The Rudolf Steiner Archive

From the book by Croce, one can clearly see how the way of thinking in the present day still prevents even outstanding minds from gaining the right access to Goethe's work. Among the various obstacles that arise for such minds, the misunderstanding of Goethe's relationship to mathematics is one of the most effective. From this it can be seen that Goethe had no skill in the treatment of mathematical problems. He himself admitted his inability in this respect sufficiently strongly. In his scientific works, therefore, one never finds the problems worked out in those areas in which a mathematical treatment is required by the nature of the subject.

Now, in the period that followed Goethe, mathematical treatment was regarded as essential for those parts of knowledge of nature that are considered to be truly exact. It was under the same impression that Kant had been under when he expressed the view that there is only as much real science in any knowledge as mathematics is contained in it. For this way of thinking, the rejection of Goethe's scientific approach is sealed from the outset.

But when it comes to assessing Goethe's relationship to mathematics, something quite different comes into play.

The study of mathematics gives a person a special position in relation to the penetration of the cognitive tasks themselves. In mathematical thinking, one deals with something that arises within the human soul. One does not look outwards, as in sensory experience, but builds up the content of thought purely within. And by thinking one's way from one mathematical structure to another, one does not have to rely on the evidence of the senses or of external experimentation, but remains entirely within one's inner soul life; one is dealing with an inner, conceptual view. One lives in the realm of the freely creative spirit.

Novalis, who was equally at home in the field of mathematics as in that of the free creative poetic imagination, saw in the former a perfect imaginative creation.

In more recent times, however, this trait has been denied in mathematics. It has been thought that this field of knowledge also borrows its truths from sensory observation, like an external experimental science, and that this fact is merely beyond human attention. It was only believed that one formed the mathematical forms oneself because one did not become aware of the borrowing from external observation. But this view has arisen only out of prejudice, which refuses to admit any free activity of the human mind. We are willing to accept scientific certainty only where we can rely on the statements of sense observation. And so, because the certainty of its truths cannot be denied, mathematics is also said to be a sense science.

Because in mathematics we live in the realm of the free creative spirit, its essence can be most clearly seen in inner self-knowledge. If one turns one's attention away from the structures that one works out in mathematical activity and back to that activity itself, one becomes fully aware of what one is doing. Then one lives in a kind of free creative spirituality.

One must only then summon up the flexibility of soul to extend the same creative inner activity that one unfolds in mathematics to other areas of inner experience. In this flexibility of soul lies the power to ascend to imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge, of which this weekly journal has often spoken.

In mathematics, every step one takes is inwardly transparent. One does not turn to the outside with the soul in order to determine the being of the other through the being of the one. One does, however, remain in a realm that, although created inwardly, relates to the external world through its own nature. Mathematics originates in the soul, but relates only to the non-spiritual. When the freely creative activity of the spirit ascends to the types of knowledge mentioned, however, one comes to grasp the soul itself and the realm of the world in which the soul lives.

Goethe's spiritual nature was such that he felt no need to cultivate mathematics himself. But his way of knowing was of a completely mathematical nature. He took in what concerned external nature through pure, refined observation, but then transformed it in his inner experience so that it became one with his soul, as is the case with freely created mathematical forms. Thus his thinking about nature became, in the most beautiful sense, a mathematical one. As a thinker of nature, Goethe was a mathematical spirit without being a mathematician.

He was just as open about his lack of knowledge of mathematics as he was about the mathematical direction of his way of looking at things. You can read about this in the essays that conclude his works on natural science under the title “On Natural Science in General. In this work he also stated that in all knowledge one must proceed as if one owed an account of one's findings to the strictest mathematician.

Through this direction of his quest for knowledge, Goethe was particularly predisposed to introducing a true scientific method of research into those scientific fields that cannot be determined by measure, number and weight because they are not quantitative but qualitative in nature. The opposing view wants to limit itself to what can be measured, counted and weighed, and leaves the qualitative as scientifically unattainable. It denies Goethe scientific validity because it does not see how he extends the rigor of research, which it demands where actual mathematics is applicable, to fields of knowledge where this is no longer the case.

Only when Goethe's methods of thought can be truly understood in this direction will it be possible to gain an unbiased judgment of the relationship between his knowledge and art. Only then will it be possible to see what the further development of his way of thinking can bring, both for art and for science.

[ 1 ] The concept “tree” is conditioned for our knowledge by the percept “tree.” When faced with a determinate percept I can select only one determinate concept from the general system of concepts. The connection of concept and percept is mediately and objectively determined by thinking in conformity with the percept. The connection between a percept and its concept is recognized after the act of perception, but the relevance of the one to the other is determined by the thing itself.

[ 2 ] The procedure is different when we examine knowledge, or rather the relation of man to the world which arises within knowledge. In the preceding chapters the attempt has been made to show that an unprejudiced observation of this relation is able to throw light on its nature. A correct understanding of this observation leads to the insight that thinking may be intuitively apprehended in its self-contained nature. Those who find it necessary, for the explanation of thinking as such, to invoke something else, e.g., physical brain-processes, or unconscious spiritual-processes lying behind the conscious thinking which they observe, fail to grasp the facts which an unprejudiced observation of thinking yields. When we observe our thinking, we live during the observation immediately within the essence of a spiritual, self-sustaining activity. Indeed we may even affirm that if we want to grasp the essential nature of Spirit in the form in which it immediately presents itself to man, we need but look at our own self-sustaining thinking.

[ 3 ] For the study of thinking two things coincide which elsewhere must always appear apart, viz., concept and percept. If we fail to see this, we shall be unable to regard the concepts which we have elaborated in response to percepts as anything but shadowy copies of these percepts, and we shall take the percepts as presenting to us reality as it really is. We shall, further, build up for ourselves a metaphysical world after the pattern of the perceived world. We shall, each according to his habitual thought-pictures, call this world a world of atoms, or of will, or of unconscious spirit, and so on. And we shall fail to notice that all the time we have been doing nothing but erecting hypothetically a metaphysical world modeled on our perceived world. But if we clearly apprehend what thinking consists in, we shall recognize that percepts present to us only a portion of reality, and that the complementary portion which alone imparts to reality its full character as real, is experienced by us in the permeation of percepts by thinking. We shall regard that which enters into consciousness as thinking, not as a shadowy copy of reality, but as a self-sustaining spiritual essence. We shall be able to say of it, that it is revealed to us in consciousness through intuition. Intuition is the purely spiritual conscious experience of a purely spiritual content. It is only through an intuition that we can grasp the essence of thinking.

[ 4 ] Only if one wins through, by means of unprejudiced observation, to the recognition of this truth of the intuitive essence of thinking will one succeed in clearing the way for a conception of the psycho-physical organization of man. One recognizes that this organization can produce no effect whatever on the essential nature of thinking. At first sight this seems to be contradicted by patent and obvious facts. For ordinary experience, human thinking occurs only in connection with, and by means of, such an organization. This dependence on psycho-physical organization is so prominent that its true bearing can be appreciated by us only if we recognize, that in the essential nature of thinking this organization plays no part whatever. Once we appreciate this, we can no longer fail to notice how peculiar is the relation of human organization to thinking. For this organization contributes nothing to the essential nature of thought, but recedes whenever the activity of thinking appears. It suspends its own activity, it yields ground. And the ground thus set free is occupied by thinking. The essence which is active in thinking has a two-fold function: first it restricts the human organization in its own activity; next, it steps into the place of it. Yes, even the former, the restriction of the physical organization, is an effect of the activity of thinking, and more particularly that part of this activity which prepares the manifestation of thinking. This explains the sense in which thinking has its counterpart in the organization of the body. Once we perceive this, we can no longer misapprehend the significance for thinking of this physical counterpart. When we walk over soft ground our feet leave impressions in the soil. We shall not be tempted to say that the forces of the ground, from below, have formed these footprints. We shall not attribute to these forces any share in the production of the footprints. Just so, if without prejudice we observe the essential nature of thinking, we shall not attribute any share in that nature to the traces in the physical organism which thinking produces in preparing its manifestation through the body.¹

[ 5 ] An important question, however, emerges here. If the human organization has no part in the essential nature of thinking, what is the function of this organization within the whole nature of man? The effects of thinking upon this organization have no bearing upon the essence of thinking, but they have a bearing upon the origin of the I-consciousness, through this thinking. Thinking, in its own character, contains the real “I,” but it does not contain, as such, the I-consciousness. To see this we have but to observe thinking with an open mind. The “I” is to be found in thinking. The “I-consciousness” arises through the traces which, in the sense above explained, the activity of thinking impresses upon our general consciousness. (The I-consciousness thus arises through the bodily organization. This view must not, however, be taken to imply that the I-consciousness, once it has arisen, remains dependent on the bodily organization. Once arisen it is taken up into thinking and shares henceforth the spiritual being of the latter.)

[ 6 ] The “I-consciousness” is built upon the human organization. The latter is the source of the acts of will. Following out the direction of the preceding exposition, we can gain insight into the connection of thinking, conscious I, and act of will, only by studying first how an act of will issues from the human organization.²

[ 7 ] In a particular act of will we must distinguish two factors: the motive and the spring of action. The motive is a factor of the nature of concept or representation; the spring of action is the factor in will which is directly conditioned in the human organization. The conceptual factor, or motive, is the momentary determining cause of an act of will; the spring of action is the permanent determining factor in the individual. The motive of an act of will may be a pure concept, or else a concept with a definite relation to perception, i.e., a representation. General and individual concepts (representations) become motives of will by influencing the human individual and determining him to action in a particular direction. One and the same concept however, or one and the same representation, influence different individuals differently. They impel different men to different actions. An act of will is, therefore, not merely the outcome of the concept or the representation, but also of the individual make-up of human beings. This individual make-up we will call, following Eduard von Hartmann, the “characterological disposition.” The manner in which concept and representation act on the characterological disposition of a man gives to his life a definite moral or ethical stamp.³

[ 8 ] The characterological disposition is formed by the more or less permanent content of the individual's life, that is, of the content of his representations and feelings. Whether a representation which enters my mind at this moment stimulates me to an act of will or not, depends on its relation to the rest of my representations, and also to my peculiar modes of feeling. The content of my representations in turn, is conditioned by the sum total of those concepts which have, in the course of my individual life, come in contact with percepts, that is, have become representations. This sum, again, depends on my greater or lesser capacity for intuition, and on the range of my observations, that is, on the subjective and objective factors of my experiences, on my inner nature (development) and place in life, and on my environment. My life of feeling more especially determines my characterological disposition. Whether I shall make a certain representation or concept the motive for action will depend on whether it gives me pleasure or pain.

These are the elements which we have to consider in an act of will. The immediately present representation or concept, which becomes the motive, determines the aim or the purpose of my will; my characterological disposition determines me to direct my activity towards this aim. The representation of taking a walk in the next half-hour determines the aim of my action. But this representation is raised to the level of a motive only if it meets with a suitable characterological disposition, that is, if during my past life I have formed the representations of the wholesomeness of walking and the value of health; and, further, if the representation of walking is accompanied in me by a feeling of pleasure.

[ 9 ] We must, therefore, distinguish (1) the possible subjective dispositions which are likely to turn given representations and concepts into motives, and (2) the possible representations and concepts which are capable of so influencing my characterological disposition that an act of will results. The former are for morality the springs of action, the latter its aims.

[ 10 ] The springs of action in the moral life can be discovered by finding out the elements of which individual life is composed.

[ 11 ] The first level of individual life is that of perception, more particularly sense-perception. This is the stage of our individual lives in which a perceiving translates itself into will immediately, without the intervention of either a feeling or a concept. The spring of action here involved may be called simply instinct. Our lower, purely animal, needs (hunger, sexual intercourse, etc.), find their satisfaction in this way. The main characteristic of instinctive life is the immediacy with which the percept releases the act of will. This kind of determination of the will, which belongs originally only to the life of the lower senses, may, however, become extended also to the percepts of the higher senses. We may react to the percept of a certain event in the external world without reflecting on what we do, without any special feeling connecting itself with the percept. We have examples of this especially in our ordinary conventional intercourse. The spring of this kind of action is called tact or moral good taste. The more often such immediate reactions to a percept occur, the more the agent will prove himself able to act purely under the guidance of tact; that is, tact becomes his characterological disposition.

[ 12 ] The second level of human life is feeling. Definite feelings accompany the percepts of the external world. These feelings may become springs of action. When I see a hungry man, my pity for him may become the spring of my action. Such feelings, for example, are shame, pride, sense of honour, humility, remorse, pity, revenge, gratitude, piety, loyalty, love, and duty.⁴

[ 13 ] The third and last level of life is to think and to form representations. A representation or a concept may become the motive of an action through mere reflection. Representations become motives because, in the course of my life, I regularly connect certain aims of my will with percepts which recur again and again in a more or less modified form. Hence it is that with men who are not wholly without experience, the occurrence of certain percepts is always accompanied also by the consciousness of representations of actions, which they have themselves carried out in a similar case or which they have seen others carry out. These representations float before their minds as determining models in all subsequent decisions; they become parts of their characterological disposition. We may give the name of practical experience to the spring of action just described. Practical experience merges gradually into purely tactful behaviour. That happens, when definite typical pictures of actions have become so closely connected in our minds with representations of certain situations in life, that, in any given instance, we omit all deliberation based on experience and pass immediately from the percept to the action.

[ 14 ] The highest level of individual life is that of conceptual thinking without reference to any definite perceptual content. We determine the content of a concept through pure intuition from the ideal sphere. Such a concept contains, at first, no reference to any definite percepts. When an act of will comes about under the influence of a concept which refers to a percept, i.e., under the influence of a representation, then it is this percept which determines our action indirectly by way of the conceptual thinking. But when we act under the influence of intuitions, the spring of our action is pure thinking. As it is the custom in philosophy to call the faculty of pure thinking “reason,” we may perhaps be justified in giving the name of practical reason to the moral spring of action characteristic of this level of life. The clearest account of this spring of action has been given by Kreyenbuehl (Philosophische Monatshefte, Vol. xviii, No. 3).⁵ In my opinion his article on this subject is one of the most important contributions to present-day philosophy, more especially to Ethics. Kreyenbuehl calls the spring of action, of which we are treating, the practical a priori, i.e., a spring of action issuing immediately from my intuition.

[ 15 ] It is clear that such a spring of action can no longer be counted in the strictest sense as a characterological disposition. For what is here effective in me as a spring of action is no longer something purely individual, but the ideal, and hence universal, content of my intuition. As soon as I regard the validity of this content as the basis and starting-point of an action, I pass over into willing, irrespective of whether the concept was already in me beforehand, or whether it only enters my consciousness immediately before the action, that is, irrespective of whether it was present in the form of a disposition in me or not.

[ 16 ] A real act of will results only when a present impulse to action, in the form of a concept or representation, acts on the characterological disposition. Such an impulse thereupon becomes the motive of the will.

[ 17 ] The motives of moral conduct are representations and concepts. There are Moralists who see in feeling also a motive of morality; they assert, e.g., that the aim of moral conduct is to secure the greatest possible quantity of pleasure for the acting individual. Pleasure itself, however, cannot become a motive; only its representation can. The representation of a future feeling, but not the feeling itself, can act on my characterological disposition. For the feeling does not yet exist in the moment of action; it has first to be produced by the action.

[ 18 ] The representation of one's own or another's well-being is, however, rightly regarded as a motive of the will. The principle of producing the greatest quantity of pleasure for oneself through one's action, that is, to attain individual happiness, is called Egoism. The attainment of this individual happiness is sought either by thinking ruthlessly only of one's own good, and striving to attain it even at the cost of the happiness of other individuals (Pure Egoism), or by promoting the good of others, either because one anticipates indirectly a favourable influence on one's own person through the happiness of others, or because one fears to endanger one's own interest by injuring others (Morality of Prudence). The special content of the egoistical principles of morality will depend on the representations which we form of what constitutes our own, or others', happiness. A man will determine the content of his egoistical striving in accordance with what he regards as one of life's good things (luxury, hope of happiness, deliverance from different evils, etc.).

[ 19 ] Further, the purely conceptual content of an action is to be regarded as yet another kind of motive. This content has no reference, like the representation of one's own pleasures, solely to the particular action, but to the deduction of an action from a system of moral principles. These moral principles, in the form of abstract concepts, may guide the individual's moral life without his worrying himself about the origin of his concepts. In that case, we feel merely the moral necessity of submitting to a moral concept which, in the form of law, overhangs our actions. The justification of this necessity we leave to those who demand from us moral subjection, that is, to those whose moral authority over us we acknowledge (the head of the family, the state, social custom, the authority of the church, divine revelation). We meet with a special kind of these moral principles when the law is not proclaimed to us by an external authority, but comes from our own inner life (moral autonomy). In this case we hear the voice, to which we have to submit ourselves, in our own souls. This voice expresses itself as conscience.

[ 20 ] It is a great moral advance when a man no longer takes as the motive of his action the commands of an external or the internal authority, but tries to understand the reason why a given maxim of action ought to be effective as a motive in him. This is the advance from morality based on authority to action from moral insight. At this level of morality, a man will try to discover the demands of the moral life, and will let his action be determined by this knowledge. Such demands are (1) the greatest possible happiness of humanity as a whole purely for its own sake; (2) the progress of civilization, or the moral development of mankind towards ever greater perfection; (3) the realization of individual moral aims conceived by an act of pure intuition.

