Lecture IV
We will remind ourselves of some of the things we have
been considering during the last few days. I have spoken of the
significant facts that within the compass of the story of the
Mystery of Golgotha we have, on the one hand, the proclamation to the
simple shepherds and on the other to the Magi from the East, men who
according to the ideas prevailing in those times had reached the
highest wisdom that it was possible to attain. The Mystery proclaimed
itself to the Magi out of the stars and the secrets which were read
from the stars. The same was revealed to the unlearned, simple
shepherds out of the kind of clairvoyance which could arise in those
times in men of piety of heart. I said that these powers were the
last remnants of faculties of vision which in much earlier times were
normal in humanity and which in the epoch of the Mystery of Golgotha
still existed in their final phase among exceptional men, both
learned and unlearned. It may therefore be said: At the time when the
last remnants of ancient faculties of vision still existed in
individual man, faculties capable of grasping the super-sensible
aspect of the Event of Golgotha, that Event actually took place on
the earth.
Once again let us describe these forms of knowledge. On
the one side we have the shepherds. They experience through their
naive, instinctive visions, what is happening in the world of men.
Such inner visions were due, as I told you, to the forces of the
earth which work into the human being. These forces of the earth do
not only work into the lower kingdoms but also within the human
being. Modern men, especially those living at the present time, no
longer have direct inner experiences of these earthly forces which
rise as it were out of the earth and then appear as inner visions.
But the further we go back in evolution the more we find these inner
visions, visions which in their whole configuration and form differ
according to the varying climatic conditions, the different regions
of the earth, and so forth. What can be discovered externally in this
connection is, however, in many ways deceptive, for the men of olden
times were wanderers. The faculties of inner knowledge coming to them
from the forces of the earth, developed in some region or territory
and then, because of the migrations of the peoples and stocks to
other territories, were propagated through heredity. It cannot always
be said, therefore, that these inner visions were connected directly
with the territory where they appeared in men. Just as the animal
world has a certain form in a specific part of the earth — in
the animals this is expressed more in the outer growth and shape, in
the mode of life, etc. — so, when human beings were still
closely connected with the forces of nature, they were united in
their inner characteristics with the inner forces of the earth. These
inner forces of the earth are not, of course, completely independent
of the forces of the universe. During his life between birth and
death, the human being is given over to these forces of the earth,
that is to say, he is given over to them in his physical body and
etheric body, not in his astral body and Ego. In his physical body
and etheric body man is given over to the forces that are active in
the earth kingdoms below him. And as in olden times man was much more
dependent upon the physical and etheric bodies than he is today, the
workings of the earth within him expressed themselves more in his
consciousness and there was within him a certain instinctive activity
in his understanding of the world of human beings, of the planet
earth and especially of the animal world. In those olden days men had
a definite picture, a definite Imagination of every species of animal.
Of this Imagination we ourselves have retained only the abstract
notion of the ‘species.’ We speak of the wolf-species,
the tiger-species, and so forth, and this is the last, abstract
remnant of the living pictures that were present in olden times in
instinctive vision and perception. Nor was man's relationship to his
fellow-men the abstract feeling that it is today when we pass them by
without really getting to know and understand them. Through the
forces living within him and through his common karma, a definite
picture, a definite perception of his fellow-man arose in a man as a
concrete, naive Imagination.
Within this ancient humanity there was also living
perception of what concerned the earth as a whole planet or —
at least it was so among many peoples — the territories on
which they dwelt. It was an inward perception of the planet earth, of
happenings in the world of men as they expressed themselves in the
social life, and also of happenings in the animal world. Our ordinary
sense-perception then developed out of this inner faculty. This
inward perception, these visionary pictures have in the modern age
come entirely to the surface of the senses. They have become the mode
of perception that is idolised in natural science where men are only
willing to believe what the intellect combines out of the
sense-perceptions. This sense-perception with which we view the
material world is the descendant of what we find when we study
ancient times in human evolution with real insight, undeluded by the
phantasmagoria of modern psychology or anthropology. The old
inner vision has become our external perception of today.
