The Origin and Goal of the Human Being

GA 53 — 29 September 1904, Berlin

What Does Modern Man Find in Theosophy?

In this lecture, I want to develop the relationship between the theosophical movement and the major cultural trends of the present day, and in the lectures entitled “The Basic Concepts of Theosophy,” I would like to sketch a picture of the theosophical worldview itself. I therefore ask you to regard today's lecture as an introduction and to accept it as such.

What I will be discussing today is the question of what contemporary people actually find within the theosophical movement, and which needs of contemporary people can be satisfied within the theosophical movement. And in this way I want to approach the other question: Why do we have something like a theosophical movement in the present? I would also like to approach the question a little more closely of why what theosophy actually wants, what it strives for, is misunderstood and misjudged by so many sides.

Anyone who wants to understand the theosophical movement in its entirety must first and foremost be clear about the task it has to fulfill in the present. They must also be clear about whom it wants to address in the present. What, then, is the contemporary human being of whom we are to speak today? By this contemporary human being, we mean someone who has familiarized themselves with the issues of the present, who does not merely live in the everyday, but has also engaged with the cultural tasks of our time and is familiar with them, for whom the questions that culture poses are themselves needs of the heart and mind; In short, I would like to understand this person as someone who strives to grapple with the questions of education and knowledge of our time. I would like to pose the question for him and sketch out an answer: What does he find in the theosophical movement? Is there anything at all to be found within theosophy that he necessarily needs? Go back to the first centuries of Christianity, take Origen and the other early Church Fathers: You will find that they did not rely solely on faith, intuition, and opinion, but that they were men who possessed the entire education of their time, men who answered worldly questions in a worldly manner, but at the same time were also able to ascend to the spiritual realm, answering spiritual questions in harmony with the science of their time. The conflict between science and faith is something that has only been known since the last century. But this conflict must be resolved. Man cannot bear it: faith on the one hand, knowledge on the other.

We must look back to the time when the theosophical movement came into being if we want to understand its purpose. We must realize that this movement is three decades old and that when it came into being less than thirty years ago, it took on a form that was expressed by the circumstances of the time. Anyone who wants to understand why it took this form must consider the development of education and teaching in recent years. We are still caught up in the currents that the 19th century brought forth, and those who started the theosophical movement believed that they were giving the world something it needed. And those who teach theosophy today believe that it is also something that leads into the future.

It has almost become a cliché today, and yet it is true: what has taken root in the souls of our contemporaries has brought about a rift in many of them, a conflict between knowledge and faith, between insight and religion, which is expressed in a longing of the heart. This conflict is characteristic of the latter half of the 19th century. It means not only for some people, but for a large part of humanity in general, what divides humanity and what causes a contradiction in the individual human soul. Until the last third of the 19th century, science had reached a level that is indeed admirable for those who look back over the centuries. This science is something that fills the 19th century with justifiable pride. It is the great legacy that the 19th century is able to pass on to all those who come after it. But at the same time, this science seems to have thrown old traditions overboard. It seems to have brought disruption to what had served souls so well in earlier times as old beliefs. Above all, it was those who had looked more deeply into science who no longer believed that scientific knowledge could be reconciled with what religion had offered them. The best believed that a completely new creed had to take hold and that it had to replace what had been the content of people's faith for centuries. Thus we see that a true revolution in human thinking has gradually taken place. We see that the question was even raised as to whether it was still possible for a person to be a Christian; whether it was still possible to hold on to the ideas that had given comfort in death and had shown people for so long how to understand their destiny, which was to extend beyond death, beyond the finite. The great question of “where from” and “where to” was to be taught in a new way, illuminated by science. People spoke of a “new faith,” and they meant that it must stand in contrast to the old. They no longer believed that a worldview could be formed from the old religious books. Indeed, there were quite a few who said that these books reflected childish mental images that were only possible in the childhood of humanity; but now that we had become mature, we must also have mature views. Many also said that they wanted to stick to the old beliefs and did not want to convert to the radical standpoint of the new.

