The Rudolf Steiner Archive

My dear friends, many secrets of the spiritual world must first be explained symbolically or half symbolically, although the images are real and should be taken as realities. It is necessary to use an imaginative language, as I mean to do to-day, it is necessary to speak in the form of images which you can meditate in your soul, because long explanations would be needed if one were to speak: in the form of concepts and not symbolically. But those who bear in mind the things which I shall explain to you to day and who meditate upon them, will not fail to discover the deeper essence which they contain.

About this time of year we always pass over from one period into another. To be sure, this may at first appear to us a mere subdivision of time, but this is not the case. For a deeper instinct led the people, who had to fix the seasons of the year, to follow certain great laws governing the course of time. The festival which marks the transition from an old year to a new one is celebrated in our part of the world in the midst of winter, when the plants cease to grow, blossom and bear fruit. Only certain forest trees keep their so-called evergreen foliage throughout the winter. The sun unfolds its weakest power.

We know that spiritual processes are interwoven with all the processes which we perceive through our senses. We know that when we go through the woods we are not only surrounded by the trees with their green needles or leaves, but that a soul-spiritual essence weaves and works in the mysterious depths of life. We have already seen that things which in the eyes of our “clever” modern people appear as childish superstition, can be experienced as something which points to the real essence of the world.

We are therefore convinced that spiritual forces and influences lie at the foundation of everything physical, of the solid substances or of the physical phenomena which we can perceive through our senses. Let us now look upon the so-called lifeless an-organic earth, upon everything which constitutes the earth's mineral kingdom; let us look upon everything which is not endowed with life. To the materialist these lifeless substances appear devoid of life. But in every lifeless object we can see a soul-element, a spiritual element, so that we can also speak of a soul and spirit pertaining to our so-called lifeless, an-organic, purely mineral earth. When we speak of the consciousness of the earth, we cannot perceive in its geological-mineralogical substance even the trace of anything that can be compared with man's muscles and the blood; we can only see the earth's skeleton, or the earth's solid substance, so that when we speak of the earth's consciousness, we must think of it as being contained in the whole earth, which does not only consist of a skeleton, or of solid parts, but also of water, air, etc., which correspond to the muscles, the blood, etc. of man. The whole earth is endowed with consciousness, with a consciousness which forms part of the mineral kingdom. We shall not speak of the change in the earth's consciousness during the course of the year in a definite region, but shall instead enter more deeply into the idea that the whole earth is endowed with consciousness. Let us now turn away our gaze from the whole mineral earth and observe the plants which sprout and blossom out of the earth.

If we study the vegetable kingdom from the standpoint of spiritual science we must first look upon it as an independent being in respect to the earth. The fact that the vegetable kingdom as a whole is an independent being in respect to the earth, becomes clearly evident if we study the consciousness of these two beings. We can speak of a consciousness pertaining to the whole mineral earth, but we can also speak of a consciousness pertaining to the whole vegetable kingdom which develops upon the earth. The laws which govern this consciousness of course differ from the laws which govern human consciousness. When we speak of the consciousness of plants, we can only bear in mind a definite region of the earth, because the consciousness changes according to the various regions of the earth.

As human beings we do not notice that there is a certain parallelism between our consciousness and, for instance, the consciousness of the vegetable kingdom of the whole earth, because our daytime consciousness, not our night-consciousness, is a fully conscious state. In order to simplify matters, let us say that during our waning daytime consciousness our Ego and our astral body are within our physical body. I have already explained to you that in reality this only applies to our blood and nerve system, but not to the other systems. For when the Ego and the astral body are, as it were, outside the head, they permeate all the more the remaining parts of our organism.

Parallel to this we have the fact that when, for instance, there is winter on one side of the earth, there is summer on the other side. This too is only a transformation of consciousness. It is the same with us human beings. But we do not notice it, because these two states of consciousness are not equally clear. They have different degrees of strength. The night-consciousness is a dulled state of consciousness, practically no consciousness at all, and the daytime consciousness is a full state of consciousness pertaining to the other side of our being. Our lower nature is awake during the night, when our higher nature is asleep, and this is also the case with the earth, for when it is winter on one side, it is summer on the other side. When there is a waiting state of consciousness in one part of our being, there is a sleeping state in the other and vice-versa.

As explained just now (this has frequently been dealt with in other lectures) this only applies to the vegetable kingdom. In the height of summer the vegetable kingdom sleeps, because it sprouts and grows; it sleeps, while it unfolds its physical part to the utmost. And it is fully awake at that time of the year when it does not pass through any external physical development. The vegetable kingdom is then awake. We therefore speak of all the plants upon the earth as a whole; and this whole is endowed with consciousness.

When we speak of this consciousness, which therefore constitutes a second state of consciousness permeating the earth's mineral consciousness, when we speak of this plant-consciousness; we can really say that in our part of the world this plant-consciousness is asleep during the summer and awake during the dark winter season.

But at this time of the year something else takes place. You see, these two states of consciousness, viz. the whole earth-consciousness pertaining to the mineral kingdom and the whole plant-consciousness are distinct and separate: throughout the year they are two separate beings. Yet they are not ONLY two beings, for they permeate each other, so that one is filled by the other during that time of the year in which we are now living. When the old year passes over into the new year, the mineral objects and processes of the earth and the whole vegetable kingdom have ONE consciousness; that is to say, the two states of consciousness interpenetrate.

Of what kind is the MINERAL consciousness of the earth? To-day, however, we shall not consider its different stages in the same way in which we shall consider the consciousness of the plants, which is awake in the winter and asleep in the summer. What is the characteristic of the mineral consciousness, of the consciousness pertaining to the great being of the earth? Those who only rely upon their physical senses and upon the intellect which they think forms part of the physical senses, cannot know anything of this great consciousness of the earth. But spiritual science teaches us to observe the thoughts of the earth-consciousness, for the earth has thoughts, even as we have thoughts of minerals, plants and animals, of the air, the rivers and mountains. The earth has thoughts, in the same way in which we have thoughts concerning our environment, when we live in our ordinary daytime consciousness. What does the earth think? What thoughts live in its consciousness?

In the consciousness of the earth there are to begin with, thoughts connected with the whole heavenly space pertaining to the earth. Even as our eyes look upon the trees and stones, so the consciousness of the earth looks out into the heavenly spaces and harbours thoughts of all that goes on in the stars. The earth is a being that thinks about the stars and the events connected with them.

The mineral consciousness thus contains the secrets of the whole cosmos in the form of thought. Whereas we human beings walk over the surface of the earth and only think of the stones on our path or of many other things in our surroundings which we perceive through our senses, the earth thinks of the cosmos outside; these are the things which live in the consciousness of the earth, and as we walk through space we pass through the consciousness of the earth. The earth has a far wider consciousness and far greater thoughts than we. And it is really an uplifting thought to know: “As you walk along over the surface of the earth, you do not only pass through its atmosphere, but you pass through the thoughts of the earth.”

Let us now envisage something else—let us consider the consciousness of the plants. You see, plants cannot have great thoughts like those of the earth, for their consciousness, the thinking consciousness of the vegetable world (of the WHOLE vegetable kingdom, not of single plants) is far more limited; throughout the year it embraces a far smaller sphere pertaining to the earth—EXCEPT IN THESE DAYS, for at this time of the year (end of December/early January) the consciousness of the plants permeates the consciousness of the earth. The vegetable kingdom becomes aware of the secrets of the stars, it comprehends the mysteries of the stairs and uses them, so that in the springtime the plants may unfold again and bear blossoms and fruits in accordance with the mysteries of the cosmos. For the whole mystery of the cosmos is contained in the way in which the plants bear leaves, blossoms and fruits.

But while the plants develop their leaves, flowers and fruits they cannot develop thoughts about these processes. They can think of these processes only at this time of the year, when the consciousness of the vegetable world unites with the consciousness of the mineral world.

In spiritual science we therefore say; Two cycles interpenetrate at this time of the year, approximately around New Year's Eve.

The secret of existence consists in the fact that cycles INTERPENETRATE, continue their development separately and again interpenetrate. How wonderful is this secret of life! Two streams of development—the vegetable consciousness and the mineral consciousness, which take their course separately throughout the year, unite when one year passes over into the next. Then they develop separately until the end of the year when they unite once more. This constitutes the cyclic course of history.

Let us now pass over from this mystery, which can fill us with a deep, sacred feeling of reverence for the secret of the transition of one annual cycle into the next, let us now pass over to a still greater mystery. You know that we are living in the cycle which is connected with the development of the Consciousness-soul, which was preceded by the cycle connected with the development of the Understanding or Intellectual soul and by the cycle connected with the Sentient soul? If we go back still further, we come to the development of the Sentient Body. This leads us to the year 5000 B.C., when all human thinking developed under the influence of the sentient body, the so-called astral body.

In the course of human evolution we shall have to pass through the consciousness soul, the Spirit-Self, and still higher stages of development.

At the present time the consciousness-soul develops chiefly through the fact that the human being only uses his physical body as an instrument of perception. This brought us to the present; climax of materialism (we dealt with this in other lectures), for we use above all our physical body. But a time will come when we shall not only use the physical body, but also the etheric body, even as we once used our astral body, during the epoch of human development when the astral body supplied the chief foundation of consciousness.

We may therefore say: Once upon a time we lived upon the earth in such a way that our soul passed through a phase in which its consciousness contacted with the consciousness of our astral body. Even as at the end of the year the plants' consciousness passes through the. mineral consciousness, so thousands of years ago our soul passed through our astral body, through the consciousness pertaining to our astral body. At that time, the consciousness of our soul and the consciousness of our astral body were one. This leads us back thousands of years, to the year 6000 B.C. When this state of consciousness began, humanity on earth celebrated a new year, a great cosmic new year. Even as the new year now brings with it a union of the consciousness of the plants with the consciousness of the minerals, so 6000 years before our Christian ere marked the beginning of a new cosmic year upon the earth. It was a great cosmic new year! Our soul's consciousness then passed Through the astral consciousness. of our body.

What took place at that time? At that time, 6000 years B.C., when our inner soul-consciousness passed through the astral consciousness of our body, our limited human consciousness, such as we have it now, extended as far as the consciousness of the plants at New Year. Even as the plant looks out into the heavenly spaces, through the fact that its consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness, so 6000 years B.C. the human being saw and perceived an extensive field of wisdom, during that ancient cosmic NEW YEAR, when his soul united with the astral body.

From that time comes the lost wisdom (we spoke of this a few. days ago), the gnostic wisdom which disappeared. We must look for the origin of this wisdom in the cosmic New Year about 6000 years before our era. This, is the source from which Zarathustra drew his knowledge; it is the wisdom that illumined the Gnostics with its last rays, but as already explained, only a few traces of this gnostic wisdom have remained to us. It is the winter of the earth, but at the same time a cosmic new year of the earth, to which we go back.

Now add about 4000 years to the time which has passed since the founding of Christianity; this will bring us to a time when we shall again pass through our astral consciousness, but upon a higher stage. Our soul will again pass through our astral consciousness, through a cosmic star-consciousness. Let us prepare ourselves for this event, so that it may not find us unprepared.

Let us prepare ourselves for this Cosmic New Year! By preparing ourselves for the Christmas Festival, as explained during one of my last lectures, we prepare ourselves in the right way for the Cosmic New Year. If the birth of spiritual knowledge lives within us as a sacred Christmas feeling, we prepare ourselves in the right way for the new Cosmic New Year, which begins 12,000 years after the old cosmic year.

Twelve months of the year pass by from the union of the earth's vegetable consciousness with the mineral consciousness, to another union. Twelve thousands of years pass by from one Cosmic New Year to the other Cosmic New Year of the earth, from one passage of the human soul through the astral world to a new passage of the human soul through the astral world.

In this solemn hour, we thus look from the new year upon a small scale to the New Year upon a great cosmic scale, from the ordinary New Year's Eve to the cosmic New Year's Eve, for which we prepare ourselves if we try to perceive in the very midst of winter the light which only streams towards us, as inhabitants of the earth, during a cosmic New Year. Then it comes to us in a natural, elemental way.

We really see the world in its true light if we perceive the surrounding world not only in the way in which it appears to our senses, not only in accordance with a materialistic mentality, but if we look upon the external physical world as a symbol for the great mysteries of the cosmos.

The approach of New Year's Eve may therefore appear to us like the approach of a messenger from the spiritual world, revealing to us the mysteries connected with the end of the year and bringing us the following message:

“Behold, in the midst of the dark cold winter season the vegetable consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness of the earth. Let this be a sign to you that the earth too has its own cycle, namely the great cosmic year mentioned by Zarathustra, which goes from one Cosmic New Year's Eve to the other, and which we must understand if we wish to grasp the course of human development.”

Zarathustra speaks of twelve thousands of years, the twelve thousand years mentioned just now. He described the course of one Earthly Year, and divided it into four seasons representing the course of human evolution upon the earth. This is deeply rooted in the spiritual mysteries.

Let us fill our hearts and souls with a festive, earnest feeling, born out of a deeper comprehension of our spiritual science. Let us unfold within our heart that inner warmth which can be felt when in the midst of the cold winter night we hear the message of the Sun-Spirit's descent to the earth and then learn to know the mystery of the year's course.

The thirteen days from the 24th of December to the 6th of January are the days in which the plants' consciousness unites with the mineral consciousness. If the human being can transfer himself into the consciousness of the plants, he can see and dream of many mysteries which pass through his heart in many forms—he can have dreams such as that of Olaf Åsteson.

If we develop such feelings and moods, we obtain the right attitude towards the aims of our spiritual knowledge; these warm feelings which stream through our heart are a preparation for the New Cosmic Year, and they enable us to await it worthily, to look forward to that cosmic New Year's Eve which brings a new cosmic year. In future incarnations, when our souls will pass through the great Cosmic New Year, we shall experience it in the right way if the end of the year which closes the small cycle of twelve months becomes a symbol for the great end of the year which closes a cycle of twelve thousand years.

This is the secret of our existence. The things which take place upon a small scale always correspond to the things which take place upon a large scale, and upon a large scale the things are the same as upon a small scale. The small scale, the course of one year, can only be grasped if it becomes a symbol for the great cosmic course, for the cycle which encompasses thousands of years.

The year is an image for the Aeons. And Aeons are the reality of symbols which we encounter in the course of one year. If we really understand the year's course, our hearts will be deeply moved toy the mysteries of the cosmos, at this time of the year which marks the beginning of a new year. Let us try to attune our soul so that it can look into the new year conscious of the fact that it can bear within it the year's course as a symbol for the great COSMIC course, which encompasses all the mysteries pursued, by spiritual Beings who surge and weave through the universe from aeon to aeon, in the same way in which the Lesser Gods pursue the mysteries connected with the development of the vegetable and mineral Kingdoms during the course of one year.

It seemed well yesterday, on the last night of the year, to enter deeply into many of the secrets of existence connected with the great super-sensible mysteries, such as the annual passing of one year into another—and of the great cosmic New Year's Eve and New Year. It seemed good to enter yesterday into those things which speak to the depths of our souls, mysteries far removed from the outer world; so, at the beginning of a New Year, it may perhaps be important to let a few at least of our great and important duties be brought before our souls.

These duties are connected above all with that which is made known to us in the course of human evolution, through Spiritual Science. They are associated with the knowledge of the road humanity must travel as it advances towards its future. A man cannot recognise the duties here mentioned, if he does not, in his own way, keep an open view in many directions. We have again and again endeavoured to do this in the course of our studies. To call up a few only of such duties before our souls may perhaps be fitting at this time, at the opening of a New Year.

It is true, that in view of this material age and all that it brings in its train, we recognise that Spiritual Science must form the basis from which we can work in a higher way for the progress of mankind. It is true, that all that seems to us necessary is so enormous, so incisive—there is (to put it mildly) so much to do at the present time, that we cannot believe that with our feeble powers we should ever be in a position to do much of what has to be done. One thing at least is important, that we should connect our interest with what has to be done, that we should acquire ever more and more interest in those things of which humanity in our time has need.

As a beginning, a group of people, however small, must be interested in that of which humanity has need, and gain a clear insight into those forces which in the evolution of time have a downward tendency, those that are harmful forces. At the opening of a New Year it is specially good to turn the interest of our circle somewhat from our own personal concerns and to direct them to the great objective interests of the whole of humanity.

To do this requires, as I have said, clear insight into that which is moving along the downward path in the human evolution of to-day. We need only carry those very thoughts which have been ours during the last few days over into the realm of the actual, there to find many of the things of which the men of the present day have need.

We have seen how at a certain moment of evolution, a far-reaching wisdom was actually lost to man; how this wisdom of the Gnostics perished; and how it is now necessary to work, so that an understanding of spiritual things may again be established, though of course in accordance with the progress of the time.

During the past autumn we have considered the deeper causes of the flood tide of materialism which took place in the nineteenth century, and I have again and again emphasised that the view of Spiritual Science in regard to this flood of materialism, in no way tends to a lack of appreciation, or want of understanding of the great progress of external, material science. This has always been recognised by us. But what we must keep specially before us is this, that the great progress made in the materialistic realms of natural science during the nineteenth century and on into the present time, has been accomplished with a falling off in the power of thought—of clear, precise thinking.

This decline in the power of thinking has taken place more especially in the domain of science. There—however much people may disbelieve it—the faith in authority has never been so strong as in our day, so that want of confidence as regards the certainty of thinking has spread widely through all the realms of popular thought. We live in an age of the most careless thinking and at the same time it is an age of the blindest trust in authority. People live to-day entirely under the impression that they must believe in, they must recognise authority, that they must have the sanction of outside powers. They desire a warrant for this or that. For the most part men do not consider to-day that it is an individual concern, that they will eventually have to take up the matter for themselves! So, they go to whom ‘right and law is bequeathed like a hereditary sickness’ and accept conclusions without weighing how those conclusions were reached; for they consider it right to accept authority blindly.

A man is ill—he takes not the least trouble to learn the simplest thing about the illness. Why should he? We have recognised and certified physicians whose business it is to look after our bodies; we need not trouble in the least about them!

If information on any subject be desired, people go to those who ought to know, to the theologian, to the philosopher, to this one or to that.

Any one following up this line of thought for himself, will find that on numberless points he himself is sunk in blindest belief in authority. If he cannot find them—do not take it ill of me, if I say—that the less he finds of this belief in authority in himself, the larger the dose he must have swallowed!

But I would now like to show how a narrow, cramped and impoverishing mode of thought has slipped even into the finest domain of spiritual life, all the world over—without distinction of nation, race or colour; that a certain element of cramped thinking is to be found where the life of spiritual culture exists in its finest form. Let us take a philosophical idea and watch how it has developed. Who is not convinced to-day, on the grounds of a belief in an authority which has come down to him through very many channels—who is not convinced that one cannot by any means arrive at the ‘thing in itself,’ but can only catch the outward phenomena, the impression on the senses, the impression made on the soul by the thing. Man can but arrive at the ‘results’ of things, but not at the ‘thing in itself.’ This is indeed the fundamental type of the thought of the nineteenth century. I have described the whole wretched business in that chapter in my book Riddles of Philosophy, which is called ‘The World of Illusion.’ Anyone who studies this chapter will find a résumé of the whole matter. Man can only perceive ‘effects,’ he cannot attain to ‘the thing in itself;’ this remains unknown.

The most capable thinkers of the nineteenth century, if we can speak of them as capable in this connection, are infected by this necessary ignorance regarding ‘the thing in itself.’

If we now turn to the trend of thought which is at the base of what I have just described, it presents itself thus: It is wrongly insisted on, that the eye can only reflect that which it can evoke within itself by means of its nervous or other activities. When an external impression comes, it responds to it in its own specific way. One only gets as far as the impression—not to that which causes the impression on the eye. Through his ear a man only gets as far as the impression made on the ear—not to the thing that makes the impression, and so on.

It is, therefore, only the impressions of the outer world that act on the senses of the soul. That which was at first established as regards a certain realm, that of colour, tone and the like, has now for a long time been extended to the whole thinking world—that can receive only the impression or effects of what is in the world. Is this incorrect? Certainly it is not incorrect, but the point—as has often been said—is not in the least whether a matter is correct or not, quite other things come into consideration. Is it correct that only pictures, only impressions of things, are called forth by our senses? Certainly it is correct, that cannot be doubted; but something very different is connected with this. This I will explain by means of a comparison.

If someone stands before a mirror and another person also stands there beside him, it cannot be denied that what is seen in the mirror is the image of the one man and also of the other. What is seen in the mirror is without doubt images—merely images. From this point of view all our sense perceptions are in fact mere images: for the object must first make an impression on us and our impression—the reaction as one might say—evokes consciousness. We can quite correctly compare this with the images which we see in the mirror; for the impressions are also images.

Thus in the Lange and Kant train of thought we have a quite correct assertion—that man is concerned with images and that therefore, he cannot come into touch with anything real, with any actual ‘thing in itself.’ Why is this? It is solely because man cannot think things out further than one assumption, he remains at one correct assumption. The thought is not incorrect, but as such it is frozen in—it can go no further—it is really frozen in. Just consider: The images that we see in the mirror are true images, but suppose the other person who stands beside me and looks into the mirror too, gives me a box on the ear, would I then say (as these are but images I see in the mirror) that one reflection has given the other reflection a box on the ear? The action points to something real behind the images! And so it is. When our thoughts are alive and not frozen, when they are connected with realities, we know that the Lange-Kantian hypothesis is correct, that we have everywhere to do with images; but when the images come in touch with living conditions, these living conditions reveal what first leads us to the thing in itself. It is not so much the case here that certain gentlemen who have thus led thoughts astray, have started from a wrong hypothesis; the whole matter hangs on the fact that we have to reckon with thoughts that were frozen, with thoughts which when at last they are reached, make people say: true, true, true—and get no further. This unworthy thinking of the nineteenth century is wanting in flexibility, in vitality. It is frozen in, truly ice-bound.

Let us take another example. During the past year I have often communicated certain things to you from a celebrated thinker—Mauthner, the great critic of language. Kant occupies himself with Critique of Idea. Mauthner went further, (things that follow must always go further)—he wrote a Critique of Speech. You will remember that during the autumn I gave you examples from the Critique of Speech. Such a man has many followers at the present day. Before he took up philosophy he was a journalist. There is an old saw which says: ‘One crow does not peck out the eyes of another.’ Not only do they not peck out each other's eyes, but the others even give eyes to the crows that are blind, especially when these are journalists! And thus this critic of language—but as I said I wish in no way to raise any question as regards the honesty of such a thinker, even as regards his solidity and depth, for I must always insist again and again that it is incorrect to say that criticism of natural or of any other science is practised here, its characteristics are only defined. So I say expressly, that Mauthner is an honourable man, ‘so are they all honourable men’—but just let us consider one process of thought which is along the lines of this Critique of Language. For example it is stated there: Human knowledge is limited. Limited—why limited according to Mauthner? Well, because all that man experiences of the world enters his soul by way of his senses. Certainly there is nothing very profound in this thought, but yet it is an undeniable fact. Everything comes to us from the outer world through the senses. But now the thought came to Mauthner that these senses are merely accidental-senses, which means that supposing that we had not our eyes and ears and other senses, we might have other senses instead, then the world around us would appear quite different. An exceedingly popular thought, especially among many philosophers of our day! So it is actually by chance that we have these particular senses, and therewith our conception of the world about us. Had we different senses we should have a different world! Accidental senses!

One of the followers of Fritz Mauthner has said roughly as follows: ‘The world is infinite; but how can man know anything of this infinite world? He can but gain impressions through his accidental senses. Through the door of these chance-senses many things enter our souls and group themselves, while without, the infinite world goes on, and man can learn nothing of the laws in accordance with which it progresses. How can man believe, that what he experiences through these chance-senses of his, can have any connection with the great cosmic mysteries beyond?’ So speaks a follower of Mauthner, who did not, however, look upon himself as an adherent of his, but as a clever man of his day. Yes, so he said. But you can transpose this line of thought into another. I will absolutely retain the form and character of the thought, but translate it into another. I will now state this other thought.

One cannot form any idea of what such a genius as Goethe really has given to mankind, for he has no other means of expressing what he had to say to men, than by the use of twenty-two or twenty-three chance letters of our alphabet which must be grouped in accordance with their own laws and set down on paper. This goes still further. How is it possible to learn anything of the genius of Goethe, through the chance grouping of letters on paper?

Clever such a man might be who believes that because Goethe had to express his whole genius by means of twenty-three letters, A.B.C. and so on,—we could learn nothing of his genius or of his ideas,—clever he might be who used such an excuse and still maintained that he had before him nothing but the twenty-three chance letters grouped in various ways! ‘Away with your explanations,’ he would say, ‘they are but fancy, I see nothing before me but letters!’ Clever, in the same way, is he who says: The world beyond is infinite, we cannot learn anything of it, for we know only what comes to us through our chance-senses.

The fact is that such inaccurate thinking does not only exist in the domain of which I am speaking, where it comes very crudely into evidence, it is present everywhere. It is active in the profoundly unhappy events of the present day, for these would not be what they are if the thinking of all humanity was not permeated with what has been pointed out in a somewhat crude form.

People will never be able to take the right interest in such things, I mean the things concerned with the true efforts of man for his real progress—true effort in the, sense of Spiritual Science—if they have not the will really to enter into such matters, if they have not the desire to recognise the things of which man stands in need. Objections are ever being raised from this side and from that, to the teaching of Spiritual Science, that it is only accessible to those who have clairvoyant perception of the spiritual worlds. People will not believe that this is not true, that what is required is, that by thought they should really be able to attain understanding of that which the seer is able to bring forth out of the spiritual world. It is not to be wondered at that people cannot to-day grasp with their thought what the seer derives from the spiritual world, when thought is built up in this way I have described. This kind of thought is ‘trumps’ and rules life in every department.

It is not because man is unable to understand with his thoughts all that Spiritual Science teaches, that it fails to be understood, but because he permits himself to be infected with the slip-shod thinking of the present day. Spiritual Science should stimulate us to intensive, courageous thinking; that is what matters: and it is well able to do this.

Of course, as long as we take Spiritual Science in such a way that we only talk about the things with which it is concerned, we shall not advance very much in the establishing of the thought for the future of humanity, which is exactly the mission of our movement to establish. When, however, we take the trouble really to understand—really to grasp the things, the matter taught,—we shall certainly make progress.

Even the conceptions of Spiritual Science are affected by the careless thinking of the present day. I have explained to you how this careless thinking acts; I quoted: ‘results only do we have in the external world, so we cannot attain to the thing in itself.’ This thought is as it were immediately frozen in; people do not wish to go any further, the thought is frozen in, they no longer see that the living interchanging activity of the reflected images leads further than to the mere image-character. This method is then applied to the conceptions of Spiritual Science. Because people are fully infected by such kind of thoughts, they say: Yes, what Spiritual Science tells on page a,b,c, are facts of Spiritual Science; these facts we cannot have before us, if we have not acquired the seer's gift. Therefore, they do not go on to think whether in their present attitude to what Spiritual Science teaches they are not making the same mistake that the whole world makes to-day. The worst of it is, that this fundamental failing of contemporary thought is so little recognised. It is dreadful how little it is recognised. It enters into our everyday thinking, and makes itself felt there, just as in the more advanced thinking of the philosophers and scientists. It is but seldom that people recognise what a really tremendous duty springs from an insight into this fact, how important it is to be interested in such things, how lacking in responsibility to permit our interest in them to be blunted.

The fact is now apparent, that in the course of the last century purely external sense-observation obtained and gave its tone to science; people laid the greatest value on the results of observation in the laboratory, or in the clinic, in the Zoological Gardens and the like, (the value of which observation must be recognised, as I have often remarked) but they desired to hold to these only and go no further. It is true that extraordinary progress has been made by these methods of natural science, quite extraordinary progress; but it is just through this progress that thought has become quite unreliable. Therefore it becomes a duty not to allow those persons to attain power in the world, who exercise this power from the standpoint of a purely materialistic experimental knowledge,—and it is power that such people want. At the present day we have reached the point, when all that is non-materialistic learning is to be driven out of the world by the brutal language of force which is used in materialistic erudition. It has already become a question of force. Among those who appeal most eagerly to the external powers to gain their external privileges, we have to recognise those who stand on the foundation of material science alone. Therefore, it is our duty to understand that force rules in the world. It is not enough that we should be interested only in what concerns ourselves personally, we must develop interest in the great concerns of the whole of humanity. It is true that as individuals and even as a small society we cannot do much to-day, but from small germs like these a beginning must be made. What is the use of people saying to-day that they have no faith in doctors; that they have no confidence in the system, and seek by every other means, something in which they can feel confidence? Nothing is affected by this, all that is but personal effort for their own advantage. We should be interested in establishing, alongside the material medicine of to-day, something in which we can have confidence. Otherwise things will get worse from day to day. This does not only mean that those who have no faith in the medical science of the day should seek out someone whom they can trust; for this would put the latter in a false position, unless he interests himself in seeing that he too should be suitably qualified to interest himself in the progress of the general condition, of humanity. It is true that to-day and tomorrow we cannot perhaps be more than interested in the matter, but we must bear in our souls such interest for the affairs of humanity if we wish to understand in their true meaning the teaching of Spiritual Science. We still often think that we understand the great interests of humanity, because we frequently interpret our personal interests as if they were the greatest interests of mankind.

We must search deeply, within the profoundest depths of our soul, if we wish to discover in ourselves how dependent we are on the blind faith in authority of the present day—how profoundly we are dependent on it. It is our indolence, our love of ease that withholds us from being inwardly kindled, and set aflame by the great needs of humanity.

The best New Year greeting that we can inscribe in our souls is that we may be enkindled and inspired by the great interests of the progress of mankind—of the true freedom of humanity. So long as we allow ourselves to believe that he who blows his trumpet before the world must also be able to think correctly,—so long as we hold beliefs derived from the carelessly organised thinking of the present day,—we have not developed within ourselves true interests in the great universal cause of mankind.

What I have just said is in no way directed against any great man in particular; I know that when such things are said especially in a public lecture, there are many who say: Natural Science and the authorities of the day were attacked by Spiritual Science; and the like. I specially quote instances from those of whom I can say, on the other hand, that they are great authorities of the present day, that they are great men,—to show that they support things which Spiritual Science has to extirpate, root and branch. Even without being a great man, one can recognise the careless thinking of great men, which has been so greatly enhanced just because of the brilliant advance in the experimental science of the day. One example, one among many,—I choose a book written by one of the best known men of the day and which is translated into German. No one can say that greatness is unrecognised by me. I repeat, I choose a book by a celebrated man of the day, in the domain of experimental Natural Science. I look up a passage in the introduction to the second volume, which deals specially with the question of the cosmology of the day; in which the great man goes into the history of the development of cosmo-conception. It runs somewhat as follows: In the times of the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and the Romans, men tried to form a picture of the world in such and such a way; then in the last four hundred years there arose the Natural Science of to-day, which has at last drawn the great prize, which has swept all previous ideas aside and has attained to actual truth, which now has but to be further built up.

I have often laid stress on the fact that it is not so much the individual assertions that people make, it is the Ahrimanic or Luciferic characteristics which at once lay hold on people, so that they become Ahrimanic or Luciferic. Thus at the close of this introduction we read the following, which is in the highest degree noteworthy. Take a special note of what is presented to us by one who is without doubt a great and celebrated man of the day. After remarking how grand the knowledge of Natural Science is to-day, he says: ‘The time of sad decline endured until the awakening of humanity at the beginning of the new age. The new age placed the art of printing at the service of learning, and contempt of experimental work disappeared from the minds of educated people. Opposition to old opinions as expressed in the writings of various investigators, advanced at first but slowly. These hindering conditions have since disappeared, and immediately the number of workers and the means of furthering Natural Science increased in rapid succession. Hence the extraordinary progress of recent years.’

There then follows the last sentence of this introduction—‘We sometimes hear it said that we live in the best of all possible worlds: there might be some objection raised to this, but we scientists at least can assert with all certainty, that we live in the best of times. And we can look forward with confidence to a still better future. ...’ Now follows what really is astounding! This author attaches to himself, and to his age, that which great men have discovered and thought, regarding nature and the world. Therefore he says: In the firm hope that the future may be better, we can say with Goethe,—the great authority on man and nature:

‘Es ist ein gross Ergotzen
Sich in den Geist der Zeiten zu versetzen,
Zu schauen, wie vor uns ein weiser Mann gedacht,
Und wie wir's dann zuletzt so herrlich weit gebracht.’

