Metamorphoses of the Soul II
GA 59
5 May 1910, Berlin
VIII. Human Conscience
Allow me to begin today's lecture with a personal recollection. As a quite young man, I once had a slight experience of the kind which seem unimportant and yet can yield pleasant memories again and again in later life.
I was attending a course of university lectures on the history of literature.49Held by his teacher and friend Karl Julius Schröer, 1825–1900. Cf. also Rudolf Steiner's remarks in the lecture of 29th October 1914 in Berlin, in: Aus schicksaltragender Zeit, Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach, Switzerland. (GA 64) The lecturer began by considering the character of cultural life in the time of Lessing, with the intention of going on to discuss various literary developments during the later eighteenth century and part of the nineteenth. His opening words were deeply impressive. In order to characterise the chief innovation which appeared in the cultural life of Lessing's time, he said: “Artistic consciousness acquired an aesthetic conscience.” His lecture showed that what he meant by this statement—we need not now ask whether it was justified—was roughly as follows:
All the artistic considerations and intentions connected with the endeavours of Lessing and his contemporaries were imbued with a deeply earnest wish to make something more of art than a mere appendage to life or a mere pleasure among others. Art was to become a necessary element in every form of human existence worthy of the name. To raise art up to the level of a serious human concern, worthy to be heard in the concert of voices which speak of the great and fruitful activities of mankind—such was the aim of the pioneer thinkers of that period. That is what the lecturer wanted to say when he emphasised that an aesthetic conscience had found its way into the artistic and literary life of those times.
Why was this statement important for a soul seeking to grasp the riddles of existence, as reflected in one or another human mind? Because a conception of art was to be ennobled and given expression in a way that left no doubt as to its importance for the whole character and destiny of human life. The serious nature and significance of artistic work were intended to be placed beyond discussion, and it is indeed true that the experiences denoted by the word “conscience” are such that all the situations to which they apply are ennobled. In other words, when “conscience” is spoken of, the human soul recognises that the word refers to a most valuable element in its own life, and that to be without this element would indicate a serious deficiency.
How often has the significance of conscience been brought out by the words, no matter whether they are taken literally or metaphorically: “When conscience speaks in the human soul, it is the voice of God that speaks.” And one could scarcely find anyone, however unprepared to reflect on higher spiritual concerns, who has not formed some idea of what conscience is. Everyone feels vaguely that whatever conscience may be, it is experienced as a voice in the individual's breast which determines with irresistible power what is good and what is bad; what man must do in order to gain his own approval and what he must leave undone if he is not to despise himself. Hence we can say: Conscience appears to every individual as something holy in the human breast, and that to form some kind of opinion about it is relatively easy.
Things are different, however, if we glance briefly at man's history and his spiritual life. Anyone who is trying to look more deeply into a spiritual situation of this kind will surely wish to consult those in whom a knowledge of such matters may be presupposed—the philosophers. But in this case, as in so many others of wide human concern, he will find that the explanations of conscience given by various philosophers are very different, or so it seems, though a more or less obscure kernel is similar in all of them. But that is not the worst of it. If anyone were to take the trouble to inquire what the philosophers of ancient and modern times mean by conscience, he would be met with all sorts of very fine phrases and also by many that are hard to understand, but he would find nothing of which he could say beyond question that it reflected his feeling: that is conscience.
Of course it would lead us too far if I were to give you an anthology of the various explanations of conscience that have been given over the centuries by the philosophical leaders of mankind. But we may note that from about the first third of the Middle Ages and on through mediaeval philosophy, whenever conscience was spoken of, it was always said to be a power in the human soul which was capable of immediately declaring what a man should do and what he should leave undone. However, these mediaeval philosophers say also that underneath this power of the soul there is something else, something of finer quality than conscience itself. A personality often mentioned here, Meister Eckhart,50See notes 14 and 13. tells of a tiny spark that underlies conscience; an eternal element in the soul which, if it is heeded, declares with unmistakable power the laws of good and evil.
In modern times, we encounter once more the most varied accounts of conscience, including some which make a peculiar impression, for they clearly fail to recognise the serious nature of the divine inner voice that we call conscience. There are philosophers who say that conscience is something that a man acquires when, by extending continually his experience of life, he learns what is useful, harmful, satisfying and so on for himself. The sum of these experiences gives rise to a judgment which says: “Do this—don't do that.”
There are other philosophers who speak of conscience in terms of the highest praise. One of these is the great German philosopher, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who pointed above all to the human ego not the transient personal ego but the eternal essence in man—as the fundamental principle of all human thought and being. At the same time, he held that the highest experience for the human ego was the experience of conscience,51See J.G. Fichte, Die Bestimmung des Menschen, 1800, Book 3: Glaube. when a man hears the inward judgment: “This you must do, for it would go against your conscience not to do it.” The majesty and nobility of this judgment, he believed, could not be surpassed. And if Fichte was the philosopher who laid the strongest emphasis on the power and significance of the human ego, it is characteristic of him that he ranked conscience as the ego's most significant impulse.
The further we move on into modern times, and the more materialistic thinking becomes, the more do we find conscience deprived of its majesty—not in the human heart, but in the thinking of philosophers who are more or less imbued with materialism. One example will be enough to illustrate this trend.
In the second half of the 19th century, there lived a philosopher who for nobility of soul, harmonious human feelings and generous breadth of mind must rank with the finest personalities. I mean Bartholomew Carnieri:52Bartholomew Carnieri, 1821–1909. Cf. his characterisation of conscience in the introduction to Der moderne Mensch. Versuch einer Lebensführung, Stuttgart, 1904. he is seldom mentioned now. If you go through his writings, you find that in spite of his fine qualities, he was deeply imbued with the materialistic thinking of his time. What, he asks, are we to make of conscience? Fundamentally, he says, it is no more than the sum of habits and judgments instilled in us during early youth and strengthened by the experience of life. These influences, of which we are no longer fully conscious, are the source of the inner voice which says: “This you must do—this you must not do,”
Thus the origin of conscience is traced back to external influences and habits, and even these are confined to a very narrow range. Some even more materialistically-minded philosophers of the 19th century have gone further still. Paul Ree,53Paul Ree, 1849–1901. Die Entstehung des Gewissens, Berlin, 1885. for example, who at one time had great influence on Nietzsche, wrote on the origin of conscience. His book is interesting as a symptom of the outlook of our times. His ideas—allowing for some inevitable distortion of details in any brief sketch of them—are roughly as follows. Man, says Paul Ree, has developed in respect of all his faculties, and therefore in respect of conscience. Originally he had no trace of what we call conscience. It is gross prejudice to hold that conscience is eternal. A voice telling us what to do and what not to do did not exist originally, according to Ree. But in human nature there was something else which did develop—something we can call an instinct for revenge. This was the most primitive of all impulses. If anyone suffered at the hands of another, the instinct for revenge drove him to pay back the injury in kind. By degrees, as social life became more complicated, the carrying out of vengeance was handed over to the ruling authorities. So people came to believe that any deed which injured another person had by necessity to be followed by something that had previously been called vengeance. Certain deeds which had bad results had to be requited by other deeds. In the course of time, this conviction gave rise to an association of certain feelings with particular actions, or even with the temptation to commit them. The original urge for revenge was forgotten, but a feeling became ingrained in the human soul that a harmful action must be paid for. So now, when a man believes he is hearing an “inner voice”, this is in fact nothing but the voice of vengeance, changed into an inward form. Here we have an extreme example of this kind of interpretation—extreme in the sense that conscience is portrayed as a complete illusion.
On the other hand, we must admit that it is going much too far to assert, as some people do, that conscience has existed as long as human beings have been living on the earth; in other words, that conscience is in some sense eternal. Since mistakes are made both by those who think more spiritually about it, and by those who regard conscience as a pure illusion, it is very difficult to reach any agreement on the subject, although it belongs to our everyday inner life, and indeed to a sacred part of it.
A glance over the philosophers will show that in earlier times even the best of them thought of conscience differently from the way in which we are bound to think of it today. For when we say that conscience is a voice speaking out of a divine impulse in the breast of the simplest man, saying, “This you must do—that you must leave undone” this is somewhat different from the teaching we find in Socrates54Socrates, 470–399 B.C. and in his successor, Plato.55Plato, 427–347 B.C. They both insist that virtue can be learnt. Socrates, indeed, says that if a man forms clear ideas as to what he should and should not do, then gradually, through this knowledge of what virtue is, he can learn to act virtuously.
Now one could easily object, from a modern standpoint, that things would go badly if we had to wait until we had learnt what is right and what is wrong before we could act virtuously. Conscience speaks with elemental power in the human soul and is heard by the individual as saying “This you must do, and that you must leave alone”, long before we learn to form ideas concerning good and evil and thus begin to formulate moral precepts. Moreover, conscience brings a certain tranquillity to the soul on occasions when a man can say to himself: “You have done something you can approve of.” It would be bad—many people might say—if we had to learn a lot about the nature and character of virtue in order to arrive at an agreed estimation of our behaviour. Hence we can say that the philosopher to whom we look up as a martyr of philosophy, whose death crowned and ennobled his philosophical work—I mean Socrates—sets before us a concept of virtue which hardly tallies with our view of conscience today: and even with later Greek thinkers we always find the assertion that perfect virtue is something that can be learnt, a doctrine not in keeping with the primitive, elemental, power of conscience.
How is it, then, that so pre-eminent and powerful a person as Socrates is not aware of the idea of conscience that we have today, although we feel whenever we approach him, as Plato describes him, that the purest morality and the highest degree of virtue speak through his words? The reason is, that the ideas, concepts and inward experiences which feel today as though they were innate, were in fact acquired laboriously by the human soul in the course of time. When we trace the spiritual life of humanity back into the past, we find that our idea of conscience and our feeling for it were not present in the same way in ancient times, and therefore not among the Greeks. Conscience, in fact, was born. But nothing about the birth of conscience can be learnt by the easy methods of external experience and scholarship, as Paul Ree, for example, tried to do. We have to go more deeply into the matter if we are to gain enlightenment for the human soul.
Now our task in these lectures has been precisely to illuminate the constitution of the soul, with the aid of the light that comes from raising the soul to higher levels of knowledge. The whole life of the soul has been described, as it reveals itself to the inner eye of the seer: the eye which does not gain knowledge of the sense-world only, but looks behind the veil of the sense-world into the region where the primary sources, the spiritual foundations of the sense-world are to be found. And it has repeatedly been shown—for example in the lecture, “What is Mysticism?”—that the consciousness of the seer opens the way into deeper regions of the soul, over and above the soul-life we experience in everyday life. We believe that even in ordinary life we come to know something of this deeper level when we look into ourselves and encounter the experiences of thinking, feeling and willing. But it was pointed out also, that in ordinary waking consciousness the soul reveals only the outer aspect of the spiritual. Just as we have to penetrate behind the veil that is spread over the sense-world if we are to discover the underlying causes of these appearances as they are revealed behind everything we see and hear and our brain apprehends, so we must look behind our thinking, feeling and willing, and thus behind our ordinary inner life, if we are to get to know the spiritual background of our own lives.
From these starting-points, we set out to throw light on the life of the human soul in its many interwoven branches. We saw that it must be conceived as made up of three members which must be distinguished but not—please note—treated as quite separate from one another. We named these three members the sentient soul, the intellectual soul and the consciousness soul, and we saw how the ego is the unifying point which holds the three members together, plays on them as though on the strings of an instrument, causing them to sound together in the most varied ways, harmonious or dissonant. This activity of the ego developed by gradual stages, and we shall understand how our present-day consciousness and soul-life have evolved from primeval times if we glance at what man can become in the future, or even today, if from within the consciousness soul he develops a higher, clairvoyant form of consciousness.
The consciousness soul in its ordinary condition enables us to grasp the external world perceived through our senses. If anyone wishes to penetrate behind the veil of the sense-world, he must raise his soul-life to a higher level. Then he makes the great discovery that something like an awakening of the soul can occur—something comparable to the outcome of a successful operation on a man blind from birth, when a hitherto unknown world of light and colour breaks in upon him. So it is with someone who by appropriate methods raises his soul to a higher level of development. A moment comes when those elements in our environment which we normally ignored, although they are swarming around us all the time, enter into our soul-life as a wealth of beings and activities because we have acquired a new organ of perception for them.
When someone achieves by training, a conscious seership of this kind, his ego is completely present throughout. This means that he moves among spiritual facts and beings, on which our sense-world is based, just as he finds his way among chairs and tables in the physical world: and he now takes up into a higher sphere of soul-life the ego which had led him through his experiences of sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul.
Let us now turn back from this clairvoyant consciousness, which is illuminated and set aglow by the ego, to the ordinary life of the soul. The ego is alive in the most varied ways in the three soul-members. If we have a man whose life is given over to the desires, passions and instinctive urges that arise from his sentient soul, we can say that his ego is hardly at all active; it is like a feeble flame in the midst of the surging waves of the sentient soul and has little power against them. In the intellectual soul the ego gains some freedom and independence.
Here man comes to himself and so to some awareness of his ego, for the intellectual soul can develop only in so far as man reflects upon and elaborates, in inner tranquillity, the experiences that have come to him through the sentient soul. The ego becomes more and more radiant and at last achieves full clarity in the consciousness soul. Then a man can say to himself: “I have grasped myself—I have attained real self-consciousness.” This degree of clarity can be activated by the ego only when it has reached the stage of working in the consciousness soul, after progressing from the sentient soul through the intellectual soul.
If, however, a human being can further rise in his ego to clairvoyant consciousness beyond the consciousness soul, comparable to yet higher soul-principles, we can well understand that the seer, looking back over the course of human evolution, should say to us: just as the ego rises in this way to higher states of soul, so did it enter the sentient soul from a subordinate condition. We have seen how the soul-members sentient soul, intellectual soul and consciousness soul—are related to the members of his bodily organisation—physical body, etheric and astral or sentient body. Hence you will find it understandable that as spiritual science indicates—the ego, before rising to the sentient soul, was active in the sentient body, and earlier still in the etheric and physical bodies. In those times the ego still guided man from outside. It held sway in the darkness of bodily life; man was not yet able to say “I” regarding himself, to find the central point of his own being within himself. What are we to think of this ego which held sway in the primeval past and built up man's exterior bodily organisation? Are we to regard it as less perfect, compared with the ego we bear within our souls today?
We look on our ego as the real inner focus of our being: it endows us with inner life, and is capable, through schooling, of endless progress in the future. We see in it the epitome of our human nature and the guarantor of our human dignity. Now when we were not yet aware of this ego, while it was working on us from out of the dark spiritual powers of the world, was it then less perfect, by comparison with what it is now? Only a quite abstract way of thinking could say so.
Consider our physical body; we look on it as having been formed out of the spiritual world in the primordial past as a dwelling for the human soul. Only a materialistic mind could believe that this human body had not been born originally from the spirit. Seen merely from an external point of view, the physical body must appear a miracle of perfection. What do all our intellectual ability and technical skill amount to, compared with the wisdom manifest in the structure of the human heart? Or take the engineering technique that goes into the building of bridges, and so forth—what is it compared with the construction of the human thigh-bone, with its wonderful crisscross of support members, as seen through the microscope. It would be sheer boundless arrogance for man to suppose that he has attained in the slightest degree to the wisdom inherent in the formation of the external physical body. And consider our soul-life, taking into account only our instincts, desires and passions—how do they function? Are we not doing all we can to undermine inwardly the wisdom-filled organisation of our body? Indeed, if we consider without prejudice the marvel of our physical organisation, we have to admit that our bodily structure is far wiser than anything we can show in our inner life, although we may hope that our inner life will advance from its present imperfection towards increasing perfection. We can hardly come to any other conclusion, even without clairvoyance, if we simply look impartially at the observable facts.
Is not this wise activity, which has built up the human body as a dwelling-place for the ego, bound to have something in common with the nature of the ego itself? Must we not think of this formative power as having the character of an immeasurably more advanced ego? We must say: Something related to our ego has worked during primordial times at building a structure which the ego could come to inhabit. Anyone who refuses to believe this may imagine something different, but then he must also suppose that an ordinary house, built for human habitation, has not been designed by a human mind but has been put together merely by the action of natural forces. One assumption is as true as the other. Thus we look back to a primordial past where a spiritual power endowed with an ego-nature of unlimited perfection worked upon our bodily sheaths. In those times our own ego was hidden in subconscious depths, thence it worked its way up to its present state of consciousness.
