The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear friends!

The Anthroposophical Society has entered a new phase of its development. We need to grasp this fully consciously and shape our anthroposophical work accordingly. In the early years, it may have been enough to absorb the results of spiritual research with an open mind and receptive heart and to prepare places for it in smaller circles. In recent years, the anthroposophical movement has increasingly become a world movement. This fact poses new challenges for those who want to represent anthroposophy to the world. This is a consequence of both the inner progress of anthroposophy and the changing conditions of the times in general. The realization that anthroposophy can bear fruit in all areas of life has given a number of people the courage to found a series of enterprises in the spirit of the anthroposophical worldview and its practical implications for life since 1919. Dr. Steiner supported this intention in the confidence that those who undertook the enterprises would also work with unyielding will to carry them out. In view of the fact that the opinion has taken hold in wide circles of the Anthroposophical Society that Dr. Steiner himself is the founder of such enterprises, it is our duty to emphasize that this is not the case. Rather, full responsibility lies with those who founded them. The way in which anthroposophy can enrich life, where it can work out of its own inner impulses, is shown by creations such as the now destroyed Goetheanum and the art of eurythmy, which has developed in unexpected ways under the direction of Mrs. Marie Steiner in recent years. They have been recognized worldwide as creations of universal human significance. Similarly, the Waldorf School, with its pedagogy born of anthroposophical spiritual insight, has found the greatest respect in Germany and far beyond. In the practical economic sphere, it has been possible – despite fierce hostility arising from old ways of thinking – to develop the joint-stock company “Der Kommende Tag” (The Coming Day) in such a way that it can fulfill its important task within the limits imposed by the general economic situation.

Dr. Steiner has shown how scientific work can be enriched by supersensible knowledge. But this gives rise to enormous tasks for anthroposophical work. The scientist can only do justice to them if he incorporates anthroposophical methods into his research, as was done, for example, in the work on the function of the spleen by Mrs. L. Kolisko of the Scientific Research Institute. Whoever is aware of the difficulties with which research in this field has had to contend up to now must welcome such a discovery, as presented in this paper, as the epoch-making beginning of a new understanding of the nature of the human organism. Dr. Hermann von Baravalle's work “On the Pedagogy of Mathematics and Physics” is a similar achievement in its field. Dr. C. von Heydebrand's work on experimental pedagogy must be seen as an act in the field of pedagogy. It delivers a scathing critique of the grotesque excesses of experimental psychology and pedagogy, countering them for the first time with positive results of the spiritual-scientific art of education.

How are these achievements to be taken into account by external science if they are not appreciated to their full extent in our own ranks?

Beyond such positive results, there are many indications from Dr. Steiner that, in continuing legitimate scientific research, the researcher himself can see himself on the path to supersensible knowledge. The Anthroposophical Society, if it wants to be the true bearer of anthroposophical life, must take a lively interest in these important tasks. Cultivating the path of spiritual-scientific knowledge is the main task of the Anthroposophical Society. The present consciousness is undergoing a transformation in many people that threatens to drive some into a state of mental chaos if they are not offered the strength to shape it through anthroposophical work.

Young people carry within them the power of new creation. They are striving to escape from the dull atmosphere that sometimes still hangs over our college courses and go to where they can find anthroposophy as such. Anthroposophy must meet their desire for healthy internalization in such a way that it takes hold of knowledge, feeling, moral and religious striving. An older generation that has followed the path of inner soul development in the sense of anthroposophy cannot come into conflict with the young, since this development awakens youthful forces in all souls. On this basis of the anthroposophical striving for soul development, there is no antagonism between old age and youth. The smear campaign by our opponents demands a counter-campaign that is conducted with objective clarity and vigorously pursued. The opposition that arose from Dr. Steiner's establishment of anthroposophical spiritual science would not have been of significant importance. It was only since the various enterprises were founded after 1919 that dangerous opposition arose. This latter type of opposition took up foolish assertions of former members and used them as a means to their intention of eliminating anthroposophy from the world. Thus an unscrupulous opposition managed to shower the person of Dr. Steiner with a flood of slander.

It is the task of the Anthroposophical Society, and especially of those who want to represent Anthroposophy in all fields, to vigorously counter these slanders in order to finally protect Dr. Steiner from such attacks in an effective way. Above all, it is important to vigorously combat defamations, such as those contained in the “Psychischen Studien” (Psychical Studies), which have then been uncritically circulated by almost all opponents, by characterizing and pillorying their authors.

In Munich, for instance, there was a man who was particularly troublesome to Dr. Steiner because of his fanatical devotion to him. He tried, for example, to kiss Dr. Steiner's hand at every opportunity. Later, out of wounded vanity, he became an equally fanatical opponent. All the other opponents drew from this source of filth. An example from the most recent past also sheds light on the character of our opponents. A private lecturer at a famous university tried to obtain unpublished material from us under the guise of scientific interest. At about the same time, he proved his manly courage by asking some of our members not to treat him in the polemic debate, as they did Prof. Drews, and thus ruin his career. The methods of many of these new opponents must also be exposed. They have tried to foist a distorted image of anthroposophy on their contemporaries, often abusing their official positions or scientific authority, and maliciously compiling numerous quotations from Dr. Steiner's books and lectures out of context. We must counter this distorted image with an accurate representation of the true nature of the anthroposophical spiritual heritage.

We owe it to anthroposophy that its representatives express an attitude of soul created by independent spiritual experience, which enables them to present anthroposophy in its full dignity in such a way that all human souls can find their way to it. Even the opponents' assertions, such as that supersensible knowledge about past human conditions has no significance for real life, are refuted simply by the way Anthroposophists themselves live when these insights are cultivated in the branch work and in individual life in such a way that it becomes apparent what they can give to people in terms of strengthening their personality and enlightening their existence. The knowledge of prenatal and post-mortal life will not be presented to people in abstract dogma if it becomes directly tangible as an ethical force. The revival of Christianity through the results of anthroposophical research will not be presented to people as a disputable assertion or an uncertain promise when it comes to them from the whole attitude of the anthroposophists themselves.

In view of the strength of the opposition, it is also imperative that all the living spiritual forces present in the Anthroposophical Society neither weaken through isolation nor wear themselves down in antagonism, but fully develop in free cooperation, and that the leadership of the Society should support everyone working in a truly anthroposophical spirit, to achieve the fullest possible effectiveness in the service of the common cause. A human relationship must develop among the individual anthroposophists. New flexible forms must be sought, so that the Anthroposophical Society can emerge from its isolation and self-isolation and become a versatile mediator of its spiritual wealth. Every leadership of the Society will have to be supported and at the same time kept flexible by a living organization of trusted individuals who will feel jointly responsible for the work as a whole.

What we have only outlined in this appeal from our sense of the new tasks for the Anthroposophical Society, we would like to present to a representative assembly for discussion. In view of the extraordinary significance of the decisions we have to make, we request the working groups in Germany to send such personalities, who are deeply committed to a re-organization of the Anthroposophical Society, to a conference to be held in Stuttgart from February 25 to 28.

Until the representatives' meeting, we signatories will form the leading trust body for the affairs of the Anthroposophical Society. Stuttgart, February 13, 1923.

Jürgen v. Grone, Dr. Eugen Kolisko, Johanna Mücke, Emil Leinhas, Dr. Otto Palmer, Dr. Friedrich Rittelmeyer, Dr. Carl Unger, Wolfgang Wachsmuth.

Dear Friends!

From the appeal that we hereby present to you, you will see the importance for the Anthroposophical Society of the delegates' assembly to be held from February 25 to 28, 1923. In this appeal, we also present those points of view that we consider to be the most important foundations for the deliberations. We may express the hope that if you now send the delegates of your confidence to this meeting, we will all be able to discuss and organize our affairs together in a fraternal spirit.

We would like to give you a completely free hand in the way you wish to appoint your delegates, including the number of delegates; in particular, we consider it a good thing if groups that carry out joint anthroposophical work within or outside the recognized working groups are also represented. In addition to the delegates, every member of the Anthroposophical Society is entitled to participate in the discussions. Please bring your delegate ID and membership cards. During the days of the conference, rooms will be available for free gatherings, group discussions, individual meetings, etc.

A detailed report of the conference will be provided.

We will try to provide free accommodation for a limited number of delegates at our local members. We therefore ask that the names of delegates who require this and any accommodation requests be sent to us by telegraph.

If any of the working groups should have financial difficulties in sending their delegates here, we ask to be notified quickly so that we can help out according to the available funds.

We request that all correspondence regarding the delegates' meeting be addressed to Mr. Jürgen von Grone, Stuttgart, Champignystr. 17, with the note “Delegates' Meeting”.

We would like to point out that this is an extremely urgent matter and request that you begin preparations for the determination of delegates as soon as possible.

With warmest anthroposophical greetings

Jürgen von Grone, Dr. Eugen Kolisko, Emil Leinhas, Johanna Mücke, Dr. Otto Palmer, Dr. Friedrich Rittelmeyer, Dr. Carl Unger, Wolfgang Wachsmuth

Delegates' Assembly program

On Sunday, February 25, 1923, at 8 p.m., Landhausstraße 70

Meeting of delegates.

Further deliberations will take place at the Gustav Siegle House, Leonhardplatz, Stuttgart, on Monday, February 26, from 9:00 a.m. to noon,

from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m., and from 8:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m. On Tuesday, February 27,

9 to 12 a.m. and 2½ to 4½ p.m. Wednesday, February 28, 9 to 12 a.m. and 2½ to 4½ p.m.

Tuesday, February 27, 5 p.m., Landhausstraße 70, performance of eurythmic art

under the direction of Mrs. Marie Steiner. The performance will be repeated on Wednesday, February 28th, at 5 p.m., at the same place.

Tuesday, February 27th, and Wednesday, February 28th, at 8 p.m. at the Gustav Siegle House, Leonhardsplatz.

Lecture by Dr. Rudolf Steiner.

NB: On March 1, the prices of tickets are expected to rise again, but it can be assumed that tickets purchased on February 28 will again be valid for three days.

on the three main questions for anthroposophical youth work

My dear friends! I think I can assume that the present appeal to the members of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany is known to you all. You have seen from it that it is recognized in the circles of the Anthroposophical Society that, to a certain extent, the rudder, as it has been steered from Stuttgart in particular, must now be turned and that there is, after all, an awareness that such a change in direction is necessary. The details that come into consideration will naturally be discussed at the delegates' meeting. I believe you will be particularly interested in all that will be going on there. You found society in a particular state when you yourself were seeking the path to anthroposophy out of the external circumstances of your life. You imagined that what a young person seeks from the depths of his soul but cannot find in the institutions of the world today must be found somewhere. They were placed in these institutions and found that what has emerged from recent history does not correspond to what is actually demanded from the human soul as humanity. Perhaps you were looking for where this demand for true humanity would be fulfilled, and finally you believed you could find it in the Anthroposophical Society. Now, however, many things were not in accordance with the facts as they were. At first it was not all of you who somehow made this discord a conflict. You found many things unsatisfactory, but at first you remained at the stage of merely stating this dissatisfaction. In the face of the past and present facts within the Anthroposophical Society, however, the fact must be faced that the Anthroposophical Society has simply not fulfilled the development of anthroposophy, and that the extent to which something completely new must be created or the old Anthroposophical Society must be continued with a completely new impulse must be faced.

This has been considered by the personalities who have been involved in the leadership to a greater or lesser extent: to leave behind many old sins, which mostly consisted of omissions and bureaucratic forms, and to attempt to create the basis for the further existence of the Society in agreement with the representatives of the Anthroposophical Society in Germany.

In Stuttgart, it must be said that the developments of recent years have brought together a large number of excellent workers. As individuals, they are excellent people, but when brought together in a group, they are a truly great movement in their own right. But as one of the leading personalities here has already said, each one stands in the way of the other. This has actually been the cause of much unproductivity here. Each individual has filled his post quite well. One can be highly satisfied with the Waldorf School. But the actual Anthroposophical Society, despite the fact that the anthroposophists were there, has basically disappeared bit by bit, began to dissolve, one cannot even say, into goodwill, but into displeasure. An end must be put to this state of affairs if the Society is not to disintegrate completely.

You have obviously noticed this very clearly and then formed your own views. But it was necessary for the Anthroposophical Society to give itself a new form out of its old supports. After all, the work of twenty-three years is present in the bulk of the Anthroposophical Society. Many who are in it are in a completely different situation and find something that exists: Even if the branch decays, the individual anthroposophists remain, and anthroposophy will find its way; for example, Mrs. Wolfram, who led the branch in Leipzig for many years and then resigned from the leadership, recently founded a local group of the “Federation for Free Spiritual Life” in deliberate contrast to the local anthroposophical circles.

The fact that replacing old forces with young ones is not enough is evident in Leipzig, where the local chairman emerged from the student body. A balance must therefore be struck between what has been created over two decades and what is coming in from young forces.

The appeal should also represent this in the right way. Many members of the Anthroposophical Society have sought a reassuring element in this society; they were always very uncomfortable when something had to be said against external opposition. Sometimes harsh words had to be used. But this will also be unavoidable in the future, because the opposition is taking on ever more outrageous forms. A strange defensive position must therefore already be adopted. One must not lose sight of this. It is difficult for the old ones to be good anthroposophists after the reassuring element has become habitual in them.

As soon as one lives in anthroposophy in such a way that one experiences things as if out of habit, this is something very bad. Anthroposophy is something that actually has to be acquired anew every day; otherwise one cannot have anthroposophy. One cannot just remember what one once thought up. And the difficulties of the old Anthroposophical Society are due to the fact that human beings are creatures of habit, as we used to say when I was very young. For Anthroposophy must not become a habit. You will in turn find difficulties because Anthroposophy demands that we go beyond everything that is merely egoistic in an intellectual sense. Of course, human beings can be selfish, like other creatures. But anthroposophy and selfishness do not go together. If you are an egoist, you can be a tolerable philistine, even a tolerable human being. If you are selfish as an anthroposophist, you will constantly contradict yourself. This is because human beings do not really live on earth with their whole being. When he comes down to earth from a pre-earthly existence, a part of him still remains in the astral realm, so that when a person wakes up in the morning, it is not the whole person that goes with it; it is precisely what goes down from the supersensible human being. The human being is not completely on earth, he leaves a certain part of his existence in the supersensible. And this is connected with the fact that there can be no completely satisfactory social order. Such a social order can only come from earthly conditions. Within such a social order, human beings cannot be completely happy.

I have said it again and again: threefolding is not paradise on earth, but it shows an organism that is possible within itself. Otherwise it would be a deception, for the human being is not only an earthly being. This is the fact that one must actually hold to in order to really feel one's full humanity; and that is why one can never be satisfied with a purely materialistic world view when one feels one's full humanity within oneself. Only when we really feel this, are we truly ready for anthroposophy, when we feel that we cannot come down completely to earth, we need something for our supersensible human being.

You have evidently felt something of the kind quite instinctively, and that is why you have come to the Anthroposophical Society. You will have to realize that this fact makes your difficulty more or less clear to you. For if, on the one hand, Anthroposophy can never become a habit, on the other hand it is necessary that Anthroposophy does not merge into a being that really comes from a merely earthly one. For that which arises out of egoism is connected with the earthly. Man becomes as bad as he is as a human being when he is supersensible and at the same time egoistic: a supersensible being is made entirely in the character of a sensual being. Spiritual feeling and perception are not compatible with egoism. That is where the obstacle begins.

But this is also the point where the anthroposophical movement coincides with what today's youth is really seeking, due to the fact that all connection with the spiritual world has been lost. And now the external institutions are there. Young people flee from them and seek a consciousness of their humanity. It is out of this feeling that you must try to come to terms with what is already there and to feel with your own inner being. You must hold together the difficulties you encounter with the difficulties that others have, and then the way will be found to actually get a strong Anthroposophical Society for the near future, including in the circle that seeks internalization, a strong Anthroposophical movement.

If you go down this path, you will have to go through many a privation and many a difficulty, because humanity does not want such a movement. There is still a lot ahead of you before you are really so far that you are truly connected to the cause with your whole being. Then anthroposophy will assert itself under all circumstances. The disintegration of the civilized world is so strong that Europe will not have much time left if it does not turn to the spirit. Only from the spirit can an ascent come! Therefore, the spiritual must be sought unconditionally, and in this striving you have done the right thing, you have taken the right path. Now it is a matter of taking up the work for the near future. And to hear some more about how you imagine your intentions will take shape, we have come together today.

[The following is a question and answer session, printed in full in GA 217a. This is only a summary of the social context:]

A participant: About the difficulties students have in asserting themselves with anthroposophical works.

Dr. Steiner: The Anthroposophical Society must learn to recognize how important it is that the work done within its framework is not ignored; it must come to recognize such work. It must learn to appreciate the work of Dr. von Baravalle or the brochure by Caroline von Heydebrand, 'Against Experimental Psychology and Education'. Little by little, even if our research institutes were to solve the tasks that lie in the natural science courses and cycles, it must also be the case that even the opponents say that there is something to be found in the Anthroposophical Society that they respect. One must train oneself to recognize human achievements. Today, a student working on an anthroposophical dissertation is rejected! The Society must become a place where such things become “conscience”, so that it can no longer happen that a professor rejects an anthroposophically oriented work for these reasons. The research institutes, in which people are involved in practical work, must stand behind it, so that a student who is working in a seminar or doing a doctoral thesis is also granted it. The Anthroposophical Society must become such that a professor must accept an anthroposophically oriented seminar paper or dissertation, provided it is substantial enough, because he is concerned that otherwise he will get the Anthroposophical Society on his back.

Dr. Steiner asks if youth representatives are coming to the delegates' meeting.

A youth representative says a few words about the assembly of delegates.

Dr. Steiner: It would be good if something could be presented in as comprehensive a form as possible and taken completely seriously on the three main questions that need to be addressed here:

Firstly: What is the situation regarding the student and youth movement?

Secondly: What kind of experiences does someone who feels their full humanity through anthroposophy have at the universities?

Thirdly: What does the academic and younger person expect from the Anthroposophical Society?

These things must, of course, be brought to bear by grasping them in a penetrating way. Nietzsche showed in a penetrating way what the situation was at our educational institutions at the turn of the 1960s. He brilliantly described how the educational institutions should be and what he expected of them. Unfortunately, Nietzsche has almost been forgotten. Today, what Nietzsche described at the time would have to be surpassed. These three questions that have just been characterized are the most important. And if we succeed in bringing personalities into the center of the Anthroposophical Society who not only have the highest interest in their field, but also attention for everything that is going on in the Society and everywhere, then everything will be fine. What has been lacking is interest and attention. This is shown by the fact that the emergence of the religious movement went unnoticed until it occurred. Attention and interest must be paid to everything in the Anthroposophical Society. For it is indeed the case that thoughts do not grow, they remain unchanged, but that attention and interest grow and can bear fruit.

Above all, one must seek and follow the path to the supersensible worlds with clarity and determination. Then one will also find the right relationship with people. And vice versa: if one has found the right relationship with people, then one is no longer far from entering the supersensible worlds.

Meeting with the Thirties Group

Dr. Steiner: It is important that the Anthroposophical Society asserts what it wants.

Emil Leinhas: It is to be presented what is still to be said about the presentations [about the various institutions at the assembly of delegates].

Several: Heyer, Stein, Maier, Hahn, Stockmeyer, Rittelmeyer, Krüger and Leinhas speak about the “Bund für freies Geistesleben” (Federation for Free Spiritual Life). One should give it concrete tasks for young people.

Dr. Steiner: The “day to come” can no longer finance things. With the large expenses that our institutes require, it will not be possible to finance such things. But then it must be shown that the world is interested in them. The “day to come” could only be in a position to finance such things if it could be placed on a broader basis. We often encounter the opinion that people do not want to join the “Kommende Tag”, but would like to profit from it. As long as it is not possible for us to involve everyone in the “Kommende Tag”, we will not be able to achieve anything.

A large number of speakers – Stockmeyer, Kolisko, Werbeck, Baravalle, Heyer, von Grone, Leinhas, Kolisko, Rittelmeyer – speak programmatically about the “Federation for a Free Spiritual Life” and also about the newspaper “Anthroposophie”.

Dr. Steiner: If we had learned by chance that a lecture was to be given on eurythmy, we would naturally have found it out of place. Eurythmy has its own content. The point is that there is no need to talk about eurythmy at all. Imagine if the report on religious renewal contained instructions on what the leaders should do, for example, in worship! On the other hand, there are a number of agendas that fall to the Society with regard to the religious renewal movement. In the same way, we would have to talk about such things as the newspaper [Anthroposophie] and the Bund für freies Geistesleben. On the other hand, we are constantly discussing the substance of the matter. This will not be the task of the assembly of delegates, but rather to show what the Anthroposophical Society as such has to contribute. You will also not be able to present the lecture on the Waldorf school in such a way that you talk about the curriculum, but rather about what the Society has to do. If we do not stick to the issues, people will leave. The questions must be addressed in such a way that the assembly of delegates gets the impression: these people know what they are doing with “Anthroposophy”, these people know what they are doing with the “Federation for a Free Spiritual Life”.

