The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] One of the greatest figures in world history is one of the successors of Constantine, whom we discussed the day before yesterday: Julian the Apostate, who was killed by assassins in 363 during a campaign against the Persians. In Julian the Apostate, we have before us a figure who played a most remarkable role in the history of Western civilization; a figure who shows how, in the evolution of the world, opposing forces must indeed be at work in order for this evolution to take place in the way it has. In Constantine, we saw the personality who had to break, so to speak, with the old principle of power of the Roman Caesars, which a large number of these Caesars claimed for themselves, with the principle of power of being initiated into the mysteries. Constantine then did everything in his power to give Christianity, so to speak, an exoteric dominion; he did everything that we tried to characterize the day before yesterday.

[ 2 ] Now Julian, from the beginning, one might say from the moment he entered the world, was regarded in the worst possible way by the imperial family and all their followers. In the time we are talking about, this always had to do with the fact that such an individuality was preceded by all kinds of prophecies and predictions even before birth. The family had been compelled by all kinds of Sibylline prophecies to believe that the impulse embodied in Emperor Constantine would give rise to a counterforce in Julian. Therefore, from the very beginning, the family sought to prevent Julian from ever attaining the dignity of Caesar. He was to be killed. All preparations had already been made for him to be killed as a child along with his brother. There was really something about Julianus, like an aura that was perceived with terror by those around him. Such stories, of which there are many connected with Julianus' personality, show how there was something sinister about him from the points of view mentioned above. Once, when he was still young and present at a military campaign in Gaul, a somnambulist whom the procession passed began to cry out: “That is the one who will restore the old gods and images of the gods!”

[ 3 ] So, one must see something deeper, something spiritual in Julianus' behavior. He was then left alive, as is very often the case in such situations, out of fear that his killing could cause even greater harm than letting him live. And then people convinced themselves that whatever he might do to oppose Constantine's undertakings would be quickly paralyzed and prevented. And they really did take all precautions to render ineffective what lay, so to speak, in Julian's nature, what he was inclined to do. Above all, they were careful to give him a thoroughly Christian education in accordance with Constantine's ideas. But this did not take hold of him; it could not touch his soul, and wherever he could perceive anything of the ancient Hellenic traditions, his soul caught fire. And because, where strong forces are at work, these strong forces ultimately prevail, it came to pass that, precisely because they wanted to keep him away from dangerous places, he was driven into the hands of all kinds of Hellenic educators, became acquainted with Hellenism, learned about the traditions of this Hellenism, and then, when he had grown up, learned about the way in which Hellenism, Greek culture, lived on in the post-Platonic, in the Neoplatonic philosophers, and that it finally came to the point where he was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. So, after the principle of initiation had been eradicated from Roman Caesarism, Julian was once again the initiate on the throne of the Caesars when he finally ascended to the throne of the Caesars.

[ 4 ] Now, everything that Julian did, and everything that history has tried very hard to distort in every way, must be viewed from the perspective that arises from his initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries. And one can only judge a personality such as Julian correctly if one is able to take the effect of this initiation into the Eleusinian mysteries completely seriously. For what had Julian actually gained for his soul by undergoing the Eleusinian initiation? He had learned from direct spiritual perception the facts of cosmic becoming, the facts of the world's becoming. He had learned about the spiritual origin of the world, learned how the spiritual origin of the world lives out in the planetary system, in the solar system; he had learned to understand certain things that had actually become completely incomprehensible to the whole world at that time, with the exception of a few Greek initiates: the connection between the activity of the sun and the nature of the sun with the ancient Hermes Logos. This was something that had entered his soul. He had learned to understand, in a sense, something like the Pythagorean saying: “You must never speak against the sun!” This, of course, cannot mean the external physical sun, but rather the spirit that is hidden behind the sun. He had therefore known that it was in accordance with ancient sacred traditions to see in the spiritual-soul element underlying the sun the actual foundation of the world, but above all to see that which man must relate to if he wants to penetrate to the sources of existence.

