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Spiritual Scientific Notes on Goethe's Faust, Vol. II
GA 273

27 January 1917, Dornach

3. Goethe's Feeling for the Concrete. Shadowy concepts and Ideas filled with Reality

(Representation of a scene from Faust, Part II, Act II High-vaulted, narrow Gothic Room—Laboratory.)

It is to be hoped that the scenes just witnessed may have effect and meet with a really intelligent reception in the widest circles today. For these scenes contain many germs of the evolution within which also flows the stream of Spiritual Science. We can say that, in writing these scenes out of his long and varied experience, Goethe foreshadowed much that like a seed will spring up through Spiritual Science. These scenes from the second part of “Faust” stand before our souls not only as a record of cultural history, but also as an expression of deep knowledge. To help us to a full understanding in our approach to this deepest manifestation of Goethe's spirit we may now call to our aid the already familiar ideas of Spiritual Science. For, in these ideas, all that Goethe's inner imagination develop out of the experiences of his time is formulated and brought to full consciousness.

In the first of these two scenes, above all, we have an important document of cultural history. Goethe had been matured by all that he had absorbed from natural science, and by the deepening of all his concepts through his studies and mysticism as well as what he received from Grecian art. And, at the very time when he was giving form to the ideas thus living in him, the spirits of men were seeking with infinite enthusiasm for knowledge to grapple with the highest problems of existence. Something that should not, cannot, surprise people in our circle is the fact that a really intensive striving towards the spiritual world should actually promote caricatures of itself. Both mystical striving and the deeper striving after philosophical knowledge produce their caricatures. In Goethe's immediate circle a really important endeavor, that might be described as both philosophical and theosophical, was developing at the time when the scenes were living in unfolding in Goethe's mind. It was then that Johann Gottlieb Fichte was teaching with an immense enthusiasm for knowledge. From the brief account given in my book, and from what is said about Fichte both in the development of the “Riddles of Philosophy” and in the more recent “Riddles of Man,” you can see by all that is said there about him how he strove an elemental way to formulate the divine spiritual dwelling in man's innermost soul, in such a way that, by developing this in his soul, man may become conscious of his divine spiritual origin. Fichte tried to grasp the full life of the ego in the soul of man, the active, creative ego, and also the ego filled with God. By this means he sought to feel the union of the inner human life with the whole life of the cosmos. And out of this enthusiasm he spoke. It is very easy to understand how such a spiritual thrust should meet with opposition. Naturally Fichte could not then speak in the concrete way of Spiritual Science, the time was not yet ripe for this. We might say that he tried by abstract, all-round concepts, to give life to the feeling that can then be wakened to full life in man by the impressions of Spiritual Science. Hence his language has often much about it that is abstract; this is penetrated, however, by living feeling and experience. And for what Fichte had to say to be taken seriously at all, the strong impression was needed that a personality such as his could produce. He often expressed himself strangely and in paradox—to even greater degree than is necessary in Spiritual Science, for, to those unaccustomed to it, what is true often appears foolish. This is why such a great spirit as Fichte, who had at that time to express the truth in abstract form, was thought ridiculous.

On the other hand, those who had been strongly impressed by Fichte might easily have exaggerated things, as happens often in life. Then came caricatures of him, caricatures of others as well who, inspired by the same convictions were also teaching in Jena at the time. Among these was Schelling who, striving like Fichte, actually fought his way—as I have often stressed—to a very deep conception of Christianity, even to a very deep conception of the Mystery of Golgotha. This conception gradually developed into a kind of Theosophy then expressed—though without being understood by his contemporaries—in his “Philosophy of Manifestation.” It was embodied too in the treatise on human freedom and other subjects akin to it written round Jakob Boehme. It was already living in his discourse on Bruno, or on the Divine and Natural Principle of Things, and lived especially in his splendid treatise on the Mysteries of the Samothracian Divinities, where he gave a picture of what in his opinion had dwelt in those old Mysteries. Then there were such spirits as Friedrich Schlegel, who energetically applied to the different branches of human knowledge what to those more philosophically constituted natures sought to charm from the heart of the world order. Hegel had begun to formulate his philosophy. And all this had been going on around the Goethe. These men sought to penetrate beyond what is relative in the world, beyond all that controls mankind in day-to-day life, to the Absolute, to what is not merely the background of the relative. Thus, Fichte tried to penetrate beyond the ordinary, everyday ego to the absolute ego, anchored in the Godhead, and weaving its web in eternity. Thus Schelling and Hegel sought to press through to absolute Being.

All this was naturally taken at the time in various ways. Today, particularly, when Spiritual Science can penetrate our hearts, we are able to form a very clear idea of the frame of mind of men like Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, when on talking about all that was so vividly before their spiritual eye people remained apathetic—apathetic and hostile. One can understand, too, how the youthful Fichte, meeting antiquated pedants in Jena, who each in their own way of thought they knew everything, might sometimes flare up. Fichte often flared up, not only when he was banished from Jena but also when he saw that, giving of his best, it found no entrance into any heart, any soul; for they all thought themselves wiser with their old traditional knowledge and ideas. So we can understand that when such a spirit as Fichte was faced with the pundits of Jena and had to deal with them, that he was driven to declare that everyone over thirty should be put to death!—It was a spiritual struggle of the first magnitude raging at that time in Jena, and everything going on there was vilified. Kotzebue, a poetaster who nevertheless had his public, wrote a very interesting and witty dramatic pamphlet—witty because it describes a type of young graduate educated at Jena, who when he goes home to his mother speaks in the empty phrases he learnt there. These are all given word-for-word in the pamphlet that is called “Hyperborean Ass or the New Education”. All this appears no doubt, very witty but it is really nothing more than a vulgar attack on a fine effort. We must not, of course, confuse it with what Goethe sought to denounce—the caricaturing of what is great—for we must be clear from the correspondence between Goethe and Fichte and between Goethe and Shelling, that Goethe was well able to appreciate the spirit striving after the Absolute. Although we did not find Goethe elaborating into a system any occult principles, yet we can say that he was a spiritual dwelling wholly within the aura of the occult, and knowing that what lives in the progress of good in world-evolution may incline on the one hand to the ahrimanic, on the other to the luciferic. He does not use these particular expressions but that is of no importance; he knew that actually the pendulum of world-evolution is always swinging between the ahrimanic and the luciferic. And Goethe wished to work everything out from its very depths, and everywhere to show how, fundamentally, even the striving after the highest may at the same time be dangerous. What is there that may not be so? It stands to reason that all that is best may be dangerous. And how dangerous the best may be when Ahriman and Lucifer take a hand in things, was precisely the problem Goethe had so vividly in mind.

Thus he had his Faust in mind—the Faust who strove after the deepest secrets of existence, who was to be the realisation of what stood ever before Goethe's soul, namely, the direct perception of the living and spiritual in all nature and in all history. Goethe himself was striving to find again the spiritual secrets of the early Greek days. He wanted to unite himself with all that was alive and creative in a past epoch—in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. This is what he wanted to put into form in the striving of his Faust after what was still living in Helen. Goethe sought the paths by which he could lead Faust to Helen. But he was quite conscious of the danger here. However justifiable, however high-minded, the striving might be, because it could so easily lead into luciferic channels it meant danger.

Thus Goethe first showed us Faust being drawn into the luciferic channel, paralyzed by the sudden appearance of Helen, paralyzed by association with the spiritual. Faust has called up Helen from the ‘realm of the Mothers’, at first having her before him only as a spiritual force. He is paralyzed by what he experiences spiritually. Inwardly he is filled with what he has absorbed. He lives in a living, spiritual element of ancient Greece but through it becomes paralyzed.

And in this condition we find him when Mephistopheles has brought him back to his cell, to his laboratory, paralyzed by his contact with the spiritual element of the past:

“Whom Helen paralyzes, use
Not likely to regain their reason.”

as Mephistopheles says. We see, too, how a certain rift has arisen between Faust, who has been drawn into the luciferic channel, and Mephistopheles. Whether the experience is altogether conscious or not, Faust with his soul, through luciferic impulse, has entered a different spiritual channel from that of Mephistopheles. They are now separated as if by the limits of their consciousness.

Faust is dreaming—as ordinary language would have it. He knows nothing of his old world in which he is presently living. But Mephistopheles is in it, through him everything ahrimanic also comes to life. Thus, in this sense we have essentially the two worlds clashing, and this is in accordance with truth. This collision is made clear to us, and it is remarkable how deeply Goethe, in his instinctive way, goes deeper than what is Spiritual Science. This collision is made clear to us through the unsuspecting Famulus now introduced, who imperturbably swings like a pendulum between the tremendous dangers surrounding him.

We may regard him as representing the type of man who is the victim of an unimaginative, unobservant nature, from which, often, he cannot escape. He sees nothing of what goes on around him. It is in the sense that we must understand all he says.

The whole milieu in which we now find ourselves is changed by Mephistopheles meeting with his former pupil who has now taken his degree. It looks as if he were right outside the picture I have just given you; however, he represents a caricature of it. He has been infused with all that the Kant-Fichte-Schelling-Hegel philosophy was able to give, and by Schlegel's interpretation of it all; but he takes this in a very narrow, egoistic sense. We may ask why he does so? This is indeed a pertinent question. Why has the graduate become what we now see? Is it possible that in him Goethe was wishing perhaps to make fun of the Jena philosophy he so much appreciated? Most certainly not! But in his opinion the student who had received from Mephistopheles the precept Eritus sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum, would have been on this philosophical channel:

“Follow the ancient saw, follow the snake, my cousin,
God's image as thou art, thou'lt rue the way thou'st chosen.”

This impulse of the one-time student received from the Mephistopheles himself. Mephistopheles cannot complain if this old student gives him occasion to say: “How crude thou art, my friend, thou scarcely know'st” for he himself has planted all that in his soul, it is a seed of his sowing. This matured scholar has indeed taken the advice and followed Mephistopheles' cousin, the famous snake. And to begin with he has no qualms; they will come later. He is not made uneasy by the thought of his affinity with God, that he clearly refers to when announcing that he has created the world, it is he who has fashioned it.—This indeed has been accepted as the Kantian philosophy by many caricature-lovers, and even today it is still widely accepted.

Yes, my dear friends, we may indeed get to know people who take the philosophy of Kant even more egoistically than this scholar. We once knew a man who was so infected with this philosophy of Kant and Fichte that he did actually believe he had created the whole world. It had become an idée fixe with him that he had created it. I said to him at the time: Why, yes, certainly an an idea, as your idea, you have created the world, but there is something to be added to the idea. You created the idea of your own boots, but it was the shoemaker who made those boots of yours. You cannot say you made your own boots, though you may have created the idea of them.—Fundamentally, every genuine refutation, even Schopenhauer's philosophy of The World as Idea, is based on this problem of the shoemaker. Those things, however, are not always seen in the right light.

Thus the scholar meeting Mephistopheles in this way, is to some extent his victim. Philosophers have striven after the Absolute. In this man the striving after the Absolute has become a caricature. Mephistopheles has to caution him:

“Pray don't go home quite absolute.”

We see the connection with the spiritual culture of that time represented by Goethe in a very witty way. It is because the scenes are based on living reality that they are so vivid and so extraordinarily dramatic. Goethe strove again and again lead men beyond the ideas that savour rather of the tavern, ideas so often heard, such as: Ah, we should like to keep to what is good and to flee from Lucifer and Ahriman, have nothing to do with them.—It is because Goethe does not like these notions that he sometimes makes Mephistopheles quite sympathetic and kindly. For how pleasant it all is when the scholar, becoming altogether too absolute, the good Mephistopheles turns his chair round from this one scholar to the general public, to the younger pit-goers, looking there, as Goethe imagined it, for sympathy. And he makes Mephistopheles speak not merely like a devil but in a very apt way, because he knows how much of what belongs to Mephistopheles must be mixed with life for life to thrive at all, and how unwholesome are the ideas which, in the way we have shown, smell of the tavern. It is quite worth-while for once to reflect how Goethe himself did not remain cold with the coldness of the apathetic crowd. For this reason he makes his Mephistopheles expressed itself rather heatedly about the people who, as he observes, receive his wise maxims so indifferently. Goethe even then wanted to point out this coldness, though it was a long way from being as cold as the usual opinions and mood of soul today towards all that can penetrate to man from the spiritual life.

And now we see a genuine ahrimanic activity developing in the creation of Homunculus. It was not easy for Goethe to write a particular part of his Faust we have had before us here. Poets of a lesser degree can accomplish anything; circumstances permitting, such a poet would easily solve the problem of bringing Faust and Helen together. But Goethe was not a poet of that calibre; poetical creation was to him difficult and harassing. He had to find a way to bring Faust with all reality together with talent, with whom, as we have seen, he lived in another state of consciousness. He had to find some way, but was by no means clear how to find it. Faust had first to be taken down to the underworld, there to beg the help of Persephone in procuring him Helen in bodily form. But when Goethe wish to show Helen being fetched by Persephone, he felt that no ideas or concepts from the scene were forthcoming. For just think what was involved. Faust has got as far as reaching Helen imaginatively, in his soul's subconscious; he had, however, to reach her with those faculties natural to him in life. For that, Helen had to enter this sphere of consciousness. Therefore Goethe had to bring about, to a certain degree, Helen's embodiment. To this end he had recourse to what he knew from Paracelsus, whose works he had really studied, the treatise De Generatione Rerum being especially useful to him. There Paracelsus shows how homunculi may be produced by means of certain processes. It is easy, of course, for the modern man to say: Yes, but that was merely a mediaeval pre-possession of Paracelsus'. It is also easy for him to say: surely no one is asked to believe this phantasy of Paracelsus'.—True, as far as I'm concerned nobody need believe it. But it is well to consider that in this treatise De Generatione Rerum Paracelsus expressly assures us that by means of certain processes it is possible to produce something having indeed no body—mark that, please. Paracelsus expressly says that it has nobody, but faculties similar to those of the human soul, and rising to clairvoyance. Thus, Paracelsus was of the opinion that there were certain devices enabling men to produce a being that, without a physical body, develop a kind of understanding, a kind of intellectuality like human beings, and even something higher. It was of this that Goethe made use. Perhaps he thought to himself: Helen has entered the sphere of Faust's consciousness in a purely spiritual sense, but she must become more substantial.

