The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We have been busy getting acquainted with the way man's life processes and the sense-zones locate him in the cosmos, and we have tried to look at some of the consequences that follow from the facts on which this knowledge is based. Above all, we have to some extent cured ourselves of the trivial notion, held by many who want to befriend the spirit, that everything that can be referred to as ‘material’ or ‘perceptible to the senses’ is to be despised. For we have seen that here in the physical world it is precisely the lower organs and functions that reflect higher activities and relationships in the human being. In their present state, we can only view the senses of touch and life as being very dependent on the physical world—equally so the ego sense, the sense of thought and the sense of speech. But we must accustom ourselves to seeing those senses that in the Earth sphere only serve the inner being of the organism as the shadowy reflections of something that is immense and significant for the spiritual world once we have passed through death: the sense of movement, the sense of balance, the sense of smell, the sense of taste and, to a certain degree, the sense of sight. We have emphasised the fact that in the spiritual world the sense of movement enables us to move among the beings of the various hierarchies in accordance with the way they attract or repel us. After death we experience our connection with the hierarchies as spiritual sympathy or antipathy. Physical balance, as we know it here in our physical bodies, is not the only thing the sense of balance provides for us; it also holds us in balance between the beings and influences of the spiritual world. It is similar with the other senses: taste, smell, sight. And, in so far as a hidden spirituality plays into the physical world, it is of no use to turn to the higher senses for clarification. Rather we must enter the realms of the so-called lower senses. Mind you, these days it is not possible to speak about many of the highly significant things that lie in this direction. For today there are such strong prejudices that all one has to do to be misunderstood and accused of all kinds of things is to speak out about precisely those things that are interesting and significant in a higher spiritual sense. So, for the time being, I must forgo speaking about some of the interesting things that go on in the realm of the senses.

In this respect, the situation was much more favourable in earlier times. In those times, however, there were not the same possibilities of disseminating information, either. Aristotle could discuss certain truths much more unguardedly than they can be discussed today, when such things are immediately taken personally and awaken personal sympathies and antipathies. In Aristotle's works, for example, you can find profound truths about the human being which one simply could not explain to a large audience of today. I was referring to some of these in the last lecture when I said that the Greeks did not fall prey to materialism even though they knew more than we do of how our soul-spiritual nature is related to our physical, bodily nature. In Aristotle's writings, for example, you can find wonderful descriptions of the external appearance of a brave person, or a coward, or an indignant person, or of someone who is addicted to sleep. There, in a manner that from a certain point of view is correct, you find described what kind of hair and complexion and wrinkles cowardly people have, what sort of bodies drowsy people have, and so on. To say even this much would create problems these days; other things would be even more problematic. People of today take these things much more personally. In many respects they positively want to use the personal to keep themselves in the fog about the truth. That is why some circumstances today compel one to speak in more general terms if one wants to speak truthfully.

Specific insights about every kind of human being and every human activity await those who, in the right spirit, turn to our preceding considerations with the necessary questions. We have said, for example, that the human senses are presently located in more or less separate, static regions. They are just like the constellations, each of which remains motionless in its own region of the cosmos—in contrast to the planets, which appear, circling, wandering, changing their location in a relatively short time. Moreover, the boundaries of each sense region are fixed, whereas the life processes pulse through the whole organism and circulate through the individual sense-zones, permeating them with their influence.

Now we also have said that our sense organs were more like vital organs during Old Moon. There they functioned more as vital organs, whereas the organs that are now vital organs were essentially more related to the soul. Consider, then, something that has been emphasised more than once: that sometimes people will regress to, or return to, an atavistic state that was a natural and usual state in an earlier time—in this case, during the Old Moon period. We have noted that there is a form of regression that revives the dreamlike imaginative vision of Old Moon. Today, such an atavistic regression into the visionary state of Old Moon is a form of illness.

Now I ask you please not to lose sight of something: namely, that the visions themselves are not pathological. If that were so, we would have to say that everything mankind experienced on Old Moon was the product of illness, for there one lived entirely in such visions. And we would have to say that Old Moon was an illness that humanity had to go through—an illness of soul, at that—so that the humanity of Old Moon was necessarily insane. Naturally, one cannot say this; it is utter nonsense. The pathological aspect does not lie in the visions themselves, but rather in the fact that they cannot be sustained by the human organisation in its present, earthly form. The earthly, human organisation adapts to such visions in a way that is not appropriate to them. Just consider: when someone has the kind of vision one had on Old Moon, this vision is only adapted for engendering the kind of feelings, activities and acts that were appropriate to Old Moon. The illness consists in someone having such a vision here on Earth and responding to it in ways that only an earthly organisation can respond. This only happens because the earthly organisation cannot tolerate this vision with which it is more or less impregnated.

Take the most obvious, concrete kind of case: circumstances arise in which someone has a vision. Then, instead of remaining in quiet contemplation of the vision and relating it to the spiritual world, which is the only world to which it can rightly be related, the person applies it to the physical world and behaves accordingly. In other words, he starts to go berserk because the vision is doing what it should not do—permeating his body and bringing it into action. This is the most obvious kind of case. Today, when an atavistic vision arises that the body cannot tolerate, it does not remain in the domain which has brought it to life, which is where it should remain. A person becomes powerless if, his physical body is too weak to stand up against the vision. If the physical body is strong enough to stand up against it, the vision is weakened. Then the objects and events in it cease to appear—falsely—as if they really belonged to the world of the senses, for that is how they seem to someone who is made ill by them. Thus, if the physical body is strong enough to counter the falsifying tendencies of an atavistic vision, the following occurs: in such cases, a person relates to the world in a fashion that is similar to that of Old Moon, and yet he is strong enough to reconcile this Moon mode of experience with the earthly organism in its present state.

What does this imply? It implies that this person has somewhat altered his inner zodiac with its twelve sense-zones. It is changed in such a way that what happens in this zodiac of the twelve senses is more like a life process than a sense process. Or, better expressed, one could say that events in the regions of the senses, events which actually do impinge on the sense processes, are transformed into life processes—so that the sense processes are lifted out of their present, dead state and transformed into something living: you still see, but something lives in that seeing; you hear, but simultaneously there is something living in that hearing. Something lives in the eyes or in the ears which otherwise only lives in your stomach or on your tongue. The sense processes are truly brought into movement. And it is quite in order for that to happen. For then our modern sense organs acquire qualities that could otherwise only be possessed in the same degree by our vital organs. The forces of sympathy and antipathy flow strongly through our vital organs. Now just consider how much of our whole life depends on sympathy and antipathy—on which things we accept and take up and which we reject! And now those very powers of sympathy and antipathy, powers that are otherwise developed in the life organs, once more begin to pour into the sense organs. The eye not only sees red, it experiences sympathy or antipathy along with the colour. The sense organs regain the capacity to receive and be permeated by the life forces. So we can say: in this way the sense organs are brought once more into the sphere of life.

For this to happen, there must be changes in the life processes. Through these changes, the life processes become more ensouled than they otherwise would be in earthly life. The ensouling takes place in such a way that the three life processes—breathing, warming and nourishing—are more or less united. Then they begin to manifest themselves more in the sphere of the soul. With normal breathing, one breathes the prosaic, earthly air; the normal process of warming involves earthly warmth; and so on. But when they are ensouled, the life processes are united by a kind of symbiosis. They cease to be separated in the way they are usually separated in the present-day human organism; they establish connections with each other. Breathing, warming and nourishing unite to form an inner association with one another. And this is not nourishing in the coarse, material sense, but is rather the process of nourishing. The process occurs without it being necessary for anything to be eaten, and it does not occur on its own, as when we eat, but in conjunction with the other processes.

The four remaining life processes are united in a similar fashion. Secretion, growth, maintenance and reproduction are united to form a single, more ensouled process, a life process that has more to do with the soul. And then these two parts can unite yet again-not just gathering all the life processes together so that they function as one, but by combining three of the processes in one group and the other four processes in another so that these two groups, in turn, can function in concert.

In this way three new soul faculties arise. In character they resemble—but are not identical with—the earthly faculties of thinking, feeling and willing: here is another triad of soul faculties. The new faculties differ from thinking, feeling and willing as they normally present themselves on Earth. They are more like life processes, but not so differentiated as the life processes otherwise are on Earth. When someone is able to sustain this sinking-back into Moon without lapsing into visions, a very intimate, subtle process takes place. The sense-zones are transformed into regions of life, the life processes are ensouled, and there arises a kind of understanding that is faintly suggestive of the Old Moon visions. Nor can a person remain constantly in this state, for then one would cease to be fit for life on Earth. To be fit for Earth one needs the kind of senses and vital organs we have described previously. But in special circumstances a person can enter into this other state. Then, if the state tends more towards the will, it leads to aesthetic creation; if the state tends more towards perception, it leads to aesthetic enjoyment. Truly aesthetic human behaviour consists in the enlivening of the sense organs and the ensouling of the life processes. This is an extremely important truth about humanity; it explains much. This enlivening of the sense organs and this new life in the regions of the senses is to be found in the arts and the enjoyment of art. Something similar occurs with the vital processes, which are more ensouled in the enjoyment of art than they are in normal life. These days, it is impossible to understand the full significance of the changes a person undergoes when he enters the artistic sphere, because a materialistic approach is incapable of grasping the facts in their full reality. Today a human being is seen as concrete and fixed. But, within certain limits, people actually are variable. This is demonstrated by the sort of variability we have just been observing.

Elucidations such as those that have just been presented contain far, far-reaching truths. To mention only one such truth: there is the fact that precisely those senses that are most adapted to the physical plane of existence are the senses that must undergo the most radical changes when they are led halfway back into a quasi-Moon existence. In order to serve someone who follows this road halfway back into the time of Old Moon, the sense of the I, the sense of thought and the sense of physical touch must be wholly transformed, for these senses are robustly adapted to Earth existence.

It is of no use to art, for example, to confront the I or the world of thoughts the way we normally do. At the very most, you might find the usual relationship to the I and to thought in some minor arts. No art describes or portrays a person's I directly, in the way the person actually lives, standing within the real world. The artist must go through a process whereby the I is lifted out of the specialisation it has acquired on earth; it must give him a generalised sense of meaning, a sense for the typical. An artist does this as a matter of course. Similarly, an artist cannot directly express the world of thoughts in the way in which it is usually expressed here on earth. Otherwise he would not be able to produce any poetry or works of art at all, but at the very most only didactic things, things that contain some lesson and are not artistic in the true sense of the word. The changes that the artist makes in the world that confronts him enliven the senses by leading them back to a previous condition in the way I have been explaining.

But, regarding this change in the senses, there is something else that must still be considered. I said that the life processes intermingle. Just as the planets come into conjunction, and just as their mutual relations are significant—in contrast to the immobile stars—the sense-zones can also come into motion; once they have been transposed to the planetary dimension of human life, they can come to life and attain to relationships with one another. This is the reason why artistic perception is never as restricted to specific sense-zones in the way in which our usual perception is. The particular senses also develop certain relationships with one another. Let us consider an example—say, painting.

A consideration that is based on true spiritual science would discover the following things. Sight, the sense of warmth, the sense of taste, the sense of smell—these have their discrete zones as far as normal sense observation goes. Their respective areas are separate. In painting, however, these sense regions merge in a remarkable fashion, not only in the concrete organs, but also in their spheres of influence as I have described them in preceding lectures.

A painter, or someone who is enjoying a painting, does not merely see the content as colours: the red or the blue or the violet. Instead, he actually tastes the colours, although of course not with the actual organ, or else he would have to lick the painting with his tongue, which he does not do. But a subtle process that is similar to the process of tasting nevertheless takes place in all those areas allied to the sphere of the tongue. When you use the processes of sensory perception to see a green parrot, your eyes see the green colour. But when you enjoy a painting, other subtle, imaginative processes also participate in the act of seeing. These processes are associated with your tongue and belong to your tongue's sense of taste. They are similar to the subtle processes that occur when you taste something, when you eat your food. Now, the act of seeing simultaneously involves other processes—not the processes that actually happen on the tongue, but rather fine, physiological processes associated with these—so that in the deeper sense of the word the painter really does taste the colours.

And he smells the nuances of the colours—not with his nose but rather with the more soul-allied things that accompany the act of smelling from deeper in the organism. Therefore, the individual sense-zones begin to merge as they become areas more given over to the life process.

When we read a description intended for instructing us as to how something looks or how something happened, we employ the sense of speech, or the sense of word. Through it, we obtain information about one thing and another. But if we listen to a poem in the same way as we listen to straightforward information, we will not be able to understand it. The poem does manifest itself to the sense of speech, of course, but it cannot be understood solely through the sense of speech. In addition to the sense of speech, the ensouled senses of balance and movement must also be focused on the poem—not just the usual senses of balance and movement, but the ensouled senses. So we again see that the senses merge. The regions of the senses have become life regions and the sense organs function in combination. Furthermore, this whole process must be accompanied by life processes that relate to the soul instead of functioning like the usual life processes in the physical world.

Someone who engages the fourth life process so intensely that he sweats when he listens to a piece of music has gone too far; that is no longer appropriate to the aesthetic realm, for secretion has been taken as far as physical secretion. The first point is that the process should remain on the soul level and not lead to physical secretion, even though physical secretion is based on exactly the same process. The second point to note is that secretion should not emerge as a discrete process, but rather in an association of four processes—all of them on a soul level: secretion, growth, maintenance and reproduction.

On the one hand, spiritual science has the task of linking the development of Earth to the spiritual worlds. From many points of view we have seen that mankind is headed for disaster unless this link is established. On the other hand, however, spiritual science must also revive the capacity for grasping and understanding the physical world in terms of the spiritual. Not only has materialism led to an inability to rise to the spirit, it also has led to an inability to understand the physical. The spirit is alive in everything physical. If it is lost sight of, it becomes impossible to understand the physical. Just ask yourselves, what could someone who knows nothing of spiritual realities know about the way an entire sense-zone can become a life-zone, and about the way vital processes can manifest as soul processes? What do contemporary physiologists know about these subtle processes that occur in us? Materialism has gradually brought us to such a pass that we have lost all contact with concrete reality. We live only in abstractions, and now we are abandoning the abstractions, too. At the beginning of the nineteenth century people still spoke of vital energy, or of life energy. Naturally, one cannot do anything with such an abstraction, for matters can only be grasped when one enters into the concrete. Once you have a full grasp of the seven life processes you are involved with the realities, and what matters is to re-establish a connection with reality. People try to put new life into all sorts of greyish abstractions, abstractions like elan vital. Even though they may intend exactly the opposite, they are only leading mankind deeper into the crudest materialism, materialism that stoops to mysticism. These abstractions say nothing; they simply testify to an inability to understand. The development of humanity in the immediate future depends on a knowledge of things that can only be discovered in the spiritual worlds. We must make real progress in our spiritual understanding of the world.

In this regard, we ought to go back to the good Aristotle, who was closer to the ancient vision than people are today. I only want to remind you of one characteristic thing about old Aristotle. A whole library has been written about the notion of catharsis, by which he attempted to show what is at the root of tragedy. He said: Tragedy is a unified presentation of events from human life, events which arouse fear and pity as they unfold; furthermore, the soul is purified because of the way this fear and pity unfold, and so the effects of the fear and pity are also purified. The age of materialism has written so much about this passage because it does not possess the organ for apprehending Aristotle. The only ones on the right track were those who saw that Aristotle's expression ‘catharsis’ is medical, or quasi-medical, and not so in the sense of today's materialistic medicine. The aesthetic experience of tragedy really does engender processes that reach right into the physical body and are the organic events that normally accompany fear and pity. It does this because vital processes are changed to processes of soul. A tragedy purifies these vital effects because they are simultaneously elevated to processes of soul. And if you read further in Aristotle's Poetics you will find a hint of this deep understanding of the aesthetic man—not understanding in the modern style, but out of the ancient traditions of the Mysteries. You will find yourself much more in the grips of immediate life reading Aristotle's Poetics than you ever will by reading the tract of some modern aesthetician who can only sniff around and dialecticize, but is unable to get hold of realities.

Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man marks another high point in the understanding of aesthetic man. He lived in a more abstract time, however. Today we need to add the spiritual—the spiritually concrete—to the idealism of that time. But when we look at the more materialistic time of Goethe and Schiller, we see that the abstractions of Schiller's letters on aesthetics nevertheless contain something of what we have been talking about. It is only that the process has descended nearer to the physical plane—but only so that the material may be all the more thoroughly penetrated by an intensively grasped spirituality. What does Schiller say? He says: Humanity, as it lives on earth has two basic drives: it has rational impulses and natural impulses. The logic of the impulse to reason functions as a natural necessity. One is forced to think in a certain way; thinking is not at all free. What avails it to speak of freedom as regards this sphere of natural necessity where one is forced to think that three times three is nine, and not ten? Logic implies a strict rational necessity. For this reason, Schiller says that the person who conforms to the necessities of pure reason is subject to spiritual compulsion.

Schiller contrasts the necessity of reason with the necessities of the world of the senses—of everything that lives in the drives and emotions. There, also, a person must follow a natural necessity rather than his own free impulses. Then Schiller looks for a middle condition between the necessities of reason and the necessities of nature. He finds it in what occurs when a person forms something aesthetically—when rational necessity inclines towards what the person loves or does not love, and when his thinking follows or avoids inner impulses and pictures instead of being bound by rigid, logical necessity. But this state also suspends natural necessity. For one ceases to follow, as through compulsion, the necessities of the natural senses. These necessities are ensouled and spiritualised. A person ceases simply to want what the body wants; instead, sensual pleasures are spiritualised. In this way, the necessity of reason and the necessity of nature approach one another.

Naturally, you must read Schiller's letters on aesthetics for yourselves; they are among the most significant philosophical productions of world history. There, living in Schiller's analyses, you will discover the very things you have just been hearing, only there they are described in metaphysical abstractions. The way vital forces are returned to the sense-zones is contained in what Schiller calls the freeing of natural necessity from rigidity. And what Schiller calls the spiritualisation of natural necessity—he might more aptly have called it ‘ensouling’—contains what we referred to as the functioning of the life processes as soul processes. The life processes become more ensouled, the sense processes come more to life—that is the true process that you will find described in Schiller's letters on aesthetics. There it is put more in abstract, rather ghostly concepts, because that was how it had to be in that era. At that time thinking was not yet spiritually strong enough, not strong enough to descend with the spirit into the regions sought by the seer. In those regions there is no opposition between matter and spirit; rather there is an experience of how the spirit everywhere saturates matter so that there is no possibility of ever bumping into spiritless matter. Contemplation that is merely mental is merely mental only because the person is not able to make his thoughts as strong and as spiritual—as concretely spiritual—that the thoughts can cope with matter. In other words, he is not able to penetrate to what is truly material. Schiller is not yet able to see that the vital processes can function as soul processes. He is not yet able to go as far as to be able to see how the processes that work physically as nourishing, warming and breathing can be formed into something that ceases to be material and instead lives and bubbles in the soul. When this happens, the material particles are scattered by the force of the concepts with which one grasps the physical process. And Schiller is equally unable to look up to the realm of the logical in such a way that he ceases to experience it as merely conceptual. He is not able to come to that stage of development, which can be reached through initiation, whereby the spiritual processes are experienced in their own right and whereby a living spirituality enters into what would otherwise be mere knowing. Thus the attitude that lives in Schiller's aesthetic letters is that ‘I do not quite trust myself to directly approach concrete experience.’ Nevertheless, that which one grasps more exactly when one tries to approach the realm of life through the spirit, and the realm of material through the living, is already stirring in these letters.

Thus we can see all areas of life struggling to move towards the goals of spiritual science. At the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century there arose a philosophy which expressed a longing for greater concreteness. This philosophy had a more or less conceptual form, however, and the longing could not be satisfied. And, because its initial vitality ebbed, this longing for greater concreteness gradually degenerated into the coarse materialism that has lasted from the second half of the nineteenth century into our own time. But something else must also be understood: For spiritualism to establish links only with the spirit is not enough; the material world must be conquered—we must learn to recognise the spirit in matter. That happens through such knowledge as we have been discussing. It leads one to discover new connections, such as the unique place of aesthetic man in Earth evolution. To a certain extent, aesthetic man lifts himself above the stream of development and enters a different world. And that is important. The aesthetically inclined person and the person who works in an aesthetic field do not act in a way that is entirely appropriate to someone on earth, but rather their sphere of activity is in a certain way lifted out of the Earth sphere. With this discovery, aesthetics leads us to some profound secrets of human existence.

On the one hand, anyone who expresses such things as these is touching on the highest truths; on the other hand, what he says can sound virtually nonsensical—mad and distorted. But we will never understand life as long as we timidly hold ourselves back from the real truths. Take any work of art that you wish—the Sistine Madonna or the Venus of Milo: if it really is a work of art, it is not entirely of this earth. It has been lifted out of the stream of earthly events. That is self-evident. And what lives in a Sistine Madonna or a Venus of Milo? That which lives in them also lives in the human being. It is a power that is not entirely adapted to Earth. If everything in humanity were adapted to the earth, mankind would not be able to live on any other level. But not everything in the human being is adapted to the earth and, for occult vision, not everything in humanity is attuned to being earthly man. There are mysterious forces that some day will provide mankind with the impetus to lift itself out of the sphere of earth existence. Nor will we ever understand art as such until we see that its task is to point beyond the merely earthly and beyond what is solely adapted to the earth—to point to the sphere where that which lives in the Venus de Milo truly does exist.

The more you cast your gaze towards the humanity of the future and towards the spiritual challenges of the future, the more you must take certain facts into account, certain facts that are necessary to any truthful picture of the world. Today we still are living with many versions of the assumption that anyone who states something logical and who logically substantiates what he says is necessarily saying something significant about life. But being logical—logicism—is not enough on its own. And because people are always so satisfied when they can produce something logical, they maintain the truth of all imaginable kinds of world view and philosophical system. And of course, all of these can be supported logically: no one who is acquainted with logic would question that they are supportable by logic. But mere logical demonstration does nothing for life. What is thought, what is held in the light of consciousness, needs to be more than just logical, it needs to measure up to reality. What is merely logical is not necessarily valid; only what measures up to reality is valid. I will use just one example to show you what I mean. Suppose you are describing a tree trunk that is lying here before you. You can describe it quite systematically and demonstrate to someone that something really is there because you are describing it just as it is. All the same, your description is a lie. For what you describe does not exist in its own right and cannot possible be a tree trunk in the state in which it is now lying there, cut off from it roots and branches and twigs. It is only a part of existence when seen along with its branches, blossoms and roots, and it is nonsense to think of the trunk as existing in its own right. It is not a reality when it is only seen as it is, lying there. It must be seen with all its shoots and with everything in it that enables it to come into being. One must become convinced that the trunk lying before one is a lie because the truth is before one only when the whole tree is there. Logic does not require us to see a tree trunk as a lie, but it accords with reality that we see it so and that we only accept the whole tree as the reality. A crystal is a truth. In a certain respect it exists in its own right, although only in a certain respect, mind you, for all is relative here, too. A crystal is a reality, but a rosebud is a lie if it is seen only as a rosebud.

So you see how all manner of things occur today because the concept of being in accordance with reality is lacking. Crystallography and, at a pinch, mineralogy are still sciences that accord with reality. But when you get to geology, it no longer accords with reality, for it is an abstraction in the way the tree trunk is an abstraction. It is an abstraction, not a reality, even though it is lying there before you. Things contained in the earth's crust came into being along with what grows out of the earth's crust and thus cannot be conceived without it. We need philosophers who are not satisfied to limit themselves to their powers of abstraction, thinking up new abstractions. More, and increasingly more, there must arise a thinking that accords with reality and is not merely logical. Thinking alters the whole course of world evolution. For what is a Venus de Milo or a Sistine Madonna from the standpoint of thinking that accords with reality? If you take them just as they are before you, you are not in contact with reality. You must be enraptured. To see a work of art truly, you must be lifted out of the earth's sphere and removed from it. To really encounter the Venus de Milo, your soul must be different from the soul that responds to earthly things; precisely the things that do not exist on this earthly plane are what transport the soul to the plane where they really do exist—to the realm of the elemental world, which is where what is in the Venus de Milo really exists. One is able to stand before the Venus de Milo in a way that accords with reality precisely because she possesses the power to tear us away from mere sense-bound vision.

I have not the slightest desire to promote teleology in the negative sense of the word. Nor shall I say anything about the uses of art, for that would be adding pedantry and philistinism to teleology. I shall say nothing about the uses of art. But we can well speak of the sources of art and how art comes to be a part of our lives. We do not have time to cover the whole subject today, so I will just make a start with a few preparatory words. A counter-question leads us to part of the answer: What would happen if there were no art in the world? If that were so, all the forces that are now devoted to art and the enjoyment of art would be used to produce a life that runs counter to reality. If you were to remove art from the development of humanity, then human development would contain just as many lies as it now contains works of art! Here art displays that unique and dangerous relationship that arises when one nears the threshold of the spiritual world. Just listen yonder, where things always have two sides! If a person has a sense for being in accord with reality, then an aesthetic attitude gives him access to higher realities. An aesthetic attitude leads someone who lacks the sense for being in accord with reality directly into a world of lies. There is always a dividing of the ways and it is very important to be aware of this fork in the road. This does not just apply to occultism; it already applies when you come to the realm of art. To bring about a way of seeing the world that accords with its reality is an aim of spiritual science. Materialism has given us a way of seeing things that goes directly against reality.

As contradictory as this all seems, it is only contradictory for those who judge the world according to their preconceptions, rather than in accordance with what is really there. We really do live in a phase of development in which the direct influence of materialism is putting more and more distance between us and the ability to comprehend what even a normal object of the senses is—an ordinary thing of the physical world. There have been some very interesting experiments that shed light on this problem.¹³ They conform exactly to a materialistic way of thinking but, like so many things produced by materialistic thought, they support the development of precisely those abilities that mankind needs for developing a spiritual world-view. The following experiment has been carried out—I am taking just one example from among the many such experiments. A whole event was planned ahead of time: A person is to give a lecture in the course of which he says something injurious and upsetting about someone present in the audience. All of it is planned. The lecture is given word for word as planned beforehand. The person against whom the insult is directed is supposed to jump up and a real scuffle is to develop—this is how events are supposed to develop. During the course of the argument, the man who has jumped up is to reach into his pocket and draw out a revolver. Other details of the incident are planned out exactly. In other words, you must imagine the unfolding of a fully programmed, detailed scene. Thirty people were in the invited audience—not just any people, but advanced students of law, and lawyers who had already completed their studies. After the scuffle is over, each of the thirty was asked to describe what happened. Others who were privy to what was going on were there to ensure that protocol was followed and that the whole event went exactly according to plan. So each of the thirty is questioned. Each has seen the event. None of them is thick-headed. They are all educated people, the very ones who later will go out into life and investigate what really has occurred in the case of such a fracas or of other incidents. Yet of these thirty, twenty-six falsely described what they saw and only four could produce an acceptably accurate account—only four tolerably accurate accounts! Such experiments have been going on for years in order to demonstrate how the truthfulness of witnesses should be weighed in a court of law. Every one of the twenty-six sat there and could say, ‘I saw it with my own two eyes.’—One forgets to consider what is required in order to be able to correctly describe something that has occurred before one's very eyes!

We need to consider the art of maintaining a true perspective on what happens before our very eyes. Someone who is not conscientious towards events in the world of the senses will never be able to develop the feeling of responsibility and the conscientiousness necessary for viewing spiritual facts. Just look at this world of ours that is presently so under the influence of materialism and ask yourselves how many are aware that it is possible for twenty-six people out of the thirty who have witnessed an event to be unable to describe it without committing falsehoods, with only four who are able to give even tolerably accurate accounts. In view of something like this, you can begin to feel what immeasurable significance the results of a spiritual world-view have for ordinary life.

Now you might ask yourself whether things were different in earlier times. Our current mode of thought has not always been current. The Greeks did not yet possess the abstract manner of thinking that we have, and need to have, in order to get about the world in a way appropriate for today. But the manner of thinking is not the important thing; the truth is what matters. In his own way, Aristotle tried to use more concrete concepts to describe the inner aesthetic mood and the aesthetic attitude. But the aesthetic constitution was understood in an even more concrete, imaginatively clairvoyant fashion by the early Greeks, who were still connected with the Mysteries and who experienced pictures instead of concepts. In those times, one looked back to the age of Uranus, who embodied everything that we can take in through our heads and through the powers that now are manifest in the outer world through the sense-zones. Uranus—the twelve senses—is wounded. Drops of his blood fall, foaming, into the ocean called Maya. Here you see the senses beginning to come to life and sending something down into the ocean of the life processes, and there below you see how the blood of the senses pulses through the life processes which begin to foam up and become processes of soul. And the ancient Greeks' understanding of this led them to see how Aphrodite¹⁴—Aphrogenea, the goddess of beauty—is created out of the foam that arises when the blood of the wounded Uranus drips into the ocean of Maya. This, the more ancient of the myths about the creation of Aphrodite, expresses the condition of the aesthetic man and is one of the most significant imaginations and one of the most significant thoughts in the whole of mankind's spiritual evolution. But still another thought needs to be placed beside the thought of this ancient myth which shows Aphrodite being born from the drops of blood of the wounded Uranus that fall into the sea—rather than as the child of Zeus and Dione. We need a further imagination—one that penetrates even more deeply into reality and goes beyond the realities of the elemental world into the physical realities. We need an imagination from a later age—one that approaches the physical-sensory world. Alongside the myth that shows how Aphrodite, beauty, was born into the world of mankind, we need to place the great truth about how original goodness entered into humanity. We need to show how the spirit descended into Maya-Maria, just as the drops of Uranus' blood trickled into the ocean whose name also was Maya—and how, out of the beautiful foam that arises [*The German for foam—Schaum—has many suggestive echoes. For example, there is the word schauen, ‘show’ or ‘spectacle’, and also ‘Schema’, which means ‘perceptible manifestation, semblance, or appearance’, and which refers to a concept that is central to Schiller's account of aesthetic man. (Tr. note.)], the herald who announces the approaching dawn of a new age is born. The sunrise that announces the eternal regency of the Good ... of understanding of the Good, The True-and-the-Good, the spirit. This is the truth Schiller intended when he wrote the words:

Only through beauty's dawn-lit gate
Can you pass into the realms of knowledge.¹⁵

The knowledge he refers to is primarily moral knowledge.

You can see how the tasks of spiritual science are growing—not mere theoretical ones, but real life tasks. In our day it is no wonder that the misunderstandings about spiritual science multiply among those who are not devoted to the truth. We have to accept that as an inevitable side-effect.

Many people have been caught in the grip of a most peculiar attitude towards the truth, especially in our materialistic age. And if I had to tell you about the letters I receive, then today I would have to make yet another addition to that part of our collection where the enemies of the truth are exhibited. I do not even like to mention the latest incredible nonsense, which came in a letter I received yesterday. Yes, my dear friends, this is something we must feel; just reflecting a little on it is not enough. For although our time demands it, bringing spiritual science to mankind in a form that is appropriate to our time is not such a simple task. One must speak out in spite of thereby being exposed to the dangers involved in telling numbers of people—and it truly is more than a few—about truths that not only touch upon what is highest and most holy, but that also go most deeply, affecting heart and soul. Think of the times when there were not a few sitting in the auditorium who later became thorough-going enemies and falsified what was being said! Those who, at any rate, still take the Society seriously, must go through this experience of speaking to many people who, like yourselves, are supposedly friends, while knowing that in the past there have been some who turned out to be enemies—people who later falsified the truths they heard and used what they received here to attack the truth. One must always reckon—sometimes while watching it happen—on the possibility that the person who is listening to what is being said may turn against us in the way others have turned in the past. Today this must colour our work in the realm of spiritual science: knowledge of the human soul takes on special significance.

Such things are not to be taken too lightly. Let us try to refresh our memory for a moment, our memory of truth's path as it has appeared in cosmic development, in the evolution of humanity, and remind ourselves of how much was involved in the progress of truth! I will not say any more about it today. But we have touched on an area that is closely related to the direct connections between this life and the spiritual world. Only by understanding it can we shed lights on such things. One must take such opportunities as this to touch on what today's representatives of the truth must undergo. And I hope that there are at least a few of you who know why every now and then I have something bitter to say about the way people relate to the truth, and that there are some who know that it is not quite truthful to say that I am the guilty one. Perhaps I might characterise our contemporaries' much-loved illogicality with an anecdote that would seem silly in other circumstances. But this false logic is used, not in the service of the truth, but in the service of lies.

Once there was a man who took another man's estate away from him. After he had taken it, the former owner did not possess it as before, but instead had to begin all over again to work for what he already had earned once. A trial was conducted. The former possessor of the estate was there and also the man who had taken it away. Each had his own advocate. Now, advocates are not always there to present the unconditional, absolute truth, but rather to say what is useful to the person they represent. In this case, the advocate who was lodging the complaint was the first to speak, the one representing the man from whom something had been taken. And, indeed, to begin with he seemed on the way to convincing the court. But then the advocate of the man who had taken the estate away took the floor and said to the judge, ‘Your Honour, you have heard that my client confesses to having done everything that he has done. You have asked my client, “Do you plead guilty, or not guilty?” To that my client answered, “I took all those things, but I do not feel that I am guilty.” And my client is entirely correct in saying this. He will concede that he took all those things; but he need not feel guilty about it. Nor can Your Honour find him guilty, for in order to establish the guilt one must go back to the original cause of the matter. Just consider, Your Honour, this man has become a thief. But he never would have become a thief if the other man had not possessed these things he took away from him! The original owner is the one who has trespassed! If he had never had the possessions, my client could never have become a thief! So he is truly the guilty one! It was only when my client saw that this man had these possessions that he was tempted to become a thief.’ And this advocate spoke so eloquently that the court finally declared, ‘Yes, until today we have always believed that the thief is the guilty one. But all those who have believed that the person who takes something is guilty have been mistaken, for when one examines the real, original cause, one sees that the person from whom the things were taken, the original possessor, is the guilty one.’

Everyone will see that what I am telling you is utter nonsense. But this is exactly the sort of logic that is used today against spiritual science. Spiritual science makes its way into the world and accomplishes certain things. Then these things are distorted by people who say they only do so because they see the truth in spiritual science. They are using the same logic as someone who says that the person from whom something is taken is the guilty one because he has tempted the other to take it from him. Such is the logic abroad today and, if you will only take care to observe the life around you, you will see instances of this kind of logic.

Yesterday I was blamed—among other things—for everything that happens in the world when someone or other lies about spiritual science and commits certain acts. This is the same logic as that followed by one who says: ‘The real guilt does not lie with the person who takes, but with the person from whom something is taken, for he is the one who created the original cause of the theft.’

• 13. The experiment referred to was carried out by Franz von List, a professor of criminal law.
• 14. The birth of Aphrodite: Compare lines 188 ff. of Hesiod's Theogony:
  
  But the members themselves, when Kronos
  had lopped them with the flint,
  he threw from the mainland
  into the great wash of the sea water
  and they drifted a great while
  on the open sea, and there spread
  a circle of white foam
  from the immortal flesh, and in it
  grew a girl, whose course first took her
  to holy Kythera
  and from there she afterward made her way
  to sea-washed Cyprus
  and stepped ashore, a modest lovely goddess,
  and about her
  light and slender feet the grass grew,
  and the gods call her
  Aphrodite, and men do too,
  and the Aphro-foam-born
  goddess, and garlanded Kythereia,
  because from the seafoam
  she grew, and Kythereia, because she came forth
  from wave-washed Cyprus,
  and Philommedea, because she appeared
  from medea, members ...
  
  (Hesiod, translated by Richmond Lattimore. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor, 1959.)
• 15. Schiller, when he wrote the words: The words in question are to be found in the poem, Die Kunstler (The Artist).

