Scientific Disciplines and Anthroposophy

GA 73a — 4 October 1920, Dornach

18. Questions During the First Anthroposophical College Course I

Preliminary note: During the first three-week “Anthroposophical College Course” (September 26 to October 16, 1920 in Dornach), at which 30 representatives of various disciplines gave lectures in addition to Rudolf Steiner, Three evenings of conversation also took place, on October 4, 6 and 15, 1920. During these so-called “Conversations on Spiritual Science,” questions on any topic could be asked, to which Rudolf Steiner then responded in more or less detail. The stenographers did not record the conversation evenings in their entirety, and there are gaps in some of them.

Rudolf Steiner: Dearly beloved! I imagine that today, in a kind of conversation, we will discuss all kinds of questions and the like that arise in one or other of the honored listeners in connection with what has been developed here in recent days as anthroposophy. Although, as I have endeavored to arrange, you will be offered a hundred lectures during these three weeks, it is not possible to do more than touch on individual topics in outline. What can be given to you here can only be suggestions at first, but these suggestions may perhaps show that the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science meant here is no less well founded

Asa is more firmly grounded than that which is taken from the external life of today's strict science, yes, that it absorbs all the methodical discipline of this science and also perceives that which stands as a great demand of the time, the demand for further development. This demand for further development arises from the fact that those impulses of scientific life, in particular, which have produced great things in the past epoch, are now in the process of dying out and would have to lead to the decline of our civilization if a new impetus were not to come.

The suggestions that have now been made for such a new impact can certainly be expanded in a variety of directions in the context of a discussion such as the one taking place today, and I would now like to ask you to contribute to this expansion. Please ask questions, express your wishes and in general put forward anything you wish to say. The questions can best be put in writing, and I ask you to make good use of this opportunity.

Mr. Conrad: The question I have to ask relates to a therapeutic area. In his lectures, Dr. Steiner pointed to certain illnesses that are currently occurring very frequently. There are certain mental disorders in this regard for which I would be grateful for an answer about the deeper causes. These are mainly speech disorders. I would like to point out that I am not motivated by personal interests, but am only asking to the extent that pedagogical interests are involved. Teachers have often asked me what to do about speech disorders. However, since this question touches on the field of therapy, I do not want to encourage questions that only concern illnesses. I would be very grateful for an answer because this question seems to be very pressing at the moment.

Rudolf Steiner: Perhaps we can start by answering this question. When something specific like this comes up, we must of course bear in mind that such specific disturbances in the human organism can have the most diverse causes and that it is extremely difficult to talk about these things in general if we want to get to the real cause. In all such matters, my esteemed audience, it is actually a matter of using spiritual science to enable one to assess the individual case in the right way. And here I would like to say something that perhaps has a much more general significance than this question requires.

You see, we live in an age of abstraction, in an age when people love to reduce the manifold world, the multiform world, to a few formulas, when people love to establish abstract laws that encompass vast areas of existence. They can only do so in an abstract way, ignoring the individual. Spiritual science will have to bring about a significant change in this direction in particular. It will indulge less in simplifying the manifold existence and will bring insights about the concrete spiritual. But by approaching the concrete spiritual, one's soul is stimulated in such a way that the ability to observe and judge is strengthened and invigorated. This will become apparent in people's general social interaction. A large part of the social question today actually lies in the fact that we no longer have any inclination to really get to know the person we pass by, because our inner being does not have the kind of stimuli that enable us to properly grasp the individual, the particular. Here spiritual science will achieve something different. Spiritual science will enrich our inner life again, enabling it to grasp the particular. And so our powers of observation and discrimination and all that will be particularly developed. Therefore, we will have less desire for abstract generalizations, but more desire for the particular, the individual. In a sense, we will adhere more to the exemplary than to the abstract. And especially when dealing with something like physical disorders, with speech disorders, one must say: almost every single case is different – it is of course a slight exaggeration, but still generally valid – almost every single case is different, and at least one must distinguish typical ones.

