The Rudolf Steiner Archive

after eurythmy-dramatic presentations: “Dedication”, “Prelude to the Theater”, “Prologue in Heaven”

Yesterday and on other occasions, I have spoken about the fact that Goethe's Mephistopheles is fundamentally a contradictory figure. We also already know why he is a contradictory figure. One could say that Mephistophelean, that is, Ahrimanic and Luciferic character traits are combined in him in a colorful jumble. Goethe, one might say, was not yet able to distinguish these character traits. If, on the one hand, one values a work of art as highly as you have seen me do with 'Faust', then one may also draw attention to such factual things. It remains strange, however, that so little has been noted about the contradictions in the poetry itself, although it has been done in individual cases. This is also a sign of the way in which things are often received today: one does not approach them with sufficient inner participation, so as to notice the inner life and activity. For if one did, one would soon have to notice, for example, the inner contradictions in the figure of Mephistopheles.

Let us take, first of all, a contradiction that may not be complete, but is nevertheless very strong, and which might be noticed immediately when one hears Mephistopheles speak in the scene that has just passed before our soul.

I see only how people toil.
The little god of the world always remains of the same ilk,
And is as whimsical as on the first day.
He would live a little better
If you had not given him the glow of heavenly light;
He calls it reason and uses it alone,

Only to be more animalistic than any animal. What must one feel when Mephistopheles criticizes the fact that man does it this way? Now, no one would credit Mephistopheles with very deep, selfless goals. He can't, even after this first scene in “Prologue in Heaven.” For what does Mephistopheles actually want? He wants Faust, doesn't he? He wants him for himself and so basically has to approve of everything Faust does in order to get together with him, to grasp him, to take hold of him. In this case, to take hold means to seize, not to understand; it is not meant conceptually, abstractly. “Can you grasp him?” – can you seize him? Mephistopheles will want to do everything to do so. It would suit him very well if Faust had all the qualities that would bring him into the very claws of Mephistopheles!

Let us turn to a later verse, where Mephistopheles confronts Faust himself in the study, where Faust speaks of his attitude towards reason and science. Faust leaves; Mephistopheles remains in his long robe. One can imagine that he will now be honest with himself, this Mephistopheles. So he says:

Despise reason and science,
Man's highest power,
Let only in Blend- and Zauberwerken
You from the lying spirit strengthen,
So I have you already unconditional.

So that could suit him just fine, when man does not apply reason and science in the right sense, but uses them to be more animalistic than any animal. Then he will just talk the Lord into it, won't he:

If thou hadst not given him the semblance of heavenly light;
He calls it reason and uses it alone,
Only to be more animal than any animal.

I say it is not a complete contradiction, but it is a strong contradiction for the senses.

In the scene I just quoted, where Mephistopheles stands opposite Faust in the study, it is clear that he is speaking sincerely as Ahriman-Mephistopheles. But in the passage you heard today:

He calls it reason and needs it alone,
Only to be more beastly than any beast,

a Luciferian trait comes into it. Lucifer cannot approve of Faust using reason to incite the animal passions. But Ahriman would have to approve if Faust behaved as Mephisto criticizes him for doing. In this case, we have not a half-contradiction, but a three-quarters contradiction!

But what are we to make of another passage?

As long as he lives on earth,
so long do not forbid it.
Man errs, so long as he strives.

I thank you for that; for with the dead
I have never been willing to associate myself.
Most of all I love my own full, fresh cheeks.
I am not at home with a corpse;
I feel like a cat with a mouse.

If you compare that with the scene that we might also be able to perform one day, where Mephisto finally tries so hard to get the soul, in the second part, when the corpse is lying there, how are we supposed to cope at all? The devil is after souls, and here he is talking about the opposite! There are many such contradictions. I only wanted to give two examples; the first is a three-quarter contradiction that is found in the poetry itself. Such contradictions can certainly be attributed to the fact that the two character traits, the Luciferian and the Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian, get mixed up.

Now the question may arise for us: how is it that Goethe actually places Ahriman-Mephistopheles at Faust's side, directing all attention to Ahriman-Mephistopheles and, as it were, still suppressing Lucifer altogether? — That must surely be a question. For the fact that Goethe, under the influence of his time, was tempted to place Mephistopheles at Faust's side means that he has also taken on Luciferian traits and thus, so to speak, blamed Mephistopheles-Ahriman for everything that should be divided between the two. Thus there must be reasons in the time to turn more attention to Mephistopheles than to Lucifer. By treating the Faust saga, Goethe goes back to the time when the Middle Ages collided with the modern era. And he has essentially absorbed the impulses of the time that arose from this clash between the Middle Ages and the modern era. If we consider somewhat more ancient poetry, poetry that follows more ancient impulses, we find an opposite confusion. We can also talk about this some other time. But today I just want to hint at it. In Milton's 'Paradise Lost', you will find the opposite mistake made. Everything that should have been attributed to Ahriman-Mephistopheles is dumped on Lucifer, although not in such a crude way as it is done in “Faust”. As I said, we will talk about this some other time. It was more of a mistake that the Middle Ages made, to focus more on Lucifer. And the mistake that the modern era makes is to focus more on Ahriman-Mephistopheles. Now we live in a time in which the correct relationship between the two world powers, Mephistopheles and Lucifer, must be more and more recognized by people. Hence our group, our sculptural group, which is intended for the building here and which is to show the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic – Mephistopheles and Lucifer – in the right relationship to each other in pictorial form.

If you want to understand what it is actually about, you have to consider something that still seems quite paradoxical to people today, but which will one day, when people do not really reject spiritual science from their earthly existence, be deeply understood. We live in modern times under very special impulses, under which we have to live. It is right that we live under these impulses. We must only recognize these impulses. We must not mistake them. I have often explained how the Copernican world view had to arise at the beginning of modern times, how it is justified, deeply justified. We have somewhat different feelings about this Copernican world view than the external world has. For if one considers the feelings with which the external world faces the Copernican world view, one can hardly come to any other conclusion than that people say: Well, the Middle Ages and antiquity were stupid, and we have become clever, and when the Middle Ages and antiquity were stupid, they thought that the sun moved and constructed all kinds of cycles and epicycles — the Ptolemaic worldview — and then believed that, assumed the movements of the heavenly bodies according to appearances. In a certain sense, this is even true for the Middle Ages, especially for the later Middle Ages, because confusion had already crept into what had emerged as the Ptolemaic worldview. But the original Ptolemaic world view was not like that; it was part of the original ancient revelation, had come into human souls through the ancient mysteries and by no means through mere external observation, and was therefore based on revelation. With this revelation, modern times broke, and modern times asked the question: How should one look at the sky in order to get to know it and its movements? — Copernicus first did the calculations, tried to make a simple calculation of the movements of the heavenly bodies, and then showed how the positions that were calculated actually corresponded to the positions of the heavenly bodies. And so, by way of calculation, he invented his Copernican system, formulated three theorems that can be found in Copernicus' works themselves, about the movements of the heavenly bodies in relation to our Earth. Of these three propositions, however, one was left out, and that is how the present-day confused Copernican view of the world came about, which is not that of Copernicus himself. The third was inconvenient – so it was left out! Therefore, anyone who merely learns the Copernican view of the world from the usual books does not know the view of Copernicus at all. But that was bound to happen. First, Copernicus had to establish a far more correct doctrine with his three propositions. Then our teaching had to come, which is based on two of Copernicus's propositions. Only when the whole matter is thoroughly penetrated in spiritual-scientific terms will the right thing emerge.

Then came those who sought to understand the movements of the heavenly bodies and their laws in a more external way, not through calculation. The telescope came. People learned to examine the sky as they examined things on earth. And in this way modern astronomy and modern astrophysics arose, a science that arises entirely from the fact that what is observed is expressed in laws; that is, one wants to explain the sky by observing the sky. And what could be more natural than this? Modern man must think that anyone who wanted to know anything other than the heavens by observing the heavens must be a completely crazy fellow. That is quite obvious, isn't it. And yet it is not correct, but it is one of the great deceptions. It is something that will be quite different in the future. In the future, too, people will consult the heavens even more than they do now, wanting to learn about the movements that live and breathe in the heavenly bodies. They will study the heavens carefully and intently, but they will know one thing that we do not know today, that seems completely paradoxical to us when we say it out loud: You learn nothing about the heavens by observing them. The most false method of getting to know the sky and its movements is to observe it as one does today. — No, I am saying something completely twisted. But one must relate to the distortions differently than the good Christian von Ehrenfels, to whom I referred eight days ago, related to them. One will observe the sky, observe it more and more thoroughly and let it tell one its secrets. But what will these secrets reveal in the distant future? They will reveal what is happening here on earth. That is what they will reveal. People will observe the sky, but they will explain from what they recognize in the sky how plants grow on earth, how animals come into being on earth, everything that forms on earth, everything that lives and weaves on earth. The information that heaven reveals will provide enlightenment about this. It will no longer occur to anyone to ask heaven about heaven, but rather they will ask heaven in order to find enlightenment about the earth. And the most significant laws that one will learn about from heaven will be used to reveal the secrets of earthly existence. Old astrology, which is little recognized today in its original meaning and which has largely become amateurish, even charlatanistic, will be revived in a completely new form. Not only will earthly destinies be sought in the movements of the stars and in the laws of the heavens, but the laws of earthly life, that which lives and moves, will be explained in terms of the laws of the heavenly bodies. One will not know why salt crystallizes in cubes, why diamond crystallizes in octahedrons, and so on, before one explains that which has forms here on earth from the positions of the heavenly bodies. And the secret of the life of animals, plants and human beings will not be known as the secret of life until the movements of the heavenly bodies, whose effect is life, can be used to explain what lives and moves here on earth. The earth is explained from the heavens. Admittedly, what is known about heaven will take on a somewhat different form from what is claimed to be known today. The laws of the positions and movements of the heavenly bodies will be investigated. But then one will let oneself be inspired meditatively by what one investigates in order to enter into a relationship, so to speak, with the beings that live in the stars. One will let oneself be told by the beings that live there what one will need to know for life on earth.

That is a future prospect. You now know that in a similar way to how Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler, who, incidentally, still had old ideas flowing in their minds, tried to discover the laws of celestial motion by observing the heavens, and how this was continued in their spirit in more recent times, so Darwin, Lamarck and Haeckel tried to find the laws of earthly life. And what would be more natural here than to get to know the earth through the earth! You travel around, as Darwin did, you use a microscope, as Haeckel did, you rationalize, as Lamarck did, about the creatures of the earth and try to recognize the laws by which life on earth is governed. On the other hand, you can be considered a crank if you don't see it as a matter of course. The future will not see it as a matter of course at all! If you consider the straight, beautiful course of development that modern biology has taken from Darwin to Haeckel and to Haeckel's students, you will find that it has led to the formation of certain laws, especially about embryonic life. The so-called biogenetic law plays an important role, that in embryonic life, man follows the individual animal species. You know that I have often drawn attention to the biogenetic law. In order to find this, such observations were made in the hope of finding something about the life of living beings. We may say that the present time is again occupied with the dissection of these views, only that it is little noticed in lay circles. Copernican astronomy is already strongly doubted by individual more insightful people. And Haeckel's student, Oscar Hertwig, has expressed things in his last writings that are likely to call into question everything that the Darwin-Haeckel theory has brought to the surface. If you educate yourself from what is happening within the field of science, you get a different view than if you educate yourself only according to what is offered to the public in popular lectures by the usual lecturers – well, I dare not say Mauthner, how should I put it? Much is already happening in the actual specialized science, and what is given here as a future perspective is already being prepared. Only one will have to come to spiritual science, so that what is going on does not become confused, but really appropriate.

Now I must again say something that is paradoxical. By observing what is happening on earth, you do not learn anything about the earth; you will learn that one day when you read from the stars what is happening on earth. But what actually happens out there in space, that is learned through the observation of, for example, embryology and so on. One can treat this observation in turn as I have indicated before, that one observes the movements of the sky; one can enter into a relationship with the elementary beings that regulate these movements within the events on earth. Just as one will ask the heavens to explain the earth, so one will ask the earth to explain the heavens. As I said, it is still paradoxical today, but it will come, in some way it will come over this earth, that this correct view will take hold. Astronomers will establish biology by the means of their science, and biologists will establish astronomy by the means of their science. And a biology truly founded on the data of astrology will be spiritual science, and an astrology founded on the data of true embryology will be spiritual astronomy. When you consider this, you must say to yourself: Humanity does not follow a straight line of development, but moves forward, as it were, in waves, in a wavy line, up and down. And in order to prepare the right spiritual view that had to come, error had to arise, which consists in wanting to explain heaven by heaven and earth by earth in modern times. People lived under this impression.

But Goethe did not live entirely under this impression, not entirely. In a sense, Goethe had pre-Darwinized Darwinism, but his was a much more spiritual Darwinism. He did not just focus on the external sensory sequence of phenomena, but on the primal plant and the primal animal. And I have often referred to the well-known conversation between Goethe and Schiller, where Goethe, after they had seen how plants were viewed side by side at the botanist Batsch's in Jena, and Schiller found this unsatisfactory, sketched out the so-called primal plant with a few strokes. This picture by Goethe does not exist. In the introduction to Goethe's morphological writings in Kürschner's National-Literatur, which I wrote in the 1880s, I tried to trace this Goethean primal plant. You can find it there as I have traced it. Schiller, however, said: That is not reality, that is an idea. — Goethe said: Then I see my idea with eyes. He was clear about the fact that this was an intuition for him, an experience, not something thought up, something rationalized. And if you get to know Goethe that way, get to know him quite intimately, whether it is through his poetic endeavors in connection with his scientific ones, or whether it is the other way around, in his scientific endeavors in connection with his poetic ones – I have just interpretation of Goethe, one sees how Goethe does not feel quite comfortable explaining heaven by heaven and earth by earth, and how this principle of modern times is continually being broken through in his ideas. That is why it is so difficult to understand Goethe's theory of colors today, because what Goethe actually wants is an astronomical explanation of the secret of colors. And if you read Goethe's Morphology very carefully, you will see how certain things come into play that originate from the very beginnings of astronomy. This is particularly evident when you consider Goethe's essays on the spiral tendency of plants. Now, that would lead to details, which I can only draw attention to today; I just want to point them out.

Let us now raise the question: how is it that this more recent period, which we have been calculating since the clash of the Middle Ages with the modern age, since the advent of Copernicanism, Galileism, Keplerism, and which we have been following up to Darwinism, to Haeckelism, to Lamarckism, how is it that this time considers explaining the heavens by the heavens, the earth by the earth, instead of the earth by the heavens and the heavens by the earth? How is that? — It is due to a twofold seduction, in that Ahriman as well as Lucifer seduce people. In the Middle Ages, when things were being prepared, when people were heading towards Copernicanism, Darwinism, it was more of a Luciferic activity, it was Luciferic impulses that prepared that. And when Copernicanism had emerged, it was more of an Ahrimanic seduction. It is Ahriman who essentially lives in people by carrying out this reversal of people that I have spoken of. For ultimately, modern science is entirely under Ahrimanic influence. And Goethe sensed correctly when he felt that Ahriman was close to the person, to Mephistopheles, in modern times. For him it was less important to consider the relationship of Lucifer to man than that of Ahriman to man. His particular attention had to be directed towards this. The Luciferic influence was of less importance to him. For Faust is presented from the very beginning of the story as the man of modern times. The various aberrations of theology at the end of the Middle Ages stemmed from Lucifer. But Faust appears on the scene by placing the Bible under the bench and declaring himself to be a man of the world and a physician, that is, he wants to explain the earth by means of the earth and heaven by means of heaven, not as was the case with the old theologians of the late Middle Ages, who still tried, as a last atavism, to explain the wonders of the earth from the revelations of theology, that is, to explain them from heaven. In more recent times, Ahriman appeared at man's side. Those who felt this, but who were not imbued with the necessity, but only permeated with the fear of the devil, therefore blasphemed the Faust, who only followed the necessary impulse of modern times. And so the sixteenth-century Faust legend came into being, which has Faust burnt and consigned to hell because he falls prey to Ahriman. Those who still lived under the atavism of the Middle Ages gave this form to the legend, as it were. Goethe was no longer under the influence of the Middle Ages. Therefore he did not have his Faust burnt and consigned to hell. But he did pose the big question: What should actually be done?

Let us look at the matter quite specifically. What do we actually do when we explain the earth through the earth? Let us grasp it with an example that is perhaps a little removed from ordinary science and therefore perhaps closer to us. Let us take a myth or a piece of fiction and think of a commentator or an interpreter of the kind I have often criticized – you remember! Let us assume that such a commentator, an interpreter of a myth, a saga or a piece of fiction, steps before us and explains, as he says, the piece of fiction from the piece of fiction; he seeks the laws of the piece of fiction in the piece of fiction or in the myth. He can be very ingenious. There are indeed very ingenious interpreters of myths and poetry. But they all err, for one can never explain a myth or a poem by applying one's intellect to it. Oh, the things the interpreters of Hamlet have written in order to interpret “Hamlet”! And what have the interpreters of Faust written in order to interpret Faust! What have the theosophists done in order to interpret all kinds of myths! One can only get to the bottom of myths and the bottom of poetry if one knows how to direct one's gaze to where myths and poetry come from — from heaven. This again points to that future perspective. This is closer to us than to point this out in science. Myths are cited by illustrating through them, so to speak, when one has come to understand the great connections in the heavenly universe; one then allows them to be reflected through the myths, at least. And when one has insight into the cosmic laws that prevail, then one will not come to intellectual commentary skills in the face of poetry; because when one peels out of the myth and the poetry that what such intellectual commentators usually get, what actually occurs there? Yes, you can always have a certain image in front of you when a myth explainer or a poetry commentator appears in the way they do today. Something emerges, like the one who emerged in his bat form, really something bat-like and gray, in contrast to the living life that is in poetry and myth. There one also makes the acquaintance of Ahriman-Mephistopheles.

What I have just mentioned as an example could be extended to cover all the goings-on in science, although I am not criticizing science. I want to show you the necessity for it. Ahriman had to intervene for a certain length of time, otherwise the way people worked in the Middle Ages would have become one that would have allowed people to become lethargic all too easily. People like to have absolute peace, so the world admits the devil, who works and entices and, as a devil, must create - he tempts and entices and works. This intervention of Ahriman is necessary. And it is utter nonsense to have heard something about Ahriman and Lucifer and then ask: “Is this perhaps an ahrimanic influence? Is this a luciferic influence?” One must guard against this!

Goethe understood the role of Ahriman! But why did Ahriman have to play such a role in modern times? Why did Ahriman-Mephistopheles have to enter the sphere of man at all? We know that evolution proceeds in such a way that we have the so-called Lemurian time, the Atlantic time, our post-Atlantic time. We know that in the Lemurian time, the human I, that is, consciousness, was still quite inactive, still quite inactive; it is only just beginning here.

But only gradually does man become enlightened about the I-impulse that lives and moves in him. Only gradually do people become clear about their position when the I dwells in their soul, about Lucifer and Ahriman. Only gradually do they become clear, people. If we visualize the principle that must guide the future era, it presents itself, schematically indicated, as pointing towards the earth to discover the secrets of heaven, and towards heaven to discover the secrets of the earth. If one does things the wrong way, if one does things in the sense of our time, then one does not find the secrets of the earth, but out of the earth comes, instead of the laws of heaven, instead of the secrets of heaven, which should come out, comes the Ahrimanic, which approaches man, which tries to approach man. It must be rejected, because what the earth gives must not be sought intellectually in the earth, but what it reveals for heaven. Lucifer comes from the cosmic space; he must go away. If he were to approach man, it would be that what is not found in him would be sought in the cosmic space outside: the secrets of heaven itself. This relationship must be understood.

Once upon a time, people had to understand how close Lucifer is to man. It has been made possible for people to understand this in a symbol that is much more than a symbol, in a symbol that points deep into the secrets of the spiritual world. If one wants to characterize what Lucifer means for humanity as a whole, one cannot make this more intimate than by presenting the matter in such a way that Lucifer approaches the powers of woman and, with the help of specifically female powers, influences the world, and man is then seduced by woman with the help of Lucifer. This symbol had to be presented to humanity, and it had to be there when the fourth post-Atlantean period began, when people should first understand the relationship between Lucifer and man, when they should feel it, sense it, become aware of it. There is no better way to become aware of the relationship between Lucifer and man than to study the beginning of the Bible, how the serpent approaches the woman, how the woman seizes her powers and thus begins the seduction, the temptation of the world. This significant symbol was the most effective for this fourth post-Atlantean cultural period, even though it had existed earlier. The mystery of Lucifer is contained in this symbol.

The fifth post-Atlantean period had to consciously enlighten man about the Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian mystery. Another symbol had to take its place. Just as the symbol of the Luciferic tempter of woman stands at the head of the religious book, which deals with the spiritual world, and man is thereby also seduced by the arts that Lucifer performs with the help of woman, so the counter-image had to arise in the fifth post-Atlantean period: Ahriman, who approaches man, initially seduces man, and with man's help, woman. Even if it was not so brilliantly achieved in the first part of the Faust epic, the deeply moving nature of the Gretchen tragedy is often based on the fact that just as Adam is seduced by Lucifer in a roundabout way through Eve, so Gretchen is seduced by Ahriman-Mephistopheles in a roundabout way through Faust. Necessity dictated that the World Book should be contrasted with the Book of Theology: the seduced and the seducer; the seduced and the seducer; Lucifer, Ahriman. The relation of Lucifer to woman on the one hand, and of Ahriman to man on the other. This is a deeply significant spiritual connection.

And therefore this world book of Faust, in contrast to the theology book, was really created out of an inner spiritual impulse. And the newer time is called upon to find the paths between Ahriman and Lucifer. For all the forces through which Lucifer works in the world are not the same as, but similar to, the forces through which he succeeded in seducing woman. All the forces through which Ahriman works in the world are similar to the forces with which he seduces man. And just as we correctly imagine the luciferic seduction that the Bible presents to us in the Lemurian period, so we must seek Ahriman in a place in the Bible that is no longer clear because the Ahrimanic secret in the Bible is not yet revealed in the same way as the luciferic secret. While we are placing the Luciferic mystery in the Lemurian time, we must, as I have often explained, place the Ahrimanic mystery in the Atlantean time. The Bible only hints at this, not with such a clear and radiant image as that of the temptation in Paradise. The Bible only says that the impulses that came into earthly existence caused the sons of the gods to take pleasure in the daughters of men. This is only a hint at what comes in as an Ahrimanic impulse.

Goethe's “Faust” already has a certain historical significance. And this historical significance lies in what I have tried to sketch out for you today. If we want to draw attention to what spiritual science wants to become and should become for humanity, we often have to express paradoxes today, express things that seem strange to many people. But it is true. When human beings will one day arrive at a state where their science will recall the original revelation by explaining earthly life from the secrets of heaven, when earthly science will be such that the deepest secrets of heaven can be recognized in the formation of embryonic development, then mankind will have found the right relationship to Ahriman and Lucifer, and then, in a certain way, that in humanity will be realized which is to be represented in our main group in the structure, in which the representative of humanity is placed between Ahriman and Lucifer in the right gesture.

We shall have to understand more and more deeply what is contained in Goethe's Faust. But we shall need an interpretation that is not dependent on authority. Those people who want to arrive at knowledge only by making, as a lady in our society once said, “a face all the way to their stomachs” in order to express their inner soul mood will not reach their goal. It was a lady who was not accustomed to speaking German and therefore made this linguistic error. But that is not the point; it was a correct description. She wanted to point out those people who lack any possibility of developing humor in their perception of the world. If one cannot develop humor, then under certain circumstances it can become quite dire. So it will have to be that one has to find one's way in the world in the way I have characterized it. Those people who only want to approach the things of the world in a sentimental mood will naturally prefer to be able to understand a work of art such as Goethe's 'Faust' in such a way that they can make 'a face up to their stomachs' at every line. But people who want to understand Faust will have to grasp it without authority. Then they will have to work their way through the contradictions, but working through the contradictions will offer the possibility of understanding. Something like the Prologue on High is no child's play! If one is too afraid of a certain irony and a certain humor towards the world, then one easily falls prey to the greatest humorist, who is a comrade of the one who confronts us in Goethe's Mephistopheles, who is more of a burden to the Lord than a prankster, who is a somewhat more dangerous spirit of the kind that can deny.

I would like to suggest that such things, which already occupy an exceptional position in the spiritual development of mankind, be grasped more deeply. For they are also a way of penetrating into the secrets beyond the threshold, where everything is different from this side of the threshold, where everything is such that one must already become familiar with it, that some things sound paradoxical, which are spoken out of the consciousness of those facts that lie beyond the threshold to the spiritual world. The present time does not want to know much about the secrets that lie beyond the threshold to the spiritual world. Most people today are indeed always convinced that we have come so gloriously far. Well, I don't know how far people will be able to maintain this conviction through our immediate time, which has come so gloriously far and yet only lives in the consequences of what it has believed through the centuries. But even if what is proclaimed from the other side of the threshold sounds paradoxical to many people today, more and more understanding must be formed for these mysteries of existence. And much of the beneficial development of humanity into the future depends on people finding understanding for what still sounds so paradoxical in so many ways.

It may still seem foolish to the world to say that the earth must be explained through heaven, heaven through the earth. He who looks into the compelling destiny of man, which reveals itself from beyond the threshold, knows that what appears so foolish and paradoxical to people is nevertheless wisdom in the sight of the spiritual and the world. And today it may be said without becoming immodest, because when one says it out of the consciousness of the spiritual world, one already has the necessary humility to be allowed to say it, because this humility already exists in the heart , although one may have to use strength to express what one would most like to express in a gesture of humility, in a gesture of the necessary strength, which might give the appearance of a gesture of arrogance. But only an Ahrimanic view could find fault with that, confusing humility and arrogance in this case. More about that another time.

We will soon depict the scene of the second part of Goethe's “Faust”, which precedes the final scene, which, as you know, has already been depicted. The scene begins with the holy anchorites:

Woods, they sway in,
rocks, they weigh on them,

Goethe calls it “Faust's Ascension” and the scene that now follows is usually called the “Entombment”. But we will begin where, in the broader sense, this entombment of Faust is depicted.

When one comes to the various parts of Goethe's “Faust”, one must repeatedly and repeatedly fall into a certain astonishment at the infinite depth that lies in the second part of Goethe's “Faust”, in particular, deep in that one is dealing with an objectivity in the representation of the spiritual world that can be justified by spiritual science. And it is remarkable that Goethe presented the spiritual world with such objectivity at a time when spiritual science as such did not yet exist. I do not need to dwell at length on the question that was once put to me when I gave a lecture many years ago on Goethe's “Fairytale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”, and a theosophical authority of the old school asked me whether I thought that Goethe knew everything that was said from the spiritual science to justify the deeper secret of the poem of the green snake and the beautiful lily. I could only reply whether the person in question believed that the plant also knows exactly what the botanist makes about it in order to be able to grow in the right way according to the botanical laws. When one hears such a question, one is usually aware of how clever the questioner feels. But if one thinks such a question through to its conclusion, then one realizes how endlessly foolish people often are, who think of themselves as being so clever. So we need not concern ourselves further with the question of whether Goethe, for instance, also studied spiritual science somewhere in the way we can study it today, even if objections can very easily be made from a point of view that considers this question. We want to go straight to the matter itself.

We are presented with three types of figures in addition to those familiar to us from the rest of the Faust legend. We are presented with three types of figures that have to do with the period of time that elapses between the death of Faust and the ascent of his soul into the spiritual regions. The first type of figures presented to us are the lemurs; the second type of figures presented to us are the thick devils with short, straight horns, and the third are the scrawny devils with long, crooked horns; both types of devils are “of the old devil's grist and grain”.

Now we can ask: What spiritual instinct, what deeper wisdom, would lead us to present these three figures in the Entombment and before the Ascension of Faust? This “Entombment” is introduced in such a way that Faust has grown old in his evolution, and, as Goethe himself stated, has become a hundred years old. So, at the beginning of this scene, we are dealing with the old, hundred-year-old Faust, who is still chained to Mephistopheles, but in such a way that Faust can now believe that Mephistopheles has become his servant. Faust has made the decision to wrest a piece of land from the sea, to cultivate this piece of land, and thereby create the basis for an area that will be beneficial to humanity, where this humanity, part of humanity, can develop in peace and freedom. This land is, so to speak, because it was wrested from the sea by Faust's labor, Faust's creation. It is to be made complete by draining a swamp that is there through a ditch, so that the air will also be purified, so that the health of the people who are to develop in peace and freedom will not be endangered by the polluting vapors of the swamp. Faust now believes that Mephisto has become his overseer in this beneficial work and commands the host that is to perform the last work. Faust has already gone blind, as was shown in the previous scene. So he does not see what Mephistopheles is doing on the external physical plane, and it is understandable that he later confuses the words “digging” and “grave”. While Faust is of the opinion that a ditch should be dug to drain the swamp water into the sea in order to purify the air, Mephistopheles has the grave of Faust dug by his lemurs. As a centenarian, Faust thus still experiences the deception, becomes entangled in the web of lies of Mephistopheles, who has the grave dug and, through the similarity of names, deceives Faust into imagining that a ditch is being dug.

There are already many secrets in it. I do not want to get involved in these things today, perhaps it can be discussed another time. But I would prefer us to make ourselves clear about the nature of these three beings. Right at the beginning of the scene, which takes place in the forecourt of the palace that Faust has built for himself, Mephistopheles appears, as already mentioned, as the overseer of the workers, whom Faust believes he has assembled, while Mephistopheles calls his lemurs. Mephistopheles characterizes the lemurs not in a particular scenic remark, but in the scene itself:

Come, come! Enter, enter!
You shivering lemurs,
Made of ligaments, tendons and bones
Half-natures patched together!

So they are described to us as creatures that are held together only by the ligaments that hold the limbs of the human body together, anatomical tendons and bones. So what is not even present in the human organism in the form of muscles holds these figures together, they are patched together out of it. They are not full-natured, not whole-natured, they are half-natured, since they only have what is not blood, not muscle, not nerve, but what tendons, ligaments and bones are. They are patched together out of it. Furthermore, they are characterized by the fact that they later express themselves in chorus. And what they express indicates two things to us. First, how they actually come to do a job there under the supervision of Mephistopheles; but at the same time, this also tells us something about their nature. The lemurs express themselves in such a way that one hears in their quivering tones:

We will help you immediately,
And, as we have half heard,
There is even a wide land,
We shall get it.

So the lemurs are also deceived at first: they have half heard that they are to be given a wide country. They are to dig the grave according to Mephistopheles' plan. But they have half heard and not fully heard that they are to receive a wide country. To this end, they bring sharpened stakes to work with.

Sharpened stakes, they are there,
The long chain for measuring;
Why we were called upon,
we have forgotten.

It sounds in their half-nature, which is patched together from tendons, ligaments and bones, there is still something that sounds and rattles from a call. But what the content of the call is, what they are actually supposed to do there, they have forgotten. They are truly characterized by this. One can say that they are there, but they do not know why they are there. They know half of it, why they are there, they have heard something, but they do not know what they have heard. They have heard a call, but they have forgotten it again. So there they are in front of us, these lemurs, and Mephistopheles immediately reprimands them. He says: “This has nothing to do with the wide land you wanted; only act according to your own dimensions, according to such dimensions as are appropriate for one who consists only of legs and tendons:

The longest one lies down lengthwise.

