Spiritual Science as a Life's Work
GA 63
15 January 1914, Berlin
Translated by Mark Willan
7. Evil in the Light of Spiritual Knowledge
Basically, what we have to deal with today is an ancient issue for mankind: the issue of the origin of wickedness and of evil in the world. And though in our time many people are of the view that, fundamentally, this question cannot be defined any further, yet the human soul feels compelled to bring it up time and again. For this question is indeed not one that rises up to our soul just from theoretical or scientific viewpoints; it is far more of a question that human souls are confronted with step after step in life, because their lives are embedded in goodness, in doing good, but also in evil and wickedness. On the one hand, one might say, the whole history of human thinking and reflection unfolds, in order to fully persuade us that our questions have always been issues for the deeper spirits in human development. On the other hand, we can study significant and prominent thinkers of the nineteenth century and of our time, and we will find that even with these prominent thinkers a halt was called to all philosophy, to all striving towards knowledge, precisely when faced with this issue. So today, we wish to try and consider what arose from the lecture cycle this winter about Spiritual Science, as the basis from which perhaps we can approach some way to finding an answer to the riddle of evil and wickedness. I say advisedly “we can approach,” since I have often expressed that this significant question must be addressed in a wholly particular way: Spiritual Science does not only open that existence to our sight which cannot be reached by external science, but in a certain way it also makes it decisive. And we may perhaps be able to feel about such a question, that it is one that easily throws up the highest questions, as they are usually thrown up, when one is at the start of striving for knowledge in a certain way. That leads to real striving for knowledge, and often it only shows the initial steps on the path, through which one can gradually approach a solution to the major riddles of life.
First of all, permit me to raise one point in advance, that should make clear how deeply this question has occupied the hearts and souls of significant thinkers throughout long ages. We can go far back into human development; but first we would like to refer to thinkers in the last centuries before the foundation of Christianity in Greece: to the Stoics, that group of remarkable thinkers which, following the views of Socrates and Plato, tried to answer this question: how should human beings behave, so that their behaviour corresponds to their deepest being, to their previously prescribed and recognisable purpose? This can be designated as the fundamental question for the Stoics. And as an ideal for humanity, that strove to insert its purpose in the universe accordingly, the ideal of the wise surfaced before the soul vision of the Stoics.—It would take us too far, if we were to exhaustively portray the ideals of the Stoics, and how this all is connected with the general stoical world view. But one point at least must be raised, that in Stoicism an awareness came into play, that human development was going towards an ever clearer and clearer self-aware human being, in order to work upon the human consciousness of the I. This was said in the stoic manner: this I, through which humanity is enabled to insert itself in full clarity in the world, this I, can be darkened, and can at the same time deaden itself; and this deadening happens if a human being allows feeling life to enter too strongly into the surging wave-play of imagination and perception. To the Stoics, if a human being were to allow the clarity of the I to be submerged, to be befogged by the being of pain and emotion, this seemed a kind of spiritual impotence. For this reason, for the Stoics, holding back the pain and emotion within the human soul, and striving for peace and equilibrium, led to freedom from the spiritual impotence of the soul.
We can see what must often be raised here, as the first step on the path to knowledge of the spiritual world, which also consists of this: that the wild waves of the being of pain and emotion, that at the same time create a spiritual impotence, are held back, so that the clarity of soul vision is extracted from the full experiences of the soul. What is here set out as the first steps on the path that leads into spiritual vision, all that swirled around before the Stoics. As regards Stoicism, I have tried to bring to the fore precisely this side of Stoic being in the new edition of my “World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century,” since it is still only little worked upon in the history of philosophy. In the matter just described, conquering pain, conquering sentiment appeared as an ideal before Stoicism. And that which inserts itself as wisdom in the development of the world, recognises in the meaning of Stoicism, that the development of the world was able to take it up. That world development was also shot through with wisdom, so its wisdom must also reach up into the flowing of cosmic wisdom.
Always, when the question surfaces: how does the human self position itself in the whole structure of the cosmic order?—Another question then arises: how does the cosmic order permit wisdom, (which humanity must assume, if it wants to embed itself into the cosmic order) to unite firstly with that which rules as evil in the widths of world experience, and secondly with what wickedness has set up in opposition to human striving for wisdom in the world?
Now, before the soul vision of the Stoics stood what was later called divine providence. How did a Stoic find himself then, with regard to this assumption of evil and wickedness? Something had already surfaced within Stoics, which even today can be put forward as a kind of justification of evil and wickedness, (if we do not want to penetrate into spiritual science itself, but only go up to the doors to the same). This arose before the Stoics as the need for human freedom. And now they could say to themselves: if a human should strive through his/her freedom towards the ideal of wisdom, the possibility must be offered to him/her also not to strive.
Freedom must reside in striving for the ideal of wisdom. But with this it must be allowed, that one can also remain behind with those features, from which one strives upwards; it must be granted that at the same time one can plunge into the being of sentiment and pain. Then, as the Stoics thought, they plunge down into a kingdom that is not their own human kingdom, but really a kingdom below their true humanity. And to want to reject the wise cosmic order, so that a human can plunge down into such a kingdom that is beneath him/her: doing that is so clever, as if one were to reject the wise cosmic order, since under humanity there is a kingdom of animal, plants and minerals. The Stoics knew that there is a kingdom into which a human being can plunge down, from which his wisdom is far removed: but if he/she can drag himself out of it, but it must be from his/her own free choice, his/her wisdom.
We can see: the concept that many people have who stand before the door to the answers laid out by Spiritual Science about the meaning of evil, already resided in ancient Stoic wisdom; and one cannot say that the grasp of evil as such has shown any real progress in later centuries. At the same time this can emphasise for us, how to go out and encounter a spirit, who was otherwise an exceptionally significant spirit, who lived in the time since the foundation of Christianity and who had a major influence on the forming of Western Christianity: to Augustine. Augustine too had to think over and research the meaning of evil in the world; and he came to a singular expression: that evil and real wickedness hardly exist, but they are simply something negative in that they are the negation of good. So Augustine said to himself: goodness is something positive; but in the end a human being in his/her weakness is not always able to perform it, so that goodness is limited. This limited goodness needs to be explained as something positive, as little as the shadows that are cast forth by the light, need to be explained as something positive. If one were to hear the Church Father Augustine speak about evil, so one might perhaps find such an answer naïve compared with what one might imagine is thinking that has progressed for a few centuries. But how things truly stand with regard to the question of the meaning of evil, can be set out before us, through the answer an erudite man gave precisely the same answer in our time: Campbell, who described the so-called “New Theology” and whose works in certain circles had created a great sensation. He too believes, that one cannot enquire about evil and wickedness, because they show nothing positive, but are simply something negative. We do not wish to get involved in hair-splitting philosophical deductions to refute the viewpoint of Augustine—Campbell. Since, for anyone who can think with an open mind free of prejudice, this response about the simple negativity of evil stands on the same ground as the answer someone might make and says: What then is cold? Cold is only something negative, namely the absence of heat. Therefore, one cannot speak of it as something positive. But if one turns around when it is cold, with no furs or winter clothes on, so one will then feel this negative as something very positive! This image should make it fully clear, how little one straightens things out with this answer that truly does not go beneath the surface, and which indeed even major philosophers of the nineteenth century have given: that with regard to evil and wickedness we have nothing to do with anything positive. It may be that in this regard, we have nothing to do with anything positive; but this “not positive” is precisely as negative as cold is compared with heat.
Now we could put forward a whole group of other thinkers, who through the preparation of their own soul life, one would like to say, came close to what Spiritual Science now has to state. For an example of such, one could put forward Plotinus, the Neo-Platonist, who lived in post-Christian times and still followed the principles of Plato; and with him also put forward at the same time a large number of other thinkers who have thought about evil and wickedness in the world. They tried to make the following clear: that a human being is put together from a spiritual and a material-bodily nature. By plunging down into the bodily, a human being shares in the characteristics of matter, which from the outset creates obstacles and limitations in opposition to the activity of the spirit. In this plunging down of the spirit into matter lies the very origin of evil in human life; but therein also lies the origin of evil in the outer world.
That such a view has not just been considered simply in the heads of individual thinkers as a satisfactory answer to this major question about the significance of evil and wickedness in the world, even though it is greatly widespread, can explain a comment that I will not suppress, because maybe it will make our situation more precisely clear. I will refer to a thinker from an entirely different region: to the significant Japanese thinker, who was a pupil of the Chinese thinker Wang Yang Ming: namely Nakae Toju. For him everything that constitutes experience of the world, consists of two things, of two entities on could say. For him, one entity is this, that he looks up to as to the spiritual, and it permits the human soul to take part in the spiritual: this entity he called Ri. Then he looked at what bodily forms a human being, and which permits the bodily to take part in everything through which is it constructed from matter: and that entity he called Ki. And from the particular juxtaposition of Ri and Ki all beings arose, according to him. For this thinker from the East, who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, mankind is partly made of Ri and of Ki. But, because the human soul must plunge down with its Ri into Ki in its experience, from Ki the will streams out against it—and with will comes desire. Thus, the human soul in its life is involved in willing and desiring, and so it stands before the possibility of evil.
This thinker from the East, who lived a reasonably short time before us, as was said, in the first half of the seventeenth century, is not far removed from what in Western lands, at the time of Neo-Platonism, of Plotinus for example, one tried to set forth as the origin of evil: humanity's involvement in matter. We shall see later that it is important to refer to this in this way, in order to answer the question of the origin of evil with the involvement of humanity in matter. Precisely this comes to meet us in the most remote circles of human thinking. A thinker of the nineteenth century, who truly was one of its most significant ones, tried to examine evil and wickedness, and I would like to briefly portray the main points of his thinking. He saw in the world around him, part evil, part human wickedness, and he stood before evil and wickedness as a philosopher, who had trained himself in depth about the characteristics of human nature in particular: Hermann Lotze, one of the most significant thinkers of the nineteenth century, whose very significant Microcosm for example, amongst others, described meaningful philosophical works for the nineteenth century. Let us try to call up others before our souls, from amongst our most significant contemporaries, who like Hermann Lotze stood before the issue of evil. He said to himself: evil does not try to deny its existence. How have we attempted to answer the question of evil? For example, it has been said, that evil and wickedness must be there in life; since only through learning how the human soul struggles out of evil, can we be educated. Now Lotze was no atheist, but one who assumed God as living and weaving throughout the world, so he said: how should one then put the idea of education about evil and wickedness? One must assume that God has used evil and wickedness, in order to develop humanity and to elevate it to the free use of its soul. That could only happen, if humans were to organise this inner working for themselves, that is organise our working the way out of evil, and only through this, then learn to recognise one's own true being and its true worth.
Against this Lotze objected at the same time: whoever gives such an answer, does not take account of the animal kingdom first of all, into which in truth not only evil but also wickedness have entered comprehensively. How does cruelty rise up to meet us in the animal kingdom, how does everything, that is taken up in human life, and which can become the most fearsome burden, come to meet us everywhere in the animal kingdom! But whoever wants to lead us to the animal kingdom in this field as regards education, can they not also run into the same animal kingdom issues? So Lotze turned away from the idea of education. In particular he drew attention to the fact that omnipotence of God would contradict this idea of education; since it was only possible then, Lotze thought, to extract the best in a being from the worst: once the worst had been given. But that would contradict the omnipotence of God: first we must work our way out of the worst, at the same time as preparing to be able to build goodness thereupon. So Lotze turns around to say: maybe one should consider more like someone who says that whatever is evil, what is bad, is wickedness. This arises not through the omnipotence of God, nor through the will of any conscious being; but evil is connected with that which exists in the world, in the way for example that the three angles of a triangle that add up together to 180º, are related to a triangle. So, if God wanted to create a world, he must conform to that which is true without him. So any world that he wanted to create is perforce connected with wickedness and evil. So, he must, if he wanted to create a world, prepare evil and wickedness along with it.—Against this Lotze objected: but then we limit what we can properly assume is the working and weaving of a divine being through the world. Since, when one observes the world, then one must say: according to general laws, according to which the appearances of the world can be thought through, it is very likely that it could be thought of without evil and wickedness. If we observe the world, we must say at once, that wickedness contravenes real freedom; so it must be from arbitrariness that freedom was called into being by the divine being.
We could add still other matters that Lotze and other thinkers have said on the problem and riddle of evil—Lotze is mentioned here only as being typical. I will only draw your attention to that to which Lotze came to in the end, because that will be important for us later. So Lotze turned against the German Philosopher Leibnitz, who had written a “Theodysee,” that was a justification of God against evil, and had come to the view that this world, even if it also contained much evil, was still the best possible of all worlds. Because if it was not the best one possible, Leibnitz thought, then either God did not know the best possible world—and that conflicts with his all- knowingness; or else he must not have wanted to create it, which conflicts with his all-goodness; or he must not have been able to do so—and that conflicts with his omnipotence. Now, Leibniz says, since in thought one cannot conflict with these three principles of God, one must assume that the world is the best one possible.—Now against this Lotze objected: in any case one cannot speak of an omnipotence of God, since in the world, where evil exists and the wicked reigns, this would be held to be outflowing from God. Therefore, one must say, as Lotze thought, Leibnitz has limited the omnipotence of God and by doing so won for himself the teaching of the best of all possible worlds.
Now, Lotze thought, there is still a way out. One must say: in general, when we observe the cosmos one can see overall order and harmony; evil and wickedness can only be seen in the details. So Lotze said: but what can a viewpoint give, which depends solely from the vision of humanity? Since about a world, where in general and as a whole, order and harmony command, so as to be able to astound us, and where in details evil and wickedness show themselves as black spots, one could also use the expression: what does it say, when in general and as a whole, order and harmony command in a world, and in details everywhere evil and wickedness is to be found? Here Lotze thought—and this was the culmination of his experience to which we wanted to refer-, one should rather say this one thing: evil and wickedness are indeed in the world. It must be wise that wickedness is there alongside excellence, and evil alongside good; it is just that we cannot see this wisdom. And so we are obliged to accept evil and wickedness beyond the boundaries of our knowledge. It must indeed be wisdom, which is not human wisdom Lotze thought: wisdom we cannot reach and which justifies evil. So Lotze transposed the wise concepts of evil and wickedness into an unknown world of wisdom.
At least I have expressly made these arguments, which for many will seem more or less pedantic, because they show us with what weapons humanity tried to approach the concept of evil and wickedness in philosophical thought, and how here we have found this confession time and again: these weapons have proven themselves to be completely blunt against such an enigma, which we come up against step by step in life; and even as Lotze says, they are completely unsuitable.
Now there is also another thinker, who tried to explore even further than Plotinus did into this, that is, in fact into the underground of being, which can only be reached after a certain development of the soul aimed at uplifting it to higher faculties of knowledge. Such a thinker was Jakob Böhme. And if one approaches Jakob Böhme, one approaches certainly a spirit of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, into which not many nowadays even wish to penetrate, since today he is seen more as a kind of curiosity. Jakob Böhme tried to penetrate into the depths of the world and its appearance up to the point where he felt something like a kind of Theosophy rising up in himself, as a kind of vision of God in his own inner being; and he now tried to make clear to himself, how wickedness and evil are to be pursued into the deepest underground of the world, and how evil and wickedness are not something simply negative, but are in a certain way rooted in the underground of the world and of human existence. Jakob Böhme saw the divine being as something, that in him, as he said—we must first of all become accustomed to his way of expressing himself—one must enter “amicably.” A being that allows its activity to flow out into the world at the same time, could never manage to grasp its own self. This activity must, one would like to say, hit up against something. Basically, each morning in waking up we perceive this to a small degree, and that is what Jakob Böhme put into his imagination. When we wake up, we are in a position so to speak, to unfold our soul-spiritual being to an unlimited extent from our soul-spiritual activity. There we hit up against our environment with our soul- spiritual activity. Through this, that we hit up against our surroundings, we become aware of ourselves. In general, a human being is only self-aware in the physical world, in that he hits up against things. The divine being cannot be such that it hits up against others. It must set up its adversary, or as Jakob Böhme stated in several expressions, its “no” against its “yes” for itself. It must limit its endlessly out-flowing activity in itself. That is…it must “amicably” distinguish, it must at the same time at a certain point create its own opposite on the surrounding circle of its activity; so for Jakob Böhme it was necessary for the divine being, in order to become self-aware, for it to create its own adversary. Now through taking part in the being of a creature, Jakob Böhme thought, not only that which streams out of the diving being, but from what the divine being had to create necessarily as its adversary, wickedness arises: evil above all arose in the world. The divine being set itself up against its own adversary, in order to become self- aware. Therefore, we cannot speak of evil and wickedness, but only of the necessary conditions of the divinity for becoming self-aware. But since creatures arose, and those creatures are not simply embedded in out-flowing life, but take part in the adversary, evil and wickedness have arisen.
Certainly, such an answer cannot be satisfactory to those who attempt to penetrate through spiritual science into the secrets of existence. This is set out here solely in order to show to what depths a sensible thinker goes, if he researches the source of evil in the world. And accordingly, I could also add much that could show us more than what we have found shining back from the world as an answer, when we try and draw close to enigmas, amongst which are wickedness and evil. If we now try and relate to what at the same time arises before us as a confession of one of the most prominent thinkers of the nineteenth century, as a confession by Lotze, we can say something like the following. Lotze is of the view, that there must be such wisdom somewhere, which justifies evil and wickedness. But mankind is limited in its capacity for knowledge; it cannot penetrate to that wisdom.—Are we not standing before, what we have often been forced to mention: that it is a beloved prejudice of our own time, to take our capacity for knowledge as it once was, and to hardly to reflect upon the fact that something could come out of the objects which are in our daily lives; something that could rise above itself, in order to have insight into other worlds, more than the simple world of the senses and the understanding related to the senses? Maybe it has already arisen before us, so that we are unable to find the answers to significant questions such as the origin of evil, because with regard to knowledge that turns to the senses and to the understanding that is related to the sense world, it spirals upwards above and away from this knowledge towards another knowledge. Along the path a way must be found, of which I have often spoken here, a way along which the human soul triumphs over that which is our everyday and usual scientific viewpoint. We have often spoken of the possibility that the human soul struggles to release itself from its bodily nature, that it really can perform a spiritual chemistry, that even releases the soul-spiritual element in mankind from the bodily, just as in outer chemistry, hydrogen is released from water. We have spoken of this: when a human being so releases his/her soul-spiritual nature from the bodily-corporeal one, so that it can rise up to the spiritual and that its bodily nature stands over against the soul-spiritual, so when the soul-spiritual is outside the body and is able to perceive in a spiritual world, then it can see into the depths of the world through direct experience, not within but outside of its body, as far as this knowledge is accessible to him/her. Maybe we should ask ourselves here: what then comes to meet us, when we truly try to walk along this path of spiritual research, the path that has often been described here, and which is set out extensively in my book “How does One Achieve Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?” What are the experiences one arrives at, when one really follows this path, in order to become a participant in super-sensible worlds? Now it will specially interest us, how what we usually call evil in everyday life positions itself on this path. We only need to look somewhat into everyday evil, what people call evil in everyday life. There it emerges, when a spirit researcher begins on his/her path, in order to rise up to soul-spiritual worlds, in order to truly come out of the bodily with his/her soul-spiritual being and to perceive free of the body, that everything that he/she must look back upon as evil, yes even upon imperfection in life, sets the hardest obstacles on his/her path. The most difficult hindrances come from that which one must look back upon as something imperfect. With this I do not want to say that the arrogant teaching follows logically: that anyone who achieves vision in the spiritual world as a spiritual researcher must be called a perfect human being. This should not be understood at all through saying this. But it should be repeated, what was once very forcefully emphasised: that the path to spiritual research is martyrdom in a certain sense, and it is so precisely on the basis that in the moment in which one comes out into the soul-spiritual from the bodily and takes part in the spiritual world, one looks back upon one's life with its imperfections and now knows: you bear these imperfections with you as a comet bears its tail. You bore them in yourself in other lives and must compensate for them in later lives. What you have stepped over until now, without having an awareness of it, now you can see.—This tragic insight into that which we are in everyday life depends on how a human being seeks out the way upwards to the spirit world. If it does not depend upon this, then it is not the true path to the spirit world. Of this act one must say: a certain seriousness of life starts, when one steps up into the spirit world. And if man gains nothing else, at least one conquers this one thing: that one can see one's own evil and one's own imperfections with endless clarity. So, one might say: one conquers an experiential knowledge of evil and imperfection with the very first steps that one takes upwards into the spirit world.