But the course of spiritual development in humanity does not depend on these many. It has always been the few, always those who stood at the height of their time, who set the tone for development into the future. So it came about that those who wanted to know nothing of the “new faith” also thought they need not concern themselves with the conflict between faith and knowledge; but one could also imagine and say that this would be different in the future. David Friedrich Strauss established his new creed at that time, that there is nothing in the world but what happens between birth and death, and that man must exhaust his task here on earth. One can see that in the present day, many people are losing the comfort of religious beliefs, and one can assume that our children and grandchildren will no longer have any benefit from them. Therefore, those who believed that bliss depended on these religious beliefs may have looked at the world with anxiety. They were the best.

The 19th century only bore the fruits of what had been sown in the previous century. Everything had been prepared in earlier centuries. This is mainly attributable to those who strove to broaden human horizons from the mid-15th to the 16th century, and above all to the popularization of education. If you look back, you will see that religion took on a completely different form for people in past centuries. The worldview seems to have changed completely. It is only because of this that people have formed false ideas, that thinking is fundamentally different from what it was centuries ago.

Put yourself in the age when the great masses stood in opposition to a few: the priesthood was the caste that possessed knowledge. In this caste, there was no conflict between faith and knowledge. What one saw and could grasp was in harmony with what was called religious belief. What was explored with the instruments of science, with the senses and with whatever aids were available to the senses, formed a foundation for what had been gained through the breadth of sensory perception. On top of this was built, as the pinnacle, the mental image of God, the mental image of the creation of the world, and the mental images about the destiny of the human soul. There was no conflict anywhere. Medieval man worked six days a week, and on Sunday he went to church. There he heard how what he did during the week had temporal significance, but also eternal significance; he heard how it fitted into the great course of the world. Thus, people knew that even the smallest thing they did had a significance that extended into all time.

However, the awareness that what people do has an effect on all people and all times has been lost, especially among those who were the bearers of education in recent centuries and most significantly in the 19th century. People had developed worldviews in a completely different way than before. Astronomy had shown them how to construct worldviews from mere sensory observation. Copernicus taught people to look out into the worlds and create a worldview that did not include human beings themselves. Look back at the old worldviews: there, human beings had a role to play, they had a place in them. Now, however, they had a system of stars before them that had been discovered by means of science. But this contained the Earth only as a small entity. It appeared like a speck of dust under that sun, which is one among countless suns.

Under the impression of all this, it was impossible to answer the question: What is the purpose of humans, these small inhabitants of Earth, on this speck of dust in the universe? And so science had to investigate the world of life. It examined the composition of plant, human, and animal bodies—the smallest living organisms with a microscope—and found that they are made up of tiny structures called cells. Once again, a step forward had been taken in sensory knowledge, but once again, only something that was a sensory perception had been understood, something that made physical existence more explainable to the senses. But once again, something had been left out that humans must ask about most intimately, namely what constitutes the soul and its purpose. The new doctrine could not be questioned about where the soul came from and where it goes. — We then come to see how people moved away from the old worldviews and answered the question with the means of science.

In geology, people researched the sensory origin of human beings. The different layers that exist on our earth became known. In the past, it was said that the earth had been formed by violent revolutions and had undergone various states; states of such a significant nature that one could only form a mental image of how spiritual powers had gradually brought about what we know today. Today, it is believed that the same forces that are still building the earth today also built it in the distant past. We see that rivers flow down from the mountains, carrying debris with them and thereby creating land and plains. We see that the wind carries sand over wide areas and covers entire stretches with sand. We see how such influences gradually change the climate and the Earth's surface. And now geologists say: just as the earth is being changed today, so it was changed in the past; and so we can understand how the earth was gradually formed. Everything that cannot be perceived by physical instruments, by calculation, or by the human senses was excluded from the explanation of the earth. The various layers of the Earth were examined and it was found that they contain not only lifeless products that have been deposited there, but also beings that lived on our Earth millions of years ago. In the lower layers, the most imperfect beings were found; higher up, more perfect beings were found; and even higher up, almost at the top, the layers in which human beings appear. Humans only appear in relatively recent periods of the Earth's formation. If we apply this image that I have just sketched, if we stick with this image, then we can imagine nothing else but that humans developed from below, that they only made a small leap and were previously nothing more than animal beings of a higher order.

