The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Twelfth Lecture

[ 1 ] We have now reached an important point in our considerations, a high point, so to speak. It goes without saying that we will have to overcome all kinds of difficult passages in the explanation of the Gospels. Therefore, before we continue with yesterday's discussion, I would like to begin today's lecture with a brief overview of what was said yesterday regarding the fundamental principles.

[ 2 ] We know that human development in ancient times took a very different form than it does today. And we know that the further back we look at earlier states of development, the more the nature of the human being appears to us in a different form. We have already touched upon the fact that we can go back from our time, which we can call the Middle European cultural period, to the Greek-Latin period, that we can go further back to the Egyptian-Chaldean period, then to the time when the ancient Persian people were led by Zarathustra. Then we arrive in that ancient past at the Indian culture, which was very different from ours, and with that we already enter a period of cultural development that followed a great, powerful catastrophe. And this catastrophe, which took place in stormy events in the air and water elements, led to the disappearance of the land that had been inhabited by humanity before the Indian culture, the ancient Atlantis, which was located between Europe, Africa, and America, disappeared, and that people migrated westward and eastward, settling on one side in America and on the other in the countries of Europe, Asia, and Africa, which gradually took on their present form. This Atlantean period saw a humanity that was completely different from today's humanity in terms of the soul, especially in earlier times. And we are primarily interested in the soul in human development, because we know that everything physical is a consequence of spiritual development. What was the life of the soul like in the ancient Atlantean period?

[ 3 ] We know that in the Atlantean era, human beings had a completely different consciousness than later, that in a certain sense they had an ancient clairvoyance, but did not yet possess the ability to have a clearly articulated self-consciousness, an ego-consciousness. For this ego-consciousness can only be gained by learning to distinguish oneself from external objects. But at that time, human beings were not able to distinguish themselves completely from external objects. Let us imagine for a moment how things would be in our time today if human beings, under present conditions, were unable to distinguish themselves from their surroundings.

[ 4 ] Human beings today ask—let us bring this before our minds in a general overview—where is the boundary of my being? And from their present standpoint, they say with a certain degree of justification: The boundary of my human being is where my skin separates me from the outside world. — Human beings believe that only what lies within their skin belongs to them, and that everything else is external objects that stand opposite them, from which they are different. He says this because he knows that he is no longer and cannot be a whole human being if a piece of what lies within his skin is taken away from him. From a certain point of view, it is correct to say that if a piece of flesh is cut off him, he is no longer a whole human being. But we also know that with every breath we take, we breathe in air. And when we ask, “Where is this air?” we must say, “It is around us, it is everywhere where our surroundings touch us; there is the air that will be inside us in the next moment.” Now it is outside, in the next moment it is inside us. Cut off this air, remove this air, and you can no longer live! You are less of a whole human being than if a hand were cut off that lies within your skin!

[ 5 ] Strictly speaking, it would therefore be correct to say: It is not true that our boundary lies where our skin ends! The air that surrounds us belongs to us — it flows in and out constantly, and we cannot arbitrarily set the boundary that exists in our skin. If humans wanted to make this clear to themselves — which they would have to do theoretically, because perception does not provide them with this observation — then they would have to think about what is not imposed on them by the external world itself. If humans could see the air flowing into them at any moment, how it spreads within them, changes within them, and leaves them again, if this were before their eyes at every moment, it would never occur to them to say: This hand belongs to me more than the air flowing into me. He would consider the air to be part of himself, and he would regard himself as someone who has hallucinations if he were to say to himself: “I am an independent entity that could exist without my surroundings.”

