The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I shall continue, in a more aphoristic form, to bring you further thoughts on the subject we have been dealing with for weeks now, and which I have always characterized by saying that the great difficulty in matters of world-view now lies — I always emphasize the word “now”—that out of the views of the present time it becomes difficult for people to build a bridge between what is called idealism and what can be described as a view of the natural order of things. When modern man attempts to build such a bridge, when he tries to realize how, for example, moral ideas — if we take one group out of the sum total of ideas — now not externally but internally real to the views, to the concepts that one develops about the course of the causal natural order, he falls into a kind of world-view dualism, as one could express it spiritually. We have emphasized this again and again. Man tries to build such a bridge, but he does not succeed.

It will be easier for us to see exactly what is at stake here if we compare this modern dualism with what existed in ancient times – I mean in pre-Christian times, as we speak of pre-Christian times – as something similar. In ancient times, something similar to our present-day dualism existed for humanity in what can be called fatalism. People were almost forced into fatalism until the 2nd or 3rd century BC, and even more so later on – but it became more and more anachronistic. And basically, fatalism also lies at the root of the Greek world view. In modern times, all fatalism is actually anachronistic; that is, it no longer belongs in the present. Seduced, one might say, were the people of ancient times to fatalism, seduced are the people of the newer times, and most particularly of the present, to dualism.

Now let us try to understand why ancient people were so easily seduced into fatalism. We know, of course, that the state of mind of human beings has changed radically in the course of evolution, and it is a superstition to assume, as popular Darwinism does, that there has been only a gradual evolution. A radical change has taken place in the state of mind, and in this respect history is most of all a fable convenante. The state of mind of ancient people was such that the natural never really confronted them as it confronts today's people, and in contrast to this, the spiritual did not confront them conceptually, as in terms of ideas, as it confronts today's people. Everything that the ancient man imagined about nature, he imagined in such a way that he imagined the natural combined with the spiritual, and again he imagined the spiritual in such a way that he took images from the course of nature for the imagination. If you had old teachings about the gods, they are actually completely imbued, as myths completely imbued, with ideas taken from the nature that can be perceived by the senses. When people spoke of nature, they did not speak as we speak today, so dryly, so abstractly, but they spoke of elementary spirituality, of essences that carry and bring about natural phenomena.

This was not due to a great childishness of expression, but it was based on the real view, on the real state of mind. The ancient man did not see nature as we see it under the influence of today's science, even if we are not scientists; he did not see his spiritual being so abstractly, so merely in terms of ideas, as we have to today. Through this confusion of nature and spirit, man brought himself into fatalism; for in the way just described, when natural phenomena became imbued with spiritual acts for man, it was natural that all life should be intended in the external way in which human acts are intended. It was a picture, but the old man had no other picture; but that necessarily leads to the deception of fatalism.

Over time, however, a different state of mind arose. We have already characterized this change in the state of mind from the most diverse points of view; today we want to look at it from a very special point of view. Today we want to pose the question, which we can only answer on the basis of everything we have presented in the last lectures: What is it, objectively speaking, that a person sees when he observes the natural order, and what is it, objectively speaking, that a person inwardly conceives when he speaks of the spirit today? I am not talking about how we speak of the spirit in spiritual science, but rather how the general consciousness of humanity today speaks of the spirit, more or less nuanced in this or that way.

We know that even if a person is not a theorist (we are disregarding theorists here), if he wants to understand the natural order, he instinctively comes to the rule of matter and forces. I am not talking now about the scientific theories of substances and forces, but rather about how the average person today, in his simple way, imagines nature, and how he instinctively bases his ideas about natural phenomena on material processes permeated by forces. Man is led - when one really properly examines things, we know that - to an illusion. Because actually everything that can be said in such contexts about what matter and forces are, everything is illusion. The basis of today's view of nature is illusion. This is not based on a defect in thinking alone, it is simply based on the present constitution of the soul. We no longer speak of maya or illusion, as in the Indian worldview, because we do not see the facts in ordinary life. We do not see these facts, so that when we present nature, we actually always live in illusion. That is one thing.

The other point is: What about today's view of the spirit? This view of the spirit today is something that floats very, very much in abstractions. You can best follow this if you take one or the other philosophy. It does not matter which philosophy you take. You can take a philosophy that is half confused and rambling in words, like Eucken's; you can take one that rests on somewhat firmer foundations, like Liebmann's; you can get involved in one that speaks more to the popular consciousness, like Schopen and so on: in the philosophies and world views of the present day, there is talk of spirit; if the philosophies are not purely positivist, like the Comtean one we recently got to know, if they are not materialist, then there is still talk of spirit among philosophers. But what is it that is talked about in the philosophies, and what is called spirit from today's soul constitution? Just as that which man draws through natural phenomena like a net by assuming a certain material and energetic order makes the view of nature an illusion, so everything that is said about the spirit in current popular belief is basically a hallucination, and the usual philosophies are actually only a sum of unrecognized hallucinations. Basically, the human being today is constituted in such a way that when he looks towards nature, he hovers between illusion with his soul, and when he looks towards the spirit, he hovers between hallucination. What philosophers dream of spirit, in that they want to construct a certain view of spirit purely out of concepts, is actually only a sum of fine hallucinations, albeit fine ones, but still hallucinations. They are images that arise from the depths of the human being for reasons that we do not want to discuss today, and as such they have nothing much to do with reality.

I have often drawn your attention to such phenomena in the world of facts, which clearly show that everything that people can imagine need not have much to do with reality. To substantiate this, I have pointed out that, for example, in their naivety, a good number of philosophers today talk about man having to be thought of as consisting of body and soul. Even the world-famous Wundtian philosophy talks of body and soul and professes to be free of prejudice. But in reality – and I have already pointed this out – what is all of Wundt's philosophy or similar philosophies? It is only the execution of what the Eighth General Council of Constantinople decided in 869: that one should not speak - roughly one could define the council decision, which was of course couched in terms of conditions at the time - when speaking of man, of body, soul and spirit, but that the spiritual is only a property of the soul, that one should only speak of body and soul. And the trichotomy of body, soul and spirit was, after all, a heretical view throughout the Middle Ages. The theological philosophers trembled when they were pushed by reality to hint at body, soul and spirit, because it was a heretical view. Philosophers still hold this view today. They only expound what was dogmatized by that Council of Constantinople in the past, and they believe that they are unprejudiced, they believe that they are expounding something that follows from their pure views and investigations, whereas in reality they are only expounding a council decision. One must look at things without illusion; one must look at reality. Our young students learn in philosophy what was decided at the Council of Constantinople in 869.

Now I am not saying that what is taught today is a direct consequence or effect of that council decision; but what was dogmatized at the eighth council in Constantinople was, as a dogma, only the intellectual outflow of deeper events that are hidden beneath the surface of things and continue to this day. And all that wants to dogmatize - no matter whether it was done by the good philosophers of the Council of Constantinople or by the good professors of today's universities - all these conceptual webs are basically only conceptual hallucinations that arise in man and are too thin, I would say, in reality content, to really grasp the reality that prevails beneath them. Because today's human being, in accordance with the constitution of his soul, oscillates to a certain extent between the hallucinatory nature of his conceptual world and the illusory nature of his view of nature, he is therefore in danger of dualism. And he will always be in danger of being able to carry everything he devises as ideas, as ideals, only into the hallucinatory sphere of concepts, which does not reach into reality; or, he will be able to carry what he devises about nature into the illusionary sphere of the view of nature, which in turn has nothing to do with true reality, which is precisely an illusion. Man is simply never predisposed to find directly, or, I might say, comfortably, that which he calls truth – a word. He must start from something that can bring him discord, doubt, skepticism in life, and penetrate to the truth. In today's developmental cycle, man is forced to ascend from oscillating between the hallucination of philosophy and the illusion of the view of nature to the truly real, to that which really is.

Now one could raise the question – I am speaking more or less aphoristically, of course, only the whole should then provide a context: What can be given as the next reason why the old man could or can fall more into fatalism, the newer man more into dualism in matters of world view? One falls into such dangers when one abandons oneself to mere conceptual play; today one could also say: to mere dialectics.

Now, of course, you will object: today's people, with their sense of reality, are not at all predisposed to fall prey to mere conceptual play. —You are very much mistaken! Future ages, which will assess our age more objectively, will see that never before have people been so inclined to theorize and play with mere concepts as they are in the present. Today, people are very keen to abandon reality and turn to mere conceptual play. But when one leaves reality and begins to twist and turn, to connect and disconnect his concepts, at the very moment when one has turned away from reality, then there is already the danger of either fatalism or dualism. What is needed, and what today's man has to train himself to do, is precisely the sense of reality, which has often been emphasized here from the most diverse points of view.

Now it is not easy to cultivate a sense of reality, especially when it comes to spiritual matters, because more often than not we are dealing with mere playing with concepts, with playful dialectics. And what appears as an external illusion is, as soon as it enters into the moral and spiritual life of human beings, very apt to foster the illusionary. Man always tries to theorize about certain things. He tries to theorize about good and evil, about freedom or necessity; one could say that man is actually terribly inclined to theorize about the most important questions of life, that is, to indulge in mere conceptual play. And what one encounters today here and there in discussions of world views actually only runs within the dialectic of concepts. People are even deceived about this, believing that they have concepts, when in reality they cannot have concepts at all; rather, in addition to the concept, they still have sympathies and antipathies for certain concepts and against certain concepts, and according to one's sympathies and antipathies, a person then forms this or that conceptual context and the like. But I do not want to dwell on that. In the vast majority of discussions of world-views, which are a game of concepts in questions, a disregard of reality is inevitable.

To make it clear what I actually mean here, let us start from a fact that often occurs in life: from hatred, from the existence of hatred. Something like the existence of hatred in human nature needs to be explained. With a mere play on words, one very often tries to explain such and similar things. Hatred is a phenomenon of the soul, a psychological reality. But anyone who engages with these things soon finds that certain concepts cannot truly capture the full color of the phenomenon of hatred. Such things as hatred can only be understood by trying to move from the world of illusion to the true world of reality. Hatred is something that plays into the human soul from a deeper world of reality. We must now ask ourselves: is this hatred the same in the world of reality as it appears in the human soul? If it is different in the world of reality than it appears in the human soul, then we will soon see how important it is not to arrive at any spiritual insight by merely getting to know hatred in the human soul. If one seeks out hatred in the cosmos using spiritual scientific methods – not in the individual human being, but hatred plays a role in the individual human soul – if one seeks it out in the cosmos, it is something quite different. You find the same thing that manifests itself as hatred in the human soul outside in the cosmos. You just must not fall for the trap of merely seeking such natural forces as today's scientific illusion seeks. But in the cosmos, this hatred is something essentially different from what it is in the human soul. In the cosmos, hatred is a force without which individualization could never occur. Special beings could never come into being, nor could the special human being, if the force of hatred did not exist in the cosmos. I am not speaking of the illusory repulsion of atoms, but of something real. Hatred arises in the cosmos, but in the cosmos hatred must not be judged so morally as when it plays into the human soul. In the cosmos, hatred is a force that underlies all individualization. The whole world would merge into a great unity, as nebulous pantheists would like it to be; no being would separate itself, no being would divide itself, if it were not for the cosmic principle that humans do not see in the cosmos at first, but which plays into the human soul and takes on the special form in the human soul that we know as hatred.

Now, however, the question arises: what is the relationship between the human and the cosmic? I have already hinted at something about this from a certain point of view; today we want to add a few aphorisms. When reasonable philologists – today philology, too, has firstly become abstracted and secondly rather philistine – but when reasonable philologists studied the languages that could be found among the so-called wild people in America when the “civilized », I say that in quotation marks, had penetrated into America, when these civilized people had discovered the wild Americans, the more insightful philologists found it remarkable that these wild people had such logically transparent languages! A great number of such languages were found there in which, as philologists can assure us, and as is also true, the refinements of Spanish and Italian can be found in the formation and structure of the language. Such things were found among the wild natives of Greenland. Now there is no doubt about it: these savages did not have the intellect of which modern man is so proud. Nor would this modern intellect get very far if it were to engage in language formation and creation; for what the modern intellect achieves when it wants to be creative in language can be sufficiently demonstrated in many places. In fact, objective reason was at work in the human soul, which was still a wild one, which did not yet have the present intellect. This objective reason I also showed you at work in humanity's creativity in language the other day. Reason held sway there. This reason that held sway there did not yet affect man as strongly individualized as today's world reason affects man; it affected man even less individualized, less separated, and worked in him even more as cosmic reason. And so it has come about in the development of mankind. In those ancient times, man was not the wild creature that today's anthropology awakens illusionary ideas about, but he was a member of a whole organism - although this is of course figuratively speaking - and he gradually individualized himself. So he was a member and expressed more and more cosmic reason, or one could also say that cosmic reason was expressed more and more in him.

This gives you a real indication of how the cosmic that is at work here plays into the human soul. And now you can also transfer this to a special phenomenon such as cosmic hatred finding its way into the human soul. And we know, of course, that in the spiritual realm, as in the natural realm, we have to speak of certain polarities. How did that which is cosmic reason enter into language? Today humanity is no longer creative in language; it was creative in language; what appears in languages today are only residues. How did that cosmic reason enter into the human soul, how did it become individual? If we seek to answer this question, we come to all that we call the Ahrimanic. And how does something like the appearance of hatred enter the human soul from the cosmic? Here we come to the Luciferic, which is the opposite pole to the Ahrimanic. Today's man is ashamed to speak of Ahriman and Lucifer, while he is not ashamed to speak of positive or negative electricity or positive or negative magnetism. But the fact that he is ashamed is based only on a modern superstition.

Even if we are clear about the fact that spiritual entities really did enter on the one hand as the Luciferic in such things as hatred, or as the Ahr in such things as speech or even thinking, on the other hand we must also realize how things are significant in the whole context of the world, how this enters into the whole context of the world. When I look at hatred in such a way that I say that the great initial facts rest on it, precisely that it can individualize itself, separate itself, that not everything floats together in a general primeval slime, then I am pointing to the phenomenon, to the fact of hatred in the distant past, in that past in which man did not yet exist in his present form; I am pointing to a very, very distant past. So, in a sense, I am giving you an insight into hatred that corresponds to a distant, distant past, the past in which man had not yet separated himself from the rest of the world. We can speak of the different kingdoms of nature, of which we know — you only have to read my 'Occult Science' — how they have developed as mineral, vegetable, animal and human kingdoms. We can speak of these nature kingdoms. If we speak of them completely, not in their illusory but in their reality, the power of hatred lives in all of this, but hatred as I have illustrated it to you as cosmic hatred.

Now there comes a point in evolution when that which is otherwise a general cosmic fact plays into the human soul; it plays into the human soul through luciferic, ahrimanic forces: now it is within the human soul, now it is raised out of the cosmic, as this cosmic has formed itself from the past until now.

Now we know – if we draw schematically the cosmic of the past up to the present (violet) – after we have spoken so much about the so-called law of the conservation of energy or matter, which does not exist! – that, to a certain extent, what is purely naturally real in the present, except for the material, ceases. We know that what is merely spiritually present today is also the germ of the material substance of the future (red). If we look at things spiritually, we have to say that everything that is now in the order of the past has flowed out of the spiritual. That which has flowed out will find its end. What is the future order is only now flowing out of the spiritual. It could never assert itself as the natural order if there were conservation of energy and matter. But the idea that there is conservation of matter and energy is the strongest of all superstitions that have ever existed. The spiritual, which today announces itself in mere thoughts, is just as much the germ for the natural order of the future as the small plant germ, which announces itself in the plant of this year, is the germ for the plant of the next year.

Thus man himself stands in an ambivalent way within the world order. And one is pointed to man in his ambivalence if one wants to understand the whole context, if one wants to find a transition from cosmic hatred to the individual-soul hatred that occurs in human nature. You know that when we look at the human being as he stands before us today, we can say that his nature is made up of perception, feeling and will. He divides himself into a perceiving, a feeling and a willing being, which form a unity. But all the beautiful things that philosophy says about it come to nothing if we cannot also clearly and precisely distinguish the other side. Now even the somewhat conceptually-minded psychologists of the present day are realizing that we actually know nothing right about will. I have already explained the nature of will to you; today it is enough to point out that even contemporary psychology has to admit that we know nothing right about will. In fact, will is also overslept in the waking life of a person, in its entity, in its essence. One could also say that the human being does not reach down with his soul to the will. He believes – I have discussed this in the context of Augustine on the basis of a concrete fact – he believes that he stands inside the essence itself by imagining; but he cannot say this with regard to the will. For, however any intended purpose is connected with the complicated mechanism of the hand or the movement of the legs, man knows as little about it in waking life as he knows about his body when he sleeps or about his surroundings when he sleeps. The present man actually oversleeps the will. If one now advances through the method of spiritual science from mere imagining to willing, one learns from the facts, albeit from spiritual facts, to understand how it comes that man today oversleeps his will.

With our thinking, with our intellect as human beings, we would actually be in a very bad way if it were not for the other circumstance that I have mentioned and which I will explain in more detail in a moment. With our thinking we would actually be in a very bad way, because our thinking basically always remains childlike in relation to our human nature. In the course of our life between birth and death, our thinking acquires some knowledge about the immediate present of the world; about the past and the future, nothing, or at most something in hypotheses, but these disintegrate immediately if one only really takes them seriously. This thinking is precisely the germ of the future. And just as the germ in the plant is as yet of no significance in the reality of the plant world, but will only have significance next year at the earliest, so today's thinking has no reality value as yet. It stands in the same relation to its reality value as a small child stands to a human being. Thought is really directed entirely towards the future; but only that which comes into being out of it, just as the plant germ becomes a plant, will have a real significance in the future. The actual content, the substance of thinking, has only a germinal value today. But if we descend spiritually into the realm of will and try to recognize the subject of will — for will is only an activity — then will is something that carries within it the consciousness of the most distant past, the cosmic past. You can never understand anything about the evolution of the world with the intellect, without placing yourself in the volition through imagination, inspiration and intuition; for only in the human volition, which at the same time builds up the whole human organism, lies a subject that has the memory of the cosmic past just as you have the memory of your ordinary life.

The difference between the human intellect and the human will is that the human intellect develops at most a memory for personal, individual life, but the will, which the human being cannot reach with his intellect, has the memory of the cosmic past. Man carries within himself the memory of the cosmic past, but he cannot reach it with his intellect without spiritual scientific research. So we can say that on the one hand, the human being stands there as a volitional being, bearing within himself, if I may call it memory - it is only a figure of speech - the memory of the cosmic past. He stands there as an intelligent being, bearing within himself, as an intelligent being, only the present, because the intellect is only a germ for the future, not yet something present. Just as the germ of a plant is not yet present, but something of the future, so the intellect in relation to the will is the same as the small plant germ is to the whole plant. In that we are volitional beings, we stand as cosmic human beings through the individual on the soil of the whole past; in that we are intelligent human beings, we stand in the present and prepare to grow into the future.

In the same way, our volition can be compared to our intellect, one could say, with an old man and a child. Just as the old man relates to the child, so, of course with a corresponding extension of time, our volitional human being relates to our thinking human being.

How is the balance achieved? Now, what I have often called the Ahrimanic before, cosmic reason, is at work in our thinking human being. If we were dependent on our human nature without the working of Ahriman, our intellect would be quite differently ordered in the present day. The Roman Catholic Church could be terribly satisfied with humanity if it had only the measure of intellect that grows out of human nature today. For this intellect is childlike in relation to what man is capable of in the whole Cosmos, just as our will is senile.

In our thinking - and this thinking is inconceivable in evolution without the participation, for example, of the linguistic element - the Ahrimanic element comes into play. The Luciferic element comes into our will. The Ahrimanic element permeates us by raising our intellect, which in the overall evolution is still weaker today, which is childlike, to a certain height. But there is also the other side of the coin: we have an intellect that does not actually grow out of us; we have an intellect that could be compared not to a plant that grows out of the ground and then has the germ, but to a plant on which another plant is placed that does not carry a germ but carries another plant, and a far more perfect plant.

Our intellect is organized in an Ahrimanic way, with Ahrimanic structure. Therefore our intellect has something deluding about it for the human being. Of course, we do not take the view that, if we are humanities scholars, we should not use this intellect because it is Ahrimanic; but one must only look at things without illusion, one must only be clear about the fact that the human intellect is a light that shines strongly, shines more strongly than what could shine as intellect already flows out of human nature today. The intellectual principle has something blinding about it for human nature, something that draws things back into a certain sphere for him, in which he is blinded. Just as a strong, blinding light would fall on things, so it is when man himself illuminates things with his intellect. In doing so, he actually makes them essentially an illusion.

Just as the Ahrimanic enters into our intellect, so the Luciferic enters into our will, so that it falls asleep, so that it falls asleep properly. Just as the Ahrimanic principle brightens our germinal intellect, so the Luciferic lulls and puts to sleep our volitional subject, which actually carries the memory of the whole past within itself, so that the human being is unaware of this past.

This is, in a somewhat deeper sense, the basis of the dualism in man, this dualism that must be bridged, but that cannot be bridged by merely turning to theories, but that can only be bridged by turning to the facts themselves, to the facts of spiritual life, by knowing that our intellect originates in the world differently than our will. Our intellect and our will are like placing a child and an old man side by side, and artificially deceiving oneself by positing the abstractum man, which is just a mere abstractum, and saying: The child is a man, and the old man is a man. Such concepts are, of course, to the liking of people today, who mix everything up. Thus, for example, the assertion of the unified soul is made today, and it is believed that the soul as such arises in the same way with intellectual thinking as with loving volition, whereas, in the way I have just indicated, if one really, actually wants to understand the human being, one must distinguish. What we think through mere intellect as a world view can therefore never approach reality, but remains hallucination, because it comes from our intellect being permeated with a spiritual essence that does not belong to this world: with Ahrimanic spiritual essence that does not belong to the world order into which we look with our eyes. Likewise, on the other hand, it is in relation to the will, which is permeated with Luciferic essence.

These things have always been felt, and in one way or another people have expressed them. For example, it is little noticed that the Old Testament already has at least an inkling of this polar opposition of the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. I say it is little noticed because people read so nicely when they read the Bible, chapter after chapter in succession, and do not distinguish there either; do not distinguish such a contrast as exists between the Book of Job and the Books of Moses. But in this contrast between the Books of Moses and the Book of Job there is already an inkling of that polar contrast between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic, which one must grasp. Moses raises the question of evil in human nature, that is, of something like the cosmic hatred, the human hatred, as it were, that enters into man. Moses raises the question of evil. And then he presents the Fall of Man in a magnificent picture. We know that behind this Fall of Man is hidden what we call the entry of the Luciferic into human nature. Then a certain conclusion is drawn from this view of Moses, that all misfortune and also death actually stems from this human sin - let us say pre-human sin, if you prefer. So that one can say that Moses' view is: misfortune and death are the consequence of sin.

The radically opposite view is that of the Book of Job. First of all, you do not have a snake, but a purely spiritual being, an ahrimanic being, which comes close to the divine being itself. And in the case of Job, it is not about a human being like Adam, who can fall prey to sin, but rather about someone who is supposed to be “righteous”. And how does this being, who approaches God, want to make Job fall into sin? By bringing misfortune upon him! It is exactly the opposite: this being wants to bring misfortune upon Job so that he will sin. Misfortune is already there, and from misfortune comes sin. In the Book of Moses, evil is said to come from sin, while in the Book of Job, sin comes from evil. This contrast is felt. Even at this early stage, a certain intuitively sensed dualism plays a part. There is a radical contrast in outlook between the more pagan Book of Job and the fully Jewish Book of Moses. But as I said, these things are read one after the other without always paying attention to them.

Today it is absolutely necessary for humanity that not that foolish “self-knowledge”, which is often defined as something desirable, seduces people, but that people really learn to know themselves, that they learn to distinguish between intellect and will just as objectively as they learn to distinguish between hydrogen and oxygen; otherwise they can only seemingly overcome a certain dualism.

But what happens in any given age is always preceded by a long period of preparation. And in fact we can only study that which emerges as particularly significant in a particular age. In our endeavor to build a bridge between the dualisms of the present, we want to take a particularly close look at the hallucinatory aspect of the intellect, which is connected with everything I have described, and at the illusory aspect of natural phenomena, which in turn is connected with what I have described. This leads man into a kind of inner conflict in life. I would say that there are two currents at work in him, whereas he must strive for one current. And today, one of these currents is particularly seductive: the one that arises from the relationship between man and his soul and the natural order. Today's man, who sees in it a reality that is the same for all things – the anatomist, if I choose a nearby example, or the physiologist – today takes the human body and differentiates only externally, not internally, the individual limbs of this body. I would say he puts the heart next to the liver and examines both only in a purely external way, not taking into account the time perspective of which I spoke recently; whereas in fact one only gets a proper understanding of the nature of the heart as well as the liver if one takes this time perspective into account , for example, if one really proceeds spiritually scientifically in embryology in such a way that one learns to distinguish in time the disposition of the heart in the development of the embryo, and furthermore, that one does not simply let them exist next to each other and consist of cells, which on the one hand is right and on the other hand is nonsense. Because something can be right and nonsense at the same time, as we know.

So, in explaining the natural order, today's scientific trend, as it were, takes no account of that which is temporally apart, placing it side by side and thereby arriving at its abstraction. There the temptation is particularly great to simply place one thing next to the other: cause, effect; cause, effect; cause, effect – an abstract, illusory causal order! We know from the presentations that I gave you here last year and also already this year that you cannot look at nature in this way, that nature can only be explained if you look at it primarily as a reflection of a spiritual being. That is when you come to the true metamorphosis, that is when you come to real Goetheanism. In this way, the human head appears as an education that depicts the distant past; the organism of the extremities appears as that which points to a distant future. But what stands in the individual is not just next to each other according to causes, but it is imagination, an image of what stands behind it. We do not understand the human head if we understand it only as if it grew out of the rest of the human organism, whereas in truth it is formed out of the whole cosmos, and out of the cosmos in a different way than, for example, the organism of the extremities. In physics, everyone would find it ridiculous if someone were to explain that a magnetic needle always points north because it has the inner power to point north; instead, the explanation is that the cosmos, i.e., the earth's magnetism, is the guiding force for the magnetic needle in one pole and the other. Only in the case of humans or other organisms should everything grow out of itself in a straight line! Just as the magnetic needle points to the north for cosmic reasons on one side and to the south on the other, so man, for reasons of cosmic time, points with his head backwards into primeval, distant pasts, even into pasts in which the earth itself was metamorphosing, and he points with his limb organism into primeval, distant futures. He is temporally and cosmically oriented. And that will be the formation of the doctrine of metamorphoses, that is real Goetheanism: rising from the mere illusory causal order to the conception of nature through imagination. By recognizing that which one has before one as an image of another, one rises above mere illusion.

'But one must not stop at nature. One needs a correlative, one needs something supplementary. He who speaks of nature in this way would again become a fantasist if he were to understand nature only in this way and were not to explain on the other side: What more recent philosophy opposes to nature as spirit is also hallucination, and this too must not be left at that. Because that which lives today has developed slowly, humanity has gone through the most diverse stages, in order to gradually, I might say, advance to the state of the human soul in the spirit. And there we can distinguish three stages. Just as the concept of nature today can still be somewhat confused, and tends towards the levels of knowledge described in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds?' as imagination, inspiration and intuition, so one can say that the human soul has gradually developed intellectually through three stages to a real standing in the spirit, to a real grasping in the spirit.

These are the three stages: the intuitive experience of the spirit, which is of course something hallucinatory because one takes the spirit in the present and does not recognize that it is a germ for the future; the intuitive experience, the dreamy-intuitive experience of the spirit. The second stage is the prophetic vision, where, in the sense of the old Hebrew prophets, for example, the future is really experienced in visions, where something of the spirit being germinal for the future is already living in it. And the third stage, which is still little understood, but which has something profound about it, is the apocalyptic view of the world. But all these are preliminary stages for the spiritual-scientific view, which, on the other hand, must be connected — because otherwise it would be in the air, figuratively speaking — with the pictorial view of nature. A pictorial view of nature lifts one above the illusory nature of science. Real behavior towards that which goes beyond the intuitive perception of the future, the visionary view of the future - prophetic visionary vision, apocalyptic vision - lifts us above the hallucinatory nature of intellectual life.

We must not – and this is the task of the human being in the present – take the spirit as the newer philosophies take it. We must not take nature as the naive view of nature takes it, nor as the theoretical natural science of the present takes it. Rather, we must, as it were, discard the delusion we have about nature and recognize how nature is merely an image of another, and we must recognize how the spirit, as it presents itself to philosophy today, is merely a shadow image. Then the bridge will be built between the ordinary view of spirit and the ordinary view of nature.

And a third will exist. You can never overcome something like dualism through mere discussion, but only by facing the facts, but then the complete facts, and finding a third to the duality. Therefore, the symbol that expresses this must express a trinity. Of course, today we realize that concepts are only a way of expressing something that is more profound. But we must have concepts; if we do not overestimate them, they do no harm. We speak here of the normal human, of the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic, and we also depict it: it is to be the central point of our structure. Auguste Comte also sensed that a view that runs in a threefold structure must be there, by setting up that Trinity of which I spoke to you recently. This true Trinity, which will include spiritual and natural views and thereby truly overcome dualism, must contain anthroposophically oriented spiritual science. Therefore, one cannot arrive at genuine anthroposophical spiritual science without seriously addressing all the light and shadow sides of today's natural science and today's spiritual science. One must take things seriously. The seriousness of today's world cannot be addressed by merely throwing things together and forming theories about them.

Life does not take place in a primeval soup, but rather proceeds in a differentiated and individualized way. That which must strive for a future must be striven for in a differentiated way from the outset. Today, there is still a widespread bad habit of, if I may put it in trivial terms, lumping everything together. Today, if someone has a political theory, he also forms everything else according to this political theory, world views and so on. If someone today has philosophical views, he also uses them as politics and so on, slapping everything over the same stick, and indeed over the one that the person in question uses as his favorite stick. That is the way it is in our time. Life is differentiated. Only the person who knows how life is differentiated is free of illusions. The future does not strive for a primeval soup of life, but for a strong structure: for the spiritual life as science, a certain inner life, of which one still has little conception today, and which, according to the customs of ancient times, one can call a religious life, and for the political life. If you mix things up, if you try to regulate one thing after another, then you fall into the same mistakes as those I characterized here last year, or even two years ago. For things proceed in separate currents: on the one hand, social life according to socialism, on the other hand, religious life according to freedom of thought, and scientific life according to pneumatology, according to knowledge of the spirit. Only in the living interaction of the three will the future have a certain healing power for human development, not a paradise on earth, that does not exist, but a certain healing power. But it would be a bad idea to present the outer life pneumatologically, for example, to found religious sects, to imbue them with pneumatological life, and thus to pursue politics from the point of view of pneumatology. That would achieve nothing. Likewise, it would achieve nothing if politics were pursued in the old sense in religious communities. Just as little as the hands can do what the head of man can do, so little the legs can do that, so little can pneumatology achieve what socialism should achieve, or religion achieve what socialism should achieve, or what pneumatology should achieve. What matters is the differentiation of certain things, but not just theoretically, but the differentiation of certain things in life. And that is what I want to conclude with today and continue with tomorrow. As I said, they are only intended to be aphorisms, to teach us something new about the fundamental questions that concern us now.

{For words following the lecture, see the end of the volume under “Notes” on p. 326]

Recently I have become aware of mystics who have attempted to elucidate the nature of the human being in the following way. I will quote the result to which they believe they have arrived. They say something like this: If we look at the human being as he walks on earth, his whole existence is a kind of riddle. His soul-being towers mightily above what he is able to represent in his entire humanity, to reveal himself, as it were, in the living out of the interrelationship with other people. Therefore, one must assume - so such mystics think - that man is actually something quite different in his essence from what he appears to be here in his earthly walk. He must be a comprehensive cosmic being, who, according to his inner nature, is much, much more powerful than what he presents himself as being here on earth; he must have forfeited his place in the great cosmos for some reason and must have been banished into this earthly existence – as for example, a mystic follower of this direction - to learn modesty here, to learn to be modest here, to feel small here for once, while in truth he is a great, powerful cosmic being, but who in some way has made himself unworthy to live out this cosmic being.

I know that there are many people who just laugh at such an idea. But the one who understands life from a deeper point of view knows that even such a mystical idea ultimately arises from the great difficulty of solving the riddle of life, which difficulty imposes itself ever more sharply and sharply on the human soul, precisely the more this human soul seeks to delve into true reality. I do not, of course, want to cite anything in particular in support of this idea of a modern mystical trend, which I have just characterized. I just wanted to cite it as something that has also found a place in human souls as a concept. One could just as easily cite a dozen other, more or less philosophical or mystical solutions to the human riddle in abstracto.

If one then tries to understand the reason why the most diverse people try to understand in such different ways, sometimes in quite unusual ways, what it actually means to be human here on earth, one comes to different conclusions. Above all, it is found that precisely with regard to the great, real questions of existence, people do not want to fulfill one thing for themselves, which they certainly admit on a small scale on every possible daily occasion: on every possible daily occasion, man will admit that one should not obscure the truth with one's desires, that what one desires to be true cannot be decisive for the objectivity of the truth. In ordinary life, in small matters, man will readily admit this; but in the great matters we see, as it were, the impossibility for people to arrive at a realistic world view, precisely because people cannot help asserting their desires when it comes to grasping the truth. And most of the time, it is precisely those desires that play a major role that could be called unconscious desires, which a person does not even admit are desires in his soul. Yet these desires are present in the soul; they remain subconscious or unconscious. And that would be the task of spiritual training: to make one aware of such desires that remain unconscious, in order to rise above the illusory life and penetrate into the sphere of truth.

These unconscious desires play a particularly important role when the highest truths of life are to be asserted within the human being, the truths about the essence of human life itself, let us say now of this ordinary human life as it unfolds in the physical world between birth and death. A real, appropriate, realistic consideration must always look at the whole course of life if life is to be understood. And just imagine that such a realistic consideration of life should yield a result that man, even if only in his subconscious desires, does not desire at all. Then man would do anything to get away from such an inconvenient result by means of apparent logic.

Surely, if we consider only life on earth, there is nothing to suggest that the truth must correspond to human desires, even if these desires are unconscious. It could, after all, be that the truth about human life is also completely unpleasant.

Spiritual science shows that this is truly the case. Of course, a higher point of view can be found from which the matter may appear differently. But for the life that a person would like to lead on this earth, a truthful examination shows that the truth about man is such that most people who are too comfortable in life feel a slight shudder - albeit a subconscious shudder, but you will understand what I mean - a slight unconscious, sometimes very strong subconscious shudder. But then the whole of human life must be considered.

We know that this whole of human life, when considered objectively and in detail, breaks down into distinct periods. You can read about these periods in my little booklet The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science. We know that we can only understand the human being by observing life, first from birth to the change of teeth, from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, from sexual maturity to the beginning of the twenties, let us say on average to the age of twenty-one; then again to the age of twenty-eight. We can understand the human being's life in the same way that we seek to understand anything scientifically, by looking at the seven-year cycles of human life.

Significant events occur in human life during each of these periods. From what we mentioned again yesterday, you know that the human being stands in life, integrating himself into the cosmos – I reminded you of the image of the magnetic needle yesterday – so that, for example, the formation of his head points far, far into the distant past, and the formation of his extremities points into the distant future, just as the magnetic needle points with one pole to the north and with the other pole to the south.

