Metamorphoses of the Soul I
GA 58
14 October 1909, Berlin
I. The Mission of Spiritual Science
This year I shall again be giving a series of lectures on subjects related to Spiritual Science, as I have done now for several years past. Those of my audience who attended those previous lectures will know what is meant here by the term, Spiritual Science (Geisteswissenschaft). For others, let me say that it will not be my task to discuss some abstract branch of science, but a discipline which treats the spirit as something actual and real. It starts from the premise that human experience is not unavoidably restricted to sense-perceptible reality or to the findings of human reason and other cognitive faculties in so far as they are bound up with the sense-perceptible. Spiritual Science says that it is possible for human beings to penetrate behind the realm of the sense-perceptible and to make observations which are beyond the range of the ordinary intellect.
This introductory lecture will describe the role of Spiritual Science in present-day life, and will show how in the past this Spiritual Science—which is as old as humanity—appeared in a form very different from the form it must take today. In speaking of the present, I naturally do not mean the immediate here and now, but the relatively long period during which spiritual life has had the particular character which has come to full development in our own time.
Anyone who looks back over the spiritual life of mankind will see that “a time of transition” is a phrase to be used with care, for every period can be so described. Yet there are times when spiritual life takes a leap forward, so to speak. From the 16th century onwards, the relationship between the soul and spiritual life of human beings and the outer world has been different from what it was in earlier times. And the further back we go in human evolution, the more we find that men had different needs, different longings, and gave different answers from within themselves to questions concerning the great riddles of existence.
We can gain a clear impression of these transition periods through individuals who lived in those days and had retained certain qualities of feeling, knowing and willing from earlier periods, but were impelled to meet the demands of a new age.
Let us take an interesting personality and see what he makes of questions concerning the being of man and other such questions that must closely engage human minds—a personality who lived at the dawn of modern spiritual life and was endowed with the inner characteristics I have just described. I will not choose anyone familiar, but a sixteenth century thinker who was unknown outside a small circle. In his time there were many persons who retained, as he did, mediaeval habits of thinking and feeling and wished to gain knowledge in the way that had been followed for centuries, and yet were moving on towards the outlook of the coming age. I shall be naming an individual of whose external life almost nothing is historically known. From the point of view of Spiritual Science, this is thoroughly congenial. Anyone who has sojourned in the realm of Spiritual Science will know how distracting it is to find attached to a personality all the petty details of everyday life that are collected by modern biographers. On this account, we ought to be thankful that history has preserved so little about Shakespeare, for instance; the true picture is not spoilt—as it is with Goethe—by all the trivia the biographers are so fond of dragging in. I will therefore designate an individual of whom even less is known than is known about Shakespeare, a seventeenth century thinker who is of great significance for anyone who can see into the history of human thinking.
In Francis Joseph Philipp, Count von Hoditz and Wolframitz, who led the life of a solitary thinker during the second half of the seventeenth century in Bohemia, we have a personality of outstanding importance from this historical point of view. In a little work entitled Libellus de nominis convenientia1The “Libellus de hominis convenienta” by Francis Joseph Philipp Count von Hoditz and Wolframitz is a manuscript which was discovered in the Fürstenberg Library in Prague and which was written approximately between 1696 and 1700.—I have not inquired if it has since been published in full—he set down the questions which occupied his soul. If we immerse ourselves in his soul, these questions can lead us into the issues that a reflecting man would concern himself with in those days. This lonely thinker discusses the great central problem of the being of man. With a forcefulness that springs from a deep need for knowledge, he says that nothing so disfigures a man as not to know what his being really is.
Count von Hoditz turns to important figures in the history of thought, for instance to Aristotle in the fourth century B.C., and asks what Aristotle says in answer to this question—what the essential being of man really is.2Aristotle, 384–322 B.C. Cf. the Parva Naturalia. He says: Aristotle's answer is that man is a rational animal. Then he turns to a later thinker, Descartes, and puts the same question, and here the answer is that man is a thinking being.3René Descartes, 1596–1650. Cf. for example the work “Meditationes de prima Philosophia”, 1641/42. But on reflection he comes to feel that these two representative thinkers can give no answer to his question; for—as he says—in the answers of Aristotle and Descartes he wanted to learn what man is and what he ought to do. When Aristotle says that man is a rational animal, that is no answer to the question of what man is, for it throws no light on the nature of rationality. Nor does Descartes in the seventeenth century tell us what man ought to do in accordance with his nature as a thinking being. For although we may know that man is a thinking being, we do not know what he must think in order to take hold of life in the right way, in order to relate his thought to life.
Thus our philosopher sought in vain for an answer to this vital question, a question that must be answered if a man is not to lose his bearings. At last he came upon something which will seem strange to a modern reader, especially if he is given to scientific ways of thought, but for our solitary thinker it was the only answer appropriate to the particular constitution of his soul. It was no help for him to know that man is a rational animal or a thinking being. At last he found his question answered by another thinker who had it from an old tradition. And he framed the answer he had thus discovered in the following words: Man in his essence is an image of the Divine.4With this answer Hoditz goes back to the Neo-Platonist Philo of Alexandria (see Rudolf Steiner's comments on him in Christianity as Mystical Fact, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1972) who in turn revives the Old Testament tradition; I Moses 1, 26/27 Today we should say that man in his essence is what his whole origin in the spiritual world makes him to be.
The remaining remarks by Count von Hoditz need not occupy us today. All that concerns us is that the needs of his soul drove him to an answer which went beyond anything man can see in his environment or comprehend by means of his reason. If we examine the book more closely, we find that its author had no knowledge gained direct from the spiritual world. Now if he had been troubled by the question of the relation between sun and earth, he could, even if he were not an observer himself, have found the answer somewhere among the observations collected by the new forms of scientific thought. With regard to external questions of the sense-world he could have used answers given by people who had themselves investigated the questions through their own observations and experiences. But the experiences available to him at that time gave no answer to the questions concerning man's spiritual life, his real being in so far as it is spiritual. Clearly, he had no means of finding persons who themselves had had experiences in the spiritual world and so could communicate to him the properties of the spiritual world in the same way as the scientists could impart to him their knowledge about the external world. So he turned to religious tradition and its records. He certainly assimilated his findings—this is characteristic of his quality of soul—but one can see from the way he worked that he was only able to use his intellect to give a new form to what he had found emerging from the course of history or from recorded tradition.
Many people will now be inclined to ask: Are there—can there be—any persons who from their own observation and experience are able to answer questions related to the riddles of spiritual life?
This is precisely what Spiritual Science will make people aware of once more: the fact that—just as research can be carried out in the sense-perceptible world—it is possible to carry out research in the spiritual world, where no physical eyes, no telescopes or microscopes are available, and that answers can thus be given from direct experience as to conditions in such a world beyond the range of the senses. We shall then recognise that there was an epoch, conditioned by the whole evolutionary progress of humanity, when other means were used to make known the findings of spiritual research, and that we now have an epoch when these findings can once more be spoken of and understanding for them can again be found.
In between lay the twilight time of our solitary thinker, when human evolution took a rest, so to speak, from ascending towards the spiritual world, and preferred to rely on traditions passed down through ancient records or by word of mouth. In certain circles it began to be doubted whether it was possible for human beings to enter a spiritual world through their own powers by developing the cognitive faculties that lie hidden or slumbering within them. Are there, then, any rational grounds for saying that it is nonsensical to speak of a spiritual world that lies beyond the sense-perceptible? A glance at the progress of ordinary science should be enough to justify this question. Precisely a consideration of the wonderful advances that have been made in unraveling the secrets of external nature should indicate to anyone that a higher, super-sensible knowledge must exist. How so?
If we study human evolution impartially, we cannot fail to be impressed by the exceptional progress made in recent times by the sciences concerned with the outer world. With what pride—and in a certain sense the pride is justified—do people remark that the vast, ever-increasing advance of modern science has brought to light many facts that were unknown a few centuries ago. For example, thousands of years ago the sun rose in the morning and passed across the heavens, just as it does today. That which could be seen in the surroundings of the earth and in connection with the course of the sun was the same then, for external observation, as it was in the days of Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, and so on. But what could men say in those earlier ages about the external world? Can we suppose that the modern knowledge of which we are so justly proud has been gained by merely contemplating the external world? If the external world could itself, just as it is, give us this knowledge, there would be no need to look further: all the knowledge we have about the sense-perceptible world would have been acquired centuries ago. How is it that we know so much more and have a different view of the position of the sun and so on? It is because human understanding, human cognition concerning the external world, has developed and changed in the course of hundreds or thousands of years. Yes, these faculties were by no means the same in ancient Greece as they have come to be with us since the 16th century.
Anyone who studies these changes without prejudice must say to himself: Men have acquired something new. They have learnt to see the outer world differently because of something added to those faculties which apply to the external sense-world. Hence it became clear that the sun does not revolve round the earth; these new faculties compelled men to think of the earth as going round the sun.
No-one who is proud of the achievements of physical science can have any doubt that in his inner being man is capable of development, and that his powers have been remodeled from stage to stage until he has become what he is today. But he is called upon to develop more than outer powers; he has in his inner life something which enables him to recreate the world in the light of his inward capacity for knowledge. Among the finest words of Goethe are the following (in his book about Winckelmann)5Goethe: Winkelmann, “Antikes” and “Schönheit”; in: Goethe, Werke, Weimar Edition, vol.46 (Weimar, 1891). “if the healthy nature of man works as a unity, if he feels himself within the world as in a great, beautiful, noble and worthy whole, if harmonious ease offers him a pure and free delight: then the universe, if it could become conscious of itself, would rise in exultation at having reached its goal and would stand in wonder at the climax of its own being and becoming.” And again: “Man, placed at the summit of Nature, is again a whole new nature, which must in turn achieve a summit of its own. He ascends towards that height when he permeates himself with all perfections and virtues, summons forth order, selection, harmony and meaning, and attains in the end to the creation of a work of art.”
So man can feel that he has been born out of the forces he can see with his eyes and grasp with his reason. But if he applies the unbiased observation we have mentioned, he will see that not only external Nature has forces which develop until they are observed by the human eye, heard by the human ear, grasped by the human reason. In the same way a study of human evolution will show that something evolves within man; the faculties for gaining exact knowledge of nature were at first asleep within him, and have awakened by stages in the course of time. Now they are fully awake, and it is these faculties which have made possible the great progress of physical science.
Is it then inevitable that these inner faculties should remain as they are now, equipped only to reflect the outer world? Is it not perfectly reasonable to ask whether the human soul may not possess other hidden powers that can be awakened? May it not be that if he develops further the powers that lie hidden and slumbering within him, they will be spiritually illuminated, so that his spiritual eye and spiritual ear—as Goethe calls them6Cf. for example Goethe's essay “Wenige Bemerkungen” in Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, edited by Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, 1975, vol. 1, p.107 or in “Entwurf einer Einleitung in die vergleichende Anatomie”, op. cit., p.262: “We learn to see with the eyes of the spirit, without which we grope around blindly as everywhere so also in natural science”. Also Faust II, sc. 1, 1 1.4667.—will be opened and will enable him to perceive a spiritual world behind the sense-world?
To anyone who follows this thought through without prejudice, it will not seem nonsensical that hidden forces should be developed to open the way into the super-sensible world and to answer the questions: What is man in his real being? If he is an image of the spiritual world, what, then, is this spiritual world?
If we describe man in external terms and call to mind his gestures, instincts and so forth, we shall find all these characteristics represented imperfectly in lower beings. We shall see his external semblance as an integration of instincts, gestures and forces which are divided up among a number of lower creatures. We can comprehend this because we see around us the elements from which man has evolved into man. Might it not be possible then, to use these developed forces to penetrate similarly into a spiritual external world and to see there beings, forces and objects, just as we see stones, plants and animals in the physical world? Might it not be possible to observe spiritual processes which would throw light on man's inner life, just as it is possible to clarify his relationship to the outer world?
There has been, however, an interval between the old and the modern way of communicating Spiritual Science. This was a time of rest for the greater part of mankind. Nothing new was discovered; the old sources and traditions were worked over again and again. For the period in question this was quite right; every period has a characteristic way of meeting its fundamental needs. So this interlude occurred, and we must realise that while it lasted men were in a special situation, different both from what had been in the past and from what would be in the future. In a certain sense they became unaccustomed to looking for the soul's hidden faculties, which could have given insight into the spiritual world. So a time drew on when men could no longer believe or understand that the inner development of hidden faculties leads to super-sensible knowledge. Even then, one fact could hardly be denied: that in human beings there is something invisible. For how could it be thought that human reason, for example, is a visible entity? What sort of impartial thinking could fail to admit that human cognition is by its nature a super-sensible faculty?
Knowledge of this fact was never quite lost, even in the time when men had ceased to believe that super-sensible faculties within the soul could be developed so as to give access to the super-sensible. One particular thinker reduced this faculty to its smallest limit: it was impossible, he said, for men to penetrate by super-sensible vision into a world that comes objectively before us as a spiritual world, just as animals, plants and minerals and other people are encountered in the physical world. Yet even he had to recognise impartially that something super-sensible does exist and cannot be denied.
This thinker was Kant,7Immanuel Kant, 1724–1804. Cf. the chapter “The time of Kant and Goethe” in Rudolf Steiner's The Riddles of Philosophy, Anthroposophic Press, New York 1973. who thus brought an earlier phase of human evolution to a certain conclusion. For what does he think about man's relationship to a super-sensible, spiritual world? He does not deny that a man observes something super-sensible when he looks into himself, and that for this purpose he employs faculties of knowledge which cannot be perceived by physical eyes, however far the refinement of our physical instruments may be carried. Kant, then, does point to something super-sensible; the faculties used by the soul to make for itself a picture of the outer world. But he goes on to say that this is all that can be known concerning a super-sensible world. His opinion is that wherever a man may turn his gaze, he sees only this one thing he can call super-sensible: the super-sensible element contained in his senses in order that he may perceive and grasp and understand the existence of the sense-world.
In the Kantian philosophy, accordingly, there is no path that can lead to observation or experience of the spiritual world. The one thing Kant admits is the possibility of recognising that knowledge of the external world cannot be attained by the senses, but only by super-sensible means. This is the sole experience of the super-sensible that man can have.
That is the historically important feature of Kant's philosophy. But in Kant's argument it cannot be denied that when man uses his thinking in connection with his actions and deeds, he has the means to affect the sense-perceptible world. Thus, Kant had to recognise that a human being does not follow only instinctive impulses, as lower animals do; he also follows impulses from within his soul, and these can raise him far above subservience to mere instinct. There are countless examples of people who are tempted by a seductive impulse to do something, but they resist the temptation and take as their guide to action something that cannot come from an external stimulus. We need only think of the great martyrs, who gave up everything the sense-world could offer for something that was to lead them beyond the sense-world. Or we need only point to the experience of conscience in the human soul, even in the Kantian sense. When a man encounters something ever so charming and tempting, conscience can tell him not to be lured away by it, but to follow the voice that speaks to him from spiritual depths, an indomitable voice within his soul. And so for Kant it was certain that in man's inner being there is such a voice, and that what it says cannot be compared with any message from the outer world. Kant called it the categorical imperatives significant phrase. But he goes on to say that man can get no further than this voice from the soul as a means of acting on the world from out of the super-sensible, for he cannot rise beyond the world of the senses. He feels that duty, the categorical imperative, conscience, speak from within him, but he cannot penetrate into the realm from which they come.
Kant's philosophy allows man to go no further than the boundary of the super-sensible world. Everything else that resides in the realm from which duty, conscience and the categorical imperative emanate is shut off from observation, although it is of the same super-sensible nature as the soul. Man cannot enter that realm; at most he can draw conclusions about it. He can say to himself: Duty speaks to me, but I am weak; in the ordinary world I cannot carry out fully the injunctions of duty and conscience. Therefore I must accept the fact that my being is not confined to the world of the senses, but has a significance beyond that world. I can hold this before me as a belief, but it is not possible for me to penetrate into the world beyond the senses; the world from which come the voices of moral consciousness, duty and conscience, the categorical imperative.
We will now turn to someone who in this context was the exact antithesis of Kant: I mean Goethe. Anyone who truly compares the souls of these two men will see that they are diametrically opposed in their attitudes towards the most important problems of knowledge. Goethe, after absorbing all that Kant had to say about these problems, maintained on the ground of his own inner experience that Kant was wrong. Kant, says Goethe, claims that man has the power to form intellectual, conceptual judgments, but is not endowed with any contemplative faculty which could give direct experience of the spiritual world. But—Goethe continues—anyone who has exercised himself with the whole force of his personality to wrest his way from the sense-world to the super-sensible, as I have done, will know that we are not limited to drawing conclusions, but through a contemplative power of judgement we are able actually to raise ourselves into the spiritual world. Such was Goethe's personal reply to Kant. He emphasises that anyone who asserts the existence of this contemplative judgement is embarking on an adventure of reason, but he adds that from his own experience he has courageously gone through this adventure!8Goethe, “Anschauende Urteilskraft” in: Goethes Naturwissenschaftliche Schriften, edited by Rudolf Steiner, Dornach, 1975, vol. 1, p.1 15/116.
