Spiritual Teachings Concerning the Soul

GA 52 — 28 April 1904, Berlin

XVI. What do our Scholars Know about Theosophy?

If a school of thought is to prevail in the course of human development, a school of thought that does not enjoy the recognition or perhaps even the knowledge of the so-called authoritative circles, the ruling intellectual circles, it must constantly struggle against the opposing forces that are prominent within human culture.

To understand this, we need only recall what happened when Christianity had to assert itself in the world against old ways of thinking, against an old spiritual current. We need only recall how, at the beginning of the new spiritual movement, Galileo, Copernicus, and Giordano Bruno had to struggle against the so-called authoritative, ruling circles. We can assume that the intellectual movement inaugurated by Giordano Bruno had to fight against the old ways.

Today, the intellectual movement represented by the name Theosophy in literature, lectures, and elsewhere for a number of years is in a similar situation. If you remember the fate of such intellectual movements, which were more or less unknown at the time of their emergence, you will find that the way in which they are opposed by the ruling parties, by the so-called authoritative circles, changes with the fashions of culture, but that the essential thing, the lack of understanding, coupled with a certain kind of narrow-mindedness, recurs again and again. It is no longer customary today to burn heretics, and those who call themselves liberal circles would certainly object to being lumped together with those who burned heretics. But perhaps that is less important. Burning heretics is no longer in vogue today. But if we examine the mindset that gave rise to the persecution of heretics and everything associated with it, if we examine the reasons for such persecution with the human soul and compare what we find there with what is going on in the souls of those who more or less fight or oppose theosophical thinking today, then we will find something very similar in the attitudes and inner soul processes of the opponents.

Of course, we do not want to get involved today in dealing with the whole wide circle of opponents of the theosophical world view. Rather, we want to limit ourselves to what is related to our contemporary scholarship. we want to examine the relationship of our contemporary scholarship to the worldview represented here, which is called theosophical and spiritual-scientific, as I have been trying to call it for some time now. We want to examine the relationship of scholarly circles to this worldview.

It is perhaps not entirely meaningless to begin this examination with small symptoms. A very popular small encyclopedia, a so-called pocket encyclopedia, which states on its title page or at least in its preface that it has been compiled by the best scientific minds, shall serve as a starting point. When we open it at the keyword “theosophy,” we find only two words as an explanation: “God-seeker, enthusiast.” Of course, such a scholarly consideration of theosophists is no longer common in all similar reference works. But anyone who wants to learn something about theosophy will not become much wiser from this brief remark than from other similar reference books.

I have now attempted to examine, at least superficially, what can be found in the actual philosophical reference books. I do not want to present you with an anthology from such reference books. I would just like to cite, by way of example, what can be found in the dictionary of philosophical terms and expressions, edited from sources, published in Berlin in 1900. So, in one of the most recent works, which actually lists most of the theosophical terms, the following is included: [Gap in the stenogram.]* With these names, it is about three lines, a little more. Anyone who wants to try to get a mental image of theosophy from this quotation will have to say to themselves: even in such philosophical dictionaries, we find nothing more than a translation of the name that is not even accurate, and then a few names are listed.

Nor does it look particularly good elsewhere if we want to orient ourselves about what is represented here as theosophy, what contemporary scholarship knows about it. But you will find that it is all the easier for contemporary scholarship to pass judgment on what theosophy is based on a few small things it has picked up from some theosophical brochure. We may have the strange experience of a shrug of the shoulders and the remark, “What theosophical literature propagates is nothing more than a rehash of a few Buddhist concepts,” or, “It is nothing more than spiritualistic superstition expressed in a different way.” You will hear such things in abundance. But what you will hear little of is a real answer to the question: Yes, what actually is Theosophy? — You may encounter, perhaps not only in coffee parties, what actually happened recently at a coffee party, but which is not at all insignificant for the whole attitude of our contemporaries towards Theosophy. One lady said to another: How did you become a theosophist? That is something terrible, something awful. Think of what you are doing to your family, think of how you are contradicting what other people think. She paused for a few seconds and then said: You know, what is theosophy actually?

This did not originate in scholarly circles, but you could certainly find it there. You will find the judgment expressed again and again that theosophy is not scientific at all, that it is merely the enthusiasm of a few fanatics, that it primarily makes claims that cannot be proven.