Then came what we call Darwinism, which says that everything that lives on Earth is related to each other, that perfection develops from imperfection, and that this development is based on certain laws that play out within sensory existence. The catchphrase “struggle for existence” came up. It was said that every animal and every plant is changeable. They can develop in this or that way, depending on whether the beings are adapted or not adapted to the external conditions of life. Those beings that are best adapted to the conditions of life will develop and survive best. However, it was not possible to determine why the conditions of life are better for one than for another. One was dependent on chance. The creature that happened to be better survived, while the less well-developed perished in the struggle of all against all.

So we have an astronomical picture and a picture that science has drawn for us of life. But man is missing from it, and above all, what was previously called divine providence is missing. What is missing is what is called the divine origin and the divine goal. The words once spoken by a great natural scientist, who contributed most to the design of a great world structure, are significant: When Laplace stood before Napoleon I and explained to him the image of the sun and the planets, Napoleon said: But in such a world view I find nothing of a God. Laplace replied: “I have no need of such a hypothesis.” The astronomical world view had no need of the hypothesis of a spiritually creative being, a God. And the other sciences behave in the same way. Is there anything in their picture of life that contains spiritually creative forces? Nowhere is there anything of the kind in the picture that science has designed, and rightly so. If we seek an explanation for this, we find that man, with his spiritual qualities, is a kind of orphan. Science has found enthusiastic words to describe how wonderful the forces are that guide the stars, how wonderful the forces are that have developed life to the point of human beings. But we see that in its entirely sublime picture, science no longer has any of the mental images that were so valuable to humans for so many centuries. And from whom could humans have demanded answers to the questions: Where do I come from? Where am I going? If not from science? The answers to these questions have always been provided by science.

Those who found no other way out than to oppose the old faith with a new scientific faith were nevertheless important men. We cannot call these people unscientific or irreligious when they said: Religious ideas contradict our knowledge, and therefore we must have a new faith. Here we see the development of what we might call scientific materialism, which regards man as a higher animal, as a member of the physical-natural creation, as a small, insignificant being, as a speck of dust. You have this being before you in what the freethinkers and those who try to solve the various mysteries of the world in this sense have developed, as you can see in Haeckel's sensational book on the wonders of life. There you see an image born of science that is incapable of harmonizing with the views of earlier centuries.

That was the situation at the end of the 19th century; that was the only thing the 19th century could have bequeathed to the 20th century, had it not been for another impact. This impact was prepared and then came to fruition in the theosophical movement. What we recognize in the theosophical movement as the actual essence was prepared by learning about the true physical structure of the world and the development of life, since the old beliefs were no longer sufficient, and on the other hand by studying spiritual development itself, that is, not only the development of life, but also spiritual development itself. Just as the forces from which living beings and living creatures developed were investigated, so too were the spiritual forces, the spiritual contents of humanity, as we observe them in the course of historical and also prehistoric development. They did not only go back to what had taken place before the sensory eyes, but also to what people had believed. It was clear that modern science was something radically different from what the old creeds had believed. It was only our time of research that made the spiritual development of humanity clear to people. Ancient beliefs were examined for their true form and content, and something very special was found. By deciphering the documents of the Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Babylonians, and Assyrians, it became possible for us to penetrate these ancient human concepts. And just as science has shed light on natural science, so now science has shed light on the beliefs of the ancients. We saw that they contained something that we in our age and with our free-thinking nature had given little thought to.

