Goethe's Standard of the Soul
GA 22
3. Goethe's Standard of the Soul, as Illustrated in his Fairy Story of “The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.”
[ 1 ] About the time of the beginning of his friendship with Goethe, Schiller was occupying himself with the ideas which found expression in his Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.1This essay is an elaboration of my article Goethe's Secret Revelation which appeared in the Literary Magazine in 1899, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of Goethe's birthday.!In 1794, he elaborated these letters, which were originally written for the Duke of Augustenberg, for Die Horen. The direction of thought in the verbal discussions and the correspondence which took place at that time between Goethe and Schiller approximated again and again to the orbit of ideas contained in these letters. Schiller's thoughts encountered this question: “What condition of the human soul forces corresponds in the best sense of the word to an existence worthy of man?” “It may be urged that every individual bears within himself, at least in adaptation and destination, a purely ideal man. The great problem of his existence is to bring all the incessant changes of his outer life into conformity with the unchanging unity of this ideal.
Thus writes Schiller in the fourth letter. It is Schiller's aim to build a bridge from man as he is in immediate reality, to the ideal man. There exist in human nature two impulses which hold it back from idealistic perfection when they develop in an unbalanced way—the impulses of the senses and of reason. If the sense impulse has the upper hand man is the servant of his instincts and passions. In action that is irradiated by human consciousness is mingled a force that clouds this consciousness. His acts become the result of an inner necessity. If the reason impulse predominates man strives to suppress the instincts and passions and to give himself up to an abstract necessity that is not sustained by inner warmth. In both cases man is subject to coercion. In the first his sense nature subdues the spiritual; in the second his spiritual nature subdues that of the senses. Neither the one nor the other gives man in the kernel of his being which lies between the material and the spiritual, full and complete freedom. Complete freedom can only be realised in harmonisation of the two impulses. The material sense nature must not be subdued, but ennobled; the instincts and passions must be permeated with spirituality in such a way that they themselves come to be the fulfilment of the spiritual element that has entered into them. And reason must lay hold of the soul nature in man in such a way that it imparts its power to what is merely instinctive and passional, causing man to fulfil its counsels as a matter of course from out of his instinct and with the power of passion. “When we have desire for someone who is worthy of our disdain, we have painful experience of the constraint of Nature. When we are antagonistic to another who merits our respect, we have painful experience of the constraint of the intellect. As soon, however, as he interests our affections and wins our respect, the coercion of feeling and the coercion of reason both disappear, and we begin to love him. A man whose material nature manifests the spiritual qualities of reason, and whose reason manifests the basic power of passion, is a free personality.” Schiller would like to found harmonious social life in human society upon the basis of free personalities. For him the problem of an existence really worthy of man was allied to the problem of the formation of man's social life. This was his answer to the questions facing man-kind at the time when he expressed these thoughts, as a result of the French Revolution (27th Letter). [ 2 ] Goethe found deep satisfaction in such ideas. On 26th October, 1794, he writes to Schiller on the subject of the Aesthetic Letters as follows: “I read the manuscript sent to me with the very greatest pleasure; I imbibed it at one draught. These letters pleased and did me good in the same way as a delicious drink that suits our nature is easily imbibed and shows its healthy effects on our tongue through a pleasant humour of the nervous system. How could it be otherwise, since I found such a coherent and noble exposition of what I have long recognized to be true, partly experiencing it, partly longing to experience it in life.
[ 3 ] Goethe found that Schiller's Aesthetic Letters expressed all that he longed to experience in life in order to become conscious of an existence that should be really worthy of man. It is therefore comprehensible that in his soul also, thoughts should be stimulated which he tried in his own way to elaborate in Schiller's direction. These thoughts gave birth to the composition that has been interpreted in so many different ways,—namely the enigmatical fairy tale at the end of the narrative which appeared in Die Horen under the title of Conversations of German Emigrants. The fairy tale appeared in this paper in the year 1795. These conversations, like Schiller's Aesthetic Letters, had as their subject the French Revolution. This concluding fairy tale cannot be explained by bringing all sorts of ideas from outside to bear upon it, but only by going back to the conceptions which lived in Goethe's soul at that time.
[ 4 ] Most of the attempts to interpret this composition are recorded in the book entitled Goethe's Wonder Compositions by Friedrich Meyer von Waldeck Heidelberg (Karl Wintersche Universitätsbuchhandlung). Since the publication of this book new attempts at explanation have of course been made.
[ 5 ] I have tried to penetrate into the spirit of the fairy tale, taking as my starting point the hypothesis of the Goethean school of thought from the ninetieth year of the eighteenth century onwards, and I first gave expression to what I had discovered in a lecture delivered on 27th October, 1891, to the Goethe Society of Vienna. What I then said has expanded in all directions. But everything that I have since allowed to be printed or that I have said verbally about the fairy tale, is only a further elaboration of the thoughts expressed in that Lecture and my Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation, published in 1910, is also a result.
We must look for the embryonic thought underlying the fairy tale in the Conversations of which it formed the conclusion. In the Conversations Goethe tells of the escape of a certain family from regions devastated by war. In the conversations between the members of this family there lives all that was stimulated in Goethe's conceptual world as a result of his interchange of ideas with Schiller. The conversations revolve around two central points of thought. One of them governs those conceptions of man which make him believe in the existence of some connection between the events of his life,—a connection which is impermeable to the laws of material actuality. The stories told in this connection are in part phantom, and in part describe experiences which seem to reveal a “Wonder” element in contrast to natural law. Goethe did not write these narratives as the result of a tendency towards superstition, but from a much deeper motive. That soothing, mystical feeling which many people have when they hear of something that cannot be explained by the limited reason directed to the facts of natural law, was quite alien to Goethe. But again and again he was faced by the question: does there not exist for the human soul a possibility of emancipating itself from conceptions emanating from mere sense perception and of apprehending a supersensible world in a purely spiritual mode of conception? The impulse towards this kind of activity of the faculty of cognition may of course be a natural human aspiration based on a connection with this supersensible world,—a connection that is hidden from the senses and the understanding bound to them. And the tendency towards experiences which appear to sever natural connections may be only a childish aberration of this justifiable longing of man for a spiritual world. Goethe was interested in the peculiar direction of the soul's activity when giving way to this fondness for the sweets of superstition rather than for the actual content of the tales and stories to which these tendencies give birth in unsophisticated minds.
[ 6 ] From the second central point of thought flow conceptions concerned with man's moral life, the stimulus for which is derived not from material existence, but from impulses which raise man above the impacts of material sense existence. In this sphere a supersensible world of forces enters into the soul life of man.
[ 7 ] Rays which must ultimately end in the supersensible proceed from both these central points of thought. And they give rise to the questions about the inner being of man, the connection of the human soul with the sense world on the one side and with the supersensible on the other. Schiller approached this question in a philosophical attitude in his Aesthetic Letters; the abstract philosophical path was not Goethe's. He had to give a picture form to what he wrote, as in the case of the fairy tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. In Goethe's imagination the different human soul powers assumed the form of figures in the fairy tale, and the whole soul life and soul striving of man was personified in the experiences and the lives of these figures. When anything of this kind is said one has to be prepared for the objection which will come from certain quarters that in this way a composition is lifted out of the realer of imagination, of phantasy, and made into an inartistic, symbolical representation of abstract concepts; the figures are removed from real life and transformed into symbols or even allegories that are not of the nature of art. Such an objection is based on the notion that nothing but abstract ideas can live in the human soul as soon as it leaves the realm of sense materiality. It ignores the fact that there is a living supersensible mode of perception as well as one that is of the senses. And in the fairy tale Goethe moves with his figures in the realm of supersensible perceptions and not of abstract concepts. What is here said about these figures and their experiences is not in any sense a statement that this figure means one thing, and that another. Such symbolical interpretation is as far removed as it could possibly be from the standpoint of this Essay. For it, the Old Man with the Lamp and the Will-o'-the-Wisps in the fairy tale are nothing more nor less than the phantasy figures as they appear in the composition. It is absolutely necessary, however, to look for the particular thought impulses which stimulated the imagination of the poet to create such figures. Goethe's consciousness did not of course lay hold of these thought-impulses in abstract form. He expressed himself in imaginative figures because to his genius any abstract form of thought would have been too lacking in content. The thought-impulse holding sway in the substrata of Goethe's soul had as its outcome the imaginative figure. Thought, as the intermediate stage, lives only subconsciously in his soul and gives the imagination its direction. The student of Goethe's fairy tale needs the thought content, for this alone can enable his soul to follow the course of Goethe's creative phantasy in re-creative imagination. The process of growing into the content of this thought involves nothing more nor less than the adaptation of organs enabling us to live in the atmosphere that Goethe breathed spiritually when he created the fairy tale. This means that we focus our gaze upon the same soul world as Goethe. As a result of Goethe's control of this soul world, living, spiritual forms—not philosophical ideas, burst forth before him. What lives in these spiritual forms lives also in the human soul.
[ 8 ] The mode of conception which permeates the fairy tale is also present in the Conversations. In the discussions narrated there, the human soul turns to the two world spheres between which man's life is placed—the material and the supersensible. The deeper nature of man strives to establish a right relationship to both these spheres for the purpose of attaining a free soul understanding that is worthy of man, and of building a harmonious social life. Goethe felt that what he brought to light in the narratives did not come to expression fully in the Conversations. In the all-embracing picture of the fairy tale he had to bring those human soul problems upon which his gaze was directed, nearer to the immeasurably rich world of spiritual life. The striving towards the condition truly worthy of man to which Schiller refers and which Goethe longs to experience, is personified in the Young Man in the fairy tale. His marriage with the Lily, who embodies the realization of the world of Freedom is the union with those forces which slumber in the human soul and when awakened lead to the true inner experience of the free personality.