The other kind of knowledge, represented by the wisdom
of the Magi from the East, has become abstract. It has gone the
opposite way. Inner vision went to the surface and became our
sense-perception. The faculty of outward perception, expressed in the
imaginative, instinctive knowledge of the world of the stars and its
secrets, in the ancient astronomy which also reckoned with numbers
and — to use the platonic term — ‘geometrised’
with figures, this form of perception which saw a living
mathematics being fulfilled in the cosmos and to which every star was
a spiritual reality has gone the opposite way. The other kind of
perception went to the surface of the senses and became what we call
our empirical knowledge. The external perception of olden times
withdrew inwards, into the human being, and became abstract
mathematics, abstract mechanics or phoronomy — the
mathematical-mechanistic knowledge that arises from within us.
Thus in perception based on the senses and in our
mathematical view of the world we have the abstract legacies of
old, instinctive visions of mankind. Since the time of the Mystery of
Golgotha the last remnants of these ancient visions have disappeared,
unintelligible as this fact will be to ordinary anthropology.
Among the majority of peoples on the earth they had already
disappeared much earlier; for we must go back many thousands of
years, to very, very early times before what became the
Egypto-Chaldean and Greek cultures proceeded from the Turanian
highlands, if we want really to understand the nature of these
primeval faculties of vision in man. Yet their last remnants still
exist in Christian tradition as in the vision of the shepherds, who,
through instinctive, imaginative clairvoyance came to know of a
mighty event, and in the vision of the wise men from the East whose
wisdom of the stars revealed the same thing. The very last remnants
of these ancient modes of perception are given us as a wonderful
landmark in our study of evolution. Since the Mystery of Golgotha
there has been an increasingly general growth of the modern mode of
perception which was already being prepared for in Greek
culture; for the one does not pass abruptly into the other, these
things are prepared for and die down again. What became intensive
only in the modern age, revealing itself since the middle of the 15th
century and reaching its zenith in the 19th, although it was last
clearly present in the 18th century, especially in the West of Europe
— this was prepared for in Greek culture. The ancient
spirit-filled vision of the heavens has become abstract mathematics
and mechanics. We look at the heavens in the sense of Galileo and
Kepler, as if they were intelligible as a mere object of mathematics
and mechanics, and what we call perceptions are limited to what the
senses alone transmit to us. The power of perception born of the
whole being of man which was instinctive in primeval times has become
inactive.
It has often been said that humanity must become able
once again to unfold real visions.. The mathematical and mechanical
knowledge which arise in the inner being must once again be
developed to Imagination. The sense-world which becomes the
object of speculation and gives rise to all kinds of theories about
the sense-processes, wave-vibrations and the like, must again be
filled with the perceptions of Inspiration. Thereby men will find the
link with their own origin, with the spiritual which is their own
true being. We have evolved mathematical conceptions and external
sense-perception as the final remnants of these ancient times. And
what has come about in the evolution of humanity as a result of this?
Let us think of the 18th century, and of the English
philosopher Locke who has had such an influence upon the development
of the sciences. Locke speaks of the only form of knowledge that is
valid — the knowledge that is transmitted, at the outset, by
the senses. It is only a question of combining sense-perception
mathematically because in the West — although the East has
always resisted this — man has retained only this external
sense perception, and inner vision has become purely abstract and
mathematical.
And in France, in the 18th century, we find efforts
being made to understand the human being, to answer the question:
What is the human being in reality? Efforts were made to understand
man through the power of knowledge he himself manifests; and we find
such a work as Man as Machine by De la Mettrie. This was not
the outcome of a sudden idea of one man but of a world-historical
necessity of evolution. The corresponding phenomenon in ancient
times would have been that the human being would have been
understood by means of all the astronomical knowledge to be
gained about the heavens — he would have been understood in the
light of the whole macrocosm, by means of that ‘qualitative
mathematics’ which is none other than ancient astronomy or, if
you like, astrology. There would have been a concrete conception of
the human being, not indeed gained with our conscious faculties of
knowledge, but with the instinctive faculties of men in those times.
