| 206. Humanity, World Soul and World Spirit II: Lecture IV
20 Aug 1921, Dornach |
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| But if we learn to observe, we can see the building process (see drawing, red), the vital building process of the vegetable kingdom, which also works in us. one then understands how this anabolic process is dampened by the animalistic (green), but how a continuous falling out (black) takes place, an inner decay, and if one finally rises to have a realization of this inner decay, then one also has that which always maintains itself against this decay. |
| 206. Humanity, World Soul and World Spirit II: Lecture IV
20 Aug 1921, Dornach |
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My aim yesterday was to show how the state of mind or consciousness of humanity has changed over the course of historical and prehistoric times, and I wanted to show this for the reason that it might make it easier to recognize the necessity of rising to a different state of mind in order to gain real, essential knowledge. And that is to a state of mind that differs from the one in which one has become accustomed to, which one cultivates in everyday and scientific life today and which one recognizes as something absolute that has existed as long as there have been people and that will exist as long as one will have the right to speak of people walking on earth. If we see how the soul has taken on a different inner constitution throughout the course of human development, then it will be easier for us to acknowledge a transformation of the present soul condition as well.  In order to tie in with what I said yesterday, I would now like to repeat in a few words, summarizing what can be derived from the last observations. I said that humanity, insofar as it can be regarded as civilized humanity, has actually only come to the present state of mind since the 15th century, and this state of mind is characterized, on the one hand, inwardly by the fact that we strive for an intellectual interpretation of the world, that we make use of our intellect to comprehend that which we call the world. This intellectualistic orientation towards the world now also corresponds to a very specific area of the world, which can be grasped and understood through it. It is the world of mineral events and mineral forms, the world that has not yet risen to life. Today, it is often believed that even within purely intellectual endeavor, life may perhaps be grasped; but this only happens because one does not recognize the belonging together of the intellect in the inner and the inanimate in the outer world. If we go back beyond the 15th century and enter the period that, calculated backwards, lasts from the 15th century to the 8th century BC, we find a different arrangement of the human soul. And this arrangement is most characteristically encountered in the Greek mind. There we are not dealing with an intellectual soul condition; concepts are not yet separated from words in the strict sense of the word. The Greeks essentially arrived at the workings of their soul not by inwardly visualizing concepts with a certain abstraction, as we do, but rather they heard, as it were, the sound of the words, even if it was not outwardly audible. What for us lives in the abstractness of concepts was tinged for him, if I may use the paradox, by the spiritually grasped sound, through the soundlessly, purely internally experienced sound. Just as we live in abstract concepts, so the Greek lived in the externally soundless sound. But this enabled him to perceive the living world as an external world. And so we see that wherever the Greeks wanted to form, let us say, ideas about the universe, about the cosmos, based on their presuppositions, they did not use the ideas taken from geology, physics, and chemistry that we use today, but rather what had settled in their souls through the growth, development, prosperity, , arising, passing away of that which lives vegetably. If we go back even further, we come, however, to times that we can no longer count as historical in the strict sense of the word, then we come to the 8th century BC, to a period roughly up to the beginning of the 3rd millennium BC. And if we look around at the peoples who could be considered civilized at the time, we find that the essential of the soul's life was no longer sought in the inwardly experienced words, but in the imaginative shaping of the word structure, the language structure. Rhythm and thematic – that is, what lines up tone by tone, what penetrates into the world of sound and also into the world of noise, so that we only make it alive in our soul when we rise to the poetic shaping of language – that was the actual element of life of the, if I may use the word, educated peoples of that time. And they found satisfaction not by expressing some external thing or event through words, as the Greeks did, but by inwardly feeling, as it were, that which they believed to live everywhere in the world as rhythm, as harmony.  Thus, inner rhythm and inner harmony were what characterized the state of soul during that period. And if we ask ourselves what realm could be penetrated externally by such an inner state of soul, we find that it is the realm of that world of beings which can experience in itself intuitive perception. Thus, what is the animal world, what is the sentient world, what lives in the perception of the objective, that inwardly came to life for the people of that ancient time in the state of soul of which I have spoken. And if we go back to even older times, you can guess that in a certain respect there must have been an awareness of the human being himself. In our own age we have a recognition of dead nature; this was preceded by a recognition of living nature. And if we go back further in time, we come to those times of which, from certain quarters, only the outlines can be discerned today, namely, the world-views that emerged from more or less enlightened Catholicism. Those very thinkers who have settled into, not the decadent state of Catholicism, but what in older times was Catholic philosophy, speak of an original revelation of mankind. One must indeed see many things in their proper light if one wants to judge these things appropriately. The Catholic Church has become something different from what she was, for example, in the times of the Catholic Church Fathers. One need only look at Origen and one will find that Origen is already trying to bring everything that has been gained in philosophical depth in his time into Christian thinking. And so we also find among the older Church Fathers a clear awareness that there was once a primordial revelation to humanity. And those Catholic writers who have retained the better forces of Catholicism still speak today of the primordial revelations, which only later disappeared into paganism, which was increasingly heading towards decadence, so that the knowledge was lost. So that in these primal revelations of an instinctive humanity, that which was later brought by Christianity in its developed form was shown. It is interesting when writers such as Otto Willmann talk about the primal revelation, when they going back to the mysteries and beyond the mysteries and pointing to such a primal revelation, by which people in those times in the 3rd and beyond the 3rd millennium of the pre-Christian era were inspired, if such a primal revelation is sought. It is not necessary for us to get involved in a more precise description of what is said about the primal revelation. But let us characterize in a spiritual-scientific sense what can be found when we go back to these prehistoric times of human civilization, where, through an instinctive state of mind, I will call it for the moment, not only the sentient but the human itself can be explored, that is, that which lives in man above the animalistic, the actual, the specifically human. Indeed, there was a time when the corresponding knowledge was instinctive, not even something that would be accepted today as knowledge, but a kind of direct experience, a dimly dreamlike experience, but one that contained something of the essence of the human being, so that one could objectify what the human being actually is as if through an inner living into this human essence. This epoch cannot be considered historically, although historical remains from it have certainly remained. How one has to look at these historical remains will become clear from what I would now like to give as a characteristic of this epoch itself. When we speak of the state of mind that we now have as the humanity, the intellectualist soul, we are speaking of something that lies within the soul for ordinary experience, for ordinary experience, as we call the soul more or less clear or more or less trivial today. Even if we look at it in that epoch, for which Greek observation is typical, we are speaking of an inner experience of the word, and thus again of something that is within the soul. And even if we go back to the 9th or 10th century BC, to the 2nd millennium, to the end times of the 3rd millennium, we are still speaking of something that takes place in the soul, although it must be admitted must be admitted by anyone who knows these things precisely from their own observation that at the moment when the soul experience emerges from the word and enters into this rhythmic experience, into this experience of harmonies and, I would like to say, musically imaginative themes, then what is experienced in the soul always resonates quietly with the physical. Just as it can be felt that every time a person has a vivid dream, something happens in their physical being that leads to the constitution of dreaming, so the person of the characterized period knew that when he brought to life within himself something harmonious, rhythmic, thematic, it was as if the secrets of the world were revealed or unveiled to him, and something of the physical moved along with it. When we speak of our abstract, intellectualistic conception of the world, we have no physical resonance in our consciousness. We can devise theories about what might happen in the human nervous system when logical-intellectualistic thinking takes place. But such theories are only thoughts; they are not alive, they are not experienced. In the same way, we still have to speak of the Greek soul when we realize how the word lived in this soul. But as I said, we already move beyond the purely soul realm to a slight involvement of the body when we ascend to the previous period. And we move even more from what we call the soul realm today into the realm of the body when we ascend to the ancient instinctive knowledge that existed in the earlier centuries of the third millennium BC and even earlier. There was a direct soul experience with the character of a physical experience. In those older times, one actually experienced a process that we today describe as physical – I do not want to discuss now whether with complete justification or with partial injustice – a physically described process where later experienced as soul-life, as we call it. I would like to point out that when one comes from such experiences of humanity, which are so different from our own, one also has a difficult time using words. The things themselves become different, very unlike what one experiences today. Our languages have been formed for our present-day experiences, and one must try to use the languages in such a way that one can return to something that is no longer directly present experience today, and which can therefore only be touched upon weakly with the word usages that we have today. Therefore, I have to say that what we today call the soul did not really live in the inner soul state of these old people. Something actually lived in them that we today would describe as physical, even as bodily, in the same way as thinking or inward hearing of the word lives in a person today. So this old man experienced inhaling, holding his breath and exhaling not as we do, who have outgrown our involvement in the breathing process. He experienced this breathing as we only experience it in abnormal states, for example when we go through states of fear in our dreams and then wake up and notice that our breathing is disturbed. In this pathological state, we notice something of the interaction of the breathing process with the occurrence of images in front of our consciousness. We have outgrown the images that arise before consciousness when the normal breathing process takes place, because we have grown up to perceive the rhythmic in language, the harmonious in language, the thematic in language, to the inner coloring of the word, because we have grown up completely in our time to abstract conception, to the intellectualistic conception of the world. But these three periods were preceded by another one, when man still, if