[ 9 ] The “Old Man with the Lamp” plays an important part in the development of the fairy tale. When he comes with his lamp into the clefts of the rocks, he is asked which is the most important of the secrets known to him. He answers, “the revealed,” and when asked if he will not divulge this secret, replies, “When I have learnt the fourth.” This fourth secret, however, is known to the Green Snake, who whispers it in the Old Man's ear. There can be no doubt that this secret concerns the condition for which all the figures in the fairy tale are longing. This condition is described at the end of the tale. A picture portrays the way in which the soul of man enters into union with the subterranean forces of its nature. As a result of this, the soul's relationship to the supersensible,—the kingdom of the Lily,—and to the material,—the kingdom of the Green Snake, is so regulated that in experience and in action it is freely receptive to impulses from both regions. In union with both the soul is able to fulfil its true being. It must be assumed that the Old Man knows this secret; for he is the only figure who is always master of the circumstances; everything is dependent on his guidance and leadership. What then can the Snake say to the Old Man? He knows that the Snake must be offered up in sacrifice if the longed-for goal is to be attained. But this knowledge of his is not unconditional. He must wait until the snake from out of the depths of her nature is ripe to make the sacrifice. Within the compass of man's soul life is a power which bears the soul's development on to the condition of free personality. This power has its task on the way to the attainment of free personality. When this is achieved the task is over. This power brings the human soul into connection with the experiences of life. It transforms into inner wisdom all that science and life reveal, and makes the soul ever riper for the desired spiritual goal. This attained, it loses meaning, for it establishes man's relation to the outer world. At the goal, however, all external impulses are changed into inner impulses of the soul, and there this power must sacrifice itself, must suspend its functions; it must, without separate existence of its own, live on now in the transformed man as the ferment permeating the rest of soul life. Goethe's spiritual outlook was particularly concerned with this power in human life. He saw it working in the experiences of life and of science. He wanted to see its application without the outcome of preconceived ideas or theories of an abstract goal. This goal must be a result of the experiences themselves. When the experiences are mature they must themselves give birth to the goal. They must not be stunted by a predestined end. This soul-power is personified in the Green Snake. It devours the gold,—the wisdom derived from life and science, which must be so worked upon by the soul that wisdom and soul become one. This soul-power will be sacrificed at the right time; it will bring man to his goal, will make him a free personality. The Snake whispers to the Old Man that it will sacrifice itself. It confides to him a mystery that is revealed to him, but of which he can make no use so long as it is not fnlfllled by the free resolve of the Snake. When this soul power in man speaks to him as the Snake speaks to the Old Man, “the time has come” for the soul to realise life experience as life wisdom; harmony between the material and the supersensible is re-established. The Young Man has had premature contact with the supersensible world, and has been paralysed, deadened. Life revives in him and he marries the Lily when the Snake,—the soul experience, is offered up in sacrifice. [ 10 ] Thus the longed for consummation is attained. The time has now also come when the soul is able to build a bridge between the nether and the further regions of the river. This bridge is built of the Snake's own substance. From now on, life experience has no separate existence; it is no longer directed merely to the outer sense world as before. It has become inner soul power which is not consciously exercised as such, but which only functions in the reciprocal illumination of the material and super-sensible life of man's inner being. This condition is brought about by the Snake. Yet the Snake by itself cannot impart to the Young Man the gifts whereby he is able to control the newly fathomed soul kingdom. These gifts are bestowed on him by the Three Kings. From the Brazen King he receives the sword with the command: “Take the sword in your left hand and keep the right hand free.” The Silver King gives him the sceptre with the words: “Feed my sheep.” The Golden King sets the Crown of Oak on his head, saying, “Acknowledge the Highest.” The fourth King, who is formed of a mixture of the three metals, Copper, Silver and Gold, sinks lifelessly to the ground. In the man who is on the way to become a free personality there are three soul forces in alloy:—Will (Copper), Feeling (Silver), Knowledge (Gold). In the course of existence the revelations of life experience give all that the soul assimilates from the operation of these three forces. Power, through which virtue works is made manifest in Will: Beauty (beautiful appearance) reveals itself in Peeling; Wisdom, in Knowledge. Man is separated from the state of “free personality” through the fact that these three forces work in his soul in alloy; he will attain free personality to the degree in which he assimilates the gifts, each of the three in its specific nature, in full consciousness and unites them in free conscious activity in his own soul. Then the chaotic alloy of the gifts of Will, Feeling and Knowledge which has previously controlled him, falls asunder.
[ 11 ] The Wisdom King is of Gold. Gold personifies Wisdom in some form. The operation of Wisdom in the life experience that is finally sacrificed has already been described. But the Will-o'-the-Wisps too, seize upon the Gold in their own way. In man there exists a soul quality,—(in many people it develops abnormally and seems to fill their whole being)—by which he is able to assimilate all the wisdom that life and science bestow. But this soul quality does not endeavour to unite wisdom wholly to the inner life. It remains one-sided know-ledge, as an instrument of dogma or criticism; it makes a man appear brilliant, or helps to give him a one-sided prominence in life. It makes no effort to bring about a balance through adjustment with the yields of external experience. It becomes superstition as described by Goethe in the Wonder Tales of the Emigrants, because it does not try to harmonise itself to Nature. It becomes learning before it has become life in the inner being of the soul. It is that which false prophets and sophists like to bear through life. All endeavour to assimilate the Goethean life-axiom: “Man must surrender his existence if he would exist” is alien to it. The Snake, the selfless life-experience that has developed for love's sake to conscious wisdom, surrenders its existence in order to build the bridge between material and spiritual existence.
[ 12 ] An irresistible desire presses the Young Man onward to the kingdom of the Beautiful Lily. What are the characteristics of this kingdom? Although men have the deepest longing for the world of the Lily, they can only reach it at certain times before the bridge is built. At noon the Snake, even before its sacrifice, builds a temporary bridge to the supersensible world. And evening and morning man can pass over the river that separates sense-existence from supersensible existence on the Giant's Shadows—the powers of imagination and of memory. Anyone who approaches the ruler of the supersensible world without the necessary inner qualification must do harm to his life like the Young Man. The Lily also desires the other region. The Ferryman who conveyed the Will-o'-the-Wisps over the river can bring anyone back from the supersensible world, but can take no one to it.
[ 13 ] A man who desires contact with the supersensible world must first have developed his inner being in the direction of this world through life experience, for the supersensible world can only be grasped in free spiritual activity.
The Prose Aphorisms express Goethe's opinion of this goal: “Everything that sets our spirit free without giving us mastery over ourselves, is harmful.” Another aphorism is: “Duty, when a man loves the commands he gives to himself.” The kingdom of pure supersensible activity—Schiller's “Reason Impulse,” is that of the Lily; the kingdom of pure sense-materiality—Schiller's “Sense Impulse” is the home of the Snake before its sacrifice. The Ferryman can bring anyone to the realm of sense but cannot convey them to the realm of spirit. All men have involuntarily descended from the supersensible world. But they can only re-establish a free union with this supersensible world when they have the will to pass over the bridge of sacrificed life-experience. It is a union independent of “Time,” of all involuntary conditions of soul. Before this free union has taken place there exist two involuntary conditions of soul which enable man to attain to the supersensible world—the kingdom of the free personality. One such condition is present in creative imagination or phantasy which is a reflection of supersensible experience. In Art man links sense existence to the supersensible. In Art he manifests also as free creative soul. This is depicted in the crossing which the Snake makes possible at noon. The Snake typifies life-experience not yet ready for supersensible existence. The other condition of soul sets in when the conscious soul of man—of the Giant in man who is an image of the macrocosm—is dimmed, when conscious cognition is obscured and blunted in such a way that it becomes superstition, hallucination, mediumistic trance. The soul power existing in this way in obscured consciousness is for Goethe one with that power that is prone by force and despotism to lead men to the state of freedom in a revolutionary sense. In revolutions the urge towards an ideal state lives obscurely; it is like the shadow of the Giant which lies over the river at twilight. What Schiller writes to Goethe on 16th October, 1794, is also evidence of the accuracy of this idea of the Giant. Goethe was on a journey which it was his intention to extend to Frankforton-the-Main. Schiller writes: “I am indeed glad to know that you are still far away from the commerce of the Main. The shadow of the Giant might well lay rough hands upon you.” The result of caprice, the unregulated “laissez faire” of historical events, is personified in the Giant and his shadow, by the side of the obscured consciousness of man. The soul impulses leading to such happenings are certainly associated with the tendency towards superstition and chimerical ideology.
The “Old Man's” lamp has the quality of only being able to give light where another light already is. One cannot but be reminded here of the saying of an old Mystic, quoted by Goethe: “If the eye were not of the nature of the light it could never see the sun; if God's own power were not within us, how could Divinity delight us?” [ 14 ] Just as the lamp does not give light in the darkness, so the light of wisdom, of knowledge, does not shine in the man who does not bring to it the appropriate organ, the inner light. What the lamp denotes will become still more intelligible if we take heed of the fact that it can in its own way shed light upon what is developing as a resolution in the Snake, but that there must first be knowledge of the Snake's willingness to make this resolution. There is a kind of human know-ledge which is at all times a concern of the highest endeavour of man. It has arisen from the inner experience of souls in the course of the historical life of mankind. But the goal of human endeavour to which it points can only be attained in concrete reality out of the sacrificed life-experience. All that the consideration of the historical past teaches man, all that mystical and religious experience enables him to say about his connection with the supersensible world,-all this can find its ultimate consummation only by the sacrifice of life-experience. The Old Man can change everything by his lamp in such a way that it assumes a new life-serving form, but actual development is dependent upon the ripening of the life-experience.
[ 15 ] The wife of the Old Man is she whose body is pledged to the river for the debt which she has come to owe it. This woman personifies the human powers of perception and conception as well as humanity's memory of its past. She is an associate of the Old Man. By her aid he has possession of the light that is able to illumine what is made evident already by external reality. But the powers of conception and of remembrance are not united in life with the concrete forces active in the evolution of the individual man and in the historical life of humanity. The power of conception and of remembrance cleaves to the past; it conserves the things of the past so that they make their claims upon all that is becoming and evolving in the present. The conditions—maintained by memory—in which the individual and the human race are always living, are the crystallisation of this power of the soul.
Schiller writes of them in the third of the Aesthetic Letters: “He (man) was introduced into this state by the power of circumstances, before he could freely select his own position. Before he could adjust it according to the Laws of Reason, necessity has done so according to Natural Laws.” The river divides the two kingdoms, of free spiritual activity in supersensible existence and of necessity in material life. The unconscious soul powers, the Ferryman, transport man, whose origin is in the supersensible kingdom, into the material world. Here in the first place he finds himself in a realm wherein the powers of conception and remembrance have created conditions in which he has to live. But they separate him from the supersensible world; he feels himself beholden to them when he must approach the power (the Ferryman) that has brought him unconsciously out of the supersensible world into the material sense world. He can only break the power which these conditions have over him, and which is revealed in the deprivation of his freedom, when with the “Fruits of the Earth” that is to say, with self-created life wisdom, he frees himself from the obligation imposed upon him by the conditions, from coercion. If he cannot do this, these conditions—the water of the river—take his individual wisdom away from him. He is swallowed up into his soul being.
