From Greek Vision to Modern Individuality: Karma and Spirit

GA 165 — 7 January 1916, Dornach

Second Lecture

Yesterday I tried to draw your attention, by means of pictorial representations, so to speak, of the great difference in the state of mind of people within the fourth and fifth post-Atlantic periods, in the latter of which we ourselves live. This is a difference to which one is indeed not inclined to pay much attention today, in our present time. Let us only realize what an average person of the present day, who is “clever”, that is, who has absorbed the prevailing basic concepts of the present, has to say about what was hinted at yesterday. He will have something like the following to say: It is all very well and good what the ancient Greek imagined in his fantasy about the succession of generations from Tantalus to Iphigenia, and it is all very well and good that Iphigenia is, so to speak, placed in an aura of ruling fate. But after all, it is all just fantasy. It is the point of view that is generally adopted today by intelligent people. Coridan, whom we have just seen in the Palatine pastoral play, does not say so from the beginning, but Pug does: “It's all just fantasy!” But it is roughly this point of view that today's Pug (beg pardon!) has.

Now we must direct our entire attention to what an enormously convincing power this point of view has for people of today, how impossible it is for them to imagine that someone could appear, someone who, instead of giving the information to such a personality, “hereditary burden,” as I quoted to you yesterday, could put forward something similar to the Iphigenia-Tantalus myth. And if he were to put it forward, everyone would of course say: fiction! In fiction, anything goes, but such fiction has absolutely nothing to do with truth, with real knowledge. And basically, that is the point of view that is currently adopted towards all art. Contemporary humanity is completely and utterly of the opinion that truth can only be attained through concepts, through theories—through such concepts, through such theories that are taken from external physical reality, and everything else, however beautiful, is fiction. In the present situation, one cannot imagine that any other point of view could be justified or even possible, that someone could take a different point of view without actually being insane. Just imagine that someone would even make the request – I dare to say this here, but I am well aware that it is only possible among us to say this – let's assume that someone would come up with the idea of saying: In medical lecture halls, there should be less talk of hereditary burden and the like, but things should be presented in a way that resembles a Greek myth. If the person concerned were to say this as if he meant it, as if he were serious and not making a bad joke, the least that contemporary culture could do to him would be to send him to a sanatorium. There is hardly any other conceivable outcome, is there! The conviction is so deeply rooted in the present that another point of view is not even possible: truth can only be found in the way that is currently officially recognized, and everything that people used to seek through their souls was just childishness, it was myth, it was poetry, it was not truth. But the modern man can be sure that we have finally come so far that the souls in all future eras will never feel anything but the truth of what has just been suggested. One can be quite convinced of this: if it were ever possible to transform air navigation into ether navigation, and if, in the sense of today's physicists, the ether really existed in the universe, and if a balloon were designed that would take some of our clever earthlings, who have never been foolish enough to enter a spiritual-scientific society, to Mars, and on Mars they would reveal other views of some kind or other than the one just mentioned, so one would say: Of course, these Martians are just making things up! They have not yet grasped the concept of how to recognize the way in which truth can really be found. The fact that another point of view might be possible could, under certain circumstances, be taken seriously in the present day even by someone who does not have an outlook based on spiritual science. But then, if he is really able to seriously reflect on other world views, a terrible fate may await him. Nietzsche was one who tried to apply a different standard and who, in the sense of his book Beyond Good and Evil, even criticized truth. But he meant the truth that the present time alone recognizes, and he wanted to assert a different point of view, namely the point of view of life, the point of view of the life of the soul above all things. He was unable to come to spiritual science, and so he had to pay for this point of view with his mental health. Another point of view would be, for example, to ask: How do such concepts as those processed in Greek myth affect the human soul? And how do such concepts as those processed by the present age affect the human soul according to the type of “hereditary burden”? How do these concepts affect the human soul, the whole life of the human soul? How do they work? And there is an enormous difference. One can summarize a number of generations, such as those from Tantalus to Iphigenia, either by doing so in an original way [like Nietzsche] or by believing in such a summary as in something real: he who can bring to life such ideas, such feelings associated with such ideas in his soul, brings an invigorating element into the whole of his soul life. But the person who works only with such concepts as that is of the hereditary burden, which brings into the soul life a killing element, a desiccating element. And this desiccating element will gradually be brought about under the influence of one-sided physical, biological and so on knowledge, a desiccating, a killing element. Never will these physical, chemical, biological sciences be able to produce anything in the present that can contribute to the inner fulfillment of the life of the soul.

