The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today, I would first like to draw your attention to two images that we can conjure up in our minds’ eye from the course of human evolution over the past millennia. First, I would like to direct your attention to something that took place around the middle and toward the end of the fifth century B.C.E. It is all well known, of course; but, as I said, let us turn the gaze of our soul toward it.

[ 2 ] We observe how the Buddha gathered a number of students and disciples around him in India, and how what took place there between the Buddha and his disciples and students gave rise to that great, powerful movement which flowed through the centuries in the East, making mighty waves and bringing inner healing, inner liberation of the soul, spiritual uplift, and a sense of humanity to countless people. If we wish to characterize what happened there, we need, so to speak, only to take a look at the main content of the Buddha’s teachings and the Buddha’s work.

[ 3 ] Life, as human beings can experience it on Earth during their earthly incarnation, is suffering; it is caused by the fact that, through the succession of their incarnations, human beings are subject to the urge for ever-new reincarnations. The goal worth striving for is to free oneself from this urge toward reincarnation, to eradicate from the soul everything that provokes the impulse to enter into a physical incarnation, in order to finally ascend to a state of existence in which the soul no longer feels the urge to be connected to existence through physical senses through physical organs to existence, to ascend, as it is so called, to Nirvana.

[ 4 ] This is the great teaching that flowed from the Buddha’s lips: that life is suffering, and that human beings must find the means to be free from suffering in order to attain Nirvana. If we wish to find an expression that succinctly captures, in terms familiar to us, the impulse underlying this teaching of the Buddha, we might say something like: Through the power and force of his individuality, the Buddha directed his disciples’ gaze toward earthly existence and, drawing from the infinite abundance of his compassion, sought to give them the means to lift their souls—with all that is within them—from the earthly to the heavenly, to lift human thought and human philosophy from the earthly to the heavenly.

[ 5 ] This is what we might express as a kind of formula if we wish to succinctly and truly describe the impulse that emanated from the Buddha’s great sermon at Benares. Thus we see the Buddha gathering around him disciples who faithfully follow him. What do we perceive in the souls of these disciples? What gradually becomes their creed? — that all the striving of the human soul must ultimately be directed toward becoming free from the urge for rebirth, becoming free from the inclination toward sensory existence, seeking the perfection of the self by freeing this self from everything that binds it to sensory existence, and uniting with all that connects it to its divine-spiritual origin. Such feelings lived in the disciples of the Buddha: to become free from all the trials of life, to be connected to the world only through the soul’s sense of compassion that shines into the spiritual, yet to lose oneself in the pursuit of spiritual perfection, to become free from need, and to be connected as little as possible to what binds the outer human being to existence. Thus these disciples of the Buddha walked through the world; thus they perceived the purpose and goal of their discipleship under the Buddha.

[ 6 ] And when we trace the centuries during which Buddhism spread and ask ourselves: What was alive in the spreading Buddhism, what was alive in the souls and hearts of its followers? — the answer we receive is: These people were devoted to lofty goals; but at the center of all their thinking, feeling, and sensibility lived the great figure of the Buddha, lived the focus on all that he had said in such captivating, meaningful words about liberation from the suffering of life. At the center of all thought and feeling lived the all-encompassing, powerful authority of the Buddha in the hearts of his disciples, in the hearts of his followers through the centuries. What the Buddha said was regarded by these disciples, these followers, as a sacred word.

[ 7 ] Why did the Buddha’s disciples and followers regard these words of the Buddha as a message from heaven itself? The reason for this was that these disciples and followers lived in the belief, in the conviction, that at that time, during the event under the Bodhi tree, true insight into worldly existence had dawned in the Buddha’s soul, that the light, the sun of the universe, had shone forth, and that therefore whatever came from his mouth was itself to be regarded as a pronouncement of the spirits of the universe. What matters is this mood, as it lived in the hearts of the Buddha’s disciples, the Buddha’s followers—the sacredness of this mood, its uniqueness, its characteristic nature. Let us place all of this before our mind’s eye in order to learn to understand what happened there half a millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 8 ] And now let us consider a different perspective on world history. In the long span of human evolution, a period of roughly a century can truly be considered a single moment. A century is insignificant when we are dealing with the millennia and millennia of human evolution. Therefore, we can say: Even though the picture we now wish to place before our soul is set a century later, for the development of humanity it is nevertheless almost simultaneous with the event we have just identified as the Buddha event.