[ 5 ] So you see, before Julianus' soul stood this whole ancient mystery of the sun, stood the truth that this physical sun that appears to the physical eye is only the outer body of a spiritual-soul sun that can be brought to life in the human soul through initiation, and when it comes to life, can tell this soul what is common to the cosmos, the great world and human historical life here. It had become clear to Julianus that there could never be institutions here in the world that arose solely from human reason, which is bound to the human brain, that only he who is somehow called upon to have a say in the institutions of the world who can converse with the Sun Logos; for he had to see a common law in the movement of the stars and in what happens here on earth among human beings, in the great movements of human beings in historical becoming.

[ 6 ] Now it must be said that even a Church Father such as St. Chrysostom was aware that there is an ancient solar mystery, a spiritual solar mystery, since Chrysostom went so far as to say: The outer physical sun blinds people on earth so that they cannot bring themselves to see the spiritual sun. But when one sees everything that lived in the environment of a man like Chrysostom, into whose soul such a ray of ancient wisdom had shone, one must say that there was really hardly any remnant of understanding left for that way of comprehending the world mystery in the soul, as it had been communicated through the ancient mysteries, and as it was communicated, albeit to one of the last, Julian, the Apostate. So basically, Julian the Apostate was surrounded by Constantinians, by people who thought in the spirit of Constantine. Certainly, individual great figures continued to emerge in the West until the end of the ninth century, even among the popes, who were still touched by the ancient mysteries; but the real work that was done from Rome was to render the efforts of such individuals ineffective and to develop a very specific and peculiar policy toward the traditions of the ancient mysteries, which we will discuss in a few words in a moment. Julian had basically nothing around him but a very exoteric form of Christianity.

[ 7 ] Through complicated processes that are difficult to describe in their psychological details, he came to form the idea of what it would be like if one were to use what had been handed down as the last, the very last remnant of the ancient initiation, to bring about a continuous progression in human development. I would say that Julian was not really an opponent of Christianity; he was merely a supporter of the propagation of Hellenism. And one perhaps encounters his individuality more clearly when one considers him as more of a propagator of Hellenism than as an opponent of Christianity. For all the zeal he developed and all the strength he developed was actually aimed at not allowing Hellenism to die out, not allowing it to be eradicated, but at creating a continuous stream of development so that Hellenism could really have come to later posterity. Julian the Apostate wanted to oppose the sharp break, the radical turn. And he was a great personality. Since he had been initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, he knew that things such as those he wanted to undertake could not be undertaken unless one allied oneself with the spiritual powers that live in everything sensual. He knew that if one wanted to carry out impulses in world evolution solely with what lives in the physical-sensory realm and also in ordinary history, one would be speaking against the sun in the Pythagorean sense. He did not want that. He wanted precisely the opposite. He actually took up one of the greatest struggles imaginable within human evolution.

[ 8 ] Now we must not forget what spoke against such a struggle in Rome at that time, what spoke against such a struggle throughout the whole of southern Europe. Do not forget that it is absolutely true that, even into the century of Constantine, broad sections of society preserved, albeit in their last remnants, the old spiritual activities. Today, a particular crux, a particular cross for the explanation of the Gospels, remains the question of miracles, because people never want to read the Gospels from the perspective of their time. For the contemporaries of the evangelists, the question of miracles meant nothing at all, because they knew that there are also activities in which human beings draw forces from the spiritual world that they control.

[ 9 ] Now, to the same extent that Christianity was introduced externally by the state, which then culminated in the actions of Constantine, to the same extent did the efforts to suppress the old spiritual activities increase; laws upon laws were enacted in Rome, all of which were aimed at preventing anyone from performing any activities that drew power from the spiritual world. Of course, this was dressed up by saying that the old superstitions had to stop! They dressed it up by saying that no one was allowed to perform any acts involving spiritual powers in order to harm other people; no one was allowed to communicate with deceased people and the like. Such laws were enacted. But behind these laws lay the desire to eradicate completely what had been preserved from ancient times in the way of spiritual activities. Certainly, history seeks to cover up and conceal what has happened. But the very beginnings of our historiography, which the present historiography with its “unconditional, authority-free science” does not take into account, the very beginnings of our historiography were made in the monasteries, by priests and monks. And it was their most serious endeavor to erase the true form of antiquity, indeed not to allow the essential to come down to posterity.

