Anthroposophy and its Opponents

GA 255b — 25 May 1921, Stuttgart

Academic and Nationalistic Opponents VII

Anthroposophy and Threefolding: Their Nature and Their Defense

Dear attendees! It has not been my custom to say a special word of thanks after greetings. Today I want to do it because I really thank you very much for this greeting in the interest of the matter. Anyone who is attached to the matter I represent here may also express his thanks when he sees that it has retained its old sympathies despite the attacks it has suffered here. For almost two decades I have been giving lectures here in Stuttgart every year on the anthroposophical worldview, and in these lectures everything has been mentioned that makes it possible to form an opinion about the anthroposophical movement. More recently, I have also spoken about things that are more loosely connected with what I represent as the anthroposophical worldview: the so-called threefold social order. And I do not believe that any of the words I have spoken in the latter context have in any way violated the spirit and content of what, as I said, I have been advocating for almost two decades as an anthroposophical worldview.

Today, however, I face the outside world as if before a caricature of what I myself have to describe as the anthroposophical worldview. From all sides, I am confronted with descriptions of what this anthroposophical worldview is supposed to be. I must confess that most of these descriptions are such that I do not recognize the picture of the anthroposophical world view that I have drawn here. Everything seems so alien to me, just as what has been said in numerous personal attacks from all sides seems alien to me. It will therefore be forgiven if today I depart from the custom I have otherwise almost always observed here of speaking purely impersonally about the anthroposophical world view, and that I also take into account in a few places the personal attacks that have been made against me. But I promise you that I will not go into these things any further than they are related to the matter in hand in any direction.

First of all, dear ladies and gentlemen, I would like to talk about the origin and starting point of the anthroposophical world view. This origin and starting point lies entirely in the scientific world view of modern times. Anyone who goes through the somewhat long series of my writings will be able to see that my starting point never lies in any religious problems, even though, of course, anthroposophy, by its very nature, as we shall see, must lead to religious feeling and religious views. The starting point was not religious views, the starting point was the scientific world view that I grew into in my younger years. Anyone who grows into this scientific worldview of the present day will initially feel an extraordinary respect for what science has achieved in modern times, and above all, they will gain an even greater respect for both the experimental and observational methods of scientific research and for the training in thinking and methodical schooling that contemporary science can introduce to people. And I must confess that, for me, since I entered the natural sciences, the most valuable thing about them was this training of thought, this conscientious discipline of thinking and researching. And more than from individual results of natural science, I have always started from what natural science research brings up in you as a training in thinking. But in doing so, one thing became clearer and clearer to me. When I — and I believe that what I am about to say is sufficiently clear from my 'Introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings', which appeared in the 1880s — when I repeatedly looked at what lives in the human soul in terms of yearning for the spiritual world, what views of a spiritual world live in the human soul, then the fundamental question arose for me: How can that which undoubtedly forms the great triumph of modern times, scientific research, be reconciled with these longings, with these justified impulses of the human soul?

Dear attendees! This question has brought me together with personalities in particular who, familiar with the scientific way of thinking of modern times, led a tragic inner life of the soul in dealing with the same question. An example: In my early youth, I encountered a person who, I might say, was completely infiltrated by the scientific way of thinking - a way of thinking that is fully justified in its field and points to the origin of our planet Earth, our entire world system, as a purely material primeval nebula, through whose inner forces all being has gradually formed, ultimately including man. But in man, so this personality said to himself, the processes of this concentrated nebula world took on very special forms; ideals arise in man, religious convictions, the longing arises in man to know something about that which lies beyond birth and death, because a life that only covers the period between birth and death seems so meaningless. But everything that appears in the so-called life of the soul in a human being is, as this personality put it, just smoke and fog, something that arises like a haze from what alone can be scientifically accepted. And the mental life of this personality was tragic, for it said to itself: It must be a mere deception, a mere illusion, what emerges from material life and presents itself to man as a mirage.

One may find such a way of thinking more or less justified, more or less opposed, it was there in numerous cases, and it was there in such personalities, for whom it was in vain to object: Yes, natural science on the one hand is an exact science, on the other hand the world of faith is the subjective world. Our ideals arise from this subjective world, our religious convictions arise from this subjective world. One must know the one, believe the other. There were just so many such personalities who could not do this, who said to themselves: If it is the case that the human being has arisen from what science presents to us, then ethical ideals and religious convictions are illusions. I could cite many examples along these lines. But what I want to say with it is sufficiently indicated. And so the question arose for me more and more out of life itself: Is there not a possibility, between what lives inside of man in terms of spiritual aspirations and what natural science has established, is there not a connection in between, is there not a bridge from one to the other?

And now, what offered me above all the possibility of finding such a bridge, that was not, at first, looking at inner, subjective visions; that had become clear to me from the beginning. No matter how convincingly or intensely subjective visions may present themselves to the soul, one has no right to accept them as objective on account of their subjective appearance, if one is not in a position to build a bridge from the scientifically established to the spiritual world. I have already tried to build this bridge in my “Introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings”. I then devoted special attention to this in the elaboration of my small work “Truth and Science” and my larger book “The Philosophy of Freedom”.

It is quite certain that if the scientific world view alone is right, then we as human beings are the works of a necessity, then the idea of freedom is impossible, then even in this so convincing experience of our inner life, the fact that we have free will seems to stand only as a deception before our soul. And so for me the question of the justification of freedom became one of those problems, one of those riddles that occupied me intensely as a young man, and I saw that it is impossible to find a foundation for the question of freedom without a foundation for all of philosophical thinking. That was therefore the task I set myself at the end of the 1880s and the beginning of the 1890s: to find a foundation for philosophical thinking. I first put aside everything that might arise to me as visions of a spiritual world. Above all, I wanted to have a secure philosophical foundation that was in harmony with the scientific research of modern times. And starting from this point of view, I examined above all the nature of human thinking. I tried all possible ways of arriving at the answer to the question: What is human thinking essentially according to its nature?

Anyone who reads my “Philosophy of Freedom” will find how these paths to fathoming the nature of human thinking were sought. And for me it turned out that only someone who sees something in the highest expressions of this thinking that takes place independently of our physicality, of our bodily organization, can understand human thinking correctly. And I believe I succeeded in demonstrating that the processes of pure thinking in man take place independently of bodily processes. In bodily processes, natural necessities prevail. What emerges from these bodily processes in the way of dark instincts, will impulses and so on is, in a certain respect, determined by natural necessity. What a person accomplishes in his thinking ultimately turns out to be a process that takes place independently of the physical organization of the person. And I believe that through this “Philosophy of Freedom” nothing less has emerged than the supersensible nature of human thinking. And once this supersensible nature of human thinking had been recognized, then the proof was provided that in the most ordinary everyday life, when man rises to real thinking, through which he is determined by nothing other than the motives of thinking itself, then he has a supersensible element in this thinking. If he then directs his life by this thinking, develops himself in this way, is educated in this way, that he goes beyond the motives of his physical organization, beyond drives, emotions, instincts, and bases his actions on motives of pure thinking, then he may be called a free being. To explain the connection between supersensible pure thinking and freedom was my task at that time.

One can stop at this point and pursue such a train of thought merely in theory. But if such a train of thought is not pursued merely in theory, but becomes a fulfillment of one's whole life, if one sees in it a revelation of human nature itself, then one pursues it not merely in theory, but in practice. What is this practical pursuit? Well, once one has grasped the supersensible nature of thinking, one learns to recognize that the human being is capable of becoming independent of his bodily organization in a certain activity. One can now try whether, in addition to pure thinking, the human being is also capable of developing an activity that is modeled on this pure thinking. Anyone who calls the method of research that I use to underpin my anthroposophical spiritual science clairvoyance must also call ordinary pure thinking, which flows from everyday life into human consciousness and into human action, clairvoyance. I myself see no qualitative difference between pure thinking and what I call clairvoyance. My view is that through the process of pure thinking, man can first develop a practice of how to become independent of one's physical organization in one's inner processes, how to accomplish something in pure thinking in which the body has no part. In 1911, at the Philosophers' Congress in Bologna, I explained in a very philosophical way that pure thinking is something that is carried out in man without the physical organization having any part in it. And here, in a large number of lectures, I have confirmed this from the most diverse points of view.