[‘It is a great delight, to enter into the spirit of the age, to see how wise men thought before our time, and how splendidly we have advanced things.’]

In all seriousness a great man closes his remarks with these words, the pronouncement of Goethe, the great authority on nature and on man; words to which Faust replies,—for it is Wagner who says:

‘By your leave it is a great delight,
To enter into the spirit of the age, etc.—’

But Faust answers: (and perhaps we may accept what Faust says as the thought of Goethe, the great authority on nature and on man.)

‘O yes! As far as to the stars!’

This is exactly fitted for a man who can reach as far as to the stars, thus:

‘O yes! As far as to the stars!
The ages that are past, my Friend,
Are for us a book with seven seals;
What we call the spirit of the age,
Is in fact the spirit of ourselves
In which the times are mirrored.
This is in truth, often but a wail!
Men fly from the first glance of it.
A rubbish heap, a lumber room,
At most some act or state of law
With excellent pragmatic maxims
Such as are put in puppets' mouths!’

And so on. ...

Thus in 1907 wrote one of the greatest men of the day who had surely got ‘as far as to the stars,’ and who looking back on all those who had worked before him had also got so far as to make use of the saying ‘of Goethe, the great authority on man and nature.’

It is a great delight
To enter into the spirit of the age.

You smile! One could wish that this smile always might be directed against those who are capable at the present day of making such carelessness valid; for the example I have given shows that it is those who are firmly established on the ground of the scientific outlook of the day, and who are associated with progress in this domain, who are able to put forth such negligent thinking. It just proves that what is called Natural Science to-day by no means excludes the most superficial thinking. A man may be a thoroughly careless thinker to-day, and yet be held to be a great man in the realm of natural science. This has to be recognised, and in this sense we must approach it. It is a sign of our time. If this were to continue; if any one is labeled as a great man, and given out as a great authority and if people put forward what he says in this or that domain without proof, as of something of great worth—then we should never surmount the great misery of our time. I am fully convinced that countless people pass over the sentence I read out to you to-day, without a smile, although it shows forth in the most eminent degree, where the greatest faults of our day lie, which are bringing about the decline of the evolution of humanity.

We must see clearly where to make a beginning with those things necessary for man; and also see that in spite of the immense advance in external natural science, the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century, even down to our own day, have shown themselves the worst dilettantists in regard to all questions of world-outlook. The great fault of our day is, that this is not recognised—that people do not recognise that the greatest investigators in natural science in the nineteenth century proved themselves the worst of dilettantists in the question of world-outlook, when they entirely left out that which as spirit rules in the realm of natural science. People blindly followed after these great persons, not only when they gave out the results of investigations in the laboratory, or of clinical research, but also when they asserted things regarding the secrets of the universe.

So, parallel with the popularising of science which is useful and beneficial in the highest degree, we have at the same time a deterioration as regards all questions of wide import and a heedlessness of thought which is infectious and very harmful, because it is founded on the very worst kind of dilettantism of great men.

Here are to be found the tasks with which our interests must be closely associated, even if we ourselves are not able to produce anything. We must at least look things in the face, we must see clearly that it will above all lead to far, far more unhappy times than we are at present passing through, if mankind does not realise what has been here pointed out;—if, in place of careless, inexact thinking, a clear and genuine method of thought be not established again among men. Everything can be traced back to this careless thinking. All those external, often very unhappy phenomena which we encounter would not exist if this inexact, negligent thought were not there.

It seems to me specially necessary to speak of these matters at the beginning of a New Year, for they are connected with the character and attitude of our whole task. For when we accustom ourselves to consider without prejudice the method and nature of modern thought, and see how powerful it is in all the varied conditions of life, we can then form some picture of what we have to do and of what mankind stands in need. We must in the first place overcome all tendency to slackness, all love of sloth and laziness, we must see clearly that a spiritual-scientific movement has duties other than that of merely listening to lectures or reading books.

I must continually remind you to make yourselves acquainted with the necessary ideas. It is clear to all that as a few individuals,—as a small society—we cannot do much. But our own thought must move in the right direction; we must know what is in question, we must not ourselves be exposed to the danger (to put it trivially) of succumbing to the different conceptions of the world, of those who are the great men of the day in the external sciences. Great men, but dilettante thinkers as regards questions of universal import, found numerous associations of monistic or other nature without the opposition that would arise if at least it were realised that, when such societies are founded, it is as if one said: ‘I am letting this man make a coat, because he is a celebrated cobbler!’

This is foolishness, is it not? But it is just as foolish when a great chemist or a great psychologist is accepted as an authority on a conception of the world. We cannot blame them if they claim it for themselves, for naturally they cannot know how inadequate they are; but that they are so accepted is connected with the great evils of the present day. To me it seems as if a thought for New Year's Eve must ever be associated with our feelings; whereas it seems to me that that which faces us as the more immediate duty of the day, must be directly associated with our reflections on New Year's Day; I thought therefore, that the tone of what has been said to-day might be fitly associated with what was said yesterday.

Let us think of the human etheric body as it is connected with the physical body. We shall sketch it thus: representing it entirely diagrammatically, and we shall sketch the physical body as a kind of rind of the etheric body, though it must be understood that in reality it interpenetrates the whole human etheric body, except the most external part of the latter. Let this then be the etheric and physical body, and there, belonging to them, as is understood, in the whole system of man, his astral body and ego. Let us now recall that the etheric body of man naturally consists of the different kinds of ether which we have learnt to distinguish.

We recognize these as consisting of:

warmth-outer ether,
light-ether,
chemical-ether [by which the music of the spheres is communicated]
and life-ether.

Let us turn our attention to the light-ether. It is true that the whole etheric body consists of an inner blend—an inwardly organised blend of the four kinds of ether, but we shall only consider today that part of the ether body which is light-ether; and in order to fix our attention on that part of the etheric body which we call the light-ether, we have sketched it above.

Now I have often said that man really only gains consciousness of things from being actually within them with his ego and soul being. It is in the daytime, when we are awake, that the astral body and ego are within the physical and etheric bodies; one may add, as regards that part of them which is not within things. Keeping this in view we say that we have sense perceptions. The cause of this is that the human ego and astral body first receive a revelation of things, and this revelation which remains unconscious, is then reflected on the instruments of the senses and their nerve extensions in the physical body. This has often been explained.

Now we shall inquire today: How does memory come about? How is it that we have remembrance of many things, of objects and experiences that we have passed through? How does it come to pass that we have memory?

Take this case. We meet a man today, whom we first saw five days ago. We remember that we saw him five days ago, that we spoke with him, that he told us his name. We say: we recognize this man. What is it that really takes place in us when we thus remember a man and our former meeting with him?

This is what occurs; the first thing we have to take into consideration is this, that when we met the man five days ago our etheric body experienced certain movements. It is the light part of the etheric body that we are now considering; of course, the other members of the etheric body—the heat, chemical and life parts also vibrate in sympathy, but it is the light part that we are considering today; I will speak of it therefore as the light-body. Our etheric body, then, experienced certain movements, for the thoughts evoked by the man whom we met, revealed themselves within our light-body as movements—as inner light-movements; so that apart from our having perceived the man with our senses, we received impressions [not communicated through the senses] that gave rise to movements in our light-body. Thus the whole result of our meeting with the man consisted in our light-body experiencing all kinds of movements. Picture this vividly to yourselves. While you stood before the man and spoke to him, your etheric light-body was in continual movement. What you said to him, what you felt and thought regarding him, is all disclosed in the movements of your light-body. When, several days after, you see this man again, the fresh sight of him stirs your soul, and this movement causes your etheric body, purely because of its laws of continuity, to reproduce the movements it experienced five days before, when you met the man and exchanged thoughts with him. Very well, we encounter this man again after five days. The etheric light-body, stirred by this meeting, experiences again the same movements which it did at the first meeting; and because man is always with part of his astral body and ego in the outer ether, he feels the movements which stir the outer ether, and thus because of its law of continuity [or persistence] he again becomes aware of what he experienced previously. We have really to picture to ourselves, that during the waking state we are both with our ego and astral body within the outer light-ether; sleep only consists in that part of the astral body and ego, which during the day, when we are awake, is within the physical and etheric body, also withdrawing into the outer ether.

Remembrance is this: the perception from the outer ether of inner etheric movements; the perception from the outer light-ether of movements in the inner light-body: that is, to remember.

Suppose, for example, that you see two men meet each other. Perhaps the one merely sees the face of the other, but because of this certain movements arise in his etheric body. Then he goes his way. The etheric body retains the tendency to repeat these movements if stirred to do so. Five days later these two men meet again. They perceive each other, the one whose light-body is stirred to make the same movements which it made when he saw the other's face before. This is expressed in his consciousness when he says: I have seen this face before. That is: consciousness perceives the inner movements of the light-ether from the light-ether. This is remembrance purely as an act of perception. We can say: in the external light one perceives the movements taking place in the inner light-body. But we do not see them as light movements. Why do we not see them thus in ordinary life? We do not see them as light movements, because this light-ether body is seated within the physical body, and therefore the movements of the light-ether impinge everywhere on the physical body. Through these impacts, the light movements of the etheric body are transformed into memory pictures. These light movements are not perceptible, it is only through what the memory presents to us through contact with the physical body that we are aware of them.

When the physical body is not there, that is when the body has passed through the gates of death, the ego and astral body are naturally at first far more intensely within the outer ether, till after a few days they leave the outer ether. The inner light-ether is then no longer stirred by impacts on the physical body to conceptions that are only possible in the physical body. Therefore the dead see everything that they have experienced, which the etheric body, now freed from the physical body and no longer restrained by it, throws off and allows to pass before it. During the first few days after death man sees everything pass before him; for the etheric has the tendency continually to repeat and to reproduce from within itself all those movements which the experiences of the physical body had at one time aroused in it. The man's whole life passes before him, set in motion by the vibrations of the ether body. It is seen projected as a mighty picture—one may say that all the etheric movements reflect, as in a panorama, the life just passed on earth.

If it were possible for us always so to control the physical body as we could make ourselves so independent of it—not letting it disturb us—that the etheric body also were set free, as can be done by certain meditations connected with the process described in my book “Knowledge of Higher Worlds”, it might be that even in life we might see, not the results of memory—not what arises through the impact of the etheric body on the physical body, but the actual swayings and movements of the etheric body itself. We should be then in the outer ether and look at the movements of our light-body.

Why can we not do this in ordinary life? Why in ordinary life does it happen that when Miss A meets Mr. B, for example, and recognises him; she remembers him—that is, she recalls the memory-picture of him, but she does not in ordinary circumstances, leaving clairvoyance out of the question, see what she otherwise could: the inner movements of her ether body which would give her the inner experience: ‘Thus has my etheric body always been stirred on meeting Mr. B.’ Light would then perceive light, that is, the outer world perceive the inner—because the astral body and ego of Miss A would perceive the tendency to continual movement of her own light-body, and would know how to interpret them so as to say: ‘These are the movements my light-body always experiences when I meet Mr. B.’ The phenomenon would then occur, that through dwelling in the ether—which is what we are always doing with a large part of our ego and astral body—through dwelling in the ether, through perceiving the weaving and flowing in the light-ether, we see our own little organised etheric body with its movements. We perceive light by the light, the light that is ourselves. Why can this not be done in ordinary life? Why is it that we first perceive the results of the impacts of the etheric body on the physical body?

It is because Ahriman and Lucifer are bound up with the earthly world, because Ahriman has shackled the physical body so firmly to the whole being of man, that the etheric body cannot easily free itself; because he has so densely compressed the physical body to the etheric body; and because the spirits that serve Ahriman are always present, they bring it to pass that when man is in the light, his light-body with its movements are darkened, so that he cannot behold them. Demons continually keep the light-body of man in darkness. This is because the organisation of the physical body and etheric body is brought about by Ahriman. We can therefore say [and I shall write this sentence on the blackboard, for it is of great importance]:

“When from out of and by light the human soul is capable of observing what takes place in its own light-body, it has liberated itself from the Ahrimanic forces which otherwise obscure what takes place therein.”

What might a soul wishing to attain this long and pray for? It might thus address certain powers that are in the spiritual world and which it recognizes.

‘Oh, ye Powers in the spiritual world, let me in my physical body be conscious in the world of Light, let me be in the Light so as to perceive my own light-body, and let not the power of the Ahrimanic forces be too strong for me, so as to prevent me from beholding what takes place in my light-body.’

Once more I will repeat what a soul by whom these Powers are to some extent recognised in the spiritual world, might say in longing, in a kind of prayer:

‘Oh, ye Powers, let me consciously, in the light, from out of and by the light behold the occurrences within my own light-body; weaken and take away the power of the Ahrimanic forces which obscure them. Let me consciously by the light perceive my own light, and remove the force that hinders me from seeing the light from out of and by the light.’

What I have just repeated to you is not simply an invented prayer, but it was thus that Christ taught those to pray who were able to understand Him after He had passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, during that time when He still lingered among His most intimate disciples.

This belonged to the understanding, to the Gnostic understanding that such disciples of Christ could still evoke at that time and which, as I have explained to you, disappeared about the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place.

Those souls which were so intimately associated with the Christ could raise their eyes to this power—who for them was the Christ—and pray Him that it might be possible for them by the light to perceive their own light-essence; pray Him to restrain the opposing Powers of Ahrimanic nature, that their vision might not be obscured and darkened, and that they might see the light-movements of their light-body. These things were learnt by the intimate disciples of Jesus Christ during the time I have indicated. They were well aware how all things I have mentioned were brought about, and were instructed in all these matters during the time that Christ held intercourse with them after the Mystery of Golgotha.

Among the fragments that remain of ancient Gnostic wisdom I have mentioned the Pistis-Sophia script. I shall now read you an extract from it as follows:

‘I will extol thee, O Light, for I desire to come to thee.’

‘I will extol Thee, for Thou art my Saviour.’

‘Leave me not in chaos (when I am withdrawn from the physical body). Leave me not in chaos, O Light of Heaven, for it is Thou whom I have glorified.’

‘Thou hast endowed me with thy Light and saved me; Thou hast led me to the upper Gods of Chaos (consciously, when out of the physical body). May the offspring of evil now be driven out (of Ahriman, but Ahriman is not written there), who follow me, and may they sink down among the lower Gods of Chaos; and let them not come near the upper Gods, that they may behold me. May great darkness cover them and black darkness come over them; and do not let them behold me in the Light of Thy Power, which Thou hast sent me to save me, so that they may not again have power over me. The determination that they have made, to take my strength, let it not take effect nor let them gainsay me to take from me my light. Take theirs rather than mine. They have desired to take away all my light, and have not been able to do so, for Thy Light-force was with me. Because they decreed, without Thy command, to take away my light, Thou has not allowed them to take it. Because I have believed in the Light I shall not fear. The Light is my Saviour, I shall not be afraid.’

When we fear, we must think of Ahriman as we saw him in one of the Mystery Plays.

Look at this fragment of the Pistis-Sophia. Does it not appear as if it had been saved on purpose to enable us to speak somewhat as follows: Behold, you opponents of the new Spiritual Science. Does not this new Spiritual Science say: that by the light, the light-movements of the light-body can be seen, when the opposing Ahrimanic demons do not prevent it. There was once a time when this was already known; and the Pistis-Sophia presents a physical evidence of that time. For what I have read to you really speaks of nothing else than that power that I have interpreted for you from the activities of the light-body, and the sojourning of the soul within this light-body. It is not possible to understand this fragment of the Pistis-Sophia unless you understand what I have just explained to you. Therefore those who come across this script of the Pistis-Sophia and attempt to read it have to admit to themselves that they do not understand it at all. They are not humble enough to be able to do so.

This is something, however, that we must possess—this humility, this great modesty as regards the things contained in it, so that we feel constrained to say to ourselves:

‘Here is a fragment of the Pistis-Sophia, which says, “I will extol Thee, O Light! for I desire to draw near unto Thee. I will extol Thee, O Light, for Thou art my Saviour.” Reading it thus I do not understand it’—but one must have such humility, such modesty, that one will not desire to understand it until one has called forth in one's self the possibility of understanding it. It is precisely in our age that such humility is hardly to be found.

The explorers who discover such writings among ruins and wreckage are frequently the least endowed with this modesty. They either explain what they find in the most trivial way saying, ‘The light spoken of here is a nebulous conception intended to be taken allegorically.’ Or else they say: ‘Those who wrote this long ago were at a childish stage of human evolution; we have made splendid progress since then! [You will remember what I said of this yesterday] We have indeed made such magnificent progress that it is easy for us to realise that these forefathers of ours with all their wisdom, were but at a childish stage.’ It is not so much a question in our day of not being able to understand, but above all that we cannot so easily come by a certain attitude of soul, which is necessary if spiritual knowledge is really to be attained.

This attitude of soul is that which existed in the Mysteries, and it consisted in a man's developing within him the feeling that it is not possible for a matter to be understood without first preparing the soul for it—without preparing ourself for the understanding of it. In our day a far more prevalent attitude of soul is that a clever man [and in his own opinion every grown man is very clever today] that the clever man can form an opinion regarding any matter. But the world is profound; and all that is connected with the hidden things of the world is also profound. Because of this belief in his own cleverness which every grown man has today, he simply ignores the most profound problems of the world; and when these mysteries are mentioned or written about they are treated with scorn, are flung aside into the obscurest corner and labeled—fanaticism and superstition, or even worse.

It is needful to see these facts clearly, for it is very important to recognize how at present those who do not desire to understand, spread scorn and derision on all that can only be reached by a soul that has first prepared itself with meekness and humility—with meekness and humility as regards knowledge. It is not only the knowledge of spiritual truths that is primarily wanting in our time, but rather that attitude of soul which shows true striving after knowledge.

The world now knows, however, that there are a few men—who will be more and more numerous—who recognise this very clearly, and note carefully and with interest, that therein lies the main driving force of true progress. One must first know what must happen and recognise clearly and without any illusion, that those who have already covered all true effort after knowledge with scorn and ridicule will attempt to interfere with everything that still has to enter into the spiritual development of mankind. It is now sought to fill mankind from childhood with materialistic ideas. This materialistic training lords it even over the tender souls of your children; materialistic schools are forced upon them, which, less through the content of their teaching than through their whole nature, imbue the children's souls with materialism.

In accordance with the illusion of the times, people veil this domination by saying: This is demanded by the age of liberty and freedom! What people call freedom in the age of materialism is the very opposite of all freedom; but things are so arranged that people hardly notice it. Those who have some insight into how things are do no more than combat this bondage by that which must be forbidden, others again cast sheep's eyes at those in power and seize in their grasp everything that ought to be as free as the flowers that grow in the fields.

It is necessary that we should possess that really fine attitude of mind that can only come from Spiritual Science. Then before all else, it is clear to us that what should be inculcated during the tender years of childhood into the human soul is not to be found on the path followed by the methods of thought of the outer materialism of today. We must not allow ourselves to be deceived by words, this we must understand. Further, it is necessary that we should free ourselves from the whole ‘aura’ of prejudice met with everywhere; that we should feel truly within us that attention of mind which springs from Spiritual Science and frequently ask ourselves what is within our souls from the whole essence of Spiritual Science and what is to be found there merely because we have received those forces of thought prevalent in the world today?

Perhaps as yet we can do nothing in our age to stem the course of the unfree materialistic tone of the day. But at least we must learn to feel it a bondage. Here it is that a beginning must be made. We must not be taken by illusion. For, if the world proceeds in its evolution according to the wishes of this materialistic impulse we shall gradually enter an evolution in which not only will anyone be forbidden to do anything for the health of humanity unless he is certificated, but no one will be allowed to say a word regarding science of any kind, except one who has taken a vow to speak only of such things as are patented with the stamp of the materialistic order of thought. At present the constraint of the things forbidden is not much felt. But a time is coming when, just as every effort for the healing of mankind that is not stamped and certificated will be forbidden, so every word will be forbidden that is said otherwise than in the form patented and guaranteed by the materialistic powers.

If people do not perceive the whole course of what is coming about, they will enter full-sail into this future ‘freedom.’ This will consist in promulgated laws forbidding people to teach differently from what is taught in a recognized school. Everything will be forbidden that recalls in the most distant way what, for instance, is taking place amongst us here. Because people do not see how the course of evolution is tending, they do not realize this.

It is true very little can be done in our day; but in our thoughts we must make a beginning by realising the trend of events—wherever we can, we must make a beginning. No matter how such remarks as these are received, I had to give expression to them at this turning point of the year; for the Festival of the New Year is a kind of sign marking the progress of time generally; and at this season we can best be made aware of what is contained in time as it runs its course. It cannot be sufficiently, or too frequently impressed on you, how dependent man is today on the opinions that whirl around him—what whirl about more especially when they are made permanent with foul printers' ink in the newspapers, and this printers' ink possesses infinitely active magical powers as regards all that is believed by people throughout the world. It is interesting to note what takes place when these gentlemen are not quite united among themselves. For then there occurs what overwhelms all thinking souls, things called into being by this black printers' ink which work dreadful magic in the masses of mankind today. Naturally there are always some who believe what one paper says, and others, again, who hold as irrefutable what is scribbled in another paper. They are divided among themselves. It is thus easy to see where the real fault and blame should lie. I will not say much on the subject, myself. You can read in Dr. Ed. Engel's book on the “Psychology of Newspaper Readers”: what he has to say on this matter. He says,

‘The reader of newspapers is a much muddled person. His countless valuable qualities disappear behind two: He believes everything and he forgets everything. On these two principal qualities, possessed by all newspaper readers, is founded the secret of the daily press as it exists today. Most people read but one paper, and believe what they see there. Their ideas regarding the world in the evening are the creation of what they read in the morning. When they meet other people who have read other papers and who put forward their opinions, they consider them either mad or paradoxical. Newspaper editors thoroughly understand the soul of their readers, they nurse the beliefs of their readers with tender care. A newspaper never brings to the mass of its readers a proof of what it has to communicate; even in the not uncommon case of a false presentation of facts having led to the publication of something completely foolish, they defend themselves, sheltering themselves behind the infallibility of their paper. They are, of course, obliged to publish the truth a few days later. The second quality of their readers, that of forgetfulness, then comes in usefully!’

When we come to think what a power newspapers have in the 19th century and the large share the belief in them has had in the decline of our culture, it is quite time the whole wretched business was put clearly before you. What often depresses one is, that the method of communication that we have chosen, and which should be a very different one, has to be preserved by printing. This indeed cannot be otherwise, for the Black Art is present there, and the White Art must of course reckon with this Black Art which finds expression in printed matter. We must have books, and lectures, but we ought to be awake to the fact that care must be taken that things which are now entrusted to print should not be cast abroad in the world in the same way as that which whirls through the minds of mankind on the wings of the newspapers of today.

I wish to make you realise that this is a serious matter. That is why I have permitted myself to join these observations to what I said today and yesterday in connection with great mysteries of existence, such as that of the human Earth-year, and the possibility of beholding the Light by man by the Light.

Now that we can be together again, it will be my task in the coming days to speak about important but rather difficult aspects of human and world existence, and we shall certainly not be able to reach any conclusion about these in this lecture; we can only make a beginning. As we proceed we will see how tremendously important these very questions are if we are to connect ourselves inwardly with the soul-stirring events of our times. If I had to summarize in a few words what I am going to speak about, I would say “necessity in world events and in human actions” and “human freedom in these two domains.”

There is hardly anyone who is not more or less intensely concerned with these problems, and perhaps there are hardly any events on the physical plane that urge us as strongly to deal with these questions as the ones that are at present overshadowing the peoples of Europe and reverberating in their souls. If we look at world events and our own actions, feeling, willing, and thinking within these events, considering them for the moment in conjunction with what we call divine cosmic guidance, wisdom-filled cosmic guidance, we see that this divine guidance is at work everywhere. And if we look at something that has happened and that perhaps we ourselves have been involved in, we can ask afterwards “Was the reason for this event we were involved in so much a part of wise cosmic guidance that we can say it was inevitable for it to happen as it did, and we ourselves could not have acted differently in it?” Or, looking more toward the future, we could also say “At some time in the future one or another thing will happen in which we believe we may be playing a part. Ought we not assume of the wise world guidance we presupposed that what happens in the future will also come about inevitably or, as we often say, is predetermined?” Can our freedom exist under such conditions? Can we resolve to use the ideas and skills we have acquired to intervene in some way? Can we do anything to alter things through the way we intervene if we do not want them to happen in the way they would be bound to happen without our intervention?

If we look back on the past, we tend to have the impression that everything was inevitable and could not have happened differently. If we look more toward the future, we have the impression that it must be possible for us to intervene in the course of events with our own will as much as we can. In short, we will always be in a conflict between supposing an absolute and all-pervading necessity on the one hand and necessarily assuming that we are free on the other. For without this latter assumption we cannot maintain our world view and would have to accept the fact that we are like cogs in the huge machine of existence, governed by the forces ruling the machine to the point where even the duties of the cogs are predetermined.

As you know, the conflict between choosing one thing or the other runs to some extent through all our intellectual endeavors. There have always been philosophers called determinists who supposed that all the events we are involved in through our actions and our willing are strictly predetermined, and there have also always been indeterminists who supposed that, on the contrary, human beings can intervene in the course of evolution through their will and their ideas. You know too that the most extreme form of determinism is fatalism, which clings so firmly to the belief that the world is pervaded by spiritual necessity as to presuppose that not one single thing could possibly happen differently from the way it was predetermined, that human beings cannot do other than submit passively to a fate that fills the whole world just because everything is predetermined.

Perhaps some of you also know that Kant set up an antinomian chart on one side of which he wrote a particular statement and always set its opposite on the other side.¹ For example, on one side stood the assertion “In terms of space the world is infinite,” and on the other side “In terms of space the world is finite.” He then went on to show that with the concepts at our disposal we can prove one of these just as well as the other. We can prove with the same logical exactitude that “the world is infinite with regard to both space and time” or that “the world is finite, boarded-up, in terms of space and that it had a beginning in time.”

The questions we have introduced also belong among the ones Kant put on his antinomian chart. He drew people's attention to the fact that one can just as well prove positively, in as proper and logical a way as possible, that everything that happens in the world, including human action, is subject to rigid necessity, as one can prove that human beings are free and influence in one way or another the course of events when they bring their will to bear on it. Kant considered these questions to be outside the realm of human knowledge, to be questions that lie beyond the limits of human knowledge, because we can prove the one just as easily and conclusively as the other.

Our studies of the last few years will actually have more or less given you the groundwork to get to the bottom of this strange mystery. For it certainly is a mysterious question whether human beings are bound by necessity or are free. It is a puzzling matter. Yet it is even more puzzling that both these alternatives can be conclusively proved. You will find no basis at all for overcoming doubt in this sphere if you look outside of what we call spiritual science. Only the background spiritual science can give will enable you to discover something about what is at the bottom of this mysterious question.

This time we will deal with our subject in very slow stages. I would just like to ask in anticipation, “How is such a thing possible that human beings can prove something and also prove its opposite?” When we approach a matter of this kind, we are certainly made aware of certain limits in normal human comprehension, in ordinary human logic. We meet with this limitation of human logic in regard to other things too. It always appears when human beings want to approach infinity with their concepts.

I can show you this by means of a very simple example. As soon as human beings want to approach infinity with their intellects, something occurs that can be called confusion in their concepts. I will demonstrate this in a very simple way. You must just be a little patient and follow a train of thought to which you are probably not accustomed. Suppose I write these figures on the blackboard one after the other, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and so on. I could write an infinite number of them: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc., couldn't I? I can also write a second column of figures; on the right of each number I can put double the number, like this:

Again I can write an infinite number of them. Now you will agree with me that each number in the right-hand column is in the left-hand column too. I can underline 2, 4, 6, 8, and so on. Look at the left column for a moment; an infinite series of numbers is possible. This infinite series contains all the numbers included in the right column. 2, 4, 6, and so on are all there. I can continue underlining them. If you look at the figures that are underlined, you will see that they are exactly half of all the numbers together because every other one is underlined. But when I write them on the right-hand side, I can write 2, 4, 6, 8, and so on into infinity. I have an infinite number both on the left and on the right, and you cannot say that there are fewer on the right than on the left. There is no doubt that I am bound to have just as many numbers on the right as on the left.

And yet, as every other number would have to be crossed out on the left to make the left column the same as the right, the infinite number on the left is only half the infinite number on the right. Obviously I have just as many numbers on the right as on the left, namely an infinite number, for each number on the right has one corresponding to it on the left—yet the amount of numbers on the right cannot but be half that of the numbers on the left.

There is no question about it, as soon as we deal with infinity, our thinking becomes confused. The problem arising here also cannot be solved, for it is just as true that on the right there are half as many numbers as on the left as it is true that there are exactly as many numbers on the right as on the left. Here you have the problem in its simplest form.

This brings us to the realization that our concepts cannot actually be used where infinity is concerned, where we go beyond the sense world—and infinity does go beyond the sense world. And do not imagine this to apply only to unlimited infinity, for you cannot use your concepts where limited infinity is concerned either, as the same confusion arises there.

Suppose you draw a triangle, a square, a pentagon, a hexagon and so on. When you reach a construction with a hundred sides, you will have come very close to a circle. You will no longer be able to distinguish the small lines very clearly, especially if you look at them from a distance. Therefore you can say that a circle is a polygon with an infinite number of sides. If you have a small circle there are an infinite number of sides in it; if you have a circle twice the size, you still have an infinite number of sides—and yet exactly twice as many!

So you do not need to go as far as unlimited infinity, for if you take a small circle with an infinite number of sides and a circle twice the size with an infinite number of sides, then even in the realm of visible, limited infinity you can encounter something that throws your concepts into utter confusion. What I have just said is extremely important. For people completely fail to notice that there is only a certain field where our concepts apply, namely the field of the physical plane, and that there is a particular reason why this has to be so.

You know, at a place where people are attacking us rather severely—which is now happening in many places from a great many people—a pastor gave a speech opposing our spiritual science, and thinking it might be especially effective, he concluded with a quotation from Matthias Claudius.² This quotation says roughly that human beings are really poor sinners who cannot know much and ought to rest content with what they do know and not chase after what they cannot know. The pastor picked this verse out of a poem by Matthias Claudius because he thought he could charge us with wanting to transcend the sense world—after all, had not Matthias Claudius already said that human beings are nothing but sinners who are unable to get beyond this world of the senses?

“By chance,” as people say, a friend of ours looked up this poem by Matthias Claudius and also read the verse preceding it. This preceding verse says that a person can go out into the open and, although the moon is always a round orb, if it does not happen to be full moon, he sees only part of the moon even though the other part is there. In the same way there are many things in the world people could become aware of if only they looked at them at the right moment. Thus Matthias Claudius wanted to draw attention to the fact that people should not confine themselves to immediate sense appearance and that anyone who allows himself to be deceived by this is a poor sinner. In fact, what the good pastor quoted from Matthias Claudius reflected on himself.

The sense world—if we happen not to be just like that pastor—at times makes us aware that wherever we look we should also look in the opposite direction and adjust our first view accordingly. However, the world of the senses cannot supply this immediate adjustment with regard to what transcends the sense world. We cannot just quote the other verse. That is why human beings philosophize away and, of course, are convinced of the truth of their speculations, for they can be logically proved. But their opposite can also be logically proved. So let us tackle the question today, “Why is it that when we transcend the sense world our thinking gets so confused?” And we will now look at the question in a way which will bring us closer to an answer. How does it happen that two contradictory statements can both be proved right? We will find this has to do with the fact that human life is in a kind of central position, a point of balance between two polar opposite forces, the ahrimanic and the luciferic.

You can of course cogitate on freedom and necessity and imagine you have compelling evidence that the world contains only necessity. But the compelling force of this argument comes from Ahriman. When we prove things in one direction, it is Ahriman who leads us astray, and if we prove their opposite, we are misled by Lucifer. For we are always exposed to these two powers, and if we do not take into account that we are placed in between them, we shall never get to the bottom of the conflicts in human nature, such as the one we have been considering.

