The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] We have often considered, in various contexts, the development of humanity that has taken place in the so-called post-Atlantean era—that is, in our own time—since the Atlantean catastrophe. We have, of course, identified various epochs and periods within this post-Atlantean development. We have pointed to the ancient Indian era, the proto-Persian era, the Egyptian-Chaldean era, the Greek-Latin era, and then to our own epoch, which is precisely the fifth phase of post-Atlantean development. We then pointed out that two further periods will elapse before the onset of another great catastrophe, so that there will then be seven such periods in the history of humanity on Earth.

[ 2 ] It is understandable that we have described these epochs of human history from various perspectives. For as people of the present who wish, in a sense, to orient ourselves toward our own tasks, we can only gain a sense of the future that lies ahead if we know how we are situated within these different ages.

[ 3 ] It is repeatedly emphasized in various ways that a distinction can be made between the individual human being as a small world, a microcosm, and the larger world, the macrocosm. And it is rightly emphasized that the small cosmos, the human being, is in every respect a reflection of the larger world, the macrocosm. Although this is a truth, it is initially a rather abstract one, and as it is usually presented, it is of little practical use. It only becomes meaningful when we can examine in detail to what extent this or that aspect of the human being that we encounter can truly be understood as a small world and related to another, larger world.

[ 4 ] In essence, the human being of the present belongs to all seven ages of the post-Atlantean epoch, for he has been and will be incarnated in all these periods. We have passed through the past ages in our earlier incarnations, and we will pass through the later periods in our future incarnations. In every incarnation, we absorb what the respective period has to offer. And by absorbing this, we carry within ourselves, in a certain sense, the results—the fruits—of previous developments, so that, in essence, the most intimate part of what we carry within us will be what we have acquired through the periods mentioned. For it must be said: What each individual human being has acquired during these periods already enters more or less into present-day human consciousness, whereas in fact what we generally acquired as human beings during our incarnations in the Atlantean era had quite different states of consciousness, so that it has already been pushed down more or less into the subconscious and no longer stirs as much as what we later acquired in the post-Atlantean era. In a certain sense, human beings in the Atlantean era were much better protected from spoiling this or that aspect of their own development, because consciousness had not yet awakened to the same degree as in the post-Atlantean era. What we therefore carry within us as the fruits of Atlantean development is much more correct, is much more in keeping with the world order than what stems from the times when we ourselves were already able to bring some disorder upon ourselves. Certainly, the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings also had influence during the Atlantean era. But even these acted upon human beings in a very different way back then. Human beings were not yet capable of defending themselves against them.

[ 5 ] The fact that this is increasingly coming into consciousness is the essence of post-Atlantean culture. In this respect, the development of humanity from the Atlantean catastrophe to the next great catastrophe is, in a sense, also a macrocosmic process. Like a great individual, the whole of humanity develops through the seven post-Atlantean epochs. And the most important thing that is to arise in human consciousness through these seven cultural epochs essentially goes through similar phases as those experienced by the individual human being.

[ 6 ] We have divided the stages of human life—as is again pointed out in *The Secret Science*—such that we consider the first seven years of life, from birth until the change of teeth, to be the first period. We have said that during this time the human physical body finally takes on its forms and that with the second set of teeth these forms are essentially established. Afterward, the human being continues to grow within these forms, but essentially the forms have their fixed directions. It is the development of the form that takes place during the first seven years. We must understand such rhythms correctly in every respect. We must therefore also distinguish, in accordance with the laws of nature, between the first teeth that a person receives in the first years of life and which then fall out and are replaced by the second teeth. These two types are, in terms of the body’s natural laws, quite different: the first teeth are inherited; they stem, so to speak, as fruits from the earlier organisms of the ancestors; and only the second teeth arise from the individual’s own physical laws. We must bear this in mind. Only by delving into such details can we realize that there truly is a difference here. We receive our first teeth because our ancestors bequeath them to us along with our constitution; we receive our second teeth because our own physical organism is constituted in such a way that we can produce them through it. In the first case, the teeth are directly inherited; in the second, the physical organism is inherited, and this in turn produces the second teeth.