[ 10 ] And so Julianus saw the declining old world in a completely different light than those who preceded Constantine. And yet he knew from his initiation that there is a connection between the human soul and the spiritual world. He knew that. He could only hope for something from the undertaking he had set himself—to use the forces of the ancient principle of initiation to bring about a continuous progression in human development—by opposing, as it were, the form of development that had been accepted all around him. And actually, precisely because of his initiation, Julianus was a man of the deepest love of truth, of that love of truth of which people like Emperor Constantine naturally had not the slightest idea. He was a man of the deepest love of truth. And one might say: Truth, taken seriously, confronts one in Julianus in such a powerful way that one hardly finds this revival of seriousness about truth more often later in Western human development. With his deeply meaningful instinct for truth, stimulated by his initiation, he looked at what had become, for example, of the schools, of the lower and higher schools in his environment. Since Constantine, Christian dogma had been introduced into the schools in the form in which it had developed up to that point. The teachers possessed this Christian dogma and taught from their standpoint about the ancient Hellenic writers, about those writers who had the ancient gods as an integral element in their works: Zeus, Apollo, Pallas Athena, Aphrodite, Hermes-Mercurius, and so on. The thought now arose in Julian's soul: What are all these teachers actually doing? Are they not the most mendacious sophists imaginable? Can anyone presume to interpret ancient writings that are based entirely on the fact that the person who wrote them felt the ancient gods in his soul as true impulses in the world? Can someone who, precisely because of his dogmatism, must fight, must fight in the most radical way, against the existence of these ancient gods, interpret such writings? This seemed to Julianus' instinct for truth to be something inappropriate. Therefore, he forbade all those who were unable to believe in the old gods because of their Christian dogmatism from interpreting the ancient writers in schools. If we were to proceed today according to the same principle of truth as Julianus did, think of all the things that would not be allowed to be taught in our schools! But consider what a deep instinct for truth lived in Julian!

[ 11 ] He wanted to keep up with the spirit of the times, which, from another point of view, was nevertheless necessary. Before him he had the Gospels, which had come into being in a completely different way from what he had experienced through the Eleusinian initiation. He could not find his way into the way in which the Gospels had come into being. He said to himself: If what came from Christ is an initiatory principle, then it must be found in the mysteries; it must be able to live in the depths of the mysteries. And he wanted to make a great test to see whether it would be possible to continue the old way. At first, he saw only what Christianity had become in his time. He wanted to conduct a great experiment, to conduct an experiment at a certain point, but not an experiment that would have been childish for him, one that relied solely on human means. He wanted to take action that would have meaning for events in the spiritual world itself. So he said to himself: Well, it has been prophesied to Christians that the temple in Jerusalem will be destroyed so that no stone will be left upon another. That has also happened, he said. But Christianity cannot be fulfilled if this prophecy, such a prophecy, is brought to shame, if people work against it! So he decided, with large sums of money, according to the circumstances of the time, to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. And it really came about that many workers gathered to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. Now you must consider the whole matter in a spiritual sense: Julianus wanted to challenge not only men, but gods! It is an indisputable fact, which can be proven historically—as well as historical facts can be proven, and it is certain both outwardly and inwardly—that every one of the workers who began to build the temple in Jerusalem had a vision that flames of fire were coming toward him at his workplace, and he withdrew. The undertaking did not come to fruition. But you can see the greatness of Julian's intention.

