Rudolf Steiner
The Dawn of Spiritual Consciousness
German Idealism
“If God’s own power did not dwell within us,
How could the divine delight us?”
—Goethe
At the end of the 18th century, a gentle and warm spiritual light radiated from Central Europe, heralding the birth of a new image of humanity: the image of a human being born of the spirit, destined to develop the most beautiful and noble powers that humanity carries within itself.
This was not the rebirth of an old ideal, as it had been centuries earlier in Florence, when the radiant worldview of the Greeks rose again from the inwardness of the Middle Ages. No, here it was a new birth! Ancient Greece still possessed an awareness of the divinity of the human being, which revealed itself to mortals in the sublime beauty of art. The figures of the gods, carved from bright marble, display the ideal of the human body as it is constructed from divine forces. In the souls of those who gazed upon them, they could kindle the highest enthusiasm. Humanity was still so intimately connected with the creative forces of the world that, when faced with the marvels of sculpture, it could inwardly experience the mighty harmony that spoke from them. It was still possible to feel this inner resonance, to sense the richness of form within oneself. Man could feel himself as a divine being when he was absorbed in the contemplation of God made man.
The Greek temple, in its broad, radiant tranquility, is the house in which the deity dwells. (10) In sublime grandeur and at the same time quiet simplicity, the rows of columns rise and support the triangular pediment, which, as if lowered from heaven, rests upon the columns that have sprung from the earth. Heaven and earth are united in mighty harmony. Rising from the landscape and connected to it through the ornamentation of the capitals, the columns form the link to the world of the gods, whose images fill the pediment.
Where the knowledge of the world’s divinity lived so strongly in the souls of men, philosophy could arise, out of love for divine wisdom. The human being, who awoke thinking from the cosmic sleep of the past and perceived in his soul the mighty revelations of beauty from the gods in nature, now sought to fathom the connection between phenomena. True philosophical thinking begins only in ancient Greece. (11) Before that, a knowledge lived in the circles of the initiated priests, that had been revealed to them as divine wisdom. It was only in Greece that thinking began to become a soul process active within the human being. Yet how intimately was thinking still connected with nature, with the cosmos. Just as in sculpture and architecture, so too did the forces of heaven and earth unite within the human soul. Thinking, the soul awoke to the world of natural phenomena, but everywhere within this thinking still lived the divinity that permeates and shapes all things.
Thus, the Greece of the pre-Christian centuries is the place where, in the awakening human souls, a thinking knowledge and a creative feeling for the divinity of the human being—which revealed itself in a divine nature—were born. The appearance of Christ precisely in this age of human development is of profound significance. The Incarnation of God had found an inner preparation in the ancient culture of the Greeks. The influence emanating from the events in Palestine was immense. As little as external history has to report about these events, so much is revealed to those who attempt to study the living history of development. The entire way of thinking, the entire way of life of human beings was transformed by these events.
Compare, for example, the language spoken by Gothic architecture with that which resonates from ancient Greece. Consider the Gothic cathedral. The sublime tranquility of the Greek temple has vanished. Nature no longer finds its continuation in the building. The harmony of nature and heaven is lost. A mighty struggle seems to be unfolding within the Gothic cathedral. The immense gray masses of stone, heavy and immovably bound to the earth, are seized by the restless striving that lives in human souls. The Gothic pointed arch arises from the painful striving upward of hands folded above the head. Towers rise, constantly seeking a new vantage point from which they can rise higher still, ever higher, as if they wished to end in the heavens.
Dim light reigns in the cathedral. The sun does not illuminate the space where the human soul seeks God. The light must arise within the soul itself as a small flame upon the altar of the heart. Refracted into countless colors, internalized, this twilight envelops the human soul in a warm radiance. Painful renunciation of the bright, radiant life, turning away from the rejoicing of the divine-human nature, a turning inward to one’s own restless, seeking being, which longs for divine salvation: this is the inner attitude of humanity in the Gothic era.
Florence under the Medici brought salvation from this immense tension. The beauty of ancient Greece was reborn. Yet not merely reborn: the powerful impulse of Christianity had also taken effect here, had also brought about the internalization of the human soul. The Renaissance brings back the images of the divine human being and of God made man, who is now Christ. But these images arise from a newly awakened self-consciousness. From a thinking and feeling consciousness into which the wisdom and beauty of the divine world could still flow unhindered, humanity has now advanced to an awakening in the consciousness of its own self.
Consider the contrast between one of the mighty statues of Zeus from ancient Greece and Michelangelo’s David. Both depict a thinking being; both are images of the highest intellectual concentration. Yet how different this thinking is. In the mighty, high-arched brow of Zeus, surrounded by hair that frames the entire face like the rays of a sun, the world-thoughts themselves seem to have come to rest. The thoughts, as cosmic forces, have created a dwelling place for themselves in this head. The thoughts of the world created this head, just as, in Goethe’s sense, light created the eye. David is quite different. He, too, thinks, but his thinking is an expression of his own self-aware being. His entire posture, at once in the greatest tension and controlled calm, seems to culminate in the expression of his face. The highest concentration lives there, a concentration grown from his own strength. The self-aware ego shapes the thoughts through its own being.