This substantiality he brought about through the kind of being we have in Homunculus, who is as it were a bridge between the purely spiritual and the physical; for he himself has no physical body but a favorable moment originates from physical devices. So that we may say: The presence of Homunculus makes it possible to bring a quite spiritual Helen into the corporeal world where Faust has his home.

Now for all this Goethe naturally needed some kind of error, and this error is brought about in a roundabout way through Wagner. Through his materialistic mind Wagner is misled into the belief that Homunculus is entirely a material production. He could not have brought a real homunculus into being; for that, there would be required spiritual forces not at his disposal. These spiritual forces are supplied when Mephistopheles, the ahrimanic element, appears. For the ahrimanic impulse is given when something actually comes into being out of what Wagner has compounded. Had Wagner—either alone or perhaps with the help of the everywhere latent forces—succeeded in his experiment, it might have happened to him as it did to a man who wrote me some time ago saying that, at last, after endless effort, he had really brought little men to life in his room, but then could not get rid of them, he could not escape them. He wanted advice as to how he could save himself from these creatures, these living mechanisms, he had produced. They have since pursued him everywhere. One can well imagine what happens to the mind of such a man. There are, of course, still men today who have these adventures, just as there are still those who scoff at such things.

Through a coincidence, but only coincidence, at the time Goethe was writing the scene Johann Jakob Wagner, in Wurzburg, was maintaining that homunculi could be produced, and he gave the method for doing this. But it goes without saying that it is not true that Goethe took the name from him; for the name Wagner come from the old “Faust” then still in existence. This scene was first written down when Johann Jakob Wagner was still an infant.

It is due to Mephistopheles that, out of what Wagner has achieved, the Homunculus comes into being. But he does come into being, and is represented in the way Goethe had learnt from Paracelsus' instructions. And Homunculus does in fact immediately become clairvoyant, for he is able to see Faust's dream. he describes what Faust—more or less under the influence of Lucifer—is experiencing in another state of consciousness—how he has actually gained access to the Grecian world. In the description Homunculus we recognise the meeting of Zeus with Leda, the mother of Helen.

Thus we see how Goethe places a close juxtaposition the spiritual that lives in Faust, and Homunculus who knows how to grasp and interpret it. We see how Goethe works round to the ordinary physical world so that Helen can then enter it. And for all that is pictured later in the “Classical Walpurgis-night”, we see how Goethe tries to form the physical out of the eternal spiritual in Helen, with whom Faust has lived, while Homunculus traverses all the kingdoms of nature, and now taking to himself a physical body unites with Helen's spiritual element. By dint of Homunculus traversing the rounds of nature Helen becomes, externally on the physical plane, all that we find her in the third Act of the second Part of “Faust”. Thus Helen is born anew through Homunculus, through the metamorphosis is able to bring about in conjunction with all Faust is living through spiritually. This is what Goethe had in mind. This is why he introduces Homunculus and why he shows the relation between what Faust is, in a way, is dreaming, and what Homunculus sees.

With all this, Goethe comes very near true Occultism, that through Occultism of which I have often spoken, from which we are led away by abstract thinking and the desire to live in abstract concepts. I have often called attention to the way a certain one-sided cultivation of the principles of Christianity leads to the maturing of unreal, shadowy concepts as world-outlook, that are powerless to come to any understanding of real-life. And men stands to-day at the mercy of such concepts. On the one hand they have a purely mechanical knowledge of nature that, however, is no knowledge but merely a system out of which all life has been driven.

“Encheiresis naturae, Chemistry calls it,
Mocking itself, not knowing what befalls it.”

says Mephistopheles. This on the one hand that wants merely to copy down what happens outwardly, and on the other hand concepts drawn from any kind of spiritual source, either represented pantheistically or existing in some cloud-cuckoo-land of shadowy concepts, neither capable of entering right into life, nor of grasping its reality.

It is for this reason I have been pointing out how Spiritual Science is able to understand once again the real, actual, human being, for example, and to say: This human head is, from one point of view, only what the anatomist makes of it by describing it purely externally, but it is not merely what is outwardly the body for an abstract concept of a soul floating in cloud-cuckoo-land; this head must be understood as having undergone a transformation, a metamorphosis, from the body of a previous incarnation and is formed, as I have explained in recent lectures, out of the spheres of the entire cosmos. The essential thing for which concrete spiritual science must strive is to fit what is thus formed into the material world by means of concepts—concepts that do not float in the general and abstract. For what is most feared today by many bigotted Christian pastors, and people of that kind, with their unsubstantial abstractions of God and eternity, is precisely this living comprehension of the world, this concrete grasping of the material that is, indeed, at the same time a revelation of the spiritual. This diving into the real world with concepts is what man today will not have. And it is just this to which Goethe wants so vigorously to point. Hence he contrasts the spirit of Homunculus, the real, genuine spiritual that then lives on, though in a different way, in the consciousness of Faust, this way of beholding, he contrasts with the world as Mephistopheles would have it—a world derived from the association-forming tendency of the Christian middle-ages, in which is extinguished everything spiritual that approaches man's soul. Therefore Homunculus sees what is visible neither to Wagner not to Mephistopheles. Hence because Mephistopheles says:

“Marry, what moonshine dost thou not narrate!
Small as thou art, thou art a dreamer great.
Naught see I—”

Homunculus answers:

“No! The North thy heritage is,
Thy birth was in the misty ages,
The waste of priesthood and of chivalry.
And how should there thine eye be free?
In murkiness thou art at home.”

Goethe is consciously striving for a concrete grasp of reality.

I have drawn attention to the fact that here, in the passage of course where Homunculus is speaking to Mephistopheles, by some mischance a line has been left out. For in all the editions we read:

“No! The North thy heritage is,
Thy birth was in the misty ages,
The waste of priesthood and of chivalry.
And how should there thine eye be free?
In murkiness thou art at home.”

The rhyme to ‘home’ is missing.

“Dingy-brown stone-work, mouldered, horrid,
And Gothic-arched, ignoble, florid.”

Now there is no reason why the rhyme here should be missing; it must have happened therefore by some accident in the dictation that a line was missed that must perhaps have run like this:

“But what we make of this gloom?”

Thus Homunculus, having seen that Mephistopheles does not understand him, shows him clearly how by living in abstractions men have separated themselves from the concrete, spiritual world. This has arisen through the misty concepts that have been developed and have led to the narrowness in all the affairs of life in which Faust grew up, from which, however, he grew away. But the devil in Mephistopheles feels at home there. This is perhaps why Homunculus says:

“No! The North thy heritage is,
Thy birth was in the misty ages,”

By the ‘misty ages’ he means the Middle Ages, but with a play upon the old German name Nivelheim. (The line in German runs Im Nebelalter jung geworden.) Jung geworden (grown young) is an old expression—and a very good one. Just as one grows old in the physical world, so one grows young when one is born into the spiritual world. Thus, in the old German expression, to ‘become young’ meant to ‘be born,’ and is clear evidence that in language there was an understanding of the spiritual.

And now he looks about him in the gloom and sees all that is there:

“Dingy-brown stone-work, mouldered, horrid,
And Gothic-arched, ignoble, florid.”

Then:

“Awakens he here, new cares we've got.”

for he must be brought into a life that is fully living if he has no wish for merely abstract concepts. Faust has no desire, for example, to have ancient Greece pictured according to the humanists or philologists; he wants to live, really live, within ancient Greece, by having Helen, as its representative, appearing bodily before him.

Thus throughout this scent we see Goethe's wonderful feeling for the concrete. We may say indeed that every word of the poetry Goethe wrote in his old age came out of a profound experience of the world. And that gives weight to these words, enormous weight, and gives them also immortality. For how fine in this respect are the words here spoken by Mephistopheles—words acquiring their special colouring from this fact:

“Alack! Away! Forbear of yonder squabble
'Twixt tyranny and slavery to babble!
It irks me. Scarce 'tis ended when de novo
With the whole farce they start again ab ovo,
Yet none doth mark he is but made a fool
By Asmodeus who the strings doth pull.”

(By the devil of discord, with whom Mephistopheles feels himself thoroughly akin.)

“They fight for freedom—so themselves they flatter.” We feel ourselves transported almost into the present, for now too we fight for freedom. But Goethe retorts:

“Slaves against slaves, if you but sift the matter.”

To sum up, my dear friends, we might say: If only the time might come when all the striving of such a poem, as we find it revealed in Goethe by this scene, might be continued on into what should arise through present-day Spiritual Science, if only what lies in such a story of endeavour might take more hold on men, might find a haven in their souls—then we might indeed go forward as real men.

But instead, since the days of Goethe, the abstraction of all endeavour has made infinitely greater progress. Here is the point where the striver after Spiritual Science—whether or not he rises to Goethe's level—should try to become clear as to the difference between concrete spiritual endeavor and the spiritual endeavor that is abstract. You see, the study of Spiritual Science gives us concepts by means of which we can really immerse ourselves in reality and learn to understand it. Materialism gives no real concepts only the shadows of them. So how can materialism understand the difference we have made clear between the human head and the rest of the body? Or how can it understand the following, for example. Let us take a concept that is infinitely important.

We know that man has his physical body, his etheric body, his astral body and his ego. The animal has its physical body, etheric body and astral body. Let us look at the animal. It is interesting to watch animals when, having eaten their fill in the meadow, they lie down to digest. It is very interesting to watch this—and why? Because the animal with its astral being has withdrawn entirely into the etheric body. What then is its soul doing while the animal is digesting? The soul is taking part with infinity satisfaction in what is happening to the body. It lies there and watches itself digesting and this gives the animal immense satisfaction. It is interesting to see a cow, for instance, digesting spiritually as she lies there, to see how all the processes involved when foodstuffs are received into the stomach and utilised in the other parts of the body are inwardly visible to her. The animal looks on at these processes with inner satisfaction, because of the intimate correspondence between her astral and ether bodies. The astral is living in what the etheric body reflects of the physico-chemical processes whereby the foodstuffs are introduced into the organism. It is a whole world that the cow sees! True, this world consists only of the cow and the processes taking place within her, but truly, though all that this astral body perceives in the etheric body of the cow consist sonly of the processes within her own horizon, within her sphere, everything is so magnified that it is as large in the consciousness of the cow as our human consciousness when it reaches to the firmament. I should have to draw the processes taking place between the stomach and the rest of the cow's organism as a large sphere growing and expanding to a vast area, since at this moment for the cow there is nothing beyond the cow-cosmos—and this is of a gigantic size.

This is no jest but a fact. And the cow has a feeling of exaltation when seeing her cosmos thus, seeing herself as cosmos. Here we have an insight into the concrete nature of animals. For, man having an ego, the astral body is torn by it from that intimate union with the etheric body existing, for example, in the cow. Astral body and etheric body are torn asunder. Hence, when man digests after a meal he is deprived of the capacity to survey the whole digestive process of the cosmos. He remains unconscious of it all. Against that, the ego by its activities so restricts the impulses of the etheric body that they are only grasped by the astral body in the region of the sense organs. So that what in the animal forms a whole with the astral body is in men concentrated in the sense organs. That is why the sense-process in man is as great as in certain moments the animal process is for the animal.

It is in a measure a defect in man that, when he begins his afternoon nap, he cannot as he dreams look on at his digestion, for he would then see a whole world. But the ego tears man's astral body away from that world, and only allows him to see as cosmos what is going on in his sense organs.

I wanted to refer to this merely as an example, for from it we see that concrete Spiritual Science mut enter into the very essence of things with concepts that are not shadowy but go deep into reality. All concepts of Spiritual Science should be such that they go deep into reality. It is a characteristic phenomenon, however, of the materialistic age that it despises concepts of this nature; it will have nothing to do with them. Where knowledge of nature is concerned this leads in reality to lack of any knowledge at all. In life it leads to a much greater lack. It makes it impossible for man to have any sense of concrete concepts, concepts full of content. Hence, materialistic education is at the same time an education in shadowy concepts, empty of content. The two things run absolutely parallel—not to be able to understand reality in a spiritual way, to lack upon everything as a mechanism; and to be incapableof forming any concepts that can really enter into the connections of the world or of humanity.

And it is from this point of view that the present time must be understood, for that is precisely where the difficulties today arise. There are now, certainly, people with idealistic natures, but they are the idealists of a materialistic age, and for that reason talk in shadowy, general concepts, unable to gras reality, or at best grasping it only indirectly through emotion, and these idealists blow their own trumpets in the world as loudly as possible. While on the other hand as regards knowledge of nature the capacity to understand her is lacking, on the other hand we have the inevitable parallel phenomenon—the holding forth of shadowy concepts. And when men talk so, they are indeed not talking of anything that is unreal in itself but of what is connected in the worst possible way with the painful events of the present time.

In Goethe's day things had not gone so far, but today we are confronted with a wide-spread lack of power to see any difference at all between a shadowy and a real concept. Wagner, as pictured by Goethe, lives entirely in shadowy concepts, and Homunculus even tries to prove to him that he does so. For instance, when Wagner has anxiously asked:

“And I pray
What becomes of me when you all go away?”

Homunculus answers:

“Oh
Thou'llt stay at home, most weighty work to do.
The ancient parchments thou'llt unroll, no doubt,
The elements of life by precept single out,
And each to other fit with foresight due. Ponder
The what, more to the how thy thoughts apply.
Whillst through a portion of the world I'll wander
Belike I'll find the dot upon the i.”

When I read this passage it always makes me realise anew how it is taken straight from life, particularly the life of the pundits. For I know of a medical examination in which a young student came up before a very learned man, a historian, and as such pre-eminently an authority on old documents, and a professor of Historical Science. It was chiefly under him that the young medical student had studied. Among the questions he asked was this: Now, tell me, Mr X, in which papal Bull was the dot over the i first used? The student knew that at once and answered: Innocent IV's. Now another historian, of a different kind, was present. He wanted to play the part of Mephistopheles a little, so he said: Look here, my dear colleague, as I am the other examiner let me now ask the candidate a question. Tell me, Mr. X, when did this Innocent IV ascend the Papal Chair? The student did not know. Then when did Innocent IV die? The student did not know. Well then, tell me anything else at all you know about Innocent IV beyond the fact that in his Bulls the i was first dotted. But the candidate again could give no answer. Then the Professor who had to do with ancient documents and parchments said: But Mr. X, you seem to be a complete blockhead today. Then the other, still wishing to play Mephistopheles, replied: But, my dear colleague, is not this your favourite pupil? What can have turned him into a blockhead?

