THE
PERSONALITY OF RUDOLF STEINER AND HIS DEVELOPMENT
By Edouard
Schuré*
*Translated by kind
permission of the author from the introduction to Le Mystère
Chrétien et les Mystères Antiques. Traduit de
l’allemand par Edouard Schuré, Librairie academique,
Perrin & Co., 1908, Paris.
Many of
even the most cultivated men of our time have a very mistaken idea of
what is a true mystic and only true occultist. They know these two
forms of human mentality only by their imperfect or degenerate types,
of which recent times have afforded but too many examples. To the
intellectual man of the day, the mystic is a, kind of fool and
visionary who takes his fancies for facts; the occultist is a dreamer
or a charlatan who abuses public credulity in order to boast of an
imaginary science and of pretended powers. Be it remarked, to begin
with, that this definition of mysticism, though deserved by, some,
would be as unjust as erroneous if one sought to apply it to such
personalities as Joachim del Fiore of the thirteenth century, Jacob
Boehme of the sixteenth, or St. Martin, who is called “the
unknown philosopher,” of the eighteenth century. No less unjust
and false would be the current definition of the occultist if one saw
in it the slightest connection with such earnest seekers as
Paracelsus, Mesmer, or Fabre d'Olivet in the past, as William
Crookes, de Rochat, or Camille Flammarion in the present. Think what
we may of these bold investigators, it is undeniable that they have
opened out regions unknown to science, and furnished the mind with
new ideas.
No, these
fanciful definitions can at most satisfy that scientific dilettantism
which hides its feebleness under a supercilious mask to screen its
indolence, or the worldly scepticism which ridicules all that
threatens to upset its indifference. But enough of these superficial
opinions. Let us study history, the sacred and profane books of all
nations, and the last results of experimental science; let us subject
all these facts to impartial criticism, inferring similar effects
from identical causes, and we shall be forced to give quite another
definition of the mystic and the occultist.
The true
mystic is a man who enters into full possession of his inner life,
and who, having become cognisant of his sub-consciousness, finds in
it, through concentrated meditation and steady discipline, new
faculties and enlightenment. These new faculties and this
enlightenment instruct him as to the innermost nature of his soul and
his relations with that impalpable element which underlies all, with
that eternal and supreme reality which religion calls God, and poetry
the Divine. The occultist, akin to the mystic, but differing from him
as a younger from an elder brother, is a man endowed with intuition
and with synthesis, who seeks-to penetrate the hidden depths and
foundations of Nature by the methods of science and philosophy: that
is to say, by observation and reason, methods invariable in
principle., but modified in application by being adapted to the
descending kingdoms of Spirit or the ascending kingdoms of Nature,
according to the vast hierarchy of beings and the alchemy of the
creative Word.
The
mystic, then, is one who seeks for truth, and the divine directly
within himself, by a gradual detachment and a veritable birth of his
higher soul. If he attains it after prolonged effort, he plunges into
his own glowing centre. Then he immerses himself, and identifies
himself with that ocean of life which is the primordial Force.
The
occultist, on the other hand, discovers, studies, and contemplates
this same Divine outpouring given forth in diverse portions, endowed
with force, and multiplied to infinity in Nature and in Humanity.
According to the profound saying of Paracelsus: he sees in all beings
the letters of an alphabet, which, united in man, form the complete
and conscious Word of life. The detailed analyses that he makes of
them, the syntheses that he constructs with them; are to him as so
many images and forecastings of this central Divine, of this Sun of
Beauty, of Truth and of Life, which he sees not, but which is
reflected and bursts upon his vision in countless mirrors.
The
weapons of the mystic are concentration and inner vision; the weapons
of the occultist are intuition and synthesis. Each corresponds to the
other; they complete and presuppose each other.
These two
human types are blended in the Adept, in the higher Initiate. No
doubt one or the other, and often both, are met with in the sounders
of great religions and the loftiest philosophies. No doubt also they
are to be found again, in a less, but still very remarkable degree,
among a certain number of personages who have played a great part in
history as reformers, thinkers, poets, artists, statesmen.