[ 6 ] The Atlantean could not indulge in this illusion, because his observation showed him quite clearly something else: he did not see the objects around him in fixed contours, but rather surrounded by colored auras. He did not see a plant as we see it, but rather, similar to how we see the streetlights on a foggy autumn evening, he saw everything as if surrounded by a large colored aura. This was because between all things in the outer world there is spirit, spiritual beings, which he could still perceive with his then dull clairvoyance. Just as there is fog between the lights of the lanterns, so there are spiritual beings everywhere in space. The Atlantean saw these spiritual beings as you see the fog. Therefore, the spiritual beings formed something like a foggy aura that lay over the external objects. The external objects themselves were unclear to him. But because he saw the spirit, he also saw everything spiritual that flowed in and out of him. He also saw himself as a link in his entire environment. He saw currents entering his body everywhere, which you cannot see today. Air is the coarsest substance; much finer currents enter the human being. Human beings have forgotten how to see the spiritual because they no longer have the old twilight clairvoyance. The people of Atlantis saw the spiritual currents flowing in and out, like your finger when you are conscious and see that blood is flowing in and out, and that it would wither if you tore it off. Just as your finger would feel, so did the Atlanteans feel as members of an organism. They felt: the currents are flowing in through my eyes and ears and so on. And if I push myself out of them, I can no longer be human. — They felt poured out into the whole outer world. People saw the spiritual world, but they could not distinguish themselves from it; they did not have the strong sense of self, the self-consciousness in today's sense. He was able to develop this because that which had made him dependent on his environment was withdrawn from his observation. Because this became invisible, he was able to develop self-consciousness, ego-consciousness.

[ 7 ] This task—to develop self-consciousness, ego-consciousness—was the task of the human being of the post-Atlantean era. After the great Atlantean catastrophe, the peoples of the post-Atlantean era were organized in such a way that the spiritual world withdrew from their consciousness and they gradually learned to see the outer physical-sensory world more and more clearly and distinctly. But everything that develops in the world does not happen all at once, but little by little; slowly and gradually it comes about. And so the ancient, dim clairvoyance was slowly and gradually lost. Yes, it still exists today in certain people who have inherited it, and in mediumistic natures under certain conditions. Slowly and gradually, that which has reached its peak at a certain time dies out. |

[ 8 ] In the earliest times of the post-Atlantean era, ordinary people still possessed much, much of the gift of clairvoyance. And what these people saw in the spiritual world was constantly supplemented, expanded, and encouraged by the initiates, who were led into the spiritual world in the manner described to you, through special methods, and thus became messengers of what all people had once seen in a certain way. The legends and myths preserve for us what is true about ancient times better than any external historical research — especially all the legends and myths connected with the oracle sites. It was so that special people were led into abnormal states—one might say into a dream state, a mediumistic state—by being put into a state of consciousness that was duller and darker than the ordinary bright state of daytime. They were in a reduced state of consciousness where they were within the objects of the outer world but did not see them. This was not the old clairvoyant state, but an intermediate state, half dreamlike, half clairvoyant. If one wanted to know something about certain connections in the world, how to behave in this or that matter, one asked the oracles, that is, where old, dim clairvoyant states existed as a legacy of the old way.

[ 9 ] Thus, at the beginning of their development, human beings were given wisdom. Wisdom flowed into them. But this wisdom gradually dried up. And even the initiates, in their abnormal state — for they had to be led into the spiritual world by lifting their etheric bodies — even they were gradually able to make only uncertain observations in the spiritual world. But this had led those who were not only initiated in the old sense, but who had progressed with their time, who were at the same time prophets for the future, to the realization that a new impulse was necessary for humanity. An ancient treasure of wisdom had been given to humanity when it descended from divine-spiritual heights, but it had become darker and darker. In earlier times, all human beings possessed it, then only a few who were led into special states in the oracles, then only the initiates.

[ 10 ] A time must come, said the initiates who knew the signs of the times, when this ancient wisdom will have dried up within humanity to such an extent that it will no longer be able to guide and direct human beings. But then people would fall into uncertainty in the world. This would be expressed in their will, their actions, and their feelings. And as wisdom gradually died out, people would lead themselves unwisely. Their ego would grow more and more, so that when wisdom withdrew, each person would begin to search for truth in their own ego, to develop their own feelings, to develop their own will, each for themselves, and people would become more and more separate, more and more alien to one another, and they would understand each other less and less. Because each person wants to have their own thoughts, which do not flow to them from the unified wisdom, one person cannot understand the thoughts of another. And because their feelings are not guided by the unified wisdom, it will come to pass that the feelings of people will conflict with one another. And it would be the same with their actions. People would all act, think, and feel against each other, and humanity would ultimately be fragmented into individuals who were at odds with each other.