[ 12 ] After this had failed, after the demonstration before the world had failed, so to speak, Julian wanted to discredit the prophecy of the destruction of the temple, and he wanted to try something else. And what he now wanted to try was something no less magnificent. It was not yet the time when European development had been affected by that wave of development which had its origin in the fact that one of the greatest teachers of the Church, Augustine, had been unable to rise to a certain idea because he was not sufficiently spiritual to rise to a certain idea. You may know from history that Augustine – I have discussed this on various occasions, including when I discussed the Faust idea – started out from so-called Manichaeism, the doctrine that arose in Persia, which claimed to understand Christ Jesus better than Rome and Constantinople could. This Manichaean doctrine, whose final word unfortunately cannot yet be spoken today, not even in our circles, this Manichaean doctrine, has seeped through in many ways, even into the West in later times, and was, so to speak, buried in its — but corrupted — offshoots, when the Faust legend began to be recorded in the sixteenth century. Out of a brilliant intuition, however, there is also something of the revival of Manichaeism in Goethe's revival of Faust. Julianus thought in broad terms; he had ideas that truly encompassed humanity. With a man like Julianus, it becomes particularly clear how small ordinary human thoughts actually are. You see, the teaching of the “Son of Man” naturally had to take on different forms, depending on one's ability to form ideas about human beings, about the nature of human beings themselves. Of course, one had to form ideas about the Son of Man in the same way that one was able to form ideas about human beings; I mean, one thing determines the other. But people were very different in this respect. Very, very different. And in our time, we have very little deep understanding of such things.

[ 13 ] Human being — Manushya: in Sanskrit, the word for human being. But this word Manushya also expresses the basic feeling that a large part of humanity associated with humanity. What are we referring to when we give human beings the name Manushya, when we use this root word to describe human beings? We are referring to the spiritual in human beings; above all, we judge human beings as spiritual beings. If one wants to express that human beings are spirit, and that everything else is merely the expression, the revelation of the spirit — if one therefore attaches primary importance to human beings as spirit, then one says “Manushya.”

[ 14 ] Based on what we have discussed in preparation, there may now be another point of view. When speaking of human beings, one can focus primarily on the soul. And then, I would say, one will pay less attention to the fact that human beings are spirit. One will pay attention to the fact that human beings are soul, and allow the external, physical, and everything connected with the physical to recede more into the background when describing humanity. One will then take the designation of the human being primarily from what expresses that something soul-like lives in the human being, which is expressed in the eye, which is expressed in the fact that the human head rises upward. If one examines the Greek word Anthropos for its origin, it expresses approximately this. If one could say that those who describe human beings with Manushya or a similar-sounding word were looking primarily at the spirit, at that which descends from the spiritual world, then one must say that those who describe human beings with a word that echoes the Greek word Anthropos, primarily the Greeks themselves, express the soul aspect of human beings.

[ 15 ] But a third possibility is also open. It is possible to look first of all at what is external in human beings, what is born of the earth, the physical, that which is produced by physical means. Then one would describe human beings with a word that means, in a sense, the producer or the produced. That would be inherent in the word. If one examines the word homo for its origin, then what has just been described is contained therein.

[ 16 ] You have presented, I would say, a threefold view of the human being in a very remarkable way. But you will see from this division that a person like Julian, who knew something of these things, could with a certain right have developed the instinct to seek a spiritual interpretation of the Son of Man. The thought arose in his soul: You have been initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries. Is it perhaps possible to compel you to allow yourself to be initiated into the Persian mysteries and into the mysteries that are hinted at in the Manichaean teaching? Perhaps you will thus gain the opportunity to promote the continuous development you are striving for! — That is a gigantic thought. But just as there was something else underlying Alexander the Great's campaign than the “triviality of conquering Asia,” there was also something else underlying Julian the Apostate's campaign to Persia. What has just been hinted at was underlying it. There was something else behind it than just conquering Persia: he wanted to see if he could penetrate deeper into his task with the help of the Persian mysteries.

[ 17 ] What this is all about can best be understood by asking oneself: What did Augustine actually not understand about Manichaeism? What was it about Manichaeism that was incomprehensible? — Well, as I said, it is not possible to speak about the ultimate goals of Manichaeism today, but we can at least hint at some things. Augustine was very taken with Manichaeism even in his youth; he was deeply moved by it. Then he exchanged Manichaeism for Roman Catholicism. What was it that he could not understand about Manichaeism? Who was he no match for?