[ 9 ] In the fifth century B.C., we see another individual in ancient Greece gradually gathering students and followers around him. Again, this fact is well known. But to gain an understanding of the developments of the past centuries, it is helpful to keep this image of that individual in mind. We see Socrates gathering students around him in ancient Greece. And to be able to mention Socrates in this context, one need only consider the image of Socrates sketched by the great philosopher Plato, which also seems to be essentially confirmed by the great philosopher Aristotle. One need only consider that Plato sketched the image of Socrates in such a vivid manner, and one can then also say: A movement emanated from Socrates in the West. And whoever takes the entire character of the cultural development of the West into account will come to the conclusion that what can be called the Socratic element was decisive for everything Western. Even if this Socratic element propagates itself more subtly through the waves of world history in the West than the Buddhist element does in the East, one can still draw a parallel between Socrates and Buddha. But in a peculiar way, we must characterize the discipleship of Socrates differently from that of Buddha. One might say: Everything that characteristically distinguishes the West from the East comes into view when one considers this fundamental difference between Buddha and Socrates.

[ 10 ] Socrates gathers his students around him. How does he feel toward his students? His art of relating to his students has been called a spiritual midwifery, because he sought to draw out of the students’ own souls what they knew and what they should learn. He posed his questions in such a way that the students’ innermost dispositions were stirred into motion, so that he did not actually impart anything to the students of his own accord, but rather drew everything out of the students themselves. The somewhat dry, sober element inherent in the Socratic worldview and the art of worldview stems from the fact that Socrates actually appealed to the independence and the innate reason of each student when he walked through the streets of Athens with his group in a somewhat different yet similar manner to how Buddha walked the paths with his disciples. But while Buddha proclaimed what he had received through enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, and while what he had received from the spiritual world and then allowed to flow back onto his disciples continued to work through the centuries, so that what had lived in Buddha lived on in his disciples, Socrates made not the slightest claim to live on as “Socrates” in the hearts of his disciples. He did not even wish, when he stood before his disciples, to impart anything of himself into their souls, but rather he wanted to leave it up to them to draw out of themselves what they possessed. Nothing of Socrates was to pass into the souls of his disciples, absolutely nothing.

[ 11 ] One cannot imagine a greater difference than that between Buddha and Socrates. In the soul of the Buddha’s disciple, the Buddha himself should live in full. In the soul of Socrates’ disciple, there should be as little of Socrates as there is in a newborn child of the midwife’s own making. Thus, the spiritual element in Socrates’ disciples was to be brought to light through Socrates’ spiritual midwifery, setting the human being on its own feet, drawing out of the human being what is within the human being itself. That was what Socrates wanted. One could also characterize this difference between Socrates and the Buddha with the following words. If a voice from heaven had wished to indicate what the Buddha’s disciples were to gain through the Buddha, it might well have said: Ignite within yourselves what lived in the Buddha, so that through the Buddha you may find the path to spiritual existence! And if one were to characterize what Socrates wanted in a similar way, one would have to say: Socrates wanted to call out to each of his disciples: Become what you are!

[ 12 ] When we hold these two images before our minds, must we not say to ourselves: Here before us stand two currents of human evolution, two currents that are, however, polar opposites? They touch one another in a certain way; but they touch only at their outermost ends. One must not confuse these things; one must characterize them in their distinctness and then point out where, after all, a higher unity exists. If one imagines the Buddha standing before a disciple, one might say: He strives—as you will recognize from the Buddha’s discourses—with the most sublime words in ever-recurring repetitions—and these are necessary, they cannot be omitted in the rendering of the Buddha’s discourses—to kindle in the disciple’s soul that which is necessary to lead him up to the spiritual worlds with the aid of what he himself experienced beneath the Bodhi tree. And so the words are chosen that they all resound with a detachment from the earth, like a heavenly proclamation from the heavenly world, from lips that speak under the immediate impression that arose in enlightenment, and which they wish to convey.