[ 21 ] The greatest possible happiness of humanity as a whole will naturally be differently conceived by different people. The above-mentioned maxim does not refer to any definite representation of this happiness, but rather means that everyone who acknowledges this principle strives to do all that, in his opinion, most promotes the good of the whole of humanity.

[ 22 ] The progress of civilization is seen to be a special application of the moral principle just mentioned, at any rate for those to whom the goods which civilization produces bring feelings of pleasure. They will only have to pay the price in the decay and annihilation of several things which also contribute to the happiness of humanity. It is, however, also possible that some men look upon the progress of civilization as a moral necessity, quite apart from the feelings of pleasure which it brings. If so, the progress of civilization will be a new moral principle for them, different from the previous one.

[ 23 ] Both the principle of the public good, and that of the progress of civilization alike, are based on the representation, i.e., on the way in which we apply the content of our moral Ideas to particular experiences (percepts). The highest principle of morality which we can think of, however, is that which contains, to start with, no such reference to particular experiences, but which springs from the source of pure intuition and does not seek until later any connection with percepts, i.e., with life. The determination of what ought to be willed issues here from an arbiter very different from that of the previous two principles. Who accepts the principle of the public good will in all his actions ask first what his ideals contribute to this public good. The upholder of the progress of civilization as the principle of morality will act similarly. There is, however, a still higher mode of conduct which, in a given case, does not start from any single limited moral ideal, but which sees a certain value in all moral principles, always asking whether this or that principle is more important in a particular case. It may happen that a man considers in certain circumstances the promotion of the public good, in others that of the progress of civilization, and in yet others the furthering of his own good, to be the right course, and makes that the motive of his action. But when all other grounds of determination take second place, then we rely, in the first place, on conceptual intuition itself. All other motives now yield place, and the ideal content of an action alone becomes its motive.

[ 24 ] Among the levels of characterological disposition, we have singled out as the highest that which manifests itself as pure thinking, or practical reason. Among the motives, we have just singled out conceptual intuition as the highest. On nearer consideration, we now perceive that at this level of morality the spring of action and the motive coincide, i.e., that neither a predetermined characterological disposition, nor an external moral principle accepted on authority, influences our conduct. The action, therefore, is neither a merely stereotyped one which follows certain rules, nor is it automatically performed in response to an external impulse. Rather it is determined solely through its ideal content.^*

[ 25 ] For such an action to be possible, we must first be capable of moral intuitions. Whoever lacks the capacity to experience for himself the moral principle that applies in each particular case, will never rise to the level of genuine individual willing.

[ 26 ] Kant's principle of morality: Act so that the principle of your action may be valid for all men—is the exact opposite of ours. His principle would mean death to all individual impulses of action. The norm for me can never be what all men would do, but rather what it is right for me to do in each special case.

[ 27 ] A superficial criticism might urge against these arguments: How can an action be individually adapted to the special case and the special situation, and yet at the same time be ideally determined by pure intuition? This objection rests upon a confusion of the moral motive with the perceptual content of an action. The latter, indeed, may be a motive, and is actually a motive when we act for the progress of culture, or from pure egoism, etc., but in action based on pure moral intuition it never is a motive. Of course, my “I” takes notice of these perceptual contents, but it does not allow itself to be determined by them. The content is used only to construct a cognitive concept, but the corresponding moral concept is not derived from the object. The cognitive concept of a given situation which faces me, is a moral concept also only if I adopt the standpoint of a particular moral principle. If I base all my conduct on the principle of the progress of civilization, then my way through life is tied down to a fixed route. From every occurrence which I perceive and which attracts my interest there springs a moral duty, viz., to do my tiny share towards using this occurrence in the service of the progress of civilization. In addition to the concept which reveals to me the connections of events or objects according to the laws of nature, there is also a moral label attached to them which contains for me, as a moral agent, ethical directions as to how I have to conduct myself. Such a moral label is justified on its own ground; at a higher level it coincides with the Idea which reveals itself to me prompted by the concrete instance.

[ 28 ] Men vary greatly in their capacity for intuition. In some, Ideas bubble up like a spring, others acquire them with much labour. The situations in which men live, and which are the scenes of their actions, are no less widely different. The conduct of a man will depend, therefore, on the manner in which his faculty of intuition works in a given situation. The aggregate of Ideas which are effective in us, the concrete content of our intuitions, constitute that which is individual in each of us, notwithstanding the universal character of the world of Ideas. In so far as this intuitive content has reference to action, it constitutes the moral content of the individual. To let this content express itself in his life is the highest moral spring of action and at the same time, the highest motive of the man who regards all other moral principles as subordinate. We may call this point of view Ethical Individualism.

[ 29 ] The decisive factor of an intuitively determined action in any concrete instance, is the discovery of the corresponding purely individual intuition. At this level of morality, there can be no question of general moral concepts (norms, laws), except in so far as these result from the generalization of the individual impulses. General norms always presuppose concrete facts from which they can be deduced. But facts have first to be created by human action.

[ 30 ] When we investigate the leading principles (the conceptual principles guiding the actions of individuals, peoples, epochs), we obtain a science of Ethics which is, however, not a science of moral norms, but rather a natural science of morality. Only, the laws discovered in this way are related to human action as the laws of nature are related to a particular phenomenon. These laws, however, are very far from being identical with the impulses on which we base our actions. If we want to understand how a man's action arises from his moral will, we must first study the relation of this will to the action. For this purpose we must single out for study those actions in which this relation is the determining factor. When I, or another, subsequently review my action we may discover what moral principles come into play in it. So long as I am acting, I am influenced by the principle of morality in so far as it lives in me intuitively; it is united with my love for the object which I want to realize through my action. I ask of no man and of no moral code, whether I shall perform this action or not. I carry it out as soon as I have formed the Idea of it. This alone makes it my action. If a man acts only because he accepts certain moral norms, his action is the outcome of the principles which compose his moral code. He merely carries out orders. He is a superior kind of automaton. Inject some stimulus to action into his mind, and at once the clockwork of his moral principles will begin to work and run its prescribed course, so as to issue in an action which is Christian, or humane, or seemingly unselfish, or calculated to promote the progress of culture. It is only when I follow solely my love for the object, that it is I, myself, who act. At this level of morality, I acknowledge no lord over me, neither an external authority, nor my so-called inner voice. I acknowledge no external principle of my action, because I have found in myself the ground for my action, viz., my love of the action. I do not examine with my intellect whether my action is good or bad; I perform it, because I am in love with it. My action is “good” when my intuition, immersed in love, inserts itself in the right way into the world-nexus as I experience it intuitively; it is “bad” when this is not the case. Neither do I ask myself how another man would act in my position. I act as I, this unique individuality, feel impelled to act. No general usage, no common custom, no general maxim current among men, no moral norm is my immediate guide, but my love for the action. I feel no compulsion, neither the compulsion of nature which dominates me through my instincts, nor the compulsion of the moral commandments. My will is simply to realize what in me lies.

[ 31 ] Those who defend general moral norms will reply to these arguments that, if everyone strives to live his own life and do what he pleases, there can be no distinction between a good action and a crime; every fraudulent impulse in me has the same right to issue in action as the intention to serve the general good. It is not the mere fact of my having conceived the Idea of an action which ought to determine me as a moral being, but the examination of whether it is a good or an evil action. Only if it is good shall I carry it out.

[ 32 ] This objection is easily intelligible, and yet it had its root in what is but a misapprehension of my meaning. My reply to it is this: If we want to get at the essence of human volition we must distinguish between the path along which volition attains to a certain degree of development, and the unique character which volition assumes as it approaches its goal. It is on the path towards the goal that the norms play a legitimate part. The goal consists of the realization of moral aims which are apprehended by pure intuition. Man attains such aims in proportion as he is able to rise at all to the level at which intuition grasps the Idea-content of the world. In any particular volition, other elements will, as a rule, be mixed up, as springs of action or motives, with such moral aims. But, for all that, intuition may be, wholly or in part, the determining factor in human volition. What one should do, that one does. One supplies the stage upon which, what one should do, becomes action. One's own action is what one lets come forth from oneself. The impulse, here, can only be wholly individual. And, in fact, only an action which issues out of intuition can be individual. To regard evil, the deed of a criminal, as a manifestation of the human individuality in the same sense as the embodiment of pure intuition, is a confusion which only becomes possible when blind instincts are reckoned as part of the human individuality.

[ 33 ] But the blind impulse which drives a man to a criminal act does not spring from intuition, and does not belong to what is individual in him, but rather to that which is most general in him, to that which is equally present in all individuals and from which man finds his way out with the help of his individual part. The individual part in me is not my organism with its instincts and feelings, but rather the unified world of Ideas which reveals itself through this organism. My instincts, cravings, passions, justify no further assertion about me than that I belong to the general species man. The fact that something ideal expresses itself in a particular way through these instincts, passions, and feelings, provides the foundation of my individuality. My instincts and cravings make me the sort of man of whom there are twelve to the dozen. The unique character of the Idea, by means of which I distinguish myself within the dozen as “I,” makes of me an individual. Only a being other than myself could distinguish me from others by the difference in my animal nature. Through my thinking, i.e., by the active grasping of the Ideal-element working itself out through my organism, I distinguish myself from others. Hence it is impossible to say of the action of a criminal that it issues from the Idea within him. Indeed, the characteristic feature of criminal actions is precisely that they spring from the non-ideal elements in man.

[ 34 ] An act the grounds for which lie in the ideal part of my individual nature is felt to be free. Every other part of an act, whether done under the compulsion of nature or under the obligation imposed by a moral norm, is felt to be unfree.

[ 35 ] Man is free in so far as, in every moment of his life, he is able to obey only himself. A moral act is my act only when it can be called free in this sense. So far we are concerned here with the presuppositions under which an act of will is felt to be free; the sequel will show how this purely ethical Idea of freedom becomes realized in the essential nature of man.

[ 36 ] Action on the basis of freedom does not at all exclude, but includes, the moral laws. Only, it shows that it stands on a higher level than actions which are dictated by these laws. Why should my act serve the general good less well when I do it from pure love of it, than when I perform it only because I feel it is a duty to serve the general good? The concept of mere duty excludes freedom, because it will not acknowledge the individual element, but demands the subjection of the latter to a general norm. Freedom of action is conceivable only from the standpoint of Ethical Individualism.

[ 37 ] But how about the possibility, of social life for men, if each aims only at asserting his own individuality? This question expresses yet another objection on the part of Moralism wrongly understood. The Moralist believes that a social community is possible only if all men are held together by a commonly fixed moral order. This shows that the Moralist does not understand the identity of the world of Ideas. He does not grasp that the world of Ideas which inspires me is no other than that which inspires my fellow-man. This unity is, indeed, but a result of the experience of the world. It cannot be anything else. For if we could recognize it in any other way than by observation, it would follow that not individual experience, but universal norms, were dominant in its sphere. Individuality is possible only if every individual being knows of others only through individual observation. I differ from my neighbour, not at all because we are living in two entirely different spiritual worlds, but because from our common world of Ideas we receive different intuitions. He desires to live out his intuitions, I mine. If we both draw our intuitions really from the world of Ideas, and do not obey mere external impulses (physical or spiritual), then we cannot but meet one another in striving for the same aims, in having the same intentions. A moral misunderstanding, a clash is impossible between men who are morally free. Only the morally unfree who follow their natural instincts or the accepted commands of duty, turn their backs on their neighbours, if these do not obey the same instincts and the same laws as themselves. To live in love of action and to let live in understanding of the other's volition, this is the fundamental maxim of the free man. He knows no other “ought” than that with which his will intuitively puts itself in harmony. How he shall will in any given case, that will be determined for him by his faculty of conceiving Ideas.

[ 38 ] If sociability were not deeply rooted in human nature, no external laws would be able to inoculate us with it. It is only because human beings are one in spirit that they can live out their lives side by side. The free man lives out his life in the full confidence that all other free men belong to one spiritual world with himself, and that their intentions will harmonize with his. The free man does not demand accord from his fellow-man, but he expects it none the less, because it is inherent in human nature. I am not referring here to the necessity for this or that external institution. I refer to the disposition, the attitude of soul, through which a man, aware of himself among his fellow-men for whom he cares, comes nearest to living up to the ideal of human dignity.

[ 39 ] There are many who will say that the concept of the free man which I have here developed, is a chimera nowhere to be found realized, and that we have got to deal with actual human beings, from whom we can expect morality only if they obey some moral law, i.e., if they regard their moral task as a duty and do not simply follow their inclinations and loves. I do not doubt this. Only a blind man could do that. But away with all this hypocrisy of morality if this is the final conclusion! Let us then say simply that human nature must be compelled to act as long as it is not free. Whether the compulsion of man's unfree nature is effected by physical force or through moral laws, whether man is unfree because he indulges his unmeasured sexual desire, or because he is bound tight in the bonds of conventional morality, is quite immaterial from a certain point of view. Only let us not assert that such a man can rightly call his actions his own, seeing that he is driven to them by a force which is not his own. But in the midst of all this network of compulsion, there arise free spirits who, in all the welter of customs, legal codes, religious observances, etc., learn to find themselves. They are free in so far as they obey only themselves; unfree in so far as they submit to control. Which of us can say that he is really free in all his actions? Yet in each of us there dwells some deeper being in which the free man finds expression.

[ 40 ] Our life is made up of free and unfree actions. We cannot, however, form a final concept of human nature without coming upon the free spirit as its purest expression. After all, we are men in the fullest sense only in so far as we are free.

[ 41 ] This is an ideal, many will say. Doubtless; but it is an ideal which is a real element in us working its way to the surface of our nature. It is no ideal born of mere imagination or dream, but one which has life, and which announces itself clearly even in the least perfect form of its existence. If men were nothing but beings of nature, the search for ideals, that is, for Ideas which as yet are not actual but the realization of which we demand, would be an impossibility. In dealing with external objects the Idea is determined by the percept. We have done our share when we have recognized the connection between Idea and percept. But with the human being the case is different. The content of his existence is not determined without him. His true concept as a moral being (free spirit) is not a priori united objectively with the percept-picture “man,” so that knowledge need only register the fact subsequently. Man must by his own act unite his concept with the percept “man.” Concept and percept coincide with one another in this instance only in so far as man himself makes them coincide. This he can do only if he has found the concept of the free spirit, that is, if he has found his own concept. In the objective world, a boundary-line is drawn by our organization between percept and concept. Knowledge breaks down this barrier. In our subjective nature this barrier is no less present. Man overcomes it in the course of his development, by unfolding his concept in his outward existence. Hence man's intellectual as well as his moral life lead alike to his two-fold nature, perception (immediate experience) and thinking. The intellectual life overcomes his two-fold nature by means of knowledge, the moral life succeeds through the actual realization of the free spirit. Every being has its inborn concept (the law of its existence and action), but in external objects this concept is indissolubly bound up with the percept, and separated from it only in our spiritual organization. In man concept and percept are, at first, actually separated, to be just as actually reunited by him.

Someone might object that to our percept of a man there corresponds at every moment of his life a definite concept, just as with every other object. I can form for myself the concept of an average man, and I may also find such a man given to me as percept. Suppose now I add to this the concept of a free spirit, then I have two concepts for the same object.

[ 42 ] Such an objection is one-sided. As object of perception I am subject to perpetual change. As a child I was one thing, another as a youth, yet another as a man. Moreover, at every moment I am different, as a percept-picture, from what I was the moment before. These changes may take place in such a way that either it is always only the same (average) man who exhibits himself in them, or that they represent the expression of a free spirit. To such changes my action, as object of perception, is subjected.

[ 43 ] In the perceptual object “man” there is given the possibility of transformation, just as in the plant-seed there lies the possibility of growth into a fully developed plant. The plant transforms itself in growth, because of the objective law which is inherent in it. The human being remains in his imperfected state, unless he takes hold of the material for transformation within him and transforms himself through his own force. Nature makes of man merely a natural being; society makes of him a being who acts according to law; only he himself can make a free man of himself. At a definite stage in his development nature releases man from her fetters; society carries his development a step farther; he alone can give himself the final polish.

[ 44 ] From the standpoint of free morality, then, it is not asserted that the free spirit is the only form in which a man can exist. The freedom of the spirit is looked upon only as the last stage in man's evolution. This is not to deny that conduct according to norms has its legitimate place as a stage in development. The point is that we cannot acknowledge it to be the absolute standpoint in morality. For the free spirit transcends norms, in the sense that he recognizes as motives not commands alone, but he regulates his conduct in accordance with his impulses (intuitions).

[ 45 ] When Kant apostrophizes duty: “Duty! Thou sublime and mighty name, that dost embrace nothing charming or insinuating, but requirest submission,” thou that “holdest forth a law ... before which all inclinations are dumb, even though they secretly counter-work it,” ⁶ then the free spirit replies: “Freedom! thou kindly and humane name, which dost embrace within thyself all that is morally most beloved, all that my manhood most prizes, and which makest me the servant of nobody, which settest up no mere law, but waitest what my moral love itself will recognize as law, because it feels itself unfree in presence of every law that is forced upon it.”

[ 46 ] This is the contrast of morality according to law and according to freedom.

