Mars and the Eightfold Path ~
25 FEBRUARY 1955
Last
time we spoke about Mars and the gestures of Mars. I may just very briefly
repeat what we did. We spoke of the movements of Mars in the course of this
year; and during this year there will take place a conjunction of Mars with the
Sun, which means that Mars is standing far out in cosmic space, more or less
behind the Sun. I indicated the conjunctions (outer circle) — that is when Mars
is standing behind the Sun — by drawing the little circle with the stroke ,
and I draw the loop to represent an opposition of Mars with the Sun, i.e.,
when the Earth is between them. Now the interesting thing is to watch what Mars
is doing in the course of the years. We started in the year 1938 when there was
a conjunction of Mars with the Sun here in Crab. In the following year an
opposition or loop took place almost opposite Crab in the transition from
Archer to Goat. And so we can follow them through the years to the loop last
summer in 1954.
During these occasions when
Mars comes very near to the Earth, the astronomers are especially eager to
observe Mars, to observe the canals and all those mysterious things on the
surface of Mars. You will recall that in the course of about sixteen years we
get eight conjunctions and eight loops or oppositions of Mars to the Sun,
totaling sixteen. And we said that we recognize in this a kind of cosmic
pattern of what appears in us as the sixteen-petalled lotus flower or chakram,
as they are called in the Eastern Wisdom, and the still more interesting thing
is that we actually have eight inner petals. We know the lotus flower is really
a flower with, so to speak, concentric rings of petals. We have eight inner
petals and eight outer petals; that is exactly how the chakram is described in
occultism. The Mars chakram, which is situated in the region of the larynx, has
sixteen petals: eight have been developed in the dim past and eight we must
develop now. The development of eight of the petals of the sixteen-petalled
lotus flower was taught by the Gautama Buddha in the eightfold path. The
eightfold path is the method we must use to develop and prepare that organ in
the region of the larynx, which must serve in a certain moment for
supersensible perception. I would just like to indicate how Rudolf Steiner
transformed and modified the eightfold path according to the present needs of
humanity. The ancient eightfold path of Buddha consisted of developing or
attaining: Right Views, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Conduct in Life,
Right Means of Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mind Control, and Right
Meditation. The eighth rule comprises all the others, or in a manner of
speaking, it crowns the preceding seven.
Now let us
see how Rudolf Steiner describes this eightfold path. He speaks of eight
functions that are
to be
performed by the human being. I am taking it from the book, Knowledge of the
Higher Worlds.
The first
concerns the way in which Ideas and Conceptions are acquired.
The second of
these functions is concerned with the control of Resolutions.
The third
concerns Speech. The student should utter no word which is devoid of sense and
meaning; all talking for the sake of talking draws one away from one’s path,
and so on.
The fourth
is the regulation of outward Action. As students, we try to adjust our actions
in such a way that they harmonize with the actions of others and with the
events in our environment.
The
fifth function includes the Management of the whole of Life. In the Eastern
fashion it is expressed as the Right Means of Livelihood. (You can see that the
concepts given in Knowledge of Higher Worlds is much wider and much more
comprehensive.) The student endeavors to live in conformity with both nature
and spirit, never over-hasty but also never indolent; one should strive to be
neither excessively active nor lazy, and so on.
The
sixth is concerned with human Endeavor. We test our capacities and proficiency
and conduct ourselves in the light of such self-knowledge; we attempt nothing
that is beyond our powers but seek to omit nothing that is within our scope,
and so on.
The seventh
deals with the effort to learn as much from life as possible. Nothing passes
before us without giving us occasion to accumulate experience which is of value
for our life.
The
eighth is that we must from time to time glance introspectively into ourselves,
sink back into ourselves, take ourselves carefully to task, form and test the
fundamental principles of our life, run over in our thoughts the sum total of
our knowledge, weigh our duties, reflect upon the content and aim of our life,
and so on. (This was called Meditation in the Eastern version, and it is, of
course, Meditation-Contemplation.)
