Goethe and the Evolution of Consciousness
GA 206
19 August 1921, Dornach
Translated by H. Collison
The views which have to be developed in anthroposophical Spiritual Science in order to comprehend man and the world are more easily understood if we study the changes that have taken place in the mental outlook of man through the centuries. If we tell people to-day that in order really to know something about the nature of man, quite a different outlook is necessary from that to which they are accustomed, their first reaction will be one of astonishment and, for the moment, the shock will make them put aside all such knowledge. They feel that one thing at least remains constant, namely, man's spiritual or mental attitude to the things of the world. This is very evident in the outlook of many teachers of history at the present time. They declare that, so far as his mental attitude is concerned, man has not fundamentally changed throughout history and that if this were otherwise there could really be no history at all. They argue that in order to write history it is essential to take the present mental attitude as the starting-point; if one were obliged to look back to an age when human beings were quite differently constituted in their life of soul, it would be impossible to understand them. One would not understand how they spoke or what they did. Historical thought, therefore, could not comprise any such period. From this the modern historian infers that human beings must always have possessed fundamentally the same frame of mind, the same mental outlook as they possess to-day.—Otherwise there could be no history.
This is obviously a very convenient point of view. For if in the course of historic evolution man's life of soul has changed, we must make our ideas plastic and form quite a different conception of former epochs of history from that to which we are accustomed to-day.
There is a very significant example of a man who found it inwardly and spiritually impossible to share in the mental attitude of his contemporaries and who was forced to make such a change in his whole outlook. This significant example—and I mention his name to-day merely by way of example—is Goethe.
As a young man Goethe necessarily grew up in the outlook of his contemporaries and in the way in which they regarded the world and the affairs of human beings. But he really did not feel at home in this world of thought. There was something turbulent about the young Goethe, but it was a turbulence of a special kind. We need only look at the poems he composed in his youth and we shall find that there was always a kind of inner opposition to what his contemporaries were thinking about the world and about life.
But at the same time there is something else in Goethe—a kind of appeal to what lives in Nature, saying something more enduring and conveying much more than the opinions of those around him could convey. Goethe appeals to the revelations of Nature rather than to the revelations of the human mind. And this was the real temper of his soul even when he was still a child, when he was studying at Leipzig, Strassburg and Frankfurt, and for the first period of his life at Weimar.
Think of him as a child with all the religious convictions of his contemporaries around him. He himself relates—and I have often drawn attention to this beautiful episode in Goethe's early life—how as a boy of seven he built an altar by taking a music-stand and laying upon it specimens of minerals from his father's collection; how he placed a taper on the top, lighting it by using a burning-glass to catch the rays of the sun, in order, as he says later—for at seven years he would not, of course, have spoken in this way—to bring an offering to the great God of Nature.
We see him growing beyond what those around him have to say, coming into a closer union with Nature, in whose arms he first of all seeks refuge. Read the works written by Goethe in his youth and you will find that they reveal just this attitude of mind. Then a great longing to go to Italy seizes him and his whole outlook changes in a most remarkable way.
We shall never understand Goethe unless we bear in mind the overwhelming change that came upon him in Italy. In letters to friends at Weimar he speaks of the works of art which conjure up before his soul the whole way in which the Greeks worked. He says: “I suspect that the Greeks proceeded according to those laws by which Nature herself proceeds, and of which I am on the track.”—At last Goethe is satisfied with an environment, an artistic environment enfilled with ideas much closer to Nature than those around him in his youth. And we see how in the course of his Italian journey the idea of metamorphosis arises from this mood of soul, how in Italy Goethe begins to see the transformation of leaf into petal in such a way that the thought of metamorphosis in the whole of Nature flashes up within him.
It is only now that Goethe finds a world in which his soul really feels at home. And, if we study all that he produced after that time, both as a poet and a scientist, it is borne in upon us that he was now living in a world of thought not easily intelligible to his contemporaries, nor indeed to the man of to-day.
Those who embark upon a study of Goethe equipped with the modern scholarship acquired in every kind of educational institution from the Elementary School to the University, and with habitual thought and outlook, will never understand him. For an inner change of mental outlook is essential if we are to realise what Goethe really had in his mind when, in Italy, he re-wrote Iphigenia in Greek metre, after having first composed it in the mood of the Germanic North. Nor is it possible to understand Goethe's whole attitude to Faust until we realise the fundamental nature of the change that had taken place.
After he had been to Italy, Goethe really hated the first version of Faust which he had written earlier. After that journey he would never have been able to write the passage where Faust turns away from the
... heavenly forces rising and descending,
Their golden urns reciprocally lending,
where he turns his back upon the macrocosm, crying: “Thou, Spirit of the Earth art nearer to me.” After the year 1790 Goethe would never have written such words. After 1790, when he set to work again upon his drama, the Spirit of the Earth is no longer ‘nearer’ to him; he then describes the macrocosm, in the Prologue in Heaven, turning in the very direction from which, in his younger days he had turned away. When he speaks in suitable language of heavenly forces ascending and descending with their golden urns, he does not inwardly say: “Thou Spirit of the Earth art nearer,” but he says: Not until I rise above the earthly to the heavenly, not until I cease to cleave to the Spirit of the Earth can I understand Man.—And many other passages can be read in the same sense. Take, for instance, that wonderful treatise written in the year 1790, on the Metamorphosis of the Plants (Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erkennen). We shall have to admit that before his journey to Italy Goethe could never have had at his command a language which seems to converse with the very growth and unfolding life of the plants. And this is an eloquent indication of the place of Goethe's soul in the whole sweep of evolution. Goethe felt a stranger to the thought of his time the moment he was obliged inwardly to ‘digest’ the result of contemporary scientific education. He was always striving for a different kind of thinking, a different way of approaching the world, and he found it when he felt that he had brought to life within him the attitude of the Greeks to Nature, to the World, to Man.
The modern physicist rejects Goethe because he lives in the very world which was so alien to Goethe in his youth. But, when all is said and done, it is more honest to reject than to express hollow agreement. Goethe could never fully find his way into the view of the world which had grown up since the fifteenth century. In his youth he was opposed to it, and after his Italian journey he let it pass, because he had gained something else from his intimacy with Greek culture.
What, then, is it that has permeated man's conception of the world and his view of life since the fifteenth century? It is, in reality, the thought of Galileo. This kind of thought tries to make the world and the things of the world comprehensible through measure, number and weight. And it simply was not in Goethe to build up a conception of the world based upon the principles of measure, number and weight.
That, however, is only one side of the picture. There is a certain correlative to what arises in man when he views the world according to measure, number and weight. It is the abstract concept—mere intellectualism. The whole process is quite evident: The application of the principles of measure, number and weight in the study of external Nature since about the middle of the fifteenth century runs parallel with the development of intellectualism—the bent towards abstract thinking, the tendency of thought to work chiefly in the element of reason. It is really only since the fifteenth century that our thinking has been so influenced by our partiality for mathematics, for geometry, for mechanics.
Goethe did not feel at home either with the principles of measure, number and weight as applied to the world, or with purely intellectualistic thought.
The world towards which he turned knew little, fundamentally speaking, of measure, number and weight. Students of Pythagorean thought will easily be misled into the belief that the world was viewed then just as we view it to-day. But the characteristic difference is that in Pythagorean thought, measure, number and weight are used as pictures—pictures which are applied to the cosmos and in close relation always with the being of man. They are not yet separated from man. And this very fact indicates that their application in Pythagorean thought was not at all the same as in the kind of thought that has developed since the middle of the fifteenth century. Anyone who really studies the writings of a man like John Scotus Erigena in the ninth century will find no trace of similarity with our method of constructing a world out of chemical and physical phenomena and theorising about the beginning and ending of the world on the basis of what we have learnt by measuring, counting and weighing. In the thought of John Scotus Erigena, the outer world is not so widely separate from man, nor man from the outer world. Man lives in closer union with the outer world and is less bent upon the search for objectivity than he is to-day. We can see quite clearly how all that unfolded in Greek culture since the age of Pythagoras manifested in later centuries and above all we can see it in a man like John Scotus Erigena. During this era the human soul lived in a world of absolutely different conceptions, and it was precisely for these conceptions that Goethe was driven to seek by a fundamental urge connected with the deeper foundations of his life of Soul.
We can have no clear idea of what this really means unless we consider another historical fact to which little attention is paid to-day. In my book Ratsel der Philosophie I have spoken of this historical fact in one setting and will approach it to-day from a different angle.
We men of modern times must learn to make a clear distinction between concept and word. Not to make this distinction between what lives in abstract reason and what lives in the word can only pervert our clarity of consciousness. Abstract reason is, after all, a universal principle, universal and human. The word lives in the several national tongues. It is not difficult to distinguish there between what lives in the idea or concept, and in the word.
We shall not succeed in understanding such historical records of Greek culture as still remain extant, if we imagine that the Greeks made the same distinction as we make between the concept and the word. The Greeks made no sharp distinction between concept or idea, and word. When they were speaking it seemed to them that the idea lived upon the wings of the words. They believed that the concept was carried into the word itself. And their thinking was not abstract and intellectualistic as our thinking is to-day. Something like the sound of the word—although it was inaudible—passed through their souls, sounding inaudibly within them. The word—not by any means the abstract concept—was imbued with life. Everything was different in an age when it would have been considered altogether unnatural to educate the minds of the young as we educate them to-day. It is characteristic of our civilisation—although we seldom give any thought to the matter—that a large majority of our boys and girls between the ages of ten and eighteen are engaged in absorbing Latin and Greek—dead languages. Can you imagine a young Greek being expected to learn the Egyptian or Chaldean languages in the same way? Such a thing is absolutely unthinkable! The Greek not only lived in his speech with his thinking, but to him speaking was thinking. Thinking was incarnate in speech itself. This may be said by some to have been a limitation, but it is a fact nevertheless. And a true understanding of the legacy that has come to us from Greece can only consist in a realisation of this intimate union between the concept or idea, and the word. The word lived in the soul of the Greek as an inward, inaudible sound.
