Origin and Goal of the Human Being

Lecture I

What Does the Human Being Find in Theosophy?

Berlin
29th September, 1904

In this lecture I want to develop the relation of the theosophical movement to the big cultural currents in the present, and on the other side I would want to design a picture of the theosophical world view in the talks which are entitled: The Basic Concepts of Theosophy. Hence, I ask you to consider this lecture absolutely as an initiating one and to accept as such.

What I have to discuss today should be the question what, actually, the present human beings find within the theosophical movement, which needs of the present human being can find their satisfaction within the theosophical movement. And in this manner I want to approach the other question: why do we have something like a theosophical movement today? I want also to approach the question, why that which theosophy wants, strives for is misunderstood and misjudged by so many people.

Whoever wants to understand the theosophical movement in its whole being has to be aware above all which task it has to fulfil in the present. It has also to be clear to him to whom it wants to speak today. What is then, actually, the present human being about whom we are just talking? I consider somebody as this present human being who has familiarised himself with the questions occupying the present, who lives not only in the everyday, but has also concerned himself with the cultural tasks of our time and is familiar with it, to whom the questions which our civilisation puts are needs of heart and mind. Briefly, I would like to understand the human being as somebody who tries hard to tackle the questions of education and knowledge of our time. I would like to put the question in his sense and answer it roughly: what does he find in the theosophical movement? Is something generally to be found within theosophy that he needs inevitably?

We have to look back to the time in which the theosophical movement has entered the world if we want to understand its task. We have to realise that this movement is three decades old and that when it entered the world approximately thirty years ago it took a shape which was determined by the relations of that time. Who wants to understand why it took this shape has to imagine the development of education and pedagogy of the last years. We still stand in the currents which the 19th century has produced, and those who brought the theosophical movement to life believed to give something to the world that it needs. And those who teach theosophy today believe that it is also something that leads into the future.

Today it has become almost a phrase, and, nevertheless, it is true: what has settled down into the souls of our contemporaries has brought a fissure in many of the contemporaries, a conflict between knowledge and faith, which expresses itself in a longing of the heart. This conflict is characteristic for the second half of the 19th century. It means not only for some people, but for a big part of the human beings generally that which separates humanity and causes a contradiction in the individual human soul. Science had come, up to the last third of the 19th century, to a height which is admirable, indeed, for someone who has an overview of the centuries. This science is something that fulfils the 19th century with just pride. It is the big heritage which the 19th century is able to hand over to all the coming ones. But this science has apparently thrown old traditions out at the same time. It has apparently brought in a disturbance to that which as old religious contents performed so big services to the souls in former times. Above all, these were those who had looked at science deeper who did no longer believe to be able to harmonise the scientific knowledge with that which religion had offered to them. The best of them believed that a quite new confession must take place and that it has to replace the old religious contents. Thus we see a true revolution of the human thinking gradually taking place.

The question was even put whether it is generally still possible that the human being can be a Christian; whether it is still possible to retain to the ideas which gave consolation at death and which have shown to the human being for so long time how he had to understand his determination which should reach beyond death, beyond the limited. The big question “where from” and “where to” should be taught in a new way illuminated by science. One spoke of a “new faith” and thought that it has to be the opposite of the old one. One did no longer believe that one could form a world view from the old religious books. Yes, there were not a few who said that there childish images are given which are only possible at the childhood age of humanity; now, however, we have become adults, and that is why we have also to have adult views. Many also said that they wanted to adhere to the old religious images; they did not want to be converted to the radical point of view of the new ones.

But the course of the mental development of humanity does not depend on these human beings. There were always a few, there were always those who stood at the summit of their time and gave the keynote of the future development. Thus it happened that those who wanted to know nothing about the “new faith” also thought to not take care of the conflict between faith and knowledge; but one could also imagine and say that that would be different in the future. David Friedrich Strauss (1808–1874, German theologian, The Old and the New Faith, 1872) elaborated his new faith at that time that there is nothing else in the world than what happens between birth and death, and that the human being has to fulfil his task here on earth. One can see that in the present the consolation of the religious images dies down to many people, and one can suppose that our children and grandchildren have nothing more of it. Hence, those may have seen uneasily into the world who believed that salvation depends on these religious images. They were the best.

