Part 5 (1/2)

Taurus-age: Mercury, Moon, Saturn; the decanates during the Aries-age: Mars, Sun, Venus. And the decanates during our age, the Pisces epoch, are very characteristically those forces which can serve us most, according to the celestial-clock: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars. Mars - here not in the same service as he had when he was in his house, when he went through Aries, but Mars now as representative power for human strength. But in the outer planets, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars you see what is connected with the human head, the human countenance, the human word-formation.

Thus all that is connected with spirituality for this life between birth and death - we will speak next time of the other life between death and a new birth - is especially serviceable in this epoch.

This epoch therefore is the one containing the greatest spiritual possibilities. In no age was it granted to men to do so much wrong as in this, since in none could one sin more deeply against the inner mission of the time. For if one lives with the age, then through the Jupiter force one transforms the force coming from the earth into a spiritually free humanity. And at one's disposal are

the best, the finest powers of man which he develops between birth and death: the Saturn- Jupiter- and Mars-forces.

The World-Clock, my dear friends, stands favourably for this epoch, but this must give no occasion for fatalism.

This must not cause people to say: Well let's leave ourselves to World-destiny, everything is sure to be all right... rather is it to be the cause, if a man will - but he must will - of his finding endless possibilities just in our age. Only, meanwhile, men do not as yet will.

But it is always unfounded to say: Well, what can I do by myself? The world takes its course ...

Certainly, my dear friends, such as we are now, the world does not pay much attention to us today. But something else is the point. The point is that we are not to say, as the men of thirty-three years ago said - that they wouldn't bother themselves about anything! That is why things have become what they now are. The question in our time is that each for himself should begin to wish to escape from

abstraction, to lay aside what is foreign to reality and so on, and to seek, each for himself, to approach the real and get beyond abstractions.

One must approach from such far-lying concepts, my dear friends, if one is to develop the important subject that is to occupy us - discussion of, so to speak, the becoming older of man, the going- towards-death, just as much as the originating- from birth, the coming-from-birth. Whereas today, pedagogy, practical education of children, proceeds entirely from recognizing that the child is born and develops as child, the time must come in

which the child learns what it means to become older. But these things cannot be so simply elucidated, and so one must bring the ideas from far away. For one can say: In order to overcome that estrangement from reality which today is the signature of the time, above all it is necessary for men to develop the will to attentiveness, the will to set Jupiter in motion. Jupiter is precisely the force that makes a perpetual call on our attentiveness. Men are so happy today if they need not be attentive, if they can resemble the sleeping Isis - I have purposely spoken of the sleeping Isis! The greatest part of mankind is sleeping through this present time and feels itself very, very well in so doing, for men hammer out concepts and stop short at these, and will not develop attention. The important thing to do is to examine the relations.h.i.+ps of life. And the difficult years in which we are living must above all get us away from what has weakened human civilization for so long - inattentiveness, absence of will - and make us look into world conditions.

It is not enough, my dear friends, merely to skim

lightly over things.

It might easily seem, for instance, that I have spoken again and again from all possible aspects of the harmfulness of Wilsonianism from some subjective urge. It is from no subjective urging, but it is actually necessary today to point the way from countless illusionary ideas into the direction in which attention must be unfolded. We learn by the events of the time; if we sharpen our attentiveness we learn precisely from the events of today an immense amount of what we need in order to understand the great impulses which solely and alone can lead mankind out of the calamities into which it has brought itself. One must put certain questions to oneself if one is to be attentive to things. It is not the point to have some general view of something, but how one sees it, how one is able to put questions regarding the outer world.

Spiritual Science has also this practical significance, that it gives us the impulse of questioning, of putting questions.

You see, my dear friends, that one reads nowadays of the so-called Peace negotiations of Brest-

Litowsk. You know that various people are taking part in them. The chief people from Russia taking part - to single that out - are Lenin, Trotsky, a certain Herr Joffe and a certain Herr Kameneff, whose real name is Rosenfeld. Trotsky's name is Bronstein; Joffe is a rich trader from Cherson.

Those are the princ.i.p.al negotiators. It is not uninteresting - but even important perhaps - to turn one's attention to the fact that for Herr Rosenfeld-Kameneff, it is only what the outer exoteric world calls pure chance that his head is still upon his shoulders. His head could long since have been sundered from his shoulders. For in November 1914, all sorts of delegates were arrested in Russia. One read about it at the time and knew of it in other ways. These delegates were imprisoned because they were accused of friends.h.i.+p with Lenin, who was abroad in a place not far from here. They believed at that time in Russia that Lenin had said 'Of all evils that can happen to Russia in this war the fall of Czardom is the least.' And so a number of delegates who were known to have communications with Lenin through letters and so on, were indicted. But at

that time it was impossible to get hold of them. To be sure, all sorts of patriotic, Russian patriotic, words were spoken. Words like these were spoken: 'Over the heads and mangled bodies of our fighters, there are traitors who are in connection with the shameful Lenin in Switzerland' - and so on. Then further proceedings took place in February 1915. Again a number of persons were accused, among them a certain Petrowski, among them also a certain Kameneff, alias Rosenfeld.

