Goethe and the Crisis of the Nineteenth Century

GA 171 — 28 October 1916, Dornach

Fourteenth Lecture

A scene in Faust such as that which leads Faust to contemplate the Earth Spirit may well trigger thoughts in our time that should follow on from some of the reflections we have been making here recently. Faust stands before the Earth Spirit. And we see that it is through the contemplation of certain things that stir meditation, which, as it says in Faust, become for him out of the book of Nostradamus, that he is transported into that state through which it can become vivid to him that which speaks to him as the Earth Spirit. Now, I have already spoken about these things here and today I just want to start from the idea of the earth spirit. Our present-day thinking is very soon satisfied with such a scene, in that it repeats a formula that is very convenient for this present-day thinking over and over again. This present time simply says: Well, the poet is allowed to conjure up before our soul that which can never be reality. For Goethe, such a formula contained the pinnacle of all that is trivial, for for Goethe there was a deep and meaningful reality in all that he wanted to develop about Faust's relationship with the earth spirit. And it is only how this reality is to be imagined now, in line with Goethe's intentions, that I would like to say a few words about in my introduction.

Even at the time when he wrote the scene about the earth spirit, Goethe was well informed about everything that could be known at that time – as I have already mentioned – about certain connections between people and the spiritual world; he had carefully informed himself about it. And whether he more or less brought these things clearly to his mind, whether he could have expressed them more or less in completely clear words, as we express these things today, is not important when one considers the time in which Goethe lived. But what does matter is that he composed the scene entirely in the spirit of correct views. If one wants to imagine this in reality, it can be done in the following way. One must imagine: through the insights that Faust gains from this so-called book of Nostradamus, in connection with soul exercises that Faust has of course already done earlier, the etheric body is uncovered, partially separated from the physical body, as is necessary for an insight into the spiritual world. But through this, the human being is brought into an etheric connection with the outside world and he really experiences the existence, the activity of spiritual beings that can only embody themselves in the etheric world, whose embodiment does not come down to the physical world. This is the case with what Goethe imagines under the earth spirit, a spiritual being that only comes down to the etheric world. So Faust must prepare himself to see the life and activity of the etheric world in this moment. And that is what he does. There is thus a real interaction between the earth spirit and the etheric body of Faust that has been released. This is, of course, as I have now described it, an imperceptible process for the external sense world, a process that can only be experienced spiritually.

Now, in the time that preceded our fifth post-Atlantic period, people who knew more than the later ones about the connection between man and the spiritual world, but in whom the old clairvoyant ability had more or less faded away, sought in the most diverse ways, one might say, for substitutes for a connection with the spiritual world. Consider, for example, that Faust receives images and words from the book of Nostradamus. By thinking these words, that is, by forming the thought-forms, he effectively paves the way for his soul to reach the earth spirit. Goethe was able to depict this because he knew that it corresponded to reality. In truth, one can say that the time in which the historical Faust lived was no longer conducive to people being able to experience such a spiritual connection so easily. For even earlier, even when the fourth post-Atlantic period, the Greco-Latin culture, came to an end in the 14th century, people were already trying to gain a connection to the spiritual world through surrogates.

Of course, today's enlightened world cannot get enough of these surrogates, descriptions of which are available, and can only laugh and sneer at them, reflecting on how wonderfully far we have come. But there is no need to listen to these very clever, these extremely clever people of the present, who, in their opinion, have of course moved beyond such things. One can visualize how people, in whom this ability had faded, in whom it was no longer as vividly present as it used to be, how people at the turn of the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantic period strove to pave the way through surrogates to observe certain spiritual processes, which in their truth can only be seen supernaturally. And that happened in many ways through external means. Let us say that such a man, who was trying to gain insights into the spiritual world and who could not summon the strong power within himself to gain these insights purely spiritually, did so by taking certain substances, burning them, and causing a smoke, produced by the mixture of very specific burning substances, to move in certain ways, which he evoked through very specific, again handed-down formulas. He had certain, as one might call them, magic formulas. So he developed a smoke from certain substances that he burned, and then he spoke certain words into the smoke. These words were also handed down and could be similar to the words that Faust finds in the book of Nostradamus. If he had been able to approach the spiritual world purely spiritually, he would not have needed the smoke. But perhaps he could not do that. Therefore he spoke certain magic formulas into the smoke. Through such magic formulas, when they are spoken in the right way, the smoke can immediately take on certain forms, and if the formulas were the right ones, then not only was the smoke made to take on certain forms, but these forms then also allowed the spiritual beings, who could not just approach him spiritually, to enter his sphere. The smoke was, so to speak, that which the person concerned formed through his formulas; and the forms that the smoke took made it possible for the spiritual entities of an elementary nature to enter into these formations, into these forms of smoke, and thus be there. We see that it is a surrogate, a holding on to that which cannot be held on to purely spiritually, through physical matter. .