We must be clear about the fact that some of the things that cause speech disorders are, of course, organically determined, that is, in a certain way, based on the inadequate development of this or that organ. But a whole series of such disorders in the present day are due to the fact that the human being's spiritual and soul forces are not being developed in the right way. And it may even be said that if a proper development of the spiritual and mental abilities of the human being can be achieved through education in childhood, at a time when the human organism is still pliable, then organic disorders can also be overcome to a certain extent; they can be overcome more easily than at a later age, when the body is more solidified. Our entire education system has gradually become more and more abstract. Our pedagogy does not suffer from bad principles. In general, if we look at the abstract treatment of pedagogical principles, we can see that we had great and significant achievements in the 19th century. And if you look at today's abstract way of applying how to do this or that in school, you have to say that 19th-century pedagogy really means something quite tremendous. But the art of responding to the individual child, of noticing the particular development of the individual child, is something that has been lost in modern times through the rush towards intellectuality and abstraction. To a certain extent, we are no longer able to strengthen the child's soul and spirit in the right way through abstract education. Do not think that when such a demand is made, it is only to point to a one-sided, unworldly education of soul and spirit – oh no. It may seem paradoxical today, but it is actually the case that materialism has had the tragic fate of being unable to cope with material phenomena. The best example of this is that we have such psychological theories as psycho-physical parallelism. On the one hand, we have human corporeality, which is only known from the point of view of anatomy, which only learns from the corpse; on the other hand, we have theories about the soul and spirit that are imagined up or even only live in words , and then one reflects on how this soul-spiritual, which bears no resemblance to the physical body, how this soul-spiritual is to affect the physical body. Spiritual science will lead precisely to the fact that one will be able to deal with the physical in a concrete way, that one will know such things as those which I already hinted at yesterday in the lecture and whose importance I would like to mention again here: From birth until the second set of teeth has come through, something is at work in us as human beings that we can call a sum of equilibrium forces that organize us thoroughly, and something that is mobile forces, that are life forces. This is particularly strong in our organism within this human age. What is at work in the human being is what really, I would say, pushes out the second teeth, what finds its conclusion in the pushing out of the second teeth, what, for its effectiveness in the organism, comes to a certain degree - it continues, of course - but comes to a certain degree to a conclusion with the appearance of the second teeth. It then transforms into what we can call mathematical, geometric thinking, what we can call thinking about the equilibrium conditions in space, thinking about the conditions of movement in space, what we can call finding oneself in the conditions of life in space and in time. We study what emerges from this, what passes, as it were, from a state of latency into a state of freedom, when it has just been released. There it is, as spiritual soul, as a very concrete spiritual soul, as we see it growing up in the child, when the change of teeth begins and continues into the later years of life. And now we look at this and see: what is spiritual and soul-like has an organizing effect in the body during the first seven years of life. And again, we study the connection between the spiritual and soul-like and the physical organization when we consider what the human being can then experience - albeit consciously only in inspiration - that is, what he experiences with ordinary consciousness, but still unconsciously, in the period from the change of teeth to sexual maturity. It is more of an immersion into physical corporeality, where in its course, first of all, as the most important phenomenon – but there are others as well – it awakens the love instinct, where it marks the end, for example, with the change of voice in the male sex, and with somewhat broader effects in the female sex. What we recognize when we observe the development of the emotional world, and when we observe, for example, something like the development of the sense of music, especially at the time when the emotional world is developing, we study this again as the connection between the soul and spiritual life and the physical organization from the seventh to the fourteenth or fifteenth year.

In short, spiritual science does not ask the abstract question: How does the soul affect the body?, but rather it studies the concrete soul, it knows that one must look at the concrete soul at certain ages and how it affects the body in other ages. Thus it transforms the abstract and therefore so unsatisfactory method of treatment of today's psychology and physiology into very concrete methods. And in the further course, one then comes to the point where one can not only determine in general through spiritual science: in the first seven years of life, equilibrium, movement, and life force are at work; but one can also specialize in how this spiritual force expresses itself in the organs, how it works in the lungs, heart, liver, and so on; one has the opportunity to really look into the human body in a living way. In this way, the knowledge of the material turns out to be quite different from what materialism can [recognize]. The peculiar thing about materialism is that it devotes itself to a false, namely an abstract, a deducted spirituality. The peculiar thing about spiritual science is that it is precisely able to assess the material in the right way. Of course, it also goes in the right way to the spiritual on the other side. More and more clearly should we fight the opinion, which starts from nebulous mystics, that spiritual science is something that deals with phantasms in general talk. No, spiritual science deals precisely with the concrete and wants to provide a view of how the spiritual and soul life works down into the individual organs. For it is only by getting to know the workings of the spiritual in a concrete way in the material existence that one recognizes the material existence. But through such a concrete penetration into the human organism, one gradually acquires — through a kind of imagination, inspiration and so on — an ability, I would say a gift, to really see the individual and then to be able to judge where any particular fault lies, for example, when speech disorders are present. At a certain childlike age, it will be possible to influence the development of the speech organs through special speech exercises. The important thing is to be able to observe what physical disorders may be present at the right age. And although all kinds of obstacles are present simply due to external circumstances – after all, today only that which is officially certified in this direction is recognized and allowed to be practiced in any way – although all kinds of obstacles are present, we can still say that, for example, some beautiful results have been achieved in the case of speech disorders simply by rhythmic speech exercises were carried out, that the particular defect was recognized, and that the person with the defective speech organism was then allowed to recite things in this or that speech rhythm, always repeating them, and that he was then instructed to place himself in the rhythmic process of these or those tones, feeling them particularly. In this direction one can achieve very significant improvements or at least relief from such disorders. But something else is also possible. For example, in the case of speech disorders, one can work particularly on regulating the respiratory process, a regulation of the respiratory process that must, however, be completely individual. This regulation of the breathing process can be achieved by letting the person you are treating develop a feeling between the internal repetition, or perhaps just thinking, but broad thinking, slow thinking of certain word connections [and the breathing process]. The peculiar thing is that if you form such word connections in the right way, then, by surrendering to such a rhythm of thought or inner rhythm of words, you convey a feeling to the person being treated: With this word and its course, its slow or fast course, you notice it in your breathing, it changes in this or that way, and you follow that. In a certain way, you make him aware of what arises as a parallel phenomenon to breathing for speech. You make him aware of it. And when he can then tell you something about it, you try to help him further, so that once he has become aware of the breathing process, he gradually reaches the point where he can consciously snap into it himself, I would even say in word contexts that he forms during this breathing process, which he can now consciously follow in a certain way, in an appropriate manner.

