The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I have already pointed out that one hears time and again an objection to the study of spiritual truths. This objection, incidentally, is immediately dismissed as arising from the extreme laziness of the human soul. It is the objection of those who say: I do not reject the idea that man, after passing through the gate of death, enters another, a spiritual world; but what this spiritual world is like, what the state of this spiritual world is, I will wait and see! Here on this earth one must attend to one's material duties, and then one will see what happens in another world when one is transported to that other world. It cannot be denied that this objection is very convenient. However, to examine it carefully is the duty of anyone who is interested in spiritual-scientific truths, because such examination can confirm their belief in the necessity of really dealing with spiritual-scientific truths. In order to lay this examination before you, I would like to say, let us today, from a certain point of view, once again visualize the relationships that exist between human life here and human life that flows between death and a new birth.

Let us be clear about the fact that man, while he walks through life here in the physical body, only really takes in part of what is connected with his life into ordinary consciousness, because things are constantly happening that are connected with our life, but which do not pass by our life so that we can bring them clearly and distinctly to our ordinary consciousness. Sometimes we become half aware of the facts, but not of their full significance for us in our everyday lives. Think about your day's work in the evening, and above all think about the places you have entered and the people you have encountered there. All of this has great significance for you, because your immediate surroundings are reflected in your soul. And of the many things that are reflected in the soul, very few come to our clear consciousness in everyday life. There is a great difference, after all, between, let us say, having been near the Stuttgart train station at nine o'clock this morning and having been out in the forest, because in both cases something quite different has been reflected in your soul; something quite different lives in your soul in both cases. We usually do not realize that this has a profound significance. Only from, I would say, quiet hints of life can we often deduce the meaning of such things. Take the following, for instance. You can see it – not in this case, of course, but in other cases – if you pay a little attention to life. Suppose you came here this evening. Someone in the first row would have reason to leave the room before I finish speaking; he gets up, moves down the aisle and leaves. Someone in the third row has seen him, but, at least I assume so, this person in the third row has listened carefully – which also happens, doesn't it – and he has only half let this personality, who has just left, pass by in his usual consciousness. He will be able to notice that he perhaps dreams very little of what I have spoken here. For if one could take a statistic on the subject, those of the honored listeners who dream a great deal about what has been said here would probably not be all that numerous. But you will easily be able to see – perhaps not from this example, but from a similar one – that you dream about the one who stood up and went out. That is to say, you will be able to observe in numerous cases in life that you draw on those things in your sleeping consciousness that fleetingly pass by your consciousness during the day.

This is why people know so little of what they have dreamt. For most of what is dreamt is of such a nature that it passes by fairly unnoticed during the day. Only the things that are clearly grasped by the consciousness are rarely dreamt of. Dreams only come when they are connected with certain sensations, certain feelings, which again are not clearly and distinctly brought to consciousness. And when one wakes up one remembers so little of the dreams, because in the previous life one paid little attention to what one dreamt. This is also connected with the limited ability to remember dreams. In short, what I want to say is this: countless things rush by in a person's life that only very fleetingly enter into consciousness, but that have a great significance for the human soul, even if they remain in the unconscious or subconscious. Everything that runs, as it were, between the lines of life has great significance at first, when the human being has passed through the gate of death.

We have often had to describe this time, which the human being first spends between death and a new birth, from the most diverse points of view. Thus one thing always blends into another, and only by choosing the most diverse points of view can one arrive at a certain completeness in this field. Everything that passes unnoticed by the ordinary consciousness is then revealed when the human being has passed through the gate of death. And I would call what the human being experiences first over a long period of time the unrolling of images. What the person goes through is essentially a reliving of experiences of the imaginative consciousness. A great, great number of images are unrolled over scenes from life that we have been very little aware of. And of that which we have become aware of here, that which has also been little touched by consciousness here is unrolled. The other, which was clear consciousness here, occurs more as memory after death, like memory images, like remembrance; but what has been little noticed here unrolls as in present images.

Today it is particularly important to me to point out that the first third of life between death and a new birth is essentially concerned with this unrolling of images, essentially with a life in imaginations. We can help these imaginations by establishing a connection between us, who have remained here, and those who, as karmically connected to us, have gone through the Gate of Death. Then comes the second third, in which this spiritual and soul life is more fully inspired. It is here that a person realizes the significance of the images he first experienced in the context of the whole world, and how these images connect him to the world. Everything a person experiences is significant in the context of the world. One must not believe that it is unimportant to have once met a person, whom one may have paid little attention to, to have been close to them. It is revealed in images, and what it means in the whole of world events comes to revelation in inspirations in the second third of life between death and a new birth.

In the last third, life is mainly one of intuitions. There the human being has to empathize with what is in his spiritual and mental environment. There the human being lives as if submerged with his consciousness in what is in his spiritual and mental environment. And it is precisely in this last third, through this submersion, that he prepares for the submersion in the physical body after birth or conception. The intuitions in the last third of life between death and a new birth are the introduction of that intuition, which is then of course subconscious or unconscious, which consists of the fact that the human being submerges into the body that is handed down to him in the hereditary stream of parents, grandparents and so on. And something remains for the person when he has now passed from the spiritual and soul world into the physical world. If you consider this, bear in mind that the human being actually lives through long periods in spiritual and soul intuitions, is accustomed to living in such, so he will still want to hold on to this habit when he has entered into the physical body. And indeed he does. For what then is the main endeavour of the soul during the first seven years of life until the change of teeth? You can look it up in the booklet 'The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science'. I have said: the desire to imitate. The child always tries to do what is being done in its surroundings; it does not start from its own intentions; it puts itself in the actions of those who live in its surroundings and imitates them. This is the echo of the intuitions in the last third of the life between death and a new birth. We are therefore born as imitative beings because we translate into physical life what we have done for a long time in a spiritual-soul way in the other world. And one understands how man grows into this physical life by turning one's gaze back to what man has become accustomed to doing in the spiritual world.

Here you see a thought from spiritual science presented to you that is of a kind that many will have to come in the coming centuries and millennia for human spiritual life. These thoughts will indeed have to change much, much from what has occupied people spiritually until now. Consider that it has become customary in recent centuries, when thinking about the question of immortality, to think mainly about what comes after death. One always thinks: Can man hold that which he develops in physical life beyond death? — This is important to people above all else. This question of immortality is certainly important, but it will take on a different complexion if we consider, I might say, the other half of the question of immortality, if we are not interested in what follows death and what emerges as a consequence of life here on earth but when one will ask: how does what we experience here in the physical body connect with what we have experienced before? For the life we have experienced before, our life here is the hereafter. It is mainly in this direction that thought will be received on this side. People will realize that they can only understand life on earth if they see it as a continuation of the spiritual life from which they have come. They will start to take an interest again in that life that preceded earthly life. It can be said that, with the exception of the last third of the 19th century, people were still somewhat interested in the question of immortality in spiritual life, but they were only interested in the question of immortality insofar as spiritual life in immortality is a continuation of earthly life. The philosophers did it that way, but these philosophers were basically, despite their claim to be doing unprejudiced science, in many respects miserable people who, while they believed they were doing unprejudiced science, did nothing more than continue the prejudices that arose from certain currents. Consider that at the time of Origen, the Church condemned the pre-existence of the soul, that it condemned Origen because he taught this pre-existence, so that the Church was in a certain dilemma: there was Origen, the greatest of the Church Fathers, and it could not be denied that Origen taught pre-existence. But that is forbidden in the church. So there was a great dilemma. Throughout the Middle Ages, people were accustomed not to teach about pre-existence. The professors of philosophy continued this well, and so did the writers of philosophy, but they believed that they were thinking without preconditions. They did the same in other questions, in questions for which I have already given examples here. Now it must be realized above all that the direction of thought, the direction of human contemplation, must undergo a serious change through spiritual science. This life on earth will only appear in its true value when one becomes conscious that it is a continuation of a spiritual life. And it can only be understood if it is grasped as such. Then, too, one will arrive at a more sound judgment on the other side of the question when one looks at it in this light. When one realizes more clearly that this life on earth has a significance for the life in the beyond, that man in the beyond strives to come here to earth to have this life on earth because he needs it, then one will ask about the value of this life on earth much more from just such a premise than one has done so far.

But one thing in particular will be able to point out to you how important it is to ask about the value of this earthly life. Two things are often not very clearly distinguished from each other, namely: Man thinks - and: Man has thoughts. But the two things are really very different from each other. Thinking is a power that man has, an activity; and this activity first leads to thoughts. Now, we bring the activity of thinking, this power that lives in thinking, into this earthly life from the time between death and a new birth. We apply this power of thinking to external perceptions through the senses and think about the surroundings that we have here. But these things in our surroundings have no significance for the time between death and a new birth, because there they are nothing. They are only here for the senses. Therefore, the thoughts we have here about the things that are spread out before our senses have no significance for life after death; but it does have a significance for life after death that we feed the power of thought at all, because this power of thought remains with us for the whole of life between death and a new birth. The thoughts that we accept from sensory perceptions are of no use to us after death. They only serve as clues to remember the self during the life between birth and death.

Imagine two people. One of them is not at all interested in what can be learned about life in the spiritual worlds through something like spiritual science. He only thinks about what the senses present and what ordinary science teaches; but that is nothing more than what the senses present. And he says: I will wait to see what the spiritual world is like before I penetrate it. From a certain point of view, they are, I might say, the less culpable in comparison with those who appeared in the 19th century and believed that they had to deny the existence of a spiritual world altogether, with all the power of science, according to the saying that the poet has such a person utter: “As surely as there is a God in heaven, I am an atheist!” — It was from such a frame of mind, after all, that 19th-century atheism was sometimes born, out of such “thoughtful soul-searching”. But let us take a person who simply does not engage in forming thoughts about the spiritual worlds. That would be one person. The other person engages in forming thoughts about the spiritual world. These are different thoughts from those that one takes in through the senses. It cannot be denied that they are different thoughts. This is already evident from the fact that the thoughts through which a spiritual world is not perceived are, in the opinion of most people living today, the clever thoughts, the real thoughts; the thoughts that spiritual science describes are the crazy, the fantastic, the crazy thoughts, and so on.

But let us take these two people. What situation are they in when they have passed through the gate of death? The person who has not absorbed any thoughts about the spiritual worlds here, who has not allowed thoughts about the spiritual worlds to pass through his soul, is, as a being of soul, in the same situation after death as someone who has a physical body but has nothing to eat and must starve. For the thoughts we think here about the spiritual worlds are the nourishment for one of the most important powers that remain with us after death: for the power of thought. We have the power of thought just as we have the power of hunger here, but this power of hunger cannot be nourished at all between death and a new birth. Between death and a new birth we can have imagination, inspiration and intuition, but we cannot have thoughts as such. We have to acquire them here. We have to enter into the life between birth and death in order to acquire thoughts here. We live on these thoughts, which we have acquired here, the whole time between death and a new birth, and we starve for these thoughts if we do not have them. That is the difference. He who does not want to occupy himself with the spiritual worlds here on earth is doomed to become a spiritual starving person. And such a person, who is able to satisfy himself and thus live between death and a new birth, is the one I mentioned as the second one who occupies himself with thoughts such as we do here. If materialism were to become the only view held by people, then in the future, between death and a new birth, people would fall more and more prey to a spiritual famine. The result of this would be that they would enter the physical world stunted through the following incarnation. The spiritual world would wither away, and with the spiritual world the physical world would wither away in the future that humanity still has to go through during this earthly world. They have succeeded in making the saying “After us, the deluge” a certain attitude for unsuspecting humanity that does not know what is at stake. This saying, 'After us, the deluge', even if it is not done, lies at the bottom of the soul in a materialistic time. This saying has no meaning at all for those who know reality. For what humanity is doing at the present time, whether it wants to immerse souls in the spiritual worlds or not, is what lays the foundation for the future of development. The welfare of the Earth itself depends on mankind not giving up its thoughts about the spiritual worlds in the present. Those who live in the present should realize this more and more. For an enormous amount depends on the fact that the course of human development is understood spiritually.

We have tried to develop important concepts about the spiritual worlds, because ultimately the spiritual worlds do indeed extend into our physical world, and one cannot understand the physical world either without understanding the spiritual worlds. And we have developed the most diverse concepts. Now, a truly thinking person will come to realize that this spiritual-scientific thinking is particularly important for reality. You simply cannot understand the whole of reality if you only want to think scientifically, just as you cannot understand material existence if you only think scientifically and not spiritually. I will give you a very paradoxical and strange example of this.

I believe I emphasized here some time ago that about a year and a half ago a very significant thick book was published by an excellent contemporary natural scientist, Oscar Hertwig, a Haeckel student, “The Becoming of Organisms; a refutation of Darwin's theory of chance”. This is an excellent book that is right at the cutting edge of contemporary scientific research. And I have taken many opportunities recently to emphasize the significance and the leading ideas in it. For it is also a remarkable book from a cultural-historical point of view. You know that in 1869 Eduard von Hartmann appeared on the scene with his 'Philosophy of the Unconscious', at that time in the heyday of Darwinism, which had then found its materialistic interpretation. Eduard von Hartmann opposed it. Then the natural scientists cried out: Well, it is an amateur philosopher who talks about spirit and understands nothing about natural science! — The matter turned out as I have already described it several times. One day a book appeared about which even Haeckel's student Oskar Schmidt wrote: “There is someone who understands something about natural science. He gave Hartmann what for! We ourselves could not say it better; let him come to us, and we will welcome him as one of our own! — They have done a terrible job of advertising. A second edition became necessary. Then the author named himself: it was Eduard von Hartmann! That's when they stopped advertising it. It was high time that someone took a stand and showed people that those who speak of the spirit are no less intelligent than those who deny it. Eduard von Hartmann wrote several other works in which he pointed out the one-sidedness of Darwinism. He did not find much favor with it. But one can say: After calm, well-trained research, a man like Oscar Hertwig has come to think the way Eduard von Hartmann spoke as early as 1869. He even quotes him frequently in his work. And everything is structured in an exemplary way in this book, 'The Becoming of Organisms'. Here one can actually study a prime example of a matter that could grow out of the scientific method of the present day, and has grown out of it.

Now, a few weeks ago, the same man published a kind of sequel to this book: “In Defense of Social, Ethical and Political Darwinism.” It is hard to imagine a more stupid book than this one, which Oscar Hertwig allowed to follow his first epoch-making work. It is hard to imagine anything more inadequate, anything more tinny than this book. As you can see, in the field of our spiritual science, it is necessary to acquire a certain lack of authority, because if our dear friends, after I have praised the truly epoch-making book to the skies and will always do so, now buy the second book on the basis of authority and say to themselves, “So we have to see this as something great,” they will be very much mistaken. The purpose of spiritual science is to enable us to form judgments freely and to be ready in every direction and at every moment to face the phenomena that come our way. Even in the most esoteric spiritual-scientific endeavors, no credence in authority can be tolerated, otherwise the result will not be spiritual science but a caricature of it. What is the cause of what I have described? It arises from the fact that today one can be a great epoch-making natural scientist, that is, one can be in a position to develop everything concerning material events and their manifestations according to the methods of the 19th and 20th centuries; but as soon as one begins to reflect on what lies in the human sphere, what lives in man, how people live together socially, when they live together ethically and morally, when they want to develop politically, want to develop political ideas, at that moment, when one begins to think about those things in which the spiritual element plays a role, one can, despite being a brilliant natural scientist, be an absolutely stupid person, because natural science is of no use at all. And just such a literary example has emerged in our time to really substantiate this, which can be seen from spiritual science; to really present it in reality. For anyone reading this second book by Oscar Hertwig will notice that there is not a single thought about what relates to social, ethical or political life, as would be quite appropriate in the present, for the present is really not exactly rich in fruitful social, ethical and especially political ideas. But that also stems from the fact that purely scientific thinking has been completely overestimated. And here Oscar Hertwig has the best of intentions; he wants to move this scientific thinking away from social, ethical and political thinking. But since he has nothing at all about the latter, it is of no use for him to reject the former. This book contains the most curious intellectual somersaults. I will only point out one thing, always assuming that the first book I mentioned is an excellent one.

People do not notice it: Oscar Hertwig is an authority; our time does not believe in authority, but it falls for any authority that is officially presented to it. People are willing to be taught; some things do not even strike them. But in the second book, Oscar Hertwig wants to make it clear to people what has to be done to think scientifically. He can do it, but he does not understand what it is. After all, you can do it instinctively. The methods are great; you just need to be educated for it, you don't have to develop in your thoughts what you are doing. This is where Oscar Hertwig comes to the following strange conclusion. He talks about how one should actually conduct scientific research in order to recognize things in one's environment. He says: The great model for physical, chemical and biological thinking has been provided by astronomers, and it is important that people learn to think about physical, chemical and actual life phenomena in the same way that astronomers think about celestial phenomena. It is very suggestive to say: imitate the greatness of thinking in Kepler, in Copernicus, in Newton, in order to understand the phenomena that are around you! But just think about what is behind it! The phenomena of life, the physical, the chemical phenomena, the phenomena of life are all around us; the facts are very close to us and we encounter them all the time. And now we are to obtain science by directing ourselves to the facts that are as far removed as possible from us; thus, because we are as far removed as possible from the facts of celestial phenomena, we are to develop from them the knowledge of that which actually surrounds us. One cannot form a more insane thought than such a thing. But thousands upon thousands of people read past such madness and suspect nothing of the fact that such follies corrupt the whole thinking of the present time, that if it takes hold, it must make people more and more alienated from reality. And then one cannot see one's way into any social, ethical or political structure if one starts from such thinking and such sentences. It is one of the tasks of our spiritual science to see clearly through what is in the so-called spiritual life of the present day.

I said that we had to deal with pointing out the spiritual forces that do indeed extend into the ordinary physical world. And we have spoken again and again about the fact that the human being, with his life, stands in three currents of force, in the luciferic, in the ahrimanic and in the one that is actually appropriate for the development of humanity. I have often pointed out that one must not say: I avoid the Luciferic, I avoid the Ahrimanic – if one avoids it, one will only plunge into it all the more, but one must be clear about it, one must really study, get to know the human being's standing in these three currents. One must take the knowledge of Lucifer and Ahriman into life.

Now, much of the social and historical structure of humanity in the last centuries or millennia has been very much under Luciferic impulses that came from within man. One could cite many, many things that were under Luciferic impulses, but I will cite only one, in which everyone will immediately see the Luciferic.

Ambition and vanity play a major role in the way people position themselves on the various poles of their lives, the various points of view in life. Many a person would never have aspired to this or that position if the social structure had not been the cause of this vanity being stirred up in one direction or another. All this business about titles, ranks and orders is ultimately based on the Luciferic element. And just try to consider impartially how much of what people achieve in life is purely due to the fact that they aspired to these fishing rods of ambition, to these baits. Try to consider how people are placed, one above the other, one under the other; how social institutions take this ambition into account. Try to realize how this has built the social structure. In this field, Lucifer has played an extraordinarily important role.

Let us consider another phenomenon that is now beginning to be practiced and admired. And here, in the field of spiritual scientific work, is the place to consider such things in a proper and realistic way. If you pay attention to some of the various things that are now becoming popular in the present, you will find among them what are now called the “gifted examinations”. The purpose of these examinations is to single out the gifted from among the children and young people. There is a danger that these aptitude tests will lead to true idolatry. How are they done? You have trained psychologists who, although they understand nothing of the soul, understand psychology all the better; psychologists who are trained in the methods of the present and who are thus able to select the gifted from a series of young people or children, so that the right man can later be in the right place, of course. One baits now less, one believes, in the future with the ambition, with the vanity, but one makes gifted examinations. These gifted examinations refer to the speed of comprehension, to the memory. Senseless words are written down, and the one who can remember them faster has a better memory than the one who can remember them less quickly. Intelligence tests are made. A word, a second, a third word that have no connection are given, and then the students are asked to find a connection. So, for example, one writes: “robber” and “mirror” and says: Now think of something between robber and mirror. — One person now thinks: The robber sees himself in the mirror. The other thinks: I have a mirror in my room, a robber sneaks in and I see it in the mirror. The latter has thought more complicatedly and is therefore more gifted. Then the matter is made statistical and those who are most intelligent are selected; they are then taken as the right people to be placed in the right place.

You see, anyone who objects to this great achievement of the present day on the basis of the conditions that now prevail here is considered a very stupid fool who knows nothing about what it is all about.

Now, let us take a look at this whole matter. What exactly are we examining when we test people in this way? We are not examining anything that really has to do with their soul. We only have to consider one thing: that probably the most important people of the past, those who have achieved the greatest things, would have been considered untalented after such tests. Consider even Helmholtz, who is regarded as a celebrity by modern man; if he had been subjected to such a test of talent, he would certainly not have reached the position he later held. These tests of talent have nothing to do with the development of the soul abilities of the human individuality, but everything to do with the sum of the Ahrimanic forces within man. It is not the person who is tested, but the Ahrimanic forces within him. And so, just as one has previously reckoned with Luciferic forces, one now begins to count on Ahrimanic forces and to establish a social structure that is built purely on Ahrimanic forces. However, only those who really engage with spiritual scientific content and who want to see through the world spiritually will be able to see through such things. Because what I have told you now about the aptitude tests is presented by a large number of people and their journalistic followers as one of the most significant achievements of the present day, presented in such a way that the social structure of the future can be built on the basis of this examination. And the public, which does not believe in authority, this poor public, has no opportunity to reflect on what such a matter is actually about. It does not have the opportunity to form clear concepts about such a matter. But that is what matters.

If, after taking in some of the things we have on our minds today, you begin to form ideas about what needs to happen first for humanity, what needs to happen in terms of the spiritual development process, then you are asking the right questions. But then you will endeavor to grasp the human individualities in order to teach them what they should be interested in. You will not come to test the Ahrimanic abilities, because these Ahrimanic abilities will lead to humanity being treated entirely as a sum of machines. You only test the mind in the outer body. One tests the human being only to the extent that he is a machine when he is subjected to this aptitude test. And a social selection is created that only makes the best types of physical machines the leaders of humanity. Nowhere is there any reflection on what basically rests in the soul, and what can never come to the surface in such tests. But I do not blame anyone if they run after such things in an almost idolatrous way today, because someone who has not studied spiritual science at all can only do as they do and surrender to the judgment that it is the smartest thing to do in the present. But this gradually leads away from real human liveliness, from human reality. It leads into abstract areas, into that which is dead in human life and is dominated only by the spirituality of Ahriman. One must see through the full seriousness of such things, how people are drawn away from the real. And that is something that confronts one with particular intensity in the present: the drawing away of people from reality. For anyone who has no sense of spiritual reality will gradually lose their sense of ordinary external reality as well, the reality that surrounds them every day, if they are not forced by their profession or other things to pay attention to reality.

I will give you an example of this: something very cute happened the other day. An article by Fritz Mauthner, the critic of language, appeared in a very popular newspaper. In this article, Fritz Mauthner, who is an extraordinarily clever man, complains about a booklet that has appeared in the collection “From Nature and the Spiritual World” and that develops the astrological ideas that have emerged in a way that is entirely in line with current materialistic science – and in fact in the way a modern university professor does – as it is. At the end, the person in question develops the horoscope of Goethe and explains that it can be used to show how things went in Goethe's life. But actually, the good professor only makes fun of those who believe in horoscopes. He wants to show them as something that can be interpreted in different ways. Fritz Mauthner rants and raves through three columns of the “Berliner Tageblatt”. One could not understand why he was actually ranting. There was not the slightest reason to rant. He actually has the same opinion as the one who wrote the little book, both look at astrology from the same point of view. And very soon the Tageblatt also published a correction by the author, in which he says that he does not understand Mauthner. He did not explicitly say on every third line: I scold astrology —, but he actually has no more interest in astrology than Fritz Mauthner does; he fully agrees with him. The Berliner Tageblatt – newspapers are very clever – adds that it has no reason to take the author to task and accuse Fritz Mauthner of misunderstandings. Fritz Mauthner was in fact the theater critic of the Berliner Tageblatt for many years and now writes a kind of theater column for this newspaper.

For his part, Fritz Mauthner says that he also has nothing to say about this anti-criticism by the author. One was faced with the strange fact that two people actually agree with each other, but one lashes out at the other. Fritz Mauthner gets angry when he hears something about astrology, or when someone writes something about horoscopes. Otherwise it would be inconceivable that he would have written this article. He writes as though the other were the most terrible astrologer, who wanted to throw the validity of Goethe's horoscope in people's faces. So there you have an example of how two people fight each other, one voluntarily, Fritz Mauthner, the other out of necessity, because Fritz Mauthner attacked him first, two people between whom there is not the slightest difference. How can that be? Such a thing can only happen when two people have nothing to do with reality, which is itself narrowly defined, when both live out of something other than reality. The most glorious example of this is that people talk and talk today, and talk very cleverly – Fritz Mauthner is a very clever man – but there is nothing behind the talk. There is not the slightest reason to talk like that.

There you have an example of a completely logical construction of thoughts that have absolutely nothing to do with reality. This is what happens to thoughts that get out of the habit of having anything to do with spiritual reality, because then the thought gradually loses all its connections to reality. It is important to realize this. And that is also the terrible seriousness of the matter. For in the end it does not matter whether Fritz Mauthner and the Heidelberg professor are attacking each other and their words have no meaning at all because there is no reality behind them, or whether they are two politicians, one of whom speaks in America and the other in Europe, and who perhaps even speak in agreement, despite being totally different. If all people who talk like this are absolutely alien to reality, have nothing to do with what really lives in things, then this estrangement from reality will spread. It has spread. For the example I gave, of Fritz Mauthner and Professor Boll, is only a grotesque example. But it is everywhere present. That is how it is done today. And what does it lead to? It leads to conflict. It is relatively easy to be united when you deal with reality; but when you stand by reality, it leads to conflict. Little by little, people will realize how much of our catastrophic events are connected with this prevailing mood of the present, and what a serious thing it is. For just go out and ask the numerous readers of this newspaper, which is one of the most widely read in Germany, whether they even notice the grotesque and paradoxical aspects that are coming to light! People are oblivious to all of this. But it does not pass unnoticed in the events themselves; there it has its bitterly evil effects. For what is being done here is nothing less than an abuse of human intellectual power. Do you think that if these mental powers, which are used for nothing because they are alien to reality, were applied in the right way, then reality would be promoted, then they would be in the normal current; but as it is, they benefit Ahriman. It is alien to reality for the middle current, but it happens, it slips into a sphere, and that is what matters. That is the seriousness of the matter. It does not pass unnoticed, but slips into another sphere and creates facts. It creates facts that do not correspond to the true situation. Because, even on the surface, purely rationally, purely intellectually, one can imagine how that creates facts.

Our time does not believe in authority. People test everything and keep what is best! Nevertheless, it does happen that people believe in authority. A person like Fritz Mauthner has countless followers who believe his every word. They are naturally impressed by such an article. Think how many thoughts are stimulated by such an article. They are all drawn into the Ahrimanic sphere in which the article flows. The matter is unreal, and things are pushed into an unreality by it. That is what matters.

What one would like to do with such things, my dear friends, is to point out again and again the tremendous seriousness behind such considerations. Because it is true: What I have characterized in individual cases, you will encounter at every turn today. We are in the time when we only do the right thing if we decide to see clearly, without prejudice, to face life impartially. That is our task. And that is precisely what spiritual science is meant to lead to, by building the bridge between the human inner life and reality in the right way. For in this respect, people live in the most terrible fogs. One cannot begin to describe what arises when one delves into this, how people live in this respect today, in dense fog. It must be so, for people must learn to rely on themselves. People must learn to create clarity through themselves, not to get clarity through authority. This must become one of the best, one of the most important achievements of spiritual studies for the individual human soul, to gain a free, clear, unbiased judgment about what life around them offers; to break the habit that basically dominates all of humanity today: to be asleep to events. People oversleep what is right in front of them. And to shroud them in a fog is precisely the endeavor of those who come with one-sided, all kinds of monistic or “scientifically based” — as they say — ideas, but who are nothing more than materialists. For they claim, indeed assert, that they are building the bridge to reality. They lead away from reality. Tell Oscar Hertwig that he is looking at things in an unrealistic way, he will laugh at you and cannot see that he is doing so. But as a spiritual scientist, you must be somewhat shocked when you read that the closest facts of life are to be considered according to the pattern of celestial phenomena, where the facts are as far away as possible. To go through life like this, paying attention to what we experience not in books but right under our noses from morning till night – not when we are among anthroposophists, of course – offers all kinds of things that we have to pay attention to without prejudice today. For humanity is at a significant turning point. And what I have said is not a criticism of the time, but only an emphasis of what is necessary by saying: This is how it is. It is good that it has come to this, because it calls on people to stand on their own two feet and become independent. The Deity did not set itself the task of leading people through evolution as spiritually and mentally dependent automatons, and so it had to let them come to the present situation. It is wise and good, but it must also be recognized in the right way and acted upon accordingly.

To let this attitude emerge from the deepest impulses of our being as the innermost stimulus of our strength for life, that must become one of the results of our spiritual-scientific occupation. Then we may not found a voluptuous, comfortable revelry in unworldly ideas, which is so good when one wants to oversleep life; but we found that genuine worship of life, which leads the divine-spiritual forces, which are the basis of all reality, through the most important instrument for this earth

instrument to the realization of this divine-spiritual in this earthly life.

More about this next time.

One of the fundamental characteristics of the spiritual scientific contemplation that we practice is not fully appreciated, even among us. Indeed, when this fundamental characteristic of our spiritual scientific endeavor is first pointed out in abstract terms, it is perhaps not so far from many of us, including those of us at the forefront, to think: That is self-evident, how could it not be! And yet it is not so. The basic characteristic I have in mind is that our spiritual science endeavors not only to point out in general terms that the spiritual world is a reality, that individual world beings live as realities within the spiritual world, but to show again and again in detail how what takes place around us and within us in our ordinary life between birth and death is a creation of the spiritual world. I say: It could be thought that if one seriously turns one's spiritual eye to the spiritual world, it is already given to see what is around us as a creation of the spiritual world. But it is a long way from these general, quite abstract, empty, meaningless thoughts to penetrating to the spiritual places where it is grasped in detail how the reality of the senses is a creation of the spirit. Today, we shall see this illustrated by a particular example, one that can also show how far present-day humanity is from even suspecting what it means that the creation of sense-perceptible reality around us, as we experience it between birth and death, is a creation of spiritual reality.

In order to explain the special example we want to approach today in detail, I would like to remind you of what I was obliged to say in yesterday's public lecture. Today, we want to bring the matter more deeply and closely before our soul with reference to certain applications.

Yesterday and earlier, I spoke here in this branch about what I would like to call the growing discipleship of humanity in the course of development. If we go back in the evolution of humanity to the catastrophe in the becoming of the earth, which we call the Atlantic catastrophe, where the continent that once lay between present-day Europe and America sank and the western American and eastern European worlds arose in its place, we find, starting from our own epoch, five epochs of humanity. The first post-Atlantean epoch, which followed immediately as a cultural epoch upon the Atlantean catastrophe, is the culture of ancient India. It goes far beyond what can be explored through external historical documents. You will find it described, to the extent necessary, in my book, Occult Science. What is important for us today, however, is to be clear about the following: in that cultural epoch, people lived in such a way that they participated in their physical development with their spiritual and soul selves up to the age of fifty. This participation does not include what we experience today. When we feel tired or old, it is not the same kind of participation as the child experiences in its physical development in the first years of life. No, what we experience physically at a later age is not directly known by the soul and spirit. We do not participate in the descent of our development. If we could participate physically in the descent of this development, we would learn an enormous amount about the spiritual world by undergoing a reverse development - a collapse, a mineralization of the brain mass, a sclerotization of the body. We would experience through our body what we have to experience today through spiritual science if we want to approach it at all. In ancient Indian culture, this descending development continued until the fifties. People were children until their fifties, only an aging child.

Then came the second post-Atlantic culture, the ancient Persian culture, which was also prehistoric. In this culture, people continued to experience what they went through mentally and spiritually in relation to the body until the end of the 1940s. Then, in the third cultural period, humanity as a whole had become younger again. In the Egyptian-Chaldean period, the souls emancipated themselves from the body from about the age of thirty-five to forty-two. Then came the age of Greek-Latin culture, which included the Mystery of Golgotha. During that time, the body underwent a development similar to that which today only the child goes through, up to the age of thirty-five. And today we are in the fifth post-Atlantic cultural epoch – we have been advanced in this cultural epoch since the 15th century – we experience what the body experiences until the end of the twenties; we no longer experience the descending development at all. This is why man is so little inclined today, by his natural disposition, to take in the spiritual as such into his soul. In ancient times, the physical body itself gave the spirit; today, the physical body no longer gives the spirit. Therefore, the spirit must be taken up by the soul itself. The soul refuses to do this. In ancient times, it was nonsense for a person not to believe in the spirit. In order not to believe in the spirit, he would have had to die before the age of thirty-five. If he lived to see the time after the thirty-fifth year, he experienced something through what was happening in his body in a descending development, which immediately presented itself as spirit. It was inconceivable that people in ancient times did not believe in the spirit. But because things have developed in this way, a moral impulse, a magnificent moral impulse of humanity, has been lost in so far as its natural development is concerned. I ask you not to underestimate this magnificent moral impulse, which was lost in a natural way and which must be found again in a spiritual-ethical way. In those ancient times, children knew from their elders: Once you have passed the age of thirty-five, you experience something as a human being that you cannot experience at a younger age. — Imagine vividly the feeling that children and young people grew up with: I have something to expect when I enter the descending development; I then have something to experience that I cannot know now, that my physical body simply cannot give me now. Imagine the feeling, quite different from today's, when one expected to grow old under such conditions. There is something tremendously different in life today when one expects to grow old in such a way that one knows: something is coming that could not come earlier.

That has changed, but not as abruptly as one might imagine. Isn't it true that when one expresses such a truth as the one just hinted at, today's intellectual bad habit immediately demands an either-or. But in reality things are never an either-or, as a rule it is a matter of both-and. The spiritual does not come of itself when one ascends again in the development of age. But when the spark of spirituality is awakened in the soul in the way it is meant in spiritual science, then one benefits from growing old after all. Then something arises from the declining body that particularly immerses itself in what one has learned and come to know through the spiritual scientific path. If you remain without a scientific contact with the spirit today – this scientific contact is not meant in a specialized way, but so that it can be accessible to everyone, even to the simplest mind, because spiritual science can become popular if humanity wills – then you will not experience anything special when you grow old; you will not be able to appreciate growing old. They will also have no special expectation of growing old in childhood and youth. It is different when the spark of spiritual knowledge in the soul is not aroused through natural development, but through educational development, through a development that approaches the souls of the human community. If it is properly understood, what spiritual science can be for the soul in a living way, the mood will be generated again in a conscious way through this spiritual science: I have something to expect when I get old. Growing old means something. When I am thirty-five years old, what lives in me will be different than it is now that I am a young badger of twenty. This mood is something tremendous for the human soul, this mood, which I would describe as the mood of expectant life, of life that simply knows: the creation that you experience in yourself, you must seriously consider it to be a creation of the spirit.

Today, when people do not want to be touched by the knowledge of the spirit, do they seriously regard the creation of man – even when it is expressed in a phrase-like way – as the creation of the spirit? No, in practice people do not do this at all. For if they did, they would say to themselves: It makes sense that one grows old. The whole human life is a spiritual creation; one does not grow old in vain, the spiritual in us is constantly finding new expression. That which arises in us, that which reveals itself in us from within, will always show new aspects. To live expectantly, to expect something from growing older and older with each passing year, is a consequence that arises from taking seriously the sentence that what is around us and in us is a creation of the spirit. This is an attitude, this expectant life, which must become part of every educational system, which must flow into the whole constitution given to the educational system. So that from an early age, and when they become young men and maidens, and even later, the children get the feeling: While we are young, the spirit does not give us everything; but as one grows older, it reveals more and more new things that arise in the soul. One need only be stimulated by the knowledge of the spirit not to overlook, not to disregard, that which wants to emerge from the depths of our being, because it is not senseless, but because it makes sense that we grow old. Today, even the youngest people are annoyed when such a feeling is still expected of them; because the youngest people already feel ready to be elected to parliaments and state assemblies, as a matter of course, even though they do not belong there, because it is a matter of being able to pass judgment on social structures only from a mature perspective on life. If you have the mood of expectant life at all, then you know: you cannot know what you assume from external institutions in a living way, in a feeling way, until you have reached a certain age.