Why,
then, should these two types of mind, which represent the highest
human faculties, and ere formerly the object of universal veneration,
usually appear to us now as merely deformed and travestied? Why have
they become obliterated? Why should they have fallen into such
discredit?
That is
the result of a profound cause existing in an inevitable necessity of
human evolution.
During
the last two thousand years, but especially since the sixteenth
century, humanity has achieved a tremendous work, namely, the
conquest of the globe and the constitution of experimental science,
in what concerns the material and visible world.
That this
gigantic and Herculean task should be successfully accomplished, it
was necessary that there should be a temporary eclipse of man's
transcendental faculties, so that his whole power of observation
might be concentrated on the outer world. These faculties, however,
have never been extinct or even inactive. They lay dormant in the
mass of men; they remained active in the elect, far from the gaze of
the vulgar.
Now, they
are showing themselves openly under new forms. Before long they will
assume a leading and directing importance in human destinies. I would
add that at no period of history, whether among the nations of the
ancient Aryan cycle, or in the Semitic civilizations of Asia and
Africa — whether in the Graeco-Latin world, or in the middle
ages and in modern times, have these royal faculties, for which
positivism would substitute its dreary nomenclature, ever ceased to
operate at the beginning and in the background of all great human
creations and of all fruitful work. For how can we imagine a thinker,
a poet, an inventor, a hero, a master of science or of art, a genius
of any kind, without a mighty ray of those two master-faculties,
which make the mystic and the occultist — the inner vision and
the sovereign intuition?
Rudolf
Steiner is both a mystic and an occultist. These two natures appear
in him in perfect harmony. One could not say which of the two
predominates over the other. In intermingling and blending, they have
become one homogeneous force. Hence a special development in which
outward events play but a secondary part.
Dr.
Steiner was born in Upper Austria in 1861. His earliest years were
passed in a little town situated on the Leytha, on the borders of
Styria, the Carpathians, and Hungary. From childhood his character
was serious and concentrated. This was followed by a youth inwardly
illuminated by the most marvellous intuitions, a young manhood
encountering terrible trials, and a ripe age crowned by a mission
which he had dimly foreseen from his earliest years, but which was
only gradually formulated in the struggle for truth and life. This
youth, passed in a mountainous and secluded region, was happy in its
way, thanks to the exceptional faculties that he discovered in
himself. He was employed in a Catholic church as a choir boy. The
poetry of the worship, the profundity of the symbolism, had a
mysterious attraction for him; but, as he possessed the innate gift
of seeing souls, one thing terrified him. This was the secret
unbelief of the priests, entirely engrossed in the ritual and the
material part of the service. There was another peculiarity: no one,
either then or later, allowed himself to talk of any gross
superstition in his presence, or to utter any blasphemy, as if those
calm and penetrating eyes compelled the speaker to serious thought.
In this child, almost always silent, there grew up a quiet and
inflexible will, to master things through understanding. That was
easier for him than for others, for he possessed from the first that
self-mastery, so rare even in the adult, which gives the mastery over
others. To this firm will was added a warm, deep, and almost painful
sympathy; a kind of pitiful tenderness to all beings and even to
inanimate nature. It seemed to him that all souls had in them
something divine. But in what a stony crust is hidden the shining
gold! In what hard rock, in what dark gloom lay dormant the precious
essence? Vaguely as yet did this idea stir within him — he was
to develop it later — that the divine soul is present in all
men, but in a latent, state. It is a sleeping captive that has to be
awakened from enchantment.
To the
sight of this young thinker, human souls became transparent, with
their troubles, their desires, their paroxysms of hatred or of love.
And it t was probably owing to the terrible things he saw, that he
spoke so little. And yet, what delights, unknown to the world, sprang
from this involuntary clairvoyance! Among the remarkable inner
revelations of this youth, I will instance only one which was
extremely characteristic.
The vast
plains of Hungary, the wild Carpathian forests, the old churches of
those mountains in which the monstrance glows brightly as a sun in
the darkness of the sanctuary, were not there for nothing, but they
were helpful to meditation and contemplation.