Published in The Golden Blade, 1975. This lecture is the ninth of fifteen lectures in the volume The Riddle of Humanity. Topics included are: Enlivening the Sense Processes and Ensouling the Life Processes; Aesthetic Enjoyment and Aesthetic Creativity; and Logic and the Sense for Reality.

We have been concerned with getting to know the human being as he is related to the world through the realm of his senses and the organs of his life-processes, and we have attempted to consider some of the consequences of the fact which underlies such knowledge. Above all, we have cured ourselves of the trivial attitude which is taken by many people who like to regard themselves as spiritually minded, when they think they should despise everything that is called material or sense-perceptible. For we have seen that here in the physical world man has been given in his lower organs and his lower activities a reaction of higher activities and higher connections. The sense of touch and the Life-sense, as they are now, we have had to regard as very much tied to the physical, earthly world. The same applies to the Ego-sense, the Thought-sense and the Speech-sense.

It is different with the senses which serve the bodily organism only in an internal way; the sense of Movement, the sense of Balance, the sense of Smell, the sense of Taste, to a certain extent even the sense of Sight. We have had to accustom ourselves to regard these senses as a shadowy reflection of something which becomes great and significant in the spiritual world, when we have gone through death.

We have emphasised that through the sense of Movement we move in the spiritual world among the beings of the several Hierarchies, according to the attraction or repulsion they exercise upon us, expressed in the form of the spiritual sympathies and antipathies we experience after death. The sense of Balance does not only keep us in physical balance, as it does with the physical body here, but in a moral balance towards the beings and influences found in the spiritual world. It is similar with the other senses; the senses of Taste, Smell and Sight. And just where the hidden spiritual plays into the physical world, we cannot look to the higher senses for explanations, but have to turn to those realms of the senses which are regarded as lower. At the present day it is impossible to speak about many significant things of this kind, because today prejudices are so great. Many things that are in a higher spiritual sense interesting and important have only to be said, and at once they are misunderstood and in all sorts of ways attacked. For the time being I have therefore to abstain from pointing out many interesting processes in the realms of the senses which are responsible for important facts of life.

In this respect the situation in ancient times was more favourable, though knowledge could not be disseminated as it can be today. Aristotle could speak much more freely about certain truths than is now possible, for such truths are at once taken in too personal a way and awaken personal likes and dislikes. You will find in the works of Aristotle, for example, truths which concern the human being very deeply but could not be outlined today before a considerable gathering of people. They are truths of the kind indicated recently when I said: the Greeks knew more about the connection between the soul and spirit on the one hand and the physical bodily nature on the other, without becoming materialistic. In the writings of Aristotle you can find, for example, very beautiful descriptions of the outer forms of courageous men, of cowards, of hot-tempered people, of sleepyheads. In a way that has a certain justification he describes what sort of hair, what sort of complexion, what kind of wrinkles brave or cowardly men have, what sort of bodily proportions the sleepyheads have, and so on. Even these things would cause some difficulties if they were set forth today, and other things even more. Nowadays, when human beings have become so personal and really want to let personal feelings cloud their perception of the truth, one has to speak more in generalities if one has, under some circumstances, to describe the truth.

From a certain point of view, every human quality and activity can be comprehended, if we ask the right questions about what has been recently described here. For instance, we have said: the realms of the senses, as they exist in the human being today, are in a way separate and stationary regions, as the constellations of the Zodiac are stationary regions out in cosmic space as compared with the orbiting planets, which make their journeys and alter their positions relatively quickly. In the same way, the regions of the senses have definite boundaries, while the life-processes work through the whole organism, circling through the regions of the senses and permeating them with the effects of their work.

Now we have also said that during the Old Moon period our present sense-organs were still organs of life, still worked as life-organs, and that our present life-organs were then more in the realm of the soul. Think of what has often been emphasised: that there is an atavism in human life, a kind of return to the habits and peculiarities of what was once natural; a falling back, in this case into the Old Moon period. In other words, there can be an atavistic return to the dreamlike, imaginative way of looking at things that was characteristic of Old Moon. Such an atavistic falling back into Moon-visions must today be regarded as pathological.

Please take this accurately: it is not the visions themselves which are pathological, for if this were so, and if all that man experienced during the Old Moon time, when he lived only in such visions, had to be regarded as pathological—then one would have to say that humanity was ill during the Old Moon period; that during the Old Moon period man was in fact out of his mind. That, of course, would be complete nonsense. What is pathological is not the visions themselves, but that they occur in the present earthly organisation of the human being in such a way that they cannot be endured; that they are used by this earthly organisation in a way that is inappropriate for them as Moon visions. For if someone has a Moon vision, this is suited only to lead to a feeling, an activity, a deed which would have been appropriate on the Old Moon. But if someone has a Moon vision here during the Earth period and does things as they are done with an earthly organism, that is pathological. A man acts in that way only because his earthly organism cannot cope with the vision, is in a sense impregnated by it.

Take the crudest example: someone is led to have a vision. Instead of remaining calm before it, and contemplating it inwardly, he applies it in some way to the physical world—although it should be applied only to the spiritual world—and acts accordingly with his body. He begins to act wildly, because the vision penetrates and stirs his body in a way it should not do. There you have the crudest example. The vision should remain within the region to which it naturally belongs. It does not do so if today, as an atavistic vision, it is not tolerated by the physical body. If the physical body is too weak to prevail against the vision, a state of helplessness sets in. If the physical body is strong enough to prevail, it weakens the vision. Then it no longer has the character of pretending to be the same as a thing or process in the sense-world; that is the illusion imposed by a vision on someone made ill by it. If the physical organism is so strong that it can fight the tendency of an atavistic vision to lie about itself, then the person concerned will be strong enough to relate himself to the world in the same way as during the Old Moon period, and yet to adapt this behaviour to his present organism.

What does this mean? It means that the person will to some extent inwardly alter his Zodiac, with its twelve sense-regions. He will alter it in such a way that in his Zodiac, with its twelve sense-regions, more life-processes than sense-processes will occur. Or, to put it better, the effect is to transform the sense-process in the sense-region into a life-process and so to raise it out of its present lifeless condition into life. Thus a man sees, but at the same time something is living in his seeing; he hears and at the same time something is living inwardly in his hearing; instead of living only in the stomach or on the tongue, it lives now in the eye and in the ear. The sense-processes are brought into movement. Their life is stimulated. This is quite acceptable. Then something is incorporated in these sense-organs which today is possessed only to this degree by the life-organs. The life-organs are imbued with a strong activity of sympathy and antipathy. Think how much the whole of life depends upon sympathy and antipathy! One thing is taken, another rejected. These powers of sympathy and antipathy, normally developed by the life-organs, are now poured into the sense-organs. The eye not only sees the colour red; it feels sympathy or antipathy for the colour. Permeation by life streams hack into the sense organs, so we can say that the sense-organs become in a certain way life-regions once more.

The life-processes, too, then have to be altered. They acquire more activity of soul than they normally possess for life on earth. It happens in this way: three life-processes, breathing, warming and nutrition, are brought together and imbued with heightened activity of soul. In ordinary breathing we breathe crude material air; with the ordinary development of warmth it is just warmth, and so on. Now a kind of symbiosis occurs; when these life-processes form a unity, when they are imbued with activity of soul, they form a unity. They are not separate as in the present organism, but set up a kind of association. An inward community is formed by the processes of breathing, warming and nutrition; not coarse nutrition, but a process of nutrition which takes place without it being necessary to eat, and it does not occur alone, as eating does, but in conjunction with the other processes.

Similarly, the other four life-processes are united. Secretion, sustenance, growth and reproduction are united and also form a process embracing activity of soul. Then the two parties can themselves unite: not that all the life-processes then work together, but that, having entered into separate unities of three and four processes, they work together in that form.

This leads to the emergence of soul-powers which have the character of thinking, feeling and willing; again three. But they are different; not thinking, feeling and willing as they normally are on earth, but somewhat different. They are nearer to life-processes, but not as separate as life-processes are on earth. A very intimate and delicate process occurs in a man when he is able to endure something like a thinking back into the Old Moon, not to the extent of having visions, and yet a form of comprehension arises which has a certain similarity to them. The sense-regions become life-regions; the life-processes become soul-processes. A man cannot stay always in that condition, or he would be unfitted for the earth. He is fitted for the earth through his senses and his life-organs being normally such as we have described. But in some cases a man can shape himself in this other way, and then, if his development tends more towards the will, it leads to aesthetic creativity; or, if it tends more towards comprehension, towards perception, it leads to aesthetic experience. Real aesthetic life in human beings consists in this, that the sense-organs are brought to life, and the life-processes filled with soul.

This is a very important truth about human beings, for it enables us to understand many things. The stronger life of the sense-organs and the different life of the sense-realms must be sought in art and the experience of art. And it is the same with the processes of life; they are permeated with more activity of soul in the experience of art than in ordinary life. Because these things are not considered in their reality in our materialistic time, the significance of the alteration which goes on in a human being within the realm of art cannot be properly understood. Nowadays man is regarded more or less as a definite, finished being; but within certain limits he is variable. This is shown by a capacity for change such as the one we have now considered.

What we have gone into here embraces far-reaching truths. Take one example: it is those senses best fitted for the physical plane which have to be transformed most if they are to be led back halfway to the Old Moon condition. The Ego—sense, the Thought-sense, the immediate sense of Touch, because they are directly fitted for the earthly physical world, have to be completely transformed if they are to serve the human condition which results from this going back halfway to the Old Moon period.

For example, you cannot use in art the encounters we have in life with an Ego, or with the world of thought. At the most, in some arts which are not quite arts the same relationship to the Ego and to thought can be present as in ordinary earthly life. To paint the portrait of a man as an Ego, just as he stands there in immediate reality, is not a work of art. The artist has to do something with the Ego, go through a process with it, through which he raises this Ego out of the specialisation in which it lives today, at the present stage in the development of the earth; he has to give it a wide general significance, something typical. The artist does that as a matter of course.

In the same way the artist cannot express the world of thought, as it finds expression in the ordinary earthly world, in an artistic way immediately; for he would then produce not a poem or any work of art, but something of a didactic, instructive kind, which could never really be a work of art. The alterations made by the artist in what is actually present form a way back towards that reanimation of the senses I have described.

There is something else we must consider when we contemplate this transformation of the senses. The life-processes, I said, interpenetrate. Just as the planets cover one another, and have a significance in their mutual relationships, while the constellations remain stationary, so is it with the regions of the senses if they pass over into a planetary condition in human life, becoming mobile and living; then they achieve relationships to one another. Thus artistic perception is never so confined to the realm of a particular sense as ordinary earthly perception is. Particular senses enter into relationships with one another. Let us take the example of painting.

If we start from real Spiritual Science, the following result is reached. For ordinary observation through the senses, the senses of sight, warmth, taste and smell are separate senses. In painting, a remarkable symbiosis, a remarkable association of these senses comes about, not in the external sense-organs themselves, but in what lies behind them, as I have indicated.

A painter, or someone who appreciates a painting, does not merely look at its colours, the red or blue or violet; he really tastes the colours, not of course with the physical sense-organ—then he would have to lick it with his tongue. But in everything connected with the sphere of the tongue a process goes on which has a delicate similarity to the process of tasting. If you simply look at a green parrot in the way we grasp things through the senses, it is your eyes that see the green colour. But if you appreciate a painting, a delicate imaginative process comes about in the region behind your tongue which still belongs to the sense of taste, and this accompanies the process of seeing. Not what happens upon the tongue, but what follows, more delicate physiological processes—they accompany the process of seeing, so that the painter really tastes the colour in a deeper sense in his soul. And the shades of colour are smelt by him, not with the nose, but with all that goes on deeper in the organism, more in the soul, with every activity of smelling. These conjoined sense-activities occur when the realms of the senses pass over more into processes of life.

If we read a description which is intended to inform us about the appearance of something, or what is done with something, we let our speech-sense work, the word-sense through which we learn about this or that. If we listen to a poem, and listen in the same way as to something intended to convey information, we do not understand the poem. The poem is expressed in such a way that we perceive it through the speech-sense, but with the speech-sense alone we do not understand it. We have also to direct towards the poem the ensouled sense of balance and the ensouled sense of movement; but they must be truly ensouled. Here again united activities of the sense-organs arise, and the whole realm of the senses passes over into the realm of life. All this must be accompanied by life-processes which are ensouled, transformed in such a way that they participate in the life of the soul, and are not working only as ordinary life-processes belonging to the physical world.

If the listener to a piece of music develops the fourth life-process, secretion, so far that he begins to sweat, this goes too far; it does not belong to the aesthetic realm when secretion leads to physical excretion. It should be a process in the soul, not going as far as physical excretion; but it should be the same process that underlies physical excretion. Moreover, secretion should not appear alone. All four life-processes—secretion, sustenance, growth and reproduction—should work together, but all in the realm of soul. So do the life-processes become soul-processes.

On the one hand, Spiritual Science will have to lead earth-evolution towards the spiritual world; otherwise, as we have often seen, the downfall of mankind will come about in the future. On the other hand, Spiritual Science must renew the capacity to take hold of and comprehend the physical by means of the spirit. Materialism has brought not only an inability to find the spiritual, but also an inability to understand the physical. For the spirit lives in all physical things, and if one knows nothing of the spirit, one cannot understand the physical. Think of those who know nothing of the spirit; what do they know of this, that all the realms of the senses can be transformed in such a way that they become realms of life, and that the life-processes can be transformed in such a way that they appear as processes of the soul? What do present-day physiologists know about these delicate changes in the human being? Materialism has led gradually to the abandonment of everything concrete in favour of abstractions, and gradually these abstractions are abandoned, too. At the beginning of the nineteenth century people still spoke of vital forces. Naturally, nothing can be done with such an abstraction, for one understands something only by going into concrete detail. If one grasps the seven life-processes fully, one has the reality; and this is what matters—to get hold of the reality again. The only effect of renewing such abstractions as elan vital and other frightful abstractions, which have no meaning but are only admissions of ignorance, will be to lead mankind—although the opposite may be intended—into the crudest materialism, because it will be a mystical materialism. The need for the immediate future of mankind is for real knowledge, knowledge of the facts which can be drawn only from the spiritual world. We must make a real advance in the spiritual comprehension of the world.

Once more we have to think back to the good Aristotle, who was nearer to the old vision than modern man. I will remind you of only one thing about old Aristotle, a peculiar fact. A whole library has been written about catharsis, by which he wished to describe the underlying purpose of tragedy. Aristotle says: Tragedy is a connected account of occurrences in human life by which feelings of fear and compassion are aroused; but through the arousing of these feelings, and the course they take, the soul is led to purification, to catharsis. Much has been written about this in the age of materialism, because the organ for understanding Aristotle was lacking. The phrase has been understood only by those who saw that Aristotle in his own way (not, of course, the way of a modern materialist) means by catharsis a medical or half-medical term. Because the life-processes become soul-processes, the aesthetic experience of a tragedy carries right into the bodily organism those life-processes which normally accompany fear and compassion. Through tragedy these processes are purified and at the same time ensouled. In Aristotle's definition of catharsis the entire ensouling of the life-processes is embraced. If you read more of his Poetics you will feel in it something like a breath of this deeper understanding of the aesthetic activity of man, gained not through a modern way of knowledge, but from the old traditions of the Mysteries. In reading Aristotle's Poetics one is seized by immediate life much more than one can be in reading anything by present day writers on aesthetics, who only sniff round things and encompass them with dialectics, but never reach the things themselves.

Later on a significant high-point in comprehending aesthetic activity of man was reached in Schiller's Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man (1795). It was a time given more to abstractions. Today we have to add the spiritual to a thinking that remains in the realm of idealism. But if we look at this more abstract character of the time of Goethe and Schiller, we can see that the abstractions in Schiller's Aesthetic Letters embrace something of what has been said here. With Schiller it seems that the process has been carried down more into the material, but only because this material existence requires to be penetrated more deeply by the power of the spiritual, taken hold of intensively. What does Schiller say? He says: Man as he lives here on earth has two fundamental impulses, the impulse of reason and the impulse that comes from nature. Through a natural necessity the impulse of reason works logically. One is compelled to think in a particular way; there is no freedom in thinking. What is the use of speaking of freedom where this necessity of reason prevails? One is compelled to think that three times three is not ten, but nine. Logic signifies the absolute necessity of reason. So, says Schiller, when man accepts the pure necessity of reason, he submits to spiritual compulsion.

Schiller contrasts the necessity of reason with the needs of the senses, which live in everything present in instinct, in emotion. Here, too, man is not free, but follows natural necessity. Now Schiller looks for the condition midway between rational necessity and natural necessity. This middle condition, he finds, emerges when rational necessity bows before the feelings that lead us to love or not to love something; so that we no longer follow a rigid logical necessity when we think but allow our inner impulses to work in shaping our mental images, as in aesthetic creation. And then natural necessity, on its side, is transcended. Then it is no longer the needs of the senses which bring compulsion, for they are ensouled and spiritualised. A man no longer desires simply what his body desires, for sensuous enjoyment is spiritualised. Thus rational necessity and natural necessity come nearer to one another.

You should, of course, read this in Schiller's Aesthetic Letters themselves; they are among the most important philosophical works in the evolution of the world. In Schiller's exposition there lives what we have just heard here, though with him it takes the form of metaphysical abstraction. What Schiller calls the liberation of rational necessity from its rigidity, this is what happens when the senses are reanimated, when they are led back once more to the process of life. What Schiller calls the spiritualisation of natural need—he should really have called it “ensouling”—this happens where the life-processes work like soul-processes. Life-processes become more ensouled; sense-processes become more alive. That is the real procedure, though given a more abstract conceptual form, that can be traced in Schiller's Aesthetic Letters. Only thus could he express it at that time, when there was not yet enough spiritual strength in human thoughts to reach down into that realm where spirit lives in the way known to the seer. Here spirit and matter need not be contrasted, for it can be seen how spirit penetrates all matter everywhere, so that nowhere can one come upon matter without spirit. Thinking remains mere thinking because man is not able to make his thoughts strong enough, spiritual enough, to master matter, to penetrate into matter as it really is.

Schiller was not able to recognise that life-processes can work as soul-processes. He could not go so far as to see that the activity which finds material expression in nutrition, in the development of warmth and in breathing, can live enhanced in the soul, so that it ceases to be material. The material particles vanish away under the power of the concepts with which the material processes are comprehended. Nor was Schiller able to get beyond regarding logic as simply a dialectic of ideas; he could not reach the higher stage of development, attainable through initiation, where the spiritual is experienced as a process in its own right, so that it enters as a living force into what otherwise is merely cognition. Schiller in his Aesthetic Letters could not quite trust himself to reach the concrete facts. But through them pulses an adumbration of something that can be exactly grasped if one tries to lay hold of the living through the spiritual and the material through the living.

So we see in every field how evolution as a whole is pressing on towards knowledge of the spirit. When, at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, a philosophy was developed more or less out of concepts, longings were alive in it for a greater concreteness, though this could not yet be achieved. Because the power to achieve it was inadequate, the endeavour and the longing for greater concreteness fell into the crude materialism that has continued from the middle of the nineteenth century up to the present day. But it must be realised that spiritual understanding cannot reside only in a turning towards the spiritual, but must and can overcome the material and recognise the spirit in matter. As you will see, this has further consequences. You will see that man as an aesthetic being is raised above earthly evolution into another world. And this is important. Through his aesthetic attitude of mind or aesthetic creativity a man no longer acts in a way that is entirely appropriate for the earth, but raises the sphere of his being above the sphere of the earth. In this way through our study of aesthetics we approach some deep mysteries of existence.

In saying such things, one may touch the highest truths, and yet sound as if one were crazy. But life cannot be understood if one retreats faint heartedly before the real truths. Take a work of art, the Sistine Madonna, the Venus of Milo—if it is really a work of art, it does not entirely belong to the earth. It is raised above the events of earth; that is quite obvious. What sort of power, then, lives in it—in a Sistine Madonna, in a Venus of Milo? A power, which is also in man, but which is not entirely fitted for the earth. If everything in man were fitted only for the earth, he would be unable to live on any other level of existence as well. He would never go on to the Jupiter evolution. Not everything is fitted for the earth; and for occult vision not everything in man is in accord with his condition as a being of the earth. There are hidden forces which will one day give man the impetus to develop beyond earth-existence. But art itself can be understood only if we realise that its task is to point the way beyond the purely earthly, beyond adaptation to earthly conditions, to where the reality in the Venus of Milo can be found.

We can never acquire a true comprehension of the world unless we first recognise something which there will be increasing need to recognise as we go forward to meet the future and its demands.

It is often thought today that when anyone makes a logical statement that can be logically proved, the statement must be applicable to life. Logic alone, however, is not enough. People are always pleased when they can prove something logically; and we have seen arise in our midst, as you know, all kinds of world outlooks and philosophical systems, and no-one familiar with logic will doubt they can all be logically proved. But nothing is achieved for life by these logical proofs. The point is that our thinking must be brought into line with reality, not merely with logic. What is merely logical is not valid—only what is in keeping with reality.

Let me make this clear by an example. Imagine a tree-trunk lying there before you, and you set out to describe it. You can describe it quite correctly, and you can prove, beyond a doubt, that something real is lying there because you have described it in exact accordance with external reality. But in fact you have described an untruth; what you have described has no real existence. It is a tree-trunk from which the roots have been cut away, and the boughs and branches lopped off. But it could have come into existence only along with boughs and blossoms and roots, and it is nonsense to think of the mere trunk as a reality. By itself it is no reality; it must be taken together with its forces of growth, with all the inner forces which enabled it to come into being. We need to see with certainty that the tree-trunk as it rests there is a lie; we have a reality before us only when we look at a tree. Logically it is not necessary to regard a tree-trunk as a lie, but a sense for reality demands that only the whole tree be regarded as truth. A crystal is a truth, for it can exist independently—independently in a certain sense, for of course everything is relative. A rosebud is not a truth. A crystal is; but a rosebud is a lie if regarded only as a rosebud.

A lack of this sense for reality is responsible for many phenomena in the life of today. Crystallography and, at a stretch, mineralogy are still real sciences; not so geology. What geology describes is as much an abstraction as the tree-trunk. The so-called “earth's crust” includes everything that grows up out of it, and without that it is unthinkable. We must have philosophers who allow themselves to think abstractly only in so far as they know what they are doing. To think in accordance with reality, and not merely in accordance with logic—that is what we shall have to learn to do, more and more. It will change for us the whole aspect of evolution and history. Seen from the standpoint of reality, what is the Venus of Milo, for instance, or the Sistine Madonna? From the point of view of the earth such works of art are lies; they are no reality. Take them just as they are and you will never come to the truth of them. You have to be carried away from the earth if you are to see any fine work of art in its reality. You have to stand before it with a soul attuned quite differently from your state of mind when you are concerned with earthly things. The work of art that has here no reality will then transport you into the realm where it has reality—the elemental world. We can stand before the Venus of Milo in a way that accords with reality only if we have the power to wrest ourselves free from mere sense-perception.

I have no wish to pursue teleology in a futile sense. We will therefore not speak of the purpose of Art; that would be pedantic, philistine. But what comes out of Art, how it arises in life—these are questions that can be asked and answered. There is no time today for a complete answer, only for a brief indication. It will be helpful if we consider first the opposite question: What would happen if there were no Art in the world? All the forces which flow into Art, and the enjoyment of Art, would then be diverted into living out of harmony with reality. Eliminate Art from human evolution and you would have in its place as much untruth as previously there had been Art.

It is just here, in connection with Art, that we encounter a dangerous situation which is always present at the Threshold of the spiritual world. Listen to what comes from beyond the Threshold and you will hear that everything has two sides! If a man has a sense of reality, he will come through aesthetic comprehension to a higher truth; but if he lacks this sense of reality he can be led precisely by aesthetic comprehension of the world into untruth. There is always this forking of the road, and to grasp this is very important: it applies not only to occultism but to Art. To comprehend the world in accordance with reality will be an accompaniment of the spiritual life that Spiritual Science has to bring about. Materialism has brought about the exact opposite—a thinking that is not in accord with reality.

Contradictory as this may sound, it is so only for those who judge the world according to their own picture of it, and not in accordance with reality. We are living at a stage of evolution when the faculty for grasping even ordinary facts of the physical world is steadily diminishing, and this is a direct result of materialism. In this connection some interesting experiments have been made. They proceed from materialistic thinking; but, as in many other cases, the outcome of materialistic thinking can work to the benefit of the human faculties that are needed for developing a spiritual outlook. The following is one of the many experiments that have been made.

A complete scene was thought out in advance and agreed upon. Someone was to give a lecture, and during it he was to say something that would be felt as a direct insult by a certain man in the audience. This man was to spring from his seat, and a scuffle was to ensue. During the scuffle the insulted man was to thrust his hand into his pocket and draw out a revolver—and the scene was to go on developing from there.

Picture it for yourselves—a whole prearranged programme carried out in every detail! Thirty persons were invited to be the audience. They were no ordinary people: they were law students well advanced in their studies, or lawyers who had already graduated. These thirty witnessed the whole affair and were afterwards asked to describe what had occurred. Those who were in the secret had drawn up a protocol which showed that everything had taken place exactly as planned.

The thirty were no fools, but well-educated people whose task later on would be to go out into the world and investigate how scuffles and scrimmages and many other things come about. Of the thirty, twenty-six gave a completely false account of what they had seen, and only four were even approximately correct ... only four!

For years experiments like this have been made for the purpose of demonstrating how little weight can be attached to depositions given before a court of justice. The twenty-six were all present; they could all say: “I saw it with my own eyes.” People do not in the least realise how much is required in order to set forth correctly a series of events that has taken place before their very eyes.

The art of forming a true picture of something that takes place in our presence needs to be cultivated. If there is no feeling of responsibility towards a sense-perceptible fact, the moral responsibility which is necessary for grasping spiritual facts can never be attained. In our present world, with its stamp of materialism, what feeling is there for the seriousness of the fact that among thirty descriptions by eyewitnesses of an event, twenty-six were completely false, and four only could be rated as barely correct? If you pause to consider such a thing, you will see how tremendously important for ordinary life the fruits of a spiritual outlook can become.

Perhaps you will ask: Were things different in earlier times? Yes, in those times men had not developed the kind of thinking we have today. The Greeks were not possessed of the purely abstract thinking we have, and need to have, in order that we may find our place in the world in the right way for our time. But here were are concerned not with ways of thinking, but with truth.

Aristotle tried, in his own way, to express an aesthetic understanding of life in much more concrete concepts. And in the earliest Greek times it was expressed, still more concretely, in Imaginations that came from the Mysteries. Instead of concepts, the men of those ancient times had pictures. They would say: Once upon a time lived Uranus. And in Uranus they saw all that man takes in through his head, through the forces which now work out through the senses into the external world. Uranus—all twelve senses—was wounded; drops of blood fell into Maya, into the ocean, and foam spurted up. Here we must think of the senses, when they were more living, sending down into the ocean of life something which rises up like foam from the pulsing of the blood through life-processes which have now become processes in the soul.

All this may be compared with the Greek Imagination of Aphrodite, Aphrogenea, the goddess of beauty rising from the foam that sprang from the blood-drops of the wounded Uranus. In the older form of the myth, where Aphrodite is a daughter of Uranus and the ocean, born from the foam that rises from the blood-drops of Uranus, we have an imaginative rendering of the aesthetic situation of mankind, and indeed a thought of great significance for human evolution at large.

We need to connect a further idea with this older form of the myth, where Aphrodite is the child not of Zeus and Dione, but of Uranus and the ocean. We need to add to it another Imagination which enters still more deeply into reality, reaching not merely into the elemental world but right down into physical reality. Beside the myth of Aphrodite, the myth of the origin of beauty among mankind, we must set the great truth of the entry into humanity of primal goodness, the Spirit showering down into Maya-Maria, even as the blood-drops of Uranus ran down into the ocean, which also is Maya. Then will appear in its beauty the dawn of the unending reign of the good and of knowledge of the good; the truly good, the spiritual. This is what Schiller had in mind when he wrote, referring especially to moral knowledge:

Nur durch das Morgentor des Schoenen
Dringst du in der Erkenntnis Land.*

* Only through the dawn of beauty canst thou penetrate into the land of knowledge.

You see how many tasks for Spiritual Science are mounting up. And they are not merely theoretical tasks; they are tasks of life.

Yesterday, we tried to characterize the forces that permeated Greece and Rome in order to obtain an idea of the influences that have been carried over from the fourth into the fifth post-Atlantean age, and we gave some indication of where we have to look today for signs of continued activity of the forces of the fourth post-Atlantean age. I want to ask you now to turn your attention once again to our description of the civilizations of Greece and Rome.

In the way it developed, the civilization of Greece was a source of great disappointment to the luciferic powers. One can, of course, only say these things out of imaginative cognition, and this will also be true of what is to be presented to you today. The development of Greek civilization was a great disappointment to the luciferic powers because they expected something quite different from it. Think what this means. They had expected the civilization of Greece, the fourth epoch of post-Atlantean times, to bring into being for them all they had striven for during Atlantean times. On Atlantis they had developed certain activities, certain influences and forces and they had expected to see the fruits of their labors appear in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. What was it they were really looking for?

To speak of such a matter lets us look right into the luciferic soul. We come to know this luciferic life that continually strives, hoping that certain results may ensue, but that continually meets with fresh disappointment. A logician would naturally ask, “Why do not these luciferic powers stop trying? Why do they not see that they must be forever and repeatedly disappointed?” Such a conclusion would be human, not luciferic, wisdom. At any rate, the luciferic powers have yet to come to this conclusion. On the contrary, it is their practice to redouble their efforts whenever they experience disappointment.

What was it, then, that the luciferic powers expected from this fourth post-Atlantean age? They wanted to obtain mastery of all the soul forces of the Greek people, those soul forces that were, as we have seen, directed to carrying over the ancient imaginations of the Chaldean-Egyptian period, and to incorporate them into the creations of their own fantasy. The luciferic powers made it their endeavor to work so strongly on the human beings of the Greek civilization that their imaginations, refined and distilled to fantasy, should fill their whole being. The Greeks would then have lost themselves in a soul world, in an everyday thinking, feeling and willing that would have consisted entirely of those subtle imaginations that had become complete fantasy.

If the Greeks had developed nothing in their souls but these imaginations refined to fantasy, if these enticing imaginations had come to fill their souls completely, the luciferic powers would have been able to lift the Greeks and a great part of humanity out of human evolution to place them in their own luciferic world. This was the intention of the luciferic powers. From the Atlantean epoch on, it had been their hope to achieve in the fourth post-Atlantean age what they had failed to do in Atlantis. Humanity, at the stage it had then reached, would have been incorporated into the cosmos. They wanted nothing less than to create for themselves a separate world where earthly gravity did not exist, but where human beings would dwell with absolute super-sensible lightness, entirely given up to a life of fantasy. It was the hope of the luciferic beings to create a planetary body, which would contain those members of humanity who had reached this highest development of the fantasy life. They made every endeavor to lead the souls of the Greeks away from the earth. Had they succeeded, these souls would gradually have forsaken the earth. The bodies that still came to birth would have been degenerate. Egoless beings would have been born, the earth would have fallen into decadence and a special luciferic kingdom would have begun. This did not come to pass. Why?

This condition did not come about because, mingled with the “self-deifying madness” of Greek poetry, to quote Plato, was the genius and greatness of Greek philosophy and wisdom. The Greek philosophers—Heraclitus, Thales, Anaximenes, Anaximander, Parmenides, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle—saved Greek civilization from being completely spiritualized in a life of fantasy. They kept the Greeks on earth, providing the strongest forces that kept Greece within earthly evolution. In considering the course of history, we must always take into account the forces that lie behind physical reality and are the true causes of all that happens. It was, then, in this way that Greece was preserved for earthly evolution.

Now, the luciferic beings would have been unable to achieve anything at all without the help of the ahrimanic beings. In all their intentions and hope they reckoned on their support. Indeed, it must always be that two forces strive together in this kind of working. Just as the luciferic beings were disappointed in Greece, so were the ahrimanic beings disappointed in Rome and the way it developed. The luciferic beings wanted to lead Grecian souls away from the earth-planet and the ahrimanic beings wanted to contribute their efforts to the end that the Roman civilization would assume a particular form. The ahrimanic beings exerted their strongest efforts in Rome, just as the luciferic beings did in Greece. They calculated that a certain hardening would arise on earth brought about by an entirely blind obedience and subjection to Rome. What did the ahrimanic powers want to accomplish in Rome? They wanted to establish a Roman Empire that would extend over the whole of the then known world, embracing within it every human activity. It would be directed entirely from Rome with the strictest centralization and the utmost development of the rule of might. They sought to establish a widely flung state machinery that would include and make subject to it all religious and artistic life. Its goal would be to stamp out all individuality. Every people and human being would comprise merely some small part of this mighty state machine.

Thanks to the clarity of its philosophers, however, Greece was not lulled into the luciferic dream, nor could Rome be hardened as these ahrimanic powers desired, because in Rome, too, something was working against them. This was described in the last lecture as Roman ideals, but the legal, political and military ideals that were then developing could not have withstood Ahriman alone. Within the Roman civilization the ahrimanic powers gathered for a stupendous onslaught. That attempt was like a repetition of their attempt made in Atlantean times, and it developed infinitely strong powers and forces. It was only from another side that Ahriman's intention was hindered. It was, at first, prevented by something that, at first sight, might be regarded as a lower trait in the Roman character, but that was not the case. As a matter of fact, the Romans had need of what I may have seemed to describe in the last lecture with some antipathy. They needed their ruthlessness, stubborn egoism, that continuous stirring up of emotions, to be able to march against the ahrimanic powers. Roman history—I beg you expressly to note this—is not a revelation of the ahrimanic powers. Although they stand in the background, it is a fight against them. If it is all confused and self-seeking, seeming to tend more and more toward a politicalization of the whole world, it is because only in this way could Ahriman's mechanizing be resisted.

All this alone, however, would not have been of much avail. Rome had also received Christianity, which in Rome would have assumed a form that would have given Ahriman a splendid opportunity to achieve his aim since, through the spiritual decline of a Roman rule that had been transformed into a papacy, the mechanizing of culture could have been accomplished. So another external power had to be brought against Ahriman, who works with much more external means than Lucifer. Ahriman, as we have seen, diverted the forces of Christianity to his own service. Another power had to be brought against him. This was the onslaught of the Germanic tribes caused by the migration of peoples in Europe. Through this onslaught on Rome, the mechanizing of the world under a single, all-embracing Roman Empire was hindered. If you will study all that took place in the migration of these peoples, you will find that you can get a true insight into it when you see it from this point of view. Whenever the migration of peoples occurs in the Roman world, Roman history is not thereby brought to an end, but the ahrimanic powers, combated throughout their history by the Romans, are repelled.

Thus did Ahriman meet with his disappointment, as Lucifer had met with his. But they will take up their tasks again in the fifth post-Atlantean age with all the more determination. Here is the point at which we must gain an understanding of the forces that are operative in our age, insofar as such an understanding is possible today.

The fourth post-Atlantean age extends both backwards and forwards from its central point in 333 A.D. It ended about 1413 A.D. and it began about 747 B.C. These are of course, approximate dates. I have just told you that the disappointment of Lucifer and Ahriman in the forms the Greek and Roman civilizations had assumed, has led them to make still stronger efforts in our fifth post-Atlantean age. Their efforts are already at work in the human forces that have been active from the fifteenth century. It does not matter whether something occurs a few decades earlier or later. In outer physical reality, which takes on the form of the “great illusion,” things are sometimes misplaced.

