The Rudolf Steiner Archive

It is a time, in which in quick succession as a result of many deaths the connection of the human being with the spiritual world approaches us. It is the world the human being enters when he goes through the gate of death. Under quite special circumstances these quick successive, almost simultaneous deaths face us. These special circumstances are given because numerous earthly people go through the gate of death that could have lived still for decades on earth under the circumstances that one may assume for earthly people. And whenever the human being goes through the gate of death prematurely as it were, extraordinary conditions come also into being.

We know that the human being going through the gate of death leaves behind, hands over as it were what falls off as his physical body from him to the earth element. We know that then the so-called etheric body is considered as the second that, however, also separates from the individuality. Then the individuality, consisting of astral body and ego, passes the spiritual regions between death and new birth. The etheric body, however, keeps on working, detached from the ego and astral body. This etheric body, which now enters the spiritual world next to us, the etheric world, is different with each human being. You may imagine that an etheric body of somebody who passes the gate of death prematurely looks differently as that of somebody who has lived his life till old age. For the etheric body which has to go with an early deceased human being through the gate of death would have the power to supply the physical body with life under normal conditions still for many years, decades. Now a force does not get lost in the spiritual world just as little as in the physical world. This force which supplies, otherwise, the physical body with life continues to exist. So that we can say: if now thousands go through the gate of death, nevertheless, almost every day, etheric bodies enter into the elemental world which are still capable of surviving, which have other forces in themselves than older etheric bodies have. What happens now with these etheric bodies still capable of surviving?

Yesterday, I spoke of the real folk-soul in the public lecture. This folk-soul is a real being. It needs quite particular forces just in our time. It needs such forces also at other times, of course, but particularly in our time. This folk-soul takes up these etheric bodies still capable of surviving. The human being himself goes other ways with his ego and astral body—those ways which prepare him then for his next life on earth. But these etheric bodies separate from the human individualities, they go over into the being, the substance of the folk-souls. After such a destiny-burdened time as we now experience we go towards a time when the folk-soul contains the etheric bodies in itself—like forces living in it—which have been handed over by those who have gone in the battles through the gate of death. A time comes near when the spiritual scientist can know that that is not lost which was sacrificed on the altar of the big events. A time comes near when effective strength emits from the folk-soul into the individual souls, that simultaneously goes out from that which in the first, second, third decades of youth numerous people have taken up here on earth, which they could still have kept for many decades, which they have handed over, however, to the folk-soul. This is in the forces in future the folk-soul drips into the individual souls; that is not lost.

Let us take that really to heart. Imagine how our consciousness of the connection with the spiritual may be enlivened in our feeling life if we keep in mind that we can speak of the folk-soul in future that the fruits of the sacrificial deaths are in it as effective forces. That is particularly important in the next time. In other times this would be different, for the next time; however, it will be significant because of a quite special reason.

We lived in a bad time of materialism. The souls, who could not approach spiritual science, were immersed in a strong aura of materialism. To fight against this aura is the task of the folk-soul in the next time. Forces will flow towards this folk-soul for the fight of materialism by the fact that the etheric bodies of the early dead linger on in this folk-soul, just linger on as forces. These etheric bodies—sacrificed on the altar of human evolution—will be the strongest fighters against materialism.

So we have to make a distinction between that which moves as a single human being through the regions of the spiritual world and remains united with the human individuality, from that which the etheric body delivers on its detour to the general community; which keeps on working in the spiritual general community in the sense cited here, in the substance of the folk-souls.

That may stamp itself especially deeply in our souls if we put two human types concerning this spiritual difference before our souls: the warrior killed on the battlefield who goes, completely devoted to the task of his people, through the gate of death—who as it were at the moment when he enters the battlefield when he only resolves to enter the battlefield must also resolve to face death. Compare this human type with the ascetic. Just if you consider what the forces of the etheric body signify in human life, you get an idea of the difference of the warrior killed on the battlefield and the ascetic. The ascetic works on himself. He tries to work on himself in such a way that he overcomes the physical in himself completely, that he becomes still free from this physical during his lifetime. Since the ascetic works that way, a significant transformation also takes place in his etheric body. He uses up, so to speak, the forces of this etheric body the strongest to incorporate them in his ego and astral body. What makes the ascetic free from the physical, this is of benefit completely for his individuality, and this serves the transformation of his individuality. So that such a human being who becomes an ascetic can serve humankind only on the detour of that which he makes out of himself. He, however, who frees himself from the physical body in early youth, because he has to surrender to the requests of war, hands over the forces of his etheric body to the general community; he incorporates them to the general work. You have to feel this difference, it is a significant difference. It points us again a little bit to that which prevails as a reality in the human life. It is also significant to look just at the path through the gate of death concerning the etheric body.

At the moment when the human being goes through the gate of death, he is still united with his etheric body. We have often described what happens to this. This connection with the etheric body gives the human being the possibility to live in all ideas that the last life aroused in him to merge completely like in a mighty tableau in everything that the last life has given him. But this is a kind of vision that lasts for a relatively short time; it fades away with the liberation of the etheric body from the ego and astral body. Yes, you can say, it immediately begins to fade away after the moment of death. The impressions become weaker and weaker which are still due to the possession of the etheric body. Then that makes itself felt which is authoritative after the physical death. What is authoritative there is properly imagined only to a lower degree by the people who want to get ideas about the life after death. It is even difficult to coin words for those quite different conditions, compared with the conditions we experience in our physical bodies. One thinks simply that the human being after he has gone through the gate of death has only again to get a consciousness for himself. It is not really that way. The human being experiences no lack of consciousness when he passes the gate of death. On the contrary, his soul experiences a superabundance of consciousness. He lives and weaves completely in consciousness, and as well as the strong sunlight dazes the eyes, he is dazed at first by consciousness, he has too much consciousness. First, this consciousness must be dampened, so that he can orientate himself in the life, into which he has entered after death. This lasts for a longer time; more and more moments happen in which the consciousness makes such an orientation possible. The soul becomes conscious for a more or less short time and then it again enters into a condition similar to sleep as you may call it. Then such moments become gradually longer and longer, the soul comes more and more in such conditions, until it is able to orient itself entirely in the spiritual world.

Also this makes difficulties to get clear ideas of the way how the soul perceives his environment after it went through the gate of death. We buried a dear anthroposophical friend in the last week, and on account of the wish of the dead I had the task to make a funeral celebration for her friends at the place where she died. In the time I spoke and directed my words to the dead person, the dead person was as it were like sleeping. Then the heat had an effect, the flames seized the body, and at this moment a moment of consciousness came over the soul, like a moment of orientation. The dead had the whole image of the funeral celebration and the funeral speech before herself, as somebody has something spatial at the same time before himself. Time becomes there really space. You do not see the past as you see the past running in time during life, but you see the past as something spatial before yourself. So that that which had already run off, which had happened a quarter of an hour before, then stood before the soul of the dead like the first lighting up moment of consciousness. Then a state of daze came again in the flooding light of consciousness to go in this condition towards those other conditions in which the soul gradually learns to orientate itself in the spiritual world.

It is important if we want to really get good ideas about the life after death for ourselves that we understand these quite different conceptions of time, that we see how there time is not something of which one can say, it has passed, and one remembers of the matters that happened in time, but the past stands there. Like the desk stands there and this desk does not go along with me when I go over there and look back at it, in the same way that remains after death which happened, which can be just only reminded, stands there; and the dead looks back at it as one looks back in the body at the spatial objects. This is very important to understand. Furthermore, that is of particular importance to understand that we really remain in connection, that our life on earth remains in connection with that what we experience between death and a new birth; at least it remains in close connection up to the point in time I called midnight hour in my last mystery drama.¹

Nevertheless, I would not like to fail to give our friends ideas of these relations to be difficultly described bit by bit. At that which we as earthly people have experienced between birth and death the soul, which has gone to death, looks back—but not, as if that which one has experienced there only would be there, but some conditions of life of the dead play a part in a peculiar way. The condition of life of the dead is not the same as the condition of life between birth and death of living people. The condition is such a one that the human being feels enclosed by his skin and looks out into the world by means of his senses. As soon as one enters as a dead the spiritual world, he/she has flowed out into the whole spiritual world. The soul feels like fulfilling the whole spiritual world bit by bit. What the human being has experienced during his physical earth existence, he feels like something that remains to him—not as a physical body, of course, but as that which constitutes the form, the forces of the physical body. This remains after death, but the soul has it as somebody has the human eye in the physical body. As you have the eye for seeing, you have then yourself, the life on earth, which you have experienced, as a cosmic sense-organ to perceive the world with it. What our eye is now for our body, this is our life on earth for our spiritual life after death.

Our life on earth is implanted to us as it were as an eye, as a sense-organ. You will understand gradually only after longer meditation what significant, actually, is pronounced that our life on earth becomes a sense-organ for our life between death and a new birth. That resembles to the process when the human being falls asleep and leaves the physical and etheric bodies with his ego and astral body. When initiation comes into being and the human being starts beholding in the spiritual world outside his physical and etheric bodies, then he knows: in the spiritual world you perceive like by means of a sense with the spiritual part of your physical body, and you think in the spiritual world with your etheric body. Your etheric body is real like your brain in the spiritual world and your former physical body is a sense-organ. However, you yourself are poured out with all your vital forces over the spiritual worlds. You have spread, you do not feel crowded together to one place because of your skin, and you feel poured out, extended over the spiritual world.

This is a quite different existence. With it is connected that somebody who himself enters the spiritual world, either by death, or by initiation, lives united with the other beings of the spiritual world, with beings of higher hierarchies or with human souls, which live between death and a new birth. However, he lives united with them in such a way that he does not experience them as you meet earthly men outside where you are separated spatially from them. But he experiences them as being contained in a common spiritual space, penetrating each other. What another soul experiences one does not experience by the fact that it says something, like with earthly people, but that one settles in the other soul and witnesses its thoughts. Hence, it is also that you can only be certain to experience that in yourself really what, for example, a dead experiences if you know: you are as it were in the dead, you do not only report something that you hear after the model of something which you experience on earth, but you hear: the dead himself speaks through your being.

I would also like to explain that to you by an example².

Into cosmic distances I will carry
My feeling heart, so that it grows warm
In the fire of the holy forces' working;

Into cosmic thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, so that it grows clear
In the light of the eternal life;

Into depths of soul I will sink
Devoted meditation, so that it grows strong
For the true goals of human activity;

In the peace of God I strive thus
Amidst Life's battles and cares
To prepare myself for the higher Self;

Aspiring for work in joy-filled peace,
Sensing cosmic being in my own being,
to fulfil my human duty;

May I live then in anticipation,
Oriented toward my soul's star
Which gives me my place in spirit realms.

I would like to put this before your souls as a clear example of the mysterious course which the human soul takes just through the point in time which separates the life between birth and death from the life between death and a new birth, where everything that was still external experience to us in the life on earth becomes internal wealth of the soul and lives in us that way. Here one takes on spiritual science still as something external. Immediately after death, however, it appears how it lives in the soul, yes, we say, as well as muscular strength now lives in our physical bodies. You have to feel that once if you want to grasp the internal sense, the internal meaning of that which spiritual science can be for the human soul. Then bit by bit you get a conception—you must have patience—of the quite different relations in the spiritual world. If we form words and concepts of the relations in the sensory world, we can give symbols at most of that what is in the spiritual world. You must work in patience towards concepts and sensations and feelings which express that fairly correctly and truly what the relations of the spiritual world are.

The logic of the life on earth—yes, there is only one logic of the life on earth—is already sometimes rather fragile for the life on earth. I have already stated how one can pass the real facts using the logic of the life on earth. I have often stated the example: assuming a person is walking along a brook. We see him falling into the brook. We rush over and find out that he is already dead. We see a stone where the person has fallen into the brook, and can now form a quite logical, but superficial judgment. We can say: the person has tripped over the stone, has fallen into the brook and drowned. He has died the death of drowning.—But this can be quite wrong. If one examines the matter purely anatomically, it can become apparent that the person had experienced a heart failure; thereby he fell in the water. The heart failure is the cause of his death. With the everyday correct logic we conclude wrongly. Such conclusions—this would be noted, only by the way—are made perpetually in human life and in particular in science. Science is full of such conclusions where cause and effect are mistaken.

But the matter becomes important when questions of human destiny are considered. We have experienced such a stroke of fate in Dornach in autumn, which is instructive in the most important sense. One evening the little, seven-year-old son of our member, Theo Faiss, who was an exceptionally dear, bright child, was reported missing. It was just during an evening lecture. The mother searched for the child, it was not to be found. When the lecture was over, one heard, actually, only that the mother misses her boy, and one could imagine nothing else that the death of the boy were in connection with a removal van, which had toppled over. A member of our society had let send his pieces of furniture in a removal van, and this removal van had toppled over in the evening where the boy stood. It was ten a quarter clock in the evening and we applied everything to lift the carriage. The mobilised military met us to help, to lift this removal van. The removal van was lifted, and one found the boy crushed under the carriage. Now think, in this area a removal van did never go generally before; nor thereafter. The boy was here, one could state this later by all possible things one calls incidents and chances, just in the time—it has concerned only minutes, around a moment—where the removal van toppled over. However, it was strange that first of all those who were here where the carriage had toppled over were only concerned to bring the horses to safety. One had no idea that the removal van had fallen on the little boy.

The child was dead. The materialist view may say: well, the removal van toppled over by chance there at this hour; the child got under it and was crushed. The materialist view will say that, of course. Before the spiritual view this is completely nonsense. For that what is there is the karma of the child, and this karma of the child steered all single circumstances. It has also steered the removal van there just at the hour when the child needed the death because the karma of the child wanted it. The karma of the child had expired. We deal here with the necessity to reverse cause and effect.

By such relations and the view of them one is able to ascend bit by bit to the real view of life which persuades us to reverse that what the external appearance presents to the senses. We must often turn around this. But the matter becomes quite significant when one experiences after that what comes into being by such a fact. The soul of a human being goes through the gate of death. This soul was embodied for seven years in a physical body. Why could the little Theo not have become also seventy, eighty, ninety years, externally considered if the karma had not made it impossible? An etheric body is there which could have supplied life still for decades; an etheric body which was really filled by forces of the eternal, of the good. It was an excellent boy.

You know that then the real individuality, the ego and astral body, go on their way. But the etheric body frees itself, this etheric body, in which all tender, nice forces are woven which have developed in the childhood, in which, however, all forces also live which come from the former incarnations. Now imagine what you have before you facing such an etheric body. The individuality comes from the former incarnations. It embodies itself anew in this incarnation; it implies what comes from previous incarnations. The life of this incarnation is as it were the fruit, realising that what was cause in a life in previous incarnations. Through the whole life these fruits could have enjoyed life to the full. Then everything would have gone into this etheric body what comes from the fruits of the former incarnations. This has not happened. In return everything is in this etheric body what still has causes in the former incarnations. And now the strangest thing is: somebody who tries to explore the aura of our Dornach construction finds this etheric body of the little Theo in the aura of the Dornach construction. There he is, there he hovers over, lives around the Dornach construction. He who has to deal with the Dornach construction or will still deal after that late autumn afternoon in which the little Theo went through the gate of death knows what has been changed in the spiritual aura of the Dornach construction by the fact that that etheric body was incorporated into this aura. This etheric body contains the forces which would else have been used for decades for the supply of a physical human body, and this etheric body is just poured out in this aura of the construction.

So mysterious are the ways that wisdom flooding through the world has to experience with its creatures. There are only correct ideas of the kind how the whole human life runs—to which in the most remarkable sense the life between death and a new birth belongs—if one goes into details of these matters. Because our anthroposophical movement should really be not anything abstract, but something in which we are with our whole being, in which also those are who just belong to us, we are also allowed to speak of such matters. We unite not only like other societies with a certain program, but we want to be with our whole souls in our spiritual-scientific movement. We want to conceive this spiritual-scientific movement as a concrete stream to which everybody belongs who really bears witness to it in a feeling way. We can say: there we speak as somebody just speaks in an enlarged family about the relatives there or there. For that what touches us, so to speak, in an informally familiar way gives us the highest, the most significant, the most important explanations of the spiritual world at the same time.

From such an attitude I would like to mention the death of one of our friends who are just often affected by deaths in the last time. Our infinitely dear friend Fritz Mitscher has recently gone through the gate of death. The necessity arose to me to subsume in words what the own soul felt, while it leant to the soul, which has just gone through the gate of death. Notice the difference between the preceding words which I have read out to you, and the words which I want to read out to you now. The words that I have read out just here are out of the soul of the dead. The words which I will read out to you now are stimulated in my own soul at the sight of the dead Fritz Mitscher, who was still combined with his etheric body. It is the impression which the dead made that is reported now in these words. Perhaps, you know that Fritz Mitscher was already as a young teacher at the most different place, especially in Berlin, active for our Anthroposophical Society. And many of us also know that he was just inclined in such a nice way to combine everything that he could acquire of earthly science and learning with the noblest, nicest anthroposophical consciousness. This also expresses itself after his death when in his whole being was combined what he was, and what shines now again after his death from the soul relieved of the body which still had its etheric body. And it seems to me that this had to be expressed what Fritz Mitscher was after death with the words, which I had to send on to him at the cremation.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.

You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant
Unperturbed by worldly contradiction

You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to your life's true value.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.

Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,

Hear our soul's entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Unlost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.

These are the words which were sent to the dead out of the being of the dead. And then some time passed after these words were spoken at the cremation, and out of the being of the dead, not yet out of the well-organised consciousness, but like from the being sounding, there the following words sounded now from the dead in the night after the cremation.

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within myself
Was my life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.

The words sounded back that way. Only after that I myself found out that two stanzas which are in the middle can be converted immediately from “you” to “I” and from “to you” to “to me.” I did not know that before. Since I heard the stanzas as I read them to you first. And now they came back from the being of the dead, spoken by him:

That shows that as well as in the time in which the consciousness does not yet have the shape which the soul has then again after this time through the whole realm between death and new birth, it shows as even in lively transformation, in meaningful transformation the words come from the dead. You have only to feel the spiritual-scientific world view becoming really alive creating the connection between the physical and the spiritual worlds. For it may run like a shiver through our souls when we feel at such an example how the words are called to the dead—and he returns them changed to us. Like we feel on one side that they went to the dead because they resound from him, not only like an echo, but meaningfully changed by him.

These are matters that give us the certainty, the confidence also for our present that the souls living here in earthly bodies are connected with the spiritual powers weaving and prevailing in the world. In this stream of prevailing and weaving spiritual powers the deceased are woven, are in it, because in it they experience their further postmortal destinies.

If we allow the connection of the physical and spiritual worlds to have an effect on our souls, we can contemplate various things. I pointed already once also here to the fact that with this cooperation of the physical and spiritual worlds proceeding in the concrete sense also the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha comes near to us. We know that now we only start contemplating the sense and meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha and Christ Being by spiritual science completely. Up to now the human beings did that by means of reason. And what did result from this reason? If the effectiveness of Christ had depended in the human earth-life on that what the human beings have understood of it, the effectiveness of the Christ Impulse on earth could had been not very strong. The human beings have understood theological squabbling, all kinds of disputes in their reason, that was they understood of Christianity. But Christ has had an effect out of lively power.

I have probably stated also here the example of the battle which Constantine fought against Maxentius, by which the fate of Europe was decided at that time. Thus Christianity was only accepted, actually, and became then the ruling power in Europe. This battle was not won through the art of strategy nor by the armies of Constantine. Maxentius had to defend Rome. By looking up in the Sibylline Books and by a dream, which he had, it was put in his head that he should lead his army out of Rome. Then he would destroy the enemies of Rome. His army was five times stronger than that of Constantine, who approached Rome. Now he really led his army out of Rome, strategically the most inept what he could do. Since according to strategy everything spoke well of letting his army in Rome and letting the hostile armies approach. However, he led his army out of Rome. Also on the side of Constantine who led his armies against Rome these were not warlike-scientific reasons which gave him the strength, but he also had a dream. The dream said to him: if you allow bearing the monogram of Christ in front of your army, you will defeat Rome.—At that time and still for later the whole map of Europe was transformed through the victory of Constantine with his weaker army. Also the spiritual life of Europe has thereby become different. That what people could understand in those days would not have been sufficient to accomplish these achievements. The Christ Impulse had an effect in the subconsciousness of the human beings, in that what lived in the depths of the souls what people only could dream of, what came up to them at most in dream pictures.

We have a later, quite important example of the effectiveness of the Christ Impulse with the Maid of Orleans.³ Who studies history really, not as one often studies history today, but that one tries to recognise the real connections, he can know that again the fate of Europe was absolutely determined for the next centuries through that what the Maid of Orleans did. Neither strategy, nor the wisdom of the politicians, but that what the shepherd girl of Orleans did was vital for the destiny of Europe, especially also for the destiny of France. Now, however, the Christ Impulse worked in the Maid of Orleans, through its Michaelic representative. It worked into the soul of the Maid of Orleans. Her soul was completely infiltrated, inspired by the Christ Impulse. Exactly in the same way as in those days when the battle was decided between Constantine and Maxentius the Christ Impulse worked, without people knowing about it in their upper consciousness. The Christ Impulse also worked there, when the Maid of Orleans sent the French armies against the English armies. The whole continent would have changed, also England if at that time France had not won. Also England would not be that what she has become if she had not been defeated. However, the subconscious forces which came up in dream pictures caused the victory. The abilities of the Maid of Orleans were inspired by them. So that you can say: what the Maid of Orleans did was influenced through a more or less unaware initiation. It is of course an unaware, you may also say, an atavistic initiation. A clean psychic vessel had to be seized just unconsciously, as it was the Maid of Orleans through whom the Christ Impulse could work, by his Michaelic representative—a clean vessel.

Let us look at the matter more exactly. If anybody today goes consciously through an initiation—there are rules for that. The ABC is in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?” There are rules by which one is able to develop gradually. One cannot speak of such a conscious initiation in the case of the Maid of Orleans. But a spirit which is otherwise not united with the human soul had to take its place in this human soul, to permeate this human soul. Especially favourable circumstances had to come into being. A spirit of higher spheres cannot always intervene in the souls who are enabled for it. Especially favourable circumstances must occur, so that a single human being comes in connection with higher worlds without initiation, without conscious work on himself. Especially favourable circumstances exist in the time when as it were the spirit of the earth is particularly awake: in the time from the 25th December to the 6th January. When in summer the sun stands highest, when the physical heat radiates mostly to the earth, then the conditions of initiation are the worst because then the spirit of the earth is sleeping. The spirit of the earth is the most awake in the winter darkness, at the winter solstice.

Hence, it is not only a legend, but corresponds to a truth when it is told in old legends that during the thirteen nights which precede the 6th January certain particularly suitable souls were initiated, so that they could go into the spiritual world, that they could experience there what we call Kamaloka and devachan. We here in Hanover probably remember that the legend of Olaf Åsteson⁴ was once reported who—sleeping for these thirteen nights—went through the whole way which can be the way through Kamaloka and devachan. Olaf Åsteson tells then what he experienced during these thirteen days.

If the external physical darkness of the earth is the strongest, the conditions are the most favourable to lead a soul into in the spiritual world. It would have been the most favourable for souls like the Maid of Orleans, who are initiated for the whole humankind for such an action not by directly conscious exercising but by especially favourable circumstances, if she could have slept during the thirteen nights. Thus she could have been brought into connection with the spiritual world; if she could have accomplished that in a sleeping state. The Maid of Orleans went really through such a sleeping state. For the Maid of Orleans spent these thirteen days up to the 6th January in the body of her mother in a condition in which the human being still sleeps. Since the human being only wakes up for the physical life when he is born and does the first gasp. With the Maid of Orleans the last sleeping nights of the embryo fall in the time of the thirteen nights, because she was born on the 6th January. There you have a deeply significant internally historical connection. There you have the basis of the mission of the Maid of Orleans, who was chosen to receive the initiation as this clean soul before her first gasp during the last thirteen nights of the pregnancy of her mother, in this sleeping state, just under the especially favourable circumstances of the earth-life. The calendar shows it simply to you. Open the calendar: on the 6th January you find the birthday of the Maid of Orleans. The calendar shows you how here a deeply intimate connection exists between the physical world and the processes in the spiritual world. Of course, it was necessary that the soul of the Maid of Orleans was prepared by her preceding incarnations. During the thirteen nights this soul and that what could come from this soul made it possible just at this point of the human development that the spiritual world was able to influence the physical world.

The spiritual world with its ingredients is always there. The spiritual world is always among us. The ways of working in the physical world are manifold, which the spiritual world selects. And our consciousness of the connection with the spiritual world becomes stronger and stronger, the more we express the connections between the physical and spiritual worlds especially deeply in such details, while such connections stand vividly in front of our souls.

On the other side, one must say: also that what happens here in the physical world may prepare a kind of connection with the spiritual world and our physical world. And if anybody who has taken up that as intensely as Fritz Mitscher what flows through our spiritual science, and then went across in the spiritual world in the thirtieth year of his life—on the 26th February his thirtieth birthday would be—and has infiltrated his soul with that what can penetrate as a strength into the soul by our spiritual science, then we have a powerful individuality who will further stay together with us in the spiritual world who is an assistant of the most immense kind. And if you imagine how difficult the striving for spiritual science is just in our time, in this time which is, nevertheless, completely impregnated with materialism. Then one may also say that he who is connected with all the fibers of his life with the spiritual world has the biggest hopes for those who can become spiritual assistants who become spiritual assistants after they have laid down their physical bodies. One does not need to say, of course, that the passage through the gate of death is never allowed to be a personal decision, but that it must be caused only by karma. These spiritual assistants are those who give us consolation and hope if we see how difficult it is, just in the present, to provide for our spiritual-scientific movement because of the manifold inhibitions. However, we know how higher spiritual forces have an effect on earth, so that the current of the spiritual worlds flows into the purposes of the physical earth. Thus the unused forces of the human souls come up to the spiritual worlds to work there just with their forces, combined with other forces. Hence, I said the words to our Fritz Mitscher in my obituary really from the bottom of my heart:

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

When we try to advance our spiritual movement to its purpose honestly, then we are aware that in the forces which we apply here on earth also those forces are working which our friends already brought through the gate of death into the spiritual world.

We summarise now all that also for the understanding of the general situation of the world. On one side, the human souls who go now due to the destiny-burdened events through the gate of death carry their etheric bodies to the folk-souls. On the other side, they carry everything that they have summoned up in sacrificial devotion, while they have gone just by these events through the gate of death with their individualities. And all that will be poured out as effectiveness into the coming age. It is the matter of the human beings who then experience peace to produce the connection with that what will be there in the spiritual world. Those who today experience as mothers and fathers, as brothers and sisters or other relatives the death on the battlefield of a human being dear to them can take up the fact in their consciousness that with the etheric body something extremely significant passes over into the general effectiveness of the earthly humankind for the future. Not only that they can know that the individualities go invigorated by death to a later stronger life on earth, but they can also know: that what the warrior after death has handed over to the folk-soul weaves and lives really. Fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers have those who have gone young through the gate of death twice, one must say, now in the folk-soul and also as individuality. This idea will only be of great value when it has completely become feeling, so that one does not only speak of immortality, but that one knows in the feeling: the dead are there, are among us. If this bond is such a strong one that also for our feeling death will be, actually, an untruth. Since the dead can appear even more real than often in the physical embodiment if he can take together everything of his being and if he does no longer have his physical body as an obstacle. Immense currents of consolation, currents of internal strength of self-consolation go out from that what spiritual science can give to the souls in lively consciousness and lively sensations. When this is felt that way, then in particular those who bear witness to spiritual science can look full of consolation into the future. They can feel something like twilight in the turn of an era during these present, destiny-burdened events after which a time of sunny peace will also follow. But important will be in the spiritual effectiveness of this time of sunny peace that what is won through the sacrificial deaths of so many people.

That can be made fruitful here on earth particularly creating a bridge, a connection between the living human beings who are incarnated in physical bodies here on earth and the souls who are above and want to radiate down that which they have taken with them. Here it is where the real understanding of spiritual science knocks on our hearts and asks us to do that what we can do from the consciousness we have gained by spiritual science what we can do feeling, so that the great, destiny-exciting, painful events of the present time, as far as we are concerned, contribute to the fertility and welfare of humankind. Those who know something about spiritual science can know feeling and feel knowing by which means the bridge is built up into the spiritual world: because the souls, who remained on earth, send the thoughts and sensations which can be enkindled by spiritual science. The horizon for that will be a horizon of peace. Above, the souls will be who send down spiritual beams of light. Below, human beings must be who have learnt to send such thoughts and feelings out of their souls from below which are stimulated by spiritual science. If there are really souls who turn their senses conscious of spirit to the spirit land, then the bridge will be built, then the time will have come when just through such painful, destiny-burdened events, as they happen in our time, an intimate bond must be woven between the physical and spiritual worlds, for which we strive by our spiritual science.

So we summarise what should be our knowledge and our task and what should arouse confidence in the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit land.

• 1. The Soul's Awakening in Four Mystery Dramas, volume 14 of Steiner's Collected Works
• 2. Lina Grosheintz-Rohrer
• 3. Maid of Orleans (1412-1431)
• 4. Cosmic New Year. The Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson. Lecture (Hanover, 1st January 1912) in The Connection Between the Human Being and the Elemental World … volume 158 of Steiner's Collected Works

What spiritual science calls the mystery of death faces us in our times so significantly. Everything is in close or more distant interrelation with them. Above all, through spiritual science we receive not only the basic conviction, but the basic knowledge of the world in the physical body and of the world, into which we enter through the gate of death. However, this world is always alive also in the sensory life and surrounds us. It is only not recognizable for the human being engaged in the sensory life, because he does not have the necessary attention for it. If such drastic events flow through the time which demand so manifold sacrifices of the human beings as they surround us now, we must be woven with our whole souls in it. Hence, it is obvious to inform you about some matters by means of spiritual science.

We want to turn our glance to fields of life that show us how humankind has come to something fatefully illogical concerning its surroundings because of the materialistic way of thinking. We hear, for example, in the way usual today the individual nations accusing each another: I have not wanted the war; it is you who has incited it.—The question is legitimate and one can now already answer it—for the facts speak clearly—where the external causes are. But for the spiritual-scientific seer it is different. In this question he has to realise that the war is basically the last phase in the course of events, or at least a later phase of matters that were there already before. One commits a mistake in the judgment also with illness processes where one often still speaks of such, whereas these are already health processes, which must take place to recover. The external processes, which take place to paralyse the illness and to recover, have happened before and are not to be observed. The war also is an apparent illness process. It is an effort of humankind to come beyond certain processes which were there before. The illness lies already before in the really unhealthy relations between the peoples. If anyone investigates the external causes with reason, he ignores the internal ones. In the area where we are crowded together like in a fortress and are surrounded with a ring, it must seem reasonable to especially raise the question which the internal causes are, or of which kind the single cause is by which this encirclement was caused. One speaks of such an encirclement for the last years, for the last decades, but if you look at the great connections, it begins much sooner. It sounds peculiar, but one can give the year 860 A. D.—not 1860, but 860. For such a long time, the process is going on, which finds expression now in a way we can call the most dreadful war of humankind, since it inhabits the earth.

In the deeper interrelation of European history one finds the extremely strange fact that in Central Europe something of spiritual substance was crowded together. If anyone investigates this deeper interrelation, he sees that it was crowded together there for a particular purpose. It concerns not the external determinations of blood or race, but the fact that something like a spiritual substance permeates the world. Something like a snake-shaped ring contracts in Central Europe coming down from the distant north. Two currents of the east and west go to the south and meet forming a ring. From a centre, the Normannic tribes move in the 9th century down who are related by blood to so many things that later exist in Central Europe. But they push their way into the Romance element, which comes from Southern Europe, and flow together with it. In 860, they stand in front of Paris; there the Normans were overpowered by the Romance people. The western France came into being from that. More than the Angles and Saxons could bring to the British islands, the Normans brought back from France to England. In the east, the Normannic people moved down, they got from the north to the Volga and the Black Sea into the Slavic regions. Later the Tartar current coalesces. The Slavic element overpowers the Normans and gives them the Christian religion in its eastern form. They become Slavic as “Ros”—they are called in Finland that way—nothing has remained except the name Russia. This name is of Germanic origin. The name Rurik has the same origin.

About these relations one has rather doubtful views. In the west of Europe many people speak that the French are appointed to resurrect the old Celtic element in a kind of Renaissance. One has the idea that in Central Europe are mainly Teutons and that in the west the Celtic element predominates. However, it is vice versa, in the French population is much more Teutonic blood, in Central Europe is more Celtic blood, this is true. Thus maya stands against truth. Only the inhabitants of the west are completely overpowered by the Romance element. In the east the Norman and with them the Teutonic elements are overpowered by the foreign race element. Still today there a religion prevails that is foreign to the Russian folk-soul.¹ Thus the people in Central Europe are encircled as it were. The Romance element reaches to Constantinople, and on the other side the Slavic Normans reach to Constantinople as well. There we have the snake, the ring.

If we consider that what was crowded together there spiritually, we get the view that it has an especially important task. Yesterday, I have only indicated it, but, nevertheless, I have spoken of the fact that here a certain familiar contact of the folk-soul with the individual soul should take place and just thereby the nicest blossoms are produced with the best relatives. The ego should immediately be seized, not the single members of the soul like in the West, should be immediately living in the ego. From that arises—this would already have to be clear to the exoteric consideration—that in Central Europe basically complete hostility could never hold sway against idealism that always a certain tendency to the spiritual world was there to a high degree. When we began our spiritual movement, karma ordained that we had to act at first in association with the British movement. But externally everything was only a symptom of that what had to happen internally with a certain necessity. If we consider what the theosophical movement represents, from which we had to separate, you will notice that there the cultural life has split in two parts. The external life takes a purely materialistic way, and the spiritual element is coupled to it. They always fall apart.

Compare to that which must be our spiritual life for us. As in the organism the head cannot be thought without body, our spiritual life grows out of the general cultural life. You only need to start with Tauler, Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, then with Herder, Lessing, everywhere we have to develop what should become higher spiritual culture. We cannot couple our spiritual view to anything, we must have it as an organism, must raise it. We have to discover internally that the return of Christ is a spiritual affair. Hence, we cannot make the slightest concession. We are able to look at Christ as a figure only with the spiritual eye, approach Him with the internal experience. In the West that had to be dogmatised and materialised. People could not imagine it differently, as that He would come in the physical body. Hence, the absurd idea to present Christ in the body on the salver.² This happened in connection with what was encircled there.

Hence, the question must touch us objectively: how has the Central European civilisation to relate to the future culture?—Truth is something general, but it is something different how it arises. In the Central European civilisation are the springs for the whole spiritual culture of the future. We have to find the way from the German idealism to the spiritual culture. For that is necessary that here in the centre an ego-culture is founded. You can see that easily on the esoteric field. The human ego has to enkindle itself in the outside world, there only it is awake and realises internally. Thus the ego-culture of Central Europe is aroused from without. You need to look only at the last events, the standardisation of the German being. It is typical that the German empire was founded in 1871 on foreign ground. So many examples could be given that also show in the external events that there is an ego-culture in Central Europe.

It seems reasonable to ask: which meaning do the deaths have for the spiritual world?—Countless human beings go in the prime of life through the gate of death. At first the connection of ego, astral body, etheric body with the physical body is separated. The physical body is handed over apparently to the earth, the etheric body to the etheric world; astral body and ego go on. However, this must strike us: are the etheric bodies of the human beings of normal age going through the gate of death different from those of the young men? As to the physical body one understands this, as to the etheric one will understand it now. The etheric body could still have supplied the physical body for decades, and could have worked on it. It goes with these unused forces through the gate of death, coalesces there with the folk-soul, and the work of the folk-soul will be impregnated in future with the unused forces of these etheric bodies. It is our task to understand that. Human beings will be there who will know: the folk-soul is an active element. Only if one knows that the unused etheric bodies will work as a spiritual force in concrete way in the spiritual world, then one can understand what takes action really. The consciousness of this concrete relationship with the spiritual world will be important. Thereby, namely by creation of such a consciousness of the spiritual world, spiritual science becomes more and more life in the souls and does not only remain doctrine. The human being knows that he is in a spiritual aura as he knows here that the air is in his surroundings. Like he distinguishes clean and dirty air here, he will feel good and bad spirits, experiencing and feeling the spiritual aura.

Only this is the right fruit of spiritual science. We see it if we consider events that are close to us and can teach us. One of them just happened in the place of our construction. In this case it was a child whose etheric body was unused. The forces are there; somebody who beholds them who knows how to behold them sees that they have gone over into the aura of our Dornach construction and live in it. This is an example I am responsible for. The etheric body which belongs with its forces more to the community is really working on. Since that time it tries to do something by means of inspirations nearby the construction. These are supporting forces.

Such matters are obvious to us, we can be taught through them how mysterious the connections are in the spiritual world. Just in the last time we experienced in the karma of our society that dear friends have died off. What I said in the Vienna cycle³ about the life between death and new birth became completely clear just in some of these souls. One of these souls has found so surely the way into our movement when the physical body was already worn-out. Since it was in our movement, it was a being whose soul faced me like through a body that had become bright and transparent as glass. After death the picture of this soul, as it was already before, grew together with that which it presented after. I was not able to help myself to give the obituary which shows that I was so surely together with this soul. The following words made themselves audible for about three days, after death had occurred:

You came to us.
The gentleness of your being
Spoke out of the calm strength of your eyes—
Calmness of your soul
Flowed in the waves
With which your glances
Carried your internal weaving
To things and human beings;—
And the soul penetrated your voice
Which revealed—more through the kind of word
In its eloquent manner—
What was working as a secret
In your lovely soul
Than it was contained in the word;
However, without saying a word
It revealed itself
To the compassionate love of human beings—
This being that told of noble, calm beauty
Of the world-soul's creation
To receptive feeling.

The consciousness is dampened after death, just because a flooding consciousness is there. This happens by the review you have on death first—not in the case of suicide,—as it were a solar point. That belongs to the most beautiful, highest experiences. You resume it there, you say to yourself: there you have lived,—and you orientate yourself that way in the spiritual world.

Our friend was out of the stage of the etheric review, so that I spoke to the present, but not yet conscious being. Then a moment of consciousness occurred as a result of the heat, and she saw the cremation. Time there becomes space.

The events in the physical and spiritual worlds correspond to each other. In such a case, calling does not return like an echo from the spiritual world, but converts itself to an answer, giving the gist, from the not yet conscious soul. By such examples we recognise feeling and feel recognising the spiritual world. The result must be to experience the reality of the spiritual world. It is especially important to get this definite feeling in our time, so that the physical welfare and the mental welfare arise for the whole humankind out of the seriousness of the present. For always the big, significant world events were, also for a superficial knowledge, the clear expression for the fact that there are not only sensory beings, but that the spiritual beings are working into the sensory world.

It is difficult to break through the veil which separates the physical and spiritual worlds. This makes self-knowledge difficult to the greatest possible extent; one imagines that as something too easy. It is sometimes difficult already in the external physical sense. The significant philosopher Ernst Mach⁴—not Ferdinand Maack, otherwise, I would not have spoken of a significant philosopher—gave a grotesque example of it. Mach describes in one of his works that when he was a young man a disagreeable countenance struck him once in a mirror of a shop-window, which he had immediately to recognise as his own to his dismay. He experienced something similar later again. While getting into a bus he saw a man with an ugly face who met him from the other side, and recognised only afterwards that he had seen himself in the mirror. The human being is still even more uncertain about the being or form of the soul. People do not dream of what one has to do to get self-knowledge. In the subsoil of the soul, maya has often large dimensions. A human being has the impulse of cruelty; he lives together with people whom he torments every now and then et cetera. He looks for an external cause for it; he often uses an ingenious gift of invention to veil the structure of his soul. I myself knew somebody who spoke repeatedly how many great sacrifices his activity demanded. But I had to say that it was only a lust of his soul, which he satisfied. When he spoke of sacrifices that way, only egoism stood behind that. Real self-knowledge is only accessible if one advances in spiritual science gradually, in so far as he experiences by himself what is in the world.