So you have to think of it this way: by first giving rhythms, which, depending on how the matter lies, are to be thought inwardly, murmured, whispered or recited aloud, you cause the person in question to notice a change in breathing. Now he knows that the breath changes in this way. And now he is, in a sense, forbidden from using the very word or thought material that has been given to him. He is made aware that he is now forming something similar within himself, and then he comes up with the idea of consciously paralleling this entire inner process of thinking or speaking or inwardly hearing words with the breathing process, so that a certain breathing always snaps into an inner imagining or inner hearing of words. In this way, a great deal of what I would call a poor association between the processes that are more mental, more soul-like, in speaking, and those processes that take place in the organism as more material, as physical processes, is balanced out. All of this has a particularly favorable effect when applied in the right childhood period. And it can be said that if our teachers were better psychologists, if they really had a concrete knowledge of the human body from the spirit, they would be able to work with speech disorders in a completely different way, especially in a pedagogical way.

Now, what I have mentioned can also be developed into a certain therapy, and it can also be used to achieve many favorable results for later stages of life. But it seems to me to be of particular importance – and here we could already point to certain successes that have been achieved in this direction – that such things can be cured by a particularly rational application of the principle of imitation. But then one must have a much more intimate, I might say subjective-objective knowledge of the whole human organism and its parts.

You see, people speak to each other in life; but they are hardly aware of the, I would say imponderable, effects that are exerted from person to person when speaking. But these effects are there nevertheless. We have become so abstract today that we actually only listen to the other person's intellectual content. Very few people today have a sense of what is actually meant when a person with a little more psychic-organic compassion feels, after speaking to another, how he consciously carries the other person's speech to a high degree in his own speech organism. Very few people today have any sense of what is experienced in this respect when one has to speak in succession with four, five or six people, one of whom is coughing, the second hoarse, the third shouting, the fourth speaking quite unintelligibly, and so on, because one's own organism is also involved; it vibrates along with everything, it experiences it all. And if you develop this feeling of experiencing speech, you certainly acquire a strong feeling, I might say, for defense mechanisms too. The peculiar thing is that it is precisely in the case of such things, which are so closely connected with the subjectivity of the human being as speech disorders, that one then finds out how one has to speak to someone who suffers from speech disorders, how one has to speak to him so that he can achieve something through imitation. I have met stutterers; if you have been able to empathize with their stuttering and then spoken to them rhythmically by name, then you could get them to really achieve something like forgetting their stuttering, by running after what is spoken to them, so to speak. However, you then have to be able to develop human compassion to the point where it is organic. In therapy, an enormous amount depends on the ability to make the patient forget the subjective experience associated with some objective process. And in particular, for example, a real remedy for speech disorders is, if the time between the ages of seven and fourteen is used correctly, by lovingly encouraging those with speech disorders to engage in the kind of imitation just described. It is often the case that one experiences that stutterers sometimes cannot pronounce three words properly without stumbling, cannot say three words

properly one after the other. If you give them a poem to recite that they can become completely absorbed in, that they can love, and if you stand behind it as it were as an attentive listener, then they can say whole long series of verses without stuttering. Creating such opportunities for them to do something like this is something that is a particularly good therapeutic tool from a psychological point of view. It is a bad thing to point out such defects to people, no matter what the reason. I had a poet friend who always lost his temper when someone tactless pointed out his stammering. When someone tactfully asked him, “Doctor, do you always stammer like that?” he replied, “No, only when I am confronted with someone who is thoroughly unpleasant to me.” Of course, I would have had to stutter terribly now if I had really wanted to imitate the way this answer was given.

