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In the course of these lectures I propose to make some important additions to the enquiry which I undertook here last week.^T1 Our earlier investigation gave us a certain insight into the impulses which determine the recent evolution of mankind. What I now propose to add will emerge from a study of the various turning points in modern history. We will endeavour to study this recent history up to the moment when we shall see how the human soul at the present day is related to the universe, in respect of its evolution within the cosmos and of its inner development in relation to the divine and its ego development in relation to the Spirit. I should like to show the connection between these things and the more or less everyday occurrences which are familiar to you. Therefore I will first take as my point of departure today—and the reasons for this will be apparent tomorrow and the day after tomorrow—the historical survey of the recent evolution of mankind which was to some extent the background to the observations on modern history, observations which I suggested in my public lecture in Zürich yesterday.^T2

From my earlier lectures in which I discussed analogous themes you already know that from the standpoint of spiritual science what is usually called history must be seen as a complex of symptoms. From this point of view what is usually taught as history, the substance of what is called history in the scholastic world, does not touch upon the really vital questions in the evolutionary history of mankind; it deals only with superficial symptoms. We must penetrate beneath the surface phenomena and uncover the deeper layer of meaning in events and then the true reality behind the evolution of mankind will be revealed. Whilst history usually studies historical events in isolation, we shall here consider them as concealing a deeper underlying reality which is revealed when they are studied in their true light.

A little reflection will show how absurd, for example, is the oft repeated assertion that modern man is the product of the past, and this remark invites us to study the history of this past. Recall for a moment the events of history as presented to you at school and ask yourself what influence they may have had, as history claims to show, upon your own sentient life, upon the constitution of your soul! But the study of the constitution of the soul in its present state of development is essential to the knowledge of man, to the knowledge of oneself. But history as usually presented does not favour this self knowledge. A limited self knowledge however is sometimes brought about indirectly. Yesterday, for example, a gentleman told me that he had been given three hours detention because in class one day he had forgotten the date of the battle of Marathon. Clearly such an experience works upon the soul and so might contribute indirectly to a better understanding of the impulses which lead to self knowledge! But the way in which history treats of the battle of Marathon adds little to man's real understanding of himself. None the less, a symptomatology of history must take into account external facts, for the simple reason that by the study and evaluation of these external facts we can gain insight into what really takes place.

I will begin by tracing the main features of contemporary history. The history which we study at school usually begins with the discovery of America and the invention of gunpowder and opens, as you know, with the statement that the Middle Ages have drawn to a close and that we now stand on the threshold of the modern era. Now if such a study is to be fruitful, it is important to turn our attention especially to the real and fundamental changes in human evolution, to those decisive turning-points in history when the life of the soul passes from one stage of development to another stage. These moments of transition usually pass unnoticed because they are overlooked amid the tangled skein of events. Now we know from the purely anthroposophical point of view that the last great turning point in the history of civilization occurred in the early years of the fifteenth century, when the fifth post-Atlantean epoch began. The Greco-Latin epoch opened in 747 B.C. and lasted until the beginning of the fifteenth century which ushered in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Because people only take a superficial view of things they usually fail to recognize that, during this period, the whole of man's soul-life underwent modification. It is manifestly absurd to regard the sixteenth century simply as a continuation of the eleventh or twelfth centuries. People overlook the radical change that occurred towards the beginning of the fifteenth century and persisted in the subsequent years. This point in time is of course only approximate; but what is not approximate in life? Whenever one stage of evolution which is to some extent complete in itself passes over into another stage we must always speak of approximation. It is impossible to determine the precise moment when an individual arrives at puberty; the onset is gradual and then runs its course to full physical maturity. And the same applies, of course, to the year 1413 which marks the birth of the Consciousness Soul. The new consciousness develops gradually and does not immediately manifest itself everywhere in full maturity and with maximum vigour. We completely fail to understand historical change unless we give due consideration to the moment when events take on a new orientation.

When, looking back to the period before the fifteenth century, we wish to enquire into and compare the predominant condition of the human soul at that time with the progressive transformation of this psychic condition after the beginning of the fifteenth century, we cannot help turning our attention to the real situation which existed in civilised Europe throughout the whole of the Middle Ages and which was still intimately related to the whole psychic condition of the Greco-Latin epoch. I am referring to the form which Catholicism that was subject to the Papacy had gradually developed over the centuries out of the Roman Empire. We cannot understand Catholicism before the great turning point which marks the birth of modern times unless we bear in mind that it was a universalist impulse and that, as such, it spread far and wide. Now mediaeval society was hierarchically ordered; men were grouped according to social status, family connections; they were organized in craft and merchant guilds, etcetera. But all these social stratifications were indoctrinated with Catholicism, and in the form that Christianity had assumed under the impact of various impulses of which we shall learn more in the following lectures (and under the impact of those impulses which I mentioned in earlier lectures). The expansion of Catholicism was characterized by the form of Christianity which was decisively influenced by Rome in the way I have indicated.

The Catholicism which emanated from Rome and developed after its own fashion through the centuries was a universalist impulse, the most powerful force animating European civilization. But it counted upon a certain unconsciousness of the human soul, a susceptibility of the human soul to suggestionism. It counted upon those forces with which the human soul had been endowed for centuries when it was not yet fully conscious—(it has only become fully conscious in our present epoch). It counted upon those who were only at the stage of the Rational or Intellectual Soul and calculated that by its power of suggestion it could slowly implant into their affective life what it deemed to be useful. And amongst the educated classes—which consisted of the clergy for the most part—it counted upon a keen and critical intelligence which had not yet arrived at the stage of the Consciousness Soul. The development of theology as late as the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries showed that it relied upon a razor-sharp intelligence. But if you take the intelligence of today as the measure of man's intelligence you will never really understand what was meant by intelligence up to the fifteenth century. Up to that time intelligence was to some extent instinctive, it had not yet been impregnated with the Consciousness Soul. Mankind did not yet possess the capacity for independent reflection which came only with the development of the Consciousness Soul. None the less men displayed on occasions astonishing acumen to which many of the mediaeval disputations bear witness, for many of these disputations were debated with greater intelligence than the doctrinal disputes of later theology. But this was not the intelligence that was an expression of the Consciousness Soul, it was the intelligence which, in popular parlance, came from ‘on high’; esoterically speaking it was a manifestation of the Angelos, a faculty not yet under man's control. Independent thinking became possible only when he achieved self dependence through the Consciousness Soul. When a universalist impulse is diffused in this way through the power of suggestion, as was the case with the Roman Papacy and everything associated with it in the structure of the Church, then it is much more the community, the Group Soul element, everything that is related to the Group Soul that is affected. And this spirit of self-dependence also affected Catholicism, with the result that under the influence of certain impulses of contemporary history this universalist impulse of expanding Catholicism found in the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation its battering ram. We will discuss these matters from another standpoint later on. We see how the expansion of universal Roman Catholicism was prosecuted amid continuous conflict and contention with the Roman Empire. One need only refer to the period of the Carolingians and the Hohenstaufens¹ in the standard history books to find that the fundamental issue was the incorporation of Europe into a universal Christian church of Roman Catholic persuasion.

If we wish to have a clear understanding of these matters from the point of view of the dawning Consciousness Soul we must consider an important turning point which, symptomatically, reveals the waning of Catholic power which had dominated the Middle Ages. And this turning point in modern history is the transference of the Pope to Avignon in 1309.² Such a challenge to the papacy would formerly have been impossible and shows that mankind which formerly had been dominated by a universalist impulse now begins to undergo a transformation. That a king or an emperor could have entertained the idea of transferring the residence of the Pope from Rome to some other city would have been inconceivable in earlier times. In 1309 the matter was quickly dealt with—the Pope was transferred to Avignon and the next decades witnessed the endless quarrels between popes and anti-popes associated with this transference of the papal court. And a victim of this conflict within the Church was the Order of the Templars,³ which had been loosely associated with the Papacy, though of course its relationship to Christianity was totally different. The Order was suppressed in 1312 shortly after the removal of the Pope to Avignon. This is a turning point in modern history and we must consider this turning point not only in respect of its factual content, but as a symptom, if we wish gradually to discover the reality concealed behind it.

Let us now turn our attention to other symptoms of a similar kind at the time of this turning point in history. As we survey the continent of Europe we are struck by the fact that its life, largely in the Eastern areas, is profoundly influenced by those events which operate in the course of history after the fashion of natural phenomena. I am referring to the continuous migrations, beginning with the Mongol invasions⁴ in the not far distant past, which poured in from Asia and introduced an Asiatic element into Europe. When we link an event such as the transference of the Papacy to Avignon with these invasions from the East we establish important criteria for a symptomatology of history. Consider the following: in order to understand not the inward and spiritual, but the external and human tendencies and influences which were connected with the event of Avignon and prepare the ground for it, you need not look beyond a coherent complex of human acts and decisions. But you will find no such coherent pattern of events when you consider the time between the Mongol invasions and the later penetration of the Turks into Europe. But when studying any historical event, a complex of facts of this kind, you must consider the following if you really wish to arrive at a symptomatology of history.

Let us assume for the moment that here is Europe and here is Asia. The columns of the invading armies are advancing towards Europe. One of these columns, let us assume, has penetrated as far as this frontier. On the one side are the Mongols and later the Turks; on the other side the Europeans. When considering the event of Avignon you find a complex of acts and decisions taken by men. There is no such complex across the frontier. You have to consider two aspects, the one on this side of the frontier, the other on the other side. For the Europeans the Mongolian wave that sweeps across the frontier resembles a natural phenomenon of which one sees only the external effects. The invaders pour across the frontier, invade the neighbouring territory and harass the inhabitants; behind them lies a whole culture of the soul of which they are the vehicle. Their own inner life lies behind the frontier. But this psychic life does not reach beyond the frontier which acts as a kind of sieve through which passes only energies akin to the elemental forces of nature. These two aspects—the inner aspect which is found amongst those who live behind this frontier and the aspect which shows only its external face to the Europeans—these are not to be found, of course, in the episode of Avignon, where everything forms a single complex, a composite whole. Now an occurrence such as these Asiatic invasions closely resembles what one sees in nature. Imagine you are looking at the world of nature ... You see the colours, you hear the sounds—but these are external trappings. Behind lies the spirit, behind are the elemental beings which are active up to the point where the frontier begins. (See diagram.) You see with your eyes, hear with your ears, you experience by touch—and behind lies the spirit which does not cross the frontier, does not manifest itself. Such is the situation in nature, but in history it is not quite the same, though somewhat similar. The psychic element behind history does not manifest itself, we see only its external appearance.

It is most important to bear in mind this strange intermediate zone, this no man's land, where peoples or races clash, revealing to each other only their external aspects—this strange intermediate zone (which must also be reckoned among the symptoms) between actual universal experience of the human soul such as we see in the event of Avignon and the genuine impressions of nature. All the historical twaddle which has come to the fore recently, and which has no idea of the operation of this intermediate zone, cannot arrive at a true history of civilization. For this reason, neither Buckle nor Ratzel⁵ (I mention two historians of widely divergent outlook), could arrive at a true history of civilization because they started from the preconceived idea: of two events, if one follows from the other, then the later event must be considered as the effect and the earlier event the cause—the common sense view that is generally accepted.

When we consider this event as a symptomatic event in the recent evolution of mankind, then, as we shall see in later lectures, it will provide a bridge from the symptoms to reality.

Now from the complex of facts we see emerging in the West of Europe a more or less hom*ogeneous configuration at first, which later gives birth to France and England. Leaving aside for the moment the external elements such as the channel, which is simply a geographical factor separating the two countries, it is difficult at first to distinguish between them. In the period when modern history begins French culture was widespread in England. English kings extended their dominion to French territory, and members of the respective dynasties each laid claim to the throne of the other country. But at the same time we see emerging one thing, which throughout the Middle Ages was also associated with what the universalist impulse of Catholicism had to some extent relegated to the background. I mentioned a moment ago that at this time communities were already in existence; families were cemented by the blood-tie to which they clung tenaciously; men were organized in craft guilds or corporations, etcetera. All these organizations were permeated by the powerful and authoritative universalist Catholic impulse moulded by Rome which dominated them and set its seal upon them. And just as this Roman Catholic impulse had relegated the guilds and other corporate bodies to a subordinate role, so too national identity suffered the same fate. At the time when Roman Catholicism exercised its greatest dynamic power national identity was not regarded as the most important factor in the structure of the human soul. Consciousness of nationality now began to be looked upon as something vastly more important than it had been when Catholicism was all powerful. And significantly it manifested itself in those countries I have just mentioned. But whilst the general idea of nationhood was emerging in France and England an extremely significant differentiation was taking place at the same time. Whilst for centuries these countries had shared a common purpose, differences began to emerge in the fifteenth century. The first indications are seen in the appearance of Joan of Arc in 1429, a most important turning point in modern history. It was this appearance of Joan of Arc which gave the impetus and if you consult the manuals of history you will see how important, powerful and continuous this impetus was—which led to the differentiation between the French and the English character.

Thus we see the emergence of nationalism as the architect of the community and at the same time this differentiation which is so significant for the evolution of modern mankind. This turning point is marked by the appearance of Joan of Arc in 1429. At the moment when the impulse of the Papacy is compelled to release from its clutches the population of Western Europe, at that moment the consciousness of nationality gathers momentum in the West and shapes its future. Do not allow yourselves to be misled in this matter. As history is presented today you can, of course, find in the past of every people or nation a consciousness of nationality. But you do not attach any importance to the potent influence of this force. Take, for example, the Slav peoples: under the influence of modern ideas and currents of thought they will of course trace back as far as possible the origin of their national sentiments and forces. But in the period of which we are speaking the national impulses were particularly active so that, in the territories I have just mentioned, there was an epoch when these impulses underwent a profound modification. And this is what matters. If we wish to apprehend reality we must make strenuous efforts to achieve objectivity. Another symptomatic fact which also reveals the emergence of the Consciousness Soul—like the one I have just mentioned—is the strange fashion in which the Italian national consciousness developed out of the levelling influence of the Papacy which, as we have seen, relegated the national impulse to a subordinate role, an influence which had hitherto pervaded the whole of Italy. Fundamentally it was the national impulse which emancipated the people of Italy from papal sovereignty at this time. All these facts are symptoms which are inherent in the epoch when, in Europe, the civilization of the Consciousness Soul seeks to emerge from the civilization of the Rational and Intellectual Soul.

At the same time—we are anticipating of course—we see the beginning of the conflict between Central and Eastern Europe. What emerged from what I described as the ‘battering ram’ of the Papacy, from the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation, came into conflict with Slav expansionism.

The most diverse historical symptoms bear witness to this interaction between Central and Eastern Europe. In history one must not attach so much importance to princely families or personages as modern historians are wont to do. After all only a Wildenbruch⁶ could throw dust in people's eyes by pretending that the farce played out between Louis the Pious and his sons had historical significance. Only a Wildenbruch could present these family feuds in his dramas as historically important. They have no more significance than any other domestic gossip; they have nothing to do with the evolution of mankind. It is only when we study the symptomatology of history that we develop a feeling for what is really important and what is relatively unimportant in the evolution of mankind. In modern times the conflict between Central and Eastern Europe has important implications. But in reality Ottokar's conflict with Rudolf⁷ is only an indication; it is a pointer to what actually happened. On the other hand it is most important not to take a narrow view of this conflict. We must realize that, during this continuous confrontation, a colonizing activity began which carried the peasants from Central to Eastern Europe and in later years from the Rhine to Siebenbürgen. These peasant migrations, through the mingling of Central and Eastern European elements, had a profound influence upon the later development of life in these areas. Thus the Slavs whose expansionist policy came into conflict with what had developed in Central Europe out of the Holy Roman Empire were continuously infiltrated by Central European colonists moving eastwards. And from this strange process emerged that which later became the Hapsburg power. But another consequence of this ferment in Europe was the formation of certain centres which developed a particular cast of mind within the urban communities. The main period when the towns throughout Europe developed their specifically urban outlook lies between the thirteenth and the fifteenth centuries. What I have described in a previous lecture^T3 penetrated into these towns; in these towns men were able to develop their individual characteristics.

Now it is a remarkable and significant phenomenon that after the separate development of France and England, there emerged in England at this time, after slow and careful preparation, that which later became the system of parliamentary government in Europe. As a result of the long civil wars which lasted from 1452–1480, we see developing, amongst manifold external symptoms, the historical symptom of embryonic parliamentary government. When the era of the Consciousness Soul opened in the early fifteenth century people wanted to take their affairs into their own hands. They wanted to debate, to discuss, to have a say in future policies and to shape external events accordingly—or at least liked to imagine that they shaped events. This spirit of independence—as a result of the disastrous civil wars in the fifteenth century—developed in England out of that configuration which was markedly different from what had also arisen in France under the influence of the national impulse. Parliamentary Government in England developed out of the national impulse. We must clearly recognize that, through the birth of parliamentary government as a consequence of the English civil wars in the fifteenth century, we see the interplay, or, if you like, the interpenetration, the interfusion of the emergent national idea on the one hand, and on the other hand an impulse clearly orientated towards that which the Consciousness Soul seeks to realize. And for reasons that we shall see later, it is precisely because of these events that the impulse of the Consciousness Soul breaks through in England and assumes the character of that national impulse; hence its peculiarly English flavour or nuance. We have now considered many of the factors which shaped Europe at the beginning of the age of the Consciousness Soul.

Behind all this, concealed as it were in the background, a virtual enigma to Europe, we see developing the later configuration of Russia, rightly regarded as an unknown quantity because it bears within it the seeds of the future. But first of all it is born of tradition, or, at least, of that which does not come from the Consciousness Soul and certainly not from the human soul. ... None of the three elements which helped to fashion the configuration of Russia originated in the Russian soul. The first was the heritage of Byzantium, of Byzantine Catholicism; the second was that which had streamed in through the mingling of Nordic and Slav blood; the third was that which was transmitted by Asia. None of these three elements was the creation of the Russian soul; but it was these elements which moulded that strange, enigmatic structure which developed in the East and was concealed from the happenings in Europe.

Let us now try to find the common characteristic of all these things, of all these symptoms. They have one common characteristic which is very striking. We need only compare the real driving forces in human evolution today with those of former times and we perceive a significant difference which will indicate to us the quintessential character of the culture of the Consciousness Soul and that of the Rational and Intellectual Soul.

In order to see this situation in clearer perspective we can compare it with the impulse of Christianity which in every man must spring from the inmost depths of his being, an impulse which passes over into the events of history, but which springs from man's inner life. In the evolution of the earth Christianity is the most powerful impulse of this nature. We can, of course, consider impulses of lesser import, for example, those which influenced Roman civilization throughout the Augustan age, or we need only glance at the rich efflorescence of the Greek soul. We see everywhere new creative impulses entering into the evolution of mankind. In this respect, however, our present epoch brings to birth nothing new; at best we can speak of a rebirth, a revival of the past, for all the impulses which are operative here no longer spring from the human soul. The first thing that strikes us is the national idea, as it is often called—more correctly one should speak of the national impulse. It is not a creation of the individual soul, but is rooted in what we have received from inheritance, in what is already established. What emerges from the manifold spiritual impulses of Hellenism is something totally different. This national impulse is a rightful claim to something which is already present like a product of nature. As member of a national group man creates nothing of himself; he merely underlines the fact that, in a certain sense, he has developed naturally like a plant, like a member of the natural order. I intentionally called your attention earlier on to the fact that Asia's contribution to Europe (and only its external aspect was perceptible to European culture) was something natural and spontaneous. The irruption of the Mongols, and later of the Osmanlis⁸ into Europe, though their influence was considerable, did not lead to any creative impulse in Europe. Russia too produced no creative impulse, nothing that was particularly characteristic of the Russian soul. This was the work solely of the Byzantine and Asiatic element, this mixture of Nordic and Slav blood. In these peoples it is given facts, facts of nature which determine the lives of men—nothing in reality is created by the human soul. Let us bear this in mind, for it will serve as a point of departure for what is to follow. From the fifteenth century on the demands of mankind are of a totally different character.

Hitherto we have considered the external facts of history; let us now turn to the more inward happenings which are related more to the impulse of the Consciousness Soul which is breaking through the shell of the human soul. Let us consider, for example, the Council of Constance⁹ and the burning of Hus. In Hus we see a personality who stands out, so to speak, like a human volcano. The Council of Constance which passed sentence on him opened in 1414, in the early years of the fifteenth century which marked the birth of the Consciousness Soul. Now in the annals of modern history Hus stands out as a symbol of protest against the suggestionism of the universalist impulse of Catholicism. In Jan Hus the Consciousness Soul itself rebels against all that the Rational or Intellectual soul had received from this universalist Catholic impulse. And this was not an isolated phenomenon—we could show how this ground had already been prepared by the struggle of the Albigenses against Catholic domination. In Savanarola in Italy and in others we see the revolt of the autonomous personality who wishes to arrive at his religious faith by relying upon his own judgement and rejects the suggestionism of papal Catholicism. And this same spirit of independence persists in Luther, in the emancipation of the Anglican Church from Rome (an extremely interesting and significant phenomenon), and in the Calvinist influence in certain regions of Europe. It is like a wave that sweeps over the whole of civilized Europe; it is an expression of the inner life, something more inward than the other influences, something which is already more closely linked with the soul of man, but in a different way from before.

After all, what do we admire in Calvin, in Luther when we consider them as historical figures? What do we admire in those who liberated the Anglican Church from Roman Catholic tutelage?—Not new creative ideas, not fresh spiritual insights, but the energy with which they endeavoured to pour traditional ideas into a new mould. Whereas these traditional ideas had formerly been accepted by the Rational or Intellectual Soul which was more instinctive or less conscious, they had now to be accepted by the Consciousness Soul which is autonomous. But this did not lead to the birth of new ideas, a new confession of faith. Time-honoured ideas are called in question, but no new symbol is found to replace them. The further we look back into the past—just think of the wealth of symbols created by man! Truly, a symbol such as the symbol of the Eucharist had to be created one day by the soul of man. In the age of Luther and Calvin there were endless disputes over the Eucharist as to whether it should be administered in both kinds or in one kind! But an autonomous impulse, an individual creation of the human soul was nowhere to be found. The dawning of the Consciousness Soul signifies a new relationship to these problems but does not herald the birth of new impulses.

When this new epoch dawns the budding Consciousness Soul is operative in it and manifests itself in historical symptoms. On the one hand we see the national impulses at work, on the other hand we see, striking at the very roots of religious faith, the revolt of the personality that strives for autonomy because the Consciousness Soul seeks to burst its bonds. And we must study the effects of these two forces when we consider the further development of the two representative national states, France and England. These forces gather strength, but are clearly differentiated and show how the two impulses, that of nationalism and that of personality, react upon each other differently in France and England. They create nothing new, but show the traditional past under new forms as the basis for the historical structure of Europe. This reinforcement of the national impulse is particularly evident in England where the personal element that in Hus, for example, assumed the form of religious pathos, unites with the national element, and the impulse of personality, of the Consciousness Soul, increasingly paves the way for parliamentary government, so that in England everything takes on a political aspect. In France—by contrast—despite the national element that exercises a powerful influence by reason of the native temperament and other things—the independence, the autonomy of the personality predominates and gives another nuance. Whilst England lays greater emphasis upon the national element, in France the active tendency is visibly more towards the element of personality. One must make a close study of these things.

That these forces act objectively—they are in no way connected with the arbitrary actions of man—can be seen in the case where the one impulse is operative, but bears no fruit; it remains sterile because it finds no external support and because the counter-impulse is still sufficiently powerful to neutralize it. In France the national impulse had such a powerful impact that it was able to liberate the French people from the authority of the Pope and this explains why it was France that compelled the Pope to reside at Avignon and why in France the ground was prepared for the emancipation of the personality. In England too the national impulse exercised a powerful influence, but at the same time, as a natural inheritance, the impulse of personality was equally strong. In the field of culture the whole nation was to a large extent free from Roman influence and developed its own doctrinal structure. In Spain the same impulse was at work but could neither penetrate the existing national element, nor, like the personality, overcome the power of suggestionism. Here everything remained in an embryonic state and became decadent before it had time to develop.