So then, the good Wagner, being different from Homunculus, was able to discover the dot over the i in his parchment. But since that time, thought that is abstract and purely conceptual has become universal and historic. Thus it has become possible for us to see the spectacle playing a profound part in the whole world-history—that, in an important affair, there appears before the world a document living entirely in shadow concepts. Nothing more unreal and less in conformity with the actual can be imagined thatn the note recently sent by Woodrow Wilson to the Senate of the United States of America. Today when it is only of use to understand the realities of the world, weakness is found in high places. Something different is needed from shadowy concepts, concepts that are mere shadows.

And here we may well ask ourselves whether suffering is to continue endlessly because in high places men of a materialistic civilisation flee reality, and can only grasp shadows instead of concepts? I know, my dear friends, that when we are comng up against events of such sadness as those of the present, there is little understanding to be found, for today there are very few men who can grasp the difference between shadowy concepts and reality. For the pure idealist—naturally idealism is always worthy of recognition—not understanding spiritual reality, will think it fine, infinitely fine, when people speak beautifully of Freedom and the Rights of Man, of International Federation and things of the kind. They do not see where the harm lies in these things; the lack of such insight is wide-spread.

So little understanding is there, that it makes us see the meaning of what Mephistophleles says after leaving Nicodemus. For, after all, many who rank today as people of importance speak as the scholar spoke, and even if they do not claim to have created the whole world, at any rate wish to govern it according to their dreary shadow concepts. Men have no wish to make progress in such things. They remain children forever, children who can believe that it is possible to rule the world with dummy concepts. Hence we can appreciate the meaning of those words of Mephistopheles:

“I see my word hath left you cold,
Ye artless bairns. Yet I'll not take it evil.
Think though, the Devil is old; grow old
If ye would understand the Devil.”

Those who believe the world can be governed by shadow concepts, do not understand anything of what Goethe is saying through the mouth of the Devil when the Devil speaks the truth.

We may take the Homunculus scene in the second Part of Goethe's Faust as a lecture on the understanding of the real, the actual, in our age that is dominated by dummy concepts. But these matters must really be taken very seriously. And for us in particular, my dear friends, it is most important to form really clear concepts about all the various pronouncements so plentiful in the world today and during many past decades, which have finally brought us to the present situation.

Goethes Ahnungen Nach Dem Konkreten Hin

Schattenhafte Begriffe Und Wirklichketisdurchtränkte Vorstellungen nach einer szenischen Darstellung aus «Faust» II

Zweiter Aufzug: Hochgewölbtes, enges gotisches Zimmer. Laboratorium

Von den Szenen, die Sie eben gesehen haben, möchte man, daß sie verständnisvollen Eingang fänden in weitesten Kreisen der Gegenwart, denn diese Szenen enthalten viele Keime der Entwickelung, in welcher auch die geisteswissenschaftliche Strömung läuft. Man kann sagen, daß Goethe, indem er diese Szenen aus langjähriger, allseitiger Erfahrung heraus schrieb, vieles geahnt hat von dem, was durch die Geisteswissenschaft wie eine Saat aufgehen muß. Sowohl wie ein kulturhistorisches Dokument als auch wie ein Ausdruck einer tiefen Erkenntnis stehen gerade diese Szenen des zweiten Teiles des «Faust» vor unserer Seele. Wir dürfen schon, wenn wir an solche tiefste Manifestationen Goetheschen Geistes herantreten, die uns jetzt schon gewohnten geisteswissenschaftlichen Vorstellungen zu Hilfe nehmen, um zum vollen Verständnisse zu kommen. Denn in diesen geisteswissenschaftlichen Vorstellungen liegt formuliert, zum vollen Bewußtsein gebracht, was Goethe aus einer inneren Imagination heraus mit den Erfahrungen seiner Zeit ausgestaltete.

Wir haben in der ersten der beiden Szenen zunächst etwas wie ein bedeutsames kulturhistorisches Dokument. Als Goethe, herangereift durch alles dasjenige, was er in sich aufgenommen hatte aus den Naturwissenschaften auf der einen Seite, aus der Vertiefung heraus, welche diese naturwissenschaftlichen Anschauungen durch seine mystischen Studien erfahren haben, aus jener Vertiefung heraus ferner, die ihm die griechische Kunst gegeben hatte, als Goethe diese Vorstellungen, die da in ihm lebten, zu Gestalten formte, da war zugleich die Zeit, in welcher aus unendlichem Erkenntnis-Enthusiasmus heraus die Geister versuchten, heranzukommen an die höchsten Probleme des Daseins. Es ist etwas, was gerade in unseren Kreisen nicht überraschen darf, nicht überraschen kann, daß das Streben nach der geistigen Welt, wenn es recht intensiv auftritt, man kann sagen seine Karikaturen treibt, richtig seine Karikaturen treibt. Sowohl das mystische Streben wie auch das tiefere philosophische Erkenntnisstreben, sie treiben ihre Karikaturen. In Goethes unmittelbarer Nachbarschaft entwickelte sich zu der Zeit, in der in Goethes Geist diese Szenen sich entfalteten, wirklich ein bedeutsames, man kann sagen philosophisch-theosophisches Streben. Da lehrte Johann Gottlieb Fichte aus einem ungeheuren Erkenntnis-Enthusiasmus heraus. Sie können aus den skizzenhaften Ausführungen in meinen Büchern, sowohl in dem einen über «Die Rätsel der Philosophie» wie auch aus dem letzten Buche «Vom Menschenrätsel» ersehen, wie Fichte in elementarer Weise strebte, dasjenige zu gestalten, was im Innersten der Menschenseele an Göttlich-Geistigem lebt, so daß durch diese Entfaltung des Göttlich-Geistigen im Inneren der Seele der Mensch sich seines göttlich-geistigen Ursprunges selber bewußt wird. Fichte suchte das volle Leben des Ich, des schaffenden, wirkenden Ich, aber auch des gotterfüllten Ich in der Menschenseele zu erfassen. Damit versuchte er, den Anschluß des inneren menschlichen Lebens an das ganze kosmische Leben zu erfühlen. Und aus diesem Enthusiasmus heraus sprach er. Es ist nur zu erklärlich, daß gerade ein solcher Geistvorstoß vielfach Anstoß erregte. Nicht wahr, aus dem Konkreten der Geisteswissenschaft heraus konnte Fichte noch nicht sprechen, dazu war die Zeit noch nicht reif. Man möchte sagen, wie in abstrakten, umfassenden Begriffen suchte Fichte das Gefühl lebendig zu machen, das dann durch die Eindrücke der Geisteswissenschaft im Menschen belebt werden kann. Dadurch hatte seine Sprache vielfach etwas Abstraktes, aber etwas von lebendigem Fühlen, von lebendiger Empfindung durchdrungenes Abstraktes. Und es bedurfte schon des starken Eindruckes, den eine solche Persönlichkeit unmittelbar machen kann, um überhaupt dasjenige, was Fichte zu sagen hatte, ernst zu nehmen. Gedruckt nahm es sich vielfach recht paradox aus, noch paradoxer als die Paradoxien — die notwendigen Paradoxien - der Geisteswissenschaft es oftmals sein müssen, weil dasjenige, was wahr ist, den Menschen, die daran nicht gewöhnt sind, vielfach nur als das Lächerliche erscheint. Deshalb konnte gerade ein solcher Geist wie Fichte, der die Wahrheit sogar noch in ganz abstrakter Form sagen mußte, lächerlich gefunden werden.

Auf der andern Seite konnten Menschen, die schon den großen Eindruck Fichtes bekamen, die Dinge übertreiben, wie ja alles leicht im Leben übertrieben wird. Und dann kamen Karikaturen der Fichteschen Wesenheit heraus, Karikaturen auch der andern, die aus ähnlicher Gesinnung dazumal in Jena lehrten. Lehrte in Jena doch auch Schelling, der dann aus einem ähnlichen Streben wie Fichte sich wirklich durchrang, wie ich oftmals betonte, zu einer recht tiefen Auffassung des Christentums, ja des Mysteriums von Golgatha, der sich geradezu zu einer Art von Theosophie hinwendete, die er dann, allerdings ohne von seinen Zeitgenossen verstanden zu werden, in seiner «Philosophie der Mythologie» und in seiner «Philosophie der Offenbarung» zum Ausdrucke brachte, die aber schon lebte in jener Abhandlung, die er in Anlehnung an Jakob Böhme geschrieben hat über die menschliche Freiheit und andere damit zusammenhängende Gegenstände, schon lebte in seinem Gespräche «Bruno oder über das göttliche und das natürliche Prinzip der Dinge», namentlich lebte in seiner schönen Abhandlung «Über die Gottheiten von Samothrake», wo er ein Bild aufrollte von dem, was nach seiner Ansicht wirklich gelebt hat in jenen alten Mysterien. Dann gab es solche Geister wie Friedrich Schlegel, die in energischer Weise auf die verschiedenen Zweige des menschlichen Wissens dasjenige anwendeten, was diese mehr philosophisch gearteten Naturen aus dem Zentrum der Weltenordnung herauszulocken versuchten. Hegel hatte begonnen, seine Philosophie aufzuzeichnen. Das alles hatte sich in Goethes Nachbarschaft abgespielt. Diese Menschen versuchten über alles Relative in der Welt, über alles dasjenige, was die Menschen in der Alltäglichkeit beherrscht, hinauszudringen zu dem Absoluten, zu demjenigen, was nicht bloß in Relativitäten lebt. So suchte Fichte hinauszudringen über das gewöhnliche alltägliche Ich zu dem absoluten Ich, das in der Gottheit verankert ist und in der Ewigkeit webt. So suchten Schelling und Hegel zu dringen zu dem absoluten Sein.

Die Art, wie die Zeit solches aufnahm, war natürlich verschieden. Man kann sich — insbesondere heute, wo die Geisteswissenschaft an unsere Herzen herandringen kann - schon eine lebendige Vorstellung verschaffen, in welcher Gemütsverfassung sich so ein Fichte, so ein Schelling, so ein Hegel befinden mochten, wenn sie über dasjenige sprachen, was ihnen so klar vor dem geistigen Auge stand, und die Menschen dagegen sich stumpf verhielten, stumpf, feindselig. Und dann kann man es begreifen, daß der jugendliche Fichte, indem er den Zöpfen in Jena entgegentrat, die alles nach ihrer Art zu wissen vermeinten, auch einmal zornentflammt sein konnte. Fichte war öfter zornentflammt, nicht nur, als man ihn von Jena wegschickte, sondern er war auch öfter zornentflammt, wenn er sah, daß er sein Bestes gab, und es in kein Herz, keine Seele hineinging, weil die Leute alles besser zu wissen vermeinten aus den alten herkömmlichen Vorstellungen und dem Wissen, das sie aufgenommen hatten. Und da kann man es dann schon begreifen, daß sich manchmal solch ein Geist wie Fichte, wenn er die Zöpfe von Jena vor sich hatte, zu dem Ausspruch hat hinreißen lassen können, wenn er da zu tun haben sollte mit diesen alten Kerlen, man solle alle, die über dreißig Jahre alt sind, totschlagen. — Es war ein Geisteskampf allererster Art, der dazumal in Jena entbrannte. Man schwärzte das auch an, was dazumal in Jena lebte. Ein Wasserdichter, der aber gerade Publikum hatte, der Kotzebue, schrieb ein sehr interessantes dramatisches Pamphlet, das geistvoll ist, geistvoll dadurch, daß er schilderte so eine Art, könnte man sagen, Jung-Baccalaureus, der in Jena ausgebildet worden ist, und der, indem er nach Hause kehrt zu seiner Mutter, in lauter Phrasen spricht, wie er sie in Jena gehört hat. Die werden alle wörtlich hineingenommen in dieses Pamphlet, das da heißt «Der hyperboreische Esel oder die neue Bildung». Es nimmt sich das alles sehr geistvoll aus; es ist aber doch nichts anderes als eine niedrige Denunziation eines großen Wollens. Das müssen wir natürlich fernhalten von dem, was Goethe seinerseits auch tadeln wollte: die Karikatur, die sich herausentwickelt aus dem Großen, denn wir müssen uns klar sein darüber, daß der Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Fichte, der Briefwechsel zwischen Goethe und Schelling zeigt, daß Goethe voll zu würdigen verstand diese nach dem Absoluten strebenden Geister. Aber Goethe war, wenn man bei ihm auch nicht okkulte Prinzipien geradezu systematisch verarbeitet findet, man kann sagen ein ganz in der Aura des Okkulten lebender Geist, der da wußte, wie dasjenige, was lebt im guten Fortschritte der Weltentwickelung, nach der einen Seite ahrimanisch, nach der andern Seite - wenn er auch diese Ausdrücke nicht gebrauchte, auf Ausdrücke kommt es nicht an - luziferisch abbiegen kann, und daß eigentlich die Weltentwickelung immer im Pendelschlag ist zwischen dem Ahrimanischen und dem Luziferischen. Und Goethe wollte alles aus dem Tiefsten heraus entwickeln, überall zeigen, wie im Grunde genommen das Streben nach dem Höchsten zu gleicher Zeit eine Gefahr sein kann. Was kann nicht alles eine Gefahr werden! Das Allerbeste kann eine Gefahr werden, selbstverständlich. Und gerade dieses Problem trat Goethe so lebhaft vor das Seelenauge, wie das Beste eine Gefahr werden kann, wenn sich die ahrimanischen, die luziferischen Mächte in die Dinge hineinmischen.

Da hatte er seine Faust-Dichtung im Auge, jenen Faust, der nach den tiefsten Geheimnissen des Daseins strebte, der verwirklicht zeigen sollte, was Goethe immer vor der Seele stand: das unmittelbare Anschauen des Geistig-Lebendigen in allem Natürlichen und Geschichtlichen. Goethe selber strebte zurück nach den Geheimnissen des geistigen Daseins der griechischen Vorzeit. Er wollte sich verbinden mit demjenigen, was schaffend lebendig in einem fertiggewordenen Zeitraume, im vierten nachatlantischen Zeitraume, vorhanden war. Das wollte er gestalten in seinem Faust, der nach dem Lebendigen der Helena hinstrebt. Die Wege sucht Goethe, auf denen er seinen Faust zu Helena führen kann. Aber Goethe war klar, daß dies eine Gefahr bedeutet. So berechtigt, so hochsinnig das Streben ist, das in solchem liegt, eine Gefahr bedeutet es, weil es sehr leicht in das luziferische Fahrwasser hineinführen kann.