The fact that the Roman civilization could be retained in the evolution of humanity as it was due to the events brought about by the migrations of the peoples. If Rome had developed in such a way that a great all-embracing mechanized empire had arisen, it would only have been habitable for egoless human beings who would have remained on earth after Lucifer had drawn out their souls on the path of Greek culture and art. You see how Ahriman and Lucifer work together. Lucifer wants to take men's souls away and found a planet with them of his own. Ahriman has to help him. While Lucifer sucks the juice out of the lemon, as it were, Ahriman presses it out, thereby hardening what remains. This is what he tried to do to the civilization of Rome. Here we have an important cosmic process going on—all due to the intention and resolve of luciferic and ahrimanic powers. As I have said, they were disappointed. They have continued their efforts, however, and our fifth post-Atlantean age has yet to learn how strong these attacks are. They are now only beginning but they will become stronger and stronger. This age must learn, too, that the necessity to understand these attacks will become ever greater. At the beginning of an age the backward beings cannot work strongly. As yet, we are only in the beginning, and even though it became manifest only later, the luciferic and ahrimanic powers began to exert their forces before the expiration of the fourth post-Atlantean age.

To understand how these powers work in the fifth post-Atlantean age, we must turn our attention for a moment to what is intended for man in the right and normal course of his evolution. It is rightfully intended that he shall take a further step forward. The step taken by humanity in the fourth post-Atlantean age is revealed in the culture of the Greeks and in the political development of the Romans, and it was through the battle with Lucifer and Ahriman that what was intended actually came about. These opposing forces are always such that they fit into the progressive plan of the world. They belong to it and are needed there as opposing forces. But what special qualities are the men of the fifth post-Atlantean age, our own, to develop?

We know that this is the age of the development of the consciousness soul and that, to accomplish this, a number of forces—soul and bodily forces—must be active. First, a clear perception of the sense world is necessary. This did not exist in earlier times because, as you know, a visionary, imaginative element continuously played into the human soul. The Greeks still possessed fantasy but, as we have seen, after fantasy and imagination had taken possession of humanity, as it did of the Greeks, it then became necessary for men to develop the faculty to see the world of external nature without the illumination of a vision standing behind it. We need not imagine that such a vision has to be a materialistic one. That point of view is itself an ahrimanically perverted perception of sense reality. As indicated before, observation of sense reality is one task incumbent upon the human soul in our fifth post-Atlantean age.

The other task is to unfold free imaginations side by side with the clear view of reality—in a way, a kind of repetition of the Egypto-Chaldean age. To date, humanity has not progressed too far in this task. Free imaginations as sought through spiritual science means imaginations not as they were in the third post-Atlantean age, but unfettered and undistilled into fantasy. It means imaginations in which man moves as freely as he does only in his intellect. That, then, is the other task of the fifth post-Atlantean age. The unfoldment of these two faculties will lead to a right development of the consciousness soul in our present epoch.

Goethe had a beautiful understanding of this clear perception, which, contrary to the materialistic point of view, he described as his “primal phenomenon” (Urphänomen). You will find that this has been dealt with at length in Goethe's writings, and I have spoken of it in my explanation of the primal phenomenon. His is a clear, pure perception of reality and of his primal phenomenon. Goethe not only gave the first impulse for perceptions free of any visions but also for free imaginations.¹ What he has given us in his Faust, even though it has not yet gone far in the direction of spiritual science, and in comparison with spiritual science is still more or less instinctive, is nevertheless the first impulse to a free imaginative life. It is no mere world of fantasy, yet we have seen how deep this world of fantasy really is that develops in free imaginations in the wonderful drama, Faust.

So, over against this primal phenomenon, we have what Goethe calls typical intellectual perception. You will find it described in detail in my book, The Riddle of Man. This mode of thought must continue to develop. The men of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, however, must not merely behold reality. They must be able to live with reality. They must get busy, like Goethe, and, working in quite a different way from that of the materialistic physicists, really make such use of their laboratory apparatus that it produces the primal phenomenon for them. They will then have to devise some way of getting the primal phenomenon into practical life. As you know, it is at home in, and holds sway throughout, nature. The intentions of humanity that come from free imaginations will have to be included in this primal phenomenon of nature. On the one hand, men will have to direct their gaze quite selflessly to the outer world to work in it and to gain knowledge of it. On the other, by powerful application of their personalities, they will have to bring it all into inner movement in order to find the imaginations for outer activity and outer knowledge. Gradually, the consciousness soul and its culture will achieve this transformation.

There will certainly be one-sidedness in this cultural epoch. That goes without saying. Our cognition will direct its efforts only outwards, as in Bacon, or only inwards, as in Berkeley. We have already spoken of this. The imaginative life welling up from within will not unfold without all manner of disturbing influences. But even now we can point to moments in this development when someone feels this free imaginative life springing up in his soul. In these beginnings it is still in great measure unfree, but we may see how so significant a man as Jacob Boehme, quite soon after the fifth post-Atlantean age began, felt how it was trying to develop in his soul. He brought this to expression in his Aurora, and we can feel as we read it how imaginative life was working within him. It must become free; Boehme still feels it to be a little unfree. Nevertheless, he knew it was a divine creative thing that was working in him. So Boehme was, in a sense, at the opposite pole to Bacon, whose endeavor always directed his attention to the external world. Jacob Boehme, however, was entirely engrossed in the world within, and described this world beautifully in the Aurora:

“I declare before God,” he says because he is speaking of his inner soul, “that I do not know how it comes to pass in me.” He means by this how the imaginations arise in him. “Without feeling the impulse of the will, I also don't know what I have to write.”

This is how Boehme speaks of the uprising of imaginations in himself. He detects the beginning of forces that must grow continually stronger in the men of the fifth post-Atlantean age.

“I declare before God that I do not know how it comes to pass in me. Without feeling the impulse of the will, I also don't know what I have to write. The spirit dictates to me in a great and marvelous knowledge what I write, so that often I do not know whether I am in this world with my spirit, and I rejoice exceedingly that sure and continuous knowledge is thus vouchsafed to me.”

Boehme describes the instreaming of the imaginative world. We can see that he feels harmony and rest in his soul, and he describes how men's souls shall, in the normal and right progress of their evolution, let themselves be taken hold of by these inner forces, which are to grow stronger in them in the fifth post-Atlantean age. But one must take possession of them in the pure inner being of the spirit and thereby avoid devious paths. In the seventeenth century one had to speak of these forces much in the way that Boehme, who spoke as a man completely and utterly devoted to divine righteousness, did.

The entire aim in the work of the luciferic and ahrimanic powers in the fifth post-Atlantean age, concerning both the perception of the primal phenomenon and the development of free imaginations, is to hinder these forces from arising in man. The luciferic and ahrimanic powers are working in this fifth post-Atlantean age to disturb these forces in the human soul, to employ them to a wrong end, thus bringing men's souls out of the earth sphere to establish a new sphere of their own. Many things must work together to disturb the right, quiet and slow unfolding of these forces. Note well that I say the quiet and slow unfolding because the entire period of 2,160 years, starting in 1413 A.D., should be used for the gradual unfoldment of the forces I have named, that is, free imaginations and the gradual development of working with primal phenomena. At intervals—by fits and starts, as it were—the luciferic and ahrimanic powers throw the whole weight of their opposition against this right evolution. When we bear in mind that everything is prepared for by the world beyond the earth long before it happens, we shall then not be surprised to find preparations being made to bring the strongest possible forces of opposition against the normal evolution of humanity.

We have already seen how the luciferic and ahrimanic powers poured what they had developed in Atlantean times into Greece and Rome. Now, in an altered form, they have tried to repeat these efforts before the arrival of the fifth post-Atlantean age. You will not be surprised when I say that for this fifth post-Atlantean age, too, a powerful impetus had to be present bearing along with it the after workings, in a luciferic and ahrimanic sense, from Atlantis. We know that the Atlantean influences spread out from a region that was called Atlantis even by Plato. Let us make a diagram and imagine Atlantis here, then over here on the right would be Europe and Asia, and here on the left would be America. The old Atlantean forces, including the old luciferic and ahrimanic forces, spread out from Atlantis. Some part of these Atlantean forces, however, was held

back, and it came to work in our fifth post-Atlantean age as luciferic and ahrimanic forces. That is, some part of the good forces, which were good and right in Atlantean times, have been carried over to our time to become luciferic and ahrimanic forces. Only the center was transferred to another region.

Atlantis, as we know, is gone and the center transposed to Asia. You must imagine it on the reverse side of my drawing and the effects of the old Atlantean culture spreading out from it as a preparation for the fifth post-Atlantean age.

Its intent was to lucifericize and ahrimanicize it. It was actually the descendants of the old Atlantean teachers who were now working from a place in Asia. A priest there had been educated to behold—to have a belated vision, as it were, of what the Atlanteans called the “Great Spirit,” and to receive his commands. These the priest communicated to a young man of remarkable energy and strength who, by virtue of this authority, received the name “The Great Ruler of the Earth” from his community. This was Genghis Khan. The Great Spirit, through his follower and through that priest, gave to Genghis Khan the command to summon all the powers of Asia to spread the influence that would lead the fifth post-Atlantean age back into a luciferic form. These forces—and they were far more powerful than the forces established in Greek culture—were all employed to this end. Free imaginations were to be changed into old, visionary imaginations. Every effort was to be made to lull the soul of man to sleep in a dim and dreamy experience of imaginations instead of a free experience filled through and through with clear understanding.

With the help of the special forces that had been preserved from Atlantis, it was the intended purpose to carry an influence into the West that would make its culture visionary. Then it would have become possible to separate the souls of men from the earth and to form a new continent, a new planetary body with them. All the unrest and disturbance that came into the evolution of modern man through the Mongolian invasions, everything connected with them that has gone on working into the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—all this unrest, which was prepared long ago, is nothing more than the great attempt that is being made from Asia to bring about a visionary European culture. It would cut it off from the conditions of its further evolution and lead it altogether away from the earth, just as the East has experienced again and again this feeling of being filled with vision and of wanting to be estranged from the earth.

Something was needed to counterbalance this tendency. An opposite trend had to be created as a counterforce that moves in the direction of the normal evolution of mankind. The influence of Genghis Khan's priest was intended to bring about a kind of buoyancy and lightness in the human race that would draw man away from the earth. Over against this, a corresponding heaviness had to come to man from the weight of the earth; this was provided through the discovery of the western world. America, with all that it holds, was discovered and thereby earth heaviness, the desire to remain on earth, was given to man. The discovery of America and everything connected with it, and the way man carried his life into the many new places of the earth, all this, when seen in wider connections, shows itself as a counterbalancing force to the activity of Genghis Khan. America had to be discovered so that man might be brought to grow closer to the earth, to grow more and more materialistic. Man needed weight and heaviness to counterbalance the spiritualization that was the aim of the descendants of the “Great Spirit.”

Along with this normal process whereby the scene of action of man's life was extended to America, we find the other forces, the ahrimanic powers of the “Great Spirit,” intervening again. An influence came from America to Europe, and another came to permeate America from Asia. Thus, normal forces developed through the discovery of America and also powerful ahrimanic onslaughts. They worked less strongly at first, but will continue to work in our time and on into the future. We must learn to recognize these ahrimanic forces.

What Rome had achieved in the Church and in the ecclesiastical state was grasped by the ahrimanic influence. While it is comparatively easy to see how the luciferic influence worked on Genghis Khan—we have exact knowledge of the fact that a priest was initiated by the follower of the “Great Spirit”—it is much more difficult to say how the ahrimanic spirit worked. This is because the ahrimanic influence is dispersed and scattered. But you need only study how Spain, strictly Roman Catholic as it was, was fascinated by all the treasures of gold that were discovered in America. What a hold it had upon her! You can observe how strong the specter-like working of the old Romanism still was in such a ruler as Ferdinand of Castile or Charles V, the ruler of the kingdom over which the “sun never set.” Study the reaction of Europe to the gradual discovery and opening up of America and you will see what temptations came from that direction. Taken all in all, it is a history of temptation woven in with a history that runs a normal course.

Please do not go about saying that I have presented the discovery of America as an ahrimanic deed. In reality, I have said the very opposite. I have said that America had to be discovered and that the entire event was necessary to the progress of the world. Ahrimanic forces entered, however, and set themselves in violent opposition to what was happening quite rightly in the normal course of progress. Things are not so simple that we can say, “There is Lucifer, and there is Ahriman; they act and behave in such and such a way, and divide the world between them.” Things are by no means so simple as that.

We find, therefore, many forces working together when we set out to listen to them in their field of action behind the physical plane. These forces take possession of other forces. They try to seize the forces in man that have continued on from the fourth post-Atlantean epoch in order to distort them and make them serve their ends. Look at a man like Machiavelli. You will find in him the symbol for the politicizing of thought that begins in the Renaissance. He is a veritable revelation of the whole process. He was a great and powerful spirit but one who, under the onslaught of the forces of which I have told you, brings to a new life again the complete attitude of thought and mind that has its source in the heathen Rome of ancient times. You have a true picture of Machiavelli when you study the history of his time and see him, not as a single personality, but as the outstanding expression of many who think in the same way. In him you can observe these forces trying to charge forward with all speed, bringing to their assistance the atavistic—and thus luciferic—forces that have been left behind. Had things gone as Machiavelli intended, all of Europe would have become nothing but a political machine. Opposing the violent onslaught of such forces are the forces that work in the normal direction. Over against a figure like Machiavelli, who was purely political and turned all man's thought into political thinking, we can place another great figure, Thomas à Kempis, who was also Machiavelli's contemporary. He stands entirely within the slow and gradual evolution, working slowly and gradually. He was anything but a man of politics.

So we can follow the several streams in history. We shall find normal streams, and we shall also find currents that flow from earlier times and are made use of by the forces of which I have told you. Many forces work together in history and it is important to observe and study their connections. A man like Jacob Boehme felt free imaginations rising within him. We can say of such a man that he fortified himself against the attacks of Lucifer and Ahriman through the whole character of his life of soul and succeeded in going undisturbed along the straight path of evolution.

East of Europe, however, in all the culture of the East, we find an untold number of people who suffer greatly under the disturbing influence of Lucifer. His influence is, as we know, to draw man again and again away from the earth, to draw him right out of his physical body so that he shall perpetually fall into a state where he becomes no more than a vision of himself and is completely soul. That is the tendency that has been grafted onto Eastern Europe.

The feeling of being drawn in the other direction was given to the West. The world of imagination was pulled down into the heavy physical body so that what should rightly be free imagination working merely in the soul becomes instead something that rams the soul down into the organism, thereby causing the organism also to live on imaginations. You can hardly find a more telling description of what I mean than in the words of Alfred de Musset in which he attempts to give us a picture of the condition of his soul. De Musset is one who feels the presence of the imaginative life in himself, but he also feels the onslaught upon this life of imagination that seeks to thrust it right down into the bodily nature. This life of imagination, which does not belong in the bodily nature but should develop freely, hovering in and existing purely as a thing of the soul, is there taken hold of by earthly gravity and by what belongs to the body. In his book, Elle et Lui, which he was led to write from his relation with Georges Sand, you will find a fine description of his soul life. I would like to quote here a passage that will serve to show how he feels himself to be placed within an imaginative life that is the scene of conflict and dispute. He says:

Creation disturbs and bewilders me; it sets me trembling. Execution, always too slow for my desire, starts my heart beating wildly. Weeping, and restraining myself with difficulty from crying out, I give birth to an idea. In the moment of its birth it intoxicates me, but next morning it fills me with loathing. If I try to modify and change it, it only gets worse and escapes me altogether. It would be better for me to forget it and wait for another. But now this other comes upon me in such bewilderment and in such boundless dimensions that my poor being cannot grasp it. It oppress me, tortures me, until it can be realized. Then come the other sufferings, the birth throes, really physical pains that I am quite unable to define. Such is my life when I let myself be ruled by this giant artist who is in me.

Note the contrast with Boehme, who feels the God in him. With de Musset it is a giant artist.

It were better that I live as I have resolved, committing excesses of every kind in order to kill this gnawing worm, which others modestly call inspiration and I quite often openly call illness.

Almost every single sentence of this quote can be matched with a sentence in our quotation from Boehme. How singularly typical! Remember what I said just now, that normal evolution seeks to progress slowly. We shall have more to say about this tomorrow. Here, as described by de Musset, it is a Wild charge; it cannot be fast enough. The picture he gives us as he surveys himself is marvelous. “Creation disturbs and bewilders me; it sets me atremble,” he says, because this to will go faster and faster and comes storming in upon him from the ahrimanic side, disturbing what is still trying to progress slowly.

“Execution, always too slow for my desire, starts my heart beating wildly.” Here you have the whole psychology of the man who wants to live in free imaginations and is distressed and vexed by the onslaught of ahrimanic forces.

“Weeping and restraining myself with difficult from crying out...” Think of it! The imaginations work so physically in him that he feels like crying out when they find expression in him.

“I give birth to an idea. In the moment of its birth it intoxicates me, but next morning it fills me with loathing.” This because it comes from his organism and not from his soul!

“If I try to modify and change it, it only gets worse and escapes me altogether. Better I forget it and wait for another.” Here he wants perpetually to go faster, faster than normal evolution can go.

“But now this other comes upon me in such bewilderment and in such boundless dimensions that my poor being cannot grasp it. It oppresses me, tortures me, until it can be realized. Then come the other sufferings, the birth throes, actual physical pains that I am quite unable to define.” Then, when he beholds this giant artist that works within him, he says he would rather follow the life he has marked out for himself; that is, have nothing to do with this whole imaginative world, because he calls it an illness.

Now take by way of contrast, the saying of Jacob Boehme, “I declare before God, I myself do not know how it comes to pass in me.” Here you have an expression of joy and bliss. Confusion and bewilderment, on the other hand, can be heard in the words of de Musset, “Creation disturbs and bewilders me; it sets me trembling. Execution, always too slow for my desire, starts my heart beating wildly.”

With Boehme all is of the soul and, when he wants to write, he does not feel as though a giant artist, who makes him unhappy, were dictating to him, but a spirit. He feels that he is transported into the world where the spirit dictates to him. He is in this world and he is supremely happy to be there because a continuous stream of knowledge is given him that flows slowly and steadily on. Boehme is inclined to receive this slow stream of knowledge. He does not find it too slow because he is not overwhelmed by the swift attacking force I have described to you. On the contrary, he is protected from it.

If time permitted, we could present many more instances of ways in which individual human beings are situated in the world process. The examples I have selected are from those whose names have been preserved in history but, in a sense, all of mankind is subject to these same conditions in one way or another. I have only chosen these particular examples in order to express what is really widespread, and by taking special cases I have been able to give you a description of it in words. If you will try to make a survey of what we have been saying, you will then be able to understand much of what has come about in the course of evolution.

It would be quite possible in this connection to study many other phenomena of life. If, however, we confine ourselves today to the spiritual life, and moreover to that special region of the spiritual life comprising knowledge and cognition, we shall be able to find in it qualities that are characteristic of modern man, the recognition of which will make many things in life comprehensible. Since it is not possible to say much about the external life of today, owing to the existing prejudices and because men's souls are so deeply bound up with the conditions of the times in which they live, you will readily understand that it is only in a limited way that I can speak of the things that are carrying their influence right into the immediate present. It cannot be otherwise, as I have frequently made clear to you. I would like, however, to indicate certain phenomena of our time that are less calculated to arouse passions and emotions. Let me describe some phenomena that I will select from the life of cognition and feeling. I think you will find them underlying all I have been saying about the forces at work in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. We will first consider these phenomena in a purely historical way in order afterward to see their relation to these forces.

Let us take first a phenomenon in which we all necessarily feel the deepest interest. The kind of understanding men have of the nature and being of Christ is of great significance, and so we will select examples of various kinds of understanding of His nature and being that lie near at hand. We have first of all a modern instance in Ernest Renan's The Life of Jesus, which appeared in the 19th century and went rapidly through many editions. I believe the twentieth appeared in 1900 after his death. Then we have The Life of Jesus, which is really no life of Jesus at all, by David Friedrich Strauss. Then we have—we cannot say, a life of Jesus, but coming from the east of Europe it is a view and conception of Christ that is of deep significance. It is not a life of Jesus but an understanding of Christ that culminates in what Soloviev wrote about Him and His part in the evolution of the earth. How significant are these three expressions of the spiritual life of the nineteenth century: The Life of Jesus by Renan, The Life of Jesus by Strauss, which is no life of Jesus at all and we shall presently hear why, and Soloviev's conception of the meaning of the Christ event in the evolution of the earth, for it is true, at any rate, to say that all of his work culminates in the Christ idea.

What is the fundamental premise of Renan's description of Jesus' life? If you want to appreciate rightly Renan's book, to understand it as a document of the times, then you must compare it with the earlier presentations of Jesus' life. Nor do you need to read only the literary accounts of His life; you can also look at the paintings of artists. You will find that the representation of the life of Jesus always takes the same path. In the early centuries of Roman Christianity, it was not only Christianity that was taken over from the East but also the manner in which Jesus was presented. The Greek art of pictorial representation was there in the West, as we know, but the ability to portray the Christ remained with the East. The Jesus countenance that is characteristic of Byzantine art was found repeatedly in the West until, in the thirteenth century, national impulses and ideas began to arise—those national ideas and impulses that later work themselves out in the way I have indicated in these last lectures.

Owing to the national impulse, a gradual change came about in the traditional stereotyped Jesus countenance that had been portrayed so long. Each of several nations appropriated the Jesus type and represented Him in its own way, and so we must recognize many different impulses at work in the different representations. Study, for example, the head of Jesus as painted by Guido Reni, Murillo, and LeBrun, and you will see how strikingly the national point of view steals in. These are only three instances that one could select. In each case there is a strong desire to represent Jesus in a national way. One has the impression that in Guido Reni's, paintings, to a far greater degree than was the case with his predecessors, we can detect the Italian type in the countenance of Jesus; similarly, in Murillo's representations, the Spanish; in LeBrun's, the French. All three painters show evidence as well of the working of church tradition; behind every one of their paintings stands the power of the Church.

Contrarily, you will find a resistance to this far reaching power of the Church, which we recognize in the art of Murillo, Lebrun, and Reni, in the works of Rubens, van Dyck, and Rembrandt—a resistance to it and a working in freedom out of their own pure humanity. Considering art in respect of its representations of the Jesus countenance, you have here direct artistic rebellion. You will now see that there is no standing still in this progression in the representation of Jesus because the forces that are at work in the world work also right into this domain. We can see how the breath of Romanism hovers over the paintings of the nationally minded LeBrun, Murillo, and Reni, and how in Rubens, van Dyck, and especially Rembrandt, the opposition to Romanism comes to such clear expression in their paintings of faces, not of Jesus alone but also of other Biblical characters. So we see how all the spiritual activities of man gradually take form among the various impulses that make themselves felt in human evolution.

Similarly, you would find that in the times when painting and representative art have given place to the word, for since the sixteenth century the word has had the same significance in such matters as pictorial representation had in earlier times, you will find that the figure of Jesus, of the Christ, is again continually changing. It is never fixed and constant but is always conceived according to how the various forces flow together in writers. Standing there before us as the latest products, let us say, we have the Jesus of Renan, the Jesus of Strauss, who is no Jesus, and the Christ of Soloviev. These are the latest products and how vastly different they are!

The Jesus of Renan is entirely a Jesus who, as a man, lives in the land of Palestine as a human historical figure. Palestine itself is marvelously depicted. With the aid of the best of modern scholarship it is described in such a way that one has before one the complete Palestinian landscape with its people. Wandering about this realistically rendered landscape and among its people is the figure of Jesus. The attempt is made to explain this Jesus figure on the basis of this landscape and its inhabitants; to explain how he grows up and becomes a man, and to explain how it was possible for such a man to arise in this land. The outstanding character of Renan's description will only be revealed when we compare it with earlier accounts and representations. These take the inner course of the events described in the Gospels and place them in a landscape that is really nowhere in particular. The facts as they are described in the Gospels are simply related over and over again and the landscape in which they occurred is totally disregarded. It is depicted in such a way that it might be anywhere.

Renan, however, goes to work to portray the Holy Land in a realistic, detailed way so that Jesus becomes a true Palestinian in this Holy Land. Christ Jesus, who should belong to all of mankind, becomes a Jesus who lives and walks in Palestine as an historical figure who is to be understood in relation to the Palestine of the years 1 to 33 A.D., that is, understood from the customs, views, opinions and landscape of the country—a right proper, realistic description. For once, Jesus was to be shown as an historical person and was to be described as any other in history. For Renan, it would have been meaningless to portray an abstract Socrates who might have lived anywhere, anytime, and it would have been equally meaningless for him to portray an abstract Jesus who might have lived anywhere on earth. In complete accord with the science of the nineteenth century, he sets out to depict Jesus as an historical figure living between the years 1 and 33 A.D., and made absolutely comprehensible by the conditions prevailing in Palestine at that time. Jesus lived from the year 1 to 33 A.D. He died in 33 A.D., just as any other man might have died in this or that year. If He continues to work in the world, it is in the same way any other dead person might have continued to work. Fitted completely into the modern point of view, Jesus was an historical personality accounted for by the milieu in which He lived. That is what Ernest Renan gives us in his Life of Jesus.

Now let us turn to the Life of Jesus that is in reality no life of Jesus by David Friedrich Strauss. I have said it is no life of Jesus. Strauss also works as a highly cultured and learned man. When he sets out to investigate anything, he does so with thoroughness akin to that of Renan in his domain. Strauss, however, does not turn his attention to the historical Jesus. He is, for him, only the figure to which he attaches something quite different. Thus, Strauss investigates all that was said of Jesus insofar as He was the Christ. He examines what is said about His miraculous entry into the world, His wonderful and miraculous development, His expression of great and special teachings, and how He undergoes suffering, death and resurrection. These are the accounts in the Gospels that Strauss selects for investigation.

Naturally, Renan, too, used the Gospels but he reduced them to what he, from his detailed and exact knowledge of Palestine, could conceive of the life of Jesus. This approach has no interest at all for Strauss. He tells himself that the Gospels relate this or that concerning Christ, who lived in Jesus. Then he sets out to investigate the extent to which what is related of the Christ has also been living as myth in other parts of the world, for instance, how the story that is told of a miraculous birth and the development of Jesus Christ is to be found in various other folk myths, as is also the Mystery of Golgotha, which is referred now the one god and then to another. Thus, Strauss sees in the figure of the historical Jesus only the opportunity for concentrating the myth forming activity of mankind into one personality. Jesus does not concern him at all. The only value He has for Strauss is that the myths, which are distributed all over the world, are concentrated in this single man Jesus. They are all hung on Him, as it were. These myths, however, all spring from a common impulse. All of them bear witness to the myth forming power that lives in mankind. Where does this myth forming power arise?

As Strauss sees it, in the course of mankind's earthly development, from the times of the first beginnings of the earth to its final end, mankind has and always will have a higher power in it than the merely external power that develops on the physical plane. A power runs right through mankind that will forever address itself to the super-earthly; this super-earthly finds expression in myths. We know that man bears something super-sensible within him that seeks to find expression in myth since it cannot be expressed in external physical science. Thus, Strauss does not see Jesus in the single individual, but rather the Christ in all men—the Christ who has lived in and through all men since their beginning, and who has brought it about that myths are told of Him. In the case of Jesus it is only that His personality gives occasion for the myth forming power to develop with extreme force and strength. In Him it is concentrated. Strauss, therefore, speaks of a Jesus that is in reality no Jesus, but he fastens upon Him the spiritual Christ force that lives in all humanity. For Strauss, mankind itself is the Christ, and He works always before and after Jesus. The true incarnation of the Christ is not the single Jesus, but the whole of humanity. Jesus is only the supreme representative for the representation of the Christ in mankind.

The main thing in all this is not Jesus as an historical figure, but an abstract mankind. Christ has become an idea, which incarnates in and through all mankind. That is the kind of highly distilled thought that a man of the nineteenth century is able to conceive! The element of life in the idea has become the Christ. He is conceived entirely as an idea and Jesus is passed by. This is a life of Jesus that is no more than a record of the fact that the idea, the divine, incarnates continually in all humanity. Christ is diluted down to an idea, is thought of merely as an idea.

So much for the second life of Jesus, The life of Jesus by David Friedrich Strauss. So we have Ernest Renan's Life of Jesus. which sets forth the historical figure of Jesus amidst the individuals around Him as well as by Himself. Then we have in Strauss's book the “idea of Christ,” which runs through all mankind. In this highly distilled form, however, it remains a mere abstraction.

When we come to Soloviev, behold, Jesus is no more, but only the Christ. Nevertheless, it is the Christ conceived as living. Not working in men as an idea, with the consequence that its power is transformed in him into a myth, but rather working as a living Being who has no body, is always and ever present among men, and is, in effect, positively responsible for the external organization of human life, the founder of the social order. Christ, who is forever present; a living Being who would never have needed a Jesus in order to come among men. Naturally, you will not find this so radically expressed in Soloviev, but that is of no account. It is the Christ as such Who stands always in the foreground—the Christ, moreover, as the living One who can only be comprehended in imagination, but by this means can be truly understood as a real and actual super-sensible Being working on earth.

There you have the three figures. The same Being meets us in the nineteenth century in a threefold description. The Life of Jesus by Ernest Renan, completely realistic; realistic history a fortiori; Jesus as an historical figure; a book that is written with all the learning of the nineteenth century. Then came David Friedrich Strauss with this idea of mankind, working on, running through all mankind, but remaining an idea, never awakening to life. Lastly, Soloviev's Christ; living power, living wisdom, altogether spiritual.

A realistic life of Jesus by Renan; an idealistic life of Jesus by Strauss that is also an idealistic presentation of the Christ impulse; a spiritual presentation of the Christ impulse by Soloviev.

Today, I want to place before you, side by side as three expressions of modern life, these three ways of cognizing the figure of Jesus Christ. Tomorrow we shall see how they take their place among the various impulses that we have recognized as working in mankind.

• 1. This distinction between pure perception free of memory pictures and visions on the one hand and an objective imagination which begins with brain-free thinking on the other is developed in Boundaries of Natural Science, Anthroposophic Press, 1983

It is extraordinarily difficult to speak of the conditions that were alluded to in the previous lecture because, in more recent times, in our age of materialistic thinking, the ideas and concepts for doing so are largely lacking. They must first be acquired through spiritual science. The information that can be given is, therefore, more in the nature of indications. Moreover, there is a further reason, which is determined by the whole development of our modern culture. This further reason that causes certain difficulties in treating conditions that are hidden behind the threshold of knowledge from modern man is that, on the whole, he has become somewhat lacking in courage. If one wishes to avoid actually using the word cowardly, one cannot say it differently. He has become weak in courage. The modern person much prefers his knowledge to give him nice pleasant feelings, but that is not always possible. Knowledge can fill us with inner satisfaction even when it does not convey exactly pleasant matters, because these—well, unpleasant things belong to truth. In every case one should find satisfaction in truth since even regarding the most terrible truths one can experience a kind of feeling of upliftment. As I have said, however, modern man is much too weak in courage for that; he wants to feel uplifted in his own way. This, too, is connected with secrets of modern existence that will become clearer in the course of such studies as we are now undertaking.

The particular faculties of which we have spoken, namely, the unfolding in our thought and deed of free imaginations and an attitude toward the world based on the primal phenomenon, can only be acquired by modern man when a veil is drawn over certain processes that are occurring, when they don't easily reveal themselves. Thus, it is also a necessary part of the evolution of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch that man does not understand certain things that thrust themselves into our sense world from the subsensible and super-sensible worlds. Most important events that are enacted around us before our very eyes are, in fact, not understood at all by modern man. In a way, he is protected from understanding them because he can only properly evolve the two faculties mentioned above under this protection. Foundations for his understanding of these events, however, have already begun to be laid. They have now progressed so far that evolution cannot continue to advance without reference being made, with a certain care and caution, to these matters.

Modern man, with his experience of what happens around him and of what he himself does and sets going, has but feeble reflections of what is surging and welling up in his own subsensory nature. At best, it emerges from time to time in frightening dream pictures, but they, too, are only feeble. What is happening in the subsensible is unknown to the man of today, and under normal circumstances he knows little of the super-sensible. Beneath what we modern people experience in the soul lies something that one can only describe as eruptive forces. It can be compared precisely with the world one experiences when standing on volcanic ground; you only have to set fire to some paper to have smoke burst out everywhere. If through the smoke you could see what is swirling and bubbling down below, you would then indeed realize what sort of ground you were actually standing on.

It is the same with modern life. We observe that Ernest Renan writes his Life of Jesus, and we see it as we see a solfatara or volcanic landscape. We see what David Friedrich Strauss writes, and we describe it as calm and peaceful. We see what Soloviev writes and we describe that too as calm and peaceful. All of this is written calmly as if we have not yet lit a piece of paper to see the eruptive impulses of humanity living and working beneath the soil.

A great deal has really been said with these few words. It only needs to be systematically thought through and you will see that it is so. What we described at the end of our observations yesterday we see is like living over a volcano. It is, however fully in accord with the purpose of evolution to see things so peaceful and harmless. That is good because beneath this peacefulness and harmlessness the very faculties that we need in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch are being developed. In most people they are not developed consciously, though in spiritual science the endeavor must be made to do so. Hence, it becomes necessary from time to time to indicate with care and caution the things one becomes aware of when one kindles that little piece of paper. Why is all this so? In the first place, because the ahrimanic powers have something quite different in mind for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In the fourth post-Atlantean culture they were greatly disillusioned through the Roman evolution, as we described in the last two lectures. They did not attain their goal and therefore have prepared still worse onslaughts for our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, for they mean to try again to achieve their purpose.

Now I have already mentioned that something is coming to expression from two sides, even geographically, that will burst like a storm into our calm and peaceful evolution in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, predisposed as it is to calm and peace. I pointed to one of these directions when I told you how Genghis Khan was inspired by the priest who had seen a descendant of the “Great Spirit” of old Atlantis. I also indicated how a certain ahrimanic attack was launched from the West through all that followed the discovery of America. It has been overcome in a certain respect but continues to live on in it as a resistant force. One must not think that things that are not seen are not there. Because what the ahrimanic powers took in hand in the Western Hemisphere did not come to outer physical earthly reality, our fifth post-Atlantean culture has been saved from the first attacks. But it goes on living in a sort of spectral form. It is there and impresses itself into men's impulses. People know nothing of it, however, and are unaware that it lives in and inserts itself into their impulses. Now it is only through placing pictures side by side that I can really lay a foundation for concepts that you must gradually create and form for yourselves in meditation. It would not be easy to find concepts in the present fund of ideas to explain what actually lives in the urges and impulses below the threshold. They push up, to be sure, into the ordinary soul life but they are normally covered over and unperceived in modern normal life.

Upon the soil of the Western Hemisphere that was now trodden through the discovery of America, quite special conditions had gradually been taking shape in the course of past centuries. The general population inhabiting those parts was far from attaining the qualities that had meanwhile been developed in the Eastern Hemisphere of Europe and Asia. A people lived in the West who stood far removed from the intellectual capacities that had evolved in the Eastern Hemisphere, but among them were a great number of individuals who had been initiated into certain mysteries. Before the discovery of America, there were mysteries of the most varied kind in the Western Hemisphere and they had a large following for the teachings that came from them. Like a single central power whom all followed and obeyed, a kind of spectral spirit, a descendant of the “Great Spirit” of Atlantis, was revered. This spirit had gradually assumed an ahrimanic character because he still worked with forces that had been right in Atlantis or were already ahrimanic there.

When the Atlantean spoke of his “Great Spirit,” he expressed it, as we have seen, in a word that sounded something like the word “Tao,” which is still preserved in China. An ahrimanic, caricatured counterpart appeared in the West as opponent of the “Great Spirit Tao” but he was still connected with him. He worked in such a way that he could only be made visible through atavistic, visionary perception but whenever they desired his presence, he always showed himself to those persons connected with the widespread mysteries of this cult so they could receive his instructions and commands. This spirit was called by a name that sounded something like Taotl. Taotl was thus an ahrimanic distortion of the “Great Spirit”—a mighty being and one who did not descend to physical incarnation. A great many men were initiated into the mysteries of Taotl but the initiation was of a completely ahrimanic character. It had a quite definite purpose and goal, which was to rigidify and mechanize all earthly life, including that of humans, to such a degree that a special luciferic planet, which has already been referred to in these studies, could be founded above earthly life. The souls of men could then be drawn out to it, by force and pressure.

