Spiritual Scientific Notes on Goethe's Faust, Vol. II
GA 273
19 January 1919, Dornach
12. In Place of Homunculism and Mephistophelianism
In the two lectures following the performance of the later Walpurgis-night scene, from the second part of Faust, I hoped to evoke the feeling that, in the whole of his inner life, Goethe was in reality on the path to the supersensible world. I wanted you to feel that he succeeded, as perhaps no other artist, no other poet, has ever done, in developing an artistic creation out of this spiritual life, so that in this creation neither the art not the wisdom falls short and, in its own place, each of the spheres—of striving and wisdom—achieves harmonic expression.
I should not like you to think that in what has been said I have been wishing to give an interpretation of this poem; that was not at all my aim. For in this sphere I consider interpretation to be utterly useless. All that was attempted in these studies was to create the possibility for you to absorb and enjoy a poem, a work of art, in the same element in which it was created. Such studies should simply teach the language, as it were, the spiritual language, in which such a work is written, and should not expound or interpret, for as a rule that too often results in misconstruction and misinterpretation.
Now, if we keep to this mood in the matter, the following may perhaps be of use. You see, there are two fundamental feelings at the base of all striving for knowledge, of every kind of striving towards spiritual experience. One of these feelings comes from man having to think, having to form ideas, as he lives his life between birth and death in the physical body. I think you will agree that we should not be complete human beings, were we not to think about things and about ourselves. Then, too, if we wish to make our lives fuller in the physical body, between birth and death, we have not only to think but also to will. And feeling lies midway between thinking and willing; sometimes it partakes more of thinking and forming ideas, sometimes more of willing. Hence, for the purpose of our proposed study, we may ignore feeling, and consider the one pole of forming ideas, thinking, and then turn to the other pole of human activity, the willing. Man is a thinking and a willing being. But there are special features about this thinking and willing. The trivially-minded, average man looks upon what can be attained as the attainment of a goal if, on the one hand, he thinks as clearly and forcibly as possible, in his own opinion, at least, and if he wills in accordance with his needs. What distinguishes the man of learning who is fundamentally honest, is that he finally admits, when he tries to advance on the path of thinking, that with his thinking in the physical body he still only goes a certain distance towards his goal.
With this thinking, my dear friends, it is exactly as if a man were striving towards a goal; he cannot see it though knowing in what direction it lies. He wants to hasten towards it, but although he knows where the goal must be, it is wrapped in darkness. He imagines it will only become clear when he reaches it. And while he is feeling that he is still nowhere near the goal but a considerable distance from it, some being seems to seize from from behind, and to stop him going farther. And he says: Thinking, the forming of ideas, drives me in a certain direction, then I am stopped; were I to pursue the path of thought in this direction, I should never be able to reach the goal thinking itself has indicated.—Thus he comes to one of the boundaries to which he is by nature subject in the life between birth and death. And it may be said that whoever has never experienced the suffering and blows of fate arising from the goal of thought, has certainly no very deep cognitional life. If, by the inner constitution of his soul, a man can fancy he is able to reach the goal of thought by thinking, he is doomed to superficiality. We can be preserved from superficiality only when by trying to think as deeply and clearly as possible, we begin to feel harassed by the hindrances to thought. This feeling of being frustrated in thought is a profound human experience, without which we cannot pass beyond superficiality into a really deep comprehension of life.
And this is not the only boundary set to the human being's full experience between birth and death; the other is encountered where the will is unfolded. This is the sphere in which there germinate men's desires arising out of the life of instinct. Man is driven to willing in the crudest sense through hunger and thirst and other instincts; and there is then a rising scale from instinct up to the purest spiritual ideals. In all these impulses, from grossest instincts up to spiritual ideals, willing is deployed. But now, if we are to try and establish ourselves in life with our will that passes over into action, we again come to a boundary. Fundamentally, Goethe's aim in Faust was to establish Faust in life by means of his will, so that he should be able to experience all that makes life happy, all that shatters life, all that gives freedom and all that is sinful. And if we try to take our stand in life with the will that passes over into action, the will translated into deed, we again find ourselves up against a boundary. But now it is a different feeling that arises. It is not so much that in our thinking we are stopped and hindered from reaching our goal, but rather that, while we are willing, we are seized upon, and our willing goes on no longer in accordance with our own wishes. In the act of willing one is snatched away. Someone else arises in our willing, who carries us off.
This then is the second feeling which, when experienced by man, leads him out of superficiality into a profound conception of life. Self-satisfied philistines, it is true, are of the opinion that a man reaches his goal by sufficiently developing his thinking and willing. But it is on these paths of complacency and self-satisfaction that the superficiality of life lies. There does not lie here what makes it possible in life's testing, after suitable probation and the crossing of an abyss, to enter another world, a world that cannot be lived through with the consciousness developed in the life between birth and death. A man is tested when, with suitable intensity, he realises in his soul the two boundary lines already referred to. Men must understand precisely from what Goethe has given, that it is not merely the bliss of endeavor—often imaginary and based on pure illusion—that can be experienced, but rather what leads a man to his goal over all hindrances, disappointments and disillusions. And whoever strives to avoid disillusionment, and refuses to transform, to metamorphose, the whole human being in certain moments of life, cannot press forward to knowledge of man, to the understanding of man.
We need not realise, my dear friends, that in this connection the Christ-permeated conception of the world and of life must, in the near future, experience a significant change. Hitherto, Christianity through the way it has developed in the different religious denominations is, usually, only at its initial stage. If we want to describe this development, we might say that it has created the feeling in man that Christ did once exist. And even this feeling that Christ once existed has been lost again in the materialistic research of the nineteenth century. What Christ brought into the world, Christ's connection with the striving of the human soul, into all this life will first pour in future through the researches of Spiritual Science, and through a spiritual kind of cosmic feeling—a supersensible experience. This will be seen if, to begin with, in this intellectual age, the majority of mankind can only have the experience in Imaginations, in imaginative pictures.
But these two basic feelings of which I have just spoken as arising from the two boundaries of self-knowledge and self-comprehension, these two feelings must find a crossing-point from a passive to an active Christianity. Just think how, for many people in the past, Christ has been nothing more than a helper in straits where a man is unable to help himself. Think of the strange way in which the Roman Catholic Church took on, at a certain time, the forgiveness of sins; anyone might sin as much as he liked, provided he repented and did due penance afterwards, he was forgiven. In short, Christ was there to help in time of need, to make good what men as a whole had no intention themselves of making good. And then look at the other, more Protestant error, where a man remains passive too, arranging his worldly life, his worldly activities, to suit himself, and then perhaps expecting that merely by belief in Christ, by a passive feeling of being united with Christ, he will be saved. This twofold passive relation to Christ belongs, and must belong, to the past. And what is to take its place must be a relation to Christ that is an active force, a going to meet Him, so that Christ does not do for a man what the man does not want to do, but gives him power through His being to do it himself. An active Christianity—or rather a Christianity that comes to activity—is what must take the place of passive Christianity in which actually (forgive the trivial mode of expression) a man does what he pleases on the physical plane, making God into a kindly friend who pardons everything if only man turns to Him at the right moment.
This my dear friends, will at the same time mark the dividing line between the age which must now belong to the past, the age that has led to so terrible a human catastrophe, and the age that must come. It is only when this coming age has passed over from a Christianity that is passive to one that is active, that it will be qualified to heal those evils that have already shown themselves and will continue to do so increasingly so long as the principles of the past prevail. These evils are rooted deep in human hearts and souls; and they must be healed if earth-evolution is to proceed.
The two basic feelings of the boundaries to thinking and willing may also be described by saying: The one boundary makes it clear that a man cannot arrive at knowledge of his own nature. As human beings we are so constituted that we cannot, on the one hand, arrive at our own human nature, cannot with our thinking reach ourselves. In willing we do this, for willing actually proceeds form ourselves; in willing we lose ourselves; but here another seizes us—another cosmic being is formed simply according to the principle of this duality. He is a dual being, not a monad, but a dual being. The one member of this twofold being cannot reach itself, the other loses itself.
Hence man is never correctly represented when shown as a mere monad, but only when an effort is made to show him as standing midway between being unable to reach himself, and losing himself. And when it is possible for men to feel both at the same time with all intensity, then he feels himself rightly as a man on earth. When he feels a kind of oscillation between the two, then he feels himself man on earth. In spite of this oscillation, what must be arrived at is repose of being. This repose of being is attained in the physical sphere by the pendulum, the balance; in the spiritual, moral sphere, man must be able to attain the condition of repose reached by the balance and the pendulum. He must not aspire to a position of absolute rest; that would make him indolent and corrupt. He should strive for the state of repose midway between the beats, midway between the not-reaching and the losing himself.
In order to develop these feelings correctly it is essential that other feelings be added concerning life and reality.
You know, my dear friends, I have often called your attention to the one-sided way in which evolution is understood today. Think how the whole of evolution is now conceived as if what comes after were always the result of what went before. Actually, the man of today thinks of the successive stages of evolution almost like a set of cardboard boxes fitting into one another. And then, as for development, one box represents the human being between birth and the seventh year; then the second is taken out, and that is the human being from seven to fourteen; the third from fourteen to one-and twenty, and so on—one always coming out of another. To modern man the most acceptable idea is evolutionary advance in a straight line.
This is really at the bottom of all the grotesque notions that are learnt at school nowadays, notions which in future will be regarded as scientific lunacy of the enlighted period of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To imagine thus that there was once a nebular condition (the Kant-Laplace theory) and that then, one after another, cardboard box out of cardboard box, the successive stages always proceeded out of the earlier—this is an abnormal idea of present-day science. For things are not like that. Just think how evolution in the individual man between birth and death appears, to even a moderately unprejudiced observation! The actual limit of the first period in life is the change of teeth, as we know—the cutting of the second teeth. I have often drawn attention to this. How what is this second cutting of teeth at about the seventh year, at the close of the first life-period? It is a consolidation, a hardening, of the human being, when a hardening process takes place in men. It is like a drawing together of all the life-forces, so that eventually the densest, most mineralised part, the second teeth, can appear. It is a real concentration and densification of all the forces of life.
The second period in life ends at puberty. And the case here is exactly the reverse. Here there is no concentration of life-forces but, on the contrary, a rarefication of them all, a dispersal, an overflowing. An opposite condition pulses in the organism. And then again, only in a more refined way, in the twenty-first year when the third life-period ends, consolidation takes place in man, the forces of life are once more drawn together. With the twenty-eighth year there is again expansion. The twenty-first year has more to do with the placing of what is within man,the twenty-eighth more with his attitude to the whole wide universe. Approximately at the thirty-fifth year there is again a kind of contraction. That is the middle life—the thirty-fifth year.
Thus, evolution does not go in a straight line but, rather, in waves: contraction, hardening; softening, expansion. That is essentially the life of man as a whole. By being born here in the physical world, we contract into our individual skins; while we are living our life between death and a new birth, we are increasingly expanding.
What follows from all this, my dear friends? It follows that the idea of evolution going in a straight line is of no help at all; it leads mankind astray, and we must reject it. All evolution proceeds rhythmically; all evolution goes with the rise and fall of waves—expanding, contracting.
Contraction, expansion. Goethe sensed this in its elementary stages. Read his Metamorphosis of Plants; read his poem The Metamorphosis of Plants, and you will see how he follows the particular formation from foliage leaf to foliage leaf, then to petal, stamen, on to pistil; how he describes it as a continuous expansion, contraction, not only in external forms, the saps also expand with their forces and again contract—expand, concentrate; expand, concentrate. When in the eighties of the last century I wrote my first introduction to Goethe's scientific works, I tried to reconstruct his archetypal plant, tried to bring into a picture this expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction—on and on right up to the blossom. No one can really understand life who does not picture it in rhythm, as a progressive rhythmic process. It must be repeatedly emphasised that to imagine evolution as proceeding in a straight line does not help us to a true understanding of life.
The same applies to the understanding of man's historical life. In the most recent number of the periodical Das Reich (October 1918) where I dealt with Lucifer and Ahriman in life, I pointed out how luciferic and ahrimanic periods alternate rhythmically in historic evolution. Life never proceeds in a straight line; it goes in waves. But while this is so, it is associated also with an external change. And only by looking clear-sightedly into these relations can we arrive at a deeper comprehension of life. Those who think of evolution as proceeding in a straight line, say: First there existed the most undeveloped animals, then more and more perfect ones, up to the apes, and out of these developed man.—If we apply this to what is moral—I have often called your attention to this—if we extend this further, it follows that the genuine, thorough-going Darwinian says: We already see in the human kindliness, and so on. This again is a worthless idea, for it takes no account at all of the rhythm of life. According to this idea evolution goes on in a straight line, one cardboard box coming out of another. In reality the matter is like this. Imagine the most highly developed animals with their proclivities further developed in a straight line—this way you do not arrive at man, you would never come to man. But the more highly developed animals would evolve those very qualities you find attractive in the animal kingdom, in a most unattractive way. What you admire in animals as companionableness, as incipient good-will and social behaviour, when further developed turns to its rhythmic opposite—to the principle of evil. Mad man developed according to Haeckel's idea, then, my dear friends, there would have evolved from the anthropoid apes a human society inevitably destined to develop the war of all against all. For in all these aptitudes, good as they may be in animals, there lies the further evolutionary impulse to clash together in violent and most bloody conflict. That is rhythm, a wave-like rise and fall, and no one finds what is hidden in nature who does not see the possibilities of evolution in rhythm. To look only on the outside of events can never teach us to realise what in reality is there. Man was able to develop only because, in the higher animals, their evolutionary possibilities did not come to anything, for these were met by another wave of cosmic becoming which subdued the tendency to evil, in a way overcame it, by what men were meant to be in the very beginning. So that we have to picture it thus: The animal kingdom rises to a certain height; then comes the other wave to meet it, and this deadens the evil development.