When the human soul is constituted in this way, it is quite impossible to observe the world after the manner of Galileo, that is to say, in terms of measure, number and weight. Measure, number and weight simply are not there, they do not enter into the picture. As an external symptom only, it is significant that the physics, for example, taught to nearly every child to-day would have been regarded as miracle by the Greeks. Many of the experiments we explain to-day in terms of measure, number and weight would have been looked upon as pure magic in those days. Any history of physics tells us as much. The Greek did not enter into what we call ‘inorganic Nature’ in the way we do to-day. The very nature of his soul made this impossible because he did not pass on to abstract thoughts as we have done ever since the time of Galileo.
To live in the word as the Greeks lived in the word meant that instead of making calculations based on the results of experiments, they observed the changes and transformations taking place unceasingly in the life of Nature. Their attention was turned not to the world of minerals but chiefly to the world of the plants. Just as there is a certain affinity between abstract thought and the comprehension of the mineral world, so there is an affinity between the Greek attitude to the word and the comprehension of growth, of life, of constant change in living beings. When we conceive of a beginning and an ending of a mineral Earth to-day and build up our hypotheses, these hypotheses are an image of what we have measured, counted, weighed. We evolve a Kant-Laplace theory, or we conceive of the entropy of the Earth. All these things are abstractions, derived from what we have measured, counted and weighed.
And now, by way of contrast, look at the Greek cosmogonies. One feels that the ideas here are nourished and fed by the very way in which the vegetation shoots forth in spring, by the way it dies in autumn—growing up and then vanishing. Just as we construct a world-system out of our concepts and observations of the material world, so did the Greeks construct a world-system from observation of all that is revealed in vegetation. In short, it was from the world of the living that their myths and their cosmogonies originated.
The arrogant scientist of modern times will say: ‘Yes, but that was all childish. We are fortunate in having got beyond it. We have made such splendid progress.’ And he will look upon all that can be obtained by measuring, counting and weighing as something absolute. But those who are less prejudiced will say: Our way of viewing the world has developed out of the Greek way of looking at the world. The Greeks formed a picture of the world by contemplating the realm of the living. We have intellectualism—which is also a factor in the education of the human race—but out of our way of viewing the world, based as it is on the principles of measure, number and weight, another must unfold.
When Schiller had conquered his former dislike of Goethe and had become closely acquainted with him, he wrote a characteristic and significant letter in which he said: Had you been born as a Greek, or even only as an Italian, the world for which you are really seeking would have been about you from early youth.—I am not quoting literally but only according to the sense. Schiller perceived how strongly Goethe's soul longed for Greece. Goethe himself is an example of the change that can be wrought in a mind by entering into the spirit of Greece with understanding. Goethe's attitude to the thought of Greece was quite different from his attitude to the period since the fifteenth century, and this is the point in which we are more interested to-day. In our age, men live in the intellect and, their knowledge of the world is derived, for the most part, from the intellect; the phenomena of the world are measured, numbered and weighed. But this age of ours was preceded by another, when the intellect was far less such that the word was alive within him; he heard the word inwardly as ‘soundless’ tone. Just as an idea or a concept arises within our minds to-day, so, in those times, the word lived as inward sound. And because the content of the soul was itself living, men were able to understand the living world outside.
We can, however, go still further back than this. Spiritual Science must come to our aid here, for ordinary history can tell us nothing. Any history written with psychological insight will bring home to our minds the radical difference between the mental attitude of the Greeks and our own, the nature of the human soul before, say, the eighth century B.C. outer history can tell us nothing. Such documents as exist are very scanty and are not really understood. Among these documents we have Iliad and the Odyssey but they, as a rule, are not considered from this point of view. In still earlier times the life of soul was of a nature of which certain men, here and there, have had some inkling. Herder was one who expressed his views on the subject very forcibly but he did not ever work them out scientifically. In short, the period when men lived in the word was preceded by another, when they lived in a world of pictures. In what sense can speech, for example, and the inner activity of soul revealed in speech, be said to live in a world of pictures? Man lives in pictures when the main factor is not so much the content of the sound, or the nature of the sound, but the rhythm, the shaping of the sound—in short the poetic element which we to-day regard as something quite independent of speech itself. The poet of modern times has to give language artistic form before true poetry can come into being. But there was an age in the remote past when it was perfectly natural to make speech poetic, when speech and the evolving of theory were not so widely separated as they were later on, and when a short syllable following a long, two short syllables following a long, or series of short syllables repeated one after the other, really meant something. World-mysteries were revealed in this poetic form of speech, mysteries which cannot be revealed in the same fulness when the content of the sound is the most important factor.
Even to-day there are still a few who feel that speech has proceeded from this origin and it is worthy of note that in spite of all the confusing elements born of modern scholarship such men have divined the existence of something which I am trying to explain to you in the light of Spiritual Science. Benedetto Croce was one who spoke in a most charming way of this poetic, artistic element of speech in pre-historic or practically pre-historic times, before speech assumed the character of prose.
Three epochs, therefore, stand out before us.—The epoch beginning with Galileo, in the fifteenth century is an age of inner intellectual activity and the world outside is viewed in terms of measure, number and weight. The second and earlier epoch is that for which Goethe longed and to which his whole inner life was directed, after his Italian journey. This was the age when word and concept were still one, when instead of intellectuality man unfolded an inwardly quickened life of soul, and in the outer world observed, all that lives in constant metamorphosis and change. And we also look further back to a third epoch when the soul of man lived in an element by which the sounds of speech themselves were formed and moulded. But a faculty of soul functioning with quickened instinct in a realm lying behind the sounds of speech perceives something else in the outer world. As I have already said, history can tell us little of these things and the historian can only surmise. But anthroposophical Spiritual Science can understand thoroughly what is meant, namely, the Imaginative element of speech, the instinctively Imaginative element which precedes the word. And when he possesses this faculty of instinctive Imagination man can perceive in outer Nature something higher than he can perceive through the medium of word or idea.
We know that even to-day, when it has become thoroughly decadent, oriental civilisation points to former conditions of life in its heyday. We realise this when, for example, we study the Vedas or the Vedanta philosophy. Moreover we know that this age, too, was preceded by others still more ancient. The soul of the oriental is still pervaded by something like an ethereal element, an element that is quite foreign to the Western mind and which, as soon as we attempt to express it in a word, is no longer quite the same. Something has remained which our word ‘compassion’ (Mitleid) can only very poorly express, however deeply Schopenhauer may have felt about it. This compassion, this love for and in all beings—in the form in which it still exists in the East—points to a past age when it was an experience of infinitely greater intensity, when it signified a pouring of the soul's life into the life of feeling of other sentient beings. There is every justification for saying that the oriental word for ‘compassion’ signifies a fundamental element in the life of soul as it was in the remote past, an element which expresses itself in an inward sharing in the experiences of another, having a life of its own, manifesting not only in a process of metamorphosis as in the plant, not only in a process of coming-into-being and passing away, but as an actual experience in the soul.
This inward sharing in the experiences of another is only possible when man rises beyond the idea, beyond the sound as such, beyond the meaning of the word, to the world where speech itself is shaped and moulded by Imagination. Man can have a living experience of the plant-world around him when the word is as full of life as it was among the Greeks. He shares in the life of feeling of other beings when he experiences not only the world of the living but the sentient life of other beings and when he is inwardly sensitive not only to speech but to the artistic element at work in the shaping of speech.
That is why it is so wonderful to find reference in certain mythological poems to this primeval phenomenon in the life of the soul. It is related in connection with Siegfried, for example, that there was a moment when he understood the voice of the birds—who do not utter words but only bring forth a consequence of sound. That which in the song of birds ripples along the surface like the bubbling of a spring of inner life, is also present in everything that has life. But it is precisely this element which imprisons the living in an interior chamber of the soul and in which we cannot share when we are merely listening to a word that is uttered. For when we listen to words, we are hearing merely what the head of another being is experiencing. But when we inwardly grasp what it is that flows on from syllable to syllable, from word to word, from sentence to sentence in the imaginative shaping of speech, we grasp that which actually lives in the heart and mind of another. As we listen to the words uttered by another human being, we can form an opinion about his capabilities and faculties; but if our ears are sensitive to the sound of his words, to the rhythm of his words, to the moulding of his words, then we are hearing an expression of his whole being. And in the same way, when we rise to a sphere where we understand the process wherein sound itself is moulded and shaped—although it is a process empty alike of concept and of word, unheard and simply experienced inwardly—we experience that from which feeling itself arises. When we thus begin to realise the nature of an entirely different life of soul in an age when audible speech was accompanied by living experience of rhythm, measure and melody, we are led to an epoch more ancient than that of Greece. It was an epoch when the mind of man was not only capable of grasping the process of metamorphosis in the world of the living, but of experiencing the sentient life connected with the animal creation and of beholding in direct vision the world of sentient being.
If we study the civilised people in the age which stretches back from the eighth century B.C. to about the beginning of the third millennium B.C., we find a life of soul filled with Imaginative instinct, prone by its very nature to experience the sentient life of all beings.
Modern scholarship, with its limited outlook, tells us that the ancients were wont to personify the phenomena of Nature. In other words, a highly intellectual element is attributed to the human soul in olden times and, the comparison often drawn is that a child who knocks himself against the corner of a table will strike the table because he personifies it, thinks of it as being alive.
Those who imagine that a child personifies the table as a living being which he then strikes, have never really gazed into the soul of a child. For a child sees the table just exactly as we see it, but he does not yet distinguish between the table and a living thing. Nor did the ancients personify the phenomena of Nature in this sense; they lived in the element by which speech is shaped and moulded and were thus able to experience the sentient life of other beings.
