Significant Facts Pertaining to the Spiritual Life of the Middle of the XIXth Century

By Rudolf Steiner Translated by D.S. Osmond GA 254

Three lectures delivered in Dornach, Switzerland, in October and November, 1915. Authorized translation from the German of Notes unrevised by the lecturer. Published by kind permission of the Rudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach, Switzerland. A part of Steiner's Lectures on the Anthroposophical Movement and Society, these are lectures 11, 12, and 13 of 13 from the lecture series: Occult Movements of the 19th Century (formerly GA 164). Published in German as: Die Okkulte Bewegung Im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert und Ihre Beziehung zur Weltkultur. Bedeutzames aus dem aeusseren Geistesleben um Mitte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Now, GA# 254. A condensed version of the three lectures comprising the series, can be found at, Outlooks for the Future.
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CONTENTS
Cover Sheet Contents Lecture I: A convulsive element is at work in the evolution of humanity during the 19th century. Two examples from European literature of significant insight into happenings in the spiritual worlds: The Mahaguru, a novel by Gutzkow, and The Undivine Comedy, a drama by Zigmunt Krasinski. Lecture II: When most of the souls now living are reincarnated they will know as a natural matter of course that there are many earthly lives. The men of the Lemurian and Atlantean epochs and their occult arts. Knowledge and application of hidden forces of nature. The gradual development of free will and a new knowledge of nature. Decadent remains of ancient, occult chemistry, for example in Tibet. Necessity for acquiring knowledge of Lucifer and Ahriman, The Ego must be permeated by Christ. Senses-perceptions and ideas. The concept of knowledge and the concept of life. Extract from a letter written by Petrarch to Boccaccio. Ahasver, the Wandering Jew. Christ is seeing us. Lecture III: The tragic wrestling with knowledge. How can man find the link with the true realities in the cosmos? Fechner and the discovery of medicaments. The moral physiognomy of men in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch as the nemesis of materialism. Gradual stiffening of the etheric body, and its consequences.

October 31, 1915

November 1, 1915

LECTURE I.

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A Convulsive Element in Humanity in the Nineteenth Century

