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

27 September 1918, Dornach

7. Some Spiritual-Scientific Observations in Connection with the “Classical Walpurgis-Night” from the Point of View of Spiritual Science

My dear Friends,

I had intended to make a few remarks from the artistic point of view about the scenes from “Faust” which were to have been performed today. Since, however, on account of illness, the performance is not taking place and the lecture can therefore be independent of it, I shall arrange matters rather differently. My lecture will have to do with the scene to be given next Sunday, but I wish to stress the fact that I shall not be speaking from the standpoint of art, but from quite another point of view. It is more that to the presentation of the scene as Goethean achievement I shall add some Spiritual-Scientific observations that will also in some respect link up with what has already been said here during the autumn.

Anyone allowing this scene—“On the Upper Peneus as Before” to pass before his soul, has an opportunity to look deeply into Goethe's soul, in that this scene—as also the following one which leads to the phantasmagoria of Helen—specially shows how Goethe divined and felt the truths of Spiritual Science even though these truths did not yet come to him in clearly defined ideas. A poet whose understanding did not reach up to the truths of Spiritual Science would certainly never have created these scenes in the way Goethe has done. It would lead us too far even to speak briefly of the path by which Goethe arrived at his insight into Spiritual Science. I can do this some other time. I shall only say enough to make it clear to you that Goethe must have seen certain things in the spiritual world to be able to give this scene the form it has. It is true that what I was explaining to you a few days ago about the evolution of man as a physical-temporal being could not have been known to Goethe in definite ideas. Nor can it be said that there is anything in the course of Goethe's development pointing to definite knowledge that not until the middle of life man first gains, through his bodily organism, the capacity for self-knowledge. From our studies during the past weeks we know that it is only at about the end of his twenties that man, through the forces he develops out of his own bodily organisation, becomes capable of achieving self knowledge. If we wish to learn the truth about these matters, we have to bear in mind that man is really a complicated being. We only understand man by first becoming clear to what extent he is a creature—if I may use a term much assailed by modern science—and that this creature points us back to his creators, his spiritual creators.

Now, by a kind of spiritual chemistry, so to say, we can extract from man what he is solely by virtue of his dependence on his own particular spiritual creators, on those beings among the hierarchies of the cosmic order whose special mission in the universe reaches its culmination in the creation of man, on those beings with whom man, as man, must therefore feel himself quite specially connected. If we separate man out in this way—(we wish our understanding of these things to be exact) we can show him diagrammatically as follows:

Let us suppose that this circle represents man at a given point in his evolution; if we then trace the human being indicated by this circle backyards in the line of his emergence from his spiritual creators we have this stream which I will colour orange. Were we to go back and examine now man has evolved through Moon, Sun and Saturn ages and later through the Earth age, we should find the special characteristics of the several beings of the higher hierarchies, as they are made known to you in my book “Occult Science”. We should discover the working-together, the mutual relations, of these hierarchies; and were we to look deeply enough into this connection of man with the hierarchies, we should perceive how he is, in a sense, the goal of divine creation. I have shown how this is so in a conversation between Capesius and the Hierophant, in the first scene of the second Mystery Play, “The Soul's Probation.” I have also pointed out there the hazardous side of such knowledge for those who are insufficiently prepared.

But suppose we go on to ask what man would be like in the course of his physical development between birth and death if he were only subjected to the influence of these creators of his? He would then be the being who only becomes ripe for self-knowledge in the physical world at the end of his twenties. For these creative beings set themselves the task of so forming man that in the course of his earthly development he should attain what is to be attained on the basis of his bodily organisation, that organisation that is itself derived from the earthly and thus is akin to earthly substances and to the interplay of earthly forces. I mean that these divine beings intended to give man the opportunity through his bodily organisation to go through a period of sound, all-round preparation for self-knowledge and for the knowledge of the world derived from self-knowledge right up to the end of his twenties. Then, in the second half of his life, they intended to give him the opportunity to pursue this self-knowledge in a very different measure from that in which man, as he now is as earthly man, can pursue it. If man had only first awakened to self-knowledge at the time that the spirits of the hierarchies concerned with him intended, at the end of his twenties, it would admittedly have been late, but he would have attained self-knowledge and the world-knowledge bound up with it in enhanced splendour. He would have been able from his innermost being to give a solution to the question: What am I as man? This under ordinary conditions at the present time he cannot do. e would have had this self-knowledge as insight, as vision, he would not have had to acquire it through abstract concepts.

Neither of these things has come about. In the first half of life we do not find that state of subdued consciousness. If he had it, man, rayed through by higher intelligences and not by his own, in a life not of sleep but of twilight, would build up his bodily organisation in a very different way, in order then to awaken to self-knowledge. But such a twilight condition does not exist. On the contrary, a certain self-knowledge appears comparatively early in man, though not with the radiance originally intended by his creators. Again, the self-knowledge that arises after the middle of life is not the self-knowledge that man's creators intended. And when we ask where the blame lies for this, we come to the other currents influencing man. We come to a stream that does not actually belong to man's nature, but which is, so to say, for the time being associated with him; we come to the Luciferic stream (yellow in diagram), we come to that stream which makes it possible for man to have a certain self-knowledge in the first half of his life, although it is not the luminous self-knowledge just described.

As you know, there is another current which unites for a time with man somewhat later; it is the Ahrimanic stream (blue). This stream prevents man, as he is on earth at present, from attaining in the second half of his life that luminous self-knowledge to which his creators had destined him. According to their intentions, the consciousness of man should have been in a much more enlightened state than the one he actually enters upon during the second half of his life, which is dimmed by ahrimanic influences. Naturally we need not think that luciferic influences are present only in the first half, ahrimanic influences only in the second half of life; they both persist throughout the whole of life. But these two influences are respectively concerned at the times in human life I have mentioned, with what I have just been describing. At other periods they have to do with something else. It is very important that no wrong conclusions should be drawn from what has been said. For instance, no one ought to say he has been told here that in the first half of his life man is luciferic, in the second half, ahrimanic. That would be completely untrue. Such misunderstandings often arise and it is important that no one should be misled by them. That is why over and over again I emphasise that in Spiritual Science we shall strive to speak accurately. Much harm is done by the way in which accurately given information about Spiritual Science is then repeated in public in another form, changed through preference or carelessness.

Thus, man stands in a threefold stream, to only one of which he really belongs. The other two were not originally in human evolution but have united themselves with it for a time. We can even say exactly when these influences entered in; you will find it in my “Occult Science”—the luciferic influence in the Lemurian age, the ahrimanic in the Atlantean age.

Now we cannot say that Goethe definitely knew anything of that phase of development, peculiar to man, beginning in the middle of his life. But he felt, he divined—divined very clearly—that through impulses inherent in the world-order man is a different being in the second half of his life from what he is in the first. And if we look into Goethe's soul-life more deeply than modern superficiality generally desires to do, we see his intense longing to gain something quite exceptional for his own life from the culture of the south—the culture of Italy. And if we follow up what he himself records of the benefits he reaped from the Italian tour, for himself, for his knowledge, for his art, we begin to feel hoe Goethe wished to make the transition into the second half of his life fruitful for himself through a deeply penetrating influence which he believed it impossible to experience by always remaining in his old surroundings. Goethe was conscious that in the forties something takes responsibility for the human soul which throws a very different light upon the nature of man than a man can gain through the human forces of the first half of life. And this knowledge, so clearly divined, flowed into the creation of the second part of his “Faust”. It was always particularly difficult for Goethe to approach the question: How does one acquire self-knowledge? If we follow his development aright, we may see his struggle for self-knowledge in a most interesting, most significant light. And little by little—not in the beginning, when he was still writing the youthful part of Faust, but later, gradually—the creation of Goethe's Faust-figure, and the whole poem, acquired such a stamp that the struggle for human self-knowledge may be said to find in “Faust” its most outstanding expression.

It was in this connection that Goethe thought out the figure of Homunculus, As I said before, I am not speaking to-night from the artistic standpoint but am relating to “Faust” a few remarks out of the essence of Spiritual Science. Thus Goethe thought out the figure of Homunculus in connection with his endeavour to depict in Faust man struggling towards self-knowledge. And what did the Homunculus-figure become under the influence of this preoccupation? The answer is that it came to represent all that man knows about man. What can we know about man by collecting together that knowledge which we have about the substances and forces of the earth? How can anyone imagine that those ingredients of earth-existence surrounding us in the kingdoms of nature can combine to form man? How is it possible to think that? For Goethe this became a burning question.

Remember how, when Schiller made friends with Goethe, he wrote him a most significant letter. I have often quoted this letter because it is characteristic both of the friendship between Goethe and Schiller and of the whole character of Goethe's soul. Schiller writes

“Though from some distance, I have for a long time been watching, with ever increasing admiration, the nature and course of your spiritual life. And I have seen that you are striving, so to say, to gather together all that is offered by the rest of nature, in order at length in your mind to put together man out of the sum-total of nature's works. This is a heroic undertaking before which any other intellect would have quailed. Had you been born a Greek, or even an Italian, an imaginative force enabling you to think of man as made up of the various ingredients of nature would have lived within you from your earliest youth. Since, however, you were born as a Northerner, you have been obliged to produce a spiritual Greece in your soul, and to supply by means of your imagination what did not exist in your surroundings.”

Thus Schiller attributes to Goethe this striving to obtain a knowledge of man by piecing together all the details to be gleaned from a knowledge of the kingdoms of nature. And that is actually the ideal which Goethe had before him. What can man know about man? But then there came to him at certain times the thought that the knowledge of man possible to acquire by earthly science is in truth small, that'll is no scan that comes into being through,this knowledge—only a manikin, a Homunculus. And Goethe was often assailed by the burning, tormenting thought: “We are in the world as men, feeling, thinking and willing as men, but we really only know something about Homunculus, not about Homo. The ideas we form concerning man bear as little relation to what man is in truth as does a little manikin in a glass test-tube”.

And for Goethe this burning question was associated with another: How can that element in knowledge which does not correspond to nature, to cosmic existence, be quickened so that it may, in knowledge at least, grow near to what in reality man is—of which he knows so little that actually it only amounts to knowledge of a Homunculus. That is why Goethe makes Wagner produce this manikin, Homunculus. Then, in the further development of his poem, he undertakes to show what sort of experience a man can have whereby his knowledge of man is widened, so that out of Homunculus there may grow something at least approaching Homo.

Now it was a belief of Goethe's that the only ideas which could be acquired in his day, the ideas which could be acquired from the culture of the North, were not sufficiently pliant and flexible to carry the Homunculus-knowledge further. Goethe believed that one could do better by endeavouring to clothe the knowledge of man that it,was still possible to acquire in one's soul life in such ideas as existed in an age that was nearer nature—such as the Greek age. It, was Goethe's firm belief that, by entering into the style and the form of Greek thought, one receives a deep, significant and vivifying impression, one's ideas acquire an added truth. This feeling lies at the root of his taking Faust to Greece, of his wanting to take him to Greece, to live there as a human being and to acquire Greek culture. Had Goethe been asked to state on his honour—I put it thus strongly on purpose—what he believed the men of his circle actually thought and felt, or had thought and felt, about the Greeks, he would probably have answered: “Oh, I should think more rubbish! They talk of Greek life, but have no ideas with which to grasp it. All that our pundits”—this is the sort of thing Goethe would have said—“all that our pundits think, write and print about Helen of Greece in modern times is just philistine trash, for in spite of it all they know nothing of Helen, nor of any other Greek, man or woman, as the Greeks really were”. But that was precisely what Goethe was striving after—to get nearer Greece in his soul. Hence his Faust had to get nearer Greece and had to live as a man among Greek men. Helen—as a Greek and the most beautiful of Greek women, as an outstanding Greek about whom so much strife and discord had arisen—Helen only supplied the point of contact for this. It the heightening, widening, strengthening of the knowledge of man, of the conception of man, that Goethe wants to accomplish in Faust.

Now in that Goethe kept all this clearly before him, (but as a kind of dim apprehension that became at the same time a torment for him) he was conscious that the abstract, philosophical path to knowledge, the path of science, regarded by many as the only right one, is all the same only one way of knowledge, and he dimly felt that there are many ways,. And whoever believes that Goethe was a rationalistic philistine—as really all upholders of modern science must be, otherwise they would not be genuine scientists, for science in the modern sense is itself pedantic, philistine, and rationalistic—whoever believes that Goethe was this kind of pedantic, rationalistic, philistine, understands nothing of him. He understands nothing at all of Goethe, my dear friends, who believes that he could for a single instant have supposed that, through ordinary scientific reflection any real knowledge could be acquired of the nature of man in his fulness. Goethe knew well that the human soul cannot discover truth merely on the path of thought or even on the path of that activity which takes place on the physical place; he knew that the soul of man has to find its way into reality and truth by several paths. Goethe was well acquainted with that approach to truth which takes a deeper course than the ordinary life of waking consciousness. This conscious, waking life in which our bright ideas run round, this life so highly valued by all the pedants, lies fundamentally very far from all that lives and weaves in the world as the basis of existence. In a certain respect man approaches nearer what lives and weaves below the surface of existence if—but this must not be misunderstood—out of his subconscious he sees and feels the arising, however chaotically, however sporadically, of significant dreams. In former years I have often told you that the content of dreams is of little importance; what is of importance is the inner drama, the connection between dream-life and deep human reality.

In a pamphlet, called “Dream-Fantasy”, a philosopher, Johannes Volkelt, in the seventies of last century, ventured timidly to suggest that man in his dreams comes near the riddle of the worlds. If only he had not later rectified this terrible professorial error by respectable pedantic works on the theory of knowledge! But then he never would have become Professor Johannes Volkelt, nor been allowed to teach philosophy in Basle, Würzburg, Jena, Leipzig. For it is a heinous sin against modern science to hint such a thing as that during his sleep-life man sinks into a real, cosmic stream, and that out of this experience things emerge which to be sure show themselves only in pictures, chaotically, and are therefore not to be accepted in their immediate form, but which nevertheless reveal how man, in the weaving of his sleep, is in a sphere that brings him nearer to the fulness of the living and weaving from which the physically visible springs than do his waking moments.

Now when a man plunges into this world—a world that the man of today only comes to know through his dreams, which do interpret it for him, even if badly—his situation within the entire world-order is different from what it is in ordinary waking consciousness. Of course the dream-life alone does not enable us to perceive the difference between the life in waking consciousness and the life we live down there in the sphere whence the dreams arise. But spiritual science can guide us into this sphere. Down there even language ceases to have its correct significance. That is why it is so difficult to come to an understanding. Down there in that sphere the words which we have formed for use in the sense-world cannot be properly applied to what takes place down there. Take for instance what used to be called the elements. Today we call them physical conditions describing them rather differently, But we can quite well understand if the old names earth, water, air, fire or warmth are used. We know these things from “Occult Science”; we can call what is solid, a solid physical condition, the earthly; what has a fluid physical condition, water; what has such a physical condition that, when it is not enclosed, it expands, we call air; whereas what permeates these three substances we call warmth or fire. Yes, my dear friends, we may call them so when, from the point of view of our waking consciousness, we speak here about our surroundings, because, if I may so express it, the things we denote by these words—earth, air, fire, water—are present with us. But if we plunge into the world out of which dreams are working, there are no such things as earth, air, fire, water, they do not exist; these words applied in the same way as for the world in which we are with our waking consciousness, no longer have meaning. As soon as we enter a different sphere of existence, a sphere that has to be grasped by a different consciousness, we see at once the relativity of these things. There—the things regarded by the ordinary materialistic consciousness as absolute—no longer exist. There earth is not earth. It has no meaning at all to talk of such things when we immerse ourselves in the world that, although also a reality, must be grasped by a quite different consciousness. To be sure, there is something there which may be said to stand midway between air and water; it is experienced in this different consciousness, through quite different forms of thought. Air is not air, water is not water, but there is something midway between air, and water; we might call it a sort of watery vapour, (German – Rauch) still called Ruach in the old Hebrew language. It does not mean the physical vapour or the mist we have now, but this intermediary something between water and air.