[ 47 ] The philistine who looks upon an external code as embodied morality is sure to look upon the free spirit even as a danger to society. But that is only because his view is narrowly focused on a limited period of time. If he were able to look beyond, he would soon find that the free spirit needs to go beyond the laws of his state as seldom as the philistine himself, and that he never needs to confront them with any real contradiction. For the laws of the state, one and all, have had their origin in the intuitions of free spirits, just like all other objective laws of morality. There is no traditional law enforced by the authority of a family, which was not, once upon a time, intuitively conceived and laid down by an ancestor. Similarly the conventional laws of morality are first of all established by particular men, and the laws of the state are always born in the brain of a statesman. These free spirits have set up laws over the rest of mankind, and only he is unfree who forgets this origin and makes them either extra-human commands, or objective moral duties independent of the human content, or—falsely mystical—the compelling voice of his own conscience.

He, on the other hand, who does not forget the origin of laws, but looks for it in man, will respect them as belonging to the same world of Ideas which is the source also of his own moral intuitions. If he thinks his intuitions better than those already existing, he will try to put them into the place of the latter. If he thinks the latter justified, he will act in accordance with them as if they were his own intuitions.

[ 48 ] We must not coin the formula: Man exists only in order to realize a moral world-order which is independent of him. Anyone who maintains that he does stands, in his science of man, still at that same point at which natural science stood when it believed that a bull has horns in order that it may butt. Scientists, happily, have cast the concept of objective purposes in nature into the limbo of dead theories. For Ethics, it is more difficult to achieve the same emancipation. But just as horns do not exist for the sake of butting, but butting because of horns, so man does not exist for the sake of morality, but morality exists through man. The free man acts morally because he has a moral Idea, he does not act in order that morality may come into being. Human individuals, with the moral Ideas belonging to their nature, are the presupposition of a moral world-order.

[ 49 ] The human individual is the fountain of all morality and the centre of earthly life. State and society exist only because they have necessarily grown out of the life of individuals. That state and society, in turn, should react upon the lives of individuals, is no more difficult to comprehend, than that the butting which is the result of the existence of horns, reacts in turn upon the further development of the horns of the bull, which would become atrophied by prolonged disuse. Similarly, the individual must degenerate if he leads an isolated existence outside human society. That is just the reason why the social order arises, viz., that it may react favourably upon the individual.

• 1. The way in which the above view has influenced psychology, physiology, etc., in various directions has been set forth by the author in works published after this book. Here he is concerned only with characterizing the results of an unbiased observation of thinking itself.
• 2. The passage from p. 111 down to this point was added, or rewritten for the Revised Edition (1918).
• 3. Students of modern science may care to turn at once to the Editor's Note on p. 135.
• 4. A complete catalogue of the principles of morality (from the point of view of Metaphysical Realism) may be found in Eduard von Hartmann's Phaenomenologie des sittlichen Bewusstseins.
• 5. Ethical-Spiritual Activity in Kant
• *. Editor's Note: The distinction here drawn by Dr. Steiner between “motive” and “spring of action” is of fundamental importance and is implicit in the common English usage of these terms. But because this distinction has been blurred in recent scientific works the word “motive” has come to have a different technical usage which may confuse some readers of this book.
  An example of the psychological usage is R. Woodworth's definition of “motive” as “a state or set of the individual which disposes him for certain behaviour and for seeking certain goals.” This does not bring out the important difference, to which Steiner draws attention, between having a goal, purpose or task, which a man finds by the characteristically human activity of thinking and adopts as the right thing to do in the particular circumstances, and being stimulated by a percept or feeling to an impulsive or emotional act. Steiner uses the term “motive” only when the act of will comes about under the influence of a concept or representation, and he traces a progressive ascent in this direction to the point where action is determined by the content of pure intuition.
  An instance of contemporary ethical usage is A. C. Ewing's alternative definitions of “motive” as “(i) Desires causing action or (ii) Circumstances relevant to an action to which attention is directed at the time.” Here, also, recognition of the unique character of a motive grasped out of pure intuition is precluded.
  In the first part of this book Dr. Steiner has shown how a concept can be grasped by the Ego from the thought-content of the world in a fully conscious act of intuition. In this chapter and the subsequent discussion of moral imagination he shows how such a freely grasped concept can be imprinted on the world as deed without losing the element of freedom. Thus it is shown how the spirit can work creatively in a human act of free will.
  Upon the recognition of this fact depends a clear understanding of the essential difference between man, who can develop the power to create freely out of the spirit, and the animal.
• 6. Translation by Abbott, Kant's Theory of Ethics, p. 180; Critique of Practical Reason, chap. iii.

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

(The Legend was here recited.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ 1 ] This is the proper point at which to refer to a preconception, persisting since the time of Kant, which has been so absorbed into the very life of certain circles as to pass for an axiom. Whoever should presume to question it would be considered a dilettante, a person not yet advanced beyond the most rudimentary concepts of modern philosophy. I refer to the opinion, held as if it were establisheda priori, that the whole perceptual world, this endless multiplicity of colors and forms, of tones and degrees of heat, were nothing more than our subjective world of representations,⁹ possessing existence only so long as we keep our senses receptive to the influences from a world quite unknown to us. The whole phenomenal world is interpreted on the basis of this opinion, as a representation (Vorstellung) inside our individual consciousness; and, on the basis of this hypothesis, are constructed further assertions regarding the nature of cognition. Volkelt also has adopted this opinion and bases upon it his theory of knowledge, a masterly production in its scientific process of development. Yet this is no basic truth, and least of all is it appropriate to form the very culmination of the science of knowledge.

[ 2 ] We would not be misunderstood. We have no desire to utter a protest—which would certainly be futile—against the contemporary achievements in physiology. But what is wholly justified as physiology is by no means for that reason appropriate to be set up before the very gateway leading to a theory of knowledge. It may pass as an unassailable physiological truth that the complex of sensations and percepts which we call experience first comes into existence through the cooperation of our organism. Yet it remains quite certain that such an item of knowledge as this can result only from much reflection and research. This characterization—that our phenomenal world is, in a physiological sense, of a subjective character—is itself a characterization of that world reached by thinking, and has, therefore, nothing whatever to do with its first manifestation. It presupposes the application of thinking to experience. It must, therefore, be preceded by an inquiry as to the interrelationship between the two factors in the act of cognition.

[ 3 ] It is supposed that this opinion raises one above the pre-Kantian naïveté, which considered the things in space and in time as constituting reality, as is still done by the “naïve” person who has no scientific training.

[ 4 ] Volkelt makes the assertion: “All acts that call themselves objective cognitions are inseparably bound up with the individual cognizing consciousness; they take their course at first and immediately nowhere else than in the consciousness of the individual; and they are utterly incapable of reaching beyond the sphere of the individual and laying hold of the sphere of the real lying outside, or of entering it.”¹⁰

[ 5] But it is quite impossible for unprejudiced thought to discover what that form of reality which touches us directly (experience) bears within itself that could in any way justify us in designating it as mere representation.

[ 6 ] Even the simple reflection that the “naïve” person observes in things nothing which could lead him to this opinion teaches us that no compelling reason for this assumption exists in things themselves. What does a tree, a table, bear within itself that could lead me to look upon it as a mere mental image? This should not, then, be asserted—least of all as a self-evident truth.

[ 7 ] Just because Volkelt does this, he entangles himself in a contradiction of his fundamental principles. According to our conviction, he could maintain the subjective nature of experience only by being disloyal to the truth recognized by him, that experience consists of nothing but an unrelated chaos of images without any thinkable definition. Otherwise he would have been forced to see that the cognizing subject, the observer, is just as unrelated within the world of experience as is any other object belonging to it. But, if one predicates subjectivity of the world of experience, this is at once a thought-characterization, just as if one looks upon a falling stone as the cause of an impression made in the ground. Yet Volkelt himself will not admit any sort of interrelationships among the things of experience. Here lies the inconsistency in his conception; here he becomes disloyal to the principle he has expressed regarding pure experience. Through this he shuts himself up within his individuality, and is no longer capable of emerging. Indeed, he admits this without reservation. Everything that lies beyond the disconnected images of perception remains for him in uncertainty. Our thinking, to be sure, endeavors according to his view to reach out from this world of mental images and infer an objective reality, but our going out beyond this world cannot lead to really known truths. All knowledge that we win by means of thinking is, according to Volkelt, not protected against doubt. It does not by any means attain to a certitude like that of immediate experience. This alone affords an indubitable knowledge. We have seen how defective is this knowledge.

[ 8 ] But all this grows out of the fact that Volkelt attributes to sense-reality (experience) a characteristic which can by no means pertain thereto, and on this presupposition bases his further assumptions.

[ 9 ] It has been necessary to give special attention to this writing of Volkelt's because it is the most important contemporary work in this field, and also for the reason that it may serve as a typical specimen of all endeavors after a theory of knowledge which are in basic opposition to the direction of thinking that we represent, founded upon Goethe's world-conception.

• 9. Vorstellungswelt
• 10. Cf. Volkelt: Erfahrung und Denken, p. 4.

The creations of Goethe and Schiller during their time as friends are among the most beautiful blossoms of human intellectual life. However, this friendship only came about because both men overcame serious inner obstacles that kept their souls apart. These obstacles can be seen in the conversation reported by Goethe, which the two had when they had once come from a lecture on the plant world that had taken place at the Naturalists' Society in Jena. Schiller found that the lecture was unsatisfactory because the individual plant forms were juxtaposed without the context becoming apparent in the consideration. Goethe replied that he had such a context in mind in his Urpflanze (primordial plant), which contains what lives as the essence in all individual plants. This “Urpflanze” does not resemble a single plant; but it makes every plant understandable from this primordial form that underlies the entire plant kingdom. Goethe sketched this primal form with a few characteristic strokes in front of Schiller's eyes. Schiller replied: but that is not an experience, that is an idea. Goethe, however, insisted that for him such an idea was at the same time an experience (observation), and that if one called such an idea an idea, he perceived his ideas with his eyes. From Goethe's description of the conversation, it is clear that the two of them had not yet been able to reconcile their opinions.

Goethe felt justified in addressing what formed itself in his mind about the things of nature in the form of ideas, as a result of observation, as he did, for example, about the red color of the rose. For him, science was spirit-filled and yet at the same time the objective result of observation. Schiller could not come to terms with such a view. For him, it was clear that man must first form the ideas out of himself if he wanted to combine the results of observation, which were only given as details. Goethe felt at home in nature with his spiritual content, while Schiller felt out of touch with nature with the same content.

Anyone who follows the course of their friendship from their correspondence will see how it deepened as Schiller came to understand Goethe's way of looking at things. He came to accept the objective rule of the spirit in the creations of nature, which was something that Goethe took for granted. It may be said that Schiller was the first to separate from Goethe the view that man stands outside nature and that when he speaks about nature, he adds something to it. Goethe was never unclear about the fact that in man nature expresses its essence as spiritual content itself, if man only puts himself in the right relationship to it.

For Goethe, the essence of nature lives in man as knowledge. And human knowledge is for him a revelation of the essence of nature. For Goethe, the process of knowledge is not merely a formal reflection of a hidden essence in nature, but the real manifestation of that which would not exist in nature at all without the human spirit. Nevertheless, for him, the spirit is the true content of nature itself, because he conceives of knowledge as the human soul immersing itself in nature. Schiller initially found it difficult to reconcile this with his Kantianism. And he had adopted this Kantianism; Goethe never found anything in Kant's view that could come close to his way of thinking.

In the feeling of Goethe's artistic creations, Schiller found himself in his way of thinking and approached Goethe more and more. In the “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man” one sees Schiller's striving to bring Goethe's artistic experience to full understanding. After he had reformed himself in this direction, he came to recognize in the artistic experience of the world the only human state of mind in which one could be a true human being in the full sense of the word. And so, for him, science became a way of experiencing the world in which man could not reveal himself in his entirety.

Goethe, on the other hand, wanted a science that, in its own way, would bring out the whole person just as art does in its own. Schiller first had to work his way towards such a view. He did so, and in doing so, his spiritual community with Goethe was placed on the right footing. Goethe, in turn, approached Schiller in that Schiller provided him with the intellectual justification for his way of thinking. He himself could not have arrived at this, for he lived in this way before the bond of friendship, as in something self-evident, which had not even occurred to him as a problem. Schiller was able to enrich Goethe's soul by showing him how it could become a self-aware mystery and search for the solution to it.

Schiller gave Goethe the incentive to continue his Faust. The “Prologue in Heaven” was created directly from this stimulus. If you compare this with one of the oldest Faust scenes, where Faust turns away from the spirit of the great world and towards the spirit of the earth, you can see the turnaround in Goethe. Before, the turning away from the intellectual content of the great world; after, the pictorial representation of the same. In the stimulus of thought that Schiller had given, lay for Goethe the germ of the artistic image of man's life in the world-spirit before the eye of the soul. Before, he was unable to do this because he accepted this life as something only felt as a matter of course, without forming it inwardly.

For posterity, it will always be significant to be able to learn to see Goethe's essence with the eye of the soul through Schiller; to see Goethe's essence fully unfold in a certain period of his life in the stimuli that emanate from Schiller.

The sense of the obstacles that both had to overcome in order to come together, and the other of the way in which they ultimately complemented each other, provides an impulse for the deepest soul observations. In doing so, however, he also penetrates to one of the most important points in the workings of the spirit in the development of humanity.

The more one moves up to the present in the consideration of evolution, one must take into account that time is an element of deception and the source of numerous errors in history. One must distinguish between what always goes through evolution, what is always there, is a total dying or death: and that is the development of the levels of consciousness of the Pitris. All that matters in the end is this development. No matter how much may have happened on the first planet: the moment the Pitris had the first state of consciousness, everything the Pitris had within them was dissolved. Only the result was transferred. All the work that was used is concentrated in one point. Everything winds around it like a spiral around the node, in which the Pitri has contracted like the snake around the Hermes staff. This is how we do it in earthly evolution. We discard the detail. Pitri has hereby achieved an elevation of consciousness. The stages are determined, the snake remains subject to a certain arbitrariness, its coils are what the illusions bring about in time.

We can predict the stages of consciousness of a Pitri. The paths of the snake are manifold and can be seen by the seer in their outcome – not in the future. So one can say for the future: it will be so and so, but not whether in two hundred or three hundred years. We do not know how much the stages of evolution will be drawn out. A can be reached in five years, C in a hundred years, or vice versa. Therefore, it is possible to determine the path, but not the length of time. Hence the deception, and one cannot say in advance in terms of time, because time belongs to macrocosmic development, the microcosmic is timeless.

This must be considered when following events in relation to the present and the future, because the microcosmic development is correct, but the macrocosmic development is subject to freedom, in that it can use external circumstances in different ways.

From this follows an occult sentence: the arbitrariness or freedom of the human microcosm expresses itself in its inclination towards the snake.

The rod is he himself, and therefore the snake symbol as the symbol of freedom. So, although the path is strictly prescribed, it would be futile to want to try to foresee what freedom of man, of external events, can be foreseen. Although external events can be foreseen, but the leaders and leaders use the external events at their discretion.

The Pitri has not yet awakened to freedom, and his future actions are mostly prescribed for him by the macrocosm.

Let us take this into account when considering the present, the Latin races. What the Pitris do can only be perceived through inner vision; what takes place in the macrocosm from the outside.

Therefore, the consideration of world history falls into events that we see from the outside and into the essential stages of development that we have to consider from the inside. We call the former noumenon and the latter all external phenomena.

All phenomena also have an inner side, and are phenomena insofar as we do not yet see their noumenon. Now, the Teutonic race has the task, the noumenal, of applying intelligence, the manasic, to external processes. Therefore, for centuries all science was transferred to the external physical plane. In his poem, Dante describes the three-tiered world. He did not, of course, believe that these were locas in space, but took them as symbols for spiritual processes. At that time, little importance was attached to the description of external events, but rather to the essence of spiritual matters.

In the Heliand saga, Christ is made the German military leader; the poet said to himself: It does not matter whether it is described through Palestinian or Saxon events, but rather it is used arbitrarily for inner events, because the temporal is Maya.

The actual mission of the Germanic race was to take the external and the temporal really seriously. In the past, the world system was used from a different point of view. From Copernicus onwards, the aim was to describe the world independently of man and according to material processes. The external is taken so seriously that the human will becomes the decisive factor. In the past, intentions for the social life of man were still taken from above, and the leaders were mediators. Now personal freedom becomes the decisive factor. Reason and self-will of the individual, freedom, equality and fraternity will [gap in the transcript]

Therefore, the French Revolution could only have been staged under the leadership of masters [gap in the transcript]

Voltaire, Rousseau, d'Alembert did not simply have an external historical [gap in the transcript] but were masters [gap in the transcript] and therefore executed it as a noumenon.

Everything that is snake is the abomination..., everything that is progress is the rod. The externally leading masters had to relinquish the leadership to the snake. In particular, Rosicrucianism withdrew.

Materialism at its highest in the forty years; it blossoms in the will.

Limitation to the external phenomenal principle of knowledge; we can only [gap in the transcript]

Kant introduced and Spencer expressed.

Ignorabimus.

The will had to be directed in such a way that it is forced down completely onto the physical plane, compressed, concentrated into a personality. To state what impression it makes, what the ultimate consequence / gap in the transcript]

Infallibility of the Pope. One does not have to investigate the counsel of God, but on the physical plane, [gap in the transcript]

The authority wants to be concentrated in one personality.

Agnosticism from one side, infallibility from the other.

Unity on the physical plane would only be possible if one ruled over all; on higher planes, unity is self-evident.

The task of the next race will be to create a culture with elementary force, renouncing the entire culture of the fifth race and starting from the original human nature.