[ 7 ] Next, we must distinguish a second phase of life, which extends from the change of teeth to sexual maturity, that is, up to the age of fourteen or fifteen. This phase involves the development of the etheric body. The third period, which extends to the age of twenty-one or twenty-two, represents the formation of the astral body. This is followed by the formation of the ego, progressing from the development of the feeling soul to the development of the intellectual soul and the conscious soul. This is how we distinguish the stages of human life. Within these stages of life, as you are well aware, only what pertains to the early stages of life is actually regular. This must be so, and it is also correct for modern human beings.

[ 8 ] Such a regular pattern in the distinction as seen in the first three stages of life does not apply to the subsequent ones; their duration cannot be specified with nearly the same precision. And when we ask ourselves why this is so, we must realize that, in the development of the world, there is always, so to speak, a midpoint following the first three of seven stages. We are now situated in the post-Atlantean epoch, have already within us the fruits of the first four epochs—that is, in a sense, the fruits of the first three epochs and the fourth—are currently living in the fifth, and are moving toward the sixth.

[ 9 ] Now we can quite rightly find a certain similarity between the development of the post-Atlantean epochs and the development of the individual human being, so that here, too, we can quite clearly distinguish the macrocosmic from the microcosmic. Let us consider what characterizes the first post-Atlantean epoch in particular, which we call the ancient Indian epoch, because the character of post-Atlantean development was particularly pronounced among the Indian people. In this first epoch—as you will find confirmed by various things I have already said—there was, above all, a high, comprehensive, far-reaching, ancient knowledge, an ancient wisdom. What the seven holy Rishis taught in India was, in principle, what the natural seers and also a large part of the people actually saw in the spiritual world at that time. This ancient knowledge existed in the Indian era as a legacy from earlier times. During the Atlantean era, it had been experienced clairvoyantly. Now it had become more of an ancient, inherited wisdom that had been preserved and proclaimed by the Rishis to those who, through initiation, strove their way back up to the spiritual worlds. Essentially, what entered human consciousness was entirely an inherited legacy. Therefore, it did not in any way possess the character of our present-day knowledge. One gets a completely false impression if one tries to express the most important things proclaimed by the holy Rishis in the first post-Atlantean cultural period in the same forms we use to express our knowledge in modern science. That is hardly possible. For the scientific forms we have today arose only within the post-Atlantean culture itself. The knowledge of the ancient Rishis was of a completely different kind. It was such that the one who communicated it continually felt how it was working within him, fermenting within him, how it arose in the very moment. And there is one characteristic we must note above all else if we wish to understand what knowledge was like back then. For this knowledge was not built upon memory at all. Memory played no role whatsoever in it. I ask you to bear this in mind in particular. Today, memory plays the greatest role in the communication of knowledge. When a university professor takes the lectern or a public speaker ascends the podium, he must have ensured that he knew beforehand what he intends to say and repeats it afterward from memory. There are, of course, people today who say they do not do this, that they followed their genius, but there is not much to that. Today, the communication of knowledge is truly based, for the most part, on memory.

[ 10 ] To truly understand how knowledge was imparted in ancient India, one must realize that the knowledge only came into being in the mind of the one imparting it at the very moment of imparting it. In the past, knowledge was not prepared in the same way it is today. The ancient rishi did not prepare it by committing to memory what he had to say. He prepared himself by putting himself into a sacred mood, into a devout mood, so to speak; by approaching what he was about to share with the understanding: I must first make my soul devout, permeate it with sacred moods! He prepared the mood, the feelings, but not what he had to say. And then it was like reading from the invisible at the moment of communication. Listeners who might take notes would have been unthinkable in those days. That was something absolutely out of the question, for it would have been interpreted to mean that what one brought along in this way had not the slightest value. Only that which one carried within one’s soul, and which inspired one to subsequently reproduce the matter in a similar way to how the one who had presented it had reproduced it himself, had value in the sense of that time. It would have been a desecration of what was shared if one had written anything down. Why? Because, in the spirit of the times, people quite rightly held the view: What is written on paper is not the same as what was shared—it simply cannot be!