Now it is a matter of giving the members suggestions as to what the Anthroposophical Society has to do to enable the anthroposophical movement to be fed by it. The discussion should be concentrated on this point. One should give a picture, for example, of the “Bund für freies Geistesleben”, that it has a great justification in the whole spiritual life of the present day. A few strokes are needed to indicate the factors from which it can draw its substance. One would have to show how society wants to absorb this and what it can do in the process.

The question of financing is answered by the anthroposophical movement. We have never worried about financing the anthroposophical movement. We have not financed anything. The “Bund für freies Geistesleben” (Association for an Independent Spiritual Life) is best financed when it is left to finance itself. If one continually strives to create funds that are spent in the most inappropriate way until there is nothing left, and does not ensure that the cause finances itself, it will not work. In the Anthroposophical Society we had no need to discuss financial questions until 1918. If one has to talk as one has done just now about financial questions, it is because one thinks only of funds.

Things that have inner life will assert themselves. The meeting on Wednesday must not break up without having achieved anything; without having talked about everything except the specific tasks of the Society, these great tasks that lie ahead for the Waldorf School, for the Research Institute, eurythmy and art. Then the discussion of community life comes up by itself. If we continue our conversation as before, the members will leave at the end as they came. It must be shown that the things are there and what one has to do with them. When the tasks of the society are discussed, it will emerge from such a discussion that the newspaper is also being properly edited.

The publishing house [“Kommender Tag”] is discussed: Wolfgang Wachsmuth, Dr. Kolisko.

Dr. Steiner: The publishing house of “Kommender Tag” is precisely an institution for a free spiritual life, which in turn is a gift of the Anthroposophical Society. The Society should continue this activity.

Gratitude must be expressed by spreading the spiritual knowledge. The existence of spiritual knowledge gives rise to the obligation to protect it.

The Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press is mentioned.

Dr. Steiner: The Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press can be satisfied. It will fulfill its tasks even when the Society is really up and running. (Note from Dr. Heyer: “It will at most receive new tasks when the Society is functioning.”) In itself, it hardly needs to be mentioned.

Marie Steiner: But there was a time when it was presented as overcome and people wanted to move beyond it. There was a time when it had to defend itself.

Dr. Steiner: The important thing is to let what is going well develop properly and to point out the real harm. This lies in the tendency to want to do something for the publishing house. The real task is to not interfere in something that is solidly grounded in itself. It must be placed on a more general footing. There have been cases in the past where a tendency has emerged to interfere with things that were in order. Instead of dealing with the things that were out of order, people have always been concerned with things that were in order.

Marie Steiner: It was thought that the women's economy should be done away with and that the matter had to be handled in a cosmopolitan way.

Dr. Steiner: It is mentioned as justified in the matter, in lectures on economics as an example that is based on a healthy foundation. First there was consumption, so that it is based on a healthy foundation. It must be mentioned from the anthroposophical point of view. Of course, you can also have a framework first and then give it content. The basic difference between these two publishing houses is that the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag emerged from the anthroposophical movement, while the Kommende Tag Verlag came into being because people wanted to found a publishing house in opposition to the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag. That is one aspect here. One is something that has become necessary out of anthroposophical affairs; the other is something that is tremendously linked to things that have been founded out of unobjective points of view. All these kinds of foundations have caused the movement many difficulties as a result. You cannot imagine the difficulties we are now facing, the huge difficulties that have arisen from the fact that, for example, the quirk has arisen of having the financial affairs of the Goetheanum administered by a Stuttgart trust company. This is something that hangs around like shackles. In the last few days I have even been obliged to tell the experts that they wanted to pass off as reasonable something that I regarded as unreasonable. These things were justified by “really practical people”, and they turn out to be the most impractical stuff there can be. Of course, if the personality and its energy are behind it, you can put a lot into such things. This must be talked about in the next few days. You can't just sweep the things that have happened since 1918 under the carpet; but you have to explain that you want to give them substance.

Dr. Krüger comments on this.

Dr. Steiner: It depends a lot on how things have been done since 1918. It must become apparent that things will not be done in the same way, that they will not be done from points of view that are heterogeneous to anthroposophy. Something has been added from outside to purely anthroposophical activity. It is not anthroposophy that cuts one off from the rest of the world. You may even find that people are very interested to know about anthroposophy. It is the things that have happened that discredit anthroposophy. We must call things by their right name.

Was it necessary to go to the President of Württemberg in 1918 without my knowledge, so that these things are now attributed to me? Was it necessary to combine something so un-anthroposophical with the anthroposophical current? These things are what has led us into the abyss. We must realize that things must not be done in this way. Was it necessary to do all this work? If in the next few days there is no talk of the things that matter and about which one can say: mistakes have been made — and the mistakes are avoided in such a way that one becomes aware of the direction in which the mistakes were made and how one will therefore do things differently — we will not make any progress. It must be shown that it is this positive doing-differently that matters (Dr. Heyer's note: “not pater peccavp”).

Ernst Uehli: I have offered to give a talk on eurythmy.

Dr. Steiner: I am just taking this opportunity to point out that we need to address the question of what the Society has to do in relation to the problems at hand. We can talk about the things that have led us away from our anthroposophical endeavors. All these endeavors should have been guided by anthroposophy, as was the case with eurythmy. All these things could have been done in the anthroposophical sense. But they were done in a bureaucratic sense. It would be just as if one were to improve the Waldorf school method by mixing in all kinds of nonsense.

But in the other areas, all kinds of nonsense has been mixed in from the outside.

Louis Werbeck is to give the presentation on the opponents.

Dr. Steiner:

But in the other areas, all kinds of nonsense has been mixed in from the outside.

Louis Werbeck should take over the presentation about the opponents.

Dr. Steiner: You have to take the standpoint of the real conditions. It is important to realize that conditions are getting worse, so that we have to expect that the books will be boycotted by the retail book trade. We have to be prepared for this fact. Now, in the next few days, our members must be spoken to in the same way that the “Berliner Tageblatt” dared to speak to its subscribers. The French have banned it in the Ruhr area because of certain articles. The Tageblatt has said: “We will nevertheless find ways and means that all those who previously received it will continue to receive the Tageblatt.” We cannot achieve anything by getting books from booksellers. We have to look for ways and means of spreading our literature.

Then it will be necessary for the branches to become disseminators of anthroposophical literature in a real way, but in such a way that it can be seen that the Society is actually working for the various fields. We must seek out new channels. I have been recommending this for two or three years; only it has not been taken into account much. To find new channels, you have to put your brainpower to work. Only cleverness belongs in criticism. We really do not lack genius. But there is a lack of goodwill. With goodwill, one must apply one's brainpower. This is not necessary with genius. One can be a genius and a mere automaton at the same time.

The question of the opponents of the Goesch case is discussed.

Dr. Steiner: You only need to take the thick document that Goesch wrote shortly after he was expelled. You just need to look at it: constant repetitions, nitpicking, fear of physical contact like shaking hands, and so on. You can put together an absolutely reliable clinical picture from these things. I do not think it is right to put things together from his own statements. That is not decisive. With these things one can throw in “situations”. I have mentioned the matter somewhere; one could know that, since every piece of rubbish is copied. For example, Goesch writes that the children spit eight days before a great battle. If you take the concoction, you will find all the symptoms that make up a complete clinical picture. I have dealt with this clinical picture in a Dornach lecture.

The main thing is that the Anthroposophical Society would understand what its duties are. The Goesch case has been left lying around; it has been left lying around. No further attention has been paid to it. But if the Anthroposophical Society is there and makes demands, it would be obliged to follow up the matter. It is a matter of drawing attention to what the tasks of the Anthroposophical Society are in each individual case.

It is just as easy to make it clear with Seiling. He has become an opponent simply because our publishing house has not accepted his Christ brochure. It is of no use if this is mentioned in a subordinate clause. This must always be brought to the attention, it must be said again and again. The archives have made it their business to lock things up and not take any responsibility for them. So the lectures in which something like this is said were locked up, so that the things have now become a scandal. This is part of the bigger picture. You have to characterize your opponents correctly.

Goesch is a medical case. He has to be destroyed professionally because he is simply a pathological case. Many people could have written a paper about him, but they didn't. I don't understand why it wasn't possible to find this Goesch case interesting. It's an interesting medical case. One really has to say: any journal with even a passing interest in psychiatry would have accepted this paper if 'y' had been used instead of 'Goesch'. Today one could have pointed to Goesch. Psychiatry is entitled to do that. There is talk of Dr. Steiner's scientific courses 'The Doctrine of Heat and Light' [GA 320, GA 321] and their publication.

Dr. Steiner: The point is that you yourselves do what you consider necessary. The point of the courses is that I would have to correct them so that they do not contain various cabbages, but are consistent. We can no longer avoid the fact that all these things are being made accessible to a wider public.

One course was about thermodynamics. Now, on the basis of this course, a theory of heat can be written in the way one is accustomed to writing a theory of heat. On the basis of this course, an optics can be written on the basis of this course on light, so that physicists would see that it is possible to treat such chapters anthroposophically in this way. In doing so, it would be shown that some things have been treated briefly there. We shall have to consider how to treat this or that problem from the point of view of the course. The chapters in question would have to be treated in such a way that, based on these principles, a theory of heat and an optics would be written anthroposophically. I have made that clear.

It happens again and again that others express their own opinions and then claim that these are my opinions. I never said that this course should only be used to do experiments. That is a task that is never complete. I don't know why people keep putting their own opinions out there as if I had said them. You can tell whether I said it or not.

Dr. von Baravalle: That is my favorite answer. In that sense, I would have liked to have taken on this task.

Dr. Steiner: I would not have had the slightest objection to things being done this way after my course. Steffen's account of the pedagogical course is an independent work. But why do people keep racking their brains over how to solve my tasks? It would have been quite a different matter if someone had reported on the courses in Anthroposophy in the manner of Steffen in the Goetheanum. Anthroposophy must solve the tasks on its own initiative.

The processing of the language course given by Dr. Steiner, “Geisteswissenschaftliche Sprachbetrachtungen” [GA 299], is discussed.

Dr. Steiner: The only thing that can be done is to write a short linguistics paper as an independent work. A Zurich student has dealt with the problems in his own way. The Stuttgart students are so lazy that they let the things in the archive gather dust. A suitable terminology would have to be found. If the Stuttgart people could do what they are capable of, the Anthroposophical Society would be the most brilliant society in the world. The suggestions that are made must be reviewed by me myself. I thought that the work would be based on the linguistic course. Instead of that, it has not been worked with at all.

There is talk of the Hochschulbund and the academic youth.

Dr. Steiner: The Hochschulbund was the pivotal point of the matter, where things were started and left lying around. From the outset, I had said that the Hochschulbund would only be taken on if there was a will to carry it through to a successful conclusion. It was left lying around. The Hochschulbund is one of the things that most clearly illustrates what must not be done. This Hochschulbund phenomenon, which we knew would be used to send private lecturers after us, was a complete waste of time. You have had opportunities here to interact with a whole range of young people and thus to see for yourself what these people say, in order to gain something positive from what now remains as a sad wreck.

When I sat with the young people here after the illustrious assembly ended the other day [on February 14], they presented their scientific problems and wanted to know what they, as anthroposophists, have to do in relation to science. The young people are completely wild. You have to make it clear to them: the possibility must be created that such a free college is enabled to issue doctoral diplomas. It is one of the tasks of the Anthroposophical Society to do something with this “Federation for a Free Spiritual Life” so that it does not end in failure. To do that, you need the young people. You can't do it with the old fogies, you can only do it with the young people. Then you also have to have young people for the Anthroposophical Society. At present there is no heart for the Anthroposophical Society. I have the feeling that the young people would prefer it if there were no society at all.

That can only happen if you are able to awaken real enthusiasm in these young people. The great fiasco was that no enthusiasm was awakened. You have to awaken enthusiasm in young people. Youth goes along when enthusiasm is awakened. Nationalist university folly has the youth behind it because it has awakened enthusiasm. But if the Genualität is used to present dry theories, then the youth will not go along. Anthroposophy must have momentum! Why is it that in Stuttgart genius is not used? That there is a reluctance to activate the will in order to use the head? Why is the seat of the organs of perception the most active and why does the soul not want to rise up into the head?

The Free School and the World School Association are discussed. Dr. Hahn and Dr. von Heydebrand discuss this.

Dr. Steiner(?): Healthy self-confidence could be given to society.

Louis Werbeck: Society should be interested in the central school.

Dr. Steiner: The difficulty is this: initially, for the first step, the people who live somewhere have no direct interest in supporting a school in Stuttgart that they cannot send their children to, so they have to say to themselves: We support a school, but we cannot allow our children to benefit from it. The only way to overcome this is to make it a matter for the whole of humanity. To support something that I have often emphasized: to propagate the idea of a free school in the form of a world school association. Then people would broaden their primary judgment and say to themselves: We see that schools can become better through this method, and such a school must exist as a model school. Then people would not focus so much on the effectiveness of the details but on the big idea of the free school. Something like this would have to be popularized and introduced to the branches. It would have to be seen as a general anthroposophical matter that free education was being addressed. Then something could really be achieved.

Then one would be able to maintain one school through contributions, and the other schools would be treated in such a way that one would say: You can found them if you have the money to maintain them in a private way. But one matter for the Anthroposophical Society is the one model school, which is simply intended to demonstrate the practical side of this methodology. In all things, it is important to present it to the whole world. Then it would work. But the founding of the World School Association has been thrown to the wind. I don't see why it couldn't have been supported. I don't see why the World School Association shouldn't have come into being. But when it comes to putting the genuality into action, then the forces fail.

In Hamburg, the matter has been messed up. What was the starting point? Pohlmann came and said he wanted to found a school. In this matter, he alone is fully responsible. Today, Pohlmann would have to be obliged to fulfill his obligations: he should found his school as a private citizen. I thought this community would be a good one, because this community of Pohlmann and Kändler seems to suit me quite well, and that would have worked. If only our membership would take something like this seriously and not always go awry! I don't know why this private school, which Pohlmann wants as a hobbyhorse, why this school had to be a branch affair. Mr. Pohlmann took over this school, so he should also carry it out.

It was not possible to found the World School Association. The Stuttgart vice also came to light outside of Germany.

Nor did Germany try to encourage friends abroad. The difficulty is that people say to themselves: We cannot send our children to Stuttgart. Therefore, this matter would have to be put on a different map.

Louis Werbeck: People feel it is a world affair.

Dr. Steiner: You can be sure: If the same conditions were possible today as before the war - that a large number of people could easily give their children away -, then a large number of parents would be scattered in different places and people would have much more heart for the Waldorf school for primary reasons. We need to popularize the secondary reason: the idea of a free school. People are easily inspired by educational ideas. Apart from isolated praiseworthy exceptions, our society is not characterized by what must be called enthusiasm. How often have I expressed my despair here in such terminology, how difficult it is to get a thirty-strong committee moving! There is a viscousness there like in strudel dough. Everything is coughed up. Only when there is something to grumble about is there momentum. Momentum is lacking in ideal things. If only momentum could be injected into them! Ingenuity is there, but momentum and enthusiasm would have to be injected into this ingenuity! It is no exaggeration to say that enthusiasm and drive are lacking here. People carry the Curule chair with them, even when they walk. Things are discussed so endlessly cleverly. This endless cleverness also characterizes the way the other person is judged.

My dear friends!

Before I come to today's reflection, please allow me a few words. It may not have remained unknown among our friends that it would correspond to my inclination to speak most gladly about the factual theosophical things from the very beginning, namely about the objective matters of the spiritual world. But sometimes it turns out to be necessary to address a word to our friends that does not belong to the matter at hand, but to our affairs. Much as I dislike it, it sometimes has to be done. It had to be done in the most diverse ways during the period when the affairs that led to the free-standing Anthroposophical Society; and unfortunately it is necessary from time to time, again and again. Therefore, allow me today to say a few words to you before we come to the subject of our consideration.

It is always the case, though, that you don't really know where to start. But it happens time and again that these or those misunderstandings, these or those things open to misunderstanding, creep into our ranks. The one who can understand this best, the one who can really understand this well, is really myself. But if nothing were said at all, it would not work either. I do not want to bother you with matters that have been discussed often enough. Because I feel, I would like to say, up to a kind of creepy feeling, I have been told more often by these or those lately: Thank God! Now that we have the Anthroposophical Society, we no longer have to worry about the matter, now we can have peace and quiet. It is a nice feeling to have peace and quiet. But it is creepy when there is this exaggerated need for peace and quiet if there is no peace from the other side. And there are enough other people around us to ensure that we do not give peace a chance! That is why I would like to make a heartfelt request to you not to live too much by this need for peace. Misunderstandings arise easily, understandably. And if I had always been understood since 1907, many things would not have come about that quite understandably did come about. If only they had had the will to represent what I tried to do with a certain clarity, to see it, to understand some of what was in what I tried to do, then they would have acquired a certain power of discernment since 1907, perhaps even earlier.

Please forgive me for discussing these matters in such a dry, seemingly presumptuous way; but it has to be done because no one else is saying it. I would rather not say it. If we had acquired the ability to distinguish between things wherever work was considered important for the further progress of our cause, then the case could not always arise that, in addition to what we are trying to do, which, as our friends know, we are trying to do out of seriousness, out of real seriousness about occultism on the one hand and about the occult situation at the time, which I I tried to characterize in a general way the day before yesterday, if one had acquired a proper sense of the seriousness with which we should actually take the matter, it would gradually have become self-evident that much of the selfish stuff – if you will allow the expression – even such selfish stuff that came from Adyar in the years mentioned would simply have been viewed in the right way.

It has caused me, I must say, a certain sadness - do not misunderstand the expression, the occultist in a sense knows no sadness - but yet I must say: It has caused me a certain sadness that in the way things are tried, the question could arise: How does the view presented here of the Christ problem or similar things square with what Miss Besant presents? It saddens me because it shows that the seriousness with which these matters are treated here is not appreciated in the right way, is not understood in the right way. Since no one else is saying it, I have to say this, although I would rather not because it could be misunderstood. I had hoped that people would not just look at the differences, but at the inferiority, the whole inferiority that is found in occult stuff, which has sometimes been taken up as if it were necessary to deal with it. I had hoped that discernment would arise for what one has discernment for in other fields! These are the words I would most like to avoid saying myself. If someone does something with seriousness and dignity and someone else does a botched job, you don't ask: How does what was done with seriousness and dignity deal with the botched job, with what openly bears its inability on its forehead!

Thus it was necessary, at the starting point of our anthroposophical movement, to address a heartfelt request to you not to live too much in the need for calm and indifference in the face of what is sufficiently done in the world to throw dust in the eyes of our contemporaries about what is reality. It is not enough for us to acquire knowledge of these or those things with a certain curiosity – but it is necessary because there are other people living around us to whom we must gain access with what needs to be done in the spirit of the time mission. It is not enough to inform oneself with a certain curiosity about the monstrous things happening in the Theosophical Society and otherwise rest on the cushion of the Anthroposophical Society, but it is necessary to gain the appropriate attitude in one's soul. Because if this appropriate attitude is not gained, what must be done as a highly necessary defense will always be distorted in the most outrageous way. One should not believe that those people who are now trying to distort everything that must come from us as a necessary defense, or who are trying to simply accept such outrageous attacks in a seemingly noble way, one should not believe that either of these people are right. What is being done against us often comes from people whose actions show the kind of spirit behind it. Therefore, I would like to ask you not to let old comradely feelings prevail where the truth is concerned. In the course of my endeavors in developing the German Section, I have always had to come into conflict with the increasing inability to distinguish. And even if our friends had developed more and more discernment between the stuff that is spreading and what is being tried here – it is unpleasant for me to say this – and even if our friends had tried to apply discernment, it would not have been possible to come to me with every piece of nonsense that comes from the other side.

Those who are familiar with the work that has been done by this side know that this is not based on intolerance, but on [painful] necessity. Inability has always had to be dealt with: examples can easily be given. For example, one should not have believed that so much was possible, as was expressed in the General Assembly, that something even more outrageous would be added to the outrageous! After the Jesuits were criticized from Adyar, one would have thought that these outrageous acts could not be surpassed. Miss Besant has made it possible to surpass these improprieties by managing, in her publication, which until recently was itself still being read in some of our lodges, not to retract the Jesuit accusation, but to reinforce it and justify it by referring to three people. The system is not to take back the untruths, but to refer to three others who have told the untruth.

We must find it within ourselves to respond to these outrageous acts, and to subsequent ones. At the beginning of the German Section's work, a certain personage wrote me a card containing the following words, which were meant to sound friendly: “We are all pulling in the same direction, after all.” I could not for a moment think of pulling with this personality in one direction; because it would have been a violation of our serious work to pull with this personality in one direction. So such personalities had to be shaken off; because they did not want help to improve their incompetence, but they wanted to push themselves forward with their incompetence. This personality is one of those who now raise the Jesuit accusation, one of those on whom Mrs. Besant relies, a personality who, like Mrs. Besant, upholds this Jesuit accusation.