[ 13 ] And how can we conceive of Socrates and the student in relation to one another? They stand opposite one another in such a way that Socrates tells the student—as he attempts to clarify the relationship between humanity and the divine through the simplest rational considerations of everyday life—how he should think and how the logical connections work. The student is constantly referred to the most sober, everyday matters and is then expected to apply what he can grasp through ordinary logic to what he can acquire as knowledge. Only once does Socrates seem to rise to such a height that one might say he speaks like the Buddha to his disciples. He appears this way once, as he faces death. There, where he speaks of the immortality of the soul immediately before his passing, he does indeed speak like a supremely enlightened being; but he also speaks in such a way that everything he says can only be understood if one takes his entire personal experience into account. That is why it touches us so deeply, speaks so directly to our souls, when we consider the Platonic dialogue on the immortality of the soul, where Socrates says, for example: Have I not striven all my life, through philosophy, to attain what a human being can attain, in order to be freed from the sensory world? And now, when my soul is soon to be detached from all that is sensory, should it not joyfully enter into the spiritual realm? Should I not joyfully enter into that which I have always strived for inwardly whenever I engaged in philosophical inquiry?

[ 14 ] Anyone who can grasp the full atmosphere of this conversation between Socrates and Plato in the *Phaedo* will immediately feel transported to a state of mind akin to that which emanates from the sublime teachings of the Buddha, when he speaks to the hearts of his disciples. And one can then say, with regard to what the difference is, what the polar contrast is between these two personalities: at a particular point, they rise in such a way that a unity emerges even within the polar contrast. If we turn our gaze to the Buddha, we will find: On the whole, the Buddha’s discourses are such that one might say, that feeling one has when encountering Socrates’ discourse on the immortality of the soul—one experiences it throughout the entire body of the Buddha’s discourses. I am referring now to the mood, the spiritual tension. But that which is always poured out in the other, the Socratic discourses—which always aim to lead the human being to his own reason—is rarely found, though occasionally it is, in the Buddha; it resounds at times. One literally senses something like a transposed Socratic dialogue when the Buddha once seeks to make clear to the disciple Sona that it is not good to dwell merely in the realm of the senses and be connected solely to sensory existence, or to merely mortify oneself, or to live only like the ancient, self-mortifying people, but that it is good to take the middle path. There Buddha stands before the disciple Sona and speaks to him something like this: “Look here, Sona, will you be able to play the lute well if the strings of the lute are too loose?” “No,” Sona must say, “I will not be able to play the lute well if the strings are too loose.” “Very well,” says the Buddha to Sona, “will you be able to play the lute well if the strings are too tight?” “No,” Sona must say, “I will not be able to play the lute well if the strings are too tight.” “So when,” says the Buddha, “will you be able to play the lute well?” “When the strings of the lute are neither too loose nor too tight,” replies Sona. “And so,” says the Buddha, “it is with human beings as well. A person will not be able to attain all knowledge if they succumb too strongly to the life of the senses; nor will they attain all knowledge if they merely withdraw from all existence in self-mortification. The middle path that must be taken with the taut strings of the lute must also be taken with regard to the mood of the human soul.”

[ 15 ] It could be said that this conversation between the Buddha and his disciple Sona could just as easily have been attributed to Socrates, for this is how Socrates speaks to his students, appealing to reason. What I have just told you is a “Socratic dialogue” that the Buddha conducted with his disciple Sona; but such a dialogue is as rare in the Buddha’s teachings as the “Buddhist” dialogue on the immortality of the soul—which he conducted with his disciples before his death—is rare in Socrates’ teachings.

[ 16 ] It is always necessary to emphasize that one can only arrive at the truth by characterizing it in this way. It is easier to characterize things if one were to say, for example: The evolution of humanity advances through great leaders; these great leaders essentially always proclaim the same thing, only in different forms, and all individual leaders of humanity are, in their words, merely manifestations of the One. — Certainly, that is true, but it is as trivial as can be. What matters is that one makes the effort to recognize things, that one seeks unity and differentiation, that one characterizes things according to their diversity, and seeks the higher unity only from that diversity. This methodological remark must be made precisely because it corresponds to life in general when it comes to spiritual considerations. It is so easy to say: All religions contain only one thing, and then to content oneself with characterizing this “one thing” and saying: All the various founders of religions have, after all, merely provided different manifestations of the One. But it is infinitely trivial, even if this characterization is done with the most beautiful words. One gets just as little out of this as if one were to try from the outset to characterize two figures like Buddha and Socrates merely in terms of an abstract unity, without seeking the polar differentiation. But as soon as one traces them back to their forms of thought, people will soon recognize what is at stake. Pepper and salt, sugar and paprika are the ingredients that sit on the table for the meals; they are all “one,” namely ingredients for the meals. But no one, just because one can say these things are all one, would equate these individual ingredients with one another and, for example, want to sprinkle pepper or salt into their coffee instead of sugar. What one cannot accept in life, one should not accept in the spiritual realm either. One should not accept it when it is said that Krishna or Zarathustra, Orpheus or Hermes are, in essence, merely different manifestations of the “One.” This is no more worthy of a serious and truthful characterization than if one were to say: pepper and salt, sugar and paprika are all different manifestations of the one entity, the ingredients for the meal. What matters is that one truly understands such methodological matters and does not accept the more convenient for the truthful.