This single example should suffice to show how the Renaissance brought about the rebirth of the Greek ideal of the God-man, but now in a soul life that has been internalized through the Christ impulse and has become self-aware.
In the spiritual light that radiated from Central Europe at the end of the 18th century, a new birth was heralded: the birth of a new stage of development in the history of humanity.
The image of the spiritual human being was emerging.
From the beauty and wisdom of the ancient cultures of India, Persia, and Egypt, the gods themselves come to meet us. Greece brings the union of the God who has become human and the human being who bears God within. In Palestine, cradled in the womb of the people of Israel, this incarnation of God became a reality that renews the world.
Now, from Central Europe, the proclamation of the birth of the spiritual human being itself comes to meet us. What is the true nature of the human being? Where does he originate? How does he stand within the realms of nature? What is his relationship to his fellow human beings, to the state in which he lives? And to the spiritual world he seeks to encompass with his thinking? These questions arise not only in intellectual thought, not only in the feeling soul, but they awaken from the entire soul, newly kindled in self-consciousness.
The immense scope of their task was well recognized by those who felt themselves to be the bearers of this awakening spiritual consciousness. Their works are characterized by the highest versatility.
The comprehensive greatness of Lessing’s critical mind is well known. As early as the age of 25, Herder had already planned to write one day on history, education, psychology, literature, classical studies, philosophy, art, and ethics. Goethe’s universality has become proverbial. But Schiller, too—who began as a physician, wrote his dissertation in this field, and later worked as a historian, philosopher, aesthetician, and poet—was exceedingly versatile. In Novalis’s case, the infinite wealth of thoughts and plans in almost every field could hardly have appeared in any other form than aphoristic during his short, fragile life. The great intellectual breadth of the leading philosophers of that time—Kant, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel—is also well known.
But even more than the general inclination toward universality, what is striking is the powerful flame of enthusiasm that burned in the souls of these people. An indescribable beauty lives in the idealism of this era. Indeed, it is as if idealism only finds its true purpose here, and the word “idealism” only acquires its true meaning.
What is the idea of man? It is the spiritual man, the man whose seed every person carries within, who lives in every soul as an unborn child. To bring this child, a child of the spirit, into the world is the task of this age.
Where the soul begins to live in thought through ideas, where ideas unfold in beauty, where beauty kindles the hidden light of truth—there the new human being, the spiritual human being, is born. “Only through the dawn of beauty do you enter the realm of knowledge,” wrote Schiller.
This idealism of beauty acted as a driving force that led souls jubilantly into the world of the new truth. It is as if, above all those who gave this era its splendor, the image of the ideal human being hovered invisibly, an image glowing in delicate colors that carried within it the seeds of all that humanity is to become in the distant future. To the ordinary eye, this image is invisible, but through the warmth of the flaming heart, the spiritual eye is opened.
To this image they all raise their seeking souls. One seeks to bring it into being through clear thought, another through the intimacy of his heart. Yet they all had to struggle with great difficulties in doing so. For three centuries, humanity had sought and found its development in a specific direction: in the development of the intellect. Prepared by the great discoverers and natural scientists whose names mark a new era of scientific thought—Copernicus, Galileo, Giordano Bruno, Newton, and many others—an age began in which the human intellect was to play an ever-greater role. The achievements accomplished through it were magnificent. They brought about a complete transformation in human life. What at first remained confined to scientific and philosophical thought began to spread more and more widely. Laws of nature were discovered, hidden forces were uncovered and made to serve humanity.
The human soul was strongly influenced by this new culture of reason. The old moral and religious values were called into question. An “Enlightenment philosophy” was able to emerge and preach the rule of “common sense.”
In England, the groundwork had been laid by Francis Bacon, who waged a fierce battle against the illusions and “idols” that cloud perception. He deemed the inductive method to be the only correct one, in which man must restrain his inquiring mind as much as possible. The goal of science is: power over nature. The human mind must subjugate nature; man must become the ruler. Undoubtedly, with these words Bacon expressed what thousands experienced in his time.(12)
The greatest inventions had been made; the art of printing and the telescope had brought about significant changes in personal and scientific life. The intellect had begun its triumphant march across the earth. Even the heavens had become accessible to the inquiring mind. The human spirit felt invincible.
That Locke’s intellectual clarity and Hume’s cool, analytical mind of Hume could take root on this ground needs no further explanation. In France, Voltaire and the Encyclopedists proclaimed common sense. Germany found in Leibniz the philosopher who, under the influence of flourishing natural science, attempted to unite science and religion in a vast, mechanistic, and teleological worldview.
How did such a culture of reason manifest itself in life? Schiller aptly characterizes it in the sixth letter of “On the Aesthetic Education of Man,” where he asks why the individual of his time is so little more than a worthy representative of humanity: “Why was the individual Greek qualified to be a representative of his time, yet why may the individual of the modern age not dare to do so? Because the all-unifying nature gave form to the former, while the all-dividing intellect gave form to the latter. It was culture itself that inflicted this wound upon modern humanity.” According to Schiller, it is the all-dividing intellect that also acts upon human nature in a dividing and fragmenting, i.e., destructive manner.
