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The Karma of Vocation
GA 172

5 November 1916, Dornach

Lecture II

Our real purpose in this lecture, as you already know from what has been said, is to lead the way to an understanding of the karma of the individual and, in a broader sense, the collective karma of our time. But even when we consider human life as it concerns single individuals, it is extraordinarily complicated, and we must follow many threads that link a man to the past and present worlds if we wish to answer questions regarding his destiny. This fact will, perhaps, explain to you the detour I am taking, although I really wish to discuss something that is close to every person. Goethe's life was important in world history, and I will associate reflections with it that are intended to light up each individual existence. His life, to be sure, is accessible to us in many details. Even though the destiny of each human life is far removed from the destined course of such an exemplary spirit in world history, it is possible for each of us to gain viewpoints from the contemplation of it. Therefore, let us not be annoyed if the connections with our special questions, which we shall gradually approach, are here somewhat expanded.

When people trace Goethe's life in the way many do who pretend to be his biographers, they fail altogether to observe how rash men are in their tendency to link cause and effect.

Scientists are constantly reminded nowadays that many blunders are due to the adoption of the principle, “After a thing, therefore because of that thing” (post hoc, ergo propter hoc); that is, because one thing follows another, it must, therefore, be an effect proceeding from its cause. This is refuted in the scientific sphere, but in the field of the observation of human life we have not yet come to reject this principle altogether. Certain uncivilized people belonging to the Kamchadales believe that the water wagtails or similar birds bring on springtime because spring follows their arrival. Such conclusions are frequently drawn when people say: A thing that follows another in time must derive from it as the effect from its cause. We learn from Goethe's own narrative, from the description of this life shining above ordinary humanity, that he had this father and that mother and that he experienced certain things in his youth. We then derive what he did later in life, which made him so important for humanity, from these youthful impressions according to the principle that, because one thing follows something else in time, it must proceed from it. That is no more intelligent than when the coming of spring is supposed to be brought on by the water wagtails.

In the scientific sphere, this superstition has been sharply reproved; in the sphere of spiritual science there is still need to do so. It is explained quite nicely, for instance, that at a rather youthful period while Goethe was still a boy and French officers were quartered in his father's house during the occupation of Frankfurt, he saw how the famous Lieutenant du roi Thoranc38 Francois de Théas, Comte de Thoranc (1719–94). directed theatrical productions and employed painters there. Goethe thus came into contact with painting and the art of the theater while scarcely more than a child. His later inclination to art is thus glibly traced to these youthful impressions. To be sure, in his case we see his foreordained karma clearly at work from his earliest youth. Is not an especially prominent trait in Goethe's life the way in which he unites his views of art, the world, and nature and has always behind his artistic fantasy the aspiration to know the truth in natural phenomena? Do we not see that a clearly prescribed karma leads the boy of six or seven to assemble minerals and geological material that he finds in his father's collections and place them on a music stand to make of them an altar to the great God of Nature? He then sets a candle on this altar made of natural objects and instead of producing a light in an ordinary, mechanical way, he lets the earliest rays of the morning sun pass through a magnifying glass to light the candle, kindling a flame to offer to the great God of Nature. How impressive and beautiful is this orientation of the mind to what lives and weaves as spirit in the phenomena of nature even in this boy of six or seven! Most certainly, this trait must have come from an original potentiality, if we choose to call it that, and not from the environment, and we see how what he brought into this incarnation worked with special force.

When we consider the time into which Goethe was born, we shall observe a remarkable harmony between his nature and contemporary events. In accordance with the present world conception, people are often inclined to say that what Goethe created—the Faust and other things that he did for the elevation and spiritual permeation of humanity—have come into existence simply because he produced them according to his talents. It is more difficult with the things he has given to humanity to prove that they cannot be bound up in this simple sense with his person. But, in reference to certain phenomena of existence, just consider how shortsighted many kinds of reflections are even though they are supposed to be fundamentally concerned with the truth. In my most recent book, The Riddle of Man,39 Vom Menschenrätsel, Bibl.-No. 20, CE (Dornach, 1957), p. 155. you can find de la Mettrie's statement that Erasmus of Rotterdam and Fontenelle would have become entirely different human beings if only small particles in their brains had been different. According to this view, we must assume that nothing of all that they produced would exist if, as de la Mettrie40 Julien Offroy de la Mettrie (1709–51) was a French physician and materialist philosopher who wrote L'homme machine (1748) and who was a friend of Frederick the Great of Prussia. suggests, they had been fools instead of wise men because of a slightly different constitution of the brain.

Now, this does apply in a certain sense for the things Erasmus and Fontenelle produced, but consider this question in relation to another case. Can you imagine, for instance, the development of modern humanity without the discovery of America? Think of all that has entered into the life of modern humanity through the discovery of America. Could a materialistic person assert that if Columbus's brain had been a little different he would have been a different sort of man, a fool, who then would not have discovered America? Certainly, this could be asserted, just as it can be said that Goethe would not have been Goethe, nor Fontenelle have been Fontenelle, nor Erasmus have been Erasmus if, for example, their mothers had suffered accidents so that their children would have been stillborn. But we can by no means suppose that America would never have been discovered if it had not been discovered by Columbus. You will find it rather self-evident that America would have been discovered even if Columbus had suffered from a brain defect.

So you will certainly have no doubt that the course of world events is one thing and the participation of an individual in these events another. You will have no doubt that these events summon those individualities who are especially fitted through their karma for whatever is demanded of them. With reference to America we can easily think through to this conclusion. But, for those whose vision penetrates more deeply, the same truth applies to the genesis of Faust. We should have to assume utter nonsense in the evolution of the world if we had to suppose that there would have been no necessity for the creation of such a poetical composition as the Faust even if what the materialists like to emphasize so much had actually occurred and a tile had fallen on Goethe's head when he was five, making him an imbecile. Anyone who traces the course of spiritual life through the decades preceding the time of Goethe will see that the Faust was really a demand of the age. Lessing, indeed, is the typical spirit who wished to create a Faust—in fact, actually wrote a fine scene. It was not merely Goethe's subjective needs that demanded the Faust, it was demanded by the age. With respect to the course of events in world history, the truth is that a relationship similar to that between Columbus and the discovery of America exists also between Goethe's creations and Goethe himself.

I have said that, if we observe the age into which Goethe was born, we note at once a certain harmony between the individuality of Goethe and his age when taken in the broadest sense of the term. Bear in mind that, in spite of all the dissimilarities between Goethe and Schiller, there is, nevertheless, something quite similar in them—not to mention other less important contemporaries. Consider, for example, how much is resplendent in both Goethe and Herder. But we can go much further. When we look at Goethe, it does not, perhaps, appear at once—we shall come back to this later—but, when we look at Schiller, at Herder and Lessing, we shall say that their lives were different, of course, but that in their tendencies and impulses a portion of the soul's potentialities is present that, under other circumstances, might just as well have made a Mirabeau41 Honore-Gabriel Comte de Mirabeau (1749–91) was a Jacobin revolutionary leader and a celebrated orator. or Danton42 Georges Jaques Danton (1759–94) was one of the leading figures of the French Revolution. of them. They truly harmonize with their age. In the case of Schiller, this would by no means be so hard to prove; as the poet who composed The Robbers, Fiesko, Intrigue and Love, he will not seem to anyone to be far removed in disposition from a Mirabeau or Danton or even a Robespierre.43 Maximilien de Robespierre (1758–94) was the French revolutionary whose name is usually associated with the infamous Reign of Terror. This same soul's blood flowed likewise in Goethe, even though we might at first consider him far from being a revolutionist. But by no means is he so remote from this. There comes about in Goethe's complex nature a special complication of karmic impulses, of destiny, that places him in the world in a most unusual way, even in earliest youth.

When we trace the life of Goethe with spiritual scientific vision and disregard all other things, we find that it falls into certain periods. The first proceeds in such a way that we can say that an impulse which we have already observed in his childhood continues to progress. Then something comes from without that changes the direction of his life; that is, his becoming acquainted with the Duke of Weimar in 1775. Then, again, we see how his soujourn in Rome44 Goethe left Karlsbad on September 3, 1786, arrived in Rome on October 29, 1786, left Rome on April 23, 1788 and arrived back in Weimar on June 18, 1788. changes the course of his life, how he becomes an utterly different person through having been able to absorb this Roman life. If we should wish to view the matter more accurately, we might say that a third impulse, which comes as if from without—but this, as we shall see, would not be entirely accurate in a spiritual45 The friendship between the two men lasted from the summer of 1794 to the death of Schiller on May 9, 1805. after he had experienced his Roman transformation.

If we study the first part of Goethe's life up to the year 1775, observing the events more intently than we usually do, we shall discover that there lives in him a powerful revolutionary mood, a rebellion against what was in his environment. His nature, however, is spread over many things. For this reason, because the impulse toward rebellion does not appear so strongly as when concentrated in Schiller's The Robbers but is more diffuse, it does not appear so strikingly. Anyone, however, who is able to enter in a spiritual scientific way into Goethe's boyhood and youth finds in him a spiritual force of life, brought with him through birth, that could not have been present throughout his life if certain events had not occurred. What was living within him as the Goethe individuality was far greater than what could be taken up and expressed in life by his organism.

This is obvious in Schiller. His early death was due primarily to the fact that his organism was consumed by his mighty, spiritual vitality.46 Cf. Rudolf Steiner's remarks in “Der pädagogische Wert der Menschenerkenntnis und der Kulturwert der Pädogogik“ [The Pedagogical Value of the Knowledge of Human Beings and the Cultural Value of Pedagogy], Second Lecture of July 18, 1924, Bibl.- No. 310, CE (Dornach, 1965). This is obvious. Indeed, it is known that after his death his heart was found to be dried up, as it were. He sustained himself as long as possible only by his powerful spiritual vitality, but this also devoured his bodily life.

With Goethe, this force of soul became even stronger, and yet he lived to an advanced age. What enabled him to live so long? You will recall that I reminded you yesterday of a fact that intervened significantly in Goethe's life. After he had spent some years in Leipzig as a student,47 Goethe arrived in Leipzig on October 3, 1765 and left the city on August 28, 1768. His illness began the end of July, 1768. he became seriously ill and stood face to face with death. He virtually looked death in the face. This illness is, to be sure, a natural phenomenon in the organism. However, we never learn to understand a man who creates out of the elemental forces of the world—indeed, we never learn really to understand any man—unless we take into consideration such events in the course of his karma. What really happened to Goethe when he became ill in Leipzig? We may describe it as a complete loosening of the etheric body in which the life forces of the soul had been active until then. It was loosened to such an extent that, after this illness, he no longer had that closely knit connection between the etheric and the physical bodies that he had formerly possessed.

The etheric body, however, is the super-sensible member in us that really makes it possible to form concepts, to think. Abstract concepts such as we have in ordinary life, the only concepts that are approved by most persons who are materialistically disposed, come about through the fact that the etheric body is, as it were, closely united with the physical by a strong magnetic union. It is also through this fact that we possess a strong impulse to project our will into the physical world, that is, provided the astral body is strongly developed. In the case of Robespierre, Mirabeau and Danton, we have an etheric body strongly united with the physical but also a powerfully developed astral body. This works, in turn, upon the etheric body, which establishes these human individualities strongly in the physical world.

Goethe was also organized like this, but another force now worked in him and brought about a complication. The result was that the etheric body was loosened and remained so through the illness that had brought him to the point of death. When the etheric body is no longer so intimately united with the physical body, however, it no longer thrusts its forces into the physical but retains them. This explains the transformation Goethe passed through when he returned to Frankfurt. There, during his acquaintance with Fräulein von Klettenberg,48 Susanna von Klettenberg (1723–74), a well known Pietist, became Goethe's prototype of “die schöne Seele,“ [the beautiful soul] in his novel Wilhelm Meister. the mystic, and with various medical friends who were devoted to studies in alchemy, and through the writings of Swedenborg, he really developed a systematic spiritual world conception. It was still somewhat chaotic, but nevertheless a systematic spiritual world conception, and he was profoundly inclined to occupy himself with super-sensible things.

These things are, however, connected with Goethe's illness. The soul that had brought this predisposition for this illness into his earthly life also brought the impulse so to prepare his etheric body through his illness that it should not be expressed merely in the physical. It maintained the urge and the capacity to become permeated with super-sensible concepts. So long as we merely consider the external biographical facts of a person in a materialistic way, we never discover what subtle interrelationships exist in his stream of destiny. But, as soon as we obtain an insight into the harmony between the natural occurrences affecting his organism, such as the illness of Goethe, and what manifests itself ethically, morally, spiritually, it becomes possible for us to sense the profound effect of karma.

The revolutionary force would certainly have been manifest in Goethe in a way that would have consumed him at an early age. Since an external expression of the life of these revolutionary forces would certainly not have been possible in his environment, and since he could not have written dramas as Schiller did, this force would necessarily have consumed him. It was turned aside through the loosening of the connection of the magnetic union between his etheric and physical bodies.

Here we see how a natural event seems to enter with immense significance into the life of a human being. Undoubtedly, it points to a deeper interrelationship than the one the biographers generally wish to reveal. The significance of an illness to a man cannot be explained on the basis of hereditary tendencies but rather points to the connection between a man and the world in such a way that this relationship must be conceived spiritually. You will note also how Goethe's life was thus complicated; such experiences determine how we take things in and what we are ourselves.

Goethe now comes to Strassburg49 Goethe left for Strassburg on April 1, 1770, and returned from that city to Frankfurt on August 14, 1771. with an etheric body that is in a sense filled with occult knowledge, and in this condition he meets Herder, whose vast conceptions had to become something quite different in Goethe because the same conditions did not exist in Herder's more subtle constitution. This event of near death appeared in Goethe at the end of the sixties in Leipzig, but its force had been prepared long before that. Anyone who undertakes to trace such an illness to external or merely physical events has not yet attained the same standpoint in the spiritual sphere as that occupied by the natural scientist who knows that what follows must not be viewed necessarily as the result of what it follows. This tendency to isolate himself from the world to some degree was a manifestation of the connection between physical and etheric bodies. It was always present in Goethe, and it really only became a crisis through his illness.