Yet in the recognition of what Goethe calls “contemplative judgement” lies the essence of Spiritual Science, for it leads, as Goethe knew, into a spiritual world; and it can be developed, raised to ever higher levels, so as to bring about direct vision, immediate experience, of that world, The fruits of this enhanced intuition are the content of true Spiritual Science. In coming lectures we shall be concerned with these fruits: with the results of a science which has its source in the development of hidden faculties in the human soul, for they enable man to gaze into a spiritual world, just as through the external instruments of the senses he is able to gaze into the realms of chemistry and physics.
It could now be asked: Does this possibility of developing hidden faculties that slumber in the soul belong only to our time, or has it always existed?
A study of the course of human history from a spiritual-scientific point of view teaches us that there existed ancient stores of wisdom, parts of which were condensed into those writings and traditions which survived during the intermediate period I described earlier. This same Spiritual Science also shows us that today it is again possible not merely to proclaim the old, but to speak of what the human soul can itself achieve by development of the forces and faculties slumbering within it; so that a healthy judgment, even where human beings cannot themselves see into the spiritual world, can understand the findings of the spiritual researcher. The contemplative judgment that Goethe had in mind when he spoke out against Kant, is in a certain sense the beginning of the upward path of knowledge which today is by no means unexplored. Spiritual Science is therefore able to show, as we shall see, that there are hidden faculties of knowledge which by ascending order penetrate ever further into the spiritual world.
When we speak of knowledge, we generally mean knowledge of the ordinary world, “material knowledge”; but we can also speak of “imaginative knowledge”, “inspired knowledge” and finally “intuitive knowledge”.9Cf. fundamental account of the stages of knowledge in Rudolf Steiner, Occult Science, An Outline, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1979, in the chapter “Knowledge of the Higher Worlds”. These are stages of the soul's progress into the super-sensible world which are also experienced by the individual spiritual researcher in accord with the constitution of the soul today. Similar paths were followed by the spiritual researcher in times gone by. But spiritual research has no meaning if it is to remain the possession of a few; it cannot limit itself to a small circle. Certainly, anything an ordinary scientist has to say about the nature of plants or about processes in the animal world can be of service to all mankind, even though this knowledge is actually possessed by a small circle of botanists, zoologists and so on. But spiritual research is not like that. It has to do with the needs of every human soul; with questions related to the inmost joys and sorrows of the soul; with knowledge that enables the human being to endure his destiny, and in such a way that he experiences inner contentment and bliss even if destiny brings him sorrow and suffering. If certain questions remain unanswered, men are left desolate and empty, and precisely they are the concern of Spiritual Science. They are not questions that can be dealt with only in restricted circles; they concern us all, at whatever stage of development and culture we may be, for the answering of them is spiritual food for each and every Soul.
This has always been so, at all times. And if Spiritual Science is to speak to mankind in this way, it must find means of making itself understood by all who wish to understand it. This entails that it must direct itself to those powers which are most fully developed during a given period, so that they can respond to what the spiritual researcher has to impart. Since human nature changes from epoch to epoch and the soul is always acquiring new aptitudes, it is natural that in the past Spiritual Science should have spoken differently about the most burning questions that concern the soul. In remote antiquity it spoke to a humanity which would never have understood the way it speaks today, for the soul-forces which have now developed were non-existent then. If Spiritual Science had been presented in the way appropriate for the present day, it would have been as though one were talking to plants.
In ancient times, accordingly, the spiritual researcher had to use other means. And if we look back into remote antiquity, Spiritual Science itself tells us that in order to give answers in a form adapted to the soul-powers of mankind in those times, a different preparation was necessary for those who were training themselves to gaze into the spiritual world; they had to cultivate powers other than those needed for speaking to present-day mankind.
Men who develop the forces that slumber in the soul in order to gaze into the spiritual world and to see spiritual beings there, as we see stones, plants and animals in the physical world—these men are and always have been called by Spiritual Science, Initiates, and the experiences that the soul has to undergo in order to achieve this faculty is called Initiation. But in the past the way to it was different from what it is today, for the mission of Spiritual Science is always changing. The old Initiation, which had to be gone through by those who had to speak to the people in ancient times, led them to an immediate experience of the spiritual world. They could see into surrounding realms which are higher than those perceived through the senses. But they had to transform what they saw into symbolic pictures, so that people could understand it. Indeed, it was only in pictures that the old Initiates could express what they had seen, but these pictures embraced everything that could interest people in those days.
These pictures, drawn from real experience, are preserved for us in myths and legends which have come down from the most diverse periods and peoples. In academic circles these myths and legends are attributed to the popular imagination. Those who are cognisant of the facts know that myths and legends derive from super-sensible vision, and that in every genuine myth and legend we must see an externalised picture of something a spiritual researcher has experienced, or, in Goethe's words, what he has seen with the spiritual eye or heard with the spiritual ear. We come to understand legends and myths only when we take them as images expressing a real knowledge of the spiritual world. They are pictures through which the widest circles of people could be reached.
It is a mistake to assume—as it so often is nowadays—that the human soul has always been just as it is in our century. The soul has changed; its receptivity was quite different in the past. A person was satisfied then if he received the picture given in the myth, for he was inspired by the picture to bring an intuitive vision of the outer world much more directly before his soul. Today myths are regarded as fantasy; but when in former times the myth sank into a person's soul, secrets of human nature were shown to him. When he looked at the clouds or the sun and so forth, he understood as a matter of course what the myth had set before him. In this way something we could call higher knowledge was given to a minority in symbolic form. While today we talk and must talk in straightforward language, it would be impossible to express in our terms what the souls of the old sages or initiates received, for neither the initiates nor their hearers had the soul-forces we have now developed.
In those early times the only valid forms of expression were pictorial. These pictures are preserved in a literature which strikes a modern reader as very strange. Now and then, especially if one is prompted by curiosity as well as by a desire for knowledge, one comes across an old book containing remarkable pictures which show, for example, the interconnections between the planets, together with all sorts of geometrical figures, triangles, polygons and so on. Anyone who applies a modern intellect to these pictures, without having acquired a special taste for them, will say: What can one do with all this stuff, the so-called Key of Solomon10The symbol of two intertwined triangles, the one pointing upwards, the other downwards. as a traditional symbol, these triangles and polygons and such-like?
Certainly, the spiritual researcher will agree that from the standpoint of modern culture nothing can be made of all this. But when the pictures were first given to students, something in their souls really was aroused. Today the human soul is different. It has had to develop in such a way as to give modern answers to questions about nature and life, and so it cannot respond in the old way to such things as two interlocked triangles, one pointing upwards, the other downwards. In former times, this picture could kindle an active response; the soul gazed into it and something emerging from within it was perceived. Just as nowadays the eye can look through a microscope and see, for example, plant-cells that cannot be seen without it, so did these symbolic figures serve as instruments for the soul. A man who held the Key of Solomon as a picture before his soul could gain a glimpse of the spiritual world. With our modern souls this is not possible, and so the secrets of the spiritual world which are handed down in these old writings can no longer be knowledge in the original sense, and those who give them out as knowledge, or who did so in the 19th century, are doing something out of line with the facts. That is why one cannot do anything with writings such as those of Eliphas Levi,11Eliphas Levi, 1810–1875, occultist. Pseudonym for the originally catholic deacon Alphonse Louis Constant from Paris. Dogme et Rituel de la haute Magie, 2 vols, 1854 and 1856. for instance, for in our time it is antiquated to present these symbols as purporting to throw light on the spiritual world. In earlier times, however, it was proper for Spiritual Science to speak to the human soul through the powerful pictures of myth and legend, or alternatively through symbols of the kind I have just described.
Then came the intermediate period, when knowledge of the spiritual world was handed down from one generation to the next in writing or by oral tradition. Even if we study only external history, we can readily see how it was handed down. In the very early days of Christianity there was a sect in North Africa called the Therapeutae12Philo of Alexandria (25 B.C.–50 A.D.) describes the life and thought of the Therapeutae in his work “De vital contemplative”. Cf. also Rudolf Steiner, Christianity as Mystical Fact, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1972, p.137. a man who had been initiated into their knowledge said that they possessed the ancient writings of their founders, who could still see into the spiritual world. Their successors could receive only what these writings had to say, or at most what could be discerned in them by those who had achieved some degree of spiritual development.
If we pass on to the Middle Ages, we find certain outstanding persons saying: we have certain cognitive faculties, we have reason; then, beyond ordinary reason we have faculties which can rise to a comprehension of certain secrets of existence; but there are other secrets and mysteries of existence which are only accessible by revelation. They are beyond the range of faculties which can be developed, they can be searched for only in ancient writings.
Hence arose the great mediaeval split between those things that can be known by reason and those that must be believed because they are passed down by tradition, are revelation.13Decisive in this respect are the writings of Thomas Aquinas, especially the four books of the Summa philosophica. Cf. also Rudolf Steiner, The Riddles of Philosophy and The Redemption of Thinking. And it was quite in keeping with the outlook of those times that the frontier between reason and faith should be clearly marked. This was justified for that period, for the time had passed when certain mathematical signs could be used to call forth faculties of cognition in the human soul. Right up to modern times, a person had only one means of grasping the super-sensible: looking into his own soul, as Augustine,14St. Augustine, 354–430 A.D.. Had the greatest influence of the Church Fathers on theology and philosophy. for example, did to some extent.
It was no longer possible to see in the outer world anything that revealed deep inner secrets. Symbols had come to be regarded as mere fantasies. One thing only survived: a recognition that the super-sensible world corresponded to the super-sensible in man, so that a man could say to himself: You are able to think, but your thought is limited by space and time, while in the spiritual world there is a Being who is pure thought. You have a limited capacity for love, whereas in the spiritual world there is a Being who is perfect love. When the spiritual world was represented for a human being in terms of his own inner experience, his inner life could extend to a vision of nature permeated by the Divine; then he had consciousness of God. But for particular facts he could turn only to information given in ancient writings, for in himself he had nothing that could lead him into the spiritual world.
Then came the later times which brought the proud achievements of natural science. These are the times when faculties which could go beyond the sense-perceptible emerged not only in those who achieved scientific knowledge, but in all men. Something in the soul came to understand that the picture given to the senses is not the real thing, and to realise that truth and appearance are contraries. This new faculty, which is able to discern outward nature in a form not given to the senses, will be increasingly understood by those who today penetrate as researchers into the spiritual world and are then able to report that one can see a spiritual world and spiritual beings, just as down here in the sense-perceptible world one sees animals, plants and minerals.
Hence the spiritual researcher has to speak of realms which are not far removed from present-day understanding. And we shall see how the symbols which were once a means for gaining knowledge of the spiritual world have become an aid to spiritual development. The Key of Solomon, for instance, which once called forth in the soul a real spiritual perception, does so no longer. But if today the soul allows itself to be acted on by what the spiritual researcher can explain concerning this symbol, something in the soul is aroused, and this can lead a person on by stages into the spiritual world. Then, when he has gained vision of the spiritual world, he can express what he has seen in the same logical terms that apply to external science.
Spiritual Science or occultism must therefore speak in a way that can be grasped by anyone who has a broad enough understanding. Whatever the spiritual researcher has to impart must be clothed in the conceptual terms which are customary in other sciences, or due regard would not be paid to the needs of the times. Not everyone can see immediately into the spiritual world, but since the appropriate forces of reason and feeling are now existent in every soul, Spiritual Science, if rightly presented, can be grasped by every normal person with his ordinary reason. The spiritual researcher is now again in a position to present what our solitary thinker said to himself: Man in his essence is an image of the Godhead.
If we want to understand the physical nature of man, we look to the relevant findings of physical research. If we want to understand his inner spiritual being, we look to the realm which the spiritual researcher is able to investigate. Then we see that man does not come into existence at birth or at conception, only to pass out of existence at death, but that besides the physical part of his organism he has super-sensible members. If we understand the nature of these members, we penetrate into the realm where faith passes over into knowledge. And when Kant, in the evening of an older period, said that we can recognise the categorical imperative, but that no-one can penetrate with conscious vision into the realm of freedom, of divine being and immortality, he was expressing only the experience natural to his time. Spiritual Science will show that we can penetrate into a spiritual world; that just as the eye equipped with a microscope can penetrate into realms beyond the range of the naked eye, so can the soul equipped with the means of Spiritual Science penetrate into an otherwise inaccessible spiritual world, where love, conscience, freedom and immortality can be known, even as we know animals, plants and minerals in the physical world. In subsequent lectures we will go further into this.
If once more we look now at the relationship between the spiritual researcher and his public, and at the difference between the past and present of Spiritual Science, we can say: The symbolic pictures used by spiritual researchers in the past acted directly on the human soul, because what today we call the faculties of reason and understanding were not yet present. The pictures gave direct vision of the spiritual world, and the ordinary man could not test with his reason what the spiritual researcher communicated to him through them. The pictures acted with the force of suggestion, of inspiration; a man subjected to them was carried away and could not resist them. Anyone who was given a false picture was thus delivered over to those who gave it to him. Therefore, in those early times it was of the utmost importance that those who rose into the spiritual world should be able to inspire absolute confidence and firm belief in their trustworthiness; for if they misused their power they had in their hands an instrument which they could exploit in the worst possible way.
Hence in the history of Spiritual Science there are periods of degeneration as well as times of brilliance; times in which the power of untrustworthy initiates was misused. How the initiate in those early times behaved towards his public depended to the utmost degree on himself alone. At the present time—and one might say, thank God for it!—all this is somewhat different. Since the change does not come about all at once, it is still necessary that the initiate should be a trustworthy person, and it will then be justified to feel every confidence in him. But people are already in a different relationship to the spiritual researcher; if he is to speak in accordance with the demands of his time he must speak in such a way that every unbiased mind can understand him, if the willingness to understand him is there. This is, of course, far removed from saying that everyone who could understand must now understand. But reason can now be the judge of what an individual can understand, and therefore everyone who devotes himself to Spiritual Science should bring his unbiased judgment to bear on it.
From now onwards this will be the mission of Spiritual Science: to rise into a spiritual world, through the development of hidden powers, just as the physiologist penetrates through the microscope into a realm of the smallest entities, invisible to the naked eye. And ordinary intelligence will be able to test the findings of spiritual research, as it can test the findings of the physiologist, the botanist, and so on. A healthy intelligence will be able to say of the spiritual researcher's findings: they are all consistent with one another. Modern man will come to the point of saying to himself: My reason tells me that it can be so, and by using my reason I can grasp clearly what the spiritual researcher has to tell. And that is how the spiritual researcher, for his part, should speak if he feels himself to be truly at one with the mission of Spiritual Science at the present time. But there will be a time of transition also today. For since the means to achieve spiritual development are available and can be used wrongly, many people whose purpose is not pure, whose sense of duty is not sacred and whose conscience is not infallible, will find their way into a spiritual world. But then, instead of behaving like a spiritual researcher who can know from his own experience whether the things he sees are in accord with the facts, these pretended researchers will impart information that goes against the facts. Moreover, since people can come only by slow degrees to apply their reasoning powers to understanding what the spiritual researcher says, we must expect that charlatanry, humbug and superstition will flourish preeminently in this realm. But the situation is changing. Man now has himself to blame if, without wishing to use his intellect, he is led by a certain curiosity to believe blindly in those who pass themselves off as spiritual investigators, so-called. Because men are too comfort-loving to apply their reason, and prefer a blind faith to thinking for themselves, it is possible that nowadays we may have, instead of the old initiate who misused his power, the modern charlatan who imposes on people not the truth, but something he perhaps takes for truth. This is possible because today we are at the beginning of an evolutionary phase.
There is nothing to which a man should apply his reason more rigorously than the communications that can come to him from Spiritual Science. People can lay part of the blame on themselves if they fall victim to charlatanry and humbug; for these falsities will bear abundant fruit, as indeed they have done already in our time. This is something that must not go unnoticed when we are speaking of the mission of Spiritual science today.
Anyone who listens now to a spiritual researcher—not in a willful, negative way that casts immediate doubt on everything, but with a readiness to test everything in the light of healthy reason—will soon feel how Spiritual Science can bring hope and consolation in difficult hours, and can throw light on the great riddles of existence. He will come to feel that these riddles and the great questions of destiny can be resolved through Spiritual Science; he will come to know what part of him is subject to birth and death, and what is the eternal core of his being. In brief, it will be possible—as we shall show in later lectures—that, given good will and the wish to strengthen himself by taking in and working over inwardly the communications of Spiritual Science, he will be able to say with deepest feeling: What Goethe divined and said in his youth is true, and so are the lines he wrote in his maturity and gave to Faust to speak:
The spirit world is ever open,
Dead is thy heart, thy sense-veil closely drawn!
Up, scholar, let thy breast unwearied
Bathe in the roseate hues of dawn!15Faust I, sc.1,11.443–446.
In the dawn-lines of the Spirit!
