The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The indications given yesterday as to the treatment of manure by the use of cows' horns were intended, of course, only to show a method of improving manure. Manuring as such remains, and we shall speak today of the way in which manure has to be applied by those who have grasped that all that is living must be kept within the realm of life. We saw that the etheric life forces should never be allowed to leave that which is within the region or sphere of growth. That is why we found it to be so important to know that the soil, out of which the plant grows and which surrounds its roots, is itself a kind of continuation of the living plant-like nature of the earth being. Moreover, I pointed out yesterday how we can imagine the transition from the heaped-up mound of earth, inwardly vitalized by the humus in it to the bark which surrounds the tree and encloses it. It is only natural, in modern times, when all understanding has been lost of the great inter-relations in Nature, that insight into the fact that the life which embraces soil and plant alike extends into such secretions of the living realm as appear in the form of manure should also have been lost. An understanding of how the forces of this all—embracing life work on in the manure was also bound to go as time went on. As I said in the discussion yesterday, it is no part of the methods of Spiritual Science to attempt by fanatical agitation and turbulence forcibly to interfere with the achievements in all the different spheres of modern life, rather it gives full recognition to the advances which have been made. And only those things should be opposed, If I may use the word, which rest on completely false assumptions and are the outcome of the modern materialistic conception of the world. These achievements, however, must be completed by the results issuing from a living conception of the world in the varied spheres of life. I shall therefore not deal with the different ways of preparing manure—whether from stable manure, from liquid manure or from compost—as much has already been said in this connection. Besides we shall have the opportunity of dealing with this in this afternoon's discussion. I only wish to assume now that we are right in saying that in the practice of agriculture we are bound to exploit the soil, because in distributing the produce of agriculture far and wide we are actually depriving the earth and even the air of forces. These forces have to be replaced, and that is why the manure must be prepared in such a way as to contain the forces which the impoverished soil needs to become vitalised again. Now it is precisely on this point that a number of errors have arisen through a materialistic conception of the world.

In the first place a careful study is made nowadays of bacteria, of micro-organisms. To these is attributed the power of creating the proper proportions of the different substances in the manure. Great stress is laid upon the activity of the bacteria in the manure. Experiments have been made in inoculating the soil with bacteria. Such experiments are clever, even logical—but as a rule have no lasting influence and are of small use. This is because they are based on assumptions somewhat resembling the following: A large number of flies are found in a room and because of this the room is considered dirty. But the truth is that the flies are there because the room is dirty. Nor will the room ever become any cleaner by our devising methods of increasing the number of flies on the supposition that they will eat the dirt, nor by diminishing their number. Far more will be achieved by a direct attack upon the dirt than by any such speculative methods as these. In the same way, when animal excrements are used as manure, the tiny living beings which appear through the processes at work in the manure substance can only really be regarded as a very valuable symptom of certain conditions which the manure substance is passing through? and therefore not something which it is important to implant or breed: one might just as well do the reverse and suppress them. Our thoughts on these things should weave within the whole living content of the farm and not be limited to an atomistic view of these micro-organisms. Now obviously on6 should not make such a statement unless one can show the ways and means of carrying it out. True, what I have said about the bacteria has been emphasised in various quarters! but it is important not only to be able to make a correct statement, for a negative statement has no value in practice. One must be able to make positive suggestions. If one ha3 no positive suggestions to make it is better to refrain from emphasising the merely negative view, as this only causes annoyance.

A second point is this. Under the influence of the materialistic outlook of modern times, the practice has come into favour of treating manure with all manner of inorganic compounds or elements. Experience has shown, however, that this method produces no lasting results. Nor can it do so, for we must clearly understand that in attempting to improve the manure by adding minerals, we vivify only the watery part of the soil. But to ensure sound growth in a plant, it is not enough to organise and vivify the water for this does not distribute any vitality as it trickles through the soil. The soil must be vitalised directly. This cannot be done with mineral substances, but only with organic substances which have been suitably prepared so as to organise and quicken the solid earth element. This is the contribution of Spiritual Science to agriculture: to provide knowledge of the way to stimulate life in manure, either solid or liquid—indeed anything that can be used in this way—but what we do must remain within the realm of the living. Spiritual Science always seeks to gain an insight into the larger connections of life, and does not pay much regard to the Microscopic view and the conclusions drawn from it, because this view is not of primary importance. The observation of the Macroscopic, of the larger range of Nature's activities—that is the task of Spiritual Science. But we must first know how to penetrate into these activities.

In all agricultural literature, you will find the following statement, based no doubt upon the experiences which have been collected. It is said that nitrogen, phosphoric acid, calcium, potash, chlorine, etc.—even iron, all these are of great value to soil which is to be used for plants; but silicic acid, lead, arsenic, mercury, even soda have only value as so-called stimuli in promoting plant growth. People show by such statements that they are really working in the dark, and it is fortunate that—because of their traditional knowledge—they do not strictly adhere to this “principle” in their treatment of plants. Indeed, it cannot be adhered toj for what is the truth of the matter?

The truth is that Mother Nature will abandon us without mercy, if we do not pay proper regard to potash, limestone or phosphoric acid. We can, however, with comparative impunity disregard her silicic acid, lead, mercury, arsenic, etc. The heavens give us the silicic acid, lead, mercury and arsenic we need; they give them freely whenever the rain falls. In order, however, to have the right amount of phosphoric acid, potash and limestone in the soil, it must be worked upon and manured in the right way. These elements are not supplied freely by the heavens I Thus by continuous use of the soil it becomes impoverished, and therefore needs to be manured. This compensation by way of manure may, and in many cases, does become too weak in time. When this happens, we rob the earth and leave it permanently impoverished. We must see to it that the true Nature-process can take place to the full. What have been called merely “stimuli” are actually the most important factors. All round the earth are the very substances though in highly diluted form which are generally held to be unnecessary, but which the plants require as urgently as they do those which come to them from the earth. Mercury, arsenic and silicic acid are sucked in by the plants from the earth after these substances have been radiated into the earth from the universe. Now we, as human beings, can prevent the soil from thus absorbing from the periphery what the plants need. By continued, unthinking use of manure, we can quite well prevent the earth from seeking, out and absorbing the silicic acid, lead and mercury which come to it in the finest homeopathic doses from the surrounding universe and which are required by the plant. The plant needs the help of these substances in order to build up its carbon structure. To ensure, therefore, that the plant gets all it needs from the surrounding universe, we must work on our manure, not only as I explained yesterday, but with other things as well. It is not enough to add.to the manure substances which we think it requires; we must add living forces. For living forces are far more important to the plant than mere material forces and substances. Be a soil never so rich in this or that substance, we should still not promote plant growth if we did not give the plant by manuring the power to absorb into its body the active forces contained in the soil. Now when it comes to living principles, it is not generally known how very powerfully minute quantities will work. Since Frau Dr. Kolisko's research work on the activity of “smallest entities” so brilliantly established as fact what until then had been more guess-work in homeopathy, we can, I think, regard it as a scientific fact that it is from the small entities (quantities) that the radiating forces necessary for the organic world are released, when these small entitles are used in the appropriate way. And in manuring we shall not find it at all difficult so to use the smallest entitles.

We have seen how we can prepare these “smallest entities” quite readily within cows' horns, and how we are able to add to the forces contained in ordinary manure these other forces which are applied in homeopathic doses. But we must try out all ways of properly vitalizing the manure, so that it retains the right amount of nitrogen and other substances and is thus vivified and enabled to convey the necessary vitality to the soil.

Today I should like to give indications for the addition in small doses of certain preparations to the manure (quite apart from what can be done with the contents of the cows' horn) to vivify it to such an extent as will enable it to carry its own vitality into the soil from which the plants spring,

I shall mention various things, but wish to emphasise that in places where the ingredients are difficult to obtain, substitutes can, if necessary, be found. (There is only one plant for which there is no substitute, because its properties are so unique that they are scarcely to be found in any other species). In the first place, it is necessary to ensure that the basic substances in the organic world—carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur—are combined in the right way with other substances in the organism, especially with potash salts. We must not have regard merely to the quantity of the potash salts which the plant requires (as is well known, it is the potash salts which give the plant organism its scaffolding what it has of solidity and structure) the main thing is that this potash content shall be so worked up [Note: This “working-up” is effected by means of Preparation No. 502.]) that when it comes within the ambit of what takes place between soil and plant, it acts properly within the organic process towards that which constitutes the actual body of the plant, viz. the albuminous substances. To accomplish this, we proceed as follows:—

You take common yarrow (or milfoil) a plant which it is generally quite easy to obtain. In any place where it does not grow, the dried plant can be used. This yarrow is a wonderful work of creation. (The same is true of every plant, but if we compare yarrow with any other flower, we realise how particularly wonderful it is). It contains that substance with which, as I told you, the spirit moistens its fingers when it wishes to send carbon, nitrogen and other substances to their places in the organism where these are needed. Yarrow is like the ideal model which some creator of plants must have had before him when he had the task of bringing sulphur into its true relationship with other vegetable substances. One may say, the spirits of Nature have never brought the distribution of sulphur to such perfection as in yarrow (milfoil). And if we know the effects this plant can produce in the animal or human organism—how with correct biological use, it can set right all troubles which are caused by any weakness in the astral body, then we can further trace its particular nature (Dr. Steiner says “its milfoil-ness”) throughout the whole process of plant growth in Nature. Its effect is extremely salutary when growing wild at the edge of fields planted with cereals, potatoes or any other cultivated plants. Yarrow should never be extirpated. It should, of course, not be allowed to spread so as to become a nuisance—it can never be harmful—but like some human beings whose mere presence is felt to be beneficent, so yarrow growing freely has an extraordinarily beneficial effect on its surroundings.

This is what can be done with milfoil: take the blossoms, the umbrella-like inflorescence, just as you do when the plant is intended for medicinal use. They should be plucked as fresh as possible and allowed to dry for a short time. If you cannot obtain fresh flowers, then take some that have “been dried and sprinkle them with some of the liquor strained off from dried leaves which have been boiled in water. Then take one or two handfuls of the yarrow blossoms well pressed together (mark that we remain always within the region of the living) and place them in a deer's bladder. Tie the bladder up and hang it in a sunny place, leaving it there throughout the summer. When autumn comes, take down the bladder and bury it in the sail but not too deeply, leaving it there throughout the winter. Thus, during a whole year, the yarrow flowers (there is no harm in using flowers in which the fruit has begun to set) in the deer's bladder have been exposed, partly above and partly below the earth's surface, to the right influences. You will find that during the winter, they have assumed a very peculiar consistency and in this condition, they will keep for as long as you like. You can add some of this substance from the deer's bladder to a manure heap as big as a house by a simple distribution (very little work is required) and the radiation works. However much the substance is scattered through the heap the radiation is so powerful (and the materialist who talks about radium will believe in radiation) that it will work on any sort of manure, whether liquid, solid or compost. The substance obtained from the yarrow has such a quickening and refreshing effect upon the manure, that when it is used in the usual way it does much to restore that' of which we have robbed the soil. The manure is again given the possibility of so vivifying the soil that it can once more absorb the other cosmic substances, the silicon, lead, etc., which come to the earth in the finest homeopathic doses. The Members of the Agricultural Circle should test this out by experiment. You will see how well it will succeed.

Now let us put the following question, for we should always act out of insight and not without it. We have learned the virtues of the common yarrow. Its content of sulphur in highly homeopathic distribution, standing in an ideal combination with potash, works so splendidly from the plant alone that it is able to radiate its activities over a large area. Then why is there need for a bladder and that of a deer?

The reason why we use a deer's bladder is found when we gain insight into the whole process which is bound up with it. The deer is an animal which stands in a peculiarly close relation, not so much to the earth as to that which is of a cosmic nature in the periphery of the earth; hence its antlers, whose function I pointed out yesterday. Now the properties of the yarrow are preserved by means of that process which takes place between the kidneys and the bladder, and this applies to both human and animal organisms. This process is itself dependent upon the nature of

the substance of the bladder. In the bladder of the deer, however tenuous its substantiality may be, there are forces which are connected not, as in the case of cattle, with the animal's interior, but with cosmic forces; the deer's bladder is almost a reflected image of the cosmos. And in putting the yarrow into the bladder, we greatly increase its capacity to combine its sulphur with the other substances. In the treatment I have given for yarrow, we have therefore something fundamental for the improvement of manure. Moreover, we have not gone outside the region of the living, and have certainly not entered the realm of inorganic chemistry. That is the important point.

Let us take another example. If we wish to enable the manure to absorb so much life that it can transmit it to the soil on which the plant is to grow, we must also render the manure capable of closely binding together all substances necessary for plant growth: not only potash but also calcium and its compounds. In yarrow potash forces are predominant. If we wish to capture calcium as -well, we require a plant which, though it does not arouse one's enthusiasm to the same extent as yarrow, nevertheless contains sulphur in homeopathic distribution. With this sulphur, it attracts the other substances and blends them into an organic process. I refer to camomile or chamomilla officinalis. It is not enough to say that camomile is distinguished by the amount of potash and calcium it possesses. The yarrow plant develops its sulphur forces especially in the potash-formative process, and for this reason it possesses exactly that amount of sulphur required to “workup” potash. The camomile, however, “works-up” calcium for the purpose of excluding certain tendencies towards fruit formation which are harmful, and in this way, keeps the plant healthy. The camomile plant has some sulphur in it, but in a different proportion, because it is calcium that has to be. worked upon. Now, bearing in mind that Spiritual Science always looks at the large, the macrocosmic cycles of events and not so much at that which is microscopic, let us, follow the process undergone by camomile which has been absorbed by a human or animal organism. For all the processes which the camomile undergoes there, the bladder has hardly any importance, while the substance of the intestinal walls has great importance. If, therefore, we wish to work with camomile as we did with yarrow the beautiful delicate little yellow-heads of blossom must be plucked and treated in the same way as the umbels of the yarrow, but instead of putting them in a bladder, we must put them in the intestines of horned cattle. This is quite an amusing proceeding. Instead of following the customary usage and making ordinary sausages, we have to make sausages filled with camomile prepared in the way indicated (for yarrow). Here again, using only ingredients taken from the realm of the living world, we have something which only needs to be exposed to the right natural influences to become of value. In this case, we have to allow those living forces to work which have the closest possible kinship to the soil. We must therefore place these precious little sausages (for they really are precious) under the ground, not very deeply, in soil which is as rich as possible in humus, and leave them all through the winter. For this purpose, we should select places where the snow will remain lying a fairly long time, and where the sun will shine upon the snow. This will be the best way of attracting the cosmic-astral influences to the place where these precious little sausages lie buried. In Spring, they are dug up and put aside as before. Their contents are added to the manure in exactly the same way as was done with the prepared yarrow. It will be found that manure so treated will have a more stable nitrogen content than other manure, and it will also have the property of so vivifying the soil that this will promote very strongly the growth of plants. Furthermore, the plants will be more healthy, really healthier, than they would otherwise be.

I know well enough that these may appear rather crazy notions, but you must remember that many things which have at first seemed to be crazy have been accepted a few years later. You should have read the Swiss papers and seen the offensive objections raised when the idea of constructing mountain railways was first mooted, yet in a very short time the mountain railways were built and nowadays nobody thinks that the man who planned them was a fool. It is all a question of putting aside prejudice.

As I said before if these two plants are difficult to obtain, others can be used in their stead, though not with such good results. The plants can, of course, be used after they have been dried. There is, however, one plant which it is difficult.to find a substitute for its good influence upon manure. It is one which is not very popular, for if we like a thing we usually want to stroke it: I refer to the stinging nettle. The stinging nettle is really the greatest of benefactors to plant growth and can scarcely be replaced by any other plant. If unobtainable fresh it must be used dried. It is a regular Jack-of-all-trades. It can do extraordinary things. It, too, bears that within it, which introduces the spiritual element everywhere and works with it as I have explained. Again, in addition to the potash and calcium which the nettle bears along in its radiating and streaming currents it also possesses a species of radiating iron forces which as regards the whole course of Nature, are almost as health promoting as are the iron forces in our blood. The stinging nettle does not really deserve to be despised as it so often is. Indeed, it ought to win everyone's heart, be cherished by everyone, for in its wonderful inner workings it plays a similar part in Nature to that played by the heart in the human organism. The stinging nettle is really a great boon. In order, therefore, to draw iron from the soil, it is necessary to plant stinging nettles in it somewhere where they will do no harm. We should do this because these plants like iron, they attract it to themselves and thus free the top layer of soil from it. If we cannot remove the iron as such, we can at least weaken its effects upon plants in this way» (If Count Keyserlingk will excuse my making a personal reference, I would say that the planting of nettles on this estate would be of particular benefit). I wish to point out that the mere presence of nettles has a significance for plant growth in the whole district.

Now if you wish still further to improve your manure, take some stinging nettles, allow them to wither a little, press them together slightly and then place them, not in a bladder nor in intestines, but directly into the soil, surrounded, perhaps, by a thin layer of peat dust, so that they will be separated a little from immediate contact with the soil. Make a note of where they are placed, so that when you afterwards dig them out you do not take merely soil. They must be left there all through one Winter and a Summer, they must lie burled for a whole year, and then their substance will have become enormously powerful. If this is then added to the manure in the manner mentioned before, it will cause it to be inwardly sensitive. The manure will actually become sensitive, as though it really had some nous. It will not allow anything to decay in a wrong way nor give off nitrogen in ä wrong way and so on. By adding this substance to the manure in a sense we really give it nous and enable it to make the soil into which it is mixed intelligent too, so that the soil will behave individually towards the different plant species growing in it. This addition of Urtica dioica has the effect of impregnating the soil with nous.

Modern methods of improving manure, however surprising they may be in their external effects, are, in the last resort, only methods for turning out fine-looking agricultural produce destined merely to fill human stomachs. There will come a time when it will no longer possess any real nutritive value. We must not be deceived by large and blown-out products of the soil. The point is that they should be firm and solid and have real nutritive value.

Now it may be that somewhere on our farm, plant diseases occur. I shall speak of these in a general way. People today are fond of specialisation and speak of this or that disease. This is all right from a theoretical-scientific point of view: one must know how the symptoms of one disease differ from those of another. But just as in the case of a doctor for human beings, it is not so useful to describe an illness as it is to cure it.

It is possible to describe an illness very accurately, to know exactly what is going on in the organism in terms of modern physiology and physiological chemistry, and yet one may be unable to heal it. Healing is not based on the microscopic changes in tissues and cells, but on a knowledge of the larger connections; this must also be our attitude to the plant nature. And since plant nature is in this respect simpler than that of the animal or man, so its healing is a more general process and when sick it can be healed with a kind of “cure-all” remedy. If this were not so, we should often be in a fix with regard to plants, as we are with animals, though not with human beings. For a man can tell us where he feels pain. Animals and plants cannot; and it is fortunate that, here the curative process is almost the same for all plants. A large number of plant diseases (although not all of them) can really be arrested as soon as they are noticed by a rational management of our manuring—namely in the following way:

We must then add calcium to the soil by means of the manure. But it will be of no use if the calcium is not applied in a living condition. If it is to have a healing effect it must remain within the realm of the living. Ordinary lime or the like is of no use here. Now we have a plant which is very rich in calcium—seventy-seven per cent, of its substances is calcium albeit in very fine distribution. This is the oak and more especially its bark. In the bark, we have something which is at an intermediate stage between plant and living earth. You will remember what I said to you about the kinship between bark and live earth. For calcium as required in this connection the calcium structure in the bark of the oak is almost ideal. Calcium in a living state (not dead, though even then it has an effect) has the property which I have already described to you: it restores order where the etheric body is working too strongly so that the astral element is prevented from reaching the organic substances. Calcium, kills (damps down) the forces of the etheric body and so sets free those of the astral body. This is characteristic of all limestone. But if it is necessary for an over-powerful etheric element to be damped down and contracted in a regular way—not suddenly nor jerkily so that shocks are produced—but in a steady and orderly fashion, we should use calcium in the particular form in which it is to be found in the bark of the oak tree.

For this purpose, we collect some oak bark just as it comes to hand« We do not need much« We collect it, chop it up until it has a crumbly consistency and put the crumbs into the hollow part of a skull or cranium of any one of our domestic animals—it is almost immaterial which one we choose. The skull should be closed up again with bony material and put into the ground—not very deeply. Then we cover it with peat moss and direct on to the spot, through a gutter or some such contrivance, a maximum amount of rainwater. Alternatively, one might put some rotting plant substance into a wooden tub into which rainwater could flow and drain off again. This would produce a sort of plant slime and in this the bony receptacle with its content of oak-bark crumbs could be buried. It should be left there through the autumn and the winter, snow water being just as effective as rainwater. Prepared thus, this substance contains something which, when it is added to our manure, endows it with the power—the prophylactic property—of fighting and arresting harmful plant disease.

We have now dealt with four substances to be added to manure. All this involves a certain amount of work. But if you think it over, you will see that it involves less work than the complicated trouble taken in agricultural-chemical laboratories, and which, moreover, has to be paid for. The methods I have outlined to you today are more profitable from the point of view of general economy.

We still need something, however, which will attract silicic acid from the cosmic environment in the right way, for we must have silicic acid in the plant, and in the course of time the soil loses the power to absorb this very substance. The loss is very gradual and therefore passes unnoticed. Those who look only at the microcosmic and do not consider the macrocosmic set little store by this loss in silicic acid, because they think it has no importance for plant growth. It is of the utmost importance, however, although to be aware of this one must know the following. Such knowledge is, however, no longer regarded in learned circles as a sign of mental confusion, as was the case heretofore, for these circles are themselves already speaking of the transmutation of elements. Observation of various chemical elements has in this respect brought the materialistic lion to heel. But there are certain things constantly going on around us of which science knows nothing. If people knew something about them it would be easier for them to accept such things as I have been expounding. I know very well that the hard-boiled modern thinker will exclaim: “But you have told us nothing of how the nitrogen content in the manure is increased.” As a matter of fact, I have spoken of this all the time, in what I said about yarrow, camomile and nettles. For in organic processes there is a secret alchemy. This hidden alchemy will, for example, transform potash into nitrogen provided only that the potash is working in the right way and. will do the same even with lime if the lime is active in the right way.

In the plant, there are the four elements of which I have spoken. Besides sulphur there is also hydrogen. I have told you of the significance of hydrogen. Now there is a mutual relation between lime and hydrogen, just as there is the well-known relation between oxygen and nitrogen in the air, and even according to the purely external standards of analytical chemistry, this ought to betray the fact that there is a kinship between the way in which oxygen and nitrogen are connected in the air and that in which lime and hydrogen are connected in organic processes. Under the influence of hydrogen, lime and potash are constantly being changed into nitrogenous matter, and finally into actual nitrogen. And the nitrogen which has come into being in this way has a tremendous value for plant growth? but it must be such as has been produced in the way I have described.

Silicic acid, as we know, contains silicon and this in its turn undergoes transmutation in the living organism. It is changed into a substance which is of exceptional importance but which is not reckoned by present-day science to be among the elements. The silicon which we require in order to attract the cosmic element is transmuted. And now there must take place in the plant a real interaction between the silicic acid and the potash—but not the calcium. In order to set up this interaction we must quicken the soil with manure. We must therefore find a plant which, by reason of the particular proportion of potash and silicon in it, is able when added in homeopathic doses, to give the manure the required power. Such a plant exists and, once again, it is a plant which always has a beneficial effect wherever it is found in our fields. It is the dandelion (Taraxaeum).

The harmless yellow dandelion does untold good in any area in which it grows, for it is the mediator between that silicic acid in minutest distribution in the cosmos and the other silicic acid actually present in the area in question. The dandelion is indeed a kind of messenger from heaven; but if it is to become active in manure, it must be applied in the right way. It must be exposed to the influences of the earth during winter. But in order to capture the forces in the environment of the earth, this plant must be treated in the same way as the other plants with which we have dealt. Collect some yellow dandelion heads, let them wither a little, press them together, sew them into the mesentery of an ox and bury them in the ground for a whole winter. In the spring, take out the balls (they will keep until they are wanted), which will then be permeated with cosmic influences. Here also, as described before, the substance thus obtained can be added to the manure, which will then give the soil the ability to attract to itself .out of the atmosphere and the cosmos as much silicic acid as is required for the plants. The plants become sensitive to the influences that surround them and can of themselves attract what they need. For in order to grow, plants must have a kind of sensibility. Just as I, as a man, can pass unnoticed before some dull fellow, so can everything in the soil and above it pass unnoticed before a dull plant. The—plant does not sense it and cannot make use of it for its own growth. But let the plant be permeated, however finely, with silicic acid in the way described, and it will become sensitive to its surroundings and able to attract what it needs. It is quite easy, of course, to make the plant attract what it wants from only a small distance around it. But naturally this is not good. If the soil is worked upon in the manner I have described, the plant will be prepared to draw for its needs upon a very wide area. The plant can then make use not only of what is in its own field, but also Of that which is in the soil of the neighbouring meadow or wood. It only needs to be made inwardly sensitive in this way. So we can bring about an interplay in Nature, by giving the plants the forces which can be transmitted to them in this way by the dandelion.

It seems to me therefore that it would be worth while trying to prepare some manure to which these five ingredients Tor their substitutes) have been added in the manner described. The manure of the future should be treated not with chemical trifles, but with common yarrow, with camomile, with nettle, with oak bark and with dandelion. Such a manure, will have much of what is actually needed.

As a final effort before using the prepared manure, take the blossoms of valerian, Valeriana officinalis, squeeze out the Juice and dilute it with plenty of warm water (this can be done at any convenient time and the result put on one side). If this highly diluted juice of valerian be added to manure, it can arouse in it a proper behaviour towards phosphorous substances. With these six ingredients, the most excellent manure can be obtained from either stable manure, solid or liquid, or compost.

Discussion

QUESTION: In speaking of the bladder of a wild deer do you mean that of the male deer (stag)?

ANSWER: Yes, I meant the male deer.

QUESTION: Did you mean the annual or the perennial nettle?

ANSWER: Uritica dioica.

QUESTION: Is it advisable to roof in the manure yard in districts where there is a great deal of rain?

ANSWER: The manure should be able to stand the normal amount of rain. On the other hand, to be completely without rain does it no good, and to be soaked in it is equally harmful. One cannot make any general pronouncement on this matter. On the whole rainwater is good for the manure.

QUESTION: Should one not have roofed-in sheds for manure in order not to lose the liquid manure?

ANSWER: In a certain sense rainwater is necessary to the manure. It might possibly be good to keep the rain off by spreading peat-moss over it. But there is no object in keeping the rain off completely. The manure would only suffer.

QUESTION: Does this method of manuring stimulate the growth of useful plants and of weeds to the same degrees and must special methods be adopted to destroy the weeds?

ANSWER: This question is a very reasonable one. I shall be speaking of weeds and ways of attacking them during the next few days. The method of manuring I have described is favourable to plant growth in general and will not help to remove weeds. But the plants that have benefited by it are better able to resist parasites and pests, being supplied, as it were, with a remedy against them. Weed control has not been covered by what we have been discussing so far. The weed shares in the general growth of plants. We shall have more to say about this later. All these things are so connected that it is not good to take any one of them separately.

QUESTION: What is your view of Captain Krantz's method? By piling up the manure in loose layers and thus causing it to produce its own warmth he has succeeded in making it odourless.

ANSWER: I have purposely abstained from speaking of methods which have been developed on rational lines. I preferred to relate what Spiritual Science can give as an improvement of such methods. The method you mention certainly has a great many advantages. But it is relatively new, it has not been tried for long, and I think one may suspect that it is one of those methods which are a great success at first, but which in the course of time are found to be not so practical as had been expected. At first, while the soil still has its “tradition” so to speak, anything can serve to freshen it up. But if you go on too long, the same thing happens as with medical remedies. Any remedy, even the most unlikely, may help the first time it enters an organism! but after a time it ceases to work. With such a method, also it takes some time before one discovers that it does not work so well as one had originally believed it would. The important thing is the generation of heat in the manure, for the activity thus called into play is highly beneficial to the manure. The loose piling up of the manure may prove a drawback to the method, and—well; I am not convinced that it really loses its smell. If it does it would be a good system. But the method has not been tried out over a period of many years.

QUESTION: Is it not better to store the manure above ground rather than sink it into the earth?

ANSWER: In principle, it is right that the manure heap should be placed as high as possible. But the place chosen should not be too high, because the manure must remain in the appropriate relation to the forces that are under the earth. The manure should not be placed on a hillock; but if it be piled up at the earth-level, that will be the most satisfactory position.

QUESTION: Can the same compost methods be applied to the vine which has suffered so much recently?

ANSWER: It can, with a few modifications. When I come to speak of fruit and vine cultivation I shall mention these. But what I have said today holds good in general as an improvement of any kind of manuring. I shall' deal later on with the special cases of meadow, pasture, or cereals and fruit and vine cultivation.

QUESTION: Should the foundation of the manure heap be paved?

ANSWER: If we go by what we know of the whole structure of the earth and of its relation to manure, we do mischief if we pave the manure area. If we do so we ought really to limit the paving to a: ring outside the manure area, so as to allow for the interaction between the earth and the manure. We spoil the manure if we separate it from the earth.

QUESTION: Does it make any difference whether the soil underneath is 3and or clay? Often people put a ground layer of clay where the manure is to be, so as to make the ground impervious.

ANSWER: It is quite true that different kinds of soil have a definite influence which proceeds from the particular qualities of the soil in question. A sandy soil does not retain water; it is therefore necessary to put some clay with it before laying the manure on it. If, on the other hand, you have a clay soil, you should break it up and strew sand over it. A middle course would be to have alternate layers of sand and clay. Then you have the earth consistency as well as the watery influences. Without this combination of the two kinds of soil the water will percolate away. For the same reason, loose soil should certainly not be used as a foundation for the manure heap as it would have no value for the manure placed over it| in this case it is better to make your own foundation.

QUESTION: With regard to the growing of the remedial plants you have mentioned, is it possible to introduce a plant into a district where it did not previously grow, simply by sowing? In cattle-farming the Greenland Society have generally supposed that yarrow and dandelion were dangerous to cattle and the Society do their best to keep their pasture-land free from them. We are engaged upon this very task at the moment. And the same with the thistle. Should we now sow them round our arable fields but not on our meadows and pasture land?

ANSWER: (Question by Dr. Steiner) Well—in what way did you suppose these plants to be harmful to cattle?

ANSWER: (Count Keyserlingk): Yarrow is said to contain poisonous substances, and dandelion to be unsuitable for cattle food. ,

ANSWER: (Dr. Steiner): This should be watched. In the open field, you will not find an animal eating what is harmful.

COUNT LERCHENFELD: With us the reverse is the case. The dandelion is looked upon &ä an excellent milk-producer.

ANSWER: These views are very often only the prevailing opinions and nothing more. Nobody knows whether they have been tried out. It is possible for there to be

something harmful among the hay, but I believe that in that case the animal would leave the hay untouched. An animal will not eat what is not good for it.

QUESTION: Has not yarrow been largely removed by large doses of lime? It surely requires a moist and acid soil?

ANSWER: If you want to have yarrow growing wild then a very small quantity properly spread out will suffice for a large farm. This is the sort of homeopathic use I meant. If we had a little yarrow growing wild in the garden here there would be enough for the whole estate.

QUESTION: I have noticed that on my meadows the cattle enjoy eating the dandelion shortly before it flowers, but cease taking it once it had begun to flower.

ANSWER: You must remember the following: this is the general rule. You must remember that an animal has an exceptionally fine instinct for what is good for it and may be trusted not to eat dandelions if they will do it harm. There is also another thing to remember. When preparing a product for a particular purpose we often use an ingredient which we would not eat by itself. For example, we use yeast to bake our bread for daily consumption. But no one would dream of eating yeast every day. What can even act as a poison when consumed in large doses can in other circumstances have the most beneficial effects. After all, medicines are usually poisonous. The important thing is the process not the substance. I think we may take it that the view that dandelions are harmful to animals can readily be dismissed. These contradictory opinions are strange. It is a curious thing to hear emphasis being laid upon the harmfulness of the dandelion when at the same time, Count Lerchenfeld talks of it as the best promoter of milk to be found. In districts lying so close to one another, the effects cannot be so very different. One of the two conflicting views must be wrong.

QUESTION: Perhaps the sub-soil is the decisive factor. My statement was based on veterinary observations. Should one then deliberately plant yarrow and dandelion in meadow and pasture land?