This is the eightfold path. It
is the development of, one might say, the eight inner petals of the Mars
chakram. Our task is to find the obvious macrocosmic picture of this chakram
that appears in the human being. Of course we must imagine that it is not just
a matter of comparing that which takes place and which is there in the human
being with that which we have here and which is a picture of the movements of
Mars. One thing is certain: we have descended from the cosmic world between
death and rebirth, and each time we enter a life on the Earth we bring down the
heritage of our experiences in the cosmos. We know that our body is built up by
that which we learned and experienced in the spheres of the planets and even
beyond the spheres of the planets. One can say that the planets are in us, in a
sense they are present in us. In us there is Saturn, there is Jupiter, there is
Mars; they are modified, but they are modified to such an extent that they have
the possibility of being spiritualized. After all, what is the meaning of human
beings constantly incarnating and bringing down to the Earth the heritage of
their experiences in the spheres of the planets and then in the moment of death
taking them back again? A human being is a means, so to speak, by which the
divine world transforms that which is in the macrocosmic world, which is the
universe. All the functions of human beings, even eating and digesting, are
really designed to be sacrifices, to be kinds of service for the whole
universe, for the whole cosmos. This is, of course, not recognized now. For the
most part, human beings take in their food because they must exist. For many it
doesn’t matter what takes place within the sphere of digestion; and anyhow,
with the present means of cognition we cannot comprehend what takes place, for
instance, in the stomach, in the intestines, in the whole metabolic system. We
don’t know these things, and perhaps it is just as well that we don’t know, for
then we don’t interfere with it, because it is a sacred region. It is there the
great transformation of that which is out there in the cosmos takes place. It
is transformed; it has the opportunity to be transformed into something
spiritual. Perhaps one time in the future humanity will recognize this — what
actually takes place within the body.
Thus we must also think of
the forces of Mars as having been given to us at one time. At a certain moment,
and each time when we incarnate, we bring those forces down to the Earth again.
When we go back into the spiritual world after death we also bring, of course,
those fruits of our life — so to speak, the fruits of that which had become our
own individual Mars. We take them back to the spiritual world; and we can
imagine that then comes the great moment when this fruit, our personal Mars
fruit, is going to be tested, let us say, in the sphere of Mars against the
expectations of the cosmic world, of those beings who live on
Mars. Then
it remains to be seen whether as individuals we have lived up to the
expectations of the cosmos. If not, of course, we will realize it during the
life between death and new birth, and from that realization the desire to
incarnate will arise again in order to make it better next time. Thus Mars is
implanted into the human being, and the highest manifestation of Mars, the most
subtle imprint coming from the sphere of Mars, is contained in that
supersensible organ, which is that spiritual organ of the sixteen-petalled
chakram or lotus.
Now if we take these eight
functions of the eightfold path of Buddha as they are represented in the book Knowledge
of Higher Worlds, then we very soon become aware that it is a path toward a
healthy confrontation with the external world. It’s a path; it’s a function;
its rules give us the opportunity to face the external, physical world in a
fashion that is healthy and which can build the foundation for healthy
existence on this planet. All these eight rules are really very practical
advice, if we read through them. They are almost common sense advice, and yet
they are most important. What is contained in these eight truths? You know that
we speak here of the seven celestial entities, the Sun, the Moon, and the five
planets. Of course we are all very well aware that three more planets have been
discovered, about which we can speak some time later, but from the viewpoint of
that which is contained within the physical framework of a human being, we must
speak of seven celestial entities as far as function is concerned. We can also
see eight functions in this eightfold path; that is, we can see something that
is also connected with the organic life of the human body.
These seven planets are of
course not isolated. You know yourself if you look at the human body, that one
cannot take, for instance, the liver or the heart as something which stands, so
to speak, on its own ground and is quite independent from any other organ. We
know perfectly well how much the liver is dependent on the circulation, and the
heart is again dependent on what the lungs do, and so on. We can see how there
is an intimate interrelation between the organs in the human body; and these
organs in the human body are, as we know, nothing else but that which has been
individualized in a corporeal sense and brought down from the spheres of the
planets. The liver is nothing else but the individualized — of course
corporeally individualized — Jupiter, and so on. There is an intimate
interrelationship between the planets, between those seven celestial bodies,
and this interrelationship reflects itself into the single planet. For instance
we are speaking of Mars. In Mars are reflected the seven again; they are there,
as seven reflections. Thus we can speak of, say, Saturn in the language, in the
modulation of Mars. So we can also speak of the Jupiter function in the sphere
of Mars, and so on.
