The Rudolf Steiner Archive

This lecture is the 4th of 12 lectures from the lecture series entitled, The Human's Connection with the Elemental World, and the 3rd of 4 lectures in the series entitled, Olaf Asteson and the Awakening of the Earth Spirit.

The period from about Christmas to the present date (Jan. 7th) is really an important and significant period of the year, also in an occult connection. It is called “The period of the Thirteen Days.” The remarkable thing is that the importance of these thirteen days is felt by those who through the constitution of their souls have preserved an inkling of the ancient connection of the human soul with the spiritual world, of which we have often spoken. We know that the primitive human being who lives in the country or in a community which is little infected by our town life, preserves more of the connection with the spiritual world which existed in ancient times than one belonging to a town.We find many things in folk-poems regarding experiences of the soul during the period from Christmas Eve to Epiphany, Jan.6th.

This is the time when—after darkness has been greatest over the earth, directly after the winter solstice, when the sun again begins his victorious course,—together with the deepest immersion and subsequent liberation and redemption of nature,—the human soul can also have special experiences if it still has a definite connection with the spiritual world. Those who o longer possess the old clairvoyance, but who in their souls are still connected with the spiritual world, perceive a difference in the abnormal world of dreams at this period of the year. What the soul can then experience is important, because the soul—if it is still susceptible—can then really penetrate best into the spiritual world. To the modern man the course of the year is such that he can no longer distinguish the various seasons of the year; for while the snowstorms rage outside, when the darkness descends about 4 p.m. and it grows light late in the morning, the city man feels the same as in the summer months when the sun develops its greatest power. Man has been torn out of his ancient connection with the Cosmos in which he lived when he was outside in nature. To those however who have kept in touch with nature, what happens at Christmas time is not the same as what takes place at some other time in the year, for example, at midsummer. Whereas at midsummer the soul is most emancipated from what is connected with the spiritual world, at the time when nature has died away the most it is connected with the spiritual world and formerly had special experiences during this time.

Now there is a beautiful folk-poem in the old Norwegian language, a poem which was re-discovered a short time ago and has quickly become popular again owing to the peculiarly sympathetic understanding of the Norwegian people. It treats of a man who was still in connection with the spiritual world,—Olaf Oesteson. What he goes through in the time between Christmas and Epiphany is beautifully described in this poem. At the New Year Festival in Hanover on Jan. 1st, 1912, I tried to put this folk-poem “Olaf Oesteson” into German verse, so that it might come before our souls too. We will begin this evening with the song of Olaf Oesteson, which contains his experiences during the “Thirteen Nights.”

The Dream Song

O listen to my song!
I will sing to thee
Of a certain youth:
This was Olaf Oesteson,
who once slept so long.
Of him I sing to thee.

He went to rest on Christmas Eve.
A deep sleep fell upon him soon,
And he could not awake,
Till on the thirteenth day
The people went to Church.
This was Olaf Oesteson,
Who once slept for so long,
Of him I sing to thee.

He went to rest on Christmas Eve:
Long, long did he sleep!
And he could not awake,
Till the thirteenth day
The birds were spreading their wings.
This was Olaf Oesteson,
Who once slept for so long
Of him will I sing to thee.

Olaf could not awake
Till on the thirteenth day
The sun shone o'er the mountains
Then did he saddle his nimble steed,
And rode to the church in haste.
This was Olaf Oesteson,
Who once slept for so long,
Of him will I sing to thee.

The priest already stood
By the altar saying mass.
When by the church-door Olaf seated himself
To give tidings of many dreams,
Which during this long sleep
Had filled his soul.
This was Olaf Oesteson,
who once slept so long.
Of him I sing to thee.

Young folk and old ones too,
Give heed unto the words
Which Olaf speaks about his dreams.
This was Olaf Oesteson,
who once slept so long.
Of him I sing to thee.

II

I went to rest on Christmas Eve,
A deep sleep soon enveloped me;
And I could not awake,
Till on the thirteenth day
The people went to church.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

Up to the clouds was I lifted,
And flung to the depths of the sea.
Mirth cannot fall upon
ONe who follow me.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

Up to the clouds was I lifted
And thrust into dismal swamps,
beheld the terrors of hell
And also the light of heaven.
Brightly shone the moon
and the paths stretched far away.

Into earth's depths did I journey,
Where streams of Gods roar frightfully,
To look at them I was not able,
But I could hear their roaring.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

My black steed did not neigh,
And my dogs did not bark,
Nor did the bird of morning sing;
There was but one marvel everywhere.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

My spirit-land I had to travel o'er
The wide plane of a thorny heath,
And also the nails on my feet.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

I came to Gjaller-Bridge
It hangs high up in windy heights;
It is covered with red gold
and has nails with sharp points.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

The ghostly snake did strike me,
The ghostly hound did bite me.
The bull, he stood across the way
These are three beasts of the bridge:
Of frightfully evil nature are they.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

The dog to bite is ready
The snake desires to sting,
The bull, he threatens violence:
They let none pass across the bridge
Who will not honour truth.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

I went across the bridge
Narrow it is, and makes one dismay.
I had to wade through swamps ...
They lie behind me now!
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

I had to wade in swamps,
Bottomless did they seem.
When I passed o'er the bridge,
I felt earth in my mouth—
Like the dead who lie in the grave.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

III

Then I came to waters
In which, like blue flames,
Masses of ice gleaned bright.
And God my purpose guided,
So that I shunned that region.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

I turned my steps to the winter-path
On the right could I perceive it.—
I looked as into Paradise,
That threw its light afar.
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

And the holy Mother of God—
I saw her there in radiance!
She made no travel to Brooksvaline:
Saying that there men's souls are judged!
Brightly shone the moon
And the paths stretched far away.

IV

In other worlds I tarried
Through the length of many nights;
And God alone can know
How much distress of soul I saw
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

A young man there I saw,
Who had recklessly a boy had killed:
Now he must carry him eternally
In his own arms!
He stood deep in mire,
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

Also an old man did I see,
He wore a cloak as though of lead.
Thus was he punished, because he
In avarice had lived on earth.
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

Ad men came into sight
Who carried fiery burdens;
Dishonesty weighs heavily
On their poor souls,
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

Children too could I behold.
With glowing coals beneath their feet.
These worked their parents ill in life,
Which hurt their spirits grievously
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

I was charged to approach that house,
Where witches had to work
In the blood which in life
Had stirred them up to wrath,
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

Down from the North in savage troops,
Come riding wicked spirits,
Led by the Prince of Hell.
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

What came from out of the North
Seemed worst of all;
In front rode he, the Prince of Hell,
On his black charger.
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

But from the South there came
In serene tranquility yet other bands.
Foremost rode St. Michael
At the side of Jesus Christ.
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

The souls laden with sin
Could but in terror tremble!
Their tears ran down in streams—
The result of their bad deeds.
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

In majesty stood Michael there
Weighing the human souls
Upon his scales for sin;
And giving judgment stood
The judge of the world, Jesus Christ.
In Brooksvaline, where souls
The Day of Judgment undergo.

V

Happy is he who in earth-life
Gives shoes to those in need;
He need not walk with naked feet
In the field of thorns.
Thus speaks the tongue of the scales,
And universal truth
Resounds within the spirit-state.

Happy is he who in earth-life
Hath given bread to the poor!
He cannot in that world
Be injured by the dogs.
Thus speaks the tongue of the scales,
And universal truth
Resounds within the spirit-state.

Happy is he, who in earth-life
Hath given corn to the poor!
Threatened he cannot be
By the sharp horns of the bull,
When he must pass the Gjaller-bridge.
Thus speaks the tongue of the scales,
And universal truth
Resounds within the spirit-state.

Happy is he, who in earth-life
Gives clothing to the poor!
The ice-masses in Brooksvaline
Cannot avail to freeze him.
Thus speaks the tongue of the scales,
And universal truth
Resounds within the spirit-state.

VI

Young folk and old ones too,
Give heed unto the words
Which Olaf spake about his dreams.
Long didst thou sleep indeed ...
Wake now, Olaf Oesteson!

The poem itself is old; but as we have already said, it has recently reappeared as if of itself among the Norwegian people and is spreading with great rapidity. The fact of this poem spreading id one among the many things at the present time which shows how people are longing to understand the secrets now being opened up by Theosophy, for the fact that what is here described takes place—or at least could take place a comparatively short time ago—in a soul, is not merely “imagination.” Olaf Oesteson is a type of those people living in the North who, even in the Middle Ages, about the middle of that period, were able to experience literally, one might say, the things mentioned in this poem. When our Norwegian friends gave me this poem on my visit to Christiania the time before last, and wished me to say something about it, it was the fact just mentioned, one of general theosophical interest, which came particularly to notice, but what led up to include this poem in our theosophical understanding we can really penetrate more and more deeply into what comes to light in it. Thus for instance, it was significant to me that Olaf (that is an old Norwegian name) has the surname “Oesteson.” “Oesteson”—the son of what? Of “Oste”; and I tried to find what sort of mother this is the son of. Now of course we might adduce many things—including some that might lead to dispute—about he meaning of the word “Oste” (East): but it would be impossible to-day to explain all that is connected with it. If, however, we take into account all that comes into question, “Olaf Oesteson” means approximately this: One who is still a son of that soul which passes down from generation to generation, and is connected with the blood which is handed on from generation to generation. Thus we have traced this name back to what we have so often spoken of in Theosophy, namely, that in ancient times the old clairvoyance was connected with the relationship of the blood which passes through generations. We might translate “Olaf Oesteson” thus: Olaf, the one born of many generations and who still bears in his soul the characteristics of many generations.

Now when we examine his experiences, it is extremely interesting to notice that what Olaf Oesteson went through while he was asleep for thirteen days, beginning from Christmas Eve, during which time he did not woke was in a sort of psychic state. When we read these verses describing his various experiences with the broad homeliness of the nation, we are reminded of certain descriptions of the first stages of initiation, where we are told that so and so was led to the portal of death. We are shown in many places in the poem that Olaf Oesteson arrives at the portal of death. It is pointed out particularly clearly where he says that he feels like a corpse, even to the earth which feels between his teeth. When we remember that in initiation the etheric body extends beyond the limits of the skin and the neophite becomes larger and larger, so that he lives into the large, into the wide expanse of space, we are told in this poem how Olaf Oesteson descends deeply, feels himself in the depths of the earth and ascends to the clouds. Olaf Oesteson experience what man has to go through after death, for example, in the sphere of the moon. It is poetically described how the moon shines clearly and how the paths stretch far away, then the chasm is described which has to be passed over in the world which lies between the human world and the one leading out into cosmic space. The heavenly bridge connects what is human with what is cosmic. Our attention is then drawn to the beings expressed in the constellations; the bull and the serpent. To one who can look spiritually into the world, the constellations are only the expression of what exists spiritually in space. Then the world of Kamaloca is disclosed in the description of “Brooksvaline.” It describes how there is a sort of recompense, how people have there to experience what they have not acquired here on earth,—but in a compensating way.—We need not, however, go into all the details of the poem. We should not do this at all with poems such as this. We ought to feel they have originated from a frame of mind still closely connected with something which existed in such a people as this, much longer than among nations which lived in the more interior part of the continent or who were connected with the life in cities. In the Norwegian people, which still possesses in its national language many things which border closely upon occult secrets, it is possible to keep souls in touch for a long time with what exists behind outer material phenomena.

Remember who I explained that, parallel with the seasons of the year, there are spiritual facts taking place, how in the spring when the plants spring forth the earth, when everything wakens, as it were, when the days grow longer, we have to recognize what may be called a sort of sleeping of the elementary and higher spirits connected with the earth. In spring, when outwardly the earth awakens, we see that spiritually this is connected with a sort of falling asleep of the earth; and when outer nature dies down again it is connected with an awakening of the spiritual nature of the earth. When about Christmas time outer nature is as though asleep, it is the time when the spiritual part of the earth is most active, and includes elemental, less important beings, as well as great and mighty beings connected with earthly life. It is only when it is observed outwardly that it seems as though we must compare spring with the awakening of the earth and winter to its going to sleep. Seen occultly it is the reverse. The “Spirit of the Earth” which however, consists of many spirits, is awake in winter and asleep in summer. Just as in the human organism the organic and plant activities are most active during sleep, as these forces then work even into the brain, and as the purely organic activity is subdued while the person is awake, so is it also with the earth. When the earth is most active, when everything has sprouted forth, when the sun has reached its zenith about St. John's Day, the Spirit of the earth is asleep. In accord with this occult truth the festival of Christmas, the festival of the awakening of the spirit, was fixed in winter. Things which have been handed down as customs from ancient times often correspond to these occult verities.

Now one who knows how to live with the spirit of the earth celebrates, for example, the festival of St. John in summer, for this festival is a kind of materialistic festival; it celebrates that which is revealed in an outward materialistic form. One who is connected with the Spirit of the Earth, with what lives spiritually in the earth, awakens in his inner being—that is, he sleeps outwardly like Olaf Oesteson—best at Christmas time, during the “Thirteen days.” This is an occult fact, which to occultism signifies exactly the same as, for example, the fact of the outer solstitial point to ordinary materialistic science. Of course materialistic science will consider it to be an obvious thing that in astronomy it should describe the activity of the sun in summer and in winter in a purely external manner, it will consider foolish what to occultists is a fact, namely that the spiritual solstice is at its highest point in winter, that therefore the conditions are then the most favorable for those who wish to come in touch with the Spirit of the Earth and all that is spiritual. Therefore to one who wishes to strengthen his soul's powers it may come about that he can have his best experiences during the thirteen days after Christmas. At that time, without noticing it, experiences come forth from the soul,—although the modern man is emancipated from outer processes, so that occult experiences can come at any time, but in so far as outer conditions can have an influence, the time between Christmas and New Year is most important.

Thus are we reminded by this poem in quite a natural manner, that a great deal of what we are able to relate regarding the period between death and rebirth was known among certain peoples a comparatively short time ago, many knew it from direct experience.

If there is a sphere in the human soul that really constitutes a kind of triad, which, in the case of modern man, is, as it were, covered by his ordinary consciousness, we should also be able to find in evolution a stage that reveals this outwardly; that is to say, a stage in which the soul really feels its threefold nature and in which the three members of the soul appear separately. In other words: A nation must once have existed that felt these soul-parts separately, in such a way that the “one-ness” was, after all, felt within the soul far less than the “threefold-ness”, and so that this threefold nature of the soul was still thought of in connection with the cosmos.

Such a nation really existed in Europe and it left behind an important monument of culture, concerning which I have already spoken to you. This nation once experienced within the soul the soul's threefold character—and just there, where it should exist—and this was the Finnish nation. This stage of culture is expressed in the epic poem “Kalevala”. What is set forth in “Kalevala”, contains a clear consciousness of the soul’s threefold nature. Thus, the ancient seers, upon whose visionary power the “Kalevala” is based, felt: “The world contains an inspiring element and one of the members of my soul is connected with it; my sentient soul receives its impulses from there.” This nation, or these ancient seers, experienced the inspiring element of the sentient soul almost as a human-divine, or a human-heroic essence, and they called it “Wainamoinen”. This is nothing but the inspiring element of the sentient soul, inspiring it from out [of] the cosmos, and all the destinies of Wainamoinen, described in “Kalevala”, express the fact that this form of consciousness once existed in a nation that was widely spread in the north-eastern territory of Europe, a nation that experienced the three parts of the soul separately and felt that the sentient soul was inspired by Wainamoinen.

In the same way, this nation, or these ancient seers, felt that the understanding soul was, as it were, a special member of the soul, that receives its forging impulses—or that which forges within the soul and builds it up—from another Being, called Ilmarinen. Just as in the Kalevala Wainamoinen corresponds to the sentient soul, so Ilmarinen corresponds to the understanding soul. If you read my lecture on “Kalevala”, you will find in it all these explanations.

In the same way, that nation, or those ancient seers (but we must bear in mind the fact that the consciousness-soul was, at that time, experienced as something that enabled the human being to be a conqueror upon the physical plane) experienced that Lemminkainen was a Being connected with the powers of the physical plane, an elemental, heroic Being, the inspirator of the consciousness-soul. Thus, if we speak in accordance with other epic poems, we may say that these three heroic characters come from the Finnish nation and inspire the threefold nature of the soul.

Wonderful is the relationship between Ilmarinen and what is being forged there. I have already pointed out that in “Kalevala” the human being is forged out of the various elements of Nature. In “Kalevala”, this Being, forged, as it were, out of all the atoms of Nature, the Being that is pulverised, and then forged together, is described in a marvellous picture as the forging of Sampo. The fact that once upon a time the human being was really formed out of these three soul-parts and then passed over, as it were, into a “pralaya”, in order to emerge again later on, all this is described in “Kalevala” in the part where Sampo is lost and found again: it is, as it were, the re-discovery of something over which the darkness of consciousness was first spread out.

Let us now imagine that in the south, or rather in the southeast, another nation faces the Finnish nation, one that developed in ancient times the soul-qualities mentioned to you: a uniform character of the soul, a soul-element expressing this uniform character in the qualities of its character, feeling and temperament. This nation is a Slav nation, influenced by Scythianos, who lived in the remote past for some time in the environment of the ancient Scythian nation. However, a nation living in the neighbourhood of a centre of initiation need not at all be a highly developed nation, but instead, the necessary things must take place in the course of evolution. With the penetration of the Graeco-Byzantine culture into Slavism, a particular form of the Mystery of Golgotha also penetrated into it. What I have indicated, here, as the centre of the Graeco-Byzantine culture, may be taken, if you like, as Constantinople on the map of Europe, for it is, after all, Constantinople.

Thus we have before us souls impregnated with a fundamentally Slav type, souls that are, on the one hand, connected with something that can lead, through the Mystery of Golgotha, to a uniform soul-essence and may thus prepare these souls having a uniform character for Christianity, and on the other hand, these souls take up the Mystery of Golgotha in a very definite form, resembling an inspiration or an influence coming from the Mystery of Golgotha, in the form in which it went out of the Graeco-Byzantine culture.

But something else must now take place. The following thing must, as it were, come from a certain point.—The separation that existed in the Finnish nation, the division of the three soul-parts, set forth so wonderfully in “Kalevala”, must now be obliterated. This can only be obliterated through an influence from outside; it can only be obliterated through the circumstance of an advancing nation, or part of nation, predisposed from the very outset to experience within the soul its “one-ness”, not its “threefold-ness”, but this “one-ness” is not the one obtained through the Mystery of Golgotha, but a kind that this nation possessed through its own nature. If we study the Finnish nation, we shall find that it is particularly disposed to develop the consciousness of the soul’s threefold character; this threefold character and its connection with the cosmos cannot be expressed more significantly than it has been expressed in “Kalevala”. But in the north, this had to be whitewashed, it had to be clouded over, as it were, by something that obliterates the consciousness of the soul’s threefold nature. And so a race descends, that bears within its soul, in a natural form, the strivings after unity, in the manner in which they existed at that time—expressed in an entirely different way and on an entirely different stage in “Faust”, in Goethe's “Faust”, and in the character of Faust, in general—it bears within its soul something that entirely ignores the soul’s threefold nature, striving after the unity of the Ego. At this still primitive stage, it has a destructive effect upon the three soul-members.

But the Finnish nation was of such a kind that it could still feel in a natural way the streaming forces that penetrated into the soul’s “threefoldness”, obliterating it. (Otherwise it would not have been able to experience these three members of the soul). This streaming-element, forcing its way into the soul, was experienced as a threefold R, as RRR. And just because it was experienced as something which in occult language is best of all expressed in the letters, or in the sound “UUO”, inducing one to say, it comes along, and one should really be afraid of it—it now streams along as a breath in the sound “RRRUUO” and becomes, rooted in what is always experienced through the “TAO” (T), when it penetrates into the human soul. In the case of the ancient divinity Jehova, the penetration into the human soul was expressed with the sound “S”, or the Hebrew “Shin”, and the penetrating element in general is expressed, with the “S” sound. This is connected with the element that penetrates into the soul. What takes root in the soul, tends towards the sound “I”, (pronounced EE), whose significance is well known. Consequently, the Finnish nation experienced this in the sound “RUOTSI”, and for this reason it called the descending nations the “RUTSI” (Ruotsi). The Slavs then gradually adopted this name, and because they connected themselves with that element, penetrating, as the Finns called it, downwards from above, they also called themselves “Rutsi”, which afterwards became the name of the “Russians”.

Thus you may see that the external events described in history had to take place. The fact that the nations that were settled down here, below, called in the Warager tribes—in reality, they were Norman-German tribes who had to connect themselves with the Slav tribes—is entirely connected with something that had to take place; it had to occur, in accordance with the constitution of the human soul. In the East of Europe thus arose later on that element which penetrated into the nations of Europe as the Russian element, the Russian nation. The Russian element therefore contains all those things which I mentioned: it contains, above all, a Norman-German element, and this lives in the name from which the name “Russians” descends, for it has arisen in the way described just now.

The “Kalevala” expresses in a deep way that the greatness of the Finnish nation is based on the fact that it really prepares the “one-ness”, or the unity within the triad; by obliterating the soul’s threefold character it prepares the acceptance of that unity which is no longer a purely human unity, but a divine one, in which dwells the godly hero of the Mystery of Golgotha.

In order that a group of men may take up what comes towards it, it must first be prepared for this. We may, thus, gain an impression of all that had to occur inwardly, in order that the things, which we then encounter inwardly, may arise in the course of development. I explained to you that “Kalevala” expresses in a wonderful way the truth that the Finnish nation had to supply this preparation, in view of the fact that the Mystery of Golgotha is introduced in a strange way at the end of the poem. Christ appears at the end of “Kalevala”, but because he throws his impulse into Finnish life, Wainamoinen abandons the country, and this expresses that the originally great and significant element that penetrated into Europe through the Finnish element, was a preparatory stage for Christianity and took up Christianity like a message from outside.

Just as an individual human being must be prepared in an extraordinarily complicated manner, as it were, so that his soul may find from various sides what it requires, in order to live within a definite incarnation, so it is also the case with nations. A nation is not an entirely uniform, homogeneous element, but something in which many elements flow together. All manner of things have flown together in the nation that lived yonder in the East. Indeed, we may say that everything of an inwardly spiritual character is, at the same time, indicated outwardly, even though it is only indicated slightly. I said that in this nation we must look out for a soul-tribe leading upwards from below; respectively, also downwards from above, in the case of a connecting soul-tribe. This was actually the case, for a powerful stream, a great road went from the Black Sea to the Finnish Bay and along this road an exchange took place between the Graeco-Byzantine element and that which constituted the natural element of the “Rutsi”.

Last time I told you that Europe’s Eastern culture was preceded, let us say, by a cultural stratum in which the human beings were constituted in such a way that they still possessed in their souls something that has more withdrawn into subconscious spheres in the case of modern man, and that they experienced in their ordinary life something like a division of the soul into sentient soul, understanding soul and consciousness-soul.

I explained to you that the men belonging to the once great Finnish nation (the present one is only a remnant of the formerly great and widely spread nation) had souls that possessed, in addition to a certain ancient form of clairvoyance, in their immediate daytime experience, something like a scission of the soul into sentient soul, understanding soul and consciousness-soul.

I told you that in the magnificent epic poem “Kalevala” the three characters Wainamoinen, Ilmarinen and Lemminkainen express how this threefold soul is structured and guided from out the cosmos.

How could such a thing take place? How was it possible that a great nation could develop at a certain place in Europe, a nation whose soul was of the kind described to you?

That the human being develops his true Ego, the gift of the earth, depends upon the fact that the spirits of the earth influence him from below, through the Maya of earthly substance. The spirits of the earth work from below, through the solid earth, as it were, and in our time these spirits of the earth are essentially used for the purpose of calling forth in the human being his Ego-nature.

When something that lies below the Ego-nature rays into a nation such as the old Finnish nation, something more spiritual than the Ego-nature and more strongly connected with the divine forces, (for, if the soul feels itself split into three, it is more strongly connected with the divine powers than if this is not the case) then not only the earthly element, with its elemental spirits, can, in a certain way, ray into man’s earthly part from below, but something else must ray into this earthly element, another elemental influence must ray into it.

Just as man’s physical existence is intimately connected with the spirit of the earth—in so far as this existence is an earthly one and in so far as he develops his Ego within it—that is to say, with the spirits working upwards from below, from the earth itself, so man’s soul-element, revealing itself as an existence connected with his nature, temperament, character and soul, is related with everything that lives upon the earth in the form of watery element, of liquid, element.

Consequently, these souls that are split into three parts must be influenced by spirits pertaining to the watery, to the liquid element. The essential element of our time is the earthly element, the Ego-forming element. When another element penetrates into us, for instance the watery element, then it penetrates more from out the spiritual world. It is not contained in the human being himself. It must, as it were, penetrate into man as a spiritual being, so that man’s earthly nature may obtain something that leads him into the spiritual world.

Suppose that the surface of this blackboard represents that out of which come the elemental forces of the earth; in that case, a spiritual element that seeks to penetrate in there, must come out of the organism of the earth itself out of something that is, in itself, spiritual: a Being must be there, a real Being, that is not the human being, but inspires the human being, as it were, to experience the threefold split of his soul. Consequently, a being must be there that influences the soul from out [of] the spirituality of Nature in such a way that the sentient soul, the understanding soul and the consciousness-soul separate and so that the souls are really able to say: My sentient soul is influenced from out Nature by a force resembling Wainamoinen; it streams towards me like a being of Nature and endows me with the force of the sentient soul. But that is still another influence, resembling Ilmarinen, that endows me with the forces of the understanding-soul, and there is moreover something that resembles Lemminkainen, endowing me with the forces of the consciousness-soul. If HERE, at this place, *) we have a being stretching out, as it were, its feelers into Nature, almost through a kind of neck, if a being that has, as it were, its chief group-body HERE, at this place, and that stretches out its feelers in such a way that we have one of them here, together with the sentient soul, a second feeler there, and a third one there, then this being of Nature would have a body and its soul-part would penetrate, as if with soul-feelers, into these places, in order to exercise an inspiring influence—and there, etheric bodies can arise, that enable the soul to feel itself split into three.

The ancient Finnish population used to say: We live here, yet we feel something resembling three powerful beings, that do not belong to the physical plane, but are beings of Nature. They reveal themselves, coming from the West; they are three parts, almost organs of one might being, whose body lives yonder, but that stretches out its feelers in this direction. (Wainamoinen, Ilmarinen, Lemminkainen.) A powerful OCEAN-BEING spreads from west to east; it stretches out its feelers and endows this nation with that which constitutes the threefold soul.

The nations who still experienced this, felt and spoke in this way, and also “Kalevala” speaks in this manner, as explained just now. Modern man, who merely lives upon the physical plane, says that the western sea stretches out as far as this place: Here is the Gulf of Bothnia, the Finnish Gulf and the Gulf of Riga. But in trying to gain an insight into the spiritual essence of the external physical aspect, we simply take together what appears to us like a transverse section of Nature: we take together the following things and say: There is still a great quantity of water, there below; beyond there is the air; man breathes in the air, and this ocean world is a great powerful being that is simply structured in a different way than the one to which we are accustomed. What is spread out over there is a powerful being, and the human beings belonging to that older race were connected with it in a very marked, and distinctly outlined way. And when we speak of Folk-Souls, these Folk-Souls have in the elemental spirits that exist in countless of these soul-expressions, the instruments through which they can work. They organise, as it were, an army in order to penetrate with their influence as far as the etheric body, and to mould man, through the etheric body, in such away that his physical body becomes an instrument for that which is to be his particular and special mission upon the earth.

We can understand culture, even in its relation to man, only if we can contemplate the forms that we encounter in Nature as an expression of the spirit, we can understand it, if we do not contemplate the sea and land boundaries in the usual thoughtless manner, but if we are able to understand what these forms express. Someone who sees the face of a person might say, for instance: The face has certain definite forms; flesh and air contact one another. But if he describes it in this way, it will be difficult to know what the face was really like. We can only understand it if we consider it as the expression, as the countenance of the human being. Similarly, in the above-mentioned case, we can only grasp things if we consider them as the physiognomy of a powerful being that stretches certain parts of its principal body out of the ocean that stretches out this part of its physiognomy.

Indeed, many things occur below the threshold of consciousness and the Spirits of Form have not in vain set definite forms into Nature. It is possible to grasp the meaning of these forms. They are the expression of an inner being. And if we become the pupils of the Spirits of Form, we ourselves can create forms expressing that which lives in the inner being of Nature and of the Spirit.

I explained to you that there is a certain relationship in which East and West work together, in which the liquid element leans towards the East, as if it were a powerful Being and, as an expression of the threefold nature of the soul, it leans over in the three great Bays, that were still experienced by the more spiritual nations of ancient Finland as Wainamoinen, Ilmarinen and Lemminkainen, and are to-day designated so prosaically as the Finnish, the Bothnian and the Riga Bays. What comes out of the liquid and out of the solid elements, worked together in the Finnish nation. Within it were united the element that moulds more the etheric part of man and refines his physical part, namely, the liquid element, and the element of the earth, or that which comes out of the earth and forms the physical part of man.

We might now ask: What significance has the fact that a nation that fulfilled so eminent a mission in the course of the earth’s evolution as that of the great Finnish nation, should still exist after having accomplished its task? The fact that such a nation remains, that it does not disappear after having fulfilled its mission, has its meaning within the whole progress of evolution. Just as a human being preserves in his living memory, for his subsequent life, the thoughts which he formed at some earlier time of life, so the nations of a past time must remain, almost like a conscience, like a living memory that continues to be active in the face of what happens later—LIKE A CONSCIENCE.

Now we might say: The conscience of Eastern Europe is the force that preserved the Finnish nation. But a time must come when the understanding for the tasks of evolution will take hold of human hearts, when the ideas of “Kalevala” will begin to blossom from out the midst of the Finnish nation itself, when this wonderful epic poem will be spiritualised and permeated with modern anthroposophical ideas, so that it will once more reach, in all its depth, the consciousness of the whole of Europe.

The European nations revered Homer’s epic poems. Yet the “Kalevala” streamed out of still deeper sources of the soul’s life. This cannot as yet be grasped. But it will be grasped, when the teachings of Anthroposophy will be used in a corresponding way, in order to explain the spiritual phenomena of the evolution of the earth. An epic poem such as “Kalevala”, cannot be preserved unless it is preserved in a living form of existence; it cannot be preserved without souls that dwell in human bodies, souls that are related with the creative forces of “Kalevala.” “Kalevala” remains as a living conscience. Its influence can continue, because, not the words, but that which lives in the poem itself, continues to live. Its influence can continue through the fact that a centre exists, from which it may ray out. The essential thing is that this centre should be there, in the same way in which the thoughts that we have had at some earlier time of our life, still exist later on in life.

Here, the four Platonic Virtues (described in The Republic) are developed in the direction of that comprehensive picture of man's threefold being—the head-system, the rhythmic system, and the metabolic and limb system—of which Steiner gave the first full description in 1917, and which is summed up in the Foundation Stone Meditation in 1923.

Our spiritual science has the task of removing for our consciousness, indeed for our whole inner life, the gulf that exists for our external human consciousness between the physical world, in which man spends the time between birth and death, and the spiritual world in which man spends the other part of the totality of his existence, the time between death and a new birth.

For one who lives in spiritual science with every fibre of his soul, such a saying is familiar, and even self-evident. But one may well say that it becomes particularly holy to us at such a moment as this. Through the grave events of war we have lost within quite a short time a number of our dear friends and members, and are soon to accompany friends upon their last paths on earth. Tomorrow morning at eleven we shall have here in Zürich the cremation of a dear member, Frau Dr Colazza, and we have just heard that our dear friend Fritz Mitscher died this afternoon about five near Davos. With these two members, souls dear to us have left the physical plane; but spiritual science has shown us the way to understand in a much higher sense than we would otherwise be able to achieve that we do not lose such souls, but remain united with them.

There are already a considerable number of souls belonging to us, who have gone through the gate of death since our work in this movement began. And from those sources from which knowledge of the spirit comes to us, it can be said that these souls have become faithful fellow-workers with us in the spiritual world, each according to his powers. With the full responsibility, with which something can be said, which should have a firm foundation in spiritual knowledge, I can say: in them we have won pillars supporting our spiritual movement. Many have passed through the gate of death, working within our spiritual movement, and looking down upon that to which their love is directed. In the period between birth and death they have grown attached to the kind of aspiration which is represented in our circle. They have left behind them in our Society something which is itself upon the path between death and a new birth.

Just as nature around us is a world upon which we look back, we can look back upon our physical life from that moment onwards, which can be compared with man's birth. Immediately after death man passes through a condition which can be compared with the embryonic life, with the life within the maternal body, except that this period in the life after death can be counted in days, and is much shorter than the embryonic life in relation to physical life. Then follows what can be compared to the entry into the physical world, with the drawing of the first breath. This can be called the awakening in the spiritual world; it is a perceiving that the will of the soul which has gone through the gate of death is received by the beings of the higher Hierarchies. Just as a human being physically entering the physical world from his mother's body finds himself able to receive the external air, and as his senses gradually awaken—in the same way there comes the moment after death when the soul feels: that power of will, which during physical life was contained within the limits of the physical body, now flows from me out into the universe. And this soul then feels how this will is really received through the activity of the beings of the next higher hierarchy, the hierarchy of the Angels. That is like drawing the first breath in the spiritual world, and the gradual growth into the spiritual environment; spiritual experience shows us this.

I would like to speak of the destiny of those who have gone from us in the course of the years, leaving the physical plane. I would like to look at those who have become attached to our spiritual movement here, and who look down upon it as something of which they know that it informs human souls while still within the physical body about that condition in which they themselves live. To be able to relate oneself in this way in memory of earthly life is something which even here in the physical world belongs already to the spiritual world. For those who have gone through the gate of death this is something infinitely precious and significant. When, like a tributary into a river, they can flow entirely into that stream which flows up to them from the physical world, taking its source from what they have experienced in our movement—the stream in the thoughts of those linked with them in love or by family ties—then the community is a much closer one than it could otherwise be in our materialistic times, because it is based on spiritual relationships.

We may say: with many a one, who has gone early through the gate of death into the spiritual world, it seems as if he had done this from intimate love to our spiritual movement, in order to help with stronger powers from the spiritual world. Among a considerable number of those who have gone from us there lives in their souls the most wonderfully clear feeling about the need for our spiritual movement. For him who can look into the spiritual world all those who have gone through the gate of death, and now gaze down upon the movement with which they were connected, are like spiritual heralds of our movement. They carry their standards before us, and call to us constantly: we were convinced while we were united with you of the necessity of this movement. But now that we have entered the spiritual world we know that we can help and how we must help at a time in which this movement is necessary.

This is something which those who are left behind on the physical plane will feel more and more, when they have lost people dear to them. For them what has been said can be the deepest comfort, for they have here all that can bring about a still deeper connection between souls when we can no longer be connected in the external realm of manifestation, through physical eyes and physical words.

This spiritual movement, of which we are to become part, has to bring a very great deal. Today I would like to choose out one particular chapter. A time like ours, in which external civilisation, in spite of the last echoes of the old religions, builds entirely upon the materialistic consciousness, can only develop the impulses of the moral life in a way that reckons only with life between birth and death. Among the many things which should come about through our spiritual movement will be a fresh development of the whole moral life of humanity. For men will learn to regard the moral life from a point of view which extends beyond birth and death, and which reckons with the fact that the human soul goes through repeated lives on earth, and that this soul, as we bear it within us between birth and death, has passed through many lives, and can hope for other lives in the future. When we have extended our vision from a single life to a series of successive lives, we shall have a more comprehensive understanding for our existence, and a sounder and more comprehensive understanding of what virtue and morality are.

When we speak of human virtues we can distinguish four of these which we can describe in ordinary language. There is one virtue, as we shall indicate later on, which lives in the depths of the human soul, but of which we should speak as little as possible as we shall see, for reasons that are holy. All other virtues which exist in life, and which together make up morality, can be regarded as special examples of the four virtues which we shall consider, four virtues of which antiquity in particular had much to say.

Plato, the great philosopher of ancient Greece, distinguished these four virtues in particular, because he was able to draw his wisdom from the echoes of the ancient Mysteries. Under the influence of the old Mysteries Plato could distinguish the virtues better than later philosophers and much better than our times, in which knowledge of Mystery wisdom has become so remote and so chaotic.