Today, where we are concerned with a characterization of the relationship of our scholarship to theosophy, there is no intention to offer criticism, not even criticism of our relationship to scholarly circles. For no one knows better than those who view our current academic education from a theosophical perspective that today's academic education, with its mental images concepts, and ideas that have been developed from today's school education, nothing else can spring forth but a cocky and somewhat snobbish shrug of the shoulders at what theosophy claims and what really cannot appear to that scholarship—because it cannot understand it any better—as anything other than fanaticism and completely unscientific talk.

Let us be fair to this scholarship. The theosophist really stands on a point of view and must stand on one, which I will illustrate with an example that did not take place on theosophical ground, but which could easily have taken place on theosophical ground. The theosophist is in a similar position vis-à-vis contemporary scholarship when he rejects the snubbing and the accusation of enthusiasm, as in the example of the recently deceased philosopher Eduard von Hartmann vis-à-vis the materialistic-Darwinist interpretation of nature. This is not to take sides with Eduard von Hartmann's “Philosophy of the Unconscious.” But one must repeatedly point out the manner in which he encountered his opponents. In 1869, the “Philosophy of the Unconscious” was published, a book for which the theosophist does not exactly have to take sides, but which was a bold act at the time. And it is precisely in the relationship of this book to the scholarship of the time that we can find an example of the way in which the spiritual scientist or theosophist today confronts his opponents. This “Philosophy of the Unconscious” was, in a certain sense, a bold act. At that time, when the waves of materialistic science were running high, when materialistic science had grown into a kind of materialistic religion, books such as Büchner's “Force and Matter,” other books by Vogt, Moleschott, and the like, which saw force and matter, in purely sensual material existence, as the only reality, caused a sensation, went through many editions, and conquered hearts and souls. At that time, anyone who did not agree with this chorus of materialism, which spoke of a self-creating spirit, was considered a fool and an idiot. At this time, when it was believed that Darwin's work provided the scientific basis for materialism, at this time, when philosophy itself was a word that was considered to be something that had been overcome, at this time, Eduard von Hartmann published his “Philosophy of the Unconscious,” a philosophy which, despite its major flaws, has the advantage of ruthlessly reducing the world to a spiritual realm, seeking the basis of the spiritual in everything, in all phenomena, even if the spiritual is regarded as unconscious, even if it occupies a particularly high rank. One thing is certain: the spiritual is sharply opposed to the materialistic direction. While at that time the Darwinian direction explained nature entirely in terms of force and matter, Eduard von Hartmann sought to understand it in such a way that the spiritual should be evident as the inner purposefulness of a spiritual activity. Then came those who believed they could shrug their shoulders and look down on everything that spoke of spirit, and they judged: “There has never been anything as amateurish as this ‘philosophy of the unconscious’. Here is a man who has actually learned nothing about all the phenomena that Darwinism now explains so scientifically.” There were many counter-writings at that time. One was published by an unknown author. The title page read: “The Unconscious from the Point of View of the Theory of Descent and Darwinism.” It was a thorough refutation of the “Philosophy of the Unconscious.” The author showed that he was familiar with the latest developments in natural science. Ernst Haeckel said in a pamphlet that it was a pity that the author had not named himself, since he himself could not have come up with anything better against Eduard von Hartmann than what was written in this pamphlet. Oscar Schmidt wrote a pamphlet and declared that no natural scientist could have said anything better against the boundless dilettantism of Eduard von Hartmann than the anonymous author of this pamphlet. He should reveal his name to us and we would consider him one of our own. The pamphlet quickly sold out and a second edition appeared with the author's name. And that was enough to silence everyone. It was Eduard von Hartmann. Since that time, there has been general silence in the chorus of those who had written about the dilettantism of the “Philosophy of the Unconscious” not about Eduard von Hartmann, but in their own loquaciousness about the brochure that had appeared without the author's name.

One can object to such a procedure in many ways, but one cannot deny that it was thoroughly effective. The person who had initially been portrayed as ignorant showed the learned circles that he could still be as clever as they were. Let me use this trivial expression, it would be good, albeit somewhat anachronistic, to do the same. But easily, very easily, someone who is at the height of the theosophical worldview could also write down all the stuff that can be fabricated against theosophy today. Above all, it must be emphasized that theosophy is not something that is directed against genuine, true science, if it is properly understood. Theosophy will always be able to understand true, genuine science, just as Eduard von Hartmann was able to understand his opponents. The reverse is not so easily possible in either case. But we must also understand how this came about.