It had been believed that humanity had started out from ignorance, from certain mythological mental images, from fantasies, from poetic mental images that had been formed about God and the soul in an imperfect, primitive way. That was roughly how people thought humanity had developed, from the imperfect to the wonderfully perfect of our time. But people were not familiar with the mental images of the ancients, and when they became acquainted with them, they aroused astonishment and admiration, not only among religious people, but also among researchers. This admiration has been expressed again and again, the more they have been studied. The further we go back into the lives of the ancient Egyptians, into the lives of the ancient Indian, Babylonian, and Assyrian, even Chinese, spiritual worlds, the more we see that there are such sublime worldviews as only a human mind can comprehend and a human heart can feel. We see people who have looked deeply, not into the external world that natural science explains to us today, but into the inner spiritual world. Confucius gave profound moral teachings and created commandments for social coexistence. Compare for yourself what philosophers of the present day have produced in terms of moral teachings, compare Herbert Spencer or the moral teachings of Darwinism, compare modern moral teachings with those of Egypt, with the mental images about morality of Laozi, Confucius, Zarathustra, you have to admit that although the new mental images are appropriate to our time, we look up with admiration to the sublime moral teachings of the ancients, which cannot be measured by what we have as science. Max Müller says of Tibetan moral teachings: “However far this people may be from the so-called cultures of our time, I bow my head in reverence before the sublime morality of Tibet!” — This is roughly what the Orientalist and objective scientist Max Müller said. He was never able to believe that humanity had started from ignorance. His research led him to the conclusion that, although this wisdom cannot be grasped by the intellect or the senses, humanity must have started from such wisdom. Gradually, the researcher learned to speak of what “primordial revelation” and “primordial wisdom” are. That was one side of the coin, the positive side.

The other side was that which set itself the task of criticizing and investigating these beliefs. And then it became apparent that the most important records, the most important documents, did not stand up to scientific criticism when taken as they had been taken for centuries. I will refrain from discussing everything else, including a critique of the Old Testament, but will only briefly mention what this critique has achieved with regard to the Gospels. With regard to the Gospels, which were read with completely different eyes a hundred years ago, historical criticism now asked: When were they written, and how did they come into being? — And science has had to chip away, piece by piece, at the ancient authority that the Gospels possessed. It has shown that they were written much later than had been believed; it has had to show that they are human works and cannot claim the authority that had been attributed to them.

Let us take these three things together: On the one hand, there is the progress of natural science; on the other, there is the recognition of the wonderful content of all the beliefs of antiquity and, at the same time, the criticism that has relentlessly attacked what was previously thought about the history of religious documents. This brought people into a situation where they became uncertain and could hardly move forward in the old way. Those who sought to consult science from all sides lost their minds. Such was the state of human knowledge at the end of the 19th century.

Then came the theosophical movement, with the express intention of giving something to those who were in this state of uncertainty, of bringing a new message to those who could not reconcile their new knowledge with their old beliefs. They were to be given an answer to the question of why this gospel has such profound content and why it speaks its moral teachings to people in such a divinely sublime way.

This theosophical movement was widely misunderstood precisely because it uses a language that developed in the last century. In the early days, when the theosophical movement entered the world, it was very difficult for the world to understand it. But what did the theosophical movement give to humanity? To mention just a few things: certain studies led to the publication of a book, Esoteric Buddhism by Sinnett, then another book called Isis Unveiled, written by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Furthermore, a two-volume work appeared, The Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky. These were books that presented a completely different worldview than science had done up to that point, and also a different worldview than the worldviews of religions. And this worldview had a peculiarity. It was precisely the scientific person who approached these works with good will, who did not take them up arrogantly, dismissively, and critically from the outset, who found that they were given something that could satisfy their needs. And there were quite a few who took them up with great interest immediately after their publication. These were people who knew how to think scientifically, but who over time had become disillusioned precisely with scientific progress, precisely with what science had to offer. They now saw in the new works Esoteric Buddhism, Isis Unveiled, and The Secret Doctrine something that satisfied their deepest heart's desires, their deepest need for knowledge, and their scientific conscience. Where did this phenomenon come from, and who were the few who found such satisfaction in the new theosophical works? If we want to understand these few, we must take a closer look at the further progress of scientific development.

