The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Earthly, the Cosmic and the Present Christ

My dear friends!

Before I say anything else, please allow me to give you a brief report on the last few weeks. I will mention only a few things so that you here at the Goetheanum may be informed about what is going on in our movement.

After I had left Dornach and had dealt with other, internal matters in Stuttgart, the beginning of my public activity was on November 19 in Berlin, where I had to give the second lecture — the first is known to you - in the great hall of the Philharmonie, which was again filled to capacity. Then, after a eurythmy performance in Berlin, the Kristiania tour began. The first lectures in Copenhagen were on November 23 and 24. These two lectures were held at the request of the Pedagogical Association in Copenhagen. In them I had to discuss the principles and methods of anthroposophical education and didactics and to say something about the way the Waldorf School is run in Stuttgart. These lectures took place at the “Nobel Institute” and were very well attended. They were mainly attended by teachers; only a small number of seats had been allocated to members of our society. The second lecture — that was on Thursday, November 24th — was preceded by a lecture on the Vidar branch in Kristiania.

On the 25th, I then had to give a public lecture in Kristiania, organized by the student body, on “The Paths to Supernatural Knowledge”. It is worth mentioning that the lecture was able to be held in the largest hall in Kristiania, which holds over 2000 people, and that this hall was full to the last seat. Considering that there may not be many people in Kristiania who understand German to any great extent, one must nevertheless come to the conclusion that the anthroposophical movement is currently expanding to some extent.

On Saturday, November 26, I had to give a lecture at the student body of Kristiania itself, as part of the weekly student gatherings held on Saturdays. The public lecture on the previous Friday was arranged by the student body, but was open to the public. This lecture on Saturday had the same topic, but was of course then treated for the student body and within the framework of student associations.

On Sunday we had a eurythmy performance at 1 p.m. in the Kristiania National Theatre. Our friends were a little anxious, because it was a risk to give a eurythmy performance in the National Theatre, and besides, the house holds 2400 people when it is fully occupied, I believe. But on this day, it was filled to capacity. Taking all the circumstances into account, the audience received this eurythmy performance with great friendliness.

At 6 p.m. the second event for the “Vidar branch” took place. That was on Sunday, November 27th. And on Monday morning we were inundated with a veritable flood of sewage from all possible newspapers in Kristiania. It presented the absolute opposite of the picture that could actually be gained from the previous day. I have already experienced very bad things from these pages, but what has been done here is pretty much one of the very worst newspaper diatribes that can be mustered.

I had to remind them that a long time ago, when the intention of presenting eurythmy to the public was expressed, I gave a lecture to our eurythmists in which I pointed out that if eurythmy was brought into the public eye, it would experience the very worst of abuse. And this prophecy has rarely been fulfilled in such a magnificent way as on that Monday and Tuesday. The things lasted for a long time, because some people ranted two or three times.

On Monday evening, the first public lecture on anthroposophy organized by our friends took place in the old university auditorium. It was well attended and very warmly received, and not the slightest hint of what had happened outside in journalism was to be noticed. Then, on Tuesday at noon, I was invited by the theological association in Kristiania to speak about the Christ problem in a university auditorium, and that same evening I gave the second anthroposophy lecture organized by our friends.

On Wednesday, the lecture on economic issues, “The Cardinal Question of Economic Life,” took place at the request of the State Economic Association, also in the university auditorium. This lecture was attended by both economic theorists and economic practitioners. This was followed, not in the hall, but at a supper that had been organized, by a lively discussion of the relevant economic issues. The topics of the previous days of anthroposophical lectures were on Monday: “The Foundations of Anthroposophy”, on Tuesday: “The Human Being in the Light of Anthroposophy”.

On Wednesday we also had a very special treat. There was a very excited debate about whether a second eurythmy performance should be organized after the way things had gone. I said: perhaps it would have been possible to discuss whether a second eurythmy performance should take place in a city that is not too big after all, considering that 2400 people had already seen it – if it hadn't been for the ranting. But as it was, it was self-evident that I, for one, could not do without the second performance, so that every effort had to be made to get the National Theater for the second time, and if it could not be obtained, then another theater would have to be taken. - Now the greatest efforts were really made.

In particular, our friend Ingerö has earned the greatest merit.

On Wednesday there was a meeting of the 'Theater Association'. Among others, the father of our friend Morgenstierne, who is a professor, belongs to it. When he came to the supper of the State Economic Association that evening, he declared, “I have been slaughtered.” It had been such an agitated meeting that he felt slaughtered, and rightly so. And now, of course, we were refused the theater.

I thought that we should now definitely take on a different theater. That happened, and rehearsals were to begin on Thursday. Then there was a fire at the power station. Kristiania was plunged into darkness, and of course the theater was in darkness all day, and we had to hold the rehearsals by candlelight, but of course we did not let that stop us. Of course, we couldn't do any light experiments, because it was dark. This darkness began on Friday. On Friday evening, my second public student lecture was to be held in the large university auditorium. It was very uncertain whether anyone would come at all, because it was simply impossible to illuminate the university auditorium. It didn't seem to me to be an obstacle either, and we boldly made the attempt. I arrived in the evening. It was difficult to pass through the corridors, one had to be guided by a candle light. Then the lecture was held in the packed University auditorium with three acetylene lights. The topic was: “On the Necessity of a Renewal of Culture”. The lecture was very well received. One could not notice anything of the newspaper ranting, because they had now smelled a rat and continued their ranting throughout the whole week. It was, however, typical that in the middle of the first week, for example, an article was published that was compiled from all the criticism of the “Kommende Tag” and the “Futurum” that had ever been published in German newspapers. It was a very select selection that was published. In response, our friend Morgenstierne sat down and wrote a reply. Another friend went to the editor and said: “It's all lies, how can you print such a thing?” He replied: “Yes, I don't know anything about the matter myself, I haven't read anything by Dr. Steiner, I don't know anything, but the article was sent to us from a proven source, and that's why I printed it.” — “Yes, but then you also have to print a reply.” — “Yes!”

Our friend Morgenstierne then sent the retort, the publication of which had been promised. The next day there was an even bigger rant, which took up almost the entire page, and the retort was printed in very small print at the back of the page in the classifieds section.

An employee of a more decent newspaper did, after all, report quite objectively, for example, about the pedagogical lectures and the public lecture. In general, the lectures were not even treated unobjectively.

Then Saturday came. A dress rehearsal had to be done with a specially compiled program for certain reasons that I don't want to discuss here. This dress rehearsal could only be carried out by candlelight, so there was no lighting test, and I said we would just have to wait until the electric light came back on. It came back on at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and then the theater declared: We have to have the first rehearsal ourselves, because we've been waiting for it all these days. So we couldn't do the light test at 4 p.m., but only at 7 p.m. The performance was scheduled for 8 p.m. At 7:45 p.m., the doors were opened and the audience was let in. The performance was received in an extraordinarily friendly manner. The hall was not full; but that is only due to the fact that very few people could have considered that a theater might be lit in that particular neighborhood. But relatively speaking, the performance was not even poorly attended and, as I said, was received extremely warmly. On the other hand, the next day a review appeared in which it was said that it had been a scandalous success.

On Sunday I held the branch meeting for our members and that was the end of the campaign in Kristiania. There was then another eurythmy performance and then a branch event on Wednesday in Berlin. So these are the events that have taken place recently.

When I arrived here about three hours ago, I opened one of many letters by chance that was very interesting. Namely, three or four weeks ago a paper was published in Germany by a publisher in Hanover by a Dr. Michel called: “Rudolf Steiner, the Anthroposoph, a Philosophical Execution”. I believe that this paper has even been reviewed in the Threefolding newspaper. The letter I received today has the following content:

Darmstadt, 14.11. 21, Saurbergstr. 66

Dear Mr. Steiner,

the publisher Paul Steegemann of Hanover announced in the latest issue of the German book trade journal, Börsenblatt, a pamphlet of mine with the title: “Rudolf Steiner, the Anthroposoph; a philosophical execution”. This pamphlet does not and will not exist; I have not written it and will not write it. It is true that I promised Steegemann Publishers a collection of essays, which would include my article “The Anthroposophists” that appeared in the Berliner Tageblatt. It is also true that I am opposed to what is referred to as anthroposophy and what was presented here as such a few months ago. But this brochure does not exist; I would not have chosen the crude title “Execution”, quite apart from the fact that I do not know those of your achievements that are most highly regarded by your followers. I would like to add with all due respect that I don't feel the need to get to know you, but I am so unhappy about the tasteless publicity that the publisher has done without my knowledge that I would like to distance myself from it in any case. The publisher also claims that I am from Keyserling's Wisdom School, which is also a blatant lie. I am sharing all this with you for the sake of truth and to get out of the false, distorted light that this kind of advertising casts on me.

Yours very sincerely

Wilhelm Michel

So you see, you can't even rely on the authors anymore, because the authors declare that they didn't write the books!

Now, another letter stated that one can still say with a clear conscience today that anthroposophy is nevertheless making its way; but the anger is also growing ever greater, precisely because it is making its way. These things are definitely connected. So another letter brought a larger number of signatures from professors at the [Copenhagen] University, inviting me to give anthroposophical lectures there. What will come of it all, I do not know at present.

It is indeed the case that the anthroposophical movement is making its way through the world, and above all, it can be seen everywhere that there is a lively interest in the various branches that have emerged from the anthroposophical movement. On the other hand, however, the opposition is growing monstrously. Just to mention one example of this opposition: when I arrived in Berlin before the trip to Kristiania, our friend Mr. Gantenbein came to me and said: “I have just received a telephone call from Stuttgart telephone conversation that on the 24th in Munich a lecture will be given by the director of the Haeckel Archive, Professor Schmidt, on the basis of documents and letters that are in the Haeckel Archive. Now Dr. Kolisko wanted to know – because he might want to intervene in the discussion in Munich – what kind of criminal act the letters I once wrote to Haeckel could represent. I said that, of course, I could not at that moment reconstruct every single sentence that I had written to Haeckel about 25 years ago, but he should go there and see for himself what was going on. Well, he went. I then received a report about the Munich meeting.

Professor Schmidt gave a lecture in which he did not dare to say much about anthroposophy itself, as I believe he said himself. Instead, he read out some passages from letters that I had written to Haeckel. I was then sent the copies of these letters, and it was an extraordinary interest to me to read them again, for one after another begins [something like this]: “Dear Professor! I must express my most sincere thanks for the latest of your works, which you have again sent me.

The letters contain essentially nothing but expressions of gratitude for the books Haeckel had sent me about himself. But two letters that were not from me were particularly serious. I still have not seen them; but they were written to Haeckel by a friend of mine in 1901, I believe, without my knowing anything about it. Haeckel had known me for quite some time, to the extent that he had given me almost all of his works, bit by bit. Now this friend wrote to him that I was doing very badly and had no money, and that he should use his influence to get me a lectureship. I knew nothing about it, otherwise I would have pointed out the folly to him. I only learned of this fact now. And on the side of one of the letters was written, “Steiner — Theosophist,” in Haeckel's own pencil, so I heard. That seemed to be the only point of complaint, because it was used to construct: Aha! He didn't have any money back then, so he became a Theosophist to make as much money as possible. - I don't know, though, whether it would have been possible to get out of this dilemma that way, because Theosophical leadership in Germany was entirely honorless.

So that was contrived. The meeting seems to have been extraordinarily instructive, because it was held in a monist alliance. The chairman seems to have been extraordinarily amazed at this outpouring of monistic wisdom and says that he certainly cannot comprehend how it came about that this was organized; he is in favor of hearing about anthroposophy first and foremost. Dr. Kolisko was invited to speak, I believe. But that is something that perhaps should not be pointed out, otherwise it will be rescinded.

As you can see, the whole affair seems to have been a terrible embarrassment, but at least it shows you the means that are being resorted to. You have probably been able to read in the Dreigliederungszeitung what the “Bund zur Abwehr der anthroposophischen Gefahr” (Federation for the Defence against the Anthroposophical Danger), which was founded in Darmstadt, has achieved. As I said, I just wanted to give you this one example of the particular way in which such things are now being done. I could tell you a great deal about the most diverse kinds of opposition. But it is already clearly visible today that things grow with the spread of the movement.

After my return from Kristiania, I received an article from the “Kölnische Zeitung”, in which a geologist speaks out in an extraordinarily dismissive manner against the way in which I arranged the geological writings for the Weimar Goethe Edition in the 1890s; he would have arranged them quite differently, and he finds it completely ungeological the way I arranged them.

I do have my particular opinion about this kind of execution by a university geologist, however; because in the first paragraph of this newspaper article, it says that it is indeed strange when a young man writes such writings about Goethe; but he admits – the person in question – that he does not understand them. Well, I think that it is not particularly valuable to pass judgment on the fundamentally rather secondary question of whether a Goethe essay will be included in the edition sooner or later; after all, one can have the most diverse views on this, because one bases one's judgment on the principles one has formed about Goethe.

And if someone cannot understand these principles, then their judgment is not to be trusted. But I would like to give such gentlemen a piece of advice: they should dispute most vehemently any judgment of mine about linguistics. Because after going back so far in the decades, one should just go back a little further and check my school notebooks in Wiener Neustadt. I can guarantee that these school notebooks always contained a large number of grammatical errors up to the age of 14, and that punctuation in particular was extremely poor. I therefore believe that one can draw the justified conclusion from this that it is completely impossible for me to make a valid judgment about anything linguistic today! It seems to me that the investigations will soon have to be driven into this quagmire.

It occurred to me, without me wanting to draw a comparison, that the poet Robert Hamerling published his high school teaching certificate in his memoirs. This certificate, which was issued by the enlightened high school teaching examination board when Robert Hamerling was to take his high school teaching qualification, contains the following passage: The candidate is eminently qualified to teach Greek and Latin, however, one cannot help but say that with regard to the German language and style, he can hardly meet the most basic requirements of a grammar school teacher of the lower classes. Such samples could indeed be collected in many ways. Those who have experience in this field know how these things actually come about, that is, how they arise from the mind, because that is the more important thing.

That, my dear friends, is what I wanted to tell you about the progress of our movement. I must repeatedly draw your attention to the fact that you must be fully aware that the opposition is growing ever greater and greater.

Today I would like to say a few words that could be a kind of continuation of the explanations I gave you before my trip. I would like to talk about how, in a sense, what I have said on various occasions about the Christ problem can be summarized. I would like to do this because a paper has recently been published that characterizes, as it were, “newer religious movements,” and among these also discusses anthroposophy. In this paper, one might say, the tone is actually quite benevolent. You see, I have given our friends in Kristiania some consolation for the terrible things that they too have had to endure in the newspapers. I said: If the newspaper reviews had been so one-sided as to bring them extraordinary praise, then I would have had to consider what is wrong with anthroposophy and what can be improved. But now, for some time, one can be encouraged again; because it would have been very bad if things had turned out differently.

So, a publication has appeared that expresses itself in an actually benevolent intention about the religious content of anthroposophy. It is said that it would be quite nice if the religious feeling of the present were to receive support from anthroposophy. But that cannot be the case, because then the religious movement would have to watch as anthroposophy points people to the higher worlds. The higher worlds would be pointed out from a different side than that of the appointed representatives of religion, and if that were to attract followers, they would not be followers of religion, but followers of anthroposophy, from which one must therefore conclude that the life of anthroposophy means the death of religion.

This sentence is included in the first part of these discussions as something special. And there it is, as with so much, referred to the Cosmic Christ. Of course, everything that can be said about gnosticism and the like is brought up again, and then it is said: To present the Christ as an extraterrestrial, cosmic being is an insult to anyone who feels religious.

Now, since this is actually being said from a benevolent side, benevolent in relation to anthroposophy, as well as in relation to religious renewal, I must confess that I found that the matter had to be considered: How is it that people who, after all, cannot change their minds but are nonetheless well-meaning, come to the conclusion that the Christology of Anthroposophy is even offensive to a Christian, as he should be according to the opinion of such public representatives - because the person in question who wrote the book is a professor of theology. So it is a matter of considering what is actually at the root of this.

My dear friends, first of all we must consider what we have always presented regarding the twofold experience, the Father-experience, that is, the experience of God permeating the world, and the Christ-experience as such, which, for example, is not separated by people like Harnack from the general experience of God, from the Father-experience. I have presented this to you. It can be shown, and this must actually be striven for in the present, that there must be two experiences in man: one that comes from a truly correct contemplation of nature and of the physical existence of man, and the other that comes from the soul to the experience of the Son. The two experiences must occur in man in a completely separate way, so that the Christ-experience is a special experience. But this is not the case with most of the present official representatives of the Christian denominations. In his book 'The Essence of Christianity', for example, Harnack says that Christ does not belong in the Gospels, only the Father; so it should not be about having Christ or an image of Christ in the Gospels. The Gospels are not meant by rights to speak about the Christ, but only about what the Christ says about the Father.

This is extremely characteristic, because for anyone who can think impartially, Harnack's concept of Christ is denied the ability to be a Christianity at all. For there is no difference between the old teaching of Yahweh and Christology when it is said: the Christ does not belong in the Gospels, only the Father. For then the Christ is merely the Father's teacher, and then we really have no difference between the Christ-Jesus of these theologians and the Jesus whom, for example, an ordinary secular historian, Ranke, describes. That is just “the simple man from Nazareth,” certainly a peak of historical human development, but just the simple man from Nazareth. Actually, there is nothing of the Mystery of Golgotha in

such a so-called Christian discussion. But the individual human being can have the separate Christ-experience in the present, especially if he feels the modern sense of self in the right way. But then, I would like to say, one has the Christ who is present and walking among us spiritually, and not yet the historical Christ-Jesus who went through the Mystery of Golgotha.

Now it is a matter of also understanding this Christ-Jesus historically. This can be done in the following way. One follows the historical development of humanity up to the time when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. You know that this is the fourth post-Atlantean period.

Now let us assume that I have to talk to you today about the historical development of humanity without the Mystery of Golgotha having taken place in the Pauline sense; then I would not be able to talk to you about anything other than the pale skull site of Golgotha. Because what happened at this pale skull site of Golgotha would not have a supersensible significance. The Christ could not be understood as a supermundane, cosmic being.

During this period, the preliminary experience of the I first occurred. This can also be proven philologically by examining the languages. However, the actual experience of the I for Western humanity in the various branches of the life of consciousness did not occur until the first third of the 15th century, but it spread from the fourth post-Atlantic period.

The peoples who lived before the mystery of Golgotha had, as you know, an ancient wisdom in the most ancient times. This primal wisdom has indeed taken on very different forms among different peoples. But, however it may have been differentiated in the most diverse ways, in religious terms it was a wisdom of the Father-God, and anyone today who, in complete impartiality, takes in what can be established about the primal wisdom of different peoples, what can be gleaned from the records and documents of the nations, even in the Vedas, which I have often discussed, one will find that one must have the deepest reverence for what appeared in the most ancient times as primordial wisdom in the development of mankind

and has always been directed by the mysteries to the appropriate heights. But now this ancient wisdom is gradually dying out, and it is diminishing to the same extent that the instinctive old way of consciousness is diminishing. But to the same extent, self-awareness is also emerging in humanity, and with it the claim to human freedom.

Why was it that ancient pre-Christian humanity could have a wisdom of God that still instills the deepest reverence in us today when we look at it impartially? Precisely because consciousness had not yet penetrated to egoity, to the I, because what man brought forth from his being, when he considered himself in connection with the environment, gave him the Father consciousness in the most diverse forms. I have said it before: one cannot become an atheist if one is completely healthy. Atheism can be traced back to some kind of physical deficiency. But because these ancient peoples had a certain divine inheritance, this father consciousness arose from their overall feeling as human beings, from their total feeling and from the intuitive wisdom that flowed from it. As I said, this faded towards the fourth post-Atlantic period.

Everything is individual when it is really considered impartially, not in the sense of today's inadequate scientific method. In the deepest sense, it points to what has just occurred as a break in human development in this fourth post-Atlantic period, for example between Greek and Latin-Roman development. I have already mentioned many things, and I could still characterize many more. I just want to draw attention to one thing: if you still learn Greek today, you have to give the letters names: Alpha, Beta and so on, while in Roman times the names for the letters have already been absorbed; it is now just an “alphabet”, A, B, C and so on.

This happened during the transition to the abstract nature of the Roman language, the Romance language, and as a result, the understanding that something was originally given with language that had an inner connection, and that with language, humans were given a gift from the genius of language at the same time, was actually lost. These things must be researched because, as I am only able to hint at today, we cannot arrive at a thorough didactics of language teaching, as it must be in a truly serious school, such as a Waldorf school, if we do not pursue serious language studies; today's studies are not serious if we do not understand what it means that we now take the Greek letters alpha, beta, gamma and so on for granted, and merely refer to the Latin letters as letters: A, B, C and so on. Something of the genius of language was given to humanity, which I have to describe to you - as you know - as a real, actual being. In all kinds of orders one speaks of the “lost word”, but nowhere does one know what it is. It was simply with what we call the alphabet, if one simply pronounced the letters in succession, a world proclamation was given. Take for example the Greek Alpha. For anyone studying languages today, this is of the utmost importance. I hope that these language studies in particular can now be pursued in detail by Waldorf teachers, whom I have encouraged to do so, because we need these things in order to be able to use them practically in our teaching. If you form the word Alpha - but you have to take it fully - you have something that means “man”; and in “Beta” you have “house”. So that the word pronounced in the first two letters means: Man in his house. And then it continues through gamma and the other letters. And when you complete the alphabet, you get a deep meaning from the simple enumeration of the respective words that the letters mean.

This was later lost, completely disappeared in humanity, when the word that consists of all the letters of the alphabet. And today one speaks in “Freemason orders” of the “lost word”, but actually does not speak of something that really exists, because hardly anything suspects this reality.

But analyze the Greek alphabet and you will trace it back to the Hebrew: Aleph, Beth and so on, the alphabet always begins with: Man in his house. And then it continues. So world wisdom is revealed with the alphabet. Now, in the fourth post-Atlantic period, that which leads more and more to self-awareness emerged. It happened in stages, and I have already hinted at the important events that took place in the fourth Christian century, for example. However, as the sense of self emerged, something else emerged to the same extent. The I, the sense of self, that which the human being experiences by coming to full self-awareness, comes only from the physical body. Study everything else today, and you will receive influences from a supersensible existence, an existence from outside of life between birth and death. The sense of self that the human being has is a creation of what is experienced in the physical body between birth and death. In the next reflection, I will explain the full significance of self-awareness to you, but for now I would just like to mention it. However, the fact that the self-awareness of earthly man initially only comes from the physical body made those who were initiated through the mysteries in the fourth post-Atlantean period feel ill. They felt the culture was mentally ill. And that was a mystery view of the fourth post-Atlantic period: culture is mentally ill and needs a healer. This was deeply ingrained, and it is interesting to see how the Greek people, who were striving for health through and through, perceived this cultural illness.

You see, long, learned treatises have been written about the word “catharsis” associated with the mysteries. This was used to describe something that lives in the development of a tragedy by Aeschylus or Sophocles for the Greek tragedy. As I said, great scholarly treatises have been written about it. You know that from Lessing to the present day, speculations have been made about it; half-truths and quarter-truths have been found, but the right one has not been found. Lessing said: Fear and compassion should be stimulated, which in turn should be overcome. The soul should, so to speak, be healed of these passions by evoking them in this way.

But the most important thing is that “catharsis” is actually a medical term, and that it indicates that in Greece there was still an essential connection, let us say, for example, between Hippocrates and Aeschylus. The healthy Greek feeling sensed the cultural disease, and in the Aeschylus drama one sensed something like a healing. Therefore, one spoke in favor of the course, for the construction of the drama of catharsis, of the crisis that is overcome. One really spoke in medical terms of this catharsis. And if you look at historical development from this point of view, you will look with a special eye at the Essenes, especially at the therapists. Why did they call themselves “therapists”? Because they wanted to work on the recovery of the culture that had become ill.

And all this was preparation for the great healer, for Christ Jesus, for the actual savior. And it is not some superficiality, but is deeply rooted in the mystery knowledge of human development that the entry of the Mystery of Golgotha signifies a therapy for the historical development of humanity, and that if one were to speak of human development today without the Mystery of Golgotha having been there, one would have to say: human development is going downhill. One could only point to the bleaching skull place of Golgotha.

With full consciousness, it must be pointed out that the Mystery of Golgotha occurred at the right time and that it could not have come from the earth, but from outside the earth. For everything that had happened on earth in the development of humanity was at the stage in which the Greeks and the people of the Near East saw it, the therapists, until the “great therapist” came.

This actually leads to a correct and inward view of history. And from such a view of history, one is simply led to the historical event of the Mystery of Golgotha, to the historical Christ-Jesus. That is the way. This will be further explained next time.

But why does theology in particular oppose this extraterrestrial, this cosmic Christ? Why does theology say: That is insulting, that the Christ should be a sun being? Well, my dear friends, the reason for this is that theology itself has become materialistic. If we go back to the ancient wisdom, which was still instinctive, we see that people did not look up into the cosmic order and say: up there is the sun, which is a glowing ball of gas, but they looked up to the spiritual beings that were in the starry heavens. Whoever speaks of the being of the sun as the Christ does not speak of the material sun, but of the spiritual essence of the cosmos. We know how it is spoken of in theology today; there, too, one sees nothing but something that is calculated like a machine. And because extraterrestrial space is merely material — according to the view of such materialistic theologians —, anthroposophy, of course, makes the Christ, by declaring him to be a solar being, a merely material being as well.

So, because contemporary theology is so deeply infected by the materialism of the present day that it is taken for granted that when one speaks of the solar being, one is only talking about something material, it says: It is insulting. Because, isn't it true that anyone who, infected by conventional science, imagines a sun being coming to earth, imagines – and I don't mean to make a slip here, but I say this out of a desire to be understood – that something flies out of the sun and onto the earth, at most thinks of a shooting star. And so the theologian, based on his materialism, basically has the opinion: yes, when anthroposophy speaks of the Christ as a being of the sun that comes from the sun to the earth, it speaks of the Christ as a shooting star, a meteor. This can only come from materialism; people can no longer think in any other way than in material terms.

You have to go back to the elements if you want to understand at all why theologians might say that it is offensive when anthroposophy associates the Christ with an extraterrestrial being. Here you can see how contemporary theology is caught up in materialism, so to speak.

Now, I have tried to make it clear to you that Christ as the savior must be understood in a real, higher, medical sense. Of course, this will offend many theologians, because the fact that I have associated the word savior with the Heliand of German poetry, “Heliand,” has, it seems, deeply hurt Pastor Kully, who finds it extremely offensive and believes that it is as hollow as his own arguments. But I would like

emphasize: the benevolent theological writing I spoke to you about is not by Pastor Kully – lest you fall into the error of thinking it is – but from a slightly different source. From this, my dear friends, you can see that the Christology of anthroposophy can and must always be further deepened, because the present time demands that the Christ be understood again, that we can again rise to a real understanding of the Christ in the Jesus.

Report by Rudolf Steiner on the Berlin School of Spiritual Science

[My dear friends!]

Allow me to say a few words today about the course of the Berlin School of Spiritual Science and then, tomorrow, to conclude with a reflection that should be of particular interest to you as a further elaboration on this very topic.

The Berlin School of Spiritual Science had organized its program in a special way. The aim was to show the relationship between certain branches of life and science in the present day and the anthroposophical world view. Each day was to be devoted mainly to a particular branch of science or life. The week was organized so that it began on Sunday, which was to be devoted to inorganic natural science; Monday was to be devoted to organic natural science and medicine; Tuesday to philosophy; Wednesday to education; Thursday to economics; Friday to theology. Saturday should be devoted to linguistics, and then on Sunday the whole thing should come to a certain conclusion with a performance of eurythmy at the Deutsches Theater.