So the one lemur has to lie down lengthwise, and now he instructs them how to dig the grave.

In the next chorus of lemurs, we are told that there is still something in them of a half-remembered memory that they were once something like human beings, that they come from something like human beings:

How young I was and live and love,
Methought it was quite sweet;
Where there was cheerful sound and merry mirth,
There moved my feet.

— That is behind them, and only half conscious.

Now the treacherous age has struck me
With his crutch;
I stumbled over the door of the grave,

Why was it open just then!

So they half-remember that they come from dead people. Mephisto first tried to come to terms with them, he needs them first.

Now I ask you to remember that I have indeed said many times that we do not carry our physical bodies with us without further ado, and that we only discard them like an empty shell. It is not only our shell, I often said, it is our tool. It contains the forces through which we are connected to the mineral earth. Now I ask you to consider the following: we are, with our physical body, formed on Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth, with what we now have between birth and death. Let us imagine all that has been implanted in us by Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth, I would say, summed up and suggested by everything I am drawing here, and let us imagine that which is incorporated into the earth in that we receive an ego as a tool in the earth, that this ego is incorporated as a physical tool. Let us imagine that within.

During the time on earth, our physical body again receives what was demanded of it on Saturn, what was formed during the time of the sun and moon. But because the I works in it, what the human being has not through Saturn, Sun and Moon, but only through the development of the Earth, is incorporated. This is the external physical expression of the I. From this, the I emerges in death. What remains of Saturn, Sun and Moon has no place in earthly life; it has nothing to do with the forces of earthly development. The physical forces of the evolution of the earth would never have produced our muscles; they had to be produced by the physical forces of the evolution of the moon. But during the evolution of the earth, the impulses of the ego did indeed produce the bones, and the bones only during the Atlantean evolution, through the salt deposits in the Atlantic Ocean, the ligaments, the tendons. All this is integrated only through the forces of the earth. In this way we carry the earth within us, in our bones, tendons and ligaments. The spirit of the earth lives in them. The same forces live in them that are present in all the mineral, natural or technical domains of the earth. In the composition of our bones, tendons and ligaments, everything that can arise from the mineral-physical natural and technical effects of the earth lives. When we now go through the gate of death, we leave behind our Saturn, Sun and Moon parts. These are destroyed by the fact that they cannot exist in the earth. Bones, tendons and ligaments must destroy the forces of the earth itself, regardless of whether the person is buried or cremated; this makes no difference, the special forces of the earth must destroy them.

Thus, because Faust has died, that which is subject to the special forces of the earth is handed over to the earth, to that earth to which all dead people are also handed over, insofar as they are made of bones, tendons and ligaments. A deep spiritual insight into nature is expressed in this formulation that Goethe gave to this scene, an infinitely deep knowledge of nature! For one should not believe that one has exhausted what remains of us when one says: Well, the physical body falls away from us, and our soul — as we have always described it — continues into the spiritual worlds. — No, there are secret spiritual forces in the whole physical body that remain on the earth. The earth can only retain that which it has produced itself, but it retains only the forces from bones, tendons and ligaments. Bury the human being and let him decay, burn him - in the earthly body itself, despite decay or burning, what remains for all future is always present in the forces in bones, tendons and ligaments! We hand over our skeleton, so to speak, to the earth, and it remains there until the earth itself has reached the goal of its evolution. Our skeleton is taken up by the skeletons of all those who have died before us, and enters into the community of those who have died before us. It would be a superficial view to say: “Everything is transitory here.” Only the form is transitory. The forces that prevail in them are contained in the earth's activity. And if you take the physical forces at work on earth today, if you look straight into the earth, the forces in it that have come about because people have been buried in the earth, or because they have somehow been destroyed, their bodies have somehow been destroyed. The forces that formed the human being are now in the earth, working in the interior of the earth, they are there, they are preserved.

So we can say: Mephisto is initially faced with the task of dealing with the path of the physical body, with the path, with the paths that the physical body wants to take. - That's where he needs the lemurs, I would say, who are not ghostly, but under ghostly beings, phantom beings that are always united with the earthly body as the remains of dead people. He needs them.

Do you know what would happen if what has been ours since Atlantean times were to disappear in our bones, tendons and ligaments? Even today the earth would be close to it, and it would soon be more likely that all people would be born with so-called “English limbs,” with weak and powerless limbs. People would be born rickety, because the earth only has a certain amount of the strength that lies in our bone movements and tendon development. And what we give back in death always goes into later human bodies in a mysterious way. Otherwise, people would be born rickety. And if one is born rickety, it is a sign that one has not entered into a right relationship in one's total karma with those forces that the earth gives again and again and again, and receives back again and again from the bones, tendons and ligaments of humanity.

Thus an infinitely deep, spiritual thought of nature is expressed in the fact that Mephisto has summoned these underworldly spectres, these pure phantom beings, in whose ranks Faust's phantom also enters. We must, of course, grasp the scene quite spiritually. The interpreters of Faust always believed that there were bone men walking around. But they are only the forces that lie in the bones, tendons and ligaments, the supersensible forces. The scene is to be grasped entirely spiritually, only through spiritual vision, in the manner of spiritual vision. These lemurs have what is in man in that he has an I. But the I is outside. But the I is outside. So all the qualities that only came in through the I are gone, are only half present, only echoes. Therefore they are there and also not there. We human beings are only there when we send our I into our bones, tendons and ligaments. They no longer have that. We only understand what we have heard when we send our ego through our bones, tendons and ligaments. They only have the echo; they hear and do not know what they hear; they have heard a call and have only half heard it, have forgotten it because the memory lies in the system that is put together by bones, tendons and ligaments. So, because Mephistopheles first has to deal with the paths that Faust's physical body takes, he, who is a spirit but wants to assert his rights on earth, naturally comes into the necessity of having to deal with the lemurs, as they are meant here, because from them he could snatch the spiritual part of Faust's physical body. After all, the physical body is also based on a spiritual one. He could grasp this spiritual.

Now, to understand the whole, let us recall something we can find in the chapter of the book 'How to Know Higher Worlds?' where the Dweller of the Threshold is mentioned. There you will find that when a person undergoes higher spiritual development, the individual powers that are otherwise united in him in ordinary human knowledge, diverge. I characterized them there according to their abilities. Will, feeling and thinking go their separate ways, each becoming something in itself. Mephisto, who remained behind on the lunar evolution with his own nature, was still familiar with the lunar evolution. That is how you have to understand him. He, Mephisto, is familiar with the lunar development in his practical view of life. But even in the atavistic view of the moon, the limbs of the human being were still separate and not yet united by the ego. So if Mephisto, in his way, wants to grasp the spiritual essence of Faust, he must actually grasp it in its threefold nature. He must grasp it as the spiritual essence of the physical body; there he must deal with the lemurs. Then he must want to grasp it as the second link in the etheric body, which separates soon after death. He is familiar with that, so he must want to grasp it. And then he must want to grasp it in what passes over into the spiritual world and has detached itself from the etheric body. What has been united through the ego does not yet correspond to his realm; he is not yet at home there, Mephisto; the separateness still exists. So he must instinctively attach importance to achieving what the spiritual is of the physical body; there he must let the lemurs work. Now, because he only knows the soul in separation, he wants to catch for himself - he does not know what - the etheric body, which leaves the human being through the lower limbs. So he puts the Dickteufel there to catch the etheric body for him. Then - he does not know how it should be. Perhaps he can grasp Faust's spiritual essence at the third link, at that which wants to ascend into the spiritual world? That is where he places the Dürrteufel. And so he wants to grasp Faust's spiritual essence. But he must, I would say, with devilish instinct, bring together the threefoldness that can convey to him the physical body directly in its spirituality – etheric body, soul-spiritual –.

Etheric body - you see, physics cannot quite cope with the ether that is present because the ether has a strange property that distinguishes it from ordinary materiality. It is not heavy, it has no weight. The usual gravity of the earth cannot hold the ether. Mephisto wants to hold it. He wants to hold it through spiritual beings. Because the ether has already become spiritual, it should also be held by spiritual beings. To do this, he needs the thick devils, who, as spiritual beings, have a certain heaviness. They must therefore be thick-bellied creatures with huge, thick bodies – small, of course, because if they were towering, they would reach too far into the upper regions. They must be designed to be small and stout, their spiritual nature must be earthly, their spiritual nature must be such that it can sustain on earth that which seeks to fly spiritually.

They must therefore be small and stout, and everything in them that is the physiognomic expression of humanity must be clumsy. They must have enormous strength in their somewhat stocky bodies. Therefore, the limbs that are more spiritualized are small; in reality they would have to have small hands, stumps, arm stumps. It is difficult to portray, can only be portrayed if the actors make every effort to move only the lower part of the arms; of course, this must be practiced and learned. But the nose, too, is difficult. It is developed, the nose that has become a horn in the devils, it is difficult; so it is, together with the forehead, the heavy organ that does not connect man with the air, but that works and is formed by its own weight.

Mephisto needs such creatures to be able to hold back the etheric body, which we know takes a different path because it is not weighed down by the earth, in the rest of the earth. He must therefore hire them so that when the etheric body appears from the lower regions of Faust's body, they can grasp it. Therefore he hires them:

Fresh meat! Double your step,
You gentlemen from the straight, crooked horn,
From the old devil's grist and grain
You bring the hellish maw at the same time.
Hell has many a maw! many!
According to rank and dignity, she devours;
But in this last game, too, one will

Canines gape; from the gorge's vault
The fire stream wells up in rage,
And in the boiling smoke of the background
I see the flame city in eternal glow!

This is, of course, the same flame city that appears in Dante!

The red surf... and so on.

Here they come, the fat devils with short, straight horns! He now describes them:

Now, bloated villains with fire cheeks!

So they are in the state in which the lunar creatures still breathed fire. They are “pot-bellied villains with fire-cheeks” who “are really fat from the brimstone of hell”.

Block-like, short, never moving necks!

So everything is immobile; mobility is already semi-spiritual. They are all clumsy and awkward, all so that they force the spirit into heaviness, because they are supposed to hold the light ether. And there he posts them:

Here below lurks, whether it glistens like phosphorus:

- whether the etheric body comes out, which they are supposed to catch —

That is the little soul, Psyche with the wings,

- he sees it as the soul! —

You pluck it out, and there is a nasty worm;

So he wants the etheric body in the form of a dragon, doesn't he.

With my stamp I will seal her,
Then away with her in a fiery whirlwind!

He says very aptly now, by placing the devil's advocate there:

Pay attention to the lower regions,
you windbags, that is your duty;
Whether she likes to live there,

You can't really know.

How should he know, since he has the three members of the soul; he does not really know what to start with!

She likes to be at home in the navel,

That is the region where the etheric body must leave the person first.

Take care, for she will wipe you out there.

So there we have the fat devils with short, straight horns who want to try to shape the spiritual so that it develops earthly heaviness.

Mephisto wants to conquer the third part through the Dürrteufel. They must be very thin guys, again difficult to represent! Very thin, and all spiritual, so nose and forehead together to a horn united, which overcomes the matter as possible, in devilish way overcomes, so crooked and long, because they should achieve it, to become quite spiritual, to overcome the earth heaviness completely. Therefore, they are “Firlefanze”, as spinning tops, move quickly like spinning tops. They must now be employed to catch that which goes into the spiritual world - the third. So they are supposed to chase after the forces that develop precisely out of heaviness, so to speak. That which they are not supposed to get into the heaviness of the earth, they are supposed to develop, like a spinning top, counter to the heaviness, through their long, flexible limbs, which should actually grow out of them. That is how they should develop. That is how Mephisto sets them up:

You winged giants of Firlefanze!
Reach into the air, try without rest;
Arms straight,

— straight means long in this case, that they become thin and long.

The arms are stretched, the claws are sharply pointed,

– so long claws instead of fingers come out –

so that you can catch the fluttering, the fleeting.

– the soul that goes to the spiritual worlds –

She must feel ill at ease in the old house,
And the genius

- in contrast to the etheric body: the genius, which is always soul-spiritual -

And the genius, it wants to get out right at the top.

There you can see how, according to the way man is constituted, the function of the lemurs on the physical body, the thick devil on the etheric body, the dry devil for the spiritual-soul is sharply, clearly outlined!

Now the heavenly host is approaching, the heavenly host, that is, the beings who belong to the spiritual worlds. And the matter is presented in such a way that none of those who can serve Mephisto – the lemures, the thick- and scrawny devils – achieve anything. The heavenly host is coming:

Follow the messengers,
heavenly relatives,
slow flight;
forgiving dust,
animating dust;
to all natures
friendly traces
work in floating
its dwelling train.

These are beings that have not experienced the earthly either, but do not claim to have an effect on the earthly sphere, but only on the spiritual and mental aspects of the human being. Mephistopheles is out of place, he has remained a ghost, a moon ghost, and has an effect on the earth. They have remained in their own sphere. They must therefore appear to him as beings who have not even become human, but are still pre-human, immature, less than children.

I hear discordant notes, nasty strumming,
From above it comes with unwelcome day;
It is the mischievous, girlish banging,
As sanctimonious taste may love it.

And so on. Of course, Mephisto is well aware of the close kinship between him and the angels as spiritual beings. They have both remained spiritual beings. That is why he calls them devils in his own way, but devils in disguise.

They are devils, but in disguise.

Now the battle begins between the host of angels and the demons and goblins down there who are striving for Faust's soul. Mephisto is standing there and must take part in this battle. He instructs his devils because he senses something. What does he actually sense? Yes, he knows the trinity as a soul quality. But that is not capable of grasping the I-unity. He does not believe that in Faust the I-unity is so strong that it holds the trinity together. That is his great error. While he is actually always talking about the trinity of the soul, the unity of the soul is asserted at this moment from the spiritual world, holding everything together. If this unity, this unity of the ego, were not there, the lemures would be able to draw the soul of the physical body to themselves, without it having remained connected to the whole world, to the whole cosmos. The Dürrteufel would be able to grasp the soul, the genius. But because they are held together by the ego in the human being between birth and death, each one goes its way: the body to the earth, the etheric body to the etheric region, that which is soul to the spiritual region, but they remain destined for each other. There remains a connection. And as soon as the connection, which is brought about by the character of the ego, is there, the devil can do nothing. But he is positioning himself quite correctly.

Why do you cower and flinch? Is this the custom of hell?

— the thick-skinned and scrawny devils sense that a different element is coming.

So stand firm and let them scatter.

They scatter roses, namely, as a symbol of spiritual love coming from above.

To his place, every Gauch!
They think, with such flowerbedecking
They can snow in the hot devils;
That melts and shrivels at your breath.

Now they begin, because he commands them:

Now blow, Püstriche! —

Now they blow away the love torment that surrounds them. This is a hot glow for them, which they cannot endure. Now they blow, but they blow too hard because they cannot find the right measure. They have not been taught about what is formed through the evolution of the earth.

— Enough, enough!....

That you never know the right measure!

He also only knows them insofar as he observes them on earth; he does not know them from his own nature, the right measures. But because he was with Faust for so long and saw what Faust needed, he recognizes the measures of men again for a while.

— Enough, enough!
Before your breath the whole flight pales. —
Not so violently! Shut your mouths and nostrils!
Truly, you have blown too strongly.
That you never know the right measure!
That not only shrinks, it browns, dries, burns!
It is already floating along with poisonous clear flames;
Brace yourselves against it, press close together! The strength goes out! All courage is gone! The devils scent the flattery of strangers.

To him, love is only flattery, he turns everything into something purely selfish. And so we see how, through this struggle that unfolds here, how in the imagination – for the whole thing takes place in the imagination of Mephisto, who for a while transports himself back to his old time on the moon – how, for the imagination of Mephisto, the possibility presents itself that he could have the soul in its trinity, while it was actually snatched from him by the unity.

The interesting thing is that in this scene in particular we also find an awareness of the inner spiritual evolution of humanity. Think of what I have often said, that only a certain narrow-mindedness can believe that as far back as people go, they have always looked the same; so spiritually, one imagines the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, all more or less the same as present-day people, while great developments have been undergone. People who only think about the last few centuries know nothing about what human beings have gone through in the course of the centuries in evolution. But spiritual beings notice this because they look at things spiritually. And so it is so wonderful that we can see from Mephisto's words here to Faust precisely what he, Mephisto, who is of course an old fellow, has gone through the whole evolution of the earth — you know how he says at one point that he once found “crystallized human race”! — yes, Mephisto sees how it has changed:

The body lies, and the spirit seeks to flee;
I quickly show it the blood-written title.

So, what does he actually want? Faust has died. He wants the soul, of which he only recognizes the trinity. We remember that Faust made a contract with Mephisto, even written in blood, a contract. What does Mephisto actually want, MephistoAhriman? What does he want? He wants to invoke his contract. If he shows the contract at the moment when the soul comes out, he believes that the soul cannot escape him. Well, I would rather not speak further on this point in view of some contemptuous words that have been spoken in this troubled time. Since our friends are already being accused of not thinking clearly about contracts, I do not want to develop a contract theory now that could be exploited in turn. Perhaps it could even be said, if I do not take the side of Mephisto in this scene, but rather the side of Faust: Faust would be a real Pan-Germanist in terms of his view of contracts! I do not want to talk further about the plight one could get into, because either one would have to take sides for Mephisto-Ahriman, or one would expose oneself to danger because Faust does not go into the blood-written title, to chalk this up to us as a pan-Germanistic view. So we prefer to remain silent about all the deeper wisdom that would have to be developed if one were to talk about Faust and Mephisto's contract. Let's leave it!

But evolution with its inner meaning comes to us in the words of Mephisto, who points out that times change and with them the impulses that are in the development of humanity. In the past, when the old times were there, he still understood quite well how to catch souls – today we call it superstition, but we know that they were somewhat clairvoyant times. Then the souls were still easily accessible in their trinity; then he could still catch the souls if the matter was well prepared – and after all, he prepared them quite well in Faust. But now, as the fifth post-Atlantic period approaches and the unity of the soul is being established through the ego, he has not yet undergone his full training.

But unfortunately we now have so many means
to withdraw souls from the devil
we come up against the old ways,
we are not recommended

The little people never sense the devil,
even when he has them by the collar.

There he is, but he is not recommended. And so he gets the helpers he needs, who he believes can help him get what he wants: the soul in its trinity. But the fact that it no longer exists in its trinity, in its original form, allows it to slip through his fingers.

It is a curious thing with this Mephisto-Ahriman. The beings that belong to the spiritual world come down into his spheres, and - yes, he actually falls in love with these beings. Goethe quite rightly describes a love scene between Mephisto and the angels. The devil has understanding. And a love affair between Mephisto and the angels is truly an absurd love affair, that is what Mephisto also calls it, it is truly an absurd love affair. But how is it that this absurd love affair can still affect him? That feelings of love arise in him at all? If he had not lived at Faust's side for so long and wanted to beguile Faust by stimulating such feelings in Faust in a particularly enticing way, they would not have crossed over to him. And so here again you have a deep wisdom, a wonderful wisdom. The devil actually has no erotic or other love in the earthly sense. He doesn't have it. Love affair is of course absurd for him, because we know that the earth is the cosmos of love. He is from the cosmos of wisdom. But he is out of place, he wanders around on earth and always wants to incorporate the earth into his realm. This means that he repeatedly finds himself in a position to incorporate into himself qualities that are developed on earth and that no longer fit his nature. In order to gain a soul, he must prepare this soul for the devil, that is, make it suitable for the qualities that Lucifer implanted at the beginning. But in doing so, he himself becomes infected by these qualities and once again makes himself incapable of keeping this soul. You see here in the big picture what happens on a small scale. Imagine that man is also capable of arousing passions, but if he develops them to a certain point, they destroy his organism at the same time. So you can only do it to a certain point. The devil must, as it were, vampirically absorb human qualities into himself so that he can arouse the passions in Faust. But in doing so, he destroys his own true devilish nature. This is how the absurd affair with the angels comes about, and he becomes inattentive and does not even realize that the angels are snatching his soul away. This darkening of consciousness, this transition of consciousness into the subconscious, had to occur in him.

Since we will have the performance today, I cannot say more. I think that enough has been said for the time being to convey a little of the understanding of the trinity inherent in this scene. I think we see, especially when we devote ourselves to such a contemplation, how infinitely deep that is of which Goethe says that he has secretly incorporated it into the second part of 'Faust'.

Those people who were able to evoke in themselves the idea that spiritual wisdom is at work through the evolution of humanity, that it has only receded somewhat in our time, that this spiritual wisdom often only a shadow in all kinds of legitimate or illegitimate occult societies, such people, as isolated individuals, always knew what profound wisdom is contained in Goethe's “Faust,” real wisdom, concrete world wisdom. That is why they have expressed themselves in this sense. And one such man dedicated a short poem to the memory of Goethe at the Feast of St. John in 1880, a poem in which he wanted to express how much he felt at one with him in spiritual wisdom, a man who, due to the erudition of the materialistic age, actually had very little of Goethe in him, very little of substance. And since spiritual science had not yet been born when this man wrote, he only had a vague feeling that this spiritual science lives in Goethe like an instinct. The Faust commentary that he wrote as a result, Oswald Marbach, did not become significant. But in the poem that he dedicated to the great mason's wisdom festival, the Manenfest, to the manes of Goethe — as one used to say in the past when speaking of the immortal part of man, the Manen, the same spirit lives that lives in the Manas – it shows that, as it were half-consciously only in lonely souls, there was always the connection with the great that lived in Goethe's poetry. And so he, who felt connected with the Manes of Goethe, with the individuality of Goethe, says at the Feast of St. John, the masonic feast in 1880:

To you, brother, father, exalted master!
To you, to whom we now, for over a century,
As a sign of our most loyal love in the alliance of free spirits,
We extend our tightly entwined hands; —
To you, the greatest of spirits and the freest of the free!
To whom we aspire to be like; —
We consecrate ourselves to you! We consecrate our sons to you,
That our building may one day be crowned with perfection!

You have striven as we have; but your striving
For self-knowledge, which leads to wisdom,
Was always inspired by the most vital life,
By strength of the creator, which proceeds to action,
To works that lift themselves up to the light,
Around which the splendor of beauty spreads eternally:
You wrestled with God like Israel,
Until you, as victor, conquered yourself!

What mysteriously unites us with you
Will not be revealed to the uninitiated by a single word;
But let it be proclaimed loudly before all the people
Through the purest love, tireless deeds,
Through clear light that ignites spirit in spirit,
Through eternal life's evergreen seeds. —
Onward, O Master! Wherever You have gone,
We follow You with the most ardent longing.

May there come a time again when such words may and can be truth!

after a eurythmic presentation of the scenes “Midnight” and “Entombment”

Once again we have allowed a piece of Goethe's 'Faust' to pass before our minds. In the last lecture here, I tried to develop some of the spiritual-scientific principles that can help us understand it when I spoke about the nature of the lemurs, the fat and scrawny devils. On such occasions, we always try not just to seek out something for the understanding of this poetry, but to gain something from the poetry in terms of general spiritual significance, to look into those true realities that Goethe tried to reach with his “Faust”.

Today I would like to tie in a few observations with what has just passed before our soul. It may seem significant to us that this scene, which we have just seen come to an end, is not the last scene of Goethe's “Faust”, but that, as we know, it is followed by that other scene that we performed here some time ago. You remember: mountain gorges, forest, rock, solitude, holy anchorites, chorus, echo, forest that staggers along and so on, where we are led through the devout meditation of the Pater ecstaticus, Pater profundus, Pater Seraphicus, through the chorus of the blessed boys , where we meet the angels again, who in the scene we saw today carry Faust's immortal into the upper regions, where we also meet the trinity of the penitent women, Doctor Marianus, and Mater gloriosa as Gretchen's guide until the final chorus, the actual mystical chorus:

All that is transitory
is but a parable.

All this follows on from the scene we have seen today, which depicts the battle of the spirits of light with the spirits of darkness for the soul of Faust.

When attempting to explain Faust, one often proceeds from scene to scene, sometimes even from sentence to sentence, without asking the questions that could be asked and that would actually shed light on this great, powerful work of literature. Today we have seen how Faust's burial took place, how Mephistopheles-Ahriman has lost his game, how the soul has been carried up into the spiritual regions. From a certain point of view, one might ask: Could the Faust epic not actually end here? Do we not now basically know everything that it is about? Do we not know that Mephistopheles has lost his wager, that all the efforts he has made throughout the lifetime of Faust, which he has been able to accompany, are lost, that Faust's soul has been accepted into the region of light, that thus the words spoken by Lessing with regard to a Faust epic vis-à-vis the spirits of darkness: “You shall not win” have been fulfilled? Could we not believe that with this everything is actually over, that the Faust epic has found its end? — The question presents itself to our soul: Why then does the conclusion known to us now follow on from what we have seen today? — And by raising this question and then dealing with its answer, one touches on significant secrets of human life in its connection with the whole world. The fact that Goethe shaped this conclusion of Faust as he did shows precisely how deeply he penetrated into the foundations of his life in an age when spiritual science had not yet come into being, and into the secrets of human existence. Much, much lies in the scene that was presented today, and even more lies in the fact that this scene is followed by other final scenes. Much of it proves that Goethe knew the deepest secrets of existence, but that he was also compelled to present the secrets of existence in such a way that they are only accessible to those who want to delve deeper into spiritual life, into its essence. Quite deliberately, Goethe expressed much of it in veiled terms, as he himself said, enwrapped in the poetry of Faust. Much of what is said in veiled terms, so to speak, triggers hatred and opposition in dull-witted people who, out of fear and laziness, do not want to approach the knowledge of the spiritual world. However, as a result, Goethe's Faust poetry has remained more or less misunderstood for eighty-four years and will only gradually, when we can live towards the future, reveal itself to humanity in its depths. Yes, it can be said that spiritual scientific knowledge will only be able to trigger those artistic perceptions that can convey an understanding of the Faust poetry.

Let us first look back at the hauntingly impressive scene in which Faust beholds the four gray women: Want, Guilt, Hardship, and Worry. Let us be clear about the fact that Faust has this experience with the four gray women at a moment when he has gone through many, many spiritual life experiences, or rather, life experiences that have evoked spiritual understanding in him. Goethe imagines his Faust in the time that is presented for Faust through this final scene, having reached the age of one hundred. Today, Faust first stood before us with all the spiritualized experiences in his soul, as he stands on the balcony of his home, which he created at a workplace from which he wanted to do work for the human future. We look at his soul in such a way that all his feelings of satisfaction, all that he has been able to achieve for humanity by wresting a free country from the sea for free men, are summarized in his soul.

The stars hide their gaze and glow,
The fire sinks and burns low;
A chilling wind fans it,
Bringing smoke and haze to me.
Offered quickly, too quickly done!

Now, seemingly before his eyes, but in reality in an inner vision, what the appearance of the four gray women forms:

What floats in the shadows?

We have to imagine that through the deepening that Faust's soul has experienced, this soul has become capable of having the vision of the four figures — of lack, of need, of worry, of guilt — from the deep inner source itself. This “scene at midnight” is an inward experience in the truest sense of the word, an inward experience as it is evoked in Faust by the soul slowly beginning to detach itself from the body. For that is the strange mystery that Goethe quite evidently intended, that from the moment the three gray women speak the words:

The clouds roll by, the stars fade away!
Back there, back there! From afar, from afar,
Here comes he, the brother, here comes he, the - death,

— that from this moment on, death already really spreads over Faust's life. And we only understand this scene correctly if we think of Faust from then on as a dying man, as one in whom the soul is slowly detaching itself from the body. And it would be wrong to think that what follows is meant to be merely realistic in terms of the external senses. It is not. As we see Faust in the room of his palace, where worry has entered, we find, as he sits there, that the soul has already loosened itself to a certain extent from the body, that the experiences of physical life merge with the experiences that the soul has when it has already loosened itself from the body. And only then do we understand the strangely interwoven sentences when we consider this interplay of the spiritual world, in which Faust is already empathizing through his loosening soul, this interplay of the spiritual world with the physical-sensual world, in which Faust is still, because the soul is loosening, has not yet detached itself. Lack, guilt, and need were powerless; they were only the heralds of death. But the consuming worry remains where the vision is transformed in such a way that it is already the vision of the soul released from the body:

Four I saw coming, three only going;
I could not understand the meaning of the speech.
It sounded as if it said - distress,
A gloomy rhyming word followed - death.
It sounded hollow, ghostly muffled.

If one knows what Goethe felt when he heard the word gespensterhaft (ghostly), he who felt much more concretely than today's dull materialists, then one does not take such a word

It sounded hollow, ghostly muffled

not light, but important and essential, and seeks the feeling that Goethe had when he put these words into the mouth of Faust. Among other things, Goethe uses a beautiful word in which he expresses the following. He says: “Sometimes life seems to me as if distant past events were entering into the present consciousness, and then everything that is distant in the past appears like a ghost that has entered the present.” Goethe had a very concrete concept of what he called ghostly. Visionarily, millennia-old times of his own life stood before him, which he often believed he saw moving into his present life like ghosts. These are not assertions that I make out of arbitrariness; this can be strictly proven from what Goethe himself expressed when he spoke intimately about the experiences of his inner life.

Now the views and thoughts that Faust has, half in the spiritual world and half still living on the physical plane, flow together. If you could imagine the interplay between these two worlds, that is what it is like for Faust. He is now experiencing something that can actually only be experienced in this interplay between the two worlds, which would not have developed if he had distanced himself more from his physical body. He still feels bound by the events of the beyond to the events of physical life:

I have not yet fought my way into the open.

And now for the remarkable speech, which to many will seem like a mere contradiction, but which becomes understandable if one understands the experience to take place between physical life and spiritual life. The spiritual world sought to reach Faust throughout his life. Spiritual science in the true sense did not exist at that time. He tried to recognize the spiritual world by means of magic inherited from the Middle Ages, the same magic that brought him into contact with Ahriman-Mephistopheles in the way we have often discussed, and also in the last lecture. This magic, by which he entered the spiritual world, cannot be separated from Mephistopheles. If you look back at what happened around Faust, you will see everywhere that Mephistopheles has set the magical actions in scene. We cannot hope that Faust wants to hold on to this magic now that he is already halfway into the spiritual world:

Could I remove magic from my path,
Unlearn spells altogether.

Those spells that he has drawn from old books and that have already become Luciferian and Ahrimanic because they have been preserved from ancient times. In this way, he now finds, when he really enters the spiritual world, that what he has achieved was not what he was looking for after all. And now he looks back. He begins to look back, as one does when one's soul is relaxed. Now he begins to look back at the life that has just passed. The moment stands vividly before him, the moment before he reached for the medieval books, before he uttered the fateful word:

That is why I devoted myself to magic.

He has been protected by good powers that have guided him mercifully in the sense of the “Prologue to Heaven” from the fruits of that magic that he would have had to pluck if these merciful workings of special powers had not passed through his path through life. Now he already sees into the spiritual world, now he knows differently. This plays a role. With the present knowledge, he would make the path different:

If I, nature! were a man alone before you,
it would be worth the effort to be a human being.