My dear friends, reincarnation can also be regarded from the moral point of view. What would man have become had he just been born, over and over again on the physical plane, and being thus born physically on the physical plane, he had not been met by all that is constantly being taken up into the spiritual world and again sent down; were man not thus ensouled after birth then he would live always at war on earth. They would only with to live in conflict and would develop the most terrible fighting instincts. These fighting instincts rest on the foundation of the human soul; they are rooted in the human organism. But they are paralysed, if I may so express it, by what comes from above out of the supersensible, from those human beings who are constantly taken up into the spiritual world. This is expressed also in the outward form, my dear friends. It is altogether grotesque for those with inner sight when the human head is represented as having gradually evolved from the animal head. It is indeed complete nonsense. The truth is that, were the animal head to develop further, a fearsome monster would emerge in what, in the present incarnation, you evolve out of the lower part of your body. Were that alone to form the head, were it to form the head out of itself, the result would be a real abortion of a head—a horrible animal-monster. For that is where the possibility of such a monstrosity lies. Only because the spiritual comes from above and, as it were, washes up against it, is the human head able to arise. It springs from the relationship of two forces, the one pressing upward from the body, the other coming to meet it from the cosmos. This human head is constructed in a state of equilibrium; and it is because of its equilibrium that we are not able to deal freely with what we bring with us from the spiritual world. We slip into our physical head and cannot there clearly express what we actually are, when we hurry into existence through birth. If we could think as we did before birth, we should not think a Homunculus, we should think a man, a Homo.
You remember in my Christmas lecture at Basle (December 22, 1918) not long ago, I mentioned in passing that, before his birth, Nikolaus von der Flüe saw scenes that he lived through as a man after his birth. But when a man is born, and does not overcome being asleep in his cognition—that is, when he cannot develop waking existence outside his body, but thinks only with his body—then he never thinks a man but only a Homunculus. A man never reaches the real man by seeking to enter into himself through the head. It is really a fact thgat he seeks to enter in but is held back; somewhere in the middle of man there exists what his is unable to reach. This is within man himself, yet he remains Homunculus and does not come to Homo.
Actually were we in possession of every technical resource, we should put into the phial that represents Homunculus on the stage, only a horrible little monstrosity, small, and therefore not unattractive; and this is really what would come into being were it left to the human body alone, out of itself, to produce something. There would come forth a sort of animal that nevertheless would be no animal but a human abortion; something on the way to becoming human yet not quite succeeding. Neither do we succeed if we do not make the approach by way of this path to becoming men, this path that does not reach man. We do not then succeed for we do not thus enter inside ourselves.
And again, if man grasps himself through his will, he is immediately seized upon by another being. Then he loses himself, then all kinds of strange motives and impulses surge up into his willing. Only when a man endeavours to bring the inner forces into equilibrium does he succeed in becoming complete man.
Now, my dear friends, with what I have said compare three different passages in the second part of Goethe's Faust that you can now have the opportunity on witnessing. Think of the sublime moment when Faust appears before Manto. Goethe is trying here to shed over the whole incident the inner repose of the human soul called forth by experiencing equilibrium. Faust would like, on the one hand, to avoid the sentimentality of the abstract mystic, and one of his last speeches is “O, could I from my path all magic ban”. He did not want external magic, he wanted to find the inner path to the supersensible world. He is near it, and then again far from it. As I explained yesterday Goethe is perfectly honest when Faust is standing before Manto. But Faust, my dear friends, does not hold to this abstract repose; he is tossed from pillar to post. Hence from the one side he is continually thrown to the opposite, where man loses himself through the will. Compare all this with what happens to Faust in the scenes where he is developing his life with Mephistopheles. There you have always the Faust of will, who, however is continually losing himself by his impulses being seized by Mephistopheles. This is where a man goes astray in his willing, where he will lose himself; here you have all the dangers that threaten man's moral impulses. And this is expressed with tremendous depth in Goethe's Faust.
Then take the moment when Mephistopheles joins the Phorkyads, when he himself takes on the form of a Phorkyad, and in all his ugliness goes as far as admitting it. Previously he was lying, but when the Phorkyads surround him he is obliged to admit his ugliness. Read the speech of the Phorkyads again; they too acknowledge their ugliness, and are in a certain way honest in their ugliness. In this moment you have a contrast to that sacred and sublime moment when Faust stands before Manto. What makes us lose ourselves in motives of will is clearly seen when Mephistopheles appears for the last time in the Classical Walpurgis-Night. Faust appears for the last time visibly, in the external drama, precisely in this scene with Manto—Mephistopheles in the scene with the Phorkyads. Goethe wished to indicate from the depths of his profound experience that, fundamentally, what makes us lose ourselves in the motives of will can only be set right if we not merely abhor it morally, but also experience it as something offending our taste. This was at the root of Schiller's feeling too, when he placed what is moral in such close connection with the aesthetic in his Aesthetic Letters.
This is just what is so distressing, my dear friends, that in the recent development of mankind culture has been brought to such a high pitch as, for instance, we see in Schiller's Aesthetic Letters, and this has all been forgotten. Imagine how Schiller believed that in these letters, written in the first place to the Duke of Augustonburg, he had brought about a deed of political significance. Whoever grasps the following two facts in their true depth learns much concerning the evolution of mankind. First he learns that Schiller's Aesthetic Letters were the outcome of his conception of Goethe's urge towards becoming; and, secondly, that this could be forgotten, that this forgetting has largely contributed to the present human catastrophe. Those who keep these two facts before them indeed learn much about the evolution of humanity.
And, from the point of view of drama, how great is the moment when in the terrible scene where Mephistopheles is among the Phorkyads we are shown how what is morally impermissible lives in man like a feeling that is aesthetically offensive. There, shown in all its atrocity, is the impulse, the essential impulse, that drives man to lose himself in the pole of will. Should a man fail to recognise this it will prove his ruin; only by realising it is one freed from it. You will find this expressed in the last scene of my first Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. There it is shown how only knowledge, a clear conception of who it is who tempts and seduces us, can save us from being led astray. It is therefore essential in the age of the consciousness-soul now entered that, in order to overcome temptation, we should strive in the right way to come to know the tempter, not allowing ourselves to sink down into a merely external knowledge of nature and a merely abstract mysticism.
In short, my dear friends, abstract mysticism, the ‘easy understanding of the divine within’, from which nothing results but a terrible egotistical abstraction—this abstract mysticism is just as bad as materialism.
As I said, take three moments in Goethe's Faust. Take purely artistically what you can feel as Faust stands before Manto; what you feel when Mephistopheles becomes a Phorkyad among the Phorkyads. And take the third moment when Homunculus crashes against Galatea's shell-chariot—feel what this Homunculus is. We come from the spiritual world seeking through conception and birth for physical existence. In this physical existence we meet with what, out of this physical existence, is given us as our physical body. Every evening we go back into the world that we leave at birth; every morning we, as it were, repeat our birth when we plunge again into our physical body. Then we can feel how, coming in from without, we do not arrive at what man is; we meet only with Homunculus, the manikin, the human being in embryo, and we realise how difficult it is to come to the real man. We might arrive at the real man could we contrive to have a perfectly clear conception just before waking, when all the evolutionary possibilities of the night are exhausted. This clear conception, my dear friends, would be a world-conception, it would be such that we should no longer feel ourselves hemmed in by any boundary, but feel as if poured out over the whole universe, over all cosmic light, all cosmic sound, all cosmic life, and in front of us a kind of abyss. One the far side of this would be a continuation of what we were feeling before we met the abyss on waking—namely, warmth. Warmth flows out over the abyss. Now, however, we cross the abyss by waking, into air, water and earth of which our organism is composed. Certainly we are approaching man, and by letting Homunculus fructify in the spiritual world, we have prepared ourselves to understand man. But in the ordinary course of life we do not do what I have just mentioned. The living conception we develop when sleep should have had its effect upon us before we wake, would have to be brought with us into waking life. This conception would be an experiencing ourselves in light, in cosmic sound, in cosmic life, a meeting with the beings of the higher hierarchies, just as here the physical body comes into connection with the mineral, vegetable and animal kingdoms. This conception, developed concisely just before waking when sleep has done its work upon us, we should have to bring deep down into our physical body; then we should be able to understand what this human body is. But alas “the Gods will not suffer it”. We plunge down; it flashes, flames up, and we hardly notice it. Instead of looking into ourselves, we hear with our external ears; instead of feeling ourselves within our skin, we feel what is outside with our sense of touch. If we did not sink down into what we are able to reach only by the physical eye, the physical ear, through physical sound and physical touch, Homunculus would receive new life and become man, but against the resistance of the elements he is dashed to pieces. The light of the eye flames up instead of cosmic light, we begin to hear physical sound in the ear instead of cosmic sound, the life of the body is aroused instead of cosmic life—Homunculus is shattered. If we experience this consciously, we experience the end of the Classical Walpurgis-night. Thus, this end scene is taken from actual, true life.
These things are not there merely to be spoken of on Sunday afternoons in the Anthroposophical Society. They are there as truth, to become gradually known to mankind, so that as impulses they may with their being penetrate what must be accepted in the future evolution of man, if he is to advance to what can save and not destroy. For men will really find the correct connection with reality only if they adopt new concepts and from now onwards they begin to see what has always been extolled as the great achievement of the nineteenth century is at an end.
You see, my dear friends, it is not surprising that, from a certain point of view, this achievement of the nineteenth century, that continued into the twentieth, should be felt to be perfect. It is not to be wondered at all. Is it not true that before the tree becomes bare in autumn, it is in its fruiting in its most perfect stage of development. This natural science of the nineteenth century, that still haunts the twentieth, al these technical perfections that have reached a certain height, are the tree before it yields its fruit. All from which it has grown has to wither, and it is not enough that the tree should go on growing, a fresh seed must be sown in the field of human culture, a new tree must be planted. It does not suffice to think we understand the evolution of animals, to think of them as having advanced to the stage of man. It is not enough that frequently some spirit arises, who first writs articles of genius about animals, and later, to follow these, a book about the origin of man. Rather is it essential that men should discard the idea of a straight line in evolution, that they should learn to understand the rhythm of life, flowing like the waves of the sea, that they should learn how, in the inner being of man, the way does not go straight on, but across two boundaries. At the one boundary we feel almost suffocated, for someone seizes us and will not allow us to go where our thinking would take us. On the other side we feel as if the powers of Mephistopheles were dragging us to destruction. We must find the balance between what belongs to Homunculus and what belongs to Mephistopheles, between not being able to reach ourselves in Homunculus, and grasping the self only to lose it in Mephistopheles. The understanding of this equilibrium is what modern man must gain. And Goethe, foreseeing this in feeling, lived himself into this understanding when with absolute honesty he tried in his Faust to speak as he did of the riddle of humanity.
Mankind must strive to grow out of what today is the typical point of view of the crowd. Nothing is more resented at present than this striving, and nothing is more injurious to mankind than this hostility against any effort to rise above the commonplace. On the other hand, as long as this resistance is not definitely opposed by those who recognise the necessity of penetrating into the supersensible, there can be no sure human evolution. At the end of the nineteenth century Hamerling, in his Homunculus sought to make what we might call a last appeal to mankind out of the past, by presenting all that is decadent in modern humanity as Homunculism.
We might picture this to ourselves, my dear friends; suppose someone were now to read this Homunculus of Hamerling's which appeared at the end of the eighties of the nineteenth century. I have given many lectures about it, even before the war I actually spoke of it, not without a certain significance. Let us suppose then that someone reads Hamerling's Homunculus and lets work upon him what Hamerling imagines as the evolutionary progress of his Homunculus. He thought it out at that time, when men had already broken away from Goethe and all that he gave, and wished to hear no more of it. Hamerling represented the evolution of his Homunculus, how he was completely under the sway of materialistic thinking, how he lived in a world where people did not enrich themselves with spiritual treasure but became millionaires instead. Homunculus was a millionaire. He pictured the world where men treat even spiritual matters with frivolity, the world in which journalism—with respect be it mentioned—that was already developing, has since sunk yet deeper into the slough. We assume then that someone reads this Homunculus, and he might say: Why, yes, this Hamerling who died in 1889, had, when he wrote his Homunculus, with his physical eyes actually only seen mankind as it then was, hurrying on its chosen path. He might continue: Had people then taken seriously what Hamerling emphasises in his Homunculus, had they let it work upon them a little more deeply and not just as a literary production, but as something to be taken in earnest, then indeed they would not have been surprised to learn that, because of men being as they then were, our present world-catastrophe had of necessity to arise. This is what anyone reading Homunculus today might say to himself. What is there in the development of this world-catastrophe to astonish us, when a writer in the eighties of the last century was able to represent the man Homunculus in this way? But, underlying this representation of man, of Homunculus, is at the same time the appeal not to stop short at the life that can give us only Homunculism, but to cross the abyss where Spiritual Science speaks of the supersensible knowledge that alone can change Homunculus into Homo. And so it might be said: Mankind is placed in the Homunculism which, in the scent we are today presenting, finds itself in a world the man of today is not very eager to enter—in a world leading to the region of the Phorkyads, between Homunculism and Mephistophelianism. Goethe divined this and represented it in his Faust; he also divined that a path must be made that will avoid the crags of fantastic, abstract mysticism, as it avoids the other crags of a phantom-like conception of nature, remote from all reality,a path that leads to supersensible knowledge where fresh social impulses will be found.