Goethe avoided depicting such a surrogate; he could just as easily have had Faust take another book in which those herbs were compiled that one has to burn together to create such a column of smoke in order to then let the earth spirit approach in this way. He avoided that. He wanted to make the scene more spiritual. But of course Goethe was well aware of these surrogates. As I said, today people laugh at the idea that something like this could have any meaning.

Now there is something strange, something very strange. The 19th century actually came to gradually lose all spiritual views, even the view of the life force that is anchored in the life ether, and of everything that is anchored in the ether. This 19th century, with its materialistic view, has come to regard life itself only as an emanation of the material, to look at a living organism only as a more complicated machine, so to speak. Of course, this tendency to expel life from the way we look at things was part of the 19th century. The strange thing is that, once it has been expelled, life creeps back into the way we look at things, creeps back in a way that the thinking of the 19th and 20th centuries has so far been unable to deal with. It is interesting to observe how, one might say, after spirit and life have been expelled from research through one door, they enter through the other door, and in a way that research does not really know how to deal with. Today, certain people are already thinking about whether the inanimate might not also be alive, albeit in a rather wrong way. One has, so to speak, expelled life from the living; but today one already feels compelled to reflect on whether the non-living also lives. One says, for example, that what shows itself as living and yet cannot have different laws of life than the non-living has - more or less - a memory. Now that everything is being mixed up, memory is also attributed to animals and plants. Memory, it is said, is something that living things have. One does not want to accept this memory as something that comes from a spiritual source; so one tries to find this memory in inanimate things as well. How do you do that? Well, one says: What is memory? Memory consists in a so-called living being being exposed to a stimulus, and when this living being is exposed to the same stimulus a second time, the repetition is such that it is noted that the living being has been exposed to the same stimulus before. It is faster with the perception, with the assimilation of the stimulus; one notices that something has remained in the living being, which makes it suitable the second time to react to the stimulus in a faster way, in an easier way than the first time. Now one wonders: is this a property peculiar to the living to have memory of this kind? Then one would have to ascribe special properties to the living that one does not want to ascribe to it; so perhaps one can also find that the non-living, the merely physical, has memory. And there you find that, say, a magnet, so iron, which has been treated in a certain way so that it has become magnetic, attracts other iron, and you can now measure through certain processes, with what force iron is attracted when the magnet, say, has transmitted a certain amount of force. You can measure how much you had to do to magnetize the iron so that it attracts other iron.

Now we find very interesting facts. Absolutely correct facts can be found if you magnetize iron once and thereby bring it to a certain force. You then wait, then magnetize again: now you need to apply less force to bring the iron to the same magnetic force, to the same reaction as the first time, and the third time even less. So people say: You see, the magnet already has what you find more complicated in the memory of higher beings. The same can be demonstrated with other forces that adhere to inanimate substances, for example, when an elastic body is deformed. You can deform it by applying a certain force; it then returns, and in the snapback, in the restoration of its former form, it develops a certain reaction force, which has a certain strength that can be measured again by apparatus. The second time, one need not apply such a strong force to make the elastic piece in question spring apart and fold up again. And so one can say: So even in the concept of elastic force, the inanimate entities are afflicted with a certain memory.