Anyone who wants to observe can see it in outward things. Try it out for yourself. Buy Ostwald's little book “Natural Philosophy” – which can be found in the Reclam Library – and try to get by with this little book if you are looking for food for your soul! See for yourself how everything an excellent chemist has to say about all kinds of natural connections is dealt with on many pages, but how everything that is supposed to serve the soul is crammed into a few pages and presented in such abstractions that it can only have the effect of desiccating the soul! And the line of development does not go so far as to promise that these biological, physical and chemical directions will in future fulfill the soul. That is not the case at all. On the contrary, the further the individual sciences progress, the less they will be able to offer anything that could even resemble nourishment for the soul. And when the time comes that the connection between the individual souls and the old religious conceptions will have been completely eradicated by modern natural science, then the soul will have no nourishment at all. The souls of adults would then still preach all kinds of things to children that they themselves do not believe — then the souls of adults would spend their day starting with breakfast, slurping in the newspaper between spoonfuls. Now there is less and less about spiritual matters concerning humanity in the newspapers, and more and more about other things. Then people will go about their daily work, will perform the tasks necessary for the material provision of humanity. Then they will have lunch, will do something similar in the evening, and if there are people who have time, they will kill it playing games or the like because it cannot be filled with some thoughts that have real value through a spiritual world. Yes, what will they do in the evening? Perhaps it will still be acceptable that people go to see plays or the like, in which they do not believe in any event. Some will read a book, perhaps about such things that were produced in the “childlike” times of humanity, which were indeed beautiful, like Raphael's or Michelangelo's pictures. And one will be quite clear about it: it is quite beautiful, but it has nothing to do with reality.

Let us not deceive ourselves: the times are moving towards something that will dry up and kill the life of the soul. If we now consider what the above can teach us, we find that there is already an enormous desolation in it. For what is the meaning of the emergence from the fourth post-Atlantic period into our fifth post-Atlantic period? This meaning consists in the fact that in the fourth post-Atlantic period, in the ancient Greek period, for example, people were not as isolated in their souls as they are today. There was still an inner connection between souls, but they also in certain last remnants of visions, of inspirations of Diana, as they were understood at that time, of inspirations of Diana, of Artemis, of what emerged from the subconscious depths of the soul. And these visions really did appear to people in pictures. It can be said that people still had the last remnants of visionary images in their minds about human relationships, about social life, and they used these images as a guide. It is quite nonsensical to believe that the Greeks would have imagined something in the same way that we imagine things in the present day. It is quite nonsensical to believe that. When the Greeks undertook the expedition to Troy and thus prepared for the march to Troy, it would have been quite impossible for them to proceed with such an undertaking for any reasons that are acquired by reason or animated by feeling as they are experienced today. It would have been quite inconceivable for the Greeks. They knew that when they undertook something of this kind, they were placing themselves in the greater context of humanity and the world, and that what must live in their souls could not be something that had anything to do with ordinary feelings playing out on the physical plane. They saw the deeper reasons and brought them to bear in imaginative visions. They certainly said: there was a contest between the three goddesses Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena, and Paris was to receive the prize of this contest, Helen. It was a picture, but in the picture the Greek felt and sensed great spiritual connections that went through the world.