If we look at this evolution from the far-distant past, when the ego was hidden within its sheaths as though in the darkness of a mother's womb, we find that although the ego had no knowledge of itself, it was all the closer to those spiritual beings who worked on our bodily vehicles and were related to the human ego, but of incomparably greater perfection. Clairvoyant insight thus looks back to a far-distant past when man had not yet acquired ego-consciousness, for he was embedded in spiritual life itself, and when his soul-life, too, was different, for it was much closer to the soul-forces from which the ego has emerged. In those times, also, we find in man a primal clairvoyant consciousness which functioned dimly and dreamily, for it was not illumined by the light of an ego; and it was from this mode of consciousness that the ego first came forth. The faculty that man in the future will acquire with his ego was present in the primeval past without the ego. Clairvoyant consciousness entails that spiritual beings and spiritual facts are seen in the environment, and this applies to early man, although his clairvoyance was dreamlike and he beheld the spiritual world as though in a dream. Since he was not yet shone through by an ego, he was not obliged to remain within himself when he wished to behold the spiritual. He beheld the spiritual around him and looked on himself as part of the spiritual world; and whatever he did was imbued, for him, with a spiritual character. When he thought of something, he could not have said to himself, “I am thinking”, as a man might do today; his thought stood before his clairvoyant vision. And to experience a feeling he had no need to look into himself; his feeling radiated from him and united him with his whole spiritual environment.
Such was the soul-life of man in primordial times. From out of his dreamlike clairvoyant consciousness he had to develop inwardly in order to come to himself, and in himself to that centre of his being which today is still imperfect but will advance ever more nearly towards perfection in the future, when man with his ego will step forth into the spiritual world.
Now if light is thrown on those primordial times by means of clairvoyance in the way already described, what does the seer tell us concerning the human consciousness of those times when a man had, for example, committed an evil deed? His deed did not present itself to him as something he could inwardly assess. He beheld it, with all its harmfulness and shamefulness, as a ghostly vision confronting his soul. And when a feeling concerning his evil deed arose in his soul, the shamefulness of it came before him as a spiritual reality, so that he was as though surrounded by a vision of the evil he had wrought.
Then, in the course of time, this dreamlike clairvoyance faded and man's ego came increasingly to the fore. In so far as man found this central point of his being within himself, the old clairvoyance was extinguished and self-consciousness established itself more and more clearly. The vision he had previously had of his bad and good deeds was transposed into his inner life, and deeds once clairvoyantly beheld were mirrored in his soul.
Now what sort of forms were beheld in dreamy clairvoyance as the counterpart of man's evil deed? They were pictures whereby the spiritual powers around him showed how he had disturbed and disrupted the cosmic order, and they were intended to have a salutary effect. It was a counteraction by the Gods, who wished to raise him up and, by showing him the effect of his deed, to enable him to eliminate its harmful consequences. This was indeed a terrifying experience for him, but it was fundamentally beneficial, coming as it did from the cosmic background out of which man himself had emerged. When the time came for man to find in himself his ego-centre, the external vision was transferred to his soul in the form of a reflected picture. When the ego first makes its appearance in the sentient soul, it is weak and frail, and man first has to work slowly upon himself in order that his ego may gradually advance towards perfection. Now what would have happened if, when the external clairvoyant vision of the effects of his misdeeds had disappeared, it had not been replaced by an inward counterpart of its beneficial influence? With his still frail ego, he would have been torn to and fro in his sentient soul by his passions, as though in a surging boundless sea. What, then, was it that was transferred at this historic moment from the external world to the inner life of the soul? If it was the great cosmic Spirit that had brought the harmful effects of a man's deed before his clairvoyant consciousness as a healing influence, showing him what he had to make good, so, later on, it was the same cosmic Spirit that powerfully revealed itself in his inner life at a time when his ego was still weak. Having previously spoken to man through a clairvoyant vision, the cosmic Spirit withdrew into man's inner life and imparted to him what had to be said about correcting the distortion caused in the world-order. Man's ego is still weak, and the cosmic Spirit keeps a perpetual, unsleeping watch over it and passes judgment where the ego could not yet judge. Behind the weak ego stands something like a reflection of the powerful cosmic Spirit which had formerly shown to man through clairvoyant vision the consequences of his deeds. And this reflection is now experienced by him as conscience watching over him.
So we see how true it is when conscience is naively described as the voice of God in man. At the same time we see how spiritual science points to the moment when external vision became inward experience and conscience was born.
What I have now been saying can be drawn purely from the spiritual world. No external history is required; the facts I have described are seen by the inward eye. Anyone who can see them will experience them as incontestable truths, but a certain necessity of the times may lead us to ask: Could external history perhaps reveal something that would confirm, in this case, the facts seen by inner vision?
The findings of clairvoyant consciousness can always be tested by external evidence, and there is no need to fear that the evidence will contradict them. That could seem to happen only if the testing were inexact. But we will give one example that can show how external facts confirm the statements here derived from clairvoyant insight.
It is not so very long since the time when the birth of conscience can be seen to occur. If we look back to the fifth and sixth centuries BC, we encounter in ancient Greece the great dramatic poet Aeschylus,56Aeschylus, 525–456 B.C., in his Oresteia trilogy. and in his work we find a theme which is especially remarkable for the reason that the same subject was treated by a late Greek poet in a quite different way.
Aeschylus shows us how Agamemnon, on returning from Troy, is killed by his wife, Klytemnestra, when he arrives home. Agamemnon is avenged by his son Orestes, who, acting on the advice of the gods, kills his mother. What, then, is the consequence for Orestes of this deed? Aeschylus shows how the burden of matricide calls forth in Orestes a mode of seeing which was no longer normal in those times. The enormity of his crime caused the old clairvoyance to awake in him, like an inheritance from the past. Orestes could say: “Apollo, the god himself, told me it was a just act for me to avenge my father upon my mother. Everything I have done speaks in my favour. But the blood of my mother is working on!” And in the second part of the Orestean trilogy we are powerfully shown how the old clairvoyance awakens in Orestes and how the avenging goddesses, the Erinyes—or Furies, as they were later called by the Romans—approach.
Orestes sees before him, in dreamlike clairvoyance, the effect of his act of matricide in its external form. Apollo had approved the deed; but there is something higher. Aeschylus wished to indicate that a still higher cosmic ordinance obtains, and this he could do only by making Orestes become clairvoyant at that moment, for he had not yet gone far enough to dramatise what today we call an inner voice. If we study his work, we feel that he was at the stage when something like conscience ought to emerge from the whole content of the human soul, but he never quite reached that point. He confronts Orestes with dreamlike, clairvoyant pictures that have not yet been transformed into conscience. Yet we can see how he is on the verge of recognising conscience. Every word that he gives to Klytemnestra, for example, makes one feel unmistakably that he ought to indicate the idea of conscience in its present-day sense; but he never quite gets that far. In that century, the great poet could only show how bad deeds rose up before the human soul in earlier times.
Now we will pass over Sophocles and come to Euripides,57>Euripides, c. 480–406 B.C., deals with this subject in Electra and in Orestes.< who described the same situation only a generation later. Scholars have rightly pointed out—though spiritual science alone can show this in its true light—that in Euripides the dream-pictures experienced by Orestes are no more than shadowy images of the inward promptings of conscience—somewhat as in Shakespeare. Here we have palpable evidence of the stages whereby the idea of conscience was taken hold of by the art of poetry. We see how Aeschylus, great poet as he was, cannot yet speak of conscience itself, while his successor, Euripides, does speak of it. With this development in mind, we can see why human thinking in general could work its way only slowly towards a true conception of conscience. The force now active in conscience was active also in ancient times; the pictures showing the effects of a man's deeds rose before his clairvoyant sight. The only difference is that this force became internalised; but before it could be inwardly experienced, the whole process of human development, which led gradually to the concept of conscience, had to take its course.
Thus we see in conscience a faculty which comes to the fore by degrees and has to be acquired by man's own endeavours. Where, then, should we look for this most intense activity of conscience? At that point where the human ego was beginning to make itself known and was still weak, that is something which can be shown in human development. In ancient Greece it had already advanced to the stage of the intellectual soul. But if we look further back to Egypt and Chaldea outer history knows nothing of this, but Plato and Aristotle were clairvoyantly aware of it—we find that even the highest culture of those times was achieved without the presence of an inwardly independent ego. The difference between the knowledge that was nurtured and put to use by the sanctuaries of Egypt and Chaldea and our modern science is that our science is grasped by the consciousness soul, whereas in pre-Hellenic times it all depended on inspirations from the sentient soul. In ancient Greece the ego progressed from the sentient soul into the intellectual soul. Today we are living in the epoch of the consciousness soul, which means that a real ego-consciousness arises for the first time. Anyone who studies the evolution of mankind, and in particular the transition from eastern to western culture, can see how human progress has been marked by ever-increasing feelings of freedom and independence. Whereas man had formerly felt himself entirely dependent on the Gods and the inspirations that came from them, in the West, culture first came to spring from the inner life.
This is especially evident, for example, in the way Aeschylus strives to bring about a consciousness of the ego in the human soul. We see him standing on the frontier between East and West, with one eye on the East and the other on the West, gathering from the human soul the elements that will come together to form the concept of conscience. He strives to give this new form of conscience a dramatic embodiment, but is not yet quite able to do so. Comparisons are apt to be confusing; we must not only compare, but also distinguish. The point is, that in the West everything was designed to raise the ego from the sentient soul to the consciousness soul. In the East the ego was veiled in obscurity and had no freedom. In the West, by contrast, the ego works its way up into the consciousness soul. If the old dreamlike clairvoyance is extinguished, everything else tends to awaken the ego and to evoke conscience as guardian of the ego as a divine inner voice. Aeschylus was the corner-stone between the worlds of East and West.
In the Eastern World men had retained a living awareness of their origin in the divine cosmic Spirit, and this made it possible for them to gain understanding of the event which took place a few hundred years after endeavours had been made by many—or Aeschylus for example—to find something that spoke as the voice of God within themselves. For this event brought to mankind the impulse which from all spiritual standpoints must be seen as the greatest impulse ever to enter into the evolution of the earth and man—the impulse we call the Christ-Impulse.
It was the Christ-impulse that first made it possible for humanity to realise that God, the Creator of things and of the external sheaths of man, can be recognised in our inward life. Only by understanding the divine humanity of Christ Jesus were men enabled to understand that the voice of God could be heard within the soul. In order that men should be able to find something of the divine nature in their own inner life, it was necessary for Christ to enter into the evolution of humanity as an external historical-event. If the Christ, a Divine Being, had not been present in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, if he had not shown once and for all that God can be discerned in our inner life, because he had once been present in a human body; if he had not appeared as the conqueror of death through the Mystery of Golgotha, men would never have been able to comprehend the indwelling of Divinity in the human soul.
If anyone claims that this indwelling could be discerned even if there had been no historical Christ Jesus, he could equally well say that we should have eyes even if there were no sun. As against this one-sided view of some philosophers that, since without eyes we could not see the light, the origin of light must be traced to the eyes, we must always set Goethe's aphorism: The eye is created by light for light.58See note 4. If there were no sun to fill space with light, no eyes would ever have developed in the human organism. The eyes are created by light, and without the sun there would be no eyes. No eye is capable of perceiving the sun without having first received from the sun the power to do so. In the same way, there could be no power to grasp and recognise the Christ-nature if the Christ-Impulse had not entered into external history. What the sun out there in the cosmos does for human sight, so the historical Christ-Jesus makes possible what we call the entry of the divine nature into our inner life.
The elements necessary for understanding this were present in the stream of thought that came over from the East; they needed only to be raised to a higher level. It was in the West that souls were ripe to grasp and accept this impulse—the West, where experiences which had belonged to the outer world were transferred to the inner life most intensively, and in the form of conscience watched over a generally weak ego. In this way souls were strengthened, and prepared to hear the voice of conscience now saying within them: The Divinity who appeared in the East to those able to look clairvoyantly into the world—this Divinity now lives in us!
However, what was thus being prepared could not have become conscious experience if the inward Divinity had not spoken in advance in the dawning of conscience. So we see that external understanding for the Divinity of Christ Jesus was born in the East, and the emergence of conscience came to meet it from the West. For example, we find that conscience is more and more often spoken of in the Roman world, at the beginning of the Christian era, and the further westward we go, the clearer is the evidence for the recognised existence of conscience or for its presence in embryonic form.
Thus East and West played into each other's hands. We see the sun of the Christ-nature rising in the East, while in the West the development of conscience is preparing the way for understanding the Christ. Hence the victorious advance of Christianity is towards the West, not the East. In the East we see the spread of a religion which represents the final consequence—though on the highest level—of the eastern outlook: Buddhism takes hold of the eastern world. Christianity takes hold of the western world, because Christianity had first created the organ for receiving it. Here we see Christianity brought into relation with the deepened element in western culture: the concept of conscience embodied in Christianity.
Not through the study of external history, but only through an inward contemplation of the facts, shall we come to knowledge of these developments. What I am saying today will be met with disbelief by many people. But a demand of the times is that we should recognise the spirit in external phenomena. This, however, is possible only if we are at least able initially to discern the spirit where it speaks to us in the form of a clear message. Popular consciousness says: When conscience speaks, it is God speaking in the soul. The highest spiritual consciousness says that when conscience speaks, it is truly the cosmic Spirit speaking. And spiritual science brings out the connection between conscience and the greatest event in the evolution of mankind, the Christ-Event. Hence it is not surprising that conscience has thereby been ennobled and raised to a higher sphere. When we hear that something has been done for reasons of conscience, we feel that conscience is regarded as one of the most important possessions of mankind.
Thus we can see how natural and right it is for the human heart to speak of conscience as “God in man”. And when Goethe says that the highest experience for man is when “God-Nature reveals itself to him”, we must realise that God can reveal himself in the spirit to man only if Nature is seen in the light of its spiritual background. This has been provided for in human evolution, on the one hand by the light of Christ, shining from outside, and on the other by the divine light within us: the light of conscience. Hence a philosopher such as Fichte, who studies human character, is justified in saying that conscience is the highest voice in our inward life. On this account, also, we are aware that our dignity as human beings is inseparable from conscience. We are human beings because we have an ego-consciousness; and the conscience we have at our side is also at the side of our ego. Thus we look on conscience as a most sacred individual possession, inviolable by the external world, whose voice enables us to determine our direction and our goal. When conscience speaks, no other voice may intrude.
So it is that on one side conscience ensures our connection with the primordial power of the world and on the other guarantees the fact that in our inmost self we have something like a drop flowing from the Godhead. And man can know: When conscience speaks in him, it is a God speaking.
Das Menschliche Gewissen
Gestatten Sie, daß ich den heutigen Vortrag mit einer persönlichen Erinnerung beginne. Sie bezieht sich auf ein kleines Erlebnis, das ich als ganz junger Mensch hatte, und das zu den Dingen gehört, die, wenn auch scheinbar ganz klein und unbedeutend, doch für das Leben immer wieder schöne Erinnerungen bilden können.
