where I was to work for eleven years as a science master in the senior
classes, which activity I have since continued outside Germany in a
more or less similar form.

This conversation with Rudolf Steiner took place in a large hall where,
while we were talking, over a thousand people were assembling to
discuss matters of concern to the Anthroposophical Movement. This did
not prevent him from asking me about the details of my examination
work, in which I was still engaged at that time; he always gave himself
fully to whatever claimed his attention at the moment. I told him of my
experimental researches in electrical high-frequency phenomena, briefly
introducing the particular problem with which I was occupied. I took it
for granted that a question from such a specialized branch of physics
would not be of much interest to him. Judge of my astonishment when he
at once took out of his pocket a note-book and a huge carpenter's
pencil, made a sketch and proceeded to speak of the problem as one
fully conversant with it, and in such a way that he gave me the
starting point for an entirely new conception of electricity. It was
instantly borne in on me that if electricity came to be understood in
this sense, results would follow which in the end would lead to a quite
new technique in the use of it. From that moment it became one of my
life's aims to contribute whatever my circumstances and powers would
allow to the development of an understanding of nature of this kind.

1 The speaker was the late Dr. Elizabeth Vreede, for some years leader
of the Mathematical-Astronomical Section at the Goetheanum, Dornach,
Switzerland.

2 The activities mentioned above do not exhaust the practical
possibilities of Spiritual Science. At that time (1921) Rudolf Steiner