Dornach, 31st October 1915. In recent lectures given here my endeavour has been to show how in the middle of the 19th century a flood of materialism burst into the evolutionary process of humanity, and how from different sides it was felt that a flood of materialism of this kind had never previously been known, and that furthermore there was a certain significance in the way it had arisen I also tried to bring home the fact that men must arm themselves if they are to continue along the path of evolution once laid down for humanity. Particularly in the most recent lectures [The Occult Movement in the 19th Century. Course of 10 lectures.] I described the efforts that were made from different quarters concerned with the furtherance of cultural aims akin to those of spiritual science to inculcate an element which was deemed necessary in order to demonstrate to men that something entirely new must be added to the old. Naturally, a very great deal more could be said about this subject, and as time goes on, there will be opportunities for speaking of many aspects of it for illustrations will have to be given of what was presented in the first place more in the form of narrative. Today, however, I want to show that towards the middle of the 19th century there were evidences in the external spiritual life, too, of a feeling that a crucial point had been reached. In the external spiritual life that is to say, in the different philosophical movements, the literary movement and so on there are evidences that a convulsive element interpolated itself into the course of evolution. As numbers of illustrations could be given, it is obviously only possible to select one or two. I will take as our starting-point today, two examples from European literature. These examples will show that in the hearts and minds of some men there was a feeling that significant things were taking place in the invisible worlds. One of these examples is Gutzkow's novel The Mahaguru the great Guru. [The Mahaguru has not been translated into English.] The second remarkably enough it was written at about the same time is the extraordinarily interesting drama which ends with the cry: Thou hast conquered, O Galilean! [See notes later in lecture on The Undivine Comedy (Krasinski).] So far as my knowledge of it goes, it seems to me to represent a crowning point in Polish literature of the 19th century. It is remarkable that in the thirties of the 19th century, the young freethinker Gutzkow then in his twenties should have chosen this particular material in order to point to much that was astir at that time, linking it on to a personage who subsequently became the Dalai-Lama in Tibet the Mahaguru, as he called him. A few brief words will suffice to outline this picture of conditions apparently so remote from those prevailing in Europe, yet in reality infinitely pertinent to them, The Mahaguru was published in the thirties of the 19th century at the dawn, therefore, of the age of materialism. One of the principal characters in the novel is a man who makes models of gods. What is such a man in Tibet? He is one who models figures of gods out of all kinds of substances (as we today work with clay or plasticine); he makes models of gods according to the traditions strictly laid down in the Tibetan canon. The details of these figures must be absolutely correct: the proportions laid down for the facial structure, the size and position of the hands all must be exact. The hero, or rather one of the heroes of the novel, has descended from an ancient stock, the members of which have always been engaged in the trade of making gods, and he is an expert in his craft. His fame is widespread and his figures of gods are bought all over Tibet. In modeling one of the chief gods, a very terrible thing happens to him. We must of course try to put ourselves into the heart and mind of a Tibetan before the whole import of the word terrible in this connection will be clear to us. To the heart of a devout Tibetan it is a terrible thing that befell this maker of gods. In the figure of one of the chief gods, the length between the nostrils and the upper lip was not correct, not in accordance with the canon. This was a terrible and significant matter. The man had departed from the ancient, time-honoured canon and had made the space between the nostrils and the upper lip a little larger than was prescribed. In Tibet this is a dreadful sin nearly or perhaps just as dreadful as when someone in the West today states to an audience of orthodox believers that the existence of the two Jesus boys was necessary in order that Christ might descend into Jesus or when he speaks of a faculty of knowledge higher than the ordinary faculty, so that he must be accused of inducing his followers to engage in experiments with clairvoyance and the like. Such teachings are sheer fantasy that is what is said today. But in the days described in this novel it was an equally outrageous sin that in a figure of one of the chief gods the nostrils should lie too far above the upper lip. The only thing that is
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different is the actual form of punishment. Today, the most that happens is that lectures crammed with inaccuracies are delivered and other justifiable measures adopted. But at that time in Tibet the maker of gods was obliged to appear before the supreme tribunal of the Inquisition the dread Council of black Inquisitors. That is how it would be designated in terms current in Europe today. So the maker of gods was obliged to set out for Lhassa and present himself before the tribunal police are not necessary in Tibet, for the people obey automatically; when they are told that they must appear before the tribunal of the black Inquisition, there is no need to fetch them. So the maker of gods set out with his brothers and his enchanting daughter, a great Tibetan beauty. With her masterly knowledge of the Tibetan canon, this daughter had been helping him devotedly and efficiently for many years and was an altogether lovable character. The brothers of the man were obliged to accompany him because they were co-responsible for what he had done. The caravan party now set out for Lhassa where the sinner must appear before the black tribunal. When they had traveled some distance from their home on the way to Lhassa, they came upon a curious troop of men, also bound for Lhassa, weeping, dancing, whistling, beating all kinds of instruments, and led by a Shaman. He was an acquaintance, a youthful playmate of the daughter of the maker of gods, and he knew the members of the caravan party, at the head of which was the man on his way to judgment in Lhassa, weighed down by the sinfulness he had incurred with his falsely-made god. The Shaman impressed upon him the danger of his position, saying that it would be a good thing if the real Dalai-Lama were still on the throne, but possibly the new Dalai-Lama had already been found and would be ruling Tibet from Lhassa. If that were so, things might be even worse, for the Vice-Regent was able in certain circumstances to be merciful in the administration of justice but if the new Dalai-Lama were installed there was no telling whether or not the supreme penalty would have to be paid. And when the canon had been violated as seriously as the maker of gods had violated it by placing the nostrils too high above the upper lip naturally the penalty would be death. So the sinner learns that the Dalai-Lama, the Mahaguru, may soon be found. What does this mean in Tibet? The Tibetans are convinced that the soul of the great Bodhisattva who rules over Tibet passes from one body to another. When a Dalai-Lama dies, a new Dalai-Lama must be sought for on an entirely democratic basis, for the Tibetans are thoroughly democratic in their attitude. No rank is hereditary, nothing transmitted from father to son by way of the body is of any account. According to Tibetan ideas this principle is utterly inconsistent with the dignity of the Dalai-Lama. Therefore when a Dalai-Lama dies the priesthood must set about finding a new Dalai-Lama, and then every young boy must be inspected for the great soul might have incarnated in the very poorest family. The whole country must be searched and every boy in every house and on the roads scrutinised; if one of them shows signs of what is considered by the priesthood to indicate the necessary intelligence, be has the prospect of being acclaimed as the Dalai-Lama. The conviction is that in the boy who shows the most signs, the great soul of the Bodhisattva has incarnated, and then he is the Dalai-Lama. In the interval, while the search continues for the incarnation of the god in human form, a Vice-Dalai-Lama must rule the country temporarily. Gutzkow's story continues. It is already being rumoured that the new Mahaguru or the new Dalai-Lama will eventually be crowned in Lhassa, brought there with all honours. And here I must interpolate an episode narrated by Gutzkow; he interpolates it in a slightly different place in the story, but what we are trying to do is to get a picture of his Mahaguru. The beautiful girl was journeying with her father, the sinner. According to the Tibetan Constitution, his brothers are also fathers because a kind of polyandry is customary there. When a man marries, his brothers also marry the same woman. So the brothers of a father are also fathers, although one is the actual chief. The caravan procession is beautifully described in the book: the fathers are in front, then the chief father (the sinner) and his beautiful daughter. While she was still a small child and was just beginning to help her father, she had a companion with whom she liked to play, who at that time had been very dear to her and whose memory she still cherished. The Shaman at the head of the shrieking, whistling band had also been one of her early playmates and he was the brother of the one who had been her dearly-loved companion. I have had to interpolate this in order to make what comes later more intelligible. The whole caravan moves on towards Lhassa, and on arriving there it is learnt that the new Mahaguru, the new Dalai-Lama, has been installed with all the honours due to him. But first we are told how the great sinner who has made the nostrils too far above the upper lip in a figure of one of the chief Tibetan gods is led before the black tribunal. During the terrible proceedings of the tribunal it is made clear that this is a sin whose only expiation is death. Meanwhile the sinner is thrown into prison together with his family, to await a further trial in which all the sins ever
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committed by him are to be enumerated. It must be emphasised that until now he had committed no sin other than that of having made the distance between nostrils and upper lip barely a millimeter too long in one of his figures. But in Tibet that is a crime punishable by death. With pomp and splendour the new Dalai-Lama has been installed in office. We are told of many Tibetan customs, also of what goes on around the Court at Lhassa. Exact and lengthy descriptions are given in the book. In this setting, with the honourable rank of a Chinese Envoy at the Court, was a man who also had a charming young sister and who had reached a certain degree among the mandarins of China. He was a mandarin of the 6th degree but was hoping soon to be raised to a higher rank. Actually the ideal to which he aspired was the Order of the Peacock's Feather. But while this Chinese Envoy is dreaming his dreams, the most daring of which is to be made a member of the high Order of the Peacock's Feather, the new Dalai-Lama has been installed in his glory. The new Dalai-Lama knows that he has made the sun, the moon, the stars, the lightning and the clouds, the plants and the stones, and he explains to those who now come to pay their respects to him how he created it all, that he is the creator of everything that is visible in the wide universe and also of what is invisible that he is therefore the primal creator of the visible world and of the invisible worlds connected with it. Now in Tibet as elsewhere there are two parties. But these two parties are still closely bound up with the spiritual evolution of mankind in very ancient times. The two parties, whose priests belong to different sects, are usually designated by their headgear: the Yellow Caps and the Red Tassels. These two parties are in perpetual conflict with one another. In our language for in Tibet these things are closely connected with the spiritual we should say; the Yellow Caps are connected with the Luciferic element, the Red Tassels more with the Ahrimanic. These traits come to expression not only in their doctrines but also in their deeds: the Luciferic element is predominant in the doctrines and deeds of the Yellow Caps, the Ahrimanic element in those of the Red Tassels. In consequence of this to explain why would lead us too far afield the Red Tassels are bent upon ensuring that the Dalai-Lama at Lhassa shall be regarded as the lawful god who has created the plants, the animals and men; it is in their interest that the new Dalai-Lama shall be found and that the whole country shall believe him to be the lawful god whereas the Yellow Caps are always indignant when the new Dalai-Lama is found and sits on the throne. For in Tibet, as well as the Dalai-Lama there is a Teshu-Lama, whose followers are found more among the northern Tibetans and the Mongol tribes. The Teshu-Lama strives his whole life long to overthrow the Dalai-Lama and usurp the throne. The Yellow Caps, then, support the Teshu-Lama and try to put him on the throne. The man who aspires to the Order of the Peacock's Feather is now faced with the fact that a new Dalai-Lama is there. China, his country, holds a kind of mandate over Tibet. The Teshu-Lama is out to contest the throne, so there is opportunity here for intrigue. The man now begins to intrigue by arranging a kind of warlike caravan column to go to the Teshu-Lama and reinforce his power. But in reality his aim is not that the Teshu-Lama shall come to the throne but that the Chinese regiment shall be able to tighten the reins. In the confusion caused by this action, the beautiful daughter of the sinner is able to escape from the prison, and something unheard of happens: in the garden where only the god, the Dalai-Lama, may walk, she comes across him and lo! the Dalai-Lama was her childhood's playmate who one day had suddenly disappeared and in the intervening time had been trained to become the Dalai-Lama. He is now the Dalai-Lama and encounters this girl, the daughter of the sinner. A deeply-interesting dialogue now ensues. You can well imagine the situation that may arise when the girl, who had loved her playmate very intensely, encounters this playmate who is convinced that he has created the sun, the moon and the stars, and she is not altogether disinclined to believe in her god. But the priests discovered the shameful thing that had happened and threw the girl back into prison. The Dalai-Lama, however, sitting on his soft silken cushions, surrounded by all his other appurtenances, continues to meditate on how he directs the lightning and the clouds, how he has created and sustains the other phenomena of the visible world. The further course of the story brings us once again to the black tribunal. There is a terrible scene because the sinner, who to begin with had nothing on his conscience except the fact of having made the nostrils and upper lip of the god about a millimeter too far apart, now appears as an arch-criminal. He had gone mad in prison and had made out of some kind of substance similar to what we should now call plasticine most curious figures of gods. Just imagine it A Tibetan tribunal confronted with a whole number of false figures of gods made by the culprit in prison! A howl of anger arises, no matter how he tries to vindicate himself; the judges sit around and the long galleries are full of people. The judges are monks who lay down the correct measurements of each feature in the case of every single god, how much larger the stomach of a god may be than that of an ordinary man, and so on; all the sins thus committed by the man with the figures made in prison are enumerated one by one. It is a dreadful affair and the fanatical judges pour their wrath on the sinner. He and his party are again thrown into prison, together with his daughter whose particular charm consists in the fact that because her feet are not too minute they differ from the excessively small feet customary in the Far East in other respects, too, she is a lovely creature. But the followers of the aspirant to the Order of the Peacock's Feather cause a commotion in Lhassa and in the confusion a fire breaks
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out, burning the very house where the girl is imprisoned. She appears at the top of the house amid the smoke and flames at the moment when the Dalai-Lama is passing by with his brother, the Shaman, who, knowing all that has happened, has helped him to escape. At the crucial moment the human heart of the god, the Dalai-Lama, is moved. Instead of sending thunder and lightning to help, he throws himself into the flames, rescues the girl and brings her to the ground. He flees with her to a lonely, mountainous region together with his brother and the Teshu-Lama, supported by the Yellow Caps, is enthroned in his place. So the beautiful girl goes off with the Mahaguru and his brother, the Shaman, and the Mahaguru is now married to her. After a year the Shaman dies. The good Dalai-Lama lives to an advanced age and for many long years is his wife's only husband. He actually outlives her, becomes a solitary old man and has long ceased to imagine that he rules over the lightning and the thunder, that he has created the mountains, forests and rivers, that sun, moon and stars circle in their courses according to his will. In his last years he becomes a Yogi, striving to acquire the wisdom that will lead his soul into the spiritual worlds. He stands on one leg, the other coiled around it like a serpent, one hand held behind him, the other raised upwards; he stands there with only his lips moving. The poor from the valley bring him food, but he never changes his posture. The description of this final scene is most remarkable. We are told how the man who had been made the Dalai-Lama does indeed, in old age, find his god; how his soul dissolves into the elements which he was trying to understand and of which for a certain period in his life he had believed himself to be the creator. The novel is a very remarkable product of the thirties of the 19th century, a work in which a comparatively young man describes with profound insight, customs prevailing in the strange country of Tibet. These customs are relics, surviving in the fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, of many things that existed in quite different forms in the Atlantean age, that is to say, the fourth main period of earth-evolution. The outward significance lies in the fact of such a novel having been written when it was; it shows that a human soul felt the need to portray something that in truth can be understood only by those who have at least some inkling of the evolutionary course of mankind, in its spiritual aspect too. One man in Europe at all events divines that in this strange country, in many Tibetan customs seeming to us so grotesque, there is preserved more faithfully than anywhere else in caricature, of course what was present in a quite different form in the Atlantean world. That is the outward significance, added to the fact that this novel was written at the time it was, and that attention is directed to a country which affords most telling evidence of how in the so-called Yellow Caps and Red Tassels there still live the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces with which the men of Atlantis, especially in the fourth Atlantean epoch, were well acquainted and with which they worked. But something else as well is inwardly significant in this novel, The Mahaguru. Inwardly significant is what is presented to us in the scene of the proceedings at the black Inquisition-tribunal. The sinner makes a remarkable speech in self-defence. As we know, he had made a great number of gods during his imprisonment; but he made them when be was in a state of madness. There is a fine description of how the first symptoms of madness already became apparent on the way to Lhassa, how the condition became more and more acute and finally broke out in the form referred to. In a state of complete madness he had made all kinds of figures which violated the canon in the most atrocious way. We learn a great deal about the Tibetan canon from Gutzkow's powerful description; but we also learn something quite remarkable. We are told that this great sinner, as the offspring of his forbears, has become a maker of gods as is invariably the custom in Tibet. The figures he made had always been correct in every detail: the proportions and positions of the limbs, the length between nostrils and upper lip, and the like. Never once had it happened that the measurement between nostrils and upper lip had been one iota too long but it did happen once, and he must expect death as the penalty. But now, as a madman that is to say, in the condition where his soul is already to some extent outside his body he uses his body in such a way as to produce utterly heterodox figures of gods. And now, he who knows nothing about Art except what is laid down by the canon for the making of gods, makes a long speech in his own defence, a speech in which, in his madness, he talks about principles of art. For one who understands these things it is a most moving scene. As long as the connection between the man's four bodies was intact, only the negligible mistake in the measurement between nostrils and upper lip could occur. But now, after the astral body and etheric body have loosened from the physical body, the man becomes an artist, producing grotesque, but for all that, artistic figures. The Inquisition does not understand this and believes that he had allied himself with evil in order to destroy the works of the gods. The description of the moving scene at the tribunal reminds us of many things I have said about the aberrations of the human soul towards the one abyss or the other. In the soul of the young Gutzkow, too, the thought arose that there may come a time when men will no longer be able to find their equilibrium. And now he places such men in the setting of a Tibetan religious community, because these problems can be brought home more vividly by presenting sharply contrasting situations, and because the novelist is able to show how art suddenly comes upon the scene. Art bursts forth from a human soul who has gone astray in the abyss, a human soul who has drawn near to Lucifer in order to save himself from the Ahrimanic claws of the Red Tassels, who are there as the unlawful judges. A profound law is indicated here the law of man's connection with the spiritual world and its abysses: the world of Lucifer and the world of Ahriman.