ANSWER: Quite a small area is sufficient.

QUESTION: Does it depend upon how long the preparations should be kept with the -manure after they have been taken out of the earth?

ANSWER: Once they are mixed with the manure it is meaningless to ask how long they should be kept with it. But it should all have been done before the manure is spread on the fields.

QUESTION: Should the various manure preparations (in cow-horn, “sausage” etc.) be buried together, or each separately?

ANSWER: A certain importance attaches to this because one preparation should not disturb the other while this reciprocal action is going on. If I were working a small farm, I should look for the most widely separated points on its. boundaries and bury the preparations at the greatest possible distances from each other in order to prevent any one of them disturbing the other. On a large estate, you can quite easily choose suitable sites.

QUESTION: Can the earth above the buried preparations be allowed to grow anything?

ANSWER: The earth can do what it likes. As a matter of fact, it is quite a good thing for something, even cultivated plants, to be grown on the covering earth.

ANSWER: I recommend the following procedure:” where the manure heap is a large one, bore a hole about ten inches deep into it and place the preparation inside it so that the manure closes around it. The exact measurement does not matter. The important thing is that the preparation should be completely shut in by the manure. The whole thing depends upon radiation (see Diag. 20). If this is the manure heap and this is a little of the preparation, then the radiations go so. If it is too near the surface, it will not be so good. At the surface the streams of force are deflected and take on a particular curve. They do not leave the heap. A depth of 20 inches will do. If it is too near to the surface it will lose a considerable part of the rays of force.

QUESTION: Should the holes be made close together at one place, or should they be evenly spaced around the heap?

ANSWER: It is better to space them out, not to make all the holes in one place. Otherwise the streams of force disturb each other.

QUESTION: Should all the preparations be put into the manure heap at the same time?

ANSWER: When the preparations are being put into a manure heap they can be placed side by side. They do not influence each other, but only the manure as such.

QUESTION: Can the preparations all be put into one hole?

ANSWER: Theoretically it ought to be possible to do this without their disturbing each other. I could not, however, guarantee beforehand that no disturbance would take place. I would therefore suggest that the preparations be placed in proximity to each other but not actually in one hole.

QUESTION: What kind of oak had you in mind?

ANSWER: Quercus robur.

QUESTION: Should the bark used be taken from a living tree or from one that has been cut down?

ANSWER: If possible from a living tree, and even from one in which the resin may be presumed to be still fairly active.

QUESTION: Should the whole of the bark be used?

ANSWER: Actually, only the upper layer, the part which crumbles as one' picks it off.

QUESTION: In burying the manure-preparations should one go no deeper than the cultivated spit or should the cow-horns be buried deeper?

ANSWER: It is best to leave them in the cultivated spit. There is even reason to think that if put into the sub-soil the material would not be so fruitful. It must also be considered that should the cultivated spit extend further down than is usual, that would provide the best possible conditions. Look, therefore, for a place where the cultivated depth is as thick as possible, but remember that below it no useful effect can arise.

QUESTION: In the cultivated spit the preparation would always be exposed to frost. Would this do any harm?

ANSWER: The time when it was exposed to frost would be the time when the earth was exposed through this very frost, to the most powerful cosmic influences.

QUESTION: How does one grind quartz and silica? In a small hand-mill, or in a mortar?

ANSWER: The best method is first to grind it to a fine powder in an iron mortar and you will need too, an iron pestle. In the case of quartz, the process must be continued on a glass surface. For the powder must be very fine, and this is difficult to obtain with quartz.

QUESTION: The experience of farmers shows that when a beast is well fed the substances which were lacking in its body increase. There must therefore be a relation between feeding and the intake of nourishment out of the atmosphere.

ANSWER: Remember what I said. I said: The essential thing about nourishment is that forces should be developed in the body. Whether the animal develops enough forces to enable it to take in and transform the substances in the atmosphere depends upon whether it absorbs its food in the right way. To make a comparison. If you want to put on a close-fitting glove you don't do it by squeezing your fingers into it. You first enlarge the glove with a stretcher. In the same way, we must bring elasticity into those forces which are to take out of the atmosphere what is not produced by food. Through the food, the organism is stretched and thereby enabled to take in more of what it needs from the atmosphere. This may even lead to hypertrophy if too much food is taken in. This has to be paid for by a shortened life span. The middle course must be found between the maximum and minimum.

In the lectures that are to follow, I shall base myself to a great extent on what you have heard me say concerning plant growth and also animal structures. We shall have to attempt to put into aphoristic form some of the Spiritual Scientific conceptions concerning the enemies of agriculture, animal and vegetable, and which are called the diseases of plants. Now these matters can only be studied in concrete cases; they must be dealt with specifically; there is little that can be said in a general way.

I shall begin with examples, which, if they are taken as the starting-point of experiments, may lead on to something further. I shall begin with the subject of weeds or noxious plants. What we have to do is not so much to find a definition for what we mean by weeds, as to discover how to remove from a field such plants as we do not wish to have there. Some of us, perhaps, as a habit from our college days, may be inclined to seek for definitions. I have given way—although without much enthusiasm—to such an inclination and have looked up in various books the definitions given of a weed. I found that most authors say: “A weed is that which grows where it is not wanted;” which does not go very deeply into the essence of the matter. Nor can we very successfully apply such a definition to the essential nature of the weed, for the simple reason that before the tribunal of Nature the weed has just as much right to grow as plants that are useful to us. Clearly, we must approach the matter from a somewhat different angle. We must ask ourselves how in a particular stretch of ground we can get rid of what was not meant by us to grow there, but which nevertheless does so because of the general connections of Nature ruling there.

The answer to this question can only be found by taking account of those things which we have been discussing during the last few days. It was pointed out that we must learn to distinguish those forces which arise in the cosmos but are absorbed by the earth and work upon plant-growth from within the earth. These forces come from Mercury, Venus and Moon and act not directly, but through the mediation of the earth. They must be taken into account if we wish to follow up how

the mother-plant gives rise to a daughter-plant, and so on. On the other hand, we have to consider the forces taken by the plant from the outer-earthly, and brought to it by way of the atmosphere from the outer planets. Broadly speaking, we may say that the forces coming from the nearer planets (see Lectures 2 and 3) are very much influenced by the workings of lime in the soil, while those coming from the distant planets fall under the influence of silicon. And, in fact, workings of silicon, even though they proceed from the earth, act as mediators of the forces coming from Jupiter, Mars and Saturn, but not for those of Moon, Mercury and Venus. People are quite unaccustomed to take these things into account. Ignorance of the cosmic influences, whether they come through the atmosphere around the earth, or whether they come from below through the medium of the earth, has caused great harm. Let-us take a special case to illustrate this. The old instinctive knowledge had disappeared from large areas of the civilised world; the soil was exhausted, and such parts of the old traditions as the peasants had preserved was also worn out. And so the vineyards far and wide were decimated by Phylloxera (or grape-louse). Men were powerless to cope with the Phylloxera that was destroying the vineyards. I could tell you of an agricultural paper that used to be published in Vienna in the eighties. Appeals from all sides were made to the editor to supply some remedy for Phylloxera, but to his despair he knew of none and that at a time when the pestilence was most acute. For the science of today is not able to deal effectively with such evils as these; what is needed is an insight into the connections I have been expounding to you here.

Now I want you to imagine that Diagram No. 9 represents the earth level, where the influences of Venus, Mercury and Moon! I enter into the earth and stream again from below upwards. These are the forces which cause the plant to grow during the season, later produce the seed, and by means of this seed a new plant', a second plant, then yet a third and so on. (I indicate this schematically). All this goes into the power of reproduction and streams on into the succeeding generations. The forces, however, which take the other path, remaining above the earth level, come from the distant planets. I can draw this schematically in this way. These forces cause the plant either to spread into its surroundings or to become fat and juicy, to build matter into itself such as we can use for food because it is produced again and again in a continuous stream.

Take for example the flesh of fruit—an apple or a plum—which we can break off and eat; all this is due to the workings from the distant planets.

From this we are able to see how we must proceed if we are to influence plant-growth in one way or another. We have to take account of these two sets of forces. A large number of plants (and more especially those which we call weeds and which often have powerful healing properties) are particularly subject to the influence of the Moon. All that we know of the Moon in the ordinary way is that the rays of the sun fall upon it and are reflected back to the earth. The moon-rays which we see by taking them up with our eyes and which the Earth receives too are thus reflected sun-rays. And these reflected sun-rays come to the Earth charged with lunar forces; this is so ever since the Moon separated from the Earth. In the cosmos, these very lunar forces have a strengthening effect upon all that is earthly. When the Moon was still united to the Earth, the Earth was much more alive, much more fertile. Its substances were not yet so mineralised within it. But since the Moon has separated from the Earth, it strengthens those forces of the Earth which by themselves are just sufficient to produce growth on earth in such a way that growth is enhanced to reproduction. (When a being grows, it increases in size. Hence the same force is at work which leads to reproduction. But growth does not go so far as to produce another being of the same kind, it is merely that cell grows upon cell, a weaker kind of reproduction: whereas reproduction is an enhanced growth). The Earth can of its own strength be the mediator of this growth only—this weak kind of reproduction; without the Moon, it cannot control the enhanced growth. To achieve reproduction proper, it needs the cosmic forces of the Moon which shine into the Earth sphere and in the case of some plants, also those which come from Mercury and Venus.

As I said before, people look upon the Moon as simply reflecting the rays of the Sun, as transmitting solar light. But that is not the only thing which reaches the Earth. Together with the Moon's rays, the entire cosmos is reflected upon the Earth. (Everything that affects the Moon is reflected. And though this cannot be proved by the usual methods of physics, the whole of the starry heavens is in a sense reflected on to the Earth from the Moon). It is a powerful and strongly organising cosmic force which is poured down from the Moon into the plant and enables it to produce seed, thus enhancing its power to grow to the power to reproduce. But all this can only come about at any particular spot when the Moon is full. When the Moon is new, the area will not enjoy the benefits of lunar influence. During the new Moon, plants can do no more than retain what they took in at the time when the Moon was full. We should reach important enough results if we pursued the custom (known in ancient India and still maintained up to the nineteenth century) of observing the phases of the moon at seed-time and of making use of its effects upon the very earliest stages of germination. But Nature is not so cruel as to punish man for his inattention and discourtesy to the Moon at times of sowing and harvesting. We have a full Moon twelve times a year. This ensures that the influences of the full Moon, i.e., those which promote the formation of fruit, are there in sufficient strength. If something to be grown is placed in the soil at new Moon instead of at full Moon, it will wait until the Moon is again at the full, and, regardless of human error, work in accord with Nature. Thus, men make use of the moon without having the least idea that they are doing so.

But this alone does not help us any further. For, as things are, weeds claim the same rights as useful plants, and we get them all mixed up together because we do not understand the forces that regulate growth. We must try and enter into these forces. We shall then see that the fully developed strength of the Moon promotes the reproductive forces of all living plants, that it creates the force which pushes upwards through the plant from the root right on into the seed as it is being formed in the fruit. Now we shall get the best possible weeds if we allow the Moon to shed its full beneficence upon them, and do nothing to stop its influence. Furthermore, in wet years when the lunar forces are more active than in dry weather, the weeds will increase and multiply. If, however, we take these cosmic forces into our calculations we shall reason as follows:

If we can cut off (apply a tourniquet, as it were) the full influence of the Moon from the weeds, allowing only those influences to reach them which work directly from outside (i.e., non-lunar influences) we shall be able to set a limit to their propagation. For they will then not be able to reproduce themselves. Since, however, we cannot screen off the Moon, we shall have to treat the soil in such a way that it will be disinclined to absorb lunar influences. Moreover, the plants, these weeds, will then develop a certain reluctance to grow in soil that has been treated in this way. This will give us what we want.

We must boldly take the matter in hand. We must not be afraid, and this is how we must proceed. We collect a number of seeds of the particular weed in question, i.e., those parts which contain within themselves the final workings of the force of which I have been speaking. We light a flame—that of a simple wood fire is best—and burn the seeds, carefully collecting the ash, of which we accumulate a relatively small quantity in this way. But in the ashes of these seeds we have literally in concentrated form, the force that is the opposite of the force which was developed under the influence of the Moon. We then sprinkle the pepper-like preparations on our fields—we need not go very carefully to work for the influence spreads over a large area—and we shall see in the second year that there are far fewer of the weeds in question. After four years of this treatment, the weed will have completely disappeared from our field. In this way, the “Effects of smallest Entities,” which has been proved scientifically by the Biological Institute (at Stuttgart), is literally put to fruitful use.

A great many results are to be obtained in this way, as you will find out if you really take account of these influences, which are totally disregarded nowadays. For instance, in order to use the dandelion in the manner I outlined to you yesterday, you can plant a number of them anywhere. But you can at the same time make use of the dandelion seed for the production of this burnt pepper to be scattered on your fields. In this way, you will be able to plant dandelions wherever you like, but you will also ensure that the field that has been treated in this way with dandelion ash will be free of dandelions. All these things were contained in the old instinctive husbandry. In those days, one could put what plants one chose to grow together, because one went about it with a sort of instinctive wisdom. From what I have said, you can see that these things are the starting point of a really practical method. And since to-day the view—I will not call it the prejudice—obtains that everything must be verified, I urge you to put these things to the test. If you carry through the experiments properly, they will verify what I have said. If, however, I myself were working on a farm, I should not wait for proofs but go straight ahead, for I am sure that these things are practicable. I look at it in this way: the truths of Spiritual Science are true in themselves and require no verification from outside or by external methods. (The mistake of all our anthroposophical scientists has been that they adopted external methods of verification. They have done so even within the Anthroposophical Society, where they certainly ought to have known that things can be true in and through themselves. But if one wants to establish any results in public nowadays, one needs external verification: there the compromise is necessary. In actual fact, it is not necessary). For we know things inwardly, i.e., that they are true through their inner nature. For example: Suppose I put fifty persons to work in manufacturing a certain material. Now, if I want three times as much of the material made, I know quite well that I should need a hundred and fifty persons to get the job done. But a subtle person may come along and say: “I do not agree. You will have to put it to the test. You will have to try it out on a given piece of work, putting first one, then two, then three persons on it and establish how much they do.” Now if all three spend all their time chattering, they will do less work than one person. The assumption can turn out to be false, for scientific experiment has shown results that are opposed to the assumption. But the idea is not refuted, although the experiment has “proved” the contrary. To be really exact, the falsifying factors would have to be examined. Then what is inwardly true will also become outwardly established.

We, are able to proceed in a fairly general way as regards the noxious plants in our fields. But we cannot speak so generally when it comes to methods of controlling the noxious animals. I shall take an example which will be particularly characteristic and will enable you to make experiments and see how these things work out. Let us take an old friend of the farmer—the field-mouse. What efforts have not been made to combat this little creature? You can read in agricultural works of the use of preparations made of phosphorus or strychnine and saccharine'. Even the drastic remedy of infecting the field-mouse with typhus has been suggested, to be applied by mixing with mashed potatoes certain bacilli harmful only to rodents, the mixture being distributed as required. These things have been done, or at any rate they have been recommended. In any case, all sorts of rather inhuman methods have been tried in order to get rid of these quite pretty-looking little animals. Even the government has taken a hand in the struggle, because it is not of much use to fight the field-mouse on your own land if your neighbour is not going to follow suit. Otherwise the mice simply come across from the adjacent fields. The government had therefore to be called in, in order to compel everyone to get rid of their field mice by the same method. Governments do not like exceptions. When a government selects a method which it thinks the right one (regardless of whether it is or not) it issues its instructions, and these have to be followed by every farmer. All this is simply proceeding by trial and error and laying down the law from outside. And one always experiences that those who proceed in such a manner are never quite happy about the results, for the mice invariably reappear. It is quite true that no method can be entirely effective on one estate only; it can however be shown to be partially effective on a single estate and then one must rely on human intelligence in inducing one's neighbours to follow the same method. For in the future, men will need to rely to a far greater extent upon reason and common sense than on police or government regulations. That will be a first real step forward in our social life.

Not let us imagine the following. We catch a fairly young field-mouse and skin it. The main thing is to get this skin when Venus is in the sign Scorpio. Those old fellows of the Middle Ages with their instinctive wisdom were not fools after all. They pretended that in passing from the plant to the animal kingdom, we come upon what they called the zodiac, which means “animal circle.” Indeed, if one wants to exercise an influence in the plant kingdom, one can content oneself with the use of planetary forces. But with animals this is not enough. Here the fixed stars have to be taken into account, especially those fixed stars which belong to the signs of the Zodiac. In the plant kingdom, the influence of the Moon is practically sufficient to call forth the powers of reproduction. In the animal kingdom, the Moon's influence must be strengthened by that of Venus. Indeed, in this case the influence of the Moon need not be specially taken into account because the animal kingdom has retained within itself Moon forces (from past epochs, Ed.) and has thus emancipated itself from the actual Moon. In the animal kingdom, lunar forces are at work even when the Moon is not at the full. The animal bears the full Moon within itself and is therefore emancipated from time conditions. There is, however, a dependence as regards the other planetary influences. We have to undertake something quite definite with the skins of the mice in connection with these. The skin must be secured at the time when Venus stands in the sign of Scorpio, then burned and the ash and any residue carefully collected (several skins must be burnt to procure a sufficient quantity of ash). Now because the skins have been burnt when Venus stood in Scorpio, that which is contained in these ashes is the negative power to the power of reproduction in the field-mouse. If, in certain districts, difficulties present themselves, a more homoeopathic method can be adopted to procure this pepper-like substance. If, however, it has been obtained during the high conjunction of Venus and Scorpio it will, when sprinkled on your fields, prove to be a means of keeping field-mice away. No doubt they are cheeky little creatures and are apt to come back again if “pepperless” areas still remain in the neighbourhood. In such areas, the mice will again settle down. But if the method is applied throughout the neighbourhood, it certainly brings about a radical result.

I believe a certain pleasure could be derived from putting such methods into practice. I believe that agriculture would acquire a sort of savour as of a well-seasoned dish. Moreover, we take into account here the workings of the stars without the least concession to superstition. Superstition arises only when an earlier knowledge is no longer understood. We do not revive superstitious beliefs. We must start from insight, but an insight which has been won in a spiritual way and not by physical methods.

This, then, is the way to deal with field-mice and any other pests from among the higher animals. Mice, being rodents, belong to the higher animals. But this method will be of no use in attacking insects, for these come under completely different cosmic influences, as do all the lower animals as compared with the higher. Now I am going .to tread on very thin ice and take an example very near home. I am going to talk about the nematode of the beetroot. The outer signs of this disease are a swelling of root fibres and limpness of the leaves in the morning. Now we must clearly realise the following facts: The leaves, the middle part of the plant which undergo these changes, absorb cosmic influences that come from the surrounding air, whereas the roots absorb the forces which have entered into the earth and are reflected upwards into the plant. What, then, takes place when the nematode occurs? It is this: The process of absorption which should actually reside in the region of the leaves has been pressed downwards and embraces the roots.

Thus, if this (Diagram No. 10) represents the earth level, and this the plant, then in the plant infested with the nematode the forces which should be active above the horizontal line are actually at work below it. What happens is that certain cosmic forces slide down to a deeper level; hence the change in the external appearance of the plant. But this also makes it possible for the parasite to obtain under the soil (which is its proper habitat) those cosmic forces which it must have to sustain it (the nematode is a wire-like worm). Otherwise it would be forced to seek for these forces in the region of the leaves; this, however, it cannot do as the soil is its proper environment. Some, indeed all, living beings can only live within certain limits of existence. Just try to live in an atmosphere 70 degrees above or 70 degrees below zero and you will see what will happen. You are constituted to live in a certain temperature, neither above nor below it. The nematode is in the same position. It cannot live without earth and without the presence of certain cosmic forces brought down into it. Without these two conditions, it would die Out.

Every living being is subject to quite definite conditions. And for the particular beings with which we are dealing, it is important that cosmic forces should enter the earth, forces which would ordinarily display themselves only in the atmosphere around the earth. Actually, the workings of these forces have a four-year rhythm. Now in the case of the nematode, we have something very abnormal. If one enquires into these forces, one finds that they are the same as those at work on the cockchafer grubs; and as those, too, which bestow on the earth the faculty of bringing the seed potato to development. Cockchafer grubs as well as seed potatoes are bred by the same forces, and these forces recur every four years. This four-yearly cycle is what must be taken into account not with regard to the nematode but with regard to the steps we take to combat it.

In this case, the procedure is not to take any particular part of the animal as we did with the field-mouse, but the whole animal must be taken. This insect which attacks the roots of the plant is as a whole a product of cosmic influences, needing the soil only as a medium. Thus, the whole insect must be burnt. That is the best and quickest method. A more thorough way might be to allow it to decay, but then it would be difficult to collect the remains, and practically the same result can be obtained by burning the whole insect. The insect can be collected and kept alive and then burnt at the proper time. The incineration must take place when the Sun is in the constellation of the Bull (i.e., the constellation exactly opposite to that which was mentioned in connection with Venus and the burning of the mice skins). For this insect world is closely related to the forces that are developed as the Sun, on its path through the Zodiac, passes from the sign of the Water-carrier through the Fishes to the Ram and the Twins and on to the Crab. In the sign of the Crab the influence becomes quite weak; it is weak, too, in the sign of the Water-carrier. As the Sun goes through these signs [The signs referred to are: Water-carrier, Goat, Fishes, Scorpion, Scales, Virgin, Leo and Crab, the first and last being the weakest.] it radiates those forces which are connected with the insect world.

We do not realise what a very highly specialised being the Sun is. It is by no means the same when, in the course of the, year or the day, it shines on to the earth from, say, the Bull as it is when it shines from e.g. the Crab. In each case, it is different: so that it is nonsense strictly speaking (though pardonable nonsense) to speak of the Sun in general. One should really speak of the Ram-sun, the Bull-sun, the Crab-sun, the Lion-sun, etc. The Sun is always a different being according to the combined effect of its daily and yearly course, as determined by its position in relation to the vernal point.

If, then, you prepare insect-pepper in the way I have described and scatter it over a field of turnips, the nematodes will gradually, become “faint.” After the fourth year, they will have completely faded away. They cannot live—they shun life if they are to inhabit a soil that has been “peppered” in this way.

Thus, there re-emerges in a remarkable way what used to be called the “Wisdom of the Stars.” Modern astronomy only serves as a means of mathematical orientation, and cannot really be put to any other use. But astronomy was not always like this; the stars once served as a guide for the labours and activities of life on earth. This, science has now been completely lost. But to the extent to which we can develop a new science, we have the possibility of controlling those animals and insects which become a nuisance. It all depends on our capacity to be, as it were, on such intimate terms with the earth that we come to know her capacity for bringing forth plants, especially through the power or lunar and water influences. But the forces in every plant and in every other being carry in themselves the germ of their own destruction. Thus, just as on the one hand water is a promoter of fruitfulness, so on the other hand fire is the destroyer of fruitfulness. It consumes it. And if instead of treating plants with water, which is the usual way of making' them fruitful, you treat them with fire applied in an appropriate manner, then you are performing within the economy of Nature an act of annihilation. This is the point to be borne in mind: a seed develops fruitfulness and spreads it abroad through the Moon-saturated water. It also develops destructive forces through the Moon saturated fire, or, strictly speaking, as we saw in our last example, through cosmically-saturated fire. There is nothing very strange about this: we are reckoning here with enormous forces of expansion and have given exact indications of how time co-operates; for the seminal power is notably active in expanding, and so if it is destroyed, it also works very far afield. The force of expansion is peculiar to the seed. And the burnt substance which because of its appearance we called pepper, also possesses the tendency to spread its power abroad.

There remains for us one more subject to consider: the so-called plant diseases. Actually, this is not the right word to use. The abnormal processes in plants to which it refers are not “diseases” in the same sense as are those illnesses which afflict animals. When we come later on to discuss the animal kingdom, we shall see this difference more clearly. Above all, they are not processes such as take place in a sick human being. For actual disease is not possible without the presence of an astral body. In man and animals, the astral body is connected with the physical body through the etheric body and a certain connection is the normal state. Sometimes, however, the connection between the astral body and the physical body (or one of the physical organs) is closer than would normally be the case; so if the etheric body does not form a proper “cushion” between them, the astral intrudes itself too strongly into the physical body. It is from this that most diseases arise.

Now the plant does not actually possess an astral body of its own. It does not therefore suffer from the specific forms of disease that occur in men and animals. This is the first point. The next point is to ascertain what actually causes the plant to be diseased. Now, from everything I have said on this subject, you will have gathered that the soil immediately surrounding a plant has a definite life of its own. These life forces are there and with them all kinds of forces of growth and tender forces of propagation not strong enough to produce the plant form itself, but still waiting with a certain intensity; and in addition, all the forces working in the soil under the influence of the Moon and mediated through water. Thus, certain important connections emerge.

In the first place, you have the earth, the earth saturated with water. Then you have the moon. The moonbeams, as they stream into the earth, awaken it to a certain degree of life, they arouse “waves” and weavings in the earth's etheric element. The moon can do this more easily when the earth is permeated with water, less easily when the earth is dry. Thus, the water acts only as a mediator. What has to be quickened is the earth itself, the solid mineral element. Water, too, is something mineral. There is no sharp boundary, of course. In any case, we must have lunar influences at work in the earth. Now these lunar influences can become too strong. Indeed, this may happen in a very simple manner. Consider what happens when a very wet spring follows upon a very wet winter. The lunar force enters too strongly into the earth, which thus becomes too much alive.” I will indicate this by red dots. (See Diagram No. 11). Thus, if the red dots were not here, i.e. if the earth were not too. strongly vitalised by the moon, the plants growing upon it would follow the normal development from seed to fruit; there would be just the right amount of lunar force distributed in the earth to work upwards and produce the requisite fruit-seed. But let us suppose that the lunar influence, is too strong—that the earth is too powerfully vitalised—then the forces working upwards become too strong, and what should happen in the seed formation occurs earlier. Through their very intensity, the forces do not proceed far enough to reach the higher parts of the plant, but become active earlier and at a lower level. The lunar influence has the result that there is not sufficient strength for seed formation. The seed receives a certain portion of the decaying life, and this decaying life forms another level above the soil level. This new level is not soil, but the same influences are at work there. The result is that the seed of the plant, the upper part of the plant becomes a kind of soil for other organisms; parasites and fungoid formations appear in it. It is in this way that blights and similar ills make their appearance in the plant. It is through a too strong working of the moon that forces working upward from the earth are prevented from reaching their proper height. The powers of fertilisation and fructification depend entirely upon a normal amount of lunar influence. It is a curious fact that abnormal developments should be caused not by a weakening but by an increase of lunar forces. Speculation might well lead to the opposite conclusion. Looking at it in the right way shows that the matter is as I have presented it. What, then, have we to do? We have to relieve the earth of the excess of lunar forces in it. It is possible to relieve the earth in this way. We shall have to discover something which will rob the water of its power as a mediator and restore to the earth more of its earthiness, so that it does not take up an excess of lunar forces from the water. This is done by making fairly concentrated brew (or tea) of equisetum arvense (horse-tail), diluting it and using it as a liquid manure on the fields for the purpose of fighting blight and similar plant diseases. Here again only small quantities are required; a homeopathic dose is generally sufficient. As you will have realised, this is precisely where one sees how one department of life affects another. If, without indulging in undue speculation, we realise the noteworthy effects produced by equisetum arvense upon the human organism by affecting the function of the kidneys we shall have, as it were, a standard by which to estimate what this plant can achieve when it has been transformed into liquid manure, and we shall realise how extensive its effects may be when even quite a small quantity is sprinkled about without the help of any special instrument. We shall realise that equisetum is a first-rate remedy. Not literally a remedy, since plants cannot really be ill. It is not so much a healing process as a process exactly opposite to that described above.

Thus, if one gains an inside knowledge of the workings of Nature in her different fields, we can actually gain control over the processes of growth; and we shall see later that this also applies to the forces of growth in animals both in normal and abnormal conditions. Thus, we arrive at an actual science. For to experiment and to proceed by trial and error as people do nowadays is not true science; it is merely collecting data and isolated facts. True science does not begin until one has gained control of the forces at work. Now plants and animals and even the parasites in plants cannot be understood by them-, selves. Remember what I said in the first lecture about the magnetic needle and the folly of regarding the fact of its always pointing to the North as being caused by something in the needle itself. No one believes this. We take the earth as a whole and assign to it a magnetic North pole and a magnetic South pole. In the same way, when we want to explain the plant we must bring into question not only plant, animal and human life, but the whole universe. For life comes from the whole of the universe, not only from the earth. Nature is a unity and her forces are at work from all sides. He who can keep his mind open to the manifest working of these forces will understand her. But what does the scientist do today? He takes a little plate, lays a preparation upon it, isolates it very carefully and then watches. Everything that could work upon the substance is shut off. This is called “Microscopic Investigation.” It is really the opposite procedure to that which should be adopted in order to gain understanding of the expanses of the world. Not content with shutting himself up in a room, the scientist actually shuts himself up inside these brass tubes and leaves the whole of Nature outside. Nothing, he maintains, must be kept under observation except the one object in question. In this way, we have yielded more and more ground to the microscope. When, however, we find a way back to the macrocosm, then we shall begin to understand Nature and many other things as well.

I propose to devote the time that remains at our disposal to the consideration of the rearing of live-stock and the cultivation of fruit and vegetables.

Naturally there will not be time to treat the subject at very great length, but in order to obtain a fruitful starting point, we must gain insight into all the factors which come into consideration. We shall do this to-day, and tomorrow we shall pass on to the more practical aspect of the subject.

I shall ask you to-day to join me in the consideration of rather more recondite matters, to follow me into what is nowadays an almost unknown territory, although the instinctive husbandry of the past was thoroughly conversant with it. The beings in Nature—minerals, plants, animals—we will disregard man for the moment—are often regarded as though, they existed in completely separate realms. It is the custom to-day to look at a plant as though it existed by and for itself, and similarly one species of plant is also regarded as being isolated from other plant species. So these things are neatly sorted and fitted into genera and species, as though they were being put into boxes. But things are not like this in Nature. In Nature—nay, in the world—being as a whole, all things are in mutual interaction. One thing is always being affected by another. In these materialistic days, only the more palpable effects of this interaction are noted, such as when one thing is eaten or digested by another, or when the dung of animals is used for the soil. In addition to these, however, finer interactions amongst more delicate forces and substances are continually taking place: through warmth, through the chemical-etheric element which is continually at work in the atmosphere, and through the life-ether. Unless we take account of these more delicate interactions, we shall make no progress, at any rate in certain departments of Agriculture. In particular we must look to those more intimate interactions which take place in Nature when we have to deal with the life together of plant and animal on the farm. We must look with understanding not only upon those animals which undoubtedly stand close to us, such as cattle, horses, sheep, etc., but also, for example, upon the manifold insect world, which during a certain period of the year hovers around the plants. Indeed, we must learn to look with understanding at bird-life too. Humanity to-day is very far from realising how much farming and forestry are affected by the expulsion from certain districts of certain kinds of birds as a result of modern conditions. Here again light can be thrown on the subject by conceptions given by Spiritual Science. Let us therefore extend some of these ideas which have been working upon us and come by their help to a yet wider vision.

A fruit tree—apple, pear or plum—is something completely different in kind from a herbaceous or cereal plant as any kind of tree outwardly is indeed. But, putting aside any preconceived notions, we must find out wherein the peculiarity of the tree lies. Otherwise we shall never understand the function fulfilled by fruits in the economy of Nature. I am speaking, of course, of the fruit that grows on trees. If we look at a tree with understanding we shall find that the only parts of it which can really be reckoned as plant are the tender twigs, the green leaves and their stalks, the blossoms, the fruits. These grow out of the tree just as herbaceous plants grow out of the soil, the tree being in fact “earth” in relation to the parts that grow out of it. It is as though the soil were heaped up—but a somewhat more quickened soil than the ordinary soil in which our herbaceous and cereal plants grow.

If, therefore, we want to understand the nature of a tree, we must observe that it consists of the thick trunk, to which are attached the branches and boughs. On this ground the specifically plant-like parts grow, viz. leaves and blossoms, which are as much rooted in the trunk and branches as cereal and herbaceous plants are rooted in the earth. The question therefore arises: is this plant this plant-like part—which may be regarded as more or less parasitical, really rooted in the tree?