Science had developed an astronomical worldview, a picture of life on Earth that extended to the understanding of physical human beings. At the same time, it had developed methods for researching the physical world using all the wonderful tools that modern times had created. Not only did it use the microscope to study the smallest living creatures, but this science did even more. It managed to calculate the planet Neptune long before it was seen! Today, science is also capable of photographing celestial bodies that we cannot see. With the help of spectral analysis, it can provide a diagram of the state of the celestial bodies, and it has shown in an extremely interesting way how the celestial bodies rush through space at a speed we had no idea about before. When celestial bodies move past us, we can see their movement. But when they move away from us or toward us, they appear to be at rest. Science has also managed to measure the movement of these celestial bodies using a particularly interesting method. This is proof of where this knowledge can lead us. It also enables us to study the physical nature more closely, piece by piece. This has resulted in something that is even more important to the human mind than what it had previously replaced the old science with as the new science.

In recent years, science has once again lost its footing on its own premises. Precisely because it has become so perfect, it has overcome itself, undermining its own foundations in a certain way. It said that the struggle for existence had brought about the perfection of living beings. Well, natural scientists have investigated things, and precisely because they have investigated them, it has become apparent that all the mental images they had formed about them are untenable. Now people speak of the “powerlessness of the struggle for existence.” Thus, natural science has undermined its own foundation of knowledge with its own methods. And so it continued, piece by piece. And when, in recent decades, humans became more and more aware of how they themselves had developed on our earth, they ultimately came to the mental image that humans had evolved from higher animals. Thus, in recent decades, cautious and at the same time more discerning natural scientists have come to speak of the impossibility of comprehending the spiritual world that must lie behind our sensory world by scientific means. The first impetus came from the famous speech by Du Bois-Reymond in Leipzig, in which he expressed that natural science was incapable of solving the most important mysteries of the world and answering questions relating to them. Science stops where questions about the origin of matter and the origin of consciousness begin. We will not be able to know anything about this by scientific means: “Ignorabimus.” Ostwald, a good student of Haeckel, who already spoke of overcoming scientific materialism at the naturalists' congress in Lübeck, openly stated in a lecture at the last naturalists' meeting that the methods used to unravel the mysteries of the world must be regarded as unsuccessful. “Natural Science and Worldview” is the title of the book that has been published. It is precisely natural science that wants to go beyond itself. It wants to go beyond itself and see the worldview in a higher light.

Just as these natural scientists stand today before all objective research, so did the few at the beginning of the theosophical movement. It was clear to them that what natural science says is something indestructible, something on which we must build. But at the same time, it was also clear to them that natural science itself must lead to a stage of development where it can no longer provide answers to higher questions with its own means. However, they found these answers in the aforementioned theosophical writings. They found them not through confession, but through the way of thinking and feeling that is expressed in the theosophical movement. This is the significance of the theosophical movement for people today: that it can fully satisfy those who seek harmony between knowledge and faith in science, who want to live into the future not in struggle against science, but with science.

Just a few years ago, it was believed that science was in contradiction with the old beliefs. People spoke of a new faith in contrast to the old faith. The theosophical movement has taught us that although the ancients expressed themselves differently from modern science, what the ancients taught about spiritual forces, about what cannot be seen with the eyes or heard with the ears, is something that can satisfy our need for faith as well as our need for the most modern science. However, one must immerse oneself in the old mental images with complete impartiality, good will, and an open mind; one must truly believe that the deeper one delves into them, the more one can gain from them.

Then something happens. Natural science taught us something else in the course of the 19th century. It familiarized us with the structure of our own sensory organs. It showed us how the eyes must be structured in order to see light and colors; it showed us that the eye is a physical apparatus that translates what is going on around us into the colorful world we see before us. It has been said that it depends on the nature of the eye, as well as on the world itself. Imagine if the world were inhabited by beings that could not see. Then the world would be without colors! The science of the senses developed in all directions during the 19th century. Let us be clear that the world around us would be dark and silent if it were not for our eyes and ears. If we did not have our senses, the world that we cannot see or hear would not exist in its causes, which affect us through the senses. There can be no effects for a person who lacks the organs under normal circumstances. Or can there be effects for a person who lacks the organs under normal circumstances? That was the question that had to be asked by science itself! This question is genuinely scientific.