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Before continuing this particular line of thought, I want to say something about the Polish drama by Zigmunt Krasinski, which ends with the words: Thou hast conquered, O Galilean? A translation of parts of it, under the title La Comedie Infernale, was given by Mickiewicz in his lectures in Paris in the year 1842. [An English translation, of the drama, with the title The Undivine Comedy, and Mickiewicz's analysis, was published in 1875. A later translation with a preface by G. K. Chesterton was published in 1924. (George Harrap & Co., London.)] I must emphasise that I am not in a position to form a judgment of the drama from the purely artistic point of view because I know only the idea and intention underlying it. The fine impressions of this drama given by Adam Mickiewicz in his lectures enables me to speak about its basic idea and intention, but I can say nothing about it as a work of art. This reservation must be kept in mind. It is possible, however, to speak about the drama in this way, for Mickiewicz analysed its underlying idea and intention. The passages in French are so excellent that by studying what Mickiewicz says one is immediately impressed by its grandeur and significance. This conviction is still further strengthened when one reads Mickiewicz's rendering of the beautiful preface on the spirit of poetry. This is obviously a drama that has sprung from the very depths of the human soul. It presents the secrets of the life of soul in a wonderful way. The chief character is a Polish Count; speaking to him and bending towards him from left and right are good angels and bad angels, the former intent upon leading mankind to the good side of evolution, the latter to the bad side. The relevant scenes are translated into French and show with what wonderful simplicity the Polish poet was trying to depict the relations of the beings belonging to the Hierarchy of the Angeloi to the hero of the drama, the old Count. We then learn of the Count's family life which has suffered on account of his personal characteristics. He lives entirely in the Past as it plays into his personal life, in the past history and evolution of the human race; surrounded by pictures of his parents and forbears, he also lives in the past of his Polish ancestral stock. He pays very little heed to the Present and so can find no real link with his wife. But in what has come to him through heredity, in what has been implanted in him through the blood refined through many generations, there is also in him an unusual spirituality, a sense for the realities of those worlds which hover above the earthly world. The result is that he can find no inner link with his wife. He lives entirely in the spirit, and the manner of his life is such that he is regarded by those around him as a god-gifted prophet. His wife has just borne him a son. We then come to the scene of the child's baptism, but the Count himself is not there. He can find no bond with anything earthly. This baptism and the circumstances associated with it send the child's mother insane. The Count had gone away, and when he returns to the house after the baptism, he learns that his wife has been taken to a madhouse. Strangely enough we are again confronted with a case where the members of a man's constitution have loosened. We are told of the words that had been uttered by the wife before she went mad. Before the baptism the idea came to the mother that misfortune would surround the child because her own talents and human qualities had not made her equal to living, like her husband, in the spiritual world, and that she was incapable of bearing a child who would be able to live with sufficient intensity in the spiritual worlds to win the father's love. And with all the strength of her soul she longs to penetrate into the spiritual worlds in order to bring down for her son what is to be found in yonder worlds. Her wish is to bring from the spiritual worlds everything that would imbue the child with spirituality. This drives her insane and she is put into a madhouse or asylum, as we should say nowadays. The old Count searches for and finds her there, and she speaks deeply moving words to him. First of all, she declares that she wants to bring out of the spiritual worlds for the child those qualities that will enable the father to love him and then she speaks wonderful words to this effect: I can traverse all worlds; my wings carry me upwards into all the worlds; I would fain gather up everything that is there and instill it into my child; I would fain gather all that lives in the light of the spirit and in the heavenly spheres in order to make my child a poet. One passage in particular is deeply indicative of the poet's intuitive conception of the spiritual world. It is where he lets the old Count say, on hearing that his wife has become insane: Where is her soul now? Amid the howling screams of maniacs! Darkness has enshrouded this bright spirit who was full of reverence for the great universe ... She has sent her thoughts into the wilderness, searching for me! The father then goes to the child who had been born physically blind but who has become clairvoyant. The child speaks of his mother. Some time after this scene, remarkable words are uttered by the Count. In the meantime the mother has died. The child had told his father that his soul could always soar, as if on wings, to where the mother now dwelt the mother he had not known. While the child is describing how he looks into the spiritual world, he relates something which he himself could not have heard but which the father had heard from the wife when she was already insane, as her last wish. The Count speaks remarkable words remarkable for those who understand these things in the light of spiritual science. He asks: Is it then possible that one who has passed through death retains for a time the last ideas he had before death?

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So we see how mother and child go to pieces physically, and are transported in a certain abnormal, atavistic way into the spiritual world. Around the Count whose spirit lives entirely in the Past, they go to pieces physically and are transported atavistically into the spiritual worlds. We cannot fail to perceive an inner connection between this atavistic transport into the spiritual world of those around the old Polish Count and of the Tibetan maker of gods in the novel The Mahaguru who, after he becomes insane and has gone to pieces physically, describes principles of art and produces an entirely new world of gods. The Polish drama, perhaps even more clearly than the novel, makes us aware of the cry which goes forth from humanity: What will befall if the souls of men cannot receive teachings concerning the spiritual worlds in the right and pure form? What will become of humanity in the future? Must human beings go to pieces physically if they are to enter the spiritual worlds? Earnest souls were inwardly compelled to put these grave questions to destiny. And as we read the preface to The Undivine Comedy we feel that these questions stood in all their urgency before the soul of the Polish poet. There is perhaps no finer, no more poignant description of this tragic situation than is given in the preface to this drama. Confronting the Count who has seen his family go to pieces around him, is a forceful personage who will have nothing to do with the Past; inwardly he is a Tartar-Mongolian character, outwardly a personality who has imbibed the socialistic doctrines of Fourier, Saint Simon and others, who will stop at nothing in order to destroy all existing conditions and to establish a new social order for mankind, who says; The world of the Past in which the Count lives must be exterminated root and branch from the earth. A despot is presented to us, a despot who is bent upon universal destruction, who will not tolerate things as they are. A battle begins between the bearer of the Past and the bearer of the Present, a vehement battle, brilliantly described. The scenes that have been translated into French amply justify this praise. There is also a dialogue between the despot and the old Count; a dialogue that could take place only between men in whose souls two world-destinies confront each other. A battle wages in which the old Count appears with the clairvoyant child. The child and the old Count perish and the despot is the victor. The whole of the Count's faction is exterminated. The old order is overcome, the despot has gained the mastery; the Present has triumphed over the Past. The description of the field of battle is magnificent. And then still another scene is presented. After the battle the despot stands with a friend, looking upwards towards a high rock gleaming with the golden light of the sun that is setting behind it. And suddenly he has a vision. The friend sees nothing unusual, he sees only the rock gleaming in the setting sun. But the despot who has burdened his soul so heavily, with whom the impression remains of the old Count whose life has been so full of experiences the despot stands there and sees over this mountain pinnacle the figure of Christ Jesus. From this moment onwards he knows: Neither the old Count, the representative of the Past, who lives in the spirit in an atavistic way and has been able only to save the Past that is breaking up around him, nor he himself who lives in the immediate Present, has won the real victory. He knows that a battle will ensue but that neither of the two will be victorious neither the Past which can lead only to atavistic life in the spiritual world, nor the Present, of which he, the despot, is the representative. The Present, basing itself upon doctrines such as those of Fourier and Saint-Simon, mocks at angels and teachings about God. Christ Jesus Who now appears to him shows him: Victory lies neither on the one side nor the other, but in that which is above them both. And the One Christ Jesus whom the despot now beholds over the pinnacle gleaming golden in the rays of the setting sun, draws from him the cry: Thou hast conquered, O Galilean! Thereupon he falls down dead. This is the tragic consequence brought about through what is higher than the two streams which are presented in such magnificent contrast in this drama. As is clear from the single scenes, we have in this wonderful product of Polish literature a magnificent expression of Polish Messianism. We see how with the coming of the modern age it behoves men to ask weighty, far-reaching questions concerning the destiny of the human race.

LECTURE II. Ancient Occult Magic. The Ahasver Mystery.

