The Nature of Color

 

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland

Lectures to the Workmen

February 21, 1923

In order, gentlemen that the last question may be thoroughly answered. I will, as far as possible, say something about colors. One cannot really understand colors if one does not understand the human eye, for man perceives colors entirely through the eye.

Picture to yourselves, for instance, a blind person. A blind person feels differently in a room that is lighted and in a room that is dark. Though it is so weak a matter that he does not perceive it, yet it has a great significance for him. Even a blind person could not live perpetually in a cellar, he would need the light. And there is a difference if one brings a blind man into a bright room with yellow windows, or into a dark room, or into a fairly light room which has blue windows. That acts quite differently on his life. Yellow color and blue color influence life quite differently. But these are things which one learns to understand only when one has grasped how the eye is affected by color.

Now from what I have hitherto put before you, you will perhaps have realized that two things are most important in man. The first is the blood, for if man were not to have blood he would have to die at once. He would not be able to renew his life every moment and life must be every moment renewed. So if you think away the blood from the body, man is a dead object.

Now think away the nerves too: man would no doubt look just the same, but he would have no consciousness; he could form no ideas, could will nothing, would not be able to move.

We must therefore say to ourselves: For man to be a conscious human being he needs nerves. For man to be able to live at all he needs blood. Thus blood is the organ of life, the nerves are the organ of consciousness.

But every organ has nerves and has blood. The human eye is in fact really like a complete human being and has nerves and blood. Imagine that here [a drawing was made] the eye protrudes, and in the eye little blood-arteries, many blood-arteries spread out. And many nerves too spread out. You see, what you have in the hand, that is, nerves and blood, you have also in the head.

Now think: the external world which is illumined works upon the eye. By day at any rate the world in which you go about is illumined, but it is difficult to form an idea of this wholly-lighted outer world. You get a true idea when you imagine the half-lighted world in the morning and evening, when you see the red of dawn and evening. Dawn and the sunset glow are particularly instructive.

For what is actually there in the glow of dawn and evening? Picture to yourselves the sunrise. The sun comes up, but it cannot shine on you direct as yet. The sun comes when the earth is like this—I am now drawing the apparent path, but that does not matter (in reality the earth moves and the sun stands still, but how we see this makes no difference). The sun sends its rays here [drawing] and then here. So if first you stand there, you do not see the sun at dawn, you see the lit-up clouds. These are the clouds and the light falls actually on them. What is that actually? This is very instructive. Because the sun has not quite risen, it is still dark around you and there in the distance are the clouds lit up by the sun. Can one understand that?

If you stand there you are seeing the illumined clouds through the darkness that is around you. You see light through darkness. So that we can say it is the same thing at dawn and sunset—one sees light through darkness. And light seen through darkness—as you can see in the morning and evening glow—looks red. Light seen through darkness looks red.

Now I will say something different. Imagine that dawn has gone by and it is daytime. You see freely up into the air, as it is today. What do you see? You see the so-called blue sky. To be sure, it is not there, but you see it all the same. That certainly does not continue into all infinity, but you see the blue sky as if it were surrounding the earth like a blue shell.

Why is that? Now you have only to think of how it is out there in distant universal space. It is in fact dark. For universal space is dark. The sun shines only on the earth and because there is air round the earth the sunbeams are caught and make it light here, especially when they shine through watery air. But out there in universal space it is absolutely black darkness. So that if one stands here by day one looks into darkness, and one should actually see darkness. But one does not see it black, but blue, because all round there is light from the sun. The air and the moisture in the air are illumined.

So you see quite clearly darkness through the light. You look through the light, through the illumined air into darkness. And therefore we can say: Darkness through light is blue.

There you have the two principles of the color-theory which you can simply get from observation of the surroundings. If you thoroughly understand the red of dawn and evening glow you say to yourself: Light seen through darkness or obscurity is red. When by day you look out into the black heavens, you say to yourself: Darkness or obscurity seen through light—since it is light around you—is blue.

You see, men have always had this quite natural view until they became “clever.” This perception of light seen through darkness being red, and darkness through light being blue, was possessed by ancient peoples over in Asia when they still had the knowledge which I have lately described to you. The ancient Greeks still had this concept, and it lasted through the whole Middle Ages until the 14th. 15th, 16th, 17th centuries when people became clever. And as they became clever, they began not to look at nature but to think out all sorts of artificial sciences.

One of those who devised a particularly artificial science about color was the Englishman Newton. Out of cleverness—you know how I am now using the word, namely quite in earnest—out of special cleverness Newton said something like this: Let us look at the rainbow—for when one is clever one does not look at something happening naturally every day: dawn, sunset, one looks at the specially unusual and rare, something to be understood only when one has gone further. However. Newton said: Let us look at the rainbow. In the rainbow one sees seven colors, namely, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. One sees them next to each other in the rainbow:

Blackboard 1

When you look at a rainbow you can distinguish these seven colors quite plainly.

Now Newton made an artificial rainbow by darkening the room, covering the window with black paper, and in the paper he made a tiny hole. That gave him a very small streak of light.

Then he put in this streak of light something that one calls a prism. It is a glass that looks like this [drawing], a sort of three-cornered glass, and behind this he set up a screen. So he then had the window with the hole, this tiny beam of light, the prism and behind it the screen. Then the rainbow appeared with the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet colors. What did Newton then say?

Newton said to himself: The white light comes in; with the prism I get the seven colors of the rainbow. Therefore they are already contained in the white light and I only need to draw them out.

You see, that is a very simple explanation. One explains something by saying: It is already there and I draw it out.

In reality he ought to have said: Since I set up a prism—that is. a glass with a cornered surface, not a regular glass plate—when I look through it like this, there is light made red through darkness, and on the other side darkness made blue through light—the blue color appears. And in between lie in fact gradations. That is what he ought to have told himself.

But at that time the aim in the world was to explain everything by seeking to find everything already inside that from which one was really to explain it. That is the simplest method, is it not? If, for example, one is to describe how the human being arises, then one says: Oh well, he is already in the ovum of the mother, he only develops out of it. That is a fine explanation!

We don't find things as easy as that, as you have seen. We have to take the whole universe to our aid, which first forms the egg in the mother. But natural science is concerned with throwing everything inside, which is the simplest possible way. Newton said that the sun already contained all the colors and we had only to draw them out.

But that is not it at all. If the sun is to produce red at dawn, it must first shine on the clouds and we must see the red through darkness; and if the sky is to appear blue, that is not at all through the sun. The sun does not shine into the heavens: it is all black there, dark, and we see the blue through the illumined air of the earth. We see darkness through light, and that is blue.

The point is to make a proper physics where it could then be seen how in the prism on the one side light is seen through darkness and on the other darkness through light. But that is too tiresome for people. They find it best to say that everything is within light and one only draws it out. Then one can say too that once there was a giant egg in the world, the whole world was inside, and we draw everything out of it.

That is what Newton did with the colors. But in reality one can always see the secret of the colors if one understands in the right way the morning and evening glow and the blue of the heavens.

Now we must consider further the whole matter in relation to our eye and to the whole of human life altogether. You see, you all know that there is a being which is especially excited through red—that is, where light works through darkness—and that is the bull. The bull is well known to be frightfully enraged by red. That you know.

And so man too has a little of the bull-nature. He is not of course directly excited through red, but if man lived continually in a red light, you would at once perceive that he gets a little stimulation from it. He gets a little bull-like. I have even known poets who could not write poetry if they were in their ordinary frame of mind, so then they always went to a room where they put a red lampshade over the light. They were then stimulated and were able to write poetry. The bull becomes savage: man by exposing himself to the red becomes poetic! The stimulation to poetry is only a matter of whether it comes from inside or from outside. This is one side of the case.

On the other hand you will also be aware that when people who understand such things want to be thoroughly meek and humble, they use blue, or black—deep black. That is so beautiful to see in Catholicism: when Advent comes and people are supposed to become humble, the Church is made blue; above all the vestments are blue. People get quietened, humble; they feel themselves inwardly connected with the subdued mood—especially if a man has previously exhausted his fury, like a bull, as for instance at Shrove Tuesday's carnival. Then one has the proper time of fasting afterwards, not only dark raiment, black raiment. Then men become tamed down after their violence is over. Only, where one has two carnivals, two carnival Sundays, one should let the time of fasting be twice as long! I do not know if that is done.

But you see from this that it has quite a different effect on man whether he sees light through dark that is red, or darkness through light, that is blue.

Now consider the eye. Within it you have nerves and blood. When the eye looks at red, let us say at the dawn or at something red, what does it experience? You see, when the eye looks at red then these quite fine little blood-arteries become permeated by the red light, and this light has the peculiarity of always destroying the blood a little. It therefore destroys the nerve at the same time, for the nerve can live only when it is permeated by blood. So that when the eye confronts red, when red comes into the eye, then the blood in the eye is always somewhat destroyed and the nerve with it.

Blackboard 2

When the bull is faced with red it simply feels: Good gracious—all the blood in my head is destroyed! I must defend myself!—Then it becomes savage because it will not let its blood be destroyed.

Well, but this is very good—not only in the bull, but in man and in other animals. For if we look at red and our blood becomes somewhat destroyed, then on the other hand our whole body works to bring oxygen into the eye so that the blood can be re-established.

Just think what a wonderful process takes place there. When light is seen through darkness—that is, red—then the blood is destroyed, oxygen is absorbed from the body and the eye vitalized through the oxygen. And now we know through the renewal of life in our eye: There is red outside. But in order that we may perceive this red, the blood and the nerve in the eye must be a little destroyed. We must send life, that is, oxygen, into the eye. And by our own vitalizing of the eye, by this waking up of the eye we notice: there is red outside.

Now you see, man's health too actually depends on his perceiving rightly the reddened light, on his always being able to take in reddened light properly. For the oxygen which is drawn out of the body vitalizes then the whole body and man gets a healthy color in the face. He can really reanimate himself.

This refers not only to a person who is healthy and able to see, it applies as well to one whose eyes are not healthy and who does not see: When the light works through the bright color then he is vitalized in the head, and this vitalizing acts again on the whole body and gives him a healthy color. So when we live in the light and can take in the light properly we get a healthy color.

It is very important tor people not to be brought up in dark places where they can become lifeless and submissive. People should be brought up in light, bright places with yellowish-reddish light, where they also properly assimilate the oxygen in them through the light.

But you see from this that everything connected with the element of red is actually connected with the development of man's blood. When we look at red the nerve is actually destroyed.

Now just think: We see darkness through light, that is, blue. Darkness does not destroy our blood, it leaves our blood unharmed. The nerve too is undestroyed since our blood is in order. The result is for man to feel himself thoroughly well inwardly. Since blood and nerve are not attacked by blue, man feels thoroughly well inside.