As we described yesterday, what the ahrimanic powers were striving for in the civilization of Rome was only a feeble echo of what those who, under the leadership of Taotl, set out to attain, and this in much fuller and wider measure by means of the most frightful magical arts. The goal they aimed to achieve was to make the whole earth a realm of death, in which everything possible would be done to kill out independence and every inner impulse of the soul. In the mysteries of Taotl the forces were to be acquired that would enable men to set up a completely mechanized earthly realm. To this end, one had, above all, to know the great cosmic secrets that relate to what works and lives in the universe and reveals its activities in earthly existence. You see, this wisdom of the cosmos is fundamentally in its wording, always the same, because truth is always the same. The point is, however, whether or not it is received in such a way that it is employed rightly.

Now this cosmic wisdom, which was intrinsically not evil but held holy secrets hidden within it, was carefully concealed by the initiates of Taotl. It was communicated to no one who had not been initiated correctly by the Taotl method. When a candidate had been initiated in the correct way, the teaching concerning the secrets of the cosmos was then imparted to him. Now, it was necessary for him to receive these secrets through initiation in a quite definite mood of soul. He had to feel in himself the inclination and desire to apply them on earth in such a way that they would set up that mechanistic rigid realm of death. It was thus that he had to receive the secrets. Nor were they communicated except on one special condition. The wisdom was imparted to no one who had not previously committed a murder in a particular manner. Moreover, only certain secrets were communicated to the candidate after the first murder, but further and higher secrets were imparted to him after he had committed others.

These murders, however, had to be committed under quite definite conditions. The one to be murdered was laid out on a structure that was reached by one or two steps running along each side. This scaffold-like structure, a kind of catafalque, was rounded off above and when the victim was laid upon it, he was bent strongly back. This special way of being bound to the scaffold forced his stomach outward so that with one cut, which the initiate had been prepared to perform, it could be cut out.

This kind of murder engendered definite feelings in the initiate. Sensations were aroused that made him capable of using the wisdom later imparted to him in the way that has been intimated above. When the stomach had been excised, it was offered to the god Taotl, again with special ceremonies. The fact that the initiates of these mysteries lived for the quite specific purpose that I have indicated to you, imparted a definite direction to their feelings. When the candidates to be initiated had matured on this path and had come to experience its inner meaning, they then learned the nature of the mutual interaction between the one who had been murdered and the one who had been initiated. Through the murder, the victim was to be prepared in his soul to strive upward to the luciferic realm, whereas the candidate for initiation was to obtain the wisdom to mould this earthly world in such a way that souls would be driven out of it. Through the fact that a connection was formed between the murdered and the initiated—one cannot say “murderer,” but “initiated”—it was made possible for the initiated to be taken with the other soul; that is, the initiated could himself forsake the earth at the right moment.

These mysteries, as you will readily admit, are of the most revolting kind. Indeed, they are only in accord with a conception that can be called ahrimanic in the fullest sense. Nevertheless, certain feelings and experiences were to be created on earth by their means. Now, naturally, the evolution of the earth would not continue if, over a considerable part of its surface, mankind and an interest in mankind should completely die out. The interest in humanity, however, did not quite die out even there because other and different mysteries were founded that were designed to counteract the excesses of the Taotl mysteries. These were mysteries in which a being lived who did not come down to physical incarnation but also could be perceived by men gifted with a certain atavistic clairvoyance when they had been prepared. This being was Tezcatlipoca. That was the name given to the being who, though he belonged to a much lower hierarchy, was partly connected through his qualities with the Jehovah god. He worked in the Western Hemisphere against those grisly mysteries of which we have spoken.

The teachings of Tezcatlipoca soon escaped from the mysteries and were spread abroad exoterically. Thus, in those regions of the earth, the teachings of Tezcatlipoca were actually the most exoteric, while those of Taotl were the most esoteric, since they were only obtained in the manner described above. The ahrimanic powers sought to “save” humanity, however—I am now speaking as Ahriman thought of it—from the god Tezcatlipoca. Another spirit was set up against him who, for the Western Hemisphere, had much in common with the spirit whom Goethe described as Mephistopheles. He was indeed his kin. This spirit was designated with a word that sounded like Quetzalcoatl. He was a spirit who, for this time and part of the earth, was similar to Mephistopheles, although Mephistopheles displayed much more of a soul nature. Quetzalcoatl also never appeared directly incarnated. His symbol was similar to the Mercury staff to be found in the Eastern Hemisphere, and he was, for the Western Hemisphere, the spirit who could disseminate malignant diseases through certain magic forces. He could inflict them upon those whom he wished to injure in order to separate them from the relatively good god, Tezcatlipoca. The powerful onslaughts were thus prepared in the West that were to be made upon the world of human impulses.

Now at a certain time a being was born in Central America who set himself a definite task within this culture. The old, original inhabitants of Mexico linked the existence of this being with a definite idea or picture. They said he had entered the world as the son of a virgin who had conceived him through super earthly powers, inasmuch as it was a feathered being from the heavens who impregnated her. When one makes researches with the occult powers at one's disposal, one finds that the being to whom the ancient Mexicans ascribed a virgin birth was born in the year 1 A.D. and lived to be thirty-three years old. These facts emerge when, as stated, one examines the matter with occult means. This being set himself a quite specific task.

At this same time in Central America another man was born who was destined by birth to become a high initiate of Taotl. This man had in his previous earthly incarnations been initiated as described above and through the fact that he had many, many times repeated the procedure involving the excision of the stomach, which has been described to you and which there is no need to recapitulate, he had been gradually equipped with a lofty earthly and super-earthly knowledge. This was one of the greatest black magicians, if not the greatest ever to tread the earth; he possessed the greatest secrets that are to be acquired on this path. He was faced directly with a momentous decision as the year 30 A.D. approached, namely whether or not, as a single human individual, to become so powerful through continuous initiation that he would come to know a certain basic secret. Through knowledge of this secret he would have then been able to give such a shock and impetus to the coming evolution of man on earth that humanity in the fourth and fifth post-Atlantean epochs would have been thrown into terrible darkness, with the result that what the ahrimanic powers had striven for in these epochs could have come into existence.

Then a conflict began between this super-magician and the being to whom a virgin birth was ascribed, and one finds from one's research that it lasted for three years. The being of the virgin birth bore a name that, when we try to transpose it into our speech approximates Vitzliputzli. He is a human person who, among all these beings who otherwise only moved about in spirit form and could only be perceived through atavistic clairvoyance, in actual fact became man, so the story goes, through his virgin birth. The three year conflict ended when Vitzliputzli was able to have the great magician crucified, and not only through the crucifixion to annihilate his body but also to place his soul under a ban, by this means rendering its activities powerless as well as its knowledge. Thus the knowledge assimilated by the great magician of Taotl was killed. In this way Vitzliputzli was able to win again for earthly life all those souls who, as indicated, had already received the urge to follow Lucifer and leave the earth. Through the mighty victory he had gained over the powerful black magician, Vitzliputzli was able to imbue men again with the desire for earthly existence and successive incarnations.

Nothing survived from these regions of what might have lived on if the mysteries of Taotl had borne fruit. The forces left over from the impulse that lived in these mysteries survived only in the etheric world. They still exist subsensibly, belonging to what would be seen if, in the sphere of the spirit, one could light a paper over a solfatara. The forces are there under the covering of ordinary life, which is like the surface crust of a volcano.

So, on one side, what came from the inspirer of Genghis Khan entered into the forming of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and, on the other, what worked on as the ghost or spectre of the events that had taken place in the Western Hemisphere. No more than a feeble echo was left of this when the Europeans discovered America. But it is even known in ordinary history that many Europeans who set foot on Mexican-American soil were murdered by the decadent priesthood, which, though no longer as evil as in earlier times, still cut out the stomach, as I described. This was the fate of many Europeans who trod the soil of Mexico after the discovery of America, and the fact is even known to history.

In Vitzliputzli these people revered a Sun being who was born of a virgin, as I have said. When one investigates it occultly, one finds that he was the unknown contemporary in the Western Hemisphere of the Mystery of Golgotha. One can, indeed, also describe these things superficially as modern people like to do to avoid giving pain. If, however, one desires real knowledge, the one must cast a fleeting glance upon these concrete facts of the past, as we have done today. Yes, when we regard this modern human soul, we see how below, in the direction of the subsensible, and how above, in the direction of the super-sensible, it is exposed to great and serious dangers, and how forces play in that remain unknown. Yet it is good that they remain unknown because it is only in this way that the fifth post-Atlantean epoch can develop. The veil must be lifted now so that consciousness may be added to what still remains unconsciousness, because enough time has passed since America has been discovered. Otherwise, if consciousness did not gradually enter, these forces would become paramount, and the relatively beneficent conditions of the time of unconsciousness would turn around and become the curse of humanity. After all, many things, which in the way they have made their appearance have proved a benefit, bear the inherent tendency to become a curse to mankind.

I wished to indicate to you by means of this description the sort of things that are surging and seething beneath the surface. Now let us leave this sub-earthly region and again consider the earthly, but without trying to make any immediate connections in thought between the two realms; we can do that later. Let us consider the question as to how that most remarkable and brilliant Life of Jesus by Ernest Renan was written in such a way that Jesus is depicted as a man who went about on earth as I have described. Such a gifted personality as Renan was not conscious of the ground on which he wrote precisely this life of Jesus. Such a work was written out of quite definite impulses but they remain in the unconscious. The impulses out of which this book was written can be considered collectively as one fundamental impulse or instinct that so far has produced only what is good—within certain limits, relatively good—because it is an excellent work of its kind. Many other things have been done out of this same instinct. I have only chosen this one example in the sphere of knowledge but one could also choose examples from life. Here, however, one would come into spheres where people are easily irritated.

Renan's book is written out of a fundamental impulse that tries to attain a specific object, namely, to observe purely externally what we know as man, to view him solely as he is when placed out into the world. I have chosen this example of the life of Jesus because, actuated by this instinct, Renan here approaches the most sacred personality of humanity and describes Him in such a way that He stands before us only as outer personality. Should it go on increasing indefinitely, where would this natural impulse eventually lead us? It would lead to a point where men would no longer be inclined to look into their own souls when they observe the world. Renan has gone so far that he no longer trusts himself to look into his own inner self when he speaks of Christ Jesus. He speaks only of the historic figure and endeavors to perceive Him externally. This comes from the instinct to lose oneself gradually in mankind and so come to see each person in the world only outwardly, no longer responding to what is reflected into one's soul from another human being.

Here, the natural impulse of primal phenomenon perception is carried to an extreme: The outer world is to be perceived without stirring the inner life in any way. The one-sided perfecting of this impulse aims at a human society in which people only see each other externally when they meet. In many respects the immediate present shows us how far the impulse has gone because it is already assumed today that people are to be understood less and less from their inner qualities of soul and more and more purely externally. The false cultivation of the idea of “nation,” in particular, stamps a man with nationality—an external condition when compared with the inner soul nature. He is then judged in accordance with this nationality and is thereby moulded in life so that he comes to be regarded only as belonging to a certain nation rather than for his own character and qualities. This is one of the forces that does great service to his natural impulse. By these means earthly humanity would tend to be enclosed increasingly within national boundaries, which would become impassable in the future. Thus, out of this first impulse, the picture of each human being arises as he stands merely externally in the world.

Now let us look at the other impulse. It would be such that through it one would consider inner experience only, paying no attention to the external man and perceiving only what can be lived through inwardly, what can be directly felt in the soul. If one makes this impulse a criterion of knowledge regarding the figure of Christ Jesus, then interest in the Jesus figure would naturally decline and would center only on the Christ being. Should this impulse spread, there would be no interest in Jesus as an historical figure but only in study of the Christ being. It is the opposite of the other impulse and it, too, is now striving to become general in earthly humanity. Should it succeed, people would pass one another by, each brooding inwardly over himself in a rich life of soul. They would pass each other without even feeling the need to understand the individual character of those around them. Everyone would only desire to live in the home of his own soul, as it were. In the sphere of knowledge this impulse inspired Soloviev in his treatment of the most sacred Being of humanity. He had interest only in the Christ and not for the historical Jesus.

You see the two extremes toward which modern man is tending. The one is the impulse, the instinct, only to view the world from outside, to carry the primal phenomenon to an extreme. The other is to conceive of the world only inwardly in free imaginations. All this is in its beginnings and up to the present has developed in admirable, beneficent ways, but it also has a strong tendency to become the reverse. Just as Renan's Life of Jesus is a masterpiece of external description, so are Soloviev's representations of the Christ Being the highest that could have been created in this sphere in the present day. They are wholesome impulses. Nevertheless, they represent the urge that, in its one-sided cultivation, would drive back each man into his own house.

In contrast, a knowledge must arise through the science of the spirit, a knowledge that can be embraced in two statements that I should especially like to inscribe into your souls today. The first is: A man can never come to a really good, upright, strong personal inner life without having the warmest interest in other men. All inner life that we seek remains false and seductive if it does not go hand in hand with a kindly interest in the character and qualities of other people. We ought straightway to take it for granted that we find ourselves inwardly as man when we take an interest in the characteristics of others. Entering with love into the individualities of other people, which is at times united with a deep experience of the tragedy of life, is what can bring us to self-knowledge. The self-knowledge we seek through delving into ourselves will never be true. We deepen our own inner nature by meeting other people with full interest. But this statement as it has now been expressed here, implies something that cannot be directly carried into effect because it must interact with the other statement.

The other statement is: We never gain a true knowledge of the outer world if we do not resolve to examine the universally human in ourselves and learn to know it. Therefore, all natural science of modern times will be a purely mechanical science and knowledge, not true but false, inverted, unless it is based on the knowledge of man. In the science that was described by me as “occult science” in the book An Outline of Occult Science, the knowledge of the outer world was sought for together with the knowledge of the human being. We find the inner through the outer, the outer through the inner.

I will bring forward next time what remains to be said regarding certain present-day phenomena as they come to light in other works such as the so-called Life of Jesus by David Friedrich Strauss. Today, I should only like to add that when, twice seven years ago, our impulse to form a theosophical movement began to work—the movement later became anthroposophical—the intention was that all the activity that went on in this movement would be founded on these two principles: The without should kindle self-knowledge; the within should teach knowledge of the world. In these two statements, or rather in their realization in the world, lies true spiritual insight into existence and the impulse to real human love, to a love filled with insight. A realization of what lies in these statements should be sought for through our Society. If in these twice seven years all had come to pass that has been striven for, if the opposing powers in our time, had not been strong enough to hinder many things, then today I should have been able to speak of certain secrets of existence quite differently from the way in which it is possible to do so. Then this Society would have become ripe enough for things to be said in its midst today that could be spoken nowhere else.

In that case, there would also be a guarantee that these secrets of existence would be safeguarded in the right way. What has happened in our Society has shown, however, that it is precisely in the matter of safeguarding things that it fails, fails through all manner of contrary interests that have attached themselves to the movement. There is really no longer a safeguard today—at least, no thorough safeguard that what is said among us is not made use of, and, as frequently has happened, clothed by many persons in such feelings, in any way they please in the outer world. Since this is so, when we examine the Society, we find that, in looking back over the twice seven years, in many respects it has remained behind. Such introspection should not lead to a loss of courage but it should lead us to be discontent with revelling in the possession of a certain degree of knowledge, and also to developing that deep earnestness in life that will lead us to accept truth in the form in which it must be communicated in our age. When it is possible for outstanding members of our movement who are writers to think in the manner revealed recently, then it is clear that other and deeper impulses must now awaken within the souls of those who find themselves in our Society than have awakened hitherto. We do not join together merely to possess agreeable facts of knowledge. Rather should it be that we unite together in order to carry on a sacred service to truth in the interest of mankind's evolution. Then, indeed, the right knowledge will come to us. Then these facts will not be restrained by all sorts of prejudices.

At any rate, let us receive at least into our hearts this ideal that perhaps even yet such a Society may arise as is necessary in the wide world of prejudice—a Society that permeates and interpenetrates our times. What I am saying is naturally not directed in the slightest degree toward anyone in particular, nor toward any single soul among us. Its intention is solely to emphasize the ideal of knowledge of our epoch, the ideal of the service of mankind we should recognize as necessary. With the same warmth with which I spoke here about eight days ago. I should like again today to stress what must not be forgotten in our circle, namely, that it is essential to modern humanity for a group of people to exist to whom it is possible to speak in the most open and candid manner of the whole content of truth that needs to be revealed today without stirring up prejudicial emotions! We must accept it as our Karma that enmity has lifted up its head in our circle, enmity from out of the unintelligent feelings, ideas and customs of the time. We should not be deceived for a moment: this is our karma. Then, from the very recognition of it the impulse for the right will arise. In particular, we must not so often forget as quickly as we do what we receive, nor let so much of what is put into concise sentences embracing truths separately explained, merely pass over us. Rather, let us preserve it all in our hearts. In our circle the longing to forget often what is most important of all, is widely diffused. So we have not yet become the living organic Society that we need, or rather that humanity needs. To achieve this it is necessary above all that we should acquire a memory for what we can learn through life in the Society.

As a continuation of yesterday's lecture, certain things must be said that are connected with subjects spoken of here a week ago. As a number of friends who were not then present are here for a special meeting, I will repeat certain matters in the lectures still to be given. This may be useful, because from remarks that have been made to me, it is obvious that important points have been misunderstood.

At the very outset let us be quite clear that the course of evolution as we have learned to know it in connection with great cosmic happenings proceeds both in these great cosmic phenomena and in the phenomena of human historical development. The so-called fourth post-Atlantean epoch, during which the Greco-Roman culture developed and attained its greatness, must be of particular interest to us in our age. As you know, from the standpoint of the science of the spirit this fourth epoch lasted until the beginning of the fifteenth century A.D. With the dawning of the fifteenth century, trends began to manifest in European culture of which we heard, for instance, in yesterday's lecture.

When we picture the nature of the Greco-Roman epoch, it appears to us as a kind of recurrence or revival of what spread over the earth as human culture during the period of Atlantis. It has often been said that the thoughts, the perceptions, and also the social life of the Greeks become intelligible when we regard this fourth post-Atlantean culture—although Atlantean culture was, of course, much more elemental and instinctive. It assumed a more spiritual form in the culture of Greece and Rome. What had been direct experience in Atlantis was transposed into reality in Greece through fantasy, imagination and thoughts, and through the will, which, in turn, was inspired, by fantasy and imagination. We must realize that this Greco-Roman culture constituted a deep disillusionment for the luciferic and ahrimanic powers. The luciferic and ahrimanic powers of the hierarchy standing nearest to the human hierarchy, desired that the Atlantean culture, as it had been in Atlantis, should simply re-appear in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. In other words it was the intention of the luciferic and ahrimanic powers that everything that had constituted the essential nature of Atlantean culture should be merely repeated during the Greco-Roman age. (You can read about this in An Outline of Occult Science or in the book, Cosmic Memory.)

This plan was frustrated inasmuch as humanity was raised to a higher stage consistent with the post-Atlantean era. What was essentially new and great in Greek and Roman culture constituted a spiritual disillusionment for the luciferic and ahrimanic powers. Through their different influences these powers desired to educate the Greeks and so to develop their powers of fantasy that the souls of men would gradually have become weary of the earth, would lose their inclination to incarnate further on the earth, and would tend to withdraw, as souls, from the earth in order to found a realm and planet of their own. The effect of this influence was annulled through the leadership of those powers we call the normal hierarchies, whereby the quality of fantasy and imagination in the Greeks, which also influenced their social life, was transformed into joy in the earthly. The Greek received into his nature such a joy in the life of earth and of the senses that he had no desire to live merely in the world of imagination where his soul would be alienated from earthly existence, but inclined rather to the attitude expressed in the well known words, “Better to be a beggar on the earth, than a king in the realm of shades.” This joy in life between birth and death enabled the normal powers to avert from the Greeks the danger inherent in the plan of the luciferic powers, namely, to lead away the souls of men so that the bodies still to be born on the earth would have gone about without egos, and the souls would have departed to a special planet of their own.

In Roman culture, on the other hand, Ahriman's aim was to help Luciferic by shaping the Roman Empire and what followed it in such a way that it would have become a great earthly mechanism for ego-less human beings. In this way he would have been of assistance to Lucifer. Whereas Lucifer's desire was to extract the juice of the lemons for himself, as it were, Ahriman, working in the Roman Empire, set out to thoroughly squeeze the lemons and to create an entirely mechanistic state organization. Thus do Ahriman and Lucifer play into each other's hands. The plan was frustrated by the development in a preeminently egoistic sense in the people of the Roman Empire of the concept of Civis, the citizen. Human egoism, be it remembered, can only develop in physical existence on the earth. Thereby Ahriman's plan to make men into ego-less beings was frustrated. It was precisely the bleakness, the lack of fantasy in Roman culture, the egoism in Roman politics and system of rights that thwarted Ahriman's plan.

The Greek and the Roman epochs were a great disillusionment for Ahriman and Lucifer. Once again they had not attained their goal. The destiny of Ahriman and Lucifer is that they work with their forces in earth evolution and repeatedly make the greatest efforts to hold back the wider progress of evolution; they try to establish a realm for themselves, and have again and again to suffer disillusionment. As I have said before, to ask why Lucifer and Ahriman are unable to perceive that their strivings will ultimately be of no avail is to judge the spiritual by human standards. Lucifer and Ahriman have a faculty of judgment different from that of man. We cannot judge from the human standpoint what is observed in the spiritual world. If we do so, we should soon be considering ourselves much cleverer than a god, or a being belonging to some higher hierarchical order. As we know, Lucifer and Ahriman, although they are retarded spirits, belong to a hierarchical order higher than that of man. It is therefore understandable that they are repeatedly disillusioned, but their strivings always begin anew.

Then came the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, which has definite tasks in the stream of progressive spiritual evolution. Whereas the Greek life of fantasy, and the egoism of Rome were to develop in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the task of the fifth epoch was to develop the gift of material perception. I have characterized this by calling the ideal of material perception, in the sense of Goethe's “primal phenomenon,” the pure perception, the pure beholding of external reality. This faculty could not operate in earlier times because then the perception of material reality was invariably mingled with what came from atavistic clairvoyance. Men did not see the pure phenomenon, and they did not see pure external, material existence as such. They saw external existence veiled in the phantasmagoria of visionary clairvoyance. If people would observe a little more closely they would realize, even from history, that this is so. Plato did not consider sight as being so passive a faculty as we consider it in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Plato, the Greek, says expressly: Sight consists in a kind of fire going out from the eye to the objects. Plato, therefore, still knew something about the activity in sight. This activity had to be laid aside, forgotten, lost, in order that a different faculty belonging to the fifth epoch might arise. This faculty of the fifth epoch, which lasts from the beginning of the fifteenth century until the fourth millennium, consists in the development of the gift of free imagination that arises in complete inner freedom. On the one side, the primal phenomenon; on the other free imagination.

Goethe spoke of the primal phenomenon and also of free imagination. References to what he says in Faust have been made on many occasions. Here we have the beginnings of what must engross evolution in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The fifth epoch will thereby receive its stamp. But in this same epoch human beings will have to battle against attacks of the luciferic and ahrimanic powers that will be stronger than those launched in the days of Greek and Roman culture. Again in this later epoch the aim of the luciferic and ahrimanic powers is to alienate the souls of men from earthly life on the one hand, and on the other so to mechanize earthly life itself, to make its outer form so entirely mechanistic, that it would be impossible for the ego of man to live in the social order of the earth. He would therefore take leave of it to enter a life apart from the earth upon a separate planet.

When we speak of the attacks of luciferic and ahrimanic powers, such things as are here indicated are prepared long beforehand. These attacks begin actually to operate first during the fourth or fifth century of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, but behind the curtains of world history, even before the beginning of this fifth epoch, complete and intense preparation was made by the luciferic and ahrimanic powers. Their plan was to bring all human faculties and human forces of will under the sway of a longing to be alienated from the earth, to leave the earth and build up a separate planetary body, while the earth was to be deserted and left desolate. As I say, the very strongest attacks have been undertaken. Think of what gave to culture its basic tone in the epoch of Atlantis. Lucifer and Ahriman wish, during the post-Atlantean period, to interpose the old Atlantean culture everywhere so that the faculties imparted by the progressive powers are rendered primitive for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and human beings will desire to depart. The attempt, therefore, consisted in placing everything that developed into a service of a world beyond the earth, as I have indicated. Thus, from two sides, from that of Lucifer and that of Ahriman, the spirit reigning in ancient Atlantean life was to be revived in order that the impulses connected with that ancient life might enter into the evolution of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

You will remember that in Atlantean times the impulses within the souls of men were turned to the Great Spirit who was designated by a word or sound of which an echo still exists in the Chinese Tao. Such was the designation of the Great Spirit in the time of Atlantis. The luciferic and ahrimanic striving consists essentially in bringing what had come later and what was still to come, into the service of the Tao, into the service of the Great Spirit. This was not, of course, the Great Spirit as he had reigned in Atlantis, but a being who had come after him, a kind of little son. Lucifer and Ahriman strove to resuscitate Atlantean impulses by reckoning, not with the normal powers of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, but with the impulses that had remained behind in the service of the Great Spirit Tao. The only possibility of achieving this end was to transfer the impulses that had worked in the culture of the now submerged Atlantis to the regions that had emerged after the Atlantean flood. Thus a part of what had succeeded the Great Spirit passed over to the East, to Asia, as it were, where certain mystery cults were gradually established during the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centuries A.D.

These mystery cults assumed a certain character inasmuch as they were a renewal, a revival, of the ancient cult of Tao in its original form, not in the form in which it still exists among the degenerate Chinese who have intellectualized it. These mystery cults in Asia were a revival of that kind of initiation that led to actual perception of the elemental spiritual, living and weaving beneath the material world of the senses, and to actual perception of the One Great Spirit. Certain priests of these Asian mysteries were initiated into the ancient Atlantean cult, which naturally led to delusions because it was unsuited to this later epoch. One of these priests had attained such an advanced stage in his initiation in Asia that he possessed full knowledge of the nature of the Atlantean impulses and was able to hold actual converse with the successor, the unlawful successor, of the Great Spirit Tao. It was he, who, in Asia, transmitted the inspiration he had received through the Great Spirit, to an external, worldly power, to a pupil who then became known in history as Genghis Khan.

Genghis Khan was the pupil of a priest who had been initiated into these Asian mysteries, and he instilled into Genghis Khan the following. The time has now come for divine justice to scour the earth. The charge has been laid upon you to put this divine justice into operation, and you must now place yourself at the head of all those men who, starting out from Asia, can enact divine justice all over the earth. Similar attempts modeled on the campaign of the Huns and so forth, had failed, but now, essentially through the impulse given by this Asian priesthood, the Mongol campaign was set in motion. This campaign was intended to carry into European culture influences that would have caused the souls of men to believe in divine justice, to fall under its sway, and gradually to take leave of the earth without any inclination to return. So the culture of the earth would have been destroyed. This was the inner purpose of the Mongol onslaughts that spread from Asia, and which, as you know, were not overthrown by physical deeds.

Remarkably, at the battle of Liegnitz in the thirteenth century, the Mongols were not conquered but remained the victors. Then, quite inexplicably, they turned back toward Asia without advancing further into Europe. So here too there is actual external evidence that a counterstroke, manifesting in a spiritual way, was put into operation. As has been said, the Europeans had not conquered the Mongols in Silesia; the Europeans had themselves been conquered. Although the Mongols were the victors, they turned back to Asia. But, in a sense, just because the purely external onslaught did not come to pass, or did not go very far, the impulses remained in Europe in the state of distillation in which they would have to operate in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. So, in the cultural impulses that came over from the East, there is clearly and yet to be perceived what was intended to be brought to Europe as an aftermath of the mysteries of the Great Spirit.

Another part of the mystery culture of ancient Atlantis made its way, not toward the East, but toward the West, to the lands of America discovered later on by the Europeans. There the more ahrimanic part of the irregular post-Atlantean culture lived itself out. Whereas the luciferic part lived on more in Asia, the ahrimanic part worked more in America. Within America impulses were to arise that could then percolate from the West. Just as those other impulses could work from the East, so these could infiltrate from the West in order that the ahrimanic attack might be made in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

Hence, in the West, the more ahrimanic side of the outlived Atlantean mystery culture was promulgated. This led to the establishment of mysteries that inevitably make a most repulsive impression upon those who have grown up in the tender culture of modern times, and do not like to hear the truth but only blessedness, as it is often called. These post-Atlantean mysteries developed especially on the soil of Mexico. Mysteries were established there, but they spread over a large part of the America the Europeans had not yet discovered. If their impulses and workings had been victorious, these mysteries would have driven souls away from the earth. By this means the service performed by Ahriman, the squeezing out of the lemons, would have become effective. The earth would gradually have become desolate, having upon it only the forces of death, whereas any living souls would have departed to found another planet under the leadership of Lucifer and Ahriman.

In order to execute the ahrimanic part of this task, it was necessary for the priests of those ahrimanic Atlantean mysteries to acquire faculties possessing the highest degrees of control and mastery over all the forces of death in earthly working. These forces would have made the earth; together with physical man—for the souls were to depart—into a purely mechanistic realm, a great dead realm in which no ego could have a place. These faculties would have had to be connected also with mastery of the mechanistic element in everything living, of the mechanistic elements in all life. For this reason these mysteries had to be instituted in a truly devilish form because such forces as would have been needed for the powerful aims of Ahriman can only arise when initiations of a special kind are attained. Such were these initiations of the ahrimanic post-Atlantean era in America. Everyone who was to attain a certain degree of knowledge was made to realize that this knowledge is acquired through certain faculties of perception that can only be engendered through an act of murder. Thus nobody whom had not committed murder was admitted to a certain degree of this initiation. The murder was performed under special circumstances. Steps led up to a kind of catafalque, a scaffold-like structure. The one to be murdered was tied to this and his body bent in such a way that his stomach could be excised with a single cut. This operation, the excision of the stomach, had to be performed with great dexterity. Certain experiences arose from the act of having cut into the living organism with such consummate skill, and under such special conditions. These experiences had to be acquired and through them a certain degree of knowledge concerning the mechanization of the earth could then be attained. Every time higher stages of initiation were to be reached, further murders had to be committed.

This cult was dedicated to the successor, the son of the Great Spirit, in the form he had assumed in America, and who was designated by a sound that approximates Taotl. Taotl is an ahrimanic distortion of the successor of Tao. This being, Taotl did not appear in a physical body but only in an etheric form. His arts, which were essentially impulses for the mechanization of earthly culture and of all earthly life, were acquired through these initiations I have described to you.

Now these initiations had a definite purpose. As has been said, the initiate acquired actual powers of black magic, the application of which would have led to the mechanization of the culture of the earth and to the expulsion of all egos, so that the bodies born would no longer have been capable of bearing an ego. But as forces in the world are in perpetual interaction, he who possessed such powers would also have become earth-bound; the initiate himself would have been permanently fettered to the earth forces. His act bound him to forces of which you will be able to learn something tomorrow at the performance of the scene from Faust, if you will follow attentively what the Lemurs represent. By these practices the initiate united himself with the earth forces and with everything that causes death on the earth. Thereby, he would himself have lost his soul. He saved himself from this fate by bringing it about that, as a result of the excision of the stomach, the soul of the one whom he murdered had lost his desire to come to the earth again and also the soul of the victim was enabled, through the intention of the murderer, to draw the murderer's soul into the realm that was to be founded beyond the earth. The soul of the initiated murderer was thus also to be drawn into the kingdom of Lucifer and Ahriman.

Many opposing sects were founded with the object of countering this devilish cult. One such sect was that of Tezcatlipoca. He too was a being who did not appear in a physical body but who was known to many of the Mexican initiates, in spite of the fact that he lived only in an etheric body. Tezcatlipoca was a being akin to Jahve or Jehovah. The aim of his cult, working in opposition to those of Taotl, was to establish a Jahve religion suited to the terrible conditions prevailing in Mexico. Tezcatlipoca was a spirit akin to Jahve.

Another sect venerated Quetzalcoatl. He, too, was a being who lived only in an etheric body. Quetzalcoatl was a being of whom we may say that he was connected with the Mercury forces. He was connected with medical art of a certain character. Such beings are always described by those who can perceive them through clairvoyance in such a way that the description conveys the impression of the actual reality. When Quetzalcoatl is described as a figure with a serpent-like body, as a green feathered serpent, this indicates to those who understand such matters that he was an actual being, but one who appears only in an etheric body. This cult continued through many millennia. It was widely practiced, not in public but within the precincts of certain Mexican mysteries, in order that the necessary post-Atlantean cultural impulses might be developed in secret in an ahrimanic form.

A third movement also developed in those regions. Counter-movements were necessary, and had there been none, the influences of these forces upon the culture of Greece and Rome, and later upon the culture of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, would gradually have become so strong that they would have proved invincible to the progressive powers. Thus, a further counter-movement developed as a result of the birth of a being who lived in a physical body in contrast to those beings who only manifested in etheric bodies. The name given to this Being may be expressed by a combination of syllables that approximate Vitzliputzli. Vitzliputzli was a human being, a being who appeared in a physical body. In Vitzliputzli the spiritual individuality lived who, within a human body, took up the fight against the mysteries I have been describing. Among the Mexicans it was said of Vitzliputzli that he was born of a virgin who had conceived by the heavenly influence of a bird having drawn near to her. If by occult means, so far as it is possible, we investigate the life of Vitzliputzli in the Western Hemisphere we find this remarkable fact. He lived at the time when, in the Eastern Hemisphere, the Mystery of Golgotha was taking place, namely, between the years 1 and 33 A.D. That is the remarkable fact. Vitzliputzli was able to make short shrift of the most important initiates of the Mexican mysteries against whom he waged violent war.

It was human being, an initiate, not one of the three spirits, but an initiate, against whom Vitzliputzli fought. Vitzliputzli, a super-sensible being but in human form, battled with every means at his disposal against the initiate who had been responsible for the greatest number of murders, who had attained the greatest power, and of whom it can be said that if his aim had been realized, it would have betokened the victory of this ahrimanic post-Atlantean culture. Vitzliputzli fought against him and—as already said, this can only be discovered by occult means—in the year 33 A.D. succeeded in causing this mightiest black magician to be crucified. Thus, in the other hemisphere of the earth, an event parallel to the Mystery of Golgotha took place, inasmuch as the greatest black magician of all was crucified by the action of Vitzliputzli who had appeared on the earth for this purpose. As a result, the power of these mysteries was thereby broken so far as the fourth post-Atlantean epoch was concerned. It was subsequently revived, however, and history tells of the fate suffered by numerous Europeans who went to America after the discovery of that continent. Many Europeans met their death at the hands of Mexican priest-initiates who bound them to scaffold-like structures and cut out their stomachs with expert skill. This is a matter of historical knowledge, and it was an aftermath of what I have been describing to you.