Die Mission der Geisteswissenschaft Einst und Jetzt
Wie schon durch mehrere Jahre hindurch wird auch in diesem Jahre von mir eine Reihe von Vorträgen gehalten werden aus dem Gebiete der Geisteswissenschaft. Für diejenigen der verehrten Zuhörer, welche in den verflossenen Jahren an diesen Vorträgen teilgenommen haben, ist ja kein Zweifel darüber, in welchem Sinne hier das Wort «Geisteswissenschaft» genommen wird. Es wird sich — das sei für diejenigen der verehrten Zuhörer gesagt, die in den verflossenen Jahren nicht da waren — nicht darum handeln, irgendeine abstrakte Wissenschaft hier zu entfalten, ähnlich dem, was wir in den gebräuchlichen Seelenlehren oder Psychologien haben; es wird sich auch nicht um etwas handeln, was sich auf den Standpunkt stellt, der heute das Wort Geisteswissenschaft nur gebraucht für die Darstellung der verschiedenen kulturgeschichtlichen Gebiete, sondern um eine Wissenschaft, für die der Geist etwas Wirkliches, etwas Reales ist. Um eine solche Wissenschaft wird es sich handeln, die von dem Gesichtspunkt auszugehen hat, daß dem Menschen nicht nur das Gebiet der sinnlichen Wirklichkeit zugänglich ist und alles, was der Verstand des Menschen und seine sonstigen Erkenntniskräfte, insofern sie gebunden sind an die sinnliche Wahrnehmung, erfahren können, was also Sinneserkenntnis und Verstandeserkenntnis ist; sondern es wird sich um etwas handeln, was sich auf einen Gesichtspunkt stellt, bei dem nicht nur solche Erkenntnis vorhanden ist, sondern bei dem es die Möglichkeit gibt für den Menschen, hinter das Gebiet der sinnlichen Erscheinungen zu kommen, Beobachtungen anzustellen, die dem Verstand und dem Gebiete, an das der Verstand gebunden ist, nicht zugänglich sind.
Heute in einer einleitenden Darstellung soll es sich darum handeln, zu zeigen, welche Aufgabe diese Geisteswissenschaft in dem Leben des Menschen der Gegenwart hat. Und es soll dies anschaulich gemacht werden an dem Unterschied, wie diese Geisteswissenschaft, die so uralt ist wie das menschliche Streben überhaupt, in vergangenen Zeiten auftrat, und wie sie sich zeigen muß in unserer Zeit. Wenn wir von «unserer Zeit» sprechen, so ist das hier natürlich nicht so gemeint, daß etwa bloß die allerunmittelbarste Gegenwart in Betracht kommen soll; sondern es ist gemeint, was seit einer verhältnismäßig längeren Zeit sich als verwandt mit unserm Geistesleben herausstellt, und was in voller Entwikkelung in unserer unmittelbaren Gegenwart begriffen ist.
Es ist ja für den, der das Geistesleben der Menschheit nur ein wenig überblickt, von vornherein klar, daß man mit dem Worte «Übergangszeit» vorsichtig sein soll. Wenn man sich den Begriff nur einigermaßen zurechtlegt, wird man im Grunde genommen jede Zeit als eine Übergangszeit charakterisieren können. Dennoch aber gibt es Zeiten in der Menschheit, wo sich sozusagen Sprünge darstellen im Fortgange des Geisteslebens. Der Mensch des 16. bis 19. Jahrhunderts und unserer Zeit wird sich seinem ganzen Seelen- und Geistesleben nach anders zur Welt verhalten müssen als die Menschheit früherer Zeiten. Und je weiter wir zurückgehen in der Menschheitsentwickelung, desto mehr wird es uns auffallen, daß die Menschheit immer andere Sehnsuchten, immer andere Bedürfnisse hat, und daß sie dasjenige, was sie als Fragen über die großen Rätsel des Daseins aufwirft, durch sich selbst in einer immer anderen Weise beantwortet haben will. Nun können wir uns das Wesen solcher Übergänge deutlich machen, wenn wir uns bekanntmachen mit Menschen solcher Übergangszeiten, die in gewisser Beziehung noch Gefühls- und Erkenntniskräfte und Willensimpulse in sich haben, die von früheren Epochen des Geisteslebens vererbt sind, aber die doch schon den Trieb in sich fühlen, in eine neue Zeit hineinzuleben. Wir können in den verschiedensten Epochen des menschlichen Werdens solche geschichtlichen Persönlichkeiten finden. Wollen wir uns heute zunächst einmal an eine interessante Persönlichkeit halten, um zu sehen, wie sie die Fragen nach dem Wesen des Menschen aufwirft und nach alledem, was zunächst den Menschen interessieren muß. An eine Persönlichkeit wollen wir uns wenden, die an der Morgenröte des neuzeitlichen Geisteslebens die so charakterisierte innere Seelenverfassung hat. Und ich möchte nicht eine der bekannteren Persönlichkeiten aus der Reihe der Denker wählen, sondern ich möchte gerade am Ausgangspunkt dieser Vorträge eine in den weitesten Kreisen unbekannte Denkerpersönlichkeit wählen aus dem 17. Jahrhundert, wo es zahlreiche solcher Persönlichkeiten gegeben hat, die in sich noch die Gefühlsgewohnheiten, die Denkgewohnheiten des Mittelalters hatten, die noch so erkennen wollten, wie man vor Jahrhunderten erkannt hat, und die doch schon hineinragten in die Erkenntnisbedürfnisse der neueren Zeit. Eine Persönlichkeit also möchte ich Ihnen nennen, über deren äußeres Leben man in der äußeren Geschichte sozusagen gar nichts weiß. Das ist für die geisteswissenschaftliche Betrachtung immer etwas außerordentlich Angenehmes; denn wer gern in der Geisteswissenschaft mit unbefangenem Blick verweilt, der wird schon gespürt haben, wie sehr ihn alles das stören kann, was einer Persönlichkeit aus dem gewöhnlichen alltäglichen Leben angehängt wird, was die heutigen Biographen aus dem gewöhnlichen Leben zusammentragen. Man könnte in diesem Sinn der Geschichte dankbar sein, daß sie uns so wenig aufbewahrt hat, zum Beispiel von Shakespeare; denn dadurch wird uns — wie das heute zum Beispiel bei Goethe der Fall ist — bei Shakespeare nicht das Bild verdorben durch allerlei kleine Züge, wie sie die Biographen so gern zusammentragen. Aber ich will Ihnen eine Persönlichkeit nennen für unsern Zweck, die noch viel unbekannter ist als Shakespeare, eine Denkerpersönlichkeit aus dem 17. Jahrhundert, die aber für den, der in die Denkergeschichte der Menschheit hineinzuschauen vermag, eine ungeheure Bedeutung hat. Gerade eine der hervorragendsten Persönlichkeiten aus der Denkergeschichte der Menschheit steht vor uns in der Persönlichkeit des Franziskus Josephus Philppus Graf von Hoditz und Wolframitz, der in der zweiten Hälfte des 17. Jahrhunderts in Böhmen ein einsames Denkerleben gelebt hat. Was ihm vor allen Dingen als wichtige Frage in der Seele gelegen hat und was, wenn wir uns in seine Seele vertiefen, uns symptomatisch so schön hineinführen kann in das, was eine Seele dazumal bewegen konnte, das hat er niedergelegt in einem kleinen Büchelchen - ich habe nicht nachgeforscht, ob es inzwischen in aller Ausführlichkeit gedruckt worden ist —, das er genannt hat «Libellus de hominis convenientia». Darin wirft diese einsame Denkerpersönlichkeit die große Frage des Daseins auf, die beim Menschen durchaus im Mittelpunkt aller Lebensverhältnisse steht: die Frage nach dem «Wesen des Menschen». Und er sagt geradezu mit einem eindringlichen, aus einem tiefen Erkenntnisgefühl herauskommenden Bedürfnisse, nichts entstelle den Menschen mehr, als wenn er nicht wisse, welches eigentlich sein Wesen ist.
Nun wendet sich dieser Franziskus Josephus Philippus Graf von Hoditz und Wolframitz an bedeutende Denkerpersönlichkeiten aus alten Zeiten - an eine Denkerpersönlichkeit aus dem vierten vorchristlichen Jahrhundert, an Aristoteles - und sagt: Was kann uns dieser alte Denker sagen, wenn die Frage aufgeworfen wird: Welches ist eigentlich das Wesen des Menschen? — Da stellt sich unser Denker die Antwort des Aristoteles vor Augen: «Der Mensch ist ein vernünftiges Tier.» Und dann wendet sich unser Denker zu einem Neueren, zu Cartesius, und fragt: Was wußte dieser Denker über die Frage zu sagen: Was ist eigentlich das Wesen des Menschen? — Da ergab sich für ihn die Antwort: «Der Mensch ist ein denkendes Wesen.» -— Nun stand unser Denker mit seiner forschenden, suchenden Seele da und mußte sich sagen: Auf die wichtige Frage nach dem Wesen des Menschen geben mir diese beiden Denker, die mir die Repräsentanten vieler Denker sind, keine Antwort! Denn wenn die Antwort auf die Frage nach dem Wesen des Menschen gegeben wird, verlange ich zu erfahren, was der Mensch ist, und was der Mensch tun soll. Was mir Aristoteles antwortet — der Mensch sei ein vernünftiges Tier —, das antwortet nicht auf die Frage, was der Mensch ist; denn man kann nicht erkennen an seiner Antwort, was eigentlich das Wesen der Vernünftigkeit ist. Und auch die Antwort, die Cartesius, der Denker des 17. Jahrhunderts, gibt, antwortet nicht auf die Frage: «Was soll der Mensch seinem Wesen gemäß tun?» Denn wenn man auch schon weiß, daß der Mensch ein Wesen ist, das denken kann, so weiß man noch nicht, was er eigentlich denken soll, um in der richtigen Weise ins Leben einzugreifen, um wirklich in seinem Denken einen Bezug zum Leben herzustellen!
So hat sich unser Denker vergeblich umgesehen nach einer Antwort auf die für ihn so brennende Frage des Daseins, welche den Menschen, wenn er sie sich nicht zu beantworten vermag, entstellt in seinem Wesen.
Da stieß er auf etwas, was freilich den heutigen Menschen sonderbar berühren wird, insbesondere, wenn er im Sinne der heutigen wissenschaftlichen Bildung denken will, was aber für jene einsame Persönlichkeit nach ihrer damaligen Seelenverfassung wirklich die einzig treffende Antwort war. Er sagte sich: Das kann mir nichts nützen, zu wissen, daß der Mensch ein vernünftiges Tier ist, oder daß der Mensch ein denkendes Wesen ist! Aber was ich gefunden habe bei einem anderen Denker, der es wieder von einer älteren Überlieferung her hat, das antwortet mir auf meine Frage. Und mit Worten, zu denen er auf diese Art gekommen war, gab sich dieser Mann Antwort auf seine Frage: «Der Mensch ist seinem Wesen nach das Ebenbild der Gottheit!»
Wir würden heute sagen: «Der Mensch ist seinem Wesen nach dasjenige, was er seinem ganzen Ursprung nach aus der geistigen Welt heraus ist.»
Was der Graf von Hoditz und Wolframitz weiter an seine Betrachtung anschließt, braucht uns heute nicht zu beschäftigen. Es braucht uns nur das eine zu interessieren, daß er aus den Bedürfnissen seiner Seele heraus auf eine Antwort hinweisen mußte, welche über alles, was der Mensch in seiner Umgebung sehen und mit seinem Verstande begreifen kann, hinausging. Wenn wir nun aber das, was jenes Büchlein enthält, weiter prüfen, dann stellt sich heraus, daß dieser Persönlichkeit nicht irgendwelche Mitteilungen aus der geistigen Welt zur Verfügung standen. Sagen wir etwa so: Hätte sich dieser Persönlichkeit die Frage auf die Seele gelegt, wie sich die Erde zur Sonne verhält, dann hätte sie, auch wenn sie nicht selber Naturforscher gewesen wäre, irgendwo innerhalb der Beobachtungswelt die Antwort gefunden, die seit dem Auftauchen der neueren Naturwissenschaft aus der Erfahrung gegeben werden konnte. Also in bezug auf äußere Fragen der Sinnenwelt hätte diese Persönlichkeit den Blick hinwenden können auf etwas, was ihr Leute hätten sagen können, die diese Fragen selber durch ihre Beobachtung, durch ihre Erlebnisse erforscht haben. In bezug auf die Fragen des menschlichen Geisteslebens aber, in bezug auf das, was der Mensch ist, insofern er ein Geist ist, darauf gaben ihm keine solchen Erlebnisse seiner damaligen Zeit Antwort. Man kann es ganz genau sehen, daß er sozusagen nicht irgendeinen Weg finden konnte zu Menschen, welche selbst eigene Erlebnisse in der geistigen Welt gehabt hätten, welche ebenso durch unmittelbare Erfahrung ihm irgendwelche Eigenschaften der geistigen Welt hätten sagen können, so wie ihm die Naturforscher sagen konnten, was sie dazumal eben über diese oder jene Frage der äußeren Sinnenwelt wußten. Daher wandte sich dieser Denker an das, was Überlieferung war, was er vorfand in den Urkunden, die ihm aus der religiösen Überlieferung gegeben waren. Er verarbeitete allerdings - und das ist charakteristisch für seine ganze Seelentiefe —, was er so als Überlieferung haben konnte; aber man sieht aus der Art, wie er arbeitete, daß er nur seinen Verstand anstrengen konnte, um eine neue Form zu geben dem, was sich im Laufe der Geschichte ausgebildet hat oder was durch Überlieferung oder Schrift bis zu ihm gekommen ist.
Nun wird gar mancher sagen: Ja, gibt es denn überhaupt solche Persönlichkeiten, kann es solche Menschen geben, welche ebenso aus der Beobachtung, aus der Erfahrung, aus dem unmittelbaren Erlebnis heraus eine Antwort geben können auf Fragen, welche sich auf die Rätsel des geistigen Lebens beziehen?
Das ist eben das, was die Geisteswissenschaft in der neueren Zeit dem Menschen wiederum zum Bewußtsein bringen wird, daß es eine Möglichkeit gibt, ebenso in einer geistigen Welt, die keinem äußeren sinnlichen Auge, keinem Teleskop und Mikroskop zugänglich ist, zu forschen, wie es möglich ist zu forschen in der Sinneswelt; und daß Antwort gegeben werden kann aus der unmittelbaren Erfahrung heraus über die Fragen nach der Beschaffenheit auch einer solchen, über die sinnliche Erfahrung hinaus liegenden Welt. Dann wird man erkennen, wie es, allerdings notwendig hervorgerufen durch den ganzen Entwickelungsgang der Menschheit, eine Epoche gegeben hat, wo mit anderen Mitteln dasjenige in die Öffentlichkeit getragen worden ist, was der Geistesforscher in der geistigen Welt erkundet hat; und daß es heute wiederum eine Epoche gibt, wo die Möglichkeit besteht, daß wiederum von den Ergebnissen der Geistesforschung gesprochen werden und wiederum Verständnis dafür gefunden werden kann. Dazwischen allerdings liegt diejenige Zeit, in deren Abendröte die Zeit unseres einsamen Denkers hineinfiel, da die ganze menschliche Entwickelung eine Weile «ausruhte» von dem Hinaufsteigen in die geistige Welt, sich vorzugsweise an die Überlieferungen durch alte Urkunden oder mündliche Mitteilung hielt, und wo man in gewissen Kreisen anfing Zweifel zu hegen, ob der Mensch überhaupt durch eigene Kraft, durch Entwickelung seiner in ihm verborgen liegenden, schlummernden Erkenntniskräfte aufsteigen kann in eine übersinnliche Welt. Gibt es denn nun irgendeinen vernünftigen Gedanken, aus dem heraus man sagen kann, es sei unsinnig, von einer solchen geistigen Welt zu sprechen, von einer Welt, die über die sinnliche hinaus liegt? Eine solche Überlegung sollte dem Menschen schon die Betrachtung der Entwikkelung seiner sinnlichen Wissenschaft selber eingeben. Und gerade die unbefangene Betrachtung der Entwikkelung dieses Fortschrittes, den die Menschheit gemacht hat, das wunderbare Fortschreiten in der Enträtselung der äußeren sinnlichen Naturgeheimnisse sollte den Menschen darauf hinweisen, daß es eine höhere, übersinnliche Erkenntnis geben muß. — Wie das?