Dornach, 1st November 1915.
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I spoke yesterday of the great Polish drama The Undivine Comedy by Krasinski and of its very special significance. One can truly say that it was consciously brought into the world as the outcome of a dialogue with the Spirits working in the evolution of humanity, who in the middle of the 19th century spoke to those who were willing to listen to them. Let us for a moment hold in our minds the thoughts that came to us from the realisation that what was astir in the inmost depths of the evolutionary process made its way into the external literary culture of the time. From Gutzkow's novel The Mahaguru as well as from The Undivine Comedy I chose only two particularly striking examples from many that might be quoted we see that as it were behind the scenes of external happenings, significant impulses are at work in the cultural life of mankind. From many sources we have gained knowledge that directs our minds and hearts to the great moment of world-evolution in which we are living, the moment when it is essential to be mindful of the new element that must be received into the evolution of humanity but with the co-operation of human souls who are able to understand it. There are different ways of characterising the importance of the present time, but perhaps one thing only need be said and this will be sufficient to bring home the significance of the point of time at which we are standing. In ages of antiquity men received a heritage consisting of wisdom yielded by atavistic clairvoyance and of knowledge gained atavistically. But this heritage petered away and the tide of materialism arose particularly since the last three or four centuries and reaching a peak in the 19th century. This tide of materialism veiled all possibilities of vision into the spiritual world and a new path, a new method, is now appearing in spiritual science. As I have often said, this development ultimately becomes a natural process in the souls of men. The situation today still is that the vast majority of souls have yet to learn that there are many earthly lives. But when the souls now living are re-incarnated, for the most part they will know, not merely as a theory, that there are many earthly lives; they will live on into an age when it will be known quite as a natural matter of course: there are many earthly lives. Just as human souls now remember back to a certain point in childhood, and thoughts from childhood constantly arise, so it will be natural one day for the living impression to well up from within: We have been here many times. Human souls will evolve to this stage just as they have evolved from primitive stages of life. This development will come about of itself but the following is inevitable. The souls who have learnt nothing from spiritual science today will die and return in new incarnations. Then, having learnt nothing from spiritual science, they will not know what to make of the impression that will rise up from within them of the truth of repeated earthly lives, and they may well be driven to despair. For this inner impression that will arise quite naturally in the soul must be grasped through thoughts, and the thoughts that are necessary before it can be understood are those yielded by spiritual science. These thoughts should make the whole history of the Ego and the fact of its existence in man intelligible to us; and he alone who has within him the force of these thoughts will be able to understand the impression that will come of itself, as a kind of remembrance. But the foundation for understanding this remembrance will from now onwards have to be laid through spiritual science; knowledge of the continued existence of the Ego will have to be acquired. And those who have not acquired it will have to admit, when these remembrances well up in them: I do not understand my own self. This will be a terrible cry of despair in future times. It must be realised that only through knowledge and understanding of what will inevitably come in the future can human souls be kept from falling into despair. When the Ego which passes from incarnation to incarnation asserts itself in the future and this means in our future incarnations men must be able to understand this Ego. And they will do so if they have worked on their souls through the thoughts of spiritual science. The Mystery of Golgotha was fulfilled in order that the Ego might be fully understood, and this can never happen if as in the case of the Polish Count described yesterday men preserve in their souls nothing but feelings of the Past sacred though these feelings may be and connected with the events centred in the Mystery of Golgotha. Such feelings will enable these events to be grasped as matters of history, but that cannot lead to any true understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. True understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha depends upon the fulfilment of the words; Not I but Christ in me. It will then be possible for Christ in His living activity within earth-evolution not to remain inaudible to men. He must be made audible through that which, under his inspiration, spiritual science has to say, no sentiments or feelings tied to remembrances, can lead mankind to future well-being. But neither can the interests of the future be furthered by one who lives only in and for the Present the tyrant described in the lecture yesterday. The tyrant does indeed, assert the Ego, but not Christ within the Ego. A deep riddle is presented to us in this Polish drama: two personalities stand in contrast to one another, one of whom has the Christ of tradition, of history, but runs the risk of falling away from Him. And what comes to expression in the wife and in the child of the Count relapses into a purely atavistic connection with the spiritual world.
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A great danger for our time is indicated here. It is that those who are not willing to assimilate in a new way the knowledge of mankind's connection with the spiritual worlds, although they feel that such connection exists, will cause part of their being to lose the requisite link with the spiritual world. Mankind would fall asunder into those who like the old Count must necessarily despair and die because they cling exclusively to the Past, and those who rise into the spiritual worlds in an atavistic way like the Count's wife and child. Because they have not received the Christ into their inmost being in full reality, they pass into the spiritual world without finding in themselves a point of anchorage. What is it that the members of the Count's family have not fully developed? They have not fully developed the Ego: they are remains from the age which in the regular course of the evolution of humanity has been at an end since the Mystery of Golgotha, but markedly so since the last few centuries. They are remains from an age of antiquity when the Ego had not yet completely taken root in man; they are Ego-less human beings who, because they cannot take the Christ into the Ego which has not developed into the necessary intensity, lose the Christ. And standing in contrast to them is the tyrant, who has developed the Ego and bears it in himself with all strength; without taking the Christ into the Ego, he desires to bring happiness to the world but is incapable of doing so. At the point of death out of the vision which the tyrant understands as little as he understands how to resign himself to death there breaks from his lips the cry: Thou hast conquered, O Galilean! This is an indication of the fact that for those human beings who have, it is true, acquired the Ego but have not taken Christ into this Ego, there is one moment only when it is possible for them to come into relationship with Christ: it is the moment when they pass from this world into the other world. But because Christ came from that other world into this world in order there to find the way to human hearts, men must inevitably lose Him when, after the moment of death, they arrive in that other world. All the deeper impulses at work in our time belong to a sphere where momentous issues are at stake I can say no more than that they are at stake. But now we must go rather more deeply into things that are already known to us but must be studied in a certain setting if we are to understand them in the light of the conditions prevailing in our time. We know that, properly speaking, the evolution of the earth must be divided into an epoch preceding the Mystery of Golgotha and an epoch following the Mystery of Golgotha. We know, too, that in the epoch before the Mystery of Golgotha, Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits also worked into the souls of men. Particularly in considering the ages before the Mystery of Golgotha it must be realised that foolish chatter about avoiding Ahriman and Lucifer at all costs will get us nowhere. For Ahriman and Lucifer were allowed by the normal, progressive spiritual Beings to work in the earthly evolution of men. Now we know that there are spiritual Beings actually ranking higher than men but who during the Old Moon period of evolution did not reach the height that would have been possible for them; they did not reach it, but for all that they rank higher than men. So that bearing in mind the intervention of the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings, we can now understand better what is called the ancient, primeval wisdom in earth-evolution. For example, the ancient wisdom that was misused in the Lemurian epoch and perished with the Lemurians; the wisdom that was then misused in the Atlantean epoch and brought about the destruction of Atlantis. What was it that was then among men? What was it, in reality? To say that the great wisdom then existing was misused, applied in practices of black magic and so forth, is a very abstract way of speaking and leads to no very definite idea. Let us think, for example, of the character of this wisdom in the last periods of the Lemurian epoch. Whence had it come? Spiritual Beings who had not completed their full development during the Old Moon epoch but who were nevertheless at a higher level than men, had mingled with the earthly evolution of humanity. Man was already there but, as you can well imagine, in his most primitive state. What was subsequently developed by human beings during the Atlantean and Post-Atlantean epochs did not yet exist. In those Lemurian times, man was a being wholly devoid of intelligence, for intelligence was to develop only gradually during the course of earth-evolution. Man was primitive in his will, in his actions, in his soul-development altogether like a child. Now had there existed only bodies of men with the higher members of those bodies that had been developed for them by the progressive spiritual Beings of the higher Hierarchies, men would not have been capable at that time of evolving any outstanding wisdom. But in that Lemurian age a very lofty altogether extraordinary wisdom existed. For example, among those primitive men there was widespread knowledge of how to handle a child during the period between birth and the seventh year so that as the result of a certain transformation of his etheric body which then worked back upon the brain, he could be made extremely clever. Radical educational methods have to be applied today if this result is desired and everyone is aware how very often these efforts are unsuccessful. But in any case the art of affecting the brain itself by exercising a certain influence on the etheric body of the brain, so that the child in question becomes extremely clever, is entirely lost today. Furthermore and I hasten to emphasise it this art is in no circumstances whatever legitimate in our time, for if it became at all general, even in its most elementary form, it would lead to terrible abuses.

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How is the existence of such an art in Lemurian times to be explained? It is explained by the fact that Beings who had not completed their development on the Old Moon, but had evolved only the first six of their seven members, incorporated in men who otherwise would have been utterly primitive. The spiritual Beings who on the Old Moon were at a higher level than men but had not attained the apex of their development, took on these primitive human bodies and went to work with arts which far transcended all earthly knowledge. You can imagine what such Beings in human bodies were capable of accomplishing, Beings who at a level higher than the human had developed the sixth member the Life-Spirit entered into these primitive, flexible, pliant bodies. And they became terrible magicians, dread magicians! And again, what kind of arts were general in the Atlantean epoch? First and foremost there was the wisdom which must be applied in order to cause talents in ancestors to be transmitted, purely through heredity, to their descendants and actually to be enhanced in these descendants. The Beings whose development had not been completed on the Moon but who for all that were of a higher rank than earthly man, were deeply versed in this art with most significant effect. Let me put it like this: it was as if by methods connected with star-constellations and the like, one were to lead over the qualities of a genius to his descendants, but in such a way that these spiritual qualities were not merely inherited, but intensified, enhanced. These higher Beings working in human bodies were capable of mighty achievements. All this was swept out of existence. Very many things were connected with these particular arts. For example, it was possible by their means to observe the course of spiritual evolution and to guide the spiritual forces into the stream of heredity.