This, then, has been the way in which the souls of men have developed during the period beginning about the third millennium B.C. and lasting until our own time: from super-speech, through speech, to the age of intellectuality; from the period of experience of the life of feeling in other beings, through the age of sharing in the processes of growth and ‘becoming’ in the outer world, to the time when attention is concentrated on the principles of measure, number and weight. Only when we picture this process quite clearly shall we be able to realise that in order to penetrate into the nature of things in an age when we try to probe everything with the conscious mind, we must deliberately adjust ourselves to an entirely new way of viewing the world around us. Those who imagine that the constitution of the human soul has never fundamentally changed but has remained constant through the ages, regard it as something absolute, and think that man would lose himself irretrievably if the essential nature of his soul were in any way to undergo change. But those who perceive that changes in the constitution of the soul belong to the natural course of evolution will the more easily realise that it is necessary for us to transform our attitude of soul if we are to penetrate into the nature of things, into the being of man and into the nature of the relation of man to the world in a way fitted to the age in which we are living.
Dreiundzwanzigster Vortrag
[ 1 ] Es führt leichter zum Verständnis der Anschauungen, die man innerhalb der anthroposophischen Geisteswissenschaft entwickeln muß zur Erkenntnis des Menschen und der Welt, wenn man sich vertieft in den geschichtlichen Wandel der menschlichen Anschauung. Derjenige, der heute hört, es müsse, um wirklich etwas über das Wesen des Menschen zu wissen, im Menschen selbst eine ganz andere Anschauungsweise auftreten als die gewöhnliche, der wird zunächst überrascht sein und eigentlich für den ersten Augenblick jede solche andere Erkenntnis aus der Überraschung heraus ablehnen. Der Mensch hat gewissermaßen das Gefühl, eines müsse wenigstens unwandelbar bleiben: das ist die Art und Weise, wie man sich selbst im Geiste in der Auffassung der Dinge verhält. Wir können dies ganz besonders aus der Auffassung gewisser Geschichtslehrer, Historiker der Gegenwart ersehen. Diese Historiker sagen ohne weiteres, der Mensch müsse im wesentlichen in seiner Seelenverfassung während der geschichtlichen Zeit so gewesen sein, wie er heute ist, denn wenn er nicht so gewesen wäre in seiner Seelenverfassung, so könnte es ja eigentlich, meinen diese Leute, keine Geschichte geben. Denn will man Geschichte ausbilden, so muß man von der heutigen Seelenverfassung ausgehen. Müsse man nun als Geschichtsbetrachter auf Menschen zurückblicken, die in ihrer Seele ganz anders sind, so könne man sie nicht verstehen. Man würde nicht verstehen, wie sie gesprochen, was sie getan haben, und man würde also mit dem geschichtlichen Denken nicht zurückreichen können bis in die Zeit solcher Menschen mit anderer Seelenverfassung. Also, meinen die Leute, damit es eine Geschichtsauffassung geben könne, müßten die Menschen im wesentlichen mit ihrer Seelenverfassung immer so gewesen sein, wie sie jetzt sind.
[ 2 ] Nun aber wird es leicht begreiflich sein, daß eine solche Auffassung eben eine Auffassung ist zum bequemen menschlichen Gebrauch. Denn wenn die Menschen im Laufe der geschichtlichen Entwickelung ihre Seelenverfassung geändert haben, dann müssen wir auch unsere Begriffe beweglich machen und müssen uns eben bemühen, andere, frühere Epochen der Geschichte anders aufzufassen, als man heute gewöhnt ist, die Dinge der Welt aufzufassen.
[ 3 ] Es gibt ein sehr bedeutsames Beispiel eines Menschen, der zu einer solchen Umänderung der ganzen menschlichen Seelenverfassung gezwungen war aus einer gewissen inneren geistigen Unmöglichkeit, sich ohne weiteres in die Seelenverfassung seiner Zeitgenossen hineinzufinden. Und dieses bedeutsame Beispiel - ich führe die Sache heute wirklich nur als Beispiel an - ist Goethe.
[ 4 ] Goethe hat als junger Mensch hineinwachsen müssen in die Art und Weise, wie man zu seiner Zeit die Dinge der Welt und die Angelegenheiten der Menschen um sich herum ansah. Man kann sagen, ganz heimisch hat er sich in dieser Seelenverfassung eigentlich nicht gefühlt. In dem jungen Goethe ist etwas Stürmisches. Aber dieses Stürmische ist von besonderer Art. Man braucht bloß auf seine Jugendgedichte zu sehen und man wird finden, daß bei Goethe auf der einen Seite eine Art innerer Opposition ist gegen das, was eigentlich seine Zeitgenossen über Welt und Leben denken.
[ 5 ] Aber es ist zu gleicher Zeit noch etwas anderes in ihm. Es ist in ihm etwas wie ein Appell an dasjenige, was in der Natur lebt, was mehr sagt, Unvergänglicheres sagt, als ihm die Meinungen der Menschen sagen können, die um ihn herum eben solche Meinungen entwickeln. Goethe appelliert an die Offenbarungen der Natur gegenüber den Offenbarungen der Menschen. Und das gibt eigentlich die Stimmung der Goetheschen Seele ab während der ganzen Zeit, schon während er als Kind heranwächst, während er in Leipzig, in Straßburg studiert, sich dann in Frankfurt herumtut, und auch für die erste Zeit seines weimarischen Aufenthaltes.
[ 6 ] Man braucht ihn nur als Kind schon zu betrachten, wie er um sich herum die religiösen Überzeugungen seiner menschlichen Genossen hat. Aber er erzählt ja doch selbst, ich habe dieses schöne Bild aus Goethes Leben öfter hervorgehoben, wie er als siebenjähriger Knabe sich einen Altar aufrichtet, indem er ein Notenpult nimmt, sich Mineralien darauflegt aus der Gesteinssammlung seines Vaters, wie er oben ein Räucherkerzchen anbringt, durch ein Brennglas die Strahlen der Sonne auffängt und das Räucherkerzchen durch das Brennglas anzünder, um — wie er später sagt, natürlich hätte er als siebenjähriger Knabe nicht so gesprochen - dem großen Gotte der Natur ein Opfer darzubringen.
[ 7 ] Wir sehen, er wächst heraus aus demjenigen, was ihm die Umgebung seiner Zeit sagen kann, und er wächst der Natur zu, in der er zunächst seine Zuflucht sucht. Es lebt - sehen Sie sich um in Goethes Jugendwerken - gerade diese Seelenverfassung in ihm. Dann ergreift ihn eine große Sehnsucht, die Sehnsucht nach Italien. Und wir sehen ja merkwürdigerweise, wie die ganze Seelenstimmung Goethes sich umändert. Eigentlich versteht Goethe nur der, welcher diesen gewaltigen Umschwung ins Seelenauge faßt, der sich vollzieht mit Goethe, als er Italien betritt. Man braucht nur einen solchen Ausspruch zu nehmen wie den, der sich in seinen Briefen an die weimarischen Freunde findet bei Betrachtung der Kunstwerke, die er da sieht und die ihm das griechische Kunstschaffen vor die Seele zaubern. Da sagt er: Ich habe die Vermutung, daß die Griechen bei der Schöpfung ihrer Kunstwerke nach denselben Gesetzen verfuhren, nach denen die Natur selbst verfährt, und denen ich auf der Spur bin. - Goethe ist einmal mit seiner Umgebung zufrieden, und er ist deshalb zufrieden, weil in diese — er meint in die Umgebung der Kunst — Anschauungen eingeflossen sind, die der Natur näherstehen als diejenigen Anschauungen, die er in seiner Jugend um sich herum hat wahrnehmen können. Und wir sehen, wie nun im Verlaufe der italienischen Reise aus dieser Seelenstimmung heraus der Metamorphosegedanke entsteht, wie Goethe gerade da anfängt, die Umwandelung des Laubblattes in das Blütenblatt so anzuschauen, daß ihm der Metamorphosegedanke, der Gedanke der Umwandelung in aller Natur aufgeht.
[ 8 ] Goethe fühlt sich mit seiner Seele in der Welt eigentlich erst jetzt richtig heimisch. Und wenn man alles das nimmt, was nun Goethe seit jener Zeit als Dichter, als Wissenschafter produziert, wenn man das ansieht, kann man nicht anders, als sich sagen: Goethe lebt jetzt wiederum in Ideen und Begriffen, die nicht so ohne weiteres wiederum für die Zeitgenossen, namentlich nicht so ohne weiteres für den modernen Menschen begreifbar sind. Wer mit dem, was er sich angeeignet hat aus dem ganzen modernen Lernen heraus, von der Volksschule bis herauf zu den höchsten Bildungsanstalten, wer mit dem, was da Denkgewohnheiten, Empfindungsgewohnheiten geworden sind, an Goethe herantritt, der versteht eigentlich Goethe doch nicht. Man muß sich erst in einer gewissen Weise innerlich umschaffen, wenn man nachkommen will mit der eigenen Auffassung dem, was Goethe eigentlich meint, wenn er die «Iphigenie», die er zunächst verfaßt hat aus der Stimmung des germanischen Nordens, in Italien umschreibt in das Metrum des griechischen Volkes. Man begreift Goethe erst nach dieser eigenen Umschaffung der Seele in seiner ganzen Stellung zu seinem «Faust».