And another intermediary thing is there between earth and fire. This you must picture as though our metals were gradually to become so glowing and fiery that at last they become actually nothing but fire, fire through and through. And these things—intermediary between earth and fire and between air and water—are down there in the world out of which dreams come whirling. As you will easily understand we could not exist in that world in our physical body, we could not breathe in that world; we have to enter it with our souls, between falling asleep and waking. With our physical body we could not breathe in that world for there is no air. I have pictured in one of my Mystery Plays (“The Guardian of the Threshold”) a being who can breathe in this world, a being having no need of air, for he breathes light. Such beings may indeed be pictured by one who knows them. But no man may take his physical body into this world, for he could not breathe there and would be consumed by the fire. Nevertheless, man is united with this world, from falling asleep to waking, and out of it spring dreams.

Now this world that man encounters beneath the threshold of his consciousness is quite unlike the world we see today during our waking hours but it is not so unlike those worlds from which the present one has evolved. Former worlds, certainly the Sun-world—and this you can gather from the description in my “Occult Science”the Sun-world was even so formed as a physical world that in it fire-earth, earth-fire and water-air whirled and simmered together, not conveniently separated as they are today. Thus, if we are to grasp world-evolution cosmically and historically, we must picture earlier conditions of our evolution as similar to what we find today when we dive down into the world to which we belong between falling asleep and waking.

These worlds, however, that were formerly physically present, just as now our world is physically present, can only be experienced today in sleep, and no one can penetrate to them unless he imagines what is no longer visible in our present world to be visible and manifest. You cannot think of water-air in the same way as today you have to think of water and air as existing side-by-side. Today you think of water and air as separate. That has come about because the water-air, substantially one in former times, has now been differentiated. Water-air is now separated into the two polaric opposites—water and air. Formerly it was a unity, water-air, but was permeated instead by another pole. Today, man has so to say descended, and has completely lost the other pole of the water-air, instead the water-air has itself separated into the two poles—water and air. If we want to get an idea of what the other pole of the water-air was, we must imagine something having reality also experienced in the world where man is between falling asleep and waking, the world from which dreams arise. But too if we go back to the old Sun-existence, we have to think of the water-air as having had side by side with it something of a spiritual nature, something of the essence of the elemental spirits. You still find the elemental spirits belonging to the water-air in mythology, where echoes of ancient truths still remain. And among the beings associated with the water-air are those that in Greek mythology—or indeed in any ancient mythology—are called Sirens. So that when out of real knowledge we say of the world we are referring to that there are in it water-air and Sirens—that it is composed of water-air and Sirens—we are speaking with as much truth as when we say of our external world that it contains water and air. Thus the Sirens belong to those elemental beings who are the other pole of water-air.

The other thing in the old Sun existence was earth-fire or fire-earth, Whereas today we have earth that has been pushed down below the level of the water, with fire or heat above it, formerly these two were one. And among those beings who were related polarically to the earth-fire as are fire or warmth to earth today, is that being whom Goethe, following the Greeks, called Seismos. By bringing Sirens into the relevant scene, Goethe points at the same time very clearly to their connection with water; not however with water as it is today, for that has grown denser and is only one pole of the old water-air. The Sirens feel themselves related to water only in a spiritual way. If we think of water as the old water-air, the Sirens belong to that water as air belongs to the water of today. And as the air produces chaotic sounds in the wind, so the spiritual element in the Sirens produces what belongs to water or water-air; the spiritual element is combined with water-air as air is with our water. And the activity of the Seismos, regarded as cosmic force, is the part played by fire in nature's economy. This is what the myth means, this is what Goethe means. And his presentation of the matter makes everyone acquainted with the reality feel that Goethe had a dim apprehension of these things. He knew that things are thus in the world we enter between falling asleep and waking, the world we find again if with understanding we turn our gaze back to the primal sources of our present existence.

But consider, my dear friends, what a shock you would have if you were suddenly in full consciousness—not as in dreams but quite consciously—transported into an element, into a sphere, where you had no solid earth beneath your feet, a sphere where everything that should be earth was fire, and where there was no earth! There you could even melt if you wished, and become hot or cold in the element of fire. And in the water-air, where you could not breathe but only experience alternations of light and darkness—think how alarmed you would necessarily be at first by the insecurity into which you had plunged, in all this surging and whirling. What then entered into man in those cosmic epochs when the earth solidified (as must once have happened, for at one time men had been living in this surging and weaving element I have described) so that he too could stand firm? What was it that took hold of man? The Sphinx-nature! This gives the firm centre of gravity in the surging element. The same force that gave to the earth the form whereby it has become this solid planet on which man can stand, at the same time wove into man what can be described, pictured, as the nature of the Sphinx.

Now in this scene Goethe introduces what can actually only be experienced between falling asleep and waking. And he believed this can best be presented not in the concepts of our modern waking consciousness, but in Greek concepts. He finds them more flexible and more suitable. Therefore he transfers the whole scene to Greece, thinking that with ideas taken from Greek nature he will be better able to characterise all that man experiences today between falling asleep and waking, all that he experienced in ancient times when air was not opposed to water, nor fire to earth, but when the Sirens formed the opposite pole to water-air, and some being like the Seismos formed the opposite pole to earth-fire or fire-earth.

So now he allows this world to make its appearance in his “Faust”. And why does he do this? It is all a question of proceeding from Homunculus to Homo, the point is that Homunculus should be given a prospect of not remaining merely Homunculus but of becoming Homo—of understanding enough to become man. Therefore his experience of the world has to be enlarged. And so aptly does Goethe bring this about that when he introduces Homunculus to this ancient cosmic world he at once places Sphinxes in it. “The Sphinxes have taken their seat”, and these form the solid element. There is a surging all around that, in these days, could not be suffered, for mortal terror would assail mankind. Everything is surging. But though the whole of hell break loose when the spirits behave as the Sirens and Seismos are doing it is pointed out that man has found his foothold—his centre of gravity:

“What a sickening thrill hereunder!”

Here is pictured the world of which I have been speaking,

“What a dire and dreadful thunder!
What a heaving, what a quaking,
Rocking to and fro and shaking,”

Were you to plunge into this world you would soon experience the ‘rocking to and fro’.

“What unbearable annoy.”

But now comes the reflection:

“Yet we” (the the Sphinxes) “budge not, though the nether
Hell should all burst forth together.”

Into the ideas of men something of such a conception perpetually flows. Men do not know it, but their ideas are influenced by what dwells at the foundations of existence. And this is the cause of many fanciful theories. The theory that the mountain ranges were formed by fire, is quite right for more ancient epochs of cosmic evolution, but this was earth-fire, fire-earth, not fire as we know it. This has introduced an element of confusion into modern ideas. And from a higher point of view, most modern ideas are confused. They can only be understood—however strange this may sound, my dear friends, it is true—these ideas, these theories can often only be understood if they are translated. They are heard in the ordinary, common-place, philistine language of men; they first begin to have meaning when translated into the language that must have been used between falling asleep and waking, for then it becomes clear that these theories bear within them faint indications of earlier earth-epochs. And the only way to understand the scene beginning here, is to realise that Goethe wanted to show the experience man would have were he conscious from falling asleep to waking, an experience that would develop in him a consciousness of a former cosmic condition of the earth.

Think how clearly Goethe must have foreseen the knowledge of Spiritual Science, to have presented these things so correctly. And that is not all. Homunculus is to be introduced to this world. Goethe seems to say—if once more I may be permitted to express it rather strongly—“Now when I turn to the ideas of philistine science, I naturally find nothing able to make a Homo of Homunculus; I can get nothing from that quarter. But if I make use of such ideas as can be acquired when a man consciously experiences the world he enters between falling asleep and waking, and, absorbing them into my soul, embody them into the scene of ‘Faust’, then perhaps I shall be more successful in acquiring, a wider knowledge of man, so that Homunculus may become Homo.”—Therefore Goethe makes Homunculus plunge, not into the philistine, scientific world experienced by man today, but into another world, introduced here, the world man experiences from the time he falls asleep to the time he wakes. In that world a man experiences so many things; curiously enough, he experiences something of how unequal in their evolutionary stages are the beings who live close to us in the cosmos. We understand nothing, literally nothing, of this world, when we consider these beings side-by-side, giving them all an equal value. When we observe ants or bees, or the whole unique insect-world in general, then, my dear friends, we arrive at the conclusion (I have put this before you at other times, in other places, as the view of Spiritual Science) that these are either forms left behind from former epochs, or forms anticipating what is to come later—like the bees, the hive of bees; they are beings projected into our epoch, though by their form they actually belong to another.

You see, when scientific nit-wits describe the world—as for instance Forel who made such a study of ants, then one finds most amazing things said. For if these people cling to their crude scientific methods, and never come to Spiritual Science, of course they are unable to give any explanation of what is really to be wondered at in this world—this world permeated everywhere by reason; not over the single ant, but over the ant-hill as a whole, over the whole ant-world, over the whole bee-world, cosmic reason, so much wiser than brain reason, is outpoured. And, in a certain respect these all really belong to a former world. Just think how aptly Goethe describes it when he brings in the ants, the emmets; and when he makes a mountain arise, as it was in an earlier cosmic evolution, and as one sees it in another sphere of reality, during the time between falling asleep and waking, he makes ants appear and begin to busy themselves with what the mountain has brought into existence. But, as companions for these ants, he makes other strange beings. For in fact the ants together with pretty well the whole of the insect-world constitute a race that does not properly belong to the earth as it is at present. This world of the ants feels itself as an anachronism in the present world. The ants have not much in common with it and have no real companions. The other animals are of quite another kind. There are tremendous differences between the soul-spiritual quality of the insect-race, for example, the ants, and that of other animals. The companions of the ants are actually not the physical animal-forms of today, but spiritual elemental beings that Goethe introduces as Pygmies, as dwarfs, as Dactyls; though the ants have succeeded in acquiring a physical nature on earth, the pygmies and the dactyls are more closely akin to them than to the beings of the present day. Thus, Goethe knows of this ant-race belonging to an ancient cosmic epoch, and introduces it covertly into this scene.

Now how has this world of ours arisen? As you know, its present condition has developed out of the old. We have now spoken of the old condition, and the present one only needs to be mentioned, for it is all that surrounds us on the physical earth. But this present earth has not come about without a struggle. It was through a mighty cosmic conflict that the old developed into the new. And the question arises: Can one observe this struggle? The answer is that we observe it when we can become conscious of waking from a very vivid dream to a condition of half-wakefulness; when we are aroused from a state of deep sleep to one less deep, and though not quite awake, are on the way to being so. We are approaching the sense-world but have not completely left the world below, and we find ourselves in a struggle closely resembling the conflict that went on when the old world was changing into the new. Again Goethe presents it all so faithfully that, while to express the old world-order he makes a dream arise, he also represents the waking from the dream by describing a struggle in the cosmos. The present comes into conflict with all that belongs to the past. The pygmies belonging to the old world come into conflict with the herons belonging to the waters of the present. The sight of this conflict as it takes place is at the same time an awakening. And Goethe makes it so clear that we are concerned with an awakening that he even alludes to what often happens on waking: one hears something that appears to be still in the dream spiritually, in imaginative picture form, and which then passes over into external reality—the coming of the cranes of Ibycus that appear in this scene. In the first part of the scene, Goethe shows us what can be experienced in dream-consciousness when it is fully developed, something which points to earlier earth-conditions; and this he believed he could more easily accomplish with Greek ideas than with those of the present day.

And now, for Homunculus. He has not yet got so far as this, for the man of today is not able to become fully conscious of what takes place in that lower sphere. Goethe intimates this quite clearly. Man today is hampered by fear, by anxiety, even though these may be unconscious. I have often spoken of this. Homunculus will not venture into that world and says so quite clearly. When he makes his re-appearance in the scene, he declares that he will not go in; he wishes to rise, that is, he wishes to become Homo, but into that world he refuses to enter.

“From place to place I flit and hover,
And fain would I in the best sense exist.
Impatiently I long my glass to shiver.
To risk me though I do not list
in aught I yet have seen. ...”

Thus it is a dangerous world into which Homunculus will not plunge. He would like to take the step from Homunculus to Homo in a less perilous world.

Now, had someone asked Goethe “Then you don't think much use can be made of the dream-world, the sleep-world, in changing Homunculus to Homo in the human head; but what about philosophy? Philosophers reflect upon the riddle of the world. What about philosophy? How would it be if Leibnitz or Kant were asked about true manhood?” Then Goethe would have put on a very sceptical expression—very sceptical indeed. He ascribed all kinds of good qualities to modern philosophers, but he did not believe them capable of penetrating into the being of man, of contributing anything to enable Homunculus to become Homo in a human life-time. Here too he thought one would get nearer by using Greek ideas. Goethe was well acquainted with the life of ancient Greece, with the times in which Anaxagoras and Thales lived. Their ideas came nearer the old Mystery outlook, they still retained some knowledge of those spiritual worlds from which for man only dreams arise. For this reason he makes Homunculus meet two ancient Greek philosophers, of whom the one, Anaxagoras, still knew a great deal of the old Mystery-wisdom, especially of the secrets of the fire-earth. Into the thinking, into the wise philosophy of Anaxagoras, ideas still rose up of the ancient Mysteries connected with what happened in the fire-earth.

With Thales, too, there were still recollections of old ideas, associated with the secrets of the water-air; but at the same time Goethe makes it clear that the conceptions of Anaxagoras though loftier, are becoming superseded, and that with Thales the new age is beginning. The history of the new philosophy, the history of philosophy in general, begins rightly with Thales. I have mentioned this in my “Riddles of Philosophy”. He is, it may be said, the original philistine, as Goethe's shows him here; he has to introduce the philistine outlook of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch that indeed in a certain, but only shadowy, way is connected with the secrets of the water-air.

Thus, in the first part of this scene in which he is describing things out of experiences of the dream-world,the world of Seismos, to which the pygmies belong, Goethe is describing all that is associated with the creative forces of Seismos. And the element of water that he uses to make the transition to the present time, describing it not as water-air, but as water, with herons and so on—this element of water he places in contrast to fire; water versus fire, actually water-air versus fire-earth. And water and fire come into conflict—pygmies versus herons. And it is the same battle, only in another sphere, transferred into the sphere of reason, that takes place between Anaxagoras, the philosopher of fire, and Thales, the philosopher of water, as has previously taken place between the pygmies as representing the earth or earth-fire, and the herons, as representing the water or water-air.

So good is the parallelism that, in this second stage of his representation, Goethe correctly shows how Homunculus, who has not ventured himself below into the subconscious element with a view to becoming man now takes refuge above in the conscious. He wants to learn how to become Homo from the philosophers, from those who would still preserve in consciousness much that should be experienced in the subconscious. But it turns out that, because the philosophers derive their impulses from different spheres of experience, they do not agree, and themselves come into conflict, the same conflict of ideas as those that lie at the foundation of cosmic conflicts. There is the same conflict between the views of Anaxagoras and those of Thales as between the pygmies and the herons—the very same.

And what is Goethe doing? He first pictures what goes, on down in the unconscious world, and then leads up to the world of consciousness but associates this world with the recollections arising from the unconscious, recollections specially clear in Anaxagoras. This is why Thales looks upon Anaxagoras as a visionary.

But we have already had to do with a second stratum, with the sphere in which the waking consciousness too is intermingled, albeit in a more or less spiritual fashion, or as I have described it, half-asleep and half awake. This is the second layer of experience that Goethe has shown. And it is very significant that he gives what is experienced in this sphere in a different form from that in which he gave the first. He makes the scene open with the Sirens. We are in the world of sleep, the world of dreams; to be in this world, there is no necessity to do anything; Goethe, therefore, simply places it before us. Then we wake up out of this world, and in waking come to our ordinary-consciousness. For a special reason Goethe has combined Lucifer and Ahriman into the one Mephistopheles. This waking he shows in the experience of Mephistopheles, and it is interesting that, as long as Mephistopheles represents the condition of being but half-awake, he is still down below, experiencing it through the Greek Lamiae. Then the scene rises into conscious life, But if Homunculus-Mephistopheles is now to enter fully conscious life, the life of reason, the man must rouse himself, he must pull himself together, and wake out of dreams to reality. Hence, when he wakes, Mephistopheles meets the Oread, who indicates very clearly in Goethe's language that this is so,

“Up hither,up; My mount is old,
And still loth keep its primal mould,
Honour the rude cliff-stair ascending,
Last-spur of Pindus, far extending.
Already thus firm-stablished
I stood as Pompey o'er me fled.
That fabric of a dream will fade
At cockcrow with the nightly shade.”