Wer unbefangen des Menschen Entwickelung betrachtet, wird sich sagen müssen: Gerade die Wissenschaft, die sich mit der äußeren Sinnenwelt beschäftigt, hat sich im Laufe der Zeit entwickelt. Mit welchem Stolze weisen viele Menschen darauf hin — und mit durchaus berechtigtem Stolze in gewissem Sinne —, wie man vor Jahrhunderten nichts wußte über dieses oder jenes, was dem äußeren Sinnesgebiete angehört, und wie uns die großen Fortschritte der Naturwissenschaft, die seit dem 15. und 16. Jahrhundert immer mehr und mehr sich steigern, Kunde gebracht haben von dem, was man vorher über diese äußere Sinneswelt nicht gewußt hat. Müßte man sich nicht eigentlich sagen: Die Sonne, die am Morgen aufgeht, sich während des Tages über den Horizont hinbewegt, sie ging dem Menschen vor Jahrtausenden ebenso auf, wie sie ihm heute aufgeht. Das, was der Mensch im Umkreise der Erde und im Zusammenhange mit der Bahn der Sonne in alten Zeiten sehen konnte, bot sich ihm für die äußere Sinnesanschauung vor Jahrtausenden ebenso dar, wie es sich dargeboten hat in der Zeit, in welcher Galilei, Newton, Kepler, Kopernikus und so weiter wirkten. Was aber wußte diese Menschheit über die äußere Sinneswelt zu sagen? Kann man davon reden, daß die Wissenschaft, wie wir sie haben, auf die unsere Zeit mit Recht so stolz ist, bloß durch eine Betrachtung der äußeren Sinneswelt errungen ist? Würde die äußere Sinneswelt, so wie sie ist, diese Wissenschaft so geben können, dann würde man nicht nötig haben, über das, was diese äußere Sinneswelt gibt, hinauszugehen. Dann hätte man vor Jahrhunderten dasselbe wissen müssen über diese Sinneswelt wie heute. Daß man heute mehr weiß, daß man die Stellung der Sonne und so weiter heute anders ansieht, worauf beruht denn das? Es beruht darauf, daß der menschliche Verstand, die menschlichen Erkenntniskräfte, welche sich auf die äußere Sinneswelt beziehen, sich entwickelt haben; daß sie etwas anderes geworden sind im Laufe der Jahrtausende und der Jahrhunderte. Oh, diese menschlichen Erkenntniskräfte waren nicht im alten Griechenland, was sie geworden sind seit dem 16. Jahrhundert bis in unsere Zeit hinein.
Wer diesen Werdegang des Menschen unbefangen betrachtet, der muß sich sagen: Der Mensch hat etwas herangebildet, was er früher nicht hatte; und er hat gelernt, in anderer Weise als früher diese äußere Welt anzusehen, weil er zu den Erkenntniskräften, welche sich auf die äußere Sinneswelt beziehen, etwas anderes hinzuentwickelt hat. Deshalb wurde ihm klar, daß die Sonne sich nicht um die Erde herum bewegt, sondern er wurde durch die Entwickelung seiner Erkenntniskräfte dazu veranlaßt, sich die Erde um die Sonne herumgehend zu denken. Der Mensch hat also in unserer Zeit andere solcher Kräfte, als er sie in früheren Zeiten hatte.
Für den, der auf die Errungenschaften der äußeren Wissenschaft stolz ist, und der unbefangen den Fortschritt studiert, kann es gar keinem Zweifel unterliegen, daß der Mensch entwickelungsfähig in seinem Innern ist, daß er nicht nur dasjenige in sich haben kann, was wir an Kräften der äußeren Welt sehen; und daß von Entwickelungsstufe zu Entwickelungsstufe seine Kräfte sich umgebildet haben, bis der Mensch so geworden ist, wie er heute ist. Der Mensch hat nicht nur das zu entwikkeln, was in seinen äußeren Kräften ist; sondern es entwickelt sich auch in seinem Innern etwas, wodurch er imstande wird, die Welt im neuen Glanze seiner inneren Fähigkeiten als Erkenntnis auferstehen zu lassen. Es gehört zu den schönsten Worten, die der große DichterDenker Goethe - im Buche über Winckelmann - gesprochen hat, als er sagte: «Wenn die gesunde Natur des Menschen als ein Ganzes wirkt, wenn er sich in der Welt als in einem großen, schönen, würdigen und werten Ganzen fühlt, wenn das harmonische Behagen ihm ein reines freies Entzücken gewährt, dann würde das Weltall, wenn es sich selbst empfinden könnte, als an sein Ziel gelangt, aufjauchzen und den Gipfel des eigenen Werdens und Wesens bewundern.» Und: «Indem der Mensch auf den Gipfel der Natur gestellt ist, so sieht er sich wieder als eine ganze Natur an, die in sich abermals einen Gipfel hervorzubringen hat. Dazu steigert er sich, indem er sich mit allen Vollkommenheiten und Tugenden durchdringt, Wahl, Ordnung, Harmonie und Bedeutung aufruft und sich endlich bis zur Produktion des Kunstwerkes erhebt.»
So mag der Mensch sich herausgeboren fühlen aus den Kräften, die er mit seinen Augen sehen, mit seinem Verstande begreifen kann. Aber wenn er das in dem Sinne, wie wir es auseinandergesetzt haben, unbefangen betrachtet, so wird er gerade von dem Gesichtspunkt der äußeren Wissenschaft sich sagen müssen: Nicht nur die Natur außen hat Kräfte, die sich heranentwickeln, bis sie angeschaut werden von einem Menschenauge, bis sie gehört werden von einem Menschenohr, bis sie begriffen werden durch einen menschlichen Verstand; sondern wenn wir den Gang der menschlichen Entwickelung verfolgen, so finden wir, daß sich auch im Innern des Menschen etwas entwickelt; daß seine Erkenntniskräfte zuerst schlummernd waren für die äußere Naturbetrachtung, daß diese schlummernden Kräfte dann erweckt wurden bis hinein in unsere Zeit, so daß die im Altertum schlummernden Erkenntniskräfte sich als entwickelt ausnehmen. Und durch die entwickelten Erkenntniskräfte schaut der Mensch heute hinaus und erringt das, was wir die großen Fortschritte der äußeren sinnlichen Wissenschaft nennen.
Nun muß die Frage an einen Menschen herantreten: Soll aber nun die Notwendigkeit vorhanden sein, daß dasjenige, was im Innern des Menschen ist, nun stehen bleibt und nur noch Kräfte entwickelt, die ein Spiegelbild dessen geben, was von außen gesehen werden kann? Oder muß es nicht auch noch andere, in der Menschenseele schlummernde Kräfte und Fähigkeiten geben, die entwickelt werden können? Ist es nicht ein durchaus vernünftiger Gedanke, wenn man sich sagt: Man muß die Frage aufwerfen, ob es denn nicht möglich sei, daß der Mensch in der Seele noch andere verborgene Kräfte habe, die geweckt werden können? Ist es denn nicht möglich, daß der Mensch dasjenige, was er im Innern hat, nicht nur dazu entwickeln kann, daß er es bis zu einem Spiegelbild der äußeren Welt bringt? Kann es nicht so sein, wenn er sich weiter entwickelt, daß vielleicht das, was früher in ihm verborgen und schlummernd war, geistig aufleuchter? — als dasjenige, was Goethe das «Geistesauge», das «Geistesohr» nennt -, wodurch sich ihm erschließt eine geistige Welt, die hinter der sinnlichen Welt liegt?
Für den, der unbefangen diesen Gedanken verfolgt, wird es nicht unsinnig erscheinen, verborgene Kräfte zu entwikkeln, die hinaufführen können in die übersinnliche Welt, und die Antwort geben können auf die Frage: Was ist denn eigentlich der Mensch? Wenn er ein Ebenbild der geistigen Welt ist, was ist denn dann die geistige Welt?
Wenn wir uns den Menschen als äußeres Wesen charakterisieren, wenn wir uns seine Gesten, seine Instinkte und so weiter vor die Seele führen, so werden wir, wenn wir auf die äußere Welt blicken, des Menschen Gesten, Instinkte und Kräfte in einem unvollkommenen Zustande an niederen Wesen sehen. Und wir werden die äußere Erscheinung des Menschen als die Zusammenfassung dessen begreifen, was wir draußen über verschiedene Wesen, über niedere Wesen verteilt finden, Instinkte und so weiter. Wir können es begreifen, weil wir dasjenige, was wir am Menschen sehen, draußen sehen als etwas, woraus wir den Menschen entwickelt denken. Sollte es nun nicht möglich sein, mit solchen entwickelten Kräften in ähnlicher Weise auch in eine geistige Außenwelt zu sehen? Wesenheiten, Kräfte, Dinge da zu sehen, wie Steine, Pflanzen und Tiere in der sinnlichen Außenwelt? Sollte es nicht möglich sein, solche geistigen Vorgänge zu sehen, die ebenso aufklären über alles, was im Innern des Menschen als Unsichtbares lebt, wie es möglich ist, das Sinnliche in bezug auf den Menschen zu erklären?
Aber es war eben die Zeit, die sozusagen eine Zwischenzeit war zwischen einer alten und einer neuen Art, die Geisteswissenschaft mitzuteilen. Es war die Zeit so, daß sie eine Ruhepause war für den weitaus größten Teil der Menschheit. Nichts Neues wurde gefunden; sondern das, was alte Urkunden und alte Überlieferungen enthielten, wurde immer wieder und wieder aufgenommen. Das war so richtig für jene Epoche; denn eine jede Epoche erfordert das Charakteristische für ihre ureigensten Bedürfnisse. Wir haben einmal eine solche Zwischenzeit; und wir müssen uns klar sein, daß die Menschen in dieser Zwischenzeit in einer anderen Lage waren als vorher und nachher; daß sie sich in dieser Zwischenzeit in einem gewissen Sinne abgewöhnten, überhaupt hinzuschauen auf die verborgenen Kräfte in der Menschenseele, die durch ihre Entwickelung zum Anschauen der geistigen Welt führen können. Daher kam es, daß eine Zeit heranrückte, wo der Mensch sozusagen den Glauben und das Verständnis dafür verloren hatte, daß es eine solche innere Entwickelung verborgener Kräfte zur übersinnlichen Erkenntnis gibt. Zwar eines konnte niemals geleugnet werden: daß im Menschen selber etwas ist, was sich nicht sinnlich anschauen läßt. Denn welches unbefangene Denken möchte wohl sagen, daß zum Beispiel der menschliche Verstand selber etwas sei, was der Mensch schon mit einem äußeren Auge gesehen habe? Welches unbefangene Denken müßte nicht wenigstens das zugeben, daß die menschlichen Erkenntniskräfte selber übersinnlicher Natur sind?
Das ist sozusagen als Erkenntnis auch niemals _geschwunden; auch in der Zeit nicht, in welcher sich die Menschen gewissermaßen abgewöhnt hatten, zu glauben, daß sich die übersinnlichen Seelenkräfte bis zu der übersinnlichen Anschauung hinaufentwickeln können. Derjenige Denker, der das Hinaufschauen in die übersinnliche Welt gewissermaßen auf ein kleinstes Maß heruntergebracht hat, der da sagt: Es gibt keine Möglichkeit für den Menschen, durch irgendeine übersinnliche Anschauung hinaufzudringen in eine Welt, die uns entgegentritt als eine geistige, wie uns Tiere, Pflanzen und Mineralien und der äußere physische Mensch in der Sinnenwelt entgegentreten — dieser Denker, der aber aus seinem unbefangenen Denken heraus durchaus anerkennen mußte, daß es ein Übersinnliches gibt, das niemals geleugnet werden kann -, dieser Denker, der dadurch wie an einem letzten Punkt einer vorzeitigen Entwikkelung steht, ist Kant. Kant ist der Denker, der dadurch in einer gewissen Weise einen alten Entwickelungsgang der Menschheit bis zu einem letzten Abschluß gebracht hat. Denn was denkt Kant über das Verhältnis des Menschen zu einer übersinnlichen geistigen Welt? Er leugnet nicht, daß der Mensch Übersinnliches erblickt, wenn er in sich selber schaut; daß er dazu Erkenntniskräfte anwenden muß, die man nicht mit sinnlichen Augen wahrnehmen kann, und wenn man noch so raffiniert die sinnlichen Instrumente verstärkt. So weist Kant hin auf ein Gebiet der übersinnlichen Welt: das sind die menschlichen Erkenntniskräfte selbst, was die Seele braucht, wenn sie sich ein Spiegelbild der äußeren Welt entwerfen will. Nun aber ist er dazu gekommen zu sagen, das sei auch das einzige, was der Mensch über eine übersinnliche Welt wissen kann; der Mensch könne von der übersinnlichen Welt nur jenes Stück erkennen, das aus den Mitteln besteht, sich eine Anschauung über die Sinneswelt zu verschaffen. Kants Meinung ist: Wohin auch der Mensch seine Anschauung richten mag, er erblickt nur eines, was er als ein Übersinnliches bezeichnen kann: was seine eigenen Sinne Übersinnliches enthalten, um die Tatsache eines Sinnlichen wahrzunehmen, zu begreifen, zu verstehen.
So also gibt es im Sinne der Kantischen Weltauffassung keinen Weg, der die geistige Welt zur Anschauung, zum Erlebnis bringt, sondern nur die Möglichkeit, einzusehen, daß die äußere Sinneswelt nicht erkannt werden kann mit sinnlichen Mitteln, sondern nur mit übersinnlichen Mitteln. Das ist das einzige Erlebnis, das der Mensch haben kann aus der übersinnlichen Welt; sonst aber ist kein Zugang zu der geistigen Welt, keine Anschauung, kein Erlebnis! Das ist das Weltgeschichtliche, um was es sich bei Kant handelt. Nicht zu leugnen ist aber im Sinne Kants, daß der Mensch, wenn er nachdenkt über das, was mit seinem Handeln, seinem Wirken und Tun zusammenhängt, auch wiederum Mittel findet, um auf die sinnliche Welt zu wirken. Auch Kant mußte sich sagen: Der Mensch folgt nicht so wie die untergeordneten Wesen bloß instinktiven Antrieben, wenn er dieses oder jenes unternimmt, sondern er folgt auch Antrieben, die bloß in seiner Seele sind, die ihn hoch erheben können über das, was bloßer äußerer Antrieb ist. Wie könnte denn auch ein unbefangenes Denken solche Antriebe zum äußeren Handeln leugnen? Man braucht ja nur den Blick hinzuwenden auf einen Menschen, welcher diese oder jene noch so reizvollen Antriebe aus der Welt erhalten würde, um dieses oder jenes zu tun; der diesen Reizen und Lockungen aber nicht folgt; sondern der sich für sein Handeln zur Richtschnur nimmt, was er nicht aus den äußeren Anreizungen empfangen kann. Braucht man nicht nur hinzuweisen auf die großen Märtyrer des Lebens, die geblutet haben, die alles, was für sie in der Sinneswelt da ist, hingegeben haben für etwas, was sie über die Sinneswelt hinausführen sollte? Man braucht nur auf das Erlebnis in der menschlichen Seele — auch im Sinne von Kant - hinzuweisen, auf das menschliche Gewissen, das gegenüber dem, was noch so reizvoll und lockend an den Menschen herantritt, ihm sagen kann: Folge nicht dem, was da reizt und lockt, folge dem, was aus geistigen Untergründen heraus wie eine unbezwingliche Stimme in deiner Seele spricht! Und so war es denn auch für Kant sicher, daß es eine solche Stimme im Innern des Menschen gibt, die etwas spricht, was nicht zu vergleichen ist mit dem, was Aussage der äußeren Sinneswelt ist. Kant faßt das in die bedeutungsvollen Worte zusammen, die er den «kategorischen Imperativ» nennt. Nun sagt er aber, weiter komme der Mensch nicht als bis zu diesem Mittel seiner Seelenwelt, aus einem Übersinnlichen heraus in der sinnlichen Welt zu handeln; denn der Mensch könne nicht heraus aus der Sinneswelt. Er fühlt, daß Pflicht, kategorischer Imperativ, Gewissen aus ihm sprechen; aber er kann nicht hineindringen in die Welt, aus der Gewissen, Pflicht, kategorischer Imperativ herausströmen. Nur wiederum bis an die Grenze der übersinnlichen Welt gestattet sozusagen das Kantische Denken, daß der Mensch komme. Alles übrige, was in diesen Reichen selber liegt, woraus Gewissen, Pflicht und kategorischer Imperativ sprechen, und was mit der Natur unserer Seele übersinnlich gleichartig ist, das alles entzieht sich der Beobachtung im Sinne Kants. Da kann der Mensch nicht hinein; da kann er nur Rückschlüsse machen. Er kann sich sagen: Die Pflicht spricht; aber ich bin ein schwacher Mensch; in der gewöhnlichen Welt kann ich nicht ausführen, was in ihrem ganzen Umfange Gewissen und Pflicht mir befehlen. Also muß ich annehmen, daß sich mein Dasein nicht in dieser sinnlichen Welt erschöpft, sondern daß es eine Bedeutung hat über die sinnliche Welt hinaus. Ich kann mir das als einen Glauben vorhalten, aber ich kann unmöglich hineindringen in diese Welt; ich kann überhaupt nicht hinein in diese Welt, aus welcher sprechen sittliches Bewußtsein, kategorischer Imperativ, Gewissen, Pflicht und so weiter!