This train of thought is very, very strange. We do not want to believe that animals have a memory because then we would have to deny them a spiritual life. Now it creeps in by thinking of magnets, elastic bodies, and thus of the inanimate, as being endowed with memory. But they went much further. As you know, a special property of the living is found, as you know, in the shadow side of all living things, in the possibility of falling ill. Now, people have thought again: could it be that the non-living, the inanimate, can also become ill? And certain people, who wanted to expel life from the living, so to speak, were actually extremely pleased that they were able to show that yes, the inanimate can also become ill! It is not just a privilege of the living that it can become ill, but the inanimate can also become ill.

It was a chemist, Erdmann, who first noticed that certain pieces of tin on a building showed quite remarkable phenomena. If such a piece of tin is (it is drawn), then they got something like such bubbles, which are raised in this way; underneath it is hollow. If you then squeezed these bubbles, the tin underneath was dusty, it was like dust at the spot. And lo and behold, it went further. We have reports that state that it did not stop with Erdmann's observations, but we find the following description, for example. “Later” — that is, after Erdmann — ‘the chemist Dr. Fritzsche took up this problem’ — of tin pest — ”again, after the head of a trading house in St. Petersburg had drawn his attention to the fact that whole blocks of pure metal that were to be shipped by ship simply disintegrated. Since uniform buttons had been turning into a gray powder in a military magazine around the same time, and since an extremely harsh winter was raging in St. Petersburg at the time, Dr. Fritzsche came up with the idea that it might be the cold that was affecting the tin. In 1893, the participants of the Naturalists' Assembly, meeting in the old city of Nuremberg, were led to the new post office building, whose roof, made of tin plates, had disintegrated in an inexplicable way. But none of the chemists and doctors present at the time knew what to do. Similar disintegration was found on the roof of the old famous town hall in Rothenburg ob der Tauber and in many other cases. In more recent times, Professor Dr. Ernst Cohen of the van't Hoff Laboratory at the University of Utrecht has now examined this decay of metals in great detail and found that it is indeed a disease, and an infectious disease at that."

So they came to ascribe a disease to the mere substance of tin, and they call this disease the tin pest. So today they already speak of the tin pest in these circles. But what is particularly interesting are such phenomena: There is a coin, a tin medal, which shows the following (a coin is drawn). It shows a head, in reality it is Balthasar Bekker, who was a reformer. This medal was cast in 1692. On this medal you will find such elevations everywhere, real pockmarked elevations that can be dabbed, then they come off. And underneath, the whole thing that is under these elevations has become dusty, dust-like. In this case, one speaks of pewter plague. But the strangest thing that has happened to people in particular is that if you now only have the dust on your fingers and transfer it to another pewter that is quite good, then this pewter is affected by the same disease. That means, according to popular belief, you are dealing with a very specific type of disease, and specifically with an infectious disease, a disease that can be transmitted by infection. Therefore, under the impression of such facts, people today say the following.

“Recently it has been recognized that there are infectious diseases of other metals as well. In the case of aluminum, there are even two different forms of infectious disease, one of which is caused by the carrier of infection being found in the water.” “Probably the doctrine of metal diseases,” writes Dr. Neuburger, “which is currently still in the early stages of development, will in the future represent a special branch of science... .”

So you see, in the future we will not only need medical doctors and veterinarians, but also “metal doctors”! Inanimate objects also fall ill; this is something that has now been incorporated into today's science. Inanimate objects also fall ill.

The living feels; it not only has memory and the ability to become ill, but it feels! It is indeed the simplest fact of life beyond the plant that it feels. Now, with this “sensation”, people today are already thinking in a strange way. It has been noticed for a long time that not only something that is born alive, for example, feels sound, but that something that is completely inanimate has a real sensation of sound. This is now particularly interesting. You just have to read what John Tyndall writes:

“When you strike the table, a column of smoke 45 cm high collapses into a bushy bunch with a stem only 2.5 cm long.”