[ 11 ] This tradition has endured for a long time, for such things remain in the heart far longer than in the mind. And when the art of printing was added to the art of writing in the Middle Ages, the people initially perceived it as black magic, because old sentiments still lingered in the popular imagination; because there was a sense that what is meant to live from soul to soul should not be preserved in such a grotesquely profane manner as occurs when it is painted with printer’s ink onto white sheets, so that it is, in a sense, first transformed into something dead, only to be revived again, perhaps in a rather unedifying way. So we must regard this direct flow from soul to soul as a characteristic of that era. This was entirely a tendency of the early post-Atlantean period, and one must understand it correctly if, for example, one wishes to comprehend how the ancient rhapsodes roamed about in Greek and also in Old Germanic times, reciting their long, long poems. Had they relied on their memory for this, they would not have been able to recite it over and over again in that way. For it was the quality of the soul, the soul’s power, that underlay them—a far more living one. When someone recites a poem today, they have learned it beforehand. These people, however, experienced what they recited, and there was truly a kind of re-creation taking place in that moment. This was also supported by the fact that, to a far greater extent than is the case today, the more spiritual elements still came to the fore. Today—with a certain justification for our time—everything spiritual is suppressed. When something is recited today, it is about the meaning; the literal meaning is brought out. It was not even like that when the medieval singer performed the Nibelungenlied. He still had a certain feeling for the inner rhythm; he even stamped his foot, marking the beat of the rises and falls, going up and down.

[ 12 ] But these are merely echoes of what existed in ancient times. Nevertheless, you would be forming a false impression of the ancient Indian rishis and their disciples if you were to believe that they did not faithfully transmit the ancient Atlantean knowledge. The students in our universities, even if they have filled their entire notebooks, do not reproduce what has been said as faithfully as the ancient knowledge was once reproduced by the Indian rishis.

[ 13 ] The subsequent periods are characterized by the fact that, for the most part, the ancient Atlantean knowledge ceased to have an effect. Until the decline of the ancient Indian cultural period, it was truly the case that the knowledge humanity had received as an inheritance continued to grow ever further and further. There was still a growth of knowledge taking place. However, this essentially came to an end with the first post-Atlantean epoch, and after the Indian period, it was hardly possible to bring forth anything new from human nature that had not already existed. Thus, an increase in knowledge was possible only in the first period; then it ceased. And in the ancient Persian period, among those influenced by Zoroastrianism, a phase began with regard to external science that can now be compared to the second stage of human life and is best understood in this way. For the ancient Indian cultural period can truly be compared to the first stage of human life, to the time from birth to the seventh year, when all forms take shape, while everything that follows is merely growth within the established forms. So it was with the spiritual in the first post-Atlantean period. And what followed in the Proto-Persian epoch can now be compared to a kind of learning. Just as a person engages in school-based learning in the second phase of life, so too can the Proto-Persian period be compared to a kind of learning. We must only clarify who the students were and who the teachers were. I would like to say one thing here.

[ 14 ] Has it not struck you as curious how very different Zarathustra, the true leader of the second post-Atlantean cultural epoch, appears to us compared to the Indian rishis? While the Rishis appear to us as figures consecrated by ancient, sacred antiquity, into whom the old Atlantean knowledge pours, Zarathustra appears as the first figure initiated into post-Atlantean knowledge. Thus, something new is emerging. Zoroaster is indeed the first post-Atlantean historical figure—who was initiated into that form of mystery knowledge which is truly post-Atlantean, in which the knowledge is prepared in such a way that it essentially becomes comprehensible only to the reason and intellect of post-Atlantean humanity. It was true, however, that in the Zoroastrian schools of the first epoch, one attained eminently supersensory knowledge. But in these Zoroastrian schools, for the first time, this knowledge began to take shape in human concepts. While the ancient Rishi knowledge cannot be rendered in the forms of our modern science, this is already more possible with Zoroastrian knowledge. This is indeed a wholly supersensible knowledge, dealing as it does with the knowledge of the supersensible world, but it is clothed in concepts that are similar to the concepts and ideas of the post-Atlantean era in general. And among his followers, what is now emerging is primarily what one might call: the conceptual system of humanity is being systematically developed. That is to say, the ancient sacred treasure of wisdom is being taken—the one that developed up to the end of the Indian epoch and has been passed down from generation to generation. Nothing new is being added, but now the old is being elaborated upon. And we can imagine the task of the mysteries of the second post-Atlantean cultural epoch by drawing a comparison, as if, for example, some occult book were to appear today. Of course, any occult book that is truly based on research in the higher worlds could be clothed entirely in logical arguments, could be brought down to the physical plane entirely within logical arguments. That could happen. But then, for example, my *Secret Science* would have had to become a work of fifty volumes, and each volume as large as that single volume itself. In this way, one could distinguish every area quite precisely and clothe it in logical forms. All of that is there and can be done. But one can also think in another way: namely, that one leaves the reader, as it were, with something to ponder. For this must already be attempted today; otherwise, one would make no progress at all in the practice of occultism. Today, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, human beings already have the ability to approach such occult knowledge using the concepts of reason that humanity has developed and to process it. But during the Zarathustra epoch, one first had to find the concepts for these facts. They were gradually worked out. Sciences such as those that exist today did not exist back then. There was something like a remnant from the time of the ancient Rishi knowledge, and something emerged that could be clothed in human concepts. But the human concepts themselves first had to be found; it was into these that the supersensible was first poured. This nuance of grasping the supersensible in human concepts only then arose. Therefore, one can say: The Rishis still spoke entirely in the manner in which supersensible knowledge can be expressed at all. They spoke in a variable imagery, in an imaginative language. They poured their knowledge, as it were, from soul to soul, speaking in vivid images that arose again and again wherever they communicated their knowledge. There was no mention at all of cause and effect, of other concepts as we have them today, or of any kind of logic. All that came later. And with regard to supersensible knowledge, this began in the second post-Atlantean cultural epoch. It was then, so to speak, that one first felt the resistance of material existence; it was then that one felt the necessity to express the supersensible in such a way that it takes on forms that human beings conceive on the physical plane. This was also, in essence, the task of the pre-Persian cultural epoch.

