| 318. Pastoral Medicine: Lecture II
09 Sep 1924, Dornach Tr. Gladys Hahn Rudolf Steiner |
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| Pythians: priestesses of Apollo who delivered the oracles at Delphi.4 . Teresa of Avila (1515–1582), Carmelite nun. Reformed the Carmelite Order in association with John of the Cross. |
| 318. Pastoral Medicine: Lecture II
09 Sep 1924, Dornach Tr. Gladys Hahn Rudolf Steiner |
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Dear friends, If we are going to consider the mutual concerns of priest and physician, we should look first at certain phenomena in human life that easily slide over into the pathological field. These phenomena require a physician's understanding, since they reach into profound depths, even into the esoteric realm of religious life. We have to realize that all branches of human knowledge must be liberated from a certain coarse attitude that has come into them in this materialistic epoch. We need only recall how certain phenomena that had been grouped together for some time under the heading “genius and insanity” have recently been given a crass interpretation by Lombroso1 and his school and also by others. I am not pointing to the research itself—that has its uses—but rather to their way of looking at things, to what they brought out as “criminal anthropology,” from studying the skulls of criminals. The opinions they voiced were not only coarse but extraordinarily commonplace. Obviously the philistines all got together and decided what the normal type of human being is. And it was as near as could possibly be to a philistine! And whatever deviated from this type was pathological, genius on one side, insanity on the other; each in its own way was pathological. Since it is quite obvious to anyone with insight that every pathological characteristic also expresses itself bodily, it is also obvious that symptoms can be found in bodily characteristics pointing in one or the other direction. It is a matter of regarding the symptoms in the proper way. Even an earlobe can under certain conditions clearly reveal some psychological peculiarity, because such psychological peculiarities are connected with the karma that works over from earlier incarnations. The forces that build the physical organism in the first seven years of human life are the same forces by which we think later. So it is important to consider certain phenomena, not in the customary manner but in a really appropriate way. We will not be regarding them as pathological (although they will lead us into aspects of pathology) but rather will be using them to obtain a view of human life itself. Let us for a moment review the picture of a human being that Anthroposophy gives us. The human being stands before us in a physical body, which has a long evolution behind it, three preparatory stages before it became an earthly body—as is described in my book An Outline of Esoteric Science.2 This earthly body needs to be understood much more than it is by today's anatomy and physiology. For the human physical body as it is today is a true image of the etheric body, which is in its third stage of development, and of the astral body, which is in its second stage, and even to a certain degree of the ego organization that humans first received on earth, which therefore is in its first stage of development. All of this is stamped like the stamp of a seal upon the physical body—which makes the physical body extraordinarily complicated. Only its purely mineral and physical nature can be understood with the methods of knowledge that are brought to it today. What the etheric body impresses upon it is not to be reached at all by those methods. It has to be observed with the eye of a sculptor so that one obtains pictorial images of cosmic forces, images that can then be recognized again in the form of the entire human being and in the forms of the single organs. The physical human being is also an image of the breathing and blood circulation. But the entire dynamic activity that works and weaves through the blood circulation and breathing system can only be understood if one thinks of it in musical forms. For instance, there is a musical character to the formative forces that were poured into the skeletal system and then became active in a finer capacity in the breathing and circulation. We can perceive in eurythmy how the octave goes out from the shoulder blade and proceeds along the bones of the arm. This bone formation of the arm cannot be understood from a mechanical view of dynamics, but only from musical insight. We find the interval of the prime extending from the shoulder blade to the bone of the upper arm, the humerus, the interval of the second in the humerus, the third from the elbow to the wrist. We find two bones there because there are two thirds in music, a larger and a smaller. And so on. In short, if we want to find the impression of the astral body upon the physical body, upon the breathing and blood circulation, we are obliged to bring a musical understanding to it. Still more difficult to understand is the ego organization. For this one needs to grasp the meaning of the first verse of the Gospel of St. John: “In the beginning was the Word.” “The Word” is meant there to be understood in a concrete sense, not abstractly, as commentators of the Gospels usually present it. If this is applied concretely to the real human being, it provides an explanation of how the ego organization penetrates the human physical body. You can see that we ought to add much more to our studies if they are to lead to a true understanding of the human being. However, I am convinced that a tremendous amount of material could be eliminated not only from medical courses but from theological courses too. If one would only assemble the really essential material, the number of years medical students, for instance, must spend in their course would not be lengthened but shortened. Naturally it is thought in materialistic fashion today that if there's something new to be included, you must tack another half-year onto the course! Out of the knowledge that Anthroposophy gives us, we can say that the human being stands before us in physical, etheric and astral bodies, and an ego organization. In waking life these four members of the human organization are in close connection. In sleep the physical body and etheric body are together on one side, and the ego organization and astral body on the other side. With knowledge of this fact we are then able to say that the greatest variety of irregularities can appear in the connection of ego organization and astral body with etheric body and physical body. For instance, we can have: physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego organization. (Plate I, 1) Then, in the waking state, the so-called normal relation prevails among these four members of the human organization.  But it can also happen that the physical body and etheric body are in some kind of normal connection and that the astral body sits within them comparatively normally, but that the ego organization is somehow not properly sitting within the astral body. (Plate I, 2) Then we have an irregularity that in the first place confronts us in the waking condition. Such people are unable to come with their ego organization properly into their astral body; therefore their feeling life is very much disturbed. They can even form quite lively thoughts. For thoughts depend, in the main, upon a normal connection of the astral body with the other bodies. But whether the sense impressions will be grasped appropriately by the thoughts depends upon whether the ego organization is united with the other parts in a normal fashion. If not, the sense impressions become dim. And in the same measure that the sense impressions fade, the thoughts become livelier. Sense impressions can appear almost ghostly, not clear as we normally have them. The soul-life of such people is flowing away; their sense impressions have something misty about them, they seem to be continually vanishing. At the same time their thoughts have a lively quality and tend to become more intense, more colored, almost as if they were sense impressions themselves. When such people sleep, their ego organization is not properly within the astral body, so that now they have extraordinarily strong experiences, in fine detail, of the external world around them. They have experiences, with their ego and astral body both outside their physical and etheric bodies, of that part of the world in which they live—for instance, the finer details of the plants or an orchard around their house. Not what they see during the day, but the delicate flavor of the apples, and so forth. That is really what they experience. And in addition, pale thoughts that are after-effects in the astral body from their waking life. You see, it is difficult if you have such a person before you. And you may encounter such people in all variations in the most manifold circumstances of life. You may meet them in your vocation as physician or as priest—or the whole congregation may encounter them. You can find them in endless variety, for instance, in a town. Today the physician who finds such a person in an early stage of life makes the diagnosis: psychopathological impairment. To modern physicians that person is a psychopathological impairment case who is at the borderline between health and illness; whose nervous system, for instance, can be considered to be on a pathological level. Priests, if they are well-schooled (let us say a Benedictine or Jesuit or Barnabite or the like; ordinary parish priests are sometimes not so well-schooled), will know from their esoteric background that the things such a person tells them can, if properly interpreted, give genuine revelations from the spiritual world, just as one can have from a really insane person. But the insane person is not able to interpret them; only someone who comprehends the whole situation can do so. Thus you can encounter such a person if you are a physician, and we will see how to regard this person medically from an anthroposophical point of view. Thus you can also encounter such a person if you are a priest—and even the entire congregation can have such an encounter. But now perhaps the person develops further; then something quite special appears. The physical and etheric bodies still have their normal connection. But now there begins to be a stronger pull of the ego organization, drawing the astral body to itself, so that the ego organization and astral body are now more closely bound together. And neither of them enters properly into the physical and etheric bodies. (Plate I, 3) Then the following can take place: the person becomes unable to control the physical and etheric bodies properly from the astral body and ego. The person is unable to push the astral body and ego organization properly into the external senses, and therefore, every now and then, becomes “senseless.” Sense impressions in general fade away and the person falls into a kind of dizzy dream state. But then in the most varied way moral impulses can appear with special strength. The person can be confused and also extremely argumentative if the rest of the organism is as just described. Now physicians find in such a case that physical and biochemical changes have taken place in the sense organs and the nerve substance. They will find, although they may take slight notice of them, great abnormalities in the ductless glands and their hormone secretion, in the adrenal glands, and the glands that are hidden in the neck as small glands within the thyroid gland. In such a case there are changes particularly in the pituitary gland and the pineal gland. These are more generally recognized than are the changes in the nervous system and in the general area of the senses. And now the priest comes in contact with such a person. The person confesses to experiencing an especially strong feeling of sin, stronger than people normally have. The priest can learn very much from such individuals, and Catholic priests do. They learn what an extreme consciousness of sin can be like, something that is so weakly developed in most human beings. Also in such a person the love of one's neighbor can become tremendously intense, so much so that the person can get into great trouble because of it, which will then be confessed to the priest. The situation can develop still further. The physical body can remain comparatively isolated because the etheric body—from time to time or even permanently—does not entirely penetrate it, so that now the astral and etheric bodies and the ego organization are closely united with one another and the physical organism is separate from them. (Plate II) To use the current materialistic terms (which we are going to outgrow as the present course of study progresses), such people are in most cases said to be severely mentally retarded individuals. They are unable from their soul-spiritual individuality to control their physical limbs in any direction, not even in the direction of their own will. Such people pull their physical organism along, as it were, after themselves. A person who is in this condition in early childhood, from birth, is also diagnosed as mentally retarded. In the present stage of earth evolution, when all three members—ego organization, astral organization, and etheric body—are separated from the physical, and the lone physical body is dragged along after them, the person cannot perceive, cannot be active, cannot be illumined by the ego organization, astral body, and etheric body. So experiences are dim and the person goes about in a physical body as if it were anesthetized. This is extreme mental retardation, and one has to think how at this stage one can bring the other bodies down into the physical organism. Here it can be a matter of educational measures, but also to a great extent of external therapeutic measures.  