It was actually in the course of the nineteenth century that people lost the feeling that throughout the world order there are, besides a state of equilibrium, pendulum swings to the right and the left, a swing toward Ahriman and a swing toward Lucifer. This feeling has been totally lost. After all, if you speak nowadays of Ahriman and Lucifer, you are considered not quite sane, aren't you? It was not as bad as this until the middle of the nineteenth century, for a very clever philosopher, Thrandorff, wrote a very nice article here in Berlin in the middle of the nineteenth century in an attempt to refute the argument of a certain clergyman.³ This clergyman let it be known—and it should be alright to say this in our circles—that there is no devil and that it is really a dreadful superstition to speak of one. We speak of Ahriman rather than of the devil. The philosopher Thrandorff spoke out against the clergyman in a very interesting article, “The Devil: No Dogmatic Bogy.” As late as the middle of the 1850s he tried as it were to prove the existence of Ahriman on a strictly philosophical basis.

In the course of the public lectures I am to give here in the near future I hope I can speak about this extinct part of human spiritual life, about an aspect of theosophy that completely disappeared in the middle of the nineteenth century. Right up to that time people had still spoken about these things, even if they called them by other names. The feeling for these things has now been lost, but basically it was there in a delicate form right into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, until it had to recede into the background for a while in the natural course of things. We know of course, as I have often emphasized, that spiritual science does not in the slightest way deny the great value and significance of progress in the natural sciences. But this progress in science would not have been possible unless the feeling for this opposition between Ahriman and Lucifer, which can be discovered only on a spiritual level, had been lost. It now has to emerge again above the threshold of human consciousness.

I would like to give you an example of how things stood in regard to Ahriman and Lucifer in the days when people had only a feeling left that there are two different powers at work. Here is an example to illustrate this.

In the old town hall in Prague there is a remarkable clock that was made in the fifteenth century. This clock is really a marvel. At first sight it looks like a sort of sundial, but it is so intricately constructed that it shows the course of the hours in a twofold way: the old Bohemian and the modern way. In the old Bohemian way the hours went from 1 or rather from 0 to 24, and the other way only to 12. At sunset the pointer or gnomon—and there was a shadow there—always pointed to 1. The clock was so arranged that the pointer literally always indicated 1 at sunset. That is to say, despite the varying times of sunset the hand always showed 1.

In addition to this, the clock also showed when sun or moon eclipses occurred. It also showed the course of the various planets through the constellations, giving the planetary orbits. It really was a wonderful construction and even showed the movable festivals, that is to say, it indicated on what day Easter fell in a particular year. It was also a calendar, giving the course of the year from January to December, including the fact that Easter is movable. A special pointer showed on what day Easter fell, despite it being movable, and it also showed Whitsun.

This clock, then, was constructed in the fifteenth century in an extraordinarily impressive way. And the story of how it was constructed has been investigated. But apart from this story—and the documents are there for you to read, with lots of descriptions—there is a legend that also aims at giving an account of the marvelous quality of this clock: first regarding its wonderful construction, and then regarding the fact that the man who was gifted enough to make such a clock always wound it up as long as he lived. After his death nobody could wind it, and they searched everywhere for people who could put it in order and get it going. As a rule they only found people who damaged it. Then someone would be found who said he could sort it out and did so, yet time and again the clock went wrong.

These facts grew into a kind of folk tale, which runs as follows: Once upon a time through a special gift from heaven a simple man acquired the ability to make this clock. He alone knew how to look after it. The legend attaches great significance to the fact that he was only a simple man who acquired this ability through special grace; that is to say, he was inspired by the spiritual world. But it came about that the governor wanted to keep this clock specially for Prague and prevent any other town from having one like it. So he had the inspired clockmaker blinded by having his eyes plucked out. Thus the man withdrew from the scene. But just before his death he begged once more to be permitted a moment in which to set the clock to rights again, and according to the legend he used this moment to make a quick manipulation and put the clock into such disorder that nobody could ever put it right again.

At first sight this seems a very unpretentious story. But in the way the story is constructed there is a sure feeling for the existence of Ahriman and Lucifer and the balance between them. Think how sensitively this story has been formed. The same sensitive construction can be found in countless such folk tales; it grows out of this same sure feeling for Lucifer and Ahriman. The story begins with the position of equilibrium, doesn't it? Through an act of grace from the spiritual world the man acquires the ability to construct an extraordinary clock. There is no trace of egotism in it, though anybody can give way to egotism. It was a gift of grace, and he really did not build the clock out of egotism. Nor was there any intellectuality in it, for it is expressly stated that he was a simple man. This whole description of the skill being an act of grace with no trace of egotism, and of his being a simple man who was free of intellectuality, was in fact given in order to indicate that there was no trace of Ahriman and Lucifer in this man's soul, but that he was entirely under the influence of divine powers that were good and progressive.

Lucifer lived in the governor. It was out of egotism that he wanted to keep the clock exclusively for his own town, and this was why he blinded the clockmaker. Lucifer is placed on the one side. But as soon as Lucifer is there, he always allies himself with his brother Ahriman. And because the man has been blinded, this other power acquires the capacity to attack from outside through skillful manipulation. That is the work of Ahriman.

Thus the power for good is placed between Lucifer and Ahriman. You can find a sensitive construction like this in many of the folk tales, even the simplest of them. But it was possible for this feeling of the intervention of Ahriman and Lucifer in life to get lost at a time when a sense had to gain ground that positive and negative electricity, positive and negative magnetism, and so on, are the basic forces of the material world. This feeling for perceiving the world spiritually had to withdraw in order for scientific investigation to flourish.

We shall now look at how Ahriman and Lucifer intervene in what human beings call knowledge, in what people call their relation to the world in general, in a way that leads to the very confusion we were speaking about. This confusion is especially evident in the questions we have introduced. Let us take a simple hypothetical example. I could just as well have taken this from great world events as from everyday occurrences. Let us suppose that three or four people are preparing to go out for a drive. They plan to travel, let us say, through a mountain pass. This pass has overhanging rocks. The people are ready for the drive and intend setting out at an arranged time. But the chauffeur has just ordered another mug of beer which is served a bit too late. He therefore delays the departure by five minutes. Then he sets out with the party. They drive through the ravine. Just as they come to the overhanging rock it breaks loose, falls on top of the vehicle, and crushes the whole party. They all perish, or perhaps it was only the passengers who were killed and the chauffeur was spared.

Here we have a case in point. You could ask whether it was the chauffeur's fault, or whether the whole thing was governed by absolute necessity. Was it absolutely inevitable that these people should meet with this disaster at that precise moment? And was the chauffeur's tardiness just part of this necessity? Or could we imagine that if only the chauffeur had been punctual, he would have driven them through the mountain pass a long time before the rock fell, and they would never have been hit by it?

Here in the midst of everyday life you have this question of freedom and necessity which is intimately connected with “guilty” or “innocent.” Obviously, if everything is subject to absolute necessity, we cannot say that the chauffeur was guilty at all from a higher point of view, as it was entirely inevitable that these people met their death.

We meet this problem in life all the time. It is, as we have said, one of the most difficult of questions, the kind of question in which Ahriman and Lucifer interfere most easily when we try to find a solution. Ahriman is the one who appears first when this question is being tackled, as we shall see.

We will have to approach this question from a different angle if we want to get at an answer. You see, if we set about solving a question like this by starting with the thought “I can easily follow the course of events: the boulder fell—that happened,” and then ask “Is this actually based on necessity or freedom? Could things have happened differently?” we are only looking at the external events. We are looking at the events as they happen on the physical plane. Now people follow this approach out of the same impulse that leads them, if they have a materialistic outlook, to stop short at the physical body when contemplating the human being. Anyone who knows nothing about spiritual science will stop short at the physical body nowadays, won't he? He will say “The human being you see and feel is what exists.” He does not go beyond the physical body to the etheric body. And if he is a thoroughly pig-headed materialist, he will jeer and scoff when he hears people saying there is a finer, etheric body underlying the dense physical body. Yet you know how well-founded the view is that among the members of the human being the etheric body is the one most closely associated with the physical body, and in the course of time we have become accustomed to knowing that we must not just speak of the human physical body but also of the human etheric body, and so on.

Some of you, however, may not yet have asked yourselves “What kind of world is that other world outside the human being, the world in which the ordinary world events occur?” We have of course spoken of a number of things in this connection. We have said that to begin with when we perceive the external events of the physical plane with our senses, we have no idea that wherever we look there are elemental beings; it is exactly the same when we first look at the human being.

Human beings have an etheric body, which we have often also called an elemental body. Outside in nature, in external physical happenings in general, we have a succession of physical events and also the world of elemental existence. This runs absolutely parallel: the human being with a physical and an etheric body, and physical processes with events of the elemental world flowing into them. It would be just as one-sided to say that external processes are merely physical as to say that a human being has a physical body only, when we ought to be saying that he also has an etheric body. What we perceive with our physical senses and physical intellect is one thing. But there is something behind it that is analogous to the human etheric body. Behind every external physical occurrence there is a higher, more subtle one.

There are people who have a certain awareness of such things. This awareness can come to them in two different ways. You may have noticed something like the following either in yourself or in other people. A person has had some experience. But afterwards he comes to you and says—or it may be something you experienced and you may say, “Actually I had the feeling that while this experience was taking place externally, something quite different was happening to me as well, in a higher part of my being.” This is to say, deeper natures may feel that events not taking place on the physical plane at all can yet have an important effect on the course of their life. First, such people know something has happened to them. Others go even further and see things of this kind symbolically in a dream. Someone dreams he experiences this or that. He dreams, for instance, that he is killed by a boulder. He wakes up and is able to say, “That was a symbolic dream; something has taken place in my soul life.” It can often be proved true in life that something took place in the soul that was of far greater significance than what happened to the person on the physical plane. He may have progressed a stage higher in knowledge, purified part of his will nature, or made his feelings more sensitive or something of that kind.

In lectures given here recently I drew attention to the fact that what a person knows with his I is actually only a part of all that happens to him, and that the astral body knows a very great deal more, though not consciously. You will remember my telling you this. The astral body certainly knows of a great deal that happens to us in the supersensible realm and not in the realm of the senses. Now we have arrived from another direction at the fact that something is continually happening to us in the supersensible realm. Just as in the case of my moving my hand, the physical movement is only part of the whole process and behind it there is an etheric process, a process of my etheric body, so every physical process outside me is permeated by a subtle elementary process that runs parallel with it and takes place in the supersensible realm. Not only beings are permeated by a supersensible element, but so is the whole of existence.

Remember something I have repeatedly referred to and which even seems somewhat paradoxical. I have pointed out that in the spiritual realm we often have the opposite of what exists on the physical plane, not always, but often. Thus if something is true here for the physical plane, the truth with regard to the spiritual aspect can look quite different. Not always, as I say. But I have counted many cases over the years where one would have to say that on the spiritual level there is exactly the opposite result from what one would expect to happen on the physical plane.

With regard to supersensible occurrences running parallel with those of the sense world, this is occasionally, in fact very often, the case. So let us examine it. If we see a party of people setting off by coach and taking a drive, and a piece of rock falls and crushes them, that is the physical occurrence. Parallel with this physical event, that is to say, within it in the same way as our etheric body is within us, there is a supersensible occurrence. And we have to recognize that this may be the exact opposite of what is happening here on the physical plane. In fact it is very frequently the exact opposite.

This can also create great confusion if we do not watch out. For instance, the following may happen. If someone has acquired atavistic clairvoyance and has a kind of second sight, he or she may have the following experience: Supposing a party of people is setting out on a journey, but at the last moment one of the party decides to stay behind, the person who has second sight, let us say. Instead of going with the others, that person stays behind and after a while has a vision. In this vision any event can appear to that person. He or she could of course just as well see the party being hit by boulders as see, for instance—and this can be a matter of disposition—that some especially good fortune happens to them. He or she could very well see the party having a very joyful experience, and might subsequently hear that the party had perished in the way I described.

This could happen if the clairvoyant were not to see what was happening on the physical plane—which he might very well have seen—but had seen what was happening as a parallel event on the astral plane: for the moment these people left the physical plane they may well have been called to something special in the spiritual world, something that filled them with an abundance of new life in the spiritual world. In short, the clairvoyant person may have seen an event of the supersensible worlds going on in exactly the opposite direction, and this absolutely contradictory event could be true. It might really be the case that here on the physical plane a misfortune exists that corresponds in the supersensible world to some great good fortune for those same souls.

Now someone who thinks he is smarter than the wise guidance of the world (and there are such people) might say, “If I ruled the world, I would not do it in such a way that I call souls to happiness in the spiritual world and at the same time shower them with misfortune here on the physical plane. I would do it better than that!” Well, all one can say to people like that is, “Surely one can understand that here on the physical plane people can easily be misled by Ahriman. But cosmic wisdom always knows better.” It could be a matter of the following: The task awaiting the souls in the spiritual world requires their having this experience here on the physical plane, so that they can look back, so to speak, to this physical event of their earthly lives and gain a certain strength they need. That is to say, for the souls who experience them these two occurrences, the physical and the spiritual one, may necessarily belong together.

We could quote hypothetical examples of all kinds, showing that when something takes place here on the physical plane there exists, as it were, an etheric body of this event, an elemental, supersensible event belonging to it. We must not merely generalize like pantheists do and stop short at the general statement that there is a spiritual world underlying the physical, but we must give concrete examples. We must be aware that behind every physical occurrence there is a spiritual occurrence, a real spiritual occurrence, and both together form a whole.

If we follow the course of events on the physical plane, we can say that we get to the point where we link together the events of the physical plane by means of thoughts. And as we watch things happen on the physical plane we actually reach the point of finding a “cause” for each “effect.” That is how things are. People everywhere look for the cause belonging to each effect. Whenever anything has happened, people always have to find the cause of it. But this means finding the inevitability. If you look with sufficient pedantry at the simple example I chose, you could say, “Well now, this party had gathered and had fixed their departure for a definite time. But if I follow up why the chauffeur was tardy, I will go in several directions. First of all, I may look at the chauffeur himself and consider how he was brought up and how he became tardy. Then I will look at the various circumstances leading to his getting his mug of beer too late. All I will be able to find in this way is merely a chain of causes. I will be able to show how one event fits in with the others in such a way that the affair could not possibly have happened otherwise. I will gradually come to the point where I completely eliminate the chauffeur's free will, for if we have a cause for every effect, this includes everything the chauffeur does as well.” The chauffeur only wanted another mug of beer, didn't he, because he had probably not been thrashed sufficiently when he was young. If he had been thrashed more often—and it is not his fault that he was not—things would not have turned out as they did. Looking at it this way we can base the whole thing on a chain of cause and effect.

This has to do with the fact that it is only on the physical plane that we can use concepts. For just consider: if you want to understand something, one thought must be able to follow from another, that is to say, you depend on being able to develop one thought out of another. It lies in the nature of concepts that one follows from the other. That must be so.

Yet, what can be clearly and necessarily linked together through concepts on the physical plane immediately changes as soon as we enter the neighboring supersensible world. There we have to do not with cause and effect but with beings. This is where beings are active. At every moment one or another being is working on or withdrawing from a task. There it is not at all a matter of what can be grasped by concepts in the usual sense.

If you tried using concepts for what is happening in the spiritual world, the following could happen. You might think, “Well, here I am. Certainly I am far enough advanced to perceive that something spiritual is happening. At one moment a gnome approaches, then a sylph, and soon afterwards another being. Now all the beings are together. I will do my best to fathom what the effects will have to be.” On the physical plane this is sometimes easy to do, of course. If we hit a billiard ball in a certain direction, we know which way the other one will go, because we can calculate it. Yet on the spiritual plane it may happen that when you have seen a being and now know “Ah, that is a gnome, he is setting out to do something and will do such and such; he is joining forces with another being, thus the following is bound to happen,” you think you have figured it all out. But the next moment another being appears and changes the whole thing, or a being you were counting on drops out and disappears and no longer participates. There, everything is based on beings. You cannot link everything together with your concepts in the same way as you can on the physical plane. That is quite impossible. There, you cannot explain one thing following from the other on the basis of concepts. Things work together in an entirely different manner in the spiritual world, in the series or stream of spiritual happenings running parallel with physical happenings.

We must become familiar with the fact that underlying our world there is a world we must not only assume to be spiritual in comparison to ours, but we must also assume its events to be connected with each other in a totally different way than those in our world. For we can do nothing at all in the spiritual world, in the actual reality of this spiritual world, with the way we are used to explaining things in the world of our concepts.

Thus we see that two worlds interpenetrate; one of them can be grasped with concepts and the other cannot, but can only be perceived. I am pointing to something that goes very deep, but people are not aware how deep it goes. Just consider for a moment that if someone were to believe he could prove everything, and that only what has been proved is true, the following could happen. That person could say, “As a matter of fact, everything has to be proved, and what has not been proved is unacceptable. Therefore everything that happens in the course of the history of the world must be capable of being proved. So I only need to think hard and I am bound to be able to prove, for instance, whether the Mystery of Golgotha took place or not.” Indeed, people are so very inclined nowadays to say that if the Mystery of Golgotha cannot be proved, the whole thing is nonsense and there never was such an event.

And what do people think of proofs? They think that one starts with one definite concept and proceeds from this to the next one, and if it is possible to do this right through, the matter is proved. But no world other than the physical functions according to this kind of proof. This reasoning does not apply to any other world. For if we were able to prove that the Mystery of Golgotha had to take place of necessity, and this could be concluded from our concepts, it would not have been a free deed at all! Christ would then have been compelled to come down to the earth from the cosmos simply because human concepts prove and therefore dictate it. However, the Mystery of Golgotha has to be a free deed, that is to say, it has to be just the kind of deed that cannot be proved. It is important that people come to realize this.

It is the same thing, after all, when people want to prove either that God created the world or that he did not. There, too, they proceed from one thought to another. But “creating the world,” at any rate will have been a free deed of a divine being! From this it follows that we cannot prove the Creation as following of necessity from our series of concepts; rather, we have to perceive it to arrive at it.

So we are saying something of tremendous importance when we state that the very next world to ours—which, as a supersensible world, permeates ours—is not organized in a way we can penetrate by means of our concepts and their conclusiveness, but that there a kind of vision comes into its own in which events are arranged in a totally different way.

Today I would just like to add a few words about the following. When I was here at Christmas, I drew your attention to the fact that in our time especially, such contradictory things are emerging, that they are quite confusing for human thinking. Just imagine, a book has just been published by the great scientist Ernst Haeckel called Thoughts about Eternity,⁴ I have already mentioned it earlier. These Thoughts about Eternity contain exactly the opposite of what many other people have concluded as a result of living through recent world events. Just think, there are many people today (we shall come to speak of this fact in its particular connection with our present studies, but today I just wanted to give an introduction) who have experienced a deepening of their religious feelings just because world events are having such a terribly overwhelming effect on their souls; for they say, “Unless there is a supersensible world underlying our physical world, how can we explain what is happening in our time?” Many people have rediscovered their feeling for religion. I do not need to describe their train of thought; it is obvious and can be discerned in so many people.

Haeckel arrives at a different train of thought. He explains in his recently published book that people believe in immortality of the soul. However, he says, current events prove clearly enough that any such belief is ridiculous, for we witness thousands of people perishing every day for no reason at all. With these events in mind, how can any sensible person imagine that there can be any talk about the immortality of the soul? How is it possible for a higher world order to stand behind things of this sort?

These shocking events seem to Haeckel to prove his dogma that one cannot speak of immortality of the soul. Here we have antinomy again: A large proportion of humanity is experiencing a deepening of religious feeling, while the very same events are making Haeckel tremendously superficial where religion is concerned.

All this is connected with the fact that nowadays people are unable to understand the relationship between the world accessible to their senses and their brain-bound intellect and the supersensible world underlying it. No sooner do they approach these things than their thinking gets confused. Yet despite all the disillusionment it brings, our time will certainly in one way also bring about a deepening of people's souls, a turning away from materialism. It will be necessary that knowledge of the way supersensible events complement happenings in the world of the senses arise from a pure activity of the soul devoting itself to an impartial exploration of the world. It is necessary that there should be at least a small number of people who are able to realize that all the pain and suffering being experienced at present on the physical plane are, from the point of view of the whole of human evolution, only one side and that there is also another side, a supersensible side.

We have drawn your attention to this supersensible aspect from various points of view, and we will speak of still further ones. But when peace returns to Europe's blood-stained soil, we will again and again experience the need for a group of people capable of hearing and sensing spiritually what the spiritual worlds will then be saying to humanity in times of peace. And we must never tire of impressing the following lines upon our hearts and souls, for it will be proved over and over again how deeply true they are:

Out of the courage of the fighters,
Out of the blood of battles,
Out of the grief of the bereaved,
Out of the peoples' deeds of sacrifice
There shall arise spirit fruit
If only souls, in spirit-mindfulness,
Will reach out to the spirits' realm.

• 1. Immanuel Kant, 1724-1804, German philosopher of the Enlightenment. For his antinomian chart see his book Critique of Pure Reason published in 1781.
• 2. Matthias Claudius, 1740-1815, German poet.
• 3. K. F. E. Thrandorff, 1782-1863. Wrote an open letter entitled “The Devil—No Dogmatic Bogy” to a preacher in Berlin in 1853.
• 4. Ernst Haeckel, 1834-1919, German scientist and philosopher. Adherent of Monism.

The day before yesterday I endeavored to show you the universal mystery of necessity and freedom in its two equally significant aspects: world processes and human action. I began by drawing your attention to the full significance and difficulty of this mystery that is both cosmic and human, and today we will continue along the same lines. I used a hypothetical example demonstrating this difficulty in regard to world events. I said, “Suppose a party of people had set out to drive through a ravine where there is an overhanging rock, and had arranged to go at a definite time. The chauffeur, however, is negligent and delays the departure by five minutes. Because of this, the party arrives at the spot beneath the rock at the very moment when the rock falls down.” According to external judgment, and I say “external” deliberately, one would have to say that all those people were buried beneath the rock because of the chauffeur's negligence, that is, because of a circumstance that was apparently someone's fault.

Last time I wanted mainly to emphasize that we should not approach a problem of this sort too hastily with our ordinary thinking and believe we can solve it that way. I showed that in the first place we use our thinking only for the physical plane, therefore it has become accustomed to dealing with those requirements only, and gets confused if we go a bit beyond these.

I would like today to go on to show the serious nature of the whole problem. For we shall not be able to approach any kind of solution in the lecture intended for Sunday, unless we also examine all the implications for human knowledge itself, unless we fully examine why we get lost in blind alleys of thinking precisely in life's most difficult problems, why we are, so to speak, lost in the woods and imagining we are making progress when we are really just going round in circles. We do not notice we are going round in circles until we realize we are back at our starting point again. The strange thing is that where our thinking is concerned, we do not notice that we return again and again to the same point. We will have more to say about this.

I have indicated that this important problem has to do with what we call the ahrimanic and luciferic forces in world events and in what approaches the human being in his actions and his whole thinking, feeling, and willing. I mentioned that as late as the fifteenth century people had a feeling that just as positive and negative electricity play a part in natural processes, and no physicist would hesitate to speak about them, so Ahriman and Lucifer could also be seen in events of the world, even if people did not use these names. I showed this by the apparently remote example of the clock in the old town hall of Prague that is so ingeniously constructed that in addition to being a clock it is also a sort of calendar showing the course of the planets and eclipses of the sun and moon. In fact, it is a great work of art created by a very talented man. I told you that there are documents showing that it was a professor of a Prague university who made this work of art, though this point is of no further interest to us, for those are only the processes that took place on the physical plane.

I explained that a simple folk tale grew out of the feeling that in an affair of this sort ahrimanic and luciferic forces play their part. The story tells us that this clock in the Prague town hall was made beautifully by a simple man who received the power to create it entirely through a kind of divine inspiration. The story then goes on to say that the governor wanted to keep this clock all for himself and would not allow anything like it to be made in any other town. So he had the clockmaker blinded and forced him to retire. Not until he felt death approaching was the clockmaker allowed to touch the clock again. And then, with skillful manipulation, he gave the clock such a jolt that it could actually never be put right again.

In this folk tale we feel that on the one hand there was a sensing of the luciferic principle in the governor who wanted to have sole possession of the clock that could only be constructed by a gift of grace from the good, progressive powers, and that as soon as Lucifer appeared, he was joined by Ahriman, for the clock-maker's ruining of the clock was an ahrimanic deed. The moment Lucifer is summoned—and the opposite is also the case—he is countered by Ahriman. It is not only in the composition of this story that we see people's feeling for Ahriman and Lucifer, we also see it in another aspect, namely in the form of the clock itself. We see that the clockmaker, too, wanted to include ahrimanic and luciferic forces in the very construction of the clock, for besides all that I have already told you of its artistic perfection, this clock included something else as well. Apart from the clock face, the planetary dial, and all the other things it had, there were figures on both sides of the clock, Death on one side and two figures on the other. One of these figures was a man holding a money-bag containing money he could jingle, and the other figure represented a man holding a mirror in which he could see himself all the time.

These two figures are exceptionally good examples of the person who gives himself up to external values: the rich miser, the ahrimanic person—and the luciferic person who wants perpetually to have his vanity aroused, the man looking at himself in the mirror. The clockmaker himself confronts ahrimanic and luciferic qualities and on the other side there is Death, the balancer (we shall say more about this later), put there as a reminder that through the constant alternation of life between death and birth and between birth and death human beings rise above the sphere in which Ahriman and Lucifer are active. Thus in the clock itself we see a wonderful presentation of the feeling still existing at that time for the ahrimanic and luciferic element.

We must bring a feeling for this element to life again in a certain way if we want to solve the difficult question we have introduced. Basically the world always confronts us as a duality. Look at nature. Mere nature always bears the stamp of rigid necessity. In fact, we know that it is the scientists' ideal to be able to calculate future occurrences mathematically on the basis of past ones. Ideally, scientists would like to deal with all natural phenomena in the same way as with future sun and moon eclipses, which can be predicted through calculations based on the constellations in the heavens. In relation to natural phenomena people feel they are confronting absolute rigid necessity. Ever since the fifteenth century people have grown accustomed to accepting rigid necessity as the model for their world outlook. This has gradually led to historical phenomena also being perceived as imbued with a similar rigid necessity.

Yet where historical phenomena are concerned we should also consider another aspect. Let us take an example quite apart from our own life situation, for instance, Goethe as a historical phenomenon.¹ In certain respects we also are inclined to regard the appearance of Goethe and all he produced as being based on a sort of rigid necessity. But someone might bring the argument “Goethe was born on August 28, 1749. If this boy had not been born into this family, what would have happened? Would we have had Goethe's works?” It might be pointed out that Goethe himself refers to the fact that his father and mother brought him up in a special way, each contributing something toward what he later became. Would his works have been created if he had been brought up differently? Again, let us look at Goethe's meeting with Karl August, Duke of Weimar.² If the duke had not called Goethe to him and given him the kind of life we know he had from the 1770s onward, would entirely different works have resulted? Or might not Goethe even have been quite an ordinary cabinet secretary if he had been brought up differently at home, and the poetic urge had not already been so alive in him? What would German literature and art after Goethe's time have been like if all these things had been different?

All these questions can be asked, and they show the very profound significance of this question. But we have not yet fully arrived at an answer which would be other than superficial. We can go deeper still and ask different questions. Let us return to the artist who made the old Prague town hall clock. He put on it the figures of the rich miser with the money-bag, the vain man and, opposite them, Death. Now it is possible to say that the man accomplished something by putting the figures there. But if we express it like that, we are naming a cause of countless possible effects. For just imagine how many people have stood in front of that rich miser, the vain man looking at his reflection, and Death. And how many people have also seen an even smarter thing the clockmaker arranged. Namely, every time the clock was about to strike, Death began to move first, accompanying the striking of the hour with a ringing apparatus, then the other figure moved. Death nodded to the miser and the latter nodded back. All these things were there to be seen, and they were important guides for life. They made a deep impression on the beholder.

We see this from the fact that the folk tale goes on to relate something unusual. Whenever the clock was about to strike, the skeleton, Death, opened its mouth and people saw inside it a sparrow that longed for nothing more than to break free. But just as it was about to do so, the mouth closed, and it was shut in again for an hour. People told an ingenious legend about this opening and shutting of the mouth, showing what a significant thing “time” is—what we so abstractly call “time” and “the marching on of time.” They wanted to give an indication that there are deep secrets hidden here.

Let us imagine that a person might have stood in front of the clock. I want to mention this folk tale as an indication of the thoughts a person might have about it, or rather the imaginations a person might see, for that sparrow was not mere invention. Some of the people who looked at the clock saw the sparrow as an imagination. I just wanted to mention that. Let us look at it rationally for a moment. A person in a state of moral uncertainty might observe the clock and see Death nodding both to the rich man, who has become dependent on his riches, and to the vain man. And the impression this has on him could divert him from the possibility of being misled in his own state of moral wavering.

We can also imagine something else. Taking this aspect into consideration we could say that the man who constructed this work of art through divine inspiration has done a great deal of good. For a lot of people may have looked at this work of art and improved morally in certain respects. It might be said what a favorable karma this man must have had, being able to have a good effect on so many people's souls! And one might begin to wonder just how many people's souls he had helped by means of this imagination. One might begin to think of the artist's karma. One might say that the making of that clock and placing Death and Ahriman and Lucifer upon it was the most wonderful starting point for a favorable karma. One might indulge in such an outlook and say that there are people who trigger off a whole series of good deeds by means of one single deed. So this series of good deeds must be put down in their karma. And one could begin to wonder how each of one's own deeds should be carried out so that a similar series of good deeds can arise.

Here you see the beginning of a train of thought that can go astray. An attempt to think out how to set about doing deeds that produce a series of good deeds would be nonsense when it comes to making it a principle of life, wouldn't it? Someone might suggest that a stream of good deeds does spring from what that man did. But someone else could argue “No, I have followed up the matter of this clock and am convinced that there has not been much in the way of such results.” That person might be a pessimist and say that times are too evil for such good effects. People do not believe it when they see things like that. He has seen something quite different happening in many cases. He has seen people looking at the clock who had a democratic frame of mind and a smoldering hatred of the rich. And when a person like that saw the clock, he noticed that it was only the rich man to whom Death nodded and who nodded back. “I will put that into practice” he said, looked for the first miser he could find and murdered him. Similar deeds of hatred were done by other people. The clock-maker brought all these about through his work of art. That is what will have to be put down in his karma.

And again, taking a shortsighted view, someone could say “Perhaps after all one should not make a perfect work of art, one that has great inner value, because it might have the worst possible effects; it might have countless bad effects on one's karma.”

This draws our attention to an immense temptation for the whole range of human soul capacities and knowledge. For one only needs to look at oneself a little to see that people have the greatest inclination to ask about everything, “What was the result of it?” and to estimate the value of what has been done in accordance with the results. But in the same way as we started to speculate when we tried to think out whether the double numbers in the right column were as many as those in the left column or half as many, which was the example I gave you last time—just as we became mentally confused then, we are bound to become confused in our thinking now if we want to judge our actions by asking, “What result will they have, what effect will they have on my karma?”

Here again the folk tale is wiser, even more scientific, in the sense of spiritual science. For it is a very trivial thing to say, of course, but the folk tale does say that the clockmaker was a simple man. He had no intentions beside the thought that inspired him; he made the clock according to that, and did not speculate on what the results of his deed might be in any direction.

True, it cannot be denied—and this is what is so tempting—that you really may get somewhere if you think along these lines and ask what the results of a deed will be. It is tempting for the very reason that there are such things as actions where you have to ask what the consequences will be. And it would obviously be one-sided to draw the conclusion from what I have said that we should always behave like that clockmaker and not consider the consequences of our actions. For you have to have the consequences in mind if you thrash a boy for having been lazy. There are obviously cases like this where we have to have the consequences in mind. However, here lies the very point we must take to heart and examine closely, namely, that we relate to the world in two ways.