Do not say that spiritual science, when it is properly understood, is something abstract that does not intervene in practical life. Spiritual science, when it is more and more and more correctly understood, will intervene very much in practical life, because it will become familiar with concrete perceptions; it will cause man to grow up differently, to expect differently what each new year of his life can bring him again. Spiritual science contains the most powerful educational enzymes, the most powerful educational impulses. It contains moral impulses that affect the human mind quite differently from the moral impulses that people of the present day pride themselves on; for it contains impulses that flow to the human soul from the whole meaning of life, from the universal meaning of life. Of course, I do not mean by this that everyone who is familiar with spiritual science should immediately fulfill all ideals. But that is the case with morality in general: it initially hangs over man as an ideal, and he has to incorporate it into himself according to his free will. But spiritual science as such contains these significant moral impulses. It is not only a nurse of earthly morality, but it is a nurse of universal morality. One must only see through these things in the appropriate way. But it is extraordinarily necessary that an attitude of mind, which is connected with what I have now explained, should gain access to human minds through spiritual science. For what has led our time into such a fateful catastrophe is precisely that we live in that transition period that wants to pour something new into the human soul, and that people have not yet lost their attachment to the old, that they do not want to take in such new feelings, especially not want to take in such feelings in the principles of education. In the outer life, which has emerged from materialistic culture, one often finds the opposite of what the future so energetically demands of humanity. It is necessary that, above all, the young people assimilate this focus on the meaning of the emerging life. And today, in this respect, everyone is still a young person, because spiritual science has not yet been sufficiently assimilated, so that everyone must first become imbued with what spiritual science can give to the education of the human soul. For mankind must free itself from the belief that one is a finished human being at the age of twenty or twenty-five, that one has developed everything and only needs to live one's life, and for whom life has meaning only in so far as one applies what one has learned, or by enjoying life, and the like.

If you look more deeply into the context of life, what has been said comes to mind in a very, very deep way. It is something that developed in people by itself in ancient times, and that is to develop in more recent times through educational care in the human feeling: expectant life. Oh, it is something significant when a person says to himself at the age of thirty: in the future, simply by growing older by five or ten years, secrets will be revealed to me through this growing older; I have something to expect. —- Just consider what that is and what it means to introduce something like that into education! But it is also something real. It is a flowing being that comes into its own in man, that came into its own in ancient times by itself, that is to be cultivated in more recent times. For that is what comes to the fore in man; just because we do not pay attention to it, do not care about it, that does not make it not there. Do not think that you will escape becoming wiser, receiving secrets, as you grow older if you ignore these secrets. The spirit is at work in you. You will all become spirit-rich! The only difference is that one person absorbs it willingly, while another, once he has decided to become a clever man in his twenties (today this is particularly the case in the so-called world of the intelligentsia), rejects the idea of absorbing anything later in his development. The youngest people today write, compose poetry and do many other things. And how they feel about these things! How little they sense the meaning of life, which consists in the emergence of the human being as a creation from the spirit. But the spirit does not give up, even if the youngest people today write dramas or feature articles and the like. Nevertheless, it is possible that they still have spirit, they just know nothing about the spirit that develops in them.

What happens to this spirit, to the real spirit that developed by itself in ancient times? Yes, my dear friends, this spirit must disperse. Truly, it disperses. It spreads in the spiritual atmosphere, it spreads in the aura of humanity. And this is something that must be said again and again to our time, but which of course it does not believe for the simple reason that it naturally regards it as fantasy when one says to it: Now there is a young feature writer who thinks he is very clever. He knows nothing of the spirit, but the spirit passes into the aura of humanity, it atomizes. His spirit is nevertheless there. Today the aura of humanity is completely permeated with such atomized spirit. This spirit must be held together again by human beings, through the mood of which I have spoken. For we are already close to the point where a terrible evil would arise if this atomizing spirit were to be further and further developed. For it is an important law of spiritual life that a spirit becomes something quite different from what it originally was when it leaves its carrier. Just grasp this clearly: a spirit that leaves its carrier, that atomizes, becomes something quite different from what it would become if it remained held together by its carrier. It is essentially deteriorated, worsened, it is transformed in an ahrimanic way. And that which must come out, which does not yet come out clearly today because we are at the beginning of what can become terrible if it is not taken into account, that is a terrible spiritual wasteland. People will search for something to keep them busy because they have allowed the spirit to dissipate, which should actually keep them busy. A search for something without knowing what one is looking for is something that must become more and more widespread if the evil is not controlled. We can already see the beginnings of this in many of the things I have already mentioned.

What does a person do today if he has neglected to pay attention to his spirit? He will preferably search for something; only this search comes to fruition in a strange way in the most diverse fields. One very common area is: people found associations, associations with good programs. They confront people with all kinds of demands. These may be quite clever things, but they are mostly things that arise only from the fact that one has remained at the childhood point of view and then fossilized the childhood idea until one lets it loose on the world at a later age in the form of association programs. In this area, people today know an enormous amount to do. But they know little about working in the spirit, starting from small seeds of spiritual effectiveness, letting people join of their own accord and keeping them alive and active, something like a human community.

You see, that is why so many conflicts arise in our society, which, for certain reasons, remain latent and which I do not want to discuss here. Wherever I myself can exert an impulse in some way, I want all statutes, all rules, all laws to remain as far away as possible. After all, why do we need statutes when a number of people come together to cultivate spiritual life? We can draw up such statutes to show the authorities; that is another matter, it has nothing to do with the matter itself, but what matters is what such statutes mean to us ourselves. The point is that such a community should live, that each new person can bring something new into it. Such a community should live; it cannot be bound by any statutes. After five years of existence, it should be just as different as a child is different at twelve than it was at seven. But that is not the way of thinking in today's world. The way of thinking in today's world is to live as unalive as possible, to constrict everything into abstractions. That is one thing. Many examples could be given, all of which show that there is no awareness of the atomizing of spiritual life. One searches, one searches in every possible way. Just think how many women's and other associations there are already in a reasonably large city today! One searches and searches because one does not know that what one is supposed to hold is atomized. So one searches because one does not have what one does not pay attention to. This seeking means a barren life. This barrenness would increase terribly if humanity did not understand that the mood of life must arise, of which I have just spoken.

Isn't that what people today refuse to understand: the immediacy of life! The principle that what is there is a creation of the living spirit certainly demands mobility of experience. Never declaring yourself closed off or finished is inconvenient in some respects. But it is a necessity if the spiritual development of humanity is to progress. And to understand spiritual science in such a way that it is the inspiration for a living life, that it really finds its way into what the time demands at the present point of development of humanity, that is precisely the task of those who really devote themselves to spiritual science: to live with humanity and to recognize what it has to go through in the course of the development of time, what is set before it.

Try to gain an unbiased view of the events that surround you today. Actually, most people are oversleeping what is going on around us today. They just think that a state like the one before 1914 must come again, and they are waiting for such a state to come. They do not understand at all how radically the issue is involved, and how necessary it is that mankind should work its way through to quite new concepts, which were not there before. To comprehend life in its historical development, that is above all the task of the spiritual-scientific school of thought.

That is one thing: that the spirit is atomized by being ignored by people, as happens so often today. But only part of it is atomized, the other part remains behind, accumulating in the human organism, but not entering consciousness. It unconsciously impregnates the organism. It enters the blood and the flesh; it works in the unconscious. Part of what the human being should be aware of is atomized in the course of a lifetime, and part is driven down into the subconscious. What does it do in the subconscious?

Let us take a closer look at what causes the spirit to be partially driven down into the subconscious. The cause for this is mostly the wrong educational principles, which work towards children and young people becoming precocious, and towards children remaining childlike as little as possible. How much benefit is derived today from bringing the child to form its own judgment as early as possible, from educating the child in a different way as early as possible, as described in my booklet “The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science”. It is necessary that the child live above all in pictorial representations, that the intellectual approach comes to the child as late as possible. Today, there is very little sense of this. Even culture itself has little sense of it. But this culture should not be held back; spiritual science will never become reactionary. It will, of course, take into account external, material cultural progress; but this external, material cultural progress demands that a counterweight be created. It was different for people in the days when they did not learn to read and write in their youth. I do not want to speak in favor of illiteracy, do not misunderstand me, but today it is considered a misfortune when people are illiterate, because one sees the value of a person not in what is alive in the soul, but in what is brought up to the person, which ultimately has terribly little to do with the actual human soul. In those ancient times, when writing was still a pictographic script, when the letter reproduced a word secret, writing was something. But today: those little ghosts that appear on white paper before the eyes of the youngest children and have to be deciphered, those little ghosts that the children themselves conjure up on the paper, what kind of relationship do they have to the soul? They are only signs, arbitrary signs. One could imagine that the whole thing, as a piece of writing, would be arranged quite differently. Some people today already have a tendency to arrange it differently. They have even arranged shorthand. There is no necessity for what is there to approach people in this way; it could also be quite different. But that is a necessary requirement of earthly culture; it is against this that the reactionary turns, not the spiritual scientist. That had to come, of course. But a counterweight will come. Spiritual science will not consider it an ideal to abolish school; but a counterweight will be that children receive pictorial instruction, that instruction which contains reference after reference to the secrets of the world, instruction which, through everything that is learned, connects the mind with the secrets of the world. Every animal, every plant in its forms, they express something that is mysteriously connected with all creation. The right freshness of mind to feel such expression is only found at a certain age. One must grow together with creation at a certain age.

Let us take an example here too. I have already mentioned a saying that my old friend Vinzenz Knauer, the historian of philosophy, often used. He said, from his well-medieval scholastic consciousness, to those who claim that everything is in the same matter: Well, just look at the same matter as it is in a wolf and in a lamb; lock up a wolf so that it can't get any other food and only give it lambs. If the matter of the lamb is really the same as the matter of the wolf, then the wolf should gradually become a lamb, or at least become as meek as a lamb. This clearly shows that in that which forms the wolf – we call it the group soul – in that living thing that determines the structure of the wolf, there is something other than the structure of the lamb. To look at mere matter, not at formed matter, not at spiritualized matter, does not lead into creation, but out of it. The animals around us are built in the most diverse forms. Just look at how different man is from animals in this respect. Consider very carefully what is actually present. Human beings, apart from small differences that lie in the various racial characteristics, which can be great but do not come close to the differences between animal species, are equally formed across the earth. Why? Because the equilibrium conditions in them are different from those in animals. The animal is a result of the equilibrium conditions that develop in relation to the earth. You can see this in the ape, which is almost upright. The animal is designed in such a way that its backbone is actually designed to be parallel to the earth's surface, that its hindquarters are at the same height as its forearms. The most significant thing is that the human being is predisposed from the outset in such a way that what is next to the hindquarters in animals is built over the hindquarters, covering them. In humans, the line that goes through the head to the earth falls into the center of gravity line, but not in animals. The fact that man is called upon to give himself his own equilibrium to the earth, which becomes a caricature in the ape, but is the self-evident essence in man, is why he rises above the definite form that each animal genus has. Man does not have the same definite configuration as the animal species because he rises above it, because he can place the head above the abdomen. This is something tremendously significant. The Darwinists have not yet thought of this at all. But this is what matters.

Today I can only hint at it; if I wanted to explain it further, I would have to give many lectures, and it would illuminate the deeply significant question of the difference between animals and humans. But that interests us less today; what interests us today is that the human being overcomes the animal form within himself by adopting an upright position, by giving himself a different state of equilibrium on earth. In doing so, he makes himself independent of the earth. But he is only independent as a physical human being. If we go to the etheric body, it is different. This etheric body is mobile in itself; it is differently shaped every moment in every single person. If someone looks at a lion, you see the lion's shape in the person looking at it. If you look at a hyena, you become hyena-like in the supersensible. In the physical, the human being overcomes external formations, but in the etheric body, he adapts to what occurs in his environment. And this is precisely what so significantly distinguishes man from animals: the animal has its definite form; the lion that confronts the dog cannot imitate the shape of the dog in its etheric body, it always remains, even internally, the lion; in truth it only recognizes another lion. Observe how the similar animal faces the similar animal quite differently than the dissimilar one. Man, however, is versatile; he adapts himself to his surroundings with regard to his ether body. But the question is whether this adaptation is regular or irregular, whether this adaptation intervenes meaninglessly or meaningfully in life. The fact that animals are so diversely formed, that they hold fast in their physical form that which man, ever changing, can become, makes that the whole animal kingdom is not only what the modern zoologist sees, but that every animal form has a definite meaning, and the connections among the animals yield a definite meaning. In a certain way one can read this meaning of the whole animal kingdom. But it is by grasping the meaning of what is out there in solid form that we build a bridge between ourselves and the spiritual world, and then meaningfully relive it by becoming it ourselves.

In ancient times, people instinctively tried to sense the meaning of their environment. The various symbolic tales about animals are what stand out in historical times: the animal fairy tales, the animal sagas, the animal fables and the like. We cannot go back to that. But something else must be developed for this, so that people do not just learn what they are currently learning in a very abstract way about the animal form. How such animals are described in today's school books! The descriptions seem so boring to children because they are entirely external. Let the description be a meaningful one, let the lion become again something that is developing in Creation in a different way from the hyena or the kangaroo. Then the human being will also live meaningfully in Creation, will take in Creation in a living way. It will certainly have a certain effect, for the spirit will become mobile, the spirit will become full of content when it becomes absorbed in Creation. Then it will not be satisfied with what official science gives it today in many cases. You can experience all kinds of things in this respect today. If you follow the development of the animal series as presented by today's official science, even where it is somewhat unbiased, you can experience strange things. You don't even have to go as far as Darwinism; you can start with Zamarck, who is much wiser than what has been developed in a materialistic way from Darwinism. There you can also find a description of how the different animal forms have developed by adapting to their living conditions. Certain animals have developed webbed feet because their living conditions have developed for them to live in the water. Other animals have developed prehensile feet because they had to find their food up in the trees and the like. Yes, if the organs have developed through such habits, they must have been different before. Animals that have webbed feet must not have had any before, must have had different ones; they then developed them through their living conditions. One gradually comes to realize that those animals that have webbed feet have developed them from other feet, and those that do not have webbed feet have developed them from the earlier ones that were differently formed. That is how it is. You just don't notice it, you study hard, but you don't notice it. When the giraffe has a long neck, it is explained that it has become so from a short one because the giraffe had to reach the tree. If the giraffe had a short neck, it would have become so from a long neck through other habits of life. You don't even notice that you are turning things around and around. Today, no one has any idea of the confusion and confused thinking in which a world view lives that does not create a meaningful bridge to what is in the human environment.

But this is what must be incorporated into education, to mention just one thing: this meaningful experience of the environment; not just understanding the environment intellectually, but experiencing it meaningfully, so that one really absorbs the forms of the animal, plant and mineral kingdoms with one's whole soul. What a blessing it would be for a fourteen- or fifteen-year-old boy or girl if you took them for a walk and said: Look at these cloud formations! Then again on a next walk, where the clouds are formed differently: Now look at these clouds. Memorize this so that you have an image of these forms! After letting the child observe the whole for a while, you go to your shelf and take out Goethe's “Natural Science Writings”, where he meaningfully describes the various cloud formations and how they merge and separate. The child will immediately understand this and immediately become immersed in this vivid, meaningful description of cloud formations, experiencing something wonderful.

Or let the child observe a plant in the garden in spring, summer and autumn, and then read to him Goethe's poem “Metamorphosis of Plants”. This is a meaningful way to introduce nature.

These are some of the things that help to create the mood of expectant life. These are some of the things that are needed if we are to avoid the spirit being repressed and entering the blood and the flesh, but instead being taken hold of by the soul in the appropriate way within. Certain things must not enter the flesh in the course of development, but must remain in the soul. What happens when they enter the flesh and blood? They create affects and passions in the subconscious, which are given names and masks, and which are sometimes quite different from the masks given them. Today, so much lives in human development that has come about because what should have remained in the soul has passed into the blood and flesh. And what is the result? It brings forth strife, discord, disharmony over the earth. This masks itself in all possible forms, this masks itself in the fact that the Italian cannot stand the German, that the Englishman cannot stand the German, that the German cannot stand the Roman; this masks itself in these passions that rage over the earth. We only have to know the deeper reasons for these things, and we have to realize what is incumbent on humanity, what is humanity's mission, in order to achieve what must be achieved at all costs.

What is happening at the present time should be seen as clear signs of what we must learn in order to lead humanity towards a prosperous future. We should not remain on the surface, as people do today, but look into the depths of human souls. The fact that the 19th century made an educational mistake because it was a transitional period, because it allowed things to be taught in the flesh and blood that should have been taught in the soul, is being fought out today on the battlefields. The blood that has absorbed what should have gone into the soul now rules in the wild passions that are raging across the earth. This makes it impossible for people to understand each other. It makes them talk at cross purposes. It makes them have so little sense of feeling and living together.

The signs of the times are serious, very serious, but they are an invitation to look into the depths of world evolution in order to recognize from these depths what our task is. I already said last time: This is not an objection to world wisdom, to divine wisdom. Divine wisdom must guide these signs through humanity, because humanity is not an automaton-like entity, but should become independent. The question is not: Why did humanity come into all this? — but: What must be done for the salvation of humanity? It is a matter of action and of great universal ethical impulses. This is what we are called upon to do from week to week, from hour to hour, from minute to minute: to engage with what is to happen. And the person who, in the way indicated today, has expected each new year of life to bring something that was previously a mystery to him, ignites in his soul that which humanity will also need in the future: the living, not the dead, sense of immortality. He who knows that every new year brings him new secrets also knows that life after death brings him new secrets; for him, doubt about the continuation of what brings something new to the development of the body makes no sense. But for him, this life after death is also real, very real: it is not only the egoistic principle, as it so often appears today, but it becomes the principle of humanity.

Today we step through the gateway of death and bring with us many observations of life that we have not processed here. But that still has a meaning for the earth. Our wisdom, which we have acquired here, will also benefit the earth after we have passed through the gate of death. But here on earth there must be people who want to use it. Those who have had experiences know how to report on them. In public, in order not to make a complete fool of oneself, one must still say these things as I did yesterday, for example: that Planck would think differently today than he thought in the 1880s. As a humanities scholar, one actually means something else by this. One knows that this person's soul has carried so much through the gateway of death that there is plenty that can still be useful to the earth. And those who know that their living feeling for the living soul is not diminished by the portal of death also know that the so-called dead are in constant contact with us, and that we only have to receive what they have worked. Those who have experience in this may perhaps speak of these things in a modest way from personal experience. I know that I have not only taken up Goethe's world view, but that I have written what I have written about Goethe's world view in the most diverse ways only because I knew that it comes from the inspiration of the soul of Goethe himself, at least as far as a weak descendant can absorb it.

But this requires a living relationship with the soul that has remained alive, not just the abstract veneration of the dead, but the absorption of the living essence of the dead into our souls, which are embodied here in the physical body. Oh, how much, how very much that is fruitful and of significant essence will flow into the evolution of the earth when the dead, through the attitude of the living, can be the advisers of mankind. I know how far our attitude still is from this. I know that people today ask: What does the twenty-two-year-old, the twenty-three-year-old say - or whatever the age limit may be for the various parliaments - what does the twenty-four-year-old say about something that is to become law? - But they do not ask: What does Goethe say today about what is to become law? But that will come too. The dead will be our fellow citizens. If you absorb into your soul the feeling that a new secret can be revealed to us every year, then you will go even further: then you will also know what it means to make the great transition through the gateway of death with the sum of the earth's evolution. Then the dead will be the co-advisers of the living. For it does not depend merely on belief in immortality, but on the fact that that which is immortal can bear fruit in all the fields where it is really to bear fruit. Man needs strength to push through the veil that still separates him from what the spiritual world still holds.

You see, today's way of thinking is actually more or less there for us to develop the strong power to penetrate to the spirit. But the time has already come when people must penetrate many things in a clear way, because they should understand it themselves. That is why the signs are placed before the human soul, because people must learn: This must not be there at all, that must be overcome completely. And because they are to overcome it themselves, that is why it had to occur among them.

Two extremes stand in the outer life - but there are many such extremes - opposite each other: Wilsonism and, opposite it, Trotskyism or Leninism, call it what you will. Both stand there, born out of an unspiritual world-view, the most unspiritual world-view imaginable. It is the task of mankind to see that everything that ultimately leads to Leninism or Wilsonism be eradicated. But there is a great deal of both Wilsonism and Leninism everywhere; they are very, very widespread, one just does not notice it. One must only look the things in the eye. But anyone who has studied spiritual science to some extent knows that this spiritual science gives him the soul's eye to look things squarely in the eye in this area as well. Today it is a vital necessity for people to look squarely at the world, to look at things, not to oversleep them. For people have all too much reason to spread masks over what is true in many cases. And people are all too gullible; that is why they believe in the masks and do not look at what is hidden behind them. One cannot develop the way of thinking that makes possible a certain agility of mind, which is necessary for spiritual science, without, in a certain time, when one really finds one's way into this agility, acquiring a clear, calm view of what is going on in the world. One must not oversleep things, one must awaken through spiritual science if one does not want to lull oneself out of a certain comfort in life. There is much need to let such a spirit flow into the soul, but the will, especially of many who feel themselves to be leaders of humanity, to take this need into account, is not there. The will to the spirit exists today in the simplest natures; they only do not yet understand themselves because they are misled by what is spread today in many cases as “public opinion” — Schopenhauer called it “private stupidity”. The leaders are often inclined to speak of the limitations of human nature where they do not want to lead people beyond those limitations. You find this today in all fields. How good it is for people – to mention just one example – when something like what is happening now to the French “theologian” Loisy, who has also taken up such a strangely vacillating position between modernism and non-modernism, although he had apparently stood on his own two feet for a while. But now, in the face of the catastrophic events, he has asked himself the question: Yes, what has actually become of Christianity in view of the catastrophic events that have taken place in the world today? Has not Christianity perhaps failed? Loisy does not mean Christ as such, but he wonders: Has not Christianity perhaps failed in some ways? Some have written about this question of conscience of Loisy. One said: Well, you just have to reckon with the imperfection of human beings. Christianity wants something different from what is happening on earth now, but what is happening must happen because people are imperfect. To think about it is not the point, but the point is to reflect and to consider and to feel how man can become more perfect, how man can ennoble himself, how man can come higher ethically by becoming more and more integrated into the universal world being. In many cases, the questions must be asked quite differently than one is inclined to ask them today.

These are the feelings that I wanted to place in your souls during our time together. Even more than before, it is important to me this time that my words are not only understood with the mind, but that they are taken as they are meant: that they inspire our minds, so that they become the seeds in our minds for an understanding penetration of what has to happen in the development of humanity, in the course of humanity. For each of us, in perhaps not too long a time, according to our nature and karma, will find ourselves surrounded by important questions in life at this or that point in our lives, questions that we cannot cope with if we only want to cling to the old, comfortable ideas. We must learn to acquire new ideas. Spiritual science can be our guide to such new ideas. My words were intended to awaken the souls to wakefulness. Even if they appear to have been based on facts, the facts were chosen so that they would touch on precisely what is most important for people at the present moment in terms of their emotional life, in terms of their entire mental life.

The fact that I am speaking today is a consequence of the question posed in the preceding history seminar. This question concerns the question of guilt for the last war catastrophe, and it is certainly such an important question, and one can already say today that it is also a thoroughly historically important question, that the answer to this question, as far as it is possible to answer it in such a narrow framework in a short time, must not be withheld from you.

I would just like to make a few preliminary remarks so that you are aware of the context in which I wish to speak about this question. I have never held back the views I have formed on the subject of today's discussions in lectures I have given at the Goetheanum in Dornach, and I have never made a secret of the fact that these views appear to me to be the ones that should be expressed to the whole world above all others. I do not believe that the situation today is such that we should keep saying that we must first leave the objective judgment to history, that we will only be able to form an objective judgment on this matter in the future. In the course of time, especially as a result of prejudices that continue to have an effect, just as much will be lost in terms of the possibility of forming a sound judgment on this question as might perhaps be gained from one or the other. I say “might” expressly, because I myself do not believe that in the future one will be able to form a better judgment on this question than one can already in the present.

That is the first thing I would like to say. I must say it for the following reason: As you well know, those attacks – I do not want to label them with any epithet now – that relate precisely to the cultural-political side of my work within the borders of Germany, come mainly from the side that one could call the “Pan-German” side, and I must of course be aware that on this side, everything I present in any way will be interpreted in the wildest way. On the other hand, I do not think I need to say any special words of defense in this direction, for the silly accusations that something is being done against Germanness are refuted by the fact that that the Goetheanum was already built during the war in the northwestern corner of Switzerland, a symbol of what is to be achieved not only within Germany, but also before the whole world through German spiritual life. If one has borne witness in this way to what it means to be German, then I think there is no need to say many more words to refute malicious accusations in any way.

What I have to say further is this: I have always endeavored not to influence in any way the judgments of those who hear what I say in this regard, and I would like to continue to do so today as far as possible – of course it is only possible to a limited extent if one has to be brief. In everything I have said, I have endeavored to provide everyone with the basis for forming their own judgment by listing these or those facts, these or those moments. And just as I never anticipate a judgment in the full scope of spiritual science, but only try to provide the material for forming a judgment, so I would also like to do so in these matters related to the historical external world.

Now, I would like to comment on the matter itself: it seems to me that the discussions taking place today on the question of guilt are, more or less everywhere in the world, based on impossible premises. I, for my part, believe that with these same premises, if only applied in one way or another, one can easily prove that the entire blame for the war lies with the somewhat strange Nikita, the King of Montenegro. I believe that with these arguments one can ultimately even prove that Helfferich is an extraordinarily wise man, or that the formerly fat Mr. Erzberger did not slither through all possible undergrounds and basements of European will in a remarkably lively manner during the war. In short, I believe that one can do very little with these arguments. On the other hand, I believe that the present German Foreign Minister Simons was quite right when he said in his recent speech in Stuttgart that it is necessary to seriously address the question of guilt. I just have the additional view that this should really be done. Because emphasizing that it is necessary to do this does not mean that we have done everything that needs to be done. It is necessary to address the question of guilt, and this is clear from the fact that the most cunning statesman of the present day, Lloyd George, put it at the forefront of those last ill-fated London negotiations. only call it, one is at a loss to find the right words for what is currently being said - the sentence: 'Everything we negotiate is based on the assumption that the Entente Allies have decided the question of guilt.

Now, if everything we can negotiate is done under the aspect that the question of guilt has been decided, then, if it has not been decided, it is all the more important to begin the negotiations by seriously raising the question of guilt and treating it in a serious manner. It must be emphasized that, so far, nothing has been done in relation to this question of guilt except for a very strange decision by the victorious powers. This decision is based, entirely in accordance with the rules of world affairs today, not on an objective assessment of the facts, but simply on a dictate from the victors. The victors need to exploit their victory in an appropriate way by dictating to the world that the other side was to blame for the war. You cannot exploit victory, as the Entente would like, as you even – it can be admitted – must exploit it from that point of view, if you do not blame the other side entirely. You will easily see that one could not act in this way if one were to say: Yes, people cannot actually be judged at all as they were, say, during the war catastrophe.

So it is a matter of the fact – because everything else has remained only literature or has not even become literature – that for the time being nothing more has been done for the question of guilt than for the dictation of a victor to flow. And the fact that this has happened in an incomprehensible way, which basically should never have happened, that this victor's dictation has been signed, has created a fact that cannot be regretted enough. For one cannot say: this signature had to be given in order not to make the disaster even greater. Those who look into the real events know that one can only get through the present world situation with the truth and with the will to the full truth. Even if what flows through the need may lead to tragic situations, today one cannot get by with anything else. The times are too serious, they call for great decisions, they cannot be resolved otherwise than with the full will to truth.

I would like to emphasize: Since I am unable, in the short time available to me, to present the matter in such a way that the content of my sentences fully substantiates what I am saying, I will at least try to give you a basis for forming an opinion in this area by the way I present the facts, the way I try to find the nuances in the way things are presented. Now, through many years of experience and careful observation of what is taking place in world-historical development, I have found out how, especially among the Anglo-Saxon people and in particular among certain groups of people within this Anglo-Saxon people, a political view exists that is, in a certain sense, quite historically generous. Certain backers, if I may call them that, of Anglo-Saxon politics have a political view that I would summarize in two main points: firstly, there is the view – and there are a large number of personalities behind the actual external politicians, who are sometimes straw men, are imbued with this view — that the Anglo-Saxon race, through certain world-developing forces, must fall to the mission of exercising a world domination, a real world domination, for the present and the future of many centuries. This conviction is deeply rooted in these personalities, even though it is rooted, I might say, in a materialistic way and in materialistic conceptions of the workings of the world. But it is so deeply rooted in those who are the true leaders of the Anglo-Saxon race that it can be compared with the inner impulses which the ancient Jewish people once had of their world mission. The ancient Jews, of course, conceived of it more in moral and theological terms, but the intensity of the conception is the same in the actual leaders of the Anglo-Saxon race as it was in the ancient Jews. So we are dealing primarily with this principle, which you can also observe externally, and with the particular way of looking at life that is present among the Anglo-Saxon people, among their representative men in particular. The prevailing view is that when something like this is at hand, everything must be done that lies in the spirit of such a world impulse, that one must not shrink from anything that lies in the spirit of such a world impulse. This impulse is brought into the minds of those who then lead political life in the more inferior positions — but this still includes those of the state secretaries — in an, it must be said, intellectually extraordinarily magnificent way. I believe that anyone who is not aware of the fact just mentioned cannot possibly understand the course of world development in modern times.

The second point on which this world policy, which has been so sad and so disastrous for Central Europe, is based, is the following. People are far-sighted. From the point of view of Anglo-Saxonism, this policy is generous, it is imbued with the belief that world impulses rule the world and not the small practical impulses by which this or that politician often allows himself to be guided with arrogance. This policy of Anglo-Saxonism is generous in this sense; it also counts on the world-historical impulse in individual practical measures. The second thing is this: It is well known that the social question is a world-historical impulse that must necessarily be realized. There is not one of the leading figures among the Anglo-Saxon personalities who does not look at it with an, I might say, extraordinarily cold and sober gaze and say to himself: The social question must be realized. But he also says to himself: It must not be realized in such a way that the Western, the Anglo-Saxon mission might suffer as a result. He says, almost literally, and these words have been spoken often: the Western world is not suited to being ruined by socialist experiments. The Eastern world is suited to this. And he is then inspired by the intention of making this Eastern world, namely the Russian world, the field of socialist experiments.

What I am about to tell you is a view that I was able to establish – perhaps it goes back even further, I don't know for the time being – to the 1880s. The Anglo-Saxon people were well aware that the social question would have to be resolved, that they would not let it ruin their Anglo-Saxon way of life, and that Russia would therefore have to become the experimental country for socialist attempts. And in this direction politics was tending, it was clearly tending towards this policy. And in particular all Balkan questions, including the one by which in the Berlin Treaty Bosnia and Herzegovina were snatched away from the unsuspecting Central Europeans, all these questions were already being treated from this point of view. The whole treatment of the Turkish problem by the Anglo-Saxon world is from this point of view, and it was hoped that the socialist experiments, by taking the course they must take when the erring proletarian world world follows Marxist or similar principles, that these socialist experiments will also be a clear lesson for the working world in their outcome, in their futility, in their destruction, that it cannot be done this way either. Thus the Western world will be protected by showing the East what socialism can achieve when it is allowed to spread as it would not be allowed to in the Western world.

You see, these things, which it will be possible to explain in full historical terms, are what has been lying at the bottom of the European situation, and the world situation in general, for decades. And from these things, I would say, emerges what shows a level of world-historical events that is now already too close to the physical world. We need only read very carefully what the fantasist Woodrow Wilson, who is, however, a good historian in the present sense, lets shine through his words in his various speeches. But we only need that to have a symptom of what I want to say. Throughout modern history, it has become apparent that the Orient, although this is usually not noticed, is a kind of discussion problem for all of European civilization. The objective observer has no choice but to say to himself: through the world-historical events of modern times, England has been favored in a certain inauguration of the mission characterized by you. This goes back a long way, back to the discovery of the possibility of reaching India by sea. From this privilege, basically, the whole configuration of modern English politics goes out, and there you have – if I may briefly indicate this schematically; what I am saying now would of course have to be discussed in many hours, but can only hint at the matter in this answer to a question. It goes from England through the ocean, around Africa to India. There is an enormous amount to be learned from this line. This line is the one for which the Anglo-Saxon world mission is really fighting and will fight to the finish, even if it is necessary to fight to the finish against America. The other line, which is just as important, is the one that represents the overland route, which played a major role in the Middle Ages but has become impossible for more recent economic developments due to the discovery of America and the incursions of the Turks into Europe. But between these two lines lies the Balkans, and Anglo-Saxon policy is directed towards dealing with the Balkan problem in such a way as to eliminate this line completely in relation to economic development, so that only the sea line can develop. Anyone who wants to see it can see what I have just indicated in everything that has happened from 1900 and even earlier, up to the Balkan Wars, which immediately preceded the so-called World War, and up to 1914.

Another thing is the relationship between England and Russia. This line is of course of no interest to Russia; but Russia is interested in its own behavior in relation to this line. As you have already seen, England has something special in mind with Russia, the socialist experiment, and therefore it must base its entire policy on the one hand on the realization of this economic line, and on the other hand on Russia being so restricted and contained that it can provide the ground for the socialist experiments. Nevertheless, that was basically the world situation. Everything that had been done in the field of world politics up to 1914 was influenced by this world tendency. As I said, it would take many hours to go into this in detail; but I wanted to at least touch on it here.

What I had to face and what I tried to throw light on when I wrote my appeal 'To the German People and the Cultural World' in 1919 is the other fact that unfortunately people in Central Europe have always refused to believe that they had to gain a political perspective from the point of view of such generous historical impulses. Unfortunately, it was not possible to get anyone within Europe, within the continent, to look at the measures that were taken from the point of view of dealing with such generous tendencies. You see, then people come and say: You have to do practical politics! A politician must be a practitioner! Now let me give you an example to make clear what such people actually mean by practice. There are numerous people who say: It is all nonsense, what the Stuttgart people are doing with their threefold social order, with their “Coming Day” and so on. It is all impractical, they are impractical idealists! Well, put these people in front of you now and think how it will hopefully be when the years come when we have been lucky, if I may put it this way, when we have achieved something, have accomplished something that stands in the world. Then you will see that the same people who now say: All this is impractical stuff – will then come and want to be hired to use their practical knowledge to spread what they previously shouted down as impractical stuff, using all their powers of speech and action. Then all at once the thing is regarded as practical. That is the only point of view these people have for their practice. Whatever the matter may be, this is what it is always about: one must realize that things must be considered at their origin and that what the “practical” impractitioners call “impractical” is something that is often sought precisely as the basis of their practice. They just don't want to put themselves in the other person's shoes, and that makes them unsuitable for dealing with real-life situations.

The practice followed by the politicians of Europe was more or less the same. There is no other way of putting it. And it is absolutely essential to realize that the nullity, the arrival at zero in relation to this policy, was a tragic relationship for Central Europe, when things were coming to a head. What is at issue here, then, is that we must also recognize that it is absolutely necessary for us in Central Europe to rise to the level of a generous, spirit-filled political point of view. Without that, we will not be able to escape from the turmoil of the present. If we do not resolve to do so, then only what we are now seeing will come about. I am of the opinion that the political problems which are still being treated today under the influence of the old maxims are so tangled and so confused that they cannot be solved at all, at least not from these old impulses. And let us assume that the Entente statesmen had sat down together – I am telling you this as something that I have formed as an honest opinion – and had, under the leadership of Lloyd George, if you like, concocted the peace demands that they put out into the world before the London Conference; but let us assume that they then lost the elaboration of these peace demands through some event and they had even forgotten what these peace demands were – of course this is an impossible hypothesis, but I want to make a point here – and now let us assume that Simons had received this document and had made these same demands, quite literally, I am convinced that they would have been rejected with the same indignation with which Simons' offers were rejected at the London Conference. For it is not a matter of solvable problems, but of beating about the bush with regard to problems that are initially insoluble from this point of view. That is what must be said for those who seek the truth in this field.

Now, I would like to go down another layer, to the purely physical events. You know that the external beginning was the catastrophe of the war with the Serbian ultimatum. I have spoken so often about the causes of this ultimatum, about everything that preceded it, and it will be possible for you to inform yourselves about these things, so that today I may speak more cursorily. The Austrian ultimatum to Serbia set in motion the whole series of complications. Now, anyone who is familiar with Austrian politics, especially the historical development of Austrian politics in the second half of the 19th century, knows that this Austro-Serbian ultimatum was indeed a warlike gamble, but that, having made the policy that was pursued, it was then an historical necessity. One cannot say anything other than this: Austrian politics took place in a territory in which it was simply impossible from the 1870s onwards to muddle along with the old principles of government. That they did muddle along is not a term I have invented; it was said by Count Taaffe, whose name was often misspelled as “Ta-affe” in Austria, in parliament itself. He said: We can do nothing else but muddle along.

