The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Mr Burle: We've had the (200th) anniversary of Kant's birthday.⁷¹ 1 May I ask Dr Steiner to tell us something about Kant's teaching, what would be its opposites, and if it might today be an anthroposophical teaching?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, gentlemen, if I am to answer this question you'll have to follow me a little bit into a region that is hard to understand. Mr Burle, who also asked about the theory of relativity, always asks such difficult questions! And so you may have to accept that things won't be as easy to understand today as the things I usually discuss. But you see, it is not possible to speak of Kant in a way that is easy to understand because the man himself is not easy to understand. The situation is that all the world talks about Kant today as of something that is of tremendous importance for the world, though people are not really interested in such things; they merely pretend to be. And you know that a whole number of articles have been written on this 200th anniversary, to show the world the tremendous importance Immanuel Kant had for the whole intellectual life.

You see, even as a boy I would often hear my history teacher⁷² at school say: Immanuel Kant was the emperor of literary Germany! I once said king of literary Germany by mistake and he immediately corrected me, saying: the emperor of literary Germany!

Well, I have studied Kant extensively and—I have described this in the story of my life⁷³—for a time we had a history teacher who really never did anything but read aloud from other people's books. I thought I might as well read that for myself at home. And once when he'd left the room I had a look to see what he was reading to us and got hold of a copy myself. That was much better. I had also got myself a copy of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason from Reclam's Universal Library;⁷⁴ this I had divided up and put between the pages of the school-book I had before me during the lessons. And so I would read Kant whilst the teacher was teaching history. I therefore also felt perfectly confident to speak about Kant, of whom people really always say when something to do with mind and spirit comes up: 'Yes, but Kant said...' Just as theologians will always say: 'Yes, but it says in the Bible...' And many of the enlightened will say: 'Yes, but Kant said...' It is now 24 years ago that I gave some lectures at which I got to know a man who always sat in the hall and slept, always heard the lectures sleeping. Sometimes, when I raised my voice a little, he would wake up, and especially also at the end. I also said something about mind and spirit at the time. Then he would wake up, jump up like a jack-in-the-box and shout: 'But Kant said!' And so it is true that people go on a great deal about Kant.

Now let us consider how this man Kant really saw the world. He said, with some justification, that everything we see, we touch, in short, perceive through the senses, that is, the whole world of nature outside us, is not real but only seems to exist as phenomena. But how does it come into existence? Well, it comes into existence—this is where it gets difficult, you'll need to pay careful attention—because something he called the 'thing in itself', something unknown of which we know nothing, makes an impression on us; and it is this impression we perceive, not the thing in itself.

So you see, gentlemen, if I draw this for you it is like this [drawing]. This is the human being—one could just as well do it with hearing or touch, but let us do it with seeing—and somewhere out there is the thing in itself. But we do not know anything about it; it is quite unknown. But this thing in itself makes an impression on the eye. One still knows nothing about it, but an impression is made on the eye. And in there, in the human being, a phenomenon arises, and we puff this up and make the whole world out of it [pointing to the drawing]. We know nothing of the red thing, only of the phenomenon we now have—I'll draw this in violet. And so the whole world is really, according to Kant, made by man. You see a tree. You do not know anything about the tree in itself; the tree merely makes an impression on you. This means something unknown makes an impression on you and you make it into a tree, putting the tree there in your sensory perceptions. Consider therefore, gentlemen. Here is a chair, a seat—a thing in itself. We do not know what it really is; but this thing which is there makes an impression on me. And I actually put the chair there. So if I sit down on a chair I do not know what kind of thing I am sitting on. The thing in itself, the item I sit on, is something I myself have put there.

You see, Kant speaks of the limits of human knowledge in such a way that one can never know what the thing in itself is, for everything is really only a man-made world. It is extremely difficult to make this clear in any real way. And when people ask one about Kant it is indeed true that to really describe him, characterize him, one has to say very strange things. For looking at the true Kant it is really difficult to believe someone who says it is like that. But the thing is that Kant insists, on the basis of theory, of his thoughts: No one knows about the thing in itself, and the whole world is merely made of the impression we have of things.

I once said that if we do not know what the thing is in itself, it may be all kinds of things; it could for instance be made of pinheads. And that is how it is with Kant. It is fair to say that according to him, the thing in itself may be made of anything. But now there is something else. If we stop at this theory, then all of you here, as I see you, are merely something that presents itself to me; I have put you all on these chairs, and I do not know what lies behind each of you as a thing in itself. And again, as I stand here, you, too, do not know what kind of thing in itself that is, but see a phenomenon which you put there yourselves. And anything I say is something you yourselves create by hearing it. So none of you know what I am really doing here—the thing in itself, what it really does. But this thing makes an impression on you. You project the impression to this point; and basically you are listening to something you produce yourselves.

Now if we take this particular example, then, speaking in Kantian terms, we might say something like this: You are sitting out there for your morning break and say: 'Right, let's go into the hall and hear one thing or another for an hour. We cannot know what this thing in itself is that we hear; but we'll use our eyes to put that man Steiner there so that—at least for an hour—we have this phenomenon, and then we'll put the things we want to hear there so that they may be heard.' This, in the first place, is what Kant says when he insists that one can never know the thing in itself.

You see, one of Kant's successors, Schopenhauer,⁷⁵ found this so clear that he said: 'You simply cannot doubt it!' He said it was quite definite that if he saw blue, it was not that something out there was blue but that the blue was created by him when a thing in itself made an impression on him. And when he heard someone complaining of pain out there, the pain and the complaining did not come from him but from Schopenhauer himself! This, he said, was really perfectly clear. And when people close their eyes and go to sleep, the whole world is dark and silent; then there is nothing there for them.

Now, gentlemen, according to this theory it will be the simplest thing to create the world and put it aside again. You go to sleep, the world has gone; you wake up again and you have once again made the whole world—at least the world you see. Apart from this there is only the thing in itself, of which you know nothing. Yes, Schopenhauer found this perfectly clear. But he did feel a bit funny. He was not quite comfortable with the thesis. He therefore said: 'There is at least something out there—blue and red, and all the cold and heat are not out there; if I feel cold I produce the cold myself. But what is out there is the will. Will lives in everything. And the will is a completely independent demonic power. But it lives in all things.'

So he put a little something into 'the thing in itself. Everything we see before our mind's eye was to him also mere phenomenon, something we produce ourselves. But he did at least furnish the thing in itself with the will. There have been many people, and there are many people to this day, who do not really consider the consequences of Kant's theories. I once knew a person who was really full of Kant's teaching—which is what one should be if one has a dogma. This man said to himself: T have actually made everything myself—mountains, clouds, stars, everything altogether, and I have also created humanity; I have made everything there is in the world. But now I don't like it. I want to get rid of it.' And he then said he started to kill a few people—he was demented; he said he started to kill a few people in order to manage this, to get rid of something he himself had created. I told him he should think about the difference which exists. He had a pair of boots; according to Kant's teaching he had made them, too. But he should consider what the shoemaker had done, apart from what he himself created as a phenomenon relating to his boots.

You see, that's how it is. The greatest nonsense may be found in things that are most highly regarded in the world. And people will cling to the worst kind of nonsense with the greatest possible stubbornness. And oddly enough it is exactly the most enlightened who cling to it.

These things which I have put to you in a few words, difficult enough to understand as it is, have to be found by reading many books if one reads Kant. For he teased it apart in long, long theories. He started his book Critique of Pure Reason, as he called it, for example, by first of all proving that space is not out there in the world; I make it myself, I spin it for myself. In the first place, therefore, space is a phenomenon. Secondly, time is also a phenomenon. For he said: There was a man called Aristotle once, but I myself have put him into time, for I create the whole of time myself.

He wrote this major work called Critique of Pure Reason. It does make quite an impression. So if a real philistine, a smug middle-class person, comes along and picks up a big volume called Critique of Pure Reason, he'll lick his chops, for this is something terribly clever, Critique of Pure Reason; if you read something like this you'll yourself be a kind of Lord God here on earth! The introduction is followed by Part 1: Transcendental aesthetics. Well, now, that's what it says: Transcendental aesthetics. If someone opens my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity the chapter heading might be no more than 'Man and world'.⁷⁶ Oh, man and world, that is so common, one does not bother to read it. But transcendental aesthetics! When a philistine opens such a book, then this is something that must be really tremendous. As to what transcendental aesthetics may be, this is something he does not usually consider; but that suits him fine. It is a word he really has to get his tongue round. So that is the main title.

Now comes the subtitle. Section one. Transcendental deduction of space. You can't think of anything better for a philistine but to have such a chapter. And it then starts in such a way that he does not really understand any of it. But everyone has been calling Kant a great man for more than a hundred years, and reading the book our philistine gets a little bit of something, and a little bit of a delusion of grandeur.

Now comes the second section: Transcendental deduction of time. Having battled through the transcendental deduction of space and of time one comes to the second major part: transcendental analysis. And transcendental analysis mainly offers proof that man has transcendental apperception.

Well, gentlemen, the question has been asked, and so I must tell you these things, this business of transcendental apperception. You have to read hundreds of pages to take in the learned statements concocted in this chapter on transcendental apperception. Transcendental apperception means that a person develops ideas and that these ideas have a certain coherence. So if everything is merely idea, the whole world, then it must be that the whole world is a tissue created out of the nothingness of one's own nature by means of transcendental apperception. Yes, that is more or less the way this is put in those books.

We now realize that in his chapter on transcendental apperception Kant creates the whole world, with all its trees, clouds, stars, and so on, out of himself. But in reality he is creating a tissue that one keeps battling with in the whole of this vast chapter which in reality offers the same ideas, only translated into the thinking of a later age, as I wrote into the Sephiroth Tree for you the other day, though only as a mere alphabet, not in a way that enables one to read, to know something. What is more, it was something very real in the past. But Kant makes a tissue where he says: 'The world thus is 1) quantity, 2) quality, 3) relation, 4) modality.' Each of these concepts has three subsumptions; quantity for example has unity, multiplicity, totality. Quality has reality, negation, limitation, and so on. Those were twelve subsumptions, 3 times 4 being 12, and you can create the whole world with them. Good old Kant did not in fact create the world with them; he only thought up twelve terms with his transcendental apperception. He thus only created twelve concepts and not the world.

Now if there were anything in this, we should get somewhere with it. But the philistines do not notice that nothing comes of it, only twelve concepts. They go about with full stomachs and Kantian philosophy and say: Nothing can be understood! Well, we can understand this in the case of philistines who like being told that the lack of understanding is not theirs but is due to the whole world. You are right to think you know nothing; but this is not because you are incapable but because the whole world is unable to know anything. And so you get these twelve concepts. That is transcendental analysis.

Now we come to the really difficult chapters. First a big chapter with the title: About transcendental paralogisms. And that is how it goes on. You get title after title in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. He wrote that some people say space is infinite. He proves it the way people prove things who are able to see that space is infinite. But there are others who say that space is finite. This is also proved, the way people do prove it. You therefore find the following in the Critique of Pure Reason—in the later chapters it always presents two opposite aspects. On the one hand it is shown that space is infinite, on the other that it is finite. Then you get proof that time is infinite, is eternity, followed by proof that time had a beginning and will have an end. And that is the way Kant did it, gentlemen. Then he gave proof that man is free, and again that he is unfree.

What did Kant want to say by giving proof of two opposite statements? He wanted to say that we actually cannot prove anything! We may just as well say space is infinite or finite; time goes on for ever or time will come to an end. In the same way we may say man is free or he is unfree. It all goes to show that in modern times we have to say: Think about things whichever way you want; you'll not find the truth, for it is all the same for you human beings.

One is also shown how to think in this way, taught transcendental methodology. And so one can first of all go through one of Kant's books. We may ask ourselves why Kant went to all that trouble. And we then discover what he really intended. You see, until Kant came, people who were philosophers may not have known much, but they did at least say that some things can be known about the world. On the other hand there was the thinking that had come from medieval times—I have shown you how ancient knowledge was lost in the Middle Ages—that one can only know something of things perceived by the senses and nothing of the things of the spirit. This was something that had to be believed. And so the idea came up through the Middle Ages and up to Kant's time that you cannot know anything about the spirit; things of the spirit can only be believed.

The Churches do of course do very well out of this dogma that one cannot know anything of the spirit, for this makes it possible for them to dictate what people should believe about things of the spirit.

Now, as I said, there were philosophers—Leibniz,⁷⁷ Wolff,⁷⁸ and so on—who said, until Kant came, that it is possible to know something, from mere common sense or reason, about the spiritual aspects of the world. Kant said it was nonsense to believe that it was possible to know anything about the spirit, and that things of the spirit were a matter of belief. For the spiritual aspect lies in the 'thing in itself'. And you cannot know anything of the 'thing in itself'. One therefore has to believe when it comes to matters of the spirit.

Kant actually betrayed himself when he wrote the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason. This second edition contains a curious statement: 'I had to let knowledge go to make room for faith.' That is indeed a confession, gentlemen. It is the thing which led to the unknown thing in itself. It is because of this that Kant called his book Critique of Pure Reason. Reason itself was to be criticized for not knowing anything. And in this statement 'I had to let knowledge go to make room for faith' lies the truth of Kant's philosophy. And that leaves the door open to all faith and belief. And Kant might indeed have referred to all positive religion. But people who do not want to know anything may also refer to Kant, saying: 'Why do we not know anything? Because one cannot know anything.' So you see, Kant's teaching has really come to support belief. It was quite natural in the light of this that I myself had to reject Kant's teaching from the very beginning. I may have read the whole of Kant as a schoolboy, but I always had to reject his teaching, for the simple reason that one would then have had to stick with the belief people had concerning the world of the spirit, and there could never have been any real knowledge of the spirit. Kant was therefore the man who excluded knowledge of the spirit more than anyone, only accepting some degree of belief.

Kant thus wrote this first book called Critique of Pure Reason. It was shown in this book that one knows nothing of the thing in itself; one can only have belief in what the 'thing in itself' is.

He then wrote a second book called Critique of Practical Reason, and a third called Critique of Judgement, but that was less important. Critique of Practical Reason, then, was his second book. There he evolved his own belief. So he wrote firstly a book of knowledge: Critique of Pure Reason, where he showed that one cannot know anything. The philistine can now put it aside, for he has been given proof that one cannot know anything. Then Kant wrote his Critique of Practical Reason, in which he developed his faith. How did he develop his faith? He said: Looking at himself in the world, man is an imperfect creature; but it is not really human to be so imperfect. So there must be a greater perfection of human nature somewhere. We do not know anything about it, but let us believe that greater perfection exists somewhere in this world; let us believe in immortality.

Well, you see, gentlemen, this is a big difference from what I tell you about the aspect of man that continues after death, based on knowledge. Kant did not want such knowledge; he simply wanted to prove that humanity should believe in immortality because of man's imperfection.

He then proved in the same way that one should only believe, being unable to know anything about freedom, that man is free; for if he were not free, he would not be responsible for his actions. One therefore believes him to be free in order that he may be responsible for his actions.

Kant's teaching about freedom has often reminded me of the statement with which a professor of law always started his lectures. He would say: 'Gentlemen, there are people who say man is not free. But, gentlemen, if man were not free, he would not be responsible for his actions, and then there could also be no punishment. If there is no punishment, you also cannot have penology, which is in fact the subject on which I speak, and then you also would not have me. But I am here, and therefore penology exists, hence also a penal system, hence also freedom. I have thus proved to you that freedom exists.' The things Kant said about freedom remind me very much of those words spoken by the professor. And Kant would also speak of God in this way. He would say: We cannot know anything of any power as such. But I am unable to make an elephant. I believe therefore that someone else can make it who is better able to do so than I am. I thus believe in a God.

In his second book, Critique of Practical Reason, Kant said that as human beings we should believe in God, freedom and immortality. We cannot know anything about these but we should believe in them. Now just think how inhuman this really is. First, proof is given that knowledge is really nothing, and secondly it is said that one should believe in God, of whom one can know nothing, in freedom and immortality. Essentially, therefore, Kant was the greatest reactionary. People create apt terms. They have called him 'the crusher'. Yes, he crushed all knowledge, but only the way one crushes a plaything. For the world was still there! And with this he really gave quite considerable support to faith and belief.

This continued for the whole of the nineteenth century and right into the present century, and today people everywhere are referring to the 200th anniversary of Kant. In reality Kant is the perfect example of how little people really think. For what I have just told you has been Kant's teaching in its pure form. But the things people say—that Kant was the greatest of all philosophers, that he cannot be refuted, and so on—well, you see, if we take this example we really see that it is indeed Kant to whom the opponents of spiritual science can always refer. Simply because they are then able to say to themselves: Yes, we do not base ourselves on religion but on the most enlightened of all philosophers. But it is indeed true that the most dogmatic of religion teachers may base himself on Kant just as much as some enlightened individual.

Kant also wrote other works, in one of which he more or less considered how metaphysics may be a science in the future.⁷⁹ Here he was really proving once again that it is impossible, and so on. We really have to say that the whole of nineteenth-century science sickened because of Kant; basically Kant was a sickness of science.

So the right way to take Kant is as an example of the nonsense sometimes produced by human minds. But you will then also say to yourselves: One really has to watch out when it comes to gaining insight, for the world is terribly keen to produce the greatest possible nonsense exactly when it comes to gaining insight. And you can imagine the difficult position one is in as a representative of spiritual science. Not only does one have the representatives of the religions against one but also those other people, all the philosophers and people who have caught their ideas, and so on. Every philistine comes along and says: You say this about the world of the spirit; Kant has proved—so they say—that one cannot know anything about it. That is really the best general objection anyone can raise. A person can say: I don't want to hear anything of what that man Steiner says, for Kant has proved that one cannot know anything about these things.

Does this satisfy you?

Mr Burle said he had mainly wanted to hear what Kant had said. As Dr Steiner said, you hear a lot about Kant but nothing positive. It did, however, take quite some effort to understand it.

Rudolf Steiner: There were consequences. In 1869 someone who had taken up Kant's ideas published The Philosophy of the Unconscious, a book that caused a sensation. And Eduard von Hartmann⁸⁰ was a very intelligent man. If he had lived before Kant, if Kant had not had such an influence on him, he would probably have done much better. But he could not overcome this enormous prejudice, which came from Kant. Like Schopenhauer before him, Eduard von Hartmann realized that one does not know anything of the world except for one's own ideas of it, something one puts out there oneself. But he also took up Schopenhauer's idea that the thing in itself must be furnished with will. So now we have the will everywhere inside it. I once wrote an article on Eduard von Hartmann in which I also mentioned Schopenhauer.⁸¹ Schopenhauer said that one knows nothing of the thing in itself; one only has ideas of it. Ideas are clever, the will is dumb. So that really all one knows by oneself is no more than dumb will.

In the article in which I mentioned Schopenhauer I wrote: 'According to Schopenhauer everything that is intelligent in the world is the work of man; for man brings everything into the world; and behind it lies the dumb will. The world is thus the dumbness of the Godhead.' But this was impounded at the time. It was to have been published in Austria.