There is a certain
similarity to the seven great Archangels. The seven great Archangels actually
belong to the Archai, to the Spirits of Personality, although they are called
Archangels. But we know that those seven in themselves, although they belong to
one hierarchy, reflect in themselves again the totality of the choirs of the
hierarchies, the seven or nine choirs of the hierarchies. As we have here eight
conjunctions and eight loops of Mars in the course of 16 years, a kind of
gigantic cosmic lotus or Mars chakram, we can now imagine, and one can work it
out in all detail, that seven of the eight are connected with the planets.
Take just the first of the
functions. The first is the way in which ideas and conceptions are acquired.
With some imagination, we can see that is nothing else but Saturn, the
reflection of Saturn in the sphere of Mars. Saturn alone would never get beyond
some kind of etheric formations, never beyond that which takes place along the
border between the astral sphere and the etheric sphere. In order to bring it
right down to the physical, even to the material world, Saturn needs Mars;
however, then Saturn appears in that sphere of Mars as a function, and that is
the function or the capacity to acquire ideas and conceptions in the right
fashion. We can see it quite clearly, it is a very practical rule, but at the
same time it is a rule that concerns ideas and conceptions, something of a
psychological nature; yet, we approach them from the physical level, from the
level of physical practicability. These are the seven, and the eighth is, so to
speak, the summing up, the taking together, also the function of bringing order
into the seven, an inner order.
I don’t want to go too much
into such details tonight as, for instance, how the conjunctions and loops are
connected with the seven planets and how they are then summarized in the
eighth. As a matter of fact, we can start anywhere, we can start, say, in 1955
and look forward to that event which will take place on the 17th of August when Mars will be beyond the Sun, behind
the Sun in one line — well, if we look out toward the Sun then we can imagine
near that Sun in the background there will also be Mars in a conjunction. We
can start with that, and then we can, for instance, look back and say to ourselves
that yes, there must also be a rhythm somewhere of seven. If we go back seven
years into the past, we come to a loop in 1948 (see diagram, p. 46) that
actually took place just in that same position of the Zodiac. The loop was
actually almost exactly in that position in Lion where this conjunction will
now take place in the course of this year.
We have already been able to
find certain significant rhythms in the cosmos, such as the rhythm of 18 years
and 7 months, which is the movement of the Moon node, the 12 years’ rhythm is
expressed in the movement of Jupiter, the 30 years’ rhythm in the movement of
Saturn, then we have the 27 or 28 day movement of the Moon in the course of one
month, and so on. But the rhythm of seven years is a reality that you know of
yourself, and you may have experienced in your own life how the rhythm of seven
years is something quite dramatic and quite real in a human life. Yet, as far
as I know, a rhythm of seven years is only indicated in these movements of
Mars.
Now then, we can go further,
and it is quite interesting to follow this up. From 1948, the next would be
‘49; you see we go over here (Fishes), and so on to ‘55. In a sense the circle
is closed; only half of the circle consists of loops and the other half of
conjunctions, but nevertheless the circle is closed. By the way, it is not
exactly seven years, it leans already into the eighth. This in ‘48 took place
in the beginning of the year, and this takes place in the second half of the
year 1955, so there is a gap of about half a year, seven and a half. The last
year of the seven already leads right into the next seven years’ period. We can
see this 8th in ’55 is already in the next cycle, but it begins,
so to speak, in the same place where our journey commenced in ‘48. If we
investigate this Mars rhythm of seven years, we will find that the other
planets alternate somewhere in these gestures.
The question is what does it
mean? To answer the question we will need two things: first, the planet and
then its gestures. We see now the planet Mars with its great cosmic chakram. We
know that it has to do with speech because it is the spiritual organ near the
larynx; in fact, Mars is connected with speech to a high degree. We also found
that this planet obviously has to do with those down-to-Earth practical things
that are contained, for instance, in the advice of the eightfold path. That is
the planet Mars, and now we add it to the gesture of Mars.