People today might imagine that the Greeks undertook the Trojan War for similar reasons to those of the present day, and that someone then sat down and invented the whole myth as a poetic explanation of the Trojan War. This is again an externalized notion of the present day. The myth was a vision, an imaginative representation of the deeper forces at work. Now, of course, if it does not lead too far away from the present task, I could discuss how Helen was the representative, how she was the image of the whole relationship between Greece and the Near East, how the whole contest between the three goddesses showed the nature of the whole impulse of Greek soul, and how Greek soul life had to work its way up to what it later presented to the world. But as I said, the consideration of this myth would take us too far from our present task.

We want to bear in mind that there still lived remnants of a visionary clairvoyance that sought the truth in images, and that poetry was not as it is today, where it is presented as something that is invented, but rather it was something that was experienced in a visionary way and then lived out in external forms, but that it was not opposed by a dry, pedantic, purely theoretical science that would have been so proud of its concepts of truth, as is the case with present-day theoretical science. So people still saw the connections between each other. This has been completely lost. It had to be lost because individualism had to arise. People would never have arrived at that individualism, for which the great educator must be the culture of the fifth post-Atlantean period, and which will gradually develop during this fifth post-Atlantean period. People had to lose their old clairvoyance, even in its last remnants, in order to be completely detached – each individual for himself – from what can still be perceived of the interrelationship. Man had to be narrowed down, so to speak, in his spiritual experience to his individual forms of existence on the physical plane. He had to be narrowed down. This could only happen if he lost everything that led him beyond his own body, so that he was completely enclosed in his own body. If you have a vision of what connects you to other people, then you have an awareness of social life. The human being of the fifth post-Atlantic period could no longer have this. He became entirely dependent on what he could experience within his own skin. And so the individualistic concept of the human being emerged at its first stage, at what one can say is this most brutal stage, at which, to a certain extent, he still stands.

If man today wants to feel what he actually is, he thinks first of all – even if he has other theories that are even more beautiful – of what he is within his body, within his skin, really within his skin. It is difficult to evoke a clear idea about this, because it is true and is not believed at all in the present day, because people like to delude themselves with all kinds of idealism in order to hide the fact that basically they only believe in themselves, insofar as they are enclosed in their own skin. But this transition had to take place. It had to take place for the reason that man must gradually realize that what is within his skin is, in a sense and within certain limits, prepared by his karma. What had existed as Greek fate man had not prepared for himself, it was connected with his lineage. What man of the future will feel as karma will consciously connect him with other men. Man will have to consciously feel his karma as something real. As you can imagine, it is still infinitely difficult for today's man to feel karma consciously. It is accepted as a theory, but to feel karma consciously is still very, very difficult for people today. I once said: Suppose we receive a slap in the face from someone. Certainly, outwardly, insofar as we are enclosed in our body and are beings between birth and death, we have to defend ourselves against it. But the higher point of view must be applied: Who gave you the slap in the face? Who put the one who gave you the slap in the face there so that he could give you the slap in the face? He would not be there if you had not placed him there through the way you are connected with him through karma. Think how terribly difficult it is for a person in the present time to think like this! Christians believe that they are people of the present, but they will still follow in thought the One who advises them: If someone strikes you on the left cheek, turn the other also—outwardly it will not work. And this distinction between inward and outward is not yet made by people. It becomes quite hopelessly difficult for them to somehow live in karma.

And yet, when we live our way into life from our embryonic state through birth, through our first childhood into our life, then that which helps to shape our body is our karma. Between our last death and our present birth, we have lived through and have even made it our business to live through how we have to experience karma and what kind of body we have to give ourselves so that it can live out its karma. We thus act, I might say, by kneading the soul-forces through our body. We even localize by placing ourselves in the place in the world where we can live out our karma. Thus we work out our personal destiny with the consciousness that we have between death and a new birth.