But this alignment with the cosmos is different in each of the main human periods. In each of the main human periods, different forces intervene in the organization of humanity. In the first seven years of our lives, something quite different prevails in us than in the second seven years. Everything that comes to expression in the seventh year, in that, one might say, all the growth is dammed up, as at a bank, by the eruption of the permanent teeth, everything that is dammed up in the eruption of the permanent teeth plays out of the forces of the cosmos in the first seven years of life. And again, there is something that the human being takes back in his education. What the human being takes back in his education, by becoming sexually mature, that with which he, I would like to say, tinges himself, it forms in that certain developmental forces, which are thoroughly grounded in the cosmos, develop in the second epoch of life and so on.

Now the thing is that one must say: in the whole human being, the various members do interact. The child, up to the change of teeth, also develops a certain psychic activity; and this psychic activity is extraordinarily important, especially in these first years of life. I am reminded of the truly wise saying of Jean Paul, who said that at the beginning of his life, one undoubtedly learns more for life from one's nurse than from all one's professors in the academic years. There is something very wise and very true in this saying. One must only assess things in the right way. One learns a lot in these first seven years of life, but what is learned remains, so to speak, intellectually and otherwise in the dullness of the soul life, which is still almost a physical life, down below. But if you read my booklet 'The Spiritual Guidance of the Human Being and of Humanity', you will see that this life, which the child develops in the first seven years, can also be evaluated differently from the usual way. In these first seven years, there is truly not much wisdom in the human organism. When the child - as the bourgeois expression goes - has seen “the light of day”, his brain is still quite undifferentiated. It only differentiates over time, and what emerges in terms of brain structures truly corresponds, when studied, to influences of a deeper wisdom than anything we can muster in later life when we construct machines or do anything scientifically. Of course, we cannot do this later in a conscious way, which we do unconsciously when we have just seen the light of the world, as I said. Cosmic reason rules in us, that cosmic reason of which we also had to speak when we mentioned the development of language. Truly, a high cosmic reason rules in the human being in the first seven years of life.

In the second seven years of life, this cosmic reason then focuses on tingeing the human being with what leads to sexual maturity; there it prevails, this cosmic intellectuality, to a small extent already. One might say: that which remains, which is not used inwardly, well, that just rises up into the head. And it affects the head – and usually it is afterwards! But what affects the head is actually something that is spared in the inner being, in the unconscious of the soul life. And then it continues in seven-year periods.

Nowadays, the usual approach is to study the whole of human life, the so-called normal human life; because to study this normal human life, a certain devotion is necessary, first to the real human being, but then also to the great cosmic laws. And however strange it may sound, what takes place in the first seven years of childhood cannot be understood, not as a child, not as a young man or woman, not even when one imagines that one has already grasped the whole of life in one's twenties. One cannot understand it. One can come to some understanding of what takes place in childhood if one seeks this understanding inwardly in the human being, in inner experience, say between the ages of fifty-six and sixty-three. Old age, old age itself, only gives us the opportunity to gain a slight insight into what rules in us during the first seven years of childhood. This is an uncomfortable thing, because today, when a person has barely outgrown the young badger years, he wants to be a full human being. And today it is uncomfortable to admit to oneself that there is something in the world, even in oneself, that can only be understood at the turn of fifty. And again, if it is a matter of understanding, of inner-human understanding, as we can first achieve it as human beings, then we can learn to understand something of what takes place in human nature during the years in which sexual maturity develops, that is, from the seventh to the fourteenth year of life. This takes place between the ages of forty-nine and fifty-six, at the beginning of the fifties.

It would be good if such truths were to be recognized, because through such truths one would learn to understand life, while the other truths that are usually established about human beings are such as one wishes. One just does not realize that unconscious desires are there. And again, what takes place in us from puberty to the age of twenty-one, one gets some inner, experienced insight into that, so that one can have a certain judgment about it between the forty-second and forty-nine, and again, what happens in the twenties up to the twenty-eighth year, about that one can get some information between the thirty-fifth and forty-second year. What I say about these things is based on real observation of life, which one must do by training oneself in spiritual-scientific observation, and not by engaging in the kind of nonsense of self-knowledge that is often called self-knowledge today, but by engaging in real self-knowledge, that is, by engaging in knowledge of human nature. And it is only in the period from about twenty-eight to thirty-five that one can experience something and at the same time understand it by experiencing it; there is a certain balance between understanding and thinking. In the first half of life one can think various things, one can imagine various things; in order to experience with understanding what one can imagine in the first half of life, one must await the second half of life.

It is an uncomfortable truth, but that is how life is. I can even imagine people saying: Yes, if the human being is so circumscribed in his or her entire inner conformity to law, where does that leave the free will of the human being? Where does freedom go? Where is the consciousness of humanity? - Certainly, I can also imagine that someone feels unfree because he cannot be in Europe and America at the same time, that someone feels unfree because he cannot reach down to the moon. But facts do not conform to human desires. Even when it comes to man gaining insight into himself, it is necessary to face the facts. These facts are as follows: We do not live a life that is constantly changing and metamorphosing for no reason. We live this life in such a way that each period of life has its meaning and significance in relation to others. And for that we live, as we say, the normal life, if we are granted such, until the age of sixty — we will also talk about early death from this point of view tomorrow — in a way that only in the second half of life does it become clear to us what prevails in the first half of life. People would be able to orient themselves in the world much more securely and correctly if this knowledge of life were to gain some ground. For then they would build on a true foundation of life, whereas today, because they do not base themselves on objectivity but on desires, they often simply cling to the idea that one must learn something until one's twenties, but after that one is a finished person, then one is ready for anything in life. In this way one completely overlooks the inner coherence of life. To get to know life is really an inner task. And one must not forget, especially when it comes to this intimate task, that desires must remain silent and that objectivity must be taken into account.

Now a certain balance is emerging in the course of human evolution. In earlier times the matter was quite different, as I have already presented: You remember how I spoke of the human development from the Atlantic time until today, of the ever-younger becoming of humanity. A certain equalization has occurred in that in the course of evolution it has been found that one element was related to the other. If that had not occurred, then one would simply have to keep the matter in life so: A person in their twenties would have to believe a forty-year-old when it comes to certain things that relate to truths in a person that can only be grasped as vividly as I have characterized them in the forties. It is not quite like that, but in the course of human development, the concepts themselves, the ideas, have become such that one can have a certain intuitive conviction at one age and at the other. If you are sufficiently devoted to let the forty- and fifty-year-olds tell you about their life experiences, provided, of course, that they have had any, today people usually don't, if you let yourself be told about these life experiences when you are still younger, you are not dependent on mere authority authority, that has already become the case through development; but by thinking – as a young person one can only think – there is more to the way and character that the thoughts have taken than what merely appeals to faith. There is already a certain possibility in it to also understand. Otherwise one would have to say: in youth man thinks, in old age he comprehends. But there is already something in it that can teach one more than a religious belief, a mere authoritative conviction. This gives a certain balance.

But take what I have said as a truth of life. If you take it as a truth of life, it will shed light on the practice of life. Just think, when what I have said is present in life, when it is thought and felt and sensed by people, how it expresses itself in the relationship between people! How it creates, as it were, binding links from soul to soul! A person who is still young looks at the old in a special way when he knows: He can experience something that, in relation to him, who can only think, is an understanding of what is thought. One is interested in a completely different way in the messages that a person in a different age can give, if one understands life in such a way. And one retains one's interest, even when one has reached a higher age, for what abounds as younger people, even as children. They remember how often I have said: The wisest can learn from the little child! Of course, the wisest of all will gladly and lovingly learn from a small child. Even if he does not want to be taught by a small child about morals or other views of life, he would be able to gain an infinite amount of wisdom from the child, especially with regard to cosmic secrets, which are expressed quite differently in a small child than in a later human being. The interest that prevails from soul to soul increases quite substantially when such things are not mere abstract theories, but when such things are wisdoms of life.

Real spiritual science has the peculiarity of strengthening, enhancing, and reinforcing the bonds of love that people have for one another, which must essentially be based on the bonds of mutual interest. Ordinary wisdom can leave people dry, as dry as some scholars are. Spiritual science, truly grasped in its substance, cannot leave people dry, but will, under all circumstances, make people love, wants to strengthen and increase mutual human interest.

I had planned to tell you a small number of such things today, things that are unpleasant for life, but are truths, are facts, because one does not progress spiritually if one does not get used to boldly facing facts, even if they are uncomfortable.

Another fact is this – it is already clear from yesterday's observations – that the intellect, as we can achieve it in the present cycle of humanity, is only suitable for awakening understanding over a certain period of time. I do not envy those people who today set about translating Aeschylus, or even Homer, the Psalms and so on, truly, I do not envy them! That faith can exist in our time, such philistine fibbing as Mr. Wilamowitz' translations of the Greek dramas, which really betray Aeschylus or whatever, that is just a sad sign of the times. You can't observe as soon as something big happens; often you don't even have the patience to observe small things. It would be good to try to observe small things as an exercise. I will give you an example of a very childlike, small thing.

Recently I read an article in one of these international magazines published here in Switzerland, in which the socialist writer Kautsky complained about a Russian socialist who quoted Kautsky in the most terrible way, so that the opposite of what is in Kautsky's books is given as Kautsky's opinion. That there was any intentional distortion of Kautsky's text was, given the nature of the matter and the personalities involved, quite out of the question. I then read the article by the person in question myself, but I also found it curious that what was quoted was presented as Kautsky's opinion. And while I was still reading, I formed an opinion about it, because I was interested in how something like this could be possible at all; but I very soon realized, by reading the essay, what must have happened, and this was also confirmed to me afterwards because the person concerned apologized; but I only saw that later. The person in question had not read Kautsky's book in German, but had read it in Russian translation, and, having written his essay in German, had retranslated it. So that was what had happened: translation from German into Russian and retranslation. In the process, the opposite of what was in the German book came out and was quoted!

All that is needed to turn things upside down is to translate a text from one language into another, honestly and accurately! It is not even necessary to talk about incorrect facts, but basically only about the principles that are commonly applied in translation today. The observation I have made is a small, childish one. But anyone who has the patience to observe such things in life should no longer find it incomprehensible when he is told that it is impossible to understand Homer with what is available to us today; it is only an imagined understanding.

Now, that is the external side of the matter. But there is also an essential internal side to the matter. The state of mind in Homer's time was so essentially different from the state of mind of today's man that today's man is also far removed from the possibility of understanding Homer. For today's state of mind is such that it is essentially tinged with intellectuality. That was not the Homeric state of mind. Man today cannot discard this tinge if he remains in the ordinary everyday state of mind. This state of mind forces man more strongly than he believes, and more strongly than he is aware of, to live in abstract terms, in which Homer did not live at all. But it is difficult for people to reconcile this with their subconscious or unconscious desires, so they say to themselves: Yes, with the understanding that is the normal understanding of the present, one must refrain from understanding something that comes from the time of Homer or even from the time of Aeschylus. This renunciation of man is something that does not correspond at all to the subconscious desires. This is where spiritual science must intervene, which does not remain with the ordinary state of mind, but evokes a comprehensive state of mind so that one can place oneself in states of mind that are different from the normal states of mind of the present. With the means of spiritual science, one can in turn penetrate into that which cannot be reached with the present-day mind, with the present-day state of mind. It would be of immense importance for the modern man to say to himself: Only over a certain stretch of the development of humanity does the understanding that we can have extend. Even with a view to the future, it is not entirely unimportant to keep such things in mind.

No matter how clearly you express yourself today, no matter how clearly you write or speak, record what is spoken, it will not be too long before, in the near future, times will move faster, if I may use the paradoxical expression, than they did in the past, it will be completely impossible to understand what we speak or write today in the same way as we understand it. It is only possible for our understanding to comprehend what we speak and write over a certain period into the future. The historian goes back to documents and wants to rely only on external documents. But it does not depend on whether one understands something or not, whether documents are there or not, but whether the possibility of understanding extends that far. Well, for more distant times, this possibility of understanding does not extend that far. And if one does not have resignation, then Kant-Laplacean theories or the like come out. I have spoken about this often enough. What, after all, is a Kant-Laplacean theory other than the impotent attempt to use the intellect of the present to think about the origin of the world, despite the fact that our understanding, our normal state of mind, has distanced itself so far from this origin of the world that what we think about time with our present understanding of the world, which should coincide with the Kant-Laplacean theory, can no longer resemble it at all.

This knowledge, that it is necessary to resort to other types of knowledge when going beyond a certain period of time and distance, is what spiritual science must also produce. Man cannot recognize anything beyond a certain age if he does not resort to spiritual scientific research, if he does not try to understand existence with senses other than those to which the intellect is bound. Now, if we consider what I have just said, we can see how narrow the horizon of the modern man must be if he does not want to resort to other levels of research, to other levels of knowledge, for those things that ordinary intellectuality, which is actually the prevailing one today, does not suffice to recognize. We know that one can ascend to imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. These types of knowledge then lead to other paths; only they can supplement what can only be seen as an island of existence if one relies on the present state of the soul.

That which comprises the present state of mind is actually bound to the human ego; you can read about this in my “Theosophy”, “Secret Science in Outline” and so on. But the human being also carries other aspects of their being within them: we know of the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body. But the soul's usual state today does not extend down into the astral body, not into the etheric body, not into the physical body. For what the anatomist recognizes from the outside is, after all, the outside. The inner recognition does not extend beyond the ego, let alone beyond the physical body. One must come to observe the human being from the inside with understanding, and the knowledge of life of which I spoke at the beginning of today's reflections is a beginning of this inner knowledge, and what one can comprehend in the second half of life is a beginning, albeit a weak beginning. When one takes hold of the human being inwardly, one descends from the mere intellect to the sphere of the will. Yesterday I mentioned that the subject of the will, the actual volition in us, preserves the cosmic memory. So one must descend into the human being. What the human being could develop if he had the will to do so, by developing normal wisdom in the second half of life, would be a beginning of this descent. It would not shed much light, but it would shed light on what the human being needs to live. But if he then descends with the developed higher knowledge, then by descending into his own being the memory of the cosmos opens up to him. Then, however, something different emerges than the Kant-Laplacean theory, for example, what we carry within us in our physical being. You know that, according to its nature, it is our oldest, going back to the fourth past incarnation on earth. If you go down there, you learn to recognize what this fourth past incarnation on earth was like in the Saturn era. But one can learn from the ordinary wisdom that opens up in the second half of life what one has to do to penetrate deeper and deeper into the nature of the human being, who is an image of the world, and by learning to recognize this image, to recognize the world.

It is usually subconscious or unconscious desires that dominate a person when he thinks up something with a light heart or in complete comfort, something that he should actually say is not accessible to his thinking, such as the Kant-Laplace theory or something similar. And so we touch again – we must, I would like to say, approach our tasks in circles – that which prevents people of the present from building the bridge between ideality and reality, which is of course of great concern to us now.

People of all ages have tried to find a way beyond these things. But it is difficult to fully understand these things, precisely because it is uncomfortable to approach the real facts. In our time it has become customary, I might say, everywhere to recognize half of the matter, the other half not. Here is a classic example: Karl Marx once said that philosophers had so far only endeavored to interpret the world with their concepts; but what was important was to change the world, one really had to find thoughts that would change the world. The first part is absolutely correct. Philosophers have endeavored, insofar as they are philosophers, to interpret the world, and if they were a little clever, they did not believe that they could do anything other than interpret the world. But the very archetype of all philosophical philistinism, Wilhelm Traugott Krug, who taught in Leipzig from 1809 to 1834 and wrote a great many books on everything from fundamental philosophy to the highest stages of philosophy, demanded that Hegel's philosophers should not only deduce concepts but also the development of the pen – something that infuriated Hegel. But even in this field, resignation is necessary, resignation that says: Of course, we human beings are called upon to change the world as whole human beings, insofar as the world consists of human life. But thinking, the thinking of the present, is simply not capable of bringing about this change. One must have the resignation to say to oneself: This thinking, which the human being of the present has, which is so gloriously sufficient, which is really quite suitable for understanding nature, this thinking is completely unsuitable for achieving something when it comes to the will to act. But that is an uncomfortable truth. Because once you see through this, you no longer say: Philosophers have so far endeavored to interpret the world, but what matters is changing the world – and secretly believe that they can contribute to this through some dialectic; instead, you say to yourself: Philosophers have only been sufficient for interpreting things because philosophers can cite them. With nature, it is enough for us to merely interpret it, because nature is, one might say, thank God, there without us, and we can content ourselves with interpreting it. Social and political life is not there without us, and we cannot be content with merely grasping it with such concepts, which are only suitable for interpreting life and not for shaping it. It is necessary to rise from mere theorizing, which mostly consists of hallucinations, as I explained yesterday, and which is so truly the hobbyhorse of the present, to the life of reality. And the life of reality in the facts demands that one does not take it so straightforwardly, this life, as one is accustomed to taking it. Certainly, ideas that one person conveys to another lead to something; but they do not always lead to the same thing. There are no absolute truths, just as there are no absolute facts, and there are no absolute facts just as there are no absolute truths. Everything is relative. And the effect of something I say is determined not only by whether or not I believe it to be true, but also by the nature of the people in a particular age, and how they react to it, if I may use the expression. I will cite a significant case that is very important to consider.

If you go back to around the 14th century of the Christian era, you could present mysticism to people before that century. In those days, mystical concepts still had the power to educate and inspire people. The Oriental population of Asia, the Indian, Japanese, Chinese, has retained these qualities in many ways, because older qualities are preserved by certain members of humanity in later times. One can still study many things in the present that were also the case with European populations in earlier times; but the whole state of mind of humanity has changed. And anyone who passes on mysticism today, for example, must be aware that we are approaching the age when, by teaching mysticism, real mysticism – Meister Eckhart's, Tauler's, and the like, you teach them by the way they react to it, what Lucifer only coaxes out of man, what brings them to bickering and quarreling. And it may well be that there is no better way to prepare a sect for quarreling and fighting, for disunity, for mutual grumbling, than to give them mystically pious speeches. Now, when understood in a straightforward way, this seems almost impossible; but it is a factual truth. It is a factual truth because it depends not only on the content of what one says, but on the way in which the person reacts to things. And one must know the world. And above all, one must not base one's views on one's desires.

I can always remember the conversation I once had in a southern German town with two Catholic priests who were in my lecture, which I gave at the time on the Bible and wisdom. The two Catholic priests could not really object to anything. The lecture contained precisely the things about which they could not reasonably object. But priests, even if they cannot object, cannot of course accept something like that; so they have to object to something. So they said: Yes, in terms of content, we could indeed say roughly what you said. But what we say, we say in such a way that every person can understand it; you, after all, are only saying it for a certain number of people who have a certain education, and what is said for people must be understandable for everyone. - Then I said to them: Yes, you see, what you believe is understandable to all people, and what I believe about it, that is not the point. What matters is not our theoretical views about what people understand, but the study of reality. And there you can easily do a reality test yourself. I ask you: If you now apply these methods and present this in your church today in the way you believe that all people will understand it – will all people go to your church, or aren't some already staying away today? That some stay away is much more important than you believing that you speak for all people. Because the reality is that some do stay away. That you believe you speak for all people is your belief. And for those who no longer go to church with you, I speak for them, because I believe that one has to submit to reality and that one can also speak to those who no longer go to church but who are still entitled to seek the path to the spiritual worlds. Here, in a trivial example, the difference is illuminated between how one thinks realistically, letting one's views be dictated by reality, and how most people believe they know what they just imagine, think up and wish for, and then swear by it. The reality researcher is even prepared at any time to discard anything he considers right, and when the facts teach him, to come to a different line of thought, because reality is not as straightforward as people wish it to be.

And so it may well be, and will increasingly be the case – this is the trend of the development of human nature – that while you want to teach the most pious mysticism, the most heartfelt mysticism of a sect, the people of that sect become more and more quarrelsome and quarrelsome. But it is just as unwise to teach people one-sided scientific views. To gain scientific knowledge, one needs a great deal of acumen, and you know that I am not at all inclined to be in any way inferior to anyone in fully recognizing scientific truths. But the fact also exists that if one were to teach the world only scientific truths or scientifically-oriented truths, the acumen that is applied to finding scientific truths would contribute significantly to condemning people to a lack of freedom. Just as one-sided mysticism would increasingly lead to quarrels and disputes, one-sided natural science in the sense of today's time would lead people to inner bondage, to inner bondage. So you see, it is fully considered when spiritual science strives neither to be one-sidedly mystical nor one-sidedly scientific, but to do justice to each individual without underestimating or overestimating it, but progressing from duality to trinity. Not the either-or, but the both-and, illumination of the one by the other, that is what spiritual science leads to by itself. For example, a person with a purely scientific mind who rants about mysticism is always going to be in the wrong, because what he says will generally be nonsense. But it is just as wrong, as a rule, for a purely mystical person who knows nothing of scientific knowledge to rant about science. Only a mystic should grumble about mysticism, if I may vary it, and only someone who knows about natural science should grumble about natural science now and then. Then his things will be as he says, because they will be weighed correctly. But it will always be bad if someone who does not understand natural science and perhaps believes himself to be a great mystic passes judgment on it, or if a scientist does not understand mysticism and passes judgment on mysticism. It has often been said in spiritual scientific circles that certain truths must appear paradoxical to people because they so strongly contradict the complacency of ordinary life.

Today I have presented you with a whole series of things that have, so to speak, struck your soul without being resolved. I have presented you with some facts of life that have to be admitted even if one would like things to be different. Many a person who today considers himself a great person, who is capable of much, has no idea of these truths of life. But this is precisely the basis of the catastrophes of our time, that our time so urgently needs to get to know this life and does not want to get to know this life.

Tomorrow we will talk about some of the things that should lead to the resolution of some contradictions that have rightly been brought to your souls today.

This lecture is the first of fifteen lectures in the series entitled, The Polarity of Continuity and Change in Human Life. Another name for this lecture is, The Bridge between the Ideal and the Real, Part 1.

I should like to take some of those subjects we have had here this Summer, which have been brought up in the course of our considerations, and to go more deeply into then. To-day, tomorrow, and the day after, I will therefore bring forward certain historical, and also a few objective facts; and to-day by way of preparation, I should like to point to a few historical facts, and from these, and especially from the revelation of certain historical personalities, we shall then draw conclusions upon which we can base our deeper considerations.

In all ages those who have been initiated into the Mysteries, have always uttered, and correctly, a certain saying. It is this:—“Unless a person knows how to value aright those two streams of world-conceptions which we have mentioned:—Idealism and Materialism,—he either falls through a trap-door into a kind of `cellar' as regards his view of the world, or he enters blindly along the other paths which one traverses to reach a World-Conception.” Now the trapdoor through which one may fall and which may very well escape notice in the “Weltanschaumergaleben,” has been recorded by the Mystery Initiates of all ages as the dualism which cannot find the bridge between the Ideal—one can also call it the “spiritually-coloured Ideal,”—and the Materialistical, that concerned with matter. And the blind alley into which one may stray along the various paths of philosophy if one does not find the balance between Idealism and Materialism, for those same Mystery Initiates this blind alley was Fatalism.

Our recent epoch clearly inclines on the one side to a dualistic outlook, and on the other to a fatalistic philosophy, although these things are not admitted nor even clearly seen.

Now, I should like to-day, to take a personality out of the life of the twilight of the 4th Post Atlantean epoch with reference to the life of philosophy, and give a brief sketch of him, and his outlook! and we can then consider other personalities more characteristic of the World-Conceptions of our own, the Post Atlantean epoch. A very, very characteristic personality in the Western life of thought, St. Augustine, who lived from the year 354 to 430 of our Christian era. We will recall certain thoughts of St. Augustine because, as you will see from the quotes I have quoted, he lived in the twilight of the 4th Post Atlantean epoch which case to an end in the 15th century. We can clearly see the approach of this end, starting from the 3rd-6th Post Xian centuries. Now St. Augustine had to pass through the impressions of the most diverse World-Views. We have often discussed these things. Above all, St. Augustine passed through Manichaeism and Scepticism. He had taken all those impulses into his soul which one gets if on the one hand, he looks at the world and sees everything Ideal, beautiful and good, all that is filled with Wisdom, and then on the other hand, all that is ugly, bad and untrue. Now we know that Manichaeism only “gets on” (this is coarsely expressed hut it can be expressed in this way)—it only gets on with these two streams in the Ordering of the Cosmos, by postulating an eternal, everlasting polarity, an everlasting dualism, between Darkness and Light, Evil and Good; that which is full of Wisdom, and that which is filled with wickedness.

Manichaeism only `gets' on with Dualism, (in its own way quite correctly), by uniting certain old pre-Christian basic concepts with its acceptance of the polarity in World-phenomena, Above all, it unites certain ideas which can only be understood when one knows that in ancient times the Spiritual world was perceived by humanity in atavistic clairvoyance, and perceived in ouch a way that men's visions of the Spiritual world were in their very content, similar to the impressions made by the Sense-world of perception. Now, because Manichaeism took into itself such ideas of a physical appearance, (sinnlichen schein) of the super-sensible, it thereby gives many people the impression of materialising the spirit, as though it presented the spirit in a material form. That, of course, is a mistake which more recent views of the world have made, (as I have explained lately) a mistake even made by modern Theosophy# St. Augustine actually broke with Manichaeism because in the course of his purified life of thought, he could no longer bear this materialisation of the spirit. That was one of the reasons which made him break with Manichaeism,

St. Augustine then also passed through Scepticism, which is a quite justifiable view of the world, in so far as it points man's attention to the fact that through the mere observation of what a person can gain from this Sense-world and his experiences therein, he can learn nothing concerning the super-sensible. And, if one is of opinion that one cannot stand for the super-sensible, as such, one begins to doubt the existence of any knowledge of the truth itself. It was doubt of the knowledge of the Truth through which St. Augustine also passed; and thereby obtained the strongest impulses.

Now if one wishes to see what led St. Augustine to place himself in Western philosophy, one must point to the apex of his perceptions, from which radiated all the light which rules in him, and which was also the apex of the view of the world which he finally developed. That is the point, my dear friends; and it can he characterised in the following ways:—St. Augustine came to acquire that Certainty, the true Certainty subject to absolutely no deception, which can only he acquired by man with reference to what he experiences in his inner soul. Everything else may be uncertain. Whether the things which appear to our eyes, or are audible to our ears, or which make impressions on our other Sense-organs, are really so constructed as they appear to be to the evidence of the senses, that one cannot know. We cannot even know how this world itself appears, when one shuts one's Sense organs to it. That is the way in which persons think of the external perceptible world, who think after the way of St. Augustine. They think this externally perceptible world, as it lies before us, can offer no unconditional certainty, can give no unconditioned truth; that man can gain nothing out of it on which he can stand on a firm substantial point. On the other hand, a men is present in what he experiences in his inner soul; quite regardless as to how he experiences it there, he himself experiences those ideas and feelings in his inner being. He knows himself to be living in his own inner experiences. And so, to such a thinker as St. Augustine, the fact is substantiated by his own inner experiences:—that, with reference to what man experiences in his inner soul as truth, he gives himself over to no possibility of deception. One can believe that everything else the world says is subject to deception, but one cannot possibly doubt that what one experiences in one's inner being, as one's ideas and feelings, is the truth; that is certain. That firm basis for the admittance of an indisputable truth, formed one of the starting-points of the Augustinian philosophy

Again in a striking way, in the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch, Descartes again took up that point; he lived from 1596 to 1650, thus in the dawn of the 5th Post Atlantean epoch. His assertion:—“I think, therefore I exist,” which remains true even if we doubt everything else, that he takes as his starting point, and in this perception he simply takes the standpoint of St. Augustine.

Now my dear friends, the fact is that with reference to any world-conception one must always say: A cum who lives at a particular point of time in human evolution acquires certain views:« only those who come later can see these. One must say that it is always reserved for those who come afterwards to see things in a more radical, true way, than does the person who has to utter them at a certain period of time in human evolution. One cannot get away from this fact; and it would be well, if especially from our Anthroposophical standpoint, as I have often told you, if it were recognised consciously and thoroughly, that even what is said now, even what we acquire as ever such advanced knowledge about Spiritual things, that must not be grasped as a sum of absolute dogmas. We must be quite clear that those who come after us, in future times, will see greater than we ourselves can. On this rests the true Spiritual evolution of mankind, and everything of a hindering nature In the Spiritual progress of mankind rests finally on the fact that human beings will not admit this. They like to have truths presented to them, not as the truths for one definite epoch of time, but as absolute timeless dogmas.

And so, from our point of view, we can look back on St. Augustine and shall have to say« If one stands on St. Augustine's standpoint, one must sharply look to this.—that he assumes uncertainty as to the truths of all external revelations, and true certainty only in the experience of what we carry in our souls. Now, if one gives oneself to such a perception as that, it presupposes that, as a human being, one has a certain courage. One would not perhaps need to mention so decidedly what I am now going to say, unless we had to admit the fact that it is characteristic of the world-view of our present age that it lacks courage, the lack of courage I refer to here is expressed in two directions. The one is this. When a person boldly admits, as did St. Augustine, that you can only find true certainty as regards what you yourself experience in your inner being, then the other pole of this courage should he there which is not there in our present age. One must also have the courage to admit that this true Certainty concerning reality is not to be found in external Sense-Revelation. It requires real inner courage in one's thought to deny external Reality in its utterances that true Certainty, which is held by modern Materialism as absolutely secure. And, on the other hand, it requires courage to admit that true certainty only comes when one is truly conscious of what one experiences inwardly. Certainly such things are said, even in our times, and there are those who demand this two-fold courage of their fellow-man, if they are anxious to create a world-conception, But one has to think differently about these things to-day, if one wishes to think exhaustively. And herein the whole historical position of St. Augustine is revealed for modern mankind, because one has to think differently about these matters. To-day one must know something which neither Augustine nor Descartes took into consideration. I hare spoken of this where I discuss Descartes, in my hook “The Riddles of Man.” To-day we must admit: The belief that one can come to a satisfactory philosophy through a grasp of one's immediate inner Being as man, as it offers itself to-day,—the belief that one can reach a firm standpoint in one's inner being,—is refuted every tine one goes to sleep. Every time a person to-day passes into the unconsciousness of sleep, from him is snatched that absolute certainty of inner experience of which St. Augustine spoke,—the Reality of that inner experience is snatched from him. Every tine you go to sleep until the moment of waking, the reality of real experience forsakes you. And the man of our age to-day, who experiences his inner being in a different way from that of the 4th Post Atlantean age, even from that of the twilight of the age of St. Augustine, has to admit: “No matter how acute a certainty is experienced in one's inner being, yet for man's life after death, there is no certainty at all; for the simple reason that the reality of his experiences sinks into the realm of the unconscious, every time he goes to sleep, and a modern human being does not even know whether it does not pass into Unreality, and so what man apparently experiences securely in his inner being is not made safe from attack. That may not be theoretically refuted perhaps, but the very fact of sleep contradicts it.”

Now if we turn attention to what has just been said, we recognise how, in reality, St. Augustine with a far greater justification than Descartes later, (who, after all, only merely repeated St. Augustine in another age)—with what right St. Augustine could arrive at his view. Through the entire 4th Post Atlantean epoch, and even through the age of St. Augustine, there still lived in human beings something of an echo of the old atavistic clairvoyance. History to-day unfortunately notices these things far too little and really knows little of them; but numerous were those persons throughout the whole 4th Post Atlantean age who, from their personal experiences knew that there existed a Spiritual life, because they beheld it. And in the 4th Post Atlantean age—it was different in the 3rd or in the 2nd Post Atlantean epochs—in the 4th age they beheld it chiefly because it played into their life of sleep. So that we may says: In the 4th Post Atlantean epoch it was not the case for human beings, (as it became later in the 5th epoch), that their sleep transpired completely unconsciously, Those human beings of the 4th Post Atlantean epoch knew that, from sleeping until waking up, there was a time in which all that they had as ideas, as feelings from waking to sleeping, still continued to work, but in other forms. Their waking life of truth dived down, as it were, into a dim, but conscious life of sleep. In that age one still knew that what was experienced as inner truth, was not only truth but also reality, because one knew those moments of sleeping life in which was revealed, not merely as an abstract life, but as a real concrete life in the spirit, what one had experienced in one's inner being. It is not a question to-day of proving whether St. Augustine himself could say, from his own experience, “I know myself that during the time between going to sleep and waking, there arises an experience which is true, even if not real inwardly.” The fact that one could grasp such a perception, on which one could stand firm, was still absolutely possible in the age of St. Augustine.

Now, you see, If you take what I have just said with reference to the subjective nature of man, and generalise it over the whole Macrocosm, you come to something else. You come to that condition from which subjective nature in an older epoch, and still in the 4th Post Atlantean period, has really proceeded; that from which it really became possible. Let us speak for a moment of the pre-Christian era. You must hear in mind that the Mystery of Golgotha is the dividing line between those ancient atavistic perceptions and the newer ones, which are on only to-day in their beginning. In that pre-Christian age one could still cling to certain living Mystery-Truth. The Mystery Truths to which I am now referring, are those which pertain especially to the great secret of Birth and Death. That is considered by certain Mystery Initiates as a secret which, they think, may not be referred to among the profane. (I have also spoken of this in recent lectures). They consider that those secrets should not be imparted to the world, because the world is not yet ripe to receive then. In that pre-Christian epoch there was in the Mysteries a certain view concerning the connection between Birth and Death in the great Cosmic life into which man with his entire being is inserted. In that pre-Christian age, through those Mysteries, man turned his attention specially to Birth, to all the processes of being born into the world. Anyone who is acquainted with the world-views of ancient times, knows also what emphasis was laid on the process of Birth,—of Arising, Sprouting, Growing;—all those processes, all those ancient views, specially concerned themselves with this. I have often emphasised what a gigantic contrast appeared through the Mystery of Golgotha. I have put it in the following way. Just think how, 600 years before the Mystery of Golgotha, Buddha, who stands ever in the evolution of man as the conclusion of the pre-Christian World-Conception, is led to his conceptions because, amongst other things, he beholds a corpse. “Death is suffering.” It becomes an axiom with the Buddha, that suffering must be overcome, A means must be found to be able to turn away from death. The corpse is that from which Buddha turns, in order to come to something which for him, though spiritualised, can be filled with Sprouting, Growing life.

If we now turn to 600 years after the Mystery of Golgotha, to another part of the world, and other human beings, we see that the vision of the Corpse of Christ on the Cross is not something which man has to turn away from, but to which he has to turn, which is regarded whole-heartedly as the symbol that can solve the riddles of the Cosmos in so far as they refer to man and his development.

There is a wonderful connection within this 1200 years. Six hundred years Before Golgotha, the turning away from a corpse gives an uplift to one's concept of the World; 600 years after Golgotha there la developed a symbol, The Image of the Crucifix, a turning towards death, towards a corpse, in order to create those forces from that Corpse, by which one can reach a concept of the world able to throw light on human evolution. Among the many things which show the mighty transformation which appeared in earthly evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha, there is this Buddha symbol, this turning away from the corpse; and then comes the Christ-symbol, the turning towards the Corpse—the Corpse of that Being Who is regarded as the Highest Being ever seen on the Earth.

It was really the case that in a certain connection the Old Mysteries put the Mystery of Birth in the very centre of their world-conception. But therewith, my dear friends, (since we are talking of Mystery-knowledge and not merely giving forth trivial view) therewith you have before your souls a deep cosmological secret. Your attention is turned to that with which is connected the life of Birth in the world's evolution.