[ 16 ] On the river stands the Temple in which the marriage of the Young Man with the Lily takes place. The “marriage” with the supersensible, the realisation of the free personality, is possible in a human soul whose forces have been brought into a state of regularity that in comparison with the usual state is a transformation. The life experience previously acquired by the soul is so far mature that the force directed to it is no longer exhausted in adapting man to the world of sense. This force becomes the content of what is able to stream into man's inner being from the supersensible world in such a way, that, acts in the material sense world become the fulfilment of supersensible impulses. In this condition of soul, those spiritual powers of man which previously flowed along mistaken or one-sided channels, assume their new significance in the character as a whole,—a significance adequate for a higher state of consciousness. The wisdom of the Will-o'-the-Wisps, for example, which has broken loose from the sense world and has wandered into superstitution or chaotic thought, serves to open the door of the Palace, that is the personification of the soul condition wherein the chaotic alloy of Will, Feeling and Cognition holds man in chain within a constricted inner life shut off from the supersensible world.
[ 17 ] In the wonder pictures of the composition Goethe approached the panoramic evolution of the human soul before his spiritual vision in that frame of mind which is conscious of estrangement in face of the supersensible until it attains those heights of consciousness where life in the sense world is permeated by the supersensible, spiritual world to such an extent that the two become one. This process of transformation was visible to Goethe's soul in delicately woven figures of phantasy. Through the Conversations of German Emigrants shines the problem of the relation of the physical world to a world of supersensible experience free of every element of sense with its consequences for the communal life of man. This problem finds a far-reaching solution at the end of the fairy tale in a panorama of poetic pictures. This Essay merely indicates the path leading to the realm where Goethe's imagination wove the fabric of the fairy tale. Living understanding of all the other details can be developed by those who realise the fairy tale to be a picture of man's soul life as it strives towards the supersensible world. Schiller realised this fully. He writes: “The fairy tale is full of colour and humour and I think that you have given most charming expression to the ideas of which you once spoke, namely, in reference to the reciprocal interplay of the powers and their reaction on each other.” [ 18 ] For even when it is objected that this reciprocal interaction of the powers refers to powers of different men, we can plead the well-known Goethean truth that although the soul powers from one point of view are distributed among different human beings, they are nothing but the divergent rays of the collective human soul. And when different human natures work together in a common existence we have in this mutual action and reaction nothing more nor less than a picture of the multifarious forces and powers constituting in their reciprocal relationships the one collective individual being, Man.
III. Goethes Geistesart in ihrer Offenbarung durch sein «Märchen von der grünen Schlange und der Lilie.»
Diese Ausführungen sind eine Neu-Bearbeitung meines Aufsatzes «Goethes geheime Offenbarung», der 1899 zu Goethes hundertfünfzigstem Geburtstage im «Magazin für Literatur» erschienen ist.
[ 1 ] Schiller war um die Zeit, in der seine Freundschaft mit Goethe begann, mit den Ideen beschäftigt, die in seinen «Briefen über ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen» ihren Ausdruck gefunden haben. Er arbeitete diese ursprünglich für den Herzog von Augustenburg geschriebenen Briefe 1794 für die Horen um. Was Goethe und Schiller damals mündlich verhandelten und was sie sich schrieben, schloß sich immer wieder, der Gedankenrichtung nach, an den Ideenkreis dieser Briefe an. Schillers Nachsinnen betraf die Frage: Welcher Zustand der menschlichen Seelenkräfte entspricht im besten Sinne des Wortes einem menschenwürdigen Dasein? «Jeder individuelle Mensch, kann man sagen, trägt, der Anlage und Bestimmung nach, einen reinen, idealischen Menschen in sich, mit dessen unveränderlicher Einheit in allen seinen Abwechselungen übereinzustimmen die große Aufgabe seines Daseins ist.» 1So schreibt Schiller im vierten Briefe. Eine Brücke will Schiller schlagen von dem Menschen der alltägigen Wirklichkeit zu dem idealischen Menschen. Zwei Triebe sind in der Menschennatur vorhanden, die diese von der idealischen Vollkommenheit zurückhalten, wenn sie in einseitiger Art zur Entwicklung kommen: der sinnliche und der vernünftige Trieb. Hat der sinnliche Trieb die Oberhand, so unterliegt der Mensch seinen Instinkten und Leidenschaften. In die Betätigung, die von seinem Bewußtsein durchhellt ist, mischt sich eine dieses Bewußtsein trübende Kraft. Sein Tun wird das Ergebnis einer inneren Nötigung. Überwiegt der vernünftige Trieb, so ist der Mensch bestrebt, Instinkte und Leidenschaften zu unterdrücken und einer abstrakten, von innerer Wärme nicht getragenen Notwendigkeit sich zu übergeben. In beiden Fällen ist der Mensch einem Zwange unterworfen. Im erstern bezwingt seine sinnliche Natur die geistige; im zweiten die geistige seine sinnliche. Weder das eine, noch das andere gibt dem Menschen im Kerne seines Wesens, der zwischen Sinnlichkeit und Geistigkeit in der Mitte liegt, völlige Freiheit. Diese ist nur durch eine Harmonie der beiden Triebe zu verwirklichen. Die Sinnlichkeit soll nicht unterdrückt, sondern veredelt werden; die Instinkte und Leidenschaften sollen sich mit der Geistigkeit durchdringen, so daß sie selbst die Verwirklicher des in sie eingegangenen Geistigen werden. Und die Vernunft soll das Seelische im Menschen so ergreifen, daß sie dem bloß Instinktiven und Leidenschaftlichen seine Gewalt nimmt, und der Mensch das, was Vernunft ihm rät, wie selbstverständlich aus Instinkt und mit der Kraft der Leidenschaft vollbringt. «Wenn wir jemand mit Leidenschaft umfassen, der unsrer Verachtung würdig ist, so empfinden wir peinlich die Nötigung der Natur. Wenn wir gegen einen andern feindlich gesinnt sind, der uns Achtung abnötigt, so empfinden wir peinlich die Nötigung der Vernunft. Sobald er aber zugleich unsre Neigung interessiert und unsre Achtung sich erworben, so verschwindet sowohl der Zwang der Empfindung, als der Zwang der Vernunft, und wir fangen an, ihn zu lieben.» [Vierzehnter Brief.] Ein Mensch, der in seiner Sinnlichkeit die Geistigkeit der Vernunft, in seiner Vernunft die elementarische Kraft der Leidenschaft offenbart, wäre eine freie Persönlichkeit. Auf die Entwicklung der freien Persönlichkeiten möchte Schiller das harmonische Zusammenleben in der menschlichen Gesellschaft begründen. Mit der Frage nach einem wahrhaft menschenwürdigen Dasein verband sich ihm diejenige nach der Gestaltung des menschlichen Zusammenlebens. Das war seine Antwort auf die Fragen, die in der Zeit, als er diese Gedanken ausgestaltete, den Menschen durch die französische Revolution gestellt waren.227. Brief
[ 2 ] Goethe fand sich durch solche Ideen tief befriedigt. Er schreibt über die ästhetischen Briefe am 26. Oktober 1794 an Schiller: «Das mir übersandte Manuskript habe ich sogleich mit großem Vergnügen gelesen; ich schlürfte es auf einen Zug hinunter. Wie uns ein köstlicher, unsrer Natur analoger Trunk willig hinunterschleicht und auf der Zunge schon durch gute Stimmung des Nervensystems seine heilsame Wirkung zeigt, so waren mir diese Briefe angenehm und wohltätig, und wie sollte es anders sein, da ich das, was ich für recht seit langer Zeit erkannte, was ich teils lebte, teils zu leben wünschte, auf eine so zusammenhängende und edle Weise vorgetragen fand.»
[ 3 ] Was Goethe zu leben wünschte, um sich eines wahrhaft menschenwürdigen Daseins bewußt sein zu dürfen, fand er in Schillers ästhetischen Briefen ausgesprochen. Begreiflich ist es daher, daß auch in seiner Seele Gedanken angeregt wurden, die er auf seine Art in der Richtung der Schillerschen auszugestalten suchte. Aus diesen Gedanken heraus ist die Dichtung erwachsen, die so mannigfaltige Auslegungen gefunden hat: Das Rätselmärchen, mit dem Goethe seine in den Horen erschienene Erzählung «Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten» schloß, und das im Jahre 1795 in «Horen» erschienen ist. Auch diese «Unterhaltungen »knüpfen wie Schiliers ästhetische Briefe an die französischen Zustände an. Man wird das ihren Schluß bildende «Märchen» nicht erklären dürfen, indem man von außen allerlei Ideen in dasselbe hineinträgt, sondern indem man zurückgeht auf die Vorstellungen, die damals in Goethes Seele lebten.
[ 4 ] Die größte Zahl der unternommenen Auslegungsversuche dieser Dichtung findet man verzeichnet in dem Buche «Goethes Märchendichtungen» von Friedrich Meyer von Waldeck. 3Heidelberg, Karl Wintersche Univcrsitätsbuchhandlung [1879] Seit dem Erscheinen dieses Buches sind allerdings einige neuere Erklärungsversuche zu den früheren hinzugekommen. 4Ich habe in den Geist des Märchens aus den Voraussetzungen der Goetheschen Gedankenwelt vom Anfang der neunziger Jahre des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts einzudringen versucht und habe, was sich mir ergeben hat, zuerst in einem Vortrage ausgesprochen, den ich am 27. November 1891 im Wiener Goetheverein gehalten habe. Was ich damals gesagt habe, hat sich mir seither nach den verschiedensten Richtungen erweitert. Aber alles, was ich seither über das «Märchen» habe drucken lassen oder mündlich ausgesprochen habe, ist nur eine weitere Ausgestaltung der in jenem Vortrage ausgesprochenen Gedanken. Auch mein 1910 erschienenes Mystcriendrama «Die Pforte der Einweihung» ist eine Frucht jener Gedanken. [Der am 27. November 1891 im Wiener Goethcvcrein von Rudolf Steiner gehaltene Vortrag «Über das Geheimnis in Goethes Rätselmärchen in den ,Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten'» im Referat von K. J. Schröer wurde 1942 in Heft XV (Band III) der «Veröffentlichungen aus dem Literarischen Frühwerk» abgedruckt.]