The thing is like this. Eduard von Hartmann had assumed that the thing in itself had to be furnished with the will; but the will is really dumb, and this is why things are so bad in the world. He therefore became a pessimist, as one says. He held the view that the world was not good, but essentially bad, very bad. And not only what people did but everything there was in the world was bad. He said: 'You can work it out that the world is bad. Just put on one side of the balance sheet, the debit side, everything one has in life by way of good fortune, pleasure and so on, and on the other side everything you have by way of suffering and so on. It is always more on the other side and the balance is always in the negative. Therefore the whole world is bad.' This is why Hartmann became a pessimist.

But you see in the first place Eduard von Hartmann was an intelligent man and secondly he was someone who also drew the consequences. He said: 'Why do people go on living? Why don't they rather kill themselves? If everything is bad, it would be much wiser to fix a day when the whole of humanity commits suicide. Then everything that is created there would be gone.' But Eduard von Hartmann also said: 'No, one will never be able to do this, to fix a day for general human suicide. And even if we did—humans have evolved from animals; the animals would never kill themselves; and then human beings would again evolve from animals! So we'll not be able to do it this way.' He then thought of something else. He said to himself: 'If one really wants to eradicate everything that exists as earthly world, one cannot do it by means of human suicide but has to thoroughly eradicate the whole earth. We do not yet have the machines for this today; but people have invented all kinds of machines so far; all wisdom must therefore be directed towards inventing a machine that enables one to drill deep enough into the earth and which will then blow the earth up, using dynamite or the like, so that the fragments fly out into the world and turn to dust. Then the right goal will have been achieved.'

This is no joke, gentlemen! It is a fact that Eduard von Hartmann said a machine should be invented to blow up the whole earth, reducing it to dust and rubble.⁸²

Comment: In America they want to build cannon to shoot down the moon!

Rudolf Steiner: But what I have told you was genuine philosophical teaching in the nineteenth century.

Now you'll say: There was such an intelligent man—but how can this be? He must have been dumb, stupid, the man who said this. No, indeed, Eduard von Hartmann was not stupid but more intelligent than anyone else. I'll prove this to you in a minute. But it was exactly because he was more intelligent than the teaching that originated with Kant that this stupid notion of the machine arose which might be used to throw the world into nothingness. This was seriously put forward by a highly intelligent man who had been thoroughly thrown off course by Kant.

So he wrote this Philosophy of the Unconscious. In it he said: 'Yes, it is true that human beings have evolved from animals, but spiritual powers played a role in this. These spiritual powers are powers of will, which means they are not intelligent but dumb.' And he put this very intelligently, and in this way contradicted Darwinism.

So at that time—in the 1860s—there was this intelligent work by Hartmann, Philosophy of the Unconscious, and there was Darwinism, supported by Haeckel,⁸³ Oscar Schmidt⁸⁴ and others, which was the cleverest thing there was in the eyes of other people. The Philosophy of the Unconscious contradicted it, however. So all those stubborn Darwinists came and said: 'This Eduard von Hartmann needs to be thoroughly refuted; he does not know anything about science.' And what did Hartmann do? What he did at that time is evident from the following. When the others had done shouting—on paper, in print, of course—a book appeared that had the title 'The Unconscious from the Point of View of Darwinism'.⁸⁵ It was not known who had written it, however.

Well, gentlemen, this pleased the scientists no end, for it said things that thoroughly refuted Eduard von Hartmann. Even Haeckel said: 'The individual who has written this book against Hartmann should make himself known to us, and we consider him to be one of us, a naturalist of the first order!' And indeed, the book sold out quickly and a second edition appeared.⁸⁶ This time the author gave his name—it was Eduard von Hartmann himself! He had written against himself. Then they stopped praising him. The matter did not become widely known. He thus proved that he was cleverer than all the rest. But you see, the news given to people never says anything about these things. It is, however, a piece of academic history that should be told. You can see that Eduard von Hartmann was someone who had been led astray by Kant but was highly intelligent.

Now when I tell you he wanted to blow up the world with a huge machine that was to be invented—you may well say that this man Eduard von Hartmann may have been terribly intelligent, but to us, who have not yet studied Kant, it nevertheless seems a dumb thing. And you may well think that however intelligent I told you von Hartmann was, he was nevertheless stupid. You may easily think so. But then you must also tell this last bit, and see that the others were even more stupid. I'll leave it at that, if you like. But it is perfectly possible to provide historical evidence that the others were even more stupid than the person who proved that the earth should be blown apart.

It is important to know such things; for today we still have this strange adulation of anything that appears in print. And since Kant has been published by Reclam—it was only because of this that I was able to read him then, otherwise I could not have afforded it at the time; but it was cheap, even though they were thick volumes—since then the fat is in the fire worse than ever where Kant is concerned, for everyone is reading him. I mean, they read the first page, but they do not understand any of it. They then hear that Kant is 'the emperor of literary Germany' and think: Wow, we know something of his work, and so we are clever people, too! And most of them are prepared to admit: 'I clearly must say I understand Kant, or other people will say I am stupid if I don't understand Kant.' In reality people do not understand any of it, but they won't admit it; they say: 'I have to understand Kant, for he is very clever. So when I say I understand Kant I am saying I understand something very clever and people will be impressed.'

In truth, gentlemen, it has been difficult to present this matter in a more popular form, but I am glad the question was asked, for we can see from it what goes on in academic life, as it is called, and how careful one really has to be when such things influence one, even going so far that now there is a lot of brouhaha in the papers about the 200th anniversary of Kant's birth. I am not saying that Kant should not be celebrated—others are also celebrated—but the truth of the matter is the way I have shown you.

We'll continue at 9 o'clock next Saturday.

• 71. Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804), German idealist philosopher.
• 72. Joseph Mayer, who taught German literature at the secondary school specializing in the sciences in Vienna-Neustadt.
• 73. Steiner, R., Rudolf Steiner, an Autobiography (GA 28), tr. R. Stebbing, New York: Rudolf Steiner Publications 1977.
• 74. Reclam's Universalbibliothek, publishing venture of Philipp Reclam Jun., Stuttgart, producing the classics in reasonably priced paperback editions. Still exists today. Translator.
• 75. Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860), German philosopher.
• 76. Steiner, R., The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. A Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4), tr. R. Stebbing, London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1989.
• 77. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1646–1716), German philosopher and mathematician.
• 78. Wolff, Christian (1679–1754), German mathematician and philosopher who made the work of Leibniz popular.
• 79. Kant, I., Prolegomena, tr. by P.G. Lucas in 1953.
• 80. von Hartmann, Karl Robert Eduard (1842–1906). His Philosophic des Unbewussten (1869) was translated into English by Coupland, with a new edition in 1931.
• 81. 'Eduard von Hartmann, his teaching and significance' first published (in German) in the monthly Deutsche Worte (Vienna), vol. XI, No. 1 (Jan. 1891) and reprinted in GA 30.
• 82. In the work referred to in note 93, vol. 2: Metaphysics of the unconscious, chapter 14: The goal of the world process and the significance of the conscious mind (numerous editions!).
• 83. Haeckel, Ernst (1834–1919), German philosopher and naturalist.
• 84. Schmidt, Oscar (1823–86), German zoologist, student of Haeckel.
• 85. Das Unbewusste vom Standpunkte der Physiologic und Deszendenztheorie. Eine kritische Beleuchtung des naturphilosophischen Teils der Philosophic des Unbewussten aus naturwissenschaftlichen Gesichtspunkten, Berlin 1872.
• 86. Das Unbewusste vom Standpunkte der Physiologic und Deszendenztheorie, 2. verm. Aufl. der 1872 anonym erschienenen Schrift nebst einem Anhang: 'Oscar Schmidts Kritik der naturwissenschaftlichen Grundlagen der Philosophic des Unbewussten', Berlin 1877.

Good morning, gentlemen. Perhaps you have been able to think of something during this slightly longer interval—a special question?

Question concerning the nature of the different hierarchies and their influence on humanity.

Rudolf Steiner: This, I think, will be a bit difficult for those of you who are here for the first time; not easy to understand because you need to know some of the things I have been discussing in earlier lectures. But I'll consider the subject, nevertheless, and try and make it as easy as possible. You see, when you consider the human being, as he stands and walks on this earth, the human being really has all the realms of nature in him. In the first place man has the animal world in him; in a sense he also has an animal organization. You can see this immediately from the fact that human beings have upper arm and thigh bones, with similar bones also found in higher animals. But if one is able to gain good knowledge of them, one also finds related or similar elements in lower animals. Right down to the fishes you can more or less see elements corresponding to human bone. And what we can thus say about the skeletal system may also be said about the muscular system and also the internal organs. We find that humans have a stomach. Correspondingly we also find a stomach in animals. In short, die things that exist in the animal world can also be found in the human body.

Because of this, the materialistic view of the human being came to be that he was simply an animal, too, though more highly developed. But he is not. Human beings develop three things which animals cannot develop out of their organism. The first is that humans learn to walk upright. Just look at animals that learn to walk more or less half-way upright, and you'll see the marked difference between them and human beings. In animals that are a bit upright, kangaroos, for instance, you'll see that the forelimbs, on which they do not walk, are stunted. The kangaroo's forelimbs are not made to be used freely. And with the apes we certainly cannot say that they are like humans in this respect; for when they go up trees, they do not walk, they climb. They really have four hands, not two feet and two hands. The feet are shaped similar to hands; they climb. An upright walk is thus the first thing to distinguish humans from animals.

The second thing that distinguishes humans from animals is the ability to talk. And the ability to talk is connected with the ability to walk upright. You will therefore find that where animals have something similar to the ability to talk—dogs, being highly intelligent, relatively speaking, do not have it, but parrots, for instance, do have it, being a little bit upright—you will find that the animal is upright in that case. Speech is entirely connected with this uprightness.

And the third thing is free will. Animals cannot achieve this, being dependent on their internal processes. These are the things that make up the whole internal organization of the human being, making it human.

But man nevertheless has animal nature in him. He does have this animal world in him.

The second thing man has in him is the plant world. What are people able to do because they have the animal world in them? You see, animals are sentient—humans, too; plants are not sentient. A strange science which has now come up does include the view—I have mentioned this here before¹⁰²—that plants are also able to feel, because there is a plant, such as the venus fly-trap, for instance, and if an insect comes near and lands on it the venus fly-trap folds up its leaves and swallows the insect. That is a highly interesting phenomenon. But if someone says: 'This plant, the venus fly-trap, must feel the insect, that is, have sensory perception of it, when it comes near it/ this is just as nonsensical as if someone were to say: 'Such a tiny little thing which I set to snap shut when a mouse comes near—a mousetrap—is also able to sense that the mouse is entering into it.' Such scientific opinions are no great shakes, they are simply nonsense. Plants do not feel. Nor are plants able to move freely.

Sentience and mobility are therefore things man has in common with animals; there he has animal nature in him. It is only when he is able to think sensibly—which an animal cannot do—which makes him human. Man also has the plant world, the whole plant world in him. Plants do not move from place to place but they grow. Humans also grow and take nourishment. The plant world in them does this. This plant power is something humans also have in them. They have it in them even when they sleep. They let their animal nature go when they sleep, for they have no sentience of things, nor do they move around—unless of course they are sleepwalking, which is an abnormal development; in that case they do not let go of the ability to move around, and then they are sick. But in their normal condition people do not walk around when they are asleep, and they have no sentient awareness of things. When they need to have this, they wake up. In sleep, they cannot be sentient. Plant nature is something humans have in them also in their sleep.

And mineral nature, gentlemen, is also in us; it is present in our bones, for instance. They are a little bit alive, but they contain the lifeless element of calcium carbonate. We carry the mineral world in us. We even have brain sand in our brains. That is mineral. We have the mineral world in us. And so we have the animal world, the plant world and the mineral world in us.

But that is not all. If human beings only had mineral, plant and animal in them, they would be like an animal, they would walk about like an animal, for the animal, too, has mineral, plant and animal in it. Human beings, of course, are connected not only with those three realms of nature, which are visible, but also with other realms.

Let me draw a diagram for you. Imagine this to be the human being [Fig. 6]. He is now related to the mineral world, the plant world, the animal world. But he is a human being. You might say: 'Well, all right, animals can be tamed.' That is quite right. But have you ever seen an ox tamed by an ox? Or a horse by a horse? Animals, even if tamed, which gives them certain abilities that show distant similarity with human abilities, have to be tamed by humans! You'll agree there is no such thing as a school for dogs where dogs teach each other and make tame dogs out of wild dogs. Human beings have to intervene. And even if one were to think one might concede everything the materialists want, one would only have to take their own lines of thought further—you can concede everything, and if you like someone might say: 'The human being, as he is now, was originally an animal and has been tamed.' But the animal he would have been in that case cannot have tamed him! It simply is not possible. Otherwise a dog might also tame a dog. So there must have been someone originally who took humanity to its present level, and this someone, these entities—who may no longer be there now—cannot be from the three realms of nature. For if you imagine that you could ever have been tamed by a giraffe and made into a human being whilst still a little creature in your infancy—just as this would not have been possible, so it would not have been possible for you to have been tamed by an oak. You'd have to be a member of the German national front to believe that, people who may perhaps assume that the oak, a holy tree, has tamed humankind. And, you see, minerals even less so. A rock crystal is beautiful, but it certainly cannot tame the human being. Other entities must have existed, other realms.

You see, in human beings everything is truly called to higher things. Animals are able to form ideas, but they do not think. Ideas develop in animals. But they have no thinking activity. Human beings have thinking activity. And so they may have their blood circulation from the animal world, for example, but their thinking organ cannot come from the animal world. We are thus able to say: Man thinks, he feels, he wills. All this is freely done. And everything is different because man is a being who walks upright and who talks.

Just think how different your will intent would have to be, all your will impulses would be different if you always had to crawl around on all fours the way you do in the first year of your life. All human will impulses would be different in that case. And you would never get to the point of being able to think. And just as the things we have in our physical bodies connect us with the three realms of nature, so do thinking, feeling and will connect us with three other realms, with supersensible, invisible realms. We have to have a name for everything. Just as we call minerals, plants and animals the realms of nature, so we call the realms that bring about thinking, feeling and will in such a way that they may be free—the hierarchies. Thus we have here the realms of nature [Fig. 6], and with this, man extends into the natural world. And here we have the hierarchies. You see, man extends into three realms of nature on the one hand and into three hierarchies on the other. With his thinking he extends into the hierarchy—now you see, we do not yet have a name for it. We do not have a name for it because materialism takes no account of it; so we have to use the old names: angeloi, angels. People will immediately brand one as superstitious if one says this. It is true, of course, that we no longer have a real possibility of finding names for things, for humanity has lost the feeling for speech sounds. Languages were only able to evolve for as long as people still had a feeling for speech sounds. Today everyone uses words like 'ball' or 'fall'.¹⁰³ Each has the vowel 'a' in it. But what is that 'a' sound? It expresses a feeling! Imagine what would happen if you were to see someone opening that window from the outside and looking in. It would not be the right moment for such a thing, and so you would be surprised and amazed. Quite of few of you would probably react to this with an 'Oh!'—unless you felt this was not the place for expressing one's reactions. That sound always expresses surprise, being taken aback a little. And this is how every letter brings something to expression. When I say 'ball', I use that vowel sound because I am surprised at the strange way it behaves when I throw it, or if it is a ball where people dance, I am surprised to see all those lively gyrations. Only the way things have developed, people have got so used to it all that they are no longer surprised, you might just as well call it 'bull', or 'bill' but certainly no longer 'ball'. Let us take 'fall'. When someone takes a fall somewhere, we may also say 'Oh'. And the other important aspect lies in the 'f'—using an energy that lies in him. 'Oh'—whenever you are surprised, you also have that particular vowel sound.

And consider this. You believe that thinking takes place in the head. But if you were suddenly able to perceive that your thinking involves spiritual entities, just as there have to be animals on this earth so that you may be able to have sensation and feeling, this would come as another surprise to you. And to express this surprise you'd have to have a word that has that 'a' [as in father] sound in it. You would therefore also be able to give these thinking entities, known as angeloi, a name which has that 'a', and you would use the letter which indicates that you have the power of thinking, expressing power in a certain way: T; and for the power that is taking effect you might perhaps use a 'b'. The word Alb,¹⁰⁴ used for something spiritual before, could indeed serve as a sign for these spirits who are connected with thinking, and not only for nightmares, which are the pathological side of it. The hierarchies are realms into which the human being extends, and which he has in him just as he has the realms of nature in him. And the spirits who were called Alb or angel are those connected with our thinking.

The feelings human beings have are connected with animal nature. What, animals? Well, you see, if one pays a little bit of heed and does not immediately go mad when something is mentioned that has to do with the spirit, but if people accept that one may be speaking of things of the spirit, quite a few things can be found out, even if one is not yet able to use a science of the spirit such as anthroposophy. Just consider—if you want to feel you need to have a certain warmth in you. A frog is much less alive in his feelings than a human being is, because it does not have warm blood. You really need to have warmth inside you when you feel. But the warmth we have in us comes from the sun. And so we are able to say that our feeling is also connected with the sun, but in a spiritual way. Physical warmth is connected with the physical sun; feeling, which is connected with physical warmth, is connected with the spiritual sun. This Second Hierarchy, which has to do with feeling, thus resides in the sun. You will definitely discover—providing you are not wholly brain-fixed, which many people are today, especially the scientists—you will discover that the Second Hierarchy are sun spirits. And because the sun only reveals itself on the outside in light and heat—no one knows the inside of the sun, for if physicists were to discover the sun as it really is they would be absolutely amazed to find that it does not at all look the way they think it does. They believe the sun to be a body of hot gases. That is far from the truth. It really consists of nothing but powers of suction; it is hollow, not even empty, but sucking. We can say that it reveals itself as light and heat on the outside; the spirits which are in there were known as 'spirits of revelation' in ancient Greek. When people still knew things—for the old instinctive knowledge was much wiser than the knowledge we have today—the spirits that revealed themselves from the sun were called Exusiai; we may just as well say 'sun spirits'. We just have to know that when we speak of feeling we enter into the realm of the sun spirits. Just as I say: Man has powers of growth and nutrition in him, and therefore the plant world, so I have to say: Man has in him powers of feeling, which are powers of the spiritual sun realm, the Second Hierarchy.

And the third thing is the First Hierarchy, which has to do with the human will. This is where human beings grow most energetic, not only moving but also bringing their actions to bear. This is in connection with spirits who are out there in the whole world and are altogether the highest spiritual entities we can get to know. Again we use a Greek or Hebrew name, for we do not yet have German ones, or altogether do not yet have the terms in our language—Thrones, Cherubs, Seraphs. That is the highest realm.

So there are three realms in the spirit just as there are three realms in nature. Man has to do with the three realms of nature and also with the three realms of the spirit.