He could not say this earlier, before he had loosened his soul from his body, not in this way. Then he had to go the whole way of error. Now he looks back and sees that it was indeed the path through the darkness of Mephistopheles. He looks back first to the time in his life when Mephistopheles had not yet crossed his path:

That was I otherwise,

— a man alone

eh' I's in the dark sought,
With sacrilegious word me and the world cursed.
Now the air is so full of such spooks,
that no one knows how to avoid it.

The full weight of what has happened now weighs on his soul.

Even when a day smiles at us with clear reason,
the night entangles us in dream images;
we return joyfully from the young meadow,

— so he has spent his life, half naked in the physical world, half already - albeit in the physical body -— transferred by Mephistopheles to the spiritual world, looking into the spiritual world, but always having to return to the physical world, because Mephistopheles cannot find it, nor can he convey it, the access, because he cannot properly find the connection.

A bird caws; what does it caw? Misfortune.

Only superstition can be found on this path.

Entwined by superstition morning, noon, and night –
It lends itself, it shows itself, it warns –
And so, intimidated, we stand alone.

But the path of superstition has always mixed with the strong path that Faust was able to walk through his own strong nature. And now he has the vision that could remain with him as his soul loosens more and more: the vision of worry. And try to feel how Goethe also lets the highest in language resonate in his words here. One would like to say that the whole of world history lies on our soul when we feel the weight of these words. Worry creeps in. Is anyone there? Faust asks.

Is anyone here?

The answer sounds:

The question demands yes!

Not a simple answer: Yes! The question demands Yes! I said: The whole of world history forces its way into our soul through the arrangement of the words. For how could one think of those magnificent scenes, where before the court Christ Jesus is asked: “Is it you, the Son of God?” He does not answer simply: Yes – but: “You say it!”

Now it is not expressed in an abstract word whom Faust is now experiencing:

I am here.

But it is in him. It is basically a soliloquy. And it is a deep soliloquy. Only gradually will humanity learn, through inner experiences, the full weight of this soliloquy. With what is to be given to humanity as spiritual science, insights will also come to humanity that will be linked to deep, deep feelings and sensations about life, feelings and sensations that the dull, dull materialism dreams of, nor does the easily acquired worldview that believes that everything has been gained with sentences that characterize the physical or spiritual-real. We have such sentences. We know that they have been achieved through difficult inner experiences. We keep them in our souls, we carry them with us through life. But they are not what they can and must truly be for the human soul if they are not accompanied by all possible moods, by those moods that often make our soul life appear as if it were living over an abyss. And when we have attained spiritual knowledge, we can never lose the concern that comes over us about the relationship of spiritual knowledge to the whole reality of life. Man must feel, especially when he enters the spiritual world, that it is a platitude to speak of it in false asceticism, that this earthly life is only a low one that one would most like to cast off. Man feels the whole deep meaning of this earth-life for eternity precisely through spiritual realizations: that this earth-life must be gone through in order that that which exists can be incorporated into the impulses which we carry through death into the sphere of eternity. But how could it be otherwise than that at the end of a life of trial, just at such a moment, when the soul is loosened, man becomes aware, in serious, grave concern, of what may become of his life just experienced, when he now has to go through the spiritual world with his soul, what the fruits of this life just lived may be. Faust has struggled through much, much. But he is great because now, when he has just entered the spiritual world and is half in it and half still feeling back to his physical existence on earth, he knows in the very significant comparison that arises between the physical and the spiritual in such a life-and-death situation:

I have only run through the world;
I seized every desire by the hair,
What was not enough, I let go,
What escaped me, I let go.
I only desired and only accomplished
And wished again, and so with might
stormed through my life; first great and mighty,
but now it goes wisely, goes deliberately.

Feel the harmony that now arises in his soul: how he has passed through the small and the great world, as it says in “Faust”, and with an overall view that is just opening up, as in the moment he feels a flood of spiritual illumination in his vision, he can survey with wisdom and deliberation all that he has gone through in the rush of the floods of life. And now: what does he see? What does he begin to see? —- He begins to see what he has experienced in the circle of the earth. Think back to what we have discussed about the review that overtakes the soul, which is now slowly overtaking Faust, at the beginning of the life after death. Think of this review. He sees his life on earth. He sees it in such a way that he has to say to himself:

The circle of the earth is well enough known to me.

What he had experienced on earth, he now sees. He is already halfway into the spiritual world. You can feel the words in this mood:

The view to the other side has vanished.

That is what one can say when looking back on earthly life. This is not a philosophical confession of materialism, but an immediate experience after death has already taken hold of the soul. Dopes who have become Faust commentators have interpreted this passage as if Faust, in his old age, were once again reverting to a materialistic creed. But now, in this situation, Faust would truly be a fool if he wanted to look back on life and now, with a blink, see that spiritual world, which is often described here by those fools who build this spiritual world in such a way that they simply write about their own kind, as is done in many confessions. He wants to stand firm on the result of his life. And now words of deep significance are actually falling, before which every semblance of materialism must fade, must fade completely. The vague mystics, those dreadful mystics who always speak of wanting to merge with the universe, of wanting to grasp eternity mystically in the chaotic darkness of the universe, which they call universal light, want to wander into eternity. The one who wants to grasp the spiritual life in a concrete way grasps it where it can be grasped in its concreteness. He does not become a fool, losing himself in vague distances that actually contain nothing but emptiness and empty space, and into which the soul dreams itself away. He will not be seduced into roaming into such eternities, but will grasp knowledge concretely. That which he recognizes can be grasped:

Thus he walks along the day on earth.

Consider how wonderful this sentence becomes when one considers that it marks the beginning of the retrospective view of earthly life: the vision walks along the day on earth. Now he has arrived at the point where he can find the right relationship to those haunting ghosts to which Mephistopheles has seduced him here.

When ghosts haunt,

– now in retrospect

he goes his way;
In walking on, he finds torment and happiness,
He! unsatisfied every moment.

We have to imagine the not yet fully completed, but now incipient review, that review, which is still full of the concern, through which fruits from the experienced earth day can be carried into the spiritual world. And always like this: over, over. Spiritual experience, but because he still clings to the body, also physical experience, so we find Faust. Care still holds him to the physical body. He is meant to enter consciously into the spiritual world, made conscious precisely by the burden of care. That is why he grows into the spiritual world in such a way that, while already bearing the spiritual world in his soul, he still believes that he can command the physical world. Those people who hold the banal contemporary view that man has always been essentially as he is now, do not know that many Greeks died as Faust dies, or rather, as Goethe had Faust die. We can prove from Greek literature that this death was almost a desirable one for the Greeks, like reliving some of the physical existence, while the soul has already been released. In Sophocles you can find words that suggest how the Greeks saw something special in such a death, not a sudden death, but a slow dying, in which consciousness is already dimming for the physical world, but what enters physical consciousness as twilight is gradually illuminated to see fully into the spiritual world. And Goethe did indeed try to incorporate much of the Greek element into the second part of his Faust. We may well imagine that he wanted something of what could be characterized as if he had wanted to depict Faust as a dying Greek. Thus, what he puts into the words in terms of feeling flows over from the spiritual world, even when he is still commanding here. And we can follow this further, follow how Goethe consciously presents what I have been talking about.

You saw Faust arrive at the scene where his grave is already being dug. Again, one can say that those commentators who accuse Goethe of bad taste by having the grave dug while Faust is still alive are not very tasteful themselves! That would, of course, be mere bad taste. We see the dying Faust. Then it is not bad taste, but a wonderful imagination, when we see the grave dug not only by the dying Faust but also by those half-spiritual creatures, the lemurs, of whose nature I spoke recently. But how does Faust speak? Well, I will first pass over the words that he speaks as he gropes his way out of the palace and toward the doorpost. I will draw your attention to the words that Faust speaks when he gives the order, so to speak, to dig the ditch that will divert the polluting swamp. At first, one might think that everything is meant physically. But Goethe was well aware that Faust speaks half out of spiritual consciousness, and that is how he wants these words to be understood. And what is revealed from this physical-spiritual, spiritual-physical consciousness? First of all, a wonderful sense of well-being in Faust. Consider what Faust says:

A swamp extends along the mountains,
Polluting everything already achieved;
To strip the foul pool too,
The last would be the highest achievement.
I open spaces for many millions,
Not to dwell securely, but actively and freely.

Beautiful, but now other words follow:

Green the field, fruitful; man and herd

At once at ease on the newest earth,

Immediately settled on the strength of the hill,

Which the bustling, industrious people have rolled up.

— these words are consciously set down, consciously out of the physical-spiritual, spiritual-physical. The paradisiacal land is the play of the spiritual into physical consciousness, then back into the physical again:

There is a raging flood right up to the edge.

Of course, it also means the external situation, but the fact that the words are chosen is something that Goethe was fully aware of when he did it.

Community pride rushes to close the gap.

And now some strange words:

Yes! I am completely devoted to this idea,
That is the ultimate wisdom:
Only he deserves freedom and life
Who must conquer it daily.
And so, surrounded by danger,
Spends childhood, manhood and old age his active years.
I would see such a teeming mass, standing on free ground with a free people. For a moment I would dare to say: Stay, for thou art so fair! The trace of my days on earth cannot perish in the eons of time.

One must hear this word repeated over and over again as a beautiful word that Faust utters because he feels: You have done something for the common good, you have worked. — And now he is overcome by the tremendous feeling of how this will continue to work through eons, how he has, as it were, founded his fame in his deeds, and he surrenders to his sense of well-being. It is often quoted. I have even heard it quoted by people who wanted to say something nice to someone else and quoted these words. You can also say: “The trace of my days on earth – that is, of your days on earth – will not perish in aeons.” And yet, however much this is understood as a beautiful saying, let us be clear about it: it is a purely Luciferic saying, a feeling of well-being in fame. We feel once more how Faust's soul is completely seduced by Lucifer, not only contemplating his deeds, but also feeling his glory through the aeons in a wildly spiritual and selfish way. This egotism grows to gigantic proportions and is still sealed:

In the anticipation of such sublime bliss
I now enjoy the highest moment.

Truly, the devil is no drip. After such a Luciferian outburst, one might well think that the devil had him, for it is once again a completely Luciferian blissful feeling, a supreme eternal desire. And we must not think of the stupid devil, but of the clever Mephistopheles-Ahriman, when he now says, which is quite appropriate:

No desire satisfies him, no luck is enough for him,
So he continues to court after changing forms;
The poor man wishes to hold on to it.

The soul has completely loosened itself, but has separated from the body with a Luciferian quality. It connects quite well with the no less inwardly voluptuous words that Faust utters as he steps out of the palace and gropes his way along the doorjamb:

How the clatter of spades disgusts me!
It is the crowd that indulges me.

One should not think that it is not tempting to think again in this last moment that the crowd indulges you! The Luciferic temptation is there once more, clearly there. And Mephistopheles is not stupid if he believes that now is the moment to follow up on that conversation in which Faust signed over his soul to him. They have conversed with each other: we recall the first part, where Faust, not yet out of the half-won spiritual consciousness, but out of the physical consciousness, said the words:

First thou dost smash to ruin this world,
The other may arise thereafter.
From this earth my joys gush forth,
And this sun shines upon my sorrows;
When I can part myself from them,
Then may what will and can come to pass.
I will hear no more about it,

I have only been running around the world.

Mephistopheles says:

In this sense you can dare.
Connect yourself; you shall in these days
With joy my arts see,
I give you what no man has seen.

Faust:

What do you want, poor devil?
Was a human spirit, in its lofty striving,
Ever grasped by your kind?
But you have food that does not satisfy,
You have red gold that, without rest,
Like mercury, melts in your hand,
A game in which one never wins,
A girl who, at my breast,
With eyes already bound for the neighbor,
The beautiful gods of honor
That, like a meteor, disappear?
Show me the fruit that rots before it's broken,
And trees that turn green every day!
I'm not deterred by such a task,

Mephistopheles replies,

I can serve you with such treasures.
But, my good friend, the time is also coming
When we may feast on something good in peace.

And now the weighty words that Faust speaks:

If I can ever rest content on a lazy bed,
then let it be now around me!
If you can ever flatter me,
so that I may please myself,
you can betray me with pleasure;
that shall be the last day for me!
I offer the wager!"

Well, how is that not fulfilled? Fullest enjoyment, even in the anticipation of eternal fame, is there now.

Mephistopheles:

Top!

Faust:

And blow upon blow!
I shall say to the moment:
Stay, yet! Thou art so fair!

— Does he not say it? —

Then you may bind me in fetters,
Then I will gladly perish!
Then may the death knell toll,
Then you are free of your service,
The clock may stand still, the hands fall,
Let the time be past for me!

Mephistopheles:

Consider it well, we will not forget it.

And he does not forget it. He says it now, Mephistopheles, after Faust has enjoyed the highest moment:

No pleasure satisfies him, no luck pleases him,
So he continues to court changing forms;
The poor man wishes to hold on to the last, poor, empty moment.
He who so vigorously resisted me
Time becomes master, the old man lies here in the sand.
The clock stands still.

The situation has been completely fulfilled; for Faust says:

The clock may stand still, the hand may fall.

Mephisto:

The clock stands still –

The chorus of lemurs:

Stand still! She is silent as midnight.
The hand falls.

What was predicted when the bet was made has come to pass. Mephistopheles can accept that his work is done:

He falls, it is done.

From the mouth of Mephistopheles the words of the cross: “It is finished!” But immediately the chorus of the lemures, who give the voice of the earth:

It is past.

This fits dreadfully into the soul of Mephistopheles. He has said, “It is finished.” The chorus of lemurs answers him, “It is over.” That is the tremendous difference. Over – he does not want the word:

Over! A stupid word.
Why over?
Gone and pure nothingness, complete monotony!

These words are the key to what it is all about. Initially, Mephistopheles is talking to his lemurs; he believes it is done, but it is only over. And now he turns his attention to himself. He wants to understand the contradiction: done, over – he wants to understand it.

Gone and pure nothingness, perfect sameness!
What is the point of eternal creation!
To sweep away the created to nothing!
“There it is over!” What can be read in it?
It is as good as if it had not been,
And yet it goes in circles as if it were.
I would have loved the eternal emptiness for it.

As I said, these words contain what we are looking for. That Goethe chose such words, that he built the scene from the enjoyment of the highest moment, as it is presented, that he lets Mephistopheles converse with the lemurs in this way, testifies that Goethe was able to express something very profound, something so profound that even today it can only be touched upon, because it is this that determines why the last scene must follow. If the matter were as many commentators on Faust have supposed, that Mephisto has simply misunderstood, been tricked, then the last scene would truly be superfluous. Then the matter would be simple enough, then it would be that Faust had not thought that there could be such a high enjoyment as that which is expressed in the words:

Not in the aeons can the trace of my days on earth

Mephisto had not thought of that either; neither of them had thought of that. Neither of them had thought that Faust would ever say to the moment: “Stay, you are so beautiful.” But because it is something higher to feel the moment in this way, the stupid devil is cheated out of his wager: that is more or less how the interpreters of Faust explain it all together. — Well, then the devil would have lost the soul, the angels would have captured it — everything would be in order. We didn't need the last scene. And Goethe certainly wouldn't have written it, because he was a man of poetic economy. But you don't understand Faust if you take it so superficially. You only understand it if you fully realize: Yes, here Goethe wants to allow a Luciferian seduction, even when Death is already fully present, to approach Faust once more, a genuine Luciferian seduction. — And Lucifer is there again in the moment when Faust speaks:

In the anticipation of such supreme bliss
I now enjoy the highest moment.

Now follows the actual entombment and Mephisto's preparation to capture the soul with the demons. The angels arrive and triumph over the demons. The soul seems to be delivered and is carried away, but the poem is not over. What is actually going on? Yes, Goethe could not say what was going on there offhand. But there are many words in the poem through which he has made himself clear enough for those who want to understand. But the idea that is so easily formed of that choir of angels that is advancing to take the soul is not correct. It is not entirely incorrect that the angels who arrive are all too proud and now consider themselves the fullest spirits of light, and the devils – the fat and the scrawny devils – only despise, and now only consider themselves quite pious, so very good, so very pious. Goethe already indicated that he did not want to have the presentation just like that, by having Mephisto, who he truly does not depict as a completely stupid devil, say the words that are interspersed at one point:

The priestly mien will not dress you at all,

and especially the significant word:

They are devils, too, but in disguise.

They are also of Lucifer's race. This is not there for fun! As far as can be said at all, to what extent it is serious, we will continue to consider the matter tomorrow.

Today and tomorrow, I will attempt to say something about certain relationships between human beings and the spiritual worlds, proceeding from the Faust poem. It may be assumed by anyone who really delves into the Faust poem with the tools of spiritual science that Goethe actually wanted to say something of the deepest that he had gained through his long life on earth as his world view in these last scenes in particular. In this case, world view is also meant to imply that Goethe, as if instinctively, as if as a matter of course, wrote these scenes in such a way that one can really feel his position in them, also in relation to the development of humanity, to the impulses of the development of humanity, as far as they were accessible to his knowledge. When spiritual scientific ideas are applied to the figures that Goethe created in his Faust poem, then this must naturally be understood in a very definite way. It would be quite wrong to think that Goethe first took these ideas as a basis and then, as one hangs up clothes on a coat rack, hung up the speeches of the characters and their characteristics. That is not the case. When we speak as we now wish to speak about these figures from Goethe's Faust, we must bear in mind that Goethe knew these figures face to face, so to speak, and characterized them as he was able to, but that spiritual science can justifiably go into the matter in even greater depth. If you meet a person whom you are seeing for the first time, you will not immediately be able to discern everything that is in his soul. Nevertheless, this is in his soul. If you now describe the person after the first encounter with this person, it may be that you only describe a few sides of the person, perhaps something that is purely external. But it is still this person whom perhaps you yourself, if you have seen him often, or someone else who is able to see deeper into the soul, would then have to characterize with much deeper ideas. If I therefore begin by posing the question: What is this Mephistopheles in Goethe? — so that I may be able to express what is significant in connection with the Faust legend today and tomorrow, this is not to be imagined as if Goethe had had in his consciousness the ideas that I must develop for you when I speak of Mephistopheles. Goethe simply characterized the Mephistopheles as he knew him, but that is why the Mephistopheles remains as he really is, a definite figure, who can also be characterized by spiritual-scientific ideas; and it is precisely the significant thing that one can look deeper into the individuality of Mephistopheles or other figures in the Faustian legend through these spiritual-scientific characteristics.

In the sense of spiritual science, one must in any case imagine such a figure as Mephistopheles as, in a sense, having remained on the old moon development. That is the prerequisite, so to speak, the spiritual-scientific prerequisite, that Mephistopheles is a being that has not undergone the corresponding form of development, which it could have undergone from the moon, or perhaps from the sun to the earth, or through the moon to the earth. But even if he confronts us – admittedly in a spiritual and visionary way – even if he confronts us, this Mephistopheles, in the earthly form of a human being, we would still be mistaken if we were to interpret him as saying, for example, that he is more developed than human beings on the moon. He stands quite decidedly higher on earth, Mephistopheles, than man stands on earth, with regard, of course, to his development, not with regard to the talent for evil. You can, if you want, call it lower that Mephistopheles has this genius for evil. But he is a being, so to speak, of a higher hierarchical order than man is, that is, after all, self-evident. If we were to go back to the old moon development, we would find that man, in his moon development, is clearly below the development of Mephistopheles, the being from which Mephistopheles on earth has become. Thus we must seek a higher being in Mephistopheles, a being that has simply been left behind with higher abilities on the lunar evolution than man has ever had. How could we, I would like to say, still make it clear through an analogy how such a being is actually constituted?

Let us assume that we look at our present development on earth. We also find during our present development on earth that some people are further along in their development than others. There are people who are decidedly further along in their development than others. Indeed, during earthly development we speak of certain people who have undergone initiation, who, while this is not yet the case for the general public in the present earthly cycle, already look into the world that lies beyond the threshold. Of course, there is also a corresponding progressive development for such advanced people. But even these people can, in a sense, lag behind on the stages of their earthly development and live their lives in such a way that, when the Jupiter development becomes acute, they say: “If everything followed the path of regular world development, we would now be going through this or that on Jupiter, but we don't want that, we remain at the point we reached during our earthly development.” The point of view is perhaps a higher one than could have been attained by people during the development of the earth; the point of view is such that the Jupiter development is perhaps already anticipated during the development of the earth. But these beings – in this case they are human beings – still lag behind in terms of the stage they had reached on Earth, and so they enter the Jupiter evolution with a Jupiter evolution that they had already undergone during their time on Earth. Thus they are behind in relation to their own measurements, but not behind in relation to the general evolution. They just do not go through the evolution as people on Jupiter will go through it; they remain earthly beings, earthly people, but they already carry the Jupiter evolution within them from the Earth.

You must be quite clear about the fact that the various evolutionary processes are really quite complicated, and that such evolutionary processes as I have just characterized actually exist. And if you now transfer what I have said from Jupiter-Earth to Earth-Moon, you will get a rough idea of what Mephistopheles, who appears in Goethe's “Faust,” is like. He can be counted among the Ahrimanic hierarchies because he had already anticipated human evolution on earth during the old lunar period, but now he adjusts himself to the earth in such a way that he does not bring earthly reason, earthly understanding, earthly individuality into the earthly evolution as they are given by the earth, but as he had anticipated them on the old moon and accepted them. This is why he feels so extraordinarily superior to the man Faust in 'Prologue in Heaven'. He is superior to the man Faust, because in Goethe's sense, the man Faust is supposed to be a real earthly human being who is not only retarded in the region of the dull-witted, but who relies entirely on earthly forces, on earthly impulses, for what he has to develop in his soul. Faust is an earthly human being, an earthly fighter. Mephistopheles appears to him as a lunar man, who naturally feels vastly superior to him because he has already adopted reason and science in the spiritual regions of the moon, which otherwise only people on earth have. Therefore, of course, Mephistopheles can only be a spiritual being. If he were to take on human form like any other human being, then he would also have to adapt to the evolution of the earth. But he does not. Thus we see in Mephistopheles a being who can feel himself to be extraordinarily superior to man on earth. But since the possibility of having moral impulses only arises during earthly development - remember the lectures we have just given in these weeks -; since human-moral impulses only arise during the earthly period, namely everything that arises from the impulse of love, Mephistopheles, who has retained his lunar development, does not have these impulses of love without further ado. He simply does not have them. He is therefore a spiritual being that belongs to a hierarchy, which, because it has held back and also rose very high in earlier developmental epochs, has a certain height out of its entire being.

Let us contrast this Mephistopheles with the higher angels. Let us assume that a present-day angel were to stand beside Mephistopheles, that is to say, a being that is now an angel. What kind of being is this, that is now an angel? It is a being that has to descend during the Jupiter evolution in order to perform services for Jupiter humanity during the Jupiter evolution, which other beings - let us say, for example, archangelic beings - perform for present-day earthly humanity. So this is a being, such an angelic being, which, by its very nature, because it is spiritual, is, when it simply stands next to Mephistopheles, less advanced in evolution than Mephistopheles himself, or rather the hierarchy to which he belongs. In terms of intellectuality, the angelic beings will only be able to achieve during the Jupiter development what Mephistopheles has already achieved through his hierarchy – albeit not through himself, if we regard him as a moon man, as a moon initiate – on the moon. One could say that Mephistopheles' immediate superior is even an extraordinarily high-ranking being, albeit one that is lagging behind in evolution. This being is so highly developed that a being of the rank of, say, the archangel Michael feels himself to be beneath the immediate superior of Mephistopheles. These evolutionary processes complicate the ranking of spiritual beings. A being like Mephistopheles has developed very far during the lunar evolution. This puts it ahead of the usual angelic evolution, the normal angelic evolution. But a being like Mephistopheles has remained a spirit. Because it is a spirit, it has something in common with the usual angelic evolution. After all, angels are spirits too. So we can say: From the Mephistophelian point of view, Mephistopheles is quite right when he speaks of the angels as “immature people”. They really are immature in relation to him, a people who, in the development he values most highly, have not progressed as far as he has.

Now, of course, there are also all possible stages of evolution in the hierarchy of the angeloi. Here, too, we can assume a normal stage of evolution for the development of the angels. But we must assume - this is a fact - that certain angels have also remained behind, that they have, if I may use the expression, lost themselves in Lucifer. Certain angels fall behind in their normal development and become Luciferized. These are the ones that do not go along, but remain at earlier stages. The angels that became Luciferized in this way, or had already become Luciferized before the Lemurian Earth period, now occupy a very special position. After all, how did they achieve this, that they were able to become Luciferized back then? It was about to happen – if I am to express myself popularly, even if only approximately, because it cannot be otherwise – that the group of beings that was human was about to undergo its moon development. Now what is called the Luciferic seduction occurred through spiritual entities that had become Luciferized. This Luciferization led certain beings during the Lemurian evolution to bring about that which you know from Occult Science. Then again, the Ahrimanic evolution during the Atlantean time led to that which you also know from Occult Science and from lectures that have been given recently. So we have to say: During the ancient Lemurian period, a certain impulse emanated from the Luciferic side, in which all beings that had previously Luciferized were involved for humanity. This impulse consists in the fact that man descended further into the material during the development of the earth than he should have done in the progressive development, that his desires, instincts and passions became, one might say, entangled in the material development. A counterweight had to be provided. And this counterweight was provided by the Ahrimanic development, so that man hovers in balance between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic development. But all this, that man thus hovers in balance between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic development, is in a certain higher style, in a certain higher sense again the plan of progressive evolution, lies in the plan of progressive evolution.

Having recapitulated this for you, you can say to yourself: Faust, the right man for the earth, will face Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces. And the Ahrimanic forces that confront him are shown to you by Goethe particularly in the Mephistopheles whom he places at Faust's side as the representative of the Ahrimanic force. We have already discussed why Goethe refrained from clearly emphasizing how the Luciferic impulses approach Faust. But everywhere – as I have indicated – it shines through that Goethe actually placed Faust in the middle between the Mephistophelian and the Luciferic forces. I have repeatedly emphasized that Goethe, in his time, could not yet be completely clear about the relationship of the human Faust to Ahriman-Mephistopheles and to Lucifer, because spiritual science did not yet exist as it does today. But he had a certain instinctive recognition that Faust is confronted with these two types of impulse.

Now we ask ourselves: What is it that Mephistopheles himself or his relatives wanted with people? What Mephistopheles wanted with people is really nothing more than something that would have made people on earth impossible, really impossible. For what has only occurred on earth is reproduction through the sexes of man, through the male-female. Mephistopheles, as a true initiate of the moon, who is only retarded, cannot stand this at all, and that is what he actually regards as his task: to eliminate the possibility of having humanity on earth through sexual reproduction. It should not exist on earth. So let us summarize this precisely: the normal development of man on earth consists in the human race reproducing itself on earth through the sexes. But Mephistopheles wanted to remain on the lunar development. He therefore did not want love to lead to the love of the sexes on earth. Mephistopheles is the enemy of the love of the sexes on earth. He is the most determined enemy. He therefore feels – and Goethe characterizes this quite correctly – extraordinarily called upon to reduce to absurdity everything that somehow leads to sexual love. What he wants to bring about in the relationship between Faust and Gretchen — just read the Gretchen scenes carefully and you will see that he wants to prevent all sorts of things that are the duty of Ahriman-Mepbistopheles. But he does not want the love between Faust and Gretchen, the real human love on earth, to arise; he does not really want to tolerate it in either Faust or Gretchen. On the other hand, he is really present in the play when the homunculus is created in the laboratory. And you know from earlier presentations that I have given from 'Faust' that the homunculus is created in order to become a creator of a human being — Helen — out of nature, without sexual love. Mephistopheles sets himself the task, not of creating a humanity in the sense of progressive development, which on earth comes about through sexual love, but of creating a different kind of being through the powers assigned to Ahriman, a being that is not in the sense of the human race destined for the earth. Because if you think of anything other than this homunculus, think of Euphorion, think of the whole way that Helen comes up again, Mephistopheles is at play everywhere. But nowhere should anything of regular sex love come into consideration. So the role that Mephistopheles is assigned is already very well done and can be fully justified from the point of view of spiritual science. There is tremendous depth in it.

And now take the strange word that immediately follows the heavenly host:

I hear discordant notes, nasty strumming,
From above it comes with unwelcome day;
It is the mischievous, girlish bumbling,
As sanctimonious taste may love it.
You know how we, in deeply wicked hours,
Conspired to destroy the human race:

He accuses the angels of knowing that they were watching when Mephistopheles and his companions plotted the destruction of the human race. Now he says something else, adopting the language of earthly man, as it were:

The most shameful thing we have invented,

— the most shameful thing is precisely this destruction of the human race. It is called the most shameful.

In order to make progress with our understanding – it is of course extremely difficult to approach these things, because Goethe wanted to express his deepest human, spiritual feeling and perception in them – in order to make progress, we need to consider the following. You are aware, are you not, that there is — for us at least — a spiritual science, even if it is only at the beginning of its development today. You also know that there has always been something like this, even if in earlier times it was attained in a different way, as true knowledge of the world that goes beyond appearances and penetrates to reality. Now you also know that in a certain way, especially in older times, the spiritual knowledge that was preserved in the mysteries was carefully guarded and that it was based on real knowledge of the world. This spiritual knowledge was only imparted to those who showed their maturity for it. If we now ask ourselves what kind of special kind of knowledge this actually was, this special kind of spiritual knowledge that was imparted in the mysteries, it is best to compare our fifth post-Atlantic period with previous periods, the Greco-Latin, Egyptian-Chaldean and so on. And if, on the basis of this comparison, we ask ourselves how the whole conception of the world has changed through man from earlier epochs, from earlier cultural epochs into our cultural epoch, It is truly the case that something important and significant has taken place in the evolution of humanity, that it is a fable convenante if one believes that one only needs to know about the development of humanity what the trivial story, what is today called history, tells. The earlier cultural ages were quite different from how they were imagined according to ordinary history, which is a fable convenante. Just consider the depth of such a saying as I have quoted:

Oh Sun, a king of this world,
Luna receives your gender;
Mercury copulates you quickly.
Without Venus' favor, you achieve nothing,

Whatever Martian is chosen as a husband.
Jovis G'nad is not lost on you;
So that Saturnus, old and decrepit,
Proves to be many-colored.

There is an enormous depth of malapropism in such a saying, but this depth was once there. People once saw into these realities, even if only through the results of atavistic clairvoyance, which were also pointed to in such sayings, for example. The fifth post-Atlantic period emerged from this knowledge of the basis of existence. It has strayed in two directions. I have characterized one of these, so to speak, through the initiation of the fifth post-Atlantic period, which I have described through Baco von Verulam, through Lord Bacon. There we have the longing to treat everything that goes beyond the perceptible as mere idols. You know, Bacon assumed four types of idols. We have listed them: Idola tribus, Idola specus, Idola fori, Idola theatri, four types. This tendency, to base everything on knowledge gained through sensual observation and through concepts that in turn arise from sensual observation, is expressed through Bacon's spirit at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantic period. Everything that goes beyond sensory perception is an idol, the content of which is actually exhausted in words. And we have already characterized that, so to speak, that is one current.

Now take, schematically expressed, the current that expresses itself through something like: “O Sun, a king of this world,” which still goes into the deep foundations of existence. If it only wanted to develop from the fourth into the fifth post-Atlantic period, we can say that it would go like this (see drawing). The development that leads to the idols goes down below this evolution (blue line); it does not recognize that in reality one finds a spiritual immediately, just as one finds a sensual; it excludes the spiritual and regards it only as contained in the word idols. This development is inaugurated with Bacon.