I may use the expression, lived down in what we today call his physical body, and lived with his process of knowledge, which was inhaling, holding his breath, and exhaling. And what did man experience with inhaling? Today, this can only be taught by the imaginative knowledge of which I spoke in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “Occult Science in Outline”. For what was experienced in that ancient epoch when inhaling was essentially an imagination; man's own imagination, the imagination of man as a figure was experienced when inhaling. Man felt this in breathing in – of course he had to focus his attention on it, in everyday life he did not always focus his attention on it – but he could, as it were, stop his everyday soul life and then he could experience it. He experienced it especially in moments when everyday consciousness was somewhat subdued. That was necessary for this. We would say today that he experienced the figure of the human being when he drew in his breath and approached the state of falling asleep or waking up; when he held his breath, he experienced the merging of this figure with the inner soul. He had the opportunity to experience the human form in the inhalation, the mistiness of this form in the retention of breath, and the connection of this auric mistiness of the form with the soul. Then, in exhaling, he experienced the soul's surrender to the outer world, the harmony of man with the outer world. I said explicitly that the person could experience this in special moments. He could, as it were, focus his attention on the breathing process and then perceive such. He really did attain an instinctive knowledge - if you want to call it knowledge - by observing his breathing process, especially when he steered this breathing process inwardly, which resulted from practice. It was, so to speak, a descent into the physical body, through which the human being could be brought to knowledge. Of course, we must not imagine that in those ancient times man spent the whole day from morning till evening only becoming acquainted with himself. I therefore said: when he directed his attention to it. But this attention could easily be drawn from the whole constitution of the human being. Now, I said that this goes back to ancient times; but what has been preserved historically from those times is the method of knowledge, the breathing method, the yogic breathing, which is practiced in certain schools in India. This has been transmitted to a later time by the fact that it was elementary and natural in an earlier time. For a later time, certain preparations and certain manipulations of the breathing process were necessary. In earlier times, these manipulations arose as something that man learned in the course of his life, just as one learns to speak today. What is called yogic breathing is an inheritance from an earlier time, when the whole soul constitution was different than it was later, and when man faced the world in an instinctive way through this different soul constitution. For it was, of course, very instinctive to grasp the essence, the secret of things, through breathing, not through thinking and inner speech, but through breathing. Where today we ponder intellectually in order to assemble individual facts into overall phenomena and to find natural laws through the calculating mind, and so on, there one inhaled that which, as the essence of the human being himself, should arise as instinctive knowledge within human nature. It is of great importance to realize that not every human epoch corresponds in the same way to every other. Just as the constitution of the soul of people has changed, so too has the bodily constitution, albeit in a more subtle way. And it must be said that those who today believe that they can reawaken, for example, the process of breathing by penetrating the secrets of the world, as this breathing process was carried out in ancient times and as it has been preserved in natures who are, after all, constituted differently from modern European natures, are on the wrong track. It is absolutely necessary that, in addition to following the external history of the development of humanity, which has become a matter for the nineteenth century in particular, we now familiarize ourselves with an inner pursuit of what has taken place as a development of the soul parallel to this external physical development. One does more justice to the portrayal of external physical development if one is able to see the spiritual-soul development on the other side. Those for whom these four types of human soul condition are now fully objective will be able to sense how the soul is viewed in a special way. First we have a state of soul that is actually no longer a state of soul at all, but a bodily state that lives in the breathing process; then there is the state that lives in the rhythmic-harmonic, in the imaginative-thematic process; then there is the state of the silent experience of the word, and finally that which lives in the intellectual process; and when one has all this in objective form, then one sees the soul in such a way that one must ascribe to it the most diverse possibilities for relating to the world. And it is necessary for the present time to know that there are such different possibilities, let us say, such different types of consciousness, and that for each state of consciousness other levels of cosmic life and cosmic existence come to light. Today, it is often believed that there is only one state of consciousness, which one then tries to describe as something that can only be taken absolutely alone. But by wanting to limit oneself to this one state of consciousness, one simultaneously limits oneself to a single level of cosmic existence and cosmic experience. And we can truly say of today's state of consciousness that it is far removed from the realization of the actual human being. It clings to constructing a human being out of physiology and biology. For what we call psychology today is basically a collection of hackneyed words for something for which there is no real soul content left. Humanity must first move forward again to grasp the living alongside the dead, the sentient alongside the living, the human alongside mere sentient cognition. As I said, I have made these remarks to facilitate an idea that leads to what is necessary today if we want to approach the human again, if we want to get to know the human again. For this human does not reveal itself to the state of consciousness that is primarily attuned to the dead, to the mineral. We speak of the I, we think we can speak of the I. The fact that we have a word for this I is no proof that we also have a soul content with this word. There are philosophers today who understand the I only as a summary of what is experienced as an idea, as a feeling. In a sense, only that which is drawn from one idea to another, from one feeling to another, from one feeling to the idea as connecting lines, that which is itself quite abstract, is often understood today as the ego. But one can say that in a sense, even this understanding has a limited justification. For what is experienced in the soul when one speaks of such consciousness of the self is basically not even content. You see, we can have a white surface, we can speak of white - I have used the image several times before -, we see the white, but we also see the black here in the middle. There is no white there, the white is missing, and yet we see the black through the white (it is drawn). Those who are really able to analyse the soul can see that today we experience something in the soul that can be compared to this white. We experience pain and pleasure, we experience this and that sensation, love, hate, and so on. We experience perceptions, although these are already something rather gray for ordinary consciousness when they want to be relived in reflection; but we experience the I with this consciousness in the same way as the black in the white here. Where we experience nothing, where we experience a kind of hole in our consciousness, that is where we place the ego for ordinary consciousness. No wonder we speak of the ego; we are also speaking here of the black hole. What a person experiences from waking up to falling asleep does not include the ego. The question may arise before us: How do we even come to a possibility of gaining ideas for the ego? Yes, here the person who is seriously seeking knowledge is led to something else. He finds no starting point for gaining ideas for the I anywhere in the world around us. As a rule, what surrounds us is sometimes outside and sometimes inside in the soul. Basically, it is the same. And if we can only find a hole for the ego within, we cannot find a point of reference outside, even under ordinary circumstances, where we can place our ego, so to speak. Those who seriously strive for knowledge find a way to approach the ego in the events of the world only with one phenomenon: that of death. It is precisely at the point where the human being ceases to exist at death, when, as it were, the human body is surrendered to the external forces from which it was withdrawn from birth or from conception to death, then, when we are now in a position to form an idea of the human being, now that we no longer have the possibility of drawing conclusions about the human being from the body, only then does the possibility begin for us to approach the ego. We must begin with the phenomenon that is, so to speak, most inexplicable among the external phenomena, most inexplicable because it can no longer be grasped by ordinary consciousness, and can least be brought into consciousness. But if we can decide to look at death in this way, if we do the same with the phenomenon of death as I have described for the struggle with concepts in general, where mere abstract knowledge becomes an inner experience, if we approach the phenomenon of death in this way, then we gradually learn to see through that death, when it confronts us at the cessation of life, is actually only something like a sum, like an integral, I would say, of individual processes that always take place in man from birth on. We are always dying, but we die in very small portions, so to speak. When we begin our life on earth, we also begin to die. But again and again, and again, what is given to us as vitality through birth overcomes death. Death always wants to work in us. It only ever manages a very small portion of its work and is then overcome. But what seems to us to be vividly compressed in death at that one moment is constantly taking place in life, like differentials, and is a continuous, ongoing process. If we follow this, we see that in the human inner organic process, there are not only anabolic processes. If there were only anabolic processes, we would never be able to achieve thinking consciousness, because that which merely lives, that which is merely vital, takes away our consciousness, makes us unconscious. The death processes in us, the dying processes, the destruction processes of the vital, which always take place differentially in us, are what bring us consciousness, what make us thinking, level-headed beings. We would always fall into a kind of rashness, into a kind of unconsciousness, if we only lived. If it were true that life in plants is at a certain level, in animals at a higher level, and in humans at an even higher level, if it were always a matter of an increase, of a potentization of life, we would never develop a thinking consciousness. We have life in plants. But as life ascends to animals, it already begins to subside in animals. But in humans, there is a continuous dying process. This continuous dying process, which not only dampens life but undermines it – it is only rebuilt in turn – is the organic process that underlies conscious thinking. To the extent that we have the continuous process of dying within us, we have the possibility of thinking in our physical life. But if we learn to observe, we can see the building process (see drawing, red), the vital building process of the vegetable kingdom, which also works in us. one then understands how this anabolic process is dampened by the animalistic (green), but how a continuous falling out (black) takes place, an inner decay, and if one finally rises to have a realization of this inner decay, then one also has that which always maintains itself against this decay. One has the process of dying, but one also has a perpetual fighter against the process of dying; one has the process that represents the life of the ego. That is where the ego lives. By seeing, in higher knowledge, in higher contemplation, how a continual depositing takes place through the nervous process of man, how, as it were, an inner sediment is formed, one also sees how the I continually wrings itself out of this sediment formation, out of this