As unpleasant as it is to talk about these things, it cannot be spared. The soul must find the opportunity to take a stand on these things. We cannot allow the belief that something is justified because it calls itself Theosophy to serve our contemporary world in this way.

Another person, who had once been introduced to me by a Theosophist, sent me a writing of his that had nothing to do with what had to be done out of the seriousness of our movement. I also had to reject this person, which this personality wrote about a series of writings that are published by a certain publisher; anyone with discernment could see from this preface how incapable such a personality is of rational thought. There are many such personalities. The matter required that the personality discussed be rejected. That is the second of the personalities on which Mrs. Besant relies. I must keep emphasizing such things. It should be understood that it is not a license for anything if a person calls himself a Theosophist. The rejection of the Jesuit accusations that originated in Germany and which Mrs. Besant has recently allowed herself to be guilty of was easily seen through. What I said in Berlin was easily seen through. One could have found that it is not a matter of thinking about a matter in one way or another, but that the whole matter is not true, that the whole matter is untrue! The person who has been designated by Adyar as the General Secretary of the German Section finds the opportunity to have the following printed: Dr. Steiner and his followers reject this with indignation. Why this indignation, actually? Is it dishonorable to have dealings with Jesuits, or is it criminal to be dogmatic?

So, my dear friends, the man who wrote this dares to write this to throw dust in people's eyes – I won't say he intends to, but it happens because of it. If someone says to me, “You broke stones in your youth,” and I say, “It's not true,” is it a retort when someone says, “Breaking stones is an honest occupation after all”? It doesn't matter if it's an honest occupation; what matters is that it's not true! We have to get into the habit of not engaging in such things. There are still people who say, “It's not meant to be so badly, he has justified himself.” It depends on the fact that it is not true! For this we must acquire a sense of discernment, so that we cannot see such stuff without inwardly taking a stand on it, without feeling how outrageous such things are. It is easy to carry out journalistic skirmishes over and over again if you leave what it is about undisturbed and write about something that has nothing to do with the matter, because people who do not feel the obligation to acquire discernment are deceived by it.

There is another page that I would like to read to you, but the whole brochure is like that again! I have included in the “Mitteilungen” in the General Assembly report that I was written to by the man who then became the General Secretary in Germany: It would be incomprehensible to him how Krishnamurti could have gone through all that he was supposed to have gone through, but that is not the point; people in the West have no understanding of what an adept is. That is why Mrs. Besant chose the path of calling the one with whom she parades – those are his words – the Christ. In response to this account, one dares to write: “Something else, a fourth way of using the word ‘Christ’ – I can only ever serve you with one use of the word, though – was the [my writing of July 4, 1911, that Mrs. Besant uses the word “Christ” occasionally, based on the idea of Paul, but in a more exact sense, namely for an “adept” or “master who has already reached the goal of human perfection. Since the present-day cultural world knows no other model for this than Jesus, it is justified to use the term 'Christ' under certain circumstances also for the human being in whom the Christ-being reveals itself in its full abundance. But the present time is such that people read this without thinking.

Much to my regret, I had to mention it here: because I must point out that it is part of the essence of the theosophical sentiment to feel that what is being done here under the flag of theosophy is actually the most outrageous thing! It would be the most outrageous thing if anyone harbored the belief that such people could still be converted! The question arises again and again: what could be done to teach this or that person a better opinion. The assumption arises again and again that it can be a matter of that at all! Those who have raised the Jesuit accusation in this way cannot be converted. It would be the most impossible undertaking to even want to negotiate with such a person!

This is one of the theosophical misunderstandings. The real issue is that we should not allow our fellow human beings to be put off by things that are said because of human laziness!

It was necessary for me to make these few remarks. I made them reluctantly. It never ceases to amaze me how even now, within the Anthroposophical Society, the belief can sometimes arise that some kind of work of initiation is to be developed on that side. I have learned many things about Adyar matters that I will not discuss here.

The founding of the Anthroposophical Society began with such accusations being made from the other side. I understand the love for the cushion. But we also have the obligation to represent our cause without camaraderie, without regard to the person, if that person is dominated by such motives, as is the case here. We see how it begins; it is not yet complete. We will have many opportunities to sit on our pillow of rest if we close our eyes. It is right that we only take care of our own business, represent our cause positively and do not look to the right or left; it is right when we are the aggressors. But when it comes to our defense, I have to admit that it saddens me – now that it is about our sacred cause – that the days are filled with dealing with individual personalities, but that I have no time to defend our sacred cause against such outrageous attacks. And since this sorrow sometimes really has to befall me within the most necessary activity for our individual members, it was probably necessary to talk about these things here once. It will not happen too often that these things are spoken about, because I will wait and see if souls find the opportunity to truly confess themselves, which actually lies in the fact that today, in our time of crass materialism, in this time when there is so little sense of duty to examine the truth, that a matter that is so seriously meant may be attacked in such a way. For the sake of the cause and for the sake of the path that the cause must take into the hearts and souls of our contemporaries, it is necessary to write such things into our hearts. This is truly our holy cause! And I would not have spoken these unpleasant words if I had not been urged on by the whole assessment of the matter. I would feel obliged to continue to do what I have been doing for years within the movement, undeterred by what can happen in such a way. But if one feels such an obligation, one may still direct one's attention to it, so that souls may find the possibility to find the unheard of also unheard of, to find a position to the unheard of, not to allow that our present is approached with such things.

My dear friends, with all my warmth, with the deepest friendship, I say to you: we will work, I will work with you on what needs to be done. When souls find the right position, the right thing happens in the outside world; all action develops out of the right attitude. I will wait.

Brochure, based on the introductory words to the lecture of May 18, 1913.

My dear Theosophical friends!

Before I can begin with the subject of our consideration today, I still have a message to make to you. You know, my dear Theosophical friends, that some time ago the construction of a kind of Theosophical center for our work was undertaken, and that after much effort, we succeeded in acquiring a property in Munich on which the so-called Johannesbau was intended under the care and guidance of our Johannes-Bauverein, so that, in accordance with our intentions, this Johannesbau in Munich should have been there for certain central events.

Now, over time, more and more difficulties arose in terms of actually completing the construction in Munich in the foreseeable future; and one might be forgiven for suspecting that, once things have been going for a while, the story of this Johannesbau will be able to form a peculiar chapter in the illumination of contemporary intellectual life. I would like to tell you as dryly as possible, so that we can come to the consideration of our subject, what there is to say about the matter! It could easily arise the idea - since we find ourselves compelled to come to an end with the matter at a time when a number of us can still be in the process of leaving Munich and building it in another Otto — one could easily get the impression that the main reason for this was the general world's dislike of our theosophical spiritual life, which might have expressed itself in very little cooperation, say, from the administrative authorities or the like. I would like to emphasize that, although these or those entities of the earth, who are called spirits, earth spirits, human spirits, have also done what was necessary through all sorts of well-meaning newspaper articles or the like to stir up sentiment against our construction in order to turn the administrative authorities against us, that does not come into it; because judging by the overall situation, we can say that we have had no interference from any political or church authority. From that side, I would still have found resistance understandable. I do not mean to say that there were no moods – there were! – but they did not get in our way. However, if we had waited much longer as a result of the other inhibitions, we might have encountered obstacles there, but these factors could not be counted on as such until now, as ones that would have presented us with immediate, tangible resistance.

No, something has come into consideration so far, but it radically forces us not to be able to think further about the construction in Munich, something that, to characterize it precisely, could take quite a long time. It came into consideration that people who, according to their pretensions, should have shown us understanding did not show us this understanding. If we had encountered resistance from administrative or church authorities, we would have realized it; but what had to be reckoned with, and which must tip the scales, is that in our time every current of thought like ours is compelled to introduce something into the chaos of the rest of culture. Our central structure must, if it is to be anything at all, be something that is truly worth realizing. It must, of course, be something that not only fits into contemporary life, but something that expresses the very new and the freedom of our spiritual current in relation to contemporary culture.

If this is not understood by others, by the administration or the church, then one need not be surprised. But the misunderstanding came from another side: from the side that today, let's say, settles on having a judgment about what is to be considered artistic in the [world or what] does not have to be artistic in what stands as the outer cityscape. And when we come to talk about the artistic field today, we realize most of all how we are in the midst of a cultural chaos. But it is precisely here that one should have assumed that there is still so much sense of freedom in the souls that the artistic judgment should have been made: “One must respond to something that wants to arise from the center of a new spiritual life, so to speak.” Instead, resistance arose, and one could see what was asserting itself under the flag of artistic insight as artistry, the kind of artistry that calls itself that and that has not the slightest understanding of what should be achieved through the artistic evolution of humanity.

It would be presumptuous of me, my dear friends, to recall the difficulties faced by a different artistic direction in the modern era – everyone knows that I am referring to the artistic creation of Richard Wagner. But even if it would be immodest to consider a comparison, the difficulties that we had to face with those who believe that they can judge dogmatically what is art or artistic could be characterized by studying the artistic trends that are built on the name of Richard Wagner. It was people of this ilk who threw the spanner in the works, people who had once opposed the aforementioned school of thought and now, having grown old enough, are fawning on it.

You could hear judgments that were made from an artistic point of view, that could make you lose your desire. Those people who recognize human spiritual life in its becoming know anyway that it is natural for this to happen as well. All human schools of thought that represent an original could not place themselves in the middle of the other. I could make a long list. Those who could only place themselves in the world according to a principle that is already in the Gospels. That which today is often called art, which asserts itself here or there under the most absurd judgments, is a dying thing. And new cultures could never place themselves in this dying thing. Wherever we today expect to find the greatest blossoming, there we find dying; and the new cultures must take to heart the principle: “Let the dead bury their dead, but you, follow me.” That which is dying must take care of its own burial, while that which is alive and germinating will not find a place there.

This is not a defeat, it is something that is perfectly justified in the normal course of evolution, and it would be pedantic to fight today against a judgment that presents itself to the world with such ridicule, as for example when some master builder says that architecture must be free, could not be guided by what should flow from some school of thought. Art itself should be free. I would advise such a master builder only, if he were commissioned to construct a residential building or build a train station, if it occurred to him.

Such absurdities, as flourish today in so-called artistry, which pushes itself forward everywhere with infinite arrogance and impotent judgment, is what cannot be emphasized enough. And it is under the influence of such currents that we finally, after we had tried hard to set up the matter in Munich, found ourselves faced with the necessity of having to reckon with never-ending periods of time; because we received a message that was roughly the same as “Wash my fur, but don't wet it” — something you can't count on at all when you have plans to work on, like our esteemed friend, Mr. Baumeister Schmid, who works so beautifully in complete harmony with us. We would have had nothing to do but plans, which would have been rejected with the comment, “They do not correspond to artistic taste,” so that we would have had to work out plans again and again, and then someone would have said, well, something like, “summarize the masses better.” I don't want to go into these things any further!

It was only necessary, absolutely necessary, to motivate an important step. And this step is this: that we will leave Munich with the St. John's building.

Thanks to the invaluable willingness and kindness of our Swiss friends, we will be able to carry out our building in nature outside, in Dornach near Basel. And our dear friends, when they want to get out in the summer to refresh themselves in the open air, will now have the opportunity, at the central point that is to be created there, to combine the impressions of nature and landscape with what we are doing in seclusion, and to enjoy seeing how our temple will rise, reaching far into the distance, a monument to that, my dear friends, which we may perhaps want to do, especially now, at this time, when our spiritual movement must stand entirely on its own two feet and is also forced to position itself as freely as possible in terms of space and location. I assure you, I went there in the summer and imagined how beautiful our building would be seen from all sides. So we hope that, out of free life, that which corresponds to our spiritual current, our central building, will rise at that site.

Now, my dear friends, although some things can be spared in the material realm through the kindness of our Swiss friends, many things will still be needed in terms of the willingness of our Theosophical friends to make sacrifices so that what needs to be done in this work can be done. I am convinced that anyone who is able to look at the facts objectively will agree that we are breaking free from our shackles and completing the matter as necessary. And it is necessary that we can complete our summer games in this central building in the near future.

If everything really does go well, we will be able to announce to you next time, with the help of the spirits, in the same way that the summer festival for the People's Theater in Munich was announced to you today, that the festival will take place in Dornach.

We would not have been able to keep to this date if we had wanted to fight the uninteresting battle – uninteresting not in the usual sense of the word – against the meaningless judgments of an unartistic present. What would have been opposed by – I do not even want to say error, because in this case it is not a matter of error – but what would have been opposed by presumption, will not be opposed to us by the magnificent nature that is to surround our spiritual work. Many will take joy in what will come about.

That, my dear friends, is what I had to put forward in order to, firstly, share a fact with you and, secondly, to provide some motivation for this fact, which marks an important step in our spiritual movement.

Of course, there might have been people who would have found it bolder to fight against prejudice and arrogance. But something else was important, and what has happened recently shows that something else was important. Now, my dear Theosophical friends, if we want to take into account what is happening around us, we need time and we must not waste time with all kinds of fighting, but must fill it in the way that common sense can see needs to be done.

This information should be conveyed without anger or resentment, just in recognition of the fact that it had to be this way. And please regard it only as an expression of why the JohannesbauVerein was hindered from approaching you freely, so that one had to hear again and again: One does not hear what should happen; if one knew what should happen, one would be able to raise the funds much more easily. Now we are in a different position, so that everyone knows what is at stake. And what has been said may be said in such a way that it is spoken in the direction of your heart, that you take up the central building in your love. Consider what is to be created as your own, as something you want to help found for the spiritual life of humanity.

Each of us will contribute what we are able to according to our abilities. And in the future we will no longer be hindered by the side that was mentioned, but, depending on the help we receive from our dear friends, we will be able to accomplish what, under the present circumstances, must be accomplished quickly. I do not emphasize the word quickly without reason, my dear friends.

In the light of the above, the Johannesbau Association would like to make the following factual announcements:

The original program of the Johannesbau-Verein has not undergone any significant changes with regard to the actual central building. Essentially, the “School of Spiritual Science” will be built in Dornach in the manner planned for Munich; in some details, the freedom we enjoy in Switzerland makes it possible to develop the intended architectural ideas more completely, including their outward appearance.

On the other hand, the residential buildings will not be built to the extent planned for Munich. The rural conditions of Dornach call for a spacious design for our settlement, so that the individual villas will be built in the middle of gardens. However, the Johannesbau-Verein must leave it to the initiative of those who want to live near the central building to build these villas; it will devote all its energy to the design of the central building alone.

It would be desirable if the developing settlement of our anthroposophical friends were to arise around the central building in accordance with a unified idea, without the activity of individual tastes being too narrowly defined; “the individual villas should, so to speak, express both through their construction and perhaps also through their orientation, express that they belong to it.” In order to carry out this idea, knowledge of the underlying ideas and construction concepts, which have emerged over the course of a long collaboration, is of course necessary. This knowledge cannot be made available to our friends at the present time, for example through a publication , so that we are obliged to request that the plans of the villas to be built in the style of the Johannesbau be submitted to the building association, which will then, of course without wanting to claim any decisive rights, suggest those corrections that could bring the present project into line with the central building. Such a measure cannot be misinterpreted as an intended monopolization.

Centralization is also extremely important for the purchase of land. In Dornach we are dealing with a rural population; the land is divided into the smallest of plots, which are in the possession of the individual farmers. It is clear that conducting purchase negotiations with so many owners requires knowledge of the circumstances, and so on. Furthermore, there is a fear that if our projects become known too soon, this would lead to a huge increase in the price of the land.

Our friends who intend to either live permanently or secure a summer residence near the central building want to get in touch with Dr. E. Grosheintz, Basel, Holbeinstrasse 55, for the terrain acquisitions.

Dornach, in the canton of Solothurn, can be reached by train in ten minutes and by electric tram in half an hour from Basel.

Furthermore, we request that for the time being absolutely nothing about the existing projects be revealed outside the Anthroposophical Society, least of all in Dornach or Basel itself.

We would like to point out that we are thinking of setting up a “College of Spiritual Science” and urgently request that all other designations that could only mislead and antagonize public opinion be avoided.

Munich, May 22, 1915
The Board of Directors of the Johannesbau-Verein

From various anthroposophical sources you know of the significance of the heavenly bodies for man's existence and I shall speak to-day of a particular aspect of this subject.

When during life on Earth we look around at our terrestrial and cosmic environment, our physical senses, even when they reach as far as the stars, perceive only what is connected with the part of our human constitution that is laid aside at death. We know from Anthroposophy that the physical body derives its forces, as well as its material composition, from what surrounds us on the Earth. In addition to the physical body we have an etheric body, and just as the physical body draws its forces and material components from the Earth, so does the etheric body draw its forces and components from the extraterrestrial Cosmos, from the etheric world. This etheric world surrounds the Earth in the expanse of space; in it the stars are embedded and from it the light streams down to the Earth from the Cosmos. Thus we owe our physical and etheric existence to what is visible in our terrestrial environment or cosmic environment. But within this etheric environment of the Earth there are two heavenly bodies which may be said to be gates or portals into the spiritual world. These are the two cosmic bodies of Sun and Moon to which everyone possessed of deeper insight into the structure of the universe has always attached the greatest possible importance for human life.

If we study man with anthroposophical insight we know that as well as the physical and etheric bodies he has within him his astral body and Ego. But if we direct our attention to the astral body and Ego of man we shall find that in the cosmic expanse perceptible to our physical senses, including even the world of stars, there is nothing in the least akin to them. We find only what is akin to our physical and etheric nature. In the whole wide universe actually or potentially visible to our senses or comprehensible to the intellect there is nothing that provides any forces or components for our astral body and Ego. The Moon and the Sun, however, are like gates into the world from which these members of our being originate.

You know that in my book Occult Science and other writings, reference is made to the time when the physical Moon separated from the Earth with which it once formed a single body in the Cosmos. But this physical and etheric separation is not the only matter with which we should be concerned in connection with the Moon existence and human life. The separation of the Moon is a very significant spiritual fact.

I have often said that in very ancient times man possessed a primordial wisdom. We are very proud nowadays of our intellectual acumen, of knowledge based upon reason and observation. This kind of knowledge was not possessed by early humanity. The Earth, and man together with the Earth, had necessarily to develop to a certain stage before such knowledge was possible. Without this development man would not have been able to use his physical body and its delicate nervous system for the acquisition of intellectual knowledge. The primordial knowledge possessed by man was an instinctive knowledge, expressed in a form altogether different from that adopted by modern scholarship. What men knew about the mysteries of the world in those ancient times was expressed in poetical language of great majesty and what tradition has preserved or can be discovered in existing records is no more than an echo of the power of that ancient wisdom. We may well be filled with wonder today when we study the Vedas or the Vedanta philosophy; we may marvel at the glorious verses of the Bhagavad Gita and recognise the sublimity of all these works, but it must be remembered that they are only the last offshoots of something infinitely greater and more powerful. Men owed this wisdom to the fact that they lived in communion with Beings whose existence was on a higher level than that of modern humanity and naturally also of the humanity of those days. These Beings had no physical body comparable with that of man to-day; they moved about the Earth in etheric bodies but nevertheless shared a life in common with humanity.

Since they had no physical body, these Beings were not able to converse with men in the way that one person converses with another to-day. But in certain states of consciousness the men of those ancient times, that is to say we ourselves in earlier incarnations, were aware of certain feelings and thoughts of which we knew that they did not spring from within our own being, as little as what we hear from someone else through oral communication springs from within ourselves. The much higher and more powerful knowledge possessed by these etheric Beings was as it were ‘inspired’ into men in a spiritual way. Thus in earlier incarnations in the primeval periods of the Earth's existence, we communed with non-physical Beings. These Beings are no longer and for long ages have not been part of earthly life. They have withdrawn from intercourse with men and only a few sparse remnants have been preserved of the world-secrets once revealed through these Beings in the remote past. Moreover it can be said with truth that even these few remnants are not really understood.

To what habitation, then, have these Beings of the ancient past withdrawn? When the physical Moon separated from the Earth, these Beings followed after it into the universe. I have already spoken about this but to-day I want to say something more, so that when we turn our gaze to the Moon we shall be aware that this cosmic body is inhabited by Beings who were once the companions of mankind on Earth. It may seem as if these Beings have no connection with the man living on Earth in his physical body: nevertheless there is a connection and it is of this that I want to speak. Simply from the fact that long ago these Beings were man's companions on Earth we may conclude that they are connected in some way with his past. And this is in fact the case.

A man's life here on Earth in his physical body is interwoven with what we call destiny. Destiny or ‘karma’—the oriental term we are accustomed to use—is a very mysterious factor in human life but its most significant connections are not always perceived.