We have spoken before about this position of Mars when
it is in a conjunction behind the Sun. Now the Sun, as we know, is a place in
the cosmos that is just the opposite of the Earth — the opposite in every
respect. It is that point where space actually disappears and where we enter
non-space, etc. The Sun is also, as perhaps you remember from how we spoke of
it last year, the portal to the spiritual world, the world of the dead. If
there is the non-space world, then
it is quite
logical that into that non-space world the souls of the dead will enter after
passing over the threshold. Now we have the picture that is something like a
tremendous curtain (vertical line in diagram),
a border between the Earth and the Sun; here it is plus space or
three-dimensional space, and this other is minus or non-space. Now what would
you think if Mars goes beyond that Sun? What kind of a Mars is that? Is it a
Mars that is very near something; what? Well, in any case it is not near the
Earth; it is as far as possible away from the Earth. With what kind of world
would that Mars be connected? We have already given the answer; it would be
connected with the world of the dead, for instance. The dead live in the
spheres of the planets. They would not appreciate very much this position
(loop) of Mars. That reminds them too much of the earthly world. What they
prefer, where they can live and breathe, where they can experience Mars in
their own being is this position where Mars is standing and resting in the
sphere of spiritual archetypes of physical existence. The opposite is when Mars
comes so near to the Earth, and then this Mars helps and promotes the
incorporation of the archetypes of the physical world into the earthly world. It
is a process of incorporation; but here in this event, which we shall have to
face in the summer, we have the opposite. Fundamentally it is an event that
refers us to a realm where the dead live, where the beings of the spiritual
world live, where the archetypes of the physical world dwell, and so on. We
must enlarge on it, of course, but for now it is the one point that we must
bear in mind.
I
would like to mention something else that is remarkable with regard to the
events during the summer. Mars is not alone behind the Sun and out in that
realm which is turned away from the Earth — the world of the spiritual
archetypes, the soul world and Spirit-land, as it is called in the book Theosophy
— all the planets are behind the Sun at this time, except perhaps Saturn,
which is too far away and is down here somewhere (Scales). Here in the
constellations of Crab and Lion we have all the planets standing behind the
Sun: Mars, Jupiter, then also Venus and Mercury. Therefore, we are very much
reminded that it is not just our own little physical world down here that comes
under celestial consideration. In such a unique position of the planets is
contained something like a clarion call of the cosmos: “Widen your
consciousness, think of us, think of the cosmos, look at things that you
experience on the Earth also from the point of view of the cosmos, from those
who have passed across the threshold.”
However, so far all this is
only the characteristic of Mars. What we must add to this in order to give this
Mars a color or a mood, so to speak, is the constellation in which the event
takes place; and that is Lion. Last time we worked out the twelve constellations
in connection with the symbols, which have been used since very ancient times. We
had to modify some of the symbols, but we could always recognize the original
symbol. I want to give you a picture of how this can fit very well into a
Christianized, spiritualized Buddhism, because we have been speaking about the
eightfold path, and we have something here like a cosmic counterpart of the
eightfold path of Buddha.
We can see that the Zodiac
was also known in Buddhism, just as the knowledge of that which appeared in
human beings as the microcosmic Mars chakram was known and also in connection
with the Mars world out there in the cosmos. Thus also the connection between
the human being, the world, and the twelve constellations was known, and that
is contained in the twelve Nidanas of Buddhism. What are the twelve Nidanas? Buddhism
speaks of the Wheel of Life, which has twelve spokes, and these are the twelve
Nidanas. What is that? It is nothing else but the microcosmic conception of the
Zodiac. If we read about these twelve Nidanas of Buddhism — of course it is a
bit difficult because we cannot always rely on translations, but something is
always shining through — we realize at once that it is nothing else but a
description similar to that which we did in connection with the symbols. By the
way, I want to assure you that I did not take the twelve Nidanas of Buddhism in
order to work out the symbols. This is something that came later into my
consciousness.
The first, for instance, is Existence, blind and
without knowledge in the very beginning. We called it the beginning (Ram,
philosophically connected with Idealism). Then Stirring, Formative, and
Organizing: we called it a further stage in the descent down to realization,
actually to manifestation (Bull, philosophically connected with Rationalism). Then
Awareness which begets Organisms: that is Twins, a further step, and we have
then the upper world and the lower world and streams communicating between the
two (philosophically connected with Mathematism). Then the fourth of the
Nidanas, which is called in Buddhism the Six Fields (Crab). The fifth is the
Five Senses (Lion), and the sixth is the Mind (Virgin). I took them all in one
go because they are really interrelated. What are the Six Fields? The Six
Fields are really that world which we perceive through the senses; and the Five
Senses is the fifth. Now let’s see how that works. Let us say here is the eye
(see drawing) and out there in space is a candle, which we see. The five senses
is one thing; in this case the sense of sight, but the object out there, that
belongs to the Six Fields. I would explain it a bit more. The human being has
five senses and the Buddhist usually combines with them the mind, what we call
the mind. It is very difficult to translate the con-
cepts of
Buddhism into modern language. But the Buddhist combines the mind with the five
senses, and then we have six. Six Fields, the senses perceive. The organism of
the senses of humanity is embedded into Six Fields. So that would be Crab, that
world of the objects of sense perception. It is really the material world, and
that is Crab. Incidentally, Crab is connected with Materialism in a
philosophical sense. The Lion, the Five Senses, and that is connected with
Sensualism (or sensism) in a philosophical sense. The Virgin, the Mind, is
philosophically connected with Phenomenalism.