There are chatting people in the world who organise chat hours. Apparently, that is even the case when men go to their sundowners. If they are asked, why they chat, people have all kinds of important reasons for that. But if we glide with our hand over velvet or silk, we have a feeling of pleasure. While somebody is chatting, his etheric body knocks perpetually against the air set in motion, and in doing so it is stroked. This is nothing bad. You understand what goes forward with chatting, only if you know that the human being has an etheric body.

Humankind goes towards a time when it must face such matters more and more. Spiritual science must arouse the consciousness for it more and more. Then people who state today in their materialistic mind that everything spiritual is daydreaming will look as if anybody wanted to say where the air is, is nothing at all. Like one discovers that the air is real, humankind will find out that the spirit is something real. If you consider the biggest mystery, Christ's Death and Resurrection, you may believe that Christ, after he has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha, would have worked on humankind particularly by means of teaching. However, what people knew about Christ was the least.

The theologians have quarrelled, but very few understood something right. Only a part of historical events happens in the consciousness. An example of that is the battle between Maxentius and Constantine at the Milvian Bridge on the 28th October 312 A. D., which was decided not by some external circumstances, but by effects of non-physical kind. With an army which was far stronger than that of his adversary Constantine Maxentius had to defend Rome. Questioning the Sibylline Books he got the advice to lead his troops out of Rome and then he would destroy the enemies of Rome that way. He was still encouraged in that by a dream. Also Constantine had a dream that his soldiers should bear banners with the monogram of Christ instead of the old field signs. Thus it happened, and the army of Maxentius, which had been led out of Rome contrary to reason, was defeated by the weaker armed forces of Constantine, and Maxentius himself found his death on the run. The Christ Impulse had here worked in the subconsciousness of the people.

The impulse lives in the subconsciousness, as if ships go on the sea, but the important matters would take place in submarines. An important point in time is again in the 15th century. At that time, the Maid of Orleans intervened in the course of history in such a way that everything that happened later was determined through it. The whole map of Europe would be different, also the spiritual life if the English had won. The Maid was a servant of St. Michael. Schiller was deeply touched by the figure of the Maid of Orleans: “the world likes to blacken the beaming.” Whereas Voltaire vented his rage against her, even Shakespeare could not understand her, Anatole France pressed her down into the materialistic view, all Western people of intellect did not understand her, and Schiller embodied this sublime figure in his drama.

It was necessary that the Maid of Orleans went through a kind of unaware initiation to fulfil her historical mission. It concerned an initiation as it is described to us in the legend of Olaf Åsteson. Such initiations, for which certain karmic conditions were necessary, could take place in the time of the thirteen nights between the 25th December and 6th January. If the external light has the slightest strength, an inner enlightenment is possible. Thus Olaf Åsteson had real spiritual experiences in the sleeping state during thirteen nights, which he then reports before the portal of a church, as it is shown in the Dream Song. Also the Maid of Orleans spent thirteen nights as it were in the sleeping state, namely in the body of her mother. In the last time before birth the human being is especially accessible to unaware influences from the spiritual world. On the 6th January the Maid of Orleans was born. During this day all the inhabitants of her birthplace gathered because something quite unusual was to be felt in the aura of the village. It was the birth of the Maid of Orleans, to whom the Christ Impulse was implanted just before she saw the physical sunlight.

The proper purpose of all our attempts and that what depends on us is to gain a living connection between the physical and spiritual worlds. People will recognise that the time of twilight of this war means a turn of an era. Human beings should know that the souls of those who have sacrificed themselves are working on and that this war has the task to close the materialistic age.

It is necessary that souls are there who send thoughts into the spiritual world like extending arms and bring down the consciousness from the spiritual world, souls conscious of spirit. The more such souls conscious of spirit send their thoughts upwards—a lot depends on the fact that our spiritual atmosphere is penetrated by such thoughts,—the more the fruits which come from the sacrificial deaths can mature. Thus we summarise our consideration in the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit land.

• 1. From Symptom to Reality, third of nine lectures (Berlin, 1918), volume 185 of Steiner's Collected Works (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1976)
• 2. the Indian boy Krishnamurti was propagated as the reincarnated Christ by Annie Besant, the president of the Theosophical Society (Adyar).
• 3. Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth, eight lectures (Vienna, 1914), Steiner's Collected Works volume 153
• 4. Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Austrian physicist and philosopher

We live in grievous, destiny-burdened days. Only few souls wait with full confidence what these destiny-burdened days will bring to us earth people. Above all, the significance of that what expresses itself by the events of these days, does not speak with full strength in the souls. Some human souls attempt to experience the impulses more and more that spiritual science demands to be implanted into the cultural development. They should know being connected with their deepest feeling with that which, on one side, takes place around us so tremendously and, on the other side, so painfully.

Something takes place that is matchless not only according to the way but also according to the degree within the conscious history of human development, that is deeply intervening and drastic in the whole life of the earth's development. One needs to imagine only what it means—and this is the case today with every human being of the European and also of many parts of the other earth population—to be in the centre of the course of such significant events. We have to feel that this is just a time which is not only suitable but also demands that the soul frees itself from merely living within the own self, and should attempt to experience the common fate of humankind. The human being can learn a lot in our present if he knows how to combine in the right way with the stream of the events. He frees himself from a lot of pettiness and egoism if he is able to do this. Such great events take place that almost anybody caring for himself ignores the destinies of the other human beings.

In particular the population of Central Europe—which immense questions has it to put to itself about matters that it can learn basically only now! The human being of Central Europe can perceive how he is misunderstood, actually, how he is hated. And these misunderstandings, this hatred did not only erupt since the outbreak of the war, they have become perceptible since the outbreak of the war. Hence, the outbreak of the war and the course of the war can be even as it were that what draws attention of the Central European souls to that how they must feel isolated in a certain way more or less compared with the feeling of those people who stand on all sides around this Central European population really not with understanding emotions. If anybody could arouse deeper interests in the big events of life in the souls dedicating themselves to spiritual science—this would be so desirable, especially now—events that lead the soul from the ken of its ego to the large horizon of humankind! Then one were able to deepen the look, the whole attitude of the souls who recognise the encompassing forces, because they have taken up spiritual science in themselves, and release them from the interest in the narrow forces that deal only with the individual human being! If one hears the world talking today, in particular the world which is around us Central Europeans, if one reads which peculiar things there are written about the impulses which should have led to this war, then one has the feeling that humankind has lost the obligation to judge from larger viewpoints in our materialistic time, has lost so much that you may have the impression, as if people had generally learnt nothing, but for them history only began on the 25th July, 1914.¹

It is as if people know nothing about that what has taken place in the interplay of forces of the earth population and what has led from this interplay of forces to the grievous involvements which caught fire from the flame of war, finally, and flared up. One talks hardly of the fact that one calls the encirclement by the previous English king who united the European powers round Central Europe, so that from this union of human forces around us, finally, nothing else could originate than that what has happened. One does not want to go further back as some years, at most decades and make conceptions how this has come what is now so destiny-burdened and painful around us.

But the matters lie still much deeper. If one speaks of encirclement, one must say: what has taken place in the encirclement of the Central European powers in the last time, that is the last stage, the last step of an encirclement of Central Europe, which began long, long ago, in the year 860 A. D. At that time, when those human beings drove from the north of Europe who stood as Normans before Paris, a part of the strength, which should work in Europe, drove in the west of Europe into the Romance current which had flooded the west of Europe from the south. We have a current of human forces which pours forth from Rome via Italy and Sicily over Spain and through present-day France. The Norman population, which drives down from the north and stands before Paris in 860, was flooded and wrapped up by that which had come as a Romance current of olden times. That what is powerful in this current is due to the fact that the Norman population was wrapped up in it. What has originated, however, as something strange to the Central European culture in the West, is due to the Romance current. This Romance current did not stop in present-day France, but it proved to be powerful enough because of its dogmatically rationalistic kind, its tendency to the materialistic way of thinking to flood not only France but also the Anglo-Saxon countries. This happened when the Normans conquered Britain and brought with them that what they had taken up from the Romance current. Also the Romance element is in the British element which thereby faces the Central European being, actually, without understanding. The Norman element penetrated by the Romance element continued its train via the Greek coasts down to Constantinople. So that we see a current of Norman-Romance culture driving down from the European north to the west, encircling Central Europe like in a snake-form, stretching its tentacles as it were to Constantinople.

We see the other train going down from the north to the east and penetrating the Slavic element. The first Norman trains were called “Ros” by the Finnish population which was widely propagated at that time in present-day Russia. “Ros” is the origin of this name. We see these northern people getting in the Slavic element, getting to Kiev and Constantinople at the same time. The circle is closed! On one side, the Norman forces drive down from the north to the west, becoming Romance, on the other side, to the east, becoming Slavic, and they meet from the east and from the west in Constantinople. In Central Europe that is enclosed like in a cultural basin what remained of the original Teutonic element, fertilised by the old Celtic element, which is working then in the most different nuances in the population, as German, as Dutch, as Scandinavian populations. Thus we recognise how old this encirclement is.

Now in this Central Europe an intimate culture prepares itself, a culture which was never able to run like the culture had to run in the West or the culture in the East, but which had to run quite differently. If we compare the cultural development in Central Europe with that of the West, so we must say, in the West a culture developed—and this can be seen from the smallest and from the biggest feature of this culture—whose basic character is to be pursued from the British islands over France, Spain, to Sicily, to Italy and to Constantinople. There certain dogmatism developed as a characteristic of the culture, rationalism, a longing for dressing everything one gets in knowledge in plain rationalistic formulae. There developed a desire to see things as reason and sensuousness must see them. There developed the desire to simplify everything. Let us take a case which is obvious to us as supporters of spiritual science namely the arrangement of our human soul in three members: sentient soul, intellectual soul or mind-soul, and consciousness-soul. The human soul can be understood in reality only if one knows that it consists of these three members. Just as little as the light can be understood without recognising the colour nuances in their origin from the light, and without knowing that it is made up of the different colour nuances which we see in the rainbow, on one side the red yellow rays, on the other side the blue, green, violet ones, and if one cannot study the light as a physicist. Just as little somebody can study the human soul what is infinitely more important. For everybody should be a human being and everybody should know the soul. He, who does not feel in his soul that this soul lives in three members: sentient soul, intellectual soul or mind-soul, consciousness-soul, throws everything in the soul in a mess. We see the modern university psychologists getting everything of the soul in a mess, as well as somebody gets the colour nuances of the light simply in a mess. And they imagine themselves particularly learnt in their immense arrogance, in their scientific arrogance throwing everything together in the soul-life, while one can only really recognise the soul if one is able to know this threefolding of the soul actually.

The sentient soul also is at first that what realises, as it were, the desires, the more feeling impulses, more that in the current earth existence what we can call the more sensuous aspect of the human being. Nevertheless, this sentient soul contains the eternal driving forces of the human nature in its deeper parts at the same time. These forces go through birth and death. The intellectual soul or mind-soul contains half the temporal and half the eternal. The consciousness-soul, as it is now, directs the human being preferably to the temporal. Hence, it is clear that the nation, who develops its folk-soul by means of the consciousness-soul, the British people, after a very nice remark of Goethe, has nothing of that what is meditative reflection, but it is directed to the practical, to the external competition. Perhaps, it is not bad at all to remember such matters, because those who have taken part in the German cultural life were not blind for them, but they expressed themselves always very clearly about that. Thus Goethe said to Eckermann²—it is long ago, but you can see that great Germans have seen the matters always in the true light—when once the conversation turned to the philosophers Hegel, Fichte, Kant and some others: yes, yes, while the Germans struggle to solve the deepest philosophical problems, the English are directed mainly to the practical aspects and only to them. They lack any sense of reflection. And even if they—so said Goethe—make declamations about morality mainly consisting of the liberation of slaves, one has to ask: which is “the real object?”—At another occasion, Goethe wrote³ that a remark of Walter Scott expresses more than many books. For even Walter Scott admitted once that it was more important than the liberation of nations, even if the English had taken part in the battles against Napoleon, “to see a British object before themselves.” A German philologist succeeded—and what does the diligence of German philologists not manage—in finding the passage in nine thick volumes of Napoleon's biography by Walter Scott to which Goethe has alluded at that time. Indeed, there you find, admitted by Walter Scott, that the Britons took part in the battles against Napoleon, however, they desired to attain a British advantage. He himself expresses it “to secure the British object.”—It is a remark of the Englishman himself, one only had to search for it. These matters are interesting to extend your ken somewhat today.

You have to know, I said, that the human soul consists of these three members, properly speaking that the human self works by these three soul nuances like the light by the different colour nuances, mainly in the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms. Then one will find out that the human being, while he has these three soul nuances, can and must assign each of these soul nuances to a great ideal in the course of human progress. Each of these ideals corresponds to a soul nuance not to the whole soul. Only if people can be induced by spiritual science to assign the corresponding ideals to the single soul members, will the real ideal of human welfare and of the harmonious living together of human beings on earth come into being.

Because the human being has to aim at another ideal for his sentient soul, for that which he realises as it were in the physical plane, at another soul ideal for that what he realises in the intellectual soul or mind-soul, and again another ideal in his consciousness-soul. He improves a soul member through one of these ideals; the other soul members are improved through the others. If one develops the soul member in particular through brotherliness of the human beings on earth, one has to develop the other one through freedom, the third through equality. Each of these three ideals refers to a soul member. In the west of Europe everything got muddled, and it was simplified by the rationalists, by that rationalism, which wants to have everything in plain formulae, in plain dogmas, which wants to have everything clearly to mind. The whole human soul was taken by this dogmatism simply as one, and one spoke of liberty, fraternity, equality. We see that there is a fundamental attitude of rationalising civilisation in the West. We could verify that in details. For example, just highly educated French can mock that I used five-footed iambi in my mystery dramas⁴ but no rhymes. The French mind cannot understand that the internal driving force of the language does not need the rhyme at this level. The French mind strives for systematisation, for that what forms an external framework, and it says: one cannot make verses without rhyme.

However, this also applies to the exterior life, to everything. In the West, one wants to arrange, to systematise, and to nicely tin everything. Think only what a dreadful matter it was, when in the beginning of our spiritual-scientific striving many of our friends were still influenced by the English theosophical direction. In every branch you could find all possible systems written down on maps, boards et cetera, on top, nicely arranged: atma, buddhi, manas, then all possible matters in detail which one systematises and tins that way. Imagine how one has bent under the yoke of this dogmatism and how difficult it was to set the methods of internal development to their place, which we must have in Central Europe, that one thing ensues from the other, that concepts advance in the internal experience. One does not need systematising, these mnemonic aids which wrap up everything in certain formulae. Which hard work was it to show that one matter merges into another, that you have to arrange matters sequentially and lively. I could expand this account to all branches of life; however, we would have to stay together for days.

We find that in the West as one part of the current which encircled Central Europe. If we go to the East, then we must say: there we deal with a longing which just presents the opposite, with the longing to let disappear everything still in a fog of lacks of clarity in a primitive, elementary mysticism, in something that does not stand to express itself directly in clear ideas and clear words. We really have two snakes—the symbol is absolutely appropriate,—one of them extends from the north to southeast, the other from the north to southwest, and both meet in Constantinople. In the centre that is enclosed what we can call the intimate Central European spiritual current, where the head can never be separated from the heart, thinking from feeling, if it appears in its original quality.

One does not completely notice that in our spiritual science even today, because one has to strive, even if not for a conceptual system, but for concepts of development. One does not yet notice that everything that is aimed at is not only a beholding with the head. However, the heart and the whole soul is combined with everything, always the heart is flowed through, while the head, for example, describes the transitions from Saturn to the Sun, from the Sun to the Moon, from the Moon to the earth et cetera. Everywhere the heart takes part in the portrayal; and one can be touched there in the deepest that one ascends with all heart-feeling to the top heights and dives in the deepest depths and can ascend again. One does not notice this even today that that what is described only apparently in concepts one has to put one's heart and soul in it at the same time if it should correspond to the Central European cultural life. This intimate element of the Central European culture is capable of the spiritual not without ideal, not to think the ideal any more without the spiritual. Recognising the spirit and combining it intimately with the soul characterises the Central European being most intensely. Hence, this Central European being can use that what descends to the deepest depths of the sensory view and the sensory sensation to become the symbol for the loftiest. It is deeply typical that Goethe, after he had let go through his mind the life of the typical human being, the life of Faust, closed his poem with the words:

Alles Vergängliche
All that is transitory

Ist nur ein Gleichnis
Is only a symbol;

and the last words are:

Das Ewig-Weibliche
The eternal feminine draws

Zieht uns hinan
Us up to higher levels.

A cosmic mystery is expressed through a sensory picture, and just in this sensory picture the intimate character of the Central European culture expresses itself. We find this wonderfully intimate character, for example, so nicely expressed and at the same time rising spiritually to the loftiest just with Novalis. If you look for translations of this last sentence: “Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan,” in particular the French translations, then you will see what has become of this sentence. Some French did explain it not so nicely, but they do not count if it concerns the understanding of Faust.

The Central European being aims at the intimacy of spiritual life most eminently, and this is that what is enclosed by the Midgard Snake in the East and the West. So far we have to go to combine completely in our feeling with that what happens, actually. Then we gain objectivity just from this Central European being to stand in front of the present great events with the really supranational human impulses, and not to judge out of the same impulses which are applied by the East and the West. Then we understand why the Central European population is misunderstood that way, is hated by those who surround them. Of course, we have to look at the mission of Central Europe for the whole humankind with all humility. We are not allowed to be arrogant, but we must also protect the free look for what is to be done in Central Europe.

The Central European population has always gone through the rejuvenating force of its folk-soul. It arrived at the summit in the ideals of Lessing, Schelling, Hegel, and Grimm. However, everything that already lived there lived more in a striving for idealism. Now this must gain more life, more concrete life. The profound ideas of German idealism have to get contents from spirituality, by which they are raised only from mere ideas to living beings of the spiritual world. Then we can familiarise ourselves in this spiritual world. The significance of the Central European task has now to inspire German hearts, and also the consciousness of what is to be defended in all directions, to the sides where the Midgard Snake firmly closes the circle. It is our task in particular because we are on the ground of spiritual science to look at the present events in such a higher sense. We cannot take the most internal impulse of our spiritual science seriously enough if we do not familiarise ourselves with such an impersonal view of the spiritual-scientific striving if we do not feel how this spiritual-scientific striving is connected in every individual human being with the whole Central European striving as it must be united with the whole substantiality of this Central European striving. We have to realise that something of what we have in mind exists only in the germ, however, that the Central European culture has the vocation to let unfold the germs to blossoms and fruits.

I give you an example. When the human being tries to further himself by means of meditation and concentration, by the intimate work on the development of his soul, then all soul forces take on another form than they have in the everyday life. Then the soul forces become as it were something different. If the human being works really busily on his development, by concentration of thought and other exercises as I described them in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, the human being begins to understand vividly, I would like to say to grasp vividly that he does no longer think at the moment, when he approaches the real spiritual world, as he has to think in the everyday life. In the everyday life, you think that the thoughts start living in you. If you face the sensory world, you know: that is me, and I have the thoughts. You connect one thought with the other and you thereby make a judgment, you combine the thoughts and let them separate. In my writing which is entitled The Threshold of the Spiritual World, I have compared somebody developing thoughts to one putting his head into a world of living beings.

The thoughts start internally prickling and creeping, they become, if I may say so, living beings, and we are no longer those who connect one thought to the other. One thought goes to the other, and frees itself from the other, the life of thoughts starts coming to life. Only when the thoughts start as it were becoming shells and containers which contract in a small room and extend then again largely, bag-like, then the beings of the higher hierarchies are able to slip into our thoughts, then only! So our own way of life, the whole thinking changes when we settle in the spiritual world. Then you start perceiving that on the other planets other beings live not human beings like on the earth. These other beings of the other planets, they penetrate as it were our living thinking, and we do no longer think about the beings of the other worlds and world spheres, but they live in us, they live combined with our selves. Thinking has become a different soul-force; it has developed from the point on which it stood to another soul-force, to that force which surpasses us and becomes identical with that world, the spiritual world.

Here we have an example of that what humankind has to conceive if it should develop the condition in which it now lives to a higher one for the earth future. This must really become common knowledge that such thinking is possible, and that only by such a thinking the human being can get to know the spiritual world. Not every human being has to become a spiritual researcher, just as little as everybody needs to become a chemist who wants to understand the achievements of chemistry. However, even if there can be few spiritual researchers, everybody can see the truth of that using unbiased thinking and understand what the spiritual researcher says. But it must become clear that there are unnoticed soul forces in the human being during life which when the human being goes through the gate of death become the same forces as an initiate has. When the human being goes through the gate of death, thinking becomes another soul-force: it intervenes in the being. It is as if antennas were perpetually put out, and the human being experiences the higher worlds which are in these antennas.

There was a witty man setting the tone in the 19th century, who contributed to the foundation of the materialistic world view: Ludwig Feuerbach.⁵ He wrote a book Thoughts on Death and Immortality, and it is interesting to read the following in a passage of this book. Feuerbach says there for instance: the summit human being is able to reach is his thoughts. He cannot develop higher soul forces than thinking. If he could develop higher soul forces than thinking, some effects and actions of the inhabitants of the star worlds would be able to penetrate his head instead of thoughts.—This seems so absurd to Ludwig Feuerbach that he regards everybody as mentally ill who speaks of such a thing at all. Imagine how interesting this is that a person—who just becomes a materialist because he rejects higher soul forces—gets on that the soul-force is that which represents the higher development of thinking. He even describes it, but he has such a dreadful fear of this development that just because it would have to be that way, as he suspects, he declares this soul-force a matter of impossibility, a fantasy.

The spiritual development in the 19th century comes so near to that what must be aimed at, but it is so far away at the same time because it is pushed, as it were, from the inside to that what should be aimed at, but cannot penetrate the depths, because it must regard it as absurd, because it is afraid of it really, fears it quite terrifically. As soon as it only touches what should come there, it is afraid. The Central European cultural life has to come back to itself, then we will attain that this Central European cultural life just develops and overcomes this fear. That has become too strong what wants to suppress this Central European spiritual light.

Some examples may also be mentioned. Hegel, the German philosopher, raised his voice in vain against the overestimation of Newton. If you today hear any physicist speaking—you can read up that what I say in many popular works,—then you will hear: Newton set the tone in the doctrine of gravitation, a doctrine through which the universe has only become explicable.—Hegel said: what has Newton done then, actually?—He dressed that in mathematical formulae what Kepler, the German astronomer, had expressed. Because nothing is included in Newton's works what Kepler did not already say. Kepler worked out of that view with which the whole soul works not only the head. However, Newton brought the whole in a system and thereby all kinds of mistakes came into being, for example, the doctrine of a remote effect of the sun which is not useful for the judgment of planetary motion. With Newton it is real that way, as if the sun had physical arms, and stretches these arms and attracts the planets.—However, the German philosopher warned in vain that the Central European culture would be flooded by the British culture in this field.

Another example: Goethe founded a theory of colours which originated completely from the Central European thinking and which you only understand if you recognise the connections of the physical with the spiritual a little bit. The world did not accept the Goethean theory of colours, but the Newtonian theory of colours.—Goethe founded a teaching of evolution. The world did not understand it, but it only accepted what Darwinism gave as a theory of evolution, as a theory of development in a popular-materialistic way. You may say: the Central European human being who is encircled by the Midgard Snake has to call in mind his forces. It concerns not to bend under that what rationalism and empiricism brought in.

You see the gigantic task; you see the significance of the ideal. One does not notice that at all because it still passes, I would like to say, in the current of phenomena if one asserts the Central European being. I do not know how many people noticed the following. When for reasons which were also mentioned yesterday in the public lecture⁶ our spiritual-scientific movement had to free itself from the specifically British direction of the Theosophical Society and when long ago as it were that happened beforehand in the spiritual realm what takes place now during the war—and preceded for good reasons,—I have discussed and explained the whole matter in those days on symptoms. There are brainless people who want to judge about what our spiritual-scientific movement is and have often said: well, also this Central European spiritual-scientific movement has gone out from that which it has got from the British theosophical movement.

I say the following not because of personal reasons, but because it characterises the situation, the whole nerve of the matter in a symptom, I would like to remind you of the fact that I held talks in Berlin which were printed then in my writing Mysticism at the Dawn of the Modern Spiritual Life, before I had any external interrelation with the British theosophical movement. In this writing nobody will find anything of western influence, but there everything is developed purely out of the Central European cultural life, from the spiritual, mystic movement of Master Eckhart up to Angelus Silesius. When I came to London the first time, I met one of the pundits of the theosophical society in those days, Mr. Mead.⁷ He had read the book which was immediately translated in many chapters into the English, and said that the whole theosophy would be contained in this book.—So far as people admitted that they could go along with us, so far we could unite with the whole object, of course; but nothing else was done.

What matters is that we reflect on our tasks of the Central European spiritual culture and that we never deviate from them. The one or the other sent the medals, certificates and the like back to the English. That is, nevertheless, less important. The important thing will be first to send back Newtonianism, the English coloured Darwinism, that means to release the Central European cultural life from it. Something is to be learnt from the way how—free of other influence—the Central European cultural life has made itself noticeable just as spiritual science. But you have to call to mind the essential part once and to stand firmly on this ground. It is very peculiar how mysteriously matters work.

Imagine the following case: Ernst Haeckel has taken care basically through his whole life to direct the German world view to the British thinking. The British thinking, the British empiricism flows into Ernst Haeckel's writings completely. He now rails against England the most. These are processes which take place in the subconscious of the soul of the Central European; these are also matters which are tightly connected in such a soul with karma. Consider please what it means that Haeckel places himself before the world and says, he himself has accomplished the first great action of the great researcher Huxley, while he stamped the sentence of the similarity of the human bone and the animal bone; that he, Haeckel, then has pointed to the big change in the view of the origin of the human being, and that he accepted nothing in the evolution theory but what came from the West.—Then one sees that he is urged now to rail against that what has constituted his whole intellectual life. It is the most tragic event of the present for such a soul which can be only thought. It is spiritual dynamite, because it bursts, actually, all supporting pillars on which such a soul stands.

Thus you can, actually, look into the depths of the present dreadful events. Only if you really consider the matters that way, are you able to consider them beyond a narrow horizon under which they are often considered today. You will be able to learn a lot—and this will be the nicest, at the same time the most humiliating and the loftiest teaching. For this teaching the prevailing active world spirit determined the Central European human being who is now embraced by the Midgard Snake, enclosed like in a fortress, surrounded by enemies everywhere. If the events become a symbol of the deepest world weaving and world being, then only we release ourselves from a selfish view of the present grievous, destiny-burdened events. Then we feel only that we must make ourselves worthy of that what, for instance, Fichte also spoke about in a time in which Germany experienced destiny-burdened days in his Addresses to the German Nation. There he wanted to speak, as he expresses it himself, “for Germans par excellence, of Germans par excellence,” and he spoke like one had to speak of the German par excellence to the German par excellence in those days. But like in those days Fichte spoke of the German mission, of the German range of tasks, we have today to experience the seriousness as the sunrise of the Central European consciousness within the containment by hating enemies. Indeed, a word which is found at the end of Fichte's addresses may be transformed: the spiritual world view must flow into the souls for the sake of humankind's welfare. The world spirit is looking at those who live in Central Europe that they become a mouthpiece for that what he has to say and bring to humankind in continuous revelation.

Without arrogance, without national egoism one can look at that which the sons of Germany and Central Europe have to defend with body, blood and soul generally. However, one has also to realise that. Then only from the immense sacrifices, which must be brought from the sufferings, must that result what serves the welfare of humankind. We stand at a significant threshold. One may characterise this threshold in the human development that one says: in future the abyss must be bridged between the physical and the spiritual worlds, between the physically living and the spiritually living human beings, between the earthly and that what lies beyond the earthly death. A time must come to us as it were when not only the souls are alive to us which walk about in physical bodies, but when we feel being integrated to that bigger world to which also the souls belong living between death and new birth disembodied in our world. The view of the human being has to turn beyond that which sensory-physical eyes are only able to see. Indeed, we are standing at the threshold of this new experience, of this new consciousness. What I said to you of the widening of the consciousness, of the ascending development of the consciousness, this must become a familiar view. The Central European culture prepares itself to make this a familiar view; it really prepares itself for that.

I have shown you how the best heads of the 19th century are afraid even today to get into their consciousness what the soul has in its depths; only its earthly soul forces cannot yet turn the attention to it. That thinking exists, into which the supersensible forces and supersensible beings extend, and this thinking also opens straight away after the human being has gone through the gate of death. The materialists are afraid of admitting that the human consciousness can be extended that really the barrier between the physical and the spiritual experience can fall, between that what lies on this side of death and beyond death. Because they are afraid, they reject it as something fantastic, dream-like, nay as mentally ill. However, one will recognise that the human being when he has gone through the gate of death develops only the forces which he also has now already between birth and death. Only they work in such depths that he does not behold them. They cause processes in him which are done, indeed, in him, but escape his attention in the everyday life. With the forces of thinking, feeling and willing, about which the human being knows, he cannot master the physical-earthly life. If the human being could only think, feel and will, as well as now he is able to do it, he would be never able to develop his body, for example, plastically that the brain matched its dispositions. Formative forces had to intervene there. However, they already belong to that what the soul does no longer perceive in the physical experience what belongs to a more encompassing consciousness than to the segment of consciousness which we have in the everyday life.

When the human being goes through the gate of death, he has not a lack of consciousness, but then he lives at first in a consciousness which is much richer and fuller of contents than the consciousness here in the physical life. Because from a more encompassing consciousness the body cuts out a piece and shows everything that can be shown only in a mirror. However, what is in the body and the human being bears through the gate of death that has an encompassing consciousness in itself. When the human being has gone through the gate of death, he is in this encompassing consciousness. He then does not have not enough, but on the contrary too much, too rich a consciousness. About that I have spoken in my Vienna cycle⁸ at Easter 1914. The human being has a richer consciousness after death. When the often described retrospect, caused by the etheric body, is over, he enters into a kind of sleeping state for a while. However, this is not a real sleeping state, but a state which is caused by the fact that the human being is in a richer consciousness than here on earth. As our eyes are blinded by overabundant light, the human being is blinded by the superabundance of consciousness, and he only must learn to orientate himself. The apparent sleep only consists in the fact that the human being orientates himself in this superabundance of consciousness that he then is able to lessen the superabundance of consciousness to that level he can already endure according to the results of his life. This is the essential part. We do not have not enough, but too much a consciousness, and we are awake when we have lessened our sense of direction to the level we can endure. It is reducing the superabundance of consciousness to the endurable level what takes place after death. You must get such matters clear in your mind by the details of the Vienna cycle.⁹

I want to illustrate that today only with the help of two obvious examples. I could state many such examples, because many of our friends have gone through the gate of death recently and also before. But as a result of characteristic circumstances, just by the fact that it concerns the last deaths, these considerations are more obvious. I would like to take the starting point from such examples to speak to you of that which makes our hearts bleed because it has happened in our own middle out of the circle of our spiritual-scientific movement.

Recently we have lost a dear friend (Sibyl Colazza) from the physical plane, and it was my task to speak words for the deceased at the cremation. There it turned out to me automatically by the impulses of the spiritual world, in such a case speaking clearly enough, as a necessity to characterise the qualities of this friendly soul. We stood—it was in Zurich—before the cremation of a dear member of our spiritual-scientific movement. Because her death occurred on a Wednesday evening and the cremation took place in the early Monday morning, it is comprehensible that the retrospect of the etheric body had already stopped. Actually, without having wanted it, I was induced by the spiritual world to begin and close the obituary with words which should characterise the internal being of this soul. This internal being of the friend deceased in the middle of life was real that I had to delve in this being and to create it spiritually by identification with this being. That means to let the thinking dive in the soul of the dead and that what wove in the soul of the dead let flow into the own thoughts. Then I got the possibility to say as it were in view of this soul how the soul was in life and how it is still now after death. It has turned out by itself to dress that in the following words. I had to say the subsequent words at the beginning and at the end of the cremation:

You walked among us.
Your being's gentle spirit
Spoke through the quiet power of your eyes—
Ensouled, alive, peace
Flowed in waves,
With your glance
To things and people
Bearing your inner weaving;
And your voice ensouled this being—
Your voice that eloquently,
More in the kind of words
Than in the words themselves,
Revealed what worked hidden
Within your beautiful soul;
Yet your sacrificial love
Unveiled itself completely
To sympathetic people without words—
This being, who, from noble, quiet beauty,
Heralded the sensitive awareness
Of worlds-and-souls creation.

The being of this soul appeared to me that way during the days before the cremation, when I identified myself with it, after the retrospect of the etheric body was over. The soul was not yet able to orientate itself in the superabundance of consciousness. It was sleeping as it were when the body was about to be cremated. The above-mentioned words were spoken in the beginning and at the end of the cremation. Then it happened that the flame—that what looks like the flame, but it is not—grasped the body, and while the body was grasped from that what looks like the flame what is, however, only the ascending warmth and heat, the soul became awake for a moment. Now I could notice that the soul looked back at the whole scene which had taken place among the human beings who were at the cremation. And the soul looked particularly back at that what had been spoken, then again it sank back into the superabundance of consciousness, you may say: in the unconsciousness. A moment later, one could perceive when such a looking back was there again. Then such moments last longer and longer, until finally the soul can orientate itself entirely in the superabundance of consciousness.

But one can recognise something significant from that. I could notice that the words spoken at the cremation lighted up the retrospect, because the words have come from the soul itself which had something awakening in them. From that you can learn that it is most important after death to overlook your own experience. You have to begin as it were with self-knowledge after death. Here in the life on earth you can miss self-knowledge, you can miss it so thoroughly that is true what a not average person, also a not average man of letters, but a famous professor of philosophy, Dr. Ernst Mach¹⁰—not Ferdinand Maack, I would not mention him—admits in his Contributions to the Analysis of Sensations, a very famous work: as a young man I crossed a street and saw a person suddenly in a mirror who met me. I thought: what an unpleasant, disgusting face. I was surprised when I discovered that I had seen my own face in the profile.—He had seen his own face which he knew so little that he could make this judgment. The same professor tells how it has happened to him later when he was already a famous professor of philosophy that he got in a bus after a long trip, surely exhausted, there a man also got in from the other side—there was a big mirror opposite,—and he confesses his thoughts quite sincerely, while he says that he thought: what a disagreeable and down-and-out schoolmaster gets in there?—Again he recognised himself, and he adds: so I recognised the type better than the individual.—This is a nice example of how little the human being already knows himself by his external figure in life if he is not a flirtatious lady who often looks in the mirror.—But much less the human being knows the qualities of his soul. He passes those even more. He can become a famous philosopher of the present without self-knowledge. But the human being needs this self-knowledge when he has passed through the gate of death.

The human being must look back just at the point of his development from which he has gone through death, and he must recognise himself there. As little the human being, who stands in the physical life and looks back with the usual forces of life is able to see his own birth, as little this stands before the usual soul-forces—there is no one which can look back with the usual soul-forces at the physical birth,—in the same way it is necessary that the moment of death is permanently there at which one looks back. Death stands always before the soul's eyes as the last significant event. This death, seen from the other side, seen from beyond, is something different than that from the physical side. It is the most beautiful experience which can be seen from the other side, from the side of the life between death and new birth. Death appears as the glorious picture of the everlasting victory of the spiritual over the physical. Because death appears as such a picture, it wakes up the highest forces of the human nature permanently when this human nature lives in the spirituality between death and new birth. That is why the soul looking back or striving for looking back must look at itself at first. Just in these cases which we have gone through recently it was clear in which way the impulse originated to characterise this soul. The so-called living human being works together with the so-called dead that way. More and more such a relation will come from the so-called living to the so-called dead.

We experienced another case in the last time, that of our dear friend Fritz Mitscher. Even if Fritz Mitscher is less known to the local friends, nevertheless, he worked by his talks among many other anthroposophists, by that what he performed wonderfully from friend to friend by the way he familiarised himself with the anthroposophical life. His character has just to be regarded as exemplary, because he whose soul forces were directed to go through a learnt education was keen to take up and collect everything in himself according to his disposition of scholarship, to embrace it intimately in his soul-life, to insert it then in his spiritual-scientific world view. We need this kind of work, in particular, while we want to carry the spiritual-scientific ideals into future in a beneficial way. We need human beings, who try to penetrate the education of our time with understanding to immerse it in the stream of spiritual education; who offer that as it were as a sacrifice. Also there—and I speak only of matters that resulted from karma with necessity—karma caused that I had to speak at the cremation. Out of internal necessity it turned out that I had to characterise the being of our dear friend again in the beginning and at the end of the funeral speech. I had to characterise this being:

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.

You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant

You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to you life' s true value.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.

Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Un-lost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.

In the following night the soul which was not yet able to orientate itself returned of own accord something like an answer what is connected with the verses, which were directed to its being at the cremation. Such words like those are spoken that the own soul writes them down really without being able to add a lot. The words are written down while the soul oriented itself to the other soul, out of the other soul. It was unclear to me at all that two stanzas are built in a quite particular way, until I heard the words from the friend's soul who had gone through the gate of death:

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within me
Was my life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.

I could only know now, why these stanzas are built that way; I spoke them exactly the same:

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

However, any “you” came back as “I,” any “your” came back as “my;” thus they returned transformed, expressed by the soul about its own being.

This is an example in which way the correspondence takes place, in which way the mutual relation already exists between the world here and the world there in the time after death. It is connected with the meaning of our spiritual-scientific movement that this consciousness penetrates the human souls. Spiritual science will give humankind the consciousness that the world of those who live between death and a new birth also becomes a world in which we know ourselves connected with them. Thus the world extends from the narrow area of reality in which the human being lives provisionally. However, this is connected intimately with that what should be in Central Europe. Somebody who has well listened finds just in the words directed to Fritz Mitscher's soul what is deeply connected with this meaning of our spiritual-scientific movement, because the words are spoken from a deep internal necessity:

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

Sometimes one may doubt, even if not in reality but concerning the interim period, whether the souls, which are embodied in the flesh here on earth, do really enough for the welfare of humans and earth what must necessarily be made concerning the spiritual comprehension of the world. However, somebody who is engaged completely in the spiritual-scientific movement may also not despair. For he knows that the forces of those who ascended into the spiritual worlds are effective in the current, in which we stand in this incarnation. In their previous lives those souls felt stronger here because they had taken up spiritual science in themselves. It is as if one communicates with a friend's soul who has gone through the gate of death if one says to him what one owes to the friend's force for the spiritual movement, if one is able to communicate as it were with the soul to remain united with its forces. We have it always among us, so that it always works on among us. We take up not only ideas, concepts and mental pictures in our spiritual science, that does not only concern, but we create a spiritual movement here on earth to which we really bring in the spiritual forces.

It suggests itself to us just at this moment, out of the sensations which perhaps inspire our local friends to turn the thoughts to the soul of somebody who has always dedicated his forces to this branch. We want to feel united also with him and his forces, after he has gone through the gate of death; therefore, we get up from our seats. The Leipzig friends know of which friendly soul I am speaking, and they have certainly turned their thoughts to this soul with moved hearts.

It was my responsibility to bring these ideas home to you today, while we were allowed to be together. These words were inspired through the consciousness that the grievous and destiny-burdened days in which we live must be replaced again with such which will pass in peace on earth in which the forces of peace will work. But a lot will be transformed, nay, must absolutely be transformed by that what happens now in the earthly life of humankind. We who bear witness to spiritual science must particularly keep in mind how much it depends on the fact that must take place on the ground—for which so much blood flows for which so often now souls go through the gate of death on which so many fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, sons and daughters are mourning—what can be done by those whose souls can be illumined through the forward-looking thoughts of spiritual science.