[ 11 ] And what was the outward physical sign that appeared to us as the expression of this development? It was the change that humanity experienced in its blood. In ancient times, as we know, close marriages were the norm. People married only within their blood-related tribe. But more and more, distant marriage replaced close marriage. Foreign blood mixed with foreign blood, and thus it came about that the heirlooms of ancient times became fewer and fewer. Let us recall once more Goethe's words, which we spoke yesterday:

“From my father I have inherited my stature,
the seriousness of life,
from my mother I have a cheerful disposition
and a love of storytelling.”

[ 12 ] Yesterday we attributed this to the fact that the maternal element, as it is inherited from generation to generation, gives rise to that which is in the etheric body of the human being, so that every human being carries in his own etheric body the inheritance of the maternal element, just as he has in his physical body the inheritance of the paternal element. Now, because there was blood relationship, the inheritance that continued from etheric body to etheric body was great, and the ancient ability of clairvoyance was attached to this inheritance. People who came from close marriages inherited the ancient wisdom with the blood, with the related blood in their etheric body. As the blood became more and more mixed, as more and more foreign tribes intermarried in distant marriages, the possibility of inheriting the old wisdom also became increasingly smaller. For, as we said yesterday, the blood of human beings changed; through the mixing of blood, it became such that human beings increasingly obscured the old wisdom. In other words, the blood, the carrier of inherited maternal characteristics, became less and less suitable for passing on the old gift of clairvoyance. The blood developed in such a way that people became increasingly unable to see into the spiritual world. Physically, therefore, we must say that human blood developed in such a way that it became less and less capable of carrying the ancient wisdom that guided people safely, and increasingly fell into the other extreme of being the carrier of egoism, that is, of what people set against each other and alongside each other as “I's.” And with that, it also became less and less capable of bringing people together in love.

[ 13 ] We are, of course, still in the midst of this process of the deterioration of human blood. For this process, insofar as this deterioration of blood originates from ancient times, is slowly running its course until the end of the Earth's time. Therefore, an impulse had to come into humanity that was capable of improving what had been made worse by the blood. In relation to their blood relationship, people would be led into error and misery. This is what the ancient sages tell us through their legends and myths. People could no longer rely on what had been left to them as a legacy of ancient wisdom: Even if you send for the oracle and ask, “What shall happen?” the oracle will only tell you what will lead you into the wildest strife and discord. For example, the oracle predicted that Laius and Jocasta would have a son who would kill his father and marry his mother. But even though this legacy of ancient wisdom, the wisdom of the oracle, was still available, it could no longer prevent blood from falling prey to error: Oedipus kills his father and marries his mother, committing patricide and incest.

[ 14 ] The old sage wanted to say: People once had wisdom. But even if it had been preserved, people would have had to continue developing their ego, and selfishness would have developed so strongly that blood would have raged against blood. Blood is no longer suitable for leading people higher if only the old wisdom guides them. Thus, the clairvoyant initiate who had given the original picture of the Oedipus legend wanted to present a warning image to people and say: This is what will happen to you if nothing else comes but the old oracular wisdom! And in the Judas legend, we have an even clearer picture of what would have become of the old oracular wisdom. Judas' mother was also told that her son would kill his father and marry his mother, bringing unspeakable misery upon them. And everything came true! This means that ancient wisdom is not capable of protecting people from what they are bound to fall into unless a new impulse comes to humanity.

[ 15 ] Now let us ask ourselves the more precise reasons why this has come about. Let us ask ourselves: Why did ancient wisdom gradually become unsuitable for controlling humanity? We can find an answer to this question if we take a closer look at the origins of ancient wisdom in relation to humanity.