inner sediment formation. One cannot gain a view of the true self until one is able to observe this inner sediment formation. The self lives in the human being, of course, but the human being perceives this self by experiencing the process of dying, the process of inner decomposition. And the one who has now grasped how the ego is a constant fighter against this process of dying has grasped how the ego is something that as such has nothing to do with death at all; he has vividly grasped what otherwise designated dialectically or logically as immortality. But this is the way to see immortality, because it leads to entities that belong to a different order of existence from that which precipitates as sediment. One arrives in a region where death has no meaning, where death loses the possibility of being formed as an earthly sensation. Thus we approach the I when we study death. I have only hinted at this, for this study of death is a very detailed one, and for those who attach a certain importance to it, it can also be said that the pursuit of this perpetual sedimentation, this formation of sediment, in contemplation appears as if there were a perpetual continuous inner flaring up of sparks of darkness, thus in contrast to sparks of light: sparks of darkness in an even luminous aura. But we must form other concepts if we want to approach what can lead us to a kind of knowledge of the human being. I must start from something else if I want to form this other concept. I had to refer you to death and how to overcome it, because the aim was to get to the ego. I would now like to refer you to the following: consider the life of plants, but first of all the actual plant. This is the annual plant, because in the perennial plant and in the tree we are already confronted with a complication that would necessitate a separate consideration. In the annual plant, you find the germinating of growth from the seed, the shooting of the leaves, the emergence of growth up to the flower, up to fertilization, the development of the fruit containing the seed for the following plant. We see, as it were, the result of the fruit, which in turn develops into a plant. You will easily be able to imagine that the plant, as it develops from those early stages where the leaf emerges, to fertilization, unfolds forces within itself that reach their culmination at the very moment of fertilization. But then the downward path begins, and the plant decays again. And by observing this cycle of the plant world, you will see the essential nature of the plant. As I said, we will not deal with perennial plants and those plants that leave behind a trunk like a tree. What I said about the annual plant, which comes to an end with a single fertilization, would only be more complicated; but we grasp the essential nature of the plant by looking at the nature of the plant that comes to an end with fertilization. When properly observed, the plant-like quality lies precisely in the life that culminates in fertilization and, by culminating in fertilization, descends in the other direction. Therein lies the plant-like. If we seek the essence of the plant, we must search in a similar way to how we must search for the human being's sense of self in the continuous dying. We say of the human being that the death with which he first ends his physical being is actually always within him as a force. When he is born, he begins to die, begins to develop, I would say, differentials of dying; he dies continually. The dying process is within him. In the plant, that which culminates last is continually present. Just as we culminate in death, so they culminate in fertilization. Just as we grasp our inner being, our ego, in death, so we grasp the essence of the plant in fertilization. The plant comes to life in fertilization; what develops in the leaf is only a metamorphosis, only a preliminary stage of fertilization. When you come to animals, the situation is as follows: the animal is fertilized, but at first the fertilization does not mean withering, but it can be fertilized again. Of course, we always come to borderline questions, but we want to grasp the living and feeling in certain characteristic main points. Just as the plant being, the actual plant being, culminates in fertilization – of course, anyone can doubt that this is the actual plant being, but we grasp the plant being where it manifests itself – so the animal does not culminate in fertilization, but overcomes fertilization. That which is the higher animal carries something else within itself. If it were to carry only that which lives in fertilization, it would have to undergo the same thing as the characteristic plant: it would have to die. But it carries something beyond fertilization. And when we come to man, he not only overcomes what the animal overcomes, but he overcomes death itself. These things of which I have now spoken should not be taken dogmatically; nor should they be taken in such a way that one formulates definitions from them, for then one immediately goes astray. But if someone were to say that a plant is what perishes in fertilization, and that an animal is what retains something beyond fertilization, then they are formulating definitions instead of acquiring concepts. One can only come to an understanding if one acquires concepts for certain stages of life and existence. And just as one must acquire the concept of the ego by bringing the ego to death, so one must acquire the concept of the animal by observing how fertilization is overcome in something that lives in the animal beyond fertilization. One must observe the plant, regarding fertilization, or rather what takes place in fertilization, as a continuous process. But then, when one has risen to such concepts, these concepts themselves become something living in the soul life. And these concepts, once grasped, themselves fertilize the soul life. So that we are now in a position not only to grasp the human being's ego, but also, by appropriating what remains in the animal beyond fertilization, we gradually arrive at a concept of the human being's astral body. And when we appropriate what lives continuously in fertilization, we also arrive at a concept of the human being's etheric body. If we grasp the actual I as that which escapes this sedimentation, then we must grasp the astral body in a different way. We must grasp this astral body in the following way. Let us not consider what grows, feeds and reproduces as dying away. We consider the whole physical being as dying away when we want to come to the I. So now we consider that which grows, which reproduces, not as dying, but only as continually paralyzed, so that there is now not something that conquers death, but something that conquers the paralysis of vitality, which thus, whenever vitality sinks, always again whips up this vitality Then we have, just as here (see drawing page 195) dark sparks spurt out of the light, here (see drawing page 200, red) there is continually a dark (blue) clouding, if I may say so, clouding out of a bright color glowing. One must use these expressions in order to have ideas in these parts of being. I would like to say that the I sparks out of the light, it clouds out, tinting, cloudily tinting a light tint, when the astral element in the etheric element conquers the dulling of the vitality. I am trying to be as precise as possible, but you understand that these things, which are no longer accessible to intellectualistic knowledge but only to the imaginative, cannot be expressed by intellectualistic concepts either, but that they have to be expressed through imagination. It can also happen, can't it, that people take such imaginations for the thing and then don't know their way around, as certain critics of anthroposophy do. But these people make the mistake that someone would make — as paradoxical as it is, but it is so — who, when someone says the word 'hedgehog', imagines a real, prickly hedgehog. The word 'hedgehog' is, of course, not the hedgehog. Just as little as these images are the corresponding being, but we can only penetrate through these images to what is really there in the supersensible being. Ultimately, it is a sensualization. Those who are familiar with the whole process do not, of course, need to be told what Bruhn, for example, says in his little book about anthroposophy: that anthroposophy confuses the supersensible with the sensual. That is about as clever as accusing a mathematician of confusing what he writes on the blackboard with mathematics. But that is how criticism is usually written about what one does not want to understand, because one does not want to choose the paths to it that are necessary. So what it is about is that we have to find our way back to what can bring the human being before our soul again. Imaginations once occurred in the course of the breathing process; imaginations must again arise through which we can approach the true nature of the human being. Only we cannot reach them through a breathing process, but through those processes which I have tried to describe in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in my “Occult Science”. I wanted to give you some hints today about how another soul condition must be sought out of today's intellectual soul condition. This other soul-condition is not the same as the consciousness of direct vision. It is not at all necessary to attain the consciousness of direct vision, but this other soul-condition can be had. It develops out of a truly intellectualized inner development, when one is in earnest and sincere about this intellectualized inner development and knows where its limits are. Then it will develop without fail. And the person most likely to arrive at such a view of an inner metamorphosed state of mind is the person who is living in the scientific concepts of modern times. For if he lives into them in such a way that one can live with them, if he does not merely humbly accept them, but if he lives into them in such a way that one can really live through them inwardly, then he will not be led by them to an ignorabimus, but will be led to a special experience, to a real struggle, precisely at the boundary where otherwise the ignorabimus is placed, is impaled. And so this other state of mind is kindled. But everything depends on approaching the scientific concepts themselves in an honest and thoroughly truthful manner. Then one does not stop at them, they become germs from which something else grows; then one does not stop at laying these scientific concepts next to each other and looking at them, but one sinks these bean germs into the earth, that is, the intellectualistic concepts of nature into the depths of the soul. There they flourish in a new state of mind. What has been developed over the past few centuries carries within it the potential to give rise to new seeds of knowledge. We have to look at an age that, in turn, reveals a different state of soul from that which the age of Galileo, the 15th century, brought forth. We have to advance to a deeper knowledge of the world by coming to a more intense experience of our own human interior. |
| 213. Human Questions and World Answers: Thirteenth Lecture
22 Jul 1922, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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| And so you see what is on earth as plant cover (green), as if it were really painted by the starry sky. It is actually the case that the form of the plant body is determined, created, by the cosmos. |
| 213. Human Questions and World Answers: Thirteenth Lecture