Als ganz junger Mensch hörte ich einmal die Vorträge eines Dozenten über Literaturgeschichte. Der betreffende Vortragende begann damals seinen Kursus mit einer Betrachtung des Geisteslebens zur Zeit Lessings und wollte einleiten eine Reihe von Betrachtungen, die durch die literarische Entwickelung der zweiten Hälfte des 18. und eines Teiles des 19. Jahrhunderts führen sollten. Und er begann mit Worten, welche einen tiefen Eindruck machen konnten. Er wollte den Hauptcharakterzug, der in das literarische Geistesleben zur Zeit Lessings hineinkam, dadurch charakterisieren, daß er sagte: Das künstlerische Bewußtsein bekam ein ästhetisches Gewissen. - Wenn man sich dann aus dem, was er weiter ausführte, zurechtlegte, was er mit diesem Ausspruch eigentlich sagen wollte — diskutieren wollen wir über die Berechtigung dieser Behauptung nicht -, so war es etwa folgendes: In die ganzen künstlerischen Betrachtungen und in alle Absichten der künstlerischen Leistungen, die sich an das Bestreben Lessings und anderer Zeitgenossen anschlossen, kam hinein der tiefste Ernst, durch den sie die Kunst nicht bloß zu etwas machen wollten, was wie ein Anhängsel des Lebens dasteht, was nur da ist, um auch nur etwas hinzuzufügen zu den verschiedenen anderen Vergnügungen des Lebens; sondern sie wollten die Kunst vielmehr zu etwas machen, was sich als ein notwendiger Faktor jedes menschenwürdigen Daseins in die Entwickelung einfügen muß. Die Kunst zu erheben zu einer ernsten und würdigen Menschheitsangelegenheit, die mitzusprechen hat in dem Chor, in welchem gesprochen wird über die großen fruchtbringenden Angelegenheiten der Menschheit, das sei das Ziel gewesen der Geister, die jene Epoche begannen. — Das wollte jener Literarhistoriker sagen, indem er betonte: Es kam in das künstlerisch-dichterische Leben hinein ästhetisches Gewissen.
Warum konnte denn ein solcher Ausspruch eine Bedeutung haben für eine Seele, die hinhorchen wollte auf die Rätsel des Daseins, wie sie sich in diesem oder jenem Menschenkopf spiegeln? Aus dem Grunde konnte ein solcher Ausdruck eine Bedeutung gewinnen, weil die Kunstauffassung geadelt werden sollte, indem sie mit einem Ausdruck belegt wurde, über dessen Bedeutung für alles Menschendasein, für alle Menschenwürde und Menschenbestimmung kein Zweifel bestehen kann. Mit einem Ausdruck sollte der Ernst des künstlerischen Wirkens belegt werden, über dessen Bedeutung sozusagen eine Diskussion ausgeschlossen ist. Und es ist etwas daran, wenn wir davon sprechen, daß in irgendeiner Angelegenheit jene Seelenerlebnisse eine Bedeutung haben, die wir mit dem Ausdruck «Gewissen» bezeichnen, weil wir dadurch gleichsam die betreffenden Angelegenheiten hinaufheben wollen zu einer Sphäre, in der sie geadelt werden. Das heißt mit anderen Worten: Die menschliche Seele verspürt, wenn der Ausdruck «Gewissen» ausgesprochen wird, daß etwas berührt wird von dem Wertvollsten im menschlichen Seelenleben, etwas von dem, was einen Mangel bedeuten würde für dieses Seelenleben, wenn es nicht in ihm vorhanden wäre. Und wie oft ist gesagt worden, um das Große und Bedeutungsvolle dessen zu charakterisieren, was mit dem Wort «Gewissen» bezeichnet wird — ganz gleichgültig, ob das der andere bildlich oder wirklich versteht: Was sich als Gewissen ankündigt in der menschlichen Seele, ist die Stimme Gottes in dieser Seele. Und man wird auch kaum finden, daß es irgendeinen Menschen geben kann, wenn er auch noch so wenig über höhere geistige Angelegenheiten nachzudenken bereit ist, der nicht irgendeinen Begriff sich von dem gemacht hätte, was man gemeinhin das «Gewissen» nennt. Ein jeder hat ja so ungefähr das Gefühl: Was es auch sein mag, es ist eine Stimme, die mit einer unwiderleglichen Gewalt in der einzelnen Menschenbrust Entscheidungen trifft über das, was gut und was schlecht oder böse ist; über das, was getan werden soll, damit der Mensch mit sich selber einverstanden sein kann, und was unterlassen werden muß, damit der Mensch nicht an den Punkt kommt, wo er sich selber in gewissem Sinne mit Verachtung behandeln muß. Daher können wir sagen: Das Gewissen erscheint jeder einzelnen Menschenseele als etwas Heiliges in der Menschenbrust, als etwas, worüber es verhältnismäßig sogar leicht ist, irgendeine Ansicht zu gewinnen.
Anders allerdings stellt sich die Sache, wenn wir ein wenig die menschliche Geschichte und das menschliche Geistesleben betrachten. Wer würde denn nicht, wenn er eine solche geistige Angelegenheit ins Auge faßt, und wenn er tiefer zu sehen sich bemüht, ein wenig Umschau halten bei denen, wo er ein Wissen darüber voraussetzen kann: bei den Philosophen? Allerdings würde es ihm da gegenüber einer solchen Angelegenheit so ergehen wie gegenüber so vielen anderen Menschheitsangelegenheiten: Die Erklärungen, die man bei den verschiedenen Philosophen über das Gewissen findet, unterscheiden sich, wenigstens scheinbar, beträchtlich voneinander, wenn sie auch immer einen mehr oder weniger dunklen Kern enthalten, der überall gleich ist. Aber das wäre nicht das Schlimmste. Wer sich recht viel Mühe geben wollte, die verschiedenen Philosophen alter und neuerer Zeit zu fragen, was sie unter dem Gewissen verstanden haben, der würde finden, daß er mancherlei recht schöne Sätze bekäme — auch mancherlei recht schwer verständliche Sätze -, daß er aber nichts Rechtes träfe, von dem er sich sagen könnte, daß es vollständig und zweifellos dasjenige zum Ausdruck brächte, wovon er fühlt: das ist das Gewissen! -— Es würde allerdings heute viel zu weit führen, würde ich Ihnen eine Blütenlese geben von dem, was als die verschiedenen Erklärungen über das Gewissen Jahrhunderte hindurch von seiten gerade der philosophischen Führer der Menschheit gesagt worden ist. Da könnte hingewiesen werden darauf, daß etwa von dem ersten Drittel des Mittelalters an und dann durch die ganze mittelalterliche Philosophie hindurch, wenn vom Gewissen die Rede war, immer gesagt worden ist, das Gewissen sei eine Kraft der menschlichen Seele, welche fähig ist, unmittelbar Aussagen zu machen über das, was der Mensch tun und lassen soll. Aber - so sagen zum Beispiel die Philosophen des Mittelalters — es liegt diesem Kraftmoment in der menschlichen Seele noch etwas anderes zugrunde, noch etwas Feineres als das Gewissen selber. Eine Persönlichkeit, deren Name hier auch schon öfter genannt worden ist, Meister Eckhart spricht davon, daß dem Gewissen zugrunde läge ein ganz kleiner Funke, der gleichsam als ein Ewiges in die Menschenseele gelegt worden ist, und der mit einer unwiderstehlichen Gewalt, wenn er vernommen wird, anzeigt die Gesetze des Guten und des Bösen.
Wenn wir dann in die neue Zeit heraufkommen, finden wir wieder die verschiedensten Erklärungen über das Gewissen; darunter auch solche, welche einen eigentümlichen Eindruck hervorrufen müssen, weil sie deutlich an der Stirn geschrieben tragen, daß sie den ganzen Ernst jener inneren Gottesstimme, die wir das Gewissen nennen, eigentlich nicht zum Ausdruck bringen. Es gibt Philosophen, welche davon sprechen, daß das Gewissen eigentlich etwas sei, was der Mensch sich dadurch erringt, daß? er immer mehr und mehr Lebenserfahrungen in seine Seele aufnimmt, immer mehr und mehr erlebt, was für ihn nützlich, schädlich, vervollkommnend und so weiter ist oder nicht. Und aus dieser Summe von Erfahrungen bilde sich sozusagen der Niederschlag eines Urteils, das dann spräche: Tue das, tue das nicht! — Es gibt andere Philosophen, welche dem Gewissen wiederum die höchste Lobrede gehalten haben, die man ihm nur halten kann. Zu diesen letzten gehört der große deutsche Philosoph Johann Gottlieb Fichte, der, wenn er auf das Grundprinzip alles menschlichen Denkens und Seins hinweisen wollte, vor allen Dingen auf das menschliche Ich hindeutete, aber nicht auf das vergängliche, persönliche Ich, sondern auf den ewigen Grundkern im Menschen. Er wies zugleich darauf hin, daß das Höchste, was der Mensch erleben kann in seinem Ich, das Gewissen sei. Und er sprach es geradezu aus, daß der Mensch nichts Höheres erleben könne als das Urteil in sich: Das mußt du tun, weil es deinem Gewissen widerspräche, es nicht zu tun. Darüber könne man, was Majestät, was Adel des Urteils betrifft, überhaupt nicht hinausgehen. Und wenn Fichte gerade der Philosoph ist, der am allerstärksten von allen Philosophen auf die Kraft und Bedeutung des menschlichen Ich hingewiesen hat, so ist es charakteristisch, daß er als den bedeutendsten Impuls im menschlichen Ich wiederum das Gewissen hinstelle.
Je mehr wir allerdings dann in die neuere Zeit hinaufkommen, und je mehr sich das Denken einem materialistischen Grundcharakter nähert, desto mehr finden wir, daß das Gewissen — nicht für die menschliche Brust und nicht für das menschliche Herz, wohl aber für das Denken der mehr oder weniger materialistisch angehauchten Philosophen — in seiner Majestät sehr stark herabgedrückt wird. Nur durch ein Beispiel soll das beleuchtet werden.
In der zweiten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts gibt es einen Philosophen, der ganz gewiß in bezug auf Vornehmheit der Seele, in bezug auf menschliches, harmonisiertes Fühlen, in bezug auf Weitherzigkeit der Gesinnung zu den schönsten und herrlichsten Persönlichkeiten gehört. Er ist heute schon wenig mehr genannt: ich meine Bartholomäus Carneri. Wenn Sie seine Schriften durchgehen, finden Sie trotz der Vornehmheit seiner Denkweise, trotz der Weitherzigkeit seiner Gesinnung, weil er ganz angehaucht war von der matertalistischen Denkweise seines Jahrhunderts, daß er das Gewissen so charakterisiert: Was können wir uns unter dem Gewissen vorstellen? Es ist doch im Grunde genommen nichts anderes als eine Summe von Gewohnheiten und anerzogenen Urteilen, die wir in der ersten Jugend aufgenommen haben, die uns eingeprägt sind durch Erziehung und Leben, deren wir uns nicht mehr genau bewußt sind. Aus unseren anerzogenen Gewohnheiten heraus spricht es: «Das sollst du tun - das sollst du nicht tun!»
Also auf die äußeren Lebenserfahrungen und Lebensgewohnheiten, und zwar auf die engumschränktesten, wird hier der ganze Umfang des Gewissens zurückgeführt. Ja andere, noch mehr materialistisch angehauchte Philosophen des 19. Jahrhunderts sind noch weiter gegangen. Und interessant ist in dieser Beziehung die Schrift eines Philosophen, der in seiner mittleren Zeit auf Friedrich Nietzsche einen großen Einfluß gehabt hat: Paul Ree. Von ihm gibt es eine Schrift über die Entstehung des Gewissens. Sie ist interessant, nicht weil man auch nur in einem einzigen Satze beistimmen könnte, sondern als ein Symptom für die Anschauungen unserer ganzen Zeit. Darin wird ungefähr ausgeführt - seien wir uns bewußt, wenn man etwas kurz sagen und mit ein paar scharfen Linien darstellen muß, wird es dadurch in manchen Einzelheiten etwas verzerrt werden müssen -: Die Menschheit hat sich in bezug auf alle Eigenschaften entwickelt, also auch in bezug auf das Gewissen. Ursprünglich hatten die Menschen das überhaupt nicht, was wir das Gewissen nennen. Das ist nur ein Vorurteil, und zwar eines der gewaltigsten, wenn man das Gewissen für etwas Ewiges hält. Ursprünglich ist so etwas wie eine Stimme, die uns sagt: «Das sollst du tun — das sollst du nicht tun!», eine Stimme, die wir als das Gewissen bezeichnen — so meint Paul R&e -, überhaupt nicht vorhanden gewesen. Aber es entwickelte sich das, was wir den Rachetrieb nennen könnten. Das war das Ursprünglichste. Wenn einem irgend etwas angetan war, entwickelte sich der Rachetrieb, dasjenige wieder zurückzugeben, was einem angetan worden war. Und durch die Komplikation der Lebensverhältnisse kam es dahin, daß in sozialen Verbänden die Rache den Mächten übergeben wurde, denen man die Ausführung übertrug. So gewöhnte sich der Mensch daran, zu glauben, daß auf jede Tat, durch die ein anderer geschädigt wird, etwas folgen müsse, was man früher «Rache» genannt hat. So bildete sich das Urteil heraus, daß gewisse Taten, die schlimme Folgen haben, ausgeglichen werden müssen durch andere Taten. Und aus der Weiterbildung dieses Urteils entstand dann ein Zusammenhang zwischen gewissen Gefühlen, die der Mensch haben kann, wenn eine Tat getan ist, oder selbst, wenn er in die Versuchung kommt, etwas zu tun. Das hat der Mensch vergessen, daß ursprünglich der Rachetrieb lebendig war; das aber hat sich festgesetzt im Gefühl, daß eine Handlung folgen müsse als Ausgleich auf eine schädigende Tat. So glaubt der Mensch jetzt, daß eine «innere Stimme» spräche, während es in Wahrheit nur die nach innen verschlagene Stimme des Rachetriebes ist. -— Da haben wir einen extremen Fall, dadurch extrem, weil durch eine solche Auseinandersetzung das Gewissen als eine vollständige Illusion hingestellt wird.
Aber auf der anderen Seite müssen wir doch wieder zugestehen, daß auch jene Menschen viel zu weit gehen, welche behaupten, das Gewissen sei etwas, was als eine Tatsache immer vorhanden gewesen sei, solange es überhaupt Menschen auf der Erde gäbe, daß es sozusagen etwas Ewiges sei. Indem sowohl dort, wo mehr geistig gedacht wird, wie auch dort, wo man das Gewissen als reine Illusion erklärt, Fehler gemacht werden, ist eine Verständigung auf diesem Gebiete sehr schwierig, trotzdem es sich um eine alltägliche, aber alltäglich-heilige Sache unseres menschlichen Innern handelt. Schon durch eine Umschau bei den Philosophen könnte man entnehmen, daß über das Gewissen selbst bei den besten unserer menschlichen Persönlichkeiten früher anders gedacht worden ist, als wir es heute müssen. Es ist mit Recht hingewiesen worden von Leuten, die doch etwas tiefer sehen in solchen Sachen, daß wir zum Beispiel bei einer so hehren Persönlichkeit wie Sokrates im Grunde genommen gar nicht so etwas finden wie das, was wir heute als «Gewissen» bezeichnen. Denn wenn wir sagen: das Gewissen ist eine Stimme, welche selbst in der Brust des naivsten Menschen spricht und die wie mit göttlichheiligem Impuls sagt: «Dies sollst du tun! das sollst du lassen!» so nimmt sich demgegenüber die von Sokrates gemachte und dann auf Plato übergegangene Behauptung doch etwas anders aus. Beide behaupten, daß Tugend etwas sei, was lehrbar sei, was man lernen könne. Sokrates will also sagen: Wenn der Mensch sich klare Begriffe bildet über das, was er tun oder nicht tun soll, so kann er durch Lernen, durch ein Wissen von der Tugend dazu kommen, allmählich rugendhaft zu handeln.
Wer nun auf dem heutigen Begriff des Gewissens feststeht, könnte dagegen einwenden: Das wäre eigentlich. recht schlimm, wenn man erst abwarten müßte, bis man gelernt hat, was gut oder schlecht ist, um zu einem tugendhaften Handeln zu kommen. Das Gewissen ist etwas, was mit viel elementarerer Gewalt in der menschlichen Seele spricht — und längst im einzelnen Falle vernehmbar spricht: «Das sollst du tun und das lassen!» bevor wir uns die höheren Ideen gebildet haben über das, was gut und böse ist, bevor wir also eine Morallehre aufgenommen haben. Und Gewissen ist etwas, was eine gewisse Ruhe in die menschliche Seele einziehen läßt, wenn der Mensch sich sagen kann: Du hast etwas getan, womit du einverstanden sein kannst. Schlimm wäre es — so kann mancher sagen —, wenn wir erst viel lernen müßten über Wesen und Charakter der Tugend, um zu einer Zustimmung über unser Handeln kommen zu wollen. — Deshalb können wir sagen: Jener Philosoph, zu dem wir wie zu einem Märtyrer der Philosophie aufsehen, der durch seinen Tod geadelt und gekrönt hat sein philosophisches Werk, Sokrates, er stellt uns einen Tugendbegriff hin, der sich schwer mit dem heutigen Begriff vom Gewissen vereinigen läßt. Und selbst bei den späteren griechischen Denkern wird immer noch gesagt, daß man sich durch Lernen in der Tugend vervollkommnen könne; was im Grunde der ursprünglichen elementaren Macht des Gewissens widersprechen würde.