At
fifteen years of age, Steiner became acquainted with an herbalist at
that time staying in his country. The remarkable thins about this man
was that he knew not only the species, families, and life of plants
in their minutest details, but also their secret virtues. One would
have said that he had spent his life in conversing with the
unconscious and fluid soul of herbs and flowers. He had the gift of
seeing the vital principle of plants, their etheric body, and what
occultism calls the elementals of the vegetable world. He talked of
it as of a quite ordinary and natural thing. The calm and coolly
scientific tone of his conversation did but still further excites the
curiosity and admiration of the youth. Later on, Steiner knew that
this strange man was a messenger from the Master, whom as yet he knew
not, but who was to be his real initiator, and who was already
watching over him from afar.
What the
curious, double-sighted botanist told him, young Steiner found to be
in accordance: with the logic of things. That did but confirm an
inner feeling of long standing, and which more and more forced itself
on his mind as the fundamental Law, and as the basis of the Great
All. That is to say: the two-fold current which constitutes the very
movement of the world, and which might be called the flux and reflex
of the universal life.
We are
all witnesses and are conscious of the outward current of evolution,
which urges onward all beings of heaven and of earth — stars,
plants, animals, and humanity — and causes them to move forward
towards an infinite future, without our perceiving the initial force
which impels them and makes them go on without pause or rest. But
there is in the universe an inverse current, which interposes itself
and perpetually breaks in on the other. It is that of involution, by
which the principles, forces, entities, and souls which come from the
invisible world and the kingdom of the Eternal infiltrate and
ceaselessly intermingle with the visible reality. No evolution of
matter would be comprehensible without this occult and astral
current, which is the great propeller of life, with its hierarchy of
powers. Thus the Spirit, which contains the future in germ, involves
itself in matter; thus matter, which receives the Spirit, evolves
towards the future. While, then, we are moving on blindly towards the
unknown future, this future is approaching us consciously, infusing
itself in the current of the world and man who elaborate it. Such is
the two-fold movement of time, the out-breathing and the in-breathing
of the soul of the world, which comes from the Eternal and returns
thither.
From the
age of eighteen, young Steiner possessed the spontaneous
consciousness of this two-fold current — a consciousness which
is the condition of all spiritual vision. This vital axiom was forced
upon him by a direct and involuntary seeing of things. Thenceforth he
had the unmistakable sensation of occult powers which were working
behind and through him for his guidance. He gave heed to this force
and obeyed its admonitions, for he felt in profound accordance with
it.
This kind
of perception, however, formed a separate category in his
intellectual life. This class of truths seemed to him something so
profound, so mysterious, and so sacred, that he never imagined it
possible to express it in words. He fed his soul, thereon, as from a
divine fountain, but to have scattered a drop of it beyond would have
seemed to him a profanation.
Beside
this inner and contemplative life, his rational and philosophic mind
was powerfully developing. From sixteen to seventeen years of age,
Rudolf Steiner plunged deeply into the study of Kant, Fichte, and
Schelling. When he came to Vienna some years after, he became an
ardent admirer of Hegel, whose transcendental idealism borders on
occultism; but speculative philosophy did not satisfy him. His
positive mind demanded the solid basis of the sciences of
observation. So he deeply studied mathematics, chemistry, mineralogy,
botany, and zoology. “These studies,” he said,
“afford a surer basis for the construction of a spiritual
system of the universe than history and literature. The latter,
wanting inexact methods, would then throw no side-lights on the vast
domain of German science.” Inquiring into everything, enamoured
of high art, and an enthusiast for poetry, Steiner nevertheless did
not neglect literary studies. As a guide therein he found an
excellent professor in the person of Julius Schröer, a
distinguished scholar of the school of the brothers Grimm, who strove
to develop in his pupils the art of oratory and of composition. To
this distinguished man the young student owed his great and refined
literary culture. “In the desert of prevailing
materialism,” says Steiner, “his house was to me an oasis
of idealism.”
But this
was not yet the Master whom he sought. Amidst these varied studies
and deep meditations, he could as yet discern the building of the
universe but in a fragmentary way; his inborn intuition prevented any
doubt of the divine origin of things and of a spiritual Beyond. A
distinctive mark of this extraordinary man was that he never knew any
of those crises of doubt and despair which usually accompany the
transition to a definite conviction the life of mystics and of
thinkers. Nevertheless, he felt that the central light which
illumines and penetrates the whole was still lacking in him. He had
reached young manhood, with its terrible problems. What was he going
to do with his life? The sphinx of: destiny was facing him. How
should he solve its problem?