Now, the necessity arose, precisely because of the complicated Austrian circumstances, to move on to a clear insight into the question: how does any association of nationalities study what are intellectual matters, and in an association state, such as the Austrian one was, did national issues really amount to something like the outpourings of intellectual life? Austrian politics has not even begun to look at this question properly, let alone study it in reality. And if I survey the situation with a certain will to weigh things, not to group them according to passions or to take them from external history, then other things appear to me in the prehistory of the Serbian ultimatum as more decisive than the murder of the Austrian heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand, around which the events then gathered. I see, for example, that from the fall of 1911 into 1912, economic debates took place in the Austrian parliament that had significant repercussions on the streets and that were always linked to the conditions existing in Austria at the time. On the one hand, a large number of companies were closed down at the time because Austrian politics as a whole was so cornered that it didn't know what to do and tried in vain to find new markets, but couldn't find them. This led to the closure of numerous businesses in 1912 and to a huge increase in prices. At that time, inflationary unrest, which reached revolutionary proportions, arose in Vienna and in other areas of Austria, and the debates on inflation, in which the late Member of Parliament Adler took such a great interest in the Austrian Parliament, led to the Minister of Justice being shot five times from the gallery. This was the signal; economic life cannot be maintained in this way in Austria, economic life cannot be sustained. What did Minister Gautsch find to be the main content of his speech back then? He said that all energy, that is, the old administrative measures of Austria, must be used to ensure that the agitation against the inflation disappears. That is how you see the mood on the other side.

Intellectual life was played out in the national struggles. Economic life was driven into a cul-de-sac – you can study this in detail – but no one had the heart or mind to study the necessity of the further development of intellectual and economic life separately from the old state views, which were shown to be null and void in Austria. In Austria, the necessity arose to approach the study of world-historical affairs in such a way that the matter worked towards a threefold structure of the social organism. This follows simply from the facts I have just described. Nobody wanted to think about it, and because nobody wanted to think about it, that is how things turned out. You see, what happened in Austria under the influence of the effects of the Congress of Berlin in the early 1880s, you just need to shed a little light on it and you will see what forces were at play. In Austria, conditions had already deteriorated to such an extent by the beginning of the 1880s, and even earlier, that the Polish member of parliament Otto Hausner publicly spoke the words in parliament: If things continue in Austrian politics at this rate, in three years' time we will no longer have a parliament at all, but something completely different. — He meant state chaos. Now, of course, people exaggerate in such arguments, they make hyperboles. What he had prophesied for the future of the next three years did not come in three years, but it did come in a few decades.

I could cite countless examples from the parliamentary debates in Austria at the turn of the seventies and eighties, from which it would be clear to you how people in Austria saw that the agricultural problem was also looming in a terrible way. I remember very well, for example, how it was said at the time, following the justification of the construction of the Arlberg railway, by individual politicians of the most diverse shades, that the construction of this railway had to be tackled because it was shown that it was simply no longer possible to continue working in the right agrarian way if the enormous influence of agricultural products from the West continued in the same way as before. Of course the problem had not been tackled in the right way, but a correct prophecy had been spoken. And all these things – one could cite hundreds – would show how Austria, in the end, in 1914, had reached the point where it had to say: either we can no longer go on, we must abdicate as a state, we must say we are helpless! or we must get out of this somehow by a desperate gamble, by doing something that will create prestige for the ruling class. Anyone who still held the view that Austria should continue to exist – and I would like to know how an Austrian statesman could have remained a statesman if he did not hold this view – even if he was as foolish as Count Berchtold, could say to himself no other words than: Something like this had to happen – there was no other way to play a game of chance. No matter how strange it may appear from certain points of view, one must understand this in its historical impulses.

Now, so to speak, we have the starting point in one place. Consider this starting point in another place, namely in Berlin. Now, I would like to begin by telling you some purely factual details in order to give you an idea of what was at work there: Please do not take it amiss if I also characterize it quite objectively: In 1905, the man who, in 1914 in Berlin, nevertheless had the decision on war and peace on his shoulders, the then General and later General-in-Chief before Moltke, was appointed Chief of Staff. At the time of his appointment, the following scene took place – I will describe it as briefly as possible: General von Moltke could not, in accordance with his convictions, take on the responsible office of Chief of Staff without first discussing with the supreme warlord, the Kaiser, the conditions of accepting this office. And this argument had approximately the following course. The point was that until then, due to the position of the generals in relation to the supreme commander, the matter was such that the latter – you may have already read about this here or there – often led the supreme command on one side or the other during maneuvers, and you know that this supreme commander also regularly won. Now the man who was to be appointed in 1905 said to himself, the responsible office of the Chief of General Staff: Of course, under such conditions, one cannot take it on; because it can also be serious, and then you should see how you can wage war under the conditions under which you have to put together maneuvers when you have the supreme commander in command, who must win. — Now General von Moltke decided to present this to the Kaiser in a very open and honest way. The Kaiser was extremely astonished when the person he had chosen to be his Chief of Staff told him that it would not do, because the Kaiser did not really understand how to lead a war in a real situation. Therefore, things had to be prepared in such a way that they could be used in a real situation, and he could only take on the role of Chief of Staff if the Kaiser renounced the leadership of any side. The Kaiser said, “Yes, but what is the situation? Have I not really won? Has it been done like that? He knew nothing about what his entourage had done, and only when his eyes were opened to it did he realize that this would not do, and it must even be said that he then accepted the conditions with considerable willingness; that should certainly not be kept secret.

So, ladies and gentlemen, having presented these facts to you for your own judgment, I ask you – and perhaps I may add in parenthesis that there is ample reason today not to color anything in such matters, because I can be checked at any moment by a personality present here – having presented these facts to you, I also ask you now to consider whether there have been any aberrations, whether it was not also a very peculiar thing that personalities were found around the supreme commander – who have also found their succession – who at least did not speak as the later General-in-Chief von Moltke did in 1905, but who also acted differently after taking office. Today there is no need to keep telling the world that one must wait until one can establish the objective facts; it is only a matter of having the sincere will to point out these objective facts.

And now there is really no need to speculate about a Kronrat of 1914, when it is certain that Generaloberst von Moltke had no idea that it had taken place, because he was absent in July 1914 until shortly before the outbreak of the war for a cure in Karlovy Vary. This is important to emphasize because when the talk comes to Germany's warmongers, one must then say the following: Of course there were such warmongers, and if one were to tackle the specific problem of warmongering, there would be a lack of such personalities, whom I have also mentioned earlier, if one wanted to whitewash them completely. And finally, what I said, that one can also ascribe a heavy burden of war guilt to Nikita of Montenegro – I don't know if he is white or black – may be inferred from the fact that as early as July 22, 1914, the two daughters, these – forgive the expression—demonic women in St. Petersburg, in the presence of Poincare, at a particularly magnificent court celebration, told the French ambassador, who did the strange thing of telling the story himself in his memoirs in old age, “We live in a historic time; a letter from our father just arrived, and it indicates that we will have war in the next few days. It will be magnificent. Germany and Austria will disappear, we will join hands in Berlin. Now, the daughters of King Nikita, Anastasia and Militza, said this to the French ambassador in St. Petersburg on July 22 – please note the date. This is also a fact that can be pointed out.

Well then, I would like to say that there is no need to worry about all the less important details. On the other hand, the fact that things in Berlin came to such a head by July 31, 1914, that all decisions about war and peace were actually placed on the shoulders of General von Moltke, and he naturally could not form an opinion about the situation based on anything other than purely military grounds. That is what must be taken into account; for in order to judge the situation in Berlin at that time, it is actually necessary to know exactly, I might almost say hour by hour, what took place in Berlin from about four o'clock in the afternoon until eleven o'clock at night on Saturday. Those were the decisive hours in Berlin, when an enormous tragedy in world history took place. This world-historical tragedy took place in such a way that the then Chief of Staff, from what had happened, or at least from all that could be known in Berlin about what had happened, could do nothing else but to have the General Staff plan carried out, which had been prepared for years in case something like this happened, which in the end could only be foreseen as the thing to happen.

The various alliances were such that one could not think about the European situation in any other way than this: if the Balkan turmoil extends to Austria, Russia will definitely take part. Russia has France and England as allies. They will have to take part in some way. But then things automatically go like this – there is no need to ask any further – that Germany and Austria must go together, and from Italy they had the most definite assurance, even stipulated in detail by an agreement reached shortly before, except for the number of divisions, how it would participate in a possible war. These were the facts known in Berlin, these were the facts available to a man who, in view of the world situation, really only had two points of departure. These were the two maxims of General von Moltke: firstly, if it comes to war, then this war will be terrible, something dreadful will happen. And anyone who knew the very fine soul of General von Moltke knew that such a soul would truly not be able to plunge into what it considered the most terrible thing with a light heart. But the other thing was an unbounded devotion to duty and responsibility, and that in turn could not help but work as it did.

If what happened should have been prevented, then it should have been prevented by German politics; what you yourself may judge should be prevented, if I draw your attention to the following facts: It was On Saturday afternoon, the event that was to lead to a decision approached, and after four o'clock the Chief of Staff, von Moltke, met the Kaiser, Bethmann-Hollweg and a number of other gentlemen in a state that actually seemed to be quite rosy. A report had just come from England – though I think it is hard to believe that it was properly read, otherwise it could not have been understood as it was – according to which German politicians believed that England could still be persuaded to change its mind. No one had any idea of the unshakable belief in the mission of Anglo-Saxons, on the other hand, one had always driven ostrich policy, that was tragic. Now one believed to be able to read with a light heart from such a telegram that the things could also play differently, and it happened that the emperor did not sign the mobilization document. So, I would like to explicitly note that on the evening of July 31st, the mobilization document was not signed by the Kaiser, although the Chief of Staff, based on his military judgment, was of the opinion that nothing should be given on such a telegram, but that the war plan must be carried out without fail. Instead of this, the officer was ordered on that day, in the presence of Moltke, to telephone that the troops in the west were to hold back from the enemy border, and the Kaiser said: Now we certainly do not need to invade Belgium.

Now what I am about to tell you is contained in notes that General von Moltke himself wrote down after his very strange dismissal. These notes were to be published with the consent of Mrs. von Moltke in May 1919, at that crucial moment when Germany was about to tell the world the truth, just before the signing of the Treaty of Versailles. And anyone who reads what was to be published at the time and what flowed from the pen of Herr von Moltke himself will not for a moment be able to gainsay the judgment, since these things so much bear the expression of inner honesty and sincerity that they would not have made a significant impression on the world before the Versailles Dictate. Well, the thing was printed, printed on a Tuesday afternoon, and was to appear on Wednesday. I will not go into further details. A German general appeared at my house who wanted to make it clear to me from a thick bundle of files that three points in these notes were incorrect. I had to tell the general: I have been doing philological work for a long time. I cannot be impressed by bundles of files until they have been assessed in a philological sense, because one must not only know what is contained in them, but also what is not contained in them, and anyone who undertakes a historical investigation does not only investigate what is contained in them, but also what is missing. — But I had to say the following: You have cooperated, the world naturally assumes that you know exactly what the facts are. If I publish the memoirs of Moltke, will you swear that these three points are incorrect? — and he said: Yes! — I am completely convinced that the three points are correct, because they can also be proven to be correct from a psychological point of view. But of course it would have been of no use at the time if the brochure had been published – all the other harassments were added to that – the brochure would simply have been confiscated, that was perfectly clear. I could not have a brochure published that had been sworn to before the whole world, that the three points in it were not correct. For we live in a world in which it is not a matter of right and wrong, but in which power decides.

I know that what I wrote in this brochure on page V was particularly resented, but I thought it necessary to shed the right kind of light on the situation. I wrote: The disastrous incursion into Belgium, which was a military necessity and a political impossibility, shows how everything in Germany was geared towards the peak of military judgment in the period leading up to the outbreak of war. In November 1914, the writer of these lines asked Mr. von Moltke, with whom he had been friends for many years: What did the Kaiser think about this incursion? and the answer was: He knew nothing about it before the days preceding the outbreak of war, because, given his character, one would have had to fear that he would have blabbed the matter to the whole world. That could not be allowed to happen, because the invasion could only have been successful if the opponents were unprepared. — And I asked: Did the Reich Chancellor know about it? — The answer was: Yes, he knew about it. So politics in Central Europe had to be conducted in such a way that one had to take account of garrulity, and I ask you: Is it not a terrible tragedy that politics must be conducted in this way? Therefore, the full proof can be provided from these underground sources that what the otherwise unpleasant Tirpitz says about Bethmann-Hollweg is correct, that the latter would have sunk to his knees and that the nullity of his policy would already have been expressed in his physiognomy. This nullity was also later expressed by the fact that he emphasized to the English ambassador that if England did strike after all, his entire policy would prove to be a house of cards. And it was a house of cards, and it collapsed, and the Chief of Staff had to write in his memoirs about the situation he was in at the time, on Saturday evening: “The mood became increasingly agitated, and I was left standing all alone.

Thus the military judgment was left standing all alone, while politics had lapsed into nullity. This was brought upon the Germans by their own refusal to rise to the great challenges to which they were particularly called, challenges that emerged in the great, significant epochs of German cultural development, challenges that they refused to face at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century. The fact that only disaster could follow from such a situation now weighed heavily on the mind of the Chief of Staff. When an officer came to him to sign the order to withdraw the troops from the Franco-Belgian border, which had been ordered by telephone border, the Chief of Staff slammed his pen down on the table, breaking it, and said that he would never sign such an order, and that the troops would become uncertain if such an order came from the Chief of Staff as well. And the Chief of Staff was then brought out of his most painful and despairing mood. It was now well past ten o'clock. Another telegram had arrived from England, and - I'd rather not go into the details - the words of the supreme commander were: Now you can do whatever you want!

You see, you have to go into the details, and I have only given a few main features of what was happening on the continent, so to speak. I would also like to mention the counter-move that occurred on the other side. It will become authentic one day – again, I can say that I am not telling you this carelessly – it will become authentic one day that the two people Asquith and Grey said at the same time as what I have just told you happened in Berlin: Yes, what is this actually? Have we been pursuing English policy with our eyes closed until now? They said that this English policy had been made by a completely different side; they had been blindfolded. And they said: Now the bandage has been removed from us – that was Saturday evening – now that we are seeing, we are standing at the abyss; now we can only go into the war. This is the reflection on the other side of the Channel, and I ask you to take all this as something that could be greatly amplified, because in the time allotted to me I can do nothing but give a kind of mood, present to you something that at least sheds some light on the things that have happened.

And then, if you take all this into consideration, I ask you to read what I have written in my “Thoughts During the Time of War”, which I deliberately titled “For Germans and Those Who Do Not Believe They Must Hate”. Every single thing in it has been carefully considered. I ask you to consider what I wrote there from these points of view, that it is not a matter of what is usually called moral guilt or moral innocence, but that things must be raised to the level of historical development , in which something extraordinarily tragic took place, something that can be called a historical necessity, and about which one should not pry with judgments such as those I have mentioned at the beginning. Matters are much more serious than the world on both sides still believes; nevertheless, they are such that they should absolutely be made known to the world, that they should actually be the starting point for the order of the confusion. But truly, at the present time, there is no possibility that what is undertaken in this direction will be presented to the world in any other way than by being distorted and slandered.

What I have told you today about General von Moltke gives us an opportunity to judge this man in this decisive hour; but, as you know, there are people who, as they themselves worked on the general staff, say the most defamatory things about General Moltke, including the absurd lie that anthroposophical events were held in Luxembourg before the Battle of the Marne and that the General Chief of Staff therefore failed to do his duty. If such things can be said from such a position, then it can be seen from this what moral condition we have entered into today, and it is difficult to pave a right path for the truth within this moral condition. For this we would actually need many, very many personalities, and only after I have given you the conditions I have spoken of, only now I would like to read from Moltke's memoirs a sentence that will show you what lived in this man's soul, firstly in relation to his opinion of the necessity of war and secondly in relation to his sense of responsibility. For it is absolutely essential that we do not construct a brutal concept of guilt, but that we delve into what lived in the souls of those times. It is a very simple sentence that Moltke wrote, a sentence that has often been spoken, but there is a difference between it being spoken by the next best person and by the one on whose soul the decision about the war lay at the time. He wrote: “Germany did not bring about the war, nor did she enter into it out of a desire for conquest or aggressive intentions against her neighbors. The war was forced upon her by her enemies, and we are fighting for our national existence, for the survival of our nation, our national life.”

When examining facts, you don't start somewhere; you have to start where the realities and facts play out, and if you can prove that an essential part of the facts plays out in a man's mind, then it is one of the facts that created the situation when such an awareness prevailed in that mind. In order to assess the situation, it is also essential to take a close look at what happened among the forty to fifty personalities who were actually involved in the outbreak of this horrific catastrophe. Anyone who does not form an opinion out of prejudice but from expertise about these things, knows that basically everyone was actually quite unsuspecting except for the forty to fifty personalities who brought about the outbreak of war, who were actually active under the constellation of European conditions.

During the war, I truly had the opportunity to talk about the situation with many people who were able to judge it, and I never minced my words. For example, I said to a personage who was close to the government of a neutral state: It can be regarded as notorious that in our time, which calls itself democratic, about forty to fifty personalities, among whom — and it is not only within the Anthroposophical Society that there are women — there were quite a few women, about forty to fifty personalities, were directly involved in this catastrophe in the international world. It would be necessary to first elevate oneself to a point of view from which one could fundamentally assess this situation. Instead, there is an enormous amount of talk about these serious, world-shaking events from the superficialities of the White Papers and the like, and it is extraordinarily difficult for someone who would not talk if he did not know things differently from many others, always to bring the necessary here or there to bear where the situation has been judged since 1914. For me, this began in Switzerland, when the “J'accuse” books were being thrown at me everywhere, and I could not tell people – you know how dangerous the situations sometimes were – anything other than the truth, even though it was often the least understood: “Don't read the legal technicalities in such a book,” I said, ”read the style, read the whole structure, the whole presentation of the book, and if you have taste, you must say: political underground literature! I have had to say it repeatedly to people who belonged to neutral and non-neutral fields. Of course, I am not saying that this “J'accuse” book does not contain some correct things; but it is least of all based on such a point of view, which is suitable for judging the world-historically tragic situation in which, one can already say, the world found itself in 1914. And one must point out the underlying causes, even if only in order to be able to discuss the question of guilt.

Yes, but this question of guilt should also teach us something. You see, immediately after Germany's ill-fated declaration of peace in the fall or winter of 1916 and the whole fantastic sequence of events that followed with Woodrow Wilson's fourteen points, I immediately – I was not intrusive, people came a long way to meet me, more than halfway – - approached those who were in positions of responsibility with the request, which admittedly seemed paradoxical to some, that the idea of the threefold social order could be put forward to the world in the face of these quixotic fourteen points of Wilson's, which, however, despite their quixotic nature, were able to bring ships, cannons and men into play. And I had to experience that yes, many people realized that something like this had to happen, but that no one actually had the courage to do anything in this direction, no one, absolutely no one. For the conversation I had with Kühlmann, I think the witness who was present is here again today. So I can't make up any stories about these things. But I still have to explain that, and here too I would certainly not tell you something that is not true, because it is well known how the matter was carried out.

Here too, I must say the following, for example: You see, as early as January 1918, I considered the spring offensive of 1918 to be an absolute impossibility, and I happened to be on a trip from Dornach to Berlin with a certain personage - it was known that when the decisive moments approached, this personality would be called upon to lead the business. I came to Berlin when I had actually found a certain understanding for the threefold social order. There I had the opportunity to talk to a personage. Those who were able to inform themselves at the time about the way things were going already knew about the offensive in January 1918; one could only not speak of it. And I had the opportunity to talk to a military personage who was extremely close to General Ludendorff. The conversation took a turn such that I said: I do not want to expose myself to the danger of being accused of wanting to interfere in military-strategic matters, but I want to speak from a certain starting point from which this military dilettantism, which I might have, would not come into consideration. I said that in a spring offensive Ludendorff might possibly achieve everything he could ever have dreamed of; but I still consider this offensive to be absurd – and I gave the three reasons I had for it. The man I was talking to got quite excited and said: What do you want? Kühlmann has your paper in his pocket. That's what he went to Brest-Litovsk with. That is how we are served by politics. Politics is nothing for us. We military can do nothing but fight, fight, fight. — In 1914, the Chief of Staff was in a situation that he had to write about in the evening hours: “The mood became more and more agitated and I was all alone.” For the mood between ten and eleven o'clock he had to write: The Kaiser said: “Now you can do whatever you want!” — And in 1918 one could be told: Politics is out of the question, it is null and void; we can do nothing but fight, fight. — My dear audience, it was no different then and it is no different today, and I would like to provide you with negative, albeit subjective, proof that it is no different.

Once again, the same unworldly, abstract language has been used, with which Woodrow Wilson spoke, as evidenced by the way Woodrow Wilson stood in Versailles. Then Harding spoke from the same place, and I see in his speech, which is as confused as possible and delivered with no sense of reality, which only repeats the old phrases, now that we are facing economic decisions just as much as political ones, I see in this speech nothing that suggests that people are somehow concerned about what is looming again. It is almost impossible to get people to make a judgment. Whether we have the first Wilson showing his confusion at Versailles, or whether we were speaking from the same area a little later, it does not matter. What would matter is that one would have a keen sense of reality.

Then one would also look at such things as the fact, which is almost unheard of for someone who has a sense of judgment in political situations, that this very statesman, Lloyd George, who is characteristic in today's sense, recently said: You cannot blame Germany for the war in the old sense; people have slipped into it in their stupidity. He spoke in this way a few weeks ago, and you know how he spoke in London to Simons. From this you can judge the truth in the speeches people make, and if people still have no impetus to look at these things – they must get it, they must get it by developing a sense for the big picture. These great aspects were present in this catastrophe, and our misfortune is that no one had any idea of these great aspects. It must be made possible for the great aspects, on which things depend, to be thrown into the decision-making process in Central Europe today.

But as long as those who believe that they have a peculiar monopoly on Germanness slander what is true, as long as such people call us traitors to Germanness , and they call us traitors to our Germanism, although if these people would only understand what we have to say, it would do nothing but help the true Germanic people to achieve the position they deserve. Until these people change, until people who are willing to recognize the truth come together.

Of course, there were warmongers in Germany as well; but everything that came from them was of no importance at the decisive moment. What was important, however, was what I explained in the last chapter of my “Key Points”: that by losing sight of the big picture, we had arrived at the zero point of political effectiveness. We shall only rise again as Germans when we rise to great heights; for anyone who stands in the German tradition with a warm heart, not just with words – forgive the somewhat crude expression – knows that true Germanness means being rooted in great principles. But we must find our way back to the great principles of the German people. And it is basically also from experience that I am speaking these things to you today. Despite the way the question was phrased, I might not have answered; but I wanted to answer this question, and something that leads to the answer of such questions will become clear to you when I present the final passage that the questioner gave me in a supplement. He writes: I consider it very valuable to publish the correct, clear view on the whole question of war guilt in a memorandum, for example, and to distribute it widely. Well, that should have happened in May 1919. The memorandum was also printed. The world within Germany prevented this memorandum from being published. Let us not just sit here forming our opinion; something like this should be done: support those who do not want to be satisfied with their opinion but have long since tried to do what is being proposed here at the decisive moment. Then we will make progress.

Dear attendees, because I do believe that there are personalities among the German youth who will find their way back to true Germanness, who have minds and hearts and open minds to receive the truth, therefore, because I might have been able to speak here with some prospect of reaching younger people in particular, the best part of our youth perhaps, I have decided to make these suggestions to you today.

Let us turn our thoughts, my dear friends, as we do continually, to the guardian spirits of those who are absent from us, taking their place where the great destinies of the time are being fulfilled:

Spirits ever watchful, Guardian of their souls
May your vibrations waft
To the Earth-men committed to your charge
Our souls' petitioning love:
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may helpfully radiate
To the souls it lovingly seeks!

And to the Spirits of those, who have passed through the gate of death:

Spirits ever watchful, Guardians of their souls!
May your vibrations waft
To the Men of the Spheres committed to your charge
Our souls' petitioning love:
That, united with your power,
Our prayer may helpfully radiate
To the souls it lovingly seeks!

And that Spirit, Who for the healing of the Earth and for her progress, and for the freedom and salvation of mankind, passed through the Mystery of Golgotha; that Spirit Whom in our Spiritual Science we seek, to Whom we would draw near, May He be at your side in all your difficult tasks! (These meditations were repeated at the beginning of each lecture in the series.)

Let me first give expression to the deep satisfaction I have in being able to be once more in your midst. I would have come earlier, but for an urgent need, that kept me in Dornach until the work at the Group had reached a point whence it could be continued without me. You have often heard me speak of this Group, that is to stand in the East end of the Dornach Building and that sets forth the Representative of mankind in relation on the one hand to the Ahrimanic, and on the other to the Luciferic forces. In these days one needs to have forethought for the future, and it seemed to me absolutely necessary, in consideration of what may happen, to make that progress with the Group before leaving Dornach that has now been possible. Furthermore the times are bound to bring home to us with especial intensity the fact that meeting with one another here on the physical plane is not the only thing that keeps us upheld and strengthened in the impulse of Spiritual Science, but that we must be up-borne through this difficult time of sorrow and trial through being together in our anthroposophical strivings, even if together in spirit only; and indeed this very thing is to be the test for our anthroposophical strivings.

Since we were here together last, we have had to lament the loss from the physical plane of our dear Fräulein Motzkus, and of other dear friends who have left the physical plane in consequence of the terrible events through which we are passing. It is particularly painful no longer to see Fräulein Motzkus among the friends who have shared here for so many years in our anthroposophical strivings. She had been a member of our movement since its beginning. From the first day, from the first meeting of a very small circle, she showed throughout the deepest and most heart-felt devotion to our movement, and took an intimate and earnest part in all the phases it went through, in all its times of trial and testing. Above all, she preserved, through the events and changes through which we had to pass, an invincible loyalty to the movement, in the deepest sense of the word, a loyalty in which she set an example to all those who would wish to be worthy members of the anthroposophical movement. And so we follow with our gaze this beloved and pure soul into the spiritual worlds whither she has ascended, feeling towards her still the bond of trust and confidence that has grown stronger and deeper with the years, knowing that our own souls are linked with hers for ever ... Recently Fräulein Motzkus herself suffered the loss of a dear friend, whom she has now so quickly found again in the spiritual world. She bore the sad blow in a manner that such a blow can be received and borne by one who is conscious of an actual hold on the spiritual world. It was marvelous with what keen and intense interest Fräulein Motzkus shared in the great events of our time, right up to the last days of her life. She told me repeatedly that she would like to remain here on the physical plane until the momentous events, in the midst of which we are living, should have come to a decisive conclusion. With still freer vision, with still firmer impulse for the evolution of mankind, will she now be able to follow these happenings to which she has been so closely and intimately linked. May it be laid on all our hearts to unite ourselves in thought and in activity of soul, when-so-ever we are able, with this faithful spirit, this faithful and well-loved member of our movement. Then shall we, who have been united with her here on the physical plane in such a remarkable way, be able still to know that we are one with her in the years to come, when she will be among us in another form.

The times in which we live are such, that it becomes more and more a matter of pressing interest to know what the struggle to obtain Spiritual knowledge will signify to the human race of the present day and of the immediate future. The events in the midst of which we are now standing are such as to call forth in many people today, though little noticed, a sort of benumbment. Those souls who survive the catastrophe on the physical plane will awake only later to be able to recognise fully what is taking place and to realise how deeply this catastrophe has cut into human evolution. All the more should we feel obliged to call up in our souls thoughts of an illuminating nature, thoughts able to throw light on the objects and aims of the Spiritual movement so necessary to humanity. And as we have now come together after a long time, it will perhaps be useful to specify the views of this Spiritual Science of ours in a few short thoughts,—or rather the views which naturally come as the result of this Spiritual Science which we have now had before our souls for some years. It is noticeable that in all parts of the world there are some members of humanity who are developing a longing to draw nearer to the Spiritual world, notwithstanding the fact that materialism, alas, is not decreasing and because of the various forms which this longing for the Spiritual is taking. For these reasons we must specify and bring before the soul, our own search for the life of the spirit. In England at the present time, the research into the Spiritual world made by one of the most prominent and learned men is making a very great impression in large circles, even of cultured people. It is a very extraordinary phenomenon that a man reckoned among the first scientists of that country should have written a comprehensive book about the relationship of man on earth with the Spiritual world, and that this should have taken such a remarkable form. Sir Oliver Lodge—who for some years has certainly striven in various ways so to extend the scientific knowledge he has acquired that it may be applied to the Spiritual world,—describes in this book a series of episodes, in which he asserts that he has come in touch with the Spiritual world. The case is as follows.

Sir Oliver Lodge had a son, Raymond, who in 1915 took part on the English side, in the war in Flanders. At a time when his parents knew him to be at the front, they received some remarkable news from America, which, to people possessing what I might call materialistic-Spiritualistic tendencies, must certainly have appeared very striking. This message was supposed to come from the English psychologist, Frederick Myers who, before his death many years ago, had studied the relationship between the physical world and the Spiritual worlds, and who himself now in the Spiritual world, pronounced that world to be prepared to receive young Lodge in the near future. At first it was not very clear to what the message referred. There was some delay in its reaching Sir Oliver Lodge; it reached him after his son had fallen. I think it was a fortnight later but I am not quite sure as to this. Then came other messages given through mediums in America, advising the parents to go to an English medium; consequently, Sir Oliver went to one, but preserved a critical attitude towards her. I shall have more to say presently on the significance of this—Sir Oliver is a scientist, and is trained to the scientific testing of such cases. He went to work just as he would in his laboratory and what follows was given not through one but several mediums. The soul of Raymond wished to communicate with the Lodge family. All sorts of communications followed through automatic writing and table-turning, communications so surprising that not only Sir Oliver himself but the rest of the family, who had till then been extremely sceptical in such matters, were now quite convinced. Among other statements, the soul of Raymond stated that Myers was with him, acting as a Guardian; he told them several things about his last days on earth, and much that was of significance to the parents and family, and made a great impression upon them, especially as various things communicated by Raymond through mediums were intended for the family and particularly for Sir Oliver. The way the sittings were held afforded great surprise to the family, and strangely enough, they also caused great surprise to a wide public. They would not have surprised anyone who had experience of such things, for in reality, the nature of the communications concerning the dead which comes through mediums, and the manner of the communication, is very familiar to the investigator. One thing, however, made a profound impression in England, and was well calculated to impress and convince the civilised world of England and America, and to bring conviction hitherto lacking to many of our sceptical age; this factor which converted many and will convert many more, made a very strong impression on the Lodge family and particularly on Sir Oliver, and also impressed a large public. It was the following incident. A description was given through a medium of some photographs taken while Raymond was still alive. Raymond himself described them to the medium, by means of rappings. In this way a photographic group was described; that is to say the soul of Raymond was by means of the medium evidently trying to describe this photograph taken of him in a group shortly before he passed through the gates of death. From the other side he told them that he had sat in two groups with his companions, and that these were taken one after the other, and that his position in the groups was such and such. Further he described the differences in the two different photographs, saying that he sat on the same chair and in the same attitude in both, but that the position of the arm was a little different, and so on. All this is minutely described. Now the family knew nothing of these photographs, they did not know that any such had been taken. Thus indirectly through the medium, the fact was made known that there was in existence a photographic group representing Raymond Lodge with several companions. Some few weeks later, a photograph was sent over to Sir Oliver from France, corresponding exactly to the one described by the soul of Raymond through the medium. This would naturally make a strong impression on anyone who approaches such things in a dilettante way—as all those concerned clearly did. It was an experimental test. The case in point is that of a soul from the other side, describing a photograph of which several copies were taken, and which reached the family some time later, and was then found to correspond in every detail to the description given. It was quite impossible that either the medium or anyone present at the sittings could have seen this photograph. Here we have a case which must be reckoned with both scientifically and historically, for not only might one say that such a case would naturally make a great impression, but it really did occur and did make an enormous impression. As far as could be seen, this photographic proof, which has nothing to do with thought-transference, was very convincing.

It is necessary for us to bring the whole of this case before our mental vision. We must be quite clear as to the fact that when a man passes through the gate of death, the human individuality is at first for a short time, enshrouded in the astral body and etheric body; and that the latter after a more or less brief period—varying in different cases, but never lasting more than a few days—passes out into the etheric world and there pursues its further destiny; so that the individuality enters the Spiritual world with the astral body only, and continues its further wanderings in that world. The etheric body is severed from the human individuality just as the physical body was on earth. Now we must clearly understand that in Spiritualistic seances,—and the whole work of Sir Oliver Lodge is based on these,—only one who has real knowledge is able to distinguish whether the communications come from the actual individuality, or only from the cast-off, forsaken etheric corpse. This etheric corpse still remains in continual communication with the individuality. Only, when one gets into connection with the spiritual world in a round-about way through a medium, one comes in touch with the etheric corpse first, and so can never be sure of reaching in this way the actual individual. It is certain that there is in our age a striving to find for Spiritual existence some sort of proof such as is found by experiments in the laboratory, something which can be grasped with hands and that one can see before one in the world of matter. Our materialistic age does not care to follow the inner path the soul must take in the Spiritual worlds, the purely Spiritual path. It wants the spirit to descend into the material world and be discovered there. We are experiencing all kinds of materialistic Spiritualism, a materialistic turning to the worlds of the spirit. Now, it is quite possible for the etheric body, which has been separated from the actual human individuality, to manifest a certain life of its own which, to the uninitiated, may easily be mistaken for the life of the individual himself. We must not think that the etheric body when given over to the etheric world only manifests reminiscences and recollections, mere echoes of what the man passes through here; it manifests a real continuous individuality. It can relate incidents and say quite new things, But we should be going quite off the track if we thought that because a connection is established with the etheric body, we are necessarily in connection with the individual himself. It is very possible in the case of people sitting in a small circle—all being members of the family as was the case with the Lodges, all thinking in one way or another about the dead man, and all filled with thoughts and memories of him,—that their thoughts may be conveyed to his etheric body through the medium, and that this etheric body may occasionally give striking replies, which may really produce the impression of being spoken by the individuality of the dead. Yet, perhaps, they may only proceed from his etheric corpse. Those who are acquainted with such things actually find this to be the case, and when Raymond Lodge was supposed to come to his family through the medium, in reality it was the etheric corpse speaking; Raymond Lodge had not really held communion with the circle at all. Hence, as I have said, to those accustomed to the course of events in such seances, the communications do not appear very remarkable. It is probable that the whole story would not have made so much impression on a wide public, nor would it continue to do so, if it were not for the incident of the photographs. For this story of the photographs is very remarkable, indeed exceptionally so. For here it was impossible that any transference of thoughts should take place,—passing through the medium to the etheric body of Raymond, as might have been the case in the other instances. Nobody in England could have known of the photographs; they had not yet come over at the time when the communications were made. But still it is very strange that such a learned scientist as Sir Oliver Lodge, who had for so long been interesting himself in these matters, should not know how such a circumstance is to be regarded. I have taken particular trouble to look more minutely into this case. Sir Oliver Lodge is a learned man, and a scientist upon whose descriptions one can rely; we are not dealing with any ordinary document produced by ordinary Spiritualistic seances but with the communications of a man describing with the certainty of a scientist, who has developed the conscientiousness customary to a scientist in the laboratory and, therefore, it is possible to form a complete picture of what happened, from the descriptions he gives. It is remarkable that such a learned man as Sir Oliver Lodge, who was for so many years interested in the subject, although in this case he was specially interested because it was a question of his own son, yet should not have known what has often been referred to in our Spiritual science, when giving descriptions of the atavistic forms of clairvoyance, which appear as presentiments. For this is none other than a very special case of Deuteroscopia. The case is as follows.

We have a medium. To this medium the Spiritual world is in a certain respect accessible; of course, as we know—through atavistic forces—such mediums can in their vision reach beyond space, but not only does their so-called second sight extend beyond space it also extends beyond time. Let us take a special case; one quoted hundreds of times. You may read descriptions of it, if you have not experienced it yourself through your acquaintances.