External events, what are usually called historical facts, are in reality only symptoms. This is obvious after a moment's reflection. In 1476 an important battle was fought on Swiss soil. The defeat of Charles the Bold in the battle of Murten was an extremely significant symptom, for it gave the death blow to chivalry that was closely associated with the Papacy. In the battle of Murten we see a trend that was already spreading through the whole of civilized Europe at that time, a trend that to some extent only came to light in a typically representative phenomenon (i.e. the battle of Murten).

When a phenomenon of this nature emerges on the surface it meets with counter-pressure from the past. The normal course of evolution, as you know, is always accompanied by Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces which derive from backward impulses and seek to assert themselves. Every normal impulse entering into mankind must fight against the subtle invasion of Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces. Thus the impulse that was clearly manifest in Hus, Luther, Calvin and Wyclif had to battle with these forces. A symptom of this struggle is seen in the revolt of the United Netherlands and in the Luciferic-Ahrimanic personality of Philip of Spain. And one of the most significant turning points of modern times was the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. With this defeat those forces which, emanating from Spain, had offered the strongest resistance to the emancipation of the personality were finally eliminated. The Dutch wars of independence and the defeat of the Armada are external symptoms and nothing more. In order to arrive at the underlying reality we must be prepared to probe beneath the surface, for when these ‘waves’ are thrown up we are the better able to see the inner reality of events. The wave of 1588, when the Armada was defeated, illustrates how the personality which, in the process of emancipation, seeks to develop within itself the Consciousness Soul, rose in revolt against the petrified forms inherited from the Rational or Intellectual soul.

It is absurd to regard historical evolution as a temporal series of causes and effects, the present as the consequence of the past, cause—effect, cause—effect, etcetera. That is extremely convenient, especially when one takes the academic approach to historical research. It is so very convenient—simply to stagger along step by step from one historical fact to the next. But if one is not blind or asleep, if one looks at things with an open mind, the historical symptoms themselves show how absurd such an approach is.

Let us take an historical symptom which is most illuminating from a certain point of view. All the new developments from the fifteenth century onwards which are characterized by the impulses I have already indicated—the rise of nationalism, the awakening of personality—all this evoked conflicts and antagonisms which led to the Thirty Years' War. The account of this war as presented by history is seldom dealt with from the standpoint of symptomatology. It can hardly be treated after the fashion of café chatter. After all it was of little importance for the destiny of Europe that Martinitz, Slavata and Fabricius¹⁰ were thrown out of the window of the royal palace in Prague and would have been killed had there not been a dungheap beneath the window which saved the lives of the emperor's emissaries. In reality the dungheap is supposed to have consisted of scraps of paper that the servants of the Hradschin had thrown out of the window and had left lying there until they finally formed a pile of rubbish. This anecdote provides a pleasant topic for cafe chatter, but one cannot pretend that it has any bearing on the evolution of mankind!

When we begin to study the Thirty Years' War—I need hardly remind you that it began in 1618—it is important to bear in mind that the cause of the war lies solely in confessional differences, in what had developed in opposition to the old Catholicism, to the old Catholic impulses. Everywhere serious conflicts had arisen through this antagonism between the recent development of personality and the suggestionism of the old Catholicism. When the conflict was brought to an end by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648¹¹ we ask ourselves the question: how did matters stand in 1648 in respect of this conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism? What had come of it? What changes had taken place in the course of thirty years? Nothing strikes us more forcibly than the fact that in this conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism and in everything connected with it the situation in 1648 was exactly the same as it had been in 1618. Though, meanwhile, certain issues which had been the source of discord had been modified somewhat, the situation in Central Europe had remained unchanged since the outbreak of hostilities. But the intervention of foreign powers which was in no way connected with the causes of the conflict of 1618, this intervention, after the powers had found scope for their activity, gave a totally different complexion to the political forces in Europe. The political horizon of those who had been involved in the war was completely transformed. But the results of the peace of Westphalia, the changed situation in relation to the past, this had nothing whatsoever to do with the causes of the conflict in 1618.

This fact is extremely important, especially in the case of the Thirty Years' War, and illustrates how absurd it is to consider history, as is the usual practice, in terms of cause and effect. However, the consequence of these developments was that England and France owed their leading position in Europe to the outcome of this war. But their supremacy was in no way connected with the causes which provoked the war. And a most important factor in the march of modern history is this: following upon the Thirty Years' War the national impulses, in conjunction with the other impulses which I have described elsewhere, develop in such a way that France and England become the representative national states. There is much talk at the present time of the national principle in the East; but we must not forget that this principle passed from the West to the East. Like the trade winds, the national impulse flowed from West to East and we must bear this clearly in mind.

Now it is interesting to see how the same impulse—the national impulse in conjunction with the emancipation of the personality—assumes a totally different form in the two countries, where, as we saw, they began to be clearly differentiated in 1429. In France the emancipation of the personality within the national group develops in such a way that it turns inward. That is to say, if the national element is represented by the red line in the diagram below and on the one side of the line is the individual human being, and on the other side mankind, then in France the development of the national impulse is orientated towards man, towards the individual, in England towards mankind. France modifies the national element within the nation state in such a way that the national element tends to transform the inner being of man, to make him other than he is. In England the personal element transcends nationalism and seeks to embrace the whole world and to promote everywhere the development of the personality. The Frenchman wishes rather to develop the personal element in the soul, the Englishman to extend the principle of personality to the whole of mankind. Here we see two entirely different trends—in both cases the basis is the national element. In the one case the national impulse turns inwards, towards the individual soul; in the other it is directed outwards, towards the soul of mankind. In England and France therefore we have two parallel streams with two sharply contrasting tendencies. Only in France therefore, where the inner life of the personality was deeply influenced, could the political and social configuration which developed as I have described lead to the Revolution—via Louis XIV, etcetera. In England the national impulse led to a sober liberalism, because here it expressed itself externally, whilst in France it expressed itself inwardly, in the inner life of man.

This phenomenon, strangely enough, manifests itself also geographically, especially when we consider another turning point in modern history as symptom—the defeat of Napoleon, who was a product of the French Revolution, by the English at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805. What is revealed to us here? Napoleon, a strange representative it is true, but nonetheless a representative of the French makeup, signifies the withdrawal inwards—and geographically too, the withdrawal to the continent of Europe. If the following diagram represents Europe—Napoleon, precisely as a consequence of the battle of Trafalgar, is thrust back towards Europe (see arrow) and England is thrust outwards towards the whole world in the opposite direction. At the same time let us not forget that these two tendencies have need of conflict, they must try conclusions with each other. And this is what happened in the struggle for supremacy in North America, which in some respects is a consequence of this turning point in 1805. Looking back a few decades before this date we see how the specifically French nuance, Romanism, is ousted in the interests of the world by the Anglo-Saxon element in North America.

Thus you can sense, if you really wish to, the forces which are at work here; like the magician's apprentice the impulse of the Consciousness Soul conjures up national impulses which implant themselves in mankind in divers forms and with different nuances. We can only understand these things if we study the impulse of the Consciousness Soul in all its aspects, avoiding all prejudice and keeping our eyes open for what is important and what is unimportant and also for what is more or less characteristic so that from our observation of external symptoms we can then penetrate to the inner pattern of reality. For external appearances often belie the inner impulse of the personality, especially in an epoch when the personality is self-dependent. And this, too, becomes apparent when we study symptomatically the development of modern history. What is taught as history in our schools is quite unreal. The real facts are as follows: here is the surface movement of the water, here is the current (shaded red in the diagram.)

Now there are times when there breaks through into historical events—like the waves thrown up here, sometimes with the violence of a volcanic eruption—what lies beneath the surface. At other times, events emerge on the surface, and isolated historical events betray what lies beneath the surface. As symptoms they are especially characteristic. But sometimes there are symptoms where one must totally ignore external appearances when looking at the symptomatic fact.

Now there is a personality who is especially characteristic of the emergence of the impulse of the Consciousness Soul in Western Europe, both on account of his personal development and on account of the place he occupies in contemporary history. At the beginning of the seventeenth century he was involved in this differentiation between the French impulse and the English impulse, a differentiation that had exercised a widespread influence upon the rest of Europe. In the seventeenth century this differentiation had been effective for some time and had become more pronounced. The personality who appeared on the stage of history at this time was a strange individual, whom we can depict in the following way: one could say that he was extremely generous, filled with deep and genuine gratitude for the knowledge imparted to him, infinitely grateful, in fact a model of gratitude for the kindness men showed towards him. He was a scholar who combined in his person almost the entire erudition of his day, a personality who was extremely peace-loving, a sovereign indifferent to the intrigues of the world, wholly devoted to the ideal of universal peace, extremely prudent in decisions and resolutions, and most kindly disposed towards his fellow men. Such is the portrait that one could sketch of this personality. If one takes a partial view, it is possible to portray him in this way and this is the external view that history presents.

It is also possible to portray him from another angle which is equally partial. One could say that he was an outrageous spendthrift without the slightest notion of his financial resources, a pedant, a typical professor whose erudition was shot through with abstractions and pedantry. Or one could say that he was timid and irresolute, and whenever called upon to defend some principle he would evade the issue out of pusillanimity, preferring peace at any price. It could also be said of him that he was shrewd or crafty and wormed his way through life by artfully choosing the path that always guaranteed success. Or that he endeavoured to establish relationships with others as children are wont to do. His friendships betrayed a frankly childish element which, in his veneration for others and in the adulation others accorded him, was transformed into romantic infatuation. One can adopt either of these points of view. And in fact there were some who described him from the one angle, others from the other angle, and many from both angles. Such was the historical personality of James I¹² who reigned from 1603 to 1625. Whichever point of view we take, in both cases the cap fits perfectly. In neither case do we know what he really felt or thought as a typical representative of contemporary evolution. And yet, precisely in the epoch when James I was King of England a hidden current rises to the surface and the symptoms manifested at that time are characteristic of the underlying reality. We will speak more of this tomorrow.

• T1. Das Geschichtsleben der Menschheit, Dornach, October, 1918. Lectures included in Die Polarität von Dauer und Entwickelung im Menschenleben (Bibl. Nr. 184).
• T2. Die Geschichte der Neuzeit im Lichte der Geisteswissenschaftlicher Forschung 17th October, 1918 (included in Bibl. Nr. 73).
• 1 . Carolingian and Hohenstaufen dynasties marked by the struggle between Empire and Papacy.
• 2 . A French bishop, Clement V, is elected to the papal throne. The papal court transferred to Avignon 1309. Beginning of the ‘Babylonian Captivity’.
• 3 . Knights Templar. Founded 1118 by Hugues de Payen to protect pilgrims on their way to the Holy Sepulchre. After their defeat at Acre 1291 they took refuge in Cyprus. The order was denounced 1307 by the Inquisition; their property was sequestrated. The Templars were arrested and most, including the leader, Jacques Molay, tortured and burnt. Papal Bull 1312 suppressed the Order.
• 4 . Mongol invasions. After destroying the power of China and Islam in Central Asia, the armies of Chingis Khan (1167–1227) advanced through Georgia, overran the Ukraine and the Crimea and destroyed three Russian armies (1222–3). A renewed invasion of Russia began in 1237 under Ögödei. The Mongols captured Moscow, Rostov, Yaroslavl and destroyed the army of the Grand Duke. In 1240 they advanced towards Poland and Hungary and reached Pesth. Another army overran Lithuania and East Prussia. Archduke Henry of Silesia was defeated at Liegnitz by a force under Kaidu and in 1241 all Hungary fell to the Mongols. The death of Ögödei in 1241 saved Western Europe from further invasion. A full account will be found in The Mongols by E. D. Phillips, Thames & Hudson, 1969. Also, The Mongols and Russia by G. Vernadsky, Yale, 1959.
• 5 . H. T. Buckle (1822–62) English historian. His chief work was the History of Civilisation in England (1857–61). He saw in the law of causality the determining factor in history. Freidrich Ratzel (1844–1904). Geographer and professor in Munich and Leipzig.
• 6 . Ernst von Wildenbruch (1845–1909). Author of historical dramas Die Karolinger 1881, Die Quitzows 1888, etcetera. Filled with a sense of priestly mission. His plays are patriotic, rhetorical and rely upon stage effects. ‘He was capable of raising a storm to put out a night light!’
• 7 . Ottokar II (1253–78), King of Bohemia, was compelled to surrender Austria, Styria and Carinthia to Rudolf of Hapsburg. He refused to recognize the validity of Rudolf's election as emperor and was defeated and mortally wounded at the battle of Marchfeld 1278.
• T3. Die Geschichte des Mittelalters bis zu den grossen Erfindungen und Entdeckungen, Berlin, October—December, 1904.
• 8 . Osmanlis or Ottomans, a western Turkish race named after their leader Osman I or Ottoman (d. 1326) who founded the Turkish empire by conquering western Asia Minor. A nomadic people.
• 9 . Council of Constance (1414–18). John Hus was summoned to defend himself before the Church authorities against the charge of heresy. Refused to recant and was convicted and burnt.
• 10. Defenestration of Prague 1618. Protestant meetings prohibited by Imperial decree. Calvinists invaded the Hradschin Palace in Prague and threw the Imperial regents, Martinitz and Slavata, together with their secretary, Fabricius, out of the window on to the courtyard fifty feet below. A Bohemian rebellion now became inevitable.
• 11. Peace of Westphalia 1648. Religious clauses a return to the Peace of Augsburg 1565—‘cujus regio, ejus religio’. Territorial and political implications of the treaty of great significance in European history.
• 12. James I of England or James VI of Scotland aptly described by Henry IV of Navarre and Sully as the ‘wisest fool in Christendom.’

The health of Emperor Frederick continues to be very favorable. On the 24th, the marriage of Prince Heinrich to Princess Irene of Hesse, the granddaughter of Queen Victoria of England, took place in Charlottenburg. On the 27th, Prince Bismarck returned to Berlin from Varzin. On the 26th, the Prussian House of Representatives held its last session, in which the Volksschullastengesetz was adopted in accordance with the resolutions of the Herrenhaus. During the hearing on the election review, Richter made a sharp speech against the behavior of the conservative and national-liberal press in the Chancellor crisis and towards the Empress, so that the conservatives and national-liberals felt compelled to protest most vigorously against these accusations. In response to an article in the "Moskauer Zeitung", the "Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung" and other publications close to Prince Bismarck published fierce articles against Russia's hostile behavior towards Germany in political and economic matters; at the same time, the necessity of countermeasures was emphasized. There was even talk of customs reprisals against the Tsarist Empire. For the time being, however, it was only to remain a threat.

The budget debate in the Austrian House of Representatives was closed on the 25th after Deputy Derschatta attacked the Minister of Justice in a fierce speech on account of the secret land register regulations for the Graz Higher Regional Court and Deputy Pernerstorfer pointed out the glaring abuses in Galician court practice. The bill concerning the subsidization of the Austro-Hungarian Lloyd was adopted. The Spirits Tax Act is currently the subject of negotiations. On May 26, Tisza replied to Helfy's interpellation concerning the participation of Hungarian industrialists in the Paris World Exhibition by stating that the state could not grant any support to the exhibitors and that he advised against any participation at all. Understandably, this speech caused a great stir in Paris and people were looking for Tisza's political motives.

In France, an assembly was convened by Clemenceau, Ranc and Joffrin, which decided to form a "Society of Human Rights". The republic was to be "protected against dictatorial desires". The number of voices against Boulanger also appeared to be increasing. The German imperial government decreed that all foreigners arriving in Alsace from France must be provided with a passport certified by the German embassy in Paris. This measure was justified by the activities of the French revanchist party. A number of other provisions sought to regulate the stay of French nationals in Alsace.

Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria arrived in Sofia on the 27th; the reception was most splendid. Princess Clementine arrived on the 29th for the Prince's name day (which falls on the 30th). Great festivities are planned for this day.

In England, a British East African Society, which aims at the further exploration and civilization of Africa, was founded and granted the right by the government to levy customs duties and taxes and to organize an armed force.

We have come here today for the opening of the group founded by our friend, Professor C. This group wishes to dedicate itself to the spiritual life of the present and future in the way that is customary in our Movement. On such an occasion it is always good to remember why we associate in groups and to ask ourselves why we found working groups and cultivate in them the spiritual treasure to which we dedicate our forces.

If this question is to be answered truly, we must realize that we make a distinction, even if only in thought, between the work we do in a group like this and our other work in the world. Those who are unwilling to enter deeply into more intimate truths connected with the spiritual progress of humanity, might ask if we could not cultivate spiritual science without forming ourselves into groups, but simply by finding lecturers and providing opportunities for people who may not know each other to come together and have access to the spiritual treasure of which we speak. We could, of course, proceed in this way. But as long as it is at all possible to establish, in the wider and narrower senses, associations of human beings who are known to one another and who come together in friendship and brotherliness within these working groups, we will continue to found them in full consciousness of the attitude of soul that is part and parcel of spiritual science. It is not without meaning that among us there are human beings who want to cultivate the more intimate side of spiritual knowledge and who sincerely intend to work together in brotherliness and harmony. Not only are relationships and intercourse affected by the fact that we can speak quite differently among ourselves, knowing that we are speaking to souls consciously associated with us—not only is this so, but something else is also to be remembered. The establishment of individual groups is connected with the whole conception that we hold of our Movement if we understand its inmost nature. We must all be conscious that our Movement is significant not only for the existence known to the senses and for the existence that is grasped by the outward turned mind of man, but that through this Movement our souls are seeking a real and genuine link with the spiritual worlds. Again and again, in full consciousness, we should say to ourselves that by the cultivation of spiritual science we transfer our souls as it were into spheres that are peopled not only by beings of earth but also by the beings of the higher hierarchies, the beings of the invisible worlds. We must realize that our work is of significance for these invisible worlds, that we are actually within these worlds. In the spiritual world, the work performed by those who know one another within such groups is quite different from work carried on outside such a group and dispersed about the world. The work carried out in brotherly harmony within our groups has quite a different significance for the spiritual world than other work we may undertake. To understand this fully we must remind ourselves of truths we have studied in many aspects during recent years.

Earth evolution in the post-Atlantean age was sustained in the beginning by the culture of the ancient Indian period of civilization. This was followed by the ancient Persian epoch—the designation is only more or less appropriate but we need not go into that now. Then came the Egypto-Chaldean-Babylonian period of culture, then the Greco-Latin, then our fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Each of these epochs has, on the one side, to cultivate a particular form of culture and of spiritual life primarily concerned with the external and visible world. But each epoch must at the same time prepare, bear within it in a preparatory stage, what is to come in the ensuing period of culture.

Within the womb, as it were, of the ancient Indian epoch, that of ancient Persia was prepared; within the ancient Persian culture, that of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch was prepared, and so on. Our fifth post-Atlantean epoch must prepare the coming sixth epoch of culture. Our task in spiritual science is not only to acquire spiritual treasure for ourselves, for the eternal life of the soul, but to prepare what will constitute the content, the specific external work of the sixth epoch of culture. Thus it has been in each of the post-Atlantean epochs. The centers of the mysteries were the places in which the form of external life belonging to the next epoch of culture was prepared. The mysteries were associations of human beings among whom other things were cultivated than those cultivated in the outer world. The ancient Indian epoch was concerned with the cultivation of the human etheric body, the ancient Persian epoch with the cultivation of the astral body, the Egypto-Chaldean with that of the sentient soul, the Greco-Latin with that of the intellectual or mind soul. Our own epoch, throughout its duration, will develop and unfold the consciousness or spiritual soul. But what will give to external culture in the sixth epoch its content and character, must be prepared in advance. Many characteristics of the sixth epoch of culture will be entirely different from those of our age. Three characteristic traits can be mentioned, of which we must realize that they should be carried in our hearts for the sixth epoch of culture and that it is our task to prepare them for this sixth epoch.

There is lacking in human society nowadays a quality that, in the sixth epoch, will be a characteristic of those men who reach the goal of that epoch, and have not fallen short of it. It is a quality that will not, of course, be found among those who in the sixth epoch have still remained at the stage of savages or barbarians. One of the most significant characteristics of men living on the earth at the peak of culture in the sixth epoch, will be a certain moral quality. Little of this quality is perceptible in modern humanity. A man today must be delicately organized for his soul to feel pain when he sees other human beings in the world in less happy circ*mstances than his own. It is true that more delicately organized natures feel pain at the suffering that is so widespread in the world, but this can only be said of the people who are particularly sensitive. In the sixth epoch, the most highly cultured will not only feel pain such as is caused today by the sight of poverty, suffering and misery in the world, but such individuals will experience the suffering of another human being as their own suffering. If they see a hungry man they will feel the hunger right down into the physical, so acutely indeed that the hunger of the other man will be unendurable to them. The moral characteristic indicated here is that, unlike conditions in the fifth epoch, in the sixth epoch the well-being of the individual will depend entirely upon the well-being of the whole. Just as nowadays the well-being of a single human limb depends upon the health of the whole body, and when the whole body is not healthy the single limb is not up to doing its work, so in the sixth epoch a common consciousness will lay hold of the then civilized humanity and in a far higher degree than a limb feels the health of the whole body, the individual will feel the suffering, the need, the poverty or the wealth of the whole. This is the first preeminently moral trait that will characterize the cultured humanity of the sixth epoch.

A second fundamental characteristic will be that everything we call the fruits of belief today will depend to a far, far higher degree than is the case today, upon the single individuality. Spiritual science expresses this by saying that in every sphere of religion in the sixth epoch, complete freedom of thought and a longing for it will so lay hold of men that what a man likes to believe, what religious convictions he holds, will rest wholly within the power of his own individuality. Collective beliefs that exist in so many forms today among the various communities will no longer influence those who constitute the civilized portion of humanity in the sixth epoch of culture. Everyone will feel that complete freedom of thought in the domain of religion is a fundamental right of the human being.

The third characteristic will be that men in the sixth epoch will only be considered to have real knowledge when they recognize the spiritual, when they know that the spiritual pervades the world and that human souls must unite with the spiritual. What is known as science today with its materialistic trend will certainly not be honored by the name of science in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. It will be regarded as antiquated superstition, able to pass muster only among those who have remained behind at the stage of the superseded fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Today we regard it as superstition when, let us say, a savage holds the view that no limb ought to be separated from his body at death because this would make it impossible for him to enter the spiritual world as a whole man. Such a man still connects the idea of immortality with pure materialism, with the belief that an impress of his whole form must pass into the spiritual world. He thinks materialistically but believes in immortality. We, today, knowing from spiritual science that the spiritual has to be separated from the body and that only the spiritual passes into the super-sensible world, regard such materialistic beliefs in immortality as superstition. Similarly, in the sixth epoch all materialistic beliefs including science, too, will be regarded as antiquated superstition. Men as a matter of course will accept as science only such forms of knowledge as are based upon the spiritual, upon pneumatology.

The whole purpose of spiritual science is to prepare in this sense for the sixth epoch of culture. We try to cultivate spiritual science in order to overcome materialism, to prepare the kind of science that must exist in that epoch. We found communities of human beings within which there must be no dogmatic beliefs or any tendency to accept teaching simply because it emanates from one person or another. We found communities of human beings in which everything, without exception, must be built upon the soul's free assent to the teachings. Herein we prepare what spiritual science calls freedom of thought. By coming together in friendly associations for the purpose of cultivating spiritual science, we prepare the culture, the civilization of the sixth post-Atlantean epoch.

But we must look still more deeply into the course of human evolution if we are fully to understand the real tasks of our associations and groups. In the first post-Atlantean epoch, too, in communities that in those days were connected with the mysteries, men cultivated what subsequently prevailed in the second epoch. In the associations peculiar to the first, the ancient Indian epoch, men were concerned with the cultivation of the astral body, which was to be the specific outer task of the second epoch. It would lead much too far today to describe what, in contrast to the external culture of the time, was developed in these associations peculiar to ancient India in order to prepare for the second, ancient Persian epoch. But this may be said that when those men of the ancient Indian epoch came together in order to prepare what was necessary for the second epoch, they felt: We have not yet attained, nor have we in us, what we shall have when our souls are incarnated in the next epoch. It still hovers above us. It was in truth so. In the first epoch of culture, what was to descend from the heavens to the earth in the second epoch still hovered over the souls of men. The work achieved on earth by men in intimate assemblies connected with the mysteries was of such a nature that forces flowed upwards to the spirits of the higher hierarchies, enabling them to nourish and cultivate what was to stream down into the souls of men as substance and content of the astral body in the second, ancient Persian epoch. The forces that descended at a later stage of maturity into the souls incarnated in the bodies of ancient Persian civilizations were like little children in the first epoch. Forces streaming upwards from the work of men below in preparation for the next epoch were received and nurtured by the spiritual world above. So it must be in every epoch of culture.