We cannot discover an actual root on the trees. We conclude, therefore, that this plant, which develops its leaves and blossoms and twigs up aloft, must have lost its roots in growing on the tree. But no plant is complete without its root. It must have a root. Where, then, does the actual root of this plant reside?

Now, the root is only invisible for our limited outer vision. In this case one does not see it, but has to understand where it is. What do we mean by this? The following concrete comparison may help. Suppose I planted a large number of herbaceous plants so closely together that their roots were intertwined and grew into each other, forming a completely matted mass or pap of roots. You can well imagine that this pap does not remain chaotic, but that it organises itself into a unity so that the sap-bearing vessels unite with each other. In this organised root-pap, it would not be possible to distinguish where one root finished. and the other began, and a common root-organ would arise (See Diag. No. 12). A thing like that does not, of course, exist in the soil, but such a root-formation is actually present in the The plants that grow on the tree have lost their root, have become relatively separated from it and are only, as it were, etherically connected with it. What I have drawn hypothetic ally is really the layer of cambium (a layer of living cells lying between the last-formed wood and the outer bark) in the tree and we cannot regard the roots of these plants otherwise than as having been replaced by the cambium. From this tissue, which is always forming new cells, these plants unfold themselves just as from the root below an herbaceous plant unfolds above the soil. We can now begin to understand what the tree really is. The tree with its cambium—which is the only cell-producing layer in the tree, is actually heaped-up earth, which has grown upwards into the air element and therefore requires a more interiorised form of life than is present in the ordinary soil which contains the root. Thus, we must regard the tree as a very curious entity, whose function it is to separate the “plants” growing on it (twigs, blossoms, fruit; from their roots; an entity which places between them and their roots a distance which is bridged only by spirit—or more strictly by the Etheric. It is in this way we need to look, with a macro-cosmic understanding, into the facts of growth.

But the matter goes much farther. What results arise from the existence of a tree? That which is around the tree in the air and outer warmth is of a different plant-nature from that which grows up from the soil in the air and warmth and forms the herbaceous plant. It is a plant-world of a different order, possessing a far more intimate relation with the surrounding astral element. Lower down that element is eliminated from the air and warmth in order to make them mineral-like, so that they can be used by man and beast. [See Lecture II. They become “dead” air and warmth.]

It is true, as I have said, that the plant we see rowing upon the ground is surrounded, as with a cloud. v the astral element. But around the tree, the astral element is far denser. So much so, that we may say: Our trees are definitely collectors of astral substance.

Here one might say it is quite easy to reach a higher development and become “esoteric”—I do not mean clairvoyant but clair-sentient as to the sense of smell. One has only to acquire the capacity for distinguishing between the scent of plants growing in the ground, the peculiar smell of orchards, especially in the spring when they are in flower, and the aroma of forests. Then one is able to tell the difference between a plant atmosphere poor in astral elements, such as that of herbaceous plants growing in the soil and an atmosphere such as we sniff with such pleasure when the scent of trees is wafted in our direction. And if you train your sense of smell to distinguish between the scent of soil-grown (herbaceous) plants and the scent of trees, you will have developed “clear-smelling” for the thinner and for the denser forms of the astral element. The countryman, as you see, can very easily acquire this “clear-smelling” though this faculty, common in the old days of instinctive clairvoyance, has been much neglected in recent times.

If, now, we realise the consequences to which this may lead the question will arise: What is happening in that part of the tree which may be regarded as the opposite pole from the “parasitical” plants on the tree which collect this astral element. What is happening through the cambium?

Now. the tree makes the atmosphere far and wide around it richer in astral element. What happens while the “parasite” growth goes on above in the tree? The tree here has a certain inner vitality, a powerful etheric life in it. The cambium tones down this vitality, making it more mineral in nature. “While about the upper part of the tree an enrichment of the astral substance is going on, the cambium causes an impoverishment of the etheric life in the tree. The tree within is deprived of etheric life as compared with the herbaceous plant. In consequence, this produces a change in the root. The root of the tree becomes more mineral, far more mineral than the roots of the herbaceous plants. But by becoming more mineral, the tree-root withdraws some of the etheric life from the soil; it makes the soil around the tree slightly more dead than it would be around a herbaceous plant. This must be fully borne in mind, for these natural processes always have a great significance in the economy of Nature. We must therefore seek to understand the significance of the astral wealth in the atmosphere around the tree and of the etheric poverty in the region of the roots.

If we look around us, we can find the further connection. It is the fully developed insect which lives on and weaves in this enriched astral element which wafts through the trees; whereas the impoverished etheric element beneath, spreading in the soil and throughout the whole tree (for, as I pointed out yesterday in connection with human Karma, a spiritual element always works throughout the whole being) is that which harbours the' larvae or grubs. Thus, if there were no trees on the earth there would be no insects. The insects that flutter around the upper parts of the trees and through the forests depend for their life upon the presence of the trees; and exactly the same thing is true of the grubs.

Here we have yet another indication of the inner connection between all roots and animal life beneath the soil. This is especially evident in the case of the trees. But this same principle which is so striking in the case of the trees is present in a modified form throughout the whole of the vegetable world, for in every plant there lives something that tends to become a tree. In every plant the root and what is around it tends to throw off the etheric life whereas the upper growth strives to attract the astral element more closely to itself. For this reason, there arises in every plant that kinship with the insect world which I have specially characterised in the case of the tree.

This relation, however, to the insect world in fact extends so as to comprise the whole of the animal world. In former times insect grubs, which can only live upon the earth because of the presence of tree roots, transformed themselves into other kinds of animals, similar to larvae and remaining at the larva stage throughout their lives. These animals then emancipated themselves to a certain extent from the tree-root nature and adopted a life which extends also to the root region of herbaceous plants. And now we find the curious fact that certain of these sub-terrestrial animals, though far removed from being larvae, yet have the ability to regulate the amount of etheric life in the soil if this amount becomes excessive. When the soil becomes, as it were, too much alive and the sprouting etheric life too strong, these animals of the soil see to it that this excess is reduced. They are thus wonderful vents which regulate the vitality in the soil.

These lovely creatures, for they are of the greatest value to the earth are no other than the common earthworms. One ought to study the life of earth-worms in relation to the soil, for these wonderful animals allow just that amount of etheric life to remain in the soil as is needed for the growth of plants. Thus, in the soil we have these creatures, earth-worms and their like, distantly resembling larvae. One ought in fact to see to it that certain soils which require it, are supplied with a healthful stock of worms. We should soon see how beneficent such a control over this animal-world in. the soil can be, not only for vegetation but also thereby for the rest of the animal kingdom, as we shall show later.

Now there are certain animals which bear a distant resemblance to the insect world, to that part of it which is fully developed and winged, I mean the birds. It is well known that in the course of the development of the earth something very wonderful took place between the birds and the insects. It is as though, to put it figuratively, the insects had one day said: “We do not feel strong enough to ‘work-up’ the astrality sparkling around the trees, we shall therefore use the ‘desire-to-be-a-tree’ of other plants. We shall flutter around these, and leave largely to you birds the astral life that surrounds the trees.” Thus, there arose in Nature a proper “division of labour” between the birds and the butterflies; and this co-operation in the winged world brought about in a wonderful manner the right distribution of astral life wherever it was required on the surface of the earth. If these winged creatures are removed, the astral life will fail to accomplish its proper function, and this will be noticeable in the stunted condition of the vegetation. The two things are connected; the world of winged animals and all that grows out of the soil into the air. The one is unthinkable without the other. In farming, therefore, we must see to it that birds and insects fly about as they were meant to do; and the farmer should know something about the breeding and rearing of birds and insects. For in Nature—I must repeat this again and again—everything, everything is connected.

These considerations are of the utmost importance for a right understanding of the questions before us and we must therefore hold them very clearly in our minds. The winged world of insects brings about the proper distribution of astrality in the air. The astrality in the air has a mutual relationship with the forest which directs it in the proper way, much as in the human body the blood is directed by certain forces. And this activity of the forest, which is effective over a very wide area, will have to be undertaken by something quite different in a district where there is no forest. Indeed, in districts where woods alternate with arable land and meadows that which grows in the soil comes under quite different laws from those which rule in completely unwooded districts.

There are certain parts of the earth which were obviously wooded areas long before man took a hand. In certain matters, Nature is cleverer than we are. and it may safely be assumed that if a forest grows naturally in a certain district it will have its uses for the neighbouring fields and for the herbaceous and cereal vegetation round about. In such districts one ought therefore to have the intelligence not to uproot the woods but to cultivate them. Ana as the earth is gradually changing through climatic and cosmic influences of all kinds, one should have the courage, when the vegetation becomes poor, not merely to indulge in all sorts of experiments in the fields and for the fields, but to increase the area of woods in the neighbourhood. And when plants run to leaf, lacking the power to produce seed, one should take bites out of the neighbouring woods. The regulation of woods in districts which Nature intended to De wooded is an integral part of agriculture, and must be examined with all its consequences from a spiritual point of view.

Again, the world of grubs and worms may be said to stand in a mutual relationship to the lime, i.e. to the mineral part of the earth; while the world of birds and insects, of all that flies and flutters about, has a similar relationship to the astral element. The relation between the worm and grub world and lime brings about the drawing off of the etheric element, as I explained a few days ago, from a different point of view. This is the function of lime, but it performs this function in cooperation with the world of worms and grubs.

If these ideas are carried out in more detail, they will lead to other things which—and that is why I have expounded them with such confidence—were applied, in the days of instinctive clairvoyance, in the right way. But this instinct has been lost, rooted out by the intelligence, as have been all such instincts. Materialism is to blame for men's having become so clever and intellectual. In the days when they were not intellectual, they were not so clever, but they were far wiser and learned through their feelings how to go about things; and we must learn to act with wisdom once again through Anthroposophy, but this time the wisdom will be conscious. For Anthroposophy is by no means something clever and intellectual—it strives for wisdom. And we must try to draw near to wisdom in all things and not be content merely to learn by rote an abstract jingle of words, such as “Man consists of a physical body, etc.” The main point is that we should introduce this knowledge into everything; then one finds the way to discriminate—especially if one really becomes clairvoyant in the sense that I have explained to you—and to see things in Nature as they really are. We shall discover, for example, that birds can become harmful if they are not in the neighbourhood of a wood of conifers which can turn what they do into something useful. Our vision is then further sharpened and we begin to discern the presence of yet another relationship. It is a very delicate relationship, similar to those I have been dealing with, but which can appear in a more tangible form. All growing things that are neither trees nor small plants, i.e. all shrubs such as the hazel bush have, an intimate relationship with mammals. If, therefore, we wish to improve the mammals on our farm, we shall do well to plant such bush-like growths. The mere presence of the bushes has a beneficent influence, for in Nature all things stand in constant reciprocal relationship.

But let us go a step further. Animals are not so foolish as human beings. They very soon notice the presence of this relationship. They find that they like these shrubs; this liking is inborn in them, and they enjoy eating them. They begin to eat what they need of the shrubs, and this has a wonderfully regulating effect upon the rest of their diet. But this insight into the intimate relations in Nature will also throw light upon the nature of harmful influences. Just as conifer woods stand in intimate relationship to birds and shrubs to mammals_? so do all kinds of fungi stand in a relation similarly intimate to the lower animals, to bacteria and the like, viz. to parasites. Harmful parasites are closely connected with fungi. They develop where fungus-life is dispersed. In this way, there arise plant diseases and other greater ills in plants. If, however, we can contrive to nave not only woods, but also well-watered meadows suitably situated in the neighbourhood of cultivated lands, these will be useful in forming a good breeding ground for fungi. One should see to it that the moist meadows are well-planted with such growths. We then make the following remarkable discovery, that if a meadow, not necessarily very large, but rich in fungi (e.g. mushrooms) is situated near cultivated land then the fungi, because of their kinship with bacteria and other parasites, will keep these creatures away from the farming-land. For mushrooms “hang together” with these little creatures more than do other plants. Thus, in addition to the other methods I have advocated for combating plant pests there is also the possibility of keeping these tiny creatures, these vermin away from cultivated land by converting land in its vicinity into meadows.

It is so important for success in agriculture that the right amount of acreage should be assigned respectively to woods, orchards, shrubberies and meadows with a natural growth of fungi, that one often gets better results-even if one reduces the extent of tilled land accordingly. Generally speaking, to cultivate the whole of the acreage at one's disposal, leaving no room for the other factors of which I have spoken, and to count in consequence upon larger crops is certainly no real economy. The extension of the tilled area is counterbalanced by a lowering in the quality of the produce because the increase in the cultivated area is made at the cost of the other factors. One cannot be engaged in a thing like farming where Nature is the “manager,” without realising the inter-connections and inter—actions which exist between all her processes.

Now let us look at something which will make clear to us the relation of plant to animal and, conversely, of animal to plant. What is an animal in reality, and what is the plant-world? (In the case of plants it is better to speak of the whole of the plant-world). We must look for the relationship between the two because only by this means can we come to understand the feeding of animals. For feeding is only properly done if it is done in accord with the true relationship between plant and animal. What are animals? We examine them, we even dissect them, study their muscles and nerves and admire the forms of their skeleton. But this does not tell us what an animal is in the whole economy of Nature. We shall only get at this if we grasp what it is with which the animal is most intimately connected in its environment.

Now with its system of nerves and senses and with part of its breathing system, the animal “works-up” all that which comes through the air and warmth. The animal does this to the extent that it is a separate being. (See Diag. No. 14). We may make a schematic drawing to indicate this. With regard to everything lying in its periphery, the animal lives with its nerves and sense system and part of its breathing system immediately in air and warmth. The animal has an immediate connection with air and warmth, its bony system being actually formed from the warmth which in particular mediates the influences of the sun and the moon. Its muscular system is formed from the air, which again works as a mediator of the forces of sun and moon. But as regards its relation to earth and water, the animal is not able directly to assimilate. It must first absorb them into its digestive tract and then work on them with what it has itself become through air and warmth; it works upon earth and water with its metabolic system and with a part of its breathing system, which passes over into the metabolic system. The animal must therefore have already come into existence by virtue of air and warmth if it is to be able to “work up” earth and water. This, therefore, is the animal's way of living in the sphere of earth and water. The process of transformation which I have described takes place, of course, by means of forces (dynamically) rather than by means of substances (materially).

Let us now try to answer the question: What is a plant?

The plant stands in an immediate relation to earth and water just as the animal does to air and warmth. The plant, therefore_? through a kind of breathing and through something very distantly resembling a sense system absorbs earth and water in the same direct manner as the animal absorbs air and warmth. Thus, the plant and earth and water live directly together. And now_? of course, you will say: If the plant lives in immediate contact with earth and water as the animal does with air and warmth, then no doubt the plant “works up” air and warmth inside itself just as the animal “works up” earth and water? But this is not the case. We cannot reach spiritual truths merely by analogy. The fact is that whereas the animal absorbs earth and water into itself, the plant actually gives off the air and warmth which it experiences dimly through its connection with the soil.

Thus, air and warmth do not go into the plant, or at any rate do not enter deeply into it; instead of being devoured by the plant, air and warmth are given off by it. And this process of elimination is the important thing. Organically the plant stands in inverse relation to the animal. That which in the animal is important as a process of nutrition becomes in the plant an elimination of air and warmth, and as in that sense we can say that the animal lives by absorbing food, in the same sense does the plant live by giving off air and warmth. And in virtue of that quality it may be said that the plant is virginal. Its character is not to absorb greedily but actually to give out that which the animal takes from the world in order to live. Thus, the plant lives by giving.

In this giving and taking, we can recognise something which played a very important part in the old instinctive knowledge of these matters. “In Nature's economy, the plant gives and the animal takes.” What is contained in this saying garnered from Anthroposophy was once common property in times of instinctive clairvoyance into Nature. Even m later days, much of this knowledge has remained among' those gifted with a peculiar sensitiveness in these matters, and in the works of Goethe you will sometimes come across the phrase: “In Nature everything lives through giving and taking.” Goethe did not fully understand the phrase, but he adopted it from ancient customs and traditions and he felt that it pointed to something in Nature which was true. Those who came after him understood nothing of this, and so did not understand what he meant when he spoke of taking and giving. Goethe also speaks of taking and giving in connection with breathing, in so far as breathing inter-acts with metabolism. He uses the words “taking and giving” in a fashion, semi-clear.

To sum up, I have shown you that in a certain sense the woods, orchards and shrubberies on the earth act as regulators in producing the right kind of plant-growth, and that under the soil grubs and other worm-like creatures act similarly in conjunction with lime. This is how we should envisage the relationship between the cultivation of fields, of fruit and of cattle, and then proceed to put our knowledge into practice. We shall endeavour to do this in the last hour that remains at our disposal, so that our Experimental Circle may work out these things more fully in the future.

In this last lecture, I shall try as far as possible to complete what I have already said, and to bring forward certain practical considerations. In the ensuing discussion, I shall make such additions as may prove necessary.

The practical hints I propose to deal with to-day are not such as can be embodied in general formulae, but need to be greatly modified according to the particular situation and the persons applying them. For this very reason, it is necessary that we should gain Spiritual-Scientific insight into this sphere, which will enable you intelligently to adapt to the individual case the various steps to be taken. I would ask you to consider how little insight there is into that most important matter, the feeding of our farm animals. Merely to indicate new methods of feeding is not sufficient.

How, then, ought our farm animals to be fed? In my opinion, improvement will certainly come if, in the teaching of agriculture, an insight is gained into the essential meaning of feeding as such. This is what I shall try to do today. Completely wrong ideas prevail as to what nutrition signifies both for man and beast. It is not merely the crude process of taking in foodstuffs and after certain changes, of storing these up in the organism, excreting what is not needed. This view carries with it the idea, for instance, that the animal should not be overfed, that its food should be as nourishing as possible and thus the bulk of it be utilised. And if we are of a materialistic turn of mind, we like to distinguish between actual food-stuffs and such substances as promote what is called combustion in the organism. We then build up all sorts of theories and put them into practice, finding, as always, that some work and some do not_? or that they only work for a time, having to be modified in one way or another.

What else indeed could we expect? We speak of processes of combustion in the organism. But no such thing takes place there. The combination of any substance whatever with oxygen in the organism means something quite different from a process of combustion. Combustion is a process which takes place in mineral, inanimate nature, and gust as a living organism is something different from a quartz crystal, so what is called “combustion” in a living organism is not the same as the “dead” process of burning, but something which is living and even sentient. The mere fact of using words in this way has directed our thoughts along certain channels and has done great mischief. To speak of “combustion” in the organism is to speak in a slipshod way. This does not matter if, by instinct or tradition, we still retain a right view of the facts. But if these slip-shod expressions are subjected to an attack of “psychopathia Professoralis,” then clever theories begin to be built upon them. If we depend upon these theories, what we do will be hopelessly wide of the mark, for such theories no longer cover the facts of the case. This is characteristic of our times. We are always doing something which does not fit in with what is going on in Nature. In this matter of nourishment, therefore, it is important to learn with what we are really dealing.

Let us recall what I said yesterday about the plant as having a physical and etheric body and being more or less surrounded from above by the astral element. The plant does not reach the astral element but is surrounded by it. If the plant enters into a special relation with the astral element, as in the case or the formation of edible fruits, a kind of food is produced which will strengthen the astral element in the animal and human organism. If one can look into this process, the very “habitus” of a plant and so on reveals whether or not it is capable of promoting some process in the animal organism. But we must also consider the opposite pole. Here something of great importance takes place. I have touched on this before, but now that the general principles of nutrition are being established, I must emphasise it still more definitely.

Since we are dealing with feeding, let us start from the animal. In the animal, the threefold organism is not so sharply defined as it is in man. The animal has a system of nerve and senses and a metabolic and limb system. These are clearly divided, the one from the other. But in many animals the limits of intermediate rhythmic system are indefinite; both nerves and senses system and metabolic system trespass upon the limits of the rhythmic system. We should therefore choose other terms when we speak of animals. In man one is quite right in speaking of a three-fold organism: but in the case of animals one ought to speak of the nerve and senses system as being localised primarily in the head, and of the metabolic and limb system as being in the hind quarters and limbs but at the same time diffused throughout the whole body. In the middle of the body the metabolism becomes more rhythmical as does also the nervous system, and there both flow into one another. The rhythmic system has a less independent existence in the animal. Rather the opposite poles become indistinct as they merge into one another. (Drawing 15.) We should therefore speak of the animal organism as being twofold, the extremes interpenetrating at the middle. In this way, the animal organization arises.

Mow all the substances contained in the head system—I am speaking of animals, but the same is true of man—are of earthly matter. Even in the embryo, earthly matter is led into the head system. The embryo must be so organised that its head receives its matter from the earth. In the head, therefore, we have earthly matter. But the substances which we bear in the metabolic and limb, organisation, those which permeate our intestines, our limbs, our muscles and bones, etc., these substances do not come from the earth, but from what has been absorbed from the air and warmth above the earth. It is cosmic substantiality. This is important. “When you see an animal's claw, you must not think of it as having been formed by the food which the animal has eaten and which has gone to the claw and been deposited there. This is not the case. It is cosmic matter taken up through the senses and the breathing. What the animal eats serves only to stimulate its powers of movement so that the cosmic matter can be driven into the metabolic and limb organisation, can be driven into the claw and similarly distributed, throughout the whole organism.

With forces (as opposed to substances) it is the other way around. Because the senses are centred in the head and take in impressions from the cosmos, the forces in the head are cosmic in nature. To understand what happens in the metabolic and limb organisation, you need only think of walking, which means that the limbs are permeated with earthly gravity: the forces are earthly ones. Thus, the limb system contains cosmic substances permeated by earthly forces.

It is extremely important that the cow or the ox, if used for working, should be fed so as to absorb the greatest possible amount of cosmic substance and that the rood which enters its stomach should produce the necessary strength to lead this cosmic substance into its limbs, muscles and “bones. It is equally important to realise that the (earthly) substances in the head have to be drawn from the food which has been worked upon in the stomach and is led into the head. In this sense, the head relies upon the stomach in a way in which the big toe does not, and we must realise quite clearly that the head can only work upon this nourishment which comes to it from the metabolism, if it can at the same time draw in sufficient cosmic forces. If, therefore, animals instead of being left in stuffy stables where no cosmic forces can reach them, are led into meadows and given every opportunity of entering into relation with their environment through the perceptions of their senses, then we may see results such as appear in the following examples.

Imagine an animal standing in a dark and stuffy stable before its manger, the contents of which have been measured out by human “wisdom”„ Unless its diet is varied, as it only can be out-of-doors, this animal will show a very great contrast to one which seeks out its food with its sense of smell, guided by this organ in its search for cosmic forces, seeking and finding its nourishment by itself and developing its whole activity in doing so. An animal that is red from a manger will not show immediately how devoid it is of cosmic forces, for it has inherited a certain amount of them. But it will breed descendants to whom these cosmic forces are no longer transmitted. Such an animal will become weak, beginning from the head, i.e. it will not be able to nourish its body because it cannot take in the necessary cosmic substances which should come in. This will show you that it is not enough simply to say: “This kind of fodder for one case, that for another.” Bather one must have a clear idea of the value for the animal's whole organisation that such and such methods of feeding have.

But we must go a step further. What is actually contained in the head? Earthly substance. If you take out the brain, the noblest part of an animal, you will have before you a piece of earthly substance. The human brain also contains earthly substance. But in both the forces are cosmic. What is the human brain for? It serves as a support for the ego. The animal, let it be remembered, has as yet no ego; its brain is only on the way to ego-formation. In man, it goes on and on to the complete forming of the ego. How then did the animal's brain come into existence? Let us look at the whole organic process. All that which eventually manifests in the brain as earthly matter has simply been “excreted,” (deposited), from tne organic process. Earthly matter has been excreted in order to serve as a base for the ego. Now the process of the working-up of the food in the digestive tract and metabolic and limb system produces a certain quantity of earthly matter which is able to enter into the head and to be finally deposited as earthly-matter in the brain. But a portion of the food stuff is eliminated in the intestine before it reaches the brain. This part cannot be further transformed and is deposited in the intestine for ultimate excretion.

We come here upon a parallel which will strike you as being very paradoxical but which must not be overlooked if we wish to understand the animal and human organisations. What is brain matter? It is simply the contents of the intestines brought to the last stage of completion. Incomplete (premature) brain-excretion passes out through the intestines. The contents of the intestines are in their processes closely akin to the contents of the brain. One could put it somewhat grotesquely by saying that that which spreads itself out in the brain is a highly-advanced dung-heap. And yet the statement is essentially correct. By a peculiar organic process, dung is transformed into the noble matter of the brain, there to become the foundation for the development of the ego. in man the greatest possible quantity of intestinal dung is transformed into cerebral excrement because man bears his ego on the earth. In animals, the quantity is less. Hence there remain more forces in the intestinal excrement of an animal which we can use for manuring. In animal manure, there is therefore more of the potential ego element, since the animal itself does not reach ego-hood. For this reason, animal dung and human dung are completely different. Animal dung still contains ego-potentiality. In manuring a plant, we bring this ego-potentiality into contact with the plant's root. Let us draw the plant in its entirety (Diagram 16). Down here you have the root? up there the unfolding leaves and blossoms. And just as above, in the leaves and blossoms, the astral element is acquired from contact with the air, so the ego-potentiality develops below in the root through contact with the manure.

The farm is truly an organism. The astral element is developed above, and the presence of orchard and forest assists in collecting it. If animals feed in the right way on the things that grow above the earth, then they will develop the right ego-potentiality in the manure they produce, and this ego-potentiality, working on the plant from the root, will cause it to grow upwards from the root in the right way according to the forces of gravity. It is a wonderful interplay, but in order to understand it one must proceed step by step.

From this you can see that a farm is a kind of individuality, and that both animals and plants should be retained within this mutual interplay. If, therefore, instead of using the manure supplied by the animals belonging to the farm, we sell off these animals and obtain manure from Chili, we are in a sense doing harm to Nature. In doing this we trespass the bounds of that which is a closed circuit, of that which should be self-sufficient. Of course, things must be ordered in such a way that the circuit really is self-contained. One need only have on the farm as many animals and of such kinds as will supply sufficient and appropriate manures. And one must also see to it that the animals have such plants to eat as they like and seek instinctively.

At this point experiments tend to become complicated because every case is different. But the main thing is to know the directions which the experiments should take. Practical rules will be found, but they should all proceed from the principle that a farm should be, as far as possible, self-contained. I say as far as possible because Spiritual Science takes a practical not a fanatical view of things. Under our present economic order this cannot be fully attained; but the ideal is one which we should make every effort to reach.

On this basis, then, we can find concrete instances of the relation between the organism formed by the livestock and the plant or “fodder organism.” Let us first consider this relation on broad general lines.

To begin with the root. The root generally develops in the soil and through the manure it becomes permeated with ego-potentiality which it absorbs. This absorption is determined and aided if the root can find in the right quantities salts in the soil around it. Let us assume that we are considering the nature of these roots merely from the point of view of the foregoing reflections. Then we shall suggest that roots are the food which, when it is absorbed into the human organism, will find its way most easily to the head by way of the digestive process. We shall therefore provide a diet of roots where we require to give the head material substances to enable the cosmic forces which work through the head to exercise their plastic activity. Mow imagine someone saying to himself: “I must give roots to this animal which requires earthly substance in its head in order to stimulate its sense-connections with its environment, i.e. with the cosmic environment.” Does not this immediately suggest the calf and the carrot? A calf eating carrots portrays this whole process. The moment something like this is put forward and you know how things really are and their true connections, you will know immediately what is to be done. It is simply a matter of realising how this mutual process arises.

But let us proceed to the next stage. Once the calf has eaten the carrot, once the substance really has been introduced into the head, the converse process must be able to begin, i.e. the head, on its part_? must begin to work with forces of volition, thus begetting within the organism forces which can be worked into it. It is not enough for the “carrot dung” to be deposited in the head; from what is deposited and in the course of disintegration, streams of force must come which will enter the rest of the organism. In short, there must be a second food substance which will enable one part of the body which has already been fed (in this case the head) to work in the right way on the rest of the organism.

Well, I have given the animal the carrot fodder. And now I want the animal's body to be permeated with the forces which are developed from the head. For this, as a second fodder, we need a plant with a spindly structure, the seed of which will have gathered into itself these “spindly” forces. We immediately think of flaxseed (linseed) or something similar. If you feed young cattle on carrots and linseed—or carrots and fresh hay (which is equally suitable)—this will bring into full operation the forces already latent in the animals. We should therefore try to give young cattle food which promotes, on the one hand, the forces of ego-potentiality, and, on the other, the complementary streams of astral force working from above downwards. For the latter purpose, those plants are especially suitable which have long, spindly stems and as such have been turned into hay. (Diagram 17.) Just as we have looked into this concrete case_? so we must approach Agriculture as a whole: of every single thing, we must know what happens to it when it passes either from the animal into the soil, or from the plant into the animal.

Let us pursue the subject yet further. Let us take the case of an animal' which should become particularly strong in the middle region (where the head or nervous organisation tends to develop in the direction of breathing and the metabolic organisation tends to have a rhythmic character). Which animals have to be strong in this particular region? They are the milch animals. The secretion of milk shows that the animal in question is strong in this region. The point to observe here is that the right co-operation should take place between the current going from the head backwards (mainly a streaming of forces) and the current going from the animal's hindquarters forward (mainly a streaming of substance). If these two currents co-operate and intermingle in the right way, the result will be an abundant supply of rich milk. For good milk contains substances prepared in the metabolic system and which, without having entered into the sexual system, have become akin to it. It.is a sexual process within the metabolic system. Milk is simply a sexual secretion on another level. It is a substance, which, on its way to becoming sexual secretion, is penetrated and transformed by the forces working from the head. The whole process can be seen quite clearly.

Now for processes which should arise in this way, we must choose a diet which will work less powerfully towards the head than do roots which contain ego-potentiality; neither may the diet, since it is to be connected with the sexual system, contain too much of the astral element, i.e. of that which goes towards the blossom and fruit of the plant. In short, if we wish to find a diet that will produce milk, we must choose the part of the plant which lies between blossom and root, i.e. the green and leafy part. (Diagram 18.) If we wish to bring about an increase in the milk supply of. an animal whose milk production we have reason to believe could be increased we shall certainly reach the desired end if we proceed as follows:

Suppose I have a cow and feed it with green fodder. I take plants in which the process of fruit-formation has been developed within the process of leaf-formation. Such, for example, are the pod-bearing or leguminous plants and especially the clovers. In clover, the would-be fruit develops as leaf and foliage. A cow that is fed in this way will perhaps not show much result of it; but when the cow comes to calve, the calf will grow into a cow that yields good milk. The effects of reformed foddering usually need a generation in which to show themselves.

There is however one point to be borne in mind. As we know, modern doctors go on using certain traditional remedies without knowing why they do so, except that the remedies have continued to prove effectual. The same thing happens in farming. People go on using traditional methods without knowing why they do so, and m addition to this they make experiments and tests, try to ascertain exactly the quantity of food that should be given for fattening cattle, milch cows, etc. But here again we have what always arises in haphazard experimenting. You know what happens when you have a sore throat and go and see your friends. They will all offer you some cure or other and in half-an-hour you will have collected a whole chemist's shop. If you were to take all these remedies, they would cancel each other out, and certainly ruin your stomach, and your sore throat would not be any better. Because of the circumstances, something which ought to be quite simple has been made extremely complicated. Something similar to this happens when one experiments with fodder for cattle. For it means, does it not, that one is using a food which suits the case 'in one particular but is ineffective in another direction. Then a second food is added to the first and finally one has a mixture of foods, each of which has a special significance for young cattle perhaps or for fattening stock. But the whole thing has become so complicated that one loses one's grasp of it all, because one loses sight of the interplay of forces involved. Or perhaps the different ingredients cancel each other in their effects. This is what often happens and especially with the modern college-trained student-farmer. Such a person looks things up in a book or tries to remember what he may have learned somewhere; “Young cattle must be fed in this way, and cattle for fattening in that.” But this does not help, because the fodder recommended by the book may well conflict with the fodder one i-s already giving.

The proper way to proceed is to start from the basis of thought which I have mentioned and which simplifies cattle-feeding so that it may be taken in at a glance. I really mean at a glance, as we saw in the case of the carrots and linseed. We can easily survey this. Think how one can then stand livingly in the midst of the farm, acting consciously and with deliberation. This knowledge leads not to a complication but to a simplification of methods of feeding. Much that has been discovered by experiment is right, but it is unsystematic and inexact. Or rather it has the sort of exactness which is really inexact because things are muddled up and cannot be seen through. Whereas what I have recommended is simple and its effects can be followed up into the animal organism.