And there is really something subtly refined in creating submissive meekness. When, let us say, the priests there above at the altar are in their blue or their black vestments, and the people sit below and gaze at them, the blood-arteries and nerves in the eye are not destroyed and naturally the people feel very well. It is actually directed to the feeling of well-being of the people.

Do not imagine that that is not known! For they still have their ancient science. The more modern science has only arisen with the men of the Enlightenment, in such men as, for instance. Newton.

Thus we can say: Blue is what sends through man a feeling of well-being, when he says to himself (it is all unconscious, but he says it inwardly): There alone I can live—in the blue. There man feels inwardly himself; in red, on the other hand, he feels as if something were to penetrate into him. One can say that with blue the nerve remains undestroyed and the body sends the feeling of well-being into the eye and hence into the whole body.

That is the difference between the color blue and the color red. And yellow is only a gradation of red, and green is a gradation of blue. So that one can say: according to whether nerve or blood is active, the more sensitive is man to red or to blue.

Now you see, one can apply that to substances. If I want to look for a red for painting, to produce a red color which contains the substances that stimulate man to develop oxygen inwardly, then I gradually arrive at the fact that to get red color for painting I must test the substances of the outer world to find how much carbon they contain. If I combine carbon in the right way with other substances, I discover the secret of making a red for my painting.

If I use plants for getting colors for paints then above all it is a matter of so organizing my processes, diminishing, consuming, and so on, that I obtain the carbon in the paint in the right way. If I have the carbon in it in the right way, then I get the bright, the reddish color.

If on the other hand I have substances which contain much oxygen—not carbon but oxygen—then I obtain the darker colors, such as blue. When I know the living element in the plant then I can really create my colors. Imagine that I take a sunflower: that is quite yellow, a bright color. Yellow is near to red, that is, light seen through darkness. If I now treat the sunflower in such a way as somehow to gel into my paint-color the right process that lies in the flower, then I have a good yellow. Even the outer light cannot have much against it, because the blossom of the sunflower has already taken from the sun the secret of creating yellow. If I therefore get the same process into my artist's color as there is in the blossom, then if I get it thick enough, I can use it normally as paint.

But let me take another plant, the chicory, for instance, the blue flower that grows on the wayside—it grows here too. If I have this blue plant and want to prepare a paint from the flower, I cannot do it, I get nothing from it. On the other hand, if I treat the root in the right way, there is a process in it which actually makes the blossom blue.

When the blossom is yellow then something goes on in the blossom itself which makes yellow; when the blossom is blue, however, the process lies in the root and it only presses upwards towards the flower. So if I want to produce a blue paint from the indigo-plant, where I get a darker blue, or from the chicory, this blue flower, I must use the root. I must treat it chemically till it yields me the blue color.

In this way, through real study, I can find out how to obtain paints from the plant. I cannot do so in Newton's way; he simply says that everything is in the sunlight and one has only to draw it out. (One can apply that at most to one's purse; what I spend for a day I must have in the purse in the morning.) That is how the quite clever people picture it, like a sack in which everything is lying. That, however, is not the case.

We must know, for instance, how the yellow is in the sunflower or in the dandelion. We must know how the blue is in chicory. The processes which make the chicory or the indigo׳ plant blue lie in the root, whereas the processes that make the sunflower or the dandelion yellow lie in the flower.

And so I must imitate chemically, in a chemistry become living, the flower-process of the plant and get the bright, light color. I must imitate the root process of the plant and there obtain the dark color.

You see, what I have related here is plain to the real human understanding; whereas as a matter of fact this business (in the rainbow) with the red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, is a rarity.

Now when Goethe lived the affair had got to the point where people generally believed in what Newton had taught, namely, the sun is the great sack in which lie the so-called seven colors. One need only tempt them out, then they come to light. Everyone believed that; it was taught and in fact is still taught today.

Goethe's nature was not one to believe everything immediately. He wanted to convince himself a little about things that were taught everywhere. People generally say that they do not believe anything on authority. But when it comes to the point of crediting what is taught from the professorial chair, then people are today frightfully credulous, they believe everything that is taught. Goethe did not want to believe everything straightaway, so he borrowed from the university in Jena the apparatus, the prisms and so on which provide the proof. He thought: Now I will do exactly what the professors do in order to see how it actually is.

Well, Goethe did not get down to it immediately and had the apparatus rather a long time without doing anything. He just did something else. So the time became too long for the Hofrat Büttner who needed the apparatus and wanted to have it fetched back. Goethe said: Now I must do the thing quickly—and at least, as he was already packing up, looked through a prism. He said to himself: The rainbow must look beautiful on the white wall if I look through there; instead of white, red, yellow, green and so on must appear. He therefore peered through, anticipating with delight that he would now see the white wall in these beautiful colors,—but he saw nothing: white as before, simply white. Naturally he was extremely surprised and asked himself what was behind it. And his whole theory of color arose out of this.

Goethe said: One must now control the whole affair again. The ancients have said light seen through darkness = red, darkness through light = blue. If I gradate the red somewhat it becomes yellow. If I make the blue go up to red, then it becomes green on the one side and violet on the other. These are gradations. And he then worked out his color theory and in fact better than it existed in the Middle Ages.

Now today we have a physicist's color-theory with the sack from which the seven colors come, which is taught everywhere. And we have a Goethean color-theory which understands the blue of the heavens rightly, understands rightly the morning and evening glow as I have been explaining to you.

But there is a certain difference between the Newtonian and the Goethean theory. For the most part other people do not notice it, for other people look on the one hand to the physicists: there the Newtonian theory of color is taught which stands in the books everywhere. One can very clearly picture to oneself what appears there in the rainbow as red, orange, yellow, green and so on. Well, but there is no prism there! However, one does not reflect further. The Newtonians certainly know, but they do not admit, that when one looks through the rainbow on the one side, then one sees darkness through the sun-illumined rainbow; sees on the other side the blue. But then one also sees in front the surface where one sees light through darkness, and on the other side the red. One must explain everything therefore by the simple principle: light through darkness is red; darkness through light is blue.

But as I have said, people on the one hand see everything as the logicians explain it to them: on the other hand they look at pictures where the colors are used. Well, they do not ask further about the red and the yellow and so on; they do not bring the two things together.

But the painter must bring them together: one who wants to paint must connect them. He must not merely know: There is a sack and the colors are within it—for he has not got the sack anywhere. He must obtain the right thing from the living plant, or living substances, so that he can mix his colors in the right way.

So this is the position today: painters really reflect (—there even are painters who reflect, who do not simply buy their colors): but those painters who reflect upon how they are to obtain these colors and how they should use them, they say: Yes, with the Goethean color-theory one can do something; that tells us something. With the Newtonian color-theory, the theory of the physicists, we painters can do nothing.

The public does not bring painting and the physicists' theory of color together, but the painter does! He therefore likes the Goethean color-theory. He says to himself: Goodness! We don't bother about the physicists: they say something in their own field. They may do what they like; we keep to the Goethean color-theory. The painters look on themselves as artists and not as having to encroach on the teaching of the physicists. That is in fact uncomfortable, enmities arise, and so on.

But that is how things stand today between what is in the books about color and what is true. With Goethe it was simply the defense of truth which impelled him to oppose the Newtonians and the whole modern physics. And we cannot really understand nature without coming to Goethe's color-theory.

Hence it is quite natural that in a Goetheanum Goethe's theory of color should also be vindicated. But then if one does not remain in some religious or moral sphere but also intervenes in the smallest single part of Physics, then one has the physicists' whole pack of hounds upon one.

So, you see, the defense of truth is extraordinarily difficult in modern times. But you should just know in what a complicated way the physicists explain the blue of the sky. Naturally, if I start from a false principle and want to explain the simple thing that the blackness of universal space appears blue through light, then I must make a frightfully complicated explanation of it. And then the red of dawn and sunset! These chapters mostly begin like this; the blue sky—one cannot actually explain that properly today, one could imagine this or that.—Yes, with all that the physicists have, their little hole which so much amused Goethe—the little hole through which they let the light come into the room, in order with the darkness to investigate the light—with all this they cannot explain the simplest facts. And so it comes to the point that color is no longer understood at all.

If one understands, however, that the destruction of the blood calls forth the vitalizing process—for when I have destroyed my blood then I call up all the oxygen in me and renew myself, bring about health—then one also understands the healthy rosy color in man.

If I have darkness round me or continual blueness, well, then I shall not continually reanimate myself, or else I should create too much life in me. And so on the one hand one can understand the healthy rosy countenance from the intake of' oxygen, when one is thoroughly exposed to the light, and one can understand paleness from the perpetual intake of carbonic acid. Carbonic acid, the counterpart of oxygen, wants to go into my head. That makes me quite pale.

Today, for instance in Germany, the children are almost all pale. But one must understand that that comes from too much carbonic acid. And if man develops too much carbonic acid—carbonic acid consists of a combination of carbon and oxygen—then he uses the carbon which he has in him too much for forming carbonic acid. Thus in such a pale child you have all the carbon in him continuously changed into carbonic acid. So he becomes pale. What must I do? I must administer something to him through which this eternal development of carbonic acid inside him is hindered, through which the carbon is held back. I can do that if I give him some carbonate of lime.

In this way the functions are again stimulated, as I have told you from quite a different standpoint, and man keeps the carbon that he needs, does not continually change it into carbonic acid. And since carbonic acid consists of carbon and oxygen, the oxygen comes up into the head and animates the head processes, the life processes. But when the oxygen is given up to the carbonic acid, the life processes are suppressed.

If I therefore bring a pale person into a region where he has a good deal of light, he becomes stimulated not to give up his carbon continually to carbonic acid, because the light sucks the oxygen up into the head. Then he will get a healthy color again. In the same way I can stimulate that through the carbonate of lime, inasmuch as I keep back the oxygen and the person has it at his disposal.

So everything must be interconnected. One must be able to understand health and illness from the theory of color. One can do that only from Goethe's theory, for that rests simply on nature in a natural manner. It can never be done from Newton's color-theory which is merely devised, does not rest on nature at all, and actually cannot explain the simplest phenomena, the red at dawn and sunset and the blue sky.

Now, gentlemen, may I still say something else to you. Think of the old pastoral peoples who drove out their flocks and herds and slept in the open air. During their sleep they were not exposed to the blue sky but to the dark sky. And up there upon it [drawing] are the unnumbered shining stars. Now picture the dark sky with these countless shining stars and there below the sleeping men. From the heavens there streams out a calming force, the inner feeling of well-being in sleep. The whole human being is permeated by the darkness, so that he becomes inwardly quiet. Sleep proceeds from the darkness, but nevertheless these stars shine down. And wherever a star-beam shines the human being becomes inwardly a little stirred up. An oxygen ray goes out from the body. Pure oxygen rays go to meet the rays from the stars and the man becomes entirely permeated inwardly by the oxygen rays: he becomes inwardly an oxygen reflection of the whole starry heavens.