But then, little by little, one will recognize what a significant remedy can be found in eurythmy for such and similar defects in the human organism. Eurythmy can be studied from two sides, as it were. I always draw attention to this in the introductions to the performances. I show how the speech organism and its movement tendencies can be perceived through sensory and supersensory observation of the human being today, and how these are then transferred to the whole human organism. However, the reverse approach is no less important. For, as has been very well presented to you today from a different point of view by Dr. Treichler, in the development of speech, a primeval eurythmy of human beings undoubtedly and most certainly plays a very significant role. Things do not have the sound within them, as it were, in the sense that the bim-bam theory asserts, but there is a relationship between all things, between the whole macrocosm and the human organization, this microcosm, and basically everything that happens externally in the world can also be reproduced in a certain way in movement by the human organization. And so, basically, we constantly tend to recreate all phenomena through our own organism. We do this not only with the physical organism, but also with the etheric organism. The etheric organism is in a state of perpetual eurythmy. Primitive man was much more mobile than he is today. You know, this development from mobility to stillness is still reflected in the fact that in certain circles it is considered a sign of education to behave as phlegmatically as possible when speaking and to accompany one's speech with as few gestures as possible. It is “considered” a mark of certain speakers that they always keep their hands in their trouser pockets, so that they do not make any gestures with their arms, because it is considered an expression of particularly good speech delivery when one stands still like a block. But what is caricatured here only corresponds to humanity's progression from mobility to stillness. We have to recognize a transition from a gestural language, from a kind of eurythmy, to phonetic language at the very bottom of human development in primeval times. That which has come to rest in the organism has specialized in the organs of speech, and has naturally first actually developed the organs of speech. Just as the eye is formed by light, so the speech organ is formed by a language that is initially soundless. And if we are aware of all these connections, we will gradually be able to use eurythmy particularly well by introducing it properly into the didactic process, in order to counteract anything that could interfere with speech. And in this direction, if there is even a little leisure time, it will be a very appealing task to develop our current, more artistic and pedagogically trained eurythmy more and more towards the therapeutic side and to create a kind of eurythmy therapy that will then extend in particular to such therapeutic demands as the one we have been talking about here. I am not sure whether what I have said is already exhaustive, but I wanted to address it briefly. Of course, as questions accumulate, the level of detail in the answers will have to decrease.

A participant asks how the movement of eurythmy is meant in relation to the ether body, and whether, according to spiritual scientific research, it has the same form as the body. Is the ether body localized at the larynx? Did the Hungarians, who were recently observed by Dr. Steiner playing cards in a Hungarian border town, themselves fall under the tables or only their etheric bodies? Was this a process that could only be observed in the etheric body?

Rudolf Steiner: Please understand me correctly. Eurythmy is such that it can be performed in the physical body and through the physical body, which otherwise only the etheric body of the human being can perform. The fact that a person as a eurythmist performs the movements studied in the ether body with his physical body does not mean that the person who stands there doing eurythmy when he has some horrible thought is not carrying out this horrible thought with his ether body. He can perform the most beautiful movements with his outer, physical body, and then the etheric body, following his emotions, may dance in a rather caricature-like manner. But those people I characterized the other day as being at the Hungarian border playing cards were, of course, characterized entirely on the basis of their physical behavior. I only said that one could study these passions in the soul and spirit, the passions that led them to do such things above and below the table, and that one could study these passions in the soul and spirit.

I would like to say the following. It is generally the case, when you look at a person at rest, that the etheric body is calm and only slightly larger than the physical body. But this is only because, schematically speaking, the physical body has a dilating effect on the etheric body of the human being in all directions. If the etheric body were not held in its form by the physical body, if it were not banished from the physical body, then it would be a very mobile being. The etheric body has the inherent possibility of moving in all directions, and in addition, in an awakened state, it is under the constant influence of the mobile astral, which follows everything of a spiritual nature. The etheric body in itself is therefore something thoroughly mobile. As a painter, for example, one has the difficulty when one wants to paint something ethereal, that one must paint, I would say, as if one could paint lightning. One must translate the moving into stillness. So at the moment when you step out of the physical world, at that moment the concept of distance also ceases to apply, along with all the things that actually only relate to resting space; all that ceases, and a completely different kind of imagining begins. A form of imagining begins that can actually only be characterized by saying that it relates to the ordinary imagining of spatial things as a suction effect relates to a pressure effect. One is drawn into the matter instead of touching it and so on. This is how it is with the relationship between the etheric body and the physical body.

A participant (also speaking for others): Dear attendees, prompted by discussions with many friends, I would like to ask a few questions that may express some of what has been going through many minds and hearts over the past week. We have heard that young students in particular can hear and learn many things here that need to be carried out into our people to build a new culture. Now, in the midst of all the problems that are being discussed here, the question of the fate of our German people often arises. How must our youth place themselves in the context of the fate of our German people if they want to fulfill their inner duties in the right way and of their own free will? Just as Fichte brought forth great and powerful thoughts a hundred years ago, so too are we receiving powerful thoughts today, the realization of which we long for. In wide circles, at least in those circles that are close to the threefold order, the view prevails today that this threefold order will also be realized without intensive work, that it can thus come about all by itself, so to speak, even if people contribute nothing to it.