But now the priest can be quite amazed at what such a person will confess. Priests may consider themselves very clever, but even thoroughly educated priests—there really are such men in Catholicism; one must not underestimate it—they pay attention if a so-called sick person comes to them and says, “The things you pronounce from the pulpit aren't worth much. They don't add up to anything, they don't reach up to the dwelling place of God, they don't have any worth except external worth. One must really rest in God with one's whole being.” That's the kind of thing such people say. In every other area of their life they behave in such a way that one must consider them to be extremely retarded, but in conversation with their priest they come out with such speeches. They claim to know inner religious life more intimately than someone who speaks of it professionally; they feel contempt for the professional. They call their experience “rest in God.” And you can see that the priest must find ways and means to relate to what such a person—one can say patient, or one can use other terms—to what such a human being is experiencing within. One has to have a sensitive understanding for the fact that pathological conditions can be found in all spheres of life, for the fact that some people may be quite unable at the present time to find their way in the physical-sense world, quite unable to be the sort of human being that external life now requires all of us to be. We are all necessarily to a certain degree philistines as regards external life. But such people as I am describing are not in condition to travel along our philistine paths; they have to travel other ways. Priests must be able to feel what they can give such a person, how to connect what they can give out of themselves with what that other human being is experiencing. Very often such a person is simply called “one of the queer ones.” This demands an understanding of the subtle transition from illness to spirituality. Our study can go further. Think what happens when a person goes through this entire sequence in the course of life. At some period the person is in a condition (Plate I, 2) where only the ego organization has loosened itself from the other members of the organism. In a later period the person advances to a condition where neither ego nor astral enter the physical or etheric bodies. Still later, (Plate I, 3) the person enters a condition where the physical body separates from the other bodies. (Plate II) The person only goes through this sequence if the first condition, perhaps in childhood, which is still normal, already shows a tendency to lose the balance of the four members of the organism. If the physician comes upon such a person destined to go through all these four stages—the first very slightly abnormal, the others as I have pictured them—the physician will find there is tremendous instability and something must be done about it. Usually nothing can be done. Sometimes the physician prescribes intensive treatment; it accomplishes nothing. Perhaps later the physician is again in contact with this person and finds that the first unstable condition has advanced to the next, as I described it with the sense impressions becoming vague and the thoughts highly colored. Eventually the physician finds the excessively strong consciousness of sin; naturally a physician does not want to take any notice of that, for now the symptoms are beginning to play over into the soul realm. Usually it is at this time that the person finally gets in touch with a priest, particularly when the fourth stage becomes apparent. Individuals who go through these stages—it is connected with their karma, their repeated earth lives—have purely out of their deep intuition developed a wonderful terminology for all this. Especially if they have gone through the stages in sequence, with the first stage almost normal, they are able to speak in a wonderful way about what they experience. They say, for instance, when they are still quite young, if the labile condition starts between seventeen and nineteen years: human beings must know themselves. And they demand complete knowledge of themselves. Now with their ego organization separated, they come of their own initiative to an active meditative life. Very often they call this “active prayer,” “active meditation,” and they are grateful when some well-schooled priest gives them instruction about prayer. Then they are entirely absorbed in prayer, and they are experiencing in it what they now begin to describe by a wonderful terminology. They look back at their first stage and call what they perceive “the first dwelling place of God,” because their ego has not entirely penetrated the other members of their organism, so to a certain extent they are seeing themselves from within, not merely from without. This perception from within increases; it becomes, as it were, a larger space: “the first dwelling place of God.” What next appears, what I have described from another point of view, is richer; it is more inwardly detailed. They see much more from within: “the second dwelling place of God.” When the third stage is reached, the inner vision is extraordinarily beautiful, and such a person says, “I see the third dwelling place of God; it is tremendously magnificent, with spiritual beings moving within it.” This is inner vision, a powerful, glorious vision of a world woven by spirit: “the third dwelling place of God,” or “the House of God.” There are variations in the words used. When they reach the fourth stage, they no longer want advice about active meditation, for usually they have reached the view that everything will be given them through grace and they must wait. They talk about passive prayer, passive meditation, that they must not pray out of their own initiative, for it will come to them if God wants to give it to them. Here the priest must have a fine instinct for recognizing when this stage passes over into the next. For now these people speak of “rest-prayer,” during which they do nothing at all; they let God hold sway in them. That is how they experience “the fourth dwelling place of God.” Sometimes from the descriptions they give at this stage, from what—if we speak medically—such “patients” say, priests can really learn a tremendous amount of esoteric theology. If they are good interpreters, the theological detail becomes clear to them—if they listen very carefully to what such “patients” tell them, to what they know. Much of what is taught in theology, particularly Catholic pastoral theology, is founded on what various enlightened, trained confessors have heard from certain penitents who have undergone this sequence of development. At this point ordinary conceptions of health and illness cease to have any meaning. If such a man is hidden away in an office, or if such a woman becomes an housewife who must spend her days in the kitchen or something similar in bourgeois everyday life, these people become really insane, and behave outwardly in such a way that they can only be regarded as insane. If a priest notices at the right moment how things are developing and arranges for them to live in appropriate surroundings, they can develop the four stages in proper order. Through such patients, the enlightened confessor is able to look into the spiritual world in a modern way but similarly to the Greek priests, who learned about the spiritual world from the Pythians, who imparted all kinds of revelations concerning the spiritual world through earthly smoke and vapor.3 What sense would there be today in writing a thesis on the pathological aspect of the Greek Pythians? It could certainly be done and it would even be correct, but it would have no meaning in a higher sense. For as a matter of fact, very much of what flowed in a magnificent way from Greek theology into the entire cultural life of Greece originated in the revelations of the Pythians. As a rule, the Pythians were individuals who had come either to this third stage or even to the fourth stage. But we can think of a personality in a later epoch who went through these stages under the wise direction of her confessors, so that she could devote herself undisturbed to her inner visions. Something very wonderful developed for her, which indeed also remained to a certain degree pathological. Her life was not just a concern of the physician or of the priest but a concern of the entire Church. The Church pronounced her a saint after her death. This was St. Teresa.4 This was approximately her path. You see, one must examine such things as this if one wants to discover what will give medicine and theology a real insight into human nature. One must be prepared to go far beyond the usual category of ideas, for they lose their value. Otherwise one can no longer differentiate between a saint and a fool, between a madman and a genius, and can no longer distinguish any of the others except a normal dyed-in-the-wool average citizen. This is a view of the human being that must first be met with understanding; then it can really lead to fundamental esoteric knowledge. But it can also be tremendously enlightening in regard to psychological abnormalities as well as to physical abnormalities and physical illnesses. Certain conditions are necessary for these stages to appear. There has to be a certain consistency of the person's ego so that it does not completely penetrate the organism. Also there must be a certain consistency of the astral body: if it is not fine, as it was in St. Teresa, if it is coarse, the result will be different. With St. Teresa, because of the delicacy of her ego organization and astral body, certain physical organs in the lower body had been formed with the same fragile quality. But it can happen that the ego organization and astral body are quite coarse and yet they have the same characteristic as above. Such an individual can be comparatively normal and show only the physical correlation: then it is only a physical illness. One could say, on the one hand there can be a St. Teresa constitution with its visions and poetic beauty, and on the other hand its physical counterimage in diseased abdominal organs, which in the course of this second person's life is not reflected in the ego and astral organization. All these things must be spoken about and examined. For those who hold responsibility as physicians or priests are confronted by these things, and they must be equal to the challenge. Theological activity only begins to be effective if theologians are prepared to cope with such phenomena. And physicians only begin to be healers if they also are prepared to deal with such symptoms.