The first virtue which we must consider, if we speak about morality from a comprehensive knowledge of human nature, is the virtue of wisdom. But this wisdom is to be understood in a rather deeper sense, more related to ethics, than is usually done. Wisdom is not something that comes to man of its own accord; still less can it in the ordinary sense be learned. It is not easy to describe what its meaning for us should be. If we pass through life in such a way that events work upon us, and we learn from them how we could have met this or that more adequately, how we could have used our powers more strongly and effectively—if we are attentive towards everything in life, so that when something meets us a second time in a comparable way we can treat it in a way which shows us we have benefited from the first experience—then we grow in wisdom. If we preserve all through life a mood of being able to learn from life, of being able to regard everything brought to us by nature and our experience, in such a way that we learn from it, not simply accumulating knowledge, but growing inwardly better and richer—then we have gathered wisdom, and what we have experienced has not been worthless for the life of our souls.

Life has been worthless for us if we pass through decades and still judge something that we have experienced in just the same way as we thought about it earlier in our lives. If we pass through life in such a way, we are most remote from wisdom. Karma may have brought it about that in youth we grew angry, and condemned this or that human action. If we retain this quality we have made poor use of our lives. We have used them well, supposing we formed harsh judgments in our youth, if at a later stage of life we do not judge harshly, but with understanding and forgiveness; if we make the effort of wishing to understand. If we have the character that from birth some things aroused furious anger in us, and if when we are old we no longer grow angry as in our youth, but our anger has left us and we have grown gentler—then we have used life in accordance with wisdom. If we were materialists in our youth, but then allowed ourselves to experience what our time could bring us as revelations from the spiritual world, then we have used our life in accordance with wisdom. If we close ourselves to the revelations of the spiritual world we have not used our life in accordance with wisdom.

To be enriched in this way, and to achieve a wider horizon, we can call the use of life in accordance with wisdom. What spiritual science seeks to give us is able to help us in opening ourselves towards life, in order to grow wiser. Wisdom is something which strongly opposes human egoism. Wisdom is something which always reckons with the course of universal events. We let ourselves be instructed by the course of universal events because this liberates us from the narrow judgment made by our ego. Fundamentally, a wise man cannot judge egoistically; for if one learns from the world, and grows in understanding for the world, one allows one's judgment to be corrected by the world; thus wisdom detaches us from narrow and limited vision and brings us into harmony with itself. Much else could be described, in order gradually to form a picture of wisdom. We should not attempt a definition of such ideas, but keep our hearts open, in order to grow wiser, even about wisdom.

Here in the physical world everything which man is to experience in waking life has to use the instruments of external physical and ethereal nature. Between birth and death we are only outside our physical and ethereal body with our soul-being, in so far as this is ego and astral body, during our periods of sleep. In our conscious, waking condition we use as instruments our physical and ethereal bodies. When we fill ourselves with wisdom, when we try in action and thought, in feeling and perception to live in accordance with wisdom, we use those organs of our physical and ethereal bodies which are so to speak the most perfect in our earthly life—those organs which have developed over the longest period, which were prepared by Saturn, Sun and Moon and have come into our lives as a heritage, having reached a certain completion.

I would like to give you from another point of view an idea of what can be understood by more or less perfect organs. Take on the one hand our brain. The brain is not the most perfect organ, but we can still call it more perfect than other organs, for it has needed longer for its evolution. We can compare the brain with our torso, upon which we have our hands. When we intend to do something with our hands, we have the thought: I stretch out my hand, I take the vase, I draw back my hand. What have I done ? I have stretched out not only the physical hand, but also the ethereal and the astral hand, and a part of my ego; the physical hand went with them.

If I only think, clairvoyant consciousness can see how something like spiritual arms stretch out from the head, but the physical brain remains within the skull. Just as my ethereal and astral hand belongs to my physical hand, something ethereal and astral belongs to the brain. The brain cannot follow, but the hands can follow. In a later time the hands will one day be fixed, and we shall only be able to move their astral part. Hands are on the way to become what the brain is already. In earlier times, during the old Sun and Moon periods, what today stretches out from the brain as something that is only spiritual was still accompanied by the physical organ. The skull has now covered it, so that the physical brain is held fast within it during the evolution of the Earth. The brain is an organ which has passed through more stages of evolution. The hands are on the way to become similar to the brain, for the whole man is on the way to become a brain. Thus there are organs which are more perfect, and have evolved into something more self-enclosed, and others which are less perfect. The most perfect organs are used for what we achieve in wisdom. Our ordinary brain is really used only as the instrument for the lowest form of wisdom, earthly cleverness. The more we acquire wisdom, the less we depend upon our cerebrum, the more activity is withdrawn (a thing unknown to external anatomy) to our cerebellum, to that smaller brain enclosed within our skull which looks like a tree. When we have become wise, when we have become wisdom, we find ourselves in fact under a ‘tree,’ which is our cerebellum and which then especially begins to unfold its activity.

Section of cerebellum, enlarged, showing tree-like structure

Imagine how a man who has become especially wise stretches out the organs of his wisdom mightily, like the branches of a tree. They originate in the cerebellum which remains within the hard covering of the skull; but the spiritual organs stretch far out, and man is under the tree, the Bodhi tree, in spiritual reality.

And so we see too that what we do in wisdom is the most spiritual thing about us, or at least belongs to the most spiritual, for the organs are already at rest. If we do anything with our hands, we must use part of our strength in the movement of the hand. If we form a wise judgment, or decide something wisely, the organs remain at rest, strength is no longer used upon the physical organ. We are there more spiritual; those organs which we use on the physical plane for the development of wisdom are those on which we need to use the least amount of energy—they are in a sense the most perfect.

Thus wisdom is something in the moral life which allows men to experience themselves in a spiritual way. It is connected with this that what man attains in the way of wisdom enables him to reap the greatest harvest from his earlier incarnations. Because we can live in wisdom within the spirit without any effort by the physical organs, we are most able through the life of wisdom to make fruitful what we have won in earlier incarnations for this life, bringing over this wisdom from earlier incarnations.

We have in German a good expression for a man who refuses to become wise. We call him a Philistine.¹ A Philistine is a man who resists the development of wisdom, who wants to remain as he is his whole life through, without altering his opinions. A man who seeks to become wise makes the effort to carry over the work which he has done and stored up in the course of earlier incarnations. The wiser we become, the more we bring over from earlier incarnations into the present, and if we do not wish to become wise, so that we leave barren the wisdom developed in earlier incarnations, there is then one who comes to saw it off: Ahriman.

No-one likes it better than Ahriman that we fail to grow wiser. We have the power to do it. We have gained far, far more in earlier incarnations than we believe; we won far more during the times in which we passed through the old conditions of clairvoyance. Everyone could become much wiser than he does become. No-one has the excuse that he could not bring much over from the past. To become wise means that one develops what has been won in earlier incarnations in such a way that it fills us in this incarnation.

The Buddha as Tree of Wisdom (sandstone relief from Bharhut, India, c. 2nd. Century B.C.) Indian Museum, Calcutta.

Another virtue can be called—though it is difficult to describe it exactly—the virtue of Courage. It contains the mood which does not remain passive towards life, but is ready to use its strength and activity. It can be said that this virtue comes from the heart. Of one who has this virtue in ordinary life it can be said: he has his heart in the right place. This is a good expression for our condition when we do not withdraw in a timid way from things which life asks from us, but when we are prepared to take ourselves in hand and know how to intervene where it is necessary. When we are inclined to get moving, confidently and bravely, we have this virtue. It is connected with a healthy life of feeling, which develops bravery at the right moment, while its absence brings about cowardice. This virtue can naturally be used in the physical course of life only through specific organs. These organs, to which the physical and ethereal hearts belong, are not so perfect as those which serve wisdom. These organs are on the way to alter, and will indeed become different in the future.

There is a great distinction between the brain and the heart in their relation to cosmic evolution. Suppose that a man goes through the gate of death, and passes through life between death and a new birth. His brain is altogether a work of the Gods. The brain is permeated by forces which leave him altogether when he goes through the gate of death, and for his next life the brain is built up entirely anew, not only materially, but also in its inner forces. That is not the case with the heart. With the heart it is so, that not the physical heart itself, but the forces which are active in the physical heart, remain in existence. These forces withdraw into the astral and into the Ego, and continue in existence between death and a new birth. The same forces, which beat within our hearts, beat again next time in our new incarnation. What works in the brain has gone; that does not appear in the next incarnation. But the forces active in the heart reappear in the next incarnation. If we contemplate the interior of the head we can say: invisible forces are working there, which compose the brain. But when a man has gone through the gate of death these forces are given over to the universe. But if we perceive a human heart-beat, we perceive spiritual forces which are not only present in this incarnation, but will live too in the next incarnation, having passed through death and a new birth.

Popular feeling has had a wonderful inkling of such things. It is because of this that it is so much concerned with the feeling of the heart-beat, not because the physical heart-beat in itself is valued so much, as because we are looking at something much more eternal when we consider a human heart-beat. If we have the virtue of courage, of bravery, we can use for it only a part of certain forces. We must use the other part for the organs which are the instrument for this virtue. They are organs for which we have still to use part of the forces concerned. If we are not courageous, if we let ourselves go and withdraw timidly from life, abandoning ourselves to our own weight, then we cannot bring to life those forces which have to accompany the use of the quality of courage in life.

When we stand in life in a cowardly way, the forces which should fire our hearts remain unused. They are then seed for Lucifer. He takes charge of them, and we lack them in the next life. To be cowardly towards life means to abandon a number of forces to Lucifer; and these are missing for us, when we seek to build up our hearts in our next incarnation. For these hearts should be the organs, the instruments of courage. We come into the world with defective, underdeveloped organs.

The third virtue reckons with the least perfect organs, those which will achieve a form in the future, of which they contain at present only the seed. This virtue can be called Temperance.² One shade of it can be called ‘Moderation.’ We have thus three virtues: Wisdom, Courage, and Temperance.

Now it is possible to be intemperate in the most varied ways. One can be intemperate in excessive eating and drinking; this is its lowest form. Here the soul is absorbed into bodily desire, and we live entirely through our body. But if we take our desire in hand, if we command the body, what it may not do, we are then temperate or moderate. Through such moderation we keep in the right order those forces which ought to help us, in order that we do not abandon the organs concerned to Lucifer in the next incarnation. For we abandon to Lucifer those forces which are expended through giving ourselves up to a life of passion. We do this in the worst way when our passions intoxicate us, and we are content to live in a dreaming, drowsy state.

When we lose our clear consciousness through intemperance we are always abandoning powers to Lucifer. He takes up these powers, and thereby deprives us of the forces which we need for the organs of breathing and digestion. We return with bad organs of breathing and digestion, if we do not practise the virtue of moderation. Those who like to be carried away by their desires, who give themselves up to the life of their passions, are candidates for decadent human beings in the future, for those future human beings who will suffer from all kinds of faults in their physical body.

It can be said that this virtue of Temperance depends upon the least perfect human organs, those organs that are at the beginning of their development and have to be fundamentally transformed. When we consider our organs of digestion and all that is connected with them, they are put in motion by the use of Ego, astral body, ethereal body and physical body. It is different with those organs which are the instruments for Courage. Here our Ego remains more or less outside, and we move freely; only what is astral and ethereal in us is absorbed into the physical. If we go further to the virtues embraced by Wisdom, we retain Ego and astral body in free detachment. For as we become wiser, we develop the organisation of the astral body and achieve control over it. That is the essential thing, that through becoming wise we transform the astral into the Spirit-Self, and only the ethereal accompanies the physical. In the brain only the ethereal accompanies the physical. While during waking life in relation to the rest of the body we are closely connected, at least with our astral nature, with the physical organ, we retain for the brain the condition, which we have in sleep, in the highest degree. Thus we require physical sleep particularly for the brain. For when we are awake we are also outside the brain with our Ego and our astral body, and these have to make the greatest efforts within themselves, without being supported by the external organ.

Thus we find a connection between our human being and the virtues. We can call Wisdom a virtue, which belongs to man as a spiritual being, where with his Ego and his astral body he is freely active, using his physical and ethereal organs only as a kind of basis. We can name Courage as the virtue active where man is only free with his Ego, which is supported by his astral, ethereal and physical bodies. Finally we can speak of Temperance, where the seed contained in our Ego is becoming free; where our Ego is still bound to the astral, ethereal and physical bodies, and yet with our Ego we are beginning to work ourselves free from these bonds.

There is then a virtue which is perhaps the most spiritual of all. This is connected with the whole human being. There is an exercise of the human being which we lose early, which we possess only in the first years of childhood. I have often mentioned this. When we enter the physical plane we do not yet have the attitude which belongs to our human dignity: we crawl, on all fours. I have pointed out that we only achieve the right attitude, the upright position, through our own forces. We develop too through the forces which enter into speech. In the first years of our life we develop the forces which in the main guide us into the position which we have in the world as true men. We do not enter the world in such a way that we already have the right direction in the world. We crawl. But we are set in it rightly, when we direct the head outwards towards the stars. This corresponds to inner forces.

In later life we lose these forces. They no longer appear. There is nothing which enters human life again so radically as learning to walk and stand upright. In relation to standing upright we grow more and more weary. If we begin in the early morning to live with our brain, then when the day is ended we grow tired and need sleep. What makes us upright in childhood, when we are tired, remains tired all through life and grows feeble, and anything comparable to achieving uprightness as children is no longer done by us in later life.

And how do we direct ourselves into life when we learn to speak? Forces of direction work as well when we learn to speak. But the forces which we use in early childhood are not really lost for us in later life. They remain for us, but they are connected with a virtue; with the virtue which is related to rightness and the right, the virtue of all-comprehending Justice, the fourth virtue. The same impulse, which we use as a child when we raise ourselves up from crawling, lives in us if we have the virtue of justice, the fourth that Plato mentions.

Whoever really exercises the virtue of justice puts every thing and every being in its right place, and goes out of himself and into the others. That is what all-comprehending Justice means. To live in Wisdom means to derive the best fruits from the forces we have stored up during earlier incarnations. If we have there to point towards what was imparted to us during earlier incarnations, where we were still permeated by divine forces, with Justice we have to point out still more: we are sprung from the whole universe. We exercise justice by developing those forces which relate us spiritually to the entire universe. Justice is the measure of a man's connection with the divine. In practice Injustice is equivalent to the godless; equivalent to the one who has lost his divine origin; we blaspheme against God, the God from whom we spring, if we do any man injustice.

Thus we have two virtues, Justice and Wisdom, which guide us back to what we were in earlier times, in earlier incarnations in the times when we ourselves were still in the womb of the godhead. And we have two other virtues, Courage and Temperance, which guide us towards later incarnations. We provide all the more forces for these, the less we give to Lucifer. We have seen how what is of the nature of courage and of temperance goes into the organs, and how the organs are prepared thereby for the next incarnation. In the same way moral life extends into the future, when we fill ourselves with spirituality. Two virtues shine out over the past incarnation: Wisdom and Justice. Courage and Temperance shine out over the incarnations to come.

The time will come when men will see clearly that they are throwing themselves into the jaws of Ahriman, when they shut themselves off against justice and wisdom. What was theirs in earlier incarnations, what belonged to the divine world, they would cast over to Lucifer through intemperate or cowardly actions. All that can be seized by Lucifer is taken away from the powers available to us for building up our body in the coming life.

We cannot practise wisdom and justice without becoming selfless, as has been indicated. Only a self-seeking man can be unjust. Only a self-seeking man can be willing to remain unwise. Wisdom and justice lead us out beyond our own Self and make of us members of the whole organism of humanity. Courage and temperance make us in a sense members of the whole organism of humanity; only through experiencing courage and temperance and expressing them in our lives, do we provide for ourselves for the future with a stronger organism to take its place within humanity. We do not then lose what we would otherwise throw to Lucifer. Egoism is of itself transformed into selflessness when it is rightly extended over the whole horizon of life, and man finds his place in the light of the fourth virtue. That is what will be brought by spiritual wisdom for the future of man, and will extend over ethics and the moral life. This will pour into educational method as well. Through understanding wisdom and justice in the sense that I have indicated, the desire to learn all through life will arise. It will be seen that one has to begin learning in the right way when one has already youth behind one—while people think now that they do not need to learn anything more once their youth is past. In this way even the greatest and noblest works of art of the greatest poets are lost. We would understand them best if we took them up again in old age. If people read Goethe's Iphigenia or Schiller's Tell, they usually think: we read that at school already. That is not right; one should not forget that these writings have their best effect if they are read in later life, for then they develop justice and wisdom.

And again the education of children will bring special fruit if the virtue of courage and the virtue of temperance are seen in the right light. Where children are to be educated, these virtues must be regarded in an individual way, by showing the children again and again that they are to take hold of life courageously, and not be afraid or withdraw themselves from all sorts of things; and that they grasp life temperately and moderately, in order gradually to free themselves from their passions. An immense amount can be done for the education of children in this way. In the later course of our study of spiritual science these things will have to be developed in greater detail.

So we see that while otherwise the ethical life only provides laws concerned with life between birth and death, on the external physical plane, the considerations of spiritual science extend to an unlimited horizon. It is the same as with other things in spiritual science. Humanity has had to experience in relation to the science of nature the extension of its horizons. Giordano Bruno showed men that there is not only the earth, but many other worlds in cosmic space. Spiritual science shows men that there is not only earthly life, but many earthly lives. Before Giordano Bruno men believed that there was a fixed boundary up in the sky. Giordano Bruno showed that there is no boundary, that the blue of the sky is not a limit. Spiritual science shows that birth and death are not there, but that we introduce them into life through the limitation of our understanding.

Thus the gulf between the physical and the spiritual can be bridged over. Things which rest upon a spiritual-scientific foundation are like this for those seeking to found a genuine, truthful Monism. Those who often call themselves Monists today manage their Monism very simply. They take one part of the world and make of it a unity by throwing away the other half. True Monism comes about through allowing both halves to have their significant influence upon one another. This comes about through spiritual science. This should not only arise in a significant way for our consciousness, but for the whole of our life. We have to come more and more to the real knowledge, looking out into the world: in all that lives and works around us something super-sensible is present, not only in what is seen by our eyes, but also in what can be perceived by the understanding which is bound to the brain. There are everywhere spiritual forces, behind every phenomenon, behind the phenomenon of the rainbow, behind the movement of the hand, and so on.

If you read the lecture cycle which I held in Leipzig at the turn of the year last year, [Christ and the Spiritual World. The search for the Holy Grail (six lectures, Leipzig, 28th December 1913 – 2nd January 1914), published by the Rudolf Steiner Press.] you will find how the Christ Impulse worked through the Mystery of Golgotha, and how Christ lives in the most important affairs of humanity, not only in human conscious knowledge. For instance, there were quarrels about dogmas. But while men were quarrelling, the Christ Impulse lived on and brought about the necessary events.

Take the figure of the Maid of Orléans. In European history the simple shepherd girl appears. She appeared in a remarkable way; there lived in her soul not only those forces, which are otherwise to be found in human beings, but the Christ Impulse works in this personality, enlivening and sustaining her through its mighty influence. She became a kind of representative of the Christ Impulse itself for her time. This she was only able to do, because the Christ Impulse could enter and live within her.

You know that we celebrate the Christmas Festival in the time when the sun has least power, in the deepest darkness of winter, because we can be convinced that at this time the inner light, the spiritual light, has its greatest power.

Old legends tell us that over Christmas, up to 6th January, people have had special experiences, because at this time the life of the earth, and the inner forces of the earth, are most concentrated. Those who have the right disposition for it, experience then in fact the spiritual forces within the earthly forces. Countless legends describe this. The best time for this covers thirteen days before 6th January.

The Maid of Orléans passed through these thirteen days in a particular condition, in a condition in which the life of her feeling was not yet affected by the external world. It is remarkable that the time during which the Maid of Orleans was carried in her mother's body ended during the Christmas time of the year 1411. She was born, having been carried for the last thirteen days in her mother's body, on 6th January. Before she drew the first breath, before she saw the physical life with physical eyes, she experienced what is earthly during these thirteen days in that sleep, through which man passes before he enters the physical world.

Here I am indicating something immensely significant, which shows how the world is guided from the spiritual; how what happens externally in the physical world is given its direction by the spiritual world; how, through the physical, the spiritual world is flowing.

Thus in our time we must work ever more consciously to remove through spiritual science the gulf between the physical and the spiritual. We do this for one field of our lives, when we become conscious that within our movement the powers of those are at work, who united their soul and body during their earthly life with our movement, and have passed through the gate of death. If we look across to the other bank of the stream, where they are active, feeling ourselves united with them, directing our thoughts towards them—we do this in full consciousness, the consciousness won through spiritual science. We know that we are in the most living connection with those who have gone through the gate of death, and we know that they provide the best powers among us. When we do this, or can think it, we regard life like a field that is to be sown. Between what we ourselves plant, we see plants everywhere springing up, which we could not have grown ourselves. Then we can know: these plants have been put in by those to whom it is granted to be in the world of the spirit, those with whom we feel ourselves connected, those with whom we become united.

Human brotherhood with those as well who no longer bear a physical body—that will be the characteristic sign of this movement and of those who feel themselves as members of this movement, and reckon themselves as belonging to it in the future. Other societies, founded only upon earthly things, will be able to remove many barriers between human beings. The barriers between the living and the dead will more and more be taken away by the movement which unites those men who wish to be united in the sign of spiritual science. We will carry all this in our souls, and keep as an abiding sense this characteristic quality, uniting us with this spiritual movement, which has become dear to us.

• 1. The German and the English meanings of the word are rather different. (Tr.)
• 2. The German word ‘Besonnenheit’ seems impossible to render adequately in English. ‘Temperance’ is widely used for Plato's word σωϕροσύνη) (Tr.)

My dear Friends,

If spiritual science is to be, as it can be, a life-draught for our souls, it must prove to be strong and also suited for times as important as our present epoch, in which so many things are taking place which widen the soul-spiritual vision of those who have dedicated themselves to spiritual science. This enables us to see events in a clearer light than our contemporaries, for their outlook is frequently—I repeat, frequently—kept within narrow limits by materialism. All that has been cultivated for so many years in our spiritual-scientific movement shows us that one of our goals is to increase the soul's life of feeling, so that we become emancipated from mere thought, thus transcending the narrower limits of our own being and its environment; we may then envisage to some extent the great impulses, the great manifestations of forces which pervade the whole development of mankind on earth. When we have thus striven to increase, as it were, the tension of our feelings, then the forces acquired through spiritual science should enable us to see something of all that remains externally invisible in the events, and still more, all that the ordinary intellect is unable to see. This is above all necessary in the present time with its tempestuous waves beating so painfully against our soul, but raising it, on the other hand, to special heights, just because they conceal so many significant things. We should be able to face above all the following question: Is there a prophetic meaning in the terrible torch of war burning above our heads, does this have a prophetic meaning for the whole development of the earth?

Only those who look upon these events in a light as significant as possible can face them in the right way. Some of our friends may often have asked themselves why we have in recent years spoken in these circles of times to which we must look ahead with special attention, times which will break in upon us daring the 20th century. The children and grand children of those who are now living will have to pass through great and important and at the same time tragic and painful events, and those who are now entrusted with the task of giving the souls of these children and grandchildren forces which enable them to hold out in the midst of the events which will befall mankind in the 20th century must realise that a strong inner spiritual force must be given to these children. In the 20th century our descendants will need strong inner forces as a support for their souls, to a far greater extent than can be imagined in the ordinary life of to-day, so that they may take along with them the treasures of mankind which have been accumulated throughout the centuries of human development. And other storms will also have to be experienced by the descendants of the present inhabitants of the earth! I have said that people may wonder why we speak of such things among ourselves, but now they will more easily have a feeling for such things because we are living in the midst of the greatest and most terrible war-events which have ever occurred in the historical course of development upon the earth, in the course of history of which mankind is conscious.

Indeed, it would be quite wrong, my dear friends, not to pervade ourselves as intensely and strongly as possible with the significance of the present moment and not to envisage the question: What has spiritual knowledge—the object of our soul's deepest longing—what has spiritual knowledge to do with the events which will break in upon the development of mankind? Even when considering things quite superficially, is it possible to ignore the storm which has arisen long ago in the East and which is now threatening to break out over the modern culture and civilisation of Europe. We should at least know that very strong and powerful forces live in the womb of the East and by the way in which they now assert themselves it is already possible to see that they are forces aiming at the destruction, at the breaking up of European culture. To-day we can only have a pale idea of the full extent of this danger.

We now live in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture. This is the epoch of the consciousness soul and in it live souls that have something to give to mankind. If we look back upon the Graeco-Latin epoch, we see that it is essentially, but in an entirely different form, an echo, a repetition upon a higher stage, of what once existed upon Atlantis. Although there it appeared in a different form, the fourth postAtlantean epoch of culture is a kind of repetition of Atlantis. The fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture in which we are now living is a new form; it is something quite new which has been added to the course of development which mankind has followed so far. We are now living in the midst of this epoch.

This should not be taken as an abstract truth, as a theory, but it should be grasped with the deepest and most intense feeling of responsibility, and we should realise that a long time will have to go by in the evolution of the earth before the hearts and souls of men can bring forth all that the divine order of the world has given mankind during the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture. The impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha arose during the fourth epoch of culture, as the most important event in the whole development of the earth. During the fifth epoch of culture the Mystery of Golgotha will not work in the same way in which it worked during the fourth epoch. For the task of the fifth epoch of culture is to approach the Mystery of Golgotha little by little with full spiritual understanding, with all the forces which the human soul contains, not only with the religious forces based merely upon feeling, but with all the forces of the soul. Little by little all the truths and forces of knowledge which the soul can develop of its own accord will serve to grasp Christ fully, the Christ who passed through the Mystery of Golgotha, so that St. Paul's words, “Not I, but Christ in me”, will become a reality in a new way. After all, everything we develop through spiritual science prepares us to grasp the true essence of Christ with all the soul's inner forces of knowledge. This is a significant, important task of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture.

Let us now try to penetrate somewhat into the meaning of these words. If this is the task of the fifth epoch of culture, let us first bring before our souls the way in which the Christ-Impulse has influenced mankind since the Mystery of Golgotha. If its influence were limited to what people have grasped in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha throughout the centuries which have elapsed since that time, the Christ-Impulse could only have exercised a weak influence upon men. Yet the Christ-Impulse does not only appeal in an intellectual way to human reason or to an understanding based on feeling, but it is a real impulse. The Christ-Impulse streams with living strength into the course of history itself. The Mystery of Golgotha, the external symbol of which is the blood that flowed on Golgotha, is a living force streaming into the history of mankind.

Let us take a historical event in order to understand how the Christ-Impulse worked in man before he was able to grasp it; let us try to understand how it worked, as a living, driving force in the evolution of mankind. The fifth epoch of culture is called upon to bring into human consciousness the whole inner nature and essence of the Christ-Impulse; but this Impulse already worked as a living force in the sub-conscious soul-forces of man before it could rise to full consciousness in him. And a historical character who picked out, I might say, the Christ-Impulse and brought about through it important events in history is, for example, the Maid of Orleans. But other characters might also be taken as an example. When we trace back the history of Europe to the event connected with the personality of the Maid of Orleans we must say, even if we only consider the external course of history: What the Maid of Orleans did, when she rose up from the heart of the French nation and vanquished the English forces—for she actually achieved this—really implied that the map of Europe took on the aspect which it afterwards gradually assumed. Any other concept of history relating to the past centuries, in so far as it refers to the European distribution of nations and states, is an invention that does not take into account the fact that the Christ-Impulse lived in the Maid of Orleans that a living Impulse brought about the distribution of the European nations and national forces.

One might say that while the learned people disputed over many things—for example, they already began to dispute on the question as to whether the Holy Supper should be eaten in this or in that form, and whether this or that should be interpreted by this or that formula,—while the learned people showed that their understanding, their conscious understanding could not the Christ-Impulse, this impulse worked through the medium of a simple country maid, through the Maid of Orleans; it worked in such a way as to mould and shape the history of Europe. The influence of the Christ-Impulse does not depend on the comprehension we have for it. I might say that the Christ-Impulse penetrated into the Maid of Orleans through Michael, its representative.

For this purpose the Maid of Orleans had to pass through a kind of initiation. To-day we speak of initiation, and in addition we give to human consciousness the rules collected in my book, “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds”. Of course, one cannot speak of such an initiation in the case of the Maid of Orleans. In her case we can only speak of an initiation which is a remnant of old initiations that took place more in man's sub-conscious soul-forces. These old initiations continued to exist up to the present time almost like elemental forces, and many things described in old legends and fairy-tales, for example that some people passed through experiences which roused their inner soul-forces so that they could perceive certain things connected with the spiritual world, indicate that independently of man, and through the influence of divine-spiritual forces which pervade the world, certain people are, I might say, predisposed by Karma to be natural initiates, thanks to the place given to them by the general Karma of humanity, where their own Karma flows together with the Karma of humanity.

A very beautiful echo of such a natural initiation, as one might call it, is contained in a Norwegian poem that speaks of Olaf Asteson, “the Son of the Sun”, who lived in a kind of sleep during the thirteen nights and days between Christmas Eve and January 6th, the festival of Christ's appearance. Olaf Asteson's very name indicates that he possessed unconscious hereditary forces of knowledge, for its real meaning The man in whose veins flows the blood of his ancestors. The Son of the Sun, Olaf Asteson, sleeps and dreams through the thirteen nights which are the darkest of the year's course on earth and which go from the day of Christ's birth to the day of Epiphany on January 6th.

These old legends dealing with the thirteen holy nights are not based on superstition. For it is indeed a fact that there are two seasons of the year which are cosmically like opposite poles in relation to the soul-life of man living in his physical body. The festival around St. John's day, which, is celebrated in the summer, is specially suited to draw out into the cosmos, through the forces of the sun which then reach their greatest strength, all the passionate impulses of the human soul, so that it becomes united with the cosmos: In ancient times, when people forgot themselves and lost themselves in the strong physical forces outside in the cosmos, the festival of St. John was called upon to pour into the human souls the divine-spiritual forces surging through the cosmos. But the spiritual forces which are also active in the darkness unfold their greatest strength in the middle of the winter, when the sun's forces reach the lowest point of their physical unfolding. And one may rightly say that it is in accordance with cosmic laws that the festival of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth should be celebrated in the winter season. When the external physical world is darkest of all, then the soul that unites with the forces spiritually pervading the aura of the earth, may have the strongest experiences. It is during these days that Olaf Asteson sleeps and sleeps and experiences everything connected with what we call Kamaloka, also what we designate as the Soul-World, and finally what we call the Spirit-land. The Norwegian legend relates that when Olaf Asteson woke up again after thirteen nights, he could describe what he had experienced and what souls he had met in the Soul-world and in the Spirit-land. These are pictures corresponding to an imaginative knowledge, but they indicate living realities which are accessible to human souls when they transcend the body during these days of physical darkness, which are, however, days of spiritual enlightenment,—when the human soul lives in forces that surge and weave through the aura of the earth. And the end of the legend describes the forces of the Christ-Impulse which strongly take hold of Olaf Asteson, but of his sub-conscious understanding.

These legends speak, as it were, of natural initiations which could still be attained in ancient times; they speak of the spiritual world into which one could still look in the darkest season of the year. The earth's aura then truly acquires forces which it does not have when it is flooded and illuminated by the physical forces of the sun. And because Christ is united with the aura of the earth ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, also the forces of the Christ-Impulse can in those days particularly influence human souls, if only they are open to receive them.

I might therefore say that before investigating anything historically, one should take for granted that the Christ-Impulse must have worked subconsciously for thirteen days also in the soul of a character such as the Maid of Orleans; she too must have experienced, as it were, what Olaf Asteson experienced in a sleeping condition during those thirteen days and nights; her sub-conscious soul-forces must, as it were, have been enlightened by the Christ-Impulse. In that case, the Maid of Orleans must once have been in a kind of sleeping condition during the thirteen days which lie between December 25th and January 6th, and on January 6th the Christ-Impulse must have taken hold of her soul, after a sleep-like state of existence.

What we may thus take for granted, really exists in a strange way, but during a special period, when the human being lives in a kind of sleep. Before he draws his first breath in earthly life, before he leaves his mother's body and is able to receive the first earthly-physical ray of light, he passes through a state of development which is really a sleeping state of experience. When we are within our mother's body, we live in a dreamlike sleep, a state of existence into which we enter at night when we fall asleep, and the last days of existence within our mother's body are those which are, so to speak, most accessible to the unconscious influences coming from the spiritual world.

In the Maid of Orleans these must have been the days chosen to implant the Christ-Impulse into her being, the days before she opened her physical eyes to the physical sunlight and before she drew her first breath outside her mother's body. This was indeed the case, for the Maid of Orleans was born on January 6th. On that day something occurred which caused a stir in her whole village; there was something undefined in its aura. This is a historical fact. The villagers did not know what had happened; they did not know that the Maid of Orleans had been born.

A great deal lies concealed in such facts. Only when these mysterious things are seen in their true light will it be possible to understand what is really taking place below the surface of the external physical world. The divine forces seek many different ways of entering human souls. Of course, the Karma of the Maid of Orleans had to be suited to these events. Because her Karma brought about the fact that she was born on January 6th, it provided the historical basis which enabled the Christ-Impulse to influence history in a special way through the Maid of Orleans. This fact gave Europe a completely new form.

When history is studied with a little more understanding it is possible to investigate such happenings. A spiritual way of looking at the world will in future enable us to refer to such facts, for by that time the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture will really have extracted from human souls all their latent forces of knowledge. Human souls will then experience more and more consciously the existence of the Christ-Impulse, but only if mankind will cease to look upon spiritual science as an abstract theory and will instead feel it livingly, experience it inwardly. Spiritual science will then be able to fulfill its true mission in the development of humanity.

We must be conscious, especially in a time such as the present one, that it is necessary to bridge the chasm between the human souls living here on earth in a physical body and those that have already gone through the portal of death. In a materialistic age this chasm widens. We shall more and more learn to consider as part of mankind as a whole not only the souls that live in a physical existence between birth and death, but also the souls that live between death and a new birth. The consciousness that throughout the earth's round we are united, also united with the souls that have passed on before us into the super-sensible worlds and that these souls are working in our midst, only with different forces than those of the souls still living in physical bodies,—this consciousness will gradually grow and become more intensive. It calls for an understanding of spiritually active forces and that we should learn to consider earthly phenomena in the new light which spiritual science alone can shed upon them.

Because spiritual science, my dear friends, should be something that stirs our hearts while our souls advance in knowledge, I want to speak to you of a recent occurrence here in Dornach throwing light upon the path which at the same time leads to many things that have occupied us during these last weeks and that belong to the wider compass of our spiritual-scientific stream of knowledge. I might also choose other cases, but the following are so immediately connected with our Karma that I am again able to speak of them to-day. What I shall tell you now, may then be extended also to other souls inside and outside our spiritual-scientific movement and related to it by destiny and by the way in which death occurred in it.

Last autumn we experienced a deeply moving case here in Dornach, in the surroundings of our Building. Dear friends had moved to Dornach with their children and had settled down as gardeners near the Building. Their eldest child, a boy of seven, spiritually wide-awake and with unique heart-qualities, was a veritable Sun-child. One felt deeply attracted by the child's soul, even if one only met the boy, now and then, for brief moments. When his father had to enlist, to do his duty on the battlefield as a German citizen, the boy of seven stood, I might say, whole-heartedly in the midst of this situation and he made a special effort to replace his father as best as he could by helping his mother with all kinds of small services. He went to town by train and did the shopping quite alone, although he was only seven. One evening he did not come home. There was a lecture that evening. At about ten o'clock a friend came along and told us that the boy was missing. There was no doubt that his disappearance had to be connected with a furniture-van which had overturned. This had happened near the Building, at a place where no van had ever passed before and where no van was likely to pass again for a long time. It had fallen down a small slope and capsized in the adjoining field. The drivers had given up the attempt of lifting it that same evening and had left the van there, after unharnessing the horses, for which they were very anxious. They wanted to lift the heavy van the next day, for they were sure that it would imply a whole day's work. It was now ten p.m. The child's disappearance had to be connected with that furniture-van. All kinds of tools were fetched and everyone able to work helped. In two hours the van was standing. At midnight the boy was discovered under the van—dead.