Where does this come from? When we look closer to see where it comes from, we find in this the essential feature of all human evil, so to speak. In my last book “The Threshold of the Spiritual World” I tried to refer to precisely this essential feature of evil, as far as it proceeds outwards from mankind. The common essential feature of all evil is none other than selfishness.—If I wanted to prove this in detail, what I will now set out here, I should have to speak for several hours; but I will only set this out and each person may then follow up for themselves with the further run of thoughts that follow as a consequence. They will also be followed up on in the next lectures, where we shall speak of the “Moral Basis of Human Life.” Basically, all human evil comes forth from what we call selfishness. We shall go and follow through from the smallest details, which we regard as human slip-ups, to the strongest crimes, that are human imperfections and human evil, regardless of whether they are portrayed to us as apparently arising more from the soul or apparently more from the bodily: the common essential feature, that comes from selfishness is universally present. We find the true meaning of evil, when we think of it as bound up with human selfishness; and we find all striving outwards and over imperfections and evil, when we see this striving upwards in the struggle against what we call selfishness. A great deal of careful thinking has been done over some ethical principle or another, over some moral basis or another; but the deeper we plunge into ethical principles and moral foundations, precisely this shows us that selfishness is the common root of all human evil. And so we might say: the more a human being works him/herself free of evil here in the physical world, the more he/she overcomes selfishness.
Now this result leads to another one just behind it; and it is so made one might say, that it is almost oppressive in spiritual investigation, truly oppressive. So what should one then develop, when one seeks to find the way up to the spiritual worlds, to those worlds, that one must look at with the soul- spiritual outside of the body?
When you take this all together, with what I have referred to as soul exercises in the run of these lectures, and which must be used in order to penetrate into the spiritual world, you will find that they run on, in order to strengthen certain soul characteristics, which the soul has in the sense-world, that make the soul stronger and more powerful, so it can set itself up more and more independently. Now what comes out in the physical-sense world as selfishness, that must be strengthened, must be made more intensive when a human being steps up and into the spiritual world. Since only in a strengthened soul, which strengthens those powers in itself that are its very own, which are in its Ego, and are rooted in its I, only such a soul can rise up to the spiritual world. Precisely that which a human must set aside, who wants to appropriate moral principles for the physical world, must be strengthened on the way to the spirit world. A significant mystic made the following statement:
When a rose decorates itself,
It also decorates the garden.
This is certainly true up to certain limits. But in human life selfishness also goes forth, if the human soul is only seen as a “rose” that decorates itself. But for the spirit world, that is perfectly valid. In the spirit world what lies in the expression: “When a rose decorates itself, it also decorates the garden” is present to a higher degree. If the soul rises up to the spirit world, and there it is all the more a useful tool, the more it has been strengthened in itself and has worked outwards on what lies in its inner fullness. Just as one cannot use an instrument that is imperfect, so can the soul itself not use what it has not fully driven out: what lies in it from its I, from its ego.
From this comparison, which takes us away from all facile phrases and leads us into the actual facts that should not be concealed, we now see that this spiritual world stands in relation to the physical sense-world: that the latter must make the former its own task completely. If a human being could only live in the spirit world, then he/she would only be able to develop inner faculties because of the law which must be valid: “When a rose decorates itself, It also decorates the garden”; he/she could not develop those faculties that would bring him/her together with other people, and with the whole world as a benefactor. We must find our abode in the physical world that enables us to overcome selfishness. Otherwise we have no duty to be benefactors in the world, except when we fundamentally educate ourselves away from selfishness, if I may use a trivial expression.
Now the same thing that a spiritual researcher finds to be definitive, namely the strengthening of his/her soul in order to rise up to the spiritual world, that same thing is equally definitive when a human being goes through the gate of death in a natural way, and goes into that world that lies between death and a new birth. There we transpose ourselves into a world, which a spiritual researcher has also reached through his/her soul development. There we must bring the characteristics that the soul has allowed to become strong in itself, which make the sentence true within the soul that runs: “When a rose decorates itself, it also decorates the garden.” In the instant in which we go through the gate of death, we enter into a world, in which our I comes to its highest elevation and strengthening. What we have to do in that world, we will hear in the lecture: “Between Human Death and Rebirth.” Now reference should only be made to this, that in this spiritual world, in essence only that which the soul has itself sent in arrives into this spiritual world, in accordance with what it has experienced in previous earthly lives, in order to structure the following. It must, to the extent that it corresponds to its destiny, primarily be concerned with itself, in the spiritual world between death and a new birth.
When we observe the human soul in this way, then the following appears to us from two different viewpoints. The way how selfishness can be transformed into becoming a benefactor appears in its meaning for the physical-sense world, since this is the large training ground, where the one must come out from the other, so that it may be something of value for the larger circles of existence. And the world between death and rebirth appears to us as that in which the soul must live with more power, and for which the soul would immediately be useless, it were to enter into this world weak and not empowered in this way.
What follows thereupon, that the soul has these two characteristics?
It follows from this, that a human must in fact protect him or herself from that which in one field, in one world is excellent, namely the lifting up of the inner soul into another world so as to somehow use it at the highest level to achieve the spiritual world; but that must be stricken by evil and by the worst, if a human permits him or herself be penetrated by what he/she must live out of as his/her being in the physical-sense world: what is useful to him/her as worthy preparation for the kingdom of the spirit. Thus we must precisely be strong in the spirit between death and new birth, in the strengthening and empowering of our I, with which we can prepare for ourselves such a physical sense being, so that in outer existence, in the acts and thoughts of the physical world we can be as unselfish as possible. We must use our selfishness before our birth in the spiritual world to work upon ourselves; we must look upon ourselves in such a way that we can become unselfish in the physical world, that is to say, moral.
Here, at this point lies everything that one could name as the most valuable for a person who wants to penetrate into the spiritual world. In fact, one must be clear, that one sees one's own evil and imperfection not otherwise than as a shadowy outline, when one is in the spiritual world. That is what shows us, that we must remain connected to the sense world, and how our karma, our destiny must bind us to the sense world, until we have broken through into the spiritual worlds so far that we are able to live not only with ourselves alone, but with the whole world. It shows as if on a screen, how things stand with evil, what is essential in spiritual progress, namely self- perfecting: that must be used on the things of outer life. Trying to make spiritual progress is not something we can allow to cease. That is our duty, far more. And that duty is development for humanity, which is the law for all other living beings. But evil is using directly in outer life, that which is fitting for spiritual development. These two, outer physical life with its morality must necessarily place a second adjacent world, next to that towards which the soul strives inwardly, if we wish to approach the spiritual world.
Now there is something present however, that could appear to be a contradiction. But one would like to say, the world lives in such living paradoxes. It must be said: one must strengthen oneself in the soul; precisely the ego, the I must become stronger in order to penetrate into the spiritual world. But if a spiritual step up were only to develop selfishness, then it would not get very far. But what does that mean? It means: one must enter into the spirit world without selfishness; or rather that one cannot enter without selfishness—which each of us who enters into the spiritual world must painfully acknowledge, so one must have all selfishness so objectively before one, that one sees one's own selfishness, to which one is bound in the outer world. One must also consider how to become an unselfish person using the means of the physical life, because one no longer has the opportunity in the spiritual world to become unselfish, because there one arrives at the strengthening of the soul life. That is only an apparent contradiction. Even when we enter the spiritual world, even when we go through the gate of death into the spiritual world, we must live there with what is present as strength in our inner being. But we cannot achieve this, if we cannot achieve this through selfless life in the physical world. Selflessness in the physical worlds is mirrored as the correct selfishness that raises value in the spiritual world. We can see how difficult the concepts become, as we near the spiritual world. But now one sees at the same time, what human life can involve. So now let us assume that a human being comes through birth into physical being. In that case, it means, that if that being that was in the spirit world before birth or conception, between the last death and the present birth, is clothed in the physical body, then the possibility is present that the person with this, which must at the same time be the life force of the spirit world, pulls through to its physical body unjustifiably; that the soul strays into the bodily, in that it brings down into the physical world that which is good in the spirit world. Then, what is good in the spirit world becomes evil, becomes wickedness in the physical world! That is a significant secret of existence, that a human can bring down what it necessarily needs in order to be a spiritual being, what in a certain sense can be portrayed as its highest being for its spiritual being, into the physical world, and that its highest and best spiritual nature can become the deepest error in the physical sense world.
Through what does evil enter life? Through what is so-called crime in the world?
It is present through the fact that a human being permits his/her better nature, not the worse one, to plunge down into the physical-body, which as such cannot be evil, and to develop those features there, which do not belong in the physical and bodily but belong precisely in the spiritual. Why can we humans be evil? Because we should be spiritual beings! Because we must come into the position, as soon as we live our way into the spirit world, to develop those features, which become bad, if we use them in the life of the physical sense world. If you allow those features which are lived out in the physical world as cruelty, malice for its own sake and others, to be taken out of the physical sense world, and let the soul be penetrated by them and live them out in the spirit world instead of the physical sense world, then there they will take us further, towards perfecting characteristics. That a human being uses the spiritual in the opposite way in the sense world, that leads to its evil. And if he/she could not be evil, he/she could not be a spiritual being. Since the characteristics that can make him/her evil, he/she must have; otherwise he/she could never rise up to the spiritual world.
Perfection lies herein, that a human being learns to penetrate himself/herself through and through with the insight: you should not use the features that make you into an evil human being in physical life, not in this physical life; since as much as you use them here, so much you take away from the empowering characteristics of the soul for the spiritual, so much you need to awaken yourself to the spiritual world. There these characteristics are in their correct place. So we see, as spiritual science shows, that evil and wickedness through their own nature indicate that we must assume a soul-spirit world alongside the physical world. Then why do the human faculties of knowledge of someone like Lotze or other thinkers freeze, when they observe the sense world and say: we cannot penetrate into the origin of evil and wickedness? Because of what is present—a capacity for knowledge that cannot penetrate to the spiritual world—, because it cannot enlighten evil starting from the physical world, because it is a misuse of powers that belong in the spirit world! No wonder also, that no philosopher, who has a viewpoint from the spirit world, can find the essence of evil in the physical sense world! And if one has a tendency to penetrate from here into a further world, in order to find the origin of evil, then also does one not come to any knowledge of outer evil, of that which we encounter as badness and imperfect in the outer world, such as for example in the animal world. So, we must be clear, that evil in human behaviour arises from this, that what for a human being is great and perfect in one world, as soon as it is uprooted into another world, it is changed over into its opposite. But when one considers evil independently of humanity in the world, the evil that flows through the animal world, then one has to say: we must then be clear upon this, that not only beings like humans are present, who through their life, bring down what belongs in the spirit world and there is great, and bear them into another world where it is out of place. Other beings must also exist—and a glance onto the animal world shows us also, that apart from humanity other beings must exist, which in the region, where humanity cannot take its evil, now bear their wickedness and so create evil. That means, that we are led by the knowledge of where the source of wickedness lies, at the same time to recognise that not only can humanity insert itself as imperfect in the world, but also that other beings are there, which can bring imperfections into the world. And so we say that it is no longer incomprehensible, when a spiritual researcher says: the world of animals is basically an outer formation of an invisible spirit; but in that spirit world beings are there, which have done before humanity itself, what mankind now does, in that it inserts the spiritual unjustifiably into the physical world. From this all the evil in the animal world has arisen.
It should be stated today, that people are wrong if they believe one can ascribe the impulse for evil to this involvement in matter, based upon material existence, because the soul is involved in a material existence. No, evil arises precisely thought the spiritual characteristics and through the spiritual possibilities of activity of humanity. And we must say to ourselves: where lies the wisdom in the world order, that wished to limit mankind to this, to only unfold goodness in the sense world—and not evil, as we see through it, as we have seen, that it necessarily must take power in order to go forward in the spirit world? Through the fact that we are a being that belongs both to the physical world and to the spiritual world, and that in us not the imperfection, but the perfection of spiritual law lies, we are placed in a position, like a pendulum, that can swing out to one side; and we are placed in the position to swing out to the other side, because we are spirit beings, which can bear the spiritual into the physical world, in order to realize evil there, as others, beings who perhaps higher than mankind are able to realize evil, which they have borne into the sense world, and which should belong solely in the spirit world.
I know very well that in such a portrayal of the origin of wickedness and evil something has been said today, which can only be enlightening to a small number of human beings, but who live ever more and more into the human soul life. For one will find that resolving the problems of the world overall is only possible, when we think of our world as one with a spiritual basis. Humanity may one day finish with the perfection of the sense world—there is also an illusion about such things; but with the imperfections, with wickedness and evil, it will never come to an end, if it does not want to seek, to what extent this wickedness and evil must be in the world. And one has insight, that it must be in this world, if one says to oneself: evil is only displaced into the physical world. If the characteristics which mankind uses unjustifiably in the physical world, and which there establish evil, were used in the spirit world, so mankind would go forward there.
I have no need to say that it would be entire nonsense, if someone were to draw conclusions from what has just been said: that you portray that only villains move forward in the spiritual world. It would be a complete travesty of what has been said. This is because these characteristics only become evil through their being used in the sense world, and they undergo a kind of immediate metamorphosis if they are used in the spirit world. Whoever wishes to raise such an objection, resembles someone who says: so you maintain that it is entirely good, if a human being has the strength to smash a watch? Certainly it is good if he has that strength; but he does not need to use that strength to smash the watch. If it is used to cure humanity, then it is a good power. And in this sense, one must say: the powers that a human being allows to flow into evil, are only evil in that place; used right in the right place, are they good powers.
It must lead us deep into the secrets of human existence, if one can say: through what is mankind evil? Through its using the powers granted to it for its perfection, in the incorrect place! Through what is wickedness, is evil in the world? Through humans using forces that are lent to them in an unsuitable world.
In our present time one could say at once: for the underlying soul there is a distinct tendency present to incline towards the spirit world. A more precise intimate glance onto the nineteenth century and on up to our present time could teach us this. Against this in the nineteenth century amongst the philosophers there also came into play what has been called pessimism, a world view that immediately looks at the wicked and to the evil present in the world, and draws the conclusion some individuals have already drawn it—, that this world cannot be seen as good overall, that something other is required of mankind, than being led to its end. I will only refer to Schopenhauer or to Eduard von Hartmann, who both saw the solution for mankind, in that they said: an individual can only find his/her salvation in the rise of world processes, but not in a personally satisfying conscious purpose. But I would like to refer to something else: that the soul in the age of matter is imprisoned in materialism, and that in this time the strongest hopelessness must arise towards the world's evils, towards the wicked; since materialism rejects a spiritual world, out of which light shines upon us, to give its meaning to evil and to the wicked. If this world is rejected, it is entirely necessary that this world is hopelessly covered in filth by evil and wickedness in their purposelessness.—I will not refer to Nietzsche today, but to another spirit of the nineteenth century. From a certain viewpoint I also wish to refer to a tragic thinker of the nineteenth century: from the viewpoint that a human being must necessarily live with their time, in that he/she is inserted into their own time. That is a property of our being, that our being finds itself together with the being of our time. So it was only natural that in the latest times, that deeply formed spirits, yes, precisely those who had an open heart for what took place in their surroundings, we deeply gripped by that world description, which only wants to see the outermost appearance of the alpha and omega of world existence. But such spirits can often give in to an illusion, that one can go through the world inconsolably, if one must look into that world existence which must be portrayed as evil—and cannot look up to a spiritual world, in which evil is justified, as we have seen.
A spirit who, I would like to say, went through the entire tragedy of materialism, even though he was not a materialist himself, was Philipp Mainländer, born in 1841. One could call him a follower of Schopenhauer, if one observes things outwardly. In a certain sense he was a deep spirit, but a child of his time, so that he could only look upward to what the material world exposes. Now materialism worked indeed, enormously to imprison precisely the very best souls: we should not be deceived about this. Yes, the humans, who are not concerned with what is around them, what the times and their spirit offer, and who live selfishly in a religious confession that they have once found pleasant, the “most religious” people are sometimes in this point the most selfish of all; they reject any rising above the things which they love, and do not concern themselves about anything else, other than what they know. One can find this answer again and again, if one refers to the tragedy of numberless human beings: yes, cannot old Christianity satisfy souls much more than your spiritual science? Such questions are put by spirits who do not go along with the times and intolerantly reject everything that should penetrate into cultural development for the salvation of mankind.
Philipp Mainländer looked around him, at what outer science, what our time was able to tell him from its materialistic viewpoint, and there he could only find a world filled with evil and mankind involved in wickedness. He could not deny it, since the pressure of this new world view was so strong that it hindered the soul from looking up to a spiritual world. So let us not try and conceal from ourselves here: why do so few people come to spiritual science? That is because, since the pressure of the prejudice of materialism, or as it is called more nobly, of monism is so powerful, it darkens the soul and prevents its penetrating into the spirit world. If the soul is left independent and to itself and is not dulled by materialist prejudice, then it will surely come to spiritual science. But the pressure is large, and from our time on, one can say: it is connected to the epoch, in which one can represent spiritual science before humanity with a few perspectives, because the desire of souls has become so strong, that spiritual science must find an echo in souls. In the second and third thirds of the nineteenth century that echo was unable to be present. Then the pressure of materialism was so strong, that even a soul striving towards the spirit such as that of Philipp Mainländer was held back. And so he came to a unique view: to the view that nothing spiritual can be found in the current world. We have in Mainländer in the nineteenth century a spirit before us, who only did not make a major impression on his contemporaries, because the spirit of the nineteenth century, despite its major progress in material areas, was a superficial spirit. But what a soul must feel in the nineteenth century, that Mainländer felt, even when he stood alone, because in a certain way he felt a kind of spiritual impotence regarding the removal of that which must leave one dissatisfied with a materialistic or monistic world view. One does not need to pick up and read the somewhat thick volume of Mainländer's “Philosophy of Salvation,” but only the reasonably small booklet by Max Seiling, in order to make a judgement about what I am saying now.
Philipp Mainländer looked out into the world, and he could only see under the pressure of materialism, what the senses and understanding portray. But he must assume a spirit world. But it is not there, he told himself; the sense world must be illuminated from itself. And now he came to the view that the spirit world of our ancestors was real, that once there was a divine spirit existence, that our soul was within a divine- spiritual existence, and that the divine existence from a former being has gone over into us, and that our world can only be there, because God had died before that spirit world died before us. So Mainländer sees a spirit world, but not in our world; but in our world he only sees a cadaver loaded with evil and wickedness, which can only be there, so that its destruction can be overcome, so that what led to God and his spirit world to die, should not enter into the destruction of the cadaver into nothingness.—Monists or other thinkers may laugh more or less at this; whoever better understands the human soul and knows how a world view can become the inner destiny of a soul, how the entire soul can adopt the nuances of a world view. He/she knows what a human being must experience, who, like Mainländer, was forced to transpose the spirit world into past times and was only able to see the material cadaver of the same left behind in the current world. In order to resolve the evils of this world, Mainländer had taken up this kind of world view. That he was more deeply involved in his world view than Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, than Bahnsen or Eduard von Hartmann, we can see from that fact that, at the time of finishing his “Philosophy of Salvation” in his fifty-third year, the thought came to him: your strength has been used lovelessly, since you more quickly offer what appears as your salvation of humanity, than when you still used it after the middle of the life in the body. That Mainländer thought with his world view with the deepest sincerity is shown from the fact that he, when he came to this thought: you now use more strength, when you pour out your power into the world and do not concentrate on the body. He really drew the conclusion, which Schopenhauer and the others did not draw, and died through suicide, and that is, a suicide through conviction.