While sleep-consciousness is being shaken into waking consciousness, the Oread points out that a transition is now taking place from the world called the world of illusion—though in one way it is, as I have shown, a world of reality—a transition to the world where mountains stand firm, and everything does not rock up and down. And Goethe does not hesitate to indicate quite clearly how one wakes out of this world. Think how often we are wakened out of the world from which dreams surge by the crowing of a cock. Goethe makes it perfectly clear that we are coming up into the waking world where philosophers have to hold forth, where through what they have to say it is expected that Homunculus will become man.

There is much I could add, perhaps tomorrow. In the meantime I shall only draw your attention to the fact that, after we have done with this world, Goethe still points us to a third. And just as it was the mountain nymph, the Oread, who gave the first indication of this waking world, so now it is another nymph, that is, an elemental being, who does the arousing. The tree nymph, the Dryad, leads Mephistopheles to a third layer of consciousness, in which understanding and clairvoyance are united: unconscious, conscious, super-conscious. And, in a certain respect, Goethe already points to the world we also would point to through Spiritual Science. Only, he does so in a quite unique way. The beings whom Mephistopheles finds next are the Phorkyads.

From our coming performance you will see what pleasant, beautiful beings these Phorkyads are, and particularly what an impressive, heart-stirring language they speak! And yet, anyone realising what experiences a man must be prepared to meet, on consciously winning through to the spiritual world, will understand this meeting of Mephistopheles with the Phorkyads.

This matter cannot be completely dealt with in one lecture; we will speak further about it tomorrow.

Geisteswissenschaftliche Ausführungen in Anknüpfung an die «Klassische Walpurgisnacht»

Eigentlich wollte ich heute nach der Aufführung einige Bemerkungen daran knüpfen, die in der Art einer künstlerischen Betrachtung sich hätten anschließen sollen an die aufgeführten Szenen des «Faust». Da aber die Aufführung wegen einiger Erkrankungen nicht stattfindet und der Vortrag daher für sich stehen kann, so werde ich die Sache etwas anders einrichten. Ich werde anknüpfen an die Szene, die dann am Sonntag, einhalb sieben Uhr, hier aufgeführt werden soll, aber ich werde — das bemerke ich ausdrücklich — nicht über die Szene vom künstlerischen Standpunkt aus sprechen, sondern ich werde von einem andern Gesichtspunkte aus über diese Szene sprechen, mehr in Anknüpfung an diese Szene, indem ich an das Vorliegen dieser Szene als Goethesche Leistung einige geisteswissenschaftliche Ausführungen anknüpfe, die sich wiederum in einer gewissen Beziehung anschließen an das schon in diesem Herbst hier Gesagte. Gerade um Mißverständnisse nach dieser Richtung zu vermeiden, bitte ich, das ausdrücklich ins Auge zu fassen, daß ich nicht vom künstlerischen Standpunkt aus sprechen, sondern an diese Szene geisteswissenschaftliche Bemerkungen anknüpfen werde. Wer diese Szene, um die es sich dann handeln wird, an seiner Seele vorüberziehen läßt, hat Gelegenheit, recht tief in Goethes Seele hineinzuschauen, insofern als diese Szene und auch die nächstfolgende, die dann zur Helena-Phantasmagorie hinüberführt, ganz besonders zeigen, wie Goethe fühlte und ahnte — wenn er das auch noch nicht in ausgesprochenen Ideen hatte — geisteswissenschaftliche Wahrheiten. Ein Dichter, der nicht mit seinem Erkennen in geisteswissenschaftliche Wahrheiten hineinragt, hätte diese Szenen ganz gewiß so nicht gemacht. Es würde zu weit führen, wollte ich auch nur einleitend — was ein anderes Mal geschehen kann — darüber sprechen, auf welchem Wege Goethe zu seinen geisteswissenschaftlichen Einsichten gekommen ist. Ich will einfach dasjenige an die Szene anknüpfen, was Ihnen ersichtlich machen kann, wie Goethe gewisse Dinge der geistigen Welt ansehen mußte, um die Szene so zu gestalten, wie sie ist. Das, was ich vor einigen Tagen hier ausgeführt habe über die Entwickelung des Menschen als zeitlich-leibliches Wesen, kannte Goethe in ausgesprochenen Ideen allerdings nicht. Man kann nicht sagen, daß sich irgendwie in Goethes Entwickelungsgang nachweisen ließe ein ausgesprochenes Wissen davon, daß der Mensch in seiner Lebensmitte erst aus seinem Leibesorganismus heraus die Fähigkeit zur Selbsterkenntnis erhält. Wir wissen das aus den Betrachtungen, die wir in diesen Wochen hier angestellt haben, daß in einer gewissen Weise der Mensch erst etwa mit dem Ende der Zwanzigerjahre fähig wird, durch die Kräfte, die er aus seiner eigenen Leibesorganisation heraus entwickelt, Selbsterkenntnis zu erringen. Man muß, wenn man über diese Dinge sich sachgemäß unterrichten will, ins Auge fassen, daß der Mensch wirklich ein kompliziertes Wesen ist. Man versteht ihn nur, wenn man zunächst sich klarmacht, inwiefern er - wenn ich den Ausdruck gebrauchen darf, der heute vielfach von der Wissenschaft angefochten wird — ein Geschöpf ist, und daß dieses Geschöpf zurückweist auf seine Schöpfer, auf seine geistigen Schöpfer.

Nun kann man - ich möchte sagen gewissermaßen geistig-chemisch, wenn ich den pedantischen Ausdruck gebrauchen darf — herausheben aus dem Menschen dasjenige, was dieser Mensch rein dadurch ist, daß er in einer gewissen Abhängigkeit von seinen ihm ureigenen geistigen Schöpfern ist, von denjenigen Wesen unter den Hierarchien der Weltenordnung, deren besondere Mission im Weltenall gipfelt in der Schöpfung des Menschen, von denjenigen Wesen, mit denen sich daher der Mensch als Mensch ganz besonders verwandt fühlen muß. Wenn man den Menschen so loslöst, kann man schematisch die Sache so darstellen. Denken wir, in irgendeinem Punkte seiner Entwickelung würde der Mensch durch diesen Kreis hier dargestellt werden. Verfolgt man dann die menschliche Wesenheit, die ich durch diesen Kreis darstellen will, rücklaufend in ihrem Hervorgehen aus ihren geistigen Schöpfern, so würde das diese Strömung darstellen, die ich hier also — orange — andeuten will. Wenn man zurückgehen, prüfen würde, wie der Mensch durch die Monden-, Sonnen-, Saturnzeit und später durch die Erdenzeit sich entwickelt, würde man die Eigenheiten der einzelnen Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien finden, so wie sie Ihnen aus meiner «Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß» bekannt sind. Man würde finden das Zusammenwirken, die Wechselbeziehungen dieser Hierarchien, und man würde, wenn man durchschaute den Zusammenhang des Menschen mit den Hierarchien, zu einer Anschauung darüber kommen, wie der Mensch gewissermaßen das Ziel der Götterschöpfung ist in der Art, wie ich das in dem zweiten Mysteriendrama in einem Gespräche, das Capesius gleich in der ersten Szene zu führen hat mit dem Hierophanten, zur Darstellung gebracht habe. Ich habe dort auch auf die bedenkliche Seite einer solchen Erkenntnis für den unreifen Menschen hingewiesen.

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Aber gerade, wenn man sich nun frägt: Was würde der Mensch im Laufe seiner physischen Lebensentwickelung zwischen Geburt und Tod, wenn er nur dem Einflusse dieser seiner Schöpfer unterworfen wäre, was würde er dann? Er würde dann jenes Wesen für die physische Welt, das gewissermaßen erst für die Selbsterkenntnis am Ende der Zwanzigerjahre reif wird. Denn diese schöpferischen Wesenheiten haben sich die Aufgabe gestellt, den Menschen so zu gestalten, daß er innerhalb seiner irdischen Entwickelung das erlangt, was er erlangt auf der Grundlage seiner Leibesorganisation, derjenigen Organisation, die selbst aus dem Irdischen genommen ist, die also verwandt ist mit den irdischen Stoffen, verwandt ist mit dem Wechselspiel der irdischen Kräfte. Ich möchte sagen: Von ihren Intentionen aus geben diese göttlichen Wesenheiten dem Menschen Gelegenheit, sich gesund allseitig vorzubereiten durch seine Leibesorganisation bis zu dem Ende der Zwanzigerjahre zur Selbsterkenntnis und zur Welterkenntnis, welche von der Selbsterkenntnis ausgeht. - Und dann würden sie ihm Gelegenheit geben in der zweiten Lebenshälfte, diese Selbsterkenntnis in einem ganz andern Maße zu treiben, als der Mensch sie jetzt als Erdenmensch, so wie er ist, betreiben kann. Der Mensch würde, wenn er wirklich erst aufwachte, wie es in den Intentionen der zu ihm gehörigen Geister der Hierarchien lag, dann zwar spät, mit dem Ende der Zwanzigerjahre, zur‘ Selbsterkenntnis und der damit verbundenen Welterkenntnis aufwachen, aber er würde diese Selbsterkenntnis und damit verbundene Welterkenntnis in einem hohen Glanze erlangen. Er würde wirklich sich innerlichst Aufschluß geben können über die Frage: Was bin ich als Mensch? — was er in der Gegenwart unter gewöhnlichen Verhältnissen nicht kann. Er würde diese Selbsterkenntnis auch als Anschauung haben, würde sie nicht durch abstrakte Begriffe erwerben müssen. Beides ist nicht vorhanden. In der ersten Hälfte des Lebens ist nicht jener herabgeminderte Bewußtseinszustand vorhanden, welcher, ich möchte sagen, nicht durch ein Schlafleben, aber durch ein Dämmerleben, in dem der Mensch dann von höherer Intelligenz, nicht von seiner eigenen, durchstrahlt wäre, in ganz anderer Weise seine leibliche Organisation ausbilden würde, um dann zur Selbsterkenntnis zu erwachen. Weder ist dieser Dämmerzustand vorhanden, sondern es tritt verhältnismäßig früh für den Menschen eine gewisse, wenn auch nicht durchaus jene glanzvolle Selbsterkenntnis auf, welche in den Intentionen seiner Schöpfer liegt, noch tritt dann wiederum nach der Lebensmitte jene Selbsterkenntnis auf, welche auftreten könnte wiederum nach den Intentionen dieser Schöpfer. Und wenn wir fragen: Was ist eigentlich schuld daran, daß dies nicht so ist? — dann kommen wir zu den andern Strömungen, welche Einfluß haben auf den Menschen. Wir kommen dann zu jener Strömung, die nicht eigentlich in seinem Wesen liegt, sondern die sich gewissermaßen zeitlich mit ihm vereinigt hat, wir kommen zu der luziferischen Strömung — gelb -, zu jener Strömung, die ihm möglich machte, daß er in der ersten Lebenshälfte schon eine gewisse, wenn auch nicht die geschilderte glanzvolle Selbsterkenntnis hat.

Und eine andere Strömung - blau - vereinigt sich mit ihm zeitlich, wie Sie wissen, etwas später. Es ist die ahrimanische Strömung, diejenige Strömung, welche verhindert, daß der Mensch, so wie er jetzt ist als Erdenmensch, in der zweiten Lebenshälfte zur glanzvollen Selbsterkenntnis kommt, welche ihm von seinen Schöpfern zugedacht ist. Das Bewußtsein des Menschen ist gewissermaßen nach den Intentionen seiner Schöpfer für einen viel helleren Zustand veranlagt als den, in den es eintritt in der zweiten Lebenshälfte. Es wird herabgedämmert durch die ahrimanische Strömung. Natürlich dürfen wir nicht glauben, daß die luziferische Strömung nur in der ersten Lebenshälfte und die ahrimanische Strömung nur in der zweiten Lebenshälfte vorhanden wären; sie dauern durch das ganze Leben hindurch. Aber, ich möchte sagen, zu tun machen sich diese Strömungen in den angegebenen Zeiten des menschlichen Lebens mit dem, was ich angedeutet habe. In andern Zeiten haben sie mit etwas anderem zu tun. Darauf kommt sehr viel an, daß man in diesen Dingen nicht etwa falsche Schlüsse zieht aus dem, was gesagt wird. Also es darf niemals etwa jemand sagen, es wäre hier ausgesprochen worden, der Mensch sei in der ersten Lebenshälfte luziferisch, in der zweiten Lebenshälfte ahrimanisch; das wäre total falsch. Solche Mißverständnisse entstanden oft, und es ist sehr wichtig, daß man sich solchen Mißverständnissen nicht hingibt. Deshalb betone ich immer wieder und wiederum, in der Geisteswissenschaft wird angestrebt, genau zu sprechen. Und in der Geisteswissenschaft wird viel gesündigt dadurch, daß das genau Gesprochene in einer beliebig abgeänderten Form, nachlässig abgeänderten Form dann in die Welt hinausgetragen wird.

So steht der Mensch in einer, man möchte sagen, dreigliedrigen Strömung: darinnen, wovon nur die eine diejenige ist, Zu der er eigentlich gehört. Die andern beiden Strömungen liegen nicht ursprünglich in der menschlichen Entwickelung, sondern sie vereinigen sich, wenn wir so sagen dürfen, zeitlich mit ihr. Wir können sogar den Zeitpunkt angeben, und Sie finden ihn in meiner «Geheimwissenschaft» verzeichnet: die luziferische Strömung in der sogenannten lemurischen Zeit, die ahrimanische Strömung in der sogenannten atlantischen Zeit.

Nun kann man nicht sagen, daß Goethe ganz ausgesprochen irgend etwas gewußt hat von jener eigentümlichen Entwickelungsphase des Menschen, die in der Lebensmitte für diesen Menschen eintritt. Aber er hat gefühlt, geahnt und sehr deutlich geahnt, daß der Mensch durch Impulse, die in der Weltenordnung liegen, in seiner zweiten Lebenshälfte im Grunde doch ein anderes Wesen ist als in der ersten Lebenshälfte. Und wenn man mit einem Blick ins Seelenleben, der tiefer blicken kann, als die heutige Oberflächlichkeit oftmals will, Goethes ganze Sehnsucht ansieht, aus der südlichen Kultur, aus Italiens Kultur für sein eigenes Leben etwas ganz Besonderes zu gewinnen, wenn man dann verfolgt, was für einen Einfluß er über diesen Gewinn durch seine italienische Reise für sein Erkennen, für sein Künstlertum bei sich selbst verzeichnet, dann bekommt man auch eine Empfindung davon, wie Goethe das Hinübergehen in die zweite Lebenshälfte für sich fruchtbar machen wollte durch einen tiefgehenden, intensiven Einfluß, von dem er glaubte, daß er ihn nicht finden könne, wenn er in seinen alten Verhältnissen bleibe. Goethe war sich also bewußt, daß in den Vierzigerjahren etwas eintritt für die menschliche Seele, was in ganz anderer Weise Aufschluß geben muß über das Wesen des Menschen, als in der ersten Lebenshälfte durch eigene menschliche Kräfte ein solcher Aufschluß zu gewinnen ist. Und diese ahnende, aber sehr deutlich ahnende Erkenntnis ist eingeflossen in die Schöpfung des zweiten Teiles des Goetheschen «Faust». Für Goethe war es immer eine ganz besondere Schwierigkeit, sich der Frage zu nähern: Wie gewinnt man Selbsterkenntnis? — Das Ringen nach Selbsterkenntnis ist zu bemerken in der allerinteressantesten, in der allerbedeutsamsten Weise, wenn man Goethes Entwickelung im rechten Lichte verfolgt. Und nach und nach - nicht schon, als er die Jugendpartien des «Faust» schrieb -, sondern nach und nach nahm die Schöpfung seiner Faust-Gestalt und der ganzen FaustDichtung ein solches Gepräge an, daß das Ringen nach menschlicher Selbsterkenntnis in dem Faust sich besonders ausdrücken sollte. Im Zusammenhange damit hat Goethe ersonnen die Figur des Homunkulus. Wie gesagt, ich spreche heute nicht vom künstlerischen Standpunkte, sondern ich knüpfe geisteswissenschaftliche Bemerkungen an Goethes «Faust» an. Also die Figur des Homunkulus hat Goethe ersonnen im Zusammenhange mit dem Streben, in Faust den nach Selbsterkenntnis ringenden Menschen darzustellen. Was wurde unter dem Einflusse dieses Sinnens nach der Selbsterkenntnis des Faust die Homunkulus-Gestalt? Sie wurde dasjenige, was repräsentiert die Menschenerkenntnis durch den Menschen. Was kann man wissen über den Menschen, wenn man das Wissen zusammennimmt, das man über die Stoffe, über die Kräfte der Erde hat? Wie kann man sich denken, daß dasjenige, was uns sonst in den Reichen der Natur umgibt an Ingredienzien des Erdendaseins, sich zusammengestaltet und den Menschenbildet? Wie kann man sich das vorstellen? Das wurde für Goethe eine brennende Frage.