Nun steht eine andere Persönlichkeit in dieser Beziehung diametral gegenüber dem, was Kant ausgesprochen hat aus den Gesichtspunkten heraus, welche eben angeführt worden sind. Und diese Persönlichkeit ist keine andere als wiederum der Dichter-Denker Goethe. Wer wirklich die Seelen beider Männer miteinander vergleichen kann, der weiß, wie sie sich diametral gerade in bezug auf die wichtigsten Erkenntnisfragen gegenüberstehen. Als Goethe das in sich aufgenommen hatte, was Kant gerade darüber bemerkt, da sagte er aus seiner inneren Seelenerfahrung heraus: Kant behauptet, daß man zwar Rückschlüsse tun kann über einen Weg in die geistige Welt hinein, daß man aber keine Erlebnisse haben kann. Kant behauptet, daß es nur eine verstandesmäßige, begriffliche Urteilskraft gäbe, nicht aber eine anschauliche Urteilskraft, die Erlebnisse habe in der geistigen Welt. Kant behauptet das. Wer aber wie ich, sagt Goethe, indem er dabei seine ganze Persönlichkeit einsetzt, rastlos sich durchgerungen hat, um sich hinaufzuarbeiten durch die Sinneswelt bis in eine übersinnliche Welt hinauf, der weiß, daß man nicht nur Rückschlüsse machen kann, sondern durch eine anschauende Urteilskraft sich in diese geistige Welt wirklich erheben kann! — Das war Goethes persönlich gehaltener Einwand gegen Kant. Und Goethe betont noch besonders, daß es ein Abenteuer der Vernunft sei, wenn jemand behaupten wollte, es gäbe eine solche anschauende Urteilskraft; aber er sagt, daß er aus seiner Erfahrung heraus das Abenteuer der Vernunft mutig bestanden habe!
Nichts anderes aber ist das innere Prinzip, der innere Nerv dessen, was man wahre Geisteswissenschaft nennt, als die Erkenntnis dessen, was Goethe die «anschauende Urteilskraft» nennt, wovon er weiß, daß es hineinführt in eine geistige Welt, daß es entwickelt werden kann, immer höher und höher hinaufgesteigert werden und dann zu einer unmittelbaren Anschauung, zu einem Erlebnis in der geistigen Welt führen kann. Was eine solche gesteigerte Anschauung den Menschen, welche sie suchen, bringen kann, das ist der Inhalt der wahren Geisteswissenschaft. Das soll uns in den kommenden Vorträgen beschäftigen: Ergebnisse einer solchen Wissenschaft, die zu ihren Quellen hat die entwickelten verborgenen Fähigkeiten der Menschenseele, durch die der Mensch hineinschaut in eine geistige Welt, wie ihm durch die äußeren Sinneswerkzeuge hineinzuschauen gestattet ist in die Welt der Chemie, der Physik und so weiter.
Nun kann man aber die Frage aufwerfen: Gibt es nur heute diese Möglichkeit, verborgene, in der Seele schlummernde Erkenntnisfähigkeiten zu entwickeln, oder hat es diese Möglichkeit zu allen Zeiten gegeben?
Ein Blick, der eben im geisteswissenschaftlichen Sinne hinschweift über das, was in der menschlichen Geschichte geschehen ist, lehrt uns nun, daß es uralte Weisheitsschätze gegeben hat, die sich zum Teil zusammengedrängt haben in dem, was dann in dem charakterisierten mittleren Zeitraum in Schriften, in Überlieferungen der Menschheit geblieben war. Weiter lehrt uns diese Geisteswissenschaft, daß es heute wiederum möglich ist, der Menschheit nicht nur das Alte zu verkünden, sondern über dasjenige zu sprechen, was die menschliche Seele heute selber vermag durch Entwickelung der in ihr schlummernden Fähigkeiten und Kräfte, so daß die gesunde Urteilskraft - auch wenn der Mensch nicht selber in die übersinnliche Welt hineinzuschauen vermag — die Mitteilungen der Geistesforscher verstehen kann. Was Goethe zunächst damals, als er jenen Ausspruch gegen Kant tat, mit «anschauender Urteilskraft» im Auge hatte, das ist in gewisser Beziehung der Anfang des heute keineswegs unbekannten Erkenntnisweges nach aufwärts. Die Geisteswissenschaft wird, wie wir sehen werden, in die Lage versetzt, hinzuweisen darauf, daß es verborgene Erkenntniskräfte gibt, welche in verschiedenen Stufen hinaufgehen und dadurch immer mehr und mehr hineindringen in die geistige Welt.
Wenn wir von Erkenntnis sprechen, so sprechen wir zunächst von der Erkenntnis der gewöhnlichen Welt, der «gegenständlichen Erkenntnis»; wir sprechen dann von der «imaginativen Erkenntnis» — wobei aber der Ausdruck «imaginativ» als ein «terminus technicus» gebraucht ist, ebenso wie die andern -; wir sprechen von der «inspirierten» Erkenntnis und endlich von der wahren «intuitiven» Erkenntnis. Das sind Entwickelungsstufen, die die Seele durchmacht bei ihrem Weg in die übersinnliche Welt hinauf. Das sind aber auch Entwickelungsstufen, die im Sinne der heutigen Seelenverfassung der eigentliche Geistesforscher durchmacht. Ähnliche Wege haben auch die alten Geistesforscher durchgemacht. Aber Geistesforschung hat als solche keinen Sinn, wenn sie nur das Besitztum einiger Weniger sein sollte. Geistesforschung ist ja nicht etwas, was sich nur richten kann an kleine Kreise. Gewiß, was der wissenschaftliche Forscher zu sagen hat über die Natur der Pflanze, was er zu sagen hat über gewisse Vorgänge in der tierischen Welt, davon kann jemand sagen: Diese Wissenschaft kann der Menschheit dienen, auch wenn sie das Besitztum kleiner Kreise, der Botaniker, der Zoologen und so weiter ist. — Das ist bei der Geistesforschung nicht der Fall. Geistesforschung hat es zu tun mit solchen Dingen, die für jede Menschenseele Lebensbedürfnis sind; sie hat es zu tun mit Fragen, die zusammenhängen mit des Menschen gerechtfertigten innersten Seelenfreuden und Seelenleiden; mit solchen Dingen, durch deren Wissen der Mensch imstande ist, sein Schicksal zu ertragen, so zu ertragen, daß er es mit innerer Befriedigung und innerer Beseligung erlebt, auch wenn es leidvoll und schmerzvoll ist. Fragen, ohne deren Beantwortung der Mensch verödet und leer würde in seinem Innern, das sind die Fragen der Geisteswissenschaft. Fragen der Geisteswissenschaft sind nicht solche, die da nur für engste Kreise beantwortet werden können, sondern die jede menschliche Seele, auf welcher Entwickelungs- und Bildungsstufe sie auch stehe, interessieren müssen, weil deren Beantwortung geistiges Lebensbrot ist für eine jegliche Seele. So aber war es immer, zu allen Zeiten. Wenn Geisteswissenschaft so zur Menschheit sprechen will, dann muß sie die Mittel und Wege finden, um verstanden zu werden; sie muß verstanden werden können von denjenigen, die sie verstehen wollen; das heißt, sie muß sich richten an diejenigen Kräfte, welche gerade zu einem gewissen Zeitalter in der Menschenseele ausgebildet sind, um den Mitteilungen des Geistesforschers einen Widerhall zu geben. Da sich das Menschengeschlecht ändert von Epoche zu Epoche und immer neue Seelenbeschaffenheiten auftreten, so ist es natürlich, daß Geisteswissenschaft einstmals über die brennendsten Seelentragen anders urteilen mußte als heute. Im grauen Altertum mußte zu einer Menschheit gesprochen werden, die nicht verstanden hätte, wenn so gesprochen worden wäre wie heute; denn die Seelenkräfte, welche heute entwickelt sind, waren im grauen Altertum nicht vorhanden. Man hätte zu den Menschen gesprochen, wie wenn man etwa zu Pflanzen spräche, wenn man so gesprochen hätte, wie heute der Geistesforscher sprechen muß. Daher mußte in alten Zeiten der Geistesforscher sich anderer Mittel bedienen, als das heute der Fall ist. Und wenn wir zurückblicken auf graue Vorzeiten, so lehrt uns die Geisteswissenschaft selber: um Antwort geben zu können in der Art und Weise, wie es die Menschheit der grauen Vorzeit nach ihren damaligen Seelenkräften brauchte, mußte auch derjenige, der sich für das Hineinblicken in die geistige Welt vorbereitete, früher sich anders dazu vorbereiten; er mußte selber in seiner Seele andere Kräfte entwickeln, als sie der Geistesforscher heute entwickeln muß, um in solchen Formen zu sprechen, wie es für die heutige Menschheit nötig ist.
Diejenigen, welche diese in der Seele schlummernden Kräfte entwickeln, um hineinschauen zu können in die geistige Welt und dort geistige Wesenheiten zu sehen, wie man in der physischen Welt Steine, Pflanzen und Tiere sieht, nennt man heute in der Geisteswissenschaft und hat sie immer genannt «Eingeweihte» oder «Initiierte»; und man spricht von demjenigen, was die Seele durchzumachen hat, um zum Hineinschauen in die geistige Welt zu kommen, von «Einweihung» oder «Initiation». Der Weg aber zu dieser Einweihung war anders in alten Zeiten; und er ist anders in unseren neueren Zeiten, weil die Mission der Geisteswissenschaft immer eine verschiedene ist. Die alte Initiation, welche diejenigen durchzumachen hatten, die zu den Menschen der Vorzeit zu sprechen hatten, führte diese Menschen auch hinauf zum unmittelbaren Erleben der geistigen Welt; sie konnten hineinschauen in Reiche um den Menschen herum, die höher sind als das, was die Sinne um uns herum schauen können. Aber diese Menschen schauten auf eine solche Art hinein, daß sie ihre Anschauung umwandelten, so daß das Geschaute dann von den Menschen in einem Symbolum, in einem Sinnbild verstanden werden konnte. Sinnbildlich konnten die alten Eingeweihten nur ausdrücken, was sie erschauten. Solche Sinnbilder erstreckten sich auf den ganzen Umfang dessen, was den Menschen interessiert an der Welt. Und solche Sinnbilder aus einer wirklichen Welterfahrung sind uns erhalten in den Mythen und Sagen, die aus den verschiedensten Zeiten von den verschiedensten Völkern vorhanden sind. Solche Mythen und Sagen sind nur für den grünen Tisch der Gelehrsamkeit — nicht für wahre Forschung — etwas, was aus der «Volksphantasie» entsprungen ist. Für denjenigen, der die Tatsachen kennt, sind Mythen und Sagen herausgeschöpft aus den Anschauungen der Geistesforscher, und in einer jeglichen wirklichen Mythe und Sage haben wir zu sehen ein äußeres Bild für etwas, was der Geistesforscher in seiner geistigen Anschauung erlebt hat; oder mit einem Wort Goethes: Was er mit Geistesaugen gesehen, mit Geistesohren gehört hat. Dann erst werden uns Sagen und Mythen begreiflich, wenn wir sie auffassen als Sinnbilder für eine wirkliche Erkenntnis der geistigen Welt.
Es sind das zunächst diejenigen Sinnbilder, durch die man zu dem weitesten Umkreis des Volkes sprach. Denn was sich heute der Mensch einbildet, daß die Menschenseele immer so gewesen wäre, wie sie gerade in diesem Jahrhundert ist, das ist nicht der Fall. Die Menschenseele hat sich geändert; ihre ganze Empfänglichkeit war früher eine andere. Die Menschenseele war befriedigt, wenn sie dieses Bild, das im Mythos gegeben war, empfing; denn dadurch wurde die Seele angeregt, dasjenige, was sie außen sah, in einer viel unmittelbareren Anschauung vor sich zu haben. Heute ist die Mythe eine Phantasie. Wenn aber früher der Mythos sich in die Menschenseele hineinsenkte, stand vor der Menschenseele das, was die Geheimnisse der menschlichen Natur sind. Und wenn die Seele auf die Wolken, auf die Sonne und so weiter sah, so geschah das in der Weise, daß sich für sie notwendig ein Verständnis dessen ergab, was sie vor Augen hatte, wenn sie den Mythos hatte. Für eine kleinere Anzahl wurde dann das, was man höheres Wissen nennen könnte, in den Symbolen gegeben. Während man heute geradeaus redet und reden muß, konnte man dasjenige, was die Seele des alten Weisen oder Eingeweihten erlebte, nicht ausdrücken in unseren Seelenkräften; denn die hatte weder der Eingeweihte, noch hatte sie sein Zuhörer. Diese Kräfte wurden erst entwickelt. Man konnte sich nur ausdrücken, wenn man sich der Sinnbilder bediente. Diese Sinnbilder sind in einer Literatur erhalten, welche dem Menschen heute höchst merkwürdig vorkommt. Heute wird der Mensch Gelegenheit haben, insbesondere wenn neben dem Erkenntnisdrang auch die Neugierde erweckt ist für solche Sachen, da oder dort manches alte Buch - ich hätte bald gesagt: manchen alten Schmöker — vor Augen zu bekommen, wo sich wunderbare Bilder befinden, welche symbolisch zum Beispiel den Zusammenhang der Planeten ausdrücken; wo irgendwelche geometrische Figuren sind, Dreiecke, Vierecke und so weiter. Wer mit den heute entwickelten Erkenntniskräften an diese Bilder herantritt, der wird, wenn er nicht gerade seine Seele in dieser Richtung entwickelt hat, daß er Geschmack daran findet, aus unserer heutigen Bildung heraus sagen: Was kann man mit all diesem Zeug anfangen? Was kann man anfangen mit dem, was uns da als sogenannter «salomonischer Schlüssel» als symbolische Figur überliefert ist, mit diesen Dreiecken, Vierecken und so weiter?
Gewiß, auch der Geistesforscher wird Ihnen sagen: für den heutigen Menschen ist vom Standpunkte der heutigen Bildung aus zunächst nichts damit anzufangen. Dazumal aber, als diese Bilder den Schülern überliefert worden sind, da wurde dadurch wirklich in den Seelen etwas erweckt. Heute ist die Menschenseele anders. In der Zeit, wo die Menschenseele sich entwickeln muß, um auf die Fragen der Natur und des Lebens in der heutigen Weise zu antworten, da kann der Seele nicht aufgehen der innere Trieb, derartiges so anzuschauen, wie man es zum Beispiel tat bei den zwei ineinander verschlungenen Dreiecken, das eine mit der Spitze nach oben, das andere mit der Spitze nach unten. Wenn dieses Bild früher einem Menschen vor die Augen trat, da regte und rührte sich beim Anschauen etwas in seiner Seele; da sah die Seele in etwas hinein. So wie heute das Auge durch das Mikroskop etwas sieht, wie zum Beispiel die Pflanzenzellen, was es ohne das Mikroskop nicht sehen kann, so dienten als Werkzeuge für die Seele diese symbolischen Figuren. Da sah man, wenn man den sogenannten salomonischen Schlüssel in der Seele als Vorstellung hatte, in die geistige Welt hinein, wie man eben mit der bloßen Seele nicht in die geistige Welt hineinsieht. So ist aber die Seele heute nicht mehr. Daher kann auch, was in solchen alten Schriften aus den Geheimnissen der geistigen Welt überliefert worden ist, nicht mehr in demselben Maße «Wissenschaft» sein; und diejenigen, welche es heute als Wissenschaft ausgeben oder noch im 19. Jahrhundert als Wissenschaft ausgegeben haben, die tun etwas, was nicht mehr sachgemäß ist. Das ist auch der Grund, warum Sie mit solchen Schriften, wie es zum Beispiel diejenigen von Eliphas Levy sind, vom Standpunkte der heutigen Bildung aus nichts mehr werden anfangen können. Es ist eben für unsere Zeit etwas Antiquiertes, wenn solche Symbole heute gegeben werden, die die geistige Welt erklären sollen. Aber es war in früheren Zeiten die Art und Weise der Geisteswissenschaft, entweder in den gewaltigen Bildern der Mythen und Sagen, oder aber in solchen Symbolen zur menschlichen Seele zu sprechen.
Dann kam die Zeit, wo anders zu der menschlichen Seele gesprochen werden mußte. Das war jene Zwischenzeit, wo sich die Erkenntnisse der geistigen Welt in schriftlicher oder mündlicher Überlieferung von den Vorfahren auf die Nachkommen verpflanzten. Wir können, auch wenn wir nur das äußere Leben studieren, handgreiflich hinweisen, wie sich das fortpflanzte. Es gab zum Beispiel eine gewisse Sekte im nördlichen Afrika zur Zeit der Entstehung des Christentums; man nennt sie die «Therapeuten». Von dieser Sekte sagt ein Mann, der in ihre Erkenntnisse eingeweiht war, daß sie alte Urkunden hatten, die herrührten von ihren Begründern, die selber noch in die geistige Welt hineinschauen konnten; was ihre Nachfolger eben nur lesen konnten in den Schriften, die sie ihnen hinterlassen hatten; oder was höchstens diejenigen sehen konnten, die sich durch ihre Seelenanlage hinaufentwickelt hatten in die geistige Welt. Das ist für eine alte Zeit gesagt. Wir können aber hineingehen in das Mittelalter und finden da, wie gewisse bedeutende Geister betonen: Wir haben gewisse Erkenntniskräfte, wir haben einen menschlichen Verstand, dann andere Erkenntniskräfte, welche hinaufreichen, um gewisse Geheimnisse des Daseins zu begreifen. Aber es gibt Geheimnisse, Mysterien des Daseins, die müssen geoffenbart sein; die können wir nicht sehen, wenn wir unsere Erkenntniskräfte entfalten, die können wir nur suchen in den Schriften!