On the one hand, we receive impressions from the physical plane, and on the other hand we receive impressions from the spiritual world, as indicated in the legend, when it tells us that the artist was a simple man inspired by a gift of grace from above. When we are given these impressions by the spiritual world, when our souls are stimulated to do a particular thing, those are the moments in life when we have a second kind of certainty, a second kind of truth—not in an objective but a subjective sense—when we are guided by truth, we have a second kind of certainty, which is direct, and which we cannot but accept as such. This is the root of the matter.

On the one hand we are in the physical world, and in this world it looks as though every event follows naturally from the preceding one. But we are also within the spiritual world. In the last lecture I tried to show that just as we have an etheric body within our physical body, there is also a supersensible element active in the whole stream of events of the physical world. We are also placed within this supersensible activity, and from this proceed those impulses that are absolutely unique and that we have to follow quite regardless of the results, especially those in the physical world. Because human beings are in the world, they acquire a kind of certainty when they examine external things. This is how people observe nature. Observing natural phenomena is the only way to come to any certainty about cause and effect. On the other hand, however, we can receive direct certainty if we want it, by really opening our souls to its influences. Then we have to stop and give our full attention to a phenomenon, and know to evaluate it on the basis of its intrinsic value.

This, of course, is difficult. Yet we are constantly being given a chance, a crucial one, by the very phenomena themselves, particularly historical ones, to appreciate events and processes according to their intrinsic value. This is always necessary. But if we go more closely into questions that would lead us very far if we understood them rightly, we find a sphere where confusion in thinking is very marked. As a rule this confusion cannot be controlled by the individual. Let us take the phenomenon of Goethe's Faust.³ It is an artistic creation, isn't it? There will be very few people in this hall, particularly as we have made a number of studies of Faust, who will not hold the opinion that Goethe's Faust is a great work of art, one that is tantamount to an inspiration of grace.

Through Goethe's Faust, German cultural life in a sense conquered the cultural life of other nations too. Even in Goethe's lifetime Faust had a strong influence on many people. They regarded it as an absolutely unique work of art. However, a certain German was particularly annoyed that Madame de Stael expressed such an extraordinarily favorable opinion of it.⁴ I would just like to read you this man's opinion, so that you see that about such things that have to be judged individually there can be different opinions from those you may consider at this moment to be the only opinions one can possibly have of Goethe's Faust.

This critical opinion was written down in 1822 by a certain Franz von Spaun.⁵ Here is his criticism of Goethe's Faust, which begins right away with the “Prologue in Heaven:”

[Right from the Prologue] we see that Herr von Goethe is a very bad versifier and that the Prologue itself is a true sample of how one ought not to write verse.

Past ages show nothing that can compare with this Prologue for presumptuous paltriness. ... But I must be brief, for I have undertaken a long and, alas, wearisome piece of work. I have to point out to the reader that this notorious Faust enjoys an usurped and unmerited renown that it owes only to the pernicious esprit de corps of an Associato obscurorum vitorum. ... It is not because I wish to rival this renown that I am compelled to vent the sarcasm of harsh criticism upon Goethe's Faust. I do not travel by his path to Parnassus, and should have been glad if he had enriched our German language with a masterpiece. ... Among the multitudes who applaud, my voice may be extinguished, yet it is enough for me to have done my best; and if I succeed in converting even one reader and recalling him from the worship of this atrocity, I shall not grudge my thankless labor. ... The wretched Faust speaks an incomprehensible gibberish, in the most atrocious rhyme of any fifth grade student. My teacher would have thrashed me soundly if I had made inferior verses such as the following:

Oh, broad bright moon, if this might be
The last of the nights of agony,
The countless midnights of toil and ache,
I've pass'd at this dreary desk awake!

Concerning the baseness of the diction, the paltriness of the verse, I will henceforth be silent; what the reader has seen is sufficient proof that the author, as far as the construction of his verse is concerned, cannot stand comparison with the mediocre poets of the old school. ...

Mephistopheles himself realized even before the contract was signed that Faust was possessed by a devil. We, however, think he belongs in a lunatic asylum rather than in Hell, with all his accessories—hands and feet, head and posterior. Of sublime galimatias, of nonsense in high-faluting words, many poets have given us samples, but Goethe's nonsense or galimatias might be called a popular galimatias, a genre nouveau, for it is presented in the commonest, most atrocious language.

The more I think about this long litany of nonsense, the more probable it seems to me that there must have been a wager to the effect that if a celebrated man permitted himself to patch together the dullest, most boring nonsense, a legion of literary simpletons and deluded readers would find deep wisdom and great beauty in this insipid nonsense and know how to expound upon it. Famous men have this in common with Prince Piribinker and the immortal Dalai Lama that their rubbish is served up as sweetmeats and revered as relics. If this was Herr von Goethe's intention, he has won the wager....

There may well be some intentions behind Faust, yet a good poet does not hurl them at his readers; he should know the art of presenting and illuminating them properly. A richer theme for poetry than this is not easy to find, and people will be cross with him for bungling it so miserably. . ..

This diarrhea of undigested ideas is not caused by an excessive flow of healthy fluids but by a relaxation of the floodgates of the mind, and is an indication of a weak constitution. There are people from whom bad verse flows like water, but this incontinentia urinae poeticae, this diabetes mellitus of lame verses never afflicts a good poet. ... If Goethe's genius has freed itself from all fetters, the flood of his ideas cannot break through the dams of art, for they have already been broken through. Yet although we do not disapprove of an author's breaking away from the conventional rules of composition, he must still hold sacred the laws of sound human reason, of grammar and rhythm. Even in dramas where magic plays a part, he is only allowed the machinery of hypothesis, and he must remain faithful to this. He must make a good plot with a knot to be unraveled and the magic must lead to grand results. In the case of Faust the outcome is to seduce the victims to dastardly crimes, and his seducer does not need magic; everything he does any matchmaking scoundrel could have done just as well without witchcraft. He is as stingy as a miser, not using the hidden treasures at his command.

In short, a miserable wretch who might learn something from Lessing's Marinelli. Therefore, in the name of sound human reason I quash the opinion of Madame de Stael in favor of the aforesaid Faust and condemn it, not to Hell, which might be cooled off by this frigid production that even has a wintry effect on the devil, but to be thrown into the sewer of Parnassus. And by rights.

As you see, this judgment was actually passed upon Faust at one time, and the context in which the man passed it does not at all prove him to be entirely dishonest, but someone who believed what he wrote. Now imagine what would have happened if this man, who said that his own fifth grade teacher would have kept him from writing such rubbish as Faust, had himself become a school teacher and passed on this nonsense to a great number of boys. These boys might in their turn have become teachers and remembered something of this verdict on Faust. Just think of all the speculations you can make regarding all the karmic damage this person might have done by means of his judgment.

However, I am less concerned about that than about the fact that it is difficult to form a true, permanent judgment concerning events possessing their own intrinsic value. I have emphasized in some of my lectures that many a great personality of the nineteenth century will no longer be considered great in centuries to come, whereas people who have been quite forgotten will by that time be regarded as very significant indeed. Time puts such things right. I only wanted to point out how extremely difficult it is to form a judgment about an event needing to be looked at on its own merit.

We must now ask why that causes us such difficulty. We shall begin our reflections by seeing the critic as a different person from the one who is being judged. Nowadays we would say that the people who even in those days considered Goethe's Faust to be a great work of art and in a certain way judged it objectively eliminated themselves, so to speak. The man who wrote what I have just been reading to you did not eliminate himself. How do we arrive at judgments that are not objective? People judge without objectivity so often that it never occurs to them to ask why they do this. They do it because of the forces of sympathy and antipathy. Without sympathy and antipathy our judgments would never be other than objective.

Sympathy and antipathy are necessary in order to obscure the objectivity of judgment. Does this mean they are bad, however, and that we ought immediately to do away with them? We need only reflect a little to find that this is not so. For no sooner do we engross ourselves in Goethe's Faust than we like it and develop more and more feelings of sympathy towards it. We must have the possibility to develop sympathy. And after all, if we were unable to develop antipathy we would not arrive at an absolutely correct judgment of the man whose opinion we have just heard. For I imagine some antipathetic feelings against the man may have arisen in you, and they could well be justified.

But there again we see that it depends on not accepting these things as absolute but considering them in their whole context. It is not merely that human beings are brought to feelings of sympathy and antipathy by outer things but that we carry sympathy and antipathy into life. We bring our sympathy and antipathy to meet the things themselves, so that they do not work upon us but upon our sympathy and antipathy. What does this mean? I approach an object or a process accompanied by my sympathy and antipathy. Naturally the man I was speaking about did not exactly bring along his antipathy to Faust but he brought the kind of feelings that made him see Faust as antipathetic. He judged absolutely according to his instincts.

What does this signify? It means that sympathy and antipathy, to start with, are only words for real spiritual facts. And the real spiritual facts are the deeds of Lucifer and Ahriman. In a certain way Lucifer is in every expression of sympathy and Ahriman in every expression of antipathy. By letting ourselves be carried through the world by sympathy and antipathy, we are letting ourselves be carried through the world by Lucifer and Ahriman. Only we must not fall into the mistake I have often described and say yet again “We must flee from both Lucifer and Ahriman! We want to become good. So we must avoid Lucifer and Ahriman, avoid them at all costs! We must drive them away, right away!” For then we should also have to leave the world. For just as there can be both positive and negative electricity and not only the balance between them, so we encounter Lucifer and Ahriman wherever we go. It all depends on how we relate to them. These two forces must be there. The important thing is that we always bring them into balance in life. For instance, without Lucifer art would not exist. What matters is that we create art that is not purely luciferic.

Thus it is a matter of becoming aware that when we confront the world with sympathy and antipathy, Lucifer and Ahriman are at work in us. That is to say, we must be able to allow Lucifer and Ahriman really to be active in us. But while we are conscious that they are at work in us, we must nevertheless acquire the capacity to confront things objectively. This we can do only if we consider not merely how we judge external things and events in the world outside us, but also consider how we judge ourselves in the world. And this “judging ourselves in the world” leads us a step further into the question and the whole complex of questions we started with. We can form a judgment of ourselves in the world only if we apply to ourselves a uniform method of consideration. We must now consider this problem.

We look out upon nature. On the one hand, we see rigid necessity; one thing arising from another. We look at our own deeds and believe that they are subject only to freedom and are connected solely with guilt and atonement and so on. Both views are one-sided. In what follows it will be shown that each view is one-sided because neither correctly estimates the position of Lucifer and Ahriman. If we look at ourselves as human beings existing here on the physical plane, we cannot look into our own souls and see only what is taking place in the immediate present. If each one of us were to ask ourselves what is taking place within us right now, it would certainly be a piece of insight into ourselves. Yet this insight would be far from giving us everything we required even for superficial self-knowledge.

Without hurting anyone's feelings, of course, let us consider all of us here: I who am speaking and you who are listening. I would not be able to speak as I do if it were not for everything that has previously happened in my present life and in other incarnations. Looking only at what I am saying to you now would produce a very one-sided kind of self-knowledge. But without hurting anyone's feelings it must be obvious that each one of you listens differently, and understands and feels what I say slightly differently. That goes without saying. In fact your understanding is in accordance with your life up to now and your previous incarnations. If each one of you did not grasp differently what is being said, you would not really be human beings.

But that leads much further. It leads to the recognition of a duality in ourselves. Just think for a moment that when you pass judgment, you do it in a certain way. Let us take a random example. If you see one thing or another, a play directed by Max Reinhardt, for example, you say, “It is charming!” while someone else says “That is the ruin of all art!”⁶ I am certainly not criticizing either opinion just now. It is possible for one person to say this and another that. On what does it depend that one person has a different opinion from another? That depends again on what is already in them, upon the assumptions with which they approach matters.

But if you think about these assumptions, you will be able to say “At one time these assumptions did not exist.” What you saw when you were eighteen, for instance, or learned at the age of thirteen, enters into your present judgments. It has become part of your whole thinking, resides in you, and contributes to your judgment. Everyone can of course perceive this in himself if he wishes to do so. It contributes to your judgment. Ask yourself whether you can change what is now in you, or whether you can tear it out of yourself. Think about it for a moment! If we could tear it out, we would be taking away the whole of our life up to now; we would be obliterating ourselves. We can no more get rid of our previous resolutions and decisions than we can give ourselves another nose if we do not like what we see in the mirror.

It is obvious that you cannot obliterate your past. Yet if you wish to rise early in the morning, you see, a resolution is always necessary. This resolution, however, is really dependent upon the prior conditions of your present incarnation. It depends on other things as well. If we say it depends on this or that, does that detract from the fact that I have to resolve to get up? This decision to get up may be so faint that we do not notice it at all, but at least a faint resolve to get up has to be there, that is to say, getting up must be a free deed.

I knew a man who belonged for a time to our Society and who is a good illustration of this, for he actually never wanted to get up. He suffered terribly because of it, and often deplored it. He said, “I simply cannot get up! Unless something occurs in the way of an external necessity to make me rise from my bed, I would stay there forever.” He confessed this openly, for he found it a terrible temptation in life not to want to get up. From this you can easily see that it really is a free deed. And although certain prior conditions have been laid down in us which suggest one or another motive, it does not prevent our doing a free deed in the particular instance.

In a certain way it is like this: Some people drag themselves out of bed with the help of strong determination, while others enjoy getting up. We could easily say that this shows us that the existing prior conditions signify that the one was brought up well and the other badly. We can see a certain necessity there, yet it is always a free decision. Thus we see in one and the same fact, in the fact of getting up, free will and necessity interwoven, thoroughly interwoven. One and the same thing contains both freedom and necessity. And I beg you to note well that, rightly considered, we cannot dispute whether a person is free or unfree in a certain matter, but we can only say that first of all freedom and necessity are intermingled in every human deed.

How does this happen? We shall not progress with our spiritual science unless we realize that we have to consider things both from the human and the cosmic standpoint. Why is this so? It is because what works in us as necessity—I will now say something relatively simple yet of tremendous significance—what we regard as necessity belongs to the past. What works in us as necessity must always be from the past. We must have experienced something, and this experience must have been stored up in our souls. It is then within our soul and continues to work there as necessity.

You can now say that everybody bears his past within him, and this means bearing a necessity within him. What belongs to the present does not yet work as necessity, otherwise there would be no free deed in the immediate present. But the past works into the present and combines with freedom. Because the past works on, freedom and necessity are intimately connected in one and the same deed.

Thus if we really look into ourselves, we will see that necessity exists not only outside us in nature but also within ourselves. When we look at this latter kind of necessity, we have to look at our past. This is an extremely important point of view for a spiritual scientist. He learns to understand the connection between past and necessity. Then he begins to examine nature, and finds necessity there. And in examining natural phenomena he realizes that all the necessities the natural scientist finds in nature are the result of past events. What is nature as a whole, the whole realm of nature with its necessity?

We cannot answer that unless we look for the answer on the basis of spiritual science. We are now living in earth existence, a condition which was preceded by the moon, sun and Saturn conditions. In the Saturn condition, as you see in Occult Science, the planet did not look like the earth does now but entirely differently.⁷ If you examine Saturn, you will see that then everything was still of a thought like nature. Stones did not yet fall to the ground. Dense physical matter did not exist as yet. Everything came from the activity of warmth. This state is similar to what goes on within the human being itself. Everything is soul activity, thoughts that divine spirits have left behind. And they have remained in existence.

All of present nature that you understand with its necessity was once in a state of freedom, a free deed of the gods. Only because it is past, because what developed on Saturn, sun, and moon has come to us in the same way as our childhood thoughts continue to work in us, the thoughts of the gods during Saturn, sun, and moon continue their existence on earth. And because they are past thoughts, they appear to us as necessity.

If you now put your hand on a solid object, what does that mean? It means that what is in the solid object was once being thought in the long distant past, and has remained in the same way as your childhood thoughts have remained in you. If you look at your past, regarding past activities as something living, you see nature in the process of becoming within you. Just as what you now think and say is not a necessity but is free, so earth's present state was once free in earlier stages of existence. Freedom continually evolves, and what is left behind becomes necessity. If we were to see what is taking place in nature now, it would not occur to us to see it as a necessity. What we see of nature is only what has been left behind. What is happening now in nature is spiritual, and we do not see that.

This gives human self-knowledge a very special cosmic significance. We think a thought. It is now within us. Certainly we might also not think it. But if we think it, it remains in our soul, where it becomes an activity of the past. It now works on as a necessity, a delicate, insubstantial necessity, and not dense matter like outer nature because we are human beings, not gods. We can perceive only the inner nature that remains in us as memory and is operative in what are necessities for us. But our current thoughts will become external nature in the coming Jupiter and Venus conditions. They will then be the external environment. And what we now see as nature was once the thoughts of the gods.

Nowadays we speak of angels, archangels, archai, and so on. They were thinking in the past, just as we are thinking today. And what they thought has remained as their memory, and it is this memory we now perceive. We can only perceive within us what we remember during earth existence. But inwardly it has become nature. What the gods thought during earlier planetary conditions has been externalized and we see it as external nature.

It is true, profoundly true, that as long as we are earthly human beings we think. We send our thoughts down into our soul life. There they become the beginning of a natural world. But they remain in us. Yet when the Jupiter existence comes, they will come forth. And what we are thinking today, in fact all that we experience, will then be the external world. The external world we will then look down upon from a higher level will be what is now our inner world. What is experienced at one time in freedom changes into necessity.

These are very, very important aspects, and only when we see the world in this way will we be able to understand the real course of historical events and the significance of today's events. For these lead us directly to the point where we always pursue the path from subjectivity to objectivity. Strictly speaking, we can be subjective only in the present. As soon as the present is over, and we have pushed the subjective elements down into our soul life, they acquire independent existence, though at first only within us. As we continue living with other thoughts, the earlier thoughts live on, only in us, of course. For the time being we still house them. But this covering will some day fall away.

In the spiritual realm matters are very different. So you must look at events, such as the hypothetical one I gave you, from this different point of view. Looked at from outside, a boulder fell and buried a party of people. But that was only the external expression of something that happened in the spiritual world, this latter event being the other half of the experience and existing just as objectively as the first one. This is what I wanted to present to you today, showing how freedom and necessity play into one another in world evolution and in the evolution in which we are involved as living beings; how we are interwoven with the world, and how we ourselves are daily, hourly, becoming what nature shows us externally. Our past, while within us, is already a piece of nature. We progress beyond this piece of nature by evolving further, just as the gods progressed in their evolution beyond their nature stage and became the higher hierarchies.

This is only one of the ways, of which there are many, that ought to show us again and again that nothing taking place on the physical plane can be judged solely according to its physical aspect, but should be judged based on the knowledge that it has a hidden spiritual content in addition to the physical one. As sure as our physical body has an etheric body in it, everything perceived by the senses has a supersensible part underlying it. Therefore, we must conclude that we are really regarding the world in a very incomplete way if we examine it solely according to what it presents to our eyes and according to what takes place externally, for while something quite different is taking place externally, inwardly something can be happening spiritually that belongs to the outer event and is of immensely greater significance than what is presented to our senses. What the souls of the people who were buried under the boulder experienced in the spiritual world may be infinitely more important than what happened physically. The occurrence has something to do with the future of those souls, as we shall see.

Let us interrupt these thoughts at this point today and continue them next Sunday. My aim today was to bring your thoughts and ideas into the direction that will show you that we can only acquire correct concepts of freedom and necessity, guilt and atonement, and so on, if we add the spiritual aspect to the physical one.

• 1. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, 1749–1832, German poet, playwright, and novelist.
• 2. Karl August, Duke of Weimar, 1757–1828, Duke of Saxony and Weimar 1758–1828.
• 3. Faust, dramatic poem by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
• 4. Madame de Stael (Germaine de Stael), 1766–1817, French writer and intellectual.
• 5. Franz von Spaun, 1753–1826, German essayist. The quotation from Faust is from Part I, “Night,” Translated by Sir Theodore Martin. Everyman's Library, (London: Dent, 1971).
• 6. Max Reinhardt, 1873–1943, director of the German theater in Berlin.
• 7. Rudolf Steiner, An Outline of Occult Science, (Spring Valley, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1972).

To continue last week's study I shall begin with a kind of hypothetical case. Where the deepest riddles of human existence are concerned the best way to avoid abstraction and to get close to reality is to give examples. My example will of course apply to every possible level of life. So let us begin with a hypothetical example.

Let us imagine we are in a school, a school of three classes, with three teachers and a headmaster. These three teachers differ tremendously in character and temperament. It is the beginning of a new school year. The headmaster discusses the coming year with his teachers. First of all it is the turn of the first teacher. The headmaster asks him what preparations he intends to make and what he thinks is the best way to proceed in the coming year. The teacher replies, “Well, during the holidays I noted down carefully all the areas where the pupils did not meet my expectations, areas that I had obviously not prepared well. And I have drawn up a new plan for next year containing all the things which I am sure were successful and got across to the children. All the work I will give them next year consists of the things that came off best last year and have proved successful.” A further question from the headmaster produced a complete schedule the teacher had made of the subject matter. He could also stipulate what work he would give the pupils to do in school and what would be set as homework in the course of the year. All his themes, both for schoolwork and homework, had been chosen from careful scanning of the previous year. The headmaster was very satisfied and said “You are doubtless a conscientious teacher, and I reckon you will achieve excellent results with your class.”

The second teacher also said, “I have gone through the whole curriculum I covered with my pupils last year and noted everything I did wrong. I have arranged the new schedule avoiding all the mistakes I made before.” And he, too, was able to show the headmaster a curriculum containing all the subjects he was going to give the pupils for schoolwork and homework in the course of the year, basing it on the experience of his last year's mistakes. The headmaster said, “The teacher I have just spoken to noted all the instances where he had achieved excellence, and tried to plan his curriculum accordingly, whereas you have endeavored to avoid mistakes. It can be done either way. I am assured that you will achieve excellent results with your class. I see with a certain satisfaction that I have teachers in my school who review their past achievements and let the wisdom of self-knowledge guide their future steps.” You see, a teacher who knows his priorities is bound to make a good impression on a headmaster.

Then it was the third teacher's turn. He said, “During the holidays I, too, have thought a lot about what happened in my class last year. I have tried to study the character of my pupils and have done a kind of review of what has taken place in the various individuals.” “Well,” said the headmaster, “you will also have seen the mistakes you made and the things you did well, and will have been able to draw up a schedule for the coming year.” “No,” replied the teacher. “I have certainly made mistakes; and some things I have done well. But I have only studied the pupils' characters and what has taken place there. I have not thought especially about whether I made any particular mistakes, or whether this or that was particularly good. I did not do that. I accepted that things had to happen the way they did. So I have just observed what I believe had to happen out of a certain necessity. The pupils had their various dispositions, and these I observed carefully. I too have a definite disposition, and the interaction of our different natures produced its own results. I cannot say more than that.”

“Well,” said the headmaster, “you seem to be a very self-satisfied person. Have you at least drawn up a schedule, and worked out the subjects you will give your pupils as schoolwork and homework during the year?” “No,” he answered, “I have not done that.” “Well, what do you intend to do with your class?” To this the teacher replied, “I will see what kinds of pupils I will have this year. And I believe I will be able to size this up better than last year, as each year I have always studied the previous year's characters during the holidays. But I cannot possibly know yet what they will be like next year. Only time will tell.” “Well, are you not intending to plan subjects for schoolwork and homework?” “Yes, but not until I have seen what my pupils' capacities are like. I will try to set the work accordingly.” “Well, really,” said the headmaster, “we would be thoroughly at sea in that case. We can hardly allow such things to happen.”

But there was nothing to be done. The headmaster had to agree to it, and the school year got under way. The headmaster inspected the school frequently. He saw the first two teachers doing exceedingly well, but with the third he always found that things were not on a good footing. There was no certainty, he said, one never really knew what would happen the following month. And it went on like this throughout the year. Then came the time for the report cards. From those of the first two teachers the headmaster was satisfied that they had been very successful. Of course, some of the pupils in their classes failed too, and others passed, but it all happened as expected. According to the report cards, the third teacher's results were no worse. Yet other people had come to the conclusion over the year that he was very lenient. While the other teachers were strict, he was so lenient that he frequently made allowances, and the headmaster was convinced that the third teacher's class had come out the worst.

Then the next year came. The holidays were over, and at the start of the school year the first two teachers spoke as before, and the third, too. Things happened similarly, with the school inspector also coming occasionally, and, of course, he noticed what the headmaster had as it were prepared him to see, namely that the first two teachers were very good, and the third only second-rate. It could not be otherwise. I hardly need mention that after a few years the two good teachers were nominated for decorations, and the headmaster received an even higher one. That is a matter of secondary importance, isn't it?

Some time later the following thing happened. The headmaster left the school and another came at the beginning of the year. He also discussed with his three teachers what their plans were, and so on, and each of the teachers answered in a similar way as before. Then the headmaster said, “There is certainly quite a difference between your methods. And I believe the first two gentlemen ought to take a little guidance from the third teacher.” “What!” said the first two gentlemen. “The previous headmaster always said that he ought to take guidance from us!” “I do not think so,” said the new head. “It seems to me that the first two should adapt to the third.” But they could not very well emulate him, for they could not see how anyone could possibly foresee what would happen in the coming year if he groped about as blindly as that teacher did. They just could not imagine it.

In the meantime the former headmaster, because of his insight into proper school administration, had himself become a school inspector, and was most astonished at the views his successor was expressing about the school he knew so well. How could such a thing happen? And he said, “The third teacher never told me anything except ‘I must first see what the pupils are like, then I can form my schedule from week to week.’ But that way you cannot look ahead at all! It is quite impossible to manage if you cannot anticipate a single thing.” To which the present headmaster replied, “Yes, but look, I have actually asked my teachers about their different ways of looking ahead. The first two gentlemen always say 'I know for certain that on February 25 next year I will present such and such items of school-work. I can say in detail what will be happening, and I know for certain that I will be talking about such and such a subject at Easter.' The third teacher says 'I do not know for certain what I will be doing at Easter, nor do I know what schoolwork I will set in February. I will set the work according to the kind of pupils I have.' And by that he meant that he can in a certain way foresee that all will be well. And,” said the new headmaster, “I actually agree with him entirely. You cannot know until afterwards whether your resolves have been entirely successful. It depends on the attitude you have to the previous year; if you study the character of last year's pupils, you acquire greater capacities to understand the character of the new pupils. I appreciate that more can be achieved this way.”

“Yes, but you still cannot know anything in advance! Everything is in the realm of uncertainty. How can you predetermine anything for the whole school year?” asked the former headmaster. “You cannot anticipate anything. But you must be able to look ahead a little bit, if you want to make proper plans.” “You can foresee that things will go well,” said the new headmaster, “if you join forces as it were with the spirit at work in the pupils, and have a certain faith in it. If you, so to speak, pledge yourself to this and depend upon it, then even if you cannot anticipate the school work you will be presenting in February, you will know that it will be the right work.” “Yes, but you cannot foresee anything with certainty, and everything remains vague,” said the school inspector, to which the new headmaster replied, “You know, I once studied the sort of thing people call spiritual science. And I still remember from this that beings on a much higher level than human beings are actually supposed to have acted in this way in much more important affairs. For at the beginning of the Bible it says 'And God made light.' And only after he made the light does it say 'And he saw that it was good.'“ To this the inspector had nothing suitable to say.

Things continued in the same way for a time. There are few headmasters like the second one I chose as a hypothetical example, aren't there? I could call him hypothetical to the second degree, for even with it being a hypothesis it is hypothetical to assume a headmaster like that. Therefore he was dismissed very soon, and another one more like the inspector was appointed. And things ran their course until one day it went so far that the completely “undecorated” teacher was driven away from the school in disgrace and another of the same style as the first two was appointed in his place. The outcome could not possibly have been any different at the time, for in all the yearbooks and personnel files it was recorded what great progress had been achieved by the first two teachers, while of the third one it was recorded that he sent out only poor students from the school for the simple reason that he made allowances; otherwise all his pupils would have failed. There was absolutely nothing that could be done about a person like this third teacher.

Many years passed. By chance a very unusual event followed. The headmaster who had been dismissed tried to go more deeply into how matters had turned out with the two teachers who had always practiced strict self-observation, for example, with the one who noted the subjects that yielded fewer successes and selected the more successful ones. The former headmaster also wanted to know what the second and the third teachers had achieved. He even followed up what their pupils had achieved under other teachers, and he discovered that with different teachers the third teacher's pupils made much less progress than those of the first two. But the former headmaster did not stop there. He went even further into the matter and traced the subsequent life of the former pupils of these teachers. He then discovered that those taught by the first two teachers, with a few exceptions naturally, had all become respectable citizens, yet they had achieved nothing outstanding. Among the pupils taught by the third teacher, however, were people of considerable importance, who accomplished things of far greater significance than the pupils of the others.

He was able to prove these things in this particular case. But it made no special impression on people, for they said, “We cannot always wait to follow up the pupils' whole subsequent lives! That is impossible, isn't it? And that is not the point, anyway.”

Now why am I telling you all this? There is an important difference between the first two teachers and the third. Throughout the holidays, the first two teachers kept focusing their attention on the way they had done their work the previous year. The third teacher did not do this, for he had the feeling that it had to happen as it did. When the headmaster, the first one, kept telling him again and again, “But you won't have any idea how to avoid mistakes next year, or how to do the right thing, if you don't study what you did well last year,” he did not answer immediately, for he did not feel like explaining this to him. But afterwards he thought to himself, “Well, even if I did know what mistakes happened in the course of the work my pupils and I did together, I will after all have different pupils this year, and our working together is not affected by the mistakes made last year. I have to work with new pupils.”

In short, the first two teachers were wholly entrenched in a dead element, while the third teacher entered into what was alive. You could also say that the first two teachers always dealt with the past, the third teacher with the immediate present. He did not brood over the past, but said, “Of necessity it had to happen as it did according to the conditions that prevailed.”

The point is that if things are judged in a superficial way according to external judgments, one can indeed go astray where actual facts are concerned. Because if you were to do things the way the first teachers did them you would be judging the present according to what is dead and gone and what ought to be allowed to remain so. The third teacher took what was still alive from the past, arriving at it by simply studying character, and made himself more perfect by doing so; in fact, he did it with this in view. For he told himself, “If I can make myself more efficient in this way, the greater capacities I thus acquire will help me achieve what I have to do in the future.”

The first two teachers were somewhat superstitious about the past and told themselves, “Past mistakes must be avoided in the future and evident good qualities must be used.” But they did this in a dead way. They had no intention of enhancing their abilities but only of making their decisions according to outer observation. They did not have the wish to be effective as a result of working in a living way on themselves; they thought the only means to gain anything for the future was observation and its results.

In accordance with spiritual science we have to say that the first teacher, who investigated so carefully the good qualities he had established in the past and wanted to incorporate them in his future work, acted in an ahrimanic way. It was an ahrimanic approach. He clung to the past, and out of personal egotism looked with complacent satisfaction at everything he had done well and prided himself on it.

The second teacher's character was governed more by luciferic forces. He brooded over his mistakes and told himself, “I must avoid these mistakes.” He did not say, “The things that happened were necessary, and had to happen like that,” but said, “I have made mistakes.” There is always something egotistic about it when we would like to have been better than we actually were, and tell ourselves we made mistakes that ought to have been avoided and that we must now avoid. We are clinging to the past, like Lucifer does, who, on a spiritual level, brings past happenings into the present. That is thinking in a luciferic way.

The third teacher was, I would say, filled with the forces of divine beings who are progressing in a normal way, whose correct divine principle is expressed right at the beginning of the Bible, where we are told that the Elohim first of all create and then they see that their creation was good. They do not look upon it egotistically as though they were superior beings for having made a good creation, but they admit that it is good in order to continue creating. They incorporate it into their evolution. They live and work in the element of life.

What is important is that we realize that we ourselves are living beings and a part of a living world. If we realize this, we will not criticize the gods, the Elohim, for instance. For anyone wishing to set his own wisdom above that of the gods might say, “If gods are supposed to be gods, could they not see that the light would be good? Those gods do not even sound like prophets to me. If I were a god, I would of course only create light if I knew beforehand what light was like, and did not have to wait till later to see that it was good.” But that is human wisdom being placed above divine wisdom.