And one does not come to understand this life of Birth in the Cosmos unless one can go back to the Riddle of the Old Moon. We know indeed that the previous incarnation of the Earth before it became Earth was Old Moon, and in many of the phenomena connected with our present Moon, that camp-follower, so to speak of the Old Moon,—(you can read [about] this in my “Outline of Occult Science”)—in various phenomena connected to-day with the present Moon, with this straggler, we simply have the after effects of what occurred in the Moon-Incarnation of the Earth, at the time which preceded our earthly development.

Now there would be no such thing as Birth in all the kingdoms of nature, there would be nothing born on the Earth, were it not that the law of the Old Moon prevailed through this straggler, which is the satellite of our Earth. All birth in the various kingdoms of nature and man, is dependent on the activity of the Moon. With this is also connected the fact that the Initiates of the ancient Hebrews regarded Jehovah as the Moon-God, as a Divine Being who arranged the process of bringing forth; Jehovah was honoured as a Moon-Divinity. It was clearly seen that cosmologically, behind all the processes of birth throughout all the kingdoms, there ruled the laws of the Moon, And so one could, I might say, symbolically utter a deep secret of Cosmology by saying, when the Moonlight falls on the Earth, on what is represented through this light, depends everything connected with all the Sprouting, Growing and `being born' on the Earth. In those pre-Christian ages one did not turn in the highest Mysteries to the life of the Sun, one turned to the reflected sunlight, that is, to the Moon, whenever the secret of Birth was alluded to. And the peculiar “Nuances” which were poured over the depths of those pre-Christian conceptions depended on the fact that the Initiates knew the Mysteries of the Moon.

They regarded the Sun Mysteries as something quite veiled, something hardly bearable for a humanity not fully prepared, because they knew that it is a deception, a maya, to believe that through the rays of the Sun falling on the Earth those things which Sprout and Grow are enchanted out of the various kingdoms of nature. That is a deception, a Maya. It was known that from the life of the Sun did not depend the process of Birth, but, on the contrary, the decaying, decreasing life, the process of Death. These were the secrets of the Mysteries. The Moon causes things to be born, but the Sun causes them to die. And, however highly for other reasons the Sun-life was honoured in those pre-Christian Mysteries, the Sun-life was honoured as the cause of death. The fact that beings had to die was not to be ascribed to the Sun, the 2nd incarnation of the Earth, but has to be ascribed to the present Sun, which appears so magnificently on the horizon.

Well, the decay of life, the opposite of birth, is connected with the Sun-life, but, my dear friends, there was something else, not so important in that pre-Christian age, but very specially important in our post-Christian age, and that is, that all conscious life is connected with Sun-life, and that conscious life through which man has especially to pass in the course of his earthly evolution, that consciousness which shines forth especially in the 5th. Post Atlantean age to which we ourselves belong, that is most intensely connected with the Sun-life. Only we must consider this Sun-life Spiritually, as we have attempted to do in the course of lectures given this Summer. For, if indeed the Sun is the creator of Death, of the decaying life in the Cosmos and also of man, yet the Sun is at the same time the creator of conscious life. The conscious life was not so important in the pre-Christian ages, because it was then replaced by an atavistic clairvoyant life, which will remained as an inheritance of the Moon. For our post-Christian age is has, however, become important, far more important than life. Consciousness has become more important than life, because only through consciousness can the goal of earthly evolution be reached—which is, that this consciousness should be attained in the corresponding way by the humanity on earth. You must receive this consciousness from the giver, the Sun, from which comes the living into Death and not the life of Birth.

Therefore the Mystery of Golgotha appears as that power in earthly development which has now become the most important thing for this evolution,—the Son of the Sun, the Christ, Who passed through the Body of Jesus of Nazareth,—That is connected with the deepest Cosmic secrets. The ancient Mystery Initiates said to their pupils: “Try to recognise through your sleep-life how the Moon-forces are playing into it. (WE know that even waking-man is partially asleep). Try to recognise the MOON-life in your sleep-life, for it plays into your sleep-life, as the Silvery Moon-shine plays into the darkness of night.”

The Christian Initiates on the contrary said to their disciples: “Try to recognise that in your waking-life consciousness shines; for the Sun-Forces pour into your waking-life, just as from morning till evening the Sun shines outside in the life of the Earth.”

You see, this reversal was fulfilled through the Mystery of Golgotha, and, whereas in pre-Christian ages the most important thing was to recognise the origin of Life, it has now become the most important thing to recognise the origin of Consciousness, Only through learning to unite this cosmological wisdom with what man experiences as true certainty in his soul, which means, only by grasping Spiritual Science with one's Inner Being, does man come to see the Spiritual Reality concealed in that which otherwise lacks this reality in his inner being.

Now with those means possessed by St. Augustine, the means possessed by those who stand on an Augustinian basis, one cannot get very far, because every sleep refutes the real certainty of one's inner experiences. Only when its Reality is added to this inner experience does man come to a really firm stand on the basis of his inner experience.

You see, my dear friends, that which we think to-day, that which we feel to-day in our present life on Earth, has not as yet any reality. This is even recognised to-day, by a few scientifically-thinking men. What we think and feel in our inner soul is unreal at present; and that is just the peculiarity—that what we experience most intimately, that which shines indubitably in us as truth, without doubt that at present has no reality. But this is really the fruitful seed for our next earthly life. That of which St. Augustine was speaking, and for which there is no guarantee of its reality, that we may say, is the seed for the next earthly life. We can say:—it is true that the truth shines in our inner being, but it shines simply as a gleam, (Schein). To-day it is still but a gleam, but in our earthly incarnation that which now is gleam, and as such is simply a germ, will become a fruit which animates our next incarnation, as the seed of the plant this year will animate the visible plant of next year. Only when we conquer time can we find in what we now experience inwardly, a reality. Of course we should not be the human being we are and that we should be, if we experienced our inward truth as though it were a reality like the external world. We should never become free. There could be no question of freedom; we should not even be personalities, we should simply be woven into an ordering of Nature, and whatever occurred in us would occur of necessity. We are only personalities, and especially free personalities, because from out of the weaving of natural events there arises as a kind of miracle, the gleam (der Schien) of those things which we experience in our inner soul and which will only become external reality, like that of our environment, in our next earthly incarnation.

It is the deceptive nature of our age to which all fantasy still gives itself, that we do not take into consideration the fact that what springs up inwardly as an unreality is one earthly incarnation, becomes a concrete reality in the next. We shall speak further on this point in the next two lectures.

We see how from the standpoint we have acquired to-day we can look back at the standpoint of St. Augustine, how we can understand him, and to a certain extent can see in him what he himself could not yet see. Thus, St. Augustine stands for us as a specially significant figure in the twilight of the 4th Post-Atlantean age, because with especial sharpness he points to the one stream in world-happiness to the stream of the Ideal; and in this stream he seeks to find a firm point. St. Augustine sought that firm point. To-day we only want to bring forward the historical fact.

There had not yet come to people in his age that tremendous swing of the pendulum which came about with the Mysteries of Birth and of Death, for only out of this Mystery of Death of which we shall speak further tomorrow, can one find a real substantiation of the absolute certainty of what man experiences inwardly as Truth.

We shall now have to make a great jump. Just as we hare characterised what reveals itself in St. Augustine as representative of the twilight of the 4th Post Atlantean age, so we will take certain personalities characteristic of our 5th Post Atlantean age, and study them according to a certain direction. Of these I will select two.

One of these persons in whom a certain tendency was developed which is characteristic for the 5th age, is Count Saint-Simon, who lived from 1766 to 1825. Another is a pupil of Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte. who lived from 1798 to 1857. If we have in St. Augustine a personality who, with all the means which stood at his disposal, sought through his knowledge, to substantiate Christianity, so on the other hand in Saint-Simon as also in Augusts Comte, we see personalities who are led completely astray as regards Christianity, We can best gain a clear idea of what lived in Auguste Comte, as also in a certain sense in Saint-Simon, if we briefly outline the chief thoughts of Auguste Comte.

Auguste Comte is to a great extent representative of a certain World-view in our age; and it is only due to the fact that people trouble so little as to how certain impulses in philosophy incorporate themselves into the life of man, that Auguste Comte is regarded as a kind of rarity, in historical life. These persons do not know how, perhaps not quite everywhere, but still in countless human beings, Augusts Comte exercises a school-masterly influence in the essential directions of their thinking, and one may say that Auguste Comte is representative of a great portion of the philosophical life of the present.

Auguste Comte says that humanity has developed through Three stages, and has now reached the third stage. If one observes the soul-life of man through these three stages, one finds in the first stage that the ideas of man tended mostly towards Demonology. The first stage of evolution in the Comte sense is the demonological stage. Human beings imagined that behind the sensible phenomena of Nature super-sensible Spiritual beings were active and operative; spirits were imagined everywhere in trivial life—demons were threatening everywhere, big demons and little demons. That was the first stage.

Then men passed on, as they developed a little further, from the standpoint of Demonology to that of Metaphysics. Whereas they first thought demons, elementary beings, were behind all phenomena, they then put abstract ideas in their place.—People became Metaphysical when they no longer wanted to be believers in demons. Thus the second stage is that of Metaphysics. They united certain concepts with their own life, and thought that through those ideas they could come to the basis of things.

But man has now gone beyond this stage. He has entered on the third stage, in which Augusts Comte quite in the sense of his master Saint Simon, assumes that man no longer looks on demons, no longer looks to Metaphysical concepts when seeking the basis of the World, but simply to that which results as the Sense-Reality of positivistic science. The third stage is therefore the stage of Positivism, of Positivistic Science. The revelations to be obtained simply through external scientific experience should be regarded by man as leading to a world-conception. He should explain himself in the some way as the metaphysical explanation given about the orderings of space, as physics explain the law of Forces, Chemistry the ordering of Substances, or Biology the ordering of Life. Just as everything can thus be explained by the different Sciences, so Comte tried to present a like harmony in his great work on Positive Philosophy. Everything which can be experienced through the various positive Sciences is considered by Comte as the sole thing worthy of man in the third stage. Christianity itself he still considers as the highest development of the last phase of Demonology, Then appeared Metaphysics,—which gave man a number of abstract concepts. But a concrete reality which alone can give an existence worthy of man on Earth, that can be given by Positive Science alone, according to Comte. And so he even tries to found a Church on the basis of Positive Science, to bring man into such social structures as can be grasped on a basis of Positive Science. It is very extraordinary to see to what things Auguste Comte really came at last. I will only bring forward a few really characteristic features, He occupied himself a great deal with the founding of a Positivistic Church. Now if you just take the various points, you will at once perceive the spirit of it. This Positivistic Church was to bring out a kind of Calendar. A certain number of the days of the year were to be devoted, for instance, to the memory of such people as Newton or Galileo, or Kepler; the bearers of Positivistic Science, These days were to be devoted to their veneration. Other days should then be devoted to the condemnation of such people as Julian the Apostate or Napoleon. All that was to be regulated. Life itself was to be regulated with a great sweep, according to the basic principles of Positivistic Science.

Now anyone who knows life to-day, knows that no great number of human beings would take such ideals as those of Augusts Comte seriously although that is simply cowardice, because in truth people do think as Auguste Comte did. If one studies the image the Positivistic Church of Comte gives, one actually gets the impression that the structure of his Church accords absolutely and entirely with that of the Roman Catholic Church. Only the Christ is lacking in the Positivistic Church of Auguste Comte, and that is the extraordinary thing. That is just what we must place before our souls as characteristic,—Auguste Comte seeks a Catholic Church without the Christ. That is what he came to, when he took those three stages into his soul;—Demonology, Metaphysics and Positivism. And one can say he took over all the “clothing” of Christianity, as it came to him out of history. He considered the clothing very good; but the Christ Himself he wished to banish out of his Church. That is the essential point round which everything revolves in Auguste Comte. A Catholic Church without the Christ.

That, my dear friends, is infinitely characteristic of the dawn of the 5th Post-Atlantean age, because as Auguste Comte thought, so a spirit had to think who had absorbed in his soul the element of Romanism, and thought from out of this element of Romanism, while at the same time he thoughtfully in the sense of the 5th Post Atlantean epoch, with its so absolutely anti-spiritual character. And so Auguste Comte and his teacher Saint-Simon, are in the highest degree characteristic of the dawning of our 5th Post Atlantean age. But in this 5th age many things have yet to be decided, and therefore other shadings appear which are still also possible. I just want to throw a few historical lights before you to-day, on which we can then build further.

An extraordinary contrast to Auguste Comte is Schelling; who lived from 1775 to 1854; and he also is to a certain extent characteristic of the dawn of our 5th Post Atlantean age. Of course I cannot put before you even diagrammatically the world-view of Schelling. We have spoken often of it from this or the other point of view—it is most manifold in itself. I cannot even give you any idea now of its structure, but can only point out various characteristics.

I told you St. Augustine takes his stand in the twilight of the 4th Post Atlantean age with the purpose, so to observe the one stream, the Ideal, that thereby he could get a firm point on which to stand. We now enter on the 5th Post Atlantean age. In its dawn we have such spirits as Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte who, in a purely natural materialistic ordering, seek a firm point in positivistic science. Thus we have two streams—Augustine on the one aide, Auguste Comte on the other. Schelling seeks to get behind what can be seen in the world with the ordinary means of the 5th Post Atlantean age; he seeks first abstractly and philosophically for a bridge between the Ideal and the Real, the Ideal and the Material, He tried with infinite energy to find the bridge, (You can find the essential points of this in my book “Riddles of Man.”) He seeks with infinite energy to bridge over that opposition and he came at first to all kinds of abstract thoughts in the course of this bridge-building. While he first built on the same basis as Johann Gottlieb Fichte, he went a little further, and attempted to grasp something in the world as real Being—something which is both the Ideal and the Real at the same time. Then came a time in Schelling's life in which it appeared impossible to him, with the methods of abstractions brought to him in the course of time out of the 5th Post Atlantean age, to build a bridge between those two. So he said one day: “Human beings have really only acquired on the basis of their modern learning concepts by which they can grasp the external ordering of Nature. But we have no concepts by means of which we can come behind this external Nature to that sphere where one could build a bridge between the Ideal and External Reality,” It is extremely interesting that one day Schelling made the following admission, He said, it appeared to him as though the learned people of the last centuries had concluded a silent contract tending to wipe out everything of a deeper nature,—all that could lead one to a real true life. Therefore he said, “We must turn to the unlearned people.” That was the time when Schelling started studying Jacob Boehme, and found in him that Spiritual deepening which then guided him to his final and theosophical period of life, from which proceeded his wonderful books the “Freedom of Man,” “The Gods of Samathrace,” the Kabiri Divinities; followed by his “Philosophy of Mythology” and the “Philosophy of Revolution.”

Now what Schelling most sought, especially in the last period of his life, was to understand the intervention of the Mystery of Golgotha into the history of mankind. That he sought especially; and while so doing it occurred to him that, with the ideas at the disposal of modern learning, one could never really understand the life which flows from the Mystery of Golgotha; which means that one could never come to understand the true life of man. Thereby Schelling—formed the conclusion, (and that is the tendency which I want to emphasise especially now:—we will build further on this in the next lecture) -, which is in complete contrast to that of his contemporary, Auguste Comte. That is the remarkable thing. We may say that Auguste Comte seeks a Catholicism, or I might better say a Catholic Church, without Christianity; Schelling, with his views, sought a Christianity without a Church. Schelling seeks, as it were, to Christianise the whole of modern life, to permeate it with Christianity; so that everything which human beings can Think and Feel and Will is absolutely saturated by the Christ-Impulse, He does not seek a separate clerical life for Christianity, especially not after the type found in historical evolution, although he studied this life very carefully.

Thus we have those two extremes—Auguste Comte's thought, of a Church without Christ, and Schelling's thought, of a Christ without a Church.

I just wanted to place these historical views before your soul, in order to be able to build further on these things. We have seen one spirit who seeks a firm starting point in Idealism—A spirit, Auguste Comte, who seeks a firm starting point in Realism, and then a personality such as Schelling who seeks to build a bridge between them. Both these tendencies preceded the evolution in which we ourselves are engaged.

We may say the following:—we can now survey those things which have contributed through many centuries to the life of World-Conceptions, and then we can turn our attention to the way in which these ideas have developed in the widest circles of human beings. The study of Auguste Comte gives a very important Apercu, but Comte himself could not attain this, because he stuck so rigidly to his positivistic prejudices. But something which can give us an important starting point for our considerations for the next days results, when we see in an Apercu the connection between St. Augustine, Augusts Comte, and Schelling, I will just put this at the conclusion of these considerations, because I should like it to have a place in your souls. We shall then have to speak of that which is connected in a significant way with just this. Now, as this Apercu results from a consideration of what I have told you, I will simply put aphoristically, without giving the foundations for it in detail, the reason why this, which is not to be found in Auguste Comte, is to be found in others. I have told you that it is important not to consider the life of these World-views individually in the abstract, but one must regard them as incorporated into the entire life of humanity. Only thereby does one reach a standpoint of reality, then one can see the incorporation of these things into the collective life of mankind.

It was clear to Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte that they could only come to their positivism in recent times, that it would have been impossible in an earlier age. Auguste Comte feels it especially strongly! he says approximately: “My mode of thought is only possible in our Age.” That in something which is of infinite importance in our modern Movement, and is connected with that Apercus to which I am referring. If one takes what Augusts Comte considers as a starting point for his threefold division, one can say in his sense, that this threefold division is Theology, Metaphysics, and what he calls Positivistic Science.

It is very characteristic that one can put this questions “Who will most easily be a believer in any one of these directions?” I beg you not to misunderstand what I am saying with reference to this Apercu, not even to grasp it as a one-sided radical dogma to be applied very roughly with absolute certainty to our present age, but to take it as applying to the whole evolution of man, as it must if one will regard what I now say. One can ask: not “Who will be a believer?” but “Who will most easily be a believer in any one of these directions?” From a very careful consideration, contradictory to facts as it may seem» this results:—The one who most easily becomes a believer in Theology (please, not a bearer, not a theologian, nor worker, but simply a believer; I am not speaking of religion but of Theology) is the Soldier. The person who most easily becomes a believer in Metaphysics is the Official, especially the legal Official. And the person who most easily becomes a believer in Positivistic Science is the Industrial.

It is important if one must judge life, not to remain in the abstract, but to look at it quite unprejudiced, and then such questions have to be put.

I just want this quite treated as an Apercu which results when one intimately studies Auguste Comte, because he was conscious that he was only completely comprehensible to the Industrials; and only in an industrial Age could he appear on the scene with his views. That is connected with the fact that the Industrial is most easily a follower of Positivistic Sciences the Soldier most easily a believer not merely of Christian but of any Theology, and the Official most easily a believer, a follower of Metaphysics.

Theology—The Soldier

Metaphysics—The Official

Positive Science—The Industrial

---

St. Augustine (354–430)

St. Simon (1766–1825)

Auguste Comte(1798–1857)—A Catholic Church

---

1. Demonology

2. Metaphysics

3. Positivistic Science

---

Schelling 1775–1854—Christianity without a Church.

This lecture is the second of fifteen lectures in the series entitled, The Polarity of Continuity and Change in Human Life. Another name for this lecture is, The Bridge between the Ideal and the Real, Part 2.

A full insight into those relationships which we are now contacting is not possible unless one looks more closely into the nature of man in the period between going to sleep and waking up; that is, the sleeping condition. Of course, diagrammatically, the sleeping condition is well-known to you. That which we call the astral body and Ego separate from the physical and etheric bodies, But if we wish to go more deeply into the nature of sleep; we must remember that it is just in the sleeping condition that a man experiences the reality of what we discussed in our last lecture, when we said that St Augustine sought in his own inner experience to grasp the real true certainty about the world, I told you in yesterday's lecture that in his waking condition, condition, man does not grasp the full reality of his inner being. We must be quite clear that what is described as the astral body and the ego, do not really come to the consciousness of man by day; in his waking condition there only comes to his consciousness a copy, a mirror-picture of his ego and astral body. If man were conscious in the sleeping condition, that is from going to sleep until waking up, or, let us say, if he became conscious through those exercises which you can find described in my various writings—(which are all at your disposal)—, if man could thus become conscious through his sleeping condition, he would experience not a mirror-image, as by day, but the true form of his Ego and Astral body. But we must quite clearly realise that the true form of the Astral body and Ego appear in such a way to the soul of man when he develops Imaginative Consciousness, that in the inner experiences during the sleep condition, he experience in his Ego end Astral body what we cull the third Hierarchy, the Hierarchy of the Angels, Archangels and Archai.

Although throughout the whole of man's working life he stands in intimate connection with what we must designate as the Angels, Archangels and Archai, he does not experience this consciously during the waking condition; and that constitutes the deception in man's waking condition. He remains aware only of an abstract Ego of those shadowy ideas and concepts which fill man's soul, or perhaps of half-dreamy feelings and willings. This is the essential—that throughout the waking condition man does not progress beyond experiencing this shadowy side of his Ego and Astral body; and that he cannot become conscious that all the time there is working into his Ego those Beings of the third Hierarchy to which I have just referred. But if he were really to wake up in his sleep, if I may use that expression, he would not have external nature around him, but would immediately feel in himself the Beings of the Angels, Archangels and the Time-Spirits.

Now because those Beings work in us, my dear friends we have in the constitution of our soul something which we would not have otherwise have had. For instance, if the Hierarchy of the Angels did not work into our and Astral body, we would never feel ourselves to be individuals. Therefore, just because the Hierarchy of the Angels work into our Spiritual, psychic nature, we can feel ourselves to be free persons.

Because the Hierarchy of the Archangels work into us, we can feel ourselves as members of the whole of humanity. We might also say, that because these Arch-Angelic Beings shine into our psychic, Spiritual nature, inspiring it, therefore we really feel ourselves as men.

And because the Beings of the Archai, the Spirits of Time, pulsate in our nature, filling it with their Intuition, therefore we feel ourselves as earthly human beings—that means members not only of the present humanity, but of the whole of earthly humanity, from the very start of earthly evolution to the very end of Earth-life. In that way we can feel ourselves as members of the entire earthly humanity. Of course, we only feel it dimly, because we can only dimly sense the influence of these Time-Spirits within us.

We cannot say that we behold ourselves as personalities; that we can only do when we attain the Imaginative Consciousness. There remains a kind of reflection of this Imaginative Consciousness when we so experience our thinking that, through the free life of thought we feel ourselves as individual beings. Let us once more make quite clear how it is that we feel ourselves as individuals. We feel ourselves as personalities because we can, of our own free will add one thought to another. You would at once cease to feel yourselves as personal beings if you were compelled to add one thought to another just as in the world of external nature one phenomenon is linked on to another. This experience of inner freedom for the developing of a thought, gives us the certainty of feeling ourselves as personalities. This feeling of inner freedom is what comes clearest of all to man's consciousness by day; and it comes to man by day when he is awake, because, from the moment of sleeping until waking he is permeated by his Angel, that Angelic Being belonging to his own Ego.

In the feeling oneself as a human being as a member of all humanity, we are generally speaking, already far more apathetic, we feel ourselves far less strongly and intensely as members of the whole of mankind; and that is because the Arch-Angels, who bring this about, stand further away from us than do our Angels; and that which inserts itself as Personality into the whole human stream of evolution, (and which comes from the Archai) that remains for most human beings something really quite shadowy. On the basis of Anthroposophy we seek to evoke this very feeling, of belonging to the entire earthly humanity, for it becomes clear to us that in the 5th Post Atlantean epoch man experiences things in a certain way; in the 4th in a different way; in the 3rd in a still different way. One thus sees how the mood of soul has altered in the various epochs of time, alterations brought about by the various Beings of the 3rd Hierarchy, the Archai, the Spirits of Time. It is of this that we seek to create a consciousness on the basis of Spiritual Science. This consciousness can alone give man the possibility of feeling himself an historical Being, of feeling conscious: “I am now living as a Personality, in the 20th Century.” The fact does not enter the consciousness of most human beings, that their personality can only be real as Personality, because it has been placed in a definite point of time. How this permeation of the human soul and spirit-being by the Beings of the third Hierarchy, is something of which men would become aware, if he were intensely enough to attain Imaginative Cognition.

In the ordinary path of human evolution, as you know, Imaginative Cognition is not present. From the moment of going to sleep until waking up, the reality of man's ego and astral body is dumped down; and by day, when man is awake, he loses his connection with the Beings of the third Hierarchy. That comes from the fact that especially in our present cycle of time, man, when he is awoke, is given over to an illusion. As we have seen, when he is asleep, man is subject to the deception that his so and Astral body are not then active; but they are not inactive. They are then in living interchange with the Beings of the third Hierarchy. In the waking condition, the state of affairs at the present cycle of tine is, that our physical and etheric bodies, “unjustly” illegally, as we night say, absorb our Spiritual, Psychic nature. They permeate themselves with our spirit and soul. Normally this should not be the case. It should be normal for a man to-day when awake, to feel himself an Ego and Astral body, and to feel his etheric and physical bodies as a kind of shell into which he crawls, to feel then as something which he carries consciously about with him. But man does not feel that today? he feels as if the physical and etheric bodies were himself. But this they are not. We are that Spiritual, psychic being which makes use of the physical and etheric bodies as an instrument; but we cannot raise ourselves above the deception which belongs to the working of our epoch of time. We are, us it were, compelled to identify ourselves with that which in the normal consciousness should be like a hammer which one takes in ones hand and gives blows with it; so should we regard our physical and etheric bodies. But in this epoch we have to identify ourselves with them,—to give ourselves over to the deception that we are these, that it is we ourselves who thus go in a fleshly way through space. But they are not ourselves. That is only because the consciousness of our ego is absorbed unjustly illegally, by the physical and etheric bodies. That simply rests in the fact that in the present cycle of time the Ahrimanic powers are stronger than they should be in the normal evolution of mankind.

They draw down the etheric and astral bodies into the physical and etheric bodies, so to speak, and they bring about in man the deception that the head which he carries is himself, that his hands and his whole body is himself. Wrongfully the physical body absorbs that consciousness, so that it appears as if the physical body brought about our personality. Anyone who thinks that his physical body brings about his personality is subject to the same deception as a person would be, who standing before a mirror, believes it produces him, because it radiates his reflection. To say that this fleshly form we carry round with us is ourselves, is no cleverer than to hold your hand before a mirror and believe that the mirror is producing your hand. Yet the whole of modern Science is subject to that deception, All modern Science believes that what we as individual persons experiences inwardly, is somehow produced by the physical and etheric bodies; whereas all the physical and etheric bodies do, is to radiate back our astral body and ego, forming the mirror-image which, while we are awake, we recognise to be our ego and our thoughts, in other words, our astral body.

That is the Fundamental Truth which we mast realise. With reference to this Fundamental Truth, modern humanity, by reason of the forces working through our present epoch of time, give themselves over to a deception of consciousness which consists, as I have just told you, in the delusion that all that we think, or experience as our thoughts or our feelings, is produced by our body. Mankind is subject naturally to this delusion to-day. With his present consciousness he cannot transcend that deception, just as the Sun when low on the horizon looks bigger than when high up in the heavens. One knows it is a delusion, yet it does seem to be so. At this point of time man help regarding his flash and blood as himself. That is a delusion of consciousness, my dear friends; but man was not always subject to this deception of consciousness; it is essentially a characteristic quality of the humanity of post-Christian tines, after the Mystery of Golgotha. Before the Mystery of Golgotha this delusion did not exist. Before the Mystery of Golgotha there existed another kind of deception, Before Golgotha man did not believe that his consciousness was united with his physical body. Of course, history tells nothing of this, but it is so. It would have been sheer nonsense for a man of the second or third millennium of the pre-Christian era to suppose that his soul was produced by his physical body; in olden times no man felt himself bound to his physical body as the modern man does. In those pre-Christian times man really had a living consciousness of the Beings of the third Hierarchy, and because he knew:—“My soul is not identical with my body,” he also knew that his soul was not bound up with the bone and muscles of his body, but that it was bound up with the Beings of the third Hierarchy,

He was subject to a different delusion, not in his consciousness but in his life. He believed that his soul was bound up with external nature, together with the Beings of the third Hierarchy, just as modern man believes his soul to be bound up with his physical body. Man to-day gives himself over to a delusion in consciousness, he believes that his soul is united with his body. The reason he cannot see the Beings of the Angels, Archangels and Archai, is because his physical body darkens them for him. The man of old, although he had a consciousness that these Beings were there and that his soul was bound up with them, could not see directly but only dimly into the external, sensible nature. A modern man, in the delusion of his consciousness, believes that his soul is bound up with his body; the man of old believed that the Beings of the third Hierarchy were bound up with the external nature which he perceived with his senses. At that time he confused the Divine Beings of the third Hierarchy with the phenomena of nature, and expressed this in his interpretation of natural phenomena. Man to-day places his soul in his flesh and blood, the man of old placed the Beings of the third Hierarchy in external nature. He had no Natural Science such as we have to-day, but he considered the phenomena of nature as brought about by this or the other demon, more or less Divine Spiritual Beings, concerning whom he gave himself to a life of deception, in that he thought of these Spiritual Beings as operative in the phenomena of Nature. It is an important fact, that this change took place in the development of man in pre-Christian times; he gives himself over to a characteristic delusion of life, and after the Mystery of Golgotha to a delusion in his consciousness. The reality, the effective working of Christ Jesus (and of this we shall speak further in the next lecture) should consist in this—of elevating, of raising that delusion in man's consciousness, elevating it, bringing it home to him that he is deceived; and through the “Christus in mir.” “Christ in me,” man should be brought to feel that what lives as astral body and ego, lives in free Spirituality, and is not bound up with his flesh and blood. Of course, this can only be seen on the path of Spiritual Science, but it can already be felt in the words of St Paul: “Nicht ich, aber das Christus in mich,” “Not I, Christ in me.”

From what I have told you, you can already, my dear friends see that there are reasons why man should experience this Duality up to a certain point; experiencing on the one hand the ordering of Nature which consists contains no ideals, which of necessity connects one event with another, an ordering in which merely cause and effect, effect and cause are incorporated, so that one can never think that through what goes on in Nature, any ideal, moral or otherwise, can be realised. On the other hand, man is conscious that he could not develop an existence worthy of man unless he had ideals, unless he could cling to something else than a mere external Ordering of Nature. But with the consciousness accessible to him to-day, he cannot regard his ideals as operative, as effective, in the same way as, let us say, electricity or magnetism or the force of heat,—so, that the ideals are able to enter into Nature, into the ordering of natural phenomena. For that reason the Ordering of Nature and his own ideals appear to him side by side, but he cannot build a bridge from one to the other. He cannot build that bridge my dear friends, because he cannot look into the Cosmos both by day and by night, where the bridge has to be built. If only man could have a normal consciousness by day—that means an Ahriman-free consciousness—so that he could feel: “I as an individual person, am not bound to my physical or etheric bodies any more than when I look into a mirror which reflects me, I am bound to the image before me.” If man could have this consciousness about his ego and astral body, he would regard the ego and astral bodies as reality and not as mere reflected images, and then he could also recognise his ideals as real forces, just as real as electricity and magnetism, only they are not working at the present time, they are acquiring reality in the present incarnation for the next; from this earthly existence they pass over into the next earthly existence.

If man in the waking condition could perceive that his ego and astral body are bound up with the Beings of the third Hierarchy, as I have pointed out,—in other words,—if man could but fully see himself, and not merely feel himself but realise himself as a free personality not bound up with flesh and blood, he would no longer believe that the external nature outside him as presented to his sense-organs is a strong enough reality to oppose the force of his Ideals, He would know that, that which is the Ordering of Nature to-day, will crumble away with all those substances; that there is no such thing as the conservation of matter, but that which in Nature destroys itself, and when that which to-day is Nature no longer exists, then another external sense-reality will appear in its place, and that which to-day constitutes our ideals will become Nature in the next epoch. So we can say, to-day we experience an Ordering of Nature, (see diagram red) we experience an Ordering of our Ideals (yellow). The physicist believes that this Nature is maintained by a conservation of force and a conservation of matter, that the Ordering of Nature persists—, that the same atoms, the same forces play into all future.

[Missing Diagram]

The physicist, if he is sincere, can say none other than this:—“The ideal Ordering was a dream, it must sink and vanish like dreams. At the end of the earth our dream-ideal will no longer be there, it will have been buried.”

Spiritual Science shows that this is a delusion, untrue. We have the Ordering of Nature, (red) but in reality there is no conservation of force or of matter, for that which is the Ordering of matter ceases at a certain definite point of time; and that which to-day constitutes our ideal Order, forms the continuation of the Ordering of Nature.

[A gap in the page ... another missing diagram?]

All that we see round us with our eyes, or that we hear with our ears, all that we perceive around us with all our senses, will, when the earth reaches the Venus-condition, be non-existent; but out of that nothingness the possibility will be given for the Ideals of modern humanity to become the external Ordering of Nature. No conception of the world, my dear friends, which fails to recognise the destruction of what is sensible, can ever have a hope that the Ideal has the power to realise itself, for if what is sensible were eternal, if the conservation of force and matter did exist, them our ideal world would simply be a dream. It is of immense significance that man should at the present time, have this illumination:—that the Ideals of the present constitute the Nature of the future. It is a great delusion to believe that the atoms and forces around us are the eternal. They are not the eternal; they are the temporal. That indeed is the fate of Spiritual Science, it has to contradict and refute a perception held by the present-day universal perception and view of science as an absolute certainty, and which is yet nothing but an Ahrimanic deception.

Now let us go back again to something else, to which I have drawn your attention. Before the Mystery of Golgotha what I have characterised to you as the delusion of man, can be described as a delusion of life; after the Mystery of Golgotha it was a delusion of consciousness. When one knows this, one can understand many things in the development of man. Above all one understands why, before the Mystery of Golgotha, those human beings who had atavistic clairvoyance, could not see things in their true form, but saw the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies as demons. That is why those ancient Mythologies consist essentially in a demonology. The Gods of the ancient Mythologies were seen as Demons, as for the most part they were. And that rests on the fact that a delusion of life was present then. Men had to think of a false Ordering of Nature as a Divine Ordering, just as they have to think to-day of a false Ordering of the body as ordained for mankind.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha; and man had to take the soul-mood which resulted from the Mystery of Golgotha. Before the Mystery of Golgotha, man in his waking condition stood in a more direct relationship to the Beings of the third Hierarchy than to-day. He saw them. And through their delusion of life they “fantasised” these Beings into Zeus, Apollo, and so on. These are the Beings of the third Hierarchy, but they were poetically altered, as seen under the influence of that delusion of life, as we to-day see everything which refers to man under the influence of our delusion of consciousness.

In spite of all that however, a Divine Spiritual order was spread into humanity. Just think how close man of those ancient epochs felt his human world to be to the Divine Ordering of the Cosmos! There was the human Hierarchy, and then came the Divine Hierarchy. Man did not feel so cut off as to-day, for he continued the world straight up to the Gods! How close the Greek felt his world of the Gods to the world of Man.