Suppose two people who have never seen each other before, meet at a particular moment. From this moment something that is the result of joint action begins to play a part in their lives. Their recognition of each other is mutual and they know that from now on they will have a great deal to do with each other. If two people in this situation review the course of their lives since childhood, they will find, if they observe with sufficient detachment, that everything they did up to the moment of their meeting had a definite significance in that every step they took since childhood seems from the beginning to have been so cleverly directed that the path led them to the point where the meeting took place. If, starting from the time when they met and began to form a friendship, they look back over their past lives without preconceived notions it will seem that since a certain starting-point in their distant childhood, every step led them inevitably to the place where they finally met. Whatever they did so purposefully was of course done unconsciously; the conscious period began only after the meeting but the conscious and the unconscious unite in a remarkable way. In the weaving of our destiny there is a great difference between the path we have arranged unconsciously so that we may meet the other person, and what we do after the meeting has taken place. Then he is actually before us, we understand what he says and we adjust our actions to what he is doing in external life; thereafter we lead a common life of which our senses and intellect are aware. But we shall see how that common life is interwoven with what we did until the time we met. We may well ask: what is it that is taking effect in all these forces and movements which finally bring us together?

There may also be some event lying ahead of us. Every aspect of destiny comes into consideration. We shall find that there is a great difference between experiences of the two kinds of events. There are, in fact, two ways of encountering another human being in life. In the one case we immediately have a feeling, or at least we have it as soon as we have come across the man or the event in question—a feeling which we take into the sphere of our will. We get to know the person: what he is, what he now does in company with us—all this we experience in the realm of our will; we want to think as he thinks, to feel as he feels, to will as he wills. We actually feel that he is beginning to be active within our own being. He sets something astir within us, something that originates in him but nevertheless lives in our will and from our will pervades our whole soul. Indeed we learn in this way to know ourselves better, inasmuch as in our life of will and in the deeper feelings connected with our will, we become aware that the person not only makes an impression upon us from outside, but stirs something into activity within us. That is one way in which our destined encounter with another human being takes effect.

In another case we are less inwardly stirred by an acquaintanceship; we observe the person more from outside, forming an opinion of him by the impression he makes upon our intelligence, upon our aesthetic sense. There is a very great difference between these two kinds of acquaintanceship.

Suppose we get to know someone, then we go away and are tempted to talk about our new acquaintance. There will be a noticeable difference in the way we speak about the different people we know. On one occasion the way in which we speak makes it quite obvious to others that we are putting something of ourselves into our words. We may speak about the other person as though he were handsome, but in point of fact he is the very reverse and those who are listening simply cannot understand why we speak of him as we do; he appears to them to be the reverse of good-looking, hence they cannot understand how anyone can possibly rhapsodise about him. But we are not in the least concerned with what others may see in him from an aesthetic point of view; we are not talking about the impression he makes upon us from outside. We are talking about the inner effect he arouses in us and what we say about him need not tally with the impression he makes upon others.

In the case of another acquaintance it is different. We have a good eye for whether he is handsome or the reverse. From the way we speak it is clear that here the impressions made upon our intellect, our senses and our aesthetic judgement have been the criterion. We may, for instance, refer to him as a fine fellow. You know quite well that there are acquaintances of whom it would never occur to us to speak in this superficial way. The actual language we use is such that other people will immediately understand what we mean, if they know the individual or get to know him later on.

It is a simple fact that these are two ways of describing individuals we meet. The first case indicates that when we meet the individual in question the existence we share in the previous earthly life is set astir within us; something is pointing back to earlier incarnations when we lived in each other's company. In the second case we judge externally; we express our opinions in a way that others can immediately understand, because we were not together in an earlier earthly life but may perhaps have met him for the very first time in the present incarnation.

If spiritual insight enables us to penetrate to what lies at the root of the destiny which reveals itself in so definite a form in the first case, we shall find the following.—Before the human being comes down to physical existence on Earth and while, before the actual descent, he is passing through the Moon sphere, there is implanted into his astral body the karma he shares in common with other human beings. It is implanted into him for his present earthly existence by those Beings who once lived on Earth together with men and who then withdrew to the Moon sphere. These are the Beings through whose sphere we pass before we descend into earthly existence. It is they who since they left the Earth and their companionship with men, concern themselves with recording the destiny which individuals have in common. Thus it is that when we come across another person in the first of the two ways I described, what reverberates within us has been recorded in those great books of destiny kept by the Moon Beings with their knowledge of the lives of men on Earth. These are books in which spiritual ‘accounts’ are kept and they contain entries of everything we have experienced in common with other men. As we pass through the Moon sphere we read in those books what we are to bring with us to the Earth, and then, with the help of what we have thus read, we direct our path—perhaps for twenty-five to thirty years—until we finally meet in earthly existence the individual of whom we had read in these Moon-books before we descended to the Earth that we had shared certain experiences with him in a previous earthly life.

These mysterious connections are organised in a wonderful way. We must look up to the Moon existence with feelings deepened through Anthroposophy, having in mind not only the information given by physical science but also what Spiritual Science can tell us about the spiritual aspect of the Moon. There are many analogies which make this sphere of cosmic existence intelligible. The analogy drawn from earthly life is supported by knowledge to which little attention is paid.

It has often been emphasised here that in seven or eight years the physical substance of a man's body has completely changed. Physical substance is thrust out through the skin; nails and hair are cut. This indicates, and it is actually the fact, that man thrusts out physical substance from the centre of his being and produces new substance to replace it. What you cut from your nails today was within your organism seven or eight years ago; you thrust it out and have now got rid of it. Physical substance is renewed. Any of you who may have been here ten years ago must not imagine that the same muscles and the same physical components are present to-day, for that is not so. But the soul-and-spirit of each of you—that is present. The same is true of the heavenly bodies. The physicist is concerned only with the physical substance and speaks as if the Moon he now sees in the heavens were the same Moon whose physical substance once separated from the Earth. But that is just as nonsensical as to believe that the muscles and physical components which were here ten years ago are here again to-day. It takes longer for the heavenly bodies to change their substance, but they do indeed change it. The physical Moon should not really be spoken of in the way that modern science speaks. What has endured in the Moon are the spiritual Beings who were once inhabitants of the Earth together with men. The Moon that is now their habitat has changed—that is to say, its physical substance has changed. And just as it is your soul-and-spirit which forms the link between the ‘you’ who sat here ten years ago and the ‘you’ of to-day, so it is the Beings of spirit-and-soul who in reality constitute the essence of the Moon. And these are the Beings who register our past.

This whole subject can be further deepened when expounded in the light of Initiation-knowledge. So far I have explained how in the case of acquaintances of the first kind something begins to stir in us, and how this is what the Moon Beings make it possible for us to read in their records before we descended to the Earth. An Initiate has a very different experience of a meeting of this kind. He, like everyone else, meets other human beings during his life; but whereas a man with ordinary consciousness merely has the feeling that he takes the other human being into the sphere of his will and does not judge him only by the external impression he makes, the Initiate can actually see the earlier incarnations of the personalities whom he encounters. He sees not only the physical man together with his qualities of soul-and-spirit but he sees behind him a shadowy picture of the man's previous life or perhaps of several lives. Through spiritual perception we get to know a man in such a way that he seems to be a whole series of persons who are as objectively real as the one physically in front of us. In civilisations where some inkling of these things still survived, attempts were actually made to portray them. Certain old pictures portray a human figure, behind it and a little higher, a second, and behind that a third, a little higher still. In this way attempts were made to capture in painting the impression which the Initiate has of an acquaintance in whom he perceives not only the qualities of which he is the bearer in this life but what comes over with him from previous incarnations. It may be said, and it is in strict conformity with Spiritual Science, that whatever is karmically connected with a human being is clearly perceptible to an Initiate but is no more than a dim inkling to ordinary consciousness.

Whatever works and weaves from our past into our destiny may be called the Moon-element in us. The effect of this is that if we meet a human being who is karmically connected with us we are really always meeting a plurality. For the Initiate, this means acquaintance with a number of human beings in the one or at very least in several human lives; and this recognition of the earlier lives is as vivid to him as that of the present life.

Now let us consider the other kind of acquaintanceship where we judge a man more by the external, aesthetic impression he makes, by what our intellect or our senses tell us about him; the impression can be understood by everyone. In this case, if it is studied by the methods of Spiritual Science, it will be found that nothing leads back to the past; no Beings in the Moon sphere have prepared the way to this acquaintanceship in earthly life; nothing has been inscribed in the Moon sphere into the astral body of the man concerned. Other forces are working here, forces of soul-and-spirit connected with the Sun existence. In this second kind of acquaintanceship, the Sun forces, forces of soul-and-spirit, weave destiny from a different side. Again, if we are capable of spiritual insight, what leads us to human beings with whom we have jointly accomplished something in past lives, is experienced to begin with as if it were hidden in dark, mysterious night. Then, when we actually meet the person in question and allow the impression he makes to affect us, the Sun and the bright light of day seem to take the place of the mysterious night. That is indeed what happens spiritually: in the case of two people who have been karmically connected for long ages, not only the past but the present and the future as well are glimpsed and the weaving of destiny continues. The spiritual influences of the Sun make themselves felt.

But even in the case of those who have shared no experiences in earlier earthly lives, this spiritual element of the Sun weaves in their destinies both in the present and in the future. If, with the insight of Initiation, we meet someone with whom we have had no joint experiences in earlier lives but whom we are meeting now for the first time, we should see no shadowy pictures of earthly lives behind him. We should see instead, Beings of the higher Hierarchies, Beings of a rank not yet attained by man. To the insight of Initiation there is a great difference between meeting someone with whom we have already been connected in the past and someone we meet for the first time. If we had often been together with him, his earlier lives rise up in a picture behind him. If we had never met before, Beings of the next higher Hierarchy appear in his background, Beings who come down to us on Earth together with the rays of the Sun. Just as the Moon Beings weave into our astral body the karma that is past, so do these Sun Beings weave into our subconscious Ego-organisation what is to take place after our first meeting with another human being here on Earth: this is the basis of our future karma. The present is all the time changing into the future; what is now the present has for the preceding moment become the future.

The counterpart in the Cosmos of this course of man's evolution from the past to the future is to be seen in the passage of the Moon in the heavens, with the Sun either following or ahead. The relationship between past and future in the mysterious weaving of destiny in human life is the same as the relationship between Moon and Sun in their passage around the universe. If with Initiation-knowledge, when you meet someone you say to yourself with deep feeling that what the Moon Beings have inscribed in his astral body belongs to you just as it does to him and that by its means you have been led to him, when you meet someone for the very first time you will feel that Angels and Archangels stand behind him. Both experiences point to the future. There are endless ways in which destiny may be fulfilled.

If you learn how to contemplate the cosmic expanse in this way, Moon and Sun are revealed as the two gates into the spiritual world. You will realise then that what is part of the earthly, physical environment lives for the moment in your physical body; what is present in the wide etheric spheres where the stars are to be seen, lives in your etheric body. But when you look up to the Moon or the Sun, you will know that you are looking at what is present, not in your physical or your etheric body, but in your astral body, and gives power to your Ego. Through the Moon existence you are led out of the physical and etheric worlds into the spiritual world. In the same way, when you look up at the Sun, you will recognise that through its forces of spirit-and-soul you are being led through a gate to a world akin to your own Ego—not akin to your physical and etheric bodies but to your Ego. The Ego enables you to take your place in the world as a conscious being, accompanied by the destiny woven into your life as necessity and to which you conform because of your particular physical aptitudes, temperament or character, all of which are merely means of expression for your karma. In everything of which the poet says: “this you must be, you cannot escape from yourself”—in all this the past Moon existence is living on. And the Sun existence is working whenever you are conscious of freedom of choice.

Thus, spiritually considered, nature-existence and moral existence interweave. Nature does not exist in isolation with its rigid necessities on the one side and, on the other side, soul-and-spirit unable to enter into any real relationship with it and existing only as a remote moral order. There is no such contrast, for it is possible, with spiritual insight, to find in the phenomena of nature the morality that is alive within us. True, it is necessary here to pass beyond the ordinary phenomena of nature to what is revealed by the spiritual Sun-and Moon-existence.

Insight of this kind makes it possible for us to ascend from a nature-existence to existence as beings of soul-and-spirit. It is also possible—although not with ordinary consciousness—to perceive in our earthly or cosmic environment the causes of illnesses which may befall us. In itself our organism is healthy, for it is born out of its healthy Ego, its healthy astral body and also out of a healthy etheric world. If someone falls ill here on Earth it can only be because something approaches him from outside which owing to his inherent constitution he is not able completely to transform. You can see that this is so from very simple examples. Suppose you are in a warm or a cold room. You must not allow the heat or cold to pass through you as it might pass through a piece of wood or stone. You absorb and convert the external warmth which acts merely as a stimulus; you yourself generate in your own organism the warmth you have within you. If you cannot do this, if you allow the environment to treat you as it treats a stick or stone, if external warmth penetrates into you and you are unable to transform it, you will immediately catch cold. Man cannot take anything from the environment of the Earth into himself without transforming it—this also applies to the food he eats. He transforms what he eats just as he transforms everything in the environment and it is a scientific fantasy to believe otherwise. If no transformation is achieved he will fall ill. Here lies the physical cause of illness; but illness can also be connected with destiny.

If we limit our thoughts to this present earthly life, to the period, let us say, between some year in the nineteenth or twentieth century and to-day, 6th February 1924, we shall agree that if something from the environment is going to make us ill, it will have to exert a very powerful influence. If something that comes from outside—cold or heat, or perhaps noxious air—is to make us ill, it will need to be very forceful. If we merely look at a deadly nightshade it will not poison us; nor if the noxious atmosphere is sufficiently far away will it poison us. In short, if the influence from outside affects only the life of soul, it does not make us ill. To achieve that, a much more powerful influence is needed.

But now consider the following—Large numbers of people nowadays are out-and-out materialists and believe only in material influences from the environment But actually there are many ways in which they cannot be materialists, for instance, in some of their bodily needs: they cannot avoid eating what is spiritual in plants or of the nature of soul in animals. If they were honest and consistent materialists in the matter of their food they would eat nothing but stones—nothing but inorganic, lifeless matter. In their life of soul the only concepts and ideas they will accept are concerned with the lifeless and this becomes a force leading to illness in the following incarnation. The impressions make their way into the soul and are transformed into forces which can become physically active. The karmic aspect of illness is carried over from previous earthly lives into our present life, because we admitted into ourselves in earlier incarnations elements which are not fitting for human beings; we have become susceptible to illness. These ideas and impressions work in this present life as potent causes of illness. Something that may have been no more than an idea or inner experience of the soul in one earthly life is transformed in the period we live through between death and rebirth into forces that work physically. We have within us much that works physically, whereas in an earlier life it was purely of the nature of soul. Thus we have to regard illness as a matter of destiny and we must not succumb to the superstition that illnesses can be cured by spiritual means alone. Means that take effect physically are necessary. But if we fully understand the facts and realise that what is physically active in the present life is to be traced back to something that was active in the life of soul in earlier lives, we shall recognise also that by turning our thoughts away from what was imperfect towards what is perfect in man, we shall carry over in a healthy form into our next life what would otherwise be a cause of illness. For instance, if we are convinced that an illness has resulted from a materialistic life of soul in a previous incarnation, we may be sure that we can only rid ourselves of the illness by a treatment based upon spiritual views and ideas. And these are found in Anthroposophy—which is not theory but directly related to life, cultivating the insight and feeling that life requires.

If we can contemplate the Cosmos and the whole environment of the Earth in the light streaming from Anthroposophy when rightly cultivated, Moon and Sun seem intimately related to us; we see in them the cosmic pictures of our own past and our own future. We become intensely conscious of our relationship with the whole Cosmos; we see our past and future weaving in our destiny; in Sun and Moon we see world-destiny revealing itself. We shall feel in our past something that takes its place beside our present and our future as the Moon takes its place in the Cosmos beside the Sun. Our reverence and devotion, our capacity for sacrifice for the sake of the whole Cosmos will be enhanced when we learn how to expand our own existence into cosmic existence and thus experience the kinship between what lives in us and weaves in the universe.

One of the tasks Anthroposophy sets itself is to help human beings to establish union with the universe in this way. And I hope that one of the results of our meeting here in such large numbers will be that we shall identify ourselves more and more with this task of Anthroposophy which is to give added depth not only to the thoughts of men but also to their hearts and feelings. This was indeed the purpose of the Christmas Foundation Meeting. That Meeting made it clear that if the Anthroposophical Society is to develop the right kind of activity it must abandon the paths it has been taking during these last ten years; it must cease to concern itself with externalities, must penetrate to inner, spiritual realities. The School of Spiritual Science to be established in Dornach must have this esoteric character, and so must the Society as a whole in order to maintain the spiritual life it needs. It must throw off the tendency that has threatened it during the last ten years—the tendency to be absorbed in externalities.

What has actually been happening during these ten years and was happening even before then? Here is an example. A very strong opposition—it is particularly active just now—has been able to refer to lecture-courses and transcripts of lectures which are not available to the general public. As you know, people wished to possess these lecture-courses and transcripts and it was a matter of meeting these wishes, although it was obvious that this was the very way to give the opposition the ammunition it needed. We live in times when secrecy is quite out of the question. Therefore at the Christmas Meeting the Society was declared to be a public institution. But that does not in any way gainsay the fact that on the other side it becomes all the more esoteric. The leadership of the Society must be more and more consciously anthroposophical. It was for this reason that when we were framing our Statutes, our procedure differed entirely from what is customary. Statutes usually start by laying down some basic principle.—We had such Statutes in the Theosophical Society: the establishment of a universal brotherhood of mankind; the recognition of unity in religions, and so on. As I have often said, instead of all this we must emphasise the reality which the Anthroposophical Society is able to establish. This was in fact done at the Christmas Meeting. There was no mention of abstract principles but it was declared that in Dornach there is something that is living reality. Whoever sees justification in what is thus actively alive in Dornach is entitled to join the Society. The life of the Society is not conditioned by abstractions usually known as ‘Statutes;’ our so-called ‘Statutes’ are an account of what exists in Dornach and what we aim to do from there. The Society is to have an Executive which acts and which in its actions and in the initiatives it takes has a clear view of what forms and constitutes it. Thus we have tried to replace abstractions by the genuinely human element and to assert this even in the ‘Statutes.’ This is the one and only possibility of life for a Society that is to be an organ for the influx of spiritual power into the world.

Let me put it like this.—The Executive created in Dornach at Christmas is based upon a hypothetical assumption. If the Society is willing to accept what it does, it will be an Executive in the real sense; if the Society is unwilling, then the Executive will amount to nothing; it can be accepted only as the centre of living activity. I can give no more than brief indications at the moment—everything else will be clearly set forth in the News Sheet.

A real attempt was made through the Christmas Meeting to bring a new spirit into the Society, but it is essential that the nature of this new spirit shall be understood. It is not a spirit of abstractions but of living reality, a spirit which wants to speak not to the head but to the hearts of men. Thus as far as Anthroposophy is concerned, the Christmas Meeting was either everything or nothing. And it will be nothing if it has no real continuity, if it was merely a festive occasion which people found enjoyable, forgetting about it afterwards and remaining in the same old grooves. If that happens the Meeting will have no real content and nothing will stream back to it. The only content it can have is derived from the life in the various spheres, of the Society. It will become a reality only by virtue of what happens through its impulse in the life of the Anthroposophical Society. The Christmas Meeting becomes a reality only through its consequences and effects. A certain responsibility in the soul is involved merely when attention is directed to the Christmas Meeting—the responsibility to make it a reality; otherwise as a foundation it will withdraw from earthly existence and go the same way as the Moon Beings of which I have spoken to-day. In a certain sense the impulse of the Christmas Foundation Meeting was actually in the world. Whether it will become effective in life depends upon whether its impulse continues.

The spiritual Foundation Stone of the Anthroposophical Society was laid in the hearts of every participant. We brought the Meeting to a formal conclusion, but actually it should never be closed, it should continue perpetually in the life of the Anthroposophical Society. For this reason I would ask you to take very seriously what you will find in the weekly News Sheet, and to consider everything that will become known to you by its means, not only as something reported or described but as actual reality. It cannot be expected that everything will be arranged at once and to begin with people will inevitably be asking, ‘How should this or that be done?’ One of the first steps will be that in the News Sheet you will find what I may call guiding lines in the form of aphorisms giving expression to anthroposophical truths on such themes as life, religion, art, and so forth. And then people in the different groups will be able to say: Here is a thought sent to us from Dornach as a guiding line; in addition to other business let us therefore concentrate on this thought.

In this way unity will develop among the various spheres of anthroposophical life within the Society. Many things will begin to flow through the Society as its life-blood, so that instead of merely speaking about unity the Society may be permeated by a common spiritual blood. Such was the aim of the Christmas Meeting. It could be felt then and its further effects will become apparent as time goes on.

