Anthroposophical Leading Thoughts
GA 26
28. Historic Cataclysms at the Dawn of the Spiritual Soul
[ 1 ] The decline and fall of the Roman Empire and the appearance on the scene of peoples from the East—the great migrations—are a phenomenon of history to which the attention of true research must again and again be turned. For the present day still contains many an after-effect of these catastrophic happenings.
[ 2 ] A true understanding of these events is impossible to merely exoteric history. For we must look into the souls of the human beings who took part in these migrations and witnessed the downfall of the Roman Empire.
[ 3 ] Ancient Greece and Rome flourished in the epoch of human evolution when the Intellectual or Mind-Soul was unfolding. Indeed the Greeks and Romans were most essentially the bearers of this unfolding process. But in the Greek and Roman peoples the evolving of this stage of the soul did not contain the seed from out of which the Spiritual Soul could truly have developed. All the contents of soul and spirit, latent in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, blossomed forth luxuriantly in the life of ancient Greece and Rome. But Greece and Rome were unable, out of their own inherent powers, to pass on to the new stage of the Spiritual Soul.
[ 4 ] The stage of the Spiritual Soul did, of course, appear none the less. But the Spiritual Soul was as something implanted from without into the character of the Greek or Roman—something that did really not proceed out of the personality.
[ 5 ] The connection with and severance from the Divine Spiritual Beings, of which we have said so much in these studies, takes place with varying intensity in the course of succeeding ages. In olden times, it was a power entering into human evolution with the impulse of a mighty living process. In the Greek and Roman experience of the first Christian centuries it was a feebler power—but it still existed. While he was unfolding the fullness of the Intellectual or Mind Soul within him, the Greek or Roman felt—unconsciously, but with no less deep a meaning for his soul—a loosening or severance from the Divine-Spiritual nature and a growing independence of the human. But this ceased in the first Christian centuries. The early dawn of the Spiritual Soul was felt as a renewed union, a closer connection with the Divine-Spiritual. Men evolved back again, from a greater to a lesser degree of independence of soul. Nor could they receive the Christian content into the human Spiritual Soul, for they were unable to receive the Spiritual Soul itself into their human being.
[ 6 ] Thus they came to regard the Christian content as something given to them from outside—from the spiritual outer world—not as something with which they could become united through their own faculties of Knowledge.
[ 7 ] But it was different with the peoples coming from the North-East, who now entered on the scene of history. They had passed through the stage of the Intellectual or Mind Soul in a condition which, to them, conveyed a feeling of dependence on the spiritual world. They only began to feel something of human independence when, with the beginnings of Christianity, the earliest forces of the Spiritual Soul were dawning.
In them the Spiritual Soul appeared as something deeply bound up with the human being. They felt a glad sense of unfolding force within them when the Spiritual Soul was stirring into life.
[ 8 ] It was into this new-springing life of the dawning Spiritual Soul that the Christian content entered in these peoples. They felt the Christian content as something springing to life within their souls, not as something given from outside.
[ 9 ] Such was the mood in which these peoples approached the Roman Empire and all that was connected with it. Such was the mood of Arianism in contrast to Athanasianism. It was a deep inner conflict in world-historical evolution.
[ 10] In the Spiritual Soul of the Greek and Roman, external as it was to man, there worked, to begin with, the Divine Spiritual essence, not uniting fully with the earthly life, but raying into it from without. And in the Spiritual Soul of the Franks, the Germanic tribes, etc., which was only just dawning into life, such of the Divine-Spiritual as was able to unite with mankind worked as yet but feebly.
[ 11 ] To begin with, the Christian content living in the Spiritual Soul that hovered over man grew and expanded in outer life. On the other hand, that Christian content which was united with the human soul, remained as an inner urge, an impulse within the human being waiting for future development—for a development which can only take place when a certain stage has been attained in the unfolding of the Spiritual Soul.