So zeigt uns denn Goethe zunächst den Faust ins luziferische Fahrwasser hineingeratend, paralysiert durch die Erscheinung der Helena, paralysiert durch die Verbindung mit dem Spirituellen. Aus dem Reich der Mütter hat Faust Helena heraufgeholt, zunächst nur als geistige Kraft vor sich gehabt. Paralysiert ist er durch das, was er spirituell erleben kann. Das Innere des Faust ist ausgefüllt mit dem, was er aufgenommen hatte. Er lebt in dem lebendigen Geistigen, in dem spirituellen Elemente des alten Griechenlandes, aber er ist dadurch paralysiert.

Und so finden wir ihn, indem Mephisto ihn zurückgebracht hat in seine Zelle, in sein Laboratorium, und ihn paralysiert zeigt durch das Zusammenleben mit dem geistigen Elemente der Vergangenheit.

Wen Helena paralysiert,
Der kommt so leicht nicht zu Verstande ...

meint Mephistopheles. Wir sehen auch, wie eine gewisse Scheidung eingetreten ist zwischen Faust, der in das luziferische Fahrwasser geraten ist, und Mephistopheles. Faust ist gewissermaßen mit seiner Seele — ob sie nun mehr oder weniger bewußt dies erlebt, was sie erlebt - in einem andern geistigen Fahrwasser, in das er durch luziferische Impulse gekommen ist, als diejenigen geistigen Wege sind, in denen Mephistopheles wandelt. Sie sind wie durch eine Bewußtseinsgrenze jetzt voneinander geschieden.

Faust träumt, so sagt man in der profanen Sprache. Er weiß nichts von seiner alten Welt, in der er als der ihm gegenwärtigen lebt. Mephisto hat sie aber um sich, und durch Mephisto lebt denn auch alles ahrimanisch wieder auf. Und so haben wir im Grunde genommen die zwei Welten gerade in dieser Szene hart aneinanderstoßend, ganz sachgemäß aneinanderstoßend. Es ist merkwürdig, wie gründlich Goethe in seiner instinktiv geisteswissenschaftlichen Art eigentlich ist. Dieses Aneinanderstoßen, es wird uns ganz deutlich gemacht durch den Famulus, der jetzt eingeführt wird, der ahnungslos hin und her pendelt, könnte man sagen, zwischen den gefährlichsten Dingen, die sich in seiner Umgebung abspielen.

Diesen Ahnungslosen sehen wir zunächst, der uns gewissermaßen repräsentiert eine Art von Menschen, die wie gefangen sind von der Ahnungslosigkeit, der Unaufmerksamkeit, für die sie oftmals nichts können. Er sieht nicht, was um ihn herum vorgeht. In diesem Sinne kann man auch die ganze Rede auffassen, die von diesem Famulus kommt.

Anders schon wird uns das ganze Milieu, in dem wir jetzt leben, durch die Begegnung des zum Baccalaureus gewordenen früheren Schülers mit Mephistopheles dargestellt. Der Baccalaureus, man sieht es ihm an, geht ganz aus der Umgebung hervor, die ich Ihnen vorhin geschildert habe. Aber er stellt eine Karikatur davon dar, ist von alledem infiziert, was die Kant-Fichte-Schelling-Hegelsche Philosophie, die Schlegelschen Auseinandersetzungen haben geben können; aber er nimmt alles im engumgrenzten, egoistischen Sinne. Warum tut er denn das? Ja, diese Frage muß man sich schon vorlegen. Warum ist denn eigentlich der Baccalaureus dasjenige geworden, als was er sich uns darstellt? Hat Goethe etwa wollen die ihm werte Philosophie der Jenenser verspotten in dem Baccalaureus? Ganz und gar nicht. Aber in seinem Sinne ist hineingeschickt worden in dieses philosophische Fahrwasser der Schüler, der da hat als ein Geleitwort von Mephistopheles erhalten:

Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum.
Folg’ nur dem alten Spruch und meiner Muhme, der Schlange,
Dir wird gewiß einmal bei deiner Gottähnlichkeit bange!

Den Impuls hat der Baccalaureus gewordene Schüler von Mephistopheles selber. Mephistopheles kann sich nicht beklagen, daß ihn der Baccalaureus so behandelt, daß er sagen muß:

Du weißt wohl nicht, mein Freund, wie grob du bist?

Denn er hat das alles in ihn gepflanzt; er hat das gesät in seiner Seele. Der Baccalaureus ist schon gefolgt dem Spruch und der Muhme, der berühmten Schlange. Und er fühlt sich zunächst gar nicht bange, das wird erst kommen. Er fühlt sich gar nicht bange in seiner Gottähnlichkeit, die er ja sehr deutlich ausspricht, indem er darauf aufmerksam macht, daß er es ist, der die Welt erschaffen hat, der die Welt gestaltet hat. — Schließlich ist dieses ja aus der Kantschen Philosophie für manche karikatursuchenden Menschenkinder geworden, wird es auch noch heute vielfach.

Ja, man kann schon Menschenkinder kennenlernen, welche die Kantsche Philosophie noch ichlicher auffassen als dieser Baccalaureus. Wir haben einmal einen Menschen kennengelernt, der so infiziert war von Kantscher, Fichtescher Philosophie, daß er wirklich die Meinung hatte, er habe die ganze Welt erschaffen. Das war in ihm zur fixen Idee geworden, er habe die ganze Welt erschaffen. Ich sagte ihm dazumal: Nun ja, gewiß, als Vorstellung, als Ihre Vorstellung haben Sie ja die Welt erschaffen, aber zu der Vorstellung kommt noch etwas hinzu, denn Sie haben auch die Vorstellung Ihrer eigenen Stiefel erschaffen, aber der Schuster hat sie gemacht, diese Stiefel, und Sie können nicht sagen, daß Sie diese Stiefel gemacht haben, obwohl Sie die Vorstellung dieser Stiefel gemacht haben! — Im Grunde beruht alle echte Widerlegung, sogar der Schopenhauerschen Philosophie von der «Welt als Vorstellung», auf diesem Schusterproblem, nur sieht man diese Dinge nicht immer im rechten Lichte.

Also der Baccalaureus ist schon gewissermaßen ein Opfer des Mephisto, so wie er ihn jetzt selber entgegentritt. Nach dem Absoluten haben die Philosophen gestrebt. In dem Baccalaureus wird.das Streben nach dem Absoluten zu einer Karikatur. Mephisto muß ihm sagen:

Kommt nur nicht absolut nach Haus.

Man sieht den Zusammenhang mit der Kultur, mit der Geisteskultur der damaligen Zeit in sehr geistvoller Weise durch Goethe dargestellt. Daher sind diese Szenen, weil sie aus der lebendigen Wirklichkeit heraus sind, auch so lebendig und so ungemein dramatisch. Und Goethe hat immer wieder und wiederum das Bestreben, die Menschen hinauszuführen über jene etwas nach Kellergeruch duftenden Vorstellungen, die man so leicht hört: Ach, wir wollen uns nur mit dem Guten verbinden; nichts Ahrimanisches und Luziferisches soll da sein; das muß man fliehen. -— Weil Goethe nicht liebt diese nach Kellergeruch duftenden Vorstellungen, stellt er auch zuweilen den Mephistopheles recht sympathisch dar, recht gemütvoll, könnte man sagen. Denn wie gemütvoll ist es doch, wenn der gute Mephistopheles, als der Baccalaureus gar zu absolut wird, mit seinem Stuhl hinunterrückt von dem Baccalaureus zu dem — Publikum. Namentlich zu dem jüngeren Parterre, dachte sich Goethe, rückt Mephistopheles heran und sucht jetzt dort ein Unterkommen. Und Goethe läßt den Mephistopheles nicht bloß Teuflisches, sondern ganz Treffendes sagen, weil Goethe weiß, wieviel Mephistophelisches dem Leben beigemischt sein muß, wenn das Leben gedeihen soll, wie ungesund die Vorstellungen sind, die in der angedeuteten Weise nach Kellergeruch duften. Und es ist schon der Mühe wert, einmal nachzudenken darüber, wie auch Goethe nicht ganz kalt geblieben ist bei der Kälte der stumpfen Menge. Daher läßt er seinen Mephistopheles sich sogar etwas erzürnt aussprechen über die Leute, denen er ansieht, wie kalt sie bleiben bei den Weisheitssprüchen, die er doch äußert. Es ist das schon eine Kälte, auf die Goethe auch hinweisen wollte, obwohl diese Kälte lange noch nicht so kalt war, wie heute oftmals die Gesinnung und die Stimmung der Seele ist gegenüber demjenigen, was aus dem geistigen Leben an die Menschheit herandringen kann.

Und dann sehen wir, wie eine echt ahrimanische Tätigkeit sich entfaltet in der Erzeugung des Homunkulus. Goethe ist es nicht leicht geworden, gerade diejenige Partie seines «Faust» zu dichten, die wir hier vor uns gehabt haben. Kleine Dichter werden mit allem fertig! Sogar mit dem großen Problem unter Umständen würde ein kleiner Dichter rasch fertig geworden sein: Faust und Helena zusammenzubringen. Aber Goethe war eben kein kleiner Dichter, daher ist ihm das Dichten schwer und sauer geworden. Daher mußte er einen Weg suchen, Faust wirklich mit der Helena zusammenzuführen, mit der er zusammen lebte, ich möchte sagen, in einem andern Bewußtseinszustande, wie wir gesehen haben. Goethe mußte den Weg suchen. Er war sich gar nicht gleich klar, wie er diesen Weg finden sollte. Zuerst sollte Faust hinuntergeführt werden in die Unterwelt und von Proserpina sich die Hilfe erbitten, daß Helena leibhaftig zu ihm herankomme. Aber Goethe empfand dasjenige, was er da darstellen würde, um sich die Helena von der Proserpina zu holen, so, daß er keine Begriffe und Vorstellungen fand, um die Sache darzustellen. Denn bedenken Sie nur, um was es sich handeite. Es handelte sich darum, daß Faust soweit gekommen war, im Unterbewußtsein seiner Seele, imaginativ, an die Helena heranzukommen; aber er sollte mit denjenigen Fähigkeiten an sie herankommen, die ihm im Leben natürlich waren. Dazu mußte Helena in diese Bewußtseinssphäre hereinsteigen. Also Goethe mußte gewissermaßen eine Verkörperung der Helena zustande bringen. Dazu benützte er dasjenige, was er wußte aus Paracelsus, den er wohl studiert hatte, namentlich die Abhandlung von Paracelsus’ «De generatione rerum» kam ihm sehr zugute. Da schildert Paracelsus, wie man durch gewisse Vorgänge Homunkeln erzeugen kann. Es ist selbstverständlich für den heutigen Menschen sehr leicht, zu sagen: Nun ja, das war halt ein mittelalterliches Vorurteil des Paracelsus. — Es ist für den heutigen Menschen leicht, zu sagen: Kein Mensch braucht zu glauben an dasjenige, was da Paracelsus phantasiert. - Gewiß, es braucht es ja meinetwillen auch keiner. Aber bedenken sollte man doch, daß Paracelsus in jener Abhandlung «De generatione rerum» ausdrücklich versichert, durch gewisse Vorgänge wäre man imstande, etwas zu erzeugen, was zwar keinen Körper hat - bitte, darauf zu achten! Paracelsus sagt ausdrücklich: es hat keinen Körper -, was aber Fähigkeiten hat, die ähnlich sind den menschlichen Seelenfähigkeiten, nur sich bis zur Hellsichtigkeit steigern. Also Paracelsus dachte an gewisse Hantierungen, die den Menschen dahin bringen, vor sich ein körperloses Wesen zu haben, das aber so wie der Mensch eine Art Verstandestätigkeit, eine Art Intellektualität, ja sogar in höherer Steigerung entfaltet. Das hat Goethe zu Hilfe genommen. Er hat sich etwa gedacht: rein spirituell griff herein die Helena in die Bewußtseinssphäre des Faust, aber sie muß dichter werden.

Dieses Dichterwerden, das ließ er geschehen durch ein solches Wesen, wie der Homunkulus es ist, der gewissermaßen die Brücke baut zwischen dem rein Geistigen, Spirituellen, indem er selber körperlos ist, aber bei Gelegenheit von körperlichen Hantierungen entsteht, zu dem Körperlichen hinüber, so daß man sagen kann: Durch die Anwesenheit des Homunkulus wird es möglich, die ganz spirituelle Helena hereinzuführen in diejenige körperliche Welt, in.der Faust heimisch ist.

Natürlich brauchte Goethe zu alldem eine Art Mißverständnis noch. Und das Mißverständnis wird auf dem Umwege durch Wagner herbeigeführt. Wagner ist durch seinen materialistischen Sinn dazu verführt, an die ganz materielle Herstellung des Homunkulus zu glauben; er würde dasjenige nicht zustande bringen, was ein wirklicher Homunkulus ist, denn dazu bedarf es geistiger Kräfte, die Wagner nicht zur Verfügung stehen. Diese geistigen Kräfte werden dadurch herbeigeführt, daß Mephistopheles, das ahrimanische Element, herankommt. Denn dadurch wird wiederum der ahrimanische Impuls gegeben, daß wirklich aus dem etwas wird, was Wagner da zusammenkobobiert. Hätte Wagner auf seinem Wege ganz allein, vielleicht durch Zuhilfekommen von irgendwelchen ja überall verborgenen Kräften seinerseits etwas zustande gebracht, dann wäre es ihm vielleicht so gegangen wie jenem Mann, der mir vor einiger Zeit schrieb, daß er, nachdem er sich lange bemüht hätte, nun wirklich lebende kleine Männchen in seinem Zimmer zustande gebracht habe, aber nun nicht mehr loskommen könne; er könne nicht mehr sich retten vor ihnen! Er wollte Rat, wie er sich retten könnte vor diesen Geschöpfen, die er als lebendige Mechanismen hervorgebracht hat. Sie verfolgten ihn seither überall. Man kann sich schon vorstellen, was aus dem Verstande solcher Menschen wird! Diese Menschen, die solche abenteuerlichen Dinge erleben, gibt es natürlich heute noch immer, ebenso wie es die Spötter gibt gegen diese Dinge.

