The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Yesterday I tried to draw your attention, by means of pictorial representations, so to speak, of the great difference in the state of mind of people within the fourth and fifth post-Atlantic periods, in the latter of which we ourselves live. This is a difference to which one is indeed not inclined to pay much attention today, in our present time. Let us only realize what an average person of the present day, who is “clever”, that is, who has absorbed the prevailing basic concepts of the present, has to say about what was hinted at yesterday. He will have something like the following to say: It is all very well and good what the ancient Greek imagined in his fantasy about the succession of generations from Tantalus to Iphigenia, and it is all very well and good that Iphigenia is, so to speak, placed in an aura of ruling fate. But after all, it is all just fantasy. It is the point of view that is generally adopted today by intelligent people. Coridan, whom we have just seen in the Palatine pastoral play, does not say so from the beginning, but Pug does: “It's all just fantasy!” But it is roughly this point of view that today's Pug (beg pardon!) has.

Now we must direct our entire attention to what an enormously convincing power this point of view has for people of today, how impossible it is for them to imagine that someone could appear, someone who, instead of giving the information to such a personality, “hereditary burden,” as I quoted to you yesterday, could put forward something similar to the Iphigenia-Tantalus myth. And if he were to put it forward, everyone would of course say: fiction! In fiction, anything goes, but such fiction has absolutely nothing to do with truth, with real knowledge. And basically, that is the point of view that is currently adopted towards all art. Contemporary humanity is completely and utterly of the opinion that truth can only be attained through concepts, through theories—through such concepts, through such theories that are taken from external physical reality, and everything else, however beautiful, is fiction. In the present situation, one cannot imagine that any other point of view could be justified or even possible, that someone could take a different point of view without actually being insane. Just imagine that someone would even make the request – I dare to say this here, but I am well aware that it is only possible among us to say this – let's assume that someone would come up with the idea of saying: In medical lecture halls, there should be less talk of hereditary burden and the like, but things should be presented in a way that resembles a Greek myth. If the person concerned were to say this as if he meant it, as if he were serious and not making a bad joke, the least that contemporary culture could do to him would be to send him to a sanatorium. There is hardly any other conceivable outcome, is there! The conviction is so deeply rooted in the present that another point of view is not even possible: truth can only be found in the way that is currently officially recognized, and everything that people used to seek through their souls was just childishness, it was myth, it was poetry, it was not truth. But the modern man can be sure that we have finally come so far that the souls in all future eras will never feel anything but the truth of what has just been suggested. One can be quite convinced of this: if it were ever possible to transform air navigation into ether navigation, and if, in the sense of today's physicists, the ether really existed in the universe, and if a balloon were designed that would take some of our clever earthlings, who have never been foolish enough to enter a spiritual-scientific society, to Mars, and on Mars they would reveal other views of some kind or other than the one just mentioned, so one would say: Of course, these Martians are just making things up! They have not yet grasped the concept of how to recognize the way in which truth can really be found. The fact that another point of view might be possible could, under certain circumstances, be taken seriously in the present day even by someone who does not have an outlook based on spiritual science. But then, if he is really able to seriously reflect on other world views, a terrible fate may await him. Nietzsche was one who tried to apply a different standard and who, in the sense of his book Beyond Good and Evil, even criticized truth. But he meant the truth that the present time alone recognizes, and he wanted to assert a different point of view, namely the point of view of life, the point of view of the life of the soul above all things. He was unable to come to spiritual science, and so he had to pay for this point of view with his mental health. Another point of view would be, for example, to ask: How do such concepts as those processed in Greek myth affect the human soul? And how do such concepts as those processed by the present age affect the human soul according to the type of “hereditary burden”? How do these concepts affect the human soul, the whole life of the human soul? How do they work? And there is an enormous difference. One can summarize a number of generations, such as those from Tantalus to Iphigenia, either by doing so in an original way [like Nietzsche] or by believing in such a summary as in something real: he who can bring to life such ideas, such feelings associated with such ideas in his soul, brings an invigorating element into the whole of his soul life. But the person who works only with such concepts as that is of the hereditary burden, which brings into the soul life a killing element, a desiccating element. And this desiccating element will gradually be brought about under the influence of one-sided physical, biological and so on knowledge, a desiccating, a killing element. Never will these physical, chemical, biological sciences be able to produce anything in the present that can contribute to the inner fulfillment of the life of the soul.

Anyone who wants to observe can see it in outward things. Try it out for yourself. Buy Ostwald's little book “Natural Philosophy” – which can be found in the Reclam Library – and try to get by with this little book if you are looking for food for your soul! See for yourself how everything an excellent chemist has to say about all kinds of natural connections is dealt with on many pages, but how everything that is supposed to serve the soul is crammed into a few pages and presented in such abstractions that it can only have the effect of desiccating the soul! And the line of development does not go so far as to promise that these biological, physical and chemical directions will in future fulfill the soul. That is not the case at all. On the contrary, the further the individual sciences progress, the less they will be able to offer anything that could even resemble nourishment for the soul. And when the time comes that the connection between the individual souls and the old religious conceptions will have been completely eradicated by modern natural science, then the soul will have no nourishment at all. The souls of adults would then still preach all kinds of things to children that they themselves do not believe — then the souls of adults would spend their day starting with breakfast, slurping in the newspaper between spoonfuls. Now there is less and less about spiritual matters concerning humanity in the newspapers, and more and more about other things. Then people will go about their daily work, will perform the tasks necessary for the material provision of humanity. Then they will have lunch, will do something similar in the evening, and if there are people who have time, they will kill it playing games or the like because it cannot be filled with some thoughts that have real value through a spiritual world. Yes, what will they do in the evening? Perhaps it will still be acceptable that people go to see plays or the like, in which they do not believe in any event. Some will read a book, perhaps about such things that were produced in the “childlike” times of humanity, which were indeed beautiful, like Raphael's or Michelangelo's pictures. And one will be quite clear about it: it is quite beautiful, but it has nothing to do with reality.

Let us not deceive ourselves: the times are moving towards something that will dry up and kill the life of the soul. If we now consider what the above can teach us, we find that there is already an enormous desolation in it. For what is the meaning of the emergence from the fourth post-Atlantic period into our fifth post-Atlantic period? This meaning consists in the fact that in the fourth post-Atlantic period, in the ancient Greek period, for example, people were not as isolated in their souls as they are today. There was still an inner connection between souls, but they also in certain last remnants of visions, of inspirations of Diana, as they were understood at that time, of inspirations of Diana, of Artemis, of what emerged from the subconscious depths of the soul. And these visions really did appear to people in pictures. It can be said that people still had the last remnants of visionary images in their minds about human relationships, about social life, and they used these images as a guide. It is quite nonsensical to believe that the Greeks would have imagined something in the same way that we imagine things in the present day. It is quite nonsensical to believe that. When the Greeks undertook the expedition to Troy and thus prepared for the march to Troy, it would have been quite impossible for them to proceed with such an undertaking for any reasons that are acquired by reason or animated by feeling as they are experienced today. It would have been quite inconceivable for the Greeks. They knew that when they undertook something of this kind, they were placing themselves in the greater context of humanity and the world, and that what must live in their souls could not be something that had anything to do with ordinary feelings playing out on the physical plane. They saw the deeper reasons and brought them to bear in imaginative visions. They certainly said: there was a contest between the three goddesses Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena, and Paris was to receive the prize of this contest, Helen. It was a picture, but in the picture the Greek felt and sensed great spiritual connections that went through the world.

People today might imagine that the Greeks undertook the Trojan War for similar reasons to those of the present day, and that someone then sat down and invented the whole myth as a poetic explanation of the Trojan War. This is again an externalized notion of the present day. The myth was a vision, an imaginative representation of the deeper forces at work. Now, of course, if it does not lead too far away from the present task, I could discuss how Helen was the representative, how she was the image of the whole relationship between Greece and the Near East, how the whole contest between the three goddesses showed the nature of the whole impulse of Greek soul, and how Greek soul life had to work its way up to what it later presented to the world. But as I said, the consideration of this myth would take us too far from our present task.

We want to bear in mind that there still lived remnants of a visionary clairvoyance that sought the truth in images, and that poetry was not as it is today, where it is presented as something that is invented, but rather it was something that was experienced in a visionary way and then lived out in external forms, but that it was not opposed by a dry, pedantic, purely theoretical science that would have been so proud of its concepts of truth, as is the case with present-day theoretical science. So people still saw the connections between each other. This has been completely lost. It had to be lost because individualism had to arise. People would never have arrived at that individualism, for which the great educator must be the culture of the fifth post-Atlantean period, and which will gradually develop during this fifth post-Atlantean period. People had to lose their old clairvoyance, even in its last remnants, in order to be completely detached – each individual for himself – from what can still be perceived of the interrelationship. Man had to be narrowed down, so to speak, in his spiritual experience to his individual forms of existence on the physical plane. He had to be narrowed down. This could only happen if he lost everything that led him beyond his own body, so that he was completely enclosed in his own body. If you have a vision of what connects you to other people, then you have an awareness of social life. The human being of the fifth post-Atlantic period could no longer have this. He became entirely dependent on what he could experience within his own skin. And so the individualistic concept of the human being emerged at its first stage, at what one can say is this most brutal stage, at which, to a certain extent, he still stands.

If man today wants to feel what he actually is, he thinks first of all – even if he has other theories that are even more beautiful – of what he is within his body, within his skin, really within his skin. It is difficult to evoke a clear idea about this, because it is true and is not believed at all in the present day, because people like to delude themselves with all kinds of idealism in order to hide the fact that basically they only believe in themselves, insofar as they are enclosed in their own skin. But this transition had to take place. It had to take place for the reason that man must gradually realize that what is within his skin is, in a sense and within certain limits, prepared by his karma. What had existed as Greek fate man had not prepared for himself, it was connected with his lineage. What man of the future will feel as karma will consciously connect him with other men. Man will have to consciously feel his karma as something real. As you can imagine, it is still infinitely difficult for today's man to feel karma consciously. It is accepted as a theory, but to feel karma consciously is still very, very difficult for people today. I once said: Suppose we receive a slap in the face from someone. Certainly, outwardly, insofar as we are enclosed in our body and are beings between birth and death, we have to defend ourselves against it. But the higher point of view must be applied: Who gave you the slap in the face? Who put the one who gave you the slap in the face there so that he could give you the slap in the face? He would not be there if you had not placed him there through the way you are connected with him through karma. Think how terribly difficult it is for a person in the present time to think like this! Christians believe that they are people of the present, but they will still follow in thought the One who advises them: If someone strikes you on the left cheek, turn the other also—outwardly it will not work. And this distinction between inward and outward is not yet made by people. It becomes quite hopelessly difficult for them to somehow live in karma.

And yet, when we live our way into life from our embryonic state through birth, through our first childhood into our life, then that which helps to shape our body is our karma. Between our last death and our present birth, we have lived through and have even made it our business to live through how we have to experience karma and what kind of body we have to give ourselves so that it can live out its karma. We thus act, I might say, by kneading the soul-forces through our body. We even localize by placing ourselves in the place in the world where we can live out our karma. Thus we work out our personal destiny with the consciousness that we have between death and a new birth.

This is the opposite of the Greek idea of fate. But in order to come to this idea as a living idea, man must pass through individualism, he must first grasp himself as an individual, I would say, in a very brutal way. And in this way of grasping himself as an individual is he a human being. But, I would say, he has had to accept something, really accept something, in order to live out the feeling: I am locked inside my skin and my flesh. He has had to accept something, this human being. That is that he has become a slave, a soul slave, to this corporeality. He allowed himself to be enslaved by corporeality, and the body initially became the master of a new way of accepting fate. An Iphigenia felt in the age of which I spoke yesterday – every single sentence in yesterday's presentation is correct: I indicated approximately how many years she still lacked until she reached the age of twenty – an Iphigenia who had visions as far as Tantalus, which visions are now interpreted as reminiscences, caused by heredity. Such an Iphigenia is no longer possible in our present day. Such an Iphigenia, who, above all, grasps morally and ethically what lives in the generation, up to Tantalus: “Listen! I am of the Tantalus family!” That is not possible today. For today the doctor steps up to her and explains: hereditary burden! Your father, your mother, your grandfather, your grandmother and so on had such and such a condition, hereditary burden! And that's where it all comes from! — But this makes it clear that today's soul lives gasping under the yoke of physicality, gasping even in its perception, in its sensation.

Basically, my dear friends, we can see this gasping beneath the physicality when we look at what has become of people under a certain 19th-century world view. They only looked at the physical and, because they only looked at the physical, they derived the descent of man purely from the animal world. Man also grasps scientifically under that to which his corporeality connects him. And it will not be easy to draw people's attention to what is at the root of this. For people when they are made aware of all this may say: Do you think you can refute the legitimate aspects of Darwinism? Surely it is well proven. Yes, it is well proven, but that is not the point. The point is that the sense of truth has changed. In the sense, this changed sense of truth, one can of course rigorously prove the whole matter. One must be out of touch with the present age if one cannot perceive what it is actually about.

But all this has practical consequences! With tremendous vehemence, external culture steers towards implementing the things that are thought in practical life and no longer allowing impulses of the spiritual and soul to apply within practical life. And how close are we today to asserting such things, for example in education or didactics, in upbringing! How close are we today to asserting such things in the education of young children! But just imagine if it ever came to pass that people would demand not only the things they demand of young children today, but also quite different things. Imagine if it ever came to pass that it became the duty of every parent to have a child examined by a materialistic doctor for its inherited characteristics once it has reached a certain age, which will then be determined by scientific-statistical data. In the meantime, however, the school system will have been divided into different categories, and after the medical examination by the materialistic doctor, the children will then have to be put into this or that school, perhaps even into this or that kindergarten, depending on their “hereditary burden”.

Today, people are still amazed when someone talks about such a perspective. But that is precisely what is so terrible about being amazed. One should not be amazed at all by such things, because if the form of Darwinism that is theoretically advocated today were true, then it would have to be done that way. That is the main thing: then that would be the only means, and it would be unscrupulous of people if they did not do it that way. There could be the slight possibility, the slight possibility, that, say, someone once, I don't know how, cheated the doctor a little, and a doctor issued a certificate that, in the opinion of others who were not officially appointed to do so, is not correct; while should have been put in section two, where there are certain “hereditary conditions,” the child may have been put in section five, where, according to the doctor's certificate, the future geniuses are, and then it could turn out that the child has become more intelligent than the person examining him! But that could only happen by “mistake.” The fact that something like that would be possible would not fool many people, would it!

This is just to give you an impulse to gain an insight into the direction in which this trend is heading, a trend that is still only theoretical in many cases today. Today it is only like fat drops on the soup, but these fat drops on the soup will become more and more powerful. More and more materialistic fat will be added, and then finally the whole plate will be full of this materialistic fat, and humanity will have to face the consequences. But this is precisely the point where people, through a world view, will have to overcome the great dangers that lie in the practical application of current theories. Once that which is in our spiritual science has found an inner soul-life in a large number of souls, then one will not be able to persuade the person in whom the spiritual-scientific truths have found inner soul-life of all kinds of “hereditary burdens.” Rather, he will say: No matter how much you can prove about what my father, my mother, my grandfather, my grandmother and so on, I know that besides what I carry in my hereditary impulses, I still have that soul that has nothing to do with these hereditary impulses, because at the time when the bequeathing, the previous generation was there, this soul was in the spiritual world between death and the present birth. I also carry these forces within me, and one day I will see whether I cannot conquer this “hereditary burden”! — Certainly, as long as one believes in the theory of inheritance, and as long as spiritual-scientific truths do not become flesh and blood, one will not be able to conquer inheritance. One will only be able to conquer it when the spiritual-scientific concepts really come to life in the souls and become flesh and blood. But for that to happen, much else must happen.