Bedenken Sie nur: als Schiller seine Freundschaft mit Goethe schloß, da schrieb er einen bedeutungsvollen Brief an Goethe. Ich habe diesen Brief oftmals zitiert, weil er sowohl charakteristisch ist für Goethes und Schillers Freundschaft wie auch für Goethes ganzen Seelencharakter. Da schreibt Schiller: Ich habe lange, obzwar aus ziemlicher Ferne, das Wesen und den Gang Ihres Geisteslebens angesehen, mit immer erhöhter Bewunderung betrachtet, und ich habe gesehen, daß Sie sich bemühen, alles dasjenige, was die Natur sonst darbietet, gewissermaßen zusammenzufassen und aus der Totalität des ganzen Naturwirkens im Geiste sich zuletzt den Menschen zusammenzusetzen. Ein heldenmäßiges Unternehmen - schreibt Schiller -, vor dem jeder andere Intellekt scheitern müßte. Wären Sie als ein Grieche geboren oder nur als ein Italiener - meint Schiller -, so wäre schon von Ihrer frühesten Jugend ab die imaginative Kraft in Ihnen gelegen, aus den einzelnen Ingredienzien der Natur sich den Menschen zusammengestellt zu denken. Da Sie aber in dieser nordischen Natur geboren sind, waren Sie genötigt, in Ihrer Seele geistig ein Griechenland zu gebären und durch die Imagination dasjenige zu ersetzen, was nicht in Ihrer Natur lag.

Also Schiller schreibt Goethe zu dieses Streben nach Menschenerkenntnis durch Zusammenfügung aller Einzelheiten, welche man aus der Erkenntnis der Reiche der Natur gewinnen kann. Und vor Goethe stand in der Tat als Ideal des Erkennens ein solches Erkennen des Menschen. Was kann man vom Menschen wissen? Da kamen ihm doch in gewissen Stunden die Gedanken, daß es im Grunde mit irdischem Wissen wenig ist, was man als Menschenerkenntnis erwirbt, daß kein Mensch wird in dieser Menschenerkenntnis, daß nur ein Menschlein wird, ein Homunkulus. Und oftmals stand vor Goethe der brennend-quälende Gedanke: Nun sind wir in der Welt als Menschen, fühlen, denken, wollen als Menschen, aber wir wissen eigentlich nur etwas, nicht von dem Homo, sondern von dem Homunkulus. Das, was wir uns an Ideen bilden über den Menschen, das ist wirklich im Verhältnis zu dem, was der Mensch in Wahrheit ist, wie ein kleines Menschlein in einer gläsernen Phiole.

Und zu dieser brennend-quälenden Frage gesellte sich für Goethe die andere: Wie kann das, was in der Erkenntnis so gar nicht entspricht dem Natur-, dem kosmischen Dasein, auferweckt, belebt werden, so daß es in der Erkenntnis wenigstens annähernd auch das werde, was der Mensch in Wirklichkeit ist, und wovon er so wenig weiß, daß er eigentlich nicht von einem Homo, sondern nur von einem Homunkulus weiß. Deshalb läßt er durch Wagner nun dieses Menschlein, diesen Homunkulus, erzeugen. Und er unternimmt es dann, in der weiteren Entwickelung seiner Dichtung solches aufzuzeigen, was der Mensch erleben kann, damit sich seine Menschenkenntnis erweitert, damit aus dem Homunkulus wenigstens annähernd ein Homo wird.

Nun war es ein Goethescher, ich will sagen, Glaube, daß die Vorstellungen, die man nur in der - also in der Goetheschen — Gegenwart gewinnen kann, die man aus der nordischen Welt heraus gewinnen kann, nicht eigentlich biegsam und schmiegsam genug sind, um das Homunkuluswissen über den Menschen zu erweitern. Es war Goethes Glaube, daß man besser fährt, wenn man versucht, dasjenige, was dem Menschen doch möglich ist in seinem Seelenleben an Erkenntnis über den Menschen zu erwerben, in solche Vorstellungen zu kleiden, wie sie eine der Natur noch näherstehende Zeit, wie sie die griechische Zeit hatte. Es war Goethes unablässiger Glaube, daß man einen bedeutsamen, tiefen, erfrischenden Eindruck bekommt, an Wahrheitswert gewinnt für seine Vorstellungen, wenn man in die Art und Formung des griechischen Gedankenlebens sich einfügt. Diese Empfindung liegt dem zugrunde, daß er Faust der griechischen Welt entgegenführt, daß er Faust nach Griechenland führen will, um dort als Mensch menschlich zu leben und Kultur zu erwerben. Würde man Goethe - ich will das etwas radikal ausdrücken — aufs Gewissen gefragt haben: Was halten Sie eigentlich von dem, was die Menschen Ihrer Umgebung über die Griechen gedacht und empfunden haben oder denken und empfinden? — so würde er wahrscheinlich geantwortet haben: Ach, das halte ich doch alles für törichtes Zeug. Da reden die Menschen über das griechische Leben, aber sie haben gar keine Vorstellungen, um dieses griechische Leben zu erfassen. Was so unsere Pedanten — so würde Goethe ungefähr geantwortet haben — über die griechische Helena schreiben, denken und drucken lassen: philiströses Zeug! Denn sie lernen doch nicht kennen diese Helena und auch keinen andern Griechen und keine andere Griechin, so wie dieGriechen waren.- Aber das war gerade Goethes Streben, Griechenland wirklich in der Seele näherzukommen., Daher sollte auch sein Faust in der Dichtung Griechenland näherkommen, menschlich unter griechischen Menschen leben. Die Helena bot nur den Anknüpfungspunkt dazu eben als eine Griechin, als die schönste Griechin, als eine hervorstechende Griechin, um die sich soviel Zank und Streit erhoben hat und so weiter. Erhöhung und Erweiterung, Verstärkung von Menschenerkenntnis und Menschenanschauung, das ist dasjenige, was sich in Faust ausbilden soll.

Nun müssen wir ins Auge fassen, daß Goethe, indem er sich eine solche Frage mehr oder weniger deutlich ahnend vorlegte — aber in diesem ahnenden Erkennen wurde sie für ihn brennend, quälend -, sich bewußt war, daß der abstrakte, der philosophische, der naturwissenschaftliche Erkenntnisweg, welchen manche für den einzig richtigen halten, doch nur eine Erkenntnisströmung ist, und er ahnte, daß es viele Erkenntnisströmungen gibt. Und wer glaubt, daß Goethe ein rationalistischer Philister war, wie im Grunde genommen alle Vertreter moderner Wissenschaft sein müssen — sonst würde Wissenschaft nicht im modernen Sinne echte Wissenschaft sein, denn sie ist im modernen Sinne selbst pedantisch, philiströs und rationalistisch —, wer glaubt, daß Goethe solch ein pedantischer, rationalistischer Philister war, versteht nichts von Goethe. Der versteht tatsächlich nichts von Goethe, welcher glaubt, daß Goethe nur einen einzigen Augenblick angenommen habe, man könne durch gewöhnliches wissenschaftliches Nachdenken sich über die Menschennatur in ihrer Fülle und in ihrer Totalität irgendwie unterrichten. Goethe hat gut gewußt, daß die menschliche Seele nicht bloß auf dem Wege des Denkens oder auch auf dem Wege derjenigen Betätigung, die auf dem physischen Plane liegt, die Wahrheit finden kann, sondern daß die menschliche Seele auf verschiedenen Wegen sich hineinfinden muß in die Wirklichkeit und in die Wahrheit. Goethe hat gut gekannt jene Annäherung an die Wahrheit, welche erfolgt gewissermaßen eine Schichte tiefer, als das gewöhnliche tagwache Bewußtseinsleben verläuft. Dieses tagwache Bewußstseinsleben, in dem sich unsere gescheiten Vorstellungen tummeln, das von allen Pedanten so hoch geschätzt wird, liegt im Grunde genommen recht weit ab von alldem, was in der Welt webt und west als Grundlage für das Dasein. Der Mensch nähert sich in einer gewissen Beziehung schon mehr dem, was webt und west unter der Oberfläche dieses Daseins, wenn er - man muß das nur nicht mißverstehen — aus seinem Unterbewußtsein, wenn auch noch so chaotisch, wenn auch noch so sporadisch, sinnvolle Träume heraufkommen fühlt und schaut. Ich habe es öfter ausgeführt im vorigen Jahre: auf den Inhalt der Träume kommt es wenig an, aber auf die innere Dramatik der Träume, auf den Zusammenhang des 'Traumlebens mit der tieferen menschlichen Wirklichkeit kommt es an. Ein Philosoph, Johannes Volkelt, hat in den siebziger Jahren in einem Büchelchen «Die Traumphantasie» nur leise gewagt, daran zu rühren, daß der Mensch in seinen Träumen sich dem Welträtsel nähert. Oh, wenn er nicht später diesen furchtbaren Professorenfehler verbessert hätte durch gut pedantische erkenntnistheoretische Werke, wäre er sicher nicht der Professor Johannes Volkelt geworden, der in Basel, Würzburg, Jena und Leipzig Philosophie lehren durfte! Denn das ist eine große Sünde wider die moderne Wissenschaft, auf so etwas hinzuweisen, daß der Mensch untertaucht in eine wirkliche, wesenhafte Weltenströmung, wenn er im Schlafesleben ist, und daß dann aus diesem Erleben Dinge herauftauchen, die sich allerdings nur bildhaft, chaotisch zeigen, so daß man sie nicht in ihrer unmittelbaren Gestalt hinnehmen darf, die aber doch verraten, daß der Mensch im Schlafesweben in einer Sphäre ist, in der er dem vollinhaltlichen Weben und Wesen, aus dem das Sichtbare, das SinnlichSichtbare auch herauswächst, näher ist, als er es ist vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen.

Wenn man in diese Sphäre untertaucht, die der heutige Mensch nur dadurch kennenlernt, daß er Träume hat, die, wenn auch schlechte, aber doch eben Interpreten sind, wenn der Mensch untertaucht in diese Welt, deren Interpreten die Träume sind, dann steht er in der ganzen Weltenordnung in einer andern Weise darinnen, als er darinnensteht, wenn er im gewöhnlichen tagwachen Bewußtsein ist. Natürlich kann man aus dem bloßen Traumleben nicht merken, wie der Unterschied ist zwischen dem Leben im tagwachen Bewußtsein und dem Leben, das man durchläuft, wenn man da unten ist in dem Gebiete, aus dem die Träume herauf weben und wesen. Aber Geisteswissenschaft kann uns hinunterführen in dieses Gebiet. In diesem Gebiete, da hört selbst die menschliche Sprache auf, ihre rechte Bedeutung zu haben. Deshalb ist die Verständigung so schwierig. Da unten in diesem Gebiete beziehen sich die Worte, die wir hier für die sinnenfällige Welt gebildet haben, nicht mehr in der richtigen Weise auf das, was dort vorgeht. Man kann nicht recht ausdrücken durch Worte, wie sie heute gebraucht werden von dem tagwachen Bewußtsein, das, was sich da unten abspielt. Nehmen Sie nur einmal die gewöhnlichen Elemente, so wie sie früher genannt wurden; heute nennt man das Aggregatzustände und bezeichnet sie etwas anders, aber wir können uns verstehen, wenn wir die alten Ausdrücke gebrauchen. Man sagte: Erde, Wasser, Luft, Feuer oder Wärme. Wir kennen diese Dinge aus der «Geheimwissenschaft». Wir können dasjenige, was fest ist, festen Aggregatzustand hat, das Erdartige nennen; dasjenige, was den flüssigen Aggregatzustand hat, das Wasser nennen; dasjenige, was den Aggregatzustand so hat, daß, wenn es nicht eingeschlossen ist, es sich stark ausdehnt, Luft nennen, und dasjenige, was diese drei Substanzen durchdringt, Wärme oder Feuer. Ja, das können wir, wenn wir hier vom Gesichtspunkte des tagwachen Bewußtseins aus über unsere Umgebung sprechen, weil die Dinge da sind, wenn ich mich so ausdrücken darf, die mit diesen Worten: Erde, Wasser, Luft, Feuer bezeichnet werden. Aber tauchen wir unter in diejenige Welt, aus der die Träume heraufwirken, dann gibt es da nicht Erde, Wasser, Luft, Feuer. Das gibt es da nicht: da har es keinen Sinn mehr, diese Worte in derselben Weise anzuwenden, wie hier für die Welt, in der wir mit unserem tagwachen Bewußtsein sind. Daraus sehen Sie schon die Relativität dieser Dinge, sobald man in ein anderes Gebiet des Daseins eintritt, das durch ein anderes Bewußtsein aufgefaßt werden muß. Da sind diese Dinge gar nicht mehr vorhanden, die das gewöhnliche materialistische Bewußtsein für absolute Dinge hält. Erde ist da nicht Erde. Überhaupt hat es keinen Sinn, davon zu reden, wenn man in die Welt untertaucht, die nun auch eine Wirklichkeit ist, aber die mit einem andern Bewußtsein aufgefaßt werden muß. Wohl aber ist da unten etwas, wovon man sagen kann, es ist ein Mittelding zwischen Luft und Wasser. Man erlebt es in diesem andern Bewußtsein durch ganz andere Gedankenformen, als man sonst erlebt. Luft ist nicht Luft, und Wasser ist nicht Wasser, aber ein gewisses Mittelding von Luft und Wasser, man möchte sagen eine Art wässeriger Rauch, wie es noch die alte hebräische Sprache «Ruach» nannte. Aber es ist damit nicht der jetzige physische Rauch, es ist schon dieses Mittelding zwischen Wasser und Luft gemeint.

Und ein anderes Mittelding ist da zwischen Erde und Feuer, das, möchte ich sagen, was Sie sich so vorstellen müßten, daß unsere Metalle allmählich glühend und so feurig würden, daß sie eigentlich schon nichts mehr sind als Feuer, daß sie durch und durch Feuer sind. Und dieses Mittelding zwischen Erde und Feuer und zwischen Luft und Wasser, das ist da unten, das ist unten in einer Welt, aus der die Träume heraufwirbeln. Wir könnten, wie Sie es leicht begreiflich finden werden, in dieser Welt mit unserem physischen Leib nicht sein. Wir müssen mit unserer Seele vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen hineingehen, denn mit unserem physischen Leib könnten wir in dieser Welt nicht atmen, denn darinnen gibt es keine Luft. Ich habe ein Wesen geschildert, das in dieser Welt atmen kann, aber das ist ein Wesen — Sie kennen es aus meinen Mysterien —, das nicht Luft zum Einatmen braucht, sondern das Licht atmet. Also solche Wesen kann man, wenn man sie kennt, wohl schildern. Aber der Mensch darf seinen physischen Leib nicht in diese Welt hineintragen, denn er könnte nicht atmen und würde verbrennen darinnen. Dennoch ist der Mensch vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen mit dieser Welt verbunden, und die Träume sprudeln aus dieser Welt herauf.