[ 12 ] In the time from the first Christian centuries until the evolutionary epoch of the Spiritual Soul, the dominant spiritual life was a Spirit-content hovering above mankind—a content with which man was quite unable to unite himself in Knowledge. He therefore united with it in an outward way. He ‘explained’ it, and pondered on the question: how, and why, and to what degree the faculties of the soul were insufficient to bring about the full union with it in Knowledge. Thus he distinguished the realm into which Knowledge can penetrate, from that into which it cannot. It became the proper thing to renounce the exercise of those faculties of soul which rise with Knowledge into the spiritual world. And at length the time approached—the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—in which the forces of the soul that inclined towards the Spirit were diverted from the Spiritual altogether, so far as active Knowledge was concerned. Men began to live their conscious life in those forces of the soul only, which are directed to the sense-perceptible.
[ 13 ] Blunt indeed became the powers of Knowledge for spiritual things—most of all in the eighteenth century.
[ 14 ] The thinkers of humanity now lost the spiritual content from their Ideas. In the Idealism of the first half of the nineteenth century, the Spirit-empty Ideas themselves are represented as the creative substance of the world. Thus Fichte, Schelling, Hegel. Or again, they point to a Supersensible which vanishes into thin air because it is bereft of Spirit. Thus Spencer, John Stuart Mill, and others. The Ideas are dead when they no longer seek the living Spirit.
[ 15 ] There is no escaping the fact, lost was the sense of spiritual vision for the things of the Spirit. [ 16 ] A ‘continuation’ of the old life of spiritual Knowledge is impossible. With the Spiritual Soul unfolding within him, man's faculties of soul must strive onward to reach their new union with the Spirit-world, a union elementary, immediate and living. Anthroposophy would fain be such a striving.
[ 17 ] In the spiritual life of this age, it is just the leading personalities who to begin with do not know what Anthroposophy intends. Wide circles of people who follow in their wake are thereby kept away from Anthroposophy. The leading people of today live in a soul-content which in the course of time has grown altogether unaccustomed to use the spiritual forces. For them, it is as though one would call upon a man having an organ paralysed, to use it. Paralysed were the higher faculties of Knowledge from the sixteenth into the latter half of the nineteenth century. And mankind remained utterly unconscious of the fact; indeed, the one-sided application of Knowledge-powers directed to the outer world of sense was regarded as a sign of special progress.
(March, 1925)
Further Leading Thoughts issued from the Goetheanum for the Anthroposophical Society (with reference to the foregoing study: Historic Cataclysms at the Dawn of the Spiritual Soul)
[ 18 ] 180. The Greeks and Romans were the peoples predestined by their very nature for the unfolding of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. They developed this stage of the soul to perfection. But they did not bear within them the seeds of a direct, unbroken progress to the Spiritual Soul. Their soul-life went under in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul.
[ 19 ] 181. In the time from the origin of Christianity until the age of the unfolding of the Spiritual Soul, a world of the Spirit was holding sway which did not unite with the forces of the human soul. The latter contrived to ‘explain’ the world of the Spirit, but they could not experience it in living consciousness.
[ 20 ] 182. The peoples advancing from the North-East in the great migrations, encroaching on the Roman Empire, took hold of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul more in the inner life of feeling. Meanwhile, imbedded in this element of feeling, the Spiritual Soul was evolving within their souls. The inner life of these peoples was waiting for the present time, when the re-union of the soul with the world of the Spirit is fully possible once more.
Die geschichtlichen Erschütterungen beim Heraufkommen der Bewußtseinsseele
(Goetheanum, März 1925)
[ 1 ] Der Untergang des Römischen Reiches im Zusammenhang mit dem Auftreten von Völkern, die von Osten herankommen — der sogenannten Völkerwanderung, ist eine geschichtliche Erscheinung, auf die der Blick des forschenden Menschen immer wieder sich richten muß. Denn die Gegenwart enthält noch vieles von Nachwirkungen dieser erschütternden Geschehnisse.