[ 15 ] Then came the third post-Atlantean epoch, the Egyptian-Chaldean culture. By this time, people had developed concepts of the supersensible. This is once again difficult for people today to grasp. One must imagine: there was no physical science yet, but rather concepts of the supersensible that had been arrived at through supersensible means. People knew what was happening in the supersensible worlds, and they could express it in the thought forms of the physical plane. Now, in the third cultural epoch, people began to apply what they had gained from the supersensible world to the physical plane itself. This can again be compared to the third stage of human life. While in the second stage of life a person learns to apply what they have learned without actually doing so, in the third stage most people must already apply it to the physical plane. The disciples of Zarathustra in the second cultural epoch were disciples of heavenly knowledge. Now people began to apply what they had gained to the physical plane. Let us say, to bring this to mind: Now people had learned from the visions of the supersensible how to grasp everything supersensible by expressing it in a triangle—the triangle as an image for the supersensible; that the supersensible human nature, which is poured into the physical, can be understood as a triad. And so they had learned other concepts as well, so that they applied physical things to the supersensible. Geometry, for example, was first learned in such a way that it was understood as symbolic concepts. Now they were there, and they applied them: the Egyptians in surveying for their field cultivation, the Chaldeans to the course of the stars, by founding astrology and astronomy. What had previously applied only to the supersensible was now applied to what one saw with the physical senses. People began to work out on the physical plane what they had brought forth from supersensible knowledge, so that in the third cultural epoch, if we may put it that way, the application of knowledge gained from the supersensible to the sensory world began. This was only the case in the third epoch.

[ 16 ] In the fourth epoch, the Greco-Latin one, it is now particularly important that human beings come to realize that things are as they are. They did so before, but they had not actually realized that things are as they are. The ancient Rishis did not need to come to this realization, for they received knowledge directly from the spiritual world. In the Zarathustra period, people worked solely with spiritual knowledge and knew exactly how supersensory knowledge forms itself. In the Egyptian-Chaldean period, concepts from the supersensible were clothed in what had been gained from the physical. And in the fourth epoch, people asked: Do we have the right to apply what has been formed in the spiritual world to the physical world? Does what is gained in the spiritual truly apply to physical things? — It was only in the fourth cultural epoch that humanity could pose this question to itself, after having applied supersensible knowledge to physical experiences and observations in innocence for some time. There, for once, it was conscientious toward itself and asked: What right is there to apply supersensible concepts to physical events, to physical facts?

[ 17 ] In fact, there is always a figure in a given era who carries out some particularly important task of that era and who is especially struck by the existence of such a thing. In such a figure, who is struck by this: Do we have the right to apply supersensible concepts to physical facts? — one can then truly see how what I have just hinted at develops. For example, you can see how Plato still has a very vivid connection to the ancient world and still applies concepts to the physical world in the old way. His student Aristotle is then the one who asks: Is that even allowed? — That is why he is the founder of logic.