In a certain way the third teacher also saw what would come about, but he saw it in a living way in that he surrendered himself to the spirit of becoming, the spirit of development. When he said, “By incorporating what I have gained through the study of last year's characters and not focusing on the mistakes I made of necessity, simply because I was as I was, nor applying criticism to what I encountered as my own past, I have enhanced my capacities and acquired in addition a better understanding for my new pupils.” And he realized that the first two teachers were considering their pupils merely in the light of what they had done the previous year, which they could not even estimate properly. So he could say, “I am quite certain I will give my pupils the right schoolwork in four weeks time, and I have every confidence in my prediction.”

The others were better prophets. They could actually say “I will present the schoolwork I have written down; I will give them that for sure.” But that was a foreseeing of facts, not a foreseeing of the course of the forces of movement. We must hold very firmly to this distinction. Prediction as such is not impossible. But predicting in detail what will happen when these details are interwoven with a living element that is to work out of itself is possible only when we consider the phenomena that Lucifer and Ahriman carry over from the present into the future.

We are gradually getting closer to the big problem occupying us in these lectures on freedom and necessity. However, as this particular problem affects so profoundly the whole matter of world processes and human action, we must not fail to look at all the difficulties. For instance, we must realize clearly that when we look back at events that have happened and in which we have been involved, we look at them as necessity. The moment we know all the circumstances, we consider the events as necessity. There is no doubt about the fact that we look upon what has happened as a necessity.

But at the same time we have to ask, “Can we really, as so often happens, always find the causes of events in what immediately preceded them?” In a certain way natural science has to look at what has just happened to see what will happen next. If I carry out an experiment, I have to realize that the cause of what takes place later obviously lies in what took place previously. But that does not mean at all that this principle applies to every process in the world. For we might very easily deceive ourselves about the connection between cause and effect if we were to look for it along the lines of what comes first and what comes later. I would like to explain this with a comparison.

When we penetrate external reality with our senses, we can say, “Because this thing is like this, then the other must be like that.” But if we apply this to every process, we very often arrive at the error I want to illustrate. For the sake of simplicity let us take a man driving himself in a cart, an example I have often taken. We see a horse with a cart behind it and a man sitting in it holding the reins. We look at it and quite naturally say that the horse is pulling and the man is being pulled. The man is being taken wherever the horse takes him. That is quite obvious. Therefore the horse is the cause of the man's being pulled along. The pulling being done by the horse is the cause, and the fact of the man being pulled is the effect. Fair enough! But you all know very well that that is not so; that the man sitting up there driving himself is leading the horse where he wants him to go. Although the horse is pulling him, it is taking him where he wants to go.

Such mistakes happen often when we judge purely externally, on the basis of happenings on the physical plane. Let us look once more at the hypothetical examples I gave you a few days ago, in which a party of people set out for a drive, got into the coach, but the driver was delayed, and they were five minutes behind time. Therefore they arrive beneath an overhanging boulder at the moment it falls, and it crushes them all. Now if we trace the cause on the physical plane, we can naturally say, “This happened first and then that and then the other.” And we will arrive at something. But in this case we could easily make the same mistake we make if we say the horse pulls the driver wherever it wants and overlook the fact that the driver is leading the horse. Perhaps we make this mistake because the controlling force in this case is possibly to be found in the spiritual world. If we merely trace events on the physical plane we really judge in the sense of saying the man is going where the horse takes him. However, if we penetrate to the hidden forces at work in the occurrence, we see that events were directed toward that point and that the driver's belated arrival was actually part of the whole complex of circumstances. It was all necessary, but not necessary in the way one might believe if one merely traces events on the physical plane.

Again, if you believe you can find the cause by assuming it to be what has happened immediately beforehand, the following might happen. Seen externally it looks like this. Two people meet. We now proceed in the proper scientific manner. The two have met, so we enquire where they were during the hour before they met, where they were an hour before that, and how they set out to meet one another. We can now trace over a certain length of time how one thing has always led to another, and how the two were brought together. Someone else who does not concern himself with this sort of thing hears by chance that the two people had arranged five days beforehand that they would meet, and he says, “They have met because they planned to do so.”

Here you have an opportunity to see that the cause for something is not necessarily connected with the immediately preceding event. In fact if we break off looking for the chain of causes before we come to the right link in the chain, we shall never find it, for after all we can only follow the chain of causes up to a certain point. In nature, too, we can only follow it up to a certain point, particularly in the case of phenomena involving human beings. And if we do this, and go from one event to the other, tracing what was before that and before that again, and imagine we will find the cause this way, we are obviously laying ourselves open to error, to deception.

You have to grasp this with what you have acquired from spiritual science. Suppose a person carries out some action on the physical plane. We see him doing it. If we want to limit our observations to the physical plane, we will look into his behavior prior to the action. If we go further, we will look into how he was brought up. We might also follow the modern fashion of looking at his heredity, and so on. However, let us assume that into this action on the physical plane something has entered that is only to be found in the life of that person between his previous death and rebirth. This means that we must break off the chain of causes at his birth and pass over to something that resembles the prior arrangement made by the two people in my example. For what I have just described may have been predetermined hundreds of years before in the life between the last death and the birth into the present life. What was experienced then enters into our present actions and resolves.

Thus it is inevitable that unless we include the sphere of the spirit, we cannot find the causes of human actions at all, certainly not here on the physical plane, and that a search for causes similar to the way people look for causes of events in outer nature may go very wrong.

Yet if we look more closely at the way human action is interwoven with world processes, we will arrive at a satisfactory way of looking at things, even of looking at what we call freedom, although we have to admit that necessity exists also. But what we call the search for causes is perhaps for the time being limited most of all by the fact that on the physical plane one cannot penetrate to the place where causes originate.

Now we come to something else that has to be considered. The two concepts freedom and necessity are extremely difficult to grasp and even more difficult to reconcile. It is not for nothing that philosophy for the most part fails when it comes to the problem of freedom and necessity. This is largely due to the fact that human beings have not looked fairly and squarely at the difficulties these problems entail. That is why I am trying so hard to focus in these lectures on all the possible difficulties.

When we look at human activities, the first thing we see everywhere is the thread of necessity. For it would be biased to say that every human action is a product of freedom. Let me give you another hypothetical example. Imagine someone growing up. Through the way he is growing up, it can be shown that all the circumstances have gone in the direction of making him a postman, a country postman, who has to go out into the country every morning with the mail and deliver letters. He does the same round every day. I expect you will all agree that a certain necessity can be found in this whole process. If we look at all that happened to this lad in his childhood and take into account everything that had its effect on his life, we will certainly see that all these things combined to make him a mailman. So that as soon as there was a vacant position he was pushed into it of necessity, at which point freedom certainly ceased to exist, for of course he cannot alter the addresses of the letters he gets. There is now an external necessity that dictates the doors at which he has to call. So we certainly see a great deal of necessity in what he has to do.

But now let us imagine another person, younger perhaps. I will assume him to be younger so that I can describe what I want to describe without your objecting too strongly to the way he behaves. Well then, another, younger person, not out of idleness but just because he is still so young, makes up his mind to go with the mailman every morning and accompany him on his round. He gets up in good time every morning, joins the postman and takes part in all the details of the round for a considerable while.

Now it is obvious that we cannot talk of necessity in the case of the second fellow in the same sense as we can of the first. For everything the first fellow does must happen, whereas nothing the second fellow does has to be done. He could have stayed at home any day, and exactly the same things would have happened from an objective standpoint. This is obvious, isn't it? So we could say that the first man does everything out of necessity and the second everything out of freedom. We can very well say this, and yet in one sense they are both doing the same thing. We might even imagine the following. A morning comes when the second fellow does not want to get up. He could quite well have stayed in bed, but he gets up all the same because he is now used to doing so. He does with a certain necessity what he is doing out of freedom. We see freedom and necessity virtually overlapping.

If we study the way our second self lives in us—the one I told you about in the public lecture,¹ our actual soul nature, which will pass through the gate of death—it could, after all, be compared with someone accompanying the outer human being in the physical world. An ordinary materialistic monist would think this was a dreadful thing to say. But we know that a materialistic monist takes the view that people are terrible dualists if they believe water consists of hydrogen and oxygen. For them everything must be undifferentiated. They think it is nonsense to say that the monon “water” consists of hydrogen and oxygen. But we must not let monism deceive us.

The crux of the matter is that what we are in life really consists of two parts that come together from two different directions, and these two parts can indeed be compared with the oxygen and hydrogen in water. For our external physical nature comes through the line of heredity, bringing not only physical characteristics with it but also social status. It is not just our particular form with its nose, color of hair, and so on that we get from our father and mother, but our social position is also predestined through our ancestors' positions in life. Thus not only the appearance of our physical body, the strength of our muscles and so on, but our position in society and everything pertaining to the physical plane comes through the line of heredity from one generation to the other.

Our individual being originating in the spiritual world comes from a different direction, and at first it has nothing to do with all the forces in the stream of heredity through the generations, but brings with it causes that may have been laid down in us centuries before, and unites them on a spiritual level with the causes residing in the stream of heredity. Two beings come together. And in fact we can only judge the matter rightly if we regard this second being coming from the spiritual world and uniting with the physical being as a kind of companion to the first one. That is why I chose the example of the companion who joins us in everything. Our soul being in a certain sense joins us in the external events in a similar way.

The other person accompanying the postman did it all voluntarily. This cannot be denied. We could certainly look for causes, but compared with the necessity that binds the first postman the causes for the second man's actions lie in the realm of freedom. He did it all voluntarily. But look closely and you will see that one thing follows with necessity from this freedom. You will not deny that if the second person had accompanied the first person long enough, he would doubtlessly have become a good mailman. He would have easily been able to do what the man he accompanied did. He would even have been able to do it better, because he would avoid certain mistakes. But if the first fellow had not made these mistakes, the second man would not have become aware of them. We cannot possibly imagine that it would be of any use if the second fellow were to think about the first one's mistakes. If we think in a living way, we will consider this to be an utterly futile occupation. By specifically not thinking about the mistakes but joining in the work in a living way and just observing the proceedings as a whole, he will acquire them through life and will as a matter of course not make these mistakes.

This is just how it is with the being that accompanies us within. If this being can rise to the perception that what we have done is necessary, that we have accompanied it and will furthermore take our soul nature into the future in so far as it has learnt something, then we are looking at things the right way. But it must have learnt those things in a really living way. Even within this one incarnation, we can really confirm this. We can compare three people. The first person plunges straight into action. At a certain point in his life, he feels the urge to acquire self-knowledge. So he looks at the things he has always done well. He revels in what he has done well, and thus he decides to go on doing what he has always done well. In a certain sense, he is bound to do well, isn't he?

A second person is inclined to be more of a hypochondriac, and he looks more at his failings. If he can get over his hypochondria and his failings at all, he will get to the point of avoiding them. But he will not attain what a third could attain who says to himself, “What has happened was necessary, but at the same time, it is a basis for learning, learning through observation, not useless criticism.” He will set to work in a living way, not perpetuating what has already happened and simply carrying the past into the future, but will strengthen and steel the companion part of himself and carry it livingly into the future. He will not merely repeat what he did well and avoid what he did badly, but by taking both the good and the bad into himself and simply letting it rest there, he will be strengthening and steeling it.

This is the very best way of fortifying the soul: to leave alone what has happened and carry it over livingly into the future. Otherwise we keep going back in a luciferic-ahrimanic way over past happenings. We can progress in our development only if we handle necessity properly. Why? Is there a right way of handling things in this area? In conclusion, I want to give you something like an illustration of this too, about which I want you to think a little between now and next Tuesday. Then, taking this illustration as our starting point, we shall be able to get a little further with our problem.

Suppose you want to see an external object. You can see it, though you cannot possibly do so if you place a mirror between the object and yourself. In that case you see your own eyes. If you want to see the object, you must renounce seeing your own eyes, and if you want to see your own eyes, you must renounce the sight of the object. Now, by a remarkable interworking of beings in the world, it is true with regard to human action and human knowledge that all our knowledge comes to us in a certain sense by way of a mirror. Knowing always means that we actually know in a certain sense by way of reflection.

So if we wish to look at our past actions, we actually always look at them by putting what is in fact a mirror between the actions and ourselves. But when we want to act, if we want to have a direct connection between ourselves and our action, between ourselves and the world, we must not put up the mirror. We must look away from what mirrors ourselves. This is how it is with regard to our past actions. The moment we look at them, we place a mirror in front of them, and then we can certainly have knowledge of them. We can leave the mirror there and know them in every terrible detail. There will certainly be cases where this will be a very good thing. But if we are not capable of taking the mirror away again, then none of our knowledge will be any good to us. The moment we take the mirror away we no longer see ourselves and our past actions, but it is only then that they can enter into us and become one with us.

This is how we should proceed with self-observation. We must realize that as long as we look back, this review can only be the inducement for us to take what we have seen into us livingly. But we must not keep on looking at it, otherwise the mirror will always be there. Self-observation is very similar to looking at ourselves in a mirror. We can make progress in life only if we take what we learn through self-observation into our will as well.

Please take this illustration to heart, the illustration of seeing one's own eyes only if one renounces seeing something else, and of the fact that if one wants to see something else, one must renounce seeing one's own eyes. Take this illustration to heart. Then, taking this illustration as a basis, let us talk next Tuesday about right and wrong self-observation, and get nearer and nearer to the solution of our problems. In this most difficult of human problems, the problem of freedom and necessity and the interrelationship of human action and world events, it is certainly necessary that we face all the difficulties. And those who believe they can solve this problem before they have dealt with all the difficulties in fact are mistaken.

• 1. See lectures of December 3 and December 10, 1915, in Berlin in Aus dem mitteleuropäischen Geistesleben (Of Central European Cultural and Spiritual Life), GA/Bn 65. Not yet translated.

We are far too accustomed to dealing with big problems like necessity and freedom in the simplest possible concepts and trying, as it were, in the twinkling of an eye to cover as many aspects as we can. We usually do not consider that problems of this kind require that we realize how complicated many of the interrelationships are in the world, and that what takes place in one area must be looked at in an entirely different light, if we want to understand it, than something quite similar in another area of the world.

I would like first of all to remind you of something I mentioned here a short time ago in a different connection. When we see such significant world events as those of the present, we are very much inclined to look hastily for the most obvious causes and to expect to find the consequences in what will happen immediately afterward. With this kind of observation we do the facts a thorough injustice. When I mentioned this before, I drew your attention to the fact that at the beginning of the Middle Ages the Roman world and what is now Central Europe were in opposition to one another. From a historical point of view we can say lightly, “Well, we try to discover the particular political motives of ancient Rome that made those Romans feel compelled to carry out their campaigns against the countries to their north, against what is now Central Europe. And we can look for the consequences in subsequent developments.”

Yet if we look at things this way we do not by any means exhaust all the points that should be considered. For just imagine, if something different had happened in the way the tribes moved across Europe from east to west, or something had happened differently in the clash between the might of Rome and the Teutonic tribes, the whole subsequent development of Central Europe right up to modern times would have had a different appearance. All the various events we have seen taking place in the course of the centuries up to our time would have been different if, at that time, the world of the ancient Roman people, who owing to their particular quality and their position in world history could not fully take up Christianity, had not fused with the world of historically young peoples who had taken up Christianity with youthful energy.

Out of the way this encounter came about between a culturally overly mature people, such as the Romans were, and a historically young people, such as the Teutonic people were in those days, all the later events have developed right up to Goethe's Faust and all that nineteenth century culture has produced. Could things have happened the way they did if that encounter had not occurred? Here, we are looking at a stream permeated with a strict inner necessity moving through world events and spreading out over immense regions. How could anyone at that time possibly have even wanted to arrange his actions in keeping with what has happened on the physical plane through the centuries from then until now?

What is taking place today is in turn the starting point of universal configurations that will of course be connected with current happenings; yet, as far as events on the physical plane are concerned, these configurations will on the face of it look very dissimilar to what takes place compressed into a short time span. I only want to mention this so that you become aware that there are deep reasons behind what I already mentioned in connection with these studies, namely, that we do not get far by brooding and speculating about how things are connected in the world. Imagine a Roman or a Teuton of the third or fourth century speculating on the possible consequences of the battles taking place in that time, and how far he would have got. Not very far!

It is essential that we become aware that the deciding factors concerning things that have to happen and our recognition that they really ought to happen are not our speculations about their possible results or immediate consequences but other things. It is essential that we become aware that into the stream of events taking place on the physical plane there actually enter forces we sense as coming from the spiritual world, impulses about the particular effects of which we don't need to speculate in regard to what ought to happen on the physical plane. We must be in no doubt that looking at human action and world history shows clearly how necessary it is that we should extend our view beyond what lies on the physical plane. And after having prepared the way for these essentials, let us return to considering the human being as such.

In the last lecture I showed how impossible it is to acquire a right relationship to our past actions if we merely continue mulling them over. On the contrary, we must realize that what is past, including our own actions, belongs to the realm of necessity, and we must become familiar with the thought that what happened had to happen. That is to say, we acquire a right relationship to our actions if we can look objectively at our past achievements, looking at a successful or unsuccessful deed of ours with equal objectivity.

Now you are bound to have serious objections to what I have just said, for such objections do exist. Consider for a moment what I have just said, that when we have done something, it is over; that we establish a proper attitude to it by facing it objectively and not wishing we had acted differently. The serious objection is this: What about the whole domain that should play a great part in human life, the domain of repentance for a deed we have done? Obviously people are quite right in saying that repentance is necessary and has to take place. If we could manage to remove from the human soul the feeling of regret, we would be removing a moral impulse of the highest order. But are we not actually doing away with it when we simply look at all that has happened completely objectively?

Here indeed is a new difficulty, one that can be the starting point for endless misunderstandings. We will have to go to the heart of the question of freedom if we want to clear away this difficulty. You know, the great Spinoza said that when we look at the world, we can really only speak of necessity.¹ Freedom is fundamentally a kind of illusion. For if a ball is hit by another one, it has to go the way the second one goes. “If it had consciousness it would believe”—Philosophy of Spiritual Activity—“that it was going its way by choice. And it is the same with the human being,” says Spinoza.¹ “Even though he is in the clutches of necessity, just because he is conscious of what he does, he thinks he is free.”

But Spinoza is utterly and totally wrong. The matter is quite different. If we really flew off somewhere like the ball that follows only the necessity of propulsion, we would lose consciousness regarding everything to do with our flying and our acting out of necessity. We would be bound to be unconscious of it. Consciousness would be eliminated. And that is what happens. Just think of the speed with which you are moving through space according to the science of astronomy! You most certainly do not do that consciously. There, consciousness is cut out. You would not be capable of being conscious, for you would not be able to hurtle through space as the science of astronomy shows you do. Consciousness of everything a person does out of necessity has to be eliminated, and in such an obvious case as flying through space we can readily see that processes subject to necessity eliminate our consciousness.

However, we are not always so obviously conscious of things, but more or less unconscious of them. In real life it is very difficult to distinguish one from the other. Where one thing borders on another we cannot understand them as easily as in our case above. On the contrary, we could say, “In all matters where we are absolutely conscious, our actions cannot be other than free. If a ball that I struck really had consciousness, it would only fly in a certain direction if it received into its consciousness the impulse I gave it and directed its own course accordingly. The ball would first of all have to become unconscious in order merely to follow the momentum.”

If you think this over, you will make a distinction that we unfortunately do not make in ordinary life with regard to actions. The fact that we do not make this distinction has not only a theoretical significance but also a very practical one. We do not in fact distinguish between situations where we have been unsuccessful and cases that are immoral and bad. This distinction is an extraordinarily important one. It is absolutely true that we arrive at a correct estimate of an action that has not succeeded and has not turned out as we intended only if we can look at it objectively as though it had been absolutely necessary. For as soon as it is over it is in the realm of absolute necessity. If something does not work out and we feel uncomfortable later on because it has not worked out, it is absolutely true that our uneasiness arises from egotism. One would have liked to have been a better person, a more capable person. That is egotism expressing itself. And unless this egotism is completely rooted out, we cannot see the further development of our soul in as significant a light as we should.

But not every deed we have done is an unsuccessful one; there can also be a bad deed, a morally bad deed. Let us look at morally bad deeds, for instance, the following one, to choose a really striking example. Suppose someone has nothing to eat, or would like something for some other reason than hunger, and he steals. Stealing is a bad deed, isn't it? Does what we have said keep a person who has stolen something from feeling remorse for his deed? No, it does not! And why not? For the very simple reason that he did not seriously want to steal, but only wanted to possess what he stole. He could readily have cut out the stealing if you had given him what he wanted, or if he had been able to acquire it in some other way than by stealing.

This is a striking case, but in a certain way it applies to all forms of bad deeds. The bad deed as such is never really intended, and language has a subtle feeling for this. When an evil deed has been done, we say, “conscience stirs.” Why does conscience stir? Because the bad deed only now becomes a matter of knowledge. It comes up into consciousness. When the deed happened, the awareness was taken up by the motive on account of which the bad deed was done. A bad deed is not willed. And repenting means that the perpetrator becomes aware that he allowed his consciousness to be dulled at the time the bad deed was done. Whenever anyone does a bad deed, it is always a matter of his consciousness of the deed being dulled, and of his having to acquire an awareness of cases like the one in which his consciousness was dimmed. The whole point of punishment is to awaken forces in the soul that will enable consciousness to extend to the kind of situations that previously produced an elimination of consciousness.

Among the dissertations done at universities by philosophers who are also occupied with legal problems there is usually one on “the right to administer punishment.” Now a great many theories have been drawn up concerning reasons for giving punishment. The one and only possible reason can be found only when we realize that punishment is given for the sake of exerting the soul forces so that consciousness will extend into spheres it did not previously reach. This is also the task of repentance. Its purpose is precisely to let us observe the deed in such a way that the force of the repentance raises the action into consciousness. Then the consciousness will see the whole picture and will not be dulled the next time. You see what is involved. We must learn to discriminate properly between a fully conscious deed and one where the consciousness is dimmed.

On the other hand, if you have an action that does not fit the category of good or bad but was only unfortunate, an action in which something we had intended to do was not successful, there the point is that we ourselves can obscure our view of it if we judge it by bringing in the thought, the feeling, that it would perhaps have turned out differently if we had done this or that better, or if we ourselves had been different. Here, it is a matter of bearing in mind that if the eye is to see an object, it cannot see itself. It must hold up a mirror, for the moment the eye holds up a mirror to see itself, it cannot see the object. The moment a person broods about how differently he should have acted, the deed cannot act upon him with the kind of power that will further his soul development. For as soon as you set egotism between yourself and your deed, as implied in the fact that you would really like to have done the deed differently, you are doing exactly the same as when you hold a mirror in front of your eye so that it cannot see the object.

We can also put it another way. You know there are so-called astigmatic eyes, eyes in which the cornea are curved in different degrees in the perpendicular and the horizontal direction. Eyes like that have a peculiar kind of inaccurate vision. Such persons see specters merely because the cornea has an irregular curve. They see specters because they are actually perceiving their own eyes and not what is outside. If one perceives one's own eye because it is incorrectly constructed and has not become an eye that can completely eliminate itself and allow the object to affect it, one cannot perceive the object. If we fill our mind with the thought “You should have been different, and if you had only done this or that differently, it would all have turned out well,” it is just as though we had astigmatism and did not see the actual fact but distorted it. Yet a person must see the real facts allotted him, only then will they really be effective. Their effect on a person who is not filled with feeling about facts but allows the facts themselves to work upon him will be the same as the effect an outside object has on healthy eyes. The facts then continue their work in the soul.

One can say that anyone who has not yet acquired an objective view of past facts in which he was involved cannot see them in their objectivity and therefore cannot obtain from them what he ought to have for his soul. It is exactly as though our eyes were to remain at their stage of development in the sixth or seventh month of embryonic growth, while we ourselves were born at the proper time. We would see the whole world wrongly. If the eyes were not to continue developing during the sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth month, but were to stop short, they would not eliminate themselves in the process of seeing. We would see something entirely different from what we actually see when we develop normally.

Thus what we have done acquires its right value only when we have come to the point of being able to let it enter the stream of necessity, and when we can regard it as necessity. But as has been said, we must realize that we then have to make the distinction between what is successful and unsuccessful and what is called “good” or “bad” in a moral sense.

Broadly speaking, you will find all this analyzed, though more philosophically, in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity for there it is emphasized that human beings become free when they achieve the possibility of drawing impulses from the spiritual world. In one passage it is even expressly stated that impulses of free will come from the spiritual world. However, that does not exclude the utmost freedom in relation to certain events in which we very distinctly follow necessity. For we must distinguish between purely external physical necessity and spiritual necessity, although the two are basically pretty much the same. But they differ in regard to the position they occupy in world existence.

It is like this: Let us look again at a figure such as Goethe, who has appeared in world history and of whom one can say that we can follow up the education of a person such as he, and can see how he became what he was; we can then follow up the impulse that led him to achieve his Faust and his other poetical works. We can, as it were, regard all that Goethe achieved as if it were the result of his education. And then of course we see him as a genius. We certainly can. By doing this we remain focused on Goethe.

But we can do it another way. We can follow the spiritual development in the eighteenth century. We can pick out some details, for instance, that before Goethe had thought of writing a Faust, Lessing had projected one, so there was already one in existence.³ Thus we can say that the conception of Faust arose out of the spiritual problems and impulses of the time. We could say that if we examine Lessing's projected Faust and a number of other similar Faust versions, they all led to the famous Faust. By leaving Goethe out, we still come to Faust as though by necessity. Faust arose out of what preceded it. So we can arrive at Faust by following Goethe's development. One can look at Goethe from a more developmental point of view, or one can entirely leave him out and look in detail at how a type of poetry originated in Europe, such as the Song of the Nibelungs,⁴ and how it became compressed into the poem Parsifal:⁵ Parsifal, the striving human being, belonging to a certain period of evolution. One can look at how another line of development then came about, due to which the Parsifal concept was quite forgotten, and how that remarkable idea took hold of people that found its expression in the popular romance of Faust. This brought the appearance of a Faust about, what one might call a Parsifal of a later age. Goethe can be left out entirely.

Obviously we must not be pedantic; fifty years more or less do not matter. Time is elastic and can be stretched forward or backward, so that that does not interfere. It is only with things that go on in an ahrimanic way that time plays an important part. Things that come from the gods can always be moved forward or backward in time. But speaking generally we can say that even if the Frankfurt councilor Kaspar Goethe and his wife Aja had not had their son Wolfgang, or if he had died immediately after birth, for as you know he was ill at birth and nearly died, someone else would certainly have produced something similar to Faust. Similarly if Goethe had lived in the fourteenth century, he would certainly not have written Faust. These are unreal thoughts of course, but sometimes one has to consider them in order to realize the truth.

Thus we can now ask the question, “Did Goethe produce his Faust or any of his life's work out of freedom, or was it a question of absolute necessity?” The greatest freedom of all is to obey historical necessity! For if anyone imagines that his freedom could ever be endangered by what exists in the world as necessity, he ought also to say, “I want to create a poem, but I am a person who wants to work in total freedom! I want to disregard all the other poets who were unfree; I want to write a free poem. But I could not be free if I were to use the words of our language, for they came about through primeval necessity. That would not do! I will be an absolute champion of freedom. I will make up my own language!” And he sets about doing so. What he would actually achieve, of course, would be that everybody rejects him and his poem written in a nonexistent language, that with his freedom he would be bound to arouse everyone's resistance, which would express itself at first of course merely in incomprehension. From this you will see that there can be no talk of freedom, as it enters into the stream of events, being in any way encroached upon by the necessity present in the ongoing stream of world events.

We might also imagine a painter who wanted to be completely free saying, “I want to paint for sure, but I do not want to paint on a canvas or any other surface; I will paint freely. Do I first of all experiment on a given material? Not me! For then I would perpetually be compelled to comply with its surface.” The material has a very definite conformity to law, yet complying with it does not mean one is not free.

Particularly where major events in world history are concerned, it is obvious that when consciousness plays a part in our actions, what we can call necessity can join directly with freedom. As I have already said, in the fourteenth century Goethe would not have been able to create Faust, for it would have been absolutely impossible for Faust to have come about at that time. He would not have been able to write it. Why not? Because there is something we have to call an empty space in world events with regard to certain evolutionary impulses. Just as we cannot put more water into a cask if it is already full, or we can only put a certain quantity into it if it is already partly full, we cannot put anything we please into an already “full” age.

In the fourteenth century there was no space for anything like the kind of thing that came down from the spiritual world through a human being into the physical world in the form of Faust; no space, only a state of fullness. Events run their course in cycles, and when a cycle has been completed, an empty space appears for new impulses which can then enter the life of the world. A cycle has to be complete in regard to content, and then an empty space must occur again, before new impulses can come in. In the cultural period in which Goethe lived, an empty space had occurred for the impulses that came from the spiritual world to the physical world through him. Evolution really does proceed in waves: emptiness—a state of fullness to the point of completion—an ebbing—emptiness again. Then something new can come.

In the time between death and a new birth a human being plans his next incarnation according to this rhythm. He arranges it so that he encounters the particular level of emptiness or fullness in the physical world that is right for his impulses. Someone bringing with him from earlier incarnations impulses of the highest order that require a space must come at a time when there is an empty space. Whoever has the kind of impulses that need to meet with receptivity must incarnate at a time when there is a space to be filled. In many areas of course one thing will work in opposition to another. That is quite obvious. We see then that in a certain respect we choose—if we may use the word—on the strength of our inner qualities the period in which we come into the world. And on this depends the inner necessity governing our activities.

If you bear this in mind, you will no longer see any contradiction in the consecutive events and realize that Parsifal and so on, and Faust, take their turns, and then comes Goethe who creates a work that can just as well be understood in the succession of periods. You will find no contradiction any longer, because Goethe looked down from above and prepared in his inner being what could become tangible in his work. That is to say, when he was on the physical plane, he brought forth from his inner being what he had absorbed in those particular preceding centuries in which the stream of events had taken place.

Between the two statements “Goethe's work had to be produced at a definite time,” and “Goethe produced it out of freedom” there is just as little contradiction as there would be if I were to have a board and six balls in a row, then produce a small cup and say, “I will put the first ball into the cup, then the second and third and so on, and I pour them out over here.” And if now someone were to say, “But those balls lying over there are the same balls we had to start with,” someone else could reply, “No, they are the balls that came out of the cup.” Both statements can be true.

What took place in the course of time and ultimately led to Faust is what Goethe had absorbed in his inner being and what Goethe then expressed just because it had accumulated within him through looking down from the spiritual world. For we always take part in the whole evolution of the world. If we look at things this way, we can say “The moment we look into the past we have to regard past events themselves as a necessity. And if we look at ourselves and produce the past again as deeds of the present, so long as we do this consciously, we are still free in what we bring into the present of what was prepared in the past out of necessity.” Thus that person is most free of all who knows in full consciousness “what I am doing is nothing but spiritual necessity.” These things cannot be understood by pedantic logic but only by fully grasping reality in a living way.

There is still another approach that can help us understand this completely. We can ask ourselves the following. If we look at animals, we know they have a dimmed consciousness. I have often described that. Human beings have a level of consciousness in which freedom can come to expression. But what kind of consciousness do angels have, the beings immediately above human beings? What is the consciousness of the angels like?

It is actually very difficult to have an immediate perception of the consciousness of angels. When we as human beings want to do something, we consider what form our action is going to take. And if it does not work out on the physical plane as we imagined it should, we have failed. If someone sews two pieces of cloth together, and when he has finished it they come apart, the endeavor has not been a success. This can happen with a sewing machine. If things do not turn out as we had envisioned they would on the physical plane, we say the deed has miscarried. That is to say, people aim their will at something they picture happening on the physical plane. This is how our human willing proceeds.