Of course, it can be believed that spiritual truths will gradually gain more and more conviction for those who see through them, but many other things will have to be added. I therefore started today with an aperçu about art. Consider how far what is called truth today has departed from art and poetry since Greek times, how in the fifth post-Atlantic period a gulf has arisen between what people call truth and what they call art. But that has a lot to do with how the present generation, the present humanity, has related to art in general. And here it is really not without value if you take a look at how people today relate to art in general. There is one art in which — because it is of primary importance for the fifth post-Atlantic period and its aftermath — it is precisely not possible to make mistakes in world history. I repeat, it is precisely not possible to make mistakes; in which people today are also compelled to look at the artistic aspect: that is music. Only in music are people today inclined to recognize the artistic, because the nature of music forces them not to see music as a representation of external reality. For one can only fail to recognize the artistic in the very outermost reaches of the musical. If someone were to just listen here and there to see if music imitates the sound of waves or the whispering of the wind or something similar, then we would know that what imitates the sound of waves or the whispering of the wind or something similar is a secondary matter in music; that something completely different is at stake here, namely inner form, which in reality cannot be observed in any way externally on the physical plane. Thus music is protected by its inner nature from being drawn too strongly into the tendencies of the fifth post-Atlantic age.

The present age has less to offer poetry. There are things that lead from the artistic to the non-artistic, and in many poetic activities these things occur particularly. How many people today will still have a real feeling for the artistic in poetry, just as one must have a feeling for the artistic in music? Most people, when confronted with something, ask: is it true in relation to this or that model in reality? Yes, we have a whole art of naturalism that judges everything poetic only in terms of its conformity to external, physical reality, whereas in poetry it is irrelevant whether something conforms to external, physical reality. It is just as unimportant for a piece of writing whether a character is drawn truthfully in the external, physical sense as it is whether a musical performance imitates the sound of wind or waves. So that one can say that the present generation is less predisposed to poetry than to music. In truth, it does not depend on whether I describe something that is true about this or that reality in four stanzas, but rather on how the second stanza arises from the first, how the third arises from the first two, and so on; in a sonnet, it does not depend on expressing this or that, but rather on how the four, four, three, three lines intertwine; how do the four lines intertwine? What inner impulses live in them – similar to melodies or harmony, but transferred to the realm of the imagination, to the realm of sound? – There is actually very little feeling for that.

A woman, a very witty woman, once gave me a novella – it was a long time ago, about thirty years – and said that I should read it and give her my opinion. This novella was of such a nature – one was dealing with a very witty woman – that something was told, as one might tell an external event, so that I found myself obliged to say: the whole thing requires, above all, that you undertake a division that you, so to speak, carve out three novellistic stanzas, a first novellistic stanza - I now mean in a figurative sense -, a second, a third, and that an inner structure, an inner structure of an artistic nature, extends into it. - You should have seen the way the lady in question looked at me - to demand such a thing! What - she said - three stanzas should I do? she said, ironically, at my suggestion.

Then there is the next art, for which the present generation has even less aptitude, and that is painting. Painting, how it lives out of form and color, how it must see the artistic and does not have to look at it: how does what is depicted bear a physical resemblance to this or that external object? Of course, the artistic aspect can also lie in physical similarity, for example in portraiture or the like, but then something quite different is important than the likeness. What matters is that the artistic aspect comes through precisely in the way the work is treated. And there is terribly little of that in humanity at present. What people judge first in painting today can be compared to wanting to judge music by the similarity of a melody or something similar to something external in nature.

However, the descent from music to poetry is also noticed in another way, and it is also noticeable in the present in another way. Someone may consider themselves a musical genius, but they still have to study something. Today, however, poetic geniuses consider it quite dreadful if they are supposed to have studied something for the finer technical aspects. And there is almost a similar tendency with regard to painting or the like.

But when it comes to sculpture, people's understanding of the subject sinks even lower still in relation to the present day. When judging sculpture, people consider almost nothing else except what might be produced if a series of sounds were heard and one spent the whole night trying to determine which natural phenomenon it resembled. Most judgments passed on plastic arts and sculpture are actually of this kind, and it is only through sculpture that we can see that an understanding of sculpture will arise when spiritual science can be sought in the human personality in a living way. Remember many of the things I have presented here – and had to present here on purpose – about the way of empathizing with the space above and below, right and left, front and back; remember all these discussions. Remember the arguments I had about the left and right sides of the human being, and consider how much can be developed in this way, this experiencing of the etheric body of the human being, which first shapes the physical forms, an experiencing that the Greeks had instinctively, that was lost in the fifth post-Atlantic period, and that must be resurrected. One can already say: the time must come when sculpture will be conceived in such a way that everything that today pushes people to their judgment is left out, and everything that people are only willing to consider in relation to music is included.

Not to mention architecture! For if people today were not forced to place their chairs somewhere in the room with the table, and to put a cover around it, and if they were not forced to somehow enter the rooms and look out into the open, then they would not find any forms today that somehow signify an architectural design. For what do architects do? They study Renaissance forms, classical forms. That is to say, they imitate, because you cannot put up mere cubic forms or polyhedral or similar boxes everywhere. That architecture will be able to give birth to forms again will depend entirely on people learning anew to feel how the Creative Power of the world pours into forms. For this had to be lost in the time of individualism. And so it is necessary to revive it; necessary that in addition to what is to bring life into the conceptions of the human soul, the artistic perception is also added, that the artistic contributes essentially. That is why it is good that a number of our dear friends have not only heard theoretical lectures on art within our spiritual-scientific endeavors, but have also actively participated in the creation of certain forms and other artistic endeavors, even if what is created here is only a beginning for something in the future.

I would like to say that the last refuge that the world-view people of the present day have chosen is what they call: reason taught by external experience. With this reason, taught by outer experience, people have now built the present-day worldview of materialism, and more and more the purely mechanical and biological, physical, chemical concepts are to become decisive for the worldview, and there is no inclination to go into the liveliness value of the concepts, into the way in which they can enliven the soul. I have expressly emphasized that the great advances in scientific research must be recognized by our spiritual science, that we should not expose and embarrass ourselves by constantly railing against scientific progress. One only rails against it as long as one does not know it. When one gets to know it, one gets an impressive impression. And we should really realize that we should not complain about science because we belong to spiritual science if we have no idea whatsoever of any kind of natural science. But let us turn again to what world view values there are in current science, or rather to the way in which current scientific concepts can become precisely the significant world view values. We live in difficult and oppressive times today. We see how death is spreading across wide areas in an endlessly oppressive manner. We see how suffering and pain are spreading, a picture that every soul should contemplate today. Especially in our time, it is so depressing when souls divert their gaze from the great world events and are so concerned with their own personal affairs. From this point of view, my dear friends, it has caused me, for example, such infinite pain in the past year that so much personal information has come to light in our ranks at a time when the great interests of humanity could so intensely approach our soul. But I don't want to talk about this and that at all, I just want to draw attention to it.

How do people of the present day face such overwhelming events of the times? There may be those who say: Does not the transience of the physical, especially in this time when we see thousands and thousands of deaths taking place all over the world, make us so aware that people must awaken within themselves all the ideas that can arise in them about the eternal powers of the human soul? Are not these events particularly suited to lead human thoughts to the eternal powers of the human soul? And so one could imagine that perhaps someone who was already very inclined to surrender completely to Ahriman, that is, to materialism, would be reminded by the force of the present impressions of the vanity of the transitory, of the withering away of the transitory, to turn his gaze to the eternal. That would be conceivable. But if we look at some of what comes to light in reality, if we take one of the most outstanding scientific visionaries of the present day, if we take Ernst Haeckel. What is the approximate content of Ernst Haeckel's “thoughts of eternity”? He says: “We see countless people passing away, an inexplicable fate befalling the physical life of man on earth. Don't we realize from this how worthless any thoughts about the eternity of the human soul are when we see that people can be cut down like that? Is this not proof that the scientific world view is right when it says: Nothing of meaning extends beyond the merely physical and corporeal? Is what we are experiencing now not proof that those who speak of an eternity of the human soul are wrong?

It cannot be said that the one who, from the present-day concepts, would be made aware of eternal forces in the human soul through the present-day events, would be more logical than the one who says: We see people dying after all, through what I can only call chance! How can one believe that there is really meaning in human development or that eternal values are there! From the present standpoint, it cannot be said that one is more or less logical than the other. You cannot consider one idea logical and the other illogical if you are seriously concerned with logic. For those who argue in this way are reminded of what lies in the present scientific achievements. One can truly admire these infinitely. One can say: just think what chemical science has achieved, and mechanical science! It has perhaps achieved wonderful things when it comes to bringing about this or that in human progress, but it has also used its wonderful achievements to create very ingenious instruments of murder. This science can be completely neutral. It can produce the most wonderful instruments for exploring the secrets of nature, and through the same achievements, the most horrible instruments of murder! And so it is with science in general. It can prove from harrowing events that human souls cannot be absorbed in transience, and that precisely these events prove – it can prove this just as well! – that the human soul is something eternal. These scientific concepts are completely neutral.

Something positive must come, the message, the tidings, the revelation must come from the spiritual worlds, and these spiritual worlds must work through their inner power! You know that what comes through these revelations will not contradict but will be in full harmony with the achievements of natural science. Therefore, those who believe that scientific concepts will ever develop into a satisfactory world view are stating something quite nonsensical. Spiritual research must be added to scientific concepts, and therein lies the way to escape from the great dangers of the present. Attention must be directed to the fact that the downward path is the one that is connected with the very greatest progress, and that the upward path is the one that must come from the revelation of spiritual life. It is in this state of world affairs alone where must we act radically. That is what matters. Only spiritual science will be able to again speak of deeper secrets.

Truly, my dear friends, it is not easy for the concept of karma to take root in the soul. This will only happen when a larger number of people are able to see the narrowness of such concepts as “inherited burden,” at the invalidity and infertility of such concepts, and look at what lives in the soul. Then, when people come and see a child of whom the materialistic doctor says: ‘He will live out such and such, but there is nothing to be done, because the father was like that, the mother was like that, the grandfather was like that, the grandmother was like that and so on, there is nothing to be done’ – when the materialistic doctor says that, then people must have a sense that it also may be true that there is a soul in this that has prepared itself for something quite different from what the materialistic doctor believes according to heredity, for something quite different between its last death and the new birth, and that above all this must not be left fallow, but these forces must be developed at all costs. Spiritual knowledge must become the norm in the world, and people will be able to see that it is unscrupulous to not turn their attention to the spiritual and soul realms. They will have to realize that if they do not turn their attention to these spiritual qualities during their education, they will remain latent. For at a certain age, physicality will have already been expressed; it should be noted that the spirit can no longer penetrate it, and then it remains fallow for the incarnation in question.

This is where spiritual science takes on a practical significance. It is to be hoped that this practical significance will be recognized. These are the things that I wanted to bring before your soul today in connection with yesterday.

As we may have gathered from yesterday's reflections, it is important for today's human being to orient themselves in the developmental process of humanity in order to imbue themselves with an awareness of what the present state of the soul must be so that the human being can be human in the true sense of the word.

The day before yesterday I used a comparison to point out the importance of the sense of time. I said that the insect has the task of always undergoing certain transformations within itself, coinciding with the course of the year. The insect undergoes the course of the year in its own transformation. It has very specific bodily functions in spring, summer, autumn and winter, and it completes the cycle of its life in connection with this course of the year. Thus, I said, the human being must find a way to consciously place himself in the present moment, not in a short period of time, but in the whole course of the earth, in the historical course of the earth. He should know how his soul experiences had to be shaped in ancient times, how they had to be shaped in medieval times, and how they have to be shaped today.

When we look back to the early days of human development and see how humanity drew its strength from the Mysteries, the strength to know, the strength to live, we find that those who were to be initiated into the Mysteries were always, as it were, given a very definite indication of the goal of their initiation. The initiates must realize that they will have to undergo exercises that ultimately lead to the experience of death; within their earthly existence, the human being must pass through death in order to gain the other knowledge of his own immortal, eternal being from this experience of knowing death. This, I would like to say, was the secret of the ancient mysteries: to gain the conviction of the human immortal being from the experience of knowing death.

Now we have seen in these days where this comes from. It comes from the fact that in those older times, man could not have come to his human self-knowledge otherwise than by realizing what happened to him immediately after death. Man of those ancient times only became the thinking, free being that he knows himself to be today in his earthly existence after death. Only after death could man in the early days of human development say: I am truly a being on my own, an individuality on my own. - Look beyond death, the ancient sages might say to their disciples, and you will know what a human being is.

That is why man in the mysteries should undergo dying in the image, so that he may receive from dying the conviction of eternal life and being. So essentially, the search for the mysteries was a search for death in order to find life.

Now things are different for people today, and therein lies the most important impulse in the development of humanity. What people went through in the old days after death, that they became a thinking being for themselves, that they became a free being for themselves, that is what people today must find in the time that lies between birth and death. But how do they find it there? He finds his thoughts first of all when he practises self-knowledge. But now we have found that throughout the time in which we have been dealing with the nature of man from a certain point of view, these thoughts, namely the thoughts that man has developed since the first third of the 15th century, since the time of Nicholas Cusanus, are actually dead as thoughts, they are corpses. That which lived lived in the pre-earthly existence. Before man descended to earth as a soul-spiritual being, he was in a spiritual life. This spiritual life died with the beginning of life on earth, and he experiences what is dead in him as his thinking. The first thing that man must recognize is that although in more recent times he can come to real self-knowledge, to a knowledge of himself as a spiritual-soul being, but that what surrenders to this self-knowledge is dead, spiritually corpse-like, and that it is precisely into this dead, into this spiritual corpse that what comes from the will must flow, from that will of which I said yesterday that it is actually in the nothing from the moment of falling asleep to the moment of waking up, anchored in the astral body and in the I. The I must shoot into the dead thoughts and must revive them.

Therefore, in the old days, all the care during the initiation was basically directed towards dampening something in the person. Actually, the old initiation was a kind of calming of the inner human abilities and powers. If you follow the course of the old initiation, you will find that in essence, the human being underwent an initiation training that led him to calm his inner excitement, to dampen the inner emotionality that would otherwise be present in ordinary life, so that what the human being had in ordinary life, the filling of his entire being with the divine-spiritual powers that permeate and animate the cosmos, would be subdued and he would consciously sink into a kind of sleep, so that he could then awaken in this subdued consciousness to a kind of sleep, which he otherwise only experiences after death: calm thinking, feeling himself as an individuality. The old system of initiation was thus a kind of system of quieting.