Those thoughts which come from the consciousness of the living relationship of the human soul with the spiritual world have to ascend from the earth into the spiritual heights. Souls now enter these spiritual worlds, and there will be spiritual forces which are produced just by our destiny-burdened days. Imagine how many people go through the gate of death in the prime of their lives in this time. Imagine that the etheric bodies of these human beings who go between their twentieth and thirtieth years, between their thirtieth and fortieth years through the gate of death are etheric bodies which could have supplied the bodies still for decades here in the physical life. These etheric bodies are separated from the physical bodies; however, they keep the forces still in themselves to work here for the physical world. These forces keep on existing in the spiritual worlds, separated from the unused etheric bodies of the souls which went through the gate of death. The bright spirituality of the unspent etheric bodies of the heroic fighters turns to the spiritual welfare and progress of humankind. However, that what flows down there has to meet the thoughts coming from the souls which—aware of spirit—they can have by spiritual science. Hence, we are allowed to summarise the thoughts of which we made ourselves aware today in some words showing the interrelation of the consciousness based on spiritual-scientific ideas with the present events. They express how for the next peacetime the room has to be filled with thoughts which have ascended from souls to the spiritual worlds, from souls which experienced spiritual science. Then that can flourish and yield fruit in the right sense what is gained with so big sacrifices, with blood and death in our time, if souls are found, aware of spirit, which turn their senses to the realm of spirits. That is why we are allowed to say taking into account the grievous and destiny-burdened days today:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. Serbia refuses the ultimatum of Austria-Hungary
• 2. conversation with Eckermann, 1st September 1829
• 3. letter to Zelter, 20th February 1828
• 4. cf. the lecture On the Mystery Dramas “The Portal of Initiation” and “The Soul's Probation” 19th December 1911, Steiner's Collected Works volume 127
• 5. Ludwig Feuerbach (1804–1872): the censorship confiscated his writing Thoughts on Death and Immortality (Nuremberg, 1830)
• 6. The Bearing Force of the German Spirit. Lecture of the same title in Berlin, 25th February 1915, in Steiner's Collected Works volume 185
• 7. George M. S. Mead: last private secretary of H. P. Blavatsky. He left the Theosophical Society later.
• 8. Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth, eight lectures (Vienna, 1914), Steiner's Collected Works volume 153
• 9. Inner Nature of Man and Life Between Death and Rebirth, eight lectures (Vienna, 1914), Steiner's Collected Works volume 153
• 10. Ernst Mach (1838–1916), Austrian physicist and philosopher

If spiritual science shall be a kind of life-force for our souls, and it can be that, this spiritual science must also prove itself powerful and suitable to extend the spiritual ken of the souls dedicating themselves to spiritual science in such times like ours in which a lot prepares which is so significant. One sees the events thereby in a wider perspective than other contemporaries often can do with their narrow view of materialism. One could see in that what our spiritual-scientific movement has nurtured during the years that one of the purposes has also consisted in extending the mood of soul, so that the human being frees himself from the bare thinking about his narrow self and about that what surrounds this narrow self and is really able to look at the big impulses, the big manifestations of forces which go through the whole evolution of humanity. If we have tried that way to extend the vigour of our feelings and sensations as it were, we also have to make the forces suitable which we have won by spiritual science, just in such times, on the one hand, the waves of which break so deeply painfully against the soul and, on the other hand, raise this soul to particular height because they bear such important matters in themselves. We must be able to come already to the position in such times to go along with that what is not so externally visible in the events, what the everyday mind is not able to see in these events. We must be able to ask ourselves: does that mean something prophetic for the whole earth development what as such a dreadful torch of war is burning above our heads?

Only that human being lives properly in the present events who sees these events in such a significant light as far as it is possible. Friends, who are in our circles, will often have asked themselves, why I have spoken in our circle during the last years now and again of the fact that in decades of the 20th century times come for which we must look ahead with a particular attention because children and grandchildren of those who live now will have to experience important and immense, but also tragic and painful events. Those upon whom it is incumbent today to give something to keep the souls of the children and grandchildren upright towards that what the humankind of the 20th century experiences must be aware that this gift must be a strong internal spiritual force. Even more than we can imagine already today in our everyday life, our offsprings of the 20th century will need strong internal forces keeping up the soul to pass on the achievements of humankind, which were accumulated in the human development throughout centuries. To quite other storms of life the offsprings of humankind now living on earth will be exposed. I said that someone could be surprised when that was said within our circles that way. Now, however, a sensation of that may arise if we consider that we are in the most dreadful war events which concerned human beings, since humankind experiences history consciously on this earth.

It would be absolutely wrong if we did not penetrate ourselves so intensely as possible with the importance of the moment and present the question to ourselves: with what does that have actually to do that we strive for out of internal longing of the soul, what spiritual knowledge does have to do with that which should come in the development of humankind? Don't we see, even if we look only cursorily, a tempest breaking out which got up from the East since long ago menacing modern education and civilisation of Europe? You have at least to know that in the lap of this East immense forces are working from which you can already see that they make themselves noticeable; so that they now intend to dismember, destroy the European civilisation. You can only anticipate now to which extent this is the case.

Our European civilisation is in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It is the culture of the consciousness-soul in whose middle souls are among us who have to give something to humankind. Looking back at what was the Greek-Latin culture, this Greek-Latin culture was basically, even if in another arrangement, an echo, a recapitulation of that what already lived in the old Atlantis but on a higher level. It lived there still differently. In the fourth post-Atlantean culture-epoch a kind of recapitulation happened. The fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch in which we stand is a new formation, is something absolutely novel what has been added to the current development of humankind. We should not conceive that only as an abstract truth, as a theory, but with the deepest and most intensive human sense of responsibility. We should also be clear to ourselves about the fact that in the earthly evolution still long times will have to run off, until everything has come out of the human hearts and souls what the divine cosmic order has to give to humankind in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch.

In the fourth culture-epoch, the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha took place as the most significant event of the whole earth development. Just as this Mystery of Golgotha had an effect in the fourth culture-epoch, it does not merely continue working in the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. This fifth culture-epoch is incumbent to go to meet the Mystery of Golgotha gradually with full knowledge of spirit, with full understanding, with all forces of knowledge of the soul; not only with the forces of the reason, the forces of devoutness. It has to comprehend Christ, Who went through Death and Resurrection, bit by bit with everything the soul can produce from itself of knowledge and understanding forces. So that the word of Paul¹ is true, indeed, in a new way: “not I, but Christ in me.” Every effort we make in spiritual science is a preparation to grasp with all internal recognising forces of the soul in the end what is, actually, this Christ. This is a significant, great task of the fifth culture-epoch.

Now we may imagine what it means, actually, if such efforts are expected from the fifth culture-epoch. Let us put before our souls the way how the Christ Impulse has worked since the Mystery of Golgotha in humankind. If the Christ Impulse could have worked only by that what the human beings understood about this Christ Impulse in the course of the centuries, since the Mystery of Golgotha has taken place, then the Christ Impulse could have worked only a little among the human beings. But it is not such an impulse which has spoken only conceptually to the human understanding or to the feeling understanding, but it is a real impulse which flowed into the course of history with living forces. The external symbol of the blood flowing on Golgotha represents the living force flowing into the history of humankind.

We will try to get clear in our mind with the help of a historical event in which way this Christ Impulse has worked, without being understood already by human beings, in which way it has worked as a living driving force in the evolution of humankind. The fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch has a vocation to make conscious the whole internal nature and being of the Christ Impulse. But that has already worked as a living force in the subconscious soul forces, before it became fully conscious in humankind. One of those figures the Christ Impulse selected to work through them, to work something significant is, for example—one could still give others—the figure of the Maid of Orleans. If we pursue the history of Europe up to the event that is connected with the personality of the Maid of Orleans, we must say, even if we look only externally at history: with that what she accomplished in those days when she struck back the English, in the midst of the French people rising up,—she did that really,—the map of Europe was arranged as it was just arranged gradually. Any other historical consideration is basically a fairy tale for the last centuries, in so far as it concerns the distribution of nations and states in Europe. It is something unconscious that the Christ Impulse as a living impulse with the help of the Maid of Orleans caused the distribution of the European nations and national forces in those days.

I may say: while the learnt people argued about a lot, already started to argue about the question whether one has to take the Communion in this or that form whether this or that has to be interpreted according to this or that formula, and while the learnt people showed that they were not yet able to comprehend the Christ Impulse, this impulse worked through the simple farmer girl, the Maid of Orleans, worked as a formative force in European history.

Because the effect of the Christ Impulse is just not dependent on the understanding which somebody shows for it. By his Michaelic representative the Christ Impulse worked in the Maid of Orleans. Now, however, the Maid of Orleans had to go through something that is similar to an initiation. We talk of initiation today and give the rules to the consciousness of the human being which I have collated in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds But such an initiation of the Maid of Orleans is out of the question, of course. You can only talk about an initiation which was as it were a relic of the ancient initiation which took place more in the subconscious soul forces of the human beings. Now just these ancient initiations have reproduced like elementary forces up to the modern time. In old legends and fairy tales a lot is told: that this or that happened to this or that person by which he got the internal soul-force. That is why he has seen this or that of the spiritual world. Such matters should be only an indication of it, like without any help of the human being, by the effect of divine-spiritual forces permeating the world, certain human beings, who are suitable for that because of their karma, are natural initiates, by the place on which they are put by karma where the karma of humankind flows together with the personal karma. A good echo of such a natural initiation, as one would like to call it, gives us a poem which speaks of the fact, that the “solar son” Olaf Åsteson was in a kind of sleeping state during thirteen nights and days—the interval between Christ's birth and His Epiphany, up to the 6th January. The name Olaf Åsteson already indicates that subconscious hereditary forces of knowledge are included in it, because somebody is called Olaf Åsteson through whom the blood of his forefathers runs. The solar son Olaf Åsteson sleeps through and dreams for thirteen nights which are the darkest of the year or contain at least the biggest force of the earthly annual darkness in them, from the first Christmas Day up to the 6th January, to Epiphany.

That is not only superstitious nonsense what goes back to these nights in such legends. Since, indeed, there are two seasons which are in a certain way like two opposite cosmic poles for the soul-life of the living human being. If we take the season around the St Johns-tide in summer, this is the time when the human soul with all its passionate impulses is united with the universe through the external physical sun force whose energy then reaches its peak. Hence, the St Johns-tide festival of the old time was intended to put divine-spiritual forces, permeating the universe, into the human soul when the human beings forgot themselves and were wrapped up in the external strong physical forces of the universe. However, when the solar force is physically the weakest, in the middle of winter, the spiritual forces which have an effect in the darkness reaches its peak in return. And rightly, one can say, according to the cosmic laws the birth of Jesus of Nazareth is in this time. When the physical surroundings are the darkest, the soul can have the profoundest experiences if it feels united with the forces permeating the aura of the earth.

That is why Olaf Åsteson keeps on sleeping during these days, and experiences everything we call Kamaloka, soul-world, and, finally, spirit-land. The Norwegian legend tells us that Olaf Åsteson, when he awoke again after thirteen nights, knows to tell about his experiences that he has met the souls in the soul-world and in the spirit-land. Indeed, these are pictures which correspond to an Imaginative knowledge, but they point to that what really living possibilities of the human soul are if these souls feel transported in that time of physical darkness which is, however, the time of spiritual enlightenment, if they feel transported to that what flows and weaves in the earth's aura. At the end of the legend, we see the forces of the Christ Impulse which get hold of the subconscious understanding of Olaf Åsteson. In such legends one speaks—as it were—of natural initiations which were still possible in olden times, of beholding the spiritual world. In these times the earth's aura really has a force which it does not have in other times when it is flooded and outshone by the physical sun force. Because Christ is united with the earth's aura since the Mystery of Golgotha, the force of the Christ Impulse is also able to work into the souls particularly during these days if the souls are susceptible for it.

Hence, one may assume, before one investigates something historical, that—also with such a figure like the Maid of Orleans—the Christ Impulse would have worked subconsciously in her soul during thirteen days. The fact that also she would have gone through something like enlightenment by the Christ Impulse in the subconscious soul forces—what Olaf Åsteson has gone through during thirteen days and nights in the sleeping state. Then, however, the Maid of Orleans would have been in a kind of sleep once during the thirteen days from the 25th December to the 6th January, and then on the 6th January the Christ Impulse would have grasped this soul after it had been in a kind of sleeping state. That what one can assume did really exist in a peculiar way, only in a quite particular time when the human being can be, indeed, in a kind of sleep. Namely, before the human being does the first gasp in his earth-life, before he is released from the body of his mother and receives the first earthly-physical beam of light, he spends a time as a nascent human being in a true sleeping state. Just as you get a dreaming sleep in the evening, you are in the body of the mother in such a dream-like sleep.

Those days in which the dream-like sleep is most receptive to the unaware influence of the spiritual world are just the last days which the human being spends in the body of his mother. That is why it could also be that just these days would have been used with the Maid of Orleans to plant the Christ Impulse to her, before she saw the physical sunlight with physical eyes and did the first gasp outside the body of her mother. This was the case, because the Maid of Orleans is born on the 6th January. On the 6th January, it took place that the whole village gathered because something uncertain was in the aura of the village. This is a historical fact. The people did not know what had happened: the Maid of Orleans was born. Behind such matters a lot is hidden. Only if humankind gets round to seeing this mysterious fact once in the right light, will understanding of that also exist what really takes action in the human development under the surface of the external sensory world. The divine forces look for the most manifold ways for themselves to get into the human soul. Of course, the karma of the Maid of Orleans had to be suitable that such a thing could happen.

But while the karma of the Maid of Orleans coincided with the fact that she was born on the 6th January, the historical chance was given that the Christ Impulse had a particular effect on her and gave Europe a new formation. These are matters which you can examine if you observe the course of history with some understanding. These are the matters which the spiritual understanding resumes in future when this fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch really gets every knowledge force out of the souls. Then the soul experiences the existence of the Christ Impulse more and more consciously. But it experiences this only if humankind is able to regard spiritual science not as a mere theory, but to feel it as living, to experience it internally. Then spiritual science is able to achieve its actual mission in the development of humankind.

In such a time like ours, we must be clear to ourselves in particular about the fact that the chasm must be bridged which opens for a materialistic age more and more between the human souls, who are here incarnated, and those who have already gone through the gate of death. More and more one will get round to regard also the souls which stand in the life between death and a new birth as belonging to the whole humankind, like those who are in the physical life between birth and death. The consciousness must become stronger and stronger, that we all are united on earth, also those who have gone into the supersensible realms before us who work only with different forces among us than we do who are incarnated. This consciousness must become more and more intense. However, just understanding of the spiritually effective forces is necessary. It is necessary that we learn to look at the connections of the earthly phenomena in that new light spiritual science can give.

Only because spiritual science should be something that touches our hearts at the same time, while it helps our souls in knowledge, want I to talk to you about something that has concerned us during the last weeks. I do that to explain something about the way which goes back at the same time to something that occupied us in the farther vicinity of our spiritual-scientific current during the last weeks. I could also take other cases, indeed, but these cases are connected with our karma immediately, so that I can speak about them just today again. You can extend that what I say here also to other persons who stand within and beyond our spiritual-scientific movement with their destinies and their relation to death in a similar relation as in the cases about which I want to speak.

Last autumn we have experienced a distressing case in Dornach in the vicinity of our construction. Dear friends had moved with their children to Dornach, settled there near the construction to manage the garden. And the oldest, seven year-old child, a spiritually infinitely bright boy who was something quite peculiar, however, also concerning his heart qualities was really a little bit like a sunny child. One had the most intimate interest in the soul of this child, even if one could see it only briefly here and there. When then the father joined the armed forces to do his duty as a German citizen on the battlefield, there was the seven-year-old boy with his heart, I would like to say, already in the whole situation of life that he made particular efforts to substitute the father, as well he was able to do, to help his mother, while he managed everything possible. He went into the city, made purchases, the seven-year-old boy quite on his own. One evening the boy was missed. It was just an evening lecture. A person friendly to us came possibly at ten o'clock and said that the boy would be missed. It could not be unclear in the end at all that this had to do something with a removal van which had toppled over near our construction at a place where perhaps a removal van has never gone before and and will probably also not go for a long time. The van had toppled over a small embankment in a meadow that the carters said, it would be out of question that one could lift the van in the evening. They unyoked the horses about which they were very anxious, and left the van to lift it the next day because they believed that they had to work for a whole day to be able to lift the heavy carriage. Now it was ten o'clock in the evening. We had to assume that the boy was missed because the carriage had toppled over. All possible tools were brought, and everybody who could work worked, and in two hours the carriage was lifted. At midnight we found the dead boy under the removal van.

Now if one takes only externally into account and considers, how from longer time, before this had happened, everything pushed itself together, so that the boy who had always gone, otherwise, a somewhat different way by which he would have passed the van on the right side, however, at that time he went so that he passed the carriage on the left side where the carriage just had to topple over him. If you imagine that he was detained a little bit in the most benevolent way, so that he left possibly a quarter of an hour later—he got something for the supper in the so-called canteen,—so that he has left later than he wanted, actually. If you imagine that the whole accident took place that it depended really on some, even not some minutes that the boy was just here where the carriage toppled over, and nobody noticed the accident. Not far away from that place people noticed that the carriage fell down, but they did not see the boy. If you imagine everything, you will recognise already externally that this is a most remarkable example of logical delusion which may occur easily to human beings.

I have often shown clearly, also to you, that the human being can already delude himself in the external life, so that he mistakes cause and effect. I have said: imagine that you see a person from the distance going along a riverside. You see him suddenly staggering and falling into the river. He is pulled out dead not long afterwards. Now you are quite justified to suppose according to all external reasons that the person has fallen into the water and has just drowned. If you do nothing else, you adhere to this judgment. In this case it only requires external means to convince you of the opposite. One has still found a stone where the person has fallen into the river, and you are supported in your judgment. If one opens the corpse, one will find out that the person suffered a stroke that he has fallen consequently into the river and that he has met his death not because he fell into the river, but that he fell because he was dead. So cause and effect were completely mistaken. However, somebody who understands the matters observes that at many places above all in science. In our case where the boy met his death, we must say: the karma of this boy ordered the removal van; karma brought the van just to that place. The judgment is wrong if one believes that chance played a role. The boy should only arrive just at the seventh year in this incarnation. I would like to say, the whole arrangement was made for that. We must completely get used to exchange cause and effect compared with the way of judging matters in the everyday life.

If we look now with the glance of the seer at the life of this soul, something stupefying becomes apparent to us that at the same time lights up the divine-spiritual secrets of the world. Not long after the boy's death, the whole aura of the Dornach construction changed. While I say this, I say something to you that is connected with my experiences. If anybody himself has to work for the Dornach construction of the Anthroposophical Society, if one has to instigate what is to be carried out there, then one knows what one has to thank the supporting forces for working from such an aura into one's soul. Since those days, the still unused etheric body of the boy is really connected with the aura of the Dornach construction. After the human being has taken off his etheric body, he goes on with his ego and astral body; this is something different. But the etheric body if it is taken off at such a tender age has forces in itself which could still have supplied the physical body and its life for decades. Now these forces have gone unused through the gate of death. They are taken off after some days. These forces just co-operate with the aura of our construction. One is not allowed to say that it is the soul itself of this individuality, but it is the unused etheric body. Nothing gets also lost in the spiritual world. The physicist knows that nothing of physical forces gets lost that the forces only change. Also in the spiritual world we have to look for transformed forces, unused etheric forces which ascend from early-deceased human beings to the spiritual world. We approach these matters if we observe them in concrete cases. That is why I may talk to you only about such concrete cases today.

A dear anthroposophical friend (Sibyl Colazza) died before some weeks in Zurich after a life which had brought her some ordeals, and the karma of our movement brought it about that I had to speak at the cremation. The time from death up to cremation lasted from Wednesday at six o'clock p. m. until Monday at eleven o'clock a. m. This interval was a little longer than usual. That is why the separation of the individuality from the etheric body had already happened, while the cremation took place. Now the peculiar was that in the time, in which the soul had already separated from the etheric body during the days between death and cremation, the necessity arose to me to speak certain words before and after the obituary. My own ability of coining words had really to do a little with the way these words were coined. However, by identifying with the soul of that personality the necessity resulted to characterise this personality as if an inspiration came from her soul itself. The soul said as it were: coin your words, so that they characterise my soul.—But the soul was still unconscious. The words came not consciously from the soul, but from the being of this soul. I had to characterise her as she wanted not to mirror herself in selfish way, but as she appeared to herself if another soul looked at her. For this other soul the necessity arose to speak the following words at the beginning of the funeral speech and to coin each single word. The words had to be spoken as an address to the soul who had gone through the gate of death:

You walked among us.
Your being's gentle spirit
Spoke through the quiet power of your eyes—
Ensouled, alive, peace
Flowed in waves,
With your glance
To things and people
Bearing your inner weaving;
And your voice ensouled this being
Your voice that eloquently,
More in the kind of words
Than in the words themselves,
Revealed what worked hidden
Within your beautiful soul;
Yet your sacrificial love
Unveiled itself completely
To sympathetic people without words—
This being, who, from noble, quiet beauty,
Heralded the sensitive awareness
Of worlds-and-souls creation.

As I said, in the beginning and at the end of the funeral these words had to be spoken. Now, indeed, this soul was as it were like sleeping during the whole process, during the funeral ceremony. Then the cremation followed. Strangely enough the soul experienced a first flashing of consciousness, which later passed again, at the moment when, one cannot say the flame, but the heat seized the corpse. There one could say: now this soul has gone through the gate of death, it had taken off its etheric body, and it now appeared how such a soul looks back. In this retrospective view, the whole funeral ceremony stood before the soul, looking at the spoken words. Someone could see there the secret of time effectiveness for the soul, after it has gone through the gate of death. One could always have seen this in such a case. If one here in the physical body looks at something spatial and then leaves it, this object does not leave, but is left, and one can always look around—one sees that it is left. However, that does not hold true of something we experience in time in the physical life. There we have a memory picture of the events only. If one looks back after death at past events, they are left; one looks at the events like through space. Thus the words had been left; the soul looked back at them like at spatial things through the course of time. This is the way to look at the things of the Akasha Chronicle. Then a kind of sleeping state happened again. But particularly in this case it was rather clear that the fear of the materialistic soul is unfounded that the consciousness of the soul is reduced when it goes through the gate of death.

We do not have no consciousness or not enough consciousness after death when we sink in a kind of sleeping state, but we have too much consciousness. When we have taken off the etheric body, when the life tableau is taken off, we are full of consciousness that blinds us at first, and the human being must orientate himself first.—I gave more details in my talks of the Vienna cycle The Inner Nature of the Human Being and Life Between Death and New Birth.—The soul orientates itself, while it looks back at its own earth-life and at its character in this earth-life. It has to orientate itself by means of self-knowledge. The force of orientation must take hold there, and then the abundant consciousness is reduced as far as the human being is able to endure it, depending on what he has gone through in his last incarnation. It is, actually, reducing the superabundance of consciousness to the degree which the human being can endure. But that may happen in stages. When the body was seized by the heat, the first flashing of real consciousness took place in the soul of this personality friendly to us.

It appeared to me especially clearly in another case that the soul, when it has gone through the gate of death, wants to summarise its being. I said that you can experience these matters at every death, but I give you typical examples of the most recent time. It appeared to me with quite particular clearness in another case when a friendly personality, after it had reached higher years, has gone through the gate of death. During the last years which it lived through on earth it was given away with all feelings in a rare way to the impulses of spiritual science. It felt the details of spiritual science more than it grasped them with the mind, that it united with its soul the kind of feeling which gives not a theoretical, but a true view of spiritual science. Shortly after the hour of death, while the soul experienced the life tableau with its etheric body, it tried now to grasp its self where it had taken off its body. This process seemed likewise to ray forth to me, and I identified with it. I had then to note words shortly after death, when the soul was still united with the etheric body, which I have also not coined with the help of my human knowledge. These words are nothing else than a reproduction of that what the soul worked internally in itself to summarise what it had been able to get from spiritual science and came to an internally complete self-awareness that way. There the words sounded from the soul which I had to speak then also, following an inspiration, before and after the funeral speech. You will immediately notice the great difference to the whole tone of those words I gave for the other personality before.

Into cosmic distances I will carry
My feeling heart, so that it grows warm
In the fire of the holy forces' working;

Into cosmic thoughts I will weave
My own thinking, so that it grows clear
In the light of eternal life-becoming;

Into depths of soul I will sink
Devoted contemplation, so that it grows strong
For the true goals of human activity;

In the peace of God I strive thus
Amidst life's battles and cares,
To prepare myself for the higher Self;

Aspiring to work in joy-filled peace,
Sensing cosmic being in my own being,
I seek to fulfil my human duty;

May I live in anticipation
Oriented toward my soul's star,
Which gives me my place in spirit realms.

The soul speaks of itself as “I.” In the former case, the considering soul had to characterise the other soul interchanging with it. In this case, the considering soul had nothing else to do than to transport itself completely into the soul which still tried to grasp, enriched by spiritual science, with the forces of the etheric body to become clear that it has now to orientate itself in the spiritual world.

These are cases again in which one realises that the human being, after he has gone through the gate of death, is dependent on looking back at himself in self-knowledge. One could see clearly that somebody who is still in the physical body can help the dead to formulate in words what works and weaves in him. Of course, the times, when the human being sees his weaknesses and mistakes, his sins, come later in the soul-world. But we have to retain: as much as death is feared now and again by those who are still in the body, death is something completely different seen from the other side in the retrospective view. Here in the physical life nobody can look so far back with his everyday human forces to the hour of his birth. Actually, nobody who does not have clairvoyant forces has the possibility to look at his entry into the world; only later the point in time up to which one can look back takes place.

Just the reverse is the case with that birth for the spiritual world which we call death. The human being looks at this point in time permanently in the life between death and new birth. This moment belongs to the most marvellous, greatest at which one can generally look in the spiritual world. Death is always an immediate proof of the fact that the spirit incessantly celebrates his victory over the physical nature. And you experience this in yourself. That is why the soul wants to experience that which one can be also really in the soul after death. Hence, it is a help if a soul living in the body expresses that in words what the soul strives for, so that the soul clearly sees itself with the best it has before its own spiritual view after it has gone through the gate of death. I just could see in this case that such words came to me with an internal necessity which referred to the soul in question when I had to speak at the funeral and did not speak out of arbitrariness, but obeyed the divine voice which told me what I had to do.

In still another case that appeared to me by the karmic course of the last times, when one of our friends died as young man who gave rise to great hopes just for our movement. He died in the thirtieth year of his life. On the 26th February he would have been thirty years old, he died shortly before. This friend, our dear Fritz Mitscher, has been somebody who was able to summarise that spiritual-scientifically what he had gained in learning—he had a disposition to scholarship,—with infinite, sacrificing devotion, and thus, indeed, he stood before something our movement needs so much: taking up our extensive science in oneself, so that one penetrates it spiritual-scientifically and reports it spiritual-scientifically, so that one stands completely on the ground of the scientific present. He was well prepared for that. Even if now the karma runs a way that such souls go early through the gate of death, this has its significance in the whole world course. Like in the other cases—because I was urged just by karma to speak at the funeral,—it was there also that I had to speak words in the beginning and at the end of the funeral speech which had to be spoken again in the same manner, transporting myself into the soul's being, so that I coined the words again not arbitrarily, but grasped them in the lively being together with the deceased. There I had to say then:

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.

You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant
Unperturbed by worldly contradiction

You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to you life's true value.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.

Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Un-lost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.

Already in the next night I could experience that the following sounded from this soul from the spiritual realm:

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within me
Was my life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.

I assure you, when I had written down these verses, I did not think, not in the least, that in both stanzas each “you” can be transformed to “me,” each “your” to “my.” I took notice only, when both stanzas sounded back from the other soul like an answer in the next night. So that the stanzas could just remain, only the second person was replaced by the first person.

I mention this, because a heart understanding can arise to us that in the future of the human development the possibility remains to speak from soul to soul, when the mouth is no longer the tool. In the same way we get answer here for the everyday life from the mouth of the other soul, it was here at an example where the soul gave answer still even from the unconscious of its being, saying as it were: I have now understood, because it was to me really that way in life; now I understand what I have aimed at in life, after I have taken off my body.

It does not only depend on the fact that we take up concepts, ideas and mental pictures of the spiritual worlds, but that we live in a certain life, in a certain way of life as human beings, while we go as human beings of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch towards the sixth and seventh culture-epochs. It depends on the fact that the chasm is bridged really which separates the living human beings from the so-called dead that humankind becomes one more and more not only in so far as it is incarnated in the body, but also as it has taken on those forms of existence which the human being lives through between death and new birth. Spiritual science has not only to bring that to humankind, but for the life which the earth needs for the rest of this post-Atlantean development, spiritual science is the first, I would like to say, still stammering attempt, because what can be given in spiritual science is basically only a stammering compared to that what future generations experience of spiritual science.

My account tried to make that comprehensible by the force of heart what we can think about the relations of life and death, referring today to spiritual science facing life, so that you get another understanding than the head understanding, the lively heart understanding which we seek for, actually, through the spiritual-scientific deepening. That is the task of the fifth post-Atlantean culture-epoch. The sixth and the seventh epochs follow it. However, you understand only what is to be defended as Central European culture if you just feel this Central European culture intimately connected with that which must be gained in the fifth culture-epoch for humankind. Something may then begin from that which I have mentioned in the beginning of this consideration: a widening of the view beyond that what our destiny-burdened times have in their lap.

In the East, a kind of human life prepares which will be significant for the future. You only need to read up about that in the series of talks about the mission of the folk-souls² I held once in Kristiania (= Oslo). But totally different from the soul kind which is just that of the Central European is already the soul kind of the Eastern European not to speak at all of the Far Eastern—totally different. We have already to get on by that what spiritual science should be for us to create an open spirit eye for such things. What is often told that once the Varangians were invited by the Russian-Slavic population that they would have said to them: we have a nice country, but we have no order, come to us and make order. Arrange something like a state for us. What is told sentimentally as a starting point of the Russian history is nothing else as a legend without any historical background. This has never taken place that way. In truth, these Varangians came into the country as conquerors and were not called really. Nevertheless, what is told in history has more significance, even more than it would have if it corresponded to a historical truth. Because it means something prophetic, something really prophetic, something that has not yet happened that happens, however, in future. What should develop in the East, has to develop so that the abilities of the eastern peoples are used to take up what the western civilisation has created, and to process it in itself to get fertilised with that which the West has created. This is the task of the eastern peoples in future.

One can just characterise the nature of the Russian eastern nation briefly. When we look at the real nation—not at that dishonest society which now governs the Russian nation,—then we have to be aware of the fact that the Russian soul has an immense lot of talents that it is gifted as it were for everything; but just while it unfolds its mission in the world human development more and more, will appear that something can be there in humanity what one can call: talent without productive power. The talent will still become greater and greater. That, however, what distinguishes, for example, the Central European, that he has combined his talent with the spiritual force that he produces that “for him whose striving never ceases ...” and lives intimately with his folk-soul. He wants to produce that what he wants to understand at the same time what is there so splendid in Fichte's philosophy where the ego to understand itself wants to produce itself perpetually—one will see only later which significance this philosophy has,—just that what distinguishes Central Europe. The opposite of that is in existence in Russia, in the east of Europe. These Russian souls are receptive first of all: they have the biggest gift for taking up, and if one speaks of productiveness, one is mistaken. They have a vocation to develop talents without productiveness. Today even the concept is difficult to grasp because something like that has not yet existed in the development, but has to develop only bit by bit. In future it happens that from the East over here to the West the call goes out: we have a nice country, but no order—for disorder increases more and more,—come and make order.—Central Europe has a vocation to bring spiritual productiveness to the East. What happens now means that they defend themselves unreasonably against that which must still happen in future. One wants to crush that to which once one will have to come and say: come to us and make order.—It is thus in the historical evolution of humanity that that is thrown back mostly, pushed back mostly what one has to long for in the end. The biggest misfortune would be that the east of Europe, if Russia were victorious in this process. That would not be the biggest misfortune for Central Europe, not at all, but for Russia herself, the biggest misfortune, considered internally, because this victory would have to be cancelled again. This victory could not last with its effects. Thus we stand before the tragic moment of the historical evolution of humanity that the East defends itself against something it will long for in future, will long for with all its forces. Because it would experience an entire decline if it could not be fertilised by the spiritual life of the directly bordering West. In the further course of its culture this West has to produce a lively cultural life, not only idealism, but lively cultural life. This lively cultural life will be like a spirit sun which moves from the West to the East, opposite to the movement of the sun. The external Russian human being will see more and more how little he is able to do by himself how he is dependent on arranging himself really in the whole evolutionary process of humanity; how he commits the biggest sin assaulting the west-European culture.

I would like to say we could feel strange pre-flashes of it. Something appeared in this East that was impossible in the West: the so-called world view of the discalced friars,³ a type of philosophy of the discalced friars which has quickly spread over big circles, while it was not there some years ago at all. Being discalced! The world view of those who make the absolute unbelief in human beings and humanity a philosophy, because they cannot believe that the human being is really something different than that what there walks around between birth and death under tribulation and fright, that the words liberty, fraternity, compassion and love are empty phrases, and that the only wise one is who walks as a pilgrim barefoot through the world, who the whole culture, the whole putrescent west-European culture—as the discalced friar says—feels as a big deception and regards the tattered clothing, the musty room and broad street as something through which the human being walks, when he forced himself to the discalced friars' world view. When a poet allows to express this discalced friars' world view by one of his persons with characteristic words, this must touch us quite strangely who always try to find out that of the Central European world view which can kindle the light of the future for the human beings. If a poet allows to express a person that what is, however, basically a kind of a summary of the discalced friars' world view and their philosophy how does it seem to us?

”Yes what does this person mean to you? Do you understand? He collars you, quashes you under the nails like a fleeing! Then you may feel sorry for him ... Certainly! Then you may manifest your whole stupidity to him. He will stretch you on seven instruments of torture for your compassion; he wraps your intestine over the hand and pulls all your veins out of the body, an inch per hour ... Oh you ... Compassion! Pray to God that one may thrash you simply without any compassion, and finish ... Compassion ... Bah!”

And Gorki of whom you have already heard something says to such words: “Cruel, but true,” while he returns now not only the world view of a poetic personality, as the poet expresses it, but he expresses his own world view which results for him as the consideration of the world. This is the world view of a discalced friar, a world view about which one can just talk like about other world views now in existence. It is the world view which has lost the possibility to come out of itself to something that rays light to life. It has to wait, until it is fertilised by this light, and then it can fulfil its mission in the human evolution. However, now it rebels against that what it just must do. One could experience many phrases in the world, but I say that from the most tragic feeling:

Such phrases, as they were spoken by the most different parties in August 1914 on the war assembly of the Russian Duma, such a sum of phrases exceeds the peak of phraseology. Such a thing is only spoken when any lively productive force of the soul is exhausted. In the East one stands in reality in the eve of that what should become first, and unfolds a force that is opposite to that what will once make this East great. We in Central Europe have to say to ourselves: nevertheless, this East waits just for the spiritual wisdom which has to arise in the middle of Europe.

My dear friends, try to transform that into feelings what I has suggested to you with grievous feelings, I would like to say, in single words that it can light up that what we are able to see as spiritual scientists with enlarged sensations and with which we should familiarise ourselves to understand the real necessity and also the contemporary historical necessity of the spiritual-scientific world view. Then we penetrate ourselves with thoughts which ascend from our souls to cosmic distances. Thoughts which meet then what works down from these spiritual worlds, when peace prevails on earth.

Today I have shown you how the etheric bodies of those souls work which free themselves as unused etheric bodies from the souls, which could work still for years, still for decades here in the physical bodies, for the physical lives. The idea must become apparent to us how many such unused parts of etheric bodies ascend into the spiritual world—still except that what human beings going through the portal of death on the battlefields take with their individualities into the spiritual world. However, these etheric bodies represent a big sum of spiritual forces, those spiritual forces which should help forming a spiritual world view from the spiritual spheres which should seize humanity more and more. It is necessary that thoughts ascending from earthly human beings to the spiritual spheres meet these forces of the unused etheric bodies which are able to work down from the spiritual spheres. These human thoughts have to show understanding for the secret work of the spiritual world into which the forces of these unused etheric bodies are woven.

However, this should be an encouragement for us that we penetrate ourselves with the profundities of spiritual science. Since these profundities stimulate thoughts in us which have an effect then more and more also in other human beings. Depending on what develops as destiny-burdened contents of our days, days full of peace will come when that what the souls have planted of spiritual science in themselves will ascend. It will meet the forces that have collected from the etheric bodies of those who went through the gate of death on the battlefields and flow down. Then this will happen what I would like to subsume in some words as a result of this spiritual-scientific consideration. If we are able to put the fruits of spiritual science in our time rightly, then that will happen what I would like to express in the words:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. Galatians 2:20
• 2. The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology 11 lectures in Kristiania (today Oslo, June 1910), Steiner's Collected Works volume 121
• 3. the following quotation from the dramatic poem The Lower Depths by Maksim Gorky (1868–1936) stems originally from a writing by Dmitry Merezhkovsky (1865–1941)

It may seem at first and it seems so to many people, as if that what one calls clairvoyant forces in the true sense of the word through which the beings and processes of the spiritual worlds can be recognised, as if the human being does not have these clairvoyant forces in the everyday life at all, or as if he develops nothing at all of these forces in his soul in the everyday life. However, it is not that way. The clairvoyant forces are not such forces which are quite strange to the human being living in the everyday life. This is not the case, but that we have to develop so that we can behold in the spiritual worlds what we must bring out of the deep subsoil of the soul in order to find the path into the spiritual worlds, this already exists in a certain soul activity also for the everyday life of the human being.

These are the moral impulses of the human being. A really moral action, a really moral impulse arises from the same abilities of the soul which lead to clairvoyant abilities by means of a corresponding development. Indeed, for the everyday life the matter is different because everything that the human being is doing comes from his physical nature or from that which he has acquired for and by means of his physical nature in the course of life. If the human being develops desires if the human being does this or that what he is determined by his education or his other conditions of life, then it is the body from which the impulse comes. But there are real impulses in the human life which do not come from the body with which only the soul deals if the human being grasps these impulses: these are the moral impulses. A really moral action is that to which the body is called for help, indeed, so that one gets a mental picture of the moral action, but the impulse of the moral action is in the psycho-spiritual which is really independent of the bodily. One will never be able to define moral with the help of mere philosophy, and it is just the typical of philosophy, provided that it wants to be moral philosophy, that it does not come to a correct, satisfying definition of moral if it does not position itself on the ground that the human being is able to experience his psycho-spiritual in himself independently of his body.

We know that human life is composed of moral, less moral and immoral actions and impulses. The difference which exists between moral and immoral actions appears only to the esoteric consideration in the true light. The human being goes in his smallest life cycle, in that time of twenty-four hours, into the sleeping state. This sleeping state means that the ego and the astral body go out basically from the physical and etheric bodies and live then beyond this physical and etheric bodies. Not yet everything is said with it if I say that the ego and the astral body leave the physical and etheric bodies. But you have also to realise that the ego and the astral body, while they leave the etheric and the physical bodies, are taken up in the spiritual worlds which prevail in the supersensible around us. We go into the supersensible worlds with our ego and astral body. If we have had a moral impulse during the day, during our waking state and have accomplished a moral action, then the following is true: we must be taken up with our ego and astral body by the spirits of the next higher hierarchies, by the spirits, which we count to the hierarchy of the angels, of the archangels et cetera. These take us up; we go into them as it were in the sleeping state.