In our epoch it is the consciousness or spiritual soul that has developed in us through our ordinary civilization and culture. Beginning with the fourteenth, fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, science and materialistic consciousness have laid hold of the human being. This will gradually become more widespread, until by the end of the fifth epoch its development will have been completed. In the sixth epoch, however, it is the spirit self that must be developed within the souls of men, just as now the consciousness soul is being developed. The nature of spirit self is that it must pre-suppose the existence in human souls of the three characteristics of which I have spoken: social life in which brotherliness prevails, freedom of thought, and pneumatology. These three characteristics are essential in a community of human beings within which the spirit self is to develop as the consciousness soul develops in the souls of the fifth epoch. We may therefore picture to ourselves that by uniting in brotherliness in working groups, something hovers invisibly over our work, something that is like the child of the forces of the spirit self—the spirit self that is nurtured by the beings of the higher hierarchies in order that it may stream down into our souls when they are again on earth in the sixth epoch of civilization. In our groups we perform work that streams upward to those forces that are being prepared for the spirit self.

So you see, it is only through the wisdom of spiritual science itself that we can understand what we are really doing in respect of our connection with the spiritual worlds when we come together in these working groups. The thought that we do this work not only for the sake of our own egos, but in order that it may stream upward into the spiritual worlds, the thought that this work is connected with the spiritual worlds, this is the true consecration of a working group. To cherish such a thought is to permeate ourselves with the consciousness of the consecration that is the foundation of a working group within the Movement. It is therefore of great importance to grasp this fact in its true spiritual sense. We find ourselves together in working groups which, besides cultivating spiritual science, are based on freedom of thought. They will have nothing to do with dogma or coercion of belief, and their work should be of the nature of cooperation among brothers. What matters most of all is to become conscious of the true meaning of the idea of community, saying to ourselves: Apart from the fact that as modern souls we belong to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch of culture and develop as individuals, raising individual life more and more out of community life, we must in turn become conscious of a higher form of community, founded in the freedom of love among brothers, as a breath of magic that we breathe in our working groups.

The deep significance of West European culture lies in the fact that the quest of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is the consciousness soul. The task of West European culture, and particularly of Central European culture, is that men shall develop an individual culture, individual consciousness. This is the task of the present age. Compare this epoch of ours with that of Greece and Rome. The Greek epoch exhibits in a particularly striking form, especially among the civilized Greeks, a consciousness of living within a group soul. A man who was born and lived in Athens felt himself to be first and foremost an “Athenian.” This community between city and what belonged to the city meant something different to the individual from what community between human beings means today. In our time the individual strives to grow out of and beyond the community, and this is right in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In Rome, the human being was first and foremost a Roman citizen, nothing else. But in the fifth epoch we strive above all else to be man in our innermost being, man and nothing else. It is a painful experience in our day to see men fighting against one another on the earth, but this, after all, is just a reaction to the perpetual striving of the fifth epoch for free development of the “human universal.” Because the different countries and peoples shut themselves off today from one another in hostility, it is all the more necessary to develop, as resistance to this, the force that allows human beings to be men in the full sense, allowing the individual to grow out of and beyond every kind of community. But on the other hand the human being must, in full consciousness, make preparation for communities into which he will enter entirely of his own free will in the sixth epoch. There hovers before us as a high ideal a form of community that will so encompass the sixth epoch of culture that civilized human beings will quite naturally meet each other as brothers and sisters.

From many lectures given in past years, we know that Eastern Europe is inhabited by a people whose particular mission it will be in the sixth epoch, and not until the sixth epoch, to bring to definite expression the elementary forces that now lie within them. We know that the Russian peoples will not be ready until the sixth epoch of culture to unfold the forces now within them in an elementary form. The mission of Western and Central Europe is to introduce into men qualities that can be introduced by the consciousness soul. This is not the mission of Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe will have to wait until the spirit self comes down to the earth and can permeate the souls of men. This must be understood in the right sense. Understood in the wrong sense it may easily lead to pride and superciliousness, precisely in the East. The height of post-Atlantean culture is reached in the fifth epoch. What will follow in the sixth and seventh epochs will be a descending line of evolution. Nevertheless, this descending evolution in the sixth epoch will be inspired, permeated by the spirit self. Today the man of Eastern Europe feels instinctively, but often with perverted instinct, that this is so; only his consciousness of it is, for the most part, extremely hazy and confused. The frequent occurrence of the term, “the Russian man,” is quite characteristic. Genius expresses itself in language when, instead of saying as we do in the West: the British, the French, the Italian, the German—Eastern Europe says, “the Russian man.” Many of the Russian intelligentsia attach importance to the use of the expression, “the Russian man.” This is connected deeply with the genius of the particular culture. The term refers to the element of manhood, of brotherhood that is spread over a community. An attempt is made to indicate this by including a word that brings out the “manhood” in the term. But it is also obvious that the height to be reached in a distant future has not yet been attained, inasmuch as the term includes a word that glaringly contradicts the noun. In the expression, “the Russian man.” the adjective really nullifies what is expressed in the noun. For when true manhood is attained there should be no adjective to suggest any element of exclusiveness.

But at a much, much deeper level there lies in members of the Russian intelligentsia the realization that a conception of community, of brotherhood must prevail in times still to come. The Russian soul feels that spirit self is to descend, but that it can only descend into a community of men permeated with the consciousness of brotherhood, that it can never spread over a community where there is no consciousness of brotherhood. That is why the Russian intellectuals, as they call themselves, make the following reproach to Western and Central Europe. They say, “You pay no heed at all to a life of true community. You cultivate only individualism. Everyone wants to be a person on his own, to be an individual only. You drive the personal element, through which every single man feels himself an individuality, to its highest extreme.” This is what echoes across from the East to Western and Central Europe in many reproaches of barbarism and the like. Those who try to realize how things really are, accuse Western and Central Europe of having lost all feeling for human connections. Confusing present and future as they do now, these people say, “it is only in Russia that there is a true and genuine community of life among men, a life where everyone feels himself the brother of the other, as the ‘Little Father’ or the ‘Little Mother’ of the other.” The Russian intelligentsia say that the Christianity of Western Europe has not succeeded in developing the essence of human community, but that the Russian still knows what community is.

Alexander Herzen, an excellent thinker who lived in the nineteenth century and belonged to the Russian intellectuals, brought this to its ultimate conclusion by saying, “In Western Europe there can never be happiness.” No matter what attempts are made, happiness will never come to Western European civilization. There humanity will never find contentment. Only chaos can prevail there. The one and only salvation lies in the Russian nature and in the Russian form of life where men have not yet separated themselves from community, where in their village communities there is still something of the nature of the group soul to which they hold fast. What we call the group soul, out of which mankind has gradually emerged and in which the animal kingdom still lives, that is what is revered by the Russian intelligentsia as something great and significant among their people. They cannot rise to the thought that the community of the future must hover as a high ideal, an ideal that has yet to be realized. They adhere firmly to the thought: We are the last people in Europe to retain this life in the group soul; the others have risen out of it; we have retained and must retain it for ourselves.

Yes, but this life in the group soul does not in reality belong to the future at all, for it is the old form of group soul existence. If it continued it would be a Luciferic group soul, a form of life that has remained at an earlier stage, whereas the form of group soul life that is true and must be striven for, is what we try to find in spiritual science. But be that as it may, the urge and the longing of the Russian intellectuals show how the spirit of community is needed to bring about the descent of spirit self. Just as it is being striven for there along a false path, so must it be striven for in spiritual science along the true path. What we should like to say to the East is this: It is our task to overcome entirely just what you are trying to preserve in an external form, namely, an old Luciferic-Ahrimanic form of community. In a community of a Luciferic-Ahrimanic character there will be coercion of belief as rigid as that established by the Orthodox Catholic Church in Russia. Such community will not understand true freedom of thought; least of all will it be able to rise to the level where complete individuality is associated with a social life in which brotherhood prevails. That other form of community would like to preserve what has remained in blood brotherhood, in brotherhood purely through the blood. Community that is founded not upon the blood, but upon the spirit, upon community of souls, is what must be striven for along the paths of spiritual science. We must try to create communities in which the factor of blood no longer has a voice. Naturally, the factor of blood will continue, it will live itself out in family relationships, for what must remain will not be eradicated. But something new must arise! What is significant in the child will be retained in the forces of old age, but in his later years the human being must receive new forces.

The factor of blood is not meant to encompass great communities of human beings in the future. That is the error that is filtering from the East into the dreadful events of today. A war has blazed up under the heading of community of blood among the Slavic peoples. Into these fateful times all those elements are entering of which we have just heard, elements that in reality have in them the right kernel, namely, the instinctive feeling that the spirit self can only manifest in a community where brotherhood prevails. It must not, however, be a community of blood: it must be a community of souls. What grows up as a community of souls is what we develop, in its childhood stage, in our working groups. What holds Eastern Europe so firmly to the group soul, causing it to regard the Slavic group soul as something that it does not want to abandon but, on the contrary, regards as a principle for the whole development of the state—it is this that must be overcome.

A great and terrible symbol stands before the eyes of the world. Think of the two states where the war had its starting-point. On the one side, Russia with the Slavic world in general, declares that the war is based on brotherhood of blood, and on the other side, there is Austria, which comprises thirteen distinct peoples and thirteen different languages. The mobilization order in Austria had to be issued in thirteen languages because Austria encompasses thirteen racial stocks: Germans, Czechs, Poles, Ruthenians, Rumanians, Magyars, Slovaks, Serbs, Croatians, Slovenes (among whom there is a second and separate dialect), Bosnians, Dalmatians and Italians. Thirteen different racial stocks, apart from all minor differentiations, are united in Austria. Whether the implications of this are understood or not, it is obvious that Austria consists of a collection of human beings among whom community can never be based on blood relationship, for what its strange boundaries contain shoots out into thirteen different lineages. The most highly composite state in Europe stands in opposition to the state that strives most intensively for life in a group soul, or for conformity. But this striving for life in a group soul brings a great many other things in its train. This leads us to another matter, the significance of which we will think about today.

In the public lecture yesterday I mentioned the great philosopher Soloviev, one of the most significant thinkers of all Russia. Soloviev is an eminent thinker, but a thoroughly Russian thinker, a mind that is exceedingly difficult to understand from the Western European point of view. Anthroposophists, however, should study his work and try to understand him. I propose to speak from our more intimate standpoint about Soloviev's main and central idea. Soloviev is far too good a philosopher to adopt for himself without question the principle of life in a group soul. He has difficulties with it and he disagrees in many respects. But one idea predominates in him, not quite consciously it is true, but in such a way that one only wishes he were clairvoyant and could thus anticipate what his soul will have to wait to see on the earth when he is incarnated in the sixth epoch of culture. The following conception that is extremely difficult for the men of West and Central Europe to understand became the main and central idea in Soloviev's mind.

In Western Europe, as a preparation for the sixth epoch, we try among many other things to grasp the meaning of death, the significance of death for life. We try to understand how death is the manifestation of a form of existence, how the soul is transformed in death into another form of existence. We describe the life of a man within his body and the manner of life between death and new birth. We endeavor to understand death, to overcome death by realizing that it is only semblance, that the soul in very truth lives on when it has passed through death. It is an essential aim with us to overcome death through understanding. But here we come to one of the points, indeed to one of the most vital points, where spiritual science deviates altogether from the central idea held by the great Russian thinker, Soloviev. His idea is this: There is evil in the world, wickedness in the world. If we, with our senses, behold the evil and wickedness, we cannot deny that the world is full of both. This, says Soloviev, refutes the divinity of the world, for when we behold the world with our senses, how can we believe in a divine world, since a divine world can certainly not exhibit evil! But the senses perceive evil everywhere and the extreme evil is death. Because death is in the world, the world is revealed in all its evil and wickedness. The arch-evil is death!

Thus does Soloviev characterize the world. He says—and I am quoting almost word for word: Look at the world with your ordinary senses; try to understand the world with your ordinary mind. You can never deny the existence of evil in the world, and to desire to understand death would be absurd! Death exists. Knowledge acquired through the senses reveals a world of wickedness, a world of evil. Can we believe, asks Soloviev, that this world is divine when it shows us that it is full of evil, when it shows us death at every step? Nevermore can we believe that a world that shows us death is a divine world. For in God there can be no evil, no wickedness, above all, not the arch-evil death. In God there cannot be death. If, therefore, God were to come into the world (I am repeating what Soloviev says practically word for word)—if God were to appear, should we be able immediately to believe him to be God? No, we should not! He would have to establish his identity first. If a being claiming to be God were to appear, we should not believe him. He would have to prove his identity by producing something of the nature of a world document that would enable us to recognize him as God! Nothing of the kind exists in the world. God cannot prove his identity through what is in the world, for everything in the world contradicts the divine nature. By what means, then, can he prove his identity? Only by showing, when he comes into the world, that he has conquered death, that death can have no power over him. We should never believe Christ to be God if He did not prove his identity. But Christ did so, inasmuch as He has risen, inasmuch as He has shown that the arch-evil, death, is not in Him.

This is what Soloviev says. It is a consciousness of the divine that is based solely upon the actual, historical resurrection of Christ, Who, as God, proves His identity. Soloviev goes on to say: Nothing in the world, with the single exception of the Resurrection, enables us to realize that a God exists. If Christ had not risen, all our belief would be vain, and everything we could say about a divine nature in the world, this too would be vain. Soloviev quotes these words of St. Paul again and again.

This, then, is the fundamental outlook of Soloviev. If we look at the world we see therein only evil, wickedness, degeneration, senselessness. If Christ had not risen, the world would be meaningless, therefore Christ has risen! Note this sentence well, for it is a cardinal saying of one of the greatest thinkers of Eastern Europe: “If Christ had not risen the world would be senseless, therefore Christ has risen.” Soloviev has said: “There may be people who think it illogical when I say, if Christ had not risen the world would be senseless; therefore Christ has risen—but this is far better logic than any you can adduce against me.”

In this curious example of a document for proving God's divinity, which we find in Soloviev's writings, I have given you a concrete instance of the strangeness of thought in Eastern Europe. Curious thoughts crop up in the attempt to understand by what means God reveals indisputably that he is God. How different it is in the West and in Central Europe! What is the aim of spiritual science? Try to review and to compare what we try to cultivate in spiritual science. What is its aim and direction? It is our desire and aim to recognize out of knowledge that the world has meaning, significance and purpose, and that the world is not filled merely with evil and degeneration. It is our aim to realize through direct knowledge that the world has meaning. By this realization we try to prepare for actual experience of the Christ. We desire to comprehend the living Christ, accepting all these things, of course, as a gift, as grace. We realize the portent of the words: “I am with you always even unto the end of the world.” We accept all that the Christ unceasingly promises us. For He speaks not only through the Gospels; He also speaks within our souls. That is what He means by the words: “I am with you always even unto the end of the world.” Always He can be found as the living Christ. We want to live in Him, to receive Him into ourselves.

“Not I but the Christ in me!” Of all St. Paul's sayings this is the most significant for us. “Not I but the Christ in me.” For thereby we realize: Wherever we may turn, meaning and purpose are revealed. Faust expressed the same truth when he clothed his philosophy in the following words:

Spirit sublime, thou gav'st me, gav'st me all
For which I prayed. Not unto me in vain
Hast thou thy countenance revealed in fire.
Thou gav'st me Nature as a kingdom grand,
With power to feel and to enjoy it. Thou
Not only cold, amazed acquaintance yield'st
But grantest, that in her profoundest breast
I gaze, as in the bosom of a friend.
The ranks of living creatures thou dost lead
Before me, teaching me to know my brothers
In air and water and the silent wood.
And when the storm in forests roars and grinds,
The giant firs, in falling neighbor bough
And neighbor trunks with crushing weight bear down,
And falling, fill the hills with hollow thunders;
Then to the cave secure thou leadest me,
Then show'st me mine own self, and in my breast
The deep mysterious miracles unfold.

These words indicate a spiritual understanding of the outer and the inner worlds, of universal purpose, of the meaning of death itself and the realization that death is the passage from one form of life to another. In seeking the living Christ we also follow Him through death and through the Resurrection. We do not, as the man of Eastern Europe, take the Resurrection as our starting point. We follow the Christ, letting His inspiration now into us, receiving Him into our imaginations. We follow the Christ until death. We follow Him not only by saying: Ex Deo Nascimur, Out of God we are born; but by also saying: In Christo Morimur, In Christ we die.

We scrutinize the world and know that the world itself is the document through which God expresses His divinity. As we try to experience and understand the weaving power of the spiritual, we in the West cannot say that if God were to come into the world we would need a document to establish His identity, but rather we seek for God everywhere, in nature and in the souls of men.

So this Fifth post-Atlantean epoch of civilization needs what we develop and cultivate in our groups. It needs the conscious cultivation of the spiritual aura that still hovers above us, cherished by the spirits of the higher hierarchies, and that will flow into the souls of men when they live in the sixth epoch. It is not our way to turn as in Eastern Europe to the group soul life that is dead, to a form of community that is a mere survival of the old. Our efforts are to cherish and cultivate a living reality from its childhood—such is the community of our groups. It is not our way to look for what speaks in the blood, calling together only those who have blood in common, and to cultivate this in community. Our aim is to call together human beings who resolve to be brothers and sisters, and above whom hovers something that they strive to develop by cultivating spiritual science, feeling the good spirit of brotherhood hovering over and above them.

At the opening of one of our groups, this is the dedicatory thought we will receive into ourselves. Hereby we consecrate a group at its founding. Community and quickening life! We seek for community above us, the living Christ in us, the Christ Who needs no document nor has first to be authenticated because we experience Him within ourselves. At the foundation of a group we will take this as our motto of consecration: Community above us; Christ in us. We know furthermore that if two, or three, or seven, or many are united in this sense in the Name of Christ, the Christ lives in them in very truth. All those who in this sense acknowledge Christ as their Brother, are themselves sisters and brothers. The Christ will recognize as His brother that man who recognizes other men as brothers.

If we are able to receive such words of consecration and carry on our work in accordance with them, the true spirit of our Movement will hold sway in whatever we do. Even in these difficult times, friends from outside have associated themselves with those who have founded the group here. This is always a good custom, for thereby those who are waking in other groups are able to carry to other places the words of consecration. They pledge themselves to think constantly of those who have undertaken in a group to work together in accordance with the true spirit of the Movement. The invisible community, which we should like to found through the manner of our work, will thus grow and prosper. If this attitude, uniting with our work, becomes more and more widespread, we shall put to good account the demands made by spiritual science for the sake of the progress of mankind. Then we may believe that those great masters of wisdom who guide human progress and human knowledge will be with us. To the extent to which you here work in the sense of spiritual science, to that extent I know full well that the great masters who guide our work from the spiritual worlds will be in the midst of your labors.

I call down upon the labors of this group, the power and the grace and the love of those masters of wisdom who guide and direct the work we perform in brotherhood within such groups. I call down the grace and the power and the love of the masters of wisdom who are directly connected with the forces of the higher hierarchies. May there be with this group the spirit of good that is in you, great masters of wisdom, and may there also prevail and work in this group the true spirit of the Movement!

Today I hope to conclude my remarks about human society in the present time and the social demands it makes on us, but I am only too aware that all I have been able to say and still intend to say here can amount to nothing more than a very scanty guideline. The social question in our time is extremely wide-ranging, and there are two main aspects that need taking into account if we are to reach some clarity about it. These are firstly the present historical moment in human evolution and secondly the immediate external circ*mstances in the world.

The present historical moment in human evolution needs to be approached with the utmost impartiality. Our understanding is all too easily clouded by preconceptions and an emotional approach that leads us to skate over the surface of what is going on in the depths not so much of the human soul as of the very nature of the human being as such.

We are easily misunderstood when we say that we are living in an age of transition, for this has been said in almost every age. Obviously we always live in a time of transition from past to future, but the point is to discern the nature of the particular transition in question. To do this it is necessary to realize that ‘the present’ does not mean this year or even this decade but a much longer period of time. The present time has been in preparation since the fifteenth century, and the nineteenth century was its culmination. Although we are now right in the midst of this age, people in general have little appreciation of the particular character of this particular moment in world history.

To put it plainly, to gain any kind of insight into social life today we have to investigate the way human beings are straining to extricate themselves from old social forms because they long to be free, independent human beings pure and simple.

To use a German term, we need a Weltanschauung der Freiheir, a universal conception of freedom or—since ‘freedom’ in this country has other connotations—a universal conception of spiritual activity in deed, in thought and feeling deriving from the spiritual individuality of the human being.

Early in the 1890s in my book Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I endeavoured to paint a picture of what human beings are now striving for not so much in their conscious as in their subconscious activity. In former times human beings were bound within a social context as far as their thoughts and actions were concerned. Look at someone in the Middle Ages: he was not an individual in the sense we mean today, but rather a member of a class or a particular station in life; he was a Christian, or a nobleman or a citizen. All his thoughts were bourgeois or aristocratic or priestly. Itis only in recent centuries that individuals have extricated themselves from these structures. If one wanted to fit into society in a social way in former times one had to ask oneself: ‘What is priestly behaviour? How should a priest behave towards others? How should a citizen behave towards others? How should a nobleman behave towards others?” Nowadays we ask: ‘How should one behave in a way that is in keeping with one’s worth as a human being and one’s rights as a human being?’

To find the answer one has to look for something within oneself. We now have to seek within ourselves the impulses that formerly showed us how to behave in society in consequence of being a citizen, a nobleman or a priest. These impulses are not in our body but in our spirit which is impressed into our soul. That is why in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I described the moral impulse that is at the same time the most profound social impulse guiding the human being as ‘moral intuition’.’? Something needs to come to fruition in us that can guide us even in the most concrete situations and tell us: This is what you must do now.

Then, you see, everything depends on the individual. Then you have to look at the individuality of each human being with the presupposition that moral intuitions reside in his or her heart and soul. All education must be aimed at awakening these moral intuitions, so that every individual can express the sense: ‘I belong not only to this earth, I am not solely a product of physical heredity; I have come down to the earth from spiritual worlds and as this particular individual I have a specific task to do here on earth.’

But to know that we have a task is not enough; we also need to find out what that task is. In each concrete situation we must find within ourselves what it is that we have to do. Our soul must tell us. Vague pricks of conscience must develop into individual moral intuition. This is what it means to become free as a human being; it means to build only on what we can discover within ourselves.

A good many people have taken strong exception to this because they imagine it would lead to placing the whole moral sphere in society at the mercy of individual caprice. But this is not the case. The moral sphere then rests on the only basis suitable for society, which is, on the one hand, the basis of mutual trust. We must learn to acquire this mutual trust in the larger concerns of life, just as we already have it in small things. If I come up against Mr K. in the doorway as I leave, I instinctively trust that he will not come straight for me and knock me down. I myself act in accordance with the same trust and we both make way so as not to knock into each other. We already do this in the lesser events of life, but it is something that can be applied in all our affairs if we learn to see ourselves rightly as free beings. There has to be trust between individuals—what a golden word this is! In educating ourselves and others to trust and believe in the individual human being, rather than just the nation or humanity as a whole, in working towards trust in the individual we are doing the only thing that can generate an impulse for social life in the future, for only such trust can create community among individuals. This is the one aspect. The other is that when there is no longer anyone telling us what to do or compelling us to do it, we shall have to find the necessary impetus within ourselves not only to act but also to respond to situations with feeling, to be active in our soul. What does this mean? If someone was a priest in former times he knew his station in society. Without having to look it up in a book he knew how to behave when he wore the habit of a religious order, and that certain obligations were connected with this. Likewise if he wore the sword of the nobility he knew that his place in human society was based on being a nobleman. He had his specific place in the social order, and the same applied to the citizen.