In anyone possessing a compact connection between the physical and etheric bodies, the external world exerts its influence and, as it makes impressions on the physical body, they pass over immediately into the etheric body; this is one and the same thing. Such a person simply lives in direct contact with the impressions of the external world. In Goethe's case, the impressions are, of course, made upon the physical body, but the etheric body does not immediately respond because it is loosened. As a result, such a person can be more isolated, in a sense, from his environment, and a more complicated process takes place when an impression is made on his physical body. If you establish a connection between this organic structure of Goethe and the fact that, as we learn from his biography, he lays himself open even to historic events without forcing them, you have then arrived at an understanding of the peculiar functioning of his nature. I told you that he took the autobiography of Gottfried of Berlichingen and, influenced only by the dramatic impulses received from Shakespeare, did not really alter much in it. So he did not call it a drama but The History of the Iron-handed Gottfried of Berlichingen, Dramatized. You see, this soft and almost timid handling of things, as I might call it, without taking hold of them forcefully is due to his quite unusual connection between the etheric and physical bodies.

This relationship between the etheric and physical bodies was not present in Schiller. For this reason, he creates characters that he has certainly not derived from external impressions but has formed forcefully out of his own nature; Karl Moor is an example. Goethe, however, needs the influence of life, but he does not force it; he only helps with a light touch to elevate the living into a work of art.

It was the same when he was confronted with the experiences that he later reduced to artistic form in Werther. His own life situations as well as those of his friend Jerusalem50 Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem (1747–72) was secretary of the Brunswick Legation in the city of Wetzlar. He committed suicide on October 30, 1772, with a pistol borrowed from J. C. Kestner, who was also a friend of Goethe. The tragedy is generally believed to have prompted Goethe to write his Werther, as if he wanted to vindicate his friend's action. Werther, too, borrowed a pistol from a friend to kill himself. are not twisted; he does not alter the form greatly but takes life and retouches it a little. Through the delicate manner in which he renders assistance by means of his etheric body, life is transformed into a work of art. But because of this organization he gains, I might say, only an indirect contact with life, and thereby he prepares his karma in this incarnation.

Goethe goes to Strassburg. In addition to the experience that advanced him on his way, he experienced also, as you know, the romantic involvement with Friederike, the daughter of the pastor in Sesenheim.51 Cf. footnote 18. His affections were deeply involved in this relationship, and many moral doubts may be raised against the course of it—doubts that may also be fully justified. We are not now concerned with that aspect of the matter, but rather with an understanding of it. Goethe really passed through everything that, in another, not only must, but obviously would, have led to a permanent life union. But he does not experience directly. Through what I have explained, a sort of chasm had been created between his unusual inner nature and the external world. Just as he does not alter by force what is living in the external world but only delicately modifies its form, he also does not carry his feelings and sensations, which he can experience only in his etheric body, through the physical body to such a firm contact with the external world—something that, in others, would have led to quite definite events in life. So he withdraws from Friederike Brion, but one must accept this from the viewpoint of the soul.

The last time he went to Sesenheim, he met himself; you can read of this in his autobiography.52 Poetry and Truth, XI: “I perceived, not with the eyes of the body but of the mind, how I approached myself on horseback, yet wearing clothes -- pike-grey with a little gold -- that I had never worn before. As soon as I shook myself loose from this dream, the apparition had disappeared. The strange thing is that after eight years from this incident when I was travelling on the same road to pay a visit to Friederike, I was wearing the very same clothes I had dreamt about -- not by choice but by coincident.“ The later visit to Friederike Brion took place on September 25, 1779, during Goethe's second journey to Switzerland. Goethe meets Goethe! Long afterward he related how he then encountered himself, Goethe meeting Goethe. He sees himself; he drives out to Sesenheim and Goethe comes to meet him, not in the same clothing he was wearing, however, but in another outfit. When he went there again many years later to visit his old acquaintances, he realized that he was unintentionally actually wearing the clothes in which he had seen himself many years before. We must believe this even took place in the same way we believe anything else he relates. Considering the love of truth with which he described his life to us, to find fault with it is not appropriate.

How does it happen, then, that Goethe, so remote that he could actually withdraw, and yet in such loose contact with the circumstances that for anyone else it would have led to something quite different—how does it come about that he meets himself? Now a man who has an experience in his etheric body finds that it easily takes objective form when the etheric body is loosened. He sees the experience as something external; it is projected outside him. This actually happened to Goethe. In a moment peculiarly appropriate, he saw the other Goethe, the etheric Goethe who lived in him, who remained united in karma with Friederike of Sesenheim, and he met himself as a ghost. But this is just the kind of event that so profoundly confirms what is to be perceived from the facts regarding his nature.

We see here how a man may stand within external events and how it is also necessary to grasp the special, individual way in which he stands among them. It is a complicated relationship that exists between the human being and the world; it is complicated also by the interrelationship between what he brings from the past into the present. Through the fact, however, that Goethe had wrenched his inner nature out of the corporeal connection, it was possible for him even in his early youth to cherish in his soul the profound truths that so astonish us in his Faust. I say astonish purposely for the simple reason that they really must astonish us. I scarcely know anything more simple-minded than when biographers of Goethe repeat over and over the statement, “Goethe is Faust and Faust is Goethe.” I have often read this in biographies of Goethe. It is, of course, an ordinary bit of nonsense. What we really have in Faust, when we permit it to work on us in the right way, so impresses us that we must sometimes say that we cannot imagine that Goethe had a direct experience of a similar kind or could even know of it. Yet there it is expressed in Faust.

Faust constantly grows beyond Goethe. This can be understood completely by one who knows the surprise experienced by a poet when he has this composition before him. That is, we do not have to suppose that the poet must always be as great as his work, anymore than a father must be as great in forces of soul and genius as his son; the truly poetic creative process is something living; just as one cannot say it is also impossible to assert that one who is spiritually creative never creates above his own level. But through the inner state of isolation that I have described in reference to Goethe, those profound insights in his soul appear that we find in reading his Faust. Such works are not poetic compositions like others. The Faust poem flows from the entire spirit of the fifth post-Atlantean culture period; it grows far beyond Goethe. Much that we experience in connection with the world and its process of becoming sounds forth to us from Faust in a strange manner. Call to mind the passage you have just heard:53 This lecture was preceded by a presentation of the scene in Faust's study (Earth Spirit, Faust, and Wagner).

To us, my friend, the ages that are passed
A book with seven seals, close fastened, are
And what the spirit of the times men call
Is merely their own spirit after all. ...54 Ann Swanwick's translation of Faust, Part I, lines 575–579, with Faust speaking to Wagner. Kaufmann's rendering of lines 575–585 is given in footnote 21.

These words by Faust himself are passed over too lightly. One who experiences the statement in its fullest depths is reminded of much that confirms its truth. Consider the knowledge possessed by modern man of the Greeks and the spiritual life of Greece, through Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides! Suppose men steep themselves in this Greek spiritual life—let us say, in Sophocles. Is Sophocles a book with seven seals? That will not easily be admitted! More than eighty dramas were written by Sophocles,55 Sophocles (496–406 B.C.) wrote 130 plays, seven of which are extant: Ajax, Oedipus Rex, Oedipus at Colonos, Antigone, Electra, The Trachiniae, Philoctetes. Recently, fragments of a satyr play, Ichneutae or The Trackers, were also found. who lived to be ninety-one; only seven of these dramas now survive. Do we really know a man if he has written eighty-one or more dramas and only seven of them survive? Is this not truly a book with seven seals? How can anyone assert that he knows the Greek world from what has been handed down to us, when he must simply recognize the fact that seventy-four of Sophocles' dramas, by which the Greeks were fascinated and inspired, are nonexistent? Many of the dramas of Aeschylus no longer exist. Poets lived in Greek times whose names are not even known any longer. Are not the times past truly a book with seven seals? We must admit this when we consider such external facts, and

... 'tis delightful to transport
Oneself into the spirit of the past,
To see in times before us how a wise man thought,
And what a glorious height we have achieved at last.

Wagner types believe they are able to transplant themselves quite easily into the spirit of a wise man; that is, when somebody before them has already done the exercise! It is a pity that we cannot put to the proof what the critics would have to write about Hamlet if it had been written today and were to be performed for them by some large municipal theater, or if a drama of Sophocles should be presented for them at this very moment. Perhaps no impression would be made on these gentlemen even by what Sophocles had to do to convince his relatives of his greatness in his advanced old age of ninety-one. His relatives had had to wait so long for their inheritance that they tried to prove he had become feeble-minded and could no longer manage his property. He had no other way to protect himself than by writing the Oedipus in Colonna, thus proving that he was not yet in his dotage. Whether this would work with present-day critics I do not know, but at that time it did help. Anyone who enters deeply into the tragedy of the ninety-one year old Sophocles, however, will be able to estimate how difficult it is to find the way to a human individuality and how such an individuality is bound up in the most complicated fashion with world events! Many things could be adduced to show under what deep layers we must penetrate in order to understand the world. But how much is alive, even in the earliest parts of Faust, of that wisdom that is necessary for an understanding of the world! This wisdom must be attributed to the peculiar course of Goethe's destiny which reveals to us in a real sense that nature and the work of the spirit are a unity in human development and that an illness not only has an external significance but may also possess spiritual meaning.

Thus we see a decided continuation of the karmic impulses that existed in Goethe. Then in 1775, however, his connection with the Duke of Weimar appeared as if from without. Goethe is called from Frankfurt to Weimar. What does this signify in his life? To further understand the life of a man, we must first understand what such an event means to his life. I know how little inclined the present world is really to arouse those forces of the soul that are necessary to fully sense and feel such a phenomenon—to completely feel what is already alive in the first scenes of Faust. In order to write the Monologue in the Study, Spirit of the Earth that has just been presented, a richness of soul is needed, and it will cause one who beholds it to linger long in an attitude of fervent reverence. One is often pained to the depths of one's soul to realize that the world is really still decidedly dull and cannot feel what is truly great. But, if we feel such a thing completely, we shall then also see where one who is deeply permeated with spiritual science arrives in his feeling. Such a person comes to the point of saying to himself that something lived in Goethe that consumed him; he couldn't go on in such a way.

Two things must be clear if we are to appreciate, in the proper sense and in the right light, these first scenes of Faust. We might imagine that Goethe had written them gradually between his twenty-fifth and fiftieth years, in which case they would not have strained his soul so intensely, nor been such a burden. Certainly! But this is impossible because, after his thirtieth or thirty-fifth year, the youthful force necessary to give such form to these scenes would have been lacking. In accordance with his individuality, he had to write them in those early years, but to continue to live thus was no longer possible. He needed something like a damper, a partial soul-sleep, to reduce the intensity of the fire that burned in his soul as he wrote these first scenes. Then, the Duke of Weimar called him to make him a minister in Weimar. As I have already said, Goethe was a good minister, and while he labored assiduously, he could refresh himself by partially sleeping off what burned in his soul.

There is really a tremendous difference between Goethe's mood up to 1775 and that after 1775, a difference that may be compared with a mighty wakefulness followed by a subdued life. The word “Dumpfheit,” an inner feeling of numbness, comes into his mind when he describes his life in Weimar, where he engages himself so much in events but responds to them more than at an earlier age, when he had rebelled against them. It is peculiar that after this dampening down for ten years there followed a period when events confronted him in a more gentle way. Just as the life of sleep is by no means a direct effect of the preceding daytime life, so also this sleep life of Goethe was not at all the result of what had gone before. The interrelationships are far greater than is generally supposed. I have already frequently pointed out that it is indicative of a superficial view when, to the question—Why does a man sleep?—the answer is given: Because he is tired. This is a lazy truth and one that is itself asleep since it is nonsense. Otherwise, it would not be true that individuals such as non-working persons living on their private incomes who are certainly not tired, fall comfortably asleep after a full meal when they are expected to listen to something that does not particularly interest them. Tired they certainly are not. The fact is not that we sleep because we are tired, but waking and sleeping are a rhythmic life process, and when it is time or necessary for us to sleep, we become weary. We are tired because we ought to sleep; we do not sleep because we are tired. But I will not discuss this further just now.

Just consider in what a tremendous interrelationship the rhythm of sleeping and waking stands. It is a reproduction within the nature of man of day and night in the cosmos. It is natural, of course, that a materialistic science should undertake to explain sleep as resulting from weariness caused by the day's activities, but the reverse is true. The explanation of the rhythm of sleeping and waking must be drawn from the cosmos, from vast interrelationships. They also explain that the period when Faust was fermenting in the soul of Goethe was followed by the ten-year period of dampening in Weimar. Here your attention is called directly to his karma, about which we cannot speak further at present.

The consciousness of the ordinary human generally lets him wake in the morning thinking he is unchanged from what he was when he fell asleep. In reality, such is never the case. We are never the same upon waking as we were when we fell asleep but, as a matter of fact, we are somewhat richer, though unconscious of it. However, just as the trough of a wave has followed after a crest, as it was in Goethe's Weimar years, the awakening that follows is at a higher stage; it must follow at a higher stage because the innermost forces strive toward this. In Goethe also the innermost forces strive to awaken again from the inner state of numbness in Weimar to a fullness of life in an environment that could now really bring him what he lacked. He awakened in Italy. With his special constitution he could not have awakened in Weimar. In this fact, however, we can see the profound relationship between the creative work of a real artist and his special experience.

You see, a writer who is not an artist can produce a drama gradually without difficulty, one page at a time; he can do this perfectly well. The great poet cannot; he needs to be deeply rooted in life. For this reason, Goethe could bring the most profound truths to expression in his Faust in relatively early youth, truths that ranged far above the capacities of his soul, but he had to set forth a rejuvenation of Faust. Just bear in mind that Faust had to come into an entirely different mood in spite of the fact that his nature was so deeply formed. In the end, in spite of all his depth, what he had taken into his soul up to that time had brought him near to suicide. He had to be rejuvenated. A lesser individual can describe perfectly well, and even in pretty verses, how a man is rejuvenated. Goethe could not do this so simply; he first had to experience his own rejuvenation in Rome. It is for this reason that the rejuvenation scene, The Witch's Kitchen, was written in Rome in the Villa Borghese.57 The scene was written in March, 1788. Goethe would not have ventured to write this scene earlier.