As well as we live in the body during the day, we live inside the beings of the higher hierarchies during sleep. That has to be clear to us. If we have accomplished a moral action, if we have had a moral impulse, then it is possible for the beings of the next higher hierarchies—according to the spiritual cosmic laws—to take up our ego and our astral body with our moral impulses or that which of our moral impulses has remained in our soul. If we have committed an immoral action or have had an immoral impulse, we cannot come with this rest, with that which was formed by the immoral impulse in us into the beings of the higher hierarchies during sleep. That really remains behind, is pushed back which is immoral in us, it is pushed down again into the physical nature. The result of the fact is that everything that we bring as an after-effect of morality into the spiritual worlds during sleep does not have an effect on our physical and etheric bodies, because it is taken away from them.

An immoral idea, an immoral impulse, an immoral action, however, becomes something that is pushed back into the etheric and physical bodies and this has an effect on them. That is why the results of immoral actions can work in the physical and etheric bodies during sleep, from falling asleep up to waking. In this regard, it is really easy to recognise what I have often emphasised in my talks that language has a miraculous genius that it works ingeniously. If we speak of guilt, there just this German word “Schuld” (also meaning debts) signifies infinitely exactly this what it concerns. We pay what we owe to the spiritual world with our moral actions, but we remain guilty to the spiritual world of that which we must leave behind in our bodies, our immoral thoughts, our immoral impulses, our immoral actions.

Take now the following into account: if we spent our life in such a way that we would only perceive the things of the outside world and think about them, the processes even in our physical body would be quite different than they are. Because we not only think and perceive, but we also remember the thoughts, perceptions and experiences. What we think, imagine, feel goes down into our etheric body, but the etheric body imprints it again into the physical body. And that what the etheric body creates like impressions in the physical body this is memory. If we remember something of former experiences in the later life, this means: we bump our astral body, which is connected then with the etheric body, on that what like an impression, as a seal impression has remained in our physical body. The materialistic idea is childish: as if a recollection sits in the brain here, another there, as if it is tinned thus. This is not true, but any recollection has an impression which corresponds basically to the whole head and still some other parts of the human figure, and the recollections are in each other, not side by side as a childish materialistic idea supposes it.

This activity of remembering is based on the fact that our astral and etheric bodies can cause impressions in our physical bodies. It is really the same activity which takes place externally when we write down something. If we look at the notes, then that what we have in our soul, of course, does not have the slightest resemblance to the signs we have on the paper. On the paper are signs of any form, but by that what we do then from it, while we are induced to bring back to life again that in the soul which we have written down, a spiritual process takes place. It is the same also with memory. What remains in us does not have more resemblance in principle with that which appears in the soul while remembering, than that which stands on the paper, with that what appears in the soul if we read it again.

Clairvoyantly beheld, the matter is like that: let us suppose that somebody remembers something that he has gone through once. What lights up then in his physical body, is a mark which is a copy of the human figure from the head and a piece below in any way. These are marks. Every mark is different which appears in the memory, but these are marks. The soul only makes with the help of the marks what we experience, while we remember. This is really a subconscious reading what appears as memory. If natural sciences progress a little further and investigate the physical processes, they will be a help to spiritual science, while they will show that that what remains in the body must really be submitted by the soul to a process which is similar to the reading in the soul in principle. Memory is a real subconscious reading. This is a regular activity of the human soul, this remembering.

However, if we send down results of immoral impulses, thoughts or actions into our body while falling asleep, we do not remove immoral impulses from our physical body. Something similar thereby happens as it happens usually regularly in memory. The work on the physical body imprints itself there. If now the human being wants to fall asleep and his ego and astral body want to go out from his physical and etheric bodies, this process begins. What he must leave behind there imprints itself like memories imprint themselves, and then there come the pangs of conscience which appear there. This is the real process of the pangs of conscience. Thus they are reflected from that what the matters cause as impressions in our physical body and also in the etheric body. This remains then.

Because these pangs of conscience remain as the regular memories do and attain strength, they appear then as self reproaches in the further life. This is the important matter that we really succeed in seeing that the moral action is a real process that it is not only something abstract, but that this moral action is handing up that into the spiritual worlds what we here act on earth. Because we hand over the results of our moral behaviour to the higher hierarchies, they also remain in certain respect in these higher hierarchies. What we cannot take with us what works then in the physical and etheric bodies remains here on earth; this is in the earth process. If the human being has gone through the gate of death, he must always look back at it, and while he always looks back at it, the impulse must originate in him to put it away from the earth process. The working out of karma between death and a new birth is based on that.

We take the results of our moral impulses in our karma with us, but while we bring them into spiritual worlds during sleep, they also make impressions there. We can say that the angels, the archangels, also the spirits of personality then have the moral impulses. What do they do with them? These moral impulses, which are now in the spiritual world, are the real fertilising germs for the later earth periods. Not only that we keep these results in our karma, but we bring the impressions up, and in the coming earth epochs the spirits of higher hierarchies bring them down again. These results of the moral impulses are the fertilising germs for the human inventive thinking, for the human thinking generally in later earth epochs. Imagine that an epoch of the earth evolution is quite immoral, so that no impressions of moral impulses are brought to the spiritual worlds. Then an epoch would follow in the earth evolution when the human beings would think of little for the life on earth when the human beings would have few ideas and concepts when they have no means to imprint and stimulate their soul-lives.

So we stand with our moral impulses in a real process of the universe. Hence, spiritual science which shows us such a matter is suitable to increase our responsibility, to make our responsibility more vigorous, because we thereby notice only what it means to be moral or immoral in human life. Being immoral means to take its life germs away from the earth, to incorporate them into the physical earth process in which they become then germs of destruction for the next earth epochs, because they are also preserved there, of course, because nothing gets lost. Then they extinguish that what should live vividly as a soul element. Suppose that a bigger crowd of people would decide that they would live immorally in a certain epoch. Then a later epoch poor in thoughts would be thereby caused, and the souls would come down to the earth and find no ideas there, they would have a desolate life.

It is now possible that we take up not only the contents of moral in our knowledge. If we do not take up that in our effective knowledge, we obliterate the earth. But we need and we have the possibility to take up something different in our soul development, and this is the knowledge of the supersensible. Basically, the earth never was completely without supersensible knowledge. We know that humankind received a certain inheritance of clairvoyant capacities, also of clairvoyant knowledge in olden times. It is not long ago that the aftermath of this clairvoyant knowledge was there on earth. We also know that we live in the time when this clairvoyant knowledge is drawing to an end since centuries, but must be replaced by the clairvoyant knowledge gained consciously. We live in this important time. We have yesterday made ourselves aware that the fifth culture-epoch and those who are its bearers have a vocation to gain clairvoyant knowledge consciously for the souls. The fifth culture-epoch will not come to an end, before a certain sum of clairvoyant knowledge has grasped a relatively big part of humankind. Herder's saying is true that enlightenment will spread over the earth.

Any knowledge we acquire from the only sensory outside world, all the thoughts we have only as after-images of the sensory outside world cannot be brought directly by us into the spiritual world, while we sleep. It is true, the thoughts, the ideas which we have reach to the beings of the higher hierarchies up to a certain degree—just with the exception of the immoral impulses. However, that rises up which we acquire as pictures of the outside world up to a certain degree into the spiritual world. But it does not rise up very far, not at all to the sphere of the archangels. So that the human being—if he fills himself with ideas only which come from the sensory world—can bring that which he gains as ideas of the sensory world not very far into the spiritual worlds. The supersensible ideas we experience in ourselves are brought far into the spiritual worlds. Just those beings who belong to the hierarchy of the archangels get, as it were, the impressions of them and carry them over into later times. That of supersensible knowledge which the human egos and astral bodies carry up into the spiritual worlds is used later for the earth evolution.

It does not form, like the moral impulses, the fertilising germs, the stimulating element, but the germs for that which we call the earth progress. Refusing supersensible ideas by an age means the condemnation of a coming age to make no progress in the earth evolution. He who refuses the supersensible ideas restrains the progress of coming epochs as far as he is concerned. If any nation became quite materialistic, this materialism of a whole nation would condemn the earth to a standstill in its development—of course up to a certain degree because the other peoples would not have to reject the supersensible ideas. We see again how the acquisition of supersensible ideas is significant in the earth process itself. Causes and effects are connected in the whole earth process that way. Those human beings who are, as it were, consciously materialists in our present are ahrimanically enticed beings, enticed by the ahrimanic spirits, because Ahriman is very interested in restraining the regular progress.

We see again how spiritual science is able to increase the feeling of responsibility of the individual human soul to the world as a whole. We see spiritual science snatching us from our selves and making us members of the whole human process, that spiritual science is basically an unselfish activity of the human soul.

In a certain respect, any living in supersensible ideas is a reproduction of the moral life. Hence, there is nothing more disturbing for the knowledge of the supersensible worlds than filling the human soul with immoral impulses. That is why it is deeply founded to demand a kind of moral thinking in the most eminent sense as a preparation of the esoteric development. The fifth epoch has the task to make consciously sure that spiritual knowledge fills the human beings, so that during the rest of the post-Atlantean age the progress of humanity is not restrained, so that really a progress can take place in humanity. If we have to ascribe the natural ability of spiritual knowledge in the most eminent sense just to the Central European peoples after all our discussions during the last days, it must be clear to us which significance the further existence, the undisturbed development of the Central European culture has.

If we now are able to see the horizon of the European life only a little bit by means of that which we have mentioned, what does it present to us? The life of the higher hierarchies is connected with the life of peoples. You need only to study the series of talks about the development of the folk-souls which was held once in Kristiania (Oslo), which is especially important to study in our present time. You need only to call it in your mind and you will see how the archangels intervene in the national life; how generally this national life unfolds in the cooperation of the higher hierarchies with that what happens here on earth. If we look at an individual human being, we know that his ego-development takes place only slowly and gradually. Indeed, in the tender childhood, from the time up to which one remembers, the ego-consciousness begins. But this ego becomes increasingly mature, advances in his development. In our time big mistakes are there concerning this ego-development. There is too little a consciousness of the fact that such an ego-development takes place in life. Thus one can experience that today greenhorns regard themselves to be mature to judge everything because they do not know that one has to attain a certain age to judge certain matters, because the ego thereby reaches a certain maturity only.

As it is in the individual life of the human being, it is also in the life of peoples. We must only take the following into consideration if we want to understand the life of peoples in relation to the individual human life on the physical plane. The individual human being matures concerning to his ego-development. Because he grows increasingly mature, he also learns to take a better overview of the outside world. What we know about the outside world if we have attained twenty, twenty-five years, and what we can know if we spend life substantially if we have worked through ten years more. For such matters just the spiritual scientist has to get a feeling. There is the ego in its relation to the external world, to its surroundings.

The beings of the higher hierarchies behave differently. These beings of the higher hierarchies have the same relationship to our egos as we have to the matters of the outside world. The matters and beings of the mineral, plant and animal realms are objects for us. For the beings of the higher hierarchies, for example, our egos are objects. The relationship of the beings of the higher hierarchies to our egos is not that of perception as we have it to the outside world. Their volition rather penetrates our egos, their volition works on our egos.

Those archangels who have to lead the peoples have the same relationship to the egos, to the individual human beings of the people as we have concerning the perception of matters of the outside world. We are the objects for these archangels. What is an outside world for us, we are as human beings for the archangels, only that it is more a process of perception with us and more a process of will with the archangels. But concerning this process of will the archangel also experiences a development. This archangel goes through a maturation of his soul exactly the same way, now not concerning his ego, but concerning deeper forces of his soul. He experiences a development through which he attains another relation to the individual human beings of his nation; as well as we attain another relation to our environment with a more mature ego.

Let us take, for example, the archangel to whom the guidance of the Italian people has been transferred in the course of history. This archangel has had such a relation to the Italian people for a long time that he has, actually, worked with his will basically on the higher parts of the soul. In the further course this archangel had an effect not only on the higher parts of the soul, but also on the lower ones, on the passions, on the impulses of the soul which are still connected with the body. Thus the development of the archangel goes on: at first, he has more an effect on the soul as such, in the later course he becomes more and more powerful and works on those parts of the soul which are more connected with the body.

We can give for the Italian people that the archangel experienced a condition of his development in 1530 which can be characterised in such a way that one can say: he has worked more on the real soul, now he starts impregnating the soul more with his will, in so far as it penetrates the body. The Italian people, really, starts now to let itself go concerning its appearance, to develop its national character so surely. Study the history of the Italian people before the mentioned time—about the middle of the 16th century,—then you see that there the archangel still worked on the internal soul qualities of the Italian people; that then the external national character formed in the most remarkable sense, as we know it today. Before this point in time—and such a point in time exists for any people—the whole soul-life of a people is still alive. It is still possible then that the soul-life of the people can take on this or that quality. The qualities are not yet coined so strongly. After this point in time, when the archangel has developed his will relations to the deeper qualities of the soul, the people's character becomes rigid; it penetrates the bodily qualities. The time begins when one can hardly approach the people with anything that does not correspond to the national character. It becomes nervous at once if anybody comes with anything that does not lie completely in the national line or current.

One can really give this point in time in the historical development of the French people correctly. All these statements are approximate, of course, but this time is for the French people about 1600, in the beginning of the 17th century, and for the English people in the middle of the 17th century, in 1650.

If you go back before this time, to the Middle Ages, you see how much the peoples of Europe still have in common, and how with the single peoples the development of the national character begins at the points in time which I have given. The archangel experiences a development so that one can say: his forces were even weaker before that, so that he was only able to work on the soul, on the inside. The forces grow stronger after that, he can stretch his forces up to the physical. He thereby causes the sharply distinctive national character. Single phenomena appear quite comprehensible to you if you have such matters for the historical consideration. Imagine that in the time in which the English people had their Shakespeare the national character had not yet been enclosed in this way, so that just the English people are no longer able to understand Shakespeare. This comes from the fact that the archangel enclosed it with a distinctive national character. This will give a real historical consideration of the future when one does no longer start, as it was the case so often in the 19th century, from the assumption that ideas have an effect in history. A human being can have ideas, but ideas cannot work as forces in history. The angels, archangels and archai can have ideas, but ideas must always come from beings. The whole historical consideration of the 19th century, in so far as it speaks of ideas in history, is a spook, because it is based on the faith that ideas develop, can freely move in the continuous current of time.

We can now put the question: what about the German people? Was there a point in time at which the archangel attained a certain level?—Yes, such a point in time happened. But the German people differ from the other peoples to a certain degree. We know that the soul of the human being consists of sentient soul, intellectual soul or mind-soul, and consciousness-soul. You can gather this from the talks on the folk-souls that the archangel of the Italian people preferably wants to gain power in the sentient soul, that of the French people in the intellectual soul or mind-soul, that of the British people in the consciousness-soul, and that of the German people in the ego which extends its power to the three soul members. Hence, the relation of the archangel to the individual egos of the German people is also another than with the western peoples.

There was already a point in time when the archangel of the German people intervened in the physical life or in the lower soul-life, in so far as it seizes the physical. This is the time approximately between 1750 and 1830. If one studies the matters once quite rationally, one will get wonderful explanations about the course of the national development. If anybody got involved only to look at the really great, magnificent difference which is there in the German life in the human beings of the 19th and 20th centuries and the human beings living two hundred years ago, then he would see how immense this difference is. In those days, the archangel intervened in the national character of the German people, as well as the archangels intervened in the other peoples at the points in time which I have given. But, one would like to say, he stopped again, he did not transform the physical constitution so vigorously, as thoroughly as it happened with the other peoples. Hence, it has even happened that the second half of the 19th century took such a course that this German people have really taken up everything imaginable from the other peoples unconsciously.

This has led to tragic conflicts in our days. Think only once that Ernst Haeckel is an Englishman in his whole world view, in so far as he has based his world view on science. He is completely an Englishman, because he has taken up English thought-forms. Everything that he thinks is influenced by the English being. He starts from Darwin, from Huxley. He regards Spencer as his philosophical God. While one cannot really translate a book of Hegel or a book of spiritual science into English, one can translate Haeckel very easily into English, of course. You may be surprised about me saying this, because you know that spiritual-scientific books are translated into English. But what you read in the books, you read this only approximately in the English translations. One can never really translate, for example, the sentence which is essentially¹ and with everything that developed in the German being following Master Eckhart. You cannot translate this sentence correctly into English: “In dem Gemüte lebt das Fünklein, in dem sich in der Menschenseele die Weltseele offenbart.” “The little spark lives in man's feeling nature in which the world-soul reveals itself to the human soul.” It is impossible to translate it really into English, because for that what is experienced in the word “Gemüt” does no translation exist. Also the original dictum by Hegel cannot be translated into English which is almost the foundation stone of German idealistic philosophy: “Sein und Nicht-Sein vereinigen sich zur höheren Einheit im Werden.” “Being and Not-Being coalesce to Becoming as the higher unity.” Of course, one can translate everything, but the translation cannot report what is experienced in such a sentence.

The German language has the special peculiarity that it still allows certain liquidness. Imagine how infinitely easy it is to say if anything is translated into English or French: this is wrong; one does not say this that way!—We Germans must not develop the bad habit to say that something is wrong, but we must keep our language liquid—this is spoken radically, of course. Study our cycles, there you will see how I always struggled to form new words, also forms which formulate the words from within. This comes, for example, from the fact that the archangel of the German people stopped the sharp stamping again. He has only made an attempt, as it were, to sharply coin the national character during almost one century, and has then released the people again.

That means a lot. But this must be that way, because the German people have a vocation to transform their idealism to lively spiritual knowledge. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, who are attacked today, created a thinking which is indeed not already spiritualism, nor spiritual science which is, however, the seed of spiritual science which guides you really to spiritual science, so to speak, if you meditate it thoroughly. However, the German national character must still remain liquid, must make really possible that one says: somebody is an Italian, somebody is a Frenchman, and somebody is an Englishman. However, somebody becomes a German! The archangel has only made an attempt with the German people to form the national character. In the same way to be national or chauvinistic as the West-European peoples are, this would be an untruth with the German; he is not able to do this at all—one is able to do everything, of course, but then it is not commensurate with the real being of the German.

The relations of the Russian people are quite different. Its archangel is connected with the individual egos of the people in a different way than with the West-European and Central European peoples. The archangels of the West-European peoples work with their rays of will, with the Italian people on the sentient soul, with the French people on the intellectual soul or mind-soul, with the British people on the consciousness-soul, with the German people on the ego. However, the folk-soul of the Russian people does not work on the souls at all. It hovers as it were over the people like a cloud, and the soul can only have a premonition of it and long for it. It has still remained a group soul as it were. There is no intimate interaction of the folk-soul with the individual human egos. You can get no more tragic, more serious impression than when you are present at a Russian-orthodox service, in which the human egos of those, who take part in it as believers, are almost completely eliminated.

There is something impersonally universal that does not seize the individual personality. There is nothing in this service that appeals to the human nature. This is an immediate expression of the fact that the Russian soul has not awoken at all to that stimulation which is due to the interchange of the individual ego with the folk-soul. Everything is a little bit rigid and stereotyped, as if spirituality comes from unknown worlds and turns to something rigid and stereotyped, in the performances just as in the icon painting. There we stand before something quite different as it is the case in Western Europe. There we stand before the fact that the archangel has not got ready at all to intervene in the national element. Hence, the national element is for the Russian more a soul dream. The Russian always talks of the “really Russian human being,” and the Russian writers talk of it. But it is a soul dream which is emphasised in particular, because the folk-soul is not incorporated into the human beings, because the Russian has a longing for a super-personal folk-soul.

You have to look into these deep secrets, and then you understand how the European cultural regions stand facing each other. I never think, of course, to see the cause of the present events directly in this facing each other of the cultural regions. Nevertheless, you must do that indirectly. In particular, you must be aware of the fact that the torch of the current war is a powerful mark to familiarise ourselves with that which weaves and reigns within the spiritual life of Europe.

We look up to beings of the higher hierarchies; we see these beings of the higher hierarchies also developing. Whereas we develop our egos as individual human beings, we see these developing in such a way that they get more and more power to penetrate the ego with their will. First they still keep far away from this ego, overshadow it from above like in the case of the Russian people. Then there is a more intimate overshadowing and living together at the same time as it is with the German people. Then they add the intransigent national character to the individual human beings like it is the case of the three characterised West-European peoples. You can derive from that in which condition this modern life of the human development is. Have a look only once at the Central European history and you will find—if you refrain from Russia where the relations are quite different,—you will find that the life of the West-European peoples and in certain way also of the Central European peoples is similar, that a European internationalism is there. Then we see a new time dawning in the individual peoples from the 14th century on. With this dawning we see the peoples being seized by distinctive national characters. At the turn of the 18th to the 19th century, we see the German people getting just as much of national character that the German feels as it were what a national character is, but not so much that he is taken up in the solidified national character. One will find that that lies in the disposition of the German nature that the German does not need to be taken up in the national character; that it really has a deep sense when Fichte² says: everything that wants freedom of the human soul-being, everything that strives for the universally human, that belongs to us.

There is a possibility of free development of the Central European or German character. However, something is contained in that which leads immediately to the insight that the West-European peoples have to take this national character—or fluid national character—of the German people into account. I say, something like the fluid national character of the German can lead to the tragic just in our time. Think of Ernst Haeckel once again. We have seen that he was influenced by the English so deeply in the second half of the 19th century—because the development of the national character was released again. And today? The man who bears, actually, the whole English nature in himself has thrown words of the strongest hatred against the English people. He stood at the head of those who sent back their English certificates, medals and honourings. It would be so much more important that they would send back the materialistic Darwinism, the materialistic Newtonism, everything that came from them. In this regard, we have to learn to really understand us, to see the matters objectively and without national hatred.

It was a kind of a spiritual prelude when some years ago the splitting had to take place between our anthroposophical movement and the Anglo-Indian coloured theosophical movement. It had to take place. Those who have a vocation to develop the spiritual element cannot go along with the materialistic view of a Christ re-embodied in the flesh. It had to come out among us that the return of Christ will really be the return of the etheric Christ. It has often been said that and could also be heard out of Theodora's mouth in my first mystery drama.³ Indeed, now we read in an English-theosophical magazine—I tell no fairy tales to you, the president of the society herself expressed it—that the warfare of the Germans shows now what was, actually, behind the theosophical German undertaking at that time, because it appears now that we would have taken amiss, actually, on theosophical field that the president Annie Besant has always stood up for the peace prince, who did his best for Europe, Eduard VII. We would have looked at this already with immense aversion, and, therefore, we would have sent our agents to England who should there talk about theosophy in our sense to get the theosophists in our hands. If we had succeeded, the president tells in the English theosophical magazine, to penetrate at that time so far that we would have got the complete, as she says, “rich administrative machinery” of the Anglo-Indian theosophy—never have we wanted this, of course,—our intention would have been carried out to bring the poison of our views to India and to gain influence on the British government from there. Then our intention would have been executed to induce the British people to acknowledge the German supremacy over England on this way!—This is the representation which is given now in English-theosophical magazines to the theosophists there.

Now look at the truth. We have to realise it, because we cannot think about these matters in a dreaming way. The truth is, for example, that that which I wrote in my book Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Life is written out of the kind as spiritualism lives in the Central European cultural current. The book was translated into English straight away, and at that time one said to us there—to me at least—that the whole theosophy is contained in this book. Now we could say: well, if people think in London that the whole theosophy is contained in this book, they can go along with us.—But each step we undertook was nothing but an expression of the Central European developing spiritualism.

Some months before the outbreak of this war, it touched me still peculiarly—today I am allowed to mention this—that some of our ladies who do eurythmy drove to London to give there a course. The eurythmy has pleased. This is all right, it shall please human beings. But one does not notice that this eurythmy is the spiritual counter pole of the materialistic sport; the fact that on one side Europe is flooded completely by materialism and sport brings materialism into the movement of human beings, which serves the amusement of the people, the addiction to make oneself healthy which is quite materialistic, whereas with us each movement is the expression of the spiritual, corresponds exactly to that which is Central European spirituality. We work on this ground and let grow up the fruits of the spiritual development from this ground. How did just the sport intervene in the second half of the 19th century in Germany! How finer sport activities have then also—I believe, a method was especially that of Dalcroze supersensible human being.

This eurythmy is based on the following principles: we have an organ through which the etheric body acts immediately, so that the physical becomes an image of the etheric. This is the case when we are speaking. Not the whole physical, but the air becomes an image of the etheric. The sounding word in the air, the kind how the air swings, is a direct expression of the etheric. If one seizes that what lives in the sound, in the word and spreads it over the whole etheric body and lets the hands and feet and everything of the human being be moved, like in speaking and singing the air is moved in the etheric body, then one has eurythmy. Since eurythmy is a speaking of the whole human being, so that one makes use not only of the moving air but of the human organs.

Such a matter shows you that the intervention of spiritual science in the modern civilisation is intended as something universal and extensive. To understand the nerve of the thing we have just heard something of which one does not think today. I have given these both talks within this small circle by means of which I wanted to stimulate the sensation in you to look at that what spiritual science intends for the whole human life universally. If I succeeded in doing so, it would be already enough. Since the task of spiritual science is not really fulfilled if we learn single theoretical concepts. The task of spiritual science is fulfilled if it intervenes in everything, in every life, and spiritualises this life. It is inevitable in our fifth culture-epoch within that nation to which this task is assigned to cause spiritualisation, to understand these matters, to cause a sense of responsibility concerning development. It is easy to criticise the human development, rather easy. However, this does not concern, because the matters which happen happen with necessity, even if they counter that which as it were the good progress intends with the human beings. In a certain respect, we must have and let have something in our culture that counters this good progress, actually.

Among these various matters which belong to it, for example, this is that we start to maltreat our children from tender age on because of our present cultural point of view, as one says, for the sake of progress. One does not know it, but one maltreats them. Since there is basically nothing more countering the human nature than to let start the children from the seventh year already learning the school objects and to teach them as pupils as one does it presently. One would really experience something especially advantageous if one grew up quite differently and such matters that are taught already in the seventh year would be taught only in the ninth or tenth years. Mind you, that I do not say this intending that it should not happen, because the general cultural progress demands it, it must be like that. But the counter pole must be created. And particularly while we maltreat the etheric bodies of the children terribly on one side because we have certain types of school lessons because we stamp something into them for which they are good in no way during these years, we must create eurythmy as a counter pole and supply just that what is eurythmy for the children, so that their etheric bodies have the balance in these movements indigenous to them.

Eurythmy will become something that is quite general, since the development does not arrive at its destination advancing unilaterally, but advancing in contrasts. One must always create the counter pole, assert the counter pole. Development moves in contrasts. And against the maltreating of the etheric body as a result of the present-day school lessons a counter pole must be created, in making the etheric body malleable, causing natural movements of it in the sense, as it is attempted in the first rudiments of our eurythmy. Thus something is connected that many call even today “our eurythmy” with that which I have to call the universal character of our spiritual movement.

If we see, on one side, how that intervenes in the ramifications of the external life how deeply it can penetrate us, on the other side, that the depths of the Christ Impulse combine with that which we gather in spiritual science, then we have the universal character of spiritual science from the highest knowledge down to the lowest. And even more than on some other things it depends on the fact that we get a sensation of this universal character of spiritual science. I must say, it belongs to the provisionally most serious sensations and feelings that the present destiny-burdened events are not felt as something more significant that they do not make stronger impressions on our contemporaries. Since apart from all that which one can notice externally these destiny-burdened events is a warning sign, a warning sign not to keep to that which the last centuries have brought up as materialism in humankind, a warning sign to turn on the developmental way of humankind. What is experienced in blood and death should be felt, as if it was sent from the gods to earth, so that it teaches us how necessary spirituality is for the further development of humankind.

It is really a pity, for example, when we experience in these times that people hold talks, also write articles in which they say: may it come soon again, the time when again the free interchange of the peoples takes place, as it has taken place before. Otherwise, the Germans could labour under the delusion to come back again to the metaphysics of Fichte and Hegel, to develop metaphysical impulses again.—Even in these destiny-burdened days one fears that in the longings of the human beings something of metaphysical impulses could come in again. The metaphysical impulses shall be aroused in these months again. Since in how many cases we see—to the grievous experience of the mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, sisters, brothers and other human connections -an unaware confidence in the significance of the supersensible going like a magic breath through our world. Shall thousands and thousands go through death willing to make sacrifices, and the human beings will then keep on preaching that the human life is enclosed between birth and death when peace is on our earth again? Then the sacrificial deaths would be offered for nothing, because these sacrificial deaths arise—even if for many not clearly—from the steady confidence that these deaths is the aurora of a new time. He who goes into death on the battlefield wants to confirm something different by his death than this: my body ends here.—Which futility would it be to fill the European earth with corpses in our time if the materialistic world view even had a grain of justification? We have to write this into our souls above all. Those, who survive this time who live in the time when peace is there again, betray the dead if they do not work on the spiritualisation of the human development. Not to work on the spiritualisation of humankind signifies nothing but to say to those who have gone through blood and death: you died for nothing.—If materialism is right, they all died for nothing.

The spiritual scientist has to penetrate himself completely with this sensation. I read just during these days again that there are people today—and in the 19th century these people became more and more numerous—who state: it was a prejudice of St Paul that he said, if Christ did not rise, then our words and our faith would be “null and void.” But this saying by Paul⁵ is true. Since through that what happened as a result of the Mystery of Golgotha, the human soul was appointed again to have forces, which lead it to the spiritual world. We have spoken of these forces. But our time calls to us clearly: the deaths of so many people would be null and void if materialism were right. If materialism were right, they all would have died in vain.

If we penetrate ourselves with such thoughts, those who offered to give up their forces to the big human progress in a death which occurred at the blossoming human age will receive their forces increasingly from the thoughts which go up from our souls. If human souls turn that what they can have of spiritual thoughts and sensations, the collected forces from above, the unused etheric forces will meet, as I also said yesterday at the end, the human spiritual thoughts and cause a new age. That is why I close with the words today which gave us the feeling sense of standing in our time as spiritual scientists:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. Master Eckhart: ~1260–1327, mystic
• 2. seventh address in Addresses to the German Nation
• 3. The Portal of Initiation
• 5. St. Paul: 1 Corinthians 15:14

It must be my intention during these days to bring something home to our souls that is able to throw some light from the spiritual-scientific point of view on our big events. Therefore, it is also my task next Sunday to turn our sensations to certain points of view which can bring some light just in that which must now move our hearts and souls in the deepest sense. I would like to prepare the basis of that, directing your souls to certain powers and forces which have an effect in the historical existence of human beings which can be only recognised by those insights spiritual science can give and are not immediately discernible for the everyday consciousness. I want to point to developmental facts of human life, to more or less subconscious facts today which express themselves in the historical course of human life.

We go out from the fact- you know it from the representation in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?—that what takes place in secrecy with every human being is recognised on successive levels of supersensible knowledge, of the so-called Imaginative knowledge, of the Inspirative knowledge and of the Intuitive knowledge. In the public lecture yesterday, I have already emphasised that one has always to keep in mind that the spiritual scientist who states something of the spiritual worlds on the basis of his knowledge of Imaginative, Inspirative and Intuitive perceptions, does not add anything that does not exist in the spiritual realms in which every human soul lives without being aware of them. The spiritual scientist only draws attention to that which always weaves and lives in the world and in which way the individual human soul is put in it. So that not only for somebody who has the intention to make his way into the current of esoteric experiences, but for every human soul the knowledge of them is important what is internal reality for it at any rate, only a reality which cannot be recognised by means of the everyday awareness of life.

Thus I would like to go out from some facts of the Imaginative perception of the human nature generally. We observe daily that an event full of riddle, at least an event full of riddle for the external science intervenes rhythmically in our life by turns: the waking and sleeping states. We know for a long time that we belong with our four human members, the physical body, the etheric body, astral body and ego, in the waking state to the physical earth. We know that we are during sleep, from falling asleep up to waking, in the physical world only with our physical and etheric bodies that we withdraw as it were into the purely spiritual world with our astral bodies and egos. We can characterise that which presents itself now to the view of the spiritual researcher and say: the spiritual researcher looks at that which takes place, for example, constantly with the human being when he leaves his physical and etheric bodies while falling asleep and advances to the region of the higher world with his astral body and ego. The spiritual researcher simply watches what happens there with the human being—with every human being falling asleep. So that we can say: the spiritual researcher only observes what would show itself to every human soul if it could look down not in the dream state, but in the complete sleeping state at the world, so that it would find its physical and etheric bodies as something among the things of the world that is outside of it, of the sleeping soul.

We must not imagine that we see that which we have left there, in which we have left behind our physical and etheric bodies, from the point of view of sleep as we see our physical surroundings with our physical eyes. We have to use our physical senses, our physical eyes to see our surroundings from waking up to falling asleep. We do not use them when we are beyond our physical and etheric bodies. If we became suddenly clairvoyant in the sleeping state, we would perceive nothing of that what surrounds us in the waking state, as it is in the waking state. We also do not perceive our physical and etheric bodies as we perceive the physical body looking into a mirror. It is quite wrong to believe that one looks at the physical and the etheric bodies as if one bends with his astral body and ego over the physical and etheric bodies. This is not the case.

That what the Imaginative knowledge—we keep that in mind now: Imaginative knowledge—shows us that everything disappears to us, really disappears for the time being that we are used to see in the waking state. Also while we see our physical and etheric bodies, these are not like they are in the waking state, but our physical and etheric bodies appear to be enlarged to a world; they appear to us as connected with the whole earth. We are looking; we are aware that we are looking at the physical and etheric bodies. But we behold them, so that they are the only world for us at first. As well as we have mountains, rivers and clouds, the sun and stars et cetera round ourselves and look at them as our surroundings in the waking state, we look, while we look at our surroundings, when we are beyond our physical and etheric bodies, at our physical and etheric bodies as something that is extended to a world. We look at nothing else at all. We look at this as we look, otherwise, at the different things of our earth. We look there at our own physical nature like at a whole world.

It is strange that we feel this world at which we look there falling asleep that we feel it as we feel the earth in spring when it produces the single green rungs, after it has been freed from the snowy cover of the winter, when it makes the vegetation grow on it again, when everything begins shooting and sprouting. Falling asleep we look at the physical and etheric bodies enlarged to a world, we look at them, so that we can feel them like a planet waking in spring. And this goes on through the whole sleeping state that way. What we see there in mighty pictures which really appear to us in the expansion of a planet, begins going to its summer like the earth is about to go towards its summer when the spring comes to an end. We experience the sleeping state that way if we experience it properly.

We go in the sleeping state up to that point where we feel: our physical and etheric bodies bear something sprouting and shooting up to bloom, up to fruit; everywhere everything grows and blossoms. If I may express myself in detail, I have to say—for the Imaginative view that is paradoxical which shows itself that way, indeed: while looking physically we feel our earth's surface and experience its sprouting upwards, its growing and blooming in our consciousness. It is different when we now observe that from outside which takes action with our body and compare it with the plant world, as if its roots penetrate from above and grows with its flowers into our body. Thus we feel a completely reverse world, and the fruits are immersed. We learn then that with this immersion of the fruits is really expressed what becomes clear to us as the refreshment of sleep.

We know thereby that our physical and etheric bodies receive the forces from the whole universe—because everything is forces at what we look Imaginatively,—while we go on sleeping. We watch forces coming from the universe which are active in the creation of plants. We see the universe driving a vegetation into our physical nature. We get the sure knowledge of the fact that we leave our body while falling asleep, because we take away our physical and etheric bodies from the effects of the cosmic forces with our egos and astral bodies from waking up to falling asleep. Because we ourselves go out, the whole universe is able to have an effect on our physical and etheric bodies. It sends elemental, not physical forces into us which express themselves in the described Imaginations. Thus a relation is produced between physical body and etheric body with the whole universe every time when we fall asleep. While we live in the waking state in the physical world, our physical and etheric bodies really live during sleep in that what we call the elemental world, the world of the bare forces which show themselves just in the described Imaginations.

Where are we with our egos and astral bodies? We have often described, and it is also shown in different writings: we are with our egos and astral bodies in the world that has been described as the world of the higher hierarchies among the beings we call angeloi, archangeloi, archai et cetera. The egos and the astral bodies dive into these beings and their world. As well as we know about the beings of the animal, the plant, the mineral realms, when we are waking, and stand as human beings as it were above this world while we take up them in our thoughts, we are taken up like thoughts by the beings of the higher hierarchies. This is the significant matter that we can say: while here below our physical and etheric bodies are connected with the forces of the whole universe, we are thought from falling asleep up to waking, as if we were real beings, woven of thoughts and the will being; we are thought by the beings of the higher hierarchies.—As we think nature, the beings of the higher hierarchies think us. Hence, it is not right at all, exactly speaking, to say if one comes out of the physical body, he thinks the world. It is correct to say that one experiences to be thought by the world of the higher hierarchies. As the thought would have to feel itself during the waking life if it had consciousness, we would have to experience ourselves as the thoughts of the higher beings when we are outside our physical bodies.

How do we experience the reawakening Imaginatively? While we prepare to wake up gradually, we experience that really as we experience—we can compare the Imagination again to the external nature—the winter coming with its forces destroying and paralysing the sprouting summer life. As well as the winter above the earth brings frost and cold and the destruction of the summer splendour, we ourselves dive into the physical body and etheric body. Waking up we prepare the decline of the forces which entered our physical body and etheric body really like a vegetation, even like an animal realm from the elemental world of the universe as the winter prepares the decline of the summer splendour. While we are awake, we really transport our physical and etheric bodies as a result of our presence into such a condition as the cosmic relations transport the earth when it is winter. We spread out the winter over our own physical and etheric bodies, entering them. You see at the same time that what one uses from physical points of view often as a comparison is not right for the spiritual view. Indeed, the human being already has the consciousness instinctively that he is connected with the whole universe and that his experience is a microcosmic image of the macrocosm. But the human being prefers to say when he really wants to compare something in his microcosmic life to the macrocosmic life: waking is like the spring coming in our life and the waking life is like the summer. The autumn is like becoming tired in the evening and sleeping is like the winter.—Just the reverse is reality. The summer life is the sleeping life and the winter life is the waking life. This is the truth of the matter.

If the spiritual researcher investigates these relations, he finds that, while his ego and astral body rise to the realms of the higher hierarchies and are thought by the higher beings, not only the elemental world but also certain beings of the higher hierarchies work on his physical and etheric bodies. It is not only the elemental world which consists of forces, but real beings of the higher hierarchies, which work on our physical and etheric body. Something strange comes to light then that we can notice that we get to quite different conditions at the moment when we fall asleep as those in which we are while we are awake. As I have said, everything that can be expressed that way is based on the fact that the spiritual research permits us to watch the conditions of falling asleep and waking. Then it appears that also that being of the higher hierarchies has an effect on our physical and etheric bodies from waking up to falling asleep whom we must feel as the folk-soul to whom we belong. When the human being wakes up, he does not only dive into his physical and etheric bodies, but also into the processes which are carried out in his physical and etheric bodies by that which his folk-soul accomplishes. Something strange becomes apparent that the human being dives with falling asleep not only into those beings of the higher hierarchies who correspond to his individual development, but also into such spiritual beings we must regard as folk-souls. I ask to notice that, because it behoves us, who want to penetrate into spiritual science, to look deeper at the world interrelation than external perception can do it. Namely, the human being dives into the relationship to all folk-souls except his own folk-soul from falling asleep up to waking.