Suppose now that we wish to consider the flowering and fruiting part of the plant. And we must go further, and observe what is fruit-like in the rest of the plant. This recalls a feature of plant-life that always delighted Goethe, namely the fact that the plant has throughout its whole body the tendency towards what is normally specialised at certain parts. With most plants, we take the seed which has formed from the blossom and place it in the earth in order to produce more plants. But we do not do this in the case of the potato. Here we use the eyes of the tubers. This is the fruiting part of the potato plant, but like many processes in Nature, it is not carried out to the end. We can, however, heighten its activity by a procedure which bears an external resemblance to combustion. For instance, if you “cossette” (chop up into thin straws) roots or tubers and dry the “cossettes” for fodder, the stuff will be enormously strengthened in its activity and brought a stage nearer to the fruit stage if you spread it out in the sun and allow it to steam a little.

Practices like this are based upon a deep and wonderful instinct. We can ask: how did men first come to cook their food? Men began to cook their food because they gradually discovered that what develops during fruit formation is mainly due to processes akin to cooking, viz. burning, warming, drying and evaporating. All these processes tend to make the fruit and seed and indirectly the other parts of the plant, especially the higher parts, more fitted to develop the forces that are necessary to the metabolic and limb system in the animal. Even uncooked the blossom and fruit of a plant work on the animal's metabolic and digestive system and primarily through the forces they develop, not through their substance«, For it is the forces of the earth which are needed by the metabolic and limb system, and in the measure in which it needs them, it must receive them. Take the case of the animals which pasture on steep mountain sides. Unlike those in the plains, they climb about under difficult conditions owing to the fact that the ground is not level. There is all the difference for those animals between level and slanting ground. They require food that will develop those forces in limb and muscle which are energised by the will. Otherwise they would not be good for either labour, milking or fattening. It is therefore important that they should eat plenty of those aromatic mountain plants in which blossom and fruit have undergone an additional treatment by the sun, resembling a process of natural cooking.

But similar results can be achieved and strength given to muscle and limb by artificial methods—roasting and boiling, etc. Flower and fruit are most suitable for this, especially of those plants which from the beginning develop towards fruiting and do not waste their time, as it were, in growing foliage. People should take careful note of these things, especially those who are on the dangerous slope that leads to laziness and inertia. An instance of this is the man who wants to be a mystic-. “But how,” he asks, “can I become a mystic if I am working with my hands all day? I ought to be completely at rest and not be constantly stirred to activity by something outside or inside me. If I no longer waste my forces by fussing about all day, I shall become a real mystic. I must therefore order my diet in such a way as to become a mystic.” And he goes in for a diet of raw food and ceases to cook for himself. But the matter is not so easy as all this. For a man of weak physical constitution who takes to a diet of raw food when he is already on the downward path that leads to mysticism, will naturally accelerate the process; he will become more and more “mystical”—that is more and more inert', (and what happens here to a man can be applied to the animal and can teach us how to stir it to greater) activity). But the opposite may also occur. We may have the case of a man of strong constitution who nevertheless has developed the queer idea of becoming a mystic. In this case his own inherent forces and those absorbed through the raw food will continue to develop and to work in him, and the diet may not do him much harm. And if, by this means, he stirs up the forces which generally remain below and produce gout and rheumatism if; he stirs these up, and transforms them, then his raw diet will make mm stronger. There are two sides to every question. No general rule can be laid down, but we must know how these principles work in individual cases. The advantage of vegetarianism is that it calls forth out of the organism forces which were lying fallow and which produce gout, rheumatism, diabetes, etc. where only vegetable food is taken, these forces serve to make it ripe for human assimilation* But where animal food is consumed, these same forces are deposited in the organism and remain unused, or rather they begin to work from out of, themselves, depositing the products of metabolism in various parts of the body, or, as in diabetes, they lay claim for their own use to substances which should remain spread out over all the organs. We only understand these matters when we look more deeply.

This brings us to the question of the fattening of animals. Here we must say we should regard the animal as a kind of sack to be filled as full as possible with cosmic substance. A fat pig is really a most heavenly animal'. Its fat body, apart from its system of nerves-and-senses, is made up entirely of cosmic, not of earthly substance. The pig needs the food which it enjoys so much in order to fill itself with cosmic substance, which it absorbs on all sides and then distributes throughout its body. It must take in this substance which has to be drawn from the cosmos, and distribute it. And the same is true of all fattened animals. lou will find that animals will fatten best on the part of the plant which tends towards fruit-formation, and has been heightened in its activity by cooking or steaming. Or, if you give them something which has in it an enhanced fruit-process, for instance turnip, which belongs to a species in which this process has been enhanced and which has become larger through long cultivation. In general, the best kind of food for fattening cattle is that which will at least help to distribute the cosmic substance, i.e. the part of the plant which tends to fruit-formation—and which has in addition received the proper treatment. These conditions are in the main fulfilled by certain kinds of oil cakes and the like. But we must also see to it that the animal's head is not entirely neglected and that in this fattening treatment a certain amount of earthly substance is introduced there. The fodder just mentioned needs to be complemented by something for the head, though a smaller quantity, as the head does not require so much. In fattening an animal, we should therefore add a small quantity of roots.

Now there is a substance which as substance has no particular function in the organism. In general, one can say that roots have a function in connection with the head, blossoms in connection with the metabolic and limb system, and leaf and stem in connection with the rhythmic system within the human organism. There is, now, a substance that can aid the whole animal organism, because it is related to all its members. This substance is salt. And as of all the ingredients in the food of both man and animals, salt is the least in quantity, we can see it is not how much we take which matters, but what we take. Even small quantities of substance will fulfil their purpose if they are of the right kind.

This brings us to a very important point and one on which I should like to see very accurate experiments made. These could be extended to the observation of human beings who use the article of food I am now going to deal with. As you know, the introduction of the tomato as a food is of comparatively recent date. It is very popular as a food and also extremely valuable as an object of study. One can learn a very great deal both from growing tomatoes and from eating them. Those who give the matter some thought—and there are some such nowadays—are of the opinion and rightly so, that the consumption of the tomato by man is of great significance. And it can well be extended to the animal; it would be quite possible to accustom animals to tomatoes. It is, in fact, of great significance for all that in the body which—while in the organism.—tends to fall out of the organism and to form an organisation of its own« We have the statement made by an American that in some circumstances the use of tomatoes can act as a dietetic means of correcting an unhealthy tendency of the liver. The liver is the most independent organ in the human organism, and diseases of the liver (and especially those of the animal liver) can in general be combated by a diet of tomatoes. Once again, we are gaining insight into the connection between plant and animal. Anyone suffering from cancer, I say this in parenthesis, i.e. from a disease which tends to make one organ in the body independent from the rest, ought at once to be forbidden tomatoes.

Why does the tomato have a special effect upon the parts of the organism which tend to be independent and specialised in their function? This is connected with the conditions which the tomato requires for its own growth. During its growth, the tomato feels happiest in the vicinity of manure which retains the form it had when it separated from the animal. Manure composed of a haphazard collection of all kinds of refuse, not worked upon in any way, will ensure the growing of very fine tomatoes. And if compost heaps could be made of tomato stalks and leaves i.e. of the tomato's own refuse, the result would be quite brilliant. The tomato does not wish to go beyond its own boundaries. It would rather remain within its own strong vitality, it is the most unsocial being in the plant kingdom. It does not wish to admit anything strange to its own nature and especially anything which has already been through the rotting process. And this is connected with the fact that this plant has a special effect on any independent organisation within the animal and human bodies.

In this respect, the tomato bears a certain resemblance to the potato, also a very independent plant in its effects—so much so indeed that after passing very easily through the digestive system, it penetrates into the brain and makes that organ independent even of the workings of the rest of the organs'. And among the factors which have led men and animals to become more materialistic in Europe, we must certainly reckon the excessive consumption of potatoes. The consumption of potatoes should serve only to stimulate the brain and head-system. But it should not go beyond this. These are the things that show in an objective way the intimate connection between agriculture and social life. It is infinitely important that agriculture should be so related to the social life.

I have only indicated these matters on general lines and, for some time to come, these should serve as the foundation for the most varied experiments, such as should lead to most striking results. From this you will be able to understand how the contents of these lectures should be treated. I am thoroughly in agreement with the decision which has been come to by the agriculturalists who have attended this course, namely, that what has been said at these lectures should for the present remain within this circle and be developed by actual experiment and research. This same circle should decide when in their opinion these experiments have been carried sufficiently far for the matter to be made public. A number of persons not directly connected with farming, but whose presence has been permitted through the organisers' tolerance because of their interest in the subject, nave also attended this course. They will, like the character in the well-known opera, be required to put a padlock on their mouths and not; fall into the common Anthroposophical mistake of spreading things as far and wide as possible. For what has so often done us harm is the talk of the individual, dictated not by a desire to convey real information but simply by a desire to repeat what has been heard. It makes all the difference whether these things are said by a farmer or by a layman. Suppose these things are repeated by laymen as an interesting new chapter of Anthroposophical teaching. What will happen? Exactly the same as has happened in the case of other Lecture Cycles. People on all sides, including farmers, will hear it ... But there are different ways of hearing. A farmer hearing these things from another farmer will think at first: “What a pity. The poor fellow has gone crazy.” He will say this the first and even the second time. But when finally a farmer sees something with his own eyes, then it is hardly wise for him to dismiss it as nonsense. But if he has only heard of a new method from people who are not professionally concerned with it but only interested in the subject, then naturally it all comes to nothing and the whole thing will lose its effect: it will be discredited from the start. Therefore, those friends who have been present and are not members of the Agricultural Circle must exercise restraint and not repeat what' they have heard wherever they go, as is so often done in Anthroposophy. This course has been decided on by the Agricultural Circle and the decision announced by our esteemed Count Keyserlingk, and I entirely agree with it.

And now that we have come to the end of this Course, I should like to express my pleasure at your having come to hear what was said, and at the prospect of your taking part in all the developments which will take place in the future. I think you will agree with me when I say that what we have been doing is useful work, and as such possesses a deep inner value.

There are, however, two things to which I would draw your attention. The first is the trouble that has been taken by Count and Countess Keyserlingk and all their household to make this course the success it has been.

This required energy, self-sacrifice, consciousness of the end in view, a sense of Anthroposophical values, a real identification with the cause of Anthroposophy. And this is why the work we have all been engaged upon, a work which will undoubtedly be of service to the whole of humanity, has seemed to take the form of a wonderful festival, for which we give our heartfelt thanks to Count and Countess Keyserlingk.

Discussion

QUESTION: Has liquid manure the same force of ego-organisation as dung?

ANSWER: Of course, liquid manure and dung should be used in union with each other and both should contribute to the same force of organisation of the soil. The connection with the Ego to which I referred holds good particularly for the dung, but does not hold good xn general for the liquid manure. For every Ego, even in the rudimentary form in which it appears in manure, must work in conjunction with some astral element, and the dung would have no astrality unless the liquid manure were there. The liquid is strong is astrality, the dung in ego-force. The manure may be regarded as “grey matter,” while the liquid is the cerebral fluid.

QUESTION: Could we be given the correct astronomical data for those preparations which must be burnt?

ANSWER: (by Dr. Vreede): The exact data cannot be supplied at present. There are calculations still required which cannot be made at the moment. In general, the period for burning the insects is from the beginning of February on into August. With regard to the destruction of field-mice, the period this year (1924)—it shifts from year to year—would be from the second half of November to the first half of December.

DR. STEINER: The principles laid down (in 1912) for the Anthroposophical Calendar ought to be worked out more precisely. Then one could go by it exactly.

QUESTION: In speaking of Full Moon and New Moon do you mean the one day on which the moon is full or new, or does it include the period shortly before and after it?

ANSWER: One reckons the new moon from the moment when the thin sickle (Diagram 22) of the old moon is still there and disappears. Full moon is reckoned from the moment when this other picture appears (again Diagram 22). Both phases cover from twelve to fourteen days.

ANSWER: We shall give the times for making the preparations, but the insects can be kept until then.

QUESTION: Has the burning of the weed seeds to take place in summer, or at any time?

ANSWER: Not too long after they have been gathered

QUESTION: How can this insect-pepper which has “been scattered over the soil' affect the living insects which never come into contact with the soil?

ANSWER: What matters here is not the physical contact but a certain quality coming from this homoeopathic dose. The insect has its own kind of sensitiveness, and it will flee from what has been scattered over the ground without having to come in contact with it. That the insect does not come into direct contact with the earth makes no difference at all.

QUESTION: What is the nature of the harm done by frost in agriculture and in the case of tomatoes in particular? In what sense is frost connected with cosmic forces?

. ANSWER: To have fine and large tomatoes you must keep them warm. They suffer from frost. With regard to frost in general, you must realise what it is t-hat is active in the effects of frost. Frost means that the cosmic influence which is active in the earth has been essentially strengthened. Now this cosmic influence has a normal mean between certain degrees of temperature. When the temperature is at a certain point, this cosmic influence is exactly what the plant requires. If, however, the frost is intense, lasts too long and strikes too deeply, the influence of the heavens upon the earth is too strong and the plant tends to become stalkified and thin throughout and in this attenuated state it falls an easy prey to the frost and is destroyed. Frost which is too intense is therefore extremely harmful to the growth of plants because it is a sign that too much of the heavens has entered into the earth.

QUESTION: Should the burnt remains of Horse-fly be used to treat the bodies of animals, or be scattered over the meadows and pastures?

ANSWER: Scatter it where the animals feed. It is to be regarded as additional to the manure.

QUESTION: What is the best way of combating couch-grass? Is it not very difficult to obtain the seeds?

ANSWER: This difficulty really solves itself. When it grows underground and rampant one can fight it. You need very little seed and you will be able to get this. Why, one can even find four-leaved clover!

QUESTION: Is it permissible to preserve bales of fodder by means of an electric current?

ANSWER: What would be your object in doing this? It is necessary at this point to consider the part played by electricity in Nature. Now it is comforting to note that in America, where people are more observant than they are over here, voices are heard to say that man cannot go on developing in the same way in an atmosphere which is continuously “being pierced “by electrical currents and waves; it has an influence on the whole development of man. Man's inner life will become different if these things are carried further and further. It makes a difference to a district whether it is provided with steam trains or electric trains. The action of steam is more conscious: the action of electricity is extremely unconscious, so that people simply do not know how certain things happen. .

No doubt there is a development going on which must be reckoned with because electricity is being used above the surface of the soil as radiant electricity (wireless) and also as conducted electricity (cables) for transmitting news as quickly as possible from one place to another. The result of this will be that men and women living in the field especially of the radiant electricity can no longer “take in” the news they obtain. The electric radiations used to ensure quick transmissions tend to blot out the capacity for understanding. This can already be observed. People have far more difficulty in taking in what comes to them than they had several decades ago. It is a comfort to find that a glimpse of the truth of this matter is beginning to dawn at least from America.

Whenever anything new appears, it is usually regarded at first as “a remedy.” Then the prophets come in and use the thing. It is strange how, when something new appears, clairvoyant perception is so often brought down to the human level. For instance, a man who had never before thought about it, begins to prophesy wildly regarding the healing power of electricity, and the idea is taken up not merely because electricity is there, but because it is in the fashion. Electricity in the form of radiations is no more a remedy than pricking with small thin needles can be a remedy. It is not the electricity which heals but the shock it produces.

It must not be forgotten, however, that, electricity has a particularly powerful effect upon the higher organisation in living beings, i.e. upon the head in men and animals and upon the root in plants. An animal that eats food that has been preserved through electrification will therefore gradually tend to grow sclerotic. The process will be slow and will not be noticed at first. All that will be noticed, is that in one way or another these animals die too soon. No one will attribute this to the electricity: all sorts of other reasons will be found. I cannot help it, but electricity is the last thing in the world which ought to be introduced into a living being to promote its life! It cannot promote life. Electricity is at one level lower than life, and the higher the level reached “by life, the more it tends to rid itself of electricity; and if you induce the living organism to take repulsive measures when there is nothing to be repelled, the organism becomes nervous and fidgety and gradually sclerotic.

QUESTION: What does Spiritual Science say on the subject of preserving food-stuffs by acidification in general?

ANSWER: If we use salt-like materials at all in this process it does not make much difference whether the salt is added at the moment of eating, or whether it is used in the preparation of the fodder. In the case of fodder that contains too little salt to carry the food stuffs to those parts of the organism where they should work, souring is the right procedure to adopt. Take the case of turnips. These, as we saw, are particularly fitted to work upon the head-organisation. They are, therefore, an excellent food for certain animals, especially for young cattle. If, however, it be noticed that the young animals shed their hair too soon and too much, their fodder should be salted because this means that the food is not being deposited in sufficient quantities in those parts of the organism where it is needed. Salt is tremendously effective in carrying food to the part of the organism where it is needed and will work.

QUESTION: What view does Spiritual Science take on the subject of souring of the leaves of sugar-beet and other green plants?

ANSWER: The great thing here is to find a certain optimum and not go beyond it by adding too much salt, because salt is the part of food which more than any other remains what it is once it is inside the organism. The organism in general, in the case of animals- and even more so of human beings, is so constructed as to submit everything it absorbs to the most varied changes. It is an error to think that the albumen which goes into our stomachs remains the same as it was before we ate it. It must first be changed into a completely lifeless substance and then changed back again by means of the etheric body into specifically human (or in the case of animals specifically animal) albumen.

Everything that enters into an organism must be changed. This applies even to warmth. Suppose that this (see Diagram 23, Part I) is a living organism and this the warmth in the environment. Now assume you have a piece of dead wood (Diagram 23, Part II) which, it is true, comes from a living organism but is already dead. It is likewise surrounded by warmth. Now when the warmth enters into the living organism, it does not simply go a little way in and remain what it is; the organism immediately transforms it into a warmth of its own, and it could not do otherwise. Whereas when the warmth penetrates into the dead wood it remains exactly the same kind of warmth as exists outside in the mineral earth. The moment warmth penetrates into us unchanged as it does into the piece of wood, we catch cold. Nothing that comes into the living organism from outside may remain what it is; it must immediately he changed into something else. This process takes place to the least extent m salt. No great harm, therefore, will he done by using salt for the preserving of food-stuffs so long as you do it carefully and do not put in too much. The mere sense of taste will reject it. If it is necessary for the preservation of food-stuffs this shows that up to a point it is the right process to adopt.

QUESTION: Do you recommend souring fodder without salt?

ANSWER: That is too advanced a process. It is a super-organic process (self-fermentation) and can in certain circumstances be extremely harmful.

QUESTION: Is Spanish Chalk, sometimes used to mitigate the effects of souring, bad for the animals?

ANSWER: Some animals cannot stand it at all; they become ill. Some can. I cannot say at the moment which are those that can stand it. On the whole, it does not do the animals much good and is apt to make them ill.

QUESTION: I suppose that the gastric juice will be dulled by the Spanish chalk?

ANSWER: Yes. The gastric juice becomes useless.

QUESTION: I would like to ask whether the inner attitude with which one sets to work is not of great importance in these matters? There is surely a great difference between sowing seed and scattering what is destined to work destruction. The attitude of mind must count. Does it not have an immensely greater karmic effect to work against insects in this way than to kill them in single instances by mechanical means?

ANSWER: The main thing about an inner attitude is whether it is a good or a bad attitude. What do you mean by “destruction?” Now consider how one must think about these things. In my lecture to-day I pointed out that we can know something and then actually see it before us. We can look at a linseed plant or a carrot and actually see (because we know) the course it takes and the process it undergoes when it enters the body of an animal. If we can really attain to this objective vision and make it a reality, then it is inconceivable

that we should not at the same time be penetrated by certain feelings of piety. And we shall gain the impulse to do this in the service of mankind, in the service of the Universe. The only way in which our state of mind could bring harm would be if we did our work from bad motives. I do not see, therefore, since these methods work on the whole for good, that they can in any way do harm. You seem to think that it would not be so bad just to run after the animal and kill it?

QUESTION: I wanted to know if there was a difference between the two ways of destruction—mechanical and cosmic?

ANSWER: This question raises very complicated issues which can only be understood if we have gained insight -into the wider connections that exist between things. Suppose you draw a fish out of the sea and kill it. Then you have killed something. You have carried out a process on a definite level. But suppose that for some reason or other you take a whole pail full of water containing quantities of fish-spawn, thus destroying a vast amount of life. This is something quite different from killing one fish. The process has been carried out on quite a different level. If something in Nature passes on towards a full-grown fish, it has travelled along a certain path. If you cut the fish off at this point, you cause a certain disorder in Nature. But it is quite a different matter to arrest a process which has not been completed or which has not ended in the blind alley of a fully-grown organism. Your question, therefore, boils down to this: What wrong am I doing in making this pepper? What I destroy with the pepper does not really come into consideration as it moves on another level of existence. All we need ask is: What must I have in order to make this pepper? And in most cases, it turns out that in making it I shall destroy far fewer animals than if I have to collect them in some other way and then kill them. I think that if you look at the question in a practical way and less from an abstract point of view you will find that it is not so very appalling.

QUESTION: Can human faeces be used for manuring, and how should they be treated before use?

ANSWER: They should be used as little as possible. For they achieve very little in the way of manuring and they can do more harm than any other kind of manure. If, however, you want to use them the normal amount that is to be had on a farm or estate will be amply sufficient. If one knows that a given number of human beings are working on an estate, then if the human manure be added to what already comes from the animals on the estate and from other sources, clearly this will make up the maximum that can he used without doing harm. It is the greatest mistake to use human manure in the neighbourhood of large towns, because the amount supplied by a large town would suffice for an estate of gigantic size. No one would have such a crazy notion as to use on a small piece of land the human manure supplied, say by the whole of Berlin. You need only try eating some of the plants that grow in the neighbourhood of big cities. Take asparagus or any other plant which still manages to grow fairly true to its nature and upright, and you will see what happens.

Again, if you use human manure for plants that are eaten by animals, you will have the most harmful results., For then much of what is eaten and goes through the animal's organism remains at the same stage as that at which the asparagus is arrested when it goes through the human organism. In this connection, it is the grossest ignorance which has caused the greatest mischief in this field.

QUESTION: Is there any remedy for red murrain (Erysipelas) in swine?

ANSWER: This is really a veterinary question. I have never gone into the matter, as I have never been asked for advice about it, but I rather think the best thing to do is to rub in a certain dose of antimony. This is a therapeutic question as it deals with a real disease.

QUESTION: Can one combat Wild Radish, which is a bastard species, with these peppers?

ANSWER: The peppers of which I have told you only affect the plants from which they were made. Plants which arise from symbiosis or the crossing of one plant with another cannot therefore be affected by pepper made from one of them.

QUESTION: What are your views on green manuring?

ANSWER: It has its uses, especially in connection with fruit-growing. One cannot generalise on such matters. It should be used if a powerful development of the leafy part of the plant is required. For such a purpose, it can well supplement other manures.

(from the 2nd German Edition, abridged).

NOTE BY EDITOR: The following pages are notes of collective conversations with Dr. Steiner on various occasions.

After the more or less harmful effects of mineral fertilisers had been referred to, Dr. Steiner said on one occasion: In view of the obvious increase in output which people today seem to, think necessary, this kind of fertiliser might perhaps not be dispensed with. But the harmful effects upon man and animal will not fail to ensue. Some of these effects will appear only after several generations have passed. Remedies, therefore, have to be found in time. Such remedies are e.g. the leaves of fruit trees. It can be recommended, therefore, to plant fruit trees around arable land.

In another discussion, Dr. Steiner spoke of the value of horn meal (ground horns and claws of cattle) as a fertiliser. He said that horn meal was one of the very best fertilisers if mixed with farmyard manure. The horn meal should not be sharply baked; the fresh horn meal is better because of its higher content of hydrogen. Hydrogen, Dr. Steiner said, is more important for its effect on the soil even than nitrogen. The Science of today has not yet discovered the importance of hydrogen for plant growth.

(Taken from a conversation between Dr. Steiner and Dr. chem. Streicher)

Dr. Streicher complained that modern agriculture confined itself to replacing in the soil the nitrogen, phosphoric acid and potassium, just as Liebig had suggested decades ago. Great danger arises from the nitrogen being compounded with very strong acids, which cause acidity of the soil and in case of drought in summer may become disastrous.

DR. STEINER: Actually, the only healthy fertilizer is cattle, manure. This should be our starting point. In addition to this a principle has to be found whereby a healthy nitrogen content of the soil may be brought about. I cannot yet tell how this can be done; it ought to be a principle which causes the earthworms and similar animals to “work the soil through.” Besides this, certain weeds have to be discovered which should be planted in the neighbourhood of the field. It is, for example, important to plant sainfoin on rye and wheat fields—at least along the edge. This influence actually exists. You have to test rationally [“rational” is often used by Dr. Steiner in the sense of Goethe, as opposite to mere empiricism.] by experiment the fact that it is good to have horse radish planted along the edge of potato fields, and corn flowers grown among corn and to have the poppies destroyed. It is such things as these which have to be considered in studying the whole problem of fertilizers. Otherwise you arrive at abstract principles and confine yourselves to the mere neutralisation of the acidity of the soil. This would kill step by step the fertility of the soil; it would make it “deaf” (taub).

Neither should one fall into the other extreme and use only plant manure. This is without doubt unfavourable to plant growth. The only ideal fertilizer is cattle manure. Besides this much depends on plant association, e.g. leguminous plants, especially sainfoin. And care should be taken to place all herbaceous plants in a dry soil, whereas cereals need a moist soil.

But importance certainly attaches to the personal human relation of the sower to the seed (paradoxical as this may seem to the modern chemist and biologist). If you observe carefully you will find a different effect produced by the way in which the sower proceeds, whether he simply takes the seed from out of the sack and flings it down, or whether he is accustomed to shake it a little in his hand and to strew it gently on the ground. These differences are of importance for the problem of manuring and it would be good to discuss them with interested farmers for they have experience in the things which are beginning to be lost in modern agriculture. I would advise you to examine old agricultural calendars to find hints on the problem of manuring. They contain ideas which sound strange but which could be formulated in chemical terms.

[DR. STREICHER here mentioned that the critical situation of the farmer has been aggravated by the infectious diseases which decimated the livestock last year, and by the shortage of food.]

DR. STEINER: Scientists should have the courage to point out where the principal harm is done. Stable feeding, which has been unduly praised in late years, has no doubt some connection with cattle tuberculosis as well as with the fact that the yield of milk is increased for a time and so on. The state of health, however, declines of course in the subsequent generations. And it is certain that the dung which the farmer's wife gathers in her basket or collects with a shovel from the meadow is better than the dung produced in stable-feeding.

Moreover, the animal should be prevented from taking in the breath of its neighbour while feeding. This is harmful. In walking across the pastures, you will see that the animals graze at some distance from each other, because they do not want to have the breath of the neighbour near themselves. It may also happen that an animal gets some little sores and if the breath of another animal touches this wound it will undoubtedly be a cause of disease.

[DR. STREICHER indicated that there are tendencies in modern agriculture to feed livestock directly on urea and to avoid the “indirect” way of feeding them on plants; the urea is gained from synthetic nitrogen. People think that the farding bag (rumen) of the cow contains certain bacteria which decompose the urea and builds it up into albumen. If these experiments are adopted in practice by farmers, the deterioration of the livestock may be intensified.]

DR. STEINER: With experiments of this kind no true results can be attained. We have to realise that in the sphere of vitality there is always present the law of inertia, if I might call it so. The effects may not manifest themselves in this or the following, but certainly they will do so in the third generation. The workings of the vital force will meantime veil the result. If such experiments deal only with one generation, you get quite a wrong impression. In the third generation one will have effects which have their cause in the feeding of the grand-parent animals, but science will seek for the causes elsewhere. Vitality cannot be broken down at once, but only in the course of generations.

DR. STREICHER mentioned experiments of the English botanist Bottomley who succeeded in producing in peat moss a certain bacterial life., which results in decomposing the humus substance to other unknown substances, which have a stimulating effect upon plant growth. He calls them `Auximones’ and puts them on the same level as biologists do vitamins.

DR. STEINER: If these substances are used to stimulate the growth of plants destined for human food, no ill results may appear in those who eat this food. But their children will perhaps be born with hydrocephalus. The procedure shows that the plants will become hypertrophied and if they serve as food, the nerve life of the succeeding generations deteriorates. One has to realise that certain effects upon the life process do not manifest themselves until the succeeding or even the third generation. Research has to be extended as far as this.

DR. STREICHER said that experiments of a scientist in Freiburg have shown that organic compounds of quicksilver have an extraordinarily stimulating effect upon vegetable growth« People hope that in this way vegetables can be produced in a very short time. The plants exhibit signs of hypertrophy.

Dr. STEINER: In this case one should find out whether the children of those who consume them become impotent. All this has to be considered. Experiments must not be carried out in too restricted a sphere, because the vital process is something which goes on in “Time,” and only in course of years does it degenerate in its inherent forces.

Further Indications on Agriculture given by Rudolf Steiner.

DR. STEINER in answer to a question by Herr Stegemann.: In sowing oats one should take care that the soil is dry; the same applies to potatoes and root crops. [Wheat and rye on the other hand should be sown in moist soil.] As marginal plants for cereals, Dr. Steiner named deadnettle and sainfoin; they should be planted at a distance of 4½ to 5½ yards. Turnips and potatoes can be surrounded by horseradish; this need only be planted at the four corners of the field and must be removed every year.

Animal pests, Dr. Steiner said, will vanish gradually with the cultivation of new kinds of plants.

To combat wireworms, Dr. Steiner recommended the exposure of rain water to the waning moon for a fortnight. The water must be poured on the places where the wireworms occur and must moisten the ground as deep as the worms go.

In order to prevent the degeneration of the potato, he recommended that seed potatoes be cut into small pieces with one eye only in each. This process should be repeated the following year.

To a question by Count von Keyserlingk: As a remedy against rust, the field can be surrounded with a border of stinging nettles.

Manure heaps should be carried out to the field and remain there until they are wanted.

Dr. Steiner recommended that an orchard on peaty ground be treated with Kali Magnesia.

On looking at the flower garden at Whitsuntide, 1924, Dr. Steiner said: “The flowers do not seem to be quite happy here| there is too much iron in the soil.” On coming to the roses, which were not flowering well and were suffering from mildew, he recommended that very finely distributed lead should be added to the soil.

When he was questioned about the enormous number of cow horns that would surely be necessary for treating the 30,000 acres at Koberwitz, Dr. Steiner gave the astonishing reply that when all measures were fully applied, as few as 150 cow horns would suffice.

When asked about sainfoin, his instructions were to use about 2 lbs. for sowing with one acre of corn.

To combat snails and slugs, Dr. Steiner recommended that a solution of 3-in-100 seed of conifers should be sprayed. This is understood to mean: obtain the sap of these seeds by pressure, dilute it in the proportion of 3:1000 of water and spray this on to the plant beds. Dr. Steiner encouraged such an experiment. Similar experiments should be made elsewhere. On a walk through the fields at Arlesheim and Dornach, Dr. Steiner told those who were with him that to increase the vigour of Preparation 500 for use upon meadows .and fields with fruit trees the following should be done: Take some fruit and a handful of leaves of the fruit trees in question and boil them in ¼ gallon of water so as to form a kind of infusion, then add this “fruit tea” when the content of the cow horn is stirred in the pail.

In order to strengthen diseased and weak fruit trees a 4-irich deep trench can be made around the stem at a distance corresponding to the crown of the tree and into this a considerable quantity of the diluted and stirred cow horn preparation (Nr. 500) can be poured.

Referring to the silica preparation (Nr. 501), Dr. Steiner said that it might even suffice to take a lump of quartz the size of a. bean and knead it with moist soil from the ground on which the preparation later on is to be sprayed; this mixture to be filled into the horn. If little pieces of it are diluted and stirred with water, this will hold sufficient silica-radiation.

Marginal plants for vegetables in the garden: sainfoin, dandelion and horseradish.

Concerning plant diseases, Dr. Steiner said that plants actually cannot be ill because the etheric principle is always healthy. When troubles appear, they show that the environment of the plants, and especially the soil, is out of order. Thus the soil has to be treated, not the plant. As an example, he recommended the strengthening of aged trees by taking fresh soil from the roots of blackthorn (Prunus spinosa) and birch and spreading that around the roots of the trees.