But then, when one knows the process by which one arrives at such pure thinking, something can be developed through what true, deeper philosophy gives, which I then presented in the most diverse ways as a method of knowledge for the higher worlds in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “Secret Science”. Just as pure thinking ultimately emerges from the ordinary everyday activities of the human soul, for which no special training is needed, so, by further developing this process, one can arrive at what I have called in the above-mentioned book and in the second part of my “Occult Science” the stages of higher knowledge — that is, imagination, inspiration, intuition. What is expressed in pure thinking becomes our own simply by virtue of being born; it is inherited by us in our present stage of human development. That which, in accordance with the pattern of pure thinking, can appear as imagination, inspiration, or intuition, must likewise be cultivated in the adult, just as certain abilities are cultivated naturally in the child.

If some people find it astonishing, some paradoxical, and some even curious, what I describe as methods in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds,” then it must be clear that when a person tries to develop an inner life within himself, he needs something other than what is available in everyday life. Therefore, other terms are needed. Anyone who penetrates the meaning of these terms without being malicious from the outset will see that the only intention of my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” is to show people how to develop certain abilities that are latent, that is, dormant, in every soul: the ability to have certain images present in consciousness. The fact of the matter is that through those methods – which I will not describe again today, I have described them here very often – that through those methods, which I have described in the books mentioned, the human being makes himself capable not only of attaining such abstract concepts as are contained in pure thinking, but that he makes himself capable of presenting to his soul fully substantial, if I may use the expression, more saturated contents of consciousness, which are as full of content as otherwise only sensual impressions. What is called for here is essentially a strengthening of ordinary thinking power, and if one wishes to call it clairvoyant power, so be it. Certain exercises must be done to develop such abilities, just as certain exercises must be done by the child to develop certain abilities.

Professor Wilhelm Bruhn, who lectured on anthroposophy and related subjects in Kiel for a semester, has observed that the preparations to be made in order to arrive at such imaginative and then at an inspired knowledge are, in a certain respect, of an ethical nature, that certain ethical forces must be applied, must be trained if man is to penetrate to the knowledge of the higher worlds. And this Wilhelm Bruhn, who is an opponent of the anthroposophical world view in the strongest possible terms, emphasizes the ethical seriousness of these preparations, which is unmistakable. Bruhn alone – and I may well base myself on him here precisely because in his small work, which appeared in the collection 'Aus Natur und Geisteswelt' (From Nature and the Spiritual World), he has a kind of compendium of everything that can be said against anthroposophy – he particularly asserts that by encouraging people to develop their inner soul abilities, I am in fact leading them to initially have pictorial representations that are expressed in colors, lines or figures. This is one of the gross misunderstandings that must be corrected if Anthroposophy is not to be completely misunderstood.

In my “Theosophy” I expressly pointed out what is important here. I said: It is not important that the one who, as a spiritual researcher, seeks the way into the higher worlds, sees exactly the same thing that is described in the sensual life as yellow and red, as pointed or blunt, but rather, said: the person who has a somewhat finer perception does not simply gaze at yellow, at green, at red, but has an inner experience of the yellow, of the green, of the red. You can read about these interesting inner experiences of colors in Goethe's Theory of Colors in the chapter “Sensual-moral Effect of Colors.” When you have this experience, this particular specific experience of yellow, green, red, blue, then you know something that is purely spiritual. And you get this experience when you rise to imaginative knowledge. By soaring to imaginative knowledge, one has, as I say in my Theosophy, an experience such as one has with yellow, an experience such as one has with blue; the experience is a purely soul process. If one wants to have designations for it, then one expresses oneself in such a way that one experiences something that is illustrated by yellow, by blue, and one speaks just as little of this color yellow and blue as one speaks of a reality, as one, when one draws a triangle or a square on the blackboard, which is to depict something, confuses this triangle or square with the reality that is to be depicted.

Everything that is striven for in this anthroposophical schooling is striven for in full consciousness; nothing unconscious or subconscious prevails in it. Everything is striven for in such a way that one emulates those inner soul processes that one has acquired through mathematical schooling. In such consciousness, in such inner development of the will, one strives for that which is to lead up into the higher worlds. One simply comes to a visualization that one depicts through colors. And when one has progressed so far in a certain way that one can have a new world, a completely new world before oneself, a world that one is urged to represent by colors or by other sensualizations, then one is ripe to advance to inspired knowledge. When one develops the element of love, which is present even in ordinary life, to its highest expression as an inner soul power, then one is given the opportunity not only to have such images arising in one's consciousness, but also to be able to remove them from one's consciousness. One is not a slave to these images, nor is one a mere psychic; one is in full command of them. But just as one knows when one puts one's finger on a hot iron that one is not just dealing with the idea of the hot, but with a reality, as one can only state this through life, through the context of life, it turns out that what one experiences inwardly in this way in imaginative experience refers to an objectively spiritual reality. And if one develops the ability to love in the appropriate way, then one comes to erase these images from one's consciousness, so to speak, and then one has spiritual substance in one's pure, inner experience.

This spiritual essence, as far as it is accessible to me, I have described in my books, and at the same time I have followed the method that on the one hand, through books like my “Theosophy” and my “Secret Science”, I have described what arises from such research. And on the other hand, in such a book and in some other books, such as 'How to Know Higher Worlds', I have described exactly the path by which every human being can come to such knowledge. And I have expressly made it clear that every person can come to such realizations; but I have also made it clear that the one who handles the inner essence of pure thinking does not need schooling of the mind, but he can, when the knowledge gained by such schooling of the mind is communicated to him and he receives it without prejudice, he can receive it inwardly as a conviction, just as he receives what astronomy gives, without becoming an astronomer himself.

This, esteemed attendees, is the method for entering the spiritual world. One enters the spiritual world as into a reality, which one then knows to be a reality as that which is handed down to us by science. If we now turn back to the method of natural science, we say to ourselves: After all, we do not really apply any other method, any other inner soul activity, to the supersensible world than the one we have already applied in natural science, but adapted to things outside ourselves that can be perceived by the senses. Yes, one finally realizes that natural science has become great precisely because, I would say, the same inner training of thought was used in the first stage, which can then be applied to supersensible knowledge.

That is why I said that what interested me most about science was what emerged from it as a training in thinking. I have wrestled with such problems as those presented by Du Bois-Reymond in his “Grenzen der Naturerkenntnis” (The Limits of Natural Knowledge), where he comes to the conclusion that one can only arrive at the supersensible by going beyond science. But I have seen that one can only make such a statement as Du Bois-Reymond does here if one believes that the way in which one masters scientific facts, brings them into laws, is not already dominated by thinking, which is similar to the supersensible capacity for knowledge.

As for how the world judges such things, there are only a few hints. I must start by saying that Wilhelm Bruhn fundamentally misunderstands much of anthroposophy. He reproaches me, for example, with offering nothing more than a kind of filtered sensuality in supersensible knowledge. What I say in the passages quoted in my Theosophy and what I say in my Occult Science cannot be applied to words such as Bruhn utters. He says:

In any case, Steiner also teaches a sufficient knowledge of reality in some sensory form.