Durch ein niedliches Zusammentreffen, das aber auch nur ein niedliches Zusammentreffen ist, behauptete ja gerade in der Zeit übrigens, in der Goethe diese Szene schrieb, Johann Jakob Wagner in Würzburg, daß man Homunkeln erzeugen könne, und er gab sogar Wege an, wie man Homunkeln erzeugen kann. Es ist dies aber selbstverständlich nicht wahr, daß Goethe von ihm den Namen genommen hat, Denn der Name rührt schon her aus dem alten «Faust», der damals vorhanden war; der wurde niedergeschrieben, als dieser Johann Jakob Wagner noch ein Säugling war.

Es gehört also wiederum Mephistopheles dazu, daß aus dem, was Wagner zustande bringt, wirklich der Homunkulus wird. Aber er wird nun. Und er wird eigentlich im Grunde genommen so, wieGoethe gelernt hatte den Homunkulus darzustellen nach der Anleitung des Paracelsus. Und der Homunkulus wird in der Tat sogleich hellsichtig, denn er schaut den Traum des Faust, beschreibt dasjenige, was Faust gewissermaßen luziferisch abgezogen, wie in einem andern Bewußtseinszustand, erlebt, wie Faust wirklich hingelangt in die griechische Welt. Die Zusammenkunft des Zeus mit Leda, der Mutter der Helena: wir erkennen sie in der Beschreibung, die der Homunkulus von dem Traum des Faust gibt.

Wir sehen also, wie Goethe unmittelbar nebeneinanderstellt dasjenige, was zuerst spirituell im Faust lebt, und den Homunkulus, der es zu deuten, aufzufassen weiß. Wir sehen, wie Goethe herüberarbeitet in die gewöhnliche physische Welt, so daß die Helena in die gewöhnliche physische Welt dann eintreten kann. Und durch all die Vorgänge, die geschildert werden in der «Klassischen Walpurgisnacht», sehen wir, wie Goethe versucht, aus dem Ewig-Geistigen der Helena, mit der Faust zusammen gelebt hat, das Körperliche zu gestalten, indem der Homunkulus durchgeht durch alle Reiche der Natur und seine Körperlosigkeit ablegt, sich verkörperlicht, sich verbindet mit dem geistigen Elemente der Helena. Und dadurch, daß das dann durchgeht durch alle Reiche der Natur, wird die Helena äußerlich auf dem physischen Plane das, als was sie uns im dritten Akte des zweiten Teiles des «Faust» entgegentritt. Durch den Homunkulus und durch die Umwandlung, die der Homunkulus vollziehen kann mit dem, womit Faust spirituell zusammen lebt, wird die Helena neu geboren. Das ist es, worauf es Goethe ankommt. Deshalb hat er den Homunkulus hineingesetzt, deshalb zeigt er die Verwandtschaft dessen, was Faust sozusagen träumt, mit dem, was der Homunkulus schaut.

Damit aber steht Goethe auch wahrem Okkultismus sehr nahe, jenem wahren Okkultismus, auf den ich öfter hingewiesen habe, und von dem alle Denkweise wegführt, die nur in Abstraktionen sich ergeht, die nur in abstrakten Begriffen leben will. Ich habe öfter darauf aufmerksam gemacht, wie eine gewisse einseitige Ausbildung des christlichen Prinzips gerade dahin geführt hat, wesenlose, schattenhafte Begriffe zu zeitigen als Weltanschauung, die nicht imstande sind, gewissermaßen hineinzugreifen ins reale Leben. Und unter solchen Begriffen steht die Menschheit heute. Die Menschheit hat auf der einen Seite das rein mechanische Naturwissen, das aber kein Wissen ist, sondern nur eine Hantierung, woraus das Lebendige herausgetrieben ist.

Encheiresin naturae nennt’s die Chemie,
Spottet ihrer selbst und weiß nicht wie,

sagt der Mephisto. Das auf der einen Seite, das nur immer abschreiben will, was äußerlich geschieht. Und auf der andern Seite die abgezogenen Begriffe von irgendeinem Geistigen, das entweder pantheistisch vorgestellt wird, oder einem Geistigen, das in irgendeinem Wolkenkuckucksheim von schattenhaften Begriffen lebt, die nicht in der Lage sind, wirklich unterzutauchen ins Leben, zu erfassen das wirkliche Leben.

Deshalb habe ich darauf hingewiesen, wie Geisteswissenschaft imstande ist, den realen, unmittelbaren Menschen wieder zu verstehen, zum Beispiel zu sagen: Dieses Haupt des Menschen ist nur auf der einen Seite dasjenige, was der Anatom daraus macht, indem er es rein äußerlich schildert, es ist auch nicht bloß dasjenige, was äußerlich eine abstrakt im Wolkenkuckucksheim der Begriffe segelnde Seele verkörpert, sondern dieses Haupt muß man verstehen als hervorgegangen durch Metamorphose aus dem Leib der vorhergehenden Inkarnation und, wie ich in den letzten Vorträgen ausgeführt habe, aus dem ganzen Kosmos, aus der Sphäre des ganzen Kosmos heraus gebildet. — Dieses Gestalten, im Gestalten in die materielle Welt eingreifen durch die Begriffe, nicht das Schwefeln in allgemeinen abstrakten Begriffen, ist das Wesentliche, was konkrete Geisteswissenschaft anstreben muß. Denn gerade dasjenige, wovor sich manche in der Gegenwart lebende christliche Pastoren und sonstige ähnliche Leute in ihren wesenlosen Abstraktionen von Gott und dem Ewigen am meisten fürchten, das ist dieses lebendige Erfassen der Welt, das konkrete Erfassen des Materiellen, das auch eine Offenbarung des Geistigen ist. Dieses Untertauchen mit den Begriffen in die wirkliche Welt ist es, was die Menschen heute nicht haben wollen.

Das ist es aber gerade, auf das auch Goethe ganz energisch hinweisen will. Daher kontrastiert er diesen Geist des Homunkulus, der das wirkliche, konkrete Geistige schaut, wie es dann in dem Bewußtsein des Faust, wenn auch von anderer Art, lebt, dieses Schauen kontrastiert er mit der Art, wie Mephisto die Welt gern haben möchte aus der Vereinseitigung des christlichen Mittelalters heraus: die Auslöschung alles desjenigen, was. spirituell an die Menschenseele herankommt. Darum sieht der Homunkulus dasjenige, was weder Wagner noch Mephistopheles sehen. Und daher, weil Mephistopheles sagt:

Was du nicht alles zu erzählen hast!
So klein du bist, so groß bist du Phantast.
Ich sehe nichts -,

antwortet Homunkulus:

Das glaub ich. Du aus Norden,
Im Nebelalter jung geworden,
Im Wust von Rittertum und Pfäfferei,
Wo wäre da dein Auge frei!
Im Düstern bist du nur zu Hause.

Goethe erstrebt bewußt ein konkretes Erfassen der Wirklichkeit.

Ich habe darauf aufmerksam gemacht, daß selbstverständlich an der Stelle, wo der Homunkulus zu Mephistopheles spricht, durch irgendwelchen Umstand ein Vers ausgefallen ist; denn wir sehen überall den Reim:

Das glaub ich. Du aus Norden,
Im Nebelalter jung geworden,
Im Wust von Rittertum und Pfäfferei,
Wo wäre da dein Auge frei!
Im Düstern bist du nur zu Hause.

Auf «zu Hause» fehlt der Reim.

Verbräunt Gestein, bemodert, widrig,
Spitzbögig, schnörkelhaftest, niedrig!

Also, es ist durch irgendwelchen Umstand beim Diktieren ein Vers ausgefallen, denn es fehlt der Reim — und es ist kein Grund, daß der Reim hier nicht stehen sollte -, also ein Vers, der etwa so gelautet haben muß:

Was aber soll uns die dumpfe Klause —

so daß Homunkulus, nachdem er gesehen hat, daß der Mephisto ihn nicht versteht, ihn deutlich darauf verweist, wie die Menschen entfernt worden sind von der konkreten geistigen Welt durch die Verabstrahierung, durch die nebelhaften Begriffe, die ausgebildet worden sind, und die ins Enge getrieben worden sind eben in solchen Verrichtungen, wie die waren, aus denen Faust herausgewachsen ist, der ihnen aber entwachsen ist. Aber Mephisto fühlt sich da wohl in seiner Teuflischkeit. Daher meint Homunkulus etwa:

Das glaub ich. Du aus Norden,
Im Nebelalter jung geworden.

Das Mittelalter ist hier gemeint, aber mit Anspielung an das alte Niflheim:

Im Nebelalter jung geworden

Jung geworden ist ein alter Ausdruck, der sehr gut ist. So wie man alt wird vom Physischen aus, so wird man jung vom Geistigen aus, wenn man geboren wird. Und dieses war ein alter deutscher Ausdruck; statt «geboren werden» sagte man «jung werden», womit man bezeugte, daß in der Sprache schon ein Verständnis dafür enthalten ist. Also:

Du aus Norden,
Im Nebelalter jung geworden,
Im Wust von Rittertum und Pfäfferei,
Wo wäre da dein Auge frei!
Im Düstern bist du nur zu Hause.
Was aber soll uns die dumpfe Klause?

Und nun blickt er umher in der dumpfen Klause und sieht da alles, was da ist:

Verbräunt Gestein, vermodert, widrig,
Spitzbögig, schnörkelhaftest, niedrig,

Dann:

Erwacht uns dieser, gibt es neue Not,

denn der muß in das lebendige Leben eingeführt werden, weil er nicht bloß abstrakte Begriffe will; er will nicht bloß zum Beispiel das Griechentum geschildert haben dadurch, daß man es zeigt, so wie es Humanisten oder Philologen gemacht haben, sondern er will lebendig mit diesem Griechentum leben, indem der Repräsentant dieses Griechentums, die Helena, leibhaftig vor ihn treten soll.

So sehen wir überall gerade in dieser Szene Goethes wunderbare Ahnung nach dem Konkreten hin. Es ist ja, man könnte sagen, bei diesen Altersdichtungen Goethes jedes Wort aus einer tiefen Welterfahrung heraus geschrieben. Und das gibt diesen Worten Gewicht, ungeheures Gewicht, gibt ihnen auch eine Unvergänglichkeit. Denn wie schön sind solche Worte gerade von Mephistopheles gesprochen, wodurch sie ihre besondere Färbung erhalten:

O weh! hinweg! und laßt mir jene Streite
Von Tyrannei und Sklaverei beiseite.
Mich langeweilt’s; denn kaum ist’s abgetan,
So fangen sie von vorne wieder an;
Und keiner merkt: er ist doch nur geneckt
Von Asmodeus, der dahinter steckt.

Von dem Zwietrachtteufel, mit dem sich der Mephisto recht verwandt fühlt.

Sie streiten sich, so heißt’s, um Freiheitsrechte.

Man fühlt sich fast in die Gegenwart herein versetzt, denn da heißt es auch: Sie streiten sich um Freiheitsrechte! Schon Goethe antwortet:

Genau besehn sind’s Knechte gegen Knechte.

Im Ganzen möchte man sagen: O könnte doch die Zeit kommen, wo auch aus dem Gedichte eines solchen Strebens, wie man es gerade geoffenbart durch diese Szene bei Goethe findet, an das ja durchaus angeknüpft werden soll aus Geisteswissenschaftlich-Anthroposophischem der Gegenwart — o könnte doch dasjenige, was in dem Gedichte eines solchen Strebens liegt, die Leute mehr ergreifen, könnte es sich einbürgern in die Seelen! Wir kämen wahrhaftig als Menschen weiter.

Aber statt dessen hat seit Goethes Zeiten die Verabstrahierung alles Strebens noch unendlich weitere Fortschritte gemacht. Und hier ist der Punkt, wo gerade der, der sich geisteswissenschaftlich bestrebt, versuchen sollte - meinetwillen sich heraufrankend an Goethe -, sich klarzumachen den Unterschied zwischen konkret-geistigem Streben und abstrakt-geistigem Streben. Die Beschäftigung mit Geisteswissenschaft gibt solche Begriffe, durch die man wirklich untertaucht in das Reale, in das Wirkliche, durch die man verstehen lernt dieses Wirkliche. Der Materialismus gibt gar keine wirklichen Begriffe, der gibt. nur Begriffsschatten. Wo kann denn der Materialismus so etwas verstehen, wie den von uns klargemachten Unterschied zwischen dem Haupte des Menschen und dem übrigen Leib? Oder wie kann der Materialismus zum Beispiel folgendes verstehen? Nehmen wir einen Begriff, der unendlich wichtig ist.

Wir wissen, der Mensch hat seinen physischen Leib, seinen Ätherleib, seinen astralischen Leib, sein Ich. Das Tier hat seinen physischen Leib, seinen Ätherleib, seinen Astralleib. Wir sehen das Tier. Interessant ist es, Tiere zu beobachten, wenn sie so, nachdem sie auf der Weide sich reichlich vollgefressen haben, daliegen und verdauen. Es ist interessant zu beobachten. Warum denn? Weil das Tier ganz mit seinem astralischen Wesen in seinen Ätherleib zurückgezogen ist. Was tut denn eigentlich die Seele des Tieres, wenn es da verdaut? Mit unendlichem Wohlbehagen nimmt die Seele teil an dem, was in dem Leibe geschieht. Es liegt da und schaut sich beim Verdauen zu. Mit unendlichem Wohlbehagen schaut es sich zu; das Wohlbehagen ist bei dem Tier ganz ungeheuer. Interessant ist es, zum Beispiel eine Kuh verdauen zu sehen, geistig, wenn sie daliegt und nun wirklich ihr innerlich sichtbar werden alle die Vorgänge, die sich da abspielen, indem die Nahrungsstoffe in den Magen aufgenommen sind und vom Magen nun in die übrigen Partien des Leibes befördert werden. Dem schaut das Tier mit innerstem Behagen zu, weil eine innige Korrespondenz zwischen seinem Astralleib und seinem Ätherleib besteht. Das Astralische lebt in dem, was der ätherische Leib spiegelt von den physisch-chemischen Vorgängen, durch die sich die Nahrungsstoffe einführen in den Organismus. Das ist eine ganze Welt, welche die Kuh sieht! Allerdings besteht diese Welt nur aus Kuh und aus den Vorgängen, die in der Kuh stattfinden. Aber wahrhaftig, wenn auch alles dasjenige, was dieser astralische Leib in dem Ätherleib der Kuh wahrnimmt, bloß die Vorgänge in dem ganzen Umkreis, in der Sphäre der Kuh sind, so vergrößert sich das alles, so daß, es so groß wird für das Bewußtsein der Kuh, wie unser menschliches Bewußtsein groß ist, indem es bis zum Firmament geht. Ich müßte Ihnen die Vorgänge, die da zwischen dem Magen und dem übrigen Organismus der Kuh stattfinden, als eine große Sphäre zeichnen, die sich entfaltet, weit hinaus entwickelt, indem in diesem Augenblick für die Kuh nur der Kuh-Kosmos, aber in riesiger Größe, da ist.