Now, a certain condition of consciousness, even though dulled, is associated with such a rejuvenation as Goethe experienced. In his time there was not as yet a spiritual science, so this state of consciousness could not be heightened but only subdued. Furthermore, special forces are associated with such a rejuvenation as Goethe experienced. In his time there was not as yet a spiritual science, so this state of consciousness could not be heightened but only subdued. Furthermore, special forces are associated with such a rejuvenation that are projected over into the next incarnation. Here experiences are woven together that belong to the present incarnation and also much that projects its influence into the next. When we bear this in mind, we are led to consider an especially profound and significant tendency in Goethe.

You see, if I may be permitted to interject this personal comment, I have occupied myself for a number of decades with Goethe's view of nature—I may say since 1879-80, and intensively since 1885-86. During this time, I have arrived at the view that there is something in the impulse that Goethe gave to the conception of nature, which contemporary scientists and philosophers really do not understand, that can be developed, but it will take centuries to do so. It may well be, therefore, that when Goethe returns in another incarnation it will still be possible for him to work formatively on what he could not perfect in his views of nature in this incarnation. Many things that are implicit in his view of nature have not yet even been surmised. In regard to this, I have expressed myself in my book, Goethes World Conception, and in the introduction to Goethe's Natural Scientific Writings in Kürschner's Nationalliteratur. We may really say, therefore, that Goethe bears within him in his view of nature something that points toward remote horizons. It is, however, intimately related with his rebirth as this was connected with the period of life through which he was passing when he was in Rome.

You may read for yourselves how I have presented these matters, how the metamorphosis of plants and animals, the archetypal plant and animal, took form during his journey in Italy; how upon his return he tackled the problem of the theory of colors, something that is scarcely understood at all at present; how he took hold of still other things. You will then see that his living penetration into a comprehensive view of nature is intimately bound up with his rebirth. To be sure, he did relate to Faust what he had arrived at in the course of his own life, not, however, as a minor, but as a major poet would do this. Faust experiences the Gretchen tragedy. In the midst of it, we are suddenly faced with Faust's view of nature, which admittedly is closely related with Goethe's. It is expressed in the following words of Faust:

Exalted spirit, all you gave me, all
That I have asked. And it was not in vain
That amid flames you turned your face toward me.
You gave me royal nature as my own dominion,
Strength to experience her, enjoy her. Not
The cold amazement of a visit only
You granted me, but let me penetrate
Into her heart as into a close friend's.
You lead the hosts of all that is alive
Before my eyes, teach me to know my brothers
In quiet bushes and in air and water.
And when the storm roars in the wood and creaks,
The giant fir tree, falling, hits and smashes
The neighbor branches and the neighbor trunks,
And from its hollow thud the mountain thunders,
Then you lead me to this safe cave and show
Me to myself, and all the most profound
And secret wonders of my breast are opened.58 Faust, Part I, “Wood and Cave,“ lines 3217–3234. The translation is by Walter Kaufmann.

A great world conception, ascribed by Goethe to Faust! Only during the journey to Italy had Goethe acquired it with such penetration of soul. The scene beginning, “Spirit sublime, thou gavest me, gavest me all,” was also written in Rome, not earlier. These two scenes—the rejuvenation scene in The Witch's Kitchen, and the scene, Forest and Cave, were the portions that were written in Rome.

Here you see a real rhythm in Goethe's life that reveals an inner impulse just as the rhythm of waking and sleeping reveals an inner impulse in the human being. In a life such as Goethe's we can study certain laws in an especially clear light, but we shall also learn that the laws we discover in great personalities may become important for the life of every individual human being. In the last analysis, the laws working in an eminent human being apply to all individuals. Tomorrow we will continue to speak of the relationships of life as they may be grasped from this point of view.

Zweiter Vortrag

Eigentlich ist ja die Absicht, wie Sie aus dem Angedeuteten schon vernommen haben, in diesem Vortrage jetzt zu einem Verständnis des einzelnen Karmas des Menschen zu führen und des Gesamtkarmas unserer Zeit im weiteren Sinne, Aber das menschliche Leben, gerade wenn man es so betrachten will, wie es jeden einzelnen angeht, ist außerordentlich kompliziert, und viele Fäden, die den Menschen an die Welt, an eine nähere oder fernere Vergangenheit knüpfen, muß man verfolgen, wenn man die Frage nach seinem Schicksal beantworten will. Das macht es vielleicht erklärlich, warum ich, während ich eigentlich etwas uns ganz Naheliegendes, jedem Menschen ganz Naheliegendes auseinandersetzen will, gerade jetzt weite Umwege mache und Betrachtungen, die gewissermaßen ihr Licht hereinwerfen sollen in das enge Daseinsstübchen jedes einzelnen, anknüpfe an ein weltgeschichtlich bedeutsames Erdenleben: an Goethes Erdenleben. Ist uns doch Goethes Erdenleben zugänglich in bezug auf sehr, sehr viele Einzelheiten. Liegt nun natürlich auch selbstverständlich jedes Menschenleben sehr weit ab mit Bezug auf sein Schicksal von dem Schicksalsgang eines so vorbildlichen, welthistorischen Geistes, so ist es doch möglich, gerade an der Betrachtung eines solchen Lebens Gesichtspunkte zu gewinnen für jeden einzelnen von uns, Daher wollen wir es uns nicht verdrießen lassen, diese Anknüpfungen, die wir gestern begonnen haben, gerade mit Bezug auf unsere speziellen Fragen, zu denen wir immer mehr und mehr kommen werden, noch ein wenig auszudehnen.

Wenn man so verfolgt Goethes Leben, wie es viele, die seine Biographen sein wollen, bis heute schon getan haben, so achtet man gar nicht darauf, wie der Mensch geneigt ist, in einer raschen Weise Wirkung mit Ursache zu verknüpfen. Sehen Sie, Naturwissenschafter werden schon heute immer wieder und wiederum darauf verweisen, daß der Mensch viele Irrtümer begeht, wenn er schnell-fertig das «Nach einem Ding und eben deshalb aus diesem Ding heraus» zu seinem Grundsatze macht, dieses «Post hoc, ergo propter hoc»: weil etwas aufeinanderfolgt, müsse es wie die Wirkung aus der Ursache hervorgehen. Man tadelt es auf naturwissenschaftlichem Gebiet. Auf dem Gebiete der Betrachtung des Menschenlebens ist man noch nicht so weitgekommen, diesen Grundsatz auch gründlich abzulehnen. Gewisse wilde Menschen, die zu den Kamtschadalen gehören, glauben, daß die Bachstelzen oder ähnliche Vögel den Frühling bringen, weil der Frühling auf deren Kommen folgt. So schließt der Mensch überhaupt sehr häufig: Das, was auf etwas anderes folgt, geht aus diesem andern hervor. — Man lernt kennen aus Goethes eigenen Beschreibungen, also aus den Beschreibungen eines besonders über die Menschheit hinleuchtenden Menschenlebens, daß Goethe diesen Vater, diese Mutter gehabt hat, die Dinge durchgemacht hat in seiner Jugend, die er uns ja selber mitteilt, und man leitet dann dasjenige, was er später im Leben getrieben hat, wodurch er der Menschheit so wichtig geworden ist, aus diesen Jugendeindrücken biographisch ab, ganz nach dem Grundsatze, daß, weil irgend etwas auf ein anderesfolegt, so müsse es auch aus diesem anderen hervorgehen. Es ist das nicht gescheiter, als wenn man glaubt, daß der Frühling von den Bachstelzen gebracht wird. Auf naturwissenschaftlichem Gebiete hat man einen solchen Aberglauben scharf getadelt, auf geisteswissenschaftlichem Gebiete muß man erst noch so weit kommen. Man erklärt allerdings sehr schön, daß Goethe in verhältnismäßig frühen Jahren, im Knabenalter noch, als in seinem Vaterhause französische Einquartierung war, während Frankfurt von den Franzosen besetzt war, erlebte, wie der berühmte Königsleutnant Thoranc Theateraufführungen dort veranstaltete, wie er Maler beschäftigte, und wie dadurch Goethe fast noch als Kind in Berührung kam mit der Malerei, in Berührung kam mit der theatralischen Kunst, und man leitet dann Goethes Hinneigung zur Kunst in der späteren Zeit au$ solchen Jugendeindrücken leichthin ab.

Allerdings, man sieht gerade bei Goethe von frühester Jugend an scharf sein vorgezeichnetes Karma wirken. Ist es nicht ein besonders hervorstechender Zug in Goethes ganzem Leben, wie er Kunstanschauung, Weltanschauung mit Naturanschauung verbindet, wie er gewissermaßen überall hinter der künstlerischen Phantasie das Streben hat nach der Erkenntnis der Wahrheit in den Naturerscheinungen? Und sehen wir nicht eben wie ein scharf vorgezeichnetes Karma den Knaben bereits, den sechs-, siebenjährigen Knaben, zusammentragen Mineralien, geologische Stufen, die er findet in der Mineralien- und Gesteinssammlung seines Vaters, um sie auf ein Notenpult zu legen und dem großen Gott der Natur einen Altar zu machen? Ja, wie er ein Räucherkerzchen auf diesem aus Naturprodukten zusammengestellten Altar befestigt und sich Licht nun nicht auf die gewöhnliche mechanische Weise macht, sondern mit einem Brennglas die Strahlen der ersten Morgensonne, gerade der ersten Morgensonne auffängt, um sie durch das Brennglas auf das Räucherkerzchen fallen zu lassen und so an den Strahlen der Morgensonne ein Feuer sich zu entzünden, das er dem großen Gotte der Natur darbringt. Wie großartig, und zu gleicher Zeit wie großartig schön sehen wir in dem sechs-, siebenjährigen Knaben den Sinn hingerichtet auf dasjenige, was als Geist in den Naturerscheinungen lebt und webt! Da sehen wir — da ja ganz gewiß dieser Zug, wenn man so sagen will, aus einer ursprünglichen Anlage gekommen sein muß, nicht aus der Umgebung herstammen kann -, wie dasjenige, was er hereingetragen hat in diese Inkarnation, bei diesem Menschen gerade mit besonders starker Kraft gewirkt hat.

Wenn man die Zeit betrachtet, in die Goethe in seiner damaligen Inkarnation hereingeboren worden ist, so wird man ein merk würdiges Zusammenstimmen seiner Natur mit den Zeitereignissen finden. Man ist ja gewiß nach heutiger Weltauffassung vielfach geneigt zu sagen: Nun ja, das was Goethe geschaffen hat, dieser «Faust», das andere, was zur Erhebung, zur geistigen Durchdringung der Menschheit von Goethe ausgegangen ist, das ist eben gekommen, weil es Goethe nach seinen Anlagen gemacht hat. - Es ist freilich schwieriger, bei solchen Dingen, wie sie durch Goethe der Menschheit gegeben worden sind, zu erhärten, daß seine Schöpfungen nicht in diesem einfachen Sinne an seine Person gebunden sein können. Aber überlegen Sie sich einmal etwas anderes. Überlegen Sie sich, wie kurzsinnig gegenüber gewissen Erscheinungen des Daseins manche Betrachtungsweise ist, die glaubt, sich gründlich auf die Wahrheit einzulassen. Sie können in meinem letzten Buche «Vom Menschenrätsel» de Lamettries Ausspruch finden, daß Erasmus von Rotterdam und Fontenelle zum Beispiel ganz andere Menschen geworden wären, wenn auch nur irgendeine kleine Partie in ihrem Gehirn anders gewesen wäre, Man muß nach einer solchen Denkweise annehmen, daß also alles dasjenige, was Erasmus, was Fontenelle geschaffen haben, nicht da wäre in der Welt, wenn, wie de Lamettrie meint, Erasmus und Fontenelle durch eine nur geringe andersartige Beschaffenheit ihres Gehirnes statt Weise Toren geworden wären. Nun, möchte ich sagen, langt es in einer gewissen Beziehung für solche Dinge, wie sie Erasmus, Fontenelle geschaffen haben. Aber überlegen Sie sich dasselbe mit Bezug auf einen anderen Fall. Können Sie sich zum Beispiel denken, daß die Entwickelung der neueren Menschheit hätte ablaufen können, ohne daß Amerika entdeckt worden wäre? Stellen Sie sich einmal vor, was alles eingeflossen ist in das Leben der modernen Menschheit durch die Entdeckung Amerikas! Könnte man nun als Materialist sagen, daß Kolumbus ein anderer geworden wäre, wenn sein Gehirn ein bißchen anders gewesen wäre und er ein Tor statt Kolumbus geworden wäre, und daß dann der Kolumbus nicht Amerika entdeckt hätte? Gewiß, das kann man sagen, geradeso wie man sagen kann, Goethe wäre nicht Goethe geworden, Fontenelle nicht Fontenelle, Erasmus nicht Erasmus, wenn zum Beispiel ihre Mütter während der Zeit, als die Betreffenden noch nicht geboren waren, ein Unglück gehabt hätten und sie tot zur Welt gekommen wären. Aber nimmermehr können wir denken, daß Amerika nicht entdeckt worden wäre, wenn Kolumbus es nicht hätte entdecken können. Sie werden es ziemlich selbstverständlich finden, daß Amerika auch entdeckt worden wäre, wenn Kolumbus einen Gehirndefekt gehabt hätte!

So werden Sie gar nicht zweifeln können, daß ein anderes der Gang der Weltenereignisse ist und ein anderes der Anteil des einzelnen an diesen Weltenereignissen, und Sie werden nicht zweifeln können, daß die Weltenereignisse selber sich aufrufen diejenigen menschlichen Individuen, die durch ihr Karma für dies oder jenes, was die Weltenereignisse fordern, besonders geeignet sind. Bei Amerika läßt es sich sehr leicht ausdenken. Aber für den Tieferblickenden ist es auch nicht anders, sagen wir zum Beispiel, mit Bezug auf die Entstehung des «Faust». Man müßte wirklich an den vollständigen Unsinn im Weltenwerden glauben, wenn man denken sollte, es hätte keine Notwendigkeit vorgelegen, daß solch eine Dichtung wie der «Faust» entstanden wäre, auch wenn das eingetreten wäre, was der Materialist so gerne betont: daß Goethe vielleicht als fünfjährigem Knaben ein Ziegel auf den Kopf gefallen wäre und er ein Blödling geworden wäre. Wer die Entwickelung des Geisteslebens in den Jahrzehnten bis zu Goethe hin verfolgt, der wird sehen, wie der «Faust» wirklich eine Forderung der Zeit war. Lessing ist ja der charakteristische Geist, der einen «Faust» schreiben wollte, sogar eine Szene, die sehr schön ist, schon geschrieben hatte. Nicht bloß Goethes subjektive Bedürfnisse forderten den «Faust», die Zeit forderte den «Faust»! Und für einen Tieferblickenden ist es eben wirklich so, daß man sagen kann, ein ähnlicher Zusammenhang wie zwischen KoJumbus und der Entdeckung Amerikas mit Bezug auf den welthistorischen Gang der Ereignisse, ist auch zwischen Goethes Schöpfungen und Goethe selber.