No, I have never taught that. Every such statement as Bruhn's is simply a misunderstanding of what I have always said as the most essential thing. When someone misunderstands so thoroughly, it seems understandable that he should make the strange statement: 'What I am giving as exercises to get up into the supersensible worlds is exactly the same as the spiritual exercises that Jesuit pupils have to do. Now, yet another Protestant theologian has found a similarity between what I write in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and the Jesuit spiritual exercises. But a Catholic theologian, Canon Laun, firmly rejects this and says that anyone who claims that my exercises are similar to those of the Jesuits does not know the exercises of the Jesuits.

Dear attendees! In this case, I must absolutely agree with Canon Laun, even though I do not agree with him on anything else, but what I have now explained to you in principle has truly nothing to do with the Jesuit retreats. No wonder that when something is misunderstood in the way I have indicated, people are led to believe that I am describing the content of the spiritual world as a series of cinematic images – that is how Bruhn expresses himself. Now, it is true that Whoever rises to the spiritual world, as I have described, also grasps his own spiritual soul, grasps this spiritual soul as it is as eternal. Through contemplation, he penetrates the riddles of death and immortality, for whom a scientific path to the eternal forces of that which lives in man reveals itself.

But if we consider the temporal forces that live in man between birth and death, what do we find? Well, we do not just have a consciousness of the moment. In our ordinary life, we look back to a very early point in our childhood, and we know that the human soul would be ill if one could not look back to this point in childhood in a continuous stream of memory. If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that, fundamentally, we are nothing more at this moment than what we have become through our experiences, which can be brought up again through the memory stream. If one delves into one's temporal existence between birth and the present moment and reveals to oneself, not cinematically but in inner experience, the recent past of one's own self, then, if one sees through this process in the right way, it will no longer wonderful that if you now familiarize yourself with the eternal, with the immortality of the soul, which was present in all processes that preceded even our formation on earth, you can also familiarize yourself with what this eternal part of the soul has experienced. If you familiarize yourself with what the soul has experienced eternally, then you have the cosmic environment around you, just as you have your personal environment around you through ordinary memory. This supersensible ability to read is in the so-called Akashic Chronicle, that is, in what one surveys through the experiences of the soul in relation to the soul's eternal; it is nothing other than that the soul these experiences are presented and revealed, so that one's ordinary memory, which otherwise reaches back to birth – or at least to a point near birth – is expanded to cosmic vision.

That, my dear audience, people who listen to ordinary mystics cannot see through in its true essence. These ordinary mystics usually take what has been seen by others and embellish it with all kinds of nebulous things. And in this way, what I would like to call the justified rejection or even the justified caution towards everything that appears as spiritual-scientific results has also come about. Nebulous mystics have brought too much all kinds of number symbolism and the like to that which is observed just as accurately, only by applying the developed soul abilities of man, as for example in physics the rainbow or the seven-color spectrum. The true spiritual researcher, when speaking of the sevenfold human being, can only speak as one speaks of the seven-coloured rainbow, and he means nothing mysterious by it, any more than the physicist means anything mysterious when he speaks of the seven-coloured spectrum. But then come the mystics, the nebulous ones, who attach all kinds of stuff to these things; as a result, much of honest spiritual research has been discredited. And if one is forced to use the number seven or the number nine somewhere, it is resented.

You see, Bruhn, as I said, provided the compendium for the opposition. Bruhn, the Kiel professor, finds a kind of mythology in what I present and finds, affirms what he says about mythology by the fact that I have to use such numbers as 7 and 9 and the like. I find this strange in a gentleman who, for his part, admits: there is intuitive knowledge, there are intuitive truths, supersensible truths – and who now lists what he calls supersensible truths in this way, and he numbers them : 1. one's own ego, 2. the ego of others, 3. the existence of things in space, 4. events in time, 5. beauty, 6. morality, 7. the divine.

Yes, my dear audience, it does not occur to me to accuse Mr. Bruhn of some nebulous number mysticism just because he mentions seven truths. However, these truths are, I would say, very meager. And even though he admits that the content of these seven truths was attained intuitively, that is, in a way that signifies a purely inner vision, he must also admit the possibility that this path, which leads to these simple, meager truths, can perhaps be developed as a very exact path like the mathematical one, and that one can then also come to other, richer, more substantial truths. Instead, such seven truths are nailed up, and what is basically drawn from the same sources – only after these sources have first been sought in the right way – is called mythology.

In a peculiar way, one relates to what appears here as an anthroposophical worldview. Recently, a newspaper here turned to an authority so that this authority, which belongs to a neighboring university, would give an authoritative judgment on anthroposophy. Now, among the many things – and you really can't read them all – that now appear to be opposed, I just got this article and read it. I came across a passage where the author objects to my statement about supersensible facts and supersensible beings. He says that in my spiritual realm, supersensible beings move just as tables and chairs move in the physical realm! Now, ladies and gentlemen, just imagine the logic that leads to saying that tables and chairs move by themselves in physical space. I am aware of states of human life in which there is a subjective appearance of tables and chairs moving by themselves, but I do not believe that the good theologian meant to refer to such a state. Now, Bruhn also betrays himself through a similar kind of logic, but I would like to say explicitly, just so that I am not misunderstood, that the earnest way in which he approaches anthroposophy is thoroughly commendable. You have to take Bruhn seriously, so I take him seriously. But now he also says that I am clinging to the gross-sensual and that I only present the supersensible, the spiritual, as a sensual, which is why one has to object that one does not get closer to the unknown spiritual through such a method. You get just as little close to this unknown spiritual as a mountaineer – so says Bruhn – who moves away from the earth and climbs up a mountain; he may move away from what is below, but the sky is still just as far above him.

Now, my dear audience, the sky that arches above us is, as is well known, not there at all; one looks out into the infinite space of the universe. One can see from the sensualizations that these people give when they want to hit something that comes from spiritual science that their logic is in a strange way ordered. And so I would like to point out right away that it is said that in the account I give of the course of the world through supersensible knowledge, one could understand Christ in the same way as any other particularly distinguished personality, such as Socrates, Plato or Buddha. — This is simply an objective untruth compared to what I have presented in my book “Christianity as Mystical Fact”. There I showed how everything in the pre-Christian era was directed towards the mystery of Golgotha, but how nothing in the pre-Christian era can be compared with what appears in the being of Christ Jesus. I have characterized it concretely in the course of spiritual history, and I have further shown how everything that has happened since the mystery of Golgotha is thoroughly impelled by this event. I have expressly shown that anthroposophy leads to the placing of this event of Golgotha in the center of the becoming of the earth. But this is what must be taken into account, what must not and should not be criticized by simply applying quite different, alien thoughts to the same.

And so a critic like Bruhn also finds that what I present as supersensible intuitions I actually only get through my thoughts operating in some way unknown to me, that I construct them out of thoughts without knowing, however, that what then becomes an image only proceeds in the unconscious, that thus, so to speak, the intuitions are only ideas after all. In his essay on Theosophy and Anthroposophy, Bruhn says that Schiller had already objected to Goethe's Urpflanze, saying that Goethe's image of the Urpflanze was an idea and not a vision. In my books and lectures, I have often described how Goethe defended himself against Schiller's statement, and Bruhn says that I must accept the same objection. Well, I am happy to do so! But I would like to point out that such an objection arises from the fact that the objector does not recognize how imaginative knowledge, how beholding, rises from the abstract idea to something more saturated, to something more fully substantial, and only in this way can that which is still a formal element in the abstract become a visualization of higher spiritual realities.

If one misunderstands in such a way what is expressed by the spiritual science meant here, then one can also very easily come to the conclusion that this spiritual science wants to be a substitute for religion. And then one says, as Bruhn has often said, that religion must not be something that one grasps in clear recognition, but that religion must be something irrational. Bruhn expresses it, I admit, very beautifully. He says it should be a blissful enjoyment as a closeness to God and a homesickness as a distance from God. It should not be a supersensible knowledge, but it should be a touch of the divine.