Emphasis on this is particularly necessary here in Germany where the whole position is different from anywhere else. In other countries the opposition is not nearly as strong as it is here. If it crops up elsewhere one can usually see that it is imported from here, although there is a certain kind of opposition everywhere, especially in the vicinity of Dornach itself. All the same it is a special kind of opposition that faces us in Germany, a very tough opposition which works with systematic, fully conscious methods. It was a difficult decision to put someone who was practically lowest at the head of the Society but that is what actually happened. When the Anthroposophical Society was founded in 1912-13, I held no office in it; indeed I was not even a Member. Nor was I a Member afterwards. I have often emphasised this but it has been misunderstood. I wanted the Anthroposophical Society to have me only as teacher, as one who could lead to the sources of anthroposophical life. The attempt had to be made in order to see what would come of it.

What has happened is that at the age when people usually retire, I have to make a beginning, for in fact I regard the Christmas Meeting as a beginning, a genuine beginning in life. And I would like you too to feel that we are at a beginning. If you feel like this then you may expect results from this beginning in which there are great possibilities. It is only from necessity that I have become a Member, in fact President of the Anthroposophical Society, and I sincerely hope that the significance of the Christmas Meeting will be realised. If this comes about it may perhaps be possible, as a result of this attempt, and with the cooperation of everyone with what will go out from Dornach, for genuine anthroposophical life to flow through the Society. In this spirit—and it is upon this spirit that everything in the Society will depend—I should like to respond most cordially to the welcome given me today by Dr. Kolisko, on the occasion of my first visit here since the Christmas Meeting. I should like to respond with equal warmth so that we may work together in the spirit of the Christmas Meeting in such a way that the impulse then given may never cease to be active among anthroposophists who genuinely strive to understand what anthroposophical life means. The influence of the Dornach Meeting and the spirit we tried to invoke then will always be present if there is devotion and perceptive understanding among the Members.

Let us then work together, realising the deep significance of the Dornach Meeting. Let us never treat it with indifference but regard it as an impulse that penetrates deeply into our hearts. The Dornach Meeting will then have been much more than a festival week; it will be an impulse affecting the whole world and the destiny of man. And that is the right impulse for all anthroposophical work and activity.

The truth of repeated lives on Earth was once expressed in German literature in impressive words to which attention has often been called in the Anthroposophical Movement. At the height of his powers Lessing wrote his memorable treatise, The Education of the Human Race, at the end of which he declares his belief in repeated lives on Earth. In monumental sentences he declares that the historical development of humanity can be intelligible only on the assumption that the individual man passes through many lives on Earth and carries over into other epochs of evolution what may have been experienced and accomplished in an earlier epoch. In this connection, two facts only need be borne in mind: when attempts are made by historians to explain later events as the effects of earlier causes, all kinds of reasons are brought forward—the influence of ideas, of physical happenings, and so forth—in short, pure abstractions. The truth is that the same individuals who were living, let us say, at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century, lived in earlier epochs as well; they then absorbed what was happening around them or what was to be experienced from their fellow human beings, carried it all through the gate of death into the spiritual world in which man lives between death and rebirth, and brought it down again with them into a new earthly life. They are therefore themselves the bearers of what has passed over from one epoch to another in the course of the evolution of humanity.

The past is forever being carried over to the future by individual men. This is the one fact that can fill the soul with a feeling of reverence when it is taken with due earnestness. And the other fact is that on reflection, all of us sitting here will be able to say: We ourselves have lived on the Earth many times and what we are to-day is the product of those previous lives. When we survey history and let it shed light upon our own experiences, the realisation that there are repeated lives on Earth may well imbue knowledge with a mood of reverence, and Lessing must certainly have experienced something of the kind when he wrote: “Why should not every individual man have existed more than once upon this world? Is this hypothesis so laughable merely because it is the oldest, because the human understanding, before the sophistries of the Schools had dissipated and debilitated it, lighted upon it at once?” [Translation by F. W. Robertson, 1872.] And he voices his consciousness of realities such as those indicated above, in the monumental words: “Is not then all Eternity mine?”

The line of spiritual development which could have been introduced into German culture at that time through Lessing's treatise, was broken. And in any case its continuance would certainly have been ridiculed by the mentality of the nineteenth century.

More than twenty years ago in Berlin, when we were beginning anthroposophical work within the framework of the Theosophical Society, it was announced on the programme of the meeting held in connection with the founding of what was then called the German Section of the Theosophical Society, that the title of one of the first lectures I proposed to give would be: “Practical Exercises for the Understanding of Karma” (über praktische Karma-Übungen). It was a matter at that time of introducing the idea of karma with such forcefulness that it could have become one of the leitmotifs in the development of the Anthroposophical Movement. But when I spoke about what I meant by this title to one or two well-known members of the old Theosophical Society who had come over to Berlin, there was general opposition. Such a subject was considered to be quite impossible. And as a matter of fact—although I am not suggesting that these people were right—it would have been premature at that time to speak to wider circles about these intimate esoteric truths. If one wishes to avoid abstract generalisations and to speak in a concrete way about karma and its significance in the historical life of mankind, this is not possible without touching upon matters of a deeply esoteric nature and making use of the concepts of esotericism. Hence in a certain respect everything in the way of knowledge that has since been developed in the Anthroposophical Society was a necessary preparation, because in the days to which I have referred the members of this Society were not sufficiently mature.

But sooner or later the time must come when it is possible to speak concretely of the truths of karma and their connection with the evolution of humanity. If we were to wait any longer this would be a grave defect on the part of the Anthroposophical Society. Hence one of the intentions expressed at the Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum was to the effect that communication of the findings of genuine spiritual investigation into these more intimate questions of the evolution of humanity should no longer be withheld. And in line with this, the Anthroposophical Movement will in future be attentive to what the spiritual Beings desire, not to what timidity and caution regard as inopportune or untimely.

In this connection the Christmas Meeting at the Goetheanum was not only of qualitative significance for the Anthroposophical Movement but something that was to mark the beginning of deeper and more intensive anthroposophical work. And it is from this point of view—which must also become a point of view of the whole Movement—that I shall speak to you to-day.

We witness great happenings in history and are aware that the keynotes in certain domains of life are set by particular personalities. It should be obvious to us that some historic personality who not so long ago was the inaugurator of the kind of thinking under the influence of which we are still living to-day, can only be understood—as the historical aspect in general can only be understood—when anthroposophical investigation penetrates into earlier incarnations of such personalities. This leads to something else as well. By observing personalities of whom history tells we become aware of threads of destiny running through their different lives on Earth and the light thus shed upon karma helps to make our own personal destiny intelligible. This is of very great importance.

There must be no sensationalism in the study of karma; the sole purpose of such study must be to illumine the circumstances of human life and the experiences of individual human souls. We see, for example, that particularly in the last two thirds of the nineteenth century, a materialistic attitude of soul became general; in certain respects this attitude continued on into the twentieth century and has helped to produce the chaos and confusion prevailing in culture and civilisation to-day. There is a radical difference between the trend that was perceptible—above all in German spiritual life—after the close of the first third of the nineteenth century and the earlier character of this spiritual life. Perceiving this difference, we naturally ask about its origin. In the last two thirds of the nineteenth century there are men who cannot fail to interest us, whose individualities we feel urged to trace back to their earlier lives on Earth.

The seer who is able to carry out such investigations is led back, to begin with, not to Christian but to non-Christian incarnations. It is natural here—for it tallies approximately with the indications given of the length of the intervals between successive lives on Earth—to go back to the very widespread spiritual movement of Mohammedanism, or Arabism, which arose about half a millennium after the founding of Christianity. Starting from Asia, Christianity spread across to Spain and thence to all Western Europe, having had a slight influence upon civilisation in North Africa; it also spread across Eastern and Middle Europe, but in its expansion was flanked, as it were, by Arabism which, with the impulse of Mohammedanism active within it, forced its way on the one side through Asia Minor and on the other side through Africa across to Italy and Spain. And the many wars of which history tells bear witness to the bitter conflict waged between European civilisation and Arabism. Here again it is important to ask: What are the concrete facts underlying the evolution of the human soul?

We will now consider some of these concrete facts. For example: at the time when Charlemagne was ruling in very primitive conditions of civilisation in Europe, brilliant spiritual culture was being developed at the Court of Haroun al Raschid over in Asia. At this Court were gathered the greatest minds of that time, men of outstanding brilliance, whose souls were deeply imbued with oriental wisdom but who also combined with this wisdom the culture that had come over from Greece. The spiritual life cultivated at the Court of Haroun al Raschid embraced Architecture, Astronomy (as it was then understood), Geography, Mathematics, Poetry, Chemistry, Medicine, and the most illustrious representatives of all these branches of learning living at that time had been brought together there.

Haroun al Raschid was an energetic and active patron, a personality who provided the foundations for a truly wonderful centre of culture in the eighth/ninth century A.D. And at this Court of Haroun al Raschid there was a remarkable personality, one who in the life spent at the Court would probably not have given the impression of being an Initiate. But he himself, as well as the Initiates, knew that in an earlier life on Earth he had been one of those who were most highly initiated. Thus in a later incarnation, at the Court of Haroun al Raschid, there lived a personality who did not appear outwardly as an Initiate but who had been an Initiate in an earlier life. The others at the Court had at least some knowledge of this nature of Initiation-life in days of antiquity. The personality of whom I am speaking was a magnificent organiser—as we should say nowadays, using a rather unworthy expression—of all the sciences and arts at the Court of Haroun al Raschid.

We know that Arabism in its external aspect spread under the impetus of Mohammedanism across Africa, Southern Europe, Spain and farther into Europe. We know too of the wars and conflicts that were waged. But the campaigns came to an end. It is usually considered that Arabism was driven out of Europe by battles such as those fought by Charles Martel, at Xeres de la Frontera. But there was a tremendously strong spiritual impulse in, Arabism, and the remarkable thing is that when it was outwardly beaten back as a political and belligerent power in Europe, the souls of eminent Arabists, when they had passed through the gate of death, were intensely concerned in the spiritual world with the question of how the influence of Arabism could be made effective in Europe. In the spiritual world the outer form of things is not of primary importance. Between two successive incarnations of an individuality there may be little outer resemblance; the significance lies in the inner nature and character. This is a difficult idea for our contemporaries to grasp. In an age when it can be held against a man that he once wrote not unfavourably about Haeckel and subsequently wrote in a different vein regarded by pedants as contradictory, [Dr. Steiner is here referring to criticisms of his own writings on the subject of Haeckel.] when such a lack of insight is in evidence, there will be little understanding of how outwardly different individuals can be in two successive lives on Earth, although the same fundamental impulse is at work in both.

The development of the great Arabist souls between death and a new birth was such that in the spiritual world they remained connected with the impulse that had streamed from the East to the West; they remained connected with their own deeds. In the external world, civilisation advanced; forms of culture quite different from those characteristic of Arabism made their appearance. But the souls of individuals who had been eminent figures in Arabism came again to the Earth and without carrying over Arabism in its outer form, bore its inner impulses into a much later age. They appeared as the bearers of culture in the sphere of language, in the habits of thinking and feeling and in the impulses of will of a later age. But in the souls of these men the impulse of Arabism was working on, and it is not difficult to see that the stream of spiritual life dominating the last two thirds of the nineteenth century was deeply influenced by minds that were the product of Arabism.

Our gaze turns to the soul of Haroun al Raschid, passing in that life through the gate of death. Between death and a new birth this soul continues to develop and appears again in the modern age in quite different conditions of civilisation. For the individuality of Haroun al Raschid appears in English spiritual life as Lord Bacon of Verulam. In the universality of Bacon's mind we have to see the rebirth of what Haroun al Raschid had achieved at his oriental Court in the eighth/ninth century. We know how intensely and profoundly European culture was influenced by Bacon and has continued to be so influenced. It is true to say that in scientific investigation and the scientific approach to things, men still think as he did. This of course cannot be said of every detail but it is true of the general trend of the age. If we contemplate the brilliant achievements of Haroun al Raschid and their influence upon the outer world, and then, having learnt through spiritual investigation that he appears again in Lord Bacon of Verulam, we think of the known course of Lord Bacon's life, we shall certainly find consistency, similarity—not in the external forms but in the inner trend of these two incarnations.

I spoke of a personality who lived at the Court of Haroun al Raschid and in an earlier incarnation had been an Initiate. It may well happen—I say this in parenthesis—that one who was an Initiate in bygone times does not, in a later life, give the impression of having attained Initiation. When I speak again and again of a number of ancient Initiates, of teachers and priests in the Mysteries, you are bound to ask yourselves: Where are they to be found? Why are they not living among us at the present time? Now an individuality with great spiritual enlightenment in an earlier life can work in a later life only through the medium of the body and the education afforded by that later epoch. But for a long time now, the character of education has made it impossible for what once lived in these Initiate-souls to express itself. They are obliged to operate in quite different forms of life and only those endowed with a power of intimate observation are able to realise that men in whom the Initiate is not apparent in the later earthly life have nevertheless passed through lives during which they reached Initiation.

One of the most striking examples in this respect is Garibaldi, the hero of the freedom of Italy. The elemental forcefulness displayed in a truly remarkable life is in itself enough to indicate that this personality lived at a level transcending the conditions of the immediate earthly existence. He had been an Initiate in an earlier incarnation and became a political visionary—for that is what he must be called. In an earlier life he had been an Initiate, filled with impulses of will which then, in the later life as Garibaldi, he brought to a head in the way that was possible for a man born in 1807. But think of the peculiar features of his earthly life. The starting-point for me was that I observed how Garibaldi's path of destiny in the nineteenth century was linked with three other men with whom he was connected and with whom he worked in a way that on the face of it is really not entirely comprehensible. In the depths of his nature Garibaldi was an intensely loyal Republican, yet he rejected everything that would have united Italy under the flag of a Republic. Convinced Republican though he was, he set out to establish the Empire, and moreover under Victor Emmanuel.

Occult investigation has now to concern itself with this enigma: How came it that Garibaldi was the one responsible for making Victor Emmanuel King of Italy?—for it was he, Garibaldi, who made him King. And then our vision falls on two other personalities: Cavour and Mazzini. The circumstances are remarkable. Garibaldi was born in 1807 and the others within the space of a few years. Garibaldi was born in Nice, Mazzini in Genoa, Cavour in Turin, Victor Emmanuel not far away. All of them were born within a small area.

A concrete starting-point is needed for researches into karma. It is not much help to know how clever a man is or what scientific knowledge he has acquired. Even if someone has written thirty novels in his life, this fact will not provide a starting-point for penetrating with vision into earlier lives on Earth. Whether a person limps or has a habit of blinking is much more important for investigation of an earlier incarnation. It is precisely by what seem to be insignificant features in life that the occultist is guided along the paths where light is shed from one earthly life into earlier incarnations.

And so a criterion for occult research in the case of Garibaldi was the way in which, in the nineteenth century, he established relations with the other three individuals. There was another criterion as well. Outwardly observed, Garibaldi was a man with a strong sense of concrete reality, one who stood firmly on his feet, mindful only of practical exigencies. But in this Garibaldi-life there were intimate phases, showing clearly that Garibaldi stood at a level above the conventional experiences of life. While still quite young he took part in many dangerous sea voyages on the Adriatic, was several times captured by pirates but on every occasion freed himself again by very hazardous means. It is also noteworthy that the first time Garibaldi saw his name in print was when he read in a newspaper the announcement of his own death-sentence. This is a biographical incident that does not happen to everybody! The death sentence had been passed on account of his participation in a conspiracy, but it was never carried out. Garibaldi fled to South America and there led an adventurous life, rich in inner experiences and full of vital force.

How very little the ordinary conditions of earthly existence affected Garibaldi is shown, for example, by the way in which he contracted his first marriage—which for many decades was an exceedingly happy one. How he became acquainted with the woman he married is a strange story. He was on board ship, still some distance out at sea, and looking towards the land through a telescope he saw a woman standing there. He fell in love with her at once. Falling in love through a telescope is by no means an everyday occurrence and in such a case the ordinary bourgeois conditions of life mean nothing! What happened? Garibaldi steered at once to the land and met a man who was so taken with him that he invited him home to a meal. This man was the father of the girl he had seen through the telescope! A slight drawback was that Garibaldi spoke only Italian, she only Portuguese, but although neither knew the other's language he made her understand that they must unite for life. It turned out to be the happiest and also one of the most interesting marriages imaginable. She shared in all his undertakings and experiences in South America and once, when a report reached her that Garibaldi had been killed in one of the many fights for freedom, she searched every battlefield—as legend narrates of other women. She lifted every corpse in order to look at the face but finally discovered on her journeyings that her husband was still alive. During these adventures she gave birth to her first child who would have died from cold if she had not bound it with a sling around her neck and kept it warm against her breast. These are not ordinary circumstances and the companionship was anything but a conventional one in the bourgeois sense. Some time after the death of his wife, Garibaldi married again, this time in perfectly conventional circumstances. But this marriage—which had not been arranged through a telescope—lasted no longer than a day! These happenings and similar features of Garibaldi's life are clear evidence that there was something quite out of the common about him.

Spiritual vision revealed to me that in an earlier incarnation¹ in the Christian era, this personality had been an Irish Initiate; he had come over with a mission from Ireland to Alsace where he taught in a centre of the Mysteries and where he had as pupils those individualities who were born later on in approximately the same period and in the same region as he. Now in various Mysteries where Initiation was attained there was a law according to which the connection of certain pupils with the teacher must be so close and strong that the teacher might not desert them when circumstances brought them together in a later life. Garibaldi was bound to feel a very strong tie with the individuality of Victor Emmanuel because the latter had been his pupil in an earlier Initiation-life. In such a case, theories are of no account. In a later life what is of real importance is not any external undertaking, but obedience, even if an unconscious obedience, to that inner law by which men are brought together in accordance with impulses working in the intimate processes of historical evolution.

The whole of Garibaldi's life indicates how the attainments of one who was an Initiate in a previous life are obliged to express themselves in a later incarnation because the bodily constitution and the education provided in a given century do not make it possible for such a personality to appear outwardly as an Initiate.

The same applies in the case of the personality who lived at the Court of Haroun al Raschid and who, when he had gone through the gate of death, was bound to take a different path from that of Haroun al Raschid himself. This personality was connected in the very depths of his soul with all the mysteries of Initiation he had received from oriental wisdom. He could not follow the path that was taken, more with an eye to outer renown, by Haroun al Raschid. He was obliged to take a different path. These paths led to reincarnation in a later epoch when the two individualities worked in the currents of civilisation and culture that were under their own influence—the influence, that is to say, of Haroun al Raschid and his Counsellor. The soul of this Counsellor appeared again as Amos Comenius, who again was not able to bring the Initiation-principle to outward manifestation but whose forceful and effective intervention in the world of education in the age that is also the age of Bacon, shows that profound and significant impulses were alive in him. And so we see how after his life at the Court of Haroun al Raschid, the soul who has now become Amos Comenius is reincarnated with a more inward vocation; we see how Haroun al Raschid himself reincarnates; and we see how in these personalities, civilisations, cultures, flow together. If we contemplate the spiritual life of Europe as it developed particularly in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we shall everywhere find Arabism in its new forms. In everything that has been influenced by Bacon, Arabism is present in a more outwardly brilliant form. In everything that has been influenced by Amos Comenius, the deep inwardness of oriental wisdom can be perceived.

What I am telling you is not a made-up story. These things are not discovered by speculation but only by uniting oneself inwardly with the spirit-entities concerned and by means of inspired investigation seeking the way from the one earthly life into the other. Through the incarnation of souls in repeated lives a great deal has been brought over from Arabism into the modern age. What is all-important is that the character and purpose of such investigation shall not be misunderstood. I told you that it is not a question of following clues that in materialistic life would usually be considered significant. Nothing much will be discovered by so doing.—I will give you an example.

I had a teacher—I have also spoken of him in my autobiography—who was a really excellent geometrician. At a certain period in my fife he began to interest me very deeply. There was something absolutely original about him, a one-sidedness that amounted almost to genius; he had other characteristics as well, but his geometrical talent provided no pointer to his earlier incarnation. This really first-class constructive geometrician had a certain external peculiarity—a club-foot. Now investigations which lead over from one incarnation into another very often reveal that everything connected in the one incarnation with the development of the legs is connected, in another life, with the development of the head. A remarkable metamorphosis takes place of the inner forces which in one life are those of the limb-system and in another, those of the head-system.