By these means the ahrimanic impulse was inculcated into the etheric nature of the Western world. As I have said, this impulse in the fourth epoch was broken as a result of the crucifixion of the great initiated black magician by the deed of Vitzliputzli. Nevertheless, so much force remained that a further attack could have been made upon the fifth epoch, having as its aim so to mechanize the earth that the resulting culture would not only have culminated in a mass of purely mechanical contrivances but would have made human beings themselves into such pure homunculi that their egos would have departed. The Europeans were meant to acquire knowledge of this world, and indeed the modern age begins with the people of Europe being drawn to America. Whereas on the one side the campaigns of Genghis Khan and his successors were to have executed as it were a divine justice, on the other side, there was prepared an atmosphere of wild, ahrimanic, elemental forces into which the Europeans were to enter. In such matters complete cooperation takes place between Ahriman and Lucifer. For example, the Europeans were not to go over to that other world with disinterested, unselfish feelings but with hankerings and greed for something concerning which they gave way to all kinds of delusions. Later on it was possible to coarsen what was at first clothed in wonderful fantasy, inasmuch as the discovery by the Europeans of the wealth of external nature in America gave an intense stimulus to their hankerings and greed. But to begin with this was to take a more idealistic form. Thus, here again we have an example of cooperation between the luciferic and ahrimanic forces that always work hand in hand.

A successor of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, had settled in China as a ruler after the Mongols had stormed over to Europe. To Kublai Khan in China there came from Europe a Venetian, Marco Polo. At the court of Kublai Khan, who was himself under the influence of the initiation I have previously described, Marco Polo was deeply and fundamentally influenced. He wrote a book of just such a kind as to excite the imagination of the Europeans concerning the Western Hemisphere. Marco Polo's Travels spoke of a magic land in the West, which stirred up longings to discover it. It was this book that induced Christopher Columbus to set out on his voyage to America. So you see how greed was guided into a world of fantasy. Things work together with extraordinarily clever foresight. You must realize that there is plan in world history in which the evil powers also come into the picture, and that the methods with which history is studied today enable us merely to observe historical life from the external aspect. The only possibility of acquiring real knowledge is to connect the right facts in the light of the science of the spirit, such as the discovery of America at a definite point of time, and the stirrings of desire for a land of fantasy, this desire being, in its turn, an impulse capable of attracting souls away from the earth.

The fitting mood for discovering America at a definite epoch is created by the description of this land of fantasy associated with the stirring up of desire. It is a mood that worked especially upon the subconscious forces in the souls of men, and it was able to work on further in the cultural life. We must think of Marco Polo and his book as being definitely connected with what instigated Christopher Columbus to travel to the West. It is well known that his wish was to discover the magic land; indeed, this is mentioned in ordinary history.

I have here described how the ahrimanic and luciferic impulses work in order to make their attacks upon the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Now, this fifth epoch is such that the human beings lives in a middle sphere of the life of soul. Man's life of soul in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch must be protected from direct perception of the ahrimanic forces. True, man must learn through the science of the spirit to enter their domain, but external life must be protected in order that the powers that were mentioned both yesterday and today may unfold. These forces that have been brought to the earth in the concrete way that has been described, work below the level of the ordinary normal consciousness. Knowledge of man's life of soul is not attained by saying, as a generalization: There is a realm of consciousness, and there is a realm of subconsciousness, and natural urges and impulses work upward out of the subconscious. It is necessary to know how these urges and impulses are brought into existence on the earth, and to understand the concrete facts. In many domains we see aftermaths in the consciousness that is unfolded by the human soul in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. We can picture the ahrimanic forces that originated in the way described as being active below the threshold of consciousness like lava, like volcanic forces under a soil that emits smoke if one sets fire to paper above it. This shows that beneath the soil there are terrifying forces that pour from every aperture under such circumstances. So it is with the forces of the soul. Beneath what is known to consciousness there are forces that have been influenced by what I have described. Then they press upward. Sometimes they reveal themselves only slightly, but at other times they force their way upward. In the super consciousness the luciferic forces are discharged into the soul as lightning and thunder discharge when the air is to be purified. There is little consciousness of these luciferic forces in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch; during this epoch man's consciousness functions in a middle realm.

Investigations into what is thus working in the subconscious reveal that ahrimanic and luciferic attacks come from two directions, and that culture is really created by an interworking between the normal progressive hierarchies and the luciferic and ahrimanic forces. Now just because culture acquires a specific character in this way, human beings in the several regions of the earth are led in different ways to the great problems of life. I shall speak further of the aspect of knowledge and what then passes into the sphere of the social life.

We may assume that certain ahrimanic forces flow into the European culture from the realm of the subconscious in the wake of the impulses of which we have heard. These ahrimanic forces guide in a definite direction impulses that, in their turn, proceed from the good and progressive powers. It can be said that problems of two kinds, strivings for knowledge of two kinds, have arisen. But we must not say that human life has taken on a certain coloring as a result of the ahrimanic forces alone because interworking has taken place between the ahrimanic forces and the normal progressive forces. The minds of men were directed primarily to two problems. First, the problem of natural urges and impulses and second, the problem of birth. These expressions are derived, of course, from the most conspicuous phenomena. A great deal is embraced by these problems but I shall speak only of certain matters.

Let us think of the problem of natural urges and impulses. Under the influence of the forces I have described, human contemplation and striving is directed to a perception, to an experiencing, of man's natural urges and impulses. The mind is directed to these impulses and a certain view of life gradually unfolds. The problem of natural urges and impulses transforms itself into the problem of happiness or prosperity, which assumes a definite character. Hence in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, especially in the culture of the West, you find strivings in connection with the problem of prosperity, strivings directed to the creation of prosperity in life. Such striving is influenced by the forces I have described. Investigations are made, for example, into what can be done in order that the life of human beings on earth may be as happy and prosperous as possible. The establishment of earthly prosperity becomes an ideal. I do not say that ahrimanic forces alone are at work here; the good progressive forces are also present.

Thought about happiness and prosperity is, of course, quite justified. But under the influence of Ahriman it has assumed a certain character as a result of a really devilish tenet. This tenet defines the good in such a way that the good is a said to manifest actually through happiness or prosperity, through the happiness indeed of the greatest number, and connected therewith is the misery of the minority, just as if one were to describe an organism by suggesting that it develops only to the knees and dies off from there down. In such identification of happiness with the good, with virtue, there is an ahrimanic impulse. The Greeks, as represented by their greatest individuals, were impervious to such identification of the concept of prosperity with that of the good. But ahrimanic influences produced a mentality in humanity in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch that seeks for the good in prosperity, in happiness. It is from this point of view that you must study the philosophy of Saint-Simon, and all the different efforts to discover principles of national economy, especially in Western Europe; only so will you be able to understand them. Even the thought of Rousseau is not free from this impulse. Such matters must be studied concretely and objectively.

Side by side with the problem of natural urges and impulses is that of sensory existence, existence in the material world of the senses. In the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the culture resulting from sensory existence ought, in reality, to be ennobled, but the ahrimanic powers desired to get this culture under their own control. Hence, their aim to produce a mentality that considers truth to be found in sensory existence alone. To this extent ahrimanic impulses are active in all that is embraced in the problem of sensory existence, of existence in the world of the senses. This problem of sensory existence is closely connected with the problem of birth, just as the problem of happiness and prosperity is connected with that of natural urges and impulses. In order to vindicate sensory existence and to cause men, through instinct, to regard all evolution as a material process, the genesis of the human being in birth was related directly to the evolution of the animals. There you can see the thread leading over to the problem of birth. Thinkers and seekers in the fifth epoch since the fifteenth century, have been deeply engrossed in the question of the birth processes of the human being. Those who understand the connections know the implications of the problem “How does man enter the earth?” Thought has been directed to the question of whether the soul passes over as soul from father and mother to the child, or whether the soul is implanted by super-sensible powers. To tackle the problem of birth in the widest sense is the task of the post-Atlantean era; it is a problem that arises in complete conformity with normal and regular progress, but it became ahrimanic by being made materialistic, inasmuch as man was placed at the apex of the animal world and, compared with the importance attached to sensory existence, the soul was left out of consideration.

Thus we see streaming in from the one side impulses that strive to distort the problem of natural urges into the problem of prosperity in a way that does not accord with the forces of the good and the moral. To make the problem of natural urges into the problem of the good and the moral would be to work in the direction of the normal forces of progress, for to develop the good and the moral in its full range out of the problem of natural urges would be to discover how to spiritualize this problem of man's natural urges and impulses. That is the normal task of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It should rightly be worked out in great imaginations, of which examples are to be found in Goethe's Faust. Also as a result of ahrimanic influences, the problem of birth was diverted to study of evolution in the world of the senses alone. The problem of natural urges was diverted to the problem of material prosperity, and the problem of birth to the problem of evolution in sensory existence.

Bearing all these things in mind, we see how the ahrimanic powers stream into the culture of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. I have already said that because ahrimanic forces stream in on the one side, and luciferic forces on the other, the strivings of men become specialized. If things had happened otherwise, four great problems would have filled the feelings of men in all their work and productive activity down to the very tilling of the soil. The first of these problems is that of natural urges and impulses; the second the problem of birth; the third the problem of death, which is concerned not only with how the human being comes to the earth through birth but also how he leaves the earth through the gate of death. The fourth is the problem of evil.

That man's concern with these four problems has not been equally distributed over the fifth epoch is due to the fact that on the one side Ahriman has diverted the problem of natural urges into that of prosperity, and the problem of birth into that of material existence in the world of sense, thereby averting the true solution of these problems. Again, on the other side, Lucifer has directed the thought of the culture that is more Eastern in character to the problem of death and the problem of evil. You can see how fundamentally the whole of Russian spiritual life is dominated by the problems of death and evil, just as the spiritual life of the West is dominated by the problems of natural urges and of birth. In the writings of Soloviev, the most powerful Russian thinker of modern times, it is everywhere apparent that his mind is concerned on the one side with the problem of death, and on the other with the problem of evil. Just as the problem of the natural urges becomes that of prosperity, so in considering the problem of evil, man's thought is turned to the question of sin, of the sinful life. Hence the problem of sin, of redemption, of cleansing from sin, has nowhere been tackled so profoundly as it has been tackled in the East. But at the same time there has been something irregular in the endeavors made to solve this problem. The problem of evil and the problem of sin have been used by luciferic powers in order that, by directing thought to sin, and to sin in the bodily carnal life, the souls might be alienated from earth life.

Whereas in the West, Ahriman makes every effort to enchain man in sensory existence on the earth, to found a kingdom where the good is thought to lie in prosperity, and where the natural urges of men therefore find satisfaction, from the East comes abhorrence of sin, as a result of which souls are to be diverted from the earth, alienated from the earth by Lucifer. From the East attention is directed to the problem of sin and the problem of death. Hence, much contemplative thought in the East is directed to how death is overcome by what came to pass in Christ Himself. Impulses for life are sought in the Resurrection. Implicit in what I said a week ago, that the East turns more to the Christ and the West more to Jesus, there is this truth: that the East has need of the Risen One, the Spirit who is not made manifest in material existence but who overcomes material existence. This is the problem of death. In a treatise that is probably one of the most beautiful writings of Soloviev, he says that if death as a physical phenomenon, a physical fact, were to signify an end of human life, man would resemble all the other animals; he would not be man at all, he would be an animal. Through death the human being resembles the animals. Through the evil of which he is capable, he becomes even worse than the animals. This is a direct indication that Soloviev's thinking is influenced by the problem of death, and by the problem of sin and evil. But we find everywhere contemplation about knowledge concerning the soul, such as how the soul is not affected by death, and external life is arranged in such a way that, even in its justifiable expressions, it tends to take a path leading away from the earth. That is why in the East there are so many sects that subdue and mortify the bodily nature, which flood the body with death, as it were, striving to lead the life of natural impulses and the act of birth ad absurdum, through leanings to sacrifice and the like.

In the West there is the danger of becoming enchained within the life of the senses, whereby this life would become egoless. For if prosperity alone were to be established on the earth, the ego would never dwell there. If the good could only be established by the spread of prosperity over the earth, a state of things would arise such as came to pass in old Atlantis. In the middle period of Atlantean culture, too, great impulses were given that would have led to a state of prosperity in their further course. In the form and effects of what men first felt as an impetus of the good, they perceived a vista of prosperity, and so they gave themselves up to prosperity, devoted themselves wholly to it. The earth had to be purged of Atlantean culture because men had preserved from the good the element of prosperity alone. In the post-Atlantean era, Ahriman strives by direct means to institute a culture of mere prosperity. This would mean pressing out the lemon, the doing away with it! Egos would no longer be able to live if prosperity were the only aim pursued by culture. In short, prosperity and the good, prosperity and virtue are not concepts that can be substituted for one another.

We are gazing here into profound secrets of life. A justified element in the founding of culture, an element that inevitably leads to a certain form of prosperity among men, is so distorted that prosperity per se is set up as the goal. And a culture that would certainly enable the human soul, even in life, to rise above and to know both death and evil is distorted in such a way that contact with what can produce death and evil is avoided from the outset, and the bodily nature is shunned. This was to satisfy the aims of Lucifer.

In this way we must endeavor to understand how real and concrete forces work in human existence, and what is at work beneath and above the conscious life of soul in the culture of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. If you recognize this leitmotif you will be able to understand many things. Only you must not give way to the delusion that everything luciferic and everything ahrimanic must for these reasons be avoided. That would be the very way to succumb to these forces! Everyone who lives together with humanity must realize that Lucifer and Ahriman have been granted their places in the world. If errors could not take place, the human being would never reach inner freedom; freedom could never come to man if he were incapable of forming the erroneous conception that prosperity and the good are identical; he would then have no opportunity of rising above this error. If man were incapable of living under the delusion that through subjugation of the external, earthly life, victory can be snatched from death and from evil, he would never in reality overcome death and sin. It is necessary for these things to pass into the life of man.

We must see to it that the woeful doctrine, “Ah! that is luciferic and must be avoided; that is ahrimanic and must be avoided,” does not obsess us, but that we confront these powers in the right way knowing that it is not for us to steer clear of Lucifer but to conquer his forces for progressive human culture. Nor must we simply steer clear of Ahriman, but conquer Ahriman's forces for the progressive culture of humanity. For into our culture these forces must be received. The battle lies in the fact that Ahriman's aim is to snatch the souls away. The task of humanity is to receive Ahriman together with his strong forces—all those forces of intellect, for instance, which are preeminently forces of intellect but they can also assume a form that is more akin to feeling—those forces that have been applied, for instance, to the problem of how a state is established. Think of the numbers of people who have wrestled with this problem, some more theoretically, some more practically. The most intense efforts have been made to solve this problem. Such forces must be wrested into the good service of humanity, and must not be made ahrimanic by resolutions to have nothing to do with Ahriman, or refusals to be concerned with what, in social problems, for instance, is alleged to proceed from Ahriman. That would lead to nothing.

It is the same as regards Lucifer. The impulse of perception, of feeling, given us by the science of the spirit must help us to confront in the right way the forces that are actually present in the world. Those who are unwilling to do this are like a man who says, “Evil elements! Oh no, I don't like them; I don't like them at all!” Of course, both attitudes are one sided, but we must remember that the working together of the evil and the good, the union of the evil and the good, make the elements fruitful in the state of balance we must bring about in life by learning to be master of the ahrimanic and the luciferic forces. In this state of balance lies the impulse that must be inculcated into life, and that it is the task of the science of the spirit to transmit.

As far as is possible, we shall speak of these things again tomorrow.

In our previous studies I have tried to show that a meaning, a wisdom-filled guidance, exists in the historical evolution of mankind that can only be discovered when ones digs deeper into spiritual foundations. I endeavored to bring this especially to your attention yesterday, and for some weeks I have sought to present it with various concrete examples. People in general live within their age in such a way as to let events come upon them, causing happiness or unhappiness, joy or sorrow; they derive their inner experiences from the impulses of the age. In a certain respect, they also reflect upon things. But their meditating upon what happens does not signify much because the spiritual development of our age is not fitted for a full penetration into the causes that hold sway spiritually behind the phenomena.

Now, as I have pointed out to you, he who goes deeply into the events of the time should continually bear in mind that with so-called civilized humanity's present-day thinking and feeling, the social order can only be maintained for a few more decades. A reshaping of sentiment and thinking is essential to mankind, a transformation of many ideas, perceptions, feelings and will impulses; spiritual science is ready to contribute its share toward the comprehension of such a renewal.

Official history today is really of little help in making a man understand why the things that go on around him are as they are. For the most part, official history does not desire to look into the inner growth of things, but instead registers what happens externally and, in what might be called the simplest and most convenient manner, always considers what has happened earlier to be the cause of what follows. But when one traces things back to their causes in the simple, easygoing way that modern history largely employs, one comes to positive absurdities. Ultimately, one would have to come to the opinion that the greatest part—yes, perhaps even the most widespread part of what happens—owes its existence not to sense, but to absurdity. If the full consequences of the views that people are so prone to entertain in our time were examined logically, one would have to admit that there is not sense, but nonsense in history. Let us take an example that everyone who studies ordinary history can see for himself.

Let us consider, for instance, the origin of the orthodox English denomination, the Anglican Church, to which many people belong; let us seek its external historical origin. Well, we shall find that Henry VIII reigned from 1509 to 1547, and that he had six wives. The first, Catherine of Aragon, was divorced from him and, considered quite externally, this divorce played a great historical role. The second, Anne Boleyn, he beheaded. The third, Jane Seymour, died. The fourth, he divorced. The fifth, Katherine Howard, he also beheaded. Only the sixth survived him and, if one investigates history further, it will be found that that was really only through a sort of mistake! A different fate was planned for her, too. I refer to his somewhat complicated matrimonial history of Henry VIII, who, as stated, reigned from 1509 to 1547, less for its historical content than in order to lead up to a consideration of his character. One can really gain some idea of a person's character if one knows that he has had two wives beheaded, been divorced from a certain number, and so on.

Now, taken purely historically, the divorce of the first, Catharine of Argon, played a definitely significant role; one need only look at two events to see this. The first was that Henry VIII, the Defender of the Faith, as he called himself, that is, of the Catholic faith emanating from Rome, became the opponent of the Pope because he refused to annul the marriage. Henry became the opponent of the Pope, of the Catholic Church issuing its orders from Rome, and simply on his own authority and power separated the English Church from the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, a kind of Reformation took place that was of a quite individualistic nature since the old customs, ceremonies and rituals were preserved. It was not the cause, as it was with the Protestants, that a renewal had been sought from a real spiritual basis and spiritual force. Everything of an ecclesiastical nature was preserved, but the Church in England was to be cut off from the Roman Catholic Church simply because the Pope had refused to sanction Henry VIII's divorce. Thus, in order to obtain a different wife, this man founded a new church for his people that has existed ever since.

So we have the outer historical fact that many millions of people have lived throughout a long period in a religious communion because a king's divorce could only be brought about through his creating this religious body! This a fact of external history. Is it not an absurdity? When one looks at the matter more closely, then another absurdity is added, a real inner absurdity, because it cannot be denied that many thousands of people, since the divorce of Henry VIII and the founding of the English Church, have found really deep, inner religious life within the communion that originated in such a questionable manner. This implies that something can arise in history through a most questionable procedure, and the ensuing fruits can bring—and have, in fact, brought—the greatest inner healing of soul to many thousands of people. One must only follow things to a certain conclusion. As a rule, one skims over things in their development but if one will observe their consequences, it will be clear that, when we look at facts from the point of view that is held today, we arrive at all sorts of absurdities.

I have spoken of one fact that emerged, but we must record yet another—the execution of Sir Thomas More, that most significant and gifted pupil of Pico della Mirandola. He it was who wrote Utopia, a wonderful work in which, out of a kind of visionary perception, he created the idea of a social relationship among men. I cannot enlarge on this today but another time it may be pursued further. One sees how this pupil of Pico della Mirandola, Thomas More, created in his book, from a certain atavistic clairvoyance, a picture of the social order. Let the people who are so clever think as they will of the practicality of this picture; ingenuity and impulses of genius live in it.

Although such a picture is not immediately practicable in the outer world, yet it is precisely for such pictures that Johann Gottlieb Fichte's words hold good regarding social and other ideals that have been set up for humanity. He observed how again and again people say, “Well, here come thinkers, preaching all sorts of ideals, but they are impractical men; one cannot make use of their ideals!” In response to such objections, Fichte said, “That these ideals are not directly applicable in real life is known to us, too, just as well as to those who make such objections—perhaps better. But we also know that, if life is truly to advance, it must be continually shaped according to such ideals. People who do not want to know anything of such ideals show nothing more than that in the evolution of humanity they are not to be counted upon. So may the good God grant them rain and sunshine at the right time and, if possible, food and drink and a good digestion also, and, if it can be done, good thoughts, too, from time to time!” So says Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and with justice. It is, after all, mankind's ideals that find realization in the world, although other forces and other impulses work together with them; the ideals do not always work directly, but indirectly.

Through the influence of Henry VIII, however, many charges were brought against Thomas More, and he was executed. It is precisely in such an execution and in the creation of the English Church, that we can see two events that must be observed more closely if we wish to know them in their deeper meaning. One can understand why this particular evolution took the course it did only when one considers outstanding individuals who appeared in the years following the time of Henry VIII and his activities.

Let us first consider the fact that a religious body was created in order to bring about a divorce. As already stated, that need not have any particular consequences for the individual if he be religiously inclined. He can find his salvation, and many have, even within a church so founded. But with regard to the religious question in historical evolution since that time, we see, in fact, that through this external creation of a religious communion something quite extraordinary has been brought about. In order to understand this, we must note what has proceeded by way of spiritual impulse from the civilization into which this religious body has been placed. Viewing matters objectively, we must be clear that after the spiritual influences coming from the southwest began to decline, cultural influences coming from England continually increased. The influence of English spiritual culture became ever stronger, first in the West and then on the entire European continent. If one wishes to speak of the strongest influences working in a spiritual sense in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe, one must naturally have in mind the impulses proceeding from England. Certain people appear within English civilization who are inspired by this cultural impulse; persons also appear in France in whom these cultural impulses live.

There arose in England, for example, the extraordinarily influential philosopher, Locke. Today, it is true that not many people know anything about him, but the influences of such men nevertheless go through thousands of cultural channels unknown to external life. Locke had an immense influence on Voltaire, who influenced European thinking greatly. This influence goes back to Locke. How much has directly come to pass under what we may call the Locke-Voltaire influence! How many thoughts would not have spread over Europe if this Locke-Voltaire influence had never existed. What a different part political and social life in Europe would have played if the European soul had not been fed such thoughts. In France, for instance, we see these same impulses live on in the immensely influential Montesquieu. If we then look to wider intellectual influences on the continent, we see how through Hume, and later on through Darwin, human thinking is revolutionized. Again we see, as through Locke and Voltaire, so also through Hume and Darwin, that an immense influence is exercised. And there is Karl Marx, the founder of modern socialism, whose influence cannot as yet be evaluated by the self-styled “cultivated” people because it exists so widely. When Marx began to study and to write his fundamental work, Capital, he went to England. To be sure, Hegelism lived in Marx, but a Hegelism colored by Darwinism. One who studies the constitutions of the different European countries in the nineteenth century and their constitutional conflicts, will realize how profound was the influence of the cultural impulses coming from England. All this can only be indicated here.

If, however, we now turn our minds to the outstanding personalities who give Europe a certain configuration, we find in all of them a specially developed, abstract rationalistic thinking that makes an excellent instrument for research in, and for learning to know and deal with, the physical world. In Locke and Voltaire, in Montesquieu and also in Hume and Darwin, in everything dependent on them, a faculty lives that is transmitted to European thinking and feeling, so that even those who know nothing of it are still deeply influenced by it. This faculty creates a kind of thinking that is peculiarly fitted to understand and deal with the materialistic relations of the world, and to create social orders that arise from materialistic connections.

Now we see a certain concomitant phenomenon that appears in all these thinkers and is emphatically not without significance. They are keen and at times brilliant thinkers, penetrating minds with respect to material matters, but they are all thinkers who take a peculiar stand toward man's religious evolution, definitely refusing to apply thinking to the sphere of religious life. Not one of them—neither Locke, nor Hume, nor Darwin, nor Montesquieu—is willing to apply thinking to what he considers to be concerns of the religious life. But neither do they dispute this religious life. They accept it in the form in which it has developed historically. To them, it was commonly accepted that one is Catholic or Protestant just as one is French or English. This means that one accepts it as something that is there; one does not criticize; one adapts oneself to it and lets it stand. But neither does one allow the subject to be broached in thought. Such energetic and keen thinkers as Hume and Montesquieu feel that the religious life should stand and be recognized in external life, but the discrimination that one employs to the full in material things should not be allowed to enter into matters concerning the spiritual sphere.

This is a direct historical consequence of the callous organization of the religion of England by Henry VIII. That is the inner meaning of the matter. This mood, which is poured out over countless European impulses, is dependent on the fact that a certain religious body was created through a man's desire for a divorce—a matter of indifference to everyone. A matter of indifference, a man's wish to be divorced, stands at the source and results in a mood in which one does not concern oneself with these affairs, but rather lets them stand for generations, centuries. This way of thinking about religious matters could only have come about through such an historical event standing at the beginning. Only when one views things from the inner aspect does one find the right connection.

Now for the other event, the execution of Thomas More that took place in 1535. Here, for various reasons, a man is executed who sees into the spiritual world, although in distorted, caricatured form. He is executed. I cannot go into the inner reasons today, but externally it is because he does not join those who take the Oath of Supremacy; that is, does not recognize the separation of the English Church from Rome. Such a man goes over into the spiritual world. The soul has thus left the physical body after having already had, while still in that physical body, deep insight into the spiritual world. This remains; it lives on further in the world as cause. What Thomas More had perceived of the spiritual world while in the physical body remains so closely united with him when he passes with his soul through the gate of death, that he can, through this circumstance, exercise a great influence upon the age that follows.

So these two streams work together. An external one, which I have described, that is apathetic toward the religious life, though full of an apparently orthodox recognition of it, and a soul that has grown powerful because, in the physical body, it has experienced the super-sensible and allows it to radiate out over succeeding evolution. It streamed into the other spiritual atmosphere I described about eight days ago (Lecture VI). The spiritual atmosphere from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries is, as we know, also permeated by the impulses that have arisen through the persecution and death of the Knights Templar.

Founded in 1119, the Knights Templar were first active in the Crusades. Then they spread out toward Europe, and through special circumstances many of them became victims of the avarice, the gold avarice, of Philip the Fair. I have described this to you, as I said, but let us see once more how these Knights were sacrificed. Let us turn our attention again to what we presented from the actual course of events, namely, that countless numbers of these Knights were tortured after having previously experienced a Christian initiation through the principles and impulses living in the Templar Order. Let calumnies assert what infamous things they please of the Knights Templar; that these were not true can be proved from history. Exceptions, of course, exist everywhere, but in essence the calumnies are not true. What was inculcated in the Templar Order was this, that each member of the Order should realize that his blood did not belong to himself but to the task of familiarizing Western mankind—and to some extent Eastern also—with the Mystery of Golgotha in the spiritual sense. What streamed to the Knights from this devotional mood toward the Mystery of Golgotha changed gradually into a kind of Christian initiation, so that a great number of them could actually see to some extent into the spiritual worlds. Through this power, however, they were exposed to quite special danger when their consciousness was dulled through the agonies of torture, as happened in hundreds of cases. Their consciousness was darkened through the torture; their day-consciousness was crippled and a subconscious was aroused. All the temptations to which one who strives toward such spiritual heights is exposed came to expression on the rack. So it came to pass as Philip the Fair had foreseen; in his own way he had a touch of genius, inspired by avarice and covetousness, as I have described. It came to pass that a great number of Knights admitted, in a subconscious state, not only the extraordinary charge of denying the Christian religion and the Mystery of Golgotha, an admission which, arising from their temptations, was understandable, but they also accused themselves of other crimes. A certain number afterward recanted when they were released from the rack and consciousness returned; others could not recant. In short, fifty-four of them met with a cruel death, including the Head of the Order, Jacques de Molay.

Souls thus passed through the gates of death who had not only looked into the progressive spiritual world in waking consciousness by having attained a Christian initiation and beheld the secrets of the Mystery of Golgotha, but who also knew something of evolution and could work into it by having learned to know those forces opposing human effort that spoke through their lips on the rack when they, in innocence, had accused themselves of crimes. These horrible and terrible experiences assumed an appropriate form when these souls were in the spiritual world. I have already related how, after these souls had gone through the gate of death, impulses streamed from them that would then work further in the super-sensible impulses from the fifteenth century on into our time. The inspiration living in different gifted personalities comes, if one observes its real cause, from the fact that souls were carried up into the spiritual world having first experienced what Philip the Fair had subjected them to before they died.

This has all been a preparation for the time in which we are now living. These causes, and many others, would first have to be described if one would fully understand among what thoughts a man born since then has been placed. What flowed out of the events I have recorded lived in everything; one can prove that by actual history. I will only refer to one instance, but I could point to many. In the age of which I speak, a most powerfully effective educational book, Robinson Crusoe, was produced. One need only think how the ideas living in this book become familiar to the tenderest, earliest age of childhood. This book has not only gone through hundreds of editions in its original form and has been translated into all languages, but it has been recreated in every possible tongue. There are not only Bohemian, Hungarian, Spanish, French, German, Polish and Russian, but also other translations. In all these languages there are new creations in the spirit of Defoe. What lives in it, how souls are moulded by it, is generally never considered at all. All of Robinson Crusoe would have been unthinkable if it had not been preceded by those events I have related.

All these things have their inner connections, and this is true down to the actual details. Today, a man walks from one street in the city to another on some business or other. At most, if he thinks of it at all, he only thinks of the immediate cause. The fact that he would not take this walk nor have this business if everything I have just mentioned had not come about before, is not considered at all. In general, inner connections are but little observed. I have often called attention to how seldom people are inclined to turn their minds to inner connections. For instance, a man who looks at things quite externally may perhaps sometimes wonder who built the St. Gotthard tunnel. Tunnels are not built nowadays unless certain calculations are made in differential calculus. The St. Gotthard was not only built by those who laid stone on stone, but without the calculus it would not have been built at all. The solitary thinker, Leibniz, devised the differential calculus; thus, he was a co-builder. All this is part of it. I am only saying this for the purposes of elucidation; the example in itself does not tell us much; it is only to make things clear.

Our age stands under all these influences—the thinking and the entire configuration of our age—that I have sought to characterize. Now one definite peculiarity is to be emphasized for this age. According to prevalent belief, it stands, not only with both feet, but also with hands and, in fact, the whole body, within reality. It is the pride, not to say the arrogance, of our age that people believe they are standing deep in reality. They are immensely proud of it. But as a later age will show, as regards thought, our age is by no means rooted in reality; it is far less so than was an earlier age. What will a later age teach? Well, it will naturally not deny that our age has produced great thoughts and achievements. The Copernican world conception makes its appearance; Galileo creates modern physics; Kepler modern astronomy; we have galvanic, voltaic electricity appearing, with all that grows out of it; we have the steam age, and so forth. Thus, the thoughts that have been formed in this age are striking; they are grand. Over and over again people emphasize, though they may not express it in the same words, how conscious they are that we have made such fine progress, in contrast to the silly superstitions of people in earlier ages. In short, men are entirely convinced that Copernicus, for example, finally established the fact that the sun stands still, or perhaps has a movement of its own. In any case, it does not move around the earth every twenty-four hours, but the earth itself revolves, and also moves around the sun in the course of the year, etc. These things are well known. They are understood today as if man had finally cast off the ancient superstition of the Ptolemaic world conception and had set truth in place of the former error. Earlier humanity believed all sorts of stupid things because it trusted its senses. The men of more recent times, however, have at last arrived at seeing that the sun is in the center and Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn move in ellipses around it—Uranus and Neptune being further out. At last, one knows this. At last, one knows that in the course of the year the earth revolves around the sun, and so on. In fact, one has made wonderfully fine progress!

We are no longer far distant from the time in which we will understand what all this means. The true reality was of no consequence at all to the spiritual powers upon whom Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo were dependent; it was rather to bring definite faculties into the human head. What matters is the education of mankind through the education of the earth.

Thus, mankind has to be obliged for a time to think in this way about the cosmos in order to be educated in a certain way through thoughts. It is with this that the wise guidance of the world is concerned. If one should begin to look at the matter spiritually—not merely externally, mathematically or physically as Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo and especially their successors have done—one would come to yet other remarkable things. One will say, “Good, now we have a physical cosmic system; when we study it we must, as we know, calculate it and treat it geometrically as is taught today in practically every elementary school.” But spiritually, things are otherwise. You see, to an observer able to behold the spiritual, the following is presented, for example. He comes upon a certain movement of the sun; it takes this course.

Seen from a certain point of view, it is the sun's course; but when I draw this line here and bring the sun back again, the point does not fall exactly on the earlier point; it lies somewhat above it. This is a real movement of the sun that can be perceived spiritually.

But the earth, too, makes certain movements in the course of a year. Observed spiritually, it describes this orbit.

You must picture it in three dimensions. If you picture the orbit of the sun lying in a plane, then the orbit of the earth lies in this plane—seen, that is, from the side. If here is the orbit of the sun drawn as a line the earth orbit is so:

But, as you see from this, there is a point in the cosmos, where the sun and the earth are both together, but at not the same time. When the sun is there on its path, or rather has left this point by a quarter of its path, the earth begins its movement at the point that the sun has left. After a certain time we are, in fact, on the spot in cosmic space where the sun was; we follow the sun's path, cross it and are, at a certain time of the year, at the very place where the sun has been. Then the sun and earth go forward and after a time the earth is again practically at the spot where the sun was. Together with the earth, we actually pass in space through the spot where the sun has been. We sail through it. We not only sail through it, however, because the sun leaves behind results of its activity in the space it has traversed, so that the earth enters into the imprints left behind by the sun and crosses them—really crosses them. Space has living content, spiritual content, and the earth enters and crosses, sails through, what the sun has called forth.

You see, this is how the matter looks spiritually. Spiritually one must draw lines like these when one thinks of the orbits of earth and sun. There is a similar relationship with the other planets, too. At certain times we are approximately at the places where Mercury was, etc. The planets carry out quite complicated movements in universal space, and they enter into the imprints of each other. We have now the external picture, the purely geometrical picture. The other picture will be added, and only from a combination of the two will a later humanity attain the concept it must have.

You see, I am now telling you these things, but imagine for a moment that you relate what I have said to an astronomer. He would say, “Someone has lost his senses, has gone mad, to present such things. They are out of the question.” But it was not so long ago that the members of a famous Academy of Science also said, when meteoric stones that fall to the earth were spoken of, “That is a senseless statement!” This happened not at all long ago; many similar things could be recorded. Today, in orthodox physics, one recognizes the so-called law of the conservation of energy as something fundamental. The first to speak of it, Julius Robert Mayer, was confined in a madhouse. One could, of course, relate hundreds of such stories. But the point is this, that you see from what I have told you—I have given it only as an example—how the nature of thinking in astronomical fields, that wonderfully effective thinking from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, has had rather the faculty of bringing men away from reality. Men do not at all stand, as they believe, with both feet, both hands and the body in the real, but they give themselves up to the most fantastic ideas and imagine these to be reality. Men had to be educated like this in these centuries. They had to give themselves up to fantastic ideas about outer nature so that they might not be merged in the external events in the old way, but that, by virtue of these fantastic ideas, they might all the more obtain a feeling of the inner ego. This feeling has been greatly intensified in men during the last few centuries precisely through these fantastic materialistic ideas. That had to happen; the feeling of the ego had at some time to be engendered in the development of mankind's history. I have chosen an astronomical example, but it could be shown in every sphere how human evolution followed a course in the centuries just past that drew man away from true reality.