Thus the ancient shepherd folk took into their quietened bodies the whole star heavens in pictures, pictures which the course of the oxygen engraved into them. Then they woke up and they had the dream of these pictures. From this they had their star knowledge, their wonderful knowledge of the stars.

Their dream was not merely that Aries, the Ram, had so-and-so-many stars, but they really saw the animal, the Ram, the Bull, and so on, and felt the whole starry heavens in themselves in pictures. That is what has remained to us from the ancient shepherd folk as a poetic wisdom which sometimes has extraordinarily much that can still be instructive today.

One can understand it when one knows that the human being lets an oxygen ray radiate to each beam of light from the stars, that he becomes wholly sky, an inner oxygen sky.

Man's inner life is as we know an astral body, for during sleep he experiences the whole heavens. It would go badly with us if we were not descended from these ancient pastoral peoples. All men in fact are descended from ancient shepherd folk. We still have, purely through heredity, the knowledge of an inner star-heaven. We still unfold that, although not so well as the ancients. In sleep, when we lie in bed, we have still a sort of recollection of how once the shepherd of old lay in the fields and drew the oxygen into him. We are no longer shepherds and herdsmen but something is still given to us, we still receive something, only we cannot express it so beautifully as it has already become pale and dim. But the whole of mankind today is indeed interconnected, all belong to each other,—and if one would know what man still bears in him today, one must go back to ancient times. Everywhere, all men on earth have proceeded from this shepherd-stage and have actually inherited in their bodies what could descend from these pastoral peoples.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The birth of our higher self

Rudolf Steiner, Berlin, December 17, 1906

The Festival of Christmas which we shall soon be celebrating acquires new life when a deeper, more spiritual conception of the world is brought to bear upon it. In a spiritual sense the Christmas Festival is a Festival of the Sun, and as such we shall think of it to-day. To begin with, let us listen to the beautiful apostrophe to the sun which Goethe puts into the mouth of Faust:—

Life's pulses newly-quickened now awaken,
Softly to greet the ethereal twilight leaping;
Thou Earth through this night too hast stood unshaken,
And at my feet fresh breathest from thy sleeping.
Thou girdest me about with gladness, priming
My soul to stern resolve and strenuous keeping,
Onward to strive, to highest life still climbing.—

Unfolded lies the world in twilight-shimmer;
With thousand throated song the woods are chiming;
The dales, where through the mist-wreaths wind, lie dimmer,
Yet heavenly radiance plumbs the deeps unnumbered,
And bough and twig, new-quickened, bud and glimmer
Forth from the fragrant depths where sunk they slumbered,
Whilst hue on hue against the gloom still heightens,
Where bloom and blade with quivering pearls are cumbered.
A very Paradise about me lightens!

Look up!—The giant peaks that rise supernal
Herald the solemn hour; for them first brightens
The early radiance of the light eternal,
Upon us valley-dwellers later showered.
Now are the green-sunk, Alpine meadows vernal
With radiance new and new distinctness dowered,
And stepwise downward hath the splendour thriven.
He sallies forth, and I mine overpowered
And aching eyes to turn away am driven.

Thus when a yearning hope, from fear and wonder
Up to the highest wish in trust hath striven,
The portals of fulfilment yawn asunder.
Then bursts from yonder depths whose days ne'er dwindle
Excess of flame—we stand as smit with thunder.
The torch of life it was we sought to kindle,
A sea of fire-and what a fire!—hath penned us.
Is't Love? Is't Hate? that yonder glowing spindle
In bliss and bale alternating tremendous
About us twines, till we the dazed beholders
To veil our gaze in Earth's fresh mantle wend us.

Nay then, the sun shall bide behind my shoulders!
The cataract, that through the gorge doth thunder,
I'll watch with growing rapture, 'mid the boulders
From plunge to plunge down-rolling, rent asunder
In thousand thousand streams, aloft that shower
Foam upon hissing foam, the depths from under.
Yet blossoms from this storm a radiant flower;
The painted rainbow bends its changeful being,
Now lost in air, now limned with clearest power,
Shedding this fragrant coolness round us fleeing.
Its rays an image of man's efforts render;
Think, and more clearly wilt thou grasp it, seeing
Life in the many-hued, reflected splendour.
—(Translation by Latham)

Goethe lets these words be spoken by Faust, the representative of humanity, as he gazes at the radiant morning sun. But the Festival of which we are now to speak has to do with a Sun belonging to a far deeper realm of being than the sun which rises anew every morning. And it is this deeper Sun that will be the guiding moth in our thoughts to-day. And now we will listen to words in which the deepest import of the Christmas Mystery is mirrored. In all ages these words resounded in the ears of those who were pupils of the Mysteries—before they were allowed to participate in the Mysteries themselves:—

Behold the Sun
At tire midnight hour;
Build with stones
in the lifeless ground,

Thus in decay and
in the night of Death
Find the Creation's new beginning,
Young morning's strength;

Glory in the heights
the eternal Word of Gods;
Shelter in the depths
the Powers of Peace.

In darkness dwelling,
create a Sun.
In matter weaving,
know the joy of Spirit!

Many to whom the Christmas Tree with its candles is a familiar sight to-day, believe that it is a very ancient institution—but this is not the case. The Christmas Tree is a very recent European custom, dating no further back than about a hundred years or so. Although, however, the Christmas Tree is a recent custom, the Christmas Festival is very ancient.

It was celebrated in the earliest Mysteries of all religions, not as a festival of the outer sun but as one which awakens in men an inkling of the very wellsprings of existence. It was celebrated every year by the highest Initiates in the Mysteries, at the time of the year when the sun sends least power to the earth, bestows least warmth. But it was also celebrated by those who might not yet participate in the whole festival, who might witness only the outer, pictorial expression of the highest Mysteries. This imagery has been preserved through the ages, varying in form according to the several creeds. The Christmas Festival is the Festival of the Holy Night, celebrated in the Mysteries by those who were ready for the awakening of the higher Self within them, or, as we should say in our time, those who have brought the Christ to birth within them.

Only those who have no inkling of the fact that as well as the chemical and physical forces, spiritual forces are also at work and that the workings of both kinds of forces take effect at definite times and seasons in cosmic life, can imagine that the moment of the awakening of the higher Self in man is of no importance. In the Greater Mysteries man beheld the forces working through all existence; he saw the world around him filled with spirit, with spiritual Beings; he beheld the world of spirit around him, radiant with light and colour. There can be no more sublime experience than this and in due time it will come to everyone. Although for some it may be only after many incarnations, nevertheless the moment will come for all men when Christ will be resurrected within them and new vision, new hearing will awaken.

In preparation for the awakening, the pupils in the Mysteries were first taught of the cosmic significance of this awakening and only then was the sacred Act itself performed. It took place at the time when darkness on the earth is greatest, when the external sun gives out least light and warmth—at Christmas time—because those who are cognisant of the spiritual facts know that at this time of the year, forces that are favourable for such an awakening stream through cosmic space. During his preparation the pupil was told that one who would be a true knower must have knowledge not only of what has been happening on the earth for thousands and thousands of years but must also be able to survey the whole course of the evolution of humanity, realising that the great festivals have their own, essential place within that evolution and must be dedicated to contemplation of the eternal truths.

The pupil's gaze was directed to the time when our earth was not as it is now, when there was no sun, no moon out yonder in the heavens, but both were still united with the earth, when earth, sun and moon formed one body. Even then man was already in existence, but he had no body; he was still a spiritual being. No sunlight fell from outside upon these spiritual beings, for the sunlight was within the earth itself. This was not the sunlight that shines from outside upon objects and beings to-day, but it was inner sunlight that glowed within all beings of the earth. Then came the time when the sun separated from the earth, when its light shone down upon the earth from the universe outside. The sun had withdrawn from the earth and inner darkness came upon man.

This was the beginning of his evolution towards that future when the inner light will again be radiant within him. Man must learn to know the things of the earth with his outer senses; he evolves to the stage where the higher Man, Spirit-Man, again glows and shines within him. From light, through darkness, to light—such is the path of the evolution of mankind.

The pupils of the Mysteries were prepared by these constantly inculcated teachings. Then they were led to the actual awakening. This was the moment when, as chosen ones, they experienced the spiritual Light within them; their eyes of spirit were opened. This sacred moment came when the outer light was weakest, when the outer sun was shining with least strength. On that day the pupils were called together and the inner Light revealed itself to them. To those who were not yet ready to participate in this sacred enactment, it was presented as a picture which made them realise: For you too the great moment will come; to-day you see a picture only; later on, what you now see as a picture will be an actual experience.

Thus it was in the lesser Mysteries. Pictures were presented of what the candidate for initiation was subsequently to experience as reality. To-day we shall hear of the enactments in the lesser Mysteries. Everywhere it was the same: in the Egyptian Mysteries, in the Eleusinian Mysteries, in the Mysteries of Asia Minor, of Babylon and Chaldea, as well as in the Mithras-cult and in the Indian Mysteries of Brahman. Everywhere the same experiences were undergone by the pupils of these Mysteries at the midnight hour of the Holy Night.

Early on the previous evening the pupils gathered together. In quiet contemplation they were to be made aware of the meaning and import of this momentous happening. Silently and in darkness they sat together. When the midnight hour drew near they had been for long hours in the darkened chamber, steeped in the contemplation of eternal truths. Then, towards midnight, mysterious tones, now louder, now gentler, resounded through the space around them. Hearing these tones, the pupils knew: This is the Music of the Spheres. Then a faint light began to glimmer from an illumined disc. Those who gazed at it knew that this disc represented the earth. The illumined disc became darker and darker—until finally it was quite black. At the same time the surrounding space grew brighter. Again the pupils knew: the black disc represents the earth; the sun, which otherwise radiates light to the earth, is hidden; the earth can see the sun no longer. Then, ring upon ring, rainbow colours appeared around the earth-disc and those who saw it knew: This is the radiant Iris. At midnight, in the place of the black earth-disc, a violet-reddish orb gradually became visible, on which a word was inscribed, varying according to the peoples whose members were permitted to experience this Mystery. With us, the word would be Christos. Those who gazed at it knew: It is the sun which appears at the midnight hour, when the world around lies at rest in deep darkness. The pupils were now told that they had experienced what was known in the Mysteries as "seeing the sun at midnight."

He who is truly initiated experiences the sun at midnight, for in him the material is obliterated: the sun of the Spirit alone lives within him, dispelling with its light the darkness of matter.