If I were to give you a lecture today merely on what our scholars know about theosophy, then today's lecture could have been quite short, and I would hardly have needed to stand before you for more than a few seconds. But I would like to go further; I would like to talk about why and for what reasons our contemporary scholarship knows so little about what is to be discovered in theosophy as a new way of thinking about the things of the world.

If we look around today at our contemporary scholarly literature, we will find that these considerations differ, even superficially, from all literature of about a hundred years ago. If we pick up a book with a title such as The Origin of Man, Man and His Position in the World, we will find that it tells us little more than how man once did not live on earth, how he then began his existence on earth in a childlike, semi-animal state. We are then told that animal ancestors lived on earth before this time and that they gradually evolved into modern humans. — If we pick up another book that is supposed to teach us about the mysteries of the cosmos, we will find that it tells us what can be seen through a telescope and what can be achieved with mathematics. In other words: everywhere, even when it comes to the highest questions, we encounter what I allowed myself to call in my book on “Goethe's Worldview” — fanaticism for facts, that fanaticism for facts that clings to sensory facts, to what our senses can perceive, at most to what our armed senses can perceive. This also includes everything that is presented in great detail today in all kinds of popular writings, and which man is able to teach about the mysteries and secrets of the world solely on the basis of established scientific facts. And if we look around in the circles that draw only from such books, we will find that there are actually all kinds of intermediate stages, but that these intermediate stages can be found between two extremes. One extreme is the sober scholars. They will accept as scientific only what they can see and combine with their intellect from what they have seen. They use instruments to explore the world in all its aspects. They search for written documents and investigate the time and development of humanity based on pure facts. One is supposed to be natural science, the other history.

In history, one sometimes comes across very strange things. Especially when it comes to experiences in spiritual science. One finds that there are people who write thick books about the ancient Gnostics, for example, or about some branch of ancient spiritual wisdom, but it does not occur to them to want to know anything about this spiritual wisdom itself. They view it purely historically, they merely record the written documents and are satisfied with that. Today, one does not need to be a Gnostic to write about Gnosticism. This is considered a fundamental principle in scholarly circles today. And the best principle is to be as little influenced as possible by the things you are actually writing about. If you take this fanaticism for facts on the one hand, you have roughly what leads such scholarly circles to say: We can establish these things, we know these things; anything beyond that is a matter of faith. Everyone can then believe or not believe whatever they want. The result of this attitude is a certain indifference toward all objects, thoughts, and entities that go beyond mere sensory facts. People then say: If someone needs them for their faith, we'll leave them to it, but science has nothing to do with it. A thick partition is erected between science and faith, and science is supposed to be nothing more than what can be perceived purely with the eye and ear, nothing more than the observation of facts and what can be abstracted from them. Nothing else is to be examined. But then something else arises that says, for example: It is not right that science should end somewhere, but it is right that human beings should develop more and more and that they should train and develop more and more powers in their creative work, so that they can then know everything, so that there are no limits to knowledge. It is true that the ultimate objects of knowledge can only be reached in an infinitely distant future, but they are such that we can come closer and closer to them. Limits must not be set anywhere. It seems like the height of presumption when such representatives appear who claim that this ability lies dormant in every human being. Just develop it and you will see that the objects that were once objects of your faith can become objects of your knowledge, of your wisdom. It is no different with the subjects that relate to the immortality of the soul, to the spiritual world, to the large and small world in space, and to the entire development of man, than it is with the things we encounter in ordinary natural science. Or what does a person who picks up a popular book on astronomy know from their own experience about what the book tells them? I ask you, how many knowledgeable people are there among those who believe in the materialistic story of creation? How many of those who swear by the materialistic spirit have ever looked through a microscope and know how to research these things? How many believe in Haeckel, and how many are knowledgeable in this field? Anyone can train themselves to do research if they devote the time and energy to it. The same is true of spiritual matters.