Now you will ask if men have known of such things as this, that together with the earth we enter the tracks of the sun, that twice in the year we are where the sun has been operative in space. Have men ever known anything of this? Yes, they have known it before, and it can even be easily proved historically that they knew it. Imagine that a man knows, really knows, that at a certain time in the course of the year the earth on its path so crosses the sun's path that the earth enters into the tracks of the sun and follows it. The reverse comes about when the earth turns back again toward the other side. The first time it is as if the sun descended below the earth's path, and the second, as if the sun ascended and the earth's path were underneath. The first time, the human being moves up with the earth above the sun's path, finding the traces of the sun by ascending; the other time, he moves down and passes under the traces of the sun. What can the man say who knows this and who also possesses the means to confirm it? He is able to know that now, at the point where the earth's path crosses the sun's path, he is passing through the place where the sun has stood. What could such a man say? He could say that this is a specially important time for us because we are at the place where the sun has been. This is expressed in the spiritual atmosphere and one meets the picture that the sun has left behind in the ether. Here, at this point in time, one establishes a festival! The ancient mysteries celebrated two such festivals of which but faint memories still remain in those of today, though the connection is no longer known. Please do not understand this as if I wished to give the actual point in time, but in the ancient mysteries it was known when we cross the sun's path and find in the ether the sun's content that has remained behind. In the time of such knowledge it was right for special festivals to be established at definite times of the year.

With the knowledge of today men are separated from these connections. Nor will they respect these things much since they say, “Well, what good is it to me if I do know that I am on the same spot that the sun was on? Of what use is that to me?” That is how modern man would speak. But the ancient Egyptians, for instance, did not speak in that way in their mysteries. On the fifteenth day of that month when they knew that the earth is passing through the point the sun has left, they interrogated the priestess of Isis, who had been prepared in the sanctity of the Temple. They knew that through the special spiritual preparation that this priestess could undertake, she could bring to light what can be experienced when one passes through the aura of the sun, and the priests might write down what they heard from the priestess, for example, “Rainy year, sow seeds at such and such a time...” In short, they were purely practical; that is, things that were important for guiding life in the succeeding year were noted. They lived according to these directions because they knew how the heavens work down into the earth.

This is what they investigated. It was already a time of decline when this science was betrayed by the opponents of the Osiris-Isis cult. The only way they could protect themselves—this external event has again a connection with the Osiris-Isis saga—was henceforth to impart at fourteen different temples what earlier, in ancient Egypt, had been the secret of only one temple. This was the art of living with the course of the year and investigating spiritually the influences on the earth.

The humanity of our age had to break away completely from such a relationship with the heavens because it had the task of finding the path away from the ambiguity of impulses and instincts, and of forming the pure ego. The ego did not act strongly at a time in which men made themselves mere instruments of heavenly activities, nor did it work strongly in the ages when the priest taught his immediate pupils, “There stands the Pleiades. When they are there, we must begin the days of Isis; then we must see that what we learn prophetically is the best way to proceed in the coming year.” They placed themselves as completely within the course of the universe as a cell is incorporated into our organism. Humanity could only become individual, personal, if in a definite epoch it were torn out of this connection, if all these human faculties of spirit that mediated such connections passed into a state of sleep. Thus a sleep regarding the spiritual was prepared, and mankind has slept most deeply in respect of spiritual matters ever since the fourteenth century. It has been a sleeping culture but now the time has come for an awakening.

Do not say, “I wish to criticize Creation and the Creator; why has he let me sleep?” This means putting oneself with one's intellect above cosmic wisdom. During the course of the earth stage, human evolution must go through its sleep periods just as much as the individual man must sleep in the course of twenty-four hours. Spiritual faculties, which is to say, a concept of the world in the sense of these faculties, slept deeply in the centuries indicated. On the other hand, man dreamt of geometrical lines in space; he dreamed the dream of the Copernican, the Galilean and the Darwinian world conception. Man needed this dream, this training, even the illusion of experiencing a special reality through the dream. Ultimately, it is the same with our sleep. In the evening we are tired and we go to sleep. Then we wake up refreshed with an inner feeling of reality. If humanity had developed the ancient spiritual faculties further, if these had not slept, men would have been tired out and would not have reached reality. They came to reality precisely by the fact that in their thinking and reflecting, and also in their social organizations, they had left reality. Because these capacities slept, past centuries have brought renewal and refreshment to mankind. In a certain respect, humanity has even become freer than it was in earlier centuries, and it will have to regain spiritual knowledge—and later spiritual power—in order to progress even further on the path of freedom.

Such things can be known! But again today's true materialist will say, “Well, and what if they are known!” I have, in fact, found materialists who say, “Good gracious, why must I think about the life of the soul after death. I shall see all that when death has arrived. Why need I bother now in the physical body about this life after death?” This seems to be quite plausible, this idea that it would be really unnecessary, here in the physical body, to bother about the super-sensible life. But this is not the case; it was so only in an earlier age when man was not yet ready for freedom. Today, the position is such that certain thoughts can only be grasped by the super-sensible hierarchies if men grasp them here in earthly existence. The gods only think certain thoughts if they live in human bodies. These thoughts must be carried into the spiritual world through the gate of death; only then can they be active. It is truly so; one who will not think about the super-sensible is like a farmer who says to his neighbor, “You are a silly fellow. Every year you put by a certain part of the grain for seed. I only became a farmer this year, but I am not as foolish as you. I shall grind it all, eat it and calmly wait. The grain will certainly grow again by itself.” Such a farmer resembles a person who is not willing to hear that, as well as consuming what we experience in the world, we must also lay aside certain seeds in the soul to guide it along its path in the spiritual worlds. Inasmuch as we pursue the science of the spirit, we are creating the right seeds for the present time. And the science of the spirit must be pursued.

You see from this that our time can become ever more clear to us through the spiritual understanding of its fundamental character and nature. This deepening of our inner faculties that must be striven for in order to come to a more real astronomy, for example, must also be striven for in social thinking. Regarding our thinking, we—or at any rate, most of us—have become as much asleep and dreaming in outer lives as we are in regards to astronomy, for instance, which I chose for an example. In the centuries gone by, and right up to today, very much has become veiled from humanity. Nor will what was present earlier appear again—investigations, for instance, through a priestess of Isis or through the Celtic druidical mysteries in which a priestess was similarly employed. To seek in that way to know about the action here of the spiritual will not recur; much more inward ways will be found, ways much more suited to future humanity. But they must be found.

Now, connect this with something I have already indicated yesterday. Remember that the servant of Osiris prepared the priestess of Isis before the fifteenth of a certain month of the year in order to obtain certain prophetic utterances from her when she traversed the sun-space with her soul. What happened through this Isis cult? What occurred was that actual time—not the abstract time of which we dream today, but actual time, was investigated. The time of year, the point of time, was, in fact, a specially important point, and the point on the return path was again important. How time works—concrete, real time—was expressed through the content of what the Isis priestess had to say. Then, might not the inscription on the Isis image read, “I am the Past, the Present and the Future?” this is the order of time. But only when such prophetic research was penetrated with a noble mood resembling the mood of virginity, when coming near to Isis was symbolized by the fact that Isis wore a veil, only then could one bring forth what was necessary. The whole must be steeped in holiness, in the atmosphere of a sacrifice.

Do not imagine that wisdom was not connected with the practical in those ancient times. What was called wisdom was fully united with practical things. Everything had a practical direction. One investigated the voice of the gods in the Egyptian temples, but the investigations were made in order to know in the right way which days or hours were most suited for sowing. Everything was connected with practical life. One investigated the action of the gods in practical life, and was conscious of how they penetrate it. Indeed, it was necessary that this temple service should be kept holy. What evils could have been committed if it had not been treated as sacred! It must never be asserted that these things that relate to past ages will arise again in the same way. They will arise quite differently. But a knowledge will again be won for humanity that will be directly fitted for entering practical life. A spiritual knowledge—but just because it is spiritual, a practical knowledge—will again appear in which the things around us will be fully mastered. Neither an Isis nor an Osiris cult will appear. Something else will arise that will bear the traces of our having passed through the centuries since the Isis and Osiris cult existed. It will show that the new science of the spirit must be sought with full consciousness and in freedom. But the things that have taken place must be tested a little in their reality. History must be different from what it so often is today, when people merely make researches in documents and records.

One comes, however, upon all sorts of peculiar explanations, like the one I have already given regarding Isis. When there stood as inscription on her image, “I am the Past, the Present and the Future,” one who was initiated knew that this referred to concrete reality and that the veil only expressed a certain attitude of mind. Today, people say of the veiled Isis image at Sais that the veil means that one cannot penetrate behind wisdom, that one will never know who Isis is. But when the inscription, “I am the Past, the Present, and the Future, no mortal hath yet lifted my veil,” stands there, one must explain it as meaning that the veil is not lifted because one only approaches its holiness when veiled as a nun, not because something lies behind it that one cannot know and that cannot be communicated to anyone. If the explanation that people usually give were correct, then one must really compare it with the trivial statement, “I am called Hans Muller, but you will never know my name.” She says indeed who she is—“I am the Past, the Present and the Future”—and this implies that it is for her to impart the Mysteries of Time, while what flows out of Time into Space is to be mediated by the Osiris priest. He is to carry the temporal into the spatial and is to receive in thought what comes from the soul, that is, the Isis revelation that is embedded in the universe and its course.

Today, the science of the spirit is still largely held to be foolish. But when it has really been understood, it will be seen to contain a science much more real than the scientific dream of the past centuries. Quite different practical operations, practical mastery of the outer world, will come to light when the time arrives. It is not yet time today; mankind must first have knowledge and know in the spirit of spiritual science before it can act in the spirit of the science of the spirit.

I wanted to go into this in order to point out precisely at this time how it is only through a true understanding of what has happened that an understanding can also be reached of what has to happen. In the future, humanity must be guided beyond many things with whose karma mankind is heavily burdened in our present grievous and painful times. Today mankind is burdened with the karma of the dream life of the past centuries. This mystery must first be grasped on its depths; then it will be easier to understand our sorrowful present and also to understand how humanity must gradually prepare a different karma for the future.

My dear friends, in the lectures which have been held here for some weeks I have endeavoured to show you some of the things which have lived in human evolution—certain things connected with various inner impulses which have entered into the modern development of humanity. We have had to go very far back to find the origin of these impulses. We have sought to understand how, from out of the Atlantean civilisation, there flowed the relics of an ancient Atlantean Mystery magic. We have shewn how, in a state of decadence, this Atlantean civilisation still lived on amongst those peoples who were re-discovered in Europe through the re-discovery of America. We then sought to study the relics of another branch of Atlantean magic which sent its rays and streams from Asia throughout Europe. And so, we have seen coming from Atlantis a co-operation in a certain sense between the Eastern and Western pole. From out of these impulses which have remained over from Atlantis, we then sought to deepen ourselves concerning the nature of the Graeco-Roman epoch, which as we know, was a copy to a certain extent, of Atlantean civilisation, though of course on a higher stage. And then we tried to understand the two poles of the IVth Post Atlantean Period. That is, the pole of Greece and the pole of Rome. We then attempted to follow at least partially, the various impulses which were further active in our European life of civilisation. We have especially considered that impulse which came into the spiritual stream of Europe through the fact that the Templars had to undergo a certain fate, and that this fate of the Templars which works so powerfully, so deeply on our own souls, evokes spiritual forces into existence which have continued to work on in a spiritual way; inspiring, impelling, initiating all of those things which have contributed to the external path of the history of the peoples of Europe. And then we have continued to trace how these impulses pass over into a recent material. And in the last lecture, we saw at the end of the 18th century, it gives a peculiar colouring to those ideas which at that time confused the world, the ideas of Brotherhood, Freedom and Equality. Many such impulses as have been born in the course of centuries and flowed into European development could be characterised, but that must be left over to a later time.

I should now like to characterise, through certain significant impulses, the path of our own European life of civilisation, because it is essential that through a Spiritual Scientific observation one should learn to know more and more thoroughly the peculiarities of our own age, the age in which we are standing to-day. It is important for us to know how our own time is determined by that special spiritual structure of the 19th century. In this 19th century all those impulses of which I have spoken to you have been more or less veiled, covered up to a certain extent. I have often drawn your attention to the fact that, as regards the evolution of modern civilisation, the middle of the 19th century was a most important time;—it was that time in which in the 5th Post Atlantean civilisation something was to become especially active something which man knows and learns to produce through his intellect in so far as that is bound to the physical plane. We must rake this quite clear to ourselves. With the 5th Post Atlantean civilisation something of the nature of forces comes into the Post Atlantean development which was absolutely different from what occurred in the Graeco-Latin age in the 4th Post Atlantean epoch. Naturally the Greeks had intellect (verstand) but that was of quite a different nature from our own - our own intellect,—which has gone through the 5th Post Atlantean epoch and which, in the middle of the 19th century, really entered upon a quite definite crisis. That intellect which was developed in ancient Greece, and which, for instance, radiated in all that the Greeks created artistically, which radiated in all that the Greeks created in their State arrangements (which were not really State arrangements at all),—that intellect which worked through the Philosophy of Plato and Aristotle, that intellect which then was drawn over into the political being of Rome was utterly different from the intellect which arose in our own 5th Post Atlantean epoch. One can even prove this philosophically, as I have attempted to do in the first volume of my “Riddles of Philosophy.” With the Greeks, their ideas were really so existing that they perceived them just as we to-day can see colours, hear sounds, and have sense perceptions: so they could experience ideas. Now with our modern humanity the intellect is separated from outer perception and it works in the inner being of man; but it works in such a way as it must do when it is to be activated through the brain or, in general, through the physical organism. This has gradually brought about a certain state of affairs:—and please bear in mind, that by reason of the whole meaning of our civilisation, it had to be so. The tendency was gradually brought about in the 15th century, through this intellectual development, of permeating human life more and more with purely materialistic cognition, and practical life with the principle of mere utility, Utilitarianism. We have gradually seen with what necessity these things developed, how in the civilisation of the West of Europe certain impulses arose, and in connection with these impulses questions were put in the sphere of cognition. We have seen how these questions differed from others which arose, for instance, in the East of Europe. We have seen, for instance, how the West, through a long preparation was driven in the sphere of knowledge and in the practical sphere of life, to urge the spirit into a configuration which gradually put certain questions above all else. We have seen how in the West there gradually rose the tendency to study what I must call the affinity of all beings; and, when it comes to man, of studying what relates to the Birth of man and to Heredity. One can best understand Western civilisation (when it is striving for cognition) if one knows that these questions concerning the affinity of beings, and of Birth and Heredity, were dominant in the life of the West. From this there arose in the Western world, in their science of chemistry and physics, the seeking of the affinity of different forces of Nature which were regarded as modifications of one particular force of Nature. This tendency then extended to other spheres; in the sphere of Biology it was the affinity of various animals and plants which was investigated; and out of all of this man himself was explained—man, as he was thought to have developed, from a purely animal existence. One must say: To understand the birth of man in its affinity with other creatures on the Earth, was the culmination of these questions in the West.

The Eastern sphere on the other hand, sought in the realm of knowledge other questions: “What is Evil? What is the meaning of suffering in the world?” Never so much as in the East of Europe was there so much thinking concerning Evil and Sin. Of course, in the other spheres this was also the case, but nowhere with the same intensity and with the same genius as in the East. All the literary production of the East stands under the influence of the question: “What is Evil?” And the pains which in the West we applied to the problems of Affinity, were in the East applied to the investigation of Sin. The same thought which was employed in the West to investigate the natural connections of physical man as he passes through birth into existence, was applied in the East to understand Death. That same effort is employed in the East to understand Death. “How does man maintain himself aright as a soul, as he passes through Death? What does Death signify in the whole connection of Life?” That announced itself as a question in the East, one just as important for the East as the question concerning the natural Affinity of Man and the Birth of Man is for the West. Just as in the Western World we can prove that these problems of Birth and Happiness lay at the basis of their thinking, so we can show that in the Eastern world, (for example, in Solovieff) we can say that all his thinking is directed to the question of Evil and of Death. The difference is only this—that in the West one has already travelled a long way in one's investigation, whereas in the East they are still more or less at the beginning. Then, as you know, all these things passed over into the sphere of practical life, into the arranging of social life,—those ideas which we seek to realise in everyday life,—and if to a certain extent we investigate the most intimate impulses in the life of the West, we see that we can refer these to the thoughts concerning the Happiness of Man.

Please just bear in mind how this thinking concerning the Happiness of Man begins with the “Utopia” of Lord Bacon and the “Utopia” of Sir Thomas More, and we see how this same trend of thought has developed into the most diverse social programmes which have found expression in the West. Of course, social programmes have also come to expression in the East, but one can easily prove that in the East they spring from quite different impulses than have the social programmes of the West. All these, as well as the idea of Freedom which came to us from the French Revolution, and all the social ideas of the 19th century, all have as their aim the Happiness of Man. In the East we find, (of course still in the beginning) how there, instead of Happiness it is Redemption which is sought for—the inner freeing of the soul of man. There the longing exists to know how the soul of man can develop towards the overcoming of life. One understands this extraordinary interplay of impulses if one keeps this in mind. And we have seen how even a consideration of a somewhat higher kind, of the Lives written of Christ Jesus, has received its colouring from what lies in these same impulses and tendencies. In the West, we have that most characteristic and clever observer of the Life of Jesus—Jesus considered only as Jesus—just as one can consider any other human being, born from a certain race, a certain climate, or a certain nation. I refer to the “Life of Jesus” by Ernest Renan. Now in the East Jesus is little spoken of, and when one speaks of Jesus it is simply as a path along which one can come to the Christ. You find this very strongly in Solovieff.

Between these two, as I have told you, (and if one only has an eye for these things, a sense for what Goethe calls the UR-phenomenon, one knows how these three names are chosen)—between these two, Renan and Solovieff, there stands—a far more original and far clever man than the other two—David Frederick Strauss. Ernest Renan considers only the Jesus, Solovieff considers only the Christ; Ernest Renan transformed Jesus into a simple man, a human, one can almost say an “all too human” man Now with Solovieff this human element is completely lost. Man's gaze is directed into the spiritual world by Solovieff, when he considers the Christ; and he only speaks of moral, spiritual impulses. Everything with Solovieff is forced into a super earthly sphere. The Christ has nothing earthly, although He pours His effects into an earthly sphere. Between these two stands David Frederick Strauss. He does not deny Jesus—he admits that such a personality lives; but, just as Ernest Renan simply and solely considers Jesus as man, so to David Frederick Strauss, Jesus is only of significance in so far as on this Jesus for the first time is suspended the idea of the whole of humanity. Everything which man can long for or ever has longed for, from out of the Mysteries of all ages as the Idea of All-humanity, is attached to the Jesus of David Frederick Strauss. D. F. Strauss does not very much consider the earthly Life of Jesus only as a means whereby to show how in the age when Jesus appears, humanity had the longing to bring together all the myths which refer to the sum total of humanity, and to concentrate them on that Figure. And so, that which in Ernest Renan's Life is so full of colour, with D. F. Strauss becomes a kingdom of shadow, which only seeks to show how the Myths of Centuries all flow together. With D. F. Strauss Christ is not a figure cut off as with Solovieff, but is the idea of that which lives on throughout the whole of humanity—that Christ Who for thousands of years has poured Himself into humanity and developed through humanity. With D. F. Strauss, therefore we find only an idea of Jesus, united with an idea of Christ. With Ernest Renan, we have a personal and historical Jesus. With Solovieff we have a Christ Who is super-personal yet individual, but at the same time super-historic. He is super-personal yet individual, because He is a Being shut off, included in Himself, although at the same time He is an individual but transcending personality. Between these two stands D. F. Strauss, who has not to do with a vision,—a perception of the personal element working in Christ Jesus,—for this personal element is only, as it were, a point of support for all those myths streaming through humanity.

If one only keeps in mind this scheme obtained from a spiritual observation of the history of Europe, one can almost read straight off the various spiritual connections. You see, with Ernest Renan, a man who pre-eminently arose out of the Western civilisation, it is a question the whole time, of understanding how a certain country, a certain race could give birth to Christ Jesus. It is a question of the birth of Jesus. With Solovieff the question is especially: “What does Christ signify for human evolution? And how can Christ save what is born in man as a soul, how can He lead that again through the Gate of Death?”

And so, in the middle of the 19th century, as I have told you, that which lives in this evolution and which belongs especially to our 19th century, reached a certain crisis. At that time, the most extreme point was reached which one can strive for through physical, intellectual performance. In the course of the 19th century, the striving after happiness was gradually transformed into the striving for mere utility,—Utilitarianism. That is something which appears especially in the middle of the 19th century, both in the sphere of knowledge as also in the sphere of life:—the striving after mere utility. And that is something which especially disturbed those who understand the real eternal needs of the human soul, it disturbed them especially that the 19th century should bring forth a striving especially concentrated on the principle of Utilitarianism. Thus, we meet Materialism in the sphere of Knowledge, and Utilitarianism in the sphere of Practical Life. And those two things belong absolutely together.

Now I am not bringing forward these things in order to criticise them, but because they are necessary points of transition for humanity. Man had to go through this materialistic principle in the sphere of Knowledge, as he had to pass through the principle of Utilitarianism in the sphere of Practical Life. It was a question of how humanity should be led in the 19th century in order to pass in the right way through those necessary points of its development. We will therefore begin the consideration of these things this evening from a certain point of view, and then, on a later occasion I shall hope to enter into them more thoroughly.

Knowledge, especially that which in the West is, ae we know, concentrated on the phenomena of Birth and the question of Heredity, and this was placed in the service of Materialism, of Utilitarianism. Now let us make clear to ourselves what really happened in thought. As you know, Darwinism arose, which studied the problem of the Birth of Man, that is, the Origin of Man from a sequence of organisms; and Darwinism attempted to make popular certain quite definite views. We know also that something far more spiritual than Darwinism already stands in Goethe's “Theory of Evolution,” but Goethe's theory had for the time to remain more esoteric. And so, in the first place, the more coarse, materialistic form had to be taken up by humanity. We know too that in the last decades the most intimate pupils of Darwinism have attempted to undermine Darwinism itself in its materialistic colouring. But Darwinism, as it really entered the world of the I9th century, did not enter the world because the investigations of Nature, because science itself made it necessary—not even the natural scientists would maintain that. Oscar Hertwig, the best pupil of Haeckel says, that because human beings only wanted to keep in man the social and mercantile principles of utility during the I9th century, therefore they carried these principles over even into the external world. They simply wanted a reflection of their own thinking, and it was no external facts of nature which forced a Darwinistic view on humanity. So, it is no wonder that, on a closer investigation, one no longer finds these views substantiated. But, as human beings, we have come now to the principle of Utility.

Now Darwin also lived in a certain stream which strove after the principle of Happiness, the Happiness of Human beings, but a stream which was absolutely materialistic. Darwin came very near to that stream which belongs to the doctrine of Malthus. The teaching of Malthus proceeded from a certain definite view, a view that on the Earth in a certain way the means of life increases. That means the fruitfulness of the Earth can increase. But, side by side with this increase in the fruitfulness of the Earth the Malthusians also regarded the increase in the population of the Earth, in such a way as one is only able to regard it, if one does not take into consideration the idea of reincarnation. And they came to see that the fruitfulness of the earth—that is, the means of nourishment,—did not increase at the same rate as the increase in population. They thought: the increase in the nourishment runs its course according to the number [sequence] 1, 2, 3, 4, and so on which we call arithmetical progression; whereas the increase in population happens according to the numbers 1, 2, 4, 8 and so on, which as you know, is geometrical progression. The disciples of Malthus, on the basis of this view, developed the ideas which they thought they had to develop, keeping in mind the Happiness of humanity on the earth. All the time they had in front of them their calculated increase in population, and on the other side an increasing lack in the means of nourishment. From this proceeded the so-called Malthusian ideal—that is, the ideal of the `two children' system. It was said: Since nature has the tendency to impel men forward geometrically and only to impel the means of nourishment forward arithmetically, therefore the population must be restricted, which can be done through the two children system. Now, concerning this special application of the principle of Happiness in the whole stream of Materialism which one gets simply by studying the sequences of Birth according to a materialistic principle (which of course has blinded humanity), we need not speak further now, but Darwin started from the certainty of the principle that for all beings who live on the Earth, the means of nourishment increase in arithmetical progression, whereas the population increases in geometrical progression, And so for him there resulted a certain consequence. He said: If things transpire so the means of nourishment increasing at the rate of 1, 2, 3, 4 and so on, whereas the population increases at the rate of 1, 2, 4, 8, then there will be amongst the beings of the Earth an inevitable struggle for existence, and the struggle for existence must be a really operative principle. So, upon Malthusianism,—that means something which was meant absolutely for practical life,—Darwin based his system. Please bear in mind that Darwin did not derive his system from an observation of Nature, but from a theory. It was not an observation of Nature based on Knowledge which gave Darwin his impulse, but simply this principle of utility which said that by regulating the births so that the rate of birth did not grow greater than the rate in the increase of nourishment—one could thereby maintain a balance. Of course, it was thought that one could find the struggle for existence everywhere in Nature, and so the Darwinians said: All beings live immersed in a struggle for existence whereby the unfit are removed and the fit remain over. That means the Darwinian `survival of the fittest.' And so, you see, no cosmic principle full of wisdom is required, because now everything runs on by itself through the survival of the fittest. How suitable for the humanity of the I9th century to strip off everything of a spiritual nature and to live as far as possible only in material existence! One has no need to think of ideals if one lives only under the principle of the survival of the fittest. Nature can then go on entirely without ideals. As a matter of fact, one might even work against the course of Nature if one attempts to realise any ideals, because through one's ideals one might even cause an unfit individual to survive;—an individual who would go under in the struggle for existence!

My dear friends, that principle lived in the humanity of the 19th century everywhere, and was uttered more or less clearly. One lived under the impulse of thinking along these lines, even if one did not always say it quite so clearly. In short, a View of the World arose which sought to satisfy the humanity of the I9th century in this special manner. I just wanted to show you in this where lies the true impulse of Darwinism, because in the beautiful scientific Unions or Scientific Societies in general, people have sought to spread a materialistically coloured Darwinism as a kind of Gospel throughout humanity, without knowing what real impulse lay at the back of them. You see, humanity has a far greater preference for ideas which deceive it than for those which explain the truth. We could go on to bring forward many, many things which would simply be an expression of the fact that in the middle of the 19th century our civilisation and culture had reached a certain crisis, and it was a question for those who knew that certain things must never he quite killed,—things that they knew were necessary for the progress of humanity,—it was a question for those who knew, how, m such an age of mere utility, one could still maintain a spiritual civilisation and culture. And so, it was no accident but something founded in the purpose of the whole of human development, that when that principle of utility brought European development to a crisis in the middle of the 19th century, a personality such as Time. Blavatsky appeared who, through her natural endowment, was capable of revealing to humanity an extraordinary amount from out of the spiritual world itself. if anyone who is an astrologer wanted to consider this matter, he could undertake the following pretty experiment. He could take the point of time of the strongest utilitarian crisis of the 19th century, and for that point of time set up a horoscope. He would get just the same horoscope if he calculates the horoscope of Time. Blavatsky! This is simply a symptom that the self-evolving Cosmic Spirit in the course of time wanted to place a personality in the world through whose soul the opposite of Utilitarianism should come to expression. That principle of utility is absolutely established in Western civilisation, and against all this the Eastern civilisation has always held itself erect. Therefore, we see this peculiar play that, whereas in the West right into the sphere of Knowledge this Western principle is striven for out of a materialistic Darwinism, where a struggle for existence inserts itself into scientific observation,—that brutal struggle for existence against which attacks have always been made by the Russian investigators, whose research work you find collected by Kropotkin in his book, wherein he says that it is not a struggle for existence which lies at the basis of all animal species, but what he calls Mutual Aid. And so, about the middle of the 19th century we have Darwin's “Origin of Species” appearing in the West through the struggle for existence, and in the East, we have brought together by Kropotkin, the labour of a whole series of Russian scientists in his book “Mutual Aid,” which characterises the evolution of species by showing that just those species develop best of all who help each other mutually. Thus, on the one side as it were, at the one pole of the newer spiritual civilisation men are taught that those species develop best who suppress each other most of all, and then from the East, from the other pole, we are taught that those species develop best, the members of which are so endowed that they support each other mutually. That is extraordinarily interesting. One might say, that just as Darwin from out of the milieu of the West works m the middle of the 19th century, so from out of the aura of the East there worked that which was laid down in the soul of Blavatsky, but which could not come fully to development because the time was not yet at hand

We have seen how the West has come forward in a certain way already, whereas the East still stands at the beginning of this development. And so, in Blavatsky there appears a kind of beginning, the announcement of a soul-development. This soul-development of Blavatsky appeared entirely out of a Russian aura, in spite of the fact that her origin was not in itself entirely Russian. This soul, in her mediumship, was developed in a Russian way, but, in the course of her life she was completely led into Western civilisation,—she was so utterly led into Western civilisation that, as you know, she wrote her books in the language of the West; even as far West as America, this figure of Blavatsky was interwoven with the civilisation of our recent age. One might say that in Blavatsky the attempt was made to see how these two things could be intermingled. From all that I have told you concerning the evolution of Blavatsky, you will know that certain things were attempted through her, but, as you also know all meaning, all sense was snatched away from these very exempts. The works of Blavatsky are even chaotic, giving out great significant truths, hut all hopelessly mixed up with the most extraordinary rubbish. Now what, in reality, has proceeded from that impulse which was attempted with Blavatsky? With Blavatsky, the attempt was made to take occultism, which is a merely traditional occultism, and to propagate that. And what has followed from this, after Blavatsky's death right on to our own age? That you have experienced for yourselves right up to the humbug with Alcyone, and what is now developing from Mrs. Besant herself.

Thus, you have this example before you—an attempt to unite occultism with utilitarianism. Now in the way in which it was attempted there, it could not go on any further. Through that peculiar intermingling of something which was born in the East with what existed in the West, Blavatsky, whose soul was of a mediumistic nature, was intended to incorporate the spirituality of the West with the principle of Utilitarianism An Ahrimanic attempt was begun; and that is a terrible, a horrible, but powerful example of how an Ahrimanic attempt inserts itself, which tries, not only to bring out a certain knowledge concerning the supersensible world, but to place it entirely in the service of utility, of Utilitarianism. Blavatsky was surrounded by personalities who strove to keep her entirely in their own hands, but that never quite succeeded because she always slipped away from them in a certain way. But a certain number of men in the Western world endeavoured to get Blavatsky entirely into their own hands, and if that had succeeded, if the ideal of uniting spirituality with the principle of utility had been Utterly realised, we should experience something quite different to-day from that Bureau of Julia (Stead's Bureau); for the Bureau of Julia is only a posthumous, an unsuccessful attempt to amalgamate the principle of utility with spiritualism. What was attempted with Blavatsky was simply only a caricature, but if that had succeeded, we should have everywhere to-day Bureaus where, through mediums, we could get all kinds of information concerning what numbers would win in a lottery, what lady one should marry, whether one should sell out or keep for a time certain stocks and shares. And all that would be arranged from the information to be got from the spiritual world, through mediumship. The spiritual life would be placed utterly at the service of utility. The tragedy of Blavatsky consists in this,—that she was driven to and fro, between both poles, and therefore her life is of such an extraordinary psychological character. In Blavatsky's life, certain doors had to be opened through which one could look into the spiritual world, and so we see this extraordinary phenomenon appearing, of the withdrawal of the Individuality who used Blavatsky as a means of bringing revelations into the world concerning the spirit, while in its place appears that individuality whom Olcott characterises as the reincarnated Sea-Pirate of the 16th century, John King. John King, who then occupied himself in materialising tea cups and things of that kind, when they were especially needed! Into these things there plays a conflict between the principle of Utility and that principle which must work with more Utilitarianism in the course of the further development of humanity,—not by removing utility out of the world, but by directing it spiritually into the right paths. Because, my dear friends, you must not think that any spiritual civilisation of the future will ever be at enmity with life. The task of any true spiritual Science should be to bring Utilitarianism into the right waters.

But of this we shall attempt to speak in the next lecture. We shall then attempt to show the relation between the principle of utility of the most practical life of our present age, and that which should be a spiritual life within this life of practise. And therewith we shall contact one of the most important questions of the life of our present age.

Someone might say that the spiritual scientific reflections touching on the problem of vocation are among the least interesting. But such is not the case. This must be recognized, especially in our fifth post-Atlantean period, because in this period all human relationships will be essentially modified in comparison with those that prevailed in earlier periods of the earth. They will be so modified that man must, out of his own freedom, bring more with him than in earlier ages when his mission in the evolution of earth could be carried out almost instinctively; that is, when he received by inspiration the direction into which he had to go.

When we look back, for example, to the Egypto-Chaldean culture or to other cultures of earlier times, we shall find that the measure of freedom now given to man toward forging his external destiny—and this freedom will constantly increase—was not given him in earlier times. During the Egypto-Chaldean period, the fact that each person belonged to a certain class into which he or she was forced similar to the way an animal is forced into its species, though not so irrevocably, removed from the sphere of man's freedom much that at present belongs there. To be sure, there was a compensation for this limitation of freedom. Students of the external history of culture who are generally quite shortsighted in their thinking, usually assume that conditions in ancient times were such that those who were then guiding human affairs did so with the same impulses as the leading personalities today. But you must bear in mind that there were quite definite processes in the mysteries in ancient times whereby the guiding personalities acquainted themselves with what was willed by beings who guide life from regions outside the earth. I have told you that at certain times—we do not need now to review them—sacrificial priests carried out specified mystery rituals. As a result, certain personalities in the temples who were suited for such purposes were brought into contact with the universe, the cosmos, the extraterrestrial relationships. The consciousness of these specially qualified personalities was then inspired by beings who guided the earth from extraterrestrial regions, and what was learned from these beings determined the course of action.

I will show you through a hypothetical case how things took their course in earlier times. Suppose that today the Christmas festival was not more or less an external holiday for most people, but that in its form and time of occurrence men knew that our earth is especially fitted to receive ideas into its aura that cannot enter, for example, in summer. I have explained how the earth is awake during the winter and that Christmas time is one of the most brilliant points of this waking state. At that time the aura of the earth is permeated, interwoven, with thoughts. We may say that the earth is permeated, interwoven, with thoughts. We may say that the earth ponders the outer universe, just as we men, while in the waking state of day, reflect in our thought on what is around us. In summer the earth sleeps, so it is not possible then to find certain thoughts in it. In winter the earth is awake, and most wide awake at Christmas; then the earth's aura is interpenetrated with thoughts, and it is possible to read the will of the cosmos for our earthly events from them.

Now the sacrificial priests educated some individuals in such a way that they became sensitive and receptive to what was alive in the earth's aura. By putting these individuals into contact with the earthly thoughts that gave expression to the cosmic will, the sacrificial priests in the temples could learn it from them. What they learned was to them, in a sense, the will of heaven, and from this they were able to determine who should remain in a particularly worthy position and who should be taken into the mysteries in order that he might assume a leading position in ancient government or priestly life. Humanity has now outgrown such things and is exposed to chaos in this respect; we must simply recognize this fact. The transition from the ancient, quite definite conditions in which men learned from the will of the gods what was to happen here on earth has already occurred. During the fourth post-Atlantean period, in which the individual freed himself from the will of the cosmos, these ancient customs passed over into our present more chaotic conditions. Everything tends to be handed over more completely to man. Thus, it is all the more necessary that the will of the cosmos shall penetrate earthly conditions in another way.

It would require much time to make clear how in the third Egypto-Babylonian culture period something still lived and wove in earthly life from the various vocations of men—to use a term adapted to our present conditions—that was in large measure a reproduction of the will of the cosmos. This came about as described and was disappearing during the fourth post-Atlantean period. It has vanished completely in our fifth post-Atlantean period which began, as we know, approximately in the fifteenth century. If men would pay more attention today to what is happening and stop offering a fable convenue in place of history, they would be able to recognize, even from external conditions, how man's relation to his vocation has changed since the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They would recognize from present conditions how everything will increasingly become different in the future. But a sort of anarchy would inevitably overtake mankind if no one were to grasp these deeper connections and impart to the intellectual community ideas that take into account the modifications produced by the natural course of evolution. What it has been possible to establish even from external history regarding the emergence of what we might call the modern vocational life since the fifteenth century would cause astonishment to those who are at all able to observe human life. If they would submit to the influence of all that it is possible to recognize, they would find fault with themselves, in a way, for living in such a somnolent state and for having no conception of what is connected with evolving human destiny.