If we consider the external facts and the whole sequence of events leading up to the circumstance that the boy, who always came home by a way which would have led him past the right side of the furniture-van, on that day choose a path which led him past its left side at the very moment when the van capsized on top of him, if we consider moreover that on the way home he was held up in a friendly way by people, so that he was a quarter of an hour late (he had gone to the so-called Canteen, to fetch something for supper)—if we bear in mind that in this accident it was a question of just a few minutes which caused the boy to be on that spot at the very moment when the van capsized and that no one had noticed the accident (people were standing not far off, and although they had seen the van toppling over, no one had seen the boy)—the external facts as such will appear to us as an outstanding example of how easily we may fall a prey to a logical illusion. I have often spoken to you about this and shown you how easily we may delude ourselves in external life and mix up cause and effect. Once I described to you the following case: In the distance you see a man walking along the bank of a river. Suddenly you see him swaying and falling into the water. Soon after he is drawn out dead. The external circumstances could justify the assumption that he fell into the river and was drowned. And you will remain by this verdict if you do not investigate things further. But in the above case you could change your view simply by drawing in an external aid, although you were strengthened in it by the fact that a stone was found on the spot where the man fell into the water. But on dissecting the corpse it will appear that the man had had a stroke; consequently he had fallen into the river because he was dead; he did not die because he had fallen into the river. Here cause and effect are reversed. People with insight into such things will frequently come across such illusions—particularly in the scientific field.

In regard to the boy's death we must therefore say: The boy's Karma had ordered the van to be there; it was his Karma that had brought it to that spot. It is wrong to think that this was accidental. For in his present incarnation the boy was not to live beyond his seventh year of age. I might say that everything was arranged accordingly. We must get accustomed to see cause and effect differently than is ordinarily the case. When we look clairvoyantly upon the boy's life, upon the life of his soul, we discover a significant fact which moves us deeply, but at the same time it can throw light upon the divine-spiritual mysteries of the universe. Soon after the boy's death, the whole aura of the Dornach Building changed. In telling you this I am relating [to] you something connected with my own experience. When one has to work for the Dornach Building of the Anthroposophical Society, when one has to arrange what should take place within it, then one knows how much one owes to the helping forces that stream into one's soul from such an aura. After the boy's death, his still unused etheric body became united, really united with the aura of the Goetheanum Building. For the etheric body is something that man discards. The individuality consisting of the Ego and of the astral body continues—this is something quite different—but the etheric body put aside at such a tender age contains forces which might have sustained the physical body and physical life for many decades. These forces have gone through the portal of death unused. After a few days they are discarded. These very forces are now active in the aura of the Building and work with it. Consequently we cannot say that the soul of this individuality works in the aura, but only his unused etheric body. Nothing is lost, even in the spiritual world. That no physical forces are ever dispersed is a fact well known to physicists; these forces only undergo a change. Also in the spiritual world we must look for transformed forces; they are the unused etheric forces of men that have died young and these forces rise up to the spiritual world. We approach such things by studying concrete examples. It is for this reason that I am describing them to you.¹

You see, the essential thing is not only to absorb thoughts and ideas concerning the spiritual worlds, but we should learn a certain way of living and penetrate into it. As human beings of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch of culture we should envisage the 6th and 7th epochs. It is essential to bridge the abyss separating the living from the so-called dead; it is essential that mankind should become more and more united, not only when men are incarnated in a physical body, but also when they take on forms of existence through which they have to pass between death and a new birth. Spiritual science exists not only for the purpose of bringing new possibilities to mankind, but in the life which awaits the earth for the remainder of its post-Atlantean development spiritual science is a first, I might say, stammering, attempt: all that spiritual science is now able to give, is really a stammering, when compared with everything that future human races will experience through spiritual science.

With this description, attempting to convey through the heart's forces certain ideas on the conditions of life and death, I want to point out to you an element of spiritual science which considers life itself, so that an understanding which is not that of the head may rise up within you, the understanding of the heart. This we should seek in a living way through spiritual-scientific immersion, for this kind of understanding is the task of the 5th post-Atlantean epoch of culture. It will be followed by the 6th and 7th epochs. But we fully grasp all that the Central-European civilisation must uphold, when we feel that the civilisation of Central Europe above all, is intimately connected with the goals that must be reached during the 5th epoch of culture. This may lead to something which I have mentioned at the beginning of to-day's lecture: to a deepened insight into things which lie concealed within our times so heavily fraught with destiny.

In the East, a soul-life is preparing which will be very significant in the future. In this connection, read what I have explained in the lectures I once gave at Christiania on the mission of the Folk-souls. The soul-character of the inhabitants of Eastern Europe is fundamentally different from that of Central Europe, not to mention that of the distant Orient. It is fundamentally different. All that spiritual science means to us should enable us to have an open spiritual eye for such things. We have often heard the legend that the Russian-Slav populations called in the Varangians and said to them: “We have a fine country, but no order. Come and make order for tip, Arrange a kind of government for us.” This, tale, born out of feeling and relating to the origins of Russian history, is a legend without any historical background, for these events have never occurred. In reality, the Varangians went out as conquerors and were never invited by the Russians! Yet these legends in history have a meaning far deeper than any historical reality behind them,—they have a prophetic meaning, a truly prophetic meaning, for they indicate something that has not yet occurred, but that will occur in the future. What will unfold in the East, will have to unfold in such a way that the capacities, of the Easterners will be used to absorb what has been developed in the civilisation of the West and to elaborate it further, so that the gifts existing in the East may be fructified by what has been produced in the West. This will one day be the task of the Eastern populations. We may, as it were, briefly characterize the nature of, the Russians of Eastern Europe by saying: If we consider the Russians, not that hypocritical community which now governs it, but the people, we must realise that the Russian soul contains a whole store of gifts; it is, so to speak, gifted in every direction, but just when it unfolds its mission within the development of the world and of mankind it will appear that within it lives something which may be called talent without any productive force. These talents will grow and increase more and more. But what preeminently characterizes the Central-European, the spiritual forces that pervade his gifts and the mood of “Constantly striving”, of living, as it were, intimately united with the Spirit of his nation, the striving to grasp what he produces—a striving that appears so, sublimely in Fichte's philosophy, where he speaks of the Ego that must constantly create itself in order to understand itself (indeed, future epochs will grasp the greatness of Fichte's philosophy!):—these very qualities which characterize Central Europe are the very opposite of what exists in Russia, in the East of Europe. The Russian souls are absolutely receptive; their greatest gift consists in absorbing things, but if anyone says that they are productive, this is an illusion. They are called upon to develop gifts which have no productive force. This idea is difficult in itself, because such things have never existed in human development, yet they must gradually unfold. In future the East will call out to the West: We have a beautiful country, but no order, (disorder will increase), come and make order.—Central Europe is called upon to bring to the East the productiveness of the Spirit. And what is happening now is an unreasonable rebellion against things which must take place in [the] future. People try to tread down things which must be reached, for in future they will say: Come to us and bring us order! In the history of mankind's development we find that what we most long for and strive after, is the very thing we reject most strongly.

The greatest misfortune that could befall us is that Russia, the East, should win in this process. It would be the greatest misfortune, not only for Central Europe, but, for Russia itself—the very greatest misfortune from an inner standpoint, because this victory would have to be reverted. Its effects could not remain. We are thus facing a tragic moment in the history of mankind's development, when the East will rebel against something which in future it will long for with all its might. For it would be doomed to decay if it refused to be fructified by the spiritual life of the peoples living on its western boundary. In the further course of civilisation the West must produce a living spiritual life, not only in the form of idealism, but a 1iving spiritual life. It will be like a spiritual sun moving from West to East, in the opposite direction of the sun's ordinary course. And in the external world the Russians will more and more realise how little they are able to do through their own forces and that they must really set themselves into the whole process of human development; also that they would commit the greatest sin by laying hands on the civilisation of the West, of the peoples of western Europe. Indeed, we may see strange, foreboding flashes of light! Did not something rise up in the East which would have been impossible in the West, the so-called, “Barefooted” world-conception, This is a kind of philosophy going out from the Barefooted Brothers, which quickly spread and took hold of many circles, although a few years ago it did not exist at all. The conception of the Barefooted! It is a conception adopted by men who make a philosophy out of their own absolute lack of faith in man, and humanity, who think that man is nothing but a poor wretch wandering about between birth and death, wandering in terror—hint pain, so that the words, freedom, brotherliness, compassion, pity, love, are empty phrases. Their only wisdom consists in roaming through the world as barefooted pilgrims who look upon the whole civilisation as a great illusion—the whole foul civilisation of western Europe, to use the words of these barefooted pilgrims—who only see the World in the ragged clothes, the stuffy room and the wide road—the world through which man roams when he has reached world-conception of the Barefooted Brothers. Indeed, it affects us, strangely when a poet gives to this “barefooted” conception in significant words spoken by one of his characters, it must affect us strangely, inasmuch as our Central-European world-conception always makes us strive to discover something which may kindle for mankind the light of the future. How does it affect us when a poet lets, one of his characters utter words that appear to sum up the world-conception and the philosophy of the Barefooted Brothers?

“Indeed, what can man mean to you?—He takes you by the scruff of the neck, he squashes you like a flea with his finger-nail! Pity him if you can! Show him how foolish you are! In return for your pity he will torture you, wind your intestines round his hand, tear every vein out of your body, an inch an hour. You fool ... pity? Pray God that they may whip you pitilessly, and there's an end to it! Pity? ... Fie!”

Gorki, of whom you will already have heard many things, comments these, words with: “Cruel, but true”, by rendering not only the world-conception of a poet in a poet's words, but his own world-conception, resulting from his own observation of the world. This is the conception of a Barefooted Brother, and it may be discussed like, any other world-conception. Yet it is one that has lost the possibility of transcending itself, of reaching something greater than itself and of sending light into life; before it can fulfill its mission in the evolution of mankind, it will have to wait until it is fructified by the light. At present, however, it is rebelling against the very things it should accomplish. Many empty words have been uttered in the world, but one of the most tragic experiences I can relate is connected with the phrases uttered by the different political parties at the war-assembly of the Russian Duma in August 1914; they surpass everything in emptiness! Such empty words can only be uttered when every living productive force of the soul is exhausted. The East is really standing upon the threshold of things to come, and it is now unfolding forces which are opposed to, those which will one day be the source of its greatness. And we in Central Europe must say to ourselves: In spite of all, the East is waiting; for the spiritual wisdom which must rise up from Central Europe.

My dear friends, try to transform into feeling what I have indicated in words fraught with heavy feelings. I have shown you what spiritual science may become if we intensify feeling and penetrate with it into spiritual science, in order to grasp the true necessity, indeed the historical necessity of a spiritual-scientific world-conception. We shall then be pervaded by thoughts filled with understanding, that rise up from our souls into the world's spaces, thoughts that will meet the forces which will soon send down their influences from the spiritual worlds, when peace will once more reign over the earthly spheres.

To-day I have shown you the influence of the etheric bodies which sever themselves from the human souls before their forces have been used up, of etheric bodies that might still have worked for many years and decades within physical bodies here on earth, and on behalf of physical life. We cannot help thinking of the many unused parts of etheric bodies rising up to the spiritual world, in addition to all other influences rising up from the individualities of men passing through the portal of death on the battlefields. These etheric bodies will form a great complex of forces, of spiritual forces, that will cooperate from spiritual regions in the formation of a spiritual world-conception which will gradually take hold of mankind. But in order that the forces proceeding from the unused etheric bodies may send flown their influence from spiritual spheres, they mum be net by the thoughts of human beings on earth, by thoughts filled with understanding for the secret working of the spiritual world which is interwoven with the forces of these unused etheric, bodies. This should be a real encouragement inducing us to fill ourselves with the great truths of spiritual science. For they will stimulate within us thoughts which will go on working in other people. The burdensome, fateful content of the life now unfolding within and around us will be followed by days of peace, when the truths which we have implanted into our souls through spiritual science will rise up before us and meet the forces gathered by the etheric forces of those who have passed through the portal of death upon the battlefields of present-day events, forces which stream down to the earth. And the result; will be something which I want to recapitulate in a few words, a result that reveals itself to spiritual, scientific research. If the fruits of spiritual science can be rightly included in the development of the times, the result will be something I want to express in the following words:

Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlass'ner,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten,
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht—
Lenken Seelen geistbewußt
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.

(From the courage of the, fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the abandoned,
From the nation's deeds of sacrifice,
Shall spring forth a fruit of the Spirit,
If souls, spirit-consciously
Direct their mind and soul towards the Spirit-realm.)

• 1. The description of the other concrete cases is contained in “Rudolf Steiner und unsere Toten”. They are too intimate for publication in the News Sheet.

In these, days I must bring before you some facts which can shed light upon the great events of our time. Next Sunday too I shall have to direct your attention and your feelings to certain aspects which can throw some light upon the events which so deeply move our hearts and souls in the present time. To-day I wish to give, as it were, a kind of basis, a kind of preparation, by guiding your souls towards certain powers and forces which are active in man's historical existence. They can only be recognised through the insight given by spiritual science and are not immediately perceptible to the ordinary consciousness. Let me point out to-day certain facts of human development, certain more or less sub-conscious facts. But let us set out from the truth that what takes place, as it were, in the hidden depths of every human being, can be recognised in the successive supersensible stages of knowledge, as described in my book A Path of Initiation (Knowledge of the Higher Worlds): it can be recognised through the so-called, imaginative knowledge, inspirative knowledge and intuitive knowledge. Yesterday, in my public lecture, I emphasized that this must always be borne in mind: namely that the spiritual scientist who reveals something concerning the spiritual worlds, as a result of knowledge gained by imaginative, inspirative and intuitive perceptions, should not add anything which does not already exist, even without his knowledge in those spiritual regions in which every human soul is at home. The spiritual scientist merely draws, attention to something which always weaves and lives in the world, and he, shows how the individual human soul lives in it. Such knowledge is therefore of importance not only for those who intend to penetrate into the stream of occult experiences, but it is of importance also for every human soul, for under every circumstance it constitutes an inner reality for all, tut an inner reality which cannot be recognised by the ordinary perception in life.

Let me therefore set out from certain facts concerning human nature in general which are accessible to the imaginative perception. Every day we may observe an enigmatic process—at least it is an enigma to ordinary science—which alternates rhythmically in our life: WAKING and SLEEPING.

We already know that during, our waking state we belong to the physical world of the earth with our four parts or members, with the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego. We know that during our sleeping state, that is to say, from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, we exist in the physical world only with our physical body and with our etheric body and that we withdraw, as it were, into a purely spiritual world with our astral body and with our Ego. What presents itself to the spiritual perception of the spiritual investigator, may be characterised by saying: The spiritual investigator simply perceives something which, always takes place in man, for example when he abandons his physical and etheric body on falling asleep, and ascends with his astral body and Ego into regions pertaining to a higher world. The spiritual-scientific investigator simply watches a process which takes place in man, in every man, whenever he falls asleep.

We may therefore say: The spiritual investigator only observes something which would present itself to every human soul if in the state of sleep, not in the: dreaming state, it could look down upon the world so as to discover among the objects in this world its physical and etheric body, but as something which exists outside the sleeping soul. But we should not think that from, the standpoint of sleep we would see our physical body and our etheric body which we left, behind in the same way in which we perceive with physical eyes the. objects which surround, us in the physical world. In order to see the world in the way in which we perceive it from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling: asleep, we must use our physical eyes, our physical sense-organs. We do not use our senses when we arc outside our physical, body and our etheric body. If we were suddenly to become clairvoyant during our sleep, we would not perceive anything of all that we see during our waking condition, nor in the way in which we perceive it then. And then we do not perceive our physical body and our etheric body in the same way in which we see our physical form when we look into a mirror. It is quite wrong to think that we behold our physical and etheric body as if we were bending over it with our astral body and our Ego, that we view them from this standpoint and, see them as if in a mirror. This is not the case. What presents itself to the imaginative-knowledge is that everything which we are accustomed to see in our waking state of consciousness during our ordinary life disappears in the end, it really vanishes from our sight. In reality, our physical body and our etheric body then appear to us as if they were extended into a world, enlarged into a world; they appear to us as if they were connected with the whole world of the earth. We behold them ... and we are conscious of the fact that we are looking upon our physical body and our etheric body, but we behold them in such a way that to begin with they constitute for us as it were the only existing world.

Even as in our waking state we are surrounded by mountains, rivers and clouds, by the sun and the stars, etc., and look upon these as our environment, so when we are outside our physical and etheric body and look upon our environment, we behold our physical and etheric body as if enlarged into a world. We really behold this. We do not look upon anything else. And we envisage it in the same way in which we ordinarily view the different objects on the earth.

We look upon our own bodily structure as if it were a whole world. And a strange thing appears: This world which we behold, appears to us in such—away that in failing asleep we experience it in the same way in which we experience the earth in the spring: it has shed off its snow covering and brings forth green shoots, and once more prepares itself for the growth and vegetation of everything that is produced upon it; everything begins to grow and to green. When we fall asleep and behold the physical body and the etheric body enlarged into a world, we behold them in such a way that we experience them as it were like a planet that is awakening in the spring. And this continues throughout the condition of sleeping. What we see in it, the mighty pictures which really appear to us in their extension as a planet, prepare to pass over into summer, just like the earth faces Sommer, when its spring is coming to an end. This is how we pass through sleep, if we live through it in the right way.

We go as it were through the sleeping state as far as a point in which we feel: our physical body and our etheric body carry a growing, greening life to the flowering stage, indeed to the stage of the development of fruits—everywhere we behold that everything is growing and flourishing.

If I may express myself in detail I must say: To the imaginative vision the sight which thus appears, presents to be sure a paradoxical aspect. When we survey the surface of the earth with our physical eyes, we are conscious of the fact that the plants grow upwards from below; but when we observe from outside what takes place in our body, and take the vegetable world as a comparison, it is as if its roots were to penetrate into our body from above, and its flowers would grow into the body. Bo that we then experience a world that is completely upside down, and its fruits grow into us.

We then discover that these fruits which penetrate into, us really bring to expression the strengthening which is brought by sleep, this strengthening of which we are conscious. And this enables us to know (because everything which we thus perceive in the imagination are forces) that by passing over into the condition of sleep, our physical body and our etheric body which remain lying on the bed, receive forces from the whole cosmos. We behold how the forces which express themselves in pictures of plants growing out of the world, come to us from the cosmos. We behold how the cosmos sends a whole vegetation into our bodily structure. And this gives us the sure knowledge that on falling asleep we abandon our body because from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep our astral body and our Ego keep the physical body and the etheric body away from the influences of the cosmic forces. By going out ourselves, we make our physical and etheric body free for the influences of the whole cosmos, which sends in these forces—elemental, not physical forces—expressed in the above-mentioned imaginations.

Whenever we fall asleep, a connection is established between our physical and etheric body and the whole cosmos. In the waking condition, we live in the physical world, but when we are asleep our physical and etheric body live in the sphere which may be designated as the elemental world, the world of pure forces, which presents itself to us in the form of the above mentioned imaginations.

And where are we ourselves, with our astral body and our Ego? This has frequently been described and it is also contained in many books: With our Ego and our astral body we live in the world which has been described as the world of the Higher Hierarchies, among the Beings whom we designate as Angeles, Archangels, Archai, and so forth. Into these Beings and into this world penetrate the astral body and the Ego. Even as during our waking state we know of the existence of the creatures pertaining to the animal world, to the vegetable world, and to the mineral world, and stand above them, as it were, as human beings, by taking them into our thoughts, so we ourselves are now taken in by the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. I might say, we are absorbed by them like thoughts.

The significant thing is that we can say: Whereas there below our physical body and our etheric body enter in connection with the forces of the whole cosmos, we ourselves become thoughts from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, as if we were real Beings woven out of the essence of thought and will. We become the thoughts of Beings of the Higher Hierarchies. Even as WE think Nature, so do the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies think US.

If we wish to speak exactly, it is therefore not correct to say: When we abandon the physical body, we think the world. It is instead correct to say: We experience that we are the thoughts of the world of the higher Hierarchies. If thoughts had consciousness and could experience themselves during our waking state, this is how we should experience ourselves outside the physical body, as thoughts of the higher Beings.

And how do we experience through imaginative knowledge the moment of waking-up again? When we gradually approach the moment of waking up, we really experience it in the same way (we may again compare this Imagination with external Nature) in which we experience the approach of winter, with its destructive and paralyzing effect on the greening growing life of summer. We dive down into the physical and etheric body when we wake up, and even as the winter brings cold and frost which destroy the glory of summer, so we dive into the physical and etheric body in the same way in which the winter dives down into the earth. We destroy the forces which entered from the elemental sphere of the cosmos into our physical and etheric body like a vegetation or an animal world, we destroy them in the same way in which the winter destroys the glory of summer.

When we are awake, our presence within the physical and etheric body brings about a condition comparable to the one in which the cosmos places the earth in winter: We spread winter over our own physical and etheric being, by penetrating into it.

This shows you at the same time that comparisons often used from physical points of view are not correct from the spiritual aspect. Of course, we feel that we are connected with the whole cosmos and that our experiences are a microcosmic image of the macrocosmos. But when people wish to compare their microcosmic life with the life of the macrocosm, they like to say: When we wake up, this is like the approach of spring in our life, aid our waking life is like summer,—the autumn is like the fatigue which we feel in the evening and our sleeping life is like winter. But the very opposite is true. Summer, life is the sleeping life, and winter life is the waking life! This is the truth.

When the spiritual investigator really investigates these conditions, he discovers that by rising up with his Ego and astral body into the spheres of the higher Hierarchies, where he is thought, as it were, by the higher Beings, not only the forces of the elemental world influence his physical body and his etheric body, but that certain Beings of the higher Hierarchies also influence our physical body and our etheric body. Not only the elemental world, consisting of FORCES, but real BEINGS, the Beings of the Hierarchies, of the Higher hierarchies, are active within our physical body and our etheric body.

Here a strange thing presents itself: Namely, we can perceive that when we fall asleep we penetrate into conditions which are quite different from those of our waking state. As stated, everything which can thus be said, is based upon the fact that spiritual research allows us to watch how the process of falling asleep and of waking up takes place. And spiritual investigation discovers that from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, our physical body and our etheric body are, for example, also subjected to the influence of that Being of the Higher Hierarchies whom we must experience as FOLK-SPIRIT, as FOLK-SOUL, as the Folk-Soul to whom we belong.

When we wake up, we do not only dive down into our physical body and into our etheric body, but also into the processes which take place in them as the result of the activity of the Folk-Soul. And a peculiar thing appears—please note this carefully, for we who wish to penetrate into spiritual science must observe the connections in the world more deeply than through the ordinary external perception—the following strange thing appears: When we fall asleep, we do not only dive down into those Beings of the Higher Hierarchies that correspond to our individual development, but also into the spiritual Beings whom we must look upon as Folk-Souls from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, we penetrate into the connection of all the other Folk-Souls, except into the Folk-Soul to which we ourselves belong. Let us note this carefully: During cur waking state we live immersed in the spiritual facts produced in our physical body and etheric body by OUR OWN Folk-Soul; from the moment of waking up to the moment of falling asleep, we live as it were together with our own Folk-Soul.

But in addition to our own Folk-Soul, there exist in the world all the other Folk-Souls of the other nations. When we fall asleep, we penetrate into the connection of these OTHER Folk-Souls; we do not dive down into one of these other Folk-Souls (let us bear this in mind clearly), but into their joint activity, into what they do together, as a community. Only our own Folk-Soul is excluded from this connection during the night.

We cannot escape entering into connection also with all the Folk-Souls that pertain to the other nations in which we are not incarnated during one particular incarnation. Whereas during the day, in our waking state, we belong to our own Folk-Soul, we belong during our sleeping state to the other Folk-Souls—but only in so far as they work together. When we are awake, we follow the intentions of the individual Folk Soul, into whose sphere we were born in a definite incarnation.

But it is possible to penetrate, even during the sleeping state, into the Being of an individual Folk-Spirit that is not our own. Whereas in our normal condition we live, when awake, within our own Folk-Soul, i.e. within his activity, and during sleep in the joint activity of the other Folk-Souls, we can dive down into an individual Folk-Soul, when we are asleep, if during our fife we are filled with glowing hatred for the activities of this other Folk-Soul. Though it may sound absurd, it is nevertheless true—and in our movement, we must learn to bear such truths calmly—it is nevertheless true that when a person is filled with glowing hatred for another nation, he condemns himself thereby to sleep with the Folk-Soul of that nation during the night, to live together with him.

Here we touch upon truths which show us that behind that veil which conceals the spiritual worlds to the ordinary observation, life begins to acquire a deeply earnest character and that it is uncomfortable, in a certain way, to be an adherent of spiritual, science. For from certain aspects spiritual science begins to treat certain matters earnestly which in ordinary life are looked upon as uncomfortable and which are mercifully withdrawn from us through the fact that in ordinary life the truth is not revealed to us. Although as followers of spiritual science we must stand with both, feet upon the ground which external life provides, we must nevertheless deal quite earnestly with such a fundamental principle, when we rise up to realms where other characteristics of life begin to reveal themselves.

You see, my book A WAY OF INITIATION speaks of that moment when we rise up to the spiritual world (indeed, every human being is in the spiritual world, it is simply a question of his being able to recognise a world which always exists round about him),—when that easy union, that unity of our being in which We live here in the physical world, ceases to exist. Divisions arise; but in addition to the division mentioned in that book, the one which may be observed after the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold, there are other divisions, one for example, which is of deepest significance for our whole life of feeling. We should recognise that although we must do our duty fully towards the nation to which we belong in one particular incarnation and give it our love unstintingly, this nation stands within the whole process of evolution of the earth. We should realise that in view of the fact that through our Ego and our astral body we are also SPIRITUAL beings, we belong to the whole, of humanity and should therefore have impulses which we share with the whole of mankind. Spiritual science does net admit that we should, live in the world in a one-sided manner; these two sides of our being must be harmonised. We should realise that in our present incarnation we can love the nation to which we belong even though we are spiritual scientists, we can love it as deeply as any patriot, but the same time wo must bring this love in harmony with the feelings which unite us with the WHOLE of mankind.

Spiritual science above all unites us with the whole of mankind because it reveals to us that through our Ego and our astral body we are connected with humanity as a whole. To establish harmony between contrasts—this is what spiritual science more and more demands from those who dedicate themselves to it with earnestness and with worthy feelings. And it is harmful to mistake spiritual science for that unclear mysticism which always seeks to mix up the demands of external physical life with the truths to which we should ascend when we penetrate into the spiritual world. For that unclear mysticism which seeks to bring into ordinary life the things which spiritual science reveals in a true light, that unclear mysticism will, for example, never be able to harmonise the love for one's own nation with the love for the whole of mankind and it will lead instead to a vague mystical cosmopolitanism.

This, may be compared, as I have, done, with that equality wh.is always advanced by vague theosophists, the equality of all religions on earth. In an abstract way, it is possible to say that the truth is of course, contained in every religion. But this is the same as saying: On the table there are pepper, salt, cayenne and many other spices; they are all the same, for they are condiments. So, I may put cayenne into my coffee or sugar into my soup, this does not matter, for all condiments are the same Exactly the same, logic is applied by people who vaguely talk in a mystical way of the equal essence in all religions, instead of penetrating into the true essence of everything that appears in the evolution of the earth. The essential thing is to avoid emphasizing again and, again that all nations are, as it were, expressions of the universally human; it is instead essential to recognise the. specific task of each nation, as given, by the folk-soul. Fundamental points for this may be found in the lectures published long ago, which, were given several years before the war, so that they were not influenced by the present events and consequently it cannot be said that they are the result of war influences! I mean the lectures comprised in the cycle “THE MISSION OF THE SINGLE FOLK-SOULS IN CONNECTION WITH THE NORTHERN GERMANIC MYTHOLOGY.

In the present time above all it is important to reflect over such earnest things, so that the harmony between universal love and. the love for one's nation may be found. We need not recoil from describing the characteristics of each single nation, in so far as it is a nation, for the individual human being always, rises above his nation, but you will see from the remarks which I made that.it is necessary.to give such a description without any hatred. Even as we cannot recognise the true nature of a plant if we hate that plant,—for in that case we would describe our hatred—so it is not possible.to recognise the characteristics of a nation if we describe the qualities which we dislike in that nation, or if our description includes things inspired by our feelings of antipathy.

Those who are able, to rise to the standpoints of spiritual science should ceaselessly endeavour to gain insight not only into the uniform essence of the world, but into the harmony of its manifold characteristics. We should be able to feel warmest love for the nation to which we belong, in this warmth of feeling we need not be behind any other person, yet at the same time we should, be able to unite this with everything which unites us with humanity as a whole, with our feelings for the whole of mankind, as a great all-encompassing being

As stated, we shall deal more fully with these things the day after tomorrow how let me explain that when we pass over from the waking to the sleeping condition, when we are taken in and received by the Beings of the higher Hierarchies, we really cast off the physical body and the etheric body which connect us with one particular incarnation. We therefore cast off our national character when we are asleep. When we are asleep, we are simply “human beings,” endowed with all the qualities which we must have through all the experiences gained as human, beings. But at the same time, when we observe from the spiritual-scientific standpoint what takes place with man both in his waking and sleeping conditions, we perceive that when he is asleep, when he lives in the spiritual world with his Ego and his astral body and also his physical body and his etheric body belong to the great cosmos, that then the single life which takes its course, as it were., within the compass of the skin, ceases, for our narrow individual self becomes extended to the great Self.

Consider now that, as a rule, in the course of twenty-four hours we always pass through a summer and a winter condition. Also, the earth passes through these conditions of summer and winter, but in the course of one year. Why does the. Earth pass through these states during the course of one year? Because the earth is, like man, a living Being? but upon another stage of the world of the Hierarchies. If we observe the whole earth physically, such as it exists, round about us, it is only the body of the earth, and even as man bears within him soul and spirit, so the earth also has its soul and its spirit. Our sleeping and waking conditions alternate in the course of twenty-four hours, whereas the earth sleeps and wakes during the course of one year. The earth is awake from autumn to spring, and it is asleep in the summer. We may therefore say that in the summer we are embedded in a sleeping earth. It is not true that the earth Is awake in the summer and asleep in the winter; this trivial comparison taken from ordinary life is hot correct. It is instead correct to say that with the approach of autumn the earth begins to wake up as a soul-spiritual being, and that it is most wide awake in the middle, of winter. The Spirit of the Earth is most deeply engrossed in thought in the middle of the winter, and with. the approach of spring, his thoughts gradually begin to ebb away, and in the summer the Spirit of the Earth is sound asleep; when life outside is budding and growing it is sound asleep.

As human beings, we are not only connected through our physical body with the body of the. Earth, but we are also connected with the Spirit of the Earth. Many lectures have shown you that through the Mystery of Golgotha the Spirit Whom we designate as the Christian Spirit, as the Spirit of Christ, united Himself with the Spirit of the Earth. Ever since the Mystery of Golgotha, the Spirit of Christ lives in the Spirit of the Earth. Consequently, if people wish to celebrate a festival expressing the fact that the Spirit of Christ lives in the Spirit of the Earth, what should be the right season for it?—Not summer, but winter would be the right season for such a festival, the very heart of winter. This festival is the Christmas Festival.

For this reason, the Christmas Festival and everything that develops from it is celebrated in the middle of winter. This proceeded from the real knowledge of the people who in the past fixed the Christian festivals of the year. The Christmas festival was fixed in accordance with occult truths, not with historical facts, because in regard to what now constitutes humanity, man is in the winter time united with that condition of earthly existence which is most wide awake, because his own soul-spiritual part is embedded in the soul-spiritual part of the earth. In the winter, he lives together with the waking earth.

And what do we find in the case of past races of whom we know that they built up their service to the world and their knowledge of the world upon a kind of dreamlike clairvoyance? They must above all have based themselves upon that which lives in the SLEEPING Spirit of the Earth. In contrast to the men of more modern times, these ancient peoples must have risen to the truths received in unconscious inspirations in the form most suited to them, when the Spirit of the Earth was immersed in deepest sleep, when it withdrew almost completely in sleep. We therefore find among these peoples whose cults and knowledge were drawn out of a more sleeping, dreaming state, the MIDSUMMER FESTIVAL, in contrast to the Christmas Festival which is suited to a more modern human race.

What was continued in an external way and what our materialistic, age did not understand at all, has its truly deep foundation in a spiritual, reality. Now we live in an age in which people should again begin to think and to feel in a different way from that of past epochs. The task of the past epoch was to make us familiar with the sphere of materialistic thinking and feeling. And the past centuries had to bring human souls in contact with materialistic thought and feeling. Indeed, the development of the earth had to pass through this materialistic epoch. And it is wrong if we only criticize materialism, for materialism had to enter the., evolution of the earth. But now we live in an epoch in which materialism must be overcome, an epoch in which a SPIRITUAL conception must enter the human souls. This is the more or less distinct or unclear feeling of all those who feel attracted, by our spiritual-scientific goals, by our spiritual-scientific world conception. These souls feel that the time has approached in which the spiritual world should be grasped consciously, whereas in the past it had to be perceived in a dreamlike way. Spiritual science exists for the purpose of understanding the world in a conscious way.

The past epoch was therefore the epoch of materialism. You see, because humanity had to dive down, as it were, into materialism, the strong impulse which leads it up again, had to be active above all during the age of materialism. This is the Christ Impulse. The preparation began when the Christ Impulse entered the development of the earth. During the 14th/15th century it was in its most active stage, but when the Christ Impulse approached humanity was already preparing itself for its dive into materialism. The Christ Impulse existed in the evolution of the world as an objective fact, yet the people, who lived in the time when it appeared, were least of all able and ready to grasp it. Now we live in an epoch in which we must begin to understand what took place.

What do we see? We may study the strange course followed by the Christ Impulse in the historical development up to the present time. We see that when the Christ Impulse entered the evolution of humanity through the Mystery of Golgotha it was not grasped at all by those who lived at that time. Let us try to form a picture of what people did in their cleverness! We find that all hinds of theological systems arose during the first Christian centuries which immediately followed the Christ Impulse. People began to dispute as to the way in which they were to think of the Trinity, and so forth. Throughout these, centuries there were endless theological disputes, and It would be the worst possible mistake to study the influence of the Christ impulse by studying these theological disputes which lasted for so many centuries. The people who were disputing over the Christ Impulse did not understand anything of the way in which the Christ Impulse stands at the very centre of evolution.

Let us try to understand how the Christ Impulse really worked. Let me indicate a few facts as an illustration. Let us take an event which took place in the 4th century, in the year 312 A.D. on the 26th of October, an event which changed, as it were, the future map of Europe completely. It took place when Constantine called the Great, the son of Constantius Chlorus, moved against Maxentius, the ruler of Rome and gained a victory over him, whereby Christianity also became victorious in an external way in the Occident. For Constantine raised Christianity to the rank of official religion of the State. But was it his own cleverness which inspired all these deeds? Were the events which then took place the outcome of his cleverness? We cannot say that this was the case. For what occurred? Maxentius, the emperor of Rome, on hearing that Constantine was approaching, first consulted the Sibylline Books, so that he tried to grasp the world's events in a dreamlike way. What these Books revealed to him, was interpreted as follows: The right “deed would be done” by the one who being the ruler of Rome would leave the city and wage battle outside the walls of Rome. This was the most unusual advice which could be imagined. For Constantine had a far, far stronger army than Maxentius; nevertheless, he could not have won had Maxentius remained within the walls of Rome, But Maxentius followed the advice of the Sybil line Books and moved out of Rome. Also, in Constantine's army, the victory was not gained by the generals, but Constantine had a dream in which he saw the symbol of Christ, and in obedience to this dream he ordered that the Cross, the symbol of Christ, should be carried in front of his armies. He made his subsequent deeds depend on the revelations of that dream.

This battle, which gave a decisive aspect to the whole map of Europe of that time, was not waged by generals, nor determined by human cleverness, but by dreams and prophecies. If the events had followed the course dictated by human consciousness, and not influences coming from sub-conscious depths, everything in Europe would have taken on a different aspect.

Theologians were quarrelling over the true essence of Christ—whether He was born in Eternity together with the Father or whether he was born in Time, whether He was of equal rank with the Father, and so forth. But their thoughts did not contain anything of the Christ Impulse! The Christ Impulse worked in the sub-consciousness of human beings. It did not work through the Ego, but through the astral body. The Christ Impulse was a reality, and it worked in such a way that people did not need to understand it. This is the important and essential fact. The way in which the Christ Impulse worked, is as independent of the way in which people grasped it, as a thunderstorm is independent of what people learn in a laboratory concerning the electrical machine, and so forth.

This time has now come in which we must immerse ourselves CONSCIOUSLY into the influence of the Christ Impulse. In the historical events, however, the Christ Impulse is active as a force.