The most holy of all moments in the evolution of man is that in which he experiences the truth that he lives in eternal light, freed from the darkness. In the Mysteries, this moment was represented pictorially, year by year, at the midnight hour of the Holy Night. The picture imaged forth the truth that as well as the physical sun there is a Spiritual Sun which, like the physical sun, must be born out of the darkness. In order that the pupils might realise this even more intensely, after they had experienced the rising of the spiritual Sun, of the Christos, they were taken into a cave in which there seemed to be nothing but stone, nothing but dead, lifeless matter. But springing out of the stones they saw ears of corn as tokens of life, indicating symbolically that out of apparent death, life arises, that life is born from the dead stone. Then it was said to them: Just as from this day onwards the power of the sun awakens anew after it seemed to have died, so does new life forever spring from the dying.

The same truth is indicated in the Gospel of St. John in the words: "He must increase, but I must decrease!" John, the herald of the coming Christ, of the spiritual Light, he whose festival day in the course of the year falls at midsummer—this John must ‘decrease’ and in this decreasing there grows the power of the coming spiritual Light, increasing in strength in the measure in which John ‘decreases.’ Thus is the new life, prepared in the seed-grain which must wither and decay in order that the new plant may come into being. The pupils of the Mysteries were to realise that within death, life is resting, that out of the decaying and the dying the new flowers and fruits of spring arise in splendour, that the earth teems with the powers of birth. They were to learn that at this point of time something is happening in the innermost being of the earth: the overcoming of death by life, by the life that is present in death. This was portrayed to them in the picture of the Light gradually conquering the darkness; this is what they experienced as they saw the Light beginning to shine in the darkness. In the rocky cave they beheld the Light that rays forth in strength and glory from what is seemingly dead.

Thus were the pupils led on to believe in the power of life, in what may be called man's highest Ideal. Thus did they learn to look upwards to this supreme Ideal of humanity, to the time when the earth shall have completed its evolution, when the Light will shine forth in all mankind. The physical earth itself will then fall into dust, but the spiritual essence will remain with all human beings who have been made inwardly radiant by the spiritual Light. And the earth and humanity will then waken into a higher existence, into a new phase of existence.

When Christianity came into being it bore this Ideal within it. Man felt that the Christos would arise in him as the representative of the spiritual re-birth, as the great Ideal of all humanity and moreover that the birth takes place in the Holy Night, at the time when the darkness is greatest, as a sign and token that out of the darkness of matter a higher Man can be born in the human soul. Before men spoke of the Christos, they spoke in the ancient Mysteries of a ‘Sun Hero’ who embodied the same Ideal which, in Christianity, was embodied in the Christos. Just as the sun completes its orbit in the course of the year, as its warmth seems to withdraw from the earth and then again streams forth, as in its seeming death it holds life and pours it forth anew, so it was with the Sun Hero, who through the power of his spiritual life had gained the victory over death, night and darkness.

In the Mysteries there were seven degrees of Initiation. First, the degree of the Ravens who might approach only as far as the portal of the temple of Initiation. They were the channels between the outer world of material life and the inner world of the spiritual life; they did not belong entirely to the material world but neither, as yet, to the spiritual world. We find these ‘Ravens’ again and again; everywhere they are the messengers who pass hither and thither between the two worlds, bringing tidings. We find them too, in our German sagas and myths: the Ravens of Wotan, the Ravens who fly around the Kyffhäuser. At the second degree the disciple was led from the portal into the interior of the temple. There he was made ready for the third degree, the degree of the Warrior who went out to make known before the world the occult truths imparted to him in the temple. The fourth degree, that of the Lion, was reached by one whose consciousness was no longer confined within the bounds of individuality, but extended over a whole tribal stock. For this reason Christ was called "the Lion of the stem of David." To the fifth degree belonged a man whose still wider consciousness embraced a whole people. He was an Initiate of the fifth degree. He no longer bore a name of his own but was called by the name of his people. Thus men spoke of the ‘Persian,’ of the ‘Israelite.’ We understand now why Nathaniel was called a ‘true Israelite’; it was because he had reached the fifth degree of Initiation. The sixth degree was that of the Sun Hero. We must understand the meaning of this appellation. Then we shall realise what awe and reverence surged through the soul of a pupil of the Mysteries who knew of the existence of a Sun Hero. He was able in the Holy Night to participate in the festival of the birth of a Sun Hero.

Everything in the cosmos takes its rhythmic course: the stars, as well as the sun, follow a regular rhythm. Were the sun to abandon this rhythm even for a moment, an upheaval of untold magnitude would take place in the universe. Rhythm holds sway in the whole of nature, up to the level of man. Then, and only then is there a change. The rhythm which through the course of the year holds sway in the forces of growth, of propagation and so forth, ceases when we come to man.

For man is to have his roots in freedom; and the more highly civilised he is, the more does this rhythm decline. As the light disappears at Christmas-time, so has rhythm apparently departed from the life of man: chaos prevails. But man must give birth again to rhythm out of his innermost being, his own initiative. By the exercise of his own will he must so order his life that it flows in rhythm, immutable and sure; his life must take its course with the regularity of the sun. Just as a change of the sun's orbit is inconceivable, it is equally inconceivable that the rhythm of such a life can be broken.

The Sun Hero was regarded as the embodiment of this inalterable rhythm; through the power of the higher Man within him, he was able to direct the rhythm of the course of his own life. And this Sun Hero, this higher Man, was born in the Holy Night. In this sense, Christ Jesus is a Sun Hero and was conceived as such in the first centuries of Christendom. Hence the festival of His birth was instituted at the time of the year when, since ancient days, the festival of the birth of the Sun Hero had been celebrated. Hence, too, all that was associated with the history of the life of Christ Jesus; the Mass at midnight celebrated by the early Christians in the depths of caves was in remembrance of the festival of the sun. In this Mass an ocean of light streamed forth at midnight out of the darkness as a remembrance of the rising of the spiritual Sun in the Mysteries. Hence the birth of Christ in the cave—again a remembrance of the cave of rock out of which life was born—life symbolised by the ears of corn.

As earthly life was born out of the dead stone, so out of the depths was born the Highest—Christ Jesus. Associated with the festival of His nativity was the legend of the three Priest-Sages, the Three Kings. They bring to the Child: gold, the symbol of the outer, wisdom-filled man; myrrh, the symbol of the victory of life over death; and frankincense the symbol of the cosmic ether in which the Spirit lives.

And so in the whole content of the Christmas Festival we feel something echoing from primeval ages. It has come over to us in the imagery belonging to Christianity. The symbols of Christianity are reflections of the most ancient symbols used by man. The lighted Christmas Tree is one of them. For us it is a symbol of the Tree of Paradise, representing all-embracing material nature. Spiritual Nature is represented by the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.

There is a legend which gives expression to the true meaning of the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life. Seth stands before the Gate of Paradise, craving entry. The Cherubim guarding the entrance with a fiery sword, allow him to pass. This is a sign of Initiation. In Paradise, Seth finds the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge firmly intertwined. The Archangel Michael who stands in the presence of God, allows him to take three grains of seed from this intertwined Tree.

The Tree stands there as a prophetic indication of the future of mankind. When the whole of mankind has attained Initiation and found knowledge, then only the Tree of Life will remain, there will be no more death. But in the meantime only he who is an Initiate may take from this Tree the three grains of seed -the three seeds which symbolise the three higher members of man's being.

When Adam died, Seth placed these three grains of seed in his mouth and out of them grew a flaming bush. From the wood cut from this bush, new sprouts, new leaves burst ever and again. But within the flaming ring around the bush there was written: "I am He who was, who is, who is to be"—in other words, that which passes through all incarnations, the power of ever-evolving man who descends out of the light into the darkness and out of the darkness ascends into the light.

The staff with which Moses performed his miracles is cut from the wood of the bush; the door of Solomon's Temple is made of it; the wood is carried to the waters of the pool of Bethesda and from it the pool receives the healing properties of which we are told. And from this same wood the Cross of Christ Jesus is made, the wood of the Cross which is a symbol of life that passes into death and yet has within it the power to bring forth new life. The great symbol of worlds stands before us here: Life the conqueror of Death. The wood of this Cross has grown out of the three grains of seed of the Tree of Paradise.

The Rose Cross is also a symbol of the death of the lower nature and the resurrection of the higher. Goethe expressed the same thought in the words:

"As long as thou best it not,
This Dying and Becoming,
Thou'rt but a dreary guest
Upon the dark earth."

The Tree of Paradise and the wood of the Cross are connected in a most wonderful way. Even though the Cross is always an Easter symbol, it deepens our conception of the Christmas Mystery too. We feel how in this night of Christ's Nativity, new, upwelling life streams towards us. This thought is indicated in the fresh roses adorning this Tree; they say to us: the Tree of the Holy Night has not yet become the wood of the Cross but the power to become that wood is beginning to arise in it. The Roses, growing out of the green, are a symbol of the Eternal which springs from the Temporal.

The square is the symbol of the fourfold nature of man; physical body, ether-body, astral body and ego.

The triangle is the symbol for Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man.

Above the triangle is the symbol for Tarok. Those who were initiated into the Egyptian Mysteries knew how to interpret this sign. They knew too, how to read the Book of Thoth, consisting of 78 leaves on which were inscribed all happenings in the world from the beginning to the end, from Alpha to Omega and which could be read if the signs were rightly put together. These pictures gave expression to the life that dies and then springs again to new life. Whoever could combine the right numbers with the right pictures, were able to read the Book. This wisdom of numbers and of pictures had been taught from time immemorial. In the Middle Ages it was still in the fore ground although little of it survives to-day.

Above this symbol is the Tao—the sign that is a reminder of the conception of the Divine held by our early forefathers; it comes from the word: TAO. Before Europe, Asia and Africa were scenes of human civilisation, these early forefathers of ours lived on the continent of Atlantis which was finally submerged by mighty floods. In the Germanic sagas of Nifelheim or Nebelheim, the memory of Atlantis still lives. For Atlantis was not surrounded by pure air. Vast cloud-masses moved over the land, like those to be seen to-day clustering around the peaks of high mountains. The sun and moon did not shine clearly in the heavens—they were surrounded by rainbows—by the sacred Iris. At that time man understood the language of nature. To-day he no longer understands what speaks to him in the rippling of waves, in the noise of winds, in the rustling of leaves, in the rolling of thunder—but in old Atlantis he understood it. He felt it all as a reality. And within these voices of clouds and waters and leaves and winds a sound rang forth: TAO—That am I. The man of Atlantis heard and understood it, feeling that Tao pervaded the whole universe.

Finally, the cosmic symbol of Man is the pentagram, hanging at the top of the tree. Of the deepest meaning of the pentagram we may not now speak. But it is the star of humanity, of evolving humanity; it is the star that all wise men follow, as did the Priest-Sages of old. It symbolises the very essence and meaning of earth-existence. It comes to birth in the Holy Night because the greatest Light shines forth from the deepest Darkness.