[ 16 ] I have already indicated to you that in the ancient Atlantean era there was a completely different relationship between the human physical body and the human etheric body than there was later. Of the four members of human nature, it is true today that the physical body and the etheric body are so connected that they roughly coincide, and this is especially the case with the head part of the human being. But this is only true for the present time. If we go back to the Atlantean era, we find a connection in which the human etheric body protruded far beyond the head. In the Atlantean era, the etheric body protruded far beyond the physical body, especially in relation to the head. Now, the Atlantic development is such that the etheric body increasingly covered the physical body, especially in relation to the head. The etheric body increasingly draws itself into the physical body and, of course, also changes this member of the human being. So that is the essential point with regard to this aspect of human development: that the etheric part of the human head draws itself further and further into the physical part of the head, and that the two come to cover each other. Now, as long as the etheric body was outside the physical head, it was in a completely different position than it was afterwards. It was connected on all sides with currents, with other spiritual beings; and what flowed in and out gave this human etheric body the ability to see clairvoyantly in the Atlantean times. So this ability to see clairvoyantly stems from the fact that the etheric body was not yet completely inside the physical body in relation to the head, and that currents flowed into the head from all sides and gave this etheric body the ability to see clairvoyantly.

[ 17 ] Then came the time when the etheric body drew itself into the physical body. In a certain way, the etheric body tore itself away — not completely — from these streams. It began to cut itself off from the inflow that had given it the ability to see clearly, to look into the wisdom of the world. Conversely, when someone was initiated in ancient times and their etheric body was lifted out, their etheric head was reconnected to the surrounding currents, and they regained their clairvoyance. If this had happened suddenly in the middle of the Atlantean epoch, if the etheric body had been completely cut off from contact with the outer world, then human beings would have lost all their old clairvoyance much more quickly. There would then have been no remnants of this old clairvoyance left for the post-Atlantean epoch, and human beings would have entered the later epoch without any memory of clairvoyance. However, in a certain sense, human beings remained connected to the outer currents, and something else happened. This etheric body of human beings, which had torn itself away from the currents of its environment, retained within itself remnants of the old wisdom. Now you will understand: at the end of the Atlantean epoch, after human beings had taken up their etheric body, there was still a fund in this etheric body, a remnant of what the etheric body had once had outside, a “savings account,” if I may say so. It is like when a son has a father. The father earns a living, and the son continually receives from his father whatever he needs. In the same way, human beings drew wisdom from their surroundings as much as they needed until their etheric body broke away. Now let us assume, to stay with our comparison, that the son loses his father and is left with only a certain portion, and the son earns nothing more; then he will eventually use it up and have nothing left. This was the situation of man. He had broken away from his father's wisdom, had added nothing to it, and had lived on it until the Christian era. Yes, even in our time he still lives from what he has inherited, not from what he has acquired. He lives, so to speak, on capital. In the earliest times of post-Atlantean development, man still had something of capital, although he had not acquired wisdom itself; he lived, so to speak, on the interest and sometimes allowed himself to be given an allowance by the initiated. But in the end, the currency of ancient wisdom became worthless. And when this old currency was paid to Oedipus, it was no longer valid. This ancient wisdom did not protect him from the most terrible mistake, nor did it protect Judas from it.

[ 18 ] This was how far the course of human development had come. Where did it actually come from that man gradually exhausted his capital of wisdom? It came from the fact that he had already taken in two kinds of spiritual beings within himself: first the Luciferic beings, and then, as a result of the Luciferic beings, the Ahrimanic or Mephistophelean beings. These prevented him from acquiring anything in addition to the old wisdom. For they worked in his being in the following way: the Luciferic beings corrupted the passions and the feelings, while the Ahrimanic and Mephistophelean beings corrupted our view of the world and our observation. If the Luciferic beings had not intervened in the development of the earth, human beings would not have gained an interest in the physical world, which draws them down below their level. If, as a consequence of the Luciferic beings, the Mephistophelean, Ahrimanic, or satanic beings had not intervened, human beings would know and always have known: Behind every external sensory thing there is a spiritual being. And he would see through the surface of the external sensory world to the spiritual. But Ahriman has mixed something like a dark smoke into his perception, and so human beings cannot see through to the spiritual. Through Ahriman, human beings become entangled in lies; through this they become entangled in Maya, in illusion. These two natures prevent them from acquiring anything to add to the ancient wisdom that human beings once received. And so it dried up and gradually lost all its usefulness.