The intuitive and the speculative intellect are now distinguished, standing in suspicious and jealous opposition to one another. Church and state, customs and laws were separated. “Pleasure was separated from labor, the means from the end, the effort from the reward. Bound forever to a single small fragment of the whole, man develops himself only as a fragment; with only the monotonous sound of the wheel that drives him ever ringing in his ears, he never develops the harmony of his being, and instead of expressing humanity in his nature, he becomes merely an imprint of his business, of his science.”
Completely isolated, man stands before the cosmos. His intellectual faculties assign him the limited sphere within which his mind must remain and his labor must operate. The scope of his knowledge continues to expand, yet at the same time this knowledge separates him, as if by a thick wall, from the universal connections he was once able to experience. It is this wall, too, that made the birth of the new conception of humanity, which was heralded in German idealism, so difficult. The leading figures in science, art, and the social sphere did not yet feel the necessity of such a rebirth. Their expectations were still directed elsewhere. They did not yet feel they had reached the goal of the path they had once embarked upon: the rational mastery of natural and life phenomena.
The great creators of German idealism looked into the near future. For them, a culture of reason progressing in this manner could only be a blessing to humanity if it placed itself in the service of an all-pervading, all-encompassing striving toward the ideal of the great human being ideal. Without carrying this ideal within itself like a radiant light, it was bound to lead to increasing fragmentation.
They did not turn against this culture of reason, but against its one-sided propagation. They deeply experienced the truth that human thinking can lead into the light of the spiritual world when this thinking is born in the full, living soul; but that one must become entangled in spiritual darkness if it continues to operate solely within the isolated intellect.
The birth of this spiritual idealism was being prepared in a great number of people. Their names form a golden chain, whose links shone brightly amidst the barren, thorny thicket of the intellectual culture of that time. Only a few of them can be briefly mentioned here.
At the height of his intellectual development, Lessing wrote an essay in a brief, aphoristic style titled “The Education of the Human Race.” Lessing was 51 years old at the time; he died a year later. Anyone who reads this work and compares it with the spirit that pervades Lessing’s other works is confronted with a remarkable fact. For several decades already, Lessing had occupied a position within German intellectual life from which he exerted a powerful influence on his younger contemporaries. Herder was greatly influenced by him. Goethe held him in the highest esteem. His “Laocoön” , his “Hamburg Dramaturgy,” and other critical and religious writings, all written in clear language, reflect the image of a man who, drawing on a strong sense of self-confidence, attempts to approach the world’s mysteries through his own thinking. Above all, the mysteries of religion captivate him. The great question that constantly occupies him is: Can the human mind find an answer to these mysteries through thought? In earlier times, the answers were revealed. (11) How will development proceed if this revelation no longer occurs?
Thinking clearly and objectively in this direction, yet always in intimate spiritual communion with the profound mysteries of Christianity, Lessing now develops his thoughts on the education of the human race. What do the various ages in human history signify? Why do they all possess a specific character? Lessing answers: “In every age, the human race can undergo the development necessary for its education.” Education works through revelation. “What education is for the individual, revelation is for the entire human race,” reads the first sentence.
Yet education can only give a person what already lies dormant within them as a seed; it merely acquires it more quickly and easily through this education. Thus, revelation cannot give the human race anything that the human mind could not find on its own. This education takes place in a specific, periodic development. The people of Israel, chosen by God for a special education, received the revelation of the one God, the Father-God, who punishes, rewards, and issues His commandments, educating His people, just as a wise father does with his children. During this period, some among the people of Israel come to realize that moral action requires higher motives than punishment and reward. To them Christ appears, bringing the immortality of the soul as both a teaching and a way of life. With his resurrection from the dead, he completes his life. True, the Jews were also familiar with the doctrine of immortality through the influence of the Chaldeans and Persians; Greek philosophy had also imparted it to them. But it remained a belief confined to certain sects. It could not be a popular belief. — Christ appears as a teacher whose teaching inspires complete trust and whose deeds fulfill this teaching. Thus, the Old Testament is to be regarded as a first, and the New Testament as a second, book of instruction. What had previously unfolded within a people, within a generation, now becomes a matter for the individual human soul.
Lessing’s language becomes prophetic when he contemplates the coming age. “No; it will come, it will certainly come, the age of perfection, when man, the more convinced his reason feels of an ever-better future, will nevertheless have no need to seek motives for his actions from that future; when he will do good because it is good, not because arbitrary rewards are attached to it, which were once meant merely to fix and strengthen his fickle gaze so that he might recognize its inner, better rewards. — It will surely come, the time of a new eternal Gospel, which is promised to us even in the elementary books of the New Covenant.” A third age will dawn. In every human being, what has been developed over the course of generations will come to consciousness. “The very path by which the human race attains its perfection must first have been traversed by every single human being (some sooner, some later).” From here, the thinking mind can easily grasp the conclusions that Lessing articulates in his questions: “To have traversed it in one and the very same life? Can he have been a sensual Jew and a spiritual Christian in the very same life? Can he have surpassed both in the very same life?—Surely not!—But why could not every single human being have existed more than once in this world?”