So John Tyndall, the physicist, observed a column of smoke 45 centimeters high. Not by striking the same table where the column of smoke was, but by striking a completely different table, the column of smoke collapsed and changed its shape, becoming something like a cactus plant, but very low. And John Tyndall is seriously of the opinion that the column of smoke has perceived the sound and changed its shape as a result of the sound. He continues:

"The column of smoke also obeys the voice. A cough throws it down, and it dances to the sound of a music box. For individual tones, only the tip of the column of smoke gathers into a bouquet. With others, the bouquet forms halfway up, while with certain notes of a suitable pitch, the column contracts into a concentrated cloud that is barely more than 2.5 cm above the end of the burner. Not only individual words, but every word and every syllable of the quoted Spenserian verses sets a truly delicate jet of smoke in the greatest agitation.

So there you have the modern physicist, ascribing sensation to the column of smoke, who, after forgetting everything that old magicians spoke into the column of smoke to make it take on a different form, notices things again. John Tyndall, an ordinary physicist of the present day, of the fifth post-Atlantic period, observes how a column of smoke collapses through a sound, forms itself into a bush, and even dances when a music box plays. He observes how it follows certain verses by Spenser as it forms. We have the physicist, who basically behaves in the same way towards the column of smoke only in a more elementary, initial way than the old, despised magician behaved:

“Even more gripping is the behavior of the sensitive water jets in response to sound.”

So today, it is not only a column of smoke that is observed, but also the water jet. Tyndall describes this fascinating phenomenon in his book, in the book just mentioned on pages 316 to 326, and concludes with the words:

“The sensitivity of this jet is amazing; it can compete with that of the ear itself.” So not only does the ear hear, that is, perceive sound, but the water jet even perceives sound and changes under its influence, that its sensitivity can compete with the ear.

“If you place the two tuning forks on a distant table” – not on the same table, but on a different table – “and let the beats gradually fade away, the beam continues its rhythm almost as long as you can still hear something. If the beam were even more sensitive, it would even prove superior to the ear; an amazing fact when you consider the wonderful delicacy of this organ.

But even further. A certain Leconte made a remarkable discovery at a musical soirée in America, which he describes in the same way:

“Shortly after the music began, I noticed that the flame showed vibrations” - the gas flame - “that perfectly matched the audible beats of the music. This phenomenon was bound to catch anyone's eye, especially when the strong tones of the cello were added.

He observed how the flame heard the musical tones and how it reproduced them within itself.

"It was extraordinarily interesting to observe how completely accurately even the trills of this instrument were reproduced by the flame. To a deaf person, the harmony would have been visible. As the evening progressed, the gas consumption in the city decreased and the pressure increased, making the phenomenon more distinct. The jumping of the flame gradually increased, became somewhat irregular, and finally turned into a continuous flickering, accompanied by the characteristic sound indicating that more gas is flowing out than can be burned. I then ascertained by experiment that the phenomenon only occurred when the gas flow was regulated so that the flame approached the flickering. I also convinced myself by experiment that the effects did not show when the floor and walls of the room were shaken by repeated knocks.

So it was not caused by the vibration, but by the flame's perception of the sound.

“From this it can be seen that the fluctuations of the flame did not originate from indirect vibrations that might have been transmitted to the burner through the walls, but were produced by the direct influence of the sound wave of the air on the flame.”

It may be mentioned here that the electric arc lamp also reacts to sound in such an extraordinarily fine way that the idea of exploiting this phenomenon for telephonic transmission has been considered several times.

So you see how the same properties that were expelled from the living are supposed to come in through the other door for the inanimate!

It is truly very, very interesting to see the curious course of the alienation of the thinking and mentality of this nineteenth century and into our time. The researchers themselves, with their thinking, are basically not to blame, because they do not search systematically. If something like this comes to their notice, they discard it. They rarely search for such things systematically. But the facts themselves speak too loudly, so that even the most reluctant researchers come to such strange insights. Now, as a rule, it does not occur to researchers who notice this to interpret such things in any other than a purely materialistic sense. They say, of course, “Well, if the inanimate can also feel, can even become ill, can develop memory, then one does not need to ascribe anything special to the animate; then the animate is only a more complicated inanimate.”