Then came the Mystery of Golgotha, and that was then no longer the case! Not through the Mystery of Golgotha, for that was to give compensation for what has been lost. But time itself brought into human evolution that man was to be cut off from this conscious connection with the Divine-Spiritual world of the third Hierarchy; only a memory, an historical memory remained. Then came the time of the first epoch after the Mystery of Golgotha. Men certainly had to think somewhat differently to what they did before the Mystery of Golgotha; but something of that immediate past still worked in them, when men knew that the Divine Spiritual Beings work into the earthly events and arrange and ordain what man does on the Earth. Therefore man of old was convinced that when he founded a State, (if one wishes to use the word “State,” it is incorrect, but we are accustomed to speak like this to-day)—he knew that those social structures were founded under the influence of the third Hierarchy. Man felt that his arrangements on Earth were Divine arrangements. You need merely study Egyptian history, even without clairvoyance to see how fully convinced the Egyptians were that what man does here in his social life was all arranged by the Beings of the third Hierarchy. That was so before the Mystery of Golgotha. After the Mystery of Golgotha the Church established a kind of grade in the clerical dignitaries. Such gradations were arranged; but behind the arrangement of those degrees there was a quite different thought. This can be seen quite clearly in the early Church writers. In Dionysius the Areopagite, you can see it clearly for yourself. There was to be such an arrangement in the administration of the Church that it should be an image of the Divine Ordering! and the relation of the Deacon to the Archdeacon was to be an image of the relation of the Angel to the Archangel, Again the relation of Archdeacon to the Bishop was a copy of the relationship of the Archangel to the Archai. Thus it was endeavoured to make the social structure of the Church a sort of copy of that Theocracy! Above in the Spiritual world there is a sequence of Hierarchies, and down below, in the physical world, there should also stand as a copy of the Spiritual Hierarchies, a sequence in the clerical dignitaries. In the first epoch after the Mystery of Golgotha, that was not conceived juridistically, but theocratically. It was a copy. The clerical Hierarchy was conceived as a copy of the Third Hierarchy, Thus in the first Christian Centuries it was endeavoured to establish such organisations as should cause the position of man on Earth to each other to be a copy of the Hierarchies in the Spiritual world.

Then gradually men lost the consciousness that they still had in their memories. The historic memory of the old theocracy was lost, in which man still knew that the earthly arrangements were a consequence of a copy of the Deeds of the Gods. The consciousness of this was lost, and in the place of the consciousness of the living world of Divine Beings, which were seen by men in olden times, and of which they still knew, there come abstract concepts. And so came the centuries where, in place of the individual Gods,—the Christians called them Angels—they put abstract ideas, a metaphysic of abstract concepts. The Divine Ordering, which should have its copy in the human ordering became theocratic; the application of mere ideas to man's social arrangements produced something which was simply intended to bring some kind of order into human intercourse. As formerly it was thought to create an image of the Divine Cosmos in the human social structure, so in the metaphysical age which followed, it was simply striven to maintain some order by punishing evil and not punishing the good, perhaps even rewarding it,—thus creating an ordering in which the social order could exist. And so, as in the place of living Gods there now appeared abstract, metaphysical concepts, a human Ordering appeared which in a sense so stamped itself on man, that one was preferred before another, not because that was a copy so that order should be maintained on earth; one came to command and the other to obey. Abstractions appeared in the place of the living permeation of the social Ordering.

Essentially the epoch of real metaphysic prevailed throughout the middle ages. The Roman consciousness essentially provided the special element for this metaphysical Ordering, which spread everywhere; one finds memories of this in the very words. For instance the word “Prince” (Fürst), is a memory of the Theocratic Ordering. The Prince, (Fürst), was the first, because some one had to be first, just as in the Divine Hierarchies also, one had to be first. A memory of the metaphysical order of administration is given us in the word Count, “Graf,” which is connected with “grafo;”—to write. In the metaphysical Ordering, everything is registered! the social order was kept by writing documents, by making compacts.

And then came the modern age. This newer age brought disbelief in the abstract concepts, in metaphysics. Men could now only believe in the external sense-phenomena, even in human life. Those traditions which still existed in ancient times of a living consciousness which somehow worked thus into the social structure, was lost. First the Gods, later the metaphysical concepts; these things could no longer exist in modern times; but they must again be won on those paths indicated by Spiritual Science. All consciousness of the Spiritual basis, of a Spiritual structure, was radically obliterated by Industrialism. Therefore Auguste Comte and his teacher Saint-Simon, felt themselves so specially united with the epoch of Industrialism, for they allowed positivistic Science alone to have any value.—That means, only that which can be related to the external sensible natural ordering, permeated by causal necessity.

Therewith, my dear friends, the concept of truth itself has undergone a complete transformation. People to-day have not the right feeling for these things, they do not as yet realise aright the fact, that the very concept of Truth has undergone a history. These modern human beings who knew themselves to be under a theocratic Ordering, had no such idea of Truth as human beings get to-day under the authority of Natural Science. It is extraordinarily difficult to speak of these things. To-day a man may think that, with reference to the world around him, truth consists in the coinciding of an idea with external reality. He gets that thought from Natural Science. Such a concept of Truth simply did not exist in the first Christian Centuries. There was another idea of Truth then, which was essentially connected with the theocratic social order. The concept of truth which lives in all souls to-day really did not exist then. This extraordinary fact, my dear friends, is not realised now. It is more easy to recognise the concept of Truth which lived then, if one approaches the idea of Divine Judgment. Suppose two people are fighting a duel, (I will not touch upon the question of duels, I am simply giving an instance), it cannot be determined from the very start by some calculation that A, will win and B will not,—if that were so the duel would hardly occur; the truth only emerges in the course of the conflict. We ourselves still have this idea of truth at the present day, in the case of war. We should not wage war if we knew from the start, as in an experiment in a chemical laboratory, how the war was going to end. In this the old concept of truth is rooted even to-day, that truth itself can only he revealed in the course of what actually happens, that one can do nothing but watch how the Divine Judgment will fall. That is the old concept of Truth.

Those who think as Auguste Comte or as the Socialists to-day, have completely broken with this idea of Truth. They only recognise a truth as such, where the event in its course can be foreseen. The cry of Auguste Comte: “Know in order to foresee,” is the radical transformation of the concept of Truth in our modern age. But, my dear friends, with the concept which prevails to-day, one can only grasp external nature. Concerning this point, humanity to-day gives way to a colossal delusion. Men believe, for instance, that they can grasp historical life through this idea of Truth, which Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon taught. But it cannot be done, even with the old concept of Truth as divine Judgment, for that stood under the influence of the Delusion of Life. Our modern concept of Truth stands under the influence of our Delusion in Consciousness. There must come the concept of Truth of Anthroposophy; a concept gained in a far more widely embracing way than that in which St Augustine got his concept of Truth; for as I have explained to you, that too was subject to delusion.

This is connected with many things: and a great deal depends on it. It is not enough to speak abstractly on the evolution of the idea of Truth, one must in general, in all its details, know how the Concept of Truth can lead the soul of man along many different paths according to the nature of his idea of Truth. It is an anachronism to speak to-day in the same sense of Nationalism, as was possible in the pre-Christian age; because in the pre-Christian age it was not only a human view—that a Divine Ordering then permeated the human Ordering, it was actually the case. Now, the Divine Ordering no longer permeates it. Hence, wherever to-day man hangs his consciousness on the Ordering of Nature, on that which is merely produced by a sequence of births, on the Principle of nationality, for instance, there he is involved in an anachronism. It is laid on man to-day to find quite other structures of social order than those worked from outside. The man of old could look to his nationality, because he saw it determined by the divine Ordering. But man cannot do this to-day in the same sense without falling into an anachronism, and to-day to honour the Nation itself as something special, is an anachronism, he must consider other social structures. To regard a Nation as something special, would bring about the modern Ahrimanic delusion. “Nations” are relics of the pre-Christian Age, and modern humanity must rise above them through that development which I have indicated. We must see how concretely human beings strive after a special development of the concept of Truth. That is important, even if it is inconvenient to-day, my dear friends. But if we are unprejudiced in trying to grasp reality, we must assimilate many an uncomfortable truth.

You see, man now goes right against what Anthroposophy wills. That world-view which found its special advocate in Auguste Comte, limits itself merely to an external Ordering of Nature. We must press forward again to a Spiritual world, and a bridge must be found between Idealism and Realism. That is what I wont to emphasise in these lectures. But this cannot be done simply by speaking of these things, but by grasping the concrete impulses working in the world. We must look certain facts full in the face, without prejudice. Now there are very curious facts connected with the things we are now considering. Yesterday I spoke of Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon. Both consider positivistic Science as the only thing valid, positivistic Science which simply relates to the sense-life, to a what is in the causal Ordering of Nature. Nevertheless the extraordinary fact is before us, that Auguste Comte turned away from his teacher and guide, Saint-Simon, because gradually Saint-Simon had become too mystical; and the disciples of Auguste Comte gradually turned from him because he himself became altogether mystical in his old age. We are faced with this extraordinary fact,—that Saint-Simon as well as Auguste Comte, on the one side stand directly on the basis of the most Ahrimanic Science, consciously in the epoch of Industrialism, they stand on the soil of this Ahrimanic Science; and yet they become mystics! Extraordinary! That really is an extraordinary fact.

One has to ask the “why” of such a fact, but this can only be explained if without prejudice, one admits that on the other hand man is living towards Spirituality. Unconsciously human beings are striving towards Spirituality. Even such beings as Auguste Comte and Saint-Simon, who only want to grasp external nature, are also striving after Spirituality.

But now in the modern life of man something very peculiar is to be seen. We will take another fact which, without any national Chauvinism (which would not be seemly) we will try to keep in mind. In the views which result as the flower of modern nations, one can find characterised in a certain way what lies under the surface; and, starting from this, I should like to point to another very dominant English philosopher, Bentham, who lived from 1748–1832. Bentham can be taken as characteristic of the thinking of his people, and with a certain justice one must describe the views of Bentham as Utilitarianism even in a deeper sense. A certain basic sentence lies at the bottom of the ideal World-Ordering according to Bentham, This principle is usually called the “maximum of human happiness.” Human happiness consists in this dogma, which Bentham put forward: “The good (that means what should be striven for as an ideal) consists in the greatest happiness of the greatest number of human beings on the Earth.” Let us get that sentence clearly in mind:—“The good consists in the greatest happiness of the greatest number of human beings on the Earth.” That sentence, as a matter of fact, of the maximum of happiness on the Earth, is the root-nerve of the Utilitarian philosophy.

Now one must bear in mind that this sentence was regarded, not by Bentham himself nor by his disciples, but by those who stand on a Spiritual basis, as absolutely Ahrimanic. The occultists of his own Country say: Bentham put forward this purely devilish sentence—they call it devilish because, so say these occultists, if it were correct that good consists in the greatest happiness of the greatest number, evil must then consist in the greatest happiness of the least number.

I am not now saying anything which I myself wish to bring before you as a definition or explanation, but simply quoting what has been said. Thus, on the one hand the English philosophy of Bentham, “The maximum of happiness;” on the other hand that English Spiritualism (Spiritualismus) which says, “Bentham's sentence is purely of the devil, because in that case evil would be the greatest happiness of the least number, and from this there would result that evil and happiness could exist side by side,” to which the Spiritualists would not under any condition agree.

I am only bringing before you here a fact of Spiritual life, significant in the most eminent degree, significant as regards the enormous opposition to be found in a certain sphere of the Earth between Spiritualism and external World-view.

And now again to-day, because I want you to realise that we shall solve these oppositions in tomorrows conditions, I want to put once more at the end, an apercus; you can put three things together:—Goetheism, Comteism, and Benthamism. These three things stand in a certain sense, in a threefold way to the Spiritual striving of man towards the future. The German Goetheism is so fashioned that out of it Spiritualism (Spiritualismus) can result. The French Comteism is so fashioned that Spiritualism can develop alongside it, for in Augusts Comte and Saint-Simon we find an extraordinary mysticism appearing side by side with their positive philosophy. With the English Utilitarianism, as in Bentham, nothing else is possible than the sharpest opposition from the side of Spiritualism against the national philosophy. That is something which lies in the soil of evolution itself. The French nature must so develop that Idealism, Mysticism and Positivism must develop side by side. Whereas in England within the British nature, things must develop more and more so, that, from the side of their Spiritualists, their own “racial nature” must be combated in the sharpest way possible. (That means, of course, what is put forward as the philosophical blossoms of the nation)

With Auguste Comte—I am not giving you theories but simply individual facts—there was such a distinct inclination to Mysticism existing, that, in spite of his application to Positivism and rejection of his teacher Saint-Simon, at the end of his life he very clearly assumes a Trinity. Auguste Comte honours three in his trinity:

1st. The great Fetish.
2nd. The great Medium.
3rd. The great Being.

And he says: the great Fetish is the Mother-bosom of humanity in space. Space itself is the great Medium out of which humanity comes. The great Being, the last person in his trinity, is humanity itself in the abstract, spread out over the Earth. Auguste Comte recognises this Trinity,—which is an extraordinary quickening of Positivism with Mysticism.

Now of this we shall speak further tomorrow.

Today we continue our study of F. von Wrangell's booklet 'Science and Theosophy'. Before we do so, I would like to briefly recapitulate some thoughts that could be linked to the various chapters so far.

First of all, I would like to explain why the points of view presented in this brochure may be of importance for our consideration. As I have already said, we are living in times when people who base their thinking on spiritual science may find themselves having to defend it against various attacks. Now, in our time, a defense will be particularly necessary when the attacks come from the side of science, and this is because science, which has developed in a certain form over the past three to four centuries, can justifiably claim to be the basis of a world view and actually makes this claim. A scholar in the humanities can therefore say: Yes, if spiritual science has nothing to say in response to the objections of science, then it proves itself to be poorly founded; for anyone who wants to advocate a worldview today must be able to defend it against the objections of science. Therefore it is especially important to take note when a scientist appears and explains what a scientist has to say about the relationship between genuine scientific thinking and theosophical, or even spiritual teachings.

The previous considerations have shown you that it can be particularly important for the spiritual teachings to be defended from the point of view that is conditioned by an awareness that has gone through astronomical and similar scientific research. I have, of course, pointed out how a representative proponent of the modern worldview, Du Bois-Reymond, invokes the so-called Laplacian mind, the astronomical knowledge of the world; I have shown what modern man imagines under the Laplacian mind, under the astronomical knowledge of the world. Therefore, it is necessary to show how far a comprehensive worldview can be built out of such astronomical conceptions.

Then I said that it was important for this brochure to point out that practical materialism must necessarily follow from theoretical materialism, from the theoretical-materialistic-mechanical conception of the world. I then showed how spiritual science must also stand on this point of view, even if in our present time the objection is still often raised that theoretical adherents of the materialistic-mechanical world view do not deny the validity of ideal, ethical motives, but on the contrary profess them.

We then saw in the brochure a beautiful exposition of the world view that arises for those who want to stand exclusively on the point of view of the mechanistic-materialistic worldview. I have, so to speak, sketched this world picture and particularly emphasized - which is also emphasized in the brochure - that the one who sees the all-encompassing world picture in the mechanical-materialistic world picture cannot view the inner experiences that take place in the consciousness of the human being essentially different from other natural processes, and thus as a by-product of mechanistic-materialistic processes. And if one creates such a mechanistic-materialistic world view, then logically there can no longer be any question of the survival of a soul-core after death.

The brochure then goes on to examine this basic assumption. In particular, it is pointed out what the relationship is between freedom and morality and the mechanistic-materialistic basic ideas; how the concept of freedom and responsibility can no longer be held if one completely embraces the materialistic-mechanistic and how this gives rise to the actual world question or world riddle, namely that it is necessary to gain such a world view within which the ideas of freedom and responsibility can have a place.

Then it is pointed out how the idea of a general law, as it were spread out as a network over all phenomena, has only gradually come about, and also how it is impossible to ever refute freedom of will on the basis of experience , because, as we have seen, freedom of will can never be conceived as being so interwoven into this network of materialistic-mechanical processes as it would have to be if one were to profess this world view alone.

Then, in an epistemological discussion, it is shown how man enters into a relationship with the external world through his senses; how one can visualize the formation of concepts, of ideas, the formation of ideas of space and time. It is pointed out how the principle of causality should be a general principle of the world view, but how it has only gradually entered into the world view because it was originally assumed that similar real motives are present in things as they are in people , so that the development would show that man did not originally start from a mechanical causality, but that he basically worked his way through to the mechanical-materialistic view only from a different view of the connection between phenomena.

Then it is pointed out how, in more recent times, scientific observation has tried to achieve objectivity. The particularly important principle of materialistic-mechanical science, the principle of measurement, is now being discussed, and we will soon see how this principle of measurement also has further consequences for the more complicated parts of contemporary science.

Now I would like to draw your attention very urgently to what the booklet says about measurement. I would really like to ask you to use it as a starting point to really embrace the character of modern science through this examination of measurement. We have seen how the principle of measurement is then applied to the principle underlying clocks and watches. I would now like to make a few comments specifically about the principle of measurement to show you how you could use this chapter of the Wrangell writing “Science and Theosophy” as a kind of leitmotif to tie in with what you can find in the various discussions about modern science, especially with regard to the character that is required in the presence of real science.

We have seen what the essence of measurement is, and we have also found a reference to how measurement introduces a kind of uncertainty in a certain relation, despite all objectivity in the observation to which the measurement applies. We can very simply point out this uncertainty by saying the following: When we have simple measurement, the measurement of lengths or spaces, we use a standard as a basis. When we have to measure a length, we have to do it in such a way that we determine the ratio of the length to a yardstick. The length must be given in the sensory world and our yardstick must also be realized in the sensory world. Now you will find a remark in the scriptures that draws attention to the fact that something is introduced that makes measuring uncertain. Measurement is based on the fact that something is compared with the standard; one compares how often the standard is contained in the thing to be measured.

Now, however, a slight warming, for example, causes the heat to expand the scale. So let us assume that the scale has been heated and has become a little longer as a result. Of course - since we are measuring in a room that is approximately equally warm, otherwise we would have to consider further complications - the thing being measured would be expanded in the same proportion as the scale. But if the measuring stick and the thing being measured are made of materials that do not expand equally, so that the measuring stick expands less or more than the thing being measured, then we are already dealing with inaccuracies in the measurement.

So we can emphasize two things. One is that the observation becomes independent of our subjectivity, of the observer. We compare the thing to be measured with the measuring stick, that is, we compare the objective with the objective. A good deal of modern science is based on this, and basically it is also an ideal of modern science. The other thing is if we were to observe the things around us simply according to our subjectivity. Just imagine the following, for example. Imagine you have a vessel of water in front of you; now bring one hand close to the stove and the other hand into an ice pit; then put both hands into the water. You will have a completely different feeling in each hand, even though the water is the same temperature. The water will seem cold to the heated hand, and not cold at all to the cold hand. Thus, the subjective extends over everything objective. This is just a crude example, but it shows how the subjective always underlies all observation. Measurement detaches the content from the subject, from the observer. Therefore, there is an objective truth, a realization, detached from the subjective. This is important. And because in recent times more and more efforts have been made to become independent of the subjective in relation to the world view, measurement became a kind of ideal.

You see, this measurement becomes so objective because the standard is independent of us, because we eliminate ourselves and insert the standard in our place. Those who remember my lectures in Berlin about the different points of view one can take towards the world will see that something similar underlies spiritual science itself. I said there: As long as one stands on the ground of external reality, one faces the world and makes a picture of the world for oneself. But as soon as one enters the spiritual world, one must, in principle, look at what is to be considered from different points of view – but now the point of view is meant spiritually. I have given twelve points of view, and only when one takes these twelve points of view does one point of view always correct the other. In this way one also becomes independent of subjectivity to a certain extent.

From this you can see how science and spiritual science converge, how what lies as a necessary motive for development in science, objectivity, must also be striven for by the spiritual scientist, although not by asserting all twelve points of view. The twelve different points of view correct each other. Thus, measuring is the detachment from subjectivity. But on the other hand, it is pointed out that even when measuring, accuracy can only be achieved within certain limits, and Wrangell points this out in the next chapter:

Error limits in measurement

When measuring time, as with measuring length, you can also specify the limit of accuracy, or more correctly, the error limit. Within these limits, the fact obtained is objectively correct, but it never reaches flawless accuracy.

In this respect, all facts derived from sensory perception differ from the intuitive truths of thought, such as the formal laws of logic, and all truths of mathematics.

So, by rightly presenting measurement as the means that, when the margin of error is taken into account, gives a certain accuracy in relation to a world view, it is pointed out at the same time how this accuracy, which can be achieved in relation to the external sensual world, can never be a flawless correctness. It can never give the same kind of truth that one has in the so-called intuitive truths of thought, in the formal laws of logic and in the truths of mathematics.

The next chapter is a further elaboration of what I have already said:

Absolute validity of logical and mathematical truths

Logical truth, for example: a part is smaller than the whole,

— that is a mathematical truth. It cannot be said with absolute certainty how many times a part is contained in this line [presumably a line on the blackboard was pointed to]

or: If two things are equal to a third, then they are also equal to each other, without any restriction;

– these are absolute truths; but they are also not gained through external perception, but through thinking.

every person in sound mind recognizes its compelling necessity. This is also the case in mathematics; once certain basic assumptions have been agreed upon, all other mathematical propositions follow with compelling necessity and without any restriction. If, for example, we agree on what we call a straight line, what a right angle is, what parallelism means, then the theorems of geometry follow with absolute certainty.

It is necessary to agree on these things. We must agree on what a right angle is, what a straight line is, what parallelism means. If we have agreed that parallel lines are those lines which are the same distance apart at all points that lie vertically above each other, or if we have agreed that parallel lines are those lines that, however far they are extended, never intersect, then we can use parallel lines to understand further mathematical propositions. I will now link something to it that seems quite far removed.

Let's assume we have a triangle here: We have discussed several times that the three angles of a triangle together are 180 degrees. Now, what is 180 degrees? It is 180 degrees if you imagine a point here and a straight line drawn through this point. 180 degrees is the size of the arc around this point, which is a semicircle. So these three angles a, b, c should be arranged in such a way that, when they are placed together in a fan shape, they form a straight line. This can be easily illustrated by drawing a parallel to the line AB through the point C. Then, if we agree on the value of the angle at point A, we can see that the angle a' must be equal to this angle a, and the angle b' must be equal to b. Now the three angles are next to each other in a fan shape and add up to 180 degrees. I would still have to introduce intermediate links, but you will see that the truth, that the three angles of a triangle together add up to 180 degrees, is based on this. That is, there are certain basic truths of mathematics that arise from self-activating thinking, on which one has to agree, and from which all of mathematics then follows.

A person who has the ability to follow the line of reasoning is as convinced of the eternal validity of the final sentence as he is of his own existence.

No one can ever doubt that the angles of a triangle together add up to 180 degrees. For those of our esteemed friends who know a little about it, I emphasize that we are disregarding a spatial geometry that is based on a different point of view; that would take us too far today.

Spatial science (geometry) establishes certain relationships between surface areas and their linear dimensions, as well as between spatial parts and the corresponding linear sizes.

This is the simplest idea. Because if you draw a rectangle, the area of this rectangle is the one that I shade. If you call the length of the base line a, the length of this line b, you get the area when you multiply a by b; that is, you compose the area from linear size and linear size.

These relationships were discovered by thinkers through intuition, logically linked to already known truths (this is what mathematical proof consists of). The correctness of the proof is not tested by experience, but is immediately recognized by intuition.

It is very important that you get involved in this matter, how mathematical reasoning and mathematical cognition in this respect differs from all cognition that relates to external sense objects. You can never have the latter without approaching the external sense object. So you have to take into account all the inaccuracy that comes into play. But if one wants to prove something, one does not need to draw mathematical structures, they arise in intuitive thinking. Drawing is only an illustration for dull thinking that does not want to work in itself. But one could think to oneself that one does mathematics without any illustration in inner visualization.

This profound and fundamental difference must never be overlooked: facts drawn from experience, which, due to the limitations of our senses, always contain sources of error, and logical or mathematical truths, which have absolute validity for us humans once the basic assumptions have been recognized as correct.

If a conclusion is drawn from any empirical fact by a chain of mathematical or logical propositions, this latter is only correct within the limitations under which that empirical fact was observed; only under these limitations can the final result obtained be accepted as a scientifically proven fact of experience; this is often overlooked.

Such empirical facts, when applied to phenomena of the sensory world, can lead to correct practical and theoretical results, and often they achieve such a high degree of probability that we consider this probability to be equivalent to certainty. However, from an epistemological point of view, it is not.

The further chapter is called:

All natural laws are derived from experience and therefore have only limited validity.

When we speak of natural laws according to which certain phenomena necessarily occur when certain conditions are present – or, to put it another way, certain causes necessarily have certain effects – these laws are derived from experience and can therefore only be proven to be correct within certain limits of accuracy.

We will explain this with a few examples: The astronomer says that the earth revolves around its axis at a uniform speed; what does he mean by that?

— So you can inwardly recognize certain mathematical truths, but you cannot inwardly recognize that the earth revolves around its axis. So what does the astronomer mean by that?

First of all, it means: “We have good reason to assume that the apparent daily rotation of the starry sky is an optical illusion caused by the rotation of the Earth around its axis; we call the duration of such a rotation a ‘sidereal day’. To measure the duration of a sidereal day (i.e. one rotation of the Earth around its axis), we have to compare it with a period of time that we assume to be unchanging. As such a unit of time, we choose the period of oscillation of a pendulum of a certain length attached to a clock. Experience shows us that the better the conditions are met to ensure that a clock runs smoothly, and the more precisely we make the star observations on which the duration of an Earth rotation is determined, the more constant the ratio between the number of pendulum oscillations and the number of Earth rotations proves to be. With the current state of technology, the rotation of the Earth has proven to be uniform within the possible margins of error, which can only reach a small fraction of a second. We cannot claim absolute uniformity, and we have reasons to doubt it.

— We need not go into the last sentence; it can be the subject of a later consideration.

So what is actually available to external observation? On the one hand, the phenomenon that we experience as day and night on Earth, and on the other hand, the comparison with the vibrations of a pendulum clock. And since we know from other premises that the pendulum swings evenly, and that the even swing of the pendulum can be compared with what is perceived in relation to the earth, we must conclude that the earth also rotates evenly around its axis. Another explanation will be given in the next chapter in relation to chemistry.

Chemical Laws

It is similar with chemistry. The whole structure of this science rests upon the proposition: Chemical combinations can only take place in quite definite proportions by weight of their indecomposable components,

- as an example of this is given in a footnote: “For example, one unit of volume (say one liter) of oxygen combines only with two units of volume of hydrogen to form water.” So one atom of oxygen combines with two atoms of hydrogen to form one molecule of water. I have often spoken of this combination of oxygen with hydrogen to form water. Then the footnote continues: “Since an atom of oxygen is 16 times heavier than an atom of hydrogen, we can also say: one unit of weight of hydrogen combines with 8 units of weight of oxygen to form 9 units of weight of water. If there is more oxygen in the mixture than 8 times the amount by weight of hydrogen, the excess remains as 'free, uncombined oxygen; if, on the other hand, there is less oxygen, the excess hydrogen remains uncombined.” Thus, only in this very specific ratio does oxygen combine with hydrogen to form water; in water they are present in this ratio. They cannot combine in any other way.

or in technical terms: the elements form chemical compounds only in whole multiples of their atomic weights.

- This sentence contains the entire hypothesis of the atom. What is stated here is correct for the entire sensory perception, for the observation of quantities of weight and spatial relationships. But if one assumes that oxygen and hydrogen consist of the smallest parts, of atoms that cannot be divided any further, then one must assume that the same certain relationship also takes place between the atoms. And since we cannot divide atoms any further, when oxygen combines with hydrogen, a tiny part of one must combine with two tiny parts of the other, the same weight ratio must exist. If we take the atomic weight of oxygen and the atomic weight of hydrogen, we get a weight ratio, that is, one atom of oxygen combines with two atoms of hydrogen, whereby the oxygen atom is eight times heavier. The whole multiple of the atomic weight goes into the compound. What must one do to arrive at such a thing? One must do a weighing, which is also a measurement. So one goes to the sensual facts, and from the result of the weighing one gets this law, that the individual substances do not combine in any arbitrary way, but in a very definite ratio.

The empirical facts from which this law is derived are never absolutely exact (because all weighing and measuring are subject to errors of observation); if the law nevertheless expresses something absolute, then the following should be said: the more exactly the apparatus used for chemical the more carefully the methods for breaking down compound compounds into indivisible elements are constructed, the better the composition of the substance can be represented by a combination of multiples of the corresponding atomic weights of these elements.

Since the chemist is aware of the possible margins of error in his measurement operations, he knows whether or not the final result of his analysis agrees with the above law within these margins of error. If he finds a major deviation, he is so convinced of the correctness of the law for the time being that he assumes the presence of an as yet unknown element to explain the deviation found, or searches for an unnoticed source of error. Thus, in practice, he regards the law as absolutely correct, although theoretically he is aware of the relativity of this empirical law.

That is to say, if we had found from other empirical facts that two or three elements combine in a certain ratio, and if we had seen yet another relationship in the substances in which these elements are found, we would have to assume that there is something else in them.

The next chapter is called:

Physical Laws

When physics postulates the law of conservation of energy, it means that if we convert a certain amount of kinetic energy into heat and compare the numbers that express the amount of kinetic energy in its units and the amount of heat produced from it in calories (units of heat) , we obtain a ratio, which is called the “mechanical heat equivalent”; the more accurately the measurements are made, the better it is ensured that all the motion is converted into measurable heat, the more accurately the ratio obtained in different experiments agree with each other. This is the actual result of experience.

— Here we have an entire physical doctrine in a single sentence. What leads to this doctrine can be demonstrated by the very simple fact that when we rub a finger over a surface, it becomes warm. You can check this for yourself. This energy, the muscle energy you expend, is not heat at first; but heat occurs and energy is lost. What happened? Your energy has been transformed into heat. If you press here, for example, a certain amount of heat is generated; if you apply a different energy, heat is also generated. You might think that it is generated irregularly, but that is not the case. The question of the relationship between the expenditure of energy and the heat that results from it has been the subject of important research. In 1842, Julius Robert Mayer - who was treated quite badly by his peers at the time, despite the fact that he is now considered a first-rate scientist - was the first to point out that the relationship between energy and the heat that results from it is a constant. And he also tried to determine the ratio. In his essay, written in 1842, it is still stated imprecisely. Later scholars, through their research, then determined and stated the exact number. Helmholtz, who argued about the priority of the discovery, sought to prove that there is such a ratio, a constant relationship between the energy expended and the heat generated from it. The same amount of energy produces the same amount of heat, and the ratio between heat and energy expended is as constant as the ratio of the constants is constant. This is called the “mechanical equivalent of heat.” This is how you get a physical law.

The physicist goes beyond this experience when he replaces the constantly diverging observation results with a simple common formula. He is justified in doing so as long as he is aware of the conditions under which the formula is valid.

— A formula arises from the mere fact that I say: when energy is converted into heat, there is a certain relationship between energy and heat. But however many cases have been investigated, the cases that will be investigated the day after tomorrow have not yet been investigated today. So when the physicist expresses a formula in such a context, he must be aware of the scope of validity that such a formula can have.

Similarly, it can be shown that all natural laws, in their simplified form, go beyond experience.

- So that, basically, one goes beyond experience if one does not stick to the description of the individual case.

Let us now consider the next chapter in terms of its overall tendency; it is called:

Cognition Progresses from the Simple to the Complex.

The phenomena of the sensory world as they present themselves are so complex that, in order to fathom their context, man is first obliged to limit his attention to the simplest and then, step by step, to expand the field of knowledge. The apparent, uniform, circular motion of the stars offered in its simplicity the possibility of applying the absolute truths of mathematics to empirical facts of observation and thereby to predict future events by calculation.

- For future lunar or solar eclipses, as I mentioned last time, it is based on observing the stars, formulizing their movements, and then inserting certain values into these formulas. This makes it possible to predict the day of a solar eclipse in, say, 1950.

This successful activity developed the ability to express large groups of phenomena in a clear, generally valid, mathematical form for vivid presentation. In the geocentric world system, the concept of natural law was magnificently expressed. Around the Earth, resting at the center of the world, the crystal-clear celestial sphere with the countless stars attached to it rotated with unchanging uniformity. Only seven celestial bodies: the sun, moon and the five planets visible to the naked eye, have their own movement, for a vivid representation of which various combinations of circular movements were used. The result was the ingenious but complicated so-called Ptolemaic system with its cycles and epicycles.

- The earlier world system was geocentric, assuming that the Earth was at the center of the world and the other stars somehow revolved around it, and so it was observed how the world gear presented itself. You could also calculate the movements mathematically. It does not matter that one had a world view that is no longer valid among astronomers today.

With increasing accuracy of observation and expansion of knowledge, the difficulties grew to represent the observed facts in this way with computational accuracy, until finally the boldest and most momentous of all scientific hypotheses – the Copernican – solved the difficulties.

- That is how it turned out; today the circumstances are quite different. It was assumed that the Earth was at the center, the starry sky was moving around it, and the planets had their own motion. It was assumed that such a planet moved in an orbit that itself moved in an orbit. This had to be imagined in epicycles. One had to have a very complicated understanding of space, which complicated the whole worldview. Now a principle entered into human thinking that contributed significantly to the acceptance of the Copernican worldview. This was the principle that had never been more frequently cited than at that time: Nature does everything in the simplest way. But that, it was said, it had not done in the simplest way. And so it was Copernicus who simply turned the matter around. He said: Let's try putting the sun in the center and letting the other heavenly bodies move around it. And so a different astronomical world view emerged, the Copernican one. I have already told you that the Church did not allow a Catholic to believe in this system until 1822.

The earth, degraded from its position at the center of the world to a satellite of the sun, orbiting it at breakneck speed, like the other planets, while rotating on its axis like a spindle , is a notion that so completely contradicted the evidence of the senses and the teachings of the Church that the latter's efforts to nip the heretical doctrine in the bud are understandable.

The reasons that led to the acceptance of this hypothesis could initially only be fully appreciated by those who were aware of how much more simply the results of the observations were explained by this hypothesis than if the Earth were assumed to be at rest. Of course, the distances that separate us from the fixed stars had to be thought of as incomprehensibly large.

- Now an important argument follows, but one that we must make the subject of a separate consideration:

Incidentally, full proof of the correctness of the Copernican hypothesis was only provided two and a half centuries later, with the discovery of the so-called “aberration of light”, and even later with the measurement of some stellar parallaxes.

- From what parallaxes of the stars and aberration of light are, you will see that the Copernican worldview was indeed subject to a certain uncertainty until these discoveries.

The mathematical method, which had been strengthened by research into the movements of the stars, was gradually applied to the phenomena of earthly, inanimate nature, which were closer to us and therefore more complicated. Statics, the study of the balance of forces, emerged among the ancients, and then, only with the revival of the exact sciences, dynamics, the mathematical study of motion. Galileo investigated the laws of falling bodies; intuitively he recognized them, expressed them in formulas, tested and proved them through ingenious experiments, which made more precise measurements possible.

— It is pointed out that science is basically a penetration of external phenomena with mathematical ideas. The Ptolemaic world view also proceeded from the idea of extending the mathematical like a net. When you see a star, you must already have grasped the mathematical concept of the circle if you are to say that the star moves in a circle. Thus you connect the mathematical with what you see empirically. This is also done in a large part of the mechanical sciences, for example in statics, which is concerned with investigating the conditions under which equilibrium of forces is achieved, whereas dynamics investigates the conditions under which movements can be regulated, and so on. So we see how sciences are formed by interspersing what is perceived empirically with mathematics.