Man is living on towards a state where the Light is to be born in him, where words full of significance will be replaced by others equally significant, where it will no longer be said: ‘The Darkness comprehendeth not the Light,’ but when the truth will ring out from cosmic space: The Darkness gives way before the Light that shines in the Star of Humanity—and now the Darkness comprehendeth the Light! This should resound and the spiritual Light ray forth from the Christmas Festival. We will celebrate this Christmas Festival as the Festival of the supreme Ideal of mankind, for then it will bring to birth in our souls the joyful confidence: I too shall experience the birth of the higher Man within me! In me too the birth of the Saviour, the birth of the Christos will take place! 

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Positions of the symbols on the Christmas Tree:

A true and comprehensive conception of what the human being is can come to us only from beyond the threshold of the spiritual world

  

Rudolf Steiner:  "By no means clearly, and yet in an instinctive way, people in all regions of the Earth feel the meaning of human dignity, of an existence worthy of the human being. The abstract social democrat of the present time believes that it is a simple matter to express in an international way the meaning of human dignity, human rights, etc. This cannot be done. If these things are to be expressed, it is imperative that we bear in mind the truth that the real conception of the human being belongs inherently beyond the threshold of the spiritual world, since man really belongs to the world of spirit and soul. In other words, a true and comprehensive conception of what the human being is can come to us only from beyond the threshold of the spiritual world."

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive  November 29, 1918

East and West from a spiritual point of view

  

 

The Challenge of the Times

Lecture 1

Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, Switzerland

November 29, 1918

In my last lecture dealing with present events, I called your attention to the necessities of a social order resulting from the impulses of the modern age. I must expressly emphasize the fact that I do not by any means wish to develop a program. You all know how little importance I attach to such things. They are mere abstractions. What I have discussed with you is not an abstraction, but a reality. I have expressed the matter in the following way to various persons with whom, in the course of the last few years, I have spoken of these impelling social forces as something inevitable. I have said that what we are seeking to set forth, which is something utterly different from an abstract program, will by its own connection with the impelling forces of history come to realization in the world within the next twenty or thirty years. “You have the choice” — I could express myself at that time in this way because people still had the choice, as they do not any longer possess it — “You have the choice between adopting a rational attitude and accepting such things, or realizing later that these things will come about in the most chaotic way through cataclysms and revolutions.” There is no other alternative in these things in the course of world history, and the demand simply faces us today to understand such things as proceed from the impulses actually at work in the world. As I have repeatedly declared, this is not a time when each person can say that he believes this or that will happen or ought to happen, but it is a time when the only person who can speak effectively in regard to the necessities of the age is one who is able to perceive what bears within itself the impelling force for its realization in the course of the times.

Now, it is most important to understand that it was impossible for me to give you anything more than a sketch of what I am compelled to view as a necessity embodying the impulse to realization. In order to establish a connection with what has already been said, I shall repeat briefly today what I then spoke about, that is, that the confusion in the social structure that has gradually led to these catastrophic events of recent years over the whole world must be set aside, and it is imperative to replace it by that threefold organization of the social structure of which I spoke to you at our last meeting. You have seen that the outcome of this threefold organization will be to distribute into separate spheres what has hitherto constituted, in a confused fashion, the basis of the seemingly unitary organization of the state.

It will be distributed among three spheres, the first of which I designated as the political, or security, order; the second, as the sphere of the social organization, the economic organization; the third, as the sphere of free spiritual production. These three spheres will be integrated independently of each other, each in its own way. Indeed, this will become manifest within the next few decades even to those persons who are unwilling today to understand it. We shall escape the great perils toward which the world is still continuing to move only if we endeavor to understand these things, but we shall not understand them unless we really study them thoroughly. In order that what follows may not be misunderstood, I should like once more to emphasize that it is not our business either to create the social question or to discuss it in any merely theoretical way. In the light of our recent reflections, you will already have seen that the social question actually exists, that it must be accepted as a factor, as an actuality, and that it can be grasped and understood only in the same way in which an occurrence of nature must be understood.

You will already have seen that everything I set forth here last Sunday as constituting the necessary impulses leading to the future is of such a nature as to supersede, in a just and legitimate way, the elements left over from ancient times in our social structure, elements that permeate it destructively through and through. Especially if you reflect more deeply on the practical results of what I said to you last Sunday, will you see that these practical results of the social organization of which I spoke are of such a character as to supersede in a suitable way what those who call themselves socialists, but who live in illusions rather than in realities, wish to overcome in an impractical way. What must be superseded — as will become clear to you upon deeper reflection over what was said last Sunday — is the membering of the social structure according to classes. What must be achieved in harmony with the period of consciousness in which we live, the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, is that the human being as such shall take the place of the ancient distinctions according to classes. For this reason it would be disastrous if what I developed before you here last Sunday should be confused with something that is perpetuated in our contemporary social organization out of past ages. Something extends into our social organization from the Greek period that must be superseded according to the principles holding sway in the course of world events. The differentiation of humanity according to the ancient Greek classification into husbandmen, soldiers, and teachers must be superseded by the very thing I brought to your attention last Sunday. It is the differentiation according to classes that brings chaos into our contemporary social structure. This differentiation will be superseded by the fact that human beings will not be divided in any way according to classes under the organization of society of which I spoke to you last Sunday. In the very nature of things, these classes will completely disappear. It is in this direction that historical necessity moves.

Man, as a living being and not as an abstraction, shall bring about the connections among the three spheres of society. We are by no means dealing with a differentiation according to classes, as husbandmen, soldiers, and teachers, when we say that we must move forward toward political justice, economic organization, and free spiritual production. What this signifies is that relationships shall be integrated in this way, and that it will be impossible for human beings to belong to a single class when the relationships are really integrated in this way. The human being exists within the social structure and he himself forms the connecting link among the different elements integrated in these relationships. There will not be a separate economic class, a separate class of producers, but a structure of economic relationships. In the same way, there will not be a special class of ”teachers” but the relationships will be such that spiritual production will be free in its own nature. Likewise, there will not be a separate class of soldiers, but the effort will be made gradually to achieve for the first sphere of the social order in a liberal democratic manner that for which a confused struggle now proceeds on behalf of all three spheres.

The very essence of the matter is the truth that the passage from ancient times to modern times makes it imperative that the human being shall take his place in the world. There is no possibility of our reaching an understanding of the demands of our age otherwise than by acquiring the capacity to understand human beings. This can be achieved, of course, only on the basis of those perceptions that a science of the spirit brings to light.

As I recently declared, what I have developed before you must be viewed against the broad background of world history. I have set before you certain things from the content of this historic tableau. In order that we may now continue further in describing such conditions as I began to explain to you last Sunday, I wish to lay a foundation today derived somewhat more from occult sources in order to make it clear to you that the manner of dealing with these things cannot be one in which each person thinks out something for himself in utter disregard of the facts of the case, but that the way to deal with these things is to view them in accordance with the actual movement of events. Here my point of departure must be the statement that the first necessity in developing the social structure is to base it upon social understanding. Indeed, this is the very thing that has been lacking for decades. The realm we here touch upon is one in which the greatest number of blunders have been made. A great majority of persons in positions of leadership have been utterly lacking in social understanding. It is not surprising, therefore, that such revolutionary movements as we now have in Central Europe seem to people like something springing out of the earth, something for which they have had no preparation. They do not appear as something unexpected to people who have a social understanding but I fear that people will continue still to be permeated by the mood that filled them before the year 1914. Just as the World War, obviously hanging over the heads of everyone at that time, came as a surprise, people will still behave in even more vital matters in just the same way. They will still continue to sleep while the social movement, which is spreading over the whole world, breaks in upon them. Because of the phlegmatic habits of thought now characterizing humanity, it may be just as impossible to prevent this as it was to prevent mankind from permitting the present catastrophe to overwhelm it unprepared.

What really matters most of all is to learn the truth that human beings must not conduct themselves in one way or another in the various parts of the world according to abstract notions, but that the moment their conduct may have social consequences, they must choose their course according to how they are impelled to act by the impulses existent in the sequence of cosmic events into which man himself is integrated. An elementary fact is utterly ignored by people even today. I say this on the basis of experience, for I have been compelled in recent years to discuss these matters with men belonging to varied professions and classes, and I know the response one meets when these things are discussed. I refer to the fact that people of the East and the West — and everyone will take part in the future shaping of things — are quite unlike one another in their impulses, and are different in what they will for themselves. Indeed, if we pay attention only to the social environment nearest to us, we shall reach no clear judgment as to what is proceeding as a matter of necessity in the world. We reach a clear judgment only when — and I must once more employ this expression — we form our judgment about things according to the impulses existing in the universal course of events. The people of the West, of Western European states and their appendage America, will have their say. The people of Eastern Europe, with its Asiatic hinterland, will have their say during the next two or three decades, but their manner of speaking will vary greatly among themselves, for human beings and various parts of the world necessarily have different conceptions regarding what man feels and must inevitably feel as a necessity of his human dignity and his nature as man.

We cannot discuss these things unless we see clearly that events must necessarily occur in the future that people would like best of all to avoid. I told you last Sunday that it is simply impossible for effectual, fruitful social ideas to be discovered in future by any other path than the one that leads in the search for truths beyond the threshold of ordinary physical consciousness. Within the limits of ordinary physical consciousness there are no effectual social ideas. For this reason, as I explained last Sunday, these social ideas which are truly effectual must come to people. But this statement implies at the same time that it will not do to shrink back in future from acquainting oneself, so far as this is possible for each person, with the real nature of the threshold of the spiritual world. Within the limits of everyday life and science, humanity may continue for a long time on its beaten path without becoming acquainted with the threshold of the spiritual world. In these fields we can get along as well as is absolutely necessary. But, as regards social life, it is not possible to get along without giving attention to what is here called the threshold of the spiritual world. There exists within people of the present age — still unconscious, of course, but thrusting ever more upward into consciousness — the impulse to bring about such a social structure as will permit every person to be, as his nature demands, a human being.

By no means clearly, and yet in an instinctive way, people in all regions of the Earth feel the meaning of human dignity, of an existence worthy of the human being. The abstract social democrat of the present time believes that it is a simple matter to express in an international way the meaning of human dignity, human rights, etc. This cannot be done. If these things are to be expressed, it is imperative that we bear in mind the truth that the real conception of the human being belongs inherently beyond the threshold of the spiritual world, since man really belongs to the world of spirit and soul. In other words, a true and comprehensive conception of what the human being is can come to us only from beyond the threshold of the spiritual world.

In reality, the conception does come from this source. Even if the American, Briton, Frenchman, German, Chinese, Japanese, or Russian speaks to you of the human being, expressing quite unsatisfactory conceptions and ideas, there yet dwells in his subconsciousness something far more comprehensive, but something that must be clearly grasped. This more comprehensive thing dwelling there struggles to rise into consciousness. In other words, we may say that historic evolution has progressed to the point where an image of the human being lives in the hearts of men. Without giving attention to this image of the human being, it is impossible to develop any social understanding. This image is alive but it lives only in the subconsciousness. The moment that it struggles upward into consciousness and really enters there, it can be grasped only by means of the capacities belonging to the form of consciousness that is in its nature supersensible — at least, by means of these capacities in the conceptual field, as they have been taken up by sound common sense.