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| 112. The Gospel of St. John: The Harmonization of the Inner Forces of Man through the Christ-Impulse
04 Jul 1909, Kassel Tr. Harry Collison Rudolf Steiner |
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| For a long time they had no progeny. Then Laios enquired of the Oracle of Delphi whether he could not be vouchsafed a son; and the Oracle gave him the answer: If thou wilt have a son it will be one who shall kill thee. |
| 112. The Gospel of St. John: The Harmonization of the Inner Forces of Man through the Christ-Impulse
04 Jul 1909, Kassel Tr. Harry Collison Rudolf Steiner |
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The lectures thus far given in this cycle should have made it abundantly clear that spiritual-scientific research reveals the Christ event as the most supremely vital one in the entire evolution of mankind, that we must recognize it as having introduced a wholly new strain into the totality of Earth evolution. We learned that something completely new entered this evolution of mankind through the Mystery of Golgotha, through the event of Palestine and everything connected with it before and after, and that human evolution must needs have taken a totally different course had the Christ event not intervened.—If we are to understand the Mystery of Golgotha we must further examine some of the intimate details of the gradual approach of the Christ Being itself; but naturally, even fourteen lectures do not suffice to tell all there is to be told about a subject embracing the whole world. The author of the John Gospel pointed this out when he said that there was much more to be told, but that the world could not produce enough books to tell it. So you will not expect fourteen lectures to mention everything connected with the Christ event and with its narration in the Gospel of St. John and in the other, related ones. Yesterday and the day before we learned how the dwelling of the Christ Spirit, the Christ Individuality, in the threefold sheath of Jesus of Nazareth gradually made possible all that is described in the John Gospel up to and including the chapter on the Raising of Lazarus. Thus we saw that Christ's task was the gradual development of the threefold corporeality—the physical, the etheric, and the astral body—that had been offered up to Him by the lofty initiate Jesus of Nazareth. But in order to understand exactly what Christ wrought in this threefold sheath we must first get a clear picture of the interrelationship, in man, of the three principles of his being. Hitherto we have only indicated in rough outline that in the waking state the physical body, the etheric or life body, the astral body, and the ego are seen by clairvoyant conciousness as interpenetrating each other, forming an interpermeating whole, and that at night the physical and etheric bodies remain in bed, while the astral body and the ego are withdrawn. Today, in order to describe the Mystery of Golgotha more closely, we must enquire more fully into the exact nature of this inter-permeation of the four principles of the human being during day consciousness; that is, in just what manner the ego and astral body enter the etheric and physical bodies upon awakening in the morning. I can best make this clear by means of a diagram.  Suppose that in this drawing we had, down here, the physical body, and above it, the etheric body. In the morning, when the astral body and the ego re-enter the physical bodies from the spiritual world, this comes about in such a way that in the main (I beg you to take this qualification seriously) the astral body enters the etheric body, and the ego the physical body. In this drawing, then, the horizontal lines stand for the astral and etheric bodies, the vertical lines for the ego and the physical body. I said “in the main” because naturally everything in the human being is interpenetrative: the ego, for example, is in the etheric body as well as elsewhere, and so on; but what is referred to here is the principal, the essential interpenetration, and the manner in which the latter prevails most completely can be represented by the diagram. Next we must enquire, What, exactly, occurred at the Baptism? We have said that the ego of Jesus of Nazareth abandoned His physical, etheric, and astral bodies, leaving this threefold sheath for the Christ Being; so what remained of Jesus of Nazareth we can show in diagram as His physical, etheric, and astral bodies. The ego abandoned the physical body, and in place of the ego of Jesus of Nazareth there entered into this threefold sheath—occupying principally the physical body, though again not exclusively—the Christ Being.  Here we indeed touch the fringe of a deep mystery; for if we consider what really took place at this point we realize that it bears on all the immense complexities of mankind which we have indicated in the last lectures. I told you that everything people have in common, the generic factor, so to speak, in man within a certain group, is to be found in the female element of heredity. I said that the outer facial resemblance among members of the same people is carried down through the generations by woman. The male element, on the other hand, passes on the distinguishing features in man: it is the factor that makes him an individual entity here on earth, that places his ego upon a footing of its own. Great minds who are in touch with the spiritual world have always felt this in the right way, and we can really learn to know and appreciate the utterances of great men who were close to the spiritual world only by penetrating to these depths of cosmic truths. Look once more at our first diagram and reflect as follows: We have an etheric body, and in it lives the astral body. The astral body is the vehicle of our conceptions, ideas, thoughts, sensations, feelings, and it dwells in the etheric body. But we have learned that it is specifically the task of the etheric body to work upon the physical body effectively, so to say, containing as it does the forces that form it. We must therefore conclude that this etheric body, permeated as it is by the astral body, contains all that makes man a man, all that imprints in him a definite form from within, as it were, proceeding from the spiritual elements. So that whatever produces resemblance among men derives from what works within, and is not merely external; in other words, not from anything bound to his physical body, but from elements associated with his etheric and astral bodies, for these are the inner principles. For this reason, anyone who can see into such matters will sense that what permeates his etheric and astral bodies comes from the maternal element, whereas all that gives his physical body its peculiar form, imprinted by his ego—the ego dwelling in the physical body—is a paternal heritage.
These words spoken by Goethe are an interpretation of what I showed you in diagram. “From my father I have my stature” refers to what develops from the ego; and the imagination, the gift of storytelling, inherited from the mother, has its being in the etheric and astral bodies. The utterances of great minds are by no means grasped by those who believe to have understood them by means of trivial human concepts. But now we must apply all this to the Christ event; and from this point of view we must ask, What would have happened to mankind if it had not taken place? If the Christ event had not occurred, the course of human development would have continued as we saw it commence with the post-Atlantean time. We learned that in very old times civilization rested upon a form of love closely linked with tribal relationship, with consanguinity. Those whom people loved were their blood relatives. And we saw how this blood bond kept fraying as humanity progressed. Now let us pass from the earliest days of human evolution to the time of Christ Jesus' appearance. While in most ancient epochs marriage was always consummated within one and the same tribe, you will find that during the Roman dominion—and that is the time of the Christ event—the custom of endogamy was increasingly ignored, that a great variety of peoples were thrown together as a result of the Roman expeditions, and that the “close marriage” had very largely to give way to exogamy, the “distant marriage.” It was necessary for blood ties to lose their strength in the evolution of mankind because men were destined to take their stand upon their own ego. Assuming, now, that Christ had not come to provide new forces, to replace the old love engendered by blood ties with a new spiritual love, we ask again, what would have happened? In that case love, the factor that unites men, would gradually have vanished from the face of the earth: that which brings men together in love would have perished in man's nature. Without the Christ the human race would have lived to see the dying out of love for each other: men would have been driven back into their own segregated individualities. Looked at only from the point of view of external science, these things do not disclose the profound truths underlying them. If you were to examine—not chemically, but by the means at the disposal of spiritual research—the blood of present-day man and compare it with that of people who lived several thousand years before the appearance of Christ, you would find that it had changed, had taken on a character tending to make it less and less a vehicle capable of bearing love. Imagine, in ancient times, a man of insight who could see deep into the course of human development, who could foretell what would needs come to pass should only the one antiquated tendency persist without the intervention of the Christ event: how would the course of future evolution present itself to an initiate of that sort? What images would he have to evoke in the human soul to indicate what would happen in the future if love in the soul, the Christ love, failed to replace the love arising from blood ties in the same measure as the latter disappeared? He had to say: If men become ever more isolated, more hardened in their own ego; if the lines separating souls become ever more marked so that souls understand each other less and less, then men of the outer world will fall increasingly into discord and contention, and the war of all against all will usurp the place of love on earth. And this is indeed what would have ensued if evolution had proceeded on the basis of blood relationship without the intervention of Christ. All men would inevitably have been involved in the war of all against all. This war will come to pass in any case, but only for those who have not become imbued in the right way with the Christ principle. That is what a prophetic seer beheld as the end of the Earth evolution, and well could it fill his soul with terror: souls no longer understand each other, hence they must rage, soul against soul. I have explained that only gradually can men become united through the Christ principle. In Tolstoi and Solovyev I gave you an example showing how two noble spirits, each thinking to proclaim the real Christ, can hold such contradictory views that one of them considers the other the Antichrist—for that is what Solovyev believed Tolstoi to be. The conflict of beliefs at first present in the souls of men would gradually come to expression in the outer world, that is, men would rage against each other. That would be the inevitable consequence of the development of the blood principle.