[ 18 ] The Manichaean doctrine did not form abstract concepts, did not form concepts that, in a sense, separate the thought from the rest of reality. To form such concepts was impossible in the Manichaean doctrine, as it was, incidentally, for the initiates of the Eleusinian mysteries. I have attempted to point out the difference between merely logical concepts and concepts that correspond to reality. The principle underlying Manichaeism is above all to form concepts that are not merely logical, but always correspond to reality, to form ideas that correspond to reality. This is not to say that unreal ideas do not also play a role in life. Unfortunately, they play a major role, especially in our time; but the role they play is also after the fact! And so it is—among many other things—in the sense of Manichaeism to form ideas that are not merely thought, but are powerful enough to intervene in real external nature, to play a role in external nature. Such an idea, as it was often formed about Jesus Christ, would have been completely impossible for the Manichaean doctrine. What then did Jesus Christ become in many respects? Yes, a rather vague concept of Christ, who was embodied in Jesus and through whom something happened in the development of the earth. The concepts have all been terribly obscured, especially in the nineteenth century.

[ 19 ] But if one asks oneself whether what is attributed to Christ and his activity in Christian dogma can really lead to anything—if one is insistent, serious, sincere, and truth-loving—one cannot answer the question in the affirmative. For if human concepts are not strong enough to conceive of an earth that is not a tomb for humanity, but rather carries humanity over to a new form, if one is not strong enough to conceive of the development of the earth other than as natural scientists describe it today: that the earth will one day cease to produce anything, that the human race will become extinct — then all ideas about Christ Jesus are actually of no help. For even if he has unfolded a certain activity for the earth, the conception we have of this is not strong enough to lift matter so far that it can be thought of as active in such a way that it passes over from the state of the earth into a future state. But much stronger concepts than can be formed are needed to catch the earth with these concepts so that it lives on into a new existence.

[ 20 ] I said recently in a public lecture: Today, natural science thinks in such a way that it calculates, for example, that if the forces of nature as they are today are extended over millions of years, a state will eventually arise — I described this to you after a lecture at the Royal Institution — where it will be possible to paint the walls with protein because it glows and you can read the newspaper by its light. I described how a natural scientist says that milk will then be solid, will shine in blue light, and so on. These ideas naturally arise from shadowy concepts of reality, from concepts that are not strong enough to grasp reality. For all this calculating in natural science is like examining the human stomach to see how it changes in four or five years and then calculating what humans will be like in two hundred and fifty years. By extending this over a large number of years, I can calculate it. Just as the natural scientist calculates what the earth will look like in a million years, I can calculate what the human stomach will look like: in a six- or seven-year-old human being, I can calculate what this stomach will look like after two hundred and fifty years; only then will the human being have died! Just as geologists can calculate what the earth looked like so many millions of years ago, so too could one take a child today and calculate how its internal organs will change in eight days, fourteen days, and work backwards, wouldn't one, and then arrive at a state what the child looked like two hundred and fifty years ago—only, of course, it did not exist then. The concepts are simply not capable of grasping the whole reality. These scientific concepts apply to the partial reality that immediately surrounds human beings in the millennia that lie approximately six to seven millennia before our calendar and six to seven millennia after our calendar, but they do not apply beyond that. However, the human being must apply to completely different ages. And in the sense of this human being, the Christ being must be there. That is why I once said here: There is a difference between what was called the “mystical marriage” in the Middle Ages and what was called the “chemical marriage” in the sense of Christian Rosenkreutz. The mystical marriage is only an inner process. As many theosophists have said in the past, and perhaps still say today: if you delve deep enough into your inner being, you will find your identity with the divine being! This was so beautifully presented to people that those who had listened to such an hour-long lecture went out with the conviction that if you really delved deep into your inner being, you could feel like a kind of god! — The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz, which indeed conceives of such forces at work in human beings that they take hold of the whole human being and truly transform the human being so that, once matter has fallen away as dross, it is carried over into the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan ages.

[ 21 ] The conquest of evil, the conquest of matter with the concept, that was in Manichaeism. That the question of the Fall, the question of evil, and in connection with this the question of Christ Jesus, must be understood in a deeper sense, that was before Julian's soul, that he wanted to obtain from a Persian initiation, which he then wanted to bring to Europe. And lo and behold, on this journey to Persia, he fell by the hand of murderers. It can also be proven historically that he fell by the hand of murderers, by the hand of a follower of Constantine, of the Constantinian Christians. So you see how, I would say, the principle of establishing continuity became tragic in Julian the Apostate, leading, as it were, to a dead end.