So entstand der große Zwiespalt bei den Geistern des Mittelalters zwischen dem, was man durch den Verstand wissen kann, und dem, was man glauben muß, weil es überliefert, geoffenbart ist. Und scharf wird — ganz im Sinne der damaligen Zeit — die Grenze zwischen beidem hingestellt. Gewiß, für die damalige Zeit war das berechtigt; denn in der Art waren die Seelenkräfte nicht mehr, daß man gewisse mathematische Zeichen hätte sinnbildlich anwenden und dadurch Erkenntnisse hervorrufen können in der Seele. Diese Zeit war vorbei. Bis hinein in die neuere Zeit gab es für die Seele nur eines für das Erfassen des Übersinnlichen: den Blick hinwenden auf das eigene Innere; was zum Beispiel ein Augustinus teilweise getan hat.
So also hatte der Mensch die Möglichkeit verloren, in der äußeren Welt etwas zu sehen, was ihm tiefere innere Geheimnisse verriet. Er konnte in den Symbolen nichts anderes mehr sehen als Phantasiegebilde. Nur das eine gab es noch, daß man ihm die übersinnliche Welt so hinstellte, daß sie dem entsprach, was in ihm selber übersinnlich war; daß man ihm sagte: Du hast ein Denken; dieses Denken ist in Raum und Zeit begrenzt; aber in der geistigen Welt ist ein Wesen, das ein AllDenken ist. Du hast eine begrenzte Liebe, aber in der geistigen Welt ist ein Wesen, das eine All-Liebe ist! Wenn man dem Menschen die geistige Welt veranschaulichte an dem, was er selber im Innern erlebte, dann erweiterte sich sein Inneres zu dem Anschauen der göttlich durchlebten Natur; dann hatte er ein Gottesbewußtsein. Aber über die Einzelheiten konnte er sich nur Auskünfte holen aus den alten Schriften; denn er hatte nichts mehr, was ihn selbst in die geistige Welt hineinführen konnte.
Nun kamen die neueren Zeiten, welche gerade den Stolz der Naturwissenschaft gebracht haben. Das sind die Zeiten, wo nicht etwa bloß bei denjenigen, welche die naturwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse erlangen konnten, sondern wo bei allen Menschen Fähigkeiten hervorgerufen wurden, die über das Sinnliche hinaus zunächst ein Verständnis entwickeln konnten. Da entwickelte sich das, was in der menschlichen Seele verstehen kann, daß nicht das Sinnenbild das Richtige ist, sondern was als Erkenntniskraft einsehen kann, daß die Wahrheit dem Sinnenschein widerspricht. Was sich so in der Seele heranentwickelt hat, daß es die äußere Natur so anschauen kann, wie sie sich nicht in der Sinnenwelt darstellt, das werden immer mehr diejenigen verstehen lernen, welche heute als Geistesforscher in die geistige Welt hinaufdringen, und die dann erzählen, daß man da ebenso eine geistige Weit und geistige Wesenheiten sieht, wie man hier die sinnliche Welt mit Tieren, Pflanzen und Mineralien sieht.
So muß der Geistesforscher sprechen für diejenigen Gebiete, welche dem heutigen Verständnis naheliegen. Und wir werden sehen, wie die Symbole, während sie früher Mittel waren zu einer Erkenntnis der geistigen Welt, heute Mittel geworden sind für eine geistige Entwickelung. Während zum Beispiel der «salomonische Schlüssel» früher in der Seele hervorgerufen hatte eine wirkliche geistige Erkenntnis, tut er das heute nicht mehr. Wenn aber die Seele auf sich wirken läßt, was ihr der Geistesforscher klarmachen kann, dann fängt in der Seele sich etwas zu regen an, was sich allmählich hinaufentwickeln kann in die geistige Welt, und wenn es in der geistigen Welt Schauungen hat, kann es zu den Menschen heute so sprechen, daß es das Geschaute in derselben Logik ausdrücken kann, welche auch die Logik für die äußere Wissenschaft ist. Daher muß die heutige Geisteswissenschaft oder Geheimwissenschaft so sprechen, daß sie ein jeder einsehen kann, der nur seinen Verstand umfassend genug anwendet. Was der Geistesforscher heute mitzuteilen hat, das muß er kleiden in die Begriffsformen, welche heute auch in der andern Wissenschaft üblich sind; denn sonst würde er nicht demjenigen Rechnung tragen, was heutige Zeitbedürfnisse sind. Hineinschauen kann so nicht gleich jeder in die geistige Welt; aber weil die entsprechenden Verstandes- und Gemütskräfte in jeder Seele ausgebildet sind, so ist die Geisteswissenschaft, wenn sie richtig gebracht wird, etwas, was jeder heute mit seiner gewöhnlichen Vernunft begreifen kann. Der Geistesforscher ist heute wieder in der Lage, etwas hinzustellen, wovon unser einsamer Denker sich gesagt hat: «Der Mensch ist seinem Wesen nach ein Ebenbild der Gottheit.» Wollen wir den Menschen physisch begreifen, so schauen wir hin auf das, was der Mensch physisch erforschen kann. Wollen wir begreifen, was der Mensch innerlich, geistig ist, dann weisen wir auf eine Welt, die der Geistesforscher geistig erforschen kann. Da zeigt sich, daß der Mensch nicht nur etwas ist, was mit der Geburt oder der Empfängnis ins Dasein tritt, und was mit dem Tode wieder hinausgeht; sondern es zeigt sich, daß der Mensch außer seinem physischen Teil übersinnliche Glieder hat. Erkennt man die Natur dieser übersinnlichen Glieder, so dringt man ein in das Reich, wo nicht nur Glauben, sondern Wissen ist. Und wenn Kant an der Abendröte einer alten Zeit gesagt hat: Den kategorischen Imperativ können wir erkennen; durch eine Anschauung hineindringen in das Reich von Freiheit, göttlichem Dasein und Unsterblichkeit kann kein Mensch -, so hat er damit nur die Erfahrung seiner Zeit zum Ausdruck gebracht. Eine Geisteswissenschaft wird zeigen, daß es möglich ist, in eine geistige Welt einzudringen. Sie wird zeigen: Ebenso wie das mit dem Mikroskop bewaffnete Auge in eine Welt eindringen kann, welche dem unbewaffneten Auge nicht zugänglich ist, ebenso kann die mit den Mitteln der Geisteswissenschaft ausgerüstete Seele eindringen in eine der unbewaffneten Seele verschlossene geistige Welt, in der Liebe, Gewissen, Freiheit und Unsterblichkeit erkannt werden können, wie in der äußeren physischen Welt Tiere, Pflanzen und Mineralien erkannt werden können. — Das kann als etwas mitgeteilt werden, was in den nächsten Vorträgen weiter ausgeführt werden soll.
Wenn wir nun die Beziehungen des Geistesforschers zu seinem Publikum betrachten und dabei noch einmal den Blick richten auf die Geisteswissenschaft in der alten Zeit und in der neueren Zeit, so können wir sagen: Die Sinnbilder, die der Geistesforscher der alten Zeit zu verwenden hatte, wirkten unmittelbar auf die menschliche Seele. Was wir heute die Verstandes- und Vernunftkräfte nennen, war noch nicht vorhanden. Die Bilder wirkten unmittelbar, und man sah dadurch hinein in eine geistige Welt, so daß der Geistesforscher der alten Zeiten den Menschen nicht so gegenüberstand, daß sie durch ihre Vernunft hätten prüfen können, was er ihnen durch diese Sinnbilder überlieferte. Man kann sagen: es wirkten diese Sinnbilder wie suggestiv, wie eine Eingebung; man war von ihnen hingenommen, hingezwungen; man vermochte nichts dagegen. Wem daher ein solches Bild gegeben wurde, der war, wenn es nicht richtig war, in jenen alten Zeiten geradezu ausgeliefert an diejenigen, welche ihm dieses Bild als ein falsches gaben; denn es wirkte unmittelbar! Daher war es in den alten Zeiten außerordentlich bedeutungsvoll, daß diejenigen, welche hinaufstiegen in die geistige Welt, den festen Glauben, das absoluteste Vertrauen erwecken konnten, daß sie zuverlässig waren; und wenn sie das mißbrauchten, was sie vermochten, dann war eine Macht in ihren Händen, die sie in der schlimmsten Weise ausbeuten konnten. Deshalb gibt es in der Geisteswissenschaft neben den Glanzzeiten auch Zeiten des Verfalls; Zeiten, in denen mißbraucht wurde die Kraft und Macht der Eingeweihten, die nicht zuverlässig waren. So hing es in einem hohen Grade in den alten Zeiten bloß von dem Eingeweihten ab, wie er sich zu seinem Publikum verhielt. Das ist nun in der Gegenwart - man könnte sagen: Gott sei Dank! — etwas anders geworden. Es ändert sich nicht alles auf einmal. Daher ist es auch heute noch notwendig, daß der Eingeweihte ein zuverlässiger Mensch ist; und ist er das, dann ist es gerechtfertigt, daß man ihm wirkliches Vertrauen entgegenbringt. Aber in einer gewissen Beziehung ist der heutige Mensch doch schon in einem anderen Verhältnis zum Geistesforscher als früher. Denn heute muß der Geistesforscher so sprechen, wenn er im Sinne seiner Zeit spricht, daß jeder unbefangene Verstand, der einsehen will, auch einsehen kann. Das ist natürlich noch weit davon entfernt, daß nun ein jeder auch einsehen müßte, der einsehen könnte. Aber die Vernunft kann heute Richterin sein über das, was man einsehen kann, und daher soll derjenige, der sich der Geisteswissenschaft ergibt, seine unbefangen wirkende Vernunft überall anwenden.
Das wird die Mission der Geisteswissenschaft von heute sein: durch die Entwickelung der verborgenen Kräfte hinaufzusteigen in eine geistige Welt, wie die moderne Physiologie durch das Mikroskop hinuntersteigt in eine Welt der kleinsten Lebewesen, die das unbewaffnete Auge nicht sieht. Und die allgemeine Vernunft wird die Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung prüfen können, wie sie die Ergebnisse des Physiologen, des Botanikers und so weiter prüfen kann. Denn die gesund wirkende Vernunft wird sich sagen können: Es stimmt das alles überein! Der heutige Mensch wird dazu kommen, zu sagen: Meine Vernunft sagt mir, daß es so sein kann; es kann einem einleuchten, wenn man sich seiner Vernunft bedient, was der Geistesforscher zu sagen hat. Und so soll der Geistesforscher sprechen, wenn er sich wirklich fühlt als innerhalb der Mission der Geisteswissenschaft in der Gegenwart stehend. Aber es wird auch heute eine Übergangszeit geben. Denn es könnten dadurch, daß die Mittel zur geistigen Entwickelung da oder dort vorliegen, und die Menschen sie auch unrichtig anwenden können, manche Leute sich hinaufleben in eine geistige Welt, wenn ihr Sinn nicht rein, wenn ihr Pflichtgefühl nicht heilig und ihr Gewissen nicht untrüglich ist. Dann werden sie aber durch das Hinaufdringen in eine übersinnliche Welt statt zum Geistesforscher zu einem solchen werden können, der nicht durch das eigene Erlebnis wissen kann, ob die Dinge den Tatsachen entsprechen; dann werden solche angeblichen Geistesforscher auch dementsprechende Dinge mitteilen. Und da die Menschen auf der andern Seite nur langsam und allmählich hinaufsteigen können im Gebrauch ihrer Vernunftkräfte zum Verständnisse dessen, was die Geistesforscher sagen, so wird gerade auf diesem Gebiet die Scharlatanerie, der Humbug, der Aberglaube üppige Blüten hervorbringen können. Aber der Mensch ist heute doch schon in einer anderen Lage. In gewisser Weise hat es sich heute doch schon selber zuzuschreiben, wer aus einer gewissen Neugier heraus, ohne seine Vernunft anwenden zu wollen, auf blinden Glauben hin denen, die sich als Geistesforscher ausgeben, zuläuft. Weil die Menschen eben noch zu bequem sind, die Vernunft selber anzuwenden, und sich lieber einem blinden Glauben hingeben, als selbst zu denken, deshalb ist es in unserer Zeit möglich, daß an die Stelle des alten, seine Macht mißbrauchenden Eingeweihten durch unsere Entwickelung leicht der moderne Scharlatan tritt, der bewußt oder unbewußt nicht die Wahrheit, sondern etwas von ihm selber vielleicht für wahr Gehaltenes den Menschen aufbindet. Das kann noch sein, weil wir heute am Anfange einer Entwickelung stehen.
Gegen nichts aber soll der Mensch seine gesunde Vernunft mehr aufbieten als gegen das, was ihm aus der Geisteswissenschaft heraus geboten werden kann. Man kann einen Teil der Schuld in sich selber suchen, wenn man auf Scharlatanerie und Humbug hereinfällt; denn sie werden noch weithin üppig treibende Blüten tragen — und haben sie schon getragen in unserer Zeit. Das ist auch etwas, was bei der Erwähnung der Mission der Geisteswissenschaft in unserer Zeit nicht unberücksichtigt bleiben darf.
Wer aber in unserer Zeit dem Geistesforscher zuhört und nicht mit einer willkürlichen, alles gleich in Zweifel ziehenden und abweisenden Vernunft -, sondern mit einer gesunden Vernunft alles prüft, der wird schon ein Gefühl dafür haben können, wie die Geisteswissenschaft dem Menschen Trost und Hoffnung bringen kann in schweren Stunden und Aufklärung in bezug auf die großen Rätselfragen des Daseins. Der Mensch wird heute ein Gefühl dafür erhalten können, daß die großen Rätselfragen des Daseins, die großen Schicksalsfragen gelöst werden können aus der Geisteswissenschaft; er wird wissen können, was von ihm geboren wird und stirbt, und was ewiger Wesenskern in dem Menschen ist. Kurz:es wird heute dem Menschen möglich sein - und dafür sollen die nächsten Vorträge einige, wenn auch wenige Belege bringen -, wenn er den guten Willen hat und die Kraft entfalten will durch Aufnehmen und In-sich-Verarbeiten der Mitteilungen der Geisteswissenschaft, daß er sich aus seinem innersten Gefühl heraus sagen kann:
Wahr ist es, was der junge Goethe ahnend gesagt hat, was der alte Goethe uns in jeder Zeile, die er in der Reife seines Lebens geschrieben hat, mitteilen wollte, was er seinen Faust sagen läßt, daß der Weise spricht:
Die Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen;
Dein Sinn ist zu, dein Herz ist tot!
Auf! bade, Schüler, unverdrossen
Die ird’sche Brust im Morgenrot!
Im Morgenrot des Geistes!
The Mission of Spiritual Science Then and Now
As in previous years, I will be giving a series of lectures on spiritual science this year. Those of you who have attended these lectures in past years will have no doubt about the meaning of the term “spiritual science” as used here. For those of you who have not been here in previous years, I would like to say that these lectures are not about developing some abstract science, similar to what we have in the usual teachings about the soul or in psychology. nor will it be about something that takes the standpoint that today the word spiritual science is only used to describe the various areas of cultural history, but rather about a science for which the spirit is something real, something tangible. It will be a science that starts from the point of view that human beings have access not only to the realm of sensory reality and to everything that the human intellect and other cognitive faculties can experience insofar as they are bound to sensory perception, i.e., sensory knowledge and intellectual knowledge; but rather something that takes a point of view in which not only such knowledge is available, but in which there is the possibility for human beings to go beyond the realm of sensory phenomena and make observations that are not accessible to the intellect and the realm to which the intellect is bound.
Today, in an introductory presentation, the aim is to show what role this spiritual science has in the life of contemporary human beings. And this will be illustrated by the difference between how this spiritual science, which is as ancient as human striving itself, appeared in past times and how it must appear in our time. When we speak of “our time,” we do not mean, of course, that only the most immediate present should be considered; rather, we mean what has been related to our spiritual life for a relatively long time and what is in full development in our immediate present.