The blessings of Western civilization will be used by the Slavic race to bring about a renewal of civilization; it will become the sixth sub-race. It will give its content to the American race, which will play a similar role to the Mongols for the future main race.

[Gap in transcript].

Yesterday I mentioned the four principal parts of the present socialistic programme. As you will remember, these four parts 1) The socialisation of industrial concerns. 2) The production is to be governed by the demand. 3) The conditions of work and of pay are to be regulated democratically. 4) Profits of any kind go to the commnity.

Attention has already been drawn to a few things showing that the currents of feeling and opinion which called into life this fourfold programme contain certain facts which are not entirely out/off from the human being, as is the case with the materialistic conceptien of history and the theory of an economic struggle among the different social classes, for these aro conclusions arrived at by the social-democratic mentality. Spiritual impulses, spiritual potentialities, now influence the development of things contained above all in the views and aspirations of the proletariat. It will indeed be fatal if we fail to acquire the required insight into the strength of the impulses which influence the development of modern socialistic thinking and of modern socialistic aims. We might say: What most strikes us in socialistic thought and in socialistic aims is the absolute lack of confidence in any sort of help or cooperation to b e gained from man's moral, ethical impulses: when socialists set about to organise the social structure, they show an absolute distrust in the power o f ethical impulses. This distrust is a sediment, as it were, or proletarian thinking and willing; the proletariat simply does not believe that the ruling classes can in any way contribute moral impulses, or even spiritual impulses, towards the solution of the social problem.

We should not allow ourselves to be deceived by such things, particularly not by the phrases which socialists sometimes use. Particularly when socialists criticize the mistakes of the ruling classes, they like to condemn their moral shortcomings. But whenever the socialistic proletariat considers in a fully conscious way the source of its hopes for the future, it merely says: Even if the ruling classes were guided by moral impulses when striving to improve the social conditions of the proletariat, they could not succeed. A real improvement can only, result from a class struggle, from a struggle between different economic interests and the economic forces as such. It is most important to realise this. For even the last remnant of trust in the moral forces of the ruling classes still extant to-day, will disappear.

We should bear in mind that the capitalistic foundation, of which I have spoken to you yesterday, will gradually lead the so-called intelligentsia, the intellectual loaders of modern humanity, to an ever growing lack of confidence in the power of moral or spiritual impulses. This will spread more and more. For in the depths of their hearts, even the middle classes do not attribute much importance to the real power of moral impulses. They do, of course, talk a lot of such moral impulses, but the way in which things manifest themselves, shows that their words often contain a more or less conscious untruthfulness. Do not let us forget one of the most fatal facts in the development of modern humanity, a fact which we have already considered from various aspects. It may be characterized as follows: On the one hand, there is a certain confidence inthe science dealing with the external phenomena of Nature, a science which is, as it were, devoid of morality, devoid of spirituality. Our contemporaries wish to develolp natartal science in such a way that there is no connection between the ideas relating to Nature and those relating to the moral order of the world.

A characteristic fact is, for instance, the following one: The Roman Catholic Church, some of whose priests are really very learned men, emphasizes that the scientists in its ranks should concentrate their attention exclusively upon physical facts, and that they should in no way attempt to mingle spiritual or moral things with the so-called causal science dealing with external phenomena.

Take, on the other hand, all the books dealing with moral, ethical or spiritual questions, written by men who are looked upon as authorities. These books undoubtedly contain many unctious or not unctious, pathetic or not pathetic impulses and ideals which seek to arouse compassion or abhorrence. But try to form an opinion by consulting one of these books and asking ourselves: What can be gained to-day from these modern books on ethics and other spiritual subjects, in regard to the burning problems of the present, which we designate as the social questions, the social riddles?—Nothing, truly nothing, can be gained from such books! That which constitutes ethical thought has, in a certain way, withdrawn from the impulses which influence social life in ordinary everyday existence. Again and again you may find in books on ethical life ideas relating to benevolence, tolerance, love… love is a very favourite subject and similar things. But the way in which they are dealt with, do not enable them to exercise any influence upon human beings. The moral concepts which are advanced in such an abstract way have no moral force and contain no moral impulses.

We therefore have, on the one hand, a rhetoric dallying with,ethical subjeats, so that no moral impulse can take hold of men. The economic order which thus results, cannot exercise any ethical influence, but works upon the foundation of the causality which can be found in Nature, and it aims to bring into the economic structure of human life nothing but this causality of Nature. Do you find in the words or writings of modern men, belonging to the so-called intellectual circles, anything which can influence humanity in such a way that ethical requirements become at the same time social-economic requirements?—The most essential point which should be borne in mind to-day, is that a straight path must lead from the field of ethics, religion and spirituality, to the most common, daily questions of economic life, of national-economic and social life.

This path must not be ignored, if greater misfortune than that of the past years is not to befall humanity. In regard to such things, the modern proletarian' party, from the extreme, right to the extreme left, has taken over the inheritanoe of the capitalistic bourgeoisie, in the way in which it, has,developed during the past centuries. The characteristic trait of the bourgeoisie is that it has completely severed man's personal aspirations from the economic structure of life, from the development of capital, and quite independenly of any traditional religion or sectarian. movement of modern times, it cultivates at the same time a soul-life which is entirely separated from the interests of daily life; the middle classes think that it is a superior attitude to separate soul-life from the concerns of daily life, and so they completely lose that survey of life which is so badly needed to-day.

I have, for instance, come across members of the Anthroposophical Society, who said: Can we admit into our Society a man who works in a brewery, for such person contributes to the fact that people drink beer!—Now I am not speaking either for or against the drinking of beer, but the point from which these members set out, was that they were against beer drinking. In similar cases one can only say: You do not see further than your own nose, and this “nose-judgment” induces you to see, or not to see, that person who has a comparatively unimportant situation in a brewery. But let us consider real facts. You are the owner of shares, including all kinds of bank shares. Do you realise how much beer you brew with your shares and bank papers? But this does nut trouble you, for you do not see further than your own nose!

But, I do not intend to blame anyone for his opinions; the essential point is to draw attention to the lack of consistency and insight contained in such a manner of thinking. The greatest misfortune of our time is that love of ease leads people into this disconnected, incoherent way of thinking and they remain in it, because they do not wish to throw a bridge which leads from ethics religion and spirituality to the other side, constituting real life in its immediate form—the social and economic dethands, the social riddles as such, which now face us.

Indeed, many things have to be learned in this direction. You will remember that I have emphasized again and again that when we deal with social matters, the most essential thing to be borne in mind to-day is the spiritual aspect. Education, schools, spiritual life in general—these are the most important questions.

If we look more deeply into things, we may even say: So long as spiritual life continues to be dependent upon the political community (you already know that in future the social organism will consist of three communities, or parts), so long as the spiritual community, or spiritual life, is obliged to depend upon a merely political.structure which absorbs it, no solution can be reached and people will continue meddling about with social questions! Schools must be quite independent, spiritual matters must be dealt wits quite independently of economic or political life: this is :the essential point.

There is really not much time to reflect over those things and to set them right, and very soon it may be too late. Something can only be achieved if man's innermost being can still be reached, if the wild instincts which have become unfettered can still be controlled. But try to preach to-day to those men whose wild instincts have become unfettered in the social chaos of the present time—try to preach to them, and you will find that they will only laugh at you!

It is our earnest endeavour again and again to appeal to the hearts and souls of men, that they may listen to that which is so sorely needed. Even as the development in the direction of capitalism has in the past centuries utterly confused the activities connected with spiritual interests, and consequently with the world as such, so the spiritual science of Anthroposophy seeks to bring light and order into these things.

Let us consider the first point in the four-fold socialistic ideal: Industrial concerns, production, is to become common property, communal property.—But the essential point here, depends above all upon spiritual questions, upon a clear insight into certain answers to spiritual questions. What can spiritual science offer to human souls, if it is not only taken as an abstract, dry theory? Spiritual science can offer human souls three things:—In the first place, not a mere faith in a divine-spiritual element, but a conception of it, though it may perhaps only be one transmitted through thoughts, but it is a conception of the spiritual worlds which is accessible to sound common sense. Instead of a confused, often pantheistic and unclear manner of speaking of the spiritual world, the spiritual science of Anthropesophy transmits a real conception of the spiritual world, speaks of definite structures of spiritual Beings, of a hierarchical order within the spiritualal world; it transmits ideas of the spiritual world which are just as concrete as the ideas relating to the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms of the physical world. In the course of development during the past centuries, these spiritual ideas were completely pushed aside. Consider how much importance is attributed to-day to faith without any concepts. The spiritual science of Anthroposophy is characterised by the fact that it transmits a conception of the spiritual world.

A second thing which spiritual science offers to those who do not only take it as a dry and lifeless theory but who allow their heart and soul to be touched by it, a second thing which spiritual science can give is the following: people really learn to respect and prize the human being, they acquire a boundless feeling of respect and appreciation of man: if a spiritual conception of life, as set forth, for instance, in my Occult Science, is not only grasped theoretically through the intellect, but with the whole soul, can it then it lead to anything but a genuine respect and appreciation of the human being. Consider that the whole cosmos is contemplated from the standpoint that man has his place within it. After all, it is man whom we consider, when we speak not only of the evolution of the Earth, but of the Moon, Sun and Saturn stages of development.

Compare in this respect, anthroposophical spiritual science with the ordinary natural science of modern times. The latter leads to hypotheses such as that of Kant-Laplace. Compared with spiritual science, which goes back to the Moon, Sun and Saturn stages of development, natural science does not go far back; it only reaches back to a certain stage of earthly development. Man has been lost long ago in that philosophical-scientific madness-designated as the Kant-Laplace theory! He is no longer contained in this theory; there we have a grey nebula, and this insane theory, which is now looked upon as science, speaks of this fog, of this nebula.

Against this fact, that even in the earthly sphere natural science can no longer find the human being, stands the conception of Spiritual science, which goes in search of the human being in the whole cosmos. This is possible, even if we pursue such things with intellectual thoughts, even if we study such things in a purely theoretical way. But those who do not only study spiritual science theoretically, but to whom such studies are an earnest amd deeply human concern, will obtain through such a contemplation of the world a boundless feeling of respect and of appreciation for the human being as such.

The modern scientific conception which turns its attention merely towards physical things, cannot appreciate the human being as such. Spititual science remains within reality, and it considers the external physical things as semblance. For if we remain standing by the external reality, we do not have the corrective of which spiritual science disposes, by contemplating the cosmic human being and thus arriving at a feeling of respect for man, in contrast to the statements concerning man which are sometimes advanced by the upholders of a physical-sensory conception. This materialistic conception cannot lead us to respect and appreciate man, for in that case it would have to deny its own theories. It would have to appreciate and respect the single empirical human being, the everyday man, that is to say, the facts which, it known about him… but this would not do!

In the first place, spiritual science is therefore the path loading to a spiritual conception, in contrast to mere faith; it is the path leading to a genuine appreciation of man, in contrast to that indifference towards man which necessarily results from a purely materialistic conception.

Then there is a third thing: In the cosmos there are of course objects and processes which are outside the human being. How does spiritual science observe these objects and processes outside man? It observes them all in relation to man. Spiritual science considers the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms in relation tb man. This enables one to appreciate that which exists besides, or
one might say, beneath the human being in the physical world outside. Take a feeling which is a truly spiritual-scientific one, a feeling which Christian Morgenstern drew out of spiritual science and to which he gave poetic expression: The human being feels himself at the top of the physical kingdoms of the earth: Below him is the anjmal kingdom, then the vegetable kingdom and the mineral kingdom. But if the vegetable kingdom were able to have feelings and thoughts in regard to the mineral kingdom, what would it say? “I bow down reverently before thee, o stone, for to thee I owe my existence. Although thou art below me in the hierarchical order of Nature, I could not exist without the soil which thou givest me.” Similarly the animal would have to bow down reverently before the plant and say: “I owe my existence to thee". And so on, throughout the higher kingdoms. Each higher kingdom bows down reverently before the lower kingdom.

Spiritual science thus renders it possible to consider also the remaining world in relation to man. It can look upon it in the right relationship to the human being. Whenever spiritual science can influence spiritual life, it exercises its influence in three directions:—

1) Through spiritual contemplation;

2) throdgh a Sense of respect and appreciation for man;

3) through a right appreciation of everything in the world by considering it in relation to man.

Unless the above-mentioned three conditions arise, any demand) as for instance the socialisation of industrial concerns, must remain an empty unsubstantial requirement. Unless the three above-mentioned conditions arise, which determine man's position in relation to the world, to his fellow-men. and to spirituality, no true impulse can penetrate into the social life of men and it will be impossible to arrange, anything within it.

In the same way it will be impossible to materialise the second point of the socialistic programme: That the demand should govern production. Demands, or the market-requirements, do not constitute anything which can be noted down statistically, it is nothing stable which can govern other processes. In real life, the demand continually fluctuates and changes. Can anyone, for instance, determine the demand for electric railways in 1840? This is a demand which was conjured up by the cultural process. itself. If production is to be ruled by some existing demand, if no initiative is to be left-to-it it will stagnate. A true relationship between production and demand can only be established if the social organism has a threefold structure. In that case, a living cooperation will regulate of its own accord, as it were, the relation betweea demand and production, and this also applies to the other impulses within the social organism.

Let us take the third; point, that conditions of work and pay be settled democratically. Here it is essential to beqr in mind that a democracy is useless unless it is based upon true respect of the human being, and this feeling of reverence for man can only be impressed upon the soul by spiritual science. Democracy contains the seed of its own decay, if it does not contain at the same time a genuine feeling of respect and reverence for the human being.

Then the fourth point, that any excess value should be handed over to the community. My dear friends, one can say that there one detects the absolutely impossible way of thinking in such a direction. What is surplus value? In the eyes of the marxistic proletariat, surplus values, or profits, are something impossible which must be eliminated. To abolish profits, they wish to establish a socialistic order. An essential point within such socialistic order, is the abolition of surplus values, of profits. But one of its ideals is that these profits should be handed over to the community. This represents, in fact, one of its ideals. Why? Because surplus values will be there, and this very fact throws its shadow upon the socialistic programme. It is the shadow which unquestionably darkens tbe programme. And this throws its whole darkness upon the whole theory.

Modern humanity thus sways in a fearful darkness; light can fall upon it only if men overcome their love of ease, and pass over from faith to a spiritual conception, from man's purely empirical position in the world to that other position which calls forth a real feeling of reverence and. respect for the human being; from a mere devouring of things, etc. to that true appreciation of the things which exist in the universe in addition to man, which can only arise if one can place everything in relation to man, through Anthroposophy.

My dear friends, you can therefore realise how closely the fate of spiritual-scientific aims is connected with the social problems of the present time. An earnest need arises in the souls of those who take spiritual science seriously, a need even greater than that of spreading spiritual science: it is that of calling up in the hearts of mon the feeling how necessary it is, particularly for the most important and justified requirements of the present, to spread the ideas, feelings and will impulses which can only arise out of spiritual science. But we shall continuo to speak of these things.

VERSES BY RUDOLF STEINER

(Discovered among his papers)
Original Text in German

Du selbst, orkennender, fühlender, wollender Mensch,
Du bist das Rätsel der Welt.
Was sie verbirgt,
In dir wird es offenbar, es wird
In deinem Geiste Licht,
In definer Seele Wärme,
Und deines Atoms Kraft
Sie bindet dir die Leibeswesenheit
An Seelenwelten,
An Geistesreiche.
Sie führt dich in den Stoff,
Dass du, dich menschlich findest,
Sie führt dich in den Geist,
Pass du dich geistig nicht verlierest.

(TRANSLATION OF ABOVE)

Thou, o cognising, feeling and, willing man
T hou art the riddle of the world!
What it conceals,
Reveals itself in thee, and becomes
Light in thy spirit,
Warmth in thy soul,
And the power of thy breath
Binds thy bodily being
To soul-worlds
And spirit-realms.
It loads thee into substance,
That thou mightst find thyself
As man,
It leads thee into spirit,
That thou mightst never lose
Thyself as spirit.

I have now brought together many and various matters which may help us to a perception of the structure of the Universe in its relation to Man. We have seen—and this must be emphasised again and again—that the Universe cannot be grasped without Man. That means that it is not possible to understand the Universe in itself, without keeping in mind Man and the relation of the Universe to him. If one wishes to form in a very simple way an idea of Man's connection with the Universe, one need only think of a theme in elementary astronomy—the so-called ‘obliquity of the ecliptic’—that is, the oblique position of the Earth's axis in relation to the line, the curve, which passes through the Zodiac. This obliquity of the ecliptic may be understood and even interpreted as you will; with such interpretations we are not for the moment concerned as to whether they accord with reality or not; we are concerned rather to bring a certain fact to your notice. If the Earth's axis—the axis on which the Earth turns daily—were perpendicular to the plane through the Zodiacal ecliptic, then day and night would be equal throughout the year over the whole Earth. If the Earth's axis lay in the ecliptic, then over the whole Earth one half of the year would be day and one half night. Both extremes do in a certain respect actually occur at the equator and at the poles. But in between lie regions where the length of day varies in the course of the year. We need only reflect a little on this matter to arrive at the tremendous significance for the whole evolution of earthly civilisation, of the position of the Earth's axis in cosmic space. Just reflect, we could all of us throughout the Earth be only Eskimos if the axis lay in the ecliptic; were it vertical to the ecliptic, the whole Earth would be filled with the kind of civilisation that prevails at the equator.