Let us remember: during the waking state we live immersed in the spiritual facts which our own folk-soul carries out in our physical and etheric bodies. We live together with our own folk-soul from waking up to falling asleep. Beside our folk-soul all the folk-souls of the other peoples are existent in the world. With falling asleep we dive into the relations of the other folk-souls, not in a single other folk-soul—make a note of that,—but in what they accomplish together, what they accomplish as it were in association, as a society. Only the own folk-soul is taken away from this relationship during night. We cannot escape to have also a relationship with all those folk-souls which belong to the other peoples in whom we are not incarnated in a certain incarnation. Since, while we belong to our folk-soul in our waking state, we belong to the other folk-souls in the sleeping state, indeed, only to their sounding-together; while we belong in the waking state to the intentions of the individual folk-soul in whose area we are born in a certain incarnation.

But there is a means to dive sleeping also into an other folk-soul. While we live in the normal awake state in our own folk-soul or its activity and in sleep in the harmony of the other folk-souls, we can dive sleeping in an individual folk-soul if we acquire a rather burning hatred of that which this other folk-soul accomplishes. So absurd it may sound, it is true—and we must be able in our movement to endure such a truth quietly: if the human being really feels burning hatred of a nation's area from his inner being, he condemns himself to sleep with the folk-soul of this nation's area at night, to be together with it.

We just touch a truth where we can see that life begins to have a deep seriousness behind that veil which covers the spiritual worlds for the everyday view, and that it is quite uncomfortable in a certain respect to be a supporter of spiritual science. Since spiritual science begins to be most serious about circumstances which one thinks uncomfortable in life and over which we are generously helped to get because life does not reveal the truth in the everyday sense. Although we must stand, of course, in the external life on the ground which this external life requires from us, we have to be serious about such a principle if we rise in spiritual science to those realms where other characteristics of life begin.

In my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? I spoke of the fact that at the moment when one rises in the spiritual world—and every human being is in the spiritual world, it concerns here only to a knowledge of that which is there always,—then that comfortable unity of the human being stops in which we live in the physical world. The human being experiences some splits; apart from those splits which are mentioned there, and which one can observe after the meeting with the guardian of the threshold, some other splits happen, for example, that is of deep importance for the soul-life. We have to accept while we live in a certain incarnation in a certain nation that it is involved in the whole process of the earth's evolution. We have to do our duty for the nation in which we stand and we have to offer our love to it. It must be clear to us that we really belong, because we are also spiritual beings in our ego and astral body, to the whole humankind and feel with our impulses with the whole humankind. Spiritual science does not allow that we live in it in one-sidedness, but we must be able to harmonise these both sides completely.

We have to realise that we harmonise—although we can love as a person of the present incarnation, even if we are spiritual scientists, our nation as intensely as somebody else is able to love his nation—this feeling with that which combines us with the whole humankind. And just spiritual science raises us to be brought together with the whole humankind because it shows us that we are connected with the whole humankind in our egos and astral bodies. Spiritual science demands more and more to harmonise contrasts from those who devote themselves to it with seriousness and dignity. It is bad if true spiritual science is confused with that unclear mystic activity which wants to combine the needs of the external, physical life with that for which we must rise diving into the spiritual world. Because unclear mysticism wants to bring in that everywhere in the everyday life what spiritual science only shows in the right light. That unclear mysticism will never be able to harmonise, for example, the love of the own nation with the love of the whole humankind, it leads to a hazy mystic cosmopolitism.

One can compare it, as I have already done, to that which hazy theosophists say all the time about equality and about the equal validity of any religion. Indeed, you can say in the abstract: all religions contain the truth. But this is exactly the same, as if one says: pepper, salt and paprika and everything possible are on the table, and all are food ingredients. Sugar, pepper, salt, and paprika—everything is the same. So I give paprika once into the coffee and sugar into the soup, because they are all food ingredients. Exactly on the same point of logic are those who drivel in an unclear mysticism only about the uniform core of all religions instead of getting involved in the real being of any detail that appears in our earth development. It does not depend on emphasising always: all peoples are only expressions of the generally human, but that we recognise the specific tasks which are given to the individual peoples by their folk-souls. A key is given for that in the series of talks which was printed long ago, which was held several years before the outbreak of the war, which did not come into being under the influence of the war, which one cannot reproach that it originated under the impressions of the war: The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology.

Just in our time it is important to call to mind such serious matters, so that the human being can find the harmony between general charity and patriotism. One does not need to shy away from characterising of any individual people, in so far as it is a people—the individual human being always rises up above his people. However, you can derive from my remarks that that has to take place without hatred, of course. Anybody does not recognise the real being of the individual plant if he hates the plant and describes what he feels as hatred. And also anybody cannot recognise the characteristics of a people if he describes what he hates of the people, or if he takes up that in the portrayal which comes from the emotions of hatred.

Thus somebody who is able to rise up to the points of view of spiritual science has to be eager all the time to see the being of the world not in a uniform unity, but just in the harmony of a variety. The human being has to find the possibility to feel all possible warmth for his people, concerning which he needs not show less commitment than anybody who does not strive for spiritual science, and to combine, on the other side, what brings us together with the whole humankind as a big complete being.

I said that we resume such matters the day after tomorrow. Now, however, I want to note that we take off that which brings us together with the single incarnation by our physical and etheric bodies at the same time, while we pass from our waking state into sleep and are thereby taken up in the beings of the higher hierarchies. So we take off our national being in sleep, too. We become only human beings, human beings with all the characteristics which we must have by that which we have acquired as human beings. If we look as spiritual scientist at that which happens to the human being, waking and sleeping, we perceive at the same time that in sleep the human being lives in the spiritual world with his ego and astral body, just as now also his physical and etheric bodies belong to the big world. The independent existence stops, which passes as it were in our skin, and we extend our selves to the big self.

Take into account that we go through a summer state and a winter state always in the course of twenty-four hours. The earth goes also through this summer and winter states, but the earth goes through them in the cycle of the year. Why does the earth go through these states in the cycle of the year? Because the earth is a being as we are, only on another level of the hierarchies. The whole earth, if we look at it physically, as it is around us, is only the body of the earth; and as well as we carry our soul and spirit in ourselves, the earth also has its soul and spirit. Only that is the difference that we are awake and sleep in the course of twenty-four hours, and the earth is awake and sleeps in the cycle of the year. It is awake from the autumn up to the spring and sleeps during the summer. So that we can always say, actually when we live in the summertime: we live embedded in the sleeping earth.—When we live in the wintertime: we live embedded in the waking earth.—It does not hold true that the earth is awake in summer and sleeps in winter as we can say in the trivial comparison taken from everyday life. But it is correct that when autumn comes the earth wakes up as a psycho-spiritual being and is most awake in the midwinter. The earth spirit thinks in the midwinter the most and starts stopping its thinking bit by bit while spring is approaching; and it sleeps when the external life sprouts; in the summertime the earth spirit is sleeping.

We as human beings are not only in connection with the body of the earth by our physical body, but also with the spirit of the earth. We know from various talks that the spirit we call the Spirit of Christ was united with the spirit of the earth by the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ Spirit lives in the spirit of the earth since the Mystery of Golgotha. If the human beings want to commit a festival which should express that the Christ Spirit is in the earth spirit—in which time they have to set this festival? They must not set it in the summer, but in the winter, in the midwinter. This is Christmas. For this reason one sets Christmas and that which develops from it in the wintertime. This arose from a right knowledge of those who once arranged the Christian year. Out of esoteric truth Christmas was determined, not account of historical facts. For the human being, while he is embedded with his soul and spirit in the soul and spirit of the earth, is together with that most awake condition of the earth in the wintertime. There he lives in the waking earth.

And what did the ancient peoples do about whom we know that they worked and got knowledge with the help of a kind of dreamlike clairvoyance? They must refer preferably to that which lives in the sleeping earth spirit when the earth spirit sleeps mostly, has withdrawn mostly to its sleeping state. There they have risen to that—in contrast to the modern humankind—which gave them the truth unconsciously, as it had to be for them. Hence, in the midsummer we find the St John's-tide festival with the peoples who belonged to the cult which scooped its knowledge from the more sleeping, dreamlike state. It is the summer festival in contrast to Christmas which is fitting for the modern humankind.

What is determined so externally, and what our materialistic time does not understand at all, this actually has its deep bases in the spiritual reality. We live now in a time in which the human beings must start again thinking and feeling quite differently as it was the case in the past time. The past time had the task to bring the realm of materialistic thinking and feeling home to the human beings. And just the last centuries which the human souls lived through should bring them home to the materialistic thinking and feeling. The earth development had to go through the materialistic time. We do not do well to harshly criticise materialism. It had to come once in the earth development. But now we live in a time when materialism must be overcome again when spiritual beholding has to enter human souls again. This is the more or less bright or dark sensation of those who are attracted in their own souls to our spiritual-scientific attempts, to our spiritual-scientific world view. They just feel that now the time is there when one has consciously to take up this spiritual world, while the spiritual world was once seen in a dreamlike condition. Spiritual science is there for that.

The past time was that of materialism. Because humankind had to dive into materialism, the strong impulse which takes up humankind again had to work just through the time of materialism. This is the Christ Impulse. When the Christ Impulse came into the earth evolution, the preparation already began. It came in the 14th, 15th centuries all the more. But when it approached, humankind already prepared itself to dive into materialism. The Christ Impulse was there as an objective fact in the world evolution, but the human beings of that time were not able to understand it least of all. Now we live in the time when one has to start to really understand it.

What do we see, hence? We see a strange course of the Christ Impulse in the previous development. We see that this Christ Impulse when it has entered in the human development as a result of the Mystery of Golgotha is not understood at all by the human beings. Let us try once to form an idea about that which people did in their cleverness. Just in the first and the following centuries, after the Christ Impulse had entered, we find that any possible theological system forms, that the people argue about how they have to imagine the Trinity et cetera. We see an infinite theological squabbling through centuries, and it would probably be the worst way to want to understand the Christ Impulse today from this theological squabbling how the Christ Impulse has worked during these centuries. The people who quarrelled there about its understanding have also understood nothing of the way the Christ Impulse stands in the evolution.

Let us try to realise how this impulse really worked once. I may give you single facts. I take the event that happened in the fourth century A.D., in 312, on the 28th October, which determined the later map of Europe completely: this was that Constantine, who was called “the Great,” the son of Constantius Chlorus, moved against Maxentius, the ruler of Rome, and triumphed over him. That is why Christianity also was victorious in the western world in an external way. Constantine declared Christianity the state religion et cetera. However, did he act out of his cleverness? Did that happen, which happened in those days, out of cleverness? We cannot say this. What happened then, actually? When Maxentius, the ruler of Rome, got to know that Constantine was approaching, he asked the Sibylline Books at first. That means that he set about understanding the world phenomena in a dreamlike way. He got the statement out of these books that somebody would accomplish the right action if he left the city as a ruler of Rome and went into battle outside Rome. This was something most unusual that one could think. Because Constantine had a much smaller army than Maxentius and could have achieved nothing without doubt if Maxentius had remained in Rome. But Maxentius moved out of Rome on the advice of the Sibylline Books. However, also in the army of Constantine the generals were not victorious. Rather Constantine had a dream showing him the symbol of Christ. On account of this dream he made his armies carry the cross as the symbol of Christ. He made his behaviour dependent on that which the dream had revealed to him. This battle by which the map of Europe was determined at that time was not decided by means of human cleverness, nor did the generals triumph, but dreams and prophecies. Everything in Europe would have changed if in those days the matters had taken place according to the consciousness of the human beings and not according to that what worked out of the subconsciousness what the human beings just did not know.

The theologians have argued about the question who is Christ, whether He is born with the Father in eternity, whether He is born in time whether He had the same validity as the Father et cetera. In their thoughts nothing of the Christ Impulse was included. But it worked within the human beings in the subconscious regions. It worked not by the egos, but by the astral bodies. The Christ Impulse was reality and worked without human beings understanding it. This is the important, essential part. The working of Christ is so independent of that what human beings understood of it like the course of a thunderstorm is independent of that what human beings have learnt about electricity or in the physical laboratory. Now it is the time to immerse oneself consciously in the effectiveness of the Christ Impulse. But Christ was always working as a force in the historical events.

We go over from this to another, later example. However, there we have to remember of what I explained to you. For the time when materialism approached it is important to know that the human being, while he wants to immerse himself in the spiritual world, must do that best of all in the wintertime. Hence, the view arises everywhere for this time that at the mentioned nights of midwinter especially talented people are endowed with inspirations from the spiritual world. There are legends everywhere with the peoples that tell us how the especially talented human beings who experience no initiation but are endowed by their nature, by elemental forces working in them to be inspired, how these are inspired during the nights from Christmas Eve up to the Epiphany day, in thirteen winter nights.

There is a very nice legend which was found in Norway not long ago, the legend of Olaf Åsteson who approaches the church at Christmas Eve and falls asleep. He sleeps up to the sixth January; and when he wakes up, he knows how to tell in imaginations about that which has taken place in the soul land, in the realm of spirits, as we call it. He expresses it in pictures, but he has experienced it through these thirteen nights. Such legends are found everywhere. They are just not that which one calls legends today. Indeed, there have always been endowed human beings who have gone through a physical initiation by elemental forces working in them which the human being can go through if he carefully follows the instructions of the initiatory path by his will.

So that we can say: in the time of materialism there could always be human beings who could unite with the earth spirit and receive inspirations when the earth spirit is most awake, in the midwinter. This was also the time when the Christ Impulse was able to work which united with the earth. Imagine especially endowed souls who are receptive for the spiritual world. It became apparent to them that they just got the impulses to that what they had to accomplish from the spiritual world in these thirteen nights up to the sixth January. This had to appear and appeared always again in little and big examples that there were human beings in the historical course who were inclined spiritually so that if the right point in time entered when they lived through those thirteen nights in winter the spiritual impulse—and in this time the Christ Impulse in particular—came into them. Initiations by nature, initiations which did not take place by means of conscious work have been carried out in the time of materialism always the easiest in these thirteen nights. We can find out that where such initiations appeared they took place in these thirteen nights.

And now we have a fact that even those will accept, who have only a little good will to recognise the spiritual world—the fewest people have this today,—that spiritual forces entered the historical course in the 15th century in the form of a virgin, the Maid of Orleans, as can be proved. You can verify this also historically that again the whole map of Europe was arranged differently, because the Maid of Orleans helped the French against the English at that time. Who thinks about it can find out that everything would have formed differently after that what human beings are able to do unless the shepherd girl had intervened—and in this shepherd girl just the forces of the spiritual world. The Maid of Orleans was only the instrument for that which was caused in those days. The Christ Impulse worked in her.

However, she had to have a physical initiation for that—and this physical initiation had to be carried out the best in the thirteen nights up to the sixth January. The Maid of Orleans had to get a sleeping state in the time from the 24th December to the sixth January when she would have been especially receptive for the spiritual influence which can be there just in this time. So that one had to demand that the Maid of Orleans would have experienced the time in a not quite conscious state from the 24th December to the sixth January and would have got the Christ Impulse.—Yes, the Maid of Orleans went through this state in a quite striking way. One cannot go through it more strikingly, than when one is still in that sleeping state in which somebody is before his birth, in the last times which he/she spends as a child before the birth in the body of the mother. The external consciousness is not able, of course, to take up anything. There is a sleeping state, and if it is the end of the time in the womb, it is the ripest condition of the internal-motherly sleep.

Indeed, the Maid of Orleans is born on the sixth January. This is the great secret of the Maid of Orleans that it went through an initiation by nature during thirteen days, which preceded her birth. That was why especially sensitive people gathered on that sixth January, when the Maid of Orleans was born in the village, and said that something quite particular must have happened. They sensed that something particular had come to the village. The Maid of Orleans was born. She worked through an initiation by nature in that sleeping state which she experienced in the body of the mother in the last time before her birth. There we see the spiritual beings working behind the threshold of that which takes place for the human consciousness, which are under this threshold of consciousness.

We see what history can mean if it counts only on that which is given in documents and external communications. The gods go differently through the course of history. The gods work by other means and in other ways. They put a Maid of Orleans into life who is able because of her special karma of this incarnation to take up the Christ Impulse and to work with it. They allow the Christ Impulse to flow in at the right moment. Of course, both were right for that: the special individual karma of the Maid of Orleans had to be added. Not any child that is born on the sixth January could accomplish the same.

Thus we can really say: the Christ Impulse worked in the human being using those forces which did not become clear to these human beings. Only today do we live in the time in which we must consciously take up that which used another way for centuries than the conscious way to be effective in history.

I wanted to arouse a feeling in your souls how the subconscious powers work definitely, what external history is which can be studied according to the external documents, that it is trivialities. It is good if one does such a study in particular in our time. We see, nevertheless, just in our time something great, something immense, something valiant, combined with sacrificial actions, occurring. But we see this great that takes place in our time, being really accompanied from the consequence of the extreme materialism, from that consequence which tries to explain everything that takes place in our time by means of bare external circumstances. This finds expression in the fact that one nation puts the blame on the other nation for the present events and wants to judge everything externally, so that one finds the guilt with the other for that which takes place. Also for our time the causes and reasons of the events are right down at the bottom in the subconscious processes. We will speak about that the day after tomorrow.

Our time will be suitable—also because of the bloody events—to remind the human beings of spiritual impulses of cognition. If once again peace is in the countries waging war today, one will realise that one cannot explain such immense wars of world history out of external causes. One will find out that one cannot explain them. Today people still say, especially the clever ones: nobody is allowed to speak about everything that has caused this war, history will speak about that.—They regard themselves as especially prudent who say there: only in fifty, in hundred years history will speak the right thing about that.

What one calls history today will never explain the causes of these events; however, one will see that from the historical consideration the causes cannot be fathomed. But other support will be there. An esoteric observation of our present just shows this.

What is one of the most remarkable facts in this destiny-burdened time? Oh, one of the most remarkable facts is without doubt this that so countless human beings go through the gate of death in their youth. We know what happens with the human being when he goes through the gate of death. We know that he comes out of the physical body with his etheric body, astral body and ego and that he takes off his etheric body after relatively short time and makes his journey with the essence of the etheric body. However, you can imagine that a difference must be between an etheric body, which is taken off between the twentieth and thirtieth years which could still have supplied the functions of human life for decades, and an etheric body, which is taken off at the later age. Yes, there is a big difference. If a human being dies because of age or illness, the etheric body has fulfilled its task. But countless young human beings go now through the gate of death, and their etheric bodies could not yet fulfil everything that they could fulfil.

I would like to show you at a concrete example how it is in a certain way with such etheric bodies that are torn away by force from the physical bodies. One could give many examples, of course. But today I want to give you an example which we ourselves experienced in Dornach in autumn. We experienced it at the site of our construction. A family which lives near the construction had a little son of seven years—a family which belongs to our anthroposophical circle. It was a dear boy of seven years, really a boon boy. He was so well-behaved that when his father had gone to war the seven-year-old Theo said to his mother: now I must be especially diligent, because I must help you where the father has helped you.

One evening after a lecture, a person belonging to our circle came and reported that this little Theo has disappeared since the evening. One could imagine nothing but that he has had an accident. A removal van had driven in that evening by what one calls in the external life chance at a place where for years indeed no van has gone, and since that time also not. Here the carriage had tipped over. The little Theo had been in that small house which one calls the canteen because there our friends who work on the construction are supplied with food. Strangely enough—he would have left sooner—he was detained by somebody, and while he wanted to go out through a door through which he would have gone on a certain way, this time he had to go through another door, and he thereby passed the removal van, just when the removal van toppled over. The van fell on him. This is one of those examples where we see clearly karma working.

I often used the simple comparison to show how often cause and effect are totally confused: we see a person going along a river. Suddenly we see the person falling into the river. We go and find a stone lying where the person has fallen. The person is drawn out of the water. He is already dead. If one does not go on examining the matter, one tells the matter with the best external conscience in the following way: the man fell over the stone and then into the river, and drowned.—One would have only needed to examine, and one would have thought that death did not happen because the person fell into the water, but the person fell into the water because he was dead; he had got a heart attack. Just the opposite happened as one imagines. You see how easy it is to confuse cause and effect everywhere in life. However, in the usual science this happens everywhere that causes and effects are confused.

Of course, here is the case that this Theo just caused it. He was the cause that the van passed at this time, he steered it to himself. You have to imagine this as the real secret of the matter. But now I will go on: a human child is killed in an accident in the very first blossom of life. If anybody is combined wholeheartedly with the construction work in Dornach and has the possibility at the same time to observe what is working on this construction, then one can say: this etheric body which was separated by force from the little Theo is in the atmosphere of the construction. Thus one gains the best Inspirative forces for the construction combining his own soul with that what lives, expanded to a little world, in the atmosphere of the construction. Never will I hesitate before confessing unreservedly that I have to thank for much that I could find for our construction in that time that I directed my soul to the etheric body of the little Theo working in the atmosphere of the construction. Thus just the connections are in the world. The real individuality of this human being goes on, but the etheric body remains which could have still supplied a human life for many decades.

Imagine the number of the unused etheric bodies which are floating there in the spiritual atmosphere over us and over those who will also live after us. Those etheric bodies which are left behind by those who went in young age through the gate of death in our destiny-burdened time. We do not speak of the way the individualities go through, but we speak of the fact that an own spiritual atmosphere is created by these etheric bodies. The human beings, who will live there, will live in this atmosphere. They will be submerged into a spiritual atmosphere which is filled with these etheric bodies which sacrificed their lives, because just in our time humankind can advance by these events. But it will be necessary that one feels what these etheric bodies intend which are the best inspirators of the future humankind. A good time of spiritualism comes if human beings show understanding, internal heart understanding for that what these etheric bodies want to say to them. All these etheric bodies are assistants of the spiritual impetus of the future. That is why it is so important that there are souls who are able to feel that what comes into the atmosphere of the future by these etheric bodies.

You do not learn anything about the nature of the etheric bodies that you can tell: the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, but that you also know such a secret of the effective spirituality of the etheric bodies as it is there in future.

Those have to prepare themselves who already tend to stand up for spiritual science, to receive that which these etheric bodies want to say. If we turn our souls to the spiritual world, we prepare ourselves and those who come after us to feel that which the legacy, the etheric legacy of the dead wants from the future humankind. If human souls are stimulated by spiritual science, so that they are able to direct their spiritual senses to the spiritual worlds, then something great and immense will certainly sprout up as an effect of the blood, of the courage, of the sufferings, and of the sacrifices. Hence, I would like to summarise at the end of this consideration in some words that what may now inspire, invigorate us if we as spiritual-scientific supporters direct our senses to the big, destiny-burdened events of our time.

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

Our spiritual-scientific world view may not only turn to the development and advance of the individual souls, but above all it has also to help really to gain additional points of view for the observation of life. In our time it has to suggest itself to us in particular to gain such additional points of view for the judgement of life. Indeed, it is a big and also important task for the individual human being to help himself by that which he can gain as the fruit of the spiritual-scientific self-education. Only because the individual human beings really help themselves, can they co-operate in the development of humankind generally. But our attention should be directed not only to that, but we really should be able to feel as supporters of the anthroposophical world view the big events of our time from a high point of view, from a really spiritual point of view. We should be able to transport ourselves to a higher standpoint judging the events. Today some points of view just with reference to the big events of our time may be given, because our present meeting takes place in these destiny-burdened times.

We start from something that is near to us as human beings. Human beings have illnesses at certain times. One considers illnesses normally as that which damages our organism which penetrates our organism like an enemy. Such a general point of view is not always justified. Indeed, there are symptoms which must be judged from this point of view where as it were the illness comes like an enemy into our organism. But that is not always the case. In most cases, the illness is something completely different. The illness is not the enemy in most cases, but just the friend of the organism. That what is the enemy of the organism precedes the illness in most cases, it develops in the human being, before the externally visible illness breaks out. There are forces opposing each other in the organism, and the illness, which breaks out at any time, is the attempt of the organism to save itself from the forces opposing each other which were not noticed before.

Illness is often the beginning work of the organism to induce the healing. The illness is that which the organism undertakes to fight against the hostile influence which precedes the illness. The illness is the last form of the process, but it signifies the battle of the good juices of the organism against that which is lurking there at the bottom. Only if we look at the most illnesses in such a way, do we get the correct understanding of the illness process. Hence, the illness points to the fact that something has taken action, before the illness broke out, that should come out of the organism. If some phenomena of life are seen in the right light, you understand quite easily what I said. The causes may be in the most different areas. What it concerns, this is that which I have just suggested: the fact that we have to look at the illnesses as something that the organism defends itself against things which should be driven out.

I do not believe that there is a comparison which holds really as true as the comparison of such a sum of significant, deeply intervening events, as we experience them now since the beginning of August 1914 over a big part of the earth, with an illness process of the human evolution. Just this must strike us that these military events are actually an illness process. But wrong would it be to believe that we cope with it if we simply understand this illness process in the wrong sense as just many an illness process is understood: as if it is the enemy of the organism. The cause goes ahead of the illness process. It can strike us in our time particularly how little people are inclined in the present to take into consideration such a truth which must prove itself as immediately clear to somebody who takes up the spiritual-scientific world view not only in his reason, but also in his feeling.

We had to experience a lot of infinitely painful things just in the course of the last nine months—painful concerning the human ability of judgement. Is it not that way, actually, if one reads the literature, which is read mostly and is spread by the most different countries of the earth, is it not as if the people who judge about these events suppose that in July 1914, actually, history has begun? This was the saddest experience in which we had to take part beside all the other painful things that the people, setting the tone or rather giving articles, and making the public opinion, know basically nothing about the origin of the events and look only at the nearest. The infinite discussions, these invalid discussions came into being from that. Where is the cause of the present military conflicts? Over and over again one has asked: does this have the guilt? Does that have the guilt?—And so on. Always one hardly went back further than up to July, at most June 1914. I mention that because it is a characteristic feature of our materialistic time. One thinks usually that materialism only manages a materialistic way of thinking, a materialistic world view. This is not the case. Materialism manages not only this, but it also manages shortsightedness; materialism manages mental laziness, manages lack of insight. The materialistic way of thinking leads to the fact that one can prove everything and believe everything. It really belongs to that self-education which anthroposophy must give us to see that somebody who stops in the area of materialism can prove everything and believe everything.

I take a simple example. When one had something to say about the spiritual-scientific world view during the last years, somebody here or there believed to have to assert his view compared to the spiritual-scientific world view. One could often hear: Kant has already proved by his philosophy that the human being has limits of knowledge, and that one cannot get where the spiritual-scientific world view wants to attain knowledge.—Then the very interesting matters were stated by which Kant should have proved that one cannot penetrate to the spiritual world with human cognition. If one still went on representing spiritual science, then the people came and believed: he denies everything that Kant has proved. Of course, such a thing contained a little bit of the assertion: this man must be an especially foolish person, because he strictly denies proven matters.

It is not that way at all. The spiritual scientist does not deny at all that this is absolutely right what Kant has proved, it is clear that this is proved quite well. However, assume once that somebody would have strictly proved in the time in which the microscope was not yet invented, that there would be the smallest cells in the plant, but one could never find these because the human eyes were not able to see them. This could have been strictly proved, and the proof would be absolutely right, because the human eye, as well as it is arranged, could never penetrate to the organism of the plant up to these smallest cells. That is an absolutely right proof which can never be upset. However, life has developed this way that the microscope was invented, and that in spite of the strict proof people got the knowledge of the smallest cells. Only if once anyone understands that proofs are worthless for gaining the truth that proofs can be correct, but mean basically nothing special for the progress of the knowledge of truth, only then will one stand on the right ground. Then one knows: the proofs can be good, of course, but the proofs do not have the task to lead really to truth. Think only once of the comparison I have given, then you see that also, as absolutely strict the proof may be that the human visual ability does not reach to the cell, as strict can be the proof that human knowledge, as Kant says, does not reach to supersensible worlds.

The proofs were absolutely correct, but life goes beyond proofs. This is also something that is given to somebody on the path of spiritual research that he extends his ken and is really able to appeal to something different than to the human reason and its proofs. Who limits himself to materialistic ideas is really led to an uncontrollable confidence in proofs. If he has a proof in the pocket, he is generally convinced of the truth.

Spiritual research will just show us that anyone can prove the one and the other matter rather well that, however, proofs by reason have no significance for gaining real truth. That is why it is a concomitant of our materialistic time that people are enslaved by mental shortsightedness. If this mental shortsightedness is still infiltrated with passions, it comes about that we see today not only the European peoples fighting with arms, but feuding with each other. There anyone has to say all possible matters, and you cannot expect basically that one is able to persuade the other, not only during the war. If anybody believed that one day a neutral state could possibly choose between the allegations of two hostile states, he would have a naive confidence. Of course, one side can have its opinion and substantiates it by all kinds of proofs, but the other side will do the same. One gets insight only if one is involved in the deeper bases of the whole human evolution.

I tried already some years before the outbreak of this war to throw some light on it in the series of talks about the individual folk-souls and their effects on the individual human beings in the different European regions, how the individual nations face each other and that there really different forces hold sway over the different peoples. Today we want to complete that with a few other viewpoints.

Our materialistic time thinks too much in the abstract. Such a thing is not taken into consideration in our materialistic time at all that there is a real development in the life that the human being has to allow to be ripe that what is in him develops gradually to the real judgment. The human being—we know this and it is shown in detail in my essay Education of the Child in the Light of Spiritual Science—experiences such a development that during the first seven years his physical body, from the seventh up to the fourteenth years the etheric body develops in particular et cetera. This advancing development of the individual human being is taken into consideration a little, the parallel phenomenon, the synonymous phenomenon much less. The processes which take place within the individual nation's connections are directed and led—we all know this from spiritual science—by beings of the higher hierarchies. We speak of folk-souls, of folk-spirits in the true sense of the word. We know that, for example, the folk-soul of the Italian people inspires the sentient soul; the French folk-soul inspires the intellectual soul or mind-soul, that the inhabitants of the British islands are inspired by the consciousness-soul; in Central Europe the ego is inspired. I do not pass any value judgment on the individual nations, but I may only say that this is that way. The fact that, for example, an inspiration of the people that inhabit the British islands is based on the fact that it brings as nation everything into the world that is caused by inspiration of the consciousness-soul from the folk-soul. It is strange to which extent people become nervous in this field. When I emphasised here or there during the war what I had expressed in the mentioned series of talks, there were people who almost understood it like a kind of abuse of the British people that I said that it would have the task to inspire the consciousness-soul, while the German folk-soul has to inspire the human ego. As if one understood it as an insult when one says: salt is white, paprika is red.—It is a simple characterisation, the representation of a truth which exists, and one has to accept this as such a truth first of all. One manages that much better which prevails between the individual members of humankind if one looks at the characteristics of the individual peoples, and not, if one confuses everything, as the modern materialistic view does it.

Of course, the individual human being rises up above that which he gets from his folk-soul, and this is just the task of our anthroposophical society that it raises the individual human being out of the group-soul and raises him to the general humankind. But it remains that the individual human being, in so far as he stands in a people, is inspired by his folk-soul, that, for example, the Italian folk-soul speaks to the sentient soul, the French folk-soul to the intellectual soul or mind-soul, the British folk-soul to the consciousness-soul. We have to imagine that as it were the folk-soul is hovering over that which the individual human beings do in the single nations. But as we see that the human being develops already as we can say: the ego experiences a particular development in a certain time of life; we can also speak of a development of the folk-soul in relation to its people. Only this development is somewhat different from that of the individual human being.

We take, for example, the Italian people. There we have this people and the folk-soul belonging to this people. The folk-soul is a being of the supersensible world; it is affiliated to the world of the higher hierarchies. It inspires the sentient soul, and this always happens, as long as the people live, the Italian people, because we speak of this people, but it inspires the sentient soul in the different times in the most different way. There are times in which the folk-souls inspire the members of the single nations, so that this inspiration happens as it were on the level of the soul. The folk-soul floats in higher regions of spirit and its inspiration happens in such a way that it inspires the soul qualities only. Then there are times when the folk-souls float further down and make stronger demands on the single members of the peoples when they inspire them so strongly that not only the human being gets them in his soul qualities, but where they work so effectively that the human being becomes dependent on the folk-soul concerning his bodily qualities. As long as people are influenced by the folk-soul in such a way that it inspires the psycho-spiritual qualities, the type of the people is not coined so deeply. The forces of the folk-soul do not work there, so that the whole human being is seized up to the blood. Then a time comes when one can infer already from the kind how the human being looks out of his eyes, from the facial features how the folk-soul is working. It is revealed that the folk-soul has sunk deeply; it makes forceful demands on the whole human being.

Such a deep impression took place with the Italian people approximately in the middle of the 16th century, about 1550. Then again the folk-soul floated back as it were, and thenceforward that is passed on the descendants. You can say: the most intensive being together of the Italian people with their folk-soul was about 1550. At this time, the Italian folk-soul sank the deepest, this people of the Italian peninsula got their most distinctive character. If we go back to the time before 1550, we see that their character is not as strongly coined as from 1550 on. Then only the typical begins what we know as Italianità. The Italian folk-soul, so to speak, entered into marriage with the sentient soul of the individual human being, who belongs to the Italian people.

For the French people—I do not talk about the single human being who can rise up above the people—the similar point in time entered when the folk-soul sank the deepest and penetrated the people completely, about 1600, in the beginning of the 17th century. At this time, the folk-soul completely seized the intellectual soul or mind-soul.

For the British people the point in time entered in the middle of the 17th century, about 1650. Only then the British people got their exterior British expression.

If you know such matters, something will be explicable to you, because you can now put the question differently: how is it with Shakespeare in England?—Shakespeare worked in England, before the British folk-soul worked most intensively on the English people. That is why he is not understood in England substantially. As everybody knows, there are issues in which everything that does not correspond completely to the taste of the governesses is eradicated. Very often Shakespeare is extremely moralised. We know that the deepest understanding of Shakespeare was caused not in England, but in the Central European spiritual development.

Now you will ask: when did the folk-soul touch the members of the Central European people?—However, the case is somewhat different, because this folk-soul descends and ascends repeatedly. And thus we have in the time, when the boon legend world of Parzival, of the Grail originated, such a descent of the folk-soul which combines with the individual souls, then it ascends again and after that a next descending takes place in the time between 1750 and 1830. The Central European life is then touched by its folk-soul the deepest. Since that time the folk-soul is ascending. Thus you see that it is quite comprehensible that Jacob Böhme (1575–1624) lived in a time in which he could get little from the German folk-soul. There was not the time when the folk-soul combined with the individual souls of the people. Hence, Jacob Böhme is, although he is called the “Teutonic philosopher.” a person who is chronologically independent of his folk-soul; he stands as it were like an uprooted human being there, like an everlasting phenomenon within his time. If we take Lessing, Schiller, Goethe, these are also German philosophers, they are completely rooted in the German folk-soul. This is just the typical feature of these philosophers living in the time between 1750 and 1830 that they are completely rooted in the folk-soul.

You see that it does not depend only on the fact that one knows: with the Italian people the folk-soul works on the sentient soul, with the French people the folk-soul works on the intellectual soul, with the British people the folk-soul works on the consciousness-soul, with the Central European nation the folk-soul works on the ego. One has also to know that this happens at certain points in time. The events which happen become historically explicable only if one knows such matters really. That nonsense which is done as science where one gets the documents and enumerates the events successively and says that one has to derive one matter from the other, however, this nonsense of the historians does not lead to a real history, to an understanding of the human evolution, but just only, so to speak, to a falsification of that which exists and works in human history.

If one sees how differently that works on the individual peoples—I could still characterise other peoples—which forces drive these peoples, then one sees the conflicting matters which are there. And one sees that the events of today really did not happen only during the last years, but were prepared for centuries.

We look at the East, at the area of the Russian culture. The characteristic of the Russian culture is that it can develop when once the point in time can enter when the Russian folk-soul combines with the spirit-self—I already expressed this in the mentioned series of talks. A time has to come in which this characteristic of the European East is only revealed. This will be completely different from the development in the West or in the middle of Europe. Provisionally, however, it is quite explicable that that which is allotted to the Russian culture is not there at all, but that the Russian culture has such a relationship—like the individual human being—to the spirit-self that it turns always upwards. The single member of the Russian people and even profound Russian philosophers do not speak as one speaks of the biggest matters in Central Europe, but they speak quite differently.

We find something tremendously typical. What is the most characteristic of this Central European cultural life? You all know that there was a time of the great mystics in which Master Eckhart, John Tauler and others worked. They all sought for the divine in the human souls. They tried to find the God in their chests, in their souls, “the little spark in the soul,” as Master Eckhart expressed it. They said: therein something must be where the divinity is immediately present. Thus that striving originated through which the ego wanted to be united with its divinity in itself. This divinity wanted to be won by hard efforts; the divinity wanted to be won by the developing human being. This runs as a trait through the whole Central European being. Imagine which infinitely deep emotion it is when Angelus Silesius (1624–1677) who, I may say, stands internationally on the ground of the Central European culture and cultural life, says in one of his nice sayings The Cherubinic Wanderer: if I die, not I die, but God dies in me.—Imagine how infinitely deep this is. For he, who said this, seized the idea of immortality vividly, because he felt: if death happens in the individual human being,—because the human being is filled with God—this phenomenon of death is no phenomenon of the human being, but of God, and because God cannot die, death can be only a delusion. Death cannot mean destruction of life. He knows that an immortal soul exists and says: if I die, not I die, but God dies in me.—It is a tremendously deep sensation which lives in Angelus Silesius. This is a result of the fact that the inspiration takes place in the ego.

If the inspiration takes place in the sentient soul, it can happen what took place by Giordano Bruno. The monk got into the spirit with everything what he found with Copernicus, felt the whole world animated. Read a line of Giordano Bruno, and you find verified that he, in so far as he has grown out of the Italian people, just proves the fact that there the folk-soul inspires the sentient soul.

Cartesius, Descartes (1596–1650), is born almost in the characterised point of the French development, when the French folk-soul combined so surely with the French people. Read a page by Cartesius, the French philosopher, you find that he confirms on each page what spiritual science finds: the fact that there the inspiration of the folk-soul works on the intellectual soul.

Read Locke (1632–1704) or Hume (1711–1776) or another English philosopher, up to Mill (John Stuart Mill, 1806–1873) and Spencer (Herbert Spencer, 1820–1903), everywhere inspiration of the consciousness-soul.

Read Fichte (Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814) in his struggle in the ego itself, then you have the inspiration of the ego by the folk-soul. This is just the characteristic that this Central European folk-soul is experienced in the ego, and that, hence, the ego is the actually striving force, this ego with all its power, with all its mistakes, with all its wrong tracks and also with all its conscious efforts. If this Central European human being should find the way to Christ, he wants to bear Him in his own soul.

Try once to look for the idea to experience the Christ or a God internally in the Russian cultural life, if it is not taken over externally by the west-European civilisation. You cannot find it at all. There one expects everywhere that a historical event happens really, so that it takes place, as Solovyov (Vladimir Solovyov, 1853–1900) says, as a “miracle.” The Russian cultural life is very much inclined to behold the resurrection of Christ in the supersensible realm, to revere the working of an inspiring power externally, as if the human being is beneath it, as if the inspiration moves over humankind like a cloud, not as if it enters into the human ego. This intimate being together of the ego with its God, or also, if it concerns Christ, with Christ, this desire that Christ is born in the soul is to be found only in Central Europe. If once the East-European culture develops as it is commensurate, again a kind of group-soul will appear because that culture will be founded which floats above the human beings. This kind of group-soul is only on a higher level than the old group-soul was. At the time being, we must find it quite natural that one speaks everywhere in that way, as the Russian philosopher does, about something that floats like the spiritual world above the human world. However, he can never approach that world as intimately as the Central European human being wants to approach with his ego the divine that flows and weaves through the world.

When I often spoke of the fact that the divinity flows through the world and weaves and surges, then that is out of the sentient world of the Central European human being and would not at all be understood by any other European people in the same way as it can be taken up by the Central European feeling nature. This is the typical, the characteristic of the Central European people.

These are the forces which live there in the individual peoples facing each other, which time and again are in competition, which must discharge by force as clouds discharge and cause flashes and thunderstorms.