This “oldest hypothesis” is the conclusion of the clear, and in a deeper sense logical, line of reasoning that Lessing constructs here:
“Why should I not return as often as I am sent to acquire new knowledge and new skills? Do I accomplish so much at once that it is not worth the effort to return?
Why not? — Or because I would forget that I had already been here? It is good for me that I forget this. The memory of my previous states would only allow me to make poor use of the present one. And what I must forget for now—have I then forgotten it forever?
Or because so much time would be lost to me? — Lost? — And what do I have to miss? Is not all eternity mine?”
The grand image of humanity, the spiritual man who, through the course of the centuries, passes from birth to birth and gathers his impressions and experiences—first educated by God Himself, then brought to his true, essential nature through Christ, and thereafter moving ever closer to his perfection through his own insight and strength—this great ideal was what Lessing envisioned when he wrote his “Education of the Human Race.” The eternity of the human spirit became a meaningful reality to him.
However, more than a century had to pass before this thought could be expressed in a completely indisputable form. Lessing’s thinking mind reached high into the realm of spiritual truths. With a premonition bordering on certainty, this mind was able to discover the doctrine of reincarnation. It only gains certainty where a spiritual science finds the same precision in relation to the spiritual world as natural science has in relation to the natural realms.
It is only a short step from Lessing to Herder. Inspired to write by Lessing’s literary letters, Herder developed the same versatility. Like Lessing, he was critical of the mediocrity of German literature at the time, equally sharp in his judgment. Yet this harsh judgment did not stem from a penchant for negative criticism. No, for Herder, art was sacred. Above all, only the very highest standards could be applied to poetry. A poem had to arise entirely from the living soul, entirely from the full, warm heart. The word could be born only from the deepest intimacy of the feeling soul. “Like the bride with her beloved, when he, his arm around her, hangs upon her mouth; like two newlyweds who confide in one another; like a pair of twins, formed and raised together; like Plato’s soul to the body—so do thought and word, feeling and expression relate to one another.”
In such an expression through the word, through language, Herder sees the highest revelation of the human being.
By what means is the human being capable of such a revelation of his inner being? Herder also attempts to answer this question. He contemplates the universe in which the Earth, nature, and humanity are situated. Language and poetry appear within it at a specific stage of development. How do the developments of the human soul relate to the realms of nature? In his “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humanity,” he seeks an answer to this question. Let us highlight just one thought from this great work here.
In contemplating the various realms of nature, Herder arrives at the idea that everything must be based on a certain archetype that seeks to realize itself throughout all things. Rising through the world of rocks, crystals, and metals, through plants, through animals, and finally reaching humanity, this archetype ascends, uniting ever more powers within a single being—namely, humanity. The deeper a being is situated within the natural kingdoms, the more one-sided are the forces it possesses, and the more one-sided is its form. Thus Herder ultimately arrives at the view that the human race is to be regarded as the synthesis of lower organic forces, which were to come together in it “for the formation of humanity.” All the forces of the animal type—of the various animal species, for example—are united in harmony within the human being. This explains his great versatility.
Thus the human being rises from the natural organisms as “the crown of earthly creation.” “He is an image of the Deity: for he explores the laws of nature, the thoughts by which the Creator united them and made them essential to them. Reason, therefore, can act no more arbitrarily than the Deity Himself thought arbitrarily.”
If we take this thought further, it becomes clear that at the pinnacle of natural development, the highest expression of the soul manifests itself: language. Language is the human instrument of the sciences, yet it is more than just an instrument. Here, Herder finds the most beautiful words in his description of the significance of language: “Words and ideas are closely related in worldly wisdom: how much depends on expression in the critique of the fine arts: through language we learn to think clearly, and for clear and vivid thoughts we seek clear and vivid words: our guardians, who shape our tongue, are our first teachers of logic. The genius of language is thus also the genius of a nation’s literature.”
The development of language, in turn, unfolds across various epochs. In youth, poetry blossoms. It finds its expression in the simple folk song, vivid and rich in imagery. The language of middle age is no longer poetry. It has become prose. In old age, truth takes the place of beauty: the philosophical age of language has dawned.
As humanity progresses through the stages of its development, man is formed from the powers of language. That is why the first law of nature that Herder establishes is: “Man is a free-thinking, active being whose powers continue to work in progression; therefore, he is a creature of language!”
Just as Lessing’s intellectual image of humanity began to take shape in the clear thoughts of his deeply religious soul, so did Herder’s in the warm fervor of his enthusiasm for true poetry. Herder thereby gained great influence over his contemporaries, especially over Goethe. In the not always easy relationship between these two still-young men—not made easy by Herder’s brusque, self-tormenting nature, which could not always bear the much brighter nature of the young Goethe—the seeds of many significant ideas and discoveries took root. Goethe felt the highest reverence for this strong, serious educator. “The most significant event, which was to have the most important consequences for me, was my closer association with Herder,” we read in “Poetry and Truth.”