22 Jul 1922, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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Today I would like to add a somewhat more extensive consideration about cosmic observation to our reflections. We, as human beings, must be thoroughly aware that we live on earth in the time that passes between birth and death, and that we consider everything that makes an impression on us, in the narrower and broader sense, with our senses and also with our intellect, but only from the point of view of our earthly residence. We often become aware of how much we are bound to this earthly abode by our external physical body. We learn already in school that a human being can only live if he breathes the air that surrounds him and that consists of a certain mixture of oxygen and nitrogen. Man is completely dependent on this air for his vital functions. We only need to consider how different our physical life would be if, for example, there were more oxygen in the air around us than there actually is. Let us assume that there were more oxygen in the air, then we would live faster, that is, we would have a much shorter lifespan on earth calculated by years. Time would be compressed, so to speak, and our lifespan would have to be shorter. This is basically just a very rough approximation. We can imagine that our entire human organism would be different if every single thing in our environment that has an influence on us were to be changed just a little. Such a consideration is indeed often made today. People are becoming aware of their physical dependence on their environment. However, at most one is only very clearly aware in the abstract that man also has a soul-spiritual being, and basically one never has such precise ideas about this spiritual-soul being as one has about the physical-bodily being. The physical-corporal aspect of our organization is so well known that one can say how differently abundant oxygen in the air would affect a person. Regarding the spiritual-soul being, one does not think so much, thoughts that would go something like this: If this spiritual-soul being were different from what it is, could it then be on earth between birth and death? Just as our body is adapted to the amount of oxygen in the air, and how many other things in our body are adapted to the conditions that are just near the earth's surface, so too is our soul and spirit perfectly adapted between birth and death to what is immediately at the earth's surface. And when one becomes fully aware of this, then one will also be able to say: Just as the human being could not live as an earthly human being out there, just a few miles from the earth's surface, so too would the human soul, with its thinking, feeling and willing, not be able to live in a different way in other than earthly conditions, just as it lives in the earth's environment. Elsewhere, in a different position to the earth, it would have to be organized differently again as a spiritual-mental being. Just as the human body would derive no benefit from its lungs, once they were organized, if they were miles away from the earth's surface, so the human soul, with its thinking, feeling and willing, as it develops in earthly life, would be unable to function under other than earthly conditions. One could not get any clear idea of these things at all if it were not possible for those people who seek an inner soul development to come to different soul experiences than are the case in ordinary thinking, feeling and willing. You all know from the descriptions in my book 'How to Know Higher Worlds' that one can arrive at quite different soul moods and dispositions, that one can arrive at a quite different soul content. One can arrive at a soul content that not only has ordinary thinking but also imagination, that lives in pictures instead of thoughts. One can go further and arrive at inspiration. Just as our lungs, with the air, perform their inhalation in relation to the physicality of the air, so too can one, so to speak, inspire and breathe in the spiritual and soul substance of the spiritual and soul substance spread throughout the world. And just as the lungs, when they inhale oxygen, draw their life from this oxygen, as the whole human body draws its life from this oxygen, so too the human soul draws its life from the inspirations that take place when such higher knowledge is acquired. And it is the same with the further level of knowledge, with intuition. Then the soul rises to a completely different inner content. Then it experiences something essentially different. But this different experience is connected, as you know, with what can be called a soul-like going out of the body. We no longer feel so within our body when we ascend to imagination, inspiration and intuition as we feel when we are in ordinary earthly life. It is then with the spiritual-soul being just as if, for example, the lungs were transformed into an organ that breathes light instead of air. Then it could indeed live a few miles outside the earthly with the organism to which the lungs belong. Now, in the physical that is not possible at first, at least not for a human being, but it is possible for the spiritual and soul in us when we leave our body and then experience imagination, inspiration and intuition in our soul, we actually leave the earthly point of view, we already come to the point of view that we had before we descended into a physical body. We come through the fact that we ascend to imagination, inspiration and intuition, actually from an earthly view of the world to a cosmic view of the world. We are just simply no longer on earth, but we look at the earthly from a different point of view.  This is not of great significance when it comes to observing human souls. However, it is of great significance when it comes to getting to know the spiritual in the cosmos itself. I will make this clear to you in a schematic drawing. Imagine that here is the earth, the human being on earth. Man sees the elements in his earthly surroundings. We can call them solid, liquid and gaseous. He perceives the fiery, the warm. But then what immediately belongs to the earth's surface ceases. By perceiving the fiery, the warm, man already rises to the perception of the earth's surroundings. He enters the light-filled realm, into that which we call the light ether. It is indeed our special characteristic that we can perceive the light ether through our looking, our seeing. But when imaginative perception occurs in a person, then he does not feel standing here on earth and letting his gaze wander out into the light ether, but then he actually feels as if he were perceiving and looking at the whole from the outside (drawing, red). Particularly in relation to what I am discussing here, it is possible to speak quite definitely about how this happens. If you are standing on the earth and let your gaze wander freely into the cosmos, then by day you are looking into the light everywhere. By night you look up at the starry sky. There you make use, if I may say so, of the perceiving power of your eye. But the power of will is also constantly directed at this perceiving power of your eye. You actually use this power of will in earthly seeing only for the adjustment of the eye. But when you ascend to imaginative cognition, this willpower is trained more and more, especially for the individual senses. You feel how you, as it were, step out into space through your eyes and increasingly come to look at the cosmos from the outside.  You do not have to believe that what I am describing here consists of your eye becoming huge, and then growing all the way over, and that you then look at the cosmos from the outside as you now look at the cosmos from the inside. You do not achieve this through the power of perception, but precisely through the will becoming clairvoyant. It is an experience in which the will expands, but in which you yourself are present. In this case you also look at the stars from the outside, as a person, when he is in the spiritual world as a soul, also looks at the stars from the outside, from where there are no more stars, not from the etheric region, but from the astral region, from which one can say that there is still space, and from which one can also say that there is no more space. It does not make much sense to speak of what I have just indicated as if there were still space. But one feels as if one had space within oneself. But then you do not see any stars. You know you are looking at the stars, but you do not see any stars, you see images. You actually see images everywhere within the stellar space. It suddenly becomes clear to you why in the old days, when people depicted spheres, they didn't just paint stars, but pictures.  But now imagine looking through these pictures. Then you become aware that forces radiate down to Earth from all these pictures; only that these forces radiate together. If you look at a radiant star from here, from the Earth, you have the feeling that the rays diverge. If you look at it from outside, you have the feeling that the rays, the light effects that emanate from the pictures, are not only light effects but also power effects, and that they go together. These power effects go as far as the earth. And what do they do there? Yes, you see, they form the shape of the plants, for example. And the one who looks imaginatively says: the lily is a plant form on earth that was created in this form and shape by this group of stars. Another, a tulip shape, was created by another group of stars.  And so you see what is on earth as plant cover (green), as if it were really painted by the starry sky. It is actually the case that the form of the plant body is determined, created, by the cosmos. And now you can easily understand: if you look further in, if you see the fixed stars out there, then closer to the earth you see the planets Saturn, Jupiter, Mars and so on. They are moving. The fixed stars show you the constellations at rest, which give the plants their shape. But the moving planets send down forces of movement. It is these that the plants first draw out of the root, then make them grow higher and higher, and so on. Just as the shape of the plants is formed from the fixed starry sky, so the movement is formed from the movement of the celestial bodies closer to the earth. Only what takes place in the plant itself, this metabolism, that, for example, the plant absorbs carbonic acid, assimilates it, as they say, and secretes the carbon, so that it forms its carbon body, that is from the forces of the earth itself. We can therefore say: When we look at the plant in its entirety, its form is from the starry sky, its growth is from the planetary movement, and its metabolism is from the earth. These are things that are regarded as foolishness by those who call themselves true scientific minds today, but they are the very reality. For he who regards the plant in its growth and form as it is done today, resembles one — I must here use a simile that I have often applied — who looks at a magnetic needle that points with one side to the north, with the other side to the south, and who now says: This is due to the magnetic needle, that one point points to the north, the other to the south. It is not due to the magnetic needle, but natural science naturally assumes that the whole earth is a great magnet, that it attracts the one point to the north and the other to the south. In natural science, the whole earth is used to explain the direction of the magnetic needle. But in the same way, if you want to explain the whole form of the plant, you have to use the whole universe. The plant is formed out of the whole universe. It is simply an awful absurdity that the same people who, for example, use the whole earth to explain the direction of the magnetic needle, want to explain the plant only in terms of its cells and their forces. Just as the magnet needle can only be understood when it is placed in the whole magnetic context of the earth, so can plants only be understood when they are placed in the whole cosmic context, when one comes to say: Here I am walking across a region, let us say, of central Europe; for this central Europe, during the time of flower growth, these constellations have a particular significance; hence the plants of this area grow here, because the heavens cause certain plants to grow on the earth in a particular area. If we wish to observe plants from this point of view, if we go as far as the form, then we must actually take the whole Cosmos to help us. With the animals we need go only as far as the constellations of the zodiac. I have already spoken about this. The stars outside the zodiac have no influence on animals. The animal has thus already become more independent, no longer depends in its organic formation on the whole cosmos, but only on what is in and under the zodiac. Man has become even more independent, because only the planets influence him, not in so far as he is a soul, but in so far as he is a physical organism. Only where it passes over into the moral, into the soul, must we go beyond the planetary influence, as was done in the older, really good views of astrology, not in today's lay and amateurish ones, which are still behind. But from all this you can see that one must say, in a certain way, but always only to the extent that one takes the external into account: this applies to the plant. For the animal, the form is connected with the zodiac, the growth with the planetary movement and the metabolism with the earth. If we go up to the human being, then we can no longer ascribe his form to any constellation, but only to the whole universe as such; we can only say: the sphere; not to the individual constellations, but to the whole sphere. I have therefore said on one occasion – and it has already been printed – that in a certain sense the human brain is a reflection of the whole starry sky, not of a single group of stars. Thus, the sphere for form. For growth, in a certain sense, planetary motion too, but now the entire planetary motion, not individual planets, as it is for the plant, for the animal; and for metabolism, again, the earth.