This is the opposite of the Greek idea of fate. But in order to come to this idea as a living idea, man must pass through individualism, he must first grasp himself as an individual, I would say, in a very brutal way. And in this way of grasping himself as an individual is he a human being. But, I would say, he has had to accept something, really accept something, in order to live out the feeling: I am locked inside my skin and my flesh. He has had to accept something, this human being. That is that he has become a slave, a soul slave, to this corporeality. He allowed himself to be enslaved by corporeality, and the body initially became the master of a new way of accepting fate. An Iphigenia felt in the age of which I spoke yesterday – every single sentence in yesterday's presentation is correct: I indicated approximately how many years she still lacked until she reached the age of twenty – an Iphigenia who had visions as far as Tantalus, which visions are now interpreted as reminiscences, caused by heredity. Such an Iphigenia is no longer possible in our present day. Such an Iphigenia, who, above all, grasps morally and ethically what lives in the generation, up to Tantalus: “Listen! I am of the Tantalus family!” That is not possible today. For today the doctor steps up to her and explains: hereditary burden! Your father, your mother, your grandfather, your grandmother and so on had such and such a condition, hereditary burden! And that's where it all comes from! — But this makes it clear that today's soul lives gasping under the yoke of physicality, gasping even in its perception, in its sensation.

Basically, my dear friends, we can see this gasping beneath the physicality when we look at what has become of people under a certain 19th-century world view. They only looked at the physical and, because they only looked at the physical, they derived the descent of man purely from the animal world. Man also grasps scientifically under that to which his corporeality connects him. And it will not be easy to draw people's attention to what is at the root of this. For people when they are made aware of all this may say: Do you think you can refute the legitimate aspects of Darwinism? Surely it is well proven. Yes, it is well proven, but that is not the point. The point is that the sense of truth has changed. In the sense, this changed sense of truth, one can of course rigorously prove the whole matter. One must be out of touch with the present age if one cannot perceive what it is actually about.

But all this has practical consequences! With tremendous vehemence, external culture steers towards implementing the things that are thought in practical life and no longer allowing impulses of the spiritual and soul to apply within practical life. And how close are we today to asserting such things, for example in education or didactics, in upbringing! How close are we today to asserting such things in the education of young children! But just imagine if it ever came to pass that people would demand not only the things they demand of young children today, but also quite different things. Imagine if it ever came to pass that it became the duty of every parent to have a child examined by a materialistic doctor for its inherited characteristics once it has reached a certain age, which will then be determined by scientific-statistical data. In the meantime, however, the school system will have been divided into different categories, and after the medical examination by the materialistic doctor, the children will then have to be put into this or that school, perhaps even into this or that kindergarten, depending on their “hereditary burden”.

Today, people are still amazed when someone talks about such a perspective. But that is precisely what is so terrible about being amazed. One should not be amazed at all by such things, because if the form of Darwinism that is theoretically advocated today were true, then it would have to be done that way. That is the main thing: then that would be the only means, and it would be unscrupulous of people if they did not do it that way. There could be the slight possibility, the slight possibility, that, say, someone once, I don't know how, cheated the doctor a little, and a doctor issued a certificate that, in the opinion of others who were not officially appointed to do so, is not correct; while should have been put in section two, where there are certain “hereditary conditions,” the child may have been put in section five, where, according to the doctor's certificate, the future geniuses are, and then it could turn out that the child has become more intelligent than the person examining him! But that could only happen by “mistake.” The fact that something like that would be possible would not fool many people, would it!

This is just to give you an impulse to gain an insight into the direction in which this trend is heading, a trend that is still only theoretical in many cases today. Today it is only like fat drops on the soup, but these fat drops on the soup will become more and more powerful. More and more materialistic fat will be added, and then finally the whole plate will be full of this materialistic fat, and humanity will have to face the consequences. But this is precisely the point where people, through a world view, will have to overcome the great dangers that lie in the practical application of current theories. Once that which is in our spiritual science has found an inner soul-life in a large number of souls, then one will not be able to persuade the person in whom the spiritual-scientific truths have found inner soul-life of all kinds of “hereditary burdens.” Rather, he will say: No matter how much you can prove about what my father, my mother, my grandfather, my grandmother and so on, I know that besides what I carry in my hereditary impulses, I still have that soul that has nothing to do with these hereditary impulses, because at the time when the bequeathing, the previous generation was there, this soul was in the spiritual world between death and the present birth. I also carry these forces within me, and one day I will see whether I cannot conquer this “hereditary burden”! — Certainly, as long as one believes in the theory of inheritance, and as long as spiritual-scientific truths do not become flesh and blood, one will not be able to conquer inheritance. One will only be able to conquer it when the spiritual-scientific concepts really come to life in the souls and become flesh and blood. But for that to happen, much else must happen.