[ 17 ] When we consider these two figures, Buddha and Socrates, they appear to us as two distinct, polar opposites within the current of human evolution. And by now uniting these two, as we have shown, in a higher unity, we can add a third figure, who is also a great individuality around whom students and disciples gather: Christ Jesus. If we consider, among these pupils and disciples gathered around him, first his closest disciples, the Twelve, the Gospel of Mark in particular tells us something with the utmost clarity about the Master’s relationship to his disciples, just as we have just characterized it in another context regarding Buddha and Socrates, with the utmost clarity. And what is the clearest expression, the most concise, the most condensed expression? It is the one that tells us the following. Christ stands—as is indicated to us several times—before the crowd that wants to hear him. He speaks to this crowd, speaks to them, as the Gospel says, in parables or in images. He explains—as is so magnificently and simply depicted in the Gospel of Mark—certain deeply significant facts of world events and human development to the crowd through parables, through images. And it is then said: When he was alone with his inner disciples, he interpreted these images for them. We are also given a specific example in the Gospel of Mark of how he speaks to the crowd in imagery and how this is then explained to his inner circle of disciples.

“And he taught them many things in parables, and said to them in his teaching:

‘Listen! Behold, the sower went out to sow.

And as he was sowing, some seed fell along the path; and the birds came and ate it up.

And some fell on rocky ground, where it had not much soil, and immediately sprang up, because it had no depth of soil.

And when the sun rose, it was scorched and withered, because it had no root.

And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up and choked it, and it bore no fruit.

And some fell on good soil and bore fruit, which sprang up and grew and yielded thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and a hundredfold.

And he said, “Whoever has ears to hear, let them hear!”

And when he was alone, those around him, along with the Twelve, asked him about the parables.” (4:2–10.)

[ 18 ] And so he says to his closest disciples:

“The sower sows the word.

But these are the ones along the path: where the word is sown, and when they hear it, Satan comes immediately and takes away the word that was sown among them.

And likewise, where it is sown on rocky ground, these are the ones who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy,

but have no root in themselves, and are children of the moment; then, when tribulation comes or persecution for the word’s sake, they immediately fall away.

But where it is sown among thorns, these are those who have heard the word,

and the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the desires for other things come in and choke the word, and it proves unfruitful.

And where it is sown on good soil, these are the ones who hear the word and accept it and bear fruit, thirty, sixty, a hundredfold.” (4:14–20.)

[ 19 ] Here we have a complete example of how Christ Jesus taught. We are told how Buddha taught, and we are told how Socrates taught. Regarding Buddha, we can say in our Western language: He raised what people experience on earth up to the heavenly realm. The phrase has often been applied to Socrates to accurately characterize his entire approach: He brought philosophy down from heaven to earth, because he appealed to immediate earthly reason. One can clearly picture how these two individuals related to their students.

[ 20 ] What, then, was the attitude of Christ Jesus toward his disciples? His attitude toward the crowd was different: he taught them in parables; and his attitude toward his disciples, who were closer to him, was different: to them he explained the parables by telling them what they could understand, what was immediately accessible to human reason. One must therefore speak in more complex terms if one wishes to characterize the teaching method of Christ Jesus. A trait common to all Buddha teachings characterizes the Buddha teachings; hence we have only one type of disciple who belongs directly to the Buddha. Socrates’ disciples, too, are all alike, for the whole world can constitute Socrates’ discipleship, since Socrates desires nothing but to draw out what lies within the human soul; and again, Socrates relates to his disciples in only one way. Christ Jesus, however, stands in two ways: differently toward his intimate disciples, differently toward the crowd. What is the reason for this?