It is foolish to say that things come to an end. It is equally foolish to say that one must believe what is written in Haeckel's history of creation, because one cannot research it oneself. In no other sense does theosophy speak of objects and things of the higher world. People have become accustomed to using the word theosophy for this spiritual science. Not because it has God alone as its object of contemplation, but because it distinguishes between the outer, sensual human being, who sees, hears, smells, tastes, and touches, and combines sensory perceptions through the mind connected to the brain — and the other human being who dwells within this physical human being, who slumbers within and can be awakened, and who uses spiritual organs, spiritual sensory instruments, just as the body has physical sensory instruments. Just as the body sees with the physical eye, so the spirit sees with the spiritual eye. And just as the body hears with the physical ear, so the spirit hears with the spiritual ear.

When a person takes their spiritual development into their own hands, these spiritual organs of perception can be developed so that the inner human being can see into a spiritual world. Because such an inner human being is called divine, I make the distinction. What the outer, sensual human being sees gives sensory wisdom, and what the inner, divine human being sees is, in contrast to sensory wisdom, theosophy, divine wisdom. This is what is meant when one speaks of theosophy. We do not speak of theosophy because the object of research is God, for God is something that could only be revealed to the occultist at the end of things, at the summit of perfection. To investigate God, even though we know that we live, move, and have our being in Him, is the last thing a theosophist would presume to do. Just as someone sitting on the beach and dipping his hand into the sea would not believe that he could scoop out the whole sea, so the theosophist would not believe that he could comprehend God. But just as the one who sits on the beach and scoops up a handful of water knows that what he takes out is of the same essence as the whole great ocean, so the theosophist knows that what he carries within himself as a divine spark is of the same nature and essence as the deity. The theosophist will not claim that his essence can comprehend the deity, nor will he claim that the infinite deity dwells in his human soul, or that man himself is God. Such a thing would never occur to him. But what he says, what he can experience and learn, is something else, namely that a part of the deity lives in man, which is of the same nature and essence as the whole deity, just as the mass of water in the hand is of the same nature and essence as the whole vast ocean. Just as the water in the hand and the water in the sea are of the same kind and essence, so too is that which dwells in the soul of the same kind and essence as the divinity. That is why we call that which is within man divine, and the wisdom that man can explore in his innermost being we call divine wisdom or theosophy.

This is a line of thought that everyone would have to admit if they were willing to think logically. Theosophy is often criticized for demanding that humans undergo a process of development. But the fact is that not everyone can test what Theosophy claims. — Those who see through things will never claim that not every human being, if they only have the necessary patience, strength, and perseverance, can achieve what individuals have achieved in the course of human development. But there is something else entirely in the so-called proofs of theosophical truths. There are many things to be found in theosophical literature and in theosophical lectures, or to be heard elsewhere within the theosophical movement, about which those who have been shaped by our zeitgeist say: These are assertions. One can accept them, but no theosophist can prove them; he merely asserts them. This talk of evidence is something that comes up again and again, something that is repeatedly held against theosophy. What is the actual situation? The situation is as follows.

What Theosophy disseminates as higher spiritual wisdom can be researched when the powers that lie dormant in every human soul are awakened. These powers and abilities, which we call the powers and abilities of the seer, of spiritual perception of things, are necessary in order to research things. If one wants to explore, if one wants to discover the facts of the spiritual world, then one needs these abilities and powers. But it is something else to understand what the spiritual explorer has found. So, mind you, to discover spiritual truths, you need the powers of the seer; to understand them, you only need clear, logical common sense that follows things through to their ultimate consequences. That is what matters. Anyone who claims that they cannot understand what theosophy asserts has not thought about it enough. On the contrary, we will be able to understand better precisely what science claims today. Precisely what we, if we stick to true science, understand today about the facts of nature, about the things of the seemingly lifeless and the living natural world, even if we take the facts of cultural history — if we want to understand them, we can never understand them if we approach them only with materialistic scholarship, which is nothing more than materialistic fantasy. We can understand precisely what true science provides us with when we know the true science of the spiritual world. For those who see more deeply, for example, science, as presented by Ernst Haeckel, is only understandable if one has theosophy as a prerequisite, as a foundation.

A comparison should clarify what I mean. Imagine you have a picture in front of you that depicts, say, some scene, some saint's legend. You can try to understand this picture in two ways. One way is to stand in front of the picture and try to bring to life in your soul what lived in the soul of the painter. You try to evoke in your soul what the picture represents as spiritual content. There is something in it that perhaps uplifts your soul, makes it feel sublime, something that enlivens your soul. But you can also relate to this picture in another way. You can go up to it and say, I'm not interested in that. Nor am I particularly interested in what the painter had in mind. But I want to try to figure out how he mixed the colors, what substances are mixed into the paint he applied to the canvas. I want to examine how it looks on the canvas, how much red and green paint was used, where straight lines were used and where curved lines were used.