Thus as regards the position of the Earth's axis, no matter how it may be interpreted—of course an understanding of the truth depends upon what interpretation we give it, but any interpretation will serve to make one perceive the connection between Man, his culture and civilisation, and the structure of the Universe; and the fact behind the interpretation, whatever the latter may be, compels us to regard Man and the Earth as forming part of the Universe, and not, in respect of man's physical being, as though he could be considered independently. This cannot be done. As physical being, Man is not a reality in himself, but only when regarded as one with the whole Earth, just as a hand severed from the human organism cannot be regarded as in any true sense a reality: it dies, it is only thinkable in connection with the organism. A rose, when plucked, dies, and as a reality it is only conceivable in connection with the rose-tree which is rooted in the Earth; so too, to estimate Man in his entirety, in his totality, one cannot regard him as simply enclosed in the boundaries of his skin.

Thus what we experience on Earth must be considered in connection with the Earth's axis. It is important in a view of the Universe based on reality that what is a partial truth should not be interpreted as a whole truth. We come to comprehend in its reality the whole man as a being of soul and spirit by not considering him as a reality in his physical nature. He is a reality as a being of soul and spirit, a complete independent reality, a true individual. What he inhabits between birth and death—the physical and etheric bodies—are not realities in themselves, they are members of the whole Earth, and as we shall presently see, they are even part of another whole.

This brings us to something which must be observed still more closely. I must again and again point out one thing. The ideas we form of man almost always tend, unconsciously, to our regarding him as a solid body. True, we are aware that he is not precisely a hard body, that he is to some extent plastic, but we are very often unaware that he consists of far more than 75% fluid, of which only the residue can be regarded as solid mineral being. Man is really 75% a water being. Now I ask you, therefore, is it possible to describe the human organism, as is usually done, in sharp outlines—saying: ‘Here we have the lobes of the brain, here this organ’, and so forth, and then assume that the solidly circumscribed organs combine in their activity to bring about the activity of the whole organism? There is no sense whatever in that. It is a question of bearing in mind the fact that Man within the limits of his skin, is, as it were, surging water; that what is purely inwardly surging fluidity also has a meaning, and that we should not describe Man as if he were more or less a solid body. In Spiritual Science this has a very deep significance. For precisely when we consider the solid in Man, which is in a manner connected with the external minerals, we find that the solid in the human being has a certain relation to the Earth.

We have observed the various relations of Man to the world around him, we will now establish the relation of his solid substance to the Earth. This connection exists; the watery element in Man has, however, primarily no connection with the Earth but with the planetary Universe outside, and especially with the Moon. Precisely as the Moon, not directly but indirectly, has a relation to the ebb and flow of the tides, to certain configurations of the fluid part of the Earth, so too it has a connection with what takes place in the fluid part of the human organism. I described yesterday that we have on the one side the astronomy that applies to the Sun—and also to the Earth. We ourselves are part of that astronomy, for we are organised into it as organisms containing solid substances. Lunar astronomy however, is different. We are organised into lunar astronomy in so far as it is connected with our fluid constituents. Thus we see that the forces of the Cosmos work into the solid and fluid parts of our physical nature.

This has a still greater significance, which is, that what we call our Ego has primarily a direct influence on our solid man, and that what we call our astral body has an indirect influence on our fluid man—so that what works from the soul and spirit upon our organisation, comes, through our bodily nature, also into connection with all the forces of the Cosmos. These movements of the Cosmos have always been a subject of observation, from the most varied points of view. When we look back to the ancient Persian civilisation we find that even then researches were made into the movements of the Universe. These researches were also made by the Chaldeans and by the Egyptians, and it is not without interest to study the attitude of the Egyptians to movements of the Universe. They had, of course, for what were apparently quite material reasons, to study the connection of the Earth with the outer Cosmos, for their land depended upon the inundations of the Nile which took place precisely when the Sun was in a definite position in the Universe. This position could be determined by that of Sirius; so that the Egyptians had arrived at making observations as to the position of the Sun in relation to what we now call the Fixed Stars. Especially in the Egyptian sacerdotal colonies, in their Mysteries, extensive researches were made into the relation of the Sun to the other stars. As I have already said, the Egyptians knew perfectly well that each year the Sun appeared to have shifted its position in the heavens in regard to the other stars, and they calculated thereby that the stars—whether apparently or really is immaterial just now—as they daily moved round the heavens, had a certain velocity, and that the daily movement of the Sun had also a certain velocity, but not quite so great as that of the stars. The Sun always lagged somewhat behind. The Egyptians knew and recorded the fact that the Sun lagged behind about one day in 72 years, so that when a particular star which rose with the Sun in a definite year rises again 72 years later, the Sun does not rise with it but 24 hours later. A star belonging to the world of fixed stars, a star in the Zodiac, outstrips the Sun by one day, one full day, in every 72 years. Multiply 72 by 360 and we obtain 25,920 years. That is a number which we often meet with. It is the time needed by the Sun in its lagging behind to get back to its starting-point; having thus gone round the whole Zodiac. The Sun is therefore exactly one degree behind in 72 years, for a circle has, as we know, 360 degrees. According to this reckoning, the Egyptians divided the great year—which really comprises 25,920 years—into 360 days; but such a day was 72 years long. And 72 years, what is that? It is the average limit of duration of man's life. Certainly there are individuals who live to be older, others not so old, but in general it constitutes the farther limit for human life. Thus one can say: The whole connection in the Universe is so constructed that it sustains a man's whole life for a solar day, which is 72 years. True, man is emancipated from that. He can be born at any time; but his life here as physical man between birth and death is arranged according to the solar day. Referring to historical records, one generally finds that the ordinary year of the Egyptians was reckoned as 360 days (not 365.25 as it actually is), until later on it was found to accord so little with the course of the stars that the other 5 days had to be inserted. How came it that the Egyptians originally took 360 days for the year? In the cosmic year a degree—that is, a 360th part—is actually a cosmic day of 72 years. Thus in the Egyptian Mysteries it was taught that man is so connected with the Cosmos, that the duration of his life is one day of the cosmic year. He was thus organised into the Cosmos. His relation to the Cosmos was made clear to him through connections which belong to the decadence of the whole evolution of the Egyptian people.

The essential nature of man and his connection with the Cosmos was not then made known to the wide mass of the Egyptians—that is characteristic of the time. It was said that if all men knew the nature of their being, how it is organised into the Cosmos, and that the duration of their own life has its part in the duration of the Sun's revolution, then those who felt themselves organised into the Universe would not allow themselves to be ruled, for each would regard himself as a member of the Universe. Only those were allowed to know this who it was believed were called to be leaders. The rest were not to possess such knowledge of the Cosmos, but a knowledge of the day only. This is connected with the decadence of the Egyptian civilisation. It was certainly necessary in regard to many other things, that immature people should not be initiated into the Mysteries, but this was extended to such things as gave power to the leaders and rulers.

Now, very much of what permeates our human souls today is derived from oriental sources. Traditional Christianity too contains much which has come from oriental sources; and especially into Roman Christianity a strong impulse has descended from Egypt. Just as the Egyptians were kept in ignorance concerning their connection with the Cosmos, so in certain circles of Romanism the view prevails that people must be kept in ignorance of their connection with the Cosmos which comes about through the Mystery of Golgotha. Hence the fierce conflict which arises when, from an inner necessity of our age, we emphasise that the Event of Golgotha is not simply something which must be regarded as outside the rest of cosmic conception but rather as inserted into it, when we show how what took place on Golgotha is really connected with the whole Universe and its constitution. It is regarded as the worst heresy to describe Christ as the Sun-Spirit, as we have done.

It must not be supposed that the point at issue is not well-known; but just as the Egyptian priest knew quite well that the ordinary year has not 360 days but 365.25, so certain people are perfectly well aware that the matter with which the Christ Mystery deals is also connected with the Sun Mysteries. But present-day humanity is to be hindered from receiving this knowledge—the very knowledge that it needs; for as I have already said, the materialistic view of the Universe is much preferred by that side to Spiritual Science. Materialistic science also has its practical consequences, in which again the present time may be compared with ancient Egypt. I call attention to the fact that the Egyptians as such were thus dependent upon the course of the Sun, on the relation of the earthly to the heavenly, as regards their external civilisation. The withholding of the knowledge of the connection of cosmic phenomena and their effect on the cultivation of the land, represented a certain power in the hands of the declining priesthood, for thereby the Egyptian labourers had to submit to direction from the priests, who had the requisite knowledge.

Now if the European and American civilisations were to retain their present character, adhering only to the materialistic, Copernican view of the Universe—with its off-shoot, the Kant-Laplace theory—a materialistic cosmogony must necessarily arise concerning earthly phenomena, biological, physical and chemical. It would be impossible for a cosmogony of this kind to include the moral world order in its structure. It could not embrace the Christ-Event, for it is impossible to be a believer in the materialistic view of the world and at the same time a Christian; that is an inner lie, it is something that cannot be, if one is honest and upright. Hence it was inevitable that the practical consequences should be seen in Europe and American culture, of the split between materialism on the one hand and a moral cosmogony on the other, and along with the moral cosmogony, also the contents of the religious faiths. This result was evidenced in the fact that men who had no external reason for being inwardly dishonest, threw faith overboard, and established a materialistic cosmogony for human life also. Thereby the materialistic cosmogony became a social cosmogony. This would however have the further consequence for our European and American civilisation that man would have a materialistic cosmogony only and would know nothing of the Earth's connection with cosmic powers, in the sense that we have described it. Within a certain caste, however, the knowledge of the connection with the cosmogony would remain, just as the Egyptian priests kept the knowledge of the Platonic year, the great cosmic year and the great cosmic day; and such circles could hope then to rule the people who under materialism degenerate into barbarism.

Of course these things have been said today only from a sense of duty towards truth; but they must be said out of such a duty to truth. It is of importance that a certain number of people should realise how necessary it is to give the Mystery of Golgotha its cosmological significance. This significance must be recognised by a number of people, who must on their part, undertake a certain responsibility that the fact should not remain hidden from earthly humanity—the fact that humanity is connected with the non-earthly Spirit, who lived in Palestine in the Man Jesus, at the beginning of our era. It is necessary that the knowledge of the entrance of Christ from the non-earthly world into the Man Jesus of Nazareth, should not be withheld. To such penetration belongs the overcoming of that dishonesty which is so general today in questions of cosmic conceptions and of faith. For what is done today? We are told on the one hand that the Earth moves in an ellipse round the Sun and has evolved in the sense of the Kant-Laplace theory, and we subscribe to this; and on the other hand we are told that at the beginning of our era such and such events took place in Palestine. These two things are accepted, without being connected; people accept them and think it of no consequence. It is not without consequence however, for it is much less evil when a lie is consciously accepted, than when it takes shape unconsciously, and degrades Man and drags him down. For if we consider a lie as it appears in a man's consciousness, every time he falls asleep it leaves his physical and etheric bodies with his consciousness, and lives on in spaceless, timeless being, in the eternal being, while Man is in dreamless sleep. There is prepared all which can result from the lie in the future; that is, everything is made ready to correct it, if it is in the consciousness. But if it is in the unconscious, it remains with the physical and etheric bodies lying in bed. When Man is not occupying these bodies, it then belongs to the Cosmos, and not to the earthly Cosmos alone, but to the whole Cosmos; there it works for the destruction of the Cosmos; above all, for the destruction of the whole of humanity, for this destruction begins in humanity itself.

Man can escape what threatens humanity in this way, by no other means than by striving after inner truth as regards such supreme questions of existence. Thus there is a kind of appeal to humanity today from out of the impulses of our time to realise that a materialistic astronomy knowing nothing of how at a definite point of time the Event of Golgotha took shape, should no longer exist. Every astronomy which includes the Moon in the structure of the Universe just the same as the Sun and Earth, instead of allowing the two streams to run in with one another, but still as separate streams—every such astronomy is no Christian astronomy but a heathen astronomy. Therefore every theory of evolution which describes the Universe homogeneously must from the Christian stand-point be rejected. If you follow my book, Occult Science, you will see how, in the description of the Saturn and Sun periods, the stream divides into two, which then intermingle and work together. Here we have two streams. In the descriptions usually given, however, the ideas are in accordance with the continuation of the pagan development. And you will find this true down to the very details. You know that Darwinian theorists describing the evolution of the organic form, would say: First there were simple organic forms, then more complicated forms, then more and more complicated forms, and so forth, up to Man. But this is not so. If we take Man as three-membered, his head alone is the development from the lower animal form. What is added to it has arisen later. Thus we cannot say that in our vertebral column we have something which transforms itself into head, we must say: Our head certainly arose from earlier structures which were spine-like; but the present spine has nothing to do with that development, it is a later appendage. What is now our head-organisation has arisen from a differently formed spine.

This I say for those who are interested in the theory of descent. I mention it so that you may see that a straight line leads from cosmic considerations to consideration of what lies in human evolution, and so that you may see the necessity for an enlightened Spiritual Science in all different realms of knowledge and of life. For science must not simply continue to develop, as did the science of the last century, under the influence of the materialistic view of the Universe, which is itself a child of the materialistic comprehension of Christianity. We owe materialism to the materialisation of the Christian view of the Universe. The teaching of the cosmic Christ must be re-established in opposition to the materialised form of Christianity we have today. This is the most important task of our time; and until its importance is realised, man will not be able to see clearly in any domain.

I have wanted to tell you these things, because they will enable you to understand better why ill-willed opponents fight so strenuously against what we are bringing before the world today. I was obliged to connect this whole study with a kind of cosmology, with the consideration of which we will continue in the next lecture.

1.

[ 1 ] Friedrich Nietzsche characterizes himself as a lonely ponderer and friend of riddles, as a personality not made for the age in which he lived. The one who follows such paths as his, “meets no one; this is a part of going one's own way. No one approaches to help him; all that happens to him of danger, accidents, evil and bad weather, he must get along with alone,” he says in the preface of the second edition of his Morgenröte, Dawn. But it is stimulating to follow him into his loneliness. In the words in which he expressed his relationship to Schopenhauer, I would like to describe my relationship to Nietzsche: “I belong to those readers of Nietzsche who, after they have read the first page, know with certainty that they will read all pages, and listen to every word he has said. My confidence in him was there immediately ... I understood him as if he had written just for me, in order to express all that I would say intelligibly but immediately and foolishly.” One can speak thus and yet be far from acknowledging oneself as a “believer” in Nietzsche's world conception. But Nietzsche himself could not be further from wishing to have such “believers.” Did he not put into Zarathustra's mouth these words:

[ 2 ] “You say you believe in Zarathustra, but of what account is Zarathustra? You are my believer, but of what account are all believers?

[ 3 ] “You have not searched for yourselves as yet; there you found me. Thus do all believers, but, for that reason, there is so little in all believing. Now I advise you to forsake me and to find yourselves; and only when all of you have denied me will I return to you.”

[ 4 ] Nietzsche is no Messianic founder of a religion; therefore he can wish for friends who support his opinion, but he cannot wish for confessors to his teaching, who give up their own selves to find his.

[ 5 ] In Nietzsche's personality are found instincts which are contrary to the complete gamut of the ideas of his contemporaries. With instinctive aversion he rejects most of the important cultural ideas of those amid whom he developed himself and, indeed, not as one rejects an assertion in which one has discovered a logical contradiction, but rather as one turns away from a color which causes pain to the eye. The aversion starts from the immediate feeling to begin with, conscious thinking does not come into consideration at all. What other people feel when such thoughts as guilt, conscience, sin, life beyond, ideal happiness, fatherland, pass through their heads, works unpleasantly upon Nietzsche. The instinctive manner of rejection of these ideas also differentiates Nietzsche from the so-called “free thinkers” of the present. The latter know all the intellectual objections to “the old illusionary ideas,” but how rarely is one found who can say that his instincts no longer depend upon them! It is precisely the instincts which play bad tricks upon the free thinkers of the present time. The thinking takes on a character independent of the inherited ideas, but the instincts cannot adapt themselves to the changed character of the intellect. These “free thinkers” put just any belief of modern science in place of an old idea, but they speak about it in such a way that one realizes that the intellect goes another way from that of the instincts. The intellect searches in matter, in power, in the laws of nature, for the origin of phenomena; but the instincts misguide so that one has the same feeling toward this being that others have toward their personal God. Intellects of this type defend themselves against the accusation of the denial of God, but they do not do this because their world conception leads them to something which is in harmony with any form of God, but rather because from their forefathers they have inherited the tendency to feel an instinctive shudder at the expression, “the denial of God.” Great natural scientists emphasize that they do not wish to banish such ideas as God and immortality, but rather that they wish to transform them, in the sense of modern science. Their instincts simply have remained behind their intellect.

[ 6 ] A large number of these “free spirits” are of the opinion that the will of man is unfree. They say that under certain circumstances man must behave as his character and the conditions working upon him force him to act. But if we look at the opponents of the theory of “free will,” we shall find that the instincts of these “free spirits” turn away from a doer of an “evil” deed with exactly the same aversion as do the instincts of those who represent the opinion that according to its desires the “free will” could turn itself toward good or toward evil.