The 19th century has even produced the fruits of that which was sowed in the preceding century. Everything has prepared during the previous centuries. This is to be attributed, above all, to those who strove for the extension of the human ken from the middle of the 15th to the 16th century, and also to the popularisation of education. Look back and you will see that the religious element formed quite differently during the past centuries. Apparently, the world view was totally changed. The human beings have formed wrong concepts about anything because the thinking is basically different from that which one thought centuries ago.

However, the consciousness that the human actions work on all human beings and all times had just got lost to those who were the bearers of education in the last centuries and the most significant people in the 19th century. People had designed world views to themselves in quite different way than in former times. Astronomy had shown them how one can collate world views from the mere sensory observation. Copernicus taught the human beings to look out into the worlds and to create a world view which does not contain, however, the human being. Look back at the old world views: the human being had a role in them; he had a place in them. Now, however, he had a system of stars before himself which was obtained with the means of science. But this contained the earth only as a small being. It appeared like a dust particle under that sun which is only one among countless suns.

Under the effect of that all it was impossible to answer the question: what about the human being, this small inhabitant of the earth, of this dust particle in the universe? That is why science had to investigate the world of life. It investigated the composition of the plant, the human and the animal bodies the smallest living beings with the microscope and found that they are built up from the smallest structures which one calls cells. Again one had advanced a further step of sensory knowledge, but again only something was understood that was a sensuous view, something that made the physical existence more explicable. But again something was eliminated a little bit that the human being has to ask for most intimately: what is the soul and its determination? One could not ask the new teaching where the soul came from and where the soul goes to. Then we see how one left the old world views and the question was answered with the means of science.

In geology one investigated the sensuous origin of the human being. The different layers which there are on our earth became known. Once one had spoken of the fact that the earth developed on account of immense revolutions and went through different states; states of particular kind, so that one could imagine only that spiritual powers had gradually brought about what we know today. Today one believes that the same forces, which build the earth even today, have also built it in old past. We see the river flowing from the mountain and picking up scree and creating thereby land and plains. We see the wind carrying sand over open regions and covering large parts with sand. We see the climate and also the earth's surface gradually changing by such influence. And now the geologists say: as well as the earth is today changed, it was also changed in former ages; and thus one also understands how bit by bit the earth has formed. Everything that is not perception for physical instruments, for the calculation and for the human senses was eliminated from the explanation of the earth. One investigated the different layers of the earth and recognised that not only that is found in them which was deposited as lifeless products; one also found beings which lived millions of years ago on our earth. In the lower layers one found the most imperfect beings, more on top one found more perfect beings and even more on top one found the layers in which the human being appears. The human being appears only in relatively young earth periods. If we apply this picture which I have just outlined, if we kept to this picture, one could imagine nothing else than that the human being has developed from below that he has only done a little jolt and he was nothing else before than an higher animal.

Then that came which is called Darwinism which says that everything that lives on earth is related with each other that something perfect develops from something imperfect and that this development is based on certain laws which find complete expression within the sensuous existence. The catchword of the “struggle for existence” arose. One said that any animal and any plant are variable. They can develop in this or that way whether the beings are adapted or not to the external conditions of life. Those beings develop and keep best of all which are adapted best of all to the conditions of life. However, one could not find why the conditions of life are better with the one than with the other. One was dependent on chance. The being survived which was the better by chance; the less developed one was destroyed in the struggle of all against all.