Diagram 1 In that epoch of Atlantis there were communities led by such Beings in human form, who, if they wished some individuality to come again to the earth, helped him to find a human incarnation by enhancing certain qualities through heredity; and then they looked for suitable descendants. It was like this. Suppose such a Being had guided some individuality into a human body on the earth; when this body died, the individuality would meanwhile be in the spiritual world. It was then a matter of manipulating the stream of heredity in such a way as to produce a human body in which this individuality could again be incarnated. This body had to be created for the same individuality who was thus kept continuously on the earth. All these arts have been lost, and necessarily lost, because human evolution was to take the course that has so often been described. But it is greatly to Ahriman's interest to hold firmly fixed in the world that which ought properly to evolve in order to make room for something different. And so even superficial observation will show that there is a very great deal in world-evolution which in an earlier age had its justification but which in the form it now bears is no more than a relic that has been preserved. Both in unimportant and important domains it is so. In his novel The Mahaguru Gutzkow wanted to indicate
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something of the kind in an important domain. He wanted to give emphasis to the question: In what form does something that had great significance in ancient times in the Atlantean epoch, when it was still possible for men to regulate the stream of heredity in what form does it appear when it is carried over into an age and into a community where the traditions of it had indeed been preserved but where nothing more was known of the earlier art than an inferior form of it called in occultism Occult Chemistry? Gutzkow showed that something of the kind existed in Tibet. Naturally, the priesthood in Tibet had no knowledge of how through forces of heredity they could produce a body for the individuality whom they believed should pass from one body into another but they preserved the old customs. So there we have an example of the external reality presenting an aspect utterly different from what it had been in conditions once prevailing in the evolution of humanity. Reading The Mahaguru makes one want to cry out: Oh, how reality itself can become a maya in face of the prevailing conditions! And now think of something else. You can well imagine that the men of Lemurian and Atlantean times did not resemble the men of today, for what developed, inwardly in the soul at that time also gave configuration to the outer form; the whole outer form of man was different it was pliant and flexible. The human form in the times of Lemuria and Atlantis was not ape-like; the bodies of the actual ancestors of men were not ape-like. It would seem, therefore, that world-evolution must have made an exception in the case of certain people who have written of themselves that they can remember having descended from apes! [Statements to this effect are made in the book Man: How, Whence and Whither by Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater. (Theosophical Publishing Company)] But we will not go into that now. Men did not resemble apes, but if you picture our children presenting a much, much more infantile appearance, with an elemental quality of being extending over the whole body, you may be able to get an idea of the character of the human body in those times. As you can read in the book From the Akasha Chronicle, because Beings surviving from the Old Moon evolution had incarnated in these pliant, flexible bodies, these bodies became animal-like rather than human. Distorted forms arose, with strangely contorted limbs. And there you have the origin of the figures of gods to be found among certain peoples. These curious figures with non-human faces and huge limbs, originate from the knowledge that the incarnating Moon-Beings were united with human bodies. If in the Atlantean epoch there had been painters and sculptors, they would have been able to portray or model these figures of Moon-Beings incarnated in human bodies. But in Tibet this was no longer possible. Hence the canon must be strictly obeyed, for the artists would otherwise have made figures with whatever terms they liked. If a man did not obey the canon but created something out of his own play of fancy, he incurred the death-penalty. Naturally, one may ask: Is there any justification for condemning to death someone who makes only one tiny change in the figure of a god? Is there really any justification for it? In Tibet, of course, there is no longer any justification, but once upon a time there was, for as you have heard, these Beings were actually present in bodies, and if they were not faithfully portrayed, any deviation amounted to a lie. In those ancient times a lie had infinitely greater power than it has nowadays. If at the present time everyone who tells a lie were to suffocate as the result well, I prefer to leave it at that, for I think that the fear of suffocation would be too great to allow people to risk telling lies! I assume that nowadays people will not suffocate but at that time a lie would have caused actual suffocation. For the thought expressed in the word contained a power to give form to the air in the larynx, and then suffocated the man and anyone who had incorrectly portrayed on earth a Being who had not fully completed his development on the Old Moon would have suffocated, in other words, a process of nature would have caused his death. The evolution of humanity is an exceedingly complicated matter and to understand it one must go deeply into spiritual science. To find the right approach to world-evolution it is essential to study what it is the mission of spiritual science to make known from spiritual worlds. For spiritual science is, as it were, a first impulse to which other impulses must increasingly be added, in order that humanity in the future may advance along the right path. You will have realised from what I have been saying recently [See The Occult Movement In the 19th Century notably Lectures IX and X.] that a course must be steered between a Scylla and a Charybdis, that a very definite path must be laid down in spiritual science. This must be taken with the deepest earnestness. Our modern natural science is developed by materialistic methods. During these last weeks I have tried to describe its characteristics to you. I have said that a materialistic method in natural science is fully justified. It can be characterized by saying that it is adapted to cloak the spiritual reality lying behind. Why, then, must this materialistic method be there in our present time? In our present time an earlier knowledge of nature must be superseded by a new knowledge of nature. I have told you something about this earlier knowledge of nature. Just think what kind of knowledge it was! To be able to mould a human head into an instrument editable for genius, through specific measures applied scientifically in the old sense of the word this signified colossal knowledge! or again, so to regulate heredity that qualities of genius were transmitted to descendants the knowledge required for this was even more penetrating and comprehensive, far, far surpassing all the theories of evolution, the physics, chemistry and so on, of today. But that
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ancient knowledge was to be veiled and obscured by the materialistic method employed in natural science today which is fully justified in the purely physical domain. It must be remembered that at the time when that lofty knowledge of nature existed, man was not a free being; he was only at the beginning of the gradual evolution of freedom. He was led and guided and what came to pass in the process of his guidance was for the most part brought about by the higher Hierarchies. And it was single individuals who deviated from the regular course, who advanced too far along the path to freedom, who were responsible for the fall into the abyss and the inevitable destruction of Atlantis. But with the constantly increasing freedom of will, man would have been unfit for knowledge of this kind. To possess knowledge such as once existed on the earth is unthinkable today because man's will has attained freedom to an extent that would enable him still to misuse this knowledge. How, then, is this free will guided into the right channel?