Woher kann es nun kommen, daß eine so hehre und gewaltig erscheinende Persönlichkeit wie Sokrates eigentlich den Begriff, den wir uns heute vom Gewissen machen, noch nicht kennt, trotzdem wir fühlen, wenn wir an Sokrates herantreten, so wie ihn uns Plato als Unterredner darstellt, daß aus seinen Worten der reinste Moralsinn, die höchste Tugendkraft spricht? Das kommt von nichts anderem her als davon, daß selbst diejenigen Begriffe, Vorstellungen und inneren Seelenerlebnisse, die heute der Mensch so fühlt, als wären sie ihm gleichsam eingeboren, auch im Laufe der Zeit von der Menschenseele erst errungen worden sind. Wer zurückgeht in das Geistesleben der Menschheit, der wird allerdings finden, daß der Begriff des Gewissens und das Gefühl vom Gewissen in den alten Zeiten — auch beim griechischen Volke - nicht in derselben Art vorhanden waren, wie sie heute gedacht und gefühlt werden. Entstanden ist der Begriff des Gewissens. Aber nicht auf so leichte Weise durch äußere Erfahrung und äußere Wissenschaft kann der Mensch etwas lernen über die Entstehung des Gewissens, wie es etwa durch Paul R&e versucht worden ist; sondern da muß schon tiefer hineingeleuchtet werden in die menschliche Seele.
Nun haben wir es in diesem Winter gerade als Aufgabe dieser Vorträge betrachtet, in das Gefüge der menschlichen Seele tiefer hineinzuleuchten, und zwar mit jenem Lichte, das entnommen ist einer Entwickelung der menschlichen Seele zu höheren Erkenntisfähigkeiten hinauf. Es wurde ja alles Seelenleben so dargestellt, wie es sich zeigt dem geöffneten Auge des Sehers, jenem Auge, das nicht nur die äußere Sinneswelt sieht und sich nicht nur ein Wissen erringt von der Sinneswelt, sondern das hinter den Schleier der Sinneswelt in die Region schaut, wo die eigentlichen Ursprünge der Sinneswelt liegen: in die geistigen Untergründe dieser Sinneswelt. Und auf der anderen Seite wurde wiederholt darauf hingewiesen - zum Beispiel in dem Vortrage «Was ist Mystik?» -, wie über dasjenige hinaus, was uns im Alltagsleben als unser Seelenleben erscheint, das seherische Bewußtsein in tiefere Regionen der Seele hineinführt. Wir glauben im gewöhnlichen Leben der Seele schon tiefere Untergründe zu erkennen, wenn wir in uns selber blicken und die Gedanken-, Gefühls- und Willenserlebnisse finden. Es ist aber darauf hingewiesen worden, wie das, was sich unserer Seele im tagwachenden Zustand zeigt, im Grunde nur die Außenseite für das eigentlich Geistige ist. Geradeso wie wir hinter den Schleier des Daseins schauen müssen, wenn wir dessen Untergründe finden wollen, hinter das, was uns unsere Augen zeigen, was uns unsere Ohren hören lassen, was uns unser Verstand durch das Gehirn erkennen läßt, so müssen wir hinter unser Denken, Fühlen und Wollen schauen, auch hinter die Gründe dessen, was wir in unserem Innern als das gewöhnliche Seelenleben haben, wenn wir die eigentlichen Ursachen, die geistigen Untergründe unseres eigenen Lebens kennenlernen wollen.
Von solchen Gesichtspunkten sind wir ausgegangen, um das menschliche Seelenleben in seinen mancherlei Verzweigungen zu beleuchten. Das hat sich uns herausgestellt, daß dieses menschliche Seelenleben in drei voneinander zu unterscheidenden Gebieten zu betrachten ist — wohl gemerkt, ich sage nicht «zu trennenden Gebieten»! Als das unterste Glied des Seelenlebens hat sich uns die Empfindungsseele dargestellt. Bei einem Menschen, der noch ganz hingegeben ist seinen Trieben, Begierden und Leidenschaften, der es noch nicht dahin gebracht hat, seine Affekte und Leidenschaften zu läutern und zu reinigen und von seinem Ich aus Herr über sie zu werden, sprechen wir davon, daß die Empfindungsseele das Übergewicht hat. Wenn der Mensch dann immer mehr und mehr Herr wird über Triebe, Begierden und Leidenschaften, dann zeigt sich uns ein höheres Seelenglied: die Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele. Darin macht sich geltend, was im Menschen lebt als Wahrheitssinn, als Mitgefühl mit anderen Menschen und dergleichen. Die Verstandesseele entwickelt sich aus der Empfindungsseele heraus. Und das höchste Seelenglied, zu dem sich der Mensch zunächst aufschwingen kann - er wird in der Zukunft noch höhere Glieder entwickeln -, haben wir die Bewußtseinsseele genannt. Während der Mensch in der Empfindungsseele das, was als äußere Eindrücke von außen auf ihn wirkt, mit seinen Trieben und Leidenschaften beantwortet, steigt er in seine Gemütsseele hinauf, um, ohne lediglich auf Triebe und Leidenschaften zu hören, die Eindrücke der Welt zu beantworten. Wenn er seine Triebe, Begierden und Leidenschaften läutert, entwickelt sich die Verstandesseele. Wenn er dann mit dem, was er sich in seinem Innern erobert hat, wiederum herantritt an die äußere Welt, wenn er sich innerlich Vorstellungen erworben hat, um die Welt zu begreifen, und sich sagt: Meine Vorstellungen und Begriffe sind dazu da, um mir die Welt verständlich zu machen, — wenn er gleichsam wieder aus sich herausgeht, um sich ein Bewußtsein zu erwerben von dem, was draußen in der Welt vorhanden ist, dann steigt er hinauf zur Bewußtseinsseele.
Was ist es, was sich in der menschlichen Seele durch diese drei Seelenglieder hinaufarbeiter? - Das ist das menschliche Ich, jener Einheitspunkt des menschlichen Innern, durch den alles zusammengehalten wird, was gleichsam wie auf drei Saiten des Seelenlebens spielt, indem es sie in der verschiedensten Weise zusammenklingen läßt, konsonierend oder dissonierend. Diese Gewalt im Innern, die sich dadurch geltend macht, daß sie die Begriffe wieder verbindet mit den Dingen der Welt, nennen wir das menschliche Ich, das anwesend ist in allen drei Seelengliedern wie ein innerer Künstler, der auf dem menschlichen Seelenwesen spielt wie auf drei Saiten. Aber was wir so sehen wie eine Art inneren Spiels des Ich innerhalb unserer Seelenglieder, das hat sich doch erst nach und nach entwickelt. Ja, die ganze Art des jetzigen Bewußtseins hat sich erst nach und nach entwickelt. Und wir verstehen am besten, wie dieses menschliche Bewußtsein und das heutige menschliche Seelenleben sich aus der Urzeit hereinentwickelt haben, wenn wir ein wenig hinweisen auf das, was aus dem Menschen in der Zukunft werden kann, und was schon heute aus ihm werden kann, wenn er aus der Bewußtseinsseele heraus seine Seele entwickelt eben zu dem, was wir ein höheres, seherisches Bewußtsein nennen können.
Die gewöhnliche Bewußtseinsseele läßt uns nur jene Außenwelt begreifen, welche dem Sinnesleben gegenübersteht. Wenn der Mensch hinter den Schleier der Sinnenwelt dringen will, muß er sein Seelenleben höher hinaufentwickeln, muß er die Entwickelung in sich selber fortsetzen. Dann macht er die große Erfahrung, daß es so etwas gibt wie eine Erweckung der Seele, etwas, was sich vergleichen läßt im niederen Seelenleben mit der Operation eines Blindgeborenen, der vorher nichts gewußt hat von Licht und Farben und nachher hereinbrechen sieht die lichtvolle, farbige Welt. So ist es mit dem, der durch die entsprechenden Methoden seine Seele zu höherer Entwickelung bringt und der dann den Augenblick erlebt, wo das, was sonst nicht genannt wird in unserer Umgebung, was uns aber immer umschwiirrt, hereintritt als eine Fülle von Wesenheiten und Tatsachen in unserem Seelenleben, weil wir uns ein neues Organ erworben haben.
Wenn sich der Mensch bewußt durch Schulung zu solchem Sehertum entwickelt, nimmt er sein volles Ich in dieses Sehertum mit hinauf; das heißt, er bewegt sich innerhalb der geistigen Wesenheiten und Tatsachen, die unserer sinnlichen Welt zugrunde liegen, so wie er sich zwischen Tischen und Stühlen in der Sinnenwelt bewegt. Was ihn als sein früheres Ich geleitet hat durch Empfindungsseele, Verstandesseele und Bewußtseinsseele, das nimmt er in eine höhere Region des menschlichen Seelenlebens mit hinauf.
Wenden wir jetzt von dem hellseherischen Bewußtsein, das durchleuchtet und durchglüht ist vom Ich des Menschen, den Blick wieder zurück auf das gewöhnliche Seelenleben. In der verschiedensten Weise lebt das Ich des Menschen in drei Seelengliedern. Haben wir einen Menschen, der ganz und gar in den Trieben, Begierden und Leidenschaften lebt, die in seiner Empfindungsseele aufsteigen, ohne daß er im Grunde etwas dazu tut, so sagen wir: er ist hingegeben an seine Empfindungsseele, und das Ich ist noch sehr schwach in ihm tätig. Da hat das Ich keine besondere Gewalt; es folgt sozusagen den Trieben, Begierden und Leidenschaften der Empfiindungsseele. Wir können sagen: Innerhalb jener Gewalten, die wie die Meereswogen der Seele auftauchen aus der Empfindungsseele, steht als eine schwache Leuchte das Ich da und vermag noch wenig gegenüber dem Wogen der Triebe und Willensimpulse. — Freier und selbständiger arbeitet das Ich schon in der Verstandesseele oder Gemütsseele. Da kommt der Mensch schon mehr zu sich, weil die Verstandesseele sich nur dadurch entwickeln kann, daß der Mensch das, was er in seiner Empfindungsseele innerlich erlebt, im ruhigen, inneren Seelenleben verarbeitet. Der Mensch kommt in der Verstandesseele zu seinem Ich, das heißt zu sich selber. Das Ich wird immer leuchtender und leuchtender und kommt dann zur vollständigen Klarheit, so daß der Mensch sich sagen kann: Ich habe mich erfaßt! Ich bin zum eigentlichen Selbstbewußtsein gekommen! Zu dieser Klarheit kann das Ich erst in der Bewußtseinsseele kommen. Da zeigt sich die vordringende Stärke des Ich, wenn wir hinaufdringen von der Empfindungsseele durch die Verstandesseele zur Bewußtseinsseele.
Wenn sich aber der Mensch in seinem Ich über die Bewußtseinsseele hinausentwickeln kann zum hellsichtigen Bewußtsein, gleichsam zu höheren Seelengliedern, so werden wir es auch begreiflich finden, wenn der Seher, zurückblickend in die Menschheitsentwickelung, uns sagt: Geradeso wie das Ich hinaufsteigt zu höheren Seelengliedern, so ist es auch in die Empfindungsseele hineingekommen von einem untergeordneten Gliede der Menschennatur. — Wir haben schon darauf hingewiesen, wie die Gesamtheit des menschlichen Innern — Empfindungsseele, Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele und Bewußtseinsseele — sich entwickelt in der Gesamtheit der menschlichen Hüllen, die wir bezeichnen als physischen Leib, Ätherleib und astralischen Leib oder Empfindungsleib. Muß es da nicht begreiflich erscheinen, wenn nun die Geisteswissenschaft uns zeigt, daß das Ich, bevor es sich hinaufentwickelt hat durch die Empfindungsseele bis zur Bewußtseinsseele, eigentlich in untergeordneten, noch wenig seelischen Gliedern des Menschen, in den äußeren menschlichen Hüllen tätig war? Bevor das Ich in der Empfindungsseele war, war es im Empfindungsleib tätig; noch früher im Ätherleib und im physischen Leib. Da war es noch mehr ein solches Ich, das den Menschen von außen lenkte und leitete. Wenn wir uns von dieser Wirksamkeit eine Vorstellung machen wollen, können wir etwa sagen: Wenn wir den Menschen vor uns haben in seinen drei Hüllen, sehen wir das Ich wirksam, indem es den Menschen leitet und lenkt. Aber da ist der Mensch noch nicht fähig, zu sich Ich zu sagen, noch nicht fähig, in sich selber seinen Wesensmittelpunkt zu finden. Da kommen wir zu einem Ich, das noch in dem Dunkel des Leibeslebens waltet. Aber legen wir uns jetzt die Frage vor: Ist dieses Ich, das in dieser urfernen Vergangenheit im Menschen gewaltet hat und die äußere Leiblichkeit aufgebaut hat, eigentlich unvollkommener zu denken als dasjenige Ich, das wir heute selbst in unserer Seele tragen?
Wir blicken heute auf unser Ich als auf den eigentlichen inneren Sammelpunkt unseres Wesens, das uns als Menschen unsere Innerlichkeit gibt, und das sich in Zukunft durch Schulung in unendlicher Weise vervollkommnen kann. Wir sehen in ihm den Inbegriff unserer menschlichen Wesenheit und zugleich dasjenige, was uns Gewähr gibt für unsere Menschenwürde. Als wir nun dieses Ich noch nicht spürten, als es noch an uns arbeitete aus den dunklen geistigen Gewalten der Welt heraus, war es da unvollkommener, als es jetzt in uns ist? — Das könnte nur derjenige sagen, der bloß abstrakt denken wollte.
Wir blicken zum Beispiel auf unseren physischen Leib als auf etwas, was in urferner Vergangenheit aus der geistigen Welt heraus gebildet worden ist, das aber doch da sein mußte, damit die Seele darinnen wohnen kann. Nur materialistischer Sinn könnte glauben, daß dieser physische Leib nicht aus dem Geiste heraus ist. Aber wir blicken damit zugleich auf etwas, was als geistige Schöpfung demjenigen vorangehen mußte, was wir jetzt unser Innenleben nennen. Denn unser Innenleben muß während des Erdendaseins in einem Leibe wohnen, und der mußte vorher zubereitet sein. Wenn wir den Leib auch nur äußerlich betrachten, werden wir uns sagen müssen: Was ist dieser menschliche Leib doch für ein Wunderwerk an Vollkommenheit! Wer auch nur als Anatom oder Physiologe zum Beispiel das menschliche Herz anschaut in seinem Wunderbau, der wird sagen: Was ist aller menschlicher Verstand, was ist alle technische Geschicklichkeit, verglichen mit dem, was sich uns als Weisheit im Bau des menschlichen Herzens darstellt! Was ist alle unsere Ingenieurtechnik, die Brückengerüste und dergleichen aufbaut, gegen das Gerüst des menschlichen Oberschenkelknochens, das sich uns darstellt als ein wunderbares Gerüst von hin- und hergehenden Balkenlagen, wenn wir es durch das Mikroskop betrachten! Es ist ein schier unermeßlicher Hochmut, wenn der Mensch glauben wollte, daß er auch nur im allergeringsten Grade das erreicht hätte, was als Weisheit hineingelegt ist in den Bau des äußeren physischen Leibes. Und wenn wir unser Seelenleben betrachten — gehen wir nur bis zu den Trieben, Begierden und Leidenschaften — und fragen wir: Wie wirken diese? Was tun wir nicht alles, um von unserem Innern heraus den weisheitsvoll organisierten Bau unseres Leibes zu untergraben? — dann wird der, der unbefangen das Weisheitswerk des menschlichen Hüllenbaues betrachtet, sagen müssen: Unendlich viel weiser ist der Bau unseres Leibes als das, was wir in unserem Innern tragen, von dem wir die Hoffnung hegen, daß es sich immer vollkommener gestalten wird, was aber heute im Grunde noch recht unvollkommen ist. — Aber nimmermehr können wir etwas anderes glauben, auch wenn wir nicht hellseherisch sind, wenn wir nur unbefangen das betrachten, was sich vor das äußere Auge hinstellt.