[ 7 ] The contradiction between intellect and instinct is the mark of our “modern spirits.” Within the most liberal thinkers of the present age the implanted instincts of Christian orthodoxy also still live. Exactly opposite instincts are active in Nietzsche's nature. He does not need first to reflect whether there are reasons against the acceptance of a personal world leader. His instinct is too proud to bow before such a one; for this reason he rejects such a representation. He says in his Zarathustra, “But that I may reveal to you my heart, to you, my friends: if there were Gods, how could I stand it not to be a God! Therefore, there are no Gods.” Nothing in his inner being compels him to accuse either himself or another as “guilty” of a committed action. To consider such a “guilty” action as unseemly, he needs no theory of “free” or “unfree” will.

[ 8 ] The patriotic feelings of his German compatriots are also repugnant to Nietzsche's instincts. He cannot make his feelings and his thinking dependent upon the circles of the people amid whom he was born and reared, nor upon the age in which he lives. “It is so small-townish,” he says in his Schopenhauer als Erzieher, Schopenhauer as Educator, “to make oneself duty-bound to opinions which no longer bind one a few hundred miles away. Orient and Occident are strokes of chalk which someone draws before our eyes to make fools of our timidity. I will make the attempt to come to freedom, says the young soul to itself; and then should it be hindered because accidentally two nations hate and fight each other, or because an ocean lies between two parts of the earth, or because there a religion is taught which did not exist a few thousand years previously?” The soul experiences of the Germans during the War of 1870 found so little echo in his soul that “while the thunder of battle passed from Wörth over Europe,” he sat in a small corner of the Alps, “brooding and puzzled, consequently most grieved, and at the same time not grieved,” and wrote down his thoughts about the Greeks. And, a few weeks later, as he found himself “under the walls of Metz,” he still was not freed from the questions which he had concerning the life and art of the Greeks. (See Versuch einer Selbstkritik, Attempt at a Self-Critique, in the 2nd edition of his Geburt der Tragödie, Birth of Tragedy.) When the war came to an end, he entered so little enthusiasm of his German contemporaries over the decisive victory that in the year 1873 in his writing about David Strauss he spoke about “the bad and dangerous consequences” of the victorious struggle. He even represented it as insanity that German culture should have been victorious in this struggle, and he described this insanity as dangerous because if it should become dominant within the German nation, the danger would exist of transforming the victory into complete defeat; a defeat, yes, an extirpation of the German spirit in favor of “the German realm.” This was Nietzsche's attitude at a time when the whole of Europe was filled with national fanaticism. It is the thinking of a personality not in harmony with his time, of a fighter against his time. Much more could be added to what has been said to show that Nietzsche's life of feeling and reflection was completely different from that of his contemporaries.

2.

[ 9 ] Nietzsche is no “thinker” in the usual sense of the word. For the deeply penetrating and valid questions which he had to ask in regard to the world and life, mere thinking was not sufficient. For these questions, all the forces of human nature must be unchained; intellectual thinking alone is not sufficient for the task. Nietzsche has no confidence in merely intellectually conceived reasons for an opinion. “There is a mistrust in me for dialectic, even for proofs” he writes to Georg Brandes on the 2nd of December 1887 (see his Menschen und Werke, Men and Works, p. 212). For those who would ask the reasons for his opinions, he is ready with the answer of Zarathustra, “You ask why? I do not belong to those of whom one may ask their why.” For him, a criterion was not that an opinion could be proved logically, but rather if it acted upon all forces of the human personality in such a way that it had value for life. He grants validity to a thought only if he finds it will add to the development of life. To see man as healthy as possible, as powerful as possible, as creative as possible, is his desire. Truth, beauty, all ideals, have value and concern the human being only to the extent that they foster life.

[ 10 ] The question about the value of truth appears in several of Nietzsche's writings. In the most daring form it is asked in his Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil. “The will for truth which has misled us into so many hazards, that famous truthfulness, about which all philosophers have spoken with awe: what questions this will for truth has already put before us! What marvelous, difficult, worthy questions! This is already a long story, yet it seems that it has barely begun. Is it any wonder that we finally become mistrustful, lose patience, turn about impatiently? Is it any wonder that from the Sphinx we ourselves also learn to ask questions? Then who is it who asks questions here? What is it in us that really wants to penetrate ‘to truth?’ In fact, we had to stand for a long time before the question about the cause of will—until we finally remained completely still before a yet more fundamental question. We asked about the value of willing. That is, provided we want truth; why not rather untruth?”

[ 11 ] This is a thought of a boldness hardly to be surpassed. If one places beside it what another daring “ponderer and friend of riddles,” Johann Gottlieb Fichte, said about the striving after truth, then one realizes for the first time from what depths of human nature Nietzsche brings forth his ideas. “I am destined,” said Fichte, “to bear witness to truth; upon my life and my destiny, nothing depends; upon the effects of my life, infinitely much depends. I am a priest of truth; I am in its debt; for it I have bound myself to do all, to dare all, and to suffer all.” (Fichte, Über die Bestimmung des Gelehrten, On the Task of the Scholar, Lecture 4). These words describe the relationship of the most noble spirits of the newer Western culture to truth. In the face of all of Nietzsche's cited expressions, they appear superficial. Against them one can ask, Is it not possible that untruth has more valuable effects upon life than truth? Is it impossible that truth harms life? Has Fichte himself posed these questions? Have others done it who have borne “witness to truth?”

[ 12 ] But Nietzsche poses these questions. And he believes that he can become clear only when he treats this striving after truth not merely as an intellectual matter, but seeks the instincts which bring forth this striving. For it could well have been that these instincts make use of truth only as a medium to accomplish something which stands higher than truth. Nietzsche thinks after he has “looked at the philosophers long enough between the lines and upon the fingers,” that “most thinking of philosophers is secretly led by their instincts, and forced along definite ways.” The philosophers consider that the final impulse to action is the striving after truth. They believe this because they are unable to look into the depths of human nature. In reality, this striving after truth is guided by the will to power. With the help of truth, this power and fullness of life should be increased for the personality. The conscious thinking of the philosopher is of the opinion that the recognition of truth is a final goal; the unconsicous instinct that motivates this thinking strives toward the fostering of life. From this instinct, “the falsity of a judgment is no real objection toward a judgment;” for him only the question comes into consideration, “to what extent is it life furthering, life supporting, species supporting, perhaps even species cultivating.” (Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, ¶ 4.)

[ 13 ] Do you call will to truth, you wisest ones, that which impels you and makes you ardent?

[ 14 ] Will for the conceivableness of all being: thus do I name your will!

[ 15 ] All being would you first make conceivable, because you doubt with good reason whether it is already thinkable.

[ 16 ] But it shall yield to you and bend itself to you! So wills your will. Smooth shall it become, and subject to the spirit, as its mirror and reflection.

[ 17 ] That is your entire will, you wisest ones, a Will to Power. (Zarathustra, second part, The Self Surpassing).

[ 18 ] Truth is to make the world subservient to the spirit, and thereby serve life. Only as a life necessity has it value. But can one not go further and ask, what is this life worth in itself? Nietzsche considers such a question to be impossible. That everything alive wants to live as powerfully, as meaningfully as possible, he accepts as a fact about which he ponders no further. Life instincts ask no further about the value of life. They ask only what possibilities there are to increase the strength of its bearers. “Judgments, evaluations of life, either for or against, can never be true, in the final analysis; they have value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms, and in themselves such judgments are nonsense. One must absolutely stretch out one's fingers and try to comprehend the astonishing finesse in the fact that the value of life cannot be measured. It cannot be measured by a living person because he partakes of it; indeed, for him it is even an object of strife: therefore he is no judge; neither can it be appraised by a dead person, for another reason. For a philosopher to see a problem in the value of life remains, so to speak, an accusation against him, a question concerning his wisdom and lack of wisdom.” (Götzendämmerung, Das Problem des Sokrates, The Twilight of Idols, The Problem of Socrates.) The question about the value of life exists only for a poorly educated, sick personality. A well-rounded personality lives without asking how much his life is worth.

[ 19 ] Because Nietzsche has the point of view described above, he places such little weight upon logical proofs for a judgment. It is of little account to him that a judgment lets itself be proved logically; he is interested in whether one can live well under its influence. Not alone the intellect, but the whole personality of the human being must be satisfied. The best thoughts are those which bring all forces of human nature into an activity adapted to the person.

[ 20 ] Only thoughts of this nature have interest for Nietzsche. He is not a philosophical brain, but a “gatherer of honey of the intellect” who searches for “honey baskets” of knowledge, and tries to bring home what benefits life.

3.

[ 21 ] In Nietzsche's personality, those instincts rule which make man a dominating, controlling being. Everything pleases him which manifests might; everything displeases him which discloses weakness. He feels happy only so long as he finds himself in conditions of life which heighten his power. He loves hindrances, obstacles against his activity, because he becomes aware of his own power by overcoming them. He looks for the most difficult paths which the human being can take. A fundamental trait of his character is expressed in the verse which he has written on the title page of the second edition of his Fröhliche Wissenschaft, Joyful Wisdom:

I live in my own house,
Have never copied anything from anyone,
And have ridiculed every master
Who has not ridiculed himself.

[ 22 ] Every kind of subordination to a strange power Nietzsche feels as weakness. And he thinks differently about that which is a “strange power” than many a one who considers himself to be “an independent, free spirit.” Nietzsche considers it a weakness when the human being; subordinates his thinking and his doing to so-called “eternal, brazen” laws of the intellect. Whatever the uniformly developed personality does, it does not allow it to be prescribed by a moral science, but only by the impulses of its own self. Man is already weak at the moment he searches for laws and rules according to which he shall think and act. Out of his own being the strong individual controls his way of thinking and doing.

[ 23 ] Nietzsche expresses this opinion in the crudest form in sentences, because of which narrow-minded people have characterized him as a downright dangerous spirit: “When the Christian Crusaders in the East came into collision with that invincible order of assassins, those orders of free thinking spirits, par excellence, whose lowest order lived in a state of discipline such as no order of monks ever attained, in some way or other they managed to get an inkling of that symbol and motto that was reserved for the highest grade alone, as their secret: ‘Nothing is true, everything is permissible!’ ... Truly, that was freedom of the spirit; thereby faith itself was giving notice to truth.” (Genealogie der Moral, Genealogy of Morals, 3rd Section, ¶ 24.) That these sentences are the expression of feelings of an aristocratic, of a master nature, which will not permit the individual to live freely according to his own laws, with no regard to the eternal truths and rules of morality, those people do not feel who by nature are adjusted to subordination. A personality such as Nietzsche cannot bear those tyrants who appear in the form of abstract moral commandments. I determine how I am to think, how I am to act, says such a nature.

[ 24 ] There are people who base their justification for calling themselves “free thinkers” upon the fact that in their thinking and acting they do not subject themselves to those laws which are derived from other human beings, but only to “the eternal laws of the intellect,” the “incontrovertible concepts of duty,” or “the Will of God.” Nietzsche does not regard such people as really strong personalities. For they do not think and act according to their own nature, but according to the commands of a higher authority. Whether the slave follows the arbitrariness of his master, the religious the revealed verities of a God, or the philosopher the demands of the intellect, this changes nothing of the fact that they are all obeyers. What does the commanding is of no importance; the deciding factor is that there is commanding, that the human being does not give his own direction for his acting, but thinks that there is a power which delineates this direction.

[ 25 ] The strong, truly free human being will not receive truth, he will create it; he will not let something “be permitted” him; he will not obey. “The real philosophers are commanders and law givers; they say, ‘Thus shall it be,’ they first decide the ‘why’ and ‘wherefore’ and thereby dispose of the preliminary labor of all philosophical workers, all conquerors of the past; they grasp at the future with creative hands and all that is and was becomes for them a means, a tool, a hammer. Their ‘knowing’ is creating, their creating is a law-giving, their will to truth is Will to Power. Are there such philosophers today? Were there once such philosophers? Must there not be such philosophers?” (Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, ¶ 211.)

4.

[ 26 ] Nietzsche sees a special indication of human weakness in every type of belief in a world beyond, in a world other than that in which man lives. According to him, one can do no greater harm to life than to order one's existence in this world according to another life in a world beyond. One cannot give oneself over to greater confusion than when one assumes the existence of beings behind the phenomena of this world, beings which are not approachable by human knowledge, and which are to be considered as the real basis, as the decisive factor in all existence. By such an assumption one ruins for oneself the joy in this world. One degrades it to illusion, to a mere reflection of the inaccessible. One interprets the world known to us, the world which for us is the only real one, as a futile dream, and attributes true reality to an imaginary, fictitious other world. One interprets the human senses as deceivers, who give us only illusory pictures instead of realities.

[ 27 ] Such a point of view cannot stem from weakness. For the strong person who is deeply rooted in reality, who has joy in life, will not let it enter his head to imagine another reality. He is occupied with this world and needs no other. But the suffering, the ill, those dissatisfied with this life, take refuge in the yonder. What this life has taken away from them, the world beyond is to offer them. The strong, healthy person who has well developed senses fitted to search for the causes of this world in this world itself, requires no causes or beings of the world beyond for the understanding of the appearances within which he lives. The weak person, who perceives reality with crippled eyes and ears, needs causes behind the appearances.

[ 28 ] Out of suffering and sick longing, the belief in the yonder world is born. Out of the inability to penetrate the real world all acceptances of “things in themselves” have originated.

[ 29 ] All who have reason to deny the real life say Yes to an imaginary one. Nietzsche wants to be an affirmer in face of reality. He will explore this world in all directions; he will penetrate into the depths of existence; of another life he wants to know nothing. Even suffering itself cannot provoke him to say No to life, for suffering also is a means to knowledge. “Like a traveler who plans to awaken at a certain hour, and then peacefully succumbs to sleep, we philosophers surrender ourselves to sickness, provided that we have become ill for a time in body and soul; we also close our eyes. And as the traveler knows that somewhere something does not sleep, that something counts the hours and will awaken him, so we also know that the decisive moment will find us awake—that then something will spring forth and catch the spirit in the act; I mean, in the weakness or the turning back or the surrendering or the hardening or the beclouding, as all the many sick conditions of the spirit are called, which in days of health had the pride of spirit against them. After such a self-questioning, self-examination, one learns to look with a finer eye at everything which had been philosophized about until now.” (Preface to the second edition of Fröhliche Wissenschalt, Joyful Wisdom.)

5.

[ 30 ] Nietzsche's friendly attitude toward life and reality shows itself also in his point of view in regard to men and their relationships with each other. In this field Nietzsche is a complete individualist. Each human being is for him a world in itself, a unicum. “This marvelously colorful manifoldness which is unified to a ‘oneness’ and faces us as a certain human being, no accident, however strange, could shake together in a like way a second time.” (Schopenhauer als Erzieher, Schopenhauer as Educator, ¶ 1.) Very few human beings, however, are inclined to unfold their individualities, which exist but once. They are in terror of the loneliness into which they are forced because of this. It is more comfortable and less dangerous to live in the same way as one's fellow men; there one always finds company. The one who arranges his life in his own way is not understood by others, and finds no companions. Loneliness has a special attraction for Nietzsche. He loves to search for secrets within his own self. He flees from the community of human beings. For the most part, his ways of thought are attempts to search for treasures which lie deeply hidden within his personality. The light which others offer him, he despises; the air one breathes where the “community of human beings,” the “average man” lives, he will not breathe. Instinctively he strives toward his “citadel and privacy” where he is free from the crowds, from the many, from the majority. (Jenseits van Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, ¶ 26). In his Fröliche Wissenschaft, Joyful Wisdom, he complains that it is difficult for him to “digest” his fellow men; and in Jenseits van Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, ¶ 282, he discloses that at the least he carried away dangerous intestinal disturbances when he sat down at the table where the diet of “ordinary human beings” was served. Human beings must not come too close to Nietzsche if he is to stand them.

6.

[ 31 ] Nietzsche grants validity to a thought, a judgment, in the form to which the free-reigning life instincts give their assent. Attitudes which are decided by life he does not allow to be removed by logical doubt. For this reason his thinking has a firm, free swing. It is not confused by reflections as to whether an assumption is also true “objectively,” whether it does not go beyond the boundaries, of the possibilities of human knowledge, etc. When Nietzsche has recognized the value of a judgment for life, he no longer asks for a further “objective” meaning and validity. And he does not worry about the limits of knowledge. It is his opinion that a healthy thinking creates what it is able to create, and does not torment itself with the useless question, what can I not do?

[ 32 ] The one who wishes to determine the value of a judgment by the degree to which it furthers life, can, of course, only do this on the basis of his own personal life impulses and instincts. He can never wish to say more than, Insofar as my own life instincts are concerned, I consider this particular judgment to be valuable. And Nietzsche never wishes to say anything else when he expresses a point of view. It is just this relationship of his to his thought world which works so beneficially upon the reader who is orientated toward freedom. It gives Nietzsche's writings a character of unselfish, modest dignity. In comparison, how repellent and immodest it sounds when other thinkers believe their person to be the organ by which eternal, irrefutable verities are made known to the world. One can find sentences in Nietzsche's works which express his strong ego-consciousness, for example, “I have given to mankind the deepest book which it possesses, my Zarathustra; soon I shall give it the most independent.” (Götzendämmerung, Twilight of Idols, ¶ 51.) But what do these words indicate? I have dared to write a book whose content is drawn from lower depths of a personality than is usual in similar books, and I shall offer a book which is more independent of every strange judgment than other philosophical writings, for I shall speak about the most important things only in the way they relate to my personal instincts. That is dignified modesty. It would of course go against the taste of those whose lying humility says, I am nothing, my work is everything; I bring nothing of my personal feelings into my books, but I express only what the pure intellect allows me to express. Such people want to deny their person in order to assert that their expressions are those of a higher spirit. Nietzsche considers his thoughts to be the results of his own person and nothing more.