[ 21 ] If one wishes to understand what this is all about, one must first grasp the entire turning point in the course of history that stands before our souls in connection with the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. The times are coming to an end in which the old clairvoyance was a common human faculty. The further back we go in human evolution, the more we come to the times when the old clairvoyance was a common human faculty, when people looked into the spiritual worlds. How did they see into them? They saw in such a way that their vision was a beholding of the world’s mysteries in images, in unconscious or subconscious imaginings—a dreamlike clairvoyance in dreamlike imaginings, not in the rational concepts with which people today make sense of things when they seek to understand. What is science today, but also what is popular thinking today—what constitutes sober reason and judgment—did not exist in those ancient times. When a person faced the external world, they faced it by seeing it; but they did not break it down into concepts, they had no logic, they did not think about things in a combinatory way. It is even difficult for people today to create a mental image of this, because today we think about everything. But ancient people did not think that way. They passed by things, they saw them and imprinted the images on their minds, and this became understandable to them when, in the intermediate states between waking and sleeping, they looked into their dreamlike, imaginative world. There they saw images.

[ 22 ] Let’s create a more concrete mental image of this. Let’s imagine that an ancient person, many, many millennia ago, had observed his surroundings. He would have noticed that there was a teacher there explaining something to his students. The ancient person would have stood there and listened to the words the teacher spoke to his students. And if there had been more students there, he would have heard how one absorbed the words quite fervently; another also took them in, but soon let them slip away; a third was so absorbed in his own self-interest that he did not listen. Intellectually, for example, the ancient human being would not have been able to compare three such students. But when he was in the intermediate states between waking and sleeping, the whole scene would appear again as an image before his soul. Then he might have seen, for example, something like a sower walking and scattering seed—he would have seen this as a clairvoyant image—: he casts one seed into good soil, where it sprouts well; the second seed he casts into poorer soil, the third into stony soil. Of what fell on the second soil, less sprouts, and of what fell on the third soil, nothing at all. The ancient person would not have spoken as people do today: one student takes in the words, another takes them in not at all, and so on. But in the intermediate states between waking and sleeping, he saw the image; there he saw the explanation. And he would never have spoken of it otherwise. If one had asked him how he explained the relationship between the teacher and the students, he would have recounted his clairvoyant ‘dream image.’ That was reality for him, but also the explanation of the matter. That is how he would have spoken.

[ 23 ] Now, the crowd standing before Christ Jesus retained only the faintest remnants of the ancient art of clairvoyance; yet their souls were still capable of listening when the course of existence and the evolution of humanity were described in imagery. And just as one would speak to someone who had preserved the last legacy of the ancient clairvoyance and carried it into ordinary spiritual life, so Christ Jesus spoke to the crowd.

[ 24 ] And who were the inner circle of disciples? We have heard how they came together as the Twelve, comprising the seven sons of the mother of the Maccabees and the five sons of Mattathias. We have heard how they had advanced through the entire ancient Hebrew people toward the strong emphasis on the immortal Self. They were truly the first whom Christ Jesus could choose to appeal to that which lives in every soul, so that it might become a new starting point for human evolution. He spoke to the crowd, assuming that they understood what had been preserved as a legacy from the ancient clairvoyance; to his disciples he spoke in such a way that he could assume they were the first who could already understand something of how we speak to people today from the higher worlds. It was therefore dictated by the entire turning point of the ages that Christ Jesus spoke in different ways when he addressed the crowd and when he spoke to those who were his intimate disciples. He placed those whom he drew to himself as the Twelve right in the midst of the crowd. To understand—to understand rationally—what would become the common heritage of humanity in the time to come, namely, what pertains to the higher worlds and the mysteries of human evolution: that was the task of the inner circle of disciples of Christ Jesus. He spoke—just take everything he said there in explaining the parable to his disciples—one might say, even in Socratic terms. For what he spoke there, he drew out of each soul itself; only that Socrates confined himself more to earthly conditions, one might say, to common logic, while Christ Jesus spoke of spiritual matters. But when he spoke to his inner circle of disciples about spiritual matters, he did so in a Socratic manner. When the Buddha spoke to his disciples, he explained spiritual matters to them, but he explained them in a way that revealed enlightenment—that is, the human soul’s existence in the higher worlds. When Christ spoke to the crowd, he spoke in a way that the ordinary human soul had experienced in earlier times in the higher worlds. To the crowd, he spoke, one might say, like a popular Buddha; to his inner disciples, he spoke like a higher Socrates, like a spiritualized Socrates. Socrates drew the individual, earthly reason out of the souls of his disciples; Christ drew the heavenly reason out of the souls of his disciples. The Buddha gave his disciples heavenly enlightenment; Christ gave the crowd earthly enlightenment in his parables.