In the present time, this longing for reassurance has remained with man in many ways, and he feels comfortable when old initiation principles are warmed up and he is led to them again. But this no longer corresponds to the essence of the modern human being. The modern human being can only approach initiation by asking himself with all depth and intensity: When I look into myself, I find my thinking. But this thinking is dead. I no longer need to seek death. I carry it within me in my spiritual-soul nature. While the old initiate had to be led to the point where he experienced death, the modern initiate must realize more and more: I have death in my soul-spiritual life. I carry it within me. I do not have to look for it. On the contrary, I have to enliven dead thoughts out of an inner, willed, creative principle. And everything I have presented in 'How to Know Higher Worlds' is aimed at this enlivening of dead thoughts, at this engagement of the will in the inner life of the soul, so that the human being may awaken. For whereas the old initiation had to be a kind of lulling to sleep, the new initiation must be a kind of waking up. What the human being unconsciously experiences during sleep must be brought into the most intimate soul life. Through activity, the human being must awaken inwardly.

To do this, it is necessary to grasp the concept of sleeping in all its relativity. One must be clear about what anthroposophical knowledge is actually present with regard to this idea of sleep. If we place side by side two people, one of whom knows nothing of the things presented in anthroposophical knowledge, and we place next to him a person who has really taken in the anthroposophical with inner interest, with inner interest, not just with passive listening or passive reading, but with inner interest, the anthroposophical ophorophical has been presented, and we place beside it a person who has really taken in the anthroposophical with inner participation, with inner interest, not just with passive listening or passive reading, but with inner interest: then the person who has not taken in the anthroposophical is like a sleeper compared to the one who has taken in the anthroposophical and is awakened in the anthroposophical, as a person is awakened in the morning when he enters his physical body from unconsciousness. And we can only find the right place for ourselves within anthroposophy, we can only find the right orientation for the anthroposophical movement if we look at it in such a way that it gives us something like waking up in the morning, if we compare approaching anthroposophy in the right way with what we feel when we pass from the unconsciousness of sleep into the perception of an external world. If we can also have this in our feelings: just as immersing ourselves in the physical body when we wake up gives us a world, not just knowledge, but a world, so immersing ourselves in anthroposophical knowledge gives us a world, a knowledge that is not just knowledge, but a world, a world into which we wake up. As long as we regard anthroposophy as just another world view, we do not have the right feeling towards anthroposophy. We only have the right feeling about anthroposophy when the person who becomes an anthroposophist feels that he is awakening in anthroposophy. And he awakens when he says to himself: the concepts and ideas that the world has given me before are conceptual and ideological corpses, they are dead. Anthroposophy awakens this corpse for me.

If you understand this in the right sense, then you will come out on top in the face of all the things that are often said against anthroposophy and the understanding of anthroposophy. People say: Yes, a person who is not an anthroposophist is learning something in the world today. That is being proven to him. He can understand that because it is being proven to him. In anthroposophy, mere assertions are made that remain unproven - so the world says very often. But the world does not know what the reality is of what it considers to be proven. The world should realize that all the laws of nature, all the thoughts that man forms out of the world, that when he experiences them correctly, they are something dead. So what is being proved to him is something dead. He cannot understand it. Only when one begins to perceive what is today the ordinary world view as something dead, then one says to oneself: I do not understand what is being proved to me, just as I do not understand a corpse, because it is what is left over from a living being. I understand a corpse only when I know to what extent it was permeated by life.

And so we have to say to ourselves: what is considered proven today cannot in fact be understood if we look at it more deeply. And it is only when we allow the spark of anthroposophy to strike that which is otherwise offered by civilization today that we can truly understand it. — Those who, let us say, say to a mere natural scientist of today who comes to them and says, “I can prove my case, you cannot prove it,” are right. They then reply, “Of course you can prove anything in your way, but the very thing you have proved to me will only become intelligible to me when I allow the spark of anthroposophy to strike it.” That should be the information that an anthroposophist, speaking from a heart full of living spiritual life, can give to a non-anthroposophist. The Anthroposophist would have to say: You are falling asleep with your knowledge of nature; you are falling asleep to such an extent that you say: I have limits to my knowledge of nature, I cannot wake up at all, I can only state that with my knowledge of nature I do not approach the spiritual at all. You still have a theory for your sleep, for the justification of your sleep. But I want to refute precisely this theory of the justification of your sleep by bringing what is there sleep to wakefulness.

I pointed this out in the first chapter of my book 'Von Seelenrätseln'. There I expressed what has been repeated in lectures over and over again, namely that a person who remains with the present civilization simply says that there are all kinds of limits to knowledge that cannot be crossed. So he calms down. But this calming down means nothing other than that he does not want to wake up, he wants to remain asleep. The one who now wants to enter the spiritual world in the modern sense must begin to wrestle with the inner soul tasks precisely where the other person sets the limits of knowledge. And by beginning the struggle with these ideas, which are set at the boundary, the view of the spiritual world gradually opens up to him step by step. One must take what is presented in anthroposophy as it is intended.

Take this first chapter of 'Mysteries of the Soul'. It may be imperfectly written, but you can at least find out the intention with which it was written. It is written with the intention that you say to yourself: If I stop at present civilization, then the world is actually boarded up for me. Knowledge of nature: you move on, then the boards come, the world is boarded up for me. What is written in this first chapter, 'On Soul Mysteries', is an attempt to knock away these boards with a spade. If you have this feeling that you are doing a job, to knock away with a spade the boards with which the world has been boarded up for centuries, if you see the words as a spade, then you come to the soul-spiritual.

Most people have the unconscious feeling that a chapter like the first, 'On Soul Riddles', is written with a pen that flows with ink. It is not written with a pen, but with the spades of the soul, which would like to tear down the boards that cover the world, that is, eliminate the boundaries of knowledge of nature, but eliminate them through inner soul work. So, when reading such a chapter, one must work with it through soul activity.

The ideas that arise from anthroposophical books are quite remarkable. I understand these ideas, often do not contradict them, because they have their value for the individual; but take for example the “Geheimwissenschaft”. People have come to me who think they can do something for this 'Occult Science' of mine if they paint the whole 'Occult Science' so that it would stand before people in pictures. This longing has arisen. There have even been samples of it. I have nothing against it; if these samples are good, then one can even admire them, it is indeed quite beautiful to do such things. But what longing does it arise from? They arise out of the longing to take away the most important thing that is developed in “occult science” and to put images in front of people that are just boards again. Because what matters is - the way our language and the awful writing has become, this terrible writing or even the way it is printed - to take it as it is, not to rebel against what civilization and to take it in such a way that the reader can also overcome it immediately, that he can immediately get out and make all the images himself that have flowed into the awful ink, thus creating them himself. The more each person individually creates these images for themselves, the better it is. If someone else anticipates this, they are in turn walling up the world for him. I do not want to deliver a diatribe against the pictorial elaboration of what is presented in the Imaginationen of “Geheimwissenschaft”, of course not, but I would just like to point out what is fundamentally necessary for everyone as a living assimilation of this matter.

These things must be understood in the right way today. One must come to the point where one does not just take anthroposophy as something that one delves into in the same way that one delves into something else, but one must take it as something that requires a change in thinking and feeling, that requires one to become different from what one was before. So if, for example, an astronomical chapter is presented from the perspective of anthroposophy, one cannot take this astronomical chapter and compare it with ordinary astronomy and then start to prove and refute back and forth. That makes no sense at all. Instead, we must be clear about one thing: the astronomical chapter drawn from anthroposophy can only be understood when the rethinking and re-sensing is in place. So if a refutation of some anthroposophical chapter appears somewhere today and then a written defense appears that has been written with the same means as the refutation, then nothing has been done, really nothing at all, because one talks back and forth with the same way of thinking. That is not what is important, but that Anthroposophy be carried by a new life. And that is absolutely necessary today.

It is quite remarkable what ideas arise from reading anthroposophical books. I understand these ideas, often do not contradict them, because they have value for the individual; but take for example “Geheimwissenschaft” (Occult Science). People have come to me who think they can do something for this Secret Science by painting the whole work so that it would stand before people in pictures. This longing has arisen. They have even delivered samples. I have nothing against it; if these samples are good, one can even admire them, it is indeed quite beautiful to do such things. But what longing does it arise from? It arises from the longing to take away the most important thing that is developed in “occult science” and to put images in front of people that are just boards again. Because what matters is - the way our language and the awful writing has become, this terrible writing or even the way it is printed - to take it as it is, not to rebel against what civilization has brought, and to take it in such a way that the reader can also overcome it immediately, that he can immediately get out and make all the images that have flowed into the hideous ink himself. The more individually each person creates these images, the better it is. If someone else anticipates this for him, he in turn wallows the world. I do not want to deliver a diatribe against the pictorial expression of what is presented in the “occult science” in imaginations, of course not, but I would just like to point out what is fundamentally necessary for everyone as an active assimilation of this matter.

These things must be understood in the right way today. We must come to the point where we do not take anthroposophy as something we delve into in the same way we delve into anything else, but we must take it as something that requires a change in thinking and feeling, that requires us to become different people than we were before. So if, for example, an astronomical chapter is presented from the perspective of anthroposophy, one cannot take this astronomical chapter and compare it with ordinary astronomy and then start to prove and refute back and forth. That makes no sense at all. Rather, we must be clear about one thing: the astronomical chapter drawn from anthroposophy can only be understood when the rethinking and re-sensing is there. So if a refutation of some anthroposophical chapter appears somewhere today and then a written defense appears that has been written with the same means as the refutation, then nothing has been done, really nothing at all, because one is talking back and forth with the same way of thinking. That is not what is important, but that Anthroposophy be carried by a new life. And that is absolutely necessary today.

It is urgently necessary to talk about these things in this phase of the Anthroposophical Society, because these things are beginning to be misunderstood in the most fundamental way. To this end, let me today look back a little at the way in which the Anthroposophical Society has developed. You see, it came into being not through seeking it, but through arising out of the circumstances of life; it came into being by being in a certain loose, external connection with the Theosophical Society at the beginning of our century. This Theosophical Society has always endeavored to bring old principles of initiation into the present. Fate decreed that it was precisely within theosophical circles that anthroposophy could first be spoken of. I have often discussed the reasons for this, and I will not repeat them today. I did hint at them in the first essay I wrote in the series 'The Goetheanum in its first ten years' (in GA 36).

But at that time anthroposophy had to struggle out of the modern conception of the spiritual, which, I might say, tended more towards theosophy in the broadest sense: towards the reintroduction of old methods of initiation. The grotesque way in which these old methods of initiation do not correspond to the demands of modern civilization was shown very clearly when, around the years 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, this spiritual movement, which had a theosophical character, approached the Christ problem. Then the theosophical movement produced the absurdity of an incarnated Christ Jesus in a present-day human being. And all the other absurdities that the theosophical movement produced were based on that. From the very beginning, anthroposophy, in contrast to theosophy, had to lead to a correct understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Therefore, in the first period of anthroposophical life, the explanation of the Gospels was given preference, the guidance to a correct understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And at a time when the other spiritual movement, with regard to the Mystery of Golgotha, fell into the worst absurdities, the anthroposophical movement approached more and more a real, real conception of the Mystery of Golgotha and went its way with this conception of the Mystery of Golgotha, while the theosophical movement could no longer be connected to it.

That was the first phase of anthroposophical endeavor. There was the significant cohesive impulse to connect the anthroposophical movement in the right way with the Mystery of Golgotha. And it can be said that at the moment when it was possible to write my Mysteries, this phase had come to a kind of preliminary conclusion. It was a general conviction among anthroposophists at the time that the anthroposophical movement had to be connected with a correct understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. And the momentum that the anthroposophical movement had up until around 1908, 1909 and so on, came from the fact that a correct understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha was gained in a new spiritual way, everything was oriented so that the Mystery of Golgotha could be at the center of understanding. That is how the Anthroposophical Society acquired its character at that time.

But the things that are part of real life outside are going through a period, and something that should be full of inner life, like the Anthroposophical Society, goes through a period at a faster “pace than others.

An important phase in the anthroposophical movement, for example, when anthroposophy had already become completely independent of theosophy, was when I gave the lecture cycle on “Occult Physiology” in Prague and more and more, I would say, also the knowledge of the world could be conquered through anthroposophical knowledge. In this way it could be shown to the world: this Anthroposophy is not something in cloud-high altitudes, only mystically hovering, but it really takes hold of modern consciousness. It takes into account the emergence of the development of consciousness souls. It ventures into areas that can only be grasped with spirituality, but which are the areas of the human world around us.

And so, after the Mystery of Golgotha was, so to speak, established within the anthroposophical movement, a scientific movement that was only possible if the Mystery of Golgotha was taken completely seriously took its first steps.

This was difficult to maintain during the period when everything in Europe was going haywire and the world war broke out. We were in the second phase of the anthroposophical movement. We had, so to speak, left behind us the fact that we had borne witness to the fact that we wanted to be firmly connected to the Mystery of Golgotha. We had just begun to work on expanding the anthroposophical impulse across the various fields of world civilization. And now came the time when people in Europe became so deeply divided from one another, the time when mistrust and hatred ran rampant. A time came when everything that was not allowed to live within an anthroposophical community came to life if it was to develop its true life impulse. And in a way, we really did succeed, despite the difficulties that existed at the time, in continuing the Anthroposophical Society.

Let us consider the difficulties that existed. One major difficulty was that the original foundation of anthroposophy had started from central Europe, that we had our Goetheanum here in a neutral area, and that, I would say, any collaboration between people from the most diverse European regions was viewed with enormous mistrust from many sides. Every interaction and every journey between different sides was, of course, an enormous difficulty at that time. But the difficulties were overcome at the time because they were treated – my dear friends, it must be said – because they were treated from an anthroposophical spirit. I know that many who were part of the anthroposophical movement at the time also criticized some things, even resented them, because it was not always immediately apparent what had to be done in the face of the divisive judgments that had been made about the world in order to ensure the cohesion that can only exist in an anthroposophical spirit! And so we were able to guide the anthroposophical movement through the difficulties that arose during the European crisis, and in a sense keep it pure. Those people who were downright mistrustful during that time could in many cases be brought to trust, to the point where they said to themselves as complete outsiders: Anthroposophy, however one may feel about it, is something that cannot be dismissed as a thing to be mistrusted, even if it works with the most diverse nations.

Even as the war was drawing near, and despite the fact that it was misunderstood by many, and that some people got involved in this or that issue that began to divide people in Europe at the time, and despite the fact that some people criticized much of what was done in the spirit of anthroposophy out of some national furor, it was still possible, if I may say so, the anthroposophical ship could be steered through the great difficulties that existed, and it was possible to continue working on our Goetheanum.

One would like to say: This second phase, in which Anthroposophy was no longer an embryo, as it was until 1908 or 1909, this second phase lasted until about 1915 or 1916. Of course, its after-effects remained in many ways.

But then a time began when the child naturally had to mature: the third phase of the anthroposophical movement, starting around 1916. Yes, my dear friends, what kind of time was that? It is the time when all kinds of personalities in the anthroposophical movement, which had grown significantly by then, had ideas, ideas that then grew particularly badly in the post-war period.

It is in the nature of such a movement that the individuals in it must have ideas, because such a movement must mature within itself. As it grows, leading personalities must gradually emerge within it. And then it was indeed right that individual personalities should have such ideas. But what was necessary was that these personalities should cling with iron will to these ideas, so that they should not be adopted merely as a program and then abandoned, but should be held fast by these personalities with an iron will.

The ideas that have sought to be realized to this day have all been good. What has not been good and what must change is the behavior of the personalities in relation to them: it is precisely a matter of gaining perseverance in the pursuit of ideas. A new element necessarily emerged.

Take the first phase of the anthroposophical movement. When anthroposophy was still in its infancy, people could approach it by simply absorbing what was offered. In the first phase, all that was required was to absorb, to join the movement, to take in what was offered.