But not in the case of angels. Their intention is everything. An angel's intention can be carried out in many different ways and the effect can still be exactly the same. This is quite true, though it is of course contrary to ordinary logic. In the artistic sphere only, and then only from the human point of view, can we acquire any feeling for this kind of consciousness. For you will always find that if the artist can take things in a human way—he may not always be in a position to do so, but if he can—he may possibly appreciate what turns out contrary to his expectations, even to the point of failure, and regard it to be of greater value than those things he did exactly as they should have been done. We then come a little closer to what is so extraordinarily difficult to grasp: that with the angels' consciousness, their will, everything depends on the intentions, and that these intentions may be realized in the most varied ways on the physical plane, even in polar opposite ways. That is to say, when an angel decides to do something, he chooses something quite definite, but not in the way that he says, “It has to look like this.” That is not in the least implied. He will not know what it looks like until it has happened.

We have seen, and I have drawn your attention to the fact, that this is even the case with the Elohim. The Elohim created light and saw that it was good. This means that what comes first for human beings, the mental image of what is on the physical plane, does not come first at all in the consciousness of spiritual beings above human beings. With them the intention comes first, and how it is to be carried out is quite another matter. Now in this respect humans are of course midway between animals and angels. Therefore, they tend on the one hand to descend to the unconsciousness of animals. Whenever a criminal deed occurs, it is essentially due to the animality in human beings. On the other hand, however, we also have a tendency to ascend to the consciousness of the Angeloi. We have within us the possibility of developing a higher consciousness, a consciousness beyond the ordinary one, in which intentions take on a different aspect than is normally the case.

Thus we can say, that if as human beings we get involved in some of life's important problems, we cannot then make plans in the ordinary way. Suppose that as a teacher—a proper teacher this time—you have a particular child to educate. Now an average person has his educational principles. He knows when to give punishment and when not to; perhaps that he should never give any punishment at all. He knows how to do that. But if you look at the matter from the point of view of a higher consciousness, you will not always judge in this way, but will leave everything in life's hands. You will wait for the results of observation. Your one intention will be to bring out all the latent talents. But these potential talents can be drawn out in various ways. This is the important thing.

If we take all these things into consideration, we will realize that in order to understand how necessity and freedom affect the human being we must observe both the external physical part and the inner part, first of all the etheric. I have already drawn your attention to the fact that our etheric body takes quite a different course from the physical body. Our physical body, as I once told you, is young to begin with. It then develops and grows older until it becomes senile. The etheric body does the opposite. Whereas we say we grow older when speaking of the physical body, we ought really to say we grow younger as regards the etheric body. If we want to use the words “old” and “young” for the etheric body, it is actually old when we are born, for it is all wrinkled up and small enough to fit us. When we reach a normal old age, and die, our etheric body has become so rejuvenated that we can hand it over to the whole world, where it can work again as a youthful force. While the physical grows older, the etheric body grows younger. It gets younger and younger.

If we die at an unusual time, die young, significant things can happen with the etheric body, such as those I have told you about. But it is not only with regard to aging that we see a difference between the physical and etheric bodies, but also with regard to necessity and freedom. When the human being is most enmeshed in necessity in what he does with the physical body or in general as a being on the physical plane, he is then freest in his etheric body, and the latter is then left entirely to itself. Whenever the etheric body is enmeshed in necessity, everything a person does on the physical plane is left to his own freedom. Thus, where the physical body is subject to necessity, the etheric body has a corresponding degree of freedom, and where the etheric body is subject to necessity, the physical body has a certain amount of freedom.

Let us look at what this means. You cannot say we are completely free to get up and go to bed whenever we want to. People get up in the morning and go to bed in the evening. There is no question of freedom there. This is part of the iron necessities of life. And even if you vary the time of getting up and going to bed, freedom is obviously out of the question. You also eat every day. There is no question of freedom there. You cannot resolve to do away with this necessity and try to be free by not eating, because you feel the taking in of food to be a compulsion. With regard to all these things a human being is tied to necessity. And why is he tied to necessity? Because the companion—as I called him last time—the inner self accompanying us through life on the physical plane and through all the compulsions connected with the physical plane, lives all the while in freedom.

But if we are to involve our inner being, our etheric body, in necessity, how are we to do it? By consciously submitting to what we recognize to be a necessity. For instance, by telling ourselves that the time has come when everyone who realizes he is ready for spiritual science ought to take it up. Nobody is forced to do this by an external necessity, of course. But we can see it as an inner necessity, because it is necessary in the present cycle of humanity. Thus out of our own free will we yield to necessity. There is no external pressure on the physical plane. We must follow compulsion out of inner freedom, as it were. The etheric body itself makes the resolve, which permeates it with necessity; it creates the necessity itself, thus acquiring the possibility of developing in freedom with regard to what happens on the physical plane. That is to say, we become acquainted with spiritual necessity, thereby making ourselves more and more free with regard to life on the physical plane.

You will now say, “Through the very fact that we find our way into a spiritual necessity we ought to become more and more free in life on the physical plane.” That is indeed so. By uniting ourselves with the spirit that streams through the world and letting it pass through us, we really do receive elements that set us free from the fetters of the physical world. We cannot of course free ourselves from what is allotted us by our previous incarnation, by our karma. But if we do not thus free ourselves through our knowledge of spiritual necessity from conditions of necessity on the physical plane, we remain bound to these after death, and have to carry them with us. We have to carry the necessities of the physical plane with us through the life between death and a new birth, and cannot free ourselves from them. But each moment in which we connect ourselves in our etheric body with the necessities of the spiritual plane, we become freer and freer of the necessities of the physical plane.

It is indeed so that if we can follow out of a free resolve a purely spiritual impulse, we become freer and freer from all that would otherwise fetter us to physical life, fetter us far beyond death. On the other hand, with regard to everything we are enmeshed in during physical life, and which is unalterable, the etheric body as such becomes freer and freer.

Thus we see how freedom and necessity interact on the physical plane and also in connection with the etheric body. The etheric body receives its freedom through the necessity of the physical plane, and has to recognize its own necessity. The physical body receives its freedom when the etheric body thus recognizes its necessity, and its necessity arises through its self-chosen karmic involvement in the events on the physical plane.

In this way we see the physical part of human beings, free in bondage, and the spiritual-soul part, bound in freedom, interacting organically. Freedom and necessity always interweave. It is quite impossible for us to be subject to pure necessity when we are fully conscious. Through the fact that we permeate a thing with consciousness, that is to say, accept it in full consciousness, freedom governs our soul. This is how we lift ourselves out of necessity in our soul and make ourselves free concerning matters we are conscious of. However, if we acknowledge with our minds that something is necessary, for instance, that the present time is the time for taking part in spiritual science, if we freely comply with a necessity, so to speak, does this give us a degree of unconsciousness? In a certain sense it does. We do become unconscious to the extent that we undertake to develop our consciousness to the point where we reach the gate through which streams and radiates what is to come from the spiritual world. We then receive this, and bend to the powerful forces coming to meet us from the spirit world. This is why in connection with working our way into spiritual necessity we speak of working our way up to the beings who bend down toward us.

Therefore we shall always stress that with our consciousness we soar toward the beings who permeate and pulse through us from the spiritual world and when we say, “We must of necessity accommodate ourselves to the impulses coming from the spiritual world,” we expect that at the same time the impulses of higher spiritual beings will descend into these our impulses. Thus a relative, deep unconsciousness arises, where we become aware of what is at work in us spiritually in the same way as we would be aware of an unconscious action where we are quite sure that the spirit is in us and the right thing to do is to obey, where we are privileged to obey.

We have now come back to our starting point. If we tried with our ordinary consciousness to mull over the many consequences that can arise from such significant events as those of the present, for instance—and I compared them earlier to the Roman-Teutonic wars—we would get nowhere. However, the moment we can tell ourselves we do not want to find the right solution through mulling them over but through giving way to the spiritual impulse and letting it stream in, we do not need to brood. For then we know that if only we let these spiritual impulses take hold of us, they lead us to the right solution, to spiritual currents that even go beyond the centuries, beyond millennia. This is what is important.

Then we see that we no longer need to think that things must go like this today and like that tomorrow for such and such to happen, for we will realize that we are now living in the particular epoch of humanity in which the further evolution of earthly existence can progress in the right way only if spiritual impulses coming from the spiritual world are directly taken up. That is how it is. And the things that happen externally on the physical plane must of necessity unite with these impulses in the right way. Then the right things will happen. Then we shall know, without mulling over what will happen tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, that what will really come about will be that the souls now passing through the gate of death will continue to work on, both in their etheric bodies and as souls, to the extent that the thoughts of those human beings who will in the future populate the blood-stained battlefields of the earth join with them, so that something will arise that will live for centuries. But we must have a direct awareness of this in the spirit of these words we have often heard:

Out of the courage of the fighters,
Out of the blood of battles,
Out of the grief of the bereaved,
Out of the peoples' deeds of sacrifice
There shall arise spirit fruit
If only souls, in spirit-mindfulness,
Will reach out to the spirits' realm.

The important thing to realize is that from a certain point in the present our souls must become conscious of the spirit, souls that have the will to direct their consciousness toward the spirit. Then, from what is happening today, the right things will come for the future. To make this thought our own, steadfast confidence is needed, such as those beings have whom we count as members of the hierarchy of the angels. For angels act out of that kind of confidence. They know that if they have the right intentions, the right things will come of them; not because they envision that future events should take a definite form, but because they have the right intentions. These right intentions, however, can only be grasped spiritually. And only through thinking in the way of spiritual science can we find the way to grasp something spiritually, as we have endeavored to do.

• 1. Baruch Spinoza, 1632–1677, Dutch pantheist philosopher. The example of a stone being pushed into motion can be found in his sixty-second letter of 1674.
• 1. Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1986).
• 3. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, 1729–1781, German poet, playwright, and critic.
• 4. Nibelungenlied, a Middle High German epic of about 1200, telling of the life of Siegfried, his marriage to Kriemhild, his wooing of Brunhild on behalf of Gunther, his murder by Hägen, and the revenge of Kriemhild.
• 5. Parsifal, a hero of mythology and various epics and romances, especially the one by Wolfram von Eschenbach.

I have a few things to add to the four lectures on freedom and necessity which more or less form a connected whole. Let us take another look at one of our basic truths of spiritual science, the structure of the human being that we have become so well acquainted with. We consider man as a synthesis of four members: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the I. If we confine ourselves to what is in the physical world, to the part of the human being that is given, we can state that in our ordinary waking condition we have in the first place the physical body. We know our physical body for the very reason that we can obviously observe it externally with our senses, and everyone else in the physical world can observe it in the same way and has to agree with us that the physical body exists. Therefore, in the physical world this physical body can be perceived from outside.

A simple reflection can convince you that you cannot observe what we usually call the etheric body. It escapes ordinary physical observation. The astral body also escapes ordinary physical observation, and the I even more so, for the essence of the I, as we have often said, can be so little observed externally that human beings cannot even name it from outside. If someone were to call out the word “I” to you, you would never come to the conclusion that he could mean your I. He can only mean his own I. The I as such is never named from outside. Yet it is obvious that we know something about it. We name it from within. Thus we can say after all that while the etheric and the astral body are inaccessible on the physical plane, as things stand now, the I is not inaccessible. We refer to it by saying “I.” Nevertheless, it remains a fact that the I cannot be seen in the same way as the physical body or any other physical object. It cannot be perceived at all by the senses.

What does the fact that we know something about the I and that we come to the point of naming it actually tell us about the I? Philosophers often say, “Human beings have direct certainty of the I. They know firsthand that the I exists.” In fact, there are philosophers who imagine they know merely from philosophy that the I is a primary being, that it cannot be dispersed or die. Yet anyone with sound thinking will immediately respond to this philosophical opinion by saying, “However much you prove to us that the I cannot be dissolved and therefore cannot fade away, it is quite enough that after death, probably for eternity, the I is to be in the same condition it is in between falling asleep and waking up.” Then of course we would no longer be able to speak of an I. Philosophers are mistaken if they imagine there is any reality in the I they speak of. If we speak of something that really exists, we are speaking of something entirely different.

Between falling asleep and awakening the I is not there, and a person cannot say “I” to himself. If he dreams about his I, it sometimes even strikes him as though he is encountering a picture of himself, that is to say, he looks at himself. He does not call himself “I” as he does in ordinary daily life. When we wake up, it is in regard to our true I as though we were to strike against the resistance of our physical body. We know, don't we, that the process of waking up consists of our I coming into our physical body. (Our astral body also does so, but for the moment we are interested in the I.) The experience of coming in feels like hitting our hand against a solid object, and the counterthrust, so to speak, that this experience engenders is what brings about our consciousness of our I. And throughout our waking day we are not really in possession of our I, for what we have is a mental image of our I reflected back from our physical body. Thus what we normally know of the I from philosophy is a reflection, a mirror image of the I. Do we have nothing more than this ego reflection? Well, this reflection obviously ceases when we go to sleep. The I is no longer reflected. Thus on falling asleep our I would really disappear. Yet in the morning when we wake up, it enters our physical body again. So it must have continued to exist.

What can this I be, then? How much of it do we possess so long as we are active solely on the physical plane? If we investigate further, we have, to begin with, nothing of this I within the physical world except will, acts of will. All we can do is will. The fact that we are able to will makes us aware of being an I. Sleep happens to be a dimming of our will; for reasons we have often discussed we cannot exert our will during sleep. The will is then dimmed. We do not will during sleep. Thus what is expressed in the word I is a true act of will, and the mental picture we have of the I is a reflection that arises when our will impinges on our body. This impact is just like looking into the mirror and seeing our physical body. Thus we see our own I as an expression of will through its effect on the body. This gives us our mental image of the I. Therefore, on the physical plane the I lives as an act of will.

So we already have a duality on the physical plane: our physical body and our I. We know of our physical body because we can picture it with our observation outside in space; and we know of our I through the fact that we can will. Everything else underlying the physical body cannot at first be discovered through physical observation. We can see how the physical body has developed and what it is composed of. Yet the description we have to give of this composition in the course of our passage through the Saturn, sun, moon, and earth evolutions remains a mystery if we consider the physical body only. Everything underlying the physical body is a mystery to physical observation in the physical world.

How the will enters our physical body, or enters into what we are, is a further mystery. For you can become conscious of your will, can't you. Therefore, Schopenhauer¹ regarded the will as the only reality, because he had an inkling that in the will we actually become conscious of ourselves. But of how this will enters into us we know nothing at all on the physical plane. On the basis of the physical world, we know only that in our I we can take hold of our will. I pick up this watch, but how this act of will passes through the etheric body into the physical body and actually turns into a picking up of the watch remains a mystery even for the physical body. The will descends straight from the I into the physical body. Nothing else remains in the I but the inner feeling, the inner experience of the will.

The way I have described this here has actually been applicable to the greater part of humanity only for the past few centuries, and this fact is usually overlooked. As for us, we have studied the matter so much that it ought to have become second nature with us. If we look back to the middle of medieval times, it is pure fancy to imagine that people lived then in exactly the same way as they do today. Humanity evolves, and the way human beings relate to the world changes in the different epochs.

If we go back beyond the fifteenth and fourteenth centuries, we find many more people than we do now who not only knew of the physical body but who really knew that something lived in the physical body that we nowadays call the etheric body, people who actually perceived something of the aura of the physical body. By the Middle Ages of course these were only the last remnants of an ancient perception. Even in the tenth century, though, people did not look into a person's eyes like we do today when we simply see the physical eyes. When they looked at other people's eyes, they still saw something of the aura, the etheric. They had a way of seeing uprightness or falsehood in the eyes, not through any kind of external judgment but through direct perception of the aura around the eyes. It was also like this with other things.

In addition to perceiving the aura of human beings, people then saw it to a far greater extent than now in animals and also in plants. You all know the description in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds that if we observe one seed, we see it shining differently from other grains of seed.² Nowadays this perception can only be achieved through training, but in earlier centuries it was still quite an ordinary, everyday phenomenon. People did not first have to investigate, possibly with a microscope, what plant a seed came from—even that can in many cases no longer be done today—for they were able to determine such things from the light aura surrounding the seed. And in the case of minerals too, you will find descriptions in old writings classifying them in a certain way according to their value in the world. When the ancients looked at gold, what they described was not invention, for to them gold really appeared in a different way from silver, for instance. When they connected gold with sunlight and silver with moonlight, this was really founded on observation. When they said, “Gold is pure sunlight that has been condensed, silver is moonlight,” and so on, they expressed what they saw in the same way as they still saw elemental life in the outside world, the elemental aura that modern people have lost sight of because modern mankind has to evolve to freedom, which can only be acquired by a complete restriction of observation to what is physically objective.

Just as human beings have lost the ability to see these auras, they have also lost another ability. Today, we must acquire a feeling for how very different it was when the ancients spoke of the will. They had much more of a feeling of how the will, which nowadays lives only in the I, entered the organic realm, the astral body as we would say today. They still felt the I continuing on into the astral body. This can be explained in a quite specific field.

The fact that painters believe they can no longer manage without a model is due to their having totally lost the faculty of experiencing in any way at all how the I continues on into the organism, into the astral body. Why is it often precisely the old portraits that people admire today? Because they were not painted as they now are, where the artist merely has a sitter to copy, and is duty bound to copy everything that is there. In the past people knew that if a person forms the muscles round his eyes in a particular way, then what lives in his I enters in a very definite way into his astral body and produces this form of the muscles. If we were to go back as far as ancient Greece, we would be quite wrong to imagine that the ancient Greeks used a model for the wonderful forms they created. They had no models. If a particular curve of the arm was required, the sculptor, knowing how the will brought the I into the astral body, created the curve out of this experience. As this feeling for what was going on in the astral body faded away the necessity arose to adhere as strictly to a model as is customary today.

The essential difference is that in fairly recent times human beings have come to the point where they see the outer world devoid of all its aura and see themselves inwardly with no awareness of the fact that the will ripples into the astral body and throughout the whole organism. Things have only been like this for a short while.

After a much longer time has elapsed, a new age will arrive for humanity. Then even more will have been taken away from both the outer aspect of the physical plane and from man's inner awareness. We know that at present we are only a few centuries into the fifth post-Atlantean epoch that began in the fourteenth century, for we count the fourth post-Atlantean epoch from approximately the founding of Rome till the fifteenth century, and the fifth post-Atlantean epoch from the fifteenth century till as long again; so we are now only in the first third of it. But mankind is steering toward an entirely different kind of perception. We are moving toward a time when the outer world will be far more bleak and empty. Nowadays when a person looks at nature, he believes it to be green and the vault of heaven to be blue. He sees nature in such a way that he believes the colors to be the outcome of a natural process.

In the sixth post-Atlantean epoch he will no longer be able to believe in the colors of nature. At present the physicists only talk about there being nothing outside us but vibrations, and that it is these that, for example, bring about red in us. What the physicists dream of today will come true. At present they only dream of it, but it will then be true. People will no longer be able to distinguish properly between a red face and a pale one. They will know that all those things are caused by their own organism. They will consider it a superstition that there are colors outside that tint objects. The outer world will be grey in grey and human beings will be conscious of the fact that they themselves put the colors into the world. Just as people today say, “Oh, you crazy anthroposophers, you talk about there being an etheric body, but it is not true, you only dream it into people!” People who then see only the outer reality will say to the others who still see colors in their full freshness, “Oh, you dreamers! Do you really believe there are colors outside in nature? You do not know that you are only dreaming inside yourself that nature has these colors.” Outer nature will become more and more a matter of mathematics and geometry. Just as today we can do no more than speak of the etheric body, and people in the world outside do not believe that it exists, people in the future will not believe that the capacity to see colors in the outer world has any objective significance; they will ascribe it purely to subjectivity.

Humanity will have a similar experience in regard to the relationship of the will in their J to the outer world. They will reach the point where they will have only the very slightest awareness of the impulses that come to expression in their will. They will have scarcely any awareness of the unique personal experience of willing anything out of the I. What is willed out of the I will only have a very faint effect on a person. If all that mankind receives by nature continues along the lines described, then in order to do anything at all people will need either long practice or outer compulsion. People will not get up of their own accord, but will have to learn it until it becomes a habit. The mere resolve to get up will not make the slightest impression. This would be an abnormal condition at present, but natural evolution as such is tending in this direction. People will have less belief in moral ideals. Outer dictates will be necessary to activate the will.

This would be the natural course of events, and those who know that what comes later is prepared beforehand know that the sixth epoch is being prepared in the fifth. After all, you can see with half an eye that a large part of humanity is tending in this direction. People are aiming more and more at having everything drummed into them, at being spoon-fed, and consider it the right procedure to be told what to do. As I said, we are now roughly in the first third of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, i.e., in an age in which—although the physicists already have the ideal of the sixth age—there is still the belief that colors really do exist outside, and that it is a human attribute to have a red or a pale face. Nowadays we still believe this. We can of course allow ourselves to be persuaded by the physicists or physiologists that we imagine colors, but we do not really believe it. We believe that the nature we live in on the physical plane has its own colors.

We are in the first third of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which will obviously have three thirds. During these three thirds post-Atlantean humanity has to pass through various experiences, the first one being that people have to become fully conscious of what I have just described. People must realize fully that in their considerations of the physical body they have completely lost sight of what is behind the physical, totally lost sight of it in all respects. In the second third of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—if spiritual science has been successful—there will be more and more people who will know with certainty that something more, something of an etheric-spiritual nature, is bound up with what we see around us. People will begin to be conscious of the fact that what existed in earlier times for clairvoyance, and is now no longer a part of our relation to the world, must be rediscovered in a different way. We will not be able to rediscover the aura that used to be seen, but if people accept and practice exercises, such as those given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, they will realize that they can rediscover along a different path that an auric element surrounds and interpenetrates the human being and everything else in the world. People will acquire a consciousness of this once again.

People will also become aware that they are able to grasp moral impulses once again. However, they will have to take hold of them with a stronger resolve than they do today, for there is a natural tendency in the will to gradually lose its impelling power. The will must be taken hold of more firmly. This kind of will can be developed if people are determined to exercise the strong thinking necessary for the understanding of the truths of spiritual science. People who do understand these truths will be pouring more strength into their will, and they will therefore acquire, instead of a will that is deteriorating to the point of paralysis, a powerful will, able to act freely out of the I.

As humanity progresses, merely natural development will be counteracted by the efforts people make: on the one hand, efforts to do the exercises of spiritual science in order to become aware once more of the aura, and on the other hand, efforts to strengthen themselves by means of the impulses coming from spiritual science for the invigorating and activating of the will.

It is actually as follows. What has to be developed by spiritual science in the second third of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch does not yet exist at all. What is the position of human beings today when they observe the external world? And how do scientists stand in this regard? It is very instructive to look at the position of present-day science, especially present-day scientists—of course only in so far as this science presents the natural relation of human beings to their environment. When they look at outer, physical nature, whether it is the mineral, plant, animal, or human kingdom, neither modern scientists nor ordinary human beings have the power really to enter into what they observe. Physicists carry out experiments and then describe them. But they do not venture to fathom the mysteries of what they are describing. They do not feel able to search more deeply into the processes the experiments reveal. They remain on the surface. In relation to the outer world they are in exactly the same situation as you are when you are on a different plane when dreaming. You dream because your etheric body radiates the experiences of the astral body back to you. Anyone observing nature or making an experiment nowadays also observes what it radiates back to him, what it presents to him. He only dreams of nature. The moment he were to approach nature as spiritual science does, he would wake up. But he does not want to. In this first third of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch people only dream of nature. Human beings must wake up! Occasionally someone does wake up out of his dream, and says, “What is out there is no mere dream; there is something living within it.”

Schopenhauer's philosophy was an awakening of this kind, but he did not know what to do with it. It gave offense to those who philosophized cleverly in the modern way such as the eminent philosopher Bolzano of Bohemia did in the first half of the nineteenth century.³ If you see his copy of Schopenhauer, you will find that he wrote in the margin, “Sheer madness!” Of course, it struck him as sheer madness, because the following statement was really made out of a kind of delirium, “There is something resembling will in outer nature.”

And when modern science remains true to itself and, as it were, draws its own conclusions, what will it arrive at? Dreaming about the physical body! It has no inkling that there is something besides the physical body, otherwise it would have to speak of an etheric body, an astral body, and an I. It does not want to grasp reality, however, but only what presents itself. The modern physicist or physiologist feels like a somnambulist. He is dreaming and if someone shouts at him, which happens if someone talks to him about spiritual science, he falls down just like a somnambulist who is shouted at. And the impression he has is, “I am now in a void!” He cannot change immediately and has to go on dreaming. Just when he thinks he is most awake in relation to external nature he is dreaming most of all.

What will be the outcome? The modern physicist or physiologist will gradually lose all possibility of finding anything in the outer world except for his mental images of it. He will even gradually lose the capacity to form any idea of anything beyond his own mental images of the outer world. What is left for him if he relinquishes the human body to the scientist? The human body is there in front of him and he observes it in great detail, but he leaves it to the scientist or the medical profession to tell him what changes take place if one or another part does not function normally. He dissects this physical body very carefully. But he stops at that and has no notion that there is anything beyond it. In this physical body there is no trace of an I or of will.

What would this scientist actually have to do? He would have to deny the 1 and the will altogether and say, “There is no will, no trace of it exists in the human being, for we cannot find it.” Down in the organism is where the will is hidden, imperceptibly. As we have said, it is only taken hold of, felt, and experienced in the I. Thus, the will would have to be shown in order to prove the existence of the I. That is to say, if a scientist who is only dreaming now were to be absolutely honest, we would hear him say to his audience, “When we speak of the human being, we ought really to speak of will. To us scientists that is an impossibility. The will is nothing. It is an absolutely unfounded hypothesis. It does not exist.” That is what he ought to say if he were to be quite consistent. He would dream of external processes and deny the will.

I have not merely invented what I have just told you. It is an inevitable conclusion of the modern scientific view. If a scientist were to follow his way of thinking to its logical conclusion, he would arrive at what I have just told you. It is not mere invention on my part. I have brought along as an example the Introduction to Physiological Psychology in Fifteen Lectures written by the celebrated Professor Dr. Ziehen of Jena.⁴ He endeavors here to describe what is manifest in the human being as a creature of body and soul. In the course of these lectures, he speaks about all the aspects of the sensations of smell, taste, hearing, sight, and so on. I will not bother you with all that, but will just discuss a few passages in the fifteenth lecture about the will. There you will find statements such as the following:

From the countless material stimuli of the outer world we isolated stimuli of the cortex which correspond in the psychological realm to sensations. We then followed these sensations to the brain cortex along the associative fibers into the motor zone from where the material stimulus was led once again towards the muscular system at the periphery where it caused muscular contraction. This transcortical process corresponded on a soul level to the association of ideas, and the resultant movement we designate psychologically as action. We were able to derive the latter sufficiently satisfactorily from the sensation and from the memory pictures of previous sensations, mental images functioning according to the laws of the association of ideas, to be able to pursue the psychic process to its final stage. At this point, however, we encounter a hypothesis that used to be almost universally taught by psychology and which the ordinary human understanding has always arrived at apparently unconsciously. I refer to the assumption of a distinct will as the cause of our actions.

Ziehen goes on to show that there is no sense in speaking of such a will, that physiologists do not find anything in any way corresponding to this word “will.” He also shows in the particular way he interprets the effects of forces that one might call depravity of will, that there too, it is not a matter of will but of something quite different, so that we cannot speak of will at all.

You see how consistent this is. If people get no further than dreaming of the external physical world, they cannot arrive at the will. They cannot find it at all. All they can do if they create a world view, is to deny the will as such and say, “So there cannot be a will.” The so-called monists of our time do this often enough. They deny the will. They say the will as such does not exist at all. It is only a mythological creation. Ziehen expresses himself a little more cautiously of course, but he still arrives at some strange results though he will no doubt take care not to take them to the ultimate conclusion. I would like to read you a few more statements from his last lecture, from which you will see that although he drew the conclusions, he nevertheless still plays around with the nonexistence of the will. For he says, “What about the concept of responsibility?”

He cannot find the will, but in answer to the question about the concept of responsibility he says,

This does indeed contradict physiological psychology. For this told us that our actions are based on absolute necessity, (i.e., in the physical sense) and are the necessary product of our sensations and memory pictures. Thus we can blame a person for a bad deed just as little as we can blame a flower for its ugliness. Therefore an action is still bad—also in a psychological sense—but not directly blameworthy. The terms blame and responsibility, to put it briefly, are a religious or social matter. So we can disregard them here. To recapitulate, psychology does not deny absolute laws of aesthetics and ethics, provided they are seen to be in another sphere, but psychology itself is confined to the empirical realm, to empirical laws only.

This is perfectly natural. If external nature is only dreamt about, then we see some people doing one good deed after another and others who keep on attacking people for no reason at all. Just as one flower is beautiful and another ugly according to natural law, one person may be what is called a good person. But on no account should the goodness or hatefulness be explained as meaning more than a flower's beauty or ugliness. So the logical conclusion is,

We can blame a person for a bad deed just as little as we can blame a flower for its ugliness. Therefore an action is still bad—also in a psychological sense—but not directly blameworthy. The terms blame and responsibility, to put it briefly, are a religious or social matter. [Not a matter of understanding but purely a religious or social matter.] So we can disregard them here. To recapitulate, psychology does not deny absolute laws of aesthetics and ethics, provided they are seen to be in another sphere, but psychology is confined to the empirical realm, to empirical laws only.

Ziehen continues to express himself cautiously, and does not yet create a world view. For if one does form a view of life from this, there is no longer any possibility of holding a person responsible for his actions if one takes the stand of the author of this book, this lecture. This is what comes of people dreaming about the outer world. They would wake up the moment they accept what spiritual science says about the outer world. But just think, these people have a science that makes them actually admit that they know nothing at all about what points the way from the external body to the human I. Yet what is bound to be living in the I? First of all the laws of aesthetics, second the laws of logic. All these must live in the I. Everything that leads to the will must live in the I. There is nothing in this science that can in any way live as a real impulse in the will. There is nothing of that sort in this science. Therefore something else is necessary.

If this science were the only one the world had today, you can imagine people saying, “There are ugly flowers and there are beautiful flowers and nature necessarily makes them so. There are people who murder others, and there are people who do good to others, and they also are like that by nature.” Obviously, everything appealing to the will would have to be discarded. So why is it not discarded? You see, if we no longer take the I into account, and if we do not accept it as part of what we can know through observation of our world, we must find it in some other way. If we do not want to continue to uphold “social or religious laws,” as Ziehen does, we must somehow get people to accept them in another way. That is to say, if we dream with regard to the outer world and with regard to what we see, then what we will has to be stimulated in some other way.

And this way can only be the opposite of dreaming, namely, ecstasy. What lives in the will must enter into it in such a way that the person under no circumstances stops to think about it or realize fully that it is an impulse of will. That is to say, what has to be aimed for in an age like this is that a person does not attempt to have a clear view of the will impulses he accepts, but they should work in him—and this is a fitting image—like wine does when a person is drunk. An impulse that is not brought to full consciousness works in the same way as intoxicating drink does when it robs a person of the full possession of his wits. That is to say, we live in an age when one has to renounce a really close examination of will impulses. Religious denominations would like to provide impulses, but these must not be examined at any price. On no account ought the motivating ideas be submitted to objective scrutiny. It should all enter into the human being by means of ecstasy.

We can actually prove this all over again in the present time. Just try with an open mind to really listen to the way religious impulses are spoken of nowadays. People feel most comfortable if they are told nothing about why they should accept one or the other impulse, but are spoken to in such a way that they become enthusiastic, fired up, they are given ideas they cannot fully grasp and that surround them with mystery. And the most highly acclaimed speakers are the ones who fill people's souls with fire, fire, and yet more fire, and who pay least attention to whether everybody has conscious hold of himself. The dreamers come along and say, “We examine the Gospels. Even if we go so far as to admit to the existence of Jesus of Nazareth, we find no evidence at all that there was in fact a supersensible being dwelling in him.” We need only remember how many dreamers there are who simply deny the existence of Christ because it cannot be proved on the external physical plane. On the other hand, there are theologians who cannot prove it either, and who therefore speak about the Christ in as vague a way as possible, appealing as much as possible to the feelings, drives, and instincts.