7.

[ 33 ] The specialist philosophers may smile about Nietzsche, or give us their impressions about the “dangers” of his “world conception” as best they can. Of course, many of these spirits, who are nothing but animated textbooks of logic, are not able to praise Nietzsche's creations, which spring from the most mighty, most immediate life impulses.

[ 34 ] In any case, with his bold thought Nietzsche leaps and hits upon deeper secrets of human nature than many a logical thinker with his cautious creeping. Of what use is all logic if it catches only worthless content in its net of concepts? When valuable thoughts are communicated to us, we rejoice in them alone, even if they are not tied together with logical threads. The salvation of life does not depend upon logic alone, but also upon the production of thoughts. At present our specialized philosophy is sufficiently unproductive, and it could very well use the stimulation of the thoughts of a courageous, bold writer like Nietzsche. The power of development of their specialized philosophy is paralyzed through the influence which the thinking of Kant has made upon them. Through this influence it has lost all originality, all courage. From the academic philosophy of his time Kant has taken over the concept of truth which originates from “pure reason,” He has tried to show that through such truth we cannot learn to know things which lie beyond our experience of “things in themselves.” During the last century, infinite, immeasurable cleverness was expended to penetrate into these thoughts of Kant's from all directions, The results of this sharp thinking are unfortunately rather meager and trivial, Should one translate the banalities of many a current philosophical book from academic formulae into healthy speech, such content would compare rather poorly with many a short aphorism of Nietzsche's, In view of present-day philosophy, the latter could speak the proud sentence with a certain justice, “It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in one book—what every other person does not say in one book ...”

8.

[ 35 ] As Nietzsche does not want to express anything but the results of his personal instincts and impulses, so to him strange points of view are nothing more than symptoms from which he draws conclusions about the ruling instincts of individual human beings or whole peoples, races, and so on. He does not occupy himself with discussions or arguments over strange opinions. But he looks for the instincts which are expressed in these opinions. He tries to discover the character of the personalities or people from their attitudes. Whether an attitude indicates the dominance of instincts for health, courage, dignity, joy, and life, or whether it originates from unhealthy, slavish, tired instincts, inimical to life, all this interests him. Truths in themselves are indifferent to him; he concerns himself with the way people develop their truths according to their instincts, and how they further their life goals through them. He looks for the natural causes of human attitudes.

[ 36 ] Nietzsche's striving, of course, is not according to the tendencies of those idealists who attribute an independent value to truth, who want to give it “a purer, higher origin” than that of the instincts. He explains human views as the result of natural forces, just as the natural scientist explains the structure of the eye from the cooperation of natural causes. He recognizes an explanation of the spiritual development of mankind out of special moral purposes, or ideals out of a moral world order, as little as the natural scientist of today recognizes the explanation that nature has built the eye in a certain way for the reason that nature had the intention to create an organ of seeing for the organism. In every ideal Nietzsche sees only the expression of an instinct which looks toward satisfaction in a definite form, just as the modern natural scientist sees in the intentional arrangement of an organ, the result of organic formative laws. If at present there still exist natural scientists and philosophers who reject all purposeful creating in nature, but, who stop short before moral idealism, and see in history the realization of a divine will, an ideal order of things, this belief is an incompleteness of the instinct. Such people lack the necessary perspective for the judging of spiritual happenings, while they have it for the observation of natural happenings. When a human being thinks he is striving toward an ideal which does not derive from reality, he thinks this only because he does not recognize the instinct from which this ideal stems.

[ 37 ] Nietzsche is an anti-idealist in that sense in which the modern natural scientist opposes the assumption of purposes which nature is to materialize. He speaks just as little about moral purposes as the natural scientist speaks about natural purposes. Nietzsche does not consider it wiser to say, Man should materialize a moral ideal, than to explain that the bull has horns so that he may gore with them. He considers the one as well as the other expression to be a product of a world explanation which speaks about “divine providence,” “wise omnipotence,” instead of natural causes.

[ 38 ] This world clarification is a check to all sound thinking; it produces a fictitious fog of ideals which prevents that natural power of seeing, orientated to the observation of reality, that ability to fathom world events; finally, it completely dulls all sense for reality.

9.

[ 39 ] When Nietzsche engages in a spiritual battle he doesn't wish to contradict foreign opinions as such, but he does so because these opinions point to instincts harmful and contrary to nature, against which he wishes to fight. In this regard his intention is similar to that of someone who attacks a harmful natural phenomenon or destroys a dangerous creature. He does not count on the “convincing” power of truth, but on the fact that he will conquer his opponent because the latter has unsound, harmful instincts, while he himself has sound, life-furthering instincts. He looks for no further justification for such a battle when his instinct considers his opponent to be harmful. He does not believe that he has to fight as the representative of an idea, but he fights because his instincts compel him to do so. Of course, it is the same with any spiritual battle, but ordinarily the fighters are as little aware of the real motivations as are the philosophers of their “Will to Power,” or the followers of a moral world order of the natural causes of their moral ideals. They believe that only opinions fight opinions, and they disguise their true motives by cloaks of concepts. They also do not mention the instincts of the opponents which are unsympathetic to them; indeed, perhaps these do not enter their consciousness at all. In short, these forces which are really hostile toward each other do not come out into the open at all. Nietzsche mentions unreservedly those instincts of his opponents which are disagreeable to him, and he also mentions the instincts with which he opposes them. One who wishes to call this cynicism may well do so. But he must be certain not to overlook the fact that never in all human activity has there existed anything other than such cynicism, and that all idealistic, illusory webs are spun by this cynicism.

American readers have known the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche in English for somewhat less than fifty years. The first translations of Nietzsche's works began appearing in this country shortly after the turn of the century. Since then, almost without interruption American publishers' lists have included collections of his writings, selections from his letters, extracts from his journals, commentaries on his works, and, above all, numerous descriptions of his tragic life story; and American interest in Nietzsche continues today.

In view of this it seems particularly fitting that the present book, with its profound insight into Nietzsche's creative activity, brilliant analysis of his character, and clear evaluation of his significance should be published for the first time in English translation as the second volume of the Centennial Edition of the Major Writings of Rudolf Steiner.

In Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom, Rudolf Steiner presents an unforgettable portrait of the man whose writings continue to exercise an important influence in shaping the world in which we live today, and which our children will inherit tomorrow.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born in the little village of Röcken near Leipzig on October 15, 1844. As he wrote later, “I was born on the battlefield of Lützen, and the first name I heard was that of Gustavus Adolphus.” The Protestant element was in his very blood, for Lutheran clergymen were among his forebearers on both his paternal and maternal sides, while his father was the pastor of Röcken. A tradition that his ancestors were Polish noblemen of the Niëzky family was recorded by Nietzsche himself, as was the statement that his grandmother belonged to the Goethe-Schiller circle of Weimar.

The parsonage life during Nietzsche's early childhood was typical of most of the country clergy-houses of the time. The atmosphere was that of “plain living and high thinking,” and the family combined honor and piety with a social life of happiness and cheer, in which a love of music, books and friendships played a role. When the boy was nearly five, in the summer of 1849, Pastor Nietzsche sustained a severe fall, in consequence of which he died. The widow took her children to Naumberg some months later, and they made their home with the paternal grandparents.

At first Friedrich was enrolled in the municipal school in Naumberg, but shortly afterward he was transferred to a private school in the same town. In October 1858, in response to the offer of a scholarship, the boy was enrolled in the Landes-Schule at Pforta. This famous institution had been founded as a Cistercian Abbey in the middle of the twelfth century; at the time of the Reformation it became a secular school. Klopstock, Fichte, Schlegel and Ranke are among the names of those who studied there. In the nineteenth century the Landes-Schule at Pforta was frequently referred to as “the German Eton” because of its excellence in classical studies and as a preparatory school.

Friedrich Nietzsche found a second home in the Landes-Schule; he thoroughly enjoyed his studies—languages, literature and history in particular. In the summer of 1860 he conceived the idea of organizing a literary-artistic club among the students, and this met with a ready response from his schoolmates. Soon the Germania Club, as it came to be called, was organized, and Nietzsche contributed a number of essays on literary and historical themes to the club paper. Many happy hours were spent with his friends at the Germania Club in active discussions about Greek and Latin classics, the works of current German and English authors, and similar subjects. Nietzsche's favorite writers at this time included Emerson, Shakespeare, Tacitus, Aristophanes, Plato and Aeschylus. About Tristram Shandy he wrote his sister Elizabeth, “I read it over and over again.”

While Friedrich Nietzsche was a student at the Landes-Schule, Rudolf Steiner was born on February 27, 1861 in the little town of Kraljevec on the frontier between Hungary and Croatia. His father was a station master in the service of the South Austrian Railway, and the boy's earliest recollections were connected with the activities of the railroad. From his second through his eighth year his impressions were those of the quiet country village of Pottsach, situated in a beautiful green valley at the foot of the magnificent Styrian Alps. The infrequent arrival and departure of the train, the daily activities of the village people, the services at the little church, the colorful peasants and foresters, the life at the local mill, and always and ever the mysterious wonder and beauty of the surrounding nature: all this was a part of the child's world. He attended school in the village for a time; afterward his father undertook to teach him the rudiments of elementary education.

But side by side with this world, the child knew another world, a spiritual world, which was just as real and tangible to him as were the forests, fields and mountains surrounding him. This spiritual world was filled with objects and beings, just as the world about him contained stones and plants and animals and people. Even before he was eight, the child could distinguish between these two worlds, and the one was as clear and immediate to him as the other.

Many children have experiences similar to this of Rudolf Steiner. However, generally speaking, with the passing of the years of childhood, these experiences also vanish little by little, until in the retrospect of later years they seem like “the gentle fabric of a dream.” But in the instance of Rudolf Steiner, the reality and immediacy of the spiritual world did not fade away; it broadened and deepened into a clear, conscious perception of beings and events of that world.

In the wondering eyes of this quiet boy there were many questions. He knew, however, that these were questions he could ask of no one around him. More than this, he could speak with no one about the “other” world which was as close and as real to him as were the houses and fields of Pottsach. So he remained silent, and the questions remained alive within him. And, although he shared the daily activities of the children around him, and entered fully into the life of his family, he was unhappy. More than this, he was lonely ...

In September 1864, Nietzsche left the Landes-Schule with excellent marks, particularly in languages and literature. He entered the University of Bonn a short time later, enrolled as a student of theology and philology. However, he had not been long in the university when his friendship with his professor of philology, Friedrich Wilhelm Ritschel, caused him to drop his theological studies in favor of philology. This action caused great grief to his mother and the other members of his family, who had looked to him to continue the clerical tradition of his father.

A year after he had entered the University of Bonn, Nietzsche withdrew in order to accompany Ritschel, who had been transferred to the faculty of the University of Leipzig. Here he continued his philological studies, and here also two very important events of his life took place. He met Richard Wagner in the home of Professor Brockhaus at Leipzig for the first time; his other meeting happened in a somewhat unusual way.

One day while he was browsing in Rohm's second-hand bookstore in Leipzig, “as if by accident” Nietzsche picked up a copy of Schopenhauer's Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, The World as Will and Idea. Without stopping to so much as open the book, he paid for it, and rushed to his lodgings. There he threw himself down on his bed and began to read avidly. As he relates in his journal, “I don't know what daemon told me to take the book home with me. ... From every line I read I heard a cry of renunciation, denial, resignation. In the book I saw a mirror of the world; life and my own soul were reflected with dreadful faithfulness. The dull, disinterested eye of art looked at me. I saw illness and healing, banishment and restoration, hell and heaven.”

Thus, at the age of twenty-one, his reading of Schopenhauer's book—the first part of which had been sold as waste paper shortly after publication because there was no sale for it—changed Nietzsche's outlook upon life. In Shopenhauer he felt he had found his teacher in the fullest, most ideal sense.

After a brief interval spent in military service, during which he sustained a serious chest injury as the result of a fall from a horse, Nietzsche returned to Leipzig to continue his studies in the autumn of 1868. Meanwhile, a series of articles he had contributed to the periodical, the Rheinisches Museum, had been read by the authorities of the University of Basel, where a position as professor of classical philology was vacant. A letter was addressed to Ritschel, asking details about Nietzsche, and indicating that the chair at the university might be offered to the young student. Ritschel's reply was unequivocal: “Nietzsche is a genius, and can do whatever he puts his mind to.”

This sweeping endorsement must have impressed the authorities at Basel, for they appointed Nietzsche to the post, despite the fact that he had not yet obtained his doctor's degree. One member of the board, however, was slightly dubious of the appointment, for he said, “If the candidate proposed is actually such a genius, perhaps we had better not appoint him, for he would be certain to remain only a short while at such a little university as ours!”

When word of the appointment reached Leipzig, the authorities of the university at once conferred a doctorate upon Nietzsche, without requiring him to undergo further examination. Accordingly, on May 28, 1869, Nietzsche delivered his Inaugural Address at the University of Basel on Homer and Classical Philology. He remained in the position for the next ten years, his final retirement being due solely to reasons of health. The foreboding of the official who felt he might “remain only a short while” proved to be ill-founded.

His residence at Basel gave Nietzsche opportunity to follow up his friendship with Richard and Cosima Wagner, and he was often a guest at their Triebschen estate on the Lake of Lucerne, under the shadow of Mount Pilatus. At the same time, he made friends with Jacob Burckhardt, “the hermit-like, secluded thinker,” as Nietzsche described him. Burckhardt had recently completed his well-known Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien, History of the Renaissance in Italy, 1867, and was famous as the author of a series of critical historical writings on Italian painting, sculpture, and architecture. In addition he occupied the chair of professor of history at the University of Basel.

1869 was a year of importance in the life of Rudolf Steiner, now a boy of eight years. Surrounded by the beauties and wonders of nature, puzzling over the intricacies of such mechanical contrivances as the telegraph equipment in the railway station and the machinery in the local mill, the boy's questions moved to a still broader plane. How could he reconcile his direct experience of the spiritual world with the world of sense which surrounded him? Was there a connection between the two? How could one find a bridge between the experiences of the outer and the inner?

The answer came in a most unexpected way.

Among the books of his school teacher in the little Hungarian village of Neudörfl where he now lived with his family, the boy found a textbook on geometry. This volume opened a new world for Rudolf Steiner. In the study of geometry he found answers to his questions. Perhaps even more important, he says, “I learned to know happiness for the first time.” His satisfaction was complete, for he had discovered that “one can live within the mind in the shaping of forms perceived only within oneself.” He had found that an inner joy came to him as he learned through his study of geometry to “lay hold upon something in the spirit alone ... ”

In the vicinity of his home in Neudörfl was a monastery of the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer. As the boy often met the silent monks on his walks, they aroused solemn feelings in him and he very much wished that they would speak with him. But they never did.

In October 1870, Rudolf Steiner, now eleven, entered the Realschule at Wiener-Neustadt in Austria, traveling backward and forward daily from his home in Neudörfl, which was over the border in Hungary. Along with his intimate contacts with nature which were still an important part of his daily life, the boy now began to find interest in such scientific matters as space and time, attraction and repulsion, atoms and their relation to natural phenomena, and many other subjects. With intense interest his mind turned to science and mathematics, and his teachers in the Realschule were of great help to him in these studies.

The Franco-Prussian War of 1870 found Nietzsche active as an ambulance attendant in the medical corps, because his health would not permit him to take part in more active combat. However, even these duties proved too much for his strength, and he contracted diphtheria as a result. He returned to his work at the University of Basel, and in 1872, when he was twenty-eight, Nietzsche published his first major work, the result of his friendship with Wagner and Burkhardt, and the feelings they had evoked in him. This was his Geburt der Tragödie aus dem Geiste der Musik, The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music. The aesthetic passages attracted musicians to the book, but Nietzsche's colleagues in the philological field greeted it with a bitter attack which was led by Wilamowitz-Moellendorf. The result was that despite efforts on the part of Ritschel and Burckhardt to defend him, Nietzsche had no pupils at all in his philology classes in the winter term of 1872–3.

The aftermath of the German victory in the War of 1870 was the eruption of a nationalistic spirit which had been gathering since the previous successes of 1864 and 1866. Nietzsche felt that this was the time to issue a fiery call to the intellectuals of Germany to abandon what he considered a highly dangerous and unworthy chauvinistic spirit, and to return to their work in the service of true German culture. Richard Wagner joined him in this effort to arouse the German youth to a recognition of the responsibilities their victorious destiny had placed upon them.

Nietzsche devoted parts of his lectures in the university to this subject, and finally, in 1873 he issued the first of a series of pamphlets under the general title, Unzeitgemässe Betrachtungen, Thoughts Out of Season, which he called David Strauss, dealing with the Philistinism of the period. The second, which was published in the following year, was Von Nutzen und Nachteil der Historie für das Leben, The Use and Abuse of History in Life, a sharp attack on the exaggerations of the current “popular historians” of Germany. The third pamphlet was titled, Schopenhauer als Erzieher, Schopenhauer as Educator, and appeared in the same year as the second. The last in the series was Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, and was published in 1876 when Nietzsche was thirty-two years of age.