In the second phase, it became necessary for the assimilation to be mixed with an understanding; for example, people from the world came who really knew this outside world, knew it as scientists, knew it as practitioners; who could therefore judge that what was offered to them by anthroposophy also had value for science and life practice. But you didn't have to be active yourself, you just had to take in the anthroposophical with a healthy judgment of the outside world. In the first phase of anthroposophy, one only needed to be a person with a warm heart and a healthy understanding to be able to say yes to anthroposophy. Of course, this must be the case throughout all phases of the anthroposophical movement, that such people with a warm heart and a healthy understanding take up anthroposophy. But there must always be some people who know the other world thoroughly and can judge from the point of view of the other world, whether scientifically or as practitioners, what is carried down from the spiritual worlds into anthroposophy.

Now, when the third phase came, people were needed who could act, people who would work with their will, but with a persistent will, on the things that had arisen in them as ideas. Just as one cannot succumb to the illusion that a child who has turned 16 is still twelve years old, one should not succumb to the illusion that the Anthroposophical Society in 1919 could still be the same as it was in about 1907. It was in the nature of things that every intention was met. But it was also always emphasized that such volition is only justified if one perseveres, if one remains steadfast in one's will. Now, this has often been lacking. I say this not as a criticism, but as something that points to what must come. But I have often pointed out what must come to pass in individual cases. Only in one instance was my attention paid to by the leadership! That was when I realized that it was necessary to intervene in a certain field, and then our friend Leinhas took over this intervention. Only in this one case has what I have repeatedly and repeatedly described as a necessity in one area or another actually been observed in recent times – I now expressly say: described as a necessity of the third phase of the anthroposophical movement. Because basically I did not need to make a special effort to explain what the impulses of the first phase and the second phase were. They were ongoing. They could be safely left to spiritual karma. It was different with what had emerged through the ideas of individual personalities as a good thing in itself, but which can only continue to be good if the persevering will of the individual personalities really intervenes in the matter. But they must not be allowed to develop in the way they have in many cases in recent times.

Let me give you an example. Among the many things that arose from ideas, let us assume that there was also the so-called Hochschulbund. Yes, my dear friends, this Hochschulbund either had to contain within it a serious will that did not weaken, or it was a stillborn child. This is something that I already said explicitly when it was founded.

What is the meaning of such a statement, my dear friends? It means only that people should be made aware: you must know that if you slacken your will, the matter will go wrong. What has become of the University Federation? In Germany it has become something that only annoys the representatives of the old ways and makes enemies of them, because the will was not behind it. In Switzerland, the Hochschulbund was never really born at all; therefore, a far-reaching will could not flash through something like that which gave the first events within our perished Goetheanum their character: the college lectures. They have basically remained quite ineffective because there was no driving force behind them. But they made enemies. And a large part of the third phase of our anthroposophical movement consisted of this: the arousal of enmity and opposition that is not necessary when there is a strong will behind the cause. Of course, enmity arises; but it is ineffective if it is not justified in a certain way. And it must always be the case that it can be said: however many enmities arise, they must not even have the appearance of justification, however vehemently they arise.

I have repeatedly pointed this out, including here, but let us see how it has come about. It is only natural that young people should approach the movement that arises from the burgeoning of the development of the consciousness soul. We should be glad that young people are approaching it. But what do young people think today about what the Anthroposophical Society is? Young people today think that it cannot be taken seriously. I don't want to talk about whether this judgment is justified or not, but it is there, and you have to deal with the facts in life.

I would like to give you just one external, factual testimony to this fact. Some time ago, a group of young people came together in Stuttgart to truly surrender themselves to the anthroposophical movement with all their hearts. These people had the best intention of devoting themselves to the anthroposophical movement. I was busy here and couldn't be there on the first day after they had gathered in Stuttgart, and so I expressed to one of the members of the central Council the wish that he should represent me by giving a lecture to the young people on the first evening. He went there and proposed the motion to them. They said: We thank you very much, we do not want a lecture from you.

Now, my dear friends, you may say: That was rude. — For my sake, say that; but it has no validity if you say it. The fact was that the people were convinced from the outset: No understanding is possible; he does not tell us something that strikes at our hearts. And I found in Stuttgart that the youth had gathered and that the previous anthroposophical leadership was actually completely out of touch with them. The people were left to their own devices, and they really approached the anthroposophical movement with warm hearts.

This way of relating to others was perfectly possible in the first and second phases of the anthroposophical movement; in the third phase it was no longer possible because in the third phase it began to depend on the individual person in the anthroposophical movement. And as I said, all this is not said to criticize anyone, all this is not said to criticize; all this is said because it caused me endless suffering, because I saw that the personalities who wanted to take the helm here or there in the Anthroposophical Society did not want to rule entirely out of the anthroposophical spirit. And I have always assured them that it is unspeakable what I had to suffer from the fact that it could be stated: This third phase of the anthroposophical movement does not want to progress as it should, because there are too many mere ideas and the energetic will behind them is lacking.

It is indeed a certain fateful connection that when we were struck by the great misfortune here at the Goetheanum, it became particularly clear that the real damage to anthroposophy lies in inaction, in not wanting to take action. And so we have been driven into the very conflicts that now exist in the bosom of the Anthroposophical Society, and which should lead to nothing other than an all the more powerful recovery. But for that to happen, it must first be truly and honestly recognized what is necessary. Above all, it is necessary not to harbor illusions about the facts that have gradually driven us into a kind of cul-de-sac. It would certainly be an illusion if we were to see the damage as lying in anything other than the failure of certain personalities to take a stand. But the Anthroposophical Society can no longer tolerate illusions today. It cannot tolerate the mere unfruitful criticism of the past, but only the actual pointing out of what is necessary. And that is to recognize that desire is not will, that one must not say, 'I have the best will', when in three weeks' time this best will proves to be nothing but will at all, but that one then sat down on one's chair and was, in title, what one is on this chair, but had only passive good will. But passive good will is a contradiction in terms. The will is only good will when it is active. The anthroposophical movement in its third phase cannot tolerate resolutions such as: We make ourselves available. It is the worst misunderstanding to pass such resolutions, the worst misunderstanding of the actual tasks.

What is at stake is for each of us to intervene where we stand, and not to stop at desire, but to develop the will. It might seem, my dear friends, as if I wanted to paint a gloomy picture of what is in the bosom of the anthroposophical movement today. I do not want to do that. But on the other hand, I must not create any illusions, or contribute to the creation of any illusions. Because the point is that we can only move forward if we grasp such an awareness as has been characterized.

But, my dear friends, I am only saying that the second phase of the anthroposophical movement has brought with it the necessity to spread the word about the outer world. I also said that those who have learned from the world in science or practice must come forward as judges. In the third phase, numerous such personalities then found themselves saying, “Yes, now we have to do something, now we have to start doing something!” They also made resolutions. But action is not part of it.

In the third phase, well, I don't want to say how many researchers in the most diverse scientific fields are among us. I don't want to say how many! If I told you the total, you would be amazed. These researchers are, in their opinion, motivated by the best will. In my opinion, they are extremely capable. Here, too, I believe that there is no lack of ability. On the contrary, in recent years we have even managed to bring together the most capable people through a wonderful selection process, here and in Stuttgart. The excuse that abilities are lacking does not hold water. What is lacking is the will. And as soon as one talks about this will, the strangest things happen.

We experienced it at the local science course when a lecture by one of our researchers was announced. He didn't come! But as if in mockery, he arrived a few hours later. Yes, my dear friends, if there is no sense of obligation within the Anthroposophical Society, then it just won't work. And if you want to tackle things, then, oddly enough, they slip out of your hands; they really do slip out of your hands. For example, I wanted to tackle this 'problem', as I would call it, that one of our researchers simply absents himself, skips his lecture – I wanted to deal with this in the appropriate way; I got the answer that he doesn't even really know how he came to be on the program in Dornach! Yes, my dear friends, when problems slip out of our hands like that, then there is truly no longer any concerted, energetic will.

But that is precisely what we need. We do not need a disintegration of all kinds of wishes and all kinds of what is often called goodwill; we need a dutiful will. All things can flourish if people approach them in the right way. Because what does not have the possibility of flourishing within it will not be undertaken, even within the anthroposophical movement. But we need the will, the truly good will, that is, the strong will of the personalities involved. We cannot tolerate curule chairs, but we need active personalities.

My dear friends, I did not bring about the situation that I have to express this, but rather it is the personalities themselves who have made themselves available to do everything possible. It has grown out of something else. Therefore, the issue today is that responsibilities should also be defined as broadly as possible, that they should really be nurtured and cherished, and that they should also be demanded.

That is what I wanted to tell you, because we are still not finished with the current trips to Stuttgart. I have to go back there tomorrow. The next lecture will be next Friday. This afternoon there will be a eurythmy performance here at 5 o'clock. I ask once again not to shy away from the second route; the preparations for the trip made it necessary for this lecture not to follow the eurythmy performance, but to be held in the morning.

The preceding considerations have essentially been concerned with showing how man in this day and age can gain an awareness of his present position in the evolution of mankind on earth. Even in circles that today do not want to know about the knowledge of spiritual worlds, some conception of this consciousness of the relationship of man to the universe is formed. And let us recall something that is much spoken of today in this connection, in this direction. Where all views of the universe are derived from the outer sensory events and the intellectual grasp of these sensory events, it is also said that the whole world consciousness of modern man has changed over the last few centuries. Attention is drawn to the great change that has taken place in this world consciousness of man through the Copernican world view.

We need only look back to the centuries that preceded the Copernican worldview; we need only look back, for example, to the scholastic worldview, which has been mentioned again here recently, and we find that for this worldview, spiritual forces and spiritual beings were present in the world of the stars. We hear how the scholastics spoke of the inhabitants of the stars, who belong to higher hierarchies in the development of their natures.

Thus, the people of this world view have directed their gaze out into the universe, have looked towards the planets of our planetary system, and towards the other stars in the night sky, and they have developed an awareness that not only etheric-material light from the starry worlds penetrates to them, but that, so to speak, when they look at the starry sky, the eyes of spiritual beings, whose outer embodiment can be seen in the stars, fall into their souls. Today, when man looks up at the planets and the other stars, he first of all forms an idea of how material bodies, permeated by ether, are floating freely in space, and how light emanates from these stars. But man does not think at all of the fact that from these stars the glances of spiritual beings of higher hierarchies meet him.

For modern man the Universe has become dead and unspiritual. And in the sphere of earthly existence, the man of ancient times found that which was intimately connected with the spiritual life of the universe. In the spiritual beings of the other stars were creative powers that had something to do with what develops spiritually and soul-wise here in man, spiritually, soul-wise and bodily, we might say. Men have looked up, let us say, to Saturn. They saw in the forces that come down from Saturn to Earth with the rays of light those forces that work within the human being and bring about the power of memory in this human being. They looked up to Jupiter, saw Jupiter connected with spiritual beings of higher hierarchies, who send their effects into man, so that the consequence of these effects in man is the development of the power of imagination. They looked up at Mars: they were of the view that the forces that work into man from the spiritual entities of Mars give man the power of reason.

Thus, a person belonging to an older stage of human development on Earth looked up at the starry sky and saw in the starry sky the origins of that which he perceived in himself spiritually, soulfully and physically. Man felt that he belonged together with beings of higher hierarchies, and man saw the outer revelations of these beings of higher hierarchies in the stars.

With the advent of the Copernican worldview, this world view also fell away. For it will be understood that an earth, which was seen as being under the influence of the immeasurable spiritual forces of the universe, was, one might say, also a gift of the whole universe for man, that man, by living on earth, saw in this earth the confluence of the effects of innumerable entities. Man felt, as it were, as a citizen of the earth, but, in feeling as such, at the same time as a citizen of the universe.

He looked up to the gods, worshiped his gods, but spoke of these gods in such a way that it was in their intentions to determine the course of human development on earth. The earth was explained in terms of its history, the earth as a dwelling place for man was explained from what was understood of the cosmos, what was understood of the universe. The earth was explained from heaven, and the gods were sought for the intentions for what was seen in the orbit of earthly events, and with which man was intimately connected.

What has emerged from the Copernican worldview gives modern man a completely different view of the world. Man increasingly felt that the earth is an insignificant world body flying around the sun. And when he reflected in a modern way on the relationship between this earth and the rest of the universe, he could not help but call this earth a speck of dust in the universe. All the other celestial bodies that his eye could see seemed more important to him than the earth, because external physical size became decisive for him. And in terms of this, the earth can hardly compete with a few celestial bodies.

Thus, for man, the earth became more and more a mere speck in the universe, as it were, and man felt insignificant in the cosmos on this insignificant earth, insignificant in the universe. With his spiritual powers, he was no longer connected to this universe. It must have seemed impossible for him to believe that what happens on this insignificant speck of dust in the universe, called Earth, is connected with the intentions of divine beings in the universe. One would like to say: All that man has seen on earth, because he recognized that heaven is populated by spirits and spiritual forces, all that has been lost to man in modern times. The universe has been desensualized and de-spirited. The earth has shrunk to an insignificant speck of dust in a world that has been de-spirited and de-spirited.

One must understand such a change in the world picture not only from the standpoint of a theoretical explanation of the world, but also from the standpoint of human consciousness itself. Man, who saw himself on an earth influenced by innumerable spiritual beings that had their realization, their intentions in man of the earth, otherwise knew himself, otherwise these views affected man, than the more spiritual space, in which glowing, spatially formed globes stand and move, of which one conceives no other activity than movement in space, than the revelation through light. How different must the human being, who now knew himself to be on one of the smallest of these world bodies, feel in the spiritless, soulless space, than within earlier world pictures. And yet, this conception of the world must have arisen in the course of the evolution of mankind. What an older mankind once knew about the heavens and their inhabitants, the divine spiritual beings, was indeed the inspiration, the imagination of an ancient dream-like clairvoyance, which was something that as such clairvoyance had descended from the universe into man. One must only imagine this correctly. When people in ancient times looked up at Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and saw divine spiritual forces at work in these heavenly bodies, it was because these revelations penetrated from the heavenly bodies themselves into their inner being and were reflected in them, so that through the influences of the universe, of the cosmos, they knew within themselves what was flowing from the cosmos into the earth. And so, through what heaven gave him, the earth became intelligible to him. Man looked up to his gods and knew what being he is on earth. In the modern conception of the world, he does not know any of this.

In the modern world view, the Earth has shrunk to a speck of dust in the universe, and now man stands as a small, insignificant creature on this speck of dust. Now the gods of the stars no longer tell him anything about plants, animals and the other kingdoms of the earth. Now he must direct his senses only to what lives in the mineral, plant, animal, and human kingdoms, what lives in wind and wave, what dwells in clouds, lightning and thunder. Now he can receive no revelations other than those that his senses give him about the things of the earth, and he can then only conclude from the revelations of the things of the earth about what is in the universe, according to the sensual and intellectual revelation.

Man has undergone this significant transformation in the fifth post-Atlantean period, which signifies the development, the unfolding of the consciousness soul. Everything that had previously come to him from the universe, and which then shone again within his soul, had to be squeezed out of him, so that he could stand there and say to himself: I know nothing but that I live on a speck of dust in the universe. This universe gives me nothing that enlightens me about the spiritual and soul life within me. If I want to experience such spiritual and soul life within me, I must extract it from my own being. I must renounce the idea that the revealing powers come to me from the vastness of the universe. I must fill my soul through my own efforts and activity, and perhaps hope that something in what wells up out of my soul is alive, which, conversely, gives me an insight into the universe from the human point of view.