Diese Welt, die da der Mensch antrifft, von der man sagen kann, sie liegt unter der Schwelle seines Bewußtseins, ist zwar recht unähnlich derjenigen Welt, die wir heute sehen vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen, aber sie ist nicht so unähnlich den früheren Welten, aus denen sich die jetzige herausentwickelt hat. Frühere Welten, schon die Sonnenwelt - Sie können das entnehmen aus meiner Darstellung in der «Geheimwissenschaft» — ist auch als physische Welt so gestaltet, daß in ihr, wenn ich sagen darf, Feuererde, Erdfeuer und Wasserluft miteinander brodeln, nicht dasjenige, was heute so hübsch getrennt ist. So daß wir also, wenn wir historisch, kosmisch-historisch die Weltenentwickelung auffassen, das schon so tun müssen, daß wir uns vorstellen: Gehen wir zu früheren Entwickelungszuständen unseres Daseins zurück, dann müssen wir uns diese früheren Entwickelungszustände ähnlich dem vorstellen, was wir erreichen heute, wenn wir in die Welt untertauchen, zu der wir gehören zwischen dem Einschlafen und Aufwachen.

Aber an diese Welten, die heute nur schlafend erlebt werden, früher so physisch da waren, wie jetzt unsere Welt physisch da ist, kann man nicht herankommen, ohne daß man das, was in unserer heutigen Welt nicht mehr sichtbar ist, als sichtbar, als offenbar sich denkt. Sie können sich nicht vorstellen die Wasserluft in derselben Weise, wie Sie sich vorstellen müssen heute nebeneinander Wasser und Luft. Heute stellen Sie sich nebeneinander Wasser und Luft vor. Das ist entstanden dadurch, daß sich differenziert hat die Wasserluft, die früher substantiell einheitlich war. Die Wasserluft hat sich in diese zwei polarischen Gegensätze Wasser und Luft auseinandergelegt. Sie war früher eine Einheit, die Wasserluft, dafür aber war sie mit einem andern Pol durchsetzt. Heute ist der Mensch gewissermaßen heruntergestiegen und hat den andern Pol, den die Wasserluft hatte, ganz verloren. Dafür ist die Wasserluft selbst in die zwei Pole Wasser und Luft auseinandergetreten. Will man eine Vorstellung gewinnen über dasjenige, was der andere Pol zur Wasserluft war, so muß man sich gewisses Wesenhaftes vorstellen, das man auch in der Welt erlebt, in welcher der Mensch ist zwischen dem Einschlafen und Aufwachen, aus der die Träume heraufspielen. Man muß sich aber auch, wenn man zum alten Sonnendasein zurückgeht, vorstellen, daß die Wasserluft neben sich etwas hatte, was geistig wesenhaft war, was von der Wesenheit der Elementargeister war. Und die Elementargeister, die zu der Wasserluft gehören, haben sich in der Mythe noch erhalten, wie sich in der Mythe, der Mythologie Anklänge an alte Wahrheiten noch erhalten haben. Und zu den Wesenheiten, die zu der Wasserluft gehören, gehört dasjenige, was die griechische Mythologie oder überhaupt die alte Mythologie Sirenen genannt hat. So daß man von der Welt, auf die wir jetzt hinweisen, ebenso spricht, wenn man sagt: Es sind in ihr Wasserluft und Sirenen. —- Wie man von unserer Welt äußerlich sachgemäß spricht, wenn man sagt: Es ist Wasser und Luft. Es ist Wasserluft und sind Sirenen. Die Sirenen gehören also zu denjenigen Elementarwesen, welche der andere Pol der Wasserluft sind. Das andere, wofür wir heute Erde haben, das ganz herabgerückt ist unter das Wasser, und droben Feuer oder Wärme, das war wiederum eines: das war Erdfeuer oder Feuererde. Wiederum gehört zu denjenigen Wesenheiten, welche sich so wie die heutige Wärme und das heutige Feuer zu der Erde polarisch entgegengesetzt verhalten, unter andern Elementargeistern derjenige, den Goethe mit den Griechen Seismos nennt. Indem Goethe auftreten läßt in der Szene, um die es sich da handelt, die Sirenen, deutet er zu gleicher Zeit, ich möchte sagen recht handgreiflich darauf, wie sie mit dem Wasser zusammenhängen, aber nicht eigentlich mit dem Wasser von heute, denn das ist schon dichter geworden, das ist nur ein Pol der alten Wasserluft. Die Sirenen fühlen sich auch nur geistig zum Wasser gehörig, sie sind, wenn man das Wasser so denkt wie die alte Wasserluft, dasjenige, was zu diesem Wasser gehört wie die Luft zum heutigen Wasser. Und wie die Luft im Winde ihre Klänge entwickelt in chaotischer Weise, so entwickelt das geistige Element in den Sirenen dasjenige, was zum Wasser gehört, respektive der Wasserluft, das geistige Element, das mit dieser Wasserluft so zusammenhängt wie die Luft mit unserem Wasser. Und die Tätigkeit des Seismos, als kosmische Kraft gedacht, ist dasjenige, was als Feuer wirtschaftet im Haushalte der Natur. Darauf deutet die griechische Mythe, darauf deutet Goethe. Und so wie Goethe die Sache darstellt, fühlt jeder, der mit der Wirklichkeit bekannt ist, daß Goethe ein ahnendes Erkennen von diesen Dingen hatte. Er wußte, so verhält es sich mit der Welt, die wir betreten vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen, und die wir wiederfinden, wenn wir erkennend den Blick zurückwenden in Ursprungszustände unseres jetzigen Daseins.

Aber bedenken Sie, welche Angst Sie kriegten, wenn Sie plötzlich bewußt versetzt würden, nicht so, wie es in den bloßen Träumen geschieht, sondern wenn Sie plötzlich bewußt versetzt würden in ein Element, eine Sphäre, wo Sie keine feste Erde unter sich haben. Denn die hört auf. Das ist alles feurig, was Erde sein sollte; da können Sie beliebig selbst schmelzen und kalt und warm werden im Elemente des Feuers. Und in der Wasserluft, wo Sie nicht atmen können, sondern wo Sie nur abwechselnd Licht- und Finsterniszustände erleben — denken Sie, welche Angst Sie zunächst kriegen müßten über dieses Unsichere, in das Sie da untertauchen, in dieses Wogende und Wirbelnde! Was ist denn in den Menschen gefahren in derjenigen Epoche der Weltenordnung, wo er sich, wie es ja einmal gewesen sein muß — denn er ist in alten Zeiten in diesem wogenden und webenden Elemente gewesen, wie ich Ihnen gesagt habe -, was ist denn in den Menschen gefahren, daß er fest stehen konnte mit der Bildung der festen Erde zugleich? Was hat den Menschen ergriffen? Die Sphinx-Natur! Die gibt in dem wogenden Elemente den festen Gleichgewichtspunkt. Gleichzeitig mit demjenigen, was der Erde jene Form gegeben hat, wodurch sie dieser feste Planet ist, auf dem man stehen kann, webte dieselbe Kraft dem Menschen das ein, was charakterisiert oder repräsentiert werden kann durch die SphinxNatur.

Nun führt Goethe in dieser Szene etwas vor, was eigentlich nur vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen erlebt werden kann. Und er glaubt, daß er es am besten charakterisieren kann, indem er nicht unsere heutigen, nur vom Tagwachen hergenommenen Begriffe nimmt, sondern griechische Begriffe; die findet er biegsamer und passender. Daher versetzt er die ganze Sache nach Griechenland, wo er glaubt, eher fertig zu werden mit den Vorstellungen, die von der griechischen Natur her genommen werden. Da glaubt er, besser. charakterisieren zu können all dasjenige, was der Mensch erlebt heute vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen, was er erlebt hat in alten Zeiten, wo dem Wasser nicht die Luft, der Erde nicht das Feuer, sondern der Wasserluft die Sirenen, dem Erdfeuer oder der Feuererde so etwas wie der Seismos entgegenstehen.

Und nun läßt er die Welt auftreten in seinem «Faust». Warum laßt er sie auftreten? Es handelt sich ihm darum, daß man vom Homunkulus zum Homo kommt, daß der Homunkulus eine Aussicht bekomme, nicht bloß Homunkulus zu bleiben, sondern Homo zu werden, so viel zu verstehen, daß er Mensch werden kann. Er soll also in seinem Weltbild eine Erweiterung erfahren. Und so sachgemäß macht das Goethe, daß, indem er nun in diese kosmisch-alte Welt einführt, er die Sphinxe gleich aufstellt:

Sphinxe haben Platz genommen.

Und die Sphinxe bilden das feste Element. Rundherum wogt es, wie es jetzt nicht wogen darf, weil die Menschen heillose Angst bekommen würden davor. Ringsum wogt es. Aber mag auch die ganze Hölle losgehen, wenn die Geister sich so benehmen wie die Sirenen, wie der Seismos, es wird zurückgewiesen darauf, daß der Mensch den Stützpunkt, die Gleichgewichtslage gefunden hat:

Welch ein widerwärtig Zittern, —

es wird geschildert diese Welt, von der ich eben gesprochen habe.

Häßlich grausenhaftes Wittern!
Welch ein Schwanken, welches Beben,
Schaukelnd Hin- und Widerstreben!

Das würden Sie schon empfinden, dieses Hin- und Widerstreben, wenn Sie in diese Welt untertauchen würden!

Welch unleidlicher Verdruß!

Aber nun die Besinnung:

Doch wir

— die Sphinxe —

ändern nicht die Stelle,
Bräche los die ganze Hölle.

Nun fließt in die menschlichen Vorstellungen immer etwas von solcher Anschauung ein. Die Menschen wissen es nicht, aber ihre Vorstellungen werden beeinflußt von dem, was in den Untergründen des Daseins lebt. Und dadurch entstehen mehr oder weniger phantasievolle Theorien. Die Theorie, daß die Gebirge sich durch Feuer gebildet haben, was für ältere Zeiten der kosmischen Entwickelung ganz richtig ist, aber durch das Erdfeuer - nicht durch das heutige Feuer, durch die Feuererde-, mischt sich hinein in die heutigen Vorstellungen. Dadurch entstehen konfuse Vorstellungen, und die meisten heutigen Vorstellungen sind konfus vom höheren Standpunkte aus. Man kann sie nur verstehen, wenn man — so paradox das klingt, es ist so —, wenn man sie übersetzt. Sie erklingen in der gewöhnlichen landläufig philiströsen täglichen Menschensprache. Übersetzt man sie in die Sprache, die man eigentlich vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen sprechen müßte, da gewinnen diese Theorien erst einen Sinn, denn da zeigt sich, daß man in diesen Theorien doch leise Hindeutungen auf frühere Erdepochen hat. Und man kann die ganze Szene, wie sie anfängt hier, nicht anders verstehen, als indem man sich darüber klar ist, Goethe wollte dasjenige auftauchen lassen, was der Mensch erlebte, wenn er vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen bewußt würde, was er so erlebte, daß er dadurch ein Bewußtsein von einem früheren kosmischen Zustand der Erde entwickelt.

Denken Sie, wie stark Goethe ahnen mußte geisteswissenschaftliches Erkennen, daß er so sachgemäß diese Dinge hinstellt. Aber das geht weiter. In diese Welt soll der Homunkulus geführt werden. Goethe will gleichsam sagen, wenn ich das wiederum radikal ausdrücken darf: Nun, wenn ich mich an die Vorstellungen der philiströsen Wissenschaft wende, da kriege ich natürlich nichts zustande, was den Homunkulus zu einem Homo machen könnte, da wird nichts daraus. Aber wenn ich solche Vorstellungen zu Hilfe nehme und sie aufnehme in die Menschenseele, sie einverleibe der Faust-Szene, Vorstellungen, wie sie gewonnen werden können, wenn der Mensch bewußt erlebt die Welt vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen, da geht es vielleicht schon eher, daß man erweiterte Menschenkenntnis gewinnt, daß der Homunkulus zum Homo wird. Daher läßt Goethe den Homunkulus untertauchen nicht in die philiströse wissenschaftliche Welt, in das, was der Mensch gegenwärtig erfährt, sondern in eine andere Welt, die er hier vorführt, und die der Mensch erlebt vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen. In dieser Welt erfährt man aber auch so manches; kurioserweise erfährt man da auch etwas darüber, wie ungleich eigentlich in ihren Entwickelungsstadien die Wesen sind, die so neben uns im Weltenall wohnen. Man versteht nichts, aber auch schon gar nichts von dieser Welt, wenn man diese Wesen so nebeneinander betrachtet und sie, ich möchte sagen, gleichwertig nebeneinander stehen läßt. Wenn man Ameisen betrachtet, Bienen betrachtet, überhaupt dieses ganze eigentümliche Insektenvolk betrachtet, dann kommt man zu der Anschauung - ich habe sie an andern Orten und zu andern Zeiten als unsere geisteswissenschaftlichen Anschauungen ausgeführt —, das sind zurückgebliebene Formen aus früheren Zeiten, oder auch Formen, welche schon vorausnehmen das, was in späteren Zeiten kommen soll, wie die Bienen respektive der Bienenstock; das sind Wesen, die eigentlich einer andern Zeit in ihren Formen angehören, die hereinragen in unsere Zeit. |

Wenn die wissenschaftlichen Nichtwisser kommen und diese Welt beschreiben, wie zum Beispiel Forel, der sich so viel mit Ameisen beschäftigt hat, dann geschieht es, daß die Leute allerlei Staunenswertes über die Ameise erzählen. Aber wenn sie bei der wissenschaftlichen Tapsigkeit bleiben, nicht zur Geisteswissenschaft kommen, dann ist es natürlich, daß sie nichts Wesenhaftes sagen können, warum man zu staunen hat über diese Welt, die überall durchdrungen ist von einer Vernunft. Nicht über die einzelne Ameise, aber über das Ganze des Ameisenhaufens und der Ameisenwelt selbst, der Bienenwelt, ist kosmische Vernunft, die viel gescheiter ist als unsere Hirnvernunft, ausgegossen; die gehören alle eigentlich in einer gewissen Beziehung einer früheren Welt an. Denken Sie, wie sachgemäß Goethe schildert. Indem er eine frühere Welt schildert, läßt er darin die Ameisen auftreten, die Imsen. Und indem er einen Berg so entstehen läßt, wie er in früherer kosmischer Entwickelung erstanden ist, wie man ihn wieder sieht für eine andere Wirklichkeitssphäre in der Zeit vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen, läßt er Ameisen auftreten, die sich dann mit dem beschäftigen, was der Berg mit ans Dasein gebracht hat. Aber zu Genossen dieser Ameisen macht er besonders andere Wesen. Die Ameisen, überhaupt fast das ganze Insektenvolk, sind eigentlich eine Rasse, die nicht recht hereinpaßt in die Gegenwartserde. Diese Welt der Ameisen fühlt sich eigentlich anachronistisch in der gegenwärtigen Welt. Sie haben nicht viel damit zu tun, sie haben keine rechten Genossen. Die andern Tiere sind von ganz anderer Artung. Es sind furchtbar große Unterschiede zwischen der seelischgeistigen Artung des Insektenvolkes, solchen Volkes zum Beispiel wie das Ameisenvolk und anderer Tiere. Die Genossen der Ameisen sind eigentlich nicht die gegenwärtigen physischen Tierformen, sondern die geistigen Elementarwesen, die Goethe als Pygmäen auftreten läßt, als Zwerge, als Daktyle; denen stehen sie in verwandtschaftlicher Beziehung, trotzdem die Ameisen eine physische Natur sich errungen haben in diesem Erdendasein, viel näher als diesen Gegenwartswesen. Also von dieser zu einer alten kosmischen Epoche gehörigen Art des Ameisenvolkes weiß Goethe, und er geheimnißt es hinein in diese Szene.