This is a very deep layer of consciousness. Let us penetrate it, let us permeate our feeling with it, let us learn to understand the language of this sphere of consciousness, coming as it does from the region where we feel: Through thinking, a man cannot reach himself; through willing he loses himself. To be unable to reach oneself in thinking is Homunculism; losing oneself in willing is Mephistophelianism. And when we feel this then we enter into such profound scenes with a language that makes intelligible what forms the conclusion of the Classical Walpurgis-night. Ultimately, everyone views the universe according to how the forces he has received enable him to represent it. But the present task of mankind consists in raising those forces, so that much of the universe may be seen that, to man's hurt, has not been seen during the last decades.
Thus, going deeply into such a profound scene as the one we are now producing, is a way for men to advance in the direction which mankind at this time should take. What lies in true Goetheanism is what mankind at this time should take. What lies in true Goetheanism is what mankind must seek. This is not the Goetheanism of the professors, not the Goetheanism of the Goethe Society at the head of which is not a Goethe enthusiast at all but a former finance minister bearing the significant name of Kreuzwendedich; neither is it all that men thought they must make out of Goethe's teaching at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. What must be sought will become something good and a good impulse towards man's advancement in the direction he must go—if in the coming age he is to find salvation and not destruction.
Statt Homunkulismus und Mephistophelismus: Goetheanismus
Durch die beiden Betrachtungen, die ich anknüpfte an die Darstellung der letzten Walpurgisnachtszene aus dem zweiten Teil von Goethes «Faust», wollte ich die Empfindung hervorrufen, daß Goethe in der Tat mit seinem ganzen inneren Leben auf dem Wege war, wenn man so sagen darf, in die übersinnliche Welt hinein, und daß es ihm, wie vielleicht keinem andern Künstler, keinem andern Dichter, gelungen ist, künstlerisches Schaffen aus solchem spirituellem Leben heraus wirklich zu entfalten, so daß weder die Kunst noch die Weisheit in diesem Goetheschen Schaffen zu kurz kommt, sondern jedes dieser WeisheitsStrebensgebiete an seinem Platze voll zum harmonischen Ausdruck kommt.
Ich möchte nicht den Glauben erwecken, als ob ich mit alldem, was ich gesagt habe, eine Interpretation dieser Dichtung hätte geben wollen; das will ich überhaupt nie. Denn Interpretationen halte ich für das Unnützlichste, was es überhaupt auf diesem Gebiete geben kann. Alles das, was versucht wird durch solche Betrachtungen, wie die beiden vorangegangenen, zu geben, das ist, die Möglichkeiten hervorzurufen, in demselben Elemente eine Dichtung oder ein Kunstwerk zu genießen, aufzunehmen, in dem es geschaffen ist. Gewissermaßen soll eine solche Betrachtung nur lehren die Sprache, die Geistessprache, in der so etwas geschrieben ist, nicht irgend etwas auslegen oder erklären, was ohnedies meistens nur ein Unterlegen und ein Mißerklären ist.
Wenn man diese Stimmung der Sache festhält, dann darf man auch vielleicht das Folgende geltend machen. Allem Erkenntnisstreben, allem nach geistigem Erleben überhaupt gerichteten Menschheitsstreben liegen zwei Grundempfindungen unter. Die eine Grundempfindung kommt daher, daß der Mensch, indem er sein Leben zwischen Geburt und Tod im physischen Leibe verbringt, denken muß, vorstellen muß. Nicht wahr, wir wären nicht voll Mensch, wenn wir nicht über die Dinge und über uns selbst denken würden. Dann aber müssen wir, wenn wir unser Leben vollenden wollen zwischen Geburt und Tod im physischen Leibe, nicht nur denken, sondern auch wollen. Das Fühlen liegt eigentlich zwischen dem Denken und Wollen in der Mitte darinnen. Es ist manchmal mehr ein Denken und Vorstellen, manchmal mehr ein Wollen. Daher kann man, wenn man diese Betrachtung, auf die wir jetzt hinsteuern wollen, anstellen will, von dem Fühlen absehen, nach dem einen Pol des Denkens und Vorstellens hinblicken und auch nach dem andern Pol der menschlichen Betätigung, nach dem Wollen. Der Mensch ist einmal ein denkendes und ein wollendes Wesen. Aber mit diesem Denken und Wollen hat es doch noch seine ganz besondere Bewandtnis. Der Trivialmensch, der gewöhnliche Durchschnittsbürger, betrachtet schon dasjenige, zu dem man kommen kann, als etwas Erreichtes, wenn er auf der einen Seite — wenigstens nach seinen Vorstellungen — möglichst klar denkt, möglichst nach seinen Vorstellungen eindringlich denkt, und wenn er nach seinem Bedürfnisse entsprechend will. Dadurch unterscheidet sich aber gerade der wirklich bis ins tiefe Innerste seiner eigenen Wesenheit hinein ehrliche Erkenntnismensch, daß er sich, wenn er versucht, auf dem Wege des Denkens weiterzugehen, zuletzt gesteht: Ach, mit diesem Denken innerhalb des physischen Leibes komme ich doch nur bis zu einem gewissen Abstand an dasjenige heran, nach dem ich eigentlich hinstrebe.
Es ist mit dem Denken gerade so, wie wenn man nach einem Ziele hinstreben würde; die Richtung hat man, aber keine Anschauung vom Ziel. Man will bis zum Ziele hineilen, man weiß, in welcher Richtung das Ziel etwa liegen kann, aber es ist noch alles dunkel um das Ziel herum. Man hat genau die Vorstellung, hell kann es erst werden, wenn man hinkommt. Aber indem man noch lange nicht am Ziele sich fühlt, sondern in einem gehörigen Abstande vom Ziele ist, packt einen gewissermaßen ein Wesen dahinten und hält einen auf, läßt einen nicht weiter. Und man fühlt: Das Denken, das Vorstellen treiben einen in einer gewissen Richtung, aber man wird aufgehalten. Wenn man nur auf diesem Wege des Denkens bleiben will in dieser Richtung, kann man nicht an das Ziel gelangen, das einem das Denken selber, das Vorstellen, eigentlich vorzeichnet. -— So gelangt der Mensch an die eine Grenze, die seinem Wesen gesetzt ist für das Leben zwischen Geburt und Tod. Und man kann sagen: Eigentlich hat derjenige kein tieferes Erkenntnisleben, der nicht alle Schmerzen und Schicksalsrückschläge empfunden hat, die sich aus einem solchen Zurückgehaltenwerden gegenüber dem Denkziele auf dem Denk wege selbst ergeben. — Man ist gewissermaßen verurteilt, oberflächlich zu bleiben, wenn man durch seine innere Seelenkonstitution die Meinung haben kann, man könne durch das Denken zum Ziele dieses Denkens selber kommen. Man bewahrt sich bloß vor der Oberflächlichkeit, wenn man gerade, indem man versucht, mit aller Klarheit, mit aller Eindringlichkeit zu denken, durch diese Klarheit, durch diese Eindringlichkeit des Denkens dahin gebracht wird, daß man fühlt, wie einem der Denkhinderer im Nacken sitzt. Dieses Im-Nacken-sitzenFühlen des Hinderers, das ist ein tiefes menschliches Erlebnis, und ohne das geht es eigentlich nicht aus der Oberflächlichkeit in die Tiefe der Lebensauffassung hinein.
Aber nun ist dies nicht die einzige Grenze, die dem Ausleben des menschlichen Wesens zwischen Geburt und Tod gezogen ist, sondern die andere Grenze ist aufgerichtet da, wo das Wollen sich entfaltet. Wo das Wollen sich entfaltet, da keimen erstens auch die Begierden des Menschen, die aus dem Triebleben heraus kommen. Der Mensch wird zum Wollen getrieben durch Hunger und Durst im gröbsten Sinne, durch andere Triebe; und es ist dann eine ganze Skala von den Trieben hinauf bis zu den reinsten geistigen Idealen. In all dem, von den gröbsten Trieben bis hinauf zu dem reinsten geistigen Ideal entfaltet, liegen die Impulse des Wollens. Wenn man nun aber versucht, mit dem Wollen ins Leben sich hineinzustellen — das war im Grunde gerade Goethes Ziel in seinem «Faust», den Faust mit dem Wollen ins Leben hineinzustellen, damit er erfahren könne alles Lebenbeglückende, alles Lebenzerschmetternde, alles Befreiende und alles Sündhafte im Leben -, wenn man versucht, mit dem Wollen, das ins Tun übergeht, in die Tat sich übersetzt, in das Leben sich hineinzustellen, so kommt man wiederum an eine Grenze. Aber es ist jetzt eine andere Empfindung, die auftritt. Nicht so sehr, daß einen wie beim Denken einer im Nacken faßt und hält vor dem Ziele, sondern indem man will, faßt einen einer und setzt eigentlich immer in einer Weise, wie man es nicht selber haben will, das Wollen fort. Man wird sich gewissermaßen selbst entrissen im Wollen. Da tritt ein anderer auf im Wollen und reißt einen mit sich fort.
Das ist die Empfindung, die, wenn sie der Mensch hat, wiederum aus dem Oberflächlichen ins Tiefe einer Lebensauffassung hineinführt. Philiströse Sattlinge, satte Menschen sind allerdings der Meinung, daß man, wenn man das Denken nur weit genug ausbildet, das Wollen nur weit genug entwickelt, am Ziele ankommt. Aber in diesem satten SichFühlen auf erfüllbaren Wegen liegt des Lebens Oberflächlichkeit, liegt nicht das, was möglich macht in der Lebensprüfung — denn geprüft wird man, wenn man mit gehöriger Intensität die zwei angedeuteten Grenzen sich im Inneren der Seele ausmalt — nach gehöriger Prüfung, gewissermaßen über einen Abgrund hinübersetzend, in eine andere Welt einzutreten, die nicht mit dem Bewußtsein durchlebt werden kann, das sich im Leben zwischen Geburt und Tod entfaltet. Es muß die Menschheit schon einmal gerade aus dem Goetheanismus heraus begreifen, daß wahrhaftig nicht bloße Beseligung des Strebens, die man sich oftmals nur einredet, die oftmals nur von Illusionen getragen ist, erlebt werden kann, sondern daß dasjenige, was den Menschen zu seinem Ziele führt, über Hindernisse, über Enttäuschungen, über Desillusionierungen führt, und wer sich sträubt, Entillusionierungen zu erleben, und sich dadurch sträubt, den ganzen Menschen in gewissen Zeitmomenten des Lebens umzugestalten, zu metamorphosieren, der kann nicht zur Menschheitserkenntnis, nicht zur Menschheitserfassung vorwärtsdringen.
Man darf schon annehmen, daß in dieser Beziehung gerade die durchchristete Weltauffassung und Lebensanschauung gegen die nächste Zukunft hin einen bedeutsamen Umschwung erfahren muß. Das Christentum ist bisher durch die Entwickelung, die es in verschiedenen Konfessionen erlebt hat, eigentlich nur in seinem Anfangsstadium. Will man ausdrücken, was das Christentum bis jetzt ausgestaltet hat, so könnte man sagen, eigentlich nur die Empfindung in dem Menschen, daß ein Christus einmal da war. Und diese Empfindung ist eigentlich der materiellen Forschung im 19. Jahrhundert wieder verlorengegangen, daß ein Christus da war. Was der Christus in die Welt gebracht hat, wie der Christus im Zusammenhang steht mit dem menschlichen Seelenstreben, da hinein soll erst Licht kommen gegen die Zukunft hin durch geisteswissenschaftliche Untersuchungen und geistige Art der Weltempfindung, durch übersinnliches Erleben, wenn auch zunächst die Menschheit in diesem intellektualistischen Zeitalter dieses übersinnliche Erleben nur im Vorstellen, in den Bildern des Vorstellens wird in ihrer großen Masse haben können.
Aber diese zwei Grundempfindungen, die ich angedeutet habe, von den beiden Grenzen des menschlichen Selbsterkennens und Selbsterfassens, müssen den Übergang finden aus einem mehr passiven Christentum zu einem aktiven Christentum. Denken Sie nur einmal, bei wie vielen Menschen der Christus eigentlich nichts weiter war in der Vergangenheit als eine Art Helfer in der Not für dasjenige, was der Mensch nur ja nicht selber tun mag. Jene eigenrümliche Art, wie die römisch-katholische Kirche von einem bestimmten Zeitpunkte an die Sünden vergeben hat -— man konnte sündigen, was man wollte, wenn man dann nur aufrichtig Buße leistete, Reue hatte und so weiter, so war einem das vergeben. Schließlich, der Christus war da zum Helfen in der Not, zum Gutmachen desjenigen, was man selber gar nicht beabsichtigte in erheblichem Maße gutzumachen, von dieser Abirrung, wo man eigentlich auch passiv bleibt, das weltliche Leben, das weltliche Treiben für sich einrichtet, und dann womöglich nur dadurch, daß man an den Christus glaubt, daß man sich ganz in Passivität mit dem Christus verbunden fühlt, von dem Christus sich erlösen läßt — dieses zwiefache passive Verhalten zu dem Christus gehört und muß angehören der Vergangenheit. Und dasjenige, was an die Stelle treten muß, das muß sein ein Verhältnis zu dem Christus als zu einer aktiven Macht, ein Entgegengehen dem Christus so, daß er nicht für sich das tut, was man selber nicht gerne:tut, sondern so, daß er einem durch sein Dasein die Kraft gibt, selber etwas zu tun. Ein aktives, oder besser gesagt, ein zur Aktivität kommendes Christentum ist dasjenige, was an Stelle des Passivitäts-Christentums treten muß, wo man im Grunde genommen — nun, verzeihen Sie, daß ich es so trivial ausdrücke - selber auf dem physischen Plane tut, was man will, und dann Gott einen guten Mann sein läßt, der einem alles verzeiht, wenn man nur im rechten Momente zu ihm zurückkommt.