One can make the weed-destroyer (pepper) more effective by burning the root-stock together with the seeds of the weed in question.

(Report by Ehrenfried Pfeiffer)

Some years before the war, when asked about the use of human faeces, Dr. Steiner gave a warning against the use of them because the circle from man to plant and from the (manured) plant back to man is too short. The way should lead from man to plant, from plant to animal, from animal to plant and then back again to man.

Peat moss as a means of soil improvement was more than once rejected by Rudolf Steiner. It is, he said, neither suitable as manure nor for improving the physical condition of the soil. We ought to add humus again' and again in every form instead: as compost, leaf mould, etc.

To a question concerning mineral manure (cf. page 39, 47 of this lecture course) Dr. Steiner replied: If one is compelled to use it, one has always to mix it up with liquid or solid stable manure. The use of liquid matter from the closet he strongly objected to; neither should this be poured on fresh compost “even if the soil is not to be used for four years, it will still contain what is harmful.”

Under trees infested with Woolly Aphis, nasturtium (Tropaeolum) should be planted in a circle.

Since Rudolf Steiner had given so many new impulses brought forth by his Spiritual Science (Anthroposophy) and bearing upon every field of knowledge and practical activity of life, he was also approached by farmers who asked him for, help with spiritual insight and practical advice concerning the difficulties, unsolved questions and problems of agriculture.

So, for instance, it was many years ago when Herr Ernst Stegemann and Count Lerchenfeld as practical farmers had received new points of view for an agriculture founded on spiritual knowledge; and afterwards in Dornach at the Goetheanum I had the privilege, together with Herr E. Pfeiffer, to carry out several experiments under the personal guidance of Dr. Steiner. We were the first to produce some of the preparations later on mentioned in this, lecture course, we exposed them to the influence of the rhythms of the seasons; and R. Steiner in spite of his tremendous overburdening did, not refuse to come to the piece of land lying far off and to test the first preparations which had become ready; he then gave help and advice for the further development of the preparing methods and their application and took things in hand himself.

An increasing number of agriculturists longed for a systematic laying down of the new principles and eventually in Spring 1924 Count Alexander Keyserlingk who had been sent by his father Count Karl Keyserlingk to Dornach succeeded in securing Dr. Steiner's promise to give a lecture course on agriculture at Koberwitz Castle (Silesia, Germany).

Dr. Steiner wrote in the Members News Sheet of 22nd June, 1927, “It has been a long cherished wish of a number of Anthroposophists working in the agricultural field to have from me a lecture course which should contain all that can be said about agriculture from the point of view of Anthroposophy. Between the 7th and 16th of June I was able to find the time to fulfil this wish. Koberwitz near Dresden, where Count Keyserlingk is running a big farming estate in an exemplary manner, was a good place for such a course. It was natural to speak of agriculture in surroundings where the audience could have around them the things and processes to which the lectures referred. It is thus that meetings of this sort receive their mood and colouring. As my subject I took the nature of the produce of agriculture and the conditions under which this can arise. The considerations aimed at practical points of view for agriculture, which should add to the results of modern practical and scientific experience the results of a study along spiritual scientific lines. Our friend, Herr Hegemann, began right from the start of the meeting to speak of the things which he connected with conversations on agriculture which I had had with him some time ago. He had as a matter of fact carried out on his farm practical experiments on that basis. He put before the audience his results and wishes. His speech was followed by a proposal of Count Keyserlingk to begin with immediate experiment according to what was to be given in the course. This aim he proposed to be to a group of professional agriculturists. Such a group was actually formed at a subsequent meeting of the farmers present. It was agreed to fake the contents of the course for the time being as hints which will not be discussed outside the circle of those attending the course; but to use these hints as the basis of experiments which are to bring the material into a form in which it can be published. This circle (community) ... was declared to be a group of members which form part of the Natural Science Section at the Goetheanum. This Section will continually indicate the direction and aims of the experimental work.”

With the impulses of this course which open unbounded prospects for the future the attending members returned to their work, strengthened with new insight, with new hopes and forces. And many a practical farmer who—through the de-spiritualising materialistic tendencies in industry had felt his profession to be a burden, could see again the deep spiritual background of just this profession and with wholly transformed view and with new love resumed his work upon animal, plant and soil.

The problems of agriculture through the influence of nourishment upon the life of each individual and that of the community have become the most central problems of our time, much more so since numerous farmers in the civilized countries have come to the conviction that the methods hitherto applied materialistically and only based upon observation of mere matter have led into a blind alley and have brought all civilized material into decay. A new foundation for agriculture is certainly a turning point important for all human history. This is what Rudolf Steiner himself felt. I shall never forget how he in his modest manner said to me on the journey back from this course; “Now we have gone another great step forward.”

Whoever expects this course to give a list of easily manufactured preparations whose application will pay in very short time, will not have any understanding of what this course means and will better put it aside without reading it. But whoever grasps that to begin with, our whole attitude to the natural kingdom needs a new orientation, since science hitherto with its materialistic-mechanistic methods had to stop short before the life phen and whoever is prepared to adopt this new attitude, will feel compelled to make a change in many important points of his farming, but he will find also that the new orientation is indispensable and—if properly carried out—yields practical success. No doubt that the changeover of the estates to the new methods must be done slowly, systematically and in organic connection, and many primary indications given in this course need practical elaborations and modifications according to the individual farm and its geographical and cultural peculiarities—but this is the case with every method. Rudolf Steiner emphasised this point often very seriously. Whoever enters into the living experience of the whole teaching will find soon what those who began as the first have already seen in all details that in reasonable and careful carrying out the most valuable practical result will be achieved.

Rudolf Steiner's wish to see Experimental Circles arise could already be fulfilled in several European countries? and in many non-European countries and continents centres have been formed where the principles of this renewed agriculture are practically applied.

In order to transmit to beginners in these methods the experiences of those who have worked for years with them and in order to secure a final success through exchange of views and ideas, to avoid unnecessary mistake and to broadcast supplementary discoveries and improvements of the “Bio-Dynamic methods of Agriculture,” the Natural Science Section at the Goetheanum and the Experimental Circles in the different countries holds meetings and informative courses*).

I have to thank those who have helped to produce this second (German) editions Herr E. Pfeiffer for his essential help in revision and correction, Frau L. Kolisko for lending her shorthand report which gave important corrections of the text and supplements of the first edition, Herr E. Vojeh for working out the index, and Fräulein E. Riese for copying the diagrams. This new edition has been supplemented by an Appendix with the summary of some agricultural conversations which Dr. Steiner had with several personalities.

Dornach, Switzerland. November, 1929.

On behalf of the Natural Science
Section at the Goetheanum.
Dr. Guenther Wachsmuth.

The concept contained in the words “social question” is something which thinking humanity has been occupied with for decades, occupied because this question has not only become urgent for the evolution of humanity, but it has become a burning question. In particular, one may say that the terrible war catastrophe which has broken over mankind during recent years has thrown its dark light on the social question in particular and its correlation to humanity's mobility in the immediate present.

As I wish to place the social enigma within the totality of history of more recent times I need to address in my upcoming lectures various things which are connected to the cause and course of the terrible catastrophe of war. In these introductory explorations, I only need to point out how, already at the war's starting point, it is clear how the social question works itself into every emotion of fear, clearly seen in those present at the beginning of the war. Certainly, a lot would have changed in 1914 when those who had encountered difficult decisions here or there, would no longer have stood under the fear of the question: ‘What will happen if the social movement becomes increasingly pertinent?’ Much which has crystallized out of this so-called war has sprung out of fear on the one hand and under complete misunderstanding of some leading personalities regarding the social question, on the other. Things would have developed in a different way if this fear and misunderstanding were not there. Then again, in the course of the war we see how personalities, who are active within the social movement, call for hope in themselves and others to activate the actual possibility towards restoring balance in the disharmony which has entered in such a shocking way into people's lives. Now, because these tragic events have infiltrated in a type of crisis, we see specific results have been left in the conquered countries: the most urgent necessity to take a stand towards the social question and to intervene in the social demands appearing in the history of this time.

Out of all of this, a thinking person viewing life at present, who wants to become familiar with present day habits, can gather how something appears in the social question which all members of humanity have been occupied with for an extremely long time. Just at this moment when, as we said, solutions to the social question are promoted in these conquered countries, something like tragedy is stored in the largest part of civilised humanity.

By looking at the spiritual efforts, at literature and anything similar which for many decades have appeared within meetings and in discussions with the intention of relating them to the social question, it appears as an immense amount of human labour in the minds of mankind. Never before has the social question been approached with such liveliness as today. Today the social demands are apparent in life itself. Despite all efforts, penetrating thoughts, despite the best will being shown in the last decades which have been instilled in capabilities, it was still insufficient to deal with the social question as it comes to the fore in its true form today when placed before the life of the human soul. Something unbelievably tragic is stored against the efforts of present day humanity. Something on which humanity has been preparing itself for such a long time, now met only those who one would like to believe had authority, but for which they were apparently quite unprepared.

For those who weren't occupied with the social question from the viewpoint of theoretical science, nor out of mere notions and not from one sided party views in the last decades, those would have discovered that the most powerful contradictions of life in just these areas always come to light. Perhaps the following is one of the most obvious contradictions in the areas of social life which has come forward. Much has been heard in discussion, much can be read by people whose lives are orientated towards the modern social movement. When within the midst of a discussion, standing within the will of a modern workforce itself one always has the feeling: Yes, here various things are discussed regarding many questions and various life forces. There is an attempt to give one or the other impulse a direction. However, in what one could call social will is something completely different to what is spoken about. Regarding any kind of event in life, no can one come to a clearer feeling than this: a more or less greater role is played by the subconscious, undeclared elements than what comes to the fore through apparently clear concepts delivered in a sober discussion. Here is the point where one can find the connection and not doubt the attempt in approaching the social question from a specific point of view.

Here in Zurich and in other Swiss towns I have often spoken about the question of spiritual science. From the standpoint of spiritual scientific research, I have also approached the social question for decades. If you hear about people who consider themselves practical you can certainly doubt that a convincing result will solve some relevant question out of simple spiritual research. Only contradiction, which I have pointed out in the striving within social life, drives away this doubt. One sees how important personalities within the social movement smile when the argument turns to people's desire to find a solution for the social question out of this or that spiritual effort; they smile because for them it is an ideology, a grey theory. Out of thoughts, out of mere spiritual life, so they think, nothing can be attributed towards the burning social question of the present. However, if you look more closely then it becomes obvious how the actual nerve, the actual foundation for the modern-day proletarian movement does not lie in what they are talking about, but it lies in their thoughts.

The modern proletarian movement is, perhaps like no other similar movement in the world—when one looks more closely it strikes you in the most imminent way—a movement born out of thoughts. This I don't say purely out of consideration. If I'm permitted to add a personal remark it would be this: For years I have taught in an educational school among the most varied branches of proletarian workers. I learnt to know what lives and strives in the souls of the modern proletarian worker. From this I came to recognise what lived in the labour unions in the most varied occupations and range of professions. Thus, not only from the point of view of theoretic consideration like in a clever play of words do I want to express it, but as the result of a real experience in life. Whosoever—this is so seldom the case in leading intellectuals—has learnt to know the modern worker's movement, where it is carried by the workers, will know what a wonderful phenomenon this is, how a certain direction of thought, a certain stream of thought has taken hold of these souls. It is this which makes it so difficult today to take a position regarding the social question, because such a small possibility exists for the understanding, the mutual understanding of the classes. The middle class has difficulty in placing themselves into the souls of the proletarians, they can hardly understand how it came about, one could call it, that a still unknown mind with an elementary intelligence could find a place such as this—be as it may towards this content—that one can have human thought develop the highest measure for an applied system, like the philosophy of Karl Marx.

Certainly, the philosophy of Karl Marx can be accepted by one and rejected by another, perhaps on the same grounds as the other. It may well be revised later for those observing social life after the death of Marx and his friend Engels. I do not wish to speak about the content of this philosophy at all. The most important for me is the fact presented: there worked a forceful thought impulse within the workforce, within the proletarian world. Added to this, one can express it in the following way: a practical movement, a pure philosophy of life with universal human claims has never stood nearly as totally alone based on a purely scientific thought as this modern proletarian movement. It is to some extent the first of its kind of movement in the world based purely on a scientific basis. Nevertheless, if all of this is considered—I've already indicated it—what the modern proletarian expresses about his personal thoughts, desires and experiences seem hardly important when considered through a penetrating examination of life.

Many people have fiercely shown how this modern proletarian social movement originated from the evolution of humanity during the last few centuries. Vehemently it was shown how the development of modern technology in particular, through the development of the modern nature of machines, actually created the proletariat in the modern sense; how through even the forceful scientific turnaround of the new time, it created the social question. Other sharp criticisms about the origin of the social question I do not wish to repeat. However, it seems important to me to characterize the present contradictions in this modern proletarian movement. Certainly, it is important that without the enormous turnaround, without the technical revolution of the new age the modern social movement could not have come to expression to such an extent. However intensively as its origins are claimed out of purely scientific impulses, out of economic powers, out of class clashes and out of class struggles, what is obvious in social life today does not stand as coming from mere scientific oppositions, mere scientific forces if considered through penetrating soul observations of the modern proletariat. Those who are familiar with a spiritual scientific approach who considers all that is human, the refinements and intimacies of soul life, even though these carriers of the soul life are often not conscious, for them it is clear that nothing which is technically or scientifically created has an importance in today's social question but that the facts are important which relate to the entirely different interrelationships in life where some people are involved with machines in the realm of big capitalist enterprises. Through this placement something is awakened in these people that are not directly related to what surrounds them and the economic situation in which they are involved. What is awakened in them is far more connected to the deepest lifetime habits of modern humanity.

If history is only considered in this way, as it wants to do now again in the newer time out of social science which says results follow from what went before—processes always refer to earlier causes—it indicates that forces of change and evolution are not considered as being alive in reality, but are being seen as mere cause and effect—one could call it the sober, arid connection of cause and effect expressed at certain points of its revolutionary development.

Take a single example in human development. For my sake let's take, if we may call it ‘successive’ development, what happens between birth and the first change of teeth. An enormous transformation takes place in the human body. Just observe what develops during this period of life. There is no obvious straight line connecting cause and effect. Then again, we can consider what happens between the seventh and fourteenth years, fifteen years and so on, in order to follow a straight line of development from cause to effect. Now again a revolutionary formation in the human body takes place towards adolescence. These changes are less obvious later but they are there. Just like such things happen which ruin the repetition of comfortable but inaccurate claims that Nature makes no jumps, jumps that take place in single organisms, it does appear in the historical evolution of humanity. In the time between the middle of the 14th and 15th centuries up to today you have quite powerful evolutionary processes taking place in human consciousness itself.

Just as a single human organism becomes something different after puberty than in the specific direction it had been going before, just so the human social organism has become something different after the elementary, underlying aspects have been validated by not merely following the straight line of cause and effect. Whoever wishes to observe history knows that before present time, humanity reacted instinctively but that now we enter our present time in full consciousness, it must be approached with full awareness. Due to this the social movement takes on a particular characteristic, expressed in a word which does not characterise it intensively enough: proletarian class consciousness. With this expression ‘proletarian class consciousness’ one should take less into account that it points to a necessary battle where proletarians get mixed up with other classes but rather much more that the social instincts which lived in the souls of the proletarians earlier, have now been transformed into a social awareness. Earlier, class instinct existed. Now the basis of the social movement is class consciousness.

This class consciousness, one could say, is only superficially indicated when one takes the wording: proletarian class consciousness. What is hidden in this expression ‘proletarian class consciousness’ is something quite different. It could be said—when one wants to briefly characterise this serious fact—within the relationships of historical occupations, for example expressed in the handwork or other crafts of olden days, lies specific social instincts which shone through human souls and worked out of human souls. These instincts enabled a process to be brought about between the way people thought, felt and acted, what they treasured for their honour, their joy and their aesthetic needs. This work itself gave something to the people.

When people were introduced to machines, when they entered into the totally impersonal mechanism of modern capitalism, it was no longer clearly transparent how the remuneration for the human performance was evaluated but monetary increase of capital became most important, so people were driven on the one side by the power of machines and on the other side into modern capitalistic economic regulations, having been torn out of their present day relationship to the world and life which gave them something personal, something towards personal joy, personal honour and personal will impulses. They were to some extent placed on the pinnacle of the personal beside the machine, within the purely objective, impersonal circulation of goods and capital, which they did not basically care for on a human personal level. However, the human soul always strives for fulfilment, wants to unfold its entire circumference. The workers, torn from their characterised other relationships in life, were torn loose from a full human life and were urged to reflect about human dignity, urged to recreate human dignity.

So, hidden behind what we called proletarian class consciousness in modern history's evolution was actually a dawning, a brightening up of a self-created human consciousness out of the souls of the people. Steering the consciousness gave rise to the question: What am I as a human being? What meaning do I have as a human being in the world?—Experiencing this gave the opportunity to proletarians while being positioned beside machines denying humanity, next to capital denying humanity.

I do still believe that the entire consideration of the social question is placed on another basis if one thinks that, while the rest of humanity more or less out of the context of their lives were not brought out of old instincts as radically and revolutionarily and drawn into the modern consciousness, the modern proletarian radically entered into a conscious understanding of themselves, whereas before they had been driven by instincts and human dignity for individuals in the community.

The arrival of consciousness in the soul of proletarians is connected to all kinds of other things which appeared earlier in human evolution. Its arrival coincides with certain steps in human thought, with certain steps in human development. Basically, the historical development of humanity is poorly understood. The historical development of humanity is basically always approached from one or other party. Whoever considers humanity's development objectively often sees it as completely different from how statements are made about this development. One can also say that whoever looks at what presently enjoys the most authority today, namely science, knows, anything proven with absolute objectivity has developed out of a previous element and clearly carries indications of its origin which can in turn take on other forms. If you look at science and its brilliant methods, at its endless conscientious research, so suitable at penetrating the phenomena of nature, then you see that the most pervasive statement it has to admit to is that basically it is hardly appropriate for understanding the deepest, most intimate human feelings and experiences, that it has little to say about actual concerns of the human being when he or she turns their gaze to self-knowledge and mindfulness. Science itself has also to some extent torn itself away from human beings. It no longer carries a personal character and it no longer speaks about the spiritual, super-sensory or eternal in human beings. If science does mention it then it is clearly shown as is the fashion today, that it neither has the corresponding methods nor the corresponding ways to research it.

One can look back to a time when the form of science within the development of humanity was fully integrated in the religious conception of life, with religious experience and scientific observation. The two separated. What was once united split around the same time when this revolution towards objectivity started, the time of machines, when modern capitalism found expression. At the time of this radical scientific change it was also the time religious evolution came to a standstill and did not want to cooperate with scientific developments. At the time Giordano Bruno became criticized over Galileo Galilei (heliocentrism), remnants remained of a withdrawal from intimate human experiences and feelings which needed expression about nature and the world as such. Humanity lost the belief that knowledge could be penetrated with a religious glow, with religious warmth. Today one is proud that science can remain free from all that is blameworthy in religion. During this time when science freed itself more and more from religion, wanting to become free of the spirit, into this time came the development of the proletarian consciousness, the apprehension of the human consciousness through the Proletariat.

Proletarianism penetrated into modern thinking, into modern intelligence, which can be grasped by human intelligence. It founded a science which no longer had the impact to capture and fulfil the whole human being. This resulted in the modern Proletariat having a specific form. The spiritual awareness of humanity, the spiritual consciousness of earlier classes which existed in earlier times lost the impact and human circumstances more or less were delivered to abstract science. Thus, the Proletarians in this new time saw science in opposition to their souls, science which did not instil trust that something can come out of it as a most true, inner spiritual reality living in the outer sensory, scientific activity. This was the type of science the Proletarian confronted, was set against. It lived into human beings. From the spiritual evolutionary basis, something rose up and today appears as a naturalness, as an absolute truth, which can only be recognised in its true nature if you have the ability to see what is happening in the soul of a person. An observer with deeper insight is moved the most by the manner and way which the modern Proletarian talk about actual spiritual affairs, about customs, morality, art, religion, even about science within evolution, that all of this is included by expressions of ideals. This is the most moving. In particular, it is most moving to know that the modern Proletarian clearly believes that everything, from thought, artistic creativity and religious experience actually arises out of the human soul as a falsely created image, an ideology. The actual reality is however scientific battles, economic causes; they represent reality. The reflection within the soul is human evolution, considered as ideological. At least this throws an impulse back into the pure materialistic reality of economic events. Even though it works back on economic events, it still has had its origins developed out of economic events.

This statement about spiritual life living in the modern proletarian question was something far more real than what is thought. Why have art, customs, morality, religion and the spiritual life of the modern Proletarian become an ideology? Because earlier ruling circles presented a science which no longer wanted to uphold a living relationship with the actual spiritual world, a science which no longer pointed to an impulse directed at actual spirituality. Such a science can at most lead to abstract concepts of natural laws. It can lead to nothing other than seeing the spiritual as an ideology. It produces methods which are only suitable on the one side for the purely objective, non-human nature and within human life only as economic events. When the modern proletarian had to take over this direction of science, his gaze was as if conquered by a mighty suggestive power which can only be linked to such a science; the economic life. He now started to believe that this economic life could be the only reality because for him from a civil class, science becomes the directive as the only truth for his economic life.

This was an unbelievably critical element because this gave the proletarian movement its actual characteristic impulse. One can see how old instincts within this proletarian movement were still present, even in the last decades of the 19th Century. One still finds in some proletarian programs such items of discussion on the awareness of man's worth, the preoccupation of rights leading to such real worthiness. Since the nineties we see under the influence of this impulse which I've just mentioned, how the Proletarians and their learned advocate glances appear as a powerful persuasive force linked to economic life. They no longer believed a spiritual or soul element from elsewhere needed to enter as an impetus into the realm of the social movement. They believed that only through the development of the un-spiritual, economic life void of soul could a sense of man's worth be brought about. They aimed at revolutionizing economic life to such a degree that all the harm resulting from egoism of single workers in private enterprise would be taken from them and single employers doing justice to the demands of human worth from the side of the employees made impossible. Thus, the Proletarians considered the only salvation to be the transfer of all private property towards a means of production in a communal business or else a common ownership. In addition, this depended basically upon people deviating their gaze from any spiritual or soul elements, regarding the spiritual as mere ideology when there was a purely scientific method, firmly established, which could be steered towards a pure economic process.

A very peculiar fact now transpired, showing how many contradictions lay in this modern proletarian movement. The modern Proletarian believed that the economy itself had to develop in such a way as to finally become a full human right. To acquire human rights as it appeared to him, was what he fought for. However, within his aspiration something appeared which could never have originated if it came only out of economic life. This is an important, penetrating fact of discourse at the centre of various forms of the social question arising from life's necessities of present day humanity which was believed to have come out of economic life itself, but which did not originate from economic life but developed much more during the gradual evolution of the old serfdom of bodily possession during the feudal times leading up to the modern proletarian worker. Just as the circulation of goods, circulation of money, the nature of capital, possession, the nature of land and grounds and so on has developed something out of modern life which cannot be expressed clearly by the modern Proletarian, it is nevertheless clearly experienced as the actual foundation of social will. It is like this: the modern capitalistic economic order basically only knows about its goods within its areas of circulation. It knows about building wealth of goods within the economic organism. It is within the capitalistic organism of the newer age where it has become goods, but the Proletariat feels it may not be goods. However, if he focuses scientifically on economic life he can't say anything but: “It is goods.” That is in other words his own labour.

When a person realizes where the basic impulse of the social movement comes from, with his subconscious experiences through his instincts as a modern Proletariat, a disgust grows towards this idea that labour is sold to the employee just like goods, this disgust grows because his labour is dependent on supply and demand, it comes down to disgust for the labour commodity as the actual basic impulse of the modern social movement, when this is impartially considered and not penetrated and radically spoken about adequately as socialistic theories then the point is reached which gives rise to the urgent, nay burning question regarding the social movement.

In olden times, there were slaves. An entire person was sold as goods. In serfdom, a little less of a person was sold, but still nearly the whole person. Capital became the power which made people a form of goods, namely labour. A method needs to be found for dividing the rest of the circulation of goods with labour as goods. Humanity will only realize what hides behind this fact when the economy is not considered through persuasion but through quite another method, when applied to the human being itself, is understood, not out of economy but quite something different flowing in a way which distances the human worker away from the nature of goods. People must realise—and here spiritual scientific research is available as a basis—that the belief is wrong that through the consideration of only the economic system which only fits the scientific method, the way can be found of how the labour of individuals can become members of the social organism. Only when the understanding is reached that labour belongs to the economic system as much as processes in the lung-, heart- and circulatory systems are the same as in the nerves and head system, then one is on the same track. The nervous system and senses centralised in the head is an independent member of the human organism. The lung and heart system are also independent members. Similarly, with the digestive system. These things can be studied more precisely in my book Riddles of the Soul. It is characteristic of the human organism that through their correct development and processes they are not centralised but exist beside one another and work freely together. If one can't understand the human organism in this all-inclusive, penetrating way, then one could through science, which has not been renewed and needs spiritual science to reform it, not understand the social organism correctly. Today it is believed that the human organism is centralised, while it is in fact threefold.

In the same way, the social organism is threefold. Today the powerful persuasion considered as the economic system, is only one member. Another member which needs to come out of this is an understanding of the function of human labour in the entire structure of the social organism. The two systems need to exist side by side. The attribute linked to goods by the labour force is wrongly given by modern thinking. This narrow minded, modern thinking which needs to place the third independent member into the social organism, the spiritual life, is made into a mere ideology. The theoretical view that spirituality is mere ideology, is the most harmless. The important element is that people who have the point of view that the spirit is not rooted at the base of all things in reality, but that it's only an ideology, can't be the real spiritual impulse. Such a person has no interest in his spiritual life allocating his true role in the world. By examining the more modern necessities of life in the proletarian consciousness then one finds no possible insight in the three aspects of the social organism. It was lost to them. Nationalization was striven for because it was believed to be the only social organization which could conquer everything. Spiritual scientific awareness may reveal a wider horizon as even today in this burning time of appointed leaders it is often given with reference to the social question. It needs to be pointed out that what is, is really needed is the necessity to renew thinking, the necessity to not only develop a scientific way of observing social life which is being substituted by traditional science but that it is necessary to recreate a science, a new way of thinking which will become a reality in the social organism, in human consciousness. This will have to lead to so much unhappiness in modern times being removed from consciousness. Those who do not work theoretically but out of life itself, as I believe they have done so during this hour, are also dispatched and made harmless by those who call themselves practical, by saying: ‘Oh, from such theoretical things nothing advantageous comes into the world.’ These people who practice practicality for life, who are the real members of abstractions, these people whose practice is nothing other than the limitation of their senses by the narrowest boundaries, these have caused a multitude of bad luck and catastrophes lately. If they are able to economise further in all party directions, misfortunes will not come to an end but will spread out immensely. The real life-practitioners must maintain their proper positions in the public sphere and speak about developmental possibilities in the spatial and temporal social organism as in the case of every single human being. These real life-practitioners who speak out of a deeper reality are the ones upon whom we may depend. They are the ones who do not need to disbelieve their own knowledge. However, as practical people, also socialistic life practitioners, they see their suffering and their regret on the other side with only the belief that it will lead nowhere else other than to the depletion of life. Those who as life practitioners want to work out of the spirit, strive out of reality towards viable reality.

Regarding the sense in which solutions can be found to the question I attempted out of newer habits of today and revealing their true form, how attempts at finding solutions could be proven on the basis of an examination of the reality of social life and the community's structure of humanity, I will allow myself to speak about, the day after tomorrow.

With reference to my presentations I would like to ask you to take these four lectures as a unit. This means the content of one lecture is not to be taken as independent and judged this way. The relative theme is so comprehensive that it can only be manageable by doing a number of lectures.

In today's lecture I would like to make a provisional outline for possible solving techniques distilled from actual knowledge of the being of the social organism, of such solution possibilities for the social question which do not come out of some one-sided remark about some or other class, some or other state, but coming from appropriate reality, coming from the properly observed evolutionary forces of humanity and in particular those evolutionary forces which are the most pronounced at present and valid for the near future of humanity. If one tries to find a solution for the social question through the aspirations or the demands of a state, of a class, out of some part of the social organism, then one does nothing other than undermine the other elements of the social organism by calling on yet another class which in some way or other restrict development or healthy living conditions.

For our time here, it is relevant to reveal and substantiate my indications of truths in the following lectures. In modern life, or it could be called the modern social organism, quite a particular form is experienced through expressions characteristic of modern life, through technology, through the technical operation of economic life and its relationships and through the capitalistic process which organises this economic enterprise. Not necessarily only those with a conscious focus observe this modern technology and modern capitalism as they were introduced into life, but their focus was on the more or less conscious or the more or less instinctive, actively organised forces within the social structure of the human community.

The characteristic, particular form of the social question coming to the fore in modern times can be expressed as follows: economic life supported by technology and modern capitalism have worked in a natural self-evident way and brought order into the modern community. Besides this claim for human awareness towards technology and capitalism, the awareness was deflected by other branches, other spheres of the social organism, where awareness should have become as necessary as the health of the social organism as it was with the economic field.

Perhaps I may use a comparison to clearly communicate what I could call the nerve of a comprehensive, many-sided observation of the social question. Please consider that with a comparison I don't mean anything other than a support of human understanding in order to orientate it towards the healing of the social question. Whoever wants to consider what we know as the most complicated organism—that of the human being—needs to pay attention to the existence of three operative systems working side by side in the human form. These three cooperative systems can be characterised in the following way. One could say in the human, natural organism a system works incorporating the nerves and senses. One could call the most important member of this system where the nerves and senses are centralized, the head organisation.

As to the second member of the human organism, in order to develop a real understanding of this organism it is necessary to consider what I would like to call the rhythmic system, in relationship with breathing, blood circulation and everything expressed as rhythmic processes. As a third system, one can recognise all the organs whose actions relate to metabolism. In these three systems are the combined effects, when they interact in a healthy way, of all that is contained in the human organism. I have tried, in full agreement with all the research science has claimed, to characterise this threefold aspect of the human being as an outline in my book Riddles of the Soul I am clear about all the aspects to be introduced in the future by biology, physiology and science regarding the human organism which will see how this threefold head-, circulation-, (or chest system) and digestive systems are maintained—that these members each work in a particular independent way which indicates it is not an complete centralisation of the organism. These three systems each have a particular relationship to the outer world; the head system through the senses, the circulation or rhythmic system through breathing and the digestive system through the nutritional organs. In relation to scientific methods we have not progressed as far as these ideas I'm indicating here, out of spiritual scientific foundations for natural science as I've tried to use, in order to present it in scientific circles as a general statement and in a way, make it desirable for the evolution of knowledge. This means however that our thinking habits, the entire way we imagine the world to be has not completely been adjusted to the example of the human organism as it is presented in its natural processes. In a way one could say yes, science can wait, they may gradually rush to their ideals, they will soon come to the view that such observations are their own. However, regarding the examination and especially the processes of the social organism, one can't wait. Not with some or other expert but for every human soul—because every human soul shares in the work of the social organism—at least must take part in the work of the social organism—at least by an instinctive knowledge of the necessities of this social organism. Healthy thought and experience, a healthy will and desire in relation to the expression of the social order can only develop when people—whether more or less instinctive—can understand that this social organism, if it is to be healthy, must be a natural threefold organism.

Now I am at the point where I need to be very careful not to be misunderstood. Since Schäffle wrote a book about the social organism, there have been repeated attempts at establishing an analogy between a natural organization, let's say an organisation of people, and on the other side, a human community as such. So many efforts have been made to determine the cell of the social organism, where the cell structure exists, what the tissues could be and so on! Recently a book appeared by Aleray, Weltmutation (mutation of the world), in which certain scientific facts and scientific laws are simply transferred on to, what they call, the social organization. With all these analogy games, nothing relates to what we are considering here. Those who at the end of this lecture could say: ‘Oh, here we have yet again such a game of analogy between the natural organism and the social organism’—would prove that the real spirit within the meaning has not been penetrated by the listener. This I don't want—some or other scientific facts adjusted as truth and transplanted on to the social organisation. What I want is for human thinking, human feeling to learn through observation of the natural organism that this method, this way of sensing can in turn be applied to the social organization. When you simply take the belief you learnt about natural organisms and apply that to social organism, like Schäffle has done, like others have done too, likewise with Weltmutation then it shows you are unwilling to develop a capability to consider the social organism as independent, to examine it as such, to research it according to its own laws, just as you do with natural organisms. In order for you to understand me I have made this comparison with a natural organism. The very moment you continue, like the researcher in nature, objectively meeting the natural organism, as you would place yourself before the independence of the social organism in order to learn about its laws, in that moment the game of analogy regarding the earnestness of your observation, will stop.