What would be the counter-image to this? The counter-image would be an evolution that would only recognize the existence of the spiritual, of the soul-spiritual, which the physical-material does not recognize. That would be the counter-image to this. We could therefore ask: Does this development also exist? Is it also the case, as Bacon says, that only sensual reality is reality, and that everything else is mere word-idols, an expression for the fact that there is only a spiritual reality and no material-physical reality that enters into the senses? This too actually exists. George Berkeley lived a little later than Bacon, and he represents this line of development (red line). Let us take a few moments to clarify the essence of Berkeley's world view.

Berkeley's view, which essentially resulted from his theological world view – he was a bishop at the end – is that everything outside of man that is perceived by the senses is only there as long as it is perceived by the senses. So Berkeley's view is this – isn't it, perhaps the contrast is the best way to characterize it – you assume, now from a, I would say, view that is naive towards Berkeleyanism, you assume the following: When you enter, you see, let us say, Mr. Brown sitting here, but you assume that he was already sitting here before, and you see him afterwards. — As I said, there is not the slightest proof that what you see sitting in this chair was also there before you saw it. And when you go out again, you believe that the Lord remains seated here and sits there while you turn your back on him and go out. Berkeley is of the opinion that there is no proof that, let us say, what you have seen here is still sitting there. It sits there as long as you look, because that is alive, the forming in the eye, and how should the forming in the eye be there if you do not look? One can prove Bacon's view of the world to be logically complete. One can also prove Berkeley's view of the world to be logically complete, because there is no contradiction in Berkeleyanism that could arise logically. It is perfectly possible to prove it logically, even if it does not correspond to naive consciousness. Berkeley does not believe that when you go in you create the farmer and when you go out you magically make him disappear again, he certainly does not believe that, but that what you see comes only with your looking and goes away again with your looking. Esse est percipi: to be is to be perceived. And there is no being other than being perceived in the surrounding world. Therefore, as you can imagine, for Berkeley everything that is the sensory world is only in the process of becoming. You look, there it is; you look away, there it is gone, no longer there. So all this is only there in your perceptions. As I said: esse est percipi, there is nothing but perception, except the process of perception. But behind this process of perception, which is nothing but the process of perception, there is the divine spiritual being. Apart from your perception, Mr. Bauer also has to do with the God who sets him up as he wants him. And this God, when you enter, creates the image of Mr. Bauer in you from what is only in you. Then, when you leave, he lets it disappear again. So this world of the senses does not exist, only the spiritual and soul-like. All of you, as you stand here before me, are only the creature of my eyes. Besides what is the creature of my eyes, there is also the divine-spiritual, soul-spiritual world, but it receives and sustains you quite differently than you exist as the creature of my eyes.

I have only characterized this view. It is really strictly provable philosophically. But it is the one that gives, one might say, the other half of the world to Baconism. And all world views of the fifth post-Atlantic period oscillate between these two directions, between the red and the blue. Either this world view becomes entangled in the mere recognition of the sensual-real and thereby declares itself powerless to see a real spiritual in the sensual-real, or it exhausts itself in the mere recognition of the spiritual-soul, seeing only God and divine thoughts everywhere and declaring itself powerless to descend from the life in God and divine thoughts to the sensual reality. These two aberrations are very much present in the fifth post-Atlantean period. And anyone who observes spiritual life as it develops outside of esotericism will constantly find it either on one or the other, on the red or the blue line. The outer esotericism does not lie on what I have drawn here as the white line.

It can be said that in the fifth post-Atlantean period, man enters into a certain tension between these two views of the world. And Goethe felt this tension intensely. I have presented here, I would say, the theoretical, the more philosophical impulses, but it did not stay that way. All life also errs between the merely spiritual-soul and the merely sensual-material. Goethe felt this tension in the most eminent way. That he felt everything that lives in the outer world, I would like to say under the influence of the current of the blue line, you will not find wonderful, because that is how our essential development goes in the fifth post-Atlantic period, as far as possible towards the material and towards the mere recognition of the material.

But Goethe also felt the other line. He felt it deeply, only in Goethe's time it really was not yet so, I would say, precarious, to call materialism materialistic as it is today. At that time it was not as precarious to point out the aberrations of the blue line as it is today. Today spiritual science must point out the aberrations of the blue line, and it will therefore have to endure all the terrible impacts that must come, because one always only opposes with prejudice, yes, with hatred, what wants to go out into the world as knowledge. And more and more, materialism will be canonized, albeit in a worldly way. But one can still say that materialism will be canonized. How close is materialistic medicine today to declaring itself sacrosanct, how many other endeavors today are declaring themselves sacrosanct in the sense of materialism, in the sense of the aberration indicated by the blue line, the deviation from the spiritual and soul, which at the same time, however, contains as its manifestation the sensual and material, which then belongs to it, which is one with it, and which must be asserted by that which we call spiritual science. Those persecutions, which one might call inquisitorial persecutions, which have already occurred in other fields, will only come in the field of materialism, are actually only just beginning, are now beginning, are only just beginning to assert themselves, even if the forms will be different. The rebellion against the materialistic coloring of knowledge will no less fall prey to the inquisition, the inquisition of the future, which will appear in somewhat different forms than the inquisition of the past, when earlier endeavors fell prey to the corresponding inquisitions. One should not believe that everything that strays according to the blue line will not become just as intolerant as endeavors in other fields became intolerant.

The red line was not so clearly visible in the past. It only separated itself in the fifth post-Atlantic period, and even somewhat later than the blue line, but it was already included in earlier endeavors. It only really emerged in a particular form and has its most important, its greatest philosophical representative in Berkeley. But it has enough other representatives. It emerged in the fifth post-Atlantic period, but certain things remained out of the forms it already had, and that is why it was that in Goethe's time it was already difficult to talk properly about the red line, while Goethe could still talk about the blue line without difficulty. It was difficult to talk about the red line. For what is it that actually strives on the path of this red line? All those world-views strive towards it that avoid extending their view over the whole breadth of the world, and that would revel in a general spiritual-soul life, in a spiritual-soul life that wants to be powerless in the face of the manifestation of the senses. It is a world-view that wants to speak about the supersensible, but that really does not want to recognize anything. Here we have a broad field to which almost all religious denominations and all sects have gradually turned, for it is characteristic of these world views that they actually refrain from trying to understand the world and just talk about something supersensory in general and want to indulge in words. They do not want to acquire the positive, concrete power of knowledge, to really delve into the world of reality with what they attain, with what they talk about.

You will perhaps understand me better if I try to express myself in the following way. Think about how life can unfold for an average person today. He works, let us say, six days a week in a factory or in an office or wherever. He is part of a purely material mechanism that is absorbed in mere sensory observation; today, nothing spiritual is mixed into it, and less and less spiritual is mixed into it. On the contrary, anyone who wants to mix something spiritual into it is considered a real character. But in this sphere all the forces which present-day science seeks to recognize are at work. All the human interconnections which knowledge seeks to fathom are at work here. In short, all the thoughts and concepts which express themselves through the reality unfolding before our eyes are developed here. And then we assume, for his own good, that this person, who has spent the week in the office or in the factory dealing with the purely material or teaching the purely material - after all, nothing but the material is taught in ordinary schools - materially cognizable. Let us assume, out of a sense of honesty, that the person goes to church on Sunday for his own good. There he hears talk about the things that are talked about in church today, based on the evolution that has taken place over the centuries. Try, if you can, I mean, if you have been to church often enough and listened to sermons with an open mind, if you have seen with open eyes what is going on, ask yourself whether there is something in what is being said that is suitable for educating the world that is spreading around us. It is admitted that the God of whom they speak is the author of the world's ruin, but there is no mention, not a single one, of the way in which He intervenes in the world through His forces, through His impulses. There is a special Weltanschhauung for weekdays: blue line; a special Weltanschhauung for Sundays: red line. Nowhere, absolutely nowhere do we see a connection between the two, if we really look at things with insight. Just ask yourself: what does what is taught from the pulpit have to do with chemistry, physics, biology? No relationship is sought, it is even condemned.

Take, on the other hand, the humanities, and you will immediately see what is important. The humanities do not speak of the sensual-material world in the same way as ordinary physics or ordinary chemistry, but they speak of the physical-sensual world in such a way that what they say about the physical-sensual world can flow into every detail of what they say about the spiritual world. It does not have a weekday view and a Sunday view, but a view that extends over the spiritual world and flows down into the details of the physical-sensual world. It does not declare itself powerless, like Berkeleyan idealism, to grasp the world of the senses from the spiritual; it does not declare itself powerless, like Baconian materialism, to find the spirit in the world of the senses, but only to find idols. Where does that come from? Well, we have already grasped that. It is natural to the fifth post-Atlantic period that evolution, schematized by the blue line, came into being. We could, so to speak, call Bacon the inaugurator. Man had to submerge into matter at some point. I have often discussed and discussed the fact that spiritual science is by no means opposed to materialism, but understands why material development is recognized in the fifth post-Atlantic period. But it cannot be recognized without allowing oneself to be inspired by a spirit like Ahriman. And however long this materialism of the fifth post-Atlantic period continues to develop in its Ahrimanic sense, it will have to believe in turn – you can be assured of this, and you will not be because I am telling you, but because you will understand it from the whole spirit of spiritual science, he will have to hold on to this materialistic Ahrimanic sense, to which Ahriman-Mephistopheles, in his deepest hours of wickedness, had resolved to have nothing to do with the regular progress of the human race on earth. Therefore, this science, which has grown out of this materialism, will never come to a thorough understanding of the mystery of the human becoming, of the riddle of embryology and so on - never! It would be able to come to an understanding of the origin of such entities that can form on the way of the homunculus. But this science will never come to that. Now this is only one current of evolution. But much, much depends on this Ahrimanism. Knowledge is only one part of it. But this Ahrimanism runs through the whole of culture.

Goethe also felt the other current, schematized by the red line, deeply, but it was not possible for him, I would say, to present the figures for this red line as clearly, as distinctly as he presented them for the blue line. For the blue line, he created Mephistopheles and his stout and lanky demons and the lemurs. There they stand before us. He dared to do that. For those who speak of the lemurs and the stout and lanky demons will only be slandered from the present age onwards, and will be slandered more and more if they speak in the sense of spiritual science. In Goethe's time, this was still less worrying to some extent. But what was worrying was the other thing, which Goethe also saw through and saw through quite well. It was that he knew that when this red line enters our present time, when there really is a view that declares itself powerless and will declare itself more and more powerless, to come from the recognition of the spiritual and soul to the penetration of the real world, it is due to the fact that certain Luciferic spirits prevent currents that were justified in the past from progressing. Luciferic nature hinders certain trends, religious and sectarian trends, from progressing. And so they cannot penetrate the world, remain stuck in mere recognition of the spiritual-mental. Berkeleyism is just a particular expression of this. This is based on a Luciferic restraint. How does it express itself for Goethe, for example? Mephistopheles remembers himself and his brothers and sisters, those who once, in the depths of their depravity — which means something different in the language of Mephistopheles — swore destruction to the human race, that is, not wanting to know about the way humanity populates the earth. Mephistopheles remembers that it was actually part of his essence that, in the Ahrimanic period, figuratively speaking, he was in the momentous meeting of his spirits, who then decided that no human being should ever be born naturally on earth, but that the powers that exist on earth as sexual beings should be used for something completely different. These Ahrimanic entities decided in ancient times not to allow the love of the sexes to arise. But now Goethe says, not identifying himself, of course, but thinking as Mephistopheles: There are others who are not inspired by Mephistopheles, but are also inspired, well, they don't say anything about the human race on earth not reproducing in the usual human way, but they begin to pray, and find that those who do nothing in the sense of the ordinary reproduction of the human race, who refrain from it, who want nothing to do with it, those are the ascetics, the saints, who make the familiar long faces at the love of the sexes, of which we have spoken several times before. — Mephistopheles sees, looks, beholds such on the other side in the host of angels. There he sees the inspirers of these others, who, in essence, worship what Mephistopheles and his brothers and sisters have decided:

... how, in our most wicked hours,
we devised destruction for the human race.
The most shameful thing we have invented
is just right for their devotion.

That is what devotion is focused on. The Luciferian inspirers of the backward church communities, monastic communities, and sectarian movements are standing among the other crowds inside it. It is not for nothing that Mephistopheles says to the one tall fellow whom he particularly likes:

The priestly mien does not suit you at all.

Goethe has here intuitively grasped much of what he had on his mind regarding the world view that goes hand in hand with the priestly mien, regarding the Sunday world view, which he conceived as Luciferic as opposed to the Ahrimanic. Mephistopheles feels a kinship with those who have taken up into their devotions what Mephistopheles has taken up into his science and into his will.

We can talk about how we think about all these things in purely spiritual terms. But now we want to talk about these things in the Goethean sense. And what I have just said is already, if I may say so, a primeval Goethean intuition. Thus, the Ahrimanic world of lemures, dickteufel and dürrteufel is juxtaposed with something that is initially touched by Lucifer. Goethe expresses this very clearly. The Luciferic is contrasted with the Mephistophelian, as I said, in as veiled a way as possible for a personality to express it, well, a personality to whom many things are allowed: the devil. He is allowed to speak of the 'cleric's expression', of the 'dearest' boys and so on. So in the facts, these two stand in contrast to each other. On the one hand, Mephistopheles, who has, as it were, pledged Faust's soul. How is it pledged? By having driven Faust through everything earthly that goes down below the sphere that has entered into earthly becoming, and goes down below the sphere of human becoming through sexual love. He has a claim on Faust's soul because he has introduced him to everything Ahrimanic. Mephistopheles is truly not to blame for what has entered Gretchen's love through Faust, and he has sufficiently transformed it into its opposite. And afterwards things go quite Ahrimanically. Only Ahrimanic arts are used to evoke certain external phenomena of the Greek world. What can be achieved by Ahrimanic arts is first achieved in the context of the state – let us say it very softly. Then it is sought in the development of the human being, in the context of evolution, but in the context of subhuman and subanimal evolution, in the context of the mechanized homunculus, historically mechanized homunculus. Helen is brought up in a way that is not in the earthly existence of humanity. Then some earthly actions are produced, well, after all, these are not earthly figures either, who help as elves and goblins. All this is already very much mortgaged under the influence of Ahrimanic arts, and mortgaged through the only thing he can have of man's actual earthly blessing. Thus, by leading him through the shallow insignificance - for earthly existence it is only shallow insignificance, but it is therefore not something to which immense reason and science do not belong, even if it is shallow insignificance - the soul is pledged to him. Then pledged by the other, that he has of the actual earthly blessing - well, what then? Man has received his ego on earth, so first his blood. Bones, tendons, ligaments, what the patched half-nature does, Mephistopheles can have, but the actual earthly blessing, the blood, the representative, the physical-material representative of the earthly man, he would like to have that, but he cannot have that, he is left standing on the moon. From him he can only obtain the title written in blood, only that which can be brought into the abstract contract, so to speak, that which is not connected with the impulses that are in reality, but which remains in the abstract, in conformity with the contract. He can only extract that from the blood, not the impulse itself, only that can Mephistopheles extract.

The soul is pledged to him. Now, in his language, it looks as if the other host has simply smuggled it away, cunningly taken it away. But it's not that easy. Up to the point of the death we described yesterday, Mephisto still has Faust pretty much in his claws. But if you recognize death as we showed it yesterday, not just when Faust falls down, but as death gradually sets in, then what Faust experiences, and in particular experiences as the blissful feeling that I described at the end yesterday, after the soul has detached itself from the body, is something that has already been experienced in the spiritual world. There Faust's soul, or, as Goethe first wrote, Faust's entelechy (we will speak of this entelechy tomorrow), glides over into the luciferic sphere and would dissolve in the luciferic sphere. Faust would have just as little benefit from this as if he were to fall prey to Mephistopheles. Just think of what is threatening him there!

Turn to me, loving flames!
The truth will heal
those who condemn themselves;
so that they may joyfully release themselves
from evil
to be blissfully united with the All.

But this beatitude would lead to dissolution in the All, to transition into the eighth sphere! This is precisely what Faust would have: dissolution into the All, which would be identical with annihilation. And now turn to the last scene, of which I have said that it is necessarily connected with the preceding scene, that it belongs to it, that it must be there. There we see the action continuing in a completely different area. There the angels come again and bring Faust's entelechy, Faust's immortality. But in bringing this entelechy, this immortality, they say how they can bring this entelechy here. The younger angels, so it says in the last scene:

Those roses, from the hands
of loving, holy penitents,
helped us to win the victory
and to complete the great work,
capturing this treasure of the soul.

Thus the angels do not raise the entelechy, the soul of Faust, through their own nature, but by receiving the roses from the loving and holy penitents, they raise it out of the human sphere, or rather out of the sphere of people who have gone through human life on earth, who have truly developed out of earthly life. Goethe derives the whole evolution from Mephisto, from the angels, to the human evolution, in that the angels do not only save the entelechy through their own power, but they save it by having received the roses from the hands of loving, holy penitent women. That is the infinitely profound thought. Goethe brings into it his conviction of the significance of continuous human development, of the significance of earthly evolution. And so he must find something in the human being that overcomes the mere Ahrimanic-Mephistophelian. Mephistopheles stands there, commanding the lemurs, half-natures patched together out of bones, tendons and ligaments, commanding the devilish thicks and scrawnies. I have come to terms with what this means: the subhuman nature that could never produce the human being lies in all this only, nature in a basis from which man cannot grow out of, lies in there. Everything lies in there that the world view can grasp, which runs on the blue line, but what surrounds us must not be grasped in this way. From his time on the moon, Mephistopheles has only the powers at his disposal that command lemurs, thick and scrawny devils, but what they draw from nature, from the earth, is only the Mephistophelean, and something else can be drawn from it that Mephistopheles cannot know because he has not gone through the evolution of the earth in his own way. This is drawn out by seeking out the relationship with earthly powers and elements from the now real sanctification of physical nature, the ennoblement of physical nature.

Eternal bliss,
glowing bond of love,
boiling pain of the chest,
foaming divine joy.
Arrows, pierce me,
Lances, conquer me,
Maces, crush me,
Lightning, batter me;

- and so on. There you have the effervescence of nature, which belongs to the human being, which is also connected with the Luciferic, with the devilish, but goes higher. There you have this nature. And the angels have the task on earth or for the earth to take with them the care of the human race. The angels who do not stay behind, but progress to the point of caring for the human race as it should be on earth, Goethe regards as the true redeemers. Do you remember what commission the Lord gives to the actual angels:

But you, the true sons of the gods,
Rejoice in the living, rich beauty!
That which is becoming, that which is eternally working and living,
Embrace you with the sweet barriers of love.

- there they are to provide help, there they are to intervene, and they do so. Those angels truly advance in the angelic host who occupy themselves with the loving-holy penitents and take the roses from them. Just as man absorbs what is allotted to him in earthly evolution, so these angels, who do not remain on the level of lunar evolution but go along with earthly evolution, receive the forces that come from natures such as those portrayed in the last act in the loving, holy penitent women. That is what will help them to progress. Goethe is convinced that the angels develop beyond the Luciferic. As I said, I wanted to hint at Goethe's thought, at how Goethe was connected with all the great evolutionary thoughts of his kind.

We will continue our discussion tomorrow. I hope that from what we have discussed today you have seen how Goethe delves into the depths of becoming and the secrets of the world in order to create his “Faust” and how he wanted to give his verdict on the evolving currents of world view. Truly, there is much in this “Faust”, very, very much in this Faust! And it must be said: humanity could gain infinitely if it tried to find its way through all that is contained in Goethe's “Faust”, to use Goethe's own expression. But we will talk more about all this tomorrow, and about some of the connections between these Faust ideas and the ideas of spiritual science.

after a eurythmic presentation of the scenes “Midnight” and “Entombment”

Much could be said if one wanted to exhaust everything that lies in these final scenes of Goethe's “Faust”, if one wanted to point out all the perspectives that naturally arise for spiritual science from the thoughts that flow from these final scenes. Today I want to bring out a few things from the abundance of what could be said. But I certainly do not want to create the impression that these things could be completely exhausted.

We must take as our starting point two facts of the evolution of the earth if we want to understand these final scenes, two of the most important facts of the evolution of the earth. We have already referred to them. The first fact lies in the Lemurian period, the second in the Atlantean period. Today we will only characterize them insofar as we need to. The fact of the Lemurian period, characterized from a certain point of view, is that through all the events that can be read about in “Occult Science in Outline” or in our cycles, human beings have, to a certain extent, organized themselves more deeply into matter than was predetermined. This has come about through the Luciferic impulse. This impulse has, as it were, fulfilled one of the intentions to which Mephistopheles refers when he says that he undertook it together with the others in deeply wicked hours when destruction was devised for the human race. Through the fact that humanity organized itself more deeply into matter than was actually predetermined for it, human consciousness connected with all that human existence means in the evolution of the earth in a different way than it should have been. We have often pointed out that, as a result of this Luciferic impulse having been given, man connects a completely different consciousness with generation, with sexual reproduction. In those days, so to speak, sexual reproduction was brought into consciousness, and in this way it was made, in a certain sense, one might say, from a supersensible fact, into a sensual fact. That is the first.

The fact that then exists in the Atlantean period is that, since man was now already more deeply organized in sensuality than was predetermined for him, he developed his whole organism in such a way that the Verahrimanization, one could say, could take place as we have often described it, that man connected his spiritual powers with the sensual-physical natural powers and natural facts. You know that in the Bible the first fact is expressed through the image that is given of the Luciferic seduction, which is mainly characterized in the words that Lucifer speaks with regard to the human race: Your eyes will be opened, and you will distinguish good and evil. Your eyes will be opened – in this taking in of the sensual into consciousness with the opening of the eyes lies precisely the fall of mankind into matter. So now mankind had fallen deeper into matter than was predetermined for it. It was predetermined for mankind to see the material world from outside the material world. Through Luciferic seduction, humanity sank into the material world, and through the Ahrimanic of the Atlantean period, a relationship between man and the material world arose within the material world, which should only have taken place in the spiritual counter-image above. What should have taken place above, as it were floating above the material, took place in the material.

The first is expressed by the words spoken over the human being: Your eyes will be opened, and you will distinguish – outwardly – good and evil in sensual perception. – The second is expressed in the Bible, as you know, by saying: And the sons of the gods found that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they united with them in matter. — That is the biblical word, which, I would say, with reference to the human being and that which dwells in the human being, expresses a broad fact. For in this broad fact, all Ahrimanic activity in the human race is included at the same time. Through the same power with which heavenly love has sunk and been drawn into matter and become earthly love, through the power that underlies the fact of the transformation of heavenly love into earthly love, through these impulses, this fact was at the same time brought about, that in an earthly way the intellect of man connects with matter and creates the materialistic form of science. If the Ahrimanic impulses had not taken hold in man, which are expressed through their most human fact: And the sons of the gods found that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they joined with them in the flesh, without the impulses having entered the human race, had the impulses not been drawn upon to use the human intellect to create all kinds of instruments that are only combinations of material forces, and that consist of merely creating everything possible in a machine-like way for any purpose, even if that purpose is the destruction of the human race. If this Ahrimanic temptation had not occurred, it would not have been possible for instruments of murder and the like to have been devised on earth, because if people had retained the relationship between intellect and creation up there, not down in matter, they would not have poured intellect into matter to create the kinds of things that are created in our purely demonic machines, which play an ever greater role in the materialization of human culture. Just as everything that is confusion and aberration in human affectivity, human passion, human emotional life, is expressed by the fact: “And your eyes will be opened and you will distinguish - outwardly, sensually distinguish - good and evil - so all the facts that, as it were, arise from the pride and out of the Ahrimanic nature of man, such as great advances of humanity are marvelled at, the purely mechanical culture, is out of the same principle as that which is hinted at in the Bible: And the sons of the gods found that the daughters of men were beautiful, and they joined with them in the flesh. The records express these things in their own way. In a certain field they shine where these impulses lie, but these impulses are effective in a wide periphery. In the present age, when humanity is to overcome that which is Luciferic and Ahrimanic – and this must be fully recognized – in our time, a clear insight must increasingly prevail regarding what has come about through the opening of the eyes, through the union of the Sons of God with the daughters of men, that is, through the descent of heavenly love to earthly love. A clear understanding must spread.

And Goethe's intuitive perception came close to grasping the necessity for this clear understanding. Precisely when he was writing the last scenes of Faust, his intuitive perception, which was based on instinct, came close. This is of infinite significance. What, then, is it all about? You know, it achieves nothing to say: Oh, I avoid the Luciferic, I avoid the Ahrimanic. That is foolish talk, for one cannot do that; one can only establish the balance between the two. Thus, the Luciferic must gradually be paralyzed by the Ahrimanic as human evolution progresses, and, conversely, the Ahrimanic must be paralyzed by the Luciferic. This is what Goethe sensed and what he incorporated into the last scenes of his “Faust”.

Let us recall once more the deeply moving scene with Sorge. Do you recall how it was explained in an earlier cycle that the rightful realm of Ahriman-Mephistopheles is the realm of death? Thus, in a certain sense, destruction and dying already belong to the realm of Ahriman; he must only not apply his impulses in a misplaced way. When he applies them to places where they do not belong, then the

bad arises. Now, Goethe has lack, need, guilt depart at the moment when the physical body begins to separate from the spiritual soul. In this way he indicates that he is aware of the connections that exist between man and lack, need and guilt, especially for the physical life on earth spent in the body. But when the soul is already loosened, when it is already said of the three that death is approaching, then there still remains worry, but it is still related to the others. It remains, so to speak, in the time in which death is already at work. It is sent from the legitimate realm of Ahriman, worry. Ahriman could do nothing worse for Faust than prevent worry from remaining with Faust through the beginning of Faust's death, for in this lies the intervention of very mysterious forces. A deep mystery is touched here. What does worry do? Sorrow, which is also brought by Mephistopheles-Ahriman, like all gray-haired women, for the magic of Mephistopheles still lasts until then, what does sorrow do? It undoes in Faust what Lucifer has achieved; it closes his eyes again. Do you realize the depth of the world view here! That which came to man through Lucifer's impulse is now paralyzed by an impulse of Ahriman through the detour of worry. Man has become sighted in the physical realm through Lucifer. Now he is being blinded again by the form brought in from the realm of Ahriman, that is, made to see inwardly.

But within there is a bright light.

There is an enormous depth to this matter. And so, in this dying Faust, Goethe is really not trying to undo anything in a human being, but to shape the Luciferic in such a way that it enters life in balance with the Ahrimanic. And now, in a sense, care speaks a profound word to interpret what it does. Lucifer once said: You humans will see by having your eyes opened. What does care say? Care counters the Luciferic with the Ahrimanic. People have indeed become able to see outwardly, physically, but they are blind in spiritual terms, and this continues throughout their lives. How can this blindness be overcome? By consciously immersing oneself in it, by grasping it, by recognizing it, and thus spiritual seeing, spiritual looking, occurs. Now Sorrow utters a word that one could already say, with a certain justification, sounds equally mysterious to the clever and the foolish:

People are blind throughout their lives,
Now, Faust, you will become blind at the end!

Thus, Sorrow seems to say:

People are blind throughout their lives,
Now, Faust, you will become blind at the end!

One cannot make much sense out of these two sentences. One wonders: What is it actually supposed to mean? — So, physically, people see all their lives, but worry calls this blind.

Well, Faust, you will become blind in the end!

He is now really going blind. She applies the words in a completely different way, but she actually means that he becomes inwardly sighted. It is important to learn how to read these sentences in the right way. And that consists of:

People are blind throughout their lives,
Now, Faust, you will become blind at the end!

The experience lies in the becoming. For people, it is a given fact: they are blind. But Faust should not be blind, but should experience the process of entering into blindness. Become blind, experience this connection between being-seeing and being-blind. Take this word and link it to another:

But you, the true sons of the gods,
Rejoice in the livingly rich beauties!
The becoming

- attention is drawn to this! —

That which is becoming, that which is eternally active and alive,
embraces you with the sweet barriers of love.

The Becoming, which is eternally active and alive, is conceived as the spiritual, as the reflection of the spiritual in the “Prologue in Heaven”; this Becoming is now poured out upon Faust through the concern:

Men are blind in their whole life,
Now, Fauste, become blind in the end!

It is something different to experience the connection between seeing and blindness in the process of becoming than not to experience it, but to be only in the blindness of seeing,

If one is well acquainted with Goethe, one can well understand his peculiar feelings towards being and becoming, and then one has a deep, deep understanding of Goethe in this interpretation of this saying. So we see how Goethe penetrates to the deepest human secrets. This going blind through worry is really the counterpart to man becoming blind through Lucifer in paradise.

And now let us move on. Let us look at Mephistopheles as he stands there, facing the sons of the gods, who have received, so that they can truly have the treasure of the soul, the roses from the hands of loving, holy penitents. What has happened here? These penitents were once on earth, they went through earthly love, through that which had become of Ahrimanic seduction in the Atlantean period. But what have these penitents achieved through their human experiences? Earthly love has become heavenly again! We see at the end that Gretchen herself has carried the earthly love she experienced here up into the spiritual regions. And what took place here on earth has been transformed into the spiritual and heavenly. Gretchen is up there among the penitents, she is among the penitents scattering roses. Love that has become earthly comes to us again in a heavenly form. She has been led back to the heavenly realm through the process of humanity, through what human beings can experience. And

if the Bible expresses it at the point where it means heavenly seduction, that heavenly love has become earthly, then Goethe points to the process of humanity, where earthly love becomes heavenly again, and Mephistopheles stands below as a son of the gods too, but now unites with the daughters of men, who in turn have become spiritual, through the roses they have strewn. It is the reverse process of the one the Bible suggests to us: And the sons of the gods united with the daughters of men. And again, Mephistopheles, who had strayed with the daughters of men, united with the daughters of men, who had been taken up by the gods. So it is the reverse process. Both the process in Paradise of the Luciferic temptation and the later process, which was indicated by the words: “The sons of the gods united with the daughters of men in the flesh” —, are applied in the opposite direction. The son of the gods, Ahriman-Mephistopheles, unites with the daughters of men, who in turn have been taken up into the nature of the gods, but now in heavenly love, not in earthly love, in spirit, in soul, not in the flesh. The reverse process. Once again, a wonderful mystery through which the events of “Faust” are directly linked to the highest traditions of humanity.

And only now, taking things this way, do we understand what Goethe actually means, for only now are we able to grasp the process that is taking place. It is most interesting to follow how Goethe was led, I might say, by the necessity of the matter, to shape the conclusion of his “Faust” exactly as he did. He really allowed himself to be led by the matter, not by some mere inner arbitrariness, he allowed himself to be led by the matter. Just consider, he once wrote down, when the matter was not yet finished, when it was so ripe that he could write it, in a scheme of how he wanted to shape this scene. There he writes down:

“Four gray women.” — Well, he carried that out.
“Faust and sorrow“ — carried out.
“Mephistopheles and lemurs” — carried out.
“Faust satisfaction“ — carried out.
“Gone. Corpse. Lemurs burying. Removed. Satans and hellish rachen” — good.
“Decay awaiting“ - he formed that. “Because the soul escapes later than usual” - that is again executed. “Satanic postures to catch it” - well, that is what we have tried to depict here today! “Angels, heavenly glory, float by. Mephistopheles. Resist. Angels scatter roses. They wither at the breath of the satans. Transformed into flames of love. Satans flee. Mephistopheles's love torment. Angels float away. Mephistopheles to the appeal."