Whether we like it or not, this is something that is no longer appropriate in human society. Of course there are plenty of people who want to go back to those days, but world history is telling us otherwise. There is absolutely no point in establishing abstract programmes for all kinds of social set-ups. The only useful thing we can do is look at what current history is telling us.

So now we have to ask ourselves what the emotive impulse for our social actions can be when we are no longer pushed along by virtue of being a priest, a citizen, a nobleman or a member of the fourth estate. Only this: we must have as much trust in our dealings with other people as we have in a person whom we love. To be free means to realize oneself in actions carried out with love.

One golden word that must rule social life in the future is ‘trust’. The other is ‘love’ for the task we have to do. In future, actions will be good for society as a whole if they arise out of love for the whole of humanity.

But first we have to learn what love for the whole of humanity means. It is no good jumping to the conclusion that it already exists. It does not, and the more we tell ourselves that it does not yet exist the better it will be. Love for the whole of humanity must be a love of deeds, it must become active and must realize itself in freedom. Then it will gradually move on from the domestic hearth or the local pulpit and become a universal, world-wide appraisal.

From this point of view I now want to ask how you think a worldwide appraisal of this kind can be applied, for example, to that most dreadful and heartbreaking example of social chaos now taking hold in Eastern Europe, in Russia.

In such a situation it is important to ask the right question, and the right question is: ‘Is there too little food on the earth for the whole of mankind?’ We have to refer to the whole globe, for since the last third of the nineteenth century we have a world economy, not national economies, and it is important to take this into account in the social context. No one will reply that there is too little food on the earth for the whole of humanity. Such a time may come, and then people will have to use their ingenuity to solve the problem. But for now we can still be sure that if countless people are going hungry in any corner of the earth, it is because human arrangements in recent decades have brought this about. It is these human arrangements that are preventing the right food supplies from reaching the starving corner of the earth in time. It is a question of distributing the food supplies in the right way at the right time.

What has happened? At a specific moment in history Russia has isolated a huge territory from the rest of the world by instituting a continuation of Tsarism on the basis of a purely intellectual abstraction. A feeling of nationalism extending over a large territory has locked Russia away from the rest of the world, thus preventing global social arrangements from enabling human hands to let nature from one part of the world help out generously in another where nature has failed for once.

When we can find the right angle from which to view these things, the sight of such social distress will lead each of us to cry: “Mea culpa.’ For although we feel we are all individuals, this does not deprive us of a sense of unity with the whole of humanity. In our human evolution we have no right to feel ourselves as individuals unless we also have a sense of belonging to humanity as a whole.

I should like to call this the fundamental ground from which any ‘philosophy of freedom’ must spring, for such a philosophy must place each individual human being in the social context in an entirely new way. Our questions, t00, will then become quite new.

Very many questions have been asked about society in recent centuries, and especially in the nineteenth century; and what have the proletarian millions made of these questions which arose first among members of the higher classes? Why is there such a widespread view that the proletarian millions are on the wrong track? It is because they have taken erroneous doctrines on board from the higher classes. They have become the pupils of the higher classes; the doctrines are not their own.

We must learn to see things clearly. Some maintain that human beings are the product of their environment, that they are produced by the social circ*mstances and arrangements all around them. Others say that social circ*mstances are what people have made them. All such views are just about as clever as asking: Is the human physical body the product of the head or of the stomach? The physical human being is the product of neither but rather of a continuous interaction between the two. The two have to work together; the head is both cause and effect, and the stomach is both cause and effect. Indeed, if you look a little deeper you will find that the stomach is made by the head, for in the embryo the head is created before the stomach is formed; but on the other hand it is the stomach that forms the organism.

So we must not ask whether human beings have been created by circ*mstances or circ*mstances by human beings. It is essential to understand that each is both cause and effect, that everything affects everything else. The foremost question to ask is: “What social arrangements will enable people to have the right thoughts on matters of social concern, and what kind of thoughts must exist so that these right social arrangements can arise?’

In practical life people tend to think in terms of doing one thing after another. But this leads nowhere. We can only make progress if we think in circles, but many people do not feel up to doing this because it would be like having a mill-wheel turning in their head. It is essential to think in circles. Looking at external circ*mstances we must admit that they have been created by people but also that people are affected by them. And looking at the things people do we must realize that these actions bring about the external circ*mstances but also that they are sustained by these same external circ*mstances. To arrive at reality we must skip back and forth in our thoughts, but people do not like doing this. They want to set up a procedure and make a programme: Point 1, Point 2, Point 3, right up to, let us say, Point 12, with Point 1 coming first and Point 12 last. But there is no life in this. Any programme should be reversible, so that we can begin with Point 12 and work back to Point 1, just as the stomach nourishes the organism, and if the nerves situated underneath the cerebellum are not in good order we cannot breathe properly. Just as things can be reversed in life, so must we also see to it that they can be reversed in social life.

In the same vein, when I wrote my book Towards Social Renewal I had to assume, on the basis of the social situation at the time, that it would find readers who would be capable of going both forwards and backwards in their ideas. But people do not want this. They prefer to begin at the beginning and read through to the end, at which point they know that they have finished. They are not interested in being told that the end is also the beginning. The worst misunderstanding connected with this book with its social intentions was that people read it the wrong way; and they continue to do so. They do not want to adapt their thoughts to life; they want life to adapt to their thoughts. This, however, is not at all the precondition for social arrangements with which we are dealing here. I shall continue with this theme after the translation.

When people began to discuss the idea of a threefold social organism I heard about an interesting opinion. The idea of a threefold society draws attention to the three streams in social life that I have been describing over the last few days. Firstly there is the cultural, spiritual stream which is today the heritage of the old theocracies, for all cultural life can ultimately be traced back to the origins of theocracy. Secondly there is what I have called the sphere of political, legal affairs, and thirdly what can be termed economic life. When attention was focused on the threefolding impulse, on these three ideas, there were people of good standing in the world, manufacturers perhaps, or clergymen, people with a specific position in society, who came and pronounced on the matter: ‘How delightful to discover a new suggestion emerging that will once again validate Plato’s grand ideas.” These people thought I had breathed new life into Plato’s division of society into the order of agricultural producers, the order of soldiers and the order of statesmen and scholars.

All I could say was that perhaps this might seem so to those who rush to the libraries to ascertain the origins of any new idea. But for those who understand what I mean by a threefolding of social life it will be obvious that it is the opposite of what Plato meant by his three orders, for Plato lived a good many years prior to the Mystery of Golgotha. His three orders were appropriate in his time, but to bring them back to life now would be absurd. The idea of a threefold organism is not concerned with dividing individuals into groups with some being producers, others soldiers and yet others statesmen. What we want to do now is create arrangements, institutions in which every individual can partake in turn, for today we are concerned with human individuals and not with orders or categories. There will be arrangements in which the cultural, spiritual life of humanity can be cultivated, this being built solely on people’s individual capabilities. Secondly there will be independent arrangements that govern political and legal life without wanting to swallow up the other two elements of the social organism. And thirdly there will be arrangements dealing solely with economic affairs.

The political, legal life will deal with agreements people have to make with one another, with things that are determined between individuals.

In the cultural, spiritual sphere not everyone will be able to make judgements, for in this sphere only those can judge who have the necessary competence in a particular subject. Here everything emanates from the individual human being. There is a wholeness in the cultural life; it has to be a coherent, uniform body. You will object that this is not so, but I shall come to this in a moment.

The political, legal sphere requires individuals to work together in the sense of present-day democracy in matters that require no specialist knowledge, so that every individual is competent to form judgements. Such a sphere exists; it is the legal and political life.

Thirdly there is the sphere of economics. Here individuals do not make judgements; indeed, an individual opinion is irrelevant, for it can never be correct. In associations or communities of individuals judgements arise when opinions merge in a common judgement.

The whole point in all of this is not the division of the state, or for that matter any other community, into three parts. The important thing is that each of the three aspects is in a position to make its own contribution to the health of the overall social organism.

The way of thinking I have represented here is capable of holding its own in the midst of life. Suppose someone wants to apply his capabilities and do something, using the necessary skills or techniques. What this person does is then carried forward by others. It is important that I should do something, but it is not the main thing. The main thing is that a second, third, fourth person or any number of people carry my action further in an appropriate manner. For this to happen the social organism must be so managed that traces of my activity do not disappear. Otherwise I might do something here in Oxford that is carried on further for a while, but by the time it reaches Whitechapel there is no trace of it. All that remains visible are the external symptoms of the hardship prevalent there. Hardship will inevitably arise if human forces cannot enter into the social organism in the right way.

Look at the misery in Russia. What causes it? It is there because social forces cannot come to grips properly with the social organism, because the social organism is not structured in the right way according to its natural three parts. The actions of individual human beings will be able to percolate through the whole social organism like blood through the human body only if that social organism is so arranged that the cultural life depends freely on individuals, if there is a legal and political life that orders all the business that falls within the competence of every individual regardless of each person’s level of education, and if, thirdly, there is an independent economic sphere concerned solely with production, consumption and distribution.

Such a thing can indeed result from a true and realistic insight into the world so long as people really do come to grips with it on the basis of a realistic understanding. But if such things, once stated, are merely explained away by Marxist theories and doctrinaire intellectualism, then of course they remain incomprehensible. No one then knows what is meant by someone who does not look at hardship superficially but who delves down more deeply, saying: ‘You cannot improve matters in this way. First you must create social interrelationships of a kind that enables the hardship to be sent packing.” That is where the problem lies.

We must begin to realize how far what was once theocracy has retreated from real life. The original theocrats did not need libraries; their science was not neatly stored in libraries. To study a science there was no need to sit down and pore over old books, for what they did was go and dwell with living human beings. They paid attention to human beings. They asked how best to do what was right for human beings. The real world was their library. Instead of studying books they looked into human faces, they took account of them; instead of reading books they read the souls of human beings. Today all our science has been swallowed up by libraries or stored by other means, well away from human beings.

We need a sphere of spirit and culture firmly rooted in the real world; we need a sphere of spirit and culture in which books are written from life and for life, full of ideas for life and ways and means of living. Especially in the sphere of spirit and culture we must emerge from our libraries and go out into life. We need education for our children based on the children present in the classroom, not on rules. Our education must be derived from knowledge of the human being; what should be done each day, each week, each year must derive from the children themselves.

We need a legal and political sphere in which human being encounters human being, where the only basis for decisions is the legitimate competence of each individual, as I have already pointed out, regardless of profession or whatever other situation each is in. The legal and political sphere exists for all the situations in which human beings meet one another as equals.

What else will belong to the sphere of spirit and culture if this sphere is accepted in the form I have described? Little by little the administration of capital will move of its own accord from the economic to the spiritual, cultural sphere.

However much we may rail against capitalism there is nothing we can do about it, for we need it. What matters about capital and capitalism is not that they exist but what the social forces are that work in them. Capital has come into being through the intellectual ingenuity of human beings; it came into being out of the cultural, spiritual sphere through the division of labour and intellectual knowledge. Merely as a way of illustrating the possibilities, and not to make a Utopian statement, I described in my book Towards Social Renewal how capital might stream towards the spiritual, cultural sphere of the social organism. Just as the copyright on books lapses after 30 years, so that their content becomes common property, so, I suggested, might someone—having amassed capital and had capital working for him while he was himself engaged in the work which his capital generated—transfer his capital to the common good after 30 years or so. I did not state this as a Utopia but merely as a possibility of how, instead of stagnating everywhere, capital might begin to flow and enter the bloodstream of social life. All the things I wrote were illustrations, not dogmas or Utopian ideas. I merely wanted to hint at what might be brought about by the associations.

What actually happens may turn out to be something quite different. When one has brought life into one’s thinking one does not set down dogmas to be adopted, one counts on human beings. Once they are embraced in the right way by the social organism they themselves will discover what is meaningful and useful socially in the environment in which they find themselves. In everything I say I count on people, not dogmas. Unfortunately it has been my experience that what I really meant in my book Towards Social Renewal is never discussed. Instead people ask questions such as: Is it really possible for capital to be inherited by the most capable after the passage of a specific number of years?’ People do not want realities, they want Utopias. This is what militates against an unprejudiced reception of the threefolding impulse.

Once the legal, political sphere is able to function properly people will notice that it will involve itself with questions of labour. Today labour is entirely enmeshed in the economic life and is not treated as something to do with how people relate with one another. In 1905 I wrote an article on the social question in which I demonstrated that with today’s division of labour, labour is reduced to a commodity as it flows into the rest of the social organism. Qur own labour only has an apparent value for us. What others do for us has real value, and what we do for them also has value. This has been achieved by technology, but our moral outlook has not kept pace with it. Within the social order as it is today one can, technically speaking, make nothing for oneself, not even a jacket. If you make it yourself it still costs as much, taking the whole social structure into account, as if it had been made by someone else. The economic aspect of the jacket is universal in the sense that it is determined by the community at large. It is an illusion to imagine that the jacket made for you by a tailor is cheaper. If you work it out in figures it might appear cheaper. But if you were to calculate its price as part of the overall balance sheet you would see that by making your own clothes you can no more jump out of your own skin than you can remove the process from the economic sphere or change that sphere in any way. The price of the garment you make for yourself remains an item in the total balance sheet. Labour is what one person does for another. It cannot be measured by the number of man/hours required in a factory setting. The value put on labour is a supreme example of something belonging in the realm of law, the legal, political sphere.

You can tell that this is not an outdated idea by the way labour is everywhere protected and safeguarded by laws. But these regulations are not even half-measures, they are quarter measures. No regulations will be properly effective until there is a proper threefolding of the social organism. Only when this has happened will human beings meet each other as equals. Only then will labour be rightly regulated when human worth meets human worth in that sphere where all are competent to speak.

You might want to object: ‘Perhaps there will sometimes not be enough work to go round if work is determined in this way in a democratic state.’ This is indeed one of the areas where the social life is affected by history, by the evolution of humanity as a whole. The economic sphere must not be allowed to determine the amount of work available. The economic sphere must be bounded on the one hand by nature and on the other by the amount of labour determined by the legal, political sphere. You cannot get a committee to decide in advance how many rainy days there are to be in 1923 so as to enable the economy to run on course in that year. Just as you have to accept the limitations set by nature, so in an independent economic organism will you have to reckon with the amount of labour available being determined by the legal, political organism. I can only mention this in general terms here, as an example.

Within the economic sphere of the social organism there will be associations in which consumers, producers and distributors will together reach an associative judgement based on practical experience—not an individual judgement that can only be irrelevant in this sphere. The small beginnings being tried today show that this is not yet possible, but the fact that these small beginnings are being tried shows that unconsciously humanity does have the intention to form associations. Co-operatives, trade unions, all kinds of communities show that this intention exists. But when co-operatives are founded side by side with ordinary social life as it exists today they will perish unless they conform to this social life by charging the same prices and using the same marketing practices. In working towards a threefold social organism we should not be trying to create new realities based on Utopian concepts; we should be coming to grips with what is already there. Institutions already in existence, consumers, producers, the entrepreneur, everything already in existence needs to come together in associations. There is no need to ask how to create associations. The question to ask is: ‘How can existing economic organizations and institutions be inte grated in associations?’

If such associations can be achieved, commercial experience will enable something to arise that can indeed lead to a genuine social ordering, just as a healthy human organism leads to a healthy life. There will be circulation in the economy, circulation of production money, loan money and gift money. There can be no social organism without these three. We may want to rail against gifts and donations, but they are a necessary part. You deceive yourself if you say that a healthy social organism should make gifts unnecessary. Yet you pay tax, and taxes are merely a roundabout way of making donations to schools and other facilities.

People deserve to have a social order in which they can always see how things flow without having to make suppositions. When social life has been extricated from today’s general muddle, in which everything is mixed up together, we shall begin to see—just as we can already observe the blood circulating in the human organism—how money circulates in the form of production money, loan money and gift money. ‘We shall see the different way human beings relate on the one hand to money they invest—money for trading, production and purchase—which goes back into production because of the way it earns interest, and on the other hand to the money they give as donations, which must flow into an independent cultural sphere.

People can only participate in social life as a whole through associations which make visible how the life of society flows. Then the social organism will be healthy. Abstract thinking is incompatible with the idea of a threefolding of the social order; only living thinking can encompass it.

Yet even in the economic sphere our thinking is no longer alive. Everywhere we have abstraction. Where is there any life in the economic sphere today? How did it begin in the days when people jotted down their income and expenditure on odd scraps of paper? As things grew more complicated clerics were employed to do the job; they became the clerks. They ran external life to the best of their ability. And who are the successors of those clerks taken from the church to record the economic affairs of princes? They are today’s bookkeepers. In some districts you still occasionally come across a small reminder of those early times. If you turn to the first page in their ledgers—is this the case in your country also?—you see the inscription: “With God’. But there is little in subsequent pages that is ‘with God’. What you find there is an abstraction of something that ought to be full of life, something that ought to be present as life in the associations and not stored up in ledgers.

In working towards a threefolding of society we certainly do not aim to juggle about in old ways with concepts such as cultural life, political life, economic life, mixing them up perhaps in slightly different ways, as has been done in recent times. Our main concern is to comprehend what an organism really is, and then to bring back into real life those things that have become such total abstractions. The most important task is to rescue things from abstraction and bring them back to life. Every individual will belong to the associations of the economic sphere, including representatives of the cultural sphere, for they, too, have to eat, as do the representatives of the legal, political sphere. Conversely, too, every individual also belongs to each of the other spheres as well.

There is a necessary consequence of all this that shocks people a good deal when the subject is brought up, especially when the examples one uses are somewhat exaggerated so as to be more explicit. I once told an industrialist, an excellent man at his job, what was needed in order to bring things back to life: ‘Suppose you have an employee who is fully integrated in the life of your factory. Then along comes a technical college and snaps this man up, not someone recently trained but someone who is fully immersed in the life of the factory. For five or ten years this man can talk to the youngsters about what the life of a factory really is. Then, when he gets a bit stale, he can return to the factory.” Well, such things will make life complicated, but they are what our time requires. There is no getting away from it.

Just as new life must continually flow through the social organism if it is not to decay, so must people either become full human beings, which means that they must be able to circulate through all the spheres of the social organism, or we shall fall into decadence. Of course we can choose decadence if we like, by standing still with our old points of view. But evolution will not allow us to stand still. This is the salient fact.

In conclusion I should like to add that I have developed the subject of my lectures more from a feeling angle. It should not be taken one-sidedly as being purely spiritual except in the sense that it arises out of the spirit of real life. I have only been able to give you a kind of feeling for the impulses that are to arise out of these social ideas. More is not possible in only three lectures.

However, as I bring these lectures to a close I want to thank you in the warmest possible way for allowing me to speak to you about these things. I especially want to thank Mrs Mackenzie who has chaired the committee, for without her efforts this whole Oxford enterprise would not have taken place.’* I also thank the committee for all they have done to assist her. Another thing I am especially grateful for is the opportunity given us here in Oxford during this meeting to bring in the artistic endeavours, eurythmy specifically, which we are trying to send out into the world from Dornach. Thank you all for your endeavours!

You will sense how seriously I want to express my thanks when I remind you that everything we are starting in Dornach is only a beginning that cannot become reality without such efforts as have taken place here in Oxford. The understanding and stoutness of heart we need in Dornach is expressed in a fact which I also want to mention to you, although this is not in any way at all intended as a hint. It is likely that by November we shall have to break off our building work in Dornach because by then we shall have run out of funds. These funds do exist in the world, I believe, but somewhere there is a blockage in this connection. If things were to proceed as they ought in a rightly functioning social organism, then . .. The fact that this work has begun but may well have to be interrupted because of the unfavourable times if an understanding for the need to continue does not emerge in time—this is something that oppresses us greatly in Dornach. I have mentioned this to show you how very heartfelt and cordial are the thanks I have expressed to you.

I have endeavoured to speak to you about education on the one hand, and about social matters on the other. From Dornach these things will be cultivated in a general way. When the anthroposophical movement was founded the point of departure initially was that of a world view and a theoretical understanding. Then people began to see and feel what strong forces of decline exist in our time, whereupon they realized that something needed doing in education and in social life. That was when they began to approach me with the question: “What has anthroposophy got to offer with regard to the establishment of schools that take the fullness of real life into account, and with regard to a future that needs to emerge from the deeper layers of humanity?’ For there is not much to be gained for the future from the more superficial layers of human existence.

The education movement did not arise out of some fad or abstract idea. It came about because people began to enquire what anthroposophy had to offer on the basis of real life rather than out of some kind of sectarian effort.

This was even more strongly the case with the social question. Here, too, people whose hearts were filled with dismay at today’s signs of decay came to ask what anthroposophy might say out of its encounter with genuine reality about impulses that could be sent towards the future.

I am immensely grateful to have been met with understanding here, for what needs saying must go forth into the fullness of life; from this college it must send its effects out into the world where real human beings are at work. I am grateful that it is not antiquated knowledge, for the centres of cultural life must send out impulses to ensure that the right people are in position in the factories, the people who know how to administer capital that generates life. You will not take it amiss that I endeavoured to demonstrate this by means of such examples as came to hand, for on the other side I want to repeat what I have already said before: I have been most happy to explain these impulses here in Oxford where every step you take outside in the street brings inspiration from ancient times and where such strong influences come to the aid of someone wanting to speak out of the spirit.

The spirit that lived in former times was not the one that is needed now to work on into the future. But it was a living spirit that can still inspire. Therefore it has been deeply satisfying to give these lectures and suggestions for the future here in Oxford surrounded by impressions of ancient, venerable learning.

Finally, yet more thanks remain to be expressed. I am sure you will all understand how grateful I am to Mr Kaufmann who has done all the translating with such great love. When you know how much effort goes into translating quite complicated texts and how much this effort can deplete a person’s strength in quite a short time you can appreciate the work Mr Kaufmann has done here during this holiday conference over the past weeks. I want to express my sincere thanks to him, and I hope that many of you will also do so. I now ask him to translate these final words as accurately and faithfully as he has translated all the previous things I have said.

Yesterday I tried to describe how the first part of a lecture on the threefold social order could be dealt with in the case of a certain audience; I called attention to the fact that it is above all necessary to call forth a feeling for the special character of the spiritual life that stands independently on its own. In the second part it will be a matter of making it even comprehensible to present-day humanity that there can be something like a democratic-political connection that has to strive for equality. For it is actually a fact—and you must take this into consideration when preparing for such a lecture—that modern man has no feeling at all for a state structure that is built upon rights as upon its very foundation. This part, the political part referring to the state, is especially difficult to deal with within Swiss conditions. It will have to be specially emphasized that lecturers, who want to represent the threefold social order within Swiss conditions, proceed from the thus given Swiss conditions, and that in the middle part concerning the political, public life, they take into consideration how one must speak out of the Swiss context. After all, generally it is like this: Because of the conditions of the recent development of humanity, public life as such, which was to express itself in the life of rights, has in the main disappeared. What expresses and lives in the configuration of the state, is really a chaotic union of the spiritual elements of human existence and the economic elements. One could say that in the modern states the spiritual elements and the economic elements have gradually become mixed together; whereas the actual political life has fallen away in between, has in fact vanished.

This is particularly noticeable within the conditions of Switzerland. We are dealing there everywhere with a seeming democratization of the spiritual life, impossible in its actual formulations, and a democratization of economic life and the fact that the public believes that this apparent democratic mixture of the spiritual and the economic life is a democracy. Since people have formed their concepts of democracy out of this mixture, since they therefore have an absolute illusory concept of democracy, it is so difficult to speak of true democracy particularly to the Swiss. Actually, the Swiss know least of all about real democracy.

In Switzerland, one thinks about how to democratize the schools. This is about the same as if one were supposed to think about and gain an idea out of real, true concepts on how to turn a boot into a good head covering. In a similar manner, the so-called democratic political concepts are treated. It serves no purpose to speak of these matters in a—let me say—puss*-footing manner in order to speak politely to a mainly Swiss audience; for then we could not understand each other. Politeness in such matters can never lead to an understanding. Well, just because of this it is so necessary to discuss the concept of rights and the equality of men in face of a people like the Swiss nation.