It was at
the age of nineteen that the aspirant to the mysteries met with his
aide — the Master — so long anticipated.
It is an
undoubted fact, admitted by occult tradition and confirmed by
experience, that those who seek the higher truth from an impersonal
motive find a master to initiate them at the right moment: that is to
say, when they are ripe for its reception. “Knock, and it shall
be opened to you,” said Jesus. That is true with regard to
everything, but above all with regard to truth. Only, the desire must
be ardent as a flame, in a soul pure as crystal.
The
Master of Rudolf Steiner was one of those men of power who live,
unknown to the world, under cover of some civil state, to carry out a
mission unsuspected by any but their fellows in the Brotherhood of
self-sacrificing Masters. They take no ostensible part in human
events. To remain unknown is the condition of their power, but their
action is only the more efficacious. For they inspire, prepare, and
direct those who will act in the sight of all. In the present
instance the Master had no difficulty in completing the first and
spontaneous initiation of his disciple. He had only, so to speak, to
point out to him, his own nature, to arm him with his needful
weapons. Clearly did he show him the connection between the official
and the secret sciences; between the religious and the spiritual
forces which are now contending for the guidance of humanity; the
antiquity of the occult tradition which holds the hidden threads of
history, which mingles them, separates, and re-unites them in the
course of ages.
Swiftly
he made him clear the successive stages of inner discipline, in order
to attain conscious and intelligent clairvoyance. In a few months the
disciple learned from oral teaching the depth and incomparable
splendour of the esoteric synthesis. Rudolf Steiner had already
sketched for himself his intellectual mission: “To re-unite
Science and Religion. To bring back God into Science, and Nature into
Religion. Thus to re-fertilize both Art and Life.” But how to
set about this vast and daring undertaking? How conquer, or rather,
how tame and transform the great enemy, the materialistic science of
the day, which is like a terrible dragon covered with its carapace
and couched on its huge treasure? How master this dragon of modern
science and yoke it to the car of spiritual truth? And, above all,
how conquer the bull of public opinion?
Rudolf
Steiner's Master was not in the least like himself. He had not that
extreme and feminine sensibility which, though not excluding energy,
makes every contact an emotion and instantly turns the suffering of
others into a personal pain. He was masculine in spirit, a born ruler
of men, looking only at the species, and for whom individuals hardly
existed. He spared not himself, and he did not spare others. His will
was like a ball which, once shot from the cannon's mouth, goes
straight to its mark, sweeping off everything in its way. To the
anxious questioning of his disciple he replied in substance:
“If
thou wouldst fight the enemy, begin by understanding him. Thou wilt
conquer the dragon only by penetrating his skin. As to the bull, thou
must seize him by the horns. It is in the extremity of distress that
thou wilt find thy weapons and thy brothers in the fight. I have
shown thee who thou art, now go — and be thyself!”
Rudolf
Steiner knew the language of the Masters well enough to understand
the rough path that he was thus commanded to tread; but he also
understood that this was the only way to attain the end. He obeyed,
and set forth.
* * *
From 1880
the life of Rudolf Steiner becomes divided into three quite distinct
periods: from twenty to thirty years of age (1881–1891), the
Viennese period, a time of study and of preparation; from thirty to
forty (1891–1901), the Weimar period, a time of struggle and
combat; from forty to forty-six (1901–1907), the Berlin period,
a time of action and of organization, in which his thought
crystallised into a living work.
I pass
rapidly over the Vienna period, in which Steiner took the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy. He afterwards wrote a series of scientific
articles on zoology, geology, and the theory of colours, in which
theosophical ideas appear in an idealist clothing. While acting as
tutor in several families, with the same conscientious devotion that
he gave to everything, he conducted as chief editor a weekly Viennese
paper, the Deutsche Wochenschrift. His
friendship with the Austrian poetess, Marie Eugénie delle
Grazie, cast, as it were, into this period of heavy work a warm ray
of sunshine, with a smile of grace and poetry.