Of course, it can be believed that spiritual truths will gradually gain more and more conviction for those who see through them, but many other things will have to be added. I therefore started today with an aperçu about art. Consider how far what is called truth today has departed from art and poetry since Greek times, how in the fifth post-Atlantic period a gulf has arisen between what people call truth and what they call art. But that has a lot to do with how the present generation, the present humanity, has related to art in general. And here it is really not without value if you take a look at how people today relate to art in general. There is one art in which — because it is of primary importance for the fifth post-Atlantic period and its aftermath — it is precisely not possible to make mistakes in world history. I repeat, it is precisely not possible to make mistakes; in which people today are also compelled to look at the artistic aspect: that is music. Only in music are people today inclined to recognize the artistic, because the nature of music forces them not to see music as a representation of external reality. For one can only fail to recognize the artistic in the very outermost reaches of the musical. If someone were to just listen here and there to see if music imitates the sound of waves or the whispering of the wind or something similar, then we would know that what imitates the sound of waves or the whispering of the wind or something similar is a secondary matter in music; that something completely different is at stake here, namely inner form, which in reality cannot be observed in any way externally on the physical plane. Thus music is protected by its inner nature from being drawn too strongly into the tendencies of the fifth post-Atlantic age.

The present age has less to offer poetry. There are things that lead from the artistic to the non-artistic, and in many poetic activities these things occur particularly. How many people today will still have a real feeling for the artistic in poetry, just as one must have a feeling for the artistic in music? Most people, when confronted with something, ask: is it true in relation to this or that model in reality? Yes, we have a whole art of naturalism that judges everything poetic only in terms of its conformity to external, physical reality, whereas in poetry it is irrelevant whether something conforms to external, physical reality. It is just as unimportant for a piece of writing whether a character is drawn truthfully in the external, physical sense as it is whether a musical performance imitates the sound of wind or waves. So that one can say that the present generation is less predisposed to poetry than to music. In truth, it does not depend on whether I describe something that is true about this or that reality in four stanzas, but rather on how the second stanza arises from the first, how the third arises from the first two, and so on; in a sonnet, it does not depend on expressing this or that, but rather on how the four, four, three, three lines intertwine; how do the four lines intertwine? What inner impulses live in them – similar to melodies or harmony, but transferred to the realm of the imagination, to the realm of sound? – There is actually very little feeling for that.

A woman, a very witty woman, once gave me a novella – it was a long time ago, about thirty years – and said that I should read it and give her my opinion. This novella was of such a nature – one was dealing with a very witty woman – that something was told, as one might tell an external event, so that I found myself obliged to say: the whole thing requires, above all, that you undertake a division that you, so to speak, carve out three novellistic stanzas, a first novellistic stanza - I now mean in a figurative sense -, a second, a third, and that an inner structure, an inner structure of an artistic nature, extends into it. - You should have seen the way the lady in question looked at me - to demand such a thing! What - she said - three stanzas should I do? she said, ironically, at my suggestion.

Then there is the next art, for which the present generation has even less aptitude, and that is painting. Painting, how it lives out of form and color, how it must see the artistic and does not have to look at it: how does what is depicted bear a physical resemblance to this or that external object? Of course, the artistic aspect can also lie in physical similarity, for example in portraiture or the like, but then something quite different is important than the likeness. What matters is that the artistic aspect comes through precisely in the way the work is treated. And there is terribly little of that in humanity at present. What people judge first in painting today can be compared to wanting to judge music by the similarity of a melody or something similar to something external in nature.