I want to call your attention now to how this play of analogies must come to an end. The examination of the social organism—here it involves something becoming, something which must come into existence first—in as far as it must be healthy, leads to the three members of this social organism, but they both can only be recognised as independent as such, when considered objectively. On the one side, you can distinguish three members of the human organism, on the other side the objective, independent members of the social organism. If you look for analogies, then you most likely will experience the following. You would say that this human head- or nerve-system relates to human spiritual life with its spiritual abilities; the circulatory system rules the relation with this spiritual system with the crudest system, and the materialistic system with the digestive system. The digestive system could be considered through certain fundamental experiences as the crudest of systems in the human organism. What then, if you continued the game of analogy, would be the next thing? The next thing would be to say the social organism divides into three branches.

Spiritual life develops within a person. That is one member. Within a person his actual political life develops too—we will speak about this division of branches afterwards—and also his economic or business life develops within. You could, if you wanted to play the analogy game, believe that spiritual life as in spiritual culture in the social organism is subject to the same kind of laws which allow a comparison with the laws in the nervous and sense systems. The system considered as unrefined, the most materialistic, the digestive system, can in the game of analogy probably be compared with what one calls the crude system of material business life. Whoever can consider things for themselves and stay far away from the mere game of analogy will know that in reality, things are actually reversed in comparison with what comes out of mere analogy. See, the social organism lies opposite the economic production and consumption, opposite the economic circulation of goods at the basis of life's rules, just like the natural human organism's laws are at the foundation of the nerves- and sense-life, which is its spiritual system. Certainly the life of public law, the actual political life, life which is often too all-encompassing, which can be described as the actual civil life, allows itself to be between the two systems of the digestive and the nerve-sense systems where the rhythmic system lies, the regulating system of the breathing and heart. Only by comparing how the human organism has, between its digestive and nerve-systems the central circulation or rhythmic systems, so between the public rights and the economic system stand the actual life of spiritual culture. This life of spiritual culture, this spiritual life of the social organism has no laws which can be thought of as analogous to laws of human talents, laws of human sense and nerve existence but the spiritual life in the social organism has laws which can only be compared with laws in the crudest system, the metabolic system.

This leads to an objective observation of the social organism. Regarding this particular point the assumption must be clear in order for no misunderstanding to arise in a belief that the physiological or biological elements are simply transferred on to the social organism. The social organism must be considered as an independent organism throughout for its success towards recovery to take place. In various areas in central and eastern Europe the word “socializing” is heard. This socializing will not become a healing process but a fake process in the social organism, perhaps even a disturbing process if the human heart, the soul does not have insight with instinctive knowledge of the necessity for a threefoldness in the social organism. This social organism has in every case, if it is to work in a healthy way, three members. The first member, to begin with from the one side—one could understandably also start on the side of the spiritual life but for now we will start on the economic side as this obviously controls the rest of life through modern technology in modern capitalism—therefore, the first member of the social organism as business life, or economic life, will be looked at. This economic life, we will partly today and partly in the course of these lectures see it has to be an independent member within the social organism just as in comparison, the nerve- sense system is relatively independent in the human organism. Our economic life is connected to all that takes place in the production, circulation and consumption of goods. With everything connected to these three things, economy is linked. We will soon consider its characteristics in order to understand it more closely.

As a second member of the social organism we observe the life of public law, the actual political life, for the purposes of the old constitutional state it could be called the actual life of the state. Meanwhile economic life involves the business of everything which the human being brings out of nature as his own production, because the economic life involves the circulation and consumption of goods, so this second member of the social organism is involved with everything with a human foundation with its relationships of people with people. This I ask you to consider comprehensively, because it is important for knowledge of the members of the social organism to know the difference between public laws which relate to the foundation of one human being to another, while in the economic system it involves the production, circulation and consumption of goods. One must be able to distinguish between the natural human system in relation to the lungs and outer air, the processing of this outer air, how this differs from the manner and way nourishment is transformed in the third natural system within the human being.

As a third member which must be placed independently from the others, there has to be a distinction from everything in the social order which involved spiritual life. More precisely the name ‘spiritual culture’ does not cover everything connected to spiritual life; it should be everything flowing into the social organism which depends on the natural gift of individuals, the natural spiritual and physical talents coming from single individuals. Similar to the first system, the economic system which needs to exist for humanity to relates and regulates the outer world, the second system which must exist in the social organism, relates to everything happening between one person and another; there we have the third system. In order for this third system to have a name it will be called the spiritual system, involved with everything which is created out of the single human individuality and needing to be incorporated into the social organism.

Even as true as it is that modern technology and modern capitalism have given a stamp to our modern community life, it actually is so necessary for the wounds of humanity beaten from this side to be healed and thus enable people and communities to develop the right relationship to the threefold social order I am characterizing here.

Economic life has in our modern time taken on particular forms. It has so to speak penetrated human life with its own rules. Both the other members of the social organism are in the position to bring their own independent laws in the right way into this social organism. For them it is necessary that people out of independence and from a point of awareness carry out the social membership, each in its place, where it is positioned. For the purpose of finding solutions to the social question which we are considering, every single person has a social task in the present and near future. The first member of the social organism, the economic life, rests primarily on a natural background. Just as each individual depends for his learning and his education on the talents of his spiritual and physical organs, on those gifts and talents given to him, likewise economic life depends on certain natural foundations. This natural basis gives economic life—and through this the totality of the social organism—its character. However, these natural foundations are there without having to be discovered through some social organisation, some or other socializing of its original form. This needs consideration. Just as with the education of humanity the various gifts they have need consideration, in natural bodily and spiritual abilities, so every attempt at socializing community living by giving it an economic form as well, need consideration out of its natural foundations. All circulation of goods and also all human labour and any spiritual cultural life lie at the foundation of the first elementary origins chained by human beings to a particular part of nature. Here one needs to really think about the social organism's relationship with the natural foundation, for instance as in individuals in regard to learning and education, in relation to their gifts in thinking. This can be made clear by taking extreme examples.

For instance, you can imagine how in various parts on earth, locally produced bananas present a source of nourishment, how bananas qualify in the community to be displaced from their point of origin and be made into a consumable product at a specific destination. Compare the human labour involved in making bananas into consumables for the community with the work of making wheat into a consumable product in the vicinity of Central Europe, it is clear the work needed for the bananas, modestly calculated, is three hundred times less. The work necessary to make the wheat consumable is, lightly calculated, three hundred times bigger.

This is indeed an extreme example. Such differences regarding the measure of work necessary in relation to its natural origin exist in our production line also, under the production line which is represented in some or other social organism in Europe. Not as radical a difference as between bananas and wheat, but the differences are there. Just as the economic organism is founded on the relationship between human beings and their consumption of nature, the measure of the work talents in reality dependent on the natural origin, so the being of a person is dependent on his natural physical or spiritual gifts. One can make a comparison. In Germany, in the region of middle profit abilities, the sowing of wheat has a crop return of seven to eight times at the harvest. In Chile this becomes twelve times, in north Mexico seventeen times and in Peru twenty times, south Mexico twenty-five times up to thirty-five times. For different regions of the earth the return in wheat productivity is in relation to the earth, to the yield of the earth. This actually affects the measure of labour needed to bring the wheat in an appropriate manner into the economic life.

Just as one can make such data for the measure of labour needed to process the wheat into a consumable item in different regions, so comparisons can be made for the labour needed in the most varied production lines, raw materials with different production lines made consumable within the economic sphere of a social organism.

This whole interconnected being found in the preliminary processes at the beginning of the relation of people to nature, which continue in every human action by transforming products of nature into consumables for the community, all these processes which are involved as a whole from the natural foundations up to consumables, all these processes, and only these, are included in a healthy social organism as a pure economic member of the social organization. This economic member of the social organisation must be—I will in the course of the lectures give more details with proof—with just such an independence be positioned in the whole social organism as the human head organisation stands in relation to the entire human organism.

Independently standing beside the economic system another system must exist and that is the relationship between one person and another. Living within the purely economic system is the relationship which needs to be established between people and objective goods. A healthy social life needs to develop as a second member of the social organism which regulates everything in relationships between one person and another.

People have neglected achieving the correct difference between the two members of the social organism through the hypnotic belief that modern technology and ancient thinking habits in modern times are the economic forces and processes necessary, either for single regions or in the radical social sense, which can be transformed into the totality of economic life, applied to what I have here as the second member, as the actual state region in a narrower sense, as the region of public law, as the area of relationships between one person to the other.

This region of the state can only then develop in a healthy way when the conflicting streams of development cut in, which are considered by some as correct. Many people believe that healing the social organism is only achievable through nationalization as much as possible; with the greatest degree of association with nationalism—but it involves far more the necessity for complete autonomy, acknowledged and applied to all the separate branches of life, which must step in between economic life—with all its laws on the one side—and the narrower life of the state on the other side—again with its own laws.

I can well imagine how many people there are who say: ‘For Heavens' sake, these things are becoming so complicated! Things which are brought together out of necessities for new developments are now to be separated from one another by various systems!’ Whoever speaks in this way, unable to consider origins developing in a natural way, would even refuse to understand that the human organism can only be alive as a result of the relative autonomy of the rhythmic life, the vital breathing and hart in the breast, concentrated, centralized in the breathing and in the heart system. The entire human organism is dependent on such systems being closed in and yet working together. The health of the social organism depends on the economic life having its own laws, that the legal life, the life of public law and public security, everything fitting the narrower description of political, has its own laws and its own proficiencies. Only then will both these spheres work in the right way, in the social organism. May it come about with some, who believe certain requirements have finally been accomplished, while others may well raise a shoulder, that it can eventually be said: no healing in the central management of the social organism, as within a party, can happen without cooperation between economic life and political life. If this does happen we will see it is valid for the third member as well. It is necessary nonetheless, that just as the circulatory system has its own lungs, just as the nerve-sense system has its own brain system, so in a single management system its own management, an autonomous replacement system or party or other representation is there for the economic and political or public legal systems, and then again for the third domain, an autonomous area for spiritual life.

These three spheres have a valid autonomy in a healthy organism and relate to one another through their independent representative, enabling this mutual relationship between the three members of the social organism. This corresponds to them in the same way as the independent relationship is produced by the three members of the natural human organism. It turns out that essentially those representations and administrations produced out of the economic members of the organism, that these essentially work towards the economic organism building an associated foundation for itself, a cooperative, trade unionism, but in a higher form. This cooperative trade unionism will only work with the laws of production, work with the circulation and consumption of goods. This is what creates the foundation, builds the content for the economic member of the social organism. It will depend on the vitality of association. It will depend on those who have given the necessary inequality produced from natural foundations, to balance it out. I have pointed out how many variations exist in the amount of human labour needed according to different relationship of the natural source of a member's production. All this enters into an unnatural social organization, when such cooperation is achieved as it has been up to now, of nature, human labour and capital. In a most chaotic way nature, human labour and capital are infused into a unified state or remain outside lawlessly, outside this unitary state. Even though the life of spiritual culture which is dependent on people's physical and spiritual talents for their expression, so also the chosen public and political laws of life must be acknowledged for their need to develop an independent life for themselves, such as the economic system.

I could, to make myself better understood as far as it is needed today, include the following. Besides other foundations out of which we live today, there is also a surfacing out of mankind's deep, natural foundations for a renewal of the social organism, in which can be heard the three words: brotherhood, equality, freedom. Whoever is unprejudiced towards a healthy human experience for all that is really human, will not feel anything but the deepest sympathy and deepest understanding for the meaning in the words, brotherhood, equality, and freedom. Nevertheless, I know of extraordinary thinkers, deep astute thinkers who repeatedly in the course of the 19th Century took the trouble to show how impossible it is to make a united social organism comprising brotherhood, equality and freedom, a reality. An astute Hungarian searched for proof that these three things, but when they are realized, when they penetrate human social structure, they will contradict themselves. Shrewdly he referred to the example of how impossible it is to instil equality into social life because every human being also wants the necessity for freedom to be valid. He found these three ideals to be contradictory. Interestingly, one can't but agree that there is a contradiction and one can't but sympathise out of a general human experience regarding these three ideals. Why these?

Because as soon as the true sense of these three ideals become clear, it will be recognised as necessarily a threefold social organism. The three members should not be an abstract, theoretical parliament or some unit assembled and centralized, they should be living reality and through their lively activity side by side be brought together in a unit. When these three members are independent they contradict one another in a certain way, just like the metabolic system is at variance with the head and rhythmic systems. However, in life, contradictions are just what work together in a unit. Through an understanding of life one is able to figure out the real gesture of the social organism. A realization will arise that brotherliness must be active in order for cooperation within economic life, where rules are needed among one another regarding particulars, are to be created in this first social member. In the second member of public law where it deals with the relationship of one person to another, only in as far as a human being is a person, it works with the activation of the idea of equality. In the spiritual sphere, where again it has to exist independently in the social organism, it deals with the idea of freedom. Now suddenly the three golden ideals gain their real value when it is known that they may not reach success through an inter-scrambled mixture but that they are orientated according to laws within the threefold organism in which each single one of the three members can achieve its applicable ideal of freedom, equality and brotherhood.

Today I can only propose the structure of the social organism in the form of a sketch. In the following lectures, I will substantiate and prove each one individually. Adding to what has been said is a third member of a healthy social organism with everything arising out of the human individuality, on the foundation of freedom and based on the physical and spiritual gifts of individuals. Here again an area is touched which causes quiet shudders when things are truthfully defined. To continue with this healthy organism, a third area is added which encompasses everything which relates to the religious life of humanity, everything related to schools and education in the widest sense which includes spiritual life, the practice of art and so on. While I only want to mention this today, in the next lectures I will create an extensive foundation regarding everything which belongs to this third sphere—which is not related to public law which belongs in the second sphere—but which is related to private law and criminal law. I found with those to whom I've explained this threefold social organism and who have understood some of it, that they could not grasp the idea that public law, the law which relates to the security and equality of people, should be separated from the right towards law breaking, or towards the private relationships between people; that this could be regarded as separate, and private law and criminal law must be included in the third, in the spiritual member of the social organism.

Modern life has unfortunately turned away from considering these three members of the social organism. Just like the body of economics with its concerns have penetrated into the government, into actual political life, penetrated its concerns into the representative body of political life, the result has clouded the possibility for the second member of the organism to be formed in which human equality can be realized, so too the economic and public life have absorbed the possibility which can only develop itself in a freer form. Out of a certain instinct, out of an erroneous instinct however, modern social democracy has tried to separate religious life from the life of the public state: “Religion is a private affair”; unfortunately, not out of particular care for religion, not out of a special evaluation accessible through the religious life, but out of disregard, out of complacency towards religious life linked to the content I presented in my previous lecture, the day before yesterday. This progression is right for the separation of religious life from the other spheres, from the formation of the economic life and from the formation of political life. Just as necessary as the separation of the lower and higher educational systems are, so too is the spiritual life actually from the two other members. A really healthy social organism can only develop when within these entities they ensure equality of all people before the law, when only out of these entities it is ensured that free human individualities develop schools, religious and spiritual life, when it is ensured that life is developed in freedom and no claim is made according to economic or state rules placed on school, educational and spiritual life.

That sounds radical today. Such radicalism must be expressed as soon as it is detected. Spiritual life, inclusive of education, inclusive of jurisdiction in public and criminal matters, actually underlies the complete freedom flowing out of single individuals which both the other members of the social organism can have no influence upon in its configuration, upon its forms.

Yesterday I only offered a sketch towards the direction thinking can move in the search for solutions of the social question, attempts at solutions based on necessities of life, not based on abstract demands of a single party, of a single class, but based on the powers actually developing in modern people.

I wish to say I can understand every objection raised but ask you to wait with objections until my sketch has been carried to completion in my coming lectures. Particularly today I can understand objections being raised as I'm just trying to characterise; the evidence of the World Trade Organization is not yet clear. I must say I can understand every objection coming out of various experiences which I want to represent here with ideas which I believe I can recognise in frequently misjudged spiritual science as the actual foundations of life which I have related to these things.

Behind us lie a time containing the most terrible human catastrophe. Within the life we had to lead within this catastrophic time, we have not had the human heart in the right place if our vision did not contain the power and ability to say: ‘Where can we find help out of this terrible chaos into which we have been driven?’—I told you the day before yesterday I would speak about the particular relationships of these wars to their causes and their unfolding in relation to the social question in both my following lectures. Today I would like to say it is clear to me, as we are going to be within these events for a long time to come, events now having entered a crisis which some short-sighted thinkers believe are soon at an end, that out of these things, out of chaos, out of the terrible catastrophe in some or other area of the civilized world it is possible to find the correct thoughts, the correct picture of more truthful, more realistic impulses for the human social organism. Towards various personalities who have been active and advisory during the last years within these terrible events, I have proposed what is also the vein of my various presentations here: I have tried to make it clear to these personalities who are involved, how different events would have been if from an authoritative place in the world it was said: ‘We want to head towards a healthy social goal.’—The entire interrelationship of states would have been different if, instead of mere laws and state programs being introduced, a comprehensive program for people in the way indicated here, had been introduced.

One can say that these things have been understood in a certain theoretical way. The content of my lectures has appeared to some in a really sympathetic way. The bridge which needs to be established between understanding such content and the will to actually do something to make it a reality in actual life, each in its own place, this bridge is quite another matter. This would mostly have an uncomfortable effect. For this reason, they compose themselves and say: ‘It all sounds a bit like a dream to me, quite impractical.’—They remain calm only because they don't have the will forces to really involve themselves with the course of events. Not a revolutionary course of events is meant here, not something which should happen from one day to the next, but a direction in which all single measures of public and private life should be brought for healing, to form a healthy social organism. The content of my lecture the day before yesterday, I have brought in another form to some people on whom one wanted to depend during these difficult times, addressed in the following way: Today, I would say for example, we are in the most terrible time of the war. Expressing the social necessity in this, the most terrible time of The War, it would be to say: People who are committed to this or that state into giving humanity a worthy self-realization which will become a reality for humanity, will enable this terrible course of events to take on quite a different, healing direction than merely the sword, the cannons and such like, or offer nothing through existing regional politics. I say they have the choice to either acknowledge what is offered here out of the developmental conditions and developmental forces within humanity, or to stand alone.

Today we stand, because during the last decade humanity has somehow missed acknowledging the essence of these things, today we stand in front of the most terrible catastrophe which has broken out like a plague, an illness attacking an organism which has failed to live according to its natural laws. This war catastrophe should now clearly reveal what is necessary for the healing of the social organism of humanity. This indication could have been perceived before the war but then it was not so clear, not even recognised. To some I have said: You have been given these indications regarding human evolution in the social sphere which will be brought into a reality in the next twenty to thirty years in the civilized world. I'm not talking about a program or ideal but it is the result of observation of those who want to make a reality of the seed towards an inclination already in humanity today, towards the next ten, twenty or thirty years. You have only to choose, I say, either to work through to its realization with reason, or to face revolutions of social cataclysms, terrible social upheavals. No third choice is possible. The war will probably be the time—so I say to some—where reason is acceptable. After that it could be too late. It is not a program which can be implemented or left undone, but involves recognising something which needs implementation through people, because in it lie their necessary historical growth forces for the future.

Another particular obstacle towards understanding is some or other belief that these things only relate to an inner structure of some state or some human territory. No, such social thoughts are at the same time the basis for the real necessary transformation of outer politics of states under one another. Just like the human organism turns each of its particular organs to the outside world, so also can a state only accomplish it when—if I might use this whole expression—such a social organism can shift its three members into outer activity. Relationships between one individual state and another appear quite different when a centralized government and administrations no longer remain in connection with one another but when one socially educated representative with a spiritual life relate to another representative with a spiritual life in another social state; whether it be an economic or a political representative, corresponding to the representative in the other state. When there is an intermixing, a confused mess due to the three members working outwardly in such a way to create an ensuing conflict at its boundary through the chaos of this intermixing of the three members, then, when across the boundary an independent state with threefold representatives working independently, the process of one member in the international relationship will not only be disrupted by the other, but by contrast, will balance out and be corrected.

This is what I wanted to sketch for you today to support the idea that it doesn't merely involve an assertion of inner social structure of one state but involves the international and social life of humanity. I have already tried to make all these things clear while we are in the middle of these horrific catastrophic events. At the moment, terrible misfortune has broken out over many people in central and eastern Europe, terrible misfortune for every individual, for every perceptive person the rest of the world indicates threatening misfortune. This must take place in relation to the real understanding of humanity for their tasks in the present and future: whoever wants to bring about a healing of life out of the actual evolutionary elements in humanity must take this up, not as an impractical ideal but as an actual practical application in life.

The obvious form modern life has taken on through technology and capitalism has to stand in opposition to the most inner human initiative forms of the spiritual, independent spiritual culture and independent state culture, which bring about in actual fact an equality between one person to another and which also, as we will soon see, could regulate labour and wage relations in a desirable way for the Proletariat.

The question about the form or human labour, about the liberation of labour from goods will only become detachable when threefoldness enters the social organism. The desire of the modern socialist is certainly legitimate as a desire; what they consider a remedy would work the least effectively as a remedy when it transforms outer reality in the way they want it to be.

This I need to stress yet again: I am not trying to come from some one-sided class or party position but from the side of the observation of human developmental forces in order to speak about what some call social integration and others call the healing of social life and others the reawakening of a healthy political sense, and so on.

What we are dealing with here is not some random program but the deepest true impulses coming to the fore in the next decades in humanity's evolution, it is actually the very foundation of the entire meaning and intention which I want to make into a reality with these lectures; it doesn't relate to the opinion of a person from this standpoint, but it relates to the expression of the deepest wishes in mankind for the next decades. This I would like to found and implement and prove in my lectures during the week ahead.

During the lectures last week, I pointed out that the present social situation, particularly where restrictions and difficulties have been experienced during its development, have made an understanding between different classes of humanity today something which lie relatively far into the future. The ruling class, as it has developed during the last century, the last decades up to the present, has its particular thought habits, particular inner impulses forming a basis for its thinking and willing. One could say an abyss exists between thought habits and what I characterized last week, this having developed out of quite a specific peculiarity in thought habits of the modern Proletarians, in whom the actual origin lies in what we call the social question today.

Whoever makes the effort to penetrate the reality of life, the forces playing into communal human relationships, for them it appears far more important what happens within the awareness of people, one could call it, among those who want to consciously discuss the underlying impulses rather than see how they actually arise in consciousness. One can get various views according to middle class thinking circles. Reports on the views of proletarian personalities or proletarian rulers are available; not much of their actual view on life and their creation of criticism about social facts of the present day are to be found here, but more what lies to a certain extent behind these observations. Behind that lies far more social psychology and social soul wisdom than you actually realize, on both sides.

Whoever—I may say it about myself, by presenting these things here—whoever takes the trouble to penetrate from all sides into the thought habits of the bourgeois circle leaders on the one side and on the other the soul impulses of the up-and-coming Proletarians, know how big the cleft is between them, how difficult understanding is; this failure to understand is both a world historic and also a social fact of the present day. We can see this in Paris, in Bern. When one has an ear for such things, one could say that in both places various languages are spoken. At both places, such different languages are spoken that one could doubt that the one spoken at the one place also seems to be most remotely felt by the other, and vice versa. For this reason, it is also so difficult in the present to connect the bourgeois circles to those of the Proletarians and to those things which are the actual main driving forces related to the social question. All that has happened before in history is not quite important but among the historic events are those which point significantly to the actual effective, truly effective powers. Other phenomena which the superficial observer might value as equally important, can in true reality hardly be considered.

Whoever properly pursues the proletarian movement as it has developed over the last decades, a significant fact, one among many, will stand out, that the modern Proletarian, considered in a really, one could call it, in a scientific form which it has taken on, that the actual impulse of this modern proletariat, through their observations, know what to say about things introduced into the present where their solutions must be found just like economic- and community building in the old populace classes had been created and gradually had to disappear to make place for something new to come into existence.

A fact is presented here which has attracted some sceptics. Considering the sceptics will not be considered here, instead we will refer to the historical importance of this matter.

By exploring insightful representatives of the modern proletarian world view, perhaps particularly during the first years when this movement became known when it was examined more at that time than later, one felt more involved in these things, one felt more resigned, but the question still arose: ‘What form of community, of human community-living and human actions, what form of the social organism can actually be observed within this view of life as something which must emerge, as something which should be brought about?’—From their point of view the proper answer would be: ‘At the moment this is of no further interest to us. Of importance to us above all is to bring a solution to the modern social order which enables it to steer itself ad absurdum. What will happen then, will reveal itself soon enough.’—People are always preoccupied with representing their opinion; the modern proletariat must impress positions of power and control. The overpowering of the marching classes favours him so that when he has power in hand he doesn't need to think, provisionally.

That was programmatic. This is not actually properly thought through. It also invites agitation and is not thought through as a reality. Actually, for those who have a sense for evolutionary powers in history this is the question: ‘Yes, what does this modern proletarian point of view actually mean within the evolution of humanity at the present time?’—The result is we are repeatedly distracted, as we said; the point of view takes on less importance as we are distracted about what people have to say about their feelings, how they experience their own lives, how they think about other classes in humanity. Briefly, we are distracted from the proletarian question about the status of the proletarians' lives. To a certain extent not talk nor statements but the particular kind of existence of a class of people show what is important through the way it is expressed. The answer which represents actual reality, given by the actual living proletariat today, can be formulated in the following way. It can be said: ‘This modern proletariat with their opportunities in life, with their living conditions, with the manner in which they are positioned in the modern social order and how they feel within themselves, this modern proletarian experience themselves as the criticism of modern technology, capitalism and the economic order.’ This is, in my view, extraordinarily interesting, that if you have a sense for reality based observation, that the proletariat themselves have the answer and that it does not come from some or other theoretical analysis, but out of the Proletarians themselves. It is a criticism. That the modern proletarians have become this way is provided by the criticism in a way outside of the proletariat who now take it as payment developed in the modern economic order.

Because this is so the souls of these modern proletarians were particularly open to embark on an abstract teaching, one can call it a teaching on scientific stilts, a teaching permeated by an impulse as I've characterised it, which is actually an impulse out of the life of the modern proletariat: the teaching of Marxism, the teaching of Karl Marx. It is a unique example in the history of humanity that such an unused class, a class without decadence, with unused intellectuality, with so much heart and such an open soul, that such a class where there were active forces in their own life forces, that it could have accepted such a scientific theory as happened with the modern proletarians and the Marxist teaching.

One needs to study things in life in this kind of relation. One must have seen how even the most difficult, seen from other classes as respectfully difficult, this has entered into the elementary sensitive and sentient proletarian soul, how millions upon millions of the modern proletarians were gripped by an apparent theoretic teaching.

However, what lives in this theoretic teaching? Here is a strange thing—it does not live in what one could in the ordinary sense call a social ideal. What lives in it doesn't have any formulation that would resemble a future state or a future social structure, but in it exist a real criticism of the modern bourgeois social and economic order and it relates to some extent to the instinct of these Marxist teachings. This instinct can be considered as follows: If I point out to the proletarian what the criticism of the modern technical capitalistic economic order is, then I involve his very life forces, then I steer it towards this becoming his own reality. It is already in a certain sense a mirror image expressed by the direct proletarian life entering right into the Marxist teaching. Whoever believes that the Marxist teaching is dismissed by the proletarian, does not understand that the formulation, the specific point of view and thoughts on the one side, can be overcome. What remains, however, is a certain momentum of this specific impulse which is alive and that on the other side perhaps in a counter observation, is realised by those who have come out of Marxism; that in all kinds of revisionist attempts there is an evolution of the impulse in the modern proletarian introduced through Marxism. This characterization of the social facts in the present time is more important for me than going along with elementary discussions because they eventually lead towards social psychology. When a direct answer is not found—we will encounter this in the course of the lectures what possible answer could be given—then it points to the present question of viewpoints which in real life at present probably will be the first consideration. What kind of experience is had when these things are considered without bias, without prejudice? The result is an experience of a certain peculiarity of modern life. Modern life—as I have often stressed in the lectures I'm giving here in Zurich—has thought habits, has developed thought forms which prove extremely fruitful for a certain direction in science. These modern thoughts also want to penetrate the understanding and comprehensive reformation, reforming the understanding of the social life itself, the social phenomena and impulses of life. However, with this penetration one has the general feeling that humanity at present, standing within the thought forms and thought habits of today, are not able to grasp the reality of complicated phenomena in social life. To some extent their understanding is too closely meshed. They can't grasp the complicated phenomena of the social life by themselves. They remain abstract, they remain delineated and they don't allow events in the social sphere to enter into actual life itself. One could say tightly meshed thinking characterises modern humanity. This narrow thinking breaks in everywhere where one wants to enter into real life, this very thinking has infiltrated into the ambition of the modern proletarian. The result is that this kind of thinking becomes transformed into criticism and does not enable real impulses created out of human soul experiences to be established as directional forces able to lead into the future. Everywhere this thinking breaks in where there is a striving for such impulses.

This calls for something which is deeply decisive in life at present. Whoever is, in full earnestness, able to understand the need of life at present, may direct his focus from the point of view being considered here, just now within this world historic moments where there is little time for a mere theoretical trend in true discussions because the facts are urgent and burning. Just right now one sees how people are presented with these urgent and burning facts but how even in these thought images it shows that reality can't be penetrated. Many people are filled with good will but not in one of them has thinking processes grown out of these facts. It is obvious in these world historic moments that even for those who wish to penetrate earnestly into this moment in time, the rising up—often masked in a variety of forms, completely unconsciously—of this incline in people for who the true earnest direction in life, when burning and urgent questions appear, it becomes particularly disastrous: the rising up of a type of fanaticism, as I would like to call it. This fanaticism shows itself in the most varied masks in a variety of areas and this makes it so difficult to allow the present to be directed into the appropriate action. This fanaticism has been the result of the development I have indicated historically in my lectures of the previous week, which started at the turning point of the 14th, 15th and 16th Centuries. What is the essence of this fanaticism? The essence can be depicted through a certain unrealistic view of life, a view of life which omits what I called last week the thrust received from inner experiences, through a certain view of life of a soulful, thoughtful and scientific knowledge seeking inner life like searching for an island—or actually an abundance of islands—and failing to build bridges to actualities in everyday life. We find in the present time certainly many people—if I could use the expression—who inwardly find a distinguished manner of thinking, be it in a scholarly abstract way, of all kinds of ethic-religious problems in cloud cuckoo land. One can observe how people ponder about the manner and way in which people could acquire virtues, how they should relate through love with their fellow human beings, how they can become blessed. We notice how concepts of salvation, mercy and so on develop in which certain adherents of this view of life possibly only want to be in the soul spiritual heights. Simultaneously we see in those good people mentioned legally and morally, who are loving and full of goodwill the inability to establish the real bridge to outer reality, everyday circulation of capital, the cost of labour, consumption, production in relation to the circulation of goods, credit systems, banking and stock exchange systems. We see how two streams have developed side by side in the world, reflected also in thought habits: one world movement wants to remain in soul spiritual heights and does not want to build bridges between what is seen as a religious order and the management of ordinary trade. Life however is uniform. It can only unfold when the driving forces of all ethical religious aspects work from its basis into the everyday, profane situation of life, into life which appears even less distinguished. If we neglect to create these bridges we lapse, in relation to the religious and moral life, into mere fanaticism, remote from daily reality, then true everyday reality retaliates. Then people strive out of a certain religious impulse towards all possible ideals, everything which can be called “good,” but instincts which oppose daily satisfaction coming from everyday experiences of life which should arise from the national economy, these instincts are powerless in the face of insensitive people. No bridge can seemingly be built between the belief of godly grace and everyday life as it happens. Everyday life then takes revenge. Now everyday life takes on a form which has nothing to do with ethical impulses cherished in distinguished, soul spiritual heights. Revenge becomes such that the ethical religious life, while it distances itself from the everyday things, from direct practical life, that this ethical religious life actually turns surreptitiously—without one noticing it as it is masked—into an inner delusion.