The case I mean, is when some one who has that tendency sees as in a dream, half in vision, his own coffin or funeral. He dies a fortnight afterwards. He saw in advance what was to occur fourteen days later. Or perhaps, one may see not his own funeral or coffin, but that of a complete stranger, an event to which the dreamer is quite indifferent. To instance a particular case, one may see oneself leaving the house and falling from horseback. This thing did occur—someone saw that happen, and tried to avert it,—but, notwithstanding all precautions, it still came to pass. That is a case of a vision extending in time, and what Sir Oliver Lodge describes is precisely this second-sight in time. His descriptions are given so accurately that it was possible to investigate the case. The medium through her forces was able to see an event still in the future. At the time she spoke, the photograph was not there; but it arrived a fortnight later, or thereabouts. It was then shown round to friends and relatives. This happened some time after but the medium saw it in advance, it was a prophetic vision, a case of Deuteroscopia. It was a pre-vision; that is the explanation. It had nothing to do with a communication between those on the physical plane and one in the Spiritual world.

You see how greatly one may be misled by striving to give a materialistic explanation of Spiritual circumstances in the world, and how blind one may be to the actual facts; such a vision is, of course, none the less a proof of the reality of a world behind the ordinary world of sense. The case is an interesting one; only it should not be quoted as proving a connection between the dead and the living. We must seek for the dead—if indeed we should or ought to seek for them at all—by following a really Spiritual path. In the near future I shall have many things to say on this subject; for it is my intention to give much consideration to the subject of the relation between the living and the dead.

I have brought up the subject of this book of Sir Oliver Lodge to show you how, although the longing after the Spiritual world does exist, it may here be said to have taken a materialistic form. Sir Oliver Lodge is a learned scientist; even although he strives after the Spiritual world he tries to gain knowledge of it by methods of the chemical world or of physics. Just as he experiments in his laboratory according to the laws of chemistry, so he wants ocular proof of what relates to the Spiritual world. But the way we must recognise as the right one is very far from his; our way leads the soul by an inner method to the Spiritual world, as we have often described, and no less often have we described what the soul first becomes acquainted with there and which immediately concerns us at the present time and underlies the world of physical sense, in which we live. We learn to recognise the whole materialistic character of our age, in the materialistic strivings that are directed to the Spiritual world. If our movement is to have any meaning at all, a meaning which it should eventually have in accordance with the necessary evolutionary laws of mankind, it must sharply define and emphasise the Spiritual inwardness of true Spirituality, as compared with these materialistic and absurd strivings after a world of spirit.

Why is it necessary in the present age that an entirely new method should hold the hearts of men, a purely spiritual method, one very different from the materialistic methods? This question must be considered in connection with the fact to which we have often alluded in the course of past years, and which must closely concern us at this time of sorrow and trial. We have indicated that this twentieth century must bring to humanity the Vision of the etheric Christ. Just as it truly happened—as we have often said—that at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha Christ walked among men in a physical form, in one known part of the earth, so will the etheric Christ walk among men in the twentieth century, the whole earth over. This event must not pass unobserved by humanity, for that would be sinning against the salvation of the world. Humanity must have its attention roused, so that a sufficient number of persons may be ready really to see the Christ Who will come and Who must be seen.

Now, such an event as this cannot come quite suddenly, even as the event of Golgotha did not come suddenly but was prepared for during thirty-three years. The point of time when the event is to occur—this time spiritually—is very near and will have a like significance for man as the event of Golgotha on the physical plane. Hence, if you consider the facts alluded to above, you will not find it difficult to believe me when I say that He is already present in the form in which He will be seen in the great moment of evolution in the twentieth century, that the great moment is being now prepared. You will not consider it incredible, when I say that moment is now being prepared. Yes, we may say that although humanity seems as regards its present actions far from being permeated with the Christ-Spirit on the physical plane, yet if men's souls will but open themselves to Him, the Christ, Who is now approaching, is very near. The occultist is able to point out that since the year 1909 or thereabouts what is to come is being distinctly and perceptibly prepared for, that since the year 1909 we are inwardly living in a very special time. It is possible today, if we do but seek Him, to be very near to Christ, to find Him in a quite different way than has been hitherto possible.

There is one thought that occurs to me, and simple as it may seem I must give words to it, from a profound feeling for the times. People do not, alas, as a rule, think with sufficient clearness on the events of the past; especially with respect to what took place in the souls of men in bygone centuries; they no longer have any conception of the strength of the impression made by the Gospels in their existing form upon a circle which was then but small. People now have no conception of how powerfully these ideas filled the souls of men at that time. As the centuries rolled by the impression made by the inner content of the Gospels grew weaker and weaker. At the present day if we see things as they are, it may be said that although individual persons, if they possess certain powers of intuition and forces of divination, may be so permeated by the words of the Gospels as to form some idea of what took place at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, yet the immense force once possessed by the Gospel-words themselves, is growing weaker and weaker, and we cannot but see that the Gospels make but little impression now on the majority of people.

This is not willingly admitted; but it is the truth, and therefore it would be well if people would realise it. How did this state of things come about?

Well, just as it is true that what pulsated in the Gospels is no earthly language but Cosmic words, Heavenly words, possessing an immeasurably greater force than anything else on earth,—so it is also true that mankind in the present age has become estranged from the form in which these words were laid down in the Gospels at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Just reflect how enormously difficult it is to understand the language of even four or five hundred years ago, if you come across it anywhere. It is not possible to draw out of it what it really contains. The Gospels, in the form accessible to us today, are really not the original Gospels, they do not possess their original force. It is possible to penetrate into them, as I have said, by means of a certain intuition; but they no longer have the same force. Christ spoke the word which should be deeply engraved in the human soul: ‘I am with you always, even unto the end of the earth time.’ That is a truth, a reality. He will be with us, during the time indicated, in the twentieth century, in various forms near to the human soul.

From what I have said, you will understand that one who feels himself standing in the centre of these things, one who is an occultist, should say: He is here, He makes His presence felt in such a way that we know clearly that He will now expect more of His human children than in centuries gone by. Till now the Gospels have spoken an inner language to man. They had to lay hold of the soul-men should, therefore, be satisfied with faith alone and had not to progress to knowledge. That time is now over, it lies behind us. Christ has something different in view for His human children. His present purpose is that the kingdom to which He referred when He said: ‘My kingdom is not of this world,’ should really draw into that part of the human being which is not of this world but which is of another world. In each one of us there is a part which is not of this world. That part of man which is not of this world must seek with intensity that kingdom of which Christ spoke, of which He said, that it was not of this world.

We are living at a time when this must be understood. Many such things in human evolution announce themselves through contrasts. In our own age something great and significant is announced by a great contrast. For with the coming Christ, with the presence of Christ, will come the time when men will learn to enquire of Him, not only concerning their souls, but concerning their immortal part on earth. Christ is not merely a Ruler of men, but their Brother, Who, particularly in the near future, wishes to be consulted on all the details of life. In anything we undertake today we act in the opposite way. Events seem to be accomplished today, in which men appear to be as far removed as possible from any appeal to Christ. We must ask ourselves this question: Who is there today who stops to enquire: ‘What would Christ Jesus say to what is now taking place?’ Who puts such a question to himself? Many say they do, but it would be sacrilegious to believe that they put the question in the form in which it is put here, addressing it directly to Christ Himself. Yet the time must come and cannot be far distant, when men's souls will, in their immortal part, ask of Christ, when they think of undertaking something: ‘Ought we to do this or not?’ Then human souls will see Christ standing by them as the beloved Companion and they will not only obtain consolation and strength from the Christ-Being, but will also receive instruction from Him as to what is to be done. The kingdom of Christ Jesus is not of this world, but it must work in this world and the human souls must be instruments of the Kingdom that is not of this world. From this point of view we must consider the fact of how few today have asked themselves the question which, as regards individual acts, as well as events, must be put to the Christ. Humanity must, however, learn to ask of Him. How is that to come about? It can only become possible if we learn His language. Anyone who comprehends the deeper purpose of our Spiritual Science, realises that it not only gives out a theoretical knowledge about different problems of humanity, the principles of human nature, reincarnation and karma, but that it contains a quite special language, that it has a particular way of expressing itself about spiritual things. The fact that through Spiritual Science we learn to hold inner converse with the spiritual world in thought, is much more important than the mere acquiring of theoretical thoughts. For Christ is with us always, even to the end of the earth-epochs. And we must learn His language. By means of the language—no matter how abstract it may seem—in which we hear of Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth and of the different periods and ages of the earth, and of many other secrets of evolution—we teach ourselves a language in which we can frame out the questions we put to the spiritual world. When we really learn inwardly to speak the language of this spiritual life, the result will be that Christ will stand by us and give us the answers Himself. This is the attitude that our work in Spiritual Science should bring about in us, as a sentiment, a feeling. Why do we occupy ourselves with Spiritual Science? It is as though we were learning the vocabulary of the language through which we approach the Christ. If we take the trouble to learn to think the thoughts of Spiritual Science, and make the mental effort necessary for an understanding of the Cosmic secrets taught by Spiritual Science, then, out of the dim, dark foundations of the Cosmic mysteries, will come forth the figure of Christ Jesus, which will draw near to us and give us the strength and force in which we shall then live. The Christ will guide us, standing beside us as a brother, so that our hearts and souls may be strong enough to grow up to the necessary level of the tasks awaiting humanity in its further development.

Let us then try to acquire Spiritual Science, not as a mere doctrine but as a language, and then wait till we can find in that language, the questions which we may venture to put to the Christ. He will answer, yes, indeed, He will answer! Plentiful indeed will be the soul-forces, the soul-strengthening, the soul-impulses, which the student will carry away with him from the grey spiritual depths through which humanity in its evolution is now passing, if he is able to receive instructions from Christ Himself; for, in the near future He will give them to those who seek.

The Lecture given here a week ago had as its culminating point the fact, well known to the Spiritual investigator, that although in the outside world the very height of materialistic views and opinions prevail—we are nevertheless just entering on an epoch of the de-materialising of thought and of the world of ideas, which, in the course of time, must lead to a spiritualising and permeating of the earth-life as such, by the spirit. That which is to lay hold of and affect the external life on the physical plane must first be grasped by a few and then by an ever-increasing number of persons, grasped and understood Spiritually. Spiritual Science is in this respect to be a beginning, a means whereby men can uplift their souls to that which is today accessible to those who desire to raise themselves to it, and of which the external physical life is not as yet a reflection, though that is what it must become if the earth is not, in a sense, to be swamped in the downfall of materialistic development. The situation of present-day man can be described as follows. His soul is generally speaking really very near to the Spiritual world; but the ideas and especially the feelings produced by a materialistic conception of the world and by a materialistic attitude towards it, have woven a veil before that which is in reality very close to the human soul today. The connection between the physical Earth-existence, in which man with his whole being is involved notwithstanding many assertions to the contrary made in other quarters—the connection between this materialistic earth existence and the Spiritual world can be found by man, if he will endeavour to develop the inner courageous forces necessary for understanding, not only what nature paints to his external senses, but also that which remains invisible. We can unite ourselves with this invisible essence and experience it, if we stir up the inner force of the soul sufficiently to become aware that in this force the soul shares in something super-human and Spiritual. This connection must not be sought just as human connections and relationships are sought, in the rude external sense-existence; for the connection between the human soul and the Spiritual world is to be found in the intimate forces which the human soul develops when it evolves an inner, silent and quiet attention., Man must now train himself to this, for he has become accustomed, in this materialistic age, to pay attention only to what presses on him from without, and which in a sense calls out to his capacities of perception. The spirit that must be experienced within does not call out, we have to wait for it, and we can only approach it by preparing ourselves for its approach. Concerning the things belonging to the external world which present themselves to our senses and press in upon our outer perception, we can say that they come to us, that they speak to us; but we cannot say anything of the kind as regards the way in which the spirit, the spiritual world, draws near to us. The language of modern times—as I have often said—is more or less coined for the use of the external world, and it is therefore difficult to find words conveying a real impression of that part of the spiritual world which stands before the soul. But an attempt can be made to show approximately the difference between that and the physical. We might say that the Spiritual is experienced in the feeling of gratitude which comes whenever one experiences the Spiritual; one feels: I am grateful to it. Take special note of this: we owe gratitude to the spiritual world. In observing the physical world we say: we see spread out before our senses the mineral world, from which proceed the plant world, the animal world, and our own,—the world of man. In the latter we feel ourselves in a sense at the top of an ascending sequence of external kingdoms; but as far as the Spiritual kingdoms are concerned, we feel ourselves at the bottom, while above and beyond us stretch out the kingdoms of the Angels, Archangels, Archai, and so on. We feel the whole time that we are being supported from these kingdoms, continually called to life by them. We owe gratitude to them. We look up to them and say: our lives and the whole content of our souls flows down to us from the will-impregnated thoughts of the Beings belonging to those worlds, and by them we are constantly being formed. This feeling of personal gratitude to the higher kingdoms should become just as alive in us as the feeling—let us say—of the impressions received through physical perception. When these two feelings are equally alive in our souls-one, that: ‘The external sense things react upon us,’ and the other, that: ‘We owe what lives in the very centre of our being to the Higher Hierarchies,’—the soul is then in that state of balance in which it can continually perceive aright the co-operative working of the Spiritual and the physical, which indeed goes on unceasingly, but which cannot be perceived unless the two feelings described above are properly balanced.

In the future from now on, evolution will have to proceed in such a way that through the presence of these two feelings in the human soul additional forces will be super-added, forces which are not able to grow therein in the present materialistic age. It is of course understood that what is here meant refers to something which has greatly altered in the course of the development of mankind. Only at the early primeval stages of man's development was there a connection with the Spiritual world, and that indeed was but dim, and unconscious. At the primeval time of his development man had not only the two states be now has, of sleeping and waking and between these a chaotic dreamy state; there was then a, third state, in which reality was present This was not merely a state of dreaming, for in it man was able, although his consciousness was damped down, to see pictures and to learn by them, for these pictures were true to spiritual reality. Now, as we know, in order that man should develop the full Earth-consciousness, this method of perception had to be withdrawn. If it had persisted, man would never have gained his freedom, he could not have become free if he had not been subjected to all the dangers, arguments and temptations of materialism; but he has to find his way back again to the Spiritual world, and must now be able to grasp it in full Earth consciousness. This is in connection with very far-reaching and complex conceptions, which have altered with all else that has undergone change in the evolution of humanity, in the manner just indicated. In the primal ages it was quite natural to live in constant communion with the souls departed from this physical life; no proof of this was then necessary; for in that state of consciousness in which man perceived the Spiritual world in pictures, he lived in the company of those with whom he was in any way connected by karma and who had passed into the Spiritual world through the portal of death. It was personal knowledge to man that the Dead existed; he knew they were not dead but alive,—living in a different form of existence. A thing need not be proved if one knows it! In those early times there was no need to discuss immortality or to wonder about it, for one had personal experience of the so-called Dead. This communion with the Dead had moreover other and far-reaching results. It was then easier to the Dead themselves to work through men; I do not say this cannot be done now, it can still be done in this way; but I do say it was then easier for the Dead to find means of working through men here on earth, and thus to participate in what goes on here. In those primeval ages the Dead were active in the impulses of will of the people; in all that men understood and did, the Dead took part; thus helping to bring about what took place on earth. Materialism has not only brought in materialistic ideas, that would be its least harmful accomplishment;—it has also brought about a completely different form of union with the Spiritual world. It is now only possible in a much more restricted measure for the so-called Dead to take part in the evolution of the earth through the so-called living; but man will have to get back to this connection with the Dead. This, however, will only be possible when to some extent he learns to understand the language of the Dead, and this language is none other than that of Spiritual Science. It may certainly appear, at first sight, as though Spiritual Science tells us only more or less of Spiritual erudition; of evolving worlds, of the evolution of man, of the different principles composing the nature of man; things in which perhaps some people are not interested, wishing rather for something calculated to set their hearts and feelings aglow. Certainly it is a good thing to want that, but the question is how far the satisfying of that demand will take us. It may seem as though Spiritual Science only teaches how the earth evolved and developed through old Saturn, Sun and Moon, how the different epochs of civilisation developed on the earth and how the different principles of man were added; but while we devote ourselves to these seemingly abstract though in reality quite concrete thoughts, endeavoring to think in such a way that these things really remain in our minds as pictures, we are really learning in a definite way to form certain thoughts and ideas which we could not have brought into our souls in any other way. If we have the right feelings and realise how our ideas have changed since we busied ourselves with the subject of Spiritual Science, the time will come when we shall consider it just as absurd to say that these things do not interest us, as it is for a child to say it has no interest in learning the A.B.C.—but only wishes to learn to speak! What the child must go through in its physical existence in learning to speak, is abstract compared with what the living language can communicate, just as the ideas pertaining to Spiritual Science are abstract compared to the thoughts, ideas and feelings aroused in the soul under the influence of these concepts. Of course this requires patience, and it is also necessary that we should not merely consider what, Spiritual Science has to give in the abstract, but should take whole life into account. That, however, as regards what we are now considering does not suggest itself to the man of the day. In other respects, however, it may appeal to him; for he is accustomed to be more or less satisfied when he has once seen a work of art or a landscape, or has once listened to some scientific explanation. He is very apt to say, if the matter is brought before him a second time: ‘Oh! I know that already—I have seen or heard that before!’ Such is life in the abstract. In other domains, where life is judged according to what is to be found in it,—according to its actuality,—that is not the method of procedure. For one does not often meet a man at dinner who excuses himself from eating because he has eaten the day before. At meals one repeats the same process over and over again. Life is a constant repetition. If the Spiritual is indeed to become real life to us—and unless it does, it cannot bring us into touch with the universal Spiritual world,—we must imitate in our souls the laws of life in the physical world, which world, although now grown torpid, was yet created by spirit. In particular, shall we become aware that a good deal is taking place in our soul, if, with a certain rhythmic regularity we allow such impressions to enter our souls as necessitate a certain freedom of thought, a certain emancipation from the mode of thought usual in the physical world. The salvation—if we may use so sentimental a word—the salvation of the Spiritual development of man depends upon our not giving way as regards Spiritual things to that idle habit common today, of saying, “Oh! I know that already, I have heard that before!” Rather should we take these things as being like life itself, which is ever connected with repetition, with what I might call the return of the same action at the same place. As soon as we are interested in letting our soul be permeated by the life of the spirit, our inner attention increases. It becomes so acute that we are able to grasp inwardly in our soul those important moments in which the connection with the Spiritual world nearest to our heart can best be developed. For instance, the moments of falling asleep and that of awaking are very important for the communion with the Spiritual world. The moment of falling asleep would be less fruitful to most people at the beginning of their Spiritual development, because immediately after one is asleep the consciousness is so dimmed that it cannot take in the Spiritual; but the moment of passing from sleep into the waking state, if we do but accustom ourselves, not simply to let it pass by unobserved but to pay attention to it, may be very fruitful for us, if we try to wake up consciously, yet not allowing the outer world to approach us at once with all its crude brutality. In this respect there is a great deal of good in the folk-customs of olden times, much that is quite right and today but little understood. Simple people who are not yet plastered over, as one might say, with intellectual culture, often say: ‘When you wake, you ought not at once to look at the light’;—that is, you should remain awhile in a state of wakefulness without allowing the brutal impressions of the outer world to press in upon you immediately. If this be observed, it is possible at the moment of waking to see those Dead that are karmically connected with us. That is not the only time when they approach us, but it is then easiest to perceive them. At such a time we can see what takes place between us and the Dead, not only at the moment but beyond it; for our perception of the Spiritual, world is not bound up with time as is the perception of the physical world. This indeed constitutes one of the difficulties attached to the grasping of the Spiritual world in its essence. At the moment of perception something may momentarily reveal itself to us out of the Spiritual world, something extending over a very great space of time; the difficulty is to have the Spiritual presence of mind to grasp this far-reaching something, at the moment;—for that moment may, as indeed is generally the case, pass away in status nascendi. It is forgotten as soon as seen. That constitutes the great difficulty of grasping the Spiritual world. Were it not for this, many, many people, especially at the present day, would already be receiving impressions of the Spiritual world.

There are also other moments in life when—as I might say—it is possible for the Spiritual world to penetrate to us. Each time we develop a thought in such a way that it springs from ourselves, when we take the initiative, when we are confronted with a decision to be made by ourselves even in quite small things, that again is a favourable moment for the approach of the Dead karmically connected with us. (Of course if we simply yield ourselves up, allowing life to take its course, carrying us along with the stream, there is but little likelihood of the real, true, inwardly living Spiritual world working into us.) Such moments need not necessarily be ‘important’ ones, in the sense we attach to the word in external material life, for very often, what is really important as a Spiritual experience, would not seem important to the outer life; -but to one who is able to see into these things, it is extremely clear that such experiences, perhaps outwardly unimportant yet inwardly exceptionally important, are profoundly related to our karma. So it is necessary to notice even very intimate soul-occurrences if one desires to attain an understanding of the Spiritual world. For instance, it may occur that a man sitting in his room or walking in the street may be startled by an unexpected sound, perhaps a crack or a bang. After his fright he may have a moment of musing, during which something important is revealed to him out of the Spiritual world. It is necessary to pay attention to these things; for as a rule a man is only concerned with the fright he had; be only keeps on thinking of the shock he had. That is why it is of such importance to acquire ‘Inner Balance’ in the manner indicated at the end of the book Theosophy and in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. When that has been acquired we are no longer so perplexed after a shock as to think of nothing else, for we shall have the mastery over ourselves, and may be able to call up, though perhaps but very faintly, what we experienced in such apparently unimportant, but really extremely important moments. Such things are of course mere beginnings, and must develop further. When we develop the two capacities:—that of ‘attentiveness at the moment of waking’ and ‘attentiveness at the moment when we are shaken by some outer occurrence,’ we shall be able once more to find the connection with the great Cosmos, which is composed of both substance and spirit, of which we are a member and from which we came forth-came forth indeed for the purpose of becoming free men—but from which we certainly did come forth. In reality, the belief of primeval man was correct; we do not wander about the earth like hermits, as is now believed. What primeval man believed is true: Man is a member of the whole great Cosmic Connection, as each one of our fingers is a member of our whole organism. People no longer possess this feeling today—at least the great majority no longer feel themselves members of the great World-Organism, in so far as they as Spiritual beings are living in a visible world. Yet ordinary scientific reflection might teach a man, even today, that he and his life are part of the whole cosmic ordering in which he as organism is placed. Let us take a very simple example, which only needs a very simple reckoning. We all know that in the Spring, on the 21st March, the sun rises at a definite point in the heavens. This we call the Vernal Point. We know too that this Vernal Point is not the same each year, but that it progresses. We know that now the sun rises in Pisces. Up to the fifteenth century it rose in Aries (Astronomy continues to say ‘in Aries’ which is not correct, but this remark does not apply at the moment.) Thus the Vernal Point progresses; the Sun rises a little further on in the Zodiac every spring, and it is easy to see that in a given time it will have moved through the whole Zodiac; the place of sunrise will have moved through the whole Zodiac. Now the approximate time required for the Sun in its journey through the Zodiac is 25,920 years. Thus, taking the Vernal Point of any given year, it will be further on the year following, and the year after will have progressed again. When 25,920 years have gone by the Vernal Point will be back again at its original place. Thus 25,920 years is an exceptionally important space of time in our Solar System; the sun has accomplished what I might call a cosmic step when at the vernal ascent it returns to the same point. Now Plato, the great Greek philosopher, called these 25,920 years a cosmic year—the great Platonic Cosmic year. Now if one has not gone into all this deeply, what I am about to say will seem only remarkable;—it is indeed remarkable; but at the same time full of profound significance.

In his normal state a man draws eighteen breaths a minute. This varies, because he breathes rather quicker in childhood and more slowly in old age—but of a normal man it is correct to say: he draws eighteen breaths a minute. It is easy to reckon that 18 times 60 make 1,080, which is the number of breaths to the hour: multiply this by 24—the number of hours in the day and you get 25,920 breaths in the day. Thus you see, my dear friends, that the same number regulates the human day as regards a man's breathing as regulates the passage of the Vernal Point through the great cosmic year.

This is a sign which shows that we are not just talking in a general, vague, dimly-mystical way when we say that the Microcosm is an image of the Macrocosm, but that man is really governed in an important activity, upon which each moment of his life depends, by the same number and measure as the course of the sun, in which course he is himself placed.

Now let us take something else.—The patriarchal age, as it is called, is seventy human years. Of course seventy years is not a hard-and-fast rule for the duration of a man's life; a man may live much longer; for man is a free being and sometimes goes beyond such limitations. We will however keep to this, and say that the normal life of man is seventy or seventy-one years, and let us see how many days these contain. Well now, we have 365.25 days in a year;—to begin with, we will multiply this number by 70, and we get 25,567.5; then we multiply by 71 and we get 25,932.75 days. This proves that between the ages of 70 and 71 comes the point of time when a man's life includes exactly 25,920 days—that is, the patriarchal age.—Thus we have defined a human day by saying that it contains 25,920 breaths; and we define the period of a man's life by saying that it reckons 25,920 days.

Now let us investigate something else—which is not so difficult now. We shall easily see that, if we divide the 25,920 years which the sun's vernal point requires to pass through the Zodiac, by 365.25, the result is something like 70 or 71. That means that if we consider the Platonic year as one great year and divide it till we bring out a day, we find the proportion of a day to a Platonic year.—What is that? It is the course of a human life. A man's life is to a Platonic year as a human day to a man's life.

The air is all around us. We breathe it in and breathe it out. According to the law of numbers it is so regulated that when we have breathed in and out 25,920 times, our life is spent. What then is a day of our life? It is comprised in the outgoing and incoming of our ego and astral body, in and out of our physical body and etheric body. So that day after day the ego and astral body go out and return, go out and come in; just like our breathing. Many of our friends will remember that to make this subject clear, in public lectures I have compared the alternation of waking and sleeping to deep breathing. Just as in breathing we breathe the air in and breathe out, so, when we fall asleep and awake, the astral body and ego go out and in. This implies that a being exists, or can be presumed to exist, which breathes in and breathes out just as we do in the eighteenth of a minute,—and the breathing of this being signifies the out-going and in-coming of our astral body and ego. This being is none other than the living being of the earth. As the earth experiences day and night, it breathes; and in the process of its breathing it bears our sleeping and waking on its wings. It is the breathing process of a greater being.—And now let us take the breathing process of a still greater being; of the sun, in its circuit. Just as the earth accomplishes a day by the releasing and drawing in of the ego and astral body into man, so does the Great Being corresponding to the sun bring human beings forth; for the 70 to 71 years are one day, as we have shown: one day of the sun-year, the great Platonic Year. Our collective human life is an out-breathing and in-breathing of this great Being, to whom is appointed the great Platonic Year. You see how it is; we draw one small breath in the 18th of a minute, which regulates our life;—our life is lived on the, earth, the breathing of which comprises day and night: that corresponds with the out-going and in-coming of the ego and astral body into the physical and etheric bodies: and we are ourselves breathed in by the great Being whose life corresponds to the course of the sun, our own life is one breath of this great Being. Now you see that as Microcosms we are actually part of and subject to the same laws, as regards the Universal Beings, as the breath we draw is subject to our own human being. It is governed by number and measure. It is a great and wonderful thing, and in its significance must cut deeply into our very hearts: that number and measure regulate the great cosmos, the Macrocosm, exactly as they regulate us, the Microcosm. This is not merely a figure of speech, it is not merely mystically felt; but the wisdom-filled contemplation of the world teaches us that we, as Microcosms, stand within the Macrocosm. When we make such simple calculations as these—which can of course be arrived at by the most ordinary scientific methods of reckoning—then, if our hearts are sensitive to the secrets of cosmic existence and not mere blocks of wood, the saying ‘we are placed in the Universe’ will cease to be abstract words, for we shall be fully alive to the fact. A knowledge and a feeling will spring up within us the fruits of which will be borne in the impulses of our will, and our whole being live in unison with the great Life, Divine Cosmic Existence. That is the path along which we find to some extent our way into the Spiritual world, which way must be found at the time alluded to in the last lecture, when Christ will walk the earth in His etheric form. I even indicated the very year in which He began to move etherically over the earth;—it must be found! Only people must accustom themselves to realise the connection, the very intimate connection already being established from cosmic existence, which will, when it is felt and realised, bring about a need, an intense longing to seek this union with the Spiritual world. For before very long, people will be compelled to realise at any rate one thing; which is the following:

If a man be deadened by materialism, he may indeed deny the existence of a Spiritual world, but he cannot kill out in himself the forces which are able to seek a connection with the Spiritual world. He may delude himself as to the existence of a Spiritual world, but he cannot kill out those forces in his soul which are intended to bring him in touch with the Spiritual world. This has very significant consequences—which should be taken into account, especially at the present time; forces are there and they work, whether their existence is believed in or not. The materialist does not forbid the spiritually inclined forces in his soul to work, he cannot do so;—and they do work. You may say; Is it then possible for a man to be a materialist and yet to have forces at work within him which are seeking the Spiritual? Yes, that is the case. These forces are at work within him; no matter what he may do they work within him. What effect do they then have? Well, wherever there are forces present, their own original activity can be suppressed,—but they then transform themselves into something else, into different forces. You see, my dear friends, if we do not employ the Spiritually tending forces for gaining understanding of the Spiritual world,—I only say ‘understanding,’ for that is all that is required at first,—these forces will transform themselves into the forces of illusion in human life. Their activity then takes the form of inducing a man to be subject to all kinds of illusion, illusions regarding the external world. It is not without significance that this should be realised in our time, for never have people indulged their imagination as they do today, although they do not care for imagination: as their imagination only works along certain definite lines. If it were desired to give examples of this, of the fanciful weavings of people who entirely desire to be realists, materialists, light could be thrown on all sorts of things, there would be no end to it. We might perhaps begin—were it not heretical—by glancing at what statesmen have prophesied even a few weeks ago as to the probable course of events in the world and at what has occurred since, and we shall see that the capacities of illusion have played no small part for some years. We might investigate many of the departments of life in the same way, and it is quite remarkable to note that everywhere we find these strongly developed capacities of illusion. Indeed they sometimes even lend a childlike—I might almost say a childish character to the opinions and attitude to life of materialistically inclined people. When one sees what is required today to make men understand each other, or to try and make them see what is before their very nose, one can understand what I mean by saying ‘childlike’ or even ‘childish.’ Well, my dear friends, it is even so. When people turn away from the Spiritual world, they must pay for it by becoming subject to illusion, by losing the capacity of forming accurate concepts concerning external physical reality and the course of events therein. They are then compelled to exercise their imagination in another direction, because they refuse to hold by the truth; whether the truth concerns the Spiritual or the physical life, it comes to the same thing, they turn away from it. I once gave you an example which can be applied to this, for it is typical of it: there are plenty of discussions and arguments to be met with as to the Spiritual Science advocated by me. Those persons reasoning against it base their arguments on their own statement that everything given out here is mere fancy. ‘It has all been imagined,’ they say, ‘and such flights of fancy cannot seriously be admitted!’ So these people will not accompany us into the true Spiritual world because they believe it to be imaginary, and they despise such fanciful imaginations. They then proceed to add all kinds of arguments which have just as little likeness to the reality as black to white and they proceed, (this indeed is a typical example) to speak of my family descent and the way in which I did this or that in my life. There they develop a bold imagination!—Here we can see, side by side, the turning away from the Spiritual world, and the capacity for illusion! These people do not notice this, yet they are following an absolute law. A certain amount of force in them tends towards the Spiritual world; a certain amount of force tends to the physical world. If the force tending to the Spiritual world is not used for that purpose, it turns towards the physical world; not in order to study and grasp the truth and actuality there, but to drive people into illusions concerning life. This cannot in each single case be so observed that one can say: ‘Ah! This man has been driven into illusion through having turned away from the Spiritual world.’ Examples of this can certainly be found, but they have to be looked for; they cannot be discovered straight away, because life is complicated, and one person influences another. It is ever the case that a stronger soul influences the weaker, so that even when we find some of that capacity for illusion in one person, it certainly may come from a hatred for, a turning away from, the Spiritual world; yet this dislike may not be in the soul of the person subject to the illusions;—it may have been suggested to him. For in Spiritual domains the danger of infection is infinitely greater than in any physical domain.

In our next lecture we shall consider how this is connected with the general karma of man; how these things—when observed in the light of the important law of the metamorphosis of the soul-forces from the Spiritual into forces of illusion—work in the whole connection of life, and their connection with the conditions of development of our present time and those of the near future. We shall then carry further what we have begun today and connect it with the Christ and the Mystery of the present age, so as to obtain some light on the significance of the Spiritual outlook in general.

What we possess as the first fruit of Spiritual Science is in its most practical and noble sense able to lead us to feel that there is within the ordinary outer man an inner man, who to the ordinary idea is really a second man. In this respect all men in reality consist of two beings; one composed more of our physical body and etheric body and belonging to that which is the external world: external in the sense that this physical body and to some extent the etheric body too are forms and images—manifestations—of the divine Spiritual beings by which we are always surrounded. Our physical and etheric bodies are I in their true essence—though not as we as men at first know them,—images, neither of ourselves, nor of our real being, but of the Gods whose whole life is spent in producing our physical and etheric bodies and bringing about their full development; just as we men bring about the actions and deeds we accomplish. The inner man is of such a nature that he is more closely related to the astral body and ego. To the universe the astral body and ego are younger than the physical body and etheric body. This we know, from what has been given out in the book Occult Science. The physical body and etheric body compose that which, as it were, reposes when we sleep and is made ready for us by the divine-spiritual beings that permeate the outer universe and make it manifest; and the ego and astral body, by the experiences, testings and shiftings which they undergo in the physical and etheric bodies, are to ascend gradually through the stages of development with which we have also become familiar.

Now, as I indicated in the last lecture, we are in connection with the universe, with the whole Cosmos; and this connection is such that—as I merely hinted in the last lecture—it can even be reckoned and expressed in numbers. This connection of ours with the universe can of course be expressed and shown in many other ways, but—I might say—to our great astonishment it can be expressed by the fact that the number of breaths a man draws in a day equals the number of years required for the Vernal Point to return to its original point of departure. These discoveries in the realm of numbers can, if we permeate them with feeling, fill us with awe, with a holy awe; if we reflect that we too belong to the divine Spiritual universe which is manifested in all external phenomena.

The fact that we are the Microcosm, the little world formed and manifested out of the Macrocosm, the great world, is felt as still more profound when we visualise such facts as will be brought before our minds today, and which I may enumerate as follows: the three meetings of the Human Soul with the Being of the Universe: and this is the subject I shall speak about today. We all know that as earth-men we bear within us the physical body and etheric body, the astral body and ego. Each of the two beings I have referred to bears within him what I might call two sub-beings. The more external man the physical and etheric body, the more inner man the ego and astral body. Now we know moreover that man is to undergo further development. The earth as such will some day come to an end. It will then evolve further, through a Jupiter, Venus, and a Vulcan planetary evolution. Man during this time will rise stage by stage; to his ego will, as we know, be added a higher being—the Spirit-Self which will manifest within him. This will reach full manifestation during the Jupiter evolution, which will follow that of our earth. The Life-Spirit will attain full manifestation in man during the Venus period; and the actual Spirit-Man during the Vulcan period. When, therefore, we look forward to the great cosmic future of man, to these three stages of evolution, we look forward to the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. But these three which in a sense await us in our future evolution are even now in a certain respect related to us, although they are as yet not in the least developed; for they are still enclosed in the bosom of the divine-Spiritual Beings whom we have learnt to know as the Higher Hierarchies. They will come forth to us from out of the Higher Hierarchies; and we today are already in relation with these Higher Hierarchies, who will endow us with the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. So that today, instead of using the more complicated expression and saying: ‘We are in connection with the Hierarchy of the Angeloi’; we can simply say: ‘We are in connection with that which is to come to us in the future—our Spirit-Self.’ And instead of saying that we are in connection with the Archangels, we can say: ‘We are in connection with what is to come to us in the future, as our Life-Spirit,’ and so on.

Indeed we human beings are already in a certain respect, though at present only in rudiment—(and in the Spiritual world rudiments are something much higher than they are in the physical world)-more than merely four-principled beings consisting of physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego. We already bear the germ of the Spirit-Self within us, as well as that of the Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man; they will evolve out of us in the future, though at present we only have them in germ within us. This is no mere abstract saying, it has quite a concrete significance, for we have meetings, real meetings with these higher principles of our being. These meetings take place in the following way. We, as human beings, would as time went on feel ourselves increasingly estranged from everything Spiritual—a state of things very difficult to endure—did we not from time to time encounter our Spirit-Self. Our ego must meet that higher Self,—the Spirit-Self which we have yet to develop, and which in a Spiritual respect is of like nature to the Hierarchy of Angels. So therefore we may say in simple language, and speaking in the Christian sense: we must from time to time meet with a being of the Hierarchy of the Angels, a being closely related to ourselves; and when it comes to us, it brings about in us a Spiritual change, which will enable us some day to take in a Spirit-Self. We must also meet with a being of the Hierarchy of the Archangels, for this being then so affects us that something is prepared which will some day lead to our developing the Life-Spirit.