[ 9 ] Goethe hat ja im Grunde genommen das, was er bis zu seiner italienischen Reise an seinem «Faust» gedichtet hat, innerlich gehaßt nach der italienischen Reise. Er hätte niemals wiederum nach der italienischen Reise etwa Verse hinschreiben können wie denjenigen, der da steht, wo Faust sich abwendet von den auf- und niedersteigenden Himmelskräften, die sich die goldnen Eimer reichen, wo Faust sich abwendet vom Makrokosmos und sagt: «Du, Geist der Erde, bist mir näher.» Das ist jugendlicher Goethe. Das hätte Goethe nach 1790 nicht mehr geschrieben. Nach 1790, als Goethe Ende der neunziger Jahre seinen «Faust» wiederum aufnimmt, da ist ihm dieser Geist der Erde nicht mehr näher, da schildert er im Prolog im Himmel den Makrokosmos. Da wendet er sich gerade zu dem, wovon sich Faust für den jugendlichen Goethe abgewendet hat. Da wird allerdings in einer gemäßen Sprache geschildert, wie Himmelskräfte auf- und niedersteigen und sich die goldenen Eimer reichen. Da sagte Goethe gewissermaßen im Inneren nicht: «Du, Geist der Erde, bist mir näher», sondern er sagt: Ich begreife den Menschen erst, wenn ich nicht bloß auf den Geist der Erde sehe, sondern wenn ich mich erhebe über das Irdische in das Himmlische hinein. - Und so könnten wir vieles durchblicken. Wir könnten zum Beispiel auch auf diese wunderbar geschriebene Abhandlung aus 1790 «Versuch, die Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären» sehen und würden zugeben müssen, nimmermehr hätte Goethe diese Sprache, die mit den Dingen selbst, nämlich mit dem Wachsenden und Werdenden der Pflanzen redet, schreiben können vor seiner italienischen Reise. Und das weist uns bedeutsam hinein in einen Zusammenhang der Goethe-Seele mit der ganzen Menschheitsentwickelung. Goethe fühlte sich fremd gegenüber dem, was seine Zeit dachte, in dem Momente, wo er genötigt war, die eigentliche Bildung, die wissenschaftliche Bildung seiner Zeit innerlich zu verdauen. Er strebte nach einer andern Art des Denkens, nach einer andern Art, sich zur Welt zu stellen, und fand diese andere Art, als er vermeinte, die Art der Griechen, das Verhalten der Griechen zur Natur und zur Welt, zum Menschen, in sich selber lebendig gemacht zu haben.
[ 10 ] Der moderne Physiker lehnt Goethe ab, weil er in demjenigen lebt, was Goethe gerade fremd war in seiner Jugend. Und die Ablehnung ist schließlich ehrlicher als die geleimte Zustimmung. Was seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts in der Weltbetrachtung die Menschen sich erobert haben, das war etwas, wo hinein sich Goethe nicht ganz finden konnte, nie ganz finden konnte. In seiner Jugend opponierte er dagegen, und nach seiner italienischen Reise ließ er es gelten, weil er für sich aus seiner Griechennähe heraus etwas anderes gewonnen hatte.
[ 11 ] Was war es denn, was in der Weltanschauung, in der Lebensauffassung seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts lebte? Was ist eigentlich der Galileismus? Der Galileismus, wenn man ihn studiert, ist etwas, was sich die Welt begreiflich machen will durch Maß, Zahl und Gewicht, in der Betrachtung, in der Beobachtung der äußeren Dinge. Goethe lag es nie nahe, sich eine Weltauffassung aufzubauen, deren Grundlage in Maß, Zahl und Gewicht liegt.
[ 12 ] Aber so ist die Sache nur von einer Seite angesehen. Es gibt ein gewisses Korrelat zu dem, was im Menschen aufsteigt, wenn er die Welt nach Maß, Zahl und Gewicht betrachtet, und das ist der abstrakte Begriff, das ist der bloße Intellektualismus. Wir können es genau sehen: In demselben Maße, in dem für die Betrachtung der äußeren Natur seit dem ersten Drittel oder der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts Maß, Zahl und Gewicht angewendet wird, in demselben Maße entwickelt sich im Menschenleben innerlich für die Seelenverfassung der Intellektualismus, das Hinneigen zum abstrakten Denken, zu demjenigen Denken, das vorzugsweise sich des Verstandes bedient. So wie wir heute Begriffe entwickeln mit unserer großen Vorliebe für die Mathematik, für die Geometrie, für die Mechanik, so tun wir das als Menschen im Grunde genommen erst seit dem 15. Jahrhundert. In dieser Welt, auf der einen Seite des Maßes, der Zahl, des Gewichtes, auf der andern Seite des Intellektualismus, fühlte sich Goethe nicht heimisch.
[ 13 ] Die Welt, zu der er sich wandte, wußte im Grunde genommen noch wenig von Maß, Zahl und Gewicht. Wer den Pythagoräismus studiert, wird ja leicht dazu verführt werden, zu glauben, da sei alles in der Welt so angesehen, wie wir es ansehen, nach Maß, Zahl und Gewicht. Aber gerade der charakteristische Unterschied, wie im Pythagoräismus bildhaft Maß, Zahl und Gewicht verwendet werden, und wie sie universell verwendet werden, wie gewissermaßen ganz menschlich, noch nicht abgesondert vom Menschen gefühlt wird, was in Maß, Zahl und Gewicht lebt, das kann uns schon darauf hinweisen, daß der Pythagoräismus nicht so arbeitete mit Maß, Zahl und Gewicht, wie später, seit der Mitte des 15. Jahrhunderts, damit gearbeitet worden ist, wie der Galileismus mit Maß, Zahl und Gewicht arbeitet. Und wer sich zum Beispiel vertieft in einen Geist des 9. Jahrhunderts - ich habe ihn vor kurzem einmal hier in einigen Vorträgen charakterisiert -, wer sich vertieft in Johannes Scotus Erigena, wer sich hineinliest in Scotus, der wird finden: so wie wir heute gewöhnt sind, aus chemischen, physikalischen Grundlagen heraus uns ein Weltengebäude aufzubauen und Anfang und Ende der Welt uns hypothetisch zu konstruieren aus dem, was wir im Messen, Zählen, Wägen gelernt haben, so ist das bei Scotus Erigena nicht. Es sondert der Mensch die Außenwelt bei Scotus Erigena nicht so weit von sich ab, und sich nicht von der Außenwelt. Er lebt mehr mit der Außenwelt zusammen, strebt noch nicht so nach Objektivität, wie man heute nach Objektivität strebt. Und so kann man sehen, wie das, was in all den Jahrhunderten seit der pythagoräischen Zeit im Griechentum sich entfaltete - und gerade an einem solchen Geist wie Scotus Erigena kann man es sehen -, sich dann in späteren Jahrhunderten ausgelebt hat. In dieser Zeit lebte im Grunde genommen die menschliche Seele in ganz andern Vorstellungen. Nach diesen Vorstellungen strebte Goethe aus den verschiedenen Untergründlichkeiten seines Seelenlebens wieder hin.
[ 14 ] Nun aber bekommen wir eine verständnisvolle Vorstellung von dem, was da eigentlich vorliegt, erst dann, wenn wir eine andere, heute wenig beachtete historische Tatsache uns vor Augen stellen. Von der einen Seite habe ich diese historische Tatsache in meinem Buche «Die Rätsel der Philosophie» schon dargestellt; ich möchte sie heute von einer andern Seite darstellen.
[ 15 ] Wir modernen Menschen müssen genau unterscheiden zwischen dem Begriff und dem Worte. Es würde nur zum Unheil in der menschlichen Besonnenheit führen, wenn wir nicht genau unterscheiden würden zwischen dem, was im abstrakten Verstande innerlich lebt, und dem, was im Worte lebt. Der abstrakte Verstand ist ja auch universell, allgemein menschlich. Das Wort lebt in den einzelnen Volkssprachen. Wir können schon unterscheiden zwischen dem, was da lebt im Begriffe, in der Idee und im Worte.
[ 16 ] Will man das, was uns von den Griechen rein historisch vorliegt, richtig verstehen, so kommt man nicht zurecht, wenn man den Griechen diesen selben Unterschied zuschreibt, wie wir ihn entwickeln im Unterscheiden zwischen Begriff und Wort. Die Griechen unterschieden nicht mit derselben Stärke Begriff, Idee und Wort. Wenn sie sprachen, lebte für sie das, was in der Idee lebt, auf den Flügeln des Wortes. Sie glaubten in das Wort hineinzulegen den Begriff. Wenn sie dachten, dachten sie nicht in einer abstrakten, intellektualistischen Weise wie wir. Es ging durch ihre Seele etwas wie der allerdings unhörbare, aber doch Laut des Wortes. Es klang unhörbar in ihnen. Das Wort lebte, nicht der abstrakte Begriff. In der Zeit, in der man es als unnatürlich empfunden hätte, einen gewissen Teil der Jugend seelisch so heranzubilden, wie wir unsere Jugend heranbilden, konnte das eben anders sein. Es ist ja außerordentlich charakteristisch für unsere Kultur und Zivilisation, obwohl wir es gewöhnlich nicht beachten, daß ein großer Teil unserer Jugend vom zehnten bis zum achtzehnten Lebensjahr sich damit beschäftigt, sich einzuleben in das Lateinische, in das Griechische, in abgelebte Sprachen. Man stelle sich vor, daß ein Grieche in seiner Jugend so hätte gebildet werden sollen, daß er meinetwillen sich in dieser Weise ins Ägyptische und Chaldäische eingelebt hätte. Undenkbar, nicht wahr, ganz undenkbar! Der Grieche lebte eben in seiner Sprache nicht nur mit seinem Denken, sondern die Sprache war ihm das Denken. In der Sprache selber verkörperte sich das Denken. Das mag man eine Beschränktheit des griechischen Wesens nennen, aber es ist eben eine Tatsache. Und ein richtiges Verständnis dessen, was uns vom Griechentum vorliegt, kann nur das sein, was uns dieses enge Gebundensein des Begriffes, der Idee an das Wort vergegenwärtigt und was uns zeigt, wie das Wort wie ein innerlicher, unhörbarer Klang in der Seele des Griechen lebte.