Let us pass over from this example to one which belongs to a later epoch. Here we must consider something which I already explained to you. It is important to know, in connection with the materialistic epoch, that when people wished to immerse themselves in the spiritual world, they could do this best of all in the winter. In that epoch, we therefore come across the conception that during the Thirteen Nights in the middle of winter specially gifted natures could obtain the gift of inspirations from the spiritual world. Every nation has legends which tell us how specially gifted people, who do not pass through an Initiation, but obtain inspirations through their own nature, through elemental forces which work in them, become inspired during the nights from Christmas Eve to the Three Kings' Day (Epiphany), during the Thirteen Holy Nights. Recently, a Very beautiful legend was discovered in Norway, the legend of OLAF ASTESON, who went to a church on Christmas Eve and began to sleep. He slept until the 6th of January, and when he woke up, he was able to relate in pictures the events which took place in the soul-realm—the Spirit-realm as we call it. He expressed them in pictures, but he had experienced all this during the Thirteen Nights. Such legends may be found everywhere. They are not simply legends, for in fact there always existed specially gifted people who passed through a kind of Nature-Initiation. Elemental forces were, active within them in this natural initiation, which we can only attain through the will, by faithfully following the indications given for the path leading to initiation.

We may therefore say: During the materialistic epoch, we can always come across people who were able to unite themselves with the Spirit of the Earth in the middle of winter, when the Spirit of the Earth is most wide awake, and they were thus able to receive inspirations. This was the epoch in which the Christ Impulse that had united itself with the earth, could not work through human consciousness. We must think of specially receptive souls, who could receive inspirations from the spiritual world. And we find that such souls receive the impulses which inspire their deeds, they receive their inspirations from the spiritual world, in the Thirteen Holy Nights, until the 6th of January. This was necessary, and it appeared again and again in small and great events that in the course of history there were people with such a spiritual disposition that when the right moment arrived for them, when they could live through these Thirteen Winter Nights, a spiritual impulse entered into them, and in that epoch this was above all the Christ Impulse. During the materialistic epoch, natural initiations which did not depend on conscious human activity, took place most easily of all in these Thirteen Holy Nights. And whenever such initiations appear, we find that they took place during these Thirteen Nights.

There is one event which induces even those who are least inclined to recognise the spiritual world (and to-day very few people are inclined to do so), to admit that in the 15th century Spiritual Powers really entered the course of history through the medium of a young girl, the Maid of Orleans, Joan of Arc. It can be proved historically that also in this case the whole map of Europe took on a different aspect because tie Maid of Orleans aided the French in the war against the English people who reflect over such things will discover that in accordance with human plans, everything would have followed a different course if the shepherd maiden had hot interfered—and through her, the forces of the spiritual world. The Maid of Orleans was only an instrument for the forces which were then at work. The influence which worked through her was the Christ Impulse.

But a natural initiation was required for this, and such an initiation could only have taken place, as it were, during the Thirteen Nights until the 6th of January. The Maid of Orleans must therefore have been in a kind of sleeping condition from the 24th of December to the 6th of January, and been specially open to the spiritual influences which are active just in that period. We must therefore assume that the Maid of Orleans must have lived through the period from the 24th of December to the 6th of January in a not fully conscious state and received the Christ Impulse. And the Maid of Orleans indeed passed through such a condition in a very marked way! It cannot be experienced more markedly than during the sleeping condition which precedes birth, during the last days in which a child lives in the mother's body, just before birth. External human consciousness is then not able to take in anything, for it lives in a sleeping state, and when the child within the mother's body reaches the end of its time and approaches birth, this is the best condition of sleep this last period in the mother's body. The Maid of Orleans was actually born on the 6th of January, and this is the great mystery connected with her: that she passed through a Nature-Initiation during the thirteen days which preceded her birth. Specially sensitive people assembled in the village on the 6th of January on which the Maid of Orleans was born, said that something special must have happened; they felt that something special had occurred in their village: The Maid of Orleans was born, she passed through a natural initiation during that sleep In her mother's body, that sleep which was so significant to her, the sleeping condition just before her birth.

This shows us that spiritual Beings are really at work below the threshold of consciousness, behind the events which are accessible to human consciousness. It shows us the meaning of a history that only reckons with information gained by documents and external reports! But the Gods work along different paths and use other means: They place a Maid of Orleans into the world, through her special Karma in that particular incarnation she is able to take in the Christ Impulse and work through it. At the right moment, the Gods allow the Christ Impulse to flow into the development of humanity. Of course, both factors had to be there: for we must consider the special individual Karma of the Maid of Orleans. This must be added. Not every child born on the 6th of January could fulfil the same deeds.

We can therefore really say: The Christ Impulse worked through forces in man which did not rise up into human consciousness. Only now we again live in an age in which we should take in consciously the impulses which sought to enter the historical development by other ways than the conscious one.

I wished to call up in you a feeling of how the sub-conscious powers really work, and that external history, studied upon the foundation of documents and external records, is really quite superficial. In the present time, it is good to study history. For now, above all we can see that great, mighty and heroic events are taking place, joined to deeds of Sacrifice. But at the same time, we can see that the events of our time are accompanied, as it were, by the effects of the crassest materialism, by that consistent form of materialism which seeks to explain everything which is now taking place.as the result of merely external conditions. This is evident through the fact that one nation makes the other responsible for the present events. People wish to judge everything from outside, and they seek in others the guilt for what is taking place. But also in the present time the true cause and reasons for what is taking place should be sought in the depths of subconscious events. But we shall speak of this the day after tomorrow.

The present epoch can more than any other admonish people to follow spiritual impulses of knowledge, also in view of the blood which is shed on the battlefields. When peace will spread out its wings over the countries now at war, people will make a discovery; They will discover that such tremendous conflagrations in the history of the world cannot be explained by drawing in external causes! They will discover that it is not possible to explain them. To-day people still say—particularly the cleverest people: “It is not right to speak of the things which gave rise to this war let history speak of this.” And they think that they are particularly clever when they say: “In 50 or in 100 years' time, history will reveal the true causes of this war.”

But what we now designate as history will never be able to explain the causes of the present events: People will see that a historical survey cannot grasp the true cause. Other aids will have to be drawn in: This is particularly evident through an occult observation of the present time.

What is one of the most evident facts in the present time which is so fraught with destiny? Oh, one of its most obvious facts is undoubtedly the one that so many young people are passing through the portal of death! We know what takes place with them when they pass through the portal of death. We know that a human being first goes out of his physical body with his etheric body, his astral body and his Ego, and that after, e.g. relatively short time he sheds his etheric body and continues his pilgrimage with an extract of the etheric body. But can you not imagine that there must be a difference between an etheric body shed between the 20th and 30th year of life, an etheric body which might still have continued its functions in life for many decades, and an etheric body cast off at a later age? Yes, there is a great difference! When a person dies as a result of illness or old age, the etheric body has fulfilled its task. But, in the case of a young person—and countless young people are^-now passing through the portal of death—the etheric body has not yet been able to fulfil all that it might have fulfilled.

Let me now give you a concrete example of what takes place with an etheric body torn away violently, as it were, from its physical body. Of course, many examples can be given. But let me give you an example which we actually experienced here at Dornach last autumn. We experienced it at the site where the Goetheanum stands. A family that lives near the Goetheanum had a little son aged seven, really a wonderful little boy. He was so good that when his father had to leave for the front, little seven year old Theo told his mother: “Now I must work specially hard, for I must help you in things, where father used to help you.” One, evening after a lecture a person belonging to our circle came and told us that little Theo was missing since that evening.—One could only suppose that, there must have been an accident. On that evening, through circumstances which in ordinary life, are designated as a “coincidence,” a furniture van had passed through a lane, through which no van had passed for years, and through which no van ever passed since. At a certain spot, it overturned. Little Theo was in the small house called the Canteen, where the friends who work on the Building get their meals. He would have left sooner, but by a strange coincidence he was held up by someone and instead of going out by the usual door which would have led him down a certain path, he went out through another door and passed by the furniture van at the very moment when it fell over. The van fell on top of him. This is an example, which clearly shows how Karma works.

I have often used a simple comparison in order to show how frequently people mix up cause and effect! A man is seen walking along the banks of a river. Suddenly he falls into the water. A stone is found at the place_; where the man fell into the river. The man is drawn out of the water but he is already dead. On investigating matters, people will give the following account of the accident in the full belief that they are telling the truth: The man stumbled over the stone, fell into the river and was drowned. Yet it would have sufficed to examine things more carefully and one would have discovered that death was not due to the fact that the man fell into the water, but he fell into the river because he was dead, for he had had a stroke. Consequently, the case was quite different from what people imagined it to be. Thus, we see how easy it is to mistake cause and effect, and particularly in ordinary science cause and effect are always mixed up.

In Theo's case, Theo himself was the cause of the accident; it was he who caused the van to pass by at a certain moment and he attracted the van so that it fell on top of him. This should he borne in mind as the secret of the whole case.

But let us now consider the continuation; A human being who dies accidentally in the very prime of life! If one's heart is intimately united with the whole work on the Building at Dornach and if at the same time one has the possibility to observe the influences which work in this Building, it is possible to say: The etheric body so violently torn away from little Theo, now lives in atmosphere of the Goetheanum Building, and the most beautiful forces of inspiration for the work connected with it, can be gained by uniting one's soul with the enlarged etheric body, extended as it were, to a small world, which lives in the atmosphere of the Goetheanum. I shall never hesitate to admit unreservedly that many things which I was able to discover at that time in connection with our Building, I owe to the fact that I turned my own soul to the etheric body of little Theo that was active in the atmosphere of the Building. Of such kind are the connections in the world. The real individuality of the human being passes on, but the etheric body that might still have sustained life for many decades, remains behind.

Consider now how many etheric bodies soar above us in the spiritual atmosphere and will also soar above those who come after us! They are the etheric bodies that remained behind, the etheric bodies of those who passed early in life through the portal of death in the present epoch so heavily laden with destiny. We do not speak here of the paths trodden by the INDIVIDUALITIES, but of a special spiritual atmosphere created by the etheric bodies that remained behind. The human beings here on earth will live in this atmosphere. They will be submerged in an atmosphere which is filled by these etheric bodies whose life-forces were sacrificed, in order that humanity may progress through the tragic events which are taking place particularly in the present time.

It will be necessary however to feel what these etheric bodies desire, for these etheric bodies will be the best inspirers of mankind in the future. A beautiful age of spirituality might dawn, if true understanding, an inner understanding of the heart, is brought towards these etheric bodies, if people listen to what they wish to say. All these etheric bodies can in the future aid humanity to rise up to spiritual heights. For this reason, it is so important that there should be souls on earth who are able to feel what is penetrating into the atmosphere of the future, through the medium of these etheric bodies. You learn something, concerning the nature of these etheric bodies not only by recounting that man consists of a physical body, of an etheric body, of an astral body and of an Ego, but also by learning to know the secret of the influence exercised, by these etheric bodies and of how this influence will work in the future.

Those who are already now followers of spiritual science prepare the souls so that they become receptive for the messages of these etheric bodies. Let us therefore turn our souls to the spiritual world, for in so doing, we prepare ourselves and those who come after us to feel the heritage of the dead, to feel what the dead demand from mankind in the future. If spiritual science can stimulate human souls in such a way that they can turn their spiritual sense towards the spiritual worlds, the effect which grows out of the blood/courage/suffering and sacrifice will be great and powerful indeed. Let me therefore recapitulate at the end of this lecture the feelings which can animate us, when our souls, which follow spiritual science, are directed towards the great events of our time:

Aus dem Mut der Kampfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassenem,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten
Wird er wachsen Geistesfrucht,
Lenken Seelen geistbewusst
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich

Translation

From the courage of the fighters
From the blood of the battles,
From the sorrow of the abandoned,
From the nation's deeds of sacrifice,
Shall spring forth a spiritual fruit,
If souls, spiritually conscious, direct
Their understanding towards the Spirit-realm.

My dear friends,

Our spiritual-scientific world-conception should not only further the, development and rise of individual souls, hut above all it should really help us to gain new aspects for a conception of life. In the present time we should take it to heart that such encompassing aspects have to be gained in order to judge life. Of course, it is a great and also a significant task for the individual to further his own development by what he can win as a fruit of spiritual-scientific self-education. Only the fact that individuals progress, enables individual souls to cooperate in the development of mankind. Our attention should, however, not only be turned to this fact, but as followers of the anthroposophical world-conception we should also be able to experience the great events of our time from a high standpoint, from a truly spiritual standpoint. When judging the things which are taking place, we should really be able to transfer ourselves, as it were, to a higher standpoint. To-day it may perhaps be appropriate to advance a few aspects connected especially with the great events of the present time, because, my dear friends, our meeting is being held in a fateful time, fraught with destiny.

Let us now set out from something which closely affects us as human beings. At certain times people are seized by illness. As a rule, illness is looked upon as something which injures the organism. But this, generally adopted view is not always justified. There are indeed certain illnesses which must be judged from this standpoint, which invade our organism, as it were, like a foe, but this is not always the case. It does not even apply to the majority of illnesses, for as a rule illness is something quite different. Illness is generally not an enemy, but a friend of the human organism. What is inimical to the organism generally precedes illness, it develops in us before the external, visible illness breaks out. Opposing forces are in the organism, and the illness which breaks out at a certain moment is an attempt on the part of our body to defend itself against these opposing forces which had remained unnoticed. When an illness breaks out, the organism frequently begins a work of healing. Through illness the organism fights against the inimical influences which precede the illness. Illness is the last form of the whole process and it implies a battle of the sound fluids in the organism against the forces which are lurking below. Illness exists for the sake of driving out what is lurking below. Only if the majority of illnesses is looked upon in this light, can a right conception of the pathological process be reached. Illness therefore indicates that something preceded its outbreak, something which must be expelled from the organism by the illness itself.

It is easy to discover what has just been said, if such phenomena of life are viewed in the right light. The causes may lie in many different spheres. But as explained, the essential point is to view illness as a defence of the organism against forces which must be driven out.

I do not think that it is possible to make a better comparison in regard to the whole complex of the significant and deeply incisive events in a great part of the world which are taking place since the beginning of August 1914,—I do not think that a better comparison can be found between these events and a pathological process affecting the whole human development. What should strike us above everything else is that these war-events really constitute a pathological process. But it would be wrong to think that we can deal with it by grasping it wrongly, as so many other pathological processes are grasped, namely by considering it as something inimical to the organism. The cause which we must envisage, precedes the pathological process.

Particularly in the present time it may strike us how little inclined people are to envisage truths which are immediately evident to these who take in a spiritual-scientific world-conception not only with their intellect, but also with their feeling.

We have had to pass through many painful experiences during the past 9 months—painful experiences connected with people's lack of judgment. When reading the books and articles which are most popular to-day and which are spread in many different countries of the world, do we not find that those who judge the present events admit that everything began, say in July 1914? The most distressing experience which we had to pass through in addition to all the other painful things, was to see that particularly the people who counted, most, that is to say, those who write newspaper articles and form public opinion, regally do not know anything about the development of events and only bear in mind the things which lie closest! This gave rise to endless discussions, to entirely useless discussions on the real cause of the present war.

Again, and again people ask: Is this or that party responsible for it? and so forth. But in every case, they omit to go back further than. July, or June 1914 at the incest. I mention this because it really characterizes our materialistic age. One generally thinks that materialism only brings with it a materialistic way of thinking. But this is not true. Materialism does not only produce a materialistic way of thinking, but also short-sightedness; materialism produces laziness of thinking and lack of insight. The materialistic way of thinking leads to the opinion that one can prove and believe anything. The self-training implied by Anthroposophy, if this is grasped in the right way, also enables us to recognise that it is possible to prove and to believe anything if one remains in the field of materialism. Let us take an example:

You see, in the past years, when one brought forward the spiritual-scientific world-conception in this or in that place and certain people thought that they had to assert their own views in the face of the spiritual-scientific world-conception, one could frequently hear the following argument: Kant has already proved by his philosophy that there are limitations to man's knowledge; human knowledge cannot reach the spheres which the spiritual-scientific world-conception tries to reach. Then they bring forward certain interesting things showing how Kant is supposed to have proved that human knowledge cannot reach the spiritual world. If spiritual science was upheld in spite of all, then they came along and said: This person rejects everything that has been proved by Kant! Of course, this more or less implied: What a foolish person he must be, for he rejects strictly proved facts!

But this is not the case: The spiritual scientist does not deny that Kant is absolutely right, for it is evident that he demonstrated this clearly. But my dear friends, suppose that someone had stated that the plant consists of minute cells, at a time when the microscope had not yet been invented, but that these cells could not be found because human eyes are unable to see them. It might have been proved that the cells do not exist and this would have been quite correct, for the constitution of the human eye does not permit us to penetrate into the plant's organism to the extent of seeing these tiniest cells. The proof would be absolutely correct and it could not be overthrown. Yet in the course of human development the microscope was discovered as an aid to the human eye, so that in spite of the strictest proof to the contrary, people were able to recognise the existence of these tiniest cells.

When people will grasp that proofs are useless for the attainment of truth, that proofs may be correct, but that they do not mean anything special if we wish to progress in the attainment of truth, then it will be possible to stand upon the right foundation. For then it will be possible to know: Though proofs may be correct, they cannot lead us to the truth, this is not their task!

Bear in mind the comparison which I made, for it will show you that the proof according to which the human power of vision is unable to reach the plant's cell is just as valid as the proof that, according to Kant, human knowledge is unable to reach the supersensible worlds. These proofs may be absolutely correct, yet real life transcends them. This too is something which we obtain, as it were, along the path of spiritual research, for by extending our horizon we really reach the point of appealing to. something which is not only limited to the human, intellect and its proofs.

Those who restrict themselves to materialistic ideas are really led to an unbounded belief in proofs; if they have a proof in their pocket, they are convinced of the truth. But spiritual science shows us that in reality it is possible to prove either the one or the other thing; intellectual proofs are however meaningless for the attainment of real truth. It is therefore an accompanying symptom of our materialistic age that people should fall into this intellectual short-sightedness. And if this is mingled with passions, it gives rise to something which we do not only see in the armed conflict of European nations, but also in the hostile attitude consisting in the fact that one accuses the other, without any outlook (I distinctly say, without any outlook, for this does not only apply to the present time of war) of their ever convincing each other. These who naively think that a neutral country might perhaps arbitrate in the case of diverging statements between two hostile countries, are really simple minded! Of course, the facts advanced by one side may be just as well supported by proofs as the facts advanced by the other side. Insight, my dear friends, can only be gained by penetrating into the deeper foundations of the whole human development.

In my lecture-cycle on the Folk-Souls of Europe and their influence on the individuals belonging to the different nations, which I gave a few years before the outbreak of the present war, I already tried to throw some light upon the reciprocal relations of the different nations and I tried to show that different forces are at work in the various, nations.¹ Let us complete this to-day by drawing in some new aspects.

Our materialistic age has far too abstract a way of thinking; Above all it does not consider the fact that in life there is a real course of development and that man should allow that which is in him to mature, so that it gradually ripens into real judgment. We know—for this has been set forth sufficiently clearly in The Education of the Child that the human being passes through a course of development; during the first seven years he develops above all his physical body, from the seventh to the fourteenth year his etheric body, and so forth. Little attention is paid to this progressive course in mans individual development, and less still to the parallel phenomenon, to the equivalent course of development in mankind.

The processes which take place in the nations and their connections are guided (we all know this through spiritual science) by the Beings belonging to the higher Hierarchies. We speak of FOLK-SOULS, or FOLK-SPIRITS in the true meaning of the word. We know, for example, that the Folk-Soul of the Italian nation inspires what we designate as Sentient Soul; the French Folk-Soul inspires what we call the Intellectual Soul; the inhabitants of the British Isle are inspired through their consciousness soul; in Central Europe the inspiration takes place through what we designate as the human Ego.

This does not imply any verdict in regard to the individual value of the different nations, it simply states the facts. It states for example, that the inspiration of the nation which inhabits the British Isle is based on the fact that it has to bring into the world influences produced by the inspiration of the Consciousness Soul through the Folk-Soul.

It is strange how nervous people get on this subject. During the war I once more emphasized in this or in that place certain things which I had already explained in the above-mentioned cycle of lectures. Yet some people almost considered it as an insult to the British nation to say that it had the task to inspire the Consciousness-Soul, whereas, the Folk-Soul pertaining to the German nation has to inspire the human Ego. It is just as if it were taken as an insult to say that salt is white and Cayenne pepper red! It is a plain characteristic, the description of an existing truth, and it has to be accepted as such, to begin with.

It will be much easier to deal with the connections existing between the single members of human nature if we bear in mind the characteristics of the various nations, if we do not mix everything together, as is done by the modern materialistic conception. Of course, the individual rises above that which he receives from, his Folk-Soul, and it is pre-eminently the task of our Anthroposophical Society to lift the individual out of the Group-Soul life into the life of humanity as a whole. But nevertheless, there remains the fact that in so far as the individual stands within his own nation he is inspired in a certain direction; the Italian Folk-Soul speaks, for example, to the Sentient soul; the French Folk-Soul to the Intellectual Soul, the British Folk-Soul to the Consciousness Soul. We should therefore imagine that the Folk Soul soars above that which individuals do within single nations.

But in the same way in which we can see a course of development in individual life and are able to say in the case of individual people that the Ego reaches a certain stage of development at a definite moment in life, so it is also possible to speak of a development, a real development in the case of the Folk-Soul. But this development of course differs somewhat from that of individual human beings.

Let us single out, for example, the Italian nation. There we. have this nation and the Folk-Soul belonging to it. You see, the Folk Soul is a Being of the supersensible world, it belongs to the world of the higher Hierarchies. It inspires the Sentient Soul, and this until the nation, the Italian nation, lives (we are speaking of this particular nation), yet it inspires the Sentient Soul at different times in a different way.

There are times in which the Folk-Souls inspire the members of single nations in such a way, that their inspiration is, as it were, one of the soul. The Folk-Soul soars in higher regions of the spirit, and its inspiration is of such a kind that it only transmits soul qualities. Then there are times in which the Folk-Souls descend and engage mere strongly the individual members of the nations; their inspiration is so strong, that they do not only send it down into the soul and its qualities, but right down into the bodily qualities, so that people depend on their Folk-Souls even bodily. As long as a nation submits to the influence of its Folk-Soul so as to receive only soul-spiritual qualities, the national type is not so distinct. The forces of the Folk-Soul do not yet work in such a way as to seize the whole human being, right down into the blood. Then comes a time when one can gather by the way in which a person looks about, by the characteristic shape of his head and his physiognomy, how the Folk-Soul influences him. The influences are so strongly marked, because the Folk-Soul has descended deeply; it claims the whole human being in a strong and intensive way.

You see, in the case of the Italian nation, the middle of the 16th century, around the year 1550, was the period mentioned by me, when the Folk-Soul came down and worked in such a way that its mark may be found in the individual people. Then the Folk-soul soared back, as it were, and these influences were transmitted to the descendants by heredity. The most intensive union of the Italian nation with its Folk-Soul was around the year 1550. It was the time when the Italian Folk-Soul descended most deeply, when the Italian nation acquired its definite character. If we go back to the time before 1550, we see that the characteristic traits are not so clearly traced, they do not confront us so clearly as after 1550, Only in that epoch began the characteristic essence which we know as Italian character. At that time the true marriage took place between the Italian Folk-Soul and the Sentient Soul of. individual people belonging to the Italian nation.

In the case of the French nation (you see, I am not speaking of individual men, who can rise above the nation) a similar moment, when the Folk-Spirit descended most deeply and permeated the whole nation, set in around the year 1600, at the beginning of the 17th century. There the Folk-Soul seized the whole Intellectual Soul.

In the case of the British nation this moment arose in the middle of the 17th century, around the year 1650. Then the British nation obtained as it were its external British expression.

Many things will be clear to you if you know such facts, for now you can, for example, face quite differently the question: “What about Shakespeare and his connection with England?” Shakespeare worked in England before the time when the British Folk-Soul exercised its strongest influence upon the English nation. Shakespeare lived before that time. This explains why he was not completely understood in England. We all know that there are Shakespeare editions in England which suppress everything that is not quite in keeping with the taste of governesses. Shakespeare has often been moralized, so to speak, in the most extreme sense. We know that the deepest, understanding for Shakespeare is not to be found in England, but in the Central European, development of spiritual life.

You will now ask: When did the Folk-Soul come into contact with the members of the Central-European nation? There matters stand as follows: Through the fact that the Ego is the essential thing in Central Europe, that the Folk-Soul soars down and withdraws, again soars down and withdraws—through this fact, we have repetitions. Thus we have a descent of the Folk-Soul, when it unites with the individual souls, around the time in which the wonderful Parsifal legends arose, the legends of the Holy Grail. Then the Folk-Soul withdrew and its next descent is between the years 1750 and 1830. At that time Central-European life is most deeply seized by the Central-European Folk-Soul. Since 1830 it has withdrawn again.

You may therefore see why Jacob Böhme lived, for example, in an epoch in which he could obtain little from the German Folk-Soul. For it was not a time in which the Folk Soul united with the individual souls of the nation. Although Jacob Böhme is called the “Teutonic Philosopher,” he is therefore a man who, in regard to the time in which he lived, is not dependent on his Folk-Soul; he faces us, as it were, like one who is not rooted in his time, like something eternal.

If we take Lessing, Schiller, and Goethe, they are German philosophers who are deeply rooted in the German Folk-Soul. It is a characteristic fact that these thinkers who live between 1710 and 1830 are deeply rooted in their Folk-Soul. This is their characteristic trait.

You therefore see that it is not only essential to know that

1. in the Italian nation, the Folk-Soul works through the Sentient Soul,

2. in the French nation, it works through the Intellectual Soul,

3. in the British nation, through the Consciousness-Soul,

4. in the Central-European nation, through the Ego—

but that it is also essential to know that they exercise their influences at given times. The events which take place can only be grasped from a historical aspect, if we really know these things. The nonsense pursued in the form of science, where documents are taken and events are enumerated in sequence, with the conclusion that one must be deduced from the other—this nonsense of historical investigation does not lead to real history, to an understanding of human development, but only—one might say—to a falsification of the forces working in human history.

If we now see in how many different ways the forces which drive the nations work upon each nation (of course, other nations might also be characterized), we discover the contrasting things which are there. We then see that the events which are taking place in the present time have not only arisen during the. past few years, but that they prepared themselves throughout the centuries.

Let us look across to the East, to the region which is the home of Russian culture. Russian culture is characterised by the fact that it can only unfold when the Russian Folk-soul will have united with the Spirit-Self. (This too is mentioned in the cycle of lectures The Mission of the Folk-Souls). That is to say; A future epoch must come in which the characteristic qualities of the European East will take on a definite form. This will be entirely different from what takes place in Western or in Central Europe. To begin with, however, it is clear that what pertains to Russian culture does not exist as yet, for Russian culture is connected with tin Spirit-Self in the same way in which the individual human being is now connected with it, that is to say, it must always look up to it. Individual Russians, even the deepest Russian philosophers, do not speak in the same way Central Europeans when they express the loftiest things, but in an entirely different way. Here we come across something very characteristic.

You see, we must ask: What is the most characteristic trait of the spiritual life of Central Europe? You all know that there was a time in which the great mystics lived; Meister Eckhart,Tauler,and others were active then, and others too. With their feeling soul they all sought the Divine Essence contained in the human soul; they looked for the God within them, ... they sought to find within their own soul “the little spark in feeling,” as Eckhart expressed himself. Within the soul (they said), within the soul there must be something where; the Godhead is present in a direct way. This gave rise to the striving to unite the human Ego with the Godhead within the human soul. This Divine Essence, this Godhead, was to be striven for; it called for an active striving, for development.

This characterizes the whole life of Central Europe. Think of the infinite soul-depth and feeling of a man who stands in a completely international way in Central European culture, in the spiritual life of Central Europe. Angelus Silesius, who says in one of the beautiful mottoes contained in his Cherubinisher Wandersmann: “When I die, it is not I who die, but God in me.” Consider the great profundity of these words! The man who uttered them, had a living grasp of the idea of immortality and he felt that when death comes to the individual human being, it is because he is filled by the Godhead. Death is a phenomenon which is not connected with man, but. with God, and since God cannot die, death must only be an illusion. Death can therefore not mean a destruction of life. A person who can say, “When I die, it is not I who die, but God in me,” knows of the existence of the immortal soul. This infinitely profound feeling lived in Angelus Silesius. It is a result of the fact that the inspiration passes through the Ego.

When the inspiration passes through the sentient soul, something may arise which appeared, for example, in Giordano Bruno: This friar penetrated with greatest passion into everything discovered by Copernicus and he felt that the whole world was filled with life. If you read anything by Giordano Bruno you will find the confirmation of the fact that in so far as he grew out of the Italian nation, he proves that the Italian Folk-soul is inspired through the sentient soul.

Cartesius (Descartes) was born at that characteristic moment of French development when the French Folk-soul completely united itself with the French nation. Read a page by Cartesius, the French philosopher; you will find everywhere the confirmation of the truth discovered by spiritual science, namely that the inspiration of the Folk-Soul influences the Understanding Soul.

Read Locke or Hume, or any other English philosopher up to Mill and Spencer,—everywhere you will come across the inspiration of the Consciousness Soul.

When you read Fichte, who strives within the Ego itself, you will find that the Folk-soul inspires the Ego.

It is characteristic that the Central European Folk-Soul is experienced in the Ego, so that the Ego is the truly striving part, the Ego with all its strength and errors, with all its mistakes and victories. A man of Central Europe who has to find the path to Christ, must give birth to Him within his own soul.

Try to find in the spiritual life of Russia the idea (it should not be taken over superficially from the civilisation of western Europe) that Christ or God should be experienced within the soul. You will not be able to find it; Russians always expect that the forces which penetrate into the historical course of events penetrate into it like a “miracle,” to use Solovioff's expression. The spiritual life of Russia is very much inclined to look for the resurrection of Christ in the spiritual world, to worship th influence of an inspiring, power, yet this inspiring power speaks as if man were below and as if the inspiring element soared on high above mankind like a cloud, as if it did not penetrate into the human Ego. This intimate union of the Ego with its God, or if Christ is thought of, with Christ, this desire that Christ should be born within one's own soul, can only be found in Central Europe. If the culture of Eastern Europe will one day reach the stage of development which is appropriate to it, it will appear in a civilisation soaring above man, setting forth a kind of Group-soul life, but upon a higher stage than in the past. At present we must find it natural that Russians, and even Russian thinkers, should always speak of a spiritual world soaring above the world of man, of a spiritual world which they can never approach as intimately as Central Europeans approach it, when their Ego seeks to draw nigh to the Divine Essence surging and weaving through the world. On many occasions, when I myself spoke of the Godhead that surges and weaves through the world, my words were inspired by the feelings of a Central European, for no other nation in Europe can grasp such truths in the way in which Central Europeans grasp it. This characterizes the Central European nation.

These are the forces that live in the different nations and that confront one another in such a way as to compete with each other again and again. Sudden explosions must occur, resembling the discharge of clouds which bring lightning and storm.

But do we not see (this is how one might express it now) how a word resounded in the East of Europe, which was like a watchword and was also meant to act as such, just as if the civilisation of Eastern Europe were beginning to overspread the unworthy west of Europe, overflooding it? Do we not observe the rise of Slavophils, of Panslavs and Panslavism, particularly in men of Dostojevski's kind, and similar ideas? Dostojevski came forward with the special points of his programme staging; “You western Europeans, the whole lot of you, have a culture which is rotten to the core; it must be supplanted by the impulses coming from Eastern Europe.” A whole theory was set up, which culminated above all in the fact that people said: In the West, everything has grown rotten and decadent, and it must be replaced by the fresh forces of the East. We have our good orthodox religion which we do not oppose, we accept it like the cloud of the Folk-soul soaring above the people ... and so forth. Very clever theories were thus built up, dealing with what might already constitute the principles, the aims of the ancient Slav life, and stating that from the East the Truth should begin to spread over Central and Western Europe.

I said that the individual may rise above his nation. In a certain sphere, Solovioff, the great Russian philosopher, was such an individual. Although every line he writes reveals that he writes as “Russian,” he nevertheless stands above his nation. In his youth Solovioff was, one might say, a Panslav. But he penetrated more deeply into the ideas which the Panslav and Slavophils set up as a kind of philosophy of nations, as a kind of world-conception of nations. And what did Solovioff discover? What did Solovioff, the Russian find? He asked, himself: Does that which constitutes the true Russian-being really exist in the present time? Is it to be found among those who represent Panslavism, who follow the Slavophils?—He did not rest until he discovered the truth. What did he discover? He investigated the statements of the Slavophils, to whom he himself had belonged in the past, he pressed upon them. And he discovered that the majority, of the thought-forms, statements and intentions had been taken from the French philosopher de Maistre, who sympathized with the Jesuits; he was the great teacher of the Slavophils in the field of a world-conception. Solovioff himself proved that these ideas had not grown out of Russian soil, but that these Panslav and Slavophil thoughts had been taken from de Maistre. And he proved other things besides. He unearthed a long-forgotten German book, from the 15th century, unknown to everyone in Germany. The Slavophils copied whole portions of it in their literature.

What is the strange phenomenon which confronts us here? People believe that from the East come impulses which are of Eastern origin, whereas they are a purely western importation. They came from the West and were then sent back again to the western people. The western people become acquainted with their own forms of thought ... because the East does not yet possess its own forms of thought.

When things are closely investigated, one always finds the confirmation of the statements made by spiritual science. They prove to be correct. We therefore have something elemental in the forces, which come rolling towards us from the East, something which will unfold one day if it will absorb the forces which developed in Central Europe with the same love with which Central Europe once absorbed the Greek and Latin life coming from the South.

In the course of mankind's development, the later epochs absorb what was contained in the past epochs. And the FAUST mentality of Central Europe, which I described in my public lecture [Lecture of May 8th, 1915. “Man's Destiny in the Light of a Knowledge of the Spiritual Worlds.”] when I spoke of the year 1770, was felt by Goethe as a Faustic striving and he expressed it in the words:

Habe nun, ach! Philosophie,
Juristerei und Medizin,
Und, leider, auch Theologie!
Durchaus studiert mit heißem Bemühen.
Da steh' ich nun, ich armer Tor!
Und bin so klug als wie zuvor.

(Alas! Philosophy, law, and medicine,
and unfortunately, also theology
I studied with hot endeavour.
But there I stand now, poor fool!
and am as clever as I was before.)

There arose in Germany an immensely rich life of the spirit, an immensely intensive rich striving in the spiritual life of Germany.—But if Goethe had written his Faust 40 years later, he would certainly not have begun with: “Habe nun ach, Philosophie ...” I have, alas! studied philosophy, etc. ... and have become the wise man of all ages ... but he would have described his Faust exactly as he did in 1770.

This living striving comes from the Folk-soul's inspiration, of the Ego, from that intimate connection of the Ego with the Folk-soul. This is a fundamental quality of the Central-European civilisation of the spirit. And the civilisation of eastern Europe must unite with it warmly and lovingly. The forces which bad to flow into Central Europe were once absorbed, received from the civilisation of the South. To-day it is not otherwise, and if the elemental wave of development comes rolling along from the East, it is just as if the pupil were furious with his teacher because he must learn something from him and wants to whip him for it. The comparison is somewhat trivial, but it is one which explains things precisely.

Groups, masses of people endowed with entirely different forces of development live together in Europe. These different forces of development must actively compete against each other; they must assert themselves in different ways. The opposing forces, those which come into conflicts with the others, prepared themselves long, long ago. Particularly when studying the fine nuances, we see everywhere the truths revealed by spiritual science.

Do we. not find it expressed in a wonderful way that the wave of European development should concentrate itself so as to show the whole of mankind, symbolically as it were, how Central Europe must feel the life-union between the Ego and the spiritual world, how God should be experienced in the “sparklet within the soul,” how Christ should be experienced in “the small spark within the soul?” Christ himself must become active within the human Ego. For this reason, in Central Europe the. whole development tends towards what we call the Ego, the “Ich.” And Ich means “I, C, H” : ICH. The Ich—Jesus Christ, faces us in Central Europe like a mighty symbol, intimately working together with, what can be the soul's holiest possession, intimately working together with the soul itself!

This is how the Folk-soul works, he inspires the nation and expresses the underlying facts in characteristic words. I know that some people laugh when such things are said, when one gives expression to the truth that the Folk-soul worked for centuries in order to give rise to the word ICH, which is so symbolically full of meaning. But let them laugh! After a few decades they will no longer laugh, and call such things more significant than what people now designate as “laws of Nature.” The influence of this wave of development was very characteristic. Only a very small portion of the truth sometimes rises up in human consciousness; but the forces which are active in the sub-conscious depths express themselves in a far more truthful way.

We speak, for example, of the Germanic peoples. The working Genius of Speech forms the words. One part of the inhabitants of Central Europe calls itself “German.” But when we speak of the Germanic races we must include Germany Austria, Holland, the Scandinavian nations and also the inhabitants of the British Isles. The word “Germanic” has a very wide meaning and embraces a large field. But the inhabitant of Great Britain rejects it. To him a “German” is an inhabitant of Germany. In English there is no special word for “Germane” (Germanic). The German language embraces a far larger field with that word. The German language as such is inclined to set the word at the service of selflessness; The German does not only call himself Germanic, but he includes the others in it. But the Briton rejects it.