Whether in the Christian sense we place this being in the Hierarchy of Angels, or whether we refer to it in the older sense understood by the ancients when they spoke of their genius as the guiding genius of man, makes no difference. We know that we are living at a time when but few people—though this will soon alter—few can gaze into the Spiritual World and perceive the things and the beings therein. The time has now gone by when the beings and even the various processes of evolution in the Spiritual-world could be perceived in a much wider and more comprehensive sense; for at the time when one spoke of the genius of a man, there was a direct, concrete perception of that being.

In a not very distant past this vision was still so strong that men were able to describe it quite concretely and objectively; describing it in terms now looked upon as poetic fancies, although they were not intended as such. Thus Plutarch describes the relation of man to his genius, as follows,—I should like to quote the passage literally. Plutarch, the Roman writer, says that besides the portion of the soul embedded in the earthly body, there is a purer part outside, soaring above man's head, in appearance like a star, and which is rightly called a man's daimon, who guides him, and whom the wise man willingly follows, In this concrete way does Plutarch describe what he does not wish to be taken as a poetic fancy, but as a concrete external reality. Indeed so concretely does he describe it that he expressly states: ‘The rest of the Spiritual part of man can to a certain extent be perceived at the same time as the physical body, inasmuch as it normally fills the same space; but the genius, the leading and guiding genius of man is something apart and can be seen outside the head of every man'. Paracelsus too, one of the last who, without special training, or without special gifts, was able to give forceful information about these things, said very much the same from his own knowledge of this phenomenon. Many others also said the same.

This genius is none other than the Spirit-Self in process of evolution, though borne by a being belonging to the Hierarchy of Angels. It is of great importance that one should enter somewhat deeply into these things; for when this genius becomes perceptible it has its own special conditions. This subject can be considered from another very different point of view, but we will now consider it from the following one.

Let us take the subject of the mutual intercourse between man and man, for we can learn much from that; it teaches us what is by no means without significance in the perception of the Spiritual principles of the human being.

If a man is only capable of observing the meeting of two persons with his physical, sense vision, he merely notices that they come together, greet one another, and so on. But when he becomes able to observe such an event Spiritually, he will find that each time two human beings meet a Spiritual process is established, which, among other things, is also expressed outwardly in the fact that the part of their etheric bodies which forms the head becomes the expression of every feeling of sympathy and antipathy which the two persons feel for each other; and this continues as long as they are together. Suppose two people were to meet who could not bear each other:—an extreme case, but there are such in life. Suppose two persons meet who dislike each other, and that this feeling of antipathy is mutual. It can then be seen that that part of the etheric body which forms the head projects beyond the head in both cases, and that both the etheric heads incline towards each other. A mutual antipathy between persons meeting is expressed as a continual bowing and inclining of the etheric head of each towards the other. When two persons come together who love each other, a similar process can be observed; but then the etheric head inclines back, it bends backwards. -Now whether the etheric head bends forward as though in greeting when antipathy is felt, or bends backward where love is felt, in both cases the physical head then becomes freer than it is wont to be. This is of course always relative; the etheric body does not entirely emerge but extends in length, so that a continuation can be observed. A more rarified etheric body then fills the physical body than is normally the case, and the result of this, by reason of the exceptional transparency of the etheric body, is that the astral body remaining inside the head becomes more clearly visible to clairvoyant vision. So that not only is there a movement of the etheric body but also an alteration in the astral light of the head. This then, my dear friends,—which is no poetic imagination but an actual fact—is the reason that in places where such things are understood, persons who are capable of selfless love are represented with an aura round their heads, which is known as a halo. When two people meet, with simply a strong tinge of egotism in their love, this phenomenon is not so apparent; but if a man comes in contact with humanity at certain times when he is not concerned with himself and his own personal relation to another, but is filled with a universal human love for all humanity, such phenomena appear. At such times the astral body in the vicinity of the head becomes clearly visible. If there are persons then present who are able to see this in a man clairvoyantly, they can see the halo and cannot do otherwise than paint or represent it as a reality. These things are absolutely in connection with the objective facts of the Spiritual world; but that which is thus objectively present, and which is a lasting reality in the evolution of humanity, is connected with something else.

Man must necessarily from time to time enter into inner communion with his Spirit-Self, with the Spirit-Self which is visible in the astral aura in rudimentary form as I have described; but it still has to be developed; it will be rayed down, as it were, from above, and stream in from the future. Man must from time to time be brought into touch with his Spirit-Self. When does this occur?

We now come to the first meeting of which we have to speak. When does it take place? It takes place quite simply in normal sleep, on almost every occasion, between sleeping and waking. With simple country people, who are nearer to the life of nature, and who go to bed with the setting sun and get up at sunrise, this meeting takes place in the middle of their sleeping time, which as a rule is the middle of the night. With people who have detached themselves from their connections with nature, this is not so much the case. But this depends on man's free will. A man of modern culture can regulate his life as he pleases, and though this fact is bound to affect his life, still he can regulate it as he likes, within certain limits. None the less he too can experience in the middle of a long sleep, what may be called an inner union with the Spirit-Self—that is, with the Spiritual qualities from which the Spirit-Self will be extracted; he can have a meeting with his genius. Thus this meeting with one's genius takes place every night, that is, during every period of sleep—though this must not be taken too literally. This meeting is important for man. For all the feelings that gladden the soul with respect to its connection with the Spiritual world proceed from this meeting with one's genius during sleep. The feeling, which we may have in our waking state, of our connection with the Spiritual world, is an after-effect of this meeting with our genius. That is the first meeting with the higher world; and it may be said that most people are at first unconscious of it, though they will become more and more conscious the more they realise its after-effects by refining their waking conscious life, through absorbing the ideas and conceptions of Spiritual Science, until their souls become refined enough to observe carefully these after-effects. It all depends on whether the soul is refined enough, sufficiently acquainted with its inner life, to be able to observe these. This meeting with the genius is brought to the consciousness of every man in some form or other; but the materialistic surroundings of the present day which fill the mind with ideas coming from the materialistic view of the world and especially the life of today, permeated as it is by materialistic opinions, prevent the soul from paying attention to what comes as the result of the meeting. As people gradually fill their minds with more Spiritual ideas than those set forth by materialism, the perception of the nightly meeting with the genius will become more and more self-evident to them.

The second meeting of which we now have to speak is higher. From the indications already given it may be gathered that the first meeting with the genius is in connection with the course of the day. If we had not, through modern civilisation, become free to adjust our lives according to our own convenience, this meeting would take place at the hour of midnight. A man would meet his genius every night at midnight. But on account of man's exercise of free will the time of this meeting has become movable; the hour when the ego meets the genius is now not fixed. The second meeting is however not so movable; for that which is more connected with the astral body and etheric body is not so apt to get out of its place in the cosmic order. That which is connected with the ego and the physical body is very greatly displaced in present-day man. The second meeting is already more in connection with the great macro-cosmic order. Even as the first meeting is connected with the course of the day, the second meeting is connected with the course of the year. I must here call attention to various things I have already indicated in this connection from another point of view. The life of man in its entirety does not run its course quite evenly through the year. When the sun develops its greatest heat, man is much more dependent upon his own physical life and the physical life around him than in the winter when, in a sense, he has to struggle with the external phenomena of the elements, and is more thrown back on himself; but then his Spiritual nature is more freed, and he is more in connection with the Spiritual world—both his own and that of the earth—with the whole Spiritual environment. Thus the peculiar sentiment we connect with the Mystery of Christmas and with its Festival is by no means arbitrary, but hangs together with the fixing of the Festival of Christmas. At that time in winter which is appointed for the Festival, man, as does indeed the whole earth, gives himself up to the Spirit. He then passes, as it were, through a realm in which the Spirit is near him. The consequence is that at about Christmas-time and on to our present New Year, man goes through a meeting of his astral body with the Life-Spirit, in the same way as he goes through the first meeting, that of his ego with the Spirit-Self. Upon this meeting with the Life-Spirit depends the nearness of Christ Jesus. For Christ Jesus reveals Himself through the Life-Spirit. He reveals Himself through a being of the Realm of the Archangels. He is, of course, an immeasurably higher Being than they, but that is not the point with which we are concerned at the moment; what we have to consider is that He reveals Himself through a Being of the order of the Archangeloi. Thus through this meeting we draw specially near to Christ Jesus at the present stage of development—which has existed since the Mystery of Golgotha—and in a certain respect we may call the meeting with the Life-Spirit: the meeting with Christ Jesus in the very depths of our soul. Now when a man either through developing Spiritual consciousness in the domain of religious meditation or exercises, or, to supplement these, has accepted the concepts and ideas of Spiritual Science, when he has thus deepened and spiritualised his life of impression and feeling, then, just as he can experience in his waking life the after-effects of the meeting with his Spirit-Self, so he will also experience the after-effects of the meeting with the Life-Spirit, or Christ. It is actually a fact, my dear friends, that in the time following immediately on Christmas and up to Easter the conditions are particularly favourable for bringing to a man's consciousness this meeting with Christ Jesus. In a profound sense and this should not be blotted out by the abstract materialistic culture of today—the season of Christmas is connected with processes taking place in the earth; for man, together with the earth, takes part in the Christmas changes in the earth. The season of Easter is determined by processes in the heavens. Easter Sunday is fixed for the first Sunday after the first full-moon after the Vernal Equinox. Thus, whereas Christmas is fixed by the conditions of the earth, Easter is determined from above. Just as we, through all that has just been described, are connected with the conditions of the earth, so are we connected, through what I shall now describe, with the conditions of the heavens—with the great Cosmic conditions. For Easter is that season in the concrete course of the year, in which all that is aroused in us by the meeting with Christ at Christmas, really unites itself with our physical earth manhood. The great Mystery that now brings home to man the Mystery of Golgotha at the Easter Season—the Good Friday Mystery—signifies among other things, that the Christ, who, as it were, has been moving beside us, at this season comes still closer to us. Indeed, roughly speaking, in a sense He disappears into us and permeates us, so that He can remain with us during the season that follows the Mystery of Golgotha—the season of summer—during which, in the ancient Mysteries, men tried to unite themselves to John in a way not possible after the Mystery Of Golgotha.

In that respect we are, as we see, the Microcosm, and we are attached to the Macrocosm in a profoundly significant way. There is a continual union with the Macrocosm in the seasons of the year, and this union, being a more inner process in man, is connected with the year's course. Thus does Spiritual Science endeavour gradually to reveal the ideas, the spiritually scientific conceptions, that man may acquire as to the way in which Christ is now able to penetrate and permeate our earth-life, since the Mystery of Golgotha.

At this point I feel obliged to make an interpolation which is of importance and which ought to be thoroughly understood, particularly by the friends of Spiritual Science. It ought never to be represented that our attempts at Spiritual Science are a substitute for the life and exercise of religion. Spiritual Science may in the highest sense, and particularly as regards the Mystery of Christ, be taken as a support, as a foundation for the life and exercise of religion; but it should not be made a religion, for we ought to be clear that religion in its living form and living practice enkindles the Spiritual consciousness of the human community. If this Spiritual consciousness is to become a living thing in man, he cannot possibly remain at a standstill, stopping at the merely abstract ideas of God or Christ, but must stand renewed amidst the religious practices and activities (which in different people may take various forms) as something which provides him with a religious centre and appeals to him as such. If this religious sentiment is only deep enough, and finds means of stimulating the soul, it will soon feel a longing—a real longing—for the very ideas that can be developed in Spiritual Science. If Spiritual Science may be said to be a support for a religious life, as, objectively speaking, it certainly is—subjectively the time has come today when we may say that a man with true religious feelings is driven by these feelings to seek knowledge. For Spiritual consciousness is acquired through religious feeling and Spiritual knowledge by Spiritual Science, just as knowledge of nature is acquired by Natural Science. Spiritual consciousness leads to the impulse to acquire Spiritual knowledge. It may be said that an inner religious life may today subjectively drive a man to Spiritual Science.

A third meeting is that in which a man approaches the Spirit-Man, which will only be developed in the far future and which is brought near to him by a being belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archai. We may say that the ancients were sensitive to this, as are even the people of the present day, although the latter, in speaking of such things, no longer have a consciousness of the deeper truth of the subject. The ancients felt this meeting as a meeting with that which permeates the world, and which we can now hardly distinguish in ourselves or in the world, but in which we merge in the world as in an unity. Just as we can speak of the second as a meeting with Christ Jesus, so can we speak of the third as a meeting with the Father-Principle, with the Father, with that which lies at the foundation of the world, and which we experience when we have the right feeling for what the various religions mean by ‘the Father.’ This meeting is of such a nature that it reveals our intimate connection with the Macrocosm, with the Divine-Spiritual Universe. The daily course of universal processes, of world processes, includes our meeting with our genius: the yearly course includes our meeting with Christ Jesus: and the course of a whole human life, of this human life of ours, my dear friends—which can normally be described as the patriarchal life of seventy years—includes the meeting with the Father-Principle. For a certain time, our physical earth-life is prepared—and rightly so—by education—at the present day to a great extent unconsciously, yet it is prepared; and most people experience unconsciously, between the ages of twenty-eight and forty-two—and though unconsciously, yet fully appreciated in the intimate depths of the soul—the meeting with the Father-Principle. The after-effects of this may extend into later life, if we develop sufficiently fine perceptions to note that which thus comes into our life from within ourselves, as the after-effects of our meeting with the Father-Principle.

During a certain period of our life—the period of preparation—education ought, in the many different ways this can be done, to make the meeting with the Father-Principle as profound an experience as possible. One way is to arouse in a man, during his years of education, a strong feeling of the glory of the world, of its greatness, and of the sublimity of the world-processes. We are withholding a great deal from the growing boy and girl if we fail to draw their attention to all the revelations of beauty and greatness in the world, for then, instead of having a devoted reverence and respect for these, they may pass them by unobserved. If we fill the minds of the young with thoughts connecting the feelings of their hearts with the beauty and greatness of the world, we are then preparing them for the right meeting with the Father-Principle. For this meeting is of great significance for the life spent between death and a new birth. This meeting with the Father Principle, which normally occurs between the above-mentioned ages, can be a strong force and support to a man, when he has, as we know, to recapitulate his life on earth retrospectively after having passed through the portals of death, and while he passes through the soul-world. This retrospective journey, which as we know, lasts one-third as long as the time spent between birth and death, can be made strong and forceful; as indeed it ought to be, if a man can see himself at a certain point and place meeting with that Being, whom he can only dimly guess at and express in stammering words, when he speaks of the Father of the Cosmic Order. This is an important Picture, which after a man has passed through the gates of death, should always be present with him, together with the picture of death itself.

Now it is natural that a certain question should arise in connection with this. There are people who die before they reach the middle of life, when they would normally have the meeting with the Father-Principle. We must consider the case of those whose death is brought about by some outer cause, such as illness (which is an outer cause) or weakness of some kind. If then, through this early death, the meeting with the Father-Principle has not yet taken place in the subconscious depths of the soul—it will take place at the hour of death. At the moment of death this meeting occurs. Here we may express, somewhat differently, what has indeed already been expressed in another form in a like connection, in the book Theosophy in reference to the always deplorable phenomenon of a man bringing his life to an end by his own will. No man would do this if he could see the significance of his deed; and when once Spiritual Science has really been taken into people's feelings and thoughts, there will be no more suicides. For the meeting with the Father-Principle at the hour of death, when death occurs before middle-life, depends upon that death approaching a man from outside, not being brought about by himself. The difficulty then encountered by the soul and which is described from another standpoint in the book Theosophy, might be described from that from which we are speaking today, and we might say: Through his self -chosen death a man may eventually deprive himself of the meeting with the Father-Principle in this incarnation.

Thus, my dear friends, since the truths which Spiritual Science has to tell us concerning human life as a whole, affect our life so deeply, they are indeed serious in cases of special importance. These truths can provide serious explanations of life, which man needs in an age when he must find his way out of the materialism which rules the present world ordering and the current point of view, in so far as these depend on man himself. Stronger forces will be required to overcome the strong connection with the purely material powers which rule over man today, and to give him once again the possibility of recognising his connection with the Spiritual world from the immediate experiences of life.

If we speak in a more abstract way of the Beings of the Higher Hierarchies we can speak in a more concrete way of the fact that man himself—in the experiences at first passed through unconsciously, but which even during his life between birth and death may be brought to his consciousness—may ascend in three stages: through the meeting with his genius, through the meeting with Christ Jesus, and through the meeting with the Father.

Of course a great deal depends on our gaining as many concepts as possible which force themselves into our feelings, concepts that so refine our inner soul-life that we do not carelessly and inattentively pass things by, which in reality, if we are but attentive, play a part in our lives. In this respect education will have a very great deal to do in the near future. I should just like to bring forward one such concept. Just think how infinitely life would be deepened, if to the general knowledge concerning karma such details could be added, as the fact that when a man's life comes to an end in early youth the meeting with the Father-Principle occurs at the hour of death. This shows that the particular karma of this man made an early death necessary, so that an abnormal meeting with the Father-Principle should take place. For what actually occurs in such a case? The man is destroyed from without; his physical being is undermined from without. In illness, too, this is really the case. For the scene of action of the meeting with the Father-Principle is really here in the physical earth-world. When it happens that this external physical earth-world has destroyed a man, the meeting with the Father-Principle can be seen at that very place, and of course it is always to be seen again in the retrospect. This however makes it possible for a man throughout the whole of his life after death to hold firmly, the thought of the place on earth where, descending from heavenly heights, the Father-Principle came to the meeting which then took place. The recollection of this makes him want to be as active as he possibly can to work down into the physical earth-world from the Spiritual world. Now if we consider our present time from this standpoint and try to arouse the same feeling of solemnity as we have just tried to do with respect to the meeting with the Father-Principle, trying not merely to look upon the numerous premature deaths now occurring in the light of feeling or abstract conception, we shall be driven to admit that these were predestined in preparation for the coming need for a great activity to be directed from the Spiritual world to the physical earth-world. This is another aspect of what I have often said with reference to the tragic events of the last few years: that those who today pass so early through the portals of death will become special helpers in the future development of humanity, which will indeed require strong forces to disentangle itself from materialism. But all this must be brought to men's consciousness; it must not take place unconsciously. Therefore it is necessary that even now, souls here on the earth should make themselves receptive—I have already mentioned this—otherwise the forces developed in the Spiritual world may go in other directions. In order that these forces, these predestined forces, may become fruitful to the earth, it is necessary that there should be souls on the earth permeated with the knowledge of the Spiritual world. And there must be more and more of such souls on the earth. Let us therefore try to make fruitful the content of Spiritual Science, which must once be given out in words. By the help of the language (I mentioned this in the last lecture but one) the language we learn through Spiritual Science—let us try to re-animate the old conceptions which are, not without purpose, interwoven in our present life. Let us try to quicken anew what we have heard from Plutarch: that man, even as mere physical man, is permeated by the Spiritual man, and that in a peculiar but normal way a man has a higher Spiritual principle outside his head which represents his genius and which, if he be wise, he obeys. Let us try, as I have said, to take the feelings acquired by Spiritual Science to our assistance—so that the phenomena of life may not pass us by unnoticed.

In conclusion, we will today take one feeling, one conception, which may be of great help to our souls. Unfortunately many people in our modern materialistic age find it very difficult to feel what I might call the holiness of sleep. (The materialistic life is being somewhat softened by this period of trial, and not only ought it to remain softened thereby—which can hardly be hoped if materialism remains at its present strength—but it ought even to be enormously and increasingly softened.) It is indeed a curious phenomenon of man's intelligence today that he is entirely devoid of respect for the holiness of sleep. We need only consider how many people who spend the evening hours in purely materialistic ways, go to sleep without developing the realisation—which indeed can never become a living thing in a materialistic mind—that sleep unites us with the Spiritual world, that sleep sends us across into the Spiritual world. (These things are not mentioned by way of blame, nor intended to drive people to asceticism: we must live with the world, but we must at the same time have our eyes open, for only thus can we wrench our bodily nature away from the lower and lift it higher.) People should at least become gradually able to develop a feeling which can be expressed somewhat as follows: ‘I am going to sleep; until I wake, my soul will be in the Spiritual world. There it will meet with the guiding-power of my earth-life, who lives in the Spiritual world, and who soars round and surrounds my head. My soul will have the meeting with my genius. The wings of my genius will come in contact with my soul.’

Yes, my dear friends, as regards the overcoming of the materialistic life, a great deal, a very great deal, depends on whether one can create a strong feeling of what this means, when one thinks over one's relation to sleep. The materialistic life can only be overcome by stimulating intimate feelings such as these, which are themselves in correspondence with the Spiritual world. Only when we intensify such feelings and make them active, will the life of sleep become so intense, that the contact with the Spiritual world will on the other hand be gradually able to strengthen our waking life too. We shall then have around us not merely the sense-world, but also the Spiritual world, which is the true, the truly real world. For this world that we generally call the real one, is, as I expounded in the last open lecture, nothing but a reflection, an image of the actual real one. The real world is the world of spirit. The small community which is today devoted to Anthroposophy or Spiritual Science, will better be able to grasp the earnest signs of the times and undergo the severe trials of the times, if besides all the other trials to which man is subject today, it learns to consider this time as a time of trial, of testing and probation, whether we are able with sufficient strength of soul and warmth of heart to unite our whole being with the Spiritual Science which we must take in through our reason and our intellect.

In these words, I wished once more to emphasise what I have often said here before: that Spiritual Science will only find its right place in the hearts of men, when it is not merely theory and knowledge, but when—symbolically speaking—it constantly permeates and penetrates the soul; just as our physical blood, our heart's blood, constantly permeates and gives life to our bodily nature.

(Continued in Lecture 5).

On the occasion of our last lecture, I spoke to you of the three meetings which the human soul has with the regions pertaining to the Spiritual world. I shall have to say a few more things as to these, which will give me the opportunity of answering a question asked at the end of the last public lecture at the Architectural Hall, regarding the forces which bring over the karma, the external destiny, from a former incarnation. I have been told that this is very difficult to understand. In the course of these lectures I will return to this subject; but it is preferable to do so after having discussed a few points which may perhaps help to make the question better understood. Today, however, in order to make the question of the three meetings with the Spiritual world still clearer, I intend to insert, by way of episode, something that it seems to me important to discuss just at the present time.

When we consider the ideas and concepts which have found their way into the souls of people of all grades of education as the result of the Spiritual development of the last century, we observe how strongly its influence tended to cause people to consider the evolution of the world and man's place in it, solely according to the standard of Natural Science and its ideas. There are of course plenty of people still living today who do not believe their attitude of mind and soul to have been formed by the concepts of Natural Science. These people do not however observe the deeper foundations upon which their minds were formed; they do not know that the ideas of Natural Science have just slipped in a one-sided way, not only determining their thoughts but even in a certain way their feelings. A man who today reflects along the lines laid down for everyone in the ordinary educational centres, whose mind and disposition have been formed in accordance with them, and whose ideas are based upon what is taught there, cannot possibly feel the true connection between what we call the world of morality, of moral feeling, and the world of external facts. If, in accordance with the ideas of our times, we ponder on the way in which the earth and indeed the whole firmament is supposed to have developed and may come to its final end, we are thinking along the lines of purely external facts, perceptible to the senses. Just think of the deep significance to the souls of men, of the existence of the so-called Kant-Laplace theory of the creation of the world, according to which the earth and the whole heavens arose from a purely material cosmic mist (for it is represented as purely material) and were then formed in accordance with purely earthly physical and chemical laws, developed further according to these laws, and, so it is believed, will also come to an end through these same laws. A condition will some day come about in which the whole world will mechanically come to an end, just as it came into being.

Of course, as I said before, there are people today who do not allow themselves to think of it in this way. That, however, is not the point; it is not the ideas that we form that signify, but the attitude of mind which gives rise to these ideas. The conception I have just alluded to is a purely materialistic one; one of those of which Hermann Grimm says, that a piece of carrion round which circles a hungry dog is a more attractive sight than the construction of the world according to the Kant-Laplace theory. Yet it arose and developed; nay, more: to the great majority of men who study it, it even appears illuminating. Few there are who, like Hermann Grimm, ask how future generations will be able to account for the arising of this mad idea in our age; they will wonder that such a delusion could have ever seemed illuminating to so many. There are but a few people who have the soundness of mind to put the question thus, and those who do are simply considered more or less wrong-headed. But, as I said, the point is not so much the ideas in themselves, as the impulse and frame of mind which made them possible. These conceptions came as the result of certain attitudes of mind; yet, though they came from learned men and were given out by them, most people still believe that the world did not originate in any such mechanical impulse, but that Divine impulses must have played a part in its creation. Still it remains a fact that such conceptions were possible. It was possible for the attitude of men's minds, their disposition of soul, to take on such a form that a purely mechanical idea of the origin of the world was conceived. That signifies that at the bottom of men's souls there is the tendency to form conceptions of a materialistic nature. This tendency is not only to be found among the unlearned, and others who believe in this idea, it exists in the widest circles among all kinds of people, yet most people today are still rather shy of becoming followers of Haeckel, picturing everything Spiritual in a material form. They lack the necessary courage for this. They still admit of something Spiritual; but do not give the matter further thought. If the above mentioned concept holds good, there can then only be room for the Spiritual and especially for the moral, in a certain sense. For just consider:—If the world really came into being as the Kant-Laplace theory believes, and only comes to its end through physical forces, dragging all men down to the grave with it, together with all their ideas, feelings and impulses of will, what then, apart from all else, would become of the whole moral order of the world? Suppose for a moment that the condition of the burial of all things came about: what good would it have been to have ever pronounced some things good and others evil? What would it avail to say this is right, and that is wrong? These would be nothing but forgotten ethical concepts, swept away as something which, if this idea of the world-order were correct, would not perhaps survive even in one single soul. In fact, the matter would stand thus: from purely mechanical causes, by physical and possibly chemical forces, the world came into being and by like means it will come to an end. By means of these forces phenomena appear like bubbles, produced by men. Among men themselves arise the moral ideas of right and wrong, of good and evil; but the whole world passes over into the stillness of the grave. All right and wrong, good and evil, is merely an illusion of man, and is forgotten and vanishes away when the world becomes ‘the grave.’ Thus the only thing that stands for the moral world-order is the feeling one has as long as the episode lasts, which extends from the first state to the last, that man requires such ideas for his common life; that man must form these moral ideals, though they can never take root in a purely mechanical world-order. The forces of nature—heat, electricity, and so on—intervene in the plan of nature, they make themselves felt therein; but the force of morality would, if the mechanical plan of the world were correct, only exist in the mind of man; it would not intervene in the natural order. It would not be like heat which expands bodies, or like light which illuminates them and makes them visible and permeates the world of space. For this moral force is present and soars as a great illusion over the mechanical world-order, and vanishes, dissolves away, when the world is transformed into the grave. People do not sufficiently carry these thoughts to their logical conclusion. Hence they are not on their guard against a mechanical world-order, but allow it to remain—not from kindness of heart, but rather from laziness. If they have a certain want in their hearts, they simply say: ‘Science does not demand that we should think deeply about this mechanical world-order, faith demands something else of us; so we put our faith side by side with science and just believe in something more than mechanical nature, we just believe what a certain inner demand of our hearts compels.’ That is very convenient! There is thus no need to rebel against what Herman Grimm, for instance, felt to be a mad idea of modern science. There need be no rebellion. But this attitude cannot be justified by one who really wishes to think his thoughts out to their conclusion.

It may be asked: What is the reason that people today live thus blindly in an impossible position, in which it is impossible to think logically? Why do they accept such a position? The reason is, strange as this may sound if one is not familiar with the thought and hears it for the first time,—the reason is that people have more or less forgotten, in the course of the last century, how to think truly of the Christ Mystery which must take its place in the very centre of the life of the age; they have forgotten how to think of it in its real, true sense. The way in which man thinks of the Christ Mystery in the newer age should be such that it rays into his whole thinking and feeling. The position which man has assumed to the Christ since the Mystery of Golgotha represents the standard of his whole collective ideas and sentiments. (I may perhaps have more to say on this subject in the near future). If he cannot look upon the Mystery of Christ as a true reality, he is unable to develop ideas and conceptions by which to gauge the views of the world held by others, ideas permeated by reality, and really capable of penetrating the truth.

That is what I wanted above all to make clear to you today. If a man really thinks in the way I have just illustrated, as most people of the present day do, whether consciously or not, the world is then divided on the one hand into the mechanical natural order, and on the other into the moral world order. Now to timid souls, who often believe themselves to be very courageous, the Christ-Mystery forms part of the purely moral world-order. This applies chiefly to those who see nothing more in the Christ-Mystery than the fact that at a particular time, a great, perhaps even the greatest Teacher of the Earth-world appeared, and that His teaching is the thing of greatest importance. Now, if Christ is only considered as the greatest Teacher of humanity, this view is in a sense quite compatible with the twofold division of the world into a natural order and a moral order. For, of course, even if the earth had formed itself as the mechanical world order represented, and is eventually to become the common grave of all things, it might still be possible for a great Teacher to arise who might accomplish much to make men better and to convert them. His teachings might have been sublime, but they would avail nothing when, at the end of all things, everything would be a grave; when even the teachings of Christ Himself would have disappeared, and there would not even be a remembrance of Him remaining in any living being. People do not like to think that; but their dislike would not alter the fact. If it be desired to believe absolutely in a merely mechanical world-order it would be impossible to avoid such thoughts as these.

Everything depends upon the fact being realised that in the Mystery of Golgotha something was accomplished which does not merely belong to the moral world-order, but to the whole collective cosmic order; something which belongs, not merely to the moral reality—which according to the mechanical world-order must be non-existent—but to the whole intensive reality. We shall be able to grasp what is really in question if we turn our thoughts once more to the Three Meetings which I mentioned in the last lecture, taking them in a different sense from that to which I then referred.

I told you that every time a person sleeps, in the intermediate state between his going to sleep and waking he meets Beings belonging to the Spiritual world, Beings of a like nature to his Spirit Self as we are accustomed to call it, Beings of the same substance and kind. This means that when a man wakes from sleep, he has had a meeting with a Spiritual being, and though he may be quite unconscious of having had this experience, yet he carries the after-effects into his outer physical life. Now what takes place in our soul during this daily meeting is in a certain way connected with the future of man. A man of today, unless he busies himself with Spiritual Science, knows very little as yet of what goes on in the depth of his soul during sleep. Dreams, which in ordinary life betray something of this, do indeed reveal something, but reveal it in such a way that the truth does not easily come to light. When a man wakes in a dream or out of a dream, or remembers a dream, this is mostly connected with ideas he had already acquired in his life, with reminiscences. These are however only the garments of what really lives in the dream or during sleep. When our dreams clothe themselves in pictures taken from our daily life, these are but the garments; for in dreams is revealed what actually takes place in the soul during sleep, and that is neither related to the past nor to the present, it is related to the future. In sleep are found the forces which in a human being can be compared to the germinal forces which develop in the plant for the production of a new one. As the plant grows it always develops the germinal forces for the new plant in the following year. These forces reach their height in forming the seed, in which they become visible. But as the plant grows, while it is growing, the germinal forces for the next plant are already there. In the same way the germinal forces;—whether for the next incarnation or even for the Jupiter-period -are present in man, and he chiefly forms these during his sleeping state. The forces then formed, my dear friends, are not immediately related to individual experiences, but rather to the basic forces of the next incarnation: they relate to the forces of the next incarnation. In sleep, a man works upon his germs for his next incarnation into the future. So that while he is asleep, he already lives in the future.

I do not wish to leave a too hazy impression in your minds in respect to this, so will at once say that in the sleeping state, the next incarnation is as the knowledge of the next day. We know from experience that when tomorrow comes the sun will rise and we know more or less how it will run its course, although we may not know what the weather will be or what separate events may affect our lives. In like way the soul is a prophet during our sleep, but a prophet who only knows of what is great and cosmic; not of the weather. If one were to suppose that the soul during sleep becomes aware of the details of the next incarnation, one would be falling into the same error as one who thought that because he knew that next Sunday the sun will surely rise and set, and knew certain universal facts as well, he could therefore predict the weather. This does not alter the fact that while we are asleep we do have to concern ourselves with the future. The forces which are of like nature with our Spirit-Self and that work on the forming of our future, meet us during our time of sleep.

Another, a further meeting—if I leave out the second—is the third meeting, of which I said in the last lecture that it only takes place once in the whole course of a man's life—in the middle of it. I said that when a man is in his thirties he meets with what may be called the Father-Principle, while he meets the Spirit-Principle every night. This meeting with the Father-Principle is of very great significance, for it must occur. You will remember I explained that even those who die before the age of thirty have this experience, only, if they live through the thirties it comes in the course of life, while when death is premature it occurs sooner. You know that, as the result of that meeting, man is enabled to impress the experiences of the present life so deeply into himself that they are able to work over into the next incarnation. Thus, that which is the meeting with the Father-Principle is connected with the earth-life of the next incarnation, whilst our meeting with the Spirit-Principle is for the whole future; it radiates over the whole of our future life, as well as over the life experienced between birth and a new birth.

Now the laws with which this meeting, that we experience only once in a life, are interwoven, they do not pertain to the earth: they are laws which have remained in the earth-evolution just as they were at the time of the moon-evolution. On the physical side they are connected with our physical descent, and with everything which physical heredity signifies. This physical heredity is indeed only one side of the matter; there are Spiritual laws behind, as I have already explained. So that everything that comes to pass regarding the meeting with the Father Principle, points back to the past; it is the legacy of the past; it points back to the moon-evolution, to earlier incarnations, while that which takes place during sleep points to the future. Just as what takes place during sleep forms the germ for the future, so that which comes about as a result of men being born as the descendants of their ancestors, carrying over from former incarnations what is necessary should be brought over; all that has remained over from the past. Both these—what relates to the future and to the past—are in a sense striving outside the natural order. The peasant still goes to sleep at sunset and rises at dawn; but as man progresses in so-called civilisation, he tears himself free from the order of nature. One meets persons in cities—though they may not be very numerous—who go to bed in the morning and arise at night. Man is freeing himself from the mere order of nature, the development of his free will makes it possible for him to do so. Thus in a sense, because he is preparing for a future which is not yet here, he is torn away from the order of nature. When he carries the past into the present, especially the past connected with the moon, he is also torn loose from the order of nature. Nobody can prove the necessity according to the universal laws of nature, that John Smith should be born in 1914; such an event is not ruled by necessity as is the rising of the sun or other natural occurrences, but by the natural order of the moon. During the moon-period everything was like the order of our birth on earth.

Man is however entirely subject to the order of nature as regards what is of immediate significance to the present, to his earth existence. Whereas, as regards the Father-Principle he bears the past within him, and as regards the Spirit-Principle the future—with respect to that meeting of which I have said that it occurs in the course of the year and which is now connected with the meeting with Christ—man is connected with the order of nature. If he were not, the consequence would be that Christmas might by one person be celebrated in December and by another in March, and so on; but although different nations have different designations for the Festival of Christmas, there is everywhere some kind of festivity in the latter days of December which always bears some relation to the meeting I referred to. Thus with respect to this meeting which is inserted into the course of the year, man, for the very reason that this is his present, is in direct connection with the order of nature; while with respect to the past and the future he has become free from it, and has indeed been free from it for thousands of years.

In the olden times man joined in the order of nature both as regards the past and the future. In the Germanic countries, for instance, birth was regulated in olden times in accordance with the order of nature. Birth, which was then regulated by the Mysteries, might only take place at a stated time of the year. Thus it was inserted into the order of nature. In olden times, long before the Christian Era, conception and birth were regulated in the Germanic countries by that of which only a faint echo has been preserved in the Myth of the worship of Hertha. In those days her worship comprised no less than the following. When Hertha descended in her chariot and drew near to men, that was the time of conception; after she had withdrawn, this might no longer take place. This was so strictly adhered to that anyone not born within the appointed season was considered lacking in honour, because his human existence was not in harmony with the order of nature. Birth and conception were just as much adapted to the course of nature in olden times as sleeping and waking, for in those days people slept when the sun had set and woke at dawn. These things have now become displaced; but the central event which is adapted to the course of the year cannot be displaced. By means of this, through its harmony with the order of nature, something is retained and must be so retained in the human soul.