Thus we have an astronomical view and a view of life which science has outlined to us. But the human being is not there and, above all, that is missing which one called the divine determination before. The divine origin and the divine goal are missing. A statement is characteristic which a great naturalist made, who contributed mostly to the design of the universe: when Laplace (Pierre Simon L., 1749–1827, French astronomer) faced Napoleon I and explained the view of the sun and the planets to him, Napoleon said: but in such a world view I find nothing of God. — Laplace answered: I do not need such a hypothesis. — The astronomical world view did not need the hypothesis of a spiritually working being, of God. And also the other sciences do not need one. Is anything of spiritually working forces contained in their view of life? Such a thing is nowhere contained in the view which science has outlined and has outlined rightly. If we look for an explanation, we find that the human being with his mental qualities is an orphan child of sorts. Indeed, science has found enthusiastic words how miraculous the forces are which steer the stars how miraculous the forces are which have developed life up to the human being. However, we see that in this sublime view science has nothing of those ideas which were so valuable for the human beings for so many centuries. And from whom the human being could have expected the answer to the questions: where from do I come? where to do I go?, unless from science? The answer to these questions was always given by science.

Go back to the first centuries of Christianity, take Origen and the other first church teachers. You find there that with them not only believing, not only suspecting and meaning held good, but that these were men who had the whole education of their time, who answered the worldly worldly, but were able at the same time to ascend to the spiritual. They answered the spiritual in accordance with the science of their time. Only the last century knows the conflict between science and faith. However, this conflict must be resolved. The human being cannot endure it: faith on the one, knowledge on the other side.

Those who found no other way out than to put a new scientific faith against the old faith were, nevertheless, significant men. We cannot call these men unscientific or non–religious who said: the religious ideas are contradictory to our knowledge, and, therefore, we must have a new faith. We see the scientific materialism developing which considers the human being as a higher disposed animal, as a member of the physical-natural creation, as a small unimportant being, as a dust particle. You have this being before yourselves in that which the freethinkers and those have developed who try to solve the various riddles of the world in this sense as you can see in the sensational book by Haeckel (Ernst H., 1834–1919), German zoologist and philosopher) about the Wonders of Life (1904). There you have a view developed by science which is not able to produce harmony with the views of the previous centuries.

This was the situation at the end of the 19th century; this was the only thing that the 19th century could have given as a legacy to the 20th century unless another impact had come. This impact prepared itself and came into the world in the theosophical movement as a fruit. That was prepared which we recognise in the theosophical movement as the essential part, by the fact that one got to know the true physical figure of the universe and the evolution of life on one side, because the old religious images were no longer sufficient, and was prepared on the other side by the fact that one subjected the spiritual development to a study. So not only the evolution of life was subjected to a study, but also the spiritual development itself. As well as one investigated the forces from which living beings developed, one also investigated the spiritual forces, the spiritual contents of humanity as we observe them in the course of the historical and also prehistoric development. One not only turned to that which happened before the sensory eyes, but also to that which people believed. It was clear that modern science was something radically different from the old religions. Only our time of investigations made the mental development of humanity clear to the human being. One investigated ancient religious ideas according to their true form and content, and there one found something particular. On account of the deciphering of the documents of the Egyptians, Persians, Indians, Babylonians, and Assyrians one was able to penetrate into these ancient human ideas. As well as science brought light to the natural sciences, science now brought light into the religious ideas of ancient peoples. One recognised that something is contained in them that, indeed, one has thought of only a little in our age and with our freethinking being.

One had believed that humanity went out from ignorance, from certain mythological ideas, from poetic images which one had formed about God and soul in imperfect, primitive way. One approximately imagined that humanity would have developed from the imperfect to the delightfully perfect state of our time. But one did not know the ideas of the ancient peoples, and when one got to know them, they aroused astonishment and admiration, not only with religious people but also with the researchers. This admiration has been expressed over and over again, the more they were investigated. The farther we go back in the life of the ancient Egyptians, in the life of the ancient Indian, Babylonian and Assyrian or even Chinese spiritual world, the more we see that there exist so sublime world views as only a human thought can grasp and a human heart can feel. There we see human beings who deeply have beheld, indeed, not into the appearance which natural sciences explain to us today, but into the internal spiritual.