Philosophers and others may look away from such a human destiny: for our time however, such a human destiny is endlessly significant, because it shows us how the soul must live, which can really pierce down into its depths, to that which as longing can resurrect in our time—how the soul can live and confront the problem of wickedness and evil in the world, and have not any vision into the world where spiritual light spreads out and illuminates the sense of wickedness and of evil. It was necessary that the human soul should develop the materialistic capacities for a period. One can also position in a certain future of spiritual life, I would like to say, under a “psycho-biological viewpoint,” a point of view of the soul life, and make clear to oneself, that only when lifted up to the spiritual, does what appears in a physical image, for example in animal beings, become valid for human beings. Certain animals can go hungry for a long time and also are hungry for a long time. Tadpoles for example, can bring about their rapid transformation into frogs through long hunger. Similar behaviour is also shown in certain fishes with long hunger, because back-bone building processes come into play, that make it possible to perform what they have to perform; they are hungry because they hold back the forces, they otherwise take in through taking in nourishment, in order to force a way into another form. That is an image that is suitable for use for the human soul: through centuries it has lived through people constantly talking about the “boundaries of human knowledge”; and even many who believe that they think spiritually, are nonetheless entirely devoted to materialistic imaginations—which are willingly called monistic today because people are ashamed of them—, and even philosophers are devoted to the maxim: human knowledge can do no more than make a halt, when it stands before the greatest riddles. The capacities that led them to everything, had to be trained for a period: that is to say that humanity must undergo a period of spiritual starvation. This was the time of the arising of materialism. But the powers that were held back in souls through this, they will now lead human souls to seek for the way into the spirit world in accordance with a psycho- biological law. Certainly one will find that human pondering had to take the form that we meet up with in Mainländer, who could no longer find the spirit world in the physical world, because materialism had taken him. He was forced to remain before the physical world: there he only had the power to visualise errors, and not that which underlies our world, that indeed gives us the possibility in find something out in our souls, that refers to the future just as the outer world refers to the past. It cannot be denied, that in a certain sense Mainländer was correct: what our world sets out all around us, are the remains of original development. Even present-day geologists have to admit today, that we, in that we wander across the earth, are walking away a cadaver. But what Mainländer could not show, that is, that we, to the extent that we are walking over a dead body, at the same time are developing something in our inner being, which is precisely a seed for the future, as that which is all around us is a bequest from the past. And to the extent that we look into this, what spiritual science is for individual souls, it can resurrect in us, that which Mainländer was not yet able to see, and therefore was forced to doubt.
So we stand at the watershed between two epochs: the epoch of materialism and that of spiritual science. And maybe nothing can prove it to us in such a popular form, as when we, if we correctly understand our soul, must live up against the spiritual epoch, as considering evil and wickedness, when we are able to lift up our sight to the illuminated heights of the spirit world. I have often said, that with such considerations one feels oneself in harmony with the best spirits of all ages, who have longed, as mankind must live in an ever-clearer manner as against the future. If one such spirit, with whom one feels in full harmony, made a remark about the outer sense world, that is like a call for spiritual knowledge, so we should also put together what today has been able to enter into our souls, and this should spark off a kind of transformation of such a remark.
Goethe let something be said in his Faust, that shows how a human being can lose their way away from the spirit. Mankind's distance from the spirit world is set out paradigmatically in a beautiful sentence with the words:
Whoever wants to know and describe the living,
Tries first of all to drive out the spirit,
Then he has the parts in his hand,
Except, sadly! only their spiritual bond is missing.
So, this is how things lie in a certain way for all knowledge of the world. It was the destiny of mankind, to devote itself to parts for a few centuries. But ever more and more one will perceive the absence of the spiritual bond as not only a theoretical deficiency, but as a tragedy of the soul. Therefore, spiritual researchers must today look into the soul overall, which the majority of souls do not know how to do themselves: and catch sight of the longing for the spirit world. And if we set our eyes upon something, such as illuminating the nature of evil and of wickedness, then perhaps we may extend Goethe's remark, in that we take the following as a summary of what was said.
Goethe thought that whoever wants to strive for a world view, should not stop at parts alone, but must see the spiritual bond above all. But whoever approaches as significant a life question as the riddle of evil and wickedness, he should say based on spiritual-scientific foundations, as a summary of his/her persuasion in accordance with his findings:
Whoever does not solve the soul riddle,
Remains in the simple light of the senses;
Whoever wants to understand life
Must strive towards spirit heights!
Das Böse im Lichte der Erkenntnis Vom Geiste
Was uns heute hier beschäftigen soll, ist im Grunde genommen eine uralte Frage der Menschheit: die Frage nach dem Ursprunge des Übels und des Bösen in der Welt. Und obwohl in unserer Gegenwart zahlreiche Menschen der Ansicht sein werden, daß diese Frage im Grunde genommen gar keine solche mehr darstellen kann, so wird doch die menschliche Seele immer wieder und wieder sich gedrängt fühlen sie aufzuwerfen. Denn es ist ja diese Frage keine solche, die nur von theoretisch-wissenschaftlichen Gesichtspunkten aus an unsere Seele herantritt; es ist vielmehr eine Frage, welcher die Menschenseele auf Schritt und Tritt im Leben begegnet, weil ihr Leben ebenso wie in das Gute, in das Wohltätige, so auch in das Übel und in das Böse hineingestellt ist. Man kann auf der einen Seite, man möchte sagen, die ganze Geschichte des menschlichen Denkens und Sinnens aufrollen, um sich davon völlig zu überzeugen, daß unsere Frage immer eine Frage der tieferen Geister der menschlichen Entwickelung war, und man kann auf der anderen Seite noch bedeutende, hervorragende Denker des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts und unserer Zeit studieren, und man wird finden, daß selbst bei diesen hervorragendsten Denkern Halt gemacht wird mit aller Philosophie, mit allem Erkenntnisstreben gerade vor dieser Frage. So wollen wir denn heute das, was sich in dem Vortrags-Zyklus dieses Winters aus der Geisteswissenschaft heraus ergeben hat, als eine Grundlage zu betrachten versuchen, von der ausgehend man sich vielleicht einer Antwort auf das Rätsel des Übels und des Bösen nähern kann. Ich sage ausdrücklich «sich nähern kann»; denn was ich oftmals betonte — dieser bedeutungsvollen Frage gegenüber muß es ganz besonders gelten: Geisteswissenschaft eröffnet nicht nur die Blicke in Gebiete des Daseins, welche der äußeren Wissenschaft nicht erreichbar sind, sondern sie macht in einer gewissen Weise auch bescheiden. Und gerade an einer solchen Frage werden wir vielleicht erfühlen können, daß es ein Leichtes ist, die höchsten Fragen aufzuwerfen, wie sie ja gewöhnlich aufgeworfen werden, wenn man gewissermaßen am Beginne des Erkenntnisstrebens ist, daß aber wirkliches Erkenntnisstreben dazu führt, vielfach nur die ersten Schritte zu zeigen zu den Wegen, auf denen man sich der Lösung der großen Lebensrätsel allmählich nähern kann.
Zuerst gestatten Sie mir, daß ich einiges vorausschicke, was klar machen soll, wie tief einschneidend diese Frage die Herzen und Seelen bedeutender Denker durch lange Zeiten hindurch beschäftigt hat. Wir könnten weit zurückgehen in der Menschheitsentwickelung; wir wollen aber zunächst nur hinweisen auf Denker in den letzten Jahrhunderten vor der Begründung des Christentums in Griechenland: auf die Stoiker, jene merkwürdige Denkergruppe, welche, auf den Anschauungen des Sokrates und des Plato fußend, die Frage zu beantworten versuchte: Wie muß sich der Mensch verhalten, der sich so in das Leben hineinstellen will, daß dies dem Innersten seines Wesens entspricht, gewissermaßen seiner ihm vorgezeichneten und für ihn erkennbaren Bestimmung? Dies können wir als dieGrundfrage der Stoiker bezeichnen. Und als ein Ideal für den Menschen, der sich seiner Bestimmung gemäß in das Weltenall hineinzustellen bestrebt war, tauchte vor den Seelenaugen der Stoiker das Ideal des Weisen auf. -— Es würde zu weit führen, wenn man in ausführlicher Art das Ideal des stoischen Weisen schildern wollte, und wie es zusammenhängt mit der ganzen stoischen Weltanschauung. Aber das eine sei wenigstens hervorgehoben, daß im Stoizismus uns ein Bewußtsein davon entgegentritt, daß die menschliche Entwickelung dahin gehe, immer klarer und klarer des Menschen selbstbewußtes Wesen, des Menschen Ich-Bewußtsein herauszuarbeiten. Es sagte sich der stoische Weise: Dieses Ich, durch welches der Mensch in völliger Klarheit sich in die Welt hineinzustellen vermag, dieses Ich kann getrübt werden, kann gleichsam sich selber betäuben; und es betäubt sich, wenn der Mensch in das Wellen- und Wogenspiel seines Vorstellens und Empfindens sein Affektleben zu stark hereinkommen läßt. Wie eine Art geistiger Ohnmacht erschien es dem Stoiker, wenn der Mensch die Klarheit seines Ich überfluten läßt, benebeln läßt von seinem Leidenschaftsund Affektwesen. Daher: niederhalten in der menschlichen Seele Leidenschafts- und Affektwesen, Erstreben der Ruhe und des Gleichmaßes, das führt im Sinne der Stoiker zur Befreiung von den geistigen Ohnmachten der Seele.
Man sieht: was hier öfter hervorgehoben werden mußte als die ersten Schritte auf dem Wege zu einer Erkenntnis der geistigen Welt, die ja auch darin bestehen, daß das wilde Gewoge des Affekt- und Leidenschaftswesens, das gleichsam eine geistige Ohnmacht erzeugt, niedergehalten wird und die Klarheit des seelischen Schauens herausgezogen wird aus dem ganzen seelischen Erleben -, was so dargestellt wurde als die ersten Schritte auf dem Wege, der dann in das geistige Schauen hineinführt, das schwebte den Stoikern vor. Gerade diese Seite des stoischen Wesens, das in der Geschichte der Philosophie noch wenig herausgearbeitet worden ist, versuchte ich in der Neuauflage meiner «Welt- und Lebensanschauungen im neunzehnten Jahrhundert» mit Bezug auf den Stoizismus herauszuarbeiten. So schwebt in der charakterisierten Art der Leidenschaftsbezwinger, der Affektbezwinger als der Weise wie ein Ideal dem Stoizismus vor. Und derjenige, der so als Weiser sich in die Weltenentwickelung hineinstellt, erkennt im Sinne des Stoizismus, daß diese Weltenentwickelung fähig ist, ihn aufzunehmen, daß diese Weltenentwickelung wirklich auch von Weisheit durchdrungen ist, so daß er seine Weisheit gleichsam in die Fluten der Weltenweisheit untertauchen muß.
Immer, wenn also die Frage auftaucht: Wie stellt sich das menschliche Selbst in das ganze Gefüge der Weltordnung hinein? - entsteht daher die andere Frage: Wie läßt sich mit der Weisheit der Weltenordnung, die der Mensch voraussetzen muß, wenn er sich in sie hineinstellen will, dasjenige vereinigen, was als Übel in der Breiteder Weltenerfahrung herrscht, und was als Böses sich dem Weisheitsstreben des Menschen entgegenstellen kann?
Nun stand vor dem Seelenauge der Stoiker das, was man später genannt hat die göttliche Vorsehung. Wie findet sich nun der Stoiker mit dem Übel und dem Bösen gegenüber diesen seinen Voraussetzungen ab?
Da taucht bei dem Stoiker schon etwas auf, was man auch heute noch, wenn man nicht in die Geisteswissenschaft selber eindringen will, sondern gleichsam nur bis zu den Pforten derselben geht, wie eine Art Rechtfertigung des Übels und des Bösen vorbringen kann; es tauchte vor dem Stoiker auf die Notwendigkeit der menschlichen Freiheit. Und nun sagte er sich: Wenn der Mensch das Ideal des Weisen aus seiner Freiheit heraus erstreben soll, muß ihm die Möglichkeit geboten sein, es auch nicht zu erstreben. Freiheit muß liegen in seinem Streben nach dem Ideal des Weisen. Damit aber muß gegeben sein, daß er auch bleiben könne bei demjenigen, aus dem er herausstreben soll; damit muß gegeben sein, daß er gleichsam untertauchen könne in das Affekt- und Leidenschaftswesen. Dann taucht er eben unter, meinte der Stoiker, in ein Reich, das zunächst nicht sein Reich ist, das eigentlich ein Reich unter seinem Wesen ist. Und der weisen Weltenordnung vorwerfen zu wollen, daß der Mensch so untertauchen könne in ein Reich, das unter ihm ist, das wäre ebenso gescheit, als wenn man der weisen Weltenordnung vorwerfen wollte, daß es unter dem Menschen ein Reich der Tiere, Pflanzen und Mineralien gibt. Daß es ein Reich gibt, in das der Mensch untertauchen kann, das seiner Weisheit entrückt ist, wußten die Stoiker; daß er selber aber aus ihm emportauchen kann, muß seine eigene freie Wahl, seine Weisheit sein.
Man sieht: der Begriff vieler vor dem Tore der Geisteswissenschaft gelegenen Antworten nach der Bedeutung des Bösen liegt schon in der alten stoischen Weisheit; und man kann nicht sagen, daß in bezug auf die Erfassung des Bösen als solchem die späteren Jahrhunderte einen wirklichen Fortschritt zeigen. Das kann sich uns gleich herausstellen, wenn wir zu einem Geist gehen, der sonst ein außerordentlich bedeutender Geist ist, der in der Zeit nach der Begründung des Christentumes lebte und auf die Gestaltung des abendländischen Christentums einen großen Einfluß genommen hat: zu Augustinus. Auch Augustinus muß über die Bedeutung des Bösen in der Welt nachdenken, forschen; und er kommt zu einem eigentümlichen Ausdruck: daß das Übel ebenso wie das eigentliche Böse gar nicht eigentlich da seien, sondern daß sie etwas bloß Negatives seien, daß sie die Negation des Guten seien. Es sagte sich also Augustinus: Das Gute ist etwas Positives; aber da ein endliches Wesen in seiner Schwachheit das Gute nicht immer ausführen könne, so begrenze sich das Gute; und dieses begrenzte Gute brauche man ebensowenig als etwas Positives erklären, wie man den Schatten, der durch das Licht hervorgerufen würde, als etwas Positives erklären würde. Wenn man den Kirchenvater Augustinus also über das Böse reden hört, so wird man eine solche Antwort gegenüber dem, was man heute bei einem schon durch einige Jahrhunderte vorgeschrittenem Denken sich vorstellen könnte, vielleicht naiv finden. Aber wie es eigentlich mit der Frage nach der Bedeutung des Bösen steht, kann uns daraus hervorgehen, daß noch in unseren Tagen ein Gelehrter genau dieselbe Antwort gegeben hat: Campbell, der die sogenannte «Neue Theologie» geschrieben hat, und dessen Werke in gewissen Kreisen großes Aufsehen gemacht haben. Auch er glaubt, daß man nach dem Übel und dem Bösen nicht fragen könne, weil sie nichts Positives darstellten, sondern etwas bloß Negatives seien. Auf haarspalterische, philosophische Deduktionen zur Widerlegung der Augustinisch-Campbellschen Anschauung wollen wir uns nicht einlassen. Denn für jeden, der unbefangen und vorurteilslos denken kann, steht ja diese Antwort von der bloßen Negativität des Übels auf demselben Boden, wie die Antwort, die jemand geben würde, der da sagte: Was ist denn die Kälte? Kälte ist nur etwas Negatives, nämlich die Abwesenheit der Wärme. Deshalb kann man von ihr nicht als von etwas Positivem sprechen. Zieht man sich aber, wenn es kalt ist, keinen Pelz oder Winterrock an, so wird man dann schon dieses Negative als etwas sehr Positives verspüren! Durch dieses Bild mag völlig klar werden, wie wenig man mit der wahrhaftig nicht tiefgehenden Antwort zurecht kommt, die ja auch große Philosophen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts gegeben haben: daß man es gegenüber dem Übel und dem Bösen mit nichts Positivem zu tun habe. Mag sein, daß man es dabei mit nichts Positivem zu tun hat; aber dieses «Nicht-Positive» ist gerade ebenso negativ, wie etwa die Kälte gegenüber der Wärme.
Nun könnte man auch eine ganze Gruppe anderer Denker anführen, die durch die Vorbereitungen ihres Seelenlebens schon, man möchte sagen, demjenigen nahekommen, was nun die Geisteswissenschaft zu sagen hat. Man könnte unter diesen zum Beispiel Plotin anführen, den Neuplatoniker, der in der nachchristlichen Zeit lebte und noch auf den Prinzipien des Plato fußte; und mit ihm führt man zugleich eine große Zahl anderer Denker an, die über das Böse und das Übel in der Welt nachgedacht haben. Sie versuchten sich klar zu machen: Der Mensch sei zusammengefügt aus einem Geistigen und einem Materiell-Leiblichen. Durch das Untertauchen in das Leibliche nehme der Mensch teil an den Eigenschaften der Materie, die von vornherein Hindernisse und Hemmnisse der Betätigung des Geistes entgegenstellt. In diesem Untertauchen des Geistes in die Materie liegt eben der Ursprung des Bösen im menschlichen Leben; aber es liegt darin auch der Ursprung des Übels in der äußeren Welt.
Daß eine solche Anschauung nicht etwa bloß in einzelnen Denkerköpfen wie etwas Befriedigendes auf die große Frage nach der Bedeutung des Übels und des Bösen in der Welt gefühlt wurde, sondern weit verbreitet ist, das mag eine Bemerkung erläutern, die ich nicht unterdrücken will, weil sie vielleicht gerade unsere Situation klar legt. Ich will auf einen Denker aus einer ganz anderen Region verweisen: auf den bedeutenden japanischen Denker, den Schüler des chinesischen Denkers Wang-Yang-Ming, Nakae Toju. Für ihn besteht alles, was sich uns an Welterfahrungen darbietet, aus zwei Dingen, aus zwei, man möchte sagen, Wesenheiten. Die eine Wesenheit ist für ihn so, daß er zu ihr aufschaut wie zu dem Geistigen, und er läßt die menschliche Seele an dem Geistigen teilnehmen; diese Wesenheiten nennt er Ri. Dann siehter hin zu dem, was sich am Menschen leiblich darstellt, und läßt dieLeiblichkeit an allem teilnehmen, woraus sie auferbaut ist aus der Materie heraus; diese Wesenheit nennt er Ki. Und aus der besonderen Zusammensetzung von Ri und Ki entstehen ihm alle Wesen. Die Menschheit ist für diesen Denker des Ostens, der in der ersten Hälfte des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts gelebt hat, teilhaftig sowohl an dem Ri als an dem Ki. Dadurch aber, daß die Menschenseele in ihrem Erleben mit ihrem Ri untertauchen muß in das Ki, strömt ihr aus dem Ki das Wollen entgegen — und mit dem Wollen das Begehren. Damit ist die Menschenseele in ihrem Leben verstrickt im Wollen und Begehren, und damit steht sie vor der Möglichkeit des Bösen. — Nicht weit ist dieser Denker des Ostens, der erst verhältnismäßig kurze Zeit vor uns, wie gesagt, in der ersten Hälfte des siebzehnten Jahrhunderts gelebt hat, nicht weit ist er von dem entfernt, was man im Abendlande, in den Zeiten des Neuplatonismus, des Plotin zum Beispiel, als den Ursprung des Bösen darzustellen versucht hat: die Verstrickung des Menschen in die Materie. Wir werden nachher sehen, daß es wichtig ist, einmal auf diese Art hinzuweisen, sich die Frage nach dem Ursprung des Bösen zu beantworten mit der Verstrickung des Menschen in die Materie. In den weitesten Kreisen des menschlichen Denkens tritt uns gerade dieses entgegen.