What then is the whole purpose of man's earthly evolution? That man should adapt himself to the earth and take the earth-conditions into himself; that he should carry into his future evolution what the earth has been able to give him, not in any one incarnation alone, but in the whole sum of his incarnations on earth. That then is the purpose of the earth evolution. This purpose can however only be fulfilled through man's to some extent forgetting during his sojourn on earth, his connection with the cosmic and heavenly powers. This he has learnt to do. We know indeed that in olden times man possessed an atavistic clairvoyance, and into that the heavenly powers could work; man was still connected with them; the kingdom of heaven in a sense extended into the human heart. This had to become different so that man might develop his free will. In order that he might become related to the earth he had to have nothing more of the kingdom of heaven in his vision, in his direct perception. This however is the reason that at the time of his closest relation to the earth, in the fifth epoch in which we are living now man became materialistic. Materialism is only the most complete, the most extreme expression of man's relation to the earth, and if nothing else had happened this would have brought about his complete and utter subjection to the earth. He would have had to become related to it and gradually share in its destiny; he would have had to follow the same path as the earth is herself pursuing; he would have been entirely dovetailed into the earth's evolution,—unless something else had occurred. He would have been obliged to tear himself away, as it were, from the cosmos together with the earth, and to unite his destiny completely with that of the earth. That however was not planned for mankind, something else was intended. On the one hand man was to unite himself in the proper way with the earth; on the other, although through his nature he was to become related to the earth, yet messages were to come down to him from the Spiritual world which would raise him once again above the earth. This bringing down of the Heavenly Message came about through the Mystery of Golgotha. Therefore the Being Who went through the Mystery of Golgotha had to take on human nature as well as that of a Heavenly Being. This means that we must think of Christ Jesus not merely as One, who although the Highest, entered human evolution and developed therein; but as One Who possessed a heavenly nature, Who not only taught and propagated doctrine but brought into the earth that which came from Heaven. That is why it is important to understand what the Baptism in Jordan really is; it is not merely a moral action—I do not say it is not a moral action, but it is not that alone. It is also a real action. Something took place then which is just as much a reality as the happenings of nature. If I warm a thing by some warmth-giving means, the warmth passes over into that which is warmed. In like manner did the Christ-Being pass into Jesus of Nazareth at the Baptism by John. That is most certainly in the highest degree a moral action; but it is also a reality in the course of nature, just as real as the phenomena of nature. The important thing is that it should be understood that this is nothing originating in rationalistic conceptions, which always accord merely with the mechanical, physical or chemical course of nature; but something which as idea, is just as much an actual fact as the laws of nature, or indeed the forces of nature.

Once this has been grasped, other ideas will become more real than they are at present. We will not now enter into a discussion on alchemy, but remember that what the old alchemist had in view was that his conceptions should not remain mere ideas, but that they should result in something. (Whether he was justified or not is a not the point for the moment, that may perhaps be the subject of another lecture.) When he burnt incense while holding his conception in mind or giving voice to it, he tried to put sufficient force into it to compel the smoke of the incense to take on form. He sought for such ideas as have the power of affecting the external realities of nature, ideas that do not merely remain within the egoistic part of man but can intervene in the realities of nature. Why did he do this? Because he still had the idea that something occurred at the Mystery of Golgotha which intervened in the course of nature: that was just as real a fact to him as a fact of nature. You see upon this rests a very significant difference which began in the second half of the Middle Ages, towards our own fifth age which followed the Graeco-Latin epoch. At the time of the crusades, in the twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth, and indeed in the sixteenth century, there were some special natures, principally women, who devoted themselves so deeply to mysticism, that the inner experience resulting therefrom was felt by them as a spiritual marriage, whether with Christ or another. Many ascetic nuns celebrated mystical marriages. I will not enter into the nature of these inner mystic unions today; but something took place in their inner being which could afterwards only be expressed in words. In a sense it was something that subsisted in the ideas, feelings and also the words in which these were clothed. In contrast to this, Valentine Andrea, as the result of certain conceptions and Spiritual connections, wrote his Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosenkreuz. This chymical—or, as we should say today, chemical-marriage is also a human experience, but when you go into the matter you find that this does not only apply to a soul-experience but to something not merely expressed in words, but which grips the whole man; it is not merely put into the world as a soul experience, for it was a real occurrence, an event of nature, in which a man accomplishes something like a natural process. Valentine Andrea in The Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosenkreuz, meant to express something that was more permeated with reality than the merely mystical marriage of Mechthild of Magdeburg, who was a mystic. The mystical marriage of the nuns only accomplished something for the subjective nature of man; by the chymical marriage a man gave himself to the world. Through this, something was accomplished for the whole world; just as something is accomplished for the whole world by the processes of nature. This is again to be taken in a truly Christian sense. Those who thought more real thoughts, longed for concepts through which they could better lay hold of reality, even if only in the one-sided way of the old alchemists—concepts through which they could better grasp reality, ideas in fact which were really connected with reality. The age of materialism has at present thrown a veil over such concepts; and those who today believe they think aright about reality are living in greater illusion than these despised men at the time of the old alchemists, who strove for concepts which should help them to master it.

For what can men accomplish today with their concepts? In our age in particular we have some experience of what they can attain through these empty illusions; the husks of ideas are idols worshipped today, they have nothing to do with reality. For reality is only reached by man plunging down into it, not by forming any sort of ideas at will; yet the difference between unreal concepts and those which are permeated with reality, can be perceived in the ordinary things of the day, but most people do not recognise this. They are so absolutely satisfied with the mere shadow of ideas, having no reality. Suppose, for instance, someone today gets up and makes a speech in which perhaps he may say that a new age must come which is already manifesting, a completely new age in which every man will be measured according to his own worth alone, when he will be valued according to what he can do! Anyone today would admit that such words are in complete understanding with the times! But, my dear friends, as long as ideas are nothing but husks, however beautiful they may be, they are not permeated with reality. For it is not the point that one who is convinced that his own nephew happens to be the best man for the job should admit the principle that every man should be put in the place to which his powers are best adapted. It is not the ideas and concepts one may have that signify: what is required is that with those ideas one should penetrate the reality, and recognise it! It is very pleasant to have ideals and fine principles and often still pleasanter to give expression to them. But what is needed is that we should really plunge down into the reality, recognise it, and penetrate it. We are plunging more and more deeply into that which has brought about these sad times, if we continue to carry on this worshipping of the idols of the husks and shadows of ideas, if we do not learn to see that it is not of the slightest value to have ‘such beautiful ideas and conceptions,’ and to talk about them unless there is the will to get right down to the realities and recognise them. If we do that, we shall not only find the substance, but also the Spirit therein. It is the worshipping of idols, of the mere shadows and husks of ideas, which lead us away from the Spirit. It is the great misfortune of our age, that people are intoxicated with fine words. It is unchristian too; for the true basic principle of Christianity is that the Christ did not pour His teaching into Jesus of Nazareth but poured Himself in; which means that He so united Himself with earthly reality, was so drawn into the reality of the earth, that He thereby became the Living Message from the Cosmos.

The New Testament, my dear friends, if read aright, is the most wonderful means of education concerning reality; only the New Testament must little by little be put into our own language. The present translations do not now completely give the original meaning; but when the old meaning is put into the direct language of our day, the gospels will then be the very best means of bringing man ‘that power of thinking that is permeated with reality.’ For nowhere can thought-forms be found in them that could lead to the husks and shadows of ideas. We need but to grasp these things today in their deeper reality. It may sound almost trivial to speak of the intoxication of ideas, but this is so enormously prevalent today that the ideas and concepts themselves, however beautiful they may sound, are no longer the real point at issue: what is important is that the man who utters them should take his stand on reality. People find that difficult to understand today. Everything that comes out into the open is judged today by its content, and indeed by what is understood of that content. If this were not so, such documents, for instance, as the so-called Peace-Programme of President Wilson—which is entirely void of ideas, a husk, a mere conglomeration of the shadows of ideas—would never be taken as based on reality. Anyone having the power of discerning the reflections of ideas would know that this combination could at most only work by means of a certain absurdity, which might become a sort of reality. What is really needed is that people should try to find ideas and concepts really permeated with reality; this however pre-supposes in the seekers that they themselves should be profoundly imbued with reality and be selfless enough to connect themselves with that which lives and moves in reality. There is a great deal in the present day well calculated to lead people entirely away from the search for reality, but these things are not observed.

He who knows sees many sad things going on. For instance, that it should be possible at the present day for people to be impressed simply by a combination of words, by a number of speeches, which indeed are printed, but which, to one who does not go by mere words but by realities, are absolutely appalling. Speeches have been delivered by a highly honoured person of our day, who in his very first speech immediately takes up the attitude that man on one side of his nature, is absolutely related to the order of nature, and that the theologians are not acting aright if they do not leave the order of nature to the scientists who investigate it. The speeches go on to say that as regards the order of nature, man is simply a piece of machinery; but on this machinery depend the functions of the soul; what are then specified as functions include practically all the functions belonging to the soul. All these are then to be left to the Nature investigators! Nothing is left to comfort theology but the thought that all this has now been given over to Natural Science, and all we have to do is to make speeches—to talk! After that, of course one can only live on husks of words. Furthermore, the speeches are so composed that they lack continuity. (I shall come back to this subject in the coming lectures and go into it more fully.) If you look closely into the thought that is supposed to be connected with the one immediately preceding it, you will find that it cannot possibly be thought of as connected. The whole thing sounds very well, however! In the preface to certain lectures “On the Moulding of Life,” it is stated that they have been lately attended by thousands of people, and that certainly many thousands more feel the need to comfort their souls at this serious time by perusing them. These lectures were given by the celebrated theologian Hunzinger, and I believe are in the ‘Quelle-Meyer’ Library, under the name of Knowledge and Education. They are among the most dangerous literature of the day, because, although they sound enchanting, one's thought-life becomes simply confused, for the thoughts are disconnected and, if one strips off the fascinating words, are nothing but nonsense. Yet these lectures were very much praised, and no one noticed the confused thoughts in them or stopped to test them; everyone was charmed by the shadow-words.

Yes, the external reality entirely hangs together with that which man is ever developing. If he develops concepts void of reality, the reality itself becomes confused and then follow conditions such as we have today. It is no longer possible to judge things by what meets us today externally; we must form our opinions by studying what has been developing in the minds of men for years, or decades, perhaps even longer still. That is what must be gone into. The whole thing depends upon our not accepting the Christ from His teaching alone, but that we should look at the Mystery of Golgotha in its actuality, in its reality; that we should see that it was a Fact that Something super-earthly united itself with the earth in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We shall then come to realise that morality is not merely something which fades and dies away, when the earth, and even the fabric of the heavens, shall become a grave; but that even though the present earth and the present heavens become a grave, yet, just as the present plants will become mere dust while in the present plant there is the germ of the next one, so there is the germ of the next world in this world of ours, and man is connected with this germ. Only this germ requires the connection with Christ that it may not fall into the grave with the earth, as a plant germ that has not been fructified falls into dust with the plant. The most real thought it is possible to hold, is that the present moral order of the world is the germinal force for the future order of nature. Morality is no mere worked-out thought; if permeated with reality it exists in the present as a germ for later external realities. But a conception of the world such as that of Kant-Laplace, of which Hermann Grimm says that a piece of carrion which attracts a hungry dog is a more appetising aspect, does not belong to that order of thought. The mechanical plan of the world can never penetrate to the thought that morality contains within it a force which is the germ of the natural, of the nature of the future. Why can it not do this? Because it must live in illusion. For just imagine, my dear friends: if the Mystery of Golgotha had not taken place, all would have been as in the Kant-Laplace theory. If you think away the Mystery of Golgotha from the earth, that theory would be correct. The earth had to reach such a condition that, left to itself, it must inevitably lead the human race into the desolation of the grave. Things had to take place as they have, that man might attain freedom through his relation to the earth. He will not sink into the grave, because at the critical moment the earth was fructified by Christ, because Christ descended, and because in Christ lies the opposing force to that which leads to the grave, namely, the germinal force whereby man can be borne up once more into the Spiritual world. That means that when the earth becomes a grave, when it fulfils its destiny according to the Kant-Laplace theory, the germ which is concealed within it must not be allowed to fall into decay, but must be carried on into the future. So that the Christian-moral plan of the world presupposes what Goethe calls ‘the higher nature in nature.’ We might say: A man who is able to think in the right way of the Mystery of Golgotha, as a reality, is also able to think thoughts and form concepts permeated with reality. This is necessary, this is what people must learn before all else. For in this fifth Post-Atlantean age they have either desired to form concepts which intoxicate them, or such as create blindness in them. The concepts which intoxicate are chiefly formed in the realms of religion; those which cause blindness chiefly in the domain of Natural Science. A conception like that of Kant, which, while admitting the purely natural ordering, placing the two worlds of knowledge and of faith side by side, has yet only the moral in view,—must result in intoxication. Concepts based on moral grounds are able to intoxicate, and the intoxication prevents one from seeing that one thus simply succumbs to the stillness of the grave, into which all the moral plans of the world have fallen, and perished. Or, again, such concepts as those of present-day Natural Science, National Economy, and—forgive the expression, which may be rather hard to swallow—even the political concepts of the day, may create blindness; for they are not formed in connection with a Spiritual conception of the world, but from the shreds of what are called actual (that is, actual in the physical sense), actual reality. Thus each man sees only as far as the end of his own nose, and blindly forms opinions upon what he can see with his eyes and grasp with mechanically acquired ideas, between birth and death; without having formed any concepts permeated with reality through being permeated by the Spiritual, by a grasp of Spiritual reality.

It is necessary over and over again to point out what it is that our age so desperately needs. For even history itself in our age is often no more than the mere shadow of ideas. How frequently what Fichte said to the German people is proclaimed abroad today! What he really said, however, can only be understood if one studies his whole life, that life so profoundly rooted in reality! That is why I tried in my book, The Riddle of Man, to represent the personality of Fichte, as he afterwards became, showing how closely from his childhood up he was connected with reality. I should indeed be glad if such words as these—as to the need for our thoughts and concepts to be permeated with reality—were not only listened to superficially but profoundly grasped, taken in, and really absorbed. Then only will a free and open vision, a psychic vision, be acquired for what our age so badly needs. Everyone of us should have this open soul-vision. If we do not each make it a duty to think over the facts touched upon here, we are not paying sufficient attention to the traffic going on today in the shadows and husks of words, nor to the fact that everything tends to lead people either into intoxicating concepts or to such as make them blind.

I hope you will not take what has been said today as propagandism of any sort, but look upon it as expressing existing facts. A man certainly must and ought to live with his times and when anything is described, he should not look upon it as all that is to be said on the subject; he should learn to strike the balance. It is quite natural that the world today should be confronted with impulses leading entirely to materialism. That cannot be prevented, it is connected with the deep needs of the age. But a counterbalance must be established. One very prominent means of driving man into materialism is the cinematograph. It has not been observed from this standpoint; but there is no better school for materialism than the cinema. For what one sees there is not reality as men see it. Only an age which has so little idea of reality as this age of ours, which worships reality as an idol in a material sense, could believe that the cinema represents reality. Any other age would consider whether men really walk along the street as seen at the cinema; people would ask themselves whether what they saw at such a performance really corresponded to reality. Ask yourselves frankly and honourably, what is really most like what you see in the street: a picture painted by an artist, an immobile picture, or the dreadful sparkling pictures of the cinematograph. If you put the question to yourselves quite honourably, you will admit that what the artist reproduces in a state of rest is much more like what you see. Hence, while people are sitting at the cinema, what they see there does not make its way into the ordinary faculty of perception, it enters a deeper, more material stratum than we usually employ for our perception. A man becomes etherically goggle-eyed at the cinema; he develops eyes like those of a seal, only much larger, I mean larger etherically. This works in a materialising way, not only upon what he has in his consciousness, but upon his deepest sub-consciousness. Do not think I am abusing the cinematograph; I should like to say once more that it is quite natural it should exist, and it will attain far greater perfection as time goes on. That will be the road leading to materialism. But a counterbalance must be established, and that can only be created in the following way. With the search for reality which is being developed in the cinema, with this descent below sense-perception, man must at the same time develop an ascent above it, an ascent into Spiritual reality. Then the cinema will do him no harm, and he can see it as often as he likes. But unless the counterbalance is there, people will be led by such things as these, not to have their proper relation to the earth, but to become more and more closely related to it, until at last, they are entirely shut off from the Spiritual world.

I have told you of the three meetings which the soul must go through in its life between birth and death, and which even while still in that life, bring it into touch with the Spiritual worlds. Today let us return to this subject, which on the last occasion was touched on in a preparatory way, as an episode, so to speak. We shall now go into it more minutely.

We noted that man in the middle of the intermediary state between sleeping and waking, has, as a rule, his meeting with the world which is related to our spirit self. (I say as a rule, because I am alluding to the normal sleep, at night.) He then meets with the world in which we place the beings of that Hierarchy which we designate as that of the Angels. Thus every time we pass through sleep, we pass in a sense, through that world in which these beings dwell; through the world which is nearest to our own physical world, reckoning upwards. Through this meeting we refresh and strengthen our whole spiritual being. Because this is so, because in the state of sleep man is in relation with the spiritual world, no merely materialistic explanation of sleep, such as is put forward by external science, can ever be satisfactory. Much of what goes on in man can be explained by the changes that take place in the body between waking up and going to sleep; we may try to explain sleep itself by means of these same changes; yet any such explanation must always prove unsatisfactory, for the reason that in sleep the afore-mentioned meeting takes place, and man enters into relation with the spiritual world; that makes the whole difference. Thus it is just when we consider the state of sleep that we can see that man, unless he consciously seeks a relation to the spiritual world, only arrives at half-true concepts and ideas, which indeed, because they change into life-falsify it, and at last actually bring about great catastrophe. These half-true concepts are indeed in some respects even worse than those which are quite false ones, for those who form the partly-true concepts and ideas rely upon them; they are able to prove them, for, being partly true they can be proved. An attempt to disprove them would bring no further illumination, for these ideas are, after all, partly true! Such concepts really falsify life even more than do the entirely wrong ones, which we can immediately recognise as false. One of these half -true concepts which external science today is to some extent giving up, though it is in a great measure still believed, is the idea I have often alluded to before, that we sleep because we are tired. We may say that this concept is only half-true, and is the result of a half-true observation. People think that the day's life tires out the body and because we are tired we must sleep! I have often, in former lectures, called attention to the fact that this concept does not explain how it is that people of independent means, who do no work at all, often fall asleep when the most stirring things relating to the outer world, are being discussed. It cannot be proved that these persons are tired out and therefore in -need of sleep. It is absolutely incorrect. If we believe that we are compelled to sleep by fatigue, we are only half-observing. We only notice that this is so when we compare the observations made on the one side, with what can be observed on the other, when we come in contact with the other half of the truth. You will presently see what I mean.

Sleeping and waking in individual human life follow each other in rhythmic succession, yet man is a free being, and can consequently interfere with this rhythm (this he does more by reason of circumstance than from what may be called freewill; but the circumstances are the bases of free life). Another rhythm which we have often placed in the same order as sleeping and waking, is that of the seasons of the year; the alternation of summer and winter (leaving the intermediate seasons out of account), but the ordinary consciousness does not connect them aright. It will occur to no one to say that because the earth is hard at work during the summer, unfolding the forces leading to the growth of plants and to much else besides, that thereby it grows tired and needs the rest of winter. Everyone would consider such an idea absurd and would say that the setting in of winter has nothing whatever to do with the summer-work of the earth, but is caused by the changed position of the sun in relation to the Earth. In this case everything is supposed to be brought about from without; in sleeping and waking it all comes from fatigue, from within. Now the one is just as incorrect as the other, or rather the one is only partly true and so is the other—for the rhythm of sleeping and waking is just the same kind of rhythm as that of winter and summer. There is just as little truth in saying that we only sleep because we are tired, as in saying that winter comes because the earth has exhausted herself in summer. Both these statements rest on the independent working of a rhythm, brought about by certain circumstances. The rhythm between sleeping and waking comes about because the human soul has need of the continually recurring meeting with the spiritual world. If we were to say we want to sleep and consequently feel tired, if we were to say that we enter the state in which we have need of one part of the rhythm, that of sleep, and consequently feel tired, we should be speaking more correctly than when we say that because we are tired, we must sleep. This whole question will become still clearer to us, if we simply ask: ‘What then does the soul do when it sleeps?’ The non-spiritual science of today has not the requisite understanding and cannot reply properly to such a question. You see, while we are awake, we enjoy the external world and the enjoyment of this lasts our whole life through. We do not merely enjoy the outer world when we convey good food to our palate, which is the sense in which we generally speak of ‘enjoyment’ because it is here directly applicable, but the whole time we are awake we enjoy the outer world; all life is enjoyment. Although there is much that is unpleasant in the world, much that is apparently no enjoyment, this is only an illusion, of which we shall speak in the subsequent lectures in other connections. In our waking state we enjoy the external world; in sleep we enjoy ourselves. Just as when we with our souls are in the body and through the latter enjoy the external world, so when we with our souls are outside our body, for in the life between birth and death we are still connected with the body: even when outside it—we then enjoy our body. The condition of sleep, of normal sleep, consists essentially in our having a deeper experience of our body, so that we enjoy it. We enjoy our body from outside. The right interpretation of dreams, of the ordinary chaotic dreams, is that they are the reflection of the enjoyment of his body which a man has in dreamless sleep.

You see this explanation of sleep is approximately that of the need of sleep felt by the man of independent means, of which I have already spoken. We cannot easily believe that he is really tired; but we can very readily believe that he may be so fond of his body that he would rather enjoy that than what often comes to him from the external world. He really loves it so much and is so fond of enjoying it, that he may even prefer that to listening to a lecture, let us say, which he is perhaps ashamed not to attend. Or perhaps a better example would be to say he would rather enjoy his body than listen to a difficult piece of classical music which sends him to sleep at once, if he is compelled to listen to it—sleep is self-enjoyment.

Now, as in sleep, in normal sleep, we have the meeting with the spiritual world, our sleep does not therefore consist merely of self-enjoyment, it is also self-understanding, to a certain degree self-understanding, a sizing-up of oneself. In this respect our spiritual training is really needed, so that people may learn to realise that in normal sleep they actually plunge down into the spirit and emerge from it when they wake up; it is necessary that they should learn to feel reverence for this meeting with the spirit.

Now, in order that we may not fail to understand completely, I will return once more to the so-called enigma of fatigue; for the commonplace consciousness may very likely lay hold of this point. It may say: Well, but we do really feel tired, and when we are tired we feel sleepy. This is a point which demands that a really clear distinction should be made. Certainly we do get tired with the day's work and while we sleep we are able to get over our fatigue. This part of the question is true: we are able to drive away fatigue by going to sleep. Yet sleep is not a result of the fatigue, but consists in the enjoyment we feel in ourselves. In this self-enjoyment, man acquires the forces through which he is able to drive away fatigue, but it does not follow that all sleep can do so; for while it is true that all sleep is enjoyment of self, yet it is not true that all sleep drives away fatigue. For a man who sleeps unnecessarily, who goes to sleep at every opportunity without any need for it, may just as well bring about a sleep in which there is no fatigue to be driven away, in which there is nothing but the enjoyment of self. In this kind of sleep, a man will certainly strive the whole time to drive away fatigue, because he is accustomed to do so while asleep; but if there is no fatigue, as in the case of the well-to-do man who falls asleep at a concert, he will simply keep on sweeping out his body, as he would do if the fatigue were there. If there is no fatigue, he goes on sweeping out unnecessarily, with the consequence that he sets up all kinds of bad conditions in his body. That is why these well-to-do men who sleep so much are the most troubled with all those fine things known as neurasthenia, and the like.

Through connection with spiritual knowledge, one may conceive a condition in which a man will be conscious of the following: ‘I am living in a state of rhythm, in which I am alternately in the physical world and in the spiritual world. In the physical world I meet with the external physical nature; in the spiritual world I meet with the beings who inhabit that world.’

We shall be able fully to understand this matter if we enter somewhat more deeply into the whole nature of man, from a particular point of view. You know that it is customary to consider the external science known as biology as a unity, necessarily divided into the head, breast, and lower part with the members attached thereto. In the olden times when man still possessed an atavistic knowledge, he connected other ideas with this division of the human being. The great Greek philosopher, Plato, attributes wisdom to the head, courage to the breast; and the lower emotions of human nature to the lower part of the body. What pertains to the breast-part of man can be ennobled when wisdom is added to courage, becoming a wise courage, a wise activity; and that which is considered the lower part of man, which belongs to the lower parts of his body, if it be rayed through with wisdom, that Plato calls ‘clothed with the sun.’ Thus we see how the soul is divided and attributed to the different parts of the body. Today, we, who have Spiritual Science, which to Plato was not attainable in like manner, speak of these things in much fuller detail. In speaking of the four-fold division of man, we begin at the top by speaking of his ‘I,’ his ego. All that a man can call his own in the soul and spirit sense in his physical life between birth and death, works through the instrument of the physical body; and we can ask concerning each of the four principles of man: with which part of his body is each physically connected A real and sufficiently penetrating spiritual observation shows us that what we call the ego of man—strange as it may seem, for the truth is often very different from what the superficial consciousness supposes—strange as it may seem, the ego of man is between birth and death, physically connected with what we call the lower part of the body. For the ego, as I have often said, is really a baby as compared to the other parts of man's nature; the germ of the physical body was already laid down in the Old Saturn epoch, the germ of the etheric body during the Old Sun, and that of the astral body during the Old Moon; but the ego was only laid down in our own earth-period; it is the youngest member of man's being. It will only attain the stage at which our physical body now stands, in the far-distant era of Vulcan. The ego is attached to the lowest bodily part of man, and this part is really always asleep. It is not so organised that it can bring to consciousness what takes place within it; what takes place there is, even in the normal waking periods, ceaselessly asleep. We are just as little conscious of our ego as such, in its reality, in its true being, as we are of the processes of our digestion. The ego of which we are conscious is but a reflex conception, the image of which is reflected into our head. We never really see or realise our ego, whether in sleep, when in normal conditions we are quite without consciousness, or in our waking state; for the ego is then also asleep. The true ego does not itself enter our consciousness, nothing but t a the concept of the ego is reflected therein. On the other hand, between sleeping and waking, the ego really comes to itself; only a man in normal deep sleep knows nothing of it, being himself still unconscious in this his deep sleep during the earth-period. Thus the ego is in reality connected with the lowest bodily part of man; during the day, in the waking time, it is connected therewith from within; and during sleep from without.

If we now pass on to the second principle in man's nature, to what we call the astral body, we find that as regards the instrument through which it works, it is, from a certain point of view, connected with the breast-part of man. Of all that goes on in this astral body working through the breast-part, we can, in reality, only dream. As earth-man we can only know something of the ego when we are asleep, consciously we know nothing. Of all that the astral body works in us, we can only dream. This is really why we dream constantly of our feelings, of the sentiments that live within us. They actually live a sort of dream-life within us. The ego of man is actually outside the region which we human beings, with our ordinary sense-consciousness, can grasp; for it is continuously asleep. The astral body is also in a certain respect outside that region too, for it can only dream. With respect to both these we are, in reality, whether asleep or awake, within the spiritual world; we are really and truly within that world.

What we know as the Etheric body, is, however, as far as the body is concerned, connected with the head. Through the peculiar Organisation of the head, the etheric body is able to be constantly awake when in the human body, when connected with the physical head. We may therefore say: The ego is connected with the lowest parts of our body; and the astral body with our breast-part. The heart—as to the workings of which we have no full consciousness, nothing but a dream-consciousness—beats and pulsates under the influence of the astral body. When the head thinks, it does so under the influence of the etheric body. We can then further differentiate our physical body, for in its entirety, it is connected with the whole external world.

We now see a remarkable connection: the ego is connected with the lowest parts of the body, the astral body with the heart; the etheric body with the head, the physical body with the whole outer world, with the environment. The whole physical body is really during the waking condition in constant connection with the outer environment. Just as we, with our whole body are in relation to the outer environment, so is our etheric body to our head, the astral body to the heart and so on. This will show you how really mysterious are the connections in which man lives in the world. In reality things are generally just the opposite to what the superficial consciousness may lightly suppose.

The lowest parts of man's nature are at present the least perfected forms of his being; hence these parts of the body, as such, correspond to what we have called the baby—our ego. Innumerable secrets of human-life lie concealed in what I am here referring to, secrets without number. If you go thoroughly into this subject you will understand above all, that the whole man is formed out of spirit, but at different stages. The head of man is formed out of spirit, but is more fully moulded, it belongs to a later stage of formation than the breast, of which indeed one might say, that it is just as much a metamorphosis of the head, as, in the sense of Goethe's theory of the metamorphoses of plants, the leaf is a metamorphosis of the flower. If we consider the rhythm between sleeping and waking from this point of view, we may say that the ego actually dwells during the waking time in all the activities in the human body, in all the lowest activities, which finally culminate in the formation of the blood. The ego is present in all these activities during the waking hours. These activities are those which are in a sense at the lowest stage of spirituality; for of course, everything connected with the body is spiritual. Now it must be carefully noted that while during the waking hours the ego stands at the lowest stage of spirituality, during the hours of sleep it stands with respect to man, at the highest stage. For consider the following: When we look at the head which we as human beings have today, that head is, as regards its outer form, the strongest manifestation of the spirit. It is the most representative of the spirit, its greatest manifestation; here the spirit has entered most deeply into matter. For that very reason there is here less left behind in the spirit itself. So much work has been spent by man on his head, to make its outer form a manifestation of the spiritual, that but little is left behind in the spirit. Whereas the lower members of the human bodily nature as regards their outer formation are the least spiritualised, have least been worked upon in a spiritual sense, there is on that account more of—what pertains to them left behind in the spiritual. The head, as head, least corresponds to the spiritual, for the reason that it has more spirit within it; the lower part of the body corresponds the most, because it has the least spirit within it. But in this greater portion of spirit which does not dwell within the bodily nature, the ego dwells during the hours of sleep.

Just reflect on this wonderful equalising process: while, as regards his body, man possesses a lower nature into which the ego immerses itself during the waking hours, this lower nature is only lower because the spirit has worked less upon it., because it kept back more of the spirit in the spiritual region. Yet in what it thus kept back, dwells the ego during sleep. During sleep, the ego is even now already present in that which man will only develop at a later epoch, which he will only then be able to develop and unfold. This at the present day is merely indicated and but little developed as yet in the bodily nature of man. Hence when the ego becomes conscious of the conditions in which it finds itself during sleep, when it really becomes conscious of this, it will be able to say to itself: ‘During sleep I am within that which is my holiest human predisposition; and when I come forth from sleep, I pass over from this holiest part of me, into that which gives but a faint indication of it.'

Through Spiritual Science such things as these must find their way into our feelings and inner sentiments, and live in them. Life itself will then become spiritualised by a magical breath of holiness. We shall then have a definite and positive idea of what is called the Grace of the Spirit, of the Holy Ghost. For we shall connect the realisation of this collective existence which runs its course in the rhythm between sleeping and waking, with the idea: ‘I am allowed to take part in the spiritual world, I am allowed to dwell in it.’ When we have once realised and felt this idea, this conception: ‘I am allowed to be within the spiritual world; grace is given me whereby I am permeated with the spiritual world, which is inaccessible to my ordinary earth-consciousness,’—when we have thoroughly filled ourselves with that thought, we shall have also learnt to look up to the Spirit which reveals itself just as clearly, I might say, between the lines of life, as the outer world of nature reveals itself to our external eyes and ears. But the age of materialism has led man far from the consciousness of being rayed into and permeated in his whole collective existence by the Grace of the Spirit. It is of immense importance that this consciousness should be re-acquired: for the depths of our souls are more affected than we suppose by the general materialism prevalent in this age of ours. Yet the human soul is now as a rule too weak to be able to realise in itself those conceptions which could lift it out of and above materialism. One such conception is that of the holiness of sleep, which if once understood, we should then ascribe all those thoughts and conceptions in our waking life which do not connect us with matter, to that inward working of the spirit which follows upon sleep. We should not then look upon our waking state, which unites us with matter, as the only important thing to man, which would be like considering the winter as the important time for the earth; we should contemplate the whole. As regards the earth we contemplate it as a whole when we take the winter in connection with the summer; and as regards man, we contemplate him as a whole when we take the day, i.e., man in relation to matter—in connection with sleep, i.e., his relation to the spirit.

Now a superficial observation might lead one to say: ‘As man in his waking state is bound up with matter, he can know nothing of the spirit; yet he does know something of the spirit, even while awake.’ Now, man has a memory; and this memory does not only work in his consciousness, it also works subconsciously. If we had no memory, sleep could not help us at all. I want you to fix this fact very firmly in your minds, for it is very important. No matter how much we slept, if we had no memory it would not help us. For if we had no memory we should of necessity be led to believe that there was naught else but material existence. It is only because we preserve in our subconscious memory what we experience during sleep—although we may know nothing of it in our outer consciousness—only because we have a subconscious recollection of what we then go through, that we are not entirely given over to a materialistic mode of thinking. If man does not think merely materialistic thoughts, if he has any sort of spiritual ideas during the day, he owes it to the fact that his memory acts. For man, as he now is, as earth-man,—only comes into touch with the spirit during sleep.

The point is that if, on the other hand, we were now able to develop as strong a consciousness of what happens to us during sleep as, under certain circumstances, men of bye-gone times could do, we should never think of doubting the existence of the spirit. We should then be able to remember not only subconsciously, but in full consciousness, what we encounter during our sleep. If a man were to experience in full consciousness what he passes through in sleep, it would be just as absurd for him to deny the existence of spirit as it would be for a waking man to deny the fact that there were tables and chairs. The crucial point now is that mankind should once more become capable of properly appreciating the meeting with the spirit in sleep. This can only be done by making the pictures of the days experiences sufficiently vivid; it can only be done by entering deeply into Spiritual Science. In this study we occupy ourselves strongly with ideas drawn from the spiritual world. We compel our head—the etheric body of our head—to picture things which are in nowise connected with outer matter, but only have reality in the world of the spirit. This requires more application than it does to picture the things which are real in the world of matter. Indeed that is the true reason why many people do not go in for Spiritual Science. They find all kinds of reasons against it. They say it is not logical. If they were driven to prove in what it is illogical, they would be embarrassed: for it could never be proved that Spiritual Science is illogical. The real reason they turn away from Spiritual Science comes from something very different! In a scientific refutation it is perhaps allowable not to be quite polite, and we may, therefore, say that the non-recognition of Spiritual Science comes solely from laziness of soul. However industrious certain learned people may be as regards all the concepts relating to outer matter, yet when it comes to the force necessary for understanding the things of the spirit, they are idle and lazy; and it is because they will not arouse in themselves this necessary force, that they refuse to recognise Spiritual Science. For it requires more effort for thinking the ideas of Spiritual Science, than it does for thinking the ordinary thoughts connected with the things of sense. The latter really come of themselves; but the ideas not connected with material things, must be thought; one must wrestle with them and make a big effort. It is this shrinking from the necessary effort which is at the bottom of the non-acceptance of Spiritual Science; and this is what we have to realise. When however, the effort really is made to accept such concepts and ideas as are not connected with the material, and to think them out, such activity is aroused in the soul that it is gradually able to develop the consciousness of what goes on between falling asleep and waking, to realise that a meeting with the Spirit takes place then. It will certainly be necessary to unlearn certain ideas. Just think how little some of the leaders of spiritual life are capable of developing such ideas. What I am about to relate is of less frequent occurrence now, but those who are the present leaders were in many cases, in the days of their youth, so deeply immersed in the life of their day, that they drank themselves into the state called in German ‘Bettschwere.’ They drank so much that the necessary gravitation was established. Well, in such cases a man's ideas as well as his feelings as to what goes on in sleep, are certainly not adapted to elucidate the whole significance of sleep. A man may be extremely learned as regards everything connected with matter, but he is naturally not then able to gain an insight into what happens to him between his falling asleep and awaking.