Ich sagte, betrachtet man das Zeitalter, in das Goethe hineingeboren ist, so merkt man schon einen gewissen Zusammenklang zwischen der Individualität Goethes und diesem Zeitalter, und zwar diesem Zeitalter in weitestem Umkreise. Bedenken Sie, daß trotz aller großen Verschiedenheiten — wir werden gleich auf die Sache noch zurückkommen — doch etwas sehr Ähnliches in den beiden Geistern, in Goethe und Schiller ist, um andere, weniger Bedeutende um sie herum gar nicht zu erwähnen. Bedenken Sie, wie vieles von dem, was wir gerade bei Goethe aufleuchten sehen, wir auch in Herder aufleuchten sehen. Aber man kann viel weiter gehen. Wenn man Goethe ansieht, tritt es vielleicht nicht gleich hervor; darauf wollen wir eben gleich zurückkommen. Aber wenn man Schiller ansieht, wenn man Herder ansieht, Lessing ansieht, so wird man sagen: Zwar ist ihr Leben anders geworden, aber in den Tendenzen, in den Impulsen lebt bei Goethe, bei Schiller, bei Herder, bei Lessing durchaus ein Stück Seelenanlage, durch die sie hätten unter anderen Verhältnissen ebensogut ein Mirabean,ein Danton werden können. Sie stimmen wirklich mit ihrem Zeitalter zusammen. Bei Schiller wird es sich ja gar nicht so schwer nachweisen lassen, denn Schillers Gesinnung wird niemand, insofern Schiller der Dichter der «Räuber», des «Fiesko», der «Kabale und Liebe» war, sehr weit abstechend sehen von der Gesinnung eines Mirabeau oder Danton oder selbst Robespierre. Nur daß Schiller dieselben Impulse, die Danton, Robespierre, Mirabeau in ihre politischen Tendenzen haben hineinfließen lassen, ins Literarische, ins Künstlerische fließen ließ. Aber, man möchte sagen, in bezug auf das Seelenblut, das die Weltgeschichte durchpulst, fließt in den «Räubern» genau dasselbe Seelenblut wie in den Taten Dantons, Mirabeaus und Robespierres, und es floß dieses selbe Seelenblut aber auch in Goethe, wenn man auch zunächst sich vorstellen möchte, daß Goethe recht, recht weit von einem Revolutionär entfernt ist. Das ist er aber gar nicht, das ist er durchaus nicht. Nur kommt bei dieser komplizierten Natur, bei der Natur Goethes, eben auch eine besondere Komplikation von karmischen Impulsen, von Schicksalsimpulsen zustande, welche ihn schon in frühester Jugend in einer ganz besonderen Weise in die Welt hineinstellen.

Wenn man mit geisteswissenschaftlichem Blick das Leben Goethes verfolgt, so teilt es sich zunächst, wenn man von allem übrigen absieht, in gewisse Perioden ab. Die erste Periode verläuft so, daß man sagen kann, es fließt ein Impuls, den man schon in seiner Kindheit findet, weiter. Dann kommt etwas von außen, das seinen Lebensstrom scheinbar ablenkt: die Bekanntschaft mit dem Herzog von Weimar 1775. Und dann wiederum sehen wir, wie ihn in eine andere Lebensbahn bringt sein Aufenthalt in Rom, wie Goethe ein ganz anderer wird dadurch, daß er römisches Leben in sich aufnehmen kann. Wollte man noch genauer darauf eingehen, so könnte man sagen: ein dritter Impuls, der wie von außen kommt - aber das würde, wie wir sehen werden, nicht ganz richtig sein im geisteswissenschaftlichen Sinne -, wäre das freundschaftliche Zusammenleben mit Schiller, nachdem er seine römische Verwandlung durchgemacht hat.

Studiert man den ersten Teil von Goethes Leben bis zum Jahre 1775, dann findet man als Ergebnis, daß allerdings — wenn man auch die Ereignisse aufmerksamer betrachten muß, als man dies gewöhnlich tut — “ in diesem Goethe eine mächtige revolutionäre Stimmung lebt, eine Auflehnung gegen dasjenige, was in seiner Umgebung ist. Nur verteilt sich gewissermaßen seine Natur über vieles. Und dadurch, daß der Auflehne-Impuls nicht so stark hervortritt wie dann, wenn er sich konzentriert wie in Schillers «Räuber», sondern sich mehr verbreitet, tritt die Sache weniger stark hervor. Aber derjenige, der geisteswissenschaftlich auf Goethes Knaben- und Jugendleben einzugehen vermag, der findet, daß in ihm eine geistige Lebenskraft sitzt, die er sich durch seine Geburt in sein Dasein trägt, die, wenn nicht gewisse Ereignisse eingetreten wären, ihn nicht durch sein ganzes Leben hätte begleiten können. Dasjenige, was in ihm als Goethe-Individualität lebte, war weit größer als dasjenige, was sein Organismus wirklich aufnehmen und ausleben konnte.

Bei Schiller ist das handgreiflich. Wenn man solch Handgreifliches heute fühlen könnte, so würde man es schon finden. Schillers früher Tod rührte von nichts anderem her als davon, daß sein Organismus verbrannt wurde durch seine mächtige seelische Lebenskraft. Handgreiflich ist es. Ist es doch bekannt, daß, als Schiller gestorben war, man fand, daß sein Herz wie ausgedörrt in seinem Innern war. Nur durch seine mächtige Seelenkraft hielt er sich eben, solange es ging, aber diese mächtige Seelenkraft verzehrte zugleich das leibliche Leben. Bei Goethe war diese Seelenkraft noch stärker, und doch erreichte Goethe ein hohes Alter. Wodurch erreichte er ein so hohes Alter?

Sehen Sie, ich habe Ihnen gestern eine Tatsache erwähnt, welche in Goethes Leben ganz bedeutungsvoll eingreift. Als er einige Jahre in Leipzig Student gewesen war, da wird er krank, schwer krank und steht dem Tode gegenüber. Er schaut wirklich sozusagen dem Tode ins Angesicht. Diese Krankheit ist ja gewiß eine organische Naturerscheinung, aber man lernt nie einen Menschen, der aus dem Elementarischen der Welt heraus schafft, eigentlich überhaupt keinen Menschen kennen, wenn man solche Ereignisse nicht im Verlauf ihres Karmas in Erwägung zieht. Was geschah denn eigentlich mit Goethe, als er so in Leipzig krank war? Das geschah, was man nennen kann eine völlige Lockerung des ätherischen Leibes, in dem die seelische Lebenskraft wirksam gewesen war bis dahin. Der lockerte sich so, daß nach dieser Krankheit Goethe nicht mehr jenen strammen Zusammenhang hatte zwischen dem ätherischen Leib und dem physischen Leib, den er vorher gehabt hatte. Der ätherische Leib ist aber dasjenige Übersinnliche in uns, was uns eigentlich möglich macht, Vorstellungen zu haben, zu denken. Abstrakte Vorstellungen, wie wir sie im gewöhnlichen Leben haben, wie sie die meisten Menschen, die materialistisch gesinnt sind, allein lieben, hat man dadurch, daß der ätherische Leib eng verbunden ist mit dem physischen Leib, gewissermaßen durch ein starkes magnetisches Band mit dem physischen Leib verbunden ist. Dadurch aber, daß dies der Fall ist, hat man auch den starken Impuls, seinen Willen in die physische Welt hineinzutragen. Man hat diesen Impuls mit dem Willen, wenn außerdem der astralische Leib besonders stark entwickelt ist. Sehen wir hin nach Robespierre, nach Mirabeau, nach Danton, so haben wir einen mit dem physischen Leib stark verbundenen Ätherleib, aber auch einen stark entwickelten Astralleib, der seinerseits auf den Ätherleib wirkt und diese Menschenindividualitäten stark in die physische Welt hineinstellt.

So war auch Goethe organisiert. Aber nun wirkte in ihm eine andere Kraft, die eine Komplikation hervorbrachte. Die wirkte dahin, daß der ätherische Leib durch die Krankheit, die ihn dem Tode ganz nahe brachte, sich lockerte und gelockert blieb. Dadurch aber, daß der Ätherleib nicht mehr so innig mit dem physischen Leib verbunden ist, stößt er nicht mehr seine Kräfte in den physischen Leib hinein, sondern behält sie innerhalb des Ätherischen. Daher diese Umwandlung, die mit Goethe vorgegangen ist, als er nun zurückkehrte von Leipzig nach Frankfurt, wo er in der Bekanntschaft mit Fräulein von Klettenberg, der Mystikerin, in der Bekanntschaft mit allerlei ärztlichen Freunden, die sich alchimistischen Studien hingaben, in der Bekanntschaft mit den Schriften Swedenborgs sich wirklich ein geistiges Weltsystem, noch chaotisch, aber immerhin ein spirituelles Weltsystem aufbaut, wie er. auch eine innigste Neigung hat, sich mit übersinnlichen Dingen zu befassen. Das aber hängt zusammen mit seiner Krankheit. Und die Seele, die sich hereintrug in dieses Erdenleben die Anlage zu dieser Krankheit, die trug damit den Impuls herein, sich durch diese Krankheit den Ätherleib so zuzubereiten, daß dieser Ätherleib sich nicht bloß im Physischen auslebte, sondern den Drang, und nicht nur den Drang, sondern die Begabung erhielt, mit übersinnlichen Vorstellungen sich zu durchdringen. Solange man bloß die äußeren biographischen Tatsachen nach materialistischer Manier betrachtet für irgendeinen Menschen, kommt man nicht darauf, welch feine Zusammenhänge in der Schicksalsströmung eines Menschen sind. Erst wenn man sich einläßt auf den Zusammenklang von Naturereignissen, die unseren Organismus treffen, wie die Krankheit bei Goethe eines war, mit dem, was ethisch, moralisch, spirituell zum Vorschein kommt, dann erst bekommt man die Möglichkeit, die tiefe Wirkung des Karmas zu ahnen.

Die revolutionäre Kraft wäre bei Goethe sicherlich so zum Vorschein gekommen, daß sie ihn früh verzehrt hätte. Da ja in seinem Milieu ein Ausleben der revolutionären Kraft äußerlich nicht möglich gewesen wäre und Goethe nicht Dramen hätte schreiben können wie Schiller, so hätte er sich verzehren müssen. Sie wurde abgeleitet durch dieLockerung des Zusammenhanges, des magnetischen Bandes zwischen seinem ätherischen Leib und dem physischen Leib.

Da sehen Sie, wie ein Naturereignis in das Leben eines Menschen bedeutsam hereintritt. Gewiß, so etwas weist auf einen tieferen Zusammenhang hin, als derjenige ist, den oftmals die Biographen allein an die Oberfläche tragen wollen. Denn die Bedeutung einer Krankheit für das ganze individuelle Erleben eines Menschen läßt sich nicht aus Vererbungstendenzen heraus erklären, sondern die weist schon auf den Zusammenhang eines Menschen mit der Welt so hin, daß dieser Zusammenhang geistig gedacht werden muß. Sie merken daraus auch, wie Goethes Leben sich komplizierte. Denn davon hängt es ab, wie wir etwas aufnehmen, wie wir selber sind.

Jetzt kommt er gewissermaßen mit einem von okkulten Erkenntnissen erfüllten ätherischen Leib nach Straßburg. Und so tritt er Herder entgegen. Herders große Anschauungen mußten in Goethe etwas ganz anderes werden als in Herder selber, der nicht die gleichen Bedingungen in seiner feineren Konstitution hatte. Solch ein Ereignis, wie es dieses Gegenübertreten dem Tode war, tritt bei Goethe ein Ende der sechziger Jahre in Leipzig, aber es ist seiner Kraft nach vorbereitet schon lange. Und derjenige, der eine solche Krankheit aus äußeren Ereignissen herleiten will oder aus bloß physischen Ereignissen, der steht eben auf geistigem Gebiete noch nicht auf demselben Standpunkt, auf dem der Naturforscher steht: daß dasjenige, was nachfolgt, nicht unmittelbar als eine Wirkung angesehen werden darf desjenigen, auf das es folgt. Es war also in Goethe dieses gewissermaßen Sich-Isolieren von der Welt ‚durch diesen Zusammenhang zwischen physischem Leib und Ätherleib, der nur seine Krisis erreichte durch die Krankheit, immer da.

Auf jemanden, bei dem ein kompakter Zusammenhang ist zwischen physischem und Ätherleib, wirkt die Außenwelt ein, aber indem sie Eindrücke macht auf den physischen Leib, gehen die Eindrücke gleich in den. Ätherleib über, das ist eins; und der lebt dann mit den Eindrücken der Außenwelt einfach flott mit. Bei einer solchen Natur wie Goethe es war, werden die Eindrücke selbstverständlich auf den physischen Leib gemacht, aber der Ätherleib geht nicht gleich mit, weil er gelockert ist. Die Folge davon ist, daß gewissermaßen ein solcher Mensch isolierter sein kann gegenüber seiner Umgebung, daß ein komplizierterer Vorgang vorliegt, wenn ein Eindruck auf seinen physischen Leib gemacht wird. Rücken Sie sich hinüber von diesem organischen Bau Goethes zu dem, was Sie aus seiner Biographie kennen: daß er die Ereignisse, auch die historischen Ereignisse, gewissermaßen ohne sie zu vergewaltigen, auf sich wirken läßt, dann haben Sie sich Verständnis geschaffen für das eigentümliche Walten der Goethe-Natur. Ich sagte Ihnen: er nimmt die Biographie des Gottfried von Berlichingen, läßt sich nur beeinflussen von Shakespeares dramatischen Impulsen und veränderte gar nicht viel die nicht besonders gut geschriebene Selbstbiographie des Gottfried von Berlichingen, so daß er sein Drama auch nicht «Drama» nennt, sondern «Geschichte Gottfriedens von Berlichingen mit der eisernen Hand, dramatisiert»; er verändert nur etwas. Sehen Sie, dieses, ich möchte sagen, sanfte und zaghafte Anrühren der Dinge, so daß er nicht gewaltsam zufaßt, das ist bewirkt durch diesen ganz besonderen Zusammenhang zwischen Ätherleib und physischem Leib.