Muß nicht jene weisheitsvolle Tätigkeit, welche das leibliche Gehäuse des Menschen aufgebaut hat, damit dieses von einem Ich bewohnt werde, von derselben Natur und Wesenheit etwas haben, was das Ich selbst seiner Natur und Wesenheit nach ist? Müssen wir nicht das, was an unsern Hüllen gearbeitet hat, uns mit einem Ich-Charakter, nur mit einem unendlich vollkommeneren Ich-Charakter denken? Wir müssen sagen: Etwas, das mit unserem Ich verwandt ist, hat durch urferne Zeiten hindurch gebaut an einem solchen Gehäuse, das von einem Ich bewohnt werden kann. — Wer das nicht glauben will, mag sich etwas anderes einbilden; aber er mag sich auch einbilden, daß ein menschliches Haus, das gebaut ist, damit ein Mensch darinnen wohnen kann, nicht von einem Menschengeiste aufgeführt worden ist, sondern sich durch bloße Naturkräfte zusammengefügt habe. Das eine ist so richtig wie das andere, wenn man es nur unbefangen betrachtet. Daher blicken wir auf eine urferne Vergangenheit, wo Geistiges mit einer unendlich vollkommenen Ich-Natur an unsern Hüllen gearbeitet hat, und da heraus arbeitete sich das Ich erst zum heutigen Bewußtsein herauf. Wie im Unterbewußten war es verborgen in Urzeiten in diesem Gehäuse.
Wenn wir diese Entwickelung betrachten seit jener urfernen Vergangenheit, wo das Ich wie im dunklen Mutterschoß der äußeren Hüllen drinnen war, so finden wir, daß es zwar von sich nichts wußte, dafür aber näher stand jenen geistigen Wesenheiten, die an unsern Hüllen gebaut haben, die mit dem Ich verwandt, aber nur unendlich vollkommener sind als das Ich selbst. Daher wird es begreiflich erscheinen, daß das Seher-Bewußtsein zurückweist auf eine Zeit, wo der Mensch zwar noch ‚nicht das Ich-Bewußtsein hatte, aber dafür im Schoße des geistigen Lebens selber war, und wo auch das heutige Seelenleben ganz anders war, noch näher den Seelenkräften, aus denen das Ich hervorgegangen ist. Wenn wir zurückgehen in die Vergangenheit der Menschheitsentwickelung, finden wir auf dem Grunde aller menschlichen Entwickelung ein ursprüngliches hellsichtiges Bewußtsein, das nur nicht von einem Ich durchleuchtet war, sondern dumpf und traumhaft wirkte; und diesem Bewußtsein erst entsprießt das Ich des Menschen. Was sich der Mensch mit seinem Ich erst in der Zukunft wieder erringen wird, das finden wir in jener urfernen Vergangenheit ohne das Ich. — Hellsichtiges Bewußtsein ist aber damit verbunden, daß der Mensch geistige Tatsachen und geistige Wesenheiten in seiner Umgebung sieht. Das ist es, was uns die Geisteswissenschaft zeigt: daß der Mensch, bevor er zum heutigen Bewußtsein gekommen ist, in seinem Seelenzustande in einem traumhaften Hellsehen war, wo er der geistigen Welt näher war, sie schaute, wenn auch nur in einer ähnlichen Weise wie im Traum. Das ist der Urzustand der Menschheit. Da war der Mensch, weil er eben noch nicht von einem Ich durchglüht war, noch nicht angewiesen, in seinem Innern zu bleiben, wenn er etwas Geistiges erblicken wollte, sondern da erblickte er das Geistige um sich herum und erblickte sich als Glied der geistigen Welt; und was er tat, hatte in seinem Anschauen noch einen geistigen Charakter. Wenn er etwas dachte, war es nicht so wie heute, wo der Mensch sagt: Jetzt denke ich! — sondern er hatte den Gedanken durch Hellsichtigkeit vor sich. Wenn er ein Gefühl zu entwickeln hatte, hatte er nicht nur in sein Inneres zu schauen, sondern das Gefühl war etwas, was ausstrahlte von ihm, wodurch er sich eingliederte in seine ganze geistige Umgebung.
So lebte der Mensch der Vorzeit in bezug auf seine Seele. Und aus diesem traumhaft-hellseherischen Bewußtsein mußte sich der Mensch entwickeln, um zu sich selber zu kommen, um jenen Mittelpunkt zu finden, der heute noch unvollkommen ist, der aber in der Zukunft immer vollkommener werden wird, wo der Mensch mit dem Ich in die geistige Welt hineinsteigen wird.
Wenn wir nun in jene Urzeiten der Menschheit zurückleuchten mit den Methoden, die wir hier charakterisiert haben, und welche dem hellseherischen Bewußtsein zur Verfügung stehen, was sagt uns dann der Seher über das ursprüngliche menschliche Bewußtsein, zum Beispiel wenn der Mensch eine schlimme Tat begangen hatte? Da stellte sich die schlimme Tat nicht dar als etwas, was der Mensch mit seinem Innern taxieren konnte, sondern er sah sie in ihrer ganzen Schädlichkeit und Schändlichkeit wie ein Gespenst vor seiner Seele stehen. Und wenn das Gefühl für die schlechte Tat in der Seele auftauchte, so war die Folge die, daß die betreffende Tat in ihrer Schändlichkeit als geistige Wirklichkeit an den Menschen herantrat. Da war der Mensch gleichsam umgeben von der Anschauung des Schlimmen seiner Tat.
Dann kam der Mensch immer mehr und mehr in die Zeit hinein, wo das alte traumhafte Hellsehen schwand und wo sich das Ich immer mehr und mehr geltend machte. Indem der Mensch seinen Mittelpunkt in seinem Innern fand, erlosch das alte Hellseherbewußtsein, dafür aber tauchte immer deutlicher das Selbstbewußitsein auf. Was er früher vor sich hatte als Anschauung seiner bösen Tat — und auch seiner guten Tat -, das wurde in sein Inneres verlegt. Es spiegelte sich gleichsam das, was er früher hellseherisch geschaut hatte, in seinem Innern.
Was waren das nun für Gestalten, die der Mensch im traumhaften Hellsehen erblickte als geistige Gegenbilder seiner schlechten Tat? Es war das, was ihm die geistigen Mächte seiner Umgebung zeigten als etwas, wodurch er die Weltordnung gestört, zerrüttet hatte. Das war im Grunde keine schlimme Wirkung im rechten Sinne des Wortes; es war eine heilsame Wirkung. Es war gleichsam die Gegenwirkung der Götter, die den Menschen emporheben wollten, indem sie ihm die Wirkung seiner Tat zeigten, um ihm zu ermöglichen, die schädliche Folge seiner Tat zu beseitigen. So war es zwar etwas Furchtbares, wenn die Wirkung der schlimmen Tat vor dem Menschen stand, aber im Grunde war es eine heilsame Wirkung des Weltengrundes, aus dem der Mensch selbst herauskam. Als dann die Zeit kam, wo der Mensch in sich seinen Ich-Mittelpunkt fand, da wurde diese Anschauung in das Innere verlegt und trat als Wirkung seiner Tat im Spiegelbilde im Innern auf. Wenn unser Ich zuerst zum Vorschein kommt, ist es zunächst schwach innerhalb der Empfindungsseele vorhanden, und der Mensch muß sich langsam erst hinaufarbeiten, um das Ich nach und nach zur Vollkommenheit zu bringen. Fragen wir uns einmal: Was wäre geschehen in dem Augenblick der Entwickelung, als die hellseherische Anschauung der Taten des Menschen von außen verschwand, wenn nicht innerlich etwas aufgetreten wäre in dem noch schwachen Ich, was zugleich wie ein Gegenbild jener wohltätigen Wirkung erschien, die dem Menschen früher vor Augen trat, wenn er die Wirkung seiner Tat hellseherisch schaute?
Der Mensch hätte sein schwaches Ich gehabt; er wäre aber hin und her gerissen worden in der Empfindungsseele durch seine eigenen Leidenschaften wie in einem uferlosen, aufgepeitschten Meere. Was trat beim Menschen in diesem großen weltgeschichtlichen Augenblick aus dem Äußeren in das Innere? Wenn es der große Weltengeist war, der als heilsame Gegenwirkung die schädliche Wirkung einer Tat vor das hellseherische Bewußtsein stellte, der dem Menschen zeigte, was er auszubessern hatte, dann war es nachher auch dieser Weltengeist, der sich als ein Mächtiges im Innern des Menschen kundgab, als das Ich selber noch schwach war. $o zog sich der früher in dem hellseherischen Anschauen sprechende Weltengeist in das menschliche Innere in bezug auf dasjenige zurück, was er zur Korrektur der gestörten Weltordnung zu sagen hatte. Das Ich ist noch schwach. Über diesem Ich wacht aber der Weltengeist; und er läßt sich vernehmen als etwas, was jederzeit wachend über dem Ich steht und über das urteilt, worüber das Ich noch nicht urteilen könnte. Hinter diesem schwachen Ich steht etwas wie ein Abglanz des mächtigen Weltengeistes, der früher im hellsichtigen Bewußtsein dem Menschen die Wirkung seiner Taten gezeigt hatte.
So nahm der Mensch, als dann das alte Hellsehen hinschwand, von dem, was der Weltengeist selber wirkte, nur noch einen Abglanz in seinem Innern wahr. Dieser Abglanz des korrigierenden Weltengeistes, der neben dem Ich wachend steht, erschien dem Menschen als das ihn überwachende Gewissen! So sehen wir, daß es wahr ist, wenn ein naives Bewußtsein davon spricht, daß das Gewissen die Stimme des Gottes im Menschen sei. Aber wir sehen zugleich, daß uns die Geisteswissenschaft in der Entwickelung des Menschen den Moment zeigt, wo das Äußere in das Innere getreten ist, und wo das Gewissen entstanden ist.
Was ich jetzt gesagt habe, kann rein geschöpft werden aus den Anschauungen der geistigen Welt. Man braucht keine äußere Geschichte dazu; das muß ganz innerlich geschaut werden. Wer es schauen kann, der empfindet es als eine Wahrheit von unwiderleglicher Gewißheit. Fragen wir aber jetzt einmal aus einem Zeitbedürfnis .heraus: Könnte uns vielleicht auch eine äußere Geschichte etwas zeigen, was sich wie eine Bestätigung dessen darstellt, was jetzt aus dem Tatbestand des inneren Schauens hervorgeholt ist?
Was aus Seherbewußtsein herrührt, kann man an den äußeren Tatsachen immer prüfen. Wer so etwas behauptet, braucht nicht besorgt zu sein, daß es den äußeren Tatsachen widerspricht. Nur ungenaues Prüfen könnte das vielleicht erleben. Aber es soll nur auf eines hingewiesen werden, was zeigen kann, wie die äußeren Tatsachen durchaus das bestätigen, was jetzt als ein Tatbestand aus dem hellsichtigen Bewußtsein hergeleitet worden ist.
Es ist gar nicht so lange her, wo wir den Augenblick der Entstehung des Gewissens wahrnehmen können. Wenn wir zurückgehen bis ins 5. und 6. Jahrhundert der vorchristlichen Zeitrechnung, treffen wir in Griechenland einen gewaltigen Dichter der griechischen Dramatik: Äschylos. Er stellt uns etwas sehr Merkwürdiges dar, merkwürdig aus dem Grunde, weil dasselbe später von einem anderen griechischen Dichter anders dargestellt worden ist. Äschylos stellt dar den aus Troja heimkehrenden Agamemnon, der beim Eintreffen in seiner Heimat von seiner Gattin Klytämnestra ermordet wird. Agamemnon wird gerächt von seinem Sohn Orest, der, nachdem ihm die Götter dazu den Rat gegeben haben, die Mutter tötet, die den Vater ermordet hat. Was ist nun die Folge dieser Tat für Orest? Durch die Wirkung des Muttermordes preßt sich aus seinem Innern etwas heraus — das wird uns bei Äschylos dargestellt -, was ihn fähig macht, das zu schauen, was während dieser Jahrhunderte normalerweise nicht mehr geschaut werden konnte; abnormalerweise läßt die Gewalt solcher Tat wie ein altes Erbstück noch einmal das alte Hellsehen erstehen. Orest konnte sagen: Apollo, der Gott selber ist es, der mir Recht gibt, daß ich meinen Vater an meiner Mutter gerächt habe. Alles, was ich getan habe, spricht für mich. Aber das Blut der Mutter wirkt nach! Und im zweiten Teil der «Orestie» wird uns gewaltig dargestellt, wie das Erbstück des alten Hellsehens erwacht, wie sie herankommen, die Rachegöttinnen, die Erinnyen, die späteren Furien der Römer. Die äußere Gestalt der Wirkung des Muttermordes sieht Orest im traumhaften Hellsehen vor sich. Apoll selbst gibt ihm Recht; aber es gibt noch etwas Höheres. Das heißt: Äschylos wollte darauf hinweisen, daß es eine noch höhere Weltordnung gibt, und er konnte es nur zeigen, indem er Orest in diesem Augenblick hellsichtig werden läßt. Noch nicht ist Äschylos so weit, um das zu zeigen, was wir heute eine innere Stimme nennen. Aber, namentlich wenn man den Agamemnon studiert, sagt man: Äschylos ist bis zu dem Punkt gekommen, wo aus dem ganzen menschlichen Seelenleben so etwas herausquellen müßte wie das Gewissen; ganz so weit ist er nur noch nicht. Er stellt vor Orest hin, was noch nicht zum Gewissen geworden ist: die Bilder des traumhaften Hellsehens. Aber wir merken schon, wie er hart am Rande ist, zum Gewissen vorzudringen. Aus jedem Wort, das er zum Beispiel der Klytämnestra in den Mund legt, kann man förmlich herausfühlen: Jetzt sollte hingewiesen werden auf die Vorstellung, die wir mit dem Gewissen bezeichnen! Aber es kommt nicht dazu. In diesem Jahrhundert kann der große Dichter nur zeigen, wie früher schlechte Taten sich vor die menschliche Seele hingestellt haben.
Und nun gehen wir ein Menschenalter weiter; wir gehen von Äschylos über Sophokles zu Euripides, der nur kurze Zeit später denselben Tatbestand behandelt. Mit Recht ist von Forschern darauf hingewiesen worden — aber nur von der Geisteswissenschaft kann es ins rechte Licht gesetzt werden —, daß er den Tatbestand so hinstellt, daß für die Auffassung des Orest, wenn von Traumbildern gesprochen wird, diese nur — ähnlich wie bei Shakespeare — etwas sind wie Schattenbilder des inneren Gewissens.
Da können wir gleichsam mit Händen greifen, wie das Gewissen für die Dichtkunst erobert wird. Wir sehen, wie Äschylos, der große Dichter, noch nicht vom Gewissen spricht, während Euripides, sein Nachfolger, schon davon spricht. Wenn wir dies vor Augen haben, können wir verstehen, warum menschliches Denken, menschliches irdisches Wissen auch nur ganz langsam sich hinaufarbeiten konnte zu einem Begriff vom Gewissen. Die Kraft, die im Gewissen wirkt, hat auch gewirkt in alten Zeiten, wo sich die Bilder, welche die Wirkungen der Taten des Menschen darstellten, dem hellseherischen Schauen zeigten. Es ist die Kraft nur von außen nach innen gezogen. Aber was gehörte dazu, um sie auch zu empfinden? Das Moralische hätte man auch haben können gleichsam als Niederschlag dessen, was das menschliche Bewußtsein schon früher hatte. Um aber diese Kraft als eine innere zu empfinden, mußte man die ganze menschliche Entwickelung mitmachen, die sich den Gewissensbegriff erst nach und nach erobert hat. In dieser Zeit sehen wir zum Beispiel den großen, hehren Denker Sokrates stehen. Warum sollte Sokrates nicht in der Lage sein, vor allem zu sprechen, wie sich der Mensch Tugenden aneignen kann? Warum sollten nicht seine Reden den tiefsten Eindruck machen können in bezug auf das, was sie uns als Moral vergegenwärtigen können? Und warum sollte nicht trotzdem für die Philosophie seiner Zeit der Gewissensbegriff noch nicht erobert worden sein, da wir doch sehen, wie in dieser Zeit die Menschenseele erst dazu drängt, den Gewissensbegriff als den Gott, der im eigenen Innern spricht, zu entdecken? Wir werden es gerade begreiflich finden, daß Sokrates noch nicht vom Gewissen spricht, weil diese menschliche Seelenkraft damals erst von außen in das Innere hineingezogen ist.