More and more, the things that come in through the other door will besiege thinking, this thinking, which already seems so extraordinarily besieged if you look at it today with the healthy view that you get when you also have a certain view of the facts of the spiritual world. For it is a particular hallmark of this nineteenth century and the period extending into our own day that, when faced with the abundance of phenomena, one cannot, so to speak, come to terms with the thoughts that are available. For what conventional research has to say about such things today is, one might say, nothing more than the most miserable helplessness. But a trend is emerging: on the one hand, there is the proliferation of facts that urge us to broaden our horizons, and on the other hand, there is the marked helplessness of those who do not want to approach spiritual science to learn from it, the complete helplessness of those who do not want to do so in the face of the pressing facts. And here it is interesting to consider certain phenomena of our time. They can be understood if we place them in the light of what we have been considering here in recent weeks.

Let us first cite a few facts today in preparation. Above all, we should consider the fact that the onslaught of the natural sciences is putting severe pressure on theology in particular, as it seeks to engage in a discussion of the claims of science. In ancient times, in times not so very far back, theology expressed certain truths, truths about the spiritual worlds, among other things, but, let us say, also truths about the human soul. These truths need not be challenged. We know, after all, how spiritual scientific research in particular can reinforce the truths that theology has traditionally adopted. But as a rule the theologians themselves do not seek to create a balance with what is storming in as a scientific world view. They do not find that comfortable, not really comfortable. And so it often happens that the theologians may be speaking the words of the old truths, but science is laying claim to the object, the subject. Natural science has come and set up its things above the human soul, deals with the human soul, so to speak, takes the object, the soul, away from the theologian. The theologians also still speak, but they no longer have the object. That is precisely the peculiarity of spiritual science: that it engages with natural science; and it is only really spiritual science when it fully engages with natural science.

The matter I am alluding to takes on a serious character when one sees how this unwillingness to come to terms with natural science, which simply annexes the soul and other spiritual realms, how this unwillingness to create a balance leads to quite grotesque phenomena. I have already demonstrated such grotesque phenomena to some of you who were with me on this journey in recent days. Today I want to show some of them again.

There is a theologian; it is not so important to say who it is. Today one need only go into a bookstore and take a few books in any language, any old books, preferably ones that are intended to educate the “people”, that is, that belong to some collection that are intended to educate the people: in the third book that you get hold of, usually already in the second, and often even in the first, it becomes clear that the deficiency I have just characterized is a very widespread one in the present day. So it is not the name that matters, but the way in which what is at issue here works in the broadest circles. For today it runs through all popular, especially through the popular writings, and everywhere we hear the echo of that which lives and breathes. There is a theologian who gives lectures, a whole cycle of lectures, first on a scientific, then on an ethical, aesthetic worldview or way of life. He then goes on to take note of all kinds of other phenomena, in order to show, in his own way, how he arrives at his understanding of Christianity, which of course then calls itself the right Christianity – every such speech is the right Christianity, and all the others are false Christendoms. He begins by speaking of the scientific world view and says: Man as a natural being, man as nature, must be left to the scientific point of view; the “man of freedom” belongs to theology, to religious contemplation. One could perhaps still accept this if it were used only as words. If there is something behind this “man of freedom” and the man now goes to a clean divorce, so you could accept that. Then he says: It is really bad for the theologians if they do not give science its full right. You should give science its full right, you should divide the people: the people of nature, hand over to science, keep the people of freedom, theology. In this way, compromises can be made! The only question is whether it is possible to divide a person into two parts like a loaf of bread. Such a theologian speaks, so to speak, about how the relationship between Hans and Karl developed when they received a piece of bread from their father. Hans asks: How should I divide it? Then the father says: Do it in a Christian way. Hans asks: What is the Christian way of sharing? Well, says the father, you keep the smaller piece for yourself and give the bigger piece to Karlchen. Oh, then Karlchen had better share! says Hans.