[ 2 ] Aber das Verständnis gerade dieser Ereignisse ist einer äußerlichen geschichtlichen Betrachtung nicht möglich. Man muß auf die Seelen der Menschen blicken, die in «Völkerwanderung» und Untergang des römischen Kaiserreiches gestellt sind.
[ 3 ] Griechentum und Römertum blühen in der Zeit, als sich in der Menschheit die Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele entfaltet. Ja, Griechen und Römer sind die eigentlichen Träger dieser Entfaltung. Aber die Entwickelung dieser Seelen-Etappe trägt bei diesen Völkern nicht einen Keim in sich, der in rechter Art die Bewußtseinsseele aus sich entwickeln könnte. Alles, was an Geist- und Seelen-Inhalt in der Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele steckt, tritt in reichem Leben in dem Dasein des Griechen- und Römertums zutage. Mit Eigenkraft hinüberströmen in die Bewußtseinsseele kann es nicht.
[ 4 ] Trotzdem tritt natürlich das Stadium der Bewußtseinsseele auf. Aber es ist, als ob die Bewußtseinsseele nicht etwas aus der Persönlichkeit des Griechen und Römers Hervorgehendes wäre, sondern etwas von außen seinem Wesen Eingepflanztes.
[ 5 ] Das Verbunden- und Losgelöstsein von den göttlichgeistigen Wesenheiten, von dem in diesen Betrachtungen so viel die Rede war, vollzieht sich im Laufe der Zeiten mit verschiedener Intensität. In alten Zeiten war es eine mit starkem Geschehen in die Menschheitsentwickelung eingreifende Macht. Im griechischen und römischen Erleben der ersten christlichen Jahrhunderte ist es eine schwächere Macht. Aber es ist vorhanden. Solange er voll in sich die Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele entfaltete, fühlte der Grieche und Römer - unbewußt, aber für die Seele bedeutsam — ein Losgelöst-Werden von der göttlich-geistigen Wesenhaftigkeit, ein Selbständig-Werden des Menschhaften. Das hörte in den ersten christlichen Jahrhunderten auf. Das Hereindämmern der Bewußtseinsseele wurde als ein Verbundensein mit dem Göttlich-Geistigen empfunden. Man entwickelte sich wieder zurück von einer größeren zu einer geringeren Selbständigkeit der Seele. Man konnte den christlichen Inhalt nicht in die menschliche Bewußtseinsseele aufnehmen, weil man diese selbst nicht in die menschliche Wesenheit hereinnehmen konnte.
[ 6 ] So empfand man diesen christlichen Inhalt als etwas von außen — von der geistigen Außenwelt — Gegebenes, nicht aber als etwas, mit dem man durch seine Erkenntniskräfte zusammenwuchs.
[ 7 ] Anders war es bei den in die Geschichte eintretenden, von Nordosten kommenden Völkern. Sie hatten das Stadium der Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele in einem Zustande durchgemacht, der sich für sie als Abhängigkeit von der Geistwelt empfinden ließ. Sie fingen erst an, etwas von der menschlichen Selbständigkeit zu empfinden, als die ersten Kräfte der Bewußtseinsseele in den christlichen Anfängen heraufdämmerten. Bei ihnen trat die Bewußtseinsseele als etwas der Menschenwesenheit Verbundenes auf. Sie empfanden sich in froher innerer Kraftentfaltung, indem die Bewußtseinsseele in ihnen auflebte.
[ 8 ] In dieses sprießende Leben der heraufdämmernden Bewußtseinsseele fiel bei diesen Völkern der christliche Inhalt. Sie fühlten ihn als etwas in der Seele Auflebendes, nicht als etwas von außen Gegebenes.
[ 9 ] Das war die Stimmung, in der diese Völkerschaften an das Römische Reich und alles, was damit zusammenhing, herankamen. Das war die Stimmung des Arianismus gegenüber dem Athanasianismus. Ein tiefer innerer Gegensatz war in der weltgeschichtlichen Entwickelung da.