An image of the human being lives in those persons who are engaged at present in the social struggle that may remain unconscious and only instinctive so long as the impulse is lacking to see the matter clearly. If, however, there is a desire to arrive at clarity, it can be done only by irradiating the matter with the light that comes from the other side of the threshold. Then it becomes obvious to the objective spiritual observer that the image of the human being lurking instinctively in human souls varies greatly in people belonging to the West and those belonging to the East. This will become an enormously important question in the future. It plays a role in all actual conditions. It plays a role in the Russian chaos, in the revolution in Middle Europe, in the confusion that is in its early stages in the West, even all the way to America. In other words, what is in process of development must be viewed in the light of supersensible consciousness if it is to be understood. It must be grasped by means of the capacities that are derived from supersensible consciousness.

There is no approach from the side of sensory consciousness that will enable us to understand what dwells instinctively as an image of man both in the peoples of the West and of the East.

In order to achieve this understanding it is necessary that you acquaint yourselves with two things. First, with the peculiar manner in which something that actually obsesses the subconsciousness of a person rises up into real supersensible consciousness. A person learns in two different ways through the Guardian of the Threshold how something that is stirring chaotically in his instincts and does not belong to the person — for only what a person consciously grasps belongs to him — appears before him. Things that instinctively obsess a person appear in one case before the Guardian of the Threshold in such a way that they seem like external perceptions. It is a hallucination, an external perception, actually appearing before the person and presenting itself like something externally perceived. That is the specter character. When something that has lived instinctively and chaotically in an individual comes to be known clearly in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold, where all instincts cease and everything begins to be known consciously and to take its place in the free spiritual life, such an instinctive living element may appear as a specter. The person is then rid of it as an instinct. There is no need for fear because of the fact that such a thing appears as a specter. This is the sole way in which the person can get rid of it. He sees it in external objectivity and what has been chaotically stirring within him is really before him in the form of a specter. This is one of the forms.

The other form in which such an instinctive thing may appear is that of a nightmare. This is not an external perception but an oppressive feeling or the aftereffects in the form of a vision of something that oppresses one. It is an imaginative experience but it may at the same time be felt as a nightmare. What exists instinctively in the person must come to manifestation either as a nightmare or as a specter if it is to be brought up into consciousness.

Just as every instinct living in a person must gradually rise to a higher level either as a specter or as a nightmare, if the person is to become fully human, so must what lives unconsciously and instinctively as the feeling of human dignity, as the image of man in the West and the East appear to him in one form or the other and be understood by him, but understood primarily through sound common sense. Thus it may happen that the practicing spiritual scientist will be able to show that some things appear as nightmares, others as specters. What a spiritual scientist experiences on the basis of his observations will be expressed by him in words applicable to historical or other conceptions in order to render it possible for what he has experienced to be grasped by the sound common sense of those who do not yet possess the occult capacities necessary for seeing these things.

The fact that a person does not actually behold these things is not in the least a valid excuse for not accepting them, since everything perceived is presented in such concepts as can be grasped by sound common sense. Confidence in the person who does see these things should not go beyond believing that he can give suggestions. It is not necessary to believe him because, if a person employs his own powers diligently without preconception, everything that is declared to be true can always be grasped with sound common sense.

Now, the situation is such that those instincts living in the West, as constituting the image of the human being and striving toward a social structure, appear before the Guardian of the Threshold as specters. The image of the human being living in the people of Eastern Europe with its Asiatic hinterland, manifests itself as a nightmare. The occult fact is simply that, if you ask an American, and this is most marked in the case of America, to describe what he feels to be the image of true human dignity, and you work over this image in an occult way and carry it all the way to the Guardian of the Threshold, and then observe what you experience in his presence in connection with this image, it appears before you as a specter. If you prevail upon an Asiatic or an informed Russian to describe what they conceive as the image of man, it will work upon you, if it is carried all the way to the Guardian of the Threshold, as a nightmare.

What I am saying to you here is only a description of an occult experience that has its basis in historical impulses and events because what takes form instinctively in the hearts and souls of men grows also out of historical substrata. The peoples of the West — Britons, Frenchmen, Italians, Spaniards, Americans — because of certain historical stimuli in the course of their development from ancient times up to their present state, have permitted to take root in their hearts, not in full clear consciousness but in an instinctive way, such an image of the human being as can be described when we study historical stimuli adequately.

These images of Eastern and Western man must be replaced by what can actually be discovered by means of spiritual scientific research. This alone can become the basis for a true social order, not one that will be dominated by either specters or nightmares. If we investigate in the right way the question as to why the Western image of the human being is a specter, we shall discover, after taking into account all the historical substrata, that the specter of the ancient Roman Empire lies at the bottom of the instincts that have led to the image of the human being in the Western parts of the world. They are the instincts that have now led, for example, to the so-called Wilson program for the West, upon which so much praise is being lavished. Everything that has gradually developed in the course of history that possesses a thoroughly outmoded character, that is, a luciferic-ahrimanic character, and is not suitable for the immediate present but is a specter from earlier ages, constitutes the specter of Romanism. Of course there is much in Western culture that does not belong at all to Romanism. In English-speaking regions you naturally find much that has no such connection. Even in the truly Latin countries there is much that has no connection with Romanism. That, however, is not the important matter. The important fact is the image of the human being insofar as he is supposed to enter into the social structure. In all these regions this is wholly determined instinctively by what has taken form within Roman culture. It continues to be altogether the product of the Latin way of thinking, belonging to the fourth post-Atlantean culture. This is nothing that really possesses life but is something that haunts the present like a ghost of the dead. It is this specter that appears to the objective occult observer when he undertakes to form an image of what is intended to be made dominant over the world under the influence of the West.

It serves no useful purpose to make assertions regarding these things without the necessary knowledge. That is no longer in keeping with the status of humanity in the present epoch. What must be taken into account is the necessity of acquiring a clear view of these things. The specter of Romanism is haunting the West. When I recently called your attention to the future destiny of various peoples of the West, especially the French, this is closely related to the fact that they have clung most firmly of all to the Roman specter. Their whole instinctive temperament and fundamental character would not permit them to get rid of this Roman specter. This, then, is one aspect of the matter, that pertaining to the West.

The other aspect is that a certain image of the human being, to the extent that he should take his place in the social structure, dominates also in the East. This image is of such character that there tends to come about even now through the very necessity of things something I have always spoken of. The sixth cultural epoch is in its preparatory stages in Eastern Europe. If we view the matter, however, from the standpoint of the present age, what is still alive in Eastern Europe, including its Asiatic hinterland, is not yet the image of the human being that will in future be developed in a natural way, even though it is the duty of humanity even today to develop it through knowledge. On the contrary, it is an image that appears as a nightmare when we take it and approach the Guardian of the Threshold in order there to observe it.

This image, in turn, appears as a nightmare because the instincts that are nourished in the East and become effective in the determination of this image are nourished by a force that is not yet perfect. This force will not reach its highest level of development until the future, until the sixth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. This force actually requires an impulse to support it. Before the consciousness awakes — and consciousness must, indeed, first awaken in the East — this force requires an instinctive basis. It is this instinctive basis, still living in the peoples of the East when they form their image of man, that works as a nightmare. Just as all the impulses left over from Romanism have their influence as ancient lingering impulses in the formation of man's image in the West, so does this instinctive foundation work as a nightmare, but one that is to give a support, the effect of which ought to be precisely that of bringing the people of the East to the point of freeing themselves from the nightmare. It has this effect in a strange manner, working just as a nightmare does when it has been overcome after we have awakened and have seen clearly what actually has happened. This force that must work there in the East is not something from the past, but rather something that is working in our own epoch for the first time. It is made up of the forces proceeding from the British Empire. Just as the image of the human being in the West has been made into a specter through the stimuli of Romanism, so is the image of the human being so stamped upon the soul in the East that what will continue for a long time into the future as the undertakings of the British Empire becomes a nightmare.

These two things produce the result that what was conscious in the Roman Empire continues to live unconsciously in a ghostly way in the West. The British-American impulse toward world empire that is in process of preparation and is active in the present epoch, manifests itself as a nightmare, as the counter force of a nightmare in order that the peoples of the East may awaken to a conscious and adequate image of man.
It is not pleasant to state these things at the present time; to listen to them is equally unpleasant. The simple truth is, however, that we have arrived at an epoch in the evolution of world history when nothing can be achieved unless people take cognizance of the things in the world on the basis of their knowledge, their full consciousness, and really acquaint themselves objectively with what exists in the world. No progress can be made in any other way. What has been happening in our time is of such a nature as to compel men in a certain sense to reverse the direction of these events. Things must not continue longer in such a way that, just as men have permitted themselves for a long time to be compelled to think in a certain way, they shall again permit themselves to be compelled to think entirely different thoughts for the simple reason that everything has been turned upside down in a certain region of the Earth. It is possible to make the acquaintance today of people who within a few weeks have suddenly evolved from gallant royalists into extreme republicans, and all other imaginable sorts of things. Nothing helpful to humanity could previously be accomplished by those who were royalists out of compulsion, and nothing helpful can come now from those who are today socialists as a matter of compulsion, or who have even become bolshevists after having been true royalists. There are even such individuals as this.

   What is necessary is neither the one nor the other of these things. What is necessary is that we shall come to see that only what proceeds from the free decision of the free human soul can be beneficial, that is, what the human being decides for himself through the use of his powers of reflection, through the use of his heart, and most of all his insight. That is what really matters. Otherwise we shall observe repeatedly that things will be viewed in one way or another under the force of circumstances. A person who considered Ludendorff a great field marshall six weeks ago and who calls him a criminal today, for instance, if he has no reason for either of these judgments and cannot form them through the free decision of a free heart, is of just as little use in the evolution of humanity in the one case as in the other. It is not sufficient that a statement is abstractly true, though generally one statement is as false as the other, but that we shall develop the capacity for forming real judgments. In this matter spiritual science may constitute a really excellent guidance for you.

I am constantly being made aware that statements I make here or elsewhere in the field of spiritual science are considered difficult to understand. This is due simply to the fact that people do not really have the will to apply their sound common sense in full measure to these things. They are considered difficult to understand because people do not find it sufficiently comfortable to lay hold of them.

In the course of these reflections I have made various statements in regard to this so-called war catastrophe of recent years and its origin. I hope that what has happened in the last few weeks will be seen to be a complete confirmation of what I have said for many years to you and to others in regard to these matters. Nothing has come about that fails to harmonize with what has here been asserted. Indeed, you can see the map I drew on the blackboard here years ago coming to reality during these very days.