What was the progress in the development of knowledge? Basically, until the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, no one who came into consideration with regard to knowledge doubted the things I have just discussed. Even if this ancient knowledge was not the fully conscious knowledge that we are striving for today through anthroposophy, for example, there was still a kind of dream-like but clairvoyant knowledge in those ancient times, at least up to the Mystery of Golgotha. And those people who were recognized as knowing something about the world had no doubt at all that when they looked at a plant blossom, they had to relate it to some configurations in the starry sky. And so with other things. Then this knowledge increasingly disappeared during the first four centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha. After the great eradication of ancient knowledge - I have often described this eradication - only those insights remained that were handed down into the Middle Ages, were often distorted, and are now recorded in old books and are still enjoyed by some people who do not want to take refuge in the new knowledge but always want to look back to the old. The realization that we are now consciously embracing, the cosmic realization of everything that appears here on our earth as a form, this cosmic realization that we are striving for today, was not present in conscious clairvoyance, but it was present in a certain way. It dawned on people more and more. And then, after man had devoted himself for some time to the artistic shaping of the word in drama, to the thought in dialectics, to the sound and word connection in rhetoric, to the contemplation of number in arithmetic, to the contemplation of form in geometry, after man had devoted himself to this artistic training of the human soul forces for several centuries, the world view emerged that no longer searches out there in the universe, that no longer asks: What is out there that a lily blossom or a tulip blossom can arise on earth? Instead, a worldview emerged that only calculates the present position of the stars, the size of the stars, which only mathematics can explain, which at most accepts mechanics and physics as astrophysics when the stellar world, when the extraterrestrial comes into consideration. If there is the earth here and a mole in the earth here, the mole has a certain view of the world. But there is not much of the sun in this world view. In more recent times, people have lost the opportunity to look up from the lily blossom, from the tulip blossom into the starry sky, just as the mole does not have the opportunity to look up beyond the darkness of the earth. And there, human beings are stuck in the earth, water, air and fire. At most, they look out into the light like an earthworm does when it comes out during a rain shower and perhaps perceives something of the scant light out there. With regard to the spiritual world, humanity has gradually become entangled in a kind of mole existence. For only what man can find in his own inner being, the mathematical connections, he seeks outside in the cosmos; but he does not seek the concrete and spiritually real outside in the cosmos. One could say that the experience of freedom could only come to man through leading this mole-like existence for a while, through looking at the lily and no longer knowing that a picture of heaven is reflected in the lily; through looking at the tulip and no longer knowing that a picture of heaven is reflected in the tulip. In this way he has turned his powers more inward, and has attained the experience of freedom. But today we have reached the point where we must again grasp the spiritual universe in the eye of our soul. That which for centuries appeared only as the mathematical, mechanical structure of space must again appear to the soul's eye as a spiritualized cosmos. One can truly say: For centuries, humanity in the civilized world has led a spiritual life of privation, albeit for the purpose of cultivating human freedom; for everything that is experienced in the progress of humanity has meaning. But one must see through this meaning, one must not stop at one stage of development, but one must go along with the development and must be clear today: Now that humanity has developed the experience of freedom in its earthly mole-like existence, it must turn again to the contemplation of the spiritual, the spiritual world, not only the mathematical world. But try to imagine vividly what I am dealing with now. It is really as if it had become dark in the soul in relation to the first four centuries after Christ, as if people had previously looked out and seen the light of the Spirit in the cosmos, figuratively speaking. There was just enough time, because this vision of the soul lasted for another four centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha, even if it became increasingly duller and duller, for the event of Golgotha, the Christ event, to still be viewed spiritually in the first centuries. Only the literature that refers to this spiritual view of the Christ event has also been eradicated. After all, there is nothing of this literature left except what the opponents wrote. Man faces the Mystery of Golgotha in such a way that, apart from the simple, seemingly simple accounts of the Gospels, he does not have the great accounts that the spiritualists of the first four centuries still gave. He has only the accounts of the opponents. We have about as much of the greatest portrayals of the mystery of Golgotha as posterity would have of anthroposophy if it only read the writings of Kal/ly. I think one would not get a very adequate picture. You always have to bear in mind how these first four centuries worked to eradicate precisely the most intense insights that were still available when one looked out into the cosmos and knew that the Christ came to earth from a spiritual cosmos. One had to understand the spiritual cosmos in order to be able to understand how the Christ came to earth from the spiritual world and embodied himself in a human being. Then nothing remained, because humanity immersed itself only in the earthly, as the memories of the Mystery of Golgotha. The memories were passed down from generation to generation. And what was passed down as a memory was called a revelation, and it was sought to comprehend it with the intellectualism that was emerging more and more. What is it then that is our task today in the face of these things? It is our task to learn to look out into the universe again and to be able to see spirit everywhere, not just by immersing ourselves in ourselves and wanting to experience the spiritual there, but by being able to experience the spirit in all the forms of the cosmos outside of us. That is our right, that must happen again. We must again penetrate into the luminous spirit of the whole cosmos, then we will also see the Mystery of Golgotha in a new light. I have shown you how, in the last third of the nineteenth century, this merely confessional adherence to the Mystery of Golgotha was actually no longer present. I have told you that a spirit like Kar} Julius Schröer said as early as the beginning of the seventies: The religious issues are actually an anachronism. He believed that people are already striving for something completely different, for a different kind of piety, for a different kind of connection with the spiritual world. But it has essentially taken these last fifty years for only weak attempts to be made, such as the one I mentioned in Werfel's “Mirror Man.” But now one sees that individual people are drawn to rediscover their connection with the spiritual world. But do not think that this connection with the spiritual world can be easily found. It cannot be easily found for the reason that today what is called science has acquired terrible authority, and is practised everywhere as official science. But it has emerged from these secret activities. I do not mean this in a derogatory sense. Please do not think that I am criticizing the times by speaking of 'moles'. I am just trying to characterize. I really do not want to say anything derogatory, because basically, since the 15th century, great things have been achieved by these cosmic moles, who are called human beings. If you do not believe this, then study the geography of moles or earthworms from a spiritual scientific point of view. This is a dream-like geography, but it is magnificent; it is just not suited to man. And if you were to study the geography of plants! The plant does not even dream in its etheric body, but what can be discovered in the etheric body is truly more magnificent than what can be learned at a faculty today. So, I do not mean any disrespect when I say: a mole existence, because I value it highly. But the world is evolving, and now is the time for us to reconnect with spiritual perception, with spiritual insight. People cannot continue to live without immersing themselves in this spiritual insight. And now one must become quite clear how these things have actually worked in the last fifty years. And here I would again like to present a characteristic personality. Sometimes one can study personalities much more precisely than one can describe more impersonal and abstract, in terms of how things develop in relation to human cultures and their progress. In these past reflections, I have referred you to Brentano and Nietzsche in order to show you, by way of what human souls have gone through, how evolution actually was. Today I would like to show you something more from the other side, how a person has been understood by his fellow human beings. In the 1820s, on July 22, 1822, a certain Gregor Mendel was born (we are celebrating his 100th birthday today). I mentioned him the other day when I said that, while we were in Vienna, articles about Gregor Mendel appeared everywhere because his 100th birthday is approaching. This Gregor Mendel was born the son of a farmer in a Silesian village, studied with great difficulty and very good progress, and was ordained a priest in Moravia at the age of twenty-four. He thus became a Catholic priest. Gregor Mendel was an exceptionally good student, as they say, both as a grammar school student and even at the seminary. It was common practice in Austria at the time – it was in the forties or fifties of the last century – for particularly well-behaved, hard-working students to be given scholarships by their convents. They were then sent to university to be trained as secondary school teachers, because almost all positions in the grammar and secondary modern schools - I also mentioned this recently when I described our trip to Vienna - were filled by monks or priests. In Austria, priests taught at the schools that are called secondary schools here, up to and including university. He was sent to Vienna to study mathematics and the exact natural sciences. After three years of study, you then had to take the teaching examination at that time. Mendel registered for the teaching examination, apparently thinking that because he had always received such excellent grades, it would be just as easy to pass the examination. He failed the teacher training examination, had to repeat it, and failed again, so that he could not repeat it a third time; because if you fail twice in such an important matter, you cannot continue. Through all kinds of circumstances, as it once was in old Austria, a school principal somewhere in Moravia once said: Well, we don't have anyone else who has come through and gotten a good report card; but we need a teacher, so we'll just hire Gregor Mendel. And so he became a secondary school teacher for fifteen years. There is no denying that he nevertheless became one of those secondary school teachers who were sent to these higher schools as priests. But then he particularly indulged his love of science, conducting a large number of experiments on the way inheritance occurs, especially in plants. He collected plants, planted plants, those, let's say, that have a reddish flower, and those that have whitish flowers. Then he allowed those that had reddish flowers to fertilize those that had whitish flowers, and then he got plants with nothing but reddish flowers, which were daughter plants. But in the second generation it was different. There was a certain number of reddish flowers, whitish flowers, mottled flowers, and so on. In short, Gregor Mendel said to himself: I must seek the atoms, the actual atomistic in the plant world, in the organic world in general. Those who are