—It would be pointless to object here that in spite of the Christ event we still see discord and contention on all sides, that we are still far from any realization of Christian love: I have told you that we are only at the beginning of Christian evolution. The great impulse has been given which enabled the Christ to imbue ever more the souls of men in the further course of earth development, and to unite them in a spiritual way. What still exists today in the way of discord and contention—and this will lead to even greater excesses—is a result of the fact that hitherto mankind has become permeated with the real Christ principle only to the most negligible extent: conditions that have existed among men from time immemorial still hold sway and can be overcome only by degrees, inasmuch as the Christ impulse will flow into mankind but slowly and gradually. That, then, is a picture of what would have been foreseen in pre-Christian times by one who had clairvoyantly penetrated the future course of human evolution. He could have put it this way: I have been vouchsafed a remnant of the old power of clairvoyance. In primeval times all men were able to see into the spiritual world by means of a dim, dull clairvoyance, which has gradually vanished. But the possibility still exists, like a heritage from those ancient times, to penetrate the spiritual world in an abnormal, dreamlike state. In this way there can be seen something of what lies beneath the outer surface of things. All the old legends, fairy stories, and myths, which truly are fraught with a wisdom deeper than is to be found in modern science, tell us that in the olden times the capacity for entering exceptional states was very wide-spread. Call such states dreams, if you like: they nevertheless heralded events; but they did not provide sufficient wisdom to protect men from the conflict of all against all. The sage of old emphasized this in the strongest possible terms, saying, We are heir to a primeval wisdom which people of the Atlantean era were able to perceive in abnormal states, and even now there are isolated men who can discern it under the same conditions; and what is heralded there is the course the near future will take. But the revelations of those dreams inspired no confidence: they were deceptive and destined to become ever more so. That was the wisdom taught in pre-Christian times, and in that form did the teacher proclaim it to the people. That is why it is significant that an appreciation of the whole intensity and power of the Christ impulse leads us to the comprehension of a certain great truth: In a world lacking the Christ impulse the isolation and segregation of men, their mutual antagonism, something like a struggle for existence, would be brought about—similar to the materialistic-Darwinistic theory foisted upon us today—a struggle for existence such as reigns in the animal kingdom, but which should have no place in the world of men. Somewhat grotesquely we might say, when the earth has run its course it will present the picture of humanity painted by certain materialists in line with a Darwinistic theory borrowed from the animal world; but today this theory, when applied to mankind, is wrong. It is true in the animal kingdom because there no impulse governs which could transform discord into love. Christ, as a spiritual force in humanity, will confound all materialistic Darwinism. But in order to grasp this, one must understand that in the outer sense world men can eliminate the antagonistic attitude arising from their differences of opinion, feelings, and actions only by combatting and adjusting within themselves all that would otherwise flow out into the external world. No one is going to quarrel with a different opinion in the soul of another if he first fights against all that must be combatted in himself, if he establishes harmony among the various principles of his being. He will confront the outer world as one who loves, not as one who quarrels. It is all a matter of diverting the conflict from the outer world to the inner man: the forces holding sway in human nature must battle each other within man. Two conflicting opinions must be looked at as follows: This is one opinion—it is tenable; that is the other—it is also tenable. But if I recognize only the one and consider justifiable only what I want, resisting the other, then I shall be involved in a struggle on the physical plane. To insist on my opinion is to be selfish; to consider my action the only justifiable one means being egotistical. But if I consider the other man's opinion and endeavor to create harmony within myself, my attitude toward the other will then be a very different one; and only then will I begin to understand him. Diverting external strife into another channel—the harmonizing of inner human forces—that would be another way of expressing the idea of progress in the evolution of mankind. The possibility of inner concord, of finding the way to harmonize the resisting forces within, this had to be bestowed upon man by the Christ. Christ gives man the power first of all to eliminate the discord within himself, and without Christ this could never be achieved. In respect of outer strife the ancient, pre-Christian people rightly looked upon one special form of it as the ultimate horror: the child's strife against father and mother. Also, in the days when men knew what course evolution would take lacking the Christ-Impulse, parricide was considered the most terrible and abhorrent of all crimes. That was made very clear by those wise men of old who foresaw the coming of Christ. But they also knew what the inevitable result would be in the outer world if the battle were not first waged in every man's own soul. Let us examine our own inner nature. We have learned that where the etheric and astral bodies interpenetrate the mother holds sway, while the father comes to expression in the ego-permeated physical body. In other words, the mother, the female element, governs in all that pertains to the traits we share with others, to the generic, to all that constitutes our inner life in so far as it expresses itself in wisdom and in conceptions; whereas every quality arising from a union of the ego and the physical body, in the externally differentiated form—all that makes man an ego—derives from the father, the male element. What is it, then, above all things that the ancient sages who thought along these lines had to demand of men? They had to insist on a clear understanding of the relation of the physical body and the ego to the etheric and astral bodies: on a mental grasp of the maternal and paternal elements. By reason of having an etheric and an astral body man has the mother principle in him: in addition to his outer mother, the mother of the physical plane, he has, so to speak, the maternal element within him—the Mother, and besides his physical father he has within him the paternal element—the Father. The proper adjustment of the relation between this inner father and inner mother is something that was held up to men as a lofty ideal to strive for. Failure to harmonize these two elements inevitably results in spreading discord within men out into the physical world—with devastating consequences. Therefore, said the old sage: Man's task is to bring about harmony within himself between the paternal and the maternal elements. If he does not succeed, there will appear in the world what we must recognize as the ultimate horror. What we have just expressed in anthroposophical phraseology, so to say, was proclaimed to mankind by the ancient sages somewhat as follows: In primeval times we inherited a primordial wisdom, and even today men can participate in it when in an abnormal state. But the possibility of entering this state is becoming ever more remote, and even the old initiation cannot lead beyond a certain point in human evolution. Let us once more consider this old initiation as we described it in the last lectures: what occurred there? Out of the complex composed of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego, the etheric and astral bodies were withdrawn, but the ego remained. Hence there could be no question of self-consciousness during the three and a half days of initiation: it was extinguished; and it was replaced by a form of consciousness from the higher spiritual world, instilled by the priest-initiator who guided the candidate throughout and placed his own ego at the latter's disposal. Now, what exactly was the result of this? Something occurred that was expressed in a formula which will strike you as strange; but when you have understood it, it will no longer seem so. It was expressed as follows: When a man was initiated in the old sense the maternal element withdrew and the paternal element remained; that is, the candidate killed the paternal element and united with the mother element. In other words, he killed his father within him and wedded his mother. So when the old initiate had lain three and a half days in the lethargic state he had united with his mother and had killed the father within himself. He had become fatherless; and that had to occur, because he had to renounce his individuality and dwell in a higher spiritual world. He became one with his people; but the factor inherent in a people was precisely that which was provided by the maternal element. He became one with the entire organism of his people; he became exactly that which Nathanael was, which was always designated by the name of the people in question—in Jewry, an “Israelite,” among Persians a “Persian.” There can never be any wisdom in the world other than the wisdom proceeding from the Mysteries—no other is possible. Those who learn in the Mysteries what these reveal become messengers, and the outer world learns from them what is beheld in the Mysteries. One of the things acquired in line with the old wisdom was the exact knowledge of what had been achieved by uniting with the inner mother and killing the father. But this hereditary wisdom cannot help man past a certain point in evolution. Something different, something wholly new, had to replace the old wisdom. Had mankind continued indefinitely to receive the old wisdom gained in this way, it would have been driven, as already stated, into the war of all against all. Opinion would be arrayed against opinion, feeling against feeling, will against will; and that terrifying, gruesome image of the future, where man would unite with his mother and kill his father, would come true. All this was portrayed in pregnant pictures, in great and mighty images, by the old initiates who, though initiated, looked for the coming of Christ; and the imprint of this wisdom of the pre-Christian sages has been preserved in the legends and myths. We need only recall the name of Oedipus and we are in touch with a myth expressing what the ancient sages had to say on this subject. The old Greek legend, presented in so mighty and grandiose a way by the Greek tragedians, runs as follows: There was a king in Thebes, and his name was Laios. His spouse was Iokaste. For a long time they had no progeny. Then Laios enquired of the Oracle of Delphi whether he could not be vouchsafed a son; and the Oracle gave him the answer: If thou wilt have a son it will be one who shall kill thee.—In a state of intoxication—that is, in a state of dimmed consciousness—Laios begot a son. Oedipus was born; and Laios knew that this was the son who would kill him. He therefore resolved to abandon the child; and in order to insure his complete annihilation he caused his feet to be pierced. Then he was left to die; but a shepherd found the child and took pity on him. He brought him to Corinth, and there Oedipus was reared in the royal household. When he was grown he learned of the Oracle's prophesy: that he would kill his father and wed his mother; but there was no escaping it. On account of being taken for the king's son he had to leave the place where he was reared. On his way he met his real father and, without recognizing him, killed him. He came to Thebes; and because he was able to answer the Sphinx' questions and solve the riddle of the grisly monster that led so many to their death, the Sphinx had to kill itself. Thus, for the time being, Oedipus was his country's benefactor. He was made king and received the queen's hand in marriage—his mother's hand! Without knowing it, he had killed his father and united with his mother. He now ruled as king; but by reason of having acquired his rule in this way and of all the dreadful misfortune that clung to him, he brought untold misery upon his country.—In Sophocles' drama we finally encounter him as blinded, as one who has destroyed his own eyesight. That is a story whose imagery originated in the old temples of wisdom; and what it intended to tell was that in a certain respect Oedipus could still make contact, in the old sense, with the spiritual world. His father had consulted the Oracle. Those oracles were the last heritage of the old clairvoyance, but they were powerless to establish peace in the outer world. They could not provide that harmony of the paternal and the maternal elements which was to be striven for and achieved. The circumstance that Oedipus solved the Sphinx' riddle indicates that he was intended to represent the sort of man who had acquired a certain old type of clairvoyance simply through heredity; that is, he knew the nature of man to the extent to which the last remnants of the old primordial wisdom could provide such cognition. But never could it suffice to stem the raging of man against man, as symbolized by the parricide and the union with the mother. Although in touch with primordial wisdom, Oedipus is unable, by its means, to see through its complexity. This old wisdom no longer induced seership—that is what the old sages wanted to proclaim. Had it been attended by clairvoyance as in the old way of consanguinity, the blood would have spoken when Oedipus confronted first his father, and later, his mother; but the blood was silent. That is a graphic presentation of the disintegration of primordial wisdom. What had to happen in order that once and for all the inner harmonious compensation might be found between the maternal and paternal elements, between man's own ego that is of the father, and the mother principle? The Christ impulse had to come.—And now we can peer from still another angle into certain depths of the Marriage in Cana of Galilee. We are told:
Jesus—or better, Christ—was to be the great example for humanity of a being who had achieved the inner concord between himself—that is, his ego—and the mother principle. At the Marriage in Cana of Galilee He indicated:
That was a new sort of passing from one to another: it was no longer as it had been, but implied a renewal of the whole relationship. It meant the lofty and enduring ideal of inner compensation achieved without first killing the father—without withdrawing from the physical body; it meant finding agreement with the maternal principle in the ego. Now the time had come when the human being learned to combat within himself the excessive power of egotism, of the ego principle; when he learned to correlate it with the maternal principle holding sway in the etheric and astral bodies. So we find in the Marriage in Cana a beautiful image of the relation of the ego, the paternal principle, to the mother principle: it represents the inner harmony, the love, obtained in the outer world between Christ Jesus and His Mother. It was intended as an image of the harmonious compensation between the ego and the maternal principle, achieved inwardly. Such a possibility had not existed previously: it was created by the deed of Christ Jesus. But inasmuch as it came about through the deed of Christ, it brought with it the only possible refutation—that is, through the deed—of all that would inevitably have come to pass under the influence of those remnants of the ancient wisdom which would have led to the killing of the father and the uniting of the mother with her son. Let us see just what it is that the Christ principle combats. The old sage, contemplating the Christ and comparing the old way with the new, could put it this way: If the union with the mother is sought in the old way, no good can result for humanity. But if sought in the new way, as shown in the Marriage at Cana—if man unites with the astral and etheric bodies dwelling within him—then salvation and peace and fraternity will spread among men more and more as time passes; and the old principle of killing the father and wedding the mother will be resisted.—So the antagonistic element which the Christ had to eradicate was not the ancient wisdom: the latter did not need to be combatted, for it was gradually losing its power and would eventually dry up of itself; and we see how people like Oedipus fall victim to discord precisely by putting their faith in it. On the other hand, the evil would not cease of itself if the new wisdom were ignored; that is, if people clung rigidly to the old principle and remained insensible to the manner in which the Christ impulse acts. Not to ding to the obsolete principle, not to follow the old lines rigidly, but to learn what had come into the world through Christ—that is what was felt to be the greatest step forward. Do we find this, too, suggested anywhere? We do: legends and myths are indeed fraught with the deepest wisdom. There is a legend you will not find in the Gospels, but it is none the less a Christian legend as well as a Christian truth. It runs this way: Once upon a time there was a married couple, and for a long time this couple had no son. Then it was revealed to the mother in a dream—note this well—that she would have a son, but that this son would first kill his father and then unite with his mother, and that he would bring frightful disaster upon his whole tribe. Again we have a dream, corresponding to the oracle in the case of Oedipus; that is, we are again dealing with what had come down from primeval clairvoyance. What was to happen was revealed to the mother in the old way. But did this revelation suffice to make her see clearly the conditions governing in the world? to avert the disaster? Let us ask the legend, which informs us further: Under the influence of the wisdom gleaned in her dream, the mother took the child she had borne to the island of Kariot and there abandoned him. But he was found by the queen of a neighboring realm, who being childless, reared him herself. Later the royal couple had a child of their own, and the foundling soon felt himself discriminated against; and being of a passionate temperament he slew the son of the royal pair. Now he could no longer re-main: he had to flee, and he came to the court of Pilate, the Governor, where he was soon made overseer in the household. But one day he came to blows with his neighbor; and in the struggle he killed him, knowing not that it was his own father. Circumstances later led to his wedding his neighbor's wife, who, unbeknownst to him, was his mother. This foundling was Judas Iscariot. When he became aware of his terrible position he Red again. And nowhere did he find compassion save in Him Who had mercy for all who approached Him, Who not only sat at the table with publicans and sinners but Who, though seeing all, took unto Himself even this great sinner; for it was His mission to work not only for the righteous, but for all men, and to lead them out of sin to salvation. In this way Judas Iscariot came into the environment of Christ Jesus and to cause the calamity which had been foretold, and which was destined to be fulfilled in the sphere of Christ Jesus. Schiller says:
Judas became the betrayer of Christ Jesus. True, everything that was destined to come about through him had already been fulfilled in the murder of his father and the wedding of his mother; but he survived, so to speak, as a tool, because he was to be the evil instrument for bringing about good, thereby performing an act of supererogation. The individuality presented to us in the figure of Oedipus loses his sight, as a result of the evil he has wrought, the moment he realizes what he has done. But the other, whose identical destiny originated in his connection with the inherited primordial wisdom, does not become blind: he was chosen to fulfill destiny, to do the deed that would lead to the Mystery of Golgotha, that would bring about the physical death of Him Who is “the Light of the World” and Who enkindles the Light of the World in healing the man born blind. Oedipus had to lose his sight; to the blind man, Christ gave sight. Yet He died at the hands of one who, like Oedipus, was chosen to exemplify the gradual extinction of the ancient wisdom in mankind, to expose its insufficiency in the matter of bringing salvation and peace and love. For these to come, the Christ-Impulse was indispensable, and the event of Golgotha had to take place. There had first to come about something whose outer reflection is shown us in the relation between the Jesus-Christ Ego and His Mother at the Marriage in Cana of Galilee. And one thing more was needed as well. The writer of the John Gospel describes it as follows: There beneath the Cross stood the Mother, and there stood the disciple “whom the Lord loved”, Lazarus-John, whom He Himself had initiated and through whom the wisdom of Christianity was to be handed down to posterity; he through whom man's astral body was to be so powerfully influenced as to render it capable of harboring the Christ principle. There in the human astral body the Christ principle was to live, and it was John's mission to pour the Christ principle into this astral body. But in order that this might come to pass, this Christ principle, raying down from the Cross, had still to unite with the etheric principle, with the Mother. That is why from the Cross Christ called down the words:
That means, He unites His wisdom with the maternal principle. Thus we see the profundity, not only of the Gospels, but of all the interrelationships in the Mysteries. Truly, the old legends are related to the prophesies and Gospels of more recent times as is presage to fulfillment. In the legends of Oedipus and of Judas we are clearly shown that once upon a time there was a divine, primordial wisdom; that this wisdom vanished; and that a new wisdom had to come. And this new wisdom will carry men forward to a point that would never have been attainable through the old wisdom. The Oedipus legend tells us what must have occurred without the intervention of the Christ impulse; and the nature of the opposition to the Christ, the rigid clinging to the ancient wisdom, is made clear in the Judas legend. But the principle which even the old legends and myths had declared inadequate is brought to us in a new light through the new revelation, through the Gospel. The Gospel gives us the answer to what the old legends expressed in images of the old wisdom. In legends we were told that nevermore can the old wisdom provide what humanity needs for the future; but the Gospel, the new wisdom, says: I bring tidings of what mankind needs, of what could never have come without the influence of the Christ principle, without the event of Golgotha.
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| 292. The History of Art I: Sculpture in Ancient Greece and the Renaissance
24 Jan 1917, Dornach Tr. Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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| 6. Charioteer from Delphi 7. |
| 292. The History of Art I: Sculpture in Ancient Greece and the Renaissance
24 Jan 1917, Dornach Tr. Unknown Rudolf Steiner |
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I have often quoted Goethe's saying, when he felt in Italy the echo of the nature of Greek Art. I may remind you of it once again today, now that we shall show a few representations of Greek sculputre. Goethe was writing from Italy to his friends in Weimer. He had seen something in Italy of the Grecian Art, and he had divined still more. He had made acquaintance with it. And he wrote: After this experience he had become convinced that in the creation of their works of art the Greeks proceeded according to the same laws by which Nature herself proceeds—and he himself was on the track of their discovery. This saying of Goethe's always seemed to me of deep and lasting significance. Goethe at that moment divined that something was living in the Greeks, in intimate unison with the laws of the great Universe. Alread before his journey to Italy, he had been trying to discover the principle of universal evolution and becoming. He had done so, above all, in his Theory of Metamorphosis. He found that the manifold forms of Nature can be referred to certain typical or fundamental forms, in which is expressed the spiritual Law and Essence that underlies the outer things. He started, as you know, from Botany—the study of the Plant world. He tried to perceive the growth of the plant in this way: A single fundamental organ, whose basic form he recognised in the leaf, undergoes constant metamorphoses. All organs are transformations of this one. Not only so, but having thus begun, he sought to understand the several plant species as diverse manifestations of one archetypal form, the primary plant. Likewise he looked for a connecting thread throughout the world of animals. We have often spoken of this work of Goethe's. But, as a rule, we have not a ufficiently vivid conception of what he intended. We are wont to conceive things too abytractly, and we do so in this case. Goethe, if I may put it thus, wanted to take hold in a really living way of the life of living things, in their organic metamorphosis. He wanted to discover the principle on which Nature works. In so doing, he was, indeed, steering straight towards what must be the characteristic of the Science of the fifth post-Atlantean age, even as that which the Greeks conceived and expressed in their works of art was characteristic of the fourth. In this connection I have often called upon you to observe what is recognisable in the Golden Age of Greek Art, and notably of Grecian sculpture, in so far as it been preserved for us. The Greek artist created from an altogether different starting point. He had a certain feeling. To exprec it in our fully concrete way, we must describe it thus: He felt how the