Ein Denker des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, der wahrhaftig zu den bedeutendsten gehört, versuchte sich mit dem Übel und dem Bösen auseinanderzusetzen, und die Hauptgedanken seines Denkens möchte ich kurz darstellen. Er sah in der Welt um sich herum Teile des Übels, Teile des menschlichen Bösen, und er stand als ein Philosoph, bei dem insbesondere die Gemütseigenschaften tief ausgebildet waren, vor dem Übel und dem Bösen: Hermann Lotze, einer der bedeutendsten Denker des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, der den sehr bedeutenden «Mikrokosmos» zum Beispiel und andere für das neunzehnte Jahrhundert bedeutsame philosophische Werke geschrieben hat. Versuchen wir uns vor die Seele zu rufen, wie Hermann Lotze, also einer unserer bedeutendsten Zeitgenossen, vor dem Problem des Bösen steht.
Er sagt sich: Wegleugnen läßt sich das Böse nicht. Wie hat man sich die Frage nach dem Bösen zu beantworten versucht? Man hat zum Beispiel gesagt, daß das Übel und das Böse im Leben da sein müsse; denn nur dadurch, daß sich die Menschenseele aus dem Bösen herausarbeite, könne man sie erziehen. Da nun Lotze nicht zu den Atheisten gehört, sondern einen die Welt durchlebenden und durchwebenden Gott annimmt, so sagt er: Wie muß man sich also im Sinne der Erziehungsidee zu dem Bösen und dem Übel stellen? Man müsse annehmen, daß Gott dasBöse und das Übel gebraucht hätte, um die Menschen herauszuarbeiten und zum freien Gebrauch ihrer Seele zu erheben. Das konnte nur geschehen, indem sie selbst diese innere Arbeit verrichteten, indem sie selbst diesen inneren Zustand erlebten, der in dem Herausarbeiten aus dem Bösen besteht, und dadurch erst, selbstbewußt ihr wahres Wesen und ihren wahren Wert erkennen lernten. —- Lotze wendet zugleich dagegen ein: Wer eine solche Antwort gibt, berücksichtige vor allem nicht die Tierwelt, in welcher uns wahrhaftig nicht nur das Übel, sondern auch das Böse im umfassenden Sinne entgegentreten. Wie tritt uns in der Tierwelt Grausamkeit, wie tritt uns alles, was, in das Menschenleben heraufgenommen, zu den furchtbarsten Lastern werden kann, überall in der Tierwelt entgegen! Wer aber vermöchte der Tierwelt gegenüber die Erziehung ins Feld zu führen, die ja bei der Tierwelt nicht angeführt werden kann? So weist Lotze die Idee der Er'ziehung ab. Insbesondere macht er darauf aufmerksam, daß der Allmacht seines Gottes diese Erziehungsidee widersprechen würde; denn nur dann habe man nötig, meint Lotze, das Bessere in einem Wesen aus dem Schlechten herauszuarbeiten, wenn man erst das Schlechte gegeben hat. Aber das würde der Allmacht des Gottes widersprechen: erst das Schlechte herausarbeiten zu müssen, gleichsam zur Vorbereitung, um dann das Gute darauf auferbauen zu können.
So wendet sich denn Lotze dahin zu sagen: Vielleicht müsse man diejenigen mehr berücksichtigen, welche da sagen: Dasjenige, was böse, was schlecht ist, was ein Übel ist, das ist dies nicht durch die Allmacht Gottes, nicht durch den Willen irgend eines bewußten Wesens; sondern es ist mit dem, was in der Welt existiert, das Übel so verbunden, wie zum Beispiel die Tatsache, daß die drei Winkel eines Dreieckes zusammen 180° betragen, mit einem Dreieck verbunden ist. Wenn Gott also überhaupt eine Welt schaffen wollte, mußte er sich richten nach dem, was ohne ihn wahr ist, daß mit irgendeiner Welt, die er schaffen wollte, das Böse und das Übel verbunden ist. Er mußte also, wenn er überhaupt eine Welt schaffen wollte, das Böse und das Übel mitschaffen. — Dagegen wendet Lotze ein: Dann aber beschränken wir erst recht das, was man als das Wirken und Weben eines göttlichen Wesens durch die Welt annehmen könne. Denn wenn man die Welt betrachtet, dann muß man sagen: Nach den allgemeinsten Gesetzen, nach dem, wie man sich die Welterscheinungen durchdenken kann, wäre sehr wohl eine Welt denkbar ohne das Übel und das Böse. Wenn man die Welt betrachte, müsse man gerade sagen, gegen eine eigentliche Freiheit verstoße das Böse; es müsse also gerade durch die Willkür, durch die Freiheit des göttlichen Wesens hervorgerufen werden.
Wir könnten noch anderes anführen, was Lotze und andere Denker — Lotze ist hier nur als Typus angeführt — gegenüber dem Problem und dem Rätsel des Bösen gesagt haben. Ich will nur auf das aufmerksam machen, wohin Lotze zuletzt kommt, weil das nachher für uns wichtig sein wird..So wendet sich Lotze gegen den deutschen Philosophen Leibniz, der ja eine «’Theodizee», das heißt die Rechtfertigung Gottes gegenüber dem Übel, geschrieben hat und die Anschauung vertreten hat, daß diese Welt, wenn sie auch viel Übel enthalte, doch die bestmöglichste der Welten sei. Denn wäre sie nicht die bestmöglichste, meint Leibniz, so müsse entweder Gott die bestmöglichste Welt nicht gekannt haben - das verstößt gegen seine Allwissenheit; oder aber er müßte sie nicht haben schaffen wollen, das verstößt gegen seine Allgüte; oder er müßte sie nicht haben schaffen können - das verstößt gegen seine Allmacht. Nun sagt Leibniz, da man im Denken gegen diese drei Prinzipien Gottes nicht verstoßen könne, so müsse man annehmen, daß die Welt die bestmöglichste sei. - Dagegen wendet nun Lotze ein: jedenfalls könne man nicht von einer Allmacht Gottes sprechen, wenn man in der Welt, wo doch Übel sind und Böses waltet, diese für einen Ausfluß Gottes halte. Daher müsse man sagen, so meint Lotze, Leibniz habe die Allmacht Gottes beschränkt und dadurch sich die Lehre von der bestmöglichsten der Welten erkauft.
Nun meint Lotze, gebe es noch einen Ausweg. Man müsse sagen: Im großen ganzen zeige sich überall, wenn man den Kosmos betrachtet, Ordnung und Harmonie; nur im einzelnen sehe man Übel und Böses. Da sagt Lotze: Was aber kann man auf eine Anschauung geben, die eigentlich bloß von der Anschauung der Menschen abhängt? Denn von einer Welt, wo im großen und ganzen Ordnung und Harmonie herrschen, die man bewundern könne, und wo im einzelnen Übel und Böses wie schwarze Flecken sich zeigen, könne man den Ausdruck gebrauchen: Was sagt es, wenn im großen und ganzen Ordnung und Harmonie in einer Welt herrschen, und im einzelnen überall Übel und Böses zu finden ist? Da meint dann Lotze — und das ist die Spitze seiner Ausführungen, zu der wir hintendieren wollen -, man sollte sich doch lieber das eine sagen: Das Übel und das Böse sind doch in der Welt; es muß weise sein, daß das Übel wie das Vortreffliche, das Böse wie das Gute da seien; wir können nur diese Weisheit nicht einsehen. Also sind wir gezwungen, dem Übel und dem Bösen gegenüber eine Grenze unseres Erkennens anzunehmen. Es müsse doch Weisheit geben, welche nicht die menschliche Weisheit ist, meint Lotze, Weisheit, zu der wir nur nicht kommen können, und die die Übel rechtfertigt. Also in eine unbekannte Welt der Weisheit versetzt Lotze das weisheitsvolle Begreifen des Übels und des Bösen.
Ich habe ausdrücklich wenigstens diese, für viele mehr oder weniger pedantischen Auseinandersetzungen gemacht, weil sie uns zeigen, mit welchen Waffen man sich dem Begreifen des Übels und des Bösen im philosophischen Denken der Menschheit zu nähern versucht hat, und wie man dort immer wieder und wieder zu dem Geständnis gekommen ist: diese Waffen erweisen sich gegenüber einem Rätsel, das uns auf Schritt und Tritt im Leben begegnet, doch recht stumpf, ja, wie Lotze sagt, als völlig ungeeignet.
Nun gibt es ja auch andere Denker, die noch weiter als etwa Plotin hineinzuschürfen versuchten in das, was schon Untergründe des Daseins sind, die nur zu erreichen sind durch eine gewisse Entwickelung der Seele zu höherem Erkenntnisvermögen hinauf. Ein solcher Denker ist Jakob Böhme. Und nähert man sich Jakob Böhme, so nähert man sich allerdings einem Geiste des sechzehnten, siebzehnten Jahrhunderts, in den nicht viele mehr in unserer Zeit eindringen wollen, obwohl man ihn heute wieder als eine Art Kuriosität betrachtet. Jakob Böhme versuchte einzudringen in die Tiefen der Welt und ihre Erscheinungen bis dahin, wo er in sich selber etwas aufgehend fühlte wie eine Art Theosophie, von einer Art Gottesanschauung im eigenen Innern; und nun versuchte er sich klar zu machen, wie das Böse und das Übel hinein zu verfolgen sind bis in die tiefsten Untergründe der Welt, wie Übel und Böses nicht bloß etwas Negatives sind, sondern gewissermaßen in den Untergründen des Welt- und Menschendaseins wurzeln. Das göttliche Wesen sieht Jakob Böhme so an, daß in ihm, wie er sagt - man muß sich an seine Ausdrucksweise erst gewöhnen - eine «Schiedlichkeit» auftreten muß. Ein Wesen, welches gleichsam seine Tätigkeit nur hinausfluten läßt in die Welt, könnte nie zum Erfassen seiner selbst kommen. Es mußte sich diese Tätigkeit an irgend etwas, man möchte sagen, stoßen. Im kleinen nehmen wir im Grunde genommen jeden Morgen beim Aufwachen das wahr, was Jakob Böhme in diese seine Vorstellung einbezieht. Wenn wir aufwachen, sind wir gewissermaßen in der Lage, aus unserm Geistig-Seelischen in unbegrenzte Weiten hinaus unsere geistig-seelische Tätigkeit zu entfalten. Da stoßen wir mit unserer geistig-seelischen Tätigkeit an unsere Umgebung. Dadurch, daß wir an unsere Umgebung stoßen, werden wir unser selbst gewahr. Der Mensch wird überhaupt nur in der physischen Welt seiner selbst gewahr, indem er sich sozusagen an den Dingen stößt. Das göttliche Wesen kann kein solches sein, das sich an anderen stößt. Es muß seinen Widerpart, oder wie Jakob Böhme in vielen Wendungen sich ausdrückt, sein «Nein» seinem «Ja» gegenüber sich selbst setzen. Es muß seine ins Unendliche hinausflutende Tätigkeit in sich begrenzen. Es muß in sich «schiedlich», das heißt unterschieden werden, muß sich gleichsam an einem bestimmten Punkte des Umkreises seiner Tätigkeit den eigenen Gegensatz erschaffen; so daß sich für Jakob Böhme notwendig das göttliche Wesen, damit es seiner selbst gewahr werden kann, selbst seinen Widerpart erschafft. Durch die Teilnahme nun eines kreatürlichen Wesens, meint Jakob Böhme, nicht nur an dem, was von dem göttlichen Wesen herausströmt, sondern was sich das göttliche Wesen notwendigerweise als seinen Widerpart schaffen muß, entsteht das Böse, entstehen überhaupt alle Übel in der Welt. Das göttliche Wesen setzt sich seinen Widerpart, um seiner selbst 'gewahr zu werden. Da kann noch nicht vom Übel und vom Bösen gesprochen werden, sondern nur von den notwendigen Bedingungen des Gewahrwerdens des Göttlichen seiner selbst. Aber indem Kreatürliches entsteht, und indem dieses Kreatürliche sich nicht bloß hineinbettet in das hinausflutende Leben, sondern teilnimmt am Widerpart, entsteht das Böse und das Übel.
Befriedigend wird gewiß für den, der geisteswissenschaftlich versucht in die Geheimnisse des Daseins einzudringen, eine solche Antwort nicht sein. Sie ist auch hier nur angeführt, um zu zeigen, bis zu welchen Tiefen ein sinniger Denker geht, wenn er nach dem Ursprunge des Bösen in der Welt forscht. Und so könnte ich vieles anführen, das uns mehr zeigen könnte, wie man sich den Rätseln, die im Übel und Bösen liegen, zu nähern versucht, als daß man etwa aus der Welt sich Antwort entgegenleuchten gefunden hätte.
Wenn wir nun an das anknüpfen, was uns gleichsam wie ein Bekenntnis eines hervorragenden Denkers des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts entgegengetreten ist, das Bekenntnis Lotzes, so können wir etwa das Folgende sagen: Lotze ist der Ansicht, es muß irgendwo eine Weisheit geben, welche das Übel und das Böse rechtfertigt. Aber der Mensch ist in seinem Erkenntnisvermögen beschränkt; er kann nicht in diese Weisheit eindringen. — Stehen wir da nicht vor dem, was wir oft erwähnen mußten: daß es sozusagen ein beliebtes Vorurteil in unserer Zeit ist, das menschliche Erkenntnisvermögen so hinzunehmen, wie es einmal ist, und gar nicht darauf zu reflektieren, daß es etwa aus dem Zustande, in welchem es in der Alltäglichkeit ist,herauskommen könne, sich über sich selbst erheben könne, daß es sich entwickeln könne, um in andere Welten hinein zu schauen, als in die Welt des bloß Sinnlichen und des an die Sinne geknüpften Verstandes? Vielleicht stellt sich uns gerade heraus, daß so bedeutsame Fragen wie die nach dem Ursprunge des Bösen ihre Antworten deshalb nicht finden konnten, weil man gegenüber der Erkenntnis, die sich an die Sinne wendet und an den Verstand, der an die Sinneswelt gebunden ist, sich sträubte, über diese Erkenntnis hinauszuschreiten zu einer anderen Erkenntnis, die auf den Wegen gefunden werden muß, von denen hier jetzt öfter gesprochen worden ist, auf den Wegen, durch welche die Menschenseele hinübergelangt über das, was sozusagen ihre alltägliche und gewöhnliche wissenschaftliche Anschauung ist. Wir haben oft von der Möglichkeit gesprochen, daß die Menschenseele sich losringt von ihrer Leiblichkeit, daß sie wirklich jene geistige Chemie vollziehen könne, die eben das Geistig-Seelische im Menschen loslöst von dem Leiblichen, wie die äußere Chemie den Wasserstoff aus dem Wasser. Wir haben davon gesprochen: Wenn der Mensch so sein Geistig-Seelisches loslöst von dem Körperlich-Leiblichen, so daß er sich erhebt im Geistigen und seiner Leiblichkeit mit seinem Geistig-Seelischen gegenübersteht, wenn er also mit dem Seelisch-Geistigen außerhalb des Leibes ist und in einer geistigen Welt wahrzunehmen vermag, dann allerdingskann er durch die unmittelbare Erfahrung, nicht inner-, sondern außerhalb seines Leibes, in die Tiefen der Welt hineinschauen, soweit sie ihm gegenüber dieser Erkenntnis zugänglich sind. Da dürfen wir uns vielleicht fragen: Was tritt uns denn entgegen, wenn wir diesen Weg der Geistesforschung wirklich zu gehen versuchen, den Weg, der öfter hier geschildert worden ist, und den Sie ausführlich in meinem Buche «Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der höheren Welten?» dargestellt finden? Zu welchen Erfahrungen gelangt man, wenn man diesen Weg wirklich geht, um außersinnlicher Welten teilhaftig zu werden?
Nun wird uns insbesondere interessieren, wie sich zu diesem Wege dasjenige stellt, was man im gewöhnlichen Leben das Böse nennt. Wir brauchen ja nur auf das gewöhnliche Böse, was man im Alltage das Böse nennt, etwas hinzuschauen. Da stellt sich heraus, wenn der Geistesforscher sich auf seinen Weg begibt, um in höhere Welten hinaufzusteigen, um wirklich mit seinem Geistig-Seelischen herauszukommen aus dem Leiblichen und leibfrei wahrzunehmen, daß dann alles dasjenige, auf was er zurückblicken muß als auf ein Böses, ja, nur auf ein Unvollkommenes im Leben, ihm die schwersten Hindernisse auf seinen Weg gibt. Die schwersten Hemmnisse kommen von dem, worauf man zurückblicken muß als auf etwas Unvollkommenes. Damit will ich nicht sagen, daß etwa die hochmütige Lehre daraus folgte, daß jeder, der dazu gelangt, als Geistesforscher in die geistige Welt hineinzuschauen, sich einen vollkommenen Menschen nennen dürfe. Das soll damit nicht gesagt sein. Aber es soll wiederholt sein, was schon einmal sehr eindringlich hervorgehoben worden ist: daß der Weg zur Geistesforschung in gewissem Sinne ein Martyrium ist, und dies auch gerade aus dem Grunde, weil man in dem Augenblick, in dem man mit dem Geistig-Seelischen aus dem Leiblichen herauskommt und der geistigen Welt teilhaftig wird, zurückblickt auf sein Leben mit seinen Unvollkommenheiten und nun weiß: Diese Unvollkommenheiten trägst du mit dir wie der Komet seinen Kometenschweif; die trägst du in dir mit hinüber in andere Leben und mußt sie auszugleichen suchen in späteren Leben. Das, worüber du bis jetzt geschritten bist, ohne ein Bewußtsein davon zu haben, das schaust du jetzt. Du weißt, was dir bevorsteht. — Dieses tragische Hinschauen auf das, was man im gewöhnlichen Leben ist, hängt einem an, wenn man den Weg in die geistige Welt hinauf sucht. Hängt es einem nicht an, so ist es nicht der wahre Weg in die geistige Welt. In der Tat muß man sagen: ein gewisser Ernst des Lebens beginnt, wenn man in die geistige Welt hineinsteigt. Und wenn man auch nichts anderes gewinnt, das eine gewinnt man: daß man das eigene Böse und die eigenen Unvollkommenheiten mit einer unendlichen Klarheit erblickt. So möchte man sagen: man gewinnt eine Erfahrungserkenntnis von Unvollkommenheit und Bösem schon bei den allerersten Schritten, die man in die geistige Welt hinauf macht.
Woher kommt das? Wenn man näher zusieht, woher dies kommt, so findet man dabei den Grundzug sozusagen alles menschlichen Bösen. In meiner letzten Schrift «Die Schwelle der geistigen Welt» versuchte ich gerade auf diesen Grundzug des Bösen hinzudeuten, insofern es aus dem Menschen hervorgeht. Der gemeinsame Grundzug alles Bösen ist doch nichts anderes als Egoismus. —- Wenn ich dieses im einzelnen nachweisen wollte, was ich jetzt ausführen will, so müßte ich allerdings viele Stunden sprechen; aber ich will es nur hinstellen, und jeder mag die angeschlagenen Gedankengänge selbst weiterverfolgen. Sie werden ja auch weiter verfolgt werden im nächsten Vortrage, wo über die «Sittliche Grundlage des Menschenlebens» gesprochen werden soll. Im Grunde genommen geht alles menschliche Böse aus dem hervor, was wir den Egoismus nennen. Wir mögen von den geringsten Kleinigkeiten, die wir als menschliche Versehen ansehen, bis zu den stärksten Verbrechen hin alles verfolgen, was menschliche Unvollkommenheiten und menschliches Böses sind, ob es sich uns darstellt scheinbar mehr von der Seele herkommend oder scheinbar mehr von der Leiblichkeit kommend, der gemeinsame Grundzug, von dem Egoismus herrührend, ist überall da. Wir finden die eigentliche Bedeutung des Bösen, wenn wir es verknüpft denken mit dem menschlichen Egoismus; und wir finden alles Hinausstreben über Unvollkommenheiten und Böses, wenn wir dieses Hinausstreben in der Bekämpfung dessen sehen, was wir den Egoismus nennen. Viel ist nachgedacht worden über diese oder jene ethischen Prinzipien, über diese oder jene Moralgrundlagen; gerade das zeigt sich aber, je tiefer man in ethische Prinzipien und in Moralgrundlagen untertaucht, daß der Egoismus die gemeinsame Grundlage alles menschlichen Bösen ist. Und so darf man sagen: der Mensch arbeitet sich aus dem Bösen hier in der physischen Welt um so mehr heraus, je mehr er den Egoismus überwindet.