An example of this kind of thing took place in a strange way in public very recently. On the one hand, there were the dreamers—it began with Eduard von Hartmann in the realm of philosophy, and Drews made a lot of propaganda out of it—and these dreamers went so far as to deny the whole message of the testaments by showing that the Mystery of Golgotha is not a historical occurrence.⁵ Certainly, it cannot be proved on the plane of external history but has to be approached on the spiritual plane. Now these dreamers had opponents. Read all the literature on this issue and you will see no sign of any thought, no sign of anything scientific; the whole thing consisted of words one can only describe as drunken and intoxicating words. No sign of thorough study! The opponents are appealing the whole time to what will excite unmotivated instincts. This is how things stand in our life of soul. On the one hand, there is dreaming, which is supposed to provide a world view grounded in natural science, and on the other hand, there is intoxication, which people are supposed to acquire from the religious confessions.

Dreaming and intoxication are the principal factors controlling mankind today. And just as the only way to stop people from dreaming is to wake them up, the only way to overcome intoxication is to look at our inner impulses in total clarity. This means giving people spiritual science that, far from making the soul drunk, awakens the soul to spiritual impulses. But people are not yet ready to go along with this. I have said before that if we offer the challenge of spiritual science to a hardened monist of the Haeckelian school, one who desires only to prove his monism on the basis of natural science, he falls on his face with a thud, metaphorically speaking, he falls down with a loud thud as a matter of course. That is the obvious thing to happen, for he immediately feels he is in a void and his consciousness is completely bowled over. If you take an ordinary person, someone who wants to base his whole world view on natural science, they mean nothing to him; he cannot understand a thing. If he is honest, he will say, “Here we go again, it makes my head spin.” Which means he plops down with a thud.

Concerning intoxication, if someone allows himself to sober up properly, it is a straightforward matter of embarking on a truly ennobled inner religious life. The fact that he can familiarize himself with the impulses coming from spiritual science will enable his belief to deepen into concrete concepts. But if you approach someone who does not want to awaken his soul to the ideals of spiritual science, yet you bring them to him and want him to accept them, that is to say, if you bring spiritual science to someone who is completely under the sway of modern theology, he will sober up, in a strange way, like people who have been drunk and have not quite recovered from the organic aftereffects. He gets a hangover. You can really notice it.

If you observe theologians nowadays—and we can do this especially well in the Dornach area where the theologians take more notice of it—if you observe them in cases where spiritual science is familiar to them but still undigested, and if you listen to them, you will find that all they say is basically a kind of hangover, caused by the fact that they ought to acquire ideas and knowledge about spiritual matters, yet still prefer to be drunk with ecstasy over them and to introduce them into people's mental organization in an entirely unmotivated way. They shrink from becoming sober because they cannot bear the thought that it will not bring them enlightenment but a throbbing headache.

These things must absolutely be seen in their historical necessity. If it can come about that spiritual science brings people at least the rudiments of an understanding of how to regain in a new way the sight of what has been lost, how to motivate the will once again, then humanity will acquire in freedom what nature can no longer give us. You see then that a certain necessity underlies our program. The kind of lecture I gave last Friday and have often given, drawing your attention to the development of thinking on the one hand and the development of will on the other, showed how thinking proceeds until we discover the will in it and come out of ourselves through thinking. It also showed how we find the other spectator on the other side, and demonstrates that through the very fact that we bring thinking to the point where we can emerge out of ourselves, we will have a chance not to fall flat on our faces when we are shouted at and awakened.

We fall down only because we cannot understand * outer processes and have nothing to hold on to when we are awakened from our dreams. What one has to hold on to, so as not to get into the kind of inwardly inorganic, disordered state we call a hangover, is what one can acquire through developing one's thinking. This comes about when the inner spectator I spoke of can emerge unhindered from our inner being. Thus what should be imparted to humanity above all is intimately connected with the real inner laws of human progress.

Yet if you think about what has been said here today and often before, and bear in mind its implications, you will avoid certain obvious mistakes. Some mistakes, of course, will be extremely difficult to avoid, and I will point out just one of these today. Again and again individuals among us say, “There are, for instance, the followers of this or that confession,” assuming in this case that we live among a more or less Catholic population “who have their Catholic priest.” Our friends very often believe that if they explain to this priest that we do represent Christianity, speak about the Mystery of Golgotha in the right way, and do not deny the existence of Christ, we will be able to gain the priest's friendship.

This way of thinking is completely wrong. You will never win these people over by showing them that we do not deny what they are duty bound to preach. We simply cannot do that. Actually you would get on better with these people if you were in a position to say that you are people who do not believe in Christ. Then they would say, “You see, there are people who do not believe in Christ. They do not belong to us. We shall stick to our community who are content to learn from us about Christ through ecstasy.” They do not say that, but that is how they act. Yet when other people besides them affirm the existence of Christ and even maintain they have positive knowledge of Christ, and we become the sort of people who follow our own way, and who want to present Christ in a different way from them: they then become far worse enemies than they would be if our friends were to deny the existence of Christ. For they consider it their privilege to present Christianity, and our mistake is precisely to present it in another way.

Therefore you only make certain theologians furious with spiritual science if you tell them, “We speak of the Christ.” You would make them far less angry if you were able to say—which of course you are not—“We deny the existence of Christ.” What infuriates them is that we refer to Christ in a different context. Out of the best intentions in the world our friends will very easily say, “What do you want? We are on a completely Christian footing.” That is the worst thing you can possibly say to them, for that is just what goes so much against the grain with them.

This touches again on an area where we encounter freedom and necessity in a very special way. The main thing I keep trying to bring home to people is that we should not take these ideas lightly. Freedom and necessity are among the most important human concepts, and you have to realize time and again that we have to gather a great number of ideas to arrive at a more or less correct understanding of the concepts of freedom and necessity.

Where would it lead if present-day humanity were to follow nothing but natural necessity? People would obviously dream more and more, until they had nothing left but a dreary grey in grey, and they would become less and less able to use their will, until they: reached actual paralysis of the will. That is necessity. Out of the freedom of spiritual science people must obviously work to counteract this; for the time is now dawning when we will have to acquire our essential freedom out of an inner necessity which we ourselves acknowledge. Of course we might all say, “We are not going to concern ourselves with what is supposed to happen.” In that case things would come about as described. Yet that things can be different is a necessity, a necessity, however, that can only be taken hold of through understanding. We might call it a free necessity, a genuine and absolute necessity.

Here again the concepts freedom and necessity come very close together. It might sometimes have seemed as though I was only playing with the words “dreaming and intoxication.” That was most certainly not the case. You can find individual examples, and I could tell you many, many more, of the way people speak, as though in a kind of dream, about outer reality. For instance, a particular objection is often raised against what I say in anthroposophical lectures. A pet remark is, “But how can you prove that?” meaning that people require to have what is presented to them proved by comparing it with outer reality. They assume that an idea is valid only if one can point to its physical counterpart, and that this external counterpart is the proof. This is such an extremely obvious idea, that people think they are great logicians if they say, “You see, it all depends on being able to prove that a concept links up with its counterpart in outer reality.”

You can easily point out that this is no great logic but proper dream logic. When people say things like this, I usually give the answer that even where the external sense world is concerned you cannot prove reality, for if someone had never in his life seen a whale, you could never prove the existence of whales through logic alone, could you? Pointing to the reality is something quite different from proving a thing. So much for dream-logic.

I can put it even more plainly. Suppose I paint a portrait of a living person, and someone gives as his objective opinion “This portrait is very like the person,” and goes on to explain that this is so because when he compares the portrait with the person, they both look the same. The likeness is due to the fact that the portrait agrees with reality. Does the correspondence to external reality cause the likeness? Why does he say the picture is like the model? Because it corresponds to external reality. The external reality is what is true. Now imagine that the model dies, and we look at his portrait thirty years later. Is it no longer like him, thirty years later, because it does not agree with external reality any more? The person is no longer there. We can assume that he was cremated a long time ago. Does the likeness depend on the external reality being there? Clear thinking knows it does not. In the case of dream-thinking one can say that in order to prove anything one has to be able to point to external reality. But this is only true for dream-thinking, dream-logic. For surely, just because a person passes from existence to nonexistence, a portrait of him does not change from being like him to being unlike him!

You see, many things can be made into a necessity if people want to adapt their logic accordingly, especially when we find in every article about logic nowadays “The truth of a concept consists in, or can be proved by, the fact that one can point to the external reality in the physical world.” But this definition of truth is nonsense, and this becomes evident in cases like the comparison with the portrait. If you consult so-called scientific books today—not the kind that deal with pure science—all they do is give descriptions, and if we stick to descriptions, what does it matter if we remain in mere dreams? If some people want to describe nothing more than the dream of outer life and do not pretend to build a world view, let them. However, a world view based on this is a dream view. And we can see that. Wherever this step is taken, you usually find dream-philosophy.

It is quite ridiculous how unable people are to think, that is to say, to think in such a way that their thinking is based on the element on which it ought to be based. I have copied out a statement Professor Ziehen makes on page 208 of these lectures, in which he wants particularly to point out that we cannot find the will that underlies an action. He puts it like this, “Thinking consists of a series of mental images, and the psychic part”—that is, the soul content—“of an action is also a series of mental images with the particular characteristic that the last link in the chain is a mental image of movement.”

There is the clock. The will is eliminated, isn't it? I see the clock. That is now a mental image. The will does not exist and I see the clock. This clock has an effect on me in some way by setting my cerebral cortex into some sort of motion, and then passes from the cerebral cortex into a kind of motor zone, as physiology tells us. One thing passes on to the next. This is the thought image of movement. I have first of all an image of the clock, and the image of the movement succeeds the activity of the imagining the movement, not by way of will but by way of the image of movement. “I have only a series of mental images,” says Ziehen. Thinking consists of a series of mental images, and the psychic part of an action is also a series of mental images. The will is unquestionably eliminated. It is not there. First of all I observe the clock and then the movement of my hand. That is all.

You can track down the logic this contains by translating this statement into another one. You can just as well say, “Thinking consists of a series of mental images. So far so good. And when we look at a machine, the psychic process is just another mental image, with the particular characteristic that the last link in the chain is a mental image of a moving machine.” One is exactly the same as the other. You have merely eliminated the machine's driving power. You have merely added the mental image of the moving machine to what you were thinking before.

This is what this dream-logic consists of. Where the outer world is concerned, a person who applies dream-logic does of course admit the existence of impulses of some sort, but not in the case of the inner world, because he wants to eliminate the will. Ziehen's whole book is full of dream-logic of this kind, eliminating the will. At the same time of course the I is also being eliminated, which is interesting. According to him, the I is also nothing more than a series of mental images. He actually explicitly says so.

The following interesting thing can happen. Forgive me if I let you into some of the intimate secrets involved in the preparation of a lecture like today's. I had to give today's lecture, didn't I? I wanted to bring you not just an overall picture of what I had to say but also some details. So I had to get this book out and look at it again, which I did. I could of course not read you the whole book but had to limit myself to a selection of passages. I certainly wanted to show you that today's world view based on dream-science cannot include the will, the will is really not there. I have shown you what the author has to say about it in this book of his. I wanted to draw your special attention to what the author says about the will, that is to say, what he says against it. So I look up “will” at the back of the book; aha, page 205 and following, and turn there to see what he says about it. I did tell you today too, though, that in the first instance the will is only perceptible in the physical world in the I. So when we speak of the true I, we actually have to speak of the I that wills. Therefore I also had to show you how the person who has nothing but a dream view based on science speaks of the I. To show you that he simply denies the will, I read you the passage from “Mental image of movement” to “the will is eliminated.”

I also wanted to read you something briefly on what he says about the I. So I turned to the index again—but I does not occur at all! That is entirely consistent, of course. So we have as a matter of course a book on physiological psychology or psychiatry that does not mention the I! There is no reference to it in the index and, if you go through it, you will see that only the mental image of the I occurs, just a mental image of course. The author lets mental images pass, for they are only another word for mechanical processes of the brain. But the I as such does not figure at all; it is eliminated.

You see it has already become an ideal, this eliminating of the I. But if humanity follows nature, then by the sixth post-Atlantean epoch the I will be eliminated altogether in earnest, for if the impulses of will proceeding from the center of one's being are lacking, people will hardly speak of an I. During the fifth epoch human beings have had the task to advance to talking up an I. But they could lose this I again if they do not really search for it through inner effort. Those who know anything at all about this aspect of the world could tell you things about the number of people one already meets who say they sense a weakness of their I. How many people are there today who do not know what to do with themselves, because they do not know how to fill their souls with spiritual content? Here we are facing a chapter of unspeakable misery of soul that is more widespread in our time than one usually imagines. For the number of people unable to cope with life because they cannot find impulses within themselves to support their I in the world of appearances is constantly growing.

This in turn is connected with something I have often spoken about here, namely, that up to now it was essential that people should work towards acquiring a conception of their I. And we live in the time when this is finally being properly acquired. You know that in Latin, which was the language of the fourth epoch, the word ego was only used as an exception. People then did not speak of the I, it was still contained in the verb. The more world evolution, and language too, approached the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the more the I became separated. The Christ impulse is to help us find this I in the right way. The fact that in Central Europe in particular this I is uniting itself in its purest form with the Christ impulse is expressed in the language itself, in that through the inner necessity of evolution the word for I (German: Ich) is built up out of the initials of Christ: I-C-H, Jesus Christ.

This may well seem a dream to those who want to stay nowadays in the realm of dream-science. Those who wake themselves from this dream view of life will appreciate the great and significant truth of this fact. The I expresses the connection the human being has to Christ. But people have to cherish it by filling it with the content of spiritual science. However, they will be able to do this only if with the help of science they make freedom a necessity. Really, how could people have said in earlier times that it used to be the normal thing for people to remember previous incarnations? Yet for our coming earth lives it will be normal.

Just as in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch human beings have to take hold of their I and bring it to life, so it will be the normal thing in the future for people to have a stronger and stronger memory of their previous lives. We could just as well say, “Spiritual science is the right preparation for remembering earlier lives in the right way.” But those who run away from spiritual science will not be able to bring this memory of past lives up into consciousness. Their inner being will feel something lacking.

That is to say, people will fall into two categories. One group will know that when they examine their innermost soul, it will lead them back into earlier lives. The others will feel an inner urge that comes to expression as a longing. Something does not want to emerge. Throughout their whole incarnation something will not want to come up, but will remain unknown like a thought one searches and cannot find. This will be due to insufficient preparation for remembering previous earth lives.

When we speak of these things, we are speaking of something real, absolutely real. You have to have properly taken hold of the I through spiritual science if you are to remember it in later earth lives. Is there anything you can remember without making a mental picture of it? Need we wonder that people cannot yet remember the 1 when they did not have a mental picture of it in earlier epochs? Everything is understandable with true logic. But the dream-logic of the so-called monism of our time is obviously always going to oppose what has to come into being through the true logic of spiritual science.

• 1. Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788–1860, German philosopher.
• 2. Rudolf Steiner, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, (Hudson, N.Y.: Anthroposophic Press, 1986).
• 3. Bernhard Bolzano, 1781–1848, mathematician and logician from Bohemia.
• 4. Theodor Ziehen, 1862–1950. Published Theory of Knowledge on the basis of Psycho-Physiology and Physics in 1913.
• 5. Eduard von Hartmann, 1842–1906, German philosopher. Arthur Drews, 1865–1935, philosopher. Denied the existence of Jesus.

Today we want to listen to a recitation from the poetry of Friedrich Lienhard and Wilhelm Jordan. Then I will add something of an anthroposophical literary consideration to it about the present time and its tasks. This will conclude our evening, but first I would like to say a few words by way of introduction.

Friedrich Lienhard is one of those poets of the present time of whom we are able to say that as far as his own striving in a certain connection, he comes near to the striving of spiritual science. On October 4, 1915, he celebrated his 50th birthday and we at Dornach joined others from all sides in sending our congraulations to this spirit-filled poet. We can look in a certain way into the actual artistic content of the poetical nature of Friedrich Lienhard who in a certain sense has been very friendly to our movement. He himself, says that he originated from the French Alsace Lorraine region where he had to pass through many difficulties in order to attain what he calls his world conception. He tried to develop out of the European German nature so as to bring to effectiveness the actual beating in of the waves of this Central European German being. We can say how there lives within him above all that which I have just attempted to characterize, an element that can perhaps only be evaluated correctly when we realize its worth as we approach it from the spiritual artistic point of view which is fostered in the science of the spirit. In Lienhard's poetry we have, above all, the wonderful description of nature, lyric nature, but put in a very special way when he attempts to bring human beings into speech with nature. Also there is something of the nature of the human being which actually proceeds directly out of the natural way and shows its spirit in nature existence. Now, what does all this come from?

It comes from something that one can perhaps only correctly notice with Friedrich Lienhard when one attempts to evaluate art today which one should always do—so as to realize that there is something which has been completely extinguished from the consciousness of mankind: people no longer are able to evaluate artistic representations. Today they focus completely upon the content of the art, on its representation characteristics and allow that to work on them, but they fail to realize that the important thing is the formal element, the artistic formal element of what is being attempted, not the content so much but how the ideas and the feeling come together, how they undulate in waves and then dissipate. It is very important to see how the poetic language comes into existence in the actual undulation of the waves. In Lienhard you can see quite readily how in the poetical expression of his experiences there is a swaying of the ruling of elemental spirituality, a sort of participation of the poetic soul with that which we would characterize as something which lives in an elementary way in the ether world behind the pure sense existence when the etheric element is brought to manifestation in a natural way as, for example, in the expression of the soul life of young children. If you follow the words of Friedrich Lienhard in a literal way, it appears as if the elementary spirits want to move on further through these words, they sort of ripple through, warm through, weave through all this natural phenomena and this rippling, this warming, this living, this weaving through of elementary beings in relationship to nature continues itself with such a poet who understands how to really live with the spirit of nature.

A further element of Friedrich Lienhard is that precisely through his ability to grasp the great connections of mankind and of the world, with which, I might say, he with his feelings is inwardly connected without anything of the narrow chauvenistic nationalistic spirit entering into these feelings, you can find in him the driving, working forces and beings of the folk life; and again the folk life not out of the details of the accidental individuals, but from the whole weaving and swaying of the priciple of the Folk Soul itself and being able to grasp all that and to place the single personalities into the great spiritual connections in which they are able to stand within the life of the folk. Through that fact Freiedrich Lienhard is in a position of being able to represent such a figure as that of the priest Oberlin of the Alsace Steinthal who was spiritualized by a kind of atavistic clairvoyance. He was able on the one hand to present Oberlin in a real plastic three dimentional way and on the other hand to grasp him in an extraordinarily intimate soul way. Out of these impulses, Lienhard was able to call forth into the present time the divine figures of antiquity, not in the way of these ancient hero sagas, but he took not only the content of it but also attempted in present day speech to find the possibility of again reawakening that which as a beating in of the waves lived through this ancient time and to be able to realize it can still beat into our present age. Lienhard was able to awaken all this and therefore we can say in a certain sense, as it were, that Friedrich Lienhard is one of the most superior poets of the present age, because other poets of this age have attempted to transpose themselves more into the naturalistic, the realistic aspect also rejecting the real artistic spiritual and in that way wanted to create something new. However, the real poet, when he wants to create something new, does not try to use these naturalistic whimsies of our present age, but creates something new by being able to grasp in a new way the stream of the eternal beauty; he grasps that which is eternal in a new way so that art remains art. And real art can never remain real art without being permeated by the spirit. Through this aspect it was possible for Friedrich Lienhard to approach much nearer to that which he called: The Way Toward Weimer. Acutally in his free time he had produced this periodical for a long time which he called Ways Toward Weimer in which he attempted to turn to the ideas and artistic impulses of that great period which began towards the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, and to recognize that which is in these, precisely much of real worth which existed in that particular period which had been forgotten and had faded away. For that reason, in his later artistic period he attempted again to deepen, to make it more inward, I might say, so that ultimately it was possible for such inward poems to come out as those who relate to personalities such as Odelia and the like. He knew how to unite himself with all that in a true sense with the Christian impulses which weave and undulates through mankind. And it is very noticeable that he, not by the external content of his poetic creation but through the way in which they carry the elementary nature right into the details, that he was able to approach the alliteration aspect of the artistic element which appeared as if it was being lost from the whole of German literature. This allilteration and that which is related to the German nature, has with it the whole central European German Folk substance. Because of Lienhard's ability to do that, that brought him close to Wilhelm Jordan, another peot who partly through his own fault and partly through the fault of our age has been little understood by our present time. We shall attempt to bring Wilhelm Jordan to you later on through recitation.

Precisely through alliteration, Wilhelm Jordan attempted again to renew, as he called it, a way of speaking which belonged to times gone by. He could do nothing else than bring this formal element of the ancient poetry, again into the present time. He attempted to lift it up to great moving impulses out of the smallness of everyday things. One must say that it is literally a calamity, although it is not quite without Jordan's own fault that such a poem as “The Damier” which attempted to bring the world moving spiritual principles into connection with mankind upon the earth, that such a creation as “The Danier” should be passed over without effect in our present time. This is partly his fault, because he allowed himself to be damaged by the natural scientific way of looking at things. Much of this damaged his poem “The Niebelungen”, whereas instead of having the deeper principles which should have been applied in this poem, he allows the naturalistic principle of heredity to dominate it; he allowed the substance transition of the forces of inheritance from one generation to another to dominate instead of the soul aspect dominating. There is too much domination of the blood aspect in a certain sense through that. You can say that Wilhelm Jordan paid his tribute to the natural scientific grasping of the present age. However, on the other hand he has taken away from his poems what perhaps already in an earlier time would have been able to give the great spiritual impulses to the artistic striving of mankind, so that not everything would have had to sink into the inartistic barbarism, which in many cases in the later period appeared in the place of the earlier spiritual principles. We can indeed see how today people want to scoff about that which Wilhelm Jordan wanted to do. But I might say that as far as we are concerned, it is our job to be able, in a certain sense, to allow these great impulses to work upon our soul wherever they might appear, because nevertheless there will come a time when these inpulses will have to fulfill a certain mission in mankind's development.

Certainly the poet, Friedrich Lienhard, will be recognized in wide circles. However, in our circles we should attempt to discover that which perhaps can be found precisely in him, because that will be, above all, what I believe will be able to carry his artistic strivings together upon the waves of the spiritual scientific strivings into the future.

Having said that now we will listen to the poems of Friedrich Lienhard and then to some extracts from the poem “Niebelungen” by Wilhelm Jordan. (The following are the poems recited by Frau Dr. Steiner: “Faith”; “The Morning Wind”; “A Greeting to the Forest”; “TheCreative Light”; “The Lonely Stone”; “Have You Also Experienced?”; “All The Tender FLower Cups”; “Soul Wandering”; “The Dance of the Elves”; “The Summer Night”. “The Songs of Odelian”; “Autumn On the Mount of Odelian”; “St. Odelia” then a recitation from the Niebelungen Song by Wilhelm Jordan.)

It is also good to allow this type of poetic art to work upon us. We have in Friedrich Lienhard a poet who really attempts in the present time to carry in spiritual idealistic soul experiences which are strong enough to unite themselves with nature experiences; and with such things one can detect something which is more appropriate to the ‘how’ in art than to the ‘what’ in art. How wonderful is that which draws itself to the magic in the district around the Mount of Odelian and how beautiful it is, how directly lyrical is the perception which streams out of this protective patroness, Odelia, of the Cloister of Mount Odelian. The fact that Odelia was once persecuted by her horrible father, that she was blinded and precisely through the loss of her eye sight, she achieved the mystical capacity of healing the blind, making them see, this is the saga around which all the rest gathers itself. All that which in truth gathers itself around this saga in deep mysticism is lyrically united with the nature which is around the Alsacian Mount of Odelian and it finds itself precisely within these poems by Friedrich Lienhard which have been recited to you. You can find in these poems that he gives the real opportunity for, I might say, the swinging in of an elemental nature which weaves itself in the form of his poems much of which reminds you of the forgotten Wilhelm Jordan. From this small sample which we have been able to hear today you will be able on the one hand to realize how very much this poet attempted to place these figures from the great spiritual weaving of life before us to create them out of this spiritual weaving of life and to allow us to realize that the weaving of the spiritual world works in the external world. You can experience precisely through Wilhelm Jordan, I believe, how the poetic soul can unite itself with a world historical streaming so that in that which confronts us in a poetic artistic form, there actually lives the striving of a spiritual stream which works through the development of the world.

When we were together last Tuesday, I had to ask the question: What would be the outcome of the development of mankind on earth if it were not possible for a spiritual beating-in to find its way into that which exists in the pure external physical existence. Not only in the external realm of scientific knowledge, of the social life and so on, but also in the realm of art, the fact that confronts us and comes to meet us very strongly is that we live in a very critical age, an age which is filled with crises, because if that which is living in spiritual science is not able to take hold of human soul life, then art itself would gradually disappear from mankind, because it cannot exist without the spirit. This art is trying to disappear from such figures as Wilhelm Jordan. However such figures as Friedrich Lienhard have attempted to hold fast to that which tried to disappear—the spiritual aspect—from Wilhelm Jordan. Today people do not see much of the threatening danger of the artistic decay, because in many connections, intoxication also dominates in this realm of dream life of which I spoke Tuesday, of which one can really only perceive if one has an organ to grasp it. I can only wish that more and more people were actually able to realize from a spiritual scientific perception what it means for the ... is an indication of what is going to come into art if this rejection of all spirtual life, of spiritual perception, still continues. One of the great tragedies of the modern times is that such a large nunber of people are able to consider art as all that which is represented by Rheinhard. When one receives a real artistic perception from Spiritual Science, then one will be able to see clearly the so-called rubbish involved in Rheinhard, because that which in modern life appears in the artistic domain is nothing other than a distorted world. When one really attempts to grasp the life of the present time, one can, I might say, indicate the actual places where a life which has been eaten up by materialism affects the art of our age and causes it to fall into a morass. You can see how everything of what art really is is forgotten. In order for a real artistic sense to continue itself into the development of mankind, it is necessary that that which comes to us from earlier times, which, for example, lives also in Lienhard's poetry and which in a certain way is a kind of nature pantheism and a kind of spirit pantheism can develop from that into something more concrete, so that human beings are able to learn to understand the manifoldness of life so that they can see the etheric, astral and the spiritual by the side of the physical sense aspect. Without seeing these things mankind remains blind, blind precisely in relationship to the artistic. As far as the artistic perceptions is concerned, the world as it is today is predisposed to only take in the quite solid external sense aspect, to look on it exactly as it is and to describe it as it is; and that is not art.

One can also experience this nonsensical unclear staggering and wabbling, this frenzy we find with reference to the phenomena of life as it is regarded by people who are called fine psychologists. It often makes your heart sad to see that so few people are strongly adapted enough to perceive what is happening in this realm, to see it in such a way as to be able to rebel against it. Contemplate human beings as they confront us. The artist must indeed look upon them in so far as he is able to place them into the deeper life of the world. If one looks upon people with that particular soul organ which the evolutionary development of mankind has already brought into existence, then we need the possibility of saying the following. There is a person; he is configured in such and such a way. He has experienced this or that thing. We know that this person is more inserted into his physical life, another is more inserted into his ego, another more into his astral body. We must have a living feeling for the fact that the characteristics of mankind can divide themselves in so far as they are taken hold of more by the physical in one case, another more by the etheric, another more by the astral and another more by the ego aspect; and if one is not able to do this in our present time and still wants to describe people artistically in poetry, etc, then one gets the sort of staggering which today is regarded as art.

You must, I might say, take hold of the significant phenomena of our age in order to obtain a real understanding of what is actually happening. For example, one can meet four people who, shall we say, have been brought together by karma. Then one can understand how they are brought together in certain connections through karma when we see them together, how the stream of karma also flows in the progress of the world and how these human beings precisely in a certain way, through their karma, wanted to insert themselves into the world. One will never be able to understand things from the standpoint which is possible today if one is not able to see such karmic connections. Let us take the four brothers, Dimitri, Ivan, Alyosha and Smerdyakov in Dostoevski's novel The Brothers Karamazov. When you are really able to see them with the eye of the soul, you actually see in these four brothers four types which you can only understand through the way they are carried by karma. Thus one knows the following. The four brothers carry a stream of karma into the world in such a way that they must be the sons of a typical scoundral of the present age who has these four brothers as his sons. They are carried in in so far as they have selected it through this karma. They are placed one by the side of the other so that one sees how they differ from each other, and this can only be understood when one knows the following. In Dimitri Karamazov there is an overpowering by the “I”; in Aloysha Karamazov there is an overpowering by the astral body; in Ivan Karamazov there is an overpowering by the etheric body and in Smerdyakov there is a complete overpowering by the physical body. A light of understanding falls upon these four brothers when one is able to consider them from this standpoint.

Now, just think how a poet with Wilhelm Jordan's gift and with a spiritual grasping of the world as it must be in accordance with our modern age, how such a person would place these four brothers side by side, how he would grasp their spiritual and fundamental conditioning. How would Wilhelm Jordan do it?

Let us consider Dostoevski; how does he grasp the situation? He grasps it in no other way than that he places these four brothers as the sons of a quite typical drunken man in a certain stagnated society of the present age. Let us take the first son, Dimitri, the son of a half adventurous, half hysterical woman who after she first elopes with the drunken sop, Fyador Karamazov, beats him and finally cannot endure him anymore and leaves him with his son, Dimitri, the eldest son. Everything is now placed only an inheritance, it is so placed that one has the impression that here the poet describes something like a modern psychiatrist who only focuses upon the coarsest principle of heredity and has no inkling of the spiritual connections, and wants to bring before us the sin of heredity. Now we have the next two sons, Ivan and Aloysha. They come fron the second wife. Naturally the sin of heredity will work differently with these two sons. They come from the so-called screaming Liza, who, because she is not half hysterical but completely hysterical has spasms of screaming. Whereas the first wife soundly thrashed the old drunkard, now the old drunkard thrashes the screaming Liza. Now we have the fourth son, who, I might say, is overpowered by everything which is in the physical body have Smerdyakov, a kind of mixture of a wise, thoughtful and idiotic man, someone who is quite imbecilic and also a partly clever man. He is also the son of the old drunkard and has been begotten with a deaf person who was regarded as the village idiot, namely, the stinking Lizaveta who is seduced by the old drunkard. She dies in childbirth and it is obvious that he does not know that Smerdyakov is his son. Smerdyakov then remains in the house and now all the scenes which occur between these personalities are played out.

As far as Dimitri is concerned it is understandable that he is influenced by his heredity. He is a man in whom the quite unconscious ego flows and pushes him further in life so that he acts out of the unconscious, but of the thoughtlessness and he is so delineated to us that, in the main, you realize that you are not dealing here with a healthy spiritual person, but with someone of a more hysterical nature. Therefore you will find the effect of all that from the nature evolution of the present, that present which will not permit itself to be influenced by that which comes from the spiritual world conception. All the unclear instincts which can actually just as well develop themselves into the best sort of mysticism as well as the most external criminality, in all that you can find the transition from the unconscious, all that Dostoevski deliniates in Dimitri Karamazov. He wants to depict as Russian, because he always tries to describe the true Russianness.

Ivan, the other son, is a Westerner, they call him the Wesler because he wants to familiarize himself with the culture of the West; whereas Dimitri knows very little of the culture of the West but prefers to function out of the Russian instincts. Ivan was in Paris. He studied all sorts of things. He has taken up the Western world conception; he argues with people; he is completely filled with the materialistic world conception of the West modified however by the brooding of the Russian. He argues with all types of people using all sorts of thoughts about how the modern spiritual culture can enter into the midst of the instincts: Should a person be an athiest? Should a person not be an athiest? Can you assume that there is a God? Can you say that there is no God? Can you arrive at an assumption of God? Yes, I accept God, but I do not accept the world. That is the sort of discussion that goes on and on. This is how it is with Ivan.

Now, the third son, Aloysha, becomes a monk early. He is the one in whom the astral body has the superior powers but it also shows that all sorts of instincts work in him, the same instincts as his older brother had developed in him developed through mysticism. Dimitri, who comes from another mother, actually is predisposed to criminality which manifests itself as with other people, but in the case of Aloysha it manifests itself differently, he becomes a mystic. You can say that criminality is only a special development of the same instinct which on the other hand prays for self-emulation—the belief in divine love which goes through the world. Both of them come out of the lower instinctive nature of men, but they develop themselves in different ways. We are not objecting to having these personalities in art, because anything which is real can be the object of art. The important part is not so much the content but how it is presented—is there a weaving of the spiritual in it?—that is the important point.