Etheric Body in its living forces and mobility underlies the forms and movements of the Physical. He felt how the Etheric is manifested or portrayed in the forms of the Physical Body, while in the movements of the latter the living forces that abound in the Etheric Body come to expression. The Greek art of Gymnastics, the Greek Athletics, were built on this foundation. Those who partook in them were to gain thereby a real feeling of what lives invisibly within the visible being of man. And in his plastic art the Greek wanted to portray what he himself experienced in his own nature. All this, as I have often said, grew different in later times, for afterwards men copied what they saw before them with their eyes, what they had outwardly before them. The Greek copies what he felt within himself. He did not work after the model as was done in later times—(whether they do so more or less obviously or indistinctly is not the point). To work from the model is only a peculiarity of the Fifth post-Atlantean age. Nevertheless, in this very age there murst arise a new view of Nature, for which the living starting-point is given in Goethe's “Metamorphosis.” True, there are weighty obstacles, as yet, to such a view of Nature. In this sphere, as in all others, materialistic prejudices stand in the way of a healthy conception of existence. The latter will have to work its way forth in the overcoming of these hindrances. We have to witness in our time things that are little noticed yet—movements that tend in the long run to brutalise even the artistic life. Goethe recognised in a beautiful way the connection between Truth in knowledge or science and Truth in Art, in practice. Science to him was still a living life within the Spirit. Among the hindrances in this regard is one thing to which—if able to look more deeply into all the impulses of hindrance and of progress in our timei—we cannot give a pleasant name. I refer to what are now called sports and games, athletics and the like, which—if we look more deeply—are also largely among the forces of hindrance in modern civilisation. I can describe them in no other way, than as a tendency to degrade civilisation to the level of the ape. Modern sports and athletics—themselves an outcome of the materialistic conception of life—represent, as it were, the other pole. At the one pole, materialism tends to conceive man as a merely more perfect ape, while at the other pole—through many of the activities that fall under the heading of sport—they are working hard to turn him into a kind of carnivorous monkey. The two things run parallel with one another. Needless to say, modern sports and games and athletics are regarded as a great sign of progress. Indeed, they are often thought of as a kind of resurrection of the spirit of ancient Greece. But in their real essence they can only be described as working towards the ideal, to “monkeyfy” the human race. What can become of man if he proceeds along this path of modern sports, etc? Precisely a “monkeyfied” man, whose chief distinction from the real monkey will lie in the fact that the latter is a vegetarian, while monkeyfied man—presumably—will be a carnivorous species of monkey. The hindrances that face us in the civilisation of today must sometimes be described grotesquely; otherwise we do not describe them strongly enough to bring them home—however little—to the people of today. It is quite in keeping with the propensities of our time: On the one hand theoretically, they are at pains to understand Man as a more perfect ape, while on the other hand in practice they work to bring out the apishness of Man. For if that human being were developed, who is the underlying ideal of the extremer movements in sports and games today, a scientist could truly describe him in no other way, than in all essentials as an offshoot of the ape-nature. We must think truly on these matters, to gain some understanding of those noble forms of Humanity which underlay the Golden Age of Grecian Art. It was inevitable in the Fifth Post-Atlantean age, for man to leave behind him his life within the spiritual ... The ancient Greek was living in it still. When he moved his hand, he knew that the Spiritual—the etheric body—was in movement. Hence, too, as a creative artist, in all that he imparted to the physical material, he strove to create, as it were, the expression of what he felt within him—the movement of the etheric body. The man of today must go a different path. By way of outward vision, contemplation,—combined with the living Imagination of the weaving of the Ethereal in the organic reelm,—he must bring ancient Greece to life again on a higher level, permeated this time by conscious knowledge, according to the true impulses of the fifth post-Atlantean age. In an elementary way, Goethe was striving towards this end in his Theory of Metamorphosis. Goethe lived with his whole being in this striving towards a living conception of the Spiritual in the world. For this reason he was glad to refresh and strengthen himself by all that came to him from the study of Greek Art. To understand the art of ancient Greece in its proper nature—its characteristics entirely a product of the mood of soul of the fourth post Atlantean age—we must start from such ideas as we have just set forth. In this respect it is interesting to see how the Greek Art found its way. Few of the original works have been preserved. Most of them are only handed down to us through later copies. It was with the help of later copies that a man like Winckelmann, in the 18th century, strove so wonderfully to recognise the essence of the art of ancient Greece. Winckelmann, Lessing and Goethe, in the latter half of the 18th century, tried to express in words the essence of Greek Art—tried to find their way back, to re-discover it. And we may truly say: Greek Art in its essence, once it is really grasped, can bring salvation from the perils of materialism. It would take us too far afield if I were to give you even an outline sketch of the real history, the occult history of Greek Art. Only this much may be said, in connection with the illustrations we shall see today. Even in the early works of the Fifth or of the end of the Sixth century B.C., the relics of which have come down to us; the underlying foundation which I described just now is clearly recognisable. Albeit, in that early period the Greeks had not yet the ability to express through the material what they experienced within, nevertheless even in the archaic forms, imperfect as they are, we can see that the artist's creation is based on a feeling of the inner life and movement of the etheric body. By this means the Greek could find the way to raise the human form so marvellously to the Divine. The Greek was well aware that the figures of his Gods were based on real Being in the ethereal universe. Out of this there arose quite instinctively (for everything in that time was more or less instinctive) the need to represent the world of the Gods and all that was connected with them, in such a way that the outer form was the human form idealised. The point was by no means merely to idealise the Human—that is only the idea of an age that fails to understand the real depths. Through the idealised human form they were able to express what lives and weaves in the ethereal life. In the earliest figures we still see a certain stiffness. But out of this, in their Golden Age, the Greeks evolved the power to express in the outer physical form the etheric human being. In the earliest pictures we shall still see a certain stiffness; but even here it can be seen that the shaping of the limbs proceeds from a true feeling for the ethereal in movement. Then as we go on to Myron and bring some of his works before our souls, we shall see how what first came to expression only in the forming of the limbs, begins to take hold of the whole body. In Myron we already see how when an arm is moved—or represented in movement—it means something for the whole breathing organism, the forming of the chest. The human being as a whole is felt through and through. And this must have been the case to the highest degree in Phidias and his School and in Polycletus—in the Golden Age of ancient Greece. Thereafter we find a gradual descent of Art from this sublime feeling of the ethereal. Not that the ethereal is left out; but they now try to master the actual forms of Nature, they follow the forms of Nature more faithfully, more humanly and less divinely. Nevertheless, the forms are still an expression of the living etheric movement within. In looking at the several pictures, we shall be less concerned to discuss the individual artists; we chiefly want to see the gradual evolution of the Grecian Art as a whole. Nor does it matter so much, whether we speak—as the historians of Art are wont to do—of a decline in the latest works. In the earlier period the body was conceived, as it were, more in position, thus a certain restfulness or repose pervades the older works. Movement itself is conceived as though it had come to rest. We have the feeling that the artist endeavors to represent the body in such a way that the position in which the figure is might be a lasting one. The later artists strive for a more dramatic quality, holding fast the moment of time in the progressive movement. Thus there is more of movement in the later works. It is, after all, a mere matter of choice—arbitrary human choice—whether we call this a decline or not. After these few remarks we will see some illustrations, and whatever more there is to say can be said in connection with the single works that will be shown.
1. Apollo of Tenea. (Glyptothek. Munich.) This is of an early period—about 600 B.C. Observe how the limbs, especially, are permeated with the ethereal ... One feature of the earliest Greek sculpture is often emphasized: the smile, as it is called, about the lips. In time to come this will be recognized as arising from the effort to represent not the dead human being—the mere physical body—but really to seize the inner life. In the earliest period they could do this in no other way than by this feature.
2. Dying Warrior. Eastern Pediment. Temple of Aegina. (Glyptothek. Munich.) These works of art in the Doric Temple at Aegina were done as a thank-offering for the Battle of Salamis. They chiefly represent battle-scenes. Dominating the whole is the figure of Pallas Athene, which we shall see presently. This dying recumbent figure is a beautiful example of the figures that are found in this temple. The figures are grouped in the pediment. It is most interesting to see the composition, the perfect symmetry. The figures are distributed to the left and right with the most beautiful symmetrical effect.
3. Pallas Athene from the Pediment of the Temple at Aegina. (Glyptothek. Munich.)
4. Reconstruction of the Western Piedemont of the Aphaia Temple. These works take us to the beginning of the 5th century B.C.
5. Head of a youth.
6. Charioteer from Delphi
7. Runner (middle of the 5th century B.C.) And then I ask you to note, as with Myron—as we come in to that age that one can denote as the pinnacle—as with Myron, that a very different treatment of the body arises, in that he no longer separates, what even here is still the case, but he knows how to treat the whole body in connection with the limbs.
8. Discus Thrower Thus we stand in the middle of the 5th century and find in such a shapes a tryly high degree of perfection in the direction, we have tried to characterize. And now we come, or are already in, to the Age of Periclean. From the time of Phidias, of whomwe unfortunately know very little, you have the so-called Athena Lemnia:
9. Athena Lemnia
10. Head of Athena We will now give a few examples of the famous Parthenon. You may read the interesting story of these figures in any History of Art. The greatest of them have in all probability been lost. We can only gain some idea of them from the drawings made by the Frenchman, Carrey, in the 17th century. Subsequently they were largely destroyed by the Venetians, and only the relics were discovered by Lord Elgin in the 19th century.
11a. Drawings of the eastern pediment.
11b. Remains of the left side of the eastern pediment. (Bristish Museum. London.)
11c. Reconstruction of the figures in the last photo.
11d. Hestia, Dione, and Aphrodite from the right side of the eastern pediment. (British Museum, London.)
11e. Far right of the eastern pediment. Now for the Parthenon western pediment:
11f. Drawings of the western pediment.
11g. Reconstruction of the western pediment.
The Parthnon Friezes:
12a. Drawings of the Friezes.