[ 25 ] I ask you to consider these three images: over in the land of the Ganges, the Buddha with his disciples—the counterpart to Socrates; over in Greece, Socrates with his disciples—the counterpart to the Buddha. And then this remarkable synthesis, this remarkable connection four or five centuries later. There you have the lawful course of human evolution laid out before your eyes in one of the greatest examples.

[ 26 ] Human evolution proceeds step by step. Much of what has been presented over the years in the early stages of Spiritual Science may seem to some like a kind of theory, a kind of mere doctrine. For example, many have certainly thought that such a thing is merely a doctrine, a mere theory, when it is said that the human soul is to be conceived as an interplay of the soul of feeling, the soul of understanding or the soul of emotion, and the soul of consciousness. Certainly, there are people who are quick to judge. How often have we seen that judgments are made even more hastily, even more hastily than by those who initially accept such a concept—where, as it were, the first outlines are drawn for further development—as complete in and of itself. There are, of course, quite different assessments as well. It is indeed good when we anthroposophists are also made aware of the ways in which one should not think.

[ 27 ] Sometimes we come across striking examples of how one should not think, yet many people believe that such thinking is permissible. This morning, someone told me a charming example of a peculiar way of thinking. I am using it here merely as an example, but as one of those examples that we should really take to heart, because as anthroposophists we are not only meant to become acquainted with the world’s vices, but are actually meant to do something to further the ever-increasing perfection of the soul. Therefore, it is not for a personal reason, but for a general spiritual reason, that I use as an example what was told to me this morning.

[ 28 ] It was said that in a certain part of Europe there is a gentleman who, a long time ago, had the most inaccurate things printed about what is taught in Steiner’s *Theosophy*, or about the way he relates to the spiritual movement in general. Now, a certain individual has been reproached today because an acquaintance of this individual—namely, the gentleman just mentioned—had such a thing printed. What did this individual say? “Yes, this acquaintance of mine is now beginning to study Dr. Steiner’s works in the most intensive way.” But he passed judgment years ago, and now the fact that he is now beginning to study these things is taken as an excuse! That is an impossible way of thinking within our movement. Future generations, who will one day write about this in history, will raise the question: Has there ever been such a thing, that it occurs to someone, after a person has passed judgment on a matter years ago, to say by way of excuse that he is now beginning to familiarize himself with the matter?

[ 29 ] These things are part of anthroposophical education, and we will only make progress once the general consensus is that such things simply cannot be allowed within the anthroposophical movement—they must be completely out of the question. For it is a matter of inner honesty not to be able to think in this way at all. One cannot take a single step toward the recognition of truth if one is still capable of making such a judgment at all. And it is the duty of the anthroposophist to take note of these things, not to pass them by unkindly and speak of “universal love for humanity.” In the higher sense of the word, it is unloving toward a person to forgive them for such a thing. For in doing so, one condemns them karmically to insignificance and meaninglessness after death. By drawing their attention to the impossibility of such a judgment, one eases their existence after death. That is the deeper meaning of the matter.

[ 30 ] So this should not be taken lightly either, even if the truth is simply stated at the outset: The human soul is composed of three parts: the soul of sensation, the soul of understanding or feeling, and the soul of consciousness. It has become clear over the years that such a concept has a much deeper significance than merely a systematic classification of the soul. It has been explained that in the post-Atlantean era, the individual cultures developed one after another: the ancient Indian, the primordial Persian, the Egyptian-Chaldean, the Greco-Latin, and subsequently our own. And it has been shown that the essence of the Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian cultural period lies in the fact that, in truth, the human feeling soul underwent a special development at that time. Similarly, in the Greek-Latin period we have a special culture of the intellectual or emotional soul, and in our own time a culture of the conscious soul. Thus we face these three cultural epochs. Thus they influence the education and evolution of the human soul itself. These three soul members are not something that has been conjured up, but something that is alive and develops successively through the successive ages.