My teacher's club-foot became for me the starting-point of occult investigation. And what transpired? The vision that was focused upon this defect led me to another personality who also had a club-foot namely, Lord Byron. I now knew: this has to do with reincarnations connected in some way with each other. And it turned out that in a previous incarnation there was something in the souls of both these men that had led them to common action, although in their last incarnation, as far as their earthly activity was concerned, they were not actually, but almost, contemporaries. I stress the point here that I am not dealing with incarnations as women because in past epochs life in a man's body was more important. Incarnations as women are only now beginning to be of importance, although in the future it will be of very special interest to take account of them. In considering many historical personalities, however, one often omits intervening incarnations as women.—You must not conclude from this that there have been no such incarnations, but I am speaking now of aspects which lead back first and foremost to previous incarnations as men.—And so through these two personalities whose connection with each other I had perceived, I was led back to a time—it was either in the tenth or eleventh century A.D. but I have not been able to determine this exactly—when they had lived in the East of Europe, in regions that are now part of modern Russia. They were comrades. At that time the legend of the Palladium and its changing whereabouts in the world had already reached the ears of a few.—You know, perhaps, that the Palladium was regarded as a holy treasure upon which the fortunes of civilisation depended. According to the legend, this Palladium was first in Troy, then in Rome and was then transferred with pomp and splendour to Constantinople by Constantine the Great, who caused a pillar to be erected over it for his own glorification. At the top of this pillar was a statue of Apollo. In a chaplet were pieces of wood which Constantine had caused to be brought from the Cross of Christ. Everything was done with an eye to his own glorification. The legend related that the Palladium would at some time be carried northwards, whither the civilisation centred in Constantinople would then be transplanted.—This legend came to the ears of the two comrades of whom I am speaking and they were seized with enthusiasm to obtain possession of the Palladium in Constantinople. They did not succeed but they embarked on many adventurous undertakings with the aim of removing this holy treasure to the North. Especially in the case of the one who was subsequently reincarnated in the West as Byron, we see how his enthusiasm for the cause of freedom was a karmic continuation of the search for the Palladium in the earlier life. And the same spiritual configuration was to be seen in the intimate impression made by my geometry teacher upon those who knew him: here was a sense of freedom in the domain of science.

And so the paths led from details of secondary importance—in this case the club-foot—to earlier incarnations of the personalities in question. When it is a matter of speaking of the karmas of individuals one must always have an eye for the inner configuration of life.

Let me give one more example.—In the eighth/ninth century A.D., in the region that we should today call the North East of France, there lived a personality who in those days would have been considered a well-to-do landowner. But he was adventurous and went out on predatory expeditions in the neighbouring provinces. Incredible as it seems today, such things as the following did happen in those times.—He would leave his house and estate and wage campaigns sometimes more, sometimes less successfully in the neighbouring districts. On returning from one of these expeditions he found that he had been robbed of his property; another man was in possession and he had so many soldiers and weapons that the property could not be wrested from him by its rightful owner. There was no place to which the latter could go and he became a serf—as it would have been said later on—of the one who had dispossessed him. And so a strange relationship developed between these two men. The former owner of the estate was obliged to reverse his position. The property that had once been his now belonged to someone else and he himself was in the position previously occupied by the new owner. He (the former owner) and like-minded companions would hold all kinds of meetings—as we should call such gatherings nowadays—in the neighbouring forests by night, voicing vehement resentment against the one who had taken possession of the property and against conditions where such things were tolerated. The intense resentment and the things that were said at that time as an expression of it are an interesting study.

I was able to follow the paths taken by these two men who passed through the gate of death in the ninth century and were born again in the nineteenth. The one who had been an owner of property of which he was afterwards dispossessed, appeared as Karl Marx, the founder of socialism in the nineteenth century. However greatly the outer circumstances differ, speculation leads nowhere. But by following certain underlying currents we find in the dispossessed landowner of the ninth century the soul of Karl Marx in the nineteenth. The one who had persecuted and abased him so cruelly in that earlier century became his friend Friedrich Engels. There is no question of sensationalism here but of understanding life and history from the concatenation of circumstances in earthly existence.

Such matters must be taken with deep earnestness, unmixed with any trace of sensationalism. In this example we have an illustration of European spiritual life, but it was into this spiritual life that Arabist trends were inculcated. In the modern age too, a great deal of Arabism will be found—but in a quite different form.

Now a predecessor of Haroun al Raschid, one of the earliest successors of the Prophet Mohammed in the seventh century A.D. was Muawiyah. He was a remarkable personality who longed to make conquests in the West but achieved little; his inner longing for the West could not find fulfilment, but he was still aware of the urge towards the West when he passed through the gate of death, and this impulse continued through his life between death and a new birth. Then this individuality of one of the Prophet's earliest successors appeared again, exercising a dominant influence upon the conditions prevailing in the twentieth century. Before the Christmas Foundation Meeting I had spoken of many things that are confirmed by what can be known about the repeated lives of a certain personality. People understood little of what I said on those occasions, for the power of conviction with which these utterances were made came ultimately from the observation of karmic relationships through many lives on Earth. Muawiyah appeared again in our age as Woodrow Wilson, who carried Arabist abstraction in its most radical form into external civilisation. In Woodrow Wilson there appeared an individuality who brought Arabism to very strong expression in our time, particularly in the famous Fourteen Points. The calamities for which Woodrow Wilson was responsible can best be studied by comparing the actual phrasing of those Fourteen Joints with certain passages in the Koran. You will then find that a great deal becomes intelligible and you will discover remarkable things once you have knowledge of the true circumstances.

The fact is, my dear friends, that the study of history to-day can be satisfactory from the human point of view only when the concrete phenomena of repeated lives on Earth are taken seriously, together with the perception of karma and the inner connections in the individual earthly lives of men. Since the Anthroposophical Society has for two decades been prepared for what ought now to be brought about under the influence of the Christmas Foundation Meeting, the “Practical Exercises for the Understanding of Karma” that were announced in 1902 when the German Section of the Theosophical Society was founded, may surely be put into practice today with greater and greater thoroughness. These exercises, devoid of all sensationalism, should form part of our anthroposophical life, becoming the foundation for greater and stronger impulses that must be at work within the Anthroposophical Society. What has now been said ought also to be regarded as an expression of the fact that esotericism must stream through the Anthroposophical Movement which is now embodied in the Anthroposophical Society. But let us also realise with what deep earnestness these things must be studied. If this earnestness is present we shall be carrying farther the threads that were beginning to be woven when, at the end of his treatise on The Education of the Human Race, Lessing drew attention to the fact of repeated lives on Earth. For out of a deeper, more intimate study of man and of his destiny, humanity must come to realise that through Spiritual Science we gaze into the true being of man, the being who, having knowledge of his own nature can utter the words: “Is not then all Eternity mine?” But the expression of this Eternity in the concrete facts of karma and of destiny in the historical life of mankind must be recognised and known.

• 1. See Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies - Volume I, p.194 (lecture XII).

On the last occasion, during our Waldorf School Conference, I spoke to you about karmic connections in the evolution of humanity, and to-day I want to say something more on the same subject. I shall begin with matters of which you already have some knowledge and then pass on to others less familiar to you.

When the human being passes through the gate of death, his ether-body dissolves away into the Cosmos when the physical body has been laid aside at the moment of death itself. To-day we shall not be studying this first stage after death, when the ether-body is dissolving, but the stage which follows. This can best be understood by thinking, to begin with, of the earthly life between birth and death. This earthly life runs its course in two sharply different conditions: waking and sleeping. You know from Anthroposophy that during the waking state the four members—physical body, ether-body, astral body and Ego—interpenetrate, mutually stimulating and sustaining their several functions. But in sleep the physical body and etheric body remain in the bed, leading temporarily a plant-like existence, while the astral body and Ego-organisation live independently in the spiritual world, separated from the physical and etheric bodies. We know from ordinary experience that when we are recollecting our earthly life, our remembrances are falsified in a certain sense. For when we look back with ordinary consciousness over our life, this retrospect seems to be a continuous, onward flowing stream, one event proceeding from another consecutively, and as a rule we ignore the fact that the stream of our memories is continually interrupted by the nights. In remembrance, therefore, there is a sequence of day-night-day-night; a period of clear consciousness passes over into one of darkness and this again into one of light. With the exception of dreams which arise from sleep, the part of earthly life which is spent in sleep remains, for the most part, unconscious. Generally speaking, this constitutes a third of the earthly life—if a man is not an abnormally long sleeper. Even taking into consideration the many more hours a child spends in sleep, it will be found that sleep occupies about a third of the time of life on the Earth.

We may ask: What are the Ego-organisation and astral body doing during the period of sleep? They are, it is true, in the spiritual world. But they have no awareness in that world and with the exception of dreams they remain unconscious. Moreover if the human being—constituted as he is on Earth with his ordinary consciousness—were always to have awareness during sleep he would go astray in one direction or another. A man of a more Ahrimanic disposition would go about during the day as if in a swoon, as if his consciousness had suffered a kind of paralysis; a man of a more Luciferic disposition would go about in a state of confused consciousness, with his thoughts and feelings in a perpetual jumble. Generally speaking, the human being is protected by the power known as the “Guardian of the Threshold” from becoming aware of the spiritual world around him during sleep.

When a man has passed through the gate of death, however, and after the first few days has laid aside the etheric body, he starts an existence which flows backwards, beginning with the day of death, passing then to the day before that, and so on through the whole of his life, in the direction from death to birth. But he lives backwards through the nights—the periods of sleep—not through the days. Hence the time during which his life is lived through in this backward order amounts to about one third of the span of his earthly life. If a man dies at the age of sixty, this backward ‘journey’ lasts about twenty years, that is to say, this other life is passed through three times as quickly as the life on Earth. Between death and a new birth we review the nights during which—unconsciously of course—pictures were produced which are in a sense negative images of the earthly life.

If man were not protected by the Guardian of the Threshold his experiences every night would be unendurable and bring about the consequences to which I have referred. If, for instance, he had done someone a wrong, he would feel during sleep as if he were transposed into the other man, experiencing what this other man had felt as a result of the wrong done to him. For the reason given there is no such experience during sleep. But after death, during the period referred to, it comes with very great intensity. We live backwards through our earthly life and through all the compensatory experiences for what we have done or failed to do. How comes it that we are able to live through these compensatory experiences?

In order to answer this question, attention must be called to a cosmic event. During the course of the Earth's evolution, the Moon—which was originally part of the Earth—separated and emerged from the Earth to lead an independent physical existence. Some time after the physical substances of the Moon separated from the Earth, the ancient primeval Teachers of humanity departed to the Moon. While they were on the Earth, these primeval Teachers had not incarnated in physical bodies, but only in etheric bodies. Hence the nature of their influence upon human beings was imaginative, inspirational. And all the wonderful teachings which were given in a more poetic form and contained in legends and sagas, originated in a majestic, primeval wisdom imparted by these ancient Teachers on the Earth. But the essential nature of these Teachers enabled them to withdraw to the Moon which has since been their habitation.

When the human being passes through the gate of death, he moves in very truth through the Cosmos; his being expands and expands. He passes first into the Moon sphere and encounters these great primeval Teachers as they now are. They preserve as it were a naively instinctive, innocent state of the human race. Before men succumbed to the possibility of doing evil, these primeval Teachers were present on the Earth. They take into themselves what is inscribed by us into the Akashic Chronicle during the nights we live through during our existence on Earth. They permeate it with their own being and thus make it possible for us, during the first third of our life after death when we are living through the events of earthly existence in backward order, to experience it all with greater intensity than we experienced it on Earth. Events in earthly life jolt us, impel and drive us, but those whose spiritual vision is able to witness what a dead man lives through in these first decades after his death know well that through the magical power of the great Teachers who have established their colony on the Moon, the experiences of yonder life have an intensity infinitely greater and more vivid than those of earthly life. We actually undergo all this. Suppose you once gave someone a box on the ears: after death you do not experience the feeling of satisfaction or perhaps of anger or malice occasioned in you by your action, but you are then within the other man, you experience the pain and the shock that were caused to him. You feel exactly what your action made him feel. The experience of living through such events with a dead man is deeply moving—one cannot say ‘shattering.’

Let me give you an example here. Most of you will remember that among the characters in my Mystery Plays, I have depicted that of Strader. As in the case of most of the characters in the Plays, the figure of Strader is drawn from actual life. There was a man whose life was almost exactly similar to that of Strader as depicted in the Plays. You can well imagine that I was very much interested in this personality during his physical life on Earth. He died in the year 1912, and my interest in his experiences after death began from then onwards. He had ultimately become a writer on the subject of rationalistic theology, and everything he had experienced on the Earth became infinitely more intense as he himself was experiencing the effect of his books and his rationalism. After I had shared for some time in what he was experiencing, I found it impossible to continue the character of Strader in the Plays and he dies because my interest in his earthly life was no longer there; it was eliminated by the intensity of interest in what he was experiencing after death.

An incident connected with this was that certain friends interested themselves in the writings left by the original of Strader and wanted to bring them to me. I simply could not take any interest in the matter and had to ignore it, for the simple reason that interest in the dead is so much stronger and eliminates everything else. By this I merely want to indicate that the experiences of a man after death while living through his life in backward order are much more intense than they were during his earthly existence. Earthly life is almost like a dream as compared with this other experience. It is an experience in negative, an experience of the consequences in the other person of what we have done and left undone. Hence it should not be described as altogether terrible. But at any rate a man must come to realise which of his deeds, his thoughts, his feelings, were just and which were not.

You can imagine that it is in this state of existence that the first seed of karma is formed. For when the human being realises what actually happens between death and a new birth, his judgement differs from judgement as it is on Earth.—I may already have mentioned that many years ago I met a lady who had listened to a conversation that had taken place in her presence on the subject of repeated earthly lives. She said that one life was enough for her, that she had no desire at all for any others, and she protested vehemently against the possibility of having to return again and again. I was obliged to say to her at the time: ‘Yes, it may be that this is your opinion here on Earth; but that is not the point. What matters is the judgement that is made between death and a new birth.’ As long as she was with us, she realised this, but on her travels afterwards she sent me a postcard saying that after all she did not admit that there are many earthly lives!

When the human being is undergoing these intensified experiences after death, he makes a resolve that may be expressed as follows: Owing to this and that, you have become imperfect, you are an inferior human being; and you must make compensation! Thereby the plan of karma is laid down. And such resolutions in the spiritual world between death and a new birth are realities. Just as here on Earth it is a reality that you burn yourself if you put your finger into a flame, so it is a reality in the spiritual world when you form a resolution. And you do most assuredly form it!

All these experiences are lived through in the Moon sphere. Passing through the following spheres of Mercury and Venus, man gradually approaches the Sun sphere. The Mercury sphere and the Venus sphere form the transition into the Sun sphere. But entry into the Sun sphere would not be possible if the whole burden of the evil laid upon the soul in the Moon sphere had still to be taken in tow. The Cosmos therefore provides that when the human being leaves the Moon sphere, the evil in him stays behind; it waits until he returns and is again passing through the Moon sphere. But as the human being is one with his deeds, he leaves much of himself behind. If I have done evil on the Earth, this simply makes me an inferior being; in passing through the Moon sphere I lose part of myself, leave it behind. A man who had been an out-and-out villain, who had never once done anything good—but after all, nobody like this really exists—such a man would be left behind in his entirety in the Moon sphere. But, as I say, nobody like this exists ... human beings do make progress.

With less or more qualities or defects, the human being passes, at first, into the Mercury sphere. Here too, between death and a new birth, he undergoes particular experiences which are a preparation for his existence in the Sun sphere. In physical life on Earth, a man becomes ill in one way or another. In soul and spirit he must be completely healthy when he passes into the Sun sphere. Hence in the Mercury sphere the human being is freed from all the effects that illnesses have produced upon the soul. Therefore it is the case that true medicine can only be mastered when one is able to perceive how the dead are freed from illnesses in the Mercury sphere. This can teach us what must be done for human beings on the Earth to free them from illnesses. And so, in the times of the Mysteries and of instinctive clairvoyance, medicine was regarded as a revelation from the Mercury sphere through the Mysteries. Just think: What is a God to modern man? A God is a Being who can never be seen on the Earth. This was not so in the days of instinctive clairvoyance. Mercury had his Mysteries. As you can read in the book, Occult Science, there were Mercury Mysteries. Indeed the Arch-High-Priest of the Mercury Mysteries was Mercury himself. This was brought about through a man being born whose spirit was then released by a super-human process in order to seek embodiment in another way. The body was there, and this body was used by the God Mercury in order to come to the Earth, that is to say, to reveal himself in the Mysteries. The Gods themselves were the teachers in the ancient Mysteries. The same applies to all the Gods of Greece; they were all on the Earth in this sense. The God Mercury taught men the art of medicine of which Hippocrates, later on, still preserved a tradition.

Then the human being enters into the Venus sphere where he becomes wholly aware of his incompleteness. But in the Venus sphere all that is incomplete in him is prepared for the Sun existence in which the longest period is spent. Man lives twice through the Sun sphere, but we need now speak only of the one period. He spends the longest period in the Sun existence where, to begin with, he is in the company of those souls with whom he has some kind of karmic connection and who are now, like himself, in the spiritual world. But he is also in the company of the Beings of the higher Hierarchies: Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, and so on. What happens here? Inasmuch as the human being is fully conscious of his incompleteness, he works together with the Beings of the higher Hierarchies at the model and prototype of his next Earth existence. During the first half of the Sun existence he works more at the prototype of his future physical corporeality, and during the second half more at the prototype of his moral nature as it will be in his next Earth existence. This work that proceeds during the Sun existence is by no means as uniform as it seems when one has to describe it, but it is infinitely richer, more splendid and more mighty than anything that a man can experience on the Earth. On the Earth, man does not experience what is actually enclosed within his skin, but what is around him. During the Sun existence it is the exact opposite, for then man experiences everything that is within the Cosmos. Just as here on Earth we say: this is my stomach, so in yonder sphere we say: out there is my Venus. And as we say here: this is my heart, over yonder, we say: this is my Sun. The Beings of the universe become our organs. We ourselves are as the universe. While man is on Earth—I refer of course to a spiritual conception of man—he is merely filled by earthly substance. This inner world of the human being is in very truth more all-embracing, more splendid than the Cosmos outside man on the Earth. On the Earth, man is not conscious of all that is concealed within his being. But it is much greater, much more majestic than anything he sees on Earth. And what thus lies concealed within him, is revealed to him during the Sun existence. Out of what is then his world, he forms and shapes his physical and moral nature for his next life on Earth. He also works at his karma. After having learnt during the first decades after death how he has to work, he proceeds to labour at his karma. The final touch, as it were, is not given until the evil he has done is encountered again during the second passage through the Moon sphere, and to the model and prototype is added the force which impels him into the karma of a new earthly life.

In order to have more precise insight into how karma is formed, we must think of the following.—Stars—what are they, in reality? Scientists speak of the stars as if they were orbs of burning gas or the like. It is by no means so! Suppose you were on the planet Venus. The Earth would then appear to you more or less as Venus appears to you now, and you would describe the Earth as you now describe Venus; you would estimate that on the Earth—which is the theatre of man's existence—there are so and so many souls. But wherever a star shines, there are souls! There are souls on the Moon: the souls of the great primeval Teachers, intermingled in a sense with the souls of the Angeloi. On Mercury there are the souls of the Archangeloi, among whom we live when we pass through the sphere of the Archangeloi. The God Mercury is an Archangelic Being. On Venus are the Archai. And upon the Sun are the Exusiai, Dynamis, Kyriotetes, in whose company man forms his karma. We must see in the shining stars the outer signs of colonies of Spirits in the Cosmos. Wherever a star is seen in the heavens, there—in that direction—is a colony of Spirits.

When the human being has lived through the Sun existence, he enters into the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere. He has already, in the Sun sphere, begun to work at his karma. But as well as this—in order that he shall find the load of evil that belongs to him when, later on, he goes back through the Moon sphere, and in order that karma may be prepared in such a way that it can be fulfilled on Earth—he needs to live with the Spirits indwelling Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Moreover when highly characteristic human destinies are being worked out, it is the case that the final stage of the development of karmic connections takes place in the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere or the Saturn sphere. Karma can, of course, be worked out when the human being comes again into the Venus sphere, and also into the Mercury sphere. Between death and a new birth man works at his karma, together with the Beings of the planetary systems. And it is exceedingly interesting to investigate this.

Today the time has come to speak more openly, with greater freedom and frankness, of many spiritual facts. The Christmas Foundation Meeting at the Goetheanum was held in order to introduce this esoteric character which should now imbue the whole Anthroposophical Society. Therefore, when I was able to speak to you on the last occasion, I began to explain all kinds of karmic connections. Let it not be thought that one is delving with clumsy fingers into the life of man when attempts are made to speak of interesting human phenomena from the point of view of their karmic connections. For thereby the world becomes for the first time transparent, full of light—not poorer but richer, more splendid in content.

I should like to speak today about an individual who was incarnated about the second century A.D. in Rome, as it then was, and who with great sensitiveness of perception had witnessed the willing martyrdom suffered by the Christians in their efforts to promulgate their cause in the Roman Empire. This individual had also witnessed the terrible injustices and the many forms of depravity and corruption which were so rife in the Roman Empire at that time. Numberless manifestations of Good and Evil were witnessed and experienced by this individual. With the methods of spiritual research which enable such happenings to be recognised, we find this individual drawn into the tumultuous happenings which at that time, during the second half of the second century A.D., were experienced in the Roman Empire in connection with the spread of Christianity. There is something extremely moving about this individual when the eye of spirit is directed upon him in the way I explained last time with reference to other individuals in their repeated earthly lives.