Now you'll say: 'Well, I can believe that or not, for those three realms are not visible, they cannot be perceived by the senses.' Yes, but gentlemen, I have known people where one was asked to explain to them that there is such a thing as air. He would not believe that there was any air. When I tell him 'That's a blackboard', he'll believe it, for if he goes up to it he'll bump into it, or when he uses his eyes he can see the blackboard. But he does not bump into the air. He may look and will say: 'There's nothing there.' In spite of this everyone admits today that air exists. It is simply there. And one day people will also admit that the spirit is there. Today they still say: 'Well, it is not there, the spirit.' Which is what country people said about the air in the old days. In the place where I grew up, the country people would still say: 'The air simply is not there; that is just something the big-heads in the city say, wanting to be so clever. You can walk through there and there is nothing there where you are able to walk through.' But that was a long time ago. Today even the cleverest people still do not know that spirits are present everywhere! But they will admit it in due course, for certain things cannot be explained in any other way, and they need to be explained.

If someone says today: 'There is no spirit in everything that exists by way of nature; everything scientists know about nature is in there, but nothing else.' Well, gentlemen, if anyone says such a tiling that is just as if there is someone who has died, and the corpse lies there, and I come and say: 'You lazy fellow! Why don't you get up and move on!' I try hard to make him understand that he should not be so lazy and that he should get up. Well, I lack understanding in that case, believing that there is a living human being in there. And that is how it is. Everything a scientist is able to find in there he does not find in the living person, he finds it in the dead body. Out there in the world of nature he also finds only dead things; he does not find that which lives. He does not find the spiritual in this way, but this does not mean it does not exist.

This is what I wanted to say on this question concerning the hierarchies.

Mr Burle: In earlier lectures you spoke about the ancient peoples having knowledge of the science of the spirit. This has been lost to humanity today. Would you be able to explain to us how that happened? If it was all due to materialism?

Rudolf Steiner: Why the old knowledge was lost? Well, you see, gentlemen, that is a very strange thing. The people who lived in very early times did not have knowledge the way we have it today but they had it in an artistic, poetic form. They had great knowledge, and that knowledge has been lost to humanity, as Mr Burle said, quite rightly. Now we may ask what caused this knowledge to be lost. We certainly cannot say that it was all due to materialism; for if all people still had the old knowledge materialism could never have arisen. It was exactly because the old knowledge had been lost and people had been mentally crippled that they invented materialism. Materialism thus comes from the decline of the old knowledge, and we cannot say that the old knowledge went into decline because materialism was spreading. So the question is, what did actually cause the old knowledge to decline?

Well, gentlemen, it happened because humanity is in a process of evolution. Now you can of course dissect a person who exists today; if he dies you can dissect him. You can gain knowledge about the way in which the human being is made in our present time. The most we have from earlier times are, well, the mummies in Egypt, which we talked about recently, only they are so thoroughly embalmed that one really cannot dissect them properly any more. Scientists therefore cannot get an idea of what human beings looked like in earlier times, especially at the time when they were of a more subtle build. Ordinary science cannot help here, and one has to penetrate it with the science of the spirit. And then one will find that people were not at all the way they are today in those earlier times.

There was a time on earth when people did not have such hard bones as we have them today. People had bones like the bones children with rickets have today, so that they grow bow-legged or knock-kneed and are altogether weak. You can see that it is possible to have such soft bones, for one still finds them in cartilaginous fish today. Those bones are as soft as cartilage. Human beings once had such bones, for the human skeleton was soft at one time. Now you'll say: 'That must mean that everyone went around bowlegged or knock-kneed, and everything must have been crooked because the bones were soft.'

That would have been the case if the air had always been the same on earth as it is today. But it wasn't. The air was much thicker in earlier times. It has got much thinner. And the air contained much more water in those old times than it does today. The air also contained a lot more carbon dioxide. The whole air was denser. Now you begin to see that people were able to live with those soft bones in the past. We only have to have the bones we have today because the air is no longer supporting us. A denser air would support human beings. Walking was much more like swimming in those times than it is today. Today we walk in a terribly mechanized way; we put down one foot, and the leg has to be like a column; then we put down the other foot. People did not walk like that in the earliest times; they were aware of the watery air just as one can let the water carry one today. So it was possible for them to have softer bones. But when the air grew thinner—and even ordinary science can tell us that the air got thinner—hard bones began to make sense. Hard bones only developed then. Of course, in those times the carbon dioxide was outside; the air contained it. Today we have calcium carbonate inside us; and with this the bones have grown hard. That is how things go together.

But when the bones grow hard, others things, too, grow hard in the human being. The people who had softer bones also had a much softer brain mass. And the skull, the head of human beings was a very different shape in those times. You see, it was more like the heads of people with water on the brain. That was beautiful then; today it is no longer so beautiful. And they kept their heads the way very young children today still have it in the womb, for they had a soft brain mass, and the soft brain deposited itself in the front part of the skull [drawing]. Everything was softer then.

Now, gentlemen, when the human being was softer, his mental faculties would also have been different. Your thinking is much more spiritual with a soft brain than with a hard brain. The ancients still felt this; they would call someone who was only able to think the same thing over and over again and therefore insists on sticking to just this one idea a thick-head. This means that they had a feeling that one is really able to think better, to have better ideas, if one has a soft brain. The early people had such a soft brain.

And then there was something else they had. We are certainly able to say that when a child is born, its skull with its soft brain, and even the soft bones, are still very similar to the way they were in the early people. But you just sit or lay a small infant down—it cannot go anywhere, it cannot feed itself and the like; it cannot do anything! Higher spirits had to take care of this when people still had those soft brains. And the result was that people did not have freedom then, they did not have free will. But free will gradually developed in the course of human evolution. It means that the bones and the brain had to harden. But this hardening also meant that the old knowledge went into decline. We would not have become independent human beings if we had not become thick-headed, hard-headed, with hard brains. But we owe our freedom to this. And the decline of the old knowledge really went hand in hand with our freedom. That is it. Can you understand this? [Answer: Yes.] It comes with our freedom.

But now, having on the one hand gained freedom and independence, human beings have lost the old knowledge and fallen into materialism. But materialism is not the truth. We must therefore gain spiritual insight again, in spite of the fact that we have a denser brain today than people did originally. We can only do this through the anthroposophical science of the spirit. This gives insights that are independent of the body and are perceived with the soul only. Early humanity had their knowledge because their brains were softer and therefore more soul-like. We have our materialism because our brain has grown hard, no longer able to take in the soul. We therefore have to gain spiritual insights with the soul only, a soul not taken up by the brain. This is the way of the science of the spirit. We regain spiritual insights. But we live in an age now when humanity has bought freedom, the price being materialism. So we cannot say that materialism is something bad, even if it is untruth. Materialism, if not taken to extremes, is not something bad, for through materialism humanity has learned many things that were not known before. That is how it is.

Now there is another question that was put in writing before:

I have read the following statement in your Philosophy of Spiritual Activity:¹⁰⁵ We must make the content of the world the content of our thought; only then shall we find the wholeness again from which we have separated.'

So the gentlemen has been reading something of the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. His question is: What belongs to this world content, since everything we see exists only in so far as we think it? And he goes on to say: Kant says the mind is unable to grasp the world of phenomena that comes before the world we perceive.

Now you see, gentlemen, it is like this. When we are bom, when we are little children, we have eyes, we have ears, we see and we hear; that is, we perceive the things that are around us. The chair which is there is not thought by a child, but it is perceived. It looks the same to a child as it does to a grown-up, only the child does not yet think the chair. Let us assume some artificial means could be found so that a child who does not yet have thoughts would be able to talk. In that case—and we are used to this today, for the very people who do not think are those who are most critical—the child would be inclined to criticize everything. I am actually convinced that if very young infants who are not yet able to think were able to chatter away they would be the greatest critics. You see, in ancient India, you had to be 60 before you were allowed to be critical; the others were not allowed to voice an opinion, for people would say: 'They have no experience of the world yet.' Now I won't defend this nor will I criticize it, I merely want to tell you how it was. Today anyone who has reached the age of 20 would laugh at you if you were to say he had to wait until he was 60 before he could give an opinion. Young people would not do that today. They do not wait at all, and as soon as they are able to hold a pen they start to write for the papers, to have opinions on everything. We've gone a long way in this direction today. But I am convinced that if very young infants were able to talk—oh, they would be severe critics! A 6-month-old infant, wow, he'd be criticizing everything we do if we could get him to talk.

Gentlemen, you see, we only start to think at a later stage. How did speech develop? Well, imagine a child of 6 months, not yet able to have the idea of the chair but able to see it just as we do. He would discuss the chair. Now you would say: 'I, too, have the idea of the chair; in the chair here is gravity, and so it stands on the floor. Some carving las been done on it, and so it has form. The chair has a certain inner consistency, and I am therefore able to sit on it without falling off, and so on. I have the idea of the chair. I think of something when I see the chair.' The child of 6 months who does not yet have the idea will say: 'Silly, you've grown stupid having grown so old. We know at 6 months what a chair is; later you have all kinds of fantasies about it.' Yes, that is how it would be if a 6-month-old child could talk. And something we are only able to do as we get older—being also able to think as we say things—with all this the situation is that the ideas do, after all, go with the chair; I merely do not know them beforehand. I only have the ideas when I have reached the level of maturity needed. But the solidity of the chair is not in me. I do not sit down on my own solidity when I sit down on the chair, otherwise I might as well sit myself down on myself again. The chair does not get heavy when I sit down on it; it is heavy in its own right. Everything I develop by way of ideas is already in the chair. I therefore perceive the reality of the chair when in the course of life I connect with it many times in my thoughts. Initially I only see the colours, and so on, hear when a chair rattles, and also feel if it is cold or warm; I can perceive this with my senses. But one only knows what is in that chair when one has grown older and is able to think. Then one connects with it again, creating a retroactive effect.

Kant—I spoke of him recently—made the biggest of mistakes in thinking that something a child does not yet perceive, something we only perceive later, i.e. the thought content, is something people put into objects themselves. So he was really saying: 'If that is a chair there—the chair has colour, it rattles. But when I say the chair is heavy, this is not a property of the chair, it is something I give to it by thinking it to be heavy. The chair is solid, but this is not inherent in it; I add it by thinking the chair to be solid.' Well, gentlemen, Kant's teachings are considered to be a great science, and I spoke about this a while ago. The truth is, however, that it is the greatest nonsense. Because of the particular way in which humanity has developed, great nonsense is sometimes considered to be great science, the most sublime philosophy, and Kant is of course also known as the man who ground everything to dust, who shattered everything. All I was able to see in him—I studied Kant from early boyhood, again and again—is a shatterer; but I have not generally found that someone who shatters soup plates creates the most sublime things, nor indeed that he was greater than the person who made the plates. It always seemed to me that the maker was the greater man. Kant has in truth always shattered everything.

Kant's objections should not concern us. But the thing is that when we are born we are disunited, having no connection with things. We only grow into them again as we develop concepts. The question that has been asked there266 fore has to be answered like this. What belongs to the world content? In my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity I wrote: 'We must make the content of the world the content of our thought; only then shall we find the whole again from which we separated in infancy.' In infancy we do not have the world content, we only have the sensual part of the world content. But the thought content is truly inside the world content. In infancy we thus have only half the world content, and it is only later, when we have developed and have thoughts, that we have the thought content not only in us, but we know that it is in the things, and we also treat our thoughts in such a way that we know they are in the things, and we then re-establish our connection with the things.

You see, in the 1880s—when everything had become Kantian and everyone kept saying that Kant's philosophy was the most sublime, and no one dared as yet to say anything against it—it was very hard when I stood up in those days and stated that Kantian philosophy was really a nonsense. But this is something I had to declare from the very beginning. For of course, if someone like Kant thinks that we actually add the thought content to things, he can no longer arrive at the plain and simple content, for he then has inner thoughts about things around him, and this is materialism indeed. Kant is in many respects responsible for the fact that humanity has not found its way out of materialism. Kant is altogether responsible for a great many things. I told you this on that earlier occasion when someone else had asked about Kant. The others, being unable to think anything else, created materialism. But Kant said: 'We cannot know anything about the world of the spirit, only believe.' What he was really saying was: 'You can only know something about the world perceived by the senses because you can drag thoughts only into this world perceived by the senses.'

And people who wanted to be materialistic felt even more justified in this by referring to Kant. But this is another prejudice humanity must get out of the habit of using - meaning the part of humanity who at least know something of Kant—they have to get out of the habit of always referring to Kant when they want to say that one really cannot know anything about the world of the spirit. And so world content is sensory content and content of mind and spirit. But mind and spirit only gain that content in the course of life, as we develop ideas. We then re-establish the connection between nature and spirit. In the beginning, in infancy, we only had nature before us, and mind and spirit evolved gradually out of our own nature.

Would anyone have a very little question?

Mr Burle asked about human hair, saying: 'Many girls now have their hair cut short. Could Dr Steiner tell us if that is good for the health? My little daughter would also like to cut her hair, but I have not permitted it. I'd like to know if it is harmful or not.'

Rudolf Steiner: Well now, the matter is like this. The hair that grows is so little connected with the organism as a whole that it does not really matter very much if one lets one's hair grow or cuts it short. The harm is not enough to be apparent. But there is a difference between men and women in this respect. You know, for a time it was the case—it's no longer the case now—that one would see anthroposophists walking about, gentlemen and ladies—the gentleman would not cut his hair, wearing long tresses, and the ladies would have their hair cut short. People would of course say: 'Anthroposophy turns the world upside down; among the anthroposophists the ladies cut their hair short and the gentlemen let theirs grow.' Now it is no longer like this, at least not noticeably so. But we might of course also ask how it is with the difference between the sexes when it comes to cutting one's hair.

Generally speaking the situation is that a great head of hair is rather superfluous in men. For women it is a necessity. Hair always contains sulphur, iron, silica and some other substances. These are needed by the organism. Men need much silica, for as they assumed the male sex in the womb they lost the ability to produce their own silica. They absorb the silica that is in the air whenever they have just had their hair cut, absorbing it through the hair. It is of course too bad when the hair has gone, for then nothing can be absorbed. Going bald at an early age, which has a little bit to do with people's lifestyles, is not exactly the best thing for a person.

With women, cutting the hair short is not exactly good, and that is because women have the ability to produce silica more in the organism, and so they should not cut the hair really short too often; for then the hair absorbs silica—which the woman already has in her—from the air and forces it back into the organism. This makes the woman inwardly hairy, prickly; she then has 'hairs on her teeth' [German saying, meaning a tough woman]. This is then something that is not so apparent; one has to have a certain sensitivity to notice it, but a little bit of it is there. Their whole manner is rather prickly then; they become inwardly hairy and prickly; and cutting one's hair off does then have an influence, especially in young people.

Now you see, it can also be the other way round, gentlemen. It may be that modern youngsters come into an environment—children are all quite different today from the way we were in our young days—where their inner silica is no longer enough, for they want to be a bit prickly, scratchy. They then develop the instinct to cut their hair. This becomes fashionable, with one copying the other, and then we have the story the other way round, with children wanting to be prickly and having their hair cut. But if one managed to organize things so that they went a bit against such a fashion, this would not be such a bad thing if the fashion has gone a bit to extremes. In the final instance it all has to do with this, does it not—one person likes a gentle woman, another a prickly one. Tastes do change a little. But it cannot have a very great influence. Though of course if someone has a daughter who wants to or is supposed to choose a husband who likes a prickly woman, then she should get her hair cut. She then won't get a husband who likes a gentle woman. So that may indeed happen. So the business has more of an effect on things that are marginal in life.

• 102. Lecture of 21 April 1923, in GA 349. Tr. by M. Cotterell entitled 'The Nature of Christianity7 in MS R59, Rudolf Steiner House Library, London.
• 103. As vowel sounds differ greatly between German and English, which reflects the spirit of each nation and its language, I have only taken the first two of the three words given by Rudolf Steiner (Ball, Fall, Kraft), as it is possible to make his point more or less well in English with these two. I have used 'oh' instead of 'ah', as it matches the English sounds and (fortunately) we know from previous lectures in this volume that both vowels express amazement. Concerning the third, Kraft, he went on to say, after discussing Fall, that the 'f' also has special significance, using an energy to propel oneself. Translator.
• 104. The German Alb means sprite, goblin, and also nightmare, incubus. The change from plural to singular occurs in the original. Translator.
• 105. Steiner, R., The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. A Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4), tr. R. Stebbing, London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1989.

We still have some questions that were asked the last time. I'm going to answer them in a slightly different order than the one in which they were put. The questions are the following.

How can one gain insight into the secrets of the world for one's view of the world and of life?

How far does a person have to go in modern science to find higher worlds?

Do the forces active in the universe have an effect on the whole of humanity?

How do plants relate to the human being, to the human body? Now what I want to do—these are, of course, very complex questions—is to proceed in a way where the answer emerges gradually. One can't really do it any other way with such complex issues. For the question 'How does one gain insight into the secrets of the world?', for instance, really means: 'How does one get to the real science of the spirit?' This is something you certainly should not imagine is an easy thing to do today. For the truth is that when they hear that there is such a thing as anthroposophy or a science of the spirit, most people will think: 'I'll now also gain the ability to see things of the spirit. I reckon that'll take a week, and then I'll no doubt be able to know everything for myself.'

Well, the matter is not that easy, of course. We have to be quite clear in our minds that even ordinary science calls for quite a lot. To make even the simplest scientific observations one has to learn to use the necessary instruments. It is of course relatively easy to use a microscope, but to do proper scientific work with a microscope you can't just say: 'I'll now put a piece of muscle or something like that under the microscope and then I'll look down the microscope and know what is going on in there.' If you were to do that, you'd see nothing, of course. To see things under a microscope you must first of all make very thin sections. A piece of muscle will not do, therefore, but you have to cut thin sections with a fine razor, take off what may sometimes be a very small amount, make another thin section, and so produce a very thin layer. And in most cases even this will not get you anywhere. For if you put such a very thin layer of muscle or cells under the microscope and look at it, you'll see nothing at all as a rule. What you have to do is ask yourself: How can I make the material I am unable to see under the microscope visible? And one often has to impregnate the material with special stains, making it visible by staining. And one must then know that one has changed the material a little bit by doing so. One also needs to know what the material is like when one does not change it. All these are still quite simple things, however. If you want to study the stars using a telescope, you first have to learn how to use the telescope. Mind you, that's still quite simple. You know there are itinerants who set up telescopes in the street for people to look through. But this, too, won't get you far. It will only get you somewhere if you know that you also have to have a small scope to go with it and a timepiece which you need to set, and so on. These are just examples to show you how complicated it is to investigate even the simplest things in the physical world we perceive through the senses.

When it comes to investigations made in the world of the spirit, things are truly very much more difficult. This calls for a great deal more preparation. People imagine you can learn it in a week. But that is definitely not the case. Above all you have to consider that we must first of all activate something that already exists within us. Something which really is not active in us all the time has to be made active.