Confucius gave profound moral philosophies and created commandments of the social living together. Compare yourselves what in the present time philosophers have produced in moral philosophy, compare Herbert Spencer (1820–1903, English philosopher, biologist, sociologist) or the moral philosophy of Darwinism, and compare the modern moral philosophies with those of the Egyptians, with the ideas about ethics of Laozi (Lao Tse), of Confucius, of Zarathustra. Then you must say to yourselves that the new conceptions are commensurate, indeed, with our time that we look up, however, admiring to the sublime moral philosophies of the ancient peoples which cannot be compared with our science. Max Müller (1823–1900, German Orientalist and language scholar) says about the Tibetan moral philosophy: if this people may be ever so far from the so-called cultures of our time, in front of the sublime moral of Tibet I bend my head in reverence! The Orientalist and objective scientist Max Müller spoke approximately that way. He could no longer believe that humanity went out from ignorance. His researches rather supplied to him the result which can be summarised in the words that, indeed, this wisdom cannot be understood with the reason, not with the senses that, however, humanity must have gone out from such wisdom. Then the researcher gradually learnt to speak of “primal revelation”, of “primal wisdom”. This was the one, the positive side.

The other side was that which the criticism, the investigation of these religious images made its task. Then it became obvious that the most important documents did not withstand to the scientific criticism if one takes them in such a way as one was used to take these documents since centuries. I want to refrain from everything else, and also not to deal with a criticism of the Old Testament, but only to point with a few words to that which this criticism has performed concerning the Gospels. The historical criticism now asked concerning the Gospels in which one had still read hundred years ago with quite different eyes: when did they come into being, and how did they originate? Science had to take away piece by piece from the old authority of the Gospels. It has shown that they came into being much later than one had believed; it had to show that they are human work and cannot claim the authority one ascribed to them.

Let us take together these three matters: on one side the progressive natural sciences, on the other side the knowledge of the miraculous contents of all ancient religious images and at the same time the criticism which relentlessly tackled what one thought once about the history of the religious documents. This brought the human being in a fairway that he became uncertain and could hardly move his ship forward in the old way. Someone who wanted to consult science from all sides lost his faith in the spirit. The cognition of the human beings was that way at the end of the 19th century.

There came the theosophical movement, just with the intention to give something to those who were in this uncertainty, to bring a new message to those who could not harmonise their new knowledge with the old faith. They should get answer to the question why this Gospel has such a deep content, and why it lets its moral philosophy speak to the human beings in such a divine-lofty way.

This theosophical movement was much misjudged, because it speaks a language that has developed in the last century. In the first time when the theosophical movement entered, the world could hardly understand it. What did the theosophical movement give to humanity? I only note something: on account of certain studies two books, Esoteric Buddhism by A. P. Sinnett (1840–1921) and Isis Unveiled by Helena Petrowna Blavatsky (1831–1891) appeared. Then a 2-volume work, the Secret Doctrine by H. P. Blavatsky was published. These were books which designed another world view than science had done it up to now, also another world view than the world views of the religions were. This world view had a characteristic. Just the scientific person, who approached these books with good will who did not take them with arrogance without denying and criticising them from the start, found that he got something that could satisfy his needs. There were not few people who received the books with great interest immediately after their publication. People who were able to academically think but had just lost their belief in the scientific progress in the course of time, just in that which science could offer. Now these saw in the new works Esoteric Buddhism, Isis Unveiled, Secret Doctrine something that satisfied the deepest needs of their hearts, of their knowledge and of their scientific conscience. Where did this phenomenon come from and who were those who felt such a satisfaction in the new theosophical works? If we want to understand these few people, we must have a closer look at the further progress of the scientific development.

Science had designed an astronomical world view, a view of the life on earth up to the understanding of the physical human being. At the same time, it had worked out the method to investigate the physical realm with all miraculous tools which the recent time has created. It investigated not only the smallest living beings with the microscope, no, this science has done more. It has contrived to calculate the planet Neptune, long before it was seen! Today science is also able to take a photo of heavenly bodies which we cannot see. It can give a scheme of the conditions of the heavenly bodies with the help of spectral analysis, and it has shown in extremely interesting way how the heavenly bodies hurry through space at a speed of which we had no idea before. If the heavenly bodies pass us, we can see the movement. If they move, however, away from us or to us, they seem to rest. Science has contrived to measure the movement of these heavenly bodies with an especially interesting method. This is an argument where this knowledge can lead us. We are thereby also enabled to closer study the physical nature gradually. There something resulted that is still more important for the human mind than that which he had put as new science to the place of the old one.