Dieser Zusammenhang war beiSchiller nicht vorhanden. Daher stellt er solche Gestalten hin, die er wahrhaftig nicht auf einen äußeren Eindruck hin hingestellt hat, sondern die er ganz gewaltsam aus seiner Natur heraus formt: Karl Moor. Goethe braucht die Wirkung des Lebens. Aber das Leben vergewaltigt er nicht; er hilft nur leise nach, um das Leben zum Kunstwerk zu erheben. So ist es auch, als die Lebens- . verhältnisse an ihn herantreten, die er dann im «Werther» gestaltet hat. Eigene Lebensverhältnisse, Lebensverhältnisse seines Freundes Jerusalem, sie biegt er nicht, formt er nicht viel, sondern er nimmt das Leben und hilft nur nach. Und durch die sanfte Art, wie er nachhilft eben aus seinem Ätherleib heraus, wird aus dem Leben ein Kunstwerk. Aber er kommt durch dieselbe Organisation dem Leben auch, ich möchte sagen, nur mittelbar nahe und bereitet sich in dieser Inkarnation sein Karma durch dieses nur mittelbare Nahekommen dem Leben.

Er kommt nach Straßburg. Außer dem, was er erlebt hat, was ich Ihnen gestern erzählt habe, was ihn vorwärtsbrachte auf seiner GoetheLaufbahn, erlebte er ja, wie Sie wissen, in Straßburg auch die Herzensbeziehung zu der Pfarrtochter in Sesenheim, zu Friederike Brion. Er ist sehr, sehr mit seinem Herzen in diesem Verhältnisse drinnen, und gewiß, man kann mancherlei moralische Bedenken gegen den Verlauf dieses Verhältnisses zwischen Goethe und Friederike von Sesenheim geltend machen, die auch berechtigt sein mögen. Darauf kommt es jetzt nicht an, sondern auf das Verständnis kommt es an. Goethe macht schon wirklich alles dasjenige durch, was eben bei jemandem, der nicht Goethe gewesen wäre, nicht nur hätte führen müssen, sondern selbstverständlich geführt hätte zu einer dauernden Lebensgemeinschaft mit Friederike Brion. Aber Goethe erlebt nicht unmittelbar. Durch dasjenige, was ich Ihnen erzählt habe, ist zwischen seinem besonderen Innern und zwischen der Außenwelt eine Art Kluft geschaffen. So wie er das Lebendige der Außenwelt nicht vergewaltigt, sondern nur sanft umformt, so bringt er gewissermaßen auch sein Fühlen und Empfinden, wie er es nur in seinem Ätherleibe erleben kann, nicht durch den physischen Leib gleich zu einem solch festen Zusammenhang mit der Außenwelt, daß bei ihm dasjenige, was bei anderen zu ganz bestimmten Lebensereignissen geführt hätte, auch dazu hätte führen können. Und so zieht er sich wieder zurück von Friederike Brion. Aber man soll nur so etwas seelisch nehmen. Als er ein letztes Mal hinausreitet, begegnet er auf dem Rückwege-Sie können das in seiner Biographie nachlesen -sich selber. Goethe kommt Goethe entgegen. Goethe erzählt es ja noch viel, viel später, wie er sich dazumal selber begegnete. Goethe kommt Goethe entgegen. Er sieht sich selber. Er reitet hinaus, entgegen kommt ihm auf dem Rückwege Goethe, aber nicht in der Kleidung, die er anhat, sondern in einer anderen Kleidung. Und als er später, nach Jahren wiederum dahin kommt, die alten Bekannten aufsucht, da erkennt er, daß er wirklich in dem Kostüm, ohne daß er es gesucht hat, das er vor Jahren voraus an sich gesehen hat, als er sich begegnete, wieder hinausging. Das ist ein Ereignis, an das man mit derselben Kraft glauben muß, mit der man irgend etwas anderes glaubt, was Goethe erzählt. Daran zu mäkeln, das, möchte ich sagen, geziemt sich nicht gegenüber der Wahrheitsliebe, mit der Goethe sein Leben dargestellt hat.

Wie kommt es denn, daß Goethe, der also ferne-nahstand den Verhältnissen, in die er getreten war, so nahe, daß es bei jedem anderen zu etwas ganz anderem geführt hätte, und so ferne, daß er eben sich zurückziehen konnte, wie kommt es, daß er sich da selber begegnete? Nun, bei einem Menschen, der etwas im ätherischen Leib erlebt, verobjektiviert sich sehr leicht das Erlebnis, wenn dieser ätherische Leib gelockert ist. Er sieht es als ein Äußeres, es projiziert sich nach außen. Das ist bei Goethe wirklich eingetreten. Er hat in einem besonders dazu geeigneten Momente den anderen Goethe gesehen, den ätherischen Goethe, der in ihm lebte, der verbunden blieb durch sein Karma mit Friederike von Sesenheim. Daher kam er sich selbst als Gespenst entgegen. Aber es ist das gerade ein Ereignis, welches im tiefsten Sinne erhärtet, was über seine eigene Natur aus den Tatsachen zu ersehen ist.

Da sehen Sie, wie der Mensch drinnenstehen kann in den äußeren Ereignissen, und wie man doch erst erfassen muß die besondere Art und Weise, die individuelle Art und Weise, wie er drinnensteht. Denn kompliziert ist das Verhältnis des Menschen zur Welt, zur Vergangenheit, der Zusammenhang mit demjenigen, was wir aus der Vergangenheit herübertragen in unsere Gegenwart. Dadurch aber, daß Goethe gewissermaßen sein Inneres so herausgerissen hat aus dem körperlichen Zusammenhang, dadurch war ihm in früher Jugend schon möglich, die tiefen Wahrheiten in seiner Seele zu hegen, die uns in seinem «Faust» so überraschen. Ich sage absichtlich: überraschen, aus dem einfachen Grunde, weil sie wirklich überraschen müssen, denn ich kenne kaum irgend etwas Einfältigeres, als wenn Goethe-Biographen immerzu mit dem Satze hausieren gehen: «Goethe ist Faust und Faust ist Goethe». Ich habe das oftmals gelesen bei Goethe-Biographen. Es ist natürlich ein ganz gewöhnlicher Unsinn. Denn dasjenige, was wir im «Faust» wirklich haben, wenn wir es recht auf uns wirken lassen, kommt uns ja tatsächlich so vor, daß wir uns sagen müssen: Es ist zuweilen so, daß wir gar nicht vermuten, daß es in unmittelbar gleicher Art Goethe durchlebt hat oder sogar wissen kann - und dennoch steht es im «Faust» drinnen. Faust wächst immer über Goethe hinaus. Das kann allerdings nur der vollständig verstehen, der jene Überraschung kennt, die der ein Dichtwerk Schaffende selber erlebt, wenn er dann dieses Dichtwerk vor sich hat. Man darf nämlich nicht glauben, daß der Dichter immer ebenso groß sein muß wie sein Werk. Er braucht es ebensowenig zu sein, wie der Vater so groß zu sein braucht an Seelenkraft und Genie wie sein Sohn; denn das wirklich dichterische Schaffen ist ein Lebendiges. Und ebensowenig wie gesagt werden kann, daß ein Lebendiges nicht über sich hinaus schaffe, so kann auch nicht behauptet werden, daß nie ein Geistig-Schöpferisches über sich hinaus schaffe.

Aber durch dieses innerliche Isoliertsein, das ich beschrieben habe bei Goethe, treten jene tiefen Einsichten auf in seiner Seele, die uns aus seinem «Faust» entgegentreten. Denn solche Werke wie «Faust» sind nicht Dichtungen wie andere Dichtungen. Der «Faust» quillt gleichsam hervor aus dem ganzen Geiste der fünften nachatlantischen Kulturperiode; er wächst weit über Goethe hinaus. Und manches, was wir erleben mit der Welt und ihrem Werden, es tönt uns aus «Faust» in einer merkwürdigen Weise entgegen. Gedenken Sie des Wortes, das Sie eben vorhin gehört haben:

Mein Freund, die Zeiten der Vergangenheit
Sind uns ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln;
Was ihr den Geist der Zeiten heißt,
Das ist im Grund der Herren eigner Geist,
In dem die Zeiten sich bespiegeln.

Man geht zu leicht über ein solches Wort hinweg. Derjenige, der es in seiner vollen Tiefe spürt, wird an manches erinnert, was ein solches Wort nur im tiefsten Sinne wahr machen kann. Denken Sie, was die modernen Menschen haben durch die Kenntnis des Griechischen, des griechischen Geisteslebens, durch Äschylos, Sophokles, Euripides! Die Menschen vertiefen sich in dieses griechische Geistesleben, sagen wir in Sophokles. Ist Sophokles ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln? Man wird nicht leicht daran denken, daß Sophokles ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln sein könne! Sophokles, der einundneunzig Jahre alt geworden ist, hat mehr als achtzig Dramen geschrieben, sieben davon sind erhalten! Kennt man einen Menschen, der einundachtzig oder mehr Dramen geschrieben hat, von denen nur sieben erhalten sind? Ist das nicht wörtlich wahr: ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln? Wie kann jemand behaupten, nach dem, was überliefert ist, das Griechentum zu kennen, wenn er sich einfach vorhalten muß, vierundsiebzig Sophokleische Dramen, die die Griechen entzückt, erhoben haben, sind nicht da? Eine sehr große Anzahl auch von Äschylos sind nicht da. Dichter haben gelebt in der griechischen Zeit, deren Name nicht einmal bekannt ist. Sind nicht die Zeiten der Vergangenheit ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln? Wenn man solch eine äußerliche Tatsache nimmt, so muß man sich das sagen. Und —

...es ist ein groß Ergetzen,
Sich in den Geist der Zeiten zu versetzen,
Zu schauen, wie vor uns ein weiser Mann gedacht,
Und wie wir’s dann zuletzt so herrlich weit gebracht.

Wagner-Naturen glauben, sich leicht in den Geist eines weisen Mannes versetzen zu können — wenn es ihnen nämlich vorgemacht worden ist! Denn schade, daß man nicht die Probe machen kann, was die wackeren Rezensentelein über den «Hamlet» schreiben würden, wenn er jetzt eben erscheinen und auf irgendeiner großen städtischen Bühne vor den Herren aufgeführt würde, oder wenn ein Sophokleisches Drama vor diesen Herren heute aufgeführt würde! Vielleicht würde bei diesen Herren es selbst nicht helfen, was Sophokles selber tun mußte, um wenigstens seine Verwandten von seiner Größe noch im hohen Alter zu überzeugen. Denn einundneunzig Jahre alt ist er geworden, die Verwandten haben so lange auf die Erbschaft warten müssen; da haben sie gesucht, Zeugnisse zu bekommen, daß Sophokles schwachsinnig geworden sei und nicht mehr sein eigenes Vermögen verwalten könne. Da konnte er sich nicht anders retten, als daß er den «Odipus auf Kolonos» schrieb. Damit konnte er wenigstens beweisen, daß er noch nicht schwachsinnig geworden war. Ob es bei heutigen Rezensenten nützen würde, weiß ich nicht, damals hat es aber geholfen. Aber wer sich in eine solche Tatsache hinein vertieft, in die Tragik des neunzigjährigen Sophokles, der wird zu gleicher Zeit ermessen, wie schwer es ist, den Weg zu finden zu einer menschlichen Individualität; wie diese menschliche Individualität in komplizierter Weise mit den Weltenereignissen zusammenhängt. Und vieles, vieles könnte angeführt werden, das zeigen würde, wie man in tiefe Schächte hineingraben muß, um die Welt zu verstehen. Aber wie viel lebt von der Weisheit, die notwendig ist, um die Welt zu verstehen, schon in den allerersten Partien von Goethes «Faust»! Zurückzuführen ist das auf dieses eigentümlich verlaufende Schicksal, das wirklich zeigt, wie Natur und Geisteswirken eines ist in der menschlichen Entwickelung, wie eine Krankheit nicht nur eine äußere physische, wie eine Krankheit eine geistige Bedeutung haben kann.

So sehen wir, man möchte sagen, scharf fortgeführt den karmischen Anstoß, der in Goethe war. Dann aber wieder, 1775, tritt wie von außen herein die Bekanntschaft mit dem Herzog von Weimar. Goethe wird von Frankfurt nach Weimar berufen. Was bedeutet denn das in seinem Leben? Man muß erst verstehen, was solch ein Ereignis bedeutete für das Leben eines Menschen, wenn man nun weiteres ausfindig machen will, um das Leben zu verstehen. Ich weiß, wie wenig die heutige Welt geneigt ist, wirklich die Seelenkräfte wachzurufen, die notwendig sind, um so etwas voll zu empfinden, voll zu fühlen, was schon in den ersten Partien von Goethes «Faust» lebt. Um das zu schreiben, was nun hier aufgeführt worden ist — «Faust I», Monolog im Studierzimmer, Erdgeist —, dazu gehört ein Reichtum der Seele, der, wenn man ihn ansieht, einen dazu veranlassen möchte, in inbrünstiger Verehrung lange, lange davor zu verharren. Und man hat oftmals den tiefsten Seelenschmerz, wenn man sieht, wie die Welt eigentlich doch recht stumpf ist und gar nicht Größe, Größe fühlen kann. Fühlt man aber so etwas voll, dann wird man auch verstehen, wozu derjenige, der von Geisteswissenschaft wirklich durchdrungen ist, in seiner Empfindung kommt. Der kommt nämlich dazu, sich zu sagen: In diesem Goethe lebte etwas, das ihn verbrannte. So konnte es nicht weitergehen.