Late in August, the first complete performance of Richard Wagner's opera cycle, Der Ring des Niebelungen took place in the newly constructed Bayreuth Festival Theatre under the direction of Hans Richter. People flocked to Bayreuth from many countries to attend this cultural event of the first magnitude. Among the spectators was Friedrich Nietzsche who, however, did not share the general enthusiasm for what he saw depicted on the stage.

The well-known French author and critic, Edouard Schuré was also present at the Bayreuth Festival and wrote an account of his meeting with Nietzsche, including a keen appraisal of the latter's character. Schuré's article appeared some years later in the Paris Revue des Deux Mondes (1895):

“I met Nietzsche in 1876 when the Ring of the Niebelungs had its premiere in Bayreuth. As I spoke with him I was impressed by the high caliber of his mind and by his strange countenance. His forehead was large, his short hair combed well back, and his prominent cheekbones were those of a Slav. His thick mustache and courageous bearing gave him the look of a cavalry officer, at first glance. However, this was tempered by a certain mixture of arrogance and nervousness difficult to describe.

“The music of his voice and the slowness of his speech expressed his artistic feelings. His circumspect, thoughtful bearing pointed to the philosopher in him. But nothing could have been more misleading than the seeming tranquility of his expression. The fixed gaze revealed the unhappy task of the thinker; his look combined sharp perception with fanaticism. This double quality made his eye appear uneasy, particularly since it always seemed to be fastened upon a single point. When he spoke for any period of time his face took on the appearance of poetic gentleness, but it was not long before it resumed its antagonistic character.

“When we left (the theatre) together, he spoke no word of censure or disapproval; his face expressed only the sorrowful resignation of a defeated man. ...”

The year ended badly for Nietzsche. As the months progressed, his health began to fail steadily, and toward the end of the year his symptoms of eye disease were augmented by those of a still graver sort. He withdrew from his university teaching, and was given sick leave.

He passed the winter in Sorrento in company with his friends, Baroness Meysenberg and Dr. Paul Rée, with whom he was to travel considerably in the next years. Despite his illness, he somehow found strength to begin another of his important writings, which would occupy him periodically over the next four years. This was his Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Human, All Too Human.

The three years that followed were a time of increasing illness and loneliness. Finally, Nietzsche resigned his position at the University of Basel in 1879 and was given a retirement pension on which he lived for the rest of his life.

The physical and mental suffering he experienced in the year 1879 alone, is described by him: “I have had two hundred days of anguish in this year. ... My pulse is as slow as that of Napoleon I. ...”

The years between 1873 and 1879 were most important in the development of Rudolf Steiner. He then passed his twelfth through eighteenth years. As Nietzsche had discovered Schopenhauer's book in Leipzig, Steiner now saw Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft, Critique of Pure Reason, in a bookstore window, and eventually came into possession of the volume. From the eager study of this book, to which he devoted every spare moment he could find, often reading single pages “more than twenty times in succession,” he hoped to find that which would enable him to understand his own thinking. Yet what he read in Kant was sharply opposed to his own inner conclusion, which he was to describe with the words, “Thinking can be developed to a faculty which really grasps the objects and events of the world.”

In this period Steiner deepened his knowledge of mathematics and German literature, in addition to the prescribed courses of study in the Realschule. From his fifteenth year onward he spent considerable time tutoring other pupils, thus inaugurating an educational activity that was to accompany him through the coming years. He found that a knowledge of practical psychology was indispensable for this task, and from his experience as a tutor he learned many valuable things about the problems involved in the training of the human mind.

Early in the summer of 1879 Steiner completed his studies at the Realschule, and was entered as a student at the Technische Hochschule in Vienna for the term to begin in the fall. He spent the summer entirely in the study of philosophy, working his way with utmost care and diligence through the writings of Kant and the principal works of Fichte. He was enrolled for the study of mathematics, natural history, and chemistry.

The years from 1879 to 1889 are generally regarded as Nietzsche's time of mature productivity. When one takes into account the suffering he experienced, the restless traveling, his constant loneliness, one is astonished at the amount of creative work he was able to produce during this period. In Italy, the French Riviera, the Swiss Engadine, the urge to write drove him relentlessly.

In July 1881, his Morgenröte, Dawn, was published. Although it received a cold reception, it is of importance, for it marks a turning point in Nietzesche's creative development. His previous writings had been largely negative and critical in tone. This book marks the appearance of a positive, constructive tendency, which increased in the works which followed.

Although his letters and journals give the impression that the autumn of this year was one of the happiest times of his life, he described the winter as a time “of unbelievable suffering.”

The next summer while Nietzsche was at Tautenberg in Thuringia, Dr. Rée and Baroness Meysenberg introduced him to Miss Andreas Salomé. Out of this and subsequent meetings with Nietzsche, Miss Andreas Salomé later wrote what has been described as “the most unreliable book about Nietzsche which has ever appeared in print.”

In July the first performances of Richard Wagner's music drama, Parsifal, were given at Bayreuth under the composer's direction. Nietzsche chose this occasion to send Wagner a presentation copy of his Menschliches, Allzumenschliches, Human, All Too Human. Curiously enough, at exactly the same time, Wagner sent Nietzsche an inscribed copy of his Parsifal. The two packages crossed in the mail. No word of acknowledgment from either recipient was ever forthcoming; the break between Nietzsche and Wagner was complete, although the public was not to become aware of it until six more years had passed. In the meanwhile, Wagner had died suddenly in Venice early in 1883.

The high point in Nietzsche's creative life came in May 1883 with the birth of his Also Sprach Zarathustra, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the work which he and many others considered to be his masterpiece. The first part in twenty-three chapters took just ten days to write, as did each of the other parts with the exception of the fourth and last which was completed in 1885. In a letter he said of the writing of his Zarathustra, “All of it was conceived in the course of rapid walks ... absolute certainty, as though each sentence were shouted at one. While writing this book, the greatest physical elasticity and sense of power ...”

In addition to his studies at the Technische Hochschule, Rudolf Steiner attended lectures at the University of Vienna. He particularly appreciated the courses given by the celebrated Karl Julius Schröer on German literature, especially on Schiller and Goethe. As a result, Steiner read Goethe's Faust for the first time at the age of nineteen. Later, he enjoyed a personal friendship with Schröer, under whose guidance he came to a deep awareness of the importance of Goethe's contribution to natural science as well as to literature.

Out of his interest in philosophical studies, Steiner attended lectures by the philosophers Robert Zimmerman and Franz Brentano. He studied writings by Ernst Haeckel on morphology, and by Friedrich Theodor Vischer on aesthetics. The writings of Eduard von Hartmann, “the philosopher of the unconscious,” interested him deeply, and the day was to come when he would meet this man face to face in Berlin; eventually Steiner would dedicate his book, Wahrheit und Wissenschaft, Truth and Science, to him “in warm admiration.”

Among the lectures in his scientific courses, those of Edmund Reitlinger on the mechanical theory of heat and on the history of physics made a deep impression on Rudolf Steiner.

At this time Steiner was engaged as tutor in a family where there were four boys, the youngest of whom was a retarded child. The three older boys were no particular problem for him, and their studies went forward without difficulty under his direction. However, the retarded child was a great challenge. That Steiner met this challenge is clear from the fact that in two years the child was able to complete his work in the elementary school and enter the Gymnasium. Eventually he entered the School of Medicine and finally graduated as a physician. The experience with this child was reflected in methods for the treatment and care of retarded children which Rudolf Steiner gave some forty years later, thus laying the foundation for a system of Curative Education which is successfully practiced in both Europe and America today.

In 1884 Professor Schröer recommended Steiner to the position of editor and commentator on Goethe's natural scientific writings which the publisher, Joseph Kürschner, wished to include in his series of volumes on German literature. In recalling the nature of this task years later, Steiner wrote, “I saw in Goethe a personality who, because of the particular spiritual relation in which he placed man in regard to the world, could also fit the science of nature into the entire realm of human creative activity in the right manner ... To me, Goethe was the founder of a science of organics ... applicable to what is alive.”

From this time onward, Steiner was occupied with Goethe's investigations in such areas of natural science as metamorphosis, the archetypal plant, the world of animals and minerals, and so on. And out of this study in the light of Goethe's investigations and comments, Steiner came to recognize that if one wishes to understand Goethe as a natural scientist this can be done only on the basis of learning how one must perceive in order to enter into the phenomena of life.

Finally he realized that no theory of knowledge then extant explained Goethe's particular form of knowledge. Therefore, as a part of his preparatory work before setting about to edit and write commentry on Goethe's natural scientific writings for Kürschner, Steiner drafted a short study of Goethe's theory of knowledge. This was completed in 1886, when Steiner was twenty-five, and is clear proof of his comprehensive grasp of Goethe's way of thinking. The book is titled, >Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung, Theory of Knowledge in Goethe's Conception of the World, and is one of the most basic of Rudolf Steiner's major writings.

In 1886 Nietzsche, now in his forty-second year, wrote his Jenseits van Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, a large part of which was composed during his residence in Italy. This was his first attempt to deal with the subject of the origin of morals. The reaction to the book was generally unfavorable, although Jacob Burckhardt in Basel and Hyppolyte Taine in Paris wrote appreciatively of it.

On July 8th Nietzsche wrote his sister, “My health is actually quite normal, but my soul is very sensitive and is filled with longing for good friends of my own kind. Get me a small circle of men who will listen to me and understand me, and I shall be cured. ...” No words could better express the poignancy of the pathetic struggle for health and the longing for human beings who “understand.”

In 1887 came his Zur Genealogie der Moral, The Genealogy of Morals, a further development of the subject which had occupied his mind for some time.

Finally, in 1888 came the publicizing of his break with Richard Wagner upon the appearance of Neitzsche's book, Der Fall Wagner, The Case of Wagner. The volume produced a sensation. It was the first of Nietzsche's works to be reviewed by the public press, and for the first time Nietzsche attracted widespread attention as an author.

Not long before this, Nietzsche had written, “I am the author of fifteen books, and never yet have I seen an honest German review of any of them.” Even though this may have been the case, nevertheless Nietzsche had had devoted and entirely capable readers during all his productive years. Among these were Jacob Burckhardt, the Swiss historian, and Hyppolite Taine, the French critic, as we have seen, and also August Strindberg, the Swedish dramatist, and Georg Brandes, the Danish literary historian. It was Brandes who wrote his famous essay about Nietzsche in 1888, thus making his name known in leading intellectual circles throughout Europe. Nietzsche's books began to sell widely. Fame had come at last. ...

But Nietzsche was fast wearing out; day by day he was fighting against fearful odds. In a pitiful letter to Brandes late in the year, he said, “I have resigned my professorship at the University; I am three parts blind. ...”

Somehow he managed to complete his Götzendämmerung, Twilight of Idols, before the year came to a close.

With the dawn of New Year's Day, 1889, the battle Nietzsche had waged so long was nearly over. For four days he struggled against the gathering shadows, but finally the light of his consciousness flickered out.

On the fourth of January Nietzsche wrote his last letter in pencil on a scrap of paper torn from a child's notebook. It was addressed to Georg Brandes from Turin: “To the friend Georg: When once you had discovered me, it was easy enough to find me; the difficulty now is to get rid of me.” The letter was signed, “The Crucified One.”

Nietzsche was forty-five years of age; the long night of spiritual darkness began. ...

While at work on Goethe's natural scientific writings, Steiner was active in the literary and artistic circles of Vienna in the last two years of the eighties. He had many friends among writers, poets, musicians, architects, journalists, scientists and the clergy. Before the Goethe Society of Vienna in 1888 he gave a lecture which reflected his keen interest in the question of artistic beauty. This lecture was subsequently published under the title, Goethe als Vater einer neuen Ästhetik, Goethe as Father of a New Aesthetics.

This year was marked by Steiner's first journey into Germany. This was in response to a letter from the administration of the Goethe-Schiller Archives at Weimar inviting him to act as a collaborator on the famous Weimar Edition of Goethe's works then in preparation under commission from the Archduchess Sophie of Saxony. Steiner was well received at Weimar, and from there went to Berlin where he made the acquaintance of Eduard von Hartmann, as we have already seen.

The reading of Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Beyond Good and Evil, in 1889 was Steiner's first acquaintance with Nietzsche's writings. He said, “I was fascinated ... yet repelled at the same time. I found it difficult to discover a right attitude toward Nietzsche. I loved his style, I loved his daring, but I did not love the way he spoke of most significant matters without entering into them in ... full consciousness. But then I saw that he said many things to which I was very closely related by my own spiritual experience. I felt myself near to his struggle. To me Nietzsche seemed to be one of the most tragic figures of the time.”

“I felt that Nietzsche photographed the world from the point to which a deeply significant personality was forced if he had to subsist on the spiritual substance of that time alone, that is, if the vision of the spiritual world did not penetrate into his consciousness ...

“This was the picture of Nietzsche that appeared in my thought. It revealed to me the personality who did not see the spirit, but in whom unconsciously the spirit fought against the unspiritual views of the age ...”

Steiner's move from Vienna to Weimar was the beginning of a new phase of his life. As a free collaborator in the Goethe-Schiller Archives he could observe events from the vantage point of one of the centers of the cultural life of his time. He came to know many of the leading personalities of the day. He had conversation with men like Hermann Grimm, the art historian and Goethe scholar, Ernst Haeckel, the scientist and German interpreter of Darwin, Ludwig Laistner, author and literary advisor to the internationally-known Cotta publishing firm, and many others. Laistner invited Steiner to edit editions of Schopenhauer and Jean Paul Richter, which were published by Cotta in their Library of World Literature. Steiner fulfilled this task, including writing introductions to the writings of both authors.

In 1891 Steiner received his Ph.D. at the University of Rostock. His thesis dealt with the scientific teaching of Fichte. In somewhat enlarged form this thesis appeared under the title, Wahrheit und Wissenchaft, Truth and Science, as the preface to Steiner's chief philosophical work, Die Philosophie der Freiheit, The Philosophy of Freedom, 1894.

And now events occurred which finally brought Rudolf Steiner into the company of those around Nietzsche, who was being cared for at the home of his mother in Naumberg.

In his autobiography Steiner describes a significant meeting: “One day Nietzsche's sister, Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche, visited the Goethe-Schiller Archives. She was about to take the first step toward forming the Nietzsche Archives, and wanted to know how the Goethe-Schiller Archives were managed. A short time afterward the publisher of Nietzsche's works, Fritz Koegel, also appeared in Weimar, and I came to know him. ...

“I am thankful to Frau Foerster-Nietzsche that during the first of my many visits (to Nietzsche's home), she led me into the room of Friedrich Nietzsche. There on a couch he lay in spirit-night, with his marvelously beautiful brow, that of artist and thinker in one. It was early in the afternoon. Those eyes, which even in thir dimness gave the effect of soul penetration, still took in a picture of the surrounding, but this had no entrance into the soul. One stood there and Nietzsche was unaware of it. And yet one could have believed that this spiritually illuminated countenance expressed a soul which had formed thoughts within itself all morning, and now wished to rest for a while. A deep inner shudder which siezed my soul ... transformed itself into an understanding for the genius whose look was directed toward me, but which did not meet mine ...

“And before my soul stood the soul of Nietzsche, as if floating above his head, already boundless in its spirit light, freely surrendered to the spirit world, for which it had longed before this darkened condition, but did not find. ...

“Previously I had read the Nietzsche who had written; now I saw the Nietzsche who, from far distant spirit fields carried within his body ideas which still shimmered in beauty, despite the fact that on the way they had lost their original power of light. I saw a soul which had brought rich gold of enlightenment from earlier earth lives, but which it could not bring to full radiance in this life. I had admired what Nietzsche had written, but now behind my admiration I glimpsed a radiant picture.

“In my thoughts I could only stammer about what I had seen, and that stammering is the content of my book. ... It was the picture of Nietzsche which had inspired it.

“Frau Foerster-Nietzsche had asked that I arrange the Nietzsche library. Thus I was permitted to spend several weeks in the Nietzsche Archives in Naumberg. It was a beautiful task that brought before me books that Nietzsche had read. His spirit lived in the impressions these volumes made. ... A book by Emerson, covered with marginal notes, bore traces of the most devoted, intense study. ...

“My relationship with the Nietzsche Archives was a very stimulating episode in my life in Weimar. ...”

In 1897 Nietzsche's mother died, and his sister took him into her home, where he passed his last years. In this same year Rudolf Steiner wrote his Goethes Weltanschauung, Goethe's Conception of the World, a rich harvest from his work in Vienna and Weimar in close study of Goethe's contribution to the knowledge of man and nature. This book marked the end of Steiner's residence in Weimar, for he now moved to Berlin to assume the editorship of Das Magazin für Litteratur, a well-known literary periodical which had been founded by Joseph Lehmann in 1832.

On the twenty-fifth of August, 1900, Friedrich Nietzsche died. He was buried in the graveyard at Röcken near the church where his father had preached, and the parsonage where he had been born fifty-six years before.

In Berlin, two weeks after Friedrich Nietzsche's death, Rudolf Steiner gave a Memorial Address in his honor, the text of which is included in the present volume.

In his Fors Clavigera, John Ruskin wrote, “Youth is properly a forming time—that in which a man makes himself, or is made, what he is to be. Then comes the time of labor, when, having become the best he can be, he does the best he can do. Then the time of death, which, in happy lives, is very short; but always a time. The ceasing to breathe is only the end of death.”

For the Fighter for Freedom, the end of death had come at last.

PAUL MARSHALL ALLEN

Englewood, New Jersey
February, 1960