[ 18 ] Those who have no interest in the humanities should ask themselves this question: Why did logic not emerge until the fourth epoch? If humanity has been evolving since time immemorial, did it really have no reason to ask itself the question of logic at a specific point in time? If one looks at things realistically, one can identify important turning points in development precisely at specific moments. For example, an important turning point in development lies between Plato and Aristotle. One might therefore say: Indeed, in the period described, we are faced with something that is still, in a certain sense, connected to the ancient relationship with the spiritual world as it existed in the Atlantean era. Living knowledge did indeed die out with the Indian period. But with it, something new had been brought down. Now, however, people had become critical in a certain sense: How can the supersensible be applied to physical-sensory things? That is to say, human beings had only now become aware that they themselves accomplish something when they observe the world externally; that they bring something down into the world. That was an important period.

[ 19 ] One can still sense that concepts and ideas are of a supernatural nature if one begins to see in their very character a guarantee of the supernatural world. But very few people sense this. For most people, what lies in concepts and ideas is something quite tenuous and flimsy. And although there is something alive within them that could provide full proof of human immortality, people could not be convinced of it, because concepts and ideas are truly a very thin spider’s web compared to the coarse reality that people demand. It is the thinnest thread that humanity has gradually spun out of the spiritual world after descending into the physical world. The thinnest, the last thread from the supersensible world, are still concepts and ideas. And in this time, when humanity has descended to the final fabric—one that is no longer credible to them at all—where they have spun themselves entirely out of the spiritual world, we now witness the most powerful impact from the supersensible world: the Christ impulse. Thus the strongest spiritual reality enters our post-Atlantean era and appears at a time when human beings themselves possess the least spiritual capacity within themselves, because they now have only the spiritual capacity for concepts and ideas.

[ 20 ] For those who view the development of humanity from a broad perspective, there is a rather interesting compilation which, aside from the fact that it can, I might say, have a storm-like effect on the soul, can also be extraordinarily interesting from a scientific standpoint: namely, if you set the infinite spirituality of that Being who strikes into humanity with the Christ Principle side by side with the fact that human beings had, shortly before, asked themselves how their final spiritual web of concepts relates to spirituality—that is, if you place Aristotelian logic alongside it, this web of the most abstract concepts and ideas to which human beings had finally descended. One cannot imagine a greater distance than that between the spirituality that descended to the physical plane in the essence of Christ, and the spirituality that humanity has preserved for itself. Therefore, you will find it understandable that, initially, in the first centuries of Christianity, it was not at all possible to comprehend the spirituality of Christ with this web of concepts as it existed in Aristotelianism. And gradually, an effort arose to understand the facts of world and human history in such a way that Aristotelian logic could be applied to world events. That was then the task of medieval philosophy.

[ 21 ] What is important, however, is that the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch can be compared, in terms of the stages of human life, to the development of the human ego; that the ego of humanity as a whole is itself entering into human evolution; and that humanity as such has actually moved the farthest away from the spiritual world. This is also the reason why human beings were initially incapable of receiving Christ in any other way than through faith. Therefore, Christianity had to be a matter of faith at first and is only gradually beginning to become a matter of knowledge. It will become a matter of knowledge. But we have only just begun to penetrate the Gospels with knowledge. Christianity was a matter of faith for centuries and millennia; it had to be, because humanity had fallen furthest away from the spiritual worlds.

[ 22 ] Even if this was the case in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, it is nevertheless necessary that, following this greatest descent, humanity now begin to ascend once more. The fourth epoch brought humanity down the farthest in a certain sense, but in return gave it the greatest spiritual impact—which, of course, it could not understand, but which will only be comprehensible in the subsequent periods. Yet we now recognize our task in this: to once again imbue our concepts with spirituality from within.

[ 23 ] The development of the world is not entirely straightforward. For once a sphere has begun to roll in a certain direction, it has the inertia to continue rolling. And if it is to continue rolling in another direction, another impulse must come along to push it in that other direction. Thus, pre-Christian culture had a tendency to maintain the downward rush into the physical world and to carry it into our time. And the upward-striving tendency is only just beginning, and moreover, it needs constant upward impetus. Especially in human thought, for example, we can see how the inertia of the downward rush continues. And a large part of what is called philosophy today is nothing more than the ball rolling further downhill. Aristotle truly still had a sense that a spiritual reality is indeed grasped through the spider’s web of human concepts. A few centuries after him, however, people were no longer able to know at all how what is observed in the human mind relates to reality. And the driest, most arid aspect of the development of the old is Kantianism and everything connected with it. For Kantianism frames the central question in such a way that it severs every connection whatsoever between what the human being develops as a concept, between the idea as inner life, and what the real concepts are. All of this is dying, old, and is therefore not at all suited to providing the life-giving force for the future. Now you will no longer be surprised that the conclusion of my psychosophical lectures had a theosophical background. I have drawn your attention to the fact that in everything we do, especially regarding soul knowledge, we have the task of offering back to the altars of the gods the knowledge that was previously bestowed upon humanity by the gods and brought down to us—knowledge that has inspired us—so that this knowledge may once again be offered up before the altars of the gods. We must, however, reappropriate those concepts that arise from spirituality.