Goethe originally wanted to tie in with this appeal, where Mephistopheles, as it were, appeals to heaven for the soul of Faust. So he wrote this down: Mephistopheles off to appeal. -— Then he writes: “Heaven, Christ, Mother” — that is, the Mater dolorosa — “Evangelists and all saints. Judgment on Faust”. So not long before Goethe completed his “Faust,” he wanted to end it with Mephistopheles appealing to heaven on behalf of Faust's soul, and he thought of having a kind of judgment held, where one should have seen a kind of heavenly scene, in which Christ, the Mother of God, the Evangelists and all the saints were gathered. Goethe had thought of presenting this scene in a way similar to the way we find the upper part in the well-known Raphael painting, where the sacrament is in the middle. We know this picture. A judgment should have been held over Faust. Goethe did not carry this out because at the time he wrote it down, he wanted to follow his inner arbitrariness even more. He was driven by the desire to do it differently. The first could have been quite beautiful, but, one might say, it could have been written in earlier times. It no longer fits into Goethe's time. Only those who understand nothing about the developmental history of humanity believe that everything can be written at all times and that the same things can be written about in the same way in every age. Those who are alive in the process of human development

So that is not what Goethe did. Instead, he did what we now know and what was presented here some time ago, the scene where it goes up through the holy anchorites, where we are then led into the realm where the angels come, into the realm of the blessed children, where the penitent women appear, where Gretchen herself appears. That is to say, Goethe humanized the last scene, in keeping with the challenge of the times that was set for him, and included the human element in its significance for spiritual reality. Goethe himself once said that, to a certain extent, the most important thing for solving his Faust problem lies in the words contained in the final scene:

Whoever strives and labors,
We can redeem him;
And if his soul has been touched
By love from above,
The blessed host will meet him
With a warm and loving welcome.

One should not take such a word of Goethe lightly. The commentators on Faust took it very lightly. By pointing this out, Goethe wanted to show how deeply he was able to grasp the secret of the gracious working of the divine spiritual principle in relation to man. And he proceeded with deep significance. But he took it in a lively way. Through the fact that Gretchen had certain experiences at Faust's side during her time on earth and was then transported into the spiritual worlds, a bond is created between Faust and Gretchen, and Goethe wants to show that something like this is a reality to him, that when death passes over these things, they remain a reality. Man is placed in the connections that are formed during his physical existence, only when death has passed over them, they take on a spiritual form.

And if love has shared in him
from above,

– that is, he has entered into an elective affinity with the spiritual that has become of the sensual – then what has become spiritual meets him with a warm welcome, then he is not only a free human being, then he is a human being enveloped in the effects of grace. Goethe points out how deeply significant everything becomes for the human being that he enters into by way of elective affinity, and how real it is for the human being who is interwoven in some way, having been taken up from the physical into the spiritual. And how real are the things that people do in the moral and spiritual realms, how these are not just, as materialism believes, something temporary, but something that continues to have an effect, something that has significance for developing humanity. This is what Goethe shows in this final scene. That is what makes this final scene so magnificent.

What can materialism say other than: Well, the Pater ecstaticus, he imagines things; but when the Pater ecstaticus is dead, then it is all over. Likewise the Pater profundus, likewise the Pater Seraphicus, and so on. — For Goethe, what these anchorites experience is just as real as the rising and setting of the sun is real to him. And just as the rising and setting of the sun has an effect on the physical world, so in Faust's soul a real process is effected in Goethe through what flows through the world from the raptures and prayers and mystical hoverings of the anchorites. Goethe presents the reality of the spiritual world, insofar as this spiritual world is rooted in human feeling and in human inner experience. Not just the supermundane conceptions that are to some extent detached from the human being, but the supermundane conceptions that are deeply connected with the human being, are presented by Goethe. And that is why his Faust has become the real poem about the origin, about the first time of the fifth post-Atlantic period.

But one thing must strike those who follow the various notes that Goethe made before writing the individual scenes. I have already spoken of some notes in another context. For example, at the end of the 18th century, when Goethe was once again approaching the task of editing his “Faust”, he wrote down a few sentences of this sketch of how he wanted to work, how he wanted to transition from what had already been edited to what followed. He wrote down:

“Ideal striving for influence and empathy in all of nature.
Appearance of the spirit as a world and deed genius.”

- That's all there.

"Conflict between form and formlessness.
Preference for formless content
over empty form.
Content brings form with it.
Form is never without content.
These contradictions, instead of unifying them, make them more disparate.
Bright, cold scientific striving. Wagner.
Dull, warm scientific striving. Pupil.
Enjoyment of life of the person seen from the outside, Part I.
In dullness, passion.
Enjoyment of action outwards, Part II, and enjoyment with consciousness.
Beauty.
Enjoyment of creation from within.

There he already indicates the direction he wants to take towards the end. And then he writes down what was not carried out: “Epilogue in Chaos on the Way to Hell”.

I have already said how it was misunderstood that this epilogue should have been held in chaos on the way to hell. People racked their brains over how Faust should have ended with an epilogue in chaos, on the way to hell. So, in a relatively advanced stage, Goethe would not have wanted Faust to be redeemed, but would have wanted him to go to hell. People have not thought about the fact that this epilogue should be spoken by Mephistopheles and not by Faust. Faust goes off to hell after having lost the bet and speaks his epilogue. But Goethe could not carry this out, it is really not there. Why is it not there? Because at that time it could not yet be written, arising out of the profound mystery and at the same time out of the mystery of his time. For what would be contained in this epilogue in the chaos on the way to hell? Let us imagine what would be contained there. What has happened? We have considered the various interactions that have occurred between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic, which are depicted at the end of Goethe's 'Faust'. As a result, Faust's soul has not really been captured by Ahriman-Mephistopheles, but enters the spiritual world in the appropriate way, to join the forces that come from the blessed host in the way we have depicted. It is due to the fact that the Luciferic element has gained a little ascendancy, that a kind of spiritualization has occurred for Faust, that the materialization, which should have occurred through Ahriman, whereby Faust's soul would have remained united with matter, as it were, through earthly heaviness, and Faust would have sunk into an abyss — the ruler over matter is Ahriman-Mephistopheles! That this did not happen. It did not happen. In a sense, the scales tipped more towards the Luciferic side. This made it possible for Faust's soul to enter the region where it then enters, where, with the overcoming of the Ahrimanic in the appropriate way, the human effects of penitents and Gretchen themselves are in the spiritual sphere.

Now Mephistopheles is standing there. He wanted to capture this soul, but could not. He did not succeed in connecting it with the heaviness of the earth, otherwise it would either have remained with the corpse and been caught by the circle of lemurs, or it would have been captured by the thick devils or the thin devils. None of this has succeeded. Such a state of equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic has arisen that Faust has risen to heavenward. But Mephistopheles has now come to a standstill. The soul has escaped him. But he could now say to himself: Yes, here I stand; this soul has escaped me, but it will again move into my realm, it will return to earth. Then I will recognize it, then I will be able to come close to it again, because then it will have to undergo new ahrimanic trials. — Having explained this, there would be the 'epilogue in chaos on the way to hell'. For that is the peculiar thing about Mephistopheles-Ahriman, that he always believes he will win in every incarnation. And in every incarnation, when the corresponding state of equilibrium with Lucifer occurs, he can again lose his victory. That is the peculiar thing. But this to and fro of man between Ahriman and Lucifer must take place, otherwise the human personality could not develop. If man did not have the spirit that works and creates through resistance, the human personality would not be able to develop. It is only through resistance that the human personality develops. Even in our body, our personality develops through resistance. Think, if we did not have two eyes and could direct them at things so that their axes intersect, if we did not have two hands that touch each other, and one of which washes the other, our personality consciousness would not be able to develop physically. The lord of obstacles, the lord of hindrances, is also Ahriman-Mephistopheles. Therefore Ahriman had to gain great influence in the fifth post-Atlantean period, because personality is to be developed precisely in this fifth post-Atlantean period. In earlier periods, the human being had far less personality; in the Egyptian-Chaldean period, almost none at all, since the human being was still almost completely enclosed in a sense of community. I have often discussed this. Personality only really begins to emerge in the Greco-Latin period, and even then slowly, there is still a lot of sense of community. Then in our fifth post-Atlantic period is the time when the personality must become fully aware of itself, so that it can fully create out of itself what is to be achieved for this fifth post-Atlantic period. The strongest demands on the creative and life impulses of the personality are the hallmark of the fifth post-Atlantic period. In this fifth post-Atlantic period, spiritual science must enter into human development. But this spiritual science demands, in order to be understood, grasped and comprehended, a greater strain on the intellectual, the sentient and also the will forces, a greater strain on all the forces of the personality than was present in earlier times. And it was from a deeply intuitive recognition of the impulses of his time that Goethe placed Ahriman-Mephistopheles at the side of Faust, who is to develop personality consciousness in his trials. He must develop in the face of the resistance of Mephistophelian influences; he must recognize what lives in Ahriman-Mephistopheles from the one-sided development of reason and science, but he must preserve himself in it. For a personality who has passed through all science – “Alas, now I have studied philosophy, jurisprudence and medicine, and unfortunately also theology!” – and who has also taken up magic and magical traditions, it was only possible either to fall into mystical enthusiasm for the Earth Spirit:

In the flood of life, in the storm of action
I surge up and down,
weaving back and forth!
Birth and grave,
an eternal sea...

— to weave with it! But this is a rising, a becoming nebulous in this weaving and living in the storm of action... only vague mystics who want to lose their personality may long for this! The fifth post-Atlantic period demands the precise exertion of the strongest personality forces, and out of this knowledge and will in man should arise in the fifth post-Atlantic period. Therefore, however, in this fifth post-Atlantic period, humanity is required to fully employ its personality. And this will become more and more a requirement of this fifth post-Atlantic period: strengthening, empowering the personality through full use of the personality. It will become necessary, also with regard to moral understanding of life, for people who do not want to lag behind in their development to use their personality more and more. This strengthening of the personality will be a demand of the time. And this strengthening of the personality lies in the sense of normal, good, proper further development. The weakening, obscuring of the personality does not lie in the impulses of the rest of the fifth post-Atlantic period. This dissolving of the personality in nebulousness is a relapse, an atavistic relapse into ancient times. But when left to themselves, the opposing Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces work against the human being and undermine his tasks. Because the human being must then fully employ the spiritual science that should arise out of the strong forces of the personality for the fifth post-Atlantean period, Ahrimanic counterforces work against the personality. We must understand this, and it is from this point of view that we must view our time.

If we look back to earlier times, we shall find, in spite of all that is already personal, much more objective striving. In our time, the Ahrimanic forces are working in such a way that they gradually seek to draw the objective striving entirely into the sphere of the personality of those individuals who allow themselves to be drawn into it. Consider how, little by little, everything is diverted from the factual to the personal. This is not just a matter of chance, but something that lies in the nature of our time. Someone is working in the service of evolution, which continues to have a regular effect. Instead of approaching the matter, the fight against his personality will start more and more, personal defamation, personal distortion, will take the place of the factual. And today we can already see how far this has progressed in our age, how people no longer know how to distinguish between purely personal suspicion and objective criticism. And precisely where spiritual science is being practiced in an improper way, it expresses itself most grotesquely and most strongly.

Just recall our own struggles. Do you remember how objectively something had to be presented against the movement that has been attached to the name of Mrs. Besant in recent times. Did they present a single objective argument in their reply? No! Only the strongest personal suspicions. All personal suspicions! This is only a caricatured anticipation of what is a characteristic of our time and will take up more and more space, and which must be seen through with full awareness. Because personality must be pushed into the breach – because only through personality will it be possible to achieve more and more of what used to be achieved more through public spirit – the fight against personality is also starting. And because strength is demanded of the personality, and the sense of comfort does not want to seek strength from the thing that is striven for, the weak personality, the incompetent personality, is today so directed by the own power of the personality, drilled up into the strong. Without having learned anything, without having seriously occupied himself with anything, without having penetrated deeply into anything, today, purely out of the arbitrariness of the personality, this or that is done. And one does not understand at all how to reckon with these things.

In our field, you can again do some nice studies. How often has it been necessary to repudiate the swelling folly that has developed in our movement over the years, to repudiate the swelling vanity! But vanity does not understand that it must be repudiated. An example: in Frankfurt, when I was there once, I received a telephone call from a man who said he had to speak to me immediately. He then arrived, with extremely long hair that fell down over his shoulders and a corresponding patriarchal beard. He explained that he had been following me for quite some time and that he wanted to reach a kind of compromise between what he has to give to the world and what I represent. Well, you can't help but violate that principle of brotherhood, which considers amateurish stupidity and that which is honestly striven for as equivalent. You have to presume to make that distinction. So, of course, you have to let such people go, you don't have to worry about them any further. You don't have to be rude to them, but you do have to show them what you think of them and that you don't subscribe to the vague principle of equality, that every self-important idiocy must be regarded as equivalent to the other. Well, after some time the person in question appeared here in Switzerland and even announced lectures in various cities against me. He has also caused mischief in other ways, as some of those sitting here know. Thus enmities arise because the personality, which today must push itself into the breach everywhere, must permeate itself with something. But if it cannot do so, it wants to be strong without first making itself strong through the forces that permeate it. One must see through the causes of the conflicts. That is the essential thing. We must really understand the times in which we live, not act arbitrarily. Therefore, the strongest possible assertion of the personality is what our time demands. Fight the Ahrimanic battle against the personality.

The second thing that our time demands, and demands quite energetically, is familiarization with the sense of fact. Humanity is instructed to understand the spiritual world. In this spiritual world, it is not the case that one can follow how one is being corrected. I expressed this in the final chapter of my “Theosophy”, that one is not corrected when one has done something wrong. Read it up. Sense of fact, sense of real facts. But the strongest Luciferic battle is being waged against this sense of fact in our time. In no other time, despite everything and in spite of everything that has happened, have facts been falsified as much as in our time! The Luciferic instincts call upon Ahrimanic forces, which present facts in a lying way. This tendency to present facts dishonestly is on the increase and will become more and more prevalent. It is important to see through this. Becoming accustomed to a sense of fact and to the fact that one will increasingly have to stand up for what needs to be stood up for in the world with one's personality is part of the fifth post-Atlantic period.

Try to understand how, especially in our field, the Ahrimanic and Luciferic struggle can already be observed today, how, right up to the most recent events, we have been confronted with a lack of sense of fact. Things are being written and said today that are no longer true at all.

Goethe sensed all this, deeply sensed it. If you go through his “Faust”, you will see that he connects the luciferic and ahrimanic forces to the nature of Faust in such a way as it must be seen by man if man wants to properly place himself with consciousness in the impulses of the fifth post-Atlantic period. In detail and on a large scale, the forces of Ahriman and Lucifer work against the human being. If Ahriman were not recognized, if Lucifer were not recognized, one would not be able to continue to live in the appropriate way. And all this must be brought about through spiritual science. One would like to say that it cannot be discussed strongly enough today, because one is still little understood today according to the weight of what has to be brought out of spiritual science. Things are taken too lightly, too easily forgotten. What our time demands is the deepening and strengthening of the personality, a sense of fact, a sense for true facts, and working with them on a large scale, one could say today, with the external events of the world. There are two things that work against what is necessary for the progress of humanity: an absurd nationality principle that has become atavistic. That is the first. A perverse nationality principle, as it was brought into the world by the Napoleons in the 19th century in particular, a nationality principle in the name of which many impulses are invoked today against the true sense of human development. A befogging nationality principle that befogs and confuses concepts, that places concepts in false spheres. I will make myself clear in the following way.

In a certain sense, we are right to speak of a green meadow if we understand the matter correctly. But we understand the matter correctly only if we speak of the green meadow in such a way that we know that the individual plants are green and that the greenness of the meadow

consists in the green of the individual plants; the individual plants have the concrete green. If I wanted to have the green of the meadow in concrete terms, without the concrete greenness of the individual plants, I would have to paint the meadow green, but then it would truly not be a green meadow. I can only speak of the green of the meadow if I am aware that in concrete terms I can only mean the green of the individual plants. I must know that the green quality is applied only to the individual plants, and that I must not think confusingly as if the green quality of the meadow could apply to the whole. If I use the word the green quality of the meadow in the abstract, then I must be clear about the fact that I am forming only an abstraction which summarizes the individual concretes, the green plants. It is absolutely necessary that there should be such clarity in the use of concepts, that, for example, people should learn that the words “freedom” and “justice” can only be applied in relation to the individual human being, just as “verdancy” can only be applied to individual plants, and that when I speak of the justice and freedom of nations, I can only mean an abstraction, just like the verdancy of a meadow. But today the most mendacious motto that could possibly exist is being spread across half the world, with talk of something that is to be fought for in the name of the rights and freedom of nations, which is such nonsense, such folly, as the green color of a meadow is a folly, if one thinks one could paint all the plants in the meadow, instead of the meadow being green because of the individual plants. Nevertheless, today's delusion of nations, with the false principle of nationality, speaks of this foolish motto: the rights and freedom of nations. And one is quite sure to be considered a fool, a madman, if one expresses what has already been expressed, especially in connection with 'Faust', who says: 'On free ground with a free people', not with a free nation, which could not be mentioned at all, - which must already be expressed in reference to 'Faust'. Today, one is certain to be considered a fool or a malicious person who rebels against something that is so beautiful and so great and so ideal, that is so well intended, but that is thought imprecisely, thought carelessly , is conceived with malevolence because it brings in something atavistic that does not belong in our time, because it teaches the individual a consciousness that comes from weakness and not from strength of personality.

And the other thing that works against progressive principles in our time, apart from the absurd principle of nationality, is the politicization of intellectual life. It is important to understand these two things, to understand the politicization of the life of thought. I have already drawn attention to the meaning of “policy” in another context, where people are constantly talking about policy, about staging certain thoughts in order to achieve this or that. But how widespread this is in the world! In our fifth post-Atlantic period, the worst is emerging from this politicization of the life of thought. A time that could still believe in a certain way when it formed thoughts, could be inspired at its councils, and could decide on this or that dogma, which was then used to achieve this or that in the world. But our time, which is truly uninspired in its materialistic structure, will, if it does not tie the thought in such a way that it is tied in responsibility to the impersonal truth, grasp the thought only out of personal-arbitrary or out of association-arbitrary or otherwise somehow common-arbitrary aspiration. And so the thought is not put into the world because one sees its correctness, but because one wants to politicize with it. This politicization of the thought life goes on and on. And one does not educate oneself in such a way that one comes to the right, to the true thought, but one educates oneself in such a way that one comes to a thought with which one can politicize, for example with the thought of not vivisecting animals. But one does not grasp the thought in its truth, but by its political power of agitation. One agitates with the thought, one politicizes with the thought in temperance associations, in anti-vivisection associations. One does not grasp a thought in its reality – temperance, vivisection or the like – but one politicizes in relation to it. Thought is politicized everywhere. They are absorbed into the political machinery. The false principle of nationality, the false politicization of thoughts, as it lives especially in our present-day clubbiness, is what is contrary to the currently progressive correct evolutions of humanity. Associations are founded, not to represent the truth, but to achieve this or that. As a result, even the right idea can be fanatized, made one-sided, while the fifth post-Atlantic period has in its fundamental character the task of working through the truth.

Herman Grimm, who had become familiar with Goethe's life, said: “Goethe's ‘Faust’ represents a poetry that is really thought out entirely from the organization of the human personality.” A middle-ranking university professor goes astray in his scientific pursuit, going through all sorts of things. But what he goes through is representative of all human striving in the highest sense and, if you go deep enough, contains everything that can arise in a person in our time in terms of philosophical questions, everything that can arise in terms of matters of the heart, and everything that can arise in terms of political forces. And one could add from the depths of spiritual science: precisely that which is purely human, which is the content of humanity, is contained in this “Faust”. What nation does he belong to then? None, of course. And he is the most vivid protest against the false nationality principle of our day, which is thoroughly captured in a word of Grillparzer, a harsh-sounding but deeply true word of Grillparzer. Grillparzer spoke the word: from humanity through nationality to bestiality. That is the way! Nationality leads astray when it is insisted upon, when aspirations are drawn from it, from humanity, and it soon leads into bestiality. And of course politics is necessary in the world, but not the politicization of thought. And one sees how Goethe's thoughts are depoliticized! Try to understand the second part of Goethe's Faust from this point of view; it is written from tremendous depths. It is a great document not only of our time, but of all times of humanity, for it touches on the questions that we have seen, which stand directly alongside the great biblical questions. The scene of Sorrow stands beside the scene of Paradise; the scene where Mephistopheles stands before the spirits of heaven stands beside the image that the Bible gives of how the sons of the gods took pleasure in the daughters of men and joined with them in the flesh.

One would like to have much, much better words to point out what should be deeply inscribed in the human mind and heart and what should not be forgotten, which unfortunately is all too quickly forgotten after it has been heard. For the healing of the great evils of the time can only come from an understanding of the things that have been touched upon.

If today, in connection with Goethe's “Faust”, I have tried to give some idea of the impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean period, and how they are spiritual, I would above all like to see an understanding come of how the sins against these impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean period are showing up all over the world, how lack of understanding is occurring everywhere in the world precisely with regard to what is to be understood. Oh, I would like to have the words with which I would like to talk about these things! But perhaps in the times to come other people will find better words to discuss the things that are so little understood today, because so many people would like to let their personality be submerged in some convenient support for this or that, seeking to become this or that through this or that movement here or there, and then no longer able to extricate themselves from the false principle of community or false principle of nationality, no longer able to extricate themselves from the politicization of thought. And yet, everything that goes down this false track will fall prey to Lucifer and Ahriman. Only that which will know that nothing can be achieved on this track will flourish! However comfortable we may be in all the various agitations and club activities of our time, the path that must be found will only be found in the service of that human activity that seeks wisdom in truth, and that is convinced that only by incorporating truth into humanity can the human goal can be achieved by incorporating truth into humanity, and which knows that all politicization of thought must cease, all agitating with thoughts as if they were dogmas, that they must be grasped with the full sense of responsibility for truth, not for their agitational value, not for the favor that we show them. It is not because they please us that thoughts may enter our sphere, but because we really have the full sense of responsibility for truth and truth-value.

I would like to have said much more than can be contained in the words spoken in the appendix to Goethe's “Faust”. I want it to continue to work in hearts and souls, because I know how much of what is needed for our era and for humanity, which is wandering on such wrong paths in our era, is contained in it. If we cannot admit to ourselves the wrong paths we wish to continue along, then we cannot make real progress towards the right goal that humanity must pursue.

The lectures printed here were an immediate experience for the speaker and the audience, arising out of the dramatic eurythmy presentation of scenes from Goethe's “Faust”, which brought all the forces of the participants into action, from the development of an understanding of the given riddles to the creation of every scenic detail. The work of the intellect was only the bridge to grasping the essential reality that Rudolf Steiner opened up here, which stands behind the secrets of this work and seeks ways of expression for which the previously known artistic means are no longer sufficient. In eurythmy, Rudolf Steiner had created a means of expression through which the supersensible element can speak its own language: the language of movement, which is the form of expression of those worlds that have not hardened down to the physical. Secret laws of nature can be revealed again through the medium of a new art. And in his wisdom of man, in his science of initiation, Rudolf Steiner has opened the gate through which we can find access to those realms into which the Faustian poetry repeatedly transports us, and which must appear to us throughout as phantasmagoria if we cannot handle the key that opens that gate. Who then understands Faust? Commentaries and learned reflections cannot help us here. They do little more than weigh down, even stifle, the spirit that wants to speak to us through poetry. Although we owe a debt of gratitude to Schröer, because his diligent explanations enable us to refresh many things that would otherwise easily disappear into the depths of our memory, this work often reminds us of the pain we go through when example when reading the “Divina Commedia”, when one's soul is crushed by the commentaries that almost every spirited terzetto is accompanied by: a difficult-to-bear dissection into the pedantic-dry. The distance between text and commentary is not so enormous here. Schröer has an affinity with Goethe and enthusiasm, and so his scholarly work seems not so much drying as conscientious. You can put it aside without annoyance and then experience the text of the Faust poem directly. What is behind the poem speaks to us at first like a hunch. Something seizes us that no learned commentary could explain, that would be word and sound if it did not contain profound truths that are not accessible to us at first. The rushing of undercurrents becomes audible; secrets murmur in our inner ear. We are grateful to Schröer for not having drowned the voice of the deep, for only helping to imprint some mythological or historical elements more precisely on our memory. These explanations have not been able to lead us to the sources that pulsate through the poetry. The sources that Faust presses for, yearns for, so that he risks the salvation of his soul, they, which are supposed to give him back his lost humanity through the potion of life that he wants to drink from them, have not flowed into this scholarly existence either; they have only shaken his soul as a yearning and as a moral impulse. Faust, and through him Goethe, cries out for the sources of life; it is also the cry of today's humanity, which still fully deserves this name, which has not numbed its humanity with the noise of machines and the pressure of soul-crushing mechanics. It should hear this cry in poetry in its harrowing force, let it rummage in itself, react to it. On the stage, however, we usually see a jaded Faust, who talks to us about something that sounds very abstract and does not touch him strongly in his depths, only filled with endless boredom and disgust, which ultimately make him reach for the bottle of brown liquid; that makes him somewhat sentimental. It is hardly possible to feel a real relationship with the experience of the earth spirit. Then a piece of not quite well-founded, unreal, legendary romance takes place on stage, a medieval spook - and Faust only really comes to life when it comes to Gretchen; then he knows where he stands. But his game with her does not last long. He has to get back into the spooky romance. Then follows some remorse at the sight of Gretchen in the dungeon, who has gone mad. But he quickly forgets and wakes up refreshed and strengthened in a flowery meadow.

How harrowing reality and crazy superstition combine here to create an overall effect of inescapable grandeur is rarely thought about. Admittedly, the human aspect of this Gretchen tragedy is so grippingly expressed that it is enough to give the poem lasting value, even if one only perceives the other, the actual driving force in Faust, as an ingredient. But since the other material far outweighs the Gretchen episode in volume, at least when reading the work, where one cannot freely abridge or delete as in a stage presentation, one can still be amazed that the poem has become so established and is recognized for its high cultural value, which elevates it to the first place among the treasures of German intellect. The sparks that fly from the finely polished diamonds of thought, that flash out at us everywhere in the dialogues with Mephistopheles and in Faust's soliloquies, they have, along with the magic of the blossoms and the suffering of Gretchen, , in their colorfulness and luminosity, to save the entire work from obscurity, despite Goethe's own statement that his “Faust” could not become popular: it is too mysterious.

And we have to take this fact into account. Before Rudolf Steiner no one could lead into the deep shafts of Goethe's thought processes, his hunches and intuitions, into the world of those imaginations from which the finely honed words have received their wealth of images and eternal value. He alone makes it possible for us to go deeper into those layers of soul-forming human events from which today's insights derive their substance. They provide the carbon from which, through metamorphosis, the diamond is formed. And just as carbon could not become a diamond unless the sun's rays were captured and stored in it, so too does thought receive its light from the spiritual sun that underlies the archetype.

Rudolf Steiner has opened up the path to these deep shafts of emerging events, the path to the “Mothers”. Unlike Faust, created by Goethe, and like the Faust of legend, we should not seek this path with the means of medieval occultism, which had already become obsolete by the time Faustian figures were struggling between outdated, decadent alchemical research methods and newly emerging exact natural science at the dawn of the modern age. At that turning point in the age, people were working with many aberrant, murky means to penetrate the secrets of life: with faded magic formulas, with incantation experiments, with mediumship, hypnosis, tinctures and ointments that would also entice today's experimental psychologists to enrich their science. Rudolf Steiner showed us other ways to access the sources of life: the paths of pure thought, moral self-education, scientific and artistic work, and the free activity of the I in the service of humanity. But in order to do so, it was necessary to prepare ourselves by doing what has happened in the meantime: the renunciation of the last remnants of atavistic clairvoyance on the part of advanced European people, the immersion in the limits of natural science, the conquest of technology, the temporary severing of the personality from its spiritual source. Now we are standing before another turning point. We are on the verge of losing our personality, of letting mechanics kill the human being. The power of thinking must lead us back to our soulfulness, to the seizing of pictorial contemplation, to the understanding of the spirituality that rules in us and underlies all phenomena of life. In our striving towards the highest goal, the figure of Faust, as portrayed by Goethe, can be our example and incentive. We no longer need to be tempted by the aberrations of medieval sorcery. In spiritual science we are shown a sure path to knowledge.

The tragedy of the medieval occultists, standing at the threshold of modern times, was that through the tradition of the secret schools they still knew about the real spiritual intercourse of the most highly developed people with the intelligences of the cosmos, but they also knew that this path was now closed to them. They could not advance further than to communion with the powers of the intermediate realm. A gradual darkening, a turning away from the strict paths of spiritual research, was often the result of this experimental work with retorts and with the forces of the elements and their animistic natures. The striving went astray, grasped in desperation to the means of despair, chased after mirages. In this sense we have to understand what the soul of Faust was going through. Yet there was a strength in the intensity of striving of these researchers that awakened the I. Through suffering, their consciousness opened ever more to the alert impulses of the I. Through the conquest of matter, the human being strove toward the center of his being, where he would be able to find himself, which could bring him back to life in the spirit. In the smaller dome of the burnt Goetheanum, in which Rudolf Steiner had the representatives of the different cultural epochs of humanity created in image and color, one could also see this figure of Faust, the serious alchemist at the threshold from the Middle Ages to modern times, in a pensive gesture and with a deep gaze, raising his right hand to his face, behind whose eloquent finger gesture the word “I” appears; stretching out his hands to him, the higher, spiritual self of man hovers in the form of an angelic child. Below him looms the skeleton, the other pole of the human ego; above the figure of Faust, the inspiring genius bends towards him.

We cannot approach an understanding of Faust from a narrow-minded perspective; we must gain perspective. The lectures presented here provide us with a basis for understanding Faust. They are not commentaries written in the study, but an introduction to the fields of spiritual science based on a work of poetry inspired by them, the secrets of which can only be properly illuminated through this spiritual science. There is no other way to get to the heart of the Faust problem. And only then will this greatest poetry of the German spirit be able to become popular when spiritual science will have penetrated the cultural life of the people as much as natural science has done in the last few centuries.