And what has remained of this? Mathematical lines and forces spread
in pure abstraction over the cosmos. The picture of the human
being was that of a machine. An ingenious book which pictures man as
a network of mathematical and mechanical forces cropped up in the
19th century and deluged all scientific views. Such objections as
were raised were, at most, theoretical. People said: “It cannot
really be so, something else must, after all, be working in man,”
But although it was admitted theoretically that things could not be
as they were pictured in Man as Machine, no other power was
applied for understanding the human being than the powers used
for understanding machines. Men were obliged to pass through this
development of the spirit — of the spirit which is supremely
abstract here and is able therefore only to grasp what is
mathematical. Only so has the consciousness of freedom come to
man. Tumultuous as was the urge for freedom in the west of Europe in
the 18th century, there is an inner connection between the meagre
knowledge of the human being which comes to expression in Man as
Machine and the urge for human freedom which became manifest in
the French Revolution. On the one side there was the worst
possible decadence of knowledge arising from inner powers and, on the
other, the insistent demand for recognition of the dignity of man by
giving him freedom.
The vision that once arose within man was driven
outwards to the senses, faded into external sense-perception. Nothing
remained of what had once brought men together with vision: a mere
feeling remained as a motivation in social life. And in the 19th
century, particularly in Central Europe, in the West already in the
18th century, we find men like Dupuis in the West and Ludwig
Feuerbach and others in Central Europe who, with the strange
mentality which was then brought to bear on these things, reminded
themselves that in the course of development humanity had once seen
the spiritual in the macrocosm, had seen Gods or, ultimately,
God. But then there arose this strong instinct: “Looking into
the external world I have only the tapestry of material life, only
what is revealed to sense-perception.” These men said to
themselves: “These traditions, all that was once seen shining
from the stars which are also things of sense, the spiritual in the
world of minerals and plants — all this was fantasy, it was
anthropomorphism; with this fantasy men imposed it into the external
world. It was not the Gods who created man, but man who, out of his
life of soul, created the Gods.” This was what was placed
before man in the middle of the 19th century, first by Dupuis and
then by Ludwig Feuerbach.
And then men like Darwin and others of similar mentality
lent tremendous weight to the idea that man has only the external
perceptions of the senses. They founded teachings based entirely
on this kind of perception. But then it became apparent that the
human being cannot be understood through these teachings. In a
marvellous edifice of ideas we have a theory of evolution from the
simplest up to the most highly complicated organisms and man is
placed at the summit of the animal world. What was understood of the
human being? That which could be externally seen through
sense-perception.
In France, in the 18th century, man was conceived as a
machine; in the 19th century he was seen only from outside and his
inner nature was not reached. Only the sheath around man was there.
This sheath does stand at the summit of the animal world. But
what this sheath surrounds comes from quite different worlds into
which there was no longer any insight, because all that remained was
the sense-perception into which the ancient clairvoyance had
developed, and the mathematics and mechanics into which the old
spiritual science of astronomy had developed. Through the science
arising from within, man could only be conceived of as a machine; and
with the science relating to the external world, man could not be
conceived at all, but only his sheath. Nor is there any realisation
today of the extent to which the human being himself has been lost.
Men study the anatomy and physiology of the animals and with certain
modifications transfer this knowledge to the human being. But in the
modern striving for knowledge there is no real understanding of
the human being. From science — the highest authority
recognised today — no conscious understanding of the human
being is to be gained. Man as machine, comprehension of the material
world in which the human being is not to be found — these have
been the forerunners of our scientific mentality.