[ 24 ] It is not out of immodesty, but rather in accordance with the laws of the times, that I say: It is necessary to pursue the study of the soul—including as a science—in such a way that it emerges from the state of deathly rigidity into which it has fallen. Certainly, there have been many psychologists, and there are still many today, but they all work with concepts that are not animated by spirituality. It is therefore a telling sign that a man like Franz Brentano published only the first volume of his *Psychology* in 1874, the content of which, though some aspects of it are flawed, is generally correctly structured. He had already announced the second volume, which was to be published that same year; but he did not finish it; he got stuck. He was still able to schematize. But if one wants to make further progress, one needs the spiritual impulse.

[ 25 ] Psychologies such as those that exist today—for example, those of Wundt and Lipps—are not really psychologies at all, because they operate solely on the basis of preconceived concepts; from the outset, they were not designed to amount to anything. Franz Brentano’s psychology, on the other hand, was designed so that it could have amounted to something, but it had to come to a standstill. And that is the fate of every dying science. In the natural sciences, this will not happen so quickly. There, one can work with flimsy concepts because one collects the facts and lets them speak for themselves. In the science of the soul, however, this is much less achievable. One immediately loses the entire substrate if one tries to work with the usual straw-like concepts. One does not immediately lose the heart muscle, even if one analyzes it like a mineral product without knowing its true nature. But one cannot analyze the soul in the same way.

[ 26 ] Thus, the sciences will, as it were, die out from the top down. And little by little, people will come to realize that while they are indeed capable of applying the laws of nature, this is entirely independent of science. The construction of machines and tools, telephones, and so on, is something entirely different from truly understanding the sciences or even advancing them. One need not have any insight into electricity to be able to construct electrical devices. True science, however, is dying out more and more. And so we now stand at the point where external science must indeed be enlivened by spiritual science. Our fifth cultural epoch, in particular, has, on the one hand, science rolling down inertly. When the ball can go no further, it simply gets stuck—as with Brentano. Alongside this, however, humanity’s ascent must be increasingly revitalized. And so it will be. This can only happen by continuing those endeavors that consist of enriching knowledge gained externally with what spiritual, occult research offers.

[ 27 ] Our era, as the fifth post-Atlantean one, will increasingly take on such a character that, as I have already emphasized, the ancient Egyptian-Chaldean era will appear as a kind of repetition within our own era. I would like to draw your attention to one thing. We are not yet very far along in this repetition; rather, we are still very much in the early stages. Just how little progress we have made in this regard may have become apparent to you if you have reflected on what has transpired in various areas during our General Assembly. For example, you heard Mr. Seiler’s lecture on astrology and were able to form the impression that, as a spiritual scientist, you are in a position to associate certain ideas with astrological concepts, whereas this is impossible with the concepts of modern physical astronomy without everything astrology says having to be regarded as nonsense. This is not a consequence of astronomical science as such. Astronomical science is, after all, the one that has the greatest opportunity to be led back to spirituality. This is most possible with it. But people’s mindset is very far removed from returning to the spiritual. There would, of course, be an easy method to return from what astronomy offers today to the fundamental truths of astrology, which is so disregarded today. But it will still take some time before a bridge can be built between them. In the meantime, all sorts of theories will be devised that seek, for example, to explain planetary movements and so on in purely materialistic terms. Things are more difficult in the field of chemistry and in matters relating to life. There, the bridge will be even harder to build.