Well, sometimes you notice that when people are divided between theology and science. But not everyone is so willing to divide in this way; some want to come to an amicable and peaceful agreement. And since the natural scientists have already become very powerful, the theologians do not want to tie them down with science; so they think of a different way to compromise. In a series of lectures that was held not long ago, we find a very strange way of reaching such a compromise: to hand over the human being of nature to science, and to keep the human being of freedom for theology. Whether one can divide it that way is precisely the question! For if we really give part of the human being to natural science, we should first ask whether a part of the other is not already contained in this part of the human being – after all, as we know, it is already contained in reality – and whether it is possible, whether we should not divide the bread in such a way that we make the flour for one part and the water for the other. But then neither part is bread anymore. But if we divide things rightly, it would be different: if we give natural science what it really needs, then it is not a real human being, but an abstraction, just as flour is not bread. But today's contemporary thinking is truly not suited to seeing through such things. And so we see how, for example, the following can be proclaimed with emphasis in our time.

It is explained by speaking about the naturalistic principle of life that man should be handed over to natural science because he belongs to natural science, and theology should keep the man of freedom. And now it is said how it is with this man as nature. Then we find that the following is said:

“Man, as presented to us by zoology, the two-legged, upright-walking homo sapiens, endowed with a finely developed backbone and brain, is just as much a part of nature as any other organic or inorganic formation, is composed of the same mass, composed of the same energies, the same atoms, interwoven and governed by the same power; in any case, the whole physical life of man, however complicated it may be, is scientifically determined in its entirety, ordered according to law like everything else in nature, living and non-living. In this respect, there is no difference between man and a jellyfish, a drop of water or a grain of sand.

This is how a theologian speaks, educating people of today. But humans have feelings. Now it is unpleasant to tie in with these modern-day natural scientists, because it is quite disgusting: they even discover feelings in inanimate things. It is better to give in to them, and that is why a theologian would say the following:

"The mental functions that are accessible to the scientific approach are subject to just as strict a lawfulness as the bodily processes; and the sensations we have, as well as the ideas we form, are just as much forced on us by nature as the nervous processes that lead to feelings of pleasure and discomfort. They are just as much mechanical processes as those of a steam engine.

These are theological lectures, my dear friends, theological lectures! Now the man reserves himself the man of freedom! You see, he willingly gives up the man of nature. He reserves the man of freedom. Now that he has divided with the naturalists, what happens? We can see from the following sentences of the first lecture what happens, because he says:

“Man as nature” – that is, the man he has given to natural science – ‘loses his independence and freedom as a natural element; everything he experiences, he suffers, he must suffer according to the law of nature.’

Thus, by giving the naturalist the man of nature, man loses his freedom. He reserves the man of freedom for himself; but he no longer has that, because by giving the naturalist the man of nature, he loses his freedom. So in reality he retains nothing. Thus the good theologian, who now gives twelve theological lectures, has nothing at all to talk about. This is also very apparent at the end, because he has nothing but a torrent of words presented with tremendous pomp. He has surrendered the human being to natural science; he has retained the human being of freedom, but only in name, because the human being of nature loses his freedom. He also loses it honestly when the natural scientist comes over to him.

Now this is a man who means well. You can really say, as Shakespeare says in his famous speech: Brutus is an honorable man; they are all honorable men! — Why shouldn't you admit that? But one can detect a strange attitude in such people. Why, since he wants to be a theologian, is he so generous as to make himself the object of human contemplation? Yes, he reveals it in a strange way. He says:

“We must go even further. This determination of man by natural law concerns not only his bodily but also his mental functions. This was always what we theologians did not want to admit because we confused the scientific concept of the soul with the theological one and feared unpleasant consequences for the faith.”

He has now finally come to the point where he no longer fears unpleasant consequences. But how does he achieve this? Well, he achieves it like this:

“These arise precisely when science is not allowed to reach its full conclusion; because then you lose the trust of thinking people.”