Try to penetrate into the wonderful essence of the Genius creating speech, and you will discover the truly wonderful element in it. Maya, the great illusion, arises in connection with that which lives in the consciousness of men. But the forces, which work, in the subconscious depths are far more true. They express something immensely significant and profound.

Compare now the intimate way in which we must work in order to understand the European play of forces, compare this inmate way of working with the coarse way in which one generally views the reciprocal connections of the European nations. It will show you the devastation in the human power of judgment resulting from the materialistic age. The fact that people have begun to think that “matter carries and supports, everything” is not the worst; the worst thing of all is that people have become short-sighted, that they are unable to see the fundamental facts and do not even make one step to reach the world which lies behind that veil which is woven over truth as Maya; this is really a calamity.

Materialism very skilfully prepared its aims. Here too genius was at work, but the genius who is the leading power in materialism is Ahriman. He exercised a powerful influence during the past centuries, a very powerful influence indeed!

Let me now refer to a chapter which people perhaps prefer to ignore to-day. But I must draw attention to it, even though people may look upon this as a special form of insanity.

You see, the easiest, way of influencing people is to drip into the soul and thoughts of still youthful persons forces which will develop later in life. Older people can very seldom be taught anything thoroughly. Consequently, Ahriman could never have a better chance of preparing souls in a genuinely materialistic way than by dripping into the souls of young children and youthful persons certain forces which will continue to work in their sub-consciousness. By absorbing materialistic forms of thought at an age, when one does not yet think materialistically, people are taught to think materialistically. When materialism is implanted into the souls of children, people learn to think in a materialistic way.

Ahriman did this by inspiring a writer of the materialistic age to write Robinson Crusoe. If our spirit is clear-sighted and submits to Robinson's influence, we shall see that ideas which are completely materialistic are at work in Robinson. This may not appear at once, yet the whole … the way in which the book is built up, the way in which Robinson is led to all kinds of outer experiences in his adventurous life, until finally even religion grows out of the soil like cabbage,—all this prepares the child's soul excellently for a materialistic way of thinking.

And if we consider that at a certain time there existed a Bohemian, a Portuguese, a. Hungarian, etc., etc. Robinson, in imitation of the original Robinson Crusoe, we must admit that the work was done very thoroughly. The reading of Robinson books contributed greatly to the development of materialism.

In contrast to such phenomena we should point out that there is something which children should take in until late in life: namely the fairy-tales of Central Europe, above all those collected by the brothers Grimm. This is far better reading for children than Robinson Crusoe.

And if to-day the terrible, difficult, fateful events among the nations of Europe are looked upon as a warning to study more closely the whole way in which things occur in the present time by developing out of the hidden depths of events, it will be possible to recognise above all that in reality the essential thing doe s not lie in the fact that a few German scientists sent back their decorations and titles to England!

If the warning of the present time is strong enough to enable us to recognise the whole significance of the materialistically inspired consciousness-soul of the British nation, we shall also recognise what it means to let children read Robinson-books and we shall extirpate the whole Robinson literature. If the warnings of the present time are really taken into consideration in the right way we shall work far more thoroughly, far more radically.

You see, I began to interpret Goethe 35 years ago by explaining his spiritual-scientific task. I tried to explain that Goethe's theory of evolution really contains a truly great theory of evolution, in keeping with spiritual views. The time must come in which larger circles of people recognise this. For Goethe gave us a great, powerful theory of evolution, which is truly spiritual. People found it difficult to understand. In the materialistic age, Darwin was far more successful for he gave in a coarser, materialistic form the truths contained in a fine, spiritual form in Goethe's theory of evolution. A thorough Anglicising took hold of Central Europe. Consider how tragic it is that the most English scientist in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, who swore by Darwin, should have felt such a furious hatred against everything English, and when this war broke out he was one of the first who returned the decorations and titles which had been given him in England. He will have been too old to send back the English-tinted Darwinism, but this would have been the important, essential fact.

The things which matter, lie deeply concealed and are immensely significant. And they are connected with the necessary spiritual deepening of our epoch. If one day we shall recognise the immensely greater depth of Goethe's Colour Theory in comparison with Newton's Colour Theory, and the immensely greater depth of Goethe's Theory of Evolution in comparison with Darwin's, we shall recognise the forces concealed in the spiritual life of Central Europe also in regard to these highest subjects.

By explaining to you all these things, I wish to awaken in your souls a feeling for the great warning which we must see in the present difficult and fateful events. It is a warning to work, to bethink ourselves of what lies concealed in the spiritual life of Central Europe, to undertake the responsibility of drawing out these forces. This is what I meant in my public lecture, yesterday, when 1 said that the spiritual life of Central Europe contains seeds which must unfold into flowers and fruits.

If we recognise again and again that the conscious life of the soul lies on the surface and that below it lies all the things explained to you in these days, we may turn our thoughts towards the fact that also in the present time the impulses of many people contain forces besides those of which they are conscious. Do not think that the people in the West and in the East who have to. defend the great fortress of Central Europe are only fighting for something which lives in their upper consciousness. You should envisage above all the impulses of which so many men who are now passing through blood and death are not conscious,—nevertheless these impulses exist. When we look to the East and to the West, spiritual science should give us the feeling that the impulses of the men who bring these sacrifices contain forces which the future will bring to birth in external life, although the fighting men are hardly conscious of this. Only if we consider the present events in this light, we are filled with the true feelings, with the feelings enabling us to grasp them.

But let us consider how many souls involved in these events—so great in their warlike character that they cannot be compared with anything else in the conscious history of mankind—let us consider how many souls are now passing through blood and death and let us remember that they will look down upon the death which they were condemned to suffer by the present time. Let us remember that in the meaning off what I told you yesterday, youthful etheric bodies fill the spiritual atmosphere of the earth. Let us consider that in the spiritual world will exist not only the souls, and the individualities of these men, but that useful impulses going out from these young etheric bodies will permeate the spiritual atmosphere. Let us set out from this point and try to bear in mind the warning calls which must be heard by those who remain behind on the earth. Indeed, each individual soul that passed through the portal of death reminds us of the great tasks which must be fulfilled in the civilisation of Europe. These warning calls must be heard. Out of the depths of spiritual life, we must be willing to draw feelings born out of knowledge, which show us the true nature cf the world in which we live. And one day, when we shall feel that each soldier who fell on the battlefield is a warner calling for mankind's spiritualization in the civilisation of Europe, we shall have grasped the events in their true meaning. Not only an abstract knowledge should go out from centres such as Dornach, the knowledge that man consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Ego, that he passes through many incarnations, that he has a Karma and so forth, but the souls who belong to our spiritual-scientific movement should be stirred in their innermost depths to that feeling life of which I have just spoken, enabling them to experience in the near future the warning calls of those who died in young years. The most beautiful experience which followers of spiritual science can win is that of the living stream which should pass like a breath through the ranks of those who count themselves as belonging to our movement. Not the mere knowledge of this fact, not only its recognition, but its life, the realisation of this life.

Indeed, recently several of our members have left the physical plane. Among them, a young helping friend, our dear FRITZ MITSCHER. Karma brought it about that I had to speak at the cremation in Basle, I had to send certain words to the departing soul. Among other things which I said to this soul, were the words that we know that he will remain a helping friend also now that he has passed through the threshold of death. I had to say this, guided by the consciousness of the fact that the truths which animate every one of us do not only stand before us as a theory, but that these truths uttered as if they were theoretical thoughts, must fill our whole soul with life, full life.

In that case, our attitude towards those who passed through the threshold of death must be the same as towards those who still live here on earth. Indeed, we should not hesitate, to say: Those who still live in the physical body are handicapped in many ways, so that they cannot live a full spiritual lire, they cannot live it to the fill. How many handicaps can be observed in people during their physical life on earth, when it is a question of recognising the truly great tasks of evolution—and still more, when it is a question of FULFILLING THEM! We may rely far more on the dead.

This feeling, that the dead live among us, of a special mission entrusted to them, guided me, when p spoke the parting words for our fried, Fritz Mitscher, who passed through the portal of death so early in life. The words spoken for him apply to many others who crossed the threshold of death. In the dead we have our beat and most important helpers and you will not misunderstand me when I say: In our spiritual work we may rely far more upon the dead than upon the living.

But in order to be able to say this, we should stand in a living way within that which our spiritual movement can give us. I rely on the fact that those who crossed the threshold of death are—particularly in the external field—our most important helpers in the spiritualization of human civilisation in the future, for they look back upon death, and death will be their great teacher. Many people to-day need stronger teachers than those whom life can give them. Many examples prove this.

Let me give you one example (though many others can be given): A few years ago, a sensational article directed against the spiritual science I represent, appeared in Hochland, a periodical published in South-Germany. This article caused a real sensation. It convinced many people, because it was written by a very famous philosopher. The editor of Hochland accepted the article, so that he propagated—at least he thought so—a very conspicuous article on this mad spiritual science.

You see, it is not important to defend ourselves against such things with external measures. It is quite comprehensible that clever modern people should think that spiritual science is foolish ... But since the outbreak of war something else occurred. The editor of that paper is a staunch German, a man with German feelings. The author of the article which had been accepted, addressed certain letters to him and these were printed in the Sueddeutschen Monatsheften for the publisher was guided by, let us say, his blessed “innocence.” Try to read these articles. They are full of venom against the spiritual culture of Central Europe; the letters which that very same philosopher wrote to the editor of Hochland are full of venom, so that the editor felt obliged to say: “In Central Europe, men with such ideas can only be found in a mad-house.”

Consider the immense significance of this criticism. There is a man who edits a paper in South-Germany. He accepts an article winch he considers important as a weapon for the destruction of spiritual science and he says: “Here, at last, we have a good article on spiritual science written by a famous thinker!” After a while, the same author sends him letters which he must designate as coming from a person who should be in a mad-house.

If one arrives at conclusions by a truly living logic, one would have to say: That man is a fool now, consequently he must have been a fool before! The editor simply did not recognise that he had to deal with a fool, when that man first wrote against spiritual science. This is living logic, life-logic. Sometimes, however, people cannot wait until this logic works and shows its effects. Nevertheless, it is active in life and so we may sometimes experience things of this kind.

The article in question was directed against my spiritual science. People read it and said: “O, that article was written by a famous philosopher and Platonist and he is a very clever man!” The editor thought: “An article on spiritual science written by such a clever man, must be a specially good article.” But after a while that same editor had to admit: “That man is a fool.” First, however, he needed proofs for this, as described.

Such things may occur among those who live on the earth. People who do not have a very firm ground under their feet, as in the case of the editor of that South-German periodical, have to be taught their lessons by the recent events which come from the spiritual world and are offered by life itself, in a far deeper meaning than one generally likes to admit.

You will therefore understand me, when I add the following remark to what I already explained to you: There are many opposing forces in the present time, and it is permissible to designate war as a disease. This war is the result of something which was enacted long ago, and it is a healing force eradicating many evils which would gradually harm the life of our whole, civilisation. By designating war as a disease in this meaning, but by looking upon disease as a self-defence, we can understand it, and the fateful events of the present with its significant hints and admonishments. In that case we experience it with all the inner forces of our soul, so that we can direct our attention towards the souls who passed through the threshold of death and look ahead into the near future, the souls who really grasp the inspiration which they are able to send into the hearts of those who are willing to listen to them, namely that a spiritual deepening must take hold of them, it must penetrate into them for the sake of human progress and salvation which the future needs.

If your souls can rightly take in the meaning which I wish to convey with these words, you will really be followers and upholders of our spiritual-scientific world-conception in the full meaning of the word. If you can make up your minds to become souls who turn their attention to the messages whispered from above by those who passed through the portal of death as a result of the fateful events of our times, you will be true followers of spiritual science.

In the near future, spiritual science will have to build a bridge connecting the living with the dead, a line of communication for the inspiring elemental forces of those who in the present time made the great sacrifice of their life, a path along which their messages can reach us.

For this reason, I wished to give you these explanations, by appealing to your souls and by stimulating certain feelings. These should be expectant, listening feelings, able to grasp what the difficult, fateful present reveals to human souls.

In this meaning, let me again conclude with the words already spoken the day before yesterday; they should work in our souls like a Mantram, transforming them into expectant souls, ready to receive the inspirations which come from the dead, from souls filled with a growing life in the Spirit:

Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassener,
Aus des Volkes Opfer taten
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht,
Lenken Seelen geistbewusst
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.

(Translation)
From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood shed in battles,
From the sorrow of the abandoned,
From the nation's deeds of sacrifice,
Will spring forth a spiritual fruit,
If souls, spiritually conscious, turn
Their senses towards the Spirit-realm.

---

• 1. See Rudolf Steiner: The Mission of the Folk-Souls in Relation with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology.

The decision to construct the first Goetheanum in Dornach, Switzerland was made in May, 1913, when Rudolf Steiner visited the future building site. Construction began within a few weeks and the exterior of the building was completed in April, 1914. Work on the interior proceeded at a slower pace and lasted through World War I (1914-1918). In 1914, Rudolf Steiner had begun a scaled-down model of the Christ sculpture that was later to be installed in the Goetheanum.. As the work on the sculpture itself began, he frequently explained its significance in his lectures.

One of Rudolf Steiner's lecture tours, May 6 through May 18, 1915, took him to Vienna, Prague and Linz. In all three cities he stressed that the Christ figure in the sculptured group would have to be portrayed as a being in equipoise between the polar forces of Lucifer and Ahriman and that this being was symbol of, and model for, man's own existence here on earth. The Linz lecture, which is here translated, presents the group in a world-historical context and relates the significance of the Lucifer-Christ-Ahriman configuration to the events surrounding World War I. Steiner sees a parallel between Christ's central, but equalizing position and Central Europe's mission in World War I. He implies that Germany's and Austria's militarism and political intransigence alone did not lead to war against the world powers in the East (Russia) and the West (France, England and, since 1917, the United States). According to Steiner, World War I was the earthly expression of a struggle between luciferic forces in the East and ahrimanic forces in the West, and it was Central Europe's destiny to mediate between these forces.

The fundamental polarization of East and West that Rudolf Steiner saw emerging more than six decades ago is now a political reality. While most historians today concede that World War II was in part caused by the circumstances surrounding World War I, few would accept Rudolf Steiner's statement from his Linz lecture that World War I was “destined by the European karma” or, to state it more concretely, that it was unavoidable. If the war could not have been avoided, then the question of who was to blame or who caused it is, as Steiner says, irrelevant. Based on this position, Steiner suggests that only one question has relevancy: “Who could have prevented the war?<” This question seems to contradict Steiner's statement that World War I was destined by the European karma. A quick glance at the historical record may help to clarify what Steiner meant.

In suggesting that the Russian government and possibly England, could have prevented the war, Steiner simply deals with possibilities outside the realm of what had to happen according to European karma. Russia's instigation of the two Peace Conferences in the Hague (1899 and 1907) was indeed self-serving and hypocritical, for it was Russia that, in 1914, mobilized its armed forces without considering British proposals for peace negotiations. Under these circumstances and considering the political immaturity of the German leadership, it was not surprising that the German Kaiser and his generals over-reacted to the Russian mobilization and interpreted it as a declaration of war. Kaiser Wilhelm II and Czar Nicholas II, who were cousins, frantically exchanged telegrams in which one beseeched the other to preserve the peace, but to no avail. The war machinery was already overheated by the forces of chauvinism and materialism so that even from this vantage point Steiner was correct in maintaining that war was unavoidable.

Regarding the possibility of preventing the war, a glance at the major Western powers involved in the controversy, and at Germany, reveals the following historical facts. France, for thirty years an ally of Russia, did nothing to prevent the war because she did not attempt to delay the hasty Russian mobilization. Her representatives said later that France regretted the Russian action, but there seems little doubt that France was more interested in presenting herself as the innocent victim of an attack. On the other hand, England's foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, could have prevented the war if he had taken earlier measures to discourage Germany's militarists from asserting themselves in their country, but in view of the English tradition and the English Constitution, this was probably not possible. Finally, the confusion in Germany itself was caused by a lack of understanding of who had legitimate authority to make decisions. Eventually, the political decisions were made by generals who managed to spread the belief that the fatherland was in peril and that Germany herself was not the attacker, but the attacked. Thus, theoretically, any one of these three powers could have prevented the war but that, as Rudolf Steiner points out in the lecture, is not the real issue.

Furthermore, the war did not emerge out of a French or Russian moral conviction that was responsive to German militarism. Rather, the goal of crushing German militarism emerged well after the war had begun. The war could be interpreted, in this sense, to be inevitable because it was not generated from a goal, but exploded and then developed its goals. In this war of attrition, materialism camouflaged itself with nationalistic sentiment and strove for absolute expression and triumph.

It is against such a background of perplexity and misguided fervor that Rudolf Steiner's message to Central Europeans must be read. In rejecting the question of who had caused the war, Steiner dismissed as equally irrelevant the question of who was to blame for materialism. Materialism was there, as was Ahriman. Steiner admonished the Central Europeans to counterbalance materialism by adopting a spiritual perception of life and by striving for an encounter with the Christ.

This profound spiritual responsibility that Steiner put on the Germans in 1915 was disregarded and the challenge passed by. After World War I it was not the Christ, but Adolf Hitler who, under the guise of “savior,” emerged as Germany's Nemesis and was thus catapulted into a central position. When Hitler was finally destroyed, Central Europe broke up into two parts, one of which disappeared behind the Iron Curtain, while the other aligned with the West.

As it stands today, Rudolf Steiner's call to instate the Christ in His central position has yet to be fully received and responded to not only by the people living in what is left of Central Europe, but also in the rest of the world.

Some day when the building in Dornach that is dedicated to the spiritual sciences is completed, it will contain, in a significant spot, a sculpture dominated by three figures. In the center of this group a figure will tower as if it were the manifestation of what I would call the most sublime human principle ever to unfold on earth. Hence, one will be able to experience this representation of the highest human principle in the evolution of the earth-the Christ, who in the course of this evolution lived three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. A special task in the portrayal of this Christ figure will be to make two ideas visible. Firstly, it will be important to show how the being that we are concerned with dwells in a human body. Secondly, it must also become apparent how this human body, in every facial expression and in every gesture reflects a magnificent degree of spiritual refinement, which descended with the Christ from cosmic and spiritual heights into this body in its thirtieth year. Then there will be the remaining two figures of the group, one to the left and the other to the right of the Christ figure, if that is the proper name for the figure that I have just sketched. This Christ figure is placed in such a way that it seems to be standing in front of a rock that towers noticeably at His left side, with its peak extending over His head. On top of the rock there will be another figure, winged but with his wings broken, who for this reason begins to fall into the abyss. One feature in the Christ figure that must be worked out with special artistic care is the manner in which he raises his left arm, for it is precisely this gesture that precipitates the breaking of the wings. It must not appear, however, as if the Christ Himself were breaking the wings of this being. Rather, the interaction of the two figures must be portrayed artistically to show how the Christ, by the very motion of raising his hand, is expressing his infinite compassion for this being. Yet this being cannot bear the energy flowing upward through arm and hand, an energy that is evidenced by indentations that the fingers of the extended hand seem to leave in the rock itself. When this being comes into proximity with the Christ being, he feels something that may be expressed in the words: I cannot bear the radiation of such purity upon me.

This feeling dominates so essentially as to break this upper beings wings and cause his imminent plunge into the abyss. To make this visible will be a particularly important artistic task and you will see how the meaning of this interaction could easily be misunderstood. Imagine, for example, an artistic portrayal of the Christ suggesting that merely by raising His hand He would radiate such power onto the being that his wings would be broken, forcing the plunge into the abyss. In that case it would be the Christ Himself who irradiated this being, as it were, with hatred, and thereby caused his descent. Such an impression must under no circumstances be conveyed. Rather, the being must be portrayed as having caused his own fall, for what is to be shown plunging downward, with broken wings, is Lucifer.

Now let us consider the other side of the group, toward the right of the Christ figure. There, the rock will have a ledge and, therefore, will be concave underneath. In this depression there will be another winged figure, who with his arm-like organs turns toward the ledge above. You have to visualize this as follows. To the right is the depression in the rock and in it stands this winged figure with wings entirely different from the figure on top of the rock. The wings of the figure on top of the rock resemble those of an eagle, whereas the figure in the depression has bat-like wings. This figure virtually buries himself in the cave, working in shackles, ever busy undermining the earthly realm.

The Christ figure in the middle has his right hand directed downward and the left one upward. Again, it will be an important artistic task not to show the Christ as wanting to shackle this figure; rather, he has infinite compassion for this being, which is Ahriman. Ahriman cannot bear this compassion and he writhes with pain from what the hand of the Christ exudes. This radiance from Christ's hand causes the golden veins down in the rock depression to wind around Ahriman's body like strong cords and shackle him. What is happening to Lucifer is his own doing; the same is true with Ahriman. This concept is going to take form as a sculpture that will be set up in a significant place in the new building. Above the sculptured group we will attempt to express the same motif through the medium of painting, but then the concept must be expressed differently. To summarize, the group of three figures: Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman will stand at the bottom as a sculpture, and above, the same motif will appear as a painting.

We are injecting this configuration of a relationship between Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman into our Dornach building because the science of the spirit reveals to us in a certain way that the next task regarding the comprehension of the Christ impulse will be to make man finally understand how the three forces of Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman are related in this world. To this day there has been much talk about Christianity and the Christ impulse, but man has not yet gained a clear understanding of what the Christ impulse has brought into the world as the result of the Mystery of Golgotha. Certainly, it is generally admitted that there is a Lucifer or an Ahriman, but in so doing, it is made to appear that from these two one must flee, as if one wished to say, “I want nothing to do with Lucifer and Ahriman!”—In yesterday's public lecture <¹ I described the way in which the divine-spiritual forces can be found. If these forces did not want to have anything to do with Lucifer and Ahriman, either, the world could not exist. One does not gain the proper relationship to Lucifer and Ahriman by saying, “Lucifer, I flee from you! Ahriman, I flee from you!” Rather, everything that man has to strive for as a result of the Christ impulse must be seen as similar to the equilibrious state of a pendulum. In the center, the pendulum is in perfect balance, but it must oscillate to one side or the other. The same applies to man's development here on earth. Man must oscillate to the one side according to the luciferic principle and to the other according to the principle of Ahriman, but he must maintain his equilibrium through the cultivation of Paul's declaration, “Not I, but Christ in me.”

To understand the Christ in His quintessential activity we must conceive of Him as a reality, as a working force. That is to say, we must realize that what wove itself into our evolution here on earth through the Mystery of Golgotha was present as a fact. It is not important how well or how inadequately this fact has been understood by mankind up to this time; what is important is that it has been present, influencing human development on earth. Much could be said to explain exactly what man has not understood about the Christ impulse up to this time; the science of the spirit will have to contribute its share to bring about a full comprehension of how the Christ impulse has come from spiritual heights and influenced man's development on earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. In order to realize how the Christ has become a working force, let us visualize—as has been done elsewhere—two events in the annals of man's evolution that have influenced the development of the entire Western world.

You will remember an important event from history when Constantine, son of Constantius Chlorus, defeated Maxentius and thus introduced Christianity externally into the mainstream of Western civilization. Constantine had to fight that important battle against Maxentius so that he could establish Christianity in his western empire as the official religion. Had this battle not taken place as it did, the entire map of Europe would have been different. But this battle really was not decided by military skill, that is, not by the intellectual prowess available to people in those days, but by something entirely different. Maxentius consulted the so-called Sibylline Books, the prophetic oracles of Rome, which guided him into leading his army out of the assured safety of Rome's walls into the open field, in order to confront Constantine's army. Constantine, on the other hand, had a dream before the battle in which he was told, “If you approach Maxentius under the banner of the Mystery of Golgotha you will reach a great objective!” Indeed, Constantine carried the symbol of the Mystery of Golgotha—the cross—when he led his forces into battle, even though his army was three-fourths smaller than that of Maxentius. Enthused by the power emanating from the Mystery of Golgotha, Constantine won that historical battle resulting in the external introduction of Christianity to Europe. When we realize the extent to which people in those days understood the Christ impulse purely by intellectual means, it is not surprising to find that there ensued an endless theological quarrel. People argued whether or not Christ was consubstantial with the Lord in all eternity, and so on. Let us say this, that the degree of knowledge of the Christ impulse available to human beings in those days is not important, but rather the fact that the Christ impulse was present and that through his dream it guided Constantine to bring about what had to happen. What is important is the actuality of the Christ and His real and visibly active power. Only in the science of the spirit do we begin to understand what the Christ impulse is.

Another historical event was the struggle between France and England. It changed the map of Europe in such a way that we can say that if France had not been victorious over England, all conditions and relationships would have become different. But how did this victory happen? It happened because the Christ impulse has worked itself into the subconscious of the soul up to the present time, when it is increasingly becoming a conscious force. So we can see in the evolution of the Western spirit how the Christ impulse seeks out in the souls of men those conditions by which it can become effective in some individuals. Legends have preserved for us the manner in which the Christ impulse can assert itself within the Western spiritual tradition. In part, these legends refer generally to ancient pagan ages, but they take us back to those heathen times in which an understanding of Christianity was beginning to germinate.

If the soul does not consciously seek initiation as delineated in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, but becomes saturated with the Christ impulse as if by way of natural initiation, then the most favorable period for this process is from December 25 to January 6. We can understand this clearly by realizing that for occult knowledge it is evident that the earth is not only what geologists describe. Geologists conceive the earth's components as being similar to the skeleton of man. Yet the spiritual also belongs to our earth whose aura has been permeated by Christ. During the day's twenty-four hours, this earth sleeps and is awake just as we are. We must familiarize ourselves with the fact that the state of wakefulness on earth occurs during the winter, and the state of sleep during the summer. The earth spirit is most awake in these twelve or thirteen days from Christmas to the Epiphany. In ancient ages when, as you know from the various presentations in my lecture series, human beings elevated themselves to a sort of dreamlike clairvoyance to reach a spiritual understanding of the world, in those ages the most favorable time for this process was summer. Thus, it is quite natural that whoever wants to elevate himself to spiritual heights by means of a more dreamlike clairvoyance will have an easier time of it during the summer, when the earth is asleep. Therefore, St. John's midsummer-day was in ancient ages the most propitious time to raise the soul to the spiritual level. The old way of spiritual interaction with the earth has been replaced by a more conscious elevation that can best be reached during the earth's wakefulness.

For this reason, legends inform us that unusually endowed people, who are particularly suited by their karmas, pass into an extraordinary state of consciousness that resembles sleep, but only on the surface. its inner quality is such that it can be inspired by those forces that elevate human beings to the domain we call the spirit world. A beautiful Norwegian legend² tells us that Olaf &Åsteson, in church on Christmas Eve, falls into a sleeplike state and when he awakens on January 6 is able to relate the experiences he had in this condition. This Norwegian legend does in fact describe the experiences that one perceives first as the soul world—and then as something that feels like the spirit world, but with everything being expressed as images, as imaginative forms.

This time of year has been most favorable in those epochs when human beings were not as advanced as they are in our time. Now it is no longer possible for the Christ impulse to penetrate the souls of men in this way, as if by natural initiation. Nowadays man must make a conscious effort and climb to initiation in a way similar to that achieved through the instructions given in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. We are living in an age when natural initiations are becoming increasingly rare and will eventually disappear. Yet one initiation that could still essentially be called a natural initiation took place when the Christ impulse worked itself into the soul of the simple country girl, The Maid of Orleans. It was she who caused the victory of the French over the English. Again, not the human mind nor the talents of military leaders were decisive factors in changing the map of Europe so magnificently, but rather the Christ impulse working itself into the subconscious of the Maid of Orleans and inspiring her to radiate its presence in all of history.

We would now have to examine whether something similar could have occurred in the Maid of Orleans by way of natural initiation and ask whether her soul was inspired in the nights from the 25th day of December to the 6th of January. From her biography it seems difficult to demonstrate that she was even once in a sleep-like state during the twelve or thirteen special days when the Christ impulse could have entered her soul, inspiring her to act as its human shell on the battle grounds of France. Yet, that is precisely what happened. There is a time when the karma of a particular individual can facilitate such a sleep-like state in a human being. During the last few days prior to a person's birth he lives in the mother's womb in a dreaming, sleep-like state. He has not yet perceived with his senses what is happening in the world outside. If by virtue of his karma a person were especially suited to receive the Christ impulse during these last few days in the womb, then these days could also be days of natural initiation. Strengthened by and saturated with the Christ impulse, such a person would have to be born on the sixth day of January. Joan of Arc was born on that day. It is her special mystery that she was born on the 6th day of January and had spent the time from Christmas to the day of Epiphany in a peculiar sleep-like state in the womb of her mother where she received her natural initiation. Now consider the profound connections beyond the external developments that we are accustomed to call history. As a rule, the external events that are reconstructed from historical documents are of the least significance. What is of decisive historical significance is the plain date in our calendar indicating that Joan of Arc was sent into this world on the 6th day of January. Thus, supernatural forces become active in the sentient world and we must read the occult signs that present this fact to us. They tell us that the Christ impulse had already streamed into the Maid of Orleans before her physical birth, as if by way of natural initiation.

I want to explain these facts in order to instill in your souls a feeling for the fact that the external preception must take into account unknown forces and connections beyond what we ordinarily call history. European history has been guided by the Christ impulse since the Mystery of Golgotha, whereas Asia retained a world view that is not vet fully sensitive to the Christ impulse. To be sure, Europeans have been led into considering the wisdom of India as something especially profound. Not only is it characteristic of Hindu thought, if not of all Asian religious perception, however, that its entire attention is directed to the time preceding the appearance of the Christ impulse, but also that the state of religious perception is preserved as it was in those days. If something remains behind in the evolutionary process it can be interpreted to have absorbed something luciferic, and for this reason Asian religious evolution is the carrier of a luciferic element. A glance at the religious development of Asia will inform us that it contains much of what mankind as a whole once possessed but was later forced to abandon. We must in part cleanse Western culture of the luciferic remnants and in part we must elevate them in such a way that the Christ impulse can enter.

Moving from Asia to the East of Europe, we notice how Russian orthodox Christianity has remained stationary at an earlier stage of Christian development, refusing to advance and thereby keeping something of the luciferic element. In short, we can detect a luciferic remnant in the East, which, I would say, a wise guiding force left behind for the evolution of mankind in general.

Looking to the West and especially to American culture, a different characteristic quality stands out. The characteristic feature of American culture is to explain everything from external appearance. This kind of perception can certainly lead to great and significant achievements, but still, externals are usually expected to provide answers to all questions. Suppose we in Europe, and especially in Central Europe, notice a person who earlier in his life did not yet have an opportunity to dedicate himself to Christ and to the spiritual cosmic forces. If some event in this person's life brought about his conversion, we want to know what had gone on in his soul. We are not interested in learning that there was a leap forward in his development because such a phenomenon could certainly be found everywhere. The most incorrect pronouncement made by the empirical sciences is that nature does not make any leaps.³ Yet there is a tremendous leap from a green plant leaf to the red petal of a flower, and there is another significant leap from petal to the calyx. This pronouncement is therefore patently false; the truth of all development rests precisely on the fact that leaps occur everywhere. Hence, when a person who for some time was leading an external existence is suddenly induced by something to turn to spiritual things, we are not interested in the fact that it happened. What does interest us is the inner force and power that can bring about such a conversion. We will want to look into the soul of such a person and ascertain what has caused such a reversal. The inner workings of the soul will interest us.

How would the American proceed? He would do something quite peculiar. In America, conversions of this sort have been observed frequently. Well, the American would ask the people who have experienced conversions to write letters. He would then gather all these letters into a bundle and say, “I have received these letters from some two hundred people. Fourteen percent of all these souls experienced a conversion out of sudden fear of death or hell: five percent claimed altruistic motives; seventeen percent because they aspired to ethical ideals; fifteen percent had experienced pangs of conscience; ten percent acted in obedience to what they were taught; thirteen percent because they saw that others were converted and imitated them; nineteen percent because they were forced by a good whipping at the appropriate age, and so on.” In this fashion the most extreme souls are isolated, sorted and tallied and the result is claimed to be founded on “scientific data.” The findings are then compiled in books that are sent out and billed as “soul science.” For these people all other evidence is unsound, or as they claim, rests on subjective notions. There you have an example of the externalization of the innermost phenomena, and so it goes with many, many things in America. At a time that cries out for special spiritual deepening, the most external brand of spiritism is rampant in America! Everything there has to be tangible.

That is a materialistic interpretation of spiritual life. We could mention many other instances from which it would be possible to see how the culture of the West is seized by the ahrimanic principle, and what principle causes the pendulum to swing to the other side. In the East we are confronted by the luciferic and in the West by the ahrimanic principle. In Central Europe we have been assigned the immensely important task of finding the equilibrium between East and West. Therefore, the plastic group in our building in Dornach must represent what we consider the most significant spiritual task of our age, that is, finding the equilibrant relationship between Lucifer and Ahriman. Only then will it be recognized how the Christ impulse was meant to influence evolution on earth, when the Christ is not simply brought to preeminence, but is known in the proper way as exemplary force in balance with Lucifer and Ahriman.

The following may illustrate that no clear understanding has yet been reached concerning the relationship of man and of Christ to Lucifer and Ahriman. In a period, even the greatest phenomena are not always free from a one-sided attitude that may characterize the age. It is impossible to overestimate the significance of Michelangelo's magnificent painting The Last Judgment, which can be found in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. Christ is portrayed in triumph, directing the good people to the one side and the wicked to the other. Let us look at this Christ figure. It does not possess the features we would like to emphasize in the Christ of our building in Dornach. Even though Lucifer towers above, it must be shown that the Christ raises His hand in compassion. Lucifer is not supposed to be toppled by the power of Christ, but plunges down by his own power because he is unable to bear the radiance of the Christ nearby, and the Christ looks up and raises his brow toward Lucifer. Similarly, Ahriman is not conquered by any hatred from Christ, but because he feels he cannot stand the forces emanating from Him. The Christ, however, towers in the middle as the One who is carrying the Parcival principle into the new age and who, not through His power but through His very being, induces others to overcome themselves, rather than being overcome by Him. In Michelangelo's painting, we see a Christ who uses His very power to send some to heaven and others to hell. In future, such an image will no longer be seen as the genuine Christ, but rather as a Christ having luciferic qualities. Of course, this observation does not detract from the greatness of the painting, in fact, we acknowledge it. We simply must admit, however, that Michelangelo was not yet capable of painting the genuine Christ because the development of the world had not yet advanced to such a point when this could be done. There has to be a clear understanding that we cannot turn our attention just to the Christ, but must set our sight on the threefold configuration: Christ, Lucifer, Ahriman. I can only hint at this, but spiritual science will eventually bring to light the full content of the mystery, Christ in relation to Lucifer and Ahriman.

Now consider the following. Looking eastward we can make out luciferic forces even in the eastern regions nearest to us, while in the West we see ahrimanic forces. As a matter of fact, in spiritual scientific consideration we must adopt a mode of perception by which neither objects nor nations, nor the spirit of nations, are observed with sympathy or antipathy, but rather in accordance with their characteristics. What is called the national mentality of a person steeped in the heritage of his people depends to a large degree on the activity of the physical body and the ether body. From the time of our falling asleep to the moment of our awakening we live with our spiritual-intellectual being as astral body and ego, and during this period we also live outside our habitual national identity. Only during the time from our awakening to the time when we fall asleep do we partake in our nationality, because then we are immersed in our physical body. For this reason man overcomes his sense of national identity little by little during his stay in kamaloka. There he strives toward a union with humanity as a whole in order to live most of the time between death and rebirth in the sphere of humanity as such. Among the characteristics discarded in kamaloka is one that specializes us as members of a nationality.

In this connection the various nationalities differ considerably from one another. Let us, for instance, compare a Frenchman with a Russian. It is a Frenchman's particular trait that he is especially persistent in holding onto, and dwelling in, what the collective soul of his people carries into his physical body and ether body during his life between birth and death. This can be seen in his definitive idea—not as an individual but as a Frenchman—of what it is to be French. Above all, he stresses the importance of being French and what that means to him. But this notion held by Frenchmen or by anyone else from a Romance culture about their nationality affects the ether body by clearly imprinting the idea of nationality on it. A few days after the Frenchman has passed through the gate of death he loses his ether body; it is then a closed entity that has a prolonged existence in the etheric world. The ether body is unable to dissolve for a long time because it is impregnated with, and held together by, the Frenchman's idea of nationality. Thus, if we look to the West we see the field of death filled with firmly defined ether bodies.