Das ist kein Scherz, das ist so. Und die Kuh fühlt sich ungeheuer gehoben, wenn sie so ihren Kosmos sieht, sich als Kosmos sieht. Da sieht man in die konkrete Natur der Tiere hinein. Denn dadurch, daß der Mensch ein Ich hat, reißt dieses Ich den astralischen Leib von jener innigen Verbindung mit dem Ätherleibe los, in der dieser astralische Leib mit dem Ätherleib zum Beispiel bei der Kuh ist. Er wird losgerissen. Und dadurch ist dem Menschen die Möglichkeit entzogen, wenn er nach dem Essen verdaut, das ganze Verdauungsgeschäft des Kosmos zu überblicken. Es bleibt für ihn das alles unbewußt. Dagegen beschränkt das Ich durch seine Tätigkeit die Impulse des Ätherleibes so, daß sie nur in dem Bereiche der Sinnesorgane von dem astralischen Leib erfaßt werden. So daß dasjenige, was beim Tier als Ganzes mit dem astralischen Leib zusammen lebt, beim Menschen nur in den Sinnesorganen konzentriert ist. Dadurch aber wird für den Menschen der Sinnesprozeß so groß, wie für gewisse Augenblicke der tierische Prozeß für das Tier wird.

Es ist in gewissem Sinne eine Unvollkommenheit des Menschen, daß er, wenn er sein Nachmittagsschläfchen eben beginnt, nicht träumend seiner Verdauung zusehen kann, denn er würde eine ganze Welt sehen. Aber dieser Welt entreißt das Ich den astralischen Leib des Menschen und läßt ihn schauen als Kosmos nur dasjenige, was in den Sinnesorganen selber erlebt wird.

Ich wollte dieses nur als Beispiel anführen. Denn man sieht daraus, daß es der konkreten Geisteswissenschaft darauf ankommt, in die Wesen wirklich hinunterzusteigen mit den Begriffen; nicht schattenhafte Begriffe zu konstruieren, sondern Begriffe, die in die Wirklichkeit eintauchen. Und alle Begriffe der Geisteswissenschaft sollen ja so sein, daß sie in die Wirklichkeit eintauchen. Das aber ist gerade die Begleiterscheinung der materialistischen Zeit, daß sie diese Begriffe, die in die Wirklichkeit untertauchen, verschmäht. Sie will solche nicht haben. Für die Erkenntnis der Natur führt das bloß zu dem Mangel, daß man nichts in Wirklichkeit erkennt. Aber für das Leben führt das zu einem weit größeren Mangel. Es macht den Menschen unmöglich, Sinn zu haben für konkrete, inhaltsvolle Begriffe. Daher ist die Erziehung im Materialismus zugleich eine Erziehung zu inhaltsleeren, schattenhaften Begriffen. Die Dinge gehen durchaus parallel: nicht spirituell verstehen können die Wirklichkeit, alles für einen Mechanismus ansehen, und unfähig sein, zu irgendwelchen Begriffen zu kommen, die wirklich in die Verhältnisse der Welt, des Menschen einlaufen können.

Und in dieser Beziehung muß man die Gegenwart verstehen, denn darinnen liegen gerade die Schwierigkeiten der Gegenwart. In der Gegenwart gibt es gewiß idealistische Naturen, aber sie sind die idealistischen Naturen einer materialistischen Zeit, und daher reden sie in schattenhaften allgemeinen Begriffen, die nicht eingreifen können in die Wirklichkeit, die höchstens eingreifen können auf dem Umwege der Leidenschaft, auf dem Umwege, daß man sich aufbläst und sie möglichst stark in die Welt hinausposaunt. Während man also auf der einen Seite mit Bezug auf die Erkenntnis der Natur nur die Unmöglichkeit hat, die Natur zu verstehen, hat man auf der andern Seite als die notwendige Parallelerscheinung das Deklamieren von schattenhaften Begriffen. Und wenn man so redet, redet man wahrhaftig nicht von irgend etwas selber Unrealem, sondern von demjenigen, was in der schlimmsten Weise mit den leidvollen Ereignissen der Gegenwart zusammenhängt.

Zu Goethes Zeiten war die Sache noch nicht so weit gediehen, aber heute stehen wir schon vor dem Unverständnis vieler Leute, überhaupt einen Unterschied zu finden zwischen einem schattenhaften und einem wirklichen Begriffe. Der Wagner, wie ihn Goethe schildert, lebt auch in schattenhaften Begriffen, und der Homunkulus versucht es ihm sogar klarzumachen, wie er in schattenhaften Begriffen lebt, zum Beispiel durch die Worte, nachdem der Wagner in Angst gefragt hat:

Und ich?

Was wird aus mir, wenn die andern fortziehen?

Eh nun,
Du bleibst zu Hause, Wichtigstes zu tun.
Entfalte du die alten Pergamente,
Nach Vorschrift sammle Lebenselemente
Und füge sie mit Vorsicht eins ans andre.
Das Was bedenke, mehr bedenke Wie?
Indessen ich ein Stückchen Welt durchwandre,
Entdeck’ ich wohl das Tüpfchen auf das i.

Wenn ich diese Stelle lese, muß ich mich immer erinnern, daß sie so recht aus dem Leben ist, gerade aus dem Gelehrtenleben. Denn ich weiß von einer Doktorpromotion, wo ein junger Doktorand einem sehr gelehrten Herrn, der Historiker war, aber als Historiker vorzugsweise als Urkundenmensch über die historische Wissenschaft Professor war, gegenüberstand: das war derjenige, welcher der hauptsächlichste Lehrer dieses jungen Doktoranden war. Unter den Fragen, die er ihm stellte, war diese, daß er fragte: Nun, sagen Sie mir, Herr Kandidat, in welcher päpstlichen Urkunde kommt zum erstenmal der I-Punkt vor? - Das wußte der gleich, unter welchem Papste in den Urkunden der I-Punkt vorkommt: Innozenz IV.!- Nun saß ein anderer Historiker, der nicht so war, daneben, und der wollte so ein bißchen den Mephisto spielen, und deshalb sagte er: Na, Herr Kollege, jetzt muß ich auch einmal, da ich der andere Examinator bin, an den Kandidaten eine Frage stellen. Sagen Sie mir, Herr Kandidat, wann hat denn dieser Innozenz IV. den päpstlichen Stuhl bestiegen? — Der Kandidat wußte nichts. Wann ist denn der Innozenz IV. gestorben? - Der Kandidat wußte nichts. Nun, mein lieber Herr Kandidat, dann sagen Sie mir was anderes, was Sie überhaupt über den Innozenz wissen, außer dem, daß in seinen Urkunden der I-Punkt zuerst vorkommt! — Der wußte gar nichts. Da sagte der Professor der Urkundenlehre, der alten Pergamente: Aber Herr Kandidat, es ist ja gerade, wie wenn Ihnen heute ein Brett vor den Kopf genagelt wäre! - Da sagte der andere, der so den Mephisto spielen wollte: Oh, Herr Kollege, er ist ja Ihr Lieblingsschüler! Wer hat ihm denn dieses Brett vor den Kopf genagelt?

Nun, so konnte auch der gute Wagner, anders als der Homunkulus, in seinem Pergamente das Tüpfelchen auf das i entdecken. Aber seit jener Zeit ist, ich möchte sagen, universell und historisch die abstrakte, rein in Begriffen lebende Denkweise gekommen. Und so sehen wir dann, daß wirklich das tief in die ganze Weltgeschichte eingreifende Schauspiel sich vollziehen kann, daß in wichtiger Angelegenheit ein Dokument vor die Welt hintritt, das in lauter Schattenbegriffen lebt. Man kann sich nichts Unwirklicheres und Unrealeres denken als jene Note, die neulich Woodrow Wilson an den Senat der amerikanischen Staaten gerichtet hat! Heute, wo es nur frommt, zu versuchen, die Wirklichkeiten der Welt zu verstehen, sieht man die Ohnmacht an hervorragender Stelle, anderes zu fassen als nur Schattenbegriffe, Begriffsschatten.

Da darf man sich wohl fragen: Soll denn das Leid ins Unendliche fortgesetzt werden deshalb, weil an den hervorragendsten Stellen aus der Kultur des Materialismus heraus die Menschen die Wirklichkeit fliehen und nur noch Begriffsschatten fassen können? - Ich weiß, daß, wenn man an solche traurigen Ereignisse der Gegenwart streift, man wenig Verständnis findet, weil heute die wenigsten Menschen auch nur fassen können den Unterschied zwischen Begriffsschatten und Wirklichkeit. Denn derjenige, der ein bloßer Idealist ist — es ist ja immer anerkennenswert, Idealist zu sein —, aber nicht versteht die spirituelle Wirklichkeit, der wird sogar schön finden, so unendlich schön, wenn so nett von Freiheit und Menschenrechten gesprochen wird und von internationalen Staatenverbänden und dergleichen. Man wird gar nicht einsehen, worin eigentlich das Unheilbringende dieser Dinge liegt, man wird es in weitesten Kreisen gar nicht einsehen.

Man wird so wenig verstanden, daß man selbst Verständnis gewinnt für die Worte, die der Mephisto spricht, nachdem er abrückt von dem Baccalaureus. Denn schließlich, so wie der Baccalaureus redet, so redet heute mancher, der als ein großer Mann gilt, der, wenn er auch nicht die ganze Welt erschaffen will, so die ganze Welt nach dem düstersten Schattenbegriff regieren will. Und mit Bezug auf das Verständnis solcher Dinge wollen die Menschen durchaus nicht vorrücken. Sie bleiben immer Kinder, bleiben Kinder, die da glauben können, mit Begriffsschablonen könne die Welt regiert werden. Deshalb kann man Verständnis haben auch für die mephistophelischen Worte:

Ihr bleibt bei meinem Worte kalt,
Euch guten Kindern laß ich’s gehen;
Bedenkt: der Teufel, der ist alt,
So werdet alt, ihn zu verstehen!

Diejenigen, die da glauben, daß man mit Begriffsschatten die Welt regieren kann, verstehen noch nicht einmal dasjenige, was Goethe durch den Teufel, da wo der Teufel die Wahrheit ausspricht, sagt!

Wie, ich möchte sagen, ein Kolleg zum Verständnis des Reellen, des Wirklichen in unserer von Begriffsschablonen beherrschten Zeit kann man auffassen gerade die Homunkulusszene im zweiten Teil von Goethes «Faust». Aber man muß diese Dinge wirklich in vollem Ernste nehmen. Und insbesondere an uns wäre es, uns recht klare Begriffe zu machen über den Unterschied all der Deklamationen, die jetzt so reichlich durch die Welt gehen, die seit Jahrzehnten durch die Welt gegangen sind, und die endlich die Situation von heute herbeigeführt haben.

Goethe's Premonitions of the Concrete

Shadowy Concepts and Ideas Steeped in Reality based on a scene from “Faust” II

Second act: High-vaulted, narrow Gothic room. Laboratory

One would like the scenes you have just seen to find understanding acceptance in the widest possible circles of the present, for these scenes contain many seeds of development in which the spiritual-scientific current also runs. It can be said that Goethe, in writing these scenes based on his many years of wide-ranging experience, foresaw much of what spiritual science must bring forth like a seed. Both as a cultural-historical document and as an expression of deep insight, these scenes from the second part of Faust stand before our soul. When we approach such profound manifestations of Goethe's spirit, we may already draw on the spiritual-scientific ideas with which we are now familiar in order to arrive at a full understanding. For it is in these spiritual-scientific ideas that what Goethe shaped from his inner imagination and the experiences of his time is formulated and brought to full consciousness. and brought to full consciousness what Goethe developed from his inner imagination and the experiences of his time.

In the first of the two scenes, we initially have something like a significant cultural-historical document. When Goethe, matured by everything he had absorbed from the natural sciences on the one hand, from the deepening of these scientific views through his mystical studies on the other, and from the deepening that Greek art had given him, when Goethe formed these ideas that lived within him into figures, it was also the time when, out of an infinite enthusiasm for knowledge, minds attempted to approach the highest problems of existence. It is something that should not surprise us, cannot surprise us, especially in our circles, that the striving for the spiritual world, when it occurs quite intensely, can be said to drive its caricatures, truly drive its caricatures. Both mystical striving and deeper philosophical striving for knowledge drive their caricatures. In Goethe's immediate neighborhood, at the time when these scenes were unfolding in Goethe's mind, a truly significant, one might say philosophical-theosophical striving developed. Johann Gottlieb Fichte taught there with tremendous enthusiasm for knowledge. You can see from the sketchy explanations in my books, both in the one on " The Riddles of Philosophy“ as well as from the last book, ”The Riddle of Man," how Fichte strove in an elementary way to shape that which lives in the innermost part of the human soul as divine-spiritual, so that through this unfolding of the divine-spiritual within the soul, man becomes conscious of his own divine-spiritual origin. Fichte sought to grasp the full life of the I, the creative, active I, but also the God-filled I in the human soul. In doing so, he attempted to feel the connection between inner human life and the whole of cosmic life. And it was out of this enthusiasm that he spoke. It is only too understandable that such a spiritual advance caused offense in many quarters. It is true that Fichte could not yet speak from the concrete reality of spiritual science; the time was not yet ripe for that. One might say that, in abstract, comprehensive terms, Fichte sought to bring to life a feeling that could then be enlivened in human beings through the impressions of spiritual science. As a result, his language often had something abstract about it, but it was an abstraction imbued with living feeling, with living sensation. And it took the strong impression that such a personality can make directly to take what Fichte had to say seriously at all. In print, it often appeared quite paradoxical, even more paradoxical than the paradoxes — the necessary paradoxes — of spiritual science often have to be, because what is true often appears ridiculous to people who are not accustomed to it. That is why a mind like Fichte's, which had to express the truth in a completely abstract form, could be found ridiculous.