What is said here, however, must not be taken in the sense of a Sunday afternoon sermon, but in the sense intended; that is, as something asserted on the basis of the actual impelling forces that either have been realized or are driving toward realization. For this reason I shall not hesitate to call your attention repeatedly to certain matters of method, even if this involves repetition. These questions of method are most important of all in the field of spiritual-scientific knowledge, which is so necessary for our age. What this science of the spirit makes of our souls is far more important than the acquisition of a merely abstract acquaintance with one truth or another.

We can observe repeatedly that the sort of soul structure that comes about through spiritual science is serviceable precisely in the comprehension of the immediate events of the times. How often have I emphasized in the course of these years the fact that it is really terrible for people to repeat continually, as they have done, the easy questions “Who is to blame for the world catastrophe of this war? Is it the Central Powers or the Entente? Or is it heaven knows who?” These questions as to who is to blame simply cannot be answered in any fundamental sense. What is really important is the correct and definite statement of the question. Only thus can we arrive at a sufficient, fundamental, actual insight, but it is utterly useless in the case of many persons of the present time to appeal to this insight. For example, much of what is now being reported from Paris reminds me of other things bearing upon this unhappy situation, things that happened earlier in Berlin or elsewhere. It is not a matter of any consequence to form one's judgment in accordance with what is permitted or not permitted — especially a judgment about questions of fact — but what matters is that this judgment should be formed on the basis of a free consideration, formed by the free mind itself. That is what really matters.

If you will recall various things I have said here in recent weeks you will see that the events meanwhile have confirmed many of my statements. For instance, I explained to you that it is utterly wrong to discuss these things in such a way, so satisfying to many persons, as to discover on the side of the Central Powers what is called “guilt” in connection with the World War. But I have said to you that the governments of the Central Powers have contributed to the World War in an essential way through their idiotic methods. What I explained to you even in the most recent lectures has during this week been completely confirmed by the disclosures made by the government of Bavaria. They, that is, the publication of the letters exchanged between the government of Bavaria and the Bavarian Envoy in Berlin, Count Lerchenfeld-Koefering, are in complete agreement with my explanations. Through such events the picture I have given you for years, which I had to give in such a way that I was continually tracing things back to the right form of questions regarding them, will become clearer. It is a certain service — and even such things as these may now be openly mentioned — that has been undertaken by this Kurt Eisner in the publication of these things, a service by one who has come in a strange way out of prison to the post of premier. At a time when so much is said in regard to persons who have made themselves unworthy of their official positions, it is certainly permissible to speak also about such a person as the present Premier of Bavaria, though we feed not lavish praise upon him for this reason.

Naturally, in accordance with the karma of each person and the manner in which he is stationed in the world by his karma, he will be able to pass one judgment or another in one place or another in the world, or ought to pass such a judgment. If we desire to achieve a social understanding, as I have said in various connections, the most important thing of all is that we shall acquire an understanding of the human being, interest in human beings, a differentiated interest in persons, that we should desire to know human beings. It is this that must constitute the task, the most important task of the future. But we must acquire a certain instinct, if you will permit me to use this expression, for forming judgments on the basis of symptoms. It is for this reason that I delivered the lecture on history as symptomatology. Such a person as this Premier of Bavaria, Kurt Eisner, is vividly present before our minds, for instance, when we consider the following facts. I say this to you now not for the purpose of bringing to your attention something actual, but to illustrate a bit of psychology, a bit of the science of the human soul.

Before there had been any declaration of war, either from the left or from the right, in the last days of July 1914, Kurt Eisner said in Munich, “If a world war really comes about, not only will the nations tear each other to pieces, but every throne in Central Europe will fall. This will be the inevitable consequence!” He remained true to his convictions. Throughout these years he continued to assemble a little group of men in Munich, always pursued by the police, and to speak to them. When a strike occurred at a particularly serious moment in the developments of recent years in Germany, he was sentenced to prison, and he has now ascended from prison to the premiership of Bavaria. He is a human being molded in a single piece. I do not mean to praise him because conditions are now such that even such a person may make blunder after blunder. But I wish to describe an example of what must really be considered. What is needed is that we shall rightly estimate as symptoms the occurrences confronting us in the world, that from the symptoms we shall reach conclusions regarding what lies behind them — if we do not possess the capacity of seeing through the symptoms the spirit at work behind them. We must at least strive to reach through the symptoms a vision of the spiritual that lies behind them. Especially in the future will it be necessary that mutual understanding shall come about between human beings. The social question is not to be solved by cliches, programs, or Leninisms, but by an understanding between man and man — such an understanding, however, as can be acquired only when we are able to recognize the human being as an external manifestation of the eternal.

If you consider what I have said, that in the West the human being produces the effect of a specter in the presence of the Guardian of the Threshold and in the East that of a nightmare, you will receive in a certain way the necessary stimulus for obtaining a true view of the conditions of the present time. In the West an image of the human being that is on a descending path and appears, therefore, as a specter; in the East an image that is ascending, but that must not be accepted in its present form since it is still merely an imagination of an oppressive nightmare and will appear in its true form only after this nightmare has been overcome. The conditions are such, therefore, that we must gain a deeper insight if we wish to participate at all in discussions of the social problem. The matters into which we must acquire a deeper insight are such as pertain to the character of our thinking, and the manner in which this thinking streams forth from the whole human being, differentiated in the case of individual personalities over the whole Earth.

The reason why this ghost of Romanism could acquire so profound an influence is that the thinking characteristic of the Old Testament worldview has not yet been surmounted in the essential nature of human thought. Christianity is really only at its beginning. Christianity has not yet progressed sufficiently to have really permeated human hearts and minds. What was necessary to prevent this has been brought about by the Roman Church, which in its theology is completely under the influence of the specter of ancient Romanism. As I have often indicated, the Roman Church has contributed more toward hindering the introduction of the image of Christ into human hearts and minds than it has helped because the conceptions that have been applied within the Roman Church for the purpose of comprehending the Christ are all taken from the social and political structure of the ancient Roman Empire. Even though human beings do not know this, it works within their instincts.

Now, the conceptions that were dominant in the Old Testament, that must be designated primarily as conceptions of Old Testament Judaism, and that took their worldly form in Romanism, which is in the worldly sphere the same thing as Judaism was in the spiritual sphere even though it is in opposition to Judaism, have come over into our own epoch by way of Romanism; they haunt our age in spectral forms. This Old Testament thinking, unpermeated by the Christ, must be found in its true origin within the human being. We must ask ourselves the question: “Upon what forces does such thinking as that of the Old Testament depend?”

This thinking depends upon what can be inherited with the blood from generation to generation. The capacity to think in the manner characteristic of the Old Testament is inherited with the blood in the succession of human beings. What we inherit as capacities from our fathers through the simple fact that we are born as human beings, that we ere embryonic human beings before our birth — what we inherit as the power of thinking, what lives in our blood, is Old Testament thinking. Our thinking is made up of two members, two parts. One part of our thinking consists in what we possess by reason of our development up to our birth, what we inherit from our forefathers or from our maternal ancestors. We are able to think in the Old Testament way because we have been embryos. This was the essential characteristic also of the ancient Jewish people that, in the world in which we live between birth and death, they did not wish to learn anything in addition to what the human being brings with him as a capacity because of the fact that he was an embryo up to the time of his birth. The only way that you can conceive of Old Testament thinking with real understanding is to say to yourself, “This is the kind of thinking that we possess by reason of the fact that we have been embryos.”

The kind of thinking that is added to this is what we have to acquire for ourselves in the course of our development beyond the embryonic period. For the purposes of certain external needs man acquires a variety of experiences, but he does not carry this process all the way to the transformation of his thinking. Thus, even today Old Testament thinking continues to exert its influence far more than is generally supposed. People do not permeate the experiences through which they pass here with the thinking that is actually the consequences of these experiences. This is done only in the most limited measure, and for the most part instinctively. At least the experiences through which people pass are not pursued by them to the stage of the birth of a special kind of thinking. This is done only by the true occultist whose development has been in accordance with the present age. In his case the life lived is so ordered that he awakes again, just as a child awakes after it is born. One who conducts his life in accordance with my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment goes through this process a second time. He relates himself to his normal nature as the ordinary man relates himself to the embryo. In ordinary life people conduct themselves in such a way that, although they are compelled to go through experiences, they apply only the kind of thinking to them that they have acquired by reason of the fact that they have been embryos. It is thus that people go about having their experiences but are not willing to proceed further. They apply to these experiences as a thinking content, especially as the character of their thinking, the form of their thinking, what the embryonic life has given them. In other words, they apply what is inherited in the blood from generation to generation.

One fact is of fundamental importance. The Mystery of Golgotha can never be grasped in its special nature by means of the kind of thinking that we possess because of our embryonic development. For that reason I have explained to you also in the lectures given during my present stay here that the Mystery of Golgotha is something that cannot be comprehended by means of ordinary physical thinking. This is something that will always be denied by honest individuals so long as they remain at the state of physical thinking. The Mystery of Golgotha, and everything permeated by the Christ, must be grasped not by means of what is derived from the Moon but by what is derived from the Sun; that is, from the standpoint that one attains after birth during the present life. This is the great distinction between what is permeated by the Christ and what is not so permeated. Whatever is not permeated by the Christ is mastered by a kind of thinking inherited in the blood stream. A comprehension of the world that is permeated by the Christ spirit is mastered by the kind of thinking that must be acquired by the individual human being as a personality in this world, through the experiences of life, by spiritualizing these experiences in the manner explained in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.

This is the essential fact. The kind of thinking we possess because of our embryonic development leads to the recognition of the Godhead only as the Father. The kind of thinking that is acquired in this world through the personal life after the embryonic stage leads to the recognition of the Godhead also as the Son.

Now, the influence of this tendency to make use only of the kind of thinking that belonged to Jehovah persisted even into the nineteenth century. But this thinking is suited to grasp only that element in the human being that belongs within the order of nature. This condition came about through the fact that the Jehovah divinity, who, as you know, was one of the Seven Elohim, gained the mastery of human consciousness and suppressed the other Elohim at an early period. The other Elohim were in this way thrust into the sphere of so-called illusion and were supposed to be fantastic beings. But this came about because the Jehovah divinity temporarily supplanted these spirits and permeated human consciousness with what alone can be developed as a power from the pre-embryonic time.

This continued into the nineteenth century. Human nature came under the influence of lower elemental spiritual entities who were working against the endeavors of the Elohim through the fact that the Jehovah divinity dethroned the other Elohim in a certain sense. They, however, made themselves effective only through the personality of Christ, and they will continue to make themselves effective one after another in the most varied ways.