The program was so well thought out that each day was to begin with a short lecture by me. Only the first Sunday could not begin in this way, since I could not yet be in Berlin at that time. So on Monday I had to summarize both inorganic and organic science in my introductory words; then the day should have a unified character. After my introductory remarks, two more lectures took place in the morning; then there was a short break for refreshments, but – as had already been announced – no refreshments were available in the Singakademie rooms, and a discussion was scheduled to take place from 1 to 2 p.m. The last lecture of the morning was then to follow from 2 to 3 p.m. It was a bit of a strenuous program!

In the evening, there were lectures, some of which were held by me in the Philharmonie, and some of which were held by others in the rooms of the Berlin University. Every evening there was a lecture, and for the other lectures, except for mine, there was still some kind of discussion in the evening after these lectures. So the days were extremely full.

Now, the entire structure of the program can actually be called interesting, especially through the formulation that the individual 'daily programs had experienced. To some extent, each day had an overall title, and the formulation of these overall titles for the days is really interesting, because they reveal so much that is significant. If you go through these formulations of the daily programs, each individual day has something positive in its formulation, except for Friday, which was dedicated to theology.

This is significant, not so much in terms of an awareness of the times, but in the way the program formulators related to the development of anthroposophy on the part of those who formulated the program. One simply felt compelled to formulate the other daily programs in a positive way. And we only need to look at these formulations to find out what is significant.

Sunday, March 5: “From hostile mechanistics to true phenomenology” - so in the formulation of the program, the hope is expressed that through anthroposophy one will come to find a phenomenology as the basis of inorganic science.

The program for Monday is summarized even more positively: “Ways of anthroposophical human knowledge in biology and medicine”. And the program for Tuesday on philosophy is just as positive: “The foundation of anthroposophy from the philosophical consciousness of the present”.

The program for Wednesday was equally positive: “From modern pedagogical demands to their realization through anthroposophy” — so here, too, the idea is that there are such pedagogical

demands in the present that can be realized through anthroposophy.

Thursday, which was devoted to social science, had a very auspicious title in the overall formulation of the program, although what was presented was less auspicious. Thursday even had an extremely auspicious title that sounds very positive: “National Economic Outlooks”.

Saturday, which was devoted to linguistics, bore the title: “From dead linguistics to living linguistics”.

So you see, these title formulations are the basis for everything: the aim is to point out the path that leads from the present into the anthroposophical shaping of the spiritual path in question. One has an idea of how the individual disciplines take their starting point from the given scientific formulations of the present and run into certain other insights, which are to be given by anthroposophy — everywhere absolutely concrete ideas about possible paths. Only - as I said - Thursday has the extraordinarily promising title: “Outlook”, even “economic outlook”, which is an abstract formulation, but which, in its abstractness, points out that one does not want to go, but to leap.

If we then look at Friday in the general formulation of the daily program, it reads as follows: “The Decline of Religion in Contemporary Theology and the New Foundation through Anthroposophy”. - So here, first of all, it is formulated quite negatively: The decline of religion in contemporary theology, and the new foundation - so it is only pointed out, even in a negative way, that there is something like anthroposophy, and that through it theology and religion can experience a renewal. It is not shown in this title in such a concrete way how the path out of the present confusion can lead into the anthroposophical formation.

If you compare this with the formulation from Sunday, for example: 'From mechanistic materialism hostile to life to true phenomenology', you even have a very specific term for what is to come in the word 'phenomenology'. Likewise, in the word 'human knowledge' from Monday, you pointed to something very specific. In philosophy you pointed to the philosophical consciousness of the present, and so to something concrete; in education you pointed to the pedagogical demands of the present, and in linguistics you said, at least, that we must move from the study of dead languages to the study of living languages, and so you formulated something concrete too.

Now, it is extraordinarily significant that this entire university course, which essentially culminated both internally and externally in the Friday event, which basically – especially the feeling that arose – had a theological character, which, while otherwise extremely well attended, on Friday, the theological day, had an attendance such that it was “packed”, overcrowded —, [it is extremely significant] that this course, in the formulation of the day for the theological program, had something negative,

Of course, these formulations arose out of the circumstances of the moment, and the speakers tried in all honesty and sincerity to express these circumstances as they arose, on the one hand from an awareness of the present and on the other from an idea of what can become of this awareness of the present through anthroposophy.

If we then go through the individual days, we naturally encounter things that are mostly familiar to us. Sunday: From mechanistic materialism hostile to life to true phenomenology: The point here, then, is to point out how we should overcome all speculation about atomism, about a mechanistic view of inanimate nature, how we should come to a pure observation of what is present in phenomena, in appearances, how these appearances themselves should speak for themselves, how they themselves should provide their theory. So it is expressed in this formulation that one wants to pursue Goetheanism in natural science.

In organic natural science, it is then expressed that the entire scope of organic natural science must be based on knowledge of the human being, that it is therefore necessary not to study nature in its kingdoms in a fragmented way, as is currently the case, but that, above all, one should start out from getting to know the human being, and from there explore the other kingdoms of nature.

If we then look at philosophy, the question on Tuesday was how philosophical consciousness has reached an end of a kind. It is interesting to think of this formulation in connection with Hegelianism, for example. In his philosophy, which dates back to the beginning of the nineteenth century, Hegel said that all philosophy of the present is an end in itself, and that basically, in philosophy, one can only look back on how things have come about, but that further development is not possible.

Now, on this Tuesday, it should be shown how a beginning, a new beginning, can arise from the end of philosophy, if one allows this beginning in the anthroposophical sense.

In education, the aim was to show that all truly thinking people today actually make certain educational demands, but that these cannot be met by the pedagogy currently being developed. These demands, which are basically made by all thinking people, can only be met by anthroposophy.

In linguistics, it should be shown how language itself, as a living organism, should be understood in the context of the human being, and not merely from the dead records, as is the case with contemporary linguistics.

As for social science, it can only be said that Emil Leinhas, in an extraordinarily illuminating way, has said something quite significant about the monetary problem of the present day based on his sound knowledge; but, as you yourself may sometimes feel, not an awful lot of positive things can be said about the monetary problem of the present day. You will already feel this here in Switzerland, in this country with its almost supreme currency. But you will believe that not much positive can be said about the money problem when you cross the border! So it is true that not an enormous amount of positive things could be said. The next two lectures did not bring any such positive results either, and this national economic day in particular showed how, basically, the cultivation of the national economic within our anthroposophical movement is what has actually failed through and through. For we have basically not been able to bring it about, despite the fact that the necessity in this area has been emphasized time and again. We have not been able to bring it about that in economics, on the part of those who are involved in economic life itself, something truly future-proof would have been put forward; namely, something that would meet the extremely difficult demands of the present. And so, for this day, the title “Nationalökonomische Aussichten” was basically something of a dancing promise; but what the day then brought was a more or less limping follow-up to this dancing promise.

As for theology, the three titles of the lectures that followed my introductory words were just as interesting as the general formulation of the day's program. The first title of Licentiate Bock's lecture was: “The Decline of Religion into Psychologism”; the second of Licentiate Doctor Rittelmeyer was: “The Decline of Theology into Irrationalism”; and the third lecture by Doctor Geyer was: “The Decline of Theology into Historicism”. So we have been given a threefold description of the decline of theology and religion in these days.

In a sense, the situation of the time had naturally led to theologians speaking, who explained how they come to a dead end within their theology today, based on their particular experiences of thought and feeling. Basically, there was a tendency among theologians to show how they come to a dead end within the theology that is presented to them at the present time.

And if we then consider what has been presented in a positive way, what has been said this Friday can be summarized as follows: Theological consideration of religion – as Mr. Bock, the licentiate, was probably thinking – comes down to looking only at the spiritual experience that can be described as a religious experience, perhaps as an experience of God. It is found that among the various inner experiences of the soul, the human being also has the religious experience, the experience that in a certain respect points to a divine one; but that, if one is unbiased, one can say: Yes, you just have a subjective experience. You have something purely psychological. There is absolutely no guarantee that this experience corresponds to anything in the objective world. The subjective experience of God is not such in modern theology that it can lead to a real acceptance of God, let alone to a view of the essence of the divine in the world. It stifles, as it were, the religious element in the consciousness of man in the psychological fact: Yes, we need a religious life. But there is nothing that can provide the certainty that this need will somehow be satisfied. The psychological fact is there that man needs religion, but the present knows of no content of this religion. - The result of the first lecture by Licentiate Bock would be something like this.

Dr. Rittelmeyer then explained how theology had become tired of rationalism, how it had come to no longer want to formulate the essence of the divine in the world in thought, that it no longer wanted to say: this or that is the content of the divine that permeates and animates the world. Thought was to be excluded from theology. The rational, the one stemming from reason, should be eliminated, and the irrational, the one that excludes thought, should become the content of theology. So that in fact in theology one arrives at nothing but the most extreme abstractions. One no longer wants concrete thoughts, one wants the most extreme abstractions. One does not dare to say: the essence of God can be grasped by this or that thought. One dares only to say: the Being of God is the Unconditional, the Absolute. One pins down a completely indeterminate concept, the “irrational,” that which no reason can grasp.

Would it not be so, in every other area of life, it would be strange to characterize something so negatively. If someone were to ask, for example, “Who is the head of the Goetheanum?” – [And one would answer:] The board of directors is the one who is not the board of directors of any other institution. – One would not get any information about who the board of directors of the Goetheanum is. Of course, you don't get any information about it if you say: The ratio of the divine being consists in the fact that God is the irrational, that which cannot be grasped by reason. – It is all just negation.

Rittelmeyer then linked this to some of the things these contemporary irrationalists have to say. For example, how man behaves inwardly when he wants to rise to this God, who can only be grasped in an irrational way. How does he experience this rising? He experiences it in silence. This is not the silence of mystical experience, which can be very positive, but the absence of speech, the cessation of speaking to oneself inwardly in thought. It was then further explained how this silence should take place in worship. It is out of the absolute powerlessness to formulate anything at all, to take refuge in silence.

It was interesting to hear two gentlemen speak, a private lecturer and a pastor, who defended this irrationalism in turn in order to show that irrationalism is particularly prevalent in the present day. For example, one private lecturer said: Yes, that would be quite right, it would be nonsense, for example, to say that one could find God less in nature than in the spirit. Nature is no more distant from God than is the spirit. Knowledge of the spirit provides no more for God than does knowledge of nature, for God is precisely the absolute that breaks through everywhere. This was repeated very often: that God is the absolute that breaks through everywhere.

Theology... Faust would have said “unfortunately” not just once, but three times; Faust would have to be rewritten: I have now studied, alas, philosophy, jurisprudence, medicine and, alas, alas, alas, also theology. So when one has to hear again and again: God is the absolute, which breaks through everywhere... one imagines it everywhere, and then it breaks through, breaks out... but it is precisely the indeterminate that breaks through everywhere! The last lecture was that of Dr. Geyer, who dealt with the decline of theology in historicism. Geyer tried to show how theology gradually came to have nothing creative of its own, but only to observe what had already been, always studying history, what had already been, in order to arrive at a content - but which naturally leads to the fact that at most one can say: In the past, people had a religious consciousness, but today they only have the opportunity to look at these different stages of religious consciousness in the past and choose something they still want to keep. Unfortunately, by making that choice, they are left with nothing of all that is served up to them from the different epochs of the past.

I myself began this day's program by noting that anthroposophy does not want to appear as a religion, that it wants to be a knowledge of supersensible worlds, and that, if theology wants to be fertilized by it, it may do so. Anthroposophy will, of course, say what can be said about the supersensible worlds, and it can wait to see what theologians can use from Anthroposophy for themselves.

For anyone who is able to see the big picture of the present situation, one deficiency has become very apparent today – but one that naturally arises from the circumstances. At least, if the topic of the day had been exhausted – as has been attempted with the other topics of the day and, with the exception of social science, has been achieved to a certain extent – a Catholic theologian should also have spoken. For all the lectures that have been given have been given solely from a Protestant perspective.

A Catholic theologian would have been in a completely different position from these three Protestant theologians. A Catholic theologian does not have a historically handed down theology, but a historically handed down and eternally valid theology, a theology that must be grasped in the present as vividly as it was grasped, let us say, in the third or second centuries of the Christian era. Of course, the councils and, in the eighteenth century, the Pope, who had become infallible, added many things. But these are individual dogmas, these are additions. But the whole essence of Catholic theology is something that, first of all, does not depend on the development of time, and that, in itself, through its own way of knowing, should have a perennial, an everlasting character.

Perhaps if a more progressive man had spoken about Catholic theology, it might have been possible to present the struggles of Catholic thinkers such as Cardinal Newman in an extraordinarily interesting way. If a less advanced Catholic theologian had spoken, he would have presented the essence of the eternal doctrine of salvation, that is, Catholic theology. Then questions of tremendous importance would have arisen. [For example] the question: What exactly is given in Catholic theology for today's man? In Catholic theology, as it appears today, there is undoubtedly nothing living for the present consciousness. But it was once something living. Its content is based entirely on the results of old spiritual knowledge, even if it is atavistic. What Catholic theology contains, say, about the fact of creation, of redemption, about the content of the Trinity, about all these things, these are real concepts, this is something that – only that it has content, which modern consciousness can no longer grasp, but instead dresses it up in abstract, incomprehensible dogmatics or does not dress it up at all, but accepts it as incomprehensible, dry dogmatics.

It was particularly the development of Catholic theology in the nineteenth century in such a way that it was no longer recognized what is contained in the dogmas. On the other hand, there is – or was, in the case of this university course in Berlin – an interesting experience.

On Friday, in my introduction, I said the following, based on my direct experience, which you already know: I said that the one who experiences what is in our natural environment and in what follows on from this natural environment comes, if he is not somehow inwardly crippled, to an awareness of the Father-God. Those who, during their lifetime, recognize the inadequacy of the Father-God and experience a kind of inner rebirth come to an experience of the Son-God, the God-Son. And then, in the same way, by progressing further, one comes to the spiritual experience.

Now a Protestant private lecturer, Lizentiat X., thought: Aha, there is the Trinity, you have to construct it. And he called it a construction, not realizing that there were experiences on which it was based... that was quite foreign to him. Well, those experiences on which the Catholic dogmas are based have become just as foreign to the modern consciousness of the nineteenth century.

These Catholic dogmas, of course, originally go back to spiritual realities. But they are no longer understood, they have become empty concepts. But in the nineteenth century, people wanted to get back to being able to revive a little externally what lives in Catholic theology. You are well aware that this urge to at least be able to understand a little of what lives in Catholic theology arose particularly under the pontificate of Leo XIII, hence the Catholic decree at that time, the Roman decree for all Catholic theologians to return to the study of Thomistic philosophy, the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas, because all later philosophy is no longer useful for grasping something like what lies in Catholic dogmas. All philosophy that followed Thomas Aquinas is only useful for understanding natural existence, for providing a foundation for the natural sciences, but not for understanding spiritual realities. These are indeed unknown even in the Catholic Church, but they are formulated in Catholic dogmas – they were formulated at a time when these spiritual realities were still known. For this purpose, all later post-Thomistic philosophy is no longer suitable. Therefore, when the need was felt to understand something of what lies in the Catholic dogmas, the renewal of the study of Thomistic was demanded, which is indeed the actual philosophical endeavor within Roman Catholicism today.

There are historical realities at the root of this. And if we compare what is actually necessary to gain access to spiritual things again, we can see that, of course, Thomistic theology alone is not enough to revive what is contained in the old dogmas that have become ossified in Rome. A completely different approach is needed.

Please just remember what a completely twisted view I put forward for such a contemporary literary historian before I left here, in the last lectures, where, by going beyond everything that is space and time, I was able to show you how Hamlet is a pupil of Faust, how Hamlet sat at the feet of Faust for ten years, during those ten years when Faust led his pupils by the nose straight and crooked, how Hamlet was one of those who were led by the nose straight and crooked and criss-cross at the time. Such connections, which are of course an abomination to the present-day literary historian – but then, almost nothing of significance can be said today in the intellectual field that would not be an abomination to the official representatives – is that it is almost the stigma of the real truth today that it is an abomination to the public representatives of real science... Well, if you take this for such a profane area, then you will see what is necessary to really come to that agility of mind that can provide a basis for grasping what is preserved in the dogmas. How one must go back to a completely different state of mind in order to enter into the way one lived in such dogmas is shown precisely by the development of Cardinal Newman.

In Berlin today, it is perhaps still taken for granted that such a university course only addresses Protestant points of view and disregards the Catholic point of view; but you still won't get a picture of what actually prevails there today if you are not somehow able to discuss the Catholic point of view, especially today, when we once again need to look at the whole world.

We have to get beyond just talking today. You know about parochial science and parochial politics. But there is also such a thing as a parochial worldview; it comes across very strongly when you see something like the event on Friday evening, when Dr. Theberat gave a lecture on the topic: “Atomistic and Realistic Consideration of Chemical Processes.” That is to say, Dr. Theberat, who is now employed at our research institute in Stuttgart, tried to show how atomism must be abandoned and how phenomenology must also be introduced into chemistry. Dr. Kurt Grelling then entered the debate. I do not want to talk about Dr. Kurt Grelling, who more or less follows the recipe: Yes, all sorts of things are said in anthroposophy, but all that is not yet probable to me. What is certain, however, is that 2 x 2 = 4, and one must hold to what is certain: 2 x 2 is 4, this is certain. He asserted this already last summer in the Stuttgart course and then even called in two university teachers to help him assert this, that 2 x 2 = 4, on a special evening.

Of course, one could not contradict him. I mean, I only want to hint symbolically at what he said; because 2 x 2 is really 4. I could not contradict him. I could not even contradict him when he said last Friday, again completely out of context: I had admitted in Stuttgart that 2 x 2 = 4. Of course, I cannot deny that. I don't just mean 2 x 2 is 4, but rather things that are just as valuable in the overall context, he put forward at the time... but actually I want to say something else with this. He then claimed: Yes, the question that is being put forward can be decided on the basis of phenomenology, it cannot be decided from the point of view of natural science, but only from the point of view of philosophy.

Now, I am not saying that this is just a Göttingen thing, but at least it is not thought in a cosmopolitan scientific way today, because in England, for example, one would not be able to make sense of a sentence like that. If someone says: This cannot be decided scientifically, this can only be decided philosophically - because this difference is something that is, isn't it, a parochial worldview. This formulation is only known within certain Central European circles.

In any case, when we are talking about such questions, we need a broader perspective today. And it is impossible, for example, to keep talking about the center, west and east – formulation of the Vienna Program: there is constant talk of the west and the east and the center, which I do not criticize, I think it is quite great-spirited when there is talk of the west and the east and the center – but I think you then have to broaden your concepts a bit, they then really have to span these areas. You cannot, of course, embrace the world from a limited point of view. Well, for example, something is missing in relation to the western development of religious life if one completely leaves out Catholicism. Because this western religious life has nothing in it of what one touches when one speaks only of Protestant theology. One does not even come to talk about how... let us say, for example, Puritanism in England or the High Church in England or things like that.

I am not putting all this forward as a criticism, because the things that have been put forward were, of course, excellent. But I would still like to talk in the narrower anthroposophical circle about what needs to be said in connection with all that has happened.

And then it would have become clear how current thinking is not at all able to approach what was once the source of the theological content. So that in Berlin there was no bridge between what modern Protestant theology is and what is now to come from Anthroposophy to enliven religious consciousness. There were only ever indications that this should come from anthroposophy. But how it should be developed was not actually discussed.

These are things that may give you an idea of the struggle on anthroposophical ground, which has now found its most beautiful expression in Berlin. It was clear from the participation of the most diverse circles in Berlin – the lectures were extremely well attended, even the morning lectures – and it was clear from the participation of wide circles that something is definitely alive in the anthroposophical movement, which strikes strongly and intensely at the consciousness of the present.

And sometimes we also did not hold back on our part in the sharpness of expression, which should be characteristic of what is. I remember, for example, with a certain inner joy, when on Saturday Dr. Karl Schubert, who was speaking within the framework of “Anthroposophy and Linguistics” and who also wanted to show how linguistics should play a role in the political life of thinkers and races, became spirited in the debate. He wanted to point out what linguistics is today when you look at it... and what it must become through anthroposophy. It was spirited when he then said: Yes, he had been to Berlin, studied linguistics with a wide variety of teachers, and then came to anthroposophy to enliven this linguistics... and only then did it become clear to him... and there he found what this present linguistics is: a dunghill! And then he banged on the table! Well, there was no lack of spirited expressions to characterize the present situation. So it was already strongly felt what one could feel. The opponents have not exactly... yes, spirited I can't really say, I don't want to say anything that — well, I won't say anything like that!

The evening events were such that one tried to give a picture of the anthroposophical content. It was particularly significant this time that both Dr. Stein and Dr. Schwebsch, two teachers at the Waldorf School, gave vivid pictures of the educational work in the Waldorf School itself.

I would like to say, between the lines, that one could experience many strange things. The whole course ended on Sunday, and I had to give the final evening lecture on Sunday, but the morning events ended with a eurythmy performance at the Deutsches Theater, in front of a full house, which was an extraordinarily successful event.

I hardly need to say that if you should come across any newspapers, you will read the opposite of what happened. But a gentleman, for example, who wrote an article in a Berlin paper that some consider to be pro-Anthroposophy... well, I don't want to comment on that – he then asked another paper, a large paper, if he could also write an article about this college course. They asked: pro or contra? He said, because he thought his article was pro: pro. They said: No, we only take contra.

So they don't care what anyone writes, they just buy “contra”! And of course you won't get any idea of what happened there if you get other reports from outside.

It is a pity that apart from this eurythmy performance at the German Theatre, and the short eurythmy performances on Thursday and Sunday, more eurythmy was not performed; for that might perhaps have led to the situation – along the lines of the Stuttgart Anthroposophical Congress – that the honored attendees would not have had to bear the burden of these packed days quite so heavily. Because I could well imagine that it was quite hard! You see, take any of the days, an average day, when there were no meetings for a number of people, well, the person who experienced everything heard five lectures and a discussion. That is a bit much for a person today: five lectures and a discussion in one day! There were actually two discussions on a normal day. So one had the opportunity to live in such thoughts from 9 a.m. to [3:00 p.m.] and then again from [8:00 p.m.] to about [10:30 p.m.]. Of course, it would have been much better if, in between, as was the case in Stuttgart, witty eurythmy lectures could have taken place.

Yes, I was in a city and had the opportunity to speak to a theologian. He said: We were at a theological meeting in Eisenach; they showed us something like eurythmy there! Well, it must have been something else, but that is what he thought. 'I don't know,' he said, 'what we theologians should make of it; we were all quite amazed, we didn't know how we came to see something like that. But on the whole the result is an extraordinarily significant one, and otherwise, I would say, the inner characteristics of the times presented themselves in an extraordinarily eloquent way. For example, at the theologians' conference, a gentleman asked to speak who once had to give a lecture on the whole field of anthroposophy in one evening; he came to the Philosophisch-Anthroposophischer Verlag in Berlin that morning Berlin and bought, or rather was given, the books he needed to prepare for his evening lecture, in which he wanted to explain to a larger audience what anthroposophy is, because he was the one who had to give the lecture. Then the gentleman in question seems to have heard one of my philharmonic lectures in Berlin. He ranted terribly about it in a lecture he gave afterwards; among other things, he said that he had actually seen, when he looked around with the opera-goer during my lecture, that someone had even slept on individual benches. And on that theological morning, he spoke.

You couldn't really see the context of this discussion, neither with the topic of the day nor with what

what had been said, nor with anything else. I just kept hearing: “The Gospels shall greet us.” But I had no real idea how it related to the whole. Then he explained that the things had all been so significant that one must have the most ardent desire to unite the whole into one book in order to sell it. Yes, that is the essence of the present-day culture: essence.

I wanted to give you a kind of overview of what has been going on. I don't want to fail to mention that a very pleasing influence has emerged in Berlin, particularly within the German anthroposophical movement: the student influence. With a real inner devotion and with extraordinary zeal, one could see a part of the student body attached to anthroposophy. And that afternoon during the week, it was Friday, when I was with the students to discuss in their way what they wanted to know, that afternoon was a very beautiful part of this entire college course for me.

It is perhaps also worth mentioning that such an afternoon also took place in Leipzig – with a small group of university students devoted to anthroposophy. But the fact that, if one really wants it, a scientific discussion can take place between well-meaning people of current scientific practice and anthroposophy was demonstrated on that very afternoon in Leipzig, when the well-known anatomy professor Spalteholz was there and actually talked to me mainly about the relationship between current natural science and anthroposophy in front of the students. I believe that the students present learned an extraordinary amount from this conversation.

You can see from such a fact that it is actually quite unobjective reasons that official science, slandered and hereticized, is the one that is anthroposophical; while, if if someone were to be found who would deign to enter into a dispassionate discussion, such as Professor Spalteholz in Leipzig, then something very fruitful could come out of it, even if a full understanding is not reached. A complete understanding cannot yet be reached today because there is an abyss between the two sides. But at least a beginning can be made by saying in front of young people what can be said by both sides if we listen to each other. That is the essential thing, and that was the case on that Saturday, March 4, when a number of Leipzig students were with Professor Spalteholz and me to talk about anthroposophy and science. And in fact, many extremely important things were discussed.

Tomorrow we will then address a specific question. I just have to say that tomorrow evening will begin with an artistic eurythmy performance, in which new students will perform, supported by some older eurythmy performers. We will start with the eurythmy performance at [7:30] p.m., and then my lecture will follow.

[My dear friends!]

As you know, my intention today is to discuss some of the experiences in Holland and England. As you know, the Dutch friends organized an Anthroposophical School of Spiritual Science this spring, which took place from April 7 to April 12. A large number of our lecturers were present. The topics were from a wide range of scientific fields. However, the main aim was to provide an insight into the extent to which the anthroposophical worldview is rooted in scientific life and the extent to which it must be taken seriously by today's scientific community. That was actually the task at hand. The fact was that although a large number of our Dutch anthroposophical friends were present at the lectures, we were essentially dealing with an audience that was still quite unfamiliar with anthroposophy, an audience recruited from the student body of the various Dutch colleges, and which, above all, mostly wanted to have something like a first acquaintance with anthroposophical ideas. This was particularly the case with this Dutch course, which is now the case with regard to anthroposophy in general: a large proportion of young people who are scientifically oriented regard anthroposophy as a matter of time. Of course, the circumstances of the present time are such that only very few of those who want to address this question muster the courage and inner strength to really get close enough to anthroposophy. But even if the effects in this direction are slight, it is still apparent on such occasions, when anthroposophy is seriously sought, as in this Dutch course, that a few individuals, especially among the younger contemporaries, are becoming aware that anthroposophy, in addition to the satisfaction it offers in religious and other respects, is thoroughly scientifically grounded. And we were also able to perceive this in Holland, that among the younger contemporaries who were present were those who, after completing the course, had the feeling that here we are dealing with a scientifically serious matter.

An extraordinarily lively discussion was provoked by the lecture by Dr. von Baravalle, who spoke in a very stimulating way about mathematics in the light of anthroposophy. The discussion that followed was interesting because one older lecturer and one younger student who took part in the discussion really did try to engage scientifically with what Dr. von Baravalle had presented, and in a very forceful way.