In this individual who lived to a very great age and who had witnessed so much Good in deeds of supreme sacrifice in the sphere of germinating Christianity, and so much that was evil and bad in Roman life at that time, there arose a kind of realisation which was also a question: Where is the balance, the mean? Is there only the wholly Good and the wholly Evil in the world?

With the consciousness of Imagination and Inspiration one can follow quite clearly how this individual was subsequently reborn in the eleventh century, as a woman. The experiences undergone in the life as a woman levelled out the hard, steel-like angularity of soul which had developed during the Roman incarnation when he had reached a great age. This trait was softened and mellowed and became a faculty of inner, thoughtful contemplation of Good and Evil. This individual then came again to the Earth in the eighteenth century and was born as the German poet, Friedrich Schiller.

And now study Schiller's life and see how it develops, striving to find a middle condition, a balance, a mean. Schiller needed Goethe before he could get rid of all that had remained in him from the conviction that there is only Good, there is only Evil. Read Schiller's dramas, and you will understand them if you think of his earlier incarnation.

What circumstances lie behind Schiller's life and outlook? The experiences he had undergone in the Roman incarnation continued to be alive within him, but he had subsequently incarnated as a woman in the Middle Ages. And then, in his life between death and a new birth, it was in the Saturn sphere that the most significant development of his karma took place.

Initiation-knowledge, of the degree that can be attained only in advanced age, is necessary in order to understand the essential nature of the Saturn sphere. The question may be asked: How is it possible to acquire knowledge of life on the stars and the like? I have told you that when the human being reaches Imaginative consciousness, he beholds his whole life in a great tableau. But he also beholds it divided into epochs. When Inspiration is attained, and the emptied consciousness wipes out this tableau, something shines out of every such epoch. Instead of beholding his own life between birth and the seventh year, a man beholds, at this place in the life-tableau, the happenings of the Moon existence—he can look into these happenings. In the tableau of the second epoch which lies between the change of teeth and puberty, the Mercury existence shines through all the happenings. The events of the school period, seen as they are backwards in this tableau, lead into the Mercury existence. How aptly and truly were the functions assigned to the several planets in the days of instinctive wisdom on the Earth! Statistics reveal that the human being is most healthy, not in the years between birth and the change of teeth, nor after puberty, but during the school period as it is called (between the ages of seven and fourteen), because that is the time when Mercury works most strongly into the human being in his Earth existence. In the tableau arising from the epoch stretching between puberty and about the twenty-first or twenty-second years, the processes and Beings belonging to Venus are seen. Again it was genius that ascribed to Venus the initial stages of the sex life. The Sun existence shines through the epoch lying between the ages of twenty-one and forty-two, the Mars existence through the epoch lying between the years forty-two and forty-nine; the Jupiter existence through the epoch from forty-nine to fifty-six; and the Saturn existence through the epoch from fifty-six to sixty-three. Truth to tell, even an Initiate cannot see the circumstances of life between death and a new birth in which Saturn plays a part, until he has passed the sixty-third year of his life. Before then it is possible to learn about this existence in many different ways; but in actual vision it is possible to behold these happenings and their connections only when one has passed the sixty-third year of life. So you will realise why it is that I am only now speaking of matters connected with the Saturn existence.

As I said, Schiller developed his karma above all in the sphere of Saturn. To behold this Saturn existence in the way I have indicated, causes great amazement, because it is so different from anything one can experience on the Earth. In the consciousness of the Beings on Saturn there is only Past; there is no Present at all. But the Past is revealed in great majesty. Let me try to make a comparison with something that might happen on the Earth—it does not happen, but hypothetically it is possible. Imagine that you have no idea what you look like, you know only that you exist. You act, you do something—you do not see this at the time, you see it only when it has become the Past. You walk: you do not see your own steps or the movements you make; but immediately afterwards these movements change into a snowman—and you draw the whole movement after you when you look round and see what you have been doing! Such is the life of these strange Spirits upon Saturn. They are never aware of what they do out of an immediate resolve of the Present, but they perceive it only when it has become the Past. This is a difficult conception for the ordinary consciousness, but it is so nevertheless. Individualities like that of Schiller, who are also forming their karma, live in similar conditions of existence. Such individuals develop a wonderful vision of the Past. And so the soul of Schiller, before he was born in the year 1790, lived in the spiritual world with a majestic vision in retrospect of all the Past that was connected with his own karma. And then, on the Earth, this changed into the reaction: the vision of the Past is now transformed into enthusiasm for ideals of the Future. Schiller's ideals of the Future arose from his activity in connection with his karma during his Saturn existence.

And now let us take another life. During an incarnation in Greece, a certain individual had had a great deal to do with Greek plastic art and also with the Platonic philosophy. As a young man he was filled with enthusiasm for plastic art which he was able to view with the eye of spirit, and his colossal artistic powers were able to translate into art what he perceived spiritually. After other incarnations had been lived through, we find this individuality developing his karma in the Jupiter sphere. The Jupiter Beings differ from the Saturn Beings. The Jupiter Beings are unlike the men of Earth. When a man of Earth wants to grow wise, he must undergo inner development, he must struggle, battle inwardly and overcome; through periods that are filled with active development the human being on Earth struggles to acquire an unpretentious form of wisdom. Not so the Jupiter Beings. They are not ‘born’ as earthly beings are born, they form themselves out of the Cosmos. Just as you can see a cloud taking shape, so do the Jupiter Beings form themselves in the etheric and astral worlds, out of the Cosmos. Neither do they die. They interpenetrate one another, do not, as it were compete with each other for space. These Beings are, so to speak, wisdom that has become real and actual. Wisdom is innate in them; they cannot be other than wise. Just as we have circulating blood, so have the Jupiter Beings wisdom. It is their very nature. Among them too, karma can be shaped. The individuality of whom we are speaking, who lived through one of his most important earthly lives in ancient Greece, passed through the Jupiter sphere, came into contact with the wisdom of the Jupiter sphere where his karma was shaped, and was born again in the eighteenth century as Goethe. Such is the origin of the wonderful combination of Greek culture and wisdom that is present in Goethe.

When history is studied in this way, when we try to glean from the Mysteries and from secrets of the Cosmos what is happening on the Earth, I do not think that the Earth's history loses significance thereby. Prosaic professors may always be insisting that it is much more to the point to depict Goethe as the man he actually was in life, than to waft him away into a higher sphere! In richer epochs of evolution, when instinctive clairvoyance still survived, men spoke, openly as well, of how life in the heavens is revealed through human acts and human existence. In this respect we must get away from that abstract mentality which makes us think we are mere worms looking upwards from the Earth, believing only what the astronomers and astro-physicists have to say about the stars. In our civilisation and culture, with all their heavy trials, it is urgently necessary to understand the battle that is being waged between men who strive for the Spirit in order to comprehend spiritual law in the Cosmos, and men who have no desire for such knowledge, who limit themselves to the Earth, not only in the sphere of natural science but also in what is called ‘cultural’ or ‘spiritual’ history at the universities where documents alone are studied—for documents too are records only of happenings in the physical, material world. A decision will most certainly have to be taken in the course of Earth-evolution. Either degeneration of the spiritual life will intensify, and an illness of which I have been speaking for years—even in public lectures—will become more and more widespread. Very little is said about it as yet in medical literature, but it will none the less exist in life—its name is Dementia professoralia (Academic dementia)—or the human being will have to unfold enthusiasm for knowledge of the Supersensible. And this will also lead him to realisation of the connection between the Cosmos and the life of man.

I want to give you a third and rather more complex example. In an earlier life on Earth, a certain individuality was incarnated in India, when India was already in decline, and in that incarnation assimilated much knowledge of a kind accessible to one with extremely poor physical sight. Such details must be studied, for, as I have often said, it is details which lead to perception of the real connections. This individuality lived through various other incarnations which were, however, less important than the characteristics developed in him in India, where his extremely poor sight allowed him to see the lotus flowers and all the blossoms only with blurred outlines. His whole vision was clouded, lacking in clarity. His knowledge of life was of the kind that is inevitable when sight is blurred and the deeper qualities of things unprobed. The karma of this individuality was developed in a complicated way. He unfolded in the Mars sphere, to begin with, qualities that made him into a regular squabbler in the spiritual world! He also worked a great deal at his karma in the Mercury sphere, developing qualities of wit, of satire. And, in the background of all this, picture to yourselves a non-European world. The individual in question tends to be reborn in Europe. He passes through the Mars sphere—battle; through the Mercury sphere—critical, subtle thinking and perception. Having developed still other characteristic qualities in the Venus sphere—it is a particularly complex karma—and with the tendency to evade the physical, while at the same time strongly permeated with spirituality, this individual in the nineteenth century becomes Heinrich Heine.

Just try to realise the understanding that arises of every verse written by Heine, of the very language, words and form, when we know: this is, in reality, a product of the Mars sphere, the Venus sphere, the Mercury sphere. All of it really originates in the Cosmos. Karma is formed and fashioned in the Cosmos; it is lived out upon Earth.

And so, looking backwards upon the life-tableau of man, we perceive the Moon sphere, the Mercury sphere; from the 21st to the 42nd years the Sun sphere, then the Mars sphere, the Jupiter sphere, the Saturn sphere. (I cannot now go into the still later periods; there too one sees something, but I cannot enter into it now). We see that all these spheres have something to do with karma. Ordinary consciousness does not know that man has within him the workings of the Mercury sphere, Moon sphere, and so on. Yet karma is brought into being by what is thus within man; he is impelled by these forces to live out his karma in his own particular way. Heinrich Heine unfolded and developed his karma in the Venus sphere, the Mercury sphere, the Mars sphere; and it is these same beings of the Venus sphere, Mercury sphere, Mars sphere which work through his earthly bodily nature in order to help him to fulfil his karma. And so, by virtue of his karma, the whole being of man stands within the Cosmos, gives expression to the Cosmos here on Earth—in one case in this way, in another in that.

These things must be studied with a free and wide outlook. When I say to you that Goethe, in the Jupiter sphere, transformed what he had absorbed in ancient Greece into deep, instinctive wisdom, which comes out in all his creations because living beings are at work—this will have a different result in another case. At the time when the culture of ancient Mexico had fallen deeply into decline, though the echoes of the Mysteries and their cults still persisted, there lived a certain individual. He came into close contact with the magic arts, the decadent manifestations of the Mystery epoch in ancient Mexico, and he understood the sense in which such beings as Quetzalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoca, Taotl, had been living realities. Orthodox books on cultural history as a rule mention hardly anything more than the names of these Beings. Nevertheless there was a time when men had living conceptions of all these Gods, of Quetzalkoatl, Tetzkatlipoca, Taotl; they had actual connection with super-sensible Beings. These matters were understood by the individual to whom I am referring; and comparatively quickly, without an intermediate incarnation, he was born again in the nineteenth century as the occultist Eliphas Lévi, having passed through the Jupiter sphere in his life between death and a new birth. In ancient Mexico he had been connected with such things as sorcery, magic arts, and the like, and had absorbed an outworn, decadent kind of knowledge. A peculiar, primitive form of wisdom—an inferior wisdom—was in this case transformed in the Jupiter sphere into the kind of content we find in the books of Eliphas Lévi. Whereas the Jupiter sphere produced in Goethe, as the fruit of the earlier incarnation, a mellow, Olympic fire, and great wisdom, Eliphas Lévi dabbles with a kind of charlatanism in all sorts of magical formulae and the like.

The earthly life is, of course, the decisive factor in what the stars are able to make of our karma. But the stars, that is to say the Beings who live where the stars indicate their existence, the stars transform into karma those things which, here on Earth, become elements in the constitution of karma.

It is in this way that we shall try more and more to deepen Anthroposophy. And if a great deal seems paradoxical and strange—as it certainly will—we must not mind it. In the paradoxical and the strange lies the truth. Man's life is based upon foundations that are deeper and more complex than is usually believed. In order to understand it, our thoughts must not be fettered to the Earth but take wings out into the expanses of the Cosmos. On the Earth man gazes at matter and too easily forgets the Spirit. The opposite is the case as soon as only a little Imaginative knowledge leads us to the realms of the heavens. There quite certainly we forget matter and begin gradually to behold the Spirits, as did the simple Shepherds in an ancient, primitive time, and as was the case on into the Middle Ages when, instead of inscribing external signs on maps of the heavens, men drew figures and forms, because they actually beheld these figures in Imaginative knowledge.

Anthroposophy deepens our inner perceptions too, as I have repeatedly said. Just think of it! If we make the attempt with the kind of knowledge I have described, we begin to gaze upon the destiny of a single human being with holy awe. For what is it that works in the destiny of each human being? In very truth it is star-wisdom—all-embracing star-wisdom! Nothing can enable us to behold the working of the Gods in the universe with deeper or truer feelings than to behold it in the destiny of a man. A world-justice flows through Eternity in the existence, the deeds, the thinking, of the Gods weaving behind the being of man.

That is what I wanted to say to you today concerning karma.

In our time, outside the circles of the anthroposophical movement, there is little understanding of how to arrive at a true view of the soul. I am saying something that may sound incomprehensible to some people, because it is often assumed that one knows what soul is, what one is dealing with when one speaks of the soul, and so on. And on the other hand, such a statement can in many cases be taken for granted in the sense that centuries- and even millennia-old views of the human soul have finally run their course and that a view of the human soul must wait until scientific research is so advanced that it is able to provide information about the soul.

Now, however, I would like to counter these two objections today with nothing more than the assertion of the recently deceased linguist Fritz Mauthner, whom I have mentioned several times: that people in the present day often believe that they have an insight into this or that, whereas in fact they only have words. And it is for this reason that Mauthner wrote a “critique of language”. He wanted to show that today's civilized humanity in particular has an inherited language. We have expressions for all sorts of things. But if you look more closely at what is behind the words, there is actually nothing there. We have the word, we think we are designating something with the word, but in reality we are not designating anything.

Now, of course, it is nonsense to apply this criticism of language to scientific knowledge. For no one will be of the opinion that, whether one knows much or little, let us say, about a horse, one could be misled about the thing horse by the expression “horse” in some language. Everyone knows perfectly well that you cannot ride on the word horse, but you can ride on the real horse. And that makes it clear from the outset that, with regard to things that exist in nature, a critique of language is rather inconsequential, because one will always know the difference between the word and the thing with regard to external observation. I do not believe that someone who wants to ride out will sit on the word 'white horse' instead of the real white horse.

But it is really different with everything in our present civilization that, on the one hand, refers to the soul, to the life of the soul, to the facts of the life of the soul, and, on the other hand, refers to the ethical, to the moral demands of humanity. Here one must indeed say: there is actually only a belief that realities lie behind the words. Therefore, one can also understand that Mauthner thought deeply: Should one even still use the word “soul”? There is nothing real behind it, as when a person speaks of a horse with the word horse. People no longer have any insights into the life of the soul. Therefore, one should not only omit the soul from the science of the soul, as a 19th-century psychology of the soul did, one should completely eradicate the word soul, and speak of “spiritual phenomena” in such a way as to refer to something indeterminate. If one wants to say that there are three entities, Karl, Fritz, Hans, who are sons of the same father and the same mother, and wants to refer to them superficially and sweepingly, then one says: siblings. Why should one, Mauthner asks, say soul when one only knows so little about mental phenomena? The word soul designates nothing; one should say “Geseel”. If this view were really to gain currency, the delusion would be done away with that in speaking of the soul one had something more or other behind it. For in the future one would no longer say that man has an immortal soul. During his life on earth man has a soul within him, I am touched in my deepest soul, and so on.

Things are indeed extremely serious for those people who are seriously seeking a view of the spirit, much more serious than one usually thinks. In any case, they prove how much people should listen up in the present when it is asserted somewhere that the right means should be sought again to reach the reality of the soul.

Today we say that the soul abilities are mainly thinking, feeling and willing. But people should just honestly realize what they mean by these terms thinking, feeling and willing. It would soon dispel their belief that they are looking at something real. Today I would just like to speak about how anthroposophy can clarify that with ordinary consciousness one is not at all able to look at something fully real in this respect. And what I would like to hint at today in this regard, I will then explain in more detail in the next lecture, because today it is still my duty to point out another aspect.

If a person looks honestly into themselves today, they must admit that what they carry within them in terms of thoughts is mostly taken from the outside world. These thoughts are more or less only mirror images of what makes an impression on the human senses in the external physical-sensual reality. Just try to do the self-observation experiment clearly and ask yourself: How many thoughts are there in this human consciousness that point to something other than the words we have: thinking, feeling, willing, God, immortality and so on, that point to something in the spiritual life of ordinary civilization that is not mirrored from the outside world? People only strive to understand everything in terms of how it can be mirrored by the external world. And if you want to explain the spiritual to many people today, they actually demand visual aids for the spiritual as well, perhaps a film or something similar, because they say: if it is not illustrated to us, if we are not presented with sensory images, then we do not understand anything about the spiritual!

In such moments, when people demand that the spiritual be clothed in sensual images, they are more honest than when they speak as experts on the soul. If we take together much of what I have often discussed here in this house, then we will be able to realize that when we look back on our thinking, we have only one side of this thinking. In this sense one can even speak of a reality — but one can speak of a reality in this way, as when one gets to know a person only from behind. Imagine the grotesque thing: you only know a person from the back! Then you know him, but you do not know his nature. At most, you can sometimes grasp something of his nature. But then cases like that of the student who once came to Heidelberg as a young badger, registered with the famous Professor Kuno Fischer, and now, in his great joy, before going to the lecture hall, rushed to the barber's, had himself dressed up, and because he is so full of the fact that he is going to hear the famous man, also talks to the barber about it. The barber says, “Yes, today Kuno Fischer is writing something on the blackboard!” The student asks him, “How do you know that Kuno Fischer is writing something on the blackboard today?” Yes, when he writes something on the blackboard, he has his hair parted at the back before the lecture; that's when he turns around!

Well, when there are such clear signs that the character is expressed in the parting of the occiput, then one can indeed learn something about the inner personality, even if one only gets to know it from behind. But firstly, it is perhaps not particularly significant, and secondly, it is the case with most people that one does not learn very much.

With regard to our thinking, the most important part of our soul for life on earth, we only perceive, if I may put it this way, the back side. The front side escapes ordinary observation. For when one approaches the observation of human beings with anthroposophy and asks oneself: Is it all about thinking, that one forms abstract ideas about the external things grasped by the senses? — then one comes to the conclusion that this is not all about thinking, but thinking, apart from representing this sum of abstract thoughts, is also still another sum of forces. Thoughts cannot actually do anything, and one actually thinks best when one does nothing, when one sits quietly, when one cultivates calm. Thoughts are powerless, like mirror images are powerless. But if you now follow the human being, from infancy until he has grown taller, and if you later follow the growth processes that are still present in the human being - even if the human being is no longer growing taller, growth processes are still there - if you look at what the forces of growth are in the human being, then these are the same forces, now seen from the other side, that show themselves backwards in abstract thought. Man sends abstract thoughts outwards; inwards they are the forces that shape his brain. In the early childhood years, the brain is formed plastically. The forces that otherwise work as growth forces are the forces of thinking. And just as you have to imagine the front side if you see a person from behind – if you are allowed to imagine that they are a complete person – you have to imagine the concrete, real power of thought that goes into the human being and works on the human being in addition to abstract thinking.

That is the essence of a pedagogy based on healthy anthroposophy: the teacher knows that it is not enough for the child to receive this or that abstract idea from this or that person. There is a big difference between whether the child receives a living, pictorial, active idea or a dead idea. The dead idea has a retarding effect on the growth processes, the living idea has a promoting effect on the growth processes. And so we come to the fact that thinking shows one side, which, powerless, only reflects the outer world, and, when we look inward, we see a living side that permeates the whole organism of the human being and that is only the other side of his growth, the spiritual counter-image of his growth. And if one continues to research, one finds that what is represented by the other side - in relation to the human being it is the rear side, but in relation to thinking it is the front side - is not brought down by dead thinking, which only appears to us from the front, but by living thinking from its pre-earthly existence.

In fact, the transition from the pre-earthly existence to the earthly existence is such that, in the pre-earthly existence, the human being freely develops a system of forces that works in all directions in the spiritual world. Then he descends into the earthly existence. There this thinking, which is active and ruling in the spiritual world, transforms itself into the inner organizing forces of the body, and outwardly it sends, as it were, the reflecting surface onto which the earth projects its images. That is the fact. But now it is indeed the case that after a person has completed the time between death and a new birth in a satisfactory manner, he then has no task for this living thinking in the spiritual world. This living thinking has its great task in the time between death and a new birth. When this task is completed, the phenomenon occurs over there, which I have often described to you: the soul turns to earth life. But then this thinking has a new task: the task of forming the human body. And that is the significance of man's earthly thinking, of man's thinking that comes from the spiritual, that it is directed towards the human body in a formative way. Thus, in our true, in our real thinking, we have an heirloom from the spiritual world, but one that is only something on earth, because in the spiritual world it has lost its purpose. We have to thank this for the fact that our thinking can become so clear on earth. If this thinking still had a task as it had in the spiritual world, it could not become so clear on earth.