Now I would like to raise the question: What will actually be the fate of our nation if this fatalistic attitude prevails in our circles – which is, of course, very easily explained from our overall cultural development – and if it is not replaced by the courageous will that is wanted from here? Today one often hears that it is possible that Bolshevism will spread even further, that it is possible that anarchic conditions in Germany will continue to spread. How should we position ourselves in the face of these questions, when this fatalistic element, which I have tried to describe, is confronted with the courageous, forward-storming will?

A second question: we are talking here about anthroposophy, about human wisdom. Now the question has been repeatedly asked in recent days: what would the whole world view actually look like if one did not start from the point of view of the anthroposophist, but if one started from the point of view of some other consciousness? We know from Dr. Steiner's lectures, but also from other lectures, that the three lower realms, that is, the mineral, plant and animal kingdoms, are actually the brothers of man who have remained behind. How would this now present itself if we were to relate man again to the higher hierarchy, for example to the angelic beings? Is it conceivable that what is presented from a human point of view today as anthroposophy might be presented from the point of view of a higher consciousness, that is, from the point of view of an angelic consciousness - one could perhaps speak of an angeloisophy in this context - and how would the problems appear from this point of view? I ask this question because it has repeatedly come up in our conversations in recent days.

A third question: From the previous remarks by Dr. Steiner, it is clear that eurythmy is extremely important from a therapeutic point of view. Now I would like to point out that if we observe certain things today, things that appear to be trivial, we can see how absolutely necessary eurythmy is from a different point of view. Even in certain children's toys, we can see how certain forces appropriate to the present time want to come out, push towards manifestation. [There follows a reference to diabolo games and toys that were introduced by French and American soldiers in particular.] Do such toys not show certain forces that pull downwards? Is there not something in them that expresses forces that are polar to human nature, perhaps a hint of the devilish? And so I wanted to raise the question: Is it not possible that the harmful aspects of these or other materialistic games given to children today could be overcome through eurythmy? Just yesterday in children's eurythmy we had a living example of how children can respond to eurythmy in an ingenious way and then reject everything that is contained in such games.

Rudolf Steiner: I will try to answer the questions briefly, although each one would require a lecture in itself. However, I would ask you to bear in mind that if one says something in a brief answer to a question, it is of course easy for some inaccuracies or misunderstandings to arise.

First of all, the question of the fate of the German people: it is true that today an enormous sense of fatalism is emerging within broad sections of the German people. This fatalistic mood can be observed on a large scale and in detail. And this fatalistic mood was also, I might say tragically there when we began in April of last year in Stuttgart to seek understanding for the threefold social organism and for the upliftment of what lies in such a terrible way, that comes from this understanding. But on the other hand, it must be said that we have arrived at a very special point in the development of humanity. I must frankly admit that when I was invited by the Anthroposophical student group in Stuttgart to give a lecture for the students of the Technical University in their assembly hall, I was still under the impression of Spengler's book “The Decline of the West”. Yes, my dear audience, we have come to the point where today we can prove the decline in a strictly methodical way. Now, Spengler's book is by no means a talentless book. On the contrary, in many respects it is extraordinarily ingenious. What is presented there testifies to nothing other than this: if only the forces of which Spengler is aware were to be effective in the future – he is not aware of anthroposophy, but, as can be seen from some of his writing, he would probably turn red with rage just hearing about it — if only what Spengler knows remains effective, then the downfall of Western civilization would be absolutely certain well into the second millennium. Just let everything that has developed in humanity be effective — the downfall is certain. Just as a human being ages when he has reached a certain number of years and is heading towards death, so this culture is heading towards death. What people like Spengler do not know is what has developed in the successive cultural periods, which you will find described in my “Occult Science”. As I said, I got to know him in the 1880s, as an old man. Once, in the 1850s, he had to give a speech in Dresden to the then Saxon crown prince and all the high-ranking and clever government officials, as well as to some other people, about the inner essence of Germanness, this Germanness that he particularly loved. But he did not give a speech about Germanness, but rather he gave a speech about Gypsies, and he described the wandering, homeless Gypsies and then went on to pour a good stream of truth on all the medal-bedecked and uniformed gentlemen in those days in the 1850s. He pointed out that if things went on in this way in Central Europe, then a future would come when the German people would wander homelessly around the world like the present-day Gypsies. And he pointed out many things that can be observed when the German in particular roams in foreign parts unaware of his special national individuality.