familiar with the development of intellectual life know how much thought was given to inheritance in those days. There are an enormous number of inheritance theories. But Gregor Mendel did not pay much attention to these inheritance theories. Instead, he planted his pea plants and observed how inheritance takes place when he allows a white pea to be fertilized by a reddish one. He to see if he got a red, white or mottled pea, and in this way he determined over generations how, for example, the color is formed, how inheritance is formed at all under different conditions, proportions and the like in peas. Yesterday I described the time – it was in the 1960s – when all of this came about, which I have described, which worked in Herman Grimm's “Unüberwindlichen Mächten”, in Paul Heyses “Kinder der Welt”, in Du Bois-Reymonds “Grenzen des Naturerkennens” and so on from the most diverse sides. In Mendel's case, it worked in such a way that he established the conditions of inheritance. The examiners at the two teaching exams were at least concerned enough about Gregor Mendel to fail him twice, and to give him the certificate: Completely unsuitable to teach any science to high school or secondary school students! — The other people, the later ones, were no longer concerned about Gregor Mendel at all. The books he wrote about the laws of inheritance are pretty much gathering dust in the libraries. Nobody cared about them anymore. But for about twenty or twenty-five years, you can find that people cared more and more about Gregor Mendel. They dug up his laws of inheritance. Because now we are facing a very special phase of science. In the epoch in which Herman Grimm wanted to show how human intellect cannot overcome class prejudices because it is not powerful, in the epoch in which Du Bois-Reymond pronounced his “Ignorabimus”, in which Paul Heyse wrote his “Children of the World”, thus in the epoch in which reason, intellect, has become increasingly powerless and sapless, but where there was nevertheless a tendency towards a new piety among non-denominational people, which has now lasted for fifty years. At the same time, efforts were being made everywhere to develop atomism to de-soul science, and Gregor Mendel also endeavored to discover botanical and zoological atomism. He tried to compose each plant according to its inheritance from red and white flowers, from large and small, from thick and thin flowers, to see how thick and thin, red and white flowers, once they are there, remain as unchanging as atoms remain unchanging. Back then, people said, for example: in carbonic acid we have coal and in hydrocarbon we have coal. Hydrocarbon is something completely different from carbonic acid, but in both there is coal. The atoms that are there as coal are the same in carbonic acid and in hydrocarbon. Mendel said: I have a red pea flower, and I have a white pea flower. Now the children that are born may be red. But now the children in turn have children, some of whom are red, some of whom are white, and some are mottled, speckled with red and white. And now it continues again: they have children, and among these there are again red, white and mottled ones, and so on. - Now we have the atomistic approach in relation to plants. If we look only at the color, red and white, then where the peas are red, only the white is hidden; it is also inside, only hidden. But with the further children, there it comes out again, just as the carbon is in the carbonic acid and in the hydrocarbon, in substances that are quite different from each other. That is the essential thing in the atoms, the carbon is here and is there; that is the same everywhere, the solid, the eternal atoms. The eternal atoms in plants, which are passed on by inheritance, are the colors, but also, for example, whether the plant is thick or thin, large or small; but the white is preserved, it is only sometimes hidden. Just as oxygen is present in water, so here the white is hidden in the red children and comes to light again when it has the opportunity. Gregor Mendel was truly a great man, because he sought out what was then considered appropriate for the time, atomism for the inanimate world, in the right place, for the plant world, in line with the thinking of his time. He also made very interesting observations about the animal world, although he failed his teaching exams twice. He did all that, but at the time, no one paid any attention. Then came the time when the discovery of radium and so on blew apart the atomism in the inanimate world. Recently, a rectorate speech was given in Berlin that seems to have dealt with this very nicely: you can't stick to the old atomism anymore. But people can't catch their breath quickly. Now they are losing their breath when they no longer have atomism. It no longer works in physics, and it doesn't really work in chemistry either. So, after Gregor Mendel had been gathering dust for a long time, his laws of inheritance were excavated, and today you can find everywhere that people are talking about Mendelism, that Mendelism is mentioned as something of the very first rank in the theory of inheritance, one hundred years after his birthday. The centenary of Gregor Mendel is now being celebrated in learned academies everywhere. It is an interesting life: the priest, who remained unnoticed during his lifetime and who failed his teaching exams twice, has nevertheless achieved something that a large number of academies around the world are celebrating as a very first intellectual accomplishment. In the case of Brentano, I have shown you the man from within, how he viewed the world, how he felt about the Vatican Council and the dogma of infallibility. In the case of Nietzsche, I have tried to show you something similar. In the case of Gregor Mendel, I wanted to show you more how others viewed him. Because it is, after all, interesting that the learned body twice failed him in his teaching exams, that he then remained completely unnoticed and now rules the world in terms of the so-called laws of inheritance. What is that? Basically, it is nothing more than the emergence of the last phase of intellectualism and, indeed, something else, which I would like to talk about tomorrow. But the emergence of intellectualism, the last gasps of intellectualism, which is so closely linked to atomism, can be seen in the relationship between the world and Gregor Mendel and also the world and Mendel today. I truly have no desire to take anything away from Gregor Mendel's fame. On the contrary, I have taken this opportunity today to introduce you to a truly great man, so that you will think of this great man here too. He is a great man. But it is precisely by studying the inner and outer destinies of great men that we can study the further development of humanity. It is not the small men, but the great ones, with whom one must study this, and Gregor Mendel is a great man, and you can be assured that I am more pleased that he is being celebrated today in all kinds of scientific academies than that I am pleased that he failed twice. You can believe that. But the fate of Gregor Mendel is extremely interesting. And I would like to say: this current clinging to atomism in the organic world is extremely characteristic of our time and actually belongs to all the phenomena that I wanted to describe to you in these days, which I examined yesterday from a different point of view and which I presented to you today from the point of view of Mendelism, for the centenary of Johann Gregor Mendel. |
| 289. The Ideas Behind the Building of the Goetheanum: Guided Tour of the Goetheanum
25 Aug 1921, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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| When I draw a horizontal line, it is actually a reproduction of something that is not there at all. When I apply the blue sky as a surface and the green below, the form arises from the experience of the color itself. In this way, every pictorial element can be formed. |
| 289. The Ideas Behind the Building of the Goetheanum: Guided Tour of the Goetheanum
25 Aug 1921, Dornach Rudolf Steiner |
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I would like to say a few words about the building concept, with the direct support of the building. From the outset, the view could arise that if one has to talk about such a building, it indicates that it does not make the necessary impression as an artistic work; and in many cases, what is thought about the building of Dornach, about the Goetheanum in the world, is thought from a false point of view influenced by a [one-sided] view. For example, the opinion has been spread that the building in Dornach wants to symbolize all kinds of things, that it is a symbolizing building. In reality, you will not find a single symbol in it when you look at it, as they are popular in mystical and theosophical societies. The building should be able to be experienced entirely from the ki-based feeling and has also been created from these artistic feelings in its forms, in all its details. Therefore, it must only work through what it is itself. Explaining has become popular, and one then complies with such requests for explanations; but in mentioning this here before you, I also say that such an explanation of an artistic work always seems to me to be not only half, but almost completely unartistic, and that I will now give you a kind of lecture in front of the building, a lecture that I fundamentally dislike, if only because I have to speak to you in abstract terms about what emerged in my mind as details when designing the building, the models and so on, and what was created from life. I would rather speak to you about the building as little as possible. It is already the case that a new style, a new artistic form of expression, is viewed with a certain mistrust in the present day. I can still hear a word that I heard many decades ago when I was studying at the Technical University [in Vienna], where Ferstel gave his lectures. In one of them, he says: “Architectural styles are not invented, an architectural style grows out of the character of a nation.” Therefore, Ferstel is also opposed to any invention of a desired new architectural style, a new type of construction. What is true about this idea is that the style, which is supposed to stylize the characteristics of a people, must emerge not from an abstraction, but from a living world view, which is at the same time a world experience and, from this point of view, comprehensively encompasses the chaotic spiritual life of contemporary humanity. On the basis of this thoroughly correct idea, it becomes necessary to transform what was characteristic of previous architectural styles into organic building forms by incorporating the symmetrical, the geometric-static, and so on. I am well aware of what can be said – and, from a certain point of view, justifiably said – by those who have become psychologically attuned to previous architectural styles against what has been attempted here in Dornach as an architectural style: the transference of geometrical-symmetrical-static forms into organic forms. But it has been attempted. And so you can see in these forms of building that this building here is an as yet inadequate first attempt to express the transition from these geometric forms of building to the organic. It is certain, of course, that the development of humanity is moving towards these forms of building, and when we again have the impulses of clairvoyant experience, I believe that these forms of building will play the first, leading role. This building should be understood in the same way through its relationship with the organizing forces of nature as the previous buildings are understood through their relationship with the geometric-static-symmetrizing forces of nature. This building is to be viewed from this point of view, and from this point of view you will understand how every detail within the building idea for Dornach must be completely individualized here. Just think of your earlobe: it is a very small part of the human organism, but you cannot imagine that an organic form like the earlobe is suitable for growing on the big toe. This organ is bound to its place within the organism. Just as you find that within the whole organism a supporting organ is always shaped in such a way that it can have a static-dynamic effect within the organism, so too the individual forms in our building in Dornach had to be such that they could serve the static-dynamic forces. Every single form had to be organized