Diagram 2 From indications I have given recently you will have gathered that by adopting the method employed in natural science, with all its scrupulous exactitude, the free will is directed into the right channel; moreover, this method is a wonderfully effective pedagogical means for the development of the free will. We have therefore no cause whatever to quarrel with the method employed in natural science, the justification of which for our present time we fully acknowledge. You will find that what is contained in our lecture-courses and books completely refutes the allegations of individual opponents to the effect, for example, that we repudiate natural science. It is sometimes necessary to take exception to the pretensions of certain investigators and so-called scientific authorities; but nothing derogatory to the achievements of natural science will ever be found in our literature. To say that anything in our literature is a repudiation of natural science would be sheer calumny, for among us there can be no question of such repudiation. But at the same time it must be realised that attacks upon us may well be made from the side of socalled natural science and if necessary, we must then repel the attack. But true adherents of spiritual science must become more and more conscious of the necessity to understand the natural-scientific method and to protect this method from being tainted by all kinds of non-scientific concepts for example concepts of the atom and movement of the atom, of which I have recently spoken. These are fantasies of natural science, and the difference must be clearly seen. Efforts must be made to distinguish between genuine natural science and scientific fantasy. How often do we not hear it said today that one thing or another is scientifically established whereas it is nothing of the kind, because words are simply accepted as facts. Never was blind belief in authority greater than it is at the present time in the domain of science, for everyone allows things to be determined entirely by those in whom they happen to believe. The purpose of the Mystery of Golgotha was that what came into the world through Lucifer might gradually be corrected in a certain way it is indicated symbolically in the Bible: Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil that is to say, ye shall know good and evil from outside. But when in the sphere of perceptions one perceives from outside, it is impossible to receive from that world anything other than perceptions. As soon as one begins to reflect about the perceptions, to speculate about them and derive all kinds of ideas from them, one is on the way to finding what has been imbued into them by Ahriman and Lucifer. The ideas must come out of the spiritual world and be united with the perceptions: then these ideas are in the real sense divine! In human life there must be a marriage between the ideas which are given to men from out of the Spiritual and what he perceives in the outer
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world through his senses. But this union must first be achieved. How this principle applies in the scientific domain you can gather from my essay Truth and Science. The belief that in the scientific sense, ideas, thoughts, could also be found from outside, from the perceptions, is based on illusion, on illusion caused by Ahriman and Lucifer. But as long as the Powers associated with the words Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil (which means to search for the ideas in the outer world) were sanctioned, that is to say, until the Mystery of Golgotha as long as Lucifer and Ahriman were allowed to work in this sphere, there was no objection to be made. But that state of things is now over. Now, in the matter of the permeation of perceptions from outside, they are all the more unjustified. This too was brought into evidence in the middle of the 19th century through a crisis of a particular kind. This crisis announced itself in great and outstanding achievements: spectral-analysis, for example, came on the scene, swept away the conception that when one looks upwards to the stars one has to do with spiritual Beings and showed that substances to be found everywhere in the universe also exist on the earth. The old union between ideas and perceptions is no longer possible, for such discoveries make it essential that the ideas shall again find the spiritual path into our souls. The same applies to Darwinism. To reason entirely on the basis of what is found by outer perception that is to say, to seek for the ideas in the outer world can only lead to a purely materialistic conception and interpretation of the world. In short, the crisis is in evidence everywhere and there is also widespread rebellion against the fact that the ideas must flow out of the spirit-realm into the souls of men if humanity is to make progress. In other words: we must understand the nature of Ahriman and Lucifer and be on the alert when they try to make us continue the principle indicated in the words; Your eyes shall be opened and ye shall know good and evil. We must learn to observe both Ahriman and Lucifer. And we shall be able to do this if we permeate the Ego, as it has now unfolded, with Christ. But something else too resounded through the world in primeval times, resounded from a different side, after man had acquired the power to distinguish good and evil, to direct his gaze outwards, that is to say, to use his senses and through them to acquire ideas based on sense-perceptions. The decree went forth: Man must be driven out of the spirit-realm in which he has hitherto been living, in order that he may not also eat of the Tree of Life. But Christ will forever give men to eat of the Tree of Life, and the ideas which stream directly out of the spirit-realm into human souls must be inwardly experienced. But they can be experienced in the real sense only when the human soul takes Christ into itself. Then we have something quite different from the concept of Knowledge; then we have the concept of Life. Just as a strict eye must be kept on Lucifer and Ahriman in order that when they allow knowledge derived from the outer world to penetrate into us we may perceive that this knowledge is coming from them, so we must realise that through the impulse given by the Mystery of Golgotha, ideas were to flow into men to be the substance of life the substance not of knowledge alone, but of life. And when from this standpoint of life we study the different religions of the world, it will be far, far from our minds to investigate these religions with the object of discovering whether they are or are not in keeping with our own view of the world. To apply only the concept of knowledge to these religions is not our task; we must apply the concept of life. There are definite forms of religion in the world. We should not set out to discover whether we can consider these forms to be true, but whether through their ritual and ceremonies they are able to give nourishment and life to the souls of men, and as the souls of men differ it follows that their life can be sustained by different forms of nourishment. If we grasp this truth we shall realise that we can never lend ourselves to quarreling with any form of religion but that we must endeavour to understand it in so far as it is life-nourishment for human souls to whom it is given as life not as knowledge only, but as very life. Then we shall see that the standpoint from which a religion begins to quarrel with some branch of science is entirely misplaced. We shall also realise that religion will inevitably adopt a hostile attitude towards progress in natural science and spiritual science alike. For the religions are still unwilling to get away from the old Tempter, they still want to invoke only that God Who said to man that He will give them life, that they themselves are not to eat of the Tree of Life. The representatives of religions do not want to invoke God alone but also the Luciferic Spirit and the Ahrimanic Spirit; they want the eyes for distinguishing good and evil to be opened through religion. Religion wants to be knowledge. But it cannot be knowledge because it is life-substance. And under the sway of this temptation which still whispers in their ears, the representatives of the different religions believe they possess facts of knowledge in their religions, whereas the question of knowledge cannot, in reality, come into consideration between religion and science. We have no cause whatever to combat religious bodies, because we ask them about the sustenance they provide for life, not about what knowledge they possess. Religious communities will always be tempted to ask whether science as it advances is in keeping with what they regard as knowledge. But because life is in process of constant evolution, advancing science can never be in keeping with religions which invariably tend towards conservatism. And now you can picture the whole conflict which in the nature of things will ever and again be urged. I should like you to think rightly about this conflict and to realize that as a matter of course the representatives of religious
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bodies, because they are under the sway of temptation, will always, from their standpoint, combat spiritual science, just as they combat natural science. But you must also realise that these opponents fight because they lack understanding. This does not excuse them at all, but it must none the less be realised that they fight because of lack of understanding; they cannot take the right standpoint. As a sign and symptom, let me bring to your notice words written by a man who perceived the inevitable approach of the natural-scientific age and the natural-scientific way of thinking, and who was told by a friend that one should not be concerned with knowledge that is not contained in the Bible or preserved in the traditions of the Church. Since the 14th century, of course, things have changed in this connection. Dante's Divine Comedy is a great, world-embracing poem. But Dante lived at the time when the epoch during which men confined themselves to purely historical Christianity was passing away. For Dante, Virgil was simply the exile banished to hell. Dante did not know much about anything that differed from the Christianity confronting him as a great system and rgime. But in the case of Petrarch it was different, 1 century later, in the 14th century, Petrarch read Virgil with far greater credence. He turned not only to Greek but also to Roman spiritual culture. When one of his friends wrote to Petrarch saying that there had appeared to him in a dream a spiritual Being who exhorted him to avoid all non-Christian literature, he (Petrarch) gave a very significant answer. I stress the importance of this incident because it shows how the friend and through him, Petrarch was enjoined from the spiritual world to concern himself only with what the Christianity of that time regarded as truly Christian. Petrarch wrote the following beautiful words which held good at that time for the approaching epoch and still hold good today. Petrarch replied to his friend Boccaccio in momentous words, affirming his standpoint, why he read this nonChristian literature, and what it meant to him (Petrarch: Letter to Boccaccio (Epistolae seniles I. 5): Why then should we shun the pagan poets and writers who do not use the name of Christ simply because they have never heard it? Surely there is greater danger in the books of sceptics who speak of Christ and at the same time dispute Him but those who claim to be the defenders of the true faith read these writings with the greatest eagerness. Believe me: much that is simply the product of sloth and timidity is attributed to thoughtful deliberation. Men often cast scorn on what is out of their reach; it is characteristic of ignorance to condemn what it cannot comprehend and nobody will concede to it strivings of which it is incapable. Here lies the root of the misguided judgments of what is unknown; it is not so much the blindness of those who pass judgment as their laziness that is in evidence. We, however, should not allow ourselves to be frightened away from the sciences by any pious admonitions, or by indications of the near approach to death. If the sciences are imbibed with inner sincerity they quicken the love of morality and take from us, or at least diminish, the fear of death; if we abandon them, this will excite the suspicion that disbelief lays claim to be knowledge. The sciences are not a hindrance to one who has the right mastery of them, but they are a help to him; they level his path of life and do not thwart him. For a diseased or weak stomach, many a food may be unwholesome which a healthy, hungry man digests at once; so too, that which would ruin a feebler nature may be rich in blessing for a sound and vigorous mind. ... I know well that many have achieved great sanctity without culture, but I know too that nobody has been kept from sanctity by culture. ... If I am to tell you my own opinion, it is this: The path to holiness via ignorance may possibly be smooth, but it is faint-hearted. All good things have a single goal but many paths lead thither and fellow-travelers along these paths differ greatly; the one moves more slowly, the other more quickly, the one in obscurity, the other visibly, the one bowed with humility, the other buoyant with exultation. All journeying is blessed; but the noblest is that which proceeds freely and openly before the world. The knowledge that has wrestled through to belief is far superior to naive simplicity, be it never so pious; and not one of the fools who have ever entered the kingdom of heaven has as high a place as a man of knowledge who has won the crown of blessedness. The same could be said about our spiritual science! And not only to X [A newspaper article had been written by a priest living in the vicinity of the Goetheanum.] but to all the others who fight against us, one could rejoin with the words written by Petrarch to his friend; For a diseased or weak stomach, many a food may be unwholesome which a healthy, hungry man digests at once; so too, that which would ruin a feebler nature may be rich in blessing for a sound and vigorous mind. And when people harp on the contradiction in the first and third Gospels and refuse to admit that the contradiction disappears as soon as the existence of two Jesus boys is taken into account; when they insist upon simplicity and say that the fantastic statements of the one up there (on the Goetheanum hill) can well be ignored; when they will not admit that all the forms of life are incorporated in our Building, but talk about distorted, fantastic forms, one must quote the words of Petrarch: The knowledge that has wrestled through to belief is far
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superior to naive simplicity; be it never so pious, and not one of the fools who have ever entered the kingdom of heaven has as high a place as a man of knowledge who has won the crown of blessedness. Such thoughts make us realise that it can never be our principle to combat any religious body and that it is sheer calumny when anyone accuses us of being an enemy of religious Movements. The very fact of such an accusation proves that there is no willingness even to try to understand us. This at least we must know; and we must resist every tendency to adopt an aggressive attitude to any religious community just as we must keep ourselves free from the same kind of attitude to natural science because that will soon disclose its attitude to spiritual science! There is no reason whatever for us to combat any religious body. Combat cannot be begun by us because it does not lie in our nature to attack. And it must be taken as an axiom that if peace is denied us, it is because the hostile neighbour is not inclined for peace. Let the principle of leaving us in peace be put to the test and then see whether peace is maintained! Let it be put to the test! But naturally, we ourselves must be permeated with the right feeling and attitude. For example, much wrong is also done when from our side, too, dogmas or rites of one kind or another are attacked, often without having been understood; but if we rightly understand them, the principle referred to holds good. I would therefore enjoin you to understand the principle of peace. Just as I was obliged to enjoin you to have forbearance with conditions prevailing at the present time, so must I enjoin you to be alert and watchful, in order that we may do what is necessary to guard the holy treasure entrusted to us. For more and more we shall have to wend our way through the world with an unwavering inner strength if we are to stand firmly on the ground where spiritual science would have us stand. The Mystery of Golgotha and the Christ Principle are intimately connected with the need to see spiritual reality in the world. Mere looking will never suffice even to understand the Mystery of Golgotha purely as an historical event. The Mystery of Golgotha must be comprehended spiritually; and those who devote themselves to knowledge where everything is derived from outside and will not open their eyes to the new revelations of the Mystery of Golgotha which can ever and again flow to us, will not grasp the import of a poem sung by yet another voice in the middle of the 19th century concerning that which ever changing yet ever present holds good in earthly humanity since the Mystery of Golgotha. Let me read you a section of this poem which describes how one who cannot grasp the meaning of the Mystery of Golgotha confronts this Mystery:

Dr. Steiner now read part of the epic poem on Ahasver, or Ahasueris, the Wandering Jew, by Julius Mosen. The Wandering Jew is the legendary figure of a Jerusalem shoemaker who, taunting Christ on the way to the Crucifixion, was told by Him to go on forever till I return. The poem itself is very long and does not lend itself to translation. Another reference to the figure of Ahasueris, from a lecture given by Dr. Steiner in Berlin, 16th May, 1908, will be found at the end of this lecture. Note by Translator.

Here is another example of how a human soul feels impelled to give expression to what has come to pass. And now that we have let these pictures pass through our souls, let me remind you of something that I have already said here: that we must change our mode of perception if we are to look with true vision into the spiritual world. We must not believe that the spiritual world can be seen as we see the material world of sense. We must even accustom ourselves to different modes of expression, In the physical world we see trees, rivers, mountains. But of spiritual being we must say: they see us, they perceive us. To understand the Mystery of Golgotha truly, it is necessary to know this, because the Mystery of Golgotha can be understood only in the Spiritual. But that is how we aspire to understand it. The time must come when through a true understanding of the words Not I, but Christ in me, it will be possible to rise into the spiritual worlds with the right knowledge. This epic poem Ahasver by Julius Mosen was published in the year 1838, and the fact that he was able to put the legend into such a form also indicates that the tragic destiny by which Mosen was overtaken profoundly affected him. He was bedridden nearly all his life, for his physical body was almost totally paralysed; this was precisely what enabled him to grasp such lofty ideas. We are reminded of the sinner in the novel The Mahaguru who, when he was already out of his mind, discovered the true nature of his art; and we are reminded, too, of the Count's wife in the Polish drama, who had to fall into a pathological state in order to find the connection with the spiritual world. It is the task of spiritual science today to help human beings to rise into the spiritual world in the healthy, normal state of consciousness. All these things
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are signs of the task and of the value to be attached to the task of the spiritual-scientific Movement. Compressed into a few brief words, this is the truth that can inspire us as a source of strength: The Mystery of Golgotha itself reveals that it must be understood spiritually, that we must seek for Christ as Spirit. And then we must also say: Christ is seeing us, Christ is perceiving us. We will inscribe this deeply in our hearts, keep it constantly in our minds, and our conscience must be satisfied when, in presenting our spiritual-scientific knowledge, we are saying with inner sincerity: May Christ be a witness of what we promulgate as Spiritual Science. We believe that this may indeed be so and it can inspire us as men were once inspired by the cry of Bernard of Clairvaux: It is God's Will! These words became deeds. May it be the same among us for we may believe that we understand Christ truly when we live under the inspiration of the words: Christ knows us. And if you understand it aright, to a soul that sees our spiritual science in the true light, to a heart that feels it in its true light, I can impart no more esoteric saying than this: Christ is seeing us. May these words live in our souls: Christ is seeing us for so we may believe if we rightly understand spiritual science. Christ is seeing us.