[ 10 ] In der dem Menschen äußerlichen Bewußtseinsseele des Römers und Griechen wirkte zunächst die nicht völlig mit dem Erdenleben sich vereinende, sondern nur hereinstrahlende göttlich-geistige Wesenheit. In der erst aufdämmernden Bewußtseinsseele der Franken-, Germanen und so weiter wirkte nur noch schwach, was von Göttlich-Geistigem mit der Menschheit sich verbinden konnte.
[ 11 ] Das Nächste war, daß der christliche Inhalt, der in der über dem Menschen schwebenden Bewußtseinsseele lebte, sich im Leben ausbreitete; der mit der Seele vereinigt etwas blieb, das als Antrieb, Impuls in dem Innern der Menschen verblieb und auf seine Entfaltung wartete, die erst eintreten kann, wenn ein gewisses Stadium in der Entfaltung der Bewußtseinsseele erreicht ist.
[ 12 ] Es ist die Zeit, von den ersten christlichen Jahrhunderten angefangen bis in das Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseelenentwickelung hinein, eine solche, in der als maßgebliches Geistesleben über der Menschheit ein geistiger Inhalt waltet, mit dem sich der Mensch erkennend nicht verbinden kann. Er verbindet sich deshalb äußerlich; er «erklärt» ihn, und er denkt darüber nach, inwiefern die Seelenkräfte nicht ausreichend sind, um die erkennende Verbindung herbeizuführen. Er unterscheidet zwischen dem Gebiete, in das die Erkenntnis reicht, und dem, wohin sie nicht reicht. Es macht sich der Verzicht geltend, Seelenkräfte zu betätigen, die sich erkennend in die Geistwelt erheben. Und so kommt die Zeit heran, Wende des siebzehnten und achtzehnten Jahrhunderts, in der man sich mit den auf das Geistige gerichteten Seelenkräften von dem Geistigen überhaupt erkennend abwendet. — Man beginnt, nur in den Seelenkräften zu leben, die auf das sinnlich Wahrnehmbare gerichtet sind.
[ 13 ] Stumpf werden die Erkenntniskräfte für das Geistige besonders im achtzehnten Jahrhundert.
[ 14 ] Die Denker verlieren aus ihren Ideen den geistigen Inhalt. Sie machen im Idealismus von der ersten Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts die geistleeren Ideen selbst als schaffenden Welt-Inhalt geltend. So Fichte, Schelling, Hegel; oder sie weisen auf ein Übersinnliches, das sich verflüchtigt, weil es entgeistigt ist. So Spencer, John Stuart Mill und andere. Die Ideen sind tot, wenn sie den lebendigen Geist nicht suchen.
[ 15 ] Der geistige Blick für das Geistige geht nun einmal verloren.
[ 16 ] Eine «Fortsetzung» des alten Geist-Erkennens ist nicht möglich. Es müssen die Seelenkräfte, indem die Bewußtseinsseele sich in ihnen entfaltet, ihre erneuerte elementare, unmittelbar lebendige Verbindung mit der Geist-Welt erstreben. Anthroposophie will dieses Erstreben sein.
[ 17 ] Im geistigen Leben des Zeitalters wissen gerade die führenden Persönlichkeiten zunächst nicht, was sie will. Und damit werden weite Kreise, die diesen Führern folgen, auch abgehalten. Die Führer leben in einem Seelen-Inhalt, der sich allmählich ganz entwöhnt hat, die geistigen Kräfte zu gebrauchen. Für sie ist es, als ob man einen Menschen, der ein gelähmtes Organ hat, veranlassen wollte, dieses zu gebrauchen. Denn gelähmt waren in der Zeit vom sechzehnten bis in die zweite Hälfte des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts die höheren Erkenntniskräfte. Und die Menschheit blieb darüber ganz unbewußt; sie betrachtete das einseitige Gebrauchen der auf die Sinnenwelt gerichteten Erkenntnis als einen besonderen Fortschritt.