Now, the error lies in the fact that anthroposophy does not want to be a substitute for religion. Religion is formed, however, through a personal relationship with the founder of the religion. This personal relationship to the founder of the religion is irrational, just as, on a smaller scale, every relationship we have with any human being is irrational. The relationship we have with any human being is something we naturally refrain from reducing to any kind of idea, however supersensible, because we would accept any tittle-tattle from him. Thus the relationship one has to the Christ Jesus is something irrational, something that should not be conceptualized, not even in supersensible concepts, but should become a fact in the inner, fully human experience alone. On the other hand, especially for those who have knowledge of nature, there is the necessity to strive for supersensible knowledge in order to have the possibility of penetrating to the soul and spiritual as something real. Once one is familiar with supersensible knowledge, one will seek to find through this supersensible knowledge that which is most valuable to one in the world. And so many people have the urge to understand that which they have as an irrational nature, which they blissfully enjoy as being close to God, which they feel homesick for as being far from God, in terms of its historical and cosmic reality. It can be understood in a philological way; this has been achieved through external science. It can also be approached through supersensible knowledge; this has been achieved through anthroposophy. The aim is not to shake people out of their irrational relationship with religion, but to seek a path of knowledge to Christ Jesus. The human being who needs it - and many people already need it today, and more and more will need it - must, on the one hand, form his view of the world of the senses and of the spirit, and on the other hand, of that which has become religiously valuable to him, in order to then find harmony between the two.

This is what tears the soul apart if one is not able to bring one's knowledge to what has become religiously valuable to one. Anthroposophy is not intended to found a religion. Anthroposophy is neither a sect nor the founding of a religion, but rather the realization of the supersensible. And since that which has embodied itself through Christ Jesus in the Mystery of Golgotha is a supersensible being, and since the event of Golgotha itself is a process in which the supersensible lives, there must be a path from supersensible knowledge to this Mystery of Golgotha. The aim is not to create a substitute for religion, but to expand our knowledge so that we can also understand what we experience religiously. This does not make religious experience more superficial, nor does it strip religious experience of its piety. Rather, it allows us to turn our inner gaze to what is religiously valuable to us in the mystery of Golgotha through contemplation, with firm inner strength.

Dearly beloved attendees, I can only give examples of what I have to say about the nature of spiritual science, of anthroposophy, and what I have to say in its defense. But just as the points I have touched on, others could be presented here if I were able to give many lectures and did not have to content myself with one lecture. Therefore, I will now move on to what has been added in recent years to what I have previously presented here over many years as the anthroposophical worldview: the idea of social threefolding.

The fact that this social threefolding exists at all can be traced back to the fact that a number of people came to me during the sad days of the war and afterwards and wanted to know my thoughts on how social life could progress from these tragic events of the war. I was asked, people came to me, ladies and gentlemen. I mention this explicitly for the reason that it is far too little seen, because usually things are presented as if I were some kind of fanatical agitator who would forcefully bring things to people. I have never done anything else in the anthroposophical worldview, except give lectures, dear attendees. I appealed to those people who wanted to come to these lectures; they came – whether they were from the aristocracy or the proletariat, they were always equally welcome to me. And those who then became my so-called followers became so because they heard me. I did not go after anyone – I would not say such a thing if I were not compelled to do so. And if anyone presents these things as if I, as a fanatical agitator, had followed one person one time and another person another time, then it must be said that I have never followed anyone with any idea. The social threefolding is even used today to cast suspicion on that aspect of the anthroposophical world view from which it actually draws its very best roots. And here I would like to come back to Bruhn, who at least is to be taken more seriously than other critics.

Bruhn says: No matter how much he may have to fight it, something like anthroposophy has its origin in the “bankruptcy of our intellectual culture”. One has to get out of this intellectual culture, and he attributes to me that I did not strive to get out of this intellectual culture in the same way as those whom I 97 as the nebulous Theosophists, but that I had gone through Goethe and Haeckel, had struggled through German idealism, that I was “occidentally” oriented, that the roots of my view would rest in “western-Germanic culture” and in “scientific training.

I am not saying this out of immodesty – you can read it in Bruhn's small writing, and you will find that this can be important to me in the face of the various hostilities that are now coming from all sides. As a young man, I was among those who, in Austria in the 1880s, had to fight a difficult battle in defense of Germanness against the other nationalities. I edited the Viennese “Deutsche Wochenschrift” for a short time. I got to know all the difficult struggles that one had to go through, especially in Austria, if one wanted to make the German character and German abilities, which are considered valuable for humanity, part of the content of the whole of human culture.

Dear attendees, I only refer to such small episodes in a spirit of urgency: when I was once asked to speak at a Bismarck Commers in Weimar, where I was in the 1890s, I concluded with the words of our Austrian poet Robert Hamerling – one only needs to know his works to know that his Germanness could not be doubted – I concluded at the time, when I spoke in Weimar, in Germany, as an Austrian at the Bismarck Commers, with the words of Hamerling: “Germany is my fatherland, Austria is my motherland!”

Dearly beloved, in all my life I have never for a moment deviated from this view. And those who approached me in 1918 to ask me what Anthroposophy thought about how to proceed from there knew full well that my answer was rooted in German spirituality. I have – I make no boast of this, but in the face of the fierce attacks it must be said – I have given lectures from Bergen to Palermo, from Paris to Helsinki; I have given them everywhere in German. In May 1914 – please note the date – I gave a public lecture in Paris in German, based on German spirituality, not to a German colony but to the French. Every sentence had to be translated afterwards.

Now, out of the same spirit, what was then called the “threefold social order” has emerged. I would like to start by quoting something, again from an opponent, so that one can see how opponents think about the threefold order, which actually does not even belong to the most serious ones, because they overlook something, although they are nevertheless trained in thinking, as for example the Jena professor Rein. To begin with, he is preaching to the converted when he says: All ideas are sterile when the concept of humanity plays a decisive role in them. I quite agree, because the abstract, nebulous, mystical concept of humanity makes no sense. Humanity consists of people, of nations, and anyone who wants to work for humanity must, of course, move out of the national and into the general human. How one can do that, everyone who has any impartiality at all should admit that one can have a definite opinion based on one's own assumptions. And now Professor Rein goes on to say that the state cannot be overcome without further ado, because the state has already developed to such an extent among us Germans that one cannot go back to earlier conditions. Again, I agree! Yes, one can even completely agree with what Rein now cites as individual state demands. He says: The state must, first of all, be responsible for the care of art and science, morality and religion. Secondly, it must advocate the equalization and reconciliation of contradictions, the cooperation of the estates and professions, of employees and employers. All this, says Rein, must work together in the state as the three limbs work together in the human organism, of which Rein says - in a discussion of threefolding - that it is also threefold.

Now, just to make it clear how the three limbs should work together in the threefold social organism, I used the comparison with the threefold human being. It never occurred to me to speak of a “tripartite division”. Just as one cannot have the head separately from the human being, one cannot have the circulatory system separately, one cannot have the metabolic system separately, so one cannot have spiritual life, economic life and legal life separately in the social organism. Just as the blood supplies everything in the human organism, so within the state there are impulses that supply everything in all three limbs. And the opinion was that the three limbs of the social organism – spiritual life, legal life, economic life – work together in the right way when they exist in relative independence, just as the three limbs of the human organism are characterized by relative independence.