Do we not hear, one could say now, a word sounding in the East of Europe which was as it were something like a slogan and should work thus, as if the culture of Eastern Europe should begin now to extend over the little valuable Western Europe, to overflow it? Do we not see that the Pan Slavists, the Pan-Slavism¹ appeared, especially also appeared in spirits like Dostoyevsky (Fyodor Mikailovitch Dostoyevsky, 1821–1881) and similar people, with the particular points of his program as there was said: you West-Europeans altogether, you have a decadent culture that must be replaced by East Europe.—Then a whole theory was built up, a theory which culminated above all in the fact that one said: in the West everything has become decadent; this must be replaced by the fresh forces of the East. We have the really orthodox religion against which we do not fight, but we have just accepted it like the cloud of the folk-soul floating above the human beings et cetera. Then sagacious theories were built up, very sagacious theories, which the principles, which the intentions of the old Slavism could already be, that from the East the truth must now spread out over Central Europe and Western Europe.

I said that the single human being can rise up above his people. Such an individual being was Solovyov in a certain field, the great Russian philosopher. Although one also notices with him in each line that he writes as a Russian, nevertheless, he rises up above his people. In the first time of his life, Solovyov was a Pan-Slavist. But he has more exactly concerned himself with that which the Pan-Slavists and Slavophils² put up as a kind of national philosophy, national world view. What did Solovyov, the Russian, find? He asked himself: is there already the real Russian being in the present? May it be included already in those who represent Pan-Slavism and Slavophilism?—And lo and behold, he did not rest, until he came on the right thing. What did he find? He checked the statements of the Slavophils to whom he had belonged before, he tackled them, and there he found that a big part of the forms of thinking, the statements, the intentions is got from the French philosopher de Maistre³ friendly to the Jesuits, who was the great teacher of the Slavophils concerning their world view. Solovyov himself proved that Slavophilism does not grow on own ground, but originates from de Maistre. He proved even more. He discovered a German book of the 19th century which was forgotten for long time and which nobody knows in Germany. The Slavophils copied whole parts of that book in their literature. What a peculiar phenomenon appeared? One believes that something comes from the East, whereas it is a purely western import. It came over from the West and was then sent back to the western people again. The western people were confronted with their own thought-forms because own thought-forms do not yet exist in the East.

If anyone tackles the matters exactly, it is confirmed everywhere what spiritual science has to say. So that one already deals with something while rolling from the East that is still elementary, with something that will find its development when it takes up that as affectionately which has developed in Central Europe as this Central Europe took up the Greek and Latin cultural achievements from the South. Because development of humankind takes place, so that the following condition takes up the previous one. What I could characterise in the public lecture as the Faustic way of thinking of Central Europe by the words: there was a year 1770—Goethe felt it as a Faustic striving when he said:

I've studied, to my regret,
Philosophy, Law, Medicine,
and—what is worst—Theology
from end to end with diligence.
Yet here I am, a wretched fool
and still no wiser than before

Faust I, verses 354–359

There a very rich German cultural life came about, a most intensive striving. But if Goethe had written his Faust forty years later, indeed he would not have started: “I've studied now, to my regret, Philosophy ...” et cetera, and I have now become a wise man,—but he would have written exactly his Faust like in 1770. This vivid striving comes from the inspiration of the folk-soul in the ego, from that intimate being together of the ego with the folk-soul. This is a basic characteristic of the Central European spiritual culture. And the East European culture has to combine with it affectionately, it must take up it. What had to flow into Central Europe was received once from the southern culture, was taken up. Now, however, it is not different when from the East the elementary wave of development rolls, as if the pupil is furious with his teacher because he should learn something from him and wants to thrash him, therefore. It is a somewhat trivial comparison, but, nevertheless, it is a comparison which exactly applies to the matter. Human masses of quite different internal forces of development live in Europe together. These different forces of development must compete with each other; they must assert themselves in different way. The reluctant forces developed for a long time. If one looks at the details, one finds that they express everywhere what spiritual science has to say.

Is it not expressed so wonderfully, does not the wave of the European development crowd together in such a way that it is put symbolically before the whole humankind that in Central Europe the intimate living together of the ego with the spiritual world must be felt? That God is to be experienced in the “little spark in the soul,” that Christ is to be experienced in the “little spark in the soul?” Christ Himself must come to life in the human ego efficiently. That is why the whole development in Central Europe tends to the ego as in no other European language. “Ich” (ego) is “I-C-H.” Like a mighty symbol in the intimate interaction of that what can be the holiest to the soul stands there in Central Europe: I = I-CH—Jesus Christ. Christ Jesus and at the same time the human ego! The folk-soul is working that way, inspiring the people to express in typical words what the underlying facts are. I know very well that people laugh at such a thing, when I express that the folk-soul worked for centuries, so that the term “ich” has come about which is so typical, so symbolical. However, we let people laugh. Only few decades, and they will no longer laugh, but then they will regard it as more significant than what people call physical laws today.

What had an effect as a wave of development worked rather typically. Sometimes, the consciousness expresses a very small part of the truth only; but what works in the subconscious depths expresses itself much truer. We speak, for example, of “Germans” (Teutons, Germanic people). Words are formed by the active genius of language. A part of the inhabitants of Central Europe is called “Germans.” If a German speaks of “Germanic people” (Teutons), he counts the inhabitants of Germany, Austria, Holland, Scandinavia, but also the inhabitants of the British islands to them. He expands the word “German” about a wide area. However, the inhabitant of the British islands rejects this. He calls the German “German” only. He does not have the word German for himself. The German language embraces a much bigger circle. It is inclined to put the word into the service of selflessness; he not only is called “German,” he also encloses the others. The other, the Briton, rejects this. If you are once grasped by the creative genius of language, then you see something really wonderful in it. What people have in consciousness becomes maya, the big delusion. What exists in subconscious depths has a much truer effect. Something tremendously significant and deep expresses itself therein.

Compare now the rude way to look at the relations of the European peoples today with the way one has to go to work intimately to understand the European interplay of forces. Then only will you be able to see the devastation that the materialistic age caused in the human power of judgment. The fact that one started to think that matter carries and holds everything is not yet the worst, but that one has become shortsighted that one cannot look at the central issue, even does not do a step behind the veil which is woven as a maya over the truth, this is the actually bad.

Materialism well prepared what it intended. Also there the genius worked, only the genius who caused materialism as the highest leader is Ahriman. He had a powerful influence during the last centuries. I may still point briefly to a chapter to which one does not point with pleasure today. If it happens, one looks at it as a particular madness. One influences the human being the easiest, if one instills to him in his youth in his powers of imagination, in his soul what should grow up then in him. In the later life one cannot teach human beings anything thoroughly. Hence, Ahriman never would have, actually, better prospects to make the souls really materialistic, than when he instills in the youthful childish souls already that which works on in the subconsciousness. If in the time when the human being does not yet think intellectually already the materialistic forms of thinking are taken up, then people will learn to think thoroughly materialistically if materialism is already instilled in the children's souls. Ahriman did this in such a way that he inspired a writer of the materialistic age⁴ with the idea of Robinson Crusoe. Who allows to take in Robinson sees the materialistic ideas of Robinson thoroughly working. It does not seem so, but the whole—as Robinson is constructed as he is driven in this adventurer's life in the external experience to everything, until even the religion grows up finally like cabbages on the fields—all that prepares the child's soul very well to the materialistic thinking. If you imagine that there were in a certain time—in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries—Bohemian, Portuguese, Hungarian versions of Robinson et cetera as imitations of Robinson Crusoe, one must say: the job was performed thoroughly, and the portion that the Robinson reading had in the education of materialism is enormous.

Compared with such a phenomenon one has to point to something different that the children should take up in their understandings for their later lives. These are the fairy tales which live in Central Europe, and particularly the fairy tales which the brothers Grimm⁵ collected. This is a much better literature for the children than Robinson. And if one understands that which now happens between the European peoples in such a frightful, such a grievous and destiny-burdened way as an admonition to look at the way a little more exactly that developed in the subsoil of the events, at that which extends to himself in the present, then one will know above all, that it does not depend really on whether now a few German scholars send back their medals and certificates to England. If the admonition of the time is so strong that one recognises the materialistically inspired consciousness-soul of the British people in its significance, one also understands the significance of the Robinson reading and eradicates the whole Robinson once. Much more thoroughly, much more radically one will have to set to work if one is able to take into consideration the admonitions of our time correctly one day.

Thirty-five years have now passed since I started interpreting Goethe, just in his spiritual-scientific task. I tried to show that in Goethe's theory of evolution a really great, spiritual theory of evolution is given. The time must come when that is seen in wider circles. For Goethe gave a great, tremendous and spiritual theory of evolution. This was hard to understand for the people. Then Darwin could work better in the materialistic age who gave that in a coarsened, materialistic way which Goethe gave in a fine, spiritual way as a theory of evolution. It was a thorough Anglicisation which seized Central Europe. Now imagine the tragedy which lies, actually, in the fact that the most English naturalist in Germany, Ernst Haeckel, who swore completely on Darwin, had to appear with his furious hatred about the English. When this war broke out, he was one of the first who sent back the received medals and certificates to England. To send back the English coloured Darwinism, he is probably too old, however, that would be the essential, the more important action.

The concerning matters are tremendously deep and important, and they are connected with the necessary spiritual deepening of our time. If one sees once that the Goethean theory of colours is infinitely deeper than the Newtonian theory of colours that the Goethean theory of evolution is infinitely deeper than Darwin's theory of evolution, then one finally becomes aware of that which the Central European cultural life involves, also with regard to such highest fields.

I will only arouse a sensation in your souls which admonitions the present grievous, destiny-burdened events must be to us. An admonition to work which should induce us to reflect that which is there in the Central European cultural life and which is as it were an obligation to get it out. I also meant this when I spoke yesterday in the public lecture⁶ about the fact that this Central European cultural life contains germs which must produce blossoms and fruits.

When we say time and again: the conscious soul-life takes place on the surface; however, beneath it there is something about which we have spoken during these days. Then we are also allowed to direct our thoughts to the fact that in the impulses of numerous human beings also in the present something lives that is quite different from that they are aware of. Do not believe that the human beings fight in the West and the East who have to defend the big Central European fortress only for that they are aware of in their consciousness. Look at the impulses above all which are unaware to many human beings who go through blood and death today. However, the impulses exist, and we should be able to get the sensation from spiritual science,—looking to the East and to the West—that in the impulses of those, who sacrifice their lives, something lives that the future has to bear only for the external experience, even if the fighters possibly have no premonition in their consciousness. Considering these events that way we can penetrate ourselves with the right feeling.

Take into account that many souls have gone through blood and death during these military events which cannot be compared with that which took place in the conscious history of humankind, and we imagine that these souls will look down on the death which was imposed to them by the big events of time. Imagine that for the purposes of what I said the day before yesterday the youthful etheric bodies permeate the spiritual atmosphere. Imagine that not only the souls, the individualities, are in the spiritual world, but that something useful of their young etheric bodies penetrates the spiritual atmosphere. Let us try to look at the admonitions which people should have, who are left here on the earth. Yes, the individual human being who has gone through the gate of death reminds us of the big tasks which are to be carried out in the European culture.

These admonitions must be heard. And people must be inclined to get recognising sensations of our conditions from the depth of the cultural life. If one feels once that way that everybody who remains today in the blossom of his years on the battlefield stands as an admonisher calling for the spiritualisation of humankind in the European culture, one will have properly understood it. One wants not only that from such sites as ours the abstract knowledge goes out: the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, the human being goes through many incarnations, the human being has a karma and so on,—but one would want that the souls who take part in our spiritual-scientific life are roused in their internal depths to the sentient life which has just been suggested, to experience also that which the admonitions of the early deceased are in the next future. The nicest we can acquire to us as supporters of spiritual science is the vivid life which should go like a breath through those who count themselves to us. Not the knowledge, not the knowledge only, but this life, this life becoming reality.

In the last times, several members left us from the physical plane. Also a young co-worker, our dear Fritz Mitscher, died. I had, arranged by karma, the task to speak at the cremation in Basel. I had to speak certain words to the disappearing soul. Among various matters, I spoke to the soul that we are aware of the fact that he also remains as a co-worker, after he has gone through the gate of death. I had to speak this out of the consciousness that what invigorates us is not only a theory, but that it must fill our souls completely with life. Then, however, we must behave to those who have gone through the gate of death like to those who are here still in life. We must not be waiting to say to ourselves: human beings living in physical bodies are prevented by the most manifold circumstances from fully realising the spiritual life. Which inhibitions can we notice in this physical life on earth with the human beings if the really big tasks of development are involved—and have to be fulfilled then. But we can rely on the dead often better. This feeling that they are among us that a special mission can be transferred to them allowed me to speak the obituary for our friend Fritz Mitscher appropriately who has gone as an early deceased through the gate of death. What was said for him concerns many others who have gone through the gate of death. We regard them as our most important co-workers, and it will not be misunderstood if I say: even more than on the living we can rely on the dead with our spiritual work.

But that we can generally express such a thing, we have to stand quite vividly in that which our spiritual movement can give us. I rely on the fact that just the dead are now the most important co-workers for the spiritualisation of the future human culture on the external field in our destiny-burdened time. For this death is a great master at which those look back who have gone through the gate of death. Some people need a stronger teacher than life can be today. You can see this at various examples.

I would like to give an example—some other could be given. A spectacular article⁷, opposing against spiritual science, represented by me, appeared several years ago in a magazine which is published in South Germany, in the Hochland. This article caused a great sensation. It has made sense to many people because it was written by a quite famous philosopher. The editor of that magazine Hochland accepted this article. He supported, actually, as he thinks, such a view on this tricky spiritual science.

It does not depend really on defending oneself with external means against it. It is absolutely comprehensible that the quite clever people of the present consider spiritual science to be something foolish. But after the war had broken out, something different occurred. The editor of the mentioned magazine is a good German, a man feeling very German. Now the man whose article he accepted in those days has written letters to him, and this editor also has printed them, I may say, in his especially gifted “innocence” in the South German Monthly Magazine. Try once to read them, you will see that same philosopher venting his rage against the Central European spiritual culture so that the editor of the Hochland feels compelled to say: one can only find somebody, who thinks such matters, in madhouses in Central Europe. What an infinitely significant criticism. There is an editor of a South German magazine. This editor accepts an article which he considers to be authoritative to destroy spiritual science of which he says: this is a good article about spiritual science by a famous philosopher.—After some time the editor gets letters from the same man, who should be in a madhouse, as he says. So would one not have to continue, with the logic of life, and say: if the man is now a fool, he once was a fool, too, and the dear editor did only not realise in those days that he deals with a fool when he wrote against spiritual science.—This is logic of life. You cannot sometimes wait, until such logic of life works, but it already exists in our life. Thus you can sometimes experience something according to this prescription. In those days, the article appeared just against my spiritual science. People read him. People said: this is a famous philosopher and Platonist, he is especially clever.—The editor said to himself: if anybody who is so clever writes about spiritual science, this is a significant article.—Some time passes, and the same editor says: the man is a fool.—But he needed the proof in the just cited way. Such matters take place with the living human beings. Such people who have so little steady ground under their feet like that editor of the South German magazine need that they are taught by events which are given in much deeper sense by the life of the last times from the spiritual world than it is convenient.

Thus you understand when I return to that which I said just now: our time had many reluctant forces, and if we call the war an illness—we can do this,—this is an illness which was caused by something that took place long ago, and it is there to the recovery, so that something is eradicated that had to lead to the damage of the life of the whole culture gradually. If we call it illness in this sense, if we look at the illness as a defence, we understand this war and the destiny-burdened events of the present, understand it also in its significant hints and admonitions. We then experience it with all internal forces of our souls, so that we can surely take notice of those who have gone through the gate of death and look at the next future and really have learnt what they can inspire in the souls which they want to hear. That spiritual deepening which is necessary for the human welfare and progress in the next future must come into them.

If your souls can rightly take up that which I would like to say with these words, you are supporters of our spiritual-scientific world view in the right sense only now. If your souls can make the decision to become such souls which turn their attention to that which is murmured down from those who have gone through the gate of death because of the destiny-burdened events.

A connecting bridge between the living and the dead should be built by spiritual science just for the next future, a connecting line by which the inspiring elemental forces of those who have made the big sacrifices in our time are able to find their way to us.

That is why I wanted to stimulate sensations during these days, teaching to your souls. These sensations should be like sensations expecting that which is said to the souls by the effects of our destiny-burdened time. In this sense, I may close today again with the words that I already spoke here the day before yesterday that should have an effect like a mantram in our souls, so that our souls expect the inspiration which will come there from the dead who become particularly living in spirit:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. was originally a scientific term for the relationship of the Slavic languages. The idea of nationality of the Slavophils led to the demand to unite all the Slavic peoples under Russian dominion.
• 2. several Russian philosophers of the 19th century who stood up for the emancipation of the Russian culture in contrast to the “Westernisers.”
• 3. Joseph-Marie Comte de Maistre (1753–1821) stood up for absolutism and the feudal form of society. He regarded Catholicism and the papal primacy as foundations of the national and social life
• 4. Daniel Defoe (1660–1731) wrote The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York (1719)
• 5. Jacob Grimm (1785–1863) and Wilhelm Grimm (1786–1859) published their collection of fairy tales in 1810 for the first time.
• 6. The Human Destiny Seen in the Light of Spiritual Knowledge, Vienna, 8th May 1915, not yet published.
• 7. Wincenty Lutoslawski Rudolf Steiner's so-called Occult Science in Hochland October 1910

It is a grievous time in which we live, a time more of effective actions full of courage and sacrifices, on one side, a time of severe ordeals for the human souls, on the other side. To stimulate some sensations just in view of our destiny-burdened time may be my task at the end of these considerations. Since we are allowed to be together in such a time, we want to let culminate our sensations at the end of our considerations according to this time. I may start from something that can spread light just about various matters which speak significantly to our souls in this time.

Since we started considering the world spiritual-scientifically, we call the four members of our human nature: physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. We know that the ego or rather that in the human being which we name ego by which we express the ego which is the youngest, but is also for us the most significant member of the human being. If the human being only consisted of physical body, etheric body and astral body as the result of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, he would not be a human being. The human being is a human being because he received his ego from the spirits of the higher hierarchies during the earth evolution. He develops this ego in the course of his successive incarnations in different human communities, through peoples and periods, until the earth arrives at the goal of its development and the human being also arrives at his goal developing his ego. However, we also know that there are higher spiritual beings—we use for them the word “higher,”—who belong to the higher hierarchies which stand as it were above the human being. We speak of the hierarchy of the angels or angeloi, of the hierarchy of the archangels or archangeloi, the archai or spirits of the age and so on, upward rising. We call them with these names, we could use other names just as well, but the names are introduced in the West.

How have we to imagine, actually, these spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies in relation to the human being here on earth? We go out from the surroundings of the human being. We know, it is the mineral realm, the plant realm, the animal realm, and the human being has to consider the human realm as the highest after all he can observe. So that we can say: if we take the visible realms on earth, we have the realms of the minerals, the plants, the animals and that of the human beings. Above these realms, as it were, as a continuation upwards, the realms of the angeloi, the archangeloi, the archai et cetera appear. We can simply imagine that the realms are not closed with the human realm, but also extend farther upwards, only that the higher realms cannot be seen with the outer senses.

It could seem remarkable if we go upwards from the realms of nature to the realm of human beings that above the human realm invisibility begins at once. However, this will be remarkable only as long as one does not think that the animals do not see the human being in such a way as a human being sees the other. That is completely clear to somebody who is able to transport himself into the animal view. If the animals could speak, they would only speak of visible realms, of the mineral realm, the plant realm, and the animal realm. They would consider themselves as the highest visible realm. The fact that the animals see the human being like a human being sees the other is only a prejudice.

We are human beings of a supersensible, ghostly existence to the animals; and if the animals had only such a perception as we have it, they would not see the human beings, but they would be as invisible for them as the realm of angels for the human beings. Only because they have a certain kind of dreamy clairvoyance, the animals see the human being as a ghost, as a supersensible being. The human being can have no idea directly of the image which an animal has of him. In return, the animals see something also downwards, or properly speaking, perceive something downwards that the human being does not perceive any more. Since the animals perceive not only like the human being perceives the mineral world, but still perceive—the lower animals most intensely—something else. If an animal, for instance, a snail creeps on the ground, and then it perceives the whole peculiarity of the ground. This would disturb the human being perpetually if he, while he goes on the surface of the earth, perceived this in the same way as a snail or a tortoise. With the higher animals which have warm blood it is somewhat different, but just the lower animals really perceive the whole peculiarity of the ground on which they creep. They perceive the whole peculiarity of the air; they perceive everything that is round them in another way as the human being. The animal knows whether it is on a soil which is marshy, or whether it moves on a sandy soil, because it perceives the whole peculiarity of the soil. Namely this is as similar as we hear the things in our surroundings. The whole mineral world is infiltrated with forces which make it shake and which the human being does not perceive. The animal perceives this fine shaking, these forces in such a way that it feels something as sympathetic, something not. If the animal turns back, for example, from one soil type to the other, it is not so that the animal sees it like the human being, but because something is a little bit painful to it, because the fine movements go on reverberating in it, because it feels as if it belongs to it. This is a kind of instinctive hearing like a hearing of that which takes action in the ground or this is like smelling. So that we can say: the animal perceives an elemental realm, and the higher hierarchies begin already with the human being for it.—We are put in the middle in the world which we know as the external sensory world, the external realms of the sensory world, and the world of the higher hierarchies. We call the lower visible hierarchies the realms of nature; we call the invisible ones the higher hierarchies.

We also know that such a being of the higher hierarchies, for example, an angel, once also experienced the level of humanity. This took place, while the earth went through the old Moon evolution. There the human being was not yet a human being; for he had no ego; he was on the preparatory level of humanity only and had the astral body as his highest member. The beings who belong to the hierarchy of the angeloi went through their human level during the old Moon evolution. The spirits to whom we turn as the guarding spirits of the individual human being are these beings of the hierarchy of the angeloi. To each of them, as it were, a human being is assigned. “Spirits of your souls” are those who stand immediately in the hierarchy above the human being who really spread out their protecting wings, symbolically spoken, over the human beings namely over the individual human being.

We come then to the hierarchy of the archangeloi. They also were human beings once. During the old Sun evolution the beings we call archangeloi today were on the human level. They were not so formed as the human beings today, of course not, they were formed quite differently, but they were on their human level in that time. We are not allowed to imagine that during the old Sun evolution the archangeloi looked as the human beings today, but concerning their development they were on their human level. The spirits of personality or spirits of the ages were on their human level during the old Saturn evolution.

Now, we pick out the spirits we call archangeloi. There we have such spirits as archangeloi who went through the human level during the old Sun evolution, ascended to the level of the angels during the Moon evolution, and today they have ascended to the level of the archangeloi. We leave these spiritual beings put before our souls at first, as it were, standing two levels above us; later we will come back to them. Then we have the spiritual beings who were human beings during the old Saturn evolution, today they are spirits of the ages, they are three levels above us. We let them put again. Now we want to look at our relation to these both types of spiritual beings.

When the human being goes through an incarnation, then stand above us the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the angels, then the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the archangeloi, and those we count to the hierarchy of the archai, spirits of the ages or spirits of personality. However, they also develop. Let us pick out the archai, the spirits of personality or spirits of the ages. We go through our incarnation, and then we go through the gate of death, come into a spiritual world after death, go through a certain purely spiritual development between death and a new birth and come to an earth existence by a new birth again. Now we can ask: what does this depend on that we move down to the earth again after a certain number of years? In public talks this question is often put. Then one can already give an answer from certain points of view, but intimately speaking in our branches we can give a more objective answer pointing to reality.

While we live here in the physical body, the spirit of the ages has a certain level of development. He does something that is connected with the development of the human beings on earth, and he experiences a development on his part. If this spirit of the ages has come in the course of a development so far that we all let flow into ourselves that which he has worked through on his part, then we are ripe, as it were, to come down to an earth incarnation. If he has advanced to a certain level and we have developed by the spiritual worlds up to a certain level, we can enter an earth development again. Let us understand well in this regard and refrain from our own development first of all. Let us look at the spirit of the ages developing in a very long period.

I may say the following. If we consider the development of the earthly humankind in such a way that we go back to the foundation of the ancient Rome, about eight hundred years before the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that there a certain spirit of the ages started his development. Another spirit of the ages was leading and steering the destiny of the earth before. This spirit of the ages who took over the leadership of the spiritual earthly development in those days was leading up to the 16th century. A spirit of the ages leads the destiny of the earth for such a period. Since the 16th century, another spirit of the ages is there. We deal with two spirits of the ages. The human being who was, for example, in the third century before the Mystery of Golgotha in any incarnation on the earth experienced that which this spirit of the ages caused for the earth. For the time after his death if this human being has died in the third century or also in the second century, the spirit of the ages can give him nothing at first. He gave him what he could give him. Now the spirit of the ages must go through a number of years again, until he is able to give something new to the human being. This human being comes again down to the earth who was between death and birth in a spiritual world, when the spirit can give him something new.

Now, however, it is arranged that way that the human being comes down several times on average, because the spirit of the ages is not able to give the human being everything that he could give him because of the imperfection of the human beings. That is why the human being comes down repeatedly in the time in which a spirit of the ages develops. But basically it depends on the fact that the spirits of the ages regulate the successive incarnations of the human beings. Now, however, the spirits of the ages regulate this whole course of the human destiny, as it were, by their subordinates. These are the archangels. Such archangels govern in subordinated positions for a much shorter time than the spirits of the ages.

While the spirits of the ages rule as long as I have stated just now, we can assume a spirit of the ages from the foundation of Rome up to the 16th century, the spirits we count to the hierarchy of the archangels rule only for three to four centuries. They alternate in such a way that about six or seven come one after the other, while a spirit of the ages is ruling. So that we have that archangel we call Oriphiel in the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Then Anael, Zachariel, Raphael, Samael, Gabriel rule successively; and now since 1879 we have the government of that archangel we call Michael. So we have, if we look at the spiritual worlds, the higher government of the spirits of the ages and subordinate to them, the successive governments of archangels. Because the human being cannot take up everything that the spirit of the ages would give him, he does not take it directly from the hands of the spirit of the ages, but from the hands of the less powerful archangel. Keep in mind: our personal guardians belong to the hierarchy of the angeloi. Above them there are the spirits who regulate the interrelations of the human beings. Above them there are the archai or spirits of personality or spirits of the ages.

If I talk in such a way, it always concerns those beings who went through their development properly. But not all the spirits develop regularly. There are spiritual beings who were archai already during the Saturn evolution who lagged behind, however, on the level of the archai at that time, the level of humankind. They have not gone beyond their Saturn level during the earth development. They did not ascend to the level of the regular development. They maintained their human character, are supersensible Saturn beings on one side, however, are on the level of humankind. There are also beings of the hierarchy of the archai who stopped on the human level during the Sun evolution and stand there now in the supersensible world still as human beings. We term these beings that lagged behind the luciferic beings or ahrimanic beings with collective names. We cannot get involved in the difference between luciferic and ahrimanic beings today. These are spirits who lagged behind.

We have now to answer the question: how does the human being conceive, here in his earthly incarnation, the influence of the spirits who have properly progressed, the spirits of the ages, the archai, and the archangeloi who are their servants? These beings are supersensible; the human being cannot get a relationship to them like to the sensory world. Hence, the human being does not know as a rule if he only relies on the sensory world that he has been put in a development which is directed by the archai and archangeloi above him. He does not know it; but these supersensible beings intervene in his whole nature. Also those spiritual beings we call folk-spirits who lead whole peoples are among the archangeloi, the archangels. And in so far as we have the people to which we belong to thank for that which we are, we have to look at that what the nation's being gives us as a gift of the corresponding being of the hierarchy of the archangeloi. It is the inspiration of the archangeloi which comes to us because we are put into a people. Now we only need to think what it means for the human being to be put into a people. In the people's being there flow mental qualities, but also customs; a certain configuration of the being flows into the human being. One cannot imagine at all that somebody would have become that who somebody is in an incarnation because of the gift of the folk-spirit, in reality of the gift of an archangel.

Except that we stand within a people and receive, inspired by an archangel, certain configurations of our whole being, we stand in the development of the whole humankind. There we are exposed to the intuitions into which the spirit of the ages of the hierarchy of the archai leads us. Imagine that we receive something today in our present spiritual culture that goes beyond any national differentiation; what we have because we live from the 19th to the 20th centuries what we would not have had if we had lived during the Roman or Greek times. We have the spirit of the ages to thank for this. You can strictly make a distinction between the gift of the spirit of the ages and the gift of the folk-spirit. If only this were there which is a regular development of the human being, of the angel, of the archangel or that of the spirit of the ages then we would receive, every individual human being, the gift always from our spirit of the ages and from our corresponding folk-spirit and would develop by means of this gift. The human beings on earth would develop side by side. All members of the different peoples would receive the gift of their folk-spirits in such a way, as if five pictures would hang completely differently from each other in a gallery which would show miscellaneous things, but which would not disturb each other in the slightest.

Thus individual human beings would receive the gift of their folk-spirits on earth side by side. They would not disturb each other if their development had proceeded regularly. But there are beings who lagged behind. Among the guiding archangeloi are those who began their development properly on the Sun and have become right archangeloi up to the earth evolution, but also those who stopped on the Sun level who are basically only on the level of human beings. These beings are on the same level as the folk-spirits, and, nevertheless, they lagged behind them, have the qualities of invisible supersensible human beings, not those of archangels. They make the same claims to the world like the archangeloi in a certain way, but they have not reached the level of the archangeloi on earth. Hence, they must work with the same forces as on the Sun. The result is that they do not seize the human beings as the archangels do directing them from above, but penetrate them as invisible human beings. They do not lead the human being from above, but go into the human nature. These spirits, who compete with the really leading folk-spirits, cause that the nations feud with each other, do not live in peace with each other.

The human being would not be tempted at all to identify his personality, his humanness with his nation, but he would look at the person as something that feeds him spiritually. However, he would not stand up as a fighter for his nation, not identify his person with it. The human being would not say, I am of this or that nationality, but: nationality is there, and I have to get my spiritual food indirectly via this nationality into which I have been born. But while the archangel stimulates him to think that way, the other comes who is on the level of humankind, actually, and is basically a luciferic spirit, and leads him into his nationality.

The result is that the archangel-like does not come down as a gift to the human being, but that the human being identifies himself with the nation like with a completely personal affair, and thereby this quarrel of the nationalities comes into being on the earth. That must absolutely be clear to us: because we were not only exposed to the influence of the leading archangel, but also to the influence of the retarded archangel, we identify ourselves with the nationality as we do on earth. That is just the spiritual-scientific feeling that we as human beings are able to rise above the only national to find access to the general humanness. Then we can be national in the most remarkable sense. As well as the one human being may do that or the other may do something different as art, and the former doing his art does not need to be the adversary of the other, one did not need to be the adversary of the other concerning nationality if there were no retarded archangels who cause the identification. One has to presuppose that if one generally speaks about the basis of the human development with reference to the national or other differentiations.

Concerning the spirit of the ages you will still see further details, in which way the luciferic element works into the regular element if we consider the following. A spirit of the ages works for a certain time. Since the 16th century a new spirit of the ages is there. This spirit of the ages has a particular task. He has the task to add the whole materialistic skill and understanding of the world to the former impulses of development. Hence, materialism made so big progress since the 16th century in the world. Therefore, we do not need to look at the materialistic understanding as something more inferior to the former kind of understanding if we identify ourselves not only unilaterally with it. What will somebody who looks at the matters that way say about the government of the different spirits of the ages? He says: we are now controlled by the particular spirit of the ages; before we were controlled by another spirit of the ages. The human beings had other ideas, other impulses then. If the human being now were able to be influenced by the properly developing spirits of the ages, he would say: we must now adapt ourselves to this spirit of the ages, while we penetrate more the laws of the evolution of the world, of the materialistic thinking. Then another spirit of the ages comes after a time; he causes another attitude of mind in the human thinking.

I emphasised it often that we as supporters of spiritual science must say: today we announce spiritual science using particular words, ideas and concepts, but it is not correct that we believe, that what we say today holds good for the whole earth future, but it changes. When two thousand years are over, our knowledge of spiritual science today is announced with other words, just as we talk differently than in the Greek epoch; nothing remains of the kind of our words. We do not rely on anything that externally remains but we know that one spirit of the ages replaces the other and that they all stand equally side by side.

Somebody who is influenced by the retarded spirits of the ages of the Saturn and identifies himself with their influence says: at that time all the other human beings were silly; this was the nursery of humankind. We have advanced so far today; we have found completely valid truth for all future.—One becomes humbler, more modest in the field of spiritual science. Somebody who identifies himself with the spirit of the ages says: Copernicus found the right thing finally; something different was once believed. Now the human beings will say forever: the earth and the planets move in ellipses around the sun. The sun is in its centre.—Spiritual science already knows today that this is a one-sided teaching. It is very good for our materialistic time to imagine the world, but it is wrong. It is not true at all that the sun is in one focus of the ellipse and the earth moves around. It is, actually, a materialistically calculated apparent movement. In truth it is in such a way that the sun moves and the earth and the other planets run after it in a helical movement. Because certain positions originate in this helical movement, the earth stands once here, another time there. That appears as an ellipse. In truth it is another line. The time will come when the external science knows this, too.

One becomes more modest if one knows that truth is announced in a certain way for certain times. We never state as correct supporters of spiritual science: from now on into all future all human beings say, the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego. But the future speaks quite differently, because everything is developing. The ideas of yesterday are as justified as the ideas of today. We can be controlled not only by a spirit of the ages who leads us to believe that all previous knowledge was a pack of lies and we have advanced so wonderfully far. With reference to the spirit of the ages you see people possessed by the luciferic spirit saying: how wonderfully far we have advanced. How imperfect everything was what one thought and said about the world once. What we have found since the 16-century remains as eternal truth.

The folk-spirit is basically a complicated being on the whole. He is the regular folk-spirit who floats above us and if we only followed him we would follow in such a way that we take up his gifts because we are in his sphere. But he is impaired perpetually in his effectiveness by his luciferic companion who obsesses us and induces us to identify ourselves as individual human beings with the whole nationality. However, the individual human being does this differently. It is very important that one really sees that in the middle of Europe a people has to develop that has another relationship to its folk-spirit as the peoples have in the periphery of Europe. We have to learn this insight. What takes place under the surface of the human consciousness and what depends really on the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies is extremely important.

The materialistically thinking human being regards it still an insanity if one says that such impulses go out from the spiritual beings like this is one in Central Europe who stimulates the unaware people to such a feeling towards the divine or—because in Central Europe Christ is working—to the Christ Impulse. So that the Central European human being learns to feel Christ in such a way as He speaks to the core of the soul. This came nowhere else into being as in Central Europe. Still during the Roman time of the Christian development one understood, for example, Christ as a being who came to earth and worked for the human beings. Indeed, the advanced human beings and partly those who thought already in such a way, as we think today who we are in the possession of spiritual science felt as Paul thought: “not I, but Christ in me.” However, it is a difference compared with a feeling as we find it with Master Eckhart, with Tauler, with Angelus Silesius and similar minds. How these spirits took up the Mystery of Golgotha. We only need to ask Angelus Silesius; and he answers us with the nice saying:

Were Christ born a thousand times in Bethlehem
And not in you, you would be lost forever.

It depends on the commiseration of the Mystery of Golgotha in the own soul. These Central European human beings tried to internally experience something that is an internal picture, an internal expression of the Mystery of Golgotha. And how wonderful is it when Angelus Silesius says once about death: everything that happens in me happens in the end because God is in me and carries out the matters in me. And if I die, I do not die, but, actually, God dies in me.—Imagine what a wonderfully intimate idea of immortality already is given when one says: God dies in me.—Since God is immortal, of course. If God dies in me, death is only apparent; then one feels like Angelus Silesius felt: God dies only apparently in me, because God cannot die. So is death not that it seems externally, it is only a fact of life. Because God cannot die—but dies in anyone,—one already feels immortality with it.

This most intimate being together with God whether one feels it as something divine or as something Christian was prepared for long times in the course of the Central European development. There the Central European folk-spirits worked, so that it found an external symbolic expression, a real symbolic expression. Except in Central Europe nowhere anybody says “ich,” if he means his own self, his own being. The whole development was led by the folk-spirit who manifests himself as a spirit of language in such a way that the own being was expressed with the word ICH. But ICH, “I-Ch,” is Jesus Christ. It lies in Jesus Christ. Because in “ICH” Christ Jesus is expressed in His initial letters, it is expressed allegorically what in the Central European spiritual being is as it is connected with the most intimate experience. Whenever somebody pronounces “Ich,” he pronounces the initial letters of “Jesus Christ.” If one turned the spiritual eyes only once to such matters which are really considered even today as fantastic, somebody would already think that the spirits of the higher hierarchies work unconsciously in the human development, and would then find something significant in the matters which one takes for granted today.

I want only to mention a really significant fact. One calls a certain group of European human beings Germanic people or Teutons. And while one speaks in Central Europe of Germanic people (“Germanen”), one includes England, Holland, Norway, Sweden and still others. One expands the concept of the Germanic people. I do not talk out of agitation, but out of that which is given in the language. The English do not speak of themselves as Germanic people, because they call only the Germans Germanic people. The German calls himself “deutsch,” and if he speaks of Germanic people, he encloses a bigger group of human beings. The English apply the term Germans only to the Germans, to those who are not like “him.” This is a tremendously significant fact. It is something that is in the deepest sense typical for the kind in which way on the one side and on the other the folk-spirit works; he works in Central Europe to embrace a bigger entity and the folk-spirit of the English people takes care to put away that and only to apply it to the other.

That will be obvious to the human beings gradually in a wonderful way which the language teaches as the outflow of the effective folk spirituality. Now one is little understood if one speaks about the different European peoples as I tried it some years before this war—not caused at all by the war—in the cycle The Mission of the Individual Folk-Souls in Connection with the Germanic-Nordic Mythology. This is understood in such a way, as if I wanted to express any value judgments. But I do not want to express value judgments, but only a characteristic. We can now characterise the West-European peoples expressing exactly what I expressed in this lecture cycle.

We know that the soul of the human being consists of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul or mind-soul and the consciousness-soul, and the ego which works in these three soul nuances. If we look at the Italian nation with its folk-spirit, we find the peculiarity that there the folk-spirit inspires the sentient soul. This is the typical of the Italian people, that the folk-spirit inspires the sentient soul. If now something is possessed by the luciferic folk-spirit, it is also the folk-spirit. Imagine that on one side the brilliant aspect of the Italian people is based on the fact that the sentient soul is inspired. Think of Dante, of all the great Italian artists. But this people also identify themselves, on the other hand, with something superhuman that lagged behind luciferically in all the passionate impulses of development which appear within the Italian people. I do not pronounce any value judgment, but I characterise it only.

We can see everywhere with the French people the folk-spirit inspiring the intellectual soul or mind-soul.

With the British people it is the consciousness-soul. The consciousness-soul is for the present human cycle that which connects the human being mostly with the external physical world. Hence, this nation which is inspired in the consciousness-soul is entrusted above all with the task of furthering the materialistic civilisation. No value judgment is expressed again, but it is characterised only that just the British nation has a vocation to get the consciousness-soul inspired. In so far as the individual human being belongs to his nation, in so far as he is inspired by the luciferic folk-spirit, he identifies himself with the purely materialistic civilisation of the present. We find this really in the British culture. Like the individual human being positions himself in the British nation, this comes out what is just the materialistic spirit of the British nation, this peculiar spirit who waged thirty-four wars of conquest from 1856 up to 1900 and made fifty-seven million people new British subjects, and who pretends to stand up for the liberty of single human groups in our time.