Das bezeichnet zu gleicher Zeit die Grenzscheide zwischen dem Zeitalter, das vergangen sein muß, das in eine furchtbare Menschheitskatastrophe hineingeführt hat, und dem, das da kommen muß und nur, wenn es ein Passivitäts-Christentum in ein Aktivitäts-Christentum überführt, geeignet sein kann, jede Schäden, die sich schon herausgestellt haben und die sich aus dem Vergangenheitsprinzip immer mehr herausstellen werden, zu heilen. Diese Schäden sitzen noch tief in den menschlichen Herzen und menschlichen Seelen. Und sie müssen geheilt werden, wenn die Erdenentwickelung weitergebracht werden soll.
Die beiden Grundempfindungen von den Grenzen im Denken und im Wollen kann man auch so bezeichnen, daß man sagt: Die eine Grenze macht einen aufmerksam darauf, wie man an sein eigenes Wesen nicht heran kann. — Ja, wir sind wirklich als Menschen so, daß wir auf der einen Seite an das eigene Menschenwesen nicht heran können, und wir kommen nicht bis zu uns selber mit unserem Denken. Im Wollen, da kommen wir bis zu uns selber, denn das Wollen geht wirklich von uns aus. Aber da erfaßt uns wiederum ein anderer, ein anderes Weltenwesen, da verlieren wir uns. Im Denken erreichen wir uns nicht, und im Wollen verlieren wir uns. Der Mensch ist einfach nach dem Prinzip dieses Dualismus als irdisches Wesen gestaltet, er ist ein duales Wesen, keine Monade, ein duales Wesen. Das eine Glied dieses dualistischen Wesens kann sich nicht erreichen, das andere Glied dieses dualistischen Wesens verliert sich.
Man stellt daher den Menschen niemals richtig dar, wenn man ihn ‚bloß als Monon darstellt, sondern nur, wenn man versucht, ihn darzustellen als einen Mittelzustand zwischen dem Sich-nicht-erreichenKönnen und dem Sich-Verlieren. Und wenn man womöglich beides gleichzeitig in aller Stärke fühlt, dann fühlt man sich so recht als Erdenmensch. Wenn man fühlt eine Art Hin- und Herpendeln zwischen Sich-nicht-erreichen-Können und Sich-Verlieren, dann fühlt man sich als Erdenmensch. Und dasjenige, was man erreichen muß, ist, trotzdem man in einem solchen Pendeln darinnensteht, die Ruhe des Daseins. Die Ruhe des Daseins erreicht auf dem physischen Gebiete der Pendel, erreicht die Waage. Auf dem geistig-moralischen Gebiete muß dasselbe, was die Waage, was der Pendel erreicht in seiner Ruhelage, der Mensch erreichen können. Der Mensch soll nicht anstreben, die absolute Ruhelage zu haben, das macht ihn faul, verfault. Der Mensch soll anstreben die Ruhelage, die der Mittelzustand zwischen dem Ausschlagen ist, zwischen dem Nicht-Erreichen und Sich-Verlieren.
Wenn man solche Empfindungen richtig entwickeln will, dann müssen andere Empfindungen über Leben und Wirklichkeit noch wesentlich dazukommen.
Ich habe Sie öfters aufmerksam gemacht, wie einseitig eigentlich heute das Entwickeln aufgefaßt wird. Denken Sie nur einmal, daß die ganze Entwickelung heute so aufgefaßt wird, wie wenn immer das Folgende aus dem Vorhergehenden so herausgezogen würde. Eigentlich denkt sich der heutige Mensch die aufeinanderfolgenden Entwickelungszustände ungefähr wie eine Folge von Pappschachteln, die so ineinandergeschachtelt sind. Und nun, wenn es sich entwickelt — eine Pappschachtel, der Mensch zwischen der Geburt und dem siebenten Jahre. Dann nimmt man die zweite heraus und man hat den Menschen vom siebenten bis vierzehnten Jahr. Dann die dritte, und man hat den Menschen vom vierzehnten bis einundzwanzigsten Jahr, und so eins aus dem andern heraus. Das geradlinige Fortschreiten in der Entwickelung ist das, was dem heutigen Menschen am angenehmsten ist.
Das liegt auch zugrunde all den grotesken Vorstellungen, die wir heute in der Schule lernen, und die in der Zukunft einmal als der wissenschaftliche Wahnsinn der aufgeklärten Periode vom 19. und 20. Jahrhundert dargestellt sein werden. Sich so vorzustellen, daß einmal ein Nebelzustand dagewesen ist - Kant-Laplacesche Theorie -, dann nach und nach eins aus dem andern hervorgehend, Pappschachtel aus Pappschachtel, eine aus der andern hervorgehend, der folgende Zustand immer aus dem früheren, das ist die krankhafte Wissenschaftsvorstellung der Gegenwart. Denn so sind die Dinge nicht. Denken Sie doch, wie die Entwickelung beim Einzelmenschen zwischen Geburt und Tod bei einigermaßen unbefangener Beobachtung Ihnen entgegentritt.
Nicht wahr, die wirkliche Grenze der ersten Lebensperiode ist der Zahnwechsel, das Bekommen der zweiten Zähne. Ich habe öfters darauf aufmerksam gemacht. Was ist denn das eigentlich, dieses Bekommen der zweiten Zähne gegen das siebente Jahr hin, wo die erste Lebensperiode abschließt? Es ist das ein Konsolidieren, ein Verhärten des Menschen, respektive das Verhärten im Menschen gestaltet sich. Es ist wie ein Zusammenziehen aller Lebenskräfte, daß man Dichtestes, Mineralisiertestes zuletzt noch einmal hervorbringen kann, die zweiten Zähne. Es ist ein wirkliches Zusammenziehen aller Lebenskräfte ins Dichte.
Die zweite Lebensperiode schließt ab mit der Geschlechtsreife. Da ist gerade das Umgekehrte der Fall. Da ist nicht wiederum ein Zusammenziehen zur Verhärtung aller Lebenskräfte, sondern da ist im Gegenteil eine Verdünnung aller Lebenskräfte, ein Auseinandertreiben, ein Üppigwerden. Da ist ein entgegengesetzter Zustand, der in dem Organismus pulsiert.
Und nur etwas verfeinert, aber doch wiederum so, wenn um das einundzwanzigste Lebensjahr die dritte Lebensperiode abschließt. Da konsolidiert sich der Mensch wiederum, zieht seine Kräfte zusammen. Mit dem achtundzwanzigsten Lebensjahr dehnt er sie wiederum aus. Einundzwanzigstes Jahr: Zusammenziehung, mehr auf das stellen, was in seinem Inneren lebt. Achtundzwanzigstes Jahr: Ausdehnung, mehr auf das stellen, das ihn zusammenbringt mit der ganzen weiten Welt. Mit dem fünfunddreißigsten Lebensjahr — approximativ zu nehmen ist wiederum eine Art Zusammenziehung da. Das ist ja die Lebensmitte, das fünfunddreißigste Jahr.
Also die Entwickelung ist nicht so geradlinig, sondern so, daß sie sich in einer Wellenlinie bewegt: Zusammenziehung, Erhärtung; Erweichung, Ausdehnung; Zusammenziehung, Erhärtung; Erweichung, Ausdehnung. Im Grunde genommen ist das auch das Leben des Menschen im Großen. Indem wir hier in die physische Welt hineingeboren werden, ziehen wir uns zusammen, so daß wir innerhalb unserer Haut sind. Indem wir das Leben zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt durchmachen, dehnen wir uns immer mehr und mehr aus.
Was folgt aus alledem? Aus alledem folgt, daß der Entwickelungsgedanke, der nur geradlinig die Entwickelung denkt, nichtsnutzig ist, daß er die Menschheit nasführt und abgestreift werden muß. Alle Entwickelung schreitet nämlich im Rhythmus voran. Alle Entwickelung geht: Wellental, Wellenberg, Zusammenziehung, Ausdehnung.
Wiederum auf elementaren Stufen hat das Goethe geahnt. Lesen Sie seine Metamorphose der Pflanzen, lesen Sie nur das Gedicht «Die Metamorphose der Pflanzen», so werden Sie sehen, wie jene eigentümliche Gestaltung, die von Laubblatt zu Laubblatt geht, dann Blütenblatt, dann Staubgefäß, dann Stempel, wie das von Goethe dargestellt wird als ein fortwährendes Ausdehnen, Zusammenziehen, aber nicht in ganz äußerlichen Gebilden nur, sondern auch die Säfte dehnen sich in ihren Kräften aus, ziehen sich wieder zusammen, expandieren, konzentrieren sich. Ich habe versucht, in den achtziger Jahren des vorigen Jahrhunderts, als ich meine erste Einführung geschrieben habe zu Goethes naturwissenschaftlichen Werken, nachzukonstruieren die Goethesche Urpflanze, wo ich versuchte, in das Bild hineinzubringen dieses Ausdehnen und Zusammenziehen, Ausdehnen, Zusammenziehen bis in die Blüte hinauf. Also niemand kann das Leben wirklich erfassen, der dieses Leben nicht rhythmisch, in rhythmischem Gange vorstellt. Die geradlinige Entwickelung — das muß immer wieder betont werden - ist eine Idee, die nichtsnutzig ist als eine wirkliche Lebenserfassung.
Und so ist es auch mit dem Begreifen des geschichtlichen Lebens der Menschheit. Ich habe in den letzten Heften der Zeitschrift «Das Reich», wo ich über Ahrimanisches und Luziferisches im Leben abgehandelt habe, darauf aufmerksam gemacht, wie luziferische Perioden und ahrimanische Perioden der geschichtlichen Entwickelung abwechseln im Rhythmus. Alies Leben geht nicht geradlinig vorwärts, sondern schreitet von Wellenberg zu Wellental. Aber das ist verknüpft mit einer auch äußeren Veränderung, indem von Wellenberg zu Wellental geschritten wird. Und nur, wenn man diese Verhältnisse durchschaut, kommt man zu einer tieferen Lebensauffassung. Wer geradlinig sich die Evolution denkt, der denkt: Erst waren unvollkommenste Tiere, dann immer vollkommenere, dann so affenartige Tiere, dann hat sich daraus der Mensch entwickelt. - Und wenn man das dann aufs Moralische anwendet - ich habe Sie darauf schon öfter aufmerksam gemacht, auch in öffentlichen Vorträgen -, wenn man das dann weiter ausdehnt, ja, dann kommt so für den richtigen, für den waschechten Darwinisten heraus, daß er sagt: Man sieht ja schon im Tierreiche moralische Triebe, Instinkte, Veranlagungen, die dann zu menschlichem Wohlwollen und so weiter hinführen! — Wiederum eine nichtsnutzige Vorstellung, denn diese rechnet ganz und gar nicht mit dem Lebensrhythmus. Sie denkt die EntwickeJung in einer geraden Linie, Pappschachtel aus Pappschachtel hervorgehend. In Wahrheit liegt die Sache so. Denken Sie sich die höchstentwickelten Tiere mit ihren Eigentümlichkeiten weiterentwickelt, geradlinig weiterentwickelt, da kommt nicht der Mensch heraus, käme nie der Mensch heraus, sondern das höher entwickelte Tier, das würde gerade die Eigenschaften, die Ihnen sympathisch erscheinen im Tierreich, entwickeln in allerantipathischester Weise. Dasjenige, was Sie bei den Tieren bewundern als eine gewisse Geselligkeit, als den Anfang des Wohlwollens, eines sozialen Verhaltens, das weiter heraufentwickelt, schlägt ins Gegenteil rhythmisch um, wird zum Prinzip des Bösen. Hätte sich der Mensch so entwickelt, wie es Haeckel vorstellt, dann hätte sich entwickelt aus den menschenähnlichen Affen eine Menschengesellschaft, die von vornherein den Krieg aller gegen alle vollständig entwickelt haben würde. Denn in allen den Anlagen, die beim Tiere noch gut sind, liegt der weitere Entwickelungsimpuls zum Aufeinanderplatzen in heftigstem, blutigstem Kampfe. Das ist der Rhythmus! Wellenberg schlägt in Wellental um, und niemand sieht hinein in dasjenige, was die Natur birgt, der nicht auf die Entwickelungsmösglichkeiten im Rhythmus sieht. Nach außen anzuschauen das, was geschieht, das lehrt niemals erkennen dasjenige, was wirklich da ist. Nur dadurch, daß gar nicht herauskamen die Entwickelungsmöglichkeiten, die in den höheren Tieren liegen, sondern daß ihnen entgegenkam eine andere Welle des Weltenwerdens, welche abtötete das Bösewerden und gewissermaßen. darüberstülpte über das Bösewerden dasjenige, was die Menschen sein sollten vom Urbeginne aus, nur dadurch entwickelte sich die Menschheit. So daß man vorzustellen hat: Tierreich bis zu einer gewissen Höhe; ihm entgegenkommend die andere Welle, welche abstumpft das Bösewerden.