Finally, Newton applies the earthly laws of gravity to celestial phenomena. He proves mathematically that the same force that drives the apple to the earth - the mutual attraction of two masses of matter - forces the moon to orbit around the earth and the planets, together with the earth, to describe their orbits around the sun, the elliptical shape of which, discovered by Kepler, corresponds to the requirements of mechanics.

- Here we come to the famous apple-and-Newton anecdote, in which Newton was once sitting under an apple tree and saw an apple fall. Now we might ask: Why does the apple fall down there? For the naive person, this is not really a scientific question; but it is precisely here that the scientific person comes into play, in that what is not a question for the naive person becomes a question for the scientific person. The naive person finds it quite natural that the apple falls down. But it could also remain hanging, and it would, if not for a force exerted by the earth; the earth pulls it toward itself. If you now imagine the earth and the moon going around it, you will realize that the moon would have to fly away if another force did not counteract it. Just remember what the boys do; maybe the girls too, but I don't know. Suppose you have an object, tie it to a thread, hold the thread at one end and move it around in circles. Try to cut the thread, then the object will fly away. The moon also goes around like that. But why doesn't it fly away? At every point it is subject to this force. If the earth were not there, the moon would certainly fly away; but because the earth is there, it attracts the moon, and it attracts the moon in such a way that it does not come here to A, but comes here to B, after a certain time.

06

The Earth must always attract him in order to keep him in a circle. This is the same force, Newton said to himself, as that which acts on the apple, which the Earth draws down to itself. It also uses this force to keep the Moon in its orbit. That is the same force with which celestial bodies attract each other and maintain their orbits. We see the force in the sinking apple; the same force, the general force of attraction, gravity, is in the heavenly bodies. The rest about how this gravity works, how it decreases with distance, and so on, are details. With this Newtonian theory of gravitation, a very important chapter of the scientific world view was introduced, a chapter that was basically established until our time; only in our time has it been shaken. I have already pointed out to you how a so-called theory of relativity is shaking it. But we will talk about that another time.

It was only with the discovery of the laws of gravitation that the world view became unified and comprehensive, encompassing the entire cosmos. The lofty idea of a cause (force) that acts everywhere and with necessity, measurable in its effects, and therefore suitable for objective examination, accustoms the human mind to seek such examination everywhere and always to strive to reduce phenomena to as few basic assumptions as possible.

The progress of European science depends essentially on the application of this principle.

Indeed, much revolves around the application of this principle. I have already drawn your attention to the fact that, as a twelve-year-old boy, I was surprised by a treatise in the school program that attempted to explain the phenomena in a way other than by gravity. At the time, this gave me a lot of headaches because I was not yet very familiar with the formulas, with the integral and differential formulas, with which the treatise was interspersed. But I can still tell you what it was about if I leave all that out.

Imagine the earth here, the moon there. (There is a drawing. Drawing p.166). That is, through the empty space, the earth acts on the moon; it therefore has an effect in the distance. Now there was a lot of thinking about whether such an effect can really take place in the distance. Many were of the opinion that a body cannot act where it is not, and others said that a body is where it acts. Schramm [the author of the aforementioned essay] says: The whole of gravitation theory is mysticism, because it assumes that a world body extends into the invisible in order to attract another. Whether it is a world body or a molecule is irrelevant. They are therefore there at a certain distance. Now he claims the following: The world bodies are not alone. Space is filled with bodies. There are many more bodies. But they are not at rest either, but in perpetual motion. If we now imagine that these bodies are all in motion, then they continually collide with this body that we imagine here; bodies also collide here; but bodies also collide from within, so that the body is collided against from all sides. And now he calculates the number and effect of these collisions. You can easily see that there are smaller surfaces here for being pushed, and larger surfaces here. But because fewer pushes can take place here than out there, the bodies are driven together. You have the result of the attractive force here, composed of different pushes, because they take place in different numbers. So there is a drumming there, there is a drumming there; so there must be fewer impacts from the inside out than from the outside in. The bodies therefore tend to come together. They are driven together by the individual impacts.

This man [Schramm] tried to replace the gravitational force with a different kind of approach. He tried to eliminate mysticism from the theory of gravity.

Paul Du Bois-Reymond wrote a paper in which it was mathematically proven that such impacts, which correspond to the phenomenon of gravity, are never possible.

This is how science proceeds in its work; it attempts to arrive at principles from uncertain premises, then to overturn these principles in order to return to the old principles. If Paul Du Bois-Reymond's arguments are correct, then one must return to the older principles. So one returns to what should be rejected. This is an interesting case that can show how science works.

The progress of European science depends essentially on the application of this principle. In this way, it has gradually been possible to unify more and more and larger areas of phenomena within inanimate nature, to reduce the phenomena of mechanics, heat, light, sound, electricity, magnetism and chemical affinity to transformations of a quantitatively indestructible something that we call energy, and whose measurable size is expressed by the product of the moved mass multiplied by the square of the speed.

— That is, it is pointed out here that if you form a world view in this way, you come to the assumption of an energy in space. I have already pointed out what the naturalist Ostwald said, that it is not the slap that matters, but the energy that is applied in the process. And so, hypothetically speaking, you can have a material body here: (Something was obviously being drawn). How can you perceive it? Only by the fact that you can detect a different spatial expansion here than in the surrounding area. But that is also only a recoil, just as you, when you see a body, can perceive nothing but what affects the eyes with a certain force. Thus, matter can be replaced by energy. What we call matter can only be energy everywhere, and so observation and the mathematical law according to which the movements take place provide the basis for expressing the law of energy as the product of the mass moved and the square of the speed. Discussing this, however, would take us too far; it can be done later.

So far, no authenticated fact is known that would contradict the basic assumption of the mechanical view within inanimate nature. On the other hand, countless conclusions derived from it, whether logically or mathematically, have been confirmed by empirical , and the more certain it is that the lawful concatenation of events and the indestructibility of mass and energy are confirmed, the more precise the examination is, and the smaller the possible errors in the measurements.

It is pointed out here that a certain comprehensive physical law can be inferred from the observation. We can most easily arrive at this law by saying: We have a certain energy. We transform this into heat. Heat, in turn, can undergo another transformation - we see this in steam engines and so on - it can be converted into another energy. This transformation takes place in corresponding proportions. That is, we are led to the so-called law of conservation of energy, that is, to the law that is expressed as follows: there is a certain amount of energy in the universe. It transforms. When a certain amount of energy, say from heat, is transformed, energy disappears on the one hand, but on the other hand there is another energy. So there is a transformation of energy. This is a law that plays an important role and that has recently been extended to the entire world view. And that brings us to the next chapter:

Extension of the mechanical idea to the organic

However, this has only been proven in terms of numbers within the inorganic world, as far as we receive impressions from it through our five senses. It is understandable that this idea of the law is also applied to organic, living nature.

But the question is, how far are we entitled to do so?

That means, when we compare these energies and apply the law of energy to everything that is inanimate, inorganic nature, we can then also try to apply the same law to organic nature. That is why the next chapter is called:

Difference between Inanimate and Animated Bodies

What is the difference between an animate and an inanimate body?

We call a body animated when material changes take place in it not only according to physical and chemical laws, but in addition to these forces, which are alone active in inanimate nature, other forces also come into play that are peculiar to each species and each individual, which cause each living individual to grow, reproduce, and die.

— It is the characteristic of living beings that they grow, reproduce and die. We do not find this in the inorganic. But there is a tendency in the mechanistic-materialistic world view to apply the same principles to the living beings, to the organic, as are applied to the inorganic world.

Whether we ascribe these laws to a “life force” or some other hypothetical cause, the fact is that the gulf between the organic and the inorganic has not now been bridged and that the more precise the observations are made, the more certain it turns out that living things can only arise from living things.

Now follows a sentence that is quoted countless times; here it reads:

The opposite assumption: that the living is only a different arrangement of the non-living, is for the time being a hypothesis not confirmed by any fact.

— But I have also put forward another point of view, and it is important that, with regard to this point of view, we also consider the other. One could believe that the validity of a spiritual world view depends on the fact that it is not possible to prove how a living thing can arise from inorganic substances. But there was a long period of time when people believed in the spiritual world view, yet still thought that a homunculus could be created in a laboratory. So the spiritual world view was not always made dependent on the fact that living things cannot be created from inanimate ones. It is our time's task to emphasize that living things can only arise from living things, and that the spiritual world view depends on this. I have often said how Francesco Redi first formulated the sentence only about 200 years ago: “Living things can only come from living things,” and proved that living things can arise from non-living things. It is also important that science points out that there is a gulf between the organic and the inorganic. Ferdinand Cohn emphasized at the naturalists' meeting in Berlin that the laws used to prove the inorganic are insufficient to prove the organic. Bunge from Basel could be cited; and Julius Wiesner, the botanist, says: The further botany advances, the more it shows how a gulf exists between the inorganic and the organic. Wrangell therefore says:

We must therefore, if we wish to remain within the bounds of what is currently scientifically established, distinguish between two essentially different groups of phenomena: the animate and the inanimate.

The next chapter is called:

Consciousness

We humans are confronted by another phenomenon through inner experience: consciousness with its expressions, which are: feeling, thinking, willing.

We have no compelling reason to believe that plants also think and will, and without leaving the realm of experience, we are justified in still making the distinction within the organic realm between unconscious plants and conscious animals.< sup class=“footnote”>1The brochure continues with the footnote: “Those who do not recognize a fundamental difference between plants and animals only retain the distinction for reasons of greater clarity.”

- We have often spoken of the fact that there are people who want to blur the difference between the plant and the animal, who claim that plants attract and devour living beings. You also know of a being that attracts and then devours approaching beings: namely, a mousetrap. And yet one need not assume that a mousetrap has an animal soul in it.

All phenomena that are connected with consciousness we call “spiritual phenomena”.

- We would have to say more precisely “All phenomena that we bring to consciousness,” because in spiritual science we must also call that which is not the astral body and I spiritual. If you are only in the physical body and etheric body, then we are not dealing with consciousness, but with spiritual activity.

Thus the world, as far as we are aware of it through our five senses and our thinking, seems to contain three essentially different principles: matter, unchanging in its mass and properties, life obeying its own laws, and the spiritual.

- I would also like to point out that even philosophers who are outside of spiritual science, such as Eduard von Hartmann and others, have spoken of an unconscious spiritual, so that one... [gap in the transcript]

In science that has the inorganic as its object, the assumption that cause and effect are in a fixed numerical relationship to each other proves to be true, as already stated, that all happenings within this world of the inanimate follow the strict law of necessity.

In accordance with the nature of every science, biological science, which has the study of life phenomena as its object, starts from the same assumption. However, since measurement, and consequently the numerical examination of the lawful course of changes (i.e. of events), is not applicable to many life phenomena, the rule of the necessary, unalterable connection between cause and effect cannot be proven beyond doubt in the field of biology. But there is no reason to doubt it, and the inner probability, as well as the analogy with what is certainly known to us, speaks in favor of it. In any case, this assumption must be taken as the basis of all scientific research, for the task of such research is indeed to discover these laws.

Now, in various lectures, I have pointed out how, in recent times, efforts have been made to trace numerical constancy right up to animal and human phenomena. Rudner, for example, tried to show how much heat energy is contained in the food that a particular animal receives; and then he tried to show how much heat the animal develops in its life phenomena. From the constant number that results, it can be seen that the heat absorbed with the food reappears in the activity. The activity would be converted food.

Another researcher extended this to the soul by testing a number of students. The principle of applying numerical relationships is quite good. This can be applied to all these phenomena. We will talk tomorrow about the extent to which this is entirely correct. But logically, the matter is usually kept very short-sighted, because someone could, according to the same logical laws as Rubner, check how the monetary values or the equivalents for them that are carried into the bank correspond to those that are carried out. They must correspond. If one were to conclude from this that there are no people in the bank who do this, that would certainly be wrong. If one examines the food that is introduced into the organism and the energy that comes out again and finds them corresponding to each other, one should not assume that there is nothing of a spiritual nature involved.

Then there is another chapter:

Spiritual phenomena

If we consider spiritual phenomena, they are, for ordinary sensory observation, linked to certain material conditions, and this could give rise to the materialistic view that spiritual phenomena would not exist at all without the material basis of a living being with its brain, nerves, etc.

— This assumption has become so strong that Du Bois-Reymond said in one of his speeches that if one wants to speak of a world soul, one must prove where the world brain is. So he said: If you want to speak of a soul of the world, you must prove where the brain of the world is. So much has it been reinterpreted in the materialistic sense, because if you observe man in the physical world, you see that everything of a spiritual nature is bound to the brain.

Most people have always had an inner aversion to this view, and the belief in the independent existence of spiritual beings and in their interaction with the sensory world we are familiar with has been expressed in the most diverse forms of religious and spiritualistic ideas.

A great many facts that are supposed to be direct confirmations of such a view are certainly based on deception and delusion.

- We have indeed gone through some of these delusions and this madness here in recent times. It is of great importance that he who stands on the ground of the spiritual scientific world view is free from deception and delusion.

Recently, however, well-documented factual material has been brought together which, in order to explain it, makes the assumption of a spiritual world appear to be the most probable hypothesis. It would now be unscientific to simply dismiss the latter – as happened just a few decades ago.

And now this will be discussed further in the following chapter:

Man's Occult Abilities

If numerous facts that can be perceived with the ordinary senses already suggest, if not demand, a spiritualistic interpretation, then there is the additional fact that many credible people claim to have other organs of perception in addition to the five senses that are not developed in most people, but which allow them to enter into direct contact with the spiritual world.

That the five senses of man do not exhaust all possibilities of perception can be assumed a priori and is confirmed by many phenomena in the animal world. There is therefore no justification for disputing it, but it is a scientific duty to examine the facts carefully and without prejudice, which is indeed now being done by many outstanding representatives of the exact sciences.

For very many people who have occult experiences themselves or hear about them from credible individuals, the existence of spiritual worlds is a proven fact, and the possibility of gaining insight into the mysteries of the world by penetrating into them is beyond doubt.

From time immemorial, teachings have been formed from such supposed or real insights, which are sometimes spread as secret teachings among the chosen few, and sometimes as openly taught religious systems. Of the major world religions, European culture is most closely interwoven with the Christian doctrine.

It is important that we use such a discussion to tie in with how spiritual science views it. Today, when spiritual science takes into account everything that human development has gone through to date, it initially does not so much emphasize that there are already other organs of perception in addition to the five senses of the human being — you know, if you look back on much of what we have covered, that there are other organs — but rather emphasizes that other organs of perception can be formed. In 'How to Know Higher Worlds', it is described what one has to do so that such organs can be formed. It is important that today's spiritual science, in a different sense, but still in a certain sense, claims the same universality as the other science. The other science tries to gain knowledge that applies to all people. Spiritual science seeks to develop such organs of perception that can be developed by all people. Just as the scientist can test what is claimed, so can the one who develops the spiritual organs test what spiritual science claims. Ordinary science relies on those abilities that already exist, while spiritual science relies on those that can be developed.

Now let us consider the principle by which abilities are developed. You will find a detailed description of how these abilities are developed in 'How to Know Higher Worlds'. I will just briefly explain how to understand such abilities.

When a symphony is played, there are actually nothing more than air vibrations in the room. These air vibrations can also be calculated mathematically. And if you did enough calculations, you could mathematically express all the movement that takes place in the instrument and in the air as the sum of the facts of movement. You could abstract completely from the symphony you are listening to and say: I don't care about Beethoven's symphony; I want to be a mathematician and investigate what motion states prevail there. — If you tempt it that way, you would have the symphony canceled and only the motion states. But you will have to admit that the symphony is still there, too. It cannot be denied and is something other than a mere image of the states of motion. What happened there? It was actually only Beethoven who, in a certain way, caused such states of motion to arise. But that does not yet make a real symphony.

If you now imagine that a person applies all those abilities that are otherwise used to recognize the external physical world in order to obtain such laws as the intuitive laws of mathematics and logic, that is, the laws that a person develops by being a thinking person, and if treating himself with these laws in the same way that the composer treats the states of movement of the air, when he does not accept the abilities of mathematics and logic and other abilities as they are, but works on them inwardly, then something arises in him that is something other than the empirical abilities of logic, mathematics and empirical research. If you compare this and the treatment that the composer applies to the air with what one does inwardly, and consider what comes out, then you have the possibility to say: There is a person who has the ability to do empirical research, the ability to form mathematical and logical judgments, that is just like a sum of states of motion that are in the instruments and in the air. But if you treat these in a certain way, a symphony, a musical work of art, arises. The laws by which you treat yourself are just those that are given in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds.” Then something arises that first develops, that is a consequence of human activity. And just as someone who has a musical ear does not just perceive the vibrations of instruments and air, so someone who has developed their inner senses perceives not only the sensual, mathematical and logical world, but also the spiritual world. This education of something new on the basis of what already exists leads to one working one's way into a spiritual world. Thus, the point for spiritual science is to recognize that the abilities that a person already has can be further developed, just as the movements of the instruments and of the air can be further developed. It is on the basis of this further development that a person can develop an understanding of the world that gives him something he would not perceive without this further development. The essential thing about spiritual science is that it points to the possibility of further developing certain abilities; not to the existence of abilities already present, but to the further development of them. And then Wrangell is right when he says that the same thing is pointed out in the various religious systems as in the secret teachings.

The next chapter is called:

The Essence of Jesus' Teachings

If we regard the common feature in all the countless interpretations of Jesus' teachings as the essence of Christianity, then it consists in the “glad tidings” that the Creator and Ruler of the Universe is a Father to man, whom He created in His own image , is a dear Father, that love for God and fellow human beings is the highest moral commandment, that the soul of man is immortal and that a fate is prepared for it after death that corresponds to the moral behavior of man during his life.

- Just as we have developed the essence of Christianity with the instrument of spiritual science, it must be said that what is expressed here is indeed the content of Jesus' teaching, but not the essence of Christianity. The essence of Christianity consists in the fact that a development took place in time, in that a fertilization of the man Jesus with the Godhead took place, that is, that a being that had not been connected with the earth until then connected itself with the earth through the well-known process, whereby time is divided into a pre-Christian and a post-Christian period. This realization of the appearance of the Christ-being on Earth belongs to the essence of Christianity.

The obvious aberrations into which the organized Christian communities, the historical churches, have fallen, have brought their dogmas into opposition to some firmly established scientific achievements, thereby causing the conflict between faith and knowledge, religion and science, which is corroding the spiritual life of European culture.

This situation explains the interest that has turned to other religious systems that claim not only to be in harmony with science, but also to expand it. Among these teachings, Theosophy deserves special attention. Since H.P. Blavatsky drew the attention of European culture to this teaching, which originated in India, it has found various representations.

Whenever the word “theosophy” is mentioned, it is important to draw attention to what spiritual science is and what the theosophical worldview is.

I think I will be able to finish tomorrow. However, I still need to discuss the extent to which Blavatsky's teachings originated in India and the extent to which they did not, and in doing so, I need to address some of the things that separate spiritual science from much of what is called Theosophy. So I will talk about that tomorrow.

We will now continue with the interpretations that we have linked to the Wrangell brochure “Science and Theosophy”. We left off at the chapter “Essence of Jesus' Teaching”, according to which the essence of Jesus' teaching is said to consist of “the raw message that the creator and ruler of the universe, to the human being whom he created in his image, is a loving Father, that love for God and fellow man is the highest moral commandment, that the soul of man is immortal and that after death a fate is prepared for it which corresponds to the moral behavior of man during his life.

We had to point out that it is indeed possible to describe the teaching of Jesus in this way, but that the essence of Christianity in the spiritual-scientific sense is not captured if one does not become aware of the facts that are present in the appearance of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth and in the Mystery of Golgotha, which must be understood by anyone who gradually wants to find their way into the essence of Christianity. These facts belong to the essence of Christianity. As I have often said, Christianity is not just a doctrine, but encompasses a reality. To understand this reality, which can be expressed as the “mystery of Golgotha”, is part of understanding the essence of Christianity.

Then attention is drawn to the fact that the various religions have caused a conflict between faith and science: “The obvious aberrations into which the organized Christian communities, the historical churches, have fallen, have brought their dogmas into opposition to some firmly established scientific achievements, thereby causing the conflict between faith and knowledge, religion and science, which has been corroding the spiritual life of European culture. This situation explains the interest that has turned to other religious systems that claim not only to be in harmony with science, but to expand it. Among these teachings, Theosophy deserves special attention. Since H.P. Blavatsky drew the attention of European culture to this teaching, which originated in India, it has found various representations.

From the spiritual scientific point of view, it must be pointed out in particular that what spiritual science is for modern humanity must not be described as a doctrine originating in India, but that it has formed purely out of itself, out of the impulses of the present cycle of development. And when outsiders repeatedly point out a relationship between our spiritual science and Indian teachings, it is only because the concept of repeated earthly lives is so foreign to the Occident that everyone who hears about repeated earthly lives immediately thinks of India, because there this teaching has become a dogma within religious beliefs. It is important to emphasize again and again that our spiritual-scientific content is built up out of the needs of the counterweight itself and is not a doctrine that comes from here or there, but is to be grasped and understood out of itself.

Finally, it must also be said with regard to Blavatsky that she was initially quite independent of any orientalizing cultural trend with her teachings, as expressed in the “Entschleierte Isis”, for example; that what she wrote in the early days belongs entirely to European intellectual culture. It was only through various complications that Blavatsky felt more and more drawn to the Indian. As a result, she imposed a kind of Indian vignette on the current that originated with her and swore by her, which in turn must be removed because it would be impossible to accomplish even the slightest thing in modern culture with any old religious system. This is extraordinarily important and remains so for our consideration of the particularly interesting chapter in our brochure in which the theosophical teachings are summarized. The chapter is entitled: “The Nature of the Theosophical Teachings.” Here Mr. von Wrangell does not describe what spiritual science is as such, but rather what he has found in the literature of the various world views that call themselves theosophical. I will read this chapter and then we will link our considerations to it. So:

The Nature of the Theosophical Teachings

The most essential assumptions common to the various presentations and conceptions of Theosophy can be expressed as follows.

1. There are other spiritual worlds besides the one perceptible to our five senses, with each higher world having an effect on the lower ones.

2. There are people who have other means of perception in addition to the usual five senses, so-called “occult senses”.

3. Thoughts, feelings, impulses of will, in short, what we call “spiritual phenomena” in human experience, are - even if they have not expressed themselves in the sense world as words or deeds - living entities capable of producing effects in the spiritual worlds and indirectly in the sense world.

4. The soul life of every human being leaves imperishable traces in the higher worlds, which in their totality are called the “Akasha Chronicle” by secret researchers and can be investigated by some qualified people (initiates).

5. The living human being is not a simple being consisting of the living body, but the physical body is only the tool by which the actual essence of the human being, his indestructible “I”, can enter into a relationship with the physical world. These relationships are mediated by intermediate links: firstly, the “etheric body”, which is the carrier of unconscious, vegetative life and forms the material substances of the body according to its own laws; secondly, the “astral body”, carrier of desires, passions, instincts.

6. The human “ego”, the seat of self-awareness, is endowed with freedom, i.e. it can guide its desires, impulses, thoughts, etc., setting them a goal and direction.

7. Depending on whether the ego utilizes the external possibilities offered to it in life in accordance with the eternal laws and the purpose of the world as a whole, or neglects to do so, it shapes its “karma,” i.e., the measure of satisfaction or torment due to it in the world as a whole.

8. After physical death, the immortal “I” of man passes through various spiritual worlds, carrying with it the sum of the eternal values that it has gained in earthly life. After a period of time that is different for each individual, the “ego” begins the return journey from the higher worlds to the lower ones, enriched by the insights gained in those worlds, and begins a new life on earth through re-embodiment, which takes shape according to its karma and the aspirations of its changed “ego”.

9. World affairs are regulated in accordance with the purpose of the whole by spiritual beings who intervene in events either favorably or unfavorably, according to their nature or volitional direction.

10. These beings are hierarchically structured according to their sphere of activity and power and, like everything in the world, are subject to evolution from lower to higher levels.

11. The supreme law of all world events is “free sacrifice out of love”. The Godhead, following this law, sacrificed Itself through manifestation in the outer world by endowing the spiritual beings that originated from It with the ability of free impulses of will. The Cosmos, brought into being through this act, is left to its own development.

12. This development leads through eons from unconscious to conscious comprehension of the supreme law of the world and through realization of it to the reunification of the individual with the whole.

We will now go through the individual points. In point 1, it says: “There are other spiritual worlds besides the one perceivable by our five senses, and each higher world has an effect on the lower ones.” We can agree with this. Under 2. it says: there are so-called occult senses. - I already said yesterday that it is necessary to emphasize that spiritual science stands on the standpoint that through special treatment of ordinary abilities, spiritual perceptual abilities can also be developed in man, and that in today's cycle of development, these methodically developed abilities are of primary importance. One can also find such abilities in man that still come from earlier times. They can be awakened, since they are present in almost every person, but they must be developed in the way described in “How to Know Higher Worlds”. It is therefore not good to say it as Mr. von Wrangell says, but one should say: It is possible that man, just as he develops his five senses through prenatal development and continues to develop them in extra-maternal existence, he also develops inner powers in the purely spiritual; develops abilities to see purely spiritual worlds. Such abilities are conscious transformations of older abilities, which were appropriate for earlier epochs on earth, and which awaken in every person already by themselves, either through external influence or during systematic training through the methods described in “How to Know Higher Worlds”. The expression “occult senses” should be avoided, because one cannot say that a person acquires occult senses, but rather that it is a completely different way of perceiving. What organizes what are called lotus flowers should not be called senses, but at most sensory faculty.

In point 3, it says: “Thoughts, feelings, volitional impulses, in short, what we call ‘spiritual phenomena’ in human experience, are - even if they have not expressed themselves in the sense world as words or deeds - living entities capable of effect in the spiritual worlds and indirectly in the sense world.” Now, this has often been described in great detail, especially recently, when I described the transition from the perception of thoughts to the experience of living thoughts. And it would be even better if one were to say: That which appears in man as thoughts, feelings and impulses of will is, as it appears to man in the soul, the image of entities of the higher worlds, the elemental world and the still higher worlds, so that we actually have the true reality in what we initially have as thoughts, feelings and impulses of will, in the same way that one has the true reality in sensory perceptions. It lies behind the one as well as behind the other.

The 4th point is: «The soul life of every human being leaves imperishable traces in the higher worlds, which in their totality are called the 'Akasha Chronicle' by secret researchers and can be explored by some qualified people (initiates).» This has often been described, and it is of particular importance to take into account the fact that when one enters the Akasha world, one enters a living world and not a world of dead images.

Then, in point 5, it is pointed out that a person consists of different aspects of his being. You know this much better than it is stated here.

Regarding point 6, about freedom, we have often said that people are led towards freedom on their path, that people become more and more free.

Point 7 is about karma, which you also know very well.

Point 8 is: “After physical death, the immortal ‘I’ of man passes through various spiritual worlds, carrying with it the sum of the eternal values that it has gained in earthly life. After a period of time that is different for each individual, the “I” begins the return journey from the higher worlds to the lower ones, enriched by the insights gained in those worlds, and, through re-embodiment, begins a new life on earth, which takes shape according to its karma and the aspirations of its changed “I”. — You can experience to a certain extent what is said about this in the lecture cycle “The Inner Nature of Man and Life between Death and a New Birth”.

Point 9: “World affairs are governed, in accordance with the purpose of the whole, by spiritual beings who intervene in events in a promoting or inhibiting way, depending on their nature and volitional direction.” — You are familiar with this too.

Point 10 reads: “These entities are hierarchically structured according to their sphere of activity and power and, like everything in the world, are subject to development from lower to higher levels.” — It is not good when everything is generalized again in this way. The idea of development also has a limited validity. I have often said that it is necessary to form new thoughts when ascending into the higher worlds. Thus, one can say that when ascending into the higher worlds, one first penetrates regions in which time still plays a role; but then one comes to regions that can be described as regions of duration. In these, time no longer plays a role. One can only speak of the fact that the law of development applies only as a symbolic, as I have done in my “Secret Science”.

Point 11 reads: “The highest law of all world happenings is ‘free sacrifice out of love’. The Godhead, following this law, has sacrificed Itself through manifestation in the outer world by endowing the spiritual entities that originated from It with the faculty of free will impulses. The Cosmos, brought into being through this act, is left to its own development.

Now Mr. von Wrangell tries to recapitulate and characterize the points mentioned, saying:

All secret researchers in European culture agree on these basic teachings: H.P. Blavatsky, Mrs. A. Besant, Leadbeater, Dr. Hartmann, Dr. R. Steiner, among others. The same teachings are also said to apply in the Indian secret schools from which H.P. Blavatsky took them.

But here we now know that spiritual science – as it presents itself in its purity to the world, little by little – must not be mixed with other things, for it can truly fulfill its mission only if it takes into account the essentials of Western culture and therefore also of Western science. But this cannot be said of such personalities as the late Dr. Franz Hartmann. Nor has the form which Theosophy has taken under the leadership of Mrs. Besant or even under Leadbeater anything to do with Western culture, as it is now making its self-evident cultural demands.

And here I may well refer those who, as seekers, are beginning to develop a certain interest in our spiritual science and attach great importance to our spiritual science breaking away from what otherwise often prevails in the world as Theosophy, to a very nice and dear article written by Dr. Rittelmeyer in the journal “Christianity and Contemporary Life”. The reason I mention this article is not that Dr. Rittelmeyer says a few things about me in it. Those who know me better are aware that I am not mentioning this for that reason, but because the article speaks of our work with a certain loving understanding and characterizes it with loving attention to one side or the other. It seems important to me to highlight one passage from this article, which I received this morning:

It is therefore important for those who, from within Western culture, are interested in what spiritual science seeks to be, that we do not want to reheat ancient Indian teachings, but that we want to create something out of the spiritual world that is suitable for our own time cycle.

Perhaps I may still refer you to the article. I can do so with reservation; because after the many things that are said about our movement and my writings, something can be said that does not complain, but responds with some understanding. The article is in issue 10 of the journal “Christianity and Contemporary Life” from October 1915, which is published in Nuremberg, Ebnergasse 10, bookstore of the Association for Inner Mission. As I said, do not misunderstand this reference when you read the article. But since I have said that it would be good to get to know the ideas that connect the outside spiritual life with us, it might interest you if something were to appear that does the opposite of what usually happens with our movement. The article is called: “Two Buildings of the German Future (Dornach and Elmau).” Elmau was founded by Dr. Müller. In this article, particular attention is paid to the differences between the Dornach and Elmau buildings. Perhaps I may read this passage. There is another passage I am not allowed to read because it mentions me too much; but perhaps I may read the following:

What Rittelmeyer is saying here is that those of us at Elmau want to keep the old ways alive, while we here want to create something new. We can be quite satisfied with that. It is very gratifying that there are some people who have an understanding of the spiritual science movement, while it is so denigrated in such an unpleasant way by those who do not want to educate themselves about it.

Now Mr. von Wrangell continues:

The occult abilities, similar to the sensory abilities in the earthly life of man, are said to be of very different degrees. The highest degree of initiation that can be attained at present enables a person, in an awakened state and in full possession of his mental faculties, to go with his ego at will into higher spiritual worlds, even into that world where the Akasha Chronicle provides information about the past of the whole world and of every single human being.

So on the whole, one can very much agree with the presentation. It is only necessary to know what our spiritual scientific movement wants in particular and to keep this clearly in mind. It is indeed necessary not to be confused with others who also deal with the spiritual worlds, but who mix everything together and speak of a deepening into the divine and so on. It is important to keep this clearly in mind.

This is followed by the chapter:

Secret teachings

The results of the knowledge gained by the secret researcher were previously only communicated in secret schools, but are now partially revealed in writings and lectures accessible to everyone. These communications naturally bear the stamp of the personality of the secret researcher in form and content. Since they are based on occult perceptions, their truth can only be independently verified by people who possess the same degree of occult gifts and the same power of judgment. For from the perceptions gained in the spiritual world, judgments must first be drawn and these conclusions must be translated into the language of the earthly sense world in order to be able to communicate them to fellow human beings.

On the other hand, it should be noted that although the content of the spiritual worlds can only be explored in the presence of the abilities that have been mentioned, anyone can actually check what has been explored. This is because the world that everyone can observe is, in a sense, a reflection of the spiritual world, which can be seen through the ability of spiritual perception. And if someone just looks at the world around them with truly open eyes and asks themselves: Does what the secret researcher has discovered in the world of spiritual reality correspond to what happens in life, then they can judge everything without developing occult abilities. It is not because one cannot judge when one says that one must “trust” the researcher of secrets, but because one does not want to engage in a test. What is said about spiritual science proves itself in life and in the world, and everyone can test it. He who says he cannot test is basically saying: I do not want to get involved in whether spiritual teachings can be tested in life and in the world; I do not want to get involved in this alert observation, I want to sleep with my intellect and my judgment. And because people like to sleep with their intellect and their judgment, that is why they say: You cannot test.

But again and again I would like to impress upon the world, so to speak, that it is important that spiritual science is not accepted on authority, but can be tested by what happens in the sensual world. Just because science still observes sensually, it does not engage in a spiritually alert contemplation of life. Therefore, one does not see the correctness of what the spiritual researcher says. And that is why I try not to rely on an authority, not to claim a belief, but I try again and again, through this or that in external science, in philosophical directions of striving, to show how people stand before the spiritual world and just do not want to admit to themselves that they should go further. One need not rely on authority, but only have open eyes, then the striving in spiritual science proves to be a genuine and necessary one in our time.

On the other hand, one must be clear about the fact that much of what is called spiritual science is likely to bar the mind of man from the real spiritual world. This is the case with world views that otherwise mean well, for example Eucken's. But it blinds people by speaking of spirit in words, words, words, that describe nothing other than what the physical soul reflection gives. Therefore, one need not be unjust. You will see that in my book “The Riddles of Philosophy” I have shown that what is said about people like Eucken cannot be called unjust. But one must also know that the wrong spiritual science obscures the view of the right one. It is infinitely more convenient to speak of the spiritual in Eucken's way than to concern oneself with the real spiritual that can be investigated.

The next chapter:

Difference between sense science and spiritual science

In this respect they differ essentially from the truths that can be gained by means of the ordinary senses, for here the testing of the facts can be undertaken by countless people and the logical chain of these is subject to the judgment of each one. In the case of occult knowledge, the most important criterion for the credibility of the communications of a secret researcher is the moral value of his personality.

— Not that is the important thing, but the important thing is that he stands on the ground of true spiritual striving, that he endeavors to lead people into the spiritual world in the right way. If one sees the paths that lead into ordinary science and can thus imagine the possibility of how it is to be passed on, then one gets a basis that is not met with the objection that one simply believes the spiritual researcher as a decent human being.

If there are reasons to doubt his truthfulness, then his occult communications are of course of little value.

- It would be as if, when someone has achieved something in ordinary science, we were to make our personal approval of his research dependent on his personality.

If you have no confidence in his judgment in ordinary life, it is highly unlikely that he should prove it under the infinitely difficult conditions, for example, of researching the Akasha Chronicle.

— One can indeed investigate whether what has been discovered from the Akasha Chronicle is in line with life.

But even with unusual occult gifts, with the highest development of the intellect, with the full impartiality of the researcher, it is not likely that people who are never infallible in earthly things should be so in unearthly ones.