On the other hand, people who were already greatly impressed by Fichte could exaggerate things, as everything in life is easily exaggerated. And then caricatures of Fichte's essence emerged, caricatures also of others who taught in Jena at that time with a similar mindset. Schelling also taught in Jena, and, as I have often emphasized, he really worked his way through a similar striving as Fichte to a quite profound understanding of Christianity, indeed of the mystery of Golgotha, turning directly to a kind of theosophy, which he then expressed admittedly without being understood by his contemporaries, in his “Philosophy of Mythology” and in his “Philosophy of Revelation,” but which already lived in that treatise he wrote in reference to Jakob Böhme on human freedom and other related subjects, already lived in his conversation “Bruno or on the Divine and Natural Principle of Things,” and lived especially in his beautiful treatise “On the Divinities of Samothrace,” where he unfolded a picture of what, in his opinion, really lived in those ancient mysteries. Then there were spirits such as Friedrich Schlegel, who energetically applied to the various branches of human knowledge what these more philosophically minded natures attempted to draw out from the center of the world order. Hegel had begun to record his philosophy. All this had taken place in Goethe's neighborhood. These people tried to go beyond everything relative in the world, beyond everything that dominates people in everyday life, to the absolute, to that which does not merely live in relativities. Thus, Fichte sought to go beyond the ordinary everyday ego to the absolute ego, which is anchored in the deity and weaves in eternity. Schelling and Hegel sought to penetrate to absolute being.

The way in which the time perceived such things was, of course, different. One can already form a vivid picture—especially today, when spiritual science can touch our hearts—of the state of mind in which a Fichte or a Schelling when they spoke about what was so clear to their spiritual eyes, and people, on the other hand, reacted with indifference, indifference, hostility. And then one can understand that the young Fichte, in confronting the old fogies in Jena who thought they knew everything in their own way, could also be inflamed with anger at times. Fichte was often inflamed with anger, not only when he was sent away from Jena, but also when he saw that he was doing his best and it did not touch any heart or soul, because people thought they knew better from the old traditional ideas and the knowledge they had acquired. And so one can understand that sometimes a spirit like Fichte, when faced with the old traditions of Jena, could be carried away to the point of saying that if he had to deal with these old fellows, everyone over the age of thirty should be killed. It was a battle of minds of the very first order that broke out in Jena at that time. People also denounced what was happening in Jena at that time. A waterproof writer, but one who had an audience, Kotzebue, wrote a very interesting dramatic pamphlet, which is witty, witty in that he described a kind of, one might say, young bachelor who had been educated in Jena and who, returning home to his mother, speaks in nothing but phrases he heard in Jena. They are all included verbatim in this pamphlet, which is called “The Hyperborean Ass or the New Education.” It all seems very witty, but it is nothing more than a low denunciation of a great desire. We must, of course, keep this separate from what Goethe himself wanted to criticize: the caricature that develops from the great, for we must be clear that the correspondence between Goethe and Fichte, the correspondence between Goethe and Schelling, shows that Goethe fully appreciated these minds striving for the absolute. But Goethe, even if one does not find occult principles systematically processed in his work, was, one might say, a spirit living entirely in the aura of the occult, who knew how that which lives in the good progress of world development can, on the one hand, turn Ahrimanic, and on the other hand — even if he did not use these terms, for terms are not important — and that world development is actually always swinging back and forth between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. And Goethe wanted to develop everything from the deepest level, to show everywhere how, in essence, the striving for the highest can at the same time be a danger. What cannot become a danger! The very best can become a danger, of course. And it was precisely this problem that Goethe saw so vividly in his mind's eye, how the best can become a danger when the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers interfere in things.

He had his Faust poem in mind, that Faust who strove for the deepest secrets of existence, who was to reveal what Goethe always had before his soul: the direct perception of the spiritual-living in everything natural and historical. Goethe himself strove back to the secrets of the spiritual existence of Greek antiquity. He wanted to connect with what was creatively alive in a completed period of time, in the fourth post-Atlantean period. He wanted to portray this in his Faust, who strives for the life of Helena. Goethe seeks the paths on which he can lead his Faust to Helena. But Goethe was aware that this posed a danger. As justified and lofty as the aspiration behind this may be, it poses a danger because it can very easily lead into Luciferic waters.

Goethe thus first shows us Faust entering Luciferic waters, paralyzed by the appearance of Helena, paralyzed by the connection with the spiritual. Faust has brought Helena up from the realm of the mothers, initially seeing her only as a spiritual force. He is paralyzed by what he can experience spiritually. Faust's inner being is filled with what he has absorbed. He lives in the living spiritual, in the spiritual elements of ancient Greece, but he is paralyzed by this.

And so we find him, when Mephisto has brought him back to his cell, to his laboratory, and shows him paralyzed by living with the spiritual elements of the past.

When Helena paralyzes someone,
He does not easily come to his senses ...

says Mephistopheles. We also see how a certain separation has occurred between Faust, who has fallen into Luciferic waters, and Mephistopheles. Faust is, in a sense, with his soul — whether he experiences what it experiences more or less consciously — in a different spiritual wake, into which he has entered through Luciferic impulses, than the spiritual paths in which Mephistopheles walks. They are now separated from each other as if by a boundary of consciousness.

Faust dreams, as they say in profane language. He knows nothing of his old world, in which he lives as his present. But Mephisto has it around him, and through Mephisto everything Ahrimanic comes back to life. And so, in this scene, we have the two worlds colliding with each other, quite appropriately. It is remarkable how thorough Goethe actually is in his instinctively spiritual scientific manner. This clash is made very clear to us by the famulus, who is now introduced, who oscillates unsuspectingly, one might say, between the most dangerous things happening in his environment.

We first see this unsuspecting person, who in a sense represents a type of person who is trapped by ignorance and inattention, for which they are often not to blame. He does not see what is going on around him. In this sense, one can also understand the entire speech that comes from this famulus.

The whole milieu in which we now live is presented to us in a different way through the encounter between the former student, who has become a bachelor, and Mephistopheles. The bachelor, as you can see, comes entirely from the environment I described to you earlier. But he represents a caricature of it, infected by everything that Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel's philosophy, and Schlegel's debates could have given; but he takes everything in a narrow, egoistic sense. Why does he do that? Yes, this question must be asked. Why has the bachelor actually become what he presents himself to us as? Did Goethe perhaps want to mock the philosophy of the Jena school, which he valued, in the Baccalaureus? Not at all. But in his mind, the student has been sent into these philosophical waters with a foreword from Mephistopheles:

Eritis sicut Deus, scientes bonum et malum.
Just follow the old saying and my aunt, the serpent,
You will surely one day fear your godlikeness!

The student of Mephistopheles, who has become the Baccalaureus, has this impulse himself. Mephistopheles cannot complain that the Baccalaureus treats him in such a way that he has to say:

You don't know, my friend, how rude you are?

For he has planted all this in him; he has sown it in his soul. The bachelor has already followed the saying and the aunt, the famous serpent. And at first he does not feel anxious at all; that will come later. He does not feel anxious at all in his godlikeness, which he expresses very clearly by pointing out that it is he who created the world, who shaped the world. — After all, this has become the case for some caricature-seeking human beings from Kant's philosophy, and it is still the case in many cases today.

Yes, one can indeed meet human beings who take Kant's philosophy even more literally than this bachelor. We once met a man who was so infected by Kant's and Fichte's philosophy that he really believed he had created the whole world. It had become a fixed idea in him that he had created the whole world. I said to him at the time: Well, certainly, as an idea, as your idea, you have created the world, but there is something else to add to the idea, because you have also created the idea of your own boots, but the shoemaker made them, these boots, and you cannot say that you made these boots, even though you created the idea of these boots! — Basically, all genuine refutation, even Schopenhauer's philosophy of “the world as an idea,” is based on this shoemaker problem, but people don't always see these things in the right light.

So the Baccalaureus is, in a sense, a victim of Mephisto, as he now confronts him himself. Philosophers have striven for the absolute. In the bachelor, the striving for the absolute becomes a caricature. Mephisto has to tell him:

Just don't come home absolutely.

One sees the connection with the culture, with the intellectual culture of the time, portrayed by Goethe in a very witty way. That is why these scenes, because they are taken from living reality, are so vivid and so immensely dramatic. And Goethe repeatedly strives to lead people beyond those somewhat musty ideas that are so easy to hear: Oh, let us only associate ourselves with the good; there should be nothing Ahrimanic or Luciferic; we must flee from that. Because Goethe does not like these ideas that smell of cellars, he sometimes portrays Mephistopheles in a very sympathetic way, very warm-hearted, one might say. For how warm-hearted it is when the good Mephistopheles, when the Baccalaureus becomes too absolute, moves his chair down from the Baccalaureus to the audience. Goethe imagined Mephistopheles moving closer to the younger audience in the stalls and seeking shelter there. And Goethe has Mephistopheles say not only devilish things, but also very apt things, because Goethe knows how much Mephistophelean must be mixed into life if life is to flourish, how unhealthy are the ideas that smell of cellar air in the manner suggested. And it is worth thinking about how Goethe himself did not remain completely cold in the face of the coldness of the dull crowd. That is why he has his Mephistopheles express some anger about the people whom he sees remaining cold to the words of wisdom he utters. This is indeed a coldness that Goethe wanted to point out, although this coldness was not nearly as cold as the attitude and mood of the soul is today towards what can come to humanity from spiritual life.

And then we see how a truly Ahrimanic activity unfolds in the creation of the homunculus. It was not easy for Goethe to write the part of his “Faust” that we have just seen. Minor poets can cope with anything! Even with the great problem that might arise, a minor poet would quickly have coped: bringing Faust and Helena together. But Goethe was not a minor poet, so writing became difficult and painful for him. Therefore, he had to find a way to truly bring Faust together with Helena, with whom he lived, I would say, in a different state of consciousness, as we have seen. Goethe had to find the way. He was not immediately clear how he should find this way. First, Faust was to be led down into the underworld and ask Proserpina for help in bringing Helena to him in person. But Goethe felt that what he would have to portray in order to get Helena from Proserpina was such that he could find no concepts or ideas to represent it. For just consider what was at stake. Faust had come so far in his subconscious, imaginatively approaching Helena; but he was to approach her with the abilities that were natural to him in life. To do this, Helena had to enter this sphere of consciousness. So Goethe had to create an embodiment of Helena, so to speak. To do this, he used what he knew from Paracelsus, whom he had studied extensively, and Paracelsus' treatise “De generatione rerum” was particularly useful to him. In it, Paracelsus describes how homunculi can be created through certain processes. Of course, it is very easy for people today to say: Well, that was just a medieval prejudice of Paracelsus. It is easy for people today to say: No one needs to believe in what Paracelsus fantasized about. Certainly, no one needs to believe it for my sake. But we should bear in mind that in his treatise “De generatione rerum,” Paracelsus expressly assures us that through certain processes it is possible to create something that has no body — please note this! Paracelsus expressly says: it has no body — but which has abilities similar to those of the human soul, only heightened to the point of clairvoyance. So Paracelsus thought of certain manipulations that would enable people to have before them a bodiless being that, like humans, develops a kind of mental activity, a kind of intellectuality, even to a higher degree. Goethe made use of this. He thought, for example: Helena intervened purely spiritually in Faust's sphere of consciousness, but she must become more dense.

He brought about this becoming a poet through a being such as the homunculus, who, in a sense, builds a bridge between the purely spiritual, being himself incorporeal but arising on occasion from physical manipulations, and the physical, so that one can say: Through the presence of the homunculus, it becomes possible to introduce the wholly spiritual Helena into the physical world in which Faust is at home.

Of course, Goethe needed a kind of misunderstanding for all this. And the misunderstanding is brought about indirectly through Wagner. Wagner's materialistic mind leads him to believe in the entirely material creation of the homunculus; he would not be able to bring about what a real homunculus is, for this requires spiritual powers that Wagner does not possess. These spiritual powers are brought about by the arrival of Mephistopheles, the Ahrimanic element. For this in turn provides the Ahrimanic impulse that actually brings about what Wagner is cobbling together. If Wagner had achieved something on his own, perhaps with the help of some hidden forces on his part, then he might have ended up like the man who wrote to me some time ago that, after long efforts, he had now really created living little men in his room, but now he could no longer get rid of them; he could no longer save himself from them! He wanted advice on how to save himself from these creatures, which he had created as living mechanisms. They had been pursuing him everywhere ever since. One can well imagine what becomes of the minds of such people! These people who experience such adventurous things still exist today, of course, just as there are still those who mock such things.

By a charming coincidence, which is just that, a charming coincidence, at the very time Goethe was writing this scene, Johann Jakob Wagner in Würzburg claimed that homunculi could be created, and he even gave instructions on how to do so. Of course, it is not true that Goethe took the name from him, because the name comes from the old “Faust,” which was already in existence at that time; it was written down when Johann Jakob Wagner was still an infant.

So it is again Mephistopheles who ensures that what Wagner creates actually becomes the homunculus. But now it does become one. And it actually becomes what Goethe had learned to portray as a homunculus according to the instructions of Paracelsus. And the homunculus immediately becomes clairvoyant, for he sees Faust's dream and describes what Faust experiences in a kind of Luciferian trance, as if in another state of consciousness, how Faust actually arrives in the Greek world. The meeting of Zeus with Leda, the mother of Helen: we recognize it in the description that the homunculus gives of Faust's dream.