To show you how things really are, let me first of all tell you this. You know that for investigations that penetrate into the world of the spirit, and also in ordinary science, one often has to start by gaining insight into something that is not normal. You only gain real knowledge of things if you have first considered something that is not normal. I have given you particular examples of this before. We have to consider this because people in the world outside often call someone who makes spiritual investigations mad, however normal he may in fact be. So we do indeed have to investigate things a little bit in such a way that we finally arrive at the truth. You should not think, of course, that your goal can be fully achieved by considering something that is not normal but pathological, but you will learn a lot from it.

There are people, for example, who are not normal because they have a mental disorder, as it is put. What does it really mean to say someone has a mental disorder? There can be no worse term in the world than this 'mental disorder'. For the mind can never be out of order. The mind simply cannot be in disorder. Take the following, for instance. If someone has a 'mental disorder' for 20 years—such things do happen—and then is normal again, what is really going on there? Now, of course, it can happen that for 20 years this person insists he is being persecuted by others; he is suffering from persecution mania, as it is called. Or the situation may be that he sees all kinds of spectres that do not exist, and so on. This may continue for 20 years. Now, gentlemen, someone who has such a 'mental disorder' for 20 years may certainly recover. But you'll always find one thing. If someone has been 'mentally deranged' for 3, 5 or 20 years and then recovers, he'll not be quite the same as he was before. You'll above all note the following. He'll tell you, once he has recovered: 'Yes, during my illness I was able to see into the world of the spirit all the time.' He'll tell you all kinds of things he perceived relating to the world of the spirit. And if you then check his story, having gained knowledge of the higher worlds whilst in sound mind, it will be true that he'll say much that is rubbish but on the other hand also much that is correct. So that is the strange thing. Someone may suffer from a 'mental disorder' for years, recover, and then tell you he was in the world of the spirit, where he experienced this and this and this. And if you know about this yourself, having been in sound mind, you have to agree that much of it is correct.

If you talk to someone during the time when his mind is deranged, he'll never be able to tell you anything that makes sense. He'll tell you the rubbish he experiences. For the truth is that people who have had a mental disorder for years did not in fact experience these things whilst they had their 'mental disorder', as it is called. They did not experience anything of the world of the spirit. But afterwards, when they have recovered and are, in a way, able to look back on the time when they were not of sound mind, things they did not in fact experience during their illness will seem to them to have been glimpses of the spiritual world. This awareness of having seen much of the world of the spirit thus really only comes at the moment when these people recover.

You see, we can learn a very great deal from this. We can learn that there is something in the human being that is not used at all when he is mentally ill. But it was there, it was alive in him. And where was it? He did not see anything of the outside world, for he'd tell you that the sky was red and the clouds were green—all kinds of things. He did not properly see anything that existed in the outside world. But this deeper human being who is inside him, whom he cannot use at all during his illness—that human being is then in the world of the spirit. And when he's able to use his brain again and to look back on the experiences this spiritual human being has had, the experiences gained in mind and spirit will come to him.

We see from this that when someone is in the condition we call 'mental illness' he is actually living in the world of the spirit with the part of him that is of the spirit. This part is in very good health. What is it, therefore, that is sick when someone is mentally ill? You see, it is the body which is sick when someone is mentally ill, and the body is then unable to use the soul and the mind and spirit. When someone is said to be mentally ill, it is always something in the body that is sick, and if the brain is sick you cannot think properly, of course. Nor can you feel things properly if your liver is sick.

Because of this, 'mentally ill' is really the worst term you can choose, for 'mentally ill' means that the body is so sick that it cannot use the mind and spirit, which in itself is always healthy. Above all else you need to understand that the mind and spirit is always sound. Only the body can get sick, and is then unable to use the mind properly. If someone's brain is sick, it is just the way it is when someone has a hammer that breaks every time it is used. If I say to someone who does not have a hammer, 'You are simply lazy, you can't use your hammer at all,' that's nonsense, of course. He can hammer perfectly well, but he does not have a hammer with which to do it. And so it is nonsense to say someone is 'mentally ill'. The mind is perfectly sound, but it does not have the body it needs to be effective.

We can get a particularly good idea of what can be learned from this if we consider the true nature of our thinking. You will have seen from what I have been saying that people have a mind but need a tool, the brain, to be able to think. It is not the least bit clever for a materialist to say that we need a brain. Of course we do. But saying this does not tell us anything about the mind. You also see from this that the mind itself may withdraw completely in the human being. And it is important to know this, for only then will one realize that at the present time—I am now going to say something that'll really surprise you—people cannot think at all. They think they can, but actually they cannot think at all. Let me show you why people are unable to think.

You'll say: 'But people go to school, and today you learn to think marvellously well even at primary school!' Well, that's certainly the way it seems. But the truth is that people are quite unable to think. It only seems that they are able to think. Now you know, at a primary school we have primary school teachers. They have also learned things, and it is said they have also learned to think. The people who taught them are 'brainy', as we say, meaning that from the modern point of view they are thought to be people of great wisdom. They have been to university. Before they went to university they went to grammar school or the like, and there they learned Latin. Now if you consider the matter a bit you'll of course be able to say: 'My teacher certainly did not know Latin!' But he studied under someone who did know Latin. And because of this the things you learned at school also depended on the Latin language, and everything people learn today is dependent on the Latin language. You can see this from the mere fact that when someone writes a prescription, he'll do so in Latin. This goes back to the times when everything was still written in Latin. It is not that long ago—30 or 40 years—that people were required to write their exam papers in Latin at the universities.

Everything we learn today therefore depends on the Latin language. And this has happened because in the Middle Ages—going back to the fourteenth or fifteenth century, which really is not that long ago—everything was taught in Latin. The first person to lecture in German in Leipzig, for example, was a man called Thomasius.³² That was not long ago, in the seventeenth century. People would always lecture in Latin. People who had some learning would also have Latin, and in the Middle Ages absolutely everything people were able to learn was in Latin. So if you wanted to learn anything else, you first had to do Latin. You'll say: 'But not at primary school.' But primary schools have only existed from the sixteenth century onwards. They only came into existence gradually, when people's everyday language also began to include terms for learned ideas. All our thinking is therefore influenced by the Latin language. All of you, gentlemen, think the way people have learned to think through the Latin language. And if you were to say, for instance, that the Americans, say, did not learn Latin so early, you have to remember that today's Americans are immigrants from Europe! Everything comes from the Latin language.

The Latin language has a particular characteristic, however. It evolved in ancient Rome and did so in such a way that the language itself is actually thinking. It is interesting to see how Latin is taught at grammar school. One learns Latin, and then learns to think—to think properly by studying the Latin sentence. All thinking then becomes dependent on something which is not done by the person himself but by the Latin language. You have to realize, gentlemen, that this is tremendously important. Anyone who has learned anything today, therefore, does not think for himself, and the Latin language does the thinking even in people who have never learned Latin. And so the strange thing is that independent thinking is today really only found in some people who have not got much education. Now please note that I am not saying we should return to illiteracy. This is something we cannot do. I never want to see regression. But we have to see the situation as it is. Because of this it is so important that we can sometimes also go back to the things a simple person, who has not had much education, still knows. He finds it hard to tell people, because they'll always laugh at him, of course. But still, it is extraordinarily important to know that people do not think for themselves today; the Latin language is thinking in them.

You see, unless one is able to think for oneself one will be unable to enter into the world of the spirit. Here you have the reason why today's academic world is against all insight into the spirit. It is because Latin education makes them unable to think for themselves. The first thing one has to learn is to think for oneself. People are quite right when they say today that the brain is thinking. Why does the brain think? Because the Latin sentences come into it, and the brain then thinks quite automatically in modern people. They are Latin language automatons who walk about and do not think for themselves.

Something quite remarkable has happened in recent times. I mentioned it to you the other day we met, something you'll not have noticed, for it is not so easy to notice. But something quite special has happened in recent times. Now you know we have our physical body in us, and also our ether body and the others as well—I'll leave these aside for the moment. The brain is of course part of the physical body, but the ether body is also in the brain, and we are only able to think for ourselves with the ether body. We cannot think with the physical body as such. But it is possible to think with the physical body if the situation is as it is with the Latin language, when the brain is used like an automatic machine as we use it to think. But for as long as we only think with the brain we cannot think things of the spirit. We have to start to think with the ether body, with the ether body which often is not used for years when someone is mentally ill. This has to be made inwardly active.

The important thing, therefore, is that we learn to think independently. It is not possible to get into the world of the spirit unless one is able to think independently. This does, of course, mean that one must first of all realize: 'Wow! You never learned to think for yourself in your young days. You only learned to think the things that have been thought for centuries by using the Latin language.' And when one rightly knows this, one also knows that the very first requirement for entering into the world of the spirit is to learn to think independently.

We now come to the thing I wanted to mention when I said that something remarkable had happened in recent times. It was the academics who were most of all thinking entirely along Latin lines. And academics developed the science of physics, for instance. They thought up physics, thinking it up entirely with their physical brains the way one does with the Latin language. When we were young, when I was the age of young Erbsmehl over there, for instance, we only learned the kind of physics that had been thought up with a Latin brain. That was all we learned then, the things thought up with the Latin brain. But much has happened since then, gentlemen. You see, when I was young the telephone was just being developed. It did not exist before that. Then came all the other great inventions which people today grow up with as if they'd always been there. They only came in the last few decades. Because of this, more and more people studied science who had not been drilled in Latin. This is a remarkable thing. For if you consider the scientific life of recent decades you'll find that growing numbers of engineers came into the world of science. They did not bother much with Latin and so their thinking did not become so automatic. This non-automated thinking was then also taken up by the others. And the result is that today many of the concepts, ideas, used in physics today are falling apart. They are most interesting. Professor Gruner³³ in Bern, for instance, spoke about a new orientation in physics two years ago. He said that all their concepts had changed in recent years.

You do not easily realize this because people will still tell you the things that were thought 20 years ago if you go to popular lectures today. They can't tell you the things that are being thought today because they are not able to think them themselves. If you take the concepts that were still valid 30 years ago, it is just as if you have a small piece of ice and it melts. The ideas are melting. They're no longer there if you want to think them through carefully. This is something we have to realize. The situation is that if someone who studied physics 30 years ago now looks at what has become of it, he feels like tearing out his hair, for he has to say to himself: 'I cannot manage this with the concepts I have learned.' That is the way it is. And why is it like this? It is so because in the course of evolution people have in recent years reached the point where the ether body should begin to think. And they don't want to do that. They want to go on thinking with their physical bodies. But the concepts simply fall apart in the physical body. And they don't want to learn to think with the ether body. They don't want to learn to think independently.

And you see, the situation is such that it became necessary for me to write this book on the philosophy of freedom in 1893. This book, The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,³⁴ is not really important because of what it says. Of course, the things it says are something one wanted to tell the world at the time, but that is not the most important point of it. The important thing about the book is that for the first time all of it is completely independent thinking. No one who is only able to think in a dependent way will be able to understand it. From the very beginning he has to get used, page by page, to go back to his ether body so that he'll actually be able to have the thoughts which are in this book. The book is therefore an educational tool—it is a most important educational tool—and it should be taken as such.

When the book was published in the 1890s, people had no idea what to do with it. For them, it was as if someone in Europe was writing in Chinese which no one could understand. It was, of course, written in German, but in thoughts that were completely unfamiliar, for anything Latin had deliberately been stripped away. For the first time care had been taken, consciously and deliberately, to have no thoughts in the book that were still under the Latin influence, but only completely independent thoughts. The physical brain is truly a Latin scholar. The human ether body is no Latin scholar. And one therefore has to make an effort to express in words the thoughts one has in one's ether body.

Let me tell you something else. People did, of course realize that all ideas had changed in recent decades. When I was young the teacher would write lots of things on the blackboard. We had to learn them to do well in our exams. Well and good. And now, in recent years, people have discovered exactly what Gruner said in his address, which is that all our concepts would be meaningless if there were no longer any solid but only fluid bodies. He imagined the whole world as a fluid body. And in that case our concepts would no longer have meaning, he said, and we'd have to think in a very different way.

Well, of course we'd have to think differently if there were no solid bodies any more! For then you'd no longer be able to do anything with all the ideas you learned at school. So if you were to grow really intelligent as a fish, let us say, and got the idea of going to a human university as a fish, you would learn something there which simply does not exist for fishes, seeing that they live in water. They only know solid bodies at the boundaries of their world, which they touch only to recoil immediately. If a fish were to start to think, therefore, its thoughts would have to be of a very different kind than those of a human being. But these are the kind of thoughts human beings, too, need today, for those other thoughts are slipping from their grasp, and they have to say to themselves: 'Wow, if everything were fluid, we'd have to have very different kinds of thoughts.'

However, gentlemen, did I not tell you of a stage in the development of the earth when no solids existed as yet, and everything was fluid, even the animals? I have told you about this. And surely you can understand that our present thinking cannot go back to such conditions. It simply cannot think them! Our present-day thinking therefore cannot tell us anything about the beginning of the world. And, we have to say that if the world were fluid, we'd have to have completely different ideas. There are no solid bodies in the world of the spirit! It is therefore quite impossible to enter into this world with the concepts in which people were drilled through the Latin language. We must first get out of the habit of using them.

You see, this is indeed a great secret. In the ancient Greek civilization, which preceded the Latin civilization—Roman civilization only developed five or six centuries before Christ, whilst Greek civilization was much earlier—in Greek civilization people still knew of the spirit. They were still able to see into the world of the spirit. When Roman civilization came, and with it the Latin language, the spirit was gradually eradicated. At this point I again have to say something you'll find rather strange, but you'll understand. Who used Latin through the centuries, nothing but Latin? The Church itself contributed most to this development. The fact is that the Church, which pretends to teach people about the spirit, has done most to drive the spirit out. And in the Middle Ages all universities were Church institutions. We do, of course, have to be grateful that the Church founded the universities in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but it founded them on the basis of Latin scholarship, in which there is no possibility of getting to the spirit. And so it came about that people gradually only came to have concepts relating to solid bodies. Just consider how this was with the Romans. They introduced these dry, objective concepts that had no spirituality. Because of this, everything then came to be seen in material terms. Just think—if the Greeks had described a rite such as Holy Communion they would not have described it as if the physical matter used for this were blood and flesh! This has come about through materialism. Even Holy Communion is seen in a materialistic way, because it is all connected with the Latin language.

The Latin language is entirely logical all the way. You see, I have worked with many people whose culture was completely Latin, even though they spoke German. To be clear about anything, they would quickly translate it into Latin, because all thinking in Latin has become logical in more recent times. But this logical thinking only relates to solid bodies. To enter into the world of the spirit we need fluid ideas.

There's the Theosophical Society, for instance. They also wanted to enter into the world of the spirit. In this Society people also say that man has a physical body, an ether body, and so on. But it is a materialistic view, for they merely think: 'The physical body is dense; the ether body is a little less dense, and the astral body even less so.' But that's always bodies, it will never be spirit, for to enter into the spirit one has to develop ideas that are always changing. You see, when I make a drawing I even take account of this in the way I draw. I may draw the physical body, let us say, and in that case try to reflect the way the human being is as a physical body. But when I try to draw the ether body, I would not dream of drawing a figure for you in the same way as before. Instead I try to show that the human being has an ether body which spreads like this [Fig. 16]. You have to know, however, that what I am drawing there is not so much the ether body I am drawing, not so much a picture of it, but only a momentary picture. It will be different the next moment. To draw the ether body, therefore, I'd have to draw it now, quickly erase it again, draw it differently again, erase, draw again, erase. It is in continuous motion. And with the kind of ideas people have today they cannot keep up with this. The most important thing for you tc consider, therefore, is that your ideas have to grow mobile, flexible. This is something people will first have to get used to. And it is necessary for people today to become completely independent in their thinking.

350-16.webp" alt="ether body on head">

But that is not all, gentlemen. Let me tell you something else. Human beings develop, as you know. Not much thought is usually given to their development in the course of later life, but attention is paid to it when they are young. People know perfectly well that a 4-year-old child cannot yet write, do sums or read, whilst an 8-year-old may be able to do these things. There you see that development is taking place. In later life, however, once we are ‘made men’, we are so arrogant that we no longer admit to being in a process of development. But we actually continue to develop all our lives, and it is quite remarkable how we develop. You see, our development proceeds like this. Let us assume this is a human being—just a rough sketch [Fig. 17]. When the child is very young, all development comes from the head. Once the second teeth have developed, and one is therefore older, all development comes from the chest. This is why one has to be so careful about children's breathing between their 7th and 14th years, making sure they breathe enough, and so on. So that would be the age of an older child—today we'd really have to use another word, for today's children will no longer accept it; from their 14th year on one really has to call them 'young ladies' and 'young gentlemen'. Well, let's say 'older children'. And it will only be when a person has reached sexual maturity that development comes from the whole human being, from the limbs. We are thus able to say that human beings are only in their full process of development when they have reached sexual maturity. This then continues. We develop further in our 20s and 30s. But you see, gentlemen—some of you can now see it in yourselves—when we get older, many things regress again. It is really true that many things will then deteriorate. It need not be like that if one has entered into a life in mind and spirit, but in normal human life there is deterioration when one gets older. It is actually the task of anthroposophy to see that in future people will no longer deteriorate in old age. But that, too, will of course have to happen slowly and gradually.

Now the situation is that there are people whose mental powers deteriorate quite dreadfully. But it is not the mind that deteriorates, but again only the body. It is interesting to note that it is often particularly intelligent people who show a terrible degree of deterioration in old age. You'll have heard, for example, that people consider Kant³⁵ to have been one of the greatest minds. Kant grew senile in his old age. His body deteriorated so much, therefore, that he was no longer able to use his wise mind. And that is how it is for many people. It is especially the intelligent people who have often grown really senile in old age. Again this is of course only a more powerful, intensive form of something that happens to everyone. As one gets older, one gradually is less able to use the physical body, apart from anything else because enormous amounts of calcium are deposited, mainly in the arteries. And the more calcium is deposited in the arteries, the less are we able to use the physical body. The degree to which development coming from the head went into the whole body up to one's 40th year, let us say, is also the degree of deterioration that happens. Coming from the 40s into the 50s, one needs to use the chest more again, and in old age one needs to use the head more again. But at that time, in old age, one should not use the physical head but the more subtle ether head. This, however, is something people do not learn to do with their Latin education. And it was above all the people who in recent decades had a materialistic Latin education who were most exposed to this senility.

We have to go back to childhood level in our old age, and this is something that gets quite powerful in some people. They grow mentally weaker and weaker, as it is put. The mind remains quite sound, however; it is only the body that grows weaker and weaker. In the end these people can no longer do the things they had been able to do first of all. Such things certainly happen. Let us say someone has grown old. He is now no longer able to do something he did previously. He can only do the things he did as an older child. Finally he'll also no longer be able to do these, but only play and understand the ideas he originally gained from play. There have actually been people who at a very advanced age were only able to understand the things their parents or nurse told them in their very earliest years. The saying that we grow childish in old age has its good reasons. We do truly return to our childhood again.