Dieses Resultat stellt sich nun neben ein anderes hin; und es stellt sich, man möchte sagen, in der Geistesforschung wie bedrückend hin, wirklich wie bedrückend. Was muß man denn ausbilden, wenn man den Weg in die geistigen Welten hinauf finden will, in jene Welten, die man anschauen muß mit dem Geistig-Seelischen außer dem Leibe?
Wenn Sie alles zusammennehmen, was ich im Laufe dieser Vorträge angeführt habe als seelische Übungen, die angewendet werden müssen, um in die geistige Welt hineinzukommen, so werden Sie finden, daß sie darauf hinauslaufen, gewisse Seeleneigenschaften zu erstarken, welche die Seele in der Sinneswelt hat, die Seele stärker und kräftiger zu machen, sie immer mehr und mehr auf sich selbst zu stellen. Was nun in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt als Egoismus hervortritt, das muß erkraftet werden, muß intensiver gemacht werden, wenn der Mensch in die geistige Welt hinaufsteigt. Denn nur die in sich erstarkte Seele, welche die Kräfte in sich erstarkt, die die ihrigen sind, die in ihrem Ego, in ihrem Ich wurzeln, nur diese Seele kommt in die geistigen Welten hinauf. Gerade das muß auf dem Wege in die geistigen Welten hinauf verstärkt werden, was der Mensch ablegen muß, der sich moralische Prinzipien für die physische Welt aneignen will. Ein bedeutender Mystiker hat den Ausspruch getan:
Wenn die Rose selbst sich schmückt,
schmückt sie auch den Garten.
Es ist dies gewiß innerhalb gewisser Grenzen richtig. Aber im Menschenleben würde dennoch der Egoismus auch hervortreten, wenn die Menschenseele sich nur als «Rose» betrachtete, die selbst sich schmückt. Für die geistige Welt aber gilt das vollkommen. In der geistigen Welt ist in einem höheren Maße das vorhanden, was in dem Ausspruche liegt: «Wenn die Rose selbst sich schmückt, schmückt sie auch den Garten». Wenn die Seele in die geistige Welt hinaufkommt, ist sie dort ein dienendes Glied um so mehr, je mehr sie in sich erstarkt ist und das herausgearbeitet hat, was in ihrer inneren Fülle liegt. Wie man ein Instrument nicht gebrauchen kann, das nicht vollkommen ist, so kann sich die Seele selbst nicht brauchen, die nicht alles aus ihrem Ich, aus ihrem Ego herausgetrieben hat, was in ihr liegt.
Aus dieser Gegenüberstellung, die uns von aller Phrase hinwegführt und hineinführt in den Tatsachenbestand, der nicht verhehlt werden soll, sehen wir zunächst, daß diese Welt des Geistigen der Welt des Physisch-Sinnlichen so gegenübersteht, daß die letztere gegenüber der ersteren ihre volle Aufgabe haben muß. Könnte der Mensch nur in der geistigen Welt leben, so würde er, weil das Gesetz gelten muß: «Wenn die Rose selbst sich schmückt, schmückt sie auch den Garten», nur die inneren Fähigkeiten entwickeln können; er könnte nicht jene Fähigkeiten entwickeln, die ihn als Altruisten mit den Menschen, mit der weiten Welt zusammenbringen. Die Stätte müssen wir gerade in der physischen Welt finden, die uns den Egoismus überwinden läßt. Wir sind nicht umsonst in der Welt zum Altruismus verpflichtet, sondern deshalb, daß wir uns den Egoismus gründlich aberziehen, wenn ich dieses triviale Wort gebrauchen darf.
Dasselbe nun, was der Geistesforscher als das Maßgebende findet, nämlich die Erstarkung seiner Seele zum Hinaufgehen in die geistige Welt, das ist auch das Maßgebende, wenn der Mensch durch die Pforte des Todes auf naturgemäße Weise in diejenige Welt eintritt, welche zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt liegt. Da versetzen wir uns in jene Welt, die eben der Geistesforscher durch seine Seelenentwickelung erreicht. Da hinein müssen wir daher diejenigen Eigenschaften bringen, welche die Seele innerlich stark erscheinen lassen, welche innerhalb der Seele den Satz bewahrheiten: «Wenn dieRose selbst sich schmückt,schmückt sie auch den Garten». In dem Augenblick, wo wir durch die Pforte des Todes gehen, treten wir in eine Welt ein, in welcher es auf höchste Erhöhung und Erkraftung unseres Ich ankommt. Was wir in dieser Welt zu tun haben, werden wir in dem Vortrage «Zwischen Tod und Wiedergeburt des Menschen» hören. Jetzt soll nur darauf hingedeutet werden, daß es in dieser geistigen Welt im wesentlichen darauf ankommt, daß sich die Seele dazu anschickt, um nach Maßgabe dessen, was sie in früheren Erdenleben erlebt hat, sich die folgenden zu zimmern. Sie muß, wie es ihrem Schicksale entspricht, vorzugsweise zwischen dem Tode und der neuen Geburt in der geistigen Welt mit sich selbst beschäftigt sein. Wenn wir so die menschliche Seele betrachten, dann erscheint sie uns von diesen zwei Gesichtspunkten aus folgendermaßen. Sie erscheint uns in ihrer Bedeutung für die physisch-sinnliche Welt so, daß diese für sie die große Lehrstätte ist, wo sie aus sich herausgehen muß, wo Egoismus sich in Altruismus verwandeln kann, so daß sie etwas wird für den weiten Umkreis des Daseins. Und die Welt zwischen dem Tode und der nächsten Geburt erscheint uns als diejenige, in welcher die Seele in sich erkraftet leben muß, und für welche die Seele gerade wertlos sein würde, wenn sie in diese Welt schwach und nicht erkraftet eintreten würde.
Was folgt daraus, daß die Seele diese zwei Wesenszüge hat?
Es folgt daraus, daß sich der Mensch in der Tat wohl hüten muß, dasjenige, was auf dem einen Felde, in der einen Welt ein Vorzügliches ist, nämlich die Erhöhung des Seeleninnern,in der anderen Welt zu etwas anderem anzuwenden als höchstens auch zur Erreichung der geistigen Welt; daß es aber vom Übel sein muß und in das Schlimmere umschlägt, wenn der Mensch das, was hier in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt sich als sein Wesen ausleben muß, von dem durchdringen läßt, was ihm gerade im Reich des Geistes zur würdigen Bereitung dient. Gerade deshalb müssen wir stark sein im Geistigen zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt, in der Erstarkung und Erkraftung unseres Ich, daß wir uns ein solches physisch-sinnliches Dasein vorbereiten, das im äußeren Dasein, in den Taten und Gedanken der physischen Welt möglichst unegoistisch ist. Wir müssen unseren Egoismus vor unserer Geburt in der geistigen Welt dazu verwenden, um uns so selbst zu bearbeiten, müssen so auf uns selbst hinschauen, daß wir in der physischen Welt selbstlos, das heißt moralisch werden.
Hier an diesem Punkte liegt alles, was man nennen kann das Wertvollste für den, der in die geistige Welt vordringen will. In der Tat muß man sich klar sein, daß man sein Böses und Unvollkommenes nicht umsonst wie sein Schattenbild sieht, wenn man in der geistigen Welt ist. Das ist es, was uns zeigt, wie wir mit der Sinneswelt verbunden bleiben müssen, wie unser Karma, unser Schicksal uns an die Sinneswelt binden muß, bis wir es in der geistigen Welt so weit gebracht haben, daß wir nicht nur mit uns allein, sondern mit der ganzen Welt leben können. Es zeigt sich, wie es vom Übel ist, dasjenige, was im geistigen Fortschritt das Wesentliche ist, nämlich Selbstvervollkommnung, unmittelbar auf die Dinge des äußeren Lebens anzuwenden. Geistigen Fortschritt zu suchen ist nicht etwas, wovon wir uns abhalten lassen können. Das ist vielmehr unsere Pflicht. Und Pflicht ist für den Menschen die Entwickelung, die für alle übrigen Lebewesen Gesetz ist. Aber vom Übel ist es, das, was für die geistige Entwickelung ziemt, unmittelbar auf das äußere Leben anzuwenden. Diese beiden, äußeres physisches Leben mit seiner Moralität, müssen sich notwendigerweise wie eine zweite Welt hinstellen neben das, was die Seele innerlich anstrebt, wenn sie sich der geistigen Welt nähern will.
Nun liegt aber etwas vor, was wiederum wie ein Widerspruch erscheinen könnte. Aber man möchte sagen: von solchen lebendigen Widersprüchen lebt die Welt. Es mußte betont werden: man muß sich in der Seele erkraften; gerade das Ego, das Ich müsse stärker werden, um in die geistige Welt einzudringen. Aber wenn man nun bei seinem geistigen Aufstieg nur den Egoismus entwickeln wollte, so würde man nicht weit kommen. Was heißt das aber? Es heißt: man muß schon ohne den Egoismus in die geistige Welt eintreten; respektive man kann nicht ohne den Egoismus eintreten — was wehmütig jeder bekennen muß, der in die geistige Welt hineinkommt -, so muß man alles Egoistische so objektiv vor sich haben, daß man es als sein Egoistisches, mit dem man verbunden ist in der äußeren Welt, schaut. Man muß also ein unegoistischer Mensch zu werden trachten mit den Mitteln des physischen Lebens, weil man in der geistigen Welt nicht mehr Gelegenheit hat, unegoistisch zu werden, weil es dort auf die Erkraftung des seelischen Lebens ankommt. Das ist der nur scheinbare Widerspruch. Wir müssen in der geistigen Welt, auch wenn wir durch die Pforte des Todes in die geistige Welt schreiten, dort mit dem leben, was in unserem Inneren an Stärke vorhanden ist. Aber wir können diese nicht erlangen, wenn wir sie nicht erlangen durch das altruistische Leben in der physischen Welt. Altruismus in der physischen Welt spiegelt sich als der richtige, den Wert erhöhende Egoismus der geistigen Welt.
Wir sehen, wie schwierig die Begriffe werden, wenn man sich der geistigen Welt nähert. Aber jetztsiehtman zugleich, um was es sich im menschlichen Leben handeln kann. Denn nehmen wir nun an, der Mensch trete durch die Geburt ins physische Dasein. In diesem Falle, das heißt, wenn er das Wesen, das er in der geistigen Welt vor der Geburt oder der Empfängnis, zwischen dem letzten Tode und der jetzigen Geburt, war, umkleidet mit dem physischen Leib, so ist die Möglichkeit vorhanden, daß er mit dem, was gleichsam Lebenskraft der geistigen Welt sein muß, ungerechtfertigterweise sein Physisch-Leibliches durchzieht; daß sich der Geist verirrt im Leiblichen, indem er das, was gut ist in der geistigen Welt, herunterträgt in die physische Welt. Dann wird, was gut ist in der geistigen Welt, zum Übel, zum Bösen in der physischen Welt! Das ist ein bedeutsames Geheimnis des Daseins, daß der Mensch das, was er notwendig braucht, um ein geistiges Wesen zu sein, was gewissermaßen sein Höchstes darstellt für sein geistiges Wesen, heruntertragen kann in die physische Welt, und daß sein höchstes, sein bestes Geistiges sogar die tiefste Verirrung werden kann im Physisch-Sinnlichen.
Wodurch tritt das Böse im Leben ein? Wodurch ist das sogenannte Verbrechen in der Welt?
Das ist dadurch vorhanden, daß der Mensch seine bessere Natur, nicht die schlechtere, untertauchen läßt im PhysischLeiblichen, das als solches nicht böse sein kann, und dort diejenigen Eigenschaften entwickelt, die nicht in das Physisch-Leibliche hineingehören, sondern die gerade in das Geistige gehören. Warum können wir Menschen böse sein? Weil wir geistige Wesen sein dürfen! Weil wir in die Lage kommen müssen, sobald wir uns in die geistige Welt hineinleben, diejenigen Eigenschaften zu entwickeln, die zum Schlechten werden, wenn wir sie im physisch-sinnlichen Leben anwenden. Lassen Sie diejenigen Eigenschaften, die sich in Grausamkeit, meinetwillen in Heimtücke und in anderem in der physischen Welt ausleben, herausgenommen sein aus der physisch-sinnlichen Welt, lassen Sie die Seele sich von ihnen durchdringen und sie ausleben statt in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt in der geistigen Welt, dann sind sie dort die uns weiterbringenden, die uns vervollkommnenden Eigenschaften. Daß der Mensch das Geistige verkehrt im Sinnlichen anwendet, das führt zu seinem Bösen. Und könnte er nicht böse werden, so könnte er ein geistiges Wesen nicht sein. Denn die Eigenschaften, die ihn böse machen können, er muß sie haben; sonst könnte er nie in die geistige Welt hinaufkommen.
Die Vollkommenheitbesteht darin, daß der Mensch lernt, sich innerlich mit der Einsicht zu durchdringen: Du darfst die Eigenschaften, die dich im physischen Leben zum bösen Menschen machen, nicht in diesem physischen Leben anwenden; denn so viel du von ihnen dort anwendest, so viel entziehst du dir von den erkraftenden Eigenschaften der Seele für das Geistige, so viel schwächst du dich für die geistige Welt. Dort sind diese Eigenschaften am rechten Platze.
So sehen wir, wie die Geisteswissenschaft zeigt, daß das Übel und das Böse durch ihre eigene Natur darauf hinweisen, daß wir neben der physischen Welt eine geistig-seelische Welt annehmen müssen. Denn warum bleibt denn das menschliche Erkenntnisvermögen etwa eines Lotze oder anderer Denker stehen, wenn sie die sinnliche Welt betrachten und sagen: man dringe nicht hinein in den Ursprung des Übels und des Bösen? Weil da das vorliegt — da das Erkenntnisvermögen nicht vordringen will zur geistigen Welt —, daß es das Böse nicht aufklären kann aus der physischen Welt heraus, weil es Mißbrauch ist von Kräften, die in die geistige Welt hineingehören! Was Wunder also, daß kein Philosoph, der von der geistigen Welt absieht, in der physisch-sinnlichen Welt jemals das Wesen des Bösen finden kann! Und wenn man von vornherein abgeneigt ist zu einer weiteren Welt vorzudringen, um in ihr den Ursprung des Bösen zu finden, dann kommt man auch nicht zu einer Erkenntnis des äußeren Übels, desjenigen, was uns als das Schlechte und Unvollkommene in der äußeren Welt, zum Beispiel in der tierischen Welt, begegnet. Wir müssen uns eben klar sein, daß das Übel im menschlichen Handeln dadurch entsteht, daß der Mensch das, was für eine andere Welt ein Großes, ein Vollkommenes ist, gleichsam in eine andere Welt versetzt, wo es in sein Gegenteil verkehrt wird. Wenn man aber das von den Menschen unabhängige Übel in der Welt betrachtet, das Übel, das etwa durch die Tierwelt flutet, dann muß man sagen: Ja, dann müssen wir uns eben darüber klar sein, daß nicht nur Wesen da sind wie die Menschen, welche durch ihr Leben das, was in die geistige Welt hineingehört und dort groß ist, in eine andere Welt hineintragen, wo es deplaciert ist; sondern es muß auch andere Wesen geben — und der Blick auf die Tierwelt zeigt uns eben, daß es außer den Menschen geistige Wesen geben muß, welche auf das Gebiet, wo der Mensch sein Böses nicht hineintragen kann, nun ihr Böses hintragen und so dort das Übel erzeugen. Das heißt, wir werden mit der Erkenntnis, wo der Ursprung des Bösen sitzt, zugleich dazu geführt anzuerkennen, daß nicht nur der Mensch ein Unvollkommenes in die Welt hineinstellen kann, sondern daß auch andere Wesen da sind, welche Unvollkommenheiten in die Welt hineinbringen können. Und so sagen wir uns, daß es nicht mehr unverständlich ist, wenn der Geistesforscher sagt: Die Tierwelt ist im Grunde genommen eine Ausgestaltung einer unsichtbaren Geisteswelt; aber in dieser Geisteswelt waren Wesen da, welche vor dem Menschen dasselbe gemacht haben, was der Mensch jetzt macht, indem er das Geistige unberechtigterweise in die physische Welt hineingezogen hat. Dadurch ist alles Übel in der Tierwelt entstanden.
Das sollte heute ausgeführt werden, daß diejenigen Unrecht haben, welche glauben, aus dem materiellen Dasein heraus, weil die Seele in ein materielles Dasein verstrickt ist, könne man durch dieses Verstricktsein gleichsam der Materie den Impuls des Bösen zuschreiben. Nein, das Böse entsteht gerade durch die geistigen Eigenschaften und durch die geistigen Betätigungsmöglichkeiten des Menschen. Und wir mußten uns sagen: Wo bliebe die Weisheit in der Weltenordnung, die den Menschen darauf beschränken wollte, bloß in der Sinneswelt das Gute zu entfalten - und nicht das Böse, wenn sie ihm dadurch, wie wir gesehen haben, notwendigerweise die Kraft nehmen müßte, um in der geistigen Welt vorwärts zu kommen? Dadurch daß wir ein Wesen sind, das der physischen Welt und der geistigen Welt zugleich angehört, und daß in unsnicht die Unvollkommenheit, sondern die Vollkommenheit das geistige Gesetz ist, sind wir in die Lage versetzt, wie ein Pendel, das nach der einen Seite ausschlagen kann; und wir sind in die Lage versetzt nach der anderen Seite ausschlagen zu können, weil wir Geistwesen sind, welche Geistiges in die physische Welt hereintragen können, um es dort als Böses zu verwirklichen, wie andere, vielleicht gegenüber dem Menschen höher stehende Wesen das Böse dadurch verwirklichen konnten, daß sie in die Sinneswelt hereingetragen haben, was nur der Geisteswelt angehören soll.
Ich weiß sehr wohl, daß mit einer solchen Darstellung des Ursprungs des Bösen und des Übels heute etwas gesagt wird, was vielleicht nur einer geringen Anzahl von Menschen einleuchtend sein kann, was sich aber immer mehr und mehr in das menschliche Seelenleben einleben wird. Denn man wird finden, daß das Fertigwerden mit den Problemen der Welt überhaupt nur möglich ist, wenn man dieser unserer Welt eine geistige zugrundeliegend denkt. Mit den Vollkommenheiten der sinnlichen Weltmag der Mensch - er gibt sich dabei allerdings auch einer Illusion hin — noch fertig werden; mit den Unvollkommenheiten aber, mit dem Bösen und dem Übel, wird er nicht fertig werden, wenn er nicht aufzusuchen vermag, inwiefern dieses Böse und das Übel in der Welt sein müssen. Und er sieht ein, daß sie in der Welt sein müssen, wenn er sich sagt: es ist das Böse in der physischen Welt nur deplaciert. Würden die Eigenschaften, die der Mensch ungerechtfertigt in der physischen Welt verwendet, und die dort Böses stiften, in der geistigen Welt angewendet werden, so würde er dort vorwärts schreiten.