In 1890
Steiner was summoned to collaborate in the archives of Goethe and
Schiller at Weimar, to superintend the re-editing of Goethe's
scientific works. Shortly after, he published two important works,
Truth and Science and The Philosophy of Liberty. “The occult
powers that guided me,” he says, “forced me to introduce
spiritualistic ideas imperceptibly into the current literature of the
time.” But in these various tasks he was but studying his
ground while trying his strength. So distant was the goal that he did
not dream of being able to reach it as yet. To travel round the world
in a sailing vessel, to cross the Atlantic, the Pacific and the
Indian Ocean, in order to return to a European port, would have
seemed easier to him. While awaiting the, events that would allow him
to equip his ship and to launch it on the open sea, he came into
touch with two illustrious personalities who helped to determine his
intellectual position in the contemporary world.
These two
persons were the celebrated philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the
no less famous naturalist, Ernst Haeckel.
Rudolf
Steiner had just written an impartial treatise on the author of
Zarathustra. In consequence of this, Nietzsche’s sister begged
the sympathetic critic to come and see her at Naumburg, where her
unhappy brother was slowly dying. Madame Foerster took the visitor to
the door of the apartment where Nietzsche was lying on a couch in a
comatose condition, inert, stupefied. To Steiner there was something
very significant in this melancholy sight. In it he saw the final act
in the tragedy of the would be superman.
Nietzsche, the author of Beyond Good and Evil, had not, like the
realists of Bismarckian imperialism, renounced idealism, for he was
naturally intuitive; but in his individualistic pride he sought to
cut off the spiritual world from the universe, and the divine from
human consciousness. Instead of placing the superman, of whom he had
a poetic vision, in the spiritual kingdom, which is his true sphere,
he strove to force him into the material world, which alone was real
in his eyes. Hence, in that splendid intellect arose a chaos of ideas
and a wild struggle which finally brought on softening of the brain.
To explain this particular case, it is needless to bring in atavism
or the theory of degeneracy. The frenzied combat of ideas and of
contradictory sentiments, of which this brain was the battlefield,
was enough. Steiner had done justice to all the genius that marked
the innovating ideas of Nietzsche, but this victim of pride,
self-destroyed by negation, was to him none the less a tragic
instance of the ruin of a mighty intellect which madly destroys
itself in breaking away from spiritual intelligence.
Madame
Foerster did her utmost to enrol Dr. Steiner under her brother's
flag. For this she used all her skill, making repeated offers to the
young publicist to become editor and commentator of Nietzsche's
works. Steiner withstood her insistence as best he could, and ended
by taking himself off altogether, for which Madame Foerster never
forgave him. She did not know that Rudolf Steiner bore within him the
consciousness of a work no less great and more valuable than that of
her brother.
Nietzsche
had been merely an interesting episode in the life of the esoteric
thinker on the threshold of his battlefield. His meeting with the
celebrated naturalist, Ernst Haeckel, on the contrary, marks a most
important phase in the development of his thought. Was not the
successor of Darwin apparently the most formidable adversary of the
spiritualism of this young initiate, of that philosophy which to him
was the very essence of his being and the breath of his thought?
Indeed, since the broken link between man and animal has been
re-joined, since man can no longer believe in a special and
supernatural origin, he has begun altogether to doubt his divine
origin and destiny. He no longer sees himself as anything but one
phenomenon among so many phenomena, a passing form amidst so many
forms, a frail and chance link in a blind evolution. Steiner, then,
is right in saying: “The mentality deduced from natural
sciences is the greatest power of modern tines.” On the other
hand, he knew that this system merely reproduces a succession of
external forms among living beings, and not the inner and acting
forces of life. He knew it from personal initiation, and a deeper and
vaster view of the universe. So also he could exclaim with more
assurance than most of our timid spiritualists and startled
theologians: “Is the human soul then to rise on the wings of
enthusiasm to the summits of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good,
only to be swept away into nothingness, like a bubble of the
brain?” Yes, Haeckel was the Adversary. It was materialism in
arms, the dragon with all his scales, his claws, and his teeth.