But so long as we have a life in the mind and spirit this is no misfortune, no misfortune at all. It is really a good thing. For as a child we are still able to use the ether body. When a child romps about, shouting and doing all kinds of things, it is not the physical body that does this—or at most only if the child has a tummy ache, but even then the tummy ache must first be transmitted to the ether body and astral body, so that the child moves because of the tummy ache. It definitely is not the physical body that is romping about there. Then you grow old and return to childhood level. You have gradually got out of the romping habit and now use the ether body which you used for romping about as a child for something better in your old age. It may be a good thing, therefore, that we go back again in this way.

This, then, would be the second thing. The first thing we have to learn in order to enter into the world of the spirit is the right way of thinking. We'll talk another time about the way one achieves this. Today let us first of all try and understand how these things go. The first thing is wholly independent thinking. It means abandoning much of what modern education offers, for modern education means the opposite of independent thinking, a thinking derived from Latin. Do not imagine that the thinking developed with socialist theories today is independent thinking! All of them have been learning from something that has come from Latin; they just did not know this. You know, a worker may decide to do one thing or another in the sphere of his will; but when he starts to think, he is using entirely middle-class concepts, and these have come from thinking in Latin. The first thing we need, therefore, is independent thinking.

The second thing is to learn to live not just in the present moment but always to be able to go back again into the life we lived whilst we were children. You see, someone wanting to enter into the world of the spirit will often have to say: 'Now discover how things were when you were a boy of 12. What did you do then?' And we need to do this not just superficially, in outer terms, but really imagine every detail. There's nothing more useful, for example, than to begin to say to yourself: 'Yes, I was 12 then—I can get quite a good picture of it. There was a pile of stones by the roadside and I climbed up on top. I fell off once. Then there was a hazel bush and I took out my knife and cut off branches, and I cut my finger.' To see again what one did many years ago, this will help us to enter into a condition where we do not just live in the present. Thinking the way people have learned to think today, you are thinking with your present physical body. But when you try to discover what you were at the age of 12, you cannot think with the physical body you then had, for it no longer exists. I told you that the physical body is a new one every seven years. You then have to think with your ether body. You therefore call up your ether body when you think back to something in the past, when you were 12 or 14 years old. This will get you into the inner activity that you need.

And we can above all get in the habit of thinking altogether differently from the way we usually think. You see, how do you think? Now you know we met at 9 o'clock today. I started by reading out the bit of paper with your questions. Then I considered a number of things, and we have now reached the point where we say: 'We have to think back to the life we knew when we were 12 or 14 years old.' Now when you get home you may, perhaps, if the matter is of special interest to you, think these thoughts through once more. Well, this is something one can do. Most people do this; they'll go through it again. But you might do something else. You might say: 'What did he say last?' The last thing he said was that one should think of one's earlier life, up to the age of 12 or 14. Before that he said one should be independent in one's thinking. And before that about the way Latin gradually came into people's lives. Even earlier he spoke of how someone who has not been of a sound mind will afterwards look back and say he had special experiences. He showed that people do not get mentally ill, but that only the body gets sick. You see, you'd now have gone through the whole lecture backwards.

Well, gentlemen, things do not go back to front in the outside world. I might perhaps have given the lecture backwards from the very beginning, but then you would not have been able to understand, for one starts from the beginning and develops the theme so that it is gradually understood. Once you've understood it, however, you can also think it through the other way round. But factual things don't go back to front, and so I come away from the facts. I then think like this: 'Just now I am not thinking the way things happen outside, but back to front.' This needs some effort. I have to grow inwardly mobile to think backwards. Just as someone must learn to use a telescope if he wants to look through it, so someone who wants to see into the world of the spirit must often think backwards, again and again think backwards. And one day he'll reach the point where he knows: 'Ah, this is where I enter into the world of the spirit.'

Once again you can see from this, gentlemen, that all your life you've got your physical body into the habit of thinking forwards. If you now start to think backwards, the physical body won't do it and something peculiar happens. When people ask again and again, 'How do I get into the world of the spirit?' the first piece of advice one gives—you'll also find it in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds—is to say: 'Learn at least to go back through the day's events; and then other things.' People have of course first of all learned to think with their physical body. They note this. They then make great efforts to think backwards, but they have only learned to think with their physical body, not with the ether body. And then the ether body goes on 'general strike'. Yes, it really is a general strike. And if people did not go to sleep so often when they think backwards, they would know: 'When I begin to think backwards I should get to the world of the spirit.' But they go to sleep the very moment they might begin to see, for the effort is too much for them. It therefore needs tremendous good will and all one's energy not to go to sleep. You need patience for this. It often takes years, actually. But you have to have patience.

You see, if someone were able to tell you the things you experience unconsciously when you've gone to sleep after thinking backwards, you'd see that it is something terribly intelligent. The stupidest people begin to have extraordinarily intelligent thoughts when they then go to sleep, but they don't know this.

So the first thing I told you was that one must first of all learn to think independently. It is something one can do. I won't say, for instance—not being conceited—that only my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity will serve the purpose, but it has been deliberately written in such a way that one will get in the habit of independent thinking.

Independent thinking, therefore.

Thinking back accurately to things that happened at the age of 10 or 12.

Or accurately thinking things one has learned over again, backwards.

With this, we have at least considered how we can tear ourselves away from the physical body; how we enter into the world of the spirit. And we'll continue with this on Saturday, taking the matter further, so that all four questions will gradually be resolved.

• 32. Christian Thomasius (1655-1728), philosopher and lawyer, the first university teacher to give lectures in German at Leipzig University in 1687.
• 33. Dr P. Gruner, professor of theoretical physics. Die Neuorientierung der Physik, vice-chancellor's address at the 87th anniversary of Bern University on 26 November 1921; Bern 1922.
• 34. Steiner, R., The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. A Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4). Tr. R. Stebbing. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1989.
• 35. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

Gentlemen, I said last time that we have several matters still to discuss. I would like to consider them today. Maybe during the Christmas holidays you could confer among yourselves and decide what should be brought up during the next lecture hour.

The human being has his senses for perceiving the world. We have examined the eye and the ear, considered the sense of touch, which is spread out over the whole organism, and have discussed the senses of taste and smell. All these senses are significant only for man's becoming acquainted with his surroundings and, as I have already explained, for enabling him to shape his body. But man does not live by virtue of the senses; he lives through the process of breathing. If you ask why he is an erect being, why his nose is in the middle of his face, for example, you have to answer that it is because of his senses. But if you look for the reason why he is alive, you have to consider his breathing, because the breath is related to all aspects of life. In one respect, human beings breathe just as the higher animals do, although many animals do breathe differently. A fish, for instance, breathes while swimming and living under water.

If we now look at human breathing we have first to consider the process of inhalation. The breathing process is initially one of inhalation. From the air around us we inhale the oxygen that is required for our existence. This then permeates our whole body, in which carbon in minute particles is deposited; or rather, in which it swims or floats. The carbon that we contain in our bodies is also found elsewhere in nature. As a matter of fact, carbon exists in a great many forms. For instance, carbon is found in coal and in every plant, which consists of carbon, mixed with water and so on, but carbon is the main component of the plant. The graphite in a pencil contains carbon, and the diamond, which is a valuable gem, is also carbon. The diamond is transparent carbon; hard coal is opaque carbon. It is rather interesting that something like coal exists in nature. It is certainly not elegant or attractive, yet is of the same substance as a valuable gem, which, depending on its size, for example, is fit for a crown. Coal and diamonds have the same substance in different forms. We, too, have in ourselves carbon of various forms.

When we breathe in oxygen it spreads out everywhere in our body and combines with the carbon. When oxygen combines with solid coal, a new gas, carbon dioxide, arises. This is a combination of oxygen and carbon, and it is this gas that we then exhale. Our life involves incorporating our body into the rest of the world by inhaling oxygen and exhaling carbon dioxide.

If we inhaled only pure oxygen, however, we would have to contain an immense amount of carbon, and the carbon dioxide would have to remain in us. Yes, we would be forever expanding, finally becoming gigantic, as big as the earth itself. Then we could always be inhaling. But we do not possess that much carbon; it must be constantly renewed. We could not survive if we only inhaled. We have to exhale to acquire carbon anew, and the carbon dioxide we produce is lethal. Indeed, if oxygen is life for us, carbon dioxide is death. If this room were now filled with carbon dioxide, we would all perish. Our life alternates between the life-giving air of inhalation and the deadly air of exhalation. Life and death are constantly within us, and it is interesting to see how they initially enter into the human being.

To comprehend this you must realize that bacteria and bacilli—microscopically small living beings—exist everywhere in nature. Whenever we move, multitudes of these little bacteria fly about us in the air. Countless tiny living beings exist within the muscles of animals. As I have already mentioned, they can rapidly increase in numbers. No sooner does one appear—particularly one of the smallest kind—then the next moment there are millions. The infectious diseases are based on their capacity for tremendous multiplication. These minute beings do not actually cause the illness, but a feeling of well-being is engendered in them when something is ailing in us. Like the plant in manure, these little beings feel well in the stricken organs of our body and like to remain there. Anyone who claims that they themselves cause disease is just as clever as one who states that rain comes from croaking frogs. Frogs croak when a rain shower comes because they feel it and stay in water that is stimulated by what is active in the rain, but they certainly do not cause the rain. Likewise, bacilli do not bring about a disease like the flu; they only appear whenever the flu appears, just as frogs mysteriously emerge whenever it rains.

One must not say, however, that research with bacilli has no use. It is useful to know that man is exposed to a certain illness, just as one knows that frogs croak when it rains. One cannot pour the baby out with the bathwater and say that it is unnecessary to examine the bacilli, yet one must realize that they do not cause the illness. One never gives a proper explanation by merely stating that for cholera there are these bacilli, for flu there exist these other bacilli, and so on. That is only a lazy way out for people who do not want to examine the actual causes of illnesses.

Now, if you take these infinitesimally small living creatures away from their habitat, they cannot continue to live. For example, cholera bacilli taken out of the human intestines die. This bacillus can survive only in the intestines of men or of animals like rats. All these microscopic creatures can live only in specific environments. Why? That these tiny beings need a specific environment is an important factor. You see, if you consider the cholera bacillus at the moment when it is within the human intestines, the force of gravity does not have as strong an effect on it as when it is outside. The force of gravity immediately ruins it when it is out of its element. Man, too, was initially a tiny living being just like these countless little creatures. As an egg, an ovum, the human being also was such a microscopic living being, such a miniature living creature. With this, gentlemen, we come to an important chapter.

Compare a cholera bacillus, which can exist only in the human intestines, with the human being. All these bacilli need to live in a place where they are protected from the earth. What does this imply? It means that an effect other than that of the earth influences them. The moonlight that shines sometimes in one way, sometimes in another has its effects on the earth, and it is indeed so that the moon influences all these living creatures. It can be seen that these creatures must be protected from the earth so that they can surrender themselves to the cosmos, especially to the influence of the moon. Now, in its earliest stage the human egg also surrenders to the moon's influence. It gives itself up to the moon just before fertilization. Just as the cholera bacillus exists in the intestines, so this tiny human egg exists in the female and is initially protected there. The female organism is so constituted, however, that the human egg is protected only in the beginning. The moment it passes too far out of the body it becomes vulnerable; then the earth begins to affect it.

Women discharge such human eggs every four weeks. At first they are given up to the moon's influence for a short time and are protected. But when the female organism dispatches the human egg during the course of the monthly period, it comes under the influence of the earth and is destroyed.

The human organization is so marvellously arranged that it represents an opposite to the bacilli. Cholera bacilli, for example, remain in the intestines and are careful not to venture too far out. Left to their own devices, they remain where they can be protected from the earth's influence. The human egg also is initially protected from the earth's influence in the mother's body, but then it moves outward because of the blood circulation of the mother, and comes under the influence of the earth's gravity. With the occurrence of the monthly period, which is connected with the moon's course and influence, an ovum is destroyed; the human ovum is really destroyed. It is not an actual human egg yet, however, for it has not been protected from destruction through fertilization.

What really happens through fertilization? If left only to the earth's influence, this human egg would perish. Through fertilization it is enfolded in a delicate, etheric substance and is protected from the earth. It is thus able to mature in the mother's body. Fertilization signifies the protection of the human egg from destruction by the earth's forces. What is destroyed in the infertile egg passes over into the environment; it does not just disappear. It dissolves in the totality of the earth's environment. Eggs that cannot be utilized for the earth disseminate in its atmosphere. This is a continual process.

We can now look at something that people rarely consider. Let us draw our attention to the herrings in the ocean. They lay millions upon millions of eggs, but only a few are ever fertilized. Those that are fertilized become protected from the influence of the earth. It is a little different in man's case, because he isn't a herring—at least not always [Play on words. In German, “Hering” is a very skinny person.]—but all these herring eggs that are not fertilized and are cast off in the ocean extricate themselves from the earth's influence by evaporation. If you consider the herrings and all the other fishes, all the other animals and also human beings, you can say to yourselves, “My attention is directed to something that continually arises from the earth into cosmic space.” Gentlemen, not only does water evaporate, but also such infertile eggs are always volatilized upward from the earth. Much more happens in cosmic space than materialistic science assumes.

If someone were sitting up there on Venus, for example, the vapours that arise and condense again as rain would hold little interest for him, but what I have just described to you, rising constantly into cosmic space, would be perceived up there as a greenish-yellow light. From this we may conclude that light emerges from the life of any given cosmic body. We will also be led to the realization that the sun, too, is not the physical body materialistic science pictures it to be but is rather the bearer of even greater, mightier life. It is as I have explained earlier; something that radiates light must be fertilized, just as the sun must be fertilized in order to radiate light through life. So then we have this difference: When a human egg is not fertilized it goes out, it evaporates into cosmic space; when it is fertilized it remains for awhile on the earth.

What happens is like inhalation and exhalation. If I only exhaled, I would give my being up to cosmic space as does the infertile human egg. Consider how interesting it is that you exhale, and the air that you have exhaled contains your own carbon. It is a delicate process. Just imagine that today you have a tiny bit of carbon in your big toe. You inhale, and oxygen spreads out. The small amount of carbon that today is in your big toe combines with the oxygen, and tomorrow this little particle of carbon is somewhere out there in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. That is really what happens. During his lifetime man constantly has in himself the same substance that the human egg contains when it is fertilized. If we only exhaled and never inhaled we would always be dying; we would continually be dissolving into the atmosphere. By inhaling we guard ourselves against death. Every time we inhale we protect ourselves from death.

The child that is still maturing in the mother's womb has come into being from the fertilized human egg and is protected from disintegration. The child takes its first breath only at the moment of birth when it comes into the world. Before that it must be supplied with oxygen from the mother's body. But now with birth something quite significant happens. At birth man for the first time receives from the outer world the capability to live. After all, man cannot live without oxygen. Although in the mother's womb he exists without oxygen from the outer air, he does get it from the body of the mother.

Thus, one can say that when man emerges from his mother's body and comes into the world, he actually changes his whole life process. Something radically different happens to it. He now receives oxygen from outside, whereas before he was able to assimilate it in the body of his mother. Just ask yourselves if there is a machine anywhere in the world that can supply itself with heat first in one way and then in another? For nine or ten months man lives in the body of his mother before he appears in the external world. In the womb he is supplied with what life gives him in a completely different manner from the way he does after he has taken his first breath.

Let us examine something else connected with this. Imagine that your sleep has been somewhat disturbed. You are awakened from a fitful sleep by a quite frightening dream in which you perhaps experience that you came home to a locked house and cannot get in. Someone in the house is expecting you so you struggle to unlock the door. You may have experienced something like this. In dreams we do indeed experience such conditions of anxiety.

Now, if you examine what actually happens when the human being has such nightmares, you always discover that something is amiss with the breathing. You can even experimentally produce such nightmares. If you take a handkerchief and plug up your mouth or cover your nose, you will dream the nicest nightmares as nightmares go because you cannot inhale properly.

It is rather strange that our having such conditions of anxiety depends simply on inhalation and exhalation, in other words, on oxygen and carbon. We can deduce from this that we live in the air with our soul element. We do not live in our muscles or in our bones with our soul element but rather in the air. It is really the case that our soul moves along with the air during inhalation and exhalation. Thus, we can say that the soul element seeks out the air in which it floats after the child has taken its first breath. Earlier, it had absorbed oxygen in a completely different way.

Where does the human being get oxygen prior to birth? In the prenatal state an actual breathing process does not yet exist. There is no breathing while the human being is in the mother's womb; everything takes place through the circulation. Various vessels that are torn away at birth pass into the embryo from the mother's body, and with the blood and fluids oxygen also passes into the embryo. With birth man carries his basic life principle out of the watery element into the air. When he is born he transposes the life principle from the fluid element in which it existed before birth out into the air.

From this you can conclude that before conception the human being is first an entity that, like the bacilli, is not fit for the earth at all. Initially he is a being alien to the earth. Later on, he is shielded from the earth's forces and can develop in the mother's body, but when he is actually born and emerges from the surroundings of the maternal womb, he is exposed to the forces of the earth. Then he becomes capable of life only by becoming accustomed to an activity that enables him to live in the air. Throughout his earthly life man protects himself against the forces of the earth by living not with the earth at all but by living with the air.

Just imagine how hard it would be if you had to live with the earth! A man who steps on a scale finds that he weighs a certain amount—a thin one less, a fat one more. Now imagine that you had to grab yourself by the hair and carry your whole body all the time, constantly carry your own weight. Wouldn't that be an exhausting chore! Yet, although you do indeed carry it around with you, you do not feel this weight at all, nor are you aware of it. Why? Your breathing protects you from the heaviness of the earth. In fact, with your soul you do not live in the body at all but rather in the breathing process.

You can now easily comprehend why materialistic science does not find the soul. Materialistic science looks for the soul in the body, which is heavy. In its research it dissects a dead body that no longer breathes. Well, science cannot discover the soul there, because the soul is not to be found in such a body. Materialistic science could find the soul only if our constitution were such that in walking around everywhere we would have to carry our own bodies, sweating profusely

from the effort. Then it would make sense to seek for the soul with materialistic means. But the way things really stand, it makes no sense at all. We sweat for other reasons. When we emerge from the maternal womb, we do not live within our solid substances. As it is, we are only ten percent solid substance. Nor do we live in our fluid element, to which we bestow life. With our soul we actually live in our breathing.

Gentlemen, please follow me now in a train of thought that belongs to the most significant matters of the present time. Let us picture to ourselves a human fetus. Through birth it emerges into the outside world and becomes a full-fledged human being who now inhales air with his lungs and exhales again through his nose. It should be quite self-evident to you that when a person is born, he actually lives with his soul in the breathing process. As long as he exists in the mother's womb, he lives in a watery element. In a sense, he emerges from the water into the air when he is born. As earthly man you can live only in the air, not in water. But before birth you lived in water, and up until the third week you were even shaped like a little fish to enable you to live there. You lived in water up to the time of birth, but the earth does not allow you to live in that element. What does it signify that before birth you lived in water? It means that your life cannot derive from the earth at all, that it must originate from beyond the earth because the earth does not permit you to live. We must lift ourselves up from the earth into the air to live.