12b. Calvary. (Western Frieze.) We may assume that these works were mostly executed in the presence of Phidias himself by his pupils. The next group is from the Eastern Frieze:
12. Poseidon Group. (Eastern Frieze.) With Phidias, indeed, all that was typical of Greek Art was already given. The stamp, the signature, as it were, was now given to the bodily figure, as it should be represented in Art. The way in which Phidias and his pupils saw it lived on for a long time. It was felt that the line of the face, the features, the movement of the limbs, the flow of the drapery and so forth, should accord with what was evolved in this ideal age. Through all the traditions this was handed down, even into the times when they were able to imitate quite superficially what had lived so strongly in this Golden Age of the Art of ancient Greece. Unhappily, the greatest works have been destroyed. It is no longer possible to gain by outer vision a conception of Phidias' greatest masterpieces, which were transcendent and sublime. We must realise that in the 18th century, when Goethe and others, stimulated by Winckelmann, entered so deeply into the essence of Greek Art, they could only do so with the help of poor, late imitations. Truly, great intuition was necessary to penetrate into the nature of Greek Art through the poor imitations that were then available. And if we really try to feel the truth about these things we cannot but admit: In the time when Goethe was a young man, or when he travelled in Italy, there was still quite a different instinctive feeling for Art than later in the 19th century,—let alone the 20th. For otherwise it would have been impossible for these late imitations to inspire the lofty conceptions of Greek Art which lighted forth in Winckelmann or in Goethe. Look, for instance, at the next, the head of Zeus, which is to be seen in Rome:
13. Zeus of Otricoli. (Vatican. Rome.)
14. Athena Here you can see something like a later continuation of the type that was evolved in the time of Phidias. This is, of course, a later imitation, though undoubtedly it still appears with a certain grandeur,—With a far less grandeur they imitated the Hera type which had been evolved by Polycleitus. And as to the famous Pallas Athene, which is also to be seen among these statues in Rome, here I must say the imitation has become insipid, fatuous. Indeed, this figure shows already the type of the later imitations of Pallas Athene. These things even become a little reminiscent of fashion-plates! We can but divine how magnificent were the works from which these later imitations were derived. In this head of Zeus you see the tradition that was handed down from Phidias.
14a. Zeus
14b. Profile of Zeus. And now we will go back to the figures from the temple of Zeus at Olympia. Here, too, the composition is magnificent:
15. Western Pediment. Temple of Zeus at Olympia.
16. Figure of Apollo. The next, too, is from the School of Phidias:—
17. Orpheus Relief. (Museum. Naples.) We remember how Phidias was accused by his fellow-citizens of stealing gold for his gold-and-ivory statue of Athene. His “grateful” fellow-citizens threw him into prison.
18. Bust of Pericles. (Berlin.) Truly an ideal conception—lifted far beyond the sphere of portraiture. The next is perhaps a work of Phidias' youth.—
19. Amazon. Here we will insert a work of Polycleitus:—
20. Amazon. Myron and Phidias are the artists of the Golden Age of Grecian Art; they, indeed, created the traditions.
21. Amazon. Another Amazon. The next is more difficult to date; it represents about the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries B.C. We insert it here to show that ancient Greece was quite capable of producing something of the character of Genre:—
22. Boy, extracting the Thorn from his Foot. (Rome.) And now we gradually come into the age of which I tried to indicate just now that the whole conception is lifted down into a more human realm, even though the figures be still the figures of the Gods. Take the following, for instance:—
23. Aphrodite of Cnidos. (Vatican, Rome.) Although it is the figure of a Goddess, it is brought down into a more human sphere. The sublimity of the earlier artists is made more human. We see this already in Praxiteles. This picture represents the so-called Aphrodite of Cnidos. Praxiteles brings us to the 4th century B.C. In connection with this we will also show the
24. Demeter of Cnidos. (British Museum.) It breathes the same spirit. The next is the Hermes of Olympia:
25. Hermes of Olympia, (By Praxiteles.)—holding the Dionysos child in his left hand.
26. Satyr, by Praxiteles. (Capitol. Rome.) To the same epoch belongs the famous Niobe Group,—Niobe losing all her children through the wrath of Apollo.
27. Figure in Flight, from the Niobe Group. (Vatican. Rome.) Going on into the 4th century, we come into the Alexandrian age. Lysippus actually worked in the service of Alexander the Great.
28. Bust of Alexander. (Louvre. Paris.)
29. Hermes. (Museum. Naples.)
30. Youth, in Adoration. (By Lysippus.) (Berlin.) His arms are lifted up to Heaven in reverence, in prayer.
31. Alexander the Great. (Munich.) Here we already see the descent of Art from the Typical to the Individual—though in the Grecian Art the process nowhere went as far as in the later epochs.
32. Medusa Head. (Glyptothek. Munich.)
33. Sophocles. (Vatican. Rome.) This status reaches back again to the best, ideal tradition of the older times; it reminds us of the Golden Age. We might equally well entitle it: The Poet, as such. This is symbolised by the rolls of script which are put there of set purpose. Compare this with the figures that now follow, tending more or less towards a portrait likeness in each case. You will see how they strive away from the ideal type, towards the quality of portraiture.
34. Socrates.
35. Plato. (Vatican. Rome.) Of course, these portraits are not done from the model, but still there is an attempt at a human likeness—by which I do not mean to say that they are really like the original. These remarks will refer especially to the Homer which will now follow:—
36. Homer. (Museum. Naples.) Now we gradually approach the 2nd century.
37. The Victory of Samothrace. (Louvre. Paris.)
38. The Venus of Milo. (Louvre. Paris.) This famous work does, indeed, preserve the tradition of the Golden Age, although it belongs to a later period. In the next picture, on the other hand, we see a fresh attempt to bring in movement:—
39. Sleeping Ariadne. This is probably a work of the same period, but you will see a distinct contrast between the two. And now we come towards the last century before the birth of Christ. We come to the School of Rhodes.
40. Laocoön. (Vatican. Rome.) This is the famous Laocoön group—the starting-point, as you know, of many an artistic discussion, ever since Lessing's Laocoön of the 18th century. It is the work of three sculptors of the School of Rhodes. Lessing's writings on this subject are, indeed, most interesting. He tried to show, you will remember, how the poet describes is not placed before the eyes. We must call it to life in our imaginations. Whereas what the plastic artist has created is there before our eyes. Therefore, says Lessing, what the plastic artist portrays must contain far more repose; it must represent moments which can at least be imagined—for a single moment—in repose. Much has been said and written about this Laocoon group, especially in relation to Lessing's explanations. It is interesting how the aestheticist, Robert Zimmermann,—without, of course, having any knowledge of Spiritual Science—arrived at an explanation which needs, no doubt, to be supplemented, but which was none the less correct for an age that had not Spiritual Science. His explanation contains—albeit only as an instinctive suggestion—some element of what I have been setting forth today. We see the priest, Laocoon, with his two sons, wound around by the serpents and going towards their death. Now we cannot but be struck by the peculiar way in which the body has been moulded. Much has been written on this subject. Robert Zimmermann rightly pointed out: The whole representation is such that we have before us the very moment where the life (or, as we should say, the etheric body) is already fleeing away. It is already a moment of unconsciousness. Hence the artist represents it as though the body of Laocoon were already falling asunder. That is the marvellous quality about this figure. The body is already being differentiated into its parts. Thus even in this late product we see how the Greek was aware of the etheric body. He brings to expression the actual moment where life is passing into death. It is the quick withdrawal of the etheric body through the shock—the shock that is expressed by the awful snakes coiling around. This effect of the etheric body withdrawing from the physical, and the physical falling asunder, is the characteristic thing in the Laocoon; not the other things that are so often said, but the peculiar way the body becomes differentiated. We could not imagine the body thus, unless we conceived it as the moment when the etheric body is drawing away. And now two more examples—imitations of earlier works, perhaps, which have, none the less, made a great impression on later students of Art.
41. Apollo Belvedere. (Vatican. Rome.) This is the famous Apollo Belvedere—Apollo represented as a kind of battle-hero.
42. Artemis. (Louvre. Paris.) This, too, will be a later imitation of an earlier work. Now, as we know, the Art of the ancient Greece gradually drew near its decline, when Greece was subjugated by Rome. In Rome, to begin with, there was a kind of imitation of the Greek Art. It was carried across to Rome, but it was soon submerged in the widespread unimaginativeness of the Roman people, to which we have frequently referred. The next centuries, as you know ... were to a large extent a dark and troubled age for our evolution. Then a new age began. I will only repeat quite briefly:—In the 12th and 13th centuries in Italy, when through manifold circumstances they rediscovered some of the ancient works of Art that had been buried in the early Middle Ages, the contemplation of the ancient works kindled the rise of a new Art, which grew in time into the Art of the Renaissance. From the 13th century onwards, artists would educate themselves by means of the Antique—the works of Art that had been found or excavated, though the number at that time was relatively small. We will now consider this re-discovery of the ancient Art in the period immediately preceding the Renaissance. In Niccola Pisano in the 13th century we find a wonderfully refined spirit who waxed enthusiastic over the relics of Greek Art, and tried to create once more in the spirit of the Greeks—out of his own imagination fructified, as it were, by the Greek Art itself. Our first picture is the famous pulpit in the Baptistery at Pisa; note the reliefs in the upper portion:—
43. Niccola Pisano. Pulpit in the Baptistery at Pisa. The pulpit is supported by antique columns between which are Gothic arches. Underneath are also lion figures; above are the relief in which he expressed so wonderfully what he owed to the inspiration of the antique. Niccola Pisano worked until the end of the 13th century.
44. Niccola Pisano. Adoration by the Three Wise Men. (Relief. Details of the above.) Another representation of the same subject:—
45. Niccola Pisano: The Crucifixtion. (Relief. Pulpit in the Cathedral at Siena.) We now go on to Giovanni Pisano. In his works you will observe already a far greater element of movement. A certain quietude pervades all the figures of Niccola Pisano.