In the past, man had the opportunity to gain insight into himself as a human being through what the universe revealed to him. He was able to see himself as the son of heaven because the heavens told him what he was as such a son of heaven. Now man had more or less become the earth's hermit, who in the solitude of his life on the dust-grain of the universe must gather strength in order, so to speak, to develop in solitude that which can be developed in him, and to wait to see whether that which reveals itself within is something that can shed light on the universe.

And for a long time, for centuries, what was revealed within was not about the universe. Man described the mineral kingdom according to spatial-temporal forces. He then described the workings of this mineral kingdom in geognosy, in geology. He described the outer sensory processes, how they take place, how plants sprout out of the mineral ground of the earth. He also described the sensory processes that take place in the inner being of the animal and the physical human being itself. He looked around everywhere on earth, inquiring what his senses told him about this earthly existence. Above all, they told him nothing about his own soul, about his own spirit. It was precisely out of this cosmic mood, if one grasped it properly, out of this mood, which can be expressed in the words: I, a human being, am an earth hermit on a speck of dust in the universe — it was precisely out of this mood that the impulse had to come to develop the truly human in free inner unfolding.

And a great, all-embracing question had to arise: Is it really true that in the whole range of what my senses can see, feel, hear, etc., here on earth, what can be combined by the intellect from them, is it really true that there is nothing in this range that gives me more than these senses can tell me? Man has developed a science. But this science, however interesting it may be, says nothing about man. It aims at abstract, dead concepts, which then culminate in natural laws. But all this leaves man indifferent. Man cannot possibly be merely the confluence of these abstract concepts, I would say, this receptacle for all natural laws! For these laws of nature have nothing spiritual, nothing of the soul about them, although they are conceived out of the human spirit.

You see, the person who felt this mood at a time of great significance for the development of world views was the young Goethe. And the expression of what he felt is what he wrote in the first form that he gave to his “Faust”.

Let us recall how Goethe, in the very first form he gave to his “Faust”, really presents this Faust, still remembering what it is that man should seek in the universe, how he would like to feel as a spirit and soul within spirits and souls, but how he feels rejected by the soulless and unspiritual world. How he then reaches for the old revelation of the mystical, the magical, opens an old book in which he finds descriptions of how the higher hierarchical beings live in the stars and their movements, a book that speaks of how heavenly forces ascend and descend and pass golden buckets to each other.

Such a view had existed, but in the times in which Goethe places Faust, such a view no longer captivates people. And Faust turns away, as Goethe himself turned away from the old explanation of the universe, which sought a spiritual and soul element in the whole universe, and he opens the book of the Earth Spirit. And then we read the remarkable words with which the Earth Spirit speaks:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action,
I surge up and down,
I weave to and fro!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
So at the whirling loom of time I labor,
And work the living garment of the Godhead.

But that there is something not quite right in the encounter between this Earth Spirit and Faust is clearly shown by Goethe in that Faust falls under the effect of this Earth Spirit, and that he is then exposed to the influences of Mephistopheles.

If you look at the monumental, succinct words of the Earth Spirit from the point of view of a concrete world view and are unbiased enough to make an assessment that was actually close to Goethe's own feelings, in that he did not stop at the Earth Spirit scene when writing Faust , but continued, if one considers all this, then one must fall into a kind of heresy in the face of much of what has been said and printed about “Faust,” but which certainly does not reflect the real opinion, the real view of Goethe. After all, what has not been said in connection with “Faust”!

You keep looking back to the words that Faust speaks to Gretchen, who is around sixteen years old, later in the course of the Faust epic: “the all-embracing, all-sustaining... Feeling is everything, name is sound and smoke,” and one feels so tremendously philosophical when quoting all that the expression is supposed to mean for one's own soul concepts, and now also quoting what Faust gives as instruction to a teenage girl. It is a schoolgirl instruction. It is actually compromising that one can cite this schoolgirl instruction from people who want to be clever as the quintessence of what one puts into words as a world view. This does indeed result, even if it is heretical, in an unbiased consideration.

But something similar also applies to the lapidary, monumental words spoken by the Earth Spirit: “In the floods of life, in the storm of action” and so on. They are beautiful, these words, but very general; we find something of a mystical pantheism of a sensually nebulous kind in them. I would say that it does not feel cloudy to us when we have this before us:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
I weave to and fro!
Birth and death,
An eternal sea,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
So at the whirling loom of time I labor,
And fashion the living robe of divinity.

Nothing happens that does not give us the ability to look concretely into the universe, into the cosmos.

Goethe certainly felt this, especially later, because he didn't stop there, he wrote the Prologue to Heaven. And if we take the prologue in heaven: “The sun resounds in the old way, in the spheres of the brothers' song” and so on, then it is much more reminiscent of the heavenly powers that float up and down and pass the golden buckets than of the somewhat nebulous tides and weaves of the earth spirit. Goethe returned from – well, one cannot say the 'divinization of the earth spirit', but something similar. Later, as a more mature person, Goethe no longer regarded this earth spirit as the one to which he wanted to turn solely and exclusively in the form of Faust, but he took up again the spirit of the great world, the spirit of the universe. And even if the words spoken by the Earth Spirit in the first version of Faust are beautiful, succinct and monumental, these words spoken by the Earth Spirit are also distantly related to the “All-embracing, All-sustaining One” and the teachings of the sixteen-year-old schoolgirl. only distant kinship – these words spoken by the Earth Spirit also have a distant kinship with the “All-embracing, All-sustaining One”, with the instruction of the sixteen-year-old schoolgirl. Why shouldn't they be beautiful for that reason? Of course, when instructing schoolgirls, one must take particular care to say things beautifully! Why shouldn't they be beautiful?

But of course we have to be clear about the fact that Goethe, as a mature man, did not see in nebulous pantheism that which gives man a real world-consciousness.

But there is something else at the root of it. Goethe, with his concrete way of looking at the things of the world – at least to a certain degree – would not have been able to draw his Faust in the way he did if he had portrayed him as a representative of humanity for the 12th century of Western civilization. He would have had to take on a different form, but he would never have been able to draw this form as he drew his Faust. Faust should not have put aside the book of Nostradamus and turned from the spirit of the great world to the earth spirit, because at that time there was an awareness that man, when he understands himself correctly, understands himself as a son of heaven, and the spirits of heaven have something to say to him about his own nature. But Faust is the representative of humanity who belongs to the 16th century, thus already to the fifth post-Atlantic period, the period that approaches the view: I live as the earth hermit on a speck of dust in the universe. It would no longer have been honest of the young Goethe to have Faust look up to the spirit of the great world. As a representative of humanity, this could not be the case with Faust, because in his consciousness, the human being no longer had any connection with the heavenly powers that rise and descend and pass the golden buckets to each other, that is, with the entities of the higher hierarchies. That was darkened, that was no longer there for human consciousness. So Faust could only turn to that with which he could be connected as an earthen hermit: He turned to the genius of the earth.

That Faust turns to the genius of the earth is something, I would say, radically grandiose, which occurs in Goethe: for this is the turn that human consciousness has taken in this age, away from the darkening powers of heaven to the genius of the earth, to whom the spirit itself has pointed, which has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha. For this genius, who has passed through the mystery of Golgotha, has connected himself with the earth. By connecting himself with the evolution of humanity on earth, he has now given man the power, in the time when he can no longer look up to the spirits of heaven, to look to the spirits of the earth, and the spirits of the earth now speak in man. Formerly it was the stars in their motion that revealed the words of heaven to the human soul that could interpret and recognize these words of heaven. Now man had to look at his connection with the earth, that is, ask himself whether the genius of the earth speaks in him.

But only nebulous words, mystically pantheistic words, can Goethe in his age wrest from the genius of the earth. It is right, it is magnificent that Faust turns to the genius of the earth, but I would like to say that it is quite magnificent that Goethe does not yet let this genius of the earth express anything that can already satisfy. That the Genius of the Earth first stammers and stutters, I might say, the secrets of the world into mystic pantheistic formulas, instead of pronouncing them in a sharply defined manner, shows that Goethe has placed his Faust in the age in which he saw his Faust and himself.

But one must feel one's way towards this relationship between Faust and the Earth Genius, so beautifully portrayed by Goethe, so that the Earth Genius will gradually become more and more understandable to man, so that he will reveal himself more and more clearly to man when man allows the activity of his own soul, the activity of his own spirit, to reveal what is in the heavens. Formerly the heavens revealed to man what he needed to know for the earth; now man turns to the earth, because the earth is, after all, a creature of the heavens. And if one gets to know the genius or genii that have taken up their residences on earth, then one nevertheless gets to know things about the heavens.

That was also the procedure adopted, for example, in my book 'Occult Science: An Outline of Its Methods'. There, everything within the human being was questioned and asked to speak. There, much was actually drawn from the spirit of the earth. But the spirit of the earth speaks about the Saturn age, the Sun age, the Moon age of the earth, the Jupiter age, the Venus age. The spirit of the earth speaks to us of what it has retained in its memory of the universe. Once upon a time, people turned their gaze out into the vastness of the heavens to gain insights about the earth. Now, they look down into the human soul, listen to what the spirit of the earth has to say about human nature from the memory of the world, and through their understanding of the genius of the earth, they gain macrocosmic knowledge. Today, of course, if one attaches the right importance to spiritual science, to spiritual knowledge, one would no longer present Faust's conversation with the Earth Spirit as Goethe did, although in his time it was ingenious to present it in this way.

Today, the earth spirit should not speak in those general, abstract words that can be said to express anything from a floating water wave to a spirit of the earth. Only that is mystically dark, because this floating wave of water is now sitting at a loom and weaving! I know, of course, that many people feel extraordinarily well when such vagueness stirs in them through the soul; but one does not thereby attain the inner human conscious stabilization that one needs as a modern person. There is always something of a reverie or even of intoxication about it: “All-embracing, All-sustaining,” “in the tides of life, in the storm of action,” one is always a little beside oneself, not quite in oneself. It certainly gives people a sense of well-being when they can be a little beside themselves; some people prefer to be completely beside themselves and let all kinds of ghosts give them insights into the world.

By this I would just like to suggest that we cannot do otherwise in modern times than to turn to the genius of the earth that lives in ourselves! The fact of the matter is this: if we simply take what the scientific ideas of modern times give us, as it is, as it is laid down in external civilization today, then it remains abstract, leaving human consciousness cold. But when one begins to wrestle with these concepts, to wrestle even with Haeckel's abstractions, then something very concrete, something that can be experienced directly, comes out of this wrestling: Then the great realization comes over us that although we initially receive the indifferent scientific ideas, this form is only a mask. We must first realize that the genius of the earth is telling us what we receive. We must first listen with the whole ear of the soul to what we initially hear with the abstract mind. And in this way we learn to understand the genius of the earth in a concrete way by listening.

In this way we approach the way in which man, in the age of consciousness soul development, must attain world consciousness. These things must be grasped by the human being in a way that is felt. Then, with feeling, I would say with his heart's blood, he approaches the anthroposophical world feeling. And this, not just individual ideas about the world, but this world feeling, must be acquired by the modern human being if he wants to feel and think in the right way, in accordance with the suggestions that I have made here recently.

Tomorrow, my dear friends, I will continue these reflections. Today, I would first like to say a few words to you about the state of the negotiations in Stuttgart. These negotiations are connected with what you have noticed as a kind of crisis within the Anthroposophical Society.

At this moment, the Anthroposophical Society must decide in its leading personalities whether it has viability or not. You have also heard various things here about the living conditions of the Anthroposophical Society. I would just like to say a few words about this today: this anthroposophical movement started in Central Europe. But it is of interest to the broadest international circles. And anthroposophy itself has gone through the three phases I spoke to you about last time. The Anthroposophical Society has not fully kept pace with the development of anthroposophy, and today there is an abyss between the work of the Anthroposophical Society and the reality of anthroposophy as it can be found today. This abyss must be bridged. And since the anthroposophical movement originated in Central Europe, it is a matter of fact that conditions must first be put in order in Central Europe. Then, when they are in order in Central Europe, we must immediately think about the order of the international anthroposophical societies, which will then have their center here or elsewhere. But the vagueness in which the Anthroposophical Society finds itself today must first be resolved. For this reason, the first step was to work on the consolidation of the Anthroposophical Society in Stuttgart.

Now the negotiations were extremely difficult. This crisis arose for the reasons I mentioned here on January 6, and the situation is as follows: on December 10, I gave a kind of mandate to one of the members of the Central Council, Mr. Uehli. I said at the time: It has been noticeable for a long time that the Anthroposophical Society needs consolidation, and I can only hope for success if the Central Board in Stuttgart, supplemented by leading personalities in Stuttgart, tells me the next time I am in Stuttgart how they would like to begin the consolidation; otherwise, if the Central Board does not come up with ideas about the consolidation, I would have to approach each individual member myself. Only this alternative is possible. —

You can see from this, my dear friends, that what was presented as a necessity for the consolidation of the Society was said on December 10; so it has nothing to do with the fire. After the fire, after this terrible catastrophe that has shattered our hearts, it must be said: if reconstruction is to happen, a strong Anthroposophical Society is needed; because without it, reconstruction would not be possible.

So it is imperative that a consolidation, an inner strengthening, a clear will of the Anthroposophical Society comes about.

This has involved very difficult negotiations in recent weeks, initially in Stuttgart. I said: They have to happen first, then they will be able to be on international ground. Well, I would have to tell you a book, a very thick book, if I wanted to tell you everything that has been negotiated in these weeks. But basically it was inconclusive until yesterday. And the day before yesterday I suggested that, now things have turned out this way, a kind of committee should deal with drafting a circular letter in which the great questions affecting the Anthroposophical Society and movement today be brought to the attention of the members; that such a circular letter call for the calling of a meeting of delegates in Stuttgart, initially for the German and Austrian branches, so that work can be done on this consolidation [see $. 268].

This committee, whose effectiveness is initially intended only until the delegates' meeting, which is to take place at the end of February, on February 25, 26 and 27, is a provisional one. Until this delegates' meeting, it is to have the leading position in the Central European Anthroposophical Society. The representatives on the committee are Dr. Unger, a member of the old Central Executive Council, and Mr. Leinhas, representing the “Kommenden Tages”; then, as a result of the circumstances, there are a number of prominent Stuttgart citizens: Dr. Rittelmeyer, Mr. von Grone, Mr. Wolfgang Wachsmuth, Dr. Palmer, Dr. Kolisko; from elsewhere, Mr. Werbeck from Hamburg and, representing the Philosophical-Anthroposophical Press, Miss Mücke. This committee has been entrusted with the preparatory work for the consolidation. After all the other efforts failed, a draft of the appeal to the assembly of delegates was produced yesterday. It is to be finalized and sent out at the beginning of next week and is to include the real issues facing the Anthroposophical Society today. So that is what I have to announce for the time being.

The negotiations were indeed accompanied by widespread dissatisfaction. After we had finished the negotiations on the draft appeal yesterday morning, I was able to speak to the members of our academic youth movement who were particularly concerned; so I hope that during the days I am now here in Dornach, the young will negotiate with the old in an appropriate way. The day before yesterday I expressed it in this way: I said, “I hope that now, taking into account the new committee, the young will be accepted by the old among the young.”