Because we have lived in water up to the moment of birth, we may conclude that our life is not bestowed by the earth. Our life of soul is not given us by the earth. It is impossible for the earth to bestow this life of the soul on you. Hence we may understand that it comes from beyond the earth. When we comprehend how life is actually contained in the breathing process, and how life already exists in the embryo but in a fluid element, we immediately realize that this life has descended from a spiritual world into the mother's ovum.

People will frequently call such statements unscientific. Nevertheless, we can study a lot of science and reach the conclusion that what the illustrious scientists do in their science is much less logical than what I have just told you. What I have now told you is absolutely logical. Unfortunately, things are such in our age that children are already drilled in school to turn a deaf ear to something like this; or if they happen to hear it, they will say at most, “He's crazy. We've learned that everything grows out of the human egg.” Well, it is just as ridiculous as learning that the human head grows from a head of cabbage. A human head can grow from a cabbage no more than the human element, the whole human activity during life, can be derived from the human egg. But children are already taught these completely nonsensical things in school.

I have already given you an example of this. Even the smallest children are told that once the earth, along with the whole planetary system, was one huge primeval nebula. Of course, the nebula does nothing when it is still, and so it is made to rotate. It starts to revolve quickly, and as it turns it becomes thinner and thinner. Eventually individual bodies split off, and a round one remains in the middle. The children are shown with a demonstration how this can be imitated. The teacher takes a piece of cardboard, sticks a needle through it, and puts a small drop of oil into a glass of water. He now turns the piece of cardboard and the oil drop, which floats on top of the water, begins to move. It starts to rotate, and tiny oil drops split off. A large drop of oil remains in the middle. This is a little planetary system with its sun. You see, children—so he says—we can do it on a small scale. So it is quite plausible that there once existed a nebula that revolved, and from this nebula celestial bodies gradually split off, leaving the large star remaining the middle.

But now, gentlemen, what is the most important factor in this experiment? Why does the drop of oil rotate in the glass of water? Because the teacher turns the piece of cardboard. Likewise, a great cosmic teacher had to sit somewhere out there in the universe to turn things around, spinning off celestial bodies! Gentlemen, when from the beginning someone teaches children such things, they become “clever” as adults. When someone wants to be logical and expresses doubt, they call him a dreamer because they know how the world began!

You see, such thoughts contain absolutely no reality. This rotating, primeval nebula thought up by Kant and Laplace has no reality at all; it is really quite foolish. To postulate such rotating nebulas is really rather stupid. The only grounds for it are the supposedly spiral nebulas observed through telescopes. Out in the wide cosmic spaces there are indeed such spiral nebulas; that is correct. But if by looking out there with a telescope and seeing these spiral nebula, a man should say, “Well, yes, our whole solar system was once such a nebula too,” then he is about as clever as one who takes a swarm of insects in the distance for a dust cloud. This can happen, but the swarm of gnats is alive while the dust cloud is lifeless. The spiral nebula out in space is alive; it has life within it. Likewise, the whole solar system had its own life and spirituality in earlier times, and this spirituality continues to work today.

When the human egg is shielded in the body of the mother by fertilization, it can unite with the human spirit. When we gradually grow old, the heaviness slowly makes itself felt by the fact that our substances are seized by the earth's gravity. Suppose a person's digestion is amiss and, as a result, the life forces do not properly pass through it. Then all kinds of tiny solid particles form in the muscles. They become filled up with these small solid bodies, which are minute uric acid stones, and then we have gout. We begin to be conscious of heaviness, of gravity.

When we are healthy and oxygen invigorates us through our breathing, such uric acid deposits are not formed, and we do not become afflicted with gout. Gout occurs only if oxygen does not pass through our body in a truly invigorating manner and does not assimilate carbon correctly. If oxygen does not pass through our organism in the right way, carbon will cause all kinds of problems; then there will be present everywhere such minute particles in our blood vessels. We feel that as an effect of the earth in moving around. In fact, we have to be shielded from the earth. We remain alive only because we are constantly protected from the earth and its influences by the breathing process. The earth is not damaging for us only because we are constantly being shielded from it. We would always be sick if we were always exposed to the earth.

You see, in the middle of the nineteenth century, when natural science had its greatest materialistic successes, people were completely stunned by its accomplishments and scientists wanted to explain everything by way of what happens on the earth. These scientists were extremely clever, and they liberated man from much that had encumbered him. Nothing is to be said against them; they can even be praised but they were utterly stupefied by scientific progress and tried to explain the whole human being in such a way as if only the earth had an influence on him. They did not realize that when the earth's influences begin to take effect on man, he first becomes nervous and then becomes ill in some way. He is well only by virtue of being constantly shielded from earthly influences.

Eventually, however, man is overcome by these earthly influences. How do they make themselves felt? The earthly influences assert themselves because man gradually loses the art of breathing. When he cannot breathe properly anymore, he returns to his condition before conception. He dissolves into the cosmic ether and returns to the world from which he came. With his last breath, man sinks back into the world from which he emerged. When we correctly understand breathing, we also comprehend birth and death. But nowhere in modern science do we find the right understanding of breathing.

In sum, man first learns to live with the world through the female ovum, then learns to exist independently on the earth for a certain length of time by virtue of the male fertilization, and finally returns to the condition where he again can live on his own outside the earth. Gradually one learns to comprehend birth and death, and only then can one begin to have the right concept of what man is regarding his soul, of what is not born and does not die but comes from without, unites itself with the ovum in the mother, and eventually returns to the spiritual world.

The situation today is such that we must comprehend the immortal soul element, which is not subject to birth and death. This applies especially to those who are active in science. This, indeed, is necessary for mankind today. For hundreds and thousands of years, men have had a faith in immortality that they cannot possibly retain today because they are told all kinds of things that actually are nothing and fall apart in the face of science. Everything that a man is asked to believe today must also be a matter of knowledge. We must learn to comprehend the spiritual out of science itself, the way we have done here in these lectures. That is the task of the Goetheanum and of anthroposophy in general: to correctly understand the spiritual out of natural science.

You see, it is difficult to get people somehow to comprehend something new. It is Christmastime now, and people could say to themselves, “Well, we must find a new way to understand how the spirit lives in the human race.” If people would stop to think how the spirit lives in mankind, and if they would try to arrive at this understanding through real knowledge, we would find everything renewed. We could even celebrate Christmas anew, because we would observe this holiday in a manner appropriate for the modern age. Instead, on one hand, people continue to observe only what is dead in science and, on the other, they perpetuate the old traditions to which they can no longer attach any meaning. I would like to know what meaning those people who exchange gifts can still see in Christmas. None at all! They do it merely from an old custom. Side by side with this, a science is taught that is everywhere filled with contradictions. Nowhere does anyone wish to consider the fact that science presents something that can lead to the realization of the spiritual.

Today, one can say that if Christianity is to have any meaning at all, one must once again embark on attaining a real knowledge of the spirit. This is the only thing possible; it is not enough just to perpetuate the old. For what does it imply to read the Bible to people on festive occasions, or even to children in school, if along with this one tells the child that there was once a primeval nebula that rotated? The head and the heart come completely to oppose one another. Then man forgets how to be a human being on the earth because he no longer even knows himself.

Anyone is a fool who thinks that as human beings on the earth we consist only of what is heavy, of the body that is put on the scale and weighed. This part we do not need at all. It is nonsense to think that we consist of these material substances that can be weighed. In reality, we do not become aware of the body at all, because we shield ourselves from it in order to stay well. The curing of illness consists in expelling the earthly influences that are affecting the sick person. All healing is actually based on removing the human being from the earth's influence. If we cannot remove man from the earth and its influences, we cannot cure him. He then lies down in bed, allows himself to be supported by the bed and gives himself up to weight. When one lies down one does not carry one's own self.

So we have the old customs on one hand and, on the other, a science that does not enlighten man as to what he really is as a human being. Nothing positive can come from all this. It is true that the World War, with all the consequences that still afflict us today, would not have occurred if human beings had known something of the inhumanity beforehand. Even now, they do not want to know. Even now, they still want to get together at congresses without any new thoughts and just repeat the same old things. Nowhere are they able to conceive new thoughts. What at first existed in mankind as confused ideas became a habit and then became our social order today. We are not going to get anywhere in the world again until from within we really feel what in fact the human being is.

This is really what those who understand the aims of anthroposophy conceive of as Christmas. Christmas should remind us that once again a science of the spirit must be born. Anthroposophy is the best spiritual being that can be born. Mankind is much in need of a Christmas festival. Otherwise, it does away with the living Christ and retains only the cross of Christ. Ordinary science is only the cross, but once again we must arrive at what is living. We must strive for that.

Well, gentlemen, that is what I wanted to mention on this particular day in addition to the other things. With this, I wish you all pleasant holidays!

Good morning, gentlemen. Maybe one of you has thought of something for today's session?

Question: What should one think about the miracles told in connection with Moses in the Bible-the sea standing still?

Rudolf Steiner: Now you see, this was less a matter of there being a sudden miracle than of Moses⁹³ having a great deal of knowledge. He was not just the person presented in the Bible but had in fact studied at the Egyptian universities, which were the mysteries. At those schools students were taught not only about the world of the spirit but from a certain point of view also about the natural world. Now in the oceans we have ebb and flood, with the waters rising and falling again, and the point was that Moses knew how to arrange the passage across the Red Sea in such a way that he took the people across at a time when the sea had receded, exposing a sandbank that could be used. The miracle therefore was not that Moses held back the Red Sea and fought it, but that he really did know more than others and was able to choose the right moment. The others did not know this. Moses had worked it all out so that he got there at the right time. He knew how long it would take, or rather that they had to be quick, so that the sea would not take them by surprise. All this did, of course, seem like a miracle to the others. With such things we must always realize that they are based on knowledge, not some other kind of thing, but knowledge.

That is how it is with most things we are told of earlier times. The people were amazed because they did not understand the matter; they did not know. But if one knows that in those early times, too, there were some very clever people, one can find the explanation. Otherwise there is not much to explain here.

Maybe someone else has another question?

Question: Can the culture that streams from Tibet into the rest of Asia still be adequate for those people, or is it getting completely decadent?

Rudolf Steiner: Now you see, the culture of Tibet is very ancient; it really still comes from ancient Atlantean times. You just have to realize that there was a time once when Europe was largely submerged, with the water only getting less towards Asia. On the other hand you had land where the Atlantic Ocean is today. There was land then where today we take a boat from Europe to America. That was an early age, when land and water were distributed very differently from the way they are today.

In those days, five, six, seven millennia ago, the culture in Asia was the same as it was on this Atlantean continent which is today under the sea between Europe and America. Over there in Asia they had a culture that has survived in the clefts and underground caves of Tibet. When the sea came to the area between Europe and America and Europe began to rise, the Atlantean culture of that area was of course lost. But it survived over there in Tibet. However, this culture was really only appropriate to those ancient times when people lived under very different conditions than they do today. You have to realize that the air was not the way it is today, that humans were not as heavy as they are today but had much less weight, and the air was much denser. A dense mist really penetrated everything at that time, and because of this it was possible to live in a very different way.

People did not read or write in those days but they had signs. These would not be put on paper. They did not have paper then. Nor did they write them on parchment but they would scratch them into rock surfaces. Those rocks had been hollowed out by the people, and on the inside they would scratch their secret signs, as they called them. We really need to understand the signs they produced if we are to understand how they thought.

Now you may ask how it has been possible for these people to keep it so well hidden. Well, you know, the earliest form of architecture had nothing to do with building above ground but people would originally dig into the rocks, making their homes in the rocks. That was the earliest form of architecture. So we need not be surprised that this was also the earliest form of architecture in Tibet. But such skills gradually grew decadent, falling into decline. And the things that developed later in Tibet are such that they cannot really be used any more today, Tibetan culture being older than Indian culture. Ancient Indian civilization developed only after the earth had reached its present form. Tibetan culture was therefore very early. And in this Tibetan culture something has been preserved in a bad form that originally had a relatively good form. Above all the ruler principle has taken a not very acceptable form. The individual who is to rule Tibet is actually venerated as divine; and this veneration is prepared in advance. I would say the choice is made in a supersensible way, really. The Dalai Lama was chosen to be ruler in the following way. Long before, when the old Dalai Lama was still there and people realized that he might soon die, a family was identified somewhere and it was said: The new Dalai Lama must come from this family. That is how it was in Tibet in earlier times. These were not hereditary rulers, but priests—who were the real rulers—identified a new family from which a Dalai Lama was to come.

If a child was born in such a family it would be held available until the old Dalai Lama died. You can imagine that the worst kind of abuse was rife. If the old Dalai Lama was no longer wanted they would simply look for a child and say: The soul of the old Dalai Lama has to enter into the soul of this child. First he had to die, however. And the priests made sure that this happened at the right time. The people then believed that the soul of the old Dalai Lama had entered into the soul of the child. It was thus arranged that the whole of the populace really believed that the soul of any Dalai Lama had previously also been in the Dalai Lama who ruled thousands of years earlier. They thought it was always the same soul, and to them it was always the same Dalai Lama; he merely changed his outer body.

It was not like this in the original culture, but extraordinary mischief has developed out of it. You can see from this that the priests had gradually found ways of managing affairs in such a way that their supremacy was ensured. This does not mean, however, that one does not discover great scientific secrets which people knew in the early days. These are engraved in the rocks, but Europeans have only been granted access on the rarest of occasions. It is true, however, that one can discover the great scientific secrets people knew in the early days, and all it needs is to develop this knowledge in a new form.

The situation is like this. The knowledge that once existed, coming to people in misty dreams, is to be made available again today through the science of the spirit. This cannot happen in the East, however. You see, new knowledge, new insights will never be gained in the same way in the East as here in Europe, because oriental bodies are not made for this. The attempts one has to make to gain insights like those I have presented to you can only be done in the West and not in the East. Orientals are also much more conservative than Europeans; they do not want anything new, and the things we do here in Europe therefore do not impress them. But if you are able to say to them: Significant truths are to be found in those ancient crypts—which is the name for those rock caves—and they are ancient, this will make a tremendous impression on them.

Europeans also have some of this. Just look at the Freemason's lodges of the higher order, if you are able to get into them. As to anthroposophy—it interests them a little, for they, too, are concerned with supersensible things; but they do not take a serious interest. But if you say to them: 'This is something that has been found; it is ancient Egyptian wisdom or ancient Hebrew wisdom,' then they'll be pleased. They'll immediately take it up, for that is the way people are. New discoveries do not impress them much; but something really ancient, even if they do not understand it, makes a considerable impression on them.

We may therefore assume that ancient knowledge if found in Tibet would provide fresh impetus. For much has been lost also to the people of Asia, with the most important Asian civilization, Indian civilization, only arising at a later stage. So it would be possible for many of the things other people do not know about in Asia to be found in Tibet.

The people who live there do not have much opportunity to make these things properly known, for the old Tibetan priest rulers did nothing to make them known; they wanted to keep the ancient rulership for themselves. Knowledge is power if it is kept secret. Europeans who went to Tibet did not understand the things they found. So there is not much prospect of the genuine Tibetan truths being made known; they live on in ancient traditions. For much has come down to posterity, and one can certainly get an idea of what lies behind it all. But it is difficult to imagine that it will really become widely known. It has grown decadent, as you said in your question; but if you go back to the signs in the crypts and not to what the priests say, you would certainly be able to discover extraordinary things. It will however be extra220 ordinarily difficult to decipher them. It will be difficult to get at it without the science of the spirit. It can be deciphered using the science of the spirit, but there one discovers things for oneself, so the old things are not needed.

Question: Would it be possible for people in Europe to do something to help that downward-moving time stream in Asia to move upwards again?

Rudolf Steiner: That is a very nice question! For you see, if the people in Europe do nothing, the world will have to go into decline there. Over there in Asia—this will be obvious from what I have been saying—people hold on to the past. They do not know progress. You see that in China. China is at the same level as it was thousands of years ago. Long ago the Chinese had many things that were only discovered much later in Europe—paper, printing, and so on. But they do not accept progress but retain the old form.

The Europeans on the other hand, what do they do when they go to Asia? You know, the English gave the Chinese opium and such things in the first half of the nineteenth century. But until now the Europeans have not done anything to bring a real life of the mind and spirit to Asia. And it is difficult, of course, for these people simply do not accept it.

You see, the situation is interesting. As you know, European missionaries go there with European religion, European theology, and want to take European culture to Asia. This makes no impression whatsoever on the people of Asia. The missionaries speak to them of Christ Jesus as they see him. And the Asian person says: 'Well, if I look at my Buddha, he has much more excellent qualities.' So they are not impressed. They would only be impressed if one presented Jesus Christ to them the way he was presented here in these lectures some time ago, again in response to your questions. That would make an impression. But again one has to remember that Asians are conservative, reactionary, and initially suspicious.

It is a strange thing, gentlemen. You see, there are some who have studied the ancient wisdom. Over in Asia they have learnt something from Tibetan scholars, wise men, Tibetan initiates. The initiates themselves do not bother with the Europeans. But their students have done so. And this can really surprise one at times. I have told you a few things that will have surprised you, concerning the influence the universe has on human beings. It takes a great deal of time to investigate this fully. I can truthfully say that some of the things I am now able to tell you took 40 years until I was able to speak of them. These are things you do not find overnight, you have to look for them for years. And one then finds such things. One finds for instance that the moon has a population which is connected with the earth's population to such effect that reproduction is regulated by this, as I have told you. Truly, gentlemen, you do not find this along the avenues taken by present-day scientists, nor do you find it from one day to the next; you find it in the course of many years. That is the way it is. And then you have it. But then, when you have it, a strange light is suddenly cast on the things said by the students of oriental initiates. Before, you could not understand it at all. These people talk of moon spirits, for example, and the influence they have on the earth. European scholars will say it is all nonsense what they say. But when one finds these things for oneself one will no longer say it is nonsense. One is merely surprised how much those ancients knew thousands of years ago, things that have since been lost to humanity. It is a tremendous impression one may gain in this way. You investigate these things with tremendous effort and you then find that they were known in the past, though this was in a way people cannot understand today, not even those who speak of these things sometimes. So you gain respect, tremendous respect, for something that did exist in the past.

Now it would be necessary for Europeans who wanted to do something over there in Asia to study anthroposophy before they do it. For otherwise they'll find they cannot do anything there. Today's European science and technology does not impress the people of Asia, for they consider modem European science to be childish, something that is entirely superficial, and as to European technology—they have no need of it. They say: 'Why should we stand at machines? That is inhuman!' It does not impress them in the least, and they consider it an encroachment on their rights when people build railways and machines over there. Europeans do this. But the people there really hate it. So again that is not the way to do it. We must also learn something about earlier days. And in those earlier days people did have some feeling as to how one should proceed.