Die Reinkarnation läßt sich auch moralisch anschauen. Was glauben Sie, was wäre dann der Mensch geworden, wenn er nur immer geboren und geboren würde hier auf dem physischen Plane, wenn nicht dem, was geboren wird rein physisch auf dem physischen Plane, entgegenkäme dasjenige, was immer in die geistige Welt aufgenommen und wieder hinuntergetan wird? Wenn der Mensch nur geboren würde, wenn er nicht durchseelt würde von den Wesen, die immer wiederum in die geistige Welt aufgenommen werden und herunterkommen, dann würde der Mensch nur im Kriege auf der Erde leben, nur im Kampfe auf der Erde leben wollen, dann würden sich die furchtbarsten Kampfesinstinkte entwickeln. Diese Kampfesinstinkte ruhen auf dem Grunde der menschlichen Seele, sie ruhen im menschlichen Organismus. Und sie werden abgelähmt durch dasjenige, was, wenn ich mich jetzt so ausdrücken darf, von oben kommt, was aus der geistigen Welt heraus kommt von derjenigen Menschenwesenheit, die immer wiederum in die geistige Welt aufgenommen wird.
Das drückt sich auch aus in der äußeren Form. Es ist geradezu grotesk für den Einsichtigen, wenn das Menschenhaupt so dargestellt wird, als ob es sich aus dem Tierkopf entwickelt hätte nach und nach. Es ist nämlich ein völliger Unsinn. In Wahrheit würde, wenn sich der Tierkopf weiterentwickelte, ein schreckliches Ungetüm herauskommen in dem, was Sie in der gegenwärtigen Inkarnation entwickeln aus Ihrem Unterleibe. Wenn das allein den Kopf bilden würde, wenn es aus sich heraus den Kopf bilden würde, nun, das wäre eine richtige Mißgeburt als Kopf, das wäre ein schreckliches Tierungeheuer. Denn da sitzt die Möglichkeit zum Tierungeheuer. Nur dadurch, daß das Geistige von oben kommt und sich entgegenstülpt, entsteht dasjenige, was Menschenhaupt ist, das aus dem Zusammengehören von zwei Kräften entsteht, von dem, was aus dem Leibe hinaufstrebt, und dem, was aus dem Kosmos entgegenstrebt. Als eine Gleichgewichtslage wird dieses Menschenhaupt herausgebildet. Und in dieser Gleichgewichtslage des Menschenhauptes ruht es, daß wir mit dem, was wir mitbringen aus der geistigen Welt, nicht frei hantieren können. Wir schlüpfen in unseren physischen Kopf hinein, und da können wir nicht das ganz zum Ausdruck bringen, was wir eigentlich sind, wenn wir durch die Geburt ins Dasein eilen. Könnten wir so denken, wie wir gedacht haben vor unserer Geburt, beziehungsweise vor unserer Konzeption, da würden wir nicht einen Homunkulus, da würden wir einen Menschen denken, einen Homo.
Sie erinnern sich, ich habe neulich einmal auf so etwas aufmerksam gemacht vorübergehend, als ich den Weihnachtsvortrag in Basel gehalten habe, wo ich darauf aufmerksam gemacht habe, daß Nikolaus von der Flüe vor seiner Geburt geschaut hat Szenen, die er nach seiner Geburt erlebt hat. Da hat er sich als Mensch geschaut vor der Geburt. Aber wenn man geboren ist und nicht den Erkenntnisschlaf überwindet, das heißt, das Erwachtsein außerhalb des Leibes entfalten kann, sondern nur mit dem Leibe denkt, denkt man nie einen Menschen, sondern nur einen Homunkulus. Man erreicht sich nicht, indem man auf dem Wege durch den Kopf in sich hineinzukommen sucht. (Es wird gezeichnet.) Es ist eigentlich so, daß man in sich hineinzukommen sucht, dann gehalten wird, und - irgendwo in der Mitte des Menschen - da irgendwo ist eigentlich das, was man nicht erreicht. Es ist im Menschen selber darinnen. Man bleibt beim Homunkulus und wird nicht kommen zum Menschen.
Und eigentlich, wenn man alle technischen Hilfsmittel hätte, so würde man in die Phiole, die über die Bühne geführt wird als der Homunkulus, hineintun — klein, daher auch niedlich - ein schreckliches kleines Ungetüm, das eigentlich dasjenige wäre, was entstehen würde, wenn es dem menschlichen Leibe allein übergeben wäre, daraus etwas zu entwickeln. Da käme so ein Tier, das doch kein Tier ist, sondern eine menschliche Mißgeburt, zustande, die auf dem Wege zum Menschwerden ist und doch nicht ganz Mensch wird. Daher erlangt man es nicht, wenn man nicht herankommt an dieses, was auf dem Wege zum Menschwerden ist und doch nicht ganz Mensch wird. Man erlangt es nicht, man kommt nicht in sich hinein.
Und wiederum, wenn man mit dem Wollen sich erfaßt, dann faßt einen gleich ein anderer. Dann verliert man sich, dann treten alle möglichen fremdartigen Motive und Impulse in diesem Wollen auf. Nur wenn man versucht, ins Gleichgewicht hinein die inneren Kräfte zu bringen, dann gelangt man zum wahren Menschtum.
Nun, mit dem, was ich gesagt habe, vergleichen Sie drei Momente, die Ihnen jetzt vor Augen treten können im zweiten Teil des «Faust». Jenen erhebenden Moment, wo der Faust vor die Manto hintritt. Da versucht Goethe, auszugießen über diesen ganzen Moment jene innere Ruhe der menschlichen Seele, welche durch die Empfindungen des Gleichgewichtszustandes hervorgerufen wird. Faust möchte weder auf der einen Seite hinein in das Schwärmerische einer abstrakten Mystik: «Könnt? ich» das ist eine seiner letzten Reden —- «Magie von meinem Pfad entfernen». Er möchte nicht äußere Magie, er möchte den inneren Weg in die übersinnliche Welt hinauf. Er ist nahe daran und doch wiederum entfernt. Goethe ist, wie ich das gestern ausführte, durchaus ehrlich in dem Augenblicke, wo Faust vor der Manto steht. Aber Faust wird auch nicht bloß in abstrakter Ruhe gehalten, sondern durch die Gegensätze hin- und hergeworfen. Daher wird er auf der einen Seite immerfort wiederum in den Gegensatz hineingeworfen, wo der Mensch sich verliert, indem er sich im Wollen zu erfassen versucht. Vergleichen sie alles das miteinander, was dem Faust passiert in den Szenen, in denen er selbst mit dem Mephisto zusammen sein Leben entfaltet. Da haben Sie immer den Willens-Faust, der aber sich immer verliert, indem eigentlich der Mephisto seine Impulse ergreift. Da haben Sie dasjenige, wo der Mensch abirrt in dem Willen, wo er sich verlieren will. Da haben Sie all die Gefahren, die den moralischen Impulsen des Menschen drohen. Und das ist eben in einer ungeheuren Tiefe im Goetheschen «Faust» zum Ausdruck gebracht.
Nehmen Sie den Moment, wo Mephisto sich vereinigt mit den Phorkyaden, wo er selbst die Gestalt einer Phorkyade annimmt, wo er in seiner ganzen Häßlichkeit auch seine Häßlichkeit gesteht, denn vorher lügt er, nachher, als die Phorkyaden ihn umfassen, da muß er seine eigene Häßlichkeit gestehen. Die Phorkyaden gestehen ja — lesen Sie die Rede der Phorkyaden noch einmal nach — ihre Häßlichkeit, sind gewissermaßen ehrlich in ihrer Häßliichkeit. In diesem Moment haben Sie einen Gegensatzmoment zu jenem heilig-erhabenen Moment, da Faust vor der Manto steht. Dasjenige, was uns uns selbst verlieren läßt im Willensmotiv, das steht so recht da, als Mephisto in der «Klassischen Walpurgisnacht» zum letzten Male auftritt. Faust tritt zum letzten Male auf, sichtbarlich, äußerlich dramatisch, in der Manto-Szene, Mephisto in der Phorkyaden-Szene. Und Goethe wollte aus seiner tiefen Empfindung heraus andeuten, daß im Grunde genommen dasjenige, was uns uns selbst verlieren läßt im Willensmotiv, nur dann Heilung finden kann, wenn wir es nicht bloß moralisch verabscheuen, sondern wenn wir es gegen unseren Geschmack verstoßend als Häßliches erleben. Das war ja auch die Grundempfindung Schillers, als er das Moralische so nahe heranbrachte an das Ästhetische in den «Briefen über die ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen».
Das ist gerade das Jammervolle, daß innerhalb der neueren Menschheitsentwickelung die Bildung es einmal bis zu einer solchen Höhe gebracht hat, wie sie zum Beispiel in Schillers Ästhetischen Briefen vorhanden ist, und daß das alles von der Menschheit vergessen worden ist. Man denke sich, daß Schiller eigentlich glaubte, eine politische Tat zu verrichten mit seinen zunächst an den Herzog von Augustenburg geschriebenen Asthetischen Briefen. Der lernt viel über die Entwickelung der Menschheit, der die zwei Tatsachen in ihrer richtigen Tiefe auffaßt, daß einmal das da war, daß Schiller aus der Anschauung von Goethes "Werdegang heraus seine Asthetischen Briefe geschrieben hat, daß einmal das da war; daß das vergessen werden konnte. Und daß durch das Vergessen die heutige Menschheitskatastrophe mit herbeigeführt worden ist. Wer diese zwei Tatsachen ins Auge faßt, der lernt wirklich viel über die Entwickelung der Menschheit kennen.
Und dramatisch groß ist der Moment, wo wie eine ästhetisch-ekelhafte Empfindung das moralisch Unerlaubte im Menschen lebt, dargestellt in der eigentlich furchtbaren Szene, wo Mephistopheles unter den Phorkyaden steht. Da wird charakterisiert in seiner ganzen Abscheulichkeit der Impuls, der wesenhafte Impuls, der den Menschen dazu treibt, sich selber im Willenspol zu verlieren. Lernt man ihn nicht erkennen, so wird man ihm verfallen. Denn nur das Erkennen befreit einen davon. Das finden Sie in der Schlußszene meines ersten Mysteriums «Die Pforte der Einweihung» ausgesprochen. Da ist ausgesprochen, wie nur die Erkenntnis, die unmittelbare Anschauung desjenigen, was eigentlich unser Verführer, unser Versucher ist, uns auch erlösen kann von der Verführung, von der Versuchung. Im Zeitalter der Bewußtseinsseele, in das wir eingetreten sind, ist es daher notwendig, daß wir, um die Versuchung, die Verführung zu überwinden, nach Erkenntnis des Versuchers, des Verführers in rechtmäßiger Weise streben, nicht fortsumpfen in einem bloß äußerlichen Naturerkennen und in einer bloß abstrakten Mystik.
Schließlich ist ebenso schlimm die abstrakte Mystik, das bequeme «den göttlichen Menschen erfassen in seinem Inneren», wobei nichts anderes als eine furchtbare, egoistische Abstraktion herauskommt. Ebenso schlimm als der Materialismus ist dieses abstrakte Mystifizieren.
Drei Momente, sagte ich, nehmen Sie im Goetheschen «Faust». Nehmen Sie so recht künstlerisch empfindungsgemäß das, was Sie fühlen können, da Faust der Manto gegenübersteht; das, was Sie fühlen können, da Mephisto unter den Phorkyaden selber zu einer Phorkyas wird. Und jetzt den dritten Moment: da Homunkulus am Muschelwagen der Galatee zerschellt, und fühlen Sie, was nun dieser Homunkulus ist. Wir kommen aus der geistigen Welt, suchen durch die Empfängnis und die Geburt das physische Dasein. Im physischen Dasein treten wir entgegen demjenigen, was aus dem physischen Dasein uns als unser Leib gegeben wird. Jeden Abend kehren wir zurück in die Welt, aus der wir heraustreten durch die Geburt; jeden Morgen müssen wir die Geburt bildhaft erneuern, indem wir wiederum in den physischen Körper untertauchen. Da können wir fühlen, wie wir von außen hereinkommend nicht das erreichen, was der Mensch ist, sondern wie uns nur der Homunkulus, das Menschlein, das embryonale -Menschentum entgegentritt, und wie schwierig es ist, zum wirklichen Menschen zu kommen. Wir könnten zum wirklichen Menschen kommen, wenn es uns gelingen würde, knapp vor dem Aufwachen, wenn alle Entwickelungsmöglichkeiten der Nacht ausgeschöpft sind, eine ganz helle Vorstellung zu haben. Diese helle Vorstellung wäre eine Weltvorstellung; diese helle Vorstellung wäre so, daß wir uns nirgends begrenzt glaubten, daß wir uns ausgegossen fühlten über die Welt; daß wir uns ausgegossen fühlten über alles Weltenlicht, allen Weltenton, über alles Weltenleben. Vor uns etwas wie einen Abgrund; jenseits des Abgrundes die Fortsetzung desjenigen, was wir gerade noch fühlen, bevor wir den Abgrund betreten beim Aufwachen: Wärme. Wärme, sie strömt über den Abgrund hinüber. Nun aber treten wir über den Abgrund ein durch das Aufwachen in Luft, Wasser, Erde, die ja unseren eigenen Organismus zusammensetzen. Allerdings, wir treten dem Menschen nahe, wir haben uns vorbereitet, indem wir den Homunkulus befruchten ließen in der geistigen Welt, den Menschen zu erfassen. Aber im gewöhnlichen Verlauf des Lebens tun wir das nicht, was ich jetzt eben angedeutet habe. Die lebendige Vorstellung, die wir haben, die ein Sich-Erleben im Licht, im Weltenton, im Weltenleben wäre, die ein Sich-Zusammenfinden wäre mit den Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien, die ebensogut sich verbunden fühlen würde mit den Wesen der höheren Hierarchien, wie sich hier der physische Leib verbunden fühlt mit dem mineralischen, mit dem pflanzlichen, mit dem tierischen Reich, diese Vorstellung, die wir entwickeln würden, wenn der Schlaf knapp vor dem Aufwachen an uns sein Werk getan hätte, die müßten wir mitbringen ins Aufwachen hinein, müßten wir hineinversenken in unseren Leibesmenschen. Dann würden wir das verstehen können, was der Leibesmensch ist. Aber, ach:
Die Götter wollen’s nicht leiden.