It is clear from the outset to anyone who has even a slight overview of the spiritual life of humanity that one should be cautious with the term “transitional period.” If one defines the concept only to a certain extent, one can basically characterize any period as a transitional period. Nevertheless, there are times in human history when there are, so to speak, leaps in the progress of spiritual life. The people of the 16th to 19th centuries and of our own time will have to relate to the world differently in their entire soul and spiritual life than the people of earlier times. And the further back we go in human development, the more we will notice that humanity always has different longings, different needs, and that it wants to answer the questions it raises about the great mysteries of existence in ever-changing ways. Now, we can understand the nature of such transitions if we familiarize ourselves with people of such transitional periods, who in a certain sense still have within them the powers of feeling and cognition and the impulses of will inherited from earlier epochs of spiritual life, but who already feel within themselves the urge to live into a new era. We can find such historical personalities in the most diverse epochs of human development. Let us first turn to an interesting personality today to see how she raises questions about the nature of the human being and about everything that must initially interest human beings. Let us turn to a personality who, at the dawn of modern spiritual life, has the inner state of mind characterized in this way. And I do not want to choose one of the better-known figures from among the ranks of thinkers, but rather, at the starting point of these lectures, I would like to choose a thinker from the 17th century who is unknown to most people, a time when there were numerous such figures who still had the emotional habits and thinking habits of the Middle Ages, who still wanted to understand things as they had been understood centuries ago, yet who already had a glimpse of the cognitive needs of the modern era. So I would like to mention a personality about whose external life we know virtually nothing from external history. This is always something extremely pleasant for spiritual scientific observation, for anyone who likes to linger in spiritual science with an unbiased view will already have sensed how much they can be disturbed by everything that is attached to a personality from ordinary everyday life, everything that today's biographers gather from ordinary life. In this sense, we could be grateful to history for having preserved so little, for example, about Shakespeare; for this means that, as is the case today with Goethe, for example, our image of Shakespeare is not spoiled by all sorts of minor details that biographers are so fond of collecting. But I would like to mention a personality for our purpose who is even more unknown than Shakespeare, a thinker from the 17th century who is of enormous significance for those who are able to look into the history of human thought. One of the most outstanding personalities in the history of human thought stands before us in the person of Franziskus Josephus Philppus Graf von Hoditz und Wolframitz, who lived a solitary life of thought in Bohemia in the second half of the 17th century. What was most important to him, and what, if we delve into his soul, can so beautifully introduce us to what moved a soul at that time, he recorded in a small booklet — I have not researched whether it has since been printed in full — which he called “Libellus de hominis convenientia.” In it, this solitary thinker raises the great question of existence that is at the very center of all human circumstances: the question of the “nature of man.” And he says quite bluntly, with an urgent need arising from a deep sense of insight, that nothing disfigures man more than not knowing what his essence actually is.
Now this Franziskus Josephus Philippus Graf von Hoditz und Wolframitz turns to important thinkers from ancient times – to a thinker from the fourth century BC, Aristotle – and says: What can this ancient thinker tell us when the question is raised: What is the essence of man? — Our thinker then considers Aristotle's answer: “Man is a rational animal.” And then our thinker turns to a more recent thinker, Descartes, and asks: What did this thinker have to say about the question: What is the essence of man? — The answer that came to him was: “Man is a thinking being.” — Now our thinker stood there with his inquiring, searching soul and had to say to himself: These two thinkers, who represent many thinkers to me, give me no answer to the important question of the essence of man! For when the answer to the question of the essence of man is given, I demand to know what man is and what man should do. Aristotle's answer—that man is a rational animal—does not answer the question of what man is, for his answer does not reveal what the essence of rationality actually is. And even the answer given by Descartes, the 17th-century thinker, does not answer the question: “What should man do in accordance with his nature?” For even if one already knows that man is a being capable of thought, one still does not know what he should actually think in order to intervene in life in the right way, in order to really establish a connection between his thinking and life!
Thus, our thinker searched in vain for an answer to the question of existence that was so pressing for him, a question that, if man is unable to answer it, distorts his nature.
Then he came across something that will certainly strike today's people as strange, especially if they want to think in terms of today's scientific education, but which was really the only appropriate answer for that lonely personality according to his state of mind at the time. He said to himself: It is of no use to me to know that man is a rational animal or that man is a thinking being! But what I have found in another thinker, who in turn has it from an older tradition, answers my question. And with words that he had arrived at in this way, this man answered his own question: “Man is, by his very nature, the image of the deity!”
Today we would say: “Man is, in his essence, what he is in his entire origin from the spiritual world.”
What Count von Hoditz und Wolframitz goes on to say in his reflection need not concern us today. We need only be interested in the fact that, out of the needs of his soul, he had to point to an answer that went beyond everything that man can see in his environment and comprehend with his intellect. But if we examine the contents of that little book further, it becomes apparent that this personality did not have access to any communications from the spiritual world. Let us put it this way: if this personality had been preoccupied with the question of how the earth relates to the sun, then, even if he had not been a natural scientist himself, he would have found the answer somewhere within the observable world, an answer that could be given from experience since the emergence of modern natural science. So, with regard to external questions of the sensory world, this personality could have turned his gaze to something that people who had explored these questions themselves through their observations and experiences could have told him. But with regard to questions of human spiritual life, with regard to what man is insofar as he is a spirit, no such experiences of his time provided him with answers. It is quite clear that he could not find any way, so to speak, to people who had had their own experiences in the spiritual world, who could have told him about some of the characteristics of the spiritual world through their own direct experience, just as natural scientists could tell him what they knew at that time about this or that question of the outer sensory world. Therefore, this thinker turned to what was tradition, what he found in the documents given to him from religious tradition. He did, of course, process what he could obtain as tradition, and this is characteristic of his entire depth of soul; but one can see from the way he worked that he could only strain his intellect to give a new form to what had developed in the course of history or what had come down to him through tradition or scripture.
Now, many will say: Yes, but are there really such personalities, can there be such people who, based on observation, experience, and direct experience, can provide answers to questions relating to the mysteries of spiritual life?
This is precisely what spiritual science in modern times will bring back to human consciousness: that it is possible to research a spiritual world that is not accessible to the external sensory eye, to any telescope or microscope, just as it is possible to research the sensory world; and that answers can be given from direct experience to questions about the nature of such a world that lies beyond sensory experience. Then people will recognize how, although necessarily brought about by the entire course of human development, there was an epoch when what spiritual researchers had discovered in the spiritual world was brought to the public's attention by other means; and that today there is once again an epoch when it is possible to speak about the results of spiritual research and find understanding for them. In between, however, lies the period in whose twilight the time of our lonely thinker fell, when the whole of human development “rested” for a while from ascending into the spiritual world, preferring to stick to the traditions handed down through ancient documents or oral communication, and where certain circles began to harbor doubts as to whether human beings could ascend to a supersensible world through their own efforts, through the development of their hidden, dormant powers of cognition. Is there any reasonable argument from which one can say that it is nonsensical to speak of such a spiritual world, of a world that lies beyond the sensory? Such a consideration should occur to people when they contemplate the development of their sensory science itself. And it is precisely the unbiased observation of the progress that humanity has made, the wonderful progress in unraveling the outer sensory secrets of nature, that should point out to people that there must be a higher, supersensible knowledge. — How so?
Anyone who considers human development impartially will have to say to themselves: it is precisely the science that deals with the external sensory world that has developed over time. How proudly many people point out — and with quite justified pride in a certain sense — how centuries ago nothing was known about this or that which belongs to the external sensory realm, and how the great advances in natural science, which have been increasing ever since the 15th and 16th centuries, have brought us knowledge of what was previously unknown about this external sensory world. Shouldn't we actually say: The sun that rises in the morning and moves across the horizon during the day rose for people thousands of years ago just as it rises for them today. What humans could see in ancient times in the vicinity of the Earth and in connection with the Sun's orbit presented itself to their external sensory perception thousands of years ago in the same way as it presented itself in the time when Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, and so on were active. But what did humanity have to say about the external sensory world? Can we say that science, as we have it, of which our age is rightly so proud, has been achieved merely by observing the external sensory world? If the external sensory world, as it is, could provide this science, then it would not be necessary to go beyond what this external sensory world provides. Then we would have had to know the same things about this sensory world centuries ago as we know today. Why is it that we know more today, that we view the position of the sun and so on differently today? It is based on the fact that the human mind, the human powers of cognition that relate to the external sensory world, have developed; that they have become something different over the course of millennia and centuries. Oh, these human powers of cognition were not in ancient Greece what they have become since the 16th century up to our time.
Anyone who looks at this development of the human being impartially must say to themselves: Human beings have developed something that they did not have before; and they have learned to view this outer world in a different way than before, because they have developed something else in addition to the powers of cognition that relate to the outer sensory world. Therefore, it became clear to him that the sun does not move around the earth, but rather, through the development of his cognitive faculties, he was led to imagine the earth moving around the sun. So, in our time, humans have different faculties than they had in earlier times.
For those who are proud of the achievements of external science and who study progress with an open mind, there can be no doubt that human beings are capable of inner development, that they can possess not only what we see as the powers of the external world, and that from stage of development to stage of development, their powers have been transformed until human beings have become what they are today. Human beings do not only have to develop what is in their external powers; something also develops within them that enables them to resurrect the world in the new splendor of their inner abilities as knowledge. Among the most beautiful words spoken by the great poet-thinker Goethe — in his book about Winckelmann — are these: “When the healthy nature of man works as a whole, when he feels himself in the world as in a great, beautiful, dignified, and valuable whole, when harmonious comfort grants him pure, free delight, then the universe, if it could feel itself, would rejoice at having reached its goal and admire the summit of its own becoming and being.” And: “Placed at the summit of nature, man sees himself once again as a whole nature, which must once again produce a summit within itself. To this end, he elevates himself by imbuing himself with all perfections and virtues, invoking choice, order, harmony, and meaning, and finally rising to the production of the work of art.”
Thus, man may feel himself born out of the forces that he can see with his eyes and comprehend with his mind. But if he considers this impartially, in the sense that we have explained, he will have to say to himself, precisely from the point of view of external science: Not only does external nature have forces that develop until they are seen by the human eye, heard by the human ear, and understood by the human mind; but if we follow the course of human development, we find that something also develops within the human being; that his powers of cognition were at first dormant with regard to the observation of external nature, that these dormant powers were then awakened up to our own time, so that the powers of cognition that were dormant in ancient times now appear to be developed. And through these developed powers of cognition, human beings today look outwards and achieve what we call the great advances of external sensory science.
Now the question must be posed to a human being: Should there now be a necessity for that which is within the human being to remain as it is and only develop powers that reflect what can be seen from the outside? Or must there not also be other powers and abilities slumbering in the human soul that can be developed? Is it not a perfectly reasonable thought to say to oneself: One must raise the question of whether it is not possible that human beings have other hidden powers in their souls that can be awakened? Is it not possible that human beings can develop what they have within themselves not only to the point of mirroring the outer world? Could it not be that, as they develop further, what was previously hidden and dormant within them might be spiritually illuminated – what Goethe calls the “spiritual eye” and the “spiritual ear” – thereby opening up to them a spiritual world that lies beyond the sensory world?
For those who pursue this idea with an open mind, it will not seem absurd to develop hidden powers that can lead up to the supersensible world and provide the answer to the question: What is man actually? If he is an image of the spiritual world, what then is the spiritual world?
When we characterize human beings as external beings, when we bring their gestures, instincts, and so on before our soul, we will see, when we look at the external world, human gestures, instincts, and powers in an imperfect state in lower beings. And we will understand the external appearance of human beings as the sum of what we find outside, distributed among various beings, among lower beings, instincts, and so on. We can understand this because we see what we see in human beings as something from which we think human beings have developed. Should it not then be possible to see into a spiritual external world in a similar way with such developed powers? To see beings, forces, things there, like stones, plants, and animals in the sensory external world? Should it not be possible to see such spiritual processes, which shed light on everything that lives invisibly within human beings, just as it is possible to explain the sensory in relation to human beings?
But it was precisely the time that was, so to speak, an interim period between an old and a new way of communicating spiritual science. It was a time of respite for the vast majority of humanity. Nothing new was found; instead, what was contained in old documents and old traditions was taken up again and again. That was right for that epoch, for every epoch requires what is characteristic of its own specific needs. We are now in such an interim period, and we must be clear that people in this interim period were in a different situation than before and after; that in this interim period they, in a certain sense, lost the habit of looking at all at the hidden forces in the human soul that, through their development, can lead to the contemplation of the spiritual world. Hence, a time approached when human beings had, so to speak, lost the belief and understanding that such an inner development of hidden forces toward supersensible knowledge exists. One thing, however, could never be denied: that there is something in human beings that cannot be perceived by the senses. For what unbiased thinking would say, for example, that the human intellect itself is something that human beings have already seen with their outer eyes? What unbiased thinking would not at least admit that the human powers of cognition themselves are of a supersensible nature?
This insight has never disappeared, so to speak, even in the period when people had, in a sense, lost the habit of believing that the supersensible powers of the soul could develop up to the level of supersensible perception. The thinker who has reduced looking up into the supersensible world to a minimum, who says: There is no possibility for human beings to penetrate through any kind of supersensible perception into a world that confronts us as a spiritual one, as animals, plants, minerals, and the outer physical human being in the sensory world — this thinker, who, however, out of his unbiased thinking had to acknowledge that there is a supersensible world that can never be denied — this thinker, who thereby stands as if at the final point of a premature development, is Kant. Kant is the thinker who, in a certain way, has brought an old course of human development to its final conclusion. For what does Kant think about the relationship of man to a supersensible spiritual world? He does not deny that man perceives the supersensible when he looks within himself; that he must use powers of cognition that cannot be perceived with the physical eyes, no matter how sophisticated the physical instruments may be. Kant thus points to an area of the supersensible world: the human powers of cognition themselves, which the soul needs if it wants to create a mirror image of the external world. But he has now come to say that this is also the only thing that humans can know about a supersensible world; that humans can only recognize that part of the supernatural world which consists of the means of gaining an insight into the sensory world. Kant's opinion is that wherever humans may direct their gaze, they see only one thing that they can describe as supernatural: what their own senses contain that is supernatural in order to perceive, comprehend, and understand the fact of the sensory.
Thus, according to Kant's view of the world, there is no way to perceive or experience the spiritual world, but only the possibility of realizing that the external sensory world cannot be known by sensory means, but only by supersensory means. This is the only experience that humans can have of the supersensible world; otherwise, there is no access to the spiritual world, no perception, no experience! This is the world-historical aspect of Kant's philosophy. However, it cannot be denied, in Kant's view, that when humans reflect on what is connected with their actions, their work, and their deeds, they also find ways to influence the sensory world. Even Kant had to admit that humans do not merely follow instinctive drives like subordinate beings when they undertake this or that, but also follow drives that are purely in their souls, which can elevate them far above mere external drives. How could impartial thinking deny such impulses for external action? One need only look at a person who would receive this or that attractive impulse from the world to do this or that, but who does not follow these temptations and enticements; instead, he takes as his guide for his actions what he cannot receive from external stimuli. Need we only point to the great martyrs of life who have bled, who have given up everything that is there for them in the sensory world for something that would lead them beyond the sensory world? One need only point to the experience in the human soul—also in Kant's sense—to the human conscience, which, in the face of whatever is so appealing and enticing to human beings, can say to them: Do not follow what is appealing and enticing, follow what speaks from spiritual depths like an irresistible voice in your soul! And so it was certain for Kant that there is such a voice within human beings that speaks something that cannot be compared with what the external sensory world expresses. Kant summarizes this in the meaningful words he calls the “categorical imperative.” However, he goes on to say that humans cannot go beyond this means of their soul world to act in the sensory world from a supersensory realm, because humans cannot escape the sensory world. They feel that duty, categorical imperative, and conscience speak from within them, but they cannot penetrate the world from which conscience, duty, and categorical imperative flow. Kantian thinking allows humans to go only as far as the boundary of the supersensible world, so to speak. Everything else that lies within these realms themselves, from which conscience, duty, and the categorical imperative speak, and which is supersensibly similar to the nature of our soul, all of this eludes observation in Kant's sense. Man cannot enter there; he can only draw conclusions. He can say to himself: Duty speaks; but I am a weak human being; in the ordinary world I cannot carry out what conscience and duty command me in their entirety. So I must assume that my existence is not exhausted in this sensual world, but that it has a meaning beyond the sensual world. I can hold this as a belief, but I cannot possibly penetrate this world; I cannot enter this world at all, from which moral consciousness, categorical imperative, conscience, duty, and so on speak!
Now, another personality stands diametrically opposed to what Kant has said from the points of view just mentioned. And this personality is none other than the poet-thinker Goethe. Anyone who can truly compare the souls of both men knows how diametrically opposed they are to each other in relation to the most important questions of knowledge. When Goethe had absorbed what Kant had just said about this, he said from his inner soul experience: Kant claims that one can draw conclusions about a path into the spiritual world, but that one cannot have experiences. Kant claims that there is only an intellectual, conceptual power of judgment, but not a vivid power of judgment that has experiences in the spiritual world. Kant claims this. But those who, like me, says Goethe, have used their entire personality to tirelessly struggle their way up through the sensory world to a supersensible world, know that one can not only draw conclusions, but can actually rise into this spiritual world through intuitive judgment! — That was Goethe's personal objection to Kant. And Goethe emphasizes in particular that it would be an adventure of reason if someone were to claim that such intuitive power of judgment exists; but he says that, based on his experience, he has courageously survived the adventure of reason!