[ 17 ] Ja, mit einer solchen Seelenverfassung kann man nicht die Außenwelt galileisch verfolgen, wie wir sie betrachten nach Maß, Zahl und Gewicht. Maß, Zahl und Gewicht fallen einem gewissermaßen heraus. Ich möchte sagen, nur äußerlich symptomatisch bedeutsam ist es, wie das, was wir heute als Physikalisches an jedes Kind heranbringen, in der Griechenwelt eigentlich als ein Wunder empfunden worden ist. Mancherlei Experimente, die wir heute machen, die wir uns nach Maß, Zahl und Gewicht erklären, die hat man empfunden als Zauberei. Sie können ja darüber in jeder Geschichte der Physik nachlesen. Auf das, was wir heute die unorganische Natur nennen, ist der Grieche überhaupt nicht in derselben Weise eingegangen wie wir. Er hatte gar nicht die Möglichkeit, in dieser Weise darauf einzugehen aus seiner Seelenverfassung heraus, und das aus dem Grunde, weil er nicht zu abstrakten Begriffen in der Weise vorschritt, wie wir das tun in der Galilei-Zeit.
[ 18 ] Wenn man so im Worte lebt wie der Grieche, dann kann man nicht die Ergebnisse von Experimenten so berechnen, wie wir das heute tun, aber man beobachtet die Verwandlungen in der Natur. Man beobachtet dasjenige, was sich nun nicht in der mineralischen, sondern was sich vorzugsweise in der pflanzlichen Welt vollzieht. Ebenso wie zwischen dem abstrakten Begriff und dem Auffassen der mineralischen Welt eine Art Affinität besteht, so besteht zwischen der griechischen Stellung zum Worte und dem Auffassen des Wachsens, Lebens, des Sich-Verwandelns im Lebendigen eine Affinität. Wenn wir heute aus unserem mineralischen Begriffe heraus über Anfang und Ende der Erde nachdenken und uns Hypothesen bilden, dann sind diese Hypothesen ein Abbild von dem, was wir gemessen, gezählt, gewogen haben. Und wir bilden eine Kant-Laplacesche Theorie aus, oder wir bilden die Vorstellung von dem Wärmetod der Erde, von der Entropie und ihrem Maximum aus. Das sind alles Abstraktionen, die wir herausschälen aus dem, was wir gemessen, gezählt, gewogen haben. Sehen Sie sich dagegen die Kosmogonien der Griechen an. Sie fühlen in diesen Kosmogonien, daß ihre Vorstellungen genährt werden aus der Art und Weise, wie die Vegetation im Frühling hervorkommt, wie sie im Herbste abstirbt, wie sie sich entwickelt, wie sie verschwindet. Geradeso wie wir aus unseren materiellen Begriffen und materiellen Beobachtungen uns ein Weltensystem aufbauen, so bauten sich die Griechen aus der Beobachtung desjenigen, was in der Vegetation sich offenbart, ein Weltensystem auf. Das Lebendige war für sie dasjenige, aus dem ihre Mythen und aus dem ihre Kosmogonien entsprangen.
[ 19 ] Der hochmütige, an der Wissenschaft heranerzogene Mensch der Gegenwart wird sagen: Nun ja, das war eben kindlich, das haben wir glücklich überwunden. Wir haben es so herrlich weit gebracht! - Und er wird das, was man durch Messen, Zählen und Wägen gewinnen kann, als ein Absolutes ansehen. Wer nicht in dieser Weise borniert ist, der wird sich sagen: Aus der griechischen Weltanschauung heraus, die aus dem Lebendigen sich ein Weltenbild formte, hat sich unsere Art entwickelt, die uns den Intellektualismus gebracht hat, der ja auch ein Erziehungsmittel der Menschheit ist. Aber aus dieser unserer Anschauung, die da lebt vom Messen, Wägen und Zählen, wird sich wiederum ein anderes entwickeln müssen.
[ 20 ] Es ist merkwürdig, als Schiller seine frühere Abneigung zu Goethe überwunden und sich ihm genähert hatte, da schrieb er ihm einen charakteristischen Brief. Ich habe ihn oft zitiert, diesen Brief. Er schrieb ihm: Wären Sie als ein Grieche geboren, ja nur als ein Italiener, so wäre diejenige Welt, nach der Sie eigentlich suchen, von früher Jugend um Sie herum ausgebreitet gewesen. — Ich zitiere nicht wörtlich, aber dem Sinne nach. Schiller empfand, wie Goethes Seele nach dem Griechentum hintendierte. Nun, man kann an Goethe eben studieren, wie ein Geist anders geworden ist, indem er sich ins Griechentum eingelebt hatte. Uns interessiert heute viel mehr diese ganz andere Art, sich zur Welt des Griechentums zu stellen als zu der Zeit seit dem 15. Jahrhundert. So kann man sagen: Unserer Zeit, die im Intellekt lebt und die durch den Intellekt am meisten von der Welt erfährt, insofern diese Welt gemessen, gezählt und gewogen werden kann, ging eine andere voran, welche weniger im Intellekt lebte als vielmehr in jenem lebendigen Seelenleben, das das Wort noch innerlich hatte, das als tonlosen Ton den Ton innerlich hörte, das so, wie wir heute einen Begriff aufnehmen, den Ton innerlich lebte, den Laut innerlich lebte. Und diese Zeit erkannte durch dieses Lebendige des Seeleninhaltes äußerlich vorzugsweise das Lebendige.
[ 21 ] Aber man kann weiter zurückgehen; dann allerdings muß man Geisteswissenschaft zur Hilfe nehmen, dann kann man nicht mehr an der Hand der gebräuchlichen Historie zurückgehen. Man kann durchaus innerhalb einer geistig-psychologisch aufgefaßten Geschichte bleiben, wenn man den radikalen Unterschied der griechischen Seelenverfassung von der unsrigen verstehen will; aber wenn man weiter zurückgehen will, etwa hinter das 8. vorchristliche Jahrhundert, und sich vergegenwärtigen will, wie da die Seelenverfassung der Menschen war, dann kann uns die äußerliche Geschichte nichts mehr sagen. Wir haben ja äußerlich dann nur noch spärliche Dokumente, und die Dokumente, die wir haben, werden nicht in der richtigen Weise gewürdigt. Eigentlich haben wir schon auch äußerlich gewisse Dokumente, und richtig gesehen, sind sogar die Ilias und die Odyssee solche Dokumente, aber man sieht sie gewöhnlich nicht von diesem Gesichtspunkte an. Geht man noch weiter zurück, dann kommt man darauf, daß eine Anschauung Bedeutung für einen gewinnt, die verschiedene Leute gehabt haben, die ganz besonders kräftig Herder, wie in einer bedeutsamen Ahnung, geäußert, aber durchaus nicht irgendwie wissenschaftlich durchgeführt hat. Es ist die Anschauung, daß jener Zeit, in der die Kulturmenschheit im Worte lebte, eine andere voranging, in der sie im Bilde lebte. Aber wie lebt man mit der Sprache zum Beispiel und mit dem innerlichen Seelenleben, das sich in der Sprache offenbart, im Bilde? Dann lebt man im Bilde, wenn es einem nicht mehr so stark auf den Inhalt des Lautes ankommt, auf dasjenige, womit gewissermaßen der Laut tingiert ist, sondern wenn es einem ankommt auf den Rhythmus des Lautes, wenn es einem ankommt auf das, was ich nennen möchte die Gestaltung des Lautes, auf das, was wir heute eigentlich wie ein selbständiges Element empfinden gegenüber der Sprache, auf das Poetische der Sprache. Heute muß der Dichter die Sprache erst künstlerisch gestalten, wenn Kunst, wenn Dichtung entstehen soll. Aber wir blicken zurück auf eine Zeit, wo es der Menschennatur elementar selbstverständlich war, die Sprache poetisch zu gestalten, wo gewissermaßen Sprache und Theorieentwickeln noch nicht so getrennt waren wie später, wo die Menschen noch etwas darin sahen, folgen zu lassen eine kurze Silbe einer langen, zwei kurze Silben einer langen, wo sie etwas darin sahen, Reihen von kurzen Silben hintereinander zu sagen. In dieser Gestaltung der Sprache offenbarte sich für sie etwas von den Weltengeheimnissen, was sich nicht offenbart, wenn wir das Tingierte, das Inhaltliche des Lautes nehmen.
[ 22 ] Einzelne Menschen fühlen heute, wie die Sprache von einem solchen Zustande ausgegangen ist, und man sollte darauf hinschauen, wie solche Menschen aus der Fülle dessen, was heute verwirrend aus unserer Wissenschaftlichkeit an den Menschen herantritt, so etwas herausempfunden haben, wie ich es jetzt versuche, geisteswissenschaftlich anschaulich zu machen. Benedetto Croce hat in einer außerordentlich liebenswürdigen Weise hingewiesen auf dieses einstmalige poetische, künstlerische Element der Sprache, das sich beim Menschen in einer vorhistorischen Zeit ausbildete oder wenigstens in einer annähernd vorhistorischen Zeit, bevor die Sprache ihren Prosacharakter angenommen hat. So daß wir gewissermaßen drei Epochen vor unserer Seele hätten: die Epoche, die etwa im 15. Jahrhundert beginnt, die ich den Galileismus nennen möchte, die innerlich intellektuell lebt, äußerlich die Welt nach Maß, Zahl und Gewicht anschaut. Und eine frühere Epoche, nach der sich Goethe gesehnt hat, nach der er sein ganzes nachitalienisches Leben innerlich seelisch eingerichtet hat, wo der Mensch lebte im ungetrennten Einessein von Wort und Begriff, wo er nicht einen Intellektualismus, sondern ein beseeltes Innenleben entwickelte, und wo er äußerlich dasjenige beobachtete, was Lebendiges ist, was sich verwandelt, was in der Metamorphose lebt. Und nun blicken wir zurück auf eine dritte Epoche, wo die menschliche Seelenverfassung in etwas Übersprachlichem lebte, in etwas, was bildhaft die Laute gestaltete. Das aber, was so noch hinter dem Laute mit der Seele wie durch einen beseelten Instinkt lebt, das nimmt auch im Äußeren etwas anderes wahr. Wie gesagt, Historisches weist uns durchaus nicht darauf hin; der Historiker kann das nur ahnen. Anthroposophische Geisteswissenschaft kann das durchaus durchschauen. Es ist das, was das imaginative Element der Sprache ist, das instinktiv Imaginative, was dem Worteerleben vorangeht. Und durch dieses imaginative Erleben wird nun tatsächlich ein noch Höheres in der äußeren Natur erlebt, als erlebt werden kann durch das Wort oder durch den Begriff.