Nun, wie ist denn eigentlich diese unsere Welt entstanden? Nicht wahr, sie hat ihren gegenwärtigen Zustand aus dem alten Zustand herausentwickelt. Wir haben jetzt gesprochen von dem alten Zustand, und auf den gegenwärtigen braucht man nur hinzuweisen, denn er ist dasjenige, was in der physischen Erdenumgebung ist. Aber ohne Kampf ist das nicht abgegangen. Das gab einen mächtigen kosmischen Kampf, indem das Alte sich zum Neuen entwickelte. Die Frage entsteht: Kann man auch diesen Kampf beobachten? — Man kann auch diesen Kampf beobachten! Man beobachtet ihn dann, wenn man erfassen kann das Aufwachen aus einem sehr deutlich erschauten Traum zu einem noch nicht ganz Wachsein, sondern zu einem halb Wachsein. Also wenn man aus einem tieferen Schlafzustand zu einem weniger tiefen herauf aufwacht, wenn man noch nicht aufwacht, sondern auf dem Wege des Aufwachens ist. Da nähert man sich der Sinnenwelt, und man hat noch nicht ganz verlassen diese Welt da unten, und da gerät man hinein in einen Kampf, der ganz ähnlich ist dem Kampfe, der sich abgespielt hat, als die alte Welt in die neue sich verwandelte. So sachgemäß geht Goethe wieder vor, daß er, indem er hier einen Traum als Ausdruck für die alte Weltenordnung auftreten läßt, auch das Erwachen aus diesem Traum darstellt, das einen Kampf im Kosmos zum Ausdruck bringt. Dasjenige, was der Gegenwart angehört, kommt in Kampf mit dem, was der alten Zeit angehört: die Pygmäen, die zu der alten Welt gehören, mit den Reihern, die zu den gegenwärtigen Wassern gehören. Dieser Kamp! spielt sich ab. Und dieses Erblicken des Kampfes ist zu gleicher Zeit ein Aufwachen. Und daß es sich um das Aufwachen handelt, das drückt Goethe so deutlich aus, daß er das andeuter, was oftmals das Aufwachen bewirkt. Man hört irgend etwas, das noch geistig im Traume erscheint, imaginativ-bildlich, und das dann übergeht in die äußere Wirklichkeit: das Herannahen der Kraniche des Ibykus, die ja auftreten in dieser Szene. Das zeigt uns Goethe im ersten Teil dieser Szene, was man im Traumbewußtsein, wenn es voll entwickelt ist, erleben kann, und was auf frühere Erdzustände hinweist, was er glaubte, mit griechischen Vorstellungen besser durchdringen zu können als mit Gegenwartsvorstellungen.

Und nun der Homunkulus. So weit geht es doch nicht! Denn für den Gegenwartsmenschen ist es — das deutet Goethe nun ganz klar an nicht möglich, zu voller, klarer Bewußtheit das zu bringen, was da unten sich abspielt. Furcht, Angst hindert den Menschen, wenn auch unbewußte Angst. Ich habe das oft dargestellt. Der Homunkulus wagt sich nicht hinein in diese Welt, das spricht er auch ganz deutlich aus. Als er wieder erscheint, da erklärt er, nein, da will er nicht hinein, er will zwar entstehen, das heißt, es soll ein Homo daraus werden, aber in diese Welt, da will er nicht hinein.

Ich schwebe so von Stell’ zu Stelle
Und möchte gern im besten Sinn entstehn,
Voll Ungeduld, mein Glas entzwei zu schlagen;
Allein, was ich bisher gesehn,
Hinein da möcht’ ich mich nicht wagen.

Also, es ist eine gefährliche Welt, in die der Homunkulus noch nicht untertauchen will. Er möchte doch in einer weniger gefährlichen Welt seinen Weg vom Homunkulus zum Homo antreten.

Nun, hätte man Goethe gefragt: Ja, also mit der 'Traumwelt, respektive mit der Schlafeswelt, da glauben Sie nicht, daß viel zu machen ist, wenn Sie im Menschenkopf den Homunkulus zu einem Homo werden lassen wollen. Aber wie wäre es mit der Philosophie? Die Philosophen denken ja über die Weltenrätsel nach. Wie wäre es mit der Philosophie? Wie wäre es, wenn man anfrägt über das wahre Menschentum bei Leibniz oder bei Kant? Da würde Goethe ein recht skeptisches Gesicht gemacht haben, ein recht ungläubiges Gesicht! Den modernen Philosophen hat er alles mögliche Gute zugeschrieben, aber daß sie in das Wesen des Menschen eindringen können, daß sie irgend etwas beitragen können, so daß der Homunkulus zu einem Homo im Menschenleben wird, das glaubte er nicht. Auch da glaubte er, daß man schon näherkomme, wenn man griechische Vorstellungen verwende. Von den Griechen namentlich der älteren Zeit, in der Anaxagoras und Thales lebten, wußte Goethe. Die standen mit ihren Anschauungen noch näher jenen alten Mysterienanschauungen, welche noch etwas von jener geistigen Welt gewußt haben, aus der dem Menschen nur die Träume herauffluten. —- Deshalb läßt er den Homunkulus begegnen zwei uralten griechischen Philosophen, von denen der eine, Anaxagoras, sehr viel noch weiß von der alten Mysterienweisheit, namentlich viel von den Geheimnissen der Feuererde. In das Denken, in die vernünftige Philosophie des Anaxagoras ragen hinein noch diejenigen Vorstellungen, welche die alten Mysterien gehabt haben, und die anknüpften an die Geschehnisse innerhalb der Feuererde.

Bei Thales waren zwar auch noch Reminiszenzen an alte Vorstellungen vorhanden, Anknüpfungen an die Geheimnisse der Wasserluft; aber zu gleicher Zeit macht es Goethe klar, daß die Anschauungen des Anaxagoras untergehende sind, wenn auch die höheren, und daß mit Thales die neuere Zeit beginnt. Mit Recht - ich habe es sogar in meinen «Rätseln der Philosophie» ausgesprochen — beginnt die Geschichte der neueren Philosophie, die Geschichte der Philosophie überhaupt, mit Thales. Thales ist gewissermaßen der Urphilister, als den ihn Goethe hier hinstellt, der die philiströse Weltanschauung der fünften nachatlantischen Periode einzuleiten hat, die zwar in einer gewissen, aber nur dunklen Weise anknüpft an die Geheimnisse der Wasserluft.

So charakterisiert Goethe im ersten Teil dieser Szene, wo er noch aus den Erfahrungen der Traumeswelt heraus schildert, die Welt des Seismos, zu dem die Pygmäen gehören, all dasjenige, was zusammenhängt mit den schöpferischen Kräften des Seismos auf der einen Seite. Und das Element des Wassers, das er in die Gegenwart schon überführen läßt, daher nicht als Wasserluft, sondern als Wasser charakterisiert mit den Reihern und so weiter, das stellt er dem Feuer entgegen: Wasser, Feuer, eigentlich Wasserluft, Feuererde. Und zwischen Wasser und Feuer kommt es zum Kampf: die Pygmäen mit den Reihern. Und nur in anderer Weise in den Verstand herübergetragen spielt sich derselbe Kampf, der sich zuerst abspielt zwischen den Pygmäen, als den Repräsentanten der Erde oder des Erdfeuers, und den Reihern, als den Repräsentanten des Wassers, der Wasserluft, dann im Verstande ab zwischen Anaxagoras, dem Philosophen des Feuers, und Thales, dem Philosophen des Wassers.

So schön ist der Parallelismus, daß in dieser zweiten Stufe seiner Darstellung Goethe richtig zur Anschauung bringt, wie nunmehr, da sich der Homunkulus zum Homo-Werden nicht hinuntergewagt hat ins unterbewußte Element, er jetzt ins Bewußte hinauf sich flüchtet. Und bei denen, die im Bewußtsein noch so manches sich bewahren wollen von dem, was man aber im Unterbewußten erfahren würde, bei den Philosophen, möchte Homunkulus erfahren, wie man zum Homo wird. Da stellt es sich heraus, daß, weil die Philosophen ihre Impulse von verschiedenen Gebieten des Erlebens hernehmen, sie nicht einig sind und selbst in solche Kämpfe kommen, in solche Ideenkämpfe, die sich auf Grundlage der Kämpfe im Kosmos abspielen! Wie zwischen den Pygmäen und Reihern, so zwischen den Begriffen des Anaxagoras und den Begriffen des Thales: derselbe Kampf!

Was tut Goethe? Er schildert also zuerst dasjenige, was sich da unten abspielt in der unterbewußten Welt, führt dann herauf in die Welt des Bewußtseins, aber knüpft an die Reminiszenzen an, die aus dem Unterbewußten heraufkommen, die namentlich bei Anaxagoras deutlich sind, daher wird Anaxagoras auch von dem Thales für einen Phantasten gehalten.

Aber wir haben es schon mit einer zweiten Schichte des Menschenlebens zu tun, mit derjenigen Schichte, die das tagwachende Bewußtsein auch hat, wenn auch der eine oder andere in mehr geistiger Weise, oder auch mehr oder weniger — wie ich es dargestellt habe — wachend-schlafend, schlafend-wachend es hat. Man kann es auch wachend-schlafend und schlafend-wachend haben. Das ist die zweite Schichte des Erlebens, die da dargestellt wird. Und sehr bedeutsam ist das Folgende. Was da erlebt wird, das läßt Goethe in einer andern Form erleben, als er das erste erleben läßt. Mit den Sirenen läßt er einfach beginnen. Die beginnen die Szene. Man ist in der Schlafeswelt, in der Traumeswelt, man hat nicht nötig, irgend etwas dazu zu tun, um in dieser Welt zu sein, daher führt sie Goethe einfach vor. Nun wacht man aber auf aus dieser Welt. Indem man aufwacht, kommt man in das gewöhnliche Bewußtsein. Goethe hat aus einem gewissen Grunde Luzifer und Ahriman in dem einen Mephistopheles zusammengefaßt. Dieses Aufwachen zeigt er in dem Erlebnisse des Mephistopheles. Und interessant ist es, indem Mephistopheles gewissermaßen repräsentiert das noch nicht voll Aufgewachtsein, da ist er noch unten, er erlebt es durch die griechischen Lamien; dann geht es ins bewußte Leben herauf. Aber soll es nun ins vollbewußte Leben heraufgehen, soll wirklich der Homunkulus-Mephisto eintreten in das vollbewußte Leben, in das Verstandesleben, da muß sich der Mensch gleichsam aufrütteln, da muß er sich fassen, da muß er aus dem Traum in die Wirklichkeit erwachen. Daher begegnet der Mephisto bei diesem Erwachen der Oreade, der Oreas, die sehr deutlich in Goethes Sprache andeutet, daß es sich um das handelt, was ich gesagt habe.

Herauf hier! Mein Gebirg ist alt,
Steht in ursprünglicher Gestalt.
Verehre schroffe Felsensteige,
Des Pindus letztgedehnte Zweige.
Schon stand ich unerschüttert so,
Als über mich Pompejus floh.
Daneben das Gebild des Wahns
Verschwindet schon beim Krähn des Hahns.

Die Oreas, sie macht, indem aufgerüttelt wird das Schlafbewußtsein ins Wachbewußtsein, gewissermaßen darauf aufmerksam, daß man jetzt aus der Welt, die man sonst die Welt des Wahns nennt, wenn sie auch in der Weise eine Wirklichkeit ist, wie ich geschildert habe, herüberkommt in die Welt, wo die Gebirge feststehen, wo nicht alles auf und ab wogt. Und Goethe geniert sich eigentlich nicht, sehr deutlich darauf hinzuweisen, wie man aus dieser Welt erwacht. Denken Sie nur, wie oft man aus der Welt, aus der die Träume heraufsprudeln, erwacht beim Krähn des Hahns. Also Goethe macht das sehr deutlich. Jetzt geht es in die wache Welt hinauf, wo die Philosophen zu reden haben, wo durch die Reden der Philosophen der Homunkulus zu einem Homo werden soll.

Nun wäre viel zu sagen — vielleicht morgen. Ich will nur noch darauf aufmerksam machen, daß, nachdem diese Welt absolviert ist, Goethe auch noch auf eine dritte hinweist. Und wie es erst die Bergnymphe Oreas war, die hingewiesen hat auf diese Welt des Wachens, des Tagwachens, so ist es eine Nymphe wiederum, das heißt, ein Elementarwesen, welches stark aufrüttelt: die Baumnymphe, die Dryade, die Mephistopheles zu einer dritten Schichte des Bewußtseins führt, zu einer dritten Schichte, in der man Vernunft und Hellsichtigkeit vereinigt: Unterbewußtes, Bewußtes, Überbewußtes. Auch auf diejenige Welt, auf die wir gerade durch die Geisteswissenschaft hinweisen wollen, deutet Goethe in einer gewissen Beziehung schon hin. Nur deutet er in einer sehr eigenartigen Weise darauf hin. Die Wesen, welche Mephistopheles zunächst findet, sind die Phorkyaden.

Aus unseren Darstellungen übermorgen werden Sie sehen, was für angenehme, schöne Wesen diese Phorkyaden sind, und namentlich, was für eine eindringliche, Herzenstöne anschlagende Sprache diese Phorkyaden führen! Und dennoch, wer da weiß, welchen Erlebnissen der Mensch die Stirne bieten muß, wenn er in bewußter Art in die geistige Welt einzudringen hat, der versteht die Begegnung des Mephistopheles mit den Phorkyaden.

Doch davon will ich dann morgen weiter sprechen, weil sich die Sache doch nicht in einer Auseinandersetzung erledigen läßt.

Humanities commentary based on the “Classical Walpurgis Night”

I had actually intended to follow up today's performance with a few remarks that would have taken the form of an artistic reflection on the scenes performed in “Faust.” However, since the performance has been canceled due to illness and the lecture can therefore stand on its own, I will approach the matter somewhat differently. I will refer to the scene that is to be performed here on Sunday at half past six, but I will not—and I emphasize this—speak about the scene from an artistic point of view. Instead, I will speak about this scene from a different perspective, more in connection with this scene, by linking the existence of this scene as a Goethean achievement to some spiritual-scientific remarks, which in turn are related in a certain way to what has already been said here this fall. Precisely in order to avoid misunderstandings in this regard, I ask you to bear in mind that I will not be speaking from an artistic point of view, but will be linking spiritual-scientific remarks to this scene. Anyone who allows this scene, which will then be discussed, to pass through their soul has the opportunity to look quite deeply into Goethe's soul, insofar as this scene and also the next one, which then leads to the Helena phantasmagoria, show in a very special way how Goethe felt and sensed — even if he did not yet have it in explicit ideas — spiritual-scientific truths. A poet who did not reach into spiritual-scientific truths with his knowledge would certainly not have created these scenes in this way. It would go too far if I were to talk, even in an introductory way — which may happen another time — about how Goethe arrived at his spiritual-scientific insights. I simply want to link to the scene what can make it clear to you how Goethe must have viewed certain things in the spiritual world in order to shape the scene as it is. What I explained here a few days ago about the development of the human being as a temporal-physical being was not known to Goethe in explicit ideas. It cannot be said that Goethe's development in any way demonstrates an explicit knowledge that it is only in middle age that human beings acquire the capacity for self-knowledge from their physical organism. We know from the observations we have made here in recent weeks that, in a certain sense, it is only around the end of their twenties that human beings become capable of achieving self-knowledge through the powers they develop from their own physical organization. If one wants to learn about these things properly, one must realize that human beings are truly complex beings. One can only understand them if one first realizes to what extent they are — if I may use the expression that is often contested by science today — creatures, and that these creatures refer back to their creators, their spiritual creators.