[ 31 ] But everything must be interconnected. What comes before must always be carried over into what comes after, and likewise, what comes after must be foreshadowed in what comes before. In which cultural epoch do Buddha and Socrates live? In the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. There they stand within it, where the intellectual or emotional soul is particularly expressed. Both have their mission, their task, within it.

[ 32 ] The Buddha’s task is to preserve the culture of the feeling soul from the preceding epoch—the third—and carry it into the fourth. What the Buddha proclaims, what the Buddha’s disciples take to heart—that is what is to shine over from the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch, which is the cultural epoch of the feeling soul, into the fourth, the epoch of the intellectual or emotional soul. So that the era of the intellectual or emotional soul, the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period, is warmed, purified, and illuminated by the Buddha’s teaching, by what the era of the feeling soul—still permeated by clairvoyance—has brought forth. The great preserver of the culture of the feeling soul into the culture of the intellectual or emotional soul is the Buddha. — What mission is assigned to Socrates, who appeared somewhat later?

[ 33 ] Socrates is also represented within the era of the intellectual or emotional soul. He appeals to the individuality of the human being, to that which can only truly emerge in our fifth cultural epoch. He must incorporate, in a still abstract form, the era of the consciousness soul into the era of the intellectual or emotional soul. Buddha preserves what has gone before. Therefore, what he proclaims appears like a warming, radiant light. Socrates brings in what is the future for him, what constitutes the characteristic of the era of the consciousness soul. Therefore, in his time, it appears as something sober, as something purely intellectual, as something dry.

[ 34 ] Thus, in the fourth cultural period, the third, fourth, and fifth periods converge; the third is preserved by Buddha, and the fifth is foreshadowed by Socrates. The West and the East exist to accommodate these two differences; the East to preserve the greatness of the past; the West to anticipate in an earlier time what is to emerge in a later time.

[ 35 ] It is a straight path from the ancient times of human evolution, during which the Buddha always appeared as the Bodhisattva, up to the time when the Bodhisattva ascended to become the Buddha. It is a great, continuous development that finds its end with the Buddha and truly comes to an end when the Buddha experiences his final earthly incarnation and no longer descends to Earth. It is a great era that came to an end at that time, having carried over from ancient times what constituted the culture of the feeling soul of the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch and having caused it to shine forth anew. If you read the Buddha’s discourses from this perspective, you will grasp their true spirit, and then the advent of the era of the intellectual or emotional soul may take on a quite different significance for you. Then you will approach the Buddha’s discourses and say: Everything in them speaks directly to the human heart; but behind it lies something that eludes this soul and belongs to a higher world. Hence also that peculiar rhythmic movement in the repetitions of the Buddha’s discourses—which is offensive to the ordinary intellectual person—which we begin to understand precisely when we move from the physical into the etheric, which is the next supersensible realm beyond the sensible. Whoever understands how much is at work in the etheric body, which lies behind the physical body, also understands why so much in the Buddha’s discourses is repeated over and over again. One must not deprive the Buddha’s discourses of their distinctive mood by eliminating the repetitions. Abstracterists have done this, believing they are doing something good by extracting only the content and avoiding the repetitions. But what matters is that one leaves everything as the Buddha gave it.

[ 36 ] If we now consider Socrates, still entirely without all the rich material that has since become available through discoveries in the natural and human sciences, if we consider how Socrates approaches ordinary things, then the one who approaches him today, drawing on scientific material, finds the Socratic method everywhere within it. People also seek it and want it. It is a great line that begins with Socrates, extends into our time, and will continue to grow in perfection.

[ 37 ] Thus we have a stream of human development that extends all the way to the Buddha and comes to an end there; and we have another stream that begins with Socrates and extends into the distant future. Socrates and the Buddha stand side by side, as it were, like two comet nuclei, if the image is permissible; the comet’s tail of light surrounding the Buddha’s nucleus and pointing far, far into indefinite perspectives of the past; the comet’s tail of light surrounding Socrates’ nucleus as well and shining far, far into indefinite distances of the future. Two diverging comets, traveling in opposite directions, whose nuclei shine simultaneously—that is the image I would like to use to describe how Socrates and Buddha stand side by side.

[ 38 ] Half a millennium passes, and something like a merging of the two currents takes place through Christ Jesus. We have already characterized this by setting forth a few facts before our souls. We shall continue this characterization tomorrow in order to answer the question: What is the mission of Christ Jesus that must be correctly characterized in relation to the human soul?