When people make the necessary effort to think out to their conclusion ideas not connected with material things, they will be able to develop understanding of what I have called the first meeting, the meeting with the Spirit during sleep. Unless the world is to fall into a state of decadence, this understanding must before very long illuminate life, and fill it with sunshine. For if men do not take up these ideas, on what are their concepts to be based? They will only be able to form them by observing external conditions, by studying the external world. Ideas formed in this way alone, leave the inner part of the human being, his soul-part, in a state of inertia; that part of man which must under other circumstances be strongly exercised in spiritual concepts and ideas is left inert, unused: it dies. What is the result of this? The result is that man becomes blind, spiritually blind in his whole relation to the world. If he develops no ideas or concepts except such as he forms under the influence of outer impressions, he becomes spiritually blind; and spiritual blindness does indeed prevail to a great extent, in this materialistic age. In science this is only injurious up to a point, but in practical life this blindness to the real world is extremely harmful. You see, the further we descend into matter, the more things correct themselves in this materialistic age. For if a man builds a bridge, he is forced by circumstances to learn the proper rules of construction, otherwise when the first wagon crosses it, that bridge will collapse. It is easier to apply wrong conceptions in trying to cure anyone, for it can never be proved what a man dies of, or what makes him well. It does not at all follow that the ideas put into practice are necessarily the right ones. If one wishes to work in the realm of the spiritual, it is a much more serious matter; and it is, therefore, particularly serious that things are in a bad way in what are generally known as the practical sciences, Political or National Economy and the like. In this materialistic age people have become accustomed to be guided by the impressions and ideas formed in the outer world and to apply these to their doctrines of national or political economy, and in this way their ideas have become blind. Almost all that has hitherto been developed along these lines is but a blind idea. It must, therefore, follow as a natural consequence, that people with these blind notions are led along in leading strings by events, they yield themselves blindly to the course of events. If in this state they then intervene in them, well, what can we expect?

One possibility formed as a result of not taking up Spiritual Science is these blind ideas. Another possibility is that instead of being stimulated to form ideas by outer circumstances people may let themselves be stimulated from within; that is to say, that nothing but what lives in the emotions and passions is, in a sense, allowed to arise in the soul. In this way a man certainly does not acquire blind ideas, but rather what we might call intoxicated ideas. People of the present day who are acknowledged materialists constantly swing backwards and forwards between blind ideas and intoxicated ideas. Blind ideas, in which they allow themselves to be blindfolded to what is going on, so that when they intervene they do so in the clumsiest way possible! Intoxicated ideas, in which they only give way to their emotions and passions, and confront the world in such a way that they do not really understand things, but either love or hate everything; and judge everything according to their love or hatred, their sympathy or antipathy. For it is only when, on the one hand, a man makes efforts in his soul to acquire spiritual ideas, and on the other develops his feelings for the great concerns of the world, that he can attain to clear-sighted ideas and conceptions. When we lift ourselves up to the thoughts given us in Spiritual Science of the great connections concerning which the materialistic view of the world merely laughs: of the ages of Saturn, Sun and Moon and of our connection with the Universe, when we fructify our moral feelings with the great goals of humanity, we can then rise above all the emotions displayed in sympathy or antipathy for anything in the world around us. And these emotions can be overcome in no other way.

It is undoubtedly necessary, that through Spiritual Science, a great deal that lives in our age, should be purified. For man, after all, does not allow himself to be entirely cut off from the spiritual world. He does not really allow himself to be cut off at all, he only allows himself to be apparently cut off. I have already called your attention to the way this is apparently done. When man, on the one hand swears only by the material and the impressions of the external world, the forces which are intended for the spirit still remain within him, but he then directs them to a false region and gives himself up to all kinds of illusions. That is why it is chiefly the most practical and materialistic people who are subject to the strongest illusions and give way to them. We see people going through life denying the existence of spirit and laughing heartily if they are told of anyone having had spiritual experiences. ‘He sees ghosts!’ they exclaim. Having said that, they consider they have broken the back of the matter. They themselves certainly do not see ghosts, in their sense of the word. But they only believe they see no ghosts; in reality they are incessantly seeing ghosts, they see them the whole time. One can put a man who is thus rooted in his materialistic view of the world to the test, and it will be evident that as regards what the next day may bring forth, he gives way to the worst illusions. This giving way to illusions, is nothing but a substitute for the spiritual, which he denies. If he denies the spiritual, he must then necessarily fall into illusion. As has been said, it is not easy to prove the illusions, existing in the many different departments of life, but they are everywhere prevalent, really everywhere. People are really fond of giving way to illusion. For instance, the following is a very frequent experience. Some one may say: ‘If I invest my money in this or that undertaking, it may be used for the brewing of beer. I refuse to use my money in that way, I will take no part in that.’ So he takes his money to the bank. The bank, without his knowledge, invests the money in a brewery. It makes no difference at all to the objective fact, but he is under the illusion that his money is not used for such base purposes as beer!

Of course, it may be objected that this is far-fetched, but it is not, it is really a thing that rules all life. People do not take the trouble today to become really acquainted with life, to be able to see through it. This, however, is of great significance. It is immensely important that we should learn to know what we ourselves are in the midst of. This is not easy today, because life has become complicated; nevertheless, what I have drawn attention to, is true. For, you know, under certain circumstances one might easily conceive an absurd situation. I will give you an example. There was once an incendiary, (this is a true story,) who ran out of a house which he had set on fire, having so arranged things that he allowed himself time to do so. He was caught and brought before the magistrates. On being questioned, he answered that he considered he had done a good piece of work, that he was not the one to be blamed, but the workmen, who had left a lighted candle in the house when they left it in the evening. If the candle had burnt out at night, it would have set the house on fire. He, therefore, set it on fire himself, before it was quite dark. In either case the house would have been on fire; he only set it on fire so that the fire might be speedily extinguished: for if a house is on fire in the daytime it may be saved, but at night it is a more complicated matter, and the whole house would then have been burnt to the ground. He was then asked why he did not put the candle out; to which he replied ‘I am a teacher of humanity; if I had blown out the candle, the workers, who were the ones to blame in the matter, would have gone on being careless, whereas now they can see for themselves what happens when they forget to blow out their lights.’

We may laugh at such an example as this, for we do not observe that we are continually doing the like. People are constantly acting in the same way as the man who did not put out the lighted candle, but set fire to the house. Only we do not notice this when we are disturbed by our emotions and passions, which cause an intoxication of ideas, and when the whole thing relates to the spiritual world. If we accustom the soul to that elasticity and flexibility, which is necessary for the forming of spiritual ideas, we shall so mould our thought that it will really find its way into life and be properly adapted to it. If we do not do this, our thought will never be fit to deal with life; it will not even be affected by it, except on the surface. That is why-to turn now to the deeper side of the question—the materialistic age really leads one away from an connection with the spiritual world. Just as we undermine our bodily health if we do not get our proper sleep, so do we undermine our soul-life if we do not spend our waking-time in the right way. If we only give way to outer impressions and live without being conscious of our connection with the spiritual world, we are not awake in the right way. Just as a man may by reason of certain conditions sleep restlessly, turning and twisting about, and thus undermine his physical health, so does a man undermine his spiritual health if he only yields to the external impressions of the world, if he is only subject to physical matter. This will prevent his experiencing in the right way that first meeting with the spiritual world, of which I have spoken. In this way he loses all possibility of rightly connecting himself with the spiritual world, during his physical existence. The connection with that world in which we spend our time when not in incarnation, into which we ourselves pass when we go through the Gates of Death, is thereby cut off.

Man must once again learn to understand that we are not here merely to build in the physical universe during our physical existence; he must learn to understand that we, during the whole of our existences are bound up with the whole world. Those who have already passed through the Gates of Death want to work with us on the physical world. This co-operation of theirs appears to be only a physical working with us, but everything physical is only an outer expression of the spirit. The age of materialism has estranged man from the world of the dead; Spiritual Science must re-establish the friendship between them. The time must once more come, when we shall cease to make the work of the dead for the spiritualisation of the physical world impossible, by estranging ourselves from them. For the dead cannot take part with hands in the events of the physical, they cannot accomplish physical work in that direct way. It would be foolish to believe that. The dead can work in a spiritual way. But to do so they need to have instruments placed at their disposal; they require the spiritual matter that lives here in the physical world. We are not merely human beings, we are also instruments, instruments for the spirits who have passed through the Gates of Death. As long as we are incarnated in physical bodies we use the pen or the hammer or the axe; when we are no longer incarnated in physical bodies the instruments we use are the human souls themselves. This rests upon the peculiar way in which the dead perceive, which I will just touch upon once more—I referred to this subject once before here.

Suppose you have before you a small vessel containing salt; you can see that. The salt looks like a white substance, like white powder. The fact that you see the salt as a white powder depends on your eyes. Your spirit cannot see the salt as a white powder; but if you put a little salt on your tongue and taste the peculiar salt taste, it is possible then for the spirit to become aware of it. Every spirit is able to perceive the taste of the salt in you. Everything that takes place in man through the external world, can be perceived by every spirit, including the human souls which have passed through the Gates of Death. Just as within us the world of sense extends to our tasting, smelling, seeing and hearing, so does the world of the dead reach down into what we hear, see and taste, etc. The experiences we have in the physical world are shared in by the dead, for these experiences do not only belong to our world but to theirs. They belong to their world when we spiritualise what we experience in the outer world with spiritual ideas. Unless we do this, if we merely experience the laws of matter, that to the dead is something which they cannot comprehend, it remains dark. To the dead a soul devoid of spirit seems dark. For this reason the dead have become estranged from our earth-life during the age of materialism. This estrangement must be got rid of. An inner common life of the so-called dead with the so-called living must take place; but that can only be when people develop in their souls those forces which are really spiritual, that is, when they develop such ideas, concepts, and images as deal with spiritual matters. When a man in his thinking makes an effort to reach the spirit, he will gradually reach it in reality. It signifies that a bridge is thrown across between the physical and the spiritual world. That alone can lead men across from the age of materialism to that age in which they will face the realities, neither blindfolded nor intoxicated, but with vision and poise. Having learnt to see through the spirit, they will attain vision and poise, and through the feelings and sentiments aroused in them by the great concerns of the world, they will attain the right balance between sympathy and antipathy, with respect to what our immediate surroundings demand of us.

We shall continue the considerations of these subjects in our next lecture, and go still more deeply from this aspect, into the ideas to be gained from the spiritual world.

LET us dwell again today a little on the considerations already referred to as the so-called Three Meetings. We have said that the two alternate states of sleeping and waking, in which man lives in the short course of twenty-four hours, are not only what they seem to external physical life, but that during every one of these two-fold periods man has a meeting with the Spiritual world. We explained this by saying that the ego and the astral bodies, which are separated from the physical and etheric bodies during sleep—being breathed forth as it were, on going to sleep and breathed in again on waking—that these during the hours of sleep meet with the world we reckon as belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angeloi. To this world our own human soul will also belong when it has formed the Spirit-Self; in this rules as highest directing principle, that which in the life of religion we are accustomed to call the Holy Spirit. We have gone somewhat minutely into the meeting which man has with the Holy Spirit in the Spiritual world, during each one of his normal periods of sleep.

Now, we must very clearly understand that in the course of the development of the human race, during the evolution of the earth, changes have taken place with regard to these things. What then actually takes place while man is asleep? Well, I think I made that clear in the last lecture, from the standpoint of what takes place within man. Considered in his relation to the universe, man in a certain sense, imitates that rhythm in the world-order, which is established in any one part of the earth by the fact that one half of the twenty-four hour period is day and the other half night. Of course, it is always day in some part of the earth, but a man only lives in one part of it, and in respect to this the rule given holds good: wherever he lives, he imitates the rhythm between day and night in his own rhythm of sleeping and waking. The fact that this rhythm is broken through in modern life, that man is no longer compelled to be awake at day and asleep at night, is connected with his progress in evolution, in the course of which he raises himself above the objective course of the world, and now only has within him the one rhythm of day and night,—no longer the two rhythms working together. These rhythms work in a certain sense at one time for the universe, for the Macrocosm, and at another for man, for the Microcosm; but they are no longer in unison. In this way man has, in a certain respect, become a being independent of the Macrocosm.

Now, in those olden times, when, as we know, there was a certain atavistic clairvoyance in man, he was then more in harmony with the great course of the world-order, with respect to this rhythm. In olden times people slept all night, and were awake all day. For this reason the whole circle of man's experience was different from what it is now. But man has had in a sense to be lifted out of this parallel with the Macrocosm, and being thus torn away he has been compelled to stimulate an inner independent life of his own. It cannot be said that the main point was, that as in those days man slept at night he did not then observe the stars; for he did observe them, notwithstanding the fables of external science with respect to worship of the stars. The essential thing was that man was then differently organised into the whole world-order; for, while the sun was at the other side of the earth and consequently did not exercise its immediate activity on the part of the earth on which he lived, a man was then able in his ego and astral bodies—which were outside his physical and etheric bodies—to devote himself to the stars. He thus observed not merely the physical stars, but perceived the Spiritual part of the physical stars. He did not actually see the physical stars with external eyes; but he saw the Spiritual part of the physical stars. Hence we must not look upon what is related of the ancient star-worship, as though the ancients looked up to the stars and then made all sorts of beautiful symbols and images. It is very easy to say, according to modern science: In those olden times the imagination was very active; men imagined gods behind Saturn, Sun and Moon; they pictured animal forms in the signs of the Zodiac. But it is only the imagination of the learned scientists that works in this way, inventing such ideas True it is, however, that in the state of consciousness of the egos and astral bodies of the ancients, this did seem to them to be as we have described, so that they really saw and perceived those things. In this way man had direct vision of the spirit which is the soul of the universe; he lived with it. In reality it is only as regards our physical and etheric body that we are suited for the earth; the ego and astral body in their present condition are suited to the spirit that ensouls the universe, in the manner described. We may say that they belong to that region of the universe; but man must develop so far as really to be able to experience the innermost being of his ego and astral body, and to have experiences within them. For this purpose the external experience which was present in olden times, had to disappear for a while, it had to be blurred. The consciousness of communication with the stars had to recede; it had to be dimmed, so that the inner being of man could become powerful enough to enable him, at a definite time in the future, to learn so to strengthen it that he may be able to find the spirit, as spirit. Just as the ancients were united every night, when asleep, with the spirit of the stellar-world, so was man once connected with that spirit in the course of every year; but as time went on, in the course of the year he came in touch with a Higher Spirit of the world of the stars, and also in a sense with what went on in that world. While asleep at night the forms of the stars in their calm repose worked upon him; in the course of the year he was affected by the changes connected with the sun's course through the year; connected, as one might say, through the sun's course with the destiny of the earth for the year, caused by her passage through the seasons, and especially through the summer and winter.

You see, although some traditions are still extant relating to the experiences man formerly went through when asleep at night, there are but few remaining of those yet more distant times (or rather few traced back to their origin), when men took part in the secrets of the year's course. The echoes of these experiences still persist, but they are little understood. If you seek among the myths of the different peoples you will constantly come across that which proves that man then knew something of a conflict between winter and summer, summer and winter. Here again external erudition sees nothing but the symbolic creative imagination of the ancients; it says, we in our advanced times have gone much further than that! These were, however, real experiences which man went through, and they played a significant and profound part in the whole Spiritual civilisation of the ancient past. There were mysteries in which the knowledge of the secrets of the year were taught. Let us just consider the significance of such mysteries. These were not the same in the very ancient times as they became later, in the times when the history of ancient Egypt and of ancient Greece and to some extent even the earlier Roman history was enacted. We will, therefore, consider those mysteries which passed away with the older civilisations of Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

In these mysteries there was still a consciousness of the connection of the earth with the whole universe. At that time it was customary for suitable persons to be subjected to a definite Psychical process—but this could no longer be done today. They could then, during a certain number of days—in winter—be sent to certain definite localities, there to serve in a sense as receiving stations for the universe, the supra-earthly universe, and to receive what it is able to communicate to the earth at such times, if the times could provide a sufficiently receptive receiving-station. Our present Christmas time was then not precisely the most important time, though approximately so but the exact time does not signify for the moment. Let us assume the time to be between the 24th December, and the early days of January. This season is one in which, through the special position of the sun to the earth, the universe conveys something to the earth that it does not at other times. At this season the universe speaks in a more intimate way to the earth than at other times. This is because the sun does not unfold its summer-force at this time; the summer-force has in a certain respect, withdrawn. Now, the leaders of the ancient mysteries took advantage of that time to make it possible in certain organised places with the help of specially prepared persons, to receive the inner secrets of the universe, which came down to the earth during this intimate duologue. This may be compared today with something certainly much more trivial, yet the two can be compared. You know that what is known as ‘wireless telegraphy’ rests upon the fact that electric waves are set in motion, which are then further transmitted without wires, and that in certain places an instrument called a coherer is installed, which, by its peculiar arrangement makes it possible for the electric waves to be received and the coherer is then set in action. The whole thing depends entirely on the arrangement and formation of the metal filings in the coherer which are then shaken back into place when the waves have passed through it. Now, if we assume that the secrets of the universe, of the supra-earthly universe, pass through the earth at the special time alluded to, it would be necessary to have an instrument for receiving them; for the electric waves would pass by the receiving-station to no purpose, unless the right instrument attuned to receive them were there! Such an instrument is needed to receive what comes from the universe. The ancient Greeks used their Pythia, their priestesses for this purpose; they were trained for the purpose and were very specially sensitive to what came down from the universe, and were able to communicate its secrets. These secrets were then later on taught by those who perhaps, had long been unable themselves to act as receivers. Still the secrets of the universe were given out. This, of course, took place under the sign of the holy mysteries, a sign of which the present age, which has -no longer any feeling for what is holy, has no conception. In our age the first thing would obviously be to ‘interview’ the priests of the mysteries!

Now, what was above all demanded of these priests? It was necessary in a certain sense that they should know that if they made themselves acquainted with what streamed down from the universe for the fructification of earth-life, and especially if they used it in their social knowledge, they must be capable, having thereby become much cleverer, of establishing the principal laws and other rules for government during the coming year.

It would at one time have been impossible to establish laws or social ordinances, without first seeking guidance from those who were able to receive the secrets of the Macrocosm. Later ages have retained dim and dubious echoes of this greatness in their superstitious fancies. When on New Year's Eve people pour melted lead into water to learn the future of the coming year, that is but the superstitious remains of that great matter of which I have described. Therein the endeavour was made so to fructify the spirit of man that he might carry over into the earth what could only spring from the universe; for it was desired that man should so live on the earth that his life should not merely consist of what can be experienced here, but also of what can be drawn from the universe. In the same way, it was known that during the summer time of the earth we are in a quite different relation to the universe, and that during that season the earth cannot receive any intimate communications from thence. The summer mysteries were based upon this knowledge, and were intended for a quite different purpose, which I need not go into today.

Now, as I have said, even less has come down to us in tradition concerning the secrets of the course of the year, than of those things relating to the rhythm between day and night, and between sleeping and waking. But in those olden times, when man still had a high degree of atavistic clairvoyance, through which he was able to experience in the course of the year the intimate relations between the universe and the earth, he was still conscious that what he thus experienced came from that meeting with the Spiritual world, which he cannot now have every time he sleeps. It came from the meeting with the Spiritual world in which dwell those Spiritual beings we reckon as belonging to the world of the Archangels—where man will some day dwell with his innermost being, after he has developed his Life-Spirit, during the Venus period. That is the world in which we must think of Christ, the Son, as the directing and guiding principle. (Man had this meeting in all ages, of course, but it was formerly perceived by means of atavistic clairvoyance.) We have, therefore, called this meeting, which in the course of the year man has in any part of the earth where he makes Christmas in his winter: the meeting with the Son. Thus in the course of a year, a man really goes through a rhythm which imitates that of the seasons of the year, in which he has a meeting and a union with the world of the Son.

Now we know that through the Mystery of Golgotha, that Being whom we designate as the Christ has united Himself with the course of the Earth. At the very time this union took place, the direct vision into the Spiritual world had become blurred, as I have just explained.

We see the objective fact: that the Event of Golgotha is directly connected with the alteration in the evolution of mankind on the earth itself. Yet we may say that there were times in the earth's development when, in the sense of the old atavistic clairvoyance, man entered into relation with Christ, through becoming aware of the intimate duologue held between the earth and the Macrocosm. Upon this rests the belief held by certain modern learned men, students of religion, with some justification:—the belief that an original primal revelation had once been given to the earth. It came about in the manner described. It was an old primeval revelation. All the different religions on the face of the earth are fragments of that original revelation, fragments fallen into decadence. In what position then are those who accepted the Mystery of Golgotha? They are able to express an intense inner recognition of the Spiritual content of the universe, by saying: That which in olden times could only be perceived through the duologue of the earth with the cosmos, has now descended; it dwelt within a human being, it appeared in the Man, Jesus of Nazareth, in the course of the Mystery of Golgotha. Recognition of the Christ who dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth, recognition of that Being who was formerly perceptible to the atavistic clairvoyance of man at certain seasons of the year, must be increasingly emphasised as necessary for the Spiritual development of humanity. For the two elements of Christianity will be then united as they really should and must be, if on the one hand Christianity, and on the other humanity, are each to develop further in the right way. The fact that in the old Christian traditions the Legend of Christ Jesus was part of the yearly celebration of the Christmas, Easter, and Whitsuntide Festivals, is connected with this; and, as I stated in a former lecture, the fact that the Festival of Christmas is kept at a fixed date, while Easter is regulated according to the heavenly constellations, is also connected with this. Christmas is celebrated in accordance with the earth-conditions, it is kept in what is always the very depth of winter and this hangs together with the meeting with Christ, with the Son, which meeting really takes place at that season. Christ, however, is a Being belonging to the Macrocosm. He descended from thence, yet is One with it; and this is expressed in the fixing of Easter by the heavens in spring, according to the constellations of sun and moon;—for the Easter Festival is intended to show that Christ belongs to the whole universe, just as Christmas should point to the descent of Christ to the earth. So it was right that what belongs to the seasons of the year through their rhythm in human life, should be inserted into the course of the year as has been done. For this is so profound a thing, as regards the inner being of man, that it is really right that these Festivals relating to the Mystery of Golgotha, should continue to be held in harmony with the rhythm of the great universe, and not be subject to the alteration which in modern cities has taken place in the hours of sleeping and waking.

Here we have something in which man should not as yet exercise his freewill, something in which each year the consciousness should come to him, that, though he can no longer come into touch with the great universe through atavistic clairvoyance, there is still something living within him which belongs to the universe and expresses itself in the course of the year.

Now, among the things which are perhaps the most found fault with in Spiritual Science by certain religious sects, is, that according to Spiritual Science the Christ-Impulse must once again be bound up with the whole universe. I have often emphatically stated that Spiritual Science takes nothing away from the traditions of religion with respect to the mystery of Christ Jesus; but rather adds to them the connection which surrounds that mystery extending, as it does, from the earth to the whole universe. Spiritual Science does not seek Christ on the earth alone, but in the whole universe.

It is indeed not easy to understand why certain religious confessions so strongly condemn this connecting of the Christ-Impulse with Cosmic Events. This attitude would be comprehensible if Spiritual Science wished to do away with the traditions of Christianity; but as it only adds to them, that should not be a reason for censure. So it is, however; and the reason is that people do not wish anything to be added to certain traditions.

There is, however, something very serious behind all this, something of very great importance to our age. I have often drawn your attention to the fact, which is also mentioned in the first of my Mystery Plays, that we are approaching a time in which we can speak of a Spiritual return of Christ. I need not go more fully into this today, it is well known to all our friends. This Christ Event will, however, not merely be an event satisfying the transcendental curiosity of man, but it will above all bring to their minds a demand for a new understanding of the Christ-Impulse. Certain basic words of the Christian faith, which ought to surge through the whole world as holy impulses—at any rate through the world of those who wish to take up the Christ-Impulse—are not understood deeply enough. I will now only call to your remembrance the significant and incisive words: ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ These words will take on a new meaning when Christ appears in a world which is truly not of this world, not of the world of sense. It must be a profound attribute of the Christian conception of the world to cultivate an understanding of other human views and conceptions, with the sole exception of rough and crude materialism. Once we know that all the religions on the earth are the remnants of ancient vision, it will then only be a question of taking seriously enough what was thus perceived; for later on, because mankind was no longer organised for vision, the results of the former vision only filtered through in fragmentary form into the different religious creeds. This can once again be recognised through Christianity. Through Christianity a profound understanding can be gained, not only of the great religions, but of every form of religious creed on the earth. It is certainly easy to say this; though at the same time very difficult to make men really adopt these views. Yet they must become part of their convictions, all the wide world over. For Christianity, in so far as it has spread over the earth up to the present time, is but one religion among many, one creed among a number of others. That is not the purpose for which it was founded; it was founded that it might spread understanding over the whole earth. Christ did not suffer death for a limited number of people, nor was He born for a few; but for all. In a certain sense there is a contradiction between the demand that Christianity should be for all men and the fact that it has become one of many creeds. It is not intended to be a separate creed, and it can only be that, because it is not understood in its full and deep meaning. To grasp this deep meaning a cosmic understanding is necessary.

One is compelled today to wrestle for words wherewith to express certain truths, which are now so far removed from man that we lack the words to express them. One is often obliged to express the great truths by means of comparisons. You will recollect that I have often said that Christ may be called the Sun-Spirit. From what I have said today about the yearly course of the sun, you will see that there is some justification for calling Him the Sun-Spirit. But we can form no idea of this, we cannot picture it, unless we keep the cosmic relation of Christ in view, unless we consider the Mystery of Golgotha as a real Christ-Mystery, as something that certainly took place on this earth, and yet is of significance for the whole universe and took place for the whole universe.

Now, men are in conflict with one another about many things on the earth, and they are at variance on many questions; they are at variance in their religious beliefs, and believe themselves to be at variance as regards their nationality and many other things. This lack of unity brings about times such as those in which we are living now. Men are not of one mind even with regard to the Mystery of Golgotha. For no China-man or Indian will straightway accept what a European missionary says about the Mystery of Golgotha. To those who look at things as they are, this fact is not without significance. There is, however, one thing concerning which men are still of one mind. It seems hardly credible, but it is a commonplace truth and one we cannot help admitting, that when we reflect how people live together on the earth, we cannot help wondering that there should be anything left upon which they are not at variance; yet there still are things about which people are of one mind, and one such example is the view people hold about the sun. The Japanese, Chinese, and even the English and Americans, do not believe that one sun rises and sets for them and another for the Germans. They still believe in the sun being the common property of all; indeed they still believe that what is supra-earthly is the common property of all. They do not even dispute that, they do not go to war about these things. And that can be taken as a sort of comparison. As has been said, these things can only be expressed by comparisons. When once people realise the connection of Christ with these things which men do not dispute, they will not dispute about Him, but will learn to see Him in the Kingdom which is not of this world, but which belongs to Him. But until men recognise the cosmic significance of Christ, they will not be of one mind with respect to the things concerning which unity should prevail. For we shall then be able to speak of Christ to the Jews, to the Chinese, to the Japanese, and to the Indians,—just as we speak to Christian Europeans. This will open up an immensely significant perspective for the further development of Christianity on the earth, as well as for the development of mankind on the earth. For ways must be found of arousing in the souls of men, sentiments which all people shall be able to understand equally.

That will be one thing demanded of us in the time that shall bring the return, the Spiritual return, of the Christ. Especially with respect to the words: ‘My Kingdom is not of this world,’ a deeper understanding will come about in that time; a deeper understanding of the fact that there is in the human being not only what pertains to the earth, but something supra-earthly, which lives in the annual course of the sun. We must grow to feel that as in the individual human life the soul rules the body, so in everything that goes on outside, in the rising and setting stars, in the bright sunlight, and fading twilight, there dwells something Spiritual; and just as we belong to the air with our lungs, so do we belong to the Spiritual part of the universe with our souls. We do not belong to the abstract Spiritual life of an outgrown Pantheism, but to that concrete Spirituality which lives in each individual being. Thus we shall find that there is something Spiritual which belongs to the human soul, which indeed is the human soul; and that this is in inner connection with what lives in the course of the year as does the breath in a man; and that the course of the year with its secrets belongs to the Christ-Being, who went through the Mystery of Golgotha. We must soar high enough to be able to connect what took place historically on the earth in the Mystery of Golgotha, with the great secrets of the world—with the Macrocosmic secrets. From such an understanding will proceed something extremely important: a knowledge of the social needs of man. A great deal of social science is practised in our day, and all sorts of social ideals mooted. Certainly nothing can be said against that, but all these things will have to be fructified by that which will spring up in man, through realising the course of the year as a Spiritual impulse. For only by vividly experiencing each year the image of the Mystery of Golgotha, parallel with the course of the year, can we become inspired with real social knowledge and feeling.

What I am now saying must certainly seem absolutely strange to people of the present day, yet it is true. When the year's course is again generally felt by humanity as in inner connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, then, by attuning the feelings of the soul with both the course of the year and the secret of the Mystery of Golgotha, a true social ruling will be the true solution, or at any rate the true continuation of what is today so foolishly called (in reference to what is really in view) the social question. Precisely through Spiritual Science people will have to acquire a knowledge of the connections of man with the universe. This will certainly lead them to see more in this universe than does the materialism of today.

Just those very things to which least importance is attributed today, are really the most important. The materialistic biology, the materialistic Natural Science of today compares man with the animal; though it certainly does admit a certain difference,—in degree. In its own domain it is of course right; but what it completely leaves out of account is the relation of man to the directions of the universe. The animal spine—and in this respect the exceptions prove the rule—the animal spine is parallel with the surface of the earth, its direction is out into the universe. The human spine is directed towards the earth. For this reason man is quite different from the animal, above and below. The ‘above and below’ in man determine his whole being. In the animal the spine is directed to the infinite distances of the Macrocosm; in man the upper part of the head, the brain, and man himself are inserted into the whole Macrocosm. This is of enormous significance. This brings about what establishes a relation between the Spiritual and bodily in man, and through this his Spiritual and bodily parts are made subject to the conditions of above and below. I shall have more to say on this subject, but today I will merely just allude to it in a sketchy way. This ‘above and below’ characterises what we may call ‘the going out of the ego and astral body during sleep.’ For man with his physical body and etheric body is really inserted into and forms part of the earth while he is awake. During the night time he, with his ego and astral body is in a certain sense, inserted into that which is above.

Now we may ask: well, how is it then with other opposites to be found in the Macrocosm? There is also the opposite which in man can be described as ‘before and behind.’ In respect to these, too, man is inserted in a different way into the whole universe than is the animal or, indeed the plant. Man is inserted in such a way that he corresponds both before and behind to the course of the sun. This ‘before and behind’ is the direction which corresponds to the rhythm in which man takes part in living and dying. Just as man expresses in a sense a living relation of the ‘above and below’ in his sleeping and waking, so in his living and dying does he also express the relation of ‘before and behind.’ This ‘before and behind’ is in correspondence with the course of the sun; so that for man, ‘before’ signifies towards the east, and ‘behind’ towards the west. East and west form the second direction of space, that direction of which we really speak when we say that the human soul forsakes the human body not in sleep, but at death. For the soul on leaving the body goes towards the east. This is only still to be found in those traditions in which, when a man dies it is said: he has ‘entered the eternal east.’ Such old traditional sayings will some day, as indeed they are even now, be looked upon by learned men as merely symbolic. Some such platitudes as the following will be uttered: ‘The sun rises in the east,’ and is a beautiful sight; therefore, when it was desired to speak of eternity, the ancients spoke of the east! Yet this corresponded to a reality, and indeed one more closely connected with the yearly course of the sun than with the course of the day.

The third difference is that between the inner and the outer. Above and below, east and west, inner and outer. We live an inner life and we live an outer life. The day after tomorrow (15 March, 1917) I shall give a public lecture on this inner and outer life, entitled: ‘The human soul and the human body.’ We live an inner and an outer life. These form just as great opposites in man as above and below, east and west. Whereas in the course of the year man has more to do with what I might call a representative delineation of the whole course of life, we may say that when we speak of an inner and outer life in connection with the life and death of man, we refer to the whole course of his life, especially in so far as it has an ascending and a descending development. We know that up to a certain age a man goes through an ascending development. His collective growth then ceases, it remains at a standstill for a while, and then retrogrades. Now it hangs together with the collective course of a man's life, that at its early stages his whole body is then more connected in a natural, elemental way, with the Spiritual. I might say that at the beginning of his life a man is constituted in the very opposite way from what he is at the middle of his life, when he attains the zenith of his ascending development. In the first part of his life a man grows, thrives, and increases; afterwards his descending development begins. This is connected with the fact that the physical forces of man are then no longer in themselves forces of growth, for with the forces of growth are also intermingled the forces of decay. The inner nature of man is then connected in a similar way with the universe, as at his birth, at the beginning of his life, his outer bodily nature is connected with the universe. A complete turning round takes place. That is why at the present day a man goes through in a state of unconsciousness, in the middle of his life, the meeting with the Father-Principle, with that Spiritual Being whom we reckon as belonging to the Hierarchy of the Archai. He then meets with that Spiritual world in which he will dwell when he has completely developed his Spirit-Man.

Now, one might ask: Is this too in any way connected with the whole universe? Is there anything in the life of the universe connected in a similar way with the meeting that occurs in the middle of a man's life with the Father-Principle, as the meeting with the Spirit is connected with the rhythm of day and night, and the meeting with the Son with the rhythm of the year? That question might be asked. Well, now, my dear friends, we must bear in mind and hold firmly to the fact that, as regards the meeting with the Father-Principle, and also as regards that with the Spirit-Principle, man is lifted above rhythm, rhythm does not run quite parallel with man. For men are not all born at the same time, but at different times, therefore, the course of their lives cannot be parallel; but they can inwardly reflect some Spiritual Cosmic happening.

Do they do this?

Well, you see, if we recall what is stated in the little book: Education of the Child in the Light of Anthroposophy, and in other books and courses of lectures, we shall know, that in the first seven years man more particularly builds up his physical body, in the next seven years his etheric body, in the next seven years his astral body. Then for seven years he forms the sentient soul; from twenty-eight to thirty-five he forms the intellectual or reasoning soul; and during this period he has the meeting with the Father-Principle. It takes place during that time;—not that it extends over the whole period, but it occurs during those years;—so that we may say: a man prepares for it in his twenty-eight, twenty-ninth, and thirtieth years. In the case of most people the meeting takes place in the deepest subconscious regions of the human soul. Now, we must assume that this corresponds to something that takes place in the universe; that is, we must find in the universe something representing a course, a rhythm. Just as the rhythm of day and night is one of twenty-four hours, and the course of the year one of three hundred and sixty-five days, so we ought to be able to find something of a like nature in the universe, only that would have to be more comprehensive. All this is connected with the sun, or at least with the solar system. Just as the twenty-eighth twenty-ninth, and thirtieth years are more comprehensive than the period of twenty-four hours; and the three hundred and sixty-five days than any other period, so something yet greater must be connected with the sun, something corresponding with this third meeting. Now, the ancients rightly considered Saturn as the most distant planet from our solar system; it is the furthest away. From the standpoint of materialistic astronomy it was quite justifiable to add Uranus and Neptune to our system; but they have a different origin and do not belong to the solar system; so that we may speak of Saturn as the outermost Planet of our system. Now let us consider this. If Saturn forms the boundary of the solar system, we may say that in its circuit round the sun, it travels round the outermost boundaries of the solar system. When Saturn travels round this and returns to the point from which he started, he describes the extreme limits of the solar system. When he has traveled round the Sun and returned to his starting point, he then occupies the same relation to the sun as he did at first. Now Saturn, (as may be said, according to the Copernican Cosmic System) takes from twenty-nine to thirty years to complete his course, which is thus of about that duration. Here then, in the circuit of Saturn round the sun, which is not yet understood today—(the facts are really quite different, but the Copernican Cosmic System has not yet gone far enough to understand these) in this course of Saturn we have a connection, extending to the furthest limits of the solar system, with the course of a human life, which is thus an image of the Saturnian circuit in so far as the life-course of man leads to the meeting with the Father. That also leads us out into the Macrocosm. In this way, my dear friends, I think I have shown you that the innermost being of man can only be understood when considered in its connection to the supra-earthly. The supra-earthly, being Spiritual, is organised into that which in a sense it turns towards us visibly. But that which it manifests visibly is also merely an expression of the Spiritual. The raising of man above materialism will only take place when knowledge has progressed far enough to raise itself above the mere comprehension of earthly connections, and ascends once more to the grasp of the world of the stars and the sun.