In one of the most recent books (another has since
appeared, for the brochures aiming at refuting Anthroposophy are
growing now into whole volumes) — in a fairly big book, we find
it said that much in Anthroposophy is reminiscent of ancient
mythologies. This is because the author simply does not understand
Anthroposophy. He is a Licentiate of Theology, a very learned
gentleman ... they are all learned gentlemen. This can be said as a
refrain, thinking of the famous speech in Shakespeare's Julius
Caesar: “So are they all honourable men ...” They are
all learned men and this particular one, because he does not
understand Anthroposophy at all, finds in it something similar to
ancient mythologies.
You know that in Anthroposophy it is a question of a
fully conscious understanding of the world, an understanding with a
consciousness that otherwise occurs only in mathematics with its
inner penetration of the realities, so that it is certainly not a
matter of mythological poetry. Nevertheless it is precisely through
Anthroposophy that we are often deeply and inwardly stimulated to
realise the meaning of ancient mythologies and ancient mythological
pictures. These ancient mythologies are not ‘poetry’
in the sense in which we think of poetry today; they are the outcome
of naive Imaginations of a certain content of the world. This
content of the world, however, was expressed in pictures. And if we
let the deep significance of these pictures work upon us we find a
wonderful sureness of knowledge in them. Let me remind you today of a
poem of ancient India addressed to the God Varuna:
Varuna is the motive power in all
beings.
Varuna is he who has spread the
air through the forests.
Varuna is he who gives the
swift-footed animals their swiftness.
Varuna is he who produces milk in
the milk-bearing cows.
Varuna is he who quickens the
Will in the heart of man.
Varuna is he who kindles the
lightning in the oceans of clouds.
Varuna is he who causes the light
of the sun to shine in the vault of heaven.
Varuna is he who produces the
Soma-drink on the mountains.
In wonderful language this poem to Varuna contains what
I described to you yesterday. Think of what enters from the
inner forces of the earth into man's physical and etheric bodies;
these forces played into the consciousness and produced, in those
ancient times, powers of inner vision. And then think of this poem
and of the deep meaning in the indication that it is Varuna, the
God of changes, who causes the air to blow through the forests (the
earth with her covering). This same power-giving Being, working from
the earth through the animals, causes the swiftness of horses, the
life-substance in creatures who bear milk, stimulating in the heart
of man the will-impulse from whence came the ancient, inner
clairvoyance. In these indications we have something that make
intelligible the kind of vision possessed by the shepherds in the
field. And then from what follows, we can understand the kind of
vision living in the wise men from the East. For it is Varuna who
kindles the fire of lightning in the oceans of clouds — we look
out into the macrocosm and there find the forces which are understood
with the knowledge possessed by the Magi. It is Varuna who causes the
light of the sun to shine in the heavens and who produces the
Soma-drink on the mountain — these are the forces which enable
man to have vision of the world.
An observation must, however, here be made. The poem
comes from an epoch when the primeval, purest form of vision of the
outer world was no longer present, when vision of the cosmic spaces
was no longer, as in the earliest times, achieved by purely spiritual
manipulations of the breathing or by drawing these visions from the
inbreathing. The poem comes from a time when, as was very usual in
the later Mysteries, a certain drink prepared from plants was taken
to stimulate vision of the outer world, just as later on, when inner
vision was lost, man attempted to stimulate inner powers by the
taking of certain substances. In the East, men tried to quicken
vision of the macrocosm by drinking certain juices from plants; in
the West, certain substances were taken. In the East, again by
external means, by the taking of substance which they called
Soma-drink, men tried to quicken the faculty which appeared, in its
last remnant, in the Magi. In the West, up to the late Middle Ages
and even on into modern times, what was taken inwardly in order to
attain the wisdom that evokes inner perception was called the
Philosopher's Stone.
In books attempting to explain oriental life you will
find many indications about the Soma-drink, the Soma-juice. All kinds
of ingenious explanations are given because real Initiation-wisdom
never tells what the substance of the Soma-drink really is. Many
books will tell you that it is not known what the substance of the
Philosopher's Stone is. Neither do I myself propose to speak about
these two substances. I only want to indicate the humour of the
statement made by scholarship that one cannot know what Soma-juice
really is, although a large number of people drink this Soma-juice by
the litre. As the poem to Varuna says, it grows on mountains. It is
also said that the Philosopher's Stone is a certain substance in
existence but that it is not really known what the learned alchemists
meant by the Philosopher's Stone. But there are people in modern
times who consume this Philosopher's Stone by the kilo. It is only a
matter of seeing things in the right light.