Last time, I called your attention to the fact that what constitutes real vocational life is by no means so insignificant for the cosmic complex as it may at first appear. I pointed out that, as men, we have gone successively through the Saturn evolution, where the first potentialities of the physical body were prepared; the Sun period, in which the etheric man was prepared; the Moon period, in which the astral man was prepared, and that we are now passing through the earth period in which the ego develops. But other periods are to follow: The Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan times. We may say that the earth is, in a way, the fourth stage of Saturn; likewise, Vulcan is the fourth stage of the earth. The earth is, in a sense, the Saturn of Vulcan. Just as on ancient Saturn processes occurred so intimately bound up with evolution that we owe the first potentiality of our physical body to them, which still continues to work in us, so must something happen on earth that will continue to work on in our evolution. On Vulcan it will attain a fourth stage of development, just as certain processes on Saturn have reached a fourth stage of development of earth. I pointed out that those processes that would correspond to Vulcan correspond to what we have on earth from the Saturn evolution; they represent, therefore, what works and lives in the various vocations that men take up on earth. As humans pursue vocational lives, something develops on earth within their vocational activity that will be the first potentiality for Vulcan, just as the Saturn activity was the first potentiality for our physical body.

If you add to this reflection the fact that vocational life has undergone a tremendous transformation since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period, you will understand how increasingly important it will become to conceive of it as a component of the entire world evolution provided you do this by means of those points of view that may be developed through spiritual science. Only by learning first to recognize the objective aspects of vocational life can we form suitable concepts regarding the karma of vocation. Of even greater interest will be the question where vocational life is going and what it will develop into from our age onward because from this we shall derive more clear-cut concepts than from today's conditions.

As can easily be recognized when we take a common sense look out into the world today, the future evolution of vocational life will consist in the ever increasing differentiation and specialization of vocations. It is not too intelligent for people to criticize the fact that, in recent times, vocations have become more specialized and that not so many centuries ago a person could find in his vocation the connections between what he was producing and what this meant for the world. He thereby would take an interest in the forming and shaping of his product because he saw clearly what his product became in life. In our times, this is no longer the case for much of humanity.

To take a radical example, a man is placed by his destiny in a factory where he perhaps makes, not a whole nail, but only part of one; this piece is then joined with another part by another man. Thus, the man who makes only part of the nail can develop no interest in how what he produced from morning until night takes its place in the relationships of life. If we compare the earlier handicraft life with the factory life of today, we are immediately aware of a radical difference between what is contemporary and what existed not too long ago. What has already come to pass in the various branches of human activity will continue to develop, and more specialization and differentiation of vocational life will necessarily occur. It is by no means especially intelligent for people to criticize this because it is a necessity in evolution; it simply will happen, and will happen more and more.

What sort of outlook is opened to us by this fact? Fundamentally, it is that men must increasingly lose interest, as we can readily imagine, in the work that occupies the greater part of their lives; in a way, they must surrender like automatons to their work in the world. But the most essential point is something else. Man's inner nature must obviously acquire the color of his outer work. Anyone who observes the historic development of humanity will certainly discover to what a large extent the men of the recent fifth post-Atlantean period have become reproductions of their vocations and how their vocational lives influence their soul lives, specializing them. This does not apply to the majority of those who live today within our Anthroposophical Society, however. They are often in the fortunate position of having detached themselves from the interconnections of life. In the fortunate position? I might just as well say in the unfortunate position! This is good fortune often only for subjective egoistic feeling. For the world, it is often bad fortune because the world will demand increasingly of men that they excel in special fields and become specialists.

But what must happen in addition to this? Their specialization will be a necessary by-product of world evolution, and this question will soon become one of the weightiest of family problems; anyone who wishes to educate children will have to understand it. To place oneself rationally within the course of evolution then will depend altogether upon an understanding of the question: How shall I place my child into the evolution of humanity? What is still possible in many cases today, even though it is only a residue left over from ancient times that people routinely cling to, will soon prove to be empty phrases; that is, the fine manner of speaking so much admired today, according to which children must be allowed to become what corresponds to their observed talents. This will soon prove to be an empty phrase. In the first place, people will see that those who are born from now on will give indications of their previous incarnations in a more complex way than was the case with people in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. They will show complex potentialities that no one would have dreamed of before since these potentialities were far simpler in earlier times. Those who consider themselves especially clever in testing the potentialities of grown children to determine whether or not they are fitted for this or that vocation may learn that the insights derived from these tests are nothing but their own fantastic imaginations.

In the near future, however, life will be so complicated that the word profession will take on an entirely different meaning. Today we still often associate something quite inward with the word, calling it “vocation,” although for most people their vocations do not at all represent anything inward. We conceive vocation (calling) as something toward which a person is called by his inner qualities. However, if we would question people about their calling, especially in our cities, many would say, “I am in my profession because I am convinced this is the only one that corresponds to my talents and inclinations that I have had since childhood.” Yet, closer inspection of these cases would reveal that the answers given did not correspond with the facts, and I imagine they are not congruent with your own observation of life. Today, a vocation is increasingly that to which a person is called by the world's objective course of development. There outside of men is the organism, the interconnection; you may call it, if you please, the machine—this is not important—that gives orders, that calls him.

All this will constantly intensify and, as a result, what humanity accomplishes through vocational activity is also detached from man himself; it becomes more objective. Through this detachment, vocational activity grows increasingly into something that, in its further development through Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan, goes through a process of development similar to what has taken place for the earth through Saturn, Sun, and Moon. It is a peculiar fact that when one speaks as a spiritual scientist it is not possible to flatter human beings if the subject is related intimately to their lives. Spiritual science will be less and less exposed, you see, to the danger of expressing itself according to the model of wisdom to be found in the words:

At best a pompous moralistic play
With wonderfully edifying quips,
Most suitable to come from puppets' lips.⁶⁷

Spiritual science will certainly not be in a position to do this. It will often be compelled to set forth as something significantly great for the evolution of the world the very thing that people would prefer not to hear. It will therefore be inevitable that some people today who consider themselves exceedingly bright because their philistinism has crept into their brains will glibly declare, “Oh, professional life is a prosaic, mundane matter.” The way vocational life appears to true spiritual science compels us to declare that through the very fact that this life becomes detached from human interests, it contains the necessity to develop relationships possessing a cosmic significance. Many people might think that a depressing view of the future results from this: increasingly people are caught in the treadmill of life and spiritual science cannot even console them that this has happened.

It would, however, be a great deception should one draw such a conclusion from what has been said since the nature of the universe requires things to be unified through polar opposites. Just consider how these polarities thrust themselves upon you in the world! It is, for example, in their mutual relationship that positive and negative electricity produce their unified effects. Positive and negative electricity are necessary to each other. Male and female are necessary for the propagation of the human race. It is from polarities that unity evolves in the evolution of the world.

Now, the same principle is at the bottom of what has been said. When vocational labor is separated from the human being, we necessarily create the first cosmic potentiality for a far-reaching cosmic evolution. Everything that happens in the evolution of the world is related to the spiritual, and in what we create within the sphere of our vocations, whether by bodily or by mental labor, there lies the possibility for the incarnation of spiritual beings. At present, during this earth stage, these spiritual beings are, to be sure, still of an elemental kind; we might say an elemental kind of the fourth degree. But they will have become elemental beings of the third degree during the Jupiter evolution, and so on. The labor in the objective vocational process is detached from us and becomes the external sheath for elemental beings who thereby continue their development. But this occurs only under a certain condition.

If it be said that we must first begin to understand the meaning of what is often belittled as the prosaic part of life, we must also understand that this meaning is not clarified until we comprehend it completely in its comprehensive cosmic connection. What we produce in our vocational life can become meaningful for the Vulcan evolution, but something else is prerequisite to this. Just as positive electricity is necessary for negative, and the male necessary for the female, so also what will be released continuously from humanity as activity will require an opposite pole. A polarity of opposites was also present for humanity in its earlier evolutionary stages. Something absolutely new, of course, does not come into existence here because something similar was already present before. But when you look back at earlier cultural periods, if only two or three centuries ago, you will find that the human being was still far more immersed in his professional life with his feelings and passions, in fact with all his emotions, than today. When you compare the joy that a human being could still experience in his or her profession even a hundred years ago with the dissatisfaction of many people today who have nothing but their profession, you will be able to form an impression of what really needs to be said.

Such things are really considered rightly far too infrequently for the simple reason that those who discuss the character and choice of vocation are those who can least afford to talk about this subject matter. Schoolmasters, literary scholars, parsons—the very people who least experience the dark side of vocational activity in the modern world—write about these things. Thus you will find in ordinary literature and even in pedagogical books that people express themselves on this subject like the blind discussing colors. Of course, someone who has finished elementary and high school, and then looked around a little in a university because that's the thing to do, may easily consider himself unusually clever with the ideas he has absorbed; that is, if he now plays the role of a reformer of humanity who can tell us how everything should be done. There are, indeed, many such individuals. A person who has gained a proper perception of life knows that they are the ones who usually talk most stupidly about what must come about. This is ordinarily not observed simply because those who have acquired such educational credentials are at present highly respected. The time is yet to come when the feeling will develop that the so-called men of letters, the journalists and narrowly educated schoolmasters, understand the interrelationships of life least of all. This must gradually develop as a general opinion.

It is important that we come to see more clearly how in earlier times man's emotional life was intricately related with his professional life and how subsequently the latter has increasingly become disengaged from man's emotional life and must continue to do so. For this reason, the polar opposite of vocational life must become something different from what it was earlier. What was this element that was added earlier to vocational life? You have it before you today when you consider what constitutes the shell of culture. The buildings in which professions are practiced and in the midst of these, the church, have become the sheath and shell of culture; the days of the week reserved for work, and Sunday reserved for the needs of the soul. These were the two poles: the vocational life and the life dedicated to religious conceptions.

It would be one of the greatest mistakes that could be made to suppose that this other pole as it is still conceived today by the religious denominations could remain as it is, since it was made to fit a vocational life still bound up with the emotions of men. All of human life will deteriorate unless understanding increases in this sphere. So long as the elemental spirit that an individual creates in his vocation, as I have described, was not separated from him, the old religious conceptions still sufficed to some extent. Today they are no longer sufficient, and they will become less so the farther we advance into the future. The very idea that is most vociferously opposed by certain people must be revived; that is, the opposite pole, consisting of the fact that men shall be able to form concrete concepts regarding the spiritual worlds, should enter into evolution.

The representatives of the religious sects will often say, “Oh, there they are in spiritual science talking about many spirits and gods, but it is the one God that is important; with Him alone we have enough.” Thus, we can still make an impression on people today if we present them with the great advantage of coming into contact with one god, especially during after-dinner coffee and family music, when contemptuous remarks are made about other more recent endeavors, and ideas are expressed in an especially egotistic and philistine fashion. But what is really important is that human horizons should be broadened; that is, that we should learn to know that everything is permeated not just by a single divine spirit conceived in the vaguest way possible, but that spirit is also omnipresent in a concrete, special sense. People must learn to know that when a workman stands at his vice and the sparks fly about elemental spirits are being created which pass over into the world process and there have their significance. Those especially clever ones will claim that this is stupid. These elemental spirits, however, will certainly come into existence even though the one working at the vice is unconscious of them. Nevertheless, they will still be created, and it is important that they shall come into existence in the right way since elemental spirits both destructive and helpful to the world process can come into being.

You will most clearly understand what I mean if you consider it in a special context because in all these things we are standing today at the threshold of new evolutionary developments. Many people already have an inkling of this. Should it be transformed into reality and people fail to have spiritual scientific aspirations, it would be the worst thing that could happen to the earth. What has come about primarily during the course of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch is that the human being has been liberated from the external, inorganic world which he embodied in his tools. Eventually, he will be reunited with what he has embodied in them.

Today, machines are constructed. Of course, they are at present objective, containing little of the human element. But it will not always be so. The course of the world tends to bring about a connection between what the human being is and what he produces and brings into existence. This connection will become ever more intimate. It will appear first in those areas that furnish the foundation for closer relations between one person and another—for example, in the treatment of chemical substances that are used in medicines. People still believe that when sulphur, oxygen, and some other substance—hydrogen or something else—have been combined, the product of this combination possesses only those effects that are derived from the individual substances. Today this is still true to a large extent, but the course of world evolution is tending toward something different. The subtle pulsations lying in the human being's life of will and disposition will weave and incorporate themselves gradually into what he produces. Thus, it will not be a matter of indifference from whom a certain preparation is received.

Even the most external and cold technical development tends toward a quite definite goal. Anyone who can form a vague conception of the future of technical development knows that an entire factory will operate in a completely individual way that will be in keeping with the one who directs it. His or her attitude of mind will enter into the factory and will pass over into the way in which the machines work. Human beings will blend with this objectivity. Everything that they touch will gradually come to bear a human impression. No matter how stupid it may seem today to the clever people—in spite of St. Paul having said that what men consider to be clever is often foolishness in the eyes of God⁶⁸—people will realize that the time will come when an individual will be able to step up to a mechanism standing at rest and will know that to set it in motion he must move his hand this way, that way, and another way. Through the vibrations of the air caused by this signal, the motor,⁶⁹ adjusted beforehand to respond to it, will be set in motion.

Then, national economic development will become such that to patent machines will be quite impossible; such things will be replaced by what I have just explained. Thus, everything will be excluded that has no relation to human nature, and by this it will be possible to bring about something quite definite. Just imagine what a truly good person who has reached an especially high level of morality will in future be able to do. He will construct machines with signals that can be governed only by individuals like himself. Evil minded people will produce quite different vibrations when they make these signals, and the machine will not respond.

People already have a faint inkling of this. It is not without purpose that I have called your attention to certain individuals who study flames dancing under the influence of definite tones. Further research in this direction will reveal the way to what I have just indicated. We might, indeed, say that it is the path back to those times when an alchemist who only wished to stuff money into his pocket could accomplish nothing, whereas another, who wished only to set up a sacrament for the glory of the gods and the welfare of humanity, would be successful.

In a sense, so long as what arose from human work bore the aura of the emotions and joys that men transferred into it, it was not accessible to the kind of influence that I have just described. But to the extent that the products of vocational labor can no longer be produced with special and absolutely necessary enthusiasm, what thus flows away from men and streams forth from them can become a motor force. The truth is that through the fact that individuals can no longer unite their emotions with the world of machinery, they, in a way, restore to this world the purity that arises from or serves their labor. In the future it will no longer be possible for people to bestow the warmth gained from the enthusiasm and joy derived from their work on the things produced. But these things themselves will be purer as they are put into the world by workers. They will also become more susceptible to what will emanate from, and be predetermined by, man as a motor force, as I have described.

Such a direction to human evolution can only be given by concrete knowledge of the spiritual forces that can be discovered by spiritual science. In order that this development may occur, it is necessary for an ever greater number of individuals in the world to gradually find the opposite pole. This consists in uniting one human being with another in what rises far above all vocational labor, while at the same time illumining and permeating it. Life in the spiritual scientific movement furnishes the foundation for a united life that can bind all professions together. If there were only an external advance of vocational evolution, this would result in a dissolution of human ties; people would become less able to understand one another or to develop relationships according to the requirements of human nature. They would increasingly disregard one another, seek only their own advantage, and have only competitive relationships with one another. This must not be permitted to come to pass lest humanity thereby fall into complete decadence. To prevent this from happening, spiritual science must be propagated.

It is possible to describe truly what many people are today unconsciously striving for, even though they deny it. There are many today, you know, who say, “This talk about the spiritual is ancient twaddle! The true advance that will really bring about human progress is to be found in the development of the physical sciences. When men get beyond all this twaddle about spiritual things, we will then, in a way, have a paradise on earth.”

Should nothing prevail in humanity except competition and the compensatory acquisitive instinct, however, it would not be paradise on earth but hell. After all, there would have to be another pole if real progress were to take place. If a spiritual pole were not sought for, there would have to be an ahrimanic pole. Then the following argument would prevail: “Should vocations continue to be specialized, there would always be a certain unity in that one person would be this, another that, but all would have the common characteristic of acquiring as much as possible through their jobs.” True, all would be made alike, but this is simply an ahrimanic principle. It is incorrect to think that the world can reach its goal through such a one-sided evolution, proceeding purely in the external sphere as we have described it. To follow this line of thinking would be tantamount to a woman's arguing that men had gradually become worse, were really utterly unfit for the world, and should be completely exterminated, and that then we would get the right evolution of the physical world.

It would require a weird person, indeed, to hold such a view since nothing whatever could be achieved by getting rid of all the men. Because this applies to the sensory world, people understand it, but they do not understand such foolishness in reference to the spiritual world. Yet, it is the same for spiritual relationships as if someone were to suppose that mere external evolution could continue to progress; it cannot. Just as the earlier evolutionary periods required the abstract religions, so this new stage requires a more concrete spiritual knowledge as it is striven for in the spiritual scientific movement. The elemental beings that are created and released through the vocational labor of men must be fructified by the human soul with what it takes into itself from impulses striving upward to the spiritual regions. Not that this is the only mission of spiritual science, but it is the mission related to the advancing and changing vocational life. Therefore, world evolution demands that as professions become more specialized and mechanized, people feel the need for the opposite pole to become proportionately more intensely active in them. This means that each human being should fill his soul with what brings him close to every other human being, no matter what their specialized work may be.

All this leads to much more. As we will hear in due course, a new age will emerge from what we may describe as our own time's indifference to and withdrawal from life, which is frequently the experience of working people these days. In the new age, human beings will again perform their work from different impulses. These will really be no worse than those good old vocational impulses that cannot be renewed, but must be replaced by others of a different sort. In this connection we can already point today, not merely abstractly but quite concretely, to a human ideal that spiritual science will develop. This will show what even a vocation may become to human beings when they understand how to observe the signs of the times in the right manner.

We shall continue our reflections regarding the significance of these matters for the individual, and for karma.

• 67. Kaufmann's translation. See footnote 21.
• 68. I Corinthians, 1:20: “Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?“
• 69. Rudolf Steiner says in the third lecture of “Weltwesen und Ichheit“ [The Essence of the World and Selfness], Bibl.-No. 169, CE (1963) that the American Keely invented such a motor in the 19th century.

You have seen how involved the more profound questions of destiny are in human life, something we recognize when we try to approach them in ways made possible by spiritual science. For this, however, many things today will be necessary if man is to correctly put himself into the nature of those phenomena that lead to a truly fruitful grasp of life. When we consider these involved problems, we must frequently take roundabout paths in order to see clearly the difficulties that hinder our understanding. We have all grown up, in a sense, in the thinking of the present, and even though many of us suppose we have attained to unprejudiced thinking, it is always well to be quite unsparing in testing ourselves and our self-knowledge, especially the unprejudiced character of our thinking. Before we proceed further, therefore, permit me to draw your attention to some particulars.

It is often difficult to discuss these things because language is obstinate when we undertake to work out concepts in accord with reality. It is easy to suppose that a concept that has been worked out and is, as it were, obtained from the sum total of occult science is directed toward an entirely different objective than is really intended. In this way, various misunderstandings arise. A certain observation may frequently be made when we discuss the course of life of eminent personalities. I will give you an example. A small brochure has just been published in Switzerland. It deals with the person we have mentioned in a different connection, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, the author of Auch Einer and the great Aesthetics, and describes with loving devotion the life of this true-hearted and extraordinarily prolific Swabian. Permit me to mention him here simply as an example of some things that we desire to consider in connection with the question of human destiny; we could just as well select another example.

Vischer was as true a Swabian by nature as might be found in the nineteenth century. The biographical sketch⁷³ that has just been published shows how he grew up in poverty, how this compelled him to take the theological training in the Tubingen seminary, and so on. Now, the point that interested me is that at the very beginning attention is called to the fact that even his secondary schooling was rather narrow. To be sure, the boys learned to get along in Latin and later in the Greek writers, but they really did not know until a rather late age into what main river the Neckar empties, nor had they even seen a map until they were fairly well along in years. Many such defects in the educational system are mentioned.

Now let us look at the matter in the right light. Friedrich Theodor Vischer became, in a sense, a great and famous man who accomplished something important. We must understand how he became the specific individual we find in history. The fact that he had never seen a map before a particular age has something to do with this; if he had seen a map earlier, a certain trait in his character would not have been present. Much else that is severely criticized had to be so. In short, if we view the matter from a more comprehensive standpoint, we shall say that the soul of Vischer descended from the spiritual world and chose precisely his environment. It wanted to have just the education that would keep it for a time from seeing a map. Likewise, his soul wanted to be close to the Neckar river but did not wish to know into which major river it emptied. If we study Vischer, we shall see that precisely all his whims and abundant peculiarities are truly integrating components of his greatness. So it seems really out of order for someone to write his biography and criticize the school that actually made him the very man he was.

Let it be clearly understood that I did not want to emphasize that schools which do not show maps to children are of the right kind. But for Vischer it was entirely right and had to be so. We have often experienced this in the nineteenth century and up to the present day. Certain famous scientists are a case in point. They were quick to criticize the present system of education, demanding that much more natural science be introduced into the schools. However, when someone would ask the scientists: “You yourselves experienced these conditions—do you find them so terribly bad,” they generally did not know what to say. We must understand clearly that everything has at least two and, under some circumstances, many sides. What do we have really when a biographer sits down and so forms his concepts and ideas—in this case the biographer was a woman—that such a thing is written as I have just told you about Vischer? It really contributes nothing whatever to an understanding of the personality concerned. When someone forms such concepts, he actually slashes—spiritually, I mean—into the person with whom he is dealing. If we do not wish to slash into a personality with our concepts, we should simply have to characterize in a loving way the nature of the school in all its narrowness and how it brought forth this individuality. But people slash—and criticize, which is surely slashing in many respects. What is the cause of this?

It comes from cruelty, a quite definite characteristic that is widespread in the thought system of the present and is rooted in the subconscious. Since people lack the courage to practice this cruelty outwardly, they are cruel in their concepts and ideas. In many works of the present time we observe this cruelty in descriptions and representations. We observe it in much that is done and said, and it is far more common at the bottom of the soul than is ordinarily supposed. I have told you that in some schools of black magic the custom exists of acquiring the means for performing black magic by having the novitiate cut into the flesh of living animals. Certain characteristics are thus developed in the soul. Not everyone can do that at present, but many people gratify the same lust through their system of concepts; this does not lead to black magic, of course, but to our present civilization. Much today is permeated by this characteristic; of this we must be entirely clear. We arrive at an unprejudiced grasp of the world only by paying attention to such things; it is achieved in no other way.

Today, beginnings tending toward attaining a particular view of the relationships of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch do exist everywhere. We do not come to understand this period when we simply criticize it or surrender to an abstract idealism, without taking into consideration that what appears in the form of mechanism, as a mechanistic culture, belongs absolutely and necessarily to it. Merely to condemn the mechanical element has no meaning whatever. Now, beginnings toward some understanding of what gives continuing life to our fifth post-Atlantean epoch have actually appeared, but few concepts that correspond with reality have yet been found for it and there is little inclination to pay attention to those who have tried to grasp it. It will be necessary for us to deal with these people whose endeavors will be a point of departure for true energetic, spiritual scientific activities.

There is a significant poet of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch through whose poetic works the life of the age pulses. This is Max Eyth,⁷⁴ who ought to be better known because he is truly a poet of our epoch. He is also a Swabian, the son of a schoolmaster who wanted his son also to be a schoolmaster but karma willed otherwise. Relatively early in his life he chose a technical vocation, became a true technician, and then went abroad to England. There he devoted himself especially to the production of steam-ploughs and became their poet. The way he has sung with warm, loving heart of these amazing mechanical beasts is today's true poetry. There is a peculiar interplay of sentiment in this heart. On the one hand, he is a man fully devoted to technology; on the other, he is receptive to everything that can be grasped without preconceptions by an intellect schooled in the mechanistic-materialistic concepts of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

Max Eyth wrote a novel which deals with the modern life of Egypt, where the English company that employed him frequently sent him to introduce and test the steam-ploughs. This novel contains an explanation of how the pyramids were built according to a specific system. Now, if you calculate certain ratios that Eyth discovered and included in a supplement to one of his novels, you will find, up to the thirtieth decimal point at least, the so-called number,⁷⁵ π, by which the diameter of a circle must be multiplied in order to arrive at the circumference. You understand: 3.14159 ... carrying many decimals and extending to infinity. It might easily be supposed that this symbol π represents the result of later scientific progress. However, it occurred to Max Eyth that the ancient Egyptian temple priests must have known it up to the thirtieth or fortieth decimal point in primeval times because they used it to determine the ratios according to which they built the pyramids. In other words, because Eyth was a technician, something was disclosed to him that is deeply hidden in the ancient structure of the pyramids. Thus he was able to point out that our culture really has two origins: the one that we know from historical records and that of ancient times in which people depended on a kind of knowledge that relied more on atavistic clairvoyance; this later disappeared and today must be found again.

But still other things are to be found in Max Eyth. However insignificant it seems, this is extraordinarily important. One of his stories, a collection of which is entitled Behind the Plow and Vice, brings you face to face with a riddle of life, a riddle of destiny. It contains a splendid description of an engineer's capacities and ability to build bridges. But he is a little too brilliant; one might say, a bit careless. After he has built a bridge, which is again described in a splendid way, he is in a train passing over the bridge. There he sits in the train, but he has overlooked something in building the bridge. As he passes over it, it collapses and he is killed. This is an impressive karmic question—not answered, naturally, but posed. We see here how modern man approaches the profound question of destiny. Here we have a man who is brilliant in his profession and who dies at a relatively early age through his connection with a work that he created. I should like to say that this poetic fiction raises an important question of a sort that spiritual science seeks to answer. Such things do, of course, happen in the numerous variations of life. Now we have described a case that shows us how karma is fulfilled swiftly and precipitously. To be sure, such an event makes karma inevitable, but let us suppose hypothetically that in another case the person was not on the train as it passed over the bridge, but was sitting at home by the fire. Then he would probably have been imprisoned for a couple of years because of his mistake, but not much more than that would have happened to him in this life. What then?

You see, the important point is that what had brought death to this man, the death he suffered in connection with his work, must enter his karma either here in this life or in the life between death and a new birth. The experience must be gone through, but it may be accelerated as in the case described by Eyth, or it may be extended over a longer period of time. Indeed, life itself in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch will raise profound questions of destiny and the very conditions of life in this epoch will make people realize how life reveals riddles in a new way that is different from that of earlier epochs.

Thus, when we consider people who are really somewhat gifted with brilliant intellects, we can observe that they seek today for different complexities of life in their artistic creation than those of earlier periods. How frequently it happents that the individuals who do discover significant complexities of life are those who are engaged in practical vocations. From this point of view the books of Max Eyth are extraordinarily instructive: first, because he is really a great and gifted writer, and second, because, as an entirely modern human being, he creates wholly from the requirements of modern life. It is especially interesting—permit me to make this remark parenthetically—that those who read Eyth learn through this mere outward exposure much that it would be important for theosophists to know—for example, many things connected with the life of Olcott,⁷⁶ the first president of the Theosophical Society. We find this hidden away in the writings of Eyth, who was in America at a time when Olcott was doing all kinds of strange things there. In short, even social karma may thrust itself upon us when we do not disdain acquainting ourselves with what this modern spirit has written. In general, however, the peculiar fact is that often not the individuals gifted with genius—Max Eyth was a genius—but those formed by the life-mechanisms of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, see the intricacies of modern life with special clearness because their minds are formed in a special way.

I am acquainted with a man who was a jurist in his younger years⁷⁷—a time when one could be a legal mind without necessarily realizing his financial gains from the practice of law. He was a clear-headed person who viewed everything without preconceptions, who by reason of his gifts attracted the attention of his superiors, as one calls them, not so much on account of his brilliance, but because he was a good and diligent worker whom they could use. Now, since he had established his reputation as an actuary or assessor, he entered a government ministry where he was also a remarkable worker who viewed everything with open eyes. There he was once assigned an important, significant task. He was to prepare a report on matters pertaining to the schools and to education and he was instructed to prepare it in such a way that it would indicate a transition to a sort of liberal system. That pleased him and, since he was a clearheaded individual who saw through the present state of affairs, an excellent report resulted, really an excellent plan of reform that looked to liberalizing and modernizing some of the conditions in the schools. But while he was working on his report, the market changed, as people say, and a reactionary report was required. His superior then said to him, “This report is so good that you certainly will be able to prepare a comparable reactionary report also; now, can you do this?” The man replied, “No, that I cannot do!” “Indeed, why not?” “Because this report presents my conviction!” “What? This is your conviction?” Well, the superior was most indignant and saw quite clearly that he no longer had any use for this man, a person not only diligent but also possessed of a conviction of his own. Clearly, such a person could not be used.

Yet, the man was an excellent jurist and worker. What could be done? He had proven himself everywhere, and it was well known that he was a competent jurist. Well, the effort was made to give him a promotion. People who have proven themselves in this way must, if possible, be kept contented. Things were arranged a little behind the scenes, as the expression goes, and one day—I think it was at a game of skittles—the secretary of a theater met this person as if by chance and said to him, “Do you know that the position of director of an important theater is vacant?” Now, the jurist, who had been attached to a government ministry, could not take it amiss when he was given this news. So when the game was over, the secretary said to him, “Won't you join me at the coffee house so I can explain the matter in detail? Would you like to be a theater director? We need one, but we cannot know, of course, when we select someone whether he would want the position under present conditions.” Then the jurist, who was quite intelligent and well versed in juristic matters and things pertaining to administration, replied, “Of course, that simply has to be accepted. One must be willing and, if one is not, he will simply be arrested.” Now, the end of the affair was that the position of director of the theater was offered him. There was one difficulty, however. There was a famous actress connected with the theater and whoever was to become the director had to be acceptable to her. “Well now,” said the secretary, “can you also get along with this actress?” “Oh, if that's all that's required! I have been in a theater no more than seven times in my life but, if I take this job, I shall certainly be able to get along with her. Can you tell me what she likes to eat?” Now, the other knew that her favorite food was poppyseed cake. That was lucky. He said, “We will go at once to the bakery and order a large cake for her.” This was delivered early the next morning. In the afternoon the secretary called on the actress in order—well, I suppose to sound her out, as the expression goes. He knew that she had a good deal of influence so he said to her. “We should like very much to have this gentleman as director. What do you think of him?” “Well,” she answered, “I don't know him at all, but so far he has only been good to me.” So the jurist became the director of the theater.

Well, the most famous critic of that city still had to be won over. He was always writing the most terrible stuff until one day he also was brought around—at least, to such an extent that even if he did not write approvingly of the director, he did not disapprove either. This came about in the following way. I am not telling you a fairy story but something that actually happened; I only wish to describe it to you. So, the most highly placed person connected with the theater, even above the director, did not know what to do because of the critic. The new director was simply there, and he gave a good account of himself, being just as competent as the director of the theater as he had previously been as a jurist. But their top executive simply did not know what to do. He could not discharge the director, but the critic kept up his clamor. What did he finally do? He invited both of them in and served them some good wine. The director could drink and drink and drink. So could the critic, but not to equal the director. So it happened that early the following morning—about five o'clock, I think—the director rang the critic's doorbell and said he had to speak to his wife because he had left something quite heavy down below on the steps that he had to deliver to her. Well, she put on her dressing gown and he delivered her husband to her, a veritable bundle of misery. From that very hour the criticism decreased. Later, after this man had gone too far as a theater director in the view of his superiors, he was once more helped to a promotion in the legal profession.

Now, this man described in a remarkable way what he had observed in his occupation, and I wish only to show by this example that those people who are involved in the actual life of the present can make quite significant comments on it.

Still more interesting is a similar man, but one of nobler attitude than the one I have just mentioned, who wrote various things during his life. Shortly before his death—everyone of whom I am speaking is no longer alive—he produced a very interesting novella, really a contemporary work of art. Just think how anyone can write such a short story today according to the taste of the age. There must be nothing spiritual in it and, if there is, it must be pointed out quite clearly that the reader may believe the story or not; or better, he may consider it to be merely a fable. Now, I will present the material for the story, which this writer found in contemporary life. A person lived in the same environment as the man whom I have previously described. For a number of years he belonged to the legal profession and was relatively successful. The novelist can describe this. He can show how this character passed through the stages of his career as a jurist, how he had this or that experience and underwent complications of one kind or another. Then he can weave a love story into this material; of course, that also is the modern way. That is, the writer can tell how an exotic young lady comes to the jurist accompanied by her mother, how this eminent jurist falls in love with her and how, because a theme of espionage is introduced and he has to deal with this as a judge, he is again brought into relationship with the young lady. This brings him into a conflict, and so on. The story may then relate quite realistically how he is finally led to commit suicide.

The writer to whom I refer, however, did not do this; he wove the following significant material into his story. He narrated a course of events that is outwardly almost the same as I have told you, but he also lets the jurist read Schopenhauer and other philosophers in such a way that their thoughts, I might say, become totally enmeshed with his individual being, if not his nervous system. Now, he is a competent jurist. What does it mean when one, as a judge, is a competent jurist? It means such a person must be able to discover all possible hair-splitting subtleties in order to bring about a defendant's undoing, and he must likewise discover all possible legal casuistries of the defense. In short, this jurist is extraordinarily competent, and he convicts a certain person in a set of circumstances similar to those I have just described. But the defendent in the story behaved in a most astonishing way during the trial—that is, as if demonic—and especially the look in his eyes remained unforgettable in the minds of the people who were present during the trial. Well, the person concerned was, of course, imprisoned. The whole affair was then associated with that young lady with whom the judge had fallen in love. The convicted man, who was in ill health, was sentenced to twenty years the penitentiary.

The judge is exceedingly well described in this story. He had not thought of the convict since the trial, which people thought he had conducted brilliantly, when one night he awoke at about twelve o'clock. He lay only half asleep. At about two o'clock there was a knock at the door of the room and the convict entered. You can imagine the situation, but he nevertheless fell again into a half-sleep and when he awoke, it was already day. He was now seized with a terrible fear. He went to the court; once, on the way to his chambers he heard the name of the convict called out. This terrified terrified him tremendously. He decided to study the documents again and had them brought to him. But he left them lying there for three weeks. Finally, in a conversation one day it was revealed that about two o'clock on a certain night the convict had died in the penitentiary. It was precisely the time, as the judge could establish, when the prisoner had visited him in his bedroom!

This is the plot of the story, which is called Hofrat Eysenhardt and in which the judge finally commits suicide. Hofrat Eysenhardt by Berger⁷⁸ is an entirely modern story and shows even through other descriptions that the author was quite familiar with various recent endeavors to penetrate the secrets of occult existence. From this point of view alone the story is brilliantly written.

Now, there is something extraordinary here. Berger is not the same writer I previously described; I introduced him only as an example of a man whose perception was incisive and who described well the very nerve of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. I brought in this Berger as an official colleague, so to speak. Alfred Baron von Berger wrote that remarkable story, Hofrat Eysenhardt; it is written in such a way that we see he understands the various endeavors today to enter the spiritual world. Berger wrote much during the course of his life, but he published this story only after he had attained a position beyond which he could make no further progress. We may say this occurred “by chance” shortly before his death. This is most significant since it shows us that today whose who wish to get somewhere, as the expression goes, believe they make a mistake when they become involved in such things. But it also shows us how the striving of men tends in the direction of penetrating the mysterious aspects of existence. These aspects will increasingly come to the fore because they set important riddles before man.