Ich brauche wohl nicht zu sagen, daß es völliger Unsinn wäre, wenn jemand aus dem eben Gesagten den Schluß ziehen wollte: also stellst du dar, daß nur der Bösewicht in der geistigen Welt vorwärts kommt. Das wäre eine vollständige Verkennung des Gesagten. Denn nur dadurch sind die Eigenschaften böse, daß sie in der Sinneswelt angewendet werden, während sie sofort eine Metamorphose durchmachen, wenn sie in der geistigen Welt angewendet werden. Wer solchen Einwand machen wollte, der gliche dem, der da sagte: du behauptest also, es ist ganz gut, wenn der Mensch die Kraft hat, eine Uhr zu zerschlagen? Gewiß ist es gut, wenn er diese Kraft hat; er braucht aber die Kraft nicht anwenden, um die Uhr zu zerschlagen. Wenn er sie zum Heile der Menschheit anwendet, dann ist sie eine gute Kraft. Und in diesem Sinne muß man sagen: Die Kräfte, welche der Mensch ins Böse hineinfließen läßt, sind nur an diesem Orte böse; am richtigen Orte richtig angewendet, sind es gute Kräfte. |
Es muß tief hineinführen in die Geheimnisse des Menschendaseins, wenn man sich sagen kann: Wodurch wird der Mensch böse? Dadurch, daß er die Kräfte, die ihm zu seiner Vollkommenheit verliehen sind, am unrechten Orte anwendet! Wodurch ist das Böse, ist das Übel in der Welt? Dadurch, daß der Mensch die Kräfte, die ihm verliehen sind, nicht in einer für diese Kräfte geeigneten Welt anwendet.
In unserer Gegenwart könnte man geradezu sagen: Es ist für die Seelenuntergründe schon handgreiflich die Tendenz, die Hinneigung zu den geistigen Welten vorhanden. Das könnte einem ein genauerer intimerer Blick auf das neunzehnte Jahrhundert lehren, auf die Zeit bis in unsere Gegenwart herein. Da treten einem im neunzehnten Jahrhundert unter den Philosophen auch Vertreter dessen entgegen, was man den Pessimismus genannt hat, jene Weltanschauung, die geradezu hinblickt auf die in der Welt vorhandenen Übel und auf das Böse, und die daraus den Schluß zieht- einzelne haben ihn ja gezogen -, daß diese Welt überhaupt nicht als eine solche angesehen werden kann, die etwas anderes von dem Menschen will, als eben dem Ende zugeführt zu werden. Ich will nur auf Schopenhauer oder auf Eduard von Hartmann hinweisen, welche gleichsam die Erlösung für den Menschen darin gesehen haben, daß sie sagten: nur in dem Aufgehen im Weltprozesse kann der einzelne sein Heil finden, nicht aber in einem, persönliche Befriedigung gewährenden Ziel. Aber ich möchte auf etwas anderes hinweisen: daß die Seele im Zeitalter der Materie von dem Materialismus gefangen ist, und daß in diesem Zeitalter die stärkste Trostlosigkeit eintreten muß gegenüber den Übeln der Welt, gegenüber dem Bösen; denn der Materialismus lehnt eine geistige Welt ab, aus der uns erst das Licht heraus leuchtet, was dem Übel und dem Bösen seine Bedeutung gibt. Wird diese Welt abgelehnt, so ist es ganz notwendig, daß uns diese Welt der Übel und des Bösen in ihrer Zwecklosigkeit trostlos entgegenstarrt. — Ich will heute nicht auf Nietzsche hinweisen, sondern auf einen anderen Geist des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts. Von einem gewissen Gesichtspunkte aus möchte ich auf einen tragischen Denker des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts hinweisen: von dem Gesichtspunkte aus, daß der Mensch, indem er in seine Zeit hineingestellt ist, notwendigerweise mit seiner Zeit leben muß. Das ist das Eigentümliche unseres Wesens, daß sich unser Wesen zusammenfindet mit dem Wesen der Zeit. So war es nur natürlich in der letzten Zeit, daß tief veranlagte Geister, ja, gerade die, welche ein offenes Herz hatten für das, was sich in ihrer Umgebung abspielte, tief ergriffen wurden von jener Welterklärung, die nur in den äußeren Erscheinungen das Um und Auf des Weltendaseins sehen will. Aber solche Geister konnten sich oft nicht der Illusion hingeben, daß man dann ungetröstet durch die Welt gehen kann, wenn man hinschauen muß auf dieses Weltendasein, die Übel betrachten muß — und nicht aufblicken kann zu einer geistigen Welt, in welcher sich die Übel rechtfertigen, wie wir gesehen haben.
Ein Geist, der ganz, ich möchte sagen, die Tragik des Materialismus durchmachte, trotzdem er nicht selber Materialist geworden ist, war Philipp Mainländer, der 1841 geboren ist. Man kann ihn, wenn man die Dinge äußerlich betrachtet, einen Nachfolger Schopenhauers nennen. Zu einer eigenartigen Weltanschauung kam Mainländer. Er war im gewissen Sinne ein tiefer Geist, aber ein Kind seiner Zeit, das also nur hinschauen konnte auf das, was die Welt materiell darbietet. Nun wirkte ja, darüber soll man sich nicht täuschen, dieser Materialismus gerade auf die besten Seelen ungeheuer gefangennehmend. Ja, die Menschen, die sich nicht um das kümmern, was die Zeit und ihr Geist bieten, die egoistisch dahinleben in einem religiösen Bekenntnis, das ihnen einmal lieb geworden ist, die «religiösesten» Leute sind manchmal in diesem Punkte die alleregoistischsten; jedes Hinausgehen über die Dinge, in die sie sich eingelebt haben, lehnen sie ab, kümmern sich nicht um anderes, als ihnen bekannt ist. Man kann immer wieder, wenn man auf die Tragik unzähliger Menschen hinweist, die Antwort bekommen: Ja, kann denn nicht das alte Christentum die Seelen viel besser befriedigen als eure Geisteswissenschaft? Solche Fragen stellen Geister, die nicht mitgehen mit der Zeit und sich intolerant auflehnen gegen alles, was zum Heil der Menschheit in die Kulturentwickelung eindringen soll.
Philipp Mainländer schaute hin auf das, was ihm die äußere Wissenschaft, was ihm unsere Zeit von ihrem materialistischen Gesichtspunkte aus zu sagen wußte, und da konnte er eben nur finden die übelvolle Weltund den Menschen, mit dem Bösen veranlagt. Er konnte es nicht ableugnen, daß der Druck dieser neueren Weltanschauung so stark ist, daß er die Seele verhindert, zu einer geistigen Welt hinaufzuschauen. Denn wollen wir es uns hier nur nicht verhehlen: warum kommen denn heute so wenig Menschen zur Geisteswissenschaft? Das ist deshalb, weil der Druck der Vorurteile des Materialismus oder, wie man es heute nobler nennt, des Monismus so stark ist, daß er die Seelen verfinstert, um in die geistigen Welten einzudringen. Wenn man die Seelen unabhängig sich selber überließe und nicht durch die materialistischen Vorurteile betäubte, so würden sie sicher zur Geisteswissenschaft kommen. Aber der Druck ist groß, und erst von unserer Zeit an kann man sagen: Es ist die Epoche herangerückt, in welcher man miteiniger Aussicht Geisteswissenschaft vor den Menschen vertreten kann, weil die Sehnsucht der Seelen so stark geworden ist, daß die Geisteswissenschaft ein Echo in den Seelen finden muß. In dem zweiten und dritten Drittel des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts konnte dieses Echo nicht vorhanden sein. Da war der Druck des Materialismus so stark, daß selbst eine so sehr zum Geiste hinstrebende Seele wie diejenige Philipp Mainländers niedergehalten wurde. Und da kam er denn zu einer eigenartigen Anschauung, zu der Anschauung: in der gegenwärtigen Welt finde man allerdings kein Geistiges. Wir haben inMainländer im neunzehnten Jahrhundert einen Geist vor uns, der nur deshalb keinen großen Eindruck auf die Zeitgenossen gemacht hat, weil der Geist des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, trotz der großen Fortschritte auf materiellem Gebiete, ein oberflächlicher Geist war. Aber was die Seele im neunzehnten Jahrhundert fühlen mußte, das hat Mainländer, selbst wenn er allein stand, gefühlt, weil er gewissermaßen der Weise war gegenüber denjenigen, die sich wie in einer geistigen Ohnmacht über das hinwegsetzten, was die Seelen in einer materialistischen oder monistischen Weltanschauung unbefriedigt lassen muß. Man braucht nicht die etwas dicken Bände der «Philosophie der Erlösung» Mainländers sich vorzunehmen, sondern nur das verhältnismäßig recht gute Büchlein von Max Seiling, um sich von dem zu unterrichten, was ich jetzt sage.
Philipp Mainländer sah also in die Welt hinaus, und er konnte sie unter dem Druck des Materialismus nur so sehen, wie sie sich den Sinnen und dem Verstande darstellt. Aber er mußte eine geistige Welt voraussetzen. Sie ist aber nicht da, sagte er sich; die Sinneswelt muß aus sich selbst erklärt werden. Und nun kommt er zu der Anschauung, daß die geistige Welt der unsrigen vorangegangen ist, daß es einst ein geistig-göttliches Dasein gegeben hat, daß unsere Seele in einem geistig-göttlichen Dasein drinnen war, daß das göttliche Dasein aus einem früheren Sein in uns übergegangen ist, und daß unsere Welt nur da sein kann, weil Gott gestorben ist, bevor diese geistige Welt vor uns hingestorben ist. So sieht Mainländer eine geistige Welt, aber nicht in unserer Welt; sondern in unserer Welt sieht er nur den mit dem Übel und dem Bösen beladenen Leichnam, der nur da sein kann, damit er seiner Vernichtung übergeben wird, damit das, was dazu geführt hat, Gott und seine Geisteswelt zum Absterben zu bringen, zuletzt auch noch im Zugrundegehen des Leichnams in das Nichtsein treten könne. — Mögen Monisten oder andere Denker darüber mehr oder weniger lächeln; wer sich aber auf die menschliche Seele besser versteht und weiß, wie Weltanschauung inneres Schicksal der Seele werden kann, wie die ganze Seele die Nuance der Weltanschauung annehmen kann, der weiß, was ein Mensch erleben mußte, der, wie Mainländer, die geistige Welt in eine Vorzeit versetzen mußte und in der gegenwärtigen Welt nur den materiell zurückgebliebenen Leichnam derselben sehen konnte. Um mit den Übeln dieser Welt fertig zu werden, hat Mainländer zu einer solchen Weltanschauung gegriffen. Daß er mehr drinnen war in dieser seiner Weltanschauung als Schopenhauer oder Nietzsche, als Bahnsen oder Eduard von Hartmann, das sehen wir daran, daß ihm in dem Augenblicke seines fünfunddreißigsten Jahres, als er seine «Philosophie der Erlösung» beendet hatte, der Gedanke kam: Deine Kraft wird jetzt leiblos gebraucht, damit du das, was dir zur Erlösung der Menschheit erscheint, schneller förderst, als wenn du nach der Mitte des Lebens den Leib noch benutzest. Daß Mainländer es mit seiner Weltanschauung im tiefsten Ernste meinte, zeigt sich daraus, daß er, als er zu diesem Gedanken kam: Du nutzest jetzt mehr, wenn du deine Kraft ausgießest in die Welt und nicht auf deinen Leib konzentrierst, wirklich die Konsequenz gezogen hat, die Schopenhauer und die anderen nicht gezogen haben, und durch Selbstmord, und zwar Selbstmord aus Überzeugung, starb.
Mögen Philosophen und andere über ein solches Menschenschicksal hinwegschauen: für unsere Zeit ist ein solches Menschenschicksal doch unendlich bedeutsam, weil es uns zeigt, wie die Seele leben muß, die wirklich zu ihren Tiefen vordringen kann, zu dem, was als die Sehnsucht in unserer Zeit wieder erstehen kann — wie die Seele leben kann, die dem Problem des Bösen und des Übels in der Welt gegenübersteht, und keinen Ausblick hat in die Welt, wo sich geistiges Licht ausbreitet und den Sinn des Bösen und des Übels erleuchtet. Es war notwendig, daß die menschliche Seele eine Zeitlang die materialistischen Fähigkeiten entwickelte. Man wird in einer gewissen Zukunft das geistige Leben auch, ich möchte sagen, unter «psycho-biologische Gesichtspunkte» stellen, Gesichtspunkte des Seelenlebens, und sich klar werden, daß, nur ins Geistige heraufgehoben, für das Menschenwesen das gilt, was wie in einem physischen Abbilde unten, bei tierischen Wesen zum Beispiel, erscheint. Gewisse tierische Wesen können lange hungern und hungern auch lange.Kaulquappen zum Beispiel kann man durch längeres Hungern dazu bringen, daß sie schnell die Gestalt in Frösche umwandeln. Ähnliche Verhältnisse zeigen sich bei gewissen Fischen bei längerem Hungern, weil dann Rückbildungsprozesse eintreten, die sie fähig machen, das auszuführen, was sie auszuführen haben; sie hungern, weil sie die Kräfte, welche sie sonst in die Nahrungsaufnahme hineinnehmen, zurücknehmen, um eben andere Formen auszubilden. Das ist ein Bild, das sich auf die Menschenseele anwenden läßt: Durch Jahrhunderte hat sie eine Zeit durchlebt, wo man immer von den «Grenzen menschlicher Erkenntnis» gesprochen hat; und selbst viele, die heute glauben spirituell zu denken, sind noch ganz den materialistischen Vorstellungen hingegeben — die man nur, weil man sich ihrer schämt, heute gern monistisch nennt -, und selbst Philosophen sind hingegeben dem Grundsatz: Es kann die menschliche Erkenntnis nicht anders als Halt machen, wo sie gerade vor den größten Rätseln steht. Die Fähigkeiten, die zu dem allen führten, mußten eine Zeitlang ausgebildet werden; das heißt die Menschheit mußte eine Zeit geistiger Aushungerung durchmachen. Dies war die Zeit des Heraufkommens des Materialismus. Die Kräfte aber, die dadurch in den Seelen zurückgehalten wurden, sie werden nun nach einem psycho-biologischen Gesetz die Menschenseele dazu führen, den Weg in die geistigen Welten hinein zu suchen. Ja, finden wird man, daß das menschliche Grübeln die Form annehmen mußte, wie sie uns bei Mainländer entgegentritt, der nicht mehr die geistige Welt in der physischen Welt finden konnte, weil sie ihm der Materialismus genommen hatte, und der daher vor der physischen Welt stehen bleiben mußte, dabei nur den Fehler machte zu übersehen, daß das, was unserer Welt vorliegt, uns doch die Möglichkeit gibt, in unserer Seele etwas aufzufinden, was ebenso in die Zukunft verweist wie die äußere Welt in die Vergangenheit weist. Denn nicht zu leugnen ist es, daß Mainländer in einem gewissen Sinne recht hatte: daß das, was unsere Welt ringsherum darbietet, die Reste einer ursprünglichen Entwickelung sind. Selbst die gegenwärtigen Geologen müssen heute schon zugeben, daß wir, indem wir über die Erde wandeln, über einen Leichnam hinwegschreiten. Aber was Mainländer noch nicht zeigen konnte, das ist, daß wir, indem wir über einen Leichnam schreiten, zugleich in unserem Innern etwas entwickeln, was geradeso Keim ist für die Zukunft, wie das, was um uns herum ist, Hinterlassenschaft der Vergangenheit ist. Und indem wir auf das blicken, was die Geisteswissenschaft der einzelnen Seele ist, kann in uns wiederaufleben, worauf Mainländer noch nicht schauen konnte, und daher verzweifeln mußte.
So stehen wir an der Grenzscheide zweier Zeitalter: des Zeitalters des Materialismus und desjenigen der Geisteswissenschaft. Und vielleicht kann uns nichts so sehr in populärer Form beweisen, wie wir, wenn wir unsere Seele recht verstehen, dem spirituellen Zeitalter der Zukunft entgegenleben müssen, als die Betrachtung des Übels und des Bösen, wenn wir den Blick in die lichten Höhen der Geisteswelt hinaufwenden können. Oft habe ich gesagt, daß man sich mit solchen Betrachtungen im Einklange fühlt mit den besten Geistern aller Zeiten, die ersehnt haben, wie in immer klarerer Weise die Menschheit gegen dieZukunfthin leben müsse. Wenn nun ein solcher Geist, mit dem man sich in vollem Einklange fühlt, gegenüber der äußeren Sinneswelt einen Ausspruch getan hat, der wie ein Appell an eine geistige Erkenntnis ist, so dürfen wir auch damit zusammenfassen, was heute an unsere Seele hat herantreten können, und dieses als eine Art Umwandlung eines solchen Ausspruches anführen.
Goethe hat in seinem «Faust» etwas sagen lassen, was zeigt, wie der Mensch von dem Geiste abkommen kann. Paradigmatisch zusammengefaßt in einen schönen Spruch ist das Fernstehen des Menschen gegenüber der geistigen Welt in den Worten:
Wer will was Lebendigs erkennen und beschreiben,
Sucht erst den Geist herauszutreiben,
Dann hat er die Teile in seiner Hand,
Fehlt, leider! nur das geistige Band.
So ist es gewissermaßen gegenüber aller Erkenntnis der Welt. Das Schicksal der Menschheit war es, durch einige Jahrhunderte hindurch sich den Teilen zu widmen. Immer mehr und mehr wird man es aber nicht bloß als einen theoretischen Mangel, sondern als eine Tragik der Seele empfinden, daß das geistige Band fehlt. Deshalb muß der Geistesforscher in den Seelen heute überall erblicken, was die meisten Seelen noch nicht selber wissen: die Sehnsucht nach der geistigen Welt. Und wenn man so etwas ins Auge faßt, wie es die Beleuchtung der Natur des Übels und des Bösen ist, so kann man vielleicht den Goetheschen Ausspruch erweitern, indem man wie eine Zusammenfassung des Gesagten das Folgende nimmt.
Goethe meinte, wer nach einer Weltanschauung streben will, der darf sich nicht nur an die Teile halten, sondern muß vor allem auf das geistige Band sehen. Derjenige aber, der sich so bedeutsamen Lebensfragen nähert, wie es die Rätsel des Übels und des Bösen sind, der darf aus geisteswissenschaftlichen Untergründen heraus sagen, seine Überzeugung empfindungsgemäß zusammenfassend:
Der löst der Seele Rätsel nicht,
Der verweilt im bloßen Sinneslicht;
Wer das Leben will verstehen,
Muß nach Geisteshöhen streben!
Evil in the Light of Knowledge From the Mind
What we are concerned with here today is, in essence, an age-old question of humanity: the question of the origin of evil and wickedness in the world. And although many people today may believe that this question is no longer relevant, the human soul will always feel compelled to raise it again and again. For this question is not one that approaches our soul solely from a theoretical-scientific point of view; rather, it is a question that the human soul encounters at every turn in life, because its life is placed just as much in the good and the benevolent as it is in evil and wickedness. On the one hand, one might say, unroll the entire history of human thought and reflection in order to become completely convinced that our question has always been a question of the deeper spirits of human development, and on the other hand, one can study the significant, outstanding thinkers of the nineteenth century and our own time, and one will find that even these most outstanding thinkers pause with all their philosophy, with all their striving for knowledge, precisely before this question. So today, let us try to regard what has emerged from spiritual science in this winter's lecture cycle as a basis from which we can perhaps approach an answer to the riddle of evil and wickedness. I say explicitly “approach,” because what I have often emphasized—and this is particularly true in relation to this significant question—is that spiritual science not only opens our eyes to areas of existence that are inaccessible to external science, but also makes us humble in a certain way. And it is precisely with such a question that we may be able to sense that it is easy to raise the highest questions, as they are usually raised when one is, so to speak, at the beginning of the quest for knowledge, but that the real quest for knowledge often leads only to the first steps on the paths by which one can gradually approach the solution of the great mysteries of life.