Diesen Gedanken muß man schon haben. Stellen Sie sich vor: 1749 ist Goethe geboren, 1775 ist er also sechsundzwanzig Jahre alt. Er trägt im Koffer das Manuskript der Szene, die wir heute aufgeführt haben nehmen wir nur dies, es war noch anderes dabei -, nach Weimar mit. Wer solches durchlebt hat, so, bis zu dem Grade, daß er es niederschreiben konnte, der hat daran in seiner Seele zu tragen; auf dessen Seele lastet es schwer, denn es ist eine Kraft, die aufwärtsführen will, die Seele zersprengen möchte.

Zwei Dinge müssen wir uns klarmachen, wenn wir in richtigem Sinne, in der richtigen Beleuchtung diese ersten Partien des «Faust», die Goethe geschrieben hat, würdigen wollen. Man könnte sich ja denken, daß Goethe, sagen wir von seinem fünfundzwanzigsten bis zu seinem fünfzigsten Jahre nach und nach diese Szenen geschrieben hätte. Dann würden sie die Seele nicht so gespannt haben, dann wären sie “ keine solche Last gewesen. Nun gewiß, aber das ist nicht möglich, wäre nicht möglich gewesen, denn vom dreißigsten, fünfunddreißigsten Jahre ab würde eben die Jugendkraft gemangelt haben, die dazu notwendig war, um diese Dinge gerade so zu gestalten. Er mußte sie in diesen Jahren schreiben nach seiner Individualität, aber er konnte so nicht weiterleben. Er brauchte etwas, was wie eine Dämpfung, wie eine Art partieller Seelenschlaf war, um abzuschwächen das Feuer, das in seiner Seele gebrannt hat, als er die ersten Partien des «Faust» schrieb. Der Herzog von Weimar holte ihn, um ihn in Weimar zum Minister zu machen. Und er war ein guter Minister, sagte ich schon. Da konnte er als Minister, indem er viel emsige Arbeit leistete, partiell verschlafen sich ausruhend — dasjenige, das gebrannt hat in seiner Seele. Und es ist wirklich ein gewaltiger Unterschied in der Stimmung vor 1775 und nach 1775, .die schon zu vergleichen ist mit einer Art gewaltigen Wachens und nachher abgedämpften Lebens. Da kommt sogar das Wort «Dumpfheit» Goethe in den Sinn, wenn er sein besonderes Leben in Weimar schildert, wo er so in die Ereignisse sich hineinlebt, aber mit ihnen mehr mitschwingt als früher, da er gegen sie revoltierte. Merkwürdig war es dann, daß auf die Abstumpfung für zehn Jahre ein sanfteres Heranbringen der Ereignisse an den Menschen folgte. Und so wenig das Schlafleben eine unmittelbare Wirkung des vorhergehenden Tageslebens ist, so wenig war dieses Schlafleben Goethes eine Wirkung desjenigen, was vorangegangen war. Die Zusammenhänge sind vie] größere, als man gewöhnlich denkt. Ich habe schon öfter darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß es eine oberflächliche Anschauung ist, wenn man auf die Frage: Warum schläft der Mensch? antwortet: Weil er müde ist! — Es ist eine faule, selber schlafende Wahrheit, denn es ist ein Unsinn. Sonst müßte nicht eine Tatsache sein, daß diejenigen Menschen, die nicht müde sein können, zum Beispiel Rentiers nach einer vollen Mahlzeit, wenn sie etwas hören sollen, wofür sie sich nicht besonders interessieren, in Schlaf sich einlullen. Müde sind sie gewiß nicht. Die Sache ist nicht so, daß wir schlafen, weil wir müde sind, sondern das Wachen und Schlafen ist ein rhythmischer Lebensvorgang, und wenn die Zeit des Schlafens, die Notwendigkeit des Schlafens herankommt, so werden wir müde. Wir sind müde, weil wir schlafen sollen, nicht aber schlafen wir, weil wir müde sind. Das will ich in diesem Augenblicke nicht weiter ausführen.

Aber denken Sie sich einmal, in welchem großen Zusammenhang der Rhythmus von Schlafen und Wachen drinnensteht! Er ist ja die Nachbildung von Tag und Nacht im Kosmos innerhalb der menschlichen Natur. Den Schlaf erklären zu wollen aus der Ermüdung des Tages, ist allerdings der materialistischen Wissenschaft naheliegend, aber das Umgekehrte ist richtig. Der Rhythmus von Schlafen und Wachen muß aus dem Kosmos erklärt werden, aus großen Zusammenhängen heraus. Aus großen Zusammenhängen heraus muß aber auch erklärt werden, warum bei Goethe nach der Periode, in der «Faust» in seinen Seelenadern brauste, die Abdämpfung der zehn Jahre weimarischen Lebens folgte. Da werden Sie unmittelbar auf sein Karma gewiesen, über das nun nicht weiter gesprochen werden kann.

Der Mensch als alltäglicher Mensch wacht am Morgen auf, in der Regel so, wie er am Abend eingeschlafen ist, für sein eigenes Bewußtsein. In Wirklichkeit ist es ja niemals so. Wir wachen niemals gerade so auf, wie wir eingeschlafen sind, sondern wirklich etwas reicher; wir werden uns nur der Bereicherung nicht bewußt. Aber wenn nun auf einen Wellenberg ein Wellental gefolgt ist, wie bei Goethe in den weimarischen Jahren, dann erfolgt das Aufwachen auf einer höheren Stufe, muß auf einer höheren Stufe erfolgen. Aber die innersten Kräfte streben danach. Und die innersten Kräfte streben bei Goethe auch, aus der weimarischen Dumpfheit zum vollen Leben wieder zu erwachen in einer Umgebung, die ihm nun wirklich bringen konnte, was ihm fehlte. Das war in Italien, als er erwachte. In Weimar selber hätte er nach seiner besonderen Konstitution nicht aufwachen können. Gerade an einer solchen Sache aber kann man den tiefen Zusammenhang des Schaffens eines wirklichen Künstlers, eines großen Künstlers mit seinem besonderen Erleben sehen. Sehen Sie, einer, der kein großer Künstler ist, der kann ein Drama so glattweg nach und nach, Seite für Seite hinschreiben; er kann es ganz gut. Der große Dichter kann es nicht, denn der braucht: tief drinnenzuwurzeln im Leben. Goethe konnte daher tiefste, tiefste Wahrheiten in seinem «Faust» zum Ausdrucke bringen in verhältnismäßig früher Jugend, Wahrheiten, die weit über sein Seelenvermögen hinauswuchsen, Aber er mußte eine Verjüngung beim Faust zum Ausdruck bringen. Denken Sie sich: Faust mußte zu einer ganz anderen Stimmung kommen; trotzdem er so tief gestaltet ist, mußte er verjüngt werden. Schließlich, trotz aller Tiefe, hat ihn dasjenige, was er bis dahin in seiner Seele aufgenommen hat, dem Selbstmorde nahegebracht. Er mußte verjüngt werden. Ein kleiner Mensch kann recht gut schildern in vielleicht recht schönen Versen, wie ein Mensch verjüngt wird. Goethe konnte es nicht so ohne weiteres; er mußte selbst erst in Rom verjüngt werden. Daher ist die Verjüngungsszene der «Hexenküche» in Rom geschrieben, im Garten der Villa Borghese. Goethe würde es nicht gewagt haben, diese Szene früher zu schreiben.

Nun, verbunden mit einer solchen Verjüngung, wie sie Goethe erlebt hat, ist ein wenn auch noch dumpfes Bewußtsein. Zu Goethes Zeit gab es noch keine Geisteswissenschaft: es konnte kein helles Bewußtsein sein, sondern nur ein dumpfes Bewußtsein. Mit einer solchen Verjüngung sind besondere Kräfte wieder verbunden, die schon in die nächste Inkarnation hinüberspielen. Da gliedern sich ineinander Erlebnisse, die dieser Inkarnation angehören, und mancherlei, was in die nächste Inkarnation hinüberspielt. Wenn man dies bedenkt, wird man auf eine besonders tiefbedeutsame Tendenz bei Goethe geführt. Sehen Sie, wenn ich diese persönliche Bemerkung einschalten darf: Ich beschäftige mich seit einer Reihe von Jahrzehnten, ich kann sagen seit 1879/80 eigentlich immer, intensiv seit 1885/86, mit Goethes Naturanschauung. Und ich habe in dieser Zeit die Anschauung gewonnen: In dem Impuls, den Goethe der Naturanschauung gegeben hat - von dem die heutigen Naturgelehrten, Naturwissenschafter, Naturdenker eigentlich gar nichts verstehen -, liegt etwas, das ausgebildet werden kann, aber erst in Jahrhunderten. So daß Goethe wohl wahrscheinlich, wenn er wiederkommen wird in anderer Inkarnation, noch die Möglichkeit finden wird, an dem zu gestalten, was er in dieser Inkarnation gerade aus seinen Naturanschauungen noch nicht hat fertigmachen können. Manche Dinge ahnt man heute noch gar nicht, die in Goethes Naturanschauung liegen. Darüber habe ich mich ja ausgesprochen in meinem Buche «Goethes Weltanschauung» und in den Einleitungen zu «Goethes Naturwissenschaftlichen Schriften» in Kürschners Nationalliteratur. So daß man schon sagen kann: Goethe trägt mit seiner Naturanschauung etwas in sich, das in weite, weite Horizonte hinausweist, das aber innig zusammenhängt mit seiner Wiedergeburt, wie sie jetzt zwar nicht gerade in dieser Beziehung an Rom gebunden war, aber an das Lebensalter, das er in Rom durchlebte. Lesen Sie nach, wie ich die Dinge dargestellt habe, wie sich die Metamorphose der Pflanzen, der Tiere, Urpflanze, Urtier, während der italienischen Reise ausgestaltet, wie er, als er zurückkam, die Farbenlehre, die man heute noch gar nicht verstehen kann, in Angriff nahm, wie er ja noch andere Dinge in Angriff nahm; dann werden Sie sehen: Mit seiner Wiedergeburt hängt auch dieses Einleben in seine umfassende Naturanschauung zusammen. Dann hat er allerdings dasjenige, was sich in ihm selber im Laufe des Lebens ergeben hat, mit Faust in Beziehung gebracht, aber nicht so, wie es ein kleiner Dichter tut,sondern wie es ein großer Dichter tut. Faust erlebt die GretchenTragödie. Mitten in der Gretchen-Tragödie tritt uns plötzlich entgegen Faustens große Naturanschauung, die nun allerdings viel Verwandtes hat mit Goethes großer Naturanschauung, und die zum Ausdruck kommt in den Faust-Worten:

Erhabner Geist, du gabst mir, gabst mir alles,
Warum ich bat. Du hast mir nicht umsonst
Dein Angesicht im Feuer zugewendet.
Gabst mir die herrliche Natur zum Königreich,
Kraft, sie zu fühlen, zu genießen. Nicht
Kalt staunenden Besuch erlaubst du nur,
Vergönnest mir, in ihre tiefe Brust,
Wie in den Busen eines Freunds, zu schauen.
Du führst die Reihe der Lebendigen
Vor mir vorbei, und lehrst mich meine Brüder
Im stillen Busch, in Luft und Wasser kennen.
Und wenn der Sturm im Walde braust und knarrt,
Die Riesenfichte, stürzend, Nachbaräste
Und Nachbarstämme quetschend niederstreift,
Und ihrem Fall dumpf hohl der Hügel donnert,
Dann führst du mich zur sichern Höhle, zeigst
Mich dann mir selbst, und meiner eignen Brust
Geheime tiefe Wunder öffnen sich.

Eine große Weltanschauung! Goethe schreibt sie dem Faust zu. Goethe hat sie erst gewonnen bis zu dieser Durchdringung der Seele während seiner Italienreise. Die Szene «Erhabner Geist, du gabst mir, gabst mir alles», ist auch in Rom geschrieben; die hatte Goethe nicht früher geschrieben. Denn diese zwei Szenen, die Verjüngungsszene in der «Hexenküche» und die Szene «Wald und Höhle»: «Erhabner Geist, du gabst mir, gabst mir alles», sie sind es gerade, die in Rom geschrieben worden sind.

Da sehen Sie einen wirklichen Rhythmus in diesem Goethe-Leben, einen Rhythmus, der einen innerlichen Impuls verrät, so wie der Rhythmus von Wachen und Schlafen im Menschen einen inneren Impuls verrät. Wir können an einem solchen Leben, wie das Goethe-Leben es ist, besonders anschaulich manche Gesetze studieren, aber es wird sich uns zeigen, wie dasjenige, was bei großen Persönlichkeiten uns an Gesetzen entgegentritt, für das Leben jedes einzelnen wichtig werden kann. Denn schließlich walten doch die Gesetze, die bei einem Großen walten, bei jedem einzelnen Menschen. Über Lebenszusammenhänge nun, wie sie von diesem Gesichtspunkte aus gewonnen werden können, wollen wir morgen weiter sprechen.

Second Lecture

As you have already gathered from what I have said, the intention of this lecture is to lead you to an understanding of the individual karma of human beings and, in a broader sense, of the collective karma of our time. But human life, especially when viewed in this way, as it concerns each individual, is extremely complicated, and many threads that connect human beings to the world, to a closer or more distant past, must be traced if one wants to answer the question of their destiny. This perhaps explains why, while I actually want to deal with something that is very close to us, very close to every human being, I am now taking such a long detour and making observations that are intended to shed light, as it were, on the narrow existence of each individual, linking them to a life on earth that is significant in world history: to Goethe's life on earth. After all, Goethe's earthly life is accessible to us in great detail. Of course, every human life is very different from the fate of such an exemplary, world-historical mind, but it is nevertheless possible to gain insights for each of us from the contemplation of such a life. Therefore, let us not be discouraged from extending a little further the connections we began yesterday, particularly in relation to our specific questions, which we will continue to explore more and more.