Goetheanum, März 1925.
Leitsätze Nr. 180 bis 182
(5. April 1925)
(Mit Bezug auf die vorangehenden Betrachtungen über die geschichtlichen Erschütterungen beim Heraufkommen der Bewußtseinsseele)
[ 18 ] 180. Die Griechen und Römer sind die für die Entfaltung der Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele besonders veranlagten Völker. Sie entwickeln dieses Seelenstadium zur Vollendung. Aber sie tragen nicht die Keime in sich, um in geradliniger Art fortzuschreiten zur Bewußtseinsseele. Ihr Seelenleben geht in die Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele hinein unter.
[ 19 ] 181. Aber es waltet nun in der Zeit von der Entstehung des Christentums bis in das Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseelen-Entwickelung eine Geistwelt, die sich nicht mit den menschlichen Seelenkräften vereinigt. Diese «erklären» die Geistwelt, aber sie erleben sie nicht.
[ 20 ] 182. In den Völkern, die mit der sogenannten «Völkerwanderung» von Nordosten gegen das Römerreich vorrücken, lebt ein gefühlsmäßiges Erfassen der Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele. Dagegen bildet sich in ihren Seelen die in dieses Gefühlsmäßige eingebettete Bewußtseinsseele aus. Das innere Leben dieser Völker wartet auf die Zeit, in der wieder ein Vereinigt-Sein der Seele mit der Geist-Welt voll möglich ist.
The historical upheavals in the emergence of the consciousness soul
(Goetheanum, March 1925)
[ 1 ] The fall of the Roman Empire in connection with the appearance of peoples approaching from the East - the so-called migration of peoples - is a historical phenomenon to which the gaze of the inquiring human being must be directed again and again. For the present still contains many after-effects of these shattering events.
[ 2 ] But the understanding of precisely these events is not possible from an external historical perspective. One must look at the souls of the people who were placed in the "migration of peoples" and the fall of the Roman Empire.
[ 3 ] Greece and Rome flourished at the time when the intellectual or emotional soul was developing in humanity. Yes, the Greeks and Romans are the actual bearers of this development. But the development of this stage of the soul in these peoples does not carry within itself a germ which could develop the soul of consciousness from itself in the right way. All that is contained in the spirit and soul content of the intellectual or emotional soul emerges in rich life in the existence of the Greeks and Romans. It cannot flow over into the consciousness soul by its own power.
[ 4 ] Nevertheless, the stage of the consciousness soul naturally occurs. But it is as if the consciousness soul were not something arising from the personality of the Greek and Roman, but something implanted from outside into his being.
[ 5 ] The connection and detachment from the divine-spiritual entities, of which so much has been said in these considerations, takes place with varying intensity in the course of time. In ancient times it was a power that intervened strongly in the development of mankind. In the Greek and Roman experience of the first Christian centuries it is a weaker power. But it is there. As long as the intellectual or emotional soul was fully developed within him, the Greek and Roman felt - unconsciously, but significantly for the soul - a becoming detached from the divine-spiritual beingness, an independent becoming of the human. This ceased in the first Christian centuries. The dawning of the consciousness soul was perceived as a connection with the divine-spiritual. One developed back again from a greater to a lesser independence of the soul. The Christian content could not be incorporated into the human consciousness soul because it could not be incorporated into the human entity itself.
[ 6 ] So this Christian content was perceived as something given from outside - from the spiritual external world - but not as something with which one grew together through one's powers of cognition.
[ 7 ] The situation was different with the peoples entering history from the north-east. They had passed through the stage of the intellectual or emotional soul in a state which they perceived as dependence on the spirit world. They only began to feel something of human independence when the first powers of the consciousness soul dawned in the Christian beginnings. With them the consciousness soul appeared as something connected with the human being. They felt themselves in a joyful inner unfolding of strength as the consciousness soul came to life in them.