It is a satisfying fact that specific details, for example in thermodynamics in physics, can be discussed in an appropriate way based on anthroposophy. Of course, discussions also occur in other scientific fields; but the point of view that Dr. von Baravalle took is truly quite far removed from the points of view that are adopted in present-day thermodynamics; and one is accustomed that those who are firmly seated in their chairs and well established in the present as scientists, simply dismiss with a slight wave of the hand these things that are so far removed from what they are accustomed to thinking. That this can no longer be the case today, that one must at least consider the corrections of formulas that one is able to make to current science through the results of anthroposophy, is an extraordinarily satisfying result.

Unfortunately, with such short lecture courses as we still have to give, one is obliged, I would say, to pick out individual short chapters from large areas, and that therefore hardly anything else can be given through such courses but a very inadequate stimulus. But for the time being we have to be satisfied with that. It is not yet possible, given the circumstances of contemporary life, to give more than this.

My first task was to elucidate the position of anthroposophy in the spiritual life of the present day. I endeavored to show how the spiritual life of the present day has, after all, taken on a kind of scientific character in all directions. Even if this is denied, it is still found that scientific thinking asserts itself everywhere; only the peculiar phenomenon emerges that, on the one hand, scientific life is declared to be the only one with authority, while, on the other hand, one is forced to let certain other areas, such as art and religion, move away from science as far as possible. On the one hand, one wants scientific certainty. But with this scientific certainty, which one strives for, one cannot do anything in art; one cannot do anything with it in religious life. Therefore, one tries to base art, if possible, only on fantasy and entertainment, not on a deeper penetration into the secrets of the world and their reproduction, and to base religion not on knowledge but only on faith. It is therefore peculiar that on the one hand one seeks a panacea in science, and on the other hand, in order to save other areas of intellectual life, one tries to distance them from science as much as possible. This is something that must and does create deep divisions in the lives of serious people today. Today they remain unconscious in many ways, showing only their effects, but they are present and lead our civilized life into the abyss.

My initial task was to show this and to show the truly scientific character of anthroposophy. But then I tried to show how, in particular in the visual arts, when it is understood that it reveals the secrets of the world, there is something that really does create out of the ethereal life of beings, and only through this does it acquire its true content, and how a natural path can be created through the anthroposophical worldview into art.

Then I had to speak about the anthroposophical research method and individual anthroposophical results. These are things that you know well, and that I therefore only need to discuss in terms of the topic. And then I had to speak about anthroposophy and agnosticism. It is a topic that I discussed quite extensively last summer at the Stuttgart University course, at the Stuttgart Congress, actually. But in The Hague I had a reason to approach the subject from a different point of view. In Stuttgart I had approached the subject, agnosticism, that is, the view that one has limits to one's knowledge, which necessarily prevent man from really penetrating into the very foundations of existence with knowledge, with reference to the damage it does to the whole of human feeling and willing, how it paralyzes the powers of will, how it paralyzes artistic development, how it paralyzes religious depth, and so on. I had characterized agnosticism in Stuttgart as the bringer of cultural damage.

I had not set myself this task in The Hague, but I had set myself the task of clearly explaining the significance of current scientific knowledge. It leads to not transcending the sensory world, and instead to constructing all kinds of crazy theories about atoms, which in the very latest times have even led to the fact that now, everywhere in the feature pages of newspapers, it is reported to the more popular audience that reads things that Rutherford has succeeded in splitting atoms by a kind of cannonade! One always wonders what people actually imagine when they are presented with such articles, especially as laymen. No one gets any idea from such articles of what actually happened in the laboratory. Because if he did get an idea of that, he would just see what a grandiose nonsense it is, which is even going around the world in a popular way.

The newer natural sciences have not grown through these fantasies of the atomic world, but rather by adhering to the phenomena, the appearances, the facts that can be observed by the senses. But in doing so, it has necessarily come to agnosticism, because one can indeed trace the fact back to its archetypal phenomena, but one cannot thereby advance to the archetypes of the world. But by being driven in a justified way through phenomenalism to agnosticism, one is precisely compelled to seek paths to the archetypes of existence in another field. Take an older form of knowledge: people still saw spiritual entities in every spring, in every bush, everywhere. There was still spirituality in the whole environment. When you find spirituality in the whole environment, you also find moral impulses in the environment at the same time. Because we have come to phenomenalism and thus to agnosticism, we are surrounded only by nature, and if we still want to seek a moral worldview, we must look for the basis for it in moral intuition, as I have explained in my “Philosophy of Freedom”.

This means that agnosticism helps us to look first for purely spiritual impulses in the moral realm. Then, by first seeking the moral intuitions, we are driven further to those imaginations, inspirations and intuitions that otherwise arise for the world. And so agnosticism has this good side to it, that it deprives man of the possibility of finding the spirit outside through ordinary cognition. Thus, cognition must develop its own strength; it must become more active. We can no longer speak of some kind of given moral commandments. We must speak of moral intuitions. I have shown this in my “Philosophy of Freedom”. This is where the good side of agnosticism comes to the fore. And it is necessary to make it clear: a truly meaningful view of the world allows everything to appear from the most diverse points of view. One can just as well speak pro agnosticism as contra agnosticism. It is then always only a matter of what one says. And only by approaching the world from the most diverse points of view can one arrive at a real content of knowledge that is then useful for life.

Of course, it is an abomination for the philistines when one deals with agnosticism in its effect, in that it causes nothing but damage to civilization and culture, and then one looks at agnosticism from the other side, in that it - I would say - causes as a reaction that which is precisely the spiritual world view. For according to the commandments of philistinism, I don't know how many, one may have only one view of any given thing, and if one illuminates the different sides, if one does that at different times, then philistinism finds contradiction upon contradiction.

We can say that, according to the Dutch organizers, the lecture course in Holland, this university course, has nevertheless brought a satisfactory result for the anthroposophical movement. Of course, it is still difficult today to penetrate with anthroposophy, even to a very small extent, here or there. But we must be thoroughly satisfied with every small step that can be taken in this direction.

For me, the Dutch School of Spiritual Science was followed by a trip to England at the invitation of the “New Ideals in Education” committee, in order to give two lectures at the events that took place in Stratford for a week this year to mark Shakespeare's birthday.

The events in Stratford were a festival that was organized in honor of Shakespeare's birthday and in memory of Shakespeare. A wide range of speakers gave talks from Tuesday to Monday, and one could learn a lot from these lectures about what contemporary English intellectual life is like and what characterizes it.

It is not my job to speak critically about what has been organized during these days, I would just like to note that some things were quite remarkable. For example, an interesting lecture given by Miss Ashwell on Wednesday about drama and national life, in which she explained with great inner strength how difficult it is in England to muster enough enthusiasm to cultivate dramatic art in the right way. The dramatic arts are, to some extent, suffering from the fact that they have to be performed by individual troupes, which in turn have to take into account the tastes or lack of taste of the audience, so that real artistic development is extremely difficult. With a certain strong emotion, this was particularly expressed in Miss Hamilton's lecture on trends in modern drama next Thursday.

Now, that this already points to certain deeper things, is also evident from something else. Every evening we spent in Stratford, we went to the theater performance that was given in parallel by a special troupe. The first evening, which

“The Taming of the Shrew” showed the director on stage after the performance, and the director apologized for the lighting effects and other aspects of the production not being up to standard by saying: Yes, you just can't do everything the way you want to according to your artistic conscience, because we are actually in a movie theater. So one learned that the “Shakespeare Memorial Theater” had actually been converted into a movie theater in modern times, and only during these festivities had it been converted back into a theater!

We have read in the last few days that the Berlin State Opera has already started showing films, and we are well on the way to phasing out the dramatic arts in modern civilization and replacing them – how can one put it without offending people? – with cinematic inartistry. But even that will be taken amiss by some who are enthusiastic about the cinema. I believe that the cinema system shows just how many destructive elements there are in our present civilization.

Now, I had announced two lectures for this Stratford week, one lecture on drama in relation to education for Wednesday afternoon and one lecture on Shakespeare and the new ideals for Sunday afternoon. It is natural that when, as is the case in our college courses and as was also the case at this event, lectures follow one another in quick succession throughout the day, as in a timetable, it leads to difficulties when lectures like mine have to be translated and thus take up twice as much time. And so, of course, on Wednesday I could only say part of what I would have liked to say, since time was already up. I had the satisfaction of being given a kind of petition the next day, asking that I present what was missing on one of the following days in a subsequent lecture, and this lecture could then be given on Friday. Then I gave my lecture on Shakespeare and the new ideals on Sunday.

I organized the lectures for this Shakespeare event in such a way that they were thoroughly based on anthroposophy, although they were actually given in the style of a Shakespearean celebration. And so too in the examination of Shakespeare's drama, which has proved its mission in education in world history by simply showing itself to be historically pedagogical in the tremendous effect it has had on the education of Goethe. One need only recall that Goethe named the three personalities Linnaeus, the naturalist, Spinoza, the philosopher, and Shakespeare, the poet, as the ones who had the deepest influence on his life. But we must bear in mind how different these influences were. Linnaeus, despite having such a great influence on Goethe, actually only had the influence that Goethe opposed him, that he developed the opposite view. Spinoza only influenced Goethe to arrive at a certain mode of expression, but he never appropriated Spinoza's inner life. He only appropriated a kind of language through Spinoza, whereas through Shakespeare he really had a living impulse that continued to work in him. I then expanded on this in particular on Sunday in the lecture on Shakespeare and the new ideals, by pointing out what actually had such a strong effect on Goethe from Shakespeare. I characterized this in an objective way at first by saying: There are whole libraries about Shakespeare; if you put together the books that have been written about him, you could fill this wall with them just about “Hamlet” alone. But the influence of Shakespeare on Goethe can be explained by the fact that all that is written about Shakespeare in these books had no effect on Goethe; that something quite different had an effect that cannot be found in all these books; that one can leave all that out and must look for the matter in something quite different. Yes, I even said that one can take everything that Goethe himself said about Shakespeare – theoretically, intellectualized – and regard that as false; that not even what he himself said theoretically about Shakespeare is the actual impulse; he may have erred, and what he said about Hamlet can be refuted. What matters is something else. And actually the most significant expression that Goethe made in relation to Shakespeare is this: These are not poems, this is something like the omnipotent book of fate, open in front of you, where the storm winds of life turn the pages now and then. With this emotional thing that Goethe said about Shakespeare, the power with which Shakespeare worked in an educational way in Goethe is actually meant.

On the one hand, I was now able to take the path in the first two lectures to explain our educational principles, as you know them so well. On the other hand, however, I was also able to characterize the relationship to anthroposophy by linking Shakespeare to Goethe, Goethe to the Goetheanum, the Goetheanum to anthroposophy, and so it was a complete circle. So it was possible to bring to bear the spiritual life, as it develops as a Central European spiritual life on the one hand, as an anthroposophical spiritual life on the other, especially at such a Shakespeare festival.

It may also be said that it is fundamentally different what one feels when one has to represent anthroposophical being on the continent and when one has to represent it over in England. I had the two things in immediate succession: in Holland the School of Spiritual Science, in England something completely different. On the continent, there is now a strong and growing need to uncover the firm, secure scientific foundations of anthroposophy everywhere. As a result, the latest phase of our anthroposophical life has taken on a certain character, which can certainly lead to very popular presentations, as I am now doing in public lectures, but which must be adhered to in a certain sense. Such a need does not exist in England. On the other hand, there is a pronounced need there to be brought closer to the spiritual world in a more direct way. And so I tried to characterize, now from a deeper spiritual point of view, what it actually is that led to Goethe taking such an intense interest in Shakespeare, one that was meaningful for his entire life, and how Shakespeare was able to remain a driving impulse in Goethe until a very late age. For me, the decisive factor was that if you take Shakespeare's dramas, both tragedy and comedy, and really let them take effect on you, the figures all come to life. And if you now, equipped with imaginative and inspired knowledge, take what you experience with the living figures of Shakespeare's plays into the spiritual world, you experience something very peculiar: the figures continue to live. They do not do the same things that Shakespeare has them do on the physical plane; they do different things, but they live. So you can certainly take the characters out of a Shakespearean drama from the drama itself: on the astral plane, let us say, the characters do something different from what they do in “Othello” or in “The Taming of the Shrew” or the like. The whole thing can be transferred to the astral plane: the people do something completely different, but they act, they live, they are living beings over there.

With a Captain or the like – one has a hobbyhorse with Captain, the other with Sudermann, that is why I mention as many as possible and actually none at all – but with the others, who are less concerned with imagination than Shakespeare, who are more concerned with imitating something in life, it is quite different. You see, Shakespeare does not actually imitate life. You won't be able to point to real life when you have Shakespearean characters. He creates them. And how does he create them? By knowing that he is creating them for the stage. Shakespeare is a theater realist, he creates for the stage. He knows that the stage has only three sides. The newer playwrights, especially the naturalists, have always forgotten that the stage is open on one side, because they write their plays so that they would actually have to be closed on four sides. Otherwise – well, the audience could have a strange pleasure if the play were performed in a room closed on all sides. But Shakespeare knew that you can't bring characters imitated from life onto the stage. He knew it, just as a painter should know that he has to paint on a surface, not in space, and that he must therefore treat the colors so that the surface comes into consideration.

Shakespeare is not an imitator of life, Shakespeare is a creative spirit. But he reaches into what is available to him. That is how he created his living figures. That is how one can still look up to the astral plane, to the Devachan plane, into the whole spiritual world; the people there do something different than they do on the physical plane, but they live, they do something. If you take naturalistic poets into the spiritual world, the

figures become like wooden puppets. They are no longer alive, they cannot walk or stand, they cannot do anything, they are no longer alive.

What one experiences through spiritual contemplation, Goethe felt — this original life, this being brought forth from the spiritual world — in Shakespeare. And that is what makes Shakespeare's drama so significant for the age in which Shakespeare created it: it was indeed a continuation of the ancient mystery dramas, which I also spoke about in the lecture on Shakespeare and the new ideals on Sunday.

The entire lecture on Shakespeare and the new ideals had the following meaning. I said that one would expect me to now begin to enumerate these new ideals: first, second, third. One person enumerates three, another enumerates five, another seven. But I said: The world already has enough of that, because such new ideals are indeed being fabricated and developed everywhere. But it is not a matter of setting up such new ideals, as others also have them, or of developing others before the world today, but rather it is a matter of finding the real strength to achieve an ideal life. Many people today think up ideals, but the strength to live by ideals can only be found by becoming aware of how real spiritual life has worked, say, in older art, in the art that still emerged from the mysteries and that was ultimately effective in Shakespeare. Even if Shakespeare is still very much a theorist, we must recognize how this spiritual life has worked in the Shakespearean plays and how we can arrive at a new ideal by absorbing this impulse, by allowing meaning and understanding of the spiritual world to arise from our soul life. Whether or not we then formulate this in detail is up to us.

So in three lectures during this festival, I was able to develop just what can be said about anthroposophy, about Goethe, about Shakespeare and about education in this context.

During the event, a strangely interesting fact came to my attention. There was an exhibition that interested a large number of people very much: an exhibition of remarkable works of art that a Viennese professor - yes, how should I put it - produces in children from the ages of 8, 9, 10 up to sexual maturity. These children really paint in such a way that one is extraordinarily captivated when looking at the things with the understanding that many people today have for art. Individual scenes are painted with great perfection, street scenes with types of people – some say “criminal types”, such as are often found on the streets today – painted with great perfection. The children paint these pictures. They paint them, and then, when they reach puberty, in their 14th, 15th, 16th year, they lose their ability to paint. After that, they can no longer paint anything. And the professor — I can only say: He makes them able to do it! Today, one marvels at such a thing. What is it really? It is pedagogical nonsense of the worst kind.

Of course there are all kinds of subconscious and subconsciously acting forces that can be used to influence children in such a way that they arrive at such demonic paintings from the rhythmic system of their being, for there the lung and heart demon paints in the children. And one would actually only need to understand what I just said about human development in my Christmas course on education here last Christmas, then it would be a completely understandable phenomenon that such nonsense can be achieved; but one would also see that it is completely harmful.

Once again, we are dealing with only a single phenomenon. But these phenomena are very numerous today, and they can only be understood with an unbiased approach, if we really look at our pedagogy and didactics. Because then you realize that, as you know, the head system prevails in the child until the second dentition changes, and the rhythmic system prevails from the second dentition change until sexual maturity; but that the demonic, which possesses the child, has an effect in this rhythm – and that it is precisely in the child that what is called for here should be fought. And then people are amazed when the child reaches sexual maturity and can no longer draw anything. It is quite understandable that it can no longer draw anything if you do not teach it to draw itself, but if you cause the ahrimanic demon to draw!

How important it is to address the damage of our present civilization in an anthroposophical way is shown by such a heartbreaking example, which sensationally produces this admirable result of such a false education and does not even see what is important.

I am saying these things, of course, only because it is necessary to form a sound judgment within anthroposophical circles about what is present in our present-day civilization. I can say that I am extremely grateful to the committee “New Ideals in Education” for giving me the opportunity to speak about anthroposophy, Goetheanism, education and Shakespeare, and to say what I have tried to say in these three lectures. And I would like to say: It is indeed a guarantee that if we as human beings all over the world were to cultivate anthroposophy in the appropriate way, we could achieve many things that are very necessary for the reconstruction of our culture.

What has been achieved by the “New Ideals in Education” committee is connected to what has been achieved before and after by the activities of our anthroposophical friends in London. After the Dutch course ended on Wednesday, April 12, I gave my first lecture on Friday to anthroposophists and an invited audience in London on Knowledge and Initiation; then on Saturday the second lecture on the anthroposophical path to the knowledge of Christ, and a more intimate lecture on Sunday morning. In these lectures I tried to say what can be said in the present phase of our anthroposophical life, taking into account the way in which such things can be understood in England in particular.

On Sunday afternoon we were in the school in the London area, at the Kings Langley boarding school, which is run by the lady — Miss Cross — who was also here for the pedagogical Christmas course, and were able to see how a number of children are educated and taught in such a boarding school. It is extraordinarily interesting to see how, in this boarding school in particular, children are actually brought closer to life in a certain way, based on certain ideals of the present day. The forty to forty-five children who live in the boarding school have to do absolutely everything; there are no servants there. The children have to get up early, take care of the whole institution themselves, and also clean their boots and clothes. They have to make sure that the necessary eggs are available by raising the chickens, which they also take care of, and many other things that you can imagine. They clean everything themselves, they cook everything themselves, they take care of the garden. The vegetables that are served are first grown, harvested and cooked by them, and then they eat them. And so the child is really introduced to life in a very comprehensive way and learns a whole range of things.

The intention has now arisen here during the Christmas course at Miss Cross's to set up this boarding school in the sense of a Waldorf School, and this is considered to be a very serious plan. Mrs. Mackenzie, who was one of the main driving forces behind my invitation to this Shakespeare festival, is very much in favor of our school movement, based on anthroposophy, gaining a certain foothold in England, and the aim now is to form a committee to set up this school based on anthroposophy in line with our education.

This will be a very significant and important step forward. And with the kind of determination that characterizes these individuals, especially Miss Cross and Professor Mackenzie, it can be assumed that something like this can be achieved after overcoming many obstacles.

We all hope that the course I will be able to give in Oxford in August of this year will contribute to the further development of this plan, in which the few suggestions I was able to give in Stratford this time can be expanded in all directions.

In this way, eurythmy will also be shown to advantage, which could not be included this time, at least not in an official way. So it is hoped that all this will now be able to contribute well to the anthroposophical school movement in England.

Monday was the day we went to the Shakespeare festival. On Sunday I had the last lecture on Shakespeare there, and we returned to London on April 24, where I gave a lecture for our members in London that evening. That was essentially all there was to do and experience in England.

Thus, without doubt, a further step has been taken in the development of our anthroposophical life, which is particularly important because it has made it possible to carry anthroposophy across the borders that have unfortunately been created during the war catastrophe.

I would like to emphasize once more that I am extremely grateful, above all to our Dutch friends, who, after many weeks of selfless work, have brought about the Dutch School of Spiritual Science, which, with regard to everything concerning the organization of the course and also the arrangement of the details, meant an enormous amount of work on the part of the organizers. And I would like to emphasize that I am deeply grateful to our English friends for what they did on the one hand for my participation in the Stratford Week, and on the other hand for what I was able to do for Anthroposophy in London. And I am also grateful for what they have done for the inauguration of an anthroposophical school movement in England, which I believe has done something extraordinarily important for the anthroposophical movement.

My dear friends!

Before I begin my lecture, I have to report that our dear friend Nelly Lichtenberg has left the physical plane. The younger friends may know her from her participation in our events, but the older participants know her very well and have certainly taken her deep into their hearts – as has her mother, who is left in mourning.

Nelly Lichtenberg, who had recently sought recovery in Stuttgart, left the physical plane there a few days ago. She and her mother, who was there for her care, have been part of our anthroposophical movement since its inception. And if I want to express in a few words what, in my opinion, best characterizes the deceased, who has left the physical plane, and her mother, I would say: their souls were made of pure loyalty and pure, deep devotion to the cause of anthroposophy. We all appreciated, when our movement here in Berlin was still extremely small, the heartfelt loyalty and deep understanding with which they both clung to the movement and participated in its development. Baroness Nelly Lichtenberg carried this loyal soul in a body that caused extraordinary difficulties for her outer life. But this soul actually came to terms with everything in a wonderful spirit of endurance, a spirit of endurance that combined with a certain inner, inspired joy in absorbing the spiritual. And this spirit of endurance, combined with this inner joyfulness, warmed by a confidence in the life of the soul, on whatever plane in the future this soul life may unfold, all this was also found in the now deceased at her last sickbed in Stuttgart, where I found her in this state of mind and soul during my last visits. It is clear to you all that anyone who can in any way contribute to a person's recovery must do everything in their power to bring about that recovery; but you also all know how karma works and how it is sometimes simply impossible to achieve such a recovery. It was indeed painful to see only the future when one had the suffering woman before one in the last weeks. But her soul, which was also extraordinarily hopeful for the spiritual world, led her and those who had to do with her even in the last days beyond all that. And so we may say that in this soul, which left the physical plane with her, there lived here on earth one who had taken up anthroposophy in the true sense of the word – had taken it up in such a way that this anthroposophy was not just a theoretical world view, a satisfaction of the intellect or even a light satisfaction of the feelings, but was the whole content of her life, the certainty of her existence. And it was with this content of her life and with this certainty of her soul's existence that she left this physical plane. It is for us, especially for those of us who have gone through so many of the hours here in physical existence with her in the same spiritual striving, to turn our thoughts to her soul's existence. And that is what we want to do faithfully! She shall often find our thoughts united with her thoughts in the continuation of her existence in another realm, and she will always be a faithful companion of our spiritual striving, even in her further soul existence. We can be certain of that. And that we promise her this, that we want to powerfully direct our thoughts to her, as a sign of honor, we want to rise from our seats.

My dear friends!

In the first part of my lecture today, which I am very pleased to be able to give to you again during my journey, I would like to raise some points that may perhaps need to be discussed at some point. These points concern the change within our anthroposophical movement that is felt by many of you – and indeed more or less approvingly, but also negatively by some.

I am talking about such a change and I think that most of us feel this change. I will only briefly characterize some of this change, because I do not want to talk about it at length.

The older of our dear members look back to the times when Anthroposophy was cultivated in small groups — at least in smaller groups than it is now — merely, I would like to say, in the way that is appropriate for small groups that combine a certain need for knowledge with a religious need to strive for certain views about the spiritual world today. We have, and it is now a good two decades since in Berlin, repeatedly and repeatedly tried to esoterically deepen that which can be gained from today's conditions of the higher worlds of knowledge of spiritual life, based on the initial foundations that could be given years ago. And it is in the direction of this esoteric deepening that very many of our dear older members have found their deep satisfaction. It is fair to say that a kind of esotericism has gradually come to permeate everything, even the more public lectures. Regarding this esotericism that we have brought about, we can say, when we look at our branch life, that it has not been lost on us. This esotericism forms the basis of all branch life and has been cultivated in the branches as best as possible.

It seems to me that it would be unjustified for older members to feel dissatisfied with the progress and transformation of the anthroposophical movement because something else has been added to the original esoteric movement of the past – to what was distinctly esoteric in character. It has only been added, it has not been replaced. We may say that esotericism has not died out, but a further, different element has naturally entered into anthroposophical life. In order to gain a correct attitude towards this further, different element - regardless of whether we see in it something that we more or less accept or reject - we must say: we did not seek it, it more or less sought us. We must be clear about that. And just as we look with heartfelt, self-evident love at our esoteric element in the anthroposophical movement, so when it comes to relating this other element to our esotericism, we must not close our minds to the clear insight into what has very much entered the anthroposophical movement in recent times and taken its place alongside the esoteric. Do you not remember, I am addressing the older members among us, the small circles from which we started everywhere. At the beginning, the spread of our anthroposophical movement was also characterized by an esoteric element. It can be said that when anthroposophy was spread through the paths that were initially there for the wider public through the magazine “Lucifer - Gnosis”, this spread was also tainted with an esoteric character. Esoteric truths reached those who wanted to take note of them. Of course, one has to feel what was in the esoteric will of the time. But something gradually broke away from esotericism, which at first was basically not within our own control. At first, one might say, the matter went its own way, and within our ranks esotericism was further developed, which then took shape in the public lectures that were given. What was then there in a more or less - we may say - “finished state” developed and wanted something from us. It was not yet there in the time that preceded the war catastrophe; at that time it was only present in the very first traces in the very first beginnings. But it was already very strongly present when the catastrophe of the war entered into that stage which was present in about 1918. There was, so to speak, something present that had arisen without our direct participation, and it confronted us as something finished. And even if I can only characterize it with the degree of precision that is appropriate for a brief, sketchy description, I have to say that anthroposophy had penetrated into the most diverse circles of the world, especially into scientific circles. It had become known and had been judged, and people demanded “scientific justification” from anthroposophy. With this phenomenon, that something was simply there through the anthroposophical literature, which made demands that had to be met, something else was there at the same time: there were a number of younger scientists, and some older ones, who seriously examined anthroposophy from their scientific point of view and, from a wide variety of angles, gave certain parts of their world knowledge an anthroposophical character. Therefore, one can say: One is not at all in a position to answer the question: Is it now sympathetic or unsympathetic that the older, esoteric kind was joined by the newer one, which some perceive as perhaps “too” scientific, and that precisely this current, especially through the challenge of its opponents, has assumed an ever broader, public character. We cannot look at what has really come to us from outside with sympathies and antipathies, because it did not depend on us at all that it once stood there more or less ready. We can only say: the necessity arose to simply place anthroposophy in the scientific life of the present, which can be placed there without reservation, and which can fertilize and lead forward the highest scientific life of the present everywhere – leading it forward to those goals to which it must be led further.

It is from such a background that some older members, who were accustomed to attending the branch every week, may have heard something more or less esoteric there, as it then passed into our cycles, and they heard it in a language that is not yet permeated by science everywhere – even though it is a more durable language than the scientific language, I want to add this here in parenthesis -, some of the older members, who were accustomed to hearing in public lectures something different from what they heard in the branches, but still in a language that was extraordinarily familiar to their hearts and souls, because what was given there was only was only a kind of more exoteric continuation of what was done in the branches, it seemed to some of these older members when they came here or there, even if lectures on anthroposophy and perhaps even congresses or courses were held there, that anthroposophy no longer sounded the way it did years ago. For whereas in the past the spiritual substance lived more in what was expressed through the word, that spiritual substance that sinks directly into the soul through its spiritual power, something has now emerged that seeks to scientifically 'prove' and , which at every step maintains the thread of a strictly organized logic, which at every step also presents what the scientific achievements of the present give us as indications of what is sought through anthroposophy in the scientific sense. But all this was of no interest to those who in earlier years had expressed their longing for words shaped more substantially in a spiritual sense. So it came about that some of the older members had the feeling: Yes, what we are hearing now is not really what we are looking for. What we heard often in the past went straight to our souls. Now everything is being given a thousand different reasons, now everything is being presented in a way that suits the learned, the academic people – and not us!