It is impossible to outline in a few words what Goethe’s universal significance for the development of humanity is based upon. The content of his long, rich life, the scope of his intellectual creativity, the breadth of his foresight—all this will only be seen in its proper light over the course of centuries. From the time of his first poems, which he wrote as a young man, to the final years of his life, in which he completed the ripest fruits of his art of living and his poetry, “Wilhelm Meister’s Journeyman Years” and the second part of “Faust,” the wellspring of his creative spirit flowed almost without interruption all that time.
As a poet and master of language, he was inspired by Lessing and, above all, by Herder. Yet soon the student surpassed his teachers. In ever-widening circles, he was regarded as the creator of the new German language. And indeed, a language so rich, so lively, so flexible is certainly not to be found before him. His expressive possibilities seem limitless. The most difficult, often barely expressible, takes shape; the simplest, the universally familiar, becomes new and captivating; the everyday becomes bearable.
Yet no matter how great Goethe’s influence on language and poetry was, his significance for the intellectual progress of humanity extends far beyond that.
The question of the innermost essence of humanity resonates throughout his entire life’s work—humanity in nature, in history, in the universe. Yet not humanity as a scientifically definable object, but the living human being—both human and divine—who lives in nature and rises above nature into the highest realms of the spirit; it is this human being that Goethe seeks, without allowing himself to be guided by any one dogmatic school of thought and, what is even more important, without allowing himself to be deterred by any such school. Everything is important to him; everything can reveal something to him about the mysteries of life.
The question of the spiritual core of the human being—a question that Lessing and Herder had already sought to answer before him—was experienced by Goethe in a far broader and deeper way. His entire life is devoted to answering it. As a result, this life appears to us as a monumental work of art, as rich and multifaceted as life itself.
There is no more beautiful or accurate portrait of Goethe’s attitude toward life than that found in Schiller’s famous letter of August 23, 1794, in which he describes what impressed him about Goethe’s way of viewing the world. “Your observant gaze, which rests so quietly and purely upon things, never puts you in danger of straying onto the wrong path, into which both speculation and the arbitrary imagination that obeys only itself so easily lose their way. In your correct intuition lies everything—and far more completely—that analysis laboriously seeks, and only because it lies within you as a whole is your own wealth hidden from you; for, alas, we know only what we can separate. Minds of your kind therefore rarely know how far they have advanced and how little reason they have to borrow from philosophy, which can only learn from you. Philosophy can only dissect what is given to it, but the act of giving itself is not the task of the analyst, but of the genius, who, under the dark yet certain influence of pure reason, unites according to objective laws.”
Here, reference is made to something that truly holds the key to the mystery of Goethe’s essence. Quiet, pure perception! That is, perception that is not clouded by the soul’s wishes and desires, not obscured by the intellect or by dogma. Perception that, like a pure mirror, carries into the soul that which lives out in nature. Through such pure perception, the light of intuition can dawn in the soul of the perceiver. Thus “true intuition” forms as the inner counterpart of “pure observation.”
For someone who stands in the world in this way, nature reveals its secrets. Goethe says: “Nature has no secret that it does not lay bare before the eyes of the attentive observer somewhere.” The person who allows the intuitions of their spirit to rise in this way and can place them within the events of the world is creative in the highest sense of the word. He acts in the world of the spirit just as creative nature itself acts in the natural realms. For just as nature constantly brings forth new forms and shapes, so too are the thoughts born in the mind of such a person as alive and fruitful as natural organisms.
“For a long time,” writes Schiller, “I have, though from a considerable distance, observed the course of your mind and noted the path you have charted for yourself with ever-renewed admiration. You seek the necessity of nature, but you seek it by the most arduous path, which every weaker force would well guard against. You take all of nature together to gain insight into the individual; in the totality of its manifestations, you seek the basis for explaining the individual. From simple organization, you ascend, step by step, to the more complex ones, to finally construct the most complex of all, man, genetically from the materials of the entire edifice of nature. By, as it were, recreating him after nature, you seek to penetrate his hidden mechanism. A grand and truly heroic idea, which amply demonstrates how firmly your mind holds the rich whole of its concepts together in a beautiful unity. You could never have hoped that your life would suffice for such a goal, but merely to set out on such a path is worth more than to complete any other...”
To recreate nature from the living, experiencing, thinking spirit, and in this recreation to build a new world—the world of the spiritual human being—that is the eternal service Goethe rendered to humanity. In this spiritual creative process, he finds humanity intimately connected with nature. He has depicted this connection with indescribable beauty in his prose poem “Nature.” It shows us humanity as a part of divine nature; humanity merges into it, is guided by it, and lives along with its creative impulse. “Nature! We are surrounded and embraced by her—unable to step out of her, and unable to penetrate deeper into her. Uninvited and without warning, she takes us into the cycle of her dance and carries us along until we are weary and slip from her arms.
She eternally creates new forms; what is there has never been, what was will not return—everything is new and yet always the old.
We live in the midst of her and are strangers to her. She speaks ceaselessly to us and does not reveal her secret to us. We constantly influence her, and yet have no power over her.”