If we consider such a time like ours, we must absolutely be clear to us that just this time teaches people very much to feel like an admonition what one puts up now as the contrast of the single national groups of Europe or of a big part of the earth. The members of thirty-four nationalities—apart from minor tribal differences—are in war with each other. One should regard this as an admonition to refrain really from that which one has called history up to now. But this approach is used just for the time being still up to nonsense. We find it really driven up to nonsense what the individual nations of Europe reproach each other for everything. One weighs up the single external facts to discover the causes of this dreadful war. But just this war will teach people that one finds nothing in its external causes, but at most external symptoms of that which exists deeply hidden in the human groups by the guidance of advanced and retarded spiritual beings. The ordeals of this time force us to appeal to the spiritual subsoil in which the causes of the external events in the world can be found today.

From the most different sides one can show how in the subsoil of the consciousness that works which appears externally. I want to point, although most of the friends already know this example, once again to the fact that the whole map of Europe was determined towards the end of the Middle Ages by the Maid of Orleans who intervened in the war between England and France. Everybody who looks understanding at our external history has to recognise that the map of Europe would have turned out quite differently if at that time England had not been defeated by France because the Maid of Orleans intervened in the fight. But the Maid of Orleans was not a qualified strategist; she was no one who stood at the summit of education. She was a simple human child—a farmer girl. But the spirits of the higher hierarchies worked through her in the way as they had to work in this time. It has been absolutely necessary up to our time that these spirits worked in the subconscious because the human beings could not yet understand what must now be understood spiritual-scientifically.

The intervention of spiritual beings in the subconsciousness is often nicely expressed in legends. And rightly, not because of superstition, but because it really corresponds to facts, one set particular store by the time when the external world has withdrawn mostly from the year, the time from Christmas up to the sixth January. If one does not want to attain spiritual knowledge in the way, as we do today using the instructions given in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, but in a more elementary way, one could be inspired in these thirteen nights. This is expressed, for example, very nicely in the Norwegian legend of Olaf Åsteson. This legend relates that Olaf Åsteson goes to the church before Christmas; that he falls asleep before the church and sleeps during thirteen nights. He wakes up at the Epiphany day and is really able to tell his experience. What he tells there figuratively in a clear, but primitive way corresponds to that we call the passage through the soul-world and the passage through the spirit-land. Olaf Åsteson experienced that in the time in which Christmas was rightly put. This makes it clear to us that the clairvoyance of a nature child could be developed best of all during these thirteen nights from Christmas till Epiphany.

Because the Maid of Orleans was such a nature child, one could assume that she would have experienced the world in these thirteen nights in a sort of dreamy state of which she spoke when she led the French army against the English that she would have been inspired in these thirteen nights. This happened in a peculiar way. Every human being experiences a sleeping state, a state when the senses do not yet speak, namely in the body of the mother, before he sees the physical earth light. This is still a kind of sleeping state, and the ripest state is that during the last thirteen days before birth. This is the great thing and fills our souls with such amazement: the Maid of Orleans is born on the sixth January. She went through the inspiration actually in the thirteen nights, but before she opened her eyes to the earth light. That is why the sixth January is noted as the birthday of the Maid of Orleans intentionally in our calendar. We have to understand that in its big world-historical connection; since it can say to us how mysterious the connections are in the world and how mysterious forces work in the world. Mysterious powers worked in those days on the sixth January, because people gathered in the little village where the Maid of Orleans was born in the morning; where the animals themselves behaved so wonderfully. On this sixth January, an inspiration could be finished. In thirteen nights a being could be inspired which was disposed by its own karma. Of course, not everybody who is born on the sixth January is disposed, but karma has to coincide with the other conditions.

I wanted to give this example of the Maid of Orleans which shows us so surely how subterranean powers intervene in the historical development. Indeed, the materialistic development of the following centuries came then. It is completely comprehensible that this had to consider such tips to historical backgrounds as insanity. This does not harm; even it does not harm at all if today people still look at this spiritual science like insanity. This spiritual science will be accepted finally.

But such significant events, within which the human beings of the present time live and in which they themselves incarnated to take part in them in one or another way, do not always mean the same in the historical development. Today these destiny-burdened events mean an admonition to the human beings. Such a flood of literature has been written about this war, but in everything that appeared in books, pamphlets and so on we do not yet find this from which one has to assume, actually, that it is found and that it must be found bit by bit. One often hears: one can talk about the causes not really, maybe after the war, maybe people find the true causes of this war from documents only after decades and know who was to blame for it.—You can read this in every third newspaper. But that does not concern, it concerns that which one finds—and just as a result of this time—that the real causes are not to be seen in these external occasions, but that one has to look for the causes in the spiritual world. One will find that this war was the significant karma of materialism which must be experienced, so that the human beings take up a sum of convictions in them leading from materialism to spiritualism. Humankind must experience this ordeal.

What does happen basically today in such a distressing way round us?—We know, when the human being goes through the gate of death, he leaves his physical body behind in the physical world. He enters in the spiritual world with his etheric body, astral body and ego. He soon takes off the etheric body which is given to the remaining world. Then he goes with astral body and ego through the soul-land, through the spirit-land. But imagine now that today a big number of human beings goes through the gate of death in relatively short time and with a particular consciousness; that they take off etheric bodies which could have supplied, so to speak, their lives normally still for decades. If a human being dies between the twentieth and thirtieth years, he takes off an etheric body which could have supplied his physical body for sixty to seventy years. The forces are in the etheric body, because nothing gets lost also in the spiritual world. All human beings, who go today in the prime of life through the gate of death, hand over to the world etheric bodies which could still have maintained their lives for a long time. These forces are there in the spiritual world. How are they there, these forces?—I may give you an illustrative example of the significance of such a phenomenon which is taken from our circle itself.

Last autumn, a family belonging to our anthroposophical circle lost a little son, a dear boy of seven years. The external circumstances were exceptionally tragic ones. The father had been called up to the army as a German citizen; he just fell ill and was in the military hospital. One evening, even as a lecture took place in Dornach where our construction is built, somebody informed us that the little seven-year-old boy was missing. He had not come home since the evening. I have to mention that the family has settled down in Dornach as a gardener family. I had come from Germany to Switzerland shortly before. The boy had already met me before the construction and shaken my hand; it was a sunny very dear child. In that evening, we were informed that the boy was missing. Now one could imagine nothing else, as that a removal van, which had brought pieces of furniture for our members, had toppled over and fallen on the boy near the construction. You must also take into consideration that since countless years no removal van went at that place or since that time. You must think further: the boy lived with his mother who manages the garden. He was such a dear boy that he said to his mother when the father had to go; now he would muck in, because the father is not there any more.

That evening, he had been sent to the so-called canteen to get something for his mother. It was not far at all; it is only a short way between the canteen and the flat of the mother. On this short way is a crossroad, so that the removal van had to do a bend. Now the boy intended to leave, actually, ten minutes sooner, was detained by somebody who wanted to go with him. If he had left sooner and through the door through which he was used to leave, he would have passed the carriage sooner and on its left side, while he went now on the right. Because he left later, through another door and on the right side of the removal van, the carriage when it tipped over fell just on the boy. People had looked at this, also those who were busy with the horses. Nobody anticipated that the boy had got under the carriage. Then one said: The carriage is too heavy to lift it still this evening, tomorrow we do this.—Between five and six o'clock p. m. this had happened. We had definitely to lift the carriage a quarter past ten o'clock. At twelve o'clock it was lifted; and we recovered the dead child.

The first thing I would like to mention is that just such an example is suited to show how wrongly people think concerning life. I would like to give an often used comparison for this wrong thinking. Assuming, you see a person in some distance who goes along a riverside. Suddenly you see the person falling into the river. You run to that place and you find a stone at the same place. Of course, you say, the person tripped over the stone, fell into the water, and found his death that way. However, the matter can be completely different; it could be the other way round. The man could have experienced a heart failure. He fell into the water, because he was dead before; and he did not find his death, because he fell into the water. This mistake is done any minute, in the natural sciences in particular. One does not notice it, of course, if it is well hidden.

That was also the case concerning this child. The karma of this child had run off. The removal van went there because of the child. The spiritual beings who exist behind the secret arranged the matter in such a way that the child could find its death. The boy was seven years old. The rather youthful etheric body would have supplied life for many decades, its forces were there. Now, I will always confess what it means that since some time our Dornach construction is embedded in the enlarged etheric body of the little boy Theodor Faiss. The etheric body is increased—it grows after death,—and the etheric body of this little seven-year-old Theo forms something like an aura of the construction since that time. If one deals with the construction, if one needs to find ideas for the construction which put himself rightly in the spiritual world, since the death of this boy he knows that he is co-inspired by the etheric body which is involved in the aura of the construction, the etheric body of the little Theo Faiss.

Of course, no longing to appear original could inveigle me into denying that a lot is co-inspired by that which contributed to the construction since that time, because the aura of this etheric body is round the construction, and one has, as it were, this help that this unused etheric strength works in favour of the construction. Imagine which important internal facts are behind the external facts: a family moves their residence near to the construction. There is a boy, especially gifted by his soul-being; he sacrifices his etheric body, so that the construction is wrapped up in the strength of this etheric body. There we have such an example at which we see that unused sacrificed etheric bodies have their task in the world.

There only that begins basically which should flow as the sentient content from our spiritual science. That one knows, the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, that one goes through different lives on earth—one knows that in theory, it does not matter really. But it matters that which is inserted in our real experience by these views. One tries to bring life also into our movement and to overcome the difference between the living and the dead not only theoretically by teaching, but by life. When recently a very dear assistant, Fritz Mitscher, was snatched away from us just in his thirtieth year, and I had to hold the address at the cremation in Basel, an important word consisted in the fact that I turned to this soul, I would like to say, begged him to continue working among us after death. For we do not only need the so-called living, but we need the cooperation of those who have gone through the gate of death. They will co-operate in a double way. On one side, a big number of etheric bodies co-operate in the next time which the human beings have taken off going through the gate of death in the destiny-burdened events.

Youthful unused etheric bodies form a big aura in which we live. On the other side are the individualities themselves who work on from their etheric bodies. We can look at the unused etheric body at the example of the little Theo Faiss where the etheric body becomes the inspirator for something that was achieved in the construction. I would look at the individuality of Fritz Mitscher in my address. It is the task of our spiritual science to feel how the abyss between life and death is filled. It must become conscious content of our earth times not only to know in theory, but to penetrate vividly that which the dead are to us like the living that the dead give something like the youthful, unused etheric bodies. In these etheric bodies, which belonged to the human beings who have now found their death as a result of the big destiny-burdened events, the echoes live of everything that is felt if one considers death as a sacrifice for the events demanded by this time—more or less consciously. This goes into these etheric bodies.

Looking for death, or properly speaking, foreseeing death and nevertheless knowing that this death has a meaning, this will be the case with the numerous human beings going through the gate of death in the present. One can be a materialist; if one exists in such a way, one may say: folk-souls, folk-spirits are only names for something that in the abstract holds together a group of human beings of the same language and the same characteristics. Speaking of folk-spirits as of real beings is a weirdie.—Some people going now through the gate of death may speak that way according to the words; because they go through death they agree unconsciously to that which spiritual science has to say that a folk-soul, a folk-spirit is a real being. For what would it mean if folk-spirits, folk-souls were not real beings and the human beings stand on all sides in this bloody war?

Provided a materialistic world creation it would be impossible to imagine that. If the individual human being sacrifices himself for the folk-spirit, if the folk-spirit is a real being to him, it has the deepest sense that such events have befallen the human beings. Thus we will feel the next time in which many unspent etheric bodies float in the spiritual atmosphere admonishing everybody that there is something spiritual. These etheric bodies are good assistants in future to deepen the human world view spiritually. The human beings have only to feel the dead calling in their souls. When again peace holds sway over the fields on which now the dreadful events take place, the human beings who live then will work much better if they hear the voices of the dead. But this is meant not only symbolically. The unspent etheric bodies are calling. The world cannot exist in future without the human beings feeling their connection with the spiritual world. Humankind of the future would turn out lifeless if it were not able to hear the admonitions of the dead.

In physics, everybody admits that energy does not get lost; one speaks of the transformation of energy. That also applies to the spiritual realm. The forces the unused etheric body carries through the gate of death do not disappear; they will be there. They can be taken up in the souls of the future, and these souls can receive strength and confidence for their spiritual work from the connection with the soul leftovers which remained from unused etheric bodies.

Beside many things this war can say to us, it is for us as supporters of spiritual science above all that we already look up in spirit at the atmosphere of the unused etheric bodies. However, here below souls have to be who have a feeling for the admonitions of the dead. It belongs to our task as supporters of spiritual science to bring about that. We must already find a spiritual point of view also towards such events, not the point of view of an abstract thinking. But we must really imagine the future population of the earth in such a way that below souls exist who are in the physical bodies, and from above forces of unused etheric bodies work; and that these souls below can say: we have no doubts that better times come for the spiritual cognition, because the unused etheric bodies help us with their forces.—If we take this specifically, not in the abstract, we have understood something of the admonitions which this destiny-burdened time can give us in particular as supporters of spiritual science. It must take place that way, because real effects in the human development are necessary. We would have to work on for long times if we had to intellectually convince people of that which the spiritual-scientific world view wants to give. With the Maid of Orleans a subconscious initiation took place. In the future, spirituality works in another way in the human development. The unused etheric bodies support us and also those who as individualities want to work on the physical plane.

It is sometimes strange what people can understand also today. On account of the given example you will admit that at the time of the Maid of Orleans the strategists, the generals did not bring about that which was brought about. I have sometimes given another example: when at a determining hour the army of Constantine marched against Rome, these were not also the generals who brought about the victory and defeated the five times stronger army of Maxentius who led his armies before the gates of Rome against Constantine. Constantine followed not his generals, but a dream that said to him, he should make his armies carry the monogram of Christ. Dreams and Sibylline oracles brought the armies together at a particular place and decided everything in those days. However, because Constantine was victorious, the map of Europe got its corresponding appearance. Who steered the events in those days taking place under the threshold of consciousness? It was the Christ Impulse, but the Christ Impulse, as it was real, not as human beings understood it.

We do not get to know the Christ Impulse listening to the squabbling of the theologians. The Christ Impulse did not work in that which the human beings accomplished consciously which the human beings understood; but it worked in joining together the events with Constantine and Maxentius, and later again with the Maid of Orleans. Also in this time one experiences something, even in little facts. You can compare the little thing with the big one sometimes.

An excellent philosopher wrote a longer article about the spiritual-scientific world view represented by me some years ago in a South German monthly magazine. This article had a big effect; it was written in an opposing way, infiltrated with many a benevolent judgment about theosophy on the whole, even some acknowledging notes. For example, I got the advice instead of using my talents for such matters to find out finally whether Mickiewicz¹ is really the reincarnation of the Maid of Orleans and so on. Nevertheless, on the whole, the article was very suitable to show how our spiritual-scientific world view has to be regarded so that an inadequate impression was aroused.

The philosopher who had written the article was regarded as a great Platonist, as a great logician. He himself said that he devoted himself to no other task than to announce the truth, and, therefore, he would be able to know the truth. The editor of the magazine seemed to be very satisfied to publish such authoritative an article about this spiritual science. This was already some years ago. Then the war came. The person concerned does not belong to those who sympathise with Central Europe, but he sympathises in determined way with England and France and even with those who also fight on the side of England and France. Now what happens? He writes a number of letters to the same man, the editor of the magazine. This editor of the mentioned magazine also publishes these letters because they are too typical, in another magazine, the South German Monthly Magazine. He even reminds of the fact that he is the same man—it is Karl Muth—who publishes the magazine Hochland and printed the article about the “Steinerean theosophy,” as he says. In these letters, a West-European minded person rants at the Central European population as much as he can do. Among other things, this man explains: black people are free aristocrats compared to people who do not know anything they are fighting for. One had to compare the British Empire with Central Europe, the former were established like the Catholic Church by God and would never have done anything but what is according to the divine world order.

Printing this letter is a matter of course. The mentioned editor adds to this: in whole Central Europe nobody could be found except in madhouses who could support such a view.—Now the dear Mr. Muth admits that the man whom he had chosen to let him loose on our spiritual-scientific world view is ready, actually, for the lunatic asylum. Of such a quality are the objections generally which are raised against our spiritual-scientific world view. Only Mr. Muth would already have had to know in those days that the man is ready for the lunatic asylum. But he needed the admonition of the war. His view had to be challenged only by that which he could easily see now. Some people who are ready for the lunatic asylum walk around and criticise our world view, only it does not come to the fore so absurdly.

I said that this example shows that the reason which people have today would limp for a long time if it concerns the spiritual-scientific world view and that one must say: not only the living but also the dead are necessary that a certain quantity of spirituality comes into the world. Those belong to the best helpers who had to stand up with their souls and lives for the course of our present destiny-burdened events. That is why we would want that such considerations remain not only something theoretical in the souls, but become a deeply honest feeling, the feeling that we may bear witness of spiritual science in such a way that we know attentively that there are admonishing voices in the spiritual world saying to us: let us dead be a landmark of the spiritual deepening which must come to the human beings, because we have gone through this death with consciousness—not for our matter, but for that which is independent from us, so that we have thereby confirmed the confession of something that goes beyond the individual material human life.

If among the supporters of spiritual science those are who anticipate, feel or know the serious murmur of the dead, then something real is achieved that has to be achieved by spiritual science in the feelings of the human souls; in other words, if souls are inspired by spiritual science who know to turn their senses to the realm of spirits, because a lot is said to the human beings from the realm of spirits in the times to come.

It is this that I wanted to suggest to you for your feelings, because the circumstances were such that we can be together just in this time also in a branch meeting. One would want that at such meetings not only a knowledge as a germ is given, but that that which is spoken in such meetings would work like a living germ which is planted in the ground of the feeling soul. What you carry on from such a consideration, this is the central issue.

That is why we want to close these considerations, while we think of that which might be assigned to us from the destiny-burdened events of this time:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. Adam Mickiewicz (1798–1855), Polish poet, stood up for the liberation of the Polish people from the Russian rule.

When we gather at such an occasion at which an own room is dedicated to our efforts which we can give a spiritual character commensurate with our spiritual-scientific feeling, it is good to think of the big viewpoint which we want to get as supporters of spiritual science towards the world and its phenomena, its tasks, its big riddles. How should our time, our distressing time full of ordeals not urge our souls to get a more far-reaching viewpoint? In particular in our time, one has to long for a viewpoint that reaches farther than the external life and external human efforts.

Out of the tasks and the efforts of our spiritual-scientific world view we put up a sculptural group at an important place in our new Dornach construction. This sculptural group should explain that which our souls should feel in the most intimate and also in the deepest sense. This group contains a central figure. One may call this central figure Christ; one may also call it the divine in the human being which tries to position itself in the right way in the world. One may call this middle figure the “human being,” the cosmic human being, expressed in an earthly personality as Christ was expressed in the earthly personality in a temporal-historical life by Jesus of Nazareth.

But two other figures will be on the sides of this middle figure, the one on top like on a rock, winged, but falling off from the rock. Because of the peculiar posture of the hand of the middle figure, expressing neither hatred nor power, but inner firmness a strength is achieved by which the figure on the rock on top, the winged figure, breaks the wings and falls down into the depth. This breaking of the wings—this must be well expressed in this sculpture—is not achieved because the human being, who stands in the middle, the Christ-human being, breaks the wings, but because he stretches out his hand in his spirituality, the other, the winged being, does not endure that, and because he finds that unbearable for his being which lives below, he himself breaks his wings by internal strength and falls off. You have to record the fact that this being throws down himself that he is not thrown down by any adversary.

Below inside the rock we see another figure tied up in chains. This is eager to turn up the earth from below. But he does not cope in his striving with that which flows out from the downwards directed hand of the middle figure. He writhes because he is thrown back by his own nature and by the strength of the middle figure.

You anticipate that in this group is expressed what we call the Christ-principle of our universe in the middle figure, the luciferic principle in the angel falling off from the rock, and the ahrimanic principle in the figure in the cave which strives from below upwards. I endeavoured to design the three figures as very similar portraits—we may express such a matter in this intimate circle,—so that one really gets an impression of the form which Ahriman takes on appearing to the human being in such a connection, and also of the physiognomy of Lucifer which he takes on appearing to the human being. Until our days, the western religious world view lacks the knowledge that Ahriman and Lucifer work in the whole world interrelation.

Publicly one can only indicate the matters because today people still recoil from precisely expressing these matters. However, we remember that even in the yesterday's public lecture I said that the human being is led by meditation, on one side, to a region where he feels lonesome in his innermost nature and helpless, on the other side, to a region where he feels being penetrated in his nature with fear and powerlessness. What threatens us if we strive unilaterally only for freeing ourselves from the material, what threatens us if we strive for the spiritual in the abstract this is that we are seized by the luciferic principle. What threatens us if we only strive down for the material if we live longing for the material where we appear as fossilized—as I have explained it in the public lecture yesterday—this is the ahrimanic principle. And the human being stands between the luciferic and ahrimanic principles.

This must be recognised. But we have also to recognise correctly that it is not sufficient for us to say: we have to remove anything luciferic and ahrimanic from ourselves.—All the emotions of hatred and fear which we summon up against the luciferic and the ahrimanic elements are not good, actually, for our human nature. We have to realise that Ahriman and Lucifer have their justification in the whole universe. That is why it is indicated in the sculptural figure that Christ does not want to overcome Lucifer and Ahriman because He hates them or wants to harass them, but that Lucifer and Ahriman overcome themselves. It is wrong to develop feelings in us, as if we had to reject Ahriman and Lucifer, as if we had to fight against them directly. Even the normal divinity permeating the world did not order in its wise guidance of the universe that Ahriman and Lucifer are not allowed to exist in the guidance of the universe. They are there.

If we ask ourselves where the luciferic principle does exist in the human development even today, then we have to look at the East. In the East, in Asia and in the European Russia, Lucifer prevails in the culture. Although the Russian element has a vocation to develop the spirit-self in future, as I explained in the series of talks on the mission of the folk-souls, the threat exists that the Russian culture is entangled by Lucifer. It is on the way to experiencing that. The luciferic principle consists of the fact that good spirits lag behind. In the Greek-Orthodox Church was a good spirit until the sixth, seventh centuries. But a spirit that is good at a certain time changes into a luciferic spirit if it is detained beyond this time. Adhering to the orthodox religion means “to be in Lucifer's claws.” And that is much more the case with the spiritual forms that develop in the East that were justified in ancient times. Because they preserve themselves, they run into in the luciferic element. Everywhere in the East, we find many people who have to go through something in the luciferic element. Everywhere in the West, we find the souls imbued with the ahrimanic element, in America above all. In America the trend exists to develop a civilisation which is imbued completely with the materialistic ahrimanic element which is infiltrated with purely material views, even where one strives for spiritualism. Even where one strives for spirituality, one wants to seize the spirits, as it were, with the hands like the spiritualists. This tendency becomes stronger and stronger, and the longing for the material becomes bigger and bigger. It will also seize the west of Europe gradually. There the mission is fulfilled to introduce the ahrimanic element into civilisation.

These are the big points of view I had in my eye: that we see how we are roped in between the luciferic principle of the East and the ahrimanic principle of the West in Central Europe, but that we have a vocation to rise toward the forces that are shown by the Christ-principle. This principle makes Lucifer break his wings by overcoming the feeling of powerlessness, and, on the other side, emits forces against Ahriman which push back any fear of knowledge of the spiritual world. Because you cannot hold up the ahrimanic element pulsating through the world, it is there. Also Central Europe is seized by this ahrimanic element. People must only know how they have to position themselves to it, because the course of the ahrimanic element is the course through materialism. This course through materialism must be, and it has a deep wisdom-filled reason why this course through materialism must be.

Imagine that there is a one-sided religious movement—I expressly say “one-sided” religious movement, also in Christianity, and manifests itself in the element of Jesuitism the strongest. Think that it always turns against the real scientific progress. Nevertheless, the Catholic Church did only acknowledge the Copernican world view in the 19th century. The one-sided religion combats the external science, of course, this cannot be different. Two impulses are in this fighting against the external science. One impulse is that the one-sided religion may feel: in science which is done only in view of the external world Ahriman shows himself. This aspect of the quarrel is justified. Ahriman cannot be kept away from the external science if it does not look up to the spiritual world view; this is justified. However, the impulse of the one-sided religion against science is not justified.

This one-sided religious world view itself is inspired, is ensouled, so to speak, by the luciferic element in particular. Since striving for religious deepening and hating the scientific investigation of spiritual worlds is that Lucifer wants from the human beings. Lucifer could not arrive better at his goal, if all human beings were only religious. This religious attitude has a tremendously strong selfish impact. Imagine only how the human beings who do not strive for spiritual knowledge understand their religion. They want egotistically to become blest, live egotistically after death, as they imagine it. They want egotistically to be embodied only once in the world. In the one-sided religion, egoism has reached its peak, egoism of the soul, not only of the body. The best religious aspirations which surround us are in this egoism. The most pious people who touch us by their devoutness—Lucifer is he who controls their religious feelings. Lucifer prefers to get a lot of devout souls who have a sense for the spiritual, for the good they aim at egotistically. Because he does not want criminal souls, he wants to lead just the devout souls into his realm.

So we have, on the one side, the justified scientific element, which stands just at the threshold to the ahrimanic if it does not look up to the spiritual world, on the other side, the luciferic element which would be enslaved by selfish religiousness also in Central Europe unless the spiritual world view brought in a spiritual knowledge. This will be the progress of Christianity. It is exceptionally valuable to our souls if we penetrate ourselves with the knowledge that we stand between that what must be there, to the luciferic and ahrimanic elements from which we cannot escape which lose, however, their power if we recognise them. This is the characteristic of the spiritual world: if we recognise it, it loses the power through which it makes the human beings obsessed. Lucifer and Ahriman are invisible. If we get an idea of them in space and time, they lose their power over us.

You must not believe that if a person has a premonition of a bad spirit because of his clairvoyant capacity but does not behold it, the person does something worse when he represents the bad spirit pictorially or plastically. On the contrary, the following is correct: the spirit loses its power as a result of the sensory view. People will no longer become nervous by spiritually putting a figure, but the spirit as an invisible power loses its significance as an invisible force, and we consciously position ourselves in it. As God Himself uses Lucifer and Ahriman to put the world from East and to West back to the right track, so that the world does not experience an irregular development, but advances like by a pendulum movement, in the same way the world government lets the luciferic of the East, the ahrimanic of the West be effective.

However, it also poses the difficult and big task for us in Central Europe to look at this pendulum movement correctly. This pendulum is, actually, a small boat, as if a small boat were appended to a pendulum clock. In this small boat the souls of Central Europe are sitting who strive rightly for spirituality. These souls really have to dive in it and know that they have to grasp the right balance point. They have to recognise what is behind the threshold of the everyday consciousness; they have to take up it in their consciousness. Our present grievous days are admonitions above all to those who already anticipate a little bit of that which approaches the world in future.

It does not concern that within the war an external victory is won by the one or the other side, but it concerns how people live after this victory. Imagine that the Central European nations were victorious, however, on the field of this victory the purely materialist-ahrimanic world view would spread out and this would be detained by the luciferic element. If the East, on one side, and the West, on the other side, penetrated the Central European spirituality, an external victory would also not be salutary for this Central Europe. Since centuries, the human beings are penetrated rather strongly by the ahrimanic-luciferic element without noticing it. Imagine only that it was necessary to reject the oriental-luciferic element in our Central European theosophical movement. For that which we got as theosophy from the East was infiltrated by Lucifer and led also in its extreme to the recognition of an external human idol, a physically reincarnated Christ. This was the quarrel we had to have about the unjustified interpretation of the theosophical world view.

But we must be clear to us that we have to recognise correctly in Central Europe how we have to imagine what approaches humankind in future. We learn to see just by that which spiritual science can be to us that materialism, the materialistic world view is not allowed to extend about the area prepared for Central Europe. Those have to strive to prevent it who anticipate a little bit of the fact that a spiritual world view really spreads out, floating over Central Europe and radiating from there to the whole earth. It would be imaginable, externally imaginable as a hypothesis that this Central Europe would serve a materialistic civilisation after a victory. Then Ahriman would reap the fruits of this victory. This must be prevented.

Think only of such a tragic figure like Ernst Haeckel. Goethe wrote a theory of evolution. Since 1884, I attempt to make it clear to the people that it is a theory of evolution which is spiritual in the highest sense. But people cannot understand it in the deep way in which it is given there. When Darwin put it up trivially, people understood the teachings which could flow into their hearts and souls. The teachings had got a materialistic colouring. Take such a tragic figure like Ernst Haeckel. He got any thought, any fiber of his scientific life from England. Huxley, Locke, Darwin were his masters. Today Ernst Haeckel is somebody who turns mostly against England, he is one of the most furious fighters—as far as he can be it as an old man. He stood at the head of those who sent back their medals, certificates and honourings to England. However, it does not matter to send back medals and honourings unless the English coloured Darwinism is sent back.

And still some other things are there. The souls are prepared for materialism best of all if they are in a half-sleeping state for the external life, so to speak, if they are still childish souls. One does not notice that one can bring into the souls ideas which prepare them best of all to accept the materialistic view as a matter of course. Ahriman accomplished this, while he let a very effective spirit come into being who planted the tendency of materialism in the childish souls, unnoticed by the British people, without the human beings being aware of it. This is the exceptionally ingenious author of Robinson Crusoe. If anybody plants the ideas of Robinson in the childish souls, they get the propensity for materialism. In the book even religion comes into being of its own accord, as well as cabbages grow up. Nowhere is reflected on anything that should flow in from the spiritual world. See only Robinson moving through the world. There was a time of the literary development in Central Europe when imitations of Robinson existed in many languages. So many translations of Robinson are there. One cannot count them at all. So deep is this there inside. But the Central European culture has to show the way to spirituality again. And really a higher guidance inspired the brothers Grimm to collect fairy tales. If we give these fairy tales to our children instead of the ahrimanic Robinson, we bring them the propensity for spiritualism.

One is painfully affected if one—all that is symptomatic—experiences the following: a very significant philosopher of Austria, Ernst Mach, wrote a book, Analysis of Sensations, which was of great importance for many who want to think philosophically today. On the third page, he speaks of self-knowledge. We know that self-knowledge is exceptionally important, as I have often explained. Ernst Mach gives a proof of the fact that self-knowledge is rather difficult even for the external world. He tells: I passed a shop window where I saw my own picture, my own figure meeting myself. I thought: what an unpleasant, disgusting person meets me there. I myself was it.—Thus he said. He himself was it who has known himself so little that he said to his mirror image: what an unpleasant, disgusting person. And to make that clear completely, he adds: when he was already a professor, he had once returned from a trip at night and had got in a bus. When he got in, he saw in the mirror a man getting in and said to himself again: what a down-and-out schoolmaster is getting in there? So he adds: I knew the appearance of my type better than my individual appearance.

If it is already so difficult for a person who does not often see himself in a mirror—this speaks for Ernst Mach that this has taken place—to recognise the external figure, then one will get an inkling how difficult it is to get self-knowledge in the soul. It is just this, however, what is necessary: attaining self-knowledge in the soul. I would like to say, it affects somebody almost tragically if one reads up in the same book even farther, and Ernst Mach speaks of the education of his son and says from really serious soul: thanks to God—no, he does not say that, but something that is commensurate with it—never did my children read any fairy tales. So they were not introduced in a spiritual world by fantastic ideas resulting from reading fairy tales.—There we see that nesting in the souls of the present which wants to lead the Central European culture to Ahriman. One has to say: that does not concern to be victorious, but that the right attitude of mind is victorious on the basis of the victory.

We are also heavily burdened in Central Europe, even in the case of a victory. Because we are connected with something that is infiltrated very luciferically. It was once a benefit for Europe that from South Europe the Arabian, Moorish culture spread out. For the past, it was justified, but today it has become ahrimanic. We are heavily burdened with the alliance with the Ottoman Empire.¹ We have to find the correct standpoint and not believe that we can arrange our sensations according to external political viewpoints.

The life of the external world is not suited to prevent Ahriman. The external banal literature leads directly to the ahrimanic principle and pours scorn on the attempts to clearly see the powers working into our world. That is why that must appear as a big warning, which appears to us under the sign of blood and grief; to make the present souls inclined to get the gifts of the spiritual life. Our souls have to tend to that which was prepared in the Central European culture especially expressing that we are put pendulum-like between two powers permeating the world and that we must find the balance. We have to realise that, on the one side, the world strives for ahrimanic hardening, strives to get solidified in the fire of the purely material; that it strives, on the other side, to ascend egotistically to an abstract spirituality.

Following the one or other side would ruin the Central European human being. Following only the science engaged in the external senses would persuade us to tear the roses from the cross and only to look at that which solidifies. We would gain a world view gradually which would completely deflect the human being from looking at the spiritual. It would allow to only looking at that which has solidified ahrimanically. Try to imagine the ideals of the ahrimanic science: it is a world of whirling atoms, a purely material world creation. One wishes to throw everything spiritual out of this world-picture. One wants to imagine, and one teaches it already the children at school, that once whirling gaseous masses were in the universe from which the sun formed which then again pushed off the planets. One makes it clear to the children at school, while one does an oil drop in water, pushes a small round paper sheet at its equator through it, pierces it with a pin in the middle and turns the pin then. Small drops are split off that way; a small planetary system comes into being. Of course, it is proved what one shows in such a way, but one forgets the most important fact that the teacher must turn the pin. In truth, however, you have to conceive a big Mr. Teacher turning the whole matter in space, if you want to imagine it honestly. But the thoughts, the sensations and feelings, which tend to Ahriman, are those which imagine the creation of the sun and the planets in the just described way. That also influenced the historical view. Herman Grimm² says once: a bone of carrion around which a hungry dog is circling is a more appetising sight than this world view which is based only on this Copernican world view.

This is a threat to tear the roses from the cross and to have only the black, charred cross. The other threat is to tear the cross from the roses and want to strive only for the spirit, despise what the divinity has put in the world development, not to want to dive affectionately into the thought that the phenomena of the sensory world express the godhead. This is the unilaterally religious world view which despises the science which only wants the roses and which tends unconsciously to the luciferic element of the East. In the same way, science, which wants to tear the roses from the cross and to keep only the charred cross, tends to the West. We, however, in Central Europe, we have a vocation to have the roses on the cross to have this what is expressed only by the connection of the roses with the cross, the roses on the cross. Looking at the stiff cross we feel that that which has come as a stiff material to the world entered the world from the godhead. It is, as if spirituality created a circle in the material for itself: ex deo nascimur.

We also feel that if we understand it correctly we may enter the spiritual world not only with Lucifer, but that we die, while we are united with that which descended from the divine higher Self to the world: in Christo morimur.

And uniting the cross with the roses, the material world view with the spiritual world view, we feel that the human soul can awake in spirit: per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

Therefore, the cross wound around by roses was the symbol of Goethe who positioned himself in the spirituality of the Central European culture. It must be our symbol. That is why we will remind—as far as we can be present in future, gathering in this room—of that which must be our ideal out of the big tasks of the earth development: winding roses around the cross, neither tearing the roses from the cross and holding only the cross in our hands, nor only estimating the roses and ascending by means of the roses to the spiritually blossoming, sprouting life in the abstract. It is expressed to us in our symbol, in the rose cross, what we want to take up more and more in our souls, in our feelings when we come together in a room dedicated to our attempts. Then we can be sure that the spirits who lead the earth development in good sense exist invisible among us; that our words, that all our thoughts and feelings, while we dedicate ourselves to the spiritual-scientific attempts that all this is really supported in such a room by the spiritual powers guiding our attempts. We can feel, cultivating our spiritual-scientific views, as if we are constantly inspired by the spirits who exist invisible in such a room. I would like to call on these spiritual powers that they are always present with the souls if they strive in serious truth, honestly and affectionately in this room. If that comes true, we can be sure that this spiritual-scientific world view finds the way to the gods as it was always found.

Today we come together in such rooms. They are separated from the efforts of the external world. The external world considers the events in our rooms as something sectarian, something superstitious. And thus we are gathered as it were underground compared with the intellectual culture of the present. This intellectual culture, which is deeply infiltrated by Lucifer in the East, by Ahriman in the West, is above ground. There we remember repeatedly in order to strengthen our hearts, to invigorate our souls that in another epoch the western world view ascended from underground to the surface. There was the world view of the Roman Empire, the world view which had taken up the distinguished philosophy and the artistic world view of the Greeks. There were basically brilliant minds among those who lived within this ancient Rome and its surroundings with this old world view. They were deeply despised who cultivated a quite new teaching underground in the catacombs. However, those who cultivated the new teaching, separated from the world view above ground justified at that time, knew that they had only to hold on the contents of their striving and to retain what had entered in the world as a result of the Christ Impulse.

They strove in the catacombs and knew: those lived above ground who were out to kill them who pursued them who did not understand them.—After we have got these conditions of the ancient Roman Empire clear in our mind, we look at the human development a few centuries later. What was above has disappeared. What lived underground in the catacombs has ascended; it passes triumphantly through the West. It already lived in the souls of those who were striving for that which should then conquer the world although they were repelled, despised and mocked living underground in the catacombs. We must feel that way, my dear friends, as if we were still spiritually outcast and mocked and pursued by those who cultivate the so-called justified world view today. But in such a way as it happened in the first epoch of the western Christian development, it will go on. What one would best destroy—not like once, while one covered human beings with pitch and burnt them, but while one mocks them—it will gain acceptance. What jeers and mocks there, what wants to conquer the earth only with an ahrimanic and luciferic world view this will have disappeared, like the ancient Roman culture, the ancient world view disappeared in a certain way. However, what is cultivated in our catacombs—they are spiritual catacombs, the world has progressed, nevertheless—what is felt in these catacombs, what is imagined, what is reflected, what penetrates our souls: it will ascend and arrive triumphally at the culture of the next epoch. We may keep in mind that at every moment when we pass the gate to such a room. And staying in it, we keep in mind that we are still like in a submarine which will take the direction upwards—and absolutely will take it if we become engrossed strongly in this with which we have learnt to connect our souls. With this vow that we want to penetrate ourselves strongly with the spiritual Christ Impulse which is developing a further level, with this attitude, with this vow we really will enter this room. We enter in the sense of these feelings that everything is dedicated to the spiritual powers, to the spiritual individualities who permeate our movement, as we can know, who spread out their blessing and protecting hands about us. We want to keep in mind that when we come together here in future.

• 1. the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War on the side of the Central European powers in 1914.
• 2. Herman Grimm (1828–1901), in his Lectures on Goethe

When once our construction, dedicated to spiritual science, is finished in Dornach, it contains a sculptural group at an important place. This group primarily presents three figures. In the middle of this group a figure stands as, I would like to say, the representative of the highest human which could develop on earth. Hence, one can also feel this figure of the highest human in the earth development as Christ, Who lived in the body of Jesus of Nazareth for three years within the earth development. It is the particular task to form this Christ figure in such a way that one can see, on one side, the concerning being living in a human earthly body, however, this earthly body being spiritualised in every look, in everything that is in it by Christ Who entered from cosmic, from spiritual heights in the thirtieth year of his life in this earthly body.

Then two other figures are to be found, one on the left side, the other on the right side of the Christ figure, if I am allowed to call this figure the Christ figure. This Christ figure stands there like before a rock which towers up in particular on the left side of Christ, so that its peak is above the head of the Christ figure. On top of the rock is another figure, a winged figure; but the wings are broken, and this figure falls, because it has broken wings, into the chasm. What has to be worked out artistically in particular is the way how this Christ figure raises the left arm. Because the Christ figure raises his left arm, it happens that this falling being breaks the wings. But this must not look in such a way, as if possibly Christ broke the wings of this being, but the whole must be artistically arranged so that, while Christ raises the arm, already lies in the whole movement of the hand that he has an infinite compassion, actually, also with this being. However, this being does not endure what flows up through the arm and hand and what is still visible because the fingers of the stretched hand hollowed the rock, as it were. What this being feels in itself, because it comes near to the Christ being, I would like to dress in the words: I cannot bear anything pure like that shining on me.