In a sense, this is unjustified, because the branch life continued, and the esoteric lived alongside what appeared in such scientific aprons. And not everyone saw that it is simply a matter of time, that we simply cannot do otherwise than to anchor anthroposophy scientifically, that it has now been taken up by scientists and is also demanded by scientists. This is how the situation we are in today arose, which is actually more in the soul feelings of our dear membership than in the fact that it is always clearly presented to the soul from the outside. But anyone who takes a good look at the anthroposophical movement, which has grown considerably in recent times, will find that what I have just said is expressed everywhere in the moods, feelings and perceptions: many people think that we do not need all this evidence at all.

I do not want to talk today about the rather unpleasant character that the opposition has taken on in the present, but I do want to say that we are obliged to place anthroposophy on a firm basis in relation to those opponents who at least mean it to some extent honestly. This is also far too little considered within the anthroposophical movement. But let us take a somewhat objective view of the situation. Then, however, we are confronted with something today that we must be mindful of, and that can already be taken up as an impulse in our work. And that is actually why I am having this whole discussion today.

On the one hand, we have today what is available as our anthroposophical esoteric stream, as it is laid down in the cycles, as most of you carry it in your hearts, having absorbed it over the years. We have this anthroposophical spiritual movement with its inner life, with its inner strength, with its inner warmth – with everything that makes it a source of soul and life. And on the other hand, when we step out of the narrower circle of our branch of life, we have the representation of our anthroposophical movement, which, as I said, gives anthroposophy a scientific character everywhere, which does present anthroposophy to the world, but uses the thought forms and thought connections that are common in scientific life today. Thought forms and thought connections that are not right for a large number of our members because these members are of the opinion that they do not need all of this. I am not talking about the practical forms of anthroposophy, such as the medical-therapeutic efforts, but rather about what appears more or less as a teaching within the anthroposophical movement.

If we look at the matter objectively, on the one hand we have today everything that is more or less permeated by esotericism, and we find this expressed in the cycles; but it can also be found if those lectures that I am still allowed to give within smaller circles – since I also have to devote myself to the external life of the anthroposophical movement, as is my duty – are examined in this regard. We find it, for example, in the discussions of the Swiss assemblies, and those of our dear friends who have been to Dornach on one occasion or another will find that, in terms of inner esoteric development, what is usually presented there is not something that would not be the right continuation of the old branch and cycle life. This on the one hand.

On the other hand, something quite different, and it must be admitted that it is something quite different: you see how anthroposophy is formed from the concepts of modern physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, psychology, as they are science, or as they have emerged from history, pedagogy and so on, anthroposophy is formed in such a way that it can, as it were, present itself as a science alongside the other sciences that are taught at universities. In terms of the nature of the investiture, however, these two currents are very different from one another. Of course, what is spoken out of the spirit, which has been the sole ruling spirit until the last four to five years, is very different from what has now been placed alongside it, not instead of it. And only because — one would like to say, thank God! — our dear members also feel the duty to take part in everything anthroposophical — while, on the other hand, many are quite indifferent to chemistry and physics and all the other beautiful things that present-day science has — only because these other friends also go to these achievements, which are based on this ground, do those members then find that a character is emerging in the anthroposophical movement of which they believe they have no need, and which they believe is something that scholars can work out among themselves, but which does not belong in the whole breadth of the anthroposophical movement.

One could say that it might have been better – but this is not said in a conclusive sense – if one could have found a way out of the old esotericism into a wider dissemination in the same kind of language; for it is simply the case that anthroposophy must be accepted by today's world, by today's people, if the world is not to descend into decline. And so one could say: Oh, if only Anthroposophy had spread in a straight line from its esoteric beginnings!

Well, it was not like that. It was the case that in the course of this spread, one came up against what was brought to it scientifically and what was formed “underhand”, so to speak. So today we have these two currents side by side, they have them so side by side that one could say - even if this is a little radically expressed -: If someone who simply wanted to find out about anthroposophy was present at the [last] course here in Berlin, informed themselves there and perhaps observed some of what was presented quite critically within themselves, they might have the objection: What is being said may not be correct in their view, but it is said 'scientifically'. But if someone who was just listening from the outside to what was being said in the scientific sense could somehow come to a branch meeting where what is said in the cycles is presented, they would find a different world, a world that is quite different from what is found in the courses and congresses designed for the public. He could say: Out there, it seemed to me as if people might be going astray, but in there they have already gone completely mad!

If we want to look at the matter seriously, we must realize that there is still a deep gulf between what our esoteric work is in the branches and what we have to present to the world externally in many respects. It is the same inwardly, but there is a gulf between the two; and the fact that this gulf is really gaping is due to the fact that the matter was as I have described it: We initiated the spiritual anthroposophical movement out of the most heartfelt and sincere needs, and developed it in this way, but then something came from outside that now stands as a second current and has a scientific character.

The latter is not a direct continuation of the former, not even in the case of those who have come from their scientific studies to work on anthroposophy scientifically. For many of them, it has been the case that they have simply undergone scientific studies and, out of certain needs of the heart, have felt towards their other studies: There is something wrong in science. Then they came to anthroposophy and through it they changed their science. These are completely different paths from those that originally formed the anthroposophical branch. But these things are developing today in such a way that, when they go side by side and there are only a few really active co-workers, it is very easy for such a gulf to form. We simply have not yet had the opportunity to bridge this gulf.

My dear friends, there is a direct path from what is presented externally in a scientific form to the deepest esoteric! And if time and opportunity were given, it could, so to speak, begin with the external, even more scientific character of the one movement, and it could be continued down to the deepest depths of the esoteric life. But so far we have not been offered the time or opportunity to do so. Therefore, those who often approach our movement with the utmost seriousness find this inconsistent character: on the one hand, what is more set down in public literature; then they desire the cycles – and find something quite different. And as much as this bridge exists between the two in essence, it has not yet been created in fact today. Our active co-workers have simply had an enormous amount to do and work on in one movement or another, and so what should have been in between could not be put in the necessary way. This will have to be something that our work will have to take up again one day: This link between what no longer sounds like anthroposophy to many older members and what is outwardly alive in the congresses and courses today, and between what was there in the old branch work and the cycles.

And then there is this, which, in line with a pressing demand of the present, must be brought into the public sphere with the cycle work, so that – I would say – the two things can be placed directly next to each other. You have them standing side by side in the journal 'Die Drei', with which you are familiar, where one of my esoteric cycles has been printed over the course of many issues, sometimes alongside very scientifically written treatises; so that, for those who looked more deeply, the connection was there everywhere, but for those who looked at the different ways of speaking, things were juxtaposed that were fundamentally and deeply different from each other. To some extent, this does appear as something disharmonious in our anthroposophical movement today. We have no reason to relate to this disharmony other than to simply present it clearly to our souls — as clarity in all areas must be what is specifically intended for anthroposophical life. But one of the difficulties we face when we want to present anthroposophy to the world today — and it must be presented to the world because the world demands it — is that we have to present a kind of Janus face, so to speak. We encounter these difficulties everywhere. On the one hand, people read our philosophical and scientific treatises, on the other hand they read the more esoteric works, and thirdly they often read a more or less good combination of the two, and we simply have to be clear about the fact that much of what makes the work in the anthroposophical movement difficult comes from this. And it must also be part of our work to provide those with information when we believe that such information is appropriate: that it is connected with the historical development, that it is as I have characterized it. And in this regard, I would also appeal to the older members not to make things too difficult by acting in opposition to what they may not care about but which cannot be dispensed with in view of the demands that are being made on the anthroposophical movement today. One could even say: if one has gained an inner vision from the laws of the soul's development, which are quite justified and present, for example, from some historical phenomenon, and if one then hears how today our dear younger members – not on the paths by which some older members have gained an inner vision, I might say, as if 'flying' to the point of convincing power, but start with things that are of little interest to many older members: with the elements of physics or even with the elements of mathematics, and then move from these elements through strictly drawn logical conclusions to things that are again of little interest to those who already have the matter, and then do it again and again - and in this way, to a more or less expressed form of what the other person already knows through his quick intuitive way, then many feel as if they are where the deepest secrets of existence have been grasped at a certain level, and now someone comes along, climbs a ladder, then past the things and then back down. Many older members certainly feel these logical climbing skills. But the fact is that these older members should show understanding for the demands of the times and know that this cannot be otherwise, and that we are simply faced with an ironclad necessity.

That, my dear friends, is what I wanted to put before you today, to express to you that there is no will — not in the slightest — to leave the old esoteric paths in the old anthroposophical movement. There is no question of that. The only thing that can be said is that we have been confronted with demands of our time, and so, as much as possible, the esoteric foundations of our anthroposophical movement must of course continue to be cultivated, for there must be a number of personalities today who are so strongly connected with spiritual life that they can achieve what otherwise could only be achieved by mental crocheting — not Haeckel, the naturalist, is meant by this — with a simple beating of the thread. Of course, it can be quite uncomfortable to do this mental crocheting, but it has to be done because, according to their general view, our time has arrived at this mental crocheting. But some people, who have been directly involved in weaving threads from their hearts and their innermost spiritual understanding, must know that the time has come when a wave of spiritual life is breaking into this earthly life from the spiritual world and must be grasped by people as a wave of spiritual life.

I have mentioned before that the period up to the last third of the nineteenth century was actually the time when the intellect of civilized humanity grew stronger. Great intellectual achievements based on the results of natural science were built up in the last few centuries. But with the twentieth century, only the legacy of this intellectual civilization remains, and there is no prospect at all that humanity will progress from the twentieth century into the following centuries by intellectual means, just as it progressed from the preceding centuries into the twentieth century. The intellect continues as it was, but it can no longer be the continuing force in the overall development of human thought. The continuing force is the spiritual life, which has broken into our earthly life as if through special gates.

Now perhaps some will say: Yes, you are talking about the intellect only continuing to live at the level at which it was already, and that the spiritual has broken into earthly existence; but we do not see this spiritual life, the intellect is certainly cultivated, but one sees nothing of the spiritual. I would like to say: So much the worse!

The spiritual is there nevertheless, although people do not see it; it can be found everywhere if one wants to find it. And that is the bad thing: that people do not want to find it, that they close their eyes to it, that they do not open their hearts to it! That is the terrible thing, that must be overcome: that today is already the time when the spiritual life can be grasped just as the intellectual was grasped from the Copernican-Galilean time on, but that people turn away from this spiritual life! But anyone who can turn their spiritual gaze to the spiritual life will see it flowing into our human life everywhere. However, this spiritual life is not yet being taken up, and so we have a desolate, merely inherited intellect. For in reality, the intellect has not advanced further; it is only being carried on in its old form.

While this is the outward appearance of the case, an event of the greatest importance is actually taking place within. I have described some aspects of this event again and again in our branch lectures. Today, I would like to summarize and present some additional information.

If we now consider ourselves as physical human beings, we live here on earth within the forms of existence that older people called “elements”: earth, water, air, fire. Today we speak of the solid material, the liquid material, the gaseous material and the warm etheric. Our organism is woven from this fourfold materiality, as is everything that our organism moves towards between birth and death. Today's man looks at this materiality, forms his world view through his lawful perception of this materiality, which is essentially an external scientific one, even if ancient religious traditions play into today's concepts. But this materiality is based on spiritual beings. The earthly solid is based on spiritual entities from the sphere of the elementary spirits, older intuitive clairvoyance called them “gnomes” and the like. Today's intellectualism regards this as fantasy. What we call them is unimportant, but underlying all that is solid on earth lies a world of spiritual elemental beings who, I might say, in their physicality, invisible to human senses, have a greater degree of intellect, of pure rationality, than we humans have ourselves and who are extremely clever compared to us humans, clever to the point of cunning, clever to the point of speculation, clever to the point of the shrewd foreknowledge of that which always gets in the way of man in the work he does based on his lesser intellectuality. Underlying all earthly solid matter is a world of elemental beings that are truly extraordinarily clever, and whose cleverness is the fundamental character of their being.

And underlying everything that is liquid, watery, is a world of elemental beings that have developed to a particularly strong degree what we humans – on the one hand somewhat more robustly, on the other hand somewhat more neutrally – spiritual elementary beings, which have a sensitive feeling, a feeling that lives into the finest nuances of sensation, that everywhere relives that which people only feel externally. For example, we look at the trees in the forest with our eyes; at most, we feel when we approach the forest or are inside it, how the wind, shaking something, rushes through us, but otherwise we only see the trees moved by the wind; on the other hand, we see, for example, the sun's rays shining. Our perception is relatively coarse compared to that of all beings that belong to the watery liquid element and permeate and flow through it, that go along with all the movements that the tree branches perform in the wind, that move with the clouds, that experience the condensation of water droplets in the clouds, experience the dissolution of water droplets as they evaporate, solidify in the solidifying ice, lose themselves in the vastness as the evaporating water does – and emotionally participate in all of this. This is a second kind of elemental being that populates our earth just as we ourselves and plants and animals populate the earth.

We then have a third kind of elemental being in the airy element, these are the beings that have developed to an intense degree that which lives in our will, which have developed this will to such a strength that this will lives in them as 'will', then becomes outwardly visible as a natural force. We finally have a fourth kind of elemental being, the warmth or fire beings, which have developed that which we carry within us as the power of our self-awareness, as the power of our ego; at the same time, they are the beings that live in all that has a destructive effect within nature. And when we see, for example, how in spring the elemental beings mentioned first look out of the natural phenomena everywhere, with a real clairvoyance based on exact foundations, we see how the fire beings are active in all the destruction of autumn, yes, are most active when what they accomplish is expressed outwardly in cold snow and ice, as in its opposite.

The elemental spirits live in the elements, we are surrounded by them, they are just as present in earthly existence as we ourselves are. These elemental spirits want something. These elemental spirits are not as unfeeling, as stubborn, as closed to the incoming spiritual wave in our age as people often are. People only want to persist in observing the sensual and in thinking about the intellectual aspects of this spiritual world, which underlies the natural elements. These elemental spirits do not close their eyes to the spiritual waves breaking into the earthly, which are everywhere today, to the spirituality that wants to come in. And when I said, for example, that the elemental spirits of the earthly firmament are preferably shrewd and even intellectual, it is only natural that they have no sympathy for a spiritual wave entering the present day. But even if they have no particular sympathy, they do pay attention! They notice that this spirituality is breaking in today and that it carries on its waves a truly deepened knowledge of Christ, a truly deepened knowledge of the mystery of Golgotha. Even the clever beings of the earthly kingdom can see that. But they decide: if people remain stubborn towards the incoming spiritual world, then we will do our part, which would have been futile so far. For in the period from the fifteenth to the end of the nineteenth century, when people mainly developed their intellect, the gnome-like intellectual spirits of the solid, earthly realm could not do anything special, so to speak! They could use their cunning to peek into the earthly world here and there; and those who have perceptions of this peeking know this. But now that humanity is to meet the spirituality that wants to enter, the time has come when the intellect, having fallen into corruption, is only passed down as an inheritance and no longer has any fruitful suggestions - for the intellect decays over time, and if you look at it impartially, you can see it everywhere; if you compare today's scientific work with that of forty years ago in terms of the intellect that prevails in science, one can already speak of the decline of the intellect. Now the time has come when the other beings, who are there just as we humans are, by becoming aware of the incoming spiritual wave, say to themselves:

Now is our time, now we will do something! And they will decide, if people do not do their part, to put all their cleverness and intellectuality at the disposal of the Ahrimanic powers, so that Ahriman will become powerful over an enormous host of elemental beings that inhabit the earth. And these beings, who thus have intellect at their disposal, will be joined by other elemental beings, because man, in turn, will be influenced by the elemental beings, so that the danger of humanity becoming ahrimanized is present. This is a somewhat radical statement, but it is nevertheless a truth.

Forty years ago, if you looked at a person in terms of how they used their intellect intellectually, the person who made the training of the intellect his profession was active in his intellectual training. The human being was there. There were really great minds there, minds that were active; in the schools, minds were there that one could rejoice at the activity of the intellect. Today it is not so, and people seem as if the mind had moved a little deeper, and as if they were producing the mind as a mechanism. One feels how people speak in intellectual terms, but as if the mind were not even involved. There are some very simple phrases that you come across. The further west you go, the worse it is, but it is already taking hold in Germany. If someone writes a sentence and doesn't put the predicate where it is supposed to be for whatever reason, it is stylistically incorrect; and if you go to France, everything is already stylistically incorrect because the language has already become stereotyped. In Germany, you can still turn your sentences around to get different possibilities of expression, but in France people are gradually getting out of the habit of doing that. In the East – Bolshevism wanted to get rid of it, but it will make itself felt again – there is still a certain flexibility in the language. But in general, this flexibility decreases with civilization. It is especially the case with younger people that they talk like mechanisms. They start – forty years ago it would have been interesting to pay attention to how they would continue to talk – but today we already know it, we are no longer interested; they talk like clockwork. There has been – we can see it today, but we want to close our eyes to it – a certain calcification of people, even literally, so that the intellect has indeed slipped down. But Ahriman takes him in. He cannot work through the nervous-sensory system as humans do, but he works through the elemental spirits. What the brains and etheric bodies are for us, the elemental spirits are for Ahriman; he waits until they place themselves at his disposal. But he has them as his brain and as his heart, which has become a leather bag. It is the case that the elemental spirits place themselves at the disposal of the Ahrimanic powers. That is one side of it.

But if we look at the world externally, spatially and temporally, then we have, in addition to these elemental spirits, another world: the etheric world. We must preferably look down at the solid earth, at what surrounds and storms around this solid earth, flows around and flows around it as the water sphere, as the air sphere, which permeates and permeates it as warmth. We must preferably look down and straight ahead if we want to look at these kinds of elemental beings. But we must preferably look into the distance, that is, upwards. After all, warmth still belongs to the earthly, but above the warmth ether lie the light ether and the chemical ether. We must look into the distance if we want to look at the etheric. And when we look at the liquid and the elemental spirits on which it is based, we find a teeming population of individuals that clearly appear to us as single beings; there the number dominates. It is, so to speak, the world of the elemental realms populated by immeasurable elemental beings. But when we look at the ethereal world, there is more than one unit of spirituality living there. In the light ether, we can no longer distinguish the individual elemental spirits from one another, as we can in the air or water element or even in the earthly element. In the earthly element, it is the case that you go out into certain forests, track down some gnome's nest, and - you might say - thousands and thousands of elemental beings can be enclosed in a small globe, and then you are standing in front of a multitude. You have only a small ball in your hand and it is teeming with what it counts. There is the number, there is the teeming, that which forces us to count and which makes us admit that we cannot count at all because it is immeasurable and because every number is immediately exceeded. And of the one who has a spiritual vision, you can not say that he “miscalculates”. You can not distinguish what is there sooner or later; You think you have counted five, and see that you actually had to count eleven. But the six were not added, they were already there. The teeming of the number prevails. But in the etheric everything converges to a unity. Even in the light ether, the elementary beings form a unity. This is even more the case in the chemical ether, and it is completely the case in the life ether. And it was from this feeling that the idea contained in the idea of Yahweh was once formed, the idea of the one God Jehovah. This is the being that is unspokenly connected and composed of the many individual beings and that animates the ether, just as the many elementary beings animate the ether.

But just as when man disregards the irruption of spirituality into our time, then the world of the lower elementary beings connects with the Ahrimanic beings that are hostile to human development, so the luciferic If the forces of Lucifer, which can take hold of everything that is human will and feeling, combine with the ahrimanic beings that are hostile to human development, then these forces of Lucifer will snatch this element from the air and water beings and, as beings of Lucifer, will carry it into the ether.

Only with the help of human beings can the power of the unified God-being, which once designated a past time with the name Jehovah, be preserved in the ether. If people do not pick up the spiritual wave, then the being that appeared as Jehovah as the cohesive spiritual being will have to retreat from the onslaught of Lucifer, who rips the light beings, the chemical beings and the life beings out of the power of Jehovah. And from what I have described, a combined rule over the earthly of Ahriman and Lucifer would arise.

The only way to escape this is for people to gain a new understanding of Christ, a new understanding of the mystery of Golgotha, through the incoming spiritual wave. For the intellect would not die as a result; it would not develop further as intellect, but it would be enlivened by spirituality. It would come out of dead abstraction to a certain inner life. On the other hand, that which lives in human emotions and human instincts would not be taken up by an abstract unity in the etheric realm; it could not become Luciferic. We need a new understanding of Christ, a new understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And we will also come to the right realization of how we need this if we properly consider what is threatening to occur as another grouping in the universe, as another grouping of elemental and etheric beings. Yes, one can really already perceive how, on the one hand, the intellect wants to descend to the Ahrimanic, to the lower elemental beings. On the other hand, it is clearly perceptible how today there is a certain tendency to move away from the actual Christ-being and to immerse oneself in that etheric unity, so that through this immersion, precisely through the denial of the Christ principle, something Luciferic is absorbed.

This, my dear friends, can be clearly seen, and I have actually spoken of this perception here several times. We see how an actual conception of Christ is fading, especially in newer theology. We see how, according to the view of the modern theologian - one need only recall Harnack's 'Essence of Christianity', for example - for many modern theologians Christ is actually denied. “The Son does not belong in the Gospel,” says Harnack, ‘only the Father.’ It could therefore be said that there is no longer any real concept of Christ, only of the one God. There is no longer any awareness of how the Son differs from the Father. It is like a return to the Old Testament and an obliteration of the New Testament. But this is the way to penetrate to the ethereal unity without warming it with the Christ impulse. In short, one sees everywhere how people often unsuspectingly expose themselves to the forces that draw their powers from the ethereal spirits on the one hand and from the elemental spirits on the other.

If, however, people not only find the same ego, the same self-awareness that they have carried up into the spiritual world through the centuries and millennia, but if they are able to gain a stronger hold within themselves through which they can absorb the Christ impulse, and if this stronger self were to develop only as such, it would degenerate into boundless egoism. It is precisely this self, as it grows stronger, that must develop the sense of what Paul meant by the words, “Not I, but the Christ in me!” When the Christ is in this self that has become strong, then humanity will find ways to prevent this regrouping and allow the earth to develop in the right way. Today, if I may express myself so, one must look behind the scenes of existence, where that takes place that remains unconscious to man, if one wants to see how man depends on holding on to the spiritual wave that brings him what he needs to can continue the God- and Christ-intended earthly nature; while if he does not accept this spiritual wave, something else would be formed out of the earth through the intervention of the ahrimanic and elemental beings together with the etheric beings, other than what should come of it. And man would be diverted from his path, for his cosmic destiny and the cosmic destiny of the earth are necessarily connected with each other.

Today, outer scientific life, outer science, is not enough. It can certainly be translated into the anthroposophical, indeed, it will only attain its true thoughts by being translated into the anthroposophical. And much can be achieved by speaking anthroposophically, and not in the external, hypothetical, materializing sense, for example, of the composition of hydrogen and oxygen to form water and of the other physical and other phenomena. But however necessary this may be to correct our increasingly false and erroneous views of the external world, it is all the more necessary, on the other hand, not only to talk about “solid quartz” on earth , of the “solid calcite” and other solids or of various watery substances and of the airy substances, but that we talk about the spiritual beings that we have with the substances and in the substances everywhere. We need not only a physics or a chemistry, but we need a doctrine of the social life of the elemental spirits, of the social life of the ethereal spirits; we need a view of the spiritual life of the world, which is indeed concrete.

But as long as there is a doctrine that only wants to prove that there is no spiritual world at all, an insurmountable barrier has been erected between the world where man is on one side and the Luciferic and Ahrimanic on the other, and that world where man can only form the real tasks of humanity today out of knowledge, including elementary and etheric beings. We must look beyond the exoteric for esoteric wisdom. We must not only ask ourselves about the attractions and repulsions of matter, we must ask ourselves about the cleverness of the elementary spirits of the earthy, about the fine sensitivity of the elementary spirits of the watery, about the will impulses of the elementary spirits of the airy, about the elementary spirits of fire or warmth that permeate everything with egoity; we must penetrate ourselves with the peculiar qualities of the spirits of light and warmth, which in their turn relate partly helpfully and partly antagonistically to the elemental spirits of air, and thus create a balance between them, where we can see an interaction between the spirits of light that have become more air-like and the air spirits that have become more light-like. Here we have the possibility of looking into the evolution of a cosmic body, which I was able to describe in my 'Occult Science' as 'Jupiter'. We must look into the spiritual evolution of the world, in a way quite different from the way in which physical science looks into the evolution of the world today. Here we enter, indeed, a sphere in which the conceptions that men have today about the spiritual must be essentially broadened. This view of the spirit must become familiar to people, as familiar as what they know today of the physical-sensual world. Humanity must learn to think about the relationship of the elemental and etheric spirits to humanity and about the coming of the spiritual wave, which can bring the relationship of the two into the right and necessary relationship for people. We can only speak correctly about the relationship of these beings, about the part they have in an earth that is suitable for people, as well as about the part they would have if the earth were to perish with humanity, if we show understanding for the spiritual wave that is about to break into human civilization and cultural development.

To have ears for what is bursting in, to have eyes, eyes of the soul, to see what is shining in and streaming in and radiating in from supersensible worlds into the sensory worlds for the perception of those beings who, in the world of sense, can see the supersensible if they want to – like human beings – to have an appreciation of these facts, that is what esoteric anthroposophy would like to inspire in those who come together for it.

That, my dear friends, is what I was allowed to present to your souls today, and in doing so I wanted to encourage you again in your souls to study the spiritual world as it may be proclaimed today. Depending on your karma, when the time is right, you will also find a living connection to this spiritual world more and more.

and more, if you do not shy away from taking on board, with confidence – but with a confidence that is based on knowledge, not on authority – what can be extracted from the spiritual world in terms of the highest truths,

My dear friends!

Congresses, such as the first Stuttgart and then the second Vienna Congresses were, have actually become a necessity for the anthroposophical movement, as a result of external pressure. From the very beginning, the anthroposophical movement has worked from within the esoteric, and it is self-evident that an esoteric movement does not appear in an agitative way, but rather seeks its way in such a way that, although it gives everyone the opportunity to hear, it only addresses those people who feel a certain inclination towards it from their hearts and minds, and who then, it must be said, find their way to it in a fateful way. But now, from a certain point on, our literature in particular has spread very rapidly and has thus come into the hands of many people, especially those who have a certain scientific orientation in the sense of the current times. All kinds of scientific schools of thought then began to deal with anthroposophy in a polemical or other way.

This in turn inspired many to defend this anthroposophical worldview with the scientific tools that were their own, and so it came about that – one might say – challenged by the world, the anthroposophical movement had to be active in the most diverse branches of life. It is fair to say that this simply came to us from outside; at first we were not at all inclined to deviate from the old ways of spreading anthroposophy. We were forced to do so.