[ 22 ] And then the Augustinian principle came into effect, that one should not form concepts that in any way resemble Manichaeism, that is, the combination of material ideas with spiritual thinking. The West was driven into the process of abstraction. And this process of abstraction continued, continued with a certain necessity, and really permeated the West. Only a few significant minds rebelled, were the great rebels against abstract thinking. One of the most significant of these rebels was Goethe, in his entire mental constitution. And one of those who fell most deeply into abstract thinking was Kant. For take Kant's Critique of Pure Reason—I know very well how heretical I am speaking, but it is true—and read its main propositions, and turn each of these main propositions into its opposite, and you will arrive at the truth. This is precisely how one must think about the most important propositions, about Kant's theory of space and time. One can calmly turn the propositions into their opposites, one can say no where he says yes, and yes where he says no, and then one gets approximately what is tenable in the intellectual world. But you can see from this how great the interest is in falsifying Goethe, Kant's great antipode, in the way that the man I told you about recently falsified him, falsifying him into the opposite: “No creative spirit penetrates into the interior of nature!”

[ 23 ] One must take these points of view into account, then one can also appreciate Julian's writing, which is directed specifically against Pauline Christianity, from the right point of view. It is a remarkable piece of writing. And it is remarkable not so much for what it contains as for what various writings of the nineteenth century contain. It is a paradox, is it not? But the fact is this: if one takes the writings of Julian the Apostate against Christianity, then all kinds of reasons are put forward against Christianity, against the historical Jesus, against certain Christian dogma, all with a very strong, true pathos; not with a false pathos, but with a true pathos, with strong inwardness. And if you take these reasons and then begin to examine what liberal theology of the nineteenth century and then the transition of this liberal theology to the Drews people and to the people who, on the basis of this liberal theological research, denied the historicity, the existence of Christ Jesus, if you take what was brought up in the literature of the nineteenth century and compile all this literature, which begins in the eighteenth century and then continues throughout the nineteenth century, which is among the most diligent, careful, and thorough philological work imaginable—I have always said this, but it has been repeated so many times that one has to go through entire libraries—then it turns out that one can indeed compile certain main lines. The main criticism began, did it not, with the comparison of the Gospels, the discovery of discrepancies between them, and so on. Well, I have spoken about these things often, so there is no need to repeat them. But if one compiles the main lines, the main propositions, they can all be found already in Julianus Apostata. Nothing new was actually put forward in the nineteenth century. Julian the Apostate had already put everything forward. He only said it out of a certain genius, whereas in the nineteenth century it was said with enormous diligence, with thorough theological scholarship and with thorough theological sophistry.

[ 24 ] So one can say that Julian the Apostate took up a titanic struggle. In the end, he tried to bring about a continuous development by reviving Manichaeism. Imagine that such great minds as Goethe, as if driven by an instinctive urge, wanted to revive the old Hellenism within themselves! Imagine what would have become of all these people if Julian the Apostate had succeeded in his work! It must be said that the necessity underlying the fact that Julian the Apostate could not succeed in his work must be viewed from a completely different angle. But one will not understand this necessity either if one looks at the great Julian in a philistine manner, if one does not see in him a titanic fighter for a human understanding of the world's connections that penetrates reality. And in our time, it is particularly useful to remember such great moments in the historical development of the West. For we live in a time that cannot be overcome in a healthy way unless we understand in a new way what a spirit like Julian the Apostate wanted. In his time, the opportunity had not yet arisen—and this is his great tragedy—to reconcile the old principle of initiation with the deepest essence of Christianity. In our time, the opportunity has come, and it must not be missed if the earth is not to decline, if humanity is not to decline. A necessary renewal in all areas must be recognized. Above all, it must be recognized that the principle of communication with the spiritual world must be accepted.