One has to accustom oneself to speak differently in each locality if one wants to be active as a lecturer. When, as was the case beginning in April 1919, one spoke about the threefold social order in Germany, one spoke under totally different conditions from those here in Switzerland, and also completely different conditions than those under which one can speak in England or in America about the threefold order. Especially in that spring, in April 1919, directly after the German revolution, everybody in Germany, the proletarian as well as the middle class—the first naturally in a more revolutionary, the second in a more resigned manner—were convinced of the fact that something new would have to come. One actually spoke into this feeling, this mood, that something new had to come. One spoke at that time to relatively prepared, receptive people; naturally, one could speak in Germany quite differently from the way one could speak there today. A whole world lies between today and that spring of 1919 in Germany as well. Today, one can at most hope to call forth some sort of idea by means of something resembling the threefold order of how the spiritual life as such can be structured independently—especially how it would have to be formulated under the conditions presently existing in Germany today, and how, under certain conditions, the inner-political life of rights within the state could be constituted. In Germany today, one naturally cannot speak of a formulation of the economic life completely in the sense of the threefold order, for the economic life in Germany is in fact something that is under rules of duress, under pressure and such as that. It is something that cannot move freely, that cannot conceive ideas concerning its own free mobility. This is quite obvious in the completely different form of life of, for example, the Futurum and the Kommende Tag. The Kommende Tag exists as if in a strait-jacket, and its task is to function under such conditions; the Futurum must work under Swiss conditions in the way it develops,—conditions of which we shall speak further directly. Therefore, a speech must be formulated in different ways depending on whether it is delivered in Switzerland, Germany, or even at different times. Again, one would have to speak completely differently in England or in America. What can be accomplished from here, in Europe, in regard to these two countries, can only be a sort of substitute. It is alright, for example, if “The Threefold Social Order” is translated, it is fine if the book is widely distributed, but, as I have said from the beginning, in the final analysis the really effective way would be if the ideas of this book were set down in a totally different style for America and England. For both Switzerland and Central Europe, it can be taken literally word for word, the way it was written down. But for England and America the ideas would indeed have to be rendered in a completely different form because in those countries one addresses people who basically have the opposite attitude of what existed, for instance, among Germans in April of 1919. In Germany, the opinion prevailed that something new would have to come and to begin with it would suffice if one knew what this consisted of. One didn't have the mental strength to comprehend it but one had the feeling that one ought to know what this sensible innovation might be. Naturally, in all of England and America nothing like this feeling exists anywhere. The only concern there is how to hold on to and save the old traditions. The only worry is how to properly secure the past because the old values are good, so one thinks, and one must by no means shake the traditional foundations!

I am certainly aware that the above can be countered with the statement that there are so many progressive movements in the Western hemisphere. Still, all these progressive movements, regardless of whether their inner content is new, are reactionary and conservative insofar as their management is concerned. The feeling that things cannot continue the way they have gone 'til now, has to be called into being over there in the West in the first place.

This can certainly be noticed by individual examples. Let us take a terrible, horrible, I could say the worst problem that could have arisen from a purely human standpoint, the question of starvation in Russia. Although the views are ever so chaotic within Germany, even though for reasons of agitation one acts contrary to what would be sensible, and although, out of humane reasons, homage is paid to pity in a matter-of-fact manner,—and naturally, we are not saying anything against pity holding sway,—within Germany, at least in some circles, one is finally more or less reaching the conclusion that it is nonsense for the whole course of humanity's evolution to do something for the starvation of Russia in the form of subsidies, by gifts, as it were, from the West. People are getting the idea that this is quite certainly demanded even from a humane standpoint, but that what is done in this direction is so self-evident that nobody should say that it has anything to do with the tasks posed today by the starvation conditions in Russia. In the West, only a few theorists—but then only on the basis of something theoretical—might arrive at such views. It is therefore natural that one must first call forth a feeling in the West for the fact that the world needs a new form, a reformation.

Switzerland's position during the dreadful catastrophe of recent times (the First World War) was such that it only participated in a theoretical way, namely by means of journalistic theory in the events, also by means of what influenced the cultural and economic conditions from outside. The Swiss population therefore has no actual feeling at all, neither of the fact that something new should come into being, nor that the old ought to remain. If today, depending on one or the other party consideration, a Swiss speaks about something new having to come into being, or something old having to remain, one has the feeling: He only tells one what he has heard, heard on the one hand from Central Europe, on the other from England and the West. He only speaks of what has reached his ears, not of what he has actually experienced. This is why it appears so like the Swiss, when those individuals, who don't like to engage themselves to the right or to the left—and leading Swiss are very often like this today,—that such people say: Well, when this happens, it happens in this way, and when the other takes place, it occurs that way! If something new comes into being, matters take their course thusly, if the old remains, matters run that way!—One figures out, as it were, what one must put on one or the other side of the scale.

It is like this: When one tries to make somebody in Switzerland take an interest in something that is bitterly needed for the world today, one can become quite desperate, for it doesn't really move him at all, for it bounces right back because in reality his heart is not in it. It is too distasteful to him for him to become interested, and he has too little experience concerning these matters for them to become in some way appealing to his sympathy. He wants to have his peace. On the other hand, he wants to be a Swiss. This signifies: If all sorts of progressive reports that include “freedom” and “democracy” resound across the border, and since one has through many centuries called oneself democratic, one cannot turn around and say that one doesn't want democracy! In short, one really has the feeling that people in Switzerland have an exceedingly well-built canal between the right and the left ear, so that everything that goes in one side goes out on the other without having reached common sense and the heart.

One will have to at least take hold at those points where it can be shown that a political system like that of Switzerland is really something quite special. It is indeed something quite special. For, first of all, Switzerland is something like a gravity-point of the world—which was already noticeable during the war, if one wanted to take notice of it. Particularly its non-alliance in regard to the various world conditions could be utilized by Switzerland to achieve free, independent judgment and actions in regard to its surroundings. The world is literally waiting for the Swiss to note in their heads what they note in their pockets. In their pockets they notice that the franc has not been affected by the rise and fall and corruption of currency. The Swiss realize that the whole world revolves around the Swiss franc. That this is also the case in a spiritual regard is something the Swiss don't notice at all. Just as they know how to value the unchanging franc, which, as it were, has become the regulator of currency the world over, the Swiss should learn to understand their independent position, brought about by world conditions, whereby Switzerland could indeed be a kind of lever for world conditions. It is therefore necessary that one makes this comprehensible to them.

It is almost similar to the way one had to speak at one time about Austria. People who knew something about such matters in Austria have often pondered the question why this Austria, which only had centrifugal tendencies, remained in existence, why it didn't split apart. In the 1880's and in the '90's, I never said anything else but: What occurs in Austria itself has to begin with no significance for the cohesiveness or the splitting apart (of the state structure), what happens around it, does. Because the others—Germany, Russia, Italy, Turkey, and those interested in Turkey, France and Switzerland itself—because these political systems that surround Austria on all sides do not let Austria split apart, and instead hold it centrally together for the reason that each (country) begrudged the other a part of it! Each took pains that the other would not acquire anything: by these means Austria held together. It was held together from outside. One could clearly see this if one had an eye for such things. Only when this mutual watch of the surrounding powers was obscured in the World War by the smoke of the cannons, only then did Austria naturally split apart. Basically, this picture says it all.

Well, it is similar in the case of Switzerland, yet it is different. All around, there are all sorts of diverse interests, but these interests left out one small spot where they do not confront each other. And today, where there is the life of the world economy, of the cultural life, matters are such that this small spot is maintained by virtue of being something quite special. What does it represent? It is something that is held together within its borders by purely political conditions. You can see this from the history of Switzerland. Swiss history is seemingly completely political, just as Swiss thinking is seemingly completely democratic. It is the same, however, in politics in Switzerland as I explained it earlier concerning democracy. It is a form of politics that is no politics; on a small spot of the world it governs the cultural and the economic life, but in reality is not politically active. Compare what is politics in Switzerland and what it is elsewhere! Occasionally, one or the other matter must be done in a political sense, because one must enter into correspondence with other countries. But genuine Swiss politics—you would have to turn things upside-down, if you wanted to discover real Swiss politics. That doesn't really exist. But this makes it evident that here a national configuration was created in which the cultural and the economic life are governed in a political sense, but in which there actually does not exist a true feeling, a true experience of the existence of rights.

Therefore, it is a matter of especially emphasizing here that rights are something that cannot be defined, as red or blue cannot be defined, and that rights need to be experienced in their self-evident quality, something that must be experienced when a person, who has become of age, becomes conscious of himself as a human being. Therefore, it would be a matter of trying to work out this human relationship of feelings and sensations in the life of rights, in the political life for Swiss conditions, to show that equality must dwell in the individual person if there is to be a life of rights. For it is Switzerland that is actually called upon—and I would like to say that the angels of the whole world look upon Switzerland to watch whether the right things take place here, to create a system of rights by letting go, freeing the cultural and the economic life; for Switzerland is, if I may put it this way, quite virginal in regard to the political life.

Roman jurisprudence, which moved in a quite different way into France and Germany and the other European countries, was really stopped by the Swiss mountains for the hearts of men. It only moved into external elements, not into the feelings of men. Therefore, this is virginal soil for rights, soil on which everything can be created. If only people will come to the realization what infinite good luck it signifies to be able to live here between the mountains, to be able to have a will of their own, independent of the whole world that revolves around this tiny country! Just because of world conditions, the elements of rights can be brought out here, worked purely out of the human being.

Now I have indicated to you how one must take into consideration the particular locality, the specific area for the preparations of such a lecture, how one must be completely sure within oneself about what the essence of the Swiss character is. Naturally, I can only outline it now; but anybody who wants to lecture in Switzerland should really try hard to fully understand what specific form the Swiss character consists of.

Now it is true, you might say: We are, after all, Swiss—just as the English could say we are English—and you want to tell us how a Swiss is to become acquainted with the Swiss character, and what all an Englishman might not have of such feelings, and so on.—Certainly, one can say that. But those who today belong to the educated class, nowhere have a truly experienced education, an education that has emerged out of the directness of experience. This is the reason why, especially in reference to rights, this direct experience must be specifically pointed out.

With this we arrive at a consideration of how human beings have gradually come into the mutual, social relationships in modern civilization in the area, where rights should really develop. Rights should develop from man to man. Anything else, all parliamentary debates, are basically only a surrogate for what should take its course from one man to the next in a truly correct realm of rights.

If one now ponders the area of rights, one has the opportunity—but now in a more realistic manner—to go into what the concepts of the proletariat consist of and the feelings of the bourgeois. But now, one can lead what the proletariat has developed in its concepts in a more realistic way into the feelings of the bourgeois. I say: concepts of the proletariat, feelings of the bourgeois. The explanation for it you can find in my Towards Social Renewal.

Out of the four concepts, which I developed here yesterday, the proletariat has certainly evolved the feeling of class consciousness; it must appropriate what is in the possession of the bourgeois, namely the state. To what extent the state is a true state of rights or not is something that did not become clear naturally to the proletariat either. But what has developed as a state of rights is something that Switzerland has least of all been touched by; therefore it could comprehend a true state of rights most readily without any prejudices. What has developed as a real state of rights, actually lives only between the expressions of the main soul life of people almost the world over today, but not in Switzerland! Everywhere else in the world, the element that is the political state of rights lives an underground-existence, so to speak, whereas the element that is really experienced between person and person is based on something quite different, namely on something that is through and through a middle-class element. What man actually seeks in public life, what he carries into the whole of public life, whereby an obscuration of the actual life of rights takes place for him—that is something that one can only grasp if one focuses a bit on the concrete relationships.

You see, the cultural, the spiritual life has gradually been absorbed by the life of the state (the government). The cultural life, however, when one confronts it as an element standing on its own ground, is a very stern element, an element in regard to which one must constantly preserve one's freedom, which therefore cannot be organized in any other way except in freedom. Just let one generation unfold its spiritual life more freely and then organize it any way it wants to: it will be purest slavery for the following generation. Not only according to theory, but according to life, the spiritual, cultural life must really be free. The human beings who stand within it must experience this freedom. The cultural life turns into a great tyranny if it spreads out anywhere on earth, for without being organized it cannot spread, and when organization occurs, the organization itself becomes a tyrant. Therefore, there must be a constant battle in freedom, in living freedom, against the tyranny to which the cultural life is inclined.

Now, in the course of the nineteenth century, the cultural life has been absorbed by the life of the state. This means: If one divests the life of the state of the toga in which it is still very much clothed in memory of the ancient Roman age,—although judges are even beginning to discard the robe, but all in all one can still say that the life of the state still wears the toga,—if one disregards this toga, looks instead at what is underneath, one sees everywhere the constrained spiritual life that is present in the state and the social life of the state. It is the restrained spiritual life! It is constrained but ignorant of the fact that it is constrained; therefore it does not strive for freedom, although it does constantly fight against its constraint. Much has emerged in recent times out of this fighting against the constraint of spiritual life. Our whole public cultural life really stands under the influence of this constraint of cultural life, and we cannot attain to healthy social conditions if we do not acquire a feeling for awareness of this constraint. One must have a feeling for how this constraint of the spiritual life meets one in everyday life.

One day, I was invited by a number of ladies in Berlin, who had heard lectures of mine in an institute, to give a lecture in the private apartment of one of these ladies. The whole arrangement was really for the purpose of the ladies' working against a certain relatively harmless attitude of their husbands. You see, the ladies arrived around twelve o'clock noon in the institute where I gave my lectures. When such a day recurred—I think it was once a week—the husbands said, “There you go again into your crazy institute today; then the soup will be bad again, or something else won't be in its usual order!”—So the ladies wanted me to give a lecture on Goethe's Faust—this was selected as the subject—the husbands were also invited. Now I gave the lecture on Goethe's Faust before the ladies and gentlemen. The men were a bit perplexed afterwards and said, “Why yes, but Goethe's Faust is a science; Goethe's Faust is not art. Art, well that's Blumenthal!”¹—I am quoting word for word—“and there one doesn't have to make such an effort. After working so hard in our professional life, who wants to exert an effort in our leisure time!” You see, what has become a substitute for enthusiasm for freedom in cultural life confronts us in the social life as a mere desire to be lightly entertained.

In the country-side, where one could still observe this well, I once saw how these old traveling actors, who always had a clown among them, sometimes presented really fine acts. I watched how the clown, who had been doing his clownish acts for some time and had entertained the people with them, threw off the clown's costume, because he now wanted to act out something that was serious to him,—and there he stood in black trousers and black tails. This image always turns itself around in my mind: First I see the man in his formal black attire, afterwards I see the man in his clown's costume. To me it's like black trousers and tails when, somewhere in a window-display, I see a book by Einstein about the theory of relativity; and I see a clown, when, next to it, I have before me a book by Moszkowski on the theory of relativity. For, indeed, there is much that's maya in outer life. But one couldn't imagine that the whole pedantry of thinkers could inwardly appear other than in black trousers and well-cut tails, I mean in the theory of relativity. And again: It is bothersome to adjust to such stern processes of thinking, such consistent sequences of thoughts, which are really cut like a well-fitting formal suit; that must confront people in a different manner as well. So, Alexander Moszkowski, especially gifted feuilletonistically as a philosopher-clown, gets busy and writes a voluminous book. From it, all the people learn in the form of light literature in the clown's costume, what was born in coat and tails! You see, one cannot do other than translate things into something that requires no effort and where no great enthusiasm need be engendered.

It is namely this overall mood that must be opposed in people's feelings, if one wants to speak about concepts of rights, for there, the human being with all his inner worth confronts the other person as an equal. What does not allow the concepts of rights to arise, is—to put it this way—the Alexander-Moszkowski-element. One must seek for the concrete facts in any given situation.

Naturally, I am not saying that if one needs to speak of concepts of human rights, one has to talk about tails and clowns' costumes. But I would like to show how one has to possess an elasticity of concepts in all matters, how one has to point out both sides of a question, and how one's own mind needs to be disposed in order to gain the necessary fluency to lecture to people.

There is another reason why a modern lecturer must be aware of such things as these. Most of the time, he is compelled to speak in the evening, when he wants to present something important concerning the future, for example. This means that he has to make use of the time when people prefer to attend either the theater or a concert. Therefore, the lecturer must realize that he is speaking to an audience that, according to the mood of the hour, would be better off in the concert hall, the theater, or another place of entertainment. So the audience is really in the wrong place if it finds itself in a lecture hall listening to a speaker who discourses from the platform on some important topic. As a speaker, one must be aware of what one is doing, down to the last detail.

What does one in fact accomplish when forced to address such an audience? Quite literally, one ruins the listener's digestion! A serious speech has the peculiar effect of negatively reacting on the stomach juices, on pepsin. A serious lecturer causes stomach acidity. And only if the speaker is in the proper frame of mind to permeate his address at least inwardly with the necessary humor, can the digestive juices function harmoniously after all. One has to present a speech with a certain inner lightness, modulation, and with an amount of enthusiasm, then one aids the processes of digestion. This way, the adverse effects on people's stomachs, caused by the time of day when one is normally forced to lecture, are neutralized. One is not promoting social ideas but instead medical specialists if one speaks pedantically, with heavy, expressive emphasis. The style must be light and matter-of-fact, or else one does not further the ideas of the threefold social order but the medical specialist's practice! There are no statistics available about the number of people who end up at the doctor's office after they have listened to pedantic speeches, but if there were, one would be astonished at the percentage of people among patients of gastro-intestinal specialists who are eager listeners of lectures nowadays.

I must draw attention to these facts because the time is near when one must be familiar with the actual constitution of the human being. We must know how seriousness or humor affect the stomach and the digestive juices; how, for example, wine acts like a cynic who does not take the human organism seriously but plays with it, as it were. If the human organization were to be viewed with human concepts rather than with the confused, indecisive concepts of today's science, one would certainly realize how every word and word-relationship causes an organic, almost chemical, reaction in the human being.

Knowing such things makes lecturing easier too. The barrier that otherwise stands between speaker and audience ceases to exists if one becomes aware of the damage that a pedantic speech causes the stomach. One frequently has occasion to observe that; though that is less the case in a lecture-class at a university, there, the students protect themselves by not paying attention!

From all this, one can readily understand how much depends on the mood in lecturing. It is much more important to prepare the whole mood-atmosphere and have it in hand than to get the speech ready word for word. A person who has prepared himself for the correct mood need not concern himself with the verbal details to a point where, at a given moment, the latter would cause the listeners discomforts.

Several different aspects go into the makeup of a correctly trained speaker. I want to mention this at this particular point because a discussion of justice, of rights, demands much that has to be characterized in this direction. I want to bring this out now before I shall talk tomorrow about the relationship of speaking and the economic elements.

An anthroposophist once brought the well-known philosopher, Max Dessoir (1867–1947), along to an evening-lecture I was giving at the Architektenhaus in Berlin. This one-time friend of Max Dessoir's said afterwards, “Oh, that Dessoir didn't go along with the lecture after all! I asked him how he had liked it and he replied that he was a public speaker himself, therefore, being one himself, he could not listen properly and form a judgment about what another lecturer was saying.” Well, I did not have to form a judgment about Dessoir following this statement, I had other opportunities for that. Indeed, I wouldn't have done so based on this utterance because I couldn't be sure whether it was really the truth or whether Dessoir, as usual, had lied here too. But assuming it was the truth, what would it have proven? It would have been proof that a person holding such an opinion could never be a proper speaker. A person can never become a good speaker if he enjoys speaking, likes to hear himself talk, and attaches special importance to his own talks. A good speaker always has to experience a certain reluctance when he has to speak. He must clearly feel this reluctance. Above all, he should much prefer listening to another speaker, even the worst one, to speaking himself.

I know very well what I imply with this statement and I realize how difficult it is for some of you to believe me in this, but it is so. Of course, I concede that there are better things to do in life than to listen to poor speakers. But one's own speaking must by no means be included among the better things! Instead, one has to feel a certain urge to hear others, even enjoy listening to others. It is not love for his own speeches but listening to others that makes a person into a good speaker. A certain fluency is acquired by speaking but this has to happen instinctively. What makes one a speaker is basically listening, the development of an ear for the specific peculiarities of the other orators, even if they are poor ones. Therefore, I tell anybody who asks me how to best prepare to become a good speaker, to listen to and to read the speeches of others! Only by doing this one acquires a strong feeling of distaste for one's own speaking. And this distaste is the very thing that enables one to speak realistically. This is extremely important. And if people are as yet not successful in viewing their own speeches with antipathy, it is good if they at least retain their stage-fright. To stand up and lecture without stage-fright and with sympathy for one's own speech is something that ought not to be done because, under any circ*mstances, the results thus achieved would be negative. It contributes to rigidity, petrification and lack of communication in speech and belongs to the elements that ruin the sermon!

I would indeed not be speaking in the spirit of the aims of this speech-course if I would enumerate on rules of speech to you taken from some old book on rhetoric or copied from dusty rhetorical speeches. Instead, from my own living experience I want you to take to heart what one should always have in one's mind when one wants to influence one's fellow-men by lecturing.

Things change quite a bit if one is forced into a debate. In a sense, a certain rights-relationship between person and person comes up in a discussion. But in the debate through which one can learn most beautifully about human rights, the projection of general concepts of rights into the relationship existing between two people in a discussion hardly plays a role today. Yet here it is indeed important not to be in love with one's own way of thinking and feeling. Instead, in a debate one should feel antipathy for one's own reaction and replies. Because then, by suppressing one's own opinion, annoyance or excitement, one can instead project oneself into the other person's mind. Thus, even if one has to take exception to something in a debate, this attitude has positive results. Of course one cannot simply reiterate what the partner has stated but one can take the substance of an effective rebuttal from understanding him in the first place.

An example that best illustrates this point is the following exchange that took place in the German Parliament between the delegate Rickert and Chancellor Bismarck. Rickert gave a speech in which he accused Bismarck of changing the direction of his political leanings. He pointed out that Bismarck had gone along with the Liberals for a time and then had changed to the Conservatists. He summed it all up with the metaphor that Bismarck's politics amounted to turning his sails to the wind. One can imagine what an effect such a statement had in a place where everybody is ready to talk! Bismarck, however, rose and with a certain air of superiority, to begin with, presented what he had to say in reply to Rickert's remarks. And then, projecting himself into the other like he always did in similar cases, he said, “Rickert has accused me of turning my sails to the wind. But politics is somewhat like navigating a ship on sea. I would like to know how one can hold a steady course if one does not adjust to the wind. A real pilot, like a successful politician, must certainly adjust to the wind in steering his course—unless, possibly, he wants to make wind himself!”

One sees that this metaphor is put to use, turned in such a direction that the verbal arrow hits back at the archer. In a debate it is a matter of picking up the points made by the opponent and quite seriously using them to counter him. Thus, one undoes him with his own arguments. As a rule it doesn't help much if one simply sets one's own reasons against those of the opponent.

In a debate one should be able to evoke the following mood: The moment the debate begins one should be in a position to turn off everything one knew up to now, push it down into one's subconscious mind, and retain only what the speaker, whom one has to reply to, has said. Then can one properly exercise one's talent of setting straight what the other speaker said. Setting matters straight is what's important! In a discussion it is important to take up directly what the other has said, not to oppose him with something one knew some time ago. If one does that, as happens in most debates, the end-result will indeed be inconclusive and fruitless. One has to realize that in a discussion one can never successfully argue the opponent down. One can only demonstrate that he either contradicts himself or reality. One can only go into what he has set forth. If this attitude is developed as the basic rule for debates it will be of great significance for them. If a person only wants to bring out in a debate what he has known previously, then it will certainly he of no significance that he does so after the opponent has stated his case.