During the last years science has lost its faith in its own preconditions. Just because it has become so perfect, it has overcome itself, it has undermined its own foundation in certain way. It stated that the struggle for existence has caused the perfection of the living beings. Now probably, the naturalists have investigated the matters, and just because they have investigated them, it became obvious that all the conceptions, which they had formed about them, could not be maintained. Now one speaks of a “powerlessness of the struggle for existence.” Thus the natural sciences have undermined their knowledge foundation with their own methods. And thus it went on bit by bit. When in the last decades the human being became more and more attentive to the way how he has developed on our earth, one came to the idea at the end that the human being has developed from the advanced animals. That is why it happened in the last decades that careful and more reasonable naturalists have spoken of the impossibility to understand the spiritual world, which must be behind our sensory world, with the scientific means. The famous address of Du Bois-Reymond (1818–1896, German physiologist)) gave the first impulse in Leipzig (1872) in which he expressed that the natural sciences are not able to solve the most important riddles of the world and to answer questions regarding this. Science stops where the issues of the origin of substance and of the origin of consciousness begin. We will not be able to know anything with scientific means: “ignorabimus.” Ostwald (Wilhelm O., 1853–1932, German chemist), a good disciple of Haeckel, who already spoke on the naturalists' congress in Lübeck of overcoming the scientific materialism, has openly expressed in a presentation at the last naturalists' meeting that the methods with which one wanted to come behind the riddles of the world are to be regarded as failed. Natural Sciences and World View is the title of his book. Just the natural sciences want to go beyond themselves and to have a higher observation point of the world view.

As well as these naturalists stand today before the whole objective research, few people stood already with the beginning of the theosophical movement. It was clear to them that that which natural sciences say is something indestructible, is something which we must rely on. But at the same time it was clear to them also that these natural sciences themselves must lead to a development where they can no longer give answer to the higher questions with their means. They found this answer, however, in the mentioned theosophical writings. They found it, not making profession to a faith, but by the way of thinking and feeling which express itself in the theosophical movement. This is the significance of the theosophical movement for the modern human beings that it can fully satisfy those who look for the harmony of knowledge and faith in science who do not want to live in struggle against science, but to live with science.

One still believed few years ago that science were contradictory to the old religious images. One spoke of a new faith in contrast to the old faith. The theosophical movement has taught us that, indeed, the old times expressed themselves differently than modern science, that, however, that which the ancient peoples taught about the spiritual forces, about what is not to be seen with eyes what is not to be heard with ears, is for us something that can satisfy the religious need just as the need of the most modern science. Indeed, you have to become absorbed without prejudice, with good will and impartially in the old images; you have to really believe that the farther you penetrate into them, the more you can also gain from it.

Then something appears. Natural sciences still taught something else to us in the course of the 19th century. They showed us the structures and functions of our own organs. They showed us how the eyes must be arranged, so that they see light and colours; they showed us that the eye is a physical apparatus which transforms that which proceeds outside round us into the coloured world which we have before us. One has said that it depends on the nature of the eye, as well as on the world itself. Imagine that the world would be inhabited by not sighted beings. Then the world would be without colours! The 19th century developed physiology in all directions. We realise that the world would be dark and silent around us if we had no eyes and ears. Unless we had our senses, the world, which we do not see and hear, would not be there in its causes which have an effect on us through the senses. There cannot be effects on a human being for whom the organs are missing under usual circumstances. Or may there be effects, nevertheless, on a human being for whom the organs are missing under usual circumstances? This was the question which natural sciences had to put to themselves! This question is really scientific.

Also in this field the theosophical movement produced works of basic significance. It not only delivered a world view, but it also produced works which gave instructions for the development of higher organs, of higher capacities. If the human being develops these higher capacities in himself, he faces the world in a new way. Transport yourselves just a moment into a dark world in which a bright light shines, and imagine that you unlocked an eye: suddenly the world has a new quality! The world also existed when it was dark and you saw no light. Now, however, you can perceive it. If you were able to develop higher organs, you would experience that even higher worlds are there, are effective because you can perceive them now.