[ 5 ] Man wird die Keim-Gedanken zu dem «Märchen» in den «Unterhaltungen» suchen müssen, deren Abschluß es bildet. Goethe stellt in diesen «Unterhaltungen» die Flucht einer Familie aus den mit Kriegsverheerungen belasteten Gegenden dar. In den Gesprächen, die sich zwischen den Gliedern dieser Familie abspielen, lebt auf, was in Goethes Vorstellungskreisen durch den Austausch der gekennzeichneten Ideen mit Schiller damals angeregt war. Die Gespräche drehen sich um zwei Gedankenmittelpunkte. Von dem einen werden alle die Vorstellungen des Menschen beherrscht, durch welche dieser in den Ereignissen, die in sein Leben eingreifen, einen Zusammenhang zu bemerken glaubt, der sich aus den Gesetzen der sinnlichen Wirklichkeit nicht durchdringen läßt. Die Geschichten, welche da erzählt werden, sind zum Teil reine Gespenstergeschichten, zum Teil solche, in denen Erlebnisse zur Darstellung kommen, die an Stelle des naturgesetzlichen Zusammenhanges einen «wunderbaren» zu verraten scheinen. Goethe hat diese Schilderungen wahrlich nicht aus einer Hinneigung zu irgendeiner Art von Aberglauben verfaßt, sondern aus einem viel tieferen Antrieb heraus. Die angenehm-mystische Empfindung, die manche Menschen haben, wenn sie von etwas hören können, das doch die «beschränkte», auf gesetzmäßige Zusammenhänge gehende Vernunft «nicht erklären kann», lag ihm ganz ferne. Aber er sah sich immer wieder vor die Frage gestellt: Gibt es für die Menschenseele nicht eine Möglichkeit, sich von den Vorstellungen, die nur aus der sinnlichen Wahrnehmung kommen, zu befreien und in einem rein geistigen Anschauen eine übersinnliche Welt zu ergreifen? Es könnte ja wohl der Drang nach einer solchen Betätigung des Erkenntnisvermögens ein naturgemäßes menschliches Streben darstellen, das auf einem für die Sinne und den auf diese gestützten Verstand verborgenen Zusammenhang mit einer solchen Welt beruht. Und die Neigung zu Erlebnissen, welche den natürlichen Zusammenhang zu durchbrechen scheinen, könnte nur eine kindliche Abirrung von dieser berechtigten menschlichen Sehnsucht nach einer geistigen Welt sein. Goethe interessierte sich vielmehr für die Richtung, welche die Seelentätigkeit bei ihrer Neigung zum abergläubisch Gehätschelten nimmt, als für den Inhalt der Erzählungen, die bei kindlichen Gemütern aus einer solchen Neigung hervorgehen.
[ 6 ] Der zweite Gedankenmittelpunkt strahlt die Vorstellungen aus, welche das moralische Menschenleben betreffen, für das der Mensch seine Antriebe nicht aus der Sinnlichkeit, sondern aus Impulsen schöpft die ihn über das hinausheben, was die Sinnlichkeit in ihm anregt. Auf diesem Gebiete ragt ja eine übersinnliche Kräftewelt in das Seelenleben des Menschen herein.
[ 7 ] Von beiden Gedankenmittelpunkten aus gehen Strahlen, welche im Übersinnlichen endigen müssen. Und von ihnen aus wird die Frage nach dem inneren Menschenwesen angeregt, nach dem Zusammenhange der Menschenseele mit der sinnlichen Welt einer- und der übersinnlichen andrerseits. Schiller trat dieser Frage philosophisch in seinen ästhetischen Briefen nahe; für Goethe war der abstrakt-philosophische Weg nicht gangbar; er mußte das, was er in dieser Richtung zu sagen hatte, im Bilde verkörpern. Und das geschah durch das «Märchen von der grünen Schlange und der Lilie». In Goethes Phantasie gestalteten sich die mannigfaltigen menschlichen Seelenkräfte zu Märchenpersonen, und in den Erlebnissen und dem Zusammenwirken dieser Personen verbildlicht sich das ganze menschliche Seelenleben und Seelenstreben. - Wenn man dergleichen ausspricht, hat man von einer gewissen Seite her sogleich den Einwand zu gewärtigen: aber dadurch wird eine Dichtung doch aus dem künstlerischen Phantasiereiche herausgehoben und zur unkünstlerischen Verbildlichung abstrakter Begriffe, die Figuren werden aus dem echten Leben herausgenommen und zu unkünstlerischen Symbolen oder gar Allegorien gemacht. Solch ein Einwand beruht auf der Vorstellung, daß in der Menschenseele nur abstrakte Ideen leben können, sobald sie das Gebiet des Sinnlichen verläßt. Er verkennt, daß es eine lebensvolle übersinnliche Anschauung gibt ebenso wie eine sinnliche. Und Goethe bewegt sich mit seinen Personen im «Märchen» nicht im Reiche abstrakter Begriffe, sondern übersinnlicher Anschauungen. Was hier über diese Personen und ihre Erlebnisse gesagt werden wird, ist durchaus nicht so gemeint, daß behauptet würde: das eine bedeute das; das andere jenes. Solche Hinneigung zu symbolischer Ausdeutung liegt diesen Betrachtungen so ferne wie nur möglich. Für sie ist im «Märchen» der Alte mit der Lampe, sind die Irrlichter und so weiter nichts anderes als die Phantasiegestaltungen, als die sie in der Dichtung auftreten. Aber gesucht werden soll, durch welche Gedankenimpulse die Phantasie des Dichters belebt wird, um solche Gestalten zu schaffen. Diese Gedankenimpulse brachte sich Goethe ganz gewiß nicht in einer abstrakten Form zum Bewußtsein. Weil sie seiner Geistesart in dieser Form zu inhaltsarm erschienen wären, drückte er sich eben durch Gestalten der Phantasie aus. Der Gedankenimpuls waltet in den Untergründen von Goethes Seele, dessen Frucht ist die Phantasiegestalt. Die Zwischenstufe als Gedanke lebt nur unterbewußt in seiner Seele und gibt der Phantasie die Richtung. Der Betrachter des Goetheschen «Märchens» braucht den Gedankengehalt; denn der allein kann seine Seele so stimmen, daß sie in nachschaffender Phantasie den Wegen der schöpferischen Goetheschen folgt. Es ist das Sichhineinversetzen in diesen Gedankengehalt nichts anderes als gewissermaßen das Aneignen der Organe, durch die der Betrachter sich in dieselbe Luft versetzen kann, in der Goethe geistig geatmet hat, als er das «Märchen» schu£ Es ist die Einstellung des Blickes auf die menschliche Seelenwelt, auf die Goethe geblickt hat, und aus deren Walten ihm - anstatt philosophischer Ideen - lebendige Geistgestalten entgegensprangen. Was in diesen Geistgestalten lebt, es lebt in der menschlichen Seele.
[ 8 ] Die Vorstellungsart, die das «Märchen» durchdringt, sie klingt schon in den «Unterhaltungen» an. In den Gesprächen, von denen da erzählt wird, lenkt sich die menschliche Seele auf die zwei Weltgebiete hin, zwischen die sich der Mensch im Leben gestellt sieht: das sinnliche und das übersinnliche. Sich zu beiden Gebieten in das rechte Verhältnis zu bringen, strebt die tiefere Menschennatur an, zur Erringung einer freien, menschenwürdigen Seelenverfassung und zur Ausgestaltung eines harmonischen Zusammenlebens von Mensch zu Mensch. Goethe hat empfunden, daß in den «Unterhaltungen» selbst nicht voll zum Ausdrucke gekommen war, was er über die Beziehung des Menschen zu den beiden Weltgebieten hat aus den Erzählungen herausleuchten lassen. Er hatte das Bedürfnis, in dem umfassenden Märchengemälde die menschlichen Seelenrätsel, auf die sein Blick gerichtet war, näher an die unermeßlich reiche Welt des Geisteslebens heranzubringen. - Das Streben nach dem wahrhaft menschenwürdigen Zustand, auf den Schiller deutet, den Goethe zu leben wünschte, verkörpert sich ihm durch den Jüngling im «Märchen». Dessen Vermählung mit der Lilie, der Verwirklicherin des Freiheitsreiches, ist die Verbindung mit den in der Menschenseele schlummernden Kräften, die zum wahren inneren Erleben der freien Persönlichkeit führen, wenn sie erweckt werden.
[ 9 ] Eine Person, die für die Entwicklung der Vorgänge im «Märchen» eine bedeutungsvolle Rolle spielt, ist der Alte mit der Lampe. Als er mit seiner Lampe in die Felsklüfte kommt, wird er gefragt, welches das wichtigste der Geheimnisse sei, die er wisse. Er antwortet: «Das offenbare». Und auf die Frage, ob er dieses Geheimnis nicht verraten könne, sagt er: Wenn er das vierte wisse. Dieses vierte aber kennt die grüne Schlange. Und sie sagt es dem Alten ins Ohr. Es kann keinem Zweifel unterliegen, daß dieses Geheimnis sich auf den Zustand bezieht, nach dem sich alle im «Märchen» vorkommenden Personen sehnen. Dieser Zustand wird am Schluß des «Märchens» geschildert. Er drückt im Bilde aus, wie die Menschenseele ihre Verbindung eingeht mit den in ihren Untergründen waltenden Kräften, und wie dadurch ihr Verhältnis zum Übersinnlichen - dem Reich der Lilie - und dem sinnlichen - dem Reich der grünen Schlange - so geregelt wird, daß sich diese Seele mit ihren Erlebnissen und ihrem Tun in freier Art von dem einen und dem andern Gebiete anregen läßt, so daß sie im Verein mit den beiden ihr wahres Wesen verwirklichen könne. Man muß annehmen, daß der Alte den Inhalt dieses Geheimnisses kennt; denn er ist ja die einzige Person, die immer über den Verhältnissen steht, diejenige, von deren Lenkung und Leitung alles abhängt. Was also kann die Schlange dem Alten sagen? Er weiß, daß sie sich aufopfern muß, wenn der ersehnte Endzustand herbeigeführt werden soll. Aber dieses sein Wissen ist nicht entscheidend. Er muß mit diesem Wissen warten, bis die Schlange aus den Tiefen ihres Wesens heraus zu dem Entschlusse der Aufopferung sich reif findet. - Im Umfange des menschlichen Seelenlebens gibt es eine Kraft, von welcher die Entwicklung der Seele getragen wird zu dem Zustande der freien Persönlichkeit. Diese Kraft hat ihre Aufgabe auf dem Wege zu diesem Zustand. Wäre dieser erreicht, so verlöre sie ihre Bedeutung. Sie bringt die Menschenseele mit den Lebenserfahrungen in Zusammenhang. Sie verwandelt, was Wissenschaft und Leben offenbaren, in innere Lebensweisheit. Sie macht die Seele immer reifer für das ersehnte Geistesziel. An diesem verliert sie ihre Bedeutung, denn sie stellt das Verhältnis des Menschen zur Außenwelt her. Am Ziele aber sind alle äußeren Impulse in innere Seelenantriebe verwandelt. Da muß diese Kraft sich aufopfern; sie muß ihre Wirksamkeit einstellen; sie muß als das übrige Seelenleben durchsetzendes Ferment ohne Eigenleben im verwandelten Menschen weiter bestehen. Goethes Geistesauge war insbesondere auf diese Kraft im Menschenleben hingerichtet. Er sah sie wirksam in den Erfahrungen des Lebens und in denjenigen der Wissenschaft. Er wollte sie da angewendet wissen, ohne daß man sich durch vorgefaßte Meinungen oder Theorien ein abstraktes Ziel setzt. Dieses Ziel muß sich erst aus den Erfahrungen heraus ergeben. Wenn diese ausgereift sein werden, sollen sie das Ziel aus sich gebären. Sie sollen nicht durch ein voraus bestimmtes Ende verstümmelt werden. Diese Seelenkraft ist in der grünen Schlange verkörpert. Sie nimmt das Gold auf, die Weisheit, die aus den Erfahrungen des Lebens und der Wissenschaft stammt, und die von der Seele angeeignet werden muß, so daß Weisheit und Seele eins werden. Diese Seelenkraft wird sich zur rechten Zeit opfern; sie wird den Menschen an sein Ziel, die freie Persönlichkeit, bringen. Daß sie sich opfern will, sagt die Schlange dem Alten ins Ohr. Sie vertraut ihm damit ein Geheimnis an, das ihm offenbar ist, das ihm aber trotzdem wertlos ist, so lange es sich nicht durch den freien Entschluß der Schlange verwirklicht. Wenn die gekennzeichnete Seelenkraft in dem Menschen so spricht wie die Schlange zu dem Alten, dann ist es für die Seele «an der Zeit», die Lebenserfahrung als Lebensweisheit zu erleben, die ein harmonisches Verhältnis vom Sinnlichen zum Übersinnlichen herstellt.