Thus we would find all twelve. It is interesting that
in the seventh, which is Scales, we find Contact with Things — touch and
philosophically connected with Realism. In the eighth, which is Scorpion, it is
Sensation; that which creeps, so to speak, into human beings and takes us into
the physical world and takes us out, so to speak — it is almost temptation and
is philosophically connected with Dynamism. In the ninth, First of
Individualized Being, that would be Archer (philosophically connected with
Monadism). It cannot be mistaken; the twelve Nidanas are, so to speak, the
microcosmic reflection in the human world of the twelve great constellations of
the Zodiac. So we are somewhere on solid ground when we are speaking of that
which concerns Lion. The Lion must give us the fundamental motive and mood of
that event which takes place in summer during this year of ‘55. Last time we
spoke about Lion, and we said the symbol is something like: , coming from the
periphery and establishing this sort of center here, a somewhat emancipated and
self-contained being. That is certainly the one thing that works in humanity
and which leads us to that world where we stand and live with our five senses. That
is the fifth of the Nidanas of Buddhism.
We have not received all of
this from the cosmos in order to sit on it and have a good rest. We have
received it in order to evolve it and to contribute to evolution. It is the
parable of the talents in the New Testament. We are not given the talents in
order to bury them so that thieves and others don’t take them, but we are
supposed to use those talents and to increase them; and woe if we don’t do it. Then
even that which has been given to us is taken away from us. Therefore it will
not do merely to sit down and say, “Yes, all right, Lion is obviously that
which comes from the periphery and establishes itself in that center, in the
heart.” It may well be that we are called upon, and especially if we tread on a
path of occult development, to return with all that which we have developed in
the isolation of Lion and take something back to that periphery as a message. That
perhaps may be the task.
You see, dear friends, what
I am really driving at is this: It will not do to ask, “What does it mean?” We
won’t get anywhere if we ask, “What does this conjunction of Mars mean?” We can
get, of course, hundreds of answers. There are many almanacs in the world that
tell us all the things connected with this conjunction of Mars with the Sun. Also
there are pretensions to give prognosis of the weather during such times and
all that, but it just won’t do. Usually we find ourselves deceived. It leaves
us empty. It takes away something of our cosmic dignity, because our cosmic
dignity is to “do” something in such a moment, to contribute something to the
world in such a moment, even if it is in a very small way. It need not be just
in that moment. I do think that such influences are most powerful when we are
working toward them. The working up to such a conjunction is the time when we
must develop thoughts and ideas that can be fruitful for the cosmos. What are
these? What does it mean, going up to such a conjunction? How can we do that?
It is only words if we say, “All right, we go from that which we feel and which
we have developed in ourselves as our own being, we go out to the periphery
again.” What does it mean?
The Lion is also connected
with the five senses. To put it into a nutshell, I would say what is needed in
such a moment as this is that we are aware and exercise, meditate, so to speak,
about this idea of trying to establish, control, and chiefly to use the five
senses — say the sense of sight or the sense of hearing — in full consciousness
and that awareness, so that we do not see the world and hear the world for our
own purposes. I believe it is still a common notion that the world is there for
the human being and not the other way round. However, more and more the time
will come — and I believe the shadow, or rather, the light of those future
times is already falling into the present — that what we see and hear in the
world must not only be for us but must be practiced and retained and even done,
as it were, for those who are beyond the threshold, living among the dead and
also for the hierarchies of the spiritual world. Because they have no eyes,
they have no ears, they do not know what happens in this world to the degree to
which we experience it in the world of the senses. They do not know it, and
they are waiting for the human being to tell them what is happening in this
world. In this present moment — and I mean moment in a wider sense, in a
historic sense — the human being enters more and more a kind of agonizing
loneliness. Human beings can live very close to each other, and yet they can be
terribly lonely. This is due to many factors connected with human life, but one
of them is that we must learn again to live for others. It will be needed, that
we pay great attention to the feeding of the spiritual world by that which we
experience in this world.