- One should not speak of infallibility at all, but only of the fact that the spiritual researcher presents things from a certain point of view. But that has basically nothing to do with the way we relate to the secret researcher's messages.

One is therefore compelled to confront the secret investigator's communications with much sharper criticism than is required of any witness of earthly perceptions.

— So do not confront it with rejection or criticism. Most of what is achieved is rejection or criticism; if one were to reject 72:7 criticism, so much rejection would not come out.

A more or less reliable sense of probability must guide the inner agreement of the various messages, but above all, trust in the person of the secret researcher.

- So we must not have false ideas about this trust. On the other hand, what comes next is particularly important:

If his communications from those worlds, inaccessible to most people, contradict what has been proven by means of sensory perception, then no unbiased person will hesitate as to which communication deserves preference. If, for example, I really know all the facts that speak for the earth rotating freely in space, and a secret researcher tells me that he has learned from occult perceptions that the earth does not rotate, but that the fixed stars move around the earth, a person of sound mind will pay no attention to such occult research.

— Thus, occult science must agree with external science; and if it does not agree, it must indicate why and try to come into line with science.

Of course, such a contradiction can only refer to facts of the sensory world, and not to transcendental questions that lie beyond all sensory experience.

Nevertheless, even transcendental questions can be considered.

Thus, to cite another example, an astronomer who considers the Kant-Laplace hypothesis about the origin of the solar system to be probable cannot tell the secret researcher, who communicates a completely different cosmogony, as in the first case, that his assertion is erroneous, because the rotation of the Earth is considered proven by every healthy person, whereas the formation of the solar system from a nebula, according to the Kant-Laplace hypothesis, can be considered probable, but not proven.

— Mr. von Wrangell is quite right. I have always pointed out the inadequacy of the Kant-Laplace hypothesis that the world formed out of a primeval nebula, which is demonstrated to children in school by the well-known experiment. You pour a drop of oil on water, pierce it with a needle to which a piece of a map is attached, turn it, move this needle and then see how the individual drops split off. If you forget yourself, you have the process of the formation of a world system. But when you do this experiment, you have to point out that the teacher is there, turning the pin, because otherwise you also forget the teacher, the great one who turns the world system.

It is therefore, and this is my deepest conviction, in a dispute between really proven facts of the sensory world and the results of occult research, that victory will always remain on the side of science.

— There will be no victory, but when the facts of sensory science have been reliably researched and on the other hand the facts of spiritual science have been reliably researched, they will agree.

When some occultists express the view that there is nothing certain in earthly science, this is only possible for those who are only familiar with sciences at second hand, but not with the foundations in question.

However, the leading Theosophists in Europe at the time, Mrs. A. Besant, Dr. R. Steiner and others, claim that there is no contradiction between their occult research and the certain results of earthly science, and Dr. Steiner in particular is well qualified to judge about the methods of the exact sciences through his extensive and thorough knowledge of them. Whether the secret researcher is mistaken in detail may be left open, and in my opinion it is not of great importance, because if such a contradiction were proven, it seems to me that the question of whether the basic teachings of Theosophy correspond to the truth or not is not affected. All these teachings relate to spheres that lie beyond sense experience and can therefore be neither confirmed nor refuted by science, which is based exclusively on sense perceptions.

This is important because it shows that anyone who professes to be a scientist comes to the conclusion that a spiritual world view is necessary on the basis of his scientific convictions, and that one is necessarily led to it if one is a scientific person in our time.

The next chapter is headed:

Theosophy – a religion

The theosophical teachings claim to provide information about the purpose and goal of the world as a whole and of the individual human life, and thus to be a religious worldview.

My dear friends, it is necessary that we realize that the actual spiritual science, our spiritual scientific movement, really has nothing to do with religion, that it does not want to be a religious movement. Let us be clear about the fact that in relation to religious life, spiritual science can give nothing other than an inner relationship of the human soul with Christ. That is the religious moment, that is the religious element, but that is Christianity. The humanities recognize that Christianity is the fulfillment of the religious striving of humanity, that new religions will neither take place nor be able to take place. One should get to know the spiritual facts and for that, the humanities is a new instrument, but does not want to found a new religion. It does not want to set itself up as a new movement alongside Christianity, but only presents the research, just as Copernicus made his discovery.

But how was it in those days? In the 15th century, Copernicus came and gave what he had to give, but the Catholic Church did not allow people to believe in the Copernican doctrine until 1822. And Luther said: “The new astrologer, Copernicus, wants to prove that the earth moves and not the sky, the sun and the moon.” Now think how long it took before Copernicus was recognized. When people come along and say that it is a fantasy to teach repeated lives on earth, that is understandable, but it is not for us to teach people as if it were a matter of founding a new religion. Christianity is the synthesis, the confluence of world religions. Through spiritual science, we want to learn to understand Christian truths better than we can understand them without spiritual science. But we do not want to leave it in our heads that we are dealing with a new religion, with a new religious worldview, in theosophy. Spiritual science must defend itself against this. It wants to be science and thereby also deepen religious life. But religious life is also deepened by Copernicanism. In the nineties, the Catholic theologian Müllner, whom I mentioned when reciting Delle Grazie's poems, said about Galilei: “The one who is truly Christian and understands the religious relationship of the human soul to the divine worlds can only experience a deepening of religious life by exploring the world more closely, and not a threat.

It must be emphasized again and again that it is a weakness to resist what is brought by spiritual science in terms of deepening the religious. Imagine if someone had told Kolurmbus: not discover America, because there might be other people, other gods. Imagine what a weakness it would be not to stand so firmly on the ground of Christianity as to be able to say: Whatever will be discovered, the ground of Christianity is so strong that it will hold firm! Therefore, it is nothing but proof of the weakness of those who say that we must reject spiritual science. To them we must say: It is not Christianity if you believe that your teachings could be overthrown by spiritual science. Copernicus did not overthrow either, on the contrary, religious life was deepened by him. It is weak and timid cowardice that imposes the fight from the external, official, so-called Christian point of view, against what spiritual science wants.

This is the point of view we must take against those who come to us with their feeble, timid objections to Theosophy.

[The chapter “Theosophy - a Religion” is read to the end:] It seems doubtful whether any solution to the world riddle can fully satisfy the critically educated person of the present day in terms of its intellectual justification. It will always be a matter of how far the mind and soul of the person are satisfied by the solution to the great eternal questions that presents itself to him. Since it is not possible to prove this intellectually, the feeling for the greater or lesser probability of one or the other solution must also be taken into account.

We want to compare some of the world views as they present themselves to the educated person of European culture from this point of view.

In the following chapters, Wrangell compares materialism, agnosticism, and occultism with each other, and then has a chapter on re-embodiment and karma. He then comes to Lessing's view of reincarnation and a recapitulation of the whole train of thought. There is no longer enough time to discuss the final chapters. We will therefore continue the discussion tomorrow at seven o'clock, because we still have a few important things to say about the final chapters.

In our discussion of the Wrangell brochure, we have reached the chapter beginning on page 37, entitled “Materialism”. I will read this chapter first:

Materialism

As stated earlier, the materialistic view recognizes only that knowledge which can be gained through sense perceptions and logical conclusions based on them, and denies the reality of occult perceptions. The sense perceptions of most people do not provide direct evidence of the reality of spiritual forces and phenomena that are not bound to material bodies. From this the materialist concludes that the assumption of such forces and beings independent of matter is not justified, and declares the conclusions to be drawn from it to be worthless. According to him, world events are the necessary consequence of the forces and conditions present in matter from the very beginning, which only allow development, and according to the law of the dispersion of energy, must ultimately lead to a state of equilibrium, and consequently to eternal death. The intellectual task of man is to investigate the laws according to which the process of this world development takes place, in order to endure the least possible suffering and waste of energy by adapting to these laws.

If one fundamentally rejects the occult evidence for the existence of spiritual entities, then logically nothing can be said against the materialistic view.

We see here, in a few concise sentences, the essence of the materialistic train of thought. But in order to arrive at a clear understanding of the full significance of the materialistic world view in our time, we actually have to take various things into account.

It must be clear that those who have become honest materialists in our time have a hard time coming to a spiritualistic worldview. And when speaking of “honest” opponents of spiritualism, it is actually the theoretical materialists who should be considered first and foremost, because those people who from the outset, I would say “professionally”, believe they have to represent this or that world view, do not always need to be described as “honest” representatives of a world view. But Ludwig Büchner, for example, was an honest representative of materialism in the second half of the 19th century, more honest than many who, from what they consider a religious point of view, feel they have to make themselves opponents of a spiritual world view in the sense of spiritual science.

Now, I said that it is difficult for materialists to arrive at a spiritual conception of the world. For materialism, as it presents itself to us today in those who say: Yes, man has his senses and perceives the world through his senses, he observes the processes that the senses can follow and cannot, on the basis of what the senses present to him to the assumption of a spiritual being that is independent of the sense world – this materialism has emerged with a certain inevitability from the development of modern humanity, because it is based on something that had to emerge in the development of modern humanity.

Anyone who takes the trouble to study the older spiritual life of humanity will find that it reached an end with the 14th, 15th, 16th centuries among the actual civilized peoples. Today, one need only really deal with what the present can give to the consciousness of man and then pick up a book that, in terms of its conception, is still fully immersed in the way the world was viewed scientifically in the 13th, 14th, 15th century , 14th, 15th century, and one will find that the present man, if he takes things seriously and worthily, no longer has and can have a proper understanding of what is really said in the older literature up to the marked turning point.

Of course it does happen, but only with those who are dilettantes, or even those who have not yet become dilettantes, that they repeatedly dig out all kinds of tomes from this older literature that deal with natural science and then come to all kinds of conclusions about what is said in them in a profound way. But anyone who values true relationships with what they acquire will have to find that the modern human being cannot really have true relationships with this older way of looking at nature. It is different with the philosophical view. But today's man cannot really do anything with the view of nature of the older time, because all the concepts that he can form about nature are only a few centuries old, and with these one must approach nature today. Our physical concepts basically all go back to the Galilean world view and nothing earlier. One must already unfold a broad historical-scientific study when engaging with earlier scientific works, because the exact exploration of the material world, the external sense world, in whose current we find ourselves today, has actually only begun in the last few centuries.

Do you remember that we were just talking about measuring in reference to Wrangell's booklet? Weighing is also part of measuring, as we have seen. However, the introduction of weighing as an instrument into the methods of the natural sciences has only been common practice since Lzvozszer, so it is not yet 150 years old, and all the basic ideas of today's chemistry, for example, are based on this weighing.

On the other hand, if we want to form ideas today about the workings of electrical forces, for example, or even just thermal forces, then they must be based on the research from the last half of the 19th century. People today can no longer cope with the older ideas. The same could be said with regard to biological science. However, anyone who needs to know the development of science would also need to get to know the older literature; but we, who want to take spiritual science seriously, must get rid of what we so often encounter in so-called theosophists. I have often spoken of the fact that I got to know a theosophical community in Vienna in the 1880s, for example. There it was almost a kind of custom to pick out all kinds of old tomes and to read in them things that one really did not understand very well, because basically it takes a lot to read a scientific work, for example, from the 14th century. But people formed judgments. These judgments were always pretty much the same. Namely, when someone pretended to have read such a book – although they had only flicked through it – they said “abysmally deep”. These were the judgments that were made. At the end of the 1980s, I heard the word “abysmally deep” – relatively naturally – more often than any other. Of course, I also heard the word “shallows” often.

What must be borne in mind is the great importance of the views, concepts and ideas that have been gained under the influence of the views of recent centuries. When we consider the explanations of the basic concepts of mechanics, the wealth of physical, chemical and biological concepts, and also some of the things that have been brought together to see how the soul expresses itself in the external physical body, we have the result of the last few centuries, and especially of the second half of the last century, an enormously expanded research result before us. And this research result must necessarily be gained, not only because all external, technical, economic, material life is based on it, which humanity had to achieve at some point, but because a large part of our world view is also based on it. And one is actually - even if it does no harm in a certain limited field, but it is true - one is actually in such a field of world view as that of today's science a hay rabbit if one knows nothing of today's physics, biology and so on, as they have developed.

Of course, it must be emphasized again and again that the research results of spiritual science are obtained on the basis of those perceptual abilities that have often been mentioned. They cannot be obtained in the same way, although with the same certainty, as the scientific-materialistic results. And of course - if one surrenders to what was indicated yesterday - this spiritual science is a reality. But for our time today, for our present, much more is needed than just somehow having a spiritual relationship to the spiritual-scientific results, which can be fully grasped by common sense. It is much more necessary than somehow catching scraps of the spiritual world to familiarize oneself with the materialistic world view, at least with a section of it, in order to be able to really represent to the outside world today what spiritual science wants. For one cannot go before the world and truly represent spiritual science if one has no idea of the way in which the scientist researches today, how he must think and how he must handle research alongside clarification. And if one repeatedly refuses to pick up a book on natural science in order to familiarize oneself with modern natural science, then one will never be able to avoid committing gaffes when representing the spiritual-scientific worldview in the face of what is the dregs of the external worldview. Today it is also much less important to listen to the traditional religious systems than to the honestly gained venerable results of materialistic research. One must only be able to relate to these materialistic research results in the right way.

Let us take, just to show what is at stake at the present moment, any field; let us take the field of human anatomy and physiology. If you take any common book today – and I have always recommended such books over the course of the many cycles – you will get a picture of how today's physiologist builds his ideas about the structure of the human body, based on the bone system, the cartilage, tendon, muscle system, the nervous, blood, sensory, main system, and so on. And a picture will emerge of how people today, living in materialistic thought, imagine the interaction, say, of the heart and lungs, and again of the heart with the other vascular systems of the body. And then an answer can present itself to the question: How does a person who has acquired his concepts from materialistic research actually relate to these things? What ideas does he actually have in him? And here one must say: Significant ideas have indeed been gained; ideas that had to be gained in such a way that one really had to turn away from everything spiritual, from carrying spiritual thoughts into research. One had to enter into the material realm as it presents itself to the five senses, as they say in popular terms, and into the context that arises from the five senses. One had to see through the world in this way, and much remains to be done in this area, in all possible fields of scientific research.

But now suppose you have acquired a picture of the structure of the human body such as the anatomist and physiologist have today. Then you will find that the anatomist and physiologist say: Well, the human being is made up of various organs and organ systems, and these work together in a certain way.

You see, when an anatomist or a physiologist speaks today and summarizes his ideas into an overall picture of the human being, then, within this picture, the same thing remains based on sensory observation. From this, very specific ideas arise that can be taken up. But one must relate to them in the right way. Perhaps I can make this clear by means of a comparison. For example, someone might say: I want to get to know Raphael, how do I do that? - I would tell him: If you want to get to know Raphael, then try to immerse yourself in Raphael's paintings; study the Marriage of Joseph and Mary, one of the paintings in Milan, and then the various paintings up to the Sistine Madonna and the Ascension, and get an concept of how Raphael tried to distribute the figures in space, how he tried to distribute light and shadow, to enliven one place in the picture at the expense of the other, to emphasize one and withdraw the other, and so on, then you will know something about Raphael. Then you will have the preparation to get to know Raphael even better, then you will gradually get a picture of the configuration of Raphael's soul, of what he wanted, from which sources of his mind his creations emerged. One could imagine that someone comes and says: Oh, looking at the pictures does not suit me, I am a clairvoyant and look directly into Raphael's soul, see how Raphael created and then talk about Raphael. I can imagine someone coming and saying: I don't need to see anything of Raphael at all, but delve directly into the soul of Raphael. Of course, in Raphael research this would be considered nonsense, but in the field of spiritual science it is practiced a great deal, despite the many admonitions over the years in which we have been doing spiritual science. One could see how few felt compelled to use the literature mentioned in the course of the lecture cycles and to use it in such a way as to obtain images from what materialistic research has produced.

But just as one would err if one were to stop at the image and not want to progress to the soul that is expressed through the image, so the materialist stops. What one could say to the materialist is, for example, this: Yes, you are looking at an image, but you do not notice that you should consider what you are looking at as the outer revelation of a spiritual inner reality. But it is true that materialistic research has brought together an enormous amount of material. If one regards this as the external manifestation of a spiritual reality, then one is on the right path. The materialist only makes the mistake of having the material and not wanting to accept that it is the expression of a spiritual reality. But on the other hand, one must always be in the wrong when one asserts something spiritual and a materialist says things about which one has no idea. Of course one can have an overview of the rich field of research and still have no idea about a great deal; but one must have some idea about the way in which things are acquired. And if our School of Spiritual Science is to serve as a place where a number of people who have studied one field or another interpret the materialistic basic premises that one must have according to the present-day development, then our School of Spiritual Science will achieve a great deal.

We could do it today, saying that what is set out in our cycles of material could suffice; we could conclude with it and use the next time to show our friends the material basis of the conditions that must be there. One will then see, when one looks at today's physics, chemistry and biology in the appropriate way, that what is in our cycles will arise. Then one would have taken the right approach to materialism.

My dear friends, you are quite mistaken when you say that materialism is wrong. What nonsense! To say that materialism is wrong is just as if you wanted to say: the Sistine Madonna is blue here and red there, that's wrong, that's just matter. Materialism is right in its own field; and if you take what it has contributed to human knowledge, it is something tremendous. We do not need to fight materialism, but only to show by its development how materialism, if it understands itself, leads beyond itself, just as I have shown how anatomy and physiology lead beyond themselves and necessarily into the spiritual realm.

One can only ask: Why are there so many people who, instead of accepting materialism as a mere research method, stop at it as a world view? - The right thing would be to say that today it would indeed be something completely complicated and foolish to practice alchemy instead of chemistry; today one must practice chemistry and not alchemy as in the 12th century. That goes without saying. But it is necessary to rise up out of today's research into the spiritual life. If our friends would only take the trouble to study the little book Haeckel and His Opponents, they would find that all the thoughts on which it is based are governed by the biogenetic law. It is significant that we have not yet managed to get a second edition of this little book 'Haeckel and his Opponents'. And yet it is extremely important to be informed, if not about the latest research results - one does not necessarily need to know these in detail - then at least about the way the researcher proceeds and how he or she goes about their research. This is of the utmost importance.

If someone says: I don't need to study the book, why should I, the spiritual world is clear to me from the outset; I don't need to climb the whole ladder – if someone says that, then today he is an egoist who only considers himself and does not pay attention to what the times demand of us. But we must pay attention to this if we want to serve the spirit of the time. It is extremely important that we keep this in mind. Of course, one has the right to say, why do I need a scientific basis, the spiritual world is clear to me. That may be true. But if you want to learn something in the field of the spiritual world – you can of course do it in such a way that you interpret what is there – but if you want to learn something, you have to familiarize yourself with what is available in materialistic science.

On the other hand, one must ask: How is it that there are many anatomists, physiologists, physicists, chemists and so on today as natural scientists, and even those who call themselves experimental psychologists, that they do not want to hold materialism as a research method, but as a worldview? Here one must honestly have the courage to answer: To conduct research in a materialistic way, all that is required is to stare at the world with the five senses and to use external methods. One need only surrender to the world passively, then one stands firm. Plucking any old plant, counting the stamens, taking the microscope, staining a cross-section in order to study the structure, and so on – I could, of course, list many more things – that is what people do. You just have to stand there, be passive and let nature take effect on you. You let yourself be led by nature.

In the very first writings I published, I called this the dogmatism of experience. People hold on to the dogmatism of experience. You can read about it in my book “Grundlinien einer Erkenntnistheorie der Goetheschen Weltanschauung” (Basic Principles of an Epistemology of the Goethean World View). I also later called it “fact fanaticism”. But to enter the spiritual world, one must work inwardly, and for that one needs inner activity. And that is where people run out of strength. One can see in our time that this strength has been exhausted. If you make comparisons in the field of anatomy, for example, you will find that one can almost point the finger to the point where the strength has been exhausted.

Take the anatomist Ayrt/, who was replaced on his chair by the anatomist Langer. Compare the writings of the two scientifically, and you will see how, in the succession of the two scholars, one is absolutely clear that there is something spiritual behind the external, and the other no longer cares. Why is that? Because, however meritorious materialism is as a research method and however much it has achieved, without which people could not live today, people were too lazy to bring what they had grasped into active life. Laziness, real indolence of mind, has made people persist in materialism. Because materialism became so dominant and presented itself as reality, people did not rise to the spiritual. It is laziness and inertia, and one must have the courage to recognize this reason.

Immerse yourself in the fields of scientific research and you will see that this scientific research is magnificent and admirable. Delve into everything that is fabricated by the monists and other associations as “world views” and you will see that they are based on laziness and inertia, on an ossification of thought. This is what we must clearly face, that we must distinguish - if we stand on the ground of true spiritual science - between the entirely justified materialistic research methods and research results and the so-called materialistic world view.

Most of the time, those who do materialistic research cannot even think, because it is easier to do materialistic research than to think spiritually. I will give you an example to illustrate that materialists simply stumble when they want to move from materialistic research methods to a worldview. So let us assume that I have tried to gain an atomistic world view. I will therefore say: bodies consist of atoms. These must be thought of in motion, so that when you have a material object in front of you, it consists of atoms. There are spaces between the atoms. The atoms are in motion, and according to the materialistic world view, heat is generated by this motion. If one were to say that heat is based on the movement of atoms, then one would be right, then one would only be stating a fact. However, one comes to the realization that it is impossible to speak of atoms as something that actually exists. Atoms are imagined – and they have to be imagined if they are to make sense – but what is perceived should first be brought about by the atoms. So you can't see an atom. You see that the so-called atomistic world view is composed of nothing visible, of nothing that can be perceived by the senses.

Now, however, you can reflect and say: the world consists of atoms and these are in motion. One wants to investigate the kind of movement that underlies heat, light, magnetism, electricity, and so on, and one comes to assume that certain atomic movements are the cause of sensory perception. So one comes to atoms. One divides what is given, and if one divides again and again, one must finally come to the indivisible, and that is the atom. Divisible atoms are meaningless. The last parts, that is, the atoms, must be indivisible. Now, however, people also want to explain movement from the atoms – I can only hint at this, but you can follow it up in the philosophical-scientific literature of recent times – they also want to explain movement from the nature of the atoms. But if you think about how one atom must push the other for motion to arise, which we see in heat, electricity and so on, then you cannot think of atoms as rigid; you have to think of them as elastic. It is necessary to think of them elastically, because rigid atoms would not give the movement that must come out during a collision if heat, electricity or magnetism is to come out.

So these atoms must be elastic. But what does that mean? It means that the atom can be compressed and then springs back to its former state. It must therefore be compressible and spring back again, otherwise one cannot even think of the pushing of the atoms. Now we have gained two things: first, the atom must be indivisible; second, it must be elastic. These two facts confront modern thinking, which pays homage to atomism. The atom must be conceived as indivisible, otherwise it is no longer an atom, and it must be conceived as elastic, because it would be a senseless idea to trace the movement of the atom back to rigid atoms. English thinkers in particular have emphasized these two sentences very sharply: firstly, the atom is indivisible, and secondly, the atom must be conceived as elastic. If I allow a body to be elastic, it is inconceivable that the parts push together and then spring back into the original position to create the elastic body. This is inconceivable without it being divisible and movable. But the atom must be indivisible on the one hand, and on the other hand it must be divisible, because otherwise it cannot be elastic. But what does that mean?

It means that if we want to imagine atoms, we come up with two contradictory basic assumptions. There is no way around this. There is an enormous amount of interesting literature about thinking the world picture together out of non-rigid atoms. But then the atom is no longer an atom, because it has to be thought of as divisible. That is to say, one comes to the conclusion that the idea of the atom is impossible as long as one assumes that the atom is material. In the moment when you do not think of the atom materially, when you think that the atom is not something material but something else, one can think of the atom as indivisible, just as the human ego is also thought of as indivisible. Suppose the atom is force, then you can also think of it as being put together. If you do not think in materialistic terms, you do not need to think that there are spaces in between. The two things are therefore perfectly compatible if we do not think of atoms materially. If we carefully consider what optics, the science of electricity, and so on, offers us, and draw the final consequences as to how the atom must be, then we come to the conclusion that the atom cannot be material. You are bound to touch on spiritual matters. But this step has to be taken. It makes no difference whether the atom is elastic or rigid; we are not concerned with such details. Materialism should not be fought, but understood. The great amount of work and good results should not be despised by spiritual science.

Let us now turn to the next chapter of the Wrangell treatise:

Doubts about the materialistic world view

But many people harbor doubts: could it really be that the whole world is not based on any rational, moral thought, and that the concepts of what is expedient and moral arise only in the human breast, but have no validity outside of it?

We feel within us the striving for good, and the concept of good is inseparable from the concept of freedom, because where absolute necessity reigns, there is no evil and no good. A stone must fall in a certain direction with a certain speed, and it would be senseless to call this fall evil or good.

Should that which we feel in our innermost being to be the true measure of life be only deception and delusion, and is this idea of good, that is, of morality chosen in freedom, not to be found in the whole of the world, of which man is only a tiny fraction? Should the small part, man, endowed with lofty feelings and thoughts, stand in this respect higher than the whole, which proceeds unconsciously, without purpose, like a dead wheelwork, to end in eternal death? Most people's minds resist such a solution and seek another.

It is all right to say that the intellect objects to this, but it is much more important in our time to say that thinking objects to it. If one wishes to stand only on the ground of materialism, then one must go to the atom and grasp it as matter. But one can also call it force, and then one arrives at the fact that where one finds matter, there is the cosmic world of thought. There then the moral world order has its full place in it.

Now, some have found it more convenient to say: Yes, if you rethink the world like that, scruples and doubts arise for sense knowledge everywhere and it is not right to accept this sense knowledge as the only valid knowledge; but man is so constituted that he cannot penetrate deeper. This results in the following situation: there stands the man, who is perhaps a very good researcher in the field of the external sense world and who, as a materialistic researcher, can produce something lasting, beautiful and magnificent, but he is not inclined to go further. And so he says: there must be all sorts of things behind matter; but we are not able to penetrate there with the human capacity for knowledge. He calls himself an agnostic. He does not realize that this talk, that man does not have the ability and so on, is inspired by Ahriman and he does not listen to what good spirits tell him; he does not listen to that. In truth, he is just a slacker. Slacker is what you call it when you say it honestly, agnosticism is what you call it in science.

The next chapter in Wrangell's book is now entitled:

Agnosticism

The answer to the question of the origin and purpose of the universe and the destiny of man, which presents the least difficulties to the mind, but leaves the demands of the heart completely unsatisfied, is the point of view of the agnostic (” “not-knowing"), when he says: these questions transcend the limits of human knowledge, and therefore, by their very nature, must remain unanswered, and it is more reasonable to devote one's time and energy to tasks where there is a prospect of overcoming them.

— One cannot object to saying, I will devote myself to a task that I can accomplish. That is within a person's freedom. But it is not within a person's freedom to say: What I do not know, no one else may know. All philosophizing about what man cannot know is actually, at bottom, a scientific infamy, and, furthermore, it is a scientific megalomania without parallel, because man sets himself up as the arbiter of what may and may not be researched, because he presents what he himself wants to accept as decisive for all other people. What impotence lies in the sentence: “There are limits to knowledge”! What arrogance and conceit lies in it, but should also be made clear. This should not be whispered in the ears, but blared. —

Without denying the existence of spiritual beings, the agnostic maintains that this area is not accessible to everyone, while everything based on sensory experience is within the realm of knowledge of the normal person, and he should be content with that. Those people in whom the intellect, trained to be critical, predominates, can remain at this point of view without being paralyzed in their actions; but for most people, this answer is no answer. If one takes the standpoint of a person without personal occult experiences and without knowledge of other people's reports of such perceptions that appear credible to him, then, logically speaking, he is free to speak out in favor of or against the existence of spiritual worlds. —

But one is not entitled to deny the scientific nature of the opposing view.

The degree of credibility of the reports of others cannot be measured with objective, i.e. universally valid rigor, and the judgment about it is inevitably influenced by subjective motives in each individual case.

- Yes, you can show that.

If the facts can be verified by any normal person, then in most cases there is no need to go to the trouble of verifying them personally, because the current organization of scientific research ensures that an erroneous observation or report is soon discovered, and this compels every observer and reporter, if only for the sake of his reputation, to be as careful and truthful as possible, and in any case an observation error does not remain undetected for long.

— Basically, that doesn't say much more than if someone were to say the following: With the way scientific work is organized today, if you go to Basel and buy a chemistry book, you can believe what's in it, because it contains chemical results, and it wouldn't occur to a chemist to lie. — But that would only legitimize the belief in authority. And if people would only admit this to themselves, they would realize how much they accept on trust today. I have often emphasized that spiritual science, although in its infancy, can be tested. Spiritual science is still young; when it is older, the spiritual scientist will be in the same position as the chemist is today: it will then be clear that one does not lie in spiritual science.

Occult perception, however, is different, and this essential difference has long led the men of exact science, who are accustomed to controllable facts, to treat occult communications not only critically, i.e. with scrutiny, but skeptically, i.e. with outright rejection.

- The real reason is that they are too lazy.

Now, however, this no longer seems possible, because the evidence for the immaterial existence of spiritual beings is so compelling that men of undoubted scientific training consider this question to be proven. It is enough to mention names such as Zöllner, Wallace, du Prel, Crookes, Butlerow, Rochas, Oliver Lodge, Flammarion, Morselli, Schiaparelli, Ochorowicz, James, among others.

— There Mr. von Wrangell relies on those who tie in with atavistic abilities, while we assume that every person can acquire the abilities that make it possible to test the spiritual as one tests the scientific.

These men not only find no contradiction between occult facts and established results of exact sensory research, but their habit of unprejudiced criticism leads them to reject the skepticism of the materialist and to devote themselves to the study of occult phenomena.

— But they do not do it in the right way. They drag everything down to the same field of experimentation as chemistry, even that which can only be attained through the free activity of thought. Instead of constructing inwardly, they go around, as it were, with a yardstick, measuring. —

These authorities may err in their judgment, but their point of view can serve as proof that we are justified in assuming the existence of spiritual entities without exposing ourselves to the accusation of scientific ignorance. Assuming that one has no occult abilities oneself, one is dependent on the reports of others and must examine them for their credibility.

— It would be better to try to engage with what is said in “How to Know Higher Worlds”. It is much easier than many assume. Most people just don't recognize it, but all sorts of complications are recognized. It would actually be relatively easy to experience at least enough of the spiritual world in a few years to recognize it in general. But people say: That is nothing; because they strive for what I have called gut-level clairvoyance. And if it does not come to gut-level clairvoyance, then none of it means anything to them.

The sources of error in occult perceptions lie both in the subject and in the object. Even a superficial knowledge of the perceptual material accumulated by spiritists and other occultists shows us that here, admittedly, the sources of error flow abundantly...

— They really do not. It is no different than saying: nature never lies! But it lies all the time. Take a glass of water and stick a stick in it, it will appear broken to you; but it is not. Take the path of the sun in the sky, compare the size in the morning and the size at noon: nature lies to you all day long. The spiritual world lies just as much and just as little. It is extraordinarily interesting, for example, to visualize the processes in the etheric body of a person when they have an intestinal disorder, or to observe what the etheric body does when the digestive processes take place. It is just as interesting as when one usually studies anatomy or physiology, even more interesting. But it is unjustified to regard what is nothing more than a process in the etheric body during digestion as a magnificent process of the cosmic world. The spiritual world itself does not lie; it must only be interpreted in the right way. There is no need to disdain what happens in our etheric body during digestion. It should not be misunderstood. The senses, too, do not deceive in reality. When you reach into the water, you find with the sense of touch... [gap in the transcription]. In the course of time, natural science has acquired good rules through study, while it is believed in the humanities that the less study one has undergone, the more suitable one is for it.

Thus: “Even a superficial acquaintance with the material of perception accumulated by spiritualists and other occultists shows us that here, admittedly, the sources of error flow abundantly... .”

because they not only lie, as in the material world, in the subject, but also in the object, in that numerous malicious entities are supposed to make it their business to mislead the person doing the research. If one could rightly say of ordinary sensory perceptions: nature never lies, only man sometimes misunderstands them - it is, according to the secret researchers, different in the spiritual world. Therefore, if the reality of spiritual phenomena that are independent of matter is admitted, it is a great and difficult task to separate the wheat from the chaff there. This is the task of spiritual science, which, if one wants to pursue it seriously, requires a person's full time and energy, as is the case with every other branch of knowledge, albeit perhaps to a lesser extent. For the majority of people, however, such study is neither possible nor necessary. Just as one can be a Christian and find consolation and uplift in the teachings of Jesus, and see in his person the realization of the moral ideal, without being a theologian, so one can recognize in the basic teachings of Theosophy an interpretation of the actual meaning and purpose of one's own life without being familiar with the comprehensive structure of esoteric science.

— This is a claim that cannot be readily accepted, for even if people are not chemists or biologists, they can still live today. But man must gradually come to know that which belongs to the world to which the human soul itself belongs. It is a kind of unjustified denial when people say that to be a Theosophist one needs no more familiarity with esoteric science than one needs to be a theologian to be a Christian.

The world view that best furthers a person's actions and feelings is the one that most satisfies both his intellect and his feelings.

The next chapter is entitled:

The Soul's Survival After Death

If we assume that the spiritual principle in man, that which is designated by the word soul, is an entity that continues to exist after the death of the body, then various ideas about its further fate are possible. Of these, we will only consider the Christian view and the doctrine of re-embodiment here, as they are currently in the foreground for us. The teachings of Christ have been a source of comfort and moral strength for millions, and will probably continue to be so in the future. However, it cannot be denied that for the scientifically educated European, the difficulties of an intellectual nature have increased and do not allow the conflict between faith and knowledge based on Christian teachings to be resolved. The existing contradiction demands a sacrifice, either of the intellect or of the mind. In addition to these intellectual difficulties, many people have serious moral reservations about the usual Christian view. All Christian denominations teach that after death, the soul of man endures a fate that is eternal in duration: eternal bliss or eternal damnation. Every person feels that this belief contradicts the demand for justice. The basis of all morality is justice.

- If only one knew a little more! Of course Wrangell is right when he says that one cannot speak of eternal bliss and eternal damnation in this way, since these contradict justice. For “eternal” is an absurdity if one believes that it is something infinite. “Eternal” is only an age, a world age, and actually one should not speak of “eternal” in the Christian sense either, but only of an age, and that roughly corresponds to the time between death and a new birth.

Deep within every human breast lies the unshakable desire for each person to receive what is deserved. The concept of merit may change, as may the value placed on what is experienced and felt. But there can be no doubt that people would be happier, better, more satisfied if they were convinced that the way the world works meets the demand for justice in every detail. In what we experience in the course of our physical life, we do not see justice prevailing in ourselves and others, regardless of whether we consider mental, spiritual or physical suffering and joy as a measure of the value of what we experience. According to the teachings of the Christian churches, this apparent injustice of earthly life is to be compensated for in the hereafter; but it is basically infinitely intensified by the eternal consequences of temporal transgressions or merits.

— It is self-evident that Wrangell only speaks of what the Christian churches say, which arose after Justinian had closed the Greek schools of philosophy. But he overlooks the fact that we have the task of making the blocked wisdom accessible to humanity again. One must look for the right reasons. One could also show that those who teach Christianity today do not teach true Christianity, but rather a form of it that has been adapted.

The next chapter is called:

Reincarnation and Karma

The doctrine of reincarnation and karma, on the other hand, offers us the possibility of resolving the visible injustice of a life's destiny by the fact that it was self-imposed in previous lives, and that there is the possibility of improving it for subsequent reincarnations.