Yet it is not only humanity that is embraced by nature; nature also lives within humanity. Human beings are all within it, and it is within all of them.”
It is like a mighty spiritual breathing process. In his plant-like being, in all his life forces and processes, the human being is a natural being, absorbed, caught up in nature. Yet the forces of nature also work within his sentient soul.
Nature lives within him, just as he lives within nature. When this natural being finds itself within, and allows it to work within in all inner purity, then creative nature will manifest itself a second time in the human soul: in the world of thoughts that arise intuitively in the human soul. In thinking, the spiritual counterpart of nature is born.
This is how Goethe’s work in the field of natural science is to be understood. The theory of plant metamorphosis, for example, is not a scientific theory introduced hypothetically to explain certain phenomena. It arose from an intimate communion with nature, from an ever-purer observation of the forces at work in the plant world. This theory had to mature in Goethe’s soul for many years before it could suddenly appear as a ripe fruit.
“Reason,” as it is written in one of his prose sayings, “depends on what is becoming; the intellect on what has become; the former does not ask: ‘Why?’; the latter does not ask: ‘Where from?’ It delights in development; it wishes to hold everything fast so that it may make use of it.”
The joy of all development inspired Goethe; it lives within him as a creative force, opening within him a new, inner organ, a spiritual eye that perceives ever more clearly the primordial plant underlying all plant forms. From this primordial plant, all individual plant forms develop in a continuous metamorphosis.
Goethe does not merely think about nature; rather, his thinking lives within the forces of nature themselves. The divine workings of nature within the human being itself become his source of knowledge; the whole human being is encompassed. Before us stands not merely a poet who, moreover, conducted studies in the field of natural science as a dedicated enthusiast; no, the poet cannot be separated from the naturalist. The soul that experiences beauty and the soul that seeks wisdom are one and the same. Enthusiasm for the beautiful opens the inner eye, which is capable of beholding the hidden mysteries of nature. The wisdom which reveals itself in divine nature, gives beauty its true substance. In his prose aphorisms he says: “To whom nature begins to unveil her manifest secret, he feels an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter, art”; and: “Beauty is a manifestation of secret laws of nature that would have remained eternally hidden from us without its appearance.”
How can one imagine ever penetrating the innermost essence of nature if one neglects what nature produces as a creative artist? Can one understand a work of art carved from marble through the chemical analysis of the marble, its weight, or its structure? Just as little can the analyzing mind discover the hidden essence of living nature.
In Goethe, a new capacity for insight is heralded, one that would not be fully recognized until a century later. (13) Goethe himself put it most beautifully: “Whoever possesses art and science also possesses religion. Whoever does not possess these two, let him have religion.”
Art and science are united in the human soul. The artist finds his highest goal in the revelation of beauty through divine wisdom; through his enthusiasm for beauty, the wise man is led into the world of phenomena.
In Goethe, the two fundamental forces of the soul—thinking and feeling—are intimately connected. Where he is most accomplished as a poet, he expresses the deepest spiritual truths; where the greatest truths shine forth within him, he finds the most artistically beautiful form. In the introduction to his “Theory of Colors,” we find the words: “Colors are the deeds of light, deeds and sufferings.” Anyone who would regard this as a poetic embellishment, as a beautiful phrase meant to accompany the scientific work, misunderstands Goethe. Such a phrase must be regarded as the central motif of a mighty composition, a symphony of wisdom! The entire “Theory of Colors” lives within it. Every chapter is an elaboration of this motif. The deeds of light where it overcomes darkness, the suffering where it is clouded by darkness—to describe this is the very essence of the “Theory of Colors,” sentence by sentence, chapter by chapter. This interpenetration of beauty and wisdom enables Goethe to speak of the nature of light and colors in a way he could not have done otherwise.
Goethe was very aware of this. No matter how deeply the attacks of his many opponents affected him, the certain knowledge that he was on the right path here filled him with great strength. When he was nearly eighty years old, he said to Eckermann about his “Theory of Colors”: “The errors of my opponents have been too widely spread for a century for me to hope, on my lonely path, to find even this or that companion. I shall remain alone! — I often feel like a man shipwrecked who seizes a plank capable of carrying only one person. This one is saved, while all the others drown miserably.”
A comprehensive, in-depth study could show how deeply artistic-creative and scientific-educational impulses interpenetrate one another everywhere. From such an intimate union of art and science, religion can be born as a profound mystery. Not a religion in the traditional ecclesiastical sense, but a religion that connects the soul with the highest, most hidden creative forces. From this religious experience, Goethe sought to approach humanity.
In nature, humanity appeared to him as a natural being, embedded within it and formed from its forces. Yet that which is truly human in humanity rises above these natural forces. Humanity distinguishes itself from all other beings of nature—from plants and animals—through its moral existence.
Noble is the human being,
Helpful and good!
For that alone
Distinguishes him
From all beings,
That we know.
This spiritual-moral being, however, alone determines his true nature. Through this, he is also able to rise above the temporality of all existence.
Only man alone
Is capable of the impossible;
He distinguishes,
Chooses and judges;
He can bestow
Durability upon the moment.