But the inner principle, the inner nerve of what is called true spiritual science, is nothing other than the knowledge of what Goethe calls “intuitive judgment,” which he knows leads into a spiritual world, can be developed, raised higher and higher, and then lead to direct intuition, to an experience in the spiritual world. What such heightened perception can bring to those who seek it is the content of true spiritual science. This is what we will be dealing with in the coming lectures: the results of such a science, which has its sources in the developed hidden abilities of the human soul, through which human beings can look into a spiritual world, just as they are allowed to look into the world of chemistry, physics, and so on through their external sense organs.
Now, however, the question may be raised: Is it only today that we have this opportunity to develop hidden cognitive abilities slumbering in the soul, or has this opportunity always existed?
A glance, in the spiritual-scientific sense, at what has happened in human history teaches us that there have been ancient treasures of wisdom, some of which have been condensed into what remained in writings and traditions during the period characterized as the Middle Ages. This spiritual science also teaches us that today it is once again possible not only to proclaim the old to humanity, but also to speak about what the human soul itself is capable of today through the development of the abilities and powers slumbering within it, so that healthy judgment—even if human beings themselves are not able to see into the supersensible world—can understand the communications of spiritual researchers. What Goethe initially had in mind when he made that statement against Kant, when he spoke of “intuitive power of judgment,” is in a certain sense the beginning of the path of knowledge that is by no means unknown today. Spiritual science, as we shall see, is able to point out that there are hidden powers of knowledge which ascend in various stages and thereby penetrate more and more deeply into the spiritual world.
When we speak of knowledge, we are referring first of all to knowledge of the ordinary world, “objective knowledge”; we then speak of “imaginative knowledge” — whereby the term “imaginative” is used as a technical term, just like the others —; we speak of ‘inspired’ knowledge and finally of true “intuitive” knowledge. These are stages of development that the soul goes through on its way up into the supersensible world. But these are also stages of development that the true spiritual researcher goes through in the sense of today's state of mind. The ancient spiritual researchers also went through similar paths. But spiritual research as such has no meaning if it is only to be the possession of a few. Spiritual research is not something that can be directed only at small circles. Certainly, what the scientific researcher has to say about the nature of plants, what he has to say about certain processes in the animal world, someone can say: This science can serve humanity, even if it is the property of small circles, of botanists, zoologists, and so on. This is not the case with spiritual research. Spiritual research deals with things that are essential to every human soul; it deals with questions related to the justified innermost joys and sufferings of the human soul; with things whose knowledge enables human beings to bear their fate, to bear it in such a way that they experience it with inner satisfaction and inner bliss, even if it is painful and sorrowful. Questions without answers to which human beings would become desolate and empty within themselves are the questions of spiritual science. Questions of spiritual science are not those that can only be answered for the narrowest circles, but those that must interest every human soul, whatever stage of development and education it may be at, because their answers are spiritual bread of life for every soul. This has always been the case, in all ages. If spiritual science wants to speak to humanity in this way, it must find the means and ways to be understood; it must be understandable to those who want to understand it; that is, it must address those forces that are developed in the human soul at a certain age in order to give resonance to the messages of the spiritual researcher. Since the human race changes from epoch to epoch and ever new soul qualities arise, it is natural that spiritual science once had to judge the most burning soul issues differently than it does today. In ancient times, it was necessary to speak to a humanity that would not have understood if one had spoken as one does today, for the soul forces that are developed today did not exist in ancient times. To speak to people as spiritual researchers must speak today would have been like speaking to plants. Therefore, in ancient times, spiritual researchers had to use different means than they do today. And when we look back to ancient times, spiritual science itself teaches us that in order to be able to respond in the way that humanity in ancient times needed according to its soul forces at that time, those who prepared themselves to look into the spiritual world had to prepare themselves differently in the past; they had to develop different powers in their souls than spiritual researchers need to develop today in order to speak in ways that are necessary for today's humanity.
Those who develop these powers slumbering in the soul in order to be able to look into the spiritual world and see spiritual beings there, just as one sees stones, plants, and animals in the physical world, are called “initiates” in spiritual science today and have always been called “initiates”; and what the soul must go through in order to gain insight into the spiritual world is called “initiation.” But the path to this initiation was different in ancient times, and it is different in our more recent times, because the mission of spiritual science is always a different one. The ancient initiation that those who had to speak to the people of ancient times had to undergo also led these people to a direct experience of the spiritual world; they could look into realms around human beings that are higher than what the senses around us can see. But these people looked in such a way that they transformed their perception, so that what they saw could then be understood by people in a symbol, in a sign. Symbolically, the ancient initiates could only express what they saw. Such symbols extended to the whole scope of what interests people in the world. And such symbols from a real world experience have been preserved for us in the myths and legends that exist from various times and various peoples. Such myths and legends are only something that sprang from the “folk imagination” for the green table of scholarship — not for true research. For those who know the facts, myths and legends are drawn from the insights of spiritual researchers, and in every real myth and legend we must see an outer image of something that the spiritual researcher has experienced in his spiritual insight; or, in Goethe's words: what he has seen with his spiritual eyes and heard with his spiritual ears. Only then do legends and myths become comprehensible to us, when we understand them as symbols of a real knowledge of the spiritual world.These are, first of all, the symbols through which one spoke to the widest circle of the people. For what people imagine today, that the human soul has always been as it is in this century, is not the case. The human soul has changed; its entire receptivity was different in the past. The human soul was satisfied when it received this image, which was given in the myth, because this stimulated the soul to have what it saw outside in a much more immediate view. Today, myth is a fantasy. But when myth used to sink into the human soul, the mysteries of human nature stood before the human soul. And when the soul looked at the clouds, the sun, and so on, it did so in such a way that it necessarily resulted in an understanding of what it had before its eyes when it had the myth. For a smaller number of people, what could be called higher knowledge was then given in symbols. Whereas today we speak and must speak directly, we could not express in our soul forces what the soul of the ancient sage or initiate experienced, for neither the initiate nor his listener possessed these forces. These forces had only just been developed. One could only express oneself by using symbols. These symbols have been preserved in a literature that seems highly strange to people today. Today, people will have the opportunity, especially if, in addition to the thirst for knowledge, curiosity is also aroused for such things, to come across here and there some old book — I would almost say some old tome — containing wonderful images that symbolically express, for example, the connection between the planets; where there are geometric figures, triangles, squares, and so on. Anyone who approaches these images with the powers of cognition developed today will, unless they have developed their soul in such a way that they find pleasure in them, say from the perspective of our present education: What can one do with all this stuff? What can one do with what has been handed down to us as the so-called “Solomon's Key” as a symbolic figure, with these triangles, squares, and so on?
Certainly, even the spiritual researcher will tell you: from the standpoint of today's education, there is nothing to be done with it for modern man. But at the time when these images were handed down to the students, they really awakened something in their souls. Today, the human soul is different. At a time when the human soul must develop in order to answer the questions of nature and life in the way we do today, the soul cannot be moved by the inner urge to look at such things as, for example, the two intertwined triangles, one with its point facing upwards, the other with its point facing downwards. When this image appeared before a person's eyes in the past, something stirred and moved in their soul as they looked at it; the soul saw something within it. Just as today the eye sees something through the microscope, such as plant cells, which it cannot see without the microscope, so these symbolic figures served as tools for the soul. When one had the so-called Solomonic key in one's soul as an idea, one could see into the spiritual world, just as one cannot see into the spiritual world with the naked soul. But the soul is no longer like that today. Therefore, what has been handed down in such ancient writings from the mysteries of the spiritual world can no longer be “science” to the same extent; and those who present it as science today, or who presented it as science in the 19th century, are doing something that is no longer appropriate. This is also the reason why, from the standpoint of today's education, you will no longer be able to make sense of writings such as those of Eliphas Levy. It is simply antiquated for our time to use such symbols today to explain the spiritual world. But in earlier times, it was the way of spiritual science to speak to the human soul, either in the powerful images of myths and legends, or in such symbols.
Then came the time when it was necessary to speak to the human soul in a different way. This was the interim period when knowledge of the spiritual world was passed on from ancestors to descendants in written or oral tradition. Even if we only study external life, we can clearly see how this was transmitted. For example, there was a certain sect in North Africa at the time of the emergence of Christianity; they were called the “Therapeuts.” A man who was initiated into the knowledge of this sect says that they had ancient documents that originated from their founders, who themselves could still see into the spiritual world; what their successors could only read in the writings they had left behind; or what, at most, those who had developed themselves up into the spiritual world through their soul disposition could see. That is said of ancient times. But we can go back to the Middle Ages and find there, as certain important spirits emphasize: We have certain powers of knowledge, we have a human intellect, and then other powers of knowledge that reach up to comprehend certain secrets of existence. But there are secrets, mysteries of existence, that must be revealed; we cannot see them when we develop our powers of cognition, we can only seek them in the scriptures!
This gave rise to the great conflict among the minds of the Middle Ages between what can be known through the intellect and what must be believed because it has been handed down, revealed. And the boundary between the two was sharply drawn, in keeping with the spirit of the times. Certainly, this was justified at the time, for the soul forces were no longer such that certain mathematical symbols could be used symbolically to evoke insights in the soul. That time was over. Until modern times, there was only one way for the soul to grasp the supersensible: to turn its gaze inward, as Augustine, for example, did in part.
Thus, human beings had lost the ability to see something in the outer world that revealed deeper inner secrets to them. They could no longer see anything in symbols other than figments of the imagination. The only thing left was to present the supersensible world to them in such a way that it corresponded to what was supersensible within themselves; to tell them: You have a mind; this mind is limited in space and time; but in the spiritual world there is a being that is all-thinking. You have a limited love, but in the spiritual world there is a being that is all-loving! When the spiritual world was illustrated to man by what he himself experienced within, then his inner being expanded to the contemplation of nature lived through divinely; then he had a consciousness of God. But he could only obtain information about the details from the ancient writings, for he had nothing left that could lead him into the spiritual world himself.
Then came the newer times, which brought with them the pride of natural science. These are the times when not only those who were able to acquire scientific knowledge, but all human beings developed abilities that could initially develop an understanding beyond the sensory. This led to the development of an understanding in the human soul that sensory images are not the true reality, but that the power of knowledge can see that truth contradicts sensory appearances. What has developed in the soul in such a way that it can see outer nature as it is not presented in the sensory world will be understood more and more by those who today, as spiritual researchers, ascend into the spiritual world and then tell us that there one sees a spiritual world and spiritual beings just as one sees here the sensory world with animals, plants, and minerals.
This is how the spiritual researcher must speak about those areas that are close to today's understanding. And we will see how symbols, which were once a means of gaining knowledge of the spiritual world, have now become a means of spiritual development. For example, while the “Solomon's Key” once evoked real spiritual knowledge in the soul, it no longer does so today. But if the soul allows itself to be influenced by what the spiritual researcher can make clear to it, then something begins to stir in the soul that can gradually develop upward into the spiritual world, and when it has visions in the spiritual world, it can speak to people today in such a way that it can express what it has seen in the same logic that is also the logic of external science. Therefore, today's spiritual science or secret science must speak in such a way that anyone who applies their intellect comprehensively enough can understand it. What the spiritual researcher has to communicate today must be clothed in the conceptual forms that are also common in other sciences today; otherwise, he would not be taking into account what the needs of the present time are. Not everyone can immediately see into the spiritual world, but because the corresponding powers of intellect and feeling are developed in every soul, spiritual science, when presented correctly, is something that everyone today can understand with their ordinary reason. The spiritual researcher is now once again in a position to present something of which our solitary thinker said: “Man is, in his essence, an image of the divine.” If we want to understand man physically, we look at what man can explore physically. If we want to understand what human beings are inwardly, spiritually, then we point to a world that spiritual researchers can explore spiritually. There it becomes apparent that human beings are not just something that comes into existence at birth or conception and leaves again at death; rather, it becomes apparent that human beings have supersensible members in addition to their physical part. When we recognize the nature of these supersensible members, we enter a realm where there is not only faith but knowledge. And when Kant said at the twilight of an old era: “We can recognize the categorical imperative; but no human being can penetrate into the realm of freedom, divine existence, and immortality through intuition,” he was merely expressing the experience of his time. A spiritual science will show that it is possible to penetrate into a spiritual world. It will show that just as the eye armed with a microscope can penetrate into a world that is inaccessible to the unaided eye, so too can the soul equipped with the means of spiritual science penetrate into a spiritual world that is closed to the unaided soul, in which love, conscience, freedom, and immortality can be recognized, just as animals, plants, and minerals can be recognized in the outer physical world. — This can be communicated as something that will be further elaborated in the next lectures.
If we now consider the relationship between the spiritual researcher and his audience, and once again turn our attention to spiritual science in ancient times and in more recent times, we can say that the symbols used by spiritual researchers in ancient times had a direct effect on the human soul. What we today call the powers of understanding and reason did not yet exist. The images had a direct effect, and through them one could see into a spiritual world, so that the spiritual researcher of ancient times did not stand before people in such a way that they could examine with their reason what he was conveying to them through these symbols. One could say that these symbols had a suggestive effect, like an inspiration; people were captivated and compelled by them; they were powerless to resist. Anyone who was given such an image in those ancient times was, if it was not correct, completely at the mercy of those who gave them this image as a false one, because it had an immediate effect! Therefore, in ancient times, it was extremely important that those who ascended into the spiritual world were able to inspire firm belief and absolute trust that they were reliable; and if they abused what they were capable of, then they had a power in their hands that they could exploit in the worst possible way. That is why, in spiritual science, there are times of decline as well as times of glory; times when the power and authority of initiates who were not reliable was abused. In ancient times, therefore, it depended to a large extent on the initiate himself how he behaved toward his audience. Nowadays, thank God, things have changed somewhat. Not everything changes at once. That is why it is still necessary today for the initiate to be a reliable person; and if he is, then it is justified to place real trust in him. But in a certain respect, people today already have a different relationship to spiritual researchers than they did in the past. For today, if spiritual researchers want to speak in a way that is appropriate to their time, they must speak in such a way that any unbiased mind that wants to understand can also understand. Of course, this is still a long way from everyone who could understand also having to understand. But reason can now be the judge of what can be understood, and therefore those who devote themselves to spiritual science should apply their unbiased reason in all areas.
This will be the mission of spiritual science today: to ascend through the development of hidden powers into a spiritual world, just as modern physiology descends through the microscope into a world of the smallest living beings that the unaided eye cannot see. And common sense will be able to examine the results of spiritual research, just as it can examine the results of the physiologist, the botanist, and so on. For sound reason will be able to say: It all fits together! People today will come to say: My reason tells me that this can be so; it can be understood, if one uses one's reason, what the spiritual researcher has to say. And so the spiritual researcher should speak if he truly feels that he is standing within the mission of spiritual science in the present. But there will also be a transitional period today. For if the means for spiritual development are available here and there, and people can also use them incorrectly, some people may live themselves up into a spiritual world if their sense is not pure, if their sense of duty is not sacred, and if their conscience is not infallible. Then, by ascending into a supersensible world, instead of becoming spiritual researchers, they will become people who cannot know from their own experience whether things correspond to reality; then such supposed spiritual researchers will also communicate corresponding things. And since people on the other side can only slowly and gradually ascend in the use of their powers of reason to understand what spiritual researchers say, it is precisely in this area that charlatanism, humbug, and superstition can flourish. But today, people are already in a different situation. In a certain sense, those who, out of a certain curiosity and without wanting to use their reason, run blindly to those who claim to be spiritual researchers have only themselves to blame. Because people are still too comfortable to use their own reason and prefer to indulge in blind faith rather than think for themselves, it is possible in our time that the old initiates who abused their power are easily replaced by modern charlatans who, consciously or unconsciously, do not tell people the truth, but rather something they themselves perhaps believe to be true. This may still be the case because we are at the beginning of a development today.
But there is nothing against which man should use his common sense more than against what can be offered to him from spiritual science. One can look for part of the blame in oneself if one falls for charlatanism and humbug, for they will continue to bear abundant fruit — and have already done so in our time. This is also something that must not be overlooked when mentioning the mission of spiritual science in our time.
But those who listen to spiritual researchers in our time and examine everything with sound reason rather than with arbitrary reason that immediately casts doubt on and rejects everything will already be able to sense how spiritual science can bring comfort and hope to people in difficult times and provide enlightenment regarding the great mysteries of existence. People today will be able to gain a sense that the great mysteries of existence, the great questions of destiny, can be solved through spiritual science; they will be able to know what is born and dies in them, and what is the eternal core of their being. In short, it will be possible for people today — and the next lectures will provide some, albeit few, examples of this — if they have the good will and want to develop the strength to absorb and process the messages of spiritual science, to say from their innermost feelings:
It is true what the young Goethe said intuitively, what the old Goethe wanted to tell us in every line he wrote in the maturity of his life, what he has his Faust say, that the wise man speaks:
The spirit world is not closed;
Your mind is closed, your heart is dead!
Arise, student, undaunted,
Bathe your earthly breast in the dawn!
In the dawn of the spirit!