[ 19 ] But in a certain other respect, development continues to follow its course. In the Atlantean epoch, human beings submerged their etheric bodies into their physical bodies. This was, so to speak, their misfortune, for in a certain sense they were forsaken by God, and so they experienced the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman in this physical world within their physical bodies. This was their doom. And the consequence of this was that, precisely through the influence of the physical body, through life in the physical body, the old wisdom became useless. How did this happen? In the past, human beings did not live in the physical body. They took wisdom, so to speak, from their father's storehouse, from the old wisdom, that is, they had their storehouse outside their physical body because they were outside with their etheric body. This storehouse gradually dried up. Human beings should have had a storehouse in their own bodies in order to increase their wisdom. But they did not have one. And so it came about that because human beings had no source in their own bodies for renewing their wisdom, every time they left their physical bodies after death, there was less wisdom in their etheric bodies. Every time after death, after each incarnation, there was less wisdom in their etheric bodies. The etheric body became poorer and poorer in wisdom.

[ 20 ] But the course of evolution continues, and just as in the Atlantean era, when human beings developed in such a way that their etheric body submerged into their physical body, so too, as we move into the future, evolution proceeds in such a way that human beings gradually emerge from their physical bodies. While the etheric body had previously been drawn in and continued to go further in until the appearance of Christ, the time now came when the course of development changed. At the moment when Christ appeared, the etheric body began to emerge again, and today it is already less connected with the physical body than it was at the time of Christ's presence. The physical body has thus become even coarser.

[ 21 ] Human beings are therefore heading toward a future in which their etheric body will increasingly withdraw again, and they will gradually arrive at a point where their etheric body will once again be as far outside as it was in the Atlantean epoch. We can continue our comparison a little further.

[ 22 ] If the son who used to live off his father's money spends everything and acquires nothing, his situation will become increasingly bleak. But if he now also has a son, this son, the grandson, will not be in the same position as his father. The father at least inherited something and could continue to spend it. The grandson now has nothing at all, he inherits nothing, he starts out with nothing. In a certain sense, this was the course of human development. When the etheric body came in and took the divine wisdom from the treasury of the Godhead, it brought wisdom with it to the physical body. But in the physical body, the Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits prevented the wisdom from multiplying, from something being added. When the etheric body now withdraws, it takes nothing with it from the physical body. And the consequence would be, if nothing else had happened, that human beings would face a future in which their etheric bodies would belong to them, but would have nothing of wisdom, nothing of knowledge. And while the physical body completely dried up, the etheric body would also have nothing, for it can gain nothing from the drying physical body. If, therefore, the physical body is not to dry up in that future, then the etheric body must be given power, the power of wisdom. This etheric body, in leaving the physical body, must have received the power of wisdom in the physical body. It must have received something there that it carries out with it. When it is outside and has received this wisdom, it then works back on the physical body and gives it life, preventing it from drying up.

[ 23 ] There are two possibilities for this development of humanity. One possibility is this:

[ 24 ] Human beings develop without Christ. In this case, the etheric body could bring nothing with it from the physical body, because it has received nothing there; it leaves empty. But since the etheric body has nothing, it cannot enliven the physical body; it cannot protect it from decay, from drying up. Human beings would gradually lose all the fruits of physical life; they would be unable to give them anything from the physical body, and they would have to leave the physical body behind. However, human beings came to Earth precisely in order to obtain a physical body to complement their earlier predispositions. The predisposition for the physical body came earlier. But without the formation of the physical body, human beings would never achieve their mission on Earth. Now the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman have come to Earth. If human beings gain nothing in their physical bodies, their etheric bodies leave the physical bodies without being able to take anything new with them, having even used up their old store of wisdom, then the mission on Earth is over. Then the mission of the earth is lost for the universe. Human beings bring nothing with them into the future. They would bring with them the empty ether skull that they brought filled into the earth's evolution!