It is remarkable that something very familiar should be
presented as being quite unknown because people do not
understand the connection of their present mode of vision with that
of times, relatively speaking, not very long ago.
But it must be realised that today we see the world
through very faulty spectacles and in spite of our scientific
development do not understand what is nearest at hand; we do not know
the workings of many substances we use in everyday life. We stand
within these workings and experience them. Modern scholarship does
not know what the Soma-drink is, or the Philosopher's Stone, although
there are very few people who are not quite familiar with these
substances (they simply do not know what they are). Equally can it be
said: People of today realise that a great deal goes on in the
intercourse between the banks and industrial undertakings and most
men tear off their coupons from the papers they receive, but they
know as little about what this means in the complex of social life as
they know about the substances mentioned above. Our mode of
perception is of a kind that it befogs us, misleads us with
spectacles; we have our everyday arrangements without knowing
anything real about the inner connections of the world.
It is strange that people try to keep to these concepts
that are so superficial, that they do not want to get down to a new
inner knowledge on the one side and strive for a new outer
knowledge on the other. Sometimes, out of dark emotions, that which
most men really want in their conscious being struggles to make
itself felt, but they are afraid to raise this will into
consciousness.
A friend recently gave me a copy of the Rheinische
Musik und Theater Zeitung. The first article is based on the
experiences of a musician. He writes out of immediate experience in
particular circumstances and what he says is extremely
interesting. I will read a few sentences:
“With the general social and economic upheaval
there was added to the inner problems of music, the outer problem —
that of the new public that is coming to art practically unprepared.
Which of the arts has permanent value and how are art and the people
to be brought together? These are questions of particular importance
at the moment”
Most people are still unaware of the weight of these
questions: there their weight has been felt, for they are
there as a terrible burden in the world.
“Many, very many problems would be better and more
easily solved if the musical profession were organised. But we are
still without any Music Chamber which could represent the common
interests of all professional musicians; even individual groups of
interests are not yet really united with each other.”
The writer now proceeds to think about a suitable
organisation. He says:
“Hardly any of the associations include all the
members of the profession. The best are, perhaps, the German
Musicians' Union which includes particularly the orchestra players,
and the Union of Music Traders where there is a common basis because
of their economic objects. After a big gap come the various groups of
academic and nonacademic music teachers, of singing teachers in music
schools, organists, directors and critics, as well as composers and
executant musicians. Self-seeking interests and rivalry have put off
many people from joining these associations. As a whole, workers in
cultural professions are very far from realising the need of union.
Thus it has come about that in the world of music those at the head
of its public affairs are not experts who are cognisant of the real
needs. In the great State arrangements as in the narrower,
provincial bodies, dilettantes have the authority and also, according
to the strength of the parties, politicians to whom art is only a
secondary interest and who, though they often have good-will, usually
lack the necessary expert knowledge and freedom from bias. And so it
has come about that the State has almost completely failed to meet
the justified demands of music. This does not concern music alone; it
is typical in all cultural affairs. In the realisation too that the
economic problems of a people cannot properly be handled by the
politically-minded representatives who have held positions up to now,
a new ‘Economic Council’ was recently formed. Out of
about 400 seats, 3 were included for the Arts — such is the
estimate of its importance. And when we know that one or two votes
are incapable of representing the interests of the German
Musicians' Union even in purely economic and financial questions, we
cannot help asking: Where then are the cultural interests of the
people to be considered? Parliamentary debates are out of the
question. There is not a single expert of our profession in the
Reichstag and even if there were ten or twenty, they could do nothing
at all in a place where people speak and vote according to party
points of view.