Light on the Path (1885 by Mabel Collins, theosophical author, 1851–1927) is such a work which was produced by the theosophical movement, too. It is an instruction how the human being can develop spiritual eyes and ears to behold and to hear spiritually. Thus the theosophical movement claimed to solve the riddles of the world in a quite new way. Not only because it makes the capacities accessible to the human being which he already has but also because it wakes up those which are slumbering in him. We perfect ourselves this way, as this has happened since primeval times; we penetrate only into the secrets of the worlds around us. The life that remains concealed to the external senses is revealed to us that way. Even if natural sciences could penetrate ever so far, even if they could achieve the most marvellous things, nevertheless, they would have to admit that there is yet something with that they do not get to grips. However, science may teach humanity this using the methods theosophy has given. Because humanity could scientifically investigate the world extensively but never in its deepness, theosophy provides assistance to modern science. This science has been enlarged; however, the theosophical world movement has to deepen it.

It became now clear and understandable why the human being must stand admiring also as a scholar before the ancient religions. It became clear that always perfect beings lived beside imperfect ones in the world. It became also clear why the idea of revelation was academically destroyed and was given back to the human being, on the other side, in a brighter light. It became also clear that the Gospels and other old religious documents have not come from lack of wisdom, but from wisdom. They have come from forces that rest in every human breast, that were already developed in single human beings at that time and that revealed that world showing us the determination of the soul and the eternity of the human life. What had been recognised by such spiritual eyes is kept to us in the religious documents. What you cannot find if you look at the world you can really find in these religious documents.

We understand now why the answer of Laplace had to be as it had been. What had Laplace observed? The external sensory world! He had no longer understood the spiritual world in which the earth is embedded. Hence, he was right answering that he could not find the divine in the world with his instruments. One had taught once to use the spiritual senses in order to observe the spiritual world. What you read in the scientific documents was not got from the stars. But what is written in the biblical documents was from those who beheld with spiritual eyes. One needs spiritual eyes to behold into the spiritual world as well as one needs the senses to look at the sensory world.

Even if anybody lost his faith in science a sure support was now won. One recognised the big spiritual connections which are clear before the soul of the human being if he only tries to find the ways there. The theosophical movement tries to provide the adequate ways.

Now you will understand above all what this theosophical movement wants and why it was misunderstood at first. It must be misunderstood. This is connected with the development of the age. Let me touch the deepest reason of misunderstanding in modern science. People believed that the “struggle for existence” brought the human beings on a lofty level of development. But it is characteristic that this world view has already appeared in the beginning of the 19th century as Lamarckism: Philosophie zoologique (1809) by Antoine de Lamarck, 1744–1829. Darwin taught nothing substantially new. But only since Darwin this view spread farther. This is connected with the living conditions of the 19th century. Life had changed. The social life itself had become a struggle for existence. When Darwin's theory spread generally, the “struggle for existence” was reality, and still today it is reality. It was struggle for existence at that time when the Indian tribes were eradicated in America and it is also a struggle for existence today with those who try hard to achieve external prosperity. Nobody thought of anything else than: how can “welfare” be achieved best of all? “If the rose decorates itself, it also decorates the garden” by the contentment of every human being the contentment of all should be achieved.

Then one came to the strange doctrine of Malthus (Thomas Robert M., 1766–1834, Essay on the Principles of Population, 1798), to that doctrine which says that the number of human beings increases much more than the necessary quantity of food, so that it must come bit by bit to such a struggle for existence in the human realm itself. One believed that the struggle is necessary because the foodstuffs do not suffice. One might consider as sad that it is in such a way, but one believed that it has to go this way. Malthusianism was the starting point of Darwin's doctrine. Because people believed that the human being must struggle for existence, they believed that the struggle also has to go in the whole nature that way. The human being has brought his social struggle for existence to the realm of life, to the heavenly realm.