In the first cultural period — I have called it the primeval Indian period — there was a primeval culture based on the wisdom of the time. Some of this has already been characterized in these lectures. From this there was an inheritance in the next age, in the ancient Persian, in the Zarathustra culture; from there, in turn, diluted into that age, what can be called the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, the third period, which closes approximately in the 8th century BC before the Mystery of Golgotha. Then very little goes into the fourth period, where Plato still lets his teaching and his writings be steeped in ancient mystery wisdom, but where naturalism and intellectualism already begin with Aristotle. During this period, in which human original wisdom is already beginning to decline, Christianity is founded. The Mystery of Golgotha is still understood with the last original wisdom. But as this ancient wisdom itself fades, it finally becomes modern theology, which either degenerates into a material dogmatism and church belief or into a description of Jesus as a simple man from Nazareth, in whom the Christ, the Christ-being, has been completely lost. But of course a new understanding of Christianity itself must come. The origin of Christianity extends into this fourth period, and from the point of view of Primordial Wisdom, it extends a little into our fifth period. The fifth period is the one in which Primordial Wisdom disappears, is paralyzed, and in which man must find a new spirituality from within himself. All talk about this spirituality coming from outside is in vain for the future. In the future, the gods must speak through the human soul. Today, the question is not addressed to any other power of the soul than to our will alone. That is to say, today it is a matter for all mankind to thoroughly overcome fatalism and consciously absorb spirituality into the will. This mission has already fallen to the German people to a very considerable extent. Anyone who studies this in more detail, by looking at the great figures of the German people, will notice how this people in particular has the mission to reshape its world, I would say its social world, out of its will, despite all the hardship and all the terrible things that are now unfolding within this people. Only for the time being there is no awareness of the actual facts and the great world-historical context.

I would like to do as I sometimes like to do, not just give my own opinion, but refer to the opinion of someone else, Herman Grimm, who certainly cannot be said to have been a Bolshevik or anything of the sort. As early as the 1880s, Herman Grimm wrote that the greatness of the German people is not based on its princes or its governments, but on its intellectual giants. But it may also be said that this is precisely what has been most misunderstood and most forgotten. Today there is a significant fact that one must only properly observe. Take the general intellectual life, untouched by a real spiritual upsurge. Study it as it lives itself out in popular literature, be it in Berlin, Vienna or elsewhere – I am not just talking about after the war here, but long before the war. study how it is lived out in Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Cologne, Hamburg, Bremen and so on, study it in popular literature, especially in newspaper literature, which can be said to represent the opinions of a very large number of people. Yes, especially during the war, it turned out that sometimes people also remembered that there was a Goethe, that there was a Schiller, that there was a Fichte – yes, even Fichte's sayings were quoted. But the fact of the matter is this: anyone today who has a feeling, a real receptivity for the inner structure, for the direction, for the whole signature of intellectual life, knows that what was written in the 20th century in Vienna, Berlin, Munich, Hamburg, Dresden, Leipzig was more similar to what was written in Paris, Chicago, New York, and London than to what a Herder, a Goethe, or a Fichte felt vibrating through their souls.

This fact is widely misunderstood. What Central Europe's greatness is actually based on has been forgotten. Once we describe figures like Frederick the Great according to the truth, not according to legend, then some of it will melt away in the face of the real intellectual greatness in Central Europe. And this must come. We must learn again, not just to quote the words of Fichte, not just to quote the words of Goethe, but to be able to live again in what lived at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century. And we must become aware that only through the individual shaping of the peoples differentiated across the earth can something of what is to be achieved be achieved – not, however, by some unified culture emanating from some side, which is a Western culture, and one that is justified only for the West, has flooded Central Europe, not through the fault of the West alone, but above all because Central Europe allowed itself to be flooded and accepted everything. And this awareness of what is at stake is what must be spread today by those who mean well.

Dear attendees, I knew an Austrian poet; I met him when he was already very old: his name is Fercher von Steinwand. He wrote many important works that unfortunately have remained unknown.

I will just add what I wrote in my booklet [1895] about Nietzsche, a fighter against his time. Right at the beginning, I quoted a saying of Nietzsche that actually deserves to be better known: the saying that Nietzsche wrote down when he served in the Franco-Prussian War, albeit as a military hospital attendant. There he wrote [about the terrible, dangerous consequences of the victorious war and called it a delusion that German culture had also triumphed; this delusion posed the danger of transforming victory into complete defeat,] yes, into the extirpation of the German spirit in favor of the German Reich. In recent decades, when people spoke of the extirpation of the spirit, they understood little of this, if they spoke of the will to let this spirit flow in again.

And when all this is taken into account, it is necessary to recall what Fichte felt and what he expressed so magnificently in his “Addresses to the German Nation”: that the gods serve the will of men, that they work through the will of self-aware men.

And after Herder, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and others, it is precisely this German nation that should be aware that the will must arise, but that will must be imbued with spirituality. What strange mental wanderings this German nation has gone through. There are many things that can be recalled that are only rarely presented in external history.

I advise everyone to buy the Reclam booklet by Wilhelm von Humboldt: “Ideas for an Attempt to Determine the Limits of the Effectiveness of the State”. You will see how much of it is already contained in the middle part of the threefold social organism, the legal, state part. Of course, the threefolded social organism is not in it, but what can be said about the state itself is there. In this writing, Wilhelm von Humboldt attempts to protect the individual against the state, against the increasing power of the state in the intellectual and economic realms. Wilhelm von Humboldt was Prussian Minister of Education from 1809 to 1819 – one almost dare not say this in view of what happened afterwards.