Dear friends, there is in
these days so much reason for complaint, for bitterness, for anxiety, even for
fear of the things to come, and there are so few among human beings to whom one
can speak, to whom one can communicate these anxieties, but there is one
possibility, and that is to communicate them to those beings beyond the
threshold. Then something wonderful will happen, because we shall lose all
those anxieties and fears and what not; they will just leave because we shall
then realize that beyond the threshold to the spiritual world, they certainly
are eager to hear, in a spiritual sense, what the human being experiences in
the physical world. However, there they have different aspects, more worldwide
aspects, more cosmic aspects than those taking place on the Earth. Thus in that
kind of cooperation, which can grow, there can enter into existence a kind of
comfort of which most human beings do not even dream at present — a kind of
direct communion with the spiritual world. Such events are, of course,
something like foci in the distance. This conjunction occurs in only a few
months, but nevertheless it is a focus. We must imagine that the road to that
end has stages, but once one sees the focus, so to speak, even if only in the
distance, one can know what the stages contain, what the stages really demand
and how one must preserve, in a sense, on one hand and distribute on the other
hand one’s efforts in order to get there.
I would like just to mention
that Mars is in Ram at present, where it entered a few days ago. Just a few
days earlier, when it was a bit further back, it was in opposition to another
planet, which does not belong to the seven that we mentioned before. It is one
of the newly discovered planets, the planet Neptune (see p. 71, outer circle). At
the same time Uranus was also up here — another one of those newly discovered
planets. If we had, so to speak, used a cosmic ruler as big as the cosmos, we
could have drawn such a geometrical form in the cosmos. In astrology it is
known as a square. We cannot spend very much time on this, but try to work it
out for yourself. We have experienced what took place during the last few days;
we have read and heard about the catastrophes taking place all over the
Northern Hemisphere and floods in the Southern Hemisphere. These nature
catastrophes all round the globe are related to this. Such catastrophes are
only possible because there is a vacuum created in the human world. Something
gives way and creates a vacuum, and into this vacuum there streams wild forces
of nature that create havoc. These catastrophes are reminders of what is really
demanded from that inner development of which we spoke.
Thus it will come just about
that time, a bit earlier, that Mars will move up here into this position and
will come into conjunction with Uranus; then we will again have the square. The
interplay of these planets back and forth is aggravating a situation that we
should fill with positive forces in order to counteract it. Try to work it out.
Really look at this as if we would look at a piece of clay, as something which
we can mold, something that expects something from us, which expects the fruits
of an inner development from us to fill that vacuum. I believe these are the
things that we must face in this age. I don’t think it is of very much use any
longer to speak of or to look out for the answer to what the things mean, for
the meaning lies in us. Even if we fail, and with regard to many of these
events in the cosmos we shall fail, because we have not even taken the very
first step on the path toward them; still, we must learn how to do this. I
believe this is what a new cosmology really demands from us. In a fortnight we
shall meet again and carry on with our work here.
Answers to Questions:
Would you
speak about the square aspect of Uranus and Neptune?
We can trace the
deterioration of the weather back two years when Uranus and Neptune first came
into a square relationship. These two planets form a combination of two great spiritual
forces. They represent, as one aspect, Lucifer and Ahriman. Neptune has been
remarkably connected with events in the last three years, and Uranus is in the
constellation of Twins, which also represents these two opposing forces. We
must transform this into a Trinity; we must fill the “gap” or vacuum with the
Third element — as in the great statue by Rudolf Steiner, where Christ holds
the balance by stepping between the two. If this does not take place a vacuum
will occur in the human soul, where the two “others” can make mischief. It is
this which lives in that square; for all heavenly events express spiritual
facts.
Will it help
to read to the dead?
Yes! One way would be
to read to the dead. We have to work not only for ourselves but also for the dead.
Each one can find their individual approach. One can enhance the stature of
humanity to a degree unknown hitherto; for we must remember how closely the
powers of Mars enter both our daily life and our speech.