It is that which lives in this being and lives so substantially in this being that its wings are broken and it falls consequently into the chasm. This is one especially significant artistic task. You notice what could be missed if Christ stood there plastically and such a force were simply emitted by raising the hand, so that He breaks the wings of this being so that it falls into the chasm. Then it would be Christ who would shine on this being like with hatred and make it fall. However, this must not be shown that way, but the being should make itself fall. Since this being who is shown falling down with broken wings is Lucifer.

On the other side, toward the right side of the Christ figure where the rock has a projection the rock will be hollowed out there. In this hollow is also a winged figure. This figure turns to the rock cavity on top with his arm-like organs. You have to imagine: on the right the rock cavity and in this cavity the winged figure which has, however, quite differently formed wings than the figure on top of the rock. This figure has more aquiline wings, the figure in the cave bat-like wings. The latter figure locks itself up in the cave, you see it in chains, and you see it working there on the ground hollowing out the earth.

The Christ figure in the middle turns his right hand downwards. Whereas it turns its left hand upwards, it turns the right hand downwards. It will be a significant artistic task again not to show this in such a way, as if Christ wanted to put this figure which is Ahriman in chains, but that Christ Himself has an infinite compassion for Ahriman. However, Ahriman cannot endure this; he writhes in pains by that which the hand of Christ emits. This causes that the veins of gold, which are at the bottom in the cave, wind like strings around Ahriman's body and tie it up. Just as that which happens with Lucifer happens by himself, it also happens with Ahriman. Then we will attempt to paint the same motive above the sculptural group, but the view of the painting must be completely different from that of the sculpture. So that we have this group of three figures: Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman as a sculpture group at the bottom and above them the same motive painted.

We put this relationship of Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman in our Dornach building because spiritual science shows us in a certain way really that concerning the understanding of the Christ Impulse the next task is that, finally, the human being learns to know which relationship exists in the world between these three powers Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman. Since, indeed, up to now one often talks about Christianity and the Christ Impulse, but that which has entered the world by the Christ Impulse, actually, as a result of Christ's Death and Resurrection, this has not yet become completely clear to the human beings. One speaks probably of the fact that there is Lucifer that there is Ahriman, but while one speaks of Lucifer and Ahriman, one speaks very often in such a way, as if one had to flee them, as if one had to say almost always: I want to know nothing, nothing at all about Lucifer and Ahriman.

If the divine-spiritual powers, which are found in the way, as I have described it in the public lecture yesterday, also wanted to know nothing about Lucifer and Ahriman, the world would just not be able to exist. You do not position yourselves in the correct relationship saying: Lucifer, I avoid him! Ahriman, I avoid him! You rather have to look at that which the human being has to strive for as a result of the Christ Impulse like the equilibrium position of a pendulum. The pendulum is in the middle in balance; however, it must swing to and fro. That is similar also in the earth development of the human being. The human being must tend on one side to the luciferic principle, on the other side to the ahrimanic principle, but he must learn and stand firmly on that which Paul said: “not I, but Christ in me.”

We have to understand Christ in his effectiveness absolutely as a reality. That is we must be clear to us that this really happened which flowed by Christ's Death and Resurrection in our earth development. How well or how badly people understood this up to now, it does not depend on it, but on the fact that it was there that it has worked in the human earth development. One could say a lot that people have not yet understood of the Christ Impulse. And spiritual science will contribute a little piece to the understanding of that what flowed in from spiritual heights by the Mystery of Golgotha as the Christ Impulse onto the earth development. To realise Christ's working, we want to make clear to us, as this has also happened at other places, two moments of the earth development of humankind, two moments which became important in the whole western development.

You know from history, what an important moment it was, when Constantine, the son of Constantius Chlorus, defeated Maxentius, and Christianity was introduced by Constantine externally in the western development. Constantine had to go into that important battle against Maxentius through which Constantine then made Christianity the state religion in his western empire. The whole map of Europe would have become different if in those days this battle had not taken place against Maxentius. But strategic art, that of what people were capable with their intellects in those days, did not decide this battle really, but something else.

Maxentius made read up in the so-called Sibylline Books, the prophetic books of Rome, and got the advice to lead his army out of the walls of Rome, whereas they would have been saved well within the walls. So he positioned his troops in the free field against the army of Constantine. However, Constantine had a dream before the battle which indicated to him: if you go in the sign of the Mystery of Golgotha against Maxentius, you arrive at a big goal.—And carrying the sign of the Mystery of Golgotha, the cross, Constantine went to the battle with an army about three quarters smaller than that of Maxentius. Filled with enthusiasm by the power which came from the Mystery of Golgotha, Constantine won that important battle through which Christianity was introduced externally in Europe. If we remember what people understood of the Christ Impulse with their intellects in those days, we find an endless theological quarrelling.

People quarrelled whether Christ is identical from eternity with the Father and the like more. One must say: it does not depend on that which people knew about the Christ Impulse in those days, but on the fact that it was there, the Christ Impulse, that it induced the necessary events by Constantine, by a dream of Constantine. It depends on the reality of Christ, on the real power of Christ. In our spiritual science, we only begin understanding the Christ Impulse.

Another moment was that when in the fight between France and England Europe was formed in such a way that one can say: if France had not been victorious against England in those days, all the circumstances would have become different. But how had this happened?—The Christ Impulse has just worked in the subconscious of the soul up to now, when it has to become more aware. We see then in the western spiritual development the Christ Impulse seeking for those conditions in the human souls through which it can be effective with individual human beings. Legends have preserved the way how the Christ Impulse in the western spiritual development can make itself noticeable. These legends point partly back to old pagan times, when everywhere understanding of Christianity was prepared just in paganism.

If the soul does not strive for initiation consciously in the way I have described in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, but gets it as it were in natural way, as it was filled with the Christ Impulse by a natural initiation. The most convenient time in which this Christ Impulse is able to inspire the soul is the time of the Christmas Eve up to the Epiphany day, the time from the 25th December to the 6th January. We can understand that if we get the following clear in our mind: for the esoteric knowledge it is unambiguously evident that our earth is not only that of which the geologists talk. That is only like the skeleton of the human being. But our earth also has its own spirituality. And Christ has just entered the earth aura. This earth sleeps and wakes as we sleep and are awake in twenty-four hours. We have to realise the fact that the earth sleeps during the summertime and is awake in the wintertime. The spirit of the earth is the most awake in these twelve or thirteen nights from Christmas to Epiphany. In olden times, in which—as you know from the various representations in my lectures—the human beings had a dreamlike clairvoyance and experienced the spiritual principle of the world that way. The most convenient time was the summertime. It is quite natural that somebody who wants to rise in a more dreamlike clairvoyance to the spiritual has it easier during the sleeping time of the earth, in the summertime. Hence, it was the St. John's-tide which was the most convenient in olden times to raise the strength of the soul to the spiritual. The new, more conscious way has replaced the old way in which the spiritual was working into the earth; now it is the best time when the earth is awake.

Hence, the legends tell us that especially gifted human beings, human beings who are particularly suitable because of their karma, get a special condition of consciousness at the Yuletide which is only externally similar to sleep but inspires it internally, so that the human being was raised to the world we call the spirit-land. There is a very nice legend, the Norwegian legend of Olaf Åsteson about whom is told to us that he goes to the church at the Christmas Eve, falls into a sleep-like state and wakes up at the sixth January and can tell what he experienced in this state similar to sleep. This Norwegian legend actually explains to us that Olaf Åsteson experienced something that one feels at first like the soul-world, then something that one feels like the spirit-land, only just everything in pictures, in Imaginations.

This time was the most convenient in those epochs in which the human beings were not yet so advanced as in our time. Today, the times are over in which the Christ Impulse can flow into the souls like by a natural initiation. Today, the human beings have to ascend to initiation as consciously as it is described in How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? We live in a time in which natural initiations become rarer and rarer and completely disappear, finally, so that we do not have to count any more on them. But, basically, one can call a physical initiation that through which the Christ Impulse worked on the soul of the simple farmer girl, the Maid of Orleans, who brought about the victory of the French over the English. This victory reshaped the European map wondrously. The human reason could not perform that, but that which guided the Maid of Orleans in those days and outstripped all the skill of the military leaders, by which Europe got a new figure. It was the Christ Impulse, which worked on the unconscious of a single personality, but worked so that then from this personality spread out what was efficient in history.

We would have to notice if anything similar could have taken place as a natural initiation with the Maid of Orleans if the soul of the Maid of Orleans had been inspired in the nights from the 25th December to the 6th January. In the course of life it seems that such a matter cannot be verified that the Maid of Orleans also was once during twelve or thirteen days from the 25th December to the 6th January in a sleep-like state in which the Christ Impulse would have worked on her, so that she would be able to work as a human being only like the cover of the Christ Impulse on the battlefields of France. Nevertheless, it was that way. For there is a time which—if the karma of the concerning individuality makes it possible—can be filled with such a sleep-like state. This is the time of the last days in which the human being still lives in the body of the mother, before he sees the physical earth light. The human being lives there in a dreamlike state similar to sleep. He has not yet seen anything by the senses that takes place externally in the world. If a human being were particularly suitable by his karma to take up the Christ Impulse during these last days in which he lives in the body of the mother, these days would also be days of the natural initiation. Then such a human being would open his eyes for the first time already strengthened by the Christ Impulse lying in him after the initiation, that means in this case, after his birth. And such a human being would have to be born on the 6th January. The Maid of Orleans was born on the 6th January. This is the secret of the Maid of Orleans that she was born on the 6th January that she spent the time from Christmas up to the Epiphany day in that peculiar state similar to sleep in the body of the mother and got a natural initiation. Consider the deep connections which are behind the external development which one normally calls history. What is shown externally in history with the help of documents is as a rule even the most insignificant. The simple date which is registered in our calendar that the Maid of Orleans was sent into the world on the 6th January is of authoritative historical significance. The forces work from the supersensible realm on the sensory realm that way. We have to read this occult writing which shows us the forces working from the supersensible realm on the sensory realm. So the Christ Impulse flowed into the Maid of Orleans like by a natural initiation, already before her physical birth.

I want to explain these matters to arouse a feeling in you that forces and connections unknown to the external view are effective behind that what one normally calls history. However, the Christ Impulse guides history, of the European humankind in particular, since the Mystery of Golgotha. In the East, in Asia a world view remained of which one can say: it has not yet approached the Christ Impulse in its feelings. Indeed, the European was enticed to call the Indian views particularly deep. But this is the typical of Hinduism—generally of the whole Asian religious feeling—that it stands with all its feelings before the Christ Impulse, but has preserved the state which was there in the religious feeling of the earthly humankind before the Christ Impulse. Lagging behind in the development always means taking up something luciferic. Hence, the Asian religious development carries a luciferic element in itself. If we look over at the Asian religious development, we must notice: indeed, we can see a lot in it that humankind had already once that it had to leave, however. But we have partly to purify that all in the western culture from the luciferic element, to raise it partly in such a way that the Christ-principle can flow into it.

If we go from Asia to Europe, we find in the east of Europe, in the Russian culture, the orthodox Christianity spread out which has stopped on a former level of the Christian development which did not want to go along which wanted to keep something luciferic. Briefly, we look at the East, we have what, I would like to say, the wise guidance of the world left behind in the whole development of humankind as the luciferic element.

Let us look at the West, particularly at the American civilisation, and then we have another characteristic. The typical of this American civilisation is that everything is searched for in the external. A lot of significant things are thereby produced indeed; but everything is searched for in the outside. Take an example. If we see in Europe, in particular in Central Europe, that a human being who did not have any opportunity in his life at first to turn his soul to Christ and the powers of the spiritual world and suddenly changes his life because of something, then interests us what has taken place in his soul. It does not interest us that he experienced a jump in his development, we find this everywhere.

Since most inaccurate is the saying which the external science has stamped: nature does not make jumps.¹—From the green plant leaf to the red petal is a big jump; from the petal to the chalices is again a big jump. It is an absolutely wrong saying, and the truth of the development is based just on the fact that everywhere jumps are made. The fact that a human being if he has lived for a while so externally is able to tend suddenly to spirituality induced by anything, in that we are not interested in particular. But the internal power which achieves such a conversion to spirituality interests us. We want to look into the soul of such a human being; we want to know what brought him to such a conversion. We are interested in the soul.

How does the American make it?—He makes something very peculiar. In America, one could often observe such conversions. Now, the American lets such people write letters who experienced a conversion. Then he puts all these letters together on a small heap and says: I received letters from two hundred people, more or less. Fourteen percent of those who experienced such a conversion wrote that they were suddenly attacked by fear of death or hell; five percent because of altruistic motives; seventeen percent because of striving for moral ideals; fifteen percent experienced pangs of conscience; ten percent because they observed teachings given to them; thirteen percent because they have seen that others were converted—by imitation; nineteen percent because they were forced, while they were thrashed at the suitable age, and so on. One selects the most extreme souls, sorts them and receives a result which is based on “sure data.” That is registered then in the books which one spreads as “psychology” among people. All the other documents are uncertain to these people, are only based on subjectivity, they say. There you have an example that something innermost is made superficial. That holds true in many respects in America. In the time which demands a particular spiritual deepening the most superficial spiritualism is rampant in America. One wants to have everything as something sensory.

Spiritual life is grasped materialistically that way. We could still give many such examples which would show you that the civilisation of the West is seized by Ahriman. This is the other deflection of the pendulum. If we look at the East, we have the luciferic element, if we look at the West, we have the ahrimanic element. The infinitely important task we have in Central Europe between West and East is to find the balance. Hence, we would like to put the biggest of the spiritual demands of our time in our Dornach building as a sculptural group: to find the balance between the relation to Lucifer and the relation to Ahriman. Then one will only recognise what the Christ Impulse wanted from the earth development if one puts outside Christ not so simply, but if one knows correctly that Christ is that power which shows us the relation to Lucifer and Ahriman exemplarily.

That the relation of the human being and Christ to Lucifer and Ahriman is not yet recognised clearly, this may become illustrative to you by the following. Also the greatest, which contains the greatest in one respect, is not always free of that which must still be there as an one-sidedness in time. Indeed, one cannot appreciate that picture enough which Michelangelo painted in the Sistine Chapel in Rome, The Last Judgement, this miraculous picture. Christ triumphing, directing the good human beings to one side, the bad human beings to the other. Let us look at this Christ. He does not have the features which we would like to give the Christ figure that should stand in our Dornach construction. It must become evident that Christ raises the hand in compassion, even though Lucifer is there above. Lucifer should not be brought down by the power of Christ, but he falls down because he cannot endure what shines from Christ in his nearness. Christ raises his eye and folds the forehead while raising the folded forehead to Lucifer.

Ahriman is overcome not by the hatred of Christ, but he feels that he cannot endure what flows out from Christ. However, Christ stands in the midst as somebody who introduces the Parzival element in the modern age. He has to get the others to overcome themselves not by His power, but by His existence, so that they overcome themselves and not he overcomes them. With Michelangelo, we still see Christ sending the good human beings to heaven and the bad ones to hell by His power. This is not the right Christ in future, but this is a Christ who is still very luciferic. That does not reduce our esteem of that picture. The whole significance of this picture is recognised, but one has to admit that Michelangelo could not yet paint Christ because the world development was not yet so far. It must clearly be seen that one has not only to turn the sense to Christ, but that one has to turn the sense to the threefold being: Christ, Lucifer, and Ahriman. I can only indicate that. Only in future, spiritual science finds out everything that lies in this secret: Christ in relation to Lucifer and Ahriman.

But now consider the following: if we look at the East, we look at luciferic powers even in the near East. In the West, we look at ahrimanic powers. In spiritual science, we have to get into the habit of considering the matters not with sympathy and antipathy and also the peoples and folk-souls not with sympathy and antipathy, but in such a way as they are in their characteristics. What one calls the national characteristic of a human being who stands in his people, depends—above all—on that which is effective in the physical and etheric bodies. When we live from falling asleep to waking up with our soul and mind as an astral body and ego, we live beyond the normal national element. We live only from waking up to falling asleep in our nationality when we are in our physical body. That is why the nationality is also something the human being overcomes gradually during his stay in kamaloka. The human being there strives for the generally human, while he overcomes the nationality in kamaloka to live then in the generally human for the longest time between death and new birth. It belongs to the qualities which are taken off in kamaloka, also that which makes us a national human being.

The single nationalities are very different from each other in this regard. Compare a French human being and a Russian human being. The French human being has the characteristic that he seizes that particularly which the folk-soul brings in his physical and etheric bodies during his life between birth and death that he lives particularly in it. This expresses itself in the fact that the Frenchman—not as an individual human being but as a Frenchman—has an idea of that which is a Frenchman; the fact that he puts ahead that above all which is, actually, a Frenchman. But these ideas which the French, also all the other neo-Latin peoples, have of their nationality cause that the ideas of their nationality are deeply stamped into their etheric bodies. When the Frenchman goes through the gate of death, he already detaches the etheric body after some days; then this etheric body is a clearly defined figure which exists in the etheric world for a long time. The etheric body cannot dissolve because the ideas of his nationality are deeply stamped on it; these ideas hold together the etheric body. That is why we see the field of death filled with clearly defined etheric bodies if we look westwards.

Look at the East now, at the Russian human being. It is the peculiarity of this Russian human being that he has such an etheric body in himself that it dissolves relatively quickly when the soul goes through the gate of death. This is the difference between the West and the East. The etheric bodies, which the West-European human beings take off after death, have the peculiarity that they want to be clearly defined. What the French calls “gloire” stamps itself to his etheric body firmly as national gloire, so that he is condemned to turn his spiritual view to this etheric body, to himself for long, long times after death. The Russian human being, however, looks at himself only a little after death. That is why the West-European human being is exposed to the ahrimanic influence; the materialisation of the etheric body is again exposed to the ahrimanic principle. The dissolution of the etheric body, the quick merging of the etheric body is accompanied by a feeling of lust, and this is just the peculiar, an instinctive feeling of lust in the national. How is this expressed in the East?

Central Europe does not understand that, as it also does not feel in that. If one pursues Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy or others who were setting the tone who talk always about the “Russian human being,” this is a feeling of lust in the national which cannot define itself. Even with Solovyov, we find that something sultry is living in his philosophy that is not compatible with the clearness and cleanness the Central European human being searches for. What is effective in Europe as a spiritual power is connected with all that. In Central Europe another, a middle state exists, namely something that one could explain even further than it was possible in the public lecture yesterday. I said: something exists in Central Europe that is an inner striving nature. Goethe would have written his Faust in exactly the same way in the forties of the last century: strive again and again.—But this striving is innermost nature. In Central Europe, the mystics appeared who did not only want to recognise the divine-spiritual, but wanted to experience it with their own souls. The mystics wanted to internally experience the Christ event. If one takes Solovyov, one thinks that he goes out above all from that: Christ died once historically for humankind. This is quite right, but Solovyov sees the spiritual life like a cloud outside himself, who sees that as it were everything already has happened, while the Central European human being demands that everybody experiences Christ in himself time and again. Master Eckhart would have possibly replied the following even to somebody like Solovyov. If Solovyov emphasised repeatedly that Christ must go through death, so that the human being can be a human being, Master Eckhart would say: you look at Christ as one looks at something external. It does not matter that we always look at the historical events only, but we ourselves have to experience Christ inside, we have to discover something inside that goes through such states like Christ, at least spiritually, so that Christ is experienced spiritually.

It seems tricky and fantastic indeed if anybody says to the modern humankind: the whole development, even the folk-soul worked in Central Europe, so that this connection of the ego with the Christ principle is expressed in the language: I-CH (= I) = Jesus Christ. I-CH which is composed in such a way that it means “I.” While one pronounces I (ich) in Central Europe, one pronounces the name of Christ. So near one wants to feel the ego with Christ, so intimately connected with it. One knows this intimate living together with the spiritual world, as it must be striven for in Central Europe in any spiritual field, neither in the West nor in the East. Hence, something must happen in the twentieth century, so that the Christ-principle can spread out gradually over the whole European continent in suitable way. I emphasised it often in various lecture cycles that in November 1879 that spiritual being whom we call the archangel Michael ascended to a special level of development. Michael became, so to speak, the leading spirit. Now this leading spirit prepares the event which I indicated in the first of my mystery dramas as the appearance of the etheric Christ over the earth, the event which must take place in the twentieth century. Then it will happen that single souls at first, then more and more souls know: Christ is there in reality, Christ walks again on earth, but in an etheric figure, not in a physical figure.

This must be prepared. If in the course of this twentieth century the spiritual eyes of certain souls were opened clairvoyantly—and this will happen—for the life of the etheric world, they would be disturbed by those etheric bodies which spread out from Western Europe. They would behold them first, and one would see the figure of Christ wrongly. Hence, Michael must fight a battle in Europe. He has to contribute something that these West-European clearly defined etheric bodies are dissolved in the etheric world. For that he has to take those etheric bodies which enjoy dissolving, the etheric bodies in the East, and must fight with them against the West. This causes that since 1879 a violent struggle prepares itself in the astral world between the Russian and the West-European etheric bodies, and this struggle is raging in the whole astral world. It is actually a violent struggle in the astral world, led by Michael, between Russia and France. This forms the basis of the battle in the astral world, raging in Europe.

As we are often stupefied by the fact that something that takes place here in the physical world is the opposite of that in the spiritual,² managed by Ahriman's seduction, which is based mainly on the ahrimanic element, namely on twenty billions which France gave Russia, is the physical expression of a battle that is raging between French and Russian souls, of a battle in which Central Europe is put with its striving for meeting the Christ in its innermost soul element. And Europe is enslaved by karma that one has to experience just in Central Europe tragically what the East with the West and the West with the East has to fight out. The matters which externally the German element has to fight out with the French element are to be understood only in such a way that the German is just in the middle between the East and the West and serves as an anvil for both sides. Since that which is pushed together by both sides in Germany is negotiated by these both sides in truth. This is the spiritual truth which is completely different from the external events in the physical world. Imagine how different the spiritual truth is from the external events in the physical world. Indeed, everything like that sounds absurd to the modern human beings, but it is the truth. This truth must stupefy us.

But another matter is also exceptionally significant. Indeed, it counters everything that history can show us that England, after it was always an ally of Turkey against Russia, must fight now suddenly with Russia against Turkey. One can understand this gainsay if one does the following occult observation. While here below on the physical plane England is an ally of Russia and fights against the Turkish element, the following presents to the occult observation. If one observes this struggle clairvoyantly and looks as it were from below up at the physical plane and then at the astral plane, it becomes apparent: in the North, Russia seems to be allied with England, and in the South-East Turkey seems to be allied with England. This is due to the fact that the alliance between England and Russia has significance only on the physical plane, but there is no reflection in the spiritual world, because it is completely based on material interests. From below one sees England and Russia united only on the physical plane in the North. In the South-East, one sees through the physical plane to the astral plane where the English are allies of the Turks and are fighting against Russia. On one side, England fights together with Russia on the physical plane, and on the other side Russia is combated by England. We have to look at the external events this way, in so far as they manifest themselves as external history. Since that which lies behind is something completely different.

A time will come in which the human beings talk about the present events quite differently than it happens now. One must say that the whole war literature has something rather unpleasant. Something pleasant is also said, but also a lot of unpleasant things. Above all one matter is unpleasant. It is always said: today one cannot yet speak about the question: who is responsible for the war? Et cetera.—People console themselves passing over the matters. They say: in future one finds out of the documents in the archives, who was responsible for the war.—Concerning the external events the matter, however, is not hard to be found at all if one judges without passion. Chamberlain³ is right in his “war articles” even if he is mistaken in the details, when he says that one can know the most certain just about this war. This is right that no doubt exists about that, only one has to put the right question. A question can only be answered unambiguously, for example, if it is put correctly. It is the question: who could have prevented this war?

The always returning question: who is responsible for this war? And still many other questions, are not just right. Who could have prevented the war?—No other answer can be given than: the Russian government could have prevented the war.—One will only be able to find the right definition of the impulses which work in detail. Of course, the war, intended by the East since decades, could not have come unless a certain relation had existed between England, Russia, and France, so that one can ascribe the bigger guilt also—if one wants—to England. But all these matters do not take into consideration which causes are behind that showing the whole world war as a necessity. It is naive to think that the war could have failed to come. Now the people talk, as if this war did not need to come. It is the result of the European karma.

I wanted to indicate something by the spiritual contrasts between the East and the West. It does not depend on the fact that we ask, so to speak, for the outer causes in particular, because they are not important. We must only know that this war is a historical necessity. The single causes are not important there.

But all the heterogeneous effects to which we will have to position ourselves correctly are important. One effect can appear to us as particularly important. It is a great, typical phenomenon that such a war produces many unused etheric bodies. Because this is the biggest war which humankind has waged in its conscious historical development, this characteristic also exists to a very high degree. Unused etheric bodies are produced. The etheric body can supply the human being for long, until the human being is seventy, eighty, or ninety years old. However, during the war human beings are sacrificed in the prime of life. When the human being goes through the gate of death, he takes off the etheric body, as you know, after a short time; but the etheric body of somebody who was killed in action is taken off in such a way that it could still have supplied this human life in a physical body for long, for decades.

In physics one accepts that energy does not get lost. However, that also applies to spirituality. The forces of these etheric bodies, which early go to the etheric world, remain available. Think now that countless unused etheric bodies of those are there who go as young human beings through the gate of death. Nevertheless, it is something particular with these etheric bodies. I would like to explain this at an example which is obvious to our movement and to lead then to the etheric bodies of the warriors gone through death which are contained in the etheric world in the next future.

In this autumn, we experienced the death of the little son of an anthroposophical family which is employed in the area of our Dornach construction. This boy, Theodor Faiss, was seven years old. His father once lived in Stuttgart, and then he came as a gardener to Dornach in the area of the construction and lived there with his family. He himself was soon called up to the army after outbreak of the war and was in a military hospital at the time of the accident. The little, seven-year-old Theodor was a real sunny child, a wonderful, dear boy. Now one day the following happened. We had just a lecture as I give them in Dornach after the construction work. After the lecture somebody came and reported that the little Theodor Faiss has not come back to his mother since the late afternoon. It was ten o'clock in the evening, and one could imagine nothing but that a big tragedy has happened. A removal van had arrived in this afternoon and had gone a way near the so-called canteen where it had to turn round. This carriage had reached a place in those days, in which, one is allowed to state this, no such a big carriage has gone for many decades before, generally maybe no removal van has ever gone and just as little after. Now the little Theodor, before this van had turned round, had been in the canteen. He had been detained there a little bit, otherwise he would have gone sooner with the provisions he had got in the canteen for the dinner. Then he went the way home—it is only a short distance—so that he was just at that place where the van toppled over and fell on him, the little Theodor. Nobody had noticed it, even the coachman did not. He had only got his horses to safety when the carriage toppled over, and did not know that the child was under it. When the absence of the child was reported to us, we had to try to lift the carriage. The friends got tools, and the mobilised Swiss soldiers helped us. Of course, the child was already dead since possibly a half past five o'clock in the afternoon. The removal van had crushed it straight away, it died of suffocation.

There we have such a case to which one can apply what I often tried to make clear using a comparison that one confuses cause and effect. Imagine that we see a person going along a riverbank. The person falls into the river. One runs to him and finds a stone where the person fell into the river and thinks that the person tripped, then fell in the river and died this way. One says that the person has died because he fell into the river. But if one dissects him, one maybe finds that he experienced a heart attack and fell consequently dead into the water. He did not die because he fell into the water, but he fell into the water because he died. You find such mistakes of cause and effect in the judgement of life very frequently and in the usual science even more.

The karma of the little Theodor had run off in a certain way, so that one can really say: he ordered the carriage to that place. I mention this case which is externally exceptionally tragic, because we deal with the etheric body of a child which could have supplied through the life of this child still for decades. This etheric body is passed over with its unused forces to the spiritual world, the etheric world. Where is he? What does he do?—Somebody who is obliged to work on the Dornach construction since that time with artistic intentions, generally to have thoughts in the area of the construction knows if he beholds clairvoyantly at the same time: this whole etheric body and its forces is increased in the aura of the Dornach construction. We have to distinguish: the individuality is somewhere else, it goes its own way, but the etheric body is expelled after some days and exists now in the construction. Never will I hesitate before saying that among the forces which one needs to Intuition the forces of this etheric body are, sacrificed to the construction. Behind life the connections are often completely different than anybody only suspects it. This etheric body has become protecting powers of the construction. Something great is in such a connection.

Consider now, what a big sum of strength goes up to the spiritual world in the unused etheric bodies of those who go now through the gate of death as a result of the military events.

The matters are connected differently than the human beings can imagine. The world karma takes place differently. Spiritual science must be there just to replace fantastic ideas with spiritually true ideas. We can imagine hardly—to mention only one example—something more fantastic or untrue from the spiritual point of view than something that took place in the last decades. A special “peace society”⁴ was founded to put the law at the place of the war, as one said, “the International Law.”—In no time of humankind such dreadful wars were waged as since the “peace society” exists. In the last decades, this peace movement had a monarch among its particular protectors who waged the bloodiest and cruelest wars which ever were waged in world history. So that the installation of the peace movement from the part of the czar must really appear as the biggest comedy which was played in world history, the biggest comedy and at the same time the most hideous comedy. One has to call that luciferic seduction. This can well be investigated in details. One can say, it stupefies the soul if one sees—one may look at the matters as one wants—in the beginning when these war impulses entered Europe, Central Europe, where one assembled like in the Berlin Reichstag, people talking almost about nothing. One has only spoken a little, but the matters have spoken. A lot has been spoken in the West like in the East. But one has the most stupefying impression in a certain way of that what has been spoken in the St. Petersburg Duma by the different parties. In the various way the representatives of the Duma have really brought forward nothing else than the empty phrases with the biggest fire of enthusiasm. It was stupefying. This is a luciferic seduction. However, everything shows us that the fire, which burns during this war, is a warning fire, and that the human beings have to pay attention.

Everything that happens now points to the fact that at least some souls must say to themselves: it cannot go on that way as it has gone in the world, spirituality must flow into the human development. Materialism has found its karma in this most dreadful war of all the wars. In certain respect this war is the karma of materialism. The more the human souls see this, the more they will get beyond arguing, whether this one or that one is responsible for the war, and say to themselves: this war was sent to us in world history that it is an admonisher that we should turn to a spiritual understanding of the whole human life.

Materialism makes not only the souls of the human beings materialistically minded; it also corrupts the logic and makes the feeling dull. Within Central Europe, one still has to see something that is connected with that which I have said: that one has to deal most intimately with the further development of the Christ Impulse just in Central Europe. But that belongs to it that one has to start understanding the spirits who have already laid the germs. Only one example: Goethe wrote a theory of colours. The physicists look at it as something, about which they say compassionately smiling: what has the poet understood of the colours? He was just a dilettante.—Since the eighties of the nineteenth century I try to help the Goethean theory of colours on the road to success against modern physics. This cannot be understood. Why can it not be understood? Because the materialistic principle, which came from the British folk-soul, penetrated Central Europe. Newton whom Goethe had to combat won the victory over that which issued from Goethe's spirit. Goethe also founded a theory of evolution in which is shown by grasping spiritual laws how the beings advance from the most imperfect condition to the most perfect. This was too hard to understand. When Darwin brought his theory of evolution, the people accepted it, because they could understand it easier. Darwin was victorious over Goethe. The materialistic thinker who was inspired by the British folk-soul was victorious over Goethe who got everything from the most intimate dialog with the German folk-soul.

Ernst Haeckel has experienced something tragic. He lived mentally through his whole life on that which Huxley and Darwin have given to him. The materialism of Ernst Haeckel is basically a very English product. When the war broke out, Haeckel was outraged about what happened from the British islands. He was one of the first to send back the English medals, certificates and honourings. What must be sent back, however, are not the certificates, medals and honourings, but the English coloured Darwinism and the English coloured physics. One has to call that in mind, so that one sees what can be striven for in the Central European area as an intimate being together with the laws of the world.

One can corrupt the childish soul mostly if one already pours out in it that which develops then in only materialistic colouring. The centuries have worked towards it. Among the Britons over there, Ahriman inspired a great author, so that this author wrote a work which was completely intended to influence the soul materialistically from the childish age on in such a way that one does not notice it, because one does not consider it preparing materialism. This is Robinson Crusoe. The whole way, as Robinson is described, is so clever that these ideas of Robinson Crusoe if they are taken up prepare the mind in such a way that it can later think only materialistically. Humankind is not yet cured of inventors of such Robinsons; they always existed and exist even today. I could give many examples.

I talk about these matters not to say anything against the peoples of the West who have to be as they are, but to show how in Central Europe the human beings have to find the connection with the big, only germ-like values of the future development. The role of Austria is also significant in particular. In the last decades, one could see some spirits striving for high ideals like Hamerling⁵ in poetry, like Carneri⁶ who wanted to deepen Darwinism concerning moral, and like Bruckner⁷ and other artists in all kinds of fields. It matters such a self-reflection of the people

Now we look at the unused etheric bodies which exist there. These etheric bodies were taken off by human beings who learnt during a big event to sacrifice themselves for something that there is no longer for them, not as anything sensory at least: for the people. If somebody talks today as a spiritual scientist about the fact that there a folk-soul is as an archangel et cetera, then they laugh at him. What one calls folk-soul in materialism is only the summary of the qualities which the human beings of a people have. What the materialist calls people is only the sum of the human beings who live together and look similar in an area. We speak about a people in such a way that we know: the folk-soul exists as a real being of the archangel's rank. Even if anybody who sacrifices himself who goes through death for his people has no clear idea of a real folk-soul on the field of the events, nevertheless, he confirms by the way he goes through death that he believes in a further effectiveness after this death that he believes that there is more than that which the eyes see in the people: its connection and its keeping together with the supersensible realm.

Everybody who goes through death, whether he knows it more or less, goes through this death, confirming that there is a supersensible world; this is stamped to his etheric body. So that in future except those who will live on the physical earth when peace has taken place again, the unused etheric bodies will live for ever sending these tones to the music of the spheres: there is more in the world than that which can be seen only with physical eyes. Spiritual truth sounds into the music of the spheres by that which the dead leave behind in their etheric bodies, apart from that which they take with their individualities which they carry through the life between death and new birth.

However, one has to listen to that which will live and sound from these etheric bodies. For these etheric bodies were taken off by human beings who, confirming the truth of the spiritual world, went through death. The biggest sin of humankind will be if it does not listen to that which the dead call to it by their warning etheric bodies. How much is the view to the spiritual world enlivened if one has to imagine that the fathers and mothers, the sisters and brothers, sons and daughters, who lose dear relatives and friends, must say to themselves: what was there sacrificed, lives for the whole humankind, admonishing that which has to come.

If one relied on the events of the physical world, one could not have a lot of hope for the prosperous progress of the spiritual movement which should be cultivated in our spiritual-scientific world view. When recently a good, loyal co-worker died, in the thirtieth year of his life, there was in my words, which I directed to this soul after he has gone through the gate of death, the entreaty that he would like to co-operate as faithfully and courageously on our spiritual-scientific field as he co-operated here faithfully and devotedly, using everything that he knew. He co-operated diligently here on the physical plane, this co-worker. I gave him this as a message for his life between death and new birth that he may co-operate after death as he done it before death, because we count on these dead, the so-called dead, as on the living.

Our spiritual-scientific world view must be vivid, so that the abyss is overcome between the so-called dead and the living that we feel the dead among us like living human beings. We want not only theory, but life. That is why we also point to the fact that a living bond exists between those who live on earth when peace is again, and those who went through the gate of death. The human beings will be able to learn from the dead, will have to learn how these dead help in the big spiritual progress which must seize the earth.

Sometimes one recognises in life that the human logic does not suffice. I would like to give you an example, not for personal reasons, but to characterise the way people position themselves to our movement. Some years ago, one could read an article about our spiritual science in a South German very serious magazine written by a famous philosopher of the present. Spiritual science was treated there in such a way that it could make a certain impression on the people because the article was written by a great philosopher. The editor of the magazine prided himself in particular that he could publish an article on spiritual science by such a famous man. Of course, everything was shown badly and erroneously; a totally askew picture of spiritual science was given. What did the editor need, however, to see what a judgment about our movement he had delivered, actually, in his monthly magazine?

Then the war came. That man who had written the article wrote some letters to the editor. These letters contain the most repellent things one can generally say about the Central European culture. He ranted and sneered terribly about this Central European culture. The editor printed these letters as an example of how brainlessly one can think about this culture. Now he says: this person writes, nevertheless, as only a person can write who should be in the lunatic asylum.—The fact is that such a thing was necessary for a good editor to see that the man should be in the lunatic asylum who wrote this article about spiritual science some years ago and wreaked much havoc outwardly. If the man had to be in the lunatic asylum, he should already be there at that time. But at that time he wrote an article about spiritual science.

Such matters happen in the world. Quite different supports have to come to get a judgment than those the human being has today. However, the spiritual scientist stands firmly on the ground that shows clearly that truth finds its way. But spiritual science must have an effect on the development of humankind, so that the necessary matters take place. Like in that time, when the emperor Constantine had to complete his task, the Christ Impulse had to work from the spiritual world on the subconscious, like with the Maid of Orleans the Christ Impulse had to work, so that happened what had to happen, the Christ Impulse has to go on working, only now more in the consciousness. There must be souls in future who know: up there in the spiritual world are those who sacrificed themselves with their individualities and request us to follow them and believe in the effectiveness of spirituality they got through death. But also the forces of the unused etheric bodies call into the future what one only needs to understand to take up it in our own souls. On earth, however, must be the souls who hear this. Souls must be there who prepare themselves by the right and living understanding of our spiritual science. Our spiritual science has to create souls here on earth that are able to have premonitions of what the etheric bodies of the dead up there speak in future. The souls who know: there up are the forces which can admonish the human beings who had to be left to their own resources on earth. If here below souls aware of spirit direct their senses to the hidden tones of the spiritual world, the right fruits will originate from all the blood that flowed, from all the sacrifices that were accomplished, from all the grief that had to be endured and must still be endured. Looking at the hope which may be expressed that a lot of souls may be found by spiritual science who can hear these voices which sound from the spiritual world in particular as a result of this war, I would like to speak, to sum up, the last words of this consideration, words which should express only as a feeling what I would like to stimulate in your souls:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

With such emotions in the heart we always want to penetrate ourselves with the sense of the rose cross, so that this rose cross is considered rightly by us as the slogan of our working and weaving and feeling. Not the black cross only. Somebody who tears the roses from the black cross would only have the black cross, would be enslaved by Ahriman. The black cross is the life striving for the bare matter. And anybody who tears the cross from the roses and prefers only to have the roses does not find the right. Since the roses, separated from the cross, would raise us to life, but this life would strive egoistically for spirituality and not reveal something spiritual in the material. Not only the cross, not only the roses, but the roses on the cross, the cross bearing the roses, both in harmonious interaction: this is our right symbol.

• 1. Carl Linné in his Philosophia Botanica, Stockholm 1751
• 2. agreement by the French president Faure and Czar Nicholas II in 1897
• 3. Houston Stewart Chamberlain: New War Essays, Munich, 1915
• 4. peace conferences in the Hague from 1899 to 1907, convened on the initiative of Czar Nicholas II
• 5. Robert Hamerling (1830–1889), cf. The Riddle of the Human Being and Autobiography, Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works volumes 20 and 28
• 6. Bartholomäus von Carneri (1821–1909), cf. Methodical Foundations of Anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works volume 30.2.29
• 7. Anton Bruckner (1824–1896), Austrian composer