These are two different ways of looking at a picture. It would be foolish to say to the first person: You are looking at something that is untrue. — No, he is looking at something that is absolutely true. He is looking at the way the paint sticks to the canvas and how it is composed. He is looking at whether and how the colors have cracked, and so on. These can be genuine truths. Then the second person comes along and says to the first: What you are thinking is not correct. It is only a thought. What I am exploring can be determined objectively.

I want to give another example so that we understand each other perfectly. Let's say someone can play a sonata on the piano. You listen to this sonata with a musical ear, you revel in the wonderful realm of sounds that this sonata conveys to you. That is one way you can explore what is happening here. But another way could also be the following. Someone comes along and says, I'm not interested in what you hear with your musical ear. But there is a piano with strings stretched across it. These strings move. I now want to attach what we call paper riders to these strings. They jump off when the string moves, and this allows me to study where the strings move and where they are at rest. I want to disregard what you hear with your ears. That cannot be determined objectively. — Just as this second observer relates to the first observer, so do the scholars you characterize relate to theosophists. No theosophist would ever think of denying scholarship. Just as someone who raves about the spiritual content of a picture would not say that what you are researching about color is not true, just as someone with a musical ear would not say that what you are investigating with the paper riders is not true — because it is true — so too is what the natural scientist researches in his material. Nothing should be objected to this. But this natural science misses what is important in the world process. Just as what is important is missed by those who only look at the paper riders, and what is also missed by those who only examine the color and perhaps the material, the canvas.

Now some people say that there is something subjective that lives only in the soul and cannot be objectively determined. One must examine what can actually be determined. Outside, only vibrating etheric matter, vibrating substance, exists. Certainly. As a theosophist, one replies to such a person: If you only examine the material, you will find only your material outside, just as someone who plugs their ears will find only what can be seen on the paper slips.

A few years ago, a great deal of nonsense was made of this objectivity in natural science. This is the so-called atomistic theory, in which what humans perceive as sensory impressions, what they perceive as sound, color, and so on, is called subjective and traced back to objective processes. And these processes were supposed to be vibrations of some kind of substance. At that time, it was always referred to as simply red, for example. Red, it was said, is only in your eye. Out there in space, there is nothing but an ether vibration of so many millions of vibrations. Thus, this pseudo-science, which is no longer science but religion, transformed the world of perceptions into a vast number of atoms, all of which are in vibrating motion. This nonsense, this transformation of everything we experience in colorful and vivid content into abstract processes that are nothing more than calculated things, nothing more than pondered and speculated things, has been receding somewhat lately. We see how even the atom and the vibrating motion are now regarded by sensible natural scientists as nothing more than a mathematical approach, and how in the better circles of thinkers no one is any longer concerned about the inaccuracy of atomic hypotheses and so on. But it has become fixed in people's minds to view the world as an objective nothingness, as merely materialistic vibrational processes, so that in the early years of the theosophical movement it also penetrated into this and into theosophy itself. We have had to experience that the most spiritual movement has been afflicted by materialism in the harshest way. We have had to experience that in the most diverse theosophical books one could read again and again, this is this vibration and that is that vibration. The English books in particular never tired of talking about vibrations.

It is a characteristic of our time that this materialistic direction was able to enter the most spiritual movement. We will have a long way to go to overcome this childhood disease of theosophy. But only when the time has come when all talk of moving atoms will have disappeared from within theosophy, when that ingenious construction of some monads whirling down from the heights and absorbing everything — a grotesque materialistic idea — will have disappeared. Only when it is recognized that theosophy can only be about recognizing the spiritual as such, when it is clear that the vibrating paper riders and the study of colors and canvas should be left to materialistic science, and that theosophy is about the development of the higher senses, about the knowledge of the higher senses, that it is about what man sees with the higher soul forces, summarizes, surveys what he hears with the musical ear, that is, what the vibrating string expresses spatially, then one will be able to understand to some extent what Theosophy is.