[ 25 ] Of course, we must first form ideas about everything that works against these necessities. And today we fear such ideas; we fear urgent ideas. Even though there is much courage in our time, it is not the courage of knowledge that lives in our time! Above all, the courage of knowledge is lacking! A real determination to face reality is not yet within the grasp of humanity today. But this is above all a necessity, a profound necessity in our time. For if our time does not want to sink into nothingness, it must learn to understand something: it must learn to understand the principle of the creative spirit; it must learn to understand what it means that the spirit, in becoming creative, works with the same power as the instincts, only that the instincts work in darkness, while the spirit that has become creative works in the light of the sun, that is, the spiritual sun. Our time must learn to understand this. And much is still working against this, directly against it, especially in our time.

[ 26 ] Cato, the Roman Cato, whose primary27 concern was to establish a firm structure for the Roman state, considered it necessary, in order to achieve this, to banish the followers of Greek, Hellenic philosophy, because, as he said, “they only talk, and that disturbs the regulations of our authorities.” Machiavelli, the great Florentine of the Renaissance, agreed with him, praising Cato in particular, saying, “They only talk, and that disturbs the regulations of our authorities.” “They only talk!” he said, ‘and that disturbs the decrees of our authorities.’ Machiavelli, the great Florentine of the Renaissance, agreed with him, praising Cato in particular for wanting to banish from the state those who, from the standpoint of intellectual knowledge, interfere in the constitution of the state. Machiavelli also had a thorough understanding that at certain times in the Roman Empire, the death penalty was imposed on those who took an interest in the structure of the social order.

[ 27 ] Dealing with the spiritual world is something that the Roman Empire and all its successors in Europe are particularly hostile to. That is why efforts are made in so many areas to keep these things as unclear as possible, to cover them up as much as possible. However, when an idea of the mystery of Golgotha, with all the radical ruthlessness with which the mystery of Golgotha must be conceived, takes root in the world, then much will have to melt spiritually, as snow melts in the sunlight. That is unpleasant. It is quite unpleasant. But it must happen. And above all, we must find a way to truly grasp the essence of Christ. And next time, we will talk about how the human soul can come close to this essence of Christ directly in our time.

[ 28 ] But truly fruitful ideas about this can only be gained if one can cast one's gaze, on the one hand, on a figure who, I would say, inaugurated the exoteric side of Western cultural development, such as Constantine, and then, on the other hand, on the figure of Julian the Apostate, who attempted, in a way that was impossible at the time, to take up the fight against this exoteric side of Western development. The peculiar thing is this: if today someone approaches Christian dogma with just a little knowledge—I don't even want to say a little knowledge of occult facts, but even a little real knowledge of the occult that is still contained in certain older writings—if someone approaches Christian dogma with this knowledge, then very strange things come out. And if someone even considers things such as the Mass — as I said, I don't even want to say with occult knowledge, but with things that originate from occult knowledge in ancient writings — if he approaches the assessment of the cult and dogma with such things, strange things come out. Things emerge that make one say: Yes, what is often found in this dogma? What is in these cultic acts? Not I, but numerous writers who have dealt with the matter from the point of view just mentioned, have come to the conclusion: Yes, there is actually so much old paganism in dogma and cult, there is so much revival of old paganism that one can attempt, as for example the French writer Drach, who was a thorough expert on ancient Hebrew, to show how everything in the dogma and cult of the Catholic Church is merely old paganism that has been brought back to the surface. And then writers have attempted to show that it was precisely the intention of certain people to conceal this fact, not to let the world know that old paganism had been transplanted into dogma and worship.

[ 29 ] It would be a strange fact if paganism were to continue to exist in a very subconscious way, and the question might arise: What services would the survival of paganism have rendered to the survival of the Roman Empire? What services? And what about Julian the Apostate? Yes, if some more recent writers were right in saying that, for example, the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass is essentially an ancient pagan sacrifice, and Julian the Apostate devoted all his efforts to preventing the old pagan customs from dying out, but rather to propagating them, then he would have achieved something in a certain sense. Countless highly curious problems, or, as Nietzsche puts it, “problems with horns,” arise from considering the great contrast between Julian the Apostate and Constantine. These are all problems with horns that are extremely, extremely fatal to contemporary man, but which must inevitably become problems of the times.

[ 30 ] We will take up this consideration again next time.