Kameneff, in especial, counted among the accused at that time as the real Russian traitor-type, as a very particularly abominable fellow. And as the proceedings started, there was a general belief that it would not be long before his head ... would be off his shoulders. But Kameneff-Rosenfeld could bring forward proofs at that time that in all questions of the war, he had always taken a different stand from Lenin; so too, Petrowski; that they had no really serious friends.h.i.+p with Lenin.

Kameneff-Rosenfeld could prove in particular that he had never wished for the victory of Germany, that a German victory could only be desired by un- Russian crafty comrades like Lenin with foreign

interests, who, while they feel themselves too weak or too lazy, await the triumph of freedom from the sword of German generals. Those are the words that were spoken at these proceedings. And a certain Kerenski, who later played another role, was a.s.signed to Messrs. Petrowski and Kameneff as counsel, advocate. He was the defender of Kameneff in that lawsuit, and he got him off. The charge against both Petrowski and Kameneff- Rosenfeld was of high-treason and treason against the country, but Kerenski could get them off and in his speech are to be found the fine words 'The accused were very far from the plan to stab in the back those who are ready to die for the Fatherland, they resisted no other intrigue so strongly as the one proceeding from Lenin's secret confederacy.'

Owing to the fact that Kerenski's oratory and the other things that could be brought forward supplied proof that Petrowski and Kameneff had nothing in common with Lenin's views, they came out of it all with fairly sound skins. Petrowski is now the Minister of the Interior in the Government of Lenin and Kameneff is together with Herr Joffe the most important negotiator at Brest-Litowsk.

I am quoting these particular stories, my dear friends, and could relate hundreds and hundreds of similar ones! But it is very important to look at actualities; that is what I wished to say. And in order to get to know actualities one must observe the men who have to do with them - if indeed these things men are taking part in are actualities.

It is vastly convenient to stand back and say: Yes, negotiations are going on at Brest-Litowsk between Russia and the Central Powers! That is abstraction, that is no actuality. One only approaches the real when one has the will to pay attention, to look really into the concrete. I wanted to bring the matter forward merely as an example to show that it is also necessary to study present- day history. Everyone today talks about current events, but how little is really known of the events of today, how little people actually know of what is going on, how little people even guess at what takes place; This is really astounding, and can only be understood through the unbelievable way in which our intelligence is trained. In fact our intelligence is trained in such a way that science misleads it on every hand to form judgments in the

way I have described: If I have one coin, then I have one coin; if I have two coins, then I have none, I have nothing! If there is one tombstone of Till Eulenspiegel, then he can have lived; if, however, there are two tombstones with an owl and a looking-gla.s.s, then Till Eulenspiegel did not live! If I want to make an electricity experiment in the Physics cla.s.sroom, I must carefully dry all the machines with warmed cloths so that nothing may be damp, for otherwise neither the ordinary electrical machine nor the inductive machine would obey me, nor anything else. But then immediately afterwards I relate: there out of the cloud - which in any case is thoroughly wet and which no Professor can have wiped with dry cloths - issues the lightning - and so could one go on.

Have I not again and again given examples of how one person repeats what another says; no one examines it! Thus, for instance, one can very well hear: the fundamental principle of modern Physics is the conservation of energy, of force. That is to be traced back to Julius Robert Mayer. Although physicists and nature-researchers and other learned men proclaim him today a great hero, Julius

Robert Mayer was once put in a lunatic asylum because he had published 'absurd trash', had claimed to have discovered a new principle. He was indeed really incarcerated in a lunatic asylum!

The great credit due to Julius Robert Mayer has gone in particular to a University Rector, but I will not stress this further; it often comes up, as you know. What I will stress is this: again and again one sees 'The Conservation of Energy - Julius Robert Mayer discovered it'. No one re-reads, but each one re-says what has been said. In Julius Robert Mayer's work nothing at all is stated in the form, in the definite form, in which the energy- principle is represented today, but it exists there in quite a different formulation, in fact in a reasonable formulation!

Another example may be considered which lies near our subject - Dr. Schmiedel has given me a magazine in which they support Goethe's 'Farbenlehre'. Two learned gentlemen a.s.sert that Goethe knew nothing of the Fraunhofer lines: Dr.

Schmiedel has put together four columns, purely of pa.s.sages from Goethe in which he speaks of the

Fraunhofer lines! But the learned gentry talk, pa.s.s judgment on the range of Goethe's optical knowledge, and let flow into such judgments - 'he knew nothing of the Fraunhofer Lines.' They tell people impudent falsehoods, for naturally today in this 'authority-free' time, what a 'learned'

man says is just as much a gospel for a large number of people as for many, many politicians what Mr. Woodrow Wilson says is a gospel. Thus in our present time it means a good deal if someone simply states: Goethe did not know of the Fraunhofer lines! Nor does it help much to prove it to people; for soon a third person says it and then a fourth. For the inattention, the thoughtlessness with which people live today is indeed great, while the will to look at the concrete truth is not forthcoming. Mankind moreover is much too much inclined to take a lively interest in abstractions, to become enthusiastic through abstractions.

With this I have only introduced what is yet to occupy us - the important principle which must enter into the culture of our time, and our

pedagogy, the principle of man's becoming old, the becoming old of his physical body, which is linked with the becoming young of his etheric body. Of this then we will speak next time in all detail.