We see, then, how Goethe directly juxtaposes what first lives spiritually in Faust and the homunculus, who knows how to interpret and understand it. We see how Goethe works his way over into the ordinary physical world, so that Helen can then enter the ordinary physical world. And through all the events described in the “Classical Walpurgis Night,” we see how Goethe attempts to shape the physical from the eternal spirituality of Helena, who lived with Faust, by having the Homunculus pass through all the realms of nature and shed his immateriality, embody himself, and connect with the spiritual element of Helena. And by passing through all the realms of nature, Helena becomes, on the physical plane, what she appears to us in the third act of the second part of Faust. Through the homunculus and through the transformation that the homunculus can bring about with what Faust lives with spiritually, Helena is reborn. That is what matters to Goethe. That is why he included the homunculus, why he shows the relationship between what Faust dreams, so to speak, and what the homunculus sees.

But in doing so, Goethe also comes very close to true occultism, the true occultism to which I have often referred, and from which all ways of thinking that indulge only in abstractions, that want to live only in abstract concepts, lead away. I have often pointed out how a certain one-sided education in the Christian principle has led to the creation of insubstantial, shadowy concepts as a worldview that are incapable of intervening in real life, so to speak. And humanity today stands under such concepts. On the one hand, humanity has purely mechanical knowledge of nature, which is not knowledge at all, but merely a manipulation from which life has been driven out.

Encheiresin naturae, chemistry calls it,
Mocking itself and not knowing how,

says Mephisto. On the one hand, there is the desire to merely copy what happens externally. On the other hand, there are abstract concepts of some kind of spiritual realm, which is either imagined in pantheistic terms or lives in some cloud cuckoo land of shadowy concepts that are incapable of truly immersing themselves in life and grasping real life.

That is why I have pointed out how spiritual science is able to understand the real, immediate human being again, for example, to say: This human head is only on the one hand what the anatomist makes of it by describing it purely externally. nor is it merely what externally embodies a soul sailing abstractly in the cloud cuckoo land of concepts, but this head must be understood as having emerged through metamorphosis from the body of the previous incarnation and, as I have explained in recent lectures, from the whole cosmos, formed from the sphere of the whole cosmos. This shaping, intervening in the material world through concepts, not raving in general abstract terms, is the essence of what concrete spiritual science must strive for. For it is precisely this living grasp of the world, this concrete grasp of the material, which is also a revelation of the spiritual, that some Christian pastors and other similar people living in the present fear most in their insubstantial abstractions of God and the eternal. This immersion in the real world with concepts is what people today do not want.

But this is precisely what Goethe wants to point out very emphatically. Therefore, he contrasts this spirit of the homunculus, which sees the real, concrete spiritual, as it then lives in Faust's consciousness, albeit of a different kind, he contrasts this seeing with the way Mephisto would like the world to be, based on the one-sidedness of the Christian Middle Ages: the eradication of everything that is spiritual in the human soul. That is why the homunculus sees what neither Wagner nor Mephistopheles see. And that is why, because Mephistopheles says:

What a lot you have to tell!
As small as you are, you are a great fantasist.
I see nothing,

the homunculus replies:

I believe that. You from the north,
Growing young in the age of fog,
In the jumble of knighthood and priesthood,
Where would your eye be free!
You are only at home in the gloom.

Goethe consciously strives for a concrete grasp of reality.

I have pointed out that, of course, at the point where the homunculus speaks to Mephistopheles, a verse has been omitted for some reason; for we see the rhyme everywhere:

I believe that. You from the north,
Growing young in the age of fog,
In the jumble of knighthood and priesthood,
Where would your eye be free!
You are only at home in the gloom.

The rhyme is missing after “at home.”

Browned rock, moldy, adverse,
Pointed, ornate, low!

So, for some reason, a verse was omitted during the dictation, because the rhyme is missing—and there is no reason why the rhyme should not be here—so a verse that must have sounded something like this:

But what is the dull hermitage to us—

so that Homunculus, after seeing that Mephisto does not understand him, clearly points out to him how humans have been removed from the concrete spiritual world through abstraction, through the nebulous concepts that have been developed and that have been driven into a narrow space precisely in such activities as those from which Faust grew out of, but which he has outgrown. But Mephisto feels comfortable in his devilishness. Therefore, Homunculus says something like:

I believe that. You from the north,
Youngened in the foggy age.

This refers to the Middle Ages, but with an allusion to the old Niflheim:

Youngened in the foggy age.

Youngened is an old expression that is very good. Just as one grows old physically, one grows young spiritually when one is born. And this was an old German expression; instead of “being born,” one said “growing young,” thereby testifying that an understanding of this was already contained in the language. So:

You from the north,
Growing young in the foggy age,
In the jumble of knighthood and priesthood,
Where would your eye be free!
You are only at home in the gloom.
But what use is the dull hermitage to us?

And now he looks around the dull hermitage and sees everything that is there:

Browned rock, decayed, repulsive,
Pointed, ornate, lowly,

Then:

When this awakens us, there is new hardship,

for he must be introduced to living life, because he does not want merely abstract concepts; he does not want, for example, to have Greek culture described to him by showing it to him, as humanists or philologists have done, but he wants to live with this Greek culture in a living way, by having the representative of this Greek culture, Helen, appear before him in person.

Thus, we see Goethe's wonderful intuition for the concrete everywhere in this scene. One could say that every word in these poems from Goethe's later years was written from a deep experience of the world. And that gives these words weight, tremendous weight, and also gives them immortality. For how beautiful are such words spoken by Mephistopheles, which gives them their special color:

Oh woe! Away! And leave me those disputes
Of tyranny and slavery aside.
It bores me; for no sooner is it done,
Than they start again from the beginning;
And no one notices: he is only being teased
By Asmodeus, who is behind it all.

By the devil of discord, with whom Mephisto feels quite related.

They argue, so they say, about civil liberties.

One feels almost transported into the present, for there it also says: They are arguing about civil liberties! Goethe himself replies:

To look closely, they are servants against servants.

All in all, one might say: Oh, if only the time could come when the poetry of such striving, as revealed in this scene by Goethe, could be linked to contemporary spiritual science and anthroposophy — oh, if only what lies in the poetry of such striving could move people more, if only it could become established in their souls! We would truly progress as human beings.

But instead, since Goethe's time, the abstraction of all striving has made infinite further progress. And this is the point where those who strive for spiritual science should try — for my sake, rising up to Goethe — to clarify the difference between concrete spiritual striving and abstract spiritual striving. The study of spiritual science provides concepts through which one truly immerses oneself in the real, in the actual, through which one learns to understand this actuality. Materialism provides no real concepts, only shadows of concepts. Where can materialism understand something like the difference we have clarified between the head of the human being and the rest of the body? Or how can materialism understand the following, for example? Let us take a concept that is infinitely important.

We know that human beings have their physical body, their etheric body, their astral body, their ego. Animals have their physical body, their etheric body, their astral body. We see animals. It is interesting to observe animals when, after they have eaten their fill in the pasture, they lie down and digest. It is interesting to observe. Why? Because the animal has withdrawn completely with its astral being into its etheric body. What does the soul of the animal actually do when it is digesting? With infinite pleasure, the soul participates in what is happening in the body. It lies there and watches itself digesting. It watches itself with infinite pleasure; the pleasure is tremendous for the animal. It is interesting, for example, to watch a cow digest, spiritually, as it lies there and all the processes that take place inside it become visible, as the nutrients are absorbed into the stomach and then transported from the stomach to the rest of the body. The animal watches this with innermost pleasure, because there is an intimate correspondence between its astral body and its etheric body. The astral lives in what the etheric body reflects of the physical-chemical processes through which the nutrients are introduced into the organism. This is a whole world that the cow sees! However, this world consists only of the cow and the processes that take place within the cow. But truly, even if everything that this astral body perceives in the cow's etheric body is merely the processes in the entire surroundings, in the sphere of the cow, all of this is magnified so that it becomes as large for the cow's consciousness as our human consciousness is large, extending as far as the firmament. I would have to describe to you the processes that take place between the stomach and the rest of the cow's organism as a large sphere that unfolds and develops far out, so that at that moment only the cow's cosmos exists for the cow, but in enormous size.

This is no joke, this is how it is. And the cow feels tremendously uplifted when she sees her cosmos in this way, when she sees herself as a cosmos. Here we see into the concrete nature of animals. For because human beings have an ego, this ego tears the astral body away from that intimate connection with the etheric body in which this astral body is connected with the etheric body, for example in the cow. It is torn away. And this deprives humans of the opportunity, when they digest their food, to survey the entire digestive process of the cosmos. All this remains unconscious to them. On the other hand, through its activity, the ego restricts the impulses of the etheric body so that they are only perceived by the astral body in the realm of the sense organs. So that what in animals lives together with the astral body as a whole is concentrated in the sensory organs in humans. As a result, however, the sensory process becomes as great for humans as the animal process becomes for animals at certain moments.

In a certain sense, it is an imperfection of the human being that, when he begins his afternoon nap, he cannot watch his digestion while dreaming, for he would see a whole world. But the ego snatches the human being's astral body away from this world and allows him to see as cosmos only that which is experienced in the sense organs themselves.

I wanted to cite this only as an example. For it shows that concrete spiritual science is concerned with really descending into beings with concepts; not constructing shadowy concepts, but concepts that immerse themselves in reality. And all concepts of spiritual science should be such that they immerse themselves in reality. But it is precisely the accompanying phenomenon of the materialistic age that it spurns these concepts that immerse themselves in reality. It does not want them. For the knowledge of nature, this merely leads to the deficiency that one does not really know anything. But for life, it leads to a far greater deficiency. It makes it impossible for people to have a sense of concrete, meaningful concepts. Therefore, education in materialism is at the same time an education in empty, shadowy concepts. The things go entirely parallel: not being able to understand reality spiritually, seeing everything as a mechanism, and being unable to arrive at any concepts that can really enter into the conditions of the world and of human beings.

And it is in this context that we must understand the present, for it is precisely here that the difficulties of the present lie. There are certainly idealistic natures in the present, but they are the idealistic natures of a materialistic age, and therefore they speak in shadowy general concepts that cannot intervene in reality, that can intervene at most by way of passion, by way of puffing themselves up and trumpeting them as loudly as possible to the world. So while on the one hand, with regard to the knowledge of nature, one has only the impossibility of understanding nature, on the other hand, as the necessary parallel phenomenon, one has the declamation of shadowy concepts. And when one speaks in this way, one is truly not speaking of anything unreal itself, but of that which is connected in the worst possible way with the painful events of the present.

In Goethe's time, the matter had not yet progressed so far, but today we are already faced with the incomprehension of many people in finding any difference at all between a shadowy and a real concept. Wagner, as Goethe describes him, also lives in shadowy concepts, and the homunculus even tries to make it clear to him how he lives in shadowy concepts, for example through the words he speaks after Wagner asks in fear:

And me?

What will become of me when the others move away?

Well,
You stay at home to do the most important thing.
Unfold the old parchments,
Collect the elements of life according to the instructions
And carefully join them together.
Consider what, consider more how.
Meanwhile, as I wander through a small part of the world,
I will discover the icing on the cake.

When I read this passage, I always remember that it is so true to life, especially to the life of a scholar. For I know of a doctoral dissertation in which a young doctoral candidate faced a very learned gentleman who was a historian, but as a historian was primarily a professor of historical science specializing in documents: he was the main teacher of this young doctoral candidate. Among the questions he asked him was this: Now, tell me, candidate, in which papal document does the dot above the i appear for the first time? The candidate knew immediately under which pope the dot above the i appears in the documents: Innocent IV! Now, another historian, who was not like that, was sitting next to him and wanted to play Mephisto a little, so he said: Well, colleague, now I, as the other examiner, must also ask the candidate a question. Tell me, candidate, when did this Innocent IV ascend to the papal throne? — The candidate knew nothing. When did Innocent IV die? — The candidate knew nothing. Well, my dear candidate, then tell me something else you know about Innocent, except that the dot above the i appears first in his documents! — He knew nothing at all. Then the professor of document studies, of old parchments, said: But candidate, it's as if you had a board nailed to your forehead today! - Then the other one, who wanted to play Mephisto, said: Oh, colleague, he is your favorite student! Who nailed this board to his forehead?

Well, unlike the homunculus, the good Wagner was also able to discover the dot on the i in his parchment. But since that time, I would say, the abstract way of thinking, living purely in concepts, has become universal and historical. And so we see that the spectacle that deeply affects the whole of world history can indeed take place, that in important matters a document appears before the world that lives in nothing but shadow concepts. One cannot imagine anything more unreal and unreal than that note that Woodrow Wilson recently addressed to the Senate of the United States! Today, when it is only pious to try to understand the realities of the world, one sees the powerlessness in an eminent position to grasp anything other than shadow concepts, conceptual shadows.

One may well ask: Should suffering continue indefinitely because, in the most prominent positions of the culture of materialism, people flee from reality and can only grasp conceptual shadows? I know that when one touches on such sad events of the present, one finds little understanding, because today very few people can even grasp the difference between conceptual shadows and reality. For those who are mere idealists — and it is always commendable to be an idealist — but who do not understand spiritual reality, will even find it beautiful, so infinitely beautiful, when people speak so nicely about freedom and human rights and international associations of states and the like. They will not understand what is actually harmful about these things; they will not understand it at all in the widest circles.

One is so little understood that one even gains understanding for the words spoken by Mephisto after he departs from the Baccalaureus. For ultimately, the way the Baccalaureus speaks is the way many people speak today who are considered great men, who, even if they do not want to create the whole world, want to rule the whole world according to the darkest shadow concept. And when it comes to understanding such things, people do not want to advance at all. They remain children, children who believe that the world can be ruled with conceptual templates. That is why one can also understand Mephistopheles' words:

You remain cold to my words,
I let you good children go;
Consider: the devil is old,
So grow old to understand him!

Those who believe that the world can be ruled with conceptual shadows do not even understand what Goethe says through the devil, where the devil speaks the truth!

I would say that the homunculus scene in the second part of Goethe's “Faust” can be understood as a colleague for understanding the real, the actual in our time dominated by conceptual templates. But one must take these things very seriously indeed. And it would be up to us in particular to form very clear concepts about the difference between all the declamations that are now so abundant in the world, that have been going on for decades, and that have finally brought about the situation we find ourselves in today.