Now one can — I would say, in a sense, spiritually-chemically, if I may use the pedantic expression — what makes this human being what he is purely by virtue of his dependence on his own spiritual creators, on those beings among the hierarchies of the world order whose special mission in the universe culminates in the creation of human beings, on those beings with whom human beings must therefore feel a special kinship. If one detaches human beings in this way, one can schematically represent the matter as follows. Let us imagine that at some point in their development, human beings are represented by this circle here. If one then traces the human being, which I want to represent by this circle, back to its emergence from its spiritual creators, this would represent the current that I want to indicate here in orange. If one were to go back and examine how human beings developed through the lunar, solar, and Saturn periods and later through the Earth period, one would find the characteristics of the individual beings of the higher hierarchies, as you know them from my Outline of Esoteric Science. One would find the interaction, the interrelationships of these hierarchies, and if one understood the connection between human beings and the hierarchies, one would come to a view of how human beings are, in a sense, the goal of divine creation, as I have depicted this in the second Mystery Drama in a conversation that Capesius has with the Hierophant in the very first scene. There I also pointed out the dangerous side of such knowledge for immature human beings.

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But if we ask ourselves: What would human beings become in the course of their physical life development between birth and death if they were only subject to the influence of their creators? They would become beings for the physical world who, in a sense, only become mature for self-knowledge at the end of their twenties. For these creative beings have set themselves the task of shaping human beings in such a way that, within their earthly development, they attain what they attain on the basis of their bodily organization, the organization that is itself taken from the earthly, that is related to earthly substances, related to the interplay of earthly forces. I would like to say: based on their intentions, these divine beings give human beings the opportunity to prepare themselves in a healthy and well-rounded way through their physical organization until the end of their twenties, so that they may attain self-knowledge and knowledge of the world, which proceeds from self-knowledge. And then, in the second half of life, they would give them the opportunity to pursue this self-knowledge to a completely different degree than human beings can now pursue it as earthly human beings, as they are. If human beings really woke up, as was the intention of the spirits of the hierarchies belonging to them, then, albeit late, at the end of their twenties, they would awaken to self-knowledge and the associated knowledge of the world, but they would attain this self-knowledge and the associated knowledge of the world in a high degree of splendor. They would truly be able to provide themselves with innermost insight into the question: What am I as a human being? — something they cannot do in the present under normal circumstances. They would also have this self-knowledge as a vision, and would not have to acquire it through abstract concepts. Neither of these things is available. In the first half of life, that diminished state of consciousness is not present, which, I would say, not through a life of sleep, but through a twilight life, in which the human being would then be illuminated by a higher intelligence, not his own, would develop his physical organization in a completely different way, in order to then awaken to self-knowledge. Neither is this twilight state present, but rather a certain, though not entirely brilliant, self-knowledge arises relatively early in human life, which is in accordance with the intentions of its creators, nor does that self-knowledge arise after mid-life, which could arise again in accordance with the intentions of these creators. And when we ask: What is actually to blame for this not being the case? — then we come to the other currents that influence human beings. We then come to that stream which does not actually lie within his being, but which has, in a sense, united with him temporally; we come to the Luciferic stream — yellow —, to that stream which made it possible for him to have a certain, albeit not the brilliant self-knowledge described above, already in the first half of his life.

And another current — blue — unites with him temporally, as you know, somewhat later. It is the Ahrimanic current, the current that prevents human beings, as they are now as earthly beings, from attaining the brilliant self-knowledge in the second half of life that is intended for them by their creators. According to the intentions of his creators, human consciousness is, in a sense, predisposed to a much brighter state than the one it enters in the second half of life. It is dimmed by the Ahrimanic stream. Of course, we must not believe that the Luciferic current is only present in the first half of life and the Ahrimanic current only in the second half; they last throughout life. But I would like to say that these currents make themselves felt in the specified periods of human life in the way I have indicated. At other times, they have something else to do with. It is very important not to draw false conclusions from what is said in these matters. So no one should ever say that it has been stated here that human beings are Luciferic in the first half of life and Ahrimanic in the second half; that would be totally wrong. Such misunderstandings have often arisen, and it is very important not to give in to them. That is why I emphasize again and again that in spiritual science, the aim is to speak precisely. And in spiritual science, many sins are committed by carelessly altering what has been said precisely and then spreading it around in a modified form.

Thus, human beings stand in what one might call a threefold stream: only one of these is the one to which they actually belong. The other two streams do not originally lie in human development, but they unite, if we may say so, temporally with it. We can even specify the point in time, and you will find it recorded in my “Secret Science”: the Luciferic stream in the so-called Lemurian period, the Ahrimanic stream in the so-called Atlantean period.

Now, one cannot say that Goethe knew anything specific about that peculiar phase of human development that occurs in the middle of life for this human being. But he felt, sensed, and sensed very clearly that, through impulses that lie in the world order, human beings are fundamentally different beings in the second half of their lives than in the first half. And if one looks at Goethe's whole longing to gain something very special for his own life from southern culture, from Italian culture, with a view into the soul that can see deeper than today's superficiality often allows, and if one then follows the influence that this gain through his Italian journey had on his own recognition and artistry, then one also gets a sense of how Goethe wanted to make the transition to the second half of his life fruitful for himself through a profound, intense influence that he believed he could not find if he remained in his old circumstances. Goethe was therefore aware that in one's forties something happens to the human soul that must provide insight into the nature of human beings in a completely different way than such insight can be gained in the first half of life through one's own human powers. And this intuitive, but very clear intuition flowed into the creation of the second part of Goethe's Faust. For Goethe, it was always a very special difficulty to approach the question: How does one gain self-knowledge? — The struggle for self-knowledge can be observed in the most interesting and significant way when one follows Goethe's development in the right light. And gradually — not when he wrote the youthful parts of Faust, but gradually — the creation of his Faust character and the entire Faust poem took on such a character that the struggle for human self-knowledge was to find particular expression in Faust. In connection with this, Goethe conceived the figure of the homunculus. As I said, I am not speaking today from an artistic point of view, but I am linking spiritual-scientific remarks to Goethe's Faust. So Goethe conceived the figure of the Homunculus in connection with his striving to portray in Faust the human being struggling for self-knowledge. What did the Homunculus figure become under the influence of this striving for Faust's self-knowledge? It became that which represents human knowledge through human beings. What can we know about human beings if we combine the knowledge we have about matter and the forces of the earth? How can we imagine that the ingredients of earthly existence that otherwise surround us in the realms of nature come together and form human beings? How can one imagine this? This became a burning question for Goethe.

Just consider: when Schiller became friends with Goethe, he wrote a meaningful letter to Goethe. I have often quoted this letter because it is characteristic of both Goethe and Schiller's friendship and of Goethe's entire soul character. Schiller writes: "I have long observed, albeit from a considerable distance, the nature and course of your intellectual life, viewing it with ever-increasing admiration, and I have seen that you strive to summarize, as it were, everything that nature otherwise offers, and ultimately to compose man in your mind from the totality of all natural activity. A heroic undertaking, writes Schiller, before which every other intellect would fail. Had you been born a Greek or even just an Italian, says Schiller, then from your earliest youth you would have had the imaginative power to conceive of man as composed of the individual ingredients of nature. But since you were born in this Nordic nature, you were compelled to give birth to a Greece in your soul and to replace what was not in your nature with imagination.

So Schiller attributes to Goethe this striving for knowledge of man by piecing together all the details that can be gained from knowledge of the realms of nature. And indeed, Goethe's ideal of knowledge was precisely this kind of knowledge of man. What can we know about man? At certain moments, it occurred to him that, in essence, earthly knowledge provides us with little insight into human nature, that no one becomes a human being through this knowledge of man, but only a little man, a homunculus. And often Goethe was tormented by the burning thought: Now we are in the world as human beings, feeling, thinking, willing as human beings, but we actually know something not about Homo, but about the homunculus. The ideas we form about human beings are really, in relation to what human beings truly are, like a tiny little human being in a glass vial.

And for Goethe, this burning, tormenting question was joined by another: How can that which in knowledge does not correspond at all to natural, cosmic existence be awakened, enlivened, so that in knowledge it becomes at least approximately what man really is, and of which he knows so little that he actually knows not of a homo, but only of a homunculus. That is why he now has Wagner create this little man, this homunculus. And he then undertakes, in the further development of his poetry, to show what man can experience, so that his knowledge of human nature is expanded, so that the homunculus becomes at least approximately a homo.

Now it was Goethe's belief, I would say, that the ideas that can only be gained in the present—that is, in Goethe's present—that can be gained from the Nordic world, are not actually flexible and pliable enough to expand the homunculus's knowledge of human beings. It was Goethe's belief that it is better to try to clothe what is possible for humans to acquire in their inner lives in terms of knowledge about humans in ideas that are closer to nature, such as those of the Greek era. It was Goethe's unceasing belief that one gains a meaningful, profound, refreshing impression and increases the truth value of one's ideas by assimilating oneself into the nature and form of Greek intellectual life. This feeling underlies his decision to lead Faust into the Greek world, to take Faust to Greece in order to live there as a human being and acquire culture. If Goethe had been asked—and I want to express this somewhat radically—what he actually thought of what the people around him thought and felt about the Greeks, he would probably have replied: Oh, I consider all that to be foolish nonsense. People talk about Greek life, but they have no idea how to grasp it. What our pedants write, think, and print about the Greek Helen, Goethe would have replied, is philistine stuff! For they do not get to know this Helen, nor any other Greek man or woman, as the Greeks really were. But that was precisely Goethe's aspiration: to truly get closer to Greece in his soul. That is why his Faust in the poem should also get closer to Greece, living humanly among Greek people. Helen simply offered the starting point for this as a Greek woman, as the most beautiful Greek woman, as a prominent Greek woman around whom so much quarrelling and strife arose, and so on. Elevation and expansion, strengthening of human knowledge and human outlook, that is what is to be developed in Faust.

Now we must consider that Goethe, in more or less clearly anticipating such a question — but in this anticipatory recognition it became burning, tormenting for him — was aware that the abstract, philosophical, scientific path to knowledge, which some consider the only correct one, is only one stream of knowledge, and he sensed that there are many streams of knowledge. And anyone who believes that Goethe was a rationalistic philistine, as all representatives of modern science must be, in essence — otherwise science would not be genuine science in the modern sense, for in the modern sense it is itself pedantic, philistine, and rationalistic — anyone who believes that Goethe was such a pedantic, rationalistic philistine understands nothing about Goethe. Anyone who believes that Goethe assumed for even a moment that it was possible to learn about human nature in its fullness and totality through ordinary scientific thinking understands nothing about Goethe. Goethe knew very well that the human soul cannot find truth solely through thinking or through activities on the physical plane, but that the human soul must find its way into reality and truth in various ways. Goethe was well aware of that approach to truth which takes place, as it were, one layer deeper than the ordinary waking consciousness. This waking consciousness, in which our clever ideas tumble about, and which is so highly valued by all pedants, is actually quite far removed from everything that weaves and flows in the world as the basis for existence. In a certain sense, human beings come closer to what weaves and flows beneath the surface of this existence when they feel and see meaningful dreams rising up from their subconscious, however chaotic or sporadic they may be — this should not be misunderstood. I have often said in previous years that it is not so much the content of dreams that matters, but rather the inner drama of dreams, the connection between dream life and deeper human reality. In the 1970s, a philosopher named Johannes Volkelt dared only to hint in a small book entitled Die Traumphantasie (The Dream Fantasy) that humans approach the mystery of the world in their dreams. Oh, if he had not later corrected this terrible professorial error with pedantic epistemological works, he would certainly not have become Professor Johannes Volkelt, who was allowed to teach philosophy in Basel, Würzburg, Jena, and Leipzig! For it is a great sin against modern science to point out that humans submerge into a real, essential world current when they are asleep, and that things then emerge from this experience which are, admittedly, only pictorial, chaotic, so that one cannot accept them in their immediate form, but which nevertheless reveal that during sleep, man is in a sphere in which he is closer to the full content and essence from which the visible, the sensually visible, also emerges than he is from waking up to falling asleep.

When one submerges into this sphere, which modern man only gets to know through his dreams, which, even if they are bad, but are nevertheless interpreters, when people immerse themselves in this world, whose interpreters are dreams, then they stand in the whole world order in a different way than they do when they are in their ordinary waking consciousness. Of course, from mere dream life alone, one cannot perceive the difference between life in waking consciousness and the life one goes through when one is down there in the realm from which dreams weave and exist. But spiritual science can lead us down into this realm. In this realm, even human language ceases to have its true meaning. That is why communication is so difficult. Down there in this realm, the words we have formed here for the sensory world no longer relate in the right way to what is happening there. It is not possible to express in words as they are used today by waking consciousness what is happening down there. Just take the ordinary elements, as they used to be called; today they are called states of matter and are described somewhat differently, but we can understand each other if we use the old terms. People used to say: earth, water, air, fire, or heat. We know these things from “Occult Science.” We can call that which is solid, has a solid state of aggregation, earth-like; that which has a liquid state of aggregation, water; that which has a state of aggregation such that, if it is not enclosed, it expands greatly, air; and that which permeates these three substances, heat or fire. Yes, we can do that when we speak of our surroundings from the point of view of waking consciousness, because the things that are there, if I may express myself in this way, are designated by these words: earth, water, air, fire. But if we dive into the world from which dreams arise, then there is no earth, water, air, or fire. They do not exist there: it no longer makes sense to use these words in the same way as we do here in the world in which we live with our waking consciousness. From this you can already see the relativity of these things as soon as one enters another realm of existence that must be perceived through a different consciousness. The things that ordinary materialistic consciousness considers to be absolute no longer exist there. Earth is not earth there. It makes no sense at all to talk about it when one enters the world that is now also a reality, but which must be perceived with a different consciousness. However, there is something down there that can be described as something between air and water. In this other consciousness, one experiences it through completely different thought forms than one usually experiences. Air is not air, and water is not water, but a certain something between air and water, one might say a kind of watery smoke, as the ancient Hebrew language called it “Ruach.” But this is not the physical smoke we know today; it is this something in between water and air that is meant.

And there is another something in between earth and fire, which, I would say, you should imagine as our metals gradually becoming so red-hot and fiery that they are actually nothing more than fire, that they are fire through and through. And this intermediate state between earth and fire and between air and water is down there, it is down in a world from which dreams swirl up. As you will easily understand, we could not be in this world with our physical body. We must enter it with our soul from the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, because we could not breathe in this world with our physical body, for there is no air there. I have described a being that can breathe in this world, but it is a being — you know it from my mysteries — that does not need air to breathe, but breathes light. Such beings can be described if one knows them. But human beings must not carry their physical bodies into this world, for they would be unable to breathe and would burn up there. Nevertheless, human beings are connected to this world from the moment they fall asleep until they wake up, and dreams bubble up from this world.

This world that human beings encounter, which can be said to lie below the threshold of their consciousness, is quite unlike the world we see today from waking to sleeping, but it is not so unlike the earlier worlds from which the present one has developed. Earlier worlds, even the sun world — you can see this from my description in Occult Science — are also shaped as physical worlds in such a way that, if I may say so, fire earth, earth fire, and water air bubble together in them, not as they are so nicely separated today. So when we understand the development of the world historically, cosmically and historically, we must do so in such a way that we imagine: if we go back to earlier stages of development of our existence, then we must imagine these earlier stages of development as similar to what we achieve today when we immerse ourselves in the world to which we belong between falling asleep and waking up.