[ 10 ] Das ersehnte Ziel wird herbeigeführt durch die Wiederbelebung des zur Unzeit von dem Übersinnlichen - der Lilie - berührten und daher gelähmten und ertöteten Jünglings; durch seine Vereinigung mit der Lilie, wenn die Schlange, die Lebenserfahrung der Seele, sich geopfert hat. Dann ist auch die Zeit gekommen, in der die Seele in sich die Brücke bilden kann zwischen dem diesseitigen und jenseitigen Gebiet des Flusses. Diese Brücke entsteht aus dem Stoffe der Schlange selbst. Die Lebenserfahrung führt fortan kein Eigenleben; sie ist nicht mehr, wie vorher, bloß auf die äußere Sinneswelt gerichtet. Sie ist innere Seelenkraft geworden, die man als solche bewußt nicht übt, sondern die nur wirkt, indem sich Sinnliches und Übersinnliches im Menschen-Innern gegenseitig erleuchten und erwärmen. - Wenn nun auch die Schlange die Urheberin dieses Zustandes ist, sie könnte allein dem Jüngling doch nicht die Gaben verleihen, durch die ihm möglich wird, das neugegründete Seelenreich zu beherrschen. Die empfängt er von den drei Königen. Von dem ehernen erhält er das Schwert mit dem Auftrag: « Das Schwert zur Linken; die Rechte frei.» Der silberne König gibt ihm das Zepter, indem er den Satz spricht: «Weide die Schafe.» Der goldene König drückt ihm den Eichenkranz aufs Haupt mit den Worten: «Erkenne das Höchste.» Der vierte König, der in Mischung die drei Metalle Kupfer, Silber und Gold enthält, sinkt zum wesenlosen Klumpen zusammen. - In dem Menschen, der auf dem Wege zur freien Persönlichkeit ist, sind drei Seelenkräfte in Mischung wirksam: der Wille (das Kupfer), das Fühlen (Silber), die Erkenntnis (Gold). Die Lebenserfahrung gibt im Laufe des Daseins aus ihren Offenbarungen, was die Seele sich durch diese drei Kräfte aneignet: die Macht, durch welche die Tugend wirkt, offenbart sich dem Willen ; die Schönheit (der schöne Schein) offenbart sich dem Fühlen; die Weisheit offenbart sich dem Erkennen. Was den Menschen abtrennt von der «freien Persönlichkeit», das ist, daß diese drei in Mischung in seiner Seele wirken; er wird die freie Persönlichkeit in dem Maße erringen, als er mit vollem Bewußtsein die Gaben der drei in ihrer besonderen Eigenart, jede für sich, empfängt und sie erst - in freier bewußter Betätigung - in seiner Seele selbst vereinigt. Dann zerfällt in sich, was ihn vorher bezwungen hat, die chaotische Mischung der Gaben des Wollens, Fühlens und Erkennens.
[ 11 ] Der König der Weisheit ist aus Gold. Wo das Gold im «Märchen» auftritt, verkörpert es die Weisheit in irgendeiner Form. Wie die Weisheit in der sich zuletzt opfernden Lebenserfahrung wirkt, ist bereits angedeutet. Aber auch die Irrlichter bemächtigen sich des Goldes in ihrer Art. Der Mensch trägt in sich eine Seelenanlage - und sie kommt bei manchen Personen in einseitiger Art zur Entfaltung, so daß sie ihr ganzes Wesen auszufüllen scheint -, durch die er sich aneignet, was Leben und Wissenschaft an Weisheit verleihen. Aber diese Seelenanlage strebt nicht darnach, die Weisheit ganz mit dem Leben der Seele zu vereinigen ; sie bleibt als einseitiges Wissen, als Mittel, dieses oder jenes zu behaupten oder zu kritisieren, bestehen ; sie dient dazu, die Person glänzen zu lassen, oder diese Person im Leben in einseitiger Weise zur Geltung zu bringen. Sie strebt auch nicht darnach, sich durch die Verbindung mit dem, was die äußere Erfahrung bietet, in Ausgleich zu bringen. Sie wird zum Aberglauben, den Goethe in den Gespenstergeschichten der «Ausgewanderten» zur Darstellung brachte, weil sie nicht darnach strebt, sich in Einklang zu versetzen mit dem Naturgemäßen. Sie wird zur Lehre, bevor sie im Seelen-Innern Leben geworden ist. Sie ist, was falsche Propheten und Sophisten durch das Leben tragen möchten. Sie ist weit entfernt davon, den Goetheschen Lebensgrundsatz sich zu eigen zu machen: Man muß seine Existenz aufgeben, um zu existieren. Die Schlange, die selbstlose, in Liebe zur Weisheit, in erlebter Weisheit entwickelte Lebenserfahrung, gibt ihre Existenz auf, um die Brücke zu bilden zwischen der Sinnlichkeit und der Geistigkeit.
[ 12 ] Der Jüngling wird durch ein unbezwingliches Verlangen nach dem Reich der schönen Lilie gedrängt. Welches sind die Kennzeichen dieses Reiches? Die Menschen können, trotzdem sie die tiefste Sehnsucht nach dem Gebiet der Lilie haben, doch nur zu bestimmten Zeiten in dasselbe gelangen, bevor die Brücke gebaut ist. Zur Mittagszeit bildet die Schlange, auch schon vor ihrer Opferung, eine vorläufige Brücke in das Gebiet des Übersinnlichen. Und abends und morgens kann man über den Schatten des Riesen hinüberkommen über den Fluß - die Vorstellungs- und Gedächtniskraft -, der das Sinnliche von dem Übersinnlichen trennt. Jemand, der sich der Beherrscherin des übersinnlichen Reiches nähert, ohne dazu die innere Eignung zu besitzen, muß an seinem Leben so Schaden nehmen wie der Jüngling. Auch hat die Lilie das Verlangen nach dem andern Reiche. Es kann der Fährmann, der die Irrlichter über den Fluß gefahren hat, jeden herüber-, aus dem Übersinnlichen, niemand hinüberbringen.
[ 13 ] Wer von dem Übersinnlichen berührt sein will, muß erst sein Inneres durch Lebenserfahrung an dieses Übersinnliche, das nur in Freiheit ergriffen werden kann, herangearbeitet haben. Goethe spricht in den «Sprüchen in Prosa» seine auf dieses zielende Überzeugung aus: «Alles, was unsern Geist befreit, ohne uns die Herrschaft über uns selbst zu geben, ist verderblich.» Ein andrer seiner Sprüche ist dieser: «Pflicht, wo man liebt, was man sich selbst befiehlt.» Das Reich des einseitig wirkenden Übersinnlichen - bei Schiller des einseitigen Vernunfttriebes - ist das der Lilie ; das Reich der einseitig wirkenden Sinnlichkeit - des sinnlichen Triebes bei Schiller - ist dasjenige, in dem die Schlange vor ihrer Opferung lebt. - Der Fährmann kann jeden herüber in dies letztere Reich, niemand hinüber in das andere bringen. Die Menschen stammen alle, ohne dazu selbst etwas zu tun, aus dem Übersinnlichen. Aber sie können eine freie - von keiner «Zeit», das ist von keinem nur unwillkürlich hervorgerufenen Seelenzustand abhängige - Verbindung mit diesem Übersinnlichen nur herstellen, wenn sie sich über die Brücke der geopferten Lebenserfahrung begeben wollen. Vorher gibt es zwei unwillkürlich eintretende Seelenzustände, durch die der Mensch ins übersinnliche Reich gelangen kann, das eins ist mit dem Reiche der freien Persönlichkeit. Der eine Seelenzustand ist derjenige durch die schöpferische Phantasie, die ein Abglanz des übersinnlichen Erlebens ist. In der Kunst verbindet der Mensch das Sinnliche mit dem Übersinnlichen. In der Kunst auch offenbart er sich als frei schaffende Seele. Das ist verbildlicht in dem Übergang, den die Schlange, die noch nicht zum übersinnlichen Erleben bereite Lebenserfahrung, zur Mittagszeit ermöglicht. - Der andere Seelenzustand tritt ein, wenn der Bewußtseinszustand der Menschenseele - des Riesen im Menschen, der ein Ebenbild des Makrokosmos ist - herabgedämpft ist, wenn die bewußte Erkenntnis sich verdunkelt und ablähmt, so daß sie sich als Aberglaube, Vision, Mediumismus auslebt. Die Seelenkraft, die sich auf diese Ärt bei gelähmtem Bewußtsein darlebt, ist für Goethe einerlei mit derjenigen, welche durch Gewalt und Willkür, auf revolutionäre Art, den Menschen in den Zustand der Freiheit führen möchte. In Revolutionen lebt sich der Drang nach einem Idealzustande dumpf aus, wie sich in der Dämmerung der Schatten des Riesen über den Fluß legt. Daß auch diese Ansicht über den «Riesen» berechtigt ist, dafür spricht, was Schiller am 16. Oktober 1795 an Goethe schreibt, der sich auf einer Reise befindet, die sich bis nach Frankfurt am Main ausdehnen sollte: «Es ist mit in der Tat lieb, Sie noch ferne von den Händeln am Main zu wissen. Der Schatten des Riesen könnte Sie leicht etwas unsanft anfassen.» Was die Willkür, der ungezügelte Verlauf geschichtlicher Ereignisse, im Gefolge hat, ist neben dem herabgedämmerten menschlichen Bewußtseinszustand im Riesen und seinem Schatten verbildlicht. Die Seelenimpulse, die zu solchen Ereignissen führen, sind ja in der Tat mit der Neigung zum Aberglauben und zur träumerischen Ideologie verwandt. Die Lampe des Alten hat die Eigenschaft, nur da zu leuchten, wo schon ein anderes Licht vorhanden ist. Man muß dabei an den von Goethe wiederholten Spruch eines alten Mystikers denken «Wär' nicht das Auge sonnenhaft, die Sonne könnt' es nie erblicken; läg nicht in uns des Gottes eigne Kraft, wie könnt' uns Göttliches entzücken.» 5Vergleiche «Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften», III. Band. Herausgegeben von Rudolf Steiner. Sonderausgabe Stuttgart 1922, Seite 88.