46. Giovanni Pisano. Pulpit. (San Andrea. Pistoja.)
47. Giovanni Pisano. Capital from the above Pulpit. Truly, it was due to the stimulus and inspiration of the Antique, arising, to begin with, in the Pisanos, that the Christian Art afterwards became able to express its motifs so perfectly as it did in
48. Giovanni Pisano. Bas-Relief from the same Pulpit. The next two are by Giovanni Pisano:—
49. Giovanni Pisano. Pulpit in the Cathedral at Pisa. We see at the same time how naturally the Antique grew together with the Gothic. And two Madonnas from him:
51. Giovanni Pisano. Madonnas. (Berlin and Padua.) And now we have a sample of the work of Andrea Pisano, who was summoned to do one of the Bronze gates of the Baptistery at Florence.
52. Andrea Pisano. Tubal Cain. (Campanile. Florence.) A Bas-Relief representing Tubal Cain, inventor of the craft of metallurgy according to the Bible, the Old Testament. We have thus approached the 15th century, and we come to Ghiberti, the great artist who at the age of twenty years was already able to compete with the others in designing the doors of the Baptistery in Florence.
53a. Ghiberti. The Offering of Isaac. (Baptistry. Florence.)
53b. Ghiberti. Northern Door of the Baptistery in Florence. At the early age of twenty he was already allowed to do the Northern Portals. From a simple goldsmith's apprentice he grew to be one of the very greatest artists. These bas-reliefs of the doors of the Baptistery in Florence are, of their kind, among the greatest things in the whole evolution of Art. Afterwards the Eastern door was also given to him to do. It represents scenes from the Old Testament. Michelangelo said that these were worthy to be the gates of Paradise. [Note:the doors at the Florence Baptistery were moved causing some confusion as to where the works of Ghiberti and Andrea Pisano are located. – e.Ed.]
54. Ghiberti. The Gates of Paradise. (Baptistery. Florence.) This work had, indeed, a great influence on the whole Art of Michelangelo himself. Even in the details we can recognise certain motifs in Michelangelo's paintings, which he took from these bronze reliefs.
55a. Ghiberti. Sacrifice of Isaac. (Detail from the 'Gates of Paradise.')
55b. Ghiberti. Creation of Man. (Detail from the 'Gates of Paradise.')
56. Ghiberti. St. Stephen These works of Ghiberti's were undoubtedly due to a faithful contemplation of the Antique. We will now insert the Art of the della Robbias. To begin with:—
57. Luca della Robbia. Dancing Boys. (Cathedral. Florence.) The della Robbias are famous as the inventors of a special art—the use of burnt clay as a material. To a large extent their works were done in this material.
58. Luca della Robbia. Singing Boys. (Cathedral. Florence.) Luca della Robbia covers practically the whole period of the 15th century.
59. Luca della Robbia. Madonna in the Bower of Roses. (Museo Nazionale. Florence. ) Observe once more the age that we have now come into. The Art of antiquity that had been derived from immediate inner experience—experience of the Etheric—works as a great stimulus and inspiration. Yet at the same time the Art of this age is founded on what is seen—the faithful representation of what is actually seen. It is no longer based on something felt and sensed inwardly. It is very interesting to receive the impression of the two epochs, one after the other, in this way.
60. Andrea della Robbia. Bambino. (Spedale degli Innocenti. Florence.)
61. Madonna (della Cintola Fojano). Andrea della Robbia. The Madonna is shown in the spiritual world.
62. Giovanni della Robbia. Reception of the Pilgrims and Washing of the Feet. (Hospital. Pistoja.) We now go on to Donatello, who was born in 1386. In him we observe the influence of the Antique combined already with a decided tendency to Naturalism. His vision has a naturalistic stamp. Donatello enters lovingly and sympathetically into Nature. But while he becomes a real naturalist, he derived his technique from what his predecessors had evolved out of the old tradition. His naturalism went so far that his friend and companion in his strivings, Brunelleschi, seeing a Christ that Donatello attempted, exclaimed; “That is not a Christ that you are doing, that is a peasant:” Donatello at first did not understand what he meant. The anecdote is interesting, if not historically true; it gives us a right impression of the relation between the two artists—the contrast between the two artists—the contrast between Donatello and Brunelleschi with his high idealism—immersed as he was in the contemplation of the Antique, in its rebirth. Brunelleschi thereupon himself undertook to model the Christ. Donatello—for they lived together—had gone out to buy things for their breakfast. He returned with all the dainties for their common meal wrapped up in a kind of pinafore. Just as he entered, Brunelleschi unveiled his Christ. Donatello gaped with wide open mouth, and his astonishment was such that he dropped all the breakfast on the ground. What Brunelleschi had achieved was a revelation to him. We cannot say that the impression he experienced went very deep. None the less, Brunelleschi undoubtedly had an ennobling influence on him. The above story goes on to relate, Donatello was so overwhelmed that he even imagined the breakfast had disappeared. “What have we now to eat?” he said. “We'll just pick the things up again,” said Brunelleschi. “I see I shall never be able to do any more than peasants,” said Donatello.
Donatello. Crucifix. (Florence.)
Filippo Brunellesco. Crucifix. (Florence.)
63. Donatello. David. (Museo Nazionale, Florence.) And now we come to the beautifully self-contained marble statues by Donatello in Florence, showing his ability—out of his naturalistic vision—to create human figures strong and firm, even as he wanted them, their feet firmly planted on the ground.
64. Donatello. David. (Florence.)
65. Donatello. St. Peter. (Or San Michele. Florence.)
66. Donatello. Jeremiah. (Campanile. Florence.)
Habbakuk
67. Donatello. St. John Baptist. (Campanile. Florence.) In Donatello Naturalism certainly finds its way in. It is not the inner soul that we found in the Northern sculpture, but a decidedly naturalistic vision of what the outer senses see.
69. Donatello. Habakkuk. (Campanile. Florence.) Niccola Pisano and Donatello were two artists who powerfully influenced Michelangelo. Those who afterwards saw what Michelangelo created—especially in his early period—remembered Donatello and coined the phrase which then became current: Donatello Michelangelosed or Michelangelo Donatelloised.
70. Donatello. Lodovico III Gonzaga
71. Donatello. St. George. (Florence.) Most characteristic is this St. George by Donatello. All the power of his naturalism is in it. Such works of Art arose out of the freedom of the free city of Florence, which also gave birth to Michelangelo. By a wider historic necessity—a cosmopolitan historic necessity, we might say,—it was in Italy that the Antique came to life again. On the other hand, the naturalistic tendency everywhere was bound up with the mood and feeling that arose in the culture of the Free Towns or Cities. Here, as in the North—though in different ways, of course, according to the different characters of the people,—we find this element arising out of the life of the free cities, where man became conscious of his dignity, his freedom, his individual being. In the characteristic works of Art which we found in the Netherlands and other Northern parts, we were reminded again and again of the life of the free cities and the feeling that pervaded them. And so it is here, when we look at this figure of a man, so firmly established in the world of space, this Florentine St. George. We cannot but think of the civilisation of the Free Cities, whose atmosphere made such a thing possible.
72. Donatello. Bas-Relief. St. George and the Dragon. (From the Base of the St. George Statue.)
73. Donatello. Madonna Pazzi. (Berlin.)
74. Donatello. Bas-Relief. Angels Singing. (Uffizi. Florence.)
75. Donatello. Annunciation. (Santa Croce. Florence.)
76. Donatello, Portrait of Niccolo da Uzzano.
Donatello. Gattamelata.
Donatello. Gattamelata. Finally, we will show some examples of Verrocchio—teacher of Leonardo and Perugino—in his capacity as a sculptor. First the famous equestrian statue:—
77. Verrocchio. Bertolomeo Colleoni. (Venice.)
79. Verrocchio. Head and Shoulders. (Detail of the above.)  80. Verrocchio. Guiliano de Medici. (Paris.) And in conclusion:—
81. Verrocchio. David. (Museo Nazionale. Florence.) And so, my dear friends, we have had before us the artists of the pre-Renaissance. They entered deeply into the Antique and brought it forth again, in a time when men no longer lived within the soul in the same inward way as did the ancients. They brought to life again in outer vision, contemplation, what the ancients had felt and known inwardly—what they had feelingly known, knowingly felt, I should say. Moreover, they united this with the element which had to come in the 5th Post-Atlantean epoch—the element of naturalism, with clear outward vision. They thus became the fore-runners of the great artists of the Renaissance—of Leonardo, of Michelangelo, and, through Perugino, of Raphael himself. For all these were influenced directly by the Art of the precursors, whose works we have seen today. They stood, undoubtedly, on the shoulders of these artists of the pre- Renaissance period, the early Renaissance. It is interesting to see, in relation to this figure, for example, how quickly they progressed in that time. Compare this David with the David by Michelangelo. Here you still see a comparative inability to dramatise the theme—to take hold of it in movement. Michelangelo, on the other hand, in his David, has seized the very essence of dramatic movement; he has caught the actual moment of resolve to go out against Goliath.
82. Michelangelo. David, Marble Statue (Florence, Academy) Thus we have tried to bring these things to some extent before our souls:—On the one hand what radiates from the Greek Art itself, and on the other, its lighting-up-again in the age when Humanity was trying to find the life of Art once more with the help of the Greek Art which came to life again. |