At the beginning, we were on the defensive on many different fronts. Anthroposophy was attacked, and usually in the most unobjective way. However, a number of extraordinarily capable people gradually grew into the role of defending it, and are indeed able to apply the basic anthroposophical principles and also anthroposophical research to the individual fields. Little by little, work could begin on developing a large number of important branches of life and science in the anthroposophical sense. The fact that publications were then also issued in these various fields meant that the anthroposophical movement was all the more exposed to the most diverse circles, and after a certain time it was simply necessary to go before the general public. From the anthroposophical point of view, too, there were the great issues of the day, at least from the standpoint of culture, to which one had to take a definite stand, for the reasons we have often discussed here. It was this that essentially provided the impetus for something like the first Stuttgart Congress and, now, the Vienna Congress.

Now our friends have set the Vienna Congress a special task. This task was obvious. It was obvious, I would say, from the nature of Vienna – the nature of Vienna within the Austrian nature. And recently there has been a lot of talk among us about the special cultural characteristics of the East and those of the West. From this, one tried to recognize the foundations from which, in the face of the forces of decline that are so active today, forces of the rising will arise. This led to the fact that in this particularly suitable place, in Vienna, this approach was moved to the center of the congress negotiations. The congress was named the “West-East Congress”. This was based on the conviction that we are now at a point in the history of Western civilization where we need to come to an understanding of the entire cultural world of the earth, and this must come primarily from intellectual and spiritual sources.

I have also pointed out here, as was rightly said by an English colonial minister, that the point of consideration for world affairs is actually shifting from the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean. One can say – and this is an extremely significant statement – that in the past, Europe and the connection between Europe and America were what mattered, and what has actually mattered since the fifteenth century, since Asia was more or less cut off from Europe by the Turkish incursion. At that time, a great cultural upheaval took place, and what then essentially became the cultural life of modern times was a Western-oriented cultural life. Now, with the shift in the focus of external cultural life across the Pacific Ocean, the beginning has been made that the whole earth must become one large area to be treated uniformly in terms of all cultural issues. But since understanding and trust are necessary between people who want to have anything to do with each other at all, this must first be preceded by an understanding in the spiritual realm.

If we look across to Asia today, we see everywhere that people are living in the last remnants of an ancient and magnificent spiritual culture, a spiritual culture that has driven out everything else, both in terms of state and legal life and in terms of economic life. We, like these people in Asia, cannot understand the people of the West, how they look at the machine-like nature of the West's external culture, how they find that something machine-like also appears in the external social order, how they look down with a certain contempt on the externalized view of life in the West. On the other hand, we know how the West has produced those cultural forces that must now develop in the future, and how the West also carries a spirituality within it, but which has not yet fully emerged today.

But everything depends on the West learning to look again with a greater understanding at what the East contains, even if today it is definitely producing and even feeling a sense of decline, and on the East learning to look at the West in such a way that it affirms it, not just negates it, as has been the case so far. Of course, a great deal remains to be done in order to create the spiritual foundations necessary for such an understanding. Today, when economic conditions are so extraordinarily pressing for cooperation, we cannot hope that the order of these economic conditions, even if it sometimes appears so, can achieve anything other than a surrogate, which will wait for a definitive solution for so long that it will have to wait until an understanding of the spiritual conditions has been reached that extends to the very core of human nature. Our Congress of Vienna should serve this understanding in a certain way, and I would say in the central intellectual field.

And in this respect, one could indeed indulge in certain hopes. One must take into account the whole Austrian essence in order to find such hopes justified. You see, my dear friends, for many decades people have been predicting the dissolution of Austria, and it has not happened. It took a world war for it to come to this dissolution. At present, the situation is such that the German part of Austria is actually in a terrible position. This German part of Austria cannot, in principle, survive on its own. For however much could be objected to the old Austria, the individual areas that now form the successor states could only advance together for certain reasons within Europe, especially in Central Europe. And this is particularly evident in those parts of the old Austria that are inhabited by Germans, where the purely nationalistic idea will be impossible to implement in the long term.

It is, after all, a purely abstract idea and essentially arose from the fact that, in the absence of a real intellectual life, the national question in the nineteenth century increasingly came to be seen as a surrogate for intellectual life.

What exists today as German Austria has no economic means of surviving independently, and in particular it has no means of having Vienna as its capital. The fact of the matter is that Vienna, in the size to which it has gradually developed, could only survive as the capital of old Austria; now it is much too big for what remains of German Austria, and therefore does not internally provide the conditions for a viable existence everywhere.

But again, it must be said that this Austria, also “German-Austria”, has absorbed cultural enzymes in the course of its development, which nevertheless offer the possibility that precisely this Austria, especially in intellectual terms, could create a bridge between the West and the East, between which it is stuck precisely because of its peoples and its geographical location.

One must only realize the following: In Austria, the “fact exists that the German element forms a kind of cultural basis everywhere. Start from the east of Austria. You will find a pure German people, the Transylvanian Saxons, mixed with Romanian and Serbian ethnic elements in old Transylvania, who had retained their German identity until well into my youth. But the Transylvanian Saxons were an ethnic element that contained a thoroughly German core and a very specific type of German individuality, which was, I would say, a cultural colony.

Then go further up, south of the Carpathians. Hungary did indeed extend as far as these Carpathians. Today, north of the Danube, lies the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia. It used to belong to Hungary. Of course, there is a Slovak population there, and there has been extensive Magyarization, especially through schools, since the 1860s. But the Spiš Germans and the other Germans lived there like a cultural ferment, scattered everywhere as far as Pressburg. And everywhere in Slovak-Magyar culture, the German element lives on the bottom, although in the second half of the nineteenth century it was on the verge of disappearing. From the western part of this German element, as you know, we borrowed our Christmas plays, which were transplanted there from more western German areas centuries ago.

If you go back down to the area between the Theiss and the Danube, that is, to central and southern Central Hungary, you will find a Swabian population, a Swabian-German population. Go to the west of Hungary, where Hungary bordered on present-day Burgenland, and you will find the so-called “WasserKroaten”, a thoroughly German population. So in this eastern part, you will find the formerly immigrated Germans at the bottom of the population speaking other languages. They often adopted the other element in later times, but they were very effective; blood does not deny itself there. And above all, it does not deny itself in the thought forms. Anyone who is well versed in such thought forms knows how to distinguish between them, even if they are still present in Magyar or Romanian, or even if they appear in another language, such as the Germanic elements that migrated there in earlier centuries and were gradually dying out, but which nevertheless continue to have an effect.

If you go over to the present-day western part, to Czechoslovakia, to the former Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, you will again find a German population everywhere at the bottom. Not only that there is such a closed population south of the Erzgebirge, but you will find everywhere - in Prague, for example, about a third or a quarter of the population was German - everywhere, as in the other areas, too, Germans were scattered. The process was definitely such that although German culture gradually disappeared, German culture asserted itself everywhere, even in areas where other languages were spoken.

If you go to the south, for example, in southern Slovenia, in a Serbian area, you will find a district – the Gottschee region – with a small German cultural colony interspersed among it. And you will find a compact German community in northern Styria, in Salzburg, in northern Tyrol, where it meets other populations to the south, but where Germans were scattered everywhere down to the German national borders in Austria. You will then find the compact German population in Upper and Lower Austria. That was the old Austria.

More and more, the individual nationalities came to the fore. More and more, the individual nationalities asserted themselves. But basically, there was no area in which the German element – I would say – had not somehow found its way in, as a force, and was not somehow effective.

But still, Austria was changing more and more. And then it came to the point that more and more of the other nationalities asserted themselves: the Romanian, the Ukrainian, the Ruthenian, the Polish, the Hungarian, the South Slav, Serbian, Slovenian, Croatian and the Slavonic, the Italian, the Bohemian, that is, the Czech. Today we see the process taking hold in the interior of Austria as well. It is hardly possible to say that Vienna is a German city in the other sense, that at least German is still spoken there. But even if it should come to pass that the Slovenian element from the south and the Czech element from the north spread further and further, and that the German character of Austria would disappear altogether, the German forces would still be present throughout Austria as effective forces. But the essential thing is that precisely within that which originated in the German element in Austria, a certain independence asserted itself against all other Germans on the European continent. The Austrian element, however intimately it interacted with the rest of the German character, was always something thoroughly independent. And that came about because Catholicism in Austria retained a certain form.

Now, it is of course very easy to misunderstand me in my present arguments, but since I cannot be sufficiently explicit, I must expose myself to these misunderstandings. It is true that one can, of course, object to much of what was present in the domination of Catholicism in Austria – and this was done within Austria itself. But this Catholicism in Austria always gave Austria and especially Vienna a very specific character. One could see how a liberal wave of cultural life was sweeping over Austria in the 1860s and 1870s, a liberal wave that only looked at – I would say – external forms of thought. But even within these external forms of thought, what was contained in Catholicism continued to have an effect.

You only have to consider how long it actually was that in Austria, with the exception of very specific areas of educational life, no one could actually become an educated person, a truly scientifically leading person, without somehow joining the leading forces of Catholicism. One studied at grammar schools, which were essentially run by monks. The monks were everywhere grammar school professors, for the most part exemplary grammar school professors. The strict scholastic thinking in its further development into the nineteenth century was something that was imposed on the whole of Austrian educational life, and on Austrian scientific life, and which has remained to this day.

We must not forget such phenomena as, for example, that in my youth the textbooks – up to those of descriptive geometry – were written by Benedictine monks or other monks. The individual grammar schools were looked after by the clergy, who certainly had to pass their state exams, but who brought a very specific spirit, a very specific way of thinking, into Austrian grammar schools. The Austrian grammar schools, which one could say only brought down the liberal era, had been liberalized by an excellent man, who, however, made them into excellent grammar schools: by Leo Thun in the 1850s. So that if you really want to understand much of what Austrian educational life is, you have to go to the monasteries, not exactly to the archpriests, not to the archbishops and bishops, but to the monasteries. Throughout the entire 19th century, there was still an incredible amount of learning in the monasteries. The learning that was then expressed by the most important researchers at the university was in the monasteries. The most important researchers had emerged from the monasteries, or if they had not emerged from the monastery, they were still part of an educational tradition that was deeply influenced by the monasteries. Only Austrian Catholicism, until it experienced its reaction at the end of the nineteenth century, was actually a development trend that moved towards an extraordinarily liberal element. You could see everywhere in the monks in the various branches of science how the sharply trained thinking that the monk had acquired from the old scholastic science had an effect on science, and especially on the pedagogy of science, and how only the Catholic, theocratic essence should remain untouched, so to speak. So that actually everything that did not reach the level of a world view developed within Austria, and thus the concept of the sciences in their specialties developed something extraordinarily significant.

You see, one of the most important researchers in the field of modern science, who is now mentioned everywhere, is Gregor Mendel. He was an Austrian religious in Moravia. While we were holding our Congress of Vienna, anniversary articles about Gregor Mendel appeared everywhere. It was perhaps the most interesting side event of our congress that the newspapers everywhere were full of tributes to Gregor Mendel. It was the case that this Gregor Mendel had actually emerged from the monastic education, that he had become a natural scientist who is now recognized everywhere, and whose theory of heredity is regarded as something extraordinary throughout the world. And Gregor Mendel is truly the type of person who, growing out of the Austrian essence, is active in individual fields of knowledge.

But there were many others like Gregor Mendel, people of action – not all of them made epoch-making discoveries – in nineteenth-century Austrian education, so that one can say that it was precisely in the field of science that Catholicism bore its most significant fruit. In addition, there was something else that is often overlooked.

A German who outgrows the Austrian way of life also outgrows a dialect. In addition to this dialect, there is a kind of general Austrian language that is not really spoken from the heart by anyone, but which is all the more suitable for being a language that goes beyond the needs of the day and which has then become the language of science. Because it is elevated above the dialects, it has also found its way into Latin logic in an extraordinary way. In the Austrian form of expression there is something on the one hand that is extraordinarily pliable, but on the other hand there is also something lively. All of this is just there.

If you take that as a basic feature of the Austrian character, then again you also have to take into account the external Austrian character. You see, my dear friends, certainly one could come to Austria in the 1970s, in the 1980s, in the 1990s, one could come to Austria in the twentieth century, one can come now, one finds, of course, in Austria everywhere in a certain sense also that which is otherwise also in the world. The inventions and discoveries, even the scientific achievements come everywhere, of course. Of course, Vienna and Austria have not been spared cinemas and so on. But in all this, there is still this very peculiar essence of Austria. And one would like to say: throughout the entire nineteenth century, perhaps precisely because of its close ties to Catholicism, there was no particular inclination in Austria to become more intimately connected with what was flowing in from outside. The Austrian retained himself when he began to dress in the French or English fashion for my sake, but always something specifically Austrian up to the aristocratic classes.

Now, my dear friends, you know that I don't really want to become a psychoanalyst – you know I have no particular inclination for it – but when it comes to the Austrian character, I feel like saying: external circumstances force you to develop something like psychoanalysis, because when you get to the Austrian character, there is something everywhere that is not fully realized in consciousness.

The Austrians readily absorb everything foreign; in many respects they are even extraordinarily proud of this foreignness. But then, inwardly, in their consciousness, they have no full connection with it. And just as when one psychoanalyzes an individual person, one searches for hidden “soul provinces,” so one is always tempted, when one comes upon the Austrian character, to search for such hidden soul provinces, even in the individual Austrian. If one approaches him with a psychoanalytic eye, one finds everywhere: He carries something with him from earlier. It is buried deep in his unconscious being; it sometimes comes to the surface. But it must first be brought to his attention, or he must do it himself. And if you go about it thoroughly, if you just analyze enough, you will discover in almost everyone, especially in the educated Austrian – in the uneducated, it can be seen from the outside – something that Emperor Joseph, Emperor Franz and everything that came later in the nineteenth century, actually has little to do with it; you go back to Empress Maria Theresa and even further back than Maria Theresa. Something from the eighteenth century comes to light everywhere. Every Austrian has something from the eighteenth century at the bottom of his soul, a hidden province of the soul; just as a psychoanalyst seeks out this repressed region of the soul and then detaches it from the soul, because people have not processed the eighteenth century at all, it is as if the whole of Austria has not fully processed the eighteenth century, as if at some point in time of Empress Maria Theresia this had settled in the soul and then it was brought up again. So that one really has to reckon with an extraordinary amount of instinct, but, I would say, historical instinct. You come across a lot of things that existed earlier, hidden in the heart, when you get to know the Austrian completely, as they say in Austria, inside and out. And in Austria, people try to get to know each other inside and out. All this predestines the Austrian to build a kind of bridge between West and East. Much of what has led to the tearing down of this bridge, what especially the present time in the West and in the East and also in the center just outside of Austria carries within itself, that comes to light when one looks at Austria so superficially , but if you look at the deeper level, you will find that there are hidden soul provinces everywhere, from which much can be brought up to build this bridge between West and East.

You see, with the West-East Congress we were now placed in this life, we were really placed differently than in Stuttgart with the first anthroposophical congress! We were placed quite differently, I would say, by the whole outward nuance in Stuttgart! Yes, in Stuttgart, right, there spoke for my sake = let's say - Hahn next to Kolisko, Blümel next to Fräulein von Heydebrand, Leinhas next to Baravalle. That makes no difference for Stuttgart.

Yes, for Vienna it made a very considerable difference, of course, and you could notice this difference everywhere you listened. You were simply placed in a very special element at this West-East Congress. And our Austrians made no effort at all at this West-East Congress to somehow deny their Austrian identity. For example, I paid particular attention when an Austrian came, and I always thought to myself: now I am curious to see if he will start his speech with “if”. He put a conditional sentence at the beginning! This is something that is deeply rooted in the character. It announces something that works quite differently in the Austrian. On the one hand, there is something in the Austrian that wants to look very thoroughly at the conditions of his own behavior, but on the other hand, there is also something in him that always wants to apologize a little. And all of this can be done better through the conditional sentences than if you thunder out a position.

Yes, these are the things that must be considered if one wants to understand the full significance of this West-East Congress. Isn't it true that everything was geared towards building a bridge between the West and the East? Scientific results, scientific methods, the artistic, everything was considered in this sense.

It is extremely difficult for me to express what I would like to say as impressions; but it seems to me that if I summarize this in a few images, these images could indeed convey some of the impressions that one can have.

You see, in our Austrian speakers at the Congress of Vienna, Austrianness was not completely denied. You could still psychoanalyze the speeches. I hope you won't take offense at this, because it's meant well, and after all, it doesn't do any harm if we can reach a general understanding. You see, there is our extraordinarily capable Kolisko. But if you want to grasp his individuality, if you want to grasp what he presents himself as when he speaks in Vienna, then you have to say: you are actually quite involuntarily led to the question: what kind of monk would he have become if he had sought his path of education in the pre-Deserian era? Well, our dear Kolisko would undoubtedly have become a Dominican, just as Baravalle and Blümel would undoubtedly have become Benedictines, Doctor Schubert would have become a Piarist and Doctor Stein would have become a Cistercian.

So, you see, today we can see – I would even say with our own hands – what was there at the bottom of their souls. I would like to say: someone who has an ear can still hear today from Baravalle and Doctor Blümel the fine spirit that once only the Benedictines had within Austrian education; from Doctor Schubert one can hear what the Piarists had, from Doctor Stein what the Cistercians achieved, and likewise the trained dialectic and sharply contoured concepts sharp-contoured concepts, the scientific method of searching thoroughly, all this, when viewed from this perspective – which is only possible if one takes a cultural-historical approach, as Dr. Kolisko did at the Congress of Vienna – is reminiscent of what was brought into Austrian education by the Dominican element.

I would remind you that Austrian university professors used to be Dominicans. They no longer know this, but in their soul province it is present, they were in an old Dominican monastery! And one must only be aware of the fact that a very old element is present there. The Austrians, and the other numerous foreigners – the congress was extremely well attended from all over the world – also hear this specific coloration, which is then incorporated into the entire congress proceedings. It is certainly the case that because there are so many Austrians among us, our lecturers, especially the Viennese, undoubtedly felt a sense of home in Vienna.

Now, one must just be clear about one thing: the other gentlemen, let's say, our dear Uehli, Hahn, Schwebsch, Dr. Heydebrand, Rittelmeyer, Leinhas, Husemann, Unger, Heyer - yes, in Austria these are the very clever foreign gentlemen who come as guests. And that is how they are perceived: the very clever foreign gentlemen who come to visit, who are only allowed in at the border, if you notice that they are clever, because there are enough of the other kind in the country. You see, I'm not saying this on my own initiative, but only what the mood is: these are the clever guests – just as one has always appointed strangers to the universities, right, who then actually have the task of being clever! That is something that is taken for granted. One becomes more objective. One becomes more objective in Vienna in particular. Then something as magnificent as the first lecture by our dear friend Dr. Hahn was this time seems tremendously incisive. And then, in turn, a certain impartiality that has remained comes into play.

For example, there was something extraordinarily beneficial that came out of the whole event, in that Dr. Schwebsch treated Bruckner with North German thought-forms; and then there was also the Bruckner performance, and something - I would say - not only Austrian, but generally cultural played into the matter. But because it was like that, the congress took on an extraordinarily pleasant character – I am really saying this now, whether someone I am talking about is there or not: I speak in the same way. For my sake, everyone I am talking about could be there.

The congress was given a particularly pleasant touch by the fine lecture given by our dear friend Steffen. In Vienna, we have a particularly fine sense for this nuance. On the one hand, we clearly felt the connection – the Swiss connection. In a sense, there is something Swiss about it, but the Austrian has a small reservation. He feels uncomfortable when he is in Vienna, and the Swiss – he comes by train. He actually expects the Swiss to come on foot and to have stayed in Innsbruck, Salzburg and Linz beforehand, and that people there had already heard of him and that he had written letters to people there. Otherwise, people are too surprised by the one who killed Gessler, aren't they, because that's the Swiss in Vienna after all. And so, at first, what brings the Swiss to Vienna is something amazing, and people are then angry. And that was certainly the case with our dear friend Steffen, that he did not give further lectures. And I am convinced that people would have wanted Steffen to have given at least three lectures of the exquisite subtlety that he gave in Vienna. The only reason I might not have wanted it was because he would have been so well understood that they would not have let him leave. He is needed here in Dornach.

So you see, there were various nuances. Yes, I am not just saying this out of theory, I have already received voices in the last few days that have told me: We could make good use of Steffen in Vienna, can't we have him? But I declined. So not out of theory — as I generally speak out of experience more than it might initially appear.

Well, it's true that I myself have been away from Vienna and Austria for so long that all these things are less relevant to me; but of course, when you enter Austria, you feel all that I have said. And that is why you feel compelled to place your own things in what is there in such a nuanced way that it takes into account what it is all about. For example, I have been away from Austria for so long that people have naturally forgotten that I was ever there and no longer give any credence to the fact that I was there. But Dr. Kolisko, you see, a mishap occurred that was quite fatal at this congress. Dr. Kolisko was invited by the Viennese medical association to give a lecture to this association as early as May 26. Now, this has its downsides; it is always unpleasant to give a lecture on a completely new field, on a completely new treatment method, only to experts, and as they say in Austria, there was a huge fuss, a terrible row, which of course was a bad start to our congress. The commotion did not continue into our congress, which was extraordinarily harmonious in all respects, but the doctors actually stayed away from the congress in their entirety. And since important medical matters were to be discussed in the seminars, this was of course a significant failure of the whole congress. We wanted to engage with the people. But that didn't happen at all. The medical profession wasn't there. And that is something that will probably trouble us for a long time to come, and it will make it extremely difficult to assert the medical side in Austria. And that would have been extremely important for the very reason that medicine in Austria has always had an extraordinarily respected representation.

Just think, if we had succeeded in making even a small initial breakthrough with the medical profession in Austria, it would have been a tremendous step forward for our medical cause. That is something we missed out on. It would not have led to anything if I had advised Dr. Kolisko against attending the conference, because it was not possible, since he had already been invited. On the other hand, we could not say that we would or wanted to withdraw from this invitation. That could not be said either. So there was a certain difficulty. That was the general difficulty, that Dr. Kolisko's excellent discussion was mocked and laughed at, and that it led to the medical profession sabotaging the congress.

But in the case of Dr. Kolisko, something specific was added. Otherwise I would not have said that I had been away for so long. But Dr. Kolisko wanted to come up with something really drastic. So people said to themselves: Dr. Kolisko, the son of a pathologist at the University of Vienna who was still famous in his nineties, who studied with us, who is a true member of the Viennese medical school, who also worked as an assistant in Vienna, yes, can he really do that? He still has the pencil that he bought in Vienna, that was used in Vienna at the time to copy the lecture notes, which he has now sharpened so often that it is now a tiny stump. He is using our pencil to write down the Anthroposophical matter, that is of course not allowed, we cannot allow that!

Yes, you see, that was of course also effective. Such things must certainly be taken into account. And so of course we had this somewhat unpleasant start. But despite that, our congress went really extremely well. It can be said that the individual contributors expressed themselves in the very best way there, and it can be said that the Viennese audience really went along with it in a very unique way.

Now, we must not forget in all of this: the congress was extremely well prepared in a certain direction, and our friends van Leer, Polzer, Breitenstein, Zeissig, Eichenberger and many others went to great lengths, really worked for months in the most intensive way because preparing for the congress requires an extraordinary amount of work to do everything that was necessary to administer it, so that the congress was prepared in a truly extraordinary diligent and dedicated manner. At the same time, it was the case that, for the first time, we were working in full public view, so to speak. Of course, this was also the case with our other endeavors. But it was not the case in the way it was in Vienna, where we worked in full public view and the Congress was taken as something that the whole Viennese public took for granted as being their concern. The whole of Vienna's public was involved with this congress, and of course all kinds of phenomena arose from that; for it is natural that people could not immediately digest everything we had to give them, everything we had to present to them.

But it must be said that, both in the way the lectures were received and in the way the eurythmy presentations were received, which were never actually as warmly received as in Vienna, and also in the way, for example, the declamatory was received, everywhere it has been shown that with a certain artistic feeling, apart from listening only to the dogmatic, in an artistic grasp lay only that which actually came towards one.

And so it is precisely at this congress, with its artistic aspects – with the Bruckner performance, with the performance of the Thomastik Quartet, with the very beautiful evening that was organized by Mrs. Werbeck-Svärdström, ärdström, who has supported this congress with her art in a truly devoted way. In all that we have been able to offer artistically, and in the artistic reception of the lectures, there has been a very special atmosphere. And at least the feeling will have remained there that one would have to deal with the problems that were at issue, that the question of East-West in such a way, which goes back to the spiritual, must actually be tackled.

And in this respect, Vienna was a well-chosen place, that is, the given place, because in no other city would one have been able to feel just as much the need to grasp the matter spiritually today. The fact is that this Austria, which is so terribly afflicted today, is not really paying much attention to the other areas of life; they go on as usual – or rather, they do not go away. But precisely because everything else is already so far in decline in this rump of Austria, in this “German-Austria” with the much too large city of Vienna, that is why people there turn to the spiritual. And that is precisely the advantage of Austrian Catholicism, that it has never sworn by dogma like any other Catholicism. Austrian Catholicism is actually much more based on looking, on feeling. Even within the clergy, the dogmatic is something that is respected and cultivated, but it is not what actually has an effect. In Austria, people do not think that they have to swear by a dogma or be as strongly opposed to a dogma as they do in Switzerland or Germany. A dogma is something that is also regarded more like a work of art.

And so this very ancient Viennese culture, with its strong artistic influence, has indeed been extraordinarily receptive to what we were able to bring from our side, especially from an East-West point of view, so that it really must be said: everything went as each individual event increased more and more.

And when the conference was over, it became clear from talking to people in Vienna that the conference was seen as a strong stimulus everywhere, quite apart from the fact that it was possible to see how strongly what had emerged from anthroposophy in recent years had taken effect in Vienna, particularly in certain sections of the population. It is the case that, for example, the threefold social order is very much on people's minds there, without it being mentioned, without anything being said about its origin. They are thinking in this sense, in this style. So, looking at the course of the congress itself, one must say: I know, of course, that there has been a lot of grumbling and there will be a lot more, the worst is yet to come in this regard, that is not the question now. But one must say: there is a growing interest, a participation of all sections of the population.

On the last evening, a number of workers who had attended the entire congress appeared before me and expressed their great interest. Other groups, including some that used to belong to the upper classes, also showed great interest. This congress has already had such an impact that one has to say: It means something within the outer element of our anthroposophical movement. And of course we will have an extraordinary amount to learn from what happened there, because now, for once, complete outsiders were present who, even though they emphasized that they disagree with much or even everything, at least see the matter as something that needs to be addressed.

This is something that, if understood in the right way, can be pursued very specifically in the wake of the Congress of Vienna, so that the world will judge: this is something that a person who cares about something must take into account and deal with today, not only with the forces of decline but also with the forces of the rising.

It can certainly be said that apart from the external success, which was indisputably there in the benevolent reception of all our speakers, the approval that our speakers received, the approval that our artistic performances received, there was also undoubtedly a certain internal success. And from this, in turn, new duties arise for us, duties that are actually of a very profound nature. For we will again have to become a little more broad-minded if the congress is to be what it can be. It is precisely under the effects of this congress that we will have to become more broad-minded again. It is absolutely necessary that we do not close ourselves off within the Anthroposophical Society, but that we draw the threads to everything that confronts us today, even if it often has a very unclear striving within itself; that we also not avoid coming into contact with our opponents in those relationships that can at least open up the possibility – even if one has to be a fierce opponent – of somehow engaging with each other in certain forms. This is something that is at least imposed on us as a duty.

Another duty is that we must try to work out ever more clearly the fact that anthroposophy can truly work fruitfully in all areas of life. So that one can say overall: the Congress of Vienna is a kind of turning point in relation to what the anthroposophical movement should be.