You see, why should it not be possible for today's European culture to do something over there in Asia? Someone did manage to do something with Greek culture over there in Asia. That was in the fourth century before Christianity was founded. Alexander the Great was the man. He did take a great deal of Greek culture to Asia. And it is there now. It even came back again to Europe by a roundabout route through Spain with the Arabs and the Jews. But how did Alexander manage to take those things to Asia? Only by not proceeding the way modern Europeans do. Europeans consider themselves to be the clever ones, people who are altogether clever. When they go somewhere else they say: 'They're all stupid. We have to take our wisdom to them.' But the others do not know what to do with it. Alexander did not do that. He first of all went wholly into what the people had themselves. And very slowly, little by little, he let something flow into the things those people had. He respected and valued the things the others had.

And that is altogether the secret of how to bring something to some place. There is much to be said against the British, and it is an infamous story in British history that they took opium to China, from sheer egotism. But one nevertheless has to say that not so much perhaps in the sphere of mind and spirit, though actually even there, the British always respect the customs and traditions of the nations they go to, especially in the economic sphere. They simply know how to respect it. The Germans are probably least able to do so. Because of this the Germans do not do well as colonizers, for they never consider what it feels like for the people where they want to have their colonies. They are expected to accept instantly what the Germans themselves have in central Europe. And that will not do, of course. As a result things have gone in such a way that the British are happily maintaining their colonies, even if the people rise at times, and all kinds of things, but economically the British still have the upper hand. The British do at least know how to consider the nature and character of foreign nations. The British also go to war in a very different way from the Germans. How does a German think of waging war against some nation? I don't want to speak against war at this point, but merely tell you how the Germans see it. They think one just has to set out and conquer. The English do not do this. They first of all observe, and perhaps even stir up another nation and let them fight among themselves. They'll look on for as long as possible, that is, they let people sort themselves out among themselves. That is how it has always been. And that is how the British Empire was established. The others, you see, never quite know what is going on. The British have a certain instinct to respect the particular nature of foreign nations. And this has made it possible for them to gain such a colossal economic advantage.

I am sure no one in England would have got the idea to do what people are now doing in Germany, which is to introduce the rentenmark currency. There is of course a major money problem in Germany at the moment. No one has any money. But when the rentenmark was introduced—as a stable currency—people thought it was something terribly clever. It was, of course, the silliest thing one could do. For as long as all the paper money in Britain has gold coverage, the rentenmark must immediately lose value. If the thing is done artificially, as is not the case with a stable currency, it just means that the price of goods will rise. You see, people have the rentenmark in Germany, and it is always worth one mark. But, gentlemen, you can only buy as much for it now as you used to get for 0.15 mark, and so it is in reality worth no more than 0.15 mark. It is a deception to say it will not go down and be stable. And that is how it is. People think in Germany, but they have no feeling for reality.

A nice little anecdote tells us how different nations study the natural history of a kangaroo, let us say, or some other animal, perhaps in Africa. The Englishman goes to Africa—like Darwin did, who travelled around the world for his nature studies⁹⁴—and observes the animal in its natural habitat. He can see how it lives there and what natural conditions are. The Frenchman immediately removes the animal from the desert and puts it in a zoo. He studies the animal in the zoo, not in its natural environment but in a zoo. And what does the German do? He does not bother to look at the animal at all. He sits down in his study and begins to think. The thing in itself does not interest him—according to Kant's philosophy, as I told you—only the ideas in his head. He spends some time thinking things out. And having thought for a sufficiently long time he says something. But it is not in accord with reality. But the thing is also only relative where the British are concerned. No one in modern Europe knows the ways used in the past to influence human beings—for instance the way Alexander the Great apparently left things exactly as they were but little by little, slowly, introduced things that came from Greece in Asia. No one in Europe knows how to do this today. The first thing Europeans would have to learn, therefore, would be not simply to take things to Asia which are there already, but above all to go to some trouble to find out what the people of Asia know. They would then learn about Tibetan wisdom, for example. And they would then not speak of it to people in the old way but present it in a new way. But they would be using Tibetan wisdom. Thus respecting the local culture they would achieve something. This is something which Europeans in particular have to learn.

Europe is really a vast edifice of theories. Europeans produce theories, and basically have no practical approach. That is the way it is. Europeans also do business in a theoretical way, simply by thinking things up. This will work for a time. It never works in the long run. But Europeans above all fail in spreading their culture of mind and spirit because they do not know how to enter into the reality of other people.

Here, too, the science of the spirit must bring a change. But how does this go, even today? You see, gentlemen, it is important that in anthroposophy we make it a way of life, absolutely practical. One has to start somewhere, of course. What did I do myself, gentlemen? I once wrote about Nietzsche,⁹⁵ and people thought I had become a follower of Nietzsche. If I had written the way people would have wanted me to write, the way many people thought I would write, I would have written: Nietzsche is an absolute fool; Nietzsche has put forward foolish notions; Nietzsche must be fought to the death, and so on. I would thus have written in opposition to Nietzsche. It would have meant that I could be thoroughly abusive, almost as abusive as Nietzsche himself, but there would have been no point to it, it would have been useless. I gave careful consideration to Nietzsche's teaching; I presented the things Nietzsche himself had said, and only let anthroposophical views flow into it. Today people come and say: 'He used to be a follower of Nietzsche; now he is an anthroposophist.' But it was exactly because I am an anthroposophist that I wrote about Nietzsche the way I did.

I wrote about Haeckel⁹⁶ using the same approach. I could of course have written that he was an out-and-out materialist, knowing nothing of the spirit, and so on. Well, gentlemen, again there would have been no point to it. Instead I took Haeckel as he was, and this is what I have always done. I have not denied the truth but taken things as they were. And this was at least a first step, through anthroposophy, in doing what should be done if our culture is to be taken to Asia. Going to India, one would need to know above all: 'That is what the ancient Brahmin said, and this is what the Buddhists say.' You have to tell people of Buddhism and Brahmanism, but also bring in the things you believe are needed. This is what the followers of Buddha themselves have done, for instance. Shortly before Christianity came into existence, the followers of Buddha spread Buddhism in the Euphrates and Tigris region, but they did it the way I have shown you, talking to people in a way they could understand. In antiquity people were not concerned with getting their own theories accepted in a completely selfish way. Asians have no understanding for European self-willedness. The relationship between Brahmins and Buddhists is not the same, for example, as that between Roman Catholics and Protestants. Roman Catholics and Protestants are highly theoretical in their teaching today, with one believing one thing, the other another. Probably the only difference between Brahmins and Buddhists is that Brahmins do not venerate the Buddha, whilst Buddhists do. And so they really deal with each other in a very different way from the way Protestants and Roman Catholics deal with one another in Europe.

You see, one must have a sense of reality if one wishes to disseminate culture. It really makes one want to cry to see how Europeans are going on in Asia today. Everything Asia has of its own also goes to perdition in the process, and nothing is gained at all. The big problem is, of course, that Europe is also in decline now, and cannot really get out of the damage caused by civilization unless people decide to accept a genuine culture of mind and spirit. Many do not yet believe this today. And so the situation is that all the people who have come to Europe from Asia, for example, have found the Europeans to be utterly barbaric.

You have probably also heard that all kinds of Asians, cultivated, clever Asians, are going about in Europe; but they all believe the Europeans to be barbarians. Because people in Asia still have much of the old knowledge of the spirit, ancient perception of the spirit, anything Europeans know seems childish to them. Everything which is so much admired in Europe seems incredibly childish to the people in Asia.

You see, the Europeans developed in such a way that their great technological advances are really all very recent. The following is interesting, for instance. If you go to some museums where they have things of early European times, you will sometimes be greatly surprised. You'll be amazed, let us say, in Etruscan museums, where they have things coming from Etruscan civilization, a civilization that once existed in Europe, and you'll find they had great skill in treating teeth, for example. They treated teeth very skilfully, putting in fillings made of stone. All this was lost in Europe, and barbarism truly came to Europe. At the time when the great migrations took place, in the third to seventh centuries ad, everything had really fallen into barbarism in Europe. And it was only after this that things were regained. Today we are, of course, amazed at all the advances made. But those things did exist before. Where did they come from in those early times? They came more or less from Asia. The Asians then also lost the technology they used to have, though some of it still exists in China. But in the cultural sphere Asians truly are ahead of Europeans even today. And if we can find nothing in Europe which is better than the culture which exists in Asia, why should one have missions and that kind of stuff over there in Asia? That is totally unnecessary.

The sharing of culture will only be meaningful when Europeans themselves have a science of the spirit. If Europeans are able to give the Asians a science of the spirit, then the Asians will perhaps also accept European technology. But you see, for the moment they only see that apart from their technology Europeans know nothing at all. Educated, scholarly Asians are particularly impressed if they come to Germany, for instance, and you tell them about Goethe and Schiller. Then they prick up their ears. Such a scholar will say: 'Goethe and Schiller may not have been as clever and as wise as the ancient people of Asia, but they certainly had good minds.'

In the nineteenth century all this declined and disappeared rapidly. Today a Chinese scholar will see a German merely as a horrible barbarian. He'll say that German culture perished with Goethe and Schiller. The fact that the railways were invented in the nineteenth century will not impress him. Goethe's Faust will impress him to some extent, but he'd still say the great people of Asia were much wiser. This is something Europeans should begin to realize. They need to realize that Asians do not care for the kind of thinking we have in Europe. They want images, like the images you see in the monasteries of Tibet. Asians want images. The abstract notions Europeans have are of no interest to them, they make their heads hurt, and they do not want them.

A symbol such as the swastika [drawing], the ancient sun cross, was widely known in Asia, and the old Asians still remember it. Some Bolshevik government people had the clever idea of making the ancient swastika their symbol, just like the nationalists in Germany. This makes much more of an impression on the Asians than anything by way of Marxism. Marxism is a set of ideas that have to be thought, and this does not impress them. But such a sign, that does impress them. And if people do not know how to approach these people and come to them with things that are completely alien, nothing will be achieved at all.

Again we see that what matters above all in Europe is to have real insight again, a science of the spirit.

You may also have heard that a gentleman called Spengler—he even gave a lecture in Basle once, I have heard—has published a work called The Decline of the West, that is, the decline of Europe and America.⁹⁷ In it he speaks of everything that exists as European culture having to perish. Well, gentlemen, the superficial culture we have today must indeed perish. Something new has to come from inside, out of the spirit. But the outer, superficial culture must go. And because of this the book speaks of the decline of the West. One cannot really say anything against what Spengler says about the decline of the West, about what will be necessary with regard to external things. But he then speaks of the things he sees as positive, as something new. And what does he speak of, gentlemen? The Prussian spirit. He says Europe should take up the Prussian spirit. In his view, that should be the future civilization of Europe.

Now I do not know how he spoke in Basle, for I cannot imagine that he would have made a good impression on the Swiss by showing them that the Prussian spirit should rise from the decline. But you can see how an important man, a clever man like Spengler is able to see quite clearly that the existing civilization must perish. But, he says, brute force should rule in future. He is quite open about this: in future there can only be the conqueror, brutal and powerful.

If that is the most widely read book today, for Oswald Spengler is most widely read in Germany today, and an Oriental, an Asian compares what it says with his own culture, he will have to say to himself: 'That is one of the cleverest people in Europe,' and if he also has his own knowledge of the spirit—dreamlike, in the ancient way—he has to say: Well, what kind of people are these most clever Europeans? They have nothing to give us!

Gentlemen, that is the crux of the matter. And when the question is asked as to what Europeans can do to counter the downward-moving time stream in Asia, we simply have to say: The situation in Europe is such that Europeans must first of all find themselves, gain their own culture of mind and spirit, having lost it at the time of the great migrations. A true culture of mind and spirit was lost in those early Christian centuries. What came to Europe was not the deeper Christianity but words, really and truly words. You can see it particularly from the way Luther then translated the Bible. What did he make of the Bible? An incomprehensible book! For if you are honest you cannot understand Luther's Bible. You can have faith in it; but it cannot really be understood because that was already a time in Europe when people no longer knew of the spirit. There is spirit in the Bible. But it must be translated spiritually. But the things you find in the German Luther Bible, for example, are incomprehensible if one is honest about it. And it is really the same in all areas, except for wholly superficial insight into nature, but this does not really take us into the reality of the world. And if Europeans want to do something in Asia, my answer to the question must be: They will be able to do something once they have really found themselves in the spirit.

I have to go to Paris now, gentlemen. I'll tell you when we'll be able to continue.

• 93. Moses (thirteenth century bc).
• 94. Darwin, Charles (1809–82).
• 95. Steiner, R., Friedrich Nietzsche, Fighter for Freedom, tr. M. Ingram deRis, Englewood, NJ, 1960.
• 96. Steiner, R., 'Haeckel and his Opponents' (in GA 30).
• 97. Spengler, Oswald (1880-1936), German philosopher, considered that civilizations and cultures to be subject to growth and decay just as human beings are. The Decline of the West (1918–1922).

A few questions were put to me last time. I will now answer them, but in a somewhat different order than they were asked. The questions are:

What is the relationship between coming to see the secrets of the universe and one's conception of the world and of life?

How far must one go before one finds higher worlds on the path of natural science?

Do the forces from the cosmos influence the whole of humanity?

What connection do plants have with the human being and the human body?

These are, of course, very complicated questions and so I would like to organize my remarks in such a way that the answers emerge gradually. One cannot do otherwise with such complicated questions because if you ask, How can I come to see the secrets of the universe?—this means, How can I arrive at a true spiritual science? Now, you must not imagine that this is something easy to do nowadays. Most people, when they hear that something like Anthroposophy or spiritual science exists, think to themselves: Very well, if that is so, I too will acquire for myself the capacity to see the spirit. I will manage it within a week then I will be able to know everything for myself.

Needless to say, it is not as simple as that. One has to realize that a great deal is required to master even ordinary science. In order to undertake the simplest observations, one must first learn how to use the instruments. Of course it is comparatively easy to use a microscope, but if one wants to investigate something with the help of a microscope one cannot simply say: I will now put a piece of muscle or the like under the microscope and look into it; then I will know what goes on in the muscle. If you were to proceed like that, you would see nothing. To see something under a microscope, one must first prepare the slides. A piece of muscle is no use by itself: one must make very thin slices with a fine razor, and sometimes a little must be removed and another cut made so that finally one has a very thin film. And very often even then the microscope does not help. For if you have such a sliver of muscle or cell under the microscope, you will probably still see nothing. What one must do is ask oneself: How can I make visible what is under the microscope? Then, often, what one must next do is color what one wants to see with certain dyes to make it visible. But then one must realize one has changed something. One has to know how it would be if one had not changed it. But these things are still really quite simple.

If one wants to observe the stars with a telescope one must first learn how to handle a telescope, although this is much simpler than a microscope. You know there are people who set up telescopes in the streets for people to look through. By itself, this does not help much. For this again requires lenses and a clock, which in turn one must then also learn to handle, etc. These are only examples to show you how complicated it is to investigate the simplest things in the physical world.

Now, to investigate the spiritual world is really much more difficult, for more preparation is necessary. People imagine they can learn to do it in a week. But this is not so. Above all, one must realize that one has to activate something one has within oneself. What ordinarily is not active must be made active.

To make things clear for you I must explain that in all investigation of the spiritual world, as in normal science, one must frequently start with some knowledge of what is not normal. You can only learn how things really are if you know how they are when they are not normal. I once gave you a particular example of this. We have to consider this because people in the outside world call people mad who investigate the spiritual world, however normal they may be. We must therefore set about our investigations in such a way that in the end we arrive at the truth. Of course one must not think one can achieve anything by concerning oneself overmuch with what is diseased and abnormal, but one can learn much from it.

For instance, there are people who are not normal because they are, as is said, mentally deranged. What does this mean? There is no worse word in the world than "mentally deranged" (geistesgestört) for the spirit can never be deranged. Consider the following case for instance: If somebody is deranged for twenty years—this happens—and afterward recovers, what has occurred? Perhaps for twenty years this person says that he is being persecuted by others—that he suffers, as one says, from paranoia—or he says that he sees all kinds of specters and apparitions which are not there, etc. This can continue for twenty years. Now somebody who has been deranged for twenty years can become normal again. But in these cases you will always notice one thing. If someone was deranged for three, five or twenty years and recovers, he will not be quite the same as he was before. Above all you will notice that he will tell you, after he has recovered, that throughout the time he was ill he was able to look into the spiritual world. He will tell you all sorts of things that he saw in the spiritual world. If one then pursues the matter with the knowledge one has gained of the spiritual world as a completely healthy person, one finds that some of what he says is rubbish but. that also much of it is correct. This is what is so strange, someone can be deranged for twenty years, recover, and then tell you that he has been in the spiritual world and has experienced these things. And if one knows the spiritual world as a healthy, normal person, one must admit that he is right in many instances. If you speak to him during his mental ill-ness, he will never be able to tell you anything sensible. He will tell you the nonsense he experiences. People who are mentally disturbed over a long period do not actually experience the spiritual world during their illness. They have not experienced anything of the spiritual world. But after they have recovered they can, in a certain way, look back to the time they were ill, and what they have not experienced appears to them like glimpses into the spiritual world. This conviction that they have seen much of the spiritual world only appears when they have recovered.

One can learn much from this. One can learn that the human being contains something that is not used at all during the time he or she is insane. But it was there, it was alive. And where was it? It was not in the outer world for the person told you that the sky was red and the clouds green—all kinds of things. The sick one saw nothing properly in the outer world, But the inner being, which the person cannot use in the deranged state, is in the spiritual world. When he or she can use the brain again and can look back on what the spiritual being lived through, then spiritual experiences come.

From this we see that a human being who is mentally ill lives spiritually in the spiritual world. The spirit in the person is perfectly healthy. What, then, is ill in a mentally ill patient? It is, in fact, the body: the body cannot use the soul and spirit. When a person is called mentally ill, there is always something ill in the body, and obviously when the brain is ill one cannot think properly. In the same way, when the liver is ill, one cannot feel properly.

This is why "mentally ill" (geisteskrank) is the most incorrect expression that one can use, for "mentally ill" does not mean that the spirit (geist) is ill. It means the body is so ill that it cannot use the spirit which is always healthy. Above all you must be quite clear that the spirit is always healthy. Only the body can become ill, with the result that it cannot use the spirit in the right way. When someone has a diseased brain it is like having a hammer that breaks with every blow. If I say to someone who does not have a hammer, You are a lazy fellow, you are not even able to strike a blow—then this is, of course, nonsense. He could well strike a blow but he does not have a hammer. It is therefore nonsense to say someone is mentally ill. The spirit is perfectly healthy, only it lacks the body through which to act.

A good example of what one can learn in this way comes from considering how our thinking works. From what I have told you, you will see that, though one has the spirit, one needs a tool for thinking, and this is the brain. In the physical world one needs the brain. It is not particularly clever of materialism to say one needs a brain. Obviously one needs a brain. But this postulate explains nothing about the spirit. We can also learn that the spirit can completely withdraw itself. In the case of mental illness the spirit does withdraw completely. And it is important to know this, because this shows that people today—and now I am going to tell you something that will really surprise you—cannot think at all. They delude themselves that they can think, but they cannot. I will show you why people cannot think.