in such a way that it could and had to be in its place what it now appears to be. Look at each arch from this point of view, how it is formed, how it flattens out towards the exit, for example, how it curves inwards towards the building itself, where it not only has to support but also to express support in an organic way, thereby helping to develop what only appears to be unnecessary in organic formation. Ordinary architecture leaves out what the organism develops, that which goes beyond the static. But one senses that the idea of building has been transferred to the organic design of the forms, and that this is also necessary. You will have to consider every column from this point of view; then you will also understand that the ordinary column, which is taken out of the geometric-static, has been replaced by one that does not imitate the organic - everything is so that it is not imitated naturalistically - but transferred into organically made structures. It is not imitating an organic structure. You will not find it if you look for a model in nature. But you will find it if you understand how human beings can live together with the forces that have an organizing effect in nature, and how, apart from what nature itself creates, such organizing forms can arise. So you will see in these column supports how the expansion of the structure, the support, the inward pointing, and, in the same way as, say, in the upper end of the human thigh, the support, the walking, the walking and so on, is embodied statically, but organically and statically. From this point of view, I would also ask you to consider something like the structure with the three perpendicular formations at the top of the stairs here below (Figs. 23, 24). The feeling arises here of how a person feels when he is striving to ascend the stairs. He must have a feeling of security, of spiritual unity in all that goes on in this building, indeed in all that he sees in this building. Everything came to me entirely from my feelings. Believe it or not, this form came to me entirely from my artistic feelings. As I said, you may believe it or not, it was only afterwards that it occurred to me that this form is somewhat reminiscent of the form of the three semicircular circles in the human ear, which, when injured, cause fainting, so that they immediately express what gives a person stability. This expression, that a person should be given stability in this building, comes about in the experience of the three perpendicular directions. This can be experienced in this structure without having to engage in abstract thought. One can remain entirely in the artistic realm.   If you look at the wall-like structures, you will find that natural-looking forces have been poured into the forms, but in such a way that in these forms, which are radiator covers (Fig. 26), the concrete material of the structure is worked out first, and then, further up, the material of the wood, so that they are metamorphosed. You will find that in these structures, the process of metamorphosis is elevated to the artistic. It is the idea of the building that should have a definite effect on such radiator covers, which are designed in such a way that you immediately feel the purpose and do not need to explore it intellectually first. This is how these elementary forms, half plant-like, half animal-like, came to be felt. One only realizes that they must be so when one has shaped them out of the material. And it also follows that it is necessary to metamorphose them depending on whether they are in one place or another, depending on whether they are long and low or narrower and higher. All this is not the result of calculating the form, but the forms shape themselves out of the feeling in their metamorphosis, as for example here, where we have come so far, where the building is a concrete structure in its basement and where one has to empathize with the design of what the concrete is. You enter here at the west gate. Here is the room for checking in your coat. The staircase, which leads up on the left and right, takes you up to the wooden structure containing the auditorium, the stage and adjoining rooms. Please follow me up the stairs to the auditorium.  We first enter a kind of vestibule (Fig. 27). You will feel the very different impression that the wooden paneling creates compared to the concrete paneling on the lower floor. I would like to note here: When one has to work with stone, concrete or other hard materials, one has to approach it differently than when one has to work with a soft material, for example, wood. The material of wood makes it necessary to focus one's entire perception on the fact that one has to scrape corners, concaves, and hollows out of the soft material, if I may use the expression. It is scraping, scraping out. You deepen the material, and only by doing so can you enter into this relationship with the material, which is a truly artistic relationship. While when working with wood you can only coax out of the material what gives the forms if you focus your attention on deepening, when working with hard material you do not have to do with the recesses. You can only develop a relationship with the hard material by applying it, by working convexly, by applying raised areas to the base surfaces, for example when working with stone. Grasping this is an essential part of artistic creation, and it has been partially lost in more recent times.  You will see when we enter the auditorium how each individual surface, each chapter, is treated individually. In this organic structure, a chapter can only be such that one feels: In what follows each other, no kind of repetition can be created, as is otherwise the case with symmetrical-geometric-static architectural styles. In this building, based on organic ideas, you have only a single axis of symmetry, which goes from west to east. You will only find a symmetrical arrangement in relation to this, just as you can only find a single axis of symmetry for a higher organism, not out of arbitrariness, but out of the inner organization of forces of the being in question. At this point, I would also like to mention that the treatment of the walls also had to be completely different under the influence of the organic building idea than it was before. A wall was for earlier architects what demarcates a space. It had the effect of being inside the room. This feeling had to be abandoned in this building. The walls had to be designed in such a way that they were not felt as a boundary, but as something that carries you out into the vastness of the macrocosm; you have to feel as if you are absorbed, as if you are standing inside the vastness of the cosmos. Walls had to be made transparent, so to speak, whereas in the past every effort was made to give the wall such artificial forms that it was closed, opaque. You will see that the transparent is used artistically at all, and that was driven out of elementary backgrounds into the physical in these windows that you see here and that you will see in the building. If you see windows in the sense of the earlier architectural style, you will actually have to have the healthy sense: they break through the walls, they do not fit into the architectural forms, but they only fit in through the principle of utility. Here, artistic feeling will be needed down to the last detail. It was necessary to present the wall in such a way that it is not something closed, but something that expands outwards, towards infinity. I could only achieve this by remembering that you can scratch out designs from single-colored window panes, as if using an erasing method, a glass etching method. And so, monochromatic window panes were purchased, which were then processed in such a way that the motifs one wanted to have were scratched out with the diamond stylus. So for this purpose, an actual glass etching technique was conceived, and from this the windows emerged. When you consider the motifs of the windows, you must not think that you are dealing with purely symbolic designs. You can see it already on this larger windowpane (Fig. 109): nothing is designed on these window panes other than what the imagination produces. There are mystics who develop a mysticism with superficial sentences and strange ideas and constantly explain that the physical-sensual outer world is a kind of maja, an illusion. Often people approach you and say that so-and-so is a great mystic because he always declaims that the outer world is a maja. The human physical countenance has something that is maya, that is absolutely false, that is something quite different in truth. What appears on this windowpane is not something that symbolizes; it is an essence that is envisaged, which only does not look to the spiritual observer as it appears to the senses. The larynx is the organ of vision for the etheric; the larynx is already Maja as a physical larynx, and that which is a merely physical-sensual vision is not reality.  What is the spiritual meaning behind this? The spiritual fact is that the human being is truly being whispered in the ear, left and right, what the secrets of the world are. So that one can say: the bull speaks in the left ear, the lion in the right ear. If one wants to depict something like this as a motif in a picture or in words, one can only put into the word what is already in the picture itself. It must be clearly understood, however, that such a picture can only be understood by someone who lives in the world view from which it originated. A person who does not have a living Christian feeling will not be able to relate to the pictorial representations that Christian art has produced. The artist experiences a great deal when he immerses himself in a vision; but such an experience must not be translated into abstract thoughts, otherwise it will immediately begin to fade. One example of the artist's experience is this: when Leonardo da Vinci painted his Last Supper, which has now fallen into such disrepair that it can no longer be appreciated artistically, people thought it took too long. He couldn't finish the Judas because this Judas was supposed to emerge from the darkness. Leonardo worked on this painting for almost twenty years and still hadn't finished it. Then a new prior came to Milan and looked at the work. He wasn't an artist; he said that Leonardo, this servant of the church, had to finally finish his work. Leonardo replied that he could do it now; he had always only sketched the figure of Judas because he had not found the model for it; now that the prior was there, he had found the model for Judas in him, and the picture would now be quickly finished. — There you have such an external, concrete experience. Such external, concrete experiences play a much greater role in all the artist's work than can be expressed in such brief descriptions.    You have [now] entered the building through the room below the organ and the room for musical instruments, dear attendees. If you look around after entering, you will find the building idea initially characterized by the fact that the floor plan (Fig. 20) represents two not quite completed circles that interlock in their segments. It seems to me that the necessity for shaping the building in this way can already be seen when approaching the building from a certain distance and if one has an idea of what is actually supposed to take place in the building. I will now explain further what is connected with the building idea. First of all, I would like to point out that you can see seven columns arranged in symmetry solely against the west-east axis, closing the auditorium on the left and right as you move forward. These seven columns are not formed in such a way that a capital shape, a pedestal shape or an architrave shape above it is repeated, but the capital, pedestal and architrave shapes are in a continuous development. The two columns at the back of the organ room have the simplest capital and pedestal motifs (Figs. 28, 33): forms that, as it were, strive from top to bottom, with others striving towards them from bottom to top. This most primitive form of interaction between above and below is then metamorphosed in the following architrave, capital and pedestal forms (Figs. 35-54).                     