Therefore, we must also renounce, completely renounce, any belief that a kind of harmony between today's scholarship and ‘theosophy’ is possible. That is not possible. — This harmony will only come when scholarship itself is ready to understand theosophy. Certainly, we are concerned with the study of colors — chemically —, with the study of lines, with the study of canvas, with the study of the paper riders on the moving strings, but that does not exclude the possibility that, with the higher development of spiritual powers, the higher spiritual realm will open up in the very things we study externally. Today's scholarship is far removed from understanding such a thing. One becomes lenient toward this scholarship when one sees, for example, how incapable those who have been born out of this scholarship are of comprehending something that is taught in the deepest sense and at the same time has arisen out of certain spiritual sciences. I know that for many who are physically educated and may be sitting here, I am saying something highly objectionable. But it is something symptomatic that I have to talk about. What physicist would not speak disparagingly about what is called Goethe's theory of colors? To speak about it today is impossible, but there will come a time—and it is not too far off—when everything that today stands as objections to Goethe's theory of colors will be recognized as outdated prejudice. You can read more about Goethe's theory of colors in my book on “Goethe's Worldview.”

Goethe's theory of colors was born out of a spiritual worldview, and for those who can understand this, this theory of colors alone is proof of how deeply Goethe thought. But it is not based on the prejudice that color is vibrating ether. Rather, it stands on a foundation that can be described as I will now attempt to do. I ask you to follow me in my subtle train of thought. When someone looks outside and sees the color red, their eye first perceives red. Now the physicist comes along and says that this red is only subjective. It is a process in space or in the brain. But what is really outside is nothing more than vibrating ether movement. Now, if someone comes along and says that what you see is only an illusion, that it is only vibrating ether, then consider the following. Try to form a mental image of this vibrating ether. Is it colorless? It must be colorless, because you want to explain color in terms of vibrations. So what is outside must be colorless. I ask, does it perhaps have other properties, does it perhaps have the property of warmth? Then the physicist comes along and says that warmth also comes only from vibrating motion. But these people are most comical when they say that these vibrations do not have sensory properties, but only those that we can think of. But if you consider what the senses tell you to be subjective, then you must also assume that what you think is subjective. And then you must also say that what you have calculated as a vibrating mass of fog is even more subjective, that it is never perceived, but only calculated. All of this is calculated subjectively. Anyone who is clear that what we experience within ourselves is objective and that the objective can become the most subjective has a right to say that what is calculated also has an objective existence. Nor will they come to regard red and green, C sharp and G, as merely subjective phenomena.

I have now told you a whole series of things that are terrible heresies for anyone who thinks scientifically today. Well, there is a lot of talk that times have changed. Yes, times have changed since the days of Giordano Bruno. Back then, the dogma of infallibility did not yet apply. Today, as you know, the dogma of infallibility applies in certain Catholic circles. But this dogma of infallibility did not originate solely from Catholicism. It was born as an external law, as an external dogma. But as a mindset, the dogma of infallibility also lives on in the spirit of materialistic thinkers, of monistic free thinkers. They consider themselves—I don't want to say each one a little pope—but they consider themselves so infallible that they consider everything that does not originate from their circles to be superstitious. And if someone opposes these infallible physicists and psychiatrists—they will not say that they are infallible, but one senses it—then he will be dismissed. He will no longer be burned, but he will be made impossible by the means that are in vogue today.

For theosophists, it cannot be a matter of finding agreement. When it comes to truth, approval is highly irrelevant. Those who have grasped the truth of a mathematical theorem can be completely indifferent to whether a million people agree or not. Truths are not decided by majority vote. Those who have recognized a truth have recognized it and do not need approval. Thus, the theosophical movement will prefer the cautious believers. It does not want children, but people who form their opinions with the utmost caution, based on the deepest examination. The call for caution is something that inspires my deepest sympathy.

From what I have tried to present, you will have been able to conclude that Theosophy is far from criticizing contemporary scholarship. Should the theosophist fight it? He would be doing something very foolish, for it would be like someone who looks at a picture with displeasure wanting to fight the person who studies the chemical composition of the colors. When, for example, a phenomenon such as Ernst Haeckel is defended from a theosophical point of view, this need not be incorrect. One can defend it if one recognizes it from a higher vantage point, sees how it appears there, and knows how things are to be placed in the development of the world. The theosophist will know how to assign the correct position to contemporary developments in every field.