Of course, there are many objections that could be raised to publishing a book like this, which seems to consist of fragments. The explanations were given on a case-by-case basis, depending on the work at the Goetheanum; the scenes in which Faust wrestles with the secrets of existence and moves into the supersensible realm were presented. The play was performed in the large carpentry workshop at the Goetheanum, where the columns of the burnt building had been constructed. The conditions were primitive, but the aim was to bring out the spiritual reality on which the play is based. The art of movement known as eurythmy, which is practised at the Goetheanum, was found to be the appropriate means of reproducing those scenes that take place in the supersensible worlds, whether in the upper or lower world. It was as if the Faust poem had been waiting for this form of expression in order to come to life on stage, to transform the otherwise unspeakable into artistic reality. What would otherwise have remained abstract and conventionally stereotyped found in eurythmy the appropriate living language. Rudolf Steiner helped and advised the actors in every detail of the performance. Our suffering consists in the fact that under the prevailing circumstances at the time, only partial performances could be given. However, they serve as a guide for us to grasp the whole. Therefore, we must not anxiously reserve this gift to a small circle. We must pass on to our contemporaries and to the future what we have received here for the formation of knowledge. Unfortunately, these are only inadequately transcribed lectures that arise from an immediately given situation, but they contain what no one else can give and what will further humanity's salvation. The people, whose task it is to conquer the spiritual, should be able to draw from the greatest work of German poetry, which at the same time aims to educate world views, the impulses that will give them strength and courage for their difficult task.

This lecture is the 1st of 15, in the lecture series entitled, Spiritual Scientific Note on Goethe's Faust Vol. I.

That which strives to enter our modern culture under the name of Spiritual Science claims to be nothing new and thereby differs from various current world conceptions and other spiritual movements which base the justification of their existence upon their claim of being in a position to bring something new regarding this or that question of spiritual life. But this Spiritual Science aims at emphasizing that the fountains of its knowledge and its life were available at all times when humanity has thought and striven after a solution of the sublime questions and problems of existence. This I have often emphasized in this city, when I had the pleasure of speaking to you in earlier lectures.

It must be especially attractive for man not only to examine, from this point of view, the many and various religious beliefs and world conceptions as they appeared during human evolution, but also to study personalities which have passed before us in history. For, if Spiritual Science is true, at least the nucleus of this truth must be present and discoverable in all those personalities who honestly and energetically strove after knowledge of the core of true human existence.

Whenever today Spiritual Science is spoken of, a variety of opinions are expressed from one side to the other, and anyone who has not penetrated this field sufficiently or formed a merely superficial idea of it from lecturers or brochures will certainly judge it from his own standpoint, as the fantasy or dreaming of a few people alienated from the world and its affairs, who indulge in curious notions about life and its foundations. It must be admitted that such a judgment is perfectly comprehensible if one does not go deeper into the subject; and though we cannot deal today with the deeper facts—having a special theme to speak upon—I nevertheless intended to bring to your notice several of the principal facts of this Spiritual Science. And even when such facts shall have been named and described, a feeling, quite honest, may easily arise within the minds of our contemporaries to the effect that all this is a most curious viewpoint.

Spiritual Science as a whole rests, in the first place, upon the preconception that all that surrounds us in the world of sense—all we can perceive through our senses and understand with our intellect—which is bound to the senses—is not the whole world, but that behind it all lies a spiritual world. And this spiritual world lies not in some undefined “beyond” but surrounds us here and now in exactly the same way as color and light phenomena surround a person born blind. But in order to perceive our environment we need an organ of perception. And just as a blind man cannot see color or light, so man of our age cannot, as a rule, perceive the spiritual facts and beings surrounding him here if he possesses only his normal powers of perception. But when we are lucky enough to perform a successful operation upon a blind person, there comes to him the moment of and “awakening” of the eye, and what previously did not exist for him—color and light, now flows into him. A new world is now perceptible to him. In a similar manner a higher awakening is possible on the Spiritual plane—that awakening which leads to initiation into the world of spirit. To use Goethe's words: there are spiritual eyes and ears, but human souls are not, as a rule, advanced far enough to use these. But when we apply the means and methods calculated to develop these powers, something happens within us similar to the new power given to the man born blind through the operation. A man becomes “awakened” when these new eyes and ears are opened; a new world surrounds him—a world that was always present, but remained invisible to him before his awakening. And now, when he has advanced thus far he learns to make his own the various sources of knowledge which illuminate life, give him power and security for his work and the ability to penetrate into the fundamentals of human destiny and the secrets of it.

One of these cognitions—one of those appearing to modern man, if not crazy, at best chimerical—shall now be dealt with, if only introductorily. It is the restoration or revival of a primeval process of perception, it's continuation upon a higher plane, pure truth which only comparatively recently has been attained for a lower plane. Humanity as a whole has a very short memory for great events in the world of spirit; hence little is thought to-day of the fact that in the 17th century not only the laity but also scientists believed that from riverslime lower animals, even worms and fishes, could develop. It was the great naturalist Francesco Redi who first said that no worm nor fish issues from riverslime unless a worm or fish germ has first been deposited therein. He said that life can spring only from life, and from this assertion we realize that it is only a superficial, inexact observation which can conclude that from lifeless slime can evolve life in the shape of fish or worm; accurate examination shows that we must go back to the living germ, and that this germ can only attract from out of its environment the forces contained therein in order to bring to the highest state of development all that reside as life within the germ or seed.

Redi's precept that life develops only from life is in modern science recognized as self-evident. But when Redi, in his day, gave utterance to it, he barely escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno. It is the same with the evolution of man. First, a truth pronounced thus brings accusation of heresy; then it becomes self-evident and common knowledge of humanity. What Redi did for natural science is to be done for the spiritual man through Spiritual Science by transferring Redi's precept through the cognition of the awakened spiritual eye and ear to the psychic sphere. And then this precept runs: the Psycho-Spiritual can develop only from the Psycho-Spiritual, in other words, it is an inexact method of observation that claims the genesis of a man being dependent only upon father, mother and ancestors. As we must return from the living worm to the living worm-germ, so we have to go back in the case of man, who has evolved from the germ to a definite being, to an earlier spiritual existence and realize that this being, which enters life through birth, only attracts from his physical ancestors the powers for his own development, as does the worm from his lifeless surroundings. And by corresponding extension of Redi's precept we get another: The present life, entering existence through birth, leads not only back to physical ancestors, but through the centuries to an earlier, psycho-spiritual condition. And if you delve yet deeper into this idea, you'll find it shown quite scientifically that there are not only one, but repeated earth lives; that that, which resides in us as life between birth and death, is a repetition of a psycho-spiritual condition already present in earlier stages of existence, and that our present life is, in its turn, the starting point for succeeding lives. The psycho-spiritual comes from the psycho-spiritual, returns to the psycho-spiritual which existed before birth and which descends from the spiritual world to exist in a physical incarnation. From this point of view we observe something very different when we, for example, study a child from the position of parent or teacher, and see the gradual development of inner powers. At birth we are confronted by something indefinite in its features; then we notice how step-by-step something is developed from within, becoming ever more and more definite—something not inherited, but issuing from a former life. We see how, from birth onwards, this psycho-spiritual center develops by degrees through the talents.

That is the message of Spiritual Science today in relation to repeated earth lives. Today it may be considered as dreaming—like the conviction uttered by Francesco Redi in the 17th century—but tomorrow, in the not-too-distant future, it will take its place as a self-evident truth, and the sentence: the psycho-spiritual comes from the psycho-spiritual will become the universal possession of humanity.

In our day the heretic is not treated as he was formally. He is no longer delivered to the stake, but looked upon as a dreamer and fool speaking from some fantastic imagination. He is made ridiculous by those who sit upon the lofty seat of science saying that all this is irreconcilable with true science, unaware that it is the true, pure science which is demanded by this truth. We could give hundreds of such truths that would show how Spiritual Science can illuminate life by demonstrating that an immortal germ resides in man, a germ which goes into the spiritual world at death, to return again to physical existence when its task in the higher world has been completed, so that new experiences may be gathered which are once again carried into the realms of spirit through the gates of death. We would see how the bond created between man and man, from soul to soul in every walk of life, those attractions of the heart uniting one soul with another—can be explained by their earlier creation in former life conditions; and how those new inner connections and sympathies formed today do not cease to be when death passes over physical life but are immortal like the human soul itself; how these accompany us through the world of spirit and later live again in future earthly conditions and new incarnations. And it is only a matter of further evolution for man to remember his former earth experiences—those psycho-spiritual events of earlier lives and conditions of existence.

These truths will, in a not very remote future, permeate, as necessary concepts, human life, and man will gain power, hope and confidence from these. Today we can only see that a few people in the world are, through their healthy sense of truth, attracted to what spiritual investigators can communicate of their experiences in the spiritual world. But true knowledge of the facts of spiritual science will become universal among men as a result of earnest search for the truth. And all those who have trodden the path of this research in the past have always given to mankind the profound wisdom and understanding which is today offered again them by Spiritual Science.

Let's consider an example taken from a time that lies very near to our own—the example of Goethe, and also the work which occupied him during his whole life as his greatest most comprehensive: his “Faust”.

Where we thus approach Goethe and try to illuminate his striving with the insight given us a Spiritual Science, we can begin very early. True it is, that from his predispositions one can discern the state of his soul and spirit. Everything within him which urged him to seek a spiritual background behind all the phenomena of nature was an early predisposition. We see the seven year old boy—Goethe—who could have absorbed quite ordinary ideas from his environment as any other boy would be able to do; but that did not satisfy him. He himself tells us so in his “Poetry and Truth”. There we see this boy begin something quite extraordinary in order to express his longing for the Divine. He takes a music stand from his father's effects and transforms it into an altar by placing upon it all kinds of minerals and plants and other products of nature from which the spirit of nature speaks. With a certain premonition this boy-soul builds an altar, places a candle upon it, takes a burning-glass, waits for the first rays of the rising Sun, gathers these with his glass and focuses them upon the candle 'til the smoke rises. And in advanced age he remembers how he, as a boy, sends his pious feelings to the great God of nature Who speaks through plants and mineral and sends us His fire through the rays of the Sun. All this develops further in Goethe. We see how it comes to expression, at a more mature age, after he arrives in Weimar and is called as advisor to the grand Duke—in the beautiful prosahymn, in which he says: Nature, we are surrounded and embraced by thee, unable to leave thee, and unable to enter deeper into thee. Unwarned and unmasked she takes us into the cycles of her dance, hurrying along with us until we fall exhausted from her arms. Not we, but she has done what is done; she thinks and meditates perpetually, looks with 1000 eyes into the world.—And again, later, he says in the book about Winckelmann “Antiques”: “When the healthy nature of man acts as one whole; when he feels himself in the world as in a great, beautiful, majestic and worthy whole; when that harmonious ease endows him with a pure, free rapture, then would this universe, could it perceive itself, feel itself at its goal and admire, joyfully, the culmination of its own being and evolution”. In this manner did Goethe sense how everything living and moving in outer nature celebrates a new resurrection in the human soul, and how a higher nature—a spiritual nature—is borne out of the soul and spirit of man. But only gradually does Goethe fight his way to full clarity of spiritual knowledge of nature. And in nothing else do we see plainer and clearer how Goethe during his entire life remained striving, with rest, to transform his knowledge again and again and so to rise to a higher stage than in his life's work—“Faust”.

In his earliest youth he began to incorporate into his poem all that filled his longing and feeling soul; and as aged man, in his last years, shortly before his death, he completed this work upon which he had spent fifty years of his life and laid into it the best fruits of his existence. At his death the second part lay there sealed, like the great testament to be bestowed upon humanity. It is a significant document, which we understand only if we follow Goethe in his efforts to win through to cognition. We find him, for example, a student at the University in Leipzig. He should have become a lawyer, but this occupied him only as a secondary interest. An unconquerable urge towards the secrets of the world—toward the spiritual—already existed within this young student, even in those days. He therefore absorbed all that Leipzig had to offer on natural science, and to hearken to the world for her problems of existence. But in order to transform what natural science offered him, into that urge which permeated all his inner forces, and aimed not at abstract knowledge, but a warm perception of the heart, he needed for its development a great experience—one that leads man to that knowledge in reality—the gate towards which we gaze with uncertain feelings and which shuts away from the normal human being of today the super physical, the invisible—the gate of death. Death passed him by at the end of his studies in Leipzig. A severe illness brought him near death's door. Hours, days, passed by where he felt that that mysterious portal would open to him at any moment and let him pass through. The exceptionally powerful urge towards knowledge demanded the higher degree of endeavor. And with this developed mood of perceptive he returned to his native city Frankfurt. There he found a circle of persons at whose head stood a woman of deep, extensive ability: Suzanne von Klettenberg. Goethe has erected a wonderful monument to her in the form of “The Confessions of a Beautiful Soul”. In it he showed that in this soul, which he at that time became spiritually intimate, something lived that cannot be expressed in any other way than to say: in Suzanne von Klettenberg lived a soul that endeavored to contain within itself the Divine and through this find the Divinity interpenetrating the world. Through this circle Goethe was introduced to studies which, were they applied today to any truly modern man, would appear crazy. They were medieval writings, and Goethe absorbed their contents. Anyone who today should study these could do little or nothing with them. When one observes the remarkable signs therein, one asks: what really is all this as compared with today's striving after truth by our science? At that time there was one book, The Golden Chain of Homer—Aurea catena Homeri. When opening this, one finds a remarkable symbolic drawing—a dragon full of life in the upper half circle bordering on another dragon, one which is dried-up and dying. Various signs are connected with this: symbolic keys, two intersecting triangles and the planetary signs. All this is mere fantasy for our contemporaries of a scientific bent, because they know not what to do with them. Goethe feels that they represent something. They do not express directly something to be found here or there in our world. But if these symbols are allowed to work upon us by, so to speak, becoming blind and deaf to our physical environment, letting only these signs act upon us, then we experience something highly peculiar—we feel, that the soul becomes aware of something that has been asleep—like a spiritual eye which has opened. And if one has sufficient perseverance, one takes to what is called meditation and concentration which so develop the soul that, as an actual fact, something like a spiritual eye operation is performed and a new world makes its appearance. Such a new world could not disclose itself to Goethe at that time, for he had not developed so far. But in his soul arose a presentiment that there exist keys for that spiritual world and that one can enter it. We have to realize this mood of Goethe's: The living sensation or feeling; something within me becomes active, compelling me to the belief that something exists which leads into the world of spirit. But simultaneously he feels his powerlessness to enter that world. If at anytime Goethe had been identical with Faust, we could say that he was in the same position as Faust when we see him at the beginning of the first part, where Faust, after studying the most varied departments of science, opens books containing those signs and symbols, feels himself encompassed by a spiritual world, but lacks the means of entry. But Goethe never was identical with Faust in that way; one part of him was Faust, but he himself grew beyond that part of himself. And so developed that which transcended Faust, through his disregard of any inconvenience, more and more and his continuous striving brought him to the conclusion that one cannot get behind the secrets of existence at one bound, not through formula and incantations, but through the patient and energetic effort to penetrate all that surrounds us in the physical world—gradually, step by step—with a true, psycho-spiritual perception. It is easy to say: this higher knowledge must arise in the soul. True, but it arises in its true form only if we are striving with patience and endurance to recognize, step-by-step, the real nature of the phenomena of the physical world and then, behind them, seek the spiritual. But Goethe could compress all this, could see it all in a different light, with what he had gained in his Frankfurt period.

Goethe came from Frankfurt to this city—Strassburg—we could indicate much that has here led him higher. Especially characteristic was the effect upon him of something that has so great a significance for this city—the Cathedral. The idea behind this building came to him and he understood why each single line must be as it is. With spiritual perception—gained during his Frankfurt meditations—he observed each triangle, each angle of this beautiful erection as part of the whole; and in his soul this great idea of the architect celebrated a resurrection and he believed he could recognize the thought, the idea, behind it. And so we could mention many instances where, so to speak, a marriage took place in his soul between his inner perception and the things it absorbed from the outer world. It is therefore not to be wondered at that, when later he returned to Weimar, he began to take up natural science from a new angle—botany, zoology, osteology, etc. and consider them all in the light of letters which together produce the book of life and lead into the secrets of existence. Thus originated his studies of the development of plants, of the animal world, in the same manner as he dealt with these subjects during his student days, except that everywhere he sought the spirit behind the sensual phenomena of existence. So we see him during his Italian Journey consider, on the one side, art, and nature's creations on the other, as he studied the plant world so as to recognize the spirit ruling within. Great and beautiful are the words he wrote to his friends who were familiar with this kind of spiritualized natural science: “Oh, everything here appears to me in a new guise; I would like to travel to India and there study, in my own way, what is already discovered ...” that is, study it in a manner demanded of him by his development. We see how he considers the works of art he meets with. He writes in one letter: "This much is certain, the old artists possessed a knowledge of nature and as sure a conception of what can be presented and how it must be presented as had Homer. Unfortunately is the number of works of art of first-class value much too small. But when one sees them one has nothing else to wish for as to understand them rightly and pass on in peace. These sublime artistic creations are, like the highest of man's natural works, built up in accordance with true and natural laws; everything imaginary, arbitrary collapses; there is only necessity—there is God”. Just as the great Spirit of Nature spoke to the boy of seven from his self constructed altar, so now did the great Spirit of Existence in the world of Spirit speak to him through the works of art which he looked upon as a unity. Thus did Goethe advance more and more towards the contemplation of the unity (of things) by energetic and devoted work. He could now quietly await the moment when, out of his observations, there should grow a real cognition of the world of Spirit, a true Spiritual Science, which we meet - transformed by the artistic treatment, in his “Faust”.

The first parts of “Faust” thus display the mood of a man who suspects the mysteries of existence but cannot penetrate them. We see then how Faust lets himself be influenced by those signs which surround him with the spiritual, and also that he is not yet ripe to really feel this spiritual environment. This is shown by the lines where Faust is acted upon by the symbolic signs of the macrocosm and the Earth spirit and the latter appears before him. With wonderful words Faust characterizes the Earth spirit. We perceive how he suspects that the planet Earth is not simply that physical globe which is described by natural science, but has within it a soul, as our physical body contains a spirit.

In the currents of life, and action's storm, I float and wave With billowy motion! Birth and the grave, A limitless ocean, A constant weaving With change still rife, A restless heaving, A glowing life—Thus time's whirring loom unceasing I ply, And weave the life-garment of deity.

That is the spirit residing in the Earth, as our spirit lives in us. But Goethe presents to us Faust as unripe, his spirit as incomplete. He must turn away from that fear-inspiring sign like a crooked worm. The Earth spirit answers him: “Thou'rt like the spirit thou dost comprehend, not me!” Goethe's soul knew, if only surmisingly, that we must not be satisfied with any of the steps we take, but strive ever higher; that we cannot claim to have achieved something but must go forward yet further. Goethe centers upon these mysteries his assiduous studies, and we now see him growing. The same spirit whom he first called and of whom he could only say “Dreadful Shape”, Goethe addresses through Faust after Goethe himself has attained a step higher, subsequent to his Italian Journey, regarding which I said that he endeavored to penetrate both nature and art according to his lights. Faust is now of the same frame of mind as Goethe himself. Faust now stands before the spirit and says:

Spirit sublime! Thou gav'st me, gav'st me all.
For which I prayed! Not vainly hast thou turn'd
To me thy countenance in flaming fire:
Gavest me glorious nature for my realm,
And also power to feel her and enjoy;
Not merely with a cold and wondering glance,
Thou dost permit me in her depths profound,
As in the bosom of a friend to gaze.
Before me thou dost lead her living tribes
And dost in silent grove, in air and stream
Teach me to know my kindred. And when roars
The howling storm—blast through the groaning wood,
Wrenching the giant pine, which in its fall
Crashing sweeps down its neighbor trunks and boughs,
While with the hollow noise the hill resounds:
Then thou dost lead me to some shelter'd cave,
Dost there reveal me to myself, and show
Of my own bosom the mysterious depths,
And when, with soothing beam, the moons pale orb
Full in my view climbs up the pathless sky,
From crag to dewy grove, the silvery forms
Of bygone ages hover, and assuage
The joy austere of Contemplative Thought.”

Here we see Goethe, and with him Faust, arrived at the height where he will not again turn away from the Spirit whom he had wanted to reach at one leap. Now this spirit faces him as one from whom he does not need to turn. Now he recognizes him in everything living, in all the kingdoms of nature, in the forest and water, in the still bush, in the giant pine, in storm and thunder. And not only in these. After his appearance in the magnitude of nature he knows him also within his own heart: his secret, profound wonders are revealed.

That is a step forward in Goethe's spiritual perception and he takes no rest, but endeavors to make still further progress. We then see how he, encouraged by Schiller, he tries to go still deeper, especially during the nineties of the 18th century. These years brought him the possibility of transcending that indefinite characteristic of consciousness of the spirit limited to the conception that in everything there is spirit. He succeeded in grasping this spirit in the concrete. But Goethe needed much preparation before he was able to present the life of the human spirit in the sense that the psycho-spiritual can arise only from the psycho-spiritual. That Goethe never neglected the effort to enter still further into this, is shown by various works created before the completion of the second part of “Faust”; and the degree of his progress in that direction is found in that second part. Many turned away from Goethe when they came to know him—an introspective Goethe—in the “Pandora”. Even today we hear it uttered: the first part of Faust is full of life, breathes direct naturalness; but the second part is a product of Goethe's advanced age, crammed with symbolisms and artificialities. Such people have no idea of the eternal wisdom embodied in this second part, a wisdom to which Goethe could attain only in the evening of his life, and leave it as testament behind him. And, because of this, we can understand Goethe, in connection with many works which already breathe the spirit of Faust, writing lines from which we see Faust presented as a contending soul—a soul into which a new element has penetrated. We realize it in his anger poured out over those who have called "Faust" and inferior work of age. He says of them:

My Faust some people praise
And what not else
That I in writings phrase
To their advantage tells.
The oldest tag-and-rag
Pleases the pit;
The rabble cannot see
There's more in it.

(My Translation. P.S.)

Here Goethe has for once clothed his opinion in words which he thought justifiable in reference to those who believed that only Goethe's more youthful accomplishments had any value; those who would not ascend to the work of his maturer years.

After Goethe has introduced his Faust to the life that closely surrounds us, has had him experiencing that wonderful Gretchen-tragedy, he leads him out into the great, exterior world—the world of the Emperors Court. Goethe here will show that Faust shall really enter in spirit into the secrets of this world. And then he was to be led into the true spiritual world—the Supersensual.

In the very beginning of the second part we see how Goethe has Faust surrounded by diverse spiritual beings in order to indicate that he was not only to be introduced into an exterior physical world, but should experience all that can be experienced by one whose spiritual eye is opened and whose spiritual ear sensitized. Hence does Goethe show us in the second part the essence of the human soul—of human evolution. What are Faust's experiences to be? The perception of the super-physical world into whose mysteries he is to be initiated. Where is this super-physical world?

Here is an opportunity—if we consider the spiritual content of Faust—in the first place to become occupied with Mephistopheles—that spirit who environs Faust from the beginning, who plays his part in everything Faust undertakes. But only in the second part, where Faust is to be introduced into the world of Spirit, can we realize the actual role Mephistopheles plays. After Faust has passed through the events in the Imperial Court, he begins to see that which is no longer a part of the physical world—the spirit of Helena, who lived many centuries ago. She has to be found for Faust. But that is impossible in the physical world; so Faust must descend into the spiritual world. Mephistopheles has the key to that world, but cannot enter there himself. He can describe it reasonably; he can say: you will descend, or we may say—ascend; and he then actually describes the world into which Faust is to submerge in order to familiarize himself with it and therein find the spirit, the immortal, the eternal, that remains of Helena. A word is sounded—a wonderful word—: Faust shall descend to the Mothers. Who or what are the “Mothers”? One could speak for hours to explain what they are. Here we need only say that the Mothers were for spiritual science at all times that which man learns to know when his spiritual eye is opened. When he looks into the physical world, he sees all things limited, bounded; when he enters the world of spirit he merges with something from which come all things physical, as does the ice from a pond. Just as someone unable to see water would say that there is nothing but ice which towers up out of nothing, so can a man who is ignorant of the spirit, claim that only physical things exist. He does not discern the spirit within and behind the physical, out of which all things physical are formed, as is ice out of water. There, at the foundation of physical things, no more discernible by the physical eye—there are the Mothers. Mephistopheles is that being which is to represent the kind of intelligence able to understand only the things formed in outer space, though aware of the existence of a spiritual realm, but unable to enter it. Mephistopheles stands at the side of Faust as today the materialistic thinker stands by him, saying: O, you Spiritual Scientist: you Theosophist: you want to look into a spiritual world? Why, there is nothing in it; you are only dreaming! And to this Materialist, who wants to build upon what the microscope and the telescope disclose, but denies all that lies behind physical appearance, the Spiritual investigator calls: “In your nothing I hope to find the All.” Thus the materialist thinker compared with the spiritual man who hopes to discover the spirit where the other perceives nothing. These two powers stand in opposition eternally. And from the very beginning Mephistopheles stands before Faust as the Spirit who can lead to the door, but no further. The Theosophist or Spiritual Scientist does not say that physical science is valueless and unnecessary, and possesses the key only. Instead he maintains: We must take this science earnestly and study it, and although the key is in its hand, it leads us to where the true spiritual life can finally be found.

Then Faust descends into the realm of the Mothers—the spiritual world; he succeeds in bringing up with him the spirit of Helena. But he is not ripe enough to unite this spirit with his own soul. Hence the scene where desire stirs in Faust, where he wishes to embrace the archetype of Helena with sensual passion. He is therefore thrust back. That is the fate of everyone who seeks to approach the Spiritual World harboring personal, egotistical feelings; he is repelled like Faust. He must first mature; must learn the real relationship between the three members of man's nature: the immortal spirit which goes on from life to life, from incarnation to incarnation; the body, commencing and ending its existence between birth and death, and the soul between the two of them. Body, soul and spirit—how they unite, how they mutually react—that is the lesson Faust must learn. The archetype of Helena, the immortal, the eternal, that passes from life to life, from one incarnation to the other, Faust has already tried to find, but was then immature. Now he is to become ripe so that he is worthy to truly penetrate into the spirit realm. For this purpose he had to learn that this immortality comes to man only when he can be re-embodied repeatedly within physical existence—have new lives extending from birth to death. Therefore must Goethe show how the soul lives between spirit and body, how the soul is placed between the immortal spirit and the body which exists only between birth and death. The second part of Faust shows us this.

Goethe conceals the soul in that wonderful form about which investigators of his Faust have little to say, while spiritual investigators who are experienced perceive therein the archetype of the soul. That form is nothing else than the Homunculus—the little man. It is a picture of the human soul. And what has this soul to do? It is the mediator between body and spirit; it must attract all the elements of the body out of all the kingdoms of nature in order to ally itself with them. Only then can it become united with the immortal spirit. In that way we can see how Faust is led by the Homunculus to the classical Walpurgisnight as far as the natural philosophers Anaxagoras and Thales who have investigated the origin of nature and life.

And there is given that true teaching of evolution which says, that not only is the animal at the foundation of man's development but a soul-element that gathers together the elements of nature and with them gradually commences to build. Hence Homunculus receives the counsel: You must begin with the lowest kingdom and rise higher and higher. The human soul is, in the first place, sent to the mineral kingdom. There man is informed that he has to pass through the vegetable kingdom: there the soul gathers all the natural elements so as to develop further. It is expressly said: “And up to man thou hast sufficient time.” There we see approaching the spirit of love, Eros, after the soul has formed the body from out of the kingdoms of nature. There the soul unites with the spirit. Body, soul and spirit are united. That which is the soul of the Homunculus, with its newly organized body, comes into union with the spirit of Helena who now, in the third act of the second part, can appear to us incarnate. The teaching of reincarnation we see artistically and practically interspersed in the second part of Faust. One cannot unite with Helena by approaching her with stormy passion, but must experience the mysteries of existence in reality—pass through rebirth.

Goethe, in his days, was as yet unable to express the idea of reincarnation as we do today; but he inserted it into the second part of Faust nevertheless. Hence he could say to Eckermann: I have written my Faust in a way suitable for the stage; and the illustrations presented are, exteriorly, sensually interesting for him who will see only the exterior—the sensual. But the initiated will at once perceive that profound spiritual truth has been included in the second part of Faust. And so has Goethe indicated that we can find his life conception—his spiritual attitude—in this work; and we can now understand that Goethe could demonstrate in this reunion of Faust with Helena the nature of true mysticism.

Faust unites with the spiritual world. Not an ordinary child is the result, but Euphorion who is just as true as he is poetic. Just as truthfully does he show, what comes to life in our soul when it unites with the spiritual world—when the soul penetrates into the secrets of the world of spirit—in it's evolution a moment arrives which is of enormously profound meaning for the soul. Before the soul progresses further, it experiences, only for short moments, its unity with the spiritual world; it knows, for quite short periods, what the spiritual world is. Then it is as if, from out of this spiritual perception, were born a spiritual child. But then again come the moments of ordinary life, when this child vanishes into the spiritual world. This one has to grasp vitally with one's whole heart, and one feels how Euphorion, the spiritual child of the mystic, and despite all poetic truths of life, sinks down into the realm of spirit into which Faust cannot, as yet, quite enter; but how he also draws across something else. It is an experience of the spiritual investigator, the seeker, when our soul has her hour of really feeling her relationship to the spiritual world, and where the knowledge, or perception, appears like the child of a marriage with the spiritual world. Then the soul has the profound experience—when returning to everyday life—of losing or leaving behind the best of her possessions. It is as though our own soul might altogether escape and remain in the spiritual world. If one has felt this, one hears the echo of the spiritual words of Euphorion who has descended and calls from out of the depths:

Leave me in realms forlorn,
Mother, not all alone!

This voice is known to the true mystic—the voice of the spiritual child calling to our soul as its Mother.

But this soul must go on. She must be severed from all that is only personal desire. Quite impersonally must we merge into the spirit existence. As long as there remains one selfish aim, one tinge of self-will, we will fail to perceive the spiritual world. That is possible only when every personal interest is eradicated. Only then can we really grasp the world of spirit permanently. But even then come various moments—after we have gone through the one that forces us back into the physical world—moments which deprive us of all mysticism for prolonged periods. They are those moments of which we must say: Yes, when we have overcome all that savours of selfishness and self-will, something still remains, as it did in Faust after he had said that “now I stand upon a free foundation; I will endeavor to gain from nature everything that I can use for the benefit of others.” But he has not advanced so far. As he gazes upon the hut of Philemon and Baucis and the sight attracts him, he shows that the egoism which wishes to experience pleasure through this view is not yet exterminated. He wanted, unselfishly, to create a place for himself within that realm, but could not yet bear the sight of what spoiled the view—the hut of Philemon and Baucis. And once more the spirit of evil approaches him. The hut is destroyed by fire. Now he sees what anyone sees who passes through this development: the anxiety which meets anyone still harboring selfish aspirations which present his ascent into the spiritual world. Here it faces us—this anxiety, here we learn to know it in its true form; and simultaneously it is something which can really lead us to the true spiritual perception. This does not mean that man shall become alienated from this world—feel any antagonisms towards it—but that he shall learn to know what it is that will not allow him to sever himself from it. Through wise self-knowledge we are to face this trouble so that we may become freed from the egotism of the anxiety, and not from the anxiety itself; from the feeling awakened and it is said that it slips through the keyhole. When we come to know this—trouble—not merely feel, but learn to bear it—then we attain that degree of development which opens our spiritual eye. This is presented to us by Faust's blindness in advanced age; his physical site has gone, but he can see the spiritual world. Night penetrates deeper and deeper, but within is a bright light—a light capable of illuminating the world in which lives the soul between death and birth—the realm of the Mothers. Only now can Faust commence his journey into the spiritual world, so beautifully presented by his ascension.