There we have it! He wants the trust of thinking people, that is, of the few who think today! And he is also an honorable man in other respects – honorable men they all are, after all – because he criticizes certain materialistic excesses of the present. He reports on all the materialistic thinking and ways of life that exist in our present day, and he finally wants a theology that can measure up to all of this. He shows, albeit in a strange way, how little he, completely in line with the pattern of people today, who are thoroughly dependent not on science but on the scientific way of thinking that prevails in many ways, how little he has grown to the storming factual worlds. And that is what matters: that people are not up to the storming factual worlds. What people lack today is the ability to truly master the sum of facts that life offers with their thoughts. Their thoughts break off everywhere. Instead of their thoughts running along in a line according to the beliefs of these people, we see that they tie on, break off, then tie on again, break off again — their thoughts break off at every moment. So here too we see such breaking-off thoughts. Then he returns to the human being in nature, and says of this human being in nature:

“He is born into the fate of this world of phenomena by virtue of a mechanical necessity, by virtue of a supreme decree that he does not understand.”

What a fine thing for a theologian to say! Man is born into the fate of this world of phenomena, namely: by virtue of a mechanical necessity, by virtue of a supreme decree that he does not understand. That is one and the same thing: mechanical necessity, supreme decree! There you have the thought: mechanical necessity - it tears away, and another thought, which claims the opposite, is put forward as a more detailed explanation of this thought. We can often observe this in our contemporaries in small matters. We can recognize them by their complete inability to develop a thought. The man in question says again at one point in his lectures that man should not be tempted to read anything spiritual into nature, but that man of nature must submit to nature:

The limitations of creation, the barriers of existence, and so on, “they are a source of life inhibitions, suffering, evil, and ultimately death. In the face of these, Christianity points to a future redemption. Within earthly life, they cannot and must not be shaken off.

Of course, today people read over this: “They cannot and must not be shaken off.” Anyone who thinks in such a serious context cannot think. Because what does it mean when I say: Yes, dear man, you cannot and must not fly to the moon. If one cannot, then it is unnecessary to say that one may not. And the man who combines the two ideas, “They cannot and may not be shaken off,” cannot think; that is, he lives in complete thoughtlessness.

But this is also a main characteristic of our time, this complete lack of thought! Yet the man is an honorable man, and he really means well in many respects. That is why he says that materialism has taken deep root in our time, and that things must change. But now it seems that just by saying this, he is already seized by a terrible fear. You know, he doesn't want to tie up with the natural scientists! And then only tie up with all the time! Terrible thought, of course! You should say to time, which is dominated by materialism, things have to change. In the lecture in which he talks about all these things: sportism, comfortism, mammonism, he says:

The things that have existed until now “must no longer be the ultimate goal. There must no longer be a merchant for whom making money is an end in itself; enjoyment of life must no longer become the content of life; there must no longer be people who live only for their health.

So, what more could one want! But then he says:

“That is, everything that has been done so far should be continued, but something else must be kept in mind.”

Well then, we will achieve it! Then we will certainly overcome the damage of the times, if everything is done as before, but people only think of something else! We can be confident that these lectures, which will appear in a collection entitled “Science and Education”, will of course represent individual contributions in all fields of knowledge, and that they will be a spiritual nourishment for thousands upon thousands of people in our time. Can it be said in the preface.

“The content of this booklet consists of twelve speeches that I last winter” - I will not name the city, it does not matter, it is a typical phenomenon, something like this can take place in any city - “in... in front of an audience of more than a thousand people.”

Thus today, the crippled, stunted, corrupted thoughts of an official, privileged position – for it is one of the most famous theologians of the present day who speaks in this way – go out into the people of the present and live in them; no wonder that such things come out, as they do today from people! But how few people are inclined to grasp the evils of the present time by their roots. The good lambs of our time approach these things, publish such things in all languages, buy them and believe that they are receiving as spiritual food what modern times have produced. Only the most extreme brutality, which, even if it is unconscious, stems from a complete lack of self-awareness and is brought about by an unconscious abuse of official power, leads to these things. And it would be quite wrong to observe an ostrich-like policy towards these things. For then one would never be able to take up with the right impulses what one must take up as a spiritual science so that it can work in the course of the cultural development of our time.