“There is only one way that is logical and clear
and it will therefore be adopted one day for the well-being of
our people. Beside the Political Parliament administering the
equitable position of the individual vis-à-vis the whole, and
of the people vis-à-vis the international world, and beside
the Economic Council to deal with the material foundations of the
people's life, we need a Cultural Council for the promotion of
spiritual affairs.
“The idea of this Threefoldness is not new. It was
however formulated in precise terms by Dr. Rudolf Steiner and is
now being worked at by a league for the ‘Threefold Social
Organism,’ Champignystrasse 17, Stuttgart, where further
information can be obtained.
“It will be difficult for anyone who goes into
this, to get the idea out of his head, so unambiguous is it and such
a certain solution of the problems with which we have long been
struggling so hopelessly. Its realisation must and will bring
health to the whole of our people's life.”
I have read you this because it shows the longing for
the Threefold Organism in one single profession. Then there are
opinions which we must reject, opinions of those who have merely a
political education and think that this Threefold Social Organism is
a Utopia. It is not by any means a Utopia; it grows from the
innermost experience of every single profession. The writer of this
article is the editor of the paper and it is seldom that editors
write in such a way. Every single individual in any profession can
feel that the most practical conception of life leads him finally to
say to himself: “It will be difficult for anyone who goes into
this to get the idea out of his head, so unambiguous is it and
such a certain solution of the problems with which we have long been
struggling so hopelessly. Its realisation must and will bring health
to the whole of our people's life.”
This ‘Cultural Council’ was founded a year
ago this May and it has already faded out, is forgotten. Those who
understood it least of all were the people in official positions and
having authority in science and art. What must be emphasised over and
over again is the need there is today for things to be taken with
deep seriousness. This goes against the grain. People choose to
believe that things will continue in the same way. No, they will not.
If life continues without the stimuli that come from the spiritual
world, industry can go on, banks can be in existence and universities
where all the sciences are taught, other professions can be developed
— but everything will lead to decadence, to barbarism, to
the fall of civilisation. Those who are not willing to apply in
practical life what can come out of Spiritual Science are working,
not for ascent but for decline. And the majority of people today want
decline and simply delude themselves into the belief that an ascent
can still come out of it.
That is what I wanted to stress on the occasion of this
Christmas festival. Let others go on, if they so will, along the old,
familiar path that is like a great lie in modern life. I confronted
this lie when I was a young man. In respect of the truths and
realities of life I was very much at home in an international
atmosphere and in things that have nothing to do with sympathy or
antipathy for any particular race, for I taught in a house belonging
to a Jewish family for many years. Every year, when Christmas was
near, all the relatives, distant and near, set about buying Christmas
presents and a Christmas tree — and all of them were members of
the Jewish religion. They did everything the same as people who call
themselves Christians, in honour of Him of whom it is said: “The
Saviour is born unto us this day.” Things have become phrases
to this extent, my dear friends. But people will not admit it, will
not admit that these things have lost all meaning. It is all one and
the same today, and it has been so for a very long time, whether a
man whose heart is livingly united with the Saviour lays presents
under the Christmas tree or whether this is done by someone who
adheres to a way of thinking which rejects the Saviour. It is such
things which show us the lie in humanity that has become reality, the
phrase that has become reality within our civilisation. These things
must be seen in all seriousness, my dear friends. It is meaningless
today to say that one should not be radical in these matters ... for
not to be radical means to take part in the advance towards
decline.
This is what I wanted to voice at this Christmas
festival, at a place where nothing in the old style is to be found.
In our architecture at the Goetheanum there are no traces of ancient
architectural styles. Neither do other things at the Goetheanum
contain anything connected with old-fashioned customs. It is
just because there is nothing of old customs at the Goetheanum that
such hatred of it prevails in many quarters. Neither should
there be old customs, because there must be at least one place today
— however much it is hated and however intensely its ruin is
desired — where attention is called to what is necessary for
mankind in our time.