Note by Translator See other note. In a lecture entitled. Elemental Beings (Berlin, 16th May, 1908), Dr. Steiner speaks as follows of the legend of Ahasueris, the Wandering Jew: An important legend sets before us what a man must experience who descends too deeply into the temporary, transitory nature of the one incarnation. If we think of an extreme case, we can imagine it like this: What is it to me that I should carry over something to later incarnations? I live in this incarnation, I like it, it suits me very well. I am not concerned with what I am supposed to make of it. Where does this thought lead? It leads to a man who sits at the wayside when a great Leader of humanity passes by. He, however, rejects the ideas of the Leader of humanity; he repulses him and thinks: I will know nothing of thee, who wouldst guide the kernel of my being into future incarnations where mankind will be outwardly more perfect. I wish to remain united with my present form. A man who thrusts from him such a Leader of mankind will appear again in the same form. And if this attitude hardens, then he shall also thrust from him the Leader in the next incarnation. He will appear again and again as the same figure. ... Those who listen to the great Leader of humanity will preserve the soul with its eternal life-kernel. Mankind will have gone forward but they too will appear in an ever-progressive form. He, however, who thrusts the Leader of humanity from him must reappear again and again in the same form. This is the legend of Ahasueris who has thrust from himself the Christ, the Leader of humanity. ...