I do not believe that I have left anything to be said about the details of the Vienna Congress unconsidered, although I have spoken in seemingly general terms. But I believe that one can only understand the Vienna Congress if one understands it in terms of the whole will of the anthroposophical movement and if one understands it in the way it was able to work into the specific Austrian being. And there it has worked in a characteristic way. Those of our friends who were present from all countries will have felt this, and I believe that on the one hand the anthroposophical movement has every reason to welcome with deep satisfaction the fact that so many friends were really there from all over the world, and that on the other hand these friends will not regret having taken part in this event in Vienna.

I do not want to fail to explicitly mention in this reflection that it gave me great satisfaction that this call to come to Vienna found an echo in so many of our friends in different countries, that so many came. It was important that a great many of our friends were there to take away what was said, sung, played and so on. But it was also important that a great many of our friends take with them the feeling that created a special atmosphere there. That is how I wanted to describe this congress.

Concluding words at a meeting for the orientation of members.

Some time ago, a few young theology students came to me to talk about their inner struggles, and the way they spoke gave the impression of the utmost seriousness. This was because, in their words, there was a very specific undertone of the soul that was not clearly expressed at the time, but which was extremely strong in these younger souls. If I am to characterize what actually manifested itself as this underlying resonance of the soul, it is this: they were young theologians who were about to complete their studies and who looked ahead to their future with a certain sense of responsibility, but who looked back on what they had lived through during their studies of theology had gone through, with a certain bleakness, at least looking back on it in such a way that they showed: they do not feel able to really do justice to the responsibility they felt towards their task.

It is obvious to think about the source of this underlying feeling, which was basically a kind of inner disharmony. It came from the fact that in the present, the most earnest souls, those souls who want to take their life's task seriously on the basis of religious work, cannot take with them from their studies the inner strength that is necessary to carry out this mission.

Now, it was the case that at that time this unspoken thing that came from these souls affected me more than what was said, that this or that was to come.

Now, my dear friends, you have heard a lot today from a theological point of view about the causes of these inner soul disharmonies. On such an occasion one would like to point out that a long time ago a large number of people felt the need for something that we all know here and that has been characterized today in its relation to the religious questions before you: the need arose for anthroposophy. And that something is being sought in anthroposophy that is missing where it should not actually be missing is shown by the fact that, in the past, young life beginners, if I may put it that way, came to the very conclusion that they should at least ask how one could come to have the strength of which one had the dark awareness that one needed this strength, and one could not find it where it should actually be given.

Since Dr. Geyer, Dr. Rittelmeyer and Dr. Bock have already discussed on previous occasions what theology, as it is offered today, has gradually become, I do not need to explain to you how little the one who is chosen to proclaim religion, to work religiously, can see himself supported by theology as it is. Anthroposophy has also occasionally had the opportunity, albeit not in a very intensive way – but that may also have its reasons – to see the illumination of contemporary theology in anthroposophical events. Perhaps some of you were there. A representative of today's theology turned up and spoke against what Dr. Geyer, Dr. Rittelmeyer and Licentiate Bock had said. He presented his view of theology to anthroposophists. If I pick out the most important thing in that speech — the other had even less content —, it is that this gentleman said to the young theologians, who now want to be given the strength to work religiously in the world, “Oh, we don't need any of that, what anthroposophy says. We don't need other teachings and insights that speak about God, about the divine and so on, all that actually hinders religious life. The most important thing is that the divine breaks through everywhere.” – This gentleman repeatedly stated that the divine breaks through everywhere. This breaking through of the divine, he emphasized so sharply that I could not think of anything else but that when he now teaches his theological course at the university, he always talks about this breaking through of the divine. Well, certainly no one sitting there got an opinion, an idea, a feeling of where and what is breaking through. Yes, where? Everywhere.

If you really look at these things with attention, you have to say: it's just bleak. And it's so incredibly bleak because the people who are mostly appointed as official representatives, especially in the theological field, have no idea how far removed they are from all that religion was actually founded on. It is indeed the strangest phenomenon that in our time people have emerged who have set themselves the task of proving that there was no Christ at all, but that Christ formed himself as an idea out of social life, after the Near Eastern, Greek, and Roman world had entered a certain stage. Then people would have had such ideas, and that out of social need, and would have made the idea of the Christ out of it, which then just lived on and held people together.

Yes, my dear friends, there is the peculiar phenomenon that Christianity was founded and now a person feels the mission to place himself in a real Christian community today with the task of actually destroying Christ. Representative of such a debate was, for example, the theologian Kalthoff. Well, there are man-eaters, and there are those who don't eat the whole person, don't they, who leave something over. Yes, such a Kalthoff, he destroys the whole Christ. Others did it more partially, as already mentioned, by proclaiming as the result of theological research into the essence of Christianity: What happened in the garden, of which Christian tradition says that Christ rose there, is not known, but the belief in resurrection - or actually the person in question says: the Easter belief - emerged from this place and then spread further. - Well, it doesn't destroy the whole of Christ, but it is a good part of it.

And you see, you don't have to go far to find that - it was in Basel, as I have already pointed out - a theologian felt compelled to provide a kind of very

proof that there is still much that is Christian in the present day, but that at any rate theology is no longer Christian. During his professorship in theology, Overbeck wrote an excellent little book entitled “On the Christianity of Our Present-Day Theology,” which also made an extraordinary impression on Nietzsche.

Yes, you see, my dear friends, with just these few sketchy words I would like to suggest that one must look at something bleak if one wants to look at what confronts young “theologians who, after studying theology ‘through and through with hot endeavor,’ are then to stand before the communities and introduce these communities to the experience of the living Christ.

But now we can also look at the picture from the other side, from the side of the faithful. From the side of the faithful, it appears that these believers have an honest need, an honest longing for a revival of spiritual strength within themselves. But one cannot say how nothing is the nothing that these believers actually feel is coming towards them most of the time.

Now, my dear friends, in describing all this with a few sketchy words, I actually feel as if I have to squeeze every word out of myself. I would rather not talk about it at all. Why? Because it is something that, when you take it completely seriously, can no longer be characterized because it has lost its content. But precisely when one, I would like to say, with a compressed chest, wants to recall in words what actually lay at the root of it back then, when young theologians came to talk about their needs, precisely when one really visualizes this, then one will also understand that one can look with deep satisfaction at those who have spoken here before you today and who, out of their intimate knowledge of what it means to live this life, have spoken out in favor of a renewal of the religious life of humanity, and have not only spoken out in some vague, abstract, idealistic way, but have spoken out in the way that needs to be spoken out today if it is to lead somewhere. Perhaps some of you were even surprised that there was so much talk about worship and the necessity of worship. Well, precisely because everything

that has developed outside of Catholicism in recent times has been so very much outside of the cultural-religious and has developed more and more outside of this cultural-religious, precisely because of this, the intellect has been driven more and more to the surface. Ultimately, religious life became the domain of the intellect. Whether a preacher delivered his sermon in a somewhat rougher voice, which was taken to mean that he was more knowledgeable and reflective, or whether another preacher delivered his sermon with less emphasis on being knowledgeable for for easily understandable reasons and therefore his words sounded more in certain unctuous emotional nuances, that didn't make a very big difference in terms of the presentation, at least not in terms of really standing in an immediate spiritual way.

You have to bring all this to mind if you want to, I would say, gain the right heart for what has been said here today. Now, you yourself have sought a path to the spiritual by becoming an anthroposophist.

When I was approached with the matter I have just described, I had to say to myself, in view of the seriousness with which the whole thing was approached: here something is wanted in a particular field of anthroposophy, and it must be fulfilled as well as it can be fulfilled. And although I am completely down to earth, leaving the anthroposophical movement to be anthroposophical, as it has been so far, and certainly not feeling any kind of mission to found a religion myself, I still felt that I was obliged to actually fulfill everything that was asked of me in terms of giving content to this religious movement. And so it has come about, in the way it has been described to you, that this religious renewal movement will soon begin its work.

It is self-evident that this religious renewal movement should not be confused with the course of the anthroposophical movement itself. What I wanted to add here at the request of the honored speakers this evening is this: that in this case anthroposophy was confronted with a need that arose from religious life itself. And that is actually what should be particularly emphasized now that this religious renewal movement wants to get down to business in terms of its work. It was not the Anthroposophical Society that wanted to step forward and say: I now want to found a religious renewal movement. Rather, the longing for renewal arose from religious life itself, and Anthroposophy was sought out to provide the content for this renewal idea. And so, the content of Anthroposophy will be there, waiting to be asked for, and insofar as it is asked for.

But it is also up to you, my dear friends, who are Anthroposophists, to show understanding for this matter, but active understanding based on the matter itself, by contributing on your part to the fulfillment of those wishes that Dr. Geyer, Dr. Rittelmeyer and Mr. Bock, who are now facing with their whole personality all the storms that will undoubtedly come when this movement steps forward into the world.

We have indeed experienced many such storms in relation to the Anthroposophical movement. Believe me, my dear friends, even if what was to be experienced passed by many anthroposophists in this way – I am not saying anything bad, but only pointing out facts, that these anthroposophists closed their eyes and slept gently, even if some of these storms became bigger and bigger and stronger and stronger because they were not paid attention to. I do not wish to bore you, for if I talk at great length about these things, then again — although the present company is always excepted, well, then we imagine we are speaking to those who are absent —, then again this state of sleep could occur, which always occurs when how strong the storms are that are battering against our movement from the outside, and then we find that we are not there to be talked about in polemics and the like; so we turn to those who treat us in the way that is happening today. One should not oversleep that! You see, I just want to explain the matter by telling you a little story from recent times. A few days ago in Vienna, a man was arrested for advertising all kinds of dance performances and then, under the guise of all kinds of dance performances, carrying out criminal, immoral acts with young people. And then, in these days, one could read an article by someone who has also written about the Viennese anthroposophists, which began: “I have long since pointed out the harmfulness of Steinerism, and it is absolutely necessary that we now finally learn from such excesses of Steinerism what needs to be done.” Well, it is true that in a sense such things grow to monstrous proportions if the will is not there to be with one's whole personality with the one to whom one's thoughts turn.

Therefore, I would like to take this opportunity to point out once again that anthroposophists should understand if personalities - first and foremost those who have spoken to you today, but also those who will initially work actively for this religious renewal - have to face all the storms that can be expected in our time when people want to work honestly and sincerely from the spiritual realm. It is always a little unpleasant that it is supposed to be heard in our time. But it is.

Therefore, at least those who have the opportunity to understand something about spiritual movements and spiritual currents must also be fully engaged in them with their whole soul and approach with understanding those who are seeking such understanding, first of all in the Anthroposophical Movement. Because if it is not there, one might well ask: Where should this understanding begin today? And it must begin. For it is self-evident that this religious renewal cannot be limited to the Anthroposophical Society, but only makes sense if it takes effect outside the Anthroposophical Society. But we in our circles have a great need to show understanding for it.

I just wanted to add this to what has been presented to you today.

The First Goetheanum in the History of Architecture

It is, of course, a matter of the fact that when one looks at something artistically, a great many intuitions or imaginations run in a region that is too sharply contoured when one attempts to describe the unconscious processes — or intuitive tive and imaginative processes — that are, when you realize something, aren't they, exactly the same; the subconscious processes and the imaginative and intuitive processes are the same for the result, for the production, for that which arises. And it is always dangerous to bring these things too much into consciousness through intellectual considerations, because it is very easy to lose sight of the actual field of interest.

I would say: this reflection would have been extraordinarily beautiful if it were a matter of showing how, in a certain sense, certain formations of the human being in different fields go hand in hand in the development of humanity. Let me give an example: the archetypally significant thing for the content of this examination of the cross is that, from the perspective of world history, analytical geometry first considers the coordinates, that is, the transformation of the old Euclidean geometry, which worked directly with intuition, into constructions with the cross: we have to trace it back to a very specific developmental force in human development. In the time of Descartes, this tendency to introduce the cross into mathematics arose through Descartes himself. Now we can – and this is what you also wanted to say – not, in fact, parallelize the emergence of the cross shape [...] in architecture. I think this parallelism is what you wanted to point out?

Isn't it true that if we now understand this in such a way that in the course of human development certain links or elements, let us say, within human nature are detached from the whole of human nature, then such parallel phenomena are extraordinarily significant.

We can say: If we go far back in human development, we find man more as a whole and he also feels more as a whole. The further we come up, the more we find that individual elements of human nature are at work as what man then feels within himself. Then the purest feelings can arise, which then together make up the human being.

If we have to assume that the invention of analytical geometry is based on a very specific use in our physical nervous system, the use of organs in our physical nervous system that were not used separately before, then the emergence of this analytical geometry, built on the cross, is an external symptom, proof that man has grasped certain inner parts of his being. Then he can just as well grasp others at the same time, and a specialization arises in what he will bring forth.

In this way we come to what is probably ever more interesting and ever more interesting. And that is what the lecture offered: the prospect of an interesting and ever more interesting psychology, historical psychology in the development of the human soul. Such things, grasping the matter much less inwardly, are also taken up by Spengler in his book, for example. It is certainly right that we can view the development of the human soul in this way.

On the other hand, with regard to the actual study of art, art history, we are too distracted from the artistic grasp when we bring up the other parallel phenomena. In this respect, one thing was extraordinarily interesting about the lecture: the explanation of the relationship between the shape of the cross and the two-dome shape, namely to the intersection of the two circles here at the Goetheanum. That is something that can actually be said. But then it is perhaps necessary to lead back into the artistic again.

Because in fact, it seems to me – I don't want to talk in a very abstract and intellectual way here, because one doesn't like to do that when one has done something artistically – but it seems to me that when we go up from older times, say Egyptian, especially also Near Eastern , that we then pass from an eminently artistic form — even if we still take the Greek —, from an eminently artistic form through a less artistic one, when we come up to the Gothic and to the forms that go hand in hand with the use of the cross shape in mathematics. We come to something less artistic because, basically, we are entering into something more mathematical.

If you take the intersection of these two lines and then the intersection of the circles, mathematically, in one direction, that is basically what falls under one and the same category. Because, taken synthetically, the straight line is a structure that does not have two ends, but a single endpoint. Whether I go here or here (right, left), I always come to the same endpoint. So I can say that if I follow the line here, I have a closed line, because it closes, the line; only the closing is stretched out to infinity. This line closes just as well. And in reality, in the shape of the cross, I still have the intersection of two circles, correctly the intersection of two circles, only these two circles have been distorted into the abstract, namely into straight lines – the straight line is flattening out compared to the round – these two circles have been distorted into flattening. The whole formation, understood artistically, has been blown up into the boundless. But by fading into the boundless, the artistic is driven out to a certain degree.

You can therefore use these two intersecting straight lines as an axis of coordinates (arrow). If you use them as an axis of coordinates, you get coordinates that give a curve. That is, from the abstract of the coordinate axis system you get the concrete, the vivid, the immediately vivid of the curve, where you can begin to feel the matter.

Here you have to think, and it is not at all easy for you to understand that a straight line – to put it synthetically – only has one end point, not two. With a curve, you will feel that a circle has a different equation in the coordinate system than an ellipse. The ellipse has a different equation than a hyperbola, and the hyperbola has a different equation than a parabola. And you will now feel when you are shown that – let us say here a hyperbola branch is on a design, then this has developed in the artistic from an essentially abstract one, which has passed over to the concrete. Art is thus, as it were, led to the concrete as if by an inner compulsion. Everywhere we see that if we are to feel something, we must be pushed towards the concrete.

Now, if you think that I look at these two circles that intersect as a coordinate axis and construct the corresponding coordinates for myself, then I would already get in the coordinates what I have to treat in any case, as I am already treating in the coordinates, that is, I allow the same treatment to occur that I allow to occur when I come to the figure. So I have coordinate figures. Here, for example, I have circles – I could just as easily have ellipses if I wanted something different – so I have figures that have already been transformed into concrete figures. So I am already starting from what is there as concrete figures, and let that be my starting point. What will be next? What will be the result if I relate to my figures in the same way as to a coordinate axis – if you expand the word axis, you can of course only do that – if I relate to the figures as a coordinate axis in the same way as I relate to the cross as a coordinate axis here. What will come out of that?

With the cross I get a figural coordinate axis – a figural cross, that is, a figural coordinate. If you follow it further, it leads directly into spiritual life itself. So if you follow this argument consistently, in the same sense that we go from the cross extending into infinity to the merely figural, which recreates life, you must absolutely go further and enter into life itself. That is to say, what is being striven for above all at the Goetheanum is that which, through Gothic and Baroque and Rococo, strove out into the more indeterminate, into the more intangible, that this in turn is summarized in the directly experienceable, that everything is summarized in the experienceable. And with that one can then come across into the qualitative.

And when you get into the qualitative, then of course you have to conclude exactly as the esteemed previous speaker had to conclude. You can then become aware that in the further development of architecture, it must actually be a matter of overcoming the crucifix, Christ on the cross, the dead Christ, through the Risen Christ, through the Christ who has been led back to life. And if we can accomplish this in architecture, then the mission of humanity in the future is actually the one that truly encompasses the whole meaning of the earth: to come from the crucifix, from the dead Christ, to the resurrected one, that is, to the one who appears again as revived or as revived reappearing - better said, to the one who has risen. We can only do that if we, like the speaker, have the experience that arises from total feeling, but we can only have this experience in architecture if we have the total feeling.

Now, however, you could describe the wide stream, I would say. The facts are much more concrete than the esteemed speaker suggested. Perhaps some of you here today remember a lecture I gave here a long time ago, in which I pointed out how certain Near Eastern pre-Greek buildings can only be understood if they are seen as representing people lying on the ground and raising themselves up with their heads – naturally translated into the architectural – certain Near Eastern buildings.

If we then go further up, as man stands up more and more, as he rises, stands up from lying - that which actually comes to the fore in the architectural form that has been particularly characterized today - we have not yet fully , the human being who has not yet fully risen, but who also asserts himself outwardly, as is still the case in particular with the Rococo and Baroque, where one does not merely show the human being's forms, but almost as if he were wearing clothes. This is just a little more artistically conceived. Now, my point is this: if we look at the Orient, we can see everywhere how the idea of building has actually emerged from an intuitive understanding of the human form.

Now, however, imagine, when you look at such forms – parallel forms, hyperbolic forms, elliptical forms – the building forms from the period that has been characterized today, then you must have the feeling: you are looking at them, it is a figure that you are looking at, traceable to the cross-shaped figure that you are looking at. Here the cross is, or rather, it is not there. Mathematically speaking, it is more correct to say: it is not there. The ellipse is there, and to the ellipse I then add the cross and then find the equation of the EIl here. So the ellipse is what matters. I have to add the cross. What I look at is the figurative, the reproduction of the living.

Now please follow me in the next step: cross, reproduction of the living, figurative; I have to look at it. Figurative has meaning only when I look at it. If I then want to think it, I can trace it back to the cross. But now think: instead of the cross, I have the two intersecting circles. These are now my complicated coordinate axes. If I now want to move on to what corresponds to the figurative, what is that?

You can only imagine this in concrete terms, just as you can imagine the mathematical process of drawing up a coordinate system and making a figure here, looking at the figure and thinking in terms of the coordinate system – in the same way, you can go over to the construction site, imagine yourself as a living person in this coordinate system, and the figure is yourself.

What arises is you with your feelings, you with your soul. There is the most intimate interpenetration of what is built and what can be experienced. Now you have complete possibility, the congruence between forms of world view and what you experience inside, as with the human body and the human soul. The human body is also configured in all its parts to the soul, just as a coordinate system is configured to the figures. And so it is there with the coordinate system and the human being. So that you have here, in a very lively presentation, achieved that which otherwise has to be constructed must be experienced. And when it is experienced, then the human being stands in this coordinate system with what he experiences in it. In short, the one who stands in this Goetheanum, together with the Goetheanum, represents soul and body, very organically within, without having to interpret it or anything like that.

If you continue your meditation, you can go back to the Gothic style. I have often said that a Gothic cathedral is not complete when it is empty. It is only complete when the community is inside it – just as a Greek temple is only complete when the god is inside it, or at least an image of the god.

The Gothic cathedral, which has the shape of a cross – and Gothic cathedrals always tend to take the shape of a cross; you have that inside the Gothic cathedral – it is the cross, the shape of a cross; the cathedral itself is built on that. The congregation is inside it. The cross extends into infinity on all sides, into the immeasurable. It corresponds to that time in which the idea of God led into the immeasurable, where one wanted to seek God only in the expanses.

Now we bring God into a house where he can really live so vividly that man can partake of him. So at the same time, you can also carry out the internalization of the idea of God in this progression of architecture.

Now, I don't attach any importance to the individual contents that I have said, but more to the way in which I have now presented them: The whole matter, again, transferred from the constructive, more intellectual, to the artistically rounded, where one must point out that in the transition to the artistic, everything always leads directly into life, and one constantly wants to move from the concept - I would say - into drawing and painting itself. Even when talking, one would much rather not talk, and above all not think, but one would like to draw and paint and point to the living.

So that is what I actually meant. It is extremely interesting when one starts from such considerations.

Now, I believe that not only in a historical sense was it very beautiful, as the lecturer pointed out, that architecture must see a certain perspective before it, but it is also important that we train our thoughts, which follow the development of humanity, more and more in such a way that they turn from thoughts into living spirit, so that we get beyond abstract thinking to the living spirit within us. For we as humanity have now thought long enough. We must learn to experience spiritually again.

It shouldn't be just any criticism, but only a small addition.

On behalf of the administrative board of the Johannesbau Association.

We should be clear about one thing: as long as we are forced to meet in such halls, whose forms belong to a declining culture, our work must more or less meet the fate of that which is doomed. The spiritual current will only be able to bring about the new culture that it is called to bring when it is granted to work right down to the purely physical design of even the walls that surround us. And spiritual life will work differently when it flows out of spaces whose dimensions are determined by spiritual science and whose forms grow out of spiritual science. And you can be sure that spiritual science would come to nothing if it did not find its way into the hearts of those who are willing to make the sacrifices that a building like the one planned in Munich demands.

(From the Stuttgart speech at the laying of the foundation stone of the local lodge house in January this year)

The spiritual science is facing obstacles whose retarding power has become dangerous. The stream of spiritual life has become broader and deeper. The number of listeners is growing, and the spiritual-scientific truths proclaimed today have taken on a character whose intimacy demands sacred places instead of the dance and concert halls that still serve their proclamation today. And even if the strong power that works among us seems to defy all obstacles, the stronger it works, the more everyone feels the contradiction of the circumstances, and everywhere the striving to create one's own spaces is making itself felt, which can accept and nurture the unfolding life with dignity.

The marked disproportion is most pronounced in Munich, where the spiritual work in the mystery plays is most dependent on external support and where the largest number of listeners flock to the cycles. The cycle participants are familiar with some of our difficulties from their own experience, albeit only the smaller part; but they have been able to deduce from the descriptions which obstacles stand in the way of staging the mystery plays on the rented stages.

But even if we were to dismiss all these external difficulties, if we were to accept that many of our friends remain distant from the cycle because the conditions under which we work make it impossible for them to follow with the appropriate attention, if we wanted to sit back and watch the best forces in this struggle being wasted on external obstacles, we must not forget that these powers of obstruction are already making the best part of the mystery plays impossible. Perhaps the audience was not aware of what could not have escaped the performers: mystery plays on a stage that was used for a modern operetta a few hours before and a few hours after the performance must remain plays. Mysteries can only be brought to reality in places of worship.

The spiritual scientific work, in its wonderful synthesis of art, science and religion, is to lead most directly and vividly into spirituality, but it is confronted with barriers that mean a “non licet”. For the inviolable laws of the spiritual world itself forbid further giving.

Thus, with unmistakable clarity, necessity itself, through which, according to Goethe's dictum, God reveals himself, demands a work from us that cannot be conceived as greater and more beautiful and that now, as it emerges more and more, not only serves practical purposes, but one might say becomes an end in itself. And this end in itself is the deeper meaning of that language in which necessity demanded – if we understand it correctly.

Architecture has to do with the same forces that shape the human physical body. Today's human body is built according to the dimensions that were prescribed in Noah's Ark; and the Gothic cathedrals preformed the physicality of the mystics of the later Middle Ages. Thus, what our eyes see and our hands grasp has an effect into the distant future, forming forms and determining destiny. And it is not irrelevant whether future forms and dimensions are dictated by the principles of purely utilitarian contemporary culture, which means obstacles upon obstacles for what is to come, or whether physical forms are formed that are in harmony with what is to be realized in the future.

And what applies to the microcosm has a corresponding meaning for the macrocosm. We know that we are at a turning point in time that demands extraordinary things of us. The fate of the world depends on what we do. What we do is not irrelevant.

The perspectives suggested here may seem too bold; but they alone explain the words spoken in January of this year at the laying of the foundation stone of the Stuttgart Lodge, which are set before these lines. These words made us aware of the responsibility that rests on us, the responsibility to the powers that shape the world. And in the face of this responsibility, all conflicting concerns had to fade away.

We hear the same words every cycle: “We cannot cover the subject exhaustively; with the limited time available, we can only hint at it; if we really wanted to delve into the subject, we would need weeks and months.”

A changing audience follows the spiritual scientific teachings. Short lessons, and of the short time half and more must be spent saying things that have already been said elsewhere, but which are indispensable as foundations, and so it is laborious to have to start almost from scratch again and again in order to be able to build a little further. And we have been grateful for this slow building up, which allowed us to consolidate the foundations to some extent. But what was necessary in the time of elementary instruction becomes fatal when we proceed to deepen and broaden our knowledge and insight beyond the first stages. And here, too, we are confronted with the serious question of whether we want to let the work come to a deadlock where it can still have an effect in breadth but not in depth.

The idea of a School of Spiritual Science is the necessary consequence that must be drawn from the delivery of the spiritual knowledge that our time has been honored to receive. If we review the co-workers active among us, it is already quite possible today to find teachers for almost all individual fields who, as far as we have been able to ascertain, would be willing to take on a teaching position. Only then, however, would spiritual science be able to fulfill the task that has been set for it from the very beginning: to fertilize all areas of life. The School of Spiritual Science will take up the developable knowledge of the academies where its official representatives have allowed it to become frozen in materialism and lead it up to the knowledge of the spirit and into that temple in which its union with art and religion makes the living mystery possible.

When the “Theosophical-Artistic Fund” was established in 1910 to ensure the Mystery Plays during the Munich Cycle, it was done with full recognition of the indispensability of a building of our own. However, the realization that the collection was so small meant that the realization seemed a long way off. It was only the urgency of the situation, which the Stuttgart lecture brought home to us, that forced us to look for other ways to make the realization possible.

The idea of borrowing interest-bearing capital initially led to the creation of an interest-bearing foundation in the form of tenement houses for Theosophists, which were to surround the intended building and shield it from the street. The Johannesbau-Verein, which was constituted in April of this year as a registered association with the rights of a legal entity, took on the project. After a short time, it was able to purchase a suitable property free of mortgages with only a small down payment from the Theosophical Artistic Fund, thanks to interest guarantees that some of its members were able to provide.

Thus he could hope to build the residential buildings with the first mortgage to be taken out by the bank and to transfer the capital of the second mortgage to the “theosophical-artistic fund” for the Johannes building. The rents yield considerable surpluses for amortization over and above the interest. Once the mortgages have been amortized, they will provide a permanent income that alone would be enough to secure the future of the festival and the work of the School of Spiritual Science.

Since the apartment buildings are to be occupied only by Theosophists, they create the most desirable environment for the central building, within which alone a strong spiritual center can arise; and they finally offer the indispensable possibility of expansion for the School of Spiritual Science.