Wir tauchen unter. Es flammt auf, es blitzt - das bemerken wir kaum. Statt in uns selber hineinzuschauen, schauen wir aus dem Auge heraus, statt in uns selber hineinzuhorchen, hören wir aus dem Ohre heraus, statt in uns selber hineinzufühlen, fühlen wir mit den Tastnerven aus der Haut heraus. Homunkulus, der aufleben würde und zum Menschen werden, wenn wir nicht untertauchen würden in das, was durch die physischen Augen nur erreichbar liegt, durch die physischen Ohren, durch den physischen Ton, durch das physische Getaste nur erreichbar liegt, Homunkulus zerschellt in dem Augenblicke an dem Widerstand der Elemente. Das Augenlicht flammt auf statt des Weltenlichtes, der Ohrenton beginnt statt des Weltentones, das Körperleben beginnt statt des Weltenlebens: Homunkulus zerschellt. Und wenn man es bewußt erlebt, so ist der Schluß der «Klassischen Walpurgisnacht» erlebt. So ist dieser Schluß der «Klassischen Walpurgisnacht» aus dem wahren, wirklichen Leben genommen.
Diese Dinge sind nicht dazu da, daß nur in Sonntagnachmittagspredigten in der Anthroposophischen Gesellschaft über sie gesprochen werde, sondern diese Dinge sind wahrhaftig dazu da, daß sie von der Menschheit allmählich gewußt werden, und daß sie als Impulse wesenhaft durchdringen dasjenige, was in die Entwickelung der Menschheit gegen die Zukunft hin aufgenommen werden muß, wenn diese Menschheit dem Heil und nicht dem Unheil entgegengehen soll. Denn seinen richtigen Zusammenhang mit der Wirklichkeit findet der Mensch wirklich nur, wenn er sich von jetzt ab neue Begriffe aneignet. Wenn er anfängt zu durchschauen, daß dasjenige, was man gerade als die große Errungenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts immer gepriesen hat, ein Ende ist.
Es ist nicht zu verwundern, daß von einem gewissen Gesichtspunkte aus diese Errungenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts, die ins 20. Jahrhundert hinüberreicht, als vollkommen empfunden wurde. Es ist gar nicht zu verwundern. Denn, nicht wahr, bevor der Baum im Herbste alles abwirft, ist er gerade in seiner vollkommensten Fruchtentfaltung. Diese Naturwissenschaft des 19. Jahrhunderts, die noch hereinspukt in das 20. Jahrhundert, alle diese technischen Vollkommenbheiten, die bis zu einer gewissen Höhe gekommen sind, sie sind der Baum, bevor er seine Früchte abwirft. Das, worauf das alles gewachsen ist, es ist ja zum Verdorren, und es genügt nicht, daß dieser Baum weiterwächst, sondern es muß in den Kulturboden der Menschheit ein neuer Same gelegt werden, und ein neuer Baum gepflanzt werden. Es genügt nicht, daß wir denken, wir haben die Entwickelung der Tiere erkannt, wir denken sie uns etwas weitergeführt, dann den Menschen. Es genügt nicht, daß immer mehr solche Geister auftreten, die zuerst in einer genialen Weise über Tiere Artikel schreiben und später ein Buch über die Entstehung des Menschen so wie eine Fortsetzung schreiben, sondern es ist notwendig, daß mit der Geradlinigkeit der Entwickelung gebrochen werde, und die Menschen verstehenlernen den Rhythmus des Lebens, der in Wellenberg und Wellental verfließt; daß die Menschen lernen, wie in das Innere der Menschheit der Weg nicht geht in geradliniger Weise, sondern über zwei Grenzen. An der einen Grenze glaubt man schier ersticken zu müssen, weil einen jemand erfaßt, der einen nicht bis dahin kommen läßt, wo das Denken hinkommen will. Auf der andern Seite glaubt man schier, daß man zugrunde gehe mit dem Geschleiftwerden durch die mephistophelischen Gewalten. Das Gleichgewicht zu finden zwischen dem Homunkulismus und dem Mephistophelismus, zwischen dem im Homunkeltum-Aufgehen und Sich-nicht-erreichen-Können, und dem vom Mephistopheles Erfaßtwerden und Sich-Verlieren. Das Verständnis dieses Gleichgewichtes, das ist es, was über die moderne Menschheit kommen muß, und das ist es, in dem Goethe vorahnend als in der Empfindung davon lebte, als er versuchte, ganz ehrlich zu sagen, was er über das Menschheitsrätsel zu sagen hatte in seinem «Faust». Herauswachsen aus dem, was heute bildhaft die Vorstellung der platten Menge ist, das ist es gerade, wonach die Menschheit hinstreben soll. Nichts wird heute mehr angefeindet als dieses Herausstreben. Mit nichts schadet sich die Menschheit mehr als durch dieses Anfeinden des Herausstrebens aus der platten Alltäglichkeit. Aber solange dieses Bekämpfen des Herausstrebens aus der platten Alltäglichkeit nicht auf der andern Seite wirklich bekämpft wird von denjenigen, welche die Notwendigkeit des Eindringens in das Übersinnliche anerkennen, so lange kann nicht Heil kommen in die Entwickelung der Menschheit.
Hamerling versuchte am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts in seinem «Homunkulus», man möchte sagen, einen noch aus der alten Zeit hervorgehenden, letzten Ruf an die Menschheit zu richten, indem er wirklich all das, was an verfaultem Wesen in dieser neueren Menschheit ist, als Homunkeltum hinstellte.
Man könnte sich eines denken: jemand läse jetzt den Hamerlingschen «Homunkulus», der am Ende der achtziger Jahre des 19. Jahrhunderts erschienen ist, diesen «Homunkulus», über den ich ja manchen Vortrag gehalten habe, wahrhaftig auch vor dem Kriege nicht ohne eine gewisse Bedeutung darüber gesprochen habe. Nehmen wir an, es läse jetzt jemand diesen Hamerlingschen «Homunkulus», er lasse auf sich wirken, was Hamerling sich denkt von dem Werdegang seines Homunkel. Das alles hat er gedacht am Ende der achtziger Jahre, als schon gebrochen war mit allem Goetheanismus, als schon die Menschen nichts mehr wissen wollten von allem Goetheanismus. Hamerling hat dargestellt den Werdegang des Homunkel: wie er ganz von materialistischem Denken erfaßt wird, wie er lebt in einer Welt, in der man sich nicht bereichert durch geistige Schätze, wohl aber Billionär wird -— Homunkel wird Billionär -, in der man sich in der frivolsten Weise selbst mit der geistigen Welt zu schaffen macht, in der sich schon ausbildet, mit Respekt zu vermelden, jener Journalismus, der seither noch viel furchtbarere Versumpfung erfahren hat. Man nehme an: jetzt läse jemand diesen Hamerlingschen «Homunkulus». Nun würde er sich vielleicht sagen: Ja, Gott, dieser Hamerling - er ist 1889 gestorben - hat eigentlich doch nur mit physischen Augen, als er seinen «Homunkulus» schrieb, die Menschheit gesehen, wie sie damals war auf den Wegen, denen sie zueilte. Nehmen wir an — so könnte ein solcher sagen, der jetzt diesen «Homunkulus» liest —, die Leute hätten damals so etwas, wie das ist, was Hamerling in seinem «Homunkulus» zeigt, ernst genommen, sie hätten es wirklich ein bißchen auf sich wirken lassen, nicht bloß als literarisches Produkt, sondern sie hätten es ernst genommen, dann hätten sie sich wahrhaftig nicht verwundert, wenn jemand gesagt hätte: Aus dieser Menschheit muß diese Weltkatastrophe entstehen ganz notwendigerweise. - Das kann sich jemand sagen, der heute den «Homunkulus» liest. Was ist weiter verwunderlich daran, daß diese Weltenkatastrophe entstanden ist, da ein Dichter der achtziger Jahre den Menschen Homunkel in dieser Weise darzustellen vermochte?
Aber der Ruf, der da liegt in dieser Darstellung des Menschen Homunkel, ist zu gleicher Zeit der, nicht stehenzubleiben bei dem Leben, das doch nur ein Homunkeltum gibt, sondern hinüberzusetzen über den Abgrund da, wo Geisteswissenschaft redet von den übersinnlichen Erkenntnissen, die erst den Homunkulus in einen Homo verwandeln können. Und so könnte man sagen: In den Homunkulismus, der sich in einer Welt, in die sich der Mensch heute nicht so gern versetzen will, befindet in der Szene, die wir heute darstellen, zwischen den Homunkulismus und den Mephistophelismus, der aber in die Region der Phorkyaden führt, ist die Menschheit hineingestellt. - Goethe ahnte das und stellte es dar in seinem «Faust». Er ahnte schon, daß ein Weg gebahnt werden muß, der ebenso sehr die Klippe phantastisch-abstrakter Mystik vermeidet wie die andere Klippe wirklichkeitsfremder gespensterhafter Naturanschauung, der aber hinführt ins übersinnliche Erkennen und aus dem übersinnlichen Erkennen heraus auch wiederum soziale Impulse findet.
Das ist nun gewissermaßen eine tiefere Bewußtseinsschicht. Dringen wir in sie ein, durchdringen wir unsere Empfindung mit ihr, lernen wir gewissermaßen die Sprache jener Bewußtseinsschicht verstehen, die aus den Regionen kommt, wo man fühlt, im Denken kann man sich nicht erreichen, im Wollen verliert man sich. Das Sich-nicht-erreichen-Können im Denken ist homunkelisch, das Sich-Verlieren im Wollen ist mephistophelisch. Empfindet man dies, dann steht man darinnen in so tiefen Szenen mit einer Sprache, die einem eben verständlich macht dasjenige, was in einer solchen Szene gegeben ist, wie die Szene ist vom Schluß der «Klassischen Walpurgisnacht».
Schließlich, jeder sieht die Welt so an, wie sie sich ihm darstellen kann nach seinen empfangenen Kräften. Aber die gegenwärtige Aufgabe der Menschheit besteht darinnen, diese empfangenen Kräfte zu steigern, damit manches von der Welt gesehen werde, was zum Unheil der Menschheit in den letzten Jahrzehnten nicht gesehen worden ist.
Und so ist auch eine wirkliche Vertiefung in solch eine tiefe Szene, wie diejenige ist, die wir jetzt vorführen, ein Weg für den Menschen, um gerade in der Richtung weiterzukommen, in der die Menschheit jetzt weiterkommen soll. Wie überhaupt Goetheanismus - nicht ProfessorenGoetheanismus, nicht der Goetheanismus der Goethe-Gesellschaft, an deren Spitze kein Goethe-Mann, sondern ein ehemaliger Finanzminister mit dem symptomatischen Namen Kreuzwendedich steht, nicht all das, was man geglaubt hat, aus Goethe machen zu müssen am Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts und Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts, sondern was im Goetheanismus wirklich liegt - gesucht werden muß. Das wird ein Gutes und ein guter Impuls sein, um die Menschheit in der Richtung weiterzubringen, in der sie weiterkommen muß, wenn ihr Heil und nicht Unheil werden soll in der nächsten Zeit.
Instead of Homunculism and Mephistopheles: Goetheanism
Through the two observations I made in connection with the description of the last Walpurgis Night scene from the second part of Goethe's “Faust,” I wanted to evoke the feeling that Goethe was indeed on his way, so to speak, into the supersensible world with his entire inner life, and that he, like perhaps no other artist, no other poet, succeeded in truly developing artistic creativity out of such a spiritual life, so that neither art nor wisdom is neglected in Goethe's work, but each of these areas of wisdom is fully and harmoniously expressed in its proper place.
I do not wish to give the impression that, with everything I have said, I have sought to offer an interpretation of this poem; that is not my intention at all. For I consider interpretations to be the most useless thing there can be in this field. All that is attempted through such considerations as the two preceding ones is to evoke the possibilities of enjoying and absorbing a poem or a work of art in the same elements in which it was created. In a sense, such a consideration should only teach the language, the language of the mind, in which such a thing is written, not interpret or explain anything, which in most cases is only a misinterpretation and a misunderstanding.
If one maintains this attitude toward the matter, then one may perhaps also assert the following. All striving for knowledge, all human striving directed toward spiritual experience in general, is based on two fundamental feelings. One fundamental feeling comes from the fact that human beings, spending their lives between birth and death in physical bodies, must think and imagine. It is true that we would not be fully human if we did not think about things and about ourselves. But then, if we want to complete our lives between birth and death in the physical body, we must not only think, but also will. Feeling actually lies in the middle between thinking and willing. Sometimes it is more thinking and imagining, sometimes more willing. Therefore, if we want to make the observation we are now heading towards, we can disregard feeling and look at one pole of thinking and imagining and also at the other pole of human activity, namely willing. Human beings are thinking and willing beings. But there is something very special about this thinking and willing. The trivial human being, the ordinary average citizen, already considers what can be achieved to be something accomplished if, on the one hand, he thinks as clearly as possible — at least according to his ideas — thinks as intensely as possible according to his ideas, and if he wills according to his needs. But this is precisely what distinguishes the truly honest, insightful person, who is honest to the very core of his own being, in that when he tries to go further along the path of thinking, he finally admits to himself: Ah, with this thinking within the physical body, I can only get so far toward what I am actually striving for.