However, the descent from music to poetry is also noticed in another way, and it is also noticeable in the present in another way. Someone may consider themselves a musical genius, but they still have to study something. Today, however, poetic geniuses consider it quite dreadful if they are supposed to have studied something for the finer technical aspects. And there is almost a similar tendency with regard to painting or the like.

But when it comes to sculpture, people's understanding of the subject sinks even lower still in relation to the present day. When judging sculpture, people consider almost nothing else except what might be produced if a series of sounds were heard and one spent the whole night trying to determine which natural phenomenon it resembled. Most judgments passed on plastic arts and sculpture are actually of this kind, and it is only through sculpture that we can see that an understanding of sculpture will arise when spiritual science can be sought in the human personality in a living way. Remember many of the things I have presented here – and had to present here on purpose – about the way of empathizing with the space above and below, right and left, front and back; remember all these discussions. Remember the arguments I had about the left and right sides of the human being, and consider how much can be developed in this way, this experiencing of the etheric body of the human being, which first shapes the physical forms, an experiencing that the Greeks had instinctively, that was lost in the fifth post-Atlantic period, and that must be resurrected. One can already say: the time must come when sculpture will be conceived in such a way that everything that today pushes people to their judgment is left out, and everything that people are only willing to consider in relation to music is included.

Not to mention architecture! For if people today were not forced to place their chairs somewhere in the room with the table, and to put a cover around it, and if they were not forced to somehow enter the rooms and look out into the open, then they would not find any forms today that somehow signify an architectural design. For what do architects do? They study Renaissance forms, classical forms. That is to say, they imitate, because you cannot put up mere cubic forms or polyhedral or similar boxes everywhere. That architecture will be able to give birth to forms again will depend entirely on people learning anew to feel how the Creative Power of the world pours into forms. For this had to be lost in the time of individualism. And so it is necessary to revive it; necessary that in addition to what is to bring life into the conceptions of the human soul, the artistic perception is also added, that the artistic contributes essentially. That is why it is good that a number of our dear friends have not only heard theoretical lectures on art within our spiritual-scientific endeavors, but have also actively participated in the creation of certain forms and other artistic endeavors, even if what is created here is only a beginning for something in the future.

I would like to say that the last refuge that the world-view people of the present day have chosen is what they call: reason taught by external experience. With this reason, taught by outer experience, people have now built the present-day worldview of materialism, and more and more the purely mechanical and biological, physical, chemical concepts are to become decisive for the worldview, and there is no inclination to go into the liveliness value of the concepts, into the way in which they can enliven the soul. I have expressly emphasized that the great advances in scientific research must be recognized by our spiritual science, that we should not expose and embarrass ourselves by constantly railing against scientific progress. One only rails against it as long as one does not know it. When one gets to know it, one gets an impressive impression. And we should really realize that we should not complain about science because we belong to spiritual science if we have no idea whatsoever of any kind of natural science. But let us turn again to what world view values there are in current science, or rather to the way in which current scientific concepts can become precisely the significant world view values. We live in difficult and oppressive times today. We see how death is spreading across wide areas in an endlessly oppressive manner. We see how suffering and pain are spreading, a picture that every soul should contemplate today. Especially in our time, it is so depressing when souls divert their gaze from the great world events and are so concerned with their own personal affairs. From this point of view, my dear friends, it has caused me, for example, such infinite pain in the past year that so much personal information has come to light in our ranks at a time when the great interests of humanity could so intensely approach our soul. But I don't want to talk about this and that at all, I just want to draw attention to it.