Thus, the idea of building residential properties, which arose from our financial difficulties, proves to be justified and necessary in every respect. The membership fees of the Johannesbau-Verein enable the interest and amortization to be raised for the central building. A series of bequests promised to the Johannesbau-Verein provide security for the future.

Despite the aforementioned documents, which the Johannesbau Association has to offer, the capital raised on the basis of the same is completely insufficient for the implementation of the project and the “theosophical-artistic fund” also falls short of expectations. The funds allocated to it at the 1911 Games were not even enough to cover the festival's deficit, so it had to be paid by a member.

When we ask for the reasons for this attitude, we unfortunately have to confirm what sounds so harsh to our ears at the foundation stone laying ceremony in Stuttgart: there is still a lack of understanding of the importance and necessity in many cases. And when the JohannesbauVerein was founded, it saw its most important task as creating and awakening understanding. And we consider our task as fulfilled, as far as promoting the cause is concerned, if we have awakened a sense of beauty and an understanding of the purpose and necessity of the Johannesbau, and we must leave it to those who hear us to ignite their will. For the Johannesbau should be an act of the freest and highest understanding and most devoted love.

Today it is only possible to teach a few things about the ideas underlying the Johannesbau; for its forms have only been given to us in sketchy outlines. And it seems to me that the spiritual worlds will only give more when the invitation that has been extended to us has found an answer, the invitation to help shape the future in our own way. But the only answer is action.

We were able to attend the inauguration of the Stuttgart Lodge during these days. And if any further confirmation of our intentions were needed, it could be found at this celebration. The words that came from the lips of our teacher in the consecration room, which had grown out of the feelings of devotion and dedication to the wisdom of “the spirit we serve,” sounded different, and the words penetrated deep into the room, like hammer blows that awaken the echo in the depths of the earth.

Since the days of the Gothic cathedrals, the temple culture could only work “underground”, that is, in secret. Our time sees the culture of the initiate come to light, and it is only logical that the “underground temple” be elevated to a “sun temple”. Those who read the signs “in which world karma is revealed” have made it clear in unmistakable words and deeds: the time has come.

Our work demands purposeful unity. The model in Stuttgart should be further developed in Munich, and on this basis, the so desirable own places for spiritual work can then arise at other places according to local needs. As commendable as the approach in Stuttgart was, equally commendable is the temporary stepping back of other branches in favor of the Munich central building, as was particularly emphasized by the Berlin Lodge at the inauguration ceremony in Stuttgart. This is the most beautiful way to demonstrate solidarity with the idea initiated in Munich, which has been dependent on the cooperation of all available forces in Germany since its first appearance. The School of Spiritual Science and the Mystery Plays are a matter for all those who care about the study and deepening of the spiritual scientific teaching and the internalization of spiritual life. To all of them we turn with the request to help carry out the great building idea, the realization of which our serious time so urgently demands of us.

And so may the nature of our work be a worthy reflection of our image in the spiritual world.

Organization:

The theosophical-artistic fund established in 1910 (deposit of Miss von Sivers and Miss Stinde at the Munich branch of the German Bank) accepts one-time donations and annual contributions of any amount.

The Johannesbau-Verein e.V. accepts extraordinary members (annual fee: at least 100 marks) and contributing members (annual fee: at least 50 marks). Applications for membership should be addressed to one of the chairpersons of the Johannesbau-Verein.

I) Miss S. Stinde, Munich, Adalbertstrasse 55/s or
II) Mr. Maler Linde, Etzenhausen near Dachau (Bavaria).

Annual contributions should be sent to the Johannesbau-Verein's check deposit account at the Bayerische Vereinsbank in Munich. Becoming a member does not involve any other obligation or liability.

Negotiations regarding mortgage loans are to be conducted with the treasurer of the Johannesbau-Verein, Count Otto Lerchenfeld-Köfering, currently of Munich, Schraudolfstr. 2 a.

The Johannesbau-Verein also accepts interest-bearing loans – but not less than 500 marks; negotiations for this also with Count Lerchenfeld. All information can be obtained from the secretaries of the Johannesbau-Verein: Countess P. v. Kalckreuth, Adalbertstraße 55/III and Dr. F. Peipers, Munich, Königinstrasse 69.

Those who wish to contribute their mite once and for all or repeatedly in annual contributions, without interest or other consideration, as a donation for the construction and the theosophical or artistic presentations, should pay to the “theosophical-artistic fund” at the Munich branch of Deutsche Bank.

Those who, by becoming members of the Johannesbau Association, wish to share in the costs of the Johannesbau on a permanent basis should make their contributions to the Johannesbau Association's cheque deposit account at the Bayerische Vereinsbank in Munich.

Please note that both ways of supporting the cause are necessary and beneficial and that it is not out of the question for someone to contribute in both ways.

The financial picture of the Johannesbau today, in round figures, is as follows:

The total requirement is estimated at 1,600,000 marks. This is broken down as follows:

A. Land purchase (including costs). 400,000 marks.
B. Residential buildings. 600,000 marks.
C. School of Spiritual Science 600,000 marks
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1,600,000 marks.

ad. A.: The majority of the property, with a total value of 300,000 marks, was purchased. For this, available funds in the amount of 60,000 marks from the theosophical-artistic fund were used for the down payment. The remaining amount bears interest at 4% and is to be paid off within twenty years. As security, personal interest guarantees from individual members were accepted by the seller, so that the property acquired in this way is unencumbered.

A small square of land worth 50,000 marks is still required and needs to be purchased; the conditions have been set. This amount, along with the costs of 50,000 marks, is to be raised by a second mortgage on the residential buildings to be constructed. The interest requirement for the entire building site, including high annuities, is 22,000 marks per annum.

ad. B.: The residential buildings require 600,000 Marks of capital, which can be raised primarily through a first mortgage, for which a first mortgage bank has made favorable offers. Interest requirements, including annuity, 30,000 Marks p.a.

ad. C. The construction of the university requires the same expenditure of 600,000 marks. Of this sum, the theosophical-artistic fund has 40,000 marks. Mortgage security, interest and annuity payments of 8,000 marks are possible for 160,000 marks. 400,000 marks are uncovered.

The annual expenses are calculated at 12,000 marks.

The interest and annuities totaling 75,000 marks (22,000 + 30,000 + 8,000 + 12,000 marks ) is covered by the rental income (approx. 50,000 Marks) and the contributions to the Johannesbau-Verein and the theosophical-artistic fund (currently approx. 22,000 Marks).

Personal interest guarantees from individual members, amounting to 30,000 Marks, are available to cover any shortfalls in this income.

To make the Johannesbau possible, the remaining sum of 400,000 marks must be raised through donations to the theosophical-artistic fund.

Munich, end of October 1911

The administrative board
of the Johannesbau Association

Lecture at the 1st General Assembly of the Johannesbau-Verein

My dear Theosophical friends!

The Johannesbau, insofar as it is intended to house the seat of our spiritual science, should be something that takes into account the developmental conditions of all humanity. And it will either be this, or it will not be what it should actually be. In such a matter, one has a responsibility towards all that is known to us as spiritual laws, spiritual powers, and spiritual developmental conditions of humanity, and that can speak to our soul. Above all, we also have a responsibility to the judgment of future humanity. Such a sense of responsibility in our time, in the present cycle of humanity, is something quite different from a similar sense of responsibility in past ages.

Great, mighty monuments of art and culture speak to us in the most diverse ways from the course of time. How art and cultural monuments from the course of time tell us about the inner conditions of human souls in those times, you heard a beautiful, meaningful reflection on this very topic this morning from this place. If we are to speak in our own terms about something that made the sense of responsibility easier for all the people who were involved in those cultural and artistic monuments, in a certain way, than it is for us when we want to speak about it in our language, then we must say: These people of the past had other aids than our time cycle has; the gods helped them, who, unconscious to these people, let their own powers flow into their subconscious or unconscious. And in a sense it is Maya to believe that in the minds or souls of those who built the Egyptian pyramids, the Greek temples and other works of art, only those thought forms, impulses and intentions were effective for that which confronts us, that which has confronted people over time in the forms, colors and so on, because the gods worked through the hands, through the minds, through the hearts of people.

Our time is, after the fourth post-Atlantic cultural period has passed, the first time cycle in which the gods test people for their freedom, in which the gods do not deny their help, but only come to meet people when these people, in their own free striving from their individual soul, which they have now received through enough incarnations, take up that which flows down from above. We also have to create something new in the sense that we have to create from the human soul in a completely different way than was the case in the past. Consciousness, which is born with the consciousness soul, which is the characteristic of our time cycle, that is the signature of our time. And with consciousness, with fully illuminated consciousness, into which nothing can be absorbed from the merely subconscious, we must create if the future is to receive similar cultural documents from us as we have received from the past. Therefore, it behooves us to try today to stimulate our consciousness with those thoughts that are intended to shed light on what we have to do. And we can only do something if we know from which laws, from which spiritual basic impulses we are to act. But this can only come about if we work in harmony with the entire evolution of humanity.

Let us now try, at least very sketchily, to bring to mind some of the main ideas that can inspire us in relation to what we are to create with this novel, not merely new work.

In a sense, we are meant to build a temple that is also a place of learning, somewhat like the ancient mystery temples. Throughout the history of human development, we have always called a “temple” any work of art that contained what was most sacred to people. And this morning you have already heard how the soul was expressed in the temple in different periods. If we look more deeply at what we can know of the temple building and the temple artwork with eyes warmed by the soul, we see a great diversity in the individual temple artworks. And I would like to say: How great is the difference to those temple works of art, of which, admittedly, only a little remains externally, and which we can actually only either guess at in their basic form, in their oldest form, or reconstruct from the Akasha Chronicle; those temple forms which we can describe as those of the second post-Atlantean cultural period, then merging into the third, as the original Persian temples, of which only a little has flowed over into the later temples, insofar as they are influenced in their configuration by that area of the earth. Some of them have been incorporated into Babylonian, Babylonian-Assyrian, and indeed Near Eastern temple art. What was the most significant aspect of this architecture?

As I said, external documents do not speak much of this architecture. But even if one cannot go into the documents of the Akasha Chronicle, but lets oneself be influenced by what has been preserved from a later period, and points out how temple buildings in such an early period in the area that has been spoken of may have looked, one must say to oneself: with these temples, an enormous amount, indeed everything, depended on the façade, on the way in which a temple presented itself when one approached the entrance. And if one had entered the temple through such a façade, one would have had the following sensation in the temple, depending on whether one belonged to the more or less profane or more or less initiated personalities: The façade is saying something to me that is spoken in a mysterious language; and inside I find what wanted to be expressed on the façade.

And if we turn our gaze from these temple buildings, which can only be guessed at by non-akashic research, to certain Egyptian temples or other sacred Egyptian buildings such as the pyramids, we find a different character indeed. We approach an Egyptian temple building and are confronted with symbols and art forms that we must first unravel. We must first unravel the mystery of the sphinxes and even the obelisks. Above all, the mysteriousness that we encounter in the sphinx and the pyramid is such that the German thinker Hegel called this art “the art of the enigma”.

In the peculiar pyramidal shape, without many external window openings, something encloses us, which is already announced by its entire enclosure as a mysterious thing, which is not revealed from the outside, at least initially through the facade, other than by the fact that we are initially presented with a puzzle. And we enter and find, in addition to the mysterious messages about all kinds of mysteries, written in the ancient mystery script or its successor, in the holy of holies, that which should lead the human heart and soul to the God who dwells in the deepest secrecy within the temple. We find the temple building as an enclosure of the most sacred secret of the deity and, on the other hand, we find the pyramid building itself as an enclosure of the most sacred secret of humanity: initiation, as something that is closed off from the outside world because it is supposed to be closed off in its inner, mysterious content.

If we turn our gaze from this Egyptian temple to Greek temple art, we find there, to be sure, the basic idea of many Egyptian temples, in that we have to understand these Greek temples as the dwelling place of the divine-spiritual. But we At the same time, we find the outer structure of the temple itself developed in such a way that it is a self-contained entity in a wonderful dynamism - not just of form, but of the inner forces living in the forms - as if in an inner infinity, as if in an inner perfection. The Greek god dwells in a work of temple art. In this temple artwork, beginning with the supporting columns, which in every way prove themselves in their dynamics as carriers and are just such that they can carry what lies on them, indeed must carry them, we find the god enclosed in a self-contained perfection; in one that represents a self-contained infinity within earthly existence, beginning with the coarsest and going into the most detailed.

And we find the thought “man's most precious expressed in temple building” captured when we approach the Christian temple, which is built over a grave or even over the grave of the Redeemer, who then joins the soaring tower and so on. But here we are confronted with a remarkable new element, one that fundamentally distinguishes later temple art, Christian temple art, from the Greek. The Greek temple is so characteristic precisely because it is self-contained, dynamically complete in itself. This is not a Christian church. I once used the expression: a temple of Pallas Athena or Apollo or Zeus needs no human soul near it or inside it, because it is not designed for a human to be near or inside it; rather, it should stand in its grandiose, lonely infinity, merely showing the dwelling of the god. The god lives in him, and this dwelling of the god in him forms his self-contained infinity. And the further away, one might say, people in the surrounding area are from a Greek temple, the more genuine a Greek temple appears. Let me express the paradox, because that is how the Greek temple is intended, and that is not the case with a Christian church: the Christian church challenges the believer with its forms of feeling and thought; and what we enter as a space, it tells us, when we study it more closely, in each of these individual forms, that it wants to take in the community and the thoughts and the feelings and the emotions of the community. And one could hardly have developed a happier instinct than to coin the word “cathedral” for the Christian temple, in which the coming together of people, the “being together” of people, to use the strange word, is expressed. “Cathedral” is closely related to “tum”, as can be seen from the suffix in the word “Volkstum”.

And if we turn our gaze further, towards the Gothic, how could we fail to recognize that the Gothic strives even more to express something in its forms, which is by no means as self-contained as, for example, Greek temple architecture. One is tempted to say: the Gothic form strives beyond itself everywhere, everywhere it strives to express something that appears in the space in which one is, like something searching, like something that wants to transcend boundaries and interweave into the universe. The Gothic arches are, of course, the result of the perception of dynamic relationships; but what leads beyond these forms themselves, what wants to make them permeable, as it were, and which, in a certain respect, is so wonderfully effective that we can, but do not have to, feel that the stained glass windows are in harmony with nature and mysteriously connect the interior with the all-pervading light. How could there be anything more grandiose and full of light in the outer weaving of space than when we stand in a Gothic cathedral and see the light weaving through the multicolored windows into the dust clouds! How could one feel more grandiose the effect of a space boundary that, going beyond itself, strives for the universe and its secrets, as they spread in the great becoming!

We have allowed our gaze to wander over a long period of temple art development and we have noticed how regularly, in accordance with the law, temple art progresses in human evolution. But in a way, we are standing before a kind of sphinx. What is the underlying reason? Why did it happen just like that? Is there an explanation for the strange facade that we encounter in the Near East as the last remnants of the first stage of temple architecture, which I have tried to hint at, with the strange winged animals, with the winged wheels, with the strange columns and capitals that tell us something, tell us something remarkable, and say exactly the same thing in a certain way that we experience in our soul when we enter the temple? Is there perhaps anything more enigmatic in the art of external forms than something like this, when we see it ourselves in the ruins in a modern museum? What was it that made that?

There is one thing that immediately gives us an explanation of what was done here. But we cannot find this explanation otherwise than by looking into the thoughts and artistic intentions of those who were involved in building this temple. This is, however, a matter that can only be solved with the help of occultism. What, after all, is a Near Eastern temple? Where do we find an example of it in the world?

The model that immediately sheds light on what happened here is as follows: Imagine a person lying on the ground and raising himself up with his forepart and his countenance. And in this man, lying on the ground and raising himself up, in order to have his body captured by the descending higher spiritual forces and to make contact with them, you have given what inspiration can give for a temple in the Near East. All the columns, the capitals, all the remarkable figures of this temple are symbols of what one can feel when one stands face to face with such a person, with all that is revealed in his hand movements, in his gestures and in his countenance. If one were to penetrate this countenance with the spiritual eye, one would enter into the human being, into the microcosm, which is an imprint of the macrocosm. In so far as the human countenance is a full expression of what is inside the human being, the microcosm, the same relationship between the human face and the inside as between the facade of the Near Eastern temple and what was inside.

A person rising up is a Near Eastern temple; not copied, but considered as a motif with all that it evokes in the soul. In so far as we are physical people and the human body can be described spiritually through theosophy, the temple of the ancient Near East is the expression of the human microcosm. Thus, by grasping the human microcosm and striving upwards, that part of human architecture is opened up. This physical human being has his faithful spiritual imprint in those remarkable temples, of which not much else remains except as ruins. In all details, down to the winged wheel and the archetypes of these things, one would be able to prove that this is so. The ages speak to us loudly: Man is the temple! And the Egyptian and Greek temples?

We cannot describe the human being merely from an anthroposophical point of view, but also from a psychosophical point of view, from the point of view of the soul. If we approach the human being as a soul-being, which is how he primarily presents himself to us on earth, then what we see when we look at a person in his eyes, in his face, in his gestures is truly a mystery. And how many people are a great mystery in this respect! Truly, when we approach a person in this way, it is no different than when we approach an Egyptian temple that presents us with the mystery. And when we enter into its interior, we find there the human soul's holy of holies. But we can only access it if we go beyond the external and enter into the inner self. A human soul is locked in the innermost Celia, like the sanctuary of the god, like the mystery secrets themselves in the Egyptian temple, in the Egyptian pyramid.

But the soul is not so closed within the human being that it cannot express itself in gestures, in everything that can come to us from a person. The body can become the external expression of the soul when it is permeated by the soul in its uniqueness. Then this human body appears to us as something that is artistically perfect to the highest degree, as something that is imbued with soul, as something infinite and perfect in itself. And if you look for something in the whole of visible creation that would represent something so perfect within itself as the human body is, insofar as it is ensouled: you will find nothing within visible creation, not in terms of dynamics, except for the Greek temple, which encloses the god within itself in such a way, but also serves as a dwelling for him in a perfect infinite, like the human body for the human soul. And in so far as man as microcosm is soul in a body, is the Egyptian, is the Greek temple: man.

The rising human being is the oriental temple. The human being who stands on the ground, keeping a world enigmatically closed within himself, but who can let this world flow into his being and calmly direct his gaze horizontally forward, closed to above and below: that is the Greek temple. And again the annals of world history speak: the temple is the human being!

And we are approaching our time, the time that originated, as we have already proven to an unshakable extent and will be able to prove more and more, in all that has emerged from ancient Hebrew antiquity and Christianity, the myster of Golgotha, but which in the first instance had to force its way into those forms that had been taken over from Egypt, from Greece, but which increasingly strove to break through these forms, to break through them in such a way that, as spatial boundaries - as broken through in themselves - they point beyond the limited space into the weaving of the infinite universe.

All things that will happen in the future are already predisposed in the past. In a certain way, the temple of the future is mysteriously predisposed in the past. And since I am talking about a great mystery of human development, I can hardly do other than express this mystery myself in a somewhat mysterious form.

We hear about the Temple of Solomon on many occasions as about that temple of which we know that it should express the whole spirit of human development. We hear about it; but the question is put to the people of the physical earth - and this is the enigmatic thing about it - that is quite in vain: Who has seen that Temple of Solomon, of which we speak as a grandiose truth, if we speak about it at all seriously? Yes, it is a mystery what I am saying! A few centuries after the Temple of Solomon must have been built, Herodotus traveled in Egypt and the Near East. From his travel accounts, which truly concern themselves with much less than what the Temple of Solomon must have been, we know that he must have passed only a few miles from the Temple of Solomon, but he did not see it. People had not yet seen the Temple of Solomon!

The mystery is now that I have to talk about something that was there and that people have not seen. But it is so. Now, there is also something in nature that can be there and that people do not see. However, the comparison is not complete, and anyone who wanted to exploit it would miss the mark completely. It is the plants that are contained in their seeds; but people do not see the plants in their seeds. However, no one should go further with this comparison, because anyone who would now interpret the Temple of Solomon based on it would immediately say something wrong. As far as I have said it myself, the comparison of the plant seed with the Temple of Solomon is entirely correct.

What is the purpose of the Temple of Solomon? It wants the same thing that the temple of the future should want and can only want.

One can depict the physical human being in anthroposophy. One can depict the human being in psychosophy, insofar as he is the temple of the soul itself and is inspired by the soul. And one can depict the human being through pneumatosophy, insofar as the human being is spirit. May we not then depict the spiritual human being in such a way that we say: First we see the human being lying on the ground, then the human being standing up; then the human being who, closed in on himself like an and stands before us with his gaze fixed straight ahead, as if he were executing himself; and then we see the man who looks up, his soul grounded within himself, but raising his soul to the spirit and receiving the spirit.

The outer human being who straightens up can be seen, and needs only to be interpreted. The human being who is to be interpreted within himself, who has been inspired by the soul, must be felt and sensed; interpretation is not enough. He was felt, as was so vividly expressed to you this morning. He was felt as truly as a Greek work of art must feel in us; in that it has been said that one feels the bones crack in the Greek temple because we are a microcosm that has been inspired to the extent that we are inspired. But the fact that the soul conceives in a spiritual, supersensible way is invisible. Yet it must become sensual if it is to become art!

No other age is capable of developing such art as our own and the coming one. But ours must make a start. All are only attempts, all are only beginnings, in the way that the self-contained temple has sought to break through the masonry in the Christian church to date and to find the connection with the infinite weaving of the universe. What must we build now?

We must build the completion of what has just been hinted at! From what spiritual science can give us, we must find the possibility of creating that inner space which, in its colors and formal effects and in other artistic presentations it contains, is at once closed and at the same time in every detail such that the seclusion is not a seclusion , that it invites us everywhere we look to penetrate the walls with the eye, with the whole feeling and sensing, so that we are closed and at the same time in the seclusion of the cell we are connected to the All of the weaving world-divine.

“To have walls and not to have walls” – that is what temple art of the future will answer: an inner space that denies itself, that no longer develops the egoism of space, that, in all the colors and forms it will offer, wants to be there only to let the universe in. How colors can do this, to what extent colors can be the connection with the spirits of the surrounding environment, insofar as they are contained in the spiritual atmosphere, I have already tried to describe at the opening of our Stuttgart building.

In the outer physical perfection of man, what is the supersensible man? Where do we still encounter a hint of the superphysical man in the outer physical man? Nowhere else but where the human being incorporates that which lives within him into the word, where he speaks, where the word becomes wisdom and prayer and - without the usual or any sentimental connotation of these words - envelops the human being in wisdom and prayer, trusting, world riddle! The Word that has become flesh in man, that is the Spirit, that is the spirituality that expresses itself also in the physical man. And we will either accomplish the task we have been given, or we will not do it at all, but will have to leave it to future ages. We will accomplish it when we are able to shape our inner space for the first time in an appropriate way, as perfectly as it is possible today, quite apart from how the building will present itself on the outside. It could be wrapped in straw on all sides — that is irrelevant. The outer appearance is for the outer, profane world, and has nothing to do with the inner. The inner space is what it is all about. What will it be?

It will present itself in such a way that every glance we cast will fall on something that announces to us: This, in all its colors and forms, in all its language of colors and forms, in all that it is, in all its real, living existence, expresses the same thing as what can be done and spoken in this place, what man can entrust to his own body as the most spiritual thing about him. And there will be a unity in this structure, proclaiming wisdom, prayer, the mystery of the human being, and that which encompasses the space. And it will be natural for the word that penetrates into space to limit itself in such a way that it falls, as it were, on the walls, and meets on the walls that which is so akin to it that it gives back to the inner space what is given by the human being himself. From the center of the word to the periphery of the word, the dynamic will emanate, and a peripheral echo of the spiritual companionship and spiritual message itself should be what presents itself as an inner space, not breaking through as a window, but at its boundaries, at what it itself is, simultaneously limited and at the same time freely opening up to the expanses of spiritual infinity.

This could not yet be there, because only spiritual science is capable of creating such a thing. But spiritual science must create such a thing at some time. If it does not create it in our age, later ages will demand it from it. And just as it is true that the Near Eastern temple, the Egyptian temple, the Greek temple, and the Christian church had to enter into human development, it is equally true that the spiritual mystery room, with its conclusion before the material world and its disclosure to the spiritual world, must arise from the human spirit as the work of art of the future.

Nothing of what already exists can remind us of the ideal form that is to emerge before us. Everything must be new in a certain respect. It will of course arise in an imperfect form, but that is enough for the time being; with it the beginning will have been made. And with it the beginning will have been made for ever higher and higher degrees of perfection in the same field. What do people of the present day need to make themselves reasonably ripe for such a work of temple art?

No art can come into being unless it arises out of the collective spirit of a cycle of humanity. The words of the architect Ferstel, builder of the Votivkirche in Vienna, still ring in my ears. These words were spoken during his rector's address in the second year of my studies at the Vienna Technical University. At the time, they sounded in my soul like a discord on the one hand, but on the other hand like a tone that truly characterizes our time. Ferstel said the remarkable words at the time: architectural styles are not invented – one must add to these words: architectural styles are born out of the peculiarity of peoples. Now, our time shows so far no signs of finding architectural styles in the same sense that the ancient times found architectural styles and presenting them to the world again. Architectural styles are indeed found, but they are only found by the collective spirit of some human cycle. How can we today bring before us anything of the collective spirit that is to find the future architectural style that we mean today?

I will now try to say something about the nature of this matter from a completely different side and from a completely different point of view: In the course of my theosophical work, I have repeatedly encountered artists in a wide variety of fields who had a certain fear, a certain shyness, of theosophy, and this was because theosophy attempts to open up a certain understanding of works of art and also of the impulses on which they are based. How often does it happen that what confronts us as saga and legend, but also as a work of art, is interpreted by theosophy, that is, it is tried to be traced back to the underlying forces. But how often does it also happen that the artist withdraws from such an interpretation in an understandable way, because he, especially when he is productive in one field, says to himself: I lose everything that is original; what I want to pour into the mold — everything, content as well as form — will be lost to me if I reduce what comes to me as a livingly felt work of art, or at least as a livingly felt intuition, to some conceptual or ideological construct.

There are few things that people have been able to say to me over time that I have been able to understand better than this fear and trepidation. For if you have the predisposition, you can fully sympathize with the horror the artist would feel if he were to find his own work, or a work he loves, analyzed here or there, with the work of art taken over by the intellect! What a terrible thought for everything that is an artist in our soul! We almost feel a kind of cadaverous odor when we have a Goethean Faust before us and below [read] the notes of an analyzing scholar, even if he belongs to the interpreting philosophers, not to the interpreting philologists alone! Yes, what should we say to that? I would like to make it clear to you very briefly in a few minutes with an example.

I have here in front of me the latest edition of the Legend of the Seven Wise Masters, which has now been published by Diederichs. This old legend – which exists in a wide variety of versions, with parts of it scattered almost all over Europe and recurring again and again – is a highly remarkable tale, beautifully constructed as a work of art. I am now talking about the art of poetry, but what is done for poetry could also be done for architecture. I cannot tell you now what is contained in the legend of the seven wise masters, which in some cases is expressed in extremely crude terms, but I would like to describe the skeleton in the following way.