What, for example, does someone like Professor Rein want, who admits all this but then says that he must nevertheless fight the threefold order? He says, for example, that the state cannot be creative, but only regulatory and controlling. So what does he demand for spiritual life? A cultural parliament! And Professor Rein imagines this cultural parliament to consist of school chambers, state school chambers and so on; he imagines it to a certain extent as self-governing. And if I examine objectively how this cultural parliament of Professor Rein differs from what I have stated as the self-government of the spiritual member of the social organism, I find no difference other than that Professor Rein - and and this is open to discussion - wants to have the parents elected to his cultural parliament, but I would like to hand over the self-administration to those who are experts in this field, to the teachers and educators themselves. I do not want a cultural parliament, but something that arises without parliamentary chatter as a proper administrative organism made up of experts.

It is indeed strange that people like Professor Rein should fight against the threefold order. I really must ask myself why Professor Rein fights against the threefold order and describes it as dangerous to the state. Well, one may well ask why he does so. For in the same article in which he does so, he says: We Germans have every need to consolidate the freedom and unity of the national state. – So says Professor Rein, and then he says: Threefolding, rightly conceived, shows the way in which this can be done – namely, to consolidate the freedom and unity of the national state. And further: This way will be especially welcome to those who aim to eliminate the political parties, together with parliamentarism, which they repeatedly present as a corrupting institution.

I asked: What does Professor Rein want more than for threefolding to fulfill this ideal task of his? I cannot find any reason why he opposes it, since he says that, properly understood, threefolding points the way for what he wants to happen. I cannot find any other explanation than the one that emerges from a few words of Professor Rein: He says that he has explained his understanding of this threefold order in the new edition of his “Ethics”, which will be published soon. I am very interested to see when this threefold division appears in his Ethics, but I could not help speaking of this threefold division earlier, since I was asked about it earlier. And it seems to me that gentlemen like Rein are only angry because I forestalled them. I cannot help that.

Now, there is one more point I must mention: I have spoken here again today - and as I said, for 15 to 16 years - about supersensible knowledge. I have not only spoken of these supersensible insights as something that is, so to speak, shot from a pistol, but I have spoken of them in such a way that I have given precise details of the paths by which one comes to such insights. And with that, everyone is given the opportunity to verify it. Anyone who wants to go this way can come to the verification. And it is therefore quite unjustified when, today, out of the thought habits of the present — the thought habits that I have to fight against in many respects — the demand arises that what I call clairvoyant knowledge should be examined in a different way than the way I have indicated. I have said in my book “Theosophy”: For everything that I present in this book, I advocate that it be presented as a fact to me, as external sensory facts are. The one who has written them down does not want to present anything that is not a fact for him in a similar sense to how an experience of the external world is a fact for the eyes and ears and the ordinary mind.

Dear attendees, through such a method, the way is to be found to create a bridge from one human inner being to another. Above all, a pedagogical path is to be sought, the pedagogical path on which we base our teaching at the Freie Waldorfschule, founded by Emil Molt and led by me, the path without which a truly free spiritual life in the three-part social organism is not possible. We must seek such a path for the child too. But such a path is far removed from today's materialistic age; it is so far removed that it seeks the path to the child in a completely different way. And this has given rise to a strange psychology of the soul, which, according to many people, should also find its way into education. Because it is no longer possible to find the way to the child's soul through inner experience, the child is to be subjected to all kinds of procedures according to the methods of experimental psychology, whereby one determines what abilities the child has, for example, from the speed with which it absorbs certain words or with which it forgets words — quite externally, as if one were experimenting on an object because one can no longer do it inwardly. This examination of abilities is applied in a particular way in that area of Europe that has reached the extreme development of social materialism in social terms; this principle of examining children externally - as one examines external apparatus - is applied in a particular way in Bolshevik Russia. This has already been officially introduced there as a method of testing children's abilities – basically a terrible procedure, an indictment of the ability of the human soul to build a bridge to a person's mental abilities. And it is quite characteristic that it is precisely Bolshevism, this destructive worldview that destroys everything human, that is advancing to this pedagogical practice.

Now there are certain people who would like to apply this method to spiritual vision as well. They demand that I or one of my students should submit to such tests as one examines external apparatus. My dear audience, I have presented to humanity for decades what is created through my methods. I have indicated the methods by which it can be tested. I have shown how people who think of such tests, such as Professor Dessoir, who now even wants to form a society for such tests, approaches the anthroposophical spiritual science that I mean. I have shown in my book 'Von Seelenrätseln' how he has presented objective untruth about objective untruth about anthroposophy. Well, anyone who wants to test any kind of fortune teller, card reader or sorcerer may demand such methods. I have never presented fortune telling, sorcery or such so-called soul abilities or clairvoyance, which Professor Dessoir or Professor Oesterreich or similar people speak of, who might also want to test mathematical abilities in such an external way. I can only say: anyone who demands such tests does not understand the slightest thing about what lives in anthroposophical spiritual science. And it would not occur to me to engage in what arises from a Bolshevist attitude. No, my dear audience, people may behave as German national as they like – but they shall be recognized by their fruits! If they make such demands as these, then it is not worth discussing their Germanness with them, and I will not engage in any further discussion. I have given my answer.

Now I come to something else. And there I would have to demand that the gentleman who asked the question, “What evidence can you give for your clairvoyant abilities?” First explain who “Mr. Winter” was, by whom I was supposedly converted to anthroposophy in 1900, before he acquires the right to ask me such questions. Dear attendees, the gentleman who wants to ask me questions today once spun his audience a yarn about how I was converted to anthroposophy by lectures given by a “Mr. Winter” in Berlin in 1900. He has probably read as closely as one reads when one only reads the first words of my writing about these winter lectures. In fact, I myself gave these lectures in Berlin in the winter of 1900/1901, through which I am said to have been converted. These, my winter lectures, became “Mr. Winter's” lectures in this gentleman's mind.

Ladies and gentlemen, I further demand that my Jewishness not be mentioned again and again in any insidious allusion, after I have spoken here in sufficient detail about my family tree. And I further demand that I not be slandered by saying that I worked under the tutelage of Mr. Liebknecht. What I experienced at the beginning of this century, however, is that I was thrown out of the proletarian schools where I taught because of my representation of a spiritual conception of history by the satellites of old Liebknecht; I was thrown out of the workers' training schools because I never bought into [the materialist conception of history] and the like.

And I demand that the claim of any kind of suggestive influence or even of post-hypnotic suggestion, as it has been raised by this side, be retracted. And I further demand that the first thing to be done is to clarify what has been stated by this side about my relationship with the late Chief of Staff, Field Marshal von Moltke. My dear audience, I have no need to entertain you this evening with these matters, but I do want to say something about some of the things that have been said here. I have, as I have already said this evening, never followed anyone. I never appeared at Mr. von Moltke's house without having been invited, without having been requested to do so; and so I have been a guest at Mr. von Moltke's house almost every week since 1904. I have learned to respect Mr. von Moltke, I have learned to respect him so much that I may describe him as one of the noblest of men; I want to leave no doubt about that. I have never been to his house without having been invited. Before the outbreak of the war, I never had a conversation with Mr. von Moltke about anything military or political. Whatever was discussed arose from Mr. von Moltke's need to get to know spiritual science. That was his personal matter; I accommodated him.

I was asked to come to Berlin in the first few days of August, as I was not in Berlin when the war broke out. I refused, in anticipation of what might come from a malicious source about these things. For only once, on August 27 [correctly: 26] of 1914, was I in Koblenz, but not at headquarters, but with a family of friends. Herr von Moltke visited me there for half an hour. My dear attendees, there was truly no reason to talk about war at the time. We were in the midst of the triumphal march; it was still relatively far to the Battle of the Marne. Not a word was spoken about military or political matters during that half-hour conversation that Herr von Moltke had with me back then, certainly not at a time when he could have missed something, because the triumphal march continued even afterwards. I did not see Herr von Moltke again until October, long after the Battle of the Marne. There is no way to place anything I discussed with Herr von Moltke before his dismissal in a political or military context. But what was said between Mr. von Moltke and me is one of those personal matters that no one should allow another to prohibit; and it would be sad if we had come to a point where snooping into such matters were considered justified today. From this, the objective untruth arose that some kind of theosophical events in Luxembourg had a paralyzing effect on Mr. von Moltke's health. Mrs. von Moltke herself has now stated that this is an objective untruth. None of this really concerns me; I have no business to speak about it.