This human being was what Goethe sought. It had been lost in the times of spiritual darkness brought about by intellectualism.
Goethe depicts this struggle for the lost human being in poetic-dramatic form in his “Faust.” “Wilhelm Meister’s Apprenticeship and Wanderings” addresses the same problem in a broad narrative form. It is touched upon most deeply in the unfinished poem “The Mysteries,” which Goethe wrote at the age of 35. 3See the author’s “Die Wirklichkeit in der wir leben” (The Reality in Which We Live). Natura Verlag Arlesheim 1959. In it, the significance of “Die Geheimnisse” is further elaborated. The significance of the whole is already indicated in the very first words:
A wondrous song is prepared for you,
Listen to it gladly and call everyone here!
The following verses show that he did not intend to cast great and sublime truths into allegorical form:
But let no one believe that with all his senses
He will ever unravel the whole song.
Such a statement by Goethe sprang from the inner certainty that the mysteries of life, which his mind could approach with understanding, are not accessible to everyone. In his old age, he expressed this candidly to Eckermann. The conversation turned to Carlyle, who had studied “Wilhelm Meister” and, according to Eckermann, would have liked to see the novel become widely known. “Goethe drew me to a window to answer me. ‘Dear child,’ he said,‘I want to confide something to you that will immediately help you beyond many things and that will benefit you for the rest of your life. My works cannot become popular; anyone who thinks so and strives for it is mistaken. They are not written for the masses, but only for individual people who want and seek something similar and who are inclined in similar directions.”
Such a statement by the elderly Goethe—the conversation took place in 1828—who was still at the height of his intellectual creativity and had a full overview of his own work, must not be overlooked. It can open the eyes of those who believe that anything not readily accessible to the simple mind cannot belong to Goethe’s truly important work. Those who think this way form a certain conception of Goethe’s intentions according to their own whims. Anyone who wishes to learn to grasp the true depths of Goethe’s spirit will also have to acknowledge him himself as a guide in the process.
The mystery of the birth of the spiritual human being—already the content of the “Mysteries”—lives even more deeply in the “Fairy Tale” written ten years later. In this strange, seemingly obscure “Fairy Tale”, which was conceived during a walk along the banks of the Saale in Jena, one must again refrain from searching for one or another allegorical guise of a familiar truth of life. Goethe did not hold such allegories in high regard. In a chapter of his treatise on the “Sensual-Moral Effect of Colors,” he distinguished very precisely between allegory and symbol. In a symbol, the essence of the images it encompasses corresponds entirely with its meaning. In allegory, chance, arbitrariness, and convention play a greater role.
If one calls the “Fairy Tale” symbolic, one may do so only in the sense that Goethe himself gave to this word. It is then, in pictorial form, the true reflection of what arose intuitively in Goethe’s soul at a specific moment in his life.
Just as all of Goethe’s significant works arose from the inner encounter of pure perception and pure intuition, so too did the “Fairy Tale”. Externally and internally, it stands at the center of Goethe’s life and marks a high point in his intellectual development. Understood in this way, it reveals what was described at the beginning of this chapter as the birth of the new image of humanity.
The “Fairy Tale” was written shortly after the decisive encounter with Schiller. The connection to this event is obvious.
Goethe’s path to humanity led through nature. By recreating the living processes of nature, he found in it humanity as a pinnacle. His theory of metamorphosis encompasses the developmental process in the plant world; then, in his morphological studies, he ascends to the animal skeleton and from there to the human skeleton. However, Goethe sought the difference between animal and human skeletons in the workings of the moral-spiritual essence of humanity. Yet true essence of man, however, his mind could not penetrate during this period of his life.
Then he met Schiller! One must not imagine that the encounter between these two geniuses could have led without further ado to an extraordinary mutual understanding. Goethe was already a famous man as a poet. After returning from Italy, his nature had been transformed, including his outward demeanor. A certain distance began to form between him and the world. Later, he once spoke to Schiller of a dividing wall. The cold weather and the cloudy skies of the north weighed heavily on him. He was not particularly impressed by the state of German literature at the time. He read Schiller’s “The Robbers” with great aversion. Thus, their first encounter was bound to be a disappointment. That it led to something else is due solely to a fortunate coincidence. Goethe came across Schiller’s poem “The Gods of Greece.” The warm, soulful tone of this poem, the profound thoughts from which it sprang, could not fail to make an impression on him. The entire poem is like a mighty sigh, a lament over the lost Greek worldview.
Since you still rule the beautiful world,
Guided by joy’s light leash
Blessed generations are still led,
Beautiful beings from the land of fables —
“How different it was there!” is Schiller’s sigh. “Everything revealed itself to the initiated gaze, everything a trace of a god.” In stirring words, the return of the gods to Mount Pindus is described. They took everything beautiful, everything sublime with them. “And all that remained for us was the soulless word.”
This poem truly captures the spirit of those who made German Idealism great. The soulless word, painfully experienced in a world that had grown cold and empty, stood before them. With the fire of their hearts, they embraced it to give it new life, new warmth of the soul. The word was to be reborn in their enthusiasm, and with the word, through the word, the new image of humanity.