What is expressed here is attached to a skeleton that is brought to life in the successive stories. The whole thing is headed: “Here begins the book that tells of the Emperor Pontianus and his wives, the Empress, and of his son, the young Lord Dyocletianus, how he wanted to hang him and how seven masters redeemed him, every day, each with his saying.” An emperor is married to a woman, with whom he has a son, who is described here as Dyocletian. The woman dies and the emperor marries another woman. His son Dyocletian is his rightful successor; from his second wife he has no legitimate successor. The time is approaching when Dyocletian is to be educated. It was announced that he was to be educated in the most meaningful and satisfying way possible by the wisest people in the land, and seven wise masters then came forward to take over the education of the emperor's son. The emperor's second wife also wanted to have a son in order to prevent her stepson from succeeding her in some way. However, she does not succeed. So she now tries to blacken this son of the emperor in every way with her husband, and she finally decides to eliminate him in some way. To do this, she uses all possible means. Now it turned out that Diocletian had been taught by the seven wise masters for seven years, that he had learned great and many things in the most diverse way, that is, in the sevenfold way. But in a certain way he had even outgrown all the practical wisdom that the seven wise masters had mastered. And so he had succeeded in interpreting a star in the night sky. This enabled him to say that for seven consecutive days, when he returned to his father, he would remain silent, would not speak in any way, and would present himself as a fool. But now he also knew that the Empress was plotting his death. So he now asks the seven wise masters to save him from death.

And now, in seven successive periods of time, the following happens: The son comes home. But the Empress has told the Emperor a story that has made a great impression on his soul, and which had the very purpose of moving the Emperor to have his son hanged. The Emperor is quite in agreement with this, for the story has convinced him. The son is already being led out to the gallows, when on the way they meet the first of the seven wise masters. After being reproached for leaving his son so stupid, the first of the masters speaks up and says he wants to tell the emperor a story. The emperor wants to hear it. Yes, says the wise man, but first you have to let the son come home; because I want the son to hear us before he is hanged. - The emperor agrees.

They return home, and there the first of the seven wise masters tells his story. The emperor is so impressed by this story that he does not have the son hanged, but releases him. The next day, however, the empress tells the emperor a story that again leads to the son being sentenced to death. He is led out to the gallows again, and on the way they meet the second of the seven wise masters, who also wants to tell the emperor a story before the son is hanged. This happens, and the result is that the son stays alive again. This is repeated seven times in a row until the eighth day arrives and the son can speak. This is how the son is saved.

The entire story, as well as the entire conclusion, are vividly presented in an excellent manner. I would now like to say: On the one hand, you take the book in your hands and immerse yourself in it and you take great pleasure in the large, sometimes rough images; wonderfully, you are absorbed in the description of souls. But such a story almost demands to be explained. Absolutely? No, only in our time, because we live in the fifth post-Atlantic cultural period, where the intellect is the dominant and ever more dominant force. In the age in which this story was written, it would not have prompted anyone to explain it. But we in our time are condemned to give an explanation for it, and then one decides to give one. How obvious is it? The Emperor had a wife; from her he has a son who is destined to be educated by seven wise masters, and who is aware that he comes from the time when humanity still had the clairvoyant soul. The clairvoyant soul has died, but the human ego still remains and can be taught by the “seven wise masters”, who appear to us in the most diverse forms. I myself once pointed out that we are essentially dealing with the same thing in the seven daughters of Jethro, the priest of Midian, whom Moses meets at his father-in-law's well, but also in the seven liberal arts in the Middle Ages.

The second woman, who can no longer develop a divine consciousness, is the present human soul, who therefore cannot have a son either. Dyocletian, the son, is taught in secret by the seven wise masters, and in the end he must be freed by the powers he has acquired from the seven wise masters. We could go on like this and give an

absolutely correct picture and would, of course, be of great service to our time. But let us now take our artistic sense. I do not know to what extent what I am about to say will find an echo! But if you read the book, let it sink in and then explain it very cleverly and correctly in the sense of our time, as our time demands, you still feel as if you have actually done the book an injustice, a serious injustice, because you have actually put a straw skeleton of all sorts of abstract concepts in place of the living work of art. And it makes no difference whether this is right or wrong, clever or not clever.

We can go even further. The greatest work of art is the world, either the macrocosm or the microcosm. In images or symbols, in all kinds of things, the ancient times expressed what they had to express about the secrets of things, and we come with the “age-old” wisdom - which is only as old as it has prepared itself as a seed for the fifth post-Atlantic cultural age - we come with the intellect, we come with all of theosophy as an explanation of the world. This is something just as abstract and dry as the living reality, just as the commentary is dry compared to the work of art! Although there must be Theosophy, although our time demands Theosophy, we must feel it in a certain respect like a straw skeleton compared to the living reality. In a certain way, this is no exaggeration. For in so far as Theosophy only occupies our minds, in so far as we are only with the intellect, in so far as we coin schemas and all kinds of technical terms, especially in the parts that relate to man himself, in so far is Theosophy a mere straw skeleton. And it only begins to become a little more tolerable where we can describe, for example, the different conditions of Saturn, the Sun and the Moon and the earlier times on Earth, or the activities of the different hierarchies.

But it is horrible to speak of it: that man consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an ego - or even of manas and kama-manas - and it is even more horrible when these things have been expressed in diagrams and on blackboards. I can hardly imagine anything more horrible than the whole, in itself magnificent human being, and next to it on a blackboard the human being with the seven human limbs; being surrounded by a large number of people in a large hall and having a blackboard next to you with the scale of the seven basic human parts. Yes, that's how it is! But we have to feel our way towards something like that. We don't need to hang these things right in front of our eyes, because they're not even beautiful, but we have to hang them in front of our souls! That is the mission of our time; no matter how much one may say against these things from the point of view of taste, of artistic productivity – that belongs in our time, that is the task of our time.

But how can we escape this dilemma? We are also supposed to be boring theosophists in some respects, to pick apart and dissect the world, to incorporate grandiose works of art into abstractions and even to say: We are theosophists! How can we escape this dilemma?

There is only one way out! And this means that Theosophy is a cross for us, that Theosophy is a sacrifice for us, that we really feel that it takes away almost everything that humanity has had of a living world content so far. And there is no degree of intensity that I would not describe to make it clear that for everything that springs up in a living way, including in the course of human development and the divine world, Theosophy must first be something like a field of corpses!

But when we then feel that Theosophy, as the herald of the greatest thing in the world, becomes the greatest pain and deprivation for us, so that we feel within us one of the divine traits of its mission in the world, then it becomes the corpse that rises from the grave, then it celebrates the resurrection, then it rises from the grave!

No one will experience joy at the defoliation and desolation of the world's content, but no one can experience the productivity of the world's secrets like the one who, with his productivity, feels like a follower of Christ, who has carried the cross to the place of the skull, who has gone through death. But in the realm of knowledge, too, spiritual science takes upon itself the cross of knowledge in order to die within it and to experience from the grave how a new world arises, a new life. Those who, through the study of theosophy, undergo a transformation of their soul that is as profound as it is vivid, who, as if dying, experience a kind of inner death, will also feel that life gives them a living force for new artistic impulses, which can transform into reality what I have been able to sketch for you today.

So closely connected with all theosophical feeling is what we are to do, and what we believe that the JohannesbauVerein will open up an understanding of. I hardly need to say any more to make it clear that this Johannesbau can be a matter close to the heart of the theosophist, of the kind that is felt to be a necessity in the course of time. For in answering the question of whether Theosophy is understood in a certain broader sense today, an extraordinary amount depends first on an answer that we cannot give with words, that we cannot express with thoughts, but rather on our act and that each, as far as possible, contributes in one way or another to what our JohannesbauVerein, so understandingly and beautifully placed in the evolution of humanity, wants.

Lecture at the 2nd general assembly of the Johannesbau-Verein

My dear Theosophical friends!

When the Johannesbau Association followed on from our last general assembly of the German Section of the Theosophical Society here in Berlin with a meeting, I had a few words to say to you about how the Johannesbau should be situated in the overall development of art, and in particular architectural art: that it should be seen, in the sense in which we also otherwise view what we want to achieve in the field of theosophy or anthroposophy, as something necessary in the whole spiritual development of humanity, so that what is to happen through theosophy or anthroposophy does not appear as some kind of arbitrariness, does not appear as something that we give birth to out of ourselves as some kind of arbitrary ideal, but appears as we derive it as a necessity from that writing, which reveals to us the necessary path of the human spirit through the development of the earth.

Now, one can choose many points of view to present this necessity that has just been characterized. At that time, I showed from a certain point of view how this necessary placing in human history of what is intended by the Johannesbau is to be understood. Today, another point of view will be chosen so that my considerations today will, in a certain respect, supplement what was presented here in December 1911.

Architecture is actually bound to a very specific premise if we understand architecture in the sense that man wants to create a shell, as it were, using some material, through some forms or other measures, be it for profane living and working, be it for religious activities or the like. In this sense, the art of building, architecture, is absolutely bound up with what we can call soul-life, is connected with the concept of soul-life, arises out of soul-life and can be grasped by grasping the whole extent of soul-life.

Now, over the years of working in spiritual science, the soul has always presented itself to us from three points of view: from the point of view of the sentient soul, from the point of view of the mind or emotional soul, and from that of the consciousness soul. But then this soulfulness also appears to us when it first announces itself, as it were, but does not yet really exist as soulfulness when we speak of the sentient or astral body. And again, the soulfulness appears to us when we say that the soulfulness has developed to such an extent that it seeks a transition to the spirit self or manas. If you look at my theosophy, you will find the threefold soul in it as a sentient soul, a mind or emotional soul and a consciousness soul, but you will find the sentient soul adjacent to the sentient body, so that the sentient soul and sentient appear as two sides of one and the same, the one side more soul-like, the other more spiritual; and then you will find, combining again, consciousness soul and spirit self; the consciousness soul representing the more soul-like side, while the spirit self represents the more spiritual side.

Those who, as anthroposophists, gradually find their way into such an understanding of these terms, as our esteemed friend Arenson has very beautifully explained in these days, will not be able to stop at the words sentient soul, mind or consciousness soul and only seek to find one or other definition for these words , but as a true anthroposophist will long to gradually develop in his mind many, many concepts, feelings and insights, which the one feeling leads to the other and so on, in order to arrive at a more comprehensive understanding, which in the case of these concepts is structured in the most diverse directions.

For the seer himself, the words quoted include, one might say, entire worlds. Therefore, in order to understand such concepts, one must also take into account what has been presented about human development, for example in the post-Atlantic period: that the sentient body has particularly developed in the ancient Persian culture, the sentient soul in the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, the mind or emotional soul in the Greco-Roman period, the consciousness soul in the time in which we ourselves live, and that we see the next period of time, so to speak, as already approaching in its development, yes, that we ourselves, with what we want as anthroposophy, theosophy, are working on the approach of this next period of time, which in a certain way should show us the connection between consciousness soul and spirit self or manas.

Architecture, as has been said, is closely linked to the concept of the soul. Now, someone might ask: shouldn't architecture then also be linked to the development of the soul, as it has just been characterized? And should not the forms and designs of architecture show certain peculiarities in their succession that are connected with this development of sentient body, sentient soul, and so on? And would one not then have no justification at all for speaking of architecture in the case of certain periods, for example the first post-Atlantic period, which particularly brought the etheric body to development? For if architecture is bound to the soul, it should only begin to dawn when it begins to develop. So one would assume that it begins to emerge in the sentient body, because that is, as it were, the other side of the soul; and before that, one would have to refer to times in which an actual art of building, in the sense in which we characteristically understand architecture, did not exist at all.

Now it is difficult in itself to answer this question from the point of view of external history, because everything that goes back to the Egyptian-Chaldean period can hardly be gleaned from historical monuments and traditions, but can only be derived from clairvoyant research. Even the period of Zarathustra, which we call the original Persian period, lies so far back that historical research is out of the question, let alone the period that we know to be connected with the development of the etheric body, namely the original Indian period.

However, one can also have strange experiences with this matter if one approaches the very clever people of the present day with it. Recently, for example, one of these clever people said that these post-Atlantean periods, as they are recorded in my esoteric science, for example, are untenable, because anyone who is familiar with the linguistic monuments of India would never believe that Indian culture had progressed as far ahead of Egyptian and Chaldean culture as it is presented in this esoteric science. Well, one can only be surprised that such very clever people of the present day have not yet managed to read a book written in their mother tongue with understanding, even if they can sometimes read Sanskrit. For it is expressly stated in esoteric science that the culture of India, including the Vedic culture, which is the subject of external science, is not the one spoken of in esoteric science as the ancient Indian culture, the first culture of the post-Atlantean time, but that in the case of the Vedic culture we are dealing with a time that can be counted as belonging to the third post-Atlantean cultural period, which thus runs parallel to the Egyptian-Chaldean culture. The original Indian culture, on the other hand, was one of which no external documents and no external monuments and the like exist and of which only the last echoes are contained in the Vedas. I will not dwell on this any further, but say this only because one or the other of you might hear this objection and perhaps not immediately have the concepts and ideas at hand that can refute such an objection.

So the question I have just hinted at remains, namely that in the first post-Atlantic period we have to go back to times when an actual art of building, as for the later periods, could not yet be possible. But then we come to a strange boundary point, to which external research also points; we come, so to speak, to a preliminary stage of architecture: the building of spaces for religious, for worship activities in caves, carved into the rock, as can be found in India or Nubia. This is indeed the age that stands on the boundary of the development of the soul from the physical. These cave dwellings confirm what spiritual research suggests we can expect in terms of the development of the soul: it is only in the period of human development in which we see the soul developing out of the physical that we also see the first real higher architecture developing out of what were previously rock caves and underground rock caves that had been hewn out of the earth itself.

In this respect, the earth appears like the physical realm into which the human soul first works, as it also happens in the development of the human being itself, where the soul works into the physical, the sentient soul into the sentient body. And in the transition from cave rooms to architectural works that encompass human activities, we also see the importance of the transition from the culture of the sentient body to that of the sentient soul.

There will come a time when what Theosophy or Anthroposophy provides will be elaborated for all branches of human knowledge, for all branches of human development. And it will be found that everything that other human worldviews present one-sidedly is cobbled together from some inadequate concepts and ideas, while spiritual science or anthroposophy shows the comprehensive whole with which one can shine a light everywhere. One can be completely reassured, even if people do not yet believe this today. That is not the point, but rather that time will provide the evidence for it. We just have to give it time. These confirmations will gradually be realized in all areas of life and development. This also applies to architecture.

And if we now go through the post-Atlantean development, we see that, in the course of time, the individual developmental epochs are, so to speak, bound to the soul, to the development of the sentient soul, then to that of the mind or feeling soul, and then to that of the consciousness soul, right up to our time. And in our own time we can see the time approaching, even if it is still only in the preparatory stage, when the spirit soul or manas will be worked out of the consciousness soul, so that we stand, as it were, at the opposite end of the process to that in the post-Atlantean epoch when we passed from the bodily to the soul realm. Just as the sentient soul was worked out of the sentient body in those days, so we are now facing a time in which we have to work our way out of the soul and into a spiritual realm. For architecture, this means that we can expect the opposite again. That is to say, just as in those earlier times caves were hewn out of the rocks as the preliminary stages of human architectural works, so now, in the present rising time, we have to work into the spirit in order to create the complement, the counterpart to it.

Let us now try to visualize the following, initially without more precise details about the time frame, since everyone can form for themselves what is necessary for parallelism. Let us consider the development through the sentient soul, mind or intellect soul, and consciousness soul, so initially the development through the sentient soul. Through being endowed with the sentient soul, the human being enters into a reciprocal relationship with the world around him. Through the sentient soul, what is present in the world as reality passes, as it were, into the human soul, into the human inner being itself. The external becomes an inner experience by way of the sentient soul. Therefore, there should now be something in the development of architectural art that, as it were, quite naturally emerges from cave construction and shows something in itself that is characteristic of the sentient soul. That is to say, it should be built in such a way that one wants to represent both an exterior and an interior.

Here we need only recall the construction of the pyramids and similar buildings, and we can even think of more recent scientific research that has shown how astronomical-cosmic relationships are reflected in the dimensions of the pyramids, and then we have an idea of what it is all about. The more we study the pyramid, the more we discover its strange structure based on cosmic relationships. Astronomical dimensions are reflected in the ratio of the base to the height, for example. And anyone who studies the pyramid gradually comes to the conclusion that with the pyramid, the pyramid priests expressed everything that could be expressed in a structure as a perception of cosmic conditions. The pyramid was built as if the earth wanted to experience within itself what is perceived from the cosmos. Just as the sentient soul brings the external reality to life within itself and presents what is outside as an inner reality, repeating in its own way what is outside, so the pyramid repeats external cosmic relationships in its proportions and forms, for example, in the way sunlight falls within it. Just as external reality finds a kind of representation in the human being through the sentient soul, so the pyramid looks like a large sentient organ of the entire earthly culture in relation to the cosmos.

Let us move on. How should architecture behave in a cultural stage in which the characteristic is the intellectual or mind soul? The mind or soul of mind is the inner soul in man that has the most work to do within itself, that builds on the already inner foundation of the sentient soul to further develop this inner soul, but does not yet go so far as to bring it together again into the actual I; thus it spreads and expands the soul, so to speak, without allowing it to culminate in the center of the I. The person who has developed precisely this soul element comes to us through the richness of his soul life, through the many inner soul contents and experiences that he has fought for and achieved; he has less of a need to build systems out of his inner experiences, but rather gives himself over to the breadth of these inner experiences. The intellectual soul is a life of the soul that bears itself inwardly, closes itself inwardly, and totalizes itself inwardly.

What kind of architecture would be needed to correspond to such a soul? It would have to be an architecture that, unlike the construction of a pyramid, does not so much resemble a kind of image or representation of cosmic conditions, but is more of a self-contained, total being; something that supports itself and which, so to speak, entirely in keeping with the intellectual soul or soul of feeling, shows the breadth of development in the way the individual parts are supported, and is less concerned with integrating what is there in the breadth of development. No one who is familiar with the nature of the intellectual soul or the soul of feeling, as it has just been characterized, can doubt that Greek and also Roman architecture can be understood as an external image of the life of the soul of intellect or soul of feeling.

Let us consider Greek architecture, for example Greek temple architecture, as we have often done before, by understanding it as the house of the god himself, so that the god dwells within it and the whole house presents itself as the dwelling of the god, the whole inwardly rounded as an inward totality. We have even been able to say from our contemplation of the Greek temple: This Greek temple does not claim that a person or a community of people is inside it. It is the dwelling place of the god and can stand alone, closed, as a totality in itself, just as the mind or soul is an inner totality, a self-contained inner life, which does not yet go to the ego, but which, albeit unconsciously, is the manifestation of the god in man. And when we see how in Greek temple construction one part supports the other, how everything is based on the columns striving upwards and supporting the beams, how the mutual forces are combined into a totality without the whole any way systematically toward a unity, toward a point, we find in it - and in Roman architecture the same is actually the case - that breadth, that expanse, which we find in the intellectual or emotional soul itself.

What is striking about Greco-Roman architecture is that it is based on statics, on the pure statics of the individual forces that unfold in a supporting or burdening way. But there is one thing you can forget about a Greek temple: you can forget that it has a “heaviness”. For anyone who feels naturally will or can at least feel that the columns are something that grows out of the earth. And with that which really grows out of the earth, with the plant, one does not have the feeling of oppressive heaviness. That is why the column in the Greek temple gradually strives to become similar to the stem of a plant, even if this only becomes visible in the Corinthian column. And that is why, in terms of perception, the column is not a burden, but rather a support.

But when you then come to the beam, to the architrave, you immediately have the feeling that this weighs on the column, that is, the structure is permeated by inner static equilibrium. And anyone who has developed their inner life will also have the feeling that the perceptions, feelings and concepts they have arrived at, which they have worked towards internally, are supported internally in the same way that the column supports the beam. Because at the time when Greco-Roman architecture originated, the intellectual soul or soul of mind was particularly developed in humanity, therefore, when the soul wanted to express itself in the language of architecture, it naturally strove to express what it had experienced internally in the static structure. Not with the intention, but in the way the human soul nature expressed itself, it was in the architecture to create a reflection of the soul.

And then gradually the development progressed to the consciousness soul. It is essential for the consciousness soul to summarize what the soul experiences in the total feeling: “You are! And you are this one person, this one personality, this one individuality.” By living in the soul of mind or feeling, God lives in you; but you allow God to live in all the vibrations of the soul, you are certain of him, so you do not have to summarize it as in one point and you do not have to bring yourself to consciousness: “You are identical with your divine.” But this is something that must be done in the consciousness soul. In this, it is not the case that the person rests inwardly within themselves as in the mind or feeling soul, but in the consciousness soul, the person reaches out from themselves in order to unfold their I arbitrarily into reality, into existence.

If you have a feeling for the formation of words, you can literally see how the words that have just been spoken as the characteristic of the consciousness soul form themselves almost automatically into the Gothic pillar and the Gothic arch, where the enclosing shape presents us with a structure that no longer expresses calm, inward persistence, but rather, through its forms, the striving to emerge from mere inward stasis. How great is the difference between the beam, which is carried in full static calm by its column, and the mutually supporting arches, which come together at the apex and hold each other, where everything pushes towards a point, just as the power of the human soul is concentrated in the consciousness soul.

And anyone who can empathize with the ongoing process of human development, especially when observing Italian or French architecture, feels how, in the transition from the development of the intellectual or emotional soul to the development of the consciousness soul, it is no longer a matter of a calm, static support and supporting itself out of its inner totality, and one no longer strives for inward unity in form, as in Greek architecture, but rather seeks to pass over into the dynamic, as it were, to emerge from one's skin, in order to enter into connection with the reality of the outer world, as in the consciousness soul. Gothic arches open up to the light of heaven in long windows. This is not the case in Greek architecture. In a Greek temple, it would make no difference to the perception whether light fell into it or not. The light is only incidental. This is not irrelevant to the Gothic cathedral; the Gothic cathedral is inconceivable without the light refracted in the stained glass windows. Here we can feel how the consciousness soul enters into the totality of the world and strives out again into general existence. The Gothic style is thus the architectural striving that is characteristic of the age of the development of the consciousness soul.

And now we enter our own age, in which a world view that does not arise out of arbitrariness but out of the necessities of human development must realize that the human being must work his way out of the soul and into the spirit again, that the human being rests in the spirit of himself. The Gothic building, with its special architecture of the wall broken through by the windows, with its opening up for what can come in, for what must now come, appears as no more than the forerunner of this process! Like the right-hand harbinger of what is to come - where the wall necessarily leads to a structure and in this respect is also only a filler, a decoration, not an enclosure, like the walls of the Greek temple - like a harbinger, this Gothic building appears to be what must now become the new building for the enclosure of the coming Weltanschauung, the new building whose essential characteristics I have already hinted at here and there and some of whose essential features have even already been attempted, for example in the Stuttgart building.

The essential thing will be that the complement to the preliminary stage of architecture, to cave construction, where the rock itself materially closed off what had been hewn into it, will now appear; that our new building opens up on all sides, that its walls are open on all sides, not, however, to the material, but open to the spiritual. And we will achieve this by designing the forms in such a way that we can forget that there is any city or the like besides our building. Such an attempt has already been made in the Stuttgart building; its walls are open despite the material closure, open to the spirit. In the new building, too, we will design the forms, the decorative, the picturesque, in such a way that the wall is broken through, so that we can feel our way through color and form: Despite being closed in, our spiritual and mental outlook expands into the world at large. Just as the proportions of the cosmos were taken up in the pyramid, we take what we can experience through anthroposophy and theosophy and create forms, colors, outlines, figures for it , but we create all this in such a way that precisely through what we create on the walls and conjure up on the walls, these walls themselves disappear, and we experience the closed space in such a way that we can feel the illusion everywhere: It expands out into the cosmos, into the universe, just as the consciousness soul, when it merges with the spiritual self, expands out of the merely human into the spiritual.

In the new architecture, the significance of the individual column will also change completely. If, as in the Greek temple, we are dealing with static conditions, with conditions in which inwardness is of primary importance, then it is natural that the column forms and the capital forms should be repeated. For how could one imagine a column in one place as being different from another in the neighborhood if they have exactly the same function? It must be designed in the same way as the other. It cannot be any different, because every column has the same function.

If we are now dealing with a new architecture that reaches out into the cosmos, which is differentiated in the most diverse ways on all sides, and we are to forget that we are in an inner space, then the columns take on a completely new task, a task that is somewhat like that of a letter that points beyond itself by forming a word with the other letters. Thus the columns combine, not in a diversity, but like the individual letters to form a weighty writing that points outwards to the cosmos, from the inside outwards. And so we will build: from the inside out! And just as one capital follows the other, so they will join together and express something as a totality. This will be something that leads beyond the room. And what we will otherwise install, for example inside the dome, will be installed in such a way that we will not have the feeling of We are closed in by a dome, but that the whole painting seems to pierce the dome, carries it away into infinity. To do this, however, one will have to learn to paint a little in the way that Johannes Thomasius paints for Strader's sensibility, so that Strader gets the feeling: “The canvas, I want to pierce it, to find what I am supposed to seek.”

You will realize that in the mystery plays not a single word is written in vain, but always from the whole, and that all the things we want necessarily follow from the preconditions of our culture. Today I just wanted to evoke a feeling for the fact that in the entire treatment of the walls, the architectural motifs, the columns, and in the use of everything decorative, the new architecture must aim at the destruction of the material, so to speak overcome the wall and outwards, so that the picturesque must also overcome the wall; I wanted to evoke a feeling that all this must occur and be attempted through the new architecture and that this is a necessity in view of the course of human development, as we recognize it as a necessary one.

However, given the necessity of such a building in the course of human development, it seems pathetic that it is so difficult to actually carry out the building, and pathetic too are all the objections raised by the authorities in Munich, including those of the artists who have been called upon to judge it and who have said that the building would overwhelm its surroundings. Perhaps they felt a little queasy about the building overwhelming the neighborhood, about it growing out of it into a very wide environment. They will initially feel oppressed by it.

Such objections, raised by artists who believe themselves to be at the cutting edge of their time, seem grotesquely comical when viewed from the perspective of human development. Our dear friend, who is helping us here as an architect, said that the master builder should not let himself be forced by the client, but should create as a free artist, as he wishes. That is a nice principle, because let's say the client orders a department store, he would not be very satisfied if the “free artist” built him a church. Now, there are many such buzzwords. But one is limited by task and material. The term “free artist” simply makes no sense here. For I would like to know what the “free artist” will do if he intends to execute a plastic work of art from free artistry, to mold clay and create a Venus, and instead of Venus a sheep comes out? Is he then a free artist? Does the word 'free' have the slightest meaning in art when Raphael was commissioned to paint the Sistine Madonna and it ended up being a cow? Raphael would have been a 'free' artist, but he would not have created a Sistine Madonna! Just as one only needs one tongue for certain things, here too only one tongue is needed. For such reasoning has nothing to do with the necessary real conditions of human development, but rather it depends on whether one has a truth in mind that relates to doing, to working. For truths that are to be fruitful, that are to be 'true', must be grounded in the necessities of human development. However, they will always be applicable to what Schopenhauer said about truth entering into human development. For Schopenhauer said: “In all centuries, poor truth has had to blush because it was paradoxical, and yet it is not its fault. It cannot take the form of the enthroned general error. So it looks up with a sigh to its patron, Time, who beckons victory and fame to it, but whose flapping of his wings is so great and slow that the individual perishes from it.

Let us hope, dear friends, and let us do our part, because it could be good for our cause, that our guardian spirit takes pity on us and turns his gaze to us, so that we, recognizing the necessity of our structure, may soon be able to truly create this shell for anthroposophy or spiritual science, which corresponds to the development of humanity.