If one follows Goethe's life as many who wish to be his biographers have done to this day, one does not pay any attention to how human beings are inclined to quickly link effect with cause. You see, natural scientists today repeatedly point out that people make many mistakes when they quickly adopt as their principle the idea that “after something happens, it must be because of something else,” this “post hoc, ergo propter hoc”: because something follows something else, it must be the effect of the cause. This is criticized in the field of natural science. In the field of human life, however, we have not yet progressed far enough to thoroughly reject this principle. Certain wild people belonging to the Kamchadal tribe believe that wagtails or similar birds bring spring because spring follows their arrival. Thus, humans very often conclude that what follows something else arises from that other thing. From Goethe's own descriptions, that is, from the descriptions of a human life that shines particularly brightly on humanity, we learn that Goethe had this father, this mother, that he went through these things in his youth, which he himself tells us about, and one then deduces biographically from these impressions of his youth what he did later in life that made him so important to humanity, entirely according to the principle that because something follows something else, it must also arise from that other thing. This is no more intelligent than believing that spring is brought by wagtails. In the natural sciences, such superstition has been sharply criticized; in the humanities, we have yet to reach that point. It is, however, very nicely explained that Goethe, at a relatively early age, while still a boy, when French troops were quartered in his father's house during the French occupation of Frankfurt, experienced how the famous royal lieutenant Thoranc organized theater performances there, how he employed painters, and how Goethe, still almost a child, came into contact with painting and the theatrical arts. From this, Goethe's inclination toward art in later life is easily deduced from such youthful impressions.

However, one can see Goethe's predestined karma at work from his earliest youth. Is it not a particularly striking feature of Goethe's entire life how he combines his view of art and his worldview with his view of nature, how he strives, behind his artistic imagination, to discover the truth in natural phenomena? And do we not see how a sharply defined karma already brings the boy, the six- or seven-year-old boy, to collect minerals and geological formations that he finds in his father's mineral and rock collection, to place them on a music stand and make an altar to the great God of nature? Yes, how he fastens a small incense burner to this altar made of natural products and, instead of lighting it in the usual mechanical way, uses a burning glass to catch the rays of the first morning sun, the very first rays of the morning sun, and lets them fall through the burning glass onto the incense burner, thus kindling a fire with the rays of the morning sun, which he offers to the great God of nature. How magnificent, and at the same time how magnificently beautiful, we see in this six- or seven-year-old boy the mind focused on that which lives and weaves as spirit in the phenomena of nature! We see here—since this trait must surely have come from an original disposition and cannot have originated from his environment—how what he brought with him into this incarnation has had a particularly strong effect on this person.

If we consider the time in which Goethe was born in his former incarnation, we find a remarkable harmony between his nature and the events of the time. According to today's worldview, one is certainly inclined to say: Well, what Goethe created, this “Faust,” and the other things that emanated from Goethe for the elevation and spiritual penetration of humanity, came about because Goethe did it according to his predispositions. It is, of course, more difficult to prove, in the case of things such as those given to humanity by Goethe, that his creations cannot be bound to his person in this simple sense. But consider something else. Consider how short-sighted certain views are toward certain phenomena of existence, views that believe they are thoroughly committed to the truth. In my last book, “Vom Menschenrätsel” (The Riddle of Man), you can find de Lamettrie's statement that Erasmus of Rotterdam and Fontenelle, for example, would have become completely different people if even the smallest part of their brains had been different. According to this way of thinking, one must assume that everything that Erasmus and Fontenelle created would not exist in the world if, as de Lamettrie believes, Erasmus and Fontenelle had become wise fools instead of fools due to a slight difference in the constitution of their brains. Well, I would say that in a certain respect this is sufficient for things such as those created by Erasmus and Fontenelle. But consider the same thing in relation to another case. Can you imagine, for example, that the development of modern humanity could have taken place without the discovery of America? Just imagine what has flowed into the life of modern humanity through the discovery of America! Could a materialist say that Columbus would have been a different person if his brain had been a little different and he had become a fool instead of Columbus, and that Columbus would not have discovered America? Certainly, one could say that, just as one could say that Goethe would not have become Goethe, Fontenelle would not have become Fontenelle, Erasmus would not have become Erasmus, if, for example, their mothers had had an accident before they were born and they had been stillborn. But we can never think that America would not have been discovered if Columbus had not been able to discover it. You will find it quite natural that America would have been discovered even if Columbus had had a brain defect!

Thus, you will not be able to doubt that the course of world events is one thing and the part of the individual in these world events is another, and you will not be able to doubt that world events themselves call upon those human individuals who, through their karma, are particularly suited to this or that which world events demand. In the case of America, it is very easy to imagine. But for those with deeper insight, it is no different, say, for example, with regard to the origin of “Faust.” One would really have to believe in complete nonsense in the becoming of the world if one were to think that there was no necessity for a work of fiction such as Faust to have come into being, even if what the materialist so gladly emphasizes had happened: that Goethe, as a five-year-old boy, had perhaps been hit on the head by a brick and had become a fool. Anyone who traces the development of intellectual life in the decades leading up to Goethe will see how Faust was truly a demand of the times. Lessing is, after all, the characteristic spirit who wanted to write a Faust and had even already written a scene that is very beautiful. It was not merely Goethe's subjective needs that demanded Faust; the times demanded Faust! And for those with a deeper insight, it is indeed true that one can say that there is a similar connection between KoJumbus and the discovery of America in relation to the course of world history as there is between Goethe's creations and Goethe himself.

I said that if one considers the age into which Goethe was born, one already notices a certain harmony between Goethe's individuality and this age, and indeed this age in its widest sense. Consider that despite all the great differences—we will come back to this point in a moment—there is something very similar in the two minds, in Goethe and Schiller, not to mention other, less significant similarities around them. Consider how much of what we see shining in Goethe we also see shining in Herder. But one can go much further. When one looks at Goethe, it may not be immediately apparent; we will come back to that in a moment. But when you look at Schiller, when you look at Herder, when you look at Lessing, you will say: although their lives turned out differently, there is definitely a piece of their soul in the tendencies, in the impulses of Goethe, Schiller, Herder, and Lessing, through which they could just as easily have become a Mirabeau or a Danton under different circumstances. They are truly in tune with their age. In Schiller's case, this is not so difficult to prove, for no one would consider Schiller's attitude, insofar as he was the poet of “The Robbers,” “Fiesco,” and “Intrigue and Love,” to be very different from that of Mirabeau, Danton, or even Robespierre. Except that Schiller allowed the same impulses that Danton, Robespierre, and Mirabeau allowed to flow into their political tendencies to flow into literature and art. But one might say that, in terms of the lifeblood that pulsates through world history, the same lifeblood flows in The Robbers as in the deeds of Danton, Mirabeau, and Robespierre, and this same lifeblood also flowed in Goethe, even if one might initially imagine that Goethe was very, very far removed from a revolutionary. But he is not that at all, he is definitely not that. It is just that in this complicated nature, in Goethe's nature, there is also a special complication of karmic impulses, of impulses of fate, which placed him in the world in a very special way from his earliest youth.

If one follows Goethe's life from a spiritual scientific perspective, it can initially be divided into certain periods, disregarding everything else. The first period can be described as the continuation of an impulse that can already be found in his childhood. Then something external appears that seems to divert the flow of his life: his acquaintance with the Duke of Weimar in 1775. And then we see how his stay in Rome sets him on a different course in life, how Goethe becomes a completely different person as a result of being able to absorb Roman life. If one wanted to go into this in more detail, one could say that a third impulse, which comes from outside – but this would not be entirely correct in the spiritual-scientific sense, as we shall see – was his friendly coexistence with Schiller after he had undergone his Roman transformation.

If one studies the first part of Goethe's life up to 1775, one finds that, although one must look at events more attentively than is usually done, “a powerful revolutionary mood lives in this Goethe, a rebellion against what is around him. It is only that his nature is, so to speak, spread over many things. And because the impulse to rebellion does not emerge as strongly as when it is concentrated, as in Schiller's “The Robbers,” but is more widespread, the matter does not stand out as strongly. But anyone who is able to examine Goethe's childhood and youth from a spiritual-scientific perspective will find that he possessed a spiritual vitality that he carried with him from birth and which, had certain events not occurred, would not have accompanied him throughout his entire life. What lived in him as Goethe's individuality was far greater than what his organism could actually absorb and live out.

In Schiller, this is obvious. If one could feel something so tangible today, one would find it. Schiller's early death was caused by nothing other than his organism being burned up by his powerful spiritual vitality. It is tangible. It is well known that when Schiller died, his heart was found to be dried up inside. Only his powerful spiritual energy kept him going as long as he could, but this powerful spiritual energy also consumed his physical life. Goethe's spiritual energy was even stronger, and yet Goethe reached a ripe old age. How did he achieve such a ripe old age?

You see, yesterday I mentioned a fact that had a very significant impact on Goethe's life. When he had been a student in Leipzig for several years, he fell ill, seriously ill, and faced death. He really looked death in the face, so to speak. This illness is certainly an organic natural phenomenon, but one never really gets to know a person who creates out of the elemental forces of the world if one does not take such events into consideration in the course of their karma. What actually happened to Goethe when he was ill in Leipzig? What happened was what can be called a complete loosening of the etheric body, in which the soul's life force had been active until then. It loosened to such an extent that after this illness Goethe no longer had the strong connection between the etheric body and the physical body that he had had before. But the etheric body is the supersensible part of us that actually enables us to have ideas and to think. Abstract ideas, such as we have in ordinary life, such as most people who are materialistic love, are possible because the etheric body is closely connected with the physical body, connected to it, as it were, by a strong magnetic bond. But because this is the case, we also have a strong impulse to carry our will into the physical world. One has this impulse with the will when, in addition, the astral body is particularly strongly developed. If we look at Robespierre, Mirabeau, and Danton, we see an etheric body strongly connected to the physical body, but also a strongly developed astral body, which in turn acts on the etheric body and places these human individuals strongly in the physical world.

Goethe was also organized in this way. But now another force was at work in him, which brought about a complication. This force caused the etheric body to loosen and remain loosened as a result of the illness that brought him very close to death. However, because the etheric body is no longer so intimately connected with the physical body, it no longer pushes its forces into the physical body, but retains them within the etheric. Hence this transformation that took place in Goethe when he returned from Leipzig to Frankfurt, where, through his acquaintance with Miss von Klettenberg, the mystic, in the acquaintance of all kinds of medical friends who devoted themselves to alchemical studies, in the acquaintance of the writings of Swedenborg, he really built up a spiritual world system, still chaotic, but nevertheless a spiritual world system, as he also had a deep inclination to concern himself with supersensible things. But this is connected with his illness. And the soul that brought the predisposition for this illness into this earthly life also brought with it the impulse to prepare the etheric body through this illness in such a way that this etheric body did not merely live out its life in the physical realm, but received the urge, and not only the urge, but also the ability to permeate itself with supernatural ideas. As long as one merely considers the external biographical facts of any human being in a materialistic manner, one cannot grasp the subtle connections in the flow of a person's destiny. Only when one allows oneself to be drawn into the harmony of natural events that affect our organism, such as Goethe's illness, with what emerges ethically, morally, and spiritually, does one gain the possibility of sensing the profound effect of karma.

The revolutionary force would certainly have come to the fore in Goethe in such a way that it would have consumed him early on. Since it would not have been possible for him to live out his revolutionary force outwardly in his milieu, and since Goethe could not have written dramas like Schiller, he would have had to consume himself. It was diverted by the loosening of the connection, the magnetic bond between his etheric body and his physical body.

Here you can see how a natural event can have a significant impact on a person's life. Certainly, something like this points to a deeper connection than the one that biographers often want to bring to the surface. For the significance of an illness for a person's entire individual experience cannot be explained by hereditary tendencies, but rather points to a person's connection with the world in such a way that this connection must be conceived spiritually. You can also see from this how Goethe's life became complicated. For it depends on this how we perceive something, how we ourselves are.

Now he arrives in Strasbourg, so to speak, with an etheric body filled with occult knowledge. And so he encounters Herder. Herder's great ideas had to become something completely different in Goethe than they were in Herder himself, who did not have the same conditions in his more delicate constitution. An event such as this encounter with death occurred in Goethe's life in Leipzig at the end of the 1860s, but it had been prepared for a long time by his inner strength. And anyone who wants to derive such an illness from external events or from purely physical events is not yet on the same level in the spiritual realm as the natural scientist, who understands that what follows cannot be regarded directly as an effect of what precedes it. So in Goethe, this kind of isolation from the world “through this connection between the physical body and the etheric body, which only reached its crisis through illness, was always there.”

In someone who has a compact connection between the physical body and the etheric body, the external world has an effect, but by making impressions on the physical body, the impressions immediately pass into the etheric body; that is one thing; and the etheric body then simply lives along with the impressions of the external world. In a nature such as Goethe's, impressions are naturally made on the physical body, but the etheric body does not immediately follow because it is loosened. The result is that such a person can be more isolated from their environment, in a sense, and that a more complicated process takes place when an impression is made on their physical body. Move away from Goethe's organic constitution to what you know from his biography: that he allowed events, including historical events, to affect him without violating them, so to speak, and then you will have gained an understanding of the peculiar workings of Goethe's nature. I told you: he takes the biography of Gottfried von Berlichingen, allows himself to be influenced only by Shakespeare's dramatic impulses, and does not change much of Gottfried von Berlichingen's not particularly well-written autobiography, so that he does not even call his drama a “drama,” but rather “The History of Gottfried von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand, Dramatized”; he only changes a few things. You see, this, I would say, gentle and tentative touching of things, so that he does not grasp them violently, is brought about by this very special connection between the etheric body and the physical body.

This connection did not exist in Schiller. That is why he creates characters whom he has not really based on external impressions, but whom he forms quite violently out of his own nature: Karl Moor. Goethe needs the effect of life. But he does not violate life; he only quietly helps to elevate life to a work of art. This is also the case when the circumstances of life approach him, which he then shaped in “Werther.” He does not bend his own circumstances or those of his friend Jerusalem; he does not shape them much, but rather takes life and only helps it along. And through the gentle way in which he helps, precisely from his etheric body, life becomes a work of art. But through the same organization, he also comes, I would say, only indirectly close to life and prepares his karma in this incarnation through this only indirect approach to life.