And so many more examples could be given. What is necessary, above all, is that those who feel this question before their soul really let history come to life in them. My dear audience, as an Austrian, one has a very special feeling for this when one gets to know the school history books of northern Central Europe. In 1889, I came from Vienna to Weimar to work on the publication of Goethe's works at the Weimar Goethe-Schiller Archive. And since I had previously been involved in education and teaching, I was also given the friendly task of guiding the director of the Goethe-Schiller Archive's boys a little. They were then in high school, and it was only then that I got to know their history books a little – I hadn't taken that into account before – starting with the creation of the world and going up to the development of the Hohenzollern dynasty, and only then the actual world history. Several textbooks presented it this way, one being roughly the same as the other. But is it not always a mere radicalism when speaking in this way, but sometimes it is also the right love for the German nation. And the right love, if it can really come through spiritual-scientific stimulation, will in turn give rise to a culture of the will from mere fatalism, and that is what matters. Unless we grasp this either/or, either destruction or ascent through our own will, we will not escape destruction. Of course, ascent will not come, but something quite different. Well, I could say a lot more about this topic, but perhaps that's enough for now. We'll see each other more often.

Regarding the question: What would our world view look like from the standpoint of a different consciousness, for example, an angelic consciousness?

Well, in a certain sense, spiritual science describes completely different forms of consciousness, such forms of consciousness that people had in the earlier stages of development, or such forms of consciousness that one can ascend to through inspiration or imagination. So, in a certain sense, one learns through spiritual science to recognize what the world view of another consciousness is. But as far as the question of an angelic consciousness is concerned, ladies and gentlemen, it is very important that we do not choose more abstract questions than are necessary for a certain, I would say elasticity, of our conceptual ability. Because, you see, we do not have our consciousness to satisfy ourselves with all kinds of sensational news from the most diverse worlds, but so that we can go through our overall human development through its development. And the angels have their consciousness precisely so that they can undergo angelic development. And if someone were to ask what the world would look like with a different consciousness, it would be like someone asking me how a person would eat if they had a beak instead of a mouth. It is a textbook example of moving out of concreteness and into abstraction. Anthroposophy is supposed to achieve precisely that, to remain within the realm of experience and to extend it only

extended only to the spiritual world, that one is always ready to broaden one's experience, but not that one constructs all kinds of questions out of pure abstractness. It is not at all necessary for us to speculate in any way about angelic consciousness or mammalian consciousness or the like, but it is necessary for us to simply abandon ourselves to experience. It gives us the input into our consciousness that we need for our orientation and for our further development in the world. And that is what we have to learn from anthroposophy: to remain within the sphere that concerns us as human beings, because that is where we make appropriate progress.

This is connected with the question I heard here just now, which is asked incredibly often: what is the ultimate goal of human development in the first place?

What is the ultimate purpose of human life, or rather of life?

You see, it is precisely in relation to such questions that spiritual science must be approached not in an abstract but in a concrete way. If you had no possibility of getting a timetable for the journey to Rome here in Dornach, but only as far as Lugano, and you knew that you could get a further timetable in Lugano to go on to Florence, and from there on to Rome, one would do well not to refrain from the journey or to speculate about how I have to organize the journey from here to Rome, but to travel first to Lugano, and then see how things go from there. It is the same with human life, especially if one knows that there are repeated earthly lives. If I now tell you something about the goal of all human life here with the abilities that one can have in this one earth life, then it could indeed be something more perfect next time and then one could answer more completely how one gets the timetable to Rome. So one has to take into account what is immediately given in the concrete, and one must know that human life is in a state of perpetual development. So one cannot ask about its ultimate purpose, but only about the direction of development in which one is moving. If you really look into it, there is truly a lot to be done for the physical, soul and spiritual life. And this path to Lugano is not quite close – I now mean the path in the development of humanity – and how that will continue, we want to leave that to the more fully developed abilities of the future. In short, it is a matter of remaining in the concrete, bit by bit, and of getting rid of the abstractness that also gives birth to such questions. Now, something else is needed here about eurythmy:

Can eurythmy, when used correctly, bring important achievements for our folk culture to light?

Yes, dear readers. From some of the comments I have already made about eurythmy, you will be able to see that eurythmy can have a great pedagogical-didactic significance. If you are convinced of this, and if you are not not only believe it but also recognize that it can even help to alleviate disturbances in life through appropriate eurythmic didactics, then there is much more that can be brought into the right channels in social life through healthy eurythmy. But of course one thing needs to be noted in this regard. You see, we should be able to take this eurythmy into children's play. The esteemed questioner spoke of children's toys and asked whether eurythmy could not be used for a lot of things. And it was also asked whether eurythmy can have a healing effect on children aged five to seven who suffer from epilepsy.