First, allow me to preface this with a few words to clarify how deeply this question has preoccupied the hearts and souls of significant thinkers throughout the ages. We could go far back in human development, but for now we will only refer to thinkers in the last centuries before the establishment of Christianity in Greece: to the Stoics, that remarkable group of thinkers who, based on the views of Socrates and Plato, attempted to answer the question: How should a person behave who wants to live in such a way that it corresponds to the innermost core of their being, to their predestined and recognizable destiny, so to speak? We can describe this as the fundamental question of the Stoics. And as an ideal for the person who strove to live in the universe in accordance with his destiny, the ideal of the wise man appeared before the mind's eye of the Stoics. — It would go too far to describe in detail the ideal of the Stoic wise man and how it relates to the entire Stoic worldview. But let us at least emphasize that in Stoicism we encounter an awareness that human development is moving toward an ever clearer and clearer elaboration of man's self-conscious being, of man's ego-consciousness. The Stoic sage said: this ego, through which man is able to place himself in the world in complete clarity, this ego can be clouded, can, as it were, numb itself; and it numbs itself when man allows his emotional life to become too strongly involved in the ebb and flow of his imagination and feelings. To the Stoic, it seemed like a kind of spiritual fainting when humans let the clarity of their ego be flooded, clouded by their passions and emotions. Therefore: keeping passions and emotions in check in the human soul, striving for calm and balance, leads, in the Stoic sense, to liberation from the spiritual fainting spells of the soul.
It is clear that what had to be emphasized here more often than the first steps on the path to knowledge of the spiritual world, which also consist in suppressing the wild waves of affect and passion, which, as it were, produces a spiritual powerlessness, is suppressed and the clarity of spiritual vision is drawn out of the whole of spiritual experience – what was presented as the first steps on the path that then leads to spiritual vision was what the Stoics had in mind. It is precisely this aspect of the Stoic nature, which has been little explored in the history of philosophy, that I attempted to elaborate in the new edition of my “World and Life Views in the Nineteenth Century” with reference to Stoicism. Thus, in the characterized manner of the conqueror of passions, the conqueror of emotions as the wise man, an ideal of Stoicism is envisioned. And those who, as wise men, place themselves in the development of the world recognize, in the sense of Stoicism, that this development of the world is capable of absorbing them, that this development of the world is truly imbued with wisdom, so that they must, as it were, immerse their wisdom in the floods of world wisdom.
Whenever the question arises: How does the human self fit into the whole structure of the world order? — the other question arises: How can the wisdom of the world order, which man must presuppose if he wants to place himself within it, be reconciled with what prevails as evil in the breadth of world experience, and what can oppose man's striving for wisdom as evil?
Now, before the mind's eye of the Stoic stood what was later called divine providence. How does the Stoic reconcile evil and wickedness with these assumptions?
Here, something emerges for the Stoic that even today, if one does not want to delve into spiritual science itself, but only approaches its gates, so to speak, can be presented as a kind of justification for evil and wickedness; it was the necessity of human freedom that emerged before the Stoic. And now he said to himself: if man is to strive for the ideal of the wise man out of his freedom, he must also be given the opportunity not to strive for it. Freedom must lie in his striving for the ideal of the wise man. But this presupposes that he can also remain with that from which he is supposed to strive; it presupposes that he can, as it were, submerge himself in the realm of emotions and passions. Then he submerges, said the Stoic, into a realm that is not initially his realm, that is actually a realm beneath his nature. And to reproach the wise world order for allowing man to submerge into a realm that is beneath him would be just as sensible as reproaching the wise world order for the existence of a realm of animals, plants, and minerals beneath man. The Stoics knew that there is a realm into which man can sink, which is removed from his wisdom; but that he himself can emerge from it must be his own free choice, his wisdom.
It can be seen that the concept of many answers to the meaning of evil that lie at the gates of spiritual science is already present in ancient Stoic wisdom; and it cannot be said that later centuries show any real progress in understanding evil as such. This becomes immediately apparent when we turn to a mind that is otherwise extraordinarily significant, one that lived in the period after the establishment of Christianity and had a great influence on the formation of Western Christianity: Augustine. Augustine, too, had to reflect on and investigate the meaning of evil in the world, and he arrived at a peculiar expression: that evil, like actual evil, did not really exist, but was merely something negative, the negation of good. Augustine said to himself: Good is something positive; but since a finite being in its weakness cannot always carry out good, good is limited; and this limited good need not be explained as something positive, just as one would not explain the shadow cast by light as something positive. When one hears the Church Father Augustine speak about evil, one may find such an answer naive compared to what one might imagine today, given the progress of thinking over the past few centuries. But what the question of the meaning of evil actually entails can be seen from the fact that even in our own day a scholar has given exactly the same answer: Campbell, who wrote the so-called “New Theology” and whose works have caused a great stir in certain circles. He, too, believes that one cannot ask about evil and wickedness because they do not represent anything positive, but are merely negative. We do not want to get involved in hair-splitting, philosophical deductions to refute the Augustinian-Campbellian view. For anyone who can think impartially and without prejudice, this answer about the mere negativity of evil stands on the same ground as the answer someone would give who said: What is cold? Cold is only something negative, namely the absence of warmth. Therefore, one cannot speak of it as something positive. But if you don't put on a fur coat or winter coat when it's cold, you will perceive this negative thing as something very positive! This image may make it perfectly clear how little one can do with the truly shallow answer given by the great philosophers of the nineteenth century: that there is nothing positive to be done about evil and wickedness. It may be that we have nothing positive to do with it, but this “non-positive” is just as negative as, for example, coldness is to warmth.
Now, one could also cite a whole group of other thinkers who, through the preparations of their spiritual life, already come close, one might say, to what spiritual science now has to say. Among these, one could cite Plotinus, for example, the Neoplatonist who lived in the post-Christian era and still based his thinking on the principles of Plato; and with him, one could cite a large number of other thinkers who have reflected on evil and wickedness in the world. They tried to make it clear to themselves that human beings are composed of a spiritual and a material-physical part. By immersing themselves in the physical, humans participate in the properties of matter, which from the outset opposes and hinders the activity of the spirit. This immersion of the spirit in matter is the origin of evil in human life, but it is also the origin of evil in the external world.
The fact that such a view was not merely felt by individual thinkers as something satisfactory in response to the great question of the meaning of evil and wickedness in the world, but is widespread, may be explained by a remark that I do not want to suppress, because it perhaps clarifies our situation. I would like to refer to a thinker from a completely different region: the eminent Japanese thinker, the student of the Chinese thinker Wang Yangming, Nakae Toju. For him, everything that presents itself to us in our experience of the world consists of two things, two, one might say, essences. For him, one entity is such that he looks up to it as to the spiritual, and he allows the human soul to participate in the spiritual; he calls these entities Ri. Then he looks at what is physically present in human beings and allows physicality to participate in everything from which it is constructed out of matter; he calls this entity Ki. And from the special combination of Ri and Ki, all beings arise for him. For this Eastern thinker, who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, humanity participates in both Ri and Ki. But because the human soul, in its experience, must submerge itself with its Ri into the Ki, the will flows out of the Ki toward it — and with the will, desire. Thus, the human soul is entangled in will and desire in its life, and thus it faces the possibility of evil. This Eastern thinker, who lived relatively recently, as I said, in the first half of the seventeenth century, is not far removed from what in the West, in the times of Neoplatonism, Plotinus for example, was attempted to be presented as the origin of evil: the entanglement of man in matter. We will see later that it is important to point this out, to answer the question of the origin of evil with the entanglement of man in matter. In the widest circles of human thought, this is precisely what we encounter.
A thinker of the nineteenth century, who is truly one of the most important, attempted to grapple with evil and wickedness, and I would like to briefly outline the main ideas of his thinking. He saw elements of evil, elements of human wickedness, in the world around him, and as a philosopher with particularly well-developed emotional qualities, he was confronted with evil and wickedness: Hermann Lotze, one of the most important thinkers of the nineteenth century, who wrote the very significant “Microcosm,” for example, and other philosophical works that were important for the nineteenth century. Let us try to imagine how Hermann Lotze, one of our most important contemporaries, faced the problem of evil.
He says to himself: Evil cannot be denied. How has one tried to answer the question of evil? It has been said, for example, that evil and wickedness must exist in life, because only by working their way out of evil can human souls be educated. Since Lotze is not an atheist, but believes in a God who lives through and interweaves the world, he says: How, then, should we approach evil and wickedness in terms of the idea of education? One must assume that God used evil and wickedness to shape human beings and elevate them to the free use of their souls. This could only happen if they themselves did this inner work, if they themselves experienced this inner state, which consists in working their way out of evil, and only then did they learn to recognize their true nature and their true value with self-awareness. —- Lotze objects to this, saying that anyone who gives such an answer fails to take into account the animal world, in which we encounter not only evil, but also wickedness in the broadest sense. How much cruelty we encounter in the animal world, how much of everything that, when brought into human life, can become the most terrible vices, we encounter everywhere in the animal world! But who would be able to apply education to the animal world, which cannot be applied to the animal world? Lotze thus rejects the idea of education. In particular, he points out that the omnipotence of his God would contradict this idea of education; for, according to Lotze, it is only necessary to bring out the good in a being from the bad if the bad has already been given. But that would contradict the omnipotence of God: first having to bring out the bad, as it were in preparation, in order to then be able to build the good on top of it.
Lotze then goes on to say: Perhaps we should pay more attention to those who say: That which is evil, that which is bad, that which is evil, is not due to the omnipotence of God, nor to the will of any conscious being; rather, evil is connected to what exists in the world in the same way that, for example, the fact that the three angles of a triangle add up to 180° is connected to a triangle. So if God wanted to create a world at all, he had to conform to what is true without him, namely that evil and harm are connected with any world he wanted to create. So if he wanted to create a world at all, he had to co-create evil and harm. — Lotze objects: But then we are limiting even more what we can accept as the workings and weavings of a divine being through the world. For when we look at the world, we must say: according to the most general laws, according to how we can think through the phenomena of the world, a world without evil and wickedness would be quite conceivable. When one looks at the world, one must say that evil violates true freedom; it must therefore be caused precisely by the arbitrariness, by the freedom of the divine being.
We could cite other things that Lotze and other thinkers — Lotze is only mentioned here as a typical example — have said about the problem and the mystery of evil. I just want to draw attention to Lotze's final conclusion, because it will be important for us later. Lotze opposes the German philosopher Leibniz, who wrote a “theodicy,” that is, a justification of God in relation to evil, and who held the view that this world, even though it contains much evil, is nevertheless the best of all possible worlds. For if it were not the best possible, Leibniz argues, then either God must not have known the best possible world—which contradicts his omniscience—or he must not have wanted to create it, which contradicts his omnibenevolence, or he must not have been able to create it, which contradicts his omnipotence. Now, Leibniz says, since one cannot violate these three principles of God in one's thinking, one must assume that the world is the best possible. Lotze objects to this, arguing that one cannot speak of God's omnipotence if one considers the world, where evil and wickedness prevail, to be an emanation of God. Therefore, Lotze believes, Leibniz limited God's omnipotence and thereby bought the doctrine of the best possible world.
Now, Lotze believes there is another way out. One must say: on the whole, when one looks at the cosmos, order and harmony are evident everywhere; it is only in the details that one sees evil and wickedness. Lotze then asks: but what value can one place on a view that actually depends solely on human perception? For in a world where, on the whole, order and harmony reign, which one can admire, and where, in detail, evil and wickedness appear like black spots, one could use the expression: What does it mean when, on the whole, order and harmony reign in a world, and in detail, evil and wickedness can be found everywhere? Lotze then believes—and this is the point of his argument, which we want to touch on—that it would be better to say: Evil and wickedness do exist in the world; it must be wise that evil exists alongside excellence, and wickedness alongside goodness; we just cannot comprehend this wisdom. So we are forced to accept a limit to our knowledge when it comes to evil and wickedness. There must be a wisdom that is not human wisdom, Lotze believes, a wisdom that we simply cannot attain and that justifies evil. Lotze thus transfers the wise understanding of evil and wickedness to an unknown world of wisdom.
I have explicitly made at least these, for many more or less pedantic, arguments because they show us the weapons with which humanity has attempted to approach the understanding of evil and wickedness in philosophical thinking, and how, time and again, we have come to the conclusion that these weapons prove to be quite blunt, even, as Lotze says, completely unsuitable, when faced with a mystery that we encounter at every turn in life.
Now there are other thinkers who have attempted to delve even further than Plotinus into what are already the foundations of existence, which can only be reached through a certain development of the soul toward a higher capacity for knowledge. One such thinker is Jakob Böhme. And when one approaches Jakob Böhme, one approaches a spirit of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that not many in our time want to penetrate, even though it is now regarded again as a kind of curiosity. Jakob Böhme tried to penetrate the depths of the world and its phenomena to the point where he felt something opening up within himself like a kind of theosophy, a kind of view of God within himself; and now he tried to understand how evil and wickedness can be traced to the deepest foundations of the world, how evil and wickedness are not merely something negative, but are in a sense rooted in the foundations of worldly and human existence. Jakob Böhme sees the divine being in such a way that, as he says—one must first become accustomed to his way of expressing himself—a “divisiveness” must arise in him. A being that, as it were, only allows its activity to flow out into the world could never come to grasp itself. This activity had to collide with something, one might say. On a small scale, we basically perceive what Jakob Böhme includes in his conception every morning when we wake up. When we wake up, we are, in a sense, in a position to unfold our spiritual-soul activity from our spiritual-soul into unlimited expanses. There we encounter our surroundings with our spiritual-soul activity. By encountering our surroundings, we become aware of ourselves. Human beings only become aware of themselves in the physical world by encountering things, so to speak. The divine being cannot be one that encounters others. It must set its opposite, or as Jakob Böhme expresses it in many turns of phrase, its “no” opposite its ‘yes’ to itself. It must limit its activity, which flows out into infinity, within itself. It must become “separate” within itself, that is, differentiated, must, as it were, create its own opposite at a certain point in the circle of its activity; so that, for Jakob Böhme, the divine being necessarily creates its own opposite in order to become aware of itself. Through the participation of a creaturely being, Jakob Böhme believes, not only in what flows out of the divine being, but also in what the divine being must necessarily create as its opposite, evil arises, and indeed all evil in the world arises. The divine being creates its opposite in order to become aware of itself. At this point, we cannot yet speak of evil and wickedness, but only of the necessary conditions for the divine to become aware of itself. But when the creaturely comes into being, and when this creaturely does not merely embed itself in the outflowing life, but participates in the opposite, evil and wickedness arise.
Such an answer will certainly not be satisfactory for those who attempt to penetrate the mysteries of existence through spiritual science. It is only cited here to show the depths to which a thoughtful thinker goes when searching for the origin of evil in the world. And so I could cite many examples that could show us more how to approach the mysteries that lie in evil and wickedness than we could find answers by looking to the world.
If we now take up what we have encountered as a kind of confession by an outstanding thinker of the nineteenth century, the confession of Lotze, we can say the following: Lotze is of the opinion that there must be a wisdom somewhere that justifies evil and wickedness. But human beings are limited in their cognitive abilities; they cannot penetrate this wisdom. Are we not faced here with what we have often had to mention: that it is, so to speak, a popular prejudice in our time to accept human cognitive abilities as they are and not to reflect at all on the fact that they could emerge from their everyday state, rise above themselves, and develop in order to look into other worlds than the world of the merely sensual and the intellect linked to the senses? , that it could rise above itself, that it could develop in order to look into other worlds than the world of the merely sensual and the intellect linked to the senses? Perhaps it turns out that such significant questions as those concerning the origin of evil could not find answers because people resisted going beyond the knowledge that appeals to the senses and to the intellect, which is bound to the sensory world, to another kind of knowledge that must be found on the paths that have been mentioned here frequently, on the paths through which the human soul transcends what is, so to speak, its everyday and ordinary scientific view. We have often spoken of the possibility that the human soul can detach itself from its physicality, that it can truly perform that spiritual chemistry which detaches the spiritual-soul aspect of the human being from the physical, just as external chemistry detaches hydrogen from water. We have spoken of this: when the human being detaches his spiritual-soul from the physical-bodily, so that he rises in the spiritual and faces his physicality with his spiritual-soul, when he is thus with the soul-spiritual outside the body and is able to perceive in a spiritual world, then he can indeed look into the depths of the world through direct experience, not within but outside his body, insofar as they are accessible to him in relation to this knowledge. We may perhaps ask ourselves: What do we encounter when we really try to follow this path of spiritual research, the path that has often been described here and which you will find described in detail in my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds”? What experiences does one have when one really follows this path in order to participate in supersensible worlds?
Now we will be particularly interested in how what is called evil in ordinary life relates to this path. We need only look at the ordinary evil that is called evil in everyday life. It turns out that when the spiritual researcher sets out on his path to ascend to higher worlds, to truly emerge with his spiritual-soul out of the physical and perceive without the physical, then everything he must look back on as evil, indeed, as merely imperfect in life, presents him with the most difficult obstacles on his path. The most serious obstacles come from what one must look back on as something imperfect. I do not mean to say that the arrogant teaching followed from this that anyone who attains the ability to look into the spiritual world as a spiritual researcher may call himself a perfect human being. That is not what I mean to say. But it should be repeated what has already been emphasized very emphatically: that the path to spiritual research is, in a certain sense, a martyrdom, and this precisely because the moment one emerges from the physical with the spiritual-soul and becomes part of the spiritual world, one looks back on one's life with its imperfections and now knows: you carry these imperfections with you like a comet carries its tail; you carry them with you into other lives and must seek to compensate for them in later lives. What you have walked through until now without being aware of it, you now see. You know what lies ahead of you. — This tragic view of what one is in ordinary life clings to one when one seeks the path to the spiritual world. If it does not cling to you, it is not the true path to the spiritual world. In fact, it must be said that a certain seriousness of life begins when one enters the spiritual world. And even if one gains nothing else, one gains this: that one sees one's own evil and imperfections with infinite clarity. So one might say: one gains experiential knowledge of imperfection and evil already in the very first steps one takes into the spiritual world.
Where does this come from? If one looks more closely at where this comes from, one finds the basic feature, so to speak, of all human evil. In my last book, “The Threshold of the Spiritual World,” I attempted to point out this fundamental trait of evil insofar as it emanates from human beings. The common fundamental trait of all evil is nothing other than selfishness. — If I wanted to prove this in detail, which I will now attempt to do, I would have to speak for many hours; but I will only present it here, and everyone can pursue the lines of thought themselves. They will also be pursued further in the next lecture, which will discuss the “Moral Foundation of Human Life.” Basically, all human evil arises from what we call egoism. We may trace everything that is human imperfection and human evil, from the smallest trifles that we regard as human oversights to the most serious crimes, whether it appears to us to come more from the soul or more from the body, the common underlying feature, originating in egoism, is present everywhere. We find the true meaning of evil when we think of it in connection with human selfishness; and we find all striving beyond imperfections and evil when we see this striving in the fight against what we call selfishness. Much has been thought about this or that ethical principle, about this or that moral foundation; but the deeper one delves into ethical principles and moral foundations, the more it becomes apparent that egoism is the common basis of all human evil. And so one may say: the more a person overcomes egoism, the more he works his way out of evil here in the physical world.
This result now stands alongside another; and it appears, one might say, in spiritual research as oppressive, truly oppressive. What must one develop if one wants to find the way up into the spiritual worlds, into those worlds that must be viewed with the spiritual-soul outside the body?
If you take together everything I have mentioned in the course of these lectures as soul exercises that must be applied in order to enter the spiritual world, you will find that they boil down to strengthening certain soul qualities that the soul has in the sensory world, to making the soul stronger and more powerful, to relying more and more on itself. What now appears as egoism in the physical-sensory world must be strengthened, must be made more intense, when the human being ascends into the spiritual world. For only the soul that has strengthened itself, that has strengthened the powers that are its own, that are rooted in its ego, in its I, only this soul ascends into the spiritual worlds. It is precisely what a person must cast off in order to acquire moral principles for the physical world that must be strengthened on the path to the spiritual worlds. An important mystic once said:
When the rose adorns itself,
it also adorns the garden.
This is certainly true within certain limits. But in human life, selfishness would still emerge if the human soul regarded itself only as a “rose” that adorns itself. For the spiritual world, however, this is completely true. In the spiritual world, what is expressed in the saying, “When the rose adorns itself, it also adorns the garden,” is present to a higher degree. When the soul ascends into the spiritual world, it is a serving member there, and the more it has strengthened itself and worked out what lies in its inner fullness, the more it is a serving member. Just as an instrument that is not perfect cannot be used, so the soul cannot use itself if it has not driven out of its ego everything that lies within it.