Thus the evolution of consciousness was such because the Jehovah divinity had placed himself as sole ruler and had dethroned the others. Through the fact that the others had been dethroned, human nature came under the influence of beings lower than the Elohim. Thus not only does Jehovah continue his influence even into the nineteenth century, but so also do gods of a lower character instead of the Elohim. I have always told you that Christianity is really still in its beginning, but even after it had become widely disseminated humanity did not yet understand it for the reason that men did not immediately accept the influence of the Elohim. They continued to be attached to the Jehovah thinking, to the kind of thinking awakened by the embryonic force, and also because they remained under the influence of the opponents of the Elohim.

During the nineteenth century — indeed, precisely during the fifth decade of that century, which I have often designated as an important turning point — the situation became such that Jehovah himself was gradually overpowered in his influence upon human consciousness through the dominance of those lower spirits he had evoked. The result was that, since only the element in the human being that is bound to the natural order of things, to the blood, can be comprehended by means of the forces of Jehovah, man's earlier seeking for the one God in nature was transmuted, because of the influence of the opposing elements, into mere atheistic natural science; that is, to mere atheistic scientific thinking and to merely utilitarian thinking in the field of practical life.

This must be grasped firmly as regards the fifth decade, the period mentioned. The fact that Jehovah could not free himself from the spirits he had evoked led to the transition of Old Testament thinking into the atheistic science of the modern age. This in the field of social thinking has become marxism or something similar. Thus a thinking under the influence of natural science holds sway in the field of the social life.

This is connected with much that is happening in the immediate present. Old Testament thinking in human beings today is transformed into naturalism. Against this kind of thinking neither what comes from the West as the image of man, nor what comes from the East, can provide an adequate defense, because this thinking prevents man from acquiring actual and true insight.

It is perfectly obvious at present that people are opposed to the acquisition of insight. This sometimes takes on a pathological form. The so-called war history of the last two years, as I have recently said, will be a psychiatric account, socially psychiatric. The course of events, as these have occurred, is such that, when put together in the proper order, they provide for those who are familiar with them the best symptomatology for the social psychiatry of recent years and of the years to follow. Only it is necessary, of course, to deal with psychiatry also with more delicate hands and in a manner somewhat different from that of materialistic medicine. Otherwise we shall never bring to light in the right way the psychiatry to be studied, for example, in the person of Ludendorff. But it is precisely a considerable portion of the most recent history of our times that must be viewed in this light.

You will be able to recall that, from the beginning of the catastrophe, I have repeatedly and emphatically declared on the occasion of one or another irresponsible assertion that this particular war catastrophe will render it impossible to write history on the basis of mere documents and the results of archival research. The manner in which this catastrophe became possible will be understood only by one who comes to realize clearly that the most decisive occurrence that took place at the end of July and the beginning of August 1914 occurred because of a dimmed condition in human consciousness. Men over the whole Earth were in a state of dimmed consciousness, and occurrences were brought about through the influence of ahrimanic powers in these dimmed consciousnesses. In other words, things will have to be unveiled through a knowledge of spiritual-scientific facts. This is something that must simply be perceived. The time is past when events can be rightly explained on the basis of mere documents, in the manner in which Rancke wrote history, or someone else in some other field — Buckle, or others. This is important. Mere sympathies and antipathies determine nothing when the right guidance for one's judgment is needed. Judgments, however, have been formed in recent years, and are still being formed primarily according to sympathies and antipathies. Certainly, correct judgments are formed even under the influence of sympathy and antipathy, but these do not signify much as regards a person's grasp by means of his judgment of the factual world. The manner in which one sort of opinion or another becomes epidemic can be subjected to special studies if we trace the development of opinions among people during recent years. What have millions of persons believed in Central Europe, and what will they believe? What is believed in the rest of the world? This continued in Central Europe as long as possible; outside of Central Europe it will continue even longer. But what is really needed is that the habit shall be formed at last of learning from the events themselves. Events shall be observed for the purpose of forming judgments on the basis of these events.

It is to be desired that the weight of events shall have some determining, decisive influence upon people, and especially the way in which events have taken their course in the present period. This way is quite new; earlier events came about differently. Today, things diametrically opposed to one another come together.

I called your attention last time to the fact that the transplantation of bolshevism into Russia was an impulse derived essentially from Ludendorff. These things, which it was naturally not necessary to mention outside the region of the Central Powers, have been stated there often enough. People would not listen. I repeatedly had the following experience. It is highly significant and I once referred to it here, but I desire that it shall not be forgotten, for I shall gradually narrate all these things so that the world shall learn what has really been happening. The writing I prepared consisted of two parts. The second part contained what I have sketched for you as the social relationships, but arranged in a form suited for that time. The first part contained what I considered it necessary that I should discuss and disseminate in the manner indicated. I have met persons who have read what I wrote and who answered me by saying, “Yes, indeed, but to carry out the first point you make would lead inevitably to the abdication of the German Kaiser.” Of course, I could only reply, “If it leads to that, it will simply be necessary that it should lead to that.” World history has confirmed this. This abdication had to come. It should not have come, however, in the way in which it actually occurred, but ought to have come from a free inner decision. Most assuredly this would have resulted from my very first point. Naturally, the first point did not read, “The German Kaiser must abdicate,” but it made a definite demand. If this had been carried out, the abdication would have occurred long ago under entirely different circumstances from those that actually took place.

I could never bring people to understand that what had there been written down was an utterance derived from reality. Regarding that one point also no further progress was made. As I was stating the matter to a minister of foreign affairs, I said to him also, “Well, you have the choice either to be reasonable and employ reason in bringing things to pass, or to experience revolutions, which must occur in the course of the next decades, and will begin soon.”

Just as truly as this was necessary, which directs attention to a somewhat greater perspective, so was it true that the German Kaiser had to be induced to abdicate, and that a proposal was made looking in this direction. But, when this statement was made, which was based upon a more limited perspective than the other, it was simply something regarding which it was not permissible even to speak, and of which not even a serious discussion was allowed.

Thus it did not require these last events to render obvious the unsound mind of Ludendorff, but this could have been known long before. I was able long ago to point this out. But, as you know, in regard to spiritual science the situation is such that people shrink in terror from it, because they are afraid of it. Fear in heart and mind is something that plays a great and tremendous role in the minds of people at the present time. It appears under the most varied masks. Indeed, anxiety of soul, unwillingness to come into contact with a thing, whatever it may be, is what plays a special role at the present time. It is with this objective in mind that we must view events, and we then recognize them as symptoms for things that lie much deeper. Just consider an event of the last few days.

That things would turn out as they have turned out now could have been known long ago by any thoughtful observer of conditions in Germany and of the German army. Only it was Ludendorff who came to realize for the first time on August 8, 1918, that he could not win the victory. He was the “practical person.” Bear in mind all that I have said to you from time to time about “practical persons,” about the impracticality of practical persons! He was a practical person, who proved to be wrong under all circumstances, who came to realize at the very last, on August 8, that he could not win the victory with the army available to him. Men of insight had known this since September 16, 1914; it was impossible to win the victory with this army. Now, what did Ludendorff do? He summoned Ballin to him in order that Ballin should go at last to the Kaiser and should tell him what the situation was, since Ballin was on terms of close friendship with him. You will ask whether there was no imperial chancellor at that time. Yes, there was an imperial chancellor, but his name was Hertling. Was there no minister of foreign affairs? There was one, but he was Herr von Hintze, who had come out of the most stupefying atmosphere of the court. There was also a Reichstag, and other things likewise — of such appendices of the life of the nation it is scarcely worthwhile in our time to speak. So Ludendorff summoned Ballin to him and proposed to him that he explain the situation to the Supreme War Lord. Ballin set out for the Kaiser's residence — of course, always at a distance from the actual events, except when Ludendorff himself found it opportune to announce that this or that action had been undertaken in the presence of His Majesty, the Supreme War Lord. Anyone who understood the situation knew what significance to attach to the word “presence.” So Ballin, who had long been a well-known and clever man, set out toward Wilhelmshohe in order to enlighten the Kaiser. This would naturally have been possible only if he had been able to speak to the Kaiser alone, which he could have done at any time if the Kaiser had not once struck him on his cheek with a lady's fan, or something of the kind, when Ballin at an earlier time, at the beginning of the war, had wished to explain something to him. But he consented to go, in spite of the affectionate slap given him with the lady's fan. He consented to go because of the critical situation, in order to explain the situation to his old friend. But the latter summoned Herr von Berg to be present, and he knew how to change the subject of a conversation — as the Kaiser obviously wished, for he did not wish to hear the truth. So the conversation never touched upon what should have been discussed.

I relate this only as a matter of psychology. You have here a person who stands in the midst of the most critical events and who is afraid of the truth brought to him by another person, and will not permit it to reach him. Here you see the situation in a clear light. The same phenomenon is common at the present time. So Ballin was not able to convince the Supreme War Lord because he simply could not present the matter to him. Ludendorff summoned Herr von Hintze, and reached an agreement with him that an armistice should be asked of the Entente. This was immediately after August 8, 1918. Herr von Hintze promised to appeal to Wilson. But nothing happened until toward October 1918, in spite of the fact that it was clear that the very thing was a matter of necessity, that actually occurred under the most unfortunate ministry of Prince Max von Baden many weeks later. Prince Max von Baden wished to go to Berlin and do something entirely different, but Ludendorff explained that an armistice must be proposed within twenty-four hours to avoid the greatest disaster. Prince Max von Baden did this against his earlier decision.

After five days, Ludendorff declared that he had really blundered, and that it would not have been necessary!

This is an example of the way in which practical persons, highly respected practical persons — to whom, however, there is not the least ground for showing respect — intervene in world events — but from what points of view and with what forces of thought! This is also an opportunity for studying how opinions become epidemic. The opinion that Hindenburg and Ludendorff are “great men” has spread everywhere with epidemic violence, whereas they were in no sense really great men, not even from the standpoint of their limited profession. These catastrophic occurrences are especially characteristic in showing how false judgments are formed. Witticisms alone have often hit the mark. If you go to Berlin now — most of you have probably not been in Berlin in recent years — you will see in the vicinity of the Victory Column, near that great cuspidor (indeed, the Reichstag building really looks like a huge cuspidor), in that vicinity you will see a remarkable structure. There stands “Hindenburg,” a great, gigantic, most horrible statue of wood. Every “patriot” has driven a nail into this statue so that it has gradually had nails hammered into it everywhere. Only the wit of Berlin has correctly evaluated this. The saying is that, when he was finally entirely nailed up (Ganz vernagelt=absolutely stupid) he would be placed in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

All these things ought to be considered especially from the viewpoint of which I have often spoken — from the standpoint of the symptomatology of history as well as the symptomatology of events that have any relationship to human beings. The external world gives only symptoms, and we arrive at the truth only when we learn to recognize these symptoms in their nature as such.

Source: The Rudolf Steiner Archive

http://wn.rsarchive.org/Lectures/GA/GA0186/19181129p01.html