Wonder in Everyday Life, Nero, Crown Prince Rudolf

A conversation I had with Schröer on one occasion led to the subject of phrenology. Not humorously, but with the seriousness with which he was wont to speak—of such things, employing a certain solemnity of language even in everyday matters, Schröer said to me: “I too was once examined by a phrenologist. He felt my head all over and discovered up there the bump of which he said: ‘There's the theosophist in you’.”—Remember that this was in the eighties of last century when there was as yet no talk of Anthroposophy. It was Schröer, not I, who was examined by the phrenologist who said: “There's the theosophist in you.” Now Schröer, outwardly, was far from being a theosophist—my autobiography makes that abundantly clear. But it was just when he spoke of things without apparent motive that his utterances were sometimes profoundly significant. And so there seemed to be a certain connection between the utterance of the word ‘Nero’ and the outer confirmation of his theosophical trend. This was what made him a personality to whose spontaneous utterances one paid heed.