[ 28 ] It will likely be easiest in the field of the science of the soul. All that will be necessary is to recognize what formed the conclusion of my *Psychosophy*: that the stream of soul life flows not only from the past into the future, but also from the future into the past; that we have two currents of time: the etheric, which moves toward the future, while that which we call the astral, on the other hand, flows back from the future into the past. Perhaps there is no one on Earth today who will come to this realization unless they have a spiritual impulse. Only when we come to see that something is constantly coming toward us from the future will we rise to a true understanding of the life of the soul. It is not possible in any other way. This one concept will be necessary. To this end, however, one will have to break away from that way of thinking which, when speaking of cause and effect, relies solely on the past. We must not do this—rely solely on the past—but rather we must speak of the future as something real that comes toward us just as truly as we carry the past with us.

[ 29 ] It will, of course, be a long time before we have these concepts. But until then, there will be no psychology either. The 19th century came up with a rather nice concept: psychology without a soul. People are quite proud of this term and mean something like this by it: Let’s simply study the manifestations of the human psyche, but let’s not talk about any soul that underlies it—the study of the soul without a soul! Methodologically, that might still work. But what has come of it, to use a crude comparison, is nothing other than a meal without food; that is psychology. Now, people are not very satisfied when they are given a meal with empty plates, but nineteenth-century science is wonderfully satisfied when it is served a psychology in which matters are discussed without a soul. This began relatively early on. And it is here that spiritual life will first have to find its way in everywhere.

[ 30 ] Thus, we are witnessing the beginnings of a completely new life. The old has, as it were, dried up, and new life must develop. We must feel this. We must feel that an ancient wisdom was given to us from the old Atlantean era, that this has gradually dried up, and that we are faced with the task, in our present incarnations, of beginning to gather more and more of a new wisdom that will be available to humanity in later times. The Christ impulse is there to make this possible. It will continually develop a living effectiveness. And perhaps the most will be drawn out of the Christ impulse when all tradition and what has been historically attached to it externally will have died away, when one will have come to the real, genuine, historical Christ himself.

[ 31 ] Thus we can see that the post-Atlantean development of time can indeed be compared to a single human life; that it is also a kind of macrocosm that stands in contrast to the microcosm of the human being. But the individual human being is in a very unique situation. What ultimately remains for him to process in the second half of life other than what he has acquired for himself in the first half? And when that is exhausted, death follows. Only the spirit can triumph over death by continuing to develop in a new incarnation what gradually begins to die away once we have passed the midpoint of our lives. We experience an upward development until the age of thirty-five; then a downward development begins. The spirit, however, ascends all the more. And what it can no longer develop into physicality in the second half of life, it can bring to fruition in a subsequent incarnation. Thus we see the body gradually dying away and the spirit gradually coming to fruition.

[ 32 ] The macrocosm of humanity presents us with a very similar picture. Up to the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, we see a youthful, upward-striving cultural development; from that point on, a veritable decline. Death is everywhere in terms of the development of human consciousness, yet at the same time, a new spiritual life is beginning. This will reincarnate as the spiritual life of humanity in the period following the current cultural epoch. There, human beings must consciously work on what is to be reincarnated. The other aspect is in the process of dying off, truly dying off. And we look prophetically into the future: Many sciences have arisen and are arising, a blessing of course for the post-Atlantean cultural epoch, but they belong to what is dying away. That immediate life which is poured into human life under the direct influence of the Christ impulse will revive in the future just as Atlantean knowledge was revived in the holy Rishis.

[ 33 ] Today, mainstream science is familiar only with that part of Copernicanism which is in the process of dying out. The part that is meant to live on—that which is to bear fruit from Copernicanism, not only what has already been effective through the four centuries, but what is meant to live on—that is something humanity must first conquer. For Copernicus’s teaching is not as true as it is presented today. Only spiritual research will reveal this. This is already the case with what humanity today considers the truest, even in astronomy. And so it will be with everything else that is regarded as knowledge among people today. And what you find as science today is true; it can be useful, and therein lies its usefulness. To the extent that today’s science becomes technology, it is justified. To the extent that it seeks to contribute to human knowledge, it is a dead product. It is useful for the immediate crafts of humanity. For that it is good, and for that it needs no spiritual content. Insofar as it seeks to make sense of the mysteries of the universe, it belongs to a dying culture. And to enrich our knowledge of the mysteries of the universe, it would have to enliven everything that is offered today as external science with what comes from spiritual science.

[ 34 ] This was intended as a prelude to the reflections on the Gospel of Mark that we are now about to begin. But first, I needed to point out the necessity of the greatest spiritual impact at a time when humanity had, in fact, only the last, the thinnest thread of spirituality left.