How many will also be sitting among you who will think that what I am saying is exaggerated, and what I am only supporting with examples because there can of course be many who think it is an exaggeration. It is no exaggeration! It is something that, for anyone who really studies our time with a sharpened eye, allows this time alone to appear in the right light and, above all, shows what will be necessary from a healthy spiritual knowledge in order to lead this time to some extent away from its terrible aberrations.

For close upon the heels of such intellectual misuse of the power of thinking follows moral aberration. It is from such angles that the opposition to spiritual science sounds, but it has the ear of thousands upon thousands. Can it be believed that people who are incapable of thinking in this way are in any position to judge spiritual science? It is no wonder, then, to hear such opinions about spiritual science, opinions similar to those expressed not so long ago. Today I will mention only one thing that characterizes the whole spiritual outlook of the person concerned, who brings up such things

The one is: he cites two writings side by side, namely the lecture by Pastor Riggenbach and the lecture by me, which I gave in Liestal in January. Now, when these two things are juxtaposed, it is not just a matter of a discussion being held about this or that, but that my lecture proved that Pastor Riggenbach was misinformed altogether, that he repeated gossip. To mention these two things side by side, as if there were a speech and a reply, as if the lecture in question of mine contained such a thing, does not mean committing an error or a misunderstanding; that already looks very much like a deliberate falsification.

But further, after the man in question has told horrible things about anthroposophy, he then says:

"We now also recognize in what sense Dr. Steiner in particular can claim: we are not against Christianity, we are in fact ultimately the true Christians. In the eyes of the Anthroposophists, Christ was one who beheld the higher powers; Dr. Steiner, the teacher, will also believe that he beholds these powers and participates in them. But each of us should also be able to partake of these powers if we practice with sufficient perseverance in contemplation. So it comes down again to the same demand that the aforementioned Russian mystic Solowjow has already made: we could and should all be Christs, by the way, a demand that every mystic who has been kind enough to take Christianity into consideration has already made... ” “Old wisdom in a new guise..."

So the exact opposite of what is being said, of what is at the core of our spiritual science with regard to Christianity. The man has the brochure right in front of him, because he is quoting it, and yet he says this! What kind of moral state is this? What are we to make of such statements in the present day? Is it not imperative that we acquire the clearest possible view of the matter, so that we know what to make of voices such as these, which we must indeed encounter and encounter again and again, but which we must not in any case regard as being honestly meant.

I am referring to the lecture that was given on May 22 of this year at the Swiss Reform Day in Aarau on newer mysticism and free Christianity. Free Christianity, indeed! Well, in this lecture, we were also accused of something else. This other thing is a little more amusing. It says:

“But we could never agree with the further demand of mysticism to give up and disdain human thinking and intuiting.”

And that includes us as well. So go through everything we do and look at it in terms of the fact that it is a renunciation of all thinking and intuiting! So they have always had only one aspiration: not to think; for that is what the man said at the Swiss Reform Day in Aarau; that would be the main task of this kind of mysticism: to bring thinking to a standstill, not to apply thinking. After all, you can't believe otherwise, can you, than that the man probably ran out of his own thinking while pursuing these matters and that he is describing what occurred to him when he got a hold of the things. And just as with the theologian I spoke to you about first, we also notice with this theologian, who may only be of a lesser caliber because he has not attained such a high position as the other, we also notice, for example, that these theologians have become satisfied with the division in a somewhat strange way. But they should not force us — after they have surrendered everything to natural science and only retained the “man of freedom”, which natural science takes from them, but now also not to retain anything other than what they, in their “modesty”, seek.

We must present such things to the soul as the antithesis of what lives and pulsates in spiritual science; otherwise we cannot arrive at the right feelings towards it. So today I wanted to show you how the impulses arise in the world of present and historical facts, in order to have, so to speak, foundations that show how the opposing impulses I spoke of – the search for happiness, salvation, birth, death, kinship, evil, and so on – can balance each other out. We will continue this reflection, which will lead us into certain depths of life, tomorrow.