Now can Goethe compress all that Faust has achieved since the time of premonitory striving, the time when he despaired of science and turned away from it, till he gained his highest degree of spiritual perception. This he does in the chorus mysticus which, by its name alone, indicates that it contains something very deep. Here, in this chorus, is to be condensed in few words—paradigmatically—that which offers the key to all the world mysteries: how everything temporal is only a symbolism for the eternal. What the physical eye can see is only a symbol for the spiritual, the immortal of which Goethe has shown that he, when entering into this spiritual realm, even gains the knowledge of reincarnation. He will finally show man's entrance into the spiritual kingdom coincides with the knowledge that what was premonition and hope in the physical is truth in the spiritual; what was aspiration in the physical becomes attainment in the spiritual world.

It may sound almost pedantic if I mention something here which must be known if the final words are to be understood.

Goethe spoke rather indistinctly in his late years because of the absence of teeth. He dictated the second part of his Faust to a writer. As he still retained something of his Frankfurt dialect, several words and sounds were not quite clearly pronounced. Thus has a “G” been substituted for several “Ch's”. For instance, for “Erreichnis” (attainment) was written “Ereignis” (event). Goethe, in his final lines of Faust said “Erreichnis”. Here, the inadequate becomes something attainable or “erreichbar”—to be written with two “r”s and a “ch”. Everywhere, in all Goethe publications, we find “Ereignis”. So little can these Goethe-investigators enter into the sense of the work. The “inadequate” of the physical world becomes the “attained” in the spiritual; what here cannot be described, becomes there a living fact.

Finally we touch that Great Fact, which Goethe incorporated into his final words: the “ever-womanly.” It is a sin against Goethe to say that here he means the female sex. He refers to that profundity signifying the human soul as related to the mystery of the world; that which deeply yearns as the eternal in man, the ever-womanly which draws the soul to the eternally immortal, the eternal wisdom, and which gives itself to the “eternal masculine.” The ever-womanly draws us towards the ever-masculine. It has nothing to do with something feminine in the ordinary sense. Therefore can we truly seek this ever-womanly in man and woman: the ever-womanly which aspires to the union with the ever-manly in the cosmos, to become one with the Divine-Spiritual that inter-penetrates and permeates the world towards which Faust strives. This mystery of man of all ages pursued by Faust from the beginning, this secret to which Spiritual Science is to lead us in a modern sense, is expressed by Goethe paradigmatically and monumentally in those five words at the conclusion of the second part of Faust represented as a mystic Spirit Choir; that everything physical surrounding us in the sense world is Maya, illusion; a symbol only of the spiritual. But this spiritual we can perceive if we penetrate that which covers it like a veil. And in it we see attained what on earth was impossible of attainment. We see that, which for ordinary intellect is indescribable, transformed into action as soon as the human spirit unites with the spiritual world. “The ineffable wrought in love.” And we see the significance of the moment when the soul becomes united with the eternal masculine of the cosmic world. That is the great secret expressed by Goethe in the words:

All of mere transient date
As symbol showeth;
Here the inadequate
To fullness groweth;

Here the ineffable
Wrought is in love;
The ever-womanly
Draws us above ...

How could Goethe say: I have now completed my life's work. It is now almost immaterial what I may do during the rest of my life on Earth.—He sealed up the second part of Faust, and only after his death was it given to humanity, and this humanity will need to concentrate deeply upon Spiritual Science in order to penetrate the mysteries of this powerful work.

It was unfortunately impossible to do more than deal with this subject in a sketchy manner today. One could illuminate by all methods of Wisdom this testament of Goethe for hours and weeks. May humanity enter more and more into its contents! Seal after seal will fall if mankind has the will to penetrate the secrets of this second part. Dumb will be the voices that say: “you seek something which Goethe never intended.” Those who speak thus, know nothing of the depths of Goethe's soul. Only those realize these depths who can see the highest in this work and in all that he condenses in the mystic choir as meditations leading to the spirit.

Today I shall speak in the most concrete way about the Spirit in order to lay a foundation for the next few days, and I must appeal to you to try to arouse a fundamental feeling for what is here meant by the Spirit.

What is taken into account by the human being today? He attaches importance only to what he experiences consciously, from the time he wakes up in the morning until the time he goes to sleep at night. He reckons as part of the world only that which he experiences in his waking consciousness. If you were listening to the voice of the present and had accustomed yourselves to it, you might say: Yes, but was it not always so? Did human beings in earlier times include in what they meant by reality anything in addition to what they experienced in their waking consciousness?

I certainly do not wish to create the impression that we ought to go back to the conditions in earlier epochs of civilization. That is not my intention. The thing that matters is to go forward, not back. But in order to find our bearings we may turn back, look back, rather, beyond the time of the fifteenth century, before the age I attempted to describe radically to you yesterday. What men of that time said about the world is looked upon today as mere phantasy, as not belonging to reality. You need only look at the literature of olden times and you will find, when men spoke of “salt,” “mercury,” phosphorus and so on, that they included many things in the meaning which people are anxious to exclude today.

People say nowadays: “Yes, in those days men added something out of their own phantasy when they spoke of salt, mercury, phosphorus.”

We will not argue about the reason why this is so anxiously excluded today. But we must realize that people saw something in phosphorus, in addition to what is seen by the mere senses, in the way modern men see color. It was surrounded by a spiritual-etheric aura, just as around the whole of Nature there seemed to hover a spiritual aura, although after the fourth or fifth century A.D. it was very colorless and pale. Even so, men were still able to see it. It was as little the outcome of phantasy as the red color we see. They actually saw it.

Why were they able to see this aura? Because something streamed over to them from their experiences during sleep. In the waking Consciousness of that time man did not experience in salt, sulphur, or phosphorus any more than he does today; but when people in those days woke up, sleep had not been unfruitful for their souls. Sleep still worked over into the day and man's perception was richer; his experience of everything around him was more intense.

Without this knowledge as a basis we cannot understand earlier times. Later on the experience of the ancients in connection with sulphur, phosphorus and so on became a mere name, an abstraction. The Spirit continued as an abstraction in tradition, until, at the end of the nineteenth century, the word spirit conveyed nothing to the mind, nothing by way of experience. External culture, which alleges such great progress, naturally attaches the greatest importance to the fact that the human being acts with his waking consciousness. Naturally, with this he will build machines; but with his waking consciousness he can work very little upon his own nature. if we were obliged to be always awake we should very soon become old-at least by the end of our twentieth year—and more repulsively old than people today. We cannot always be awake, because the forces we need to work inwardly upon our organism are active within us only during sleep. it is of course true that the human being can work at external, visible forms of culture when he is awake, but only in sleeping consciousness can he work upon himself. And in olden times much more streamed over from sleeping consciousness into the waking state.

The great change took place in the middle of the fifteenth century: this trickling of sleep consciousness into waking consciousness ceased. Pictorially I would say: In the tenth and eleventh centuries of western civilization man still grew up in such a way that he felt: Divine-spiritual powers have been performing deeds within me between my going to sleep and waking up. He felt the influx of divine-spiritual forces just as in waking consciousness he experienced the health-bringing light of the sun. And before going to sleep there was in every human being an elemental mood of prayer, full of Nature-forces. People entered sleep—or if they were men of knowledge they at least strove to do so—by giving themselves over to divine-spiritual powers.

The education of those who were destined for the spiritual life was such that this mood was deliberately cultivated. At the end of the nineteenth century those who regarded themselves as the most spiritual men had for a long time replaced this by another method of preparation. I have often witnessed how people prepare themselves for sleep: “I must take my fill of beer to prepare for sleep.” This sounds grotesque. Yet we see it is historically true that vision into the spiritual world through sleep was a deliberate and conscious striving among human beings of past epochs, apart from the fact that the candidates for initiation—the students of those days-were prepared in a sacred way for the temple-sleep in which they were made aware of man's participation in the spiritual world.

At the present time when one considers the development of civilization people do not ask: What has come about in modern mankind from the educational point of view? The question is not asked because people do not think of the whole human being but only of part of him. One has a strange impression if one sees a little further than the nearest spiritual horizon: people believe they at last know the truth about certain things, whereas the men of old were altogether naive. Read any current history of physics and you will find that it is written as if everything before this age were naive; now at last things have been perceived in the form in which they can permanently remain. A sharp line is drawn between what has been achieved today and the ideas of nature evolved in “childish” times. No one thinks of asking: What educational effect has the science that is absorbed today, from the point of view of world-historical progress?

Let us think of some earlier book on natural science. From the modern point of view it is childish. But now let us put aside the modern point of view and ask: What educational effect had such a book at that time and what effect has a modern book? The modern book may be very clever and the older one very phantastic, but if we consider the educational value as a whole, we shall have to admit that when a book was read—and it was not so easy to read books in those days, there was something ceremonial about it—it drew something out of the depths of men's souls. The reading of a book was actually like the process of growing: productive forces were released in the organism and human beings were aware of them. They felt something real was there. Today everything is logical and formal. Everything is assimilated by means of the head, formally and intellectually, but no will-force is involved. And because it is all assimilated by the head only and is thus entirely dependent upon the physical head-organization, it remains unfruitful for the development of the true man.

Today there are people who struggle against materialism. My dear friends, it would be almost more sensible if they did not. For what does materialism affirm? It asserts that thinking is a product of the brain. Modern thinking is a product of the brain. That is just the secret—that modern thinking is a product of the brain. With regard to modern thinking, materialism is quite right, but it is not right about thinking as it was before the middle of the fifteenth century. At that time man did not think only with the brain but with what was alive in the brain. He had living concepts. The concepts of that time gave the same impression as an ant-hill, they were all alive. Modern concepts are dead. Modern thinking is clever, but dreadfully lazy! People do not feel it, and the less they feel it the more they love it. In earlier times people felt a tingling when they were thinking—because thinking was a reality in the soul. People are made to believe that thinking was always as it is today. But modern thinking is a product of the brain; earlier thinking was not so.

We ought to be grateful to the materialists for drawing attention to the fact that present-clay thinking is dependent upon the brain. Such is the truth and it is a much more serious matter than is usually imagined. People believe that materialism is a wrong philosophy. That is not at all true. Materialism is a product of world-evolution but a dead product, describing life in the condition where life has died.

This thinking which has evolved more and more since the fifteenth century and which has entrenched itself in civilization the farther west we go, (oriental civilization in spite of its decadence has after all preserved some of the older kind of thinking) has quite definite characteristics. The farther west we come the more does a thinking, regarded by the orientals as inferior, take the upper hand. It does not impress the oriental at all; he despises it. But he himself has nothing new; all he has is the old kind of thinking and it is perishing. But the European, and more so the American, would not feel at ease if he had to transfer himself into the thinking of the Vedas. That kind of thinking made one tingle and the Westerners love dead thinking, where one does not notice that one is thinking at all. The time has come when people confess that a millwheel is revolving in their heads—not only when someone is talking nonsense but when they are talking about living things. They merely want to snatch at what is dead.

Here is an example which I am only quoting for the sake of cultural interest, not for the sake of polemics. I described how it is possible to see an aura of colors around stones, plants and animals. The way in which I put this in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds was such that it made living thinking, not dead thinking, a necessity. A short time ago a professor at a University who is said to have something to do with philosophy, came across this description. To think livingly! Oh, no? that won't do; that is impossible! And there is supposed to be an aura of colors around stone, plant, animal!—He had only seen colors in the solar spectrum and so he thinks that I too can only have seen them in the solar spectrum and have transferred them to stone, plant and animal. He cannot in the least follow my way of describing, so he calls it just a torrent of words. For him, indeed, it is so. He is incapable of understanding it at all. And for a great number of University professors it can be the same. A millwheel is going round in their heads, so away with the head; and then, of course, nothing can possibly come out of it!

The living human being, however, demands a living kind of thinking and this demand is in his very blood. You must be clear about this. You must get your head so strong again that it can stand not only logical, abstract thinking, but even living thinking. You must not immediately get a buzzing head when it is a matter of thinking in a living way. For those whose characteristic was pure intellectualism had dead thinking. The purpose of this dead thinking was the materialistic education of the West. If we look into it, we get a very doubtful picture.

The earlier kind of thinking could be carried over into sleep when the human being was still an entity. He was a being among other beings. He was a real entity during sleep because he had carried living thinking with him into sleep. He brought it out of sleep when he woke up and took it back with him when he fell asleep. Modern thinking is bound to the brain but this cannot help us during sleep. Today, therefore, according to the way of modern science, we can be the cleverest and most learned people, but we are clever only during the day. We cease to be clever during the night, in face of that world through which we can work upon our own being. Men have forgotten to work upon themselves. With the concepts we evolve from the time of waking to that of sleeping we can only achieve something between waking and sleeping. Nothing can be achieved with the real being of man. Man must work out of the forces with which he builds up his own being. During the period when he has to build himself up, when he is a little child, he needs the greatest amount of sleep. If ever a method should be discovered for cramming into babies all that is taught to seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds, you would soon see what they would look like! It is a very good thing that babies are still provided for from the mother's breast and not from the lecturing desk. It is out of sleep that man must bring the forces through which he can work upon his own being.

We can carry into sleep nothing from the concepts we evolve through science, through external observation and experiments and the controlling of experiments; and we can bring nothing of what is developed in sleep into these concepts of the material world. The spiritual and the intellectual do not get on well together unless united in the world of full consciousness. Formerly this union was consummated, but in a more subconscious way. Nowadays the union must be fully conscious, and to this human beings do not wish to be converted.

What happened when a man of earlier times passed with his soul into sleep? He was still an entity, because he had within him what hovers around material things. He bore this into sleep. He could still maintain his identity when in sleep he was outside the physical body and in the spiritual world. Today he is less and less of a real entity. He is well-nigh absorbed by the spirituality of Nature when he leaves his body in sleep. In true perception of the world, this is at once evident to the soul. You should only see it!—well, you will be able to see it if you will exert yourselves to acquire the necessary vision. Humanity must attain this vision, for we are living in an age when it can no longer be said that it is impossible to speak of the Spirit as we speak of animals or stones. With such faculties of vision you will be able to see that even though Caesar was not very portly in physical life, yet when his soul left his body in sleep it was of a considerable “size”—not in the spatial sense, but its greatness could be experienced. His soul was majestic. Today a man may be one of the most portly of bankers, but when his soul steps out of his body in sleep into the spirituality of Nature, you should see what a ghastly, shrunken framework it becomes. The portly banker becomes quite an insignificant figure! Since the last third of the nineteenth century humanity has really been suffering from spiritual under-nourishment. The intellect does not nourish the Spirit. It only distends it. That is why the human being takes no spirituality with him into sleep. He is well-nigh sucked up when with his soul as a thin skeleton, he stretches out into the world of spiritual Nature between sleeping and waking.

That is why the question of materialism is far from theoretical. Nothing is of less importance today than the theoretical strife between materialistic, spiritualistic and idealistic philosophy. These things are of no reality, for the refutation of materialism achieves nothing. We may refute materialism as often as we like, nothing will come of it. For, the reasons we bring in order to refute it are just as materialistic as those we quote for or against idealism. Theoretical refutations achieve nothing one way or the other. But what really matters is that in our whole way of looking at the world we have the Spirit once again. Thereby our concepts will regain the force to nourish our being. To make this clear, let me say the following.

Now, I really do not find any very great difference between those people who call themselves materialists and those who in little sectarian circles call themselves, let us say, theosophists. For the way in which the one makes out a case for materialism and another for theosophy is by no means essentially different. It comes down to whether people want to make out a case for theosophy with the kind of thinking entirely dependent upon the brain. If this is so, even theosophy is materialistic. It is not a question of words, but whether the words express the Spirit. When I compare much of the theosophical twaddle with Haeckel's thought, I find the Spirit in Haeckel, whereas the theosophists speak of the Spirit as if it were matter, but diluted matter. The point is not that one speaks about the Spirit but that one speaks through the Spirit. One can speak spiritually about the material, that is to say, it is possible to speak about the material in mobile concepts. And that is always much more spiritual than to speak un-spiritually about the Spirit.

However many come forward today with every possible kind of logical argument in defense of the spiritual view of the world; this simply does not help us, does not help one bit. During the night we remain just as barren if during the day we ponder about hydrogen, chlorine, bromine, iodine, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, silica, potassium, sodium and so on, and then evolve our theories; as if we ponder about the human being consisting of physical, etheric, and astral bodies. It is all the same so far as what is living is concerned. To speak in a living way about potassium or calcium, to treat chemistry as really alive, this is much more valuable than a dead, intellectual theosophy. For theosophy too can be taught in a dead, intellectual way. It does not really matter whether we speak materialistically or intellectually, what matters is that the Spirit shall be in what we say. The Spirit must penetrate us with its livingness. But because this is no longer understood, it is very disagreeable when anyone takes this seriously.

I did this in one of my last Oxford lectures, and to make myself quite clear I said: It is all the same to me whether people speak of spiritism, realism, idealism, materialism or anything else When I need language to describe some external phenomenon I use materialistic language. This can be done in such a way that the Spirit too lives within it. If one speaks out of the realm of the Spirit, what one says will be spiritual although the language may have materialistic form. That is the difference between what is cultivated here as Anthroposophy and what is pursued in other places under similar names. Every other week books against Anthroposophy are brought out. They contain statements which are supposed to be leveled against what I have said, but what they attack is always quite new to me for as a rule I have never said such things. They collect all sorts of rubbish and then write voluminous books about it. What they attack has usually nothing whatever to do with what I actually say. The point is not to fight materialism but to see to it that the concepts come out of the world of the Spirit, that they are really experienced, that they are concepts filled with life. What is here presented and accepted as Anthroposophy is quite different from what the world says about it.

People fight today against Anthroposophy—and sometimes also in defense of it—quite materialistically, un-spiritually, whereas what really matters is that experience of the Spirit should be made a reality in us. People easily get muddied, for when one begins to speak of spiritual beings as one speaks of plants and animals in the physical world, they take one for a fool. I can understand that; but there is just this, that this folly is the true reality, indeed the living reality for human beings! The other kind of reality is good for machines but not for human beings.

This is what I wanted to say quite clearly, my dear friends, that in what I intend here and have always intended, the important thing is not merely to speak about the Spirit, but out of the Spirit, to unfold the Spirit in the very speaking. The Spirit can have an educative effect upon our dead cultural life. The Spirit must be the lightning which strikes our dead culture and kindles it to renewed life. Therefore, do not think that you will find here any plea for rigid concepts such as the concepts physical body, etheric body, astral body, which are so nicely arrayed on the walls of theosophical groups and are pointed out just as, in a lecture room, sodium, potassium and so on are pointed to with their atomic weights. There is no difference between pointing at tables giving the atomic weight of potassium and pointing to the etheric body. It is exactly the same, and that is not the point. Interpreted in this way, Theosophy—or even Anthroposophy—is not new, but merely the latest product of the old.

The most incredible twaddle is heard when people suddenly feel themselves called upon to uphold the spiritual. I do not mention these things for the sake of criticism, but as a symptom. I will tell you two stories; the first runs as follows. I was once at a meeting in the West of Europe on the subject of theosophy. The lectures had come to an end. I fell into conversation with someone about the value of these lectures. This personality who was a good disciple of theosophical sectarianism told me of his impression of the lectures in these words: “There are such beautiful vibrations in this hall.” The pleasant sensation, you see, was expressed in terms of vibrations—in other words, materialistically.

Another time people pestered me about some discovery that had been made on the spiritual plane. It was stated that repeated earth-lives—which as a matter of fact can only be revealed to the soul by genuinely spiritual perception—must also be perceived in an earthly guise, must be clothed in terms of materialistic thinking. So these people began to speak of the “permanent atom” which goes through all earth-lives. They said: If I am now living on the Earth, and come back again after hundreds of years, the atoms will be scattered to the four winds—but one single atom goes over into the next earth-life. It was called the “permanent atom”. Quite happily the most materialistic ideas were being introduced into the truth of repeated earth-lives, into a truth that can only be grasped by the Spirit. As if it could profit anyone to have a single atom say from the fourth or filth century going around in his brain! Surely it is the same as if a surgeon in the world beyond had managed to equip me in this life by having preserved my stomach from a former incarnation and inserted it in my present body. In principle, these things are exactly the same.

I am not telling you this as a joke, but as an interesting symptom of people who, wanting to speak of the Spirit, talk of the pleasant sensation coming from spiritual “vibrations” and have only absorbed through imitation what others have known about repeated earth-lives, clothe this in such a way that they talk about the permanent atom. Books have been written by theosophists about this permanent atom—books with curious drawings showing the distribution of hydrogen, oxygen, chlorine and so on. And when one looks at them they seem no less outrageous than the sketches which materialists have made of the atoms. It does not matter whether we say: This is spiritual, or that is material. What matters is to realize the necessity of entering the living Spirit. I do not say this in a polemic sense but to make it clear to you.

The following is characteristic. There lives at the present time a very gifted Benedictine Father Mager, one of the finest minds in the Order—and the Benedictines have exceedingly fine minds. Mager has written an extremely interesting little book on “The Behaviour of Man in the Sight of God.” It belongs, in thought, to the time when Benedict founded his Order. Had it been written then it would have been quite in accordance with the times. When someone writes a book about the “Behaviour of Man in the Sight of God” one can admire it. And I do admire it. The same priest has, however, also given his opinion on Anthroposophy. And now he becomes the densest of materialists. It is really terribly difficult for one to force one's way into such a rigid kind of thought in order to describe the statements made by this priest. What he censures most is that the perception in Imaginative knowledge, which I put first, is of such a nature that for Father Mager it amounts to a lot of pictures. He gets no farther. And then he says, in accordance with his scientific conscience, that Anthroposophy materializes the world. He takes violent exception to the fact that Anthroposophy materializes the world, in other words, that Anthroposophy does not confine itself to the unreal, abstract concepts he loves—for this Father loves the most abstract concepts. Just read any Catholic philosophy and you will find—Being, Becoming, Existence, Beauty and so on—all in the most abstract form. Whatever you do, don't touch the world! And the Father notices that Anthroposophy contains living concepts which can actually come down to real things, to the real world. That is an abomination to him.

One ought to answer him: If knowledge is to be anything real, it must follow the course taken by God in connection with the world. This course started from the Spiritual and was materialized. The world was first spiritual and then became more and more material, so that real knowledge must follow this course. It is not sought for in Anthroposophy, but one comes to it. The picture slips into reality; but Father Mager condemns this. And yet it is exactly what he must himself believe if he wants to give his faith a reasonable content. But he calls it in our case the materialization of knowledge.

Of course, there is no satisfying those who insist: For heaven's sake no living concepts, for they will slip into reality, and concepts must be kept away from that! In such cases we can only have concepts belonging to waking consciousness and none that is capable of working upon man from the spiritual world. And that is exactly what we need. We need a living evolution and a living education of the human race. The fully conscious human being feels the culture of the present day to be cold, arid. It must be given life and inner activity once again. It must become such that it fills the human being, fills him with life. Only this can lead us to the point where we shall no longer have to confess that we ought not to mention the Spirit, but it leads us to where the good will to develop within us the inclination not for abstract speaking, but for inward action in the Spirit that flows into us, not for obscure, nebulous mysticism, but for the courageous, energetic permeation of our being with spirituality. Permeated by spirit we can speak of matter and we shall not be led astray when talking of important material discoveries, because we are able to speak about them in a spiritual way. We shall shape into a force that educates humanity what we sense darkly within us as an urge forward. Tomorrow, we will speak of these things again.

Today I shall begin with a review of ethics up to the end of the nineteenth century. I do not wish to convey that philosophical expositions can give rise to an impulse for the renewal of the moral life, but rather to show that forces which work from other sources to determine the moral life are symptomatically expressed in the philosophical expositions of ethics.

We must give up the view that systems of philosophy which start from the intellect can give a sound direction. Yet the whole impulse of the age expresses itself in what the philosophers say. No one will declare that our reaction to the temperature of a room is influenced by the thermometer; what the thermometer registers is dependent upon the temperature of the room. In the same way we can gauge, from what philosophers write about morality, the condition of morals in general.

You see, I treat philosophical expositions of ethics in rather a different way, merely as a kind of thermometer for registering conditions. Just as we know the temperature of a room by reading the thermometer, so we can find out a great deal about the undercurrents of the life of humanity in a particular region or period by knowing what the philosophers express in their writings.

Consider the following only from this point of view as I read you a passage printed in 1893 in the periodical Deutsche Literaturzeitung that deals with Spencer's Principle of Ethics. The reviewer says: “It contains, as I think, the most complete argument, supported by a crushing weight of material, that there is absolutely no such thing as one universal morality for all mankind, nor is there an unchangeable Moral Law: that there exists only one norm which underlies all judgments of human characteristics and actions, namely, the practical fitness or unfitness of a character or action for the given state of the society in which the judgment is made. On this account the same things will be very differently judged according to the different cultural conditions in which they occur. The view of the present writer is that this masterpiece (Spencer's Principles of Ethics) must, from a scientific point of view at least, strike dumb any recent attempts to base ethical judgments upon intuition, inborn feelings, or the most evident of axioms and the like.”

This passage is characteristic of the attitude of most of the civilized world at the end of the nineteenth century, so that it could be expressed in philosophical terms.

Let us be clear as to what is said. The attempt is made in this very important work, Spencer's Principles of Ethics, to prove—as the reviewer rightly says—with crushing weight of material, that it is impossible to draw forth from the human soul moral intuitions, moral axioms, and that we must stop talking about moral intuitions. We can only say with certainty that man acts according to his natural endowments. Any action is judged by a man's social environment; he is forced to bring his action into line with the judgment of this social environment. Hence conventional moral judgments are modified as human society changes from century to century. And a reviewer in the nineties of last century says that it is at last possible to silence, so far as science is concerned, all attempts to speak of ethics and moral views in such a way that moral intuitions arise out of the soul.

I have chosen this example because it characterizes what faced one when one thought about ethics and moral impulses.

Into this mood of the age, my dear friends, I sent my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity which culminates in the view that the end of the nineteenth century makes it eminently necessary that men, as time goes on, will only be able to find moral impulses in the very essence of the soul; that even for the moral impulses of everyday life, they will be obliged to have recourse to moral intuitions. All other impulses will become gradually less decisive than the moral intuitions laid bare in the soul. In view of the situation which I faced, I was obliged to say, “The future of human ethics depends upon the power of moral intuition becoming stronger; advance in moral education can only be made as we strengthen the force of moral intuition within the soul, when the individual becomes more and more aware of the moral intuitions which arise in his soul.”

Over against this stood the judgment—a universal one, for we only speak here of what holds good universally—that it is proven with overwhelming evidence that all moral intuitions must be silenced. It was therefore necessary to attempt to write a book that would present in a virile way the very point of view which, with equal vigor, science declared should be forever silenced.

This example shows clearly that the turning-point of the nineteenth century was a time of tremendous significance for the spiritual evolution of the West. It goes to show those who have been growing up since the end of the last century are faced with quite a different situation in the life of soul from that of previous centuries. And I said with regard to the Spiritual, that at the end of the nineteenth century, man stood, in his soul-being, face to face with “Nothingness”. It was necessary to emphasize, because of man's deeper spiritual nature, that for the future, moral intuition is confronted with what had come from the past, with the Nothingness. This turning-point of the nineteenth century revealed itself in German culture in a most tragic way. We need only mention the name of Nietzsche.

For those who lived through the transition from the nineteenth to the twentieth century with alert and wide-awake consciousness, Nietzsche represents an experience of real tragedy. Nietzsche was a personality who through the successive periods of his life poignantly experienced that he was faced with the Nothingness, that Nothingness which he had at first assumed to be a “something,” a reality.

It will not be superfluous for our study during the next few days to say a few words about Friedrich Nietzsche. In a certain respect Nietzsche, through his tragic destiny, clearly indicates the twilight in the spiritual evolution of mankind at the end of the nineteenth century, making a new dawn necessary for the century just beginning.

Nietzsche started from a mature scientific standpoint; this he first met in philology in the middle of the nineteenth century. With a mind of extraordinary inner flexibility Nietzsche assimilated the philological standpoint of the middle of the nineteenth century and with it he absorbed the whole spirit of Greek culture.

Nietzsche was not a personality to shut himself off from the general culture. The very reverse of a theoretical scholar, he accepted naturally what he found in the middle of the nineteenth century, namely, Schopenhauer's philosophical pessimism. This made a profound impression upon him, because he realized more deeply than Schopenhauer the decline of the spiritual life in the midst of which he was living.

The only form in which the light that pointed towards the future came to him was in Richard Wagner's music. As you know, Wagner was a follower of Schopenhauer at the time he made Nietzsche's acquaintance.

Thus, towards the beginning of the last third of the nineteenth century, Nietzsche developed the view that was no theory but the very substance of life to him—that already in Greek culture there had dawned the age in which the full human content was being crushed by intellectualism. Nietzsche was not correct in regard to the complete development of intellectualism, for in the form in which Nietzsche experienced intellectualism as an all-destroying spirit, it had, as I said yesterday, come upon the scene only since the fifteenth century. What Nietzsche experienced was the intellectualism of the immediate present. He dated it back to the later age of Greek culture, and held that the influence working so destructively upon what was livingly spiritual began with Socrates. And so Nietzsche became anti-Socratic in his philosophy. With the advent of Socrates in the spiritual life of Greece he saw intellectualism and the faculty of understanding driving away the old spirituality.

Not many have grasped with such innate power the contrast between the character of Greek culture as it appears in the writings of Aeschylus, of Sophocles, in the early sculpture and in the mighty philosophies of men like Heraclitus, Anaxagoras and others; the contrast of this life of soul, still full of spiritual impulses—and that other life of soul which gradually began to paralyze the true spirituality. According to Nietzsche this began with Socrates who confronted all world-questions with intellectual questions, with Socrates who established his art of definition, about which Nietzsche felt: “When it began man no longer looked at the immediate and living Spirit in the old natural way.” Provided this idea is not carried too far and thus made intellectual, it shows that Nietzsche felt something of great significance.

Real experience of the Spiritual, wherever we meet it, always becomes individualism. Definition inevitably becomes generalization. In going through life and meeting individuals we must have an open heart—an open mind for the individual. Towards each single individual we should be capable of unfolding an entirely new human feeling. We only do justice to the human being when we see in him an entirely new personality. For this reason every individual has the right to ask of us that we should develop a new feeling for him as a human being. If we come with a general idea in our heads, saying that the human being should be like this or like that—then we are being unjust to the individual. With every definition of a human being we are really putting up a screen to make the human individual invisible.

Nietzsche felt this in regard to the spiritual life—hence his opposition to the Socratic teaching. And so, during the sixties and early seventies of the nineteenth century there grew in his soul the idea that the true and living Greek culture has a kind of pessimism at the root of its feeling about the world. He thought the Greeks were convinced that immediate life, in its elementary form, cannot give man satisfaction, a complete feeling of his dignity as man. Therefore the Greeks took refuge in what art was to them. And to the Greeks, the art they cultivated in the time of their prime was the great comforter, helping to overcome what was lacking in material existence. So that for Nietzsche, Greek art could be understood only out of a tragic feeling about life, and he thought that this mission of art would again be revived by Wagner and through his artistic impulse.

The seventies approached and Nietzsche began to feel that after all this was not so, because in his time he failed to find the impulse which the Greeks had set up as the great consoler for the material life around them. And so he reflected: “What was it that I wanted to find in Wagner's art as a renewal of Greek art? What was it? Ideals.” But it dawned upon him, as he let these ideals work upon his soul, that they were no different from those of his own epoch.