You will object: But people go to school; nowadays one already learns to think quite well even in grade school. So it seems, at least. Nevertheless, people today cannot think at all. It only appears as if they could. In grade school we have grade school teachers. These have also learned something; ostensibly they have also learned to think. Those from whom they have learned have, as one says in Stuttgart, "swollen heads." These are very clever people according to present ideas. They have been to a university. Before they went to university they went to high school. There they learned Latin. If you think back a bit you might say: But my teacher did not know Latin. Perhaps not, but he learned from teachers who did. And what they learned was entirely under the influence of the Latin language. Everything one learns today is under the influence of the Latin language. You can see this from the fact that when someone gives you a prescription, he writes it in Latin, It stems from the time when everything was written in Latin. It is not so long ago, only thirty to forty years, that if one went to university one was obliged to write one's thesis in Latin. Everything one learns today is under the influence of Latin. This is because in the Middle Ages, up to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries—this is not so long ago—all teaching was in Latin. For instance the first person to lecture in German was a certain Thomasius¹ in Leipzig. This was not long ago, it was in the seventeenth century. Everywhere lectures were given in Latin. Everybody who learned anything had to go through the Latin language and in the Middle Ages everything one could learn was in Latin. If one wanted to learn anything new one had to learn Latin first. You may protest: But surely not in the grade schools. But there were no grade schools before the sixteenth century. Only gradually, as the vernacular was adopted by science, did grade schools come into existence. So, you see, Latin influences our whole thinking. All of you think like people who have learned to think under the influence of Latin. And if you were to say that the Americans, for instance, could not have learned Latin so long ago—well, today's Americans emigrated from Europe! They too depended on the Latin language.

Latin has a certain peculiarity. It was developed in ancient Rome in such a way that it thinks by itself. It is interesting how Latin is taught in high schools. One learns Latin; and then one learns thinking, correct thinking according to Latin syntax. So one's whole way of thinking does not depend on anything one does, but on what the Latin language does. You understand, don't you, that this is something quite significant. Anybody today who has learned something does not think for himself: the Latin language thinks in him, even if he has not learned Latin. Strange as it is, one meets independent thinking today only in the few people who have not been to school very much.

I am not suggesting that we return to illiteracy. We cannot do this. In no realm do I advocate going backward, but one must understand how things have become as they are. Therefore it is important to be able to go back to what the simple person knows, though he has not had much schooling. He is not very forthcoming because he is used to being laughed at. In spite of everything, it is important to know that contemporary human beings do not think for themselves, but that the Latin language thinks in them.

You see, as long as one cannot think for oneself, one can in no way enter the spiritual world. This is the reason why modern science is opposed to all spiritual knowledge; because through Latin education people can no longer think for themselves. This is the first thing to learn—independent thinking. People are quite right when they say: the brain thinks. Why does the brain think? Because Latin syntax goes into the brain and the brain thinks quite automatically in modern humanity. What we see running round the world are automatons of the Latin language who do not think for themselves.

In recent years something remarkable has happened. I hinted at it last time, but you may not have noticed it, because it is not easy to see. Something remarkable has happened in recent years. Now, as you know, besides the physical body, we have the etheric body. (I will not speak for the moment of the rest.) The brain belongs to the physical body. The etheric body is also in the brain and one can only think independently with the etheric body. One cannot think independently with the physical body. One can think with the physical hotly only when—as with Latin—the brain is used like an automaton. But as long as one only thinks with the brain, one cannot think anything spiritual. To think something spiritual one must start to think with the etheric body—with the etheric body which, in the case of the mentally ill, is often not used for years. It has to be awakened to an inner activity.

This is the first thing one has to learn: to think independently. Without independent thinking, one cannot enter the spiritual world. But it is, of course, necessary first of all to find out that one has not learned to think for oneself in one's youth! One has only learned to think what has been thought for centuries through the use of the Latin language. And if one really grasps this then one knows that the first condition for entry into the spiritual world is this: Learn to think independently!

Now we come to what I wanted to point out when I said that in recent times something remarkable has happened. The people who, more than anyone else, thought along Latin lines were the people of learning—those who, for instance, created physics. They worked it out with thoughts derived from Latin and with the physical brain. When we were small, when I was about as old as young E. here, we learned physics which was worked out with a Latin brain. We only learned what was thought out with a Latin brain. Since then a lot has happened. When I was small the telephone was just being invented. Until then it did not exist. After this followed all the other great inventions that everyone now takes for granted as if they had always been there. They only appeared in the last decades. This caused more and more people to become involved in science who were not Latin trained. This is rather a strange thing. When one looks into the scientific life of the last decades one finds more and more technicians of this kind involved in science. These people had not had much to do with Latin and so their thinking did not become so automatic. And this non-automatic thinking was then picked up by others. This is why today physics is full of concepts and ideas that fall apart. They are most interesting. There is, for instance, Professor Gruner² in Bern who two years ago spoke about the new direction in physics. He said that all the concepts have changed in the last years.

The reason that one does not notice this is because if you listen to lectures on popular science people tell you what was thought twenty years ago. They cannot tell you what is thought today because they themselves cannot think yet. If you take the thoughts of thirty years ago as valid, it is just like taking a piece of ice and melting it; the ideas melt away. They are no longer there if one wants to follow them exactly. We must see this. If someone learned physics thirty years ago, and sees what has become of it today, he wants to tear his hair out, because he has to confess: I cannot handle all this with the concepts I have learned. This is how it is. And why? Because in recent years, through the development of humanity, the human being has reached the point when the etheric body is supposed to begin to think, and human beings do not want this to happen. They want to go on thinking with the physical body. The concepts fall apart in the physical body, and yet human beings do not want to learn to think with the etheric body. They do not want to think independently.

Now you see why, in the year 1893, it became necessary for me to write the book The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity,³ It is not the contents of this book that are so important, though obviously at that time one wished to tell the world what is said in it, but the most important thing is that independent thinking appeared in this book for the first time. No one can possibly understand this book who does not think independently. From the beginning, page by page, a reader must become accustomed to using his etheric body if he would think the thoughts in this book at all. Hence this book is a means of education—a very important means—and must be taken up as such.

When this book appeared in the nineties people did not know at all what to make of it. It was as if someone in Europe wrote Chinese and no one could understand it. It was of course written in German, but people were completely unaccustomed to the thoughts expressed in it, because all connection with Latin was purposely cast off. For the very first time, quite consciously, it was intended that there should be no thoughts in it that are influenced by Latin, but only independent thoughts. Only the physical brain is a Latin scholar. The etheric body is no Latin scholar. And therefore one has to try to express such thoughts in a language one can only have in the etheric body.

I will tell you something else. People have noticed, of course, that concepts have changed in the last decades. When I was young the professor filled the whole blackboard with writing. You had to learn it all and then you did well in your exams. But recently, people have begun to notice what Gruner said in his inaugural lecture: none of our concepts would remain valid if there were no solid bodies, only fluids. If the whole world were liquid, as Gruner imagined in his lecture, then our concepts would be invalid and we would have to think quite differently.

Yes, of course one would have to think differently if there were no solid bodies. In that case you, as you sit here, could do nothing with the concepts you learned in school. If you, say, as a fish, suddenly became clever and had the idea that, as a fish, you wanted to attend a human university, then you would learn something that does not exist for a fish, because it lives in water. A fish only has a boundary sensation of a solid body; the moment it touches the body, it is immediately repulsed. So, if a fish began to think, it would have to have thoughts quite different from those a human being has. But a human being likewise needs such different thoughts, because other thoughts escape him, so that he has to say to himself: If everything were liquid I would have to have quite different thoughts. Well, have I not told you about the condition of the earth when there were no solid bodies and when everything was fluid, even the animals? I have told you of this condition. Can you not then understand that present day thinking cannot reach back to these conditions? It cannot think them. So present day thinking cannot make anything of the beginning of the world. Naturally, then, a human being today begins to say to himself: Good heavens! If the world were fluid we would have to have quite different concepts. But in the spiritual world there are no solid bodies. So, with all the concepts with which Latin has gradually schooled us, we are unable to enter the spiritual world. We must wean ourselves of these concepts.

Here is another hidden truth. In Greek times, which preceded the Latin era (the Latin era only began in the fifth or sixth century B.C. but the Greek period is much older), in Grecian times there was still a knowledge of the spirit, One could still see into the spiritual world. When Rome emerged with the Latin language, this was gradually extinguished. Now I must again say something you will find curious, but you will understand it. Who has used Latin, only Latin, throughout the centuries? More than anyone, the Church. It is precisely the Church that claims to teach humanity about the spirit that has contributed the most to drive out the spirit. In the Middle Ages all universities were ecclesiastical. Of course one must be grateful to the Church for founding the universities in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but it founded them in Latin, and Latin thought has no possibility of attaining the spirit. And so it gradually came about that human beings only have concepts relating to solid bodies. Just look at the Romans, they only introduced dry, prosaic and unspiritual concepts into the world. And this was the reason that all ideas became so material. How would the Greeks have described the sacrament of the Eucharist? They would certainly not have described it as if the elements were actually blood and flesh. This stems from materialism. So even the concept of the Eucharist has become materialistic and this is connected with the Latin language.

Latin is entirely logical. I have worked with many people who were Latin in their whole attitude to life, although they spoke German. If one wanted to make something clear one quickly translated it into Latin, because since the time of Christ only in Latin does one think logically. But this logical thinking only applies to solid bodies. If one wants to enter the spiritual world one needs fluid concepts.

There is for instance the Theosophical Society. It also wanted to reach the spiritual world. The Theosophical Society says that man has a physical body, an etheric body, etc. But these people are materialistic because they think the physical body is dense, the etheric body is a little thinner and the astral body thinner still. But all these are still bodies, they never become spirit. If one wants to reach the spirit one has to find concepts which are constantly changing.

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Even when I draw something on the blackboard you will notice that I take this into consideration. When I draw the physical body I try to portray physical man as he is. But if I try to draw the etheric body, I would never dream of representing it in the same way. I would do it like this. The human being has an etheric body which expands.

But you must know that this is not so much the etheric body, but the picture of one instant. In the next moment it is different. So if I wish to draw the etheric body, I would have to draw, quickly wipe it off, draw differently, again wipe it off, draw again and wipe it off. It is in constant movement. With the concepts we have today, we cannot catch up with these movements. This is what you have to keep in mind, concepts must become mobile. People must get into the habit of it, This is why it is necessary that thinking become completely independent.

But this is not enough. I will tell you something more. As you know a human being develops, but one does not usually notice it. However, when a person is quite young, one does notice it. One knows that a child who is only four years old can neither write nor read nor do sums. An eight year old child can perhaps do these things. Here one can see development. But in later life when we have made our way, we are so terribly superior that we don't admit that we can still develop. But we do, throughout our lives, and it is remarkable how we develop. Our development goes like this: Imagine this is man:

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I will draw him diagrammatically. When the child is quite young its development proceeds from the head. After the change of teeth, the development proceeds from the chest. Therefore one must watch how a child between seven and fourteen breathes—that it breathes adequately, etc. So this is a picture of the older child. (Nowadays one would have to say it differently. Children do not like to be called children any more. From fourteen onward one must call them "young ladies" and "young gentlemen.") Only at puberty does the development proceed from the limbs and from the whole human being. So one can say that only when one has reached puberty is one developing from the whole being. And this goes on throughout our twenties and thirties. But when one becomes older—some of you can already see it in yourselves—there is a certain retrogression. This need not be the case if one has adopted a spiritual mode of life, but in normal life there is a certain retrogression as one gets older. It is just the task of Anthroposophy to see to it that in the future one does not regress as one gets older. Slowly and gradually this must happen.

Now there are people whose mental capacities diminish alarmingly. But the mind, the spirit, cannot diminish. It is again only the body. It is interesting that often it is the most brilliant people who regress very much in old age. You may have heard that Kant was reckoned to be one of the wisest men, but in old age he became feeble-minded. His body regressed so much that he could not express his wise mind any more. And so it often is. Especially the very intelligent become feeble-minded in old age. It is an exaggerated form of what happens to everybody. Eventually in old age there comes a point when one can no longer use the physical body. The reason for this is mainly be-cause the arteries harden with excessive deposits of calcium, And the more this happens, the less one can make use of the physical body. As, up to the fortieth year, development proceeds from the head into the whole body, so, in the same degree, the process reverses. As one proceeds from the forties to the fifties one comes back to using the chest more, and in old age one goes back to using the head. So if one becomes really old, one again has to use one's head much more. But now one would have to use the finer head—the etheric head. But this is not learned in Latin education. And it is just those who, in the last decades, had a materialistic Latin education who were most strongly affected by senility.

In old age one must go back to childhood. There are people in whom this is very noticeable. They become mentally weaker and weaker. The mind, the spirit, however, remains completely intact. Only the body becomes weaker and weaker. In the end such people can no longer do the things they first learned to do in life. Such things happen. Let us say somebody gets old. He can no longer do the work he used to do. He can only do what he did as an older child. Finally he cannot even do this. He can only play and can only understand ideas he learned when playing. There are even very old people who can only understand what their parents or their nurse told them in the very first years of their lives. The saying about returning to second childhood is well founded. One really does return to childhood.

Actually it is not a misfortune, that is, if one has developed a spiritual life. In fact it is rather fortunate, for as long as one is a child, one can use one's etheric body. If a child tears around and shouts and does all kinds of things, this is not done by the physical body—except if it has a stomachache, but even then the stomachache has to be transferred to the etheric and astral bodies so that the child throws itself about as a result. What tears around is not the physical body. Now one grows old and returns to childhood. Gradually one has learned not to tear around any more, but one no longer uses the etheric body like a child, but for something more sensible. So it can be fortunate that one returns to childhood.

This is the second point. The first was that in order to enter the spiritual world one has to learn to think in the right way. We shall have to speak further about how one achieves this. The matter is very complicated. Today we have to concentrate on the question why there has to be independent thinking. One must break away from much in modern education, for what one learns in modern education is not independent thinking, it is Latin thinking. Do not imagine that the thinking emerging from socialist theories being developed today is free thinking! It has all been learned from what originally came from Latin, but people do not know it. The worker may have this or that intention in his will, but when he begins to think he thinks in bourgeois concepts and these originate in Latin thinking. So the first thing one has to learn is independent thinking. The second thing is that one must learn not only to live in the present moment, but to be able to turn back into the life one led in childhood. If you want to penetrate into the spiritual world you must continually remember to ask yourself how it was when you were twelve years old. What did you do? One must not do this superficially, but imagine it in great detail. Nothing is better than to begin to try to picture: Oh yes, there I was twelve years old—I can see it quite clearly—there was a pile of stones by the roadside and I climbed up on it. Once I fell off it. There was a hazel bush and I took out my pocket knife and cut off some branches and cut my finger. It is important really to visualize what one did so many years ago; in this way one gets away from just living in the present. If you think the way one learns to think today, you think with your present physical body. But if you turn back to when you were twelve, you cannot think with your physical body as it then was, for it is no longer there (I told you the physical body is renewed every seven years) so you have to think with your etheric body. If you think back to something that happened twelve or fourteen years ago, you call on your etheric body. This is the way to call up inner activity.

Above all, one should get accustomed to think in a new way, different from one's usual thinking. How do you think? You know we met here at nine o'clock. I began by reading to you the questions on the slips of paper. Then I proceeded with various observations and we have now arrived at saying: We have to think back into the life we lived when we were twelve or fourteen years old. Now when you get home, you can, if you find it really interesting, think through these thoughts again. One can do this. Most people do it. They go through it once again. But you can do something different. You can ask yourself: What did he say last? The last thing he said was that one should think back to one's early life, to the age of twelve or fourteen years. Before that he said one has to have independent thinking. Earlier still he described how Latin gradually took over. Before that, how a person who was mentally ill for a time and then looks back on it, says he has experienced extraordinary things. It was further explained to us how the inner being cannot be mentally ill—only the body can be ill. Now you have run backward through the whole lecture.

But in the world things do not run backward. I could possibly have given you the lecture backward in the first place, but then you would not have understood it. One has to begin at the beginning and then look at the whole as it gradually unfolds, but once one has understood it, one can think it backward. But things do not run backward. So I tear myself free from things. I say: Just to be contrary, I will think things exactly not the way they go in the outer world, but I will think them backward. This requires a certain strength. When I think backward I have to make myself inwardly active. A person who wants to look through a telescope has to learn how to handle it. In the same way a person who wants to see into the spiritual world must learn how to handle it. He must think backward many times. One day the moment will come when he knows: Ah, now I am entering the spiritual world.

You see, throughout your whole life you have accustomed your physical body to thinking forward, not backward. When you begin to think backward your physical body does not take part in it. Something strange happens. This is the first advice to those who ask: How can I reach the spiritual world? You can also read this in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment.⁴ What is said there repeatedly is: At least learn to go backward through the course of the day; then other things, People have, of course, only learned to think with their physical body. They notice this and have to make a great effort to think backward, but they have only learned to think with the physical body, not with the etheric body. Now there is an all-out strike by the etheric body; yes, a real "general strike." And if people would not fall asleep so easily, they would know that, if they began to think backward, they would arrive at the spiritual world. But the moment the vision begins, they fall asleep. People fall asleep, because the effort is too great. So one must exert one's entire will and all one's strength not to fall asleep. In addition, one must have patience. Sometimes it takes years, but one must have patience.

If somebody could tell you what you experienced unconsciously when you went to sleep after thinking backward, you would see that it was something very wise. The most stupid people begin to have extraordinarily wise thoughts in their sleep, but they do not know anything about it.

So today I have drawn your attention to the fact that one must first learn to think independently. Well, one can do this. I do not want to say—for I am not a conceited fool—that only my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity serves this purpose, but it was quite consciously written in a way that would lead to independent thinking. Independent thinking; thinking backward accurately over things that happened when you were ten or twelve years old, or over other things one has experienced—with these we have at least begun to describe how one tears oneself free from the physical body and how one finds one's way into the spiritual world.

We will pursue this further and eventually deal with all four questions.

• 1. Christian Thomasius (1655-1728), philosopher and jurist, delivered the first lectures in the German language at Leipzig University in 1687.
• 2. Dr. P. Gruner, Professor of Theoretical Physics, gave the Presidential Address, entitled New Guidelines for Physics (1922)," at the eighty-seventh Founder's Day celebration of the University of Bern on the 26 November, 1921.
• 3. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (also called The Philosophy of Freedom). First published in German in 1894 and in English in 1916, this basic work of Rudolf Steiner exists at present in two English editions: Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, New York, 1986 (translated by William Lindemann) and Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1988 (translated by Rita Stebbing).
• 4. Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. First published in book form in German in 1909. English editions appeared in 1909 and 1910. Two versions are currently available in English: Anthroposophic Press, Hudson, New York, 1983 (translated by Henry B. and Lisa D. Monges); and Rudolf Steiner Press, London, 1985 (translations by Max Gysi (1909) and Clifford Bax (1910) revised by D.S. Osmond and C. Davy).