People were very proud saying to themselves that the new human being has become modest. He should be nothing more than a small being on the dust particle earth, while he once strove for redemption. However, the human being has not become modest! Projecting that social struggle in humanity into the world he has made the world the image of the human being. If the human being once considered his soul, he explored it from all sides to recognise the world–soul from there. He has now investigated the physical world and has imagined it in such a way that he sees an image of humanity with its struggle for existence in it. If the theosophical movement wanted to achieve anything, it had to understand this fact. If the human being rediscovers the divine really in himself, so that he finds God in his inside, then he can say to himself: God who is working in my inside is the God of the universe, is that who is working within and without me. I recognise Him and I am allowed to imagine the world in such a way as I am, because I know that I imagine it as something divine, because I know how I can attain this new knowledge from new depths of my soul and new feelings of my heart.

Thus one could also investigate the different religious systems with their profound truths. The religious researchers like Max Müller and his great colleagues initiated this theology, and theosophy had to continue it. The human being has to see with spiritual eyes and hear with spiritual ears what no physical eye can see and no physical ear can hear. The theosophical movement had paved the way for this. It would have been impossible to achieve anything in these two points really unless in the centre of this whole movement one thing had been pushed which is suitable to bear the new knowledge, the new science and the new faith from the human soul. The human being believed in the middle of the 19th century to get to perfection only through struggle and made thereby the struggle the big world principle. Now we have to learn to develop the opposite of struggle in our souls: love which cannot separate the happiness and the well-being of the individual from the happiness and the well-being of the fellow man. Love does not regard the fellow man as anybody on whose expenses we can make progress, but whom we have to help. If love is born in the soul, the human being is also able to see the creative love in the outside world. As the human being created a view of nature in the 19th century which went out from his idea of struggle, he will create a world view of love because he develops the seeds of love.

A reflection of that which has love in the soul will be the new world view again. The human being may imagine the divine again how he finds his own soul but love should live in this soul. Then he recognises that not struggle is the quality of the force system working in the world, but that love is the primal force of the world. If the human being wants to recognise God, creating love and pouring out love, he has to develop love in his soul. This is the most important principle which the theosophical movement made its own: forming the core of a general human brotherhood which is built on human love. The theosophical movement thereby prepares the human beings in comprehensive way for a world view in which not struggle, but love creates and forms. The sighted human mind will see the creative love approaching him. The creation of love in him leads to the knowledge that love created the world. And the Goethean thought is fulfilled:

The human being,
May he be noble,
Helpful and good!
For this only
Distinguishes him
From all beings
We know.

This legacy of the great poet is the impulse of our theosophical movement. The modern human being should develop the most significant factor of the advanced development in him through the theosophical movement. He should aim at the cooperation in the social life. Thereby he would become able to progress in wisdom and with energy, imbued with wisdom also in the spiritual worlds. Then the human being recognises his eternal being and determination more and more. He knows how he works on the “whirring loom of the time” (Earth Spirit in Faust I, verse 508), as a member in a spiritual not only sensuous world chain. He knows that he does his everyday job and that this work does not only consist of itself, but that it is a small link in a big human progress. He will know that every human being is a seed which needs a force to its blossoming and prospering, which pushes the germ out of the dark earth. What the soul creates must be got out of the spiritual earth as the plant sprout must be got out of the physical earth. As the physical sprout is got out by the sun to the sun, the blossoming and prospering human plant will be got out by a spiritual solar force, which theosophy wants to mediate and to teach the human beings. It will lead him to the marvellous and immense spiritual sun which one needs not only to express, but also to recognise and to understand. This is the spiritual sun which lives outside in the spiritual world which lives, however, inside the human being, too.

The theosophical movement has as its first principle that those who unite to this society develop the capacity in themselves to behold this spiritual sun which lives inside of the human being and in the big spiritual outside world. It is the propelling force in the spiritual realm and is really a force, like all the other physical forces, only a higher one and this is the force of creative love. A new divine knowledge will come to the fore. Then the human being recognises the creative love in the outside world if he allows this love in himself to become bigger and bigger. Then theosophy will deliver not only knowledge, but will also bring about the spiritual future with the growing and prospering love.