I have already pointed out on a former occasion, that many things of which the present scholastic wisdom does not allow itself to dream, are connected with these things. Today men believe they will some day be able to generate living beings in their laboratories from inorganic matter. Materialism makes the most of this today. But it is not necessary to be a materialist to believe that a living being can be created out of inorganic matter, in the laboratory; for the alchemists, who certainly were not materialists, testified that they could make Homunculi; but today this is taken in a materialistic sense. The time will come, however, when it will be realised and inwardly felt, on approaching a man at work in his laboratory—(for living beings will indeed be produced in the laboratory from that which has no life)—on approaching such a man we shall feel ourselves compelled to say: ‘Welcome to the star of the hour!’ For this cannot be brought about at any hour; it will depend on the constellations. Whether life arises from the lifeless, will depend on the forces that do not belong to the earth, but come from the universe. Much is connected with these secrets. We shall speak of these things again in the near future, for it is now possible to say somewhat on these subjects, concerning which de Saint-Martin, who was called ‘The unknown philosopher’ says in many passages of his book on Truth and Error, that he thanks God that they are shrouded in secrecy. They cannot remain shrouded in secrecy however, for man will need them for his further development; but one thing is necessary, my dear friends, it is necessary that men should once more acquire that earnestness and feeling for the holiness of all these things, without which the world will not make the right use of such knowledge.

We will speak of these things again in the next lecture.

I should like today to introduce a sort of historical survey into this series of lectures, not so much for the purpose of making this an historical lecture, as of drawing attention to various matters concerning the Spiritual attitude of the present day, by which we are immediately surrounded.

In 1775 a very remarkable book appeared in Lyons, which even as early as the year 1782, found its way into certain circles of German Spiritual life, and the effects of which were much greater than is generally supposed. Above all, the result was such that it had to be more or less suppressed by that which was the principal impulse of the nineteenth century. This book is of the very greatest interest, more especially to those who in the interests of Spiritual Science wish to inform themselves as to what happened from the earliest times down to our own—I allude to Concerning Error and Truth, by Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (b. 18th January, 1743; d. 23rd October, 1803.). Anyone taking up this book today, whether in its own original language or in the careful German edition by Matthias Claudius, with its beautiful preface,—will find it extremely difficult to understand. Matthias Claudius himself admits this, even at the end of the eighteenth century. In his fine preface, he says: ‘Most people will not understand this book; I do not understand it myself. But what it contains has sunk so deeply into my heart, that I think it must be admitted into the widest circles.’ Least of all will those be able to make anything of this book whose knowledge is based upon those physical, chemical, and similar conceptions of the world taught today in the schools or acquired as ordinary education, and who have not even a smattering of real knowledge of these things. Neither will those understand this book, who base their present views of the times—we will not use the word ‘Politics’—on what they glean from the ordinary newspaper, or from what is reflected from those newspapers into the magazines of the day. There are several reasons why I should refer to this book today, after the two public lectures I gave last week. In these I spoke of ‘The nature and the principles of man,’ and ‘The connection between the human soul and the human body,’ and referred to the way in which we shall some day speak of those connections, when the knowledge which can now be gained by Natural Science but cannot be utilised, is viewed in the right way. One who has a thorough knowledge of Spiritual Science cannot but be convinced that when the knowledge of Natural Science is rightly appreciated, it will no longer be possible to speak today, of the relation of the life of imagination, of feeling and of will to the human organism. It may be that in these two lectures a beginning has been made of what must come, though it may perhaps be postponed for a long time by the great resistance made in the external world, not by science but by the scientists themselves. However long a time it may take, it must eventually come about that people win consider the relation between man's soul and body in the manner outlined in those two lectures.

In those two lectures I spoke of these things as it is necessary to speak of them in the year 1917; I mean, taking all the investigations of Natural Science and other experiences of man into consideration. One could not have spoken in that way in the eighteenth century, for example. Such things would have been spoken of in a very different way at that time. The enormous significance of the fact which I have repeatedly alluded to is not sufficiently realised—that somewhere about the end of the first third of the nineteenth century, in the thirties or forties, a crisis of exceptional magnitude occurred in the development of European humanity, from the Spiritual aspect. I have often mentioned this, saying that the tide of materialism then reached its height. I have also frequently drawn attention to the frivolous way in which our own time is often called ‘period of transition.’ Of course, every time is a period of transition, and it is absolutely correct to say so of our own. The point, however, is not so much to declare that any particular time is a period of transition as to establish in what this transition consists. One will then certainly come upon certain turning-points which represent deep incisive moments of transition in the development of man; and one such, although it passes unnoticed today, occurred at the time mentioned. Hence it is easy to understand that we must speak in quite a different way about the riddles with which man is confronted now; we must use quite different expressions and study the subject from quite a different aspect than would have been the case in the eighteenth century. Perhaps no man in the eighteenth century spoke with such intensity as de Saint-Martin, calling the attention of the Natural Science of that day to problems similar to those we discuss here. In all that he said, de Saint-Martin stood in the fading light of the old age, and not as we do, in the glimmering light of a new age. Unless we consider the point of view of which I am about to speak, it might seem a matter of indifference whether one studied de Saint-Martin at all, whether one absorbed or did not absorb the peculiar form of ideas aroused in him by Jacob Böhme. Unless a very different, much more significant standpoint were in question, to which I am about to allude today, this might indeed be a matter of indifference.

Let us quote a concrete case. In endeavouring to point out the errors into which man may fall in his philosophy of life as well as to point out the road to truth, de Saint-Martin, in his book: Des erreurs et de la virite—uses in the most practical and objective way the ideas and conceptions current in certain circles up to and into the eighteenth century. By the way he writes it can be seen that he is thoroughly accustomed to make use of them. We find, for instance, that in trying to explain the relation of man to the whole cosmos and to ethical life, de Saint-Martin employs the three principal ideas which play so great a part with Jacob Böhme and Paracelsus: Mercury, Sulphur and Salt, the three chief conceptions by which people tried at that time to grasp the sense world and also man. In these three elements it was sought to find the key to the understanding of external nature and of man. Modern man, speaking in the sense of the Natural Science of today, (as one must and should speak) can no longer use these expressions in the same way; for it is now quite impossible to think in the same way of Mercury, Sulphur and Salt, as did a man in the eighteenth century. In speaking of these, a three-fold nature was in view, which a man of the present day, could only represent according to Natural Science by dividing man as I have done, into the metabolic man, the rhythmic man, and the nerve-man, of which three the whole man is composed; for every part of him belongs to these three. If one supposes that any one part does not belong to these three, as one might of the bones, the discrepancy would only be apparent, not real. A man of the eighteenth century knew that the whole complexity of a human being could be understood if one acquired a comprehensive grasp of Mercury, Sulphur and Salt. Now of course, when the ordinary man speaks of salt today, he refers to the white substance he has on his dinner table, or if he be a chemist, to the salts with which he works in his laboratory. In speaking of sulphur the ordinary man thinks of matches and the chemist thinks of all the many experiments he has tried in his retort for the transmutation of sulphur. As to mercury, one at once thinks of quicksilver and so on.

The men of the eighteenth century did not think in this way. Indeed it is today very difficult to imagine what lived in the souls of that time when they spoke of ‘Mercury, Sulphur and Salt.’ De Saint-Martin put the question to himself in his own way; Into what parts must I divide man, if I take his body as image of his soul? And he replied: First I must consider in man the instruments or organs of his thought. (De Saint-Martin puts this rather differently but we must translate a little, for the exposition would otherwise be too lengthy). I must first study man with respect to the organ of his head; what is the principal thing therein? What comes into consideration there? What is the really active agent in the head? (or as we today should say: in the nervous system? ) He replies: Salt. And by this he does not understand the white table salt, nor what the chemist understands by salt, but the totality of forces at work in the human head, when a man forms ideas. Everything in the nature of the external working of salt, he only regards as manifestation, as an external manifestation of the same forces as work in the human head. He then asks: What is the element that chiefly works in the human breast? According to the division of man I gave in the lecture last Thursday we should put the question thus: What works in the Breathing-Man? De Saint-Martin replies, Sulphur. So that according to him, everything connected with the functions of the chest is governed by those actions which have their origin in Sulphur, or that which is of the nature of Sulphur. He then goes on to ask: What is at work in the rest of man? (We today should say: in the metabolic man.) He replies: There Mercury works. Thus, in his own way, does de Saint-Martin compose the whole human being. By the way he throws things together, from time to time, disjointedly, we can see that he stands in the fading evening twilight of that whole system of thought. On the other hand we see that standing thus in the twilight, he was still able to grasp an enormous number of gigantic truths which could still be understood then, but are now lost. These he expressed by making use of the three conceptions of Mercury, Sulphur and Salt. Thus, in the book Des erreurs et de la verite there is a very fine treatise (which to the modern physicist is of course utter nonsense) on thunder-storms, on thunder and lightning; in which he shows how on the one hand one may use Mercury, Sulphur and Salt to explain the bodily nature of man, and on the other to explain atmospherical disturbances; at one time they are working together within man, at another time in the world outside. In man they engender what may perhaps spring up as a thought or an impulse of will, while outside in the world the same elements engender, for instance, lightning and thunder. As we have said, what is thus expounded by de Saint-Martin could well be understood in the eighteenth century; it belonged to the mode of thought of that time. To the present-day physicist it would be utter nonsense. But precisely as to thunder and lightning, there is a flaw in modern physics, which is obliged to be rather easy-going with respect to these. It teaches that when the clouds in close vicinity—the one charged with positive, and the other with negative electricity—discharge their electricity, a thunderstorm is the result. Any school boy a little brighter than his fellows would notice that before the teacher starts making electrical experiments, he carefully wipes any traces of damp from the instruments, for nothing can be done with electricity where damp is present. He may ask the teacher: ‘Are not clouds damp? How then can electricity be at work in these, as you say?’ The teacher probably replies; ‘You are a silly boy, you don't understand!’ He would hardly be able to give any other answer today. De Saint-Martin tried to explain how through the Salt in the air, Mercury and Sulphur may be connected in a special way, in a similar way to that in which saltpetre and sulphur are united in gunpowder through charcoal; so through a particular transmutation of the elements of Mercury and Sulphur by means of Salt, explosions can occur. This exposition, considering the laws of that time, is extraordinarily clever. I cannot now go into it more deeply; let us rather consider the question more historically. De Saint-Martin particularly proves in a very fine way that in certain properties of the clouds which lead to thunderstorms, one can verify the relation of lightning to salt, or what he called salt. In short, he fights in his own way the materialism which was then beginning to dawn, for he had behind him the basis of a traditional wisdom, which found in him an industrious worker. In so doing he strove to find an explanation of the world in general, and after having made the above-mentioned explanations in which he makes use of the elements, he passes on to an explanation of the origin of the earth. In this he is not so foolish as those born after him, who believe in a mist or nebula as the origin of all things and who think they can find the beginning of the world by means of physical conceptions. He starts straight away by using his imagination, whereby to explain the origin of the world. In the afore-mentioned book when he speaks on this subject we find a wonderful wealth of imaginative ideas, of true imaginations, which, like his physical ideas, can only be understood in connection with the age in which he lived. We could not make use of them today, but they show that beyond a given point he tried to grasp things by means of imaginative cognition. Then, having tried this, he passes on to the comprehension of the historical life of man. Here, he tries to establish how that can only be understood by allowing for the real Spiritual impulses from the Spiritual world which from time to time found their way into the physical plane. He then tries to apply all this to the deeper nature of man, by showing how what the Bible story relates of the Fall in Paradise, rests, according to his imaginative cognition, on definite facts, how man passed over from an original condition into his existing one. He then tries to understand the historical phenomena of his own time and of all the time embraced by history, in the light of the fall from Spiritual life into matter. I am not upholding this, but it must be mentioned; naturally I do not wish to put the doctrine of de Saint-Martin in the place of Spiritual Science, or our Anthroposophy: I am only relating history, to show how far he was in advance of his times. As one reads the book Des erreurs et de la virite, chapter after chapter, we come upon one notable remark. One sees that he speaks from a rich fullness of knowledge, and that what he gives out is but the outer rind of the knowledge that lives in his soul. This is indicated in various passages in which he says somewhat as follows: ‘If I were to go deeper into this, I should be giving out truths that I may not express.’ In one place he even goes so far as to say: ‘If I were to say all that could be said on this subject, I should have to give out certain truths which, as far as most people are concerned, are better left veiled in the profoundest darkness of night.’ A true Spiritual Scientist can read a great deal between the lines in these passages; he knows why these remarks appear at certain parts of certain chapters. There are certain things which cannot be spoken of by means of assumption. It will only be possible to speak of such things when the impulses given by Spiritual Science have grown into moral, ethical impulses,—when men have acquired a certain lofty-mindedness through Spiritual Science, which will enable them to speak in a different way about certain questions than can be done in an age in which such remarkable scientific figures as those of Freud and Konsirt live and move. But the day will come when it will be possible.

In the last third of his book de Saint-Martin passes on to certain political subjects. It is hardly possible at the present day to do more than indicate how the mode of thought here employed by him can be brought into relation with the way men ‘think’ as they call it, today; that is a forbidden subject. I can only say that his whole attitude throughout the last third of his book is very remarkable. If we read this chapter today—we must do so while bearing clearly in mind that the book was published in 1775, and that the French Revolution took place subsequently. This chapter must be thought of in connection with the French Revolution, one must read a great deal between the lines in this particular chapter. De Saint-Martin proceeds as an occultist, I might say. Anyone lacking the organ of perception for the profound impulses to be found in this chapter, would probably be quite satisfied with its introduction. For here de Saint-Martin says: ‘Let no one connected with the ruling powers of the earth, or connected in any way with the government, believe that I am trying to stand well with him. I am the friend of all and everyone.’ After having thus excused himself, he goes on to say things, compared with which Rousseau's remarks are mere child's play. But I cannot say any more about this.

In short, we must realise the deep incisive significance of this man, who had a school behind him, and without whom Herder, Goethe, Schiller and the German Romanticists cannot be imagined, as he himself cannot be thought of without Jacob Böhme. And yet, when one reads de Saint-Martin to day, allowing oneself to be influenced by what he says, one feels, as I have just said: that there would not be the smallest use in putting what one has to say to the public in the form in which de Saint-Martin put it. That would be no use now, when I try to give a picture of the world, as I did in the last two public lectures and shall again in the next, which must on the one side be correct on the basis of Spiritual Science, and on the other fully justified according to the most minute discoveries of Natural Science today. The mode of forming ideas which de Saint-Martin employed is no longer suited to the way in which men must think today, nor to the way in which they must, and rightly so, formulate their thoughts. Just as in travelling, when we pass from the domain of one language into that of another, in that moment we can no longer speak the language of the first, so would it be foolish today to use the form of thought of de Saint-Martin; more especially would it be foolish, because that mighty dividing line in Spiritual evolution which falls in the year 1842 (in the first third of the nineteenth century) lies between us.

By this you see, my dear friends, that it is possible in the Spiritual development of man, for a certain mode of thought to pass into the twilight. But in studying de Saint-Martin, one does not feel that what he says has an been exhausted. On the contrary one feels that there is in his works an enormous amount of still undiscovered wisdom, and that much might still be brought out of it. Yet on the other hand it was necessary in the Spiritual development of mankind that that way of thinking should cease, and another way of thinking should begin. This had to be. In the former the external world was only just beginning, it had only then reached its most external phases of materialism, Therefore we can only rightly understand what really happened, by surveying longer periods of time and applying to greater epochs what Spiritual Science wishes to stimulate in us; for of course what de Saint-Martin gave out at the end of the eighteenth century, being then but in its dawn, subsequently took a different form.

At that time something came to an end on the earth. Not only in a comparatively short time did the ideas ruling Jacob Böhme, Paracelsus, de Saint-Martin and others descend into the twilight, it being impossible to carry them on further; but a very curious change also took place in the manner of feeling. While in de Saint-Martin we see this phenomenon of the twilight of the human mind as regards the study of nature, the same phenomenon can also be traced in another way if we direct our attention to the almost parallel decline of theosophy, to the dimming and damping down of the theosophical philosophy of life.

True, de Saint-Martin is generally called a theosophist; but in speaking of him and describing him, I am thinking rather of a theosophy directed to Natural Science, a more religious form of theosophy then prevalent which was called by that name. Theosophy in the particular form in which it then reached a climax, ruled, I was going to say, in South Germany, though perhaps it would be more accurate to say in Schwabia. There, although it was then already on the decline, it had reached a certain maturity; and among its most prominent followers stand out the figures of Bengel and Ötinger, who were surrounded by many others. I will simply name those whom I know best: Friederick Daniel Schubart; Hahn, the mathematician; Steinhofer; the schoolmaster Hartmann, who had a great influence on Jung Stilling and even a certain influence on Goethe and knew him personally; and Johann Jacob Moser. A goodly number of remarkable minds in comparatively humble circumstances, who did not even form a connected circle, but who all lived at the time when Ötinger's star shone in the firmament. Ötinger lived almost through the whole of the eighteenth century; he was born in l702, and died in l782, as Prelate in Murrhard. A very remarkable personality, in whom was concentrated in a sense, all that the whole circle contained. It was an echo of this Theosophy of the eighteenth century which influenced Richard Rothe, Professor at the University of Heidelberg and other Universities. He wrote a fine preface to a book edited by Carl August Auberlen on the Theosophy of Frederick Christopher Ötinger. In this preface Richard Rothe, who represents a traditional echo of that circle, reminds us in his convinced acceptance of Theosophy, of those great Theosophists just mentioned; while on the other hand we can clearly see in the way he speaks of Ötinger in this preface, that he feels himself standing behind a period of twilight, even as regards those secrets of life with which he as theologist was concerned. The preface was written in 1847. I should like to quote some of it here, that you may see how in Richard Rothe (who was then in Heidelberg) lived one who looked back in thought to Ötinger, and saw in him a man who above all, in his own fashion, strove to decipher the Old and the New Testament; who tried to read them with theosophical understanding of the world. Richard Rothe looked back at that method of reading the Scriptures and compared it with the way he had been taught to read them, and which was then customary. (He only died in the sixties and was himself but an echo).

He compared the then manner of reading the Scriptures with the methods of Bengel, Ötinger, Steinhofer and the mathematician Hahn.

With respect to this Richard Rothe says something very remarkable: ‘Among the men of this school, to which Bengel with his Apokalyptica belongs, Ötinger occupies a foremost place. Not satisfied with the theology of the schools of his day, he thirsted after a richer and fuller and at the same time a purer understanding of Christian truth, The orthodox theology did not suffice him, it seemed to him but shallow; he wanted more than that; not that it asked too much of his faith, but that the deeper spirit within him wanted more than that. He did not object to the super-naturalism of the orthodox theology of his time, but considered rather that the latter did not take the supernatural seriously enough. His innermost soul rebelled against the spiritualism which reduced the realities of the world of Christian faith to mere abstractions, to mere thought-pictures. Hence his fiery zeal against all forms of idealism.’ ... Such a saying might appear strange, but it has to be understood. By idealism the German understands a system which only lives in ideas, whereas Ötinger as well as Rothe, strove for true Spiritual life. True Spirits were they, who pushed history forward, not like what Ranke and others with their pallid notions, have described as the so-called ideas of history. As though it were possible for mere ideas—one really does not know what word to use in speaking reality—possible for mere ideas to wander through history and carry the whole thing on further. The followers of Ötinger wished to put the living in the place of the abstract and dead. Hence Ötinger's fiery zeal against any idealism; hence too his realism, which, although that was not his intention, did actually, in his energetic search for ‘massive’ conceptions, tend towards materialism.

The conceptions he was trying to find were such as really grasped the Spiritual, not merely talking of an ideal archetype at the back of things, but real, solid (massive) thoughts and ideas, such as look for the Spirits behind created things.

Rothe continues: ‘His leaning to nature and Natural Science is intimately connected with this fundamental scientific tendency. The lack of appreciation, the tendency of the idealist to despise the world of Nature, were foreign to him; he felt that behind rude matter there was a very real existence; he was profoundly permeated by the conviction that without the world of sense there could be no real true existence, either divine or creative. This is a startling and new legitimisation of the authority of history, and we see not only in Ötinger but in the earlier contemporaneous Theosophists and especially in the philosophical writings of Jacob Böhme, the original scientific tendency of the time of the Reformation breaking through again, as shown in this thirst after a true understanding of the world of Nature.’ The kind of realism for which Ötinger longed, comes to ‘life in its innermost being in Christianity,’ (so says Richard Rothe)—‘if transplanted into any other Spiritual movement it must become weaker, more especially as regards its own peculiar doctrine. It is capable of bearing a completely different, richer, Christian world of wonder than that of this idealism to which we have all been accustomed from childhood, which is governed by a fear of believing too strongly in the actuality of Divine things and of taking the word of God too literally. Indeed, this Christian realism demands just such a wonder-world as is unfolded in the doctrine of the Last Things. It cannot therefore, be led astray in its eschatological hopes by the compassionate shaking of the head of those who believe themselves alone to be in the right. For to Christian realism it does not seem possible to arrive at a thoughtful understanding of created things and their history, without clear and definite thinking as to the final result of the development of the world, which is the object and aim of Creation, for only thus can light and meaning come into men's conceptions. This Christian realism does not shrink from the thought of a real, bodily and, therefore, truly living spirit-world, and a real contact of that world with man, even in his present state. The reader admits how true this all seems in the pages of Ötinger.

This refers to a time in which men did not seek for the ideas of the world of nature, but for a living world of Spirit, and indeed Ötinger tried to bring all the treasures of knowledge then accessible to man to his assistance, for the purpose of establishing a living contact with the Spiritual world. What stood behind such a man as this? He was not like a man of the present day, who has above all the task of showing that modern Natural Science must allow itself to be corrected by Spiritual Science, for true knowledge to be attained. Ötinger strove for something different. He strove to prove that the Spiritual world must be contacted in order to attain an understanding of the Bible, of the Scriptures, and especially of the New Testament. Richard Rothe puts it beautifully:

‘In order to understand this, a man must assume that frame of mind (which was that of Ötinger) which admits in its whole consciousness, that, as regards the Holy Scriptures a full, complete and, therefore, real understanding of them is still lacking, that the explanations given by the Churches do not contain it.’ Rothe goes on to say: ‘Perhaps I can best make this clear by relating what has been my own experience for more than thirty years of the Bible and more particularly of the New Testament—and of the words of the Saviour and the Epistles of Paul. The more I study the Scriptures, with the help of the Commentaries, the more I am impressed with a lively sense of their exuberant fulness, not only because of the inexhaustible ocean of feeling which surges through them, but no less by the thoughts contained in the words that I encounter. I stand before them with a key put in my hand by the Church, which has tested it for many a century. I cannot exactly say that it does not fit, still less can I say that it is the right one. It has effected an opening, but only with the help of the power I use in the unlocking. Our traditional exegesis—I do not refer to the neological one—gives me some understanding of the Scriptures, but does not suffice for a full and complete understanding. It is certainly able to draw forth the general content of the thoughts, but cannot give any reason for the peculiar form in which the thoughts appear. It seems to me that there is a blossom flowering above and beyond the exposition given. This remains as an unexplained residue left behind the written word, and this puts the Bible Commentators and those to whom they refer in a very awkward position, however well they may have accomplished their task in other respects. As a matter of fact they have only allowed the Lord and His Apostles to say precisely what the Commentators wish them to say, and this they have done in so clumsy, or perhaps we should say in so wonderful a way that for those who read them, things are made unnecessarily difficult to understand. The very large number of books comprising our exegetic literature deserve a serious reproach, in that they speak with so little clarity and polish concerning such incomparably important things, and such an incomparably important object. Who does not feel that this blame is deserved? The true Bible-reader receives an unequivocal impression that the words are right, just as they are,—that this is no meaningless scroll, from which our commentators must first cut away the wild branches before being able to penetrate the power of the thoughts contained therein. He feels that the accustomed methods of these gentlemen, of sweeping away the dust from these documents on account of their great age before they interpret them, only tends to brush away the imperishable spring-like brilliance which has shone in eternal youth for thousands of years. Let the masters of the Bible commentaries laugh as much as they will, it still remains a fact that there is something written between the lines of the Bible text which, with all their art, they are not able to decipher; yet that is above all what we ought to be able to read, if we wish to understand the altogether peculiar setting in which, in the Holy Scriptures alone, the now familiar thoughts of Divine manifested truth are to be found, in characteristic contra distinction to anything else of the kind. Our interpreters merely point out the figures standing in the foreground of the Scripture pictures; they completely leave out of account the background, with its wonderfully formed mountains in the far distance, and its brilliant dark-blue sky flecked with clouds. Yet from this falls on each one of us that quite unique and magic light which gives illumination, when we have understood what to us is truly an enigma. The peculiar basic thoughts and conceptions which, in the Scriptures, underlie the unexpressed assumptions, are lacking; and at the time there is a lack of soul, of the inner connection of the separate element of the Bible thoughts, which should organically bind them together. No wonder then that there are hundreds of passages in our Bible which thus remain un-interpreted and which are never properly understood, not understood completely in all the minute details of their features. No wonder there are so many passages of which a host of different interpretations have been given, and which have been ceaselessly in dispute for countless ages. No wonder at all; for they are certainly all wrong, because they are all inexact, only approximate, only giving the meaning as a whole, not in detail. We approach the Bible text with the alphabet of our own conceptions of God and the world, in all good faith, as though it was so obvious that it could not be otherwise: we take it, for granted that the Bible Commentator, who, as a silent observer is at the back of all he thinks and writes and illuminates, is of the same opinion. That is, however, an unfortunate illusion, of which we ought to have been cured by experiences long ago. Our key does not unlock, the right key had been lost, and until we find it again our investigations will find no green branch. We lack a fundamental conception of the Bible not expressly given in the text itself, but as long as we make researches without the system which can be found therein and which is not in our schools, the Bible must remain a half-closed book. We should study it with different fundamental conceptions from those we now cultivate as the only ones possible. No matter what these are, or where they are discovered, one thing is very certain from the whole concord of the melody of the Bible in its natural fulness, these conceptions must be more realistic and more “massive.” This is my own individual opinion, and while far from wishing to force it on those to whom it is foreign, I cannot but believe that Ötinger would understand me and assure me it was the same with him. Among all the many protestations that will be raised against me, I can still reckon one, if not many of my contemporaries, who will stand by me in this; I refer to the celebrated Dr. Beek of Tübingen.’

Ötinger hoped to be able to reach an understanding of the Bible on trying to arouse conceptions of a still living nature in the twilight days in which he and de Saint-Martin also lived: he hoped to make these living to himself, that he might enter into a living connection with the Spiritual World, and would then be able to understand the true language of the Bible. His assumption was practically this—that with mere abstract intellectual ideas it was impossible to understand the most important things in the Bible and especially in the New Testament. He believed that one can only hope to understand the Now Testament if one realises that it has proceeded from a direct vision of the Spiritual world itself, that no commentaries or exegesis are necessary; but that above all one ought to learn to read the New Testament. With this object he sought for a Philosophia Sacra. He did not mean this philosophy to be of the pattern of those that came after, but one in which was inscribed what a man may really experience, if he lives in contact with the Spiritual world.

Just as today, we who wish to throw the light of Natural Science on the researches of Spiritual Science, can no longer speak like de Saint-Martin; neither can we speak of the Gospels as did Ötinger or still less like Bengel. The edition of the New Testament brought out by Bengel will still be of use; but for the Apocalyptics of which he thought so much, a man of our day has no use at all. In this, Bengel laid great stress on calculation; he reckoned out the periods of history by this means. One number he held of special importance. This alone of course is sufficient to make the man of modern ideas look upon Bengel as a lunatic, a fantastic or a fool; for according to his reckoning, the year 1836 was to be of special importance in the development of humanity! He made profound calculations! He lived in the first half of the eighteenth century, so that he was a century removed from 1836. He reckoned this out in his own way by considering things historically. But if one goes more deeply, into things and is not so ‘clever’ as the modern mind, one knows that our good Bengel was only six years out in his reckoning. His error was caused by a false rendering of the year of the founding of Rome, and this can easily be proved. What he had meant to arrive at with his calculation was the year 1842, the year we have given for the materialistic crisis. Bengel, the teacher of Ötinger, referred to that profound incision in time; but, because in his search for massive conceptions he went too far and thought too massively, he reckoned that in the course of external history -something very special would take place, something like a last day. It was only the last day of the ancient wisdom

Thus, my dear friends, we see at no very distant date from our own times, the decline of a theosophical age; yet today, if an historian or philosopher writes about these persons at all, he devotes at most a couple of lines to them, and these as a rule tell one very little. None the less these persons had in their day a very far reaching, profound influence. If today anyone tries to disclose the meaning of the second part of Faust and finds it as given in the many commentaries, we cannot be surprised that:

‘He who clings to shallow things alone
Must find his hopes all disappear,
He digs with eager hands for treasure
But only finds the poor earth-worms.’

In this second part of Faust there is an enormous amount of occult wisdom and rendering of occult facts, though expressed in truly German poetic form. All this would be inconceivable if it had not been preceded by that world of which I have given you only the two principal examples. The man of today has no idea of how much was still known of the Spiritual world but a short while ago, comparatively speaking, and of how much of this belief has been shed only in the last few decades. It is certainly extremely important once in a way to fix our attention on these facts, because we, who learn to read the gospels now with the help of what Spiritual Science can give us, are only just beginning to learn over again to read the Scriptures. There is a very remarkable sentence in Ötinger. In his writings we find it quoted over and over again, though never understood. This sentence alone should suffice to make a man who has insight say: Ötinger is one of the greatest spirits of mankind. That sentence is: ‘Die Materie ist das Ende der Wege Gottes.’ (Matter is the end of Gods path). It was only possible for a very highly-developed soul to have given such a definition of matter, corresponding so clearly to what the Spiritual Scientist also knows; such a definition was only possible from one who was in a position to understand how the Divine Spiritual creative-forces work and concentrate to bring about a material structure such as man, who in his form is the expression of an enormous concentration of forces. If you read what takes place at the beginning of the conversation between Capesius and Benedictus in the second Mystery Play, and how the relation of the Macrocosm to man is there developed, which causes Capesius to fall ill, you will be able to form an idea of how these things can be expressed according to our present Spiritual Science, translated into our words. This is the same as Ötinger expressed in his significant saying, which can only be understood when we rediscover it: ‘Matter is the end of God's path.’ Even here it is the case, as in the words of de Saint-Martin, that we can no longer speak in such words today. Anyone using them must be fond of preserving that which today can no longer be understood.

Not only have our conceptions undergone a great transformation, but our feelings too have very greatly changed. Just think of a typical man of modern times, one who is really a practical example of his age, and imagine what his impressions would be were he to take up de Saint-Martin's: Des erreurs et de la liberte and come upon the following sentence. ‘Man is preserved from knowing the principle of his external corporeality; for if he were to become acquainted with it, he could never for very shame look at an uncovered human being.’ In an age in which the culture of the nude is even encouraged on the stage, as is done by the most modern people, one could, of course, make nothing of such a sentence. Yet just think: a great philosopher, de Saint-Martin, understanding the world, tells us that a higher feeling of shame would make one blush to gaze upon a human form—to de Saint-Martin this seemed absolutely comprehensible. You will have observed that I wanted first of all to call your attention today to something extremely significant, which has now disappeared. Besides that, I wanted to call to your notice the fact that at that time a different language was spoken from the one we now speak. We are obliged to speak differently. The possibility of thinking in the way corresponding to that language has vanished. Both in Ötinger and de Saint-Martin we find that things were not thought out to their end; but they could be thought out further. They can be further discussed; though not with a modern thinker. I might go even farther, and say: We need not go into these things today when studying the Riddles of the world, for we must understand ourselves through the conceptions of our own day, not through former ones. For that reason I always lay so much stress on the necessity of connecting all our Spiritual scientific work with modern ideas. It is a remarkable phenomenon, that no matter how much we now try to fall back into those former ideas, yet they are not played out; they show in themselves that a vast deal more could be arrived at by thinking further along those lines. Because we today hold the curious belief that people have always thought just as we do today, we have no conception how closely those conceptions were connected with universal consciousness. The typical man, to whom I have already referred, thinks as follows: ‘I call the white powdered particles in the salt-cellar, salt.’ Now this man is wen aware that salt is called by a different name in different languages, but he assumes that it has always represented what we see it to be today. That, however, is not the case, even the most uneducated peasant in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and much later still, had a much more comprehensive conception of ‘Salt;’ he had a conception of which de Saint-Martin's was but a more concentrated form; he had not the present materialistic idea, and when he spoke of Salt he meant something connected with the Spiritual life. Words were even then not so material as they are today, they did not refer to a direct, separate substance.

Now, read in the Gospels how Christ says to His Disciples: ‘Ye are the salt of the Earth.’ Well now, if these words are read with the present meaning, we do not get the words spoken by Christ, for the word ‘Salt’ was then quite naturally understood as referring to the whole configuration of the soul A man may have a very broad mind on the subject, but that is not enough. To call forth in a man of today a like feeling, ‘Salt’ must be differently translated, This applies to many of the old records, but above all to the Scriptures. Many mistakes have been made in this very respect. So it is not difficult to understand why Ötinger made many historical studies, trying to get at what was concealed behind the value of words, and to get at the right feeling for them. Of course, at the present day a mind like his would be considered mad! He shut himself up in his laboratory, not merely for weeks but for whole months, making alchemical experiments and studying Cabalistic books, simply to find out how the words in a given sentence were to be understood; for all his strivings were directed to the meaning of the words of holy writ.

I have spoken of these things today to show that we must now speak in a different way, for we are standing at the dawn, as they then stood in the evening twilight; and I also want to approach them now from yet another standpoint. I should like to go back to the strange fact that according to the modern view of things, from which Spiritual Science as it develops must set itself free, it would appear useless to enter deeply into the nature of the ideas of the time of Bengel, Ötinger, de Saint-Martin, and others. For when we speak to educated people today we must speak of the metabolic body, of the rhythmic body, of the nervous system; we can no longer speak of the mercurial-body, of the sulphur-body and of the salt-body. For these conceptions, comprehensible to the age of Paracelsus, of Jacob Böhme, de Saint-Martin and Ötinger, would no longer be understood today. And yet it is not without value to study these things—and would not be so even if it were quite impossible to speak to the cultured today through these methods. I am willing to admit that it would not be wise to throw the old ideas of Mercury, Sulphur, and Salt into modern thought; it would not be well to do so, nor right. A man who can feel the pulse of his time would not fall into the error of wishing to restore those old conceptions, as is done in certain so-called occult societies which attach great weight to decorating themselves with old vignettes. Yet, none the less, it is of immense significance to re-acquire the language that is no longer spoken now; for de Saint-Martin, Ötinger, and in more ancient times Paracelsus and Jacob Böhme by no means exhausted it.

Why is this? Yes, why? The men of today no longer speak in that way; that language could fall into disuse and at the most one could study the historical phenomenon of how it was possible for an historic period not to live out its full life. How comes it about that there is still something remaining which might be carried further, but which has yet come to a standstill? How does this come about? What is the underlying cause? It might well be that if we could learn all there is to be learnt, even without including these conceptions, nobody would be able to understand us! Here, however, something comes to light which is of enormous significance. The living no longer speak of these conceptions and do not require to use them; but for the dead, for those who have passed through the portals of death, the language of these ideas is of all the more importance. If we have occasion to make ourselves understood by the dead or by certain other Spirits of the Spiritual world, we come to recognise that in a certain respect we need to learn that unexhausted language, which has now died out as regards the earthly physical life of the physical plane, It is just among those who have passed through the portal of death that what lives and stirs in these conceptions will become a living language, the current language for which they are seeking. The more we have tried to realise what was once thought, felt and understood in these conceptions, the better we are able to make ourselves understood to the Spirits who have passed the portals of death. It is then easier to have mutual understanding.

Thus then the peculiar and remarkable secret is disclosed: that a certain form of thought lives on this earth only up to a given point; it does not then develop further on the earth, but attains a further stage of perfection among those who pass into the intermediate life, between death and rebirth. Let no one suppose that all that is necessary is to learn what we can today about the formation of Sulphur, Quicksilver, (mercury is not Quicksilver) and Salt; these conceptions alone would not suffice for coming into relation with the dead through their language. But if we can take in these thoughts as did Paracelsus, Jacob Böhme, and especially the almost super-abundant fruitfulness of de Saint-Martin, Ötinger and Bengel, one perceives that a bridge is established between this world and that other. However much people may laugh at Bengel's calculations, which, of course, are of no tangible value to the external physical life,—to those living between death and rebirth they are of very great significance and meaning. For incisions in time such as that of which Bengel tried to calculate the date, and in which he was only six years out, are in that other world of very profound significance.

You see that the world here on the physical plane and the world of the Spirit are not so connected that one can form a bridge between them by means of abstract formulae; they hang together in a concrete way. That which in a sense, loses its meaning here, rises into the Spiritual world and lives on there together with the dead, while with the living it has to be succeeded by a different phase.