[ 23 ] Wir wissen ja, daß uns die orientalische Zivilisation auch heute noch, wo sie in einer vollen Dekadenz ist, in ihren dekadenten Erscheinungen hinweist auf frühere Verhältnisse, Verhältnisse, die in einem noch vollen Leben waren, wenn man zum Beispiel die Veden oder die Vedantaphilosophie studiert, was aber wiederum hinweist auf noch ältere vorhistorische Zeiten. Da ist etwas geblieben, was, ich möchte sagen, wie ein Ätherisches durchzieht diese ganze orientalische Seelenverfassung, etwas, was der abendländischen Seelenverfassung ziemlich ferne liegt, was, wenn wir es im Worte aussprechen, nicht mehr dasselbe ist. Es ist etwas geblieben, was mit unserem Worte Mitleid, so tief Schopenhauer das auch empfunden haben mag, nur höchst spärlich ausgedrückt werden kann. Dieses Mitleid, diese Liebe in allen Wesen, so wie sie noch heute vorhanden ist im Oriente, weist auf ältere Zeiten hin, wo sie noch intensiver vorhanden gewesen ist, wo sie in der Seele ausdrückte ein Sich-Hineinleben der Seele in dasjenige, was empfindet. Es ist durchaus begründet, wenn man sich sagt: Das orientalische Mitleid drückt ein verflossenes Urphänomen des Seelenlebens aus, das sich bekundet im innerlichen Miterleben desjenigen, was empfindet, was selber innerlich lebt, was nicht nur wie die Pflanze in der Verwandlung lebt, was nicht nur entsteht und vergeht, was das Entstehen und Vergehen in der innerlichen Empfindung miterlebt.
[ 24 ] Dieses Miterleben der objektiv lebendigen Empfindung des andern, das ist eigentlich nur möglich, wenn man jenseits von Begriff und jenseits von Laut oder inhaltlichem Worte sich erhebt zu dem, was in der imaginativen Sprachgestaltung lebt. Man lebt nach das äußere Leben der Pflanze, wenn einem das Wort so lebendig ist, wie es dem Griechen lebendig war. Man lebt nach die andere Empfindung, man lebt nach das, was in dem nicht nur Lebendigen, sondern in dem Empfindenden liegt, wenn man eine innere Empfänglichkeit hat nicht nur für die Sprache, sondern für die künstlerische Sprachgestaltung.
[ 25 ] Daher ist es ein so Großes, wenn einmal mythisch dichtend hingewiesen wird auf dieses Urphänomen des Seelenlebens, wenn uns zum Beispiel von Siegfried erzählt wird, daß es einen Moment für ihn gab, wo er die Stimme der Vögel verstand, die es nicht bis zum menschlichen Worte bringen, die es nur bringen bis zu der Gestaltung von Lautzusammenhängen. Aber was uns wie eine Quelle des inneren Lebens an die Oberfläche plätschert in dem Gesang der Vögel, der Stimme der Vögel, das lebt ja in allem Lebendigen. Das ist es aber gerade in allem Lebendigen, was wir nicht nachleben können, wenn wir bloß dem Worte zuhören, was das Lebendige einsperrt in sein innerliches Seelenkämmerchen. Denn wenn wir dem Worte zuhören, dann hören wir, was der Kopf des andern erlebt. Wenn wir aber das innerlich erfassen, was von Silbe zu Silbe, von Wort zu Wort, von Satz zu Satz in der imaginativen Sprachgestaltung lebt, dann erfassen wir nicht bloß das, was im Kopfe, sondern das, was namentlich im Gemüte des andern Menschen lebt. Wenn wir hören auf das, was uns der Mensch in Worten vorspricht, hören wir, wie fähig er ist; wenn wir aber hören können auf seinen Wortklang, auf seinen Wortrhythmus, auf seine Wortgestaltung, dann hören wir den ganzen Menschen. Und wie wir den ganzen Menschen hören, so gelangen wir - wenn wir uns aufschwingen zu dem Erfassen des begrifflosen, wortlosen Lautgestaltens, das nun auch nicht selber gehört wird, das innerlich erlebt wird - zum Erfassen desjenigen, was die Empfindung objektiv innerlich erlebt. Und indem wir wiederum uns so hineinfinden in eine ganz andere Seelenverfassung, wo das Lautesprechen nebenherging, wo aber die Seele lebte im Rhythmus, im Takt, in dem melodiösen Thema, wo das ein Lebendiges im Seelenerleben war, da kommen wir in eine Zeitepoche zurück, die jenseits des Griechischen nach dem Altertum zu liegt; da kommen wir zurück in jene Epoche, wo die Menschen aufstiegen vom Erfassen der bloßen Metamorphose im Lebendigen zu dem Erfassen von dem, was in der Tierheit, was in der empfindenden Welt lebt, zu dem unmittelbaren Anschauen dessen, was in der empfindenden Welt lebt.
[ 26 ] Wenn wir die zivilisierte Menschheit betrachten, das heißt diejenige Menschheit, die für die damalige Zeit so in Betracht kommt, wie die zivilisierten Völker für die Gegenwart in Betracht kommen, wenn wir diese Menschheit vom 8. vorchristlichen Jahrhundert zurück bis etwa in den Anfang des 3. vorchristlichen Jahrtausends anschauen, so haben wir auf dem Grunde der Seelen dieser Völker schon eine solche, im Bildhaften der Seele liegende Seelenverfassung, ein solches Hinneigen, alles als ein Empfindendes aufzufassen.
[ 27 ] Unsere beschränkte Wissenschaft redet davon, daß man eben in früheren Zeiten personifiziert hat. Ein ungeheuer Intellektuelles in der Seele vindiziert man da dem, was eigentlich vorgelegen hat, und man vergleicht es dann mit so etwas wie: Na ja, das Kind, wenn es sich an einer Ecke stößt, dann schlägt es auch die Ecke, weil es den Tisch personifiziert als ein Lebendes. - Niemals hat derjenige in eine kindliche Seele hineingesehen, der da glaubt, daß das Kind den Tisch personifiziert, ihn etwa als etwas Lebendiges vorstellt, das es schlägt. Das Kind schaut den Tisch nicht anders als wir, nur trennt es noch nicht das, was der Tisch ist, von dem Lebendigen. Und jene alten Völker personifizierten nicht, sondern erlebten tatsächlich, indem sie die Sprachgestaltung erlebten, nicht nur das Lebendige, sondern das Empfindende.
[ 28 ] Nur wenn man sich in dieser Weise klarmacht, wie die Seelen der Menschen sich entwickelt haben, sagen wir - wir wollen zunächst nur dieses vor uns hinstellen - vom 3. vorchristlichen Jahrtausend bis in unsere Zeit, aus der Zeit der übersprachlichen Entwickelung durch die sprachliche Entwickelung in die intellektualistische Zeit hinein, aus der Zeit des Erlebens der objektiven Empfindung durch das Erleben des objektiven Wachsens und Werdens zu dem Empfinden dessen, was in Maß, Gewicht und Zahl lebt, nur dann, wenn wir uns dies vergegenwärtigen, werden wir uns leichter sagen können, daß es heute, wo das Bewußtsein alles ergreift, notwendig ist, um in das Wesen der Dinge einzudringen, auch bewußt uns einzuleben in eine neue Art, die Dinge um uns herum anzuschauen. Wer da glaubt, die menschliche Seelenverfassung habe sich nie geändert, sondern wäre in den Zeiten, die vorzugsweise in Betracht kommen, immer gleich geblieben, der denkt, diese menschliche Seelenverfassung sei etwas Absolutes, und der Mensch verliere überhaupt ganz sich selber, wenn er diese Seelenverfassung in eine andere verwandelt. Wer aber sieht, wie es im naturgemäßen Gang der Menschheitsentwickelung liegt, daß die Seelenverfassung Verwandlungen durchmacht, der wird sich leichter aufschwingen können zu dem Begreifen der Notwendigkeit, daß wir uns erst in unserer Seelenverfassung verwandeln müssen, um in einer unserer heutigen Zeit gemäßen Art hineinzudringen in das Wesen der Dinge, in das Wesen des Menschen, in das Wesen des Verhältnisses von Mensch und Welt.
Twenty-third Lecture
[ 1 ] It is easier to understand the views that must be developed within anthroposophical spiritual science in order to gain knowledge of human beings and the world if one delves deeply into the historical changes in human perception. Those who hear today that, in order to really know anything about the nature of the human being, a completely different way of looking at things must arise within the human being than the usual one, will at first be surprised and, out of this surprise, will actually reject any such different insight. Human beings have a certain feeling that at least one thing must remain unchangeable: the way in which we behave in our minds in our perception of things. We can see this particularly clearly in the views of certain teachers of history, contemporary historians. These historians say without further ado that human beings must essentially have been the same in their state of mind during historical times as they are today, because if they had not been so in their state of mind, then, according to these people, there could not actually be any history. For if one wants to develop history, one must start from the present state of mind. If, as a historian, one has to look back on people who are completely different in their souls, one cannot understand them. One would not understand how they spoke or what they did, and one would therefore not be able to think back historically to the time of such people with a different state of mind. So, people believe that in order for there to be a conception of history, human beings must essentially have always been the same in their state of mind as they are now.
[ 2 ] Now, however, it will be easy to understand that such a view is merely a view for convenient human use. For if people have changed their mental constitution in the course of historical development, then we must also make our concepts flexible and strive to understand other, earlier epochs of history differently than we are accustomed to understanding the things of the world today.