How do people of the present day face such overwhelming events of the times? There may be those who say: Does not the transience of the physical, especially in this time when we see thousands and thousands of deaths taking place all over the world, make us so aware that people must awaken within themselves all the ideas that can arise in them about the eternal powers of the human soul? Are not these events particularly suited to lead human thoughts to the eternal powers of the human soul? And so one could imagine that perhaps someone who was already very inclined to surrender completely to Ahriman, that is, to materialism, would be reminded by the force of the present impressions of the vanity of the transitory, of the withering away of the transitory, to turn his gaze to the eternal. That would be conceivable. But if we look at some of what comes to light in reality, if we take one of the most outstanding scientific visionaries of the present day, if we take Ernst Haeckel. What is the approximate content of Ernst Haeckel's “thoughts of eternity”? He says: “We see countless people passing away, an inexplicable fate befalling the physical life of man on earth. Don't we realize from this how worthless any thoughts about the eternity of the human soul are when we see that people can be cut down like that? Is this not proof that the scientific world view is right when it says: Nothing of meaning extends beyond the merely physical and corporeal? Is what we are experiencing now not proof that those who speak of an eternity of the human soul are wrong?

It cannot be said that the one who, from the present-day concepts, would be made aware of eternal forces in the human soul through the present-day events, would be more logical than the one who says: We see people dying after all, through what I can only call chance! How can one believe that there is really meaning in human development or that eternal values are there! From the present standpoint, it cannot be said that one is more or less logical than the other. You cannot consider one idea logical and the other illogical if you are seriously concerned with logic. For those who argue in this way are reminded of what lies in the present scientific achievements. One can truly admire these infinitely. One can say: just think what chemical science has achieved, and mechanical science! It has perhaps achieved wonderful things when it comes to bringing about this or that in human progress, but it has also used its wonderful achievements to create very ingenious instruments of murder. This science can be completely neutral. It can produce the most wonderful instruments for exploring the secrets of nature, and through the same achievements, the most horrible instruments of murder! And so it is with science in general. It can prove from harrowing events that human souls cannot be absorbed in transience, and that precisely these events prove – it can prove this just as well! – that the human soul is something eternal. These scientific concepts are completely neutral.

Something positive must come, the message, the tidings, the revelation must come from the spiritual worlds, and these spiritual worlds must work through their inner power! You know that what comes through these revelations will not contradict but will be in full harmony with the achievements of natural science. Therefore, those who believe that scientific concepts will ever develop into a satisfactory world view are stating something quite nonsensical. Spiritual research must be added to scientific concepts, and therein lies the way to escape from the great dangers of the present. Attention must be directed to the fact that the downward path is the one that is connected with the very greatest progress, and that the upward path is the one that must come from the revelation of spiritual life. It is in this state of world affairs alone where must we act radically. That is what matters. Only spiritual science will be able to again speak of deeper secrets.

Truly, my dear friends, it is not easy for the concept of karma to take root in the soul. This will only happen when a larger number of people are able to see the narrowness of such concepts as “inherited burden,” at the invalidity and infertility of such concepts, and look at what lives in the soul. Then, when people come and see a child of whom the materialistic doctor says: ‘He will live out such and such, but there is nothing to be done, because the father was like that, the mother was like that, the grandfather was like that, the grandmother was like that and so on, there is nothing to be done’ – when the materialistic doctor says that, then people must have a sense that it also may be true that there is a soul in this that has prepared itself for something quite different from what the materialistic doctor believes according to heredity, for something quite different between its last death and the new birth, and that above all this must not be left fallow, but these forces must be developed at all costs. Spiritual knowledge must become the norm in the world, and people will be able to see that it is unscrupulous to not turn their attention to the spiritual and soul realms. They will have to realize that if they do not turn their attention to these spiritual qualities during their education, they will remain latent. For at a certain age, physicality will have already been expressed; it should be noted that the spirit can no longer penetrate it, and then it remains fallow for the incarnation in question.

This is where spiritual science takes on a practical significance. It is to be hoped that this practical significance will be recognized. These are the things that I wanted to bring before your soul today in connection with yesterday.