He arrives in Strasbourg. In addition to what he experienced, what I told you yesterday, what brought him forward on his Goethe path, he also experienced, as you know, in Strasbourg the heartfelt relationship with the pastor's daughter in Sesenheim, with Friederike Brion. He is very, very much involved in this relationship with his heart, and certainly one can raise various moral objections to the course of this relationship between Goethe and Friederike von Sesenheim, which may well be justified. That is not what matters now, but rather understanding. Goethe really goes through everything that would not only have led, but would naturally have led someone who was not Goethe to a lasting relationship with Friederike Brion. But Goethe does not experience this directly. Through what I have told you, a kind of gap has been created between his special inner world and the outside world. Just as he does not violate the living world around him, but only gently transforms it, so too does he, in a sense, not bring his feelings and sensations, which he can only experience in his etheric body, into such a firm connection with the outside world through his physical body that what would have led to very specific life events for others could also have led to them for him. And so he withdraws again from Friederike Brion. But one should only take this as something spiritual. When he rides out for the last time, he encounters himself on the way back—you can read about this in his biography. Goethe comes toward Goethe. Goethe recounts much, much later how he encountered himself at that time. Goethe comes toward Goethe. He sees himself. He rides out, and on his way back Goethe comes toward him, but not in the clothes he is wearing, but in different clothes. And when he returns there years later to visit his old acquaintances, he realizes that he really did go out again in the costume he saw himself wearing years ago when he encountered himself, without having sought it out. This is an event that must be believed with the same force with which one believes anything else Goethe tells us. To find fault with this, I would say, is not befitting of the love of truth with which Goethe portrayed his life.

How is it that Goethe, who was so close to the circumstances he had entered into, so close that it would have led to something completely different for anyone else, and yet so distant that he was able to withdraw, how is it that he encountered himself there? Well, in a person who experiences something in the etheric body, the experience very easily becomes objectified when this etheric body is loosened. He sees it as something external; it projects itself outward. This is what really happened to Goethe. At a particularly suitable moment, he saw the other Goethe, the etheric Goethe who lived within him, who remained connected through his karma with Friederike von Sesenheim. That is why he encountered himself as a ghost. But it is precisely an event that confirms in the deepest sense what can be seen about his own nature from the facts.

You can see how people can be caught up in external events, and how you first have to grasp the particular way, the individual way, in which they are caught up in them. For the relationship of human beings to the world, to the past, the connection with what we carry over from the past into our present, is complicated. But because Goethe, in a sense, tore his inner self out of its physical context, he was able, even in his early youth, to cherish the profound truths in his soul that so surprise us in his Faust. I deliberately say “surprise” for the simple reason that they really must surprise us, for I can hardly think of anything more simplistic than Goethe biographers constantly peddling the phrase: “Goethe is Faust and Faust is Goethe.” I have read this many times in Goethe biographies. It is, of course, utter nonsense. For what we really have in Faust, when we allow it to sink in properly, actually strikes us as such that we have to say to ourselves: it is sometimes the case that we do not even suspect that Goethe experienced it in exactly the same way or could even have known it – and yet it is there in Faust. Faust always grows beyond Goethe. However, only those who know the surprise that a poet experiences when he has his work of poetry before him can fully understand this. For one must not believe that the poet must always be as great as his work. He needs it just as little as a father needs to be as great in soul and genius as his son; for true poetic creation is a living thing. And just as it cannot be said that a living thing cannot create beyond itself, so it cannot be claimed that something spiritual and creative can never create beyond itself.

But through this inner isolation that I have described in Goethe, those deep insights into his soul emerge that we encounter in his “Faust.” For works such as “Faust” are not poems like other poems. “Faust” springs forth, as it were, from the entire spirit of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period; it grows far beyond Goethe. And much of what we experience with the world and its becoming resounds in a strange way in Faust. Remember the words you heard just now:

My friend, the times of the past
Are a book sealed with seven seals;
What you call the spirit of the times
Is in essence the spirit of the lords themselves,
In which the times are reflected.

It is too easy to overlook such words. Those who feel their full depth are reminded of many things that such words can only make true in the deepest sense. Think of what modern people have gained through their knowledge of Greek, of Greek intellectual life, through Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides! People immerse themselves in this Greek spiritual life, let us say in Sophocles. Is Sophocles a closed book? It is not easy to think that Sophocles could be a closed book! Sophocles, who lived to be ninety-one, wrote more than eighty dramas, seven of which have survived! Do you know anyone who has written eighty-one or more dramas, of which only seven have survived? Isn't that literally true: a book with seven seals? How can anyone claim to know Greek culture based on what has been handed down, when they simply have to admit that seventy-four Sophoclean dramas, which delighted and uplifted the Greeks, are no longer available? A very large number of Aeschylus' works are also missing. Poets lived in Greek times whose names are not even known. Are not the times of the past a book with seven seals? If one takes such an external fact, one must say so. And —

...it is a great delight,
To put oneself in the spirit of the times,
To see how a wise man thought before us,
And how we finally brought it so gloriously far.

Wagnerians believe they can easily put themselves in the mind of a wise man — if it has been shown to them! It is a pity that we cannot test what the brave little reviewers would write about “Hamlet” if it were to appear now and be performed on some large city stage before these gentlemen, or if a Sophoclean drama were to be performed before them today! Perhaps even what Sophocles himself had to do to convince at least his relatives of his greatness in his old age would not help these gentlemen. For he lived to be ninety-one years old, and his relatives had to wait so long for their inheritance that they sought evidence that Sophocles had become senile and was no longer capable of managing his own affairs. He had no way out except to write “Oedipus at Colonus.” With that, he could at least prove that he had not yet become senile. I don't know if it would work with today's critics, but it helped back then. But anyone who delves into such a fact, into the tragedy of the ninety-year-old Sophocles, will at the same time realize how difficult it is to find the path to human individuality; how this human individuality is intricately connected with world events. And much, much more could be cited to show how deep one must dig to understand the world. But how much of the wisdom necessary to understand the world is already present in the very first parts of Goethe's Faust! This can be traced back to this peculiar course of fate, which truly shows how nature and spiritual activity are one in human development, how an illness can have not only an external physical meaning, but also a spiritual meaning.

So we see, one might say, a sharp continuation of the karmic impulse that was in Goethe. But then again, in 1775, the acquaintance with the Duke of Weimar enters as if from outside. Goethe is summoned from Frankfurt to Weimar. What does this mean in his life? One must first understand what such an event meant for a person's life if one wants to find out more in order to understand that life. I know how little the world today is inclined to truly awaken the soul forces that are necessary to fully perceive and feel what already lives in the first parts of Goethe's Faust. To write what has now been presented here—Faust I, monologue in the study, Earth Spirit—requires a richness of soul which, when you look at it, makes you want to stand there for a long, long time in fervent adoration. And one often feels the deepest pain in one's soul when one sees how dull the world actually is and how incapable it is of feeling greatness. But if one feels something like this fully, then one will also understand what someone who is truly imbued with spiritual science comes to feel. For they come to say to themselves: there was something living in Goethe that consumed him. It couldn't go on like this."

You have to have this thought. Imagine: Goethe was born in 1749, so in 1775 he was twenty-six years old. He carried the manuscript of the scene we performed today in his suitcase—let's just take this, there was more in it—to Weimar. Anyone who has gone through something like that, to such an extent that he could write it down, carries it in his soul; it weighs heavily on his soul, because it is a force that wants to rise up, that wants to burst the soul apart.

We must be clear about two things if we want to appreciate the first parts of Faust that Goethe wrote in the right sense and in the right light. One might think that Goethe wrote these scenes gradually, say from the age of twenty-five to fifty. Then they would not have been so tense, they would not have been such a burden. Certainly, but that is not possible, it would not have been possible, because from the age of thirty to thirty-five, he would have lacked the youthful energy necessary to shape these things in this way. He had to write them during those years according to his individuality, but he could not continue living like that. He needed something like a dampening, a kind of partial slumber of the soul, to weaken the fire that burned in his soul when he wrote the first parts of Faust. The Duke of Weimar summoned him to make him a minister in Weimar. And he was a good minister, as I have already said. As a minister, he was able to rest and partially sleep away what was burning in his soul by working very diligently. And there really is a huge difference in the mood before 1775 and after 1775, which can be compared to a kind of tremendous awakening followed by a subdued life. The word “dullness” even comes to Goethe's mind when he describes his special life in Weimar, where he lives himself into events, but resonates with them more than before, when he rebelled against them. It was strange, then, that the ten years of dullness were followed by a gentler approach to events. And just as little as sleep is a direct effect of the previous day's life, Goethe's sleep was not an effect of what had gone before. The connections are much greater than one usually thinks. I have often pointed out that it is a superficial view to answer the question, “Why do people sleep?” with “Because they are tired!” It is a lazy, sleepy truth, because it is nonsense. Otherwise, it would not be a fact that people who cannot be tired, for example, rentiers after a full meal, when they have to listen to something that does not particularly interest them, lull themselves to sleep. They are certainly not tired. The fact is not that we sleep because we are tired, but that waking and sleeping are rhythmic processes of life, and when the time for sleeping, the necessity for sleeping, approaches, we become tired. We are tired because we have to sleep, but we do not sleep because we are tired. I do not wish to elaborate on this further at this moment.

But just think of the greater context in which the rhythm of sleeping and waking exists! It is, after all, the reproduction of day and night in the cosmos within human nature. To explain sleep as the result of fatigue during the day is, of course, obvious to materialistic science, but the opposite is true. The rhythm of sleeping and waking must be explained from the cosmos, from larger contexts. But larger contexts must also explain why, after the period when Faust raged in Goethe's soul, there followed the ten years of subdued life in Weimar. This points directly to his karma, which cannot be discussed further here.

As an everyday person, we wake up in the morning, usually in the same state of consciousness as when we fell asleep the night before. In reality, this is never the case. We never wake up exactly as we fell asleep, but always somewhat enriched; we are simply unaware of this enrichment. But when a wave crest is followed by a trough, as was the case with Goethe in his Weimar years, then the awakening takes place on a higher level, must take place on a higher level. But the innermost forces strive for this. And in Goethe's case, the innermost forces also strive to awaken from the dullness of Weimar to a full life in an environment that could now really give him what he lacked. That was in Italy, when he awoke. In Weimar itself, he could not have awakened because of his particular constitution. But it is precisely in such a thing that one can see the deep connection between the work of a real artist, a great artist, and his particular experience. You see, someone who is not a great artist can write a drama smoothly, page by page; he can do it quite well. The great poet cannot do this, because he needs to be deeply rooted in life. Goethe was therefore able to express the deepest, deepest truths in his “Faust” at a relatively early age, truths that far exceeded his soul's capacity. But he had to express a rejuvenation in Faust. Think about it: Faust had to arrive at a completely different mood; even though he is so deeply drawn, he had to be rejuvenated. After all, despite all his depth, what he had absorbed in his soul up to that point had brought him close to suicide. He had to be rejuvenated. A small person can describe quite well, perhaps in beautiful verses, how a person is rejuvenated. Goethe could not do this so easily; he first had to be rejuvenated himself in Rome. That is why the rejuvenation scene in “The Witch's Kitchen” was written in Rome, in the garden of the Villa Borghese. Goethe would not have dared to write this scene earlier.

Now, connected with such a rejuvenation as Goethe experienced is a consciousness, albeit still a dull one. In Goethe's time, there were no spiritual sciences: it could not be a clear consciousness, but only a dim one. Such rejuvenation is connected with special powers that already carry over into the next incarnation. Experiences belonging to this incarnation are intertwined with various things that carry over into the next incarnation. When one considers this, one is led to a particularly profound tendency in Goethe. Allow me to interject a personal remark: I have been studying Goethe's view of nature for a number of decades, I would say since 1879/80, and intensively since 1885/86. And during this time I have come to the conclusion that there is something in the impulse that Goethe gave to the view of nature – something that today's natural scientists, natural philosophers and natural thinkers actually understand nothing about – that can be developed, but only over centuries. So that Goethe will probably, when he returns in another incarnation, still find the opportunity to shape what he has not yet been able to complete in this incarnation from his view of nature. There are many things in Goethe's view of nature that we cannot even imagine today. I have expressed my thoughts on this in my book Goethe's World View and in the introductions to Goethe's Scientific Writings in Kürschner's National Literature. So that one can already say: Goethe carries within himself, with his view of nature, something that points to far, far-reaching horizons, but which is intimately connected with his rebirth, which was not exactly tied to Rome in this respect, but to the age he lived through in Rome. Read how I have described things, how the metamorphosis of plants, animals, the primordial plant, the primordial animal developed during his Italian journey, how, when he returned, he tackled the theory of colors, which even today is still incomprehensible, how he tackled other things as well; then you will see that this settling into his comprehensive view of nature is also connected with his rebirth. Then, of course, he related what had developed within himself in the course of his life to Faust, but not as a minor poet would do, but as a great poet does. Faust experiences the tragedy of Gretchen. In the midst of the Gretchen tragedy, we are suddenly confronted with Faust's great view of nature, which now, however, has much in common with Goethe's great view of nature, and which is expressed in Faust's words:

Sublime spirit, you gave me, gave me everything,
Why I asked. You did not turn your face toward me in vain in the fire.
You gave me the glorious nature as my kingdom,
the power to feel it, to enjoy it. Not
coldly allowing only a visit of wonder,
you grant me to look into its deep bosom,
As into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the ranks of the living
Before me, and teach me to know my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce, falling, crushing neighboring branches
And neighboring trunks,
And their fall thunders hollowly through the hills,
Then you lead me to a safe cave, show
Me then to myself, and to my own breast
Secret deep wonders open themselves.

A grand worldview! Goethe attributes it to Faust. Goethe only attained this insight into the soul during his trip to Italy. The scene “Sublime spirit, you gave me, gave me everything” was also written in Rome; Goethe had not written it earlier. For these two scenes, the rejuvenation scene in the “witches' kitchen” and the scene “Forest and Cave”: “Sublime spirit, you gave me, gave me everything,” are precisely those that were written in Rome.

Here you can see a real rhythm in Goethe's life, a rhythm that reveals an inner impulse, just as the rhythm of waking and sleeping in humans reveals an inner impulse. In a life such as Goethe's, we can study certain laws particularly clearly, but it will become apparent to us how what we encounter in the form of laws in great personalities can become important for the life of each individual. For ultimately, the laws that govern a great person also govern every single human being. Tomorrow we will continue to talk about the connections between life as they can be gained from this point of view.