Thinking is just like striving toward a goal; you have the direction, but no view of the goal. You want to rush toward the goal, you know in which direction the goal may lie, but everything around the goal is still dark. You have the distinct idea that it can only become clear when you get there. But since you still feel far from the goal, but rather at a considerable distance from it, a certain being behind you grabs you, so to speak, and holds you back, not letting you continue. And you feel: thinking and imagining drive you in a certain direction, but you are held back. If you want to stay on this path of thinking in this direction, you cannot reach the goal that thinking itself, imagining, actually sets out for you. — Thus, human beings reach the one limit that is set for their nature for life between birth and death. And one can say: actually, those who have not experienced all the pain and setbacks of fate that result from such restraint in relation to the goal of thinking on the path of thinking itself do not have a deeper life of knowledge. — One is, in a sense, condemned to remain superficial if one's inner soul constitution leads one to believe that one can reach the goal of thinking itself through thinking. One only protects oneself from superficiality if, precisely by trying to think with all clarity and intensity, one is led by this clarity, by this intensity of thought, to feel how the obstacle to thinking is sitting on one's neck. This feeling of the hindrance sitting on one's neck is a profound human experience, and without it, it is actually impossible to move from superficiality into the depths of one's understanding of life.
But this is not the only boundary that limits the human being's experience between birth and death; the other boundary is erected where the will unfolds. Where the will unfolds, the desires of the human being, which come from the life of the instincts, also germinate. The human being is driven to will by hunger and thirst in the grossest sense, by other instincts; and then there is a whole scale from the instincts up to the purest spiritual ideals. In all this, from the grossest instincts up to the purest spiritual ideal, lie the impulses of the will. But when one tries to enter life with the will — which was basically Goethe's goal in his “Faust,” to place Faust in life with the will, so that he could experience everything in life that brings happiness, everything that destroys life, everything that liberates and everything that is sinful in life — when one tries to place oneself in life with the will that turns into action, that translates into deeds, one again comes to a boundary. But now a different sensation arises. It is not so much that, as in thinking, something grabs you by the neck and holds you back from your goal, but rather that, as you will, something grabs you and continues the will in a way that you yourself do not want. In a sense, you are torn from yourself in your will. Something else enters into your will and carries you away.
This is the feeling that, when a person has it, leads them from the superficial to the depths of a conception of life. Philistine satiates, satiated people are of the opinion that if one develops one's thinking far enough, develops one's will far enough, one will reach the goal. But in this complacent feeling of being on fulfillable paths lies the superficiality of life, not what makes life's trials possible — for one is tested when, with due intensity, one imagines the two boundaries indicated within the soul — after proper testing, crossing over an abyss, so to speak, to enter another world that cannot be experienced with the consciousness that unfolds in life between birth and death. Humanity must understand, starting from Goetheanism, that it is not merely the bliss of striving, which is often only talked oneself into and is often only supported by illusions, that can be experienced, but that what leads human beings to their goal leads them over obstacles, over disappointments, over disillusions, and those who resist to experience disillusionment and thereby resists transforming and metamorphosing the whole human being at certain moments in life, cannot advance toward knowledge of humanity, toward understanding humanity.
It is reasonable to assume that, in this respect, the Christian worldview and outlook on life will undergo a significant change in the near future. Christianity, through the development it has undergone in various denominations, is actually only in its initial stage. If one wants to express what Christianity has developed so far, one could say that it is really only the feeling in human beings that a Christ once existed. And this feeling, that a Christ existed, was actually lost again in the 19th century through materialistic research. What Christ brought into the world, how Christ is connected with the striving of the human soul, this is where light should first come in the future through spiritual scientific investigations and a spiritual way of perceiving the world, through supersensible experience, even if, in this intellectual age, humanity will initially only be able to have this supersensible experience in its imagination, in the images of its imagination.
But these two fundamental feelings that I have indicated, of the two limits of human self-knowledge and self-understanding, must find their transition from a more passive Christianity to an active Christianity. Just think how many people in the past saw Christ as nothing more than a kind of helper in times of need for what people themselves did not want to do. The peculiar way in which the Roman Catholic Church forgave sins from a certain point in time — one could sin as much as one wanted, as long as one sincerely repented, showed remorse, and so on, then one was forgiven. After all, Christ was there to help in times of need, to make up for what one did not intend to make up for to any significant degree, from this aberration where one actually remains passive, setting up worldly life and worldly activities for oneself, and then, possibly only by believing in Christ, feeling completely connected to Christ in passivity, allowing oneself to be redeemed by Christ — this twofold passive attitude toward Christ belongs and must belong to the past. And what must take its place must be a relationship to Christ as an active power, a meeting of Christ in such a way that he does not do for oneself what one does not like to do oneself, but in such a way that he gives one the strength to do something oneself through his existence. An active, or rather, an increasingly active Christianity is what must take the place of passive Christianity, where, basically — forgive me for putting it so trivially — one does what one wants on the physical plane and then lets God be a good man who forgives one everything, as long as one returns to him at the right moment.
This also marks the dividing line between the age that must pass, which has led to a terrible catastrophe for humanity, and the age that must come, which can only be suitable for healing to heal all the damage that has already become apparent and that will become increasingly apparent as a result of the principles of the past. This damage still sits deep in human hearts and souls. And it must be healed if the development of the earth is to be advanced.
The two basic feelings of the limits in thinking and willing can also be described as follows: One limit makes us aware of how we cannot access our own being. — Yes, we as human beings are indeed such that, on the one hand, we cannot access our own human nature, and we cannot reach ourselves with our thinking. In our will, we can reach ourselves, because our will truly emanates from us. But then another, a different world being, takes hold of us, and we lose ourselves. We cannot reach ourselves in our thinking, and we lose ourselves in our will. Human beings are simply formed as earthly beings according to the principle of this dualism; they are dual beings, not monads, but dual beings. One part of this dualistic being cannot reach itself, the other part of this dualistic being loses itself.
Therefore, one never correctly represents the human being if one represents him 'merely as a monad, but only if one tries to represent him as a middle state between not being able to reach oneself and losing oneself. And when one feels both simultaneously with full intensity, then one feels truly like an earthly human being. When one feels a kind of oscillation between not being able to reach oneself and losing oneself, then one feels like an earthly human being. And what one must achieve, despite being caught up in such oscillation, is the tranquility of existence. The tranquility of existence is achieved in the physical realm of the pendulum, it achieves balance. In the spiritual-moral realm, human beings must be able to achieve the same thing that the pendulum achieves in its state of rest. Human beings should not strive to achieve absolute rest, as this makes them lazy and rotten. Human beings should strive for the state of rest that is the middle ground between swinging out, between not achieving and losing oneself.
If one wants to develop such feelings properly, then other feelings about life and reality must also be added.
I have often pointed out to you how one-sidedly development is actually understood today. Just think for a moment that the whole of development is understood today as if the following were always drawn out of the preceding. Actually, people today think of the successive stages of development as something like a series of cardboard boxes nested inside one another. And now, when it develops — a cardboard box, the human being between birth and the age of seven. Then you take out the second one and you have the human being from the age of seven to fourteen. Then the third, and you have the human being from the age of fourteen to twenty-one, and so on, one out of the other. Straightforward progression in development is what is most comfortable for people today.
This also underlies all the grotesque ideas we learn in school today, which in the future will be portrayed as the scientific madness of the Enlightenment period of the 19th and 20th centuries. To imagine that there was once a state of fog – Kant-Laplace theory – then gradually one thing emerging from another, cardboard box from cardboard box, one emerging from the other, the following state always emerging from the previous one, that is the pathological scientific conception of the present. For that is not how things are. Just think about how the development of an individual human being between birth and death appears to you when you observe it with a reasonably unbiased eye.
Isn't it true that the real boundary of the first period of life is the change of teeth, the emergence of the second set of teeth? I have often pointed this out. What is this emergence of the second set of teeth around the age of seven, when the first period of life comes to an end? It is a consolidation, a hardening of the human being, or rather, a hardening within the human being. It is like a contraction of all life forces, so that the densest, most mineralized substance can be produced once again: the second teeth. It is a real contraction of all life forces into density.
The second period of life ends with sexual maturity. Here, the opposite is the case. There is no contraction to harden all life forces, but on the contrary, there is a dilution of all life forces, a dispersal, a becoming lush. There is an opposite state pulsating in the organism.
And only slightly refined, but still the same, when the third period of life ends at around the age of twenty-one. At this point, the person consolidates again, drawing their forces together. At the age of twenty-eight, they expand them again. Twenty-first year: contraction, focusing more on what lives within. Twenty-eighth year: expansion, focusing more on what brings them together with the whole wide world. At the age of thirty-five — approximately — there is again a kind of contraction. That is the middle of life, the thirty-fifth year.
So development is not so linear, but rather moves in a wave-like pattern: contraction, hardening; softening, expansion; contraction, hardening; softening, expansion. Basically, this is also the life of human beings in general. When we are born into the physical world, we contract so that we are within our skin. As we go through life between death and a new birth, we expand more and more.
What follows from all this? What follows from all this is that the idea of development, which thinks of development only in a linear fashion, is useless, that it misleads humanity and must be discarded. All development progresses in rhythm. All development goes: trough, crest, contraction, expansion.
Goethe sensed this again at an elementary level. Read his Metamorphosis of Plants, read only the poem “The Metamorphosis of Plants,” and you will see how that peculiar formation, which goes from leaf to leaf, then petal, then stamen, then pistil, is depicted by Goethe as a continuous expansion and contraction, but not only in completely external structures; the juices also expand in their powers, contract again, expand, and concentrate. In the 1880s, when I wrote my first introduction to Goethe's scientific works, I attempted to reconstruct Goethe's archetypal plant, trying to incorporate into the image this expansion and contraction, expansion and contraction, right up to the blossom. So no one can truly grasp life who does not imagine this life rhythmically, in rhythmic motion. Linear development — this must be emphasized again and again — is an idea that is as useless as a real grasp of life.
And so it is with understanding the historical life of humanity. In recent issues of the magazine Das Reich, where I have discussed Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces in life, I have pointed out how Luciferic periods and Ahrimanic periods alternate rhythmically in historical development. All life does not proceed in a straight line, but moves from wave peaks to wave troughs. But this is linked to an external change as well, in that we move from wave crest to wave trough. And only when we understand these relationships can we arrive at a deeper understanding of life. Those who think of evolution in a linear fashion think: first there were the most imperfect animals, then increasingly more perfect ones, then ape-like animals, and then humans developed from them. And if you apply this to morality—I have often pointed this out to you, including in public lectures—if you extend this further, then the true, genuine Darwinist will say: You can already see moral drives, instincts, and predispositions in the animal kingdom that lead to human benevolence and so on! — Again, this is a useless idea, because it does not take the rhythm of life into account at all. It thinks of development as a straight line, cardboard box emerging from cardboard box. In reality, the situation is as follows. Imagine the most highly developed animals with their peculiarities developing further, developing in a straight line; the result would not be humans, it would never be humans, but rather the more highly developed animal, which would develop precisely those characteristics that you find appealing in the animal kingdom in the most unappealing way. What you admire in animals as a certain sociability, as the beginning of goodwill, of social behavior, which develops further, rhythmically reverses into the opposite, becomes the principle of evil. If humans had developed as Haeckel imagines, then a human society would have developed from the human-like apes, which from the outset would have fully developed the war of all against all. For in all the predispositions that are still good in animals lies the further impulse of development to clash with each other in the most violent, bloodiest struggle. That is the rhythm! The wave peaks and troughs, and no one can see what nature holds unless they look at the possibilities for development in the rhythm. Looking outward at what is happening never teaches us to recognize what is really there. Only because the possibilities for development that lie in higher animals did not emerge at all, but were met by another wave of world creation, which killed off evil and, in a sense, superimposed on evil what human beings should have been from the very beginning, only then did humanity develop. So one must imagine: the animal kingdom up to a certain level; meeting it, the other wave, which dulls the tendency to become evil.
Reincarnation can also be viewed from a moral perspective. What do you think would have become of human beings if they had only ever been born and reborn here on the physical plane, if what is born purely physically on the physical plane had not been met by that which is always taken up into the spiritual world and sent back down again? If human beings were only born, if they were not imbued with the beings who are always taken up into the spiritual world and come down again, then human beings would only want to live in war on earth, only want to live in struggle on earth, and then the most terrible fighting instincts would develop. These fighting instincts lie at the bottom of the human soul, they lie in the human organism. And they are tempered by that which, if I may express it this way, comes from above, which comes out of the spiritual world from those human beings who are always being taken back into the spiritual world.This is also expressed in the outer form. It is downright grotesque for the discerning observer when the human head is depicted as if it had gradually developed from an animal head. This is complete nonsense. In truth, if the animal head continued to develop, a terrible monster would emerge from what you are developing in your lower abdomen in your present incarnation. If that alone formed the head, if it formed the head from within itself, well, that would be a real monstrosity of a head, it would be a terrible animal monster. For there lies the possibility of an animal monster. Only when the spiritual comes from above and turns itself inside out does that which is the human head arise, arising from the union of two forces, from that which strives upward from the body and that which strives downward from the cosmos. This human head is formed as a state of equilibrium. And in this state of equilibrium of the human head, we are unable to freely use what we bring with us from the spiritual world. We slip into our physical head, and there we cannot fully express what we actually are when we rush into existence through birth. If we could think as we did before our birth, or rather before our conception, we would not think of a homunculus, we would think of a human being, a homo.