If we wish to consider the question of destiny without presuppositions, we must first acquire a clear perception and try not to sleep through life—excuse the bald expression—but rather look around ourselves. Let me express figuratively the important point to bear in mind. Let us say that we have here one stream of life, there a second, there a third, since life consists of many streams crossing one another in the most manifold ways—for example, the life of the individual and that of groups of people, as well as the life of all humanity. The sort of concepts that dominate today are entirely too simplistic to disentangle the intertwining threads of life. Frequently, what needs to be done is to direct one's gaze first toward one point, then another, and then to relate these two points through one's perception. When we thus hit upon the right facts, the situation is then illumined.

Now, you will say, “Yes, but how can such things be accomplished?” Well, that is just the point. When you pursue spiritual science in the right way, your imagination will reveal to you those points in life that you must consider together, so that life may unveil itself to you. By contrast, if you simply trace the consecutive events of life, you will understand nothing whatever of its totality. This is the way the historians do, in a sense; they draw threads from one event to another but do not understand life at all because what is needed is to view the world symptomatically. This will become increasingly necessary; that is, to view the world in such a way that we direct our perception to the right places and then draw the lines of connection from them to other things. A clear, symptomatic view of things is especially important in the concrete study of karma—with which so much is associated that is confusing because so much is seductive in it.

I have already pointed out⁷⁹ that some contemporary occult societies have endeavored to keep this symptomatic study as far as possible from human beings. I have called your attention to the societies that are derived from ancient institutions and still continue to call themselves “occult,” especially in Western Europe. Within these occult societies special study has been devoted to human character in order to be able to use and grasp these characteristics in the right way. All sorts of ways have been used to keep this knowledge, which is fostered within their walls, from the rest of humanity. When the connection between the occult endeavors of these modern societies and public events are some day laid bare, when the threads are exposed that lead from them to modern events and their methods are exposed, it will be exceedingly interesting. These occult societies had a way of dealing with human characters by taking in hand the threads of their karma, guiding and directing them without their being conscious of this. Simple attempts have often been made in the Theosophical Society, but they have remained for the most part dilettantish because the theosophists lacked the skills of other occult societies. It is, of course, difficult to speak about these things, especially today when an objective characterization is not only suppressed by prejudice but is even forbidden by law. It is difficult to speak of these things; indeed, in a certain sense, it is quite impossible. But intimations must be given in one way or another since it is impossible for people simply to live and share in all that flows from the karma of the age into the unconscious region of their souls and then, in spite of living in this nebulousness, also to cultivate spiritual science, which demands clear and unprejudiced minds. There must be truth in certain things, but it is not possible to gain the truth in an abstract way by hypocrisy when we have to do with things that pertain to the real occult world. What is essential is that we must have a real will to truth. Now, this will to truth meets with many obstacles, especially today because men have gradually lost their sense for it. Just think how often in public life people are not concerned with discovering the truth, but rather with saying whatever suits one person or another and offers certain advantages to them.

Nowadays one comes upon particular fields everywhere of which it is not possible to speak, even though it is so necessary to do so. But I ask you to give the most earnest attention to this very fact because we must understand quite clearly that what has been said is the truth. You may ask, “What have these things to do with the question of karma we are now discussing?” Indeed, they have much to do with this, and we shall undertake to go into some of them in order finally to reach the goal toward which we are really striving.

• 73. Franza Feilbogen, F. Th. Vischer's “Auch Einer“ (Zurich, 1916).
• 74. Max von Eyth (1836–1906) was an engineer and author of the book Hinter Pflug und Schraubstock (Behind Plough and Bench-Vice]. He introduced the steam-plough that was developed by John Fowler to Egypt, America, and Germany.
• 75. The “Ludolf number“ was named after the mathematician Ludwig van Ceulen (1540–1610).
• 76. Henry Steel Olcott (1832–1907).
• 77. Dr. Max Burckhard (1854–1912). The description is based on Hermann Bahr's Erinnerung an Burckhard [In Memory of Burckhard] (Berlin, 1913). Cf. Rudolf Steiner, “Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Dramaturgie“ [Collected Essays on Dramaturgy], Bibl.-No. 29, CE (Dornach, 1960), p. 60 ff. (“The Crisis of the Vienna Burg-theater“).
• 78. Alfred Freiherr von Berger (1853–1912) was a theater manager, first in Hamburg and then in Vienna. On December 14, 1915, Rudolf Steiner spoke in detail about the novella Hofrath Eysenhardt in the fifth lecture of the cycle “Schicksalsbildung und Leben nach dem Tode“ [The Formation of Destiny and the Life after Death], Bibl.- No. 171, CE (Dornach, 1964).
• 79. Lecture of October 30, 1916, published in Innere Entwicklungsimpulse der Menschheit [Inner Development Impulses of Mankind], Bibl.-No. 171, CE (Dornach, 1964).

Our present considerations will impress us with their deeper and real meaning only if we do not take them in a merely theoretical way, since they are in the highest sense truths of life. Rather, we must draw from them certain consequences for our feelings and sentiments that may enable us to look upon life differently than is often done by those who have not been prepared to do so by an anthroposophical view. Our minds must be broadened through spiritual science to grasp the truth of life. This means that we must learn to compare the nature of truth as it meets us in life with the one-sided thinking about the truth that so easily befalls people. It is all too easy to get into the habit of forming opinions about this or that, not merely about everyday matters but also about the most important facts of life, and then fortifying our point of view with this opinion, paying no attention to the fact that the world may be viewed from the most varied standpoints. Thus, we can attain to the truth only when we feel and realize how everything, every single fact, can be viewed from many standpoints. I will relate the course of a certain life in order that I may give you an example, a kind of illustration of what I mean. We are now dealing with what we call karma, the passage of the human being through repeated earthly lives, the destiny of man, which is expressed in the course a human life takes. We can learn much through the examples of individual lives if we view them correctly in the light of repeated earthly lives.

In this example, we have to do with a person who was born in the sixteenth century. In order to consider the hereditary influences that people today like to emphasize, let us first look at his father. The father of this man who was born in the sixteenth century was a rather versatile person but also an extraordinarily obstinate one; this was characterized by a certain harshness in the expression of his life. He was well-acquainted with music, played the lute and other string instruments, was also familiar with geometry and mathematics, and his profession was that of a merchant. His harshness may be more readily understandable from the following. He had a certain music teacher who, at that time in the sixteenth century, was a highly respected man. As a pupil of this man, he wrote a book on music, but this did not please his teacher and he took issue with it in a book of his own. The pupil then became really quite angry and wrote another volume in which he included all possible contempt he could muster against the “ancient and rusty views” of his music teacher. Then he dedicated the book to him, saying expressly in the dedication, “Since you deigned to turn against me in such an obtrusive manner, I want to give you an opportunity to experience this pleasure more often. You obviously enjoy this sort of thing and that is why I dedicate this book to you.”

The son of this man is the person whose course of life I wish to tell you about in a slightly disguised way. As was the custom in those days, he at first pursued the study of Greek and Latin with a famous teacher in Italy because his father attached great importance to having him well-instructed. He studied the humanities with a monk, learned mathematics from his father and, in addition, learned drawing, perspective, and the like with other teachers. Possessing an extraordinary capacity for mathematics and mechanics, he continued to excel in these fields and became quite a versatile young man. Even as a boy he had made all sorts of models of machines that were useful at that time. Today, you know, boys make only airplanes, but then other ships were made. At eighteen, the young man went to the university, studying medicine at first—excuse this just after we have heard that passage from Faust.¹⁰⁶ But he had a somewhat different experience than the student who has just been presented to you in that scene of “Mephisto and the Student.” He did not pass through his medical studies as if he were in a dream, nor did he say, “They're not so bad.” No, he really disliked studying medicine since he found that this discipline proceeded in an unsystematic way, one fact simply following after another with no true connection. Then he turned to philosophy. In those days it was the custom of some individuals to attack Aristotle, the Greek philosopher who had hitherto been so greatly honored. Having one of these critics as his teacher, our young man fell into the same habit of criticizing and hating Aristotle. Although his father was an extraordinarily competent man, he was not well-liked because of his various characteristics. So, after his son had studied for a few years, he did not have much money and tried to secure a scholarship for him. He did not succeed, however, and was compelled to provide further instruction for him with the money he earned with sweat and blood.

After the son had struggled through his medical and philosophical studies, he had reason to feel most fortunate. He became a professor at one of the most famous universities of his country, teaching mathematics and also practicing medicine, of which he had a good deal of knowledge from his student days. On the whole, he was a quite popular teacher. But at this university things got a little hot for him. This came about through a book that was published containing a description of a public project, a mechanical project. It was written by an eminent gentleman who was not too intelligent, but who was the son of an actual princely personality of that particular state. Our professor, although still relatively young, had little difficulty in proving it would be impossible to carry out this project. Much hostility was then aroused against him and, although he had already succeeded in attracting attention to himself through his accomplishments, he no longer felt entirely comfortable in that particular city and university. The opportunity arose to go to another university in a republican state. At this university also, he soon became well-known, had many students and, what was then a mere matter of course, gave many private lessons so that he had an excellent income. He needed a good deal of money because his father had died and he had to support his mother and sisters. In order that we may see a little more clearly into the karma of this person let me mention the following authenticated fact; it was related by a contemporary to whom it was told by the man himself. Moreover, no matter with what philological finesse the endeavor is made to get at the fact, it is demonstrably true. This man with whom we are dealing, now teaching in a republican university, once had a dream in which he saw himself walking over burning coals and ashes and knew that they must have come from the burning of the cathedral in the city where he had previously been a professor. He related this dream and also wrote of it in many letters. It was later revealed that the very same night he had this dream, the cathedral had actually burned down.

Now, he was most successful; indeed, he made significant scientific discoveries, for which others claimed part of the credit as was then the custom and is still so to some extent even now, without thanking him. He became fairly prosperous but not sufficiently so in his own mind, especially since he had to drive himself so hard. He had to give many private lessons, earning a little thereby, to be sure, but it required a good deal of work. Now, his Italian contemporaries and later others tell in an interesting way how he was a man so much occupied with his brain that—I simply repeat what was related—he had little time to pay attention to the impulses of his heart. He was, therefore, quite clever but somewhat less lovable. Thus, he never officially married but lived, as his contemporaries say, in a common-law marriage with a certain Marina Gamba by whom he had two daughters, whom he sent into a convent, and a son, whom he later legitimized. Although he became the instructor of many famous people—for example, he taught Gustav Adolf, who later became the king of Sweden—things were not entirely as he wished them. So he applied to the Grand Duke of his native land where he had previously been a professor. This was in 1610. The fact was that he was striving to gain more free time to devote to inventions and discoveries. It is interesting, therefore, to observe the man somewhat more carefully since he was really a sort of child of his age. For this reason I should like to read to you, in a pretty good translation, a letter that he wrote to obtain a more fitting position at the court of the Grand Duke. He writes to a friend about his correspondence with the Grand Duke:

Your grace's letter was heartily welcome, first, because it lets me know that his most serene Highness, the Grand Duke, my Lord, remembers me, and then because it assures me of the continued goodwill of the right honorable Signor Aeneas Piccolomini, infinitely highly treasured by me, as also of the love of your Grace, which causes you to perceive my interest and induces you to write me in such friendly fashion about circumstances of great importance. For this service I remain always under obligation both to the right honorable Signor Aeneas and also to your Grace, render you endless thanks, and consider it my duty, as evidence of the value I attach to such goodness, to speak with these gentlemen concerning thoughts and those life relationships in which it would be my desire to pass the years that still remain to me. I hope that an opportunity might present itself when the right honorable Aeneas, with his keenness and versatility, might give a more definite answer to our august Lord, toward whose Highness, in addition to that reverent relationship and most obedient subjection that is due him from every one of his loyal servants, I feel myself, moreover, inclined with such special devotion and, as I may be permitted to say, so much love. Even God does not require any other feeling of us than that we should love Him, but I would set aside every other interest, and there is no position whatever for which I would not exchange my own state if I should learn that this would please His Highness. This answer might then suffice to realize any decision it might please His Highness to form in regard to my person. But if, as we may assume, His Highness, full of humanity and goodness, which renders him worthy of fame among all others and will ever render him more and more worthy, will unite together with my service to him every other satisfaction for me, I will then not refrain from speaking my mind. For twenty years now, and indeed throughout the best part of my life, I have labored even to minute detail, as it is said, upon the demand of anybody and everybody, to share any small talent that had come into my possession from God or through my own endeavors in my vocation. But now I would really wish to attain sufficient leisure and peace to be able to bring to completion before my life ends three great works I have on my hands so that I may publish these. I would hope to do this perhaps to the honor of myself and also of everyone who might support me in such undertakings, through the fact that I would perhaps bring to those studying in this special field greater, more general, and more lasting service than I could otherwise do for the rest of my life. I do not believe that I could have greater leisure elsewhere than I have here as long as I am compelled to obtain the support of my family out of my official duties as a teacher and from private lessons. Moreover, I would not willingly do such work in another city than in this one, for various reasons that it would be too cumbersome to enumerate. Yet, the freedom I have here is not sufficient, since I must sacrifice, upon the demand of one person and another, many hours of the day and often the best. No matter how brilliant and generous a republic, to retain a remuneration from it without rendering service to its general community is not customary. As long as I am able to give lectures and to render service, no one in a republic can release me from this obligation without ending my income; in short, I cannot hope to receive such a favor from anyone else than an absolute prince. Yet I should not wish, after what I have said, to appear to make unjustified claims upon your Grace, as if I were seeking for support without a corresponding service and obligation. That is not my purpose; on the contrary. As concerns a corresponding service, I have various inventions of which even a single one would suffice to provide a support for my life, if I should meet a great prince who should take pleasure in it. Experience shows me that things that are, perhaps, of far less significant value have a great advantage for their discoverer, and it had always been my thought to place these things before my Prince and natural master rather than before others. He in turn could do with these things and with the inventor as he might see it, and to receive from them, if it should please him, not only the ore, but also the metal. I find new things of this kind every day and would find many more if I had the leisure and more favorable opportunities to secure skillful persons whose help I could utilize in various investigations. So far as concerns further the daily rendering of service—that is, public and private lectures—I have only a distaste against that venal servitude in which I must offer my work in exchange for whatever remuneration pleases any purchaser; but to render service to a Prince or a great Lord, and to anyone dependent upon him, would never cause me any feeling of repugnance. On the contrary, I would earnestly desire this and strive for it, and since your Grace wanted to know from me something about my income here, I will tell you that the compensation for my service amounts to 520 gold gulden, which will be changed to an equal number of scudi within a few months when I receive my new position, of which I am just as good as certain. This money I can in great part save, since I obtain a large supplementary assistance for the support of my household through having private students and through my earnings from private lessons, although I rather discourage than seek to give many such lessons. I have a far greater longing for more free time than for money, since I know that it would be much more difficult for me to acquire a sufficient sum of money to give me any distinction than a certain amount of fame through my scientific work.

This man was then really summoned to this court. The only requirement was that he deliver lectures on the occasions when there were unusual events, brilliant occasions, festival affairs at which the Grand Duke had to appear and where it was necessary to make a good impression on foreign visitors. As for the rest, he was simply to receive his support salary and devote himself entirely to his studies. For a time things went well, indeed. Even poets, noblemen, and princes honored him and held all kinds of festivities because they considered him a great man. He himself—it was on February 3, 1613—composed the text for a masquerade in which he represented himself as Jupiter enthroned on the clouds. He could easily be recognized in his disguise and since the four moons of Jupiter had just been discovered by Galileo¹⁰⁷ and had been given the names of the four princes of the house, even these four princes appeared in the entourage. It was an altogether unusual, festive pageantry.

The kindness of the Prince, however, gradually subsided and after a certain time he actually betrayed this man of learning. The clergy found that his views did not agree with theirs. Moreover, he was impoverished at the close of his life and died in genuine disillusionment. He had thoroughly tasted the ingratitude and fickleness of fate. He had learned fully how some princes behave in the long run, and he had experienced the hatred of the clergy.

I have now given you a factual account of the life of a human being. But now I would like to relate this life story in a different way, from another perspective, as it were.

On February 18, 1564, the great Galileo was born. His father, Vincenzo Galileo, was extraordinarily well-acquainted with music, played the lute and other string instruments well, was occupied with geometry, and at first taught his son music himself. The boy pursued his studies in Latin and Greek with distinguished teachers; he learned the humanities with a monk and then went to the University of Pisa where he studied medicine without much satisfaction, then turned to philosophy, became an anti-Aristotelian under the influence of the contemporary anti-Aristotelian tendency. At that time he was already such a genius that one day as he sat in the Cathedral of Pisa watching the church lamp swing, he discovered the principle of the pendulum's isochronism, a most important discovery that has had significance ever since. This event was told by Galileo's contemporaries. I am constantly being told that this story is a myth, but I will continue to relate it because it is true.

In spite of the importance of Galileo's thoughts upon observing this swinging church lamp, his father could not obtain a stipend for him. Then, after he had pursued his geometrical studies, he became a professor at the University of Pisa. There he lectured on mathematics for sixty scudi a year and also practiced medicine. We know that he actually did practice medicine from a letter he wrote to his father in which he asked that the writings of the ancient physician Galen be sent him as a guide. He sharply criticized the writing of the highly placed but imprudent Cosimo I¹⁰⁸ that was published at that time. Then things became too hot for him in Pisa and since the Venetian Republic invited him to teach there, appreciating him more than his native state, he went to Padua in 1592. Galileo Galilei became a professor at the University of Padua and lectured with great distinction on mathematics and related subjects; he also constructed sun dials according to special principles and perfected the knowledge of mechanics. It was there that Giambattista Doni in his letters on dreams wrote that Galileo had the dream of which I have told you; this was the dream where he was walking over glowing coals and ashes. The Cathedral of Pisa burned at the time Galileo had his dream, and he wrote of this in letters to many contemporaries. About this time he invented the proportional circles and machines for raising water, made important discoveries in connection with the telescope and the thermoscope, and made observations regarding the barometer and other things, credit for which was claimed by other people, whereas in most cases it is to be attributed to him. I have already told you the story of his common-law marriage; it happened as I related it so I need not repeat it. Likewise, his letter was written in the way I have told you. Thus, he was actually transferred from Padua back to his native state and things happened to him there as I have said. It was Galileo who produced that masquerade in which he represented himself as Jupiter enthroned on the clouds, and it was he who gave the names of the Medici to the four satellites of Jupiter, which led to their representing them at this festival. The fact that he was not well-treated by the clergy, and that, in relation to it, he was betrayed by his prince, is known from history. Although all sorts of things in the story of his recantation are true, the assertion made by everybody that he said, “And yet it does move,” is certainly false. I have frequently pointed this out.

So this is the matter when it is reenacted from another point of view. You will observe that even though I did not relate false things the first time, your feelings for the man were probably not the same as when I related the story the second time. And you will also agree that your feelings the second time were definitely those that almost every person has when he or she thinks about Galileo, the astronomer. You will see from this that much knowledge is lacking in what many think. They certainly do not know much about Galileo but think and feel about him, not because of what they know, but because the name Galileo Galilei has a certain significance in history.

We must take into consideration, however, that what a man produces through his genius has meaning for the physical world. The fact that there are satellites around Jupiter was a discovery of immense importance for the evolution of the earth, but it has no significance for the concerns of the spiritual world, that is, for the beings of the higher hierarchies. So it is with the other discoveries of Galileo. They are such that they have a great significance for the earth. What, then, was the substance of what I first related? It was his personal fate. Apart from the fact that Galileo was an important man because of his earthly discoveries, it was his personal fate, the misery he experienced in his vocation, his—well, what shall I say—perhaps his loyalty toward the Prince, and so forth. In other words, I first told you what his daily affairs were, but because it concerns him personally it is also what has significance when he bears it through the portal of death and has to develop it between death and a new birth. We must go into such studies as this to educate ourselves regarding the question of human destiny, which cuts so deeply into life. It is precisely with significant, distinguished human lives that we must do this.

There is much talk about heredity nowadays and many questions are considered solely in connection with it. I first told you the story of the life of Galileo in such a way that you could observe it without any preconception. I related his life to that of his father, so that we perhaps might again have an example of right thinking about the question of heredity. It is certainly impossible to think correctly of it without taking into consideration the teaching of repeated earthly lives. In such a thought process, heredity does not prove to be without meaning, but is, on the contrary, most meaningful. There also appears, however, the connection between the inherited characteristics and what the human being brings down from the spiritual world through his own individuality as a result of his previous earthly life. When we wish to decide what is really inherited, we simply have to look at the facts of life.

On a previous occasion I called your attention to the fact that the period of puberty is not taken into consideration at all by science today, whereas it should be when heredity is discussed. Up to this period a person must carry with him all the impulses of heredity. What comes later must be referred to another point of time. I mentioned this a week ago. But what, then, really is inherited? The unprejudiced observation of the following facts is testimony for the arbitrary manner in which scientists interpret things in this field, but they are utterly incapable of understanding them. Since it is known to anybody who can observe life, it must be known to every psychiatrist that there may be two sons in a family who have the same inherited potentialities. Let us define the two sets of hereditary potentialities that may be similar. First, there is a certain tendency to think out concepts and connections and to apply them to external life; second, there is a certain—what shall we call it?—peppy or fashionable bearing such as a businessman must have. Once there were two sons who both had these traits; that is, a certain self-consciousness and from it a certain boldness in bringing to realization what occurred to them. These were simply inherited characteristics, and it is thus that they must, in general, be conceived. But the question now is: What did each of them become? What course did their karmas take? One of them became a poet whose achievements were pretty respectable. The other became a swindler. The inherited characteristics were applicable to both activities; in one individual, they could be applied to the art of poetry, and in the other, to all kinds of swindles. Whatever comes from physical life was similar in these brothers. These things must really be studied conscientiously and earnestly and not in the way contemporary science often studies them. Indeed, we often find that the people themselves register the facts quite correctly nowadays, but they cannot make anything of them because they do not possess the ability to connect them with the great law of repeated earthly lives.

Influenced by the currents of our time, people in a few regions have begun to think of how it may be possible to assist nature according to the physical line of heredity, the stream of heredity, as the materialist says—they do not say Divine Providence. The brilliant minds of many individuals are especially impelled to reflect on how offspring may be produced in our sad time. But in the minds of most people, this question is identical with that of how families may be assisted to have as many children as possible; that is, how the conditions conducive to producing the greatest number of descendants may be established scientifically. One who can see through things can readily foresee what will come about. Those who are displaying their scientific theories about the best possible conditions for producing future progeny will be completely fooled simply because they refuse to learn anything. All they would have to do would be to observe the results in instances where excellent conditions existed for the production of children. For example, there is the case of the well-known Johann Sebastian Bach,¹⁰⁹ who was cantor in the Thomas School in Leipzig some two hundred years ago, and who played a great deal of music with his ten musical sons. No one can say that this family with ten sons was unfruitful. But you can go all the way back to the great grandfather of Johann Sebastian Bach. He also had sons. There were so many sons throughout the generations that almost the entire family was as prolific as Johann Sebastian himself. That is to say that what constitutes favorable conditions for having descendants was present in this family in the most eminent sense. Nevertheless, by 1850, a hundred years after the death of Johann Sebastian Bach, the entire family had died out; not a single descendant was left. There you have what needs to be studied. Thus, when people with their new method will have come up with their so-called favorable conditions, they will not be able to prevent the possible generation of ten-member families, but after fifty years such families may no longer exist.

We shall speak again tomorrow of how conditions arise under which humanity evolves and how these are quite different from those at which our natural philosophic world conception labors with its utter lack of all wisdom. But this scientific world conception is simply one of the outcroppings of materialism. I have already told you that those who are familiar with the fundamental laws of the occult conception of the world knew that in the middle of the nineteenth century we reached the lowest point—or, as the materialists might designate it, the highest point—of materialistic thinking, feeling, and willing. We have already learned to know much that is connected with this materialistic thinking, and we shall still have to learn much more. But what strikes us time and again is the fact that even well-meaning persons are by no means inclined to become acquainted with the materialistic impulses dominating the depths and heights regarding human perception and will. Here people are really astonishingly little inclined to submit to what has so often been discussed, that is, to seeing the world with open eyes. What will become of the world if the views that have spread over the entire earth in the second half of the nineteenth century continue to develop further? In the course of these lectures we shall have to speak about the deep inner reasons for these things in our time.

We must, however, confront our souls with the question of how far things have really gone in some fields. Indeed, the nineteenth century was the period in which the view was presented that a real scientist could not possibly accept the childish and absurd conceptions of the ancient religions. What has been preserved in them—and we shall later discuss how it has been preserved—was considered mere childishness. It was considered the mark of an enlightened person to have risen above the assumption of a spiritual-psychic organism in the human being and that he is to be especially distinguished from animals. Not only was the endeavor made to establish a physical connection between human beings and animals, but the endeavor was also made to prove that they are nothing but animals, that is, simply a little different from other animals just as other animals differ from one another. That is the very point these people wanted to make, and it was from this point of view that not only natural histories were written, but also psychological texts. Pick up at random what the dominant people of the nineteenth century have written, and you will find at what conceptions man has actually arrived.

I have a book here before me; it is, in a certain sense, a book representing profoundly decisive views of the nineteenth century for it deals with the human soul. Every possible effort is made in this book to prove that this soul is something simply talked about by stupid people of earlier and present times. It was written in 1865, but these views were disseminated, and though some people say today that we have passed beyond that, we have not, but are still deep within it in the life of feeling and of general culture. The book deals with the human soul, but a special effort is made to demonstrate that the animal soul is the same as that of humans. In particular, you will find in it a neat definition of women and men. The author says that women represent in their peculiar characteristics a greater tendency to spirituality, whereas men represent more the tendency to materialism. In other words, according to this statement, spirituality is a weakness of women! The author then finds that certain crazy psychologists still speak about an ego that distinguishes man from animal. But he says in a delicate way that the cat, for example, shows that it also says “I;” that it has the same kind of consciousness of the ego, so the author expresses it, as our vague and super-sensible psychologists because the ego consciousness of the cat is not in the least different from that of the human being. Then comes a passage that is quoted from another book with which, however, the author is in full agreement. I shall read this passage, and I beg you to excuse the fact that the language is a bit off-color, but this is not my fault. It is the fault of the philosophy that has developed under such influences and that proposes to project living impulses into the future, asserting that it is the only philosophy today worthy of the human being. The passage reads:

The theologians and metaphysicians of our age pretend that man is the only religious animal. This is utterly false and the error is entirely in keeping with that made by some travelers who conclude, from the absence of organized cults, that religion is absent among certain savage peoples. Among a great proportion of the entire succession of animals, including even the molluscs, indications are to be found of fetishism and star worship. [ So we find among the molluscs and other animals indications of fetishism and worship of the stars.] Those that most nearly approach the human being live in veritable polytheistic anthropolatry. Our domestic dog barks at the moon and howls in a particular way when it is at the seashore; it may also be seen on certain occasions making use of whatever lustral water is available and carrying out more or less obscure rites. Who would be able to prove that there have never been high priests among dogs? What could have degraded the poor animal to the point of causing him to lick the hand that strikes him if this was not done by religious and superstitious ideas? How is one to explain, except on the basis of a profound anthropolatry, the voluntary submission to man of so many animals stronger and more active than he? To be sure, it will be said that the animal frequently devours his god, but primus in orbo deos fecit timor (fear, first of all things on earth, created gods). ... Besides, the sectarians of most of the religions also eat theirs!

The book in which this view is approved is entitled Materialism and Spiritualism and was written by Leblais¹¹⁰ with a preface by Littré,¹¹¹ a man who produced a whole series of writings. In 1871 he was elected to the National Assembly and in the same year was made a member of the Academy. This same Littré, a man known throughout the entire world, wrote the preface to this book. It deals with the human soul and simply expresses in an emphatic way what in essence is pulsing through many souls today. It is only because people are so little inclined to observe life that they fail to see the important bearing it has upon the course of human evolution, to the sorrow and pain of anyone who sees into these things.

Thus, I wanted to present to you a by no means isolated example of the presence of materialistic views in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Now let us ask whether such views are without significance for external life. Do they not gradually penetrate into this external life? Do they not mold and form this external life? Just yesterday I was sent a book by a member, the young Swiss Albert Steffen,¹¹² in which he could observe various currents of our time, because he is, in a certain sense, permeated by those impulses that are at play in spiritual science. Young Steffen describes a little of what can be experienced by a man who permits the influences of materialism on the molding of the social world to work upon him.

In his novel, which is called The True Lover of Destiny (Der rechte Liebhaber des Schicksals), there is a character named Arthur who records a fragment of his life for a certain purpose. It is, to be sure, a section taken from a novel, but it describes much of what pulses today in life. So this Arthur describes a fragment from that part of his life when materialism takes hold of humanity and forms the social order. Arthur says:

At twenty-one, I went to a metropolis for the first time—not the city in which I now live—in order to begin my studies.

One the day of my arrival I took a look at the streets. It was raining. Everything was murky and dirty.The people all showed the same indifferent but hurried pace, one just like another. I felt myself overcome immediately by an inner barrenness. I stopped in front of a billboard to see where I might spend the evening. I read one poster that called for a meeting in favor of prohibition. A man came with a pastepot and brush and pasted a beer bottle poster over it.

The very mark of our age—a poster in favor of anti-alcoholism with a beer bottle poster pasted over it!

Then suddenly I understood the significance of the mood that had taken possession of me since I arrived in this city: it was foolish to wish to improve human beings.

Disabled people stood to the right and left on the streets, yet no one had time to consider their misfortune. Women passed by and offered themselves and nobody showed pity or indignation. Suddenly it seemed to me almost astonishing that the shopkeepers did not come out of their shops to smash everything to pieces and shout, “What does it matter?” But then I perceived that the only reason that people did not despair was because they were already too commonplace, too cunning, too thievish. They were entirely too much at home in these alleys.

And did I then despair? I must confess that I greedily sucked up the mood of this alley. With a shuddering lust for death I took in the certainty that everything was on the way to destruction. The people who met me bore the unmistakable signs of degeneration. The houses reeked of corruption. Even the gray sky seemed to drop something heavy and inevitable from its clouds.

This feeling grew stronger in me. In this state of soul I sought out almost unconsciously darker and darker alleys. I went into courtyards full of refuse. I stared into windows and witnessed dreadful crimes. I read the notices that swindlers and procuresses thrust into my hands. Finally, I climbed aboard one of the buses that roared with terrific power through the streets. I closed my eyes. The thundering noise rumbled through me like a hymn of death.

Suddenly the vehicle stopped. I stooped over and heard a few indifferent words. A child had run across the street, had been caught under a wheel and was carried away dead. We continued our way.

From this moment on something within me was paralyzed. I could now see the horrible thing that this city was, and it no longer horrified, angered, or disgusted me. It seemed to me quite natural.

More: I had to laugh at anybody who wanted to change it.

Could a person move otherwise in this fever of hunger, thirst, and passions?

My father came from a family of pastors. He studied natural science and absorbed its results with great enthusiasm. It made him clear in thought, thorough, broad-minded and, in the truest sense of the word, human. He applied all his powers to the investigation of the sensory world. The super-sensible did not interest him. At least, I learned nothing of it from him.

In my childhood I adopted his view of the world without investigating whether its theories might be one-sided, just as an admiring child receives the truth from his father. But I did not yet possess his steadfastness of character that is acquired in the course of life, nor the religiousness he inherited from his ancestors, which he denied, but which was nonetheless in his nature. I did not have such a stock to live on. No pious practices were taught me in my youth that would have enriched and deepened my soul and could have worked on further in me.

Now bear in mind how often I have said—I have brought this to your attention for years—that the first generation will still be able to live with materialism because it lives under the spiritual influence received from its forefathers, but that the succeeding generation would degenerate under materialism and would go to ruin. It is gratifying—if such a thing can be gratifying—that this truth passes over now even into literature. Steffen's narrator continues:

Perhaps this is why the effect of scientific knowledge on me was different from what it was on my father. That inner inheritance prevented him from carrying over into life what he had attained as knowledge. In my case it was quite different; this single day had the effect of reversing, so to speak, the direction of my will.

My father confessed to an intellectual satisfaction when he reflected that the human being is dissipated after death and no longer exists. The certainty of this, and it seemed certain to me, evoked in me a sort of ecstatic impulse to self-destruction and, as a result, heartlessness and lust for crime.

I recently pointed out to you that modern humanity is cruel even in its use of concepts. Now we read here:

That evening I had become empty, void of feeling, and cruel, and I did not say No to these characteristics. In the succeeding time I lived entirely without scruple. And just because my action arose not from an impulse that I was unable to master, but from a certain logic and strength of will, the effect on me was twice as disastrous. I knew this. I was absolutely wicked.

He now relates how he fell into bad company, led another into bad company, and so forth. This you can read yourselves. But there is another brief passage to which I should like to call attention because it is symptomatic. A number of Arthur's acquaintances are together, all of them persons “worthy of honor,” who intended the best within their group. But Arthur has to slip away on one occasion, and he then sits alone at an empty table. Steffan narrates the incident as follows:

After a while a gentleman sat down opposite him whose face struck him because it bore an astonishing likeness to his own. It was pale, lean, smoothly shaven, but with somewhat more witch-like lines.

A peddlar came, put his glasses on his nose, untied a bundle of picture postcards and, with a sleight-of-hand rapidity, put them first before Arthur, then before the stranger all the while looking into the face of the one under whose nose he held them as if he might see his chances there. Arthur turned away in disgust. The stranger went through them carefully and selected about ten, which he put together and tore to pieces. “These persons should not be given the opportunity to earn anything,” he said to Arthur. “Of course, he will order a double supply of those I purchased. They were the most dreadful of all. But I saw so many decent working class couples here that I was afraid he would show these cards to them.”

“How can anyone look at such pictures?” asked Arthur.

“Surrender yourself for a moment, without resistance, to the fumes in here, and you will see that figures take form in your soul whose movements are just as ugly as is depicted on the postcards. What are our places of entertainment today other than hells? You need only test your feelings after you have left them—smoke, fumes, prostitutes. You do not take anything noble away with you.”

“Why are you, then, in this dangerous place?” asked Arthur.

“Because I consider it necessary that someone should be here who is disgusted. The thought of the necessity for disgust in our time came to me a few days ago at an exhibit of Greek vases. The Greeks did not need to be disgusted in order to attain to beauty. They lived in it from the beginning. But we need this disgust if we wish to stand completely in life, in order to value the world correctly, in order to come to the spirit within us, in order to protect the God within us. It was different with the Greeks. When they surrendered themselves to life, they fulfilled also the laws of the spirit. They did not need to constantly defend and arm themselves. The work of man everywhere made the human being beautiful—the buildings, the art, the customs, the utensils, even to the smallest thing. But we become ugly through everything that surrounds us—streets, posters, movies, popular music—everything makes us barren, everything destroys us ...”

Here is a question we must study: what lives at first in the thought world, and in the world of feeling, how does it flow into the social world? It is not good simply to sleep through life, not knowing what has been working at the bottom of it before it has come to its ultimate consequence. After all, the reason such a man, who has taken into himself something from spiritual science, describes this life well is because he has an eye for it.

• 106. Prior to this lecture, a scene from Faust, Part I, had been performed: Mephisto and the freshman student.
• 107. Galileo Galilei (1564–1642). The letter is quoted from Angelo de Gubernatis, “Galileo Galilei,“ Deutsche Revue (March/April, 1909).
• 108. Cosimo I de'Medici (1519–74), Duke of Florence (1537–69) and Grand Duke of Tuscany (1569–74).
• 109. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750).
• 110. Alphonse Leblais, Matérialisme et Spiritualisme (Paris, 1865).
• 111. Maximilian Lime (1801–81) was a philosopher, linguist, and follower of the positivist Auguste Comte (1798–1857).
• 112. Albert Steffen (1884–1963), Swiss poet and writer, became president of the Anthroposophical Society after the death of Rudolf Steiner.