Da sehen wir im Gewissen etwas, was sich mit dem Menschen heranentwickelt, was der Mensch sich erringt. Wie aber muß sich dieses Gewissen zeigen? Wo muß es sich am allerintensivsten darstellen als das, was es ist? Dort, wo der Mensch mit seinem Ich noch schwach in die Ich-Entwickelung hineingetreten ist! Das ist etwas, was wir nachweisen können in der menschlichen Entwickelung. In Griechenland selbst waren schon die Menschen etwas weiter, so daß dort die Ich-Entwickelung schon hinaufgelangt war bis zur Verstandesseele. Wenn wir aber von der griechischen Zeit zurückgehen — davon weiß die äußere Geschichte nichts, Plato und Aristoteles wußten es aus der hellseherischen Anschauung heraus -, wenn wir zu dem Ägyptertum und Chaldäertum kommen, so finden wir, daß selbst die höchste Kultur etwas ist, was nicht mit einem innerlich selbständigen Ich errungen wird. Was wir aus Ägyptens und Chaldäas Heiligtümern hervorgehen sehen, das unterscheidet sich gerade dadurch von der heutigen Wissenschaft, daß wir heute die Wissenschaft in der Bewußitseinsseele erfassen; in der vorgriechischen Zeit aber verdankte man alles den Eingebungen der Empfindungsseele. In Griechenland selber schreitet man dazu vor - und darauf beruht der Fortschritt —, daß sich das Ich hinaufentwickelt von der Empfindungsseele zur Verstandes- oder Gemütsseele. Wir leben heute in der Epoche der Entwickelung der Bewußstseinsseele. Innerhalb dieser Entwickelung tritt also das eigentliche Ich-Bewußtsein erst so recht auf. Wer wahrhaftig die Menschheitsentwickelung betrachtet, kann geradezu verfolgen, wenn er von der orientalischen Kultur hinübergeht zur westlichen Kultur, daß das Fortschreiten der Menschheit so ist, daß ein immer größeres Freiheitsgefühl und eine immer größere Selbständigkeit auftritt. Während sich der Mensch früher ganz abhängig fühlte von dem, was ihm die Götter eingaben, tritt im Westen zuerst die Verinnerlichung der Kultur auf.
Das zeigt sich zum Beispiel daran, wie gerade Äschylos danach ringt, das Bewußtsein vom Ich heraufzuholen in die menschliche Seele. An der Grenze von Orient und Okzident sehen wir Äschylos stehen, das eine Auge nach dem Orient gerichtet, mit dem andern nach dem Okzident blickend, herausholend aus der menschlichen Seele, was sich später namentlich in der Vorstellung, dem Begriff des Gewissens zusammenfaßt. Wir sehen, wie Äschylos darnach ringt, aber noch nicht in der Lage ist, die neue Form des Gewissens dramatisch zu verkörpern. Wenn man nur immer vergleichen will, wirft man auch alles leicht durcheinander. Man muß nicht nur vergleichen, man muß auch unterscheiden. Das ist das Wesentliche, daß im Westen alles darauf angelegt war, das Ich heraufzuholen aus der Empfindungsseele in die Bewußtseinsseele. Dumpf beschlossen bleibt das Ich im Osten als ein Unfreies. Im Westen dagegen wachsen die Menschen heran, bei denen das Ich immer mehr sich hinaufringt in die Bewußtseinsseele. Wenn auch die Entwickelung zunächst so verläuft, daß das alte traumhafte Hellseherbewußtsein zum Schweigen gebracht wird, so ist doch alles dazu angelegt, das Ich aufzuwecken, und als Wächter des Ich, als die Gottesstimme im Innern, das Gewissen entstehen zu lassen. Und Äschylos ist der Eckstein zwischen der östlichen und der westlichen Welt; er blickt mit einem Auge nach dem Osten, mit dem andern nach dem Westen. Daher verlief der Gang der Menschheitsentwickelung in der Weise, wie wir es eben sehen konnten.
In der östlichen Welt hatten sich die Menschen ein lebendiges Bewußtsein ihres Herkommens von dem göttlichen Weltengeiste bewahrt. Aus diesem Bewußtsein heraus konnten die Verständnisse gewonnen werden für das, was einige Jahrhunderte danach geschah, nachdem die Menschheit in vielen, wie in Äschylos, danach gerungen hatte, etwas zu finden, was im Innern als Gottesstimme spricht. Denn da hatte sich zugetragen, daß jener Impuls in die Menschheit trat, den wir bei aller Geistesbetrachtung in der Erd- und Menschheitsentwickelung ansehen müssen als den größten, der jemals gekommen ist, und den wir als den Christus-Impuls bezeichnen.
Durch den Christus-Impuls wurde die Menschheit erst in die Möglichkeit versetzt, zu begreifen, daß der Gott, der der Schöpfer der Dinge, der der Schöpfer auch der äußeren Hüllen des Menschen ist, in unserm Innern verstanden und begriffen werden kann. Nur dadurch, daß die Menschheit die Gott-Menschheit des Christus Jesus begriff, wurde sie fähig zu begreifen, daß der Gott etwas sein kann, was zu uns in unserm eigenen Innern sprechen kann. Damit der Mensch in seinem Innern finden konnte Gott-Natur, dazu war notwendig, daß als äußeres historisches Ereignis der Christus in die Menschheitsentwickelung hineintrat. Wäre nicht der Gott, der Christus, in dem Menschenleib des Jesus von Nazareth anwesend gewesen, hätte er nicht ein für allemal gezeigt, daß der Gott im Innern des Menschen erfaßt werden kann, weil er einmal in der Menschheit anwesend war, wäre er nicht als der Sieger über den Tod angesehen worden in dem Mysterium von Golgatha, so hätte niemals der Mensch begreifen können die Innewohnung der Gottheit in seinem Innern. Wer behaupten wollte, daß der Mensch die innere Durchgottung begreifen könnte ohne einen äußeren historischen Christus Jesus, der mag auch behaupten, daß wir Augen hätten, wenn es keine Sonne gäbe in der Welt. Das wird ewig wahr bleiben, daß es eine Einseitigkeit ist, wenn Philosophen sagen: Ohne Augen könnten wir kein Licht sehen, also müssen wir das Licht von den Augen ableiten. Einer solchen Vorstellung muß immer der Satz Goethes entgegengehalten werden: Das Auge sei am Lichte für das Licht gebildet! -— Wenn keine Sonne den Raum durchleuchtete, würden sich nicht aus der menschlichen Organisation die Augen herausorganisiert haben. Die Augen sind Geschöpfe des Lichtes, und ohne die Sonne könnte nie ein Auge die Sonne wahrnehmen. Kein Auge ist fähig, die Sonne wahrzunehmen, ohne die Kraft zum Wahrnehmen erst von der Sonne erhalten zu haben. Ebensowenig gibt es ein inneres Begreifen und Erkennen der Christus-Natur ohne einen äußeren historischen Christus-Impuls. Was die Sonne ist im Weltenall für das Sehen, das ist der historische Christus Jesus für das, was wir die Durchdringung mit der Gott-Natur in uns selber nennen.
Um dies zu begreifen und zu verstehen, waren die Elemente gegeben in all dem, was vom Orient herüber kam; es mußte nur auf eine höhere Stufe gehoben werden. Die Elemente zum Begreifen des Gottes, der sich verbindet mit der Menschennatur, konnten sich allmählich entwickeln aus der orientalischen Strömung heraus. Begreifen, entgegennehmen, was dieser Impuls gebracht hat, dazu waren die Seelen im Westen reif, in jenem Westen, wo sich am intensivsten das entwickelt hat, was aus der Außenwelt in die menschliche Innenwelt hineingestiegen ist, und was als Gewissen wacht über ein gewöhnliches schwaches Ich. So hat sich die Seelenkraft so vorbereitet, daß das Gewissen entstand, das nun sagt: In uns lebt der Gott, der denjenigen erschien, welche drüben im Osten die Welt hellseherisch durchschauen konnten; in uns lebt das Göttliche!
Aber was sich so vorbereitete, hätte nicht zum Bewußtsein kommen können, wenn nicht in diesem Hervorgehen des Gewissens selber schon der innerliche Gott wie in der Morgenröte vorausgesprochen hätte. So sehen wir, wie das äußere Verständnis für die Gottesidee des Christus Jesus im Orient geboren wird, wie ihm aber entgegenkommt im Westen, was das menschliche Bewußtsein als das Gewissen ausbildete. Wir sehen zum Beispiel, wie im Römertum gerade in der Zeit, als die christliche Zeitrechnung beginnt, immer mehr und mehr vom Gewissen gesprochen wird, und je weiter wir nach Westen kommen, desto deutlicher ist es im Keime, im Bewußtsein vorhanden.
So arbeiten Osten und Westen sich gegenseitig in die Hände. Wir sehen die Sonne der Christus-Natur im Osten aufgehen; und wir sehen, wie sich das ChristusAuge im menschlichen Gewissen vorbereitet im Westen, um den Christus zu verstehen. Daher sehen wir den Siegeszug des Christentums nicht nach Osten, sondern nach Westen hin sich entwickeln. Im Osten breitet sich dafür ein Religionsbekenntnis aus, das die letzte Konsequenz — wenn auch eine höchste — des Ostens ist: der Buddhismus ergreift die östliche Welt. Das Christentum ergreift die westliche Welt, weil sich das Christentum erst sein Organ im Westen geschaffen hat. Da sehen wir das Christentum an das geknüpft, was dem Westen der allertiefste Kulturfaktor geworden ist: den Gewissensbegriff gegliedert an das Christentum.
Nicht durch eine äußerliche Geschichtsbetrachtung, sondern indem wir innerlich die Tatsachen betrachten, kommen wir allein zu einem Erkennen der Entwickelung. Was heute ausgesprochen ist, wird noch viele ungläubige Gemüter finden. Aber die Zeit drängt dazu, den Geist in der äußeren Erscheinung zu erkennen. Das vermag aber nur derjenige, der zunächst wenigstens diesen Geist dort zu erblicken vermag, wo er sich durch einen klar sprechenden Boten ankündigt. Das Volksbewußtsein sagt: Wenn das Gewissen spricht, spricht der Gott in der Seele. Das höchste geistige Bewußtsein zeigt uns: Wenn das Gewissen spricht, spricht wirklich der Weltengeist. Und die Geisteswissenschaft zeigt den Zusammenhang des Gewissens mit der größten Erscheinung in der Menschheitsentwickelung, mit dem Christus-Ereignis. Kein Wunder daher, wenn für das moderne Bewußtsein dasjenige, was mit dem Gewissensnamen belegt wird, dadurch geadelt wird, dadurch in eine höhere Sphäre hinaufgehoben wird. Wenn gesagt wird, es wird etwas aus «Gewissen» getan, so fühlt man, daß das als zum Wichtigsten der Menschheit gehörig betrachtet wird.
So zeigt sich uns auf ungezwungene Art, daß das menschliche Gemüt recht hat, wenn es vom Gewissen spricht als von dem «Gotte im Menschen». Und wenn Goethe sagt, daß es für den Menschen das Höchste sei, wenn sich «Gott-Natur ihm offenbare», so müssen wir uns klar sein, daß sich der Gott dem Menschen nur im Geiste offenbaren kann, wenn die Natur uns auf ihrer geistigen Grundlage erscheint. Daß sie uns so erscheinen kann, dafür ist gesorgt in der Menschheitsentwickelung auf der einen Seite durch das Christus-Licht, das Licht von außen, und auf der andern Seite durch das göttliche Licht in uns selber, durch das Gewissen. Daher darf ein Charakter-Philosoph wie Fichte wirklich vom Gewissen sagen, daß es die höchste Stimme ist in unserm Innern. Daher haben wir auch das Bewußtsein, daß an diesem Gewissen unsere individuelle Würde hängt. Wir sind Menschen dadurch, daß wir ein Ich-Bewußtsein haben; und was sich im Gewissen uns zur Seite stellt, das stellt sich unserm Ich zur Seite. Das Gewissen ist daher auch etwas, was wir als ein heiligstes, individuelles Gut ansehen, in das uns keine äußere Welt hineinzureden hat, und wodurch wir Richtung und Ziel uns selber vorsetzen können. Daher ist das Gewissen für den Menschen etwas, was er als ein Allerheiligstes ansehen muß, von dem er weiß, es weist auf ein Höchstes, aber auch auf ein Unantastbares im menschlichen Innern hin. Da soll ihm niemand hineinsprechen, wo ihm sein Gewissen spricht!
So ist Gewissen auf der einen Seite eine Gewähr für den Zusammenhang mit den göttlichen Urkräften der Welt, und auf der andern Seite die Gewähr dafür, daß wir in unserm eigensten Individuellsten etwas haben, was wie ein Tropfen aus der Gottheit ausfließt. Und der Mensch kann wissen: Spricht das Gewissen in ihm, so spricht ein Gott!
The Human Conscience
Allow me to begin today's lecture with a personal memory. It relates to a small experience I had as a very young person, and it is one of those things that, although seemingly very small and insignificant, can still form beautiful memories for life.
As a very young person, I once heard a lecturer talk about literary history. The lecturer began his course with a reflection on intellectual life during Lessing's time and wanted to introduce a series of reflections that would lead through the literary development of the second half of the 18th century and part of the 19th century. And he began with words that made a deep impression. He wanted to characterize the main feature that entered into literary intellectual life at the time of Lessing by saying: Artistic consciousness acquired an aesthetic conscience. If one then deduced from what he went on to say what he actually meant by this statement—we do not want to discuss the validity of this assertion—it was something like the following: All artistic considerations and all intentions of artistic achievements that followed the endeavors of Lessing and other contemporaries were imbued with the deepest seriousness, through which they did not want to make art merely something that stands as an appendage to life, something that is only there to add to the various other pleasures of life; Rather, they wanted to make art something that must be integrated into development as a necessary factor of every dignified existence. To elevate art to a serious and dignified human affair, which has a say in the chorus in which the great fruitful affairs of humanity are discussed, that was the goal of the minds that began that epoch. — That is what the literary historian wanted to say when he emphasized: Aesthetic conscience entered into artistic and poetic life.
Why could such a statement have meaning for a soul that wanted to listen to the mysteries of existence as they are reflected in this or that human mind? Such an expression could gain meaning because the concept of art was to be ennobled by being endowed with an expression whose significance for all human existence, for all human dignity and human destiny, could be beyond doubt. The expression was intended to underscore the seriousness of artistic activity, the significance of which is, so to speak, beyond dispute. And there is something to be said for the fact that, in any matter, those experiences of the soul that we describe with the expression “conscience” have meaning, because we want to elevate the matters in question to a sphere in which they are ennobled. In other words, when the term “conscience” is used, the human soul senses that something is being touched that is most valuable in human soul life, something that would be a deficiency in this soul life if it were not present in it. And how often has it been said, in order to characterize the greatness and significance of what is designated by the word “conscience” — regardless of whether the other person understands this figuratively or literally: What announces itself as conscience in the human soul is the voice of God in that soul. And one will hardly find that there can be any human being, however little he is prepared to think about higher spiritual matters, who has not formed some concept of what is commonly called “conscience.” Everyone has a vague feeling that Whatever it may be, it is a voice that, with irrefutable force, makes decisions in the individual human breast about what is good and what is bad or evil; about what should be done so that man can be at peace with himself, and what must be refrained from so that man does not reach the point where he must, in a certain sense, treat himself with contempt. Therefore, we can say: Conscience appears to every individual human soul as something sacred in the human breast, as something about which it is relatively easy to form an opinion.