Something like this had to take place, because everywhere people are demanding a new, fresh element of life. That must come. Youth is knocking at the gates. It has every right to do so; it must be understood. But age cannot be ignored; it must be allowed to work; the foundations of the Anthroposophical Society have come out of it. A modus operandi must be found as quickly as possible that will lead to a strong Anthroposophical Society, otherwise we will not be able to continue our work.

I wanted to share this with you today so that you are informed about these matters. The old Central Executive Council has ceased to exist, and this committee will now manage affairs until the end of February.

In continuation of what I have said in the preceding reflections on the tasks of anthroposophical world view in the present and for the development of humanity, today I would like to add a few more things from a different perspective: those points of view that can arise when one sees how the world view of the nineteenth century led, as it were, to a kind of absurdity in Friedrich Nietzsche, and how it can be shown, precisely from the phenomenon of Nietzsche, that such a view of the world and of the human being as is presented in anthroposophy is an historical necessity for the development of humanity. I do not wish to repeat things that I have already said about Nietzsche here and elsewhere in the anthroposophical movement, but I would like to point out two implications of Nietzsche's world view today that I have touched on even less.

Throughout his life, Nietzsche was characterized by a tendency to arrive at a view of the value and essence of morality in man. Nietzsche was a moral philosopher in the proper sense of the word. He wanted to come to terms with himself regarding the origin of morality, the significance of morality for humanity, and the value of morality for the world order. In this quest for clarity, we see how two main themes run through his entire life, which, in relation to many other things, has undergone the most diverse transformations.

The first is that throughout his life – from the point in his life that he had already passed through in his second year at university until the end of his life, one might say – he had an essentially atheistic view. The atheistic element is what has remained constant throughout all the transformations of Nietzsche's world view.

And the second is that, in the face of what has come to him peculiarly in the moral impulses of the present, what has also come to him in the intellectual and practical impulses of human life in the present, he has asserted one virtue as the most fundamental, and that virtue is honesty towards himself, towards others, towards the whole world order. Integrity, honesty, that is what he considered to be the most important thing, what is most necessary for modern man, both inwardly, to his soul, and outwardly, to the world.

Nietzsche once listed four cardinal virtues that he considered to be the most important for human life. Among these four cardinal virtues, honesty, this honesty towards oneself and others, is the first. These four cardinal virtues are namely: firstly, honesty towards oneself and one's friends; secondly, bravery towards one's enemies; the third cardinal virtue is generosity towards those whom one has defeated, and the fourth cardinal virtue is courtesy towards all people.

These four cardinal virtues, which Nietzsche described as being particularly necessary for present-day humanity, all tend towards the one he described as the first, and which he regarded as a kind of necessary temporal virtue: they tend towards honesty, towards sincerity. And one can say: there is a relationship between this virtue of sincerity and his atheism.

Nietzsche first of all grew out of his age completely and utterly. He then outgrew this age in an even more comprehensive sense. Even a superficial examination shows how he initially took root in Schopenhauer's worldview, which is also an atheistic one, and how he initially saw this Schopenhauerian worldview artistically realized in Richard Wagner's musical drama in the first period of his life.

Nietzsche started out with Schopenhauer and Wagner. He then absorbed what can be called the positivism of the time in scientific life, that is, the world view that thinks the whole world is built solely on what is immediately perceptible, on what is perceptible to the senses, and which therefore sees the sensual as the only thing that matters for the world view.

And Nietzsche then attained a certain independence in the third period, by assimilating the modern idea of development, which he so elaborated that he applied it to man, by setting himself the ideal, as a kind of positivistic ideal, that man must develop into the superman.

Thus Nietzsche has outgrown various currents of thought and currents of culture of his time. But how has he outgrown them? The answer to this significant question also contains important information about the characteristics of the entire age that occupies the last third of the 19th century. One must ask oneself the question: Why did Nietzsche become an atheist? He became one out of a sense of integrity, out of inner honesty. He took with complete honesty what the 19th century was able to offer him in the way of knowledge, what he was able to absorb with holy zeal from this 19th-century knowledge. And he said to himself quite intuitively: If I take this particular kind of 19th-century knowledge honestly, then it does not lead me anywhere towards the divine; then I must exclude the divine from my world of thought.

There lies the first great conflict between Nietzsche and his age, so that he had to become a fighter against his time. When Nietzsche looked around at the people who had also absorbed the knowledge of the 19th century, he saw that the vast majority of them still believed in a divine world order. He perceived this as dishonesty. It seemed dishonest to him to look at the world on the one hand as the knowledge of the 19th century looked at it, and then somehow to assume a divine order on the other. Because he was still speaking in the various thought formulas of the 19th century, he did not actually express what he instinctively felt about the 19th-century world view. He felt that the 19th century viewed world phenomena in the same way that one views the human organism when one has it as a corpse, when it has died. If one believes in this human organism in death, so to speak, if one believes that this dead organism has an inner truth, then one could not honestly believe that this organism only has a meaning when it is permeated by the living and ensouled and spiritualized human being. Anyone who studies a corpse should actually say to himself: What I can look at, what I can study, has no truth. It only has a truth if it is permeated by the spiritualized human being. It presupposes the spiritualized human being. But that is no longer there when I have the corpse before me.

Nietzsche felt this very clearly, although he did not express it so clearly: if you look at nature in the way that modern world knowledge looks at it, you look at it as a corpse. You should actually say to yourself: what you interpret as nature around you no longer has the divine in it. But if one accepts it in its absoluteness, if one speaks of this nature in such a way that one only follows its laws, then one must obviously deny that a divine underlies it. Because the way it stands before you, this nature, has no more of a divine basis than a human basis underlies a human corpse.

These were the feelings that lived in Nietzsche's soul. But the 19th-century world view had such a strong effect on him that he said to himself: Yes, we have nothing but this nature before us, and modern times have taught us to have nothing else before us. If we stick to this knowledge of nature, then we must reject God.

And so Nietzsche, as a student of Schopenhauer, rejected any divine, considering it dishonest to have modern knowledge and yet still speak of a divine. In this respect, his inner life was extraordinarily interesting because it strove for such intense honesty. He perceived it as a cultural lie of the 19th century that on the one hand there was a view of nature as it was, and on the other hand people still spoke of a divine. But he also took life seriously within this natural order in which one still believed. And he saw that the life of modern man had actually developed in such a way that it had become quite natural for him to assume such an order of nature. After all, nature had not forced modern man to accept this order, but life had become such that it could only endure such a view of nature. The view of nature actually came from life. And Nietzsche felt that this life was thoroughly dishonest. And he strove for honesty.

He had to say to himself: If we live in such an order as modern humanity recognizes as the true one, then we can never feel like human beings within this truth. That was actually the basic feeling in the first period of his life: How can I feel like a human being when I am surrounded by this natural order as it is now viewed? That which is truth does not allow me to come to my consciousness as a human being! Nietzsche felt and sensed this too, and so he said to himself in this first period of his life: “If one cannot live in truth, then one must live in appearance, in poetry, in art.

And when he turned his gaze to the Greeks, he believed he had recognized in them the people who, out of a certain naivety, had come to this dissatisfaction with the truth and who therefore consoled themselves with appearances, with beauty. This is what he expressed in his first, so beautifully written hymn, “The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music”. He wanted to say: Man, when you are in the realm of truth, you can never feel like a human being. So flee from the realm of truth into the realm where you create a world that does not correspond to truth. In this world of poetry you will be consoled by what truth can never give you.

The Greeks, he believed, had felt as the true naive pessimists that one could not be satisfied within the world of truth. That is why they created above all their wonderful tragedies, a world of beautiful appearance, in order to have in this world that which can satisfy man.

In Richard Wagner's musical drama, Nietzsche believed he saw a renewal of this beautiful appearance, with the express purpose of leading people away from the so-called real world into the world of appearances, in order to find satisfaction as human beings. So there was no possibility for Nietzsche to say to himself: Let us take the sensory world, deepen our contemplation of the sensory world, penetrate from the external manifestation to the inner divine, and thus feel connected to this divine as a human being and come to feel truly human in the world.

For Nietzsche, this consideration was not possible. He saw no possibility — because he wanted to be honest — of arriving at such a consideration from what the 19th century was. Hence the other: This whole reality gives us no satisfaction, so we satisfy ourselves with an unreal world. Just as if there were beings somewhere who came to a planet where they found only corpses, and in the face of these corpses would have to see not remnants of reality but true reality, because they had once permeated, and as if these beings, who thus encountered a planet of corpses, were beings who, in order to console themselves for these corpses, invented beings to animate them. That was Nietzsche's first sense of the world.

And basically, the writings that followed The Birth of Tragedy were: David Strauss, the Confessor and the Writer, On the Use and Disadvantage of History for Life, Schopenhauer as Educator, Richard Wagner in Bayreuth, confrontations of his honesty with the dishonesty of the time. This time spoke, although it had no way out of sensuality into the spirit, it still spoke of spirit; this time spoke of the divine, although basically it could not include a divine in its knowledge anywhere. This period spoke something like this: In the past, people surrendered to the delusion of a divine, but we know from the study of nature that there is no divine. But we have our concerts, of course, in which we make music. — There is a chapter in David Friedrich Strauß's “The Old and the New Faith” that particularly annoyed Nietzsche, where David Friedrich Strauß asserts this philistine point of view. That is why Nietzsche wrote this essay about Strauss as a philistine and writer, in spite of the fact that Strauss was a relatively excellent man, in order to show how one can either be dishonest by still assuming a divine quality that one should no longer assume, or how one must fall into the banal and philistine, as he saw it with David Friedrich Strauss.

But now the second period in Nietzsche's life began. He remained true to himself with regard to the demand for honesty, he remained true to himself with regard to his atheism. But in the first period, he adopted ideals, albeit aesthetically colored, ideals that would have a justification and with which people could console themselves about the reality of the external senses.

But now, I would like to say, in the second period of his life, his mind clings more strongly to what, according to the prevailing view of the time, the world reveals to people alone. And so he said to himself: No matter how much a person devotes himself to ideals, these ideals are born out of his very nature! People imagine many beautiful things, but this ideal beauty is only an all-too-human one.

And so the time came for him when he saw particularly the human weakness, the all-too-human, the devotion of man to his physique. And since he took the view of nature seriously, he said to himself: Man cannot help but devote himself to his physique! - Nietzsche once said: Long live physics, even longer live honesty in believing in physics. “Let us be honest,” he said to himself in the second period of his life. ”Let us be clear: no matter how beautiful an idealistic thought a person has, it is still an emanation of his physical nature. Therefore, when we approach human life, let us not describe the smoke it produces at the top, but let us describe the fuels from which this smoke is formed at the bottom: then we will not arrive at the idealistic-divine, but at the human-all-too-human.

And so, in the second period of his life, Nietzsche, because he wanted to be honest with himself and with others, virtually killed all idealism in life. So he said to himself: What people usually call soul is actually just a lie. This is based on the structure of the body, and something that comes from this structure of the body reveals itself in such a way that it is given the name soul.

And Nietzsche saw in this inclination of some modern people, for example, to Voltaire, the true enlightenment, that true enlightenment that consists in man no longer engaging in some illusory world in order to elevate himself above reality, but rather that he actually looks at reality in its physical nature and sees all morality emerging from the physical.

And if you then look at the third period in Nietzsche's life, you can't help but notice how he, one might say, out of a highly pathological nature, took this honesty to excess, as he said: If If you take seriously and honestly what you can know about nature and the laws of nature in the modern sense, then you have to say: Everything that is supposed to live as spirit in the human being is precisely the emanation of his physical being. Therefore, the human being can only be the perfect one who, in comparison to others, shows the physical being to be the most perfect; that is, the one who has such a physical nature that the strongest instincts live in him.

Nietzsche ultimately saw instinctual life as superior to all spiritual life, as that which, in its development, leads man beyond himself, in that instincts become ever stronger and stronger, remain instincts, but rise ever higher and higher above the animal: this is where man becomes superman.

What was it, then, that actually impelled Nietzsche in this way, that he first recognized the ideal in appearance as necessary for man, that he then, as he put it, led this ideal onto the ice, because he saw how it arises from the physical, and that he then wanted to lead man to the superman through a higher development of his physique, his instinctive life? It was impossible, if one stood within the world view of the 19th century, to grasp the physical in the sense of this world view, and then still get out of it if one wanted to remain honest. One simply had to stay inside.

And Nietzsche developed, if one may say so, an iron honesty in placing himself with all that he had in the physical. So that in fact his ideal for the future, if one may still speak of an ideal, for human civilization should have consisted in man's enlightenment about the great illusion of having a spirit. That these undercurrents are usually not seen in Nietzsche, who, however, worked his way out as honestly as possible, is only due to the fact that he denied the spirit with so much spirit that he glorified the spiritual poverty of humanity in such a brilliant, brilliant, witty way.

It becomes simply impossible to be a moral philosopher, as Nietzsche was by his very nature within the 19th-century world view, if one honestly wants to take this on board. For if one is no longer able to speak of the fact that man's task on earth is to bring a spiritual and supernatural element into this earthly world, if one feels compelled to remain within the mere earthly world, then, if one wants to establish morality, one wants to establish it without justification. Morality becomes outlawed if one accepts the world view of the 19th century in all honesty. And that is what Nietzsche really experienced deep inside: that morality became outlawed. He wanted to be a moral philosopher. But where did the moral impulses come from? That was the big question for him. If one finds the luminosity of the supersensible in man, then morality arises as the demand of the supersensible on the sensible. If one finds no supersensible element in man, as was the case with the world view of the 19th century, then there is no source from which one could draw moral impulses. If one wants to distinguish good from evil, then one needs the supersensible. But the supersensible had to be rejected by Nietzsche, who honestly took the world view of the 19th century. And so he groped around in human life to find something like the origin of the moral impulses.

So he looked at the cultural development of humanity, found how strong racial people acted as conquerors towards weaker people, how these stronger racial people imposed the direction of their actions on the weaker ones, how they, out of their instinctive nature, demanded of those whom they had acted as conquerors towards: This is how you should act! Nietzsche could not believe in any categorical imperative, in moral commandments. He could only believe in the instinctive racial supermen, who saw themselves as the good ones, the others as the bad ones, that is, as the inferior human beings, on whom they imposed the direction of action.

And then it happened that those who were the inferiors according to the conquerors joined forces and now, not with the more brutal older means, but with the finer means of the soul and spirit, with cunning and guile, made themselves conquerors over the others. And those who had previously considered themselves the superiors, the good ones, they called the bad ones, because they were conquerors, power-seekers, force-seekers, militarists; they called them the bad ones. And they called themselves the good, who had previously been called the inferior, the bad. Being poor, limited, oppressed, weak, overcome and yet holding on in weakness, in being overcome, that is the good, and being a conqueror, overcoming the other, that is the evil.

Thus good and evil arose from good and bad. But good and bad did not yet have the later moral connotation, but merely the connotation of the conquering, the powerful, the noble, in relation to the army of slave people, who were the inferior, the bad ones. And what was later distinguished between good and evil, that came only from the slave revolt of the previously bad, inferior, who now called the others criminals and evil, in revenge for what had happened to them. Thus, to Nietzsche, the later morality, clothed in the concepts of “good” and “evil,” appeared as the revenge taken by the oppressed on the oppressors. But he found no inner foundation for morality. He could only stand beyond good and evil, not in the midst of good and evil. For to find an inner foundation for good and evil, he would have had to resort to the supersensible. But that was a delusion to him, it was merely the expression of weak human nature, which did not want to admit to itself that its true essence is exhausted in the physical.