[ 25 ] But let us now suppose that something happens at the right time whereby, when the etheric body withdraws from the physical body, the human being becomes able to give something to this etheric body, to revive it, to permeate it again with wisdom. Then the etheric body would also go out toward the future, but it would now have new life, new strength. He could then use this to revive the physical body. He could now send strength and life back into the physical body. But he would first have to have it himself; he would first have to receive strength and life himself. But if it can receive strength and life, then the fruit of man's life on earth is saved. Then the physical body does not simply decay, but the physical body, the perishable, takes on the form of the etheric body, the imperishable! And the resurrection of man with the achievements of the physical body is saved.

[ 26 ] An impulse therefore had to come to the earth through which what had been exhausted in the old wisdom could be renewed, through which new life could be implanted in the etheric body, so that the physical, which was otherwise destined to decay, could attract the imperishable and fill itself with an etheric body that makes it imperishable, that rescues it from earthly evolution. But this, this life into the etheric body, was brought by Christ. It is therefore connected with Christ that what would otherwise be doomed to death, the physical body of the human being, is transformed, preserved from decay, and given the ability to attract the imperishable. The Christ impulse has poured life into the human etheric body, new life after the old life has been used up! And when human beings look into the future, they must say to themselves: When my etheric body is once out of my physical body, I will have had to develop in such a way that the etheric body is completely permeated by Christ. Christ must live in me. In the course of my earthly development, I must gradually permeate my etheric body with Christ!

[ 27 ] What I have just described to you are the deeper processes that are hidden from the outer eye. They are the spiritual behind the physical development of the world. But what did the outer form have to be?

[ 28 ] What was it that entered into the physical body through the Luciferic and Ahrimanic beings? What entered into the physical body was the predisposition to decay, the predisposition to dissolution, the predisposition to death, in other words. The germ of death had entered into the physical body. This germ of death would only have come to full expression at the end of the earth's development if Christ had not come. For then the etheric body would be incapable of reviving human beings for all eternity. And when the Earth's evolution was complete, everything that had come into being as the physical human body would fall prey to decay, and the Earth's mission itself would succumb to death. Whenever we see death today, this present death is a sign of what will be the general death at the end of the earth's development. Slowly and gradually, what was once given to humanity is drying up. The fact that human beings are born again and again, that they can pass from one embodiment to another, has only become possible because human beings were given a life fund. For the purely external life in successive incarnations, all possibility of life would die at the end of the earth's development. But little by little it would become apparent that human beings are dying. This would happen slowly, part by part, and the physical body would dry up more and more. If the Christ impulse had not come, human beings would die off limb by limb toward the end of Earth's development. Now the Christ impulse is only at the beginning of its development. It will only gradually live its way into humanity, and what Christ will be for humanity will only be fully revealed in future times—until the end of Earth's development.

[ 29 ] But the various human activities and things have not been affected by the Christ impulse in the same way. There are many things today that have not been touched by the Christ impulse at all, which will only have to be touched by the Christ impulse in the future. I will give you a striking example of how there is a whole area of human activity in our time that has not yet been touched by the Christ impulse.

[ 30 ] When the pre-Christian era came to an end, around the seventh or sixth century BC, ancient wisdom and ancient power were coming to an end in terms of human knowledge. In other areas of life, it still had a young, fresh power for a long time, but in terms of knowledge in particular, it was coming to an end. From the eighth, seventh, and sixth centuries before the Christian era, something remained that can be described as a remnant of the remnant. If you had gone to the Egyptian-Chaldean wisdom or to the ancient Persian and Indian wisdom, you would have found this wisdom permeating everything with real spiritual insights, with the results of ancient clairvoyance. Those who were not very clairvoyant had the reports of clairvoyants. Science without the foundation of clairvoyance did not exist and has never existed, neither in Indian and Persian times nor in later times. Even in the early days of Greek civilization, there was no science without underlying clairvoyant research. But then the time came when clairvoyant research dried up for human science. And now we see human science emerging, from which clairvoyance is being removed, or at least gradually thrown out.