Such a belief, when it has become an inner certainty, gives one the strength to bear one's fate, even the hardest, without inner revolt, and spurs one on to improve it for the future by following the voice we call “conscience”.

The sense of responsibility in our consciousness is strengthened, and the danger that humanity, in a frenzy and selfishness, seeks to exploit the short span of temporal life, would be eliminated. The doctrine of rebirth and karma makes man free, because it puts him on his own.

Of course, the great mystery of the “what for” of it all remains unsolved, but the purpose and task of the individual life are clear and certain.

The next chapter is the conclusion of Lessing's “Education of the Human Race”:

Lessing's view of the doctrine of reincarnation.

“Is this hypothesis (of reincarnation) so ridiculous because it is the oldest? Because the human mind, before it was dispersed and weakened by sophistry and school, immediately fell for it? Why should I not come back as often as I am able to gain new knowledge, new skills? Do I get so much out of it at once that it is not worth the effort to come back?”

According to the doctrine of reincarnation, it is our fate to live on this earth until we have reached our destiny: knowledge of God, which is knowledge of self. Death is not annihilation; our sense of self, our true nature, merely enters into another body. Even the suicide does not escape; he only cuts the thread of life, which, according to inexorable laws, must be reattached.

- So Lessing. These were strong words. But they were also the words of a man who had the education of his time within him and who was necessarily led to this doctrine of reincarnation by what this and Christianity could give him. At this point, one sees the eminent education, one sees the historical critic. But now people say, of course Lessing is a great man; he wrote Nathan and so on, that's good, but when he grew old he devoted himself to such fantastic dreams as the doctrine of reincarnation; you can't go along with that. Well, in that respect the court master has become much cleverer than Lessing was in his old age. Many a person believes that he is much cleverer than Lessing, who is otherwise even recognized as a great man. One should at least recognize the ridiculousness of such an acknowledgment; recognize that one must strive toward what Lessing had finally worked his way to. They should realize how ridiculous it is if they do not want to go along with this, the ripest fruit of Lessing's thinking, not to mention what has followed in the newer intellectual life. These people speak without going into the actual core, which was already at the basis of the new intellectual life, but which for many who interpret it is a closed book. Now Wrangell continues:

That Goethe also believed in reincarnation is known to us from Eckermann and Boisserau's notes. Kant says in his “Lectures on Psychology”: “The beginning of life is birth; but this is not the beginning of the life of the soul, but of the human being. Birth, life and death are therefore only states of the soul... Consequently, the substance remains, even though the body perishes, and so the substance must also have existed when the body came into being.

Now follows the last chapter:

A brief summary of the train of thought

Let us try to briefly summarize the train of thought set out above.

The concept of the law-governed, the necessary chain of cause and effect in events, is not an original insight. On the contrary, direct consciousness gives us the idea of conditional freedom.

The concept of lawfulness, on which all science is based, probably first came to man from observation of the temporally regular course of celestial phenomena. Then this concept was applied with ever-increasing success to the phenomena of the inanimate (physics, chemistry), then to the animate, and finally also to the spiritual. The concept of lawfulness can only be tested and irrevocably proven on the basis of phenomena that can be quantitatively determined, that can be measured. The extension of the idea of the necessity of the material to the spiritual is an assumption that, according to analogy with what happens in the material, can indeed be given a certain probability, but which cannot be proven because the touchstone of measurability is lacking here. Numerous facts, examined by discerning men of science, do not allow any truth-seeking person to deny the existence of spiritual beings without providing proof, which is why he rejects the facts in question and their probative value.

The basic tenets of Theosophy – reincarnation and karma – do not contradict any scientific fact, satisfy the intellect and, better than other teachings, meet the basic requirement of all morality – the demand for justice.

Belief in these basic assumptions must strengthen people to endure unwanted life destinies and promote the striving for good in them.

And so, my dear friends, this brochure stands before us as a document of our time, as the expression of a person who, after thoroughly studying scientific methods, stands firmly within them and wants to bear witness to the fact that one can be a good, fully conscious scientist and precisely because of this, not in spite of it, must arrive at a world view that honors the spirit.

You will have gathered from the last chapters of Mr. von Wrangell's brochure that he has not yet delved very deeply into spiritual science, that he has not approached the difference between what spiritual science wants and amateurish theosophy. And so it is all the more important to see how someone who is scientifically trained longs for what can only be truly given through spiritual science, so that one can say: through such a brochure one has come to know how an unprejudiced scientist can relate to a spiritual-acknowledging view.

We can pull other strings and we will do so occasionally. We will delve further into the matter in order not only to cultivate spiritual science in an egoistic way, but to really see it as a cultural ferment and to work through it on the developmental path of humanity. It is extremely important that we get into the habit of really going along with everything.

Sometimes, our ranks offer a particular experience. Please don't be offended when I talk about this experience, but it really can be had. You see, there are certain members in our ranks who say, “Public lectures aren't important to us,” and they say it in a way that shows they're not really involved. They say that the public lectures are not the most important thing; the branch lectures, yes, those are for us, but we have progressed beyond what the public lectures provide. And yet it is precisely the case that the public lectures are designed for those who have a connection to the outside world. And much more reference is made to contemporary science in the public lectures than in the private lectures, which show how often delicate consideration has to be given to the fact that one does not love to base strictly scientific questions. And this delicate consideration is often interpreted to mean that one says: the public lectures are not so important.

The truth of the matter is somewhat different. There is only one kind of selfishness at the root of these matters. I do not want to break a lance for the public lectures, I just want to challenge the unfounded opinions of many people. It may be easier to miss this or that intermediate link in the branch lectures here or there; but the public lectures must be shaped link by link. This is not popular with many people whose work is not part of the overall cultural process of our time. But it is precisely this process of engaging with the cultural process of the time, this not shutting ourselves off, that is important.

Of course, it is easier to talk about angels, Lucifer and Ahriman than about electrons, ions and so on. But it is true that we must also bring ourselves to the realization that we must pull the strings towards the present culture. But I ask you not to take the matter one-sidedly again, as if I wanted to urge you to buy the entire scientific collection of Göschen tomorrow and sit down to gradually concoct everything, as the students would say. I do not mean that at all. I only mean that where one wants to speak authoritatively about the position of spiritual science in our culture, one must also have an awareness of it and should not fall into the trap of saying: this outer science is a pipe dream. As an individual, one can say that one has no time to deal with it; but the whole institution, the whole enterprise, should be given a certain direction through what I have said. And it should not be surprising that the School of Spiritual Science aims to pursue individual branches of science in such a way that they will gradually lead to spiritual science. We still need the materialistic culture out there. And those anthroposophists are wrong who say: What do I care about materialistic culture, it is none of my business, it is for coarse materialists; I cultivate what one experiences when one dreams, when one is not quite right while being fully conscious; the rest is none of my business, I have the teachings of reincarnation and karma and so on. On the other hand, there is the world out there that says: We have real science, serious and dignified methods, and now the anthroposophists are coming along with their spiritual science; they are the purest fools.

This antagonism cannot remain unresolved, and we cannot expect mediation from the outside. It must come from within. We must understand and not lie back on the sickbed and say: if we first have to climb up into the spiritual world through science, that is far too arduous for us.

I wanted to speak about the significance of materialistic culture and draw your attention to it, because I have often emphasized that materialism comes from Ahriman, but Ahriman must be known, just as Lucifer must be known and reckoned with. And the Trinity, which we were able to see in the model yesterday, is the one with which humanity will have to become familiar.

I would like to repeat once more: try not to annoy the outside world by talking about a new religion. If we were to talk about the group as a “Christ statue,” it would be a big mistake. It is enough to say: there stands the representative of humanity. Everyone can see what is meant there. It is important that we always find the right words, that is, that we consider how we want to place ourselves in the whole cultural world and come to describe the matter with the right words. That is what must be said again and again. We do not want to speak to others: We have only just presented the real Christ. - We may know that and keep it to ourselves. For us it is important to understand the full blessing of materialistic culture, otherwise we make the same mistake as those who do not examine.

Let us ask ourselves whether we are not doing the same with others. We do not need to withhold the true judgment, but we must understand what is going on outside. Then we will also be able to counter what is going on outside in the right words. But, my dear friends, we will have a lot to do in this direction, because the laziness I have spoken of today is very, very widespread and we must find the courage to tell people: You are too lazy to engage in the activity of thinking.

If we understand what is going on outside, then we can also use strong words and take up an energetic fight. But we must familiarize ourselves with it and pull the strings of the outer culture. That is why I wanted to give an example of the very commendable Wrangell brochure, which shows how someone is strong as a scientist, but has not sufficiently studied the spiritual scientific world view, but through the whole direction of his soul tends towards spiritual science.

We have often shown the drawing of threads, mostly in relation to specific personalities, and I advise you, where there are branches, to do the same in collaboration. Of course, this cannot be the work of just one person; it would never be finished. Rather, there must be someone who takes on a brochure about Eucken's world view for my sake, and someone else takes a brochure that deals with the blood, muscle and nervous system and so on, and works through it with the others. This can be branch work. It can be arranged so that on one branch evening, work is done purely in terms of spiritual science, and then the next evening, a subject like this is covered. When one person has done it on one day, another can do it the next time. Everyone can take up something that is somehow close to them. And why should someone who has no scientific education not be able to take up this or that? There are questions of life that can also be linked to such things. It is much more useful to use the time for such studies than to extract all kinds of occult intricacies and material from dreams and tell people about them. This is not meant to be one-sided either. It is not meant to say that one can never speak of occult experiences; but it is a matter of drawing the right line of connection. It is not a matter of despising the science of the senses, but of mastering it. The science of the senses is not to be trampled or destroyed, but mastered.

In our examination of the Wrangell brochure on “Science and Theosophy”, we have tried to consider various ideas that show how someone who wants to stand firmly on the ground of modern science is nevertheless pushed towards the recognition of knowledge of spiritual life. And as you have seen, we have fewer objections to Wrangell's pamphlet than the fact that we have only had additions to make in the sense of spiritual science. So in this pamphlet there is, as it seems at first, a subjective judgment about how the path of the modern scientist to spiritual science is, how, in other words, one can be a modern scientist and still find the path to spiritual science.

It is important to consider this train of thought, because it seems to me to be absolutely necessary that those who stand on the ground of spiritual science clearly recognize that the objections of so-called scientists are not at all really scientific, but come from the fact that today one can be an excellent scientist who knows how to use materialistic scientific methods quite well in some field of science and can be a complete amateur in all other world-view questions.

Now today, so to speak, in continuation of the thoughts developed on the basis of the brochure, I would like to develop some other thoughts that are important for us. I would like to show how the present development of humanity has reached a point that should suggest to the insightful scientist, to the one who really takes science seriously and appreciates it, that he should engage in spiritual scientific study and not do it the way it has been done so far: to regard it as something to be rejected from the outset.

I have, as some of you may recall, in the context of the considerations related to the Wrangell brochure, in some respects actually sung the praises of the materialistic scientific method. I have said that it has produced great and significant results in recent times, that one need only gain a correct point of view in relation to this materialistic scientific method and one will appreciate it and not underestimate it. We will familiarize ourselves with its results, precisely if we necessarily intend to draw the threads between it and spiritual science.

Now, I would first like to start from a kind of scientific train of thought that can show us how the thinking scientist — precisely when he understands himself in the right way — should knock on the door of spiritual science. I would like to draw attention to a chapter of modern natural science that also has great significance in socio-ethical terms, but which cannot achieve this in a way that is satisfying for the human being until and unless natural science has found the path to spiritual science. I would like to discuss some of the lines of thought in so-called criminal anthropology.

One of the great researchers in criminal anthropology is Professor Dr. Moriz Benedikt, whom I have mentioned before. He was one of the first to examine the brains of criminals in a thoroughly modern and systematic way, by dissecting criminals, especially murderers who had been sentenced to death. The results were so surprising compared to many of the pre-existing theories that, at first, after the first few examinations, he thought he was dealing with a kind of scientific adventure and not at all with something on the trail of the truth. When he examined the brains of criminals, then, those familiar with the configuration and structure of the normal human brain would always see very specific internal structures with very specific characteristics that differ from the structure of the brain of a person who is not a criminal. And so that we don't go too far afield, I will stick to the main feature.

It was found that a certain part of the human brain, called the occipital lobe, which covers the cerebellum, is too small in the case of criminals, so that it only covers the cerebellum sparsely or not at all, whereas it would otherwise cover it completely.

Now imagine dissecting the brain of a criminal and finding that this criminal brain differs from a normal brain in that the occipital lobe does not completely cover the cerebellum. Then you have to come to the conclusion that If you are born in such a way that you cannot possibly develop the occipital lobe to such an extent that it covers the cerebellum, then no matter what you do in life, you will become a criminal and consequently you cannot help it. And if you now examine ape brains, the same peculiarity can be seen: the occipital lobe does not completely cover the cerebellum. So you have to say: In the various developmental stages on the way from ape to man, it should also be noted that man has progressed beyond the ape's development and has become a more perfect being because his occipital lobe has grown and completely covers the cerebellum. This means that when a person becomes a criminal, he falls back into the ape's organization. In the criminal, then, we have to do with an outspoken atavism. This means nothing other than that there are individuals among human beings who, in the structure of their brains, have atavistically reverted to the ape-like image. These atavistic individuals become criminals.

Now think of the ethical and social consequences of such a view and then you will know what it means to have to accept these facts under the auspices of the current materialistic world view – I do not mean the prevailing natural science. For the facts are there and only a fool could deny them. So anyone who allows themselves to be guided by the materialistic worldview is confronted with the challenge: just look at the brains of criminals and you will see that the structure of the brain regresses to that of an ape. So you can clearly see how what is revealed in man in terms of morality is simply a consequence of the material organization of the physical. There you see it quite clearly. The man who had this brain had become a criminal precisely because he had this brain. With the same necessity with which the clockwork serves us, if it is working properly, to catch the ten o'clock train, while a clockwork that is not working properly, which perhaps only shows seven o'clock, makes us late for the train, with the same necessity a brain that has not fully developed the occipital lobe indicates a criminal person who is retarded. Since you would certainly not be able to bring yourself to fantasize a demon into the clock that drives the hands around, you will also not be able to bring yourself to dream the demon “soul” into the brain. |

To resist the proven results of criminal anthropological investigations of criminal brains so readily is to pursue an ostrich-like policy in science, to simply refuse to reckon with those things that have been absolutely researched.

Now, as you know, there is still a philosophy besides materialistic science. But if you look at this philosophy, perhaps especially at those who are often counted among its most important representatives today, you will find that this philosophy is completely powerless in the face of materialistic methods. The concepts that philosophers arrive at either boil down to, as I showed you with Otto Liebmann, who is a very astute person and who says that one cannot get beyond certain points, that one cannot cross certain boundaries. I gave you the example of the chicken egg. Or take the philosophy of Rudolf Eucken in Jena, and you can see how they talk around it and dress up the words nicely, but how the concepts that are developed cannot approach the materialistic methods. They are like the actions of someone who is standing on one bank of a river and is making every possible effort to get to the other bank, but cannot get there.¹ Over there is the materialistic scientific method, but he cannot get over to it; therefore, philosophizing remains just beating about the bush.

What is actually going on here? Well, let us go back to something we have known for a long time; let us go back to the division of the human being into physical body, etheric body, astral body and I. Let us start with this roughest classification, as it has presented itself to us in the course of our spiritual scientific investigations, and ask ourselves: What happens when we look at something external and sensual – and a criminal mind is also something external and sensual – what happens then? The external sensuality acts on our sense organs. These are in the physical body. That is where sensual perception comes about. Nobody denies this. We would be fools if we, as spiritual scientists, were to deny it. It would be foolishness if we did not concern ourselves with the results I have cited from criminal anthropology. We cannot deny their validity either, for they prove conclusively that the criminal has the brain of an ape and the normal human being no longer has this ape-like brain. So when we philosophize, as today's philosophers do, what are we doing? In which regions of the human being do we then move? Then we move in the sphere of the I. Today, all philosophical concepts are there. And you will see that even those who are most astute in their philosophy today are all swimming in the region of the I, as it were. You can find scientific proof of this in the introductory chapter of my Rätsel der Philosophie (Puzzles of Philosophy), where I have shown how philosophy in our time tends to be essentially a swimming in the I. But between natural science and philosophy there is a wide distance, that is the river over which philosophy cannot cross, that is, the philosophical concepts are on one side - inwardly in man - and all sensual perceptions are outside, on the other side.

I once had a clear, if only symptomatic, insight into the abyss between philosophy and scientific perception – but I ask you to bear in mind that this is only meant to be symptomatic – when the sixtieth birthday of Ernst Haeckel was celebrated. I took part in the celebration in Jena. Various people spoke there, supporters of Haeckel and so on. Now it was interesting for me to see what would happen if Haeckel's philosophical colleagues, among whom was Dr. Rudolf Eucken, would propose a so-called toast during the lunch, as is so common, because then one could somehow see how the representatives of philosophy of a university relate to the representatives of natural science and sensory perception. The toast – proposed by Eucken – had the following content; I will only give the main idea. Eucken said something like: at a birthday party like today's, it is customary to say what particularly characterizes the birthday child. Now, I have tried to think of what could particularly characterize our birthday child, but I have not found anything special in my own thinking. So I asked the daughter of our guest of honor and she told me that it is one of the characteristic peculiarities of our guest of honor that he cannot manage his tie, for example, when he wants to turn it down. - In this tone the toast continued.

Now, as I said, what the representatives of philosophy at a university had to say about the representative of sensual, scientific perceptions was symptomatic of what I encountered. It is really symptomatic, because there is no real bridge between today's philosophy and science, because the concepts of philosophers are very thin and the sensual facts that science brings to light are beyond their reach. You cannot cross over with philosophical concepts.

Now I have already drawn your attention to the fact that there is a possibility of bringing the facts of natural science into play, of really bringing them into play. This possibility consists in really engaging with the spirit of Goethe's scientific observations. Just remember that I explained to you how Goethe came to regard the skull bones, despite their quite different external form from the vertebrae, as transformed spinal vertebrae. I called your attention to this theory of transformation when I told you that our boiler house is only a transformation of our main building, in that it is enlarged on the one hand and stunted on the other. I also pointed out to you in another lecture that when one ascends from ordinary concepts to spiritual-scientific concepts, one has to set the concepts in motion. I recommended reading Goethe's poems about the metamorphosis of plants and animals. There you will see how mobile the concepts are, and how he has shaped all of this.

If you take what I have said on various occasions and combine it with what we need to be guided by today, then you will say to yourself: If I take the sensory perceptions directly, they are more limited, but if I move on to the Goethean worldview, then such a vertebral bone appears to me to be more elastic, softer, so that it gradually becomes part of the skull. I look into the creative nature. I see how, for example, the individual skull bones in fish are very similar to the dorsal vertebrae, and how the transition to humans occurs by developing the dorsal vertebrae into skull bones... *

You can only follow this mentally, however; you cannot see it with your senses. If you wanted to see it with your senses, you would have to observe for thousands, millions of years, how one passes into the other. So you have to spiritualize the observation, the sensory perception.

You see, Goethe instinctively did this spiritualization of sensory perception correctly. I have often referred to the momentous conversation between him and Schiller when they once walked out of the Natural History Society in Jena after a lecture by the botanist Batsch. Schiller said that he had found everything only side by side in Batsch's lecture. Goethe then drew his archetype, which one gets when one moves from one plant form to another. Schiller said: “But that is not a perception, that is an idea.” Goethe replied: “Then I have my ideas before my eyes.” He was aware that he not only saw the individual transformations, but that he saw a plant in all its parts. This is based on the fact that Goethe instinctively observed everything not only with his physical senses, but by immediately capturing physical perception in the observation of the etheric body. That is, Goethe takes the metamorphosing perception - and this is a continually moving perception - into his view of nature. As a result, the whole sensory world comes into motion for him. The particular is then only a special expression of a very general one, but not of a general one as abstract philosophers make it, but of a general one that winds its way through the individual sensory perceptions. There you see a raising of sensory perception into the imaginative that arises in man when one does not disdain to add his etheric body to sensory perception.

You will not understand what Goethe wrote about animals and plants if you do not consider that he included the etheric body. Now you have already pushed it a little higher. We would have done something if we had pushed the philosophical concepts over here as well, so that they could approach [the perceptions] (...).²

Now take what we have often considered over the years. It is part of the first step of “How to Know Higher Worlds”: that one can raise physical, objective perception to a higher level, to imaginative perception. But do you remember the characteristic that I have given over and over again - in countless places in our cycles it says - what this imaginative view consists of? It consists of the fact that the I works its way back into the etheric body. As long as one only forms objective concepts, as the philosopher also does - for the fact that he works in the spirit is only his megalomania - one does not get any further. One must pass from the objective to the imaginative, that is, as soon as life enters into the concepts, one passes from the mere ego back into the etheric body. One works the astral body into the spirit-self, that is, one can say that the philosophical concepts become imaginative concepts or ideas, if one can still apply the word “concept” there.

But now things have come together: the imaginative concepts are no longer separated from the metamorphosing perceptions by a gulf, but are immediately adjacent.

We will now see that while philosophy and sense perception are separated by a gulf and cannot come together because physical perception takes place in the physical body and the philosopher in the ego , here, however, [it was apparently drawn again] the imaginative concepts and the perceptions come together because the objective concept is in the physical body and the metamorphosed concepts are in the etheric body. So there is a deepening in both directions. On the one hand, we have to approach the world with the whole human being, and on the other hand, we have to deepen the concepts by bringing them to life, by transforming them into imagination.

Philosophers want to avoid this. They cannot engage with the concept of imagination, and natural scientists cannot engage with the metamorphosing perception. But spiritual science brings this about. Our entire spiritual science is precisely an answer to the question: How does the rational human being, living in his astral body, perceive the metamorphosing perceptions living in his etheric body? How does he think them? That is what is so important, that we really know that we bring the outer world closer to the inner world, that they approach each other, that we bring them together.

Now we can gain a ray of hope with regard to the reality of criminal anthropology. Of course, someone who is born with a occipital lobe that does not properly cover the cerebellum will have to walk around with such an ape-like occipital lobe for their whole life. But where does such an ape-like occipital lobe come from? From a spiritual science point of view, it arises as a result of the previous life, because what a person used to be in the past creates their physical development from the inside out. This is how they create the structure of their body and brain, and thus also of their occipital lobe. We can therefore say: If a person walks around with an atrophied occipital lobe, then in his previous life he did not gain enough strength to form the occipital lobe normally. This is not really a consolation, because there is always the possibility that such a person will become a criminal, because the occipital lobe cannot become enlarged. One could say that people are then divided into two parts: those who have a too small occipital lobe and who are born to be criminals, and those who have a fully developed occipital lobe and who do not become criminals. For the materialistic world view, there is hardly any error here. It will come to this conclusion. Theoretically, there is no other answer for spiritual science either, but since it knows that the physical body is not the only body, but also carries an etheric body within it, the situation changes for it. For if a person is born with an atrophied occipital lobe, that is, with an unfavorable disposition, then we can still educate this person properly. We can shape the education in such a way that we teach him the appropriate moral and ethical concepts. Although the physical body cannot be changed in the present incarnation, the etheric part of the occipital lobe can. It can be enlarged by what a person is taught through proper education. Thus, it is possible to help a person who, due to a previous incarnation, has a occipital lobe that is too short, by means of a suitable education. By educating such a person correctly, we make the etheric part of the occipital lobe larger and the person in question can thus be saved from becoming a criminal.

Now, given the fact that those who have become criminals have a too-short occipital lobe, one would also have to do the reverse experiment. One would have to dissect normal people and prove that they all had normally developed occipital lobes; and in doing so, one might discover that even in normally developed people, some have occipital lobes that are too small, but nevertheless have not become criminals, precisely because their etheric occipital lobes have grown larger through appropriate education.

Ethical education adds something to the etheric, not to the physical, constitution. However, education must be organized in such a way that it corresponds to spiritual laws. If you take what has been developed as an educational principle in the small publication “The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science”, you will find that the principles of development from seven to seven years have been followed. When one begins to grasp these laws and to implement them in appropriate measures, then one intervenes more deeply than with the purely rationalistic educational methods that have been common practice for a long time. One does not get any further with what has emerged as Froebelism. With all the educational methods that are practiced today, one only gets to the I. But as long as you only reach the I, you cannot do anything, the occipital lobe remains too small. But if you eavesdrop on the secrets of spiritual existence and turn them into educational measures, you will enter the etheric body. There you really normalize the etheric body, that is, with spiritual science you gain powerful concepts, concepts that really have power over the human being, that can change him. If you take the concepts that can be gained today - whether from observation of the world of sensory perception, or from abstract talk, which comes only from the ego - you will not get any educational principles or principles for social life that really have an effect on people. The concepts remain powerless. You can search through whole libraries - and enough has been written about education - but all of it is a will to rule out of the ego, whether you believe you are educating more theoretically or otherwise. As long as it is not eavesdropped on the secret of human nature and the spiritual principles of education and thereby made effective into the etheric body, as long as it remains powerless against what grows in the human being. As we approach the world with concepts that are becoming more powerful, we also approach what is becoming and growing in the world, so that we do not incorporate anything theoretical. If we go from philosophical to imaginative concepts, as spiritual science does, and if you go from sensory perception to metamorphosing perception, we approach our principles to the spiritual, and then we will gain appropriate measures and principles from spiritual science.

From what I have said, you can see how right and how necessary it is in our time - after centuries of development have pointed the world to mere sensory perception and thereby pushed it back to mere comprehension in the ego - how necessary it is to bring external perception and inner soul life closer together again, both for contemplation and for practical life. With spiritual science, we gain powerful concepts that intervene in life, concepts that really have something to do with life. Concepts such as those of Eucken's philosophy never intervene in real life. With spiritual science, we touch reality, we touch it where it is more real than sensory perception.

When we approach reality with our ordinary concepts and with ordinary sensory perception, we look at what is on the surface; we look with our sensory tools. For example, we look at the mountain with its plant world. And now there are two types of people: some look at the mountain with its plant world and forget themselves (Haeckel), while others look at nothing of the external world, but only talk in terms and stare into space; as a result, philosophy becomes empty (Eucken's philosophy). Spiritual science approaches reality with metamorphosing perception and thus looks at something that is not expressed on the surface, but at something that lies beneath. But even when it looks at the human being, it goes from the mere sensory perception of the physical sense organs back to the metamorphosing perception (etheric body) and from the mere philosophical concept to the imaginative conception and thus has something like an underground channel between the mere sensory perception (physical sense organs) and the mere philosophical concept (I). Now you will also understand that a bleak world view must arise if spiritual science does not take hold, because philosophy will naturally be completely powerless with its concepts in the face of the human being. Sensory perception cannot be denied; it will become less and less possible to deny it. So it is natural that the materialistic world view will say: What can you do about becoming a criminal? What can you do about having a short occipital lobe? Imagine what this must do to the concept of responsibility and to legal concepts! We must face up to this prospect. It is cowardly not to face it.

However, there is a way to go beyond this by working on the etheric body from within through appropriate good education, so that the etheric occipital lobe is developed. But this education must be an education of the heart and of love, as shown in the essay 'The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science'. When one realizes this, one says to oneself: Of course, a person with a short occipital lobe will walk around with the shortened occipital lobe his whole life and be tempted. But by developing the etheric occipital lobe, he will always be able to find the necessary balance. Spiritual science will thus become a great factor when those who only know the achievements of the materialistic world view knock at the door of spiritual science.

Secondly, I would like to show you another thing that can be taken from the life of the soul. Especially in our time, we have the opportunity to see that feelings, for example feelings of hatred, are spreading throughout entire communities. Now someone who still has a naive worldview, when asked why they hate, will of course not know exactly why something is hateful because they still have a naive worldview. They might say, “I hate because I find it hateful.” Now there is a psychological world view today that goes beyond this naivety, that knows more than that one hates something because it is hateful, just as the criminal anthropologist knows more than the person who believes that a person became a criminal because he was a bad guy and did not improve; because the criminal anthropologist knows that the person in question has a occipital lobe that is too small. And so it is also a naive judgment to say: I hate this or that because it is hateful. Now, there too, people have already risen to a correct judgment. If you take a closer look at human nature, you can see how the feelings that are developed in the soul belong to the soul's tools, to its living conditions. And if one does not look naively but with real observation of the facts at the world of the soul today, one comes to the conclusion that a certain amount of need to hate is stored up latently in man without it becoming visible. He must hate. And when so much hatred has accumulated that the barrel overflows, so to speak, he seeks an object for his power to hate. Now consider the way in which a person comes to a worldview. We endeavor to show how one can come to a spiritual-scientific worldview in an objective way. But one does not always come to a spiritual-scientific worldview, or even to a materialistic worldview, because of this, but because one is emotionally predisposed to it. What logically speaks for a worldview comes into consideration only in the second or even third place. Go, for example, to the meetings of the Communists or materialists and examine what they present to logically found their worldview, then you can see that it is not their logic but their feeling that is predestined. And so it is with the spiritual worldview. Perhaps you have the mystical worldview because it appeals to your feelings and does you more good than a materialistic worldview. The emotional and affective factor plays an enormous role here. It is the same with hatred of the outside world. When a person hates something, the psychologist will not ask: What is the object like? but rather: What is the person like? The need for hatred is in him and the object arises by itself. He must hate, as one must eat at certain times. This is a realization that contemporary psychology has already achieved.

I have in my hand a copy of the journal “Die Zukunft” from September 25, 1915. It contains an essay by Franz Blei entitled “Truths.” It discusses something like what I have done now. It then explains what Avenarius - Franz Blei is a student of Avenarius - has established in his empirical criticism. This is summarized in individual sentences and there you will find very beautifully expressed in these sentences what can already be understood today as the results of psychological research: “Pure feelings are to be assumed theoretically as preexisting feelings laden with ideational components and not experienceable. Practically, we know of no feeling that has no ideational component.” This sentence does not exactly concern what we need, so we do not want to dwell on it. It is not necessary for us to peel it apart, otherwise we would have to go into the concepts that were used. But another sentence may be more important for us, namely: “Pure ideas are to be assumed to preexist humanly conceived ideas and cannot be experienced purely. Practically, we know of no idea (thought, image) that has not already served as a component of a feeling.

So, when an idea arises in us, we must ask ourselves: what feeling has driven us to this idea? The idea arises in one person: the world can be broken down into atoms. What feeling drove him to this? In another, the idea arises: the world has a hierarchy, a ladder. - What feeling drove him to that? So the component of feeling is in it everywhere. And when someone hates, what feeling drives him to it? Blei says: “It is not ideas that evoke feelings, but pure feelings take possession of ideas that can satisfy those feelings.” For example: the Social Democrat hates the bourgeois. He hates him because he needs a quantity of hate and he turns that against the bourgeois. Or the anti-Semite needs hate and the Jew presents himself for the purpose. Franz Blei says in point 8: “It is not the truth of an idea in itself that decides whether it is accepted by people, but its affective content.”

So you see, he already knows that too! You don't become a materialistic monist because you see the truth, but because you are predestined by your feelings, and you don't become a spiritualist because it is true, but because you are predestined by your feelings.

The essay continues: “Ideas are accepted whose probability is zero, others together again and at the same time with those that are the opposite of the first. Think of the multiplicity of the ”Thou shalt not kill!” Here only the believer is allowed an objection, to which Hegel once gave the expression of the “cunning of the idea”, which uses our passions for its realization, in that people think they are working for themselves, while in reality they are doing it for the “world spirit. The Christian believer speaks of the inscrutability of God's ways.

The whole essay is therefore about the fact that it is not the ideas, the so-called truths, that take hold of people, but the emotional content.

Anyone who looks at the world today, at how it has gradually developed, will find this quite right and it is very significant that a school of philosophy like Avenarius' has come to realize that the social democrat hates the bourgeois not because he finds him hateful, but because he himself needs a certain amount of hate. So Avenarius' school of philosophy has already come to understand this today.

But let us consider what social consequences this has. Imagine for a moment – and one would say that this point of view, if one still has any real feelings at all, must become the very bitterest of soul-pills – that you seriously accept these things as truths. Then you will have to say to yourself: In this case, truth no longer decides anything, but emotions do. I am admitted to a worldview, but only because I do not know the truth. This leads to absolute desolation. There is no escape. Just as there is no escape in criminal anthropology from admitting that a short occipital lobe makes a criminal, so there is no escape from external psychology from the fact that people are driven by their affects to what they call truth.

Friedrich Nietzsche has attempted to express this most clearly, most significantly and most convincingly in the most diverse variants of his world view. All of Nietzscheanism is based on this. I have quoted the passage myself in my book “Friedrich Nietzsche, a fighter against his time”. The question there is: What is truth? And because Nietzsche did not accept the correctness of this sentence because of the truth, but rejected it because of the whole preparation of human subjectivity, Nietzsche wanted to put an end to fantasy [of the will to truth], that is, also to Christianity. Therefore, he wrote “Antichrist”, the next one was to be “The Immoralists” and the whole thing was then to be “The Will to Power”.

Desolation and absolute nihilism is what such schools of philosophy lead to, with their realization that those who are predisposed to believe that they can best relate to the world by adhering to matter, become materialists; and those who believe that they live through a dependence on the spiritual world become spiritualists out of their affect.

- Now, my dear friends, all you have to do is take one thing, you just have to open the last chapter of “Theosophy”, where the path to knowledge is described, and take the fact that is taken as a starting point. It is not based on the idea that one should logically speculate in order to arrive at these truths, but it is based on the idea that it is necessary to develop and shape the whole affective world of the human being, the direction of feeling, in a certain way. It deals with what underlies the search for truth. It tackles what psychology points to, but does not know how to deal with. Why do we not refute materialism with logical arguments, why do we not establish spiritualism with logical arguments? Because all this means nothing. Rather, something else is to be shown. It is to be shown: You have to do this and this with your affects so that you are no longer guided by the subjective, but... . [space].

Take this chapter of “Theosophy” and you will see that everything depends on an objectivization of the affective life, and then you can see how this intervenes in the impasse of the modern worldview... [The final sentences are no longer decipherable in shorthand.]

• 1. was obviously drawn on the blackboard; however, the drawing has not been handed down.
• 2. Here are a few more lines in the original shorthand that do not reveal any coherent meaning.

We have let two Christmas plays pass before our soul. We may perhaps raise the thought: Are the first and second Christmas plays dedicated in the same sense to the great human cause that is so vividly before our soul these days? The two plays are fundamentally different, quite different from each other. One can hardly imagine two plays that are more different and yet are dedicated to the same subject. When we consider the first play, we see in all its parts the most wonderful simplicity, childlike simplicity. There is depth of soul, but it is breathed through and lived through everywhere with the most childlike simplicity. The second play moves on the heights of outer physical existence. It is immediately associated with the thought that the Christ Jesus enters the world as a king. He is confronted with the other king, Herod. Then it is shown that two worlds open up before us: the one that, in the good sense, develops humanity further, the world that Jesus Christ serves, and the other world that Ahriman and Lucifer serve, and which is represented by the devilish element. A cosmic, a cosmic-spiritual picture in the highest sense of the word! The connection between the development of humanity and the writing on the stars is immediately apparent. Not the simple, primitive clairvoyance of shepherds, which finds a “shine in the sky” that can be found in the simplest of circumstances, but the deciphering of the writing on the stars, for which all the wisdom of past centuries is necessary and from which one unravels what is to come. That which comes from other worlds shines into our world. In the states of dreaming and sleeping, that which is to happen is guided and directed; in short, occultism and magic permeate the entire play.