However, the situation is different when we consider human history and human intellectual life. When considering such an intellectual matter and striving to see more deeply, who would not look around a little among those who can be assumed to have knowledge of it: the philosophers? However, in this case, as with so many other human matters, the explanations found among the various philosophers differ considerably from one another, at least on the surface, even though they always contain a more or less obscure core that is the same everywhere. But that would not be the worst of it. Anyone who took the trouble to ask the various philosophers of old and more recent times what they understood by conscience would find that he would get many beautiful sentences—and also many sentences that are quite difficult to understand—but that he would find nothing quite right, nothing that he could say completely and undoubtedly expressed what he feels: that is conscience! — It would, of course, be going too far today to give you an anthology of what has been said over the centuries by the philosophical leaders of humanity in their various explanations of conscience. It could be pointed out that from about the first third of the Middle Ages and then throughout medieval philosophy, when conscience was discussed, it was always said that conscience is a power of the human soul that is capable of making immediate statements about what a person should and should not do. But, as the philosophers of the Middle Ages say, for example, there is something else underlying this force in the human soul, something even finer than conscience itself. A personality whose name has already been mentioned here several times, Meister Eckhart, speaks of a tiny spark underlying conscience, which has been placed in the human soul as something eternal, so to speak, and which, when heard, indicates the laws of good and evil with irresistible force.
When we come to the modern era, we again find a wide variety of explanations of conscience, including some that must make a peculiar impression because they clearly show that they do not actually express the full seriousness of that inner voice of God that we call conscience. There are philosophers who say that conscience is actually something that people acquire by absorbing more and more life experiences into their souls, by experiencing more and more of what is useful, harmful, perfecting, and so on for them, or not. And from this sum of experiences, a judgment is formed, so to speak, which then says: Do this, don't do that! There are other philosophers who have praised conscience in the highest terms possible. Among the latter is the great German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who, when he wanted to point out the basic principle of all human thinking and being, pointed above all to the human ego, but not to the transitory, personal ego, but to the eternal core in human beings. He also pointed out that the highest thing a person can experience in their ego is conscience. And he stated outright that a person cannot experience anything higher than the judgment within themselves: You must do this because it would be contrary to your conscience not to do so. In terms of the majesty and nobility of judgment, one cannot go beyond this at all. And if Fichte is the philosopher who, more than any other philosopher, pointed to the power and significance of the human self, it is characteristic that he in turn placed conscience as the most important impulse in the human self.
However, the more we move into more recent times, and the more thinking approaches a materialistic character, the more we find that conscience—not for the human breast and not for the human heart, but certainly for the thinking of more or less materialistically inclined philosophers—is greatly diminished in its majesty. This can be illustrated with just one example.
In the second half of the 19th century, there was a philosopher who certainly ranks among the most beautiful and magnificent personalities in terms of nobility of soul, harmonious human feeling, and broad-mindedness. He is little mentioned today: I mean Bartholomew Carneri. If you go through his writings, you will find that despite the nobility of his thinking, despite the broad-mindedness of his attitude, because he was completely imbued with the materialistic thinking of his century, he characterizes conscience as follows: What can we imagine conscience to be? It is basically nothing more than a sum of habits and learned judgments that we absorbed in our early youth, that have been impressed upon us by our upbringing and life, and of which we are no longer fully aware. Our learned habits tell us: “You should do this—you should not do that!”
So the entire scope of conscience is reduced here to external life experiences and habits, and indeed to the most narrowly defined ones. Other, even more materialistic philosophers of the 19th century went even further. In this regard, the writings of a philosopher who had a great influence on Friedrich Nietzsche in his middle years are interesting: Paul Ree. He wrote a treatise on the origin of conscience. It is interesting, not because one could agree with a single sentence in it, but as a symptom of the views of our entire era. It states, roughly speaking—and let us be aware that when something has to be said briefly and presented in a few sharp lines, some details will inevitably be distorted—that Humanity has developed in all respects, including conscience. Originally, humans did not have what we call conscience at all. That is only a prejudice, and one of the most powerful ones at that, if one considers conscience to be something eternal. Originally, something like a voice that tells us, “You should do this — you should not do that!” — a voice that we call conscience — did not exist at all, according to Paul R&e. But what we might call the instinct for revenge developed. That was the most primitive thing. When someone did something to you, the instinct for revenge developed, to return what had been done to you. And due to the complication of living conditions, revenge was handed over to the powers in social associations, which were entrusted with its execution. Thus, people became accustomed to believing that every act that harms another must be followed by what was formerly called “revenge.” Thus, the judgment developed that certain acts that have bad consequences must be compensated for by other acts. And from the further development of this judgment, a connection arose between certain feelings that humans can have when an act is done, or even when they are tempted to do something. Humans have forgotten that the urge for revenge was originally alive; but this has become established in the feeling that an action must follow as compensation for a harmful deed. So people now believe that an “inner voice” speaks, when in reality it is only the inwardly turned voice of the instinct for revenge. — Here we have an extreme case, extreme because such a conflict presents the conscience as a complete illusion.
But on the other hand, we must admit that those people who claim that conscience is something that has always existed as a fact, as long as there have been people on earth, that it is, so to speak, something eternal, are also going too far. Since mistakes are made both where people think more spiritually and where they declare conscience to be pure illusion, it is very difficult to reach an understanding in this area, even though it is an everyday but everyday-sacred matter of our human inner being. A glance at the philosophers shows that even the best of our human personalities used to think differently about conscience than we do today. People who see a little deeper into such matters have rightly pointed out that, for example, in a personality as noble as Socrates, we do not really find anything like what we today call “conscience.” For when we say that conscience is a voice that speaks even in the breast of the most naive person and says, as if with a divine impulse, “You shall do this! You shall not do that!”, the assertion made by Socrates and then passed on to Plato takes on a somewhat different meaning. Both claim that virtue is something that can be taught, something that can be learned. Socrates wants to say: if people form clear concepts about what they should or should not do, then through learning, through knowledge of virtue, they can gradually come to act virtuously.
Those who adhere to today's concept of conscience might object: It would actually be quite bad if one had to wait until one had learned what is good or bad in order to act virtuously. Conscience is something that speaks with much more elemental force in the human soul—and has long been audible in individual cases: “You should do this and not do that!” before we have formed higher ideas about what is good and evil, before we have absorbed a moral doctrine. And conscience is something that brings a certain peace to the human soul when a person can say to themselves: You have done something you can agree with. It would be bad — as some might say — if we first had to learn a great deal about the nature and character of virtue in order to come to an agreement about our actions. That is why we can say that the philosopher whom we regard as a martyr of philosophy, who ennobled and crowned his philosophical work with his death, Socrates, presents us with a concept of virtue that is difficult to reconcile with today's concept of conscience. And even among later Greek thinkers, it is still said that one can perfect oneself in virtue through learning, which would basically contradict the original elementary power of conscience.
How can it be that such a noble and powerful personality as Socrates did not yet know the concept we have today of conscience, even though when we approach Socrates as Plato presents him to us as a conversationalist, we feel that his words express the purest moral sense, the highest power of virtue? This comes from nothing other than the fact that even those concepts, ideas, and inner spiritual experiences that people today feel as if they were innate to them have also been acquired by the human soul over time. Anyone who goes back into the spiritual life of humanity will indeed find that the concept of conscience and the feeling of conscience in ancient times — even among the Greek people — did not exist in the same way as they are thought and felt today. The concept of conscience has developed. But human beings cannot learn about the development of conscience so easily through external experience and external science, as Paul R&e attempted to do; rather, it is necessary to look deeper into the human soul.
Now, this winter, we have considered it the task of these lectures to shine a deeper light into the structure of the human soul, namely with that light which is taken from the development of the human soul toward higher cognitive abilities. All soul life has been presented as it appears to the open eye of the seer, that eye which not only sees the outer sensory world and acquires knowledge of the sensory world, but also looks behind the veil of the sensory world into the region where the actual origins of the sensory world lie: into the spiritual foundations of this sensory world. And on the other hand, it has been repeatedly pointed out — for example, in the lecture “What is Mysticism?” — how, beyond what appears to us in everyday life as our soul life, seerical consciousness leads us into deeper regions of the soul. In the ordinary life of the soul, we believe we can already recognize deeper foundations when we look within ourselves and find the experiences of thought, feeling, and will. However, it has been pointed out that what reveals itself to our soul in the waking state is basically only the outer side of what is actually spiritual. Just as we must look behind the veil of existence if we want to find its foundations, behind what our eyes show us, what our ears let us hear, what our mind lets us recognize through the brain, so we must look behind our thinking, feeling, and willing, behind the reasons for what we have within us as ordinary soul life, if we want to know the actual causes, the spiritual foundations of our own life.
We have taken these points of view as our starting point in order to illuminate the human soul life in its many ramifications. It has become clear to us that this human soul life can be viewed in three distinct areas — note that I do not say “separate areas”! The sentient soul has presented itself to us as the lowest link in the life of the soul. In a person who is still completely devoted to their instincts, desires, and passions, who has not yet managed to purify and cleanse their emotions and passions and become master of them from their ego, we say that the sentient soul predominates. When the human being then becomes more and more master of his instincts, desires, and passions, a higher member of the soul reveals itself to us: the intellectual or emotional soul. In this, what lives in the human being as a sense of truth, as compassion for other people, and the like, asserts itself. The intellectual soul develops out of the sentient soul. And the highest soul member to which the human being can initially rise – he will develop even higher members in the future – we have called the conscious soul. While in the sentient soul the human being responds to external impressions with his drives and passions, he rises to his emotional soul in order to respond to the impressions of the world without merely listening to his drives and passions. When they purify their instincts, desires, and passions, the intellectual soul develops. When they then approach the outer world again with what they have conquered within themselves, when they have acquired inner ideas in order to understand the world, and say to themselves: My ideas and concepts are there to make the world understandable to me — when he steps out of himself again, as it were, to acquire an awareness of what is present in the outside world, then he ascends to the consciousness soul.
What is it that works its way up through these three soul members in the human soul? It is the human I, that point of unity within the human being through which everything is held together, which plays, as it were, on the three strings of the soul life, causing them to sound together in the most diverse ways, consonantly or dissonantly. We call this inner power, which asserts itself by reconnecting concepts with the things of the world, the human I, which is present in all three soul members like an inner artist playing on the human soul being as on three strings. But what we see as a kind of inner playing of the I within our soul members has only developed gradually. Indeed, the whole nature of our present consciousness has developed only gradually. And we understand best how this human consciousness and today's human soul life have developed from primeval times when we point out a little what can become of human beings in the future, and what can already become of them today, if they develop their souls out of the consciousness soul into what we can call a higher, seerical consciousness.
The ordinary consciousness soul allows us to comprehend only that outer world which confronts the life of the senses. If human beings want to penetrate behind the veil of the sensory world, they must develop their soul life to a higher level; they must continue their development within themselves. Then they have the great experience of something like an awakening of the soul, something that can be compared in the lower soul life to the operation of a person born blind, who previously knew nothing of light and colors and then suddenly sees the light-filled, colorful world. So it is with those who, through the appropriate methods, bring their soul to a higher level of development and then experience the moment when that which is otherwise unnamed in our environment, but which always surrounds us, enters our soul life as a wealth of beings and facts, because we have acquired a new organ.
When a person consciously develops such clairvoyance through training, they take their whole self up into this clairvoyance; that is, they move within the spiritual beings and facts that underlie our sensory world, just as they move between tables and chairs in the sensory world. What guided him as his former self through the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul, he takes with him into a higher region of human soul life.
Let us now turn our gaze back from the clairvoyant consciousness, which is illuminated and infused with the human self, to ordinary soul life. The human ego lives in three soul members in very different ways. If we have a person who lives entirely in the drives, desires, and passions that arise in their feeling soul, without really doing anything about it, we say that they are devoted to their feeling soul, and that the ego is still very weak in them. The I has no particular power there; it follows, so to speak, the drives, desires, and passions of the feeling soul. We can say that within those forces that arise like the waves of the sea of the soul from the feeling soul, the I stands there like a weak light and is still powerless in the face of the surging drives and impulses of the will. The I already works more freely and independently in the intellectual soul or mind soul. Here, the human being comes more into their own, because the intellectual soul can only develop when the human being processes what they experience inwardly in their sentient soul in a calm, inner soul life. In the intellectual soul, the human being comes to their I, that is, to themselves. The ego becomes brighter and brighter and then reaches complete clarity, so that the human being can say to themselves: I have grasped myself! I have come to true self-awareness! The I can only attain this clarity in the consciousness soul. The penetrating strength of the I becomes apparent when we ascend from the feeling soul through the intellectual soul to the consciousness soul.
But if human beings can develop beyond the consciousness soul to clairvoyant consciousness, to higher soul members, so to speak, then we will also find it understandable when the seer, looking back on human development, tells us: Just as the ego ascends to higher soul members, so too has it entered the sentient soul from a subordinate member of human nature. We have already pointed out how the entirety of the human inner being — the sentient soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul — develops in the entirety of the human sheaths, which we refer to as the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body or sentient body. Is it not understandable, then, when spiritual science shows us that before the I developed through the feeling soul to the consciousness soul, it was actually active in subordinate, still less spiritual members of the human being, in the outer human sheaths? Before the I was in the sentient soul, it was active in the sentient body; even earlier, in the etheric body and the physical body. There it was even more an I that guided and directed the human being from outside. If we want to form an idea of this activity, we can say something like this: when we see a human being before us in his three sheaths, we see the I at work, guiding and directing the human being. But at this stage, the human being is not yet capable of saying “I” to himself, not yet capable of finding the center of his being within himself. This brings us to an I that still reigns in the darkness of physical life. But let us now ask ourselves the question: Is this I, which reigned in humans in this distant past and built up their outer physicality, actually more imperfect than the I that we ourselves carry in our souls today?
Today we regard our I as the actual inner center of our being, which gives us our inner life as human beings and which can be perfected in infinite ways in the future through training. We see in it the epitome of our human essence and at the same time that which guarantees our human dignity. When we did not yet feel this I, when it was still working on us from the dark spiritual forces of the world, was it more imperfect than it is now within us? — Only someone who wanted to think purely abstractly could say that.For example, we look at our physical body as something that was formed in the distant past from the spiritual world, but which had to be there so that the soul could dwell within it. Only a materialistic mind could believe that this physical body did not originate from the spirit. But at the same time, we look at something that, as a spiritual creation, must have preceded what we now call our inner life. For our inner life must dwell in a body during our earthly existence, and that body had to be prepared beforehand. Even if we only look at the body externally, we will have to say to ourselves: What a marvel of perfection this human body is! Anyone who looks at the human heart in its miraculous construction, even if only as an anatomist or physiologist, for example, will say: What is all human understanding, what is all technical skill, compared to what presents itself to us as wisdom in the construction of the human heart! What is all our engineering technology, which builds bridge structures and the like, compared to the structure of the human thigh bone, which presents itself to us as a wonderful framework of criss-crossing beams when we look at it through a microscope! It is sheer arrogance for human beings to believe that they have achieved even the slightest degree of what is laid down as wisdom in the construction of the outer physical body. And when we consider our soul life — let us go only as far as our drives, desires, and passions — and ask: How do these work? What do we not do to undermine the wisely organized structure of our body from within? — then anyone who impartially considers the work of wisdom in the construction of the human shell will have to say: The construction of our body is infinitely wiser than what we carry within us, which we hope will become more and more perfect, but which is still quite imperfect today. — But we can never believe anything else, even if we are not clairvoyant, if we only look impartially at what presents itself to the outer eye.
Must not that wise activity which has built up the physical shell of the human being, so that it may be inhabited by an I, have something of the same nature and essence as the I itself is in its nature and essence? Must we not think of that which has worked on our shells as having an ego character, only an infinitely more perfect ego character? We must say: something related to our ego has built, through primeval times, a shell that can be inhabited by an ego. — Those who do not want to believe this may imagine something else; but they may also imagine that a human house, which is built so that a human being can live in it, was not constructed by a human spirit, but came together through mere natural forces. One is as true as the other, if one considers it impartially. Therefore, we look back to a distant past, where spiritual beings with an infinitely perfect ego nature worked on our shells, and from there the ego worked its way up to today's consciousness. As in the subconscious, it was hidden in this shell in ancient times.