I once experienced a most instructive illustration of the above. During my last trip to Holland, I was invited to give a lecture before the Philosophical Society of the University of Amsterdam. Of course, the chairman there had a different opinion from mine already, no doubt about that! And if he participated in the debate he would differ from my viewpoints greatly. But it was equally clear that whatever he would have to say would have no effect on my lecture, and that my views would have no special influence on what he would say based on what he had known beforehand. Therefore, I thought that he was quite clever, he brought out what he had to say not afterwards, during the debate, but before my lecture. What he did add later to what he had said at the start might just as well have been said at the beginning too, it wouldn't have changed matters one bit.

One shouldn't have any illusions concerning such things. It is most important that an orator be very, very strongly attuned to human relationships. But, if matters are to have results, one cannot afford having illusions about human relations. And as a foundation for the following lectures, let me say that, above all, one should have no illusions about the effectiveness of speeches.

I always find it extremely humorous when well-meaning people say all the time that words don't matter, deeds do! I've heard it proclaimed at the most unsuitable times, during discussions and from the rostrums, that it isn't words but actions that count!

Everything that happens in the world in regard to actions depends on words! One who can see through things knows that nothing takes place that hasn't been prepared in advance by somebody through words.

But one will understand that this preparation is a subtle, delicate process. If it is true that theoretical, pedantic speaking affects the digestion, one can imagine how indigestion in turn affects actions, and how public actions are the results of such poor speeches. And if, on the other hand, speakers try to be humorists and only act funny, this results in an overproduction of digestive juices that act like vinegar. And vinegar is a terrible hypochondriac. But the general public is constantly entertained by what flows through public life as continuous fun-making. The jokes of yesterday are not yet digested when the fun of today makes its appearance. And so, the digestive juices turn into something like vinegar. Oh, man is already being entertained again today and maybe he is quite cheerful about it. But the way he places himself into public life is influenced by the hypochondria of this vinegar-like substance at work in him.

One must know how the dimension of speaking fits into the world of actions. The most untrue expression concerning speaking, born of a false sentimentality that is in itself wrong, is,

“The words you've bandied are sufficient;
'Tis deeds that I prefer to see ...”

Faust, Prelude on Stage)

Certainly, this can be said in a dramatic play, and rightly so in its place. But when it is taken out of context and made into a general dictum, it might be true but it certainly will not be good. And we should learn to speak not only beautifully or correctly but effectively as well, so that good will come of it. Otherwise, we lead people into the abyss and can certainly never speak to them about anything that has lasting value for the future.

• 1. Oskar Blumenthal, 1852–1917; author of light comedy.

The Taaffe ministry had a difficult time last week. The governing party acted as if it had no ill will to deny Mr. von Gautsch the teaching budget. It could easily have come to that if the opposition had not shirked its duty. However, the majority of the German-Austrian Club went over to the pro-government camp and thus saved the Taaffe Ministry, or at least the Minister for Culture and Education. However, it is very doubtful whether the cabinet will be able to enjoy its victory. The Liechtenstein school application and the Spiritus Act will apparently still cause the government a lot of trouble, and it remains to be seen whether the cabinet will be able to cope with them in the future. There is little to be said about other events in the Austrian parliament. The thirst for scandal is increasing from day to day. One committee of disapproval follows another. This is the activity of the Austrian House of Representatives, for which the people will know little gratitude.

The great disgruntlement that the appointment of General Bogdanovich has caused in the German Empire continues. While in Germany they avoid any occasion that could somehow offend the Tsar's sensibilities, in Russia there is little understanding for a similar concession. It is understandable that this appointment of General Bogdanovich, which is at least untimely, has given fresh impetus to the Boulangist movement in France, which seemed to be on the wane of late. The republican papers are now launching a campaign against the ministers Lockroy and Freycinet, who refused to sign the manifesto of the deputies and senators of the Seine against Boulanger. The declaration of the Council of Ministers that Lockroy and Freycinet did not have to sign the manifesto because the Ministry was in solidarity in all its actions and Floquet's declarations in Parliament on Boulangism were sufficient, apparently made little impression. The first edition of Boulanger's book "L'invasion allemande", in which he "analyzed and studied the events and men of 1870", is due to be published in the next few days. 2½ million copies of the book would be distributed free of charge.

Now England is also arming. The Minister of War, Stanhope, has introduced a bill to improve national defense, which was adopted by the House of Commons at first reading. Everywhere in Europe people are bowing to the iron commandment: si vis pacem, para bellum.

The Italian Prime Minister has thoroughly shone a light on the "irredenta" on the Apennine peninsula. In a significant speech, he emphasized that Italy was allied with Germany and Austria, but only because this was in Italy's best interests. Crispi also admitted that in addition to Italy's alliance with Germany and Austria, there was also an alliance between Italy and England.

Everything is quiet on the Balkan peninsula. Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria arrived in Tirnova and was received with enthusiastic cheers. At a banquet organized in his honour, the Prince gave a speech in which he referred to Bulgaria's moral strength, which gave him hope that it would soon become independent of all harmful foreign influences. "This strength instills in me," the Prince concluded his speech, "a strong confidence in Bulgaria's bright future."

Emperor Frederick's health is improving again from day to day in the most gratifying way; Prince Bismarck has left for Varzin.

A few days ago, the budget debate in the Austrian House of Representatives entered calmer waters. The crisis rumors that have repeatedly surfaced recently have now also fallen silent. Hardly anyone took them seriously anyway. As was to be expected, the Poles have completely bowed to the advice of Grocholski, the "smartest man", and have more or less withdrawn from the spirit issue. Prince Liechtenstein also had to agree that the first reading of his school proposal would be postponed until the next session. On the other hand, it is reported that the Minister for Culture and Education, so much pampered by the opposition, is busy preparing a new law on elementary schools. Truly, the elementary school should not complain that too little attention is being paid to it. The lex Liechtenstein, lex Lienbacher, lex Herold and lex Gautsch, all aim with their peculiar care to crush the poor elementary school. Evening meetings will be held in the next few days to deal with the masses of unfinished work. There is also talk of the necessity of continuing the session into the summer months. On 13 May, the monument to Empress Maria Theresa was ceremoniously unveiled on the magnificent square between the two court museums in Vienna in the presence of the imperial couple; the following day, Franz Josef personally opened the jubilee exhibition organized by the Lower Austrian Trade Association in the Prater and the Rotunda to celebrate the fortieth anniversary of the reign.

England has finally emerged from the reserve of a silent observer. On the 14th of this month. a deputation, the members of which are among the most distinguished personages in the country, went to the Secretary of State for War, Stanhope, to request him to take the necessary precautions for the defense of the country, and an appeal is at present circulating among the merchants, bankers, and other leading circles of the City, requesting them to take part in a great meeting, to take part in a great meeting, the object of which is to ascertain England's present state of defense by land and sea, as a war with a foreign power is not impossible in the near future, and the present policy of defensive measures can no longer continue.

England, however, was not so much aware of the danger of war from Russia as from France, which, once Boulanger realized his ambitious plans, was more likely to attack the unprepared island kingdom than the well-armed German Empire. Yes, Boulanger and no end! He celebrates triumphs wherever he appears. At a banquet in Lille, he gave a speech in which he pointed out the impotence and incompetence of the Chamber, which was composed of 500 sovereign non-taxpayers. He called the deputies the authors of the colonial wars, swindlers, railed against the constitution, accused the people's representatives of defrauding the people and clumsily flattered the voters. In Douai, he complained that the constitution did not provide any means of removing the president. That is clear enough.

Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria returned to Sofia on the 16th of this month from his journey, which was a continued chain of warm and enthusiastic ovations for him.

King Milan of Serbia arrived in Vienna on the 14th, where his wife has been staying with the Crown Prince for several days.

The crisis in Prussia

Emperor Frederick's reservations about signing the law on the extension of legislative terms in Prussia led to a Puttkamer crisis, which is likely to remain a crisis and not, as some claim, lead to a crisis of the entire ministry. The publication of the law depends on the position that Mr. v. Puttkamer takes with regard to the letter addressed to him by the Emperor, in which he is asked to comment on the election interference brought forward in the House of Representatives.

In this letter, the Emperor seems to want to counterbalance the law by taking a stand against electoral interference. This letter is to be published at the same time as the law on legislative periods. The outcome of the crisis cannot be foreseen at the moment, as the Chancellor's position on the issue can only be guessed at.

The Boulanger hype

The day before yesterday (June 4), Boulanger presented his long-announced request for constitutional revision in the French Chamber and asked for it to be made urgent. The words with which he supported his proposal did not rise above the most ordinary democratic phrases. The republic should not be the property of coteries, but the common property of all. Not the members of the Chamber, who only represent the interests of certain circles, but he was the true interpreter of the will of the people. He was in favor of abolishing the presidency. The ministers should only be responsible to the head of state. The Chamber should only make laws, but not govern. He would see the Senate, which meant nothing, disappear without regret. After a speech by Floquet, who rejected the haughty language of the General, who spoke like Bonaparte returning home from his victories, the urgency of the motion was rejected by 335 votes to 170.

Emperor Frederick left for Potsdam on ı. June to Potsdam. There is good news about his health this time too.

The debate on the Spirits Tax Act began in the Austrian House of Representatives on May 29. It was adopted on June 5 with a majority of 30 votes, thus creating a law that will be an oppressive burden for the lower classes of the population and at the same time will bring the country of Galicia (as compensation for those entitled to propaganda there) a gift of one million a year. Saturday, June 9, the delegations gather in Pest. The Chamber of Deputies concluded its sessions on the 5th.

The Tisza affair was brought to a provisional conclusion when Goblet informed the Chamber of Kalnoky's and Tisza's statements, both of which asserted that there could be no question of any violation of France. Goblet gave a well-received speech that explained the peaceful nature of French policy, but also spoke of the determination with which the French would defend their national dignity against anyone.

On the occasion of the name day of Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria, a great revue took place and the population gave the Prince and Princess Clementine an ovation.

In these days the so-called Trans-Caspian Railway has been opened to traffic, which makes it possible to cover the distance from the Black Sea to Samarkand in four days. There is no doubt that this railroad opens up new routes for Russia's trade, but it is questionable whether any ulterior political motives were excluded during its construction.

You will understand that for one who follows with sympathy the destiny of mankind it will be difficult to speak today, on New Year's Eve. I expect it will be understandable if what I have to say today cannot be rounded off in the way we have come to expect, for that ‘New Year's Eve gift’ received by mankind will hardly allow the free unfolding of what is in my soul.

Yesterday I endeavoured to describe to you a historical event and to show that on no account may such an event be judged in a moral sense, for events founded on historical necessity may not be assessed morally. We have to be quite clear that just as the Mystery of Golgotha has nothing to do with peoples or groups of people—for its light falls only on the individual human being—so, by analogy, is it also impossible to transfer to groups the way in which we morally judge the thinking, feeling and willing of the individual.

There are other cases, also, to which moral yardsticks may not be applied. For instance, it would not occur to anyone to apply a moral yardstick to the building of a house; no one would find one roof less moral than another because of its shape. It is just that this example is more extreme, so it is more obvious that people would not apply moral judgements to such things; in such an extreme case they would be unlikely to let themselves be led astray by moral judgements. In contrast, however, those who want to work on people's souls, which are ever open to such things, choose just this method of decking out with moral reasons things to which, in truth, moral judgements do not apply and which cannot be judged morally, except by hypocrites. That is why I put before you an event which had the capacity of throwing light on certain motives which are at work in human evolution on the physical plane.

It is not permissible to make moral judgements, either positive or negative, about events such as the Opium War I described to you yesterday. Where would a moral judgement lead, even if it were one which might make people consult their consciences? Suppose someone were to say: That was indeed an immoral venture, but now we have put it behind us. This would be one of those judgements intended to lull us to sleep! For thanks to the millions which flowed from Asia to Europe at that time, there exists today, in all its glory, that kingdom which ought to consult its conscience.

To be logical it would then also be necessary, from the same standpoint of conscience, to condemn the present intrigues just as firmly and sharply as one condemns the Opium War! If one did not do so it would be like taking into account, in the case of a house, only the first, second and third floors and the attic, while leaving out what cannot be left out—namely, the ground floor. What was won at that time belongs now to the whole configuration of the British Empire. Perhaps you have heard the example of how much a penny or a centime invested at the time of the birth of Christ at compound interest would have increased by now. This shows you what increase of riches is possible over the years. So if you want to judge the yield of the Opium War you must look at it as a whole. Then you will see that what has grown out of those millions—after all, this has been going on for a century—is something which is preparing to rule the world, to overrun the world; this is what may be found in what was won at that time!

You see, it would be an offence against all truth to consider in isolation a single event which is part of an ongoing evolution. What you can say is that what has since developed is one of the consequences of the Opium War. You can say this quite objectively, without taking up a positive or negative moral stance. It is not permissible to paint over the facts with shades of morality. If we do this today, we are preventing the possibility of any subsequent insight into what is going on now. On karmic and moral grounds we have to presume that, looking back on today's events in the decades or centuries to come, people will condemn with an equal degree of certainty and conviction what is today defended with noble moral patriotism. In the centuries to come, today's events will look very similar.

It behoves us to look more deeply into such things as they occur on the physical plane, especially at a moment like this when, on the one hand, the turn of the year should awaken a festive mood in our souls, while on the other hand the bitterness of events must move us deeply—unless we are utterly superficial. Regardless of any side we might support, none of us can fail to realize that on the words we have read today could depend the most terrible destiny for the whole of mankind.

I said: It behoves those of us who stand for spiritual knowledge to look more deeply into things. So today, since I do not know how much longer it will be possible to speak about such spiritual matters in Europe, I want to draw your attention to something which may serve as an example to help us look more deeply into conditions which are manifested outwardly in what we see on the physical plane. You see, even more than is the case in the sciences which apply to the physical plane, it is necessary to be clear that in spiritual science the facts and the way they relate to one another are not simple at all, but very complicated indeed. I have often stressed the complicated nature of these facts and have begged you to understand that although the general formulae, ideas and laws about the relationships between the different aspects of life which we receive from spiritual science are absolutely correct, nevertheless they are naturally extraordinarily complex in their application to actual cases.

We have often spoken about the time between death and a new birth and of how the human being descends again to the physical world in order to incarnate his soul-and-spirit being into a physical body. So we can realize that whenever we raise our spiritual eye to the spiritual world we always find souls who, with the forces they have gathered between death and their new birth, are preparing to descend into physical bodies. In other words, here down below the possibilities await the creation of those physical bodies, while up above there are the forces in the souls which guide them to these physical bodies.

Now you must consider a number of other things together with what I have just said. You know that one of the objections to the concept of repeated earthly lives is: The human population is increasing all the time, so where do all the souls come from?

I have often replied that this is a superficial objection, for the simple reason that people forget to take into account that this so-called increase in the population of the world has only been observed in very recent centuries. For instance, those scientists who are so very proud of the exactitude of their calculations would be highly embarrassed if one were to question them about the population statistics of the year 1348 when America had not yet been discovered. The objections often mentioned are indeed staggeringly superficial. It is a fact that in some parts of the world the birth rate diminishes while it rises elsewhere, so that the population density varies in different places. This brings about a certain amount of disharmony. It can happen that, in accordance with the conditions prevailing in relation to the incarnation of souls who are living between death and a newbirth, there are certain souls who, as a result of previous incarnations, are inclined to descend to a certain part of the world but that there are too few bodies available there. This can indeed happen. Furthermore, there is something else that can happen as well, which I would like you to consider in connection with what we have been saying.

Some time ago—and you will see from this that the lectures I have given here in recent weeks have not been without a wider context—I mentioned that John Stuart Mill, and the Russian philosopher and politician Herzen, have both pointed out that in many ways a kind of ‘Chineseness’ is beginning to manifest in Europe, as though Europe were becoming ‘chinesified’. This was no idle remark on my part. If John Stuart Mill, who was a keen observer, considered that many people in his vicinity were beginning to show noticeable Chinese traits, then in certain respects he was quite right.

Consider the following: Souls exist who, as a result of their former lives, are inclined to incarnate in Chinese bodies during the nineteenth century or at the beginning of the twentieth. Now since the Chinese population is nowhere near as great as it was in former times, it is, in any case, not possible for all these Chinese souls to incarnate there. In Europe, on the other hand, the physical population has increased considerably in recent times, and so many souls can be accommodated here who were really destined for incarnation in Chinese bodies. This is one reason why keen observers are beginning to notice that Europe is becoming ‘chinesified’.

But this alone would not have sufficed to prepare Europe for that European karma which was to come about. A helping hand was needed to assist a certain aspect of the great laws of existence. Now if over a long period something is brought about of the kind I mentioned yesterday, namely, that very many bodies in a whole population are caused to become emaciated, then a situation will arise in which souls who were inclined towards that area will not, after all, incarnate in those bodies. By bringing about the ‘opiumising’ of Chinese bodies and causing generations to come into being under the influence of opium's forces, it was possible to condemn the Chinese to take in, to a certain extent, some very immature, sub-standard souls, whose qualities I shall not discuss. But those souls who had themselves decided to incarnate in Chinese bodies were thereby prevented from approaching these ‘opiumised’ bodies. They were diverted to Europe where they brought about among the European population those traits which have, meanwhile, been noted by those keen observers I mentioned.

So you see that an event on the physical plane such as the Opium War has a quite definite spiritual background. In the first instance, its purpose is not to help certain people make millions and grow rich but to prevent certain souls who would have come from the spiritual world round about now, to strengthen the cultural forces of Europe, from incarnating yet, and instead to surreptitiously fill European bodies with Chinese souls. This is really so, however paradoxical it may seem. This momentous event has truly become fact. In a great many European people a disharmony between soul and body has been brought about in the way I have just described. Such disharmony between soul and body always has the consequence of making it impossible to use the tools of the body properly. This makes it possible, instead, for others to busy themselves with errors and untruths. It would not be so easy to work by means of errors and untruths, if those who see through these errors and untruths were not condemned, by the conventions of their day, to preach in the wilderness.

You see, therefore, that I certainly did not mention what I told you yesterday merely in order to link it in an insulting manner with a particular nation. I mentioned it as an example of how actions by human beings here on the physical plane can bring about far-reaching changes in the spiritual evolution of mankind as a whole. Furthermore, please do not imagine that I told you what I did about the hotbeds of deception, and the manner in which they bring about errors and illusions, simply for my own amusem*nt. Here, too, my intention was to show you much that goes on in our materialistic age. And today I have sought to demonstrate the kind of result one discovers when one observes not only the physical events but also the spiritual background of what human beings bring about. Seen in this way, that Opium War meant the switching of a soul element from a part of the earth to which it belonged—and where it might have been of use, because it would have been united with bodies into which it would have fitted—to another part of the earth where it could become a tool for forces whose designs are by no means necessarily beneficial for mankind.

We must realize, of course, that an ordinary historian will only notice some degree of degeneration in certain strata of the Chinese population resulting from the Opium War. But one who, in addition, observes the spiritual aspects of cultural history will have to look more deeply in order to see what is brought about by this degeneration for the whole of mankind. For only in this fifth post-Atlantean period, which is entirely permeated by materialism, is it possible to observe things in a manner so deeply ahrimanic—a manner which pervades all thinking and all ideas—that if something good or something bad is done to a part of mankind, people really can believe that this will not affect mankind as a whole. Whatever is done in connection with, or by, a part of mankind, will always affect the whole of human evolution because of the way the forces behind the scenes of physical existence arrange things.

Not until the sixth post-Atlantean period will a sense of responsibility become general among mankind so that each individual feels responsible for what he does, not only towards himself but towards mankind as a whole. Today we are surrounded by such a mood of catastrophe because the very opposite of this is the general trend, and from the attitudes prevalent today mankind will prepare to crystallize out the opposite as the right view.

So this is an example which can show you that what takes place on the physical plane really does affect even the spiritual world, and is therefore not only significant for the physical plane but is also echoed in the events of the spiritual world and thus of the whole universe. This is expressed quite deliberately in the mystery drama not for the poetic effect but, for once, in order to give embodiment to a truth which needs to be placed into our present time equally as much as everything else that is contained in the Mysteries.

Man has as yet not progressed very far along the road towards the achievement of wider horizons in his view of the world. Somehow he does not really want wider horizons in his view of the world. At the same time, science today is intent on restricting the horizon more and more. For science is secretly afraid of what the truth really is. Fear of the truth is taking hold of mankind increasingly, both in everyday matters and in wider contexts. Indeed, if this were not the case in the wider contexts, neither could it come about in everyday situations. For instance, people would no longer continue to draw out the war merely because they are afraid that if an understanding were to be reached by means of proper discussion, certain matters would then be revealed of which they are—well, of which they are afraid.

Some of you will remember the lecture cycle I gave in Vienna in the spring of 1914 when I summarized much of what I have said over the years about the tendencies and inclinations of our time. I said there that it is possible to speak about a social carcinoma. I must admit to being somewhat astonished by the way such remarks—which throw a profound light on certain existing things—are very frequently taken simply as remarks which satisfy curiosity to some extent, just like any other remark that might be made.

I was trying to point out—at the beginning of 1914—that in our life today certain impulses are active comparable with the impulse in the physical human organism underlying the formation of a carcinoma, the disease of cancer. I said that just as one studies the sick physical organism, it would more and more become a task for mankind to study the social organism. Although poisons causing the disease are not present in the same way as they are in a physical organism, nevertheless they are no less poisons which create the disease. But to do this, a sense for what is spiritual is needed. And you cannot have a sense for the spiritual if you deny its existence. Of course the social organism is not infiltrated with bacterial poison as though it were a physical organism. The poison in the social organism can only be found if you have a sense for the spiritual as it interweaves with physical existence. But if there is a possibility of doing more than merely making analogies—which are inadmissible anyway—if there is a possibility of following events on the different planes, then it will be possible to form an idea of what is behind these things.

It might be asked how it can be possible at all in the social life of the globe to move, in the way I have described, a whole company of souls from one part to another, just as though an illness were being artificially cultivated in a human body. But if these things are understood, if they are, to begin with, studied independently of what comes to meet us in human life, much may be noticed. Consider that plant life, animal life and, of course, also the minerals, are all capable of secreting poisons. As you know, these poisons have two different characteristics. On the one hand they are ‘poisons’, they destroy higher forms of life; they destroy and slay, for instance, the human organism. But on the other hand, suitably prepared and taken in suitable doses, they are medicaments.

This arises from profound interconnections in the whole realm of nature. We ought gradually to acquire certain ideas about this, not based on hypotheses or, even worse, on fantasies, but on spiritual science. We know, for instance, the truth about the evolution of man and, connected with this, of way the world has passed through the Saturn, Sun and Moon existences and has now reached Earth existence. We know that before the present Earth existence there was the Moon existence. I have described this to some extent, though hitherto more physically, depicting the substantiality, the substances of Moon existence. From my descriptions you can see that this Moon existence was quite physical, that it was—at least in certain stages—just as physical as Earth existence is today. Even though the mineral kingdom did not exist, Moon existence was physical. The physical structures were held by different conditions, but they were physical. So the question arises: How can the substantiality of ancient Moon be compared with the substantiality of Earth, with what flows and pulsates in the substances of our Earth?

Spiritual investigation reveals that the substances existing on Earth today have really only come about during the course of Earth existence. They are such that the human body, which needs them for its nourishment, can unite itself with them. They passed through earlier stages but only reached their present stage during Earth existence. You could not speak of ‘wheat’ or ‘barley’ during Moon existence.

So what substances now present on Earth were there during Moon existence? Every mineral, plant and animal poison, every poison that flows through these kingdoms, everything we today call poison and which today works as poison—these were the normal substances of Moon! You need only recall something I have pointed out quite often, namely, that prussic acid was present as something quite normal on ancient Moon. I have mentioned this a number of times since the year 1906, when I spoke about it for the first time, in Paris. All these things are connected with prussic acid.

On ancient Moon the substances which are today poisonous played the same role as do the plant juices on Earth, those juices which agree with man. But why are the poisons still present today? For the same reason that Ahriman is present. They are what has remained behind, something that has remained behind in physical forms. So we now have what agrees with man, that is, whatever has progressed in the normal way, and certain other substances which have remained behind at the Moon stage, which is now the stage of poisons.