During the last third of the nineteenth century there came a terribly tragic moment in Nietzsche's life, the moment when he felt his ideals to belong to his own times. He was forced to admit: “My ideals are no different from what this present age calls its ideals. After all, I am drawing from the same forces from which my own age draws its ideals.” This was a moment of great pain for Nietzsche. For he had experienced the idealistic tendencies manifest in his day. He had found, for example, a David Friedrich Strauss—revered by the whole age as a great man—but whom he had unmasked as a philistine. And he realized that his own ideals, stimulated by his absorption in Wagner and in Greek art, strongly resembled those of his time. But these ideals seemed to him impotent and unable to grasp the Spiritual.

So he said to himself: “If I am true to myself, I cannot have any ideals in common with my time.” This was a tragic discovery although not expressed in these words. Anyone who has steeped himself in what Nietzsche lived through during the years of which I am speaking, knows that there came for Nietzsche the tragic moment when, in his own way, he said: “When a man of the present day speaks of ideals and these coincide with what others call their ideals, then he is moving in the realm of the ‘empty phrase’, the ‘empty phrase’ that is no longer the living body but the dead corpse of the Spirit.”

This brought Nietzsche to the conviction: I must resolutely put aside the ideals I have evolved hitherto. And this putting aside all his ideals began in the middle of the seventies. He published his Human All Too Human, The Dawn of Day and The Joyful Wisdom—works in which he pays some homage to Voltaire but which also contain a certain view of human morals.

An external inducement to forsake his former idealism and steer towards the views of his second period was his acquaintance with the works of Paul Rée. Paul Rée treated the moral nature and its development from a purely scientific point of view, entirely in line with the natural science of the day. Paul Rée has written the very interesting little book, On the Origin of Moral Perceptions and also a book on The Genesis of Conscience. This book, which everyone should read who wants to know about the thought of the last third of the nineteenth century, had a very deep influence on Nietzsche.

What is the spirit of this book? Again, I am not describing it because I think that philosophy has a direct influence upon life; I do so because I want to have a thermometer for culture by which we can read the state of the ethical impulses of the time. Paul Rée's view amounted to this: The human being, originally, had no more than what in his opinion a child has, namely, a life of instinct, impulses of unconscious, instinctive activity. The individual human being, when he becomes active, comes up against others. Certain of these activities unfolded towards the outer world happen to suit other human beings, to be beneficial to them; other activities may be harmful. From this there arises the judgment: What proceeds from the instinctive activities of the human being as beneficial is gradually seen to be “Good;” what proves harmful to others is branded as “Evil.” Life becomes more complicated all the time. People forget how they put labels on things. They speak of good and evil and have forgotten that in the beginning the good was simply what was beneficial and the evil what was felt to be harmful. So finally what has arisen has become instinct, has recast itself as instinct. It is just as if someone struck out blindly with his arm—if the result is a caress, then this is called good; if it is a box on the ears, then it is evil. And so judgments pile up. The sum of such judgments becomes instinct. People know how they raise their hand just as little as they know why a voice comes out of the soul and utters this or that moral judgment. This voice they call conscience. This voice of conscience is simply what has arisen out of instinctive judgments about the beneficial and the harmful. It has become instinct, and because its origin has been forgotten, it speaks from within as if it were the voice of conscience.

Nietzsche realized fully that not everyone would agree with Paul Rée. But he was also quite clear that when views on natural science were such as they were in his day, it is impossible to think about Ethics otherwise than in the way Paul Rée did. Nietzsche was thoroughly honest; he deduced the ultimate consequences as Paul Rée had done. Nietzsche bore the philosopher no grudge for having written such things. This had not much more significance for Nietzsche than what was circumscribed by the four walls of the room in which Paul Rée did his writing, just as a thermometer indicates nothing more than the temperature of the immediate environment. However, it shows something universal, and Nietzsche felt this. He felt the ethical sediment of the times in this book and with this he agreed. For him there was nothing more important than to put aside the old “empty phrase” and to say: “When people talk about nebulous ideals they make nothing clear. In fact everything is instinct.”

Nietzsche often said to himself: Here is someone who says, I am an enthusiast for this or that ideal and I rejoice that others too should be enthusiastic about it. And so, Nietzsche comes to the conclusion that when all is said and done, a man who is an enthusiast for certain ideals and wants to enthuse others, is so constituted that when he is thinking of these ideals he can work up the juices in his stomach in the best way for the digestion of his food. I am putting this rather inelegantly but it is exactly what Nietzsche felt in the seventies and eighties. He said to himself: People talk about all sorts of spiritual things and call them ideals. But in reality it is there for no other purpose than to enable people, each according to his constitution, to digest and carry out bodily functions in the best way. What is known as human must be divested of the “empty phrase,” for in truth the human is all-too-human.

With a magnificent devotion to honesty, Nietzsche declared war on all idealism. I know that this aspect of Nietzsche has not always been emphasized. A great deal that has been said about him is pure snobbery, without anything serious in it. So Nietzsche found himself facing the “Nothingness” at the end of the first period of his spiritual development, consciously facing the Nothingness in a second period which began with Human All Too Human and ended with The Joyful Wisdom. Finally, only one mood remained, for it is impossible to reach a real spiritual content when all ideals are traced back to bodily functions. One example will show what Nietzsche's view became. He said to himself: There are people who work towards asceticism, that is to say, towards abstention from physical enjoyment. Why do they do this? They do it because they have exceedingly bad digestion arid feel most comfortable when they abstain from physical enjoyment. That is why they regard asceticism as the highest aim worth striving for. But unconsciously they are seeking what makes them most comfortable. They wish to feel the greatest enjoyment in the absence of enjoyment. That absence of enjoyment is their greatest enjoyment shows us how they are constituted.

In Nietzsche, who was thoroughly honest, this mood intensified to moments when he gave vent to words like these:

“Ich wohn' in meinem eigenen Haus,
Hab' niemand etwas nachgemacht,
Und lache jeden Meister aus,
Der sich nicht selber ausgelacht.”

(I dwell within my own house and
have imitated no single man; and I
laugh at every master who has not
laughed at himself.)

In its poetic anticipation this verse is a magnificent description of the mood that came to its climax about the turn of the nineteenth century, yet it was already there earlier, in a form that made itself felt in the life of soul. Nietzsche found his way out of this second period of facing the Nothingness by creating what is implicit in two ideas to which he gave poetic expression. The one was the idea of the “Superman.” Ultimately there was nothing left but to call upon something which must be born out of the human being but was not yet there. After his grandiose experience of facing Nothingness, there arose the idea of the eternal recurrence of the same, which came to him out of the theory of evolution. In his scientific period he had become familiar with the idea of evolution. But as he steeped himself in what came from these thoughts about evolution he discovered nothing that would bring evolution forward; these only gave him the idea of eternal recurrence. This was his last period, which need not be described any further, although from the point of view of psychology a very great deal might be learnt from it.

I do not wish to draw a character-study but only to indicate how Nietzsche, who was forced through illness to lay down his pen at the end of the eighties, had experienced in advance the mood that dominated deeper souls at the turn of the century. During the last third of the nineteenth century Nietzsche tried to express a mood drawn from his store of ideas, from Greek philosophy and art, from art as found in Wagner, from the philosophy of Schopenhauer, and so on. But time and again Nietzsche himself abandoned his own views.

One of his last works is called The Twilight of the Idols, or How to Philosophize with the Hammer. He felt himself as a destroyer of the old ideas. It was really very remarkable. The old ideas had already been destroyed by the spirit of cultural evolution. During Nietzsche's youth the store of ideas was already destroyed. Up to the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, ideas continued through tradition but came to an end in the last third of the nineteenth century. The old spirit was already in ruins. It was only in the “empty phrase,” the cliché, that these ideas lived on.

Those who thought in accordance with spiritual reality in Nietzsche's day would not have felt that they had to smash the ideals with a hammer but that they had already been smashed simply in the course of the evolution of the human race. Mankind would not have reached freedom unless this had happened. But Nietzsche who found these ideals still blossoming in the empty phrase was under the illusion that he was doing what had already long been done.

What had been the inner fuel of the spiritual life in the former age, the fuel whereby the Spirit in man could be kindled and, once kindled, illuminate both Nature and his own life—this had passed away. In the realm of the moral this is expressed by people saying: There can be no moral intuitions any longer.

As I mentioned yesterday, theoretical refutations of materialism as world-conception are sheer nonsense, for materialism has its justification in this age. Thoughts which our age has to recognize as right are products of the brain. Therefore a refutation of materialism is in itself of the nature of the empty phrase, and no one who is honest can see the good of refuting materialism theoretically for nothing is to be gained by it. The human being has come to the stage where he no longer has an inner, living Spirit but only a reflection of the Spirit entirely dependent upon the physical brain. Here materialism is fully justified as a theoretical world conception. The point is not that people have a false world-conception or refute it, but that little by little they have come to an inner attitude of life and soul that is lacking in Spirit. This rings tragically, like a cry, through Nietzsche's philosophy.

This is the situation of the spiritual life in which souls with natural feeling among the young of the twentieth century found themselves. You will not come to any clear view, to any tangible experience, of what is brewing indistinctly, subconsciously in your souls and what you call the experiences of youth, unless you look into this revolution that has inevitably taken place in the spiritual life of the present period of evolution.

If you try to characterize what you experience on any other basis, you will always feel after a time that you must brush it aside. You will not hit upon a truth but only on clichés. For unless the human being today honestly admits: I must grasp the living, the active Spirit, the Spirit which no longer has its reality but only its corpse in intellectualism—unless I come to this, there is no freedom from the confusion of the age. As long as anyone believes that he can find Spirit in intellectualism, which is merely the form of the Spirit in the same way as the human corpse is the form of a man, man will not find himself.

To find oneself is only possible if man will honestly confess: Intellectualism has the same relation to the living essence of the Spirit as a dead corpse to the man who has died. The form is still there but the life of the Spirit has gone out of intellectualism. Just as the human corpse can be treated with preparations that preserve its form—as indeed Egyptian mummies show—so too can the corpse of the Spirit be preserved by padding it out with the results of experiment and observation. But thereby man gets nothing of what is livingly spiritual, he gets nothing that he can unite naturally with the living impulses of the soul. He gets nothing but a dead thing, a dead thing that can wonderfully reproduce what is dead in the world, just as one can still marvel at the human form in the mummy. But in intellectualism we cannot get what is truly spiritual any more than a real human being can be made out of a mummy.

As long as importance is attached to conserving what the union of observation and intellect is intended to conserve, one can only say: The achievements of the modern age are great. The moment the human being has to unite in the depths of his soul with what his Spirit inwardly holds up before him—there can be no link between intellectualism and the soul. Then the only thing is for him to say: “I am thirsting for something, and nothing I find out of intellectuality gives me water to quench my thirst.”

This is what lives in the feelings of young people today although, naturally, it is not so clear when expressed in words. Young people today say many things, annoying things when one gets to the bottom of what is said. But one soon overcomes it. The annoyance is due to the fact that bombastic words are used that express anything rather than what the speaker really feels. The empty phrase over-reaches itself and what appears as the character of the youth movement is, for one who lives in the Spirit, like a continuous bursting of bubbles; it is really intellectualism overreaching itself. I do not want to hurt any of you personally, but if it does hurt—well, I cannot help it. I should be sorry, but I still think it right to say it. I cannot say only pleasant things; I must sometimes say things which will not please everyone. Moreover I must say what I know to be true. So, in order to characterize what is rightly there in the souls of young people today, we need something more than a revival of old concepts over-reaching themselves in empty phrases; we need a highly-developed feeling for truth.

We need truth at the bottom of our soul. Truth is the alpha and the omega of what we need today, and when your Chairman said yesterday that we have got to a point where we do not want to utter the word “Spirit” any longer, that is in itself a confession of the truth. It would be much more clever if our age, which has lost the Spirit, would stop there and not want to talk about the Spirit, because then human beings would again begin to thirst for the Spirit. Instead of this, anything and everything is termed “Spirit,” “spiritual.” What we need is truth, and if any young person today acknowledges the condition of his own soul, he can only say: This age has taken all spirit out of my soul, but my soul thirsts for the Spirit, thirsts for something new, thirsts for a new conquest of the Spirit.

As long as this is not felt in all honesty the youth movement cannot come into its own. Let me add the following to what I have said in characterization of what we must seek. In the deepest, innermost being of the soul, we must seek for light; above all else we must acquire the most profound feeling for honesty and truth. If we build upon honesty and truth, then we shall progress, for humanity must indeed progress. Then we shall speak of the Spirit which is so like our human nature. The soul is most of all like the Spirit, therefore it can find the Spirit if only it so wills. In our time the soul must strive beyond empty phrase, convention and routine; beyond the empty phrase to a grasp of truth; beyond convention to a direct, elementary warm-hearted relation between man and man; beyond routine to the state in which the Spirit lives in every single action, so that we no longer act automatically but that the Spirit lives in the most ordinary everyday actions. We must come to spirituality in action, to the immediate experience of human beings in their relations to one another and to honest, upright experience of truth.

Yesterday I tried to characterize the spiritual life at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries; to describe it as I experienced it, and as it led to the writing of my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity (The Philosophy of Freedom).

The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity was to point to moral intuitions as that within man which, in the evolution of the world, should lead to the founding of the moral life of the future. In other words, through my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, I wanted to show that the time has come, if morality is to continue in the evolution of mankind, to make an appeal to what the individual is able to call forth from his inmost nature. I mentioned that the Philosophy of Spiritual Activity was published at a time when it was universally said that at last it had been recognized that moral intuitions were an impossibility and that any discussion about moral intuitions must once and for all be silenced. I therefore considered it essential to establish the reality of moral intuition. Thus there was a distinct cleft between what the age, among many of its most eminent minds considered to be truth, and what I was obliged to maintain as truth out of the principles of human evolution.

But on what is this difference really based? Let us look into the depths of man's life of soul, as we see it today in the West. In earlier times people also spoke of moral intuitions, that is to say, it was said that, as an individual entity, man could call forth from within himself independently of external life the impetus to action. But when the new age dawned, in the first third of the fifteenth century and more powerfully in subsequent centuries, what had been said about moral intuitions was no longer quite true. It was said: Morality cannot be established by the observation of external facts; men were no longer aware of a real light when they looked into their inner being. So they declared that moral intuitions were there, but that actually nothing more was known about them. For centuries statements were such that one might say: The thinking, which had been natural before the fifteenth century, moved onwards automatically and facts formerly justified had ceased to be so.

Traditions, of which I have spoken, persisted through the centuries and contributed towards such statements. Before the fifteenth century, men did not speak in indefinite terms as was current later, and this very indefiniteness was untruthful. When speaking of intuitions, of moral intuitions he spoke of that which rose up in his inner being, of which he had a picture as real as the world of Nature when he opened his eyes in the morning. Outside he saw Nature around him, the plants and the clouds; when he looked into his inner being, there arose the Spiritual, the Moral as it was given to him. The further we go back in evolution the more we find that the rising tip of an inner realm into human experience was a matter of course. These facts, as I have explained them to you, are the outcome of Spiritual Science; they may also be studied historically by considering external symptoms. In the days when speech, from being an inner reality was lapsing into untruthfulness, proof for the existence of God came into evidence.

Had anyone during the first centuries of Christianity spoken about proofs for the existence of God, as Anselm of Canterbury, people would not have known what was meant. In earlier times they would have known still less! For in the second or third century before Christ, to speak of proofs for the existence of God would have been as if someone sitting there in the first row were to stand up and I were to say: “Mr. X stands there,” and someone in the room were to assert “No, that must first be proved!” What man experienced as the divine was a Being of full reality standing before his soul. He was endowed with the faculty of perception for what he called divine; this God appears primitive and incomplete in the eyes of modern man. They could not get beyond the point they were then capable of reaching. But the men of that age had no desire to hear about proofs, for that would have seemed absurd. Man began to “prove” the existence of the divine when he had lost it, when it was no longer perceived by inner, spiritual perception. The introduction of proofs for the existence of God shows, if one looks at the facts impartially, that direct perception of the divine had been lost. But the moral impulses of that time were bound up with what was divine. Moral impulses of that time can no longer be regarded as moral impulses for today. When in the first third of the fifteenth century the faculty of perception of the divine-spiritual in the old sense was exhausted, perception of the moral also faded and all that remained was the traditional dogma of morals which men called “conscience.” But the term was always applied in the vaguest manner.

When, therefore, at the end of the nineteenth century it was said that all talk about moral intuitions must be silenced, it was the final consequence of a historical development. Until then human beings had a feeling, however dim, that such intuitions had once existed. But now they began to put themselves to the test. Intelligence had at least brought them to the point of being able to do this; they discovered that with the methods they were accustomed to use to think scientifically, they were unable to approach moral intuitions.

Let us consider the moral intuitions of olden times. History has become very threadbare in this respect. We have a history of outer events and in the nineteenth century a history of culture was established. But this age has been incapable of producing a history which takes man's inner life of soul into account; there is no knowledge of how the life of soul developed from the earliest times until the first third of the fifteenth century. But if we go back in time and consider what was spoken of as moral intuition, we find that it did not arise as a result of inner effort. For this reason the Old Testament, for instance, is right not to feel what figured then as moral intuition as begotten from within, but as divine commandments, coming to the soul from outside. And the further back we go the more the human being felt what he saw when he beheld the moral, to be a gift to his inner nature from some living divine being outside him. Moral intuitions held good as divine commands—not in a figurative or symbolic sense, but in an absolutely real sense.

There is a good deal of truth in contemporary religious philosophies when they allude to a primal revelation preceding the historical age on earth. External science cannot get much beyond, shall I say, a paleontology of the soul. Just as in the earth we find fossils, indicating an earlier form of life, so in fossilized moral ideas we find forms pointing back to the once living, God-given moral ideas. Thus we can get to the concept of primal revelation and say: This primal revelation faded out. Human beings lost the faculty for being conscious of primal revelation. And this loss reached its culminating point in the first third of the fifteenth century. Human beings perceived nothing when they looked within themselves. They preserved only the tradition of what they had once beheld. Religious communities gradually seized upon this tradition and turned its externalized content, this purely traditional content, into dogmas which people were expected merely to believe, whereas formerly they had living experience of their truth, though as coming from outside man.

This was the very significant situation at the end of the nineteenth century: Certain circles realized that the old intuitions, the God-given intuitions, were no longer there; that if a man wants to prove with his head the ideas of the people of old, moral intuitions simply disappear; science has silenced them. Human beings even when receptive are no longer capable of receiving moral intuitions. To be consistent, one would have had to become a kind of Spengler, and to say:—There are no moral intuitions; man in future will have no alternative but gradually to wither up—perhaps asking one's grandfather: “Have you heard that there were once moral intuitions, moral influences?” And the grandfather would answer: “One would have to search the libraries; at second or third-hand one might still glean some knowledge of moral intuitions but no longer from actual experience.” So there is no alternative but to wither up and become senile, not to have youth any more.—That would have been consistent. But people did not dare, for consistency was not an outstanding quality of the dawning age of the intellect.

Indeed, there were many things that one did not dare! If a judgment were pronounced it was only half given, as in the case of du Bois-Reymond [a leading German physiologist at the turn of the nineteenth century] who delivered a speech about the boundaries to the knowledge of Nature. He said that supernaturalism could not be mentioned in connection with natural science, for supernaturalism was faith and not knowledge. Science stops short at the supernatural—and nothing further was said by him on the subject. If mentioned, people got excited and said that this was no longer science; consistency was not a characteristic of the century then ending.

So, on one hand, there was the alternative of withering. The Spiritual passes over gradually into the life of soul, the life of soul into the physical. As a result, after some decades, souls would only have been able to ferret out antiquated moral impulses. After some years, not only the thirty-year-olds but also the twenty-year-olds would have been going about with bald heads, and the fifteen-year-olds with grey hair! This is a figurative way of speaking, but Spenglerism would have become an impulse carried into practice. That was one alternative.

The other alternative was to become fully conscious of the following: With the loss of the old intuitions we are facing Nothingness. What can be done? In this Nothingness to seek the “All”! Out of this very Nothingness try to find something that is not given, but which we ourselves must strenuously work for. This was no longer possible with passive powers of the past, but only with the strongest powers of cognition of this age: with the cognitional powers of pure thinking. For in acts of pure thinking, this thinking goes straight over into the will. You can observe and think, without exerting your will. You can carry out experiments and think: it does not pass right over into the will. You can do this without much effort. Pure thinking, by which I mean the unfolding of primary, original activity, requires energy. There the lightning-flash of will must strike directly into the thinking itself. But the lightning-flash of will must come from each single individual. Courage was needed to call upon this pure thinking which becomes pure will; it arises as a new faculty—the faculty of drawing out of the human individuality moral impulses which have to be worked for and are no longer given in the form of the old impulses. Intuitions must be called up that are strenuously worked for. Today what man works for in his inner being is called “phantasy.” Thus in this present age which has, apart from this, silenced inner work, moral impulses for the future must be produced out of moral phantasy, moral Imagination; the human being had to be shown the way from merely poetical, artistic phantasy, to a creative moral Imagination.

The old intuitions were always given to groups. There is a mysterious connection between primal revelation and human groups. It was always to groups of human beings in association that the old intuitions were given. The new intuitions must be produced in the sphere of each single, individual human soul; in other words, each single human being must be made the source of his own morality. This must be brought forth through the intuitions out of the Nothingness by which man is confronted.

That was the only possibility left, if as an honest man one was not willing to turn to a kind of Spenglerism—and to work in the Spengler way is far from alive. It was a question of finding a living reality out of the Nothingness which confronted men, and it goes without saying that at first one could only make a beginning. For a creative power in the human being had to be called upon, the creation, as it were, of an inner man within the outer man. In earlier times the outer man received moral impulses from outside. Now the human being has to create an inner man and with this inner man there came, or will come, the new moral intuition. So, out of the times themselves there had to be born a kind of Philosophy of Spiritual Activity—something that must inevitably be in sharp opposition to the times.

Let us complete this survey of the condition of the soul of modern man by considering another aspect. You see, as a preparation for intellectualism in western civilization, the consciousness of man's pre-earthly existence had for a long time been wiped out. Western civilization had lost it in very early times. So that in the West there was not this consciousness: “When I issue from the embryonic state of physical development something unites itself with me, something that descends from the heights of spirit and soul and permeates this physical earth-being.”

Now in this connection the following presents itself quite clearly to our vision. I have already given you a picture to elucidate it. I said that when we look at a corpse we know that it cannot have its form through the forces of nature, but must be the remains of a living human being. It would be foolish to speak about the human form as if it were itself something living. We must go back to what was the living human being. In the same way, looked at impartially, man's intellectual thinking presents itself as dead. People naturally will say: “Prove this for us.” It proves itself in the very beholding and the kind of proofs necessary for the side issues are indeed available. But to demonstrate it I would have to go into a good deal of philosophy and this lies outside the scope of our present task. To anyone looking at it without prejudice, intellectual thinking, out of which our whole modern civilization flows, bears the same relation to living thinking as the corpse to the living human being. Just as the corpse is derived from the living man, so the thinking we have today is derived from the living thinking of an earlier time. But upon sound reflection I must say to myself: “This dead thinking must have originated in a living thinking which was there before birth. The physical organism is the tomb of the living thinking, and the receptacle of dead thinking.”

But the strange fact is that during the first two periods of human life, up to the sixth, seventh or eighth years, to the end of the change of teeth, and then further, up to the thirteenth, fourteenth, fifteenth years—that is to say, to the age of puberty—the human being has a thinking not yet entirely dead; but in process of dying. It was only living thinking in pre-earthly existence. During the first two periods of life it comes to the point of dying, and for modern man, since the first third of the fifteenth century, thinking is quite dead by the time of puberty. It is then the corpse of living thinking. It was not always so in the evolution of mankind. If we go back before the fifteenth century, it becomes evident that thinking still was something living. There existed livingly the kind of thinking which human beings today do not like because they feel as if ants were swarming in their brain. They do not like it when something is really alive within them. They want their head to behave in a quiet and comfortable way.

And the thinking in it, too, should take a peaceful course so that all one needs is to help things along with the laws of logic. But pure thinking—that is just as if an ant-heap were let loose in one's head, and that, people say, is not as it should be. At the beginning of the fifteenth century the human being was still able to endure living thinking. I am not saying this in order to criticize; that would be out-of-place, just as out-of-place as to criticize a cow because she is no longer a calf. It would have been the greatest disaster for humanity if this had not happened. There had to be human beings who could not endure having an ant-heap in their head! For what was dead had to be brought to life again in a different way.

And so it came about after the middle of the fifteenth century that human beings inwardly experienced a dead thinking once puberty was passed. They were filled out with the corpse of thinking. Go really deeply and seriously into this idea and you will understand that it is only since that time that an inorganic natural science could arise, because the human being began to grasp purely inorganic laws. Now for the first time man could grasp what is dead in the way striven for since Galileo and Copernicus. The living had first to die inwardly. When man was still inwardly alive in his thinking, he could not grasp the dead in an external way for the living kind of knowledge imparted itself to what was external. Natural science became increasingly pure science and nothing more, and this continued until, at the end of the nineteenth century, it was well-nigh only mathematics. That was the ideal towards which it strove—it strove to be Phoronomy, a kind of system of pure mechanics.

So, in the modern age, man began more and more to make what is dead into the actual object of knowledge. That was the whole aim. This lasted for some centuries; evolution took this direction. Men of genius like de Lamettrie, for example, anticipated the idea that the human being was really a machine. Yes, the human being who only wants to grasp what is dead avails himself of what is merely a machine within him, of what is dead within him. And this makes the development of natural science easy for modern man. For his thinking is dead by the time of puberty, whereas in earlier days he had God-given intuitions; thinking preserved the forces of growth within itself far beyond puberty. In later times, living thinking was lost; human beings in later life learnt nothing more; they simply repeated mechanically what they had assimilated in earlier youth.

You see, this suited the old, who held the control of culture in their hands: to comprehend a dead world with their dead thinking. On this dead thinking, science can be founded, but with it the young can never be taught and educated. And why? Because up to puberty the young preserve the livingness of thinking, in an unconscious way. And so, in spite of all the thought given today to principles of education, if rigidified objective science which comprehends only what is dead becomes the teacher of the living, the youthful feel it like a thorn in the flesh. This thorn enters their heart and they have to tear out from their heart what is living. Many still overlook what has had to come about out of the depths of human evolution: a definite cleavage between young and old. And this cleavage is due to the fact that the young cannot allow the dead thorn to be thrust into their living heart—the thorn which the head produces out of intellectualism. The young demand the livingness that can only come out of the Spirit as the result of strenuous effort by the individual. We are making a beginning in the sphere of moral intuitions.

A beginning has been made in what I have tried to present in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity in regard to this purely spiritual matter—for such are moral intuitions, striven for by the human individuality. Because one has dared to open one's mouth while others were saying that nothing should be said—the powers which ordained that one should be stopped from speaking of moral intuitions will themselves be silenced. And so I called upon the living, the purely Spiritual Science is dead. Science cannot make what is living flow from the mouth. And without this one cannot build on it. One must appeal to an inner livingness, and so begin to seek in the right way. The divine lies precisely in the appeal to the original, moral, spiritual intuitions. But if one has once grasped the spiritual then one can unfold the forces which enable one to grasp the Spiritual in wider spheres of cosmic existence. And that is the straight path from moral intuitions to other spiritual contents.

In my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, I have tried to show that knowledge of the super-sensible worlds is built up gradually out of Imaginative, Inspired and Intuitive experience. If we look at outer Nature, we reach first Imagination, then Inspiration, and lastly Intuition. In the moral world it is different. If in that world we reach picture-consciousness, Imaginations as such, then with Imaginations of Nature we have at the same time developed the faculty for moral intuitions. Already at the first stage we acquire what, in the other sphere, is not attained until the third stage. In the moral world, intuition follows immediately upon outer perception. In the world of Nature, however, there are two intermediate stages. So that if, in the moral world one speaks of intuitions not in mere phrases but honestly, truthfully, one simply cannot do otherwise than recognize these intuitions as being purely spiritual. But then one must work on to discover other realms of the Spirit. For qualitatively one has grasped in moral Intuition the same as the evolution of the natural world, filled with content by a book such as Occult Science.

But, my dear friends, we must proceed as follows. On the one hand, we must acknowledge that outer science by its very nature can only comprehend what is material; hence perception of the material is not only materialism but also phenomenalism. On the other, we must work to bring back life into what has been made into dead thinking by natural science.

Thus certain Bible words become alive on a higher level. I do not want to intersperse what I say in a sentimental way with words from the Bible but only to elucidate things for our better mutual understanding.

Why is it that today we no longer have any real philosophies? It is because thinking, as I have described it, has died; when based merely upon dead thinking, philosophies are dead from the very outset. They are not alive. And if like Bergson one seeks in philosophy for something living, nothing comes of it because, although spasmodic efforts are made, one cannot lay hold of the living. To grasp the living means first to attain vision. What we need to reach the living is what after our fifteenth year we can add to what has worked within us before our fifteenth year. This is not disturbed by our intellect. What works within us, a spontaneous, living wisdom—we must learn to carry this over into the dead thinking. Dead thinking must be permeated with forces of growth and with reality. For this reason—not out of sentimentality—I want to refer to the words. from the Bible: “Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

For it is always the Kingdom of Heaven that one is seeking. But if one does not become like the child before puberty, one cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Childlikeness, youthfulness, must be brought into dead thinking. Thereby it becomes alive, it comes once more to intuitions; thus we learn to speak out of the primal wisdom of the child. Out of a science of language such as Fritz Mauthner has written, moral intuitions not only become dumb, but actually all talk about the world is silenced. People ought to stop talking about the world because Mauthner proves that all talk about the world consists only of words and words are incapable of expressing reality!

Such thinking has made its appearance only since the first third of the nineteenth century. But supposing our words and concepts not only meant something but had real existence. Then indeed they would not be transparent; then, like clouded lenses before our eyes, they would conceal what is material; because they are realities they would hide the world from us. Something splendid would be made of man had he concepts and words which signify something in themselves! He would have been held fast by them. But concepts and words must be transparent so that we may reach things through them. It is imperative when the desire is almost universal to silence all talk about reality, that we learn to speak a new language.

In this sense we must return to childhood and learn a new language. The language we learn in the first years of childhood gradually becomes dead, because it is permeated by dead intellectual concepts. We must quicken it to new life. We must find something that strikes into what we are thinking, just as when we learnt to speak an impulse arose in us out of the unconscious. We must find a science that is alive. We should consider it a matter of course that the thinking which reached its apex in the last third of the nineteenth century silences our moral intuitions. We must learn to open our mouth by letting our lips be moved by the Spirit. Then we shall become children again, that is to say, we shall carry childhood on into our later years. And that we must do. If a youth movement wants to have truth and not only phraseology, then such a movement is imbued of necessity with the longing for the human mouth to be opened by the Spirit, a longing for the quickening of human speech by the Spirit which wells forth from the individual. As a first step, individual moral intuitions must be brought out of the human individuality; we shall see how as a result, the true Science of the Spirit, which makes all Anthropology into Anthroposophy, is born.