Now, if we take a closer look to the East, at Russian man, we recognize his peculiar trait; his soul, upon passing through the gate of death, carries an ether body that dissolves in a relatively short period of time. That is the difference between the West and the East. When the ether bodies of Western Europeans are separated after death, they tend to maintain a certain rigidity. What the Frenchman calls “Gloire” is impregnated in his ether body as a national Gloire. He is condemned for a long time after his death to turn his spiritual sight onto this ether body, and to look at himself (The Russian, however, looks little at himself after his death.) Through all this, Western European man is exposed to the ahrimanic influence because his ether body has been infected by materialistic thinking.

The speedy separation and the diffusion of the ether body is accompanied by a feeling of sensual pleasure, which is also present as a most peculiar ingredient of national sentiment. How is this expressed in the East (Central Europeans do not understand this just as they do not empathize with the East.) Consider Dostoevsky and even Tolstoy or those leading writers who are constantly speaking of “Russian man”; their jargon is an expression of an undefined sensual pleasure surging from their national sentiment. Even in Solowjow's philosophy, we find a vague and stifling quality that the Central European man cannot reconcile with the clarity and purity he seeks. This search for clarity and purity is related to what is active in Europe as spiritual power.

In Central Europe there exists another condition, an intermediate state and something I can now dwell on in greater detail than was possible in yesterday's lecture. I mentioned that something exists in Central Europe that could be called the inner disposition toward striving. As a Central European, Goethe could have written his Faust no differently in the eighteen-forties: he was always striving! This striving is innermost nature. It was in Central Europe where the mystics made their appearance—those mystics who were not satisfied with the mere knowledge of the divine-spiritual principle but wanted to experience it in their own souls. To experience the Christ event internally was their very endeavor. Now take Solowjow who proceeds above all from a historical premise that the Christ died for mankind. That is correct, but Solowjow is a soul who, similar to a cloud, perceives spiritual life as something outside himself. Somehow he thinks that everything is viewed as a completed event, while Central European man demands that everyone experience the Christ event again in himself. Solowjow stresses time and again that Christ has to die so that man can be human. Meister Eckhart, in contrast, would have responded like this: “You are seeing Christ in the same way in which one looks at something external.” The point is that we should not look only at historical events, but that we should experience the Christ within ourselves. We must discover something within ourselves that passes through stages similar to those experienced by Christ, at least spiritually, so that we can rediscover the Christ event within ourselves.

Now it will certainly seem strange and fantastic when mankind nowadays is told that in Central Europe the close association of the “I” with the Christ principle had put a stamp on the entire development of the area, to the effect that even the linguistic spirit of a people took up this association and equated “I” (Ich) and “CH” (Christ): I-CH conjoined became “Ich.” In pronouncing “Ich” in Central Europe one utters the name of Jesus Christ. That is how close the “I” wants to be to the Christ, longing for the most intimate closeness with Him. This living together, as one, with the spiritual world, which we in Central Europe must strive to attain in all intellectual fields, is not known in the West or in the East. Therefore, something in the twentieth century is necessary so that the Christ principle can gradually spread over the entire European continent. I have frequently emphasized in several lecture series⁴ that in November 1879 the spiritual being we call the Archangel Michael had reached a special stage of development. Michael had become, so to speak, the leading spirit who is now preparing the event that has to take place in the twentieth century. This is alluded to in my first mystery play⁵ as the appearance of the etheric Christ on earth. It will come to pass that at first a few, and gradually more and more souls will know that the Christ is really here, is again on this earth, but as an ether body and not as a physical body.

Certain preparations are necessary. When some souls in the course of the twentieth century become clairvoyant to life in the etheric world—and that will happen—they would be disturbed by those ether bodies that are residual from Western Europe. The spiritual eye would perceive them first of all and would have a distorted vision of the Christ figure. For this reason Michael has to fight a battle in Europe. He has to contribute something to the diffusion of these rigid ether bodies from Western Europe. To accomplish this task, he must take the ether bodies from the East, which strive for diffusion, and join with them in a struggle against the West. The result of this is that since 1879 a violent struggle has been in preparation between Russian and Western European ether bodies and is now raging in the entire astral world. This furious battle between Russia and France is indeed going on in the astral world and is led by Michael; it corresponds to the war that is now being waged in Europe. We are often shaken by the knowledge that the events in the physical world take place as exact opposites to those occurring in the spiritual world, and that is precisely what is happening in this case. The alliance between France and Russia⁶ can be blamed on the seductive powers of Ahriman or, if you will, on the ahrimanic element, the twenty billion francs that France gave to Russia. This alliance is the physical expression of a struggle raging between French and Russian souls, a struggle that has an impact on Central Europe as it strives in its innermost soul for an encounter with the Christ. It is the karma of Europe that we in Central Europe must experience in an especially tragic way what the West and East must settle between themselves. The only possible interpretation of the external struggle between German and French elements is that the German element lies in the middle and serves as an anvil for both East and West. Germany, which is hammered by both sides in the conflict, is in reality the subject of their own controversy. That is the spiritual truth and quite different from what is happening in the physical world. Consider how different the spiritual truth is from what is happening in the physical world! This must strike contemporary man as grotesque, but it nevertheless is the truth, which must have a shocking effect on us.

There is yet another extraordinarily important matter worth mentioning. Surely history seems to be contradicted when we see that England, even though she has in the past always been allied with Turkey against Russia, now has to fight with Russia against Turkey. We can understand this contradiction only through occult observation. On the physical plane England and Russia are allies in the fight against the Turkish element, yet occult vision, perceiving this struggle from below through the physical plane and then onto the astral plane, sees that in the North it is Russia and in the Southeast it is Turkey that appear to be allied with England. This is due to the fact that the alliance between England and Russia is only of significance on the physical plane, but has no corresponding value in the spiritual world since it rests entirely on material interests. From below one sees that England and Russia are allied in the North only on the physical plane. In the Southeast, looking through the physical plane, one perceives on the astral plane a spiritual alliance between the English and the Turks while they are both fighting the Russians. Thus, on the physical plane, England is an ally to Russia and on the astral plane Russia is attacked by England. This is how we must see the events as they unfold in external reality inasmuch as they reveal themselves as external history. What is behind this history is something entirely different.

There will be a time when people will speak about the present events differently than they are doing now. You will have to admit, the entire war literature contains something rather unpleasant. True, some valid statements are made, but there are also many disagreeable ones. Above all, there is one thing that is disagreeable. There is much talk about how it is still too early to discuss the question of who has caused the war and so on. People delude themselves about the facts when they say that at a later date the documents in our archives will surely bring to light who is to blame for the war! In reference to the external events, however, the matter can be resolved fairly easily, provided one judges dispassionately. Chamberlain, in his War Essays⁷ is correct (even though he is in error about the details) when he says that it is possible to know the key issues of this war. All that is without a doubt accurate, but it leaves the proper question unasked. For example, there is but one question that can be answered unequivocally, if only it is properly posed, and this question is: Who could have prevented the war?—The constantly recurring question: Who is to blame for this war? and many other questions just are not appropriate. Who could have prevented the war? The answer to this question can be no other than that the Russian government could have prevented the war! Only in this fashion will it be possible to find the appropriate definition for the impulses that are at work in each situation. Of course, war had been desired by the East for decades, but had it not been for a certain relationship between England, Russia and France, it could not have broken out. Therefore, one might ascribe the greater blame to England. Yet all these conjectures do not take into consideration the underlying causes that made this World War a necessity. It is naive to believe that war could have been avoided. People these days talk as if it did not have to come about when it was, of course, destined by the European karma.

I wanted to allude to some of this by sketching the spiritual differences between East and West. It is not important that we look for external causes. All we have to know is that this war was a historic necessity. When that is understood the individual causes do not matter.

What is important is the proper attitude toward the various effects, for one effect can impress our souls in an especially significant way. It is remarkable and a characteristic phenomenon that a war like this one produces many unexpended ether bodies. Since this is the biggest war in man's conscious history, this phenomenon is present to a corresponding large degree. Ether bodies are produced that are not worn out. You see, the ether body that man carries with him can support him for a long period of time, until he reaches seventy, eighty or ninety years of age. But in a war human beings are sacrificed in the prime of their lives. You know that man, when he passes through the gate of death loses his ether body after a short period of time. A person dying in a war, however, loses his ether body when normally it could have supported his physical body for a long time, in many cases for decades. Those ether bodies entering the etheric world prematurely are preserved with all their powers. Consider now the countless number of unexpended ether bodies of those going through the gate of death at an early age. There is something distinctive about these ether bodies. I would like to illustrate this fact with an example that concerns our Movement, and after that I wish to explain how the ether bodies of the young soldiers who have gone through the gate of death will emerge in the etheric world in the near future.

This fall we witnessed in Dornach the death of little seven-year-old Theodor Faiss; his family belonged to the Anthroposophical Society and was employed not far from our building project. The father used to live in Stuttgart before moving to Dornach. He worked as a gardener in the vicinity of the building and lived there with his family. He himself had been drafted soon after the beginning of the war and at the time of the event I would like to relate, he was staying in a military hospital. Little seven-year-old Theodor was really a sunny child—a wonderful, lovely boy. Now, one day the following happened. We just had a lecture that I delivered in Dornach about the work that goes on in the building. After the lecture someone appeared and reported that little Theodor's mother had not seen him since late in the afternoon. It was ten o'clock at night and we could not help thinking that a terrible accident had happened. This afternoon a horse-driven furniture van had been in the vicinity of the so-called canteen; it was seen on a narrow street where it was forced to turn. To my knowledge, no van as huge had reached that spot in decades. Little Theodor had been in the canteen before the van had turned. He had been delayed there, otherwise he would have gone home earlier with the food that he had fetched from the canteen for supper. It so happened that he covered the short distance to his home in such a way that he reached the very spot where at that moment the van turned over and fell on him. Nobody had noticed the accident, not even the coachman because he was tending to his horses when the van turned over and did not know that the child was buried under it. When we were informed that the child was missing we tried to heave the vehicle up again. Friends fetched tools and alerted Swiss soldiers to help us with the task. Naturally the child had been dead since five-thirty in the afternoon. The van had crushed him immediately and he had died of suffocation.

This case can be used as an example of what I have often tried to explain by means of a comparison: causes are mistaken for effects, and vice versa. I have frequently used the following example. A person falls into the river and people hurry to the spot where it happened. When they find a rock, they conjecture that the victim had stumbled over it and this caused him to fall into the river and drown. Thus, they are sure that the man had died because he fell into the river. If one were to conduct an autopsy, however, it might turn out that he had suffered a heart attack and as a result, was already dead when he fell into the water, but he fell into the water because he had died. You will frequently encounter a similar confusion of cause and effect when life situations are assessed, and even more frequently in the general sciences.

The situation with little Theodor was that his karma had expired, so that it is actually possible to say, “He himself ordered the van to the place of the accident.” I have told you this externally tragic case in detail because we are here concerned with a child's ether body, which could have supported his life for decades. This ether body has passed into the spiritual world with all of its unexpended powers, but where is it? What is it doing? Since that day, anyone attuned to occult perception who is working artistically on the building in Dornach or is there simply to pursue his thoughts will know that the entire ether body of the child, with all its powers, is enlarged in the aura of the Dornach building. We must distinguish that the individuality is elsewhere; it goes its own way, but the ether body was separated after a few days and is now present in the building. I will never hesitate to assert that the powers needed for intuition are those of this ether body that was sacrificed for the building. The relationships behind ordinary life are often quite different from what we are able to suspect. This ether body has become one of the protective forces of the building. Something tremendously stupendous lies in such a relationship.

Now let us consider the vast amount of power that ascends to the spiritual world from the unexpended ether bodies of these who are now walling through the gate of death as a result of military events.

The way in which events are connected is different from what people can imagine; the karma in the world takes its course in a different way. It is the task of spiritual science to replace fantastic notions with spiritually true ideas. For example, we can hardly imagine something more fantastic and untrue, from a spiritual perspective, than what has taken place in the last few decades. Let us ask what has been accomplished by the (Hague) Peace Conference⁸ which aimed at replacing war with law, or international law, as it was called. Since the Peace Conferences were held, wars have never been more terrible. During the last few decades this Peace Movement counted among its special patrons the very monarch who has waged the bloodiest and most cruel wars ever known in history. The launching of the Peace Conferences by the Russian Czar must therefore be considered the biggest farce in world history; it is also the most abominable. This must be labeled a luciferic seduction of the East; the details can be easily traced. No matter how one may view the situation, the human soul is shocked by the fact that in the beginning, when the war impulses made their way into Central Europe, the people there made few comments about the situation, even in places where they gathered for the purpose of discussion, such as the German Parliament in Berlin. Little was said, but the events spoke for themselves. In contrast, there was much talk in the East and West. The most shocking impressions come from the debates among various political parties in the St. Petersburg Duma. Representatives of these parties uttered, with great fervor, endless variations of absolutely meaningless phrases. It was terrifying to see the luciferic seduction at work. The fires raging in this war, however, are intended to warn and admonish the human race to be on guard.

From what is now happening, a few souls must come to a realization that we cannot go on like this; human evolution must take up the spiritual! Materialism is confronting its karma in this, the most terrible of all wars. In a certain sense, this war is the karma of materialism. The more this fact is realized by human beings, the more they will abandon their arguments about who is to blame for the war, and then they will have to realize that this war has been sent into world history to admonish man to turn to a spiritual perception of human life in its entirety.

Not only does materialism cause human souls to embrace materialism, it also perverts man's logic and dulls his feelings. We in Central Europe are still lacking a full understanding of what I have stated before. We in Central Europe must be most intimately engaged in the continued development of the Christ impulse. To do this we must, among other things, try to understand the minds that have already sown the seeds. Just one example. Goethe wrote a theory of color, which physicists regard as something—well—something that deserves no more than an indulgent smile, as if they wanted to say, “What did the poet know about colors? He was nothing but a dilettante.” Since the 1880's I have tried to gain acceptance for Goethe's theory of color in spite of the findings of modern physics.⁹ Why does nobody understand that? The answer is that Central Europe has been imbued with the materialistic principle that has come to us from the British folk soul. Newton, whom Goethe had to oppose, has been victorious over everything emanating from Goethe's spirit. Goethe also established a theory of evolution that demonstrates how human beings, simply by grasping spiritual laws, can progress from the state of greatest imperfection to one of greatest perfection. People found this too difficult to understand. When Darwin published his theory of evolution in a more comprehensible fashion, it was readily accepted. Darwin, a materialistic thinker who was inspired by the British folk soul has conquered Goethe, a man whose perceptions resulted from a most intimate dialogue with the German folk soul.

Ernst Haeckel's experiences were tragic. During his entire life he nourished himself intellectually by leaning on the ideas of Huxley and Darwin; his materialism is basically an English product¹⁰ Yet when the war broke out, Haeckel was enraged about what emerged from the British Isles. He was one of the first to return British medals, diplomas and honors; instead, he should have returned his brand of Darwinism and physics, which is tinged with English thought. This is what we have to realize if we are to understand how Central Europe can strive for an intimate harmony with the laws of the world.

The greatest damage is done when what is poured into a child's soul induces the child to develop merely materialistically later in life. This trend has been on the increase for several centuries. Ahriman has even inspired one of the great British writers to compose a work that is calculated to impress the child's soul materialistically. The intent is hardly noticeable because ordinarily, one does not see all this as preparatory to a materialistic orientation. The work I am talking about is Robinson Crusoe. The description of Robinson is so shrewd that once the mind has accepted the ideas in the Robinson tale, it cannot avoid thinking materialistically thereafter. Mankind has not yet recovered from the ill effects perpetrated by the inventors of Robinson tales; they existed before and exist now. Much more could be said. These statements are not made to say something derogatory about the people of the West who have to be what they are. Rather, I wish to point out how the people in Central Europe must discover the connections to great values that are just now germinating but will grow to determine future developments. In this regard, the significance of Austria is especially noteworthy. During the past few decades several men there aspired to profound accomplishments, for example, Hamerling¹¹ in the area of literature, Carneri¹² who set out to deepen Darwinism, by extending it to the moral realm, as well as Bruckner¹³ and other artists from a variety of disciplines. What matters here is the concern of a people for these things.

Now let us consider the unexpended ether bodies that are still in existence. They were cast off by human beings who had learned, through a great event, how to sacrifice themselves for their people's spiritual commonalty, a commonalty no longer present for them, at least on the surface. If a spiritual scientist today asserts that there is a collective soul of people and that it exists as archangel and so forth, he will be ridiculed. What is called a people's collective soul by the materialists is nothing but the abstract sum of attributes that the people of a nation possess. The materialist considers the people as nothing but the sum of human beings who co-exist in the same geographic area and share a sense of commonalty with each other. We, on the other hand, speak of a people's spiritual commonalty in such a way that we know that the spirit of a people is present as a real being of the rank of an archangel. Even though somebody who sacrifices his life for his people is not fully conscious of the real spirit of his people, he nevertheless confirms by the manner in which he goes through death that he believes in a continuity of life alter this death. He believes that there is more to a people's spiritual commonalty than meets the eye, that is, it is related to, and co-exists with, the super-sensible world. All those going through death confirm in a more or less conscious way that there is a super-sensible world, and that realization is imprinted on their ether bodies. In a future time of peace, the unexpended ether bodies will be among people living on earth and will continually send the following sounds into the music of the spheres: there is more in the world than what mere physical eyes can perceive! This spiritual truth will ring forth as part of the music of the spheres through ether bodies that the dead have left behind. These are aside from what they are taking along as their individuality, which they retain during their lives between death and rebirth. We must listen to what lives and echoes from these ether bodies, because they were discarded by people who went through death and in so doing, affirmed the truth of the spiritual world. Mankind's greatest sin will be to ignore what the dead call out to us when their ether bodies speak. One's glance at the spiritual world will be infinitely enriched if one considers that those who have lost loved ones—fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, sons and daughters—may tell themselves that those who were sacrificed continue to live for humanity, as a reminder of what is yet to come!

If one were to rely only on what is taking place in the physical world, there would be little hope for the successful continuation of the spiritual movement through which a spiritual scientific world view is to be cultivated. Recently, a good and faithful colleague aged thirty or so died. My words to this soul that had gone through the gate of death requested that it should continue to work in our spiritual scientific field as faithfully and as courageously as it had done here on earth, utilizing all of its acquired knowledge. This colleague had worked diligently with us here on the physical plane; my message to him for his life between death and rebirth was that he should continue to work with us after death as he had done in life, for we are counting on these so-called dead as we are counting on the living. Our spiritual-scientific world view must be alive to such a degree that the gap between the so-called dead and the living can be overcome: we must feel the dead among us as if they were alive. We want not only theory, but life. Thus we wish to point out that when there is peace, there will be a living tie between those on earth and those who have gone through the gate of death. Man will be able to learn, and must learn, from the dead how they contribute to the great spiritual progress that must take hold on earth.

Sometimes life offers us an opportunity to see how human logic alone does not suffice. I would like to mention an example—not for personal reasons but because I want to characterize the way our Movement is viewed by the public. A few years ago an article was printed in a respected South German journal¹⁴ by a famous contemporary philosopher about our spiritual science. This treatment of spiritual science was intended to impress the public purely because the essay was authored by a famous philosopher. The editor took great pride in the fact that he was able to present an article about spiritual science by such a famous man. Of course, everything was skewed and the facts about spiritual science were distorted. But what did it take for the editor to realize that the account about spiritual science that he had sponsored in his monthly journal was distorted? The war broke out and the author of the article sent several letters to the editor. These letters contained some of the most disgusting remarks about Central European culture that one could imagine. The professor had railed and sneered at it. The editor then printed these letters in his journal as examples of the stupidity of this kind of thinking, commenting that anyone who writes this way belongs in an insane asylum. We are confronted by a curious fact. A good editor needed such an experience in order to see that the author, whose article on spiritual science had severely damaged the public image of the Movement, belonged in an insane asylum. If the man belongs in an insane asylum now, however, then the same was true before, when he wrote the article on spiritual science!

So it goes in the world! To be a judge of what is going on, man must garner other supports than those ordinarily available to him. The spiritual scientist who can clearly demonstrate that truth finds its own way, is on firm ground. Spiritual science, however, must be active in the evolution of mankind so that what is necessary, happens. Early in history Emperor Constantine had to accomplish his mission so that the Christ impulse could bear on the subconscious from the spiritual world. Later, the Christ impulse became active in the Maid of Orleans; what had to happen did indeed take place. Today, the Christ impulse must continue to bear on man, but more on his consciousness. In the future, there must be souls who will know that up there in the spiritual world there are those who sacrificed themselves as individuals and who admonish us to emulate their own belief in the active force of the spiritual, which they attained in death. The forces in the unexpended ether bodies beckon to the future, as well: to understand their message is to admit it into one's soul. Below, however, there must be souls who will perceive this truth and prepare for it through the proper and active understanding of our spiritual science. Our spiritual science must cultivate souls on this earth who will be capable of sensing what the ether bodies of the dead up there will say to us in the future. These souls will know that in the beyond there are forces to admonish human beings who had to be left on earth. When spirit-conscious souls down here harken to the hidden sounds of the spiritual world, then all bloodshed, all sacrifices and all suffering, past and future, will bear fruit. I do hope that quite a few souls come together through spiritual science and perceive the voices from the spiritual world that are resounding especially because of this war. Summarizing the final words of today's reflection, I wish to say a few words to you that are merely an expression of my feeling for what I want to instill in your souls.

From the warrior's valor,
From the blood of battles,
From the pain of the bereaved.
From a people's sacrifice
Will the spirit fruit arise—
Will the souls embrace the spirit
Consciously, with inner eyes.

With such feelings in our hearts we forever want to imbue ourselves with the meaning of the rose cross so that we can perceive it in the proper way as the motto for our doing, weaving and feeling. Not the black cross alone. He who tears the roses from the black cross and has nothing left but the black cross, would fall into the clutches of Ahriman. The black cross in itself represents life when it strives to embrace inanimate matter. Also, if one were to separate the cross from the roses, keeping only the latter, one would nor find the proper thing. For the roses, separate from the cross, tend to elevate us to a life of selfish striving toward the spiritual, but not to a life in which we reveal the spirit in a material world. Not the cross alone, not the roses alone, but the roses on the cross, the cross carrying the roses: That is our proper symbol.

• 1 . “Die übersinnliche Erkenntnis und ihre stärkende Seelenkraft in unserer schicksalstragenden Zeit” (“Supersensible Perception and Its Strengthening Soul-force in Our Time of Destiny”). Corresponding remarks can be found in the Berlin lectures of April 16 and 23, 1915, published as: “Aus schicksalstragenden Zeit”, (“From a Time of Destiny”) Bibl.-No. 64 in the Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works [of Rudolf Steiner]), Dornach, 1959.
• 2 . “Welten-Neujahr. Das Traumlied von Olaf &Åsteson” (“Cosmic New Year. The Legend of Olaf &Åsteson's Dream”), Hanover lecture of January 1, 1912. Published as a separate edition in Dornach, 1958; Gesamtausgabe (Complete works), Bibl.-No 158.
• 3 . In this form the pronouncement was first made by Karl von Linné in his Philosophia Botanica, Stockholm, 1751, no. 77.
• 4 . Cf. especially “Die spirituellen Hintergründe der äusseren Welt—Der Sturz der Geister der Finsternis” (“The Spiritual Background of the External World—The Fall of the Spirits of Darkness”), 14 lectures, Dornach, September 29 to October 28, 1917. Gesamtausgabe (Complete works), Bibl.-No. 177, Dornach, 1965.
• 5 . “Die Pforte der Einweihung” (“The Portal of Initiation”), first scene. Gesamtausgabe (Complete works), Bibl.-No 14, Dornach, 1962.
• 6 . The alliance was negotiated in 1897 by President Faure of France and Czar Nicolas II of Russia.
• 7 . Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Neue Kriegsaufsatze (New War Essays), Munich, 1915, p.36.
• 8 . “The reference is to the Hague Peace Conference of 1899 and 1907, which were both initiated by Czar Nicholas II.
• 9 . Rudolf Steiner was asked in 1882 to edit Goethe's scientific writings in Kürschner's Deutsche National-Literatur. Volume I was published in 1883; it contained writings on the formation and transformation of organisms. Rudolf Steiner's introductions and critical commentaries to the four volumes were published as a special edition, entitled: Rudolf Steiner, , Dornach, 1926. A German edition was published in Freiburg, 1949. Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Bibl.-No. 1. Cf. the correspondence between Karl Julius Schröer, Joseph Kürschner and Rudolf Steiner in Blätter für Anthroposophie,. 13 Jg. No. 2, February 1961.
• 10. Ernst Haeckel: “I have always readily acknowledged the magnificent contributions of the small insular British empire to the enrichment of human civilization. These were possible because of its advantageous insular position and its geographic alliances. In addition I worked on Darwinism for the past fifty years and had many personal dealings with Darwin, Huxley, Lyell, John Murray and many other famous natural scientists in England and Scotland; these were pleasant and fruitful personal relationships.” Haeckel, Ewigkeit. Weltkriegsgedanken über Leben und Tod, Religion und Entwicklungslehre (Eternity, World War Reflections on Life and Death, Religion, and the Theory of Evolution), Berlin, 1915, p.65 and 114.
• 11. Robert Hamerling, 1830-1889. Cf. Rudolf Steiner, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Literatur 1886-1902 (Collected Essays on Literature, 1886-1902), Bibl.No. 20, Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Dornach, 1957; Mein Lebensgang (The Course of My Life), Bibl.-No. 28, Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Dornach, 1962; “Robert Hamerling, ein Dichter und ein Denker und ein Mensch” (“Robert Hamerling, the Poet, the Thinker and the Man”), Dornach, 1939.
• 12. Bartholomäus Ritter von Carneri, 1821-1909. Cf. Rudolf Steiner, “Carneri, der Ethiker des Darwinismus” in Methodische Grundlagen der Anthroposophie 1884-1901 (“Carneri, the Moral Philosopher of Darwinism” in Methodological Foundations of Anthroposophy, 1884-1901), Bibl.-No. 30, Gesamtausgabe (Complete Works), Dornach, 1961: also “Vom Menschenrätsel” (“On the Riddle of Man”) and Mein Lebensgang (The Course of My Life).
• 13. Anton Bruckner, 1824-1896.
• 14. Wincenty Lutoslawski, “Rudolf Steiner's sogenannte ‘Geheimwissenschaft’” in Hochland, 8.Jg., 1.Heft Oktober 1910, S.45-58. (“Rudolf Steiner's so-called ‘Occult Science’” in Hochland, VIII, 1, October 1910, p.45-58). Professor Karl Muth, editor of the journal, writes an editorial comment in No. 7 of the same year, in which he describes Lutoslawski as an “author who is eminent as a man and as a thinker.” Later, in Krisgshefte der Suddeutschen Monatshefte, Munich, February 1915, p.623-631, Muth refers to his correspondence with Lutoslawski and writes, among other things: “in addition to making several small contributions to Hochland, Lutoslawski also published in this journal three lead articles which aroused considerable attention among the readers: one article on the theosophy of Rudolf Steiner, another one on exercises to strengthen the will, and the third one on his conversion to the Catholic faith. His published notes contain peculiar biographical clues ... Where in Germany—except in an inane asylum—would there be a human being like this lector of philosophy from the University Geneva—a man who seems to be completely disoriented as he confronts the magnitude of our contemporary world-historical situation with complete blindness and a paucity of ideas! The relief which his overwrought brain received through his epistolary outpouring did not satisfy him; he now insists that his latest letter should come to the attention of the public as well.”

At present we live in the midst of events that arouse every feeling of the human soul in the deepest and most significant way. We live in the midst of events that cause death to pass over the earth very, very frequently, in a comparatively short time, death that has always been looked upon by our spiritual science as a riddle which must be solved. The times in which we live send pain and suffering to many human souls, but let us hope that these times also bear within them forces for the unfolding of man's future development. Many things are born out of pain and suffering, and in these fateful days spiritual-scientific thoughts in particular are well suited to awaken in us forces of confidence and of hope. Let me therefore unfold a few thoughts before your souls. Although not directly, they are nevertheless, indirectly connected with feelings that come to the surface in these stormy and sorrowful times.

What we can see and feel in the manifold events of the present time, is the fact that many people abandon the physical plane, at a comparatively early age of their earthly life. What characterizes the events of the present, is that they call away many young lives from the physical plane.

We know that when a human being passes through the portal of death, he must leave his physical body to the elements of the earth. When he passes through the portal of death, he is, to begin with, still united with his etheric body, his astral body and his ego. And we know that after a comparatively short time the etheric body becomes severed from the human being, who then continues along the path which he must tread between death and a new birth; he passes through the after-death experiences with his ego and his astral body and together with those members of his spiritual nature which can only be acquired in the spiritual world. Afterwards, however, as he continues along his path during the time between death and a new birth, also the etheric body becomes severed from the human individuality and goes its own ways.

Now it must be evident to everyone of us that the etheric body of a man who died young must have an entirely different constitution than that of a man who died after having reached, so to speak, a normal age. We know that the ordinary natural science of to-day always speaks of the fact that forces never go lost, but transform themselves. Natural science recognises this truth in regard to the external world of physical life; it admits that forces do not go lost, but merely transform themselves. Spiritual science must teach that this truth should be recognised in regard to the spiritual world.

When an etheric body abandons a human being who has passed through the portal of death at an early age, that etheric body might still have maintained that man's life on the physical plane for many decades. The constitution of an etheric body must be of such a kind as to enable it to provide the life-forces required by a human being until he reaches an advanced age. But when a human being passes through the portal of death in his 25^th, 26^th or 30^th year, the etheric body that abandons him still possesses the forces that might have enabled it to preserve physical life up to the 60^th, 70^th or 80^th year. These forces live in the etheric body; they do not go lost.

Particularly at a time such as the present one, in which so many etheric bodies are entrusted, as it were, to the spiritual worlds, we should contemplate the following problem: What takes place with the etheric bodies of those who have passed through the portal of death in their early youth?—In order to obtain a sound answer to this question, it will be a good thing to become acquainted first of all with the path trodden by man's etheric body, while he is passing through his life between birth and death.

Man's external physical body (we know this, for it is a trivial truth) grows older and older. But this is not the case with the etheric body. It may perhaps be difficult to understand this, but the etheric body does not in any way grow older; the etheric body grows younger and younger, in the same degree in which the physical body grows older, until it reaches, as it were, a certain childlike stage of etheric existence, when the human being passes through the portal of death after having reached a normal age. We should therefore say to ourselves: When we begin our physical life on earth through birth, then our etheric body, that has become united with our physical body, is, comparatively speaking, old, and in the course of our earthly life it grows younger and younger, until it reaches its childhood stage, when we pass through the portal of death. We might also say: When a human being dies in his young years, his etheric body has not grown young enough, but has instead maintained a certain age. What does this really mean?—A concrete example, already known to many of you, but that I must nevertheless repeat here, a real event of recent times, experienced by quite a number of our friends, may throw some light upon this question.

This concrete example is really connected with a child, with the little boy of one of our members. After an evening lecture at Dornach, we were told that the son of our friend Faiss was missing—a little boy of seven. It was soon evident that a terrible accident must have happened, for a large furniture van had arrived in the late afternoon, moving towards the Goetheanum Building. Curiously enough, this furniture van had appeared in a part where perhaps no furniture van had been seen for a long time, or perhaps never at all, and where perhaps no furniture van would ever be seen again. At a certain spot, this large van had overturned; this had happened towards evening. Nothing else had been noticed, but the little boy was missing. When our friends, with the help of other people, began to lift the van between eleven and twelve at night (the owners intended to lift it the following day for it had fallen most awkwardly and was moreover a very heavy van), sparing no effort in doing so, and when they at last succeeded in lifting it, with the help of other people, it appeared that the little boy, Theodor Faiss, had passed by just when the van had collapsed, so that it fell on top of him. This child (he was only seven years old) was an exceptionally lovable child, with exceptionally beautiful qualities.

In order to see this in the light of spiritual science, let me remind you of a logical train of thoughts which I have often advanced in our circles. I have frequently explained to you that a superficial manner of thinking, an untrained manner of thinking, easily mixes up cause and effect; indeed, such confusions in regard to cause and effect are very frequent. I tried to explain this with the aid of an example, which was only meant, as a comparison. Take the following case: You see a man, who is walking along the bank of a river; you see him fall into the river and try to reach him. Where he fell into the river, you see a stone. You then try to draw the man out of the water; he is dead. What would be more natural than to think that he had stumbled over the stone, thus falling into the water and drowning? But this need not be true at all; a physical investigation may show us that his destiny in no way led him to the stone or anything else, but that at the very moment when he reached the stone, he had a stroke, and this stroke was the cause of his felling into the water. If we were not to investigate matters, we would simply say that the cause of his death was the fact that he fell into the river. Yet this would be the exact opposite of the truth.

In the case of things that are connected, with the spiritual world, it is far more difficult to perceive the true relationship of cause and effect. We should therefore say to ourselves: When we have before us [a] case resembling that of the boy who found his death under circumstances that were so extraordinary (other things too occurred that made it appear extraordinary), we should not think—if we consider the whole case from a higher standpoint—that for instance, the following course of events took place: That the furniture van arrived and overturned, and that the child simply happened to be crushed by it, so that the van was the real cause of the child's death. In a similar case, we think correctly and contemplate it from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, if we say instead that the boy's Karma had reached its end and that the van really arrived at that particular spot because the child had to encounter its death. The van therefore merely provided the external conditions that enabled the child to meet its death, as prescribed in its Karma. Trivially speaking, we might say: The child's Higher Self, that wished to pass through the portal of death, gave orders that this situation should arise, it ordered that these events should occur. Of course, those who think in accordance with the mentality of our time, will find that this is quite an insane idea. Spiritual science must however show that many things which are looked upon as insane by the materialistically minded people of the present time, really correspond to the truth.

In this particular case, however, it is significant that the etheric body of a child of seven severed itself from the child's individuality, from that part of its being which then continued along its path in the spiritual world, united with its ego and astral body. Now I do not mean to speak of the further path taken by the individuality of little Theodor Faiss, but I would rather draw your attention to the fact that this etheric body was of such a kind that its life-forces nurtured that boy's physical existence for only seven years; nevertheless it contained forces that might have enabled it to sustain a whole existence between birth and death, feeding it with life-forces. These forces remained in that etheric body and the significant fact is that all those who had any spiritual connection with the Building which we intend to erect at Dornach in the service of spiritual science, know from that day, which is connected with the death of little Theodor Faiss, what has become of his etheric body.

Many things must be achieved in connection with the Building. Let me now say a few things in regard to the inspirations which must now be brought down from the spiritual worlds. Helping forces are needed if everything that must be brought down from the spiritual world is really to come down. Ever since the death of little Theodor Faiss, we can see that our Dornach Building is enveloped by the greatly enlarged etheric body of this child, as if by an aura that reaches very far. Indeed, we may even determine the limits of this enveloping aura. If you contemplate the Dornach Building you will know (and those who have seen it know this) that it is a double cupola building. (A drawing is made). Here is a separate fire-box building, constructed in a special way, according to principles dictated by spiritual science, and here is another building, where the glass windows for the Goetheanum are cut. Casually I might also add that here you may see the so-called “Haus Hansi”, the house in which I live. Now it is strange to see that little Theodor Faiss' aura, enveloping the whole Building, reaches as far as this spot, near the woods; then it goes past the fire-box building and through the very midst of the building where the windows are cut, and finally past Haus Hansi, but without enclosing it. Consequently, when we enter the Goetheanum, we actually enter this etheric aura.

I have often explained to you that when the etheric body frees itself from the physical body it grows large. Consequently we should not wonder at the large size of this etheric body. It contains mediating forces, and in these we may find certain impressions from the spiritual world, which are needed to create the forms and the artistic structure of our Building. Those who work upon the Building know how much they owe to this etheric aura. And I shall never hesitate to confess that ever since little Theodor's death, the work upon the Building became possible, because the boy's etheric body spreading over the Building supplied the mediating forces that were needed to draw down inspirations from the spiritual world. It would be far easier to hide this fact, or to take on airs as if these mediating forces were not needed. But this is not the essential point; the essential point is to recognise the true facts.