The two plays are fundamentally different. The first one comes to us, one may truly say, in childlike simplicity and innocence. Yet how infinitely admonishing it is, how infinitely sensitive. But let us first consider only the main idea. The human being who is to prepare the vessel for the Christ enters the world. Its entrance into the world is to be presented, to be demonstrated, that which Jesus is for the people into whose circle of existence he enters. Yes, my dear friends, this idea, this notion, has by no means conquered those circles so readily, within which such plays have been listened to with such fervor and devotion as this one. Karl Julius Schröer, of whom I have often spoken to you, was one of the first collectors of Christmas plays in the 19th century. He collected the Christmas plays in western Hungary, the Oberufer plays, from Bratislava eastwards, and he was able to study the way in which these plays lived and breathed among the people there. And it is very, very significant when you see how these plays were handed down from generation to generation in handwritten form, and how, not when Christmas was approaching, but when Christmas was approaching in the distant past, those who were found suitable for this in the village prepared to perform these plays. Then one sees how closely connected with the content of these plays was the whole annual cycle of life of the people in whose village circles such plays were performed. The time in the mid-19th century, for example, when Schröer collected these plays there, was already the time when they began to die out in the way they had been played until then. Many weeks before Christmas, the boys and girls in the village who were suitable to represent such games had to be found. And they had to prepare themselves. But the preparation did not consist merely of learning by heart and practicing what the play contained in order to represent it; rather, the preparation consisted in the fact that these boys and girls changed their whole way of life, their external way of life. From the time they began their preparations, they were no longer allowed to drink wine or consume alcohol. They were no longer allowed to fight on Sundays, as is usually the case in the village. They had to behave very modestly, they had to become gentle and mild, they were no longer allowed to beat each other up, and they were not allowed to do many other things that were otherwise quite common in villages, especially in those times. In this way, they also prepared themselves morally through the inner mood of their souls. And then it was really as if they were carrying something sacred around in the village when they performed their plays.

But this only came about slowly and gradually. Certainly, in many villages in Central Europe in the 19th century there was such a mood, the mood that at Christmas these plays were something sacred. But one can only go back to the 18th century and a little further, and this mood becomes more and more unholy. This mood was not there from the beginning, when these games came to the village, not at all from the beginning, but it only emerged and established itself over time. There were times, one does not even have to go back that far, when one could still find something different. There you could find the village gathering here or there in Central Europe, and a cradle in which the child lay, in which a child lay, not a manger, a cradle in which the child lay, and with it, indeed, the most beautiful girl in the village – Mary must have been beautiful! – but an ugly Joseph, an ugly-looking Joseph! Then a scene similar to the one you saw today was performed. But above all: when it was announced that the Christ was coming, the whole community appeared, and each person stepped on the cradle. Above all, everyone wanted to have stepped on the cradle and rocked the Christ Child, that was what it was all about, and they made a tremendous racket, which was supposed to express that the Christ had come into the world. And in many such older plays, there is a terrible mockery of Joseph, who has always been depicted as an old man in these times, who was laughed at.

How did these plays, which were of this nature, actually come into the people? Well, we must of course remember that the first form of the greatest, most powerful earthly idea, the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth, was the idea of the savior who had passed through death, of the one who, through death, won for the earth what we call the meaning of the earth. It was the suffering of Christ that first came into the world in early Christianity. And to the suffering Christ, after all, sacrifices were offered in the various acts that took place in the cycle of the year. But only very slowly and gradually did the child conquer the world. The dying savior first conquered the world, only slowly and gradually did the child conquer it. We must not forget that the liturgy was in Latin and that the people understood nothing. Only gradually did people begin to see something more in the sacrifice of the Mass, which was fixed for Christmas, besides the sacrifice of the Mass that was celebrated three times at Christmas. Perhaps not without good reason – if not for him personally, then for his followers – the idea of showing the mystery of Jesus to the faithful on Christmas night is attributed to Francis of Assisi, who, out of a certain opposition to the old forms and spirit of the church, held his entire doctrine and his entire being. And so we gradually, slowly see how the believing community at Christmas should be offered something that was connected with the great mystery of humanity, with the coming down of Christ Jesus to earth. At first, a manger was set up and figures were merely made. It was not acted out by people, but figures were made: the infant Jesus and Joseph and Mary – but in three dimensions. Gradually, this was replaced by priests dressing up and acting it out in the simplest way. And it was only in the 13th or 14th century that the mood began to develop within the communities that could be described as people saying to themselves: We also want to understand something of what we see, we want to penetrate into the matter. And so people began to be allowed to play individual parts in what was initially only played by the clergy. Now, of course, one must know life in the middle of the Middle Ages to understand how that which was connected with the most sacred was at the same time taken in such a way as I have indicated. At that time it was entirely possible out of a sense of accommodation, so that the village community, the whole community, could say: I too rocked a little with my foot at the cradle where Christ was born! — out of the accommodation of this mood. It could be expressed in this and in many other ways, in the singing that accompanied it, which at times intensified to the point of yodeling, in all that had taken place. But that which was alive in the matter had in itself the strength, one might almost say, to transform itself out of a profane, out of a profanation of the Christmas idea, into the most sacred itself. And the idea of the child appearing in the world conquered the holy of holies in the hearts of the simplest people.

That is the wonderful thing about these plays, of which the first was one that was not simply there as it now appears to us, but became so: piety first unfolding in the mood out of impiety, through the power of that which they represent! The Child had first to conquer hearts, had first to find entrance into hearts. Through that which was holy in Itself, It sanctified hearts that at first encountered It with rudeness and untamedness. That is the wonderful thing about the developmental history of these plays, how the mystery of Christ still has to conquer hearts and souls piece by piece. And tomorrow we will take a closer look at some of what has been conquered step by step. Today I would just like to say: it is not without reason that I noticed how admonishingly even the simplest thing is presented in the first game.

As I said, slowly and gradually that which came into the world with the mystery of Christ entered into the hearts and souls of human beings. And it is actually the case that the further one goes back in the tradition of the various mysteries of Christ, the more one sees that the form of expression is an elevated one, a spiritually elevated one. I would like to say that the further back one goes, the more one enters into a “cosmic utterance”. We have already incorporated some of this into our reflections, and in the previous Christmas lecture I showed how Gnostic ideas were used to understand the deep mystery of Christ. But even if we follow this or that even in the later periods of the Middle Ages, we find that, as late as the Middle Ages, something is present in the Christmas poems of that time that was later absent: an emphasis on the early Christian idea that Christ descends from the heights of the spirit. We find it in the 11th and 12th centuries when we bring such a Christmas carol before our soul:

The honor of the incarnate Son of God
Is proclaimed by the heavenly hosts, rejoicing and exulting;
And loudly resounds from the shepherd's mouth
The joyful tidings.

“Glory in the highest! And peace on earth!”
So it resounds in solemn song;
With wonder it is seen by men today,
What never happened before.

The heavens shine brightly with a new star;
Guided by it, from afar come
the wise men, and greet with delight
the sight of them.

With him, truth has now been born anew.
What was lost through sin has been replaced;
In the light of grace, the fruits of blessing
Bloom more gloriously.

The punishment of the past has now been revealed,
Since this fruit has sprung from the earth,
Which grants us life and refreshment,
And nourishes forever.

He has come, clothed in our flesh,
The good shepherd who tends all nations;
He has dwelt, like us, in pilgrim huts,
Suffered for us.

Hail then to the earth that saw his light!
Through him for time and eternity beglücker,
Consecrate everyone to him, the Savior, thanks and love
With pure impulses.

Help us, Christ, to fulfill Your law ourselves,
Through You, let us succeed in doing good deeds,
So that one day, the crown of eternal life
will also reward us!

Such was the tone that resonated from those who had still understood something of the cosmic significance of the mystery of Christ.

Or there was another Christmas poem from the middle of the Middle Ages, a little later than the Carolingian period:

The Son of God, begotten from eternity, who invisibly and without end,
Through whom the heavens and the earth were built, and all that dwells there was created,
Through whom the days and the hours pass and return;
Whom the angels in the heavenly castle always praise in fully harmonious singing,
Freed from all original sin, clothed in a weak body,
He, who took from Mary, the Virgin, destroyed the guilt of the first father Adam
As well as the lust of the mother Eve.
Today's glorious day of sublime splendor testifies that now the son,
The true sun, dispelled the ancient darkness of the world with the beam of his light.
Now the night is illuminated by the light of that new star,
Which once amazed the sky-wise gaze of the magicians,
And see, that shine for the shepherds, who were blinded
By the lofty splendor of the heavenly inhabitants.
Rejoice, Mary, Mother of God, for at your birth you were attended by a host of angels
singing your praises.
O Christ, only Son of the Father, who for our sake took on the nature of man,
of man, so you revive your own who plead here.
O Jesus, graciously hear the pleas of those whom you have deigned to take care of,
to make them, O God's Son, partakers of your divinity.

This is the tone that, I would say, sounds from the heights of more theologically colored scholarship down to the people.

Now we also hear a little of the sound that rang out at Christmas from the people themselves, when a soul was found that expressed the people's feelings:

He is powerful and strong,
who was born to win,
That is Saint Knist.
yes, praise be to thee in all that is, Niewan the deep
because of his great arrogance
so hell became his portion.

In hell is Michael out of place
who has his home there,
Your sun never shines so brightly,
the moon does not help him,
Only the bright stars,
yes, he has to see everything,
yes, he would love to be in heaven so much.

In heaven there is a house,
a golden gate opens therein,
the windows are the pearls of pity,
which adorn our little house
with precious stones:
no one enters there,
he is cleansed of all sins so pure.

He who gladly goes to church
and stands there without sinning,
may well live joyfully,
he will be given
the angels' common lot,
if he so desires:
in heaven, life is so pure.

I have long served
alas a man
Who walks around in the darkness
and has sworn an oath at my wrongdoing,
His reward is evil.
Help me, Holy Spirit,
to free myself from his delusion.

That is the prayer that the simple man said and understood. We have read the descent, now we have the ascent.

I will try to reproduce this 12th-century Christmas carol so that we can see how the simple man also grasped the full greatness of Christ and related it to the whole of cosmic life:

He is mighty and strong, who was born at Christmas. This is the Holy Christ. Everything that is there praises him, except for the devil, who, through his great arrogance, was sent to hell. There is much filth in hell – “much” is the old word for great, mighty – there is much filth in hell. He who has his home there, who is at home in hell, must realize: the sun never shines there, the moon does not help, nor do the bright stars. There everyone who sees something must say to himself how nice it would be if he could go to heaven. He would very much like to be in heaven. In the kingdom of heaven stands a house. A golden path leads to it. The columns are marble, that is, made of marble, adorned with precious stones. But no one enters there who is not completely pure from sin. Anyone who goes to church and stands there without envy may well have a higher life, for there are always young ones, that is, when he has finally ended his life. Remember, I once introduced the word “younger” from the ether body here. Here you have it in the vernacular! So when he is given “young” to the angelic community, he can certainly wait for it, because in heaven life is pure. — And now he who prays this Christmas carol says: I have unfortunately served a man who walks around in hell, who has developed my certain deed. Help me, holy Christ, to be released from his captivity, that is, to be released from the prison of the evil one. So that is in the language of the people:

He is mighty and strong
Who was born at Christmas...

Yesterday I pointed out to you how the fact of Jesus' birth has only gradually conquered the hearts and souls of men, and how the Christmas play, as we have been able to let it affect us, has basically only gradually developed into this noble and beautiful form and at the same time with all the spirit of consecration with which it had been imbued during the times in which it had flourished. Basically, one can say of the first forms of this Christmas play: People were trying, out of a completely profane mood, to take part in what the people had seen for centuries in a way that was incomprehensible to them. The Christ Child only gradually won the hearts of the people. And it even took quite a long time to win the hearts of humanity. When we see in the 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th centuries that what the priests had gradually done was to involve the people, then this involvement is, as I indicated to you yesterday, not yet of the noble form that these Christmas plays had later, of which we have just seen two examples.

But I tried to make you aware that these two games are quite different in origin, and that this is clearly visible. The first game has something simple and folksy about it, so that you can see that the main thing in this game is to The main thing about it is to show how the child, in whom the great world spirit was later embodied and worked within earthly existence, how this child entered the world, how it was received on the one hand by the hosts, the two innkeepers, and on the other hand by the shepherds. And basically, this Christmas play, the first one we saw yesterday, shows very clearly how different the reception was with the innkeepers and with the shepherds. That is what particularly stands out for us.

The other Christmas play is quite different. There we are led straight to the fact that wise men – who at that time were wise kings for the peoples involved – read in the stars about the significant fate that awaits humanity. So we see occult ancient wisdom poured out into the action of the play at the same time. And then, as the story unfolds, we see how the being who now, in the sense of this occult wisdom, this wisdom divined from the stars, enters into earthly events, is confronted by the one at whose side we clearly see evil, the retarded principle, the devilish, the Ahrimanic-Luciferic principle — Herod. We see how the Christ principle and the Luciferic-Ahrimanic principle are set against each other. But we also see how that which is revealed out of spiritual spheres asserts itself in the course of events. As if proclaiming that they are guiding us from spiritual spheres, the angels appear and guide and direct the events so that what Herod wills does not come to pass, but something else happens. Human beings are permeated in their will by what comes from the spiritual worlds. So we have a play that, in terms of the forces it contains, points us beyond mere earthly events.

When we consider how these two plays face each other, the one steeped in primitive folk-watching, the other steeped in a wisdom that really refers us back to an ancient wisdom of the evolution of the earth , we are led to let many thoughts arise in us about what has happened in the course of time and what is connected with the full significance of the Mystery of Golgotha for the evolution of the earth. Let us consider that at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, in a broader sense, there was a deep, profound wisdom in certain circles about spiritual matters. This wisdom is called Gnosis. In the outer world, in the progress of European spiritual culture, one can positively say that this gnosis, this gnostic science of the secrets of the spiritual world, had disappeared within European culture for the outer world. In the third, fourth, fifth and sixth centuries, within spiritual life, there was really still very little awareness of what this science contained. Those who knew something – I mean those who knew what one could easily know if one was a Christian priest or a Christian scholar – knew about this gnosis because there were opponents of this gnosis in the first centuries of Christianity and these opponents fought against the gnosis. Imagine that today all the books that we consider to be our literature and all the cycles were to be eradicated, burned, so that nothing of them remained, and only what the opponents had written – and in a few centuries someone would come across these books of the opponents that remained and would have to form an idea from them of what was written in our books: That was the case with Gnosticism! |

One of the most important church writers was Irenaeus, who was a student of Bishop Polycarp of Asia Minor, who himself was a student of the apostles. But Irenaeus wrote as an opponent of Gnosticism. Over the centuries, the only way to learn what the Gnostics taught was to see what Irenaeus stated and recorded in his book in order to refute it. So everything of this ancient wisdom had to be accepted, which was caused by the fact that this wisdom had only been handed down by an opponent. You see from this that the whole development of the Occident was actually based on the fact that something that came up from the old times was eradicated, properly eradicated. Outwardly, you can simply see from this fact how new the beginning was for Western culture, which was given with the Mystery of Golgotha; how basically it began with something completely new everywhere. I would say that just as a buried city is buried in the ground, so the ancient literature was buried for that which emerged from the ancient church fathers through Ambrose, Augustine, Scotus Erigena and so on. A new beginning! And just as a new city rises on what appears to be new ground, so the new rose — a new city, but on ground in which the old city lay submerged, without any hint of what it had looked like. Such was the case with the development of European civilization. Hence it can also be seen that in our time, if there is to be a spiritual deepening again, it is necessary that this spiritual deepening be achieved from the original strength of human beings, that human beings themselves again find what they have not received from outside, at least within the course of European spiritual development. And – I cannot speak of this today because it would lead too far – there can be no question of the fact that, for example, obtaining Oriental documents could be a substitute for what has disappeared in the way of external documents in Western intellectual life, for the simple reason that the Oriental documents actually give something much, much more primitive than what has become of it in the world that extended over Asia Minor, North Africa, Southern Europe and even partly over Central Europe. What spiritual knowledge had developed to in the first centuries of Christian development had been thoroughly eradicated; it only survived thanks to the writings of opponents.

Now in these writings, which have been eradicated, we have not only the knowledge, the spiritual knowledge that related to the spiritual worlds, apart from the Christ, but in these writings the application of all the old comprehensive spiritual wisdom to the mystery of Christ Jesus has also been lost. These Gnostics wanted to understand in their own way – if we may call them that – the process of evolution on earth and the nature of the Christ. The time had not yet come to understand the matter in the way we understand it now, by drawing from the original spiritual worlds truths that need not be written down because they are directly present in the spiritual world in a living way. It was not possible to extract the knowledge of the nature of Christ Jesus in this way. This is only possible in our time. But in the older way, certain things were known about Christ in a knowledge that has really been lost. Only recently have a few scant remains been found: the Pistis Sophia writings, then the writings on the “Secret of Jeü”, which are now there as if to draw people's attention to the fact that the knowledge of Christ, which is now being sought in our way, is not as foolish as the opponents of our movement would have us believe. The Book of Jeü — little of it remains, in Coptic script, but what little there is is as if to say: Look at what is in the Gospels — it is not the only thing that filled the minds of people in the early centuries of Christianity. This book Jeü contains messages about how the Christ spoke after the resurrection, after he had gone through the mystery of Golgotha, to those who could understand him at the time, who had become his disciples. The remarkable thing is that this book Jeü - I mean the small fragment that is there - speaks about the Christ and what he is in a completely different way than even the Gospel of John. The remarkable thing is that in this book one word recurs again and again, which clearly indicates to us that it is meant to draw attention to something. And this, to which attention is to be drawn, I would like to explain in the following way. Suppose someone at that time had wanted to make clear why Christ Jesus actually entered into the development of the earth, he would have spoken like this, he would have said to those who could understand: Behold, the time is coming when men will advance in the evolution of the consciousness soul. The time is coming when men will have to comprehend the world through the outer, physical organs, through the organs that are essentially anchored in the physical body. The time is past when men had original revelations through original primitive clairvoyance. The time is past when people knew something not only by applying their physical body with its tools, but by using their etheric body independently of the physical body for knowledge. People will now only have to use their physical body as a tool. But in the future it will also be possible to know something of what has so far only been known through the etheric body. In the outer world there will only be knowledge that is tied to the physical body, which is subject to death. But knowledge about the spiritual world cannot be had through the tools that are tied to the physical body. A helper must come who kindles in people that which only the etheric body can know. Someone must come who does not kindle the dead of the physical body, but who kindles the living in man, the etheric-living, who is with the living, who is with that which is not earthly in man on earth. There must be someone who can tear out of this inert, dead physical body the mind that can understand the spiritual world, the mind that is in man and is connected to heaven – the mind that cannot be crucified by the world because it belongs to heaven, which itself crucifies the world, that is, which overcomes the world.

One must imagine that in the past, before they could see the Christ in his true essence, when they went through the mystery of Golgotha, people felt connected to the spiritual world with their etheric body in primitive clairvoyance. How the physical body has become more and more hardened and hardened and has thus become an instrument; how one had to come, precisely the Christ, to bring out the living from the inert instrument of the physical body. This is what one must imagine.

And now let us consider this book Jeû: How the Christ, after going through the Mystery of Golgotha, speaks to those who have learned to hold to Him, to hold to the wisdom contained in His words: “I have loved you and desired to give you life.” We hear it from the sentence: “and desired to give you life”; he desired to bring this inert physical body out of its inertia and to give what only the etheric body can give.

“Jesus the Living One is the knowledge of the truth.” The Living One - that is, the One who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha - speaks, presenting Himself as the Representative of the Living One.

The text continues: “This is the book of the knowledge of the invisible God by means of the hidden mysteries,” that is, the mysteries that are hidden in man, “showing the way to the chosen essence of man, leading in silence to the life of the Father of the World, in the coming of the Redeemer, the Savior of souls, who will receive the Word of Life, which is higher than all life , in the knowledge of Jesus, the living one, who came forth from the aeon of light in the allness of the pleroma, that is, of other aeons, of all spiritual beings, in the teaching, except for which there is no other, that Jesus, the living one, taught his apostles, saying, “This is the teaching in which all knowledge rests.”

So then, we have to imagine that the Risen One, who through the mystery of Golgotha has gone, speaks to the disciples who have learned to belong to him.

“Jesus, the living one, spoke to his apostles: ‘Blessed is he who has crucified the world and has not let the world crucify him’”, who can thus grasp in man that which is not overcome by matter, by external physical matter.

“The apostles answered unanimously, saying: ‘Lord, teach us this way of crucifying the world, so that it may not crucify us, and we may perish and lose our lives.’”

Jesus, the living one, answered and said: “He who has crucified the world is he who has found my word and fulfilled it according to the will of him who sent me.”

And the apostles answered, saying: “Speak to us, Lord, that we may hear you. We have followed you with all our hearts, leaving father and mother, leaving vineyards and fields, leaving goods, leaving the glory of the outward king, and have followed you that you may teach us the life of your Father who sent you.”

And now, at this invitation of the apostles, the Christ Jesus, the Living One, responded with what He has to say to them: “Christ, the Living One, answered and said: ‘My Father's life is this, that you receive your soul out of the human being of that understanding, which is not earthly’”.

So the Living One wills that His disciples learn to understand that there is an understanding of spiritual things in man that can be torn away from the physical body, that is not earthly. When they stir this up within themselves, then they understand His word in truth.

«‹This essence of all souls, which becomes understandable through what I tell you in the course of my word. And that you perfect it and before the Archon›», before the being of this eon, this age, «‹and his persecutions›», the ahrimanic-luciferic being, «‹and his persecutions, which have no end, so that you may be saved from them. But you, my disciples, hurry to carefully receive my word within yourselves, so that you may recognize it, and that the archon of this aeon, that is, Ahriman-Lucifer, may not dispute with you because he cannot find any of his commands in me. finds his orders outside of the one who has gone through the mystery of Golgotha, “so that you yourselves, O my apostles, fulfill my word with regard to me and I myself set you free, and you become holy through the freedom that is without blemish. As the Spirit of the Holy Spirit is holy, so you too will become holy through the freedom of the spiritual, the Holy Spirit.”

And all the apostles answered with one accord, Matthew and John, Philip and Bartholomew and James, saying: 'O Jesus, thou living one, whose goodness is spread abroad among those who have found thy wisdom and thy form in illumination , O Light, that in the light which has enlightened our hearts, we receive the light of life, O true Logos, that through Gnosis true knowledge of that which is alive has been taught to us.

Jesus, the living one, answered and said: “Blessed is the man who has recognized this and has been led down to heaven,” that is, who has become aware that there is something in him that is not connected with this earthly body, but is connected with the beings of the heavens, and who introduces what is connected with heaven in him, what is above, into earthly events below.

“Blessed is the man who has recognized this and led heaven down and carried the earth and sent it to heaven.” That which is earthly in him has connected with what is heavenly in him, so that when he goes through the gate of death, with the fruits of the earthly, through the heavenly, he can lead the earth back to heaven.

"The apostles answered, saying: 'Jesus, Thou Living One, explain to us the manner in which one leads heaven down. For we have followed thee that thou mightest teach us the true light.

And Jesus, the living one, answered and said: “The word that exists in heaven,” that is, he means what can be had as wisdom, as knowledge, independently of the physical being of the person. “The word that exists in heaven before the earth came into being, that earth which is called the world. But you, when you recognize my word, will lead heaven down, and the word will dwell in you. Heaven is the invisible word of the Father. But when you recognize this, you will lead heaven down. I will show you what it is like to send the earth to heaven so that you may recognize it; to send the earth to heaven is: the listener of the word of knowledge who has ceased to be the mind of an earth man only, but has become a heaven man, 'who has thus torn away his understanding in himself from the outer physical body, who has ceased to be an earth man and has become a heaven man. His mind has ceased to be earthly; it has become heavenly.

"That is why you will be saved from the archon of this aeon, from the Ahrimanic-Luciferic being.

They see a piece that has remained, has been rediscovered, and that could make people aware of the infinitely deep knowledge that was once associated with the secret of the Mystery of Golgotha in the first Christian centuries. Theologians in the present day usually get quite angry when one wants to draw attention to these or other similar writings. That they exist, they admit, certainly. Outwardly, historically, they treat them and publish editions of them. But they are convinced, these normal 'theologians of the present', that these writings have been forgotten to a certain extent with good reason, because they contain only all kinds of fantastic fantasies that the rational man of the present should no longer deal with; that this is no longer appropriate to an enlightened mind. But in a certain sense, these are indications that what we are now bringing out of the source of the spiritual worlds is in fact taking up something that was already there in the evolution of the earth, something that had only to flow underground for a time, like certain waters in the Alps flow underground after being above ground for a while; then they disappear into the depths and reappear later. So spiritual knowledge has flowed through the centuries as in underground worlds and is now to come out again. In order that those who cannot believe in such origins of the flowing out of spiritual sources into earthly existence may also receive an external indication, history has preserved some pieces, some scraps of a rich ancient literature that was spread out, that was great and powerful, and that is actually only really known in the counter-writings, for example those of Irenaeus and similar people who only wanted to refute it.

So we have to say: under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, the Mystery of Golgotha has been assimilated into Western culture. And the first thing was the result of the tremendous word of Paul, which flowed to him from his appearance of Damascus: the secret of death, of the passage through the Mystery of Golgotha. And then there were those far-reaching discussions about the way in which the Christ was connected to the Jesus, how the divine and human natures were connected to each other, how the three forms of manifestation of the divine, which enter into the development of Western Christian culture as the three persons, relate to each other, and so on. One could say that what was human wisdom receded. The power of knowledge also receded. It was an enormously strong power of wisdom that was present in those people who could come to something like what I have just read to you – a strong power of wisdom. It declined very, very much. And people were much more willing to listen to those who could say: The Jesus, the Christ, was there in person on earth. You know that he was there, because I knew Polycarp, and Polycarp knew the disciples of Jesus! There was an immediate personal tradition. In a certain way, belief in only that which was physically present, in physical development, begins to take hold. As spiritual wisdom gradually seeps away, belief in the merely physical arises. You can say: Irenaeus, for example — what kind of a mind was he? He was a thinker who said: There were Gnostics who claimed to know something through a mind that can work independently of the physical body. All this is wrong, all this is, as they said at the time, heretical, people must not believe in it. And he refuted it. More and more such refuters appeared, further and further afield. And of course there was the power of the Mystery of Golgotha, the power of the fact, the power of tradition. Through what had been handed down, what seemed to be fact, Christianity now propagated itself. What propagated itself as science actually seeped away. And the successor of Irenaeus in our time fights everything that comes from real knowledge of the spiritual world. Who is the forerunner and who is the successor? Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon, who fought the Gnostics; and the Irenaeus of our time, the bishop of matter in Jena, is Ernst Haeckel — the successor of Irenaeus. That is the line of development, my dear friends! The others are only anachronisms, because the rejection of Ernst Haeckel also stems from the same spirit. In terms of thinking, there is a straight line of reproduction from Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon, to Ernst Haeckel. These things must be taken objectively and historically, not with any sense of critical sympathy or antipathy, but quite objectively and historically.

When we imagine this entire process of spiritual development, we get a feeling for something that has already been touched on from a different angle: that what people could understand did not actually help this Christian development. Understanding, spiritual comprehension, is yet to come. For people had lost the strength to understand something that can only be understood spiritually, like the Mystery of Golgotha. That through which the Mystery of Golgotha conquered humanity was not through the intellect, but through the fact. And this fact actually worked in a very strange way.

Now, only a very faint echo of this remains. In the early centuries, when the story of the appearance of Christ on earth at Christmas was told, the first chapters of the creation story were read first. The Christmas mystery was directly linked to the creation story, the beginning of the Bible. Now only one thing remains in connection with it: if you look at the calendar, you have Christmas on December 25, Adam and Eve on December 24. That this appears in the calendar in direct connection is the last remnant of what was present in consciousness: that people thought together when Christmas was once established for a certain season of the year, the story of creation with the Christmas mystery. But not only that outwardly the story of Creation was first told and then the Christmas mystery, but also that attention was repeatedly drawn to one of the most profound legends, which sought to express the connection between the world, the beginning of the earth, and the mystery of Golgotha. Attention was called to the fact that when Adam had been driven out of Paradise, the tree through which he had sinned, the tree of knowledge of good and evil, had also been removed from Paradise; how fruits, seeds of this tree, were planted on Adam's grave, and this tree grew out of it. And then the wood of this tree, the tree of Paradise, came down from generation to generation to the time when the Christ appeared on earth. And then the cross was made out of this wood, out of the wood that had just grown again from the grave that was Adam's grave. The Redeemer hung on the cross.

This legend about the connection between the beginning of the world and the Mystery of Golgotha was repeated again and again in earlier centuries to those people who were able to understand such things. They were told: The tree of Paradise, which man had sinned against, was thrown out over Paradise, and seeds came into the soil that was on that grave of Adam. And from these germs arose again the tree, of which man had sinned in Paradise. And this wood of the tree was given from generation to generation and then came in many detours into the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and the cross on which the Christ hung is made of this wood.

This legend also contains the connections between the beginning of the earth and the Mystery of Golgotha. But things are so interconnected, so intimately connected, that there are certain plays that were performed not only at Christmas as plays about Christ, but as plays about Paradise. These are plays about Paradise in which the mystery of Adam and Eve and the Fall of Man was presented to the people directly, when Christmas, or rather, when the Feast of the Epiphany, the Three Kings, approached on January 6.

Consider, my dear friends, the deeply spiritual facts to which we are led. We think of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic seduction of man, of what has become of man through the Ahrimanic-Luciferic seduction, and we think that this is represented by the figure of Adam, who succumbed to temptation. When we fully understand this Ahrimanic-Luciferic temptation, we must necessarily think that the evolution of the earth would have been quite different if the Luciferic-Ahrimanic temptation had not approached man. But this Luciferic-Ahrimanic temptation has only one meaning for life on earth in the physical body. It can only gain significance from the moment we enter earthly life from the spiritual world through birth, or, let us say, through conception. The Luciferic-Ahrimanic temptation cannot have this significance for the time between death and a new birth, because it has this significance here in earthly life.

Therefore, when we see the child enter into earthly life, we perceive correctly when we say: You appear, you soul, who are here in the flesh, you appear out of a world sphere that is still untouched by the nature of Lucifer and Ahriman. You only enter by growing more and more together with the flesh into the nature of Lucifer and Ahriman.

And when we look at the child, we see a spiritual mystery of the world. The moment a human being enters into earthly development, he is already predetermined by his previous incarnations to grow together with the flesh. But people should once feel what it means to enter into the earth without being predetermined for earthly life. That this thought should awaken in man, the thought of what actually dwells in man as an entity through which he is connected with the heavenly, with the solar, that this should awaken in man, for this the Christ-child conquered the spiritual development of mankind. And this Christ-child conquered the spiritual development of mankind in just the way He could conquer it.

There were basically two currents in the whole Christian development. We can understand these two currents very well. Through two bodies, the Christ entered the world: through the Nathanic Jesus and through the Solomonic Jesus. I would say that He entered through the Nathanic Jesus as through the earthly child. You can see how I have described it in the cycles and also in the book 'The Spiritual Leading of Man and Humanity'. Through the Nathanic Jesus, the Christ entered the earth in such a way that this Nathanic Jesus was a being, as preserved from the previous development on earth, as the substance from the beginning of the earth. But the Solomonic Jesus: an upward development that has gone through many, many earthly incarnations. So two paths that should then meet in the way I have described.

But now imagine that all this is happening at a time when spiritual wisdom is dying out, when there is no possibility of grasping this. Such infinite depth comes into play that two Jesus-children are there through whom the Christ is to come into the world. That infinite depth is entering in, which people who understand nothing of the whole matter, despite being officially appointed to do so, blaspheme and condemn today. That which could only have been understood through that wisdom that has been eradicated is entering in. It is no wonder that this fact has entered in a way that can only be understood little by little through our science. Therefore, the following endeavor was first made. When more of the old wisdom began to seep through, little by little, people wanted to place more emphasis on the appearance of Christ Jesus on Earth, on the onset of the great world events. That is why they established the Feast of the Epiphany, the manifestation of the Lord, on January 6th. This is more closely connected with the Solomon-like Jesus, with the Jesus who appeared as a king, who appeared from a royal line. He was also understood more through what was royal-magical wisdom. In contrast, the other, the Nathanic Jesus, who actually had nothing of what had happened on earth in his substance, was transferred to this deep winter time, which is now Christmas. People have not understood that these two belong together, and have even separated the dates of birth. For in older centuries, the birth of Jesus is still celebrated on January 6. But the fact that two births were celebrated is quite understandable to anyone who can speak of two Jesus boys. Even the way people thought about Jesus is actually available in two versions. One relates more to the Jesus who entered without having previously entered into connection with what human differentiations on earth have brought about through nations and classes and races: the Jesus who can enter, understood by the simplest popular feeling – the Luke Jesus, the Nathanic Jesus. The other Jesus, the Solomon-like Jesus, is more comprehensible through that which is heavenly wisdom, through a wisdom through which that which remains of the old magical wisdom seeps through.

It is not wrong to say: First we saw the first Jesus-Play, this simple Jesus-Play, to which the old remnants of the magical wisdom cannot be applied at all: this is the Nathanian Jesus-Child. In the other, there is the wisdom that still remained: the Jesus who entered the world from royal blood — the second play that had an effect on us. People did not know about it, but the two Jesus boys had an effect in that people made such fundamentally different plays out of them.

So, first of all, I wanted to give a few hints as to how the Paradise Play grew together with the Christmas Play, so that the whole has a meaning. We will talk about it again tomorrow. Today, however, I would just like to once again commend to you the words that I spoke at the end yesterday and also in the course of the reflections, that these Christmas Plays are at the same time - in a certain sense even the simplest - yet a warning. And they were also a warning to all those who listened.

Again, what we have to want should be a kind of world Christmas in a spiritual sense. The Christ should again be born, at least in human understanding, in a spiritual way. All this work within spiritual science is actually a kind of Christmas celebration, a birth of the Christ in human wisdom. The only question is whether people will come in large numbers who are now able to understand. Yes, I would like to say that one could hear many a farmer sitting there when such a Christmas play as yesterday's first play was performed in earlier centuries. The whole community came in and now the farmers were sitting there. Now it was like this: sometimes one of the farmers would say to the other: “Tell me, are you actually a host or are you a shepherd?” Then the other would reflect on whether he was a host or a shepherd. But I think that, in view of what is known about Christ in modern science, one could also ask people: “Are you a host or are you a shepherd?” For one hears the landlords railing quite vividly and saying: What do you want here at my door? Away with you, seek a lodging somewhere else, not with us! The others are the shepherds. There is also a skeptic among them, Mops, who also does not want to understand the appearance, but still lets himself be carried through the coridan by a certain sense of truth. I think it could make us think about the question and the answer in the soul with which some people used to go out after watching the Christmas play, the farmers in the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries: Well, tell me, are you actually a host, or are you a shepherd? – Let us hope, my dear friends, that, little by little, many shepherds will arise in our way, so that the innkeepers, who can be heard from afar, will gradually be silenced.