In Russian culture you have a certain spirituality which is a further development of natural relationships which I have described in my previous lectures as a contrast of spiritual relationships. From the very beginning Dostoevski was a hater of Germany. He had his task of instinctively letting none of West European culture flow into his soul. Because of his being a true Russian, Dostoevski did not come out of the real soul aspect, but that which comes from his subconscious nature arose, all the brooding in the inner human being, that sort of worked itself out and developed itself in the art with the exclusion of all spirtual aspects.

Now we have in Dostoevski's Brothers Karamazov that remarkable episode of the great inquisitor in front of whom the reincarnated Christ appears. And being a true orthodox Christian of his time, this priest knows that he has to put Jesus Christ in prison. That is the first thing that he does. Then he gets the inquisition to give him a hearing. The great inquisitor who develops religion in the sense of the Christianity of our age says to himself: “Ah, yes, Christ has come back. You are indeed the Christ. However, you cannot enter into Christianity as it is now with our priests of the holy order, because you do not understand these things. Take what you yourself have performed. Has it done anything to make people happy? We had to put right what was impractical in your approach. If Christianity as you know it came among people, it would not have the sort of salvation which we have brought to the people, because when you really want to bring salvation to people, you have to bring them a teaching which actually works upon human beings. Now, you believe the teaching also must be the truth. However, you cannot begin to confront human beings with such things. Above all, human beings have to believe the teachings we have given to them; they have to be forced to accept those teachings. We have done better than you. We have established authority. Therefore the only thing that can be done is to take this reincarnated Christ over to the inquisition.” In the case of Dostoevski you see that there is nothing at all spiritual; you see Christ appearing externally in the physical body and then His being broken up by the-great inquisitor.

It is very necessary that we understand the characteristics of our present age where you get books entitled: Jesus, A Psychopathical study; another entitled: Jesus Christ Considered from the Psychiatric Standpoint. Here you have the standpoint of modern evolution which is the pathological situation of Jesus Christ. A well known psychiatrist—people run after this—writes epoch making works about psychiatry; he gives talks to students and colleagues not only about Goethe, Schiller, Nietzsche, all sorts of people, then he also talks about Jesus Christ.

Now if we just sit down and listen to Anthroposophy with a sort of lust for sensation or some mystical sensation, we cannot move forward; that is not good enough. This Spiritual Science must become living, it must become living impulses within us. We are not anthroposophists because every week we learn about the elementary spirits, about the hierarchies, and so on. No, we really become spiritual scientists if we are able to carry our ideas into all the single details of life and Anthroposophy gives us the sort of mood which will enable us to actually feel a disgust for many things that are going on at the present time. But let us not be fooled by the sort of standpoint which the Theosophists think they are duty bound to follow, the idea of universal human love. Because we believe in universal human love, we avoid all the disgusting things that are happening all around us, we avoid giving them the right names because we are filled with universal love. People today are not inclined to keep their eyes open. Now this is not the guilt of a single people; it is the guilt of the whole spiritual life of the present. Before we come to any judgements about anything, it is necessary that we make sure that we know all that we need to know so that a judgement can be formed. Let us consider Tolstoy, for example. Now everyone who has listened to me for any length of time knows how I see the greatness which is in Tolstoy; nevertheless we must not forget the other aspects of his personality. Here we have a great spirit of the East filled with bitter hatred for what comes fron Germanism. People did not know about that, because the translators of Tolstoy into German left out these very reprehensible passages. Therefore they presented literature with a false Tolstoy. The so-called critics of our age consider Goethe and Schiller and then they put Dostoevski side by side with them without realizing the vast difference. Whereas Goethe and Schiller had some spiritual motivation in them, Dostoevski was thoroughly absorbed by our modern culture; he reflected it. Now, these things must be brought out in order that one can get a perception of the significance of our anthroposophical striving.

I wanted to add this sort of anthroposophical literary consideration to the recitation which you heard today.

Today I would like to return to much of that which I said in previous lectures and I would like to amplify, in the first place, certain ideas about the inner being of man, about the soul spiritual nature of man. You know that we speak in the first place of that particular member of the inner human being which we designate with an abstract expression as the ether body. Whereas the physical body of man is perceptible for the external senses to external science which is bound to the intellect and its observation, we know that the ether body is something of a super-sensible nature. Furthermore, we speak of the next member of human nature as the so-called astral body. We remember how often we have emphasized the fact that one cannot say that the inner being of man is completely unknown to us. Indeed, man perceives within his bodily existence in the physical world, he perceives his thinking, his feeling and his willing. He experiences it inwardly and he experiences this thinking, feeling and willing as being radiated through by his “I”. One can say that man inwardly perceives this thinking, feeling and willing. However one cannot say that you can actually perceive your astral body. Also one cannot say that you really perceive your “I”, because this “I”—and we have brought this to your attention in the course of these lectures—this “I” of which man speaks falls back into unconsciousness with every sleep and is actually only a reflection of the real “I”. Therefore, in a certain sense, it can he concluded also that this “I” with this thinking, feeling and willing, is in a similar way only an expression, a manifestation of the actual inner being of man, just as with the physical body what you have is a manifestation, an expression of the spiritual nature of that which we designate as the etheric body.

Now, man is obviously happy when, in reference to any given domain of knowledge, he has such a very tightly fit division which he can neatly preserve. Therefore people are so happy when they know that man consists of physical body, ether body, astral body and ego. However, in the man—and I want to emphasize this—all you have with these four expressions are just four words, nothing more than four expressions. And when you advance to real contemplation, then you must, in a certain sense, always pass beyond the borders which are so easily established by these expressions. you speak in a general way, to be sure you may say: Thinking, feeling and willing proceed in the astral body. However that is really only a one-sided abstract way in which the fact of thinking exhausts itself. Just as we as human beings stand in the first place within the physical world, so, to be sure, the impulse to the thinking which exist in the astral body is that impulse which proceeds from the “I”. However, the thinking develops itself as a thought only through the fact that we have the mobile ether body. Our whole thinking would remain unconscious to us as physical human beings if the astral body did not send its impulses into the ether body and the ether body in its mobility would be unable to take up the thought impulses of the astral body. And every thought again would simply just pass over in a transitory way without having the possibility of a memory if we did not have a physical body. You cannot say the physical body is the carrier of the memory. No. The carrier of the memory is the ether body. However, for us human beings, if our thinking were to merely flow along just as dreams flow along and if it were not possible to have it engraved in the physical materiality of the physical body, then our thoughts here in the physical body can assert themselves through the fact that we have this physical body. Thus you see how this thinking is actually a very complicated process. It has its impulses in the astral body, actually already in the “I”. These impulses continue themselves as forces in the ether body, call forth the thoughts, and the thoughts in their turn engrave their tracks into the physical body. And through the fact that they are imprinted, you can always fetch them out of the memory again during the physical life.

Now, just consider—and we have often spoken about this situation—what the memory actually represents for man here in the physical body. As you know, man has experiences. He works these experiences over; then he goes away from these experiences. There comes a time when such experiences relate themselves to the human being as if we knew nothing about them, as if we no longer stood in relationship to them. However, there again comes the time when we are able to fetch the thought experiences out of our inner being. That which we have already experienced is present for us again in in the form of memory. Now, in the first place, man must believe the following. This process of memory belongs to him; it belongs to his soul. When we as human beings walk through the streets and associate in society, someone outside of us with external physical sense organs cannot really know what is hidden within us as our memories, that is, he cannot know what sort of experiences we have had. We carry these in our soul. I might say the sheaths of the physical body are so arranged that they cover over our soul for us. It is as if true physical body is a mantle which hides our soul and in which we can preserve these memories. They belong to us and they work in us through our whole life. We make the outside world into our own inner world. Then we carry this external world in the form of memories with us through existence. We carry these memories as our own possession.

Now, it would be a great mistake if one were to believe that this carrying of the memories through life really comprises the whole process. This is not the case. Darwin, for example, had the correct idea when he investigated to see if rain worms had a special task, and he discovered that rain worms are not there just to merely enjoy their existence but have the very important task of making the soil fruitful as they crawl through it. These are things which natural science certainly admits and this is a ground upon which natural science believes itself secure. Now, natural science, in so far as it does that, should not be criticized because it is really good when they enter into certain single details. However, the problem is that one builds world views upon such details. Obviously you must consider the saying about a man who digs for treasure and is happy when he finds rain worms. However, from the spiritual point of view one can ask the following: Was this activity through which man forms thoughts during his whole life and preserves them in his memory, has that any significance for the whole cosmos? Is this process of memorization only a process which occurs in ourselves? Now, the materialist says that obviously that is a process which only occurs in us. With death we put our physical body in the grave and then that which we have preserved in us as memory is obviously something which is rarely an extinguished thing. We are not going to enter into such a materialistic reply. We want to ask the question: Is our thinking process and memory process something quite different from that which occurs in our memory?

So it is. While we think, while we form thoughts and out of our experiences preserve these memories, during this time we occupy ourselves not only with our thoughts, but the whole world of the Third Hierarchy occupies themselves with our thoughts, the Hierarchies of the Angels, Archangels and Archai. When we think, we think not only for ourselves, we think and we preserve our thoughts in our inner being in order that a field of activity should be created for Angels, Archangels and Archai. Whereas we believe that our thoughts live only in us, actually the three spiritual Hierarchies occupy themselves with our thoughts. The very smallest of that which we propose with our thoughts is something which concerns us. Even when we have forgotten the thoughts, they are in us and we again call these thoughts out of our memory. Just as we as human beings occupy ourselves on earth with our machines or with eating and drinking, so do the Angels, Archangels and Archai occupy themselves with a web which is formed from our thoughts; they work continuously on our thoughts. It is thus only the side of the activity of the thoughts which is turned toward us that we know about. There is in addition another side and this other side of our thoughts so appears for spiritual perception that we can say the following. While our thoughts which we have in our inner being occupy themselves from outside, the above mentioned spiritual beings weave these thoughts so that we, when we achieve this knowledge, can say the following of ourselves. Our thought process is acutely not something unnecessary for the world. Our thought process is something not only for ourselves, but it stands within the whole world development and contributes to it so that something new can continuously be woven into the world development. If we were not born as single individuals, if we had no thoughts, if we had not preserved memories in us, then at our death, that portion which would have been able to be woven out of our thoughts, that which we ourselves do not weave, that would be lost for world development. And when we pass through the portal of death—the elementary process I have often described—we put aside our physical body and this is given over to the elements of the earth in various ways. Our ether body remains with for a short time. It represents itself to our inner being as a great life tableau which is in front of us. Everything of that which we otherwise remember, that which has gone on in a time continuum becomes as a mighty panorama all at once, a mighty life tableau placed around us. Then, however, our etheric being is separated from us. It is, as it were, drawn out of us.

Now, who does that? Indeed, that is done by the beings of the three Hierarchies we mentioned and they weave it gradually into the cosmic ether so that after our death this web of the cosmic ether consists of that which we during our life between birth and death have added to it, also that which was worked over by the beings of these next three Hierarchies. The new webbing is taken away from us and is interwoven with the whole cosmic all. Every human being has a knowledge of this when he passes through the portal of death, since, for the human being after he has passed the portal of death, something enters which can be described in no other way than as follows. Now, you must see that the ether body is separated from him; his etheric web has been interwoven into the universal cosmic ether. That which he has carried in himself all through his life is now outside, it is external. And that is important. That person who knows these things indicates it with a short phrase which one should call forth before the soul in a meditative way. It can be described through a very essential process by saying the following. The inner being becomes the external, which means that which we always have felt as our thought life becomes external world. Just as here we are surrounded by rivers, mountains, trees, clouds, stones and stars, so after our death something occurs which one can characterize in following way. That which during our physical life has lived in in us now has become a portion of the external world so that it can now be perceived by us.

In addition to this ether body, we have the world of our astral body. This world of our astral body comes to our consciousness, in the first place, so that we feel it as thinking; we feel the world of the astral body as thinking. However, the thinking I have precisely characterized, indeed, sends its impulses down into the ether body so that the thinking itself cannot be conscious in the astral body. You can only become aware of feeling and willing in your astral body. You cannot be conscious of your thinking there, but you become aware of your thoughts in the ether body. It is very important that feeling and willing can become conscious for us, it has to go down into the ether body. Throughout our whole life we feel and we will, we foster feelings about certain experiences. These are processes in our astral body. That again is a very characteristic weaving, but now not just a web in thoughts as I have formerly described it but a web of perception, feeling and impulses toward willing. Higher beings also work in that which we have throughout our whole life as feeling and will impulses. Just as in our thinking beings of the Third Hierarchy work, so there work in our feeling and our will impulses the beings of the Second Hierarchy including the Thrones.

Just imagine how we stand in the world when we know these things how we feel ourselves inserted into the spiritual world. On the one side we say to ourselves: Man, you go through the world thinking, but your thinking in so far as it is turned to its inner side is only the one side of thinking. That which you think is substance for the work of the Angels, the Archangels, the Archai. In so far as we feel and will, we create substance for the Spirits of Form, the Spirits of Movement, the Spirits of Wisdom, the Thrones, or the Spirits of Will. Just as the human being cultivates the earth and works it over, he does not know that while he is working over the earth that it is only one side which is worked over, but on the other side actual processes are occurring which he does not know of with his normal consciousness. In a similar way, man believes that his feelings and his will impulses merely belong to him, but they are a field for the work of the indicated beings of the hierarchies.We are truly not merely physical body that only stands in connection with our environment, but we are also there as soul spiritual beings so this soul spiritual man can stand in connection with the environment. Normally one does not think about how our physical body belongs to our whole environment. But this is easy to work out.

In any given moment when you visualize yourself in a bodily way, you possess not only bones, blood, muscles and so on, but you also have a certain stream of air in yourself which you have breathed in and which you will soon breathe out. This belongs to you while you have breathed in; that was out of you in the previous moment, in the next moment it is again outside you. Just think of yourself without this stream of air. It is impossible to think in this way without realizing that you have this stream of air within you. It belongs to us, it is nonsense to think of the physical body as if it were only enclosed within the skin; whereas you are pointed to the fact that you live with the whole atmosphere environment. However, just as we through our physical body live with the atmosphere environment, with the warmth environment, so do we live with the environment of the Hierarchy of the Third Order through our thoughts and we live through our feelings and will impulses with the Beings of the Hierarchies of the Second Order and with the Spirits of Will. This is how we stand within the cosmic all.

Let us now turn our attention to passing through of the portal of death. We can then say the following. When man passes through the portal of death, we know that when his ether body is taken away from him, when the interweaving into the universal cosmic ether begins, then he has to live backwards three times as fast as he experienced during physical life between birth and death, in so far as during that period he perceives the effects of his experiences between birth and death. Thus, that which we have experienced in us during our physical life we do not perceive them just because we have perceived it here in physical life. We will perceive the feeling out of which we have executed an injury to someone else, not our feeling but that of the other person, that which we have lived through here in the physical life stands as a causative factor there and carries in itself the karma. We have not experienced the impression that our injury has made upon the other person's soul. We experience here, in the main, not that which our deeds, our actions, our thoughts have resulted in effects in the external world, we do not experience that here in the physical life, but we do experience that when we go through our backward vision in the time between death and a new birth. There we live through everything that is outside, not in the way it was experienced by us but in the way in which it was experienced by the external world with which we were in contact. Really everything which other human beings have perceived, have felt through our thoughts, through our words, we live through and because of this the external must become the inner in our new state of post mortem. Through this experience the effects of our thoughts, the effects of our deeds in life, the external effects now become inner which means something which we inwardly experience, something which is experienced by the spirit human being after death, because now he must live himself into that world in which he lived unconsciously during the time of his life.

In so far as he has an astral body, and the Spirits of the Second Hierarchy have worked upon his astral body, he must now live into that world in which his astral body gradually dissolves itself into the external, but now he experiences the external in an inward way, he really lives through it inwardly. He must learn between death and a new birth to work in that sphere in which the Spirits of the Second Hierarchy work, in which they prepare that which again can lead into a new incarnation. And, indeed, then we know that after the astral body has dissolved into the external world and man lives on further with his actual inner being in the time between death and a new birth.

When we want to understand something of this life between death and a new birth, we must make many points of view valid for ourselves. Our goal is not to be one-sided but to make various viewpoints valid so that gradually a comprehensive understanding of these processes can open themselves to us. Thus you must keep the following in view. Just as man through birth enters natural processes which around him in the mineral world, in the plant world, in the animal world, so he enters into a world where things are happening around him with the beings of the Hierarchies which we have mentioned. He is, as it were, enfolded into their activities and that which he has brought with him for them, they weave together so that it can become the foundation for his next incarnation.

You must realize that in this it is, I might say, very difficult to give our present age the correct concepts and ideas for reasons which I have often presented. The present age works precisely with the most reversed concepts in this realm. When a human being enters through birth into physical existence, he enters with certain characteristics. The present time speaks purely of heredity, and means physical heredity, and one speaks of this physical heredity in the following way. A man shows this or that characteristic. Therefore to find out where those characteristics come from, you must look for its ancestors. For example, there is a very industriously worked over book about Goethe, in which Goethe's characteristics are so presented that it has looked for one thing in this ancestor, another in that, one characteristic from a great-great grandmother, another from a great-great grandfather, and so on, as if everything that Goethe had had came to him through heredity. I have often said the following: When you say that the child has the qualities of his parents, it is just as wise a saying as a human being is wet when he falls into water and is then drawn out of it. Naturally he is wet from the water when he is taken out. In the same way he has the properties of his ancestors in him, because they have been led through his soul. There is no greater wisdom there either. Therefore to go back to causes is, for the logical aspect ultimately the most logical, because one can say the following: One wants to prove that the soul-spiritual properties come through heredity in so far as one shows that a genius like Goethe has the same characteristics which his ancestors had, but as we have said, it is no cleverer than the assertion that the man is wet after he has fallen into water.

Now, if you really want to prove that the properties of genius are concerned with heredity, then you would have to show how the descendents of a genius show the properties of the genius. In other words, if you have to prove that genius can be transmitted by heredity, that would be a proof. Look at Goethe's son. See if he has Goethe's genius. Now, behind all this there is a much deeper process. Just imagine this hypothesis, for example, just imagine that there are beings who are not able to see human beings and just imagine that one of these beings who cannot see the activity of man goes to Berlin and sees how watches are being produced everywhere. This being obviously has to say to himself: These watches produce themselves. And that is no wiser than people who say that you do not need any additional explanations about how human beings come into the world; that that occurs quite of itself in the course of propagation in the generations. These ideas can only be held by people who cannot see human beings, who cannot see that that which occurs here in the physical world is only the external expression of an activity which continuously flows down out of the spiritual world just as the activity of the watchmakers flow into the watches. Therefore that which precisely occurs here upon the earth, of which human beings in their foolishness believe that they occur completely for themselves, that is only an external physical process which is directed just as the activity of making watches is a directing activity, so the moment which I have called the Midnight Hour of Existence in my mystery dramas, from that moment on which lies within the middle between death and a new birth, there already begins that activity of the spiritual world, as it were, of inclining itself into the physical in order after centuries to lead the human being into physical existence. When man goes through the portal of death, there is the activity of a working over of that which the human being experienced in his last life which is exercised in the spiritual world. All this occurs in the first half of the life between death and a new birth. However, in the second half of the life between death and a new birth,
the preparation for the next incarnation begins. And now the following can be said about the situation.

That person who is born has ancestors; ancestors again have ancestors; these ancestors have ancestors. Just see how far this goes when you go through 30 generations. However, if you go through 30 generations, you will find that in many people, as it were, there already is the tendency which ultimately leads to the fact that man A is brought together with woman B and then they bring another human being into existence. And if the whole thing did not so occur through 30 generations, if the people had not married, A not coming together with B, therefore that human being who descends into a physical incarnation would not have ultimately been produced. From the whole working together of many people which finally peaks into two, the single individuality of the human being has been a participation in the spiritual world. Thus when we see that the son has the characteristic of his father, of his mother and then again the father's and mother's characteristics are led back to grandfathers and grandmothers and great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers and so on, that is because there has previously been an influence exerted on these great-great-grandparents through 30 generations by that individuality who then later on after many centuries wants to be born and this has all been determined according to the plan to find himself as a human being through the generations. All that is a participating activity and the fact that you have similar inherited characteristics emanates from the fact that through the generations that power works down through the spiritual world which finally comes to appearance in a certain human being. This individuality already works in a father, a mother, a grandfather, a grandmother, a great-grandfather, a great-grandmother, and ultimately one gets the qualities which come to expression. It is not the physical stream which makes the inheritance, but the physical stream is inserted in this way through inheritance. Therefore, precisely the reverse of that which the so-called natural scientific view maintains, is true. In order that Goethe ultimately comes to appearance through Johann Casper Goethe and his Frau Eiya, Beings of the Second Hierarchy have worked through 30 generations in such a way that Goethe could ultimately be produced. Naturally this applies not only for genius but for eveiy single human being.

Now, you can say that this is difficult to imagine, and you could also ask yourself how is this compatable with human freedom when we have already been determined 30 generations before we descend. I know it is very complicated, but you must remember that this is complicated for the normal consciousness which has been apportioned to you during your earth existence. You will remember that what we are dealing with is not only the individual himself, but the individual in community with the Spirits of Form, with the Spirits of Motion, and so on, and so it is worked out in such a way that freedom is not influenced. Naturally this works in such a way that it corresponds to the working of these Higher Hierarchies. The situation is just like that.

There is worked together that which we are able to give over as thoughts to the cosmic ether with that which we express during our earth existence in our feeling life and in our will life. Therefore Spiritual Science is not supposed to be a totality of knowledge, but above all it should be capable of bringing forth a certain soul mood. I have attempted to indicate this soul mood in the first part of my second mystery play, in the meeting between Capaius and Benedictus, when the goal is that man as a complete human being lives here upon the earth. In order that that can happen, Gods and Gods, Spirits and Spirits work together so that the human being is a goal for Gods and Gods, Spirits and Spirits. This feeling, I might say, the thankfulness, the gratitude to the spiritual universe, this feeling to know ourselves in the spiritual universe must flow into our souls through spiritual science. This must become as natural for us as it is natural for us to know about the connections with the physical world.

Science today has advanced so far that everyone is aware of the fact that man cannot just live on his own resources but needs the atmosphere, that he is a menber of the whole environment. When he is hungry or thirsty, then he notices that the external world is necessary in a physical way for his existence, that he stands within the external world, within a universal process. However, man also stands in a universal process in the spiritual world. When he thinks he stands within Angels, Archangels, Archai, and in so far as he feels and he wills, he then stands in a spiritual connection with the next higher Hierarchy. Just as the air stretches itself into man's physical body in so far as his physical nature is concerned, so the spiritual aspect of the activity of the so-called Hierarchies works in his soul.

Quite often you get a materialist raising the objection: Indeed, it may be true that a spiritual world does exist, but it does not help us to know anything about this spiritual world even when you tell us that thinking, feeling and willing stand in connection with the Higher Hierarchies. It does not matter, because in order to think we do not need to know about these Higher Hierarchies. We already think in the world without knowing anything about them. Man believes, thank God. If he had to wait until he knew about the breathing process in a theoretical way before breathing, then he also would not be able to think unless he knew about the breathing process. You think without knowing anything about these Higher Hierarchies. However, let us present a counter question. Can you really think without one having that? At the present time you see that people work with the inheritance of the ancient times; they work with that which they have inherited and they are still inventing machines from that. All this is an inheritance of an earlier age. Much of what we accomplish today is a result of what we have inherited in the past.

Recently we were in Hamburg and saw a picture done in the 13th, 14th century by Master Bertram and I want to tell you something about this picture. Let us go back to the biblical story of the fall into sin which we in spiritual science call Luciferic temptation. When a painter in our modern age paints the fall into sin, so he would paint Adam and Eve on either side of the tree and then, naturally, a serpent on the tree. According to whether he is an Impressionist, Cubist, Expressionist or any other ‘ist’, he would more or less paint this; he would paint it beautifully. But he will paint a serpent looking like any serpent which crawls in the grass; that is realism. But is it realism? Is it actually not realism? I cannot imagine any simple woman being deceived by such a serpent. We know from spiritual science that Lucifer is a being who had remained behind at the Moon development. Lucifer, during the Moon evolution, could not be seen with physical eyes such as we have upon earth, so the serpent could not be something which could be seen with the physical eye, not the serpent referred to in the Garden of Eden. Lucifer had to be seen inwardly. When you study the human being more accurately, you can see in every skeleton that it consists of two portions. You have the skull and the spinal column attached to it with the brain inside the skull and the spinal fluid in the spinal column, and the rest of the human being is attached to it. You can consider the human being only as being attached to it. You have the head like a small cosmic sphere attached to the whole thing. You can also say: Thank God that man through his own wisdom cannot contribute to this head coming into existence through his birth. It would look very strange if the anatomists and physiologists could contribute anything to produce this wonderful structure of the human head. This human head comes into existence between death and a new birth as in a large sphere which we could compare with our blue heavenly sphere, that in which our karma is woven and is an organization which as it goes towards incarnation, becomes smaller and smaller and then unites itself with the mother. That which then becomes our head is woven through by countless beings of the Hierarchies out of the whole cosmic all. It is a wisdom of the most immense magnitude, a wisdom which has embodied in it all the experiences. Our head is an inheritance of the Saturn, Sun and Moon incarnations. The earth with all its forces could not have been able to produce this head. It is only possible to bring into existence that which is added to the head, not the head with all its forces. The other part of the human being, not the head with the spinal column, but that which is attached to it actually is earth man. Now, how would a person with inner vision try to represent Lucifer actually as a Moon being? One would represent a human head and would attach something like a boned up spinal column to it, something like a serpent; and that is how Master Bertram in the 13th, 14th century presents Lucifer there on the tree between Adam and Even. In the Hamburg Museum you can see the picture represented just like that. So you see that the painter who painted this picture has the living knowledge
of the configuration of Lucifer within him. You can also see that it was not so very long ago that we still had the ancient atavistic clairvoyance which has now been lost.

I would like to present the situation from another side in order that you will see the assertion of the materialist who says that you do not need to know anything that comes out of the spiritual world, that all you need to do is use your thinking and feeling just as we breathe in the atmosphere and take in food for our hunger and thirst. I have often talked about the very significant criminal anthropologist, Benedict. He was the first to investigate the brains of criminals, naturally, after their death. He analyzed these brains in order to see if he could find some connections between the structure of the brain and criminal qualities. Benedict found that they all have a common characteristic, namely, their rear head lobes were too short and did not completely cover up the small brain. Just imagine this: the common qulaities of the criminal brain is to have a too short rear head lobe just as the apes also have it, something which does not cover the small brain. Obviously this actually is a property of the physical body and so from that you can conclude that there are two types of people being born, those having a correct rear head lobe and those with too short lobes. Those who have a correct rear head lobe do not become criminals and those with too short rear head lobes must become criminals. From the standpoint of the materialistic world conception you cannot raise any objection against this knowledge, but then all talk about morality is nonsense. Can we really punish people when we have to say that they have to be criminals because they have too short rear head lobes. You can see how materialism and all that can come about from it can gradually degenerate. You must extinguish all sorts of spiritual aspects from the social, ethical and juristic life, otherwise we are living in a complete lie, because there can be no objection against the facts which have just been presented.

Now, let us see how we approach the situation. To be sure, there are those who have correct rear head lobes and those with too short rear head lobes. However, there is an ether body there which can be developed in a quite different way and is much more mobile than the physical body. Behind the rear head lobes of the physical body there are the rear head lobes of the ether body and the human beings of the future will have to learn to distinguish between children who have too short rear head lobes and those who have longer rear head lobes. The educators will have to know in what characteristics a short hind head lobe manifests itself in the earliest years of childhood. These children will have to be educated in such a way that the ether lobes can be correspondingly developed and so form a counter weight. Then through the fact that you have developed the ether lobes strongly, they will prevent the damage which the physical lobes can produce when they are too short. So we can see that if spiritual science does not enter into our civilization, then as a result of materialism, all morality, all ethics, all justice would be meaningless. The spiritual would be extinguished from mankind's experience.

Recently in my public lectues I spoke about a forgotten thinker, Karl Christian Plunk. I do not intend to defend everything which Karl Christian Plunk has written in a dogmatic way. However, I have showed you how he worked out of a very deep spiritual consciousness and that he had a certain spiritual world conception. He died in 1880. Very few people bothered about his books. In 1912 the book entitled A TESTAMENT OF A GERMAN by Karl Christian Plunk appeared,a wonderful book. Since he died in 1880, this book had to be written before that. In the first edition of my RIDDLES OF PHILOSOPHY which was entitled WORLD AND LIFE VIEW OF THE 19TH CENTURY, I had already pointed in the year 1900 to Karl Christian Plunk. Plunk actually was an Idealist; he really was a man who lived in the spiritual world and wanted to bring into existence that which inserts itself in the world from the spiritual. I could mention many other examples, however, I am just pointing to Karl Christian Plunk. (An extract from Plunk's book TESTAMENT OF A GERMAN written in 1880 is given in which he spoke of the present war ‘1914–1918’) In this book he refers to the fact that in the future war, Germany will have to defend herself in the West and the South; how on all sides the enemy has national jealousy against the Center. The people will be jealous of the success and growth of the culture of Germany. How many people who had a materialistic concept could have thought like that? Very few of them. Yet, these are the very people who call the people who have a spiritual feeling, idealists.

When a spiritual researcher says: Today people are alright, they can still continue to think, because they have an inheritance of the ancient type of thinking and are able to invent machines. However, human beings will come to a standstill before 50 years is over. They will not be able to discover anything more unless they decide to take spiritual influences up into their thinking. They will reach a dead end. They will have to go to the next stage which will be a development of a spiritual scientific point of view, then they will be able to have new discoveries. Today we have machines only because we have inherited the ancient thinking in our consciousness. We see that the time demands that we allow ourselves to become fructified from the spiritual world. And only this fructification will make it possible to be able to understand the spiritual facts as anthroposophical spiritual science gives us. And unless this happens, the great world tasks will not be solved. I have often mentioned the fact that we are living in a time when the second appearance of Christ will occur shortly, the Etheric Christ Being, that second appearance of Christ upon earth. However, it is necessary to have a preparation in order that this event does not go by unnoticed.

Just recently when I gave a lecture, two people came to me after the lecture and said that they are very surprised about what I was saying and they thought that they would not expect a Theosophist to speak the same way that I spoke. They thought Theosophists would speak differently, because they were pacifists. They forgot the fact that ever since pacifism arose, we have had the bloodiest wars. We talked about illnesses and I tried to explain that illness is the reaction of nature in order to make man healthy, that before the appearance of illness there are unnatural relationships and illness is an attempt to compensate for these unnatural relationships. The illness is necessary, because the unnatural relationships were there. You must see that in all circles of materialism, it leads to the unfruitfulness of thinking.

Spiritual scientific truths must work in our feeling, in our soul mood in a fructifying way and there must be a number of people in our age who can hold them true out of an inner conviction to that which is a necessity for world evolution, that which comes out of spiritual science. Then there will be what should be, then the Christ when He appears in His new form will find those people whom He needs; and that must be. When he appears in His etheric figure, and when someone says that he has experienced the Etheric Christ, then he must not be grasped as being an idiot. It is very necessary today to give mankind a strong push forward, a push which is able to overcome the materialism and its consequences, and this century needs it, needs it in order to take up a new form. And we have as the signs of fire for this goal of mankind today the significant bloody events all around us. We take up spiritual science so that the sacrifice of all those people who have died as a result of this will not have died in vain. If we take up spiritual science, then all that which has gone an around us as a sacrifice of these souls in this war, will be some sort of compensation for it and that will contribute towards the elevation of mankind. that must be, that is why we have to express this invocation again and again.

From the Courage of the fighters,
From the blood on fields of battle,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the people's sacrifice:
There will ripen fruit of Spirit,
If souls will turn in consciousness
Towards the realm of Spirit.