[ 14 ] So wie die Lampe im Dunklen nicht leuchtet, so leuchtet das Licht der Weisheit, der Erkenntnis, dem Menschen nicht, der ihm nicht die geeigneten Organe, das innere Licht, entgegenbringt. Noch deutlicher aber wird, was die Lampe ist, wenn man beachtet, daß sie in ihrer Art wohl beleuchten kann, was die Schlange als Entschluß in sich ausreift, daß sie aber die Geneigtheit der Schlange zu diesem Entschlusse erst erfahren muß. Es gibt eine menschliche Erkenntnis, die jederzeit auf das höchste Streben des Menschen geht. Sie hat sich im Laufe des geschichtlichen Lebens der Menschheit aus dem inneren Erleben der Seelen erhoben. Aber, worauf sie deutet, das Ziel des menschlichen Strebens: es kann nur in seiner konkreten Wirklichkeit aus der sich opfernden Lebenserfahrung gewonnen werden. Was den Menschen die Betrachtung der geschichtlichen Vergangenheit lehrt, was ihm mystisches, was religiöses Erleben über seinen Zusammenhang mit dem Übersinnlichen zu sagen vermögen: alles dieses kann seine letzte Verwirklichung nur durch die Opferung der Lebenserfahrung finden. Der Alte kann mit seiner Lampe alles so verwandeln, daß es in neuer, dem Leben dienlicher Form erscheint; aber die wirkliche Entwicklung ist von dem Ausreifen der Lebenserfahrung abhängig.
[ 15 ] Der Alte hat zur Frau die Persönlichkeit, welche dem Flusse mit ihrem Leibe haftet für dasjenige, was sie ihm schuldig geworden ist. Diese Frau verkörpert ebenso die menschliche Wahrnehmungs- und Vorstellungskraft wie die geschichtliche Erinnerung der Menschheit an ihre Vergangenheit. Sie ist dem Alten beigesellt. Mit ihrer Hilfe hat er das Licht, das beleuchten kann, was durch äußere Wirklichkeit schon hell ist. Aber die Vorstellungs- und die Erinnerungskraft sind nicht in Lebenseinheit verbunden mit den konkret wirklichen Kräften, die in der Entwicklung des Einzelmenschen und im geschichtlichen Leben der Menschheit tätig sind. Vorstellungs- und Erinnerungskraft haften am Vergangenen; sie konservieren das Vergangene, so daß es zum Forderer an das Entstehende und Werdende wird. In den Verhältnissen, in denen als dem durch die Erinnerung Festgehaltenen der Mensch und die Menschheit leben, ist der Niederschlag dieser Seelenkraft enthalten. Im dritten der ästhetischen Briefe schreibt Schiller über diesen Niederschlag: «Der Zwang der Bedürfnisse warf ihn (den Menschen) hinein, ehe er in seiner Freiheit diesen Stand wählen konnte; die Not richtete denselben nach bloßen Naturgesetzen ein, ehe er es nach Vernunftgesetzen konnte.» Der Fluß trennt die beiden Reiche, das der Freiheit im Übersinnlichen, das der Notwendigkeit im Sinnlichen. Die unbewußten Seelenkräfte - der Fährmann - stellen den Menschen, der im Übersinnlichen seinen Ursprung hat, in das Sinnliche hinein. Er findet sich da zunächst in einem Bereich, in dem Vorstellungs- und Erinnerungskraft Verhältnisse geschaffen haben, mit denen er leben muß. Aber sie trennen ihn von dem Übersinnlichen; er befindet sich ihnen gegenüber in der Lage eines Schuldners, wenn er an die Kraft heranzutreten genötigt ist (den Fährmann), die ihn auf ihm unbewußte Art aus dem Übersinnlichen in das Sinnliche gebracht hat. Er kann die Gewalt, welche die Verhältnisse auf ihn ausüben und die in einer Hinwegnahme seiner Freiheit sich offenbart, nur brechen, wenn er mit «Früchten der Erde», das ist mit selbstgeschaffener Lebensweisheit, von der ihm durch die Verhältnisse auferlegten Schuld, dem Zwang, sich befreit. Kann er das nicht, so nehmen ihm diese Verhältnisse - das Wasser des Flusses - die Eigenwesenheit. Er schwindet in seinem Seelen-Selbst dahin.
[ 16 ] Auf dem Flusse wird der Tempel errichtet, in dem sich die Vermählung des Jünglings mit der Lilie vollzieht. In der Menschenseele, in welcher die Kräfte sich in eine gegenüber dem gewöhnlichen Zustande umgewandelte Ordnung gebracht haben, ist die Vermählung mit dem Übersinnlichen, die Verwirklichung der freien Persönlichkeit möglich. Was die Seele als Lebenserfahrung vorher gewonnen hat, ist so weit gereift, daß die Kraft, die auf diese Lebenserfahrung gerichtet ist, sich nicht mehr in der bloßen Einordnung des Menschen in die Sinneswelt erschöpft, sondern sich zum Inhalte desjenigen macht, was aus dem Bereich des Übersinnlichen in das Menschen-Innere strömen kann, so daß das Wirken im Sinnlichen der Vollzieher von übersinnlichen Antrieben wird. - In dieser Seelenverfassung gewinnen auch diejenigen menschlichen Geisteskräfte, die vorher in irren oder einseitigen Bahnen liefen, ihre im Gesamtgemüt neue, einem erhöhten Bewußtseinszustand angemessene Bedeutung. Die von der Sinneswelt sich loslösende, in Aberglauben oder tumultuarisches Denken verirrte Weisheit der Irrlichter zum Beispiel dient dazu, das Tor aufzuschließen jenes Schlosses, das den Seelenzustand verbildlicht, in dem Wollen, Fühlen und Erkennen noch durch ihre chaotische Mischung den Menschen in einem unfreien, vom Übersinnlichen getrennten Innenleben erhalten.
[ 17 ] In den Märchenbildern der hier betrachteten Dichtung trat Goethe die Entwicklung der Menschenseele vor das Geistesauge von der Verfassung an, in der sie dem Übersinnlichen gegenüber sich fremd fühlt, bis zu derjenigen Bewußtseinshöhe, auf welcher das in der sinnlichen Welt vollbrachte Leben sich mit der übersinnlichen Geistwelt durchdringt, so daß beide eins werden. Dieser Umwandelungsprozeß stand Goethe in leichtgewobenen Phantasiegestalten vor der Seele. Die Frage nach der Beziehung der physischen Welt zu einem von dem physischen Erleben freien Erfahren eines übersinnlichen Reiches mit ihrer Folge für das menschliche Gemeinschaftsleben, welche die «Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten» durchleuchtet: hier in dem Märchenabschluß findet sie eine umfassende Lösung in dem Weben dichterisch gestalteter Bilder. In diesen Ausführungen ist nur gewissermaßen der Weg angedeutet, der in den Bereich führt, in dem Goethes Phantasie das «Märchen» gewoben hat. Alle übrigen Einzelheiten sind bis ins letzte von demjenigen in ihrer Lebendigkeit zu erfühlen, der das «Märchen» als ein Gemälde des menschlichen Seelenlebens in dessen Streben nach dem Übersinnlichen ansieht. Daß es ein solches Gemälde des Seelenlebens ist, hat Schiller von dem «Märchen» wohl empfunden. Er schreibt darüber [Am 29. August 1795.] «Das Märchen ist bunt und lustig genug, und ich finde die Idee, deren Sie einmal erwähnten, das gegenseitige Hilfeleisten der Kräfte und das Zurückweisen auf einander, recht artig ausgeführt.»
[ 18 ] Denn selbst, wenn jemand einwenden wollte: dieses gegenseitige Hilfeleisten der Kräfte beziehe sich auf Kräfte verschiedener Menschen, so gilt dagegen die Goethe durchaus geläufige Wahrheit, daß die Seelenkräfte, die einseitig auf verschiedene Menschenwesen verteilt sind, doch nichts anderes sind als die auseinandergelegte Wesenheit des menschlichen Gesamtgemütes. Und wenn im Gemeinschaftsleben verschiedene Menschennaturen zusammenwirken, so ist in dieser Wechselwirkung doch nur ein Bild der mannigfaltigen Kräfte gegeben, die in ihrer gegenseitigen Beziehung das eine individuelle menschliche Gesamtwesen ausmachen.
III Goethe's way of thinking in its revelation through his "Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Lily."
These remarks are a reworking of my essay "Goethe's Secret Revelation", which appeared in the "Magazin für Literatur" in 1899 on the occasion of Goethe's hundred and fiftieth birthday.