Steiner's
desire to understand this man and to do him justice as to all that
was great in him, to fathom his theory so far as it was logical and
plausible, was only the more intense. In this fact one sees all the
loyalty and all the greatness of his comprehensive mind.
Tie
materialistic conclusions of Haeckel could have no influence on his
own ideas which came to him from a different science; but he had a
presentiment that in the indisputable discoveries of the naturalist
he should find the surest basis of an evolutionary spiritualism and a
rational theosophy.
He began,
then, to study eagerly the History of Natural Creation. In it Haeckel
gives a fascinating picture of the evolution of species, from the
amoeba to man. In it he shows the successive growth of organs, and
the physiological process by which living beings have raised
themselves to organisms more and more complex and more and more
perfect. But in this stupendous transformation, which implies
millions and millions of years, he never explains the initial force
of this universal ascent, nor the series of special impulses which
cause beings to rise step by step. To these primordial questions,
Haeckel has never been able to reply except by admitting spontaneous
regeneration, [A speech delivered in Paris, 28th August 1878. See
also Haeckel's History of Natural Creation, 13th lecture.] which is
tantamount to a miracle as great as the creation of man by God from
a, clod of earth. To a theosophist like Steiner, on the other hand,
the cosmic force which elaborates the world comprises in its spheres,
fitted one into another, the myriads of souls which crystallise and
incarnate ceaselessly in all beings. He, who saw the underside of
creation, could but recognise and admire the extent of the all-round
gaze with which Haeckel surveyed his above. It was in vain that the
naturalist would deny the divine Author of the universal scheme: he
proved it in spite of himself, in so well describing His work. As to
the theosophist, he greeted, in the surging of species and in the
breath which urges them onward — Man in the making, the very
thought of God, the visible expression of the planetary Word. [This
is how Dr. Steiner himself describes the famous German naturalist:
“Haeckel's personality is captivating. It is the most complete
contrast to the tone of his writings. If Haeckel had but made a
slight study of the philosophy of which he speaks, not even as a
dilettante, but like a child, he would have drawn the most lofty
spiritual conclusions from his phylogenetic studies. Haeckel's
doctrine is grand, but Haeckel himself is the worst of commentators
on his doctrine. It is not by showing our contemporaries the weak
points in Haeckel's doctrine that we can promote intellectual
progress, but by pointing out to them the grandeur of is phylogenetic
thought.” Steiner has developed these ideas in two works:
Welt und Lebensanschauungen im 19ten
Jahrhundert (Theories of the Universe, and of Life in the
Nineteenth Century), and Haeckel und seine
Gegner (Haeckel and his Opponents).]
While
thus pursuing his studies, Rudolf Steiner recalled the saying of his
Master: “To conquer the dragon, his skin must be
penetrated.” While stealing within the carapace of present-day
materialism, he had seized his weapons. Henceforth he was ready for
the combat. He needed but a field of action to give battle, and a
powerful aid to uphold him therein. He was to find his field in the
Theosophical Society and his aid in a remarkable woman.
In 1897
Rudolf Steiner went to Berlin to conduct a literary magazine and to
give lectures there.
On his
arrival, he found there a branch of the Theosophical Society. The
German branch of this Society was always noted for its great
independence, which is natural in a country of transcendental
philosophy and of fastidious criticism. It had already made a
considerable contribution to occult literature through the
interesting periodical, The Sphinx, conducted by Dr.
Hübbe-Schleiden, and Dr. Carl du Prel's book — Philosophie der Mystik. But, the leaders having
retired, it was almost over with the group. Great discussions and
petty wranglings divided the theosophists beyond the Rhine. Should
Rudolf Steiner enter the Theosophical Society? This question forced
itself urgently upon him, and it was of the utmost gravity, both for
himself and for his cause.
Through
his first Master; through the brotherhood with which he was
associated, and by his own innermost nature, Steiner belongs to
another school of occultism, I mean to the esoteric Christianity of
the West, and most especially to the Rosicrucian initiation.