It can certainly do so if it is applied in the right way. Admittedly, we are only just beginning with eurythmy. But the continuation of this beginning does not always depend only on the intellectual momentum. For example, we had intended to build a kind of eurythmeum in Stuttgart to begin with, because of course the Waldorf School is there, and later here in the building itself. You really need opportunities if these things are to be developed bit by bit. You cannot pursue these things without practising them, without having the necessary premises and also the necessary connection with the rest of human culture; you cannot pursue these things out of the blue. It would have been terribly expensive to build a eurythmy in Stuttgart and we only had a small sum of money together. Perhaps I may say the following about this. In the first year, through the dedicated work of our Waldorf teachers, which cannot be sufficiently recognized, we really achieved everything possible for the Waldorf School in the first year. Although, in spiritual and psychological terms, everything that could be expected has been achieved – it is fair to say this without being immodest – this year began with extraordinary worries for those who were sincere about the Waldorf School. It is a fact that the Waldorf School had to be enlarged because a large number of children came from outside; the number of children has more than doubled compared to the previous year. We were facing a very considerable deficit, and the fund that we had for a eurythmy school was first eaten up by the Waldorf School. It is only natural that the Waldorf School should take this on, but it means that we cannot build a eurythmy school. What lets us down is people's lack of understanding. Nowadays people are willing to understand anything, except for work that comes out of the truly concrete soul and spiritual life. I do not want to be polemical here, but I could tell you many things that would show you the dilettantism and the philosophical emptiness that is added to it today, as it performs a few somersaults before all possible reactionary powers in the world. We do not easily find the understanding of those who could do something on the material side to help things move forward. And anyone who wants the didactic, pedagogical, and especially the folk-pedagogical side of eurythmy and other aspects of a spiritual-scientific art of education to be further developed must ensure that understanding of what is actually intended is drawn into as many minds and as many souls as possible, with what is asserted here as anthroposophical spiritual science.

Question: It is often mentioned in spiritual science that those or those of the higher hierarchies have gone through their stage of humanity in these or other circumstances. What does stage of humanity mean in this sense, that is, the goal of human development? Is the goal set as the development of the I, of freedom, which freedom is denied to the higher hierarchies? So what is the stage of humanity?

Rudolf Steiner: Yes, I don't know who has denied the higher hierarchies the freedom in its special form of education. What is meant when I speak, for example, in 'Occult Science' or in the other writings of the human stage of other beings, is essentially characterized by degrees, by the different states of consciousness. In spiritual science, the term “stage of human development” is to be understood as follows:

Today, within human development in the broadest sense, we live in a state of consciousness when we are awake, which we can call object consciousness. This state of consciousness can be described as Dr. Stein described it to you in his lectures, according to his activity in imagination, concept, judgment. One can also add perception and the special kind of emotional effect, the volitional emotion, volitional impulses and so on. Then present-day humanity also still knows, but only in reminiscences, in chaotic images, the dream state, but this points back, it is an atavistic remnant of an earlier state of consciousness, of an ego-less image consciousness; this is therefore an underhuman consciousness. And it is preceded by two other states of consciousness, so that we can say: the present state of consciousness is the fourth in the series. It will be followed by a fifth, which we can anticipate today through imagination, inspiration and so on. We can also characterize this progression as future states of the sixth and seventh states of consciousness. The fourth, however, the one we have today, is in the narrower sense the state of consciousness of humanity as it is today. So when we speak of the human stage, we mean beings with object consciousness. Beings who do not perceive through such senses as human beings do, who have a special education, perhaps through very different senses, but who, in their inner being, depend on imagining and grasping and then, in a more or less subconscious activity, connecting perception with ideas and concepts. The higher, fifth state of consciousness would thus be one in which one consciously differentiates between the inner, spiritual realm, which one first grasps in pure thinking, as has been attempted in the Philosophy of Freedom, and then has perception as such as a phenomenon of development in its own right, into which one no longer mixes concepts and ideas, so that, as in the process of inhalation, in inhaling and exhaling, an inner interaction between perception and concept consciously takes place. That would be the next higher state of consciousness.

When we speak of other beings and say that they were at the human stage of development at different times, we mean that they had a perception of the external world in the past – regardless of which senses were involved – which they connected in a more or less conscious way with the inner soul life, so that at that time they were not yet at a stage that humanity will reach in the future, the stage of a separate experience of perception, of the spiritual soul realm, and a conscious synthesis. That is what needs to be said about this question.

Dear attendees, it is now 10 a.m., I think I will collect the questions that have yet to be asked and save them, and we can meet again in the next few days. I think we will be able to discuss the matters on the other notes better and with more focus if we don't rush through it in a few minutes, but instead come together again to answer these questions. I also think you will agree to this, after we have spent two hours having this conversation. So we will conclude today and continue in some way soon.