But let us turn to the other faculty of the human soul, to feeling. You will all notice - quite apart from what I myself have said about it here in this room: feeling is not as clear as thinking. Feeling is something that occurs in a different form, but in the same way as dreaming. The state of mind during feeling is basically the same as during dreaming, except that feeling occurs in a completely different form. Why is that so? Well, in feeling, just as in thinking, we only have the back side for this earthly life. But the front side is not only directed towards the human body, but, as man descends to earth from the pre-earthly existence, from the existence between death and a new birth, he also retains what lies behind feeling as an heirloom. But that still remains turned towards the spiritual, it does not just have an earthly task. Therefore, every night when a person falls asleep, he does not take his thinking with him into sleep, but he does take his feeling with him. And if you look at dreams in the right way, they are images because logical thoughts do not live on; but feelings live on. With every sleep, a person delves into the whole spiritual world. Man does not take his thoughts with him, but he does take his feelings, and even more so his volitions.

Understandably, during the day there is nothing to be done with the will. I have often said that a person can make a plan, he has a thought. But how the thought slides down into the body, how the will to move the hand continues to work, remains as dark as the state remains dark in sleep. But for that, a person retains the most from the eternal for his will. And again, one can see from the activity of the human being, for if the human being does not move, there is not a will present, but only a desire. Seen from the other side, the will represents something completely eternal. Thinking also represents something eternal, but it has been transformed into an earthly activity. The will, however, remains in the Eternal and is active in man's destiny through repeated earthly lives, in Karma.

I just wanted to give you an introduction to how one penetrates to a real teaching of the soul, so that behind the words thinking, feeling and willing there are realities, so that one points to reality. Just as the word horse refers to the outer physical horse, so when one penetrates anthroposophically into the life of the soul in this way, one can come to reality, to realities. That is the way, and on this way will come at the same time what I emphasized at the end of the last lecture here: that Anthroposophy will never will be understood when it is theory, but only when, in acquiring the anthroposophical, the human being becomes a different being, the human being is truly transformed; when he becomes a different being altogether in ethical and human relationships.

What is being striven for in this way is now confronted with something else. And now I come to what I am obliged to tell you, because Anthroposophy is already in the world and one must be alert to what is happening. We must not always have closed windows, but must also look out, and so it is a spiritual and intellectual duty to speak about these things. For everywhere today, where people believe that they have obtained clear concepts only from science, anthroposophy is dismissed with the assertion: that is fantasy, speculation, that is fantasy. And those people say that they alone have clear thinking. Apart from the fact that when one approaches anthroposophy, one naturally gains inner certainty from the truth by pursuing the anthroposophical, one must sometimes also look at how clear today's thinking actually is! I would like to discuss this with you first of all using an example, for the reason that the anthroposophist should be aware of what is today's culture or civilization. I will take an example that says something. If, let us say, one examines the logic of a person who writes in the newspapers, not much is said by that. But I take a prominent naturalist of the present day and say explicitly that I do not want to say anything malicious or disparaging, because I fully recognize that we are dealing with an important naturalist and with a serious matter that he discusses. And in this regard, I would like to draw your attention to the clarity that prevails in this regard.

In October 1910, the well-known naturalist Max Rubner gave the rector's speech at the University of Berlin, entitled: “Our Goals for the Future”. He talks about the spiritual goals of the future, and it is not just anyone who speaks, but someone who is immersed in research and who must be seen as a serious and diligent researcher from the point of view of today's civilization. At the end of his speech, he also addresses the students and tries – well, in a way that is beautiful in his own way – to make it clear that they should study. But he does this with the “clear” concepts — I mean “clear” in quotation marks — that are possible for such a researcher today, based on today's thinking. I would like to draw attention to a few points. First of all, he says, addressing the students: “We all have to learn; we come into the world with nothing but our instrument for intellectual work, a blank page, the brain, differently predisposed, differently capable of development; we receive everything from the outside world...”

So, an often-encountered view today, which says: Look, if you want to talk about the soul life, look at your brain, which is a blank slate that has to get everything from the impressions of the outside world. So when we are born, we have our brain as a blank slate, we have to expose ourselves to the impressions of the world, then they go into us, then the slate is written on. So, he says to his students, just expose yourselves to the impressions of the world with freshness, courage and vigor, and then the page you brought with you will be written on.

In the next sentence, he tells them how to do it. He says: “No brain wants to grasp everything that its ancestors have experienced and learned, what billions of brains have considered and matured in the course of human history, what our spiritual heroes have helped create...”

So the students should only pay attention to what the spiritual heroes have created. But now the spiritual heroes are suddenly creating, so now the unwritten brains have to oppose the written brains of the spiritual heroes! You see, as soon as you put two sentences together, one on page 23 and the other on page 24, they are no longer correct! For if the heroes of the mind were also blank brains, it would not be possible to speak of their impressions on the blank brains in such a way as to suggest that these brains have created anything, for that is precisely what is being denied: everything must be received from the outside world. But now the outside world is also considered to include what human brains create. One must indeed go into such things.

But then it goes on to say: “What has been learned provides the basic material for productive thinking.” Now, put the two sentences together: “We receive everything from the outside world,” and the second: “What has been learned provides the basic material for productive thinking.” This is not the speech of an ordinary newspaper writer, this is the speech of a truly meritorious researcher of the modern age. You see, it is basically irrelevant if you now want to point out the way in which such a personality characterizes how the brain works. “[...] there is always something refreshing about working in a new, previously untilled field of the brain.” That is why he tells his students to sometimes look around for other subjects that they have not yet looked at: “[...] some areas of the brain only yield results when they are repeatedly plowed, but ultimately bear the same good fruit as others that open up more effortlessly.”

Well, after all, the soil that is plowed does not produce the plow. If you want to dwell on these thoughts, you can no longer grasp any thought at all. But now Rubner finds that this thinking is quite natural.

In order to show you the significance of what he is saying, I would like to say something in advance. When someone does sports, we see him in various movements. If you are particularly interested, you can even take a snapshot of these movements. But if we take an unbiased view of things, we have to admit that if we follow the internal organic processes that take place while someone is doing sports, what happens inside between nerve and muscle as a kind of process of destruction and restoration is, firstly, much more important for what it means to be human, but also infinitely more interesting than what can be captured in a snapshot. I am not saying anything against sport as an external physical exercise. But what the athlete is inwardly is truly much more interesting than what he is outwardly. It is only in what he achieves within the organism that it begins to become interesting.

Now it so happens that the opposite is the case with the movement of the human limbs as it is with thinking. In thinking, what is done, what happens, what the fact is, is the essential, and what lies in the organization is the unessential. In sports, what takes place externally in the facts is the less interesting part; what the organism does internally is the more interesting part. In thinking, what is interesting is what thinking presents itself as, what thinking really is; what the organism does in the process is something more or less simple. Therefore, when you understand things, you can no longer speak of thinking in the same way as of muscle movement.

But if all this becomes superficial, external, what do you say? Then you explain things like this: “Thinking strengthens the brain, and the latter (the brain) increases in performance through exercise, just like another organ, like our muscle strength, through work and sport. Studying is brain sport.

You see, our civilization is caught out in its most important element, in thinking about things, if you grasp it in such a place. You don't wake up to what is actually happening in the present through something else.

Now I would like to introduce you to a personality who, through her way of thinking, which can truly be called ingenious within certain limits, has some excellent negative thoughts about our present civilization, and who understands how to characterize it well: how it is ultimately an impossible formation and shaping of thought that has brought our civilization to decay and ruin. And I must say: the man who wrote the book about the “decay and reconstruction of culture”, Albert Schweitzer, is in a position to judge such things. Anyone who is familiar with Albert Schweitzer's book “The History of the Life-Jesu Research,” published in 1906, for example, and the way in which Schweitzer knows how to address even the most apocalyptic of subjects, so that he is already well ahead of the other theologians, must admit that Schweitzer can have a sound judgment of what contemporary intellectual life is actually worth. Now he has written this book, the first part of which has just been published. The first chapter is entitled: “The Fault of Philosophy in the Decline of Culture.” And truly razor-sharp are the sentences that are intended to characterize our present intellectual life, our life of civilization. The very first sentence is: “We are living in the era of the decline of culture. The war did not create this situation. It itself is only one manifestation of it. What was spiritual has been translated into facts, which in turn react on the spiritual in every respect in a deteriorating way.” A person who has insights into the worthlessness of present-day culture! And further: ”We lost our way in culture because there was no reflection on culture among us... So we crossed the threshold of the century with unshakable illusions about ourselves.” And now he asks himself: Why is this symptom of the decline of culture there? Why are we living in a cultural decline? And he says to himself: If we look back just a short time, to the time when intellectualism was in its first stage of flowering, people still had a “total worldview.” They still spoke of ethical and moral goals in such a way that they lay in the same sources as the laws of nature. They contemplated the laws of nature and then ascended to the sources of morality with the same views, thus having a “total worldview” that encompassed both the moral and the natural.

You will remember how often I have pointed out that the decline of our culture has been caused by the fact that we have a one-sided view of nature, which posits the Kant-Laplace theory or something similar at the beginning of our existence on earth, where everything has formed out of a primeval nebula. Man also formed out of this primeval nebula, then what is called moral ideals arose - illusions - and when the heat death occurs one day, which must occur according to purely physical laws, there will be a large field of corpses, but what emerged as cultural ideals or moral ideals will be buried with them. Thus, our morality is no longer part of the world view. It is no longer part of it; it has become something that can only be captured in abstract thoughts. Schweitzer also knows that basically this has become the case around the middle of the 19th century. He is quite clear about it: “Now it is obvious to everyone that the self-destruction of culture is underway... The Age of Enlightenment” - by this he means the period when intellectualism first flourished - ”and rationalism had established ethical and rational ideals about the development of the individual into true humanity, about his position in society, about its material and spiritual tasks, about the behavior of nations towards each other and their absorption into a humanity united by the highest spiritual goals... But around the middle of the nineteenth century, this engagement of ethical rational ideals with reality began to decline. In the course of the following decades, it came more and more to a standstill. The abdication of culture took place without a fight and without a sound. Its thoughts lagged behind the times, as if they were too exhausted to keep pace with it."

And now Albert Schweitzer wants to make it clear that if people no longer have effective thoughts, culture must perish. Since effective thoughts seem to be contained in philosophy, he attributes the reason for the decline of culture to philosophy. He knows, and expresses it in this book, that although Flege and Kant are read by only a few, their ideas dominate the ideas of thousands, because they pass unnoticed through all possible into the broadest masses of humanity, and one does not exaggerate when one says today: If only the most popular books have begun to be read by the simplest mountain farmers, then Kant is already in them. One only believes that philosophy works on those who read the philosophers. That is just outer Maja.

That is why Schweitzer says: “The decisive factor was the failure of philosophy.” But now he treats this philosophy with some compassion and says to himself: Philosophy should have thought, but since thinking had gone astray, since thinking had been forgotten, one need not be surprised that philosophy could no longer think either. So he treats philosophy a little more mildly. “It did not become clear to philosophy that the energy of the cultural ideas entrusted to it was beginning to be questioned. At the end of one of the most outstanding works on the history of philosophy published at the end of the nineteenth century - the same one that I once discussed here - “this is defined as the process in which ‘step by step, with ever clearer and more certain awareness, reflection on cultural values has taken place, the universal validity of which is the subject of philosophy itself’. In doing so, the author forgot the essential: that in the past, philosophy not only reflected on cultural values, but also allowed them to be transmitted as active ideas in public opinion, while from the second half of the nineteenth century they increasingly became a guarded, unproductive capital for it.

But now he becomes mild. After all, what can the philosopher do if he no longer thinks because everyone else does not think: “That thinking did not manage to create a world view of optimistic-ethical character and to base the ideals that make up culture in such a view was not the fault of philosophy, but a fact that arose in the development of thought. But philosophy was guilty of our world because it did not admit this fact to itself and remained in the illusion that it really maintained a progress of culture."

Schweitzer no longer blames the philosophers for no longer being able to think, since it has become a general habit of people not to think anymore. But he does blame the philosophers for not having noticed this at all. They should have noticed it at least.

"According to its ultimate purpose, philosophy is the leader and guardian of general reason. It would have been its duty to admit to our world that the ethical ideals of reason no longer found support in a total worldview, as they used to, but were for the time being left to their own devices and had to assert themselves in the world through their inner strength alone... Philosophy philosophized so little about culture that it did not even notice how it itself, and the times with it, became more and more cultureless. In the hour of danger, the guard who was supposed to keep us awake slept. So it happened that we did not struggle for our culture.

Well, I think I have already told you many things about this sleeping from a variety of points of view.

In the next chapter, Schweitzer discusses the elements in us that inhibit culture. He comes to some very interesting conclusions. He finds, for example, that man has become unfree as a result of what he has absorbed as culture in recent times. Well, one can sympathize with him on that point, because people have gradually come to really only follow certain bellwethers, to swear by the authority of science, and so on. But now Schweitzer claims that the human being is not collected in his thinking. I don't think we need discuss this much either; Schweitzer is probably right that the power to collect has really declined a lot in our civilization. But then he calls the human being incomplete. Now, people will say, if he already finds us unfree and so unsettled; that we are not even supposed to be whole people, we cannot concede that to him! But he means it this way: What a person learns today, that is a specialty, be he a scholar or be he somehow a different person, so that only certain sides of his abilities are developed, not the total human being. Therefore, we go around as incomplete, not at all as complete people. And then he finds, as a fourth, that humanity has decreased to the highest degree. He cites beautiful examples. But he is generally of the opinion that unfree, uncollected and incomplete people do not develop humanity in their ethical lives either. He also finds a culture-inhibiting element in over-organization, in the eradication of human individuality. How much does the individual still depend on today? It depends only on what is prescribed by any organization. Schweitzer rightly accuses our time of over-organization as a particular tendency.

But now he also wants to move on to answering the question of how to achieve culture again. What must be done to achieve culture again? He then asks: What must the culture we achieve be like? — And he says: It must be ethical and optimistic. Now, imagine you want to build a house for yourself. You go to a builder who says: You have to describe to me what the house should be like so that I can make the plans for you. — So you tell him: The house should be solid, weatherproof, beautiful, and so that you can live comfortably in it. — Well, you can't make plans with that, but you think you have said something when you say: The house must be solid, weatherproof, beautiful and so that you can live comfortably in it. But you can't do anything with these statements. Nor can you do anything with the statement: A worldview must be ethical and optimistic. It's the same, exactly the same.

Once, when I was a little boy, there was a court case in a village where I lived. Some chickens had been stolen from a prominent member of the community. The judge wanted to know what the sentence should be and needed a description of the chickens. So he asked the man concerned what the chickens were like. “Well, they were beautiful chickens.” Yes, that's not enough. You have to tell us something so that we can get an idea of what the chickens might have been worth. Well, they were really quite beautiful chickens. Yes, but, you have to know whether the chickens were skinny or fat... – Well, they really were quite beautiful chickens. – And so it went on, nothing at all could be elicited from the man except that they were quite beautiful chickens. |

Now here we have a quite outstanding spirit who trenchantly characterizes the decline of culture in an extraordinarily fine and apt way, who even knows a great deal that people today do not even want to admit to themselves. For example, he knows the following – it is good that it is also said by someone other than just the anthroposophist: 'The summary of knowledge and the assertion of its consequences for the world view is not his concern. In the past every scientist was also a thinker who had a certain significance in the general spiritual life of his generation. Our time has arrived at the ability to distinguish between science and thinking. Therefore we still have freedom of science, but hardly any thinking science at all.” It is indeed good to hear it from someone else for a change. But you see, despite all this insight, he does not get any further than the beautiful chickens. Extremely characteristic! Something that reappears as a truly fruitful worldview must be ethical, optimistic, firm, weatherproof, beautiful, and such that one can comfortably live in it!

Yes, he gets very far in this negative characterization. He notices that there are people who have already felt that this thinking, this brain sport, does not lead to the sources of existence. Therefore they said: Well, let us give up all this thinking and arrive at the truth by way of feeling or belief, by a mystical path. He sees that, and being a keen thinker himself, to a certain extent, he asks a remarkable question. The question is: “Philosophical, historical and scientific questions, which he was not able to answer, overwhelmed his earlier rationalism like an avalanche and buried him on the way. The new thinking world view must work its way out of this chaos. Let everything that actually is take effect on itself, passing through all kinds of reflection and recognition” - yes, if only he went through a little recognition and reflection now: the house should be beautiful and weatherproof - ”it strives towards the ultimate meaning of being and life, whether some of it can be unraveled,

The final knowledge, in which man comprehends his own existence in universal existence, is said to be mystical in nature. By this is meant that it no longer comes about through ordinary reflection, but is somehow experienced.

But why assume, he says, that the path of thinking ends at mysticism? Reasoning, as practiced up to now, has always stopped when it came close to mysticism...

Now one asks oneself: What does Anthroposophy want? To start from clear, mathematically clear thinking, not to stop at mysticism, but to penetrate, thinking, into the regions that are to be opened up for the eternal. Even then people still say that the house should be solid, weatherproof and comfortable to live in – when it is already standing in front of their noses, but they cannot find their way into it. This can be said without any modesty, but these are not the worst, these are the best, these are the sharp thinkers! We must not close our eyes to such things. We must not keep beating about the bush, saying that we must make this or that person understand what anthroposophy is, when people talk like this.

But further: “Thought carried to its conclusion thus leads somewhere and somehow to a living mysticism that is necessary for all human beings to think...” Right building leads to the good house, the way I want it! Now, he finds that people are unfocused, and so he wants to make it clear what people should do to get beyond this terrible state that culture has fallen into: “In itself, reflecting on the meaning of life has a meaning. If such reflection arises again among us, the ideals of vanity and passion, which now proliferate like evil weeds in the convictions of the masses, will wither away without hope. How much would be gained for today's conditions if we all just spent three minutes each evening looking up thoughtfully at the infinite worlds of the starry sky...' It does not say in the footnote: 'The details can be found in “How to Know Higher Worlds”, oh no, but it says that somehow we have to get to the point that there are people who take three minutes to collect their thoughts - “..look up thoughtfully to the infinite worlds of the starry sky and, when attending a funeral, would devote themselves to the mystery of death and life instead of walking behind the coffin in thoughtless conversation...”

It then concludes with the following, after first drawing attention to the fact: But something, which is now a world view, should not actually be said to people; we do need such a world view - I just want to know what we need it for if we are not supposed to say it to people! “The great revision of the convictions and ideals in which and for which we live cannot take place by talking into the people of our time different, better thoughts than those they have..."

It is not right that one should speak better thoughts into the minds of people than they have, but rather one must leave them to themselves! Reflect, think of other things when you walk behind a coffin, reflect! - Yes, then people will just continue to do what they have been doing so far: they will not know what to reflect on in the three minutes and so on.

"Previous thinking sought to understand the meaning of life from the meaning of the world. It may be that we have to resign ourselves to leaving the meaning of the world open to question and to give our lives a meaning from the will to live, as it is in us... “It may be! - “Even if the paths by which we have to strive towards the goal still lie in darkness, the direction in which we must go is clear. Together we have to think about the meaning of life, to struggle to arrive at a world- and life-affirming worldview in which our drive, which we experience as necessary and valuable, finds justification, orientation, clarification, deepening, moralization and strengthening, and then becomes capable of setting up and realizing definitive cultural ideals inspired by the spirit of true humanity. — They'll be beautiful chickens!

No one will be able to say that I want to practice caustic, deliberately negative criticism. I chose the first example of Professor Rubner because I wanted to choose a personality whose scientific achievements would be recognized. I chose the second example so that I could say that I regard the person who wrote this book as one of the sharpest thinkers, as a personality who is most justified in speaking in this way. I do not want to criticize adversely, that is far from me. One must endeavor to point out characteristically what is. But when Albert Schweitzer says: Philosophy should have been on guard, but it was asleep, then we can't help but say: He continues to sleep.

Let's wait and see what the second part is like, but the first part promises that the second part will not be much different. He continues to sleep, only dreaming out of his sleep. They are desires, they are not realities. Our striving must be to go beyond mere illusions, beyond phrases, to arrive at realities. You see how the words of our language have been squeezed dry. So we have to proceed as we started this evening, by talking about the soul, then we will put content back into the words. Otherwise, as Schweitzer says: philosophy is not to blame for the decline of culture, but it is to blame for not having noticed it. Well, of course Albert Schweitzer is not to blame either for the fact that our words have been so squeezed out that they no longer contain any concepts or realities. But he is to blame for not noticing this at all. He does not notice that he is talking in completely squeezed-out words.

I felt obliged to draw attention to the cultural decline in such a cutting way in response to Albert Schweitzer's recently published cultural act – I don't mean this maliciously, I mean it quite seriously. I was obliged to point out what the situation must actually be like in order to gain a real judgment of what is not happening on the one hand and should be happening on the other. After we have gone through this episode, we want to continue talking about specific topics of anthroposophy.