Such is the relationship of the newly emerging spiritual current that attempts to view the world as it has always been viewed by select individuals. But in recent centuries it has not been possible to present this spiritual science in the way it was presented in the past. What we call theosophy today is a small part of a comprehensive world wisdom, of what is called the secret science. This is something that has always existed in select human individuals for thousands of years, indeed, since humans have existed. But in the form in which individual great spirits possessed it, it could not be given to the masses. Nevertheless, it was not withheld from the masses.

If you examine the legends and myths of different peoples, if you examine them impartially, you will see that these legends and myths are the pictorial expression of a science that contains more wisdom than today's science offers. Today's science would consider it fantasy to say that there is wisdom in these fairy tales. Furthermore, this world wisdom has been proclaimed in different ways in different religions, depending on how one people or another used it in one way or another according to their temperament and climate. When we look at everything that has been given to humanity in so many different forms, it leads us to a common core, to a comprehensive world wisdom. Not everything can be handed over to the greater part of humanity today, for those who rise to this world wisdom have to undergo certain inner trials. Only those who undergo these trials can be entrusted with this world wisdom. Even the elementary part was formerly only handed down in the narrowest circle of well-prepared students with the appropriate intellectual, moral, and emotional qualities. There are still people today who consider it wrong for the occult wisdom of theosophy to be handed down to the masses. However, this criticism is unfounded, because today there is no other way. Anyone who understands the structure of the contemporary zeitgeist knows that inner truth and wisdom feel alienated from the religious worldview because they can no longer be understood. In the past, things were different. The wisdom that is proclaimed today by theosophy was the property of the individual. The masses were given in images what they needed to know in terms of wisdom. The minds of the masses were capable of absorbing these images. The masses could live with these images alone. Truth was found in religions, truth was found in basic religious views. This is what theosophy makes clear to us once again in the deepest sense. In ancient times, people could grasp this with their feelings. Today, the times require that they also be able to comprehend what is contained in the religions. Thus, what is called secret science is compelled to step forward, to contribute something to the verification of the religions, to give at least the elementary aspects of spiritual truth. It would be a void and empty time if humanity were alienated from all knowledge of the spiritual worlds and all connection with them. Only those who do not understand the matter can believe that humanity could exist without connection to the spiritual, without faith in spirit and immortality. Just as a plant needs nourishing juices, so the soul needs what underlies it as spirit. Theosophy does not seek to found a new religion. But it seeks to bring truth back to humanity in a form that is suitable for modern man, in the form of thinking comprehension. Thus, Theosophy will bring the old truth to our contemporaries in a new form, undeterred by those who, starting from materialistic superstition, turn against this spiritual current.

Just as external science relies on what it explores and calculates with the help of the microscope and telescope, so too will Theosophy make use of the most important instrument Goethe speaks of: What the trained ear of the musician is to all instruments, the human soul is to all tools — and furthermore:

Mysterious in the light of day,
Nature cannot be robbed of its veil,
And what it may not reveal to your spirit,
You cannot force it out of her with levers and screws.

Those who see through the world are the most perfect instruments, and based on spiritual vision, theosophy will produce more and more such instruments.

The answer to the question of what our scholars know about the actual essence of theosophy is: nothing. — They cannot know anything because all their habits of thought can lead them to nothing else but to regard theosophy as fantastical stuff. But anyone who has understood that scholarship cannot yet engage with Theosophy, which is based on completely different fundamental principles, will also understand how necessary it will be for scholarship to delve deeper into the structure of the spirit. What fruits does this scholarship produce? But only a true understanding of the soul can make things such as those known to today's scholarship comprehensible. Or what should those who have considered Goethe, Schopenhauer, Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, and so on to be great minds think when this materialistic scholarship has progressed so far that you can find these illnesses explained from the standpoint of materialistic psychiatry in a little book about Goethe's illness, about Schopenhauer's illness—and also in other works? Circular insanity is the name given to a certain type of mental illness. Dementia praecox is another, and paranoia a third. These three forms of insanity are used as a basis to show that even great minds, who are considered leaders of humanity, can exhibit symptoms that are considered symptoms of mental illness. In Schopenhauer, symptoms of circular insanity were found, and in Tasso, Rousseau, and so on, symptoms of paranoia. The same author has described an even greater number, an even greater quantity of people as feeble-minded. He is the author of the book on the physiological feeble-mindedness of women, which affects the second half of the entire human race. It would be easy to view the author from his own point of view and to scrutinize him properly. — But all these things are no laughing matter. Materialistic science must come to this conclusion, because they are partial truths. But one can only come to the right understanding if one sees the spirit working behind it. Then one sees that higher spiritual development often has to be paid for with the same symptoms, just as health has to be paid for with other symptoms. One can only do this if one explains and considers them from above, that is, from a theosophical point of view.