In this field, too, the theosophical movement produced works of fundamental importance. Not only did it provide a worldview, but it also produced works that gave guidance on the formation of higher organs, on the formation of higher abilities. When a person develops these higher abilities within themselves, they face the world in a new way. Imagine for a moment that you are in a dark world with a bright light, and imagine that you open your eyes: suddenly, the world is filled with a new quality! The world was there before, when it was dark and you saw no light. But now you can perceive it. If you could open up higher organs, you could experience that even higher worlds are there, are active, because you can now perceive them.

“Light on the Path” is one such work, which was also produced by the theosophical movement. It is a guide on how human beings can develop spiritual eyes and spiritual ears in order to see and hear spiritually. Thus, the theosophical movement claims to solve the mysteries of the world in a completely new way. Not only by opening up the abilities that people already have, but also by awakening those that lie dormant within them. By perfecting ourselves in this way, as has been done since time immemorial, we can penetrate the secrets of the worlds and the worlds that surround us. In this way, life that remains hidden from the outer senses is revealed to us. Natural science could advance as far as it likes, it could produce its most magnificent achievements, but it would still have to admit that there is something else that it cannot grasp. But science could teach humanity this through the methods that theosophy has given it. Because humanity has been able to explore the world in its breadth through science, but never in its depths, theosophy now stands alongside modern science. This science has expanded, but the theosophical world movement is intended to deepen it.

Now it became clear and understandable why human beings, even as scholars, must stand in awe before the ancient religious creeds. It became clear that perfect beings have always lived alongside imperfect beings in the world. Now it also became clear why the concept of revelation was scientifically destroyed and, on the other hand, presented to human beings in a more beautiful light. It also became clear that the Gospels and other ancient expressions of faith did not arise from ignorance, but from wisdom, that they arose from forces that lie dormant in every human breast and that were already developed in individuals at that time, revealing the world that shows us the destiny of the soul and the eternity of human life. What was recognized through such spiritual eyes has been preserved for us in religious documents. That which cannot be found when one looks out into the world is truly contained in these religious documents.

And now we understand why Laplace's answer had to be what it was. What had Laplace observed? The outer sensory world! He had not understood the spiritual world in which the earth is embedded. He was therefore right in his answer that he could not find the divine in the world with his instruments. In the past, people had been taught to use their spiritual senses to observe the spiritual world. What is written in the scientific records was not taken from the stars. But what is written in the biblical documents was written by those who saw with spiritual eyes. One needs spiritual eyes to see into the spiritual world, just as one uses the senses to see into the sensory world. One might be misled by science — but now a sure support had been gained. Now people could see the great spiritual connections that lie just as clearly before the human soul, if only people seek to find the paths that lead there. And the paths that lead there are what the theosophical movement seeks to convey to humanity. Now, above all, people will understand what this theosophical movement wants and why it was initially so misunderstood. It had to be misunderstood. This has to do with the development of the times. Let me touch on the deepest reason for the misunderstanding in the latest science. People believed that the “struggle for existence” had brought humanity to a high level of development. But it is peculiar that this worldview already appeared at the beginning of the 19th century as Lamarckism. Darwin taught nothing essentially new. But it was only since Darwin that this view has become more widespread. This is related to the living conditions of the 19th century. Life had changed. Social life itself had become a struggle for existence. When Darwin's teachings became widely known, the “struggle for existence” was a reality, and it still is today. It was a reality at the time of the extermination of the tribes in America and also for those striving to achieve external prosperity: no one thought of anything other than how best to achieve “well-being.” “If the rose adorns itself, it also adorns the garden” — the satisfaction of each individual should also lead to the satisfaction of all.

Then came the strange doctrine of Malthus, Malthusianism, which says that humanity develops much faster than the food it needs, so that gradually a struggle for existence must arise in the human realm itself. It was believed that the struggle would be necessary because there was not enough food. People may have considered it sad that this was the case, but they believed that it had to be so. For Darwin, Malthusianism was the starting point for his theory. Because people believed that humans had to fight a struggle for existence, he believed that the struggle must also be the same throughout nature. Humans carried their social struggle for existence out into the world, into the heavens.