A language such as Schiller spoke in this poem was a revelation to Goethe. Yet it would be some time before the truly decisive encounter could take place. Following a meeting of the “Society of Naturalists” in Jena, the famous conversation about plant metamorphosis ensued. Schiller carefully examined the rough sketch of the primordial plant, but had to reject the whole thing as not derived from experience. Still strongly under the influence of Kant’s philosophy at the time, Schiller could not acknowledge such an idea that had not been arrived at through the usual scientific method.
“But when I had finished,” writes Goethe, “he shook his head and said: ‘That is not experience; that is an idea.’ I paused, somewhat disheartened: for the point that separated us was thereby most sharply defined. The assertion from “Grace and Dignity” came back to me; the old resentment threatened to stir, but I pulled myself together and replied: ‘It is very dear to me that I have ideas without knowing it, and even see them with my eyes.’”
Yet this conversation was decisive. The first step had been taken. Goethe called this time of budding friendship “A New Spring.”
Rarely in history will one find such a strong, spiritual bond as that which united Goethe and Schiller. It is as if two world forces, effective from different poles, were to meet. Goethe, in whom the creative life forces of nature, as it were, continue their path of development, in whom the creative work of the Deity was carried forward within a human spirit—and, opposite him, Schiller, wholly filled with the burning desire to unveil the mystery of humanity, to recognize the human being as a creature born of divine forces.
The lament over the soulless word opened Goethe’s eyes to Schiller’s suffering soul. For Schiller, Goethe’s great power was revealed in the discovery of plant metamorphosis. The “Letters on Aesthetic Education,” begun as early as 1793, became, under the influence of the new friendship with Goethe, a great educational work for humanity. Man’s relationship to the ideal he carries within himself, the potential lying within him to develop the best forces of humanity—all of this is presented in the letters as a new path of development. “Every individual human being, one might say, carries within them, by nature and destiny, a pure, ideal human being, and the great task of their existence is to harmonize with this unchanging unity amidst all their vicissitudes,” states the fourth letter. Yet humanity today is wounded. The culture that advances in the direction of empirical science and seeks its strength in an ever-increasing development of intellectuality has split human nature. An increasing tendency toward abstraction on the one hand and a rampant imagination on the other have destroyed the soul’s powers. “The dead letter stands in for the living mind, and a trained memory guides more surely than genius and feeling.”
How can what is truly human be reawakened? By entering the realm where human beings can freely unfold their essence. This realm lies within the human being itself. On the one hand, human beings are bound by the forces of nature at work within them. The “material instinct,” as Schiller calls it, holds them captive in nature. On the other hand, they are equally unfree within the forces that their spirit makes tangible to them as the all-shaping, all-governing, divine forces. Here the “formative impulse” is at work. Between these two bonds—the sensual and the spiritual, between nature and morality—the free human being can be born when they discover beauty.
The same forces that live in a child’s play reveal themselves as the forces of beauty. It is the “play instinct” that operates in all human beings and gives everyone the opportunity to become a free human being through the creation of beauty. The two forces of the “form instinct” and the “material instinct,” through their union within the human being, express, in the deepest sense of the word, “the idea of his humanity.” It is there, in this interplay, that the “play instinct” operates. Drawing on one of the highest intuitions of which the human spirit is capable, Schiller arrives at the almost paradoxical statement: “For, to put it bluntly at once, man plays only where he is a human being in the full sense of the word, and he is a fully human being only where he plays.”
The “Letters on Aesthetic Education” rank among the most significant works to be found in literature. Far exceeding the original intention of a series of aesthetic treatises, they became a book in which ideas come to life that future humanity needs for its education. Novalis, who recognized this divine impulse in Schiller, called him “the educator of the coming century.” “Fate gave him the divine gift of transforming everything he touches into the property and inheritance of moral grace.”
In a profound spiritual sense, one can place Goethe’s “Fairy Tale,” written in 1795, directly alongside these letters. In it appears—not in clear, philosophical form, but as poetic imagination—a revelation of the true human being as it is to be born in the coming centuries.
Three times in the “Fairy Tale” we hear the call of the man with the lamp: “The time has come.” The coming development is announced prophetically. The realm of the beautiful lily, separated from the other realm by a wide river, can be entered once humanity has made the sacrifice of the intellect. The green serpent brings this sacrifice. The human of the future, embodied in the “Fairy Tale” by the young man, is endowed with three soul faculties: wisdom, beauty, and strength. The subterranean temple rises and stands as a mighty edifice on the banks of the river, over which the serpent can form a solid bridge through its sacrifice.
In the human being equipped with the three ruling powers of the soul, a fourth power of the soul blossoms, even stronger than the other three: the power of formative, creative love. “Love does not rule, but it forms; and that is more.”
Whoever wishes to immerse themselves with humility in the wondrous spiritual revelation of Goethe’s “Fairy Tale” will find in it the luminous, radiant proclamation of the birth of the new image of humanity. The image that teaches us to recognize humanity as a being born of divine creative powers, living and dying on earth under the sign of true human love, and enduring eternally in the spirit of his own divine self.