I would like to say one more thing. You know that I have referred to ancient times of development, when today's culture did not yet exist, when there was a continent between today's Europe and America, the continent of ancient Atlantis. I have already pointed out that this Atlantis is being rediscovered by natural scientists. In the magazine Kosmos, issue 10, a natural scientist speaks of animals and plants that lived on this Atlantis. Such a natural scientist will admit this, but he will not admit that other human beings lived there at that time. He will not admit that the ancient Atlantean land was covered by a vast sea of fog, that the soil of Atlantis was not covered by the kind of air that forms our atmosphere today, that the expression used by the ancient Central European peoples in their myths, Nebelheim, refers to something real, to something actual, that our Atlantean ancestors lived in a land of fog. I have often pointed this out. A few days ago, a lecture was given at a famous natural history society in which it was pointed out that, most likely, during the time of our Atlantean ancestors, very large areas of the Earth were covered with fog. This is speculatively concluded from various other phenomena. Above all, it is pointed out that plants that need sunshine, i.e., those that grow in the desert, are of more recent origin and did not yet exist at that time, while those that need little sunshine, which could exist in Nebelheim, are older.

So you see here how natural science, lagging behind, tells you what Theosophy has already said before. We see ahead of us a time when this natural science will also have to gradually admit other things. The relationship in the future will not be such that Theosophy will have to adapt itself to the fantastic, objective atomic theories, but rather that the facts proclaimed by Theosophy from higher insight will be confirmed by external natural science. This will be the course that future developments will take. Even if today's scholars do not yet know anything about this, their own progress will point them in this direction. No thinker should doubt that with a developed soul one can see and perceive more than with the mere senses and the mere intellect. The recognition of the developed human being as the highest, most perfect instrument for exploring the world — that is what Theosophy wants to be recognized. Everything else follows naturally. If you say that human beings have reached the highest levels and will not develop further, then you do not need Theosophy. But if you say that the laws that have prevailed in the past will also prevail in the future, that individuals have always stood higher than others around them — if you admit that, then you are already, in principle, a Theosophist in your thinking. You do not become a Theosophist by uttering the words Theosophy, brotherhood, unity, and so on. Brotherhood is what all good people understand. When I see how people always talk about brotherhood and then also see how they feel an inner pleasure when they talk about brotherhood, harmony, and unity, I am always reminded of the stove and the first principle of the Theosophical Society, which demands to form the core of a universal brotherhood of humanity. It is useless to say to the stove: “Dear stove, heat the room and make it warm.” — If you want the stove to heat, you have to put fuel in it and light it. You have to put fuel in it. That is the spiritual power, the ability to see, to overlook through the opening up of the higher worlds. Through the opening up of the spiritual world, that truth and wisdom will take hold in human souls which, as wisdom and knowledge, must of their own accord lead to universal human brotherhood. In this way, we will achieve what is expressed in the first principle of the theosophical program, when human beings can be instruments that look into the spiritual worlds. When the organs of perception hidden within human beings are brought out of the soul, then theosophy will be a progress that can be pursued. If we compare this attitude, which arises from theosophy, with the attitude of theosophists, of great, sublime personalities who lived in ancient times, we also find it in a sentence penned by Herder: Our tender, sensitive, and finely perceptive nature has developed all the senses that God has given it. It cannot do without any of them, for what results from the combined use of the organs is clear to all. They are the vowels of life, and so on.

Even if only the external physical senses are taken into consideration here, we can still say in the theosophical sense: the physical and spiritual senses must be developed, for from the harmony of the spiritual and physical organs of perception will spring forth not only the vowels of life, but also those of eternal, infinite, spiritual life.

From the force that binds all beings,
The person who overcomes himself is freed

is written in Goethe's poem “The Secrets.” The person is neither free nor unfree; he is in the process of development.