[ 1 ] Around the time his friendship with Goethe began, Schiller was preoccupied with the ideas expressed in his "Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man". He reworked these letters, originally written for the Duke of Augustenburg, for the Horen in 1794. What Goethe and Schiller discussed orally at the time and what they wrote to each other was always linked, in terms of the direction of thought, to the circle of ideas in these letters. Schiller's reflections concerned the question: What state of the human soul's powers corresponds in the best sense of the word to an existence worthy of man? "Every individual man, one can say, carries within himself, according to his disposition and destiny, a pure, ideal man, with whose unchanging unity in all his variations it is the great task of his existence to agree." 1So writes Schiller in the fourth letter. Schiller wants to build a bridge from the man of everyday reality to the ideal man. There are two drives in human nature that hold it back from ideal perfection when they develop in a one-sided way: the sensual and the reasonable drive. If the sensual instinct has the upper hand, man is subject to his instincts and passions. The activity that is illuminated by his consciousness is mixed with a force that clouds this consciousness. His actions become the result of an inner compulsion. If the rational impulse predominates, man endeavors to suppress instincts and passions and to surrender himself to an abstract necessity not supported by inner warmth. In both cases man is subject to compulsion. In the former, his sensual nature overcomes his spiritual nature; in the latter, his spiritual nature overcomes his sensual nature. Neither the one nor the other gives man complete freedom in the core of his being, which lies in the middle between sensuality and spirituality. This can only be realized through a harmony of the two drives. Sensuality should not be suppressed but ennobled; the instincts and passions should interpenetrate with spirituality so that they themselves become the realizers of the spiritual that has entered into them. And reason should seize the soul in man in such a way that it takes away the power of the merely instinctive and passionate, and man accomplishes what reason advises him to do as a matter of course out of instinct and with the power of passion. "When we embrace with passion one who is worthy of our contempt, we feel embarrassingly the compulsion of nature. When we are hostile to another who compels our respect, we feel embarrassingly the compulsion of reason. But as soon as he at once interests our affections and earns our respect, both the compulsion of feeling and the compulsion of reason disappear, and we begin to love him." [A man who reveals in his sensuality the spirituality of reason, in his reason the elementary power of passion, would be a free personality. Schiller would like to base the harmonious coexistence of human society on the development of free personalities. For him, the question of a truly humane existence was linked to the question of how to shape human coexistence. This was his answer to the questions posed to people by the French Revolution at the time when he was developing these ideas.227th letter
[ 2 ] Goethe found himself deeply satisfied by such ideas. He wrote to Schiller about the aesthetic letters on October 26, 1794: "I immediately read the manuscript sent to me with great pleasure; I slurped it down in one go. Just as a delicious drink analogous to our nature creeps down willingly and shows its healing effect on the tongue through the good mood of the nervous system, so these letters were pleasant and beneficial to me, and how could it be otherwise, since I found what I had recognized as right for a long time, what I partly lived and partly wished to live, presented in such a coherent and noble way."
[ 3 ] What Goethe wished to live in order to be able to be aware of a truly humane existence, he found expressed in Schiller's aesthetic letters. It is therefore understandable that thoughts were also stimulated in his soul, which he sought to shape in his own way in the direction of Schiller's. Out of these thoughts grew the poetry that has found so many different interpretations: The riddle tale with which Goethe concluded his story "Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten", which appeared in "Horen" in 1795. Like Schilier's aesthetic letters, these "Unterhaltungen" also refer to French conditions. One should not explain the "fairy tale" that forms its conclusion by introducing all kinds of ideas into it from the outside, but by going back to the ideas that lived in Goethe's soul at the time.
[ 4 ] The largest number of attempts at interpreting this poem can be found in the book "Goethes Märchendichtungen" by Friedrich Meyer von Waldeck. 3Heidelberg, Karl Wintersche Univcrsitätsbuchhandlung [1879] Since the publication of this book, however, several newer attempts at explanation have been added to the earlier ones. 4I have tried to penetrate into the spirit of the fairy tale from the premises of Goethe's world of thought from the beginning of the nineties of the eighteenth century and have first expressed what has emerged to me in a lecture that I gave on November 27, 1891 in the Goetheverein in Vienna. What I said then has since been extended to me in the most diverse directions. But everything I have had printed or spoken about the "fairy tale" since then is merely a further elaboration of the thoughts expressed in that lecture. My mystic drama "The Gate of Initiation", published in 1910, is also a fruit of those thoughts. [The lecture "Über das Geheimnis in Goethes Rätselmärchen in den 'Unterhaltungen deutscher Ausgewanderten'" held by Rudolf Steiner on November 27, 1891 at the Goethcvcrein in Vienna was reprinted by K. J. Schröer in 1942 in issue XV (volume III) of "Veröffentlichungen aus dem Literarischen Frühwerk."]
[ 5 ] You will have to look for the germinal thoughts of the "fairy tale" in the "Unterhaltungen", of which it forms the conclusion. In these "conversations", Goethe depicts a family's escape from the devastation of war. The conversations that take place between the members of this family bring to life what was stimulated in Goethe's imagination at the time by the exchange of the ideas described with Schiller. The conversations revolve around two centers of thought. The first dominates all of man's ideas, through which he believes to perceive a connection in the events that intervene in his life that cannot be penetrated by the laws of sensory reality. The stories that are told are partly pure ghost stories, partly stories in which experiences are portrayed that seem to reveal a "miraculous" connection instead of a natural law connection. Goethe certainly did not write these descriptions out of an inclination towards any kind of superstition, but out of a much deeper motivation. The pleasant, mystical feeling that some people have when they hear about something that "limited" reason, which focuses on lawful connections, "cannot explain", was far removed from him. But he repeatedly faced the question: Is there not a way for the human soul to free itself from the ideas that only come from sensory perception and to grasp a supersensible world in a purely spiritual vision? The urge for such an activity of the cognitive faculty could well be a natural human striving that is based on a connection with such a world that is hidden from the senses and the intellect that is based on them. And the inclination towards experiences that seem to break through the natural connection could only be a childish deviation from this justified human longing for a spiritual world. Goethe was much more interested in the direction that the soul's activity takes in its inclination towards the superstitiously cherished than in the content of the stories that emerge from such an inclination in children's minds.>
[ 6 ] The second center of thought radiates the ideas concerning moral human life, for which man draws his impulses not from sensuality but from impulses that lift him above what sensuality stimulates in him. In this area, a supersensible world of forces intrudes into the life of the human soul.
[ 7 ] Rays emanate from both centers of thought, which must end in the supersensible. And it is from them that the question of the inner human being is stimulated, of the connection between the human soul and the sensual world on the one hand and the supersensible world on the other. Schiller approached this question philosophically in his aesthetic letters; for Goethe, the abstract-philosophical path was not feasible; he had to embody what he had to say in this direction in pictures. And this happened through the "fairy tale of the green snake and the lily". In Goethe's imagination, the manifold forces of the human soul were shaped into fairy-tale characters, and in the experiences and the interaction of these characters, the whole of human soul life and soul striving is visualized. - If one says such things, one immediately has to expect the objection from a certain side: but thereby a poem is lifted out of the realm of artistic fantasy and becomes an inartistic visualization of abstract concepts, the figures are taken out of real life and turned into inartistic symbols or even allegories. Such an objection is based on the idea that only abstract ideas can live in the human soul as soon as it leaves the realm of the sensual. It fails to recognize that there is a vivid supersensible view as well as a sensuous one. And Goethe, with his characters in "Fairy Tales", is not moving in the realm of abstract concepts, but of supersensible perceptions. What will be said here about these characters and their experiences is by no means meant to imply that the one meant this; the other that. Such a tendency towards symbolic interpretation is as far removed from these observations as possible. For them, the old man with the lamp in the "fairy tale", the will-o'-the-wisps and so on are nothing other than the imaginary figures as which they appear in poetry. But what we should be looking for is the thought impulses that animate the poet's imagination in order to create such figures. Goethe certainly did not bring these thought impulses to consciousness in an abstract form. Because they would have seemed too insubstantial to his way of thinking in this form, he expressed them through figures of the imagination. The thought impulse reigns in the depths of Goethe's soul, the fruit of which is the fantasy form. The intermediate stage as thought lives only subconsciously in his soul and gives direction to the imagination. The observer of Goethe's "fairy tale" needs the thought content; for this alone can tune his soul in such a way that it follows the paths of Goethe's creative imagination. To place oneself in this thought content is nothing other than, as it were, the appropriation of the organs through which the observer can place himself in the same air in which Goethe breathed spiritually when he wrote the "fairy tale". What lives in these spiritual figures lives in the human soul.
[ 8 ] The type of imagination that permeates the "fairy tale" can already be heard in the "conversations". In the conversations recounted there, the human soul is directed towards the two realms of the world between which man sees himself in life: the sensual and the supersensible. The deeper human nature strives to bring itself into the right relationship with both realms in order to achieve a free, humane constitution of the soul and to shape a harmonious coexistence between human beings. Goethe felt that the "Entertainments" themselves did not fully express what he had allowed to emerge from the stories about man's relationship to the two spheres of the world. He felt the need to bring the mysteries of the human soul, on which his gaze was focused, closer to the immeasurably rich world of spiritual life in the comprehensive fairy-tale painting. - The striving for the truly humane state, to which Schiller points and which Goethe wished to live, is embodied for him by the youth in the fairy tale. His marriage to the lily, the realizer of the realm of freedom, is the connection with the forces slumbering in the human soul, which lead to the true inner experience of the free personality when they are awakened.
[ 9 ] One person who plays a significant role in the development of the events in the "fairy tale" is the old man with the lamp. When he arrives in the cliffs with his lamp, he is asked which is the most important of the secrets he knows. He answers: "The revealed one". And when asked if he could reveal this secret, he says: "If he knows the fourth. But the green snake knows this fourth secret. And she says it in the old man's ear. There can be no doubt that this secret refers to the state that all the characters in the fairy tale long for. This state is described at the end of the fairy tale. It expresses in a picture how the human soul enters into its connection with the forces that rule in its subsoil, and how thereby its relationship to the supersensible - the realm of the lily - and the sensuous - the realm of the green serpent - is regulated in such a way that this soul, with its experiences and its actions, allows itself to be stimulated freely by the one and the other realm, so that in union with both it can realize its true nature. It must be assumed that the old man knows the content of this secret, for he is the only person who always stands above the circumstances, the one on whose guidance and direction everything depends. So what can the serpent tell the old man? He knows that he must sacrifice himself if the longed-for final state is to be brought about. But this knowledge is not decisive. He must wait with this knowledge until the serpent, from the depths of its being, finds itself ripe for the decision of sacrifice. - Within the scope of the human soul's life there is a power by which the development of the soul is carried to the state of free personality. This force has its task on the way to this state. If this were achieved, it would lose its significance. It brings the human soul into connection with the experiences of life. It transforms what science and life reveal into inner wisdom. It makes the soul ever more mature for the longed-for spiritual goal. At this goal it loses its significance, for it establishes man's relationship to the outside world. At the goal, however, all external impulses are transformed into inner soul impulses. There this power must sacrifice itself; it must cease to be effective; it must continue to exist as a ferment without a life of its own in the transformed human being, enforcing the rest of the soul's life. Goethe's spiritual eye was particularly focused on this force in human life. He saw it at work in the experiences of life and in those of science. He wanted to see it applied there without setting an abstract goal through preconceived opinions or theories. This goal must first emerge from experience. When these have matured, they should give birth to the goal of themselves. They should not be mutilated by a predetermined end. This soul force is embodied in the green snake. It absorbs the gold, the wisdom which comes from the experiences of life and science, and which must be appropriated by the soul so that wisdom and soul become one. This soul-power will sacrifice itself at the right time; it will bring man to his goal, the free personality. The serpent tells the old man in his ear that it wants to sacrifice itself. He thus entrusts him with a secret which is obvious to him, but which is nevertheless worthless to him as long as it is not realized through the free decision of the serpent. When the marked soul force in man speaks as the serpent did to the old man, then it is "time" for the soul to experience life as wisdom, which creates a harmonious relationship between the sensual and the supersensible.