LECTURE III. The Tragic Wrestling with Knowledge. The Secrets of the Future Sixth Cultural Period.
Dornach, 7th November 1915. As there is an opportunity for us to be together again today, I will speak of certain matters connected in one way or another with subjects we have been studying. I should like, first of all, to direct your minds to the fact that the attitude of which I spoke last time, the attitude which leads to a certain denial of the reality of the spiritual worlds, is fairly universal in the external world today. Fundamentally speaking and indeed it is evident willingness to approach the spiritual worlds in order to receive from them something that will enrich and invigorate life, is to be found in only a tiny handful of men. We can see that this is so. We shall not succeed in understanding these matters unless we realise that not many people today have experienced something that will become more and more widespread in the world, namely, the tragic wrestling with knowledge. The feeling that knowledge of the spiritual worlds is needed but only to be attained by patient surrender of the soul to the spiritual worlds this experience, this inner wrestling with knowledge, could not have been present in those olden times when knowledge came to men through their atavistic clairvoyance.
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This wrestling with knowledge in our time can only be explained in the light of facts of which I have been speaking here in recent weeks. [The Occult Movement in the 19th Century, Course of ten lectures.] When it is a matter of striving for knowledge today, people are all too prone to give way to delusions. On the one side they want to be free from any kind of belief in authority, and on the other side they have succumbed to it in its very worst form. This is particularly the case at the present time. For when anything that bears the mantle of science is propounded, belief in it becomes universal. Men do not want to rouse themselves into embarking upon a genuine, individual striving for knowledge. Without being aware of it, they are actually too easy-going, too lazy, to kindle those forces of the soul which become active whenever it is a matter of wrestling with knowledge. And so they like to pacify themselves with what is universally accepted as scientific and authoritative, and acts as a kind of narcotic for the soul-and-spirit. They want to take over ready-made what is universally accepted so that they need not themselves make any individual efforts to acquire knowledge. The rebellion against the world-outlook of spiritual science is to be traced back, fundamentally, to the fact that the soul is required to activate its own individual forces of thinking and feeling. But this is not to people's liking; they prefer to accept knowledge that is ready-made and authoritative. Men who by their very nature share in the wrestling for knowledge that characterises our age and our age means the last three or four centuries such men dimly divine and feel that they must evoke all that lies in the depths of the soul in order to approach the spiritual worlds, in order to unite their own souls with the spiritual forces weaving and surging through the world. Study of such souls will make it evident to us how they feel themselves involved in the wrestlings and strugglings of the age. In the last lecture I spoke of significant literary works from which these wrestlings of the soul amid the impulses of the times can be perceived. But souls who want to lull themselves to sleep by inducing a kind of mental narcosis, settle down in some stream of thought into which they were born or educated. This certainly applies to a large number of souls in our time who through their karma and the circumstances connected with it, incline more to materialism. They accept the view of the world presented by materialism. Other souls are more spiritually inclined and they accept what spiritism or idealism have brought into the world, stupefying their minds with what they accept, without having the will to engage in the wrestlings in which the soul is necessarily involved if it is to find its way into the spiritual worlds. But today I want to give an example of a genuinely struggling soul an unassuming, yet for all that a significant soul who participated to the full in the spiritual wrestlings of the 19th century. At the time of the great wave of philosophic thinking, the man of whom I am speaking was young. He lived with all the great thoughts and ideas put forward by the idealist philosophers and nature-philosophers at the beginning of the 19th century who believed, as did Fichte, Schelling and Hegel, that it was possible by dint of intense efforts of thinking to reach the sphere where the world-riddles are unveiled. The man in question lived through that wave of philosophy which sought to show that a certain rigid, one-sided kind of thinking can explain everything in the universe. He lived on through the transition to the time when this thinking was held to be of no avail, when it was believed that the riddles of the world can never be unveiled in this way. It was the time when men were saying: thinking leads us nowhere; we must turn to the vast field of outer, sensory experience; the objects of sensory experiences must be measured, weighed, compared, traced back to their origins in an external way. The man of whom I am speaking was one of those who still preserved their belief in the power of thinking in days in the second half of the 19th century when a certain mistrust of thinking became predominant and faith was invested in external, material observation alone. This same man made very important discoveries in the field of external observation, in a domain that is extraordinarily illuminating for the theory of knowledge. But because he had lived on from the time of the sovereignty of thinking into that of sense-observation, there surged within him those inner forces of the soul which wrestle with the question: How can man find the link with the actual reality, the actual truth in the universe? In such circumstances the human soul lives through strange moments, moments when it feels itself standing as it were before an abyss; when it says to itself: No matter what efforts are made to develop really creative thoughts and ideas, where is there any certainty, where is there any criterion for knowing that it has not all been brought out of the soul itself, that it is not all subjective and will lose significance at death, showing thereby that it would not have led into the realities of world-existence? Then again there are moments when the soul asks itself: What is the use of trying to bring forth anything from the soul? There can be no certainty in it! When investigations are made in the domains of chemistry or physics where one has to depend upon the physical world, one can at least feel guided further by the thread of outer reality. Such moods of the soul must be taken for what indeed they are moods in which the soul is tossed to and fro between the urge to seek and the urge to abandon all seeking. A soul of this character is usually one who sincerely and genuinely strives for knowledge, but who in our age is bound to stand in a peculiar position in the world for
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such a soul, observing the people around, may well realise: How easily these people persuade themselves into believing that something or other is irrefutable! The eyes of the mind need be opened only a little and the frailty of such belief will be evident. The soul to whom I am referring was able to find from experience that those upon whom the responsibility for certain matters in the world rests, witness the appearance of some apparently important invention or discovery that is blazoned abroad as great and epoch-making and that they themselves consider highly significant and then after a year or two say that there is nothing in it. This soul was particularly struck by the fate of different medicaments. A remedy is discovered and then triumphantly proclaimed to the world as a certain cure for some illness. People who take life in a happy-go-lucky way accept such a discovery as epoch-making; but those who have some knowledge also know that such things appear on the scene and then disappear again. And so at the time shortly before the thirties of the 19th century, this soul found that a certain medicament iodine had become famous. But he could not bring himself to join without further ado in the furor created by iodine, for he was only too familiar with the levity with which people acquire knowledge due for the most part to indolence. And so in the year 1821 he writes the first edition of a short treatise at the time when iodine was beginning to create a stir. The second edition appeared in 1832. It actually reckoned to find a temporary and partly local interest only. I will leave the brochure here in case anybody may still be interested in it. [The title of the treatise was Beweis, dass der Mond aus Jodine besteht (Proof that the Moon consists of Iodine), by Dr. Mises. Second edition, Leipzig, 1832, Published by Leopold Voss.] The contents would probably quite rightly be called absurd by every enlightened man. But that does not prevent this enlightened man from making similar mistakes at any time. He does not, however, notice the mistake when it is a matter of something he has accepted as an object of belief. The man who wrote this treatise in 1821 at that time he called himself Dr. Mises is the same whom you know from scientific literature as Professor Gustav Theodor Fechner, who in the fifties of [the] last century tried to build a theory of aesthetics from below upwards, on the basis of actual physical experiments, and not from above downwards, that is to say, not out of material provided by the thoughts and experiences of the life of soul. He was a man of whom it can truly be said that he passed through all the throes of the wrestling for knowledge in the 19th century. He was the same man who had the controversy with Schleiden, the botanist, about the influence of the moon upon various happenings on the earth. I have told you how the decision as to which of the two professors was right, devolved upon their wives. [See the lecture entitled: On the Moon in the volume, Paths of Experience.] He is also the same man who struggled to acquire an idealistic and spiritual conception of the world. You can see how he endeavoured to do this from what I have said about Gustav Theodor Fechner in my book Riddles of Philosophy. [Not translated (when this series was published, e.Ed.)] It may truly be said that such a soul is a clear illustration of the reality of the experience which comes to a man when he strives earnestly for knowledge. But when all is said and done, spiritual science alone can make clear to us the whole seriousness and significance of a matter such as this. When a man like Gustav Theodor Fechner writes as he does in this little treatise Proof that the Moon consists of Iodine, he is really trying to show the limitations of man's thinking, how easily it is prevented from making even an approach to reality and therefore how remote it is from reality. The fact is that people do not realise or feel the seriousness, significance and import of human evolution. And so the aim of spiritual science is to make the horizon of our view of man's being wider than is possible by means of the recognised science of today. Spiritual science points our attention to epochs of human evolution lying in the far distant past, to what man was like in Atlantis and in what changes he is involved in the course of his development. Think only of the following: Recalling what we have heard about ancient Atlantis what is to be said about the world of the animals and the world of men round about us? Everything was entirely different in the times of Atlantis! We know that it was during that epoch that men came down again as souls from their sojourn in the world of the stars. It was then that they again sought for bodies which had been fashioned for them out of earthly substance. And from the descriptions given we know, too, how different these human bodies were in Atlantean times. I have repeatedly emphasised and you can also read it in my writings that in those times the human body was still malleable, pliant, flexible, was of such a nature that it was still possible for the souls descending from the heavenly worlds to shape and mould the bodies. Suppose a woman or also a man, to be strictly fair! becomes furious with anger, thoroughly malicious, and sends evil thoughts towards another human being. This does not come so very strongly to expression in an actual change of the countenance true, it does so a little, but not drastically for people today can be very malicious without this being directly expressed in their physiognomy. In the times of ancient Atlantis it was different. When
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there was malice in a man, his countenance was entirely transformed into an expression of his inner being so that it would not have been incorrect to say: that man or woman looks like a cat. Such a person actually looked like a cat or if he were utterly deceitful, like a hyena. His external appearance was wholly an expression of his inner being. He was capable of metamorphosis, transformation, in the highest degree. The animals were less mutable, but metamorphosis was possible in them too; their physical body was already far more consolidated than that of man and metamorphosis took place only very gradually. As species, the animals were capable of metamorphosis nor did they transmit to their offspring such stereotyped characteristics as is the case nowadays. Since the time of Atlantis everything in man's physical body has become consolidated, has taken on fixed forms. It is still possible for man today to move his hands and to have a certain play of expression on his countenance; but in a certain sense his bodily form has become fixed. The forms of the animals have become completely fixed; this explains their immobile, inflexible physiognomy. But in their case, too, this inflexibility was less marked in ancient Atlantean times. In the general sense it can be said of man that his physical body today is fixed and inflexible in a high degree. His etheric body is still mobile; therefore the etheric body still shapes itself according to what a man is in his inner being. So there is meaning, indeed a certain reality, in the fact that if a man is crafty and malicious his etheric body and his facial expression take on a slight resemblance to a hyena. The etheric body is still mutable, still has something about it that enables it to be metamorphosed; but equally with the physical body, the etheric body too is on the way to becoming inflexible. Just as since the Atlantean epoch onwards into our fifth post-Atlantean epoch the physical body has acquired fixed forms, so from the fifth epoch on into the sixth and from then onwards into the second main epoch after Atlantis, the etheric body too will acquire firmer forms, with the consequence as I have indicated in several lectures that the etheric body, as it passes with its fixed forms into the physical body, will assert itself very strongly. We are living now in the fifth epoch (of the first main epoch after Atlantis), then comes the sixth and then the seventh, and in these sixth and seventh epochs, the etheric body, with its inflexibility, will exercise a very strong influence upon the physical, will make the physical body into a faithful image of itself. This has momentous consequences, namely, that in the sixth epoch of post-Atlantean evolution, men will be born with bodies quite definitely expressing their inner, moral qualities. A man's moral qualities will be recognised from his actual appearance. The moral physiognomy will then be very strongly in evidence and the physiognomy as it now is, will have receded more into the background. Man's physiognomy today is largely determined through heredity: he resembles his parents, his grandparents, his people, and so forth. In the sixth epoch this will play no part at all; man will himself determine his outer appearance as the result of his incarnations. Human beings will all be very different, but each will have a very definite stamp. It will then be known with certainty: You have before you now a well-disposed or an ill-disposed man. Just as it is known today: You now have before you an Italian or a Frenchman, it will then be known: Here is a malicious or a kindly man with all the many gradations. More and more, therefore, the moral qualities will be expressed in the countenance. In its external aspect, the surrounding world too will be much changed in this sixth epoch. Particularly those animals which are nowadays consumed as food, will have died out. Men will sing the praises of a fleshless diet, for it will then be an ancient memory that the ancestors in olden days actually ate flesh. It is not the case that all animals will die out, but only certain species of animals especially those which have acquired the most inflexible forms will have disappeared from the earth. So the outer face of the earth itself will have changed. To have a physiognomy which in future time will be so inevitably an expression of the moral qualities will be like a nemesis, a destiny, setting the seal on a man's whole being. He will not be able to find in himself any possibility of resisting this fate. And now imagine the tragic situation! Man will then actually be obliged to say to himself: Yes, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch there were materialists who believed that when the occipital bone does not exactly cover the cerebellum, these men are bound to be criminals. For the materialists at that time, this was a theory, but now it has become a reality; what they regarded as still flexible (the etheric body) has now assumed a fixed form. We are actually tending in the direction of bringing the theories of the materialistic world-conception to fulfilment. They are not reality as yet but that is the direction towards which we are tending. We come here to a strange secret. Those who would indignantly repudiate being called prophets today are the true prophets; they are those who say: The reason why a man is a criminal is that the occipital bone does not cover the cerebellum. These men will prove themselves to have been true prophets. It is indeed so! The materialists of today are wonderful prophets, without wanting to be. In our time it is still possible, through proper education, for a counterweight to be provided for a peculiar formation in the physical body such as an undersized occipital bone; in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch this will no longer be possible, for etheric bodies then will no longer be capable of mutation. When this is the case, quite different measures are required as preventives. If this state of things is not
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obviated, the condition described by the materialists will become a reality. It is the condition depicted with such agonised suffering in the poems of Marie Eugenie delle Grazie which have been recited today. These poems can be related to an age already foreshadowed, an age that will actually have dawned in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. The poems give one the impression of having been written by a soul who feels as if plunged into the void through what can be acquired by way of modern knowledge. The soul longs to progress but knows nothing as yet that can be a remedy and then a picture arises a picture of what will come to pass if materialism continues as at present. And if no remedial measure were created against the direction in evolution which man is induced to take by the forces that are in him, then in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch he will be subject to the very same fate already now depicted by delle Grazie. All the systems of religion hitherto existing in the world could not prevent a terrible fate overtaking man in the sixth epoch the fate of having his moral qualities expressed in his countenance, in his whole bodily physiognomy. Nor could he do anything to prevent this if he were to let things remain as the modern world-conception desires. These are grave thoughts. A good means for turning the dreams of materialists into reality would be if victory were won by those who say: Spiritual science cherishes the dream that in the future men will see etheric beings, first of all the Christ in an etheric form and after that still other etheric forms. Spiritual science dreams all this, but those who say such things are lunatics and ought to be shut up in asylums. The people who maintain that the things of which spiritual science speaks are sheer delusions are clever people. Yet if this world-view were to be victorious, then what I have described will certainly come about. But this world-view must not, shall not, gain the day that must be our unshakable conviction. We must know: If our etheric bodies are to be so strong that they are able to correct the mistakes of our physical body, this strength must come from the fact that men learn to take in an earnest and true way, what will come to them from the etheric world. This will then work more and more as a factor of healing as we move towards the future. But above all we must receive spiritual science into our hearts in order to prepare ourselves to see the Christ in His etheric form, and to take this event with true earnestness. A great stroke can be drawn across the evolution of humanity. Before it, the etheric forces in man were at work, still shaping and moulding the Physical; but a time will come when the Physical and the etheric have become fixed. Man will have to accustom himself to seeing the etheric forces outside him in all manner of forms and figures, and it will be the etheric realities in accordance with which we must act, just as now his actions are influenced by senseperceptions. We must go forward to a time when we find, first of all, Christ as an Etheric Being, and in His train, more and more etheric realities. These etheric realities will then have the strength still to make true individuals out of us. Many are the secrets lying behind the process of world-evolution, and many of those secrets are shattering. Once upon a time there was a Homer. Read carefully what I have said in different lectures and also in the little book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, and you will find yourselves asking: How did Homer become what he was? It was because he was guided by a still higher Spirit. Homer well knew that it was so. Hence his poems do not begin with the words I sing, but with the words Sing, O Muse. This must be taken with all seriousness. Homer knew that a higher Spirit was inspiring him. It is only in the present age that this is regarded as a phrase, just as is the case with Goethe's lines: The sun, with many a sister-sphere, Still sings the rival psalm of wonder, And still his fore-ordained career Accomplishes, with tread of thunder ... In so far as Homer incarnates again, the man will incarnate, not, however, the Spirit who guided him in those days. But the Being by whom Homer was inspired will be encountered in the etheric world or again, the Spirit who inspired Socrates or Plato, in so far as they were inspired. We must begin to understand the spiritual world, the world of spiritual science. Vision will then come of itself. But if we do not make a beginning with understanding spiritual science, we move towards the time which brings a terrible nemesis upon mankind. The materialistic world-conception may not be true, but for all that it contains an inner truth. Of this inner truth it can be said: What the materialistic world-conception describes regarding man would become actual fact if this world-conception were to gain the day. And it lies with men by means of a different world-conception, to prevent this materialism from being victorious. The matter is not so simple as to enable it to be said that the materialistic world-conception is false; the point is that it lies in the hands of men to gain the victory over it through deeds, not through feeble thoughts of refutation. The more men there are who open their eyes to the spiritual world, the more
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there will be who realise that the fulfilment of materialism can be frustrated and the greater will be the possibility of frustrating it. A man who is perhaps a poet or an artist today still has inklings which make him say: I feel my inspiration within myself! Such experiences will continue for some time yet. But this mood will vanish, will vanish altogether! For men will have an experience which makes them say: An etheric Being appeared to me, telling me this or that. I am the instrument through which this spiritual Being works into this age! The spiritual world is present in all truth; but men can alienate themselves from it. The materialistic worldconception may be called: the conspiracy against the Spirit. This materialistic world-conception is not a fallacy only, it is conspiracy against the Spirit. In spite of these very sketchy indications, I hope your souls will grasp these thoughts and work upon them. It is essential that those who hold the spiritual-scientific view of the world should know something about the impulses operating in the life of humanity. Many people will come and say; This is not so, that is not so; this is not Christian, that is not Christian and so forth. If these people come, then, if we have worthily understood through Spiritual Science by what impulses the world is moved, in our meditative life we shall be able to glimpse eternal principles. Let people call us fantastic dreamers, or whatever it may be we know how mankind and the world evolve. And He Who for the sake of this evolution fulfilled the Mystery of Golgotha, He is seeing, too, what is born in our souls as the expression of world-evolution. Christ is seeing us by this we shall be sustained.

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