[ 3 ] There is a very significant example of a person who was forced to undergo such a change in his entire mental constitution due to a certain inner spiritual impossibility of readily identifying with the mental constitution of his contemporaries. And this significant example — I am really only citing it today as an example — is Goethe.
[ 4 ] As a young man, Goethe had to grow into the way in which people of his time viewed the things of the world and the affairs of the people around him. One could say that he did not really feel at home in this state of mind. There is something stormy about the young Goethe. But this storminess is of a special kind. One need only look at his early poems to see that Goethe had a kind of inner opposition to what his contemporaries actually thought about the world and life.
[ 5 ] But at the same time there is something else in him. There is something in him like an appeal to that which lives in nature, which says more, says something more enduring than the opinions of the people around him who develop such opinions. Goethe appeals to the revelations of nature as opposed to the revelations of humans. And this actually conveys the mood of Goethe's soul throughout his entire life, already as he grows up as a child, while he studies in Leipzig and Strasbourg, then spends time in Frankfurt, and also during the early period of his stay in Weimar.
[ 6 ] One need only look at him as a child, surrounded by the religious beliefs of his fellow human beings. But he himself recounts I have often highlighted this beautiful image from Goethe's life, how as a seven-year-old boy he sets up an altar by taking a music stand, placing minerals from his father's rock collection on it, placing a small incense burner on top, catching the rays of the sun through a magnifying glass and lighting the incense burner through the magnifying glass in order to — as he later says, of course he would not have spoken like that as a seven-year-old boy — to offer a sacrifice to the great God of nature.
[ 7 ] We see that he is growing out of what the environment of his time can tell him, and he is growing closer to nature, in which he initially seeks refuge. This state of mind is alive in him – look around you in Goethe's early works. Then he is seized by a great longing, a longing for Italy. And strangely enough, we see how Goethe's whole mood changes. Only those who grasp this tremendous change in Goethe's soul, which takes place when he enters Italy, can truly understand Goethe. One need only take a statement such as the one found in his letters to his friends in Weimar when he contemplates the works of art he sees there, which conjure up Greek art before his soul. He says: “I have the suspicion that the Greeks, in creating their works of art, proceeded according to the same laws that nature itself proceeds according to, and which I am trying to trace.” Goethe is satisfied with his surroundings, and he is satisfied because these surroundings—he means the surroundings of art—have been influenced by views that are closer to nature than those he was able to perceive around him in his youth. And we see how, in the course of his Italian journey, the idea of metamorphosis arises from this mood of the soul, how Goethe begins to view the transformation of the leaf into the petal in such a way that the idea of metamorphosis, the idea of transformation in all nature, dawns on him.
[ 8 ] Goethe feels that his soul is truly at home in the world only now. And when one takes everything that Goethe has produced since that time as a poet and scientist, when one looks at it, one cannot help but say: Goethe now lives again in ideas and concepts that are not readily comprehensible to his contemporaries, especially not to modern people. Anyone who approaches Goethe with what they have acquired from all their modern learning, from elementary school to the highest educational institutions, with what has become their habits of thought and feeling, does not really understand Goethe. One must first undergo a certain inner transformation if one wants to understand, with one's own mind, what Goethe actually means when he rewrites “Iphigenia,” which he first composed in the mood of the Germanic North, in Italy, in the meter of the Greek people. One can only understand Goethe in his entire position toward his Faust after this inner transformation of the soul.
[ 9 ] Goethe basically hated what he had written in Faust before his trip to Italy. After his Italian journey, he could never again have written verses such as those where Faust turns away from the ascending and descending heavenly forces passing golden buckets to one another, where Faust turns away from the macrocosm and says: “You, spirit of the earth, are closer to me.” That is the youthful Goethe. Goethe would not have written that after 1790. After 1790, when Goethe took up his Faust again at the end of the 1890s, this spirit of the earth was no longer close to him; in the prologue in heaven, he describes the macrocosm. He turns precisely to that from which Faust, representing the youthful Goethe, had turned away. However, this is described in appropriate language, how heavenly forces ascend and descend and pass each other the golden buckets. Goethe did not say, in a sense, “You, spirit of the earth, are closer to me,” but rather, “I only understand man when I do not merely look at the spirit of the earth, but when I rise above the earthly into the heavenly.” - And so we could see through many things. We could, for example, look at this wonderfully written treatise from 1790, “An Attempt to Explain the Metamorphosis of Plants,” and we would have to admit that Goethe could never have written this language, which speaks with the things themselves, namely with the growing and becoming of plants, before his Italian journey. And this points us significantly to a connection between Goethe's soul and the entire development of humanity. Goethe felt alienated from the thinking of his time at the moment when he was compelled to digest the actual education, the scientific education of his time, within himself. He strove for a different way of thinking, a different way of relating to the world, and found this other way when he believed he had brought to life within himself the way of the Greeks, the Greeks' attitude toward nature and the world, toward human beings.
[ 10 ] Modern physicists reject Goethe because they live in what was foreign to Goethe in his youth. And this rejection is ultimately more honest than feigned approval. What people had conquered in their view of the world since the middle of the 15th century was something that Goethe could not quite find, could never quite find. In his youth, he opposed it, and after his trip to Italy, he accepted it because he had gained something else for himself from his closeness to Greece.
[ 11 ] What was it that had been alive in the worldview, in the conception of life since the middle of the 15th century? What is Galileism, actually? Galileism, when you study it, is something that seeks to make the world comprehensible through measurement, number, and weight, through the contemplation and observation of external things. Goethe was never inclined to construct a worldview based on measurement, number, and weight.
[ 12 ] But that is only one side of the coin. There is a certain correlation with what arises in human beings when they view the world in terms of measure, number, and weight, and that is abstract thinking, pure intellectualism. We can see this clearly: to the same extent that measure, number, and weight have been applied to the observation of external nature since the first third or middle of the 15th century, intellectualism has developed internally in human life, a tendency toward abstract thinking, toward thinking that prefers to use the intellect. Just as we develop concepts today with our great preference for mathematics, geometry, and mechanics, we have basically only been doing so as human beings since the 15th century. Goethe did not feel at home in this world, with measurement, number, and weight on the one hand and intellectualism on the other.
[ 13 ] The world to which he turned knew little about measure, number, and weight. Anyone who studies Pythagoreanism is easily tempted to believe that everything in the world is viewed as we view it, according to measure, number, and weight. But it is precisely the characteristic difference between how Pythagoreanism uses measure, number, and weight figuratively and how they are used universally, how what lives in measure, number, and weight is felt, as it were, in a wholly human way, not yet separated from human beings, that can already indicate to us that Pythagoreanism did not work with measure, number, and weight as it has been done since the middle of the 15th century, as Galileanism works with measure, number, and weight. And anyone who delves deeply into the spirit of the 9th century, for example—I characterized it recently in a few lectures here—anyone who delves deeply into John Scotus Erigena, anyone who reads Scotus, will find that just as we are accustomed today to constructing a worldview based on chemical and physical principles and hypothetically constructing the beginning and end of the world from what we have learned through measuring, counting, and weighing, this is not the case with Scotus Erigena. In Scotus Erigena's view, human beings do not separate themselves so far from the external world, nor do they separate themselves from the external world. He lives more in harmony with the external world and does not strive for objectivity in the same way that we strive for objectivity today. And so we can see how what developed in Greek culture over the centuries since the time of Pythagoras—and this can be seen particularly in a mind such as that of Scotus Erigena—then played itself out in later centuries. During this period, the human soul basically lived in completely different concepts. Goethe strove toward these concepts again from the various depths of his soul life.
[ 14 ] But we can only gain a meaningful understanding of what is actually at hand when we consider another historical fact that is little noticed today. I have already presented this historical fact from one perspective in my book The Riddles of Philosophy; today I would like to present it from another perspective.
[ 15 ] We modern people must distinguish precisely between the concept and the word. It would only lead to disaster in human prudence if we did not distinguish precisely between what lives inwardly in the abstract mind and what lives in words. The abstract mind is, after all, universal, generally human. The word lives in the individual vernacular languages. We can already distinguish between what lives in the concept, in the idea, and in the word.
[ 16 ] If we want to understand correctly what we have from the Greeks in a purely historical sense, we cannot do so by attributing to the Greeks the same distinction that we develop in distinguishing between concept and word. The Greeks did not distinguish between concept, idea, and word with the same intensity. When they spoke, what lived in the idea lived for them on the wings of the word. They believed that they could put the concept into the word. When they thought, they did not think in an abstract, intellectual way as we do. Something like the inaudible but nevertheless audible sound of the word passed through their souls. It sounded inaudibly within them. The word lived, not the abstract concept. At a time when it would have been considered unnatural to educate a certain portion of young people in the way we educate our youth today, things could have been different. It is extremely characteristic of our culture and civilization, although we do not usually notice it, that a large part of our youth, from the age of ten to eighteen, is occupied with familiarizing themselves with Latin, Greek, and dead languages. Imagine if a Greek had been educated in his youth in such a way that, for my sake, he had familiarized himself with Egyptian and Chaldean in this way. Unthinkable, isn't it, completely unthinkable! The Greek did not just live in his language with his thinking, but language was his thinking. Thinking was embodied in the language itself. One may call this a limitation of the Greek character, but it is a fact. And a true understanding of what we have of Greek culture can only be that which makes us aware of this close connection between the concept, the idea, and the word, and which shows us how the word lived like an inner, inaudible sound in the soul of the Greek.
[ 17 ] Yes, with such a state of mind, one cannot observe the external world in the Galilean way, as we do according to measure, number, and weight. Measure, number, and weight fall away, so to speak. I would say that it is only outwardly symptomatic that what we today teach every child as physics was actually perceived as a miracle in the Greek world. Many experiments that we perform today, which we explain in terms of measurement, number, and weight, were perceived as magic. You can read about this in any history of physics. The Greeks did not approach what we now call inorganic nature in the same way as we do. They did not have the opportunity to approach it in this way because of their mental constitution, and this was because they did not progress to abstract concepts in the way we did in the Galilean era.