You may recall that I recently drew attention to something like this when I gave the Christmas lecture in Basel, where I pointed out that Nikolaus von der Flüe saw scenes before his birth that he experienced after his birth. He saw himself as a human being before birth. But if one is born and does not overcome the sleep of knowledge, that is, if one cannot develop awakening outside the body, but only thinks with the body, one never thinks of a human being, but only of a homunculus. You cannot reach yourself by trying to get inside yourself through your head. (A drawing is made.) It is actually the case that you try to get inside yourself, then you are held back, and somewhere in the middle of the human being is what you cannot reach. It is inside the human being itself. You remain with the homunculus and will not reach the human being.
And actually, if one had all the technical aids, one would put into the vial that is carried across the stage as the homunculus — small, and therefore cute — a terrible little monster, which would actually be what would arise if it were left to the human body alone to develop something from it. The result would be an animal that is not an animal, but a human miscarriage, on the way to becoming human and yet not quite human. Therefore, one cannot attain it if one cannot approach that which is on the way to becoming human and yet is not quite human. One cannot attain it, one cannot enter into oneself.
And again, when you grasp yourself with your will, another immediately grasps you. Then you lose yourself, then all kinds of strange motives and impulses arise in this will. Only when you try to bring your inner forces into balance can you attain true humanity.
Now, compare what I have said with three moments that you can now see before your eyes in the second part of “Faust.” That uplifting moment when Faust steps before Manto. Here Goethe attempts to pour out over this entire moment that inner peace of the human soul which is evoked by the sensations of equilibrium. Faust does not want to fall into the enthusiasm of abstract mysticism: “Could I?” — this is one of his last speeches — “remove magic from my path.” He does not want external magic; he wants the inner path to the supersensible world. He is close to it and yet far away. Goethe, as I explained yesterday, is completely honest in the moment when Faust stands before Manto. But Faust is not merely kept in abstract tranquility; he is tossed back and forth by contradictions. Therefore, on the one hand, he is constantly thrown back into the contradiction where man loses himself by trying to grasp himself in his will. Compare all this with what happens to Faust in the scenes in which he himself unfolds his life together with Mephisto. There you always have the Faust of will, but he always loses himself because Mephisto actually seizes his impulses. There you have the situation where man strays in his will, where he wants to lose himself. There you have all the dangers that threaten man's moral impulses. And this is expressed with tremendous depth in Goethe's “Faust.”
Take the moment when Mephisto unites with the Phorcys, when he himself takes on the form of a Phorcys, when he confesses his ugliness in all its ugliness, because before that he lies, but afterwards, when the Phorcys embrace him, he has to confess his own ugliness. The Phorcys admit—read the Phorcys' speech again—their ugliness, are, in a sense, honest in their ugliness. In this moment, you have a moment of contrast to that holy, sublime moment when Faust stands before Manto. That which causes us to lose ourselves in the motive of will is clearly evident when Mephisto appears for the last time in the “Classical Walpurgis Night.” Faust appears for the last time, visibly, outwardly dramatically, in the Manto scene, Mephisto in the Phorcys scene. And Goethe wanted to suggest, out of his deep feeling, that basically what makes us lose ourselves in the motive of will can only be healed if we not only morally abhor it, but also experience it as ugly, contrary to our taste. This was also Schiller's basic feeling when he brought morality so close to aesthetics in his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.”
It is precisely the sad thing that, within the recent development of humanity, education once reached such a height as is found, for example, in Schiller's Aesthetic Letters, and that all this has been forgotten by humanity. One should imagine that Schiller actually believed he was performing a political act with his Aesthetic Letters, which he initially wrote to the Duke of Augustenburg. Those who grasp the true depth of two facts learn a great deal about the development of humanity: that Schiller wrote his Aesthetic Letters based on his view of Goethe's career, and that this could be forgotten. And that this forgetting has contributed to the catastrophe facing humanity today. Anyone who considers these two facts will learn a great deal about the development of humanity.
And the moment is dramatically great when the morally impermissible lives in human beings as an aesthetically repulsive sensation, depicted in the truly terrible scene where Mephistopheles stands among the Phorkyades. There, the impulse, the essential impulse that drives human beings to lose themselves in the pole of will, is characterized in all its abominability. If you do not learn to recognize it, you will fall prey to it. For only recognition can free you from it. You will find this expressed in the final scene of my first mystery play, “The Portal of Initiation.” There it is expressed how only knowledge, the direct perception of what is actually our seducer, our tempter, can also redeem us from seduction, from temptation. In the age of the consciousness soul, which we have now entered, it is therefore necessary that, in order to overcome temptation and seduction, we strive in a legitimate way for knowledge of the tempter, the seducer, and do not remain mired in a merely external knowledge of nature and in a merely abstract mysticism.
After all, abstract mysticism is just as bad, the comfortable “grasping the divine human being in his inner being,” which results in nothing more than a terrible, egoistic abstraction. This abstract mystification is just as bad as materialism.
Three moments, I said, take them from Goethe's “Faust.” Take, in a truly artistic way, what you can feel when Faust stands opposite Manto; what you can feel when Mephisto himself becomes a Phorkyas among the Phorkyads. And now the third moment: when Homunculus is shattered on Galatea's shell chariot, and feel what this Homunculus is now. We come from the spiritual world, seeking physical existence through conception and birth. In physical existence, we encounter what is given to us as our body from physical existence. Every evening we return to the world from which we emerged through birth; every morning we must figuratively renew birth by immersing ourselves once again in the physical body. There we can feel how, coming in from outside, we do not reach what the human being is, but how only the homunculus, the little human being, the embryonic humanity, confronts us, and how difficult it is to become a real human being. We could become real human beings if we succeeded in having a very clear idea just before waking up, when all the possibilities for development during the night have been exhausted. This bright image would be a world image; this bright image would be such that we would feel ourselves to be unlimited, that we would feel ourselves poured out over the world; that we would feel ourselves poured out over all the light of the world, all the sound of the world, over all the life of the world. Before us something like an abyss; beyond the abyss the continuation of what we still feel just before we enter the abyss upon waking: warmth. Warmth, it flows across the abyss. But now we step across the abyss through waking into air, water, earth, which indeed make up our own organism. However, we are approaching the human being; we have prepared ourselves by allowing the homunculus to be fertilized in the spiritual world in order to grasp the human being. But in the ordinary course of life, we do not do what I have just indicated. The living image we have, which would be an experience of ourselves in the light, in the world tone, in world life, which would be a coming together with the beings of the higher hierarchies, which would feel just as connected to the beings of the higher hierarchies as the physical body here feels connected to the mineral, plant, and animal kingdoms, this idea that we would develop if sleep had done its work on us just before waking up, we would have to bring it with us into waking up, we would have to sink it into our physical human being. Then we would be able to understand what the physical human being is. But, alas:
The gods will not tolerate it.
We dive beneath the surface. It flares up, it flashes – we hardly notice it. Instead of looking into ourselves, we look out of our eyes; instead of listening within ourselves, we hear out of our ears; instead of feeling within ourselves, we feel with the tactile nerves out of our skin. Homunculus, which would come to life and become human if we did not dive into what is only accessible through the physical eyes, through the physical ears, through physical sound, through physical touch, Homunculus shatters in the moment of resistance from the elements. Sight flares up instead of the light of the world, the sound of the ear begins instead of the sound of the world, physical life begins instead of the life of the world: the homunculus shatters. And when one experiences this consciously, one experiences the conclusion of the “Classical Walpurgis Night.” Thus, this conclusion of the “Classical Walpurgis Night” is taken from true, real life.
These things are not there to be talked about only in Sunday afternoon sermons in the Anthroposophical Society, but these things are truly there to be gradually known by humanity, and that they may essentially permeate as impulses that which must be taken up in the development of humanity toward the future, if this humanity is to move toward salvation and not disaster. For human beings will only find their true connection with reality if they acquire new concepts from now on. When they begin to realize that what has always been praised as the great achievement of the 19th century is coming to an end.
It is not surprising that, from a certain point of view, this achievement of the 19th century, which extends into the 20th century, was perceived as perfect. It is not surprising at all. For, is it not true that before the tree sheds everything in autumn, it is at its most perfect stage of fruit development? This natural science of the 19th century, which still haunts the 20th century, all these technical perfections that have reached a certain height, they are the tree before it sheds its fruit. That on which all this has grown is destined to wither, and it is not enough for this tree to continue growing; rather, a new seed must be sown in the cultural soil of humanity, and a new tree must be planted. It is not enough for us to think that we have understood the development of animals, that we have taken it a step further, and then to humans. It is not enough that more and more such minds appear, who first write articles about animals in a brilliant way and later write a book about the origin of man as a sequel, but it is necessary to break with the linearity of development and for people to learn to understand the rhythm of life, which flows in waves and troughs; that people learn how the path into the innermost depths of humanity does not proceed in a straight line, but across two boundaries. At one boundary, one feels as if one must suffocate because someone seizes hold of one and does not allow one to reach the place where one's thoughts want to go. On the other side, one almost believes that one will perish by being dragged down by the Mephistophelean forces. To find the balance between homunculism and Mephistopheles, between the dissolution into homunculism and the inability to achieve oneself, and being seized by Mephistopheles and losing oneself. Understanding this balance is what must come to modern humanity, and it is what Goethe lived in anticipation of when he tried to say quite honestly what he had to say about the mystery of humanity in his “Faust.” Growing out of what is today figuratively the idea of the flat crowd is precisely what humanity should strive for. Nothing is more hostile today than this striving. Nothing harms humanity more than this hostility toward striving to rise above the flatness of everyday life. But as long as this hostility toward striving to rise above the flatness of everyday life is not really combated on the other side by those who recognize the necessity of penetrating into the supersensible, salvation cannot come to the development of humanity.
At the end of the 19th century, in his “Homunkulus,” Hamerling attempted to make what one might call a final appeal to humanity, emerging from the old days, by presenting everything that is rotten in this newer humanity as homunculus.
One might imagine someone reading Hamerling's “Homunkulus,” which was published at the end of the 1880s, this “Homunkulus” about which I have given many lectures and which I spoke about with some significance even before the war. Let us assume that someone were to read Hamerling's “Homunculus” now, letting Hamerling's thoughts on the development of his homunculus sink in. He thought all this at the end of the 1880s, when there had already been a break with all Goetheanism, when people no longer wanted to know anything about Goetheanism. Hamerling described the career of Homunkel: how he is completely taken over by materialistic thinking, how he lives in a world where one does not enrich oneself through spiritual treasures, but rather becomes a billionaire — — Homunkel becomes a billionaire —, in which people deal with the spiritual world in the most frivolous way, in which, with all due respect, journalism is already developing that has since experienced even more terrible decline. Let us assume that someone is now reading Hamerling's “Homunkulus.” Now he might say to himself: Yes, God, this Hamerling—he died in 1889—actually only saw humanity with his physical eyes when he wrote his “Homunkulus,” as it was then on the paths it was rushing down. Let us assume—as someone reading Homunkulus today might say—that people at that time had taken seriously what Hamerling shows in his Homunkulus, that they had really let it sink in a little, not just as a literary product, but that they had taken it seriously, then they would truly not have been surprised if someone had said: This world catastrophe must necessarily arise from this humanity. - Anyone reading “Homunkulus” today can say that. What is so surprising about the fact that this world catastrophe has arisen, given that a poet of the 1880s was able to portray the man Homunkel in this way?
But the call that lies in this portrayal of the human being Homunkel is at the same time not to remain stuck in a life that is nothing more than homunculus, but to cross over the abyss where spiritual science speaks of the supersensible insights that alone can transform the homunculus into a homo. And so one could say: in the homunculism that exists in a world in which people today do not want to place themselves, in the scene we are depicting today, between homunculism and Mephistopheles, which leads into the realm of the Phorkyades, humanity is placed. Goethe sensed this and depicted it in his “Faust.” He already sensed that a path must be paved that avoids both the cliff of fantastical, abstract mysticism and the other cliff of an unrealistic, ghostly view of nature, but which leads to supersensible knowledge and, from supersensible knowledge, also finds social impulses.
This is, in a sense, a deeper layer of consciousness. If we penetrate it, if we permeate our feelings with it, we learn, in a sense, to understand the language of that layer of consciousness that comes from the regions where one feels that one cannot reach oneself in thinking and loses oneself in wanting. The inability to reach oneself in thinking is homuncular, the losing oneself in wanting is Mephistophelean. If one feels this, then one stands there in such deep scenes with a language that makes one understand what is given in such a scene, as the scene is from the end of the “Classical Walpurgis Night.”
Ultimately, everyone sees the world as it can be presented to them according to their received powers. But the present task of humanity is to increase these received powers so that some things in the world may be seen that have not been seen for the misfortune of humanity in recent decades.
And so, truly immersing oneself in such a profound scene as the one we are now presenting is a way for people to move forward in the direction in which humanity should now be moving. As with Goetheanism in general – not professorial Goetheanism, not the Goetheanism of the Goethe Society, which is headed not by a Goethe man but by a former finance minister with the symptomatic name of Kreuzwendedich, not all that people believed they had to make of Goethe at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, but what really lies in Goetheanism – must be sought. This will be a good thing and a good impulse to move humanity in the direction it must go if it is to find salvation and not disaster in the near future.