From this comparison, which leads us away from all rhetoric and into the facts that should not be concealed, we see first of all that this spiritual world stands in such a relationship to the physical-sensory world that the latter must have its full task in relation to the former. If human beings could live only in the spiritual world, they would, because the law must apply: “When the rose adorns itself, it also adorns the garden,” be able to develop only their inner abilities; they could not develop those abilities that bring them together with other people and with the wider world as altruists. It is precisely in the physical world that we must find the place that allows us to overcome selfishness. We are not obliged to altruism in the world for no reason, but because we thoroughly wean ourselves from egoism, if I may use this trivial word.The same thing that the spiritual researcher finds to be decisive, namely the strengthening of his soul to ascend into the spiritual world, is also decisive when man enters through the gate of death in a natural way into the world that lies between death and a new birth. There we enter the world that the spiritual researcher reaches through his soul development. We must therefore bring into it those qualities that make the soul appear strong within, that confirm within the soul the saying: “When the rose adorns itself, it also adorns the garden.” The moment we pass through the gate of death, we enter a world in which the highest elevation and strengthening of our ego is important. What we have to do in this world will be explained in the lecture “Between Death and Rebirth of Man.” For now, it suffices to point out that what matters most in this spiritual world is that the soul prepares itself to shape its future according to what it has experienced in previous earthly lives. In accordance with its destiny, it must occupy itself primarily with itself between death and new birth in the spiritual world. When we look at the human soul in this way, it appears to us from these two points of view as follows. In its significance for the physical-sensory world, it appears to us as the great school where it must go beyond itself, where egoism can be transformed into altruism, so that it becomes something for the wider sphere of existence. And the world between death and the next birth appears to us as the one in which the soul must live in strength, and for which the soul would be worthless if it entered this world weak and without strength.
What follows from the fact that the soul has these two characteristics?
It follows that human beings must indeed be careful not to apply what is excellent in one field, in one world, namely the elevation of the soul's inner life, to anything else in the other world except, at most, to the attainment of the spiritual world; but that it must be evil and turn into something worse if human beings allow what they must live out as their essence here in the physical-sensory world to be permeated by what serves them precisely in the realm of the spirit for worthy preparation. Precisely for this reason, we must be strong in the spiritual between death and new birth, in the strengthening and fortification of our ego, so that we prepare for a physical-sensual existence that is as unselfish as possible in our outer existence, in the deeds and thoughts of the physical world. We must use our egoism before our birth in the spiritual world to work on ourselves, we must look at ourselves in such a way that we become selfless, that is, moral, in the physical world.
Here at this point lies everything that can be called the most valuable for those who want to penetrate the spiritual world. In fact, one must be clear that one does not see one's evil and imperfections as one's shadow image in vain when one is in the spiritual world. This is what shows us how we must remain connected to the sensory world, how our karma, our destiny, must bind us to the sensory world until we have progressed so far in the spiritual world that we can live not only with ourselves but with the whole world. It shows how evil it is to apply what is essential to spiritual progress, namely self-perfection, directly to the things of outer life. Seeking spiritual progress is not something we can allow ourselves to be deterred from. Rather, it is our duty. And duty for human beings is the development that is law for all other living beings. But it is wrong to apply what is appropriate for spiritual development directly to external life. These two, external physical life with its morality, must necessarily stand as a second world alongside what the soul strives for internally when it wants to approach the spiritual world.
Now, however, there is something that might again appear to be a contradiction. But one might say: the world thrives on such living contradictions. It had to be emphasized: one must strengthen oneself in the soul; precisely the ego, the I, must become stronger in order to penetrate the spiritual world. But if one wanted to develop only egoism in one's spiritual ascent, one would not get very far. But what does that mean? It means that one must enter the spiritual world without egoism; or rather, one cannot enter without egoism — which everyone who enters the spiritual world must wistfully admit — so one must view everything egoistic so objectively that one sees it as one's egoism, with which one is connected in the outer world. One must therefore strive to become an unselfish person by means of physical life, because in the spiritual world one no longer has the opportunity to become unselfish, since there it is a matter of strengthening one's soul life. This is only an apparent contradiction. In the spiritual world, even when we pass through the gate of death into the spiritual world, we must live there with the strength that is present within us. But we cannot attain this strength unless we attain it through an altruistic life in the physical world. Altruism in the physical world is reflected as the right kind of egoism in the spiritual world, which increases value.
We see how difficult the concepts become when we approach the spiritual world. But now we also see what human life can be about. For let us now assume that a human being enters physical existence through birth. In this case, that is, when he clothes the being that he was in the spiritual world before birth or conception, between the last death and the present birth, with the physical body, there is a possibility that he will unjustifiably permeate his physical body with what must be, as it were, the life force of the spiritual world; that the spirit gets lost in the physical, carrying down into the physical world what is good in the spiritual world. Then what is good in the spiritual world becomes evil in the physical world! This is a significant mystery of existence, that human beings can carry down into the physical world what they necessarily need in order to be spiritual beings, what in a sense represents the highest for their spiritual being, and that their highest, their best spiritual nature can even become the deepest aberration in the physical-sensual realm.
How does evil enter into life? How does so-called crime come into the world?
This is because human beings allow their better nature, not their worse nature, to submerge in the physical-bodily realm, which as such cannot be evil, and there develop qualities that do not belong in the physical-bodily realm, but belong precisely in the spiritual realm. Why can we humans be evil? Because we are allowed to be spiritual beings! Because as soon as we enter the spiritual world, we must be able to develop those qualities that become evil when we apply them in physical, sensory life. Let those qualities that manifest themselves in cruelty, in malice, and in other ways in the physical world be removed from the physical-sensory world; let the soul be permeated by them and live them out in the spiritual world instead of in the physical-sensory world, then they will be the qualities that advance us and perfect us. When people apply the spiritual in the wrong way in the physical world, it leads to their evil. And if they could not become evil, they could not be spiritual beings. For they must have the qualities that can make them evil; otherwise, they could never ascend to the spiritual world.
Perfection consists in man learning to penetrate himself inwardly with the insight: You must not apply the qualities that make you an evil person in physical life in this physical life; for the more you apply them there, the more you deprive yourself of the strengthening qualities of the soul for the spiritual, the more you weaken yourself for the spiritual world. There, these qualities are in the right place.
Thus we see how spiritual science shows that evil and wickedness, by their very nature, point to the fact that we must accept a spiritual-soul world alongside the physical world. For why does the human faculty of cognition, for example that of Lotze or other thinkers, come to a standstill when they consider the sensory world and say: one must not penetrate into the origin of evil and wickedness? Because there is something there — since the faculty of cognition does not want to penetrate into the spiritual world — that it cannot explain evil from the physical world, because it is an abuse of forces that belong to the spiritual world! No wonder, then, that no philosopher who disregards the spiritual world can ever find the essence of evil in the physical-sensory world! And if one is averse from the outset to penetrating into a further world in order to find the origin of evil there, then one will not come to a recognition of external evil, of that which we encounter as bad and imperfect in the external world, for example in the animal world. We must be clear that evil in human actions arises from the fact that human beings transfer what is great and perfect in another world, as it were, into another world where it is turned into its opposite. But when we consider the evil in the world that is independent of human beings, the evil that floods through the animal world, for example, then we must say: Yes, we must be clear that there are not only beings like human beings who, through their lives, carry what belongs to the spiritual world and is great there into another world where it is out of place; but that there must also be other beings — and a look at the animal world shows us that, apart from humans, there must be spiritual beings who carry their evil into the realm where humans cannot carry theirs, thus creating evil there. This means that, with the knowledge of where the origin of evil lies, we are also led to recognize that it is not only human beings who can bring imperfection into the world, but that there are also other beings who can bring imperfection into the world. And so we tell ourselves that it is no longer incomprehensible when the spiritual researcher says: The animal world is basically a manifestation of an invisible spiritual world; but in this spiritual world there were beings who did the same thing to humans that humans now do by unjustifiably drawing the spiritual into the physical world. This is how all evil in the animal world came about.
It should be pointed out today that those who believe that, because the soul is entangled in material existence, one can attribute the impulse of evil to matter as a result of this entanglement are wrong. No, evil arises precisely from the spiritual qualities and spiritual activities of human beings. And we had to ask ourselves: Where would the wisdom lie in a world order that sought to restrict human beings to developing only good in the sensory world – and not evil – if, as we have seen, this would necessarily deprive them of the power to advance in the spiritual world? Because we are beings who belong to both the physical world and the spiritual world, and because the spiritual law within us is not imperfection but perfection, we are able, like a pendulum, to swing to one side or the other. and we are enabled to swing to the other side because we are spiritual beings who can bring spiritual things into the physical world in order to realize them there as evil, just as other beings, perhaps higher than human beings, were able to realize evil by bringing into the sensory world what should belong only to the spiritual world.
I am well aware that such a description of the origin of evil and wickedness may be something that only a small number of people can understand today, but it will become more and more familiar in human soul life. For people will find that it is only possible to cope with the problems of the world if they think of our world as having a spiritual basis. With the perfections of the sensory world, people can still cope—though they are indulging in an illusion—but with the imperfections, with evil and misfortune, they will not be able to cope unless they are able to seek out the extent to which this evil and misfortune must exist in the world. And they realize that they must exist in the world when they say to themselves: evil is only out of place in the physical world. If the qualities that humans unjustifiably use in the physical world, and which cause evil there, were applied in the spiritual world, they would make progress there.
I need hardly say that it would be complete nonsense if anyone were to conclude from what has just been said: so you are saying that only the wicked advance in the spiritual world. That would be a complete misinterpretation of what has been said. For it is only when applied in the sensory world that these qualities are evil, whereas they undergo an immediate metamorphosis when applied in the spiritual world. Anyone who were to raise such an objection would be like someone who said: so you are claiming that it is quite good for a person to have the power to smash a clock? Certainly it is good for him to have this power; but he does not need to use it to smash the clock. If he uses it for the good of humanity, then it is a good power. And in this sense it must be said: the powers that man allows to flow into evil are only evil in this place; used correctly in the right place, they are good powers. |
One must delve deeply into the mysteries of human existence to be able to say: What makes a person evil? It is the fact that they use the powers they have been given for their perfection in the wrong place! What is the cause of evil in the world? It is the fact that people do not use the powers they have been given in a world that is suitable for these powers.
In our present time, one could say that there is already a tangible tendency, a predisposition toward the spiritual worlds in the depths of the soul. A closer, more intimate look at the nineteenth century, at the period up to the present, could teach us this. In the nineteenth century, we encounter philosophers who represent what has been called pessimism, a worldview that looks squarely at the evils and wickedness that exist in the world and concludes—as some have done—that this world cannot be regarded as anything other than something that wants nothing more from human beings than to be brought to an end. I need only refer to Schopenhauer or Eduard von Hartmann, who saw salvation for humanity in the idea that only by merging with the world process can the individual find salvation, and not in a goal that grants personal satisfaction. But I would like to point out something else: that in the age of matter, the soul is trapped by materialism, and that in this age, the strongest despair must arise in the face of the evils of the world, in the face of evil; for materialism rejects a spiritual world from which shines the light that gives meaning to evil and wickedness. If this world is rejected, it is quite necessary that this world of evil and wickedness stares at us desolately in its futility. — Today I do not want to refer to Nietzsche, but to another spirit of the nineteenth century. From a certain point of view, I would like to refer to a tragic thinker of the nineteenth century: from the point of view that man, being placed in his time, must necessarily live with his time. It is peculiar to our nature that our nature coincides with the nature of the times. So it was only natural in recent times that deeply gifted minds, indeed, precisely those who had an open heart for what was happening around them, were deeply moved by that explanation of the world which sees only in external appearances the essence of worldly existence. But such minds often could not succumb to the illusion that one can go through the world inconsolable when one must look at this worldly existence, must contemplate evil — and cannot look up to a spiritual world in which evil is justified, as we have seen.
One mind that, I would say, went through the tragedy of materialism, even though he himself did not become a materialist, was Philipp Mainländer, born in 1841. Looking at things from the outside, he could be called a successor to Schopenhauer. Mainländer arrived at a peculiar worldview. He was, in a certain sense, a profound spirit, but a child of his time, who could therefore only look at what the world offers materially. Now, let us not deceive ourselves, this materialism had an enormous hold on the best souls. Yes, people who do not care about what the times and their spirit have to offer, who live selfishly in a religious confession that they once grew fond of, the “most religious” people are sometimes the most selfish in this respect; they reject any departure from the things they have become accustomed to and care about nothing other than what they know. When one points out the tragedy of countless people, one often gets the answer: Yes, but can't old Christianity satisfy souls much better than your spiritual science? Such questions are asked by spirits who do not keep up with the times and who intolerantly rebel against everything that is supposed to penetrate cultural development for the salvation of humanity.
Philipp Mainländer looked at what external science, what our time from its materialistic point of view, had to say to him, and there he could only find the evil world and man predisposed to evil. He could not deny that the pressure of this newer worldview is so strong that it prevents the soul from looking up to a spiritual world. For let us not hide from ourselves here: why do so few people come to spiritual science today? It is because the pressure of the prejudices of materialism, or, as it is more nobly called today, monism, is so strong that it darkens the soul's ability to penetrate the spiritual worlds. If souls were left to themselves and not numbed by materialistic prejudices, they would surely come to spiritual science. But the pressure is great, and only from our time onwards can we say: the era has arrived in which spiritual science can be presented to people with a reasonable prospect of success, because the longing of souls has become so strong that spiritual science must find an echo in them. In the second and third thirds of the nineteenth century, this echo could not exist. The pressure of materialism was so strong that even a soul as spiritually inclined as that of Philipp Mainländer was held down. And so he came to a peculiar view, the view that nothing spiritual could be found in the present world. In Mainländer, we have a spirit from the nineteenth century who made no great impression on his contemporaries simply because the spirit of the nineteenth century, despite great progress in the material realm, was a superficial spirit. But what the soul had to feel in the nineteenth century, Mainländer felt, even if he stood alone, because he was, in a sense, the wise man in contrast to those who, as if in a spiritual powerlessness, ignored what must leave souls unsatisfied in a materialistic or monistic worldview. One need not undertake Mainländer's somewhat thick volumes of “Philosophy of Redemption,” but only Max Seiling's relatively good little book to learn what I am now saying.
Philipp Mainländer thus looked out into the world, and under the pressure of materialism he could only see it as it presents itself to the senses and the intellect. But he had to presuppose a spiritual world. However, it is not there, he said to himself; the sensory world must be explained from within itself. And now he comes to the view that the spiritual world preceded ours, that there was once a spiritual-divine existence, that our soul was within a spiritual-divine existence, that the divine existence has passed into us from a former being, and that our world can only exist because God died before this spiritual world died before us. This is how Mainländer sees a spiritual world, but not in our world; rather, in our world he sees only the corpse laden with evil and wickedness, which can only exist so that it may be handed over to destruction, so that what led to the death of God and his spiritual world may finally also enter into non-existence in the demise of the corpse. — Monists and other thinkers may smile at this more or less; but those who understand the human soul better and know how a worldview can become the inner destiny of the soul, how the whole soul can take on the nuances of a worldview, know what a person had to experience who, like Mainländer, had to place the spiritual world in a past time and could see only the materially backward corpse of it in the present world. In order to cope with the evils of this world, Mainländer resorted to such a worldview. That he was more immersed in his worldview than Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, than Bahnsen or Eduard von Hartmann, we can see from the fact that at the age of thirty-five, when he had finished his “Philosophy of Redemption,” the thought occurred to him: Your strength is now needed in a disembodied form so that you can promote what you see as the salvation of humanity more quickly than if you were still using your body after reaching middle age. The fact that Mainländer was deeply serious about his worldview is evident from the fact that, when he came to this thought: You are now more useful if you pour your strength into the world and do not concentrate it on your body, he really drew the conclusion that Schopenhauer and the others did not draw, and died by suicide, and indeed suicide out of conviction.
Philosophers and others may overlook such a human fate, but for our time it is infinitely significant because it shows us how the soul must live if it is to truly penetrate to its depths, to what can be revived as a longing in our time — how the soul can live that faces the problem of evil and wickedness in the world and has no view of the world where spiritual light spreads and illuminates the meaning of evil and wickedness. It was necessary for the human soul to develop materialistic abilities for a time. In the future, spiritual life will also be viewed, I would say, from a “psycho-biological perspective,” a perspective of the soul's life, and it will become clear that only when elevated to the spiritual realm does what appears in a physical image below, in animal beings for example, apply to human beings. Certain animal beings can go hungry for a long time and do so. Tadpoles, for example, can be made to quickly transform into frogs by starving them for a long time. Similar conditions occur in certain fish when they go hungry for a long time, because then processes of regression set in that enable them to carry out what they have to do; they go hungry because they withdraw the energies that they would otherwise use for feeding in order to develop other forms. This is an image that can be applied to the human soul: For centuries, it has lived through a time when people always spoke of the “limits of human knowledge”; and even many who today believe themselves to be spiritual thinkers are still completely devoted to materialistic ideas — which, simply because people are ashamed of them, are now often referred to as monistic — and even philosophers are devoted to the principle: Human knowledge cannot help but come to a halt when it faces the greatest mysteries. The abilities that led to all this had to be developed over a period of time; that is, humanity had to go through a period of spiritual starvation. This was the time of the rise of materialism. But the forces that were held back in the souls as a result will now, according to a psycho-biological law, lead the human soul to seek the way into the spiritual worlds. Yes, we will find that human brooding had to take the form we encounter in Mainländer, who could no longer find the spiritual world in the physical world because materialism had taken it away from him, and who therefore had to remain standing before the physical world, only making the mistake of overlooking the fact that what is present in our world does give us the opportunity to find something in our soul that points to the future just as the outer world points to the past. For it cannot be denied that Mainländer was right in a certain sense: that what our world presents around us are the remnants of an original development. Even today's geologists must admit that as we walk across the earth, we are walking over a corpse. But what Mainländer was not yet able to show is that as we walk over a corpse, we are at the same time developing something within ourselves that is just as much a seed for the future as what surrounds us is a legacy of the past. And by looking at what spiritual science is for the individual soul, we can revive within ourselves what Mainländer was not yet able to see and therefore had to despair of.
So we stand at the watershed between two ages: the age of materialism and that of spiritual science. And perhaps nothing can prove to us in such a popular form how, if we understand our soul correctly, we must live toward the spiritual age of the future, as the contemplation of evil and wickedness, when we can turn our gaze up to the bright heights of the spiritual world. I have often said that such contemplations bring us into harmony with the best spirits of all times, who have longed to see humanity live in an ever clearer way toward the future. When such a spirit, with whom one feels in complete harmony, has made a statement about the outer sensory world that is like an appeal to spiritual knowledge, we can also summarize what has been able to approach our soul today and cite this as a kind of transformation of such a statement.
In his “Faust,” Goethe had something said that shows how human beings can stray from the spirit. Paradigmatically summarized in a beautiful saying, the distance between human beings and the spiritual world is expressed in the words:
Whoever wants to recognize and describe something living,
First seeks to drive out the spirit,
Then he has the parts in his hand,
Unfortunately, only the spiritual bond is missing.
This is true, in a sense, of all knowledge of the world. It was the fate of humanity to devote itself to the parts for several centuries. However, more and more people will come to feel that the lack of the spiritual bond is not merely a theoretical deficiency, but a tragedy of the soul. That is why the spiritual researcher must see everywhere in souls today what most souls do not yet know themselves: the longing for the spiritual world. And when one considers something such as the illumination of the nature of evil and wickedness, one can perhaps expand on Goethe's statement by taking the following as a summary of what has been said.
Goethe believed that anyone who wants to strive for a worldview must not only adhere to the parts, but must above all look at the spiritual bond. However, anyone who approaches such significant questions of life as the mysteries of evil and wickedness can say, based on spiritual scientific foundations, summarizing their conviction in accordance with their feelings:
He who dwells in mere sensory light
Does not solve the riddles of the soul;
He who wants to understand life
Must strive for spiritual heights!