If we consider the facts which I have described to you just now, we can grasp how matters really stand with an etheric body that had to cut itself off from the existence of a human being at a moment when death closed this existence at an early age. It is important to note that the etheric body does not remain, as it were, a mere misty shape, in which the physical body lies embedded. Even the true aspect of the physical body cannot be recognised if we merely describe a mass of muscles, bones, etc. It can only be recognised if we see in it, as it were, a kind of temple, an abode of the Godhead—if we see it standing before us like a microcosm. We recognise what pertains to the physical body only if we realise that its forms are really taken from the whole universe and that in regard to his physical body the human being is a wonderful structure. Those who know the feelings voiced in the first dialogue of my second Mystery Play, “The Souls' Probation”, can have an idea of how the individual human being is placed into his physical existence; all the hierarchies are at work on his physical body, a whole world of divine Beings has the task of placing a human being into his physical existence. If we bear in mind to some extent the observations of clairvoyant knowledge, we fully learn to know the significance of the physical body.

You see, clairvoyant knowledge arises when our soul-spiritual part is lifted out of our physical-corporeal part, so that we are endowed with consciousness and with perceptive forces in the soul-spiritual sphere, outside the body.

From a purely external standpoint, there is really no difference between one who is able to perceive clairvoyantly and one who is asleep, for in both cases the soul-spiritual part is lifted out of the physical-corporeal part. The clairvoyant consciousness is able to perceive outside the physical body, so that it can have an idea of what takes place with the human being when he is asleep.

To facilitate matters, let me draw you a diagram. (A drawing is made.) Now let us assume that this is the physical-corporeal and that the soul-spiritual part of a sleeping human being. When a man is awake, the soul-spiritual part is of course contained in the physical-corporeal part; but let us now imagine a sleeping human being. On the bed lie his physical body and his etheric body; they do not contain his astral body and his ego, as is the case when he is awake. We might say, however: The activity that our astral body and ego carry on within our physical body while we are awake, does not cease completely while we are asleep. To begin with, and seen purely from outside, the sleeping human being lying there on the bed has a lifeless aspect, but to a clairvoyant consciousness the physical and etheric body of the man lying there asleep on the bed do not present a lifeless aspect. The seer must give an entirely different description of a sleeping human being, of this physical and etheric human being, lying there asleep on his bed. A clairvoyant seer must say: The whole day long the sun shone over that region of the earth, where the human beings are now sleeping. Now it is night. (I am speaking of normal conditions; when people are asleep during the night and awake during the day, I am not speaking of the conditions of life in great cities, of metropolitan habits). Darkness envelops that region on which the sun shone the whole day long. And now it is strange to notice the following: The earth, as a living Being, begins to think, and the organs through which the earth thinks are the sleeping human bodies.

The human beings think through their brain, and in the same way the earth thinks through these sleeping human bodies. The earth always perceives by day; it perceives through the fact that the sun shines upon it out of the cosmic spaces. That is the earth's perception. And during the night, the earth works out in thoughts all its perceptions. “The earth thinks”, says the clairvoyant seer; the earth thinks because it makes use of the sleeping human beings. Every sleeping human being becomes, as it were, a brain-molecule of the earth. Our physical body is organised in such a way that it can be used by the earth for it's thinking activity, when we do not use it ourselves.

Just as the earth thinks through the physical body, so it “imagines” (you know what imaginative knowledge is)—it imagines all that is not earthly upon the earth itself, all that belongs to the earth from out the cosmos. The earth imagines this through the etheric body.

We may discern in the sleeping human body parts of the earth's brain, and when the human being is asleep, we may discern in his etheric body the imagination of that part of the universe which belongs, to begin with, to the earth. The etheric body contains, in a play of wonderful pictures, all the forces that must stream into the earth out of the etheric world, so that the earth's events may take place.

As a physical being man belongs to the earth, and just as truly does he belong to the heavens as an etheric being. We can only use our physical body as an organ of thinking, because it is organised for that purpose, because the earth sets it free, as it were, for this purpose, when we are awake. And we can only use our etheric body in such a way that it provides us with life-forces, because the heavens place it at our disposal; when we are awake, and because the heavenly forces of imagination are transformed into life-forces within us, when we are awake.

Thus we cannot speak of our etheric body merely as a misty form, but we should rather speak of it as a microcosmic form reflecting the heavens. When we are born, the etheric body is handed over to us as a specially perfect form. When we are born, our etheric body glistens and shines inwardly, because it is so full of imaginations that come towards it from the great universe. It is a magnificent reflexion of the universe! All that we acquire during our life as culture, knowledge and forces of the will and of feeling, is all drawn out of our etheric body as we grow old in the course of our existence between birth and death. Heaven's cosmic forces give us what they must give us during our life between birth and death, and so we are once more young as etheric beings, when we have lived through a normal life between birth and death, for then we have drawn out of our etheric body everything that could be drawn out of it.

But when an etheric body belonging to a youthful body passes through the portal of death, it still contains a great, great deal of unused heavenly light. That is why it becomes a mediator of the forces which I have described to you. Quite apart from what takes place with the individuality of a human soul such as the one of which we spoke just now, its etheric body almost becomes a heavenly gift, a gift of the spiritual worlds. Such an etheric body can therefore have the inspiring influence that I have described to you.

It would lead us too far to speak of the peculiar Karma of a human soul that is able to make such a sacrifice. This cannot be produced artificially; it must be connected with the whole Karma of the human being that is called upon to make this sacrifice, thus fulfilling something within the process of development of the world that is destined to play a part in the spiritual progress of humanity—and this is the aim of our Building at Dornach, that will house our spiritual-scientific endeavours.

Consider now that we live in a time in which many of these etheric bodies, though they may not be as young as Theodor Faiss, but which are nevertheless etheric bodies coming from youthful human lives, inhabit, as it were, the spiritual atmosphere. Those who crossed the threshold of death on the bloodstained battlefields, pass through this portal of death in a different way than those who pass through it when they die in bed, or as a result of an ordinary accident. In a certain way, they pass through the portal of death so that they reckon with their death, even though this may be more or less unconscious, but in a certain way the astral body reckons with death. We can always say that these deaths are sacrifices. All the etheric bodies, of youthful human beings that thus ascend to the spiritual world contain unused forces. And at present we are facing an epoch in the evolution of humanity in which the souls of men will be able to look up consciously to the spiritual worlds and say to themselves: A time has gone by which sent many, many unused etheric bodies to the spiritual world. These unused etheric bodies contain forces. And from a spiritual-scientific standpoint, we may say even at the present time that these unused etheric bodies contain forces that will be very significant for the evolution of humanity.

When similar things are discussed, it should be emphasized that they cannot apply to every war that was waged in the evolution of humanity upon the earth. What takes place spiritually, what should be contemplated with the aid of spiritual science, is not so easy as natural science thinks. Other wars belonging to the past, require to be spoken of differently. And what I am now explaining to you only applies to the present fateful times.

Now imagine the following: On various occasions we had to emphasize the fact that to-day we do not pursue spiritual science arbitrarily, but that this is connected with the evolutionary process of humanity. It is connected with the progress of humanity that the human beings should gradually become acquainted with spiritual science. We know that every epoch of human evolution has its particular task. You will find this in many of my lectures. And we can realise that man's future salvation, man's welfare in the nearest future, can only flourish if that which spiritual science can reveal, becomes the spiritual property of an ever growing number of human souls.

Consider now—you, who are filled with a heartfelt enthusiasm for spiritual science—consider the difficulties connected with the propagation of spiritual-scientific truths at the present time! Consider the strong opposition that spiritual-scientific truths encounter on the part of people outside. Consider how these truths are slandered, how people look upon them as something insane, distorted and mad, how they consider them to be empty fantasies. Indeed, I might mention striking cases, yet they would all be merely a portion of what everyone can feel, if he is filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science and faces a world, desirous that this world should take up spiritual science ... a world that is so little inclined to take it up!

The spiritual scientist may now say: What the mere earthly forces of humanity are able to attain, seems so weak, so very weak, in comparison to the tasks of spiritual science! But in the near future, the unused etheric bodies of those who had to carry life and soul through the portal of death, on the battlefields where the events of our time are taking place, will be there—and these etheric bodies with their unused forces will be inspiring forces, they will be helping forces in the near future. We only need to look up, but not in an intellectual or theoretic way, we only need to look up to the heavenly etheric bodies of those who in the present fateful times passed through the portal of death in their youth; we only need to direct our souls, as it were, in the mood of prayer towards these etheric bodies ... all those who are filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science only need to direct their souls towards these forces, and they will obtain help from these etheric bodies. Help will come! Those who are genuinely filled with a spiritual-scientific mentality and having a deep life in common with these etheric bodies will find that among the many fruits that will fall into the lap of our earnest time there will also be the one that the souls of men who are filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science will receive the instreaming forces of the youthful etheric bodies that were sacrificed in these terrible times; these forces will flow into them. The souls of those who will live in physical bodies in the near future, and who genuinely feel this, will be filled by the forces of the etheric bodies that were thus sacrificed; their forces will stream into them. And these will be heavenly forces, that is to say, forces pertaining to the spiritual world! Entirely different forces will in future hold sway in the world, so that the world may receive what it should receive: a spiritual-scientific mentality. If we but find the possibility of recognising what is taking place now, if we recognise it in accordance with the explanations given to you just now, this fateful present will acquire a deep, deep significance, also for those who pursue spiritual science.

I already explained to you how wonderful are the imaginative forms contained in man's etheric body! Yet they would present a different aspect, if they had not passed through a human etheric body. We may also apply to this field the saying: “Out of nothing, comes nothing.” Although this is not an absolute truth, it is nevertheless valid for this particular field. The etheric body that man receives through the fact that the human soul enters physical existence through birth, contains a whole collection of forces pertaining to the spiritual world. These forces are gradually used up during physical life. They do not come from nothing, they exist in the spiritual world. They may, of course, also be found in the spiritual world, but it is difficult to discover them directly in the spiritual world; for this we would have to unfold far greater powers. They can be used and they can help us more easily when they have passed through a human being who died young, and in that case they appear together with what they contain through the fact that they passed through that human being. All the forces that lived in the youthful etheric body of little Theodor Faiss would be in the spiritual world even if he had not existed, but without him, it would be a Herculean task to draw them down. Ever since they have become accessible to us through that boy, it is far easier to be inspired by them, so that there is a difference.

Think how important it is for the whole progress of human evolution that in the near future such a great number of etheric bodies with their unused forces will be at the disposal of humanity! Since these forces (I must always call them heavenly forces) have passed through human beings, they have become, as it were, emancipated from the cosmic laws on which they depend. Outside, in the cosmos, these forces that are drawn directly out of the cosmos, cannot possibly be used in an evil way.

Let us now consider the following: All those who pass through the portal of death as a result of the war, or through some other accident, would not yield such a great number of etheric bodies, had the war not broken out. Of course, all these forces also exist in the cosmos, but they could not be employed by the human beings on earth, for it would be too difficult to use them. Another reason why they could not be employed is that they would be entirely used up in the life of men who die at a normal age. This is a very significant fact, it is most important that these heavenly forces should have passed through human bodies, for this renders them, as it were, free from the ordinary course of development. Yet this very freedom also makes it possible that these forces be used for other purposes than the salvation of humanity.

These forces could be used in different ways. Let us take for granted that human life develops in the light of freedom. Let us then assume that Ahriman succeeds in darkening human thought and reason to such an extent as to induce him to reject spiritual science. The etheric bodies would then still be there, but no souls would be there, filled with enthusiasm for spiritual science and able to place these forces at the service of the earth's progress. Lucifer and Ahriman would in that case be able to exercise their influence and they would make use of these etheric forces, either by leading them into the world built up by Lucifer, or into that built up by Ahriman.

Consider the tremendous importance of this fact! It means, that it will depend on man, as it were, how these forces, bestowed upon the world through death-sacrifices, will be embodied in the evolutionary process of the earth. They serve the evolutionary process of the world through the fact that they can inspire us with what spiritual science has kindled. If materialism were to take hold of every mind, or if nationalism were to spread out exclusively in the form of passion, then Lucifer and Ahriman would be able to use these forces for their own end and in that case these forces would be unable to further the progress of the earth. If we consider these connections, then the deep significance which spiritual science has for the human development on earth rises up before us. And only then shall we be able to say: In order that these forces, sacrificed through death, may be rightly used for the progress of human development, it is necessary that the new spirit, which is the outcome of spiritual science, should take hold of those human beings who are capable of grasping it. If we consider spiritual science in connection with the spiritual process of evolution, which comes to the fore so clearly in these fateful days, then we realise that spiritual science is something tremendously great and sacred. The new spirit which can be acquired through spiritual science thus becomes something that may be compared with the mood of prayer and it may be comprised in the words:

O cosmic spirit, let us be completely filled with the spirit that grows out of spiritual science; so that we may not fail to wrest from Ahriman and Lucifer that which can be of help to the earth, for its salvation and its progress!

Our Building is intended to be a symbol of the soul-attitude that humanity should adopt through spiritual science; for that reason, it is built in such a way that its forms are an artistic expression of what spiritual science is able to give us.

I would be obliged to speak of many things were I to explain to you all that is contained in the details of this Building. But you will learn to know them when you shall see the Building in the course of time and participate in what takes place within it.

To-day I will just mention one thing connected with the explanations which I gave just now. There will be a plastic group in a significant place of our Building, where it turns to the East. This plastic group in particular expresses something that should completely fill our consciousness at the present time. Apart from the details that will be added to the group, we may say that it consists of three chief figures. Three Beings express themselves in this plastic group. In this sculpture we shall see a kind of rock with a projecting part, and in this projection there will be a cave. The central figure of the group will stand upon the projecting rock. It is quite indifferent what name we give to this central figure, but we may see in it the representative of man on earth, man's representative in the highest meaning of the word. And if we see the ideal of humanity in that human being who for three years bore within him the Christ, then we may also see the Christ in this central figure of our plastic group. Yet we should not simply face the statue with the thought: “That is meant to be the Christ”, for this would be wrong. Instead, we should experience everything in an artistic way, that is to say, we should not interpret things symbolically from outside, but everything should result from what the forms themselves reveal.

Above, you may see a second shape. This Being has a head resembling (I can only say, resembling) a human head. It is really formed in such a way that it has a strongly developed skull and particularly a strongly developed forehead. Whereas in man these parts are relatively rigid, everything in that Being is extremely mobile. That is to say, everything is an expression of the soul. Just as we can move our hands and fingers, but not the upper parts of our head, so this Being can move everything up there. And the sculptural work expresses that everything up there is mobile. In this Being, the lower part of the physiognomy recedes in a marked way. One might say that the mighty skull dominates the face, that recedes. (I can only discuss a few details, for every line of this sculpture is significant). It is characteristic that the ear of this Being is connected with that part which has, in the case of man, deteriorated and become his larynx. The lobe of the larynx grows upwards and forms the lower part of the ear, whereas the upper part of the ear is formed by the forehead. On the other side, we can see two protuberances that remind us of birds' wings, and in between there is a form that, as a whole resembles a transformed human countenance. The wings, larynx and ear are one form. We may therefore say that this Being lives with its wings in the harmony of the spheres; it swings through the spaces, through the waves of the harmony of the spheres, and this becomes localised in the ear. (In man, all this has deteriorated). Through the fact that the Representative of Mankind raises His left hand, the wings of that Being break against the rock. You may now guess that this falling shape with the broken wings is meant to be Lucifer.

Below in the cave, we can see another shape. Its wings do not resemble birds' wings, but those of a bat. Its body is like that of a dragon, or of a worm, and its head again reminds us of a human head. Whereas in Lucifer's forehead everything is powerfully developed, the forehead of this second Being recedes and is quite undeveloped. Instead, the lower parts, towards the jaw, are strongly developed. This Being is enwrapped in gold; it is the gold contained in the earth. The gold of the earth takes on the shape of strong fetters that chain this shape to the cave. It writhes under the influence of Christ's hand pointing downward, the hand of the Representative of Mankind. The shape in the cave is Ahriman; it is Ahriman fettered by the gold of the earth.

The above explanations can really give you, as it were, an idea of the whole. Yet this idea merely indicates the essential point. The essential point that we must bear in mind is that we should never imitate the mistake of the old theosophists, who always work with symbols; the essential point which we must bear in mind is that everything in spiritual science that tends towards human feeling should be transformed into something artistic. We should therefore not say: that these sculptures express “this or that”, but they should reveal to us, through what they are artistically and through what we can see in them, the relation of man, or of Christ, to Lucifer and Ahriman. For that reason, it is impossible to express this with the artistic means of the past. Every movement of the fingers and of the hands, the way in which the hands are shaped, are significant, for they must express something significant. At first we may think that Christ raises His left hand and sends out forces with the intention of breaking Lucifer's wings and of causing him to fall. We might also think that the right hand of Christ pointing downwards sends out forces that fetter Ahriman. Yet it would be quite wrong to think so.

In order to explain the significant fact contained in this, let me remind you of one of the greatest works of art that have so far been produced, of Michelangelo's Last Judgment, in the Sistine Chapel in Rome. There we see Christ sending the righteous men to heaven and the sinful ones to hell. We see Christ sending one part of mankind to a good world and the other part to an evil world. The Christ that is portrayed on Michelangelo's picture is not the Christ whose true nature we must, from now onwards, learn to know through spiritual science. The true Christ never condemns in wrath, nor does he mete out praise in ordinary love. His influence goes out of him simply because he is there; Lucifer's wings do not get broken, but it is Lucifer himself who breaks them, as a result of what takes place within his soul through the fact that he is in the proximity of Christ. And Ahriman fetters himself, as a result of what takes place within his soul, through the fact that he is in the proximity of Christ. When Christ raises his left hand and points downwards with his right hand, he only expresses purest compassion with the world. Lucifer, there above, cannot bear this, he cannot bear the proximity of Christ's hand. And what he thus experiences within him induces him to break his wings. It is not Christ who breaks them, it is Lucifer himself who breaks his own wings.

Michelangelo was not as yet able to portray the real Christ. Christ is such a significant Being and it is so difficult to understand Him, that this understanding can only be reached in the course of time. Only in [the] future shall we be able to grasp the Christ Who induces the other beings to condemn or to redeem themselves, simply through the fact that He is there. The Christ on Michelangelo's painting still has Luciferic and Ahrimanic traits, for he sends the sinners to hell in wrath and leads the righteous to heaven, so that his passions are active. But in our sculpture, Christ is mute impersonal, and the Beings that approach Him must judge themselves.

You may therefore see that man's position in the world that contains the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forces will be significantly expressed in our Building. You will see in it the artistic expression of Beings that can only be found in the spiritual world. Naturalism in art and everything towards which art has striven in recent times as a result of materialism which took hold of man, must be overcome by the art which we cultivate here. Even in the sphere of art, something entirely new must enter the world through spiritual science, something that is able to overcome even the greatest artistic achievement—the Christ, portrayed in Michelangelo's Last Judgment.

It is permissible to say this, if we emphasize on the other hand something that we should not forget: that in spite of everything, our Building is but a first, primitive beginning. Everything in this Building is still imperfect and elementary, it is merely a beginning, yet it is the beginning of an entirely new impulse. We should of course bear in mind that everything is imperfect, yet at the same time we should not fail to notice in this the new impulse that will enter human life.

Consider how easy it is to ignore a gift of cosmic life consisting of the unused forces pertaining to the etheric bodies of human beings! Consider how these unused forces of the human etheric bodies can fall a prey to Lucifer and Ahriman, if we do not find the possibility of including them in the evolution of the earth, for the welfare of the earth!

Here we touch upon a great mystery, connected with the evolution of humanity upon the earth. It is the mystery of the connection existing between the Christ-impulse and the impulses of Lucifer and Ahriman. This connection of the Christ-impulse with the Lucifer-impulse and with the Ahriman-impulse will be grasped more and more clearly in the near future.

Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces surge through the world, but owing to the fact that man is conscious of Christ, owing to his Christ-consciousness, he is like a sailor who must steer his boat through the storms called up by Lucifer and Ahriman. He can steer his boat through that ocean, whose living substance consists of Lucifer and of Ahriman; he can do this in spite of everything, because he sits in his Christ-boat.

The true reason why we come together in our Group-meetings is not that of learning in a theoretical way one or the other truth which spiritual science can reveal, but the true reason why we assemble is that everything that lives in our souls should be filled with the spirit that can flow out of spiritual science. The essential point is not WHAT we think, but HOW we think, feel and will. The smallest or the greatest things in the evolution of the earth may rise up before our soul's eye, yet everything shows us how necessary it is for the human beings of the future to become acquainted above all with the significance of the triad, Christ, Lucifer and Ahriman. Michelangelo was unable to grasp this, and in the times that have gone by men were unable to see how these three Beings stand within the world. The true nature of Christ will only be grasped in the right way if we can see Him in relation to the forces which are active in the same way in which the North and the South poles are active: in relation to the forces of Lucifer and of Ahriman.

Many things connected with these thoughts will be discussed in the next few days for those who can remain. To-day I wished to bring before your souls thoughts that render the spiritual-scientific attitude so important even in regard to the significant things that will in the near future appear in the spiritual world to those who can discern the spiritual behind the physical events.

O how earnestly one would like to entreat the guardian spirits and the guardian divinities, of the earth and of humanity to give man strength, so that the things needed for the welfare of mankind may take place!

There above, will be the unused etheric forces of those human beings who passed through death in their youth. But here on earth there must be human hearts and human souls who look up to these forces so that they can be included in the right direction of human evolution. It is not only essential that these forces should exist up there, for they can fall a prey to Lucifer and Ahriman, but it is essential above all that here below physical bodies should be inhabited by human souls that send up their reverent thoughts to these sacrificed etheric bodies. On this circumstance will depend the way in which these forces will stream into the evolution of humanity, these forces that arose on the battlefields streaming with blood, where sacrifices are made and suffering is borne.

This indicates more or less what spiritual science is able to contribute to the future development of humanity, if a certain number of people really takes in that which can only be recognised through spiritual science.

Before I close this lecture, let me once more address to your souls a few pragmatic words that express what the present time, so fraught with destiny, is able to give us:

From the courage of the fighters
From the blood of the battles,
From the suffering of the abandoned,
From the nation's sacrifices,
Shall grow forth a spirit-fruit,
If souls will lead, in spirit-consciousness,
Their mind and heart into the spirit-realm.

Original German Text:

Aus dem Mut der Kämpfer,
Aus dem Blut der Schlachten,
Aus dem Leid Verlassener,
Aus des Volkes Opfertaten—
Wird erwachsen Geistesfrucht,
Lenken Seelen giestbewusst
Ihren Sinn ins Geisterreich.

We have come here today for the opening of the group founded by our friend, Professor C. This group wishes to dedicate itself to the spiritual life of the present and future in the way that is customary in our Movement. On such an occasion it is always good to remember why we associate in groups and to ask ourselves why we found working groups and cultivate in them the spiritual treasure to which we dedicate our forces.

If this question is to be answered truly, we must realize that we make a distinction, even if only in thought, between the work we do in a group like this and our other work in the world. Those who are unwilling to enter deeply into more intimate truths connected with the spiritual progress of humanity, might ask if we could not cultivate spiritual science without forming ourselves into groups, but simply by finding lecturers and providing opportunities for people who may not know each other to come together and have access to the spiritual treasure of which we speak. We could, of course, proceed in this way. But as long as it is at all possible to establish, in the wider and narrower senses, associations of human beings who are known to one another and who come together in friendship and brotherliness within these working groups, we will continue to found them in full consciousness of the attitude of soul that is part and parcel of spiritual science. It is not without meaning that among us there are human beings who want to cultivate the more intimate side of spiritual knowledge and who sincerely intend to work together in brotherliness and harmony. Not only are relationships and intercourse affected by the fact that we can speak quite differently among ourselves, knowing that we are speaking to souls consciously associated with us—not only is this so, but something else is also to be remembered. The establishment of individual groups is connected with the whole conception that we hold of our Movement if we understand its inmost nature. We must all be conscious that our Movement is significant not only for the existence known to the senses and for the existence that is grasped by the outward turned mind of man, but that through this Movement our souls are seeking a real and genuine link with the spiritual worlds. Again and again, in full consciousness, we should say to ourselves that by the cultivation of spiritual science we transfer our souls as it were into spheres that are peopled not only by beings of earth but also by the beings of the higher hierarchies, the beings of the invisible worlds. We must realize that our work is of significance for these invisible worlds, that we are actually within these worlds. In the spiritual world, the work performed by those who know one another within such groups is quite different from work carried on outside such a group and dispersed about the world. The work carried out in brotherly harmony within our groups has quite a different significance for the spiritual world than other work we may undertake. To understand this fully we must remind ourselves of truths we have studied in many aspects during recent years.

Earth evolution in the post-Atlantean age was sustained in the beginning by the culture of the ancient Indian period of civilization. This was followed by the ancient Persian epoch—the designation is only more or less appropriate but we need not go into that now. Then came the Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian period of culture, then the Greco-Latin, then our fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Each of these epochs has, on the one side, to cultivate a particular form of culture and of spiritual life primarily concerned with the external and visible world. But each epoch must at the same time prepare, bear within it in a preparatory stage, what is to come in the ensuing period of culture.

Within the womb, as it were, of the ancient Indian epoch, that of ancient Persia was prepared; within the ancient Persian culture, that of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch was prepared, and so on. Our fifth post-Atlantean epoch must prepare the coming sixth epoch of culture. Our task in spiritual science is not only to acquire spiritual treasure for ourselves, for the eternal life of the soul, but to prepare what will constitute the content, the specific external work of the sixth epoch of culture. Thus it has been in each of the post-Atlantean epochs. The centers of the mysteries were the places in which the form of external life belonging to the next epoch of culture was prepared. The mysteries were associations of human beings among whom other things were cultivated than those cultivated in the outer world. The ancient Indian epoch was concerned with the cultivation of the human etheric body, the ancient Persian epoch with the cultivation of the astral body, the Egypto-Chaldean with that of the sentient soul, the Greco-Latin with that of the intellectual or mind soul. Our own epoch, throughout its duration, will develop and unfold the consciousness or spiritual soul. But what will give to external culture in the sixth epoch its content and character, must be prepared in advance. Many characteristics of the sixth epoch of culture will be entirely different from those of our age. Three characteristic traits can be mentioned, of which we must realize that they should be carried in our hearts for the sixth epoch of culture and that it is our task to prepare them for this sixth epoch.

There is lacking in human society nowadays a quality that, in the sixth epoch, will be a characteristic of those men who reach the goal of that epoch, and have not fallen short of it. It is a quality that will not, of course, be found among those who in the sixth epoch have still remained at the stage of savages or barbarians. One of the most significant characteristics of men living on the earth at the peak of culture in the sixth epoch, will be a certain moral quality. Little of this quality is perceptible in modern humanity. A man today must be delicately organized for his soul to feel pain when he sees other human beings in the world in less happy circumstances than his own. It is true that more delicately organized natures feel pain at the suffering that is so widespread in the world, but this can only be said of the people who are particularly sensitive. In the sixth epoch, the most highly cultured will not only feel pain such as is caused today by the sight of poverty, suffering and misery in the world, but such individuals will experience the suffering of another human being as their own suffering. If they see a hungry man they will feel the hunger right down into the physical, so acutely indeed that the hunger of the other man will be unendurable to them. The moral characteristic indicated here is that, unlike conditions in the fifth epoch, in the sixth epoch the well-being of the individual will depend entirely upon the well-being of the whole. Just as nowadays the well-being of a single human limb depends upon the health of the whole body, and when the whole body is not healthy the single limb is not up to doing its work, so in the sixth epoch a common consciousness will lay hold of the then civilized humanity and in a far higher degree than a limb feels the health of the whole body, the individual will feel the suffering, the need, the poverty or the wealth of the whole. This is the first preeminently moral trait that will characterize the cultured humanity of the sixth epoch.

A second fundamental characteristic will be that everything we call the fruits of belief today will depend to a far, far higher degree than is the case today, upon the single individuality. Spiritual science expresses this by saying that in every sphere of religion in the sixth epoch, complete freedom of thought and a longing for it will so lay hold of men that what a man likes to believe, what religious convictions he holds, will rest wholly within the power of his own individuality. Collective beliefs that exist in so many forms today among the various communities will no longer influence those who constitute the civilized portion of humanity in the sixth epoch of culture. Everyone will feel that complete freedom of thought in the domain of religion is a fundamental right of the human being.

The third characteristic will be that men in the sixth epoch will only be considered to have real knowledge when they recognize the spiritual, when they know that the spiritual pervades the world and that human souls must unite with the spiritual. What is known as science today with its materialistic trend will certainly not be honored by the name of science in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. It will be regarded as antiquated superstition, able to pass muster only among those who have remained behind at the stage of the superseded fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Today we regard it as superstition when, let us say, a savage holds the view that no limb ought to be separated from his body at death because this would make it impossible for him to enter the spiritual world as a whole man. Such a man still connects the idea of immortality with pure materialism, with the belief that an impress of his whole form must pass into the spiritual world. He thinks materialistically but believes in immortality. We, today, knowing from spiritual science that the spiritual has to be separated from the body and that only the spiritual passes into the super-sensible world, regard such materialistic beliefs in immortality as superstition. Similarly, in the sixth epoch all materialistic beliefs including science, too, will be regarded as antiquated superstition. Men as a matter of course will accept as science only such forms of knowledge as are based upon the spiritual, upon pneumatology.

The whole purpose of spiritual science is to prepare in this sense for the sixth epoch of culture. We try to cultivate spiritual science in order to overcome materialism, to prepare the kind of science that must exist in that epoch. We found communities of human beings within which there must be no dogmatic beliefs or any tendency to accept teaching simply because it emanates from one person or another. We found communities of human beings in which everything, without exception, must be built upon the soul's free assent to the teachings. Herein we prepare what spiritual science calls freedom of thought. By coming together in friendly associations for the purpose of cultivating spiritual science, we prepare the culture, the civilization of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch.

But we must look still more deeply into the course of human evolution if we are fully to understand the real tasks of our associations and groups. In the first post-Atlantean epoch, too, in communities that in those days were connected with the mysteries, men cultivated what subsequently prevailed in the second epoch. In the associations peculiar to the first, the ancient Indian epoch, men were concerned with the cultivation of the astral body, which was to be the specific outer task of the second epoch. It would lead much too far today to describe what, in contrast to the external culture of the time, was developed in these associations peculiar to ancient India in order to prepare for the second, ancient Persian epoch. But this may be said that when those men of the ancient Indian epoch came together in order to prepare what was necessary for the second epoch, they felt: We have not yet attained, nor have we in us, what we shall have when our souls are incarnated in the next epoch. It still hovers above us. It was in truth so. In the first epoch of culture, what was to descend from the heavens to the earth in the second epoch still hovered over the souls of men. The work achieved on earth by men in intimate assemblies connected with the mysteries was of such a nature that forces flowed upwards to the spirits of the higher hierarchies, enabling them to nourish and cultivate what was to stream down into the souls of men as substance and content of the astral body in the second, ancient Persian epoch. The forces that descended at a later stage of maturity into the souls incarnated in the bodies of ancient Persian civilizations were like little children in the first epoch. Forces streaming upwards from the work of men below in preparation for the next epoch were received and nurtured by the spiritual world above. So it must be in every epoch of culture.

In our epoch it is the consciousness or spiritual soul that has developed in us through our ordinary civilization and culture. Beginning with the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, science and materialistic consciousness have laid hold of the human being. This will gradually become more widespread, until by the end of the fifth epoch its development will have been completed. In the sixth epoch, however, it is the spirit self that must be developed within the souls of men, just as now the consciousness soul is being developed. The nature of spirit self is that it must pre-suppose the existence in human souls of the three characteristics of which I have spoken: social life in which brotherliness prevails, freedom of thought, and pneumatology. These three characteristics are essential in a community of human beings within which the spirit self is to develop as the consciousness soul develops in the souls of the fifth epoch. We may therefore picture to ourselves that by uniting in brotherliness in working groups, something hovers invisibly over our work, something that is like the child of the forces of the spirit self—the spirit self that is nurtured by the beings of the higher hierarchies in order that it may stream down into our souls when they are again on earth in the sixth epoch of civilization. In our groups we perform work that streams upward to those forces that are being prepared for the spirit self.

So you see, it is only through the wisdom of spiritual science itself that we can understand what we are really doing in respect of our connection with the spiritual worlds when we come together in these working groups. The thought that we do this work not only for the sake of our own egos, but in order that it may stream upward into the spiritual worlds, the thought that this work is connected with the spiritual worlds, this is the true consecration of a working group. To cherish such a thought is to permeate ourselves with the consciousness of the consecration that is the foundation of a working group within the Movement. It is therefore of great importance to grasp this fact in its true spiritual sense. We find ourselves together in working groups which, besides cultivating spiritual science, are based on freedom of thought. They will have nothing to do with dogma or coercion of belief, and their work should be of the nature of cooperation among brothers. What matters most of all is to become conscious of the true meaning of the idea of community, saying to ourselves: Apart from the fact that as modern souls we belong to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture and develop as individuals, raising individual life more and more out of community life, we must in turn become conscious of a higher form of community, founded in the freedom of love among brothers, as a breath of magic that we breathe in our working groups.

The deep significance of West European culture lies in the fact that the quest of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is the consciousness soul. The task of West European culture, and particularly of Central European culture, is that men shall develop an individual culture, individual consciousness. This is the task of the present age. Compare this epoch of ours with that of Greece and Rome. The Greek epoch exhibits in a particularly striking form, especially among the civilized Greeks, a consciousness of living within a group soul. A man who was born and lived in Athens felt himself to be first and foremost an “Athenian.” This community between city and what belonged to the city meant something different to the individual from what community between human beings means today. In our time the individual strives to grow out of and beyond the community, and this is right in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In Rome, the human being was first and foremost a Roman citizen, nothing else. But in the fifth epoch we strive above all else to be man in our innermost being, man and nothing else. It is a painful experience in our day to see men fighting against one another on the earth, but this, after all, is just a reaction to the perpetual striving of the fifth epoch for free development of the “human universal.” Because the different countries and peoples shut themselves off today from one another in hostility, it is all the more necessary to develop, as resistance to this, the force that allows human beings to be men in the full sense, allowing the individual to grow out of and beyond every kind of community. But on the other hand the human being must, in full consciousness, make preparation for communities into which he will enter entirely of his own free will in the sixth epoch. There hovers before us as a high ideal a form of community that will so encompass the sixth epoch of culture that civilized human beings will quite naturally meet each other as brothers and sisters.

From many lectures given in past years, we know that Eastern Europe is inhabited by a people whose particular mission it will be in the sixth epoch, and not until the sixth epoch, to bring to definite expression the elementary forces that now lie within them. We know that the Russian peoples will not be ready until the sixth epoch of culture to unfold the forces now within them in an elementary form. The mission of Western and Central Europe is to introduce into men qualities that can be introduced by the consciousness soul. This is not the mission of Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe will have to wait until the spirit self comes down to the earth and can permeate the souls of men. This must be understood in the right sense. Understood in the wrong sense it may easily lead to pride and superciliousness, precisely in the East. The height of post-Atlantean culture is reached in the fifth epoch. What will follow in the sixth and seventh epochs will be a descending line of evolution. Nevertheless, this descending evolution in the sixth epoch will be inspired, permeated by the spirit self. Today the man of Eastern Europe feels instinctively, but often with perverted instinct, that this is so; only his consciousness of it is, for the most part, extremely hazy and confused. The frequent occurrence of the term, “the Russian man,” is quite characteristic. Genius expresses itself in language when, instead of saying as we do in the West: the British, the French, the Italian, the German—Eastern Europe says, “the Russian man.” Many of the Russian intelligentsia attach importance to the use of the expression, “the Russian man.” This is connected deeply with the genius of the particular culture. The term refers to the element of manhood, of brotherhood that is spread over a community. An attempt is made to indicate this by including a word that brings out the “manhood” in the term. But it is also obvious that the height to be reached in a distant future has not yet been attained, inasmuch as the term includes a word that glaringly contradicts the noun. In the expression, “the Russian man.” the adjective really nullifies what is expressed in the noun. For when true manhood is attained there should be no adjective to suggest any element of exclusiveness.

But at a much, much deeper level there lies in members of the Russian intelligentsia the realization that a conception of community, of brotherhood must prevail in times still to come. The Russian soul feels that spirit self is to descend, but that it can only descend into a community of men permeated with the consciousness of brotherhood, that it can never spread over a community where there is no consciousness of brotherhood. That is why the Russian intellectuals, as they call themselves, make the following reproach to Western and Central Europe. They say, “You pay no heed at all to a life of true community. You cultivate only individualism. Everyone wants to be a person on his own, to be an individual only. You drive the personal element, through which every single man feels himself an individuality, to its highest extreme.” This is what echoes across from the East to Western and Central Europe in many reproaches of barbarism and the like. Those who try to realize how things really are, accuse Western and Central Europe of having lost all feeling for human connections. Confusing present and future as they do now, these people say, “it is only in Russia that there is a true and genuine community of life among men, a life where everyone feels himself the brother of the other, as the ‘Little Father’ or the ‘Little Mother’ of the other.” The Russian intelligentsia say that the Christianity of Western Europe has not succeeded in developing the essence of human community, but that the Russian still knows what community is.