[ 18 ] If you live in words like the Greeks did, you cannot calculate the results of experiments as we do today, but you observe the transformations in nature. One observes what takes place not in the mineral world, but primarily in the plant world. Just as there is a kind of affinity between abstract concepts and the perception of the mineral world, there is also an affinity between the Greek attitude toward words and the perception of growth, life, and transformation in living beings. When we think about the beginning and end of the earth today based on our mineral concepts and form hypotheses, these hypotheses are a reflection of what we have measured, counted, and weighed. And we form a Kant-Laplace theory, or we form the idea of the heat death of the earth, of entropy and its maximum. These are all abstractions that we extract from what we have measured, counted, and weighed. Look, on the other hand, at the cosmogonies of the Greeks. In these cosmogonies, you sense that their ideas are nourished by the way vegetation emerges in spring, how it dies in autumn, how it develops, how it disappears. Just as we construct a world system from our material concepts and material observations, the Greeks constructed a world system from their observations of what was revealed in vegetation. For them, living things were the source of their myths and their cosmogonies.
[ 19 ] The arrogant, scientifically educated person of today will say: Well, that was childish, we have happily overcome that. We have come so far! - And he will regard what can be gained by measuring, counting, and weighing as absolute. Those who are not narrow-minded in this way will say to themselves: From the Greek worldview, which formed a picture of the world out of living things, our way of thinking developed, which brought us intellectualism, which is also a means of educating humanity. But from this view of ours, which lives by measuring, weighing, and counting, another will have to develop in turn.
[ 20 ] It is remarkable that when Schiller overcame his earlier aversion to Goethe and drew closer to him, he wrote him a characteristic letter. I have often quoted this letter. He wrote to him: “If you had been born a Greek, or even just an Italian, the world you are actually searching for would have been spread out around you from your early youth.” I am not quoting verbatim, but I am quoting the gist. Schiller sensed how Goethe's soul yearned for Greek culture. Now, one can study Goethe to see how a mind changed by immersing itself in Greek culture. Today, we are much more interested in this completely different way of approaching the world of Greek culture than in the period since the 15th century. So one can say: Our age, which lives in the intellect and learns most about the world through the intellect, insofar as this world can be measured, counted, and weighed, was preceded by another age that lived less in the intellect than in that lively soul life that still had the word within itself, that heard the sound internally as a soundless sound, that lived the sound internally, lived the sound internally, just as we today take in a concept. And this era recognized the living in the external world primarily through this living soul content.
[ 21 ] But one can go back further; then, however, one must resort to spiritual science, for one can no longer rely on conventional history. One can certainly remain within a spiritually and psychologically conceived history if one wants to understand the radical difference between the Greek soul constitution and our own; but if one wants to go further back, for example beyond the 8th century BC, and try to imagine what the soul constitution of human beings was like then, external history can tell us nothing more. Externally, we have only sparse documents, and the documents we do have are not appreciated in the right way. Actually, we do have certain external documents, and, viewed correctly, even the Iliad and the Odyssey are such documents, but they are not usually seen from this point of view. If we go back even further, we come to the conclusion that a view gained significance for us which was held by various people, most powerfully expressed by Herder, as if in a significant premonition, but by no means carried out in any scientific way. It is the view that the time when cultural humanity lived in words was preceded by another time when it lived in images. But how does one live with language, for example, and with the inner soul life that is revealed in language, in images? One lives in images when one no longer attaches so much importance to the content of the sound, to that which, so to speak, colors the sound, but when one attaches importance to the rhythm of the sound, to what I would like to call the form of the sound, to what we today actually perceive as an independent element in relation to language, to the poetic nature of language. Today, the poet must first shape language artistically if art, if poetry, is to emerge. But we look back to a time when it was elementary and self-evident to human nature to shape language poetically, when language and theoretical development were not yet as separate as they later became, when people still saw something in following a short syllable with a long one, two short syllables with a long one, when they saw something in saying a series of short syllables in succession. In this shaping of language, something of the secrets of the world was revealed to them, something that is not revealed when we take away the tinged, the content of the sound.
[ 22 ] Individual people today sense how language originated from such a state, and we should look at how such people have felt their way out of the confusion that our scientific approach presents to us today, as I am now attempting to illustrate from a spiritual-scientific perspective. Benedetto Croce pointed out in an extraordinarily charming way this once poetic, artistic element of language that developed in humans in prehistoric times, or at least in a time close to prehistory, before language took on its prosaic character. So that we have, as it were, three epochs before our soul: the epoch that begins around the 15th century, which I would like to call Galileanism, which lives inwardly intellectually and outwardly views the world according to measure, number, and weight. And an earlier epoch, for which Goethe longed, according to which he inwardly and spiritually organized his entire post-Italian life, where human beings lived in the undivided oneness of word and concept, where they developed not intellectualism but an animated inner life, and where they observed externally that which is alive, that which transforms, that which lives in metamorphosis. And now we look back on a third epoch, where the human soul lived in something beyond language, in something that shaped sounds pictorially. But what still lives behind the sound with the soul, as if through an animated instinct, also perceives something else in the external world. As I said, history does not point this out to us at all; the historian can only guess at it. Anthroposophical spiritual science can see this clearly. It is the imaginative element of language, the instinctive imagination, that precedes the experience of words. And through this imaginative experience, something even higher is actually experienced in external nature than can be experienced through words or concepts.
[ 23 ] We know that even today, when it is in full decadence, Oriental civilization points us in its decadent manifestations to earlier conditions, conditions that were still full of life, if we study, for example, the Vedas or Vedanta philosophy, which in turn point to even older prehistoric times. Something has remained that, I would say, pervades this entire Oriental state of mind like an ether, something that is quite foreign to the Western state of mind, something that, when we express it in words, is no longer the same. Something has remained that can only be expressed very sparsely with our word compassion, however deeply Schopenhauer may have felt it. This compassion, this love in all beings, as it still exists today in the East, points to older times when it was even more intense, when it expressed in the soul a living-into of the soul into that which feels. It is entirely justified to say that Eastern compassion expresses a lost primordial phenomenon of the soul's life, which manifests itself in the inner experience of what feels, what lives inwardly, what does not merely live in transformation like a plant, what does not merely arise and pass away, but experiences arising and passing away in its inner feeling.
[ 24 ] This sharing of the objectively living feeling of another is actually only possible when one rises above concepts and sounds or words with content to what lives in imaginative speech formation. One lives according to the external life of the plant when the word is as alive to one as it was to the Greeks. One lives according to the other sensation, one lives according to what lies not only in the living, but in the sentient, when one has an inner receptivity not only to language, but to artistic language formation.
[ 25 ] That is why it is so great when mythical poetry refers to this primordial phenomenon of soul life, when we are told, for example, that there was a moment when Siegfried understood the voice of the birds, which cannot express themselves in human words, but only in the formation of sound combinations. But what ripples to the surface as a source of inner life in the song of birds, in the voice of birds, lives in all living things. But it is precisely this in all living things that we cannot relive when we merely listen to words, which imprison the living in its inner soul chamber. For when we listen to words, we hear what the other person's head is experiencing. But when we grasp inwardly what lives from syllable to syllable, from word to word, from sentence to sentence in imaginative speech formation, then we grasp not only what lives in the head, but what lives specifically in the mind of the other person. When we listen to what a person says to us in words, we hear how capable they are; but when we can listen to the sound of their words, to their rhythm, to their word formation, then we hear the whole person. And as we hear the whole person, we arrive—if we raise ourselves to the level of comprehending the non-conceptual, wordless sound formation, which is not itself heard but is experienced inwardly—at the comprehension of that which the sensation objectively experiences inwardly. And by finding ourselves in a completely different state of mind, where speaking aloud went hand in hand with the soul living in rhythm, in beat, in the melodious theme, where there was something alive in the soul experience, we return to a time that lies beyond the Greek era, after antiquity; we return to that epoch when human beings rose from the perception of mere metamorphosis in living beings to the perception of what lives in animality, in the sentient world, to the direct observation of what lives in the sentient world.
[ 26 ] When we consider civilized humanity, that is, the humanity that was considered civilized at that time, just as civilized peoples are considered civilized today, when we look at this humanity from the 8th century BC back to about the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC, we find at the bottom of the souls of these peoples a state of mind, a tendency to perceive everything as something sentient.
[ 27 ] Our limited science speaks of the fact that in earlier times people personified things. One attributes an enormous intellectual capacity to the soul, which is what actually existed, and then compares it to something like this: Well, when a child bumps into a corner, it also hits the corner because it personifies the table as a living being. No one who believes that the child personifies the table, imagining it as something living that it hits, has ever looked into a child's soul. The child sees the table no differently than we do, only it does not yet separate what the table is from what is alive. And those ancient peoples did not personify, but actually experienced, through their experience of speech formation, not only the living, but also the sentient.
[ 28 ] Only when we understand in this way how human souls have developed can we say — let us first just put this before us — from the third millennium BC to our own time, from the time of supra-linguistic development through linguistic development into the intellectualistic age, from the time of experiencing objective sensation through the experience of objective growth and becoming to the feeling of what lives in measure, weight and number, only then, when we keep this in mind, will we be able to say more easily that today, when consciousness grasps everything, it is necessary, in order to penetrate into the essence of things, to consciously live into a new way of looking at the things around us. Anyone who believes that the human soul has never changed, but has always remained the same in the times that are most relevant, thinks that the human soul is something absolute and that man loses himself completely when he transforms this soul into another. But anyone who sees how it is in the natural course of human development that the soul state undergoes transformations will find it easier to understand the necessity that we must first transform our soul state in order to penetrate into the essence of things, into the essence of man, into the essence of the relationship between man and the world in a way that is appropriate to our present time.