If one wants to characterize Nietzsche, one would like to say: Actually, all thinking people of his time should have spoken as he did, if they had been as honest as he was. And he made it his goal to be completely honest. That is why he became a fighter against his time, and that is why he had such sharp intellectual weapons, and why he strove for a revaluation of all values. He saw the values by which he lived as being the product of dishonesty. Centuries had already worked to bring about modern scientific concepts and also introduced them into all of history. But the same centuries had left that which was no longer compatible with them in human souls: divine and moral ideas. Values had emerged that now had to be reevaluated.

Nietzsche's life is a tremendous tragedy. And I don't think that anyone has really grasped the essence of human civilization in the last third of the 19th century and how it continued to have an effect in the 20th century, in the right way, who has not even seen into such a tragedy as it took place in a soul experiencing this civilization, as in Nietzsche. It is really the case that we have to see the collapse we are now experiencing as a consequence of what Nietzsche calls the dishonesty of modern civilization. One would like to say that Nietzsche became a fighter against his time because he had to tell himself: If this dishonesty continues, then only a destructive struggle can break out among the nations that belong to this modern civilization. And this tragedy in Nietzsche's life arose from the fact that Nietzsche wanted to find the foundations of morality, but could not find them in the education of his time. Nowhere could he find a source from which he could draw moral impulses. And so he groped his way through and wounded his fingers everywhere in the groping. And out of the pain he described his time, as he has just described it.

What was he looking for? He was looking for something that can only be found in the supersensible realm, something that cannot be found in the realm of the sensible. That is what he was looking for. No matter how beautiful, great, and noble the moral principles you come up with, they cannot heat a machine, turn a wheel, or set the electrical apparatus in motion. But if one applies only that to one's cognition which sets the machine in motion, sets the electrical apparatus in motion, turns the wheel, if one introduces only that into one's cognition, then one can never understand how that which lives in man as a moral impulse is to reach into one's own human organism. You can think up the most exalted ideals, but they can only be smoke and fog, because there is no possibility of them taking effect in a muscle, in some skill or the like. There is nowhere in the sensory world where you can see moral ideals taking effect in the organic. Imagine the most beautiful moral ideals – Nietzsche could only say to himself – if you harbor them in your head, then you are to your own organism as you are to a machine. You can make posters for the machine, write on them “Moral Ideals”: it will not heat with them, it will not turn. But should you revolve around your moral ideals if you are as nature intended you to be? You can think them up, they may be very beautiful, but they cannot intervene in the workings of the world! Therefore, they are a lie in the face of reality. It is not the person who devotes himself to ideals who is effective, but the one who fuels his machine so that the instincts become powerful: “the blond beast,” as Nietzsche paradigmatically expresses it.

And so Nietzsche stood with his problems before Man, who could only have been moral to him if the moral impulses in him had found a point of contact. They did not. Therefore, no good and evil, but - “Beyond Good and Evil”.

But now consider: we have always had to characterize this whole modern world-knowledge by saying that it does not approach man, it cannot gain any conception, any idea of man. So, if one experiences in the sense of the modern world-view, one does not have man in one's soul. Yet in Nietzsche everything tended towards man. Everything tended towards something he could not have! And now, in keeping with the modern idea of development, he wanted to transform man into the superman, only he did not have man. How could it be shown, from what was not available, how man develops into the superman! Man was not there for contemplation, for intuitive perception, for feeling, for the impulses of the will. Now the superman! It was as if one had formed these words only out of old habit: man and superman - and now choked, because these words have no content, just as one chokes in a vacuum.

Nietzsche was faced with the necessity of entering the supersensible world with moral problems, and could not enter. That was his inner tragedy. And with that, he is at the same time the representative soul of the end of the 19th century, that representative soul who points out the necessity: If you want to remain honest as human beings, you must enter the supersensible world in order not to declare the ideals of morality to be a lie.

Nietzsche goes mad because he is confronted with the necessity of entering the supersensible world and cannot do so. Many other people do not go mad; but I do not want to explain the reasons why they do not go mad, because one must indeed observe certain limits of politeness when describing the peculiarities of civilization. But one thing is clear from Nietzsche's life: modern man can only be honest and upright with himself and others when he enters the supersensible world. In other words, honesty and uprightness do not exist in a nonsensory world view. Nor can the path from man to superman be found if one cannot take the other path from the sensual to the supersensible. And if morality belongs in a certain sense to the superman, then it demands that this superman be sought not in the sensual but in the supersensible, otherwise it is a mere word, the word “superman,” that is called out but to which nothing resounds from the world.

Tomorrow I will approach the subject from the other side, from the side of how what Nietzsche encountered must now be further developed so that moral values in human life can be understood in the right way and harmonized with the knowledge of our time.

On the “tailoring problem” of the Anthroposophical Society

Tomorrow I will look at the topic from a different angle, from the angle of how what Nietzsche encountered must now be further developed so that morality can be properly understood in human life and reconciled with the knowledge of our time. These are the questions that the members of the Anthroposophical Society must ask themselves. Having an understanding of such questions is part of the Anthroposophical Society. And it is now in the process of coming to its senses.

At the end of February, I would like to add, a meeting of delegates will take place in Stuttgart – if traffic conditions still permit – at which the fate of the German Anthroposophical Society will be discussed first, so that the conditions of the Anthroposophical Society can then be discussed in more detail. These things must be taken very seriously today. For it was precisely during my presence in Stuttgart that I felt so keenly how, above all, those who want to do something within the Anthroposophical Society must bear in mind that anthroposophy, in the three stages that I described to you here recently, has become something that has outgrown what the Anthroposophical Society wants to remain in many ways.

In the first stages of the Anthroposophical Society's development, no thought was given to how, later on, under the influence of a Goetheanum and other things, people in the furthest reaches would relate to Anthroposophy, in the sense of opposing it or of adhering to it. The Society must grow with the growth of Anthroposophy. And so the next problem, which is to occupy the minds of the Anthroposophical Society at the end of February in Stuttgart – forgive me, my dear friends, if I express this in a figurative way – the next problem is a tailoring problem. It is the problem that has been raised by the fact that anthroposophy today is something in relation to which the Anthroposophical Society represents clothes that anthroposophy has outgrown. The sleeves of the skirt no longer reach the hands, not even the elbows, not to mention the trousers. Now the problem of tailoring must really be solved with the full application of the mind: how do you make the right clothes for Anthroposophy out of the Anthroposophical Society? That will be the big problem for Stuttgart at the end of February. And this is indeed pointed out in the call that has now been sent out.

What has struck me most is that there is not enough of what I hinted at at the end of my last lecture here last week. I said: Of course, not everyone can become a physician in the anthroposophical sense, but there can be understanding for what is happening in medicine that is inspired by anthroposophy to the greatest extent, there can be understanding, there can be interest. This interest must be present in the broadest sense among the members of the Anthroposophical Society for everything that happens within Anthroposophy. Then we will also succeed in solving the problem of the tailor. But it must be solved, otherwise other means must be considered; for the opponents are full of interest and are extremely attentive to everything, and their methods consist precisely in being good disseminators of the Anthroposophical worldview. Oh, if the members of the Anthroposophical Society were as good at spreading the Anthroposophical worldview as the opponents, then things would go excellently!

The opponents take everything they can from the writings, interpret it in the most absurd way and spread it with frantic interest. So that Anthroposophy is very well known – but as a caricature – on the part of the opponents. Until now, there has been no equal to this in terms of the true form of Anthroposophy. That is how it is. But this is what has now become critical and what must necessarily be led towards a solution. We need a strong and not a weak Anthroposophical Society in the near future.

I recently gave you the names of the provisional committee that will manage affairs within Germany for the time being until the assembly of delegates takes place. The last time we were in Stuttgart, a number of prominent figures declared their willingness to make their voices heard at the assembly of delegates, thereby awakening hope among those who care about the Anthroposophical Society that the support of anthroposophy in the most diverse directions will be presented to the world in a truly penetrating way. But the lecturers who have agreed to take on this task will really have to summon up all their strength and mobilize all their interest if they are to fulfill their duties. We will see.

[ 1 ] [ I would like to reciprocate Mr. Ingerö's kind words by assuring you that it gives me the greatest satisfaction to be able to speak to you again in such internal lectures about anthroposophical matters in more detail. It so happens that I have been granted the opportunity here in Norway to repeatedly develop incisive anthroposophical truths in cycles. Here I was also allowed to speak about the European folk souls, a cycle that is always before my mind's eye, and many other anthroposophical things were allowed to be spoken about here. This is brought about by the special circumstances that exist in Norway, as I have repeatedly characterized on previous occasions, at a remarkable point in the development of European civilization, and that the future of Europe will have a great deal to expect from Norway.

[ 2 ] But now I would like to add another word to these words of deepest satisfaction. That is, when I now speak to my dear anthroposophical friends about anthroposophy, the sad event of New Year's Eve 1922-1923 will always be in the background. Many of our Norwegian friends have seen the Goetheanum, yes, Norwegian friends have devotedly worked on this Goetheanum during the ten years while we have been working. And finally, it is with the greatest satisfaction that I recall the fact that it was precisely Norwegian friends who gave us their material help in the most generous way, just at the time when we needed it most to build the Goetheanum, which has unfortunately now been taken from us. The self-sacrificing activity of our Norwegian friends in this regard will be deeply ingrained in the history of the Goetheanum, for spiritually, that which was built into this Goetheanum remains connected with the history of anthroposophical development. And those who have made such great sacrifices, such as some of our Norwegian friends, will also have made a significant spiritual contribution to the annals of spiritual development associated with the Goetheanum.

[ 3 ] In the background, I would like to say, there is the terrible flame that we saw consuming our Goetheanum on New Year's Eve, in one night that which has been achieved through long work. And the only consolation for this terrible and painful event is the fact that something exists in anthroposophy itself that comes from an indestructible source, so that it must prevail in the development of humanity, even if this external monument and symbol has disappeared from the earth for the time being and can only be rebuilt in a makeshift manner, even under the most favorable conditions. So in a sense, a tone of melancholy must now permeate our reflections, as we have to send our feelings after this painful event. ] ¹

[ 4 ] In the course of this short cycle, I should like to set forth several things connected in the most intensive way with the being of man, the formation of man's destiny, and what might be called the relationship of man in his entirety to world-evolution. I shall proceed immediately to the center of this matter by pointing out that the whole evolution of man's being, within the realm of earth-life, is connected not only with what we observe with our ordinary, waking consciousness while participating in earth-life, but is also connected closely and intensively with what takes place during sleep, from the time of falling asleep until awaking.

[ 5 ] Doubtless external earthly culture, external earthly civilization derives its significance primarily from that which man is able to think, feel and accomplish out of his waking being. Man, however, would be utterly powerless, in an external sense, unless his human forces were continuously renewed, in the period between falling asleep and awaking, by contact with the spiritual world. Our spirit and soul being or, as we usually call it in Anthroposophy, our astral body and our ego, withdraw from the physical and etheric body when man falls asleep; they enter the spiritual world, penetrating the physical and etheric body again only after our awaking. Thus, if leading a normal life, we spend one third of our earthly existence in the sleeping state.

[ 6 ] If we look back on our earth-life, we always join day to day; we leave out of this conscious retrospect all that we experience between falling asleep and awaking. We skip, as it were, all the things contributed by the heavenly realms, by the divine worlds to our earth-life. And we take into account only what is given us by earthly experiences. Yet, if we desire to attain correct conceptions of our experiences between falling asleep and awaking, we should not spurn ideas which diverge from those of ordinary life. It would be naive to assume that the same things occur in the divine-spiritual worlds that are occurring in the physical-sensible worlds wherein we dwell between awaking and falling asleep. For, on falling asleep, we return to the spiritual worlds—and here things are quite different from things in the physical-sensible world. All this must be taken into account most decidedly by anyone wishing to form a conception of man's super-sensible destinies.

[ 7 ] In mankind's religious records, we find many strange allusions which can be understood only if penetrated by means of spiritual science. Thus a passage occurs in the Bible which, although known to everybody, is generally too little regarded: unless ye become as little children, ye may not enter the kingdom of God.

Often such passages are interpreted most trivially; nonetheless, they are always intended to convey an extraordinarily deep meaning.

[ 8 ] The knowledge from which is drawn a conception of the spiritual-super-sensible has often been called by me, as well as by others, the Science of Initiation. We speak of this science of initiation when we look back at what went on in mankind's ancient Mysteries. Yet we also speak of the science of initiation—modern science of initiation—if we wish to characterize Anthroposophy in its deeper aspects.

Science of initiation points, as it were, to the knowledge of primeval conditions, of original conditions. We seek to acquire knowledge concerning that which existed in the beginning, which marked the starting-point. All these endeavors are connected with a matter of yet greater profundity which presently will be envisaged by our souls.

[ 9 ] If we have fallen asleep on May sixteenth, nineteen twenty-three, and have slept until May seventeenth, nineteen twenty-three, we assume that this time has been spent by us in the same way as by a person who happens to stay awake and roam all night long through the streets of some city. We somehow picture to ourselves the experiences of our spirit and soul (ego and astral body) during the night as though similar to the experiences—although in a somewhat different state—of a reveler seeking nightly adventures.

[ 10 ] Things, however, are not as they seem to us. One must consider that on falling asleep in the evening, or even in the daytime (it really does not matter when; but I want first to discuss the nightly sleep enjoyed by every respectable person), one invariably goes back in time until a phase of life is reached lying at the very beginning of one's earthly existence. Moreover, one goes back even beyond one's earthly existence: to pre-earthly life; to that world from which we descended after acquiring a physical body by means of conception. At the moment of falling asleep, we are transported backward through the whole course of time. We are brought back to that moment when we descended from the heavenly realms to earth. Hence, if we fall asleep, for instance, on May sixteenth, nineteen twenty-three, we are transplanted from this date to that period which preceded our descent to earth; and also to that time which we cannot remember, because our memory stops at a certain point of our childhood. Each night, if we pass through it in real sleep, we actually become children again with regard to spirit and soul. And just as we can walk, in the physical world, for two or three miles through space, so a person can walk, at the age of twenty, through time for a span of twenty years, thus arriving at a stage before he was a child—when he began to be a human being. We return, across time, to the starting-point of our earth-life. Hence, while the physical and etheric body are lying in bed, the ego and astral body have gone back across time to an earlier moment. Now the question arises: if we go back every night to an earlier moment, what happens to our ego and astral body while we are awake?

[ 11 ] We would not ask such a question unless being aware of this nightly going backward. And, at bottom, even this going backward is only an illusion. In reality, our ego and astral body have not emerged, even during our waking day-time consciousness, from the state in which we existed during our pre-earthly existence.

[ 12 ] If we desire to recognize the truth about these facts, we must grasp the idea that ego and astral body have, initially, no share in our earthly evolution. They remain behind; they stop at the point where we began to acquire a physical and an etheric body. We thus, even when waking, leave our ego and astral body at the point marking the beginning of our earth-life.

Fundamentally, we live our earth-life only with the physical body and, in a certain way, with the etheric body. Our physical body alone becomes old. As for the etheric body, it connects our beginning with that moment at which we happen to stand during a certain period.