[ 8 ] The Christian content fell into this sprouting life of the dawning consciousness soul among these peoples. They felt it as something coming to life in the soul, not as something given from outside.
[ 9 ] This was the mood in which these peoples approached the Roman Empire and everything connected with it. This was the mood of Arianism towards Athanasianism. There was a deep inner contradiction in the development of world history.
[ 10 ] In the conscious soul of the Roman and Greek, which was external to man, the divine-spiritual entity, which did not completely unite with earthly life but only radiated in, was at first at work. In the first dawning consciousness soul of the Franks, Germanic tribes and so on, only weakly that which of the divine-spiritual could unite with humanity was still at work.
[ 11 ] The next thing was that the Christian content, which lived in the consciousness-soul hovering above man, spread out in life; which, united with the soul, remained something that remained as a drive, an impulse in the inner being of man and waited for its unfolding, which can only occur when a certain stage in the unfolding of the consciousness-soul has been reached.
[ 12 ] It is the time, from the first Christian centuries up to the age of the development of the consciousness soul, a time in which a spiritual content prevails over mankind as an authoritative spiritual life, with which man cannot connect himself cognitively. He therefore connects himself externally; he "explains" it, and he reflects on the extent to which the soul forces are not sufficient to bring about the recognizing connection. He distinguishes between the area into which cognition reaches and that to which it does not reach. The renunciation of activating soul forces that rise cognitively into the spirit world becomes apparent. And so the time comes, at the turn of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the powers of the soul directed towards the spiritual turn away from the spiritual in general. - One begins to live only in the powers of the soul that are directed towards the sensually perceptible.
[ 13 ] The powers of cognition for the spiritual become blunt, especially in the eighteenth century.
[ 14 ] The thinkers lose the spiritual content of their ideas. In the idealism of the first half of the nineteenth century, they assert the spiritless ideas themselves as the creative content of the world. Thus Fichte, Schelling, Hegel; or they point to a supersensible that evaporates because it is de-spiritualized. Thus Spencer, John Stuart Mill and others. Ideas are dead if they do not seek the living spirit.
[ 15 ] The spiritual eye for the spiritual is simply lost.
[ 16 ] A "continuation" of the old spirit-recognition is not possible. The soul forces must strive for their renewed elemental, directly living connection with the spirit world as the consciousness soul unfolds within them. Anthroposophy wants to be this striving.
[ 17 ] In the spiritual life of the age, it is precisely the leading personalities who initially do not know what it wants. And thus wide circles that follow these leaders are also held back. The leaders live in a soul content that has gradually become completely unaccustomed to using spiritual powers. For them it is like trying to get a person with a paralyzed organ to use it. For in the period from the sixteenth to the second half of the nineteenth century, the higher powers of cognition were paralyzed. And humanity remained completely unaware of this; it regarded the one-sided use of knowledge directed towards the sensory world as a special progress.
Goetheanum, March 1925.
Guiding principles no. 180 to 182
(April 5, 1925)
(With reference to the preceding reflections on the historical upheavals in the emergence of the consciousness soul)
[ 18 ] 180. The Greeks and Romans are the peoples particularly predisposed to the unfolding of the intellectual or emotional soul. They develop this stage of the soul to perfection. But they do not carry within them the germs to progress in a straightforward manner to the consciousness soul. Their soul life is absorbed into the intellectual or emotional soul.
[ 19 ] 181 But now, in the time from the emergence of Christianity to the age of the development of the consciousness soul, a spirit world prevails which does not unite with the human soul forces. These "explain" the spirit world, but they do not experience it.
[ 20 ] 182 In the peoples who advance from the northeast against the Roman Empire with the so-called "migration of peoples", there lives an emotional grasp of the intellectual or emotional soul. In their souls, on the other hand, the consciousness soul embedded in this emotional soul develops. The inner life of these peoples awaits the time when the soul can once again be fully united with the spirit world.