[ 31 ] Why is clairvoyance disappearing? Because now the etheric body is already beginning to emerge again above. The first signs are already apparent. Clairvoyance is drying up, faith in the messages of clairvoyants is drying up, and this is rooted in the seventh and sixth centuries before the appearance of Christ, in what can be called a human science from which the results of spiritual research are increasingly being driven out. And this continues further and further. With Parmenides, Heraclitus, Plato, and even Aristotle, you can prove everywhere in the writings of natural scientists and ancient physicians that what we call science was originally permeated by the results of spiritual research. But spiritual science dried up more and more, becoming less and less. It still remains in relation to our soul capacity, it remains in relation to feeling and willing; but in relation to human thinking, it is gradually drying up.

[ 32 ] Thus, in relation to human thinking, to scientific thinking, the influence of the etheric body on the physical body had already begun to wane when Christ appeared. Everything happens gradually, little by little. Then Christ came and gave the impulse. But of course not everyone accepted the Christ impulse immediately, and in certain areas in particular it was not accepted. It was accepted in various areas, but it was rejected outright in scientific circles. Look at science in the Roman Empire. Look at Celsus. There you will find all kinds of things he wrote about Christ. This Celsus, who was a very great scholar but understood nothing about human thinking from the Christ impulse, reports: There once lived in Palestine a married couple named Joseph and Mary, and to them is attached the sect of the Christians. But what is told about them is all superstition. The truth is that the wife of this Joseph was unfaithful to her husband with a Roman captain named Panthera. But Joseph did not know who the father of her child was.

[ 33 ] This is one of the best-known stories of that time. Anyone who follows contemporary literature will know that certain people today have not yet progressed beyond Celsus. Certainly, the Christ impulse is only slowly taking root in some areas, but in the areas we are now talking about, it has not yet been able to take root at all. Here we see one of the limbs withering away. We see that something is withering away in the human brain, whereas when this brain is influenced by the Christ impulse, it will revive science in a completely different form. As strange as this may sound in our age of scientific fanaticism, it is nevertheless true: the part of the human brain that is called upon to think scientifically is slowly dying. That is why you see how slowly, step by step, the old vestiges of scientific thinking are disappearing. We see how Aristotle still has relatively much of it, but how science is gradually being squeezed out by the old heirlooms, and how science, through what it later receives in external observations, is abandoned by God in terms of thinking, how it no longer has anything of the old fund. And we see how it is possible that, even if one experiences Christ very strongly, one can no longer find any connection between the Christ impulse and what humanity has achieved in science. There is external evidence for this.

[ 34 ] Imagine that there was a person in the thirteenth century who was deeply moved by the Christ impulse and who said: We have the Christ impulse. Like a sum of powerful new revelations, it flows out of the Gospel and we can permeate ourselves with it! And let us suppose that this person had set himself the task of creating a link between science and Christianity: even in the thirteenth century, he would have found nothing in contemporary science to help him! He would have had to go back to Aristotle. And with Aristotle, not with the science of the thirteenth century, but only with Aristotle, would he have been able to interpret Christianity. Science was such that it became increasingly incapable of coming to terms with the Christ principle. That is why the men of the thirteenth century had to go back to the old Aristotle. He still had the old heritage of wisdom, and he could provide the concepts through which science could be reconciled with Christianity. Then science became poorer and poorer in concepts, precisely as it became richer in observations. And then came the time when all the concepts of the old wisdom disappeared from science.