Other untrue things have come to light in connection with the threefold social order. And it will be considered justified that, after I have been personally insulted in this way – I do not usually need the word personally – after I have been personally insulted in this way, I would not find it dignified to enter into a discussion with these people before these things are not taken back – despite the fact that I am open to any other discussion.

That is why I sent a registered letter that arrived a few days ago, with “General von Gleich” as the sender, back unopened by return of post. Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know how individuals would behave in such a case; I know how I behave. General von Gleich then wrote an open postcard – which of course I could not return because it was put in the letterbox – in which he repeated what he had said in his letter and in which he expressly confirmed that he had received the letter I had returned. Well, my dear attendees, with my understanding of the mutual relationship between people, I cannot understand such intrusiveness.

My dear attendees, it has been said at this time, and even in a well-known German weekly magazine, that the former minister Simons is supposed to be my student, that he was inspired by me for all the horrible things he did in London. Now, it seems to me necessary to look at this matter a little more closely. Some time ago I came across an interview with a French journalist. This French journalist said that he had just had an interview with Minister Simons. Minister Simons had spoken to him about the threefold order and said that he found something agreeable in it, just as he did in the views of the Italian minister Giolitti. It seemed to me that there was something fishy about it – I had never got to know Minister Simons very well before – and for me there was only one thing, and I said it in front of many people at the time, even in public meetings, long before the accusations against Simons started here. I said that a German minister would be more likely to know about the threefold order than a French journalist. You see, perhaps out of a prejudice that comes from national backgrounds, I had more sympathy for a German minister than for a French journalist. Then, however, I was urged to talk to Mr. Simons, and lo and behold, Mr. Simons told me that he had not known about the threefold order, that the French journalist had only just told him about it. Well, then I saw Mr. Simons again when he spoke here in Stuttgart about the politics of the time. He wanted to see the Waldorf School. How this visit went has been presented here in a public announcement.

No one who is familiar with what happened at the time will be able to deny that I did anything other than be courteous to the German Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs. Politeness, especially in such a case, does not seem to me to be particularly punishable. And anyone who claims that a different relationship existed is claiming an objective untruth. In this case, however, I am not surprised at this objective untruth. For when this public notice was posted, a letter was produced that was said to have been written in Cologne and which stated that I had boasted in Cologne that I had spoken to Minister Simons here in Stuttgart about the threefold order before his London mission. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have not been to Cologne for many years, and I have not been to Cologne at all recently.

Bruno Roos: Here is the letter!

That may be. The letter can only be a forgery! And that is no wonder, because a lot of work has been done here with forged letters. I don't care what the letter says. The truth is that there was never any relationship between me and Minister Simons other than the one I have described here, and that I have not been to Cologne at all in the last few years, I don't think I've been there for four or five years. So it is a lie that I could have said anything in Cologne. Someone may read or show you a letter – if it says what appeared in the newspaper, then the content of the letter is a blatant forgery. There is no need to engage with people who use such letters to wage a fight.

Dear attendees, many other things have been brought up recently. It is late, and I will only be able to address a few of them. The aim of all these opposing arguments is to distort the essence of threefolding and to present it as questionable by slandering me. For example, there is repeated mention of certain changes that I am supposed to have undergone in my world view. Now, anyone who reads what is contained in my first “Introduction to Goethe's Scientific Writings” about my engagement with Haeckel will see that I was not a blind admirer of Haeckel in my entire life, but that I did struggle with it in the nineties, trying to come to terms with the things said, even in the details, by such a brilliant naturalist as Haeckel. At that time, it was around the time when Haeckel's “Welträtsel” had not yet been published, but his Altenburg speech on “Monism as a bond between religion and science” had been published. At that time, I gave a speech against this monism at the Vienna Scientific Club about my spiritual monism. And at that time I wrote an essay on ethical questions in the “Zukunft”, and it was Haeckel who approached me at that time, at the beginning of the nineties. I answered his letter and later sent him a copy of the lecture I gave on spiritual monism. Then Haeckel developed the material that became his one-sided book 'The World Riddles'. This led to a fierce battle against Haeckel, especially on the part of philosophers. And I still admit today: the one who was the greater at that time, on whose side the principal right was, was not Haeckel's opponents, it was Haeckel. And I stood up for the one who was relatively more in the right. And from this point of view one must understand what I have often said. Anyone who wants to do spiritual scientific research must be able to immerse himself in everything. This must not be just a phrase; one must also be able to immerse oneself in foreign worldviews. That was always my endeavor: to be able to be objective about foreign worldviews. This may have justified the view of those who from the outset held malicious opinions that I somehow stood in the position myself, in which I found myself; no one who cannot find themselves in foreign points of view can come to spiritual-scientific views. This reproach regarding “changes” is settled by what I presented in an issue of Das Reich, where I showed how what I represent as spiritual science grows out of my original epistemological views in a completely consistent way.

However, I only want to point out these things. It has even been claimed – and this shows how everything is dug up today that can somehow lead to the disparagement of the bearer of the threefold idea – that I was connected with an occult society that practices some evil practices. Dearly beloved, whatever I have advocated, internally or externally, is contained in what I have said in my “Theosophy”: the person who has written it down - and I must say, who has spoken it - does not want to represent anything that is not a fact for him in a similar sense to which an experience of the external world is a fact for the eye and ear and the ordinary mind. The fact that a gentleman, who later in Berlin even became the director of a larger theater, once introduced me to a person as being in need of support does not change that, and that person then received support from me for years through a kind of, I would like to say foolish, good-naturedness. No other relationship than that I supported this person, who would otherwise have had nothing to eat, has led to the assertion that worthless things, which were spoken and agreed between me and this person, have led to the assertion that I had some kind of occult relationship with this person or with an order he represented. I never had a single spiritual scientific conversation with this personality, not least because this personality understood nothing of spiritual science. And when the brazen claim is now made that I received something of the content of my spiritual science from that side, it means that one has understood nothing of what courses through my writings and my speeches.

When such things are stated, one need not be surprised if the claim has also been made that the un-German, the un-national nature of anthroposophy has been revealed in its position on the Upper Silesian question. No one who has sought advice from us in any way has been given any advice other than that those who stand in our ranks should vote for Germany when it comes to the vote. No one was ever given any other advice. What was said in addition to this was, however, that one should not only bring about this vote, but that one should bring about such a relationship for Upper Silesia as an integral country, so that it would be united internally with the German spirit. The idea was not just to call for a plebiscite, but at the same time to introduce a nuance into the agitation that would not only result in a worthless yes-saying in the face of the terrible will of the Entente, but would also lead to something being established that would show Upper Oberschlesien as a region turns out to be, which, through its inner structure, through what it can develop in terms of German spiritual impulses precisely in these difficult struggles, can, I would say, establish its inner affiliation with Germany in the germ. That, my dear attendees, I say in response to all those variously nuanced and from all sorts of dark backgrounds emerging accusations regarding the Upper Silesian question.