The Goetheanum contains nothing of the old. The Goethean
science cultivated here obviously contains hardly anything that is
old. And if we establish anything in practical life ... the reaction
to it shows quite clearly that it is not in the old style. Whether in
the habits of all anthroposophical friends everything of the old
style has been overcome ... on that point the lecturer will be silent
for the sake of politeness. But he would express the hope that our
habits, down to the very way we handle our children, will tend more
and more to what we recognise as a necessity for the evolution of
mankind.
The year we are beginning with this Christmas festival
will be no easy one for our anthroposophical development. On the
contrary, it will be a difficult year. The opposition against us will
not diminish but increase in strength. For the powers which have an
interest in ruining Anthroposophy are very active, very alert, as I
have often said. And one thing particularly I would like to call to
mind today. When the ‘Futurum Company’ was founded here
in Dornach, our good friend Herr Molt spoke of all that should enter
and be applied in the affairs of practical life. He was right in
everything that he said. When I was speaking afterwards I said that I
was not anxious about the incorporation of anthroposophical thoughts
and ideas in practical institutions — but what did cause me
anxiety was whether we should find a sufficiently large number of
human beings capable and energetic enough to carry these things
through.
What is so very necessary, my dear friends, is that we
should always be trying to bring together those human beings who are
sufficiently energetic and capable to make Anthroposophy really
practical, as well. Recent centuries have not only dulled human
knowledge, they have also actually suppressed the practical
capacities of men. And it is essential that people should try to
unfold these powers out of the deepest foundations of their being —
for the powers that are needed lie in every individual. We need a
renewal also of the external, practical capacities of man, out of his
deepest foundations. This birth should hover before us — the
birth of an energy that can be brought forth within to confront the
lack of energy to be met with in the outer world today. This birth
should hover before us in everything that we feel to be connected
with Christmas.
Think, too, of science. A young medical student was with
me a few days ago and was talking to me about his studies. All that I
could say was that the very worst thing that is happening nowadays in
the most important sciences is that the thinking powers of men are
not being unfolded. Take any modern book on therapy or pathology —
so often we find heart, lung, digestive organs and so forth,
represented according to purely material observations and with
as much elimination of the thought element as possible. And when some
real thinking is offered we find, as in the book written by Kurt
Leese, the Licentiate of Theology, that it is said: this is
unbearable, irritating; for here is someone speaking about the
threefold being of man and we are expected to believe that the three
members are not side by side, but intermingled. So much jugglery of
thought ... Such is the opinion of this Licentiate of Theology, Kurt
Leese.
To be a Licentiate of Theology at our universities means
that thinking is fundamentally exterminated by the studies. When a
man is challenged to think, this is unbearable, irritating,
unpleasant in the extreme. It has come to the point where things that
come from the innermost being, truthfulness among them, appear in the
form they do, even among the leaders of Christianity. For example
there is this clergyman who does not say that some drunkard
told him of a statue of Christ being made with Luciferic traits above
and animal characteristics below ... but who gives this out as
something that he knows with certainty. He puts an objective lie into
a book in which he sets out to describe Anthroposophy. And people
accept such things without criticism or censure. Do you think for a
moment that any healing of social life is possible when such things
happen? If you have any such belief, it is a false hope. What is
necessary is to develop a sane outlook on a positive evil in moral
life. The point is not whether Anthroposophy is attacked or not but
that a book has appeared containing a whole number of similar
untruths. A man who writes such lies in this book will naturally
include them in other writings. This is habit. The same thing exists
in teachings given to the young. We must not fail to face these
things, my dear friends.
The Child in the crib says to us that the deepest things
in man need a health-bringing renewal. What we need is a new
proclamation of what was given to the shepherds in the field and to
the Wise Men from the East; from its very foundations we must
understand what it is that will bring healing into the development of
mankind. Then and then only are we worthy to say: The Saviour has
been born unto us.
These are the things I wanted to say before we have to
make a short pause in the lectures here.
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