[ 35 ] The greatest men are, of course, also children of their time in terms of their science. Galileo could not think outside the absolute; he could only think in terms of his time. And it is precisely this that makes him great, that he established purely godless thinking, purely mechanistic thinking. A great upheaval is taking place before our very eyes with Galileo. The most common phenomenon, as it is explained today in physics, was described differently before Galileo than after him. For example, someone throws a stone. Today we say that the stone maintains its motion through inertia until it is stopped by the influence of another force. Before Galileo, people thought quite differently; they were convinced that if the stone was to continue moving, someone had to push it. Something active was behind the flying stone. Galileo completely taught people to think differently, but in such a way that they learned to understand the world as a mechanism. And today it is considered an ideal to explain the world mechanically, mechanistically, and to drive out all spirit. This stems from the fact that those parts of the human brain, the thinking instrument, which are the organs of scientific thought, are already so dried up today that they cannot breathe new life into concepts, so that these concepts become poorer and poorer.

[ 36 ] It would be easy to prove that science, no matter how much detail it piles up, has not enriched humanity with a single concept. Mind you, observations are not concepts! Do not say that things like Darwinism and the like have enriched humanity with concepts. Others have done that, not scientists, but people who had completely different sources. One such person was Goethe. He enriched humanity with concepts from completely different sources. For this, however, he is considered a dilettante by scientists.

[ 37 ] The fact is that science has not been enriched with concepts. You will find concepts much, much more alive, much higher and greater in ancient times. The concepts of Darwinism have been squeezed dry like a lemon. He merely collected observations and linked them to impoverished concepts. This scientific direction is something that clearly shows us the process of gradual dying. There is a limb in the human brain that is drying up. This is the member that is at work in science today. And the reason for this is that the part of the human etheric body that should enliven this drying brain has not yet attained the Christ impulse. Until the Christ impulse also flows into this part of the human brain, which is supposed to supply science, no life will come into this science. This is based on the great laws of the world. If science continues in this way, it will become increasingly impoverished in terms of concepts, and concepts will increasingly die out. And there will be more and more people in science who simply string observations together and are terrified of anyone who starts to think. It is terrible for a professor today when a young person brings him a doctoral dissertation that contains even a little bit of thinking.

[ 38 ] But anthroposophy already exists today! And this anthroposophy will make the Christ impulse more and more understandable to humanity and thereby bring more and more life to the etheric body. And it will be able to bring so much life to it that it will also melt the withering part of the brain that has brought about our scientific way of thinking today. This is an example of how the Christ impulse, gradually taking root in humanity, revives the dying members. More and more members would die off as humanity's future approached. But the Christ impulse will flow into humanity in relation to each dying limb, and at the end of the Earth's development, all the limbs that would otherwise have died will have been revived by the Christ impulse, which will then have permeated the entire etheric body, with which the human etheric body will then have become one. And the first impulse for this gradual revival of humanity, the first impulse for the resurrection of humanity, occurred at a moment that is beautifully described in the Gospel of John.

[ 39 ] Let us imagine that Christ entered the world completely universal and first accomplished the great deed from a completely Christ-filled etheric body. For this is what Christ did with the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, that this etheric body could also enliven the physical body. At the moment when the etheric body of Jesus of Nazareth, in which Christ now was, had become a complete life-giver of the physical body, the etheric body of Christ appeared transfigured! And the writer of the Gospel of John describes this moment to us:

“Father, glorify your name! — Then a voice came from heaven: I have glorified him, and I will glorify him again. Then the people who stood there and heard it said, 'It is thunder.'”

[ 40 ] It is said that those who stood there heard thunder. But it is never said that anyone who was not prepared for it would have heard it.

“But the others said, 'An angel spoke to him. Jesus answered and said, 'This voice was not for my sake, but for yours.

[ 41 ] Why? So that those around him might understand what had happened. And Christ speaks about what has happened:

“Now is the judgment of this world; now the prince of this world will be cast out.” (12:28-31)

[ 42 ] At this moment, Lucifer-Ahriman was cast out of the physical body of Christ! The great example stands there, which must be fulfilled in the future in the whole of humanity: the obstacles of Lucifer-Ahriman must be cast out of the physical body through the Christ impulse! And the human earth body must be enlivened by the Christ impulse in such a way that the fruits of the earth mission are carried over into those times which will follow the earth times.