This question has been used particularly as a slander because one knows how it works, even by those who then added: One does not get the impression that Steiner's mother tongue is German. - Well, my dear attendees, I have not yet shown anyone outside of this room a document that I have here right now. Those who know me are aware that I do not use such documents to boast about myself or to engage in any kind of self-aggrandizement, but I may read out a sentence here from a letter I received many years ago, immediately after the publication of my first independent work, 'The Epistemology of the Goethean Worldview':

I can only say here that your struggle to gain a firm point of view between idealism and realism is extremely interesting to me, that your booklet has revealed a meaningful life of thought to me, that so many fine and pretty remarks have spoken to me from it and that the tone and style of the whole - despite some content-related suggestions for objections - has touched me sympathetically from beginning to end.

Dear attendees, I have only ever made use of this document in my thoughts when people complained about my style. I have not yet responded to it, but I have remembered that what I have read to you was written to me from Graz on January 30, 1887 by the German poet Robert Hamerling, who probably also understands something about the German style and the German mother tongue. So when the threefold social order emerged here, it was born out of German idealism, oriented towards the West, and it is born out of the longing to present to the world what has emerged from the world forces in Goethe, Schiller, in German Romanticism, in German philosophy, as a German creation, as German power.

Dear attendees, do you think it was easy to work on an eminently German construction in the northwestern corner of Switzerland during the entire war, in a highly visible location? Do you think it was easy to be labeled a Pan-German, that is, an All-German, by the French and the English throughout the entire period? That is what happened to me: across the border I am an Alldeutsche, within Germany I am an enemy of the Alldeutsche and their like-minded people, a traitor to Germanness. Well, that is how the views face each other, just as the views of the Protestant and Catholic priests face each other. Whether I give people Jesuit or anti-Jesuit exercises, both are essentially a distortion and have nothing to do with what threefolding really wants to be. It wants to bring to independent existence that which is genuine German spiritual life. Therefore, it wants the self-administration of spiritual life. In order that man may rightly relate to man, everything that can exist among equals and that can sustain the other two members of the social organism, which must shape themselves out of their own specialized activities in self-government, must unfold in the state. The threefold social organism in Germany will certainly be a vital organism, arising out of the genuine German spiritual life, and if it is only understood, it will bear its fruits. It will work in such a way that German spiritual power will become for the whole world what it can be by its very nature. Much of this German spiritual power has now been shaken, and much of it is slandered, which wants to work precisely from the deepest German essence.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, they go to great lengths in this regard. And I would like to share the latest product of such processes with you at the end. Just a few days ago, an article appeared in the Chicago Daily News with the following content:

Chicago Daily News The Germans have a pale pink theory about losing the war. The Battle of the Marne was lost because Moltke was studying science. By Georg Witte. Spezial Kabel: Chicago Daily News, field service. Copyright. 1921. By the Chicago Daily News Co. Berlin, Germany, May 4. – “Anthroposophy”, a new communist theory of the pale pink variety, is directing the fortunes of Germany according to the enemies of Foreign Secretary Simon. Yesterday they came out with the confirmation that he was only a puppet in the hands of his anthroposophical directors. The Vossische Zeitung, which has continually attacked Dr. Simon during the past week, prints the following: "Dr. Steiner, creator of a new theory. Recently, during a meeting of opponents of the new theory, it was confirmed that the influence of Dr. Steiner, the creator of the Theosophical theory, extended as far as Wilhelmstrasse and Dr. Simons, who, before leaving for the London conference, visited Dr. Steiner in Stuttgart and also had lunch with Director Molt, the founder of the Waldorf-Astoria School, where Anthroposophy is taught. It has also been established that Dr. Simons is in constant touch with the exponents of the new theory, who are never refused entry to his house, even at this critical time. Was General von Moltke a victim? The anthroposophical theory was first widely noticed when its enemies claimed that the Battle of the Marne was lost because General Moltke, the chief of staff, neglected to go to the front because he was too absorbed in studying the new theory, which completely governed all his actions. General von Gleich, who makes this accusation, describes Anthroposophy as a “very dangerous idea, destined to have a pernicious influence on both the individual and family life, undermining the authority of the state and dissolving national unity.” Dr. Steiner's theory, according to the Vossische Zeitung, provides for a division of national strength into three parts, with a communist system under anthroposophical auspices as the ultimate goal.

Now, you see, when someone spreads such a slander that General von Moltke lost the Battle of the Marne because of anthroposophy, and then makes a weak retraction of this claim, this does not prevent this disparagement of General von Moltke's personality from crossing the ocean to America, and that as a result of this slander, General von Moltke's good name is dragged through the mud across the sea.

I also had to mention this fact here, because I was asked by a certain party whether I had inspired a writing that was written against General von Moltke by a person close to him. Just as Hofrat Seiling once became an enemy and wrote a book full of objective untruths against me – because a book by him could not be accepted by our publishing house and was returned to him – so, basically, all of General von Gleich's hostility stems from the fact that a person close to him married someone whom he probably does not consider to be his equal. I am supposed to be responsible for this fact. Well, I can only say that the lady to whom that personality married spoke to me only once, long before the marriage; if she were introduced to me today, I would first have to get to know her again. I knew so little about this connection, and so far I have not been notified of the marriage by an announcement in the papers. I believe that in those circles where such outward appearances are highly valued, one could even argue that I know nothing about this marriage at all, because it has never been objectively indicated to me. And when the writing in question was composed, it was sent to me in Dornach. But I forgot about it. And when I was asked on the telephone about this writing - there are witnesses for it - I said: I completely forgot to read this writing. - That was just before it appeared in print. I have no connection whatsoever with this writing, and I am very far from infringing on anyone's freedom.

My Philosophy of Freedom, ladies and gentlemen, is meant seriously and honestly, and therefore do not count it as immodesty on my part if I - to affirm that threefolding originated in the attitude I have described to you today, I quote here the judgment of an opponent of my Philosophy of Freedom, for ultimately the idea of threefolding rests on my Philosophy of Freedom. I will read to you at the end, because time is already so short and I do not want to bother you any longer with going into all kinds of details - perhaps this will come up in the question - I will therefore read to you at the end the judgment of a fierce opponent of my “Philosophy of Freedom.” In this judgment, it says right at the beginning:

These lines are addressed exclusively to the philosopher, not to the anthroposophist Steiner. And in the main, to his by far most important book, 'Philosophy of Freedom', which the later work 'The Riddles of Philosophy' does not come close to. It goes without saying that Steiner the person is not considered here. I count myself among Steiner's most outspoken opponents and have also publicly expressed this opposition (in my writing “The Thinker”). But the form in which the polemic against Steiner often degenerates into wild agitation is more than unpleasant. And there it must be said...

— Please do not accuse me of immodesty, here it is written:

... that a man capable of a book like “The Philosophy of Freedom” could not possibly have the small and lowly character that is made out of him. In their clarity and noble calm, Steiner's philosophical and anthroposophical writings are among the most formally noble products of our new philosophical literature.

Dear attendees, in no other situation than the one in which anthroposophy and threefolding find themselves today would I somehow bother you with reading such a passage, which might seem immodest; but today it seems to me to be a duty to point out how someone can be an opponent but at the same time a decent person.

It has been said that I do not expose myself to scientific discussions. My dear audience, take the long series of my writings; they are available to the world. It is not my fault that the internal lectures are only now beginning to appear in public. They were urgently requested, but I did not have time to review them. It is not because of the slanderous intentions that they state that they have not been reviewed by me – for my sake they could always have been published for the greatest possible public after I had reviewed them – but I really have not had the time to review them, just as I really do not have the time to deal with all the possible hostile writings that have sprung up from all sides in recent times.