After
mature consideration he resolved to join the Theosophical Society of
which he became a member in 1902. He did not, however, enter it as a
pupil of the Eastern tradition, but as an initiate of Rosicrucian
esotericism who gladly recognised the profound depth of the Hindu
Wisdom and offered it a brotherly hand to make a magnetic link
between the two. He understood that the two traditions were not meant
to contend with each other, but to act in concert, with complete
independence, and thus to work for the common good of civilisation.
The Hindu tradition, in fact, contains the greatest treasure of
occult science as regards cosmogony and the prehistoric periods of
humanity, while the tradition of Christian and Western esotericism
looks from its immeasurable height upon the far-off future and the
final destinies of our race. For the past contains and prepares the
future, as the future issues from the past and completes it.
Rudolf
Steiner was assisted in his work by a powerful recruit and one of
inestimable value in the propagandist work that he was about to
undertake.
Mlle.
Marie von Sivers, a Russian by birth, and of an unusually varied
cosmopolitan education (she writes and speaks Russian, French,
German, and English equally well), had herself also reached Theosophy
by other roads, after long seeking for the truth which illumines all
because it illumines the very depths of our own being. The extreme
refinement of her aristocratic nature, at once modest and proud, her
great and delicate sensitiveness, the extent and balance of her
intelligence, her artistic and mental endowments, all made her
wonderfully fitted for the part of an agent and an apostle. The
Oriental-theosophy had attracted and delighted her without altogether
convincing her. The lectures of Dr. Steiner gave her the light which
convinces by casting its beams on all sides, as from a transplendent
centre. Independent and free, she, like many Russians in good
society, sought for some ideal work to which she could devote all her
energies. She had found it. Dr. Steiner having been appointed General
Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society, Mlle.
Marie von Sivers became his assistant. From that time, in spreading
the work throughout Germany and the adjacent countries, she displayed
a real genius for organisation, maintained with unwearied
activity.
As for
Rudolf Steiner, he had already given ample proof of his profound
thought and his eloquence. He knew himself, and he was master of
himself. But such faith, such devotion must have increased his energy
a hundredfold, and given wings to his words. His writings on esoteric
questions followed one another in rapid succession. [Die Mystik, im Aufgange des neuzeitlichen
Geisteslebens (1901); Das Christentum als
mystische Tatsache (1902); Theosophie (1904). He is now preparing an important
book, which will no doubt be his chief work, and which is to be
called Geheimwissenschaft (Occult
Science).]
He
delivered lectures in Berlin, Leipzig, Cassel, Munich, Stuttgart,
Vienna, Budapest, etc. All his books are of a high standard. He is
equally skilled in the deduction of ideas in philosophical order, and
in rigorous analysis of scientific facts. And when he so chooses, he
can give a poetical form to his thought, in original and striking
imagery. But his whole self is shown only by his presence and his
speech, private or public. The characteristic of his eloquence is a
singular force, always gentle in expression, resulting undoubtedly
from perfect serenity of soul combined with wonderful clearness of
mind. Added to this at times is an inner and mysterious vibration
which makes itself felt by the listener from the very first words.
Never a word that could shock or jar. From argument to argument, from
analogy to analogy, he leads you on from the known to the unknown.
Whether following up the comparative development of the earth and of
man, according to occult tradition, through the Lemurian, Atlantean,
Asiatic, and European periods; whether explaining the physiological
and psychic constitution of man as he now is; whether enumerating the
stages of Rosicrucian initiation, or commenting on the Gospel of St.
John and the Apocalypse, or applying his root-ideas to mythology,
history, and literature, that which dominates and guides his
discourse is ever this power of synthesis, which co-ordinates facts
under one ruling idea and gathers them together in one harmonious
vision. And it is ever this inward and contagious fervour, this
secret music of the soul, which is, as it were, a subtle melody in
harmony with the Universal Soul.
Such, at
least, is what I felt on first meeting him and listening to him two
years ago. I could not better describe this indefinable feeling than
by recalling the saying of a poet-friend to whom I was showing the
portrait of the German theosophist. Standing before those deep, and
clear-seeing eyes, before that countenance, hollowed by inward
struggles, moulded by a lofty spirit which has proved its balance on
the heights and its calm in the depths, my friend exclaimed:
“Behold a master of himself and of life!”
|