Alexander Herzen, an excellent thinker who lived in the nineteenth century and belonged to the Russian intellectuals, brought this to its ultimate conclusion by saying, “In Western Europe there can never be happiness.” No matter what attempts are made, happiness will never come to Western European civilization. There humanity will never find contentment. Only chaos can prevail there. The one and only salvation lies in the Russian nature and in the Russian form of life where men have not yet separated themselves from community, where in their village communities there is still something of the nature of the group soul to which they hold fast. What we call the group soul, out of which mankind has gradually emerged and in which the animal kingdom still lives, that is what is revered by the Russian intelligentsia as something great and significant among their people. They cannot rise to the thought that the community of the future must hover as a high ideal, an ideal that has yet to be realized. They adhere firmly to the thought: We are the last people in Europe to retain this life in the group soul; the others have risen out of it; we have retained and must retain it for ourselves.

Yes, but this life in the group soul does not in reality belong to the future at all, for it is the old form of group soul existence. If it continued it would be a Luciferic group soul, a form of life that has remained at an earlier stage, whereas the form of group soul life that is true and must be striven for, is what we try to find in spiritual science. But be that as it may, the urge and the longing of the Russian intellectuals show how the spirit of community is needed to bring about the descent of spirit self. Just as it is being striven for there along a false path, so must it be striven for in spiritual science along the true path. What we should like to say to the East is this: It is our task to overcome entirely just what you are trying to preserve in an external form, namely, an old Luciferic-Ahrimanic form of community. In a community of a Luciferic-Ahrimanic character there will be coercion of belief as rigid as that established by the Orthodox Catholic Church in Russia. Such community will not understand true freedom of thought; least of all will it be able to rise to the level where complete individuality is associated with a social life in which brotherhood prevails. That other form of community would like to preserve what has remained in blood brotherhood, in brotherhood purely through the blood. Community that is founded not upon the blood, but upon the spirit, upon community of souls, is what must be striven for along the paths of spiritual science. We must try to create communities in which the factor of blood no longer has a voice. Naturally, the factor of blood will continue, it will live itself out in family relationships, for what must remain will not be eradicated. But something new must arise! What is significant in the child will be retained in the forces of old age, but in his later years the human being must receive new forces.

The factor of blood is not meant to encompass great communities of human beings in the future. That is the error that is filtering from the East into the dreadful events of today. A war has blazed up under the heading of community of blood among the Slavic peoples. Into these fateful times all those elements are entering of which we have just heard, elements that in reality have in them the right kernel, namely, the instinctive feeling that the spirit self can only manifest in a community where brotherhood prevails. It must not, however, be a community of blood: it must be a community of souls. What grows up as a community of souls is what we develop, in its childhood stage, in our working groups. What holds Eastern Europe so firmly to the group soul, causing it to regard the Slavic group soul as something that it does not want to abandon but, on the contrary, regards as a principle for the whole development of the state—it is this that must be overcome.

A great and terrible symbol stands before the eyes of the world. Think of the two states where the war had its starting-point. On the one side, Russia with the Slavic world in general, declares that the war is based on brotherhood of blood, and on the other side, there is Austria, which comprises thirteen distinct peoples and thirteen different languages. The mobilization order in Austria had to be issued in thirteen languages because Austria encompasses thirteen racial stocks: Germans, Czechs, Poles, Ruthenians, Rumanians, Magyars, Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, Slovenes (among whom there is a second and separate dialect), Bosnians, Dalmatians and Italians. Thirteen different racial stocks, apart from all minor differentiations, are united in Austria. Whether the implications of this are understood or not, it is obvious that Austria consists of a collection of human beings among whom community can never be based on blood relationship, for what its strange boundaries contain shoots out into thirteen different lineages. The most highly composite state in Europe stands in opposition to the state that strives most intensively for life in a group soul, or for conformity. But this striving for life in a group soul brings a great many other things in its train. This leads us to another matter, the significance of which we will think about today.

In the public lecture yesterday I mentioned the great philosopher Soloviev, one of the most significant thinkers of all Russia. Soloviev is an eminent thinker, but a thoroughly Russian thinker, a mind that is exceedingly difficult to understand from the Western European point of view. Anthroposophists, however, should study his work and try to understand him. I propose to speak from our more intimate standpoint about Soloviev's main and central idea. Soloviev is far too good a philosopher to adopt for himself without question the principle of life in a group soul. He has difficulties with it and he disagrees in many respects. But one idea predominates in him, not quite consciously it is true, but in such a way that one only wishes he were clairvoyant and could thus anticipate what his soul will have to wait to see on the earth when he is incarnated in the sixth epoch of culture. The following conception that is extremely difficult for the men of West and Central Europe to understand became the main and central idea in Soloviev's mind.

In Western Europe, as a preparation for the sixth epoch, we try among many other things to grasp the meaning of death, the significance of death for life. We try to understand how death is the manifestation of a form of existence, how the soul is transformed in death into another form of existence. We describe the life of a man within his body and the manner of life between death and new birth. We endeavor to understand death, to overcome death by realizing that it is only semblance, that the soul in very truth lives on when it has passed through death. It is an essential aim with us to overcome death through understanding. But here we come to one of the points, indeed to one of the most vital points, where spiritual science deviates altogether from the central idea held by the great Russian thinker, Soloviev. His idea is this: There is evil in the world, wickedness in the world. If we, with our senses, behold the evil and wickedness, we cannot deny that the world is full of both. This, says Soloviev, refutes the divinity of the world, for when we behold the world with our senses, how can we believe in a divine world, since a divine world can certainly not exhibit evil! But the senses perceive evil everywhere and the extreme evil is death. Because death is in the world, the world is revealed in all its evil and wickedness. The arch-evil is death!

Thus does Soloviev characterize the world. He says—and I am quoting almost word for word: Look at the world with your ordinary senses; try to understand the world with your ordinary mind. You can never deny the existence of evil in the world, and to desire to understand death would be absurd! Death exists. Knowledge acquired through the senses reveals a world of wickedness, a world of evil. Can we believe, asks Soloviev, that this world is divine when it shows us that it is full of evil, when it shows us death at every step? Nevermore can we believe that a world that shows us death is a divine world. For in God there can be no evil, no wickedness, above all, not the arch-evil death. In God there cannot be death. If, therefore, God were to come into the world (I am repeating what Soloviev says practically word for word)—if God were to appear, should we be able immediately to believe him to be God? No, we should not! He would have to establish his identity first. If a being claiming to be God were to appear, we should not believe him. He would have to prove his identity by producing something of the nature of a world document that would enable us to recognize him as God! Nothing of the kind exists in the world. God cannot prove his identity through what is in the world, for everything in the world contradicts the divine nature. By what means, then, can he prove his identity? Only by showing, when he comes into the world, that he has conquered death, that death can have no power over him. We should never believe Christ to be God if He did not prove his identity. But Christ did so, inasmuch as He has risen, inasmuch as He has shown that the arch-evil, death, is not in Him.

This is what Soloviev says. It is a consciousness of the divine that is based solely upon the actual, historical resurrection of Christ, Who, as God, proves His identity. Soloviev goes on to say: Nothing in the world, with the single exception of the Resurrection, enables us to realize that a God exists. If Christ had not risen, all our belief would be vain, and everything we could say about a divine nature in the world, this too would be vain. Soloviev quotes these words of St. Paul again and again.

This, then, is the fundamental outlook of Soloviev. If we look at the world we see therein only evil, wickedness, degeneration, senselessness. If Christ had not risen, the world would be meaningless, therefore Christ has risen! Note this sentence well, for it is a cardinal saying of one of the greatest thinkers of Eastern Europe: “If Christ had not risen the world would be senseless, therefore Christ has risen.” Soloviev has said: “There may be people who think it illogical when I say, if Christ had not risen the world would be senseless; therefore Christ has risen—but this is far better logic than any you can adduce against me.”

Our spiritual science has the task to remove for our consciousness, for our whole soul-life, that abyss which arises for the external human consciousness between the physical world in which the human being spends the interval between birth and death, and the spiritual world in which the human being spends the other time of his whole life, the time between death and a new birth.

Such a sentence is for somebody living in spiritual science with all the fibres of his soul so familiar, so natural. It is only at a moment when I speak just today to you, a moment that is, you may probably say, especially sanctified. We have lost several of our dear friends and members by the grievous war events from the physical plane within a very short time and now we are about as it were to accompany two friends on their last way on earth. Here in Zurich, the cremation of the dear member Mrs. Colazza will take place at eleven o'clock who has left the physical plane this week, and we just have got the message that our dear friend Fritz Mitscher has left the physical plane close to Davos at five o'clock in the afternoon. In both members, dear souls go away from the physical plane. However, spiritual science shows us the way to understand that we do not lose such souls in a much higher sense than we could otherwise understand this but how we remain linked with them.

Since we are working in our movement, a bigger number of souls who belong to us have gone through the gate of death. Above all, I may say based on those sources from which spiritual-scientific cognition generally flows to us that these souls—according to their possibilities—have become loyal co-workers for us in the spiritual world. Under the full responsibility with which one says something that should be firmly backed up on the ground of spiritual science I am allowed to say, we have won supporters for our spiritual movement in them. Many have passed the gate of death, working within our spiritual movement, looking down on that which they are fond of in their love. In the time between birth and death, they have grown fond of the way of striving that we cultivate in our circle. Here in our society they themselves have left something that is on the way between death and a new birth.

Like nature is a world around us at which we look back, in the same way, we can look back at our physical life from that moment on which you can compare to the birth of the human being. Immediately after death, the human being goes through a state of sorts that you can compare with the embryonic life, with the life in the body of the mother, only that this life lasts only days after death. It is much shorter than the embryonic life in proportion to the physical life. Then that follows which you can compare with the entrance of the physical world, with the first gasp, what one may call waking up in the spiritual world. The soul perceives as it were that the will of the soul that has passed the gate of death is taken up by the beings of the higher hierarchies.

Here on earth, the human being, when he enters the physical world out of the body of the mother physically, is prepared first to take up the external air and then his senses awake bit by bit. After death, a moment comes when the soul feels: now my will, which was harnessed during the physical life by the borders of the physical body flows from me out into the universe. Moreover, this soul feels how this will is really taken up by the activity of the beings of the next higher hierarchy, the beings of the hierarchy of the angeloi. This is like doing the first gasp in the spiritual world and gradually growing into the spiritual surroundings, for this shows us spiritual experience.

I would like to speak about the destiny of those who have left the physical plane and gone from us in the course of the years. I would want to look at those who esteemed our spiritual movement and glance down on it as something about which they know that that in which they live is passed on the human souls also within the physical bodies. To be able to go back to the earthly in memory that is something that already belongs here in the physical world to the spiritual world. This purports for the human beings concerned who have gone through the gate of death an infinitely valuable, an infinitely important thing. When they flow completely into the current—which streams to them from the physical world which takes its spring from that which they have witnessed in our movement—like a tributary into a river, when the thoughts of those who loved them or were connected with them by natural bonds, then the community is much more intimate than it could otherwise be in our materialistic time. For it is founded on the spiritual connections.

Again, we may say, somebody who has gone early through the gate of death into the spiritual world appears to us, as if he had done this because of intimate love to our spiritual movement to be able to help with stronger forces from the spiritual world. With a great number of those who have gone from us, wonderfully clearest feelings live in their souls of the necessity of our spiritual movement. And for somebody who is capable to look into the spiritual world all dead souls are the spiritual heralds of our movement who now look down on the movement with which they were interlinked. They carry the spiritual slogans before us, while they are calling to us continually: we were convinced of the necessity of this movement, while we were combined with you. Now however, after we have entered the spiritual world, we know that we can and must assist in the time in which this movement is necessary.

This is something that those human beings will sense more and more who remain behind here on the physical plane. They have lost dear relatives and friends on the physical plane and just these words may be the deepest consolation to them to have here everything that attaches still a deeper connection between the souls, even if we are no longer able to interlink with those souls with physical eyes and physical words.

The spiritual movement in which we shall participate has to bring a lot. Today I would like to select a particular chapter from the various ones, which it should bring us. A time like ours when the external civilisation is completely based—in spite of the last echoes of the old religions—on the materialistic consciousness, such a time can also build up the impulses of moral life only , so that one takes the life between birth and death into consideration. Among the various matters, which will come by our spiritual movement, will be a new construction of the complete moral life, the complete virtue life of humanity. For people will learn to look at the moral life, at the life of virtue from a ken that goes beyond birth and death. It counts on the fact that the human soul goes through repeated earth-lives, and that the human soul, as well as one bears it in the life between physical birth and death, has gone through many lives and has to hope for future lives, which he has to experience. If we have extended our ken of one life to the successive earth-lives, a more comprehensive, more correct view of life will result, also a more correct and more comprehensive view of virtue and moral life.

If we speak of the human virtues, we can distinguish four such virtues first of which one can speak as it were in the usual style of speech among people. One virtue, as we will indicate later, is such a one which lives in the depths of the human soul of which one has to speak, however, as we will see, as little as possible for holy reasons. All other virtues, which exist in life and constitute the moral life, you can understand as special cases of the four virtues at which we want to look, those four virtues of which in particular antiquity has spoken a lot.

Plato, the great philosopher of ancient Greece, distinguished these four virtues because he could scoop his wisdom still from the echoes of the ancient mysteries. Among the echoes of the ancient mysteries, Plato could carry out the classification of the virtue better than the later philosophers or even those of our times where the knowledge of “mysteriosophy” stands so far apart and has become something chaotic.

The first virtue, which we have to consider when we are speaking of a moral life in this sense as it arises from a comprehensive cognition of the human nature, this is the virtue of wisdom (prudence). However, one has to understand this wisdom in a little deeper sense and concerning more to the ethical, to the moral philosophy than one normally does. We cannot say that wisdom is something that can simply approach as it were the human being. Even less is wisdom something that the human being can learn in the usual sense. It is even not easy to characterise what wisdom should mean to us with some words:

• If we live through our life so that we allow that to have an effect on us which moves up in this life to us,

• If we learn—induced by the different processes of life—from a process how we could have dealt with this or that more correctly, how we should have made the one or the other of our forces more skilful or stronger,

• If we pay attention to everything that meets us in life and pay attention to the fact that if anything similar meets us a second time, we do not let touch us the second time as the first time, but feel taught.

• And if we preserve the mood through life to be able to learn from life, and to consider everything that nature and life bring to us, so that we learn something, however, not only learn that we know something, but so that we become more and more better, more valuable internally,

Then we increase in wisdom, then our soul-life will become such that our experience has not passed us worthless.

In worthlessness life passes us if we have spent decades and judge anything that we have experienced later also as we have judged it in a younger age. If we spend our life that way, we are apart from wisdom the most. Karma may have caused it that we have become angry as young people, that we have badly judged this or that with the human beings. If we maintain this attitude, we have applied our life badly. Nevertheless, if we have judged in our youth disparagingly, we have it applied well if we judge at an older age not disparagingly, but in an understanding, forgiving way, if we try to understand. If we are so born that certain things have brought us in abrupt rage and we as old persons not always come to abrupt rage as young people, if our abrupt rage has left us by that which life has taught us and we have become milder, then we have applied life for the purposes of wisdom. If we were materialists in our youth, however, let have an effect of that which time wanted to say to us as revelations from the spiritual world, then we have applied our life for the purposes of wisdom. If we close our mind to the revelations of the spiritual world, we have not applied our life for the purposes of wisdom.

We can call that the application of life for the purposes of wisdom becoming enriched that way, getting a larger ken. Moreover, what spiritual science wants to give us is suitable to open us towards life becoming wiser in life. Wisdom is something that opposes human egoism most remarkably. Wisdom is something that always counts on the course of the world-events. That is why we can be taught by the course of the events of worldwide importance because we thereby leave the narrow judgment, which our ego is able to make. A wise human being cannot judge egoistically, because if one learns of the world, one learns to understand the world, one learns to let the world correct the own judgment, so that wisdom tears us out as it were from the narrow, limited ken and harmonises it. I could state many things that could deliver a description of wisdom to us bit by bit. We should not strive for a definition of such concepts, but we have to open our mind, so that we—also about wisdom—can become wiser and wiser.

Now here in the physical world everything that the human being has to live through in his conscious life has to use the tools of the external physical and etheric nature. We are as human beings between birth and death only when we are sleeping with our mental being—as far as it is ego and astral body—beyond our physical and etheric bodies. If we are in the conscious state, we use the tools of our physical and etheric bodies. As far as wisdom fills us, as we strive to live in our acting and thinking, in our feeling for the purposes of wisdom, we use those organs of our physical and etheric bodies, which are the most complete ones within our life on earth. We live in those organs, which have taken to their finishing the longest, which were already prepared during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions and have come as an inheritance in our life and to a certain conclusion.

I would like to give you from another side another concept from that which one can understand as almost perfect organs. Take our brain on one side. The brain is not yet the perfect organ, but we can call it, at least, perfect compared to other organs, because it has taken for its development longer than these other organs. Let us compare the brain with our middle body in which we have the hands. If we decide to do something with the hands, we have the thought: I stretch the hand, I take the vase, and I pull back the hand. What have I done there? I stretched not only the physical hand, but also the etheric one and the astral hand and a limb of my ego, but the physical hand has gone along with them.

When I am only thinking, only looking for thoughts, then the clairvoyant consciousness can see, as if some spiritual arms stick out of the head, but the physical brain remains in the husk. Exactly the same way as my etheric and astral hands belong to my physical ones, something etheric and astral also belongs to the brain. The brain cannot follow; however, the hands can follow. In times to come, the hands are also fixed, and we will only be able to move their astral parts. The hands are on the way to become what the brain is already today. In former times, during the old Sun and Moon evolutions, that which stretches itself out today from the brain and is only spiritual was still accompanied by the physical organ. The cranial cover only covers it, so that the physical brain in it is fixed during the earth development. The brain is an organ that has gone through more stadia of development.

The hands are on the way to become similar to the brain, because the whole human being is on the way to become a brain. There are organs, which are more complete, which have shut themselves off more from the development, and those which are less perfect. The perfect organs are used by that which we accomplish in wisdom. Our usual brain is, actually, only a tool for the lowest form of wisdom, for the earthly cleverness. However, the more we acquire wisdom, the less we are depended on our great brain, the more—the outer anatomy does not know that—the activities withdraw to our cerebellum, on that which our skull encloses as a little brain looking like a tree. We human beings, when we have become wise, when we are wisdom, are then really sitting under a “tree” that is our cerebellum and that in particular starts then unfolding its activity.

Imagine an especially wise human being stretching the organs of his wisdom like the branches of a tree in a powerful way. They have their origin in the cerebellum, this is sitting in the cranial cover, but the spiritual organs extend, and the human being is under the tree, the buddhi tree, in reality, in spiritual reality.

However, there we also see that what we do in wisdom is the most spiritual of us, or belongs at least to the most spiritual, because the organs already rest. If we do anything with the hand, we still must use a part of the forces for the movement of the hand. If we judge anything in wisdom, decide anything in wisdom, the organs remain quiet. There no force is used to the physical organ, there we are more spiritual, and those organs which we apply to the physical plane to live in wisdom are those to which we need to apply the least strength which are as it were already the perfect ones.

Hence, wisdom is something in the moral human life that lets the human being experience himself in a spiritual way. What the human being achieves in wisdom makes him able to reap the possibly biggest fruits from his former incarnations. Because we live in the spiritual realm in wisdom without straining the physical organs, we are most capable by the life of wisdom to make the acquisitions of former incarnations fruitful for this life, to get this wisdom from former incarnations.

For a person who does not want to become wise we have a good German term. We call him a Philistine. A Philistine is such a person who struggles against becoming wise, who wants to remain his whole life long as he is, who does not want to come to another judgment. A human being, however, who wants to become wise, is eager to get from the former incarnations what he has performed as work and stored in former incarnations. The wiser we become, the more we bring from former incarnations into the present one, and if we do not want to become wise, so that we allow leaving the wisdom of former incarnations unexploited, then there comes somebody who saws it off: Ahriman.

Nobody other than Ahriman likes it more that we do not become wiser. We have the strength. We have attained a lot in the former incarnations, even more than we believe, even more in the times in which we have gone through the ancient clairvoyant states. Everybody could become much wiser than he becomes. Nobody is allowed to use as an excuse that he could not bring a lot with him. Becoming wise means that we bring the acquisitions of former incarnations to the fore, so that they completely fill us in this incarnation.

Another virtue is that which we can call with a word that is hard to form, actually, the courage-like virtue (fortitude). It is of such a disposition that it remains not passive towards life, but is inclined to apply the forces. The courage-like virtue comes, as you may say, from the heart. You can say of somebody who has this virtue in everyday life: he has the heart in the right place.—And this is a good expression for that if we are able to withdraw not cowardly from the matters that life requires from us, but if we are able to take in hand ourselves, knowing to intervene where it is necessary. If we are inclined to put our activity in movement in such way, briefly if we are brave—the term “brave” is also good for this virtue,—then we have this virtue of the brave life. You could also say, this virtue, which is connected with a sound mind life, which generates fortitude at the right moment, whose absence causes the cowardice in life. Of course, one can practice this virtue in the course of physical life only by certain organs. The organs to which the physical and the etheric hearts belong are not as perfect as those are, which serve wisdom. These organs are still on the way to change, and change in future.

There is a great difference between the brain and the heart concerning their cosmic development. Assuming that a human being goes through the gate of death and passes the life between death and a new birth. His brain is generally a product of the gods. Forces that completely disappear when he goes through the gate of death penetrate the brain. In the next life then the brain is anew built up completely, also its internal forces, not only the material. So also, the forces are anew built up. This is not the case with the heart. With the heart the matter so far is that the physical heart does not continue, however, the forces last that are active in the physical heart. These forces go back to the astral and ego and remain between death and a new birth. The same forces knocking in our heart are also knocking next time in our new incarnation. What works in the brain has disappeared; it does not come out in the next incarnation. However, the forces that flash across the heart are there also in the next incarnation again. If we look into a head, we can say, in it, there work the invisible forces that construct the brain. However, when the human being has gone through the gate of death, these forces are handed over to the universe. If we hear, however, the heartbeat of a human being, we hear spiritual forces, which exist not only in this incarnation, but will also live in the next incarnation, passing death and new birth.

The folk soul had a wonderful premonition of such things. Hence, it puts so much value on the feeling of the heartbeat, not because one appreciates the physical heartbeat so much, but because we look at something that last much longer when we consider the heartbeat of a human being. If we have the virtue of courage, we can only use one part of certain forces for this courage-like. We must use the other part for the organs that serve as tools for the courage-like. We must still use a piece of the forces for these organs. If we do not have the courage-like, we do not develop the virtue of fortitude, we lose our self-control, we withdraw cowardly from life, we leave ourselves to the gravity of our being, and then we cannot invigorate those forces, which must help to realise the virtue of fortitude, the courage-like.

While we stand there cowardly in life, the forces also remain inactive which should flash across our heart. They are a sowing for Lucifer. He takes hold of them, and we do not have them in the next life. Cowardice in life means to deliver a quantity of forces to Lucifer that are missing for us when we want to build up our hearts in our next incarnation that are, actually, the organs, the tools of the courage-like. We come into the world with defective, unqualified organs.

The third virtue that counts to the most incomplete organs, which take on forms only in future, to which they now contain the germ only, is that which one can call calmness or temperance. You may call it also, in certain shading, the moderate life. Then we have three virtues: wisdom (prudence), courage (fortitude), temperance. You could call temperance also moderation .

One can be impulsive now in the most different way. One can be impulsive because one eats or drinks too much. This is the lowest kind of impulsiveness. There the astral completely sinks into the bodily desire, and we completely enjoy life in our body. If, however, we control our desire, if we almost order the body what he has to do or not, then we are temperate, one can also say moderate. Then we keep by such moderation those forces in the correct order which should help that we do not deliver the concerning organs to Lucifer in the next incarnation. Since we deliver the forces to Lucifer, which we spend to a passionate life. Most badly when the passions transport us into a state of drunkenness, when we feel well with dozing.

Where we lose our temperance, we always deliver forces to Lucifer. He takes these forces, but with them, he also takes the forces from us we need for the respiratory and the digestive organs. We return then with bad respiratory and digestive organs if we do not practice the virtue of moderation. Those who like to be captivated by their life of passions, who dedicate themselves to their passionate life, are the candidates for the decadent people of the future, for those people of the future who will suffer from all possible shortcomings of their physical bodies.

You can say this virtue of moderation is depending on the most incomplete organs of the human beings, on the organs, which are in the initial stage of their evolution, which must transform themselves still quite substantially. If we look at our digestive organs and on that which is connected with them, we have to apply the ego, the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body to set the organs in motion. If we go over to the organs that are the tools for courage, then the matter is quite different. There we stay outside with our ego more or less, in that we move freely, and only our astral and our etheric go into the physical. If we come to the virtues which wisdom encloses, there we keep the ego and the astral body free outside. Since, while we become wiser and wiser, we organise the astral body, we get hold of the astral body. This is the essential part that we—becoming wiser—transform the astral to the spirit-self, and only the etheric coalesces with the physical. In the brain, the etheric is only combined with the physical. Moreover, while—concerning the remaining body—we are connected in the waking state very strongly at least with the astral, with the physical organ; we maintain the condition for the brain in which we are most in sleep. Hence, we need the physical sleep for the brain most. Being awake, we are with our ego and our astral body beyond the brain, and then they must make the greatest efforts in themselves, without having any support in the external organ.

Thus, we find a connection between our human being and the virtues. We can call wisdom a virtue that is attached to the human being as a spiritual being, where he is freely active with his ego and astral body and has in his physical and etheric organs only a kind of support. We can call courage as a virtue, where the human being is free only with his ego and has in the astral, etheric, and physical bodies his supports. Finally, we can speak of temperance where we become free with our ego-germ, where we are bound with our ego to the astral, etheric, and physical bodies and work our way out of this restraint with the help of our ego.

Then, however, the next virtue is the most spiritual one. This most spiritual virtue is as it were with the whole human being in a certain relation. The human being has capacities that we lose early, which we have only in the first years of childhood. I have already mentioned that several times. When we enter the physical plane we do not have the same position, which we need for our human dignity: we creep on all fours. I have drawn your attention carefully to the fact that we bring us only by means of our own strength in the correct position and stand up. We also develop by the forces, which go into speech. Briefly, in the first years of our life we develop forces, which direct us basically—be careful of the expression—into the position that we have as real human beings in the world. We do not come into the world, so that we are “correctly” put into the world. We creep. However, we are correctly put in it, if we turn the head to the stars. This corresponds to internal forces.

We lose these forces in later life. They do not appear any more. Nothing more appears which intervenes in similar way so energetically in the human life like learning to walk and the straight standing position. We become tired more and more as to our upright position. If we start early in the morning living with our brain, we become tired when we have accomplished the day, we have the need of sleep. That which raises us in childhood if we are tired remains quite tired during the whole life and goes into flabbiness. In our later life, we do no longer exercise such a thing like standing up in childhood.

Moreover, how are we directed into life when we learn speaking? Even if we learn speaking, directing forces help us. However, the same forces that we apply in the earliest infancy do not get lost to us during our later life. They remain to us, only they are connected with a virtue, with the virtue that is connected with the right or correct, with the virtue of the all-embracing justice, the fourth virtue. The same force that we use as a child if we stand up from a creeping being lives in us if we have the virtue of justice, the fourth of Plato's virtues.

Who really practices the virtue of justice, puts every thing, every being to the right place, comes out of his shell and goes into the others. That is living in the all-embracing justice. Living in wisdom means to reap the best fruits from the forces that we have stored in former incarnations. Moreover, when we had to point there already to that which was allotted to us in former incarnations, where still divine forces permeated us, we must point out it in the case of justice even more: we come from the universe. We practice justice if we unfold the forces by which we are connected with the whole universe, but in spiritual relation. Justice is the measure how a human being is connected with the divine. Injustice is, virtually, like the atheist, like somebody who has lost his divine origin. We slander God, the God Whom we stem from if we do wrong to any person.

Thus, we have two virtues, justice and wisdom, which point us back to that which we were in former times, in other incarnations, in the times when we ourselves were still in God's womb. In addition, we have two other virtues, the courageous-like life and the temperate life, which point us to later incarnations. The more forces we devote to them, the less we give Lucifer. We have seen how fortitude and temperance go into the organs and how thereby the organs are prepared for the next incarnation. In addition, moral life spreads over the future life if we are filled with spirituality. Two virtues shine over the former incarnations: wisdom and justice. However, fortitude and temperance shine over the future incarnations.

The time will come when the human being realises that he throws himself into Ahriman's jaws if he ignores justice and wisdom. He would throw to Lucifer what he possessed in former incarnations, what belonged to the divine world, by that which he accomplishes in impulsiveness or cowardice of life. We are missing the forces Lucifer has withdrawn from us for the construction of our body in the next life.

We cannot practice wisdom and justice without becoming unselfish, as already suggested. That human being can only be unjust who is egoistic. Only he who wants to remain unwise is egoistic. Wisdom and justice lead us beyond our egos and make us members of the whole humanity. Fortitude or the courage-like and temperance make us members of the whole organism of humanity in certain way. Only because we experience courage and temperance, that we spend our life with them we take care that we live with a stronger organisation in the future humankind. Then that we do not lose which we throw, otherwise, to Lucifer. Egoism changes automatically into selflessness if it is extended over the whole horizon of life, and the human being positions himself in the light of the fourth virtue. That will bring the spiritual wisdom of the human future extending on ethics and moral life. Then this will also flow into pedagogy. If you understand wisdom and justice, as I suggested it, you want to learn the whole life through. You will see that you have to learn only properly when you have your youth behind yourself. However, people now think that they, after they have youth behind themselves, do not need to learn anything more. The biggest and noblest fruits of art, the great poets of humankind get lost that way. They would merge in us the best if we study their works as old people. Reading Goethe's Iphigenia or Schiller's Tell, people normally think, we read this already at school.—However, this is not right; because you may not forget that these works have the best effects if you read them as old persons, because then they serve justice and wisdom.

On the other hand, the education of children will also bear particular fruits if you see the virtue of the courage-like and the virtue of temperance in the right light. You have to consider these virtues where you have to educate children individually, by the fact that you point out repeatedly to the children that they seize life bravely, that they do not shrink or withdraw from anything, and that they understand the life in temperance and moderation in order to become gradually free from their passions. You can achieve a lot for the education of children that way. We have to explain these matters more and more in the later course of our spiritual-scientific considerations.

Thus, we see how that which has laws in the moral life of humankind, otherwise, only for the external physical plane, for the life between birth and death is spread by the spiritual-scientific considerations over an infinitely wide horizon. It also is the same thing as it is with the remaining matters of spiritual science. Concerning the natural sciences, humankind had also to experience that its horizon was extended. Giordano Bruno¹ points out the fact to the human beings that not only the earth does exist, but also that still many other worlds are there outside in space. Spiritual science points out to people that not only a life on earth exists, but that many lives on other earths exist. The human beings before Giordano Bruno believed that there was a border in the sky. Giordano Bruno drew attention to the fact that there is no border, that the blueness of the sky shows no border. Spiritual science shows that there is neither birth nor death, but that we put them into life because of our limits of conceiving.

Thus, the abyss between the physical and the spiritual is bridged. Thus are the matters that stand on spiritual-scientific ground for those who found a true monism. The so-called monists today make it easy for themselves with their monism. They take one part of the world and make it a unity, while they throw away the other half of the world. True monism originates from the fact that one allows to flow both halves into each other in the general sense. This happens by spiritual science. Not only that this originates in the consciousness, but also it must originate for our whole life. More and more we must get around to knowing really, if we look into the world: there is round us, in all that which lives and works, something supersensible, not only in that which our eye sees, but also in that which the mind can perceive which is bound to the brain. Everywhere are spiritual forces, behind every phenomenon, behind the phenomenon of the rainbow, behind the movement of the hand et cetera.

If you read up the series of talks² I gave around the turn of the last year in Leipzig, you will find how the Christ Impulse was working on account of the Mystery of Golgotha, how Christ lives in the most important human matters, not only in that which the human beings have known. There they quarrelled, for example, about dogmas. While they quarrelled, however, the Christ Impulse kept on living and caused what should happen.

Let us take the figure of the Maid of Orleans³. In the development of Europe the simple shepherd girl appears. She appears strangely, so that in her soul not only those forces live which a human being has usually but that in this personality the Christ Impulse works and invigorates and bears her by His powerful impulse. She became as it were a representation of the Christ Impulse for her time. She was only able to do that, while the Christ Impulse had made hold of her.

You know that we celebrate Christmas in the time when the solar strength is the slightest, in the deepest darkness of the wintertime because we can be persuaded that the internal light, the spiritual light has its strongest intensity.

Old legends tell us that from Christmas up to the 6th January people experienced something quite particular because there the life on earth and the internal forces of the earth are the most concentrated. Indeed, those who are specially inclined experience the spiritual forces there in the forces of the earth. Countless legends tell us that. The best time for it is the thirteen days until the 6th January.

The Maid of Orleans spent these thirteen days in a particular condition, in a state when her soul was not yet receptive to the external world. Peculiar as it is, the time in which the Maid of Orleans was in the body of her mother ran off in the Christmas time in 1411. She was born, after she had spent the last thirteen days in the body of her mother, at the 6th January. Before she did the first gasp, before she saw the physical light with the physical eye, she experienced the earthly during thirteen days in the sleep, which the human being experiences, before he enters the physical world.

I point here to a tremendously significant fact that shows how the world is governed from the spiritual, how that which happens externally in the physical world is directed by the spiritual world, how the spiritual world flows under the physical.

Thus, we have to clear away the abyss between the physical and the spiritual more and more consciously by spiritual science in the present time. We do that for life in a field if we realise that just within our movement the forces of those exist who connected their souls and bodies during their earthly lives with our movement and went through the gate of death. If we look at the other bank of the stream, where they are active, and feel combined with them and turn our thoughts to them, then we do that out of full consciousness we have got from spiritual science. We know to be connected the liveliest with those who went through the gate of death, and we know them as the best forces among us. If we can do this or think, we look at life as a sowing field. Everywhere between that which we ourselves plant we see those plants in it which sprout up without our help. Then we can know: those to whom it is granted to be in the world of spirit, those with whom we feel linked, with whom we become one, place these plants.

A human brotherhood also with those who do no longer carry physical bodies will be the typical sign of this movement and of those who feel as members of this movement and belong to it in future. Other societies, only built on the earthly, will clear away some barriers between human beings. The barriers between the living and the dead will be cleared away by the movement more and more, which will unite human beings who want to be united in the sign of spiritual science. We all want to have this in our souls and just take up the typical as a remaining feeling that connects us with this movement that has become dear to us.

During the war, Rudolf Steiner spoke the following commemorative words before each lecture he held within the Anthroposophical Society in the countries affected by the war:

The first thoughts we cultivate now with our being together in our branches should be turned to the spirits who protect those who are on the fields where they have now to serve the great duties of time with blood and soul. We want to turn our petitions to the protecting spirits of these souls, that what we summon up in imploring love may radiate and unite with the power of the spirits who guard these souls on the fields of the events.

Spirits of your souls, active guardians,
May your wings bring
Our souls' imploring love
To the human beings entrusted to your care,
So that, united with your might,
Our entreaties might ray forth to help
The souls they lovingly seek.

In addition, for those who had already gone through the gate of death:

Spirits of your souls, active guardians,
May your wings bring
Our souls' imploring love
To the human beings in the spheres, entrusted to your care,
So that, united with your might,
Our entreaties may ray forth to help
The souls they lovingly seek.

The Spirit we have searched for all the years of our striving may radiate the power, which He has carried through the Mystery of Golgotha to you that you may have strength for accomplishing what the big duties of humanity demand from you. The Spirit Who has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha; the Spirit of Christ may be with you!

• 1. Giordano Bruno (1548–1600). According to his teachings our solar system is only one of countless worlds which are parts of an infinite universe Dell' infinito universo e mondi (London, 1584)
• 2. Christ and the Spiritual World: The Search for the Holy Grail, 6 lectures (Leipzig, 1913–1914), volume 149 of Steiner's Collected Works (Rudolf Steiner Press, 2008)
• 3. Jeanne d'Arc (1412–1431)