After today's allusions and after what a large number of you have heard in my many lectures over the past years, allow me to say: I stand for what I stand for because, from the innermost strength of my soul, I cannot stand for anything else, and because what I stand for lives in me in such a way that I must stand for it. If it is the truth, it will work its way through despite all opposition. If it is not the truth, which is, however, quite unlikely, then it will be replaced by the truth, because that which is truth will find its way through even the greatest obstacles. But anyone who believes that they can represent the truth from any side must do so. I have always stood before you from these underground bases, I stand before you today from these underground bases, and I will work from these underground bases as long as it is granted to me. No matter how many attacks are made, I will always use honorable means against honorable opponents. But what has emerged in recent times cannot claim that it can be dealt with by means of personal vilification, because it tries to attack the cause indirectly.

But I have to think in terms of standing up for this cause. I will stand up for it. That is what I must express to you today at the end of this discussion, and I have the confidence that if what I have to advocate is the truth, it will prevail because truth itself is something spiritual, something divine, and that which must triumph over all hostile powers is, after all, divine, spiritual truth.

After the previous great unrest in the hall.

Dear attendees, after this heated discussion, I would now like to answer the questions put to me in peace.

How is it possible, if, as you quite rightly noted, our thoughts are a resultant of previous impressions in the cerebral cortex, i.e. changes in a part of our body, that one can free oneself from the influence of the body with one's thoughts, as you explained at the beginning of your lecture. Do you have the ability to free your thoughts in this way?

Now, I have already spoken quite clearly about this matter; I now want to state here some more that follows from spiritual science itself for this question. We humans have in us, in a physical sense, an ascending life and also a descending life. This, I might say two-fold current of our life is usually not sufficiently taken into account. All ascending life consists in our developing growth forces and those forces that drive the absorbed nutrients to all, even the finest, organizational links in our organism. Now, alongside these processes, which are thoroughly constructive, others take place that are destructive, so that we constantly have destructive processes within us. This too is something that can only be established through spiritual science, which is not yet sufficiently known to ordinary materialistic physiology today. Now, all those phenomena that dampen our consciousness and put us into a state of partial or complete sleep are connected with the organic anabolic processes. The processes of our thoughts now go hand in hand with the catabolic processes in our organism, and all the other mental processes, such as instinctive perceptions, perceptions of drives, which actually always put us in a down-tuned state of consciousness, are connected with the organic ascending processes; the actual life of thinking is connected with the catabolic processes. This thinking life is already so in every single person that it develops independently of the organism; there must only be a process of degradation, that is, a process of dissociation in the brain, if thinking is to take hold in us.

If you consider this, my dear audience, you will say to yourself: Our organic building processes extend as far as thinking, then they recede, and thinking is precisely tied to the organic processes limiting themselves. So one becomes free of the organic processes through thinking, and one then continues this freedom by rising from thinking to higher spiritual knowledge. It is therefore absolutely the case – as is explained in more detail in my “Philosophy of Freedom” – that thinking, when it is practiced as pure thinking, is already a clairvoyant process. Even if people do not recognize it in ordinary life, we learn to know the peculiar true nature of higher knowledge precisely when we grasp ordinary thinking in terms of its essential being.

Why were you in a neutral country during the war and not in your homeland?

Dear attendees, I have had my work in Dornach. During the war, I was really, I may say it, more in Germany here than in neutral foreign countries, and I have done what could be done by me as a job, which has been recognized from various sides, during the war. And those who want to know about it, look at the events. It is not true that I did not work for the German people during this time.

Is it true that the ideas of threefolding are partly based on extrasensory knowledge and insights gained through it? And what are these extrasensory experiences and insights?

Dear attendees, I have specifically said that the idea of threefolding has loosely connected to the anthroposophical worldview because what appears in the anthroposophical worldview is a result of supersensible knowledge. For threefolding and for everything that I have presented in my “Key Points of the Social Question”, one does not need clairvoyance. Look through the entire Kernpunkte and see if at any point it appeals to anything other than common sense. Any association of clairvoyance with the threefold order is pure nonsense and malicious slander.

Anyone who follows the method according to your books “Geheimwissenschaft” and “Erkenntnisse höherer Welten” and so on, you claim that he will achieve supersensory knowledge or vision. As a master of this method, I can demand of you that you can do this. And so I ask you, tell me the feeling, not the physical one, that I have gained from you through your lecture: the feeling is, I ask you, is...

The rest cannot be read. Well, what the questioner asks on this piece of paper cannot be brought out, cannot be read.

Why does a doctrine, if it is good, have to defend itself? Good never needs to defend itself.

Ladies and gentlemen, no one would be happier than I if I did not need to defend myself in any way. And to the one who asks why the good must defend itself – if he regards what I have just presented as the good – I refer him to the address of my opponents, because what one clings to with all the fibers of one's soul must, when it is attacked, be defended.

If anthroposophy has nothing to do with Buddhism and Theosophy, then why are the Sanskrit words karma, reincarnation and so on used?

Reincarnation is not a Sanskrit word. And I use the word karma only because — and not even I always use it, those who have heard my lectures often will know this — because in an old, instinctive spiritual vision, the word “karma” was used. However, I very often replace it by saying: fate as it unfolds through successive earthly lives. I do not attach any importance to these words, but they are often used by others and by myself for the reason that our modern world view is intimately connected with our coinages and therefore one often has to go a long way for the words one has to form.

At the beginning of his speech, Mr. Steiner said that anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion. Why then does anthroposophy not remain neutral?

Dear attendees, I did not say that. I said: Anthroposophy, as I represent it, has arisen from natural science; it has its sources in natural science. — I said: It is not a substitute for religion. —- And I have said: It leads from the side of knowledge to that which is irrationally as a religious experience in the human soul. — And there I can say nothing other than: Just as external philology leads to the dissection of the Bible, so does a supersensible knowledge lead to the knowledge of the spiritual that underlies world development in a religious way. I did not say that anthroposophy has nothing to do with religion, I only said that it did not arise from it and that it does not want to be a substitute for religion.

Why is the neutrality of true and pure theosophy and Christianity not more sharply outlined and clearly presented?

Well, I have never lacked clarity in this respect in the various lectures I have given here, for those who are at all able to grasp the fundamentals of the anthroposophical worldview. And to anyone who demands that anthroposophy should relate to some religion in some subjective way, I can say nothing other than that, according to what I can discern, Christianity is at the center of earthly evolution , that all the other religions of antiquity are moving towards Christianity, culminating in the Mystery of Golgotha, and that everything we have in the way of civilization since then comes from the Christ impulse and is influenced by it. If someone wants a different neutrality, I cannot offer a different neutrality. It is not out of some subjective wish that I place Christianity at the center of earthly development, but out of what I believe I can support as objective knowledge.

I distinguish between what lives irrationally in man as Christianity, as a religion, and what then leads to the spiritual interpretation of the content of this religion. Anthroposophy is concerned with the latter in the sense in which I have expressed it. I will not allow myself to be influenced by the fact that non-Christians may not take kindly to my placing Christianity at the center of attention. For me, this is not a subjective fact, but an objective one. Those who disagree in any direction may be willing to go along with Anthroposophy as far as the discussion of religious questions; after that, they can leave.

But I believe I have presented the relationship between my anthroposophical worldview and the Christian religion very conscientiously in my book “Christianity as a Mystical Fact”. And in addition to all that I have said, I will only add this: When a malicious source says that I have taken something from Anglo-Indian Theosophy, the fact is that I wrote “Mysticism at the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life” entirely on my own, before I had any relationship to Anglo-Indian Theosophy before I had read any book that had emerged from the Theosophical Society, I wrote my “Mysticism in the Dawn of Modern Spiritual Life” and that I was invited to give lectures to Theosophists.

I said in the lecture: I did not follow anyone; I did not follow the Theosophists either. They came to me because they wanted to hear me. I did not tell you anything that I learned from the Theosophical Society; I said what came from me, and I will defend that in the future everywhere where people want to hear it. I will not ask what views or what kind of societies prevail among those who want to hear me, but I will take it as my right to speak whenever I am wanted in any circle.