When we consider this development since that distant past, when the I was inside the outer shells as if in a dark womb, we find that although it knew nothing of itself, it was closer to those spiritual beings who built our shells, who are related to the I but are infinitely more perfect than the I itself. It therefore seems understandable that the seer's consciousness harks back to a time when human beings did not yet have self-consciousness, but were instead in the womb of spiritual life itself, and when the life of the soul was also very different, even closer to the soul forces from which the self emerged. When we go back into the past of human development, we find at the basis of all human development an original clairvoyant consciousness that was not illuminated by an ego, but seemed dull and dreamlike; and it is from this consciousness that the human ego springs. What human beings will only regain with their ego in the future, we find in that distant past without the ego. — Clairvoyant consciousness, however, is connected with the fact that human beings see spiritual facts and spiritual beings in their surroundings. This is what spiritual science shows us: that before human beings attained their present consciousness, they were in a dreamlike state of clairvoyance in their soul state, where they were closer to the spiritual world and could see it, albeit only in a manner similar to that in dreams. This is the original state of humanity. Because they were not yet imbued with an ego, human beings were not yet instructed to remain within themselves if they wanted to see something spiritual. Instead, they saw the spiritual around them and saw themselves as members of the spiritual world; and what they did still had a spiritual character in their perception. When they thought something, it was not as it is today, when people say, “Now I am thinking!” — but they had the thought before them through clairvoyance. When they had to develop a feeling, they did not only have to look within themselves, but the feeling was something that radiated from them, through which they integrated themselves into their entire spiritual environment.
This is how people of ancient times lived in relation to their souls. And from this dreamlike, clairvoyant consciousness, people had to develop in order to find themselves, to find that center which is still imperfect today but which will become more and more perfect in the future, when people will enter the spiritual world with their ego.
If we now look back to those primeval times of humanity with the methods we have characterized here, which are available to clairvoyant consciousness, what does the seer tell us about the original human consciousness, for example, when a person had committed a terrible deed? The evil deed did not appear as something that the human being could assess with his inner being, but he saw it in all its harmfulness and shamefulness, like a ghost standing before his soul. And when the feeling for the evil deed arose in the soul, the consequence was that the deed in question approached the human being in its shamefulness as a spiritual reality. The person was, as it were, surrounded by the perception of the evil of their deed.
Then people increasingly entered a time when the old dreamlike clairvoyance faded and the ego became more and more assertive. As humans found their center within themselves, the old clairvoyant consciousness faded, but self-awareness emerged more and more clearly. What they had previously seen before them as a vision of their evil deeds — and also their good deeds — was transferred to their inner being. What they had previously seen clairvoyantly was reflected, as it were, within themselves.
What were these figures that humans saw in their dreamlike clairvoyance as spiritual counterimages of their evil deeds? They were what the spiritual powers around them showed them as something through which they had disturbed and disrupted the world order. This was not really a bad effect in the true sense of the word; it was a healing effect. It was, as it were, the counteraction of the gods, who wanted to lift the human being up by showing him the effect of his deed, in order to enable him to eliminate the harmful consequences of his deed. So it was indeed something terrible when the effect of the bad deed stood before the human being, but basically it was a healing effect of the world foundation from which the human being himself had emerged. When the time came for man to find his ego center within himself, this view was transferred to the inner self and appeared as the effect of his actions in the mirror image within. When our ego first comes to the fore, it is initially weak within the sentient soul, and man must slowly work his way up to gradually bring the ego to perfection. Let us ask ourselves: What would have happened at the moment of development when the clairvoyant view of human actions disappeared from the outside, if something had not arisen internally in the still weak ego, which at the same time appeared as a counter-image to the beneficial effect that humans used to see before their eyes when they clairvoyantly saw the effect of their actions?
Human beings would have had their weak ego, but they would have been torn back and forth in their sentient soul by their own passions, as if in a boundless, whipped-up sea. What entered human beings from the outside into their inner being at this great moment in world history? If it was the great world spirit that, as a healing counteraction, presented the harmful effect of an action to clairvoyant consciousness, showing human beings what they had to correct, then it was also this world spirit that subsequently manifested itself as a powerful force within human beings when the ego itself was still weak. Thus, the world spirit, which had previously spoken in clairvoyant vision, withdrew into the human interior with regard to what it had to say to correct the disturbed world order. The ego is still weak. But the world spirit watches over this ego; and it makes itself heard as something that stands watch over the ego at all times and judges what the ego cannot yet judge. Behind this weak ego stands something like a reflection of the powerful world spirit, which had previously shown human beings the effects of their actions in clairvoyant consciousness.
Thus, when the old clairvoyance faded away, human beings perceived only a reflection within themselves of what the world spirit itself was doing. This reflection of the corrective world spirit, which stands vigilant beside the ego, appeared to human beings as the conscience watching over them! Thus we see that it is true when a naive consciousness speaks of conscience as the voice of God in man. But at the same time we see that spiritual science shows us the moment in human development when the external entered the internal and conscience arose.
What I have just said can be drawn purely from the insights of the spiritual world. No external history is needed for this; it must be seen entirely inwardly. Those who can see it feel it to be a truth of irrefutable certainty. But let us now ask, out of a need of the times: Could an external story perhaps also show us something that presents itself as a confirmation of what has now been brought out of the facts of inner vision?
What comes from seer consciousness can always be tested against external facts. Anyone who claims such a thing need not be concerned that it contradicts external facts. Only inaccurate testing could possibly experience that. But we need only point to one thing that can show how external facts confirm what has now been derived as a fact from clairvoyant consciousness.
It was not so long ago that we can perceive the moment of the emergence of conscience. If we go back to the 5th and 6th centuries BC, we encounter a great poet of Greek drama in Greece: Aeschylus. He presents us with something very strange, strange because it was later portrayed differently by another Greek poet. Aeschylus depicts Agamemnon returning home from Troy, who is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra upon his arrival in his homeland. Agamemnon is avenged by his son Orestes, who, after receiving advice from the gods, kills the mother who murdered his father. What are the consequences of this act for Orestes? Through the effect of matricide, something is forced out of his inner self—as Aeschylus depicts—which enables him to see what normally could no longer be seen during these centuries; abnormally, the violence of such an act, like an old heirloom, brings the old clairvoyance back to life. Orestes could say: Apollo, the god himself, agrees with me that I avenged my father on my mother. Everything I have done speaks for me. But the blood of the mother continues to have an effect! And in the second part of the “Oresteia,” we are powerfully shown how the heirloom of ancient clairvoyance awakens, how they approach, the goddesses of vengeance, the Erinyes, the later Furies of the Romans. Orestes sees the external form of the effect of matricide in his dreamlike clairvoyance. Apollo himself agrees with him; but there is something even higher. That is to say: Aeschylus wanted to point out that there is an even higher world order, and he could only show this by allowing Orestes to become clairvoyant at this moment. Aeschylus is not yet ready to show what we today call an inner voice. But, especially when studying Agamemnon, one says: Aeschylus has reached the point where something like conscience should spring forth from the whole of human soul life; he is just not quite there yet. He presents Orestes with what has not yet become conscience: the images of dreamlike clairvoyance. But we can already see how close he is to reaching conscience. From every word he puts into Clytemnestra's mouth, for example, one can literally sense: Now the idea we call conscience should be pointed out! But this does not happen. In this century, the great poet can only show how evil deeds of the past have been placed before the human soul.
And now we move on a generation; we go from Aeschylus to Sophocles to Euripides, who deals with the same subject matter only a short time later. Researchers have rightly pointed out—but only spiritual science can put it into the right light—that he presents the facts in such a way that, when Orestes speaks of dream images, these are only—as in Shakespeare—something like shadow images of the inner conscience.
Here we can see, as it were, with our own hands how conscience is conquered by poetry. We see how Aeschylus, the great poet, does not yet speak of conscience, while Euripides, his successor, already does. With this in mind, we can understand why human thinking, human earthly knowledge, could only very slowly work its way up to a concept of conscience. The power that works in conscience also worked in ancient times, when the images that represented the effects of human deeds were revealed to clairvoyant vision. The power was drawn only from the outside to the inside. But what was needed to feel it? Morality could also have been seen as a reflection of what human consciousness already had earlier. But in order to feel this power as an inner one, one had to go through the whole of human development, which gradually conquered the concept of conscience. In this period, for example, we see the great, noble thinker Socrates. Why should Socrates not be in a position to speak above all about how human beings can acquire virtues? Why should his speeches not be able to make the deepest impression in relation to what they can bring to mind for us as morality? And why should the concept of conscience not yet have been conquered for the philosophy of his time, since we see how, at this time, the human soul is just beginning to strive to discover the concept of conscience as the God who speaks within oneself? We will find it understandable that Socrates does not yet speak of conscience, because this human soul power was only then being drawn from the outside into the inside.
Here we see in conscience something that develops with man, something that man achieves. But how must this conscience manifest itself? Where must it manifest itself most intensely as what it is? Where human beings have only just begun to develop their ego! This is something we can demonstrate in human development. In Greece itself, people were already somewhat further along, so that ego development had already reached the level of the intellectual soul. But if we go back from the Greek period — of which external history knows nothing, Plato and Aristotle knew it from clairvoyant insight — if we come to Egyptian and Chaldean civilization, we find that even the highest culture is something that is not achieved with an inner, independent ego. What we see emerging from the sanctuaries of Egypt and Chaldea differs from today's science precisely in that we now grasp science in the conscious soul; in pre-Greek times, however, everything was owed to the inspirations of the sentient soul. In Greece itself, progress is based on the ego developing from the sentient soul to the intellectual or emotional soul. Today we live in the epoch of the development of the conscious soul. It is within this development that true ego consciousness really comes into its own. Anyone who truly observes human development can see, when moving from Eastern to Western culture, that the progress of humanity is such that an ever greater sense of freedom and independence is emerging. Whereas in earlier times people felt completely dependent on what the gods inspired them to do, in the West the first step is the internalization of culture.
This can be seen, for example, in how Aeschylus struggles to bring consciousness of the self into the human soul. We see Aeschylus standing at the border between the Orient and the Occident, one eye directed toward the Orient, the other toward the Occident, drawing out of the human soul what would later be summarized in the concept of conscience. We see how Aeschylus struggles for this, but is not yet able to dramatically embody the new form of conscience. If one only wants to compare, one easily confuses everything. One must not only compare, one must also distinguish. The essential point is that in the West everything was designed to bring the ego up from the sentient soul to the conscious soul. In the East, the ego remains dull and unfree. In the West, on the other hand, people grow up with the ego increasingly rising up into the consciousness soul. Even if the development initially proceeds in such a way that the old dreamlike clairvoyant consciousness is silenced, everything is designed to awaken the ego and to allow the conscience to arise as the guardian of the ego, as the voice of God within. Aeschylus is the cornerstone between the Eastern and Western worlds; he looks with one eye to the East and with the other to the West. This is why the course of human development has proceeded in the way we have just seen.
In the Eastern world, people had retained a living awareness of their origin in the divine world spirit. From this awareness, understanding could be gained for what happened several centuries later, after humanity had struggled, as in Aeschylus, to find something that speaks within as the voice of God. For then there occurred that impulse in humanity which, in all spiritual contemplation of the development of the earth and humanity, we must regard as the greatest that has ever come, and which we call the Christ impulse.
It was only through the Christ impulse that humanity was enabled to comprehend that God, who is the creator of all things, who is also the creator of the outer shell of the human being, can be understood and comprehended within us. Only by comprehending the God-humanity of Christ Jesus was humanity able to understand that God can be something that can speak to us within our own inner being. In order for human beings to find God-nature within themselves, it was necessary for Christ to enter into human development as an external historical event. If the God Christ had not been present in the human body of Jesus of Nazareth, had he not shown once and for all that God can be grasped within the human being because he was once present in humanity, had he not been seen as the victor over death in the mystery of Golgotha, then human beings would never have been able to comprehend the indwelling of the Godhead within themselves. Anyone who would claim that human beings could comprehend the inner deification without an external historical Christ Jesus might as well claim that we would have eyes if there were no sun in the world. It will remain eternally true that it is one-sided when philosophers say: Without eyes, we could not see light, so we must derive light from the eyes. Such an idea must always be countered with Goethe's statement: The eye is formed by light for light! — If no sun illuminated space, eyes would not have developed from the human organism. The eyes are creatures of light, and without the sun, no eye could ever perceive the sun. No eye is capable of perceiving the sun without first receiving the power of perception from the sun. Likewise, there can be no inner understanding and recognition of the Christ nature without an external historical Christ impulse. What the sun is in the universe for seeing, the historical Christ Jesus is for what we call the permeation with the God nature within ourselves.
In order to comprehend and understand this, the elements were present in everything that came from the Orient; they only had to be raised to a higher level. The elements for comprehending the God who connects with human nature were able to develop gradually from the Oriental current. The souls in the West were ready to grasp and accept what this impulse brought, in that West where what came from the outside world into the human inner world developed most intensely, and what watches over an ordinary, weak ego as conscience. Thus, the soul force prepared itself in such a way that conscience arose, which now says: God lives within us, who appeared to those in the East who were able to see through the world clairvoyantly; the divine lives within us!
But what was prepared in this way could not have come to consciousness if the inner God had not already been foretold in the dawn of conscience itself. Thus we see how the outer understanding of the idea of God in Christ Jesus is born in the East, but how it is met in the West by what human consciousness has developed as conscience. We see, for example, how in Roman culture, just at the time when the Christian era begins, there is more and more talk of conscience, and the further west we go, the more clearly it is present in its germ, in consciousness.
Thus, East and West work together. We see the sun of Christ nature rising in the East, and we see how the Christ eye is being prepared in human conscience in the West to understand Christ. Therefore, we see the triumph of Christianity developing not towards the East, but towards the West. In the East, a religious creed is spreading that is the ultimate consequence — albeit a supreme one — of the East: Buddhism is taking hold of the Eastern world. Christianity is taking hold of the Western world because Christianity first created its organ in the West. Here we see Christianity linked to what has become the deepest cultural factor in the West: the concept of conscience structured around Christianity.
It is not through an external view of history, but by looking at the facts internally that we alone can come to an understanding of development. What has been said today will still find many unbelieving minds. But time is pressing for us to recognize the spirit in outward appearances. However, only those who are able to see this spirit, at least initially, where it announces itself through a clear-speaking messenger, are capable of doing so. Popular consciousness says: When conscience speaks, God speaks in the soul. The highest spiritual consciousness shows us: When conscience speaks, the world spirit truly speaks. And spiritual science shows the connection between conscience and the greatest event in human development, the Christ event. No wonder, then, that for modern consciousness, that which is designated by the name of conscience is thereby ennobled, thereby raised to a higher sphere. When it is said that something is done out of “conscience,” one feels that it is considered to be among the most important things for humanity.
Thus it becomes clear to us in a natural way that the human mind is right when it speaks of conscience as the “God in man.” And when Goethe says that the highest thing for human beings is when “God-nature reveals itself to them,” we must be clear that God can only reveal himself to human beings in spirit when nature appears to us on its spiritual basis. That it can appear to us in this way is ensured in human development on the one hand by the light of Christ, the light from outside, and on the other hand by the divine light within ourselves, through conscience. Therefore, a philosopher of character such as Fichte can truly say of conscience that it is the highest voice within us. Therefore, we also have the awareness that our individual dignity depends on this conscience. We are human beings because we have an ego consciousness; and what stands by our side in our conscience stands by our ego. Conscience is therefore also something that we regard as a most sacred, individual good, into which no external world has a say, and through which we can set ourselves direction and goals. Therefore, conscience is something that humans must regard as most sacred, knowing that it points to something supreme, but also to something inviolable within the human being. No one should interfere with what conscience tells us!
Thus, conscience is, on the one hand, a guarantee of our connection with the divine primal forces of the world and, on the other hand, a guarantee that we have something within us, in our most individual selves, that flows like a drop from the divine. And human beings can know that when their conscience speaks, it is God who speaks!