This progressive metamorphosis came about through the fact that, when I was forming the model (Fig. 22), I tried to recreate what occurs in nature by force. What happens in nature, where an unnotched leaf with primitive forms is first formed at the bottom of the plant, and then this primitive form metamorphoses the higher you go, into the indented, more intricately designed leaf, even transformed into a petal, stamen and pistil, which must be imitated - although not in a naturalistic way - one must place oneself inwardly and vitally into it and then create from within, as nature creates and transforms, as it produces and metamorphoses. Then, without reflection, but from much deeper soul forces than from reflection, one gets such transformations of the second from the first, the third from the second, and so on.  It is possible to misunderstand that, for example, in the fifth column and in the architrave motifs above the fourth column, something like a caduceus appears (Figs. 41, 42). One could now believe that the caduceus was stuck in these two places by the intellect. I believe that someone who had worked from the intellect would probably have placed the caduceus in the architrave motif and, because the intellect has a symmetrical effect, the column motif with the caduceus below it. Someone who works as we have here finds something different. Here, with the motif that you see as the fourth capital motif, this Mercury staff emerged just as a petal emerges from the sepal, only through sensing the metamorphosing transformation, without me even remotely thinking of forming a Mercury staff. I did not think of a past style, but of the transformation of the fourth capital motif from the third. One can see how the forms that have gradually emerged in the development of humanity have developed quite naturally. Then we come to the epoch when the human being intervenes in his or her psychological development. If we work this into the column in an individualizing way, what is worked on earlier on the surface of the architrave comes later. That is why you see the caduceus on the capital later than on the architrave. A plant that is thin and delicate develops different leaf shapes than a sturdy one. Compare just a shepherd's purse with a cactus, and you will see how the filling and shaping of space is expressed in the figurative design. At the same time, a cosmic secret arises in this way of feeling evolution through. There has been much talk of evolution in recent times, but little feeling about it. One only thinks it through with the mind. One speaks of the evolution of the perfect from the imperfect. Herbert Spencer and others have done much harm to this, and the thought has arisen that is completely justified in front of the mind, but which does not do justice to the observation of nature: In intellectual thinking, one assumes that in evolution, the simpler forms are at the beginning and that these then become more and more differentiated and differentiated. Spencer, in particular, worked with such evolutionary ideas. But evolution does not show it that way. There is, however, a differentiation, a complication of the forms; but then one comes to a center, and then the forms simplify again. What follows is not more complicated, but what follows is simpler again. You can see this in nature itself. The human eye, which is the most perfect, has, so to speak, achieved greater simplicity than the eye forms of certain animals, which, for example, have the xiphoid process, the fan, which has disappeared again as the eye in evolution moved further up to become human. It is therefore necessary for man to connect with the power of nature, to feel the power of nature, to make the power of nature his own power and to create from this feeling. Thus, an attempt has been made to design this building in an entirely organic way, to design every detail in its place as it must be individualized from the whole. So you can see, for example, that the organ (Figs. 28-30) is surrounded by plastic motifs that make it appear as if the organ is not simply placed in the space, but that it works out of the whole remaining organic design, as if growing out of it. So everything in this building must be tried to be made in this way.   Here you see the lectern (Fig. 68) on which I am standing. Initially, the idea was to create something here that would, as it were, grow out of the other forms of construction, but in such a way that it would also express the fact that from here, through the word, one strives to express everything that is to be expressed in the building. At the moment when a person speaks here, the forms of what is spoken must continue in such a way that, just as the nose betrays in its form what the whole person is through his or her countenance, so too can the forms of what is spoken continue in such a way that the whole human being is revealed through the form of the nose. Anyone who has made artistically inspired nose studies can create the 'architectural style', the physiognomy of the whole human being, from a nose study. No one can ever have a different nose than they have, and there could never be a different lectern than the one that is here. However, if you claim this, it is meant according to your own view; you can only act according to your own view.  That an attempt has been made here to truly metamorphose the body can be seen from the fact that the motifs here in the glass windows are in part really such motifs that arise as images of the soul's life. For example, look at the pink window here (Fig. 113). You will see on the left wing something coming out like the west portal of the building; on the right wing you see a kind of head. There you see a person sitting on a slope, looking towards the building, and another person looking towards the head. This has nothing to do with speculative mysticism; it has to do with an immediate inner visual experience. This building could not have been created in any other way than by sensing the shape of the human head in a mysterious way, and the organic power on the one hand and the shape of the human head on the other hand result in the intuitive shape of the building. Therefore, the person sitting on the slope sees the metamorphosis of the building in his soul, sometimes as a human head, sometimes as the building revealing itself to the outside world. This provides a motif that leads, if I may say so, to an inner experience. There you will find in the blue windowpane (Fig. 111) a person who is aiming to shoot a bird in flight. In the right-hand pane you will see that the person has fired. The bird in the left-hand field is in a sphere of light. Around the man you find all kinds of figures vividly alive in the astral body, one when he is about to shoot, the other when he has shot. This is reality, but it is from mundane life. I can imagine that those who always want to be dripping with inner elevation take offence when they experience such things as they are meant here, that a human shooting is simply depicted. Yes, I was pleased when an Italian friend once used a somewhat crude expression about theosophists, who are such mystics. The friend who had already died said it, and I may say it in the very esteemed company here, because the person concerned was a princess, and what a princess says can certainly be said. She glossed such people, who always want to live in a kind of inner elevation, by saying that they are people with a “face up to their stomachs”. I also do not repeat her not quite correct German.  Now, dear attendees, the same idea was then also implemented in painting. I can only talk about the actual painting, about spiritual painting, by referring to the small dome. Only in the small dome was it possible for me to carry out what I have indicated as the challenge of a newer painting: that here, behind the emergence from the color experience, drawing disappears altogether. I had one of my characters in the first mystery drama express this as follows: that the forms appear to be the work of color. For when one feels with the feeling for painting, then one feels the drawing, which is carried into the pictorial, as a lie. When I draw a horizontal line, it is actually a reproduction of something that is not there at all. When I apply the blue sky as a surface and the green below, the form arises from the experience of the color itself. In this way, every pictorial element can be formed. Within the world of color itself lies a creative world, and the one who feels the colors paints what the colors say to each other in creation. He does not need to stick to a naturalistic model; he can create the figures from the colors themselves. It is the case that nature and also human life already have a certain right to shape the moral out of the colored with a necessity. Yesterday, Mr. Uehli quite rightly pointed out how newer painters already have an intuitive sense of such effects created by light and dark, by the colors themselves, and how they come to paint a double bass next to a tin can. They are pursuing the right thing in and of itself, that it is more important to see how the light gradates in its becoming colored when it falls on a double bass and then continues to fall on a tin can. That is the right thing. But the wrong thing is that this is again based on naturalistic experience. If you really live in the colors, something other than a tin can and a bass violin arises from the colors. The colors are creative, and how they come together is a necessity arising from the mere colors, which you have to experience. Then you don't put a tin can next to a bass violin because that is outside the colors. So here I have tried to paint entirely from the colors. If you see the reddish-orange spot and the black spot next to the blue spot, it is first of all a vivid impression from the colors. But then the colors come to life, then figures emerge from them, which can even be interpreted afterwards. But just as little as one can make plants here with the human mind, one can just as little paint something on them that one has thought up with the human mind. One must first think when the colors are there, just as the plant must first grow before one can see it. And so a Faust figure with Death and the Child came into being (Figs. 69-74). The whole head emerged out of the colors, with all the figures in it. Only in the realm of the human soul does something spiritually real take shape of its own accord. For example, you can see above the organ motif how something is painted (Fig. 31) that a person with a philistine attachment to the sensual world would naturally perceive as madness. But you will no longer perceive it as madness when I tell you the following: if you close your eyes, you will, as it were, feel something like two eyes looking at each other, inside the eye. What takes place inwardly can certainly be further developed in a certain way. Then what, when viewed in a primitive way, looks like two eyes glowing out of the darkness and what is seen when it is experienced inwardly, can be projected outwards and experienced in such a way that an entire beyond, an entire world-genesis can be seen in it. Here again an attempt has been made to create out of color what the eye experiences when it looks into the darkness and sees itself. One need not merely read the secrets intellectually, one can see them – suddenly they are there.        In a similar way, attempts were made to bring other motifs into reality, again not from the naturalistic imitation of signs and forms, but entirely from color. The ancient Indians and their inspiration, the seven Rishis, who in turn were inspired by the stars, to paint with an open-topped head (Fig. 32, far right) is, if you do it that way, abstract, actually nonsense; I say that quite openly. But when one experiences what was experienced in the ancient Indian culture in the relationship between the disciple and the guru, the teacher, one feels as if the ancient Indian did not have a skullcap, but as if it had evaporated and as if he were not the one human being who lives in his skin, but one feels as a sevenfold being, as if his soul power was composed of the seven soul rays of the holy Rishis of ancient Atlantis, enlightening him, and that he then communicated to his world that which he revealed, not from his own spirit but from the spirit of the holy Rishis. The more one works out what is said here, the more one comes closer to what has been painted here. The intuitive perception has first placed itself in ancient India, in ancient Atlantis. That which can be seen there has been painted on the wall here, and only afterwards can one speculate when it is there. This is how the message can relate to artistic creation. This is how everything in this building should actually come about. You will find this building covered with Nordic slate. The building idea