There is also another aspect to this matter. We know that today's spirituality only developed as a possibility during the transition from ancient Moon to Earth existence. Our normal development was also paralleled in the substances of the lower kingdoms. Only the poisons remained behind. But there is a link, not in the spiritual but in the physical sense, between the substances on which our higher man is founded—that is, the higher organs which make us human, those organs which only developed during Earth existence—and the poisonous substances of Moon existence. To a certain degree we bear within ourselves the further stage of development of the poisons. The substances we today regard as poisonous are something which has remained behind at an earlier stage. Those substances from the lower kingdoms which man cannot tolerate have developed in a retrograde direction. But those substances that have developed in a forward direction, those substances that live in us in such a way that they can transform themselves to become the bearer of our ego, these are the transformed poisonous substances of ancient Moon.

It is only because we bear within us these transformed poisonous substances of ancient Moon that we have to some extent the capacity to be ego-conscious beings. I have mentioned this, even in public lectures, by saying that, in order to live, man needs not only constructive but also destructive forces. Without the latter, ego intelligence would be impossible. From birth onwards, breaking-down, growing-old and death are necessary, for it is in the processes of breaking-down—not those of building-up—that the possibility for our spiritual development lives. The building-up process lulls us to sleep. The building-up process is like rank, abundant growth which sends us to sleep. It dampens down consciousness. Consciousness can only live by using up spiritual forces. Those structures within us, together with their substances, which use up spiritual forces—these are the transformed poisonous substances of ancient Moon; they are transformed in such a way that they no longer work in the way they did on ancient Moon.

It is difficult to imagine this in connection with certain poisonous substances. But what we have to imagine about the development of these poisons is that their intensity has been reduced by one seventh, or two sevenths, or three sevenths. Poisonous substances in plants are as they are today because they have remained behind from Moon existence. But other poisonous substances have had their poisonous potential reduced many times, and these have been inoculated into us during the course of evolution. Because of this we are capable of growing old during our lifetime. Also because of this we are capable of using these poisonous effects—for they are poisonous effects—which are connected with the way the male element works on the female element in human procreation. The effect of the poison is expressed in the fact that, without it, the female alone would tend to bring forth only an etheric being. For this etheric being to find a physical form, the rank growth of etheric life has to be poisoned. I hinted at this in my lecture on physiology some time ago in Prague. The act of fertilization provides this poisoning, just as in plant life the effect of etheric material on the pistil—which is the fertilization act of the plant—provides a poisoning by light.

Here you have something which has come into existence for man since the beginning of Earth existence: procreation. It is a kind of distilled poisonous effect, a poisonous effect which existed on ancient Moon in an intensity equalling that of the poisons which have now remained behind in the lower kingdoms. You can now understand a sentence which I simply want to place before you for the moment: Ordinary poisons, which are ahrimanic substances left over from ancient Moon, are the opponents of progressive evolution; distilled, in a way diluted, they provide the physical substance which is the bearer of our spiritual life.

What happens when a diseased form comes into being, when a form falls ill? Medical science will have to concern itself more and more with such things, so that it can widen its view through spiritual science. When a diseased form comes into being, this means that evolution is advancing faster, and with it our physical organism. If some form—and this need not only be a growth, it could be something fluid or not even fluid in the organism—if such a form comes into being, this means that a part of the physical organism is growing faster than normal. A carcinoma, for instance, comes about when a part of the organism excludes itself and starts to evolve more quickly than the rest of the human organism. In physical life, the life of substances, this is something luciferic. I do not mean luciferic in the moral sense; it is simply objectively luciferic. And it is balanced out by poison, because poison is ahrimanic—and that is the opposite. If you can find the proper polar opposite then the luciferic growth will be balanced by the poison, which is ahrimanic. These two can balance each other out if they work in the right way.

From this you see that the concepts of what is luciferic and what is ahrimanic may be pursued right down into the realms of natural life. They may also be pursued upwards into human life, human social life. If we wanted to be cleverer than the gods, we might ask why they did not make the world without all these poisons. We would have to be as clever as that King of Spain, who first asked this in relation to a particular case. Now, just as these poisons work as actual substances in the human organism, so do they also work spiritually in social life. And in social life it is possible to guide and lead them. What is grey magic really? Grey magic is nothing other than the guiding of poisonous effects in such a way that they cause damage and bring about sickness in the social sense.

This is, in the first place, something which must be taken into account by those who seriously wish to learn about life. So as not to go on for too long about one subject, we shall continue—probably tomorrow—to talk further about poison, sickness and health.

Meanwhile, we might find in our soul the question: What is the consequence of all this? If you meditate on it you will not fail to see the connection. The consequence is that, having evolved beyond the former atavistic knowledge of these things, mankind now has the task of striving for truth with the new consciousness which has been achieved. Without this, nothing is possible. The links with the old atavistic knowledge have been severed, precisely because mankind is to become free to develop ego-consciousness ever further. So there is a fading away of what was still quite clear to the old atavistic consciousness and which is expressed in certain myths. I have demonstrated to you the connection between a myth such as the Baldur myth and great all-encompassing manifestations of human evolution.

Our scientific simpletons who conduct research into myths and legends can go no further than to maintain that they are an expression of creative folk imagination. In reality, however, they encompass deeply significant truths which are revealed particularly through the fact that they are truly worked out down to the last detail. As an example, the Baldur myth, among many other things, gives us a very good idea of the gradation of poisons. That a parasitic plant exudes a certain degree of poison is expressed wonderfully in the way Baldur is slain by the mistletoe. This shows that there existed a knowledge of the gradation of poisons in the world, for instance, that mistletoe is poisonous to a degree which cannot be tolerated by man. Everything is differentiated by degrees, everything is graded.

When certain things are said to be ‘poison’, what is meant is that they are stronger poison which has remained behind at the Moon stage—they have not continued to evolve. But everything is to some small extent poison, in everything there is a little poison; the only difference is in the degree. Although I cannot back a certain doctor and professor who stood up in favour of alcohol and maintained he could prove that many more people had died of the poison ‘water’ than of the poison ‘alcohol’, nevertheless the point he makes is important: In all poisons there are degrees, and it is true that more people have been killed by water than by alcohol. It is a fact that something can be true but at the same time it may, without becoming untrue, be inapplicable to a certain case. I have often said it is not enough for something to be true. What matters is whether it can be incorporated into reality, whether it belongs to actual reality.

The ancient truths have, to a great extent, faded away. That is why significant indications about the truth of ancient myths still given, for instance, by the so-called ‘unknown philosopher’ Saint-Martin, remained totally incomprehensible to those who followed him. Saint-Martin, who considered himself to be a pupil of Jakob Böhme, was still just able to point to the true core of the myths. That was in the eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century the most total and utter nonsense was being put forward by way of interpretation of the myths. All this is connected with the way our time lacks a strong, intense urge for the truth. If this urge for truth had been sufficiently strong, it would have sufficed to lead mankind far more extensively towards spiritual life than has actually been the case. It is the weakness of the urge for truth which has brought it about that so few people experience a longing to deepen their spiritual life.

This shows itself in the external, concrete world as well. The sad and painful events of today show that the sense for truth does not flow through the world like the blood of the soul, and this is not always the fault of human beings. The sense for truth must be properly awakened. That is why, during the past weeks, it has been necessary to point to concrete, sense-perceptible affairs in so far as they are the expression of spiritual impulses and spiritual events. It is because of the striving for truth—or rather the lack of striving for truth today—that current affairs are handled and things are said which are believed in the widest circles, although they are in fact nothing but absolute inversions of the truth. In an age when it is possible to make the truth, conform to any kind of antipathy, passion or instinct, a great deal of effort will be needed in this age to awaken a strong sense for the truth which can then lead to a spiritual life. The details show that this is so.

Only consider all the things that have been said in the two-and-a-half years since this event called the war started to rage. Consider further all the things that have been believed. As I said yesterday, the striving for truth, the search for truth, has been the only standpoint for everything I have said; there has been no intention of taking sides in any way at all. It is necessary, however, when making an assertion—even if only in your own soul, for that is just as much a reality—to have the will to take into account that in a particular case the truth might not be entirely available to you and that it is therefore a matter of holding back and searching for ways which can then make it possible to come to a judgement of something.

Let us look at a particular case. Think of all that was disseminated in America in connection with European life during the build-up to this war! Much that has echoed back to Europe reveals what is believed in America. Why are these things believed? They are believed because people over in America have, of course, just as little possibility of understanding European life as did the English with regard to life in China after the Opium War. Pangs of conscience might inspire someone today to admit that the Opium War was a faux pas. I should like to remind such a person that among those in the British Parliament who sang the praises of the outcome of the Opium War as ‘an achievement of British culture’ was old Wellington himself—not one of the worst.

Some time ago an American wrote an essay for his countrymen which they obviously failed to note. To conclude this evening I shall read some passages to you so that you can see the judgement of a man who genuinely endeavours to understand things. Do not rejoin that after seeing what has happened in recent weeks a different judgement could be reached. Of course a more profound background might be found. But to form a judgement such things are not needed. To form a judgement it is enough to have a true sense of objectivity about the external events which are taking place. This sense of objectivity has been little in evidence.

This is what George Stuart Fullerton, a professor at New York University, writes about Germany. Allow me to read to you from this document, which provides such a contrast to that New Year's Eve document which is now circulating in the world. Fullerton writes:

‘I am an American without a drop of German blood in my veins, so that I can not be suspected of having the natural partiality for Germany which characterizes the German-American. Moreover, I can claim the right to be as truly an American as any one, since my family has been American as long as there has been an American Nation. I love my country, and pray that it may have before it a great future, and a prosperity founded upon right and justice. Nevertheless, no man has the right to be only an American, but must remember that he is also a man, and that, as a man, it is a matter of concern to him that justice should prevail in other continents than his own. We Americans are neutrals, but we have a right to know the facts about the great war, and it is our duty to aim at intelligent comprehension of the situation.’

He is a man who applies only his common sense to what he sees; he is not an occultist.

He is rather optimistic here! But never mind; at the time this judgement was appropriate.

This man speaks very good sense!

These are the words of one who had the will to see things as they really are, and not to listen to what is said in the newspapers and journals of the periphery. Are these the only people who spoke like this? Such people are equipped with a genuine sense for the truth. This is how they spoke.

Yesterday—this is very relevant—I had a look at the Basler Nachrichten. It quoted some words which were actually spoken. It is a good thing that they have been quoted. They were spoken in 1908 by an Englishman in front of other Englishmen in order to point out that Germany had every reason to adopt a militaristic attitude, and that it would have been unwise for Germany not to have adopted this ‘militarism’, which has since become a slogan to be slandered. The words this Englishman spoke to other Englishmen were:

‘Look at the position of Germany ... Suppose we had here a possible combination (of enemies) which would lay us open to invasion, suppose Germany, and France, or Germany and Russia, or Germany and Austria, had fleets which, in combination, would be stronger than ours, would we not be frightened? Would we not arm? Of course we should!’

Lloyd George spoke these words in 1908 with as much conviction as he now thunders his tirades into the world! These words were spoken by Lloyd George in 1908!

Dear friends, once again our thoughts must first of all be for those who are at the front, having to meet the challenge of our time with their bodies and their whole being. Let us therefore direct our thoughts to the spirits who are protecting the men who are at the front.

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And for those who have already passed through the gate of death in the course of these events, we say:

Spirits of your souls, guardian guides,
On your wings let there be borne
The prayer of love from our souls
To those whom you guard here on earth.
Thus, united with your might,
A ray of help our prayer shall be
For the souls it seeks out there in love.

And the spirit we have sought in our endeavours for so many years, the spirit who went through the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ spirit, the spirit of courage, the spirit of strength, the spirit of unity, the spirit of peace—may he rule over everything you are asked to do these days.

More than at other times the serious purpose of our spiritual efforts must live in our souls during these days, these weeks—a seriousness which enables us to be aware how everything we aim for in our spiritual movement has to do with all that is truly human. We are aiming for something that addresses itself not just to human existence as it is for the moment, an existence that will pass with human physical body. We are speaking of laws, of forces in soul and spirit, that directly address the higher self in man, a higher self which is more than the self that may wither away with the body and its existence. We have frequently spoken of ‘Maya’ when referring to outward appearances, and it has often been stressed that outward appearances, the processes of physical life, become Maya because man does not properly penetrate them with his mind, his perceptive faculties. He therefore does not sense, does not perceive, what is really significant; the real essence of the things perceptible to the outer senses. Man uses his perceptive faculties to draw a veil, a tissue of deception, over the events of the physical world. This makes them become Maya.

There is one particular great truth that we should have in mind these days as we look for love and understanding, for a loving comprehension of what is happening all around us—an insight that, fundamentally speaking, is at the centre of everything we aim for in spiritual science. In our day this has to present itself to our souls with the full gravity and moral weight inherent in it. It is the realization—and this has by now become the simplest and most elementary fact in our spiritual life—that life on earth recurs. The fact that in the course of time our souls progress from body to body. The part of man that is eternal hastens from body to body through man's successive incarnations on earth. On the other hand, there is the part that has to do with human existence in a physical body, the part present on the physical plane that provides the configuration. the formation, the particular stamp to human existence in an outer physical body.

One particular thing that provides the outer stamp, determining the character of a person as it were, in so far as he is living in a physical body on the physical plane, is what may collectively be referred to as nationality. This is something we should never forget, especially today. If we turn the mind's eye to what we call man's higher self, the concept of nationality loses significance. For when we pass through the gate of death everything encompassed by the term ‘nationality’ is among the things we cast off. And if we do in all seriousness want to be what we think people with spiritual aims should be, it is proper to remember that in passing through successive incarnations the human being belongs not to one but to a number of different nationalities. The part of him that links him to a particular nationality is among the things that are cast off, have to be cast off, the moment we pass through the gate of death.

Truths that belong to the realm of the eternal do not have to be easily understood. Indeed, they may well be truths which at times go against our feelings—truths we achieve with difficulty particularly in difficult times, and also find difficult to achieve and retain in their full strength and clarity in difficult times such as these. A true anthroposophist must do this, and it will be exactly in this way that he arrives at a real understanding of the physical world around him. The basic elements for such understanding have already been presented in our anthroposophical work. You will find that the lecture cycle on folk souls' in a sense contains everything needed to gain insight into the way human beings, in so far as they are in the eternal realm, are connected with their nationalities. Those lectures were of course given in peacetime when souls are more ready and prepared to accept objective, unvarnished truths. Perhaps it will be difficult to take these truths as objectively today as they could be taken in those days. Yet this is the very way in which we can prepare our souls to develop the strength they need today, if even today we are able to take these truths objectively.

Let us bring before our mind's eye the picture of a warrior going through the gate of death on the field of battle. We need to understand that this is very much a special case, to go through the gate of death like this. We need to understand that entrance is made into a world that we are seeking with every fibre of our souls in spiritual science, so that it may bring clarity even into physical life. Let us remember that death means the entrance into that spiritual world and that it is not possible to take other life impulses directly into that world, for they would bear no fruit. The only life impulses we are able to take there are those that animate the efforts of our hearts and minds and in the final instance aim to join all peoples on the earth in brotherhood. Then a simple popular saying can be seen in a new way in the light of anthroposophy. It is the proverb which says ‘Death is the grand leveller’. It makes them all equal—Frenchmen. Englishmen, Germans and Russians. That is indeed true. Considering this in relation to what is going on all around us on the physical plane today, we shall indeed become aware of the solid ground that enables us to overcome Maya in this field and look to events for their essential meaning.

Consider it in relation to the feelings of antipathy and hatred that fill the hearts of the peoples of Europe at present. Consider it in relation to all the things peoples in the different regions of European soil feel about the others, expressing it in spoken and written words. And let us also see in our mind's eye all the antipathy coming to full fruition in our time.

How should we see these things with the eye of truth? Where in this field do we find something that will take us beyond Maya, beyond the great illusion? We do not get to know about each other on earth by an approach that considers everything that is generally human as something abstract. We get to know one another by getting in a position where we are able really to understand the peculiar qualities of the peoples who are spread out over the whole earth, to understand them in concrete terms, in what they are in particular. We do not get to know a person in this life by simply saying: He is a human being like myself and must have all the same qualities that I have. No, we have to forget about ourselves and really consider the qualities of the other person.

In the lecture cycle on the folk souls I showed how the different aspects of the soul within us—the sentient soul, the intellectual or mind soul, the spiritual soul, the ego and the spirit-self—are distributed among the nations of Europe and how every nation fundamentally represents a one-sided aspect. I also said that the different nationalities will have to work together, to become the soul of Europe as a whole, just as the different aspects of our own soul need to work together. Looking at the Italian and the Iberian peninsulas we find that the national element comes to expression in the sentient soul. In France, it comes to expression as intellectual or mind soul. Moving on to the British Isles we see it coming to expression as spiritual soul. In Central Europe the national element comes to expression as ego. When we finally look to the East of Europe, that is the region where it fully emerges as spirit-self—though that is not quite the right way of putting it, as we shall see later. What comes to expression there is something that lies in the national character. But the eternal in man goes beyond what is national and this is what human beings are looking for when entering more deeply into the spirit. Compared to this, the national element is a mere garment, an outer envelope, and the more a person is able to gain insight into this the higher he will ascend. In so far as man lives in the physical world, he does live in the outward trappings of what is national and this gives his body its configuration and, fundamentally speaking, also provides the configuration for certain qualities, character traits.

Today we see the members of different nations facing one another in dislike, in hatred. I am not at this point speaking about what is going on in the combat situation. I am speaking of what is going on in the feelings, the passions, of human souls. Here we have a soul. It needs to prepare for its reception into a spiritual world through which it will now have to pass between death and its next birth, a world that will guide it towards an incarnation that will belong to quite a different nationality from the one it is now leaving. This is a fact which shows very clearly, in the best and most powerful way, how man resists the higher self that is within him. Consider some real ‘nationalist’ today, someone with national feelings who directs his antipathy very particularly against the members of another nation and, indeed, may be ranting and raving against this other nation in his own country. What is the meaning of such ranting and raving, of such antipathy? It signifies a premonition—My next incarnation will be into this nationality! The higher self has already at subconscious level established links with the other nationality. This higher self is resisted by that part of us which on the physical plane. This is man raging against his own higher self. Wherever the ranting and raving is worst, wherever the hatred felt against other nationalities is greatest and where the most lies are told about them, someone seeing things not as Maya but in truth can perceive the true reason, which is that a great many members of the nation that rages most, is most cruel in its attitudes and lies the most, will have to assume that other nationality at their next incarnation.

That is the full seriousness of what we teach, the moral greatness that lies behind it. There is much in man—very much, infinitely much—that wants to resist having to recognize his higher self, the part of him that is eternal. This is what makes it so tremendously difficult to speak objectively at the present time. It certainly is a strange phenomenon that before this war started infinitely appreciative comments reached us from England, appreciative of the German character, German competence and particularly the intellectual life in Germany. I attempted to give examples of this in my last public lecture.5 It is possible to give many more examples, and this shall also be done. What was going on there?

From the occult point of view, there had been an instinctive feeling that an element was being striven for in Central Europe that had to do with regaining youth—I spoke of the Faust type of soul in that last public lecture—a search for the spiritual, preparing for the spiritual, something the whole of Europe would one day turn to, truly turn to. This is something people were instinctively aware of in times gone by. The desire has been to understand what is going on in Central Europe. Yet being wholly bound up with the national element, we shall only be able to relate to this in full understanding in the life between death and rebirth. Then it will be possible to relate to this and understand, and the way will be found to the teachers of Central Europe. It is embarrassing to speak of this now for it may appear like boasting in someone who comes from Central Europe. Yet the objective truths must be told. So there is an instinctive feeling for something that will be looked for in the life between death and rebirth: a uniting with souls that have striven for what is altogether human—with the Goethe soul, the Schiller soul, the Fichte soul. [Johann Gottlieb Fichte, 1762–1814, German idealist philosopher.] There has been some awareness of the fact that, having passed through the gate of death, we shall look above all for the Goethe soul, the Fichte soul, the Schiller soul and other souls that had their last incarnation in Central Europe. This fact had come to expression instinctively, and now once more, for the last time, infinitely passionate nationalistic feeling is rising against it. When we realize that the words so often heard now from the west and the north west are but covering up this feeling of resistance we shall have come to understand the truth, to replace Maya, misconception. We shall then understand how earth man, having eternal man within him, does not want what the eternal man within him wants; how the love he must feel in eternity is in the temporal world transformed into hatred.

We shall find that the best way of achieving love in understanding, and understanding in love, will be to get to know the characteristics of European peoples' using the means spiritual science is able to provide. We are allowed to do so in so far as we are always addressing the higher self in man. And all who want to share in our way of thought or feeling will recognize this higher self and therefore be able to listen to everything that has to be said with regard to the outer garb, knowing that we are speaking of the outer garb.

In a certain sense every nation has its specific mission.—In due course we shall be able to enter the building in Dornach and find that the sequence of columns, their capitals and the architraves above them, express in their forms what comes to expression in the impulses we discern in Europe. But I am not going to talk about this now for it is best to talk about it when we have the building before our eyes. That is what I did there a few days ago.⁶—If we consider the impression our soul may gain even without seeing the building, we note above all that the inhabitants of the southern peninsulas—Italy and Spain—are, in a way, bringing back in their modern mission the elements that in the past had appeared in the third post-Atlantean epoch, in Egypto-Chaldean civilization. As soon as we grasp this, we gain a true insight into the soul of an Italian or Spanish national. This can be traced down to specific details. It is possible to say that we find in reality what we have previously perceived in the spirit. What were the characteristic features of Egypto-Chaldean civilization? This is something we have spoken of many times. They had a feeling for the great, cosmic astrology. Stars and constellations were not seen the way we see them today. Instead, spiritual entities were perceived and the constellations were seen as their physical exterior. The spiritual was seen in everything. If this is to be repeated as the mission of a nation in the time after the Mystery of Golgotha it has to be repeated in such a way that it now is part of the inner soul—that the great cosmic tableau seen by the Egyptians and Chaldeans now presents itself as though born anew out of the soul. This is nowhere more evident than in Dante's Divina Comedia, a work representing the high point of culture on the Italian peninsula. [Dante Alighieri, 1265-1321.] Even in details, the elements of ancient Egypto-Chaldean culture emerge again as though born out of the soul, resurrected in the inner life.

The essence of Greek culture is today found in the French nation, down to the character of their leading personalities. Voltaire [1694–1778] for instance can be understood only if one compares him to a real Greek. And if you consider the form Corneille [1606–16841] and Racine [1639–1699] gave to their works you can see how they were wrestling with the Greek form. This is of great significance in the history of civilization. The struggle with outer form, with what Aristotle [384–322 BC] established with regard to form, lives on in Racine and Corneille. If we look to French culture to find again the culture of the intellectual or mind soul that set the tone in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, we should find what was best in that culture. With the intellectual or mind soul coming to grips with the world, we should find exactly what relates to this. The greatest poet therefore, beyond compare in that respect, will have to be one whose creative work arises out of the intellectual or mind soul. A nation achieves greatness where its incomparables are brought to the fore. And the French poet who is unsurpassable is Molière [1622-1673]. With him the French soul reached its true, characteristic height—there it is unsurpassable. An echo of this was still alive in Voltaire.

An element that repeats nothing of the past but belongs to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, something that has come up new in this epoch as it were, is the British soul. The principal aim of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch is to develop the spiritual soul, to bring it out. The spiritual soul is particularly in evidence in the essential nature of the British folk soul. It is characteristic of the British soul that it faces events. Fourteen, fifteen years ago, when I was writing the first edition of my Riddles of Philosophy⁷ I struggled to find a term to describe the British philosophers and it then became clear to me that they are onlookers in life. They face things the way the spiritual soul faces life as an onlooker. And the greatest creative spirit in the British soul, the man who stood there and faced the British character traits giving expression to all of them, down to the very depths of the soul, was Shakespeare. There the British soul is incomparable, in the onlooker mode.