People had taken great credit for themselves when they said that the new human being had become modest. He should be nothing more than a small creature on the speck of dust that is Earth, whereas in the past he strove for salvation. But humans have not become modest! By projecting what exists as social struggle in humanity out into the world, humanity has made the world into an image of itself. Whereas humanity used to contemplate its soul, exploring it from all sides in order to recognize the world soul from this vantage point, it has now explored the physical world and imagined it in such a way that it sees in it an image of humanity with its struggle for existence. If the theosophical movement wanted to achieve anything, it had to grasp this fact. When human beings truly rediscover the divine within themselves, so that they find God within, they can say to themselves: The God who works within me is the God of the world, the one who works within me and outside me; I recognize him and may form the mental image of the world as I myself am, because I know that I form it divinely, because I know how this new knowledge can be gained from new depths of the soul and new feelings of the heart.

In this way, it was also possible to explore the various religious systems with their profound truths. Religious scholars such as Max Müller and his great colleagues pioneered this religious science, and theosophy had to continue it. Human beings should see with spiritual eyes and hear with spiritual ears what no physical eye can see and no physical ear can hear. The theosophical movement had pioneered this. It would have been impossible to really achieve anything in these two areas if something had not been placed at the center of this whole movement that is capable of truly giving birth to new insights, new science, and new faith from the human soul: If, in the middle of the 19th century, human beings believed that they could only attain perfection through struggle, and thus made struggle the great law of the world, they must now learn to develop in their souls the opposite of struggle: love, which cannot separate the happiness and well-being of the individual from the happiness and well-being of others; which does not see in others those at whose expense one can advance, but those whom one must help. When love is born in the soul, then man will also be able to see creative love in the outside world. Just as in the 19th century, people created a view of nature based on their mental image of struggle, so they will create a worldview of love because they will develop the seed of love.

The new worldview will once again be a reflection of what has love in the soul. Human beings may form again in their minds the mental image of the divine as they find their own soul — but love should live in this soul. Then they will recognize that struggle is not the characteristic of the creative force system in the world, but that love is the primal force of the world. If human beings want to recognize the God who creates love and radiates love, then they must develop their own souls to love. This is the most important principle that the Theosophical Movement has made its own: to form the core of a universal brotherhood of humanity based on love for humanity. In this way, the Theosophical Movement will comprehensively prepare people for a worldview in which it is not struggle but love that creates and forms. The seeing human spirit will see creative love flowing toward it. The cultivation of love within oneself will lead to the realization that love created the world. And Goethe's idea will be fulfilled:

Let man be noble,
Helpful and good!
For that alone
Distinguishes him
From all beings
That we know.

This legacy of the great poet is the driving force behind our theosophical movement. Modern man should develop within himself the most significant factor in progressive development through the theosophical movement. He should strive for cooperation in social life. This would enable them to progress in wisdom and wisdom-filled power — even in the spiritual worlds. Then people will increasingly recognize again what is eternal and what their eternal destiny is. They will know how they themselves create and work on the “whirring loom of time” as a link in a spiritual, not merely sensual, world chain. They will know that they are doing everyday work and that this work is not exhausted in itself, but is a small link in a great chain of human progress. They will know that every human being is a seed that needs a force to blossom and flourish, a force that pushes the seed out of the dark earth. What the soul creates must be brought out of the spiritual soil, just as the plant seed must be brought out of the physical soil. And just as the physical seed is brought out by the sun to the sun, so the blossoming and thriving human plant will be brought out by a spiritual sun power, by that spiritual sun power which theosophy will teach and impart to human beings. It will lead him to the glorious and mighty spiritual sun, which can be spoken of, but which must not only be spoken of, but also recognized and understood: This is the spiritual sun that lives outside in the spiritual world, but also lives within the human being.

The first principle of the theosophical movement is that those who join this society develop within themselves the ability to perceive this spiritual sun, which lives within human beings and in the great spiritual world outside, which is the driving force in the spiritual realm and is truly a force like all other physical forces, only a higher one — and that is the force of creative love. A new divine knowledge will be brought forth. Then human beings will recognize creative love in the outer world when they allow this love to grow ever greater within themselves. Then theosophy will not only provide knowledge, but also bring about the spiritual future through growing and flourishing love.