We see how people go about out of a certain ethical religious dignity—they believe—and how they show only the best of will in relation to the community of fellow human beings, a display of the best will to do their utter best towards them, while they neglect actually doing anything, because they have acquired nothing socially in their life of feeling which relate to practical habits.

So we experience it—when I might use this expression yet again—in this world historic moment, how the social question so blatantly, so tangibly insistent, approach from all sides by fanatics who see themselves sometimes as good practical people, who claim: ‘We need people to back out of materialism, out of outer materialistic life to a certain spirituality, to a spiritual view of life.’ They do not tire from quoting or making statements about personalities who in the past—the past has to be the rule, the present has less authority—had expressed certain ideal ways towards spirituality. Yes, you can have the experience that when someone points to something as practical and necessary as daily bread, it is pointed out that the primary importance is for people to return to the spirit. This warning contains unbelievably much of what had led mankind into the present catastrophe, fanaticism, which appear behind the most varied masks today and play a role in the facts. Certainly, on the one side it is fanaticism when someone, without being cognisant of outer practical living conditions, draws up some social ideal, called Utopian, and out of this finely fits and crystallizes a prescriptive system for living in order to be happy or satisfied or something or other. Basically, even when such Utopia appears full of criticism, it neither comes down to the criticism nor to good will, but it comes down to how they place themselves in practical life. Today it does not involve people being directed to a return to the spirit but that spirit exists in those who think about the social organism today. Today the importance is on the How, the Manner and Way in which thinking is arrived at. For my sake people don't talk about spirit but about the manner and way one talks about practical life, be it spiritual. Present time will be better served this way than through fanaticism reminding people in every third sentence to return to spirituality because usually those who are addressed can't imagine this spiritually, precisely because those who make these statements can't actually use imagination with which to present spiritually. The idealist utopians who insist—and these days they are not low in numbers—on finely thought-out social ideals are not the worst, because as a rule they don't hold water. One soon finds out these things are impractical and do not originate out of circumstances in real life. Far worse are the masked fanatics in today's reality, who appear to be coming out of apparent practical life situations but these situations actually have to relation to reality but exist in lifeless abstraction. Still, we have fanaticism—one must always speak freely from the heart—we have experienced this in present events only too significantly. It is difficult to recognise it. It is difficult because we have not sharpened our gaze in this area.

Some people appear to have characteristics of fanatics—incidentally nothing at all should be said against the qualities of fanatics, they could be good people, they could be doing their duties in their field, could even be excellent people—but when the fact is stressed regarding the relationship some personalities have to fanaticism, then some people are quite astounded that these personalities can be associated with fanaticism because these fanatics appear to think with independent judgement, while these judgements are actually nothing other than wild superstition. I have for instance in the course of the last few years looked at some “life practitioners”—I say this in quotation marks—of fanaticism. With reference to this, if humanity wants to advance in knowledge it may experience some inner paradoxes. It will appear for example as a surprise, if I propose the most imminent Ludendorff, as a fanatic. The judgement of his supporters and his opponents go in quite different directions. The important thing about his personality is that with the exception of the field in which he is highly scholarly, namely strategy, he is in all the rest of his thinking adhered to abstraction, totally strange in life where his fanatical thoughts, which have no relation to reality, now take on power and result in unspeakable evil by his fanatical thoughts entering into reality. In this way, various personalities we know today and see as practical in life, could cause unending evil as typical representatives of fanaticism.

In the nineties of the nineteenth century fanatics appeared as if in an epidemic; coming from America they flooded Europe in the then so-called “Society for Ethic Culture.” Here was an attempt at something having nothing to do with life, which could only come out of an abstract sensing of a certain ethic impulse and be propagated as ethical culture. If someone who was asked to do this, pointed out that such things harboured fanaticism, such things imprisoned and limited thought and thus made it impossible to discover the actual truth, they were either not understood or misunderstood or ridiculed.

This fanaticism should contrast itself with real truthful thinking which I believe has been represented through many years in the true spiritual scientific point of view. What actually is this spiritual scientific world view?

Essentially the spiritual scientific world view means it is not defined as a mere mirror image of observation of outer sensory reality but that it addresses spirit as coming from a real super-sensory experienced world, as real as what our eyes can see, ears can hear or touched by our hands. This viewpoint is less concerned with singular theories uttered about the actual spiritual world but rather far more involves everything experienced as knowledge coming out of the spiritual knowledge of the world and takes on an inner soul understanding into itself, an inner state in life through which the human being feels enlivened by soul spiritual beings in a real spiritual world. It is not dependant on what is said about the spiritual world but comes down to how people feel while in this spiritual world. It may already be that some or other super-sensible belief exists. This belief however, can just as easily steer towards fanaticism, like with those who strive towards goodwill. It comes down to this feeling: through the way one thinks, the way one experiences it, is within thinking, it flashes like lightening through one's own soul as the vital active spirit is experienced flashing through the soul.

This living, active spirit is in us. It is there like things outside are in space and events outside happen in time. When you take this expression in order to really spiritually acknowledge it not merely by thinking about it but living into it, then out of this spiritual acknowledgement an inner impulse arises, which is an incentive to make spirit something real out of itself, in the world; an incentive to experience the spirit as a reality and to make it a reality in quite a different way than what it can be as a mere mirror image of ideas and concepts which deals with the spiritual. There is a big difference whether one says: I think about the spirit, I believe in the spirit—or whether one says: Within me thinks the spirit, I experience the spirit within me.—The concept of ordinary faith actually loses its meaning through this experience. Coming out of this experience a soul-spiritual power will enter into the evolution of mankind. This soul-spiritual power which should enter into humanity's experiences is of a far greater importance than can be imagined, because it is the healing medicine for the laming type of ideology characterised here last week, which the proletariat inherited as a depressing element from the bourgeoisie.

This is what lives as the first true form of the social question in reality, if one penetrates this question in order to understand it in depth, that the development of modern spiritual life since the turn of this newer time during the 14th Century gradually became so blunt, weakened and paralysed that people didn't know any more that within them the spirit is alive as something real, full of life, but that they believe they only have ideas and mirror images containing some or other reality. These images they have in the world and which exist in the modern proletarian view of life is such that they say: ‘The only thing that exists in the spiritual realm is ideology. Reality only exists in economy, in financial processes, in class conflicts—this is where reality exists.’ However, something steams up in the human soul, it takes on the form of images of revelation, images which express science, morality, religion, art. This gives a superstructure based on a solid, real foundation. If one also can't admit to sociology living as an ideology in this superstructure being able to work back into the economic life, then it remains an ideology. No healing element comes out of this ideology if real spiritual participation, like spiritual science wanting to enter into modern humanity, is not engaged through spiritual experiences. Healing the damage in this ideology is only possible through real deepening in the real spirit and its manifestations, through deepening the real supersensible world. Everything which worked as spiritual life within the modern proletarians and was introduced as culture appeared as mere ideology and because ideology was seen as nothing, the soul was unable to experience a certain impetus, a certain momentum within consciousness which can be sensed in the higher sense, and souls were left dissatisfied and empty. Out of this soul emptiness developed the hopeless mood of the proletarian world view, where one part of it grew into a member of the real social question. As long as people will not realize that the tendency towards ideology needs to be healed and therefore are unable to introduce any positive impulses into the modern proletarian souls, so long will mere criticism remain in the modern proletarian regarding the developing capitalism, economic order and their world view.

This will not be accomplished without the will to enter a real practical view of life, a view of life which is not made up of theories or mere religious ideas, but with someone who wants to live, who wants to be creative, with a will to create individual impulses in life. For this some things are necessary and this scares today's individuals away as if it is something quite radical. What is intended here is far less radical than what comes out of life, provoked by modern instincts confronting people when they are too comfortable to turn towards what is necessary.

What I have been aiming at from a certain angle involves one member of the social organism which needs to develop out of modern living conditions as one of the three members, just as I have been sketching here last week, Wednesday. On that occasion, I dealt with the misfortune, in a certain sense, of modern humanity, when it is not examined—and it is so indeed, it is not being examined—that what should consist in a threefold way and that the three individual members work together in a lively way, has been turned through their power into chaos and a random organism which they want to continue to make so.

Now to not make myself misunderstood, I'm mentioning almost in parenthesis, my intention is not to advocate a complete reversal to be accomplished in a day. I'm giving indications in a certain direction towards which single questions may be orientated, questions about the state, spiritual life and economic life and how these meet in people's lives. There is no need to believe in things right away, as I present them; what we call ‘the state’ today can be made into something quite different tomorrow. People only need the will forces to relate to these things, to actualize the Christian “change your way,” which means, the details, the individual measures presented need to be entered into if one wants to get their meaning, in order to orientate their configuration in a certain direction.

Thus, I have set out what people want to muddle together into a uniformed state just like one would try to do with the human organism—and make a Homunculus as a result—botched together to centralize the three systems in chaos so that the attempt at consolidating everything into a combined state enterprise forces the three living members apart rather than allowing a healthy social organism to develop. In one independent member within the social organism, all that relates to spiritual culture must develop; as a second independent member in the social organism everything related in the narrower sense to the political state life, not consolidated but in a lively exchange with spiritual life, need develop; and as a third independent member the economic organism. A spiritual organism, state organism, economic organism—of this people should be saying: in the next ten to twenty years evolutionary forces of humanity will be striving towards this. Whoever opposes this development is opposing the possibilities for progress in modern humanity.

The first point I want to touch on is from this view I'm considering today comprises the following: the life of so-called spiritual culture, all inclusive of what could be termed school and educational impulses, all that could be included in religious life, all that is artistic, literary and also all that relates to private and criminal law. These things I will still characterise more precisely. Everything decided in life regarding spiritual culture, positioned on a communal but independent basis, must be placed alongside the rest of the social organism. It must be placed by itself, it must be placed on such a basis that one can say: the vital element of this member of the social organism must have its centre in the free unfolding of the physical and spiritual arrangement of the human being. Everything needs to be based on this sphere of the individuality. Everything flowing into this must come from the centre of the human individuality and the physical and spiritual faculties must have free evolutionary possibilities but must however be withheld from influencing the remaining cultural life in some or other damaging or limiting or unreasonable way.

In this particular sphere, something can be achieved. I would like to offer a grotesque example. Please excuse me if this example appears grotesque but it will conceivably illustrate what I want to say. Let us take some or other young student, in other words a person budding within spiritual development, who has to deliver his doctorate. He obtains advice from authoritative personalities to edit some theme which has hardy or never been done before—let's take for example, dealing with the swear words of an old Roman writer. Such things really exist as those who are implicated with it, already know. Now the young man works for a whole year with these swear words of some ancient writer. Today one says: ‘This is scientifically important.’—Well yes, from the side of this observation which exists in certain areas, it is certainly important, but now something else comes into consideration. It is the positioning of such a thing in the totality of the social organism. One needs to look away from the fact that it may well be interesting to write about swear words of some old writer. I know a dissertation where a young man was terribly plagued by the subject of parenthesis used by an old Greek writer.

I don't have anything that can be said against a pure scientific viewpoint presenting these things. Philistine details will not be made relevant here. However, in relation to it finding its position within the social organism the following is valid: the young man needs true diligence for possibly a year and so he needs to eat, drink and clothe himself. In order to do so he needs some income, capital. What does it mean to say: ‘He consumes a certain amount of capital?’ It means nothing other in the real life than: Many, many people must work for him.

What he eats, drinks, where he finds clothing, engages a whole army of people during these years. A small army is involved in his food, drink and clothing and this comes into consideration in relation to the social effects of the case. Today one mostly has the view that things can simply be taken thus, without a social understanding, out of a certain inclination to purely place these interests scientifically in the world. Our life in the present demands however that every branch in its relationship, in its vital connection to all the other of life's branches should be conceived with social understanding, with a feeling for the social aspect.

As I said, I've asked you to excuse me with this grotesque example; it could have been less grotesque but I chose this one in order to show you how necessary it is to develop a feeling for the social sphere, how spiritual life, the entire activity of the spiritual life need to stand within the social organism, in order to be justified in the general interest of humanity. The general interest of humanity may be asked whether the determination of swear words of some ancient writer has such worth that it requires a small army or workers to be appointed for an entire year. The question can of course be made less grotesque by working around it from other sides. One could then realize that spiritual culture can also include, for instance, the experience belonging to technical ideas and work in a lively way in other structures, in the rule of law for instance, because these things have a relative independence in life. Against this works centralization which steers everything into chaos.

Spiritual life must exist in a relative independent way, must not submit only to one's inner freedom but must stand within the social organism of one's spiritual life in order to position itself completely free of competition, resting on no state monopoly. That which is justified as a spiritual life—what this means for single individuals—is another thing. We are talking here about the social organism. Spiritual life is to be completely free of competition, completely free to meet singular needs of the community as they may reveal themselves. Someone might create poems, as many as he wants; may find friends for these poems, as many as he likes; what validates spiritual life is only what he, as a single individual, shares with other people. This is however only presented on a healthy basis when everything considered as spiritual life, everything from school to university life, everything from educational to artistic life need to be disrobed of any state monopolising characteristics and be contained by itself as independent—but as we said, not from one day to the next. Direction is thus indicated for people placed on their own—this is how the bridge can be created towards something different. Due to a request, I have been occupied for some years during the nineties with my book “The Philosophy of Freedom” (later translation: ‘The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity’) which has just been newly reprinted, perhaps in a favourable time, to show that a true experience of freedom cannot be said to be anything other than the actual play of the spiritual life into the human soul.

At that time, I called it the enactment of intuition in the human soul, the play of something totally spiritual. This real spiritual element must be born in the human soul in the light of freedom—free from competition—then it will live in a right way in the social organism. It may not—and this is important—be placed under some or other regulatory law of some or other branch of the social organism. It must be able to reveal itself in full freedom, as a result of general needs.

I know—and I will present this again in the following lectures—that many people think that if schools would be a free choice then we will be surrounded by illiterate people. I would like to show this will not be the case. Of importance today for me is to point out how, out of the inner nature of the thing, the necessity for a free spiritual life will be shown in the social organism. There are states where natural science, like nearly everywhere, is the monopoly; their enterprise is monopolised through the state which proclaims a law: ‘Science and its education is free.’ This however remains merely a phrase and will remain only a phrase if spiritual life does not persist in being held by itself. Not only may spiritual life, in relation to its activity in personalities, in relation to what is publicly said or dare not be said, depending on another member of the social organism when these other members instruct schools and universities, when I only mention it; not only, as said, the outer operation, the appointment of personalities, the limitations which may not be mentioned, become determined as a result, but that it also determines the inner content of spiritual life itself. Our whole scientific life has characteristics of political life, since in the more modern time the spheres of political life have spread over spiritual life. Spiritual life may however not be the affair of some or other member of the social organism; it can only uphold its self-contained content when this develops freely out of the human individuality.

Spiritual life stands opposite pure economic life just like the digestive system stands opposite the head system in the natural human organism. Economics has its own laws. The character of modern economic life has been identified through the proletarian science in an experiential, vital manner, not as a theoretical science preached from the rostrum but in order for it to become clear how proletarian science, just like economic life, relates to humanity in general.

Now one could refer once again to a certain point. I have mentioned this point in previous lectures. What is striking in economic life today, or with reference to the proletarian scientific consideration of economic life, is, and also in relation to it, the proletariat has been taken over by the inheritance from other classes. Whether it is through modern technology, whether through modern capitalism—as explored in previous weeks here—the human focus is as if hypnotized on economic life as the actual and only reality which can be linked to, in the social organism. People believe, when one talks about human evolution that only economic life needs to be referred to. We have seen how this economic life has become quite committed, how through economic life a particular active impulse in the bright light of the sun of human experience has moved the modern Proletariat's feeling of becoming human—this must be considered precisely, against economic life. The result of this is Karl Marx's inflaming of millions upon millions of Proletarians that people believed he primarily, in clear language, pointed out to the Proletarians the worth of humanity in his entire statement: he, Karl Marx, first pointed out to the Proletariat that labour equals goods, labour could circulate as goods on the market and stand under the law of supply and demand.

Karl Marx used various erroneous ways to point out basic facts. That he referred to the innermost nerve of the modern social question anyhow, made his merits appear sufficient in the feelings of proletarian souls. Also here social psychology has a far more reality based meaning than theories, observations and discussions which are linked to some scientific and social life impulses. Out of this a vital question arises. How could the experience of human worth be conquered? That human labour is dealt with like goods?—This is what Marx had to say next. As we said, in many ways there are errors but this is not relevant now when an erroneous fact became so powerful in millions of human souls that it became a social fact. This is what Karl Marx said and this is how they understood the modern Proletariat. This understanding, while it has altered in some relationships, still work today, work particularly strongly in feelings. This is what he said: ‘Within the economic organism goods are brought to the market and sold. There are owners of goods, prospective owners and buyers of goods. Between these exists the circulation of goods. The modern Proletarian has nothing other than his own labour. For each unit of goods, a certain production cost is necessary. The production of this or that product, until it is consumed, has this or that value. The modern Proletarian only has the power of his body, the only power he possesses is that of labour. In order to determine the production cost of labour all his needs to be included: his acquisition of nourishment, clothing and so on, and so the spent labour becomes replaced in turn. That is the production cost of his labour.’—Now, Karl Marx said, and in his inner being this also means the modern proletariat: ‘Naturally the employer gives the employee no more than the so-called wages, without compulsion, for the work as the production cost for his labour. If however, the job continues for five hours and all the production costs are covered, the modern entrepreneur is not satisfied. He demands longer working hours. So the worker labours for free because he only earns as much as his “goods”—his labour—amounts to. What work he does additionally is added value. This is what he brings to the altar—if one could call it an altar—of capitalism, which collects as capital but actually originates from his labour, and as a result, because he is only paid the production costs, he is forced to offer his wares on the labour market, according to economic relationships, with all he has: his goods called “labour.”’

You can with the greatest human ingenuity, applying the deepest national economic knowledge, discuss what can be done in the social organism that the worker should not carry his labour to the market as goods, that he can rid the world of this last result of slavery and you will, even by employing the greatest intelligence, the most profound national economic knowledge regarding many human lives, arrive at no solution. You will find no outcome to this question because the imminent sense of this question can't be discussed, can't be answered theoretically, but can only be answered through life itself, through creating something in life which strips away the characteristic of goods from labour.

If I might offer a comparison I would like to point to this little man in Goethe's Faust which Wagner produces as a test tube baby: Homunculus. It is made out of what human thoughts can imagine are ingredients from nature, but he does not become a person but remains a little manikin, a Homunculus. In the same way, you may combine something out of ingredients of understanding or out of national economic created ingredients—and your result will be a social Homunculus! Just as we need certain conditions in order to create a living human being, so in the same way, conditions need to be created towards a vital social organism which works progressively in life, not through theories, not through arguments. Human labour needs to be separated from the mere circulation of goods and may not be realized as such.

This will not be accomplished in any other way, if you look into it, in order for a social organism to be lively; it must have independent members, with the spiritual member beside the legal-state member, in a narrower sense the political-state member, and relatively independent beside that, the economic organism which lives under its own laws. Just as little as the stomach can breathe or direct the heartbeat, so little can the economic organism develop law out of its own forces. Economics will never develop its own laws when it works only from its own actual basis. Out of this actual basis the social organism will only be driven from production and commerce to consumption.

Just like the circulation of goods stand opposite nature itself, this foundation of all production, all consumption, all human events and so on, of profession and trade, so must on the other side stand in opposition, not determined by the economic organisation but that the economy determines, the existence of politics in the state's laws. This must be independent of the economic organism just like the lung-heart system is relatively independent of the head and nerve system.

Just because they work independently yet together, they have the right relationship in life. Only by the lungs and heart being isolated from the stomach, do they function relatively independently in the correct way together.

Only by there being in the lively social organism an independent member which does not determine on some or other economic grounds that labour becomes goods, but allows, out of the vitality of life for labour to be positioned in the social structure so that it becomes a right in the social structure, only through this, on the other side, can the economic life be allowed to be determined through the life or rights, the political life of the state in a narrower sense, as is determined by the natural foundation of economic life. Only then, when these three members exists side by side, when you have an independent spiritual member, an independent legal system member or actually state life plus an independent economic life and these members work in relative independence with one another, when each of these members out of its own foundation finds its representatives, its administrative body, we can say, its kingdom, its federal day, its ministry, and the single members are as sovereign among one another like single states who only trade through delegations, only then does the social organism really becomes healthy. Then the foundation of interest develops in the area of economics which is the only impulse crucial to the economic life. Then the question can be raised from life according to events taking place in other members of the social organism, in the legal organism: if out of the impulses of the legal body limitations are placed on human labour which from then on does not have the character of goods but the characteristics of rights, when labour flows into a specific economic branch where it does not pay, then this economic branch in relation to non-payment need be looked at, like when through a too expensive raw material it is not paid. This means that human labour becomes the dominant element in relation to economic life, not dominated, not enslaved. This is not accomplished by making certain laws but by creating a living body which must simply be something different than human impulses in a separated body, continuing from epoch to epoch snatching labour from the character of goods, because this character of goods must be torn out otherwise it will ever and again be absorbed because the economic body has the tendency to always suck up the capacity for work and make it goods only. The state body must be ever awake and remove the labour force from the stamp of goods.

Everywhere in life it appears that this muddling along—if I may use this trivial expression—makes the three social spheres a disaster. The social catastrophe which has taken place in the last four and a half years only needs to be considered. You can study the actual events. It is a lovely study for instance in the area in Austria which appears to have fallen apart into atoms: How has the inner structure actually held up, how has it wanted to hold since more than half a century? Here we have the so-called empire state. In this empire state a certain representation of nations exist, only in certain layers. This representation collapsed—not recently but where events prepared it, in the second half of the 19th Century—into four councils, the council of large landowners, of rural communities, of cities and markets and industrial areas, chambers of commerce; in other words, the rural communities, the cities, the industrial areas and the chambers of commerce. You see nothing about basic economic impulses existing in this representation. This representation was the representation of the state. This representation had laws. It only came from there because people were powerless under the influence of modern developments, as I've indicated under our consideration today, to penetrate economic life itself with their own organisation because their thoughts were too tightly meshed, too limiting because they could not plunge into them. People took the economic life as a frame for the rising state and bungled economic and state life with one another. Before people will not see that this bungling of innumerable causes has led to our present catastrophe, the sooner they will not go to ruin but towards a true cure.

Today I could once again only give a few indications. The day after tomorrow I will allow myself to expand the remarks. I want to still make another observation. Even in relation to the mighty world politics can what I said be substantiated, if you only want to go into the substrate of life. Whoever studies the Genesis of this terrible war, which is no war in the old sense but various ingredients of human catastrophes cooked up together which have not appeared at its end but entered at its crisis, whoever studies the Genesis of this catastrophe will find for instance that the importance of the starting point was totally directed towards the preparation and the expansion of modern economic life in a specific way and that this modern economic life, as a result, cannot be understood as being separated in the right way from a naturally and really vitally formed social organism, or in an organism found all over the world, because this economic life has been connected with the bare seven state laws which should have remained independent. As a result, essential economic factors and economic elements were there and they served the state power forces during the last decades, the economic powers which work in disharmony against one another. Were they held to develop merely on the foundation of their economic life and on the foundation of their common consensus it would never have led to this catastrophe. Towards this catastrophe they approached as purely economic forces while these economic forces had to serve as a false political entity of political powers of state whose armies were sent into the fields on their behalf.

These things need to be examined in a relevant way, not only theoretically. Some people do this of course. Still, one needs to know how to lift the actual impulse of the real social question, urgent and burning, into the light in a relative way into the present, in order to discover the real symptoms. Then you exit fanaticism as a mere warning and discover the reality within it, which makes it possible to allow the three members of the social organism to work together. What no discussion, no national economic judgement is able to do for economic and political life to exist side by side and so solve the labour force question, could continue to get rid of the most essential and difficult points in the modern proletarian's experience in the right way.

Now, the day after tomorrow I will continue with these observations, entering into detail in some of them which must remain as questions today, which will then be cleared up in a proper way. I just want to point out one thing. It has been and will be for a long time still, the comfortable thinking habits of people to find it radical, perhaps too academic in some or other way, what in truth is not some abstract idealism, but is actually everyday practical life. Some will say: ‘Indeed, here comes a spiritual scientist who wants to by means of an imminent question, through a world historically important question, involve the social question.’ Precisely not for something extraordinary for me or for the representatives of some conviction is what I'm validating here, so to say, but in relation to such people who take these things as impractical, a lost cause, while they don't look over the possibilities, can't envisage the perspectives. For these people, not for me, I would like to use a comparison at the closing today.

I would like to refer to some poor chap, Stephenson, who was condemned to sit at a ‘Newcomenschen’ steam engine (by Thomas Newcomen) and open and close the taps alternately, allowing steam out the one side and the entry of condensation water on the other. Now this little chap noticed up above, a balance swinging up and down and he thought: How would it be if I tied one tap to the other tap with a string, to the balance? Then at one moment the one tap will be opened and the other closed, and the next instance the one will close and the other open. The balance will do my work for me, I can only sit and look—so the little chap thought. And he actually did this. Now something could well happen as it is with many such things, when something quite new enters into life, for some quite clever person to then exclaim: ‘You stupid young man, you must do as you are supposed to do! What kind of string have you tied to the balance? Remove it quickly or otherwise I'll tie you to it!’

It didn't happen quite like this but it is one the most important discoveries if the modern time, the automatic control of the steam engine which sprung out of the experience of this little chap. To have developed more insight towards only the self-control of a social organism which leads toward a vital interactive cooperation of the three members—its self-manipulation of spiritual members, legal-political member, economic member—to be more raised than this, spiritual science has no claim. It depends on whether all the clever people will say of this spiritual science: ‘You stupid young man! Do your duty’ or if you will look into what is actually happening. This must often be done if one is to be involved in all humility and without insolence. The belief in fanatics who label themselves as practical might soon give way to knowledge that the real practical people can be notorious idealists who could enter into the realities of life, that it could be them who may research the real evolutionary conditions of mankind and only through knowledge and the evolutionary process modern humanity could find the way which could lead to the solution of the social question—we will speak about this next time—that it is even possible in real life at all. Not via the route of presumptions by which many practitioners lay the law today, but probably the real-life practitioners, the clever idealists who can really penetrate the realities of life, have to prove it.

Perhaps the lectures which I have been able to give here during this week and last week, proves from a certain point of view that it is justified to say that the situation of current humanity is deeply influenced by the developments which social thinking and social will have been adapting in the course of more recent times up to the present. More perhaps than most people suspect, the social impulse will penetrate directly into the life of single people—this penetration will happen more and more. It will become the determining factor towards the powers of the most individual behaviour. People are hardly able to understand their position within the human community which heaves and pulses with social impulses under examination, how its origins actually developed out of two different human shifts in the course of recent times—into social thinking and social willing. As a result, the continuation of these origins works into the present, works in such a way that it actually gives a social form to our current life.

I have mentioned in my lectures that solutions are not to be found towards understanding such things by doing what one usually does, by taking history as a straight line and regarding it as cause and effect in order to always reach a conclusion by what had gone just before. I have tried to draw attention to this: the historical life of humanity in its essence or foundations in relation to certain crises in the course of events, or rather better said: of the presence of crises during the course of events—are similar to what happens in the life of individual people. In the life of individual human beings there is no straight line of development; results arrive without a leap out of what went before. It is necessary to take the comfortable but often misunderstood conception that nature makes no leaps in a corresponding way by observing time and again how in the course of an individual life, crises appear, like the crisis in the sixth or seventh year of life with the change of teeth, how these crises arrive out of elementary organic foundations, just as it similarly rises to puberty. Whoever has knowledge of the course of human life can show how such critical changes also appear later in life even if they are not taken in as decisive a way by superficial observation as the first two. To observe such critical changes in the course of life is necessary in order to really understand the history of life. As much as current humanity is averse to such observation and listening, just as necessary is it right now to promote the social understanding of life and to point out such things with radical intensity. One of the last big changes—this I explored in the previous lectures—in the course of evolution of mankind we can point out as having taken place at the turn of the 15th, 16th Centuries. Only if one does not enter deeply enough into the historical course of things will one not know how radically different everything is which happens in the human soul as demands, as desires demanding certain satisfaction; how that changes in relation to what had arrived before that moment.

Now at the same time, as if followed by this elementary change in the later times of man's evolution, something appears which can be expressed as follows: the social impulse lived within the human soul in earlier times; this social impulse led to the structure of the social impulse. In earlier times, this social impulse was experienced instinctively. People lived together socially, ordered their affairs socially within their community. At that time, in the place of instinctive thinking and willing, a change started to take place towards a more conscious social impulse. This conscious impulse came to the fore gradually and slowly but it distinguished itself by shifting modern humanity radically away from the situation of medieval and ancient humanity. Here we see immediately how with the taking up of the social impulse out of the instinctive and into the conscious life, clearly two streams are created, indicating two diverging movements of social thinking and willing.

The one stream is clear in those people who can still up to today be called the foremost, leading social class of humanity. The other stream appeared somewhat later but is clearly distinguishable from the former, which we today describe as the Proletarian world. The leading intellectual bourgeois circles with all their interests as modern time came along, are linked to all that was created as the newer state which had gradually developed out of the structures of medieval community life. These bourgeois leading circles are through their interests linked to what we have placed under the three members I have explored as the social organism, describable as the actual constitutional state, as actually politically constituted, whether instinctive or consciously based regarding the relationships of one person to another. As with ancient traditions and also with a certain reference to newer scientific relationships, the leading bourgeois circles linked their interests more or less to what many people held as the only social form, namely the state. As a result of them moving consciously from the old instinctive social life to the modern consciousness, they thought as a result of anything related to the state were to be in terms of the constitutional state. As modern economic life became ever more complicated which through the expansion of the human horizon of activities became ever more complicated right over the world, so the leading circles tried to establish it in the structure of the state. They wanted to make the state ever more into the economist. This endeavour took on a certain course and we see that within certain circles single economic sectors were gradually drawn into the state structure. I pointed out such economic sectors last time. The essential aspect from this view is that social thinking earned quite a particular form as a result, in these circles, because of it wanting to conquer the state's interests: the encroaching complicated economic life.

The social impulse developed in quite a different way in the Proletarians. Now with the awakening in newer times the modern Proletarians didn't involve themselves as much within the real state territory. Due to a lack of time I can't enter into this further through deeper examination—but in their relationship, they stood quite removed from the interests of the leading circles and their representation in the state's structure. Still, the Proletarians were driven into the structure of the economic life in the most radical way. Their entire thinking and feeling unfolded in such a way that it was like a mirror image of what was being experienced in the economic life. Thus, the social impulse of the Proletarians became determined by the social structure of the economy of humanity, the economic life, just like the social impulse of the leading bourgeois and intellectual circles became determined by impulses of the constitutional state, by the impulses of the actual political structures. With both streams, they developed more and more in such a way that even these days there appears what I referred to in my lecture the day before yesterday, a gap, an abyss between the specific configuration of social thinking and feeling of leading bourgeois and Proletarian circles. I consider this to be the most tragic arrangement of mankind's situation in present times, the existence of this abyss which makes it so difficult for an understanding, to find a mutual understanding between both the two mentioned social classes. So it must come about as we will see: how prepared both the classes are in their struggle for existence in confrontation. The essential fact in this fight, which has partly already happened, is partly still being prepared, and that which can make sense, even still today only grasp community life superficially, will take on gigantic forms which are essential in order for, on the one side the bourgeois leading circles want the economy to become gradually captured by the state, co-capturing the state economy in such an extraordinary way which is the productivity and labour of the Proletarians themselves, and on the other side that the Proletarians want to conquer from the state the element where their interests are experienced in an isolated economic life.

That is the essential basic principle of this struggle which plays with so much meaning into the current situation of humanity. Over and beyond all that, as is often the case in awareness, it has been forgotten to pay attention calmly—I would like to call it, to what has been pushed down into the subconscious which lies behind the two impulses I've mentioned—to what is actually hidden. What wants to work on the surface of human lives since the critical change in the 15th Century entered later mankind, while what sweeps and drifts and pulsates in human life frequently only takes place in disguise in the consciousness: this striving towards an affirmation of the human personality appears which had not been known in earlier times. Assertion of the human personality, experiencing human nature within, actually makes up the nerve of the social question and dresses itself only according to the various relationships already determined by the given forms. So it could happen that this struggle towards the achievement of the complete assertion of all individuals, can become a struggle for all people—a struggle having become one of differing mutual interests, a struggle of the classes, a struggle which throws its forces in a disastrous way into the present.

Because this indicates something hidden and masked in the newer development of humanity it has resulted in focus not being directed, or better said, that people up to now have not learnt to direct their focus on what matters. During the time when the social impulse worked instinctively, people could allow the social organism to form itself instinctively. Because the social impulse has entered consciousness, even if in masked form, it is necessary right there, necessary as the most important thing in relation to the social problem of the more newer times, that social understanding, an understanding for the expression of the social organism in each individual enters, but that this understanding brings no learned aspect with it but brings an experience which lives in feelings and expresses itself in individuals as this or that necessity to situate themselves in the human community. For this reason, it is so necessary to do what I'm trying to accomplish in these lectures: to turn our focus on to the totality of striving in newer humanity which can only now penetrate the surface in a particular relationship, to focus on really making the social organism into a living form, a form which will allow humanity in their current situation to understand it in a lively way, not just in theory. For this reason, I point out that the health of the social organism depends on not making a chaotic jumble but that the three members are as follows: spiritual life in the widest sense, legal- or political life which means state life in a narrower sense and lastly, the economic life. Only in this way can those within the three members experience their necessary liberation, so that one of the three forms are not engulfed by one of the others but that they unfold freely beside one another and already in a certain independence as I have depicted from different viewpoints, now work together side by side. Up to now certain preconditions directed actual tendencies of human evolution against this independence. By differentiating what had been interwoven previously has now become the most needed current question in relation to the social nature of current humanity.

By exploring certain sides of human thinking, you can feel what I mean, that even in the light of consciousness the social impulse starts according to spiritual presuppositions respectively and they think in this or that way about the relationships between the life of the state and that of the economy. So we see the so-called social or national economics—whatever you want to call it, it is the same thing—formed out of ways of thinking, habits of thinking. It is not my purpose to present the social thinking of the newer time. I only want to draw your attention to one thing—actually I would like to shed light on several things which must be addressed in these lectures. Among these various ways of thinking, ways of presenting the interweaving of economic with state- and spiritual life, there appears also in this newer time what was designated in the 18th Century as the so-called physiocratic national economic ideas. Earlier thinking had the intention of organizing economic life out of the state organism and this formed itself as by necessity in opposition against the physiocratic thinking. It was developing in such a way that there was a need to change economic life not being tyrannized by the state in a narrow sense, that economic life be responsible for its own natural laws, wanting it to be left to what it would fall into if humanity freely, simply out of his own interests guide the economic life. Experts had various revealing things to say which can be somewhat echoed. These people asked: What kind of system of laws should actually go into this form of political state which will regulate economic life? Either the laws are to be the same as those which economic life gives when it is left to freely play with the forces, or it will let others impose on it. If it is the first case, when it is the same, then it is not necessary, the others are not needed and economic life develops its own laws, particularly state laws do not need involvement in economic life. If, however, the state laws work against the economic life then it restricts it, it impairs it and can do damage to itself.

I would like to say that what is expressed in these two opposing statements still haunts many people's thoughts. It haunts them because modern humanity, even though they consider themselves very practical and have a sense for what is real, are still terribly consumed by a certain sense for abstraction, for theoretical one sidedness. Should one try to prove in how many people today what appears as practical life is none other than an actualized one-sidedness, realized one sided theory, then one will touch on some riddles of life and be able to find partial solutions. What sounds the most plausible, most independent for me is to say: Either state laws take on the same direction as the economic ones then they are not necessary, or you contradict them and by so doing, damage the economy. One thinks about these opposites only when one considers the social organism as something which allows itself to be regulated according to concepts, laws, principles and programs, when one does not face up to the social organism being something which has to have life, which must live through its own being. Whatever has come through its own content of life, through its own thriving and sprouting impulses of life, has in real life an opposition to it. The social organism, in order to be a reality, must have oppositions within itself.

For this reason it is necessary to express something which probably many theoretically orientated souls in current times will see as absurd: the state-, pure legal-, and pure political-life needs to be limited in a certain way, in its laws it needs to counteract the economic life in order for the community life of humanity not to be only an economic, not only a legal life situation but an economic, legal and spiritual one, so that it can unfold as we have seen in the example of the human organism. I will once again use this example—I don't want to play the game of analogy between physiology and sociology—the processes of the digestive system is in a certain way independent of those in the rhythmic system, breathing and heart system, both are limited and mutually restrained in their vital processes. So it is necessary that the placing beside one another within the real social organism is the economic life on the one side and in a narrower sense the state life on the other side, which must be joined by the relatively independent spiritual life, as I have illustrated last time from another point of view.

From the following we see what it's really all about. Economic life has quite different inner forces than the legal life, which have to work together if the totality of life is to prosper and this is different again with spiritual life. You could, if you wanted to bring something more or less concretely lively into abstract forms, even if from a one-sided view in order to make it understandable, say the following: in economic life, as in the production of goods, circulation and consumerism, it all comes down to a corresponding creation of value. This creation of value is accomplished essentially by value building itself if the social organism is to be healthy, under the influences and impulses, that the consumption for which the economic organism takes responsibility—call it market or something else—has it ready for consumption so that the consumer of the goods benefits as far as possible. Goods must be offered for consumption if the social organism is healthy, in such a way that it is completely used in an expedient way, that it lasts for as long as it is useful, or for as quickly as it can be consumed while it is useful, that in any case its entire content depends on consumption.

If human labour would be so totally engaged in economic life—and this economic life can only develop in the healthy way under the historical points of goods-price development according to the corresponding consumption—so what the Proletarians with Marxist viewpoints had hoped for, would be fulfilled, human labour being considered as goods. In this way human labour becomes tainted with the characteristics of goods in the social organism, because it is being considered in its ability to be fully utilised for its worth.

The economic member of the social organism also has, when looked at more closely, the tendency to use people and should the economic member of the social organism only follow its own rules, then human labour would be used up. Because the leading bourgeois circles do not take this into account, they have contributed to the situation that within economic life and the position of the Proletariat in economic life, the very nerve of the modern social question has developed, indicating that the life of the modern Proletariat shows, particularly for himself, he chose to undress his labour of the character of goods. As it is sometimes masked in the social question and much of it living unconsciously in the Proletariat, it is the important element which the Proletarian soul strives for, the liberation of human labour from the character of goods.

This can never happen if the economic processes follow their own laws and when the totality of state life is only made into a single economy as is the ideal of many modern socialists. This can also not happen when in a one-sided way the state out of itself is made into an economist. A healthy relationship can only come about if the economic organism can be allowed to unfold its relative processes by itself, when, as it happens in natural organic life as well, a system is allowed to gradually develop fully out of its own latent forces, is allowed to unfold in relative independence. Whatever arises out of this unfolding and is being limited, becomes changed by an adjacent relatively independent system, just like it happens in a natural organism having developed its system fully, which also only expresses its harm as these losses are continuously being paralyzed by the adjacent system. All organic processes are based on this. On this the healing of the social organism must also be based.

It really doesn't matter to me how the economic organism is defined, how one thinks about it. For me it matters that these two branches need to be side by side and that they each develop independently even with the predisposition of developing damage within, so that the other system adjacent to it develops and paralyzes that which arise as damage in the other system. That is the nature of what is alive; that is also what the nature of a living social organism need to be. Only when the economic body manages itself on its own terms and the legal and political bodies manage themselves, whether along their own terms which result from the regulation or the legal relationships between people; when these organisms regulate themselves independently because they are working side by side and on each other, then a healthy social life will be formed. The social question will not be solved through theories, not solved by laws but it will be solved through there being in actual life the forces, one kind being the economic, beside the others, the stately, the political, working directly in their own existence, that they both work adjacent to one another and develop in one another, but by developing in such a way that each one maintains its independence.

This has been missed, out of a certain historical necessity. What has happened has of course been necessary. No criticism but a formulation of relationships is to be presented here. This needs to be taken as essential today if human progress is to orientate itself now and towards the future. It is a given that for the sake of the recovery of the social organism, economic life will become an associate, and becomes divided in such a way that the cooperative societies, trade unions and so on are formed by stripping off what had been inherited from the prejudice of how a constitutional state should be formed. What still existed in state life within these associations has to be stripped off. They must become purely economic serving entities which are based on the relationship of the human being in the economic life, whether it is for the foundation of economic life, or whether it is for the necessity of adding value to raw materials, or to bring goods into circulation, the relationship of consumerism in the right relation to production and trade and so on. The complexity of human life makes it necessary today for the entire system of associations and coalitions which are created on the foundations of the economic life, to be formed through human beings; such associations and coalitions which essentially exist on the understanding of the exploitation of the foundations and the directing of goods towards appropriate consumption. Even the complexity demands the creation of an entire system of associations in this sphere. However, these associations would be designed out of the connection of people with economic powers themselves. The result could be something which again and again enters into real life which is the tendency of the economic life to use individuals.

Beside the economic life the political life must stand, which in contrast to the economic life, is founded on associations which must be based more on democracy because the state life encompasses relationships between people. It encompasses everything in which all people are equally interested in. As the economic life is based on the economic value of goods, so state life has to be based essentially on public law; based on law or with law as its foundation, which determines the relationships of one person to another. In a lively exchange in the economic life a restriction and limitation would have to take place. Approaches to this are available but a penetrating social insight must take place. Whatever is to be created must prioritise the protection of the human being from the economic orientation of consumption, also in relation to his labour being consumed.

Just as the creation of prices and values are the essentials within the economic body, so the arrangement of actual laws, of practical public laws regulating relations of one person to another, are essential in life of the political state. Can it not be said even today that in relation to the experience of public law, no particular clarity has been reached? Many questions can be raised to those who should know these things, who should have done research about these things which are actually to be understood under the essence of laws, laws which always appear in practical form. One only comes to an understanding of the difficulties when one looks for instance at the example of such questions raised in the doctoral dissertation of my friend who has passed away, Ludwig Laistner in his “The Right to Punish,” This in itself can become a question which considers the actual right of the human community in relation to punishment.

One can try all kinds of ways to come closer to the impulse of the law. Particularly in our time when so much is being discussed from the most various sides about the law, it is obvious that to come ever closer, is to essentially search for the being of Law. If you try and find what lies behind such real Law, ownership is also based on law; the relationship of ownership being a piece of land or anything exclusive to one person, for his use with the exclusion of others—you find it is the subject of the actual political member of the social body and so you find nothing other than that it finally comes back to power. Others discover it actually goes back to an original human experience. One arrives far too easily at empty forms if you try to tackle it. Without me getting entangled—and this could involve hours of time—in a complete substantiation, I would still like to say that the law bases a certain relationship of people to something, to a thing, a cause or something similar, or a collection of causes, with the exclusion of other people. What is its basis then actually, if one can develop the feeling that someone or other or a nation has the right to something they lay their eyes on? Still, when one takes the pains, you come to say nothing other than legal rights are based on public life enabling an evolution for the activity of something or its causes or collection of causes which most probably do more for general humanity than any other. The moment one has the experience that someone has a relationship to something, or to someone else, where the need to general humanity is obvious, one can apply the relevant law for it. This will also be essential which will bring about the decisive factor through human experience when the big legal questions of international life now steps into the real world. One would fully award rights over a certain territory, to those who have the intention that in the sense of wellbeing of general humanity this nation in particular will be the best at making the territory the most productive.

So one comes to the impulse which can weave and flow through the democratic common wealth which must orientate the exchanges of one person to another, be it in workers' insurance or be it in other insurance, instituted to give protection against damaging economic life; in all of this human life lies as the foundation of law which I've just been speaking about. An understanding, but not an understanding for some or other general abstract definition of law, but an understanding for the effectiveness of the law, in every single real case, needs to enter to make it a healthy social life for humanity. This legal life, this life of the political state in a narrower sense, of the second member of a healthy social organism, that it will also be; the real crossing point, I would say, of the modern social question only, would not be through some realization of theories, principles and programs, but through direct life, created in the world, namely the point which I have referred to as the demand of the modern Proletarians: disrobing the power of human labour from being dressed up as goods.

To that end it is necessary for people to also really understand, I could say, understand out of the very foundation, what is involved in the share of human labour in general life, in the structure of the community. Again, it will involve hours to take this into consideration if I would attempt establishing one basic social law for human labour: intuitively and instinctively, I believe, every person can do it if life is penetrated fairly and comprehended regarding what I now want to express.

In my Newspaper called “Lucifer Gnosis” I tried to point out this fundamental social law in my contribution about the social question, which was published already at the beginning of the century. However, people were sermonizing about many things on this subject and even today, it falls to deaf ears, unfortunately. This law implies that no one, in as far as he or she belongs to the social body, the social organism, actually works for himself or herself. Just think, insofar as a person belongs to the social organism, he does not work for himself. Each act of work which a person performs can never fall back on him, also not in his actual yield, because it can only be performed for others. What other people produce must be good for us. It is not merely an ethical form of altruism which lives in these things, but a simple social law. We can't do it any other way, just as we can't redirect our blood, so the circulation of the human manipulation will work in such a way that our activity towards everyone and all the activities of others are to our benefit; our own work never reverts back on us.

However paradoxical it sounds, when you examine the real circulatory process in human labour within the social organism you will find the following: it originates in people and benefits others. What one side receives out of the labour is the result of the labour of the other side. As I said, as paradoxical it might sound, it is true. One person can just as little live from his own labour in the social organism as one can eat oneself to get nourishment.

Even though basically this law is easy to understand, you could argue: ‘When I am a tailor and among the clothes I make for others, I also make myself a garment, then surely I'm directing my labour back on to myself!’—That is only an illusion as it is always a deception to believe that the result of labour falls back on oneself. By me making a skirt, pants or equivalent, I don't in truth work for myself but put myself into the position to work for others. This is the pure function human labour has in a social law within the social organism. Whoever dispels this law, works against the social organism. One works against the social organism when one implements the idea which has come about in the more recent history that the proletarian worker must live from the proceeds of his labour. That holds no truth, it is hidden through social relation means an achieved untruth, which penetrates and damages economic life. This can only be regulated in the economic life when the economic life has developed independently beside the relatively independent political-, narrower state life, which all the time snatches from the economic life, the possibility to link human labour back to itself. Within the legal system this is processed in the right social understanding where human labour retains the function it must get according to the truthful course of life in the social organism. The economic organism always has the tendency to use up the force of human labour. Judicial life must always refer to the natural altruistic position of labour and it is always, ever and again necessary, that through new concrete democratic legalization, what the economic life wants to accomplish in error, is to once again tear human labour out of the fangs of economic life on the way to public law. Just as the digestive system and the breathing-circulatory systems must work together, and the circulation of the blood absorb what the digestive system has absorbed, so there must be cooperation, a mutual interaction of what is taking place in the economic life and in the legal life, otherwise neither the one nor the other will thrive. The mere legal state, when it wants to become economic, paralyzes the economic life; the economic organism, when it wants to conquer the state, kills the system of public laws.

This is what I wanted to add to what had been said in previous lectures towards the foundation of the Threefoldness of the social organism. Because the bourgeois leading circles have had their gaze hypnotized by the state, it has become something like a god to them. Focus is not being orientated towards the necessary differentiation of the social organism into three members. So it has come about in our newer times that the state has absorbed political life and in a narrower sense spiritual life. Just like the circulation of goods depends on price and wealth creation, like life within the political social organism depends on the legal life, so everything which is the spiritual life comes out of the direct content of the produce. Just think how enormous the difference is between economic life and spiritual life. In economic life, everything depends on goods being brought to a goal orientated use. Anything generated out of the spirit, be it in the sphere of education, schooling, be it in the sphere of art, or in some or other spiritual sphere, placing spiritual creativity in relation to its usefulness is quite an absurdity. It can't be done. What is brought about spiritually can't be placed on the same line as the circulation of the economic process. This has resulted in the absorption of the school system by the state, the university system and whatever similar by the state, which in the modern development is becoming a limiting factor, even in the real sense it is becoming a limiting factor. People need to become aware once again of making spiritual life free, unharnessed. I have already pointed out that something else needs to be added to the spiritual member of the social organism even though it appears as a paradox, and that is the actual practice of private and criminal judgement. As extraordinary as it sounds, there are tendencies in modern life also which are not judged in the correct way. What is increasingly taken into account in court through misguided psychology is the tendency towards, not an acknowledged, but need for acknowledgement of the principle of incorporating private and criminal processes in the spiritual member which exists relatively independently, and relates relatively independently to all in life which develops as the closer political life, which was developed out of pubic rights legislation. Certainly in future it will happen in a healthy social organism that a criminal for instance will look for results in the second, political member. If it however is looked for then he would be brought to trial by a judge who he will confront in an individual human relationship.

Regarding this question perhaps only those can judge from history, those like me, who is speaking to you now, who during years and years of observing a region where it has become really difficult to actually govern, and where one could still, I may say, want to be ruled through constraint according to a uniform state: in a region such as Austria. Here one can see what happened if across purely language boundaries a free jurisdiction should have been there; when despite the language barriers of those bohemians living in a German region near neighbouring Czech or Bohemian residents with bohemian judges over there, the bohemian residents could turn and choose their judges from the German region. You can see how beneficial this principle could work which unfortunately was only in the beginning of the aspirations in various school associations. Here is something, I might say, like a difficult nightmare still today, for those who have participated in Austrian life, which presses on the soul that this egg of Columbus has not been found: the free choice of a judge and the lively cooperation of the plaintiffs, of the judges and of the defendants, instead of judges presented out of the centralised political state, who can only be authoritative, not for the jurisdiction but for the visiting and delivering of the criminal or then for the delivery of the judgement.

As paradoxical it might sound today, the relationship of people to their judge in connection with criminal and private law must be incorporated in the independent spiritual member. Already two days ago I made you aware how it doesn't depend on an outer management as to the choice of persons in the spiritual branch of the state. If you look into modern relationships then you will see this as well, that the innermost life of science, art and everything spiritual is above all becoming dependent on what they should not becoming dependent on if the spiritual member is to develop relative independence beside the other members. It still appears like a paradox today when I say in conclusion that each of these areas must have a certain sovereignty, its own system of representation, its own legislation, developed out of its relationships, developed out of relationships of associations in economic areas, and so have its management, its legislation as independent. In a democratic way, there will develop out of the whole of mankind a particular social sphere for the actual political state in which the relationship of one person to another is regulated, as will be the relationship to economy and the relationship to spiritual life; without these two being interfered with by the state laws and as a result the spiritual life's active forces will give the layout for the management of spiritual life as well. To an even higher degree, the spiritual life can be emancipated from modern life, to a higher degree than it had been in olden times when the only spiritual life, which applied to many people, came out of religious life, out of schools and universities.

Certainly the intervention of the modern state was necessary to rebuke the antiquated forms of religion and obsolete management which suited them no longer. Out of modern life itself an independent spiritual life is to be developed. This is exactly why a spiritual scientific direction, the very foundation of this, needs to be taken into consideration on this basis because it is known that the entire actual productive spiritual life also lives in, for instance, technical participation, technically experienced ideas which can only develop with healthy human impulses, when it is developed out of the vital, autonomous spirit, independent from both the other members of the social organism. The human spirit will only acquire impact of productivity in the right way if spiritual life is relatively autonomous. Brooding, theorizing, inventing thoughts, for my sake as well, can also be experienced as it takes a certain direction in more modern technology and science, observable in their admirable methods, but the real productive idea, which is so productive that true human progress and at the same time real human healing is served, these ideas can only be born within a self-supporting, self-determining spiritual life.

As much as people are still alienated from what I'm actually implying which must be understood in order to place the social question on a healthy basis, some people have responded to what I've explained by saying: ‘Yes, this is only a more modern meaning of the renewal of the old platonic idea of dividing the social body into three classes: the rulers/guardians, the fighters/auxiliaries and the producers/labourers/educational state.’ No, this is no renewal of old platonic ideas but is in a specific relationship as the extreme opposite, if it comes down to it—because between the platonic thoughts considered great in Greece and also later times, and the thoughts of today towards a healing of the Social organism, lies the big, critical historic incision of the fifteenth Century. At the time of Plato, the divisions of the social organism was one of the division of classes. The structure which I'm talking about here was not a division of people but was formed by members of the social organism; this social organism was so structured that in some cases one person could belong to all three divisions of members, it was not damaging to move from one to the other, not even when, as in modern parliaments it often happens, the same person is accounted for as a farmer and at the same time belong to a party of the state. Today it is still possible through some or other association inaugurating an advocacy group, that an economic protection of interest can be passed through into law. Last time I mentioned such an example where an entire state's life of law was penetrated by such a protection of interests. This becomes excluded. However, my presentation of the threefold healthy social organism, excludes people from the social organism. People just become independent through it; they are stripped of the character of being slaves of the organism, where not classes of people, layers of people exist as members but that the social organism finds its own divisions. This points at the same time to these thoughts which form the basis of it, which should be taken from true reality, distanced from everything which I indicated as fanatical the day before yesterday.

This fanaticism appears in the most varied parties. It is even present in bourgeois circles on the side of social democracy. This fanaticism gets a hold on people if they don't gradually get an inkling of what the social organism as such can actually aim for, when it is healthy. Again and again, the social thinking suffers under the influence of the feeling, the idea, as if the social order can be aimed for directly through some or other program in order to bring good fortune or satisfaction to humanity, or something of this sort. This cannot be sought for directly. What can be aimed for directly is a social organism capable of life, one which has vital forces of life within itself. Situated in such an organism, living in such an organism can out of quite different foundations bring happiness to people. That has other foundations. However, these foundations need to be freed from being restrained. They can only be freed if the social organism is based on life giving forces. Just like a really viable organism can be of help to develop the soul, so in a comparative way can a viable social organism develop happy, satisfied human beings who are willing to work and have an understanding about work. This is what a healthy social organism is all about.

An observation of what we have experienced during a catastrophic time, one might say, can also be considered from an international viewpoint and corroborated out of a larger historic viewpoint, how these ideas I have been exploring as three members, are really necessary for the present-day form of life for humanity and also a form of life for humanity in the foreseeable future. One could say that before this terrible catastrophe, called a war, which broke out over humanity, there was a culmination of the thorough tossing and complete turmoil of the three members which should have reached a differentiation. Precisely due to these three members not being able to reach relative independence beside one another, the result has been much penetrating into what in reality must be calculated as the point of origin and the causes of these tragedies of war. Only a few details need to be pointed out. The focus of humanity has been entirely directed toward the idea that the war has its point of origin in the relation of the Austrian state with the Balkan, namely the Serbian relationship. Whoever was initiated into the Austrian relationships of the last decades know how to judge the economic connections taking place between Austria and the south-eastern Europe, and how these were being convoluted in an unnatural way in the relationships which were to have developed independently with the purely political. As a result of this amalgamation suddenly the political relationship could for itself decide about something which was deeply rooted in economic relations and as a result actualize a falsehood and explode.

How different these things could have been—I can only indicate a few things in my lecture today, in conclusion—if the relationships of such neighbouring states could have been representing the Threefoldness, when across the border the relationship could have been purely politically, democratically based and separated from the other members, just as the form of government is as usual. When however, the corrected, harmonized independently economic and spiritual factors work on the other side of the border, then the system of the state, the so-called state, would be propagated through interests in harmony and amalgamation, where the one is always correcting the other, where no one single side by itself can circumvent an explosion. Healthy relationships across borders would develop in international relationship of nations through Threefoldness.

And then again, how global mankind turned their eyes on what was happening in Germany at least outwardly, at the declaration of war. Whoever is initiated in this area knows how the disaster happened. Often it has been said that during July and August, in those fatal days, politics, beside the actual warfare, alongside the army, had failed. Politics and armies are there where they both work, running simultaneously. They are not divisible anyhow. They could only unfold in a healthy way, if they worked within one of the state formed three-fold social organisms. Otherwise politics would necessarily, at least in one member, take on a uniformed characteristic. At a given moment it would either culminate into the military or non-military. What has to be uniform through its very nature, even when it has been amalgamated through human error with other systems, it cannot do externally so that the one goes over to correcting the other. During these terrifying fearful conditions which grew out of Berlin during the last days of July and the first days of August, the process of coagulation into one single system took place, a system which should have been split up. They all became concentrated and responsible to one system which no single system for the healing of mankind had ever dared take on. Actual relationships would then clearly teach us if these things are investigated without prejudice and bias. Oh, how much nonsense is being said in relation to politics and the army! So much nonsense has been uttered in the last four and a half years! I only want to say one thing: if within an inseparable member of the social organism the dormant policies and strategy could only work, then never, when the strategy is led to depend on itself, will the policies influence this strategy in a healthy way. There has been a tendency to time and again refer to the clause of (Major General Carl von) Clausewitz (1780-1831): "War is a mere continuation of politics by other means," (Die Kriegführung sei die Fortsetzung der Politik mit anderen Mitteln).

I don't want to offer criticism about this statement in as far as it relates to the entire war analysis. However, just like men have, again and again—and women have done so as well—referred to this saying, it has just about as much sense as if one would say: “Divorce is the continuation of marriage through other means.”

This kind of nonsense springs from unnatural thinking, which multiply and penetrate in an unnatural way into real relationships. When things are for once considered without prejudice then it will be apparent how differently things could have gone. Understandably what has happened is historically necessary and what must be said should be a valid impulse for the future, but hypothetically one could still say that everything could have happened differently if the structure of the international European relationships could have been under the influence of the social Threefoldness. One could then say: what has happened came through the relations of alliance. However, alliance relationships could never have entered under the influence of a Threefoldness. Such alliance training which these were and which led to the catastrophes of the last four and a half years, would be ended if people orientated themselves in the sense of the Threefoldness of a healthy social organism.

What I am opening up here has been thoroughly thought through with real meaning, it is brought out of thoughts from reality. I have also always said that if I had involved myself during these fearful years, an authoritative position corresponding to that time would have been to point out the Threefoldness: The only reality is that things change from one day to the next and understandably relationships could have changed regarding these things which need to be talked about. I say to people: ‘What is presented here is no program, it is not an ideal; it corresponds to observations which want to be realized in Central and Eastern Europe, above all in Europe. You have the choice to either apply good sense today or to go and encounter revolutions and cataclysms.’

They have started already and will show themselves in other ways. Today however I might repeat a consideration which can be said on this occasion. I have always said: ‘Whoever is a Utopian, a theorist, who does not think from the basis of reality, but out of abstract claims or party impulses, is interested in what a program or something similar can offer, and that this is actually executed according to specific details.’ These things do not matter in what I am presenting—I have mentioned this before. It could be said—and still is said today—that the formulation of what I am representing will leave no single stone standing on another. The important thing is not that some or other conjecture is realised but that reality is tackled at some point. If this is done it will be discovered that through tackling it, the way forward will become clear. It could become clear by carrying it out and then all formulations need to be adjusted. This is not important if one is no Utopian, no fanatic, to execute something word for word, but to start it at a certain point. At such a point as to where it must start I want to point out still today, before it becomes too late, before human instincts are so far unleashed that an understanding among people, perhaps decades from now, would not be possible any more.

In closing today, I still want to mention something—although in a narrower sense it doesn't belong to this lecture—I also think that if anyone feels within his soul that he is somehow connected to the social question, he has the task to not only speak up about it but need to apply all means to allow his understanding to be brought to his contemporaries. This is what we can do first: promoting mutual social understanding. Much has been corrupted, spoiled in the most varied areas throughout the world due to fragmented, mashed thinking, as I have characterised, resulting in disabling the right idea to come forward at the right time. As a result, I must greet the possibility with a certain satisfaction that out of the difficult relationships of the present it has become possible to accomplish practical results of ideas suggested here, in a relatively short time. Those individualities who have in a certain way, I could call it, been ignited regarding the social question with a view based on reality, have allowed themselves to work towards an understanding of these things, at least in these areas where today misfortune can be the biggest teacher. Anyway, I might regard it as particularly lucky that here within the Swiss region, where there is still relatively speaking the opportunity for peaceful objectivity, that precisely due to this possibility of peaceful objectivity a deeper understanding can enter as well and point out the necessity for the mutual social understanding of humanity indicated in these four lectures, and calling for action. After all, within the pain and suffering which come along during the course of events and in destiny which various members of humanity can experience these days, it can give a certain satisfaction that misfortune actually has taught some people a thing or two. So it could happen—if you allow me to bring this, as it is always meaningful not to remain abstract but be actual when relating to the social question—I have incorporated an appeal in my detailed presentation here in short sentences, a call which is actually dedicated towards processes in the whole world but which has found entry into the hearts of those who have been severely tested in Germany and German-Austria by tragedy and educated by tragedy. I have in this appeal tried to present how the founding of the German Reich took place at a time when the developmental possibilities of a newer humanity in such a reestablishment wanted to, in the most imminent sense, enter into the new social task.

Small things were presented in a comprehensive way; yet just what this empire should have done, to place corresponding content into its frames from the developmental forces of modern humanity and steer towards this Threefoldness, this they could not see. The result has been that the rest of the world turned towards Central Europe. How could the rest of the world understand the entitlement of this particular empire's establishment if this establishment did not create what undoubtedly pointed out its right within the international process of humanity?

Therefore I have believed that a right program, if I may call it that—but you know from the foregoing: this is no program but the reality—therefore I have believed that formulation may be done in the appeal to humanity for a task which could arise from the Europeans who are confronted with the necessity for renewal. After all one can be satisfied that up to yesterday afternoon this appeal had already been supported by more signatures in Germany than the one-time appeal of the ninety-nine intellectuals with unhappy memories, that over a hundred signatures for this appeal in Germany and up to yesterday over seventy signatures out of German-Austria has been made available for this appeal. I mention this because I want to speak from the basis of reality and as a result draw attention to what I believe is needed in the further process of social development, by it not standing alone when it comes down to making it valid for the mutual relationships of one person to another.

So we must first work on the way to a real social solution. This is the next step. Today humanity stands for once in relation to a large part of the civilized world confronting the necessity to look the social problem in the eye. To do so would mean solving a problem—let me say this to you in conclusion—that it is uncomfortable in the highest levels of thinking. Many people will still admit that for a transformation of the institutions, a transformation of the social structure is necessary. Didn't the entire spirit of the lectures, which I allow myself to present, hasn't the whole spirit been one of pointing out that something else is necessary? If Proletarian Marxist educated leaders repeatedly stress that the words of Marxism are the truth: The philosophers interpreted the world and declared: ‘It comes down to thoughts not only explaining the world but transforming it.’ Thus, it happens in today's critical demands of time that not only a half measure but perhaps not even a quarter is done. What is necessary is that thoughts are not only directed to some or other transformation of institutions, or social structures but that it is necessary for thoughts themselves to change. Only out of reformed thoughts will a healthy social organism be able to develop. Institutions hardly please people; to re-think is even less pleasing—but necessary. Unless a person accepts this, it will not be possible to orientate him- or herself, and then they can't cooperate towards the healing of the social organism.

For a long time, the most important considerations and decisions have knocked at the door of the social question. Now it has entered into the house of humanity. It can't be thrown out again because in a certain sense humanity's evolution comes up against an enchantress. It not only works on humanity's outer structure but makes humanity face the need to either re-think or to add tragedy to the already present tragedies, which multiply.

With this, necessities become clear, what needs to be realised if it will not be too late in the relationship that instincts, as I've mentioned, takes on form in order that the understanding between the various classes would no longer be possible. Only then do we approach a healing of the social organism when renewal, what we are waiting for, when health, for which we hope, are not based on old thinking, but that when we make the bold and powerful decision towards the progress of mankind by orientating our forces towards new thinking; because only out of new thoughts will the possibility of life blossom for new generations. This is how you must think the social question has come about, that it has grown out of the conditions of modern life. It will be false to think one can believe in somehow finding a current solution. Socialism isn't a solution or an attempt at a solution, no, modern life and the life of mankind into the future has brought about the social question. It will always be there. In a living, social organism solutions will always be needed. In this a part, a piece of the life of future humanity will have to exist, that in each generation these questions need to be solved out of new forms; this social question which, once it has come up, admonishes and upsets the entire structure of human thoughts and feelings. If we turn to it with our whole heart, with our entire soul, then it will turn to us, not however for our salvation but for our harm.