Moving on to Central Europe we find ‘...what is forever evolving, and never actually is...’ as I have already described it in the public lecture. It is the ‘I’ as such, the innermost part of man. How does this relate to the elements of man's soul? It relates individually to the sentient soul, the intellectual or mind soul and the spiritual soul, developing links with all of them. Let us consider this in the case of Goethe. We note how he longed to go to Italy. And as it was in his case so all the best minds of Central Europe always longed for Italy, to achieve fertilization of the ego and let it conceive from the sentient soul. And the ego also exchanges forces with the intellectual or mind soul. Let us try and observe how that close bond between ego and intellectual or mind soul has really always been there through the centuries. Note how Frederick the Great [1712–1786], that most German of princes, really only spoke and wrote in French, how he had a special appreciation of French culture. This is evident, for instance, from his relationship with Voltaire. We can also note how the German philosopher Leibniz [1646–1716] wrote his works in French. That is exactly how the ego relates to the intellectual or mind soul. And when the ego is from the depths of the soul seeking the thing it strives for, something pushes up from the depths of the ego, from unfathomable depths of the ego: the spiritual soul tries to grasp it. This can be seen in the case of Goethe. I have often shown how he tried to grasp the way organisms evolve one from another. He established a whole system for organisms. That arose from the depths of the ego. But it is not immediately compreshensible. People need something that is easier to understand, they need things presented the way they arise from the spiritual soul. So they did not take up what Goethe had to offer but took up Darwin [1809–1882]. We still have not reached the point today where we are able to give recognition to Goethe's Theory of Colours.⁸ Transposed into the spiritual soul in Newton's [1642–1727] work it became what is currently accepted as the science of physics.

These things indicate the way in which individual, in this case national, characters are facing one another. We rise above the outer Maya which holds men captive and come to the truth when we learn to look at things in the light of spiritual science. We come to a truth that will show us that just as individual soul forces are warring with each other in a human being so the soul forces incorporated in the folk souls are at war with each other. It is not by chance that now in our day—when the teaching I have just presented has emerged—war makes its appearance as the great teacher, telling mankind in such a bloody, such a terrible way the very thing we are also telling them in spiritual terms. It is not by chance that whilst we are able to discuss this here there rages outside what is probably one of the bloodiest struggles ever. Fundamentally speaking, it represents the same truths but we must first penetrate them in their Maya to understand them as they really are.

In speaking about these things we must for once remove from the words that are spoken every nuance of feeling, of sympathy or antipathy, and use words merely for characterization. Then we shall understand things rightly. For these are things contained within the self of man, in so far as it is wrapped in the national element. We can follow this through in detail. To begin with, to prepare for what we must come to understand, let me say the following.

Let us take a Central European living in the ego culture. In my public lecture I said that the Central European aspires to his god in such a way that he will be joined to him. He wants to be united with his god. With regard to the thinking process, we can make the I generally say: ‘Man thinks’. Yet the statement ‘Man thinks’ really says very little indeed. We need to learn to look more carefully with the aid of spiritual science. We must gradually learn not to speak thoughtlessly but instead put things in the right way. For people who do not really care about the reality of things it is, of course, all right the way one just says it, but it is right only to say: ‘the Central European or Scandinavian thinks’—with ‘thinking’ here considered an activity because it is the evolving of thought that matters. ‘The ensouled being thinks’—that is what matters in Central Europe and in the Nordic countries. Man is so bound up with thought that this thought is the product of the soul's own activity, that the soul's activity consists of nothing else but the soul being caught up in thought.

The same cannot be rightly said for the Frenchman. In that case we have to say: ‘He has thoughts’. For ‘thinking’ and ‘having thoughts’ are not the same—there is a subtle difference. My Riddles of Philosophy can help to make this clear. In Western Europe people have thoughts. Thoughts are something that comes; they are given just as sensory perceptions are given. That is how it is with thoughts. They enter into the soul, they are fully alive in it, people have them, even grow intoxicated with them, are delighted to have them. One accusation made against the Germans is that their thoughts show a certain coldness. That may well be. A German has to form them first in his individual soul. They need to be warmed through there and only stay warm for as long as they are part of the immediate activity.

So much in preparation. For, indeed, the expression of individual national characteristics will always be found to show something coming alive that has already been put forward in the principles of spiritual science, something you will find in my lectures on folk souls. Let us consider individual expressions of national character.

The Italian and the Spanish character is determined by the sentient soul. We can observe this in life down to the finer detail. Everywhere we come upon the sentient soul. (This does not, of course, refer to life in the higher self.) As soon as a native of those countries is wholly within his national element he is within the sentient soul. This is particularly attached to everything connected with home and sensitive to everything that is not home but, rather, ‘alien country’. If you try, for instance, to understand all that is part of the national element in Italy you will find that an Italian sees another person who is not Italian as a foreigner who lives abroad. All the struggles that took place in Italy during the 19th century had specifically to do with home territory. Here we have a recapitulation of Egypto-Chaldean culture.

Next let us consider the people of Western Europe, those living on French soil. (Remember, we need to rid ourselves of anything to do with sympathy and antipathy.) They are recapitulating Greek civilization. Their attitude to someone from another country will be like that of the Greeks—they will call him a barbarian. Greek civilization is recapitulated here. We can understand this even if the wildest feelings of antipathy are raging. There always is a nuance present of the way people in ancient Greece considered non-Greeks.

The English people have the specific mission to nurture the spiritual soul and this comes to full expression in materialism. Here we specially need to rid ourselves of all antipathy. The nurturing of materialism results in men being simply positioned next to each other in space. This is something that was not experienced in the past: awareness of the rival. The spiritual soul is conscious of another person as its rival in physical life.

What is the situation as regards the Central Europeans, including the Scandinavians? It would be most interesting to go into full detail of this another time. What does a German feel when face to face with another national, in the position where the Italian sees the foreigner, the Frenchman the barbarian and the Englishman his rival? One needs to find the pregnant phrase always for these things. A German faces his opponent—this may also be in a duel and may have nothing at all to do with any feeling of antipathy even—it is merely an matter of fighting for existence or for something connected with one's existence. The enemy need not be denigrated in the least. Again it is possible to observe this even in fine detail. This war in particular shows how the German national faces his enemy as though in a duel.

Let us now turn to the East. We have spoken of the sentient soul coming into its own on the two southern peninsulas, the intellectual or mind soul among the French, the spiritual soul in the British Isles. In Central Europe and up north in Scandinavia the national element comes into its own in the I, the ego. It shows differentiation between different regions but overall is experienced by what is called the ego soul. As I have said, it lives as spirit-self in the East. How do we characterize the spirit-self? It approaches man, comes down upon him. In the ego, man is striving. In the three soul aspects, man is also striving. The spirit-self on the other hand descends. It will one day descend upon the East as a true spirit-self. These things are true, as we have often said. But it needs preparation, preparation to the effect that the soul conceives, that it becomes well versed in its conceiving.

Surely the Russian people have done nothing else so far but conceived. We have had the works of Soloviev, the greatest Russian philosopher, translated within our movement.⁹ If we consider his works in depth we find that it is all Western European culture and philosophy. It is a little different because it has been born out of the Russian folk soul. What is it that is approaching in the Russian soul in contradistinction to western European culture? Italy and Spain are a recapitulation of the third post-Atlantean epoch, the French people a recapitulation of the culture of ancient Greece. The Briton shows the new element that has come in, something we very definitely acquire on the physical plane. In Central Europe it is the ego that has to emerge clearly. In Russia we have receptiveness, conception. First it was Byzantine Christianity that was received, descending like a cloud and then spreading. And western European culture was received even during the reign of Peter the Great [1672–1725]. At present, one would say, only the material basis for conception is there. What we do have there is a reflection of Western European culture, and the soul's work consists in preparing itself for conception, making itself receptive. The Russian folk-soul will only be in its right element when it realizes that Western European elements have to be received the same way as the ancient Germans, for instance, received the Christian faith, or the way the Germanic people took in Greek culture through Goethe. It will be a while yet. The physical element in the people of the East is reacting against the things that need to be taken in, and so the East is still resisting what will be coming towards it. The spirit-self has to descend.

The element coming across from the West is not the spirit-self—but the soul uses it, in a way, to prepare, to practise, receptiveness. And how does a Russian see another national? As someone who stands in opposition, someone descending upon his consciousness. And so the person who is a foreigner to the Italian, a barbarian to the Frenchman, a rival to the Briton and an opponent to the German is a heretic in Russia. That is why, fundamentally speaking, the Russians have only fought religious wars until now—all their wars have so far been religious wars. The aim was to liberate all nations or bring them to the Christian faith—the Balkan countries and so on. And even now Russian country people feel the other person to be ‘evil’ incarnate. They see the other person as a heretic and always believe they are fighting for the faith—even today! These things are true down into detail and we come to understand them if we are truly willing really to look into things. And so we may also ask what it is we see confronting us in the East of Europe.

The way he is in physical life, man is in a way unjust to his higher self. Someone living in the intellectual or mind soul, a person whose imagination is particularly well developed, will ‘have’ thoughts. The concept of how he should appear to himself, in so far as he is a particular national, presents itself before his higher self. He feels that it is his glory; a third self as it were, a national self which stands between him as a higher self and as a national person. He fights on the basis of this. After death he first of all has to be overcome this unless he has already overcome it beforehand through spiritual science. He must pass through something that first of all presents itself to his soul as the Inspiration of his own image of himself.

Someone living in the spiritual soul as a national will above all be inclined towards the things the spiritual soul has made its own in the physical world. This will be like a grievous memory in the world that lies between death and rebirth.

The Central European is a seeker. This is evident even from derogatory remarks made by his enemies who may say he is fit only to plough the fields and search among the clouds. However far he may have advanced, he is, even here, seeking the self in. spirit. In the efforts he makes during his progress on earth he will therefore, in a sense, try already get rid of whatever has to be got rid of when we go through the gate of death and enter the spiritual world.

Someone who has been in a Russian body during his last incarnation must first of all, on passing through the gate of death, assume the consciousness of an angelos, merge into the inner being of an angelos—unless he has gone through a different preparation with spiritual science—and share in all that comes down from the hierarchies above him.

All these are reasons why we may say that if we look to the West of Europe it seems natural that strife arises out of the very nature of men in so far as they are nationals, for the national element is connected with something that is an outer covering. It is quite natural for strife to arise. In the spiritual world anything that rightfully belongs there can spread without hindrance. But external means have to be used to assert the image one has of oneself. It needs to be able to spread in order to emerge. Anything looking for competition must of course be able to spread. It is perfectly understandable that strife comes from the people who represent the spiritual soul. If we are really seeking the I, the ego, in Central Europe, let us see if the qualities of the ego can already be brought to bear.

I have already stressed, for example, that the ego needs to be fanned to life again every morning. It is in an unaroused state when we enter into the sphere of sleep with it and needs to be fanned to life again every morning when we wake up. If I may refer to Austria—I heard it said even when I was young that Austria would one day fall apart when occasion arose. We knew different; it might have any amount of centrifugal force within it but it was held together from outside, it could not fall apart. Let us consider Germany. Does it show the ego character in its outer aspect, in its form? It is a fact of considerable import that for much of a century the Germans have pressed for unification. They did not achieve this from the inside. It took an external impulse, not from inside Germany but from outside, from the centre of France, to let the Germany of today come into being in accord with the ego character. We can only understand the world if we consider it in the light of spiritual science. Fundamentally speaking, the ego does not have the inclination to hit out; for the overweening forces from the physical plane would then go over into the spiritual sphere. This is something we could demonstrate over and over again in German history, in the history of Austria and the history of the Scandinavian peoples. The feeling is right, therefore, that a German, or a Central European, has to be made to come out in war. Fundamentally speaking, he is unable to start a war of his own accord. If he goes to war out of initiative, he does it the way the initiative does it in the ego, and there have of course been such wars in the interior. That is what we must feel the attitude of Central Europe to war to be.

And what emerges in the East for someone able to get a feeling for national character? For the Russian it is the most unnatural thing in the world to wage war. If he were to know himself he would feel it to be most unnatural for him to wage war. We of the West cannot become Tolstoyans, however well we understand all things Russian. But for the Russian it is unnatural to wage war. War has to be imposed on him, for it is totally against the national character. A Russian feels towards war the way he feels about religious war—it is something coming from outside. War cannot be made plausible to him for he would rather pray for what is to come to him. It is therefore quite natural to look for the motives that causes Russians to go to war not in the national character but in the motives imposed on them from outside. More than anywhere else we have to say in this case that it is not the people who make war—it is the people only in an external sense and seemingly—but rather whatever it is that they have to turn against most of all. In Russia war is always a 'Maya', illusion, in the worst sense. This is why we can state clearly and precisely what I posed as a question in my public lecture: Who could have prevented the war?—If we actually want to talk of the possibility of its being prevented.—For the French, war has been something natural since 1871 and it would not be natural to speak of their being able to prevent it. Anyone forced to fight his rivals naturally does not have the right to be indignant when neutrality has been breached in some place or other, and in this case the indignation needs to be reinterpreted into the national element. But it is natural for him to go to war. We cannot take that amiss. In that case war can no more be rejected than when, in interpreting the nature of living creatures, one has to find a different phrase out of the element of the spiritual soul than from the the standpoint of the ego and therefore speaks of the 'struggle for survival'. Goethe did not coin that phrase, because from the ego point of view it does not apply. But where it is a question of war being a falsehood, where it even has to be reinterpreted first into a religious war, there we have to say that it has risen externally and therefore could also have been prevented externally. Looking into all the depths one is able to look into—the war has indeed been a necessity but that is another thing—we have to say: It is true that Russia could have stayed an onlooker, and the war could have been prevented. If Russia had remained an onlooker the war could have been prevented. For here a war has been grafted onto a national character when basically it is something quite unnatural.

Such things, as we speak about them, come from the spiritual world. They arise from it. But it is always possible to verify them, to confirm them, in the outside world. Anything we arrive at out of the spiritual world finds confirmation in the outside world. We could say that it would be a natural gesture for the Russian national character to pray and wait for what is to come. It is very strange; even Russian intellectuals are waiting in expectancy—I have already referred to this—in the feeling that something belonging to the future has to come towards them. What will have to come for them still lies far ahead in the future and we have seen how there is refusal to accept what has to be taken up now. It is perhaps more than just an outer symbol that now, when battles are being fought on the Black Sea, the Russian still looks in that direction—to see an embodiment, as it were, of what he may expect in the spirit—pointing to the Hagia Sophia.¹⁰ Merezhkovsky [1865–1941] describes two visits he has made to the Hagia Sophia. He felt the Hagia Sophia to be the outer symbol, as it were, of something he did not know in his feelings but was expecting, and he called it the Christianity that is to come for the Russians. He would have seen it rightly if he had realized that it is a Christian faith that has gone through the Faust nature which will have to take hold of the Russian people. But that is something he does not yet know. He believes it is the Hagia Sophia which represents it. What is his attitude to the Christian faith? If we consider what Soloviev has to say on this, then I am able to say that he shows a certain understanding of it. For when problems were once again created for him by St Petersburg and the Holy Synod, he said: ‘Ah, that is how you fare when you have problems in getting them to understand what you want to say. The one side calls me a liberal Western European atheist, the other an orthodox believer, and others again even consider me a Jesuit.’ He concluded by saying: ‘Amazing what you can turn into when seen through the eyes of the Petersburg blackguards.’ These are not my words but those of a good Russian citizen, a Russian who shows us that it is not easy to rid oneself of feelings of sympathy or antipathy. But let us assume the Russian intellectual is left to himself. As I said, it is a world of expectancy, a natural mood of looking for what is to come, something not to be achieved with the sword and with cannon. That is why the Pan-Slavonic movement is such a lie. Left to himself, Merezhkovsky gave himself up to his feelings when face to face with the Hagia Sophia. He did however confuse it with the Christian faith of the Western European which has gone through the strivings of Faust. And how does he speak of it?

I have tried to find a succinct formulation for the feelings different nations may be seen to have towards war, saying that a Russian believes he is going to war for the sake of religion, an Englishman for competition, a Frenchman for the glory, an Italian or Spaniard for his homeland and a German to fight for existence. And we are therefore able to say that Italy wants to preserve the homeland; France conceives of its own idea of [glory] as the national ideal; the Englishman takes action and does business¹¹ the German aspires; the Russian prays—and that comes naturally. I am not speaking of external prayer, for it is a matter of the heart. What was it then Merezhkovsky said at the end of his book, which I mentioned the day before yesterday?¹²

The Hagia Sophia—brilliant, sad and flooded with the amber-coloured light of ultimate mystery—lifted up my soul which had fallen and was frightened. I looked up into the dome that is like the vault of heaven, and I thought: There it stands, made by the hand of man, and in it men are coming close to the triune god on earth. This close approach has been made and more still of this shall come in time to be. Surely those who believe in the Son must come to the Father who is the world. And surely those must come to the Son who love the world, which the Father also loved so much that he gave his Son for it. For they offer their souls for him and for their friends; they have the Son because they have Love, only they do not know the name.

They do not have it as a whole. And he concluded:

And I felt impelled to pray for them all, in the temple that at this hour belongs to the heathen but is the only temple for the future, to pray that my people be given that true, conquering strength: pray for conscious belief in the triune god.

So there you have the prayer. There you have the anomaly of a fight that goes from East to West.

In making this attempt to gain inner understanding of what meets us here, in attempting to escape from Maya and enter into the truth, we can indeed say to ourselves that were are not pursuing an abstract anthroposophy that is afraid to see. For it would be fear of seeing the truth if we were to shrink from seeing national characters in their true foundations, because of our ‘First Principle.’¹³ We are exactly following that Principle if we approach man as he is and endeavour really to look into his soul. Then we are most of all addressing the immortal aspect of man and we shall then also find the part of him that goes beyond the national, that goes towards the eternal, and the fine feelings that turn to the eternal in man. And then we shall find a way of bringing about what after all has to be brought about. For do you think progress and the good of mankind will not suffer if the temper now prevailing among nations is to persist? Tempers which in any case are merely born out of Maya? From the point of view of the necessity which demands that men get to understand one another again, that there shall be a continuation of what in a certain sense had already been started, arising from Central Europe, it is essential that this atmosphere we live in—a spiritual atmosphere that is one of such dreadful tumult today—receives also other elements into it and not only those of tumult. We cannot help but sense, if we have entered into spiritual life, the tumult that exists in the spiritual atmosphere today. The more deeply one has entered, the more one will be sensitive to this. Profoundly disturbing things may arise out of the spiritual life. The occultist has been able to learn much, but never has so much been experienced that was so deeply disturbing and has such impact as in the last three months.

Many is the time I have stressed the occult truth that things presenting themselves one way in the physical world are the opposite by nature in the spiritual world. Some of our friends will also be able to recall how often I have said that war was hanging in the spiritual air and was really only being held off by something which is a spiritual impulse also in physical life—by fear. Force of fear held it back for as long as it was astral by nature. Fear stopped it from breaking out earlier. Externally speaking, the war started of course with the assassination in Sarajevo. That, too, has its significance. That is what is so disturbing in this affair. We are among ourselves here, and so it must also be possible to say these things. The individual personality who was murdered on that clay [Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria, assassinated on 28 June 1914] and went through the gate of death afterwards presented an appearance I had never before seen myself nor heard described by others. I have on several occasions described the appearance of souls as they pass through the gate of death. This soul however showed a peculiar feature. It was like a centre of crystallisation, with everything by nature of fear elements crystallizing around it, as it were, until war broke out. Afterwards it showed itself to be something quite different. Where before it had been a great cosmic force attracting all fear, it had then become something that was the opposite. The fear which had prevailed here on the physical plane had held everybody back. But once this soul had ascended to the spiritual plane it acted in the opposite way, bringing war.

It profoundly disturbs the soul to experience such things. And there are many such things that now exist within the heaving swell of the astral impulses that rise up into the spiritual world from the hearts and minds of men. And among ourselves I am able to say that I have never experienced anything like the things I experienced in these last months, something that stirred up the waves in human souls to such a dreadful extent. From this it is of course apparent what is going on in the spiritual atmosphere. And if that which has to be in the spiritual atmosphere is indeed to come about, thoughts must enter into that atmosphere that can only arise from souls that have grasped the spiritual world. Pleading with utmost passion, therefore, your souls are asked to conceive ideas, ideas we try to stimulate with reflections like those of today or of the last occasion. These are ideas arising from spiritual insight and only souls that have gone through spiritual science are able to send such thoughts up into the spiritual world. The souls will need such thoughts now whilst war is in progress, and even more so afterwards. For thoughts are reality!

The great wish is to send the most fervent prayer into the spiritual world that whatever arises out of this war and after it may originate not from human Maya but from the truth and from spiritual reality. The more you send such thoughts up into the spiritual world the more you are doing for what shall be the fruit of these worldwide struggles, and the more you are doing for what is needed for the whole evolution of mankind.

This prayer, then, shall be the culmination of all I intended to present to your souls with these thoughts. If the questions we have considered have truly entered into our souls, if our souls, as souls that have now lived in spiritual science, allow to stream up into the spiritual world that which brings peace to man. then our spiritual science has stood the test in these fateful times. It will have stood the test to the effect that our fighters out there have not in vain given full rein to their courage; that the blood of battle has not flowed in vain. Then the suffering of those who mourn, the sacrifices which have been made, will not have been in vain in the world. Then spirit fruit will grow out of these fateful days, all the more so to the extent human beings are able to send thoughts like those I have indicated up into the spiritual world.

I want to make it clear that the words I am about to speak form a sevenfold structure, making a kind of mantram. Please note that in the last but one line the words ‘Lenken Seelen’ should be taken to mean ‘wenn Seelen lenken’ (if souls turn).

This is what I wanted to put before you: that these events, which speak so much of reality, appear in the right light to us if we rise above Maya and to the true reality. Oh, the souls will be found that are able to see our present time in that way. Souls will be found if they are found also in the sense Krishna was teaching¹⁴ with regard to warrior-souls. And if it should truly prove possible for souls that have gone through spiritual science to send thoughts to fructify the spirit up into the spiritual world in these difficult, fateful days, then the right fruit will develop out of all that is happening in those hard struggles and cruel sacrifices. And so I am able to let the things I wanted to put before your souls today culminate in what I would so much like to see as the state of consciousness, the innermost consciousness, of souls that have gone through spiritual science:

Out of courage shown in battle,
Out of the blood shed in war,
Out of the grief of those who are left,
Out of the people's deeds of sacrifice
Spirit fruits will come to grow
If souls with knowledge of the spirit
Turn their mind to spirit realms.

• 6. Rudolf Steiner, ‘Der Dornacher Bau als Wahrzeichen geschichtlichen Werdens und kiinstlerischer Umwandlungsimpulse’ (1914) Dornach 1937 (Proposed for GA 287).
• 7. Rudolf Steiner, Die Rätsel der Philosophie in ihrer Geschichte als Umriss dargestellt. (GA 18) Riddles of Philosophy. Tr. F. Koelin. Anthroposophic Press, 1973.
• 8. ‘Goethe's Theory of Colours’ in Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schrifien, hersg. und kommentiert von Rudolf Steiner ( GA 1c).
• 9. Soloviev, Vladimir: Gesammelte Werke (Collected Works), tr. Harry Kohler, with an introduction by Rudolf Steiner; Stuttgart 1921. Also Gedichte von Wladimir Solovjeff tr. by Marie Steiner, 2nd edn (Dornach 1949).
• 10. Santa Sophia. the Great Church of the Holy Wisdom, principal church of Constantinople, Built by Justinian in 532 –7, it was converted into a mosque when Constantinope fell to the Turks in 1453 (translator).
• 11. The German verb handeln means both ‘to act, to take action’ and ‘to trade’ (Translator).
• 12. Dmitri Merezhkovsky, Der Antnarsch des Pöbels (Tr. H. Horschelmann) Munich & Leipzig 1907.
• 13. First Principle: When he established the Anthroposophical Society in 1912/1913, Rudolf Steiner formulated the First Principle as follows: ‘The Society provides for all people to work together in brotherhood who consider the basis of their work together in love to be a common spiritual element that is in all human souls, irrespective of differences of creed, nationality, class, sex, etc.’
• 14. In the Bhagavad Gita. See also lecture of 1 September 1914.