[ 10 ] The longed-for goal is brought about by the revival of the youth who was touched untimely by the supersensible - the lily - and therefore paralyzed and killed; by his union with the lily when the serpent, the life experience of the soul, has sacrificed itself. Then the time has also come when the soul can form the bridge within itself between this side and the other side of the river. This bridge is formed from the substance of the serpent itself. Life experience henceforth has no life of its own; it is no longer, as before, merely directed towards the outer sense world. It has become the inner power of the soul, which is not consciously practiced as such, but which only works by mutually illuminating and warming the sensual and the supersensible within the human being. - Even if the serpent is the author of this state, he alone could not give the youth the gifts that enable him to rule the newly founded realm of the soul. He receives these from the three kings. From the bronze king he receives the sword with the order: "The sword to the left; the right free." The silver king gives him the sceptre, saying: "Feed the sheep." The golden king presses the oak wreath on his head with the words: "Recognize the highest." The fourth king, who contains the three metals copper, silver and gold in a mixture, collapses into an insubstantial lump. - In the human being who is on the path to free personality, three soul forces are active in a mixture: will (copper), feeling (silver) and knowledge (gold). In the course of existence, life experience reveals what the soul acquires through these three powers: the power through which virtue works reveals itself to the will; beauty (the beautiful appearance) reveals itself to feeling; wisdom reveals itself to knowledge. What separates man from the "free personality" is that these three work in mixture in his soul; he will attain the free personality to the extent that he receives with full consciousness the gifts of the three in their particular character, each for itself, and only unites them - in free conscious activity - in his soul himself. Then the chaotic mixture of the gifts of volition, feeling and cognition, which previously dominated him, disintegrates.>
[ 11 ] The king of wisdom is made of gold. Where gold appears in the "fairy tale", it embodies wisdom in some form. How wisdom works in the ultimately sacrificial experience of life has already been indicated. But the will-o'-the-wisps also take possession of gold in their own way. Man carries within himself a soul disposition - and in some persons it comes to unfold in a one-sided way, so that it seems to fill their whole being - through which he acquires what life and science bestow in wisdom. But this disposition of the soul does not strive to unite wisdom completely with the life of the soul; it remains as one-sided knowledge, as a means of asserting or criticizing this or that; it serves to make the person shine, or to bring this person to the fore in life in a one-sided way. Nor does it seek to equalize itself through a connection with what external experience offers. It becomes superstition, which Goethe portrayed in the ghost stories of the "Emigrants", because it does not strive to harmonize itself with what is natural. It becomes a doctrine before it has become life within the soul. It is what false prophets and sophists want to carry through life. It is far from making Goethe's principle of life its own: One must give up one's existence in order to exist. The snake, the selfless experience of life developed in love for wisdom, in experienced wisdom, gives up its existence in order to form the bridge between sensuality and spirituality.
[ 12 ] The youth is urged by an indomitable desire for the realm of the beautiful lily. What are the characteristics of this realm? Although people have the deepest longing for the realm of the lily, they can only enter it at certain times, before the bridge is built. At midday the snake, even before its sacrifice, forms a temporary bridge into the realm of the supernatural. And in the evening and in the morning one can cross over the shadow of the giant over the river - the power of imagination and memory - which separates the sensual from the supersensible. Someone who approaches the ruler of the supersensible realm without possessing the inner aptitude for it must suffer as much damage to his life as the youth. The lily also has a desire for the other realm. The ferryman who has driven the will-o'-the-wisps across the river cannot bring anyone across from the supernatural.
[ 13 ] Whoever wants to be touched by the supersensible must first have worked his inner being through life experience towards this supersensible, which can only be grasped in freedom. In his "Proverbs in Prose", Goethe expresses his conviction in this regard: "Everything that liberates our spirit without giving us control over ourselves is pernicious." Another of his sayings is this: "Duty, where one loves what one commands oneself." The realm of the one-sided supersensible - in Schiller the one-sided rational drive - is that of the lily; the realm of the one-sided sensuality - the sensual drive in Schiller - is that in which the snake lives before its sacrifice. - The ferryman can bring everyone over to this latter realm, no one over to the other. People all come from the supernatural without doing anything themselves. But they can only establish a free connection - not dependent on any "time", that is, on any state of soul that is only involuntarily evoked - with this supersensible when they want to cross the bridge of sacrificed life experience. Before that, there are two involuntarily occurring states of soul through which man can enter the supersensible realm, which is one with the realm of the free personality. One state of the soul is that through the creative imagination, which is a reflection of the supersensible experience. In art, man connects the sensual with the supersensible. In art, too, he reveals himself as a freely creative soul. This is visualized in the transition that the snake, the experience of life that is not yet ready for supersensible experience, makes possible at midday. - The other state of the soul occurs when the state of consciousness of the human soul - the giant in man, who is an image of the macrocosm - is dimmed, when conscious cognition becomes darkened and paralyzed, so that it lives itself out as superstition, vision, mediumism. For Goethe, the power of the soul that lives itself out in this way when consciousness is paralyzed is the same as that which seeks to lead man into a state of freedom through violence and arbitrariness, in a revolutionary way. In revolutions, the urge for an ideal state lives itself out dully, as the shadow of the giant lies over the river at dusk. That this view of the "Giant" is also justified is indicated by what Schiller wrote to Goethe on October 16, 1795, who was on a journey that was to extend to Frankfurt am Main: "It is indeed dear to me to know that you are still far away from the affairs on the Main. The shadow of the giant could easily touch you a little roughly." What arbitrariness, the unbridled course of historical events, has in its wake is visualized in the giant and his shadow alongside the dimmed state of human consciousness. The impulses of the soul that lead to such events are indeed related to the tendency towards superstition and dreamy ideology. The lamp of the old has the property of shining only where another light is already present. One must remember the saying of an old mystic, repeated by Goethe, "If the eye were not sunlike, it could never behold the sun; if God's own power were not in us, how could the divine delight us." 5Compare "Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften", III. vol. Published by Rudolf Steiner. Special edition Stuttgart 1922, page 88.
[ 14 ] Just as the lamp does not shine in the dark, so the light of wisdom, of knowledge, does not shine for the person who does not bring the appropriate organs, the inner light, towards it. But it becomes even clearer what the lamp is when one considers that it can illuminate what the serpent matures as a decision within itself, but that it must first experience the serpent's inclination to make this decision. There is a human cognition that is always directed towards man's highest aspiration. It has arisen in the course of the historical life of mankind from the inner experience of souls. But what it points to, the goal of human striving: it can only be gained in its concrete reality from the sacrificial experience of life. What the contemplation of the historical past teaches man, what mystical and religious experience can tell him about his connection with the supersensible: all this can only find its ultimate realization through the sacrifice of life experience. The old man can transform everything with his lamp so that it appears in a new form that serves life; but the real development is dependent on the maturing of life experience.
[ 15 ] The old man has for his wife the personality that is liable to the river with her body for that which she has become indebted to it. This woman embodies the human power of perception and imagination as well as humanity's historical memory of its past. She is associated with the old man. With her help, he has the light that can illuminate what is already bright through external reality. But the powers of imagination and memory are not united with the concrete, real forces that are active in the development of the individual and in the historical life of humanity. Imagination and memory cling to the past; they conserve the past so that it becomes a claimant on the emerging and becoming. The conditions in which man and mankind live, as that which is held fast by memory, contain the expression of this power of the soul. In the third of the Aesthetic Letters, Schiller writes about this precipitation: "The compulsion of needs threw him (man) into it before he could choose this state in his freedom; necessity arranged him according to mere natural laws before he could do so according to the laws of reason." The river separates the two realms, that of freedom in the supersensible, that of necessity in the sensible. The unconscious powers of the soul - the ferryman - place man, who has his origin in the supersensible, in the sensible. There he finds himself at first in a realm in which imagination and memory have created conditions with which he must live. But they separate him from the supersensible; he finds himself in the position of a debtor to them when he is compelled to approach the power (the ferryman) that has brought him in an unconscious way from the supersensible into the sensible. He can only break the power which circumstances exert on him and which manifests itself in a taking away of his freedom, if he frees himself with "fruits of the earth", that is, with self-created wisdom of life, from the guilt, the compulsion, imposed on him by circumstances. If he cannot do this, these circumstances - the water of the river - take away his own being. He disappears into his soul-self.
[ 16 ] The temple in which the marriage of the youth with the lily takes place is erected on the river. In the human soul, in which the forces have been brought into a transformed order compared to the ordinary state, the marriage with the supersensible, the realization of the free personality is possible. What the soul has previously gained as life experience has matured to such an extent that the power directed towards this life experience is no longer exhausted in the mere classification of the human being in the sense world, but makes itself the content of that which can flow from the realm of the supersensible into the human inner being, so that the working in the sensible becomes the executor of supersensible impulses. - In this state of soul, even those human spiritual forces that previously ran in erroneous or one-sided paths gain a new significance in the overall mind, appropriate to an elevated state of consciousness. The wisdom of the will-o'-the-wisps, for example, which detaches itself from the sensory world and strays into superstition or tumultuous thinking, serves to unlock the gate of that castle which symbolizes the state of the soul in which volition, feeling and cognition still maintain man in an unfree inner life separated from the supersensible through their chaotic mixture.
[ 17 ] In the fairy-tale images of the poetry considered here, Goethe presented the development of the human soul to the mind's eye from the state in which it feels alien to the supersensible to that level of consciousness at which the life accomplished in the sensible world interpenetrates with the supersensible spiritual world, so that both become one. This process of transformation stood before Goethe's soul in lightly woven fantasy figures. The question of the relationship of the physical world to an experience of a supersensible realm free from physical experience, with its consequences for human community life, which illuminates the "Conversations of German Emigrants": here in the fairy tale conclusion it finds a comprehensive solution in the weaving of poetically formed images. These remarks only hint at the path that leads into the realm in which Goethe's imagination wove the "fairy tale". All other details are to be felt in their vitality by those who see the "fairy tale" as a painting of the human soul in its striving for the supernatural. That it is such a painting of the life of the soul is something Schiller certainly felt about the "Märchen". He writes about it [on August 29, 1795]: "The fairy tale is colorful and funny enough, and I find the idea you once mentioned, the mutual assistance of the forces and the rejection of each other, quite well executed."
[ 18 ] For even if someone wanted to object that this mutual assistance of forces refers to the forces of different human beings, the truth, quite familiar to Goethe, that the forces of the soul, which are unilaterally distributed among different human beings, are nevertheless nothing other than the disassembled essence of the human mind as a whole. And if different human natures work together in community life, then in this interaction only an image of the manifold forces is given, which in their mutual relationship make up the one individual human being as a whole.