But these worlds, which today are only experienced in sleep, were once as physically present as our world is now, and cannot be approached without imagining what is no longer visible in our world today as visible, as apparent. You cannot imagine water and air in the same way that you must imagine water and air side by side today. Today you imagine water and air side by side. This has come about because the water-air, which used to be substantially uniform, has differentiated. The water-air has split into these two polar opposites, water and air. It used to be a unity, the water-air, but it was interspersed with another pole. Today, human beings have, in a sense, descended and completely lost the other pole that the water-air had. Instead, the water-air itself has split into the two poles of water and air. If one wants to gain an idea of what the other pole was to the water-air, one must imagine a certain essence that one also experiences in the world in which human beings are between falling asleep and waking up, from which dreams arise. But if we go back to the old sun existence, we must also imagine that the water air had something beside it that was spiritually substantial, that was of the essence of the elemental spirits. And the elemental spirits that belong to the water air have been preserved in myth, just as echoes of ancient truths have been preserved in myth and mythology. And among the beings that belong to the water air are those that Greek mythology, or ancient mythology in general, called sirens. So that one speaks of the world we are now referring to in the same way when one says: there is water air and sirens in it. —- Just as one speaks appropriately of our world when one says: there is water and air. There is water air and there are sirens. The sirens thus belong to those elemental beings that are the other pole of the water air. The other, for which we today have earth, which has descended completely below the water, and above, fire or warmth, was in turn one thing: it was earth fire or fire earth. Again, among those beings that are polar opposites to the earth, like today's heat and fire, is the one that Goethe, like the Greeks, calls Seismos. By having the sirens appear in the scene in question, Goethe points out, quite tangibly I would say, how they are connected to water, but not actually to today's water, for that has already become denser; it is only one pole of the ancient water air. The sirens also feel that they belong to the water only spiritually; if one thinks of water as the ancient water air, they are what belongs to this water as the air belongs to today's water. And just as the air in the wind develops its sounds in a chaotic manner, so the spiritual element in the sirens develops that which belongs to water, or rather to the water air, the spiritual element that is connected to this water air in the same way as the air is connected to our water. And the activity of the seismos, conceived as a cosmic force, is that which works as fire in the household of nature. This is what the Greek myth points to, and this is what Goethe points to. And as Goethe presents the matter, anyone familiar with reality feels that Goethe had an intuitive understanding of these things. He knew that this is how it is with the world we enter from falling asleep to waking up, and which we rediscover when we turn our gaze back in recognition to the original states of our present existence.

But consider how frightened you would be if you were suddenly consciously transported, not as happens in mere dreams, but if you were suddenly consciously transported into an element, a sphere, where you have no solid ground beneath you. For it ceases to exist. Everything that should be earth is fiery; there you can melt at will and become cold and warm in the element of fire. And in the watery air, where you cannot breathe, but where you only experience alternating states of light and darkness — think how frightened you would be at first by this uncertainty into which you are plunging, into this surging and swirling! What came over people in that epoch of the world order, when they, as must once have been the case — for in ancient times they were in this surging and weaving element, as I have told you — what came over people that they could stand firm with the formation of the solid earth? What seized people? The sphinx nature! It provides the firm point of equilibrium in the surging element. At the same time as that which gave the earth its form, making it the solid planet on which we can stand, the same force wove into human beings that which can be characterized or represented by the sphinx nature.

Now, in this scene, Goethe presents something that can actually only be experienced from falling asleep to waking up. And he believes that he can best characterize it by using not our modern concepts, which are based solely on waking life, but Greek concepts, which he finds more flexible and appropriate. Therefore, he transfers the whole thing to Greece, where he believes he can better deal with the ideas taken from Greek nature. There, he believes he can better characterize everything that humans experience today from falling asleep to waking up, what they experienced in ancient times, when water was not opposed by air, earth by fire, but water-air by sirens, earth-fire or fire-earth by something like the seismos.

And now he lets the world appear in his “Faust.” Why does he let it appear? His concern is that one should come from homunculus to homo, that the homunculus should have the prospect of not merely remaining a homunculus, but of becoming a homo, of understanding enough to become a human being. He should therefore experience an expansion in his worldview. And Goethe does this so appropriately that, as he introduces us to this cosmically ancient world, he immediately sets up the sphinxes:

The sphinxes have taken their places.

And the sphinxes form the solid element. All around, it surges as it must not surge now, because people would become hopelessly afraid of it. All around, it surges. But even if all hell breaks loose, if the spirits behave like sirens, like the Seismos, it is rejected because man has found his foothold, his balance:

What a repulsive trembling, —

this world I have just spoken of is described.

Ugly, gruesome weather!
What a swaying, what a trembling,
Swinging back and forth!

You would feel this back and forth if you were to immerse yourself in this world!

What unbearable annoyance!

But now the reflection:

But we

— the sphinxes —

do not change our place,
even if all hell broke loose.

Now, something of this view always flows into human ideas. People do not know it, but their ideas are influenced by what lives in the depths of existence. And this gives rise to more or less imaginative theories. The theory that mountains were formed by fire, which is quite correct for earlier periods of cosmic development, but by the fire of the earth — not by today's fire, by the fire of the earth — interferes with today's ideas. This gives rise to confused ideas, and most of today's ideas are confused from a higher point of view. One can only understand them if one — as paradoxical as it sounds, it is so — translates them. They resound in the ordinary, commonly philistine everyday human language. If one translates them into the language that one should actually speak from falling asleep to waking up, then these theories begin to make sense, because it becomes apparent that these theories contain subtle references to earlier Earth epochs. And one cannot understand the whole scene, as it begins here, other than by realizing that Goethe wanted to bring to light what humans experienced when they became conscious from falling asleep to waking up, what they experienced in such a way that they developed an awareness of an earlier cosmic state of the earth.

Think how strongly Goethe must have sensed spiritual-scientific knowledge in order to present these things so appropriately. But it goes further. The homunculus is to be led into this world. Goethe wants to say, if I may express it radically: Well, if I turn to the ideas of philistine science, I will of course not achieve anything that could make the homunculus a homo, nothing will come of it. But if I take such ideas to heart and incorporate them into the human soul, into the Faust scene, ideas that can be gained when a person consciously experiences the world from falling asleep to waking up, then it may be more likely that one will gain a broader understanding of human nature, that the homunculus will become a homo. That is why Goethe does not let the homunculus submerge into the philistine scientific world, into what man currently experiences, but into another world, which he presents here and which man experiences from falling asleep to waking up. In this world, however, one also experiences many things; curiously enough, one also learns something about how unequal the beings that live alongside us in the universe actually are in their stages of development. One understands nothing, absolutely nothing, about this world if one looks at these beings side by side and, I would say, lets them stand side by side as equals. When one observes ants, bees, indeed this whole peculiar insect population, one comes to the conclusion — I have expounded it in other places and at other times as our spiritual scientific views — that these are forms left behind from earlier times, or also forms that already anticipate what is to come in later times, such as the bees or the beehive; these are beings that actually belong to another time in their forms, which protrude into our time.

When scientific ignoramuses come and describe this world, such as Forel, who has studied ants so extensively, people end up telling all kinds of amazing things about ants. But if they stick to scientific clumsiness and do not come to spiritual science, then it is natural that they cannot say anything essential about why one should marvel at this world, which is permeated everywhere by reason. Not about the individual ant, but about the whole of the anthill and the ant world itself, the bee world, cosmic reason is poured out, which is much smarter than our brain reason; they all actually belong in a certain relationship to an earlier world. Think how appropriately Goethe describes it. By describing an earlier world, he lets the ants, the Imsen, appear in it. And by creating a mountain as it arose in earlier cosmic development, as one sees it again for another sphere of reality in the time between falling asleep and waking up, he lets ants appear, which then occupy themselves with what the mountain has brought into existence. But he makes other beings in particular the companions of these ants. The ants, and indeed almost the entire insect population, are actually a race that does not really fit into the present earth. This world of ants actually feels anachronistic in the present world. They do not have much to do with it, they have no real companions. The other animals are of a completely different nature. There are tremendous differences between the spiritual nature of the insect world, such as the ant world, and that of other animals. The companions of the ants are not actually the present physical animal forms, but the spiritual elemental beings that Goethe depicts as pygmies, dwarves, and dactyls. to whom they are related, even though the ants have acquired a physical nature in this earthly existence, much closer than these present-day beings. So Goethe knows about this species of ants belonging to an ancient cosmic epoch, and he mysteriously incorporates it into this scene.

Now, how did our world actually come into being? It developed its present state from its ancient state. We have now spoken of the ancient state, and we need only point to the present state, for it is what exists in the physical environment of the earth. But this did not happen without a struggle. There was a mighty cosmic struggle as the old developed into the new. The question arises: Can this struggle also be observed? — Yes, this struggle can also be observed! It can be observed when one is able to perceive the awakening from a very clearly seen dream to a state of not yet being fully awake, but rather half awake. That is, when one awakens from a deeper state of sleep to a less deep one, when one is not yet awake but is on the way to awakening. Then one approaches the sensory world, and one has not yet completely left this world below, and one gets caught up in a battle that is very similar to the battle that took place when the old world transformed into the new. Goethe proceeds so appropriately that, by presenting a dream here as an expression of the old world order, he also depicts the awakening from this dream, which expresses a struggle in the cosmos. That which belongs to the present comes into conflict with that which belongs to the olden days: the pygmies, who belong to the old world, with the herons, who belong to the present waters. This struggle takes place. And this sight of the struggle is at the same time an awakening. And Goethe expresses so clearly that it is an awakening that he hints at what often causes awakening. One hears something that still appears spiritually in dreams, imaginatively and pictorially, and which then transitions into external reality: the approach of the cranes of Ibycus, which appear in this scene. In the first part of this scene, Goethe shows us what can be experienced in dream consciousness when it is fully developed, and what points to earlier states of the earth, which he believed he could better understand with Greek ideas than with contemporary ideas.

And now the homunculus. It doesn't go that far! For modern man, it is — as Goethe now clearly indicates — impossible to bring what is happening down there into full, clear consciousness. Fear, anxiety hinders man, even if it is unconscious fear. I have often described this. The homunculus does not dare to enter this world, he states this quite clearly. When he reappears, he explains that no, he does not want to enter it. He wants to come into being, that is, he wants to become a homo, but he does not want to enter this world.

I float from place to place
And would like to come into being in the best sense,
Full of impatience to break my glass in two;
But what I have seen so far,
I do not want to venture into.

So, it is a dangerous world into which the homunculus does not yet want to plunge. He would like to begin his journey from homunculus to homo in a less dangerous world.

Well, if you had asked Goethe: Yes, so with the ‘dream world’, or rather the world of sleep, you don't believe there is much to be done if you want to let the homunculus become a homo in the human mind. But what about philosophy? Philosophers ponder the mysteries of the world. What about philosophy? How about asking Leibniz or Kant about true humanity? Goethe would have looked quite skeptical, quite incredulous! He attributed all kinds of good things to modern philosophers, but he did not believe that they could penetrate the essence of human beings, that they could contribute anything so that the homunculus could become a homo in human life. Here, too, he believed that one could come closer by using Greek ideas. Goethe knew about the Greeks, especially those of the earlier period in which Anaxagoras and Thales lived. With their views, they were even closer to those ancient mystery beliefs, which still knew something of that spiritual world from which only dreams flow up to man. That is why he has the homunculus encounter two ancient Greek philosophers, one of whom, Anaxagoras, still knows a great deal about the ancient mystery wisdom, especially about the secrets of the fiery earth. The thinking, the rational philosophy of Anaxagoras, is still influenced by the ideas of the ancient mysteries, which were linked to the events within the fiery earth.

Thales also had reminiscences of ancient ideas, connections to the mysteries of the watery air; but at the same time Goethe makes it clear that the views of Anaxagoras are declining, even if they are the higher ones, and that with Thales the newer era begins. Rightly so—I have even stated this in my “Riddles of Philosophy”—the history of modern philosophy, the history of philosophy in general, begins with Thales. Thales is, in a sense, the original philistine, as Goethe portrays him here, who is to introduce the philistine worldview of the fifth post-Atlantic period, which is linked in a certain, but only obscure way, to the mysteries of the watery air.

Thus, in the first part of this scene, where he still describes the world of Seismos, to which the Pygmies belong, from the experiences of the dream world, Goethe characterizes everything that is connected with the creative powers of Seismos on the one hand. And the element of water, which he already allows to be transferred to the present, therefore not characterized as water air, but as water with the herons and so on, he contrasts with fire: water, fire, actually water air, fire earth. And between water and fire there is a battle: the pygmies with the herons. And only transferred to the mind in a different way does the same battle take place, which first takes place between the pygmies, as representatives of the earth or the earth fire, and the herons, as representatives of the water, the water air, then in the mind between Anaxagoras, the philosopher of fire, and Thales, the philosopher of water.

The parallelism is so beautiful that in this second stage of his presentation, Goethe correctly illustrates how, now that the homunculus has not dared to descend into the subconscious element to become a homo, he now flees into the conscious. And among those who still want to preserve in consciousness much of what one would experience in the subconscious, among the philosophers, the homunculus wants to learn how to become homo. It turns out that because philosophers draw their impulses from different areas of experience, they are not in agreement and even engage in such struggles, such battles of ideas, which are based on the struggles in the cosmos! As between the Pygmies and the Herons, so between the concepts of Anaxagoras and the concepts of Thales: the same struggle!

What does Goethe do? He first describes what is happening down there in the subconscious world, then brings it up into the world of consciousness, but ties in with the reminiscences that come up from the subconscious, which are particularly clear in Anaxagoras, which is why Anaxagoras is also considered a fantasist by Thales.

But we are already dealing with a second layer of human life, the layer that waking consciousness also has, even if some people have it in a more spiritual way, or more or less — as I have described — waking-sleeping, sleeping-waking. One can also have it awake-asleep and asleep-awake. That is the second layer of experience that is described here. And the following is very significant. Goethe lets us experience what is experienced there in a different form than he lets us experience the first. He simply lets the sirens begin. They start the scene. One is in the world of sleep, in the world of dreams; one does not need to do anything to be in this world, so Goethe simply presents it. But now one awakens from this world. By awakening, one enters ordinary consciousness. For a certain reason, Goethe has combined Lucifer and Ahriman into one Mephistopheles. He shows this awakening in the experiences of Mephistopheles. And it is interesting in that Mephistopheles, in a sense, represents not yet being fully awake; he is still below, experiencing it through the Greek Lamia; then he ascends into conscious life. But if it is to ascend into fully conscious life, if the homunculus Mephisto is really to enter into fully conscious life, into intellectual life, then the human being must, as it were, shake himself awake, he must compose himself, he must awaken from the dream into reality. Therefore, in this awakening, Mephisto encounters the Oreade, the Oreas, who very clearly indicates in Goethe's language that this is what I have said.

Come up here! My mountain is old,
Stands in its original form.
Admire rugged rocky paths,
The last branches of Pindus.
I stood there unshaken,
When Pompey fled above me.
Next to it, the image of delusion
Disappears with the crowing of the cock.

The Oreas, by shaking the sleeping consciousness into waking consciousness, draws attention, as it were, to the fact that one now comes over from the world, which is otherwise called the world of delusion, even though it is a reality in the way I have described, into the world where the mountains are fixed, where not everything surges up and down. And Goethe does not shy away from pointing out very clearly how one awakens from this world. Just think how often one awakens from the world from which dreams spring forth at the crowing of the cock. Goethe makes this very clear. Now we ascend into the waking world, where philosophers have their say, where through the speeches of philosophers the homunculus is to become a homo.

There would be much to say about this — perhaps tomorrow. I would just like to point out that, after this world has been completed, Goethe also refers to a third one. And just as it was the mountain nymph Oreas who pointed to this world of waking, of daytime waking, so it is again a nymph, that is, an elemental being, who strongly stirs us up: the tree nymph, the dryad, who leads Mephistopheles to a third layer of consciousness, a third layer in which reason and clairvoyance are united: the subconscious, the conscious, and the superconscious. Goethe also points in a certain way to the world to which we want to draw attention through spiritual science. Only he points to it in a very peculiar way. The beings that Mephistopheles first encounters are the Phorcys.

From our descriptions the day after tomorrow, you will see what pleasant, beautiful beings these Phorcys are, and in particular, what a powerful, heart-striking language these Phorcys speak! And yet, anyone who knows what experiences human beings must face when they consciously enter the spiritual world will understand Mephistopheles' encounter with the Phorcys.

But I will talk more about this tomorrow, because the matter cannot be settled in a single discussion.