[ 13 ] Let us suppose that someone was born in nineteen hundred. His ego and astral body have come to a standstill at the moment of his birth. The physical body has reached the age of twenty-three; and the etheric body connects the moment at which this person entered earth-life with the moment experienced by him as the present one. Hence, if we did not possess an etheric body, we would awaken every morning as a newborn babe. Only by entering the etheric body before entering the physical body do we accommodate ourselves to the physical body's actual age. This accommodation must take place every morning. The etheric body is the mediator between the spirit-soul element and the physical body. It is a mediator forming the connecting link across the years of life. If a man reaches sixty or more years of life, the etheric body still forms the link between his very first appearance on earth—the point at which his ego and astral body have remained—and the age of his physical body.

[ 14 ] Now you will say: Well, after all, the ego is ours; it has aged with us; so also has our astral body aged with us, our thinking, feeling, and willing. If someone has become sixty, then his ego, too, has become sixty.

This would be quite correct if our everyday ego and our true, our real ego were identical. Our everyday ego, however, is not the same as our real ego; that remains standing at the starting-point of our earth-life. Our physical body reaches, let us say, the age of sixty. By means of the mediation of the etheric body, the physical body reflects—corresponding to the respective moment at which it is living—the mirrored image of the real ego. And what we see is the mirrored image of the real ego reflected back to us, from moment to moment, by the physical body; but resulting from something that has not accompanied us into earth-life. This mirrored image we call our ego. This mirrored image will naturally grow older as the reflecting apparatus, the physical body, gradually loses the freshness of early childhood and finally becomes wobbly and unstable. Yet this “ego,” which is only the mirrored image of the real ego, appears to age for the sole reason that the reflecting apparatus functions less efficiently after the physical body has grown old.

Like a perspective, the etheric body stretches from the present moment to the real ego and astral body, both of which do not descend into the physical world.

[ 15 ]

[ 16 ] You can imagine that these facts shaping human earth-life must acquire especial significance at the moment of human death. The physical body is the first that we discard in death. This body, however, is the one that determines our earthly age. In discarding this body, what do we retain? Primarily, that which we have not carried with us into earth-life, but which we have filled with all the experiences of earth-life: the ego and astral body. They have, as it were, stood still at the starting-point. Yet they have always looked at that which the physical body, helped by the etheric body, has reflected back as a mirrored image.

Thus, in passing through the portal of death, we stand at our life's starting-point; not filled, however, with what we carried within us when descending from the spiritual world, but filled with what was reflected back to us during earth-life as the mirrored image of this earth-life. With that we are filled to the brim. And this fact engenders an especial state of consciousness at the end of earth-life.

[ 17 ] This especial state of consciousness at the end of earth-life can be comprehended only by someone who, endowed with imaginative, inspired, and intuitive knowledge, is able to see that which generally remains unconscious, that which man experiences between falling asleep and awaking. [ 18 ] Then one recognizes how man, during every night, retraces the life of the past day. One person does it faster, another slower—in one minute or five minutes. Concerning these things, however, time-conditions are entirely different from those of ordinary, outward earth-life. If we are gifted with super-sensible knowledge, we may take a look at what is experienced by the ego and the astral body. You may then actually, by going backward, recapitulate what you have experienced in the physical world since waking up in the morning. Every night we repeat the experiences of the day in reverse order. Every night we first recapitulate the experiences we had just before going to sleep; then the preceding hours; then those lying back still further, and so forth. Having passed in review, in reverse order, all the day's events, we usually awaken after arriving at the moment when we started in the morning.

[ 19 ] You might make the following objection: But people are sometimes awakened by a sudden noise. You must consider, however, that time may elapse in different ways. For instance, someone goes to bed at eleven in the evening, sleeps quietly until three in the morning and, having recapitulated in reverse order all that he experienced during the past day up until ten in the morning, is roused by a sudden disturbance. In such a case, the rest of the time can be retraced very rapidly in the last few moments before waking. Thus events that have stretched themselves out over several hours may, in such a case, be passed through again almost instantly. The conditions of time change in the sleeping state. Time may be completely compressed. Hence we may truthfully say that the human being, during every period of sleep, passes through in reverse what he has experienced during his last waking period. He recapitulates the events not only by seeing them before him, but also by interweaving his experiences with a complete moral judgment of what he did during the day. The human being, as it were, is summoned to judge his own state of morality. And when, on awaking, we have finished this activity, we have passed something like a world judgment on our worth as human beings. Every morning, having experienced in reverse what we did during the day, we appraise ourselves as a being of greater or lesser worth.

This description conveys to you what man's spirit and soul element undergoes, unconsciously, during every night; that is, during one third of our earth-life (if spent in a normal way). The soul passes through life in reverse; only somewhat faster, because merely one third of our earth-life is taken up by sleep.

[ 20 ] After our physical body has been discarded in death, the part called by me in my writings etheric body, or formative-force body, gradually separates itself from the ego and the astral body.

This separation takes place in such manner that the human being, having passed through the portal of death, feels his thoughts, heretofore considered by him as something inward, becoming realities which acquire ever greater expansion. Two, three or four days after his death man has this feeling: Fundamentally, I consist of nothing but thoughts. These thoughts, however, are driven asunder. The human being, as a thought-being, takes on ever greater dimensions; and finally this whole human thought-being is dissolved into the cosmos. But the more this thought-being (that is, the etheric body) is dissolved into the cosmos, the more arise experiences derived from other sources than ordinary consciousness.

[ 21 ] Essentially, all that we have thought and visualized in the waking state is scattered three days after death. This fact cannot be evaded by hiding our heads in the sand. The content of conscious earth-life has vanished three days after death. But just because the things seemingly so important, so essential during earth-life are dissipated within three days, there arise from the depth memories of that which could not come forth until now: memories of what we always experienced at night, in a preliminary way, between falling asleep and awaking. As the waking life of the day is scattered, dissipated, our inward depth sends forth the sum of experiences undergone by us during the night. These are none other than our day-time experiences, but passed through in reverse order and acquired, in every detail, by means of our moral sense.

[ 22 ] You must remember that our real ego and our real astral body are still standing at life's beginning; whereas the mirrored images that we have received from the physical body, regardless of its age, now flutter away with the etheric body. What we have not looked at in the least during earth-life, our nightly experiences, now come forth as a new content. Therefore we do not really feel as if our earth-life were ended, until three days have passed and brought about the scattering of our etheric body. If someone dies, let us say, on May sixteenth, nineteen twenty-three, he seems to be carried to the end of his earth-life by the arising, from nocturnal darkness, of his nightly experiences. At the same time, he is seized by the tendency to go backward.

[ 23 ] Hence we pass again through the period spent by us, night in, night out, in the state of sleep. This amounts to about one third of our earth-life.

The different religions describe this stage of existence as Purgatory, Kamaloka, and so forth. We pass through our earth-life, just as we passed through it unconsciously in successive nights, until our experiences have gone back to its very beginning. The wheel of life, ever rotating, must again return to its starting-point. Such is the course of events. Three days after death our day-time experiences have fluttered away. One third of our earth-life has been passed through in reverse; a period during which we can evaluate, in full consciousness, our human worth. For what we have passed through every night unconsciously, rises into full consciousness once the etheric body has been discarded.

[ 24 ] In ordinary life, we can conceive only of paths leading through space. Space, however, has no significance for the spirit and soul element; it is significant only for the physical-sensible. When reaching the spirit and soul state, we must also conceive of paths leading through time. After death, we must go backward across the whole span of time traversed by our physical body since breaking away—as might be said—from the heavenly realms. Actually we go back thrice as fast, because the time is balanced through the experiences undergone by us every night. Thus we return anew to the starting-point; but enriched by all that we experienced as physical beings. Enriched not only by what remains as a memory—for what flew away with the etheric body still remains as a memory—but also by the judgment passed unconsciously each night, out of our full human nature, on our worth as human beings.

Thus, depending on the kind of life lived by us, we sooner or later enter again (approximately after several decades) into the spiritual world whence we had departed—but departed only inasmuch as our consciousness was concerned. Actually, we have stood still at the starting-point, waiting until the physical body's earthly course would have been fulfilled, so that we might return again to what we were before birth, respectively before conception.

[ 25 ] In describing these things, especially in public, we must beware lest people be shocked by such unusual concepts. Speaking metaphorically, it could be said that we advance after death. In reality, however, we retrace our steps after death; we live our life in reverse. Time, as it rotates, returns to its starting-point. The following might be said: the divine world remains where it stood at the beginning. Man but bursts out, wanders out of the divine world. Then he comes back to it, bringing with him all that he conquered while dwelling outside of the divine realms.

[ 26 ] Then, in its turn, comes life. After returning once more to the spiritual world, enriched not only by conscious but also by unconscious earth-life; after “becoming as little children” who stand again within the heavenly realms, we pass into a kind of life that might be described in this way: now the human being beholds what he really is. Just as he perceived, with his ordinary consciousness, the plants, stones, and animals among whom he dwelt on earth, so he now perceives his new surroundings. What I am describing is the life after death. Here man sees himself surrounded by human souls who, having died or not yet having been born, undergo no earthly experiences, but those of the divine world. Moreover, he perceives the higher Hierarchies, such as the Angels, the Archangels, the Exusiai, and others still higher. You know these names and their significance from my Occult Science.

The human being gathers experiences in this purely spiritual world. I could characterize these experiences by saying: it is as if the human being were carrying his own being into the cosmos. What he experienced during the waking earth-life, during the nightly unconscious earth-life, he now carries into the cosmos. It is needed by the cosmos.

[ 27 ] While standing amidst earth-life, we judge the whole surrounding cosmos, sun, moon, and stars, only from a terrestrial viewpoint. As astronomers, we calculate the movement of the sun, of the planets, the latter's' relationship to the fixed stars, and so forth. This entire astronomical-scientific method, however, could be compared to the following procedure: suppose, that a man stood here and a tiny being—for instance, a ladybug—observed him. Then this tiny creature would found a science. An “Association of Ladybugs for the Study of Mankind” would observe how man comes to life. (I presume that ladybugs, too, have a certain life-span.) This association would observe what happened to man; would investigate all the phenomena backwards and forwards. One thing, however, would be ignored: that the human being eats and drinks, thus renewing his physical being again and again. The ladybugs would believe that man is born, grows by himself, and dies by himself. They would not be able to recognize that man's metabolism must be renewed from day to day.

As an astronomer the human being behaves somewhat similarly in regard to the world. He pays no attention to the fact that the world is a gigantic organism which needs nourishment, otherwise would the stars long ago be scattered in all the directions of universal space and the planets would have deserted their orbits. This gigantic organism, in order to live, needs a kind of nourishment that must be received again and again. Whence comes this nourishment?

[ 28 ] Here we encounter the great questions concerning man's relationship to the universe. It is simply stupendous how much physical science can prove. Only, somehow or other, these proofs have little meaning. People, who have been told that Anthroposophy contradicts ordinary science in many things, are inclined to believe that this ordinary science can prove anything in the world. This is true and not denied by Anthroposophy. Science can prove anything in the world. Only things happen to be constituted in such a way that, in certain cases, these proofs have nothing to do with reality.

[ 29 ] Let us suppose that I could calculate how the physical structure of the human heart changes from one year to the next. Then we might say: a man of thirty-three will have such and such a heart structure; at thirty-four he will have a certain heart structure; at thirty-five he will have still another heart structure, and so forth. Having made these observations over a period of five years, I calculate how the heart structure of this man was constituted let us say thirty years ago. This can be done. Now the whole physical structure of the heart lies before me. I can also calculate how it was constituted three hundred years ago. Here, however, arises a slight difficulty: three hundred years ago this heart did not exist and could, therefore, have had no physical structure of any kind. The calculation was absolutely correct. We can prove that the heart was constituted three hundred years ago in such and such a way, only it did not exist. We can also prove that the heart will be constituted three hundred years later in such and such a way, only then it will have ceased to exist. But the proofs are completely infallible.

[ 30 ] Geology can be handled today in the same manner. We can calculate that a certain layer of the soil indicates this or that fact. Likewise, we calculate how everything was twenty millions of years ago, or will be twenty millions of years later. The proof clicks with marvelous accuracy: only the earth did not exist twenty millions of years ago. It is the same as with the heart. Neither is the earth going to exist twenty millions of years later. The proofs are flawless, but have nothing whatever to do with reality. This is how things actually are. The possibilities of being deceived by physical life are immeasurably great. We must be able to penetrate spiritual life if we desire to gain a standpoint from which the physical world can be judged.

[ 31 ] And now let us go back to that which was to be elucidated by this digression concerning proofs that have no point of contact with reality. Let us go back to the moment after death, as I characterized it, and observe how the human being adjusts his life to the world of spiritual facts, spiritual beings. He brings into this spiritual world what he has experienced on earth while waking and sleeping.

[ 32] Just consider that these experiences are the nourishment of the cosmos; that they are continuously needed by the cosmos in order to live on. Whatever we experience on earth in the course of an easy or hard life is carried by us into the cosmos after death. We thus feel how our being as man is dissolved into the cosmos to furnish its nourishment. These experiences, undergone by man between death and a new birth, are of overwhelming grandeur, of immeasurable loftiness.

[ 33 ] Then comes the moment when man appears to himself no longer as a unity, but as a multiplicity. He appears to himself as if some of his virtues and qualities moved, as it were, towards one star; others towards a different star. Now man perceives how his being is scattered out into the whole world. He also perceives how the parts of his being fight with one another, harmonize with one another, disharmonize with one another. Man feels how that which he experienced on earth by day or by night is scattered into the cosmos. And just as we held fast to our nightly experiences when, three days after death, our thoughts—that is, the essence of our waking life—dissipated out into the cosmos and we, concentrating on our nightly experiences, lived again over, but backward, our whole earth-life until the starting-point of our earth-life is reached; so now, when our entire earthly human experience is scattered out into the cosmos, we hold fast to that which we represent as human beings belonging to a super-sensible world order.

[ 34 ] Now our real ego emerges from what might be called the Dionysically disjointed human being. Gradually there emerges the consciousness: You are nothing but spirit. You have only dwelt in a physical body; have only passed through—even in the nightly experiences—the events brought upon you by the physical body. You are a spirit among spirits.

[ 35 ] Now we enter a spiritual existence among spiritual beings; whereas our substance as physical man is scattered and dissolved into the cosmos. What we passed through here on earth is divided and given to the cosmos: so that it might nourish the cosmos and enable it to live on; so that the cosmos might receive new incentives for the movement of its stars, the sustenance of its stars. As we must partake of physical nourishment in order to live as physical men between birth and death, so must the cosmos partake of human experiences, take them into itself. Thus we feel ourselves more and more as cosmic men; find our whole being transfused, as it were, into the cosmos—but a cosmos taken in a spiritual sense. And then the moment approaches when we must seek the transition from death to a new birth; from man become cosmos to cosmos become man. We have ascended by identifying ourselves more and more with the cosmos. A moment comes—I have called it in my Mystery Plays the Great Midnight Hour of Existence—which brings to us this feeling: We must again become human beings. What we carried into the cosmos must be returned to us by the cosmos, so that we may come back to earth.

[ 36 ] Today it was my foremost purpose to describe man's being, as it is carried out of earth-life into the vast cosmic space. Thus this sketch—which will be enlarged upon during the coming days—has placed us into the center of life between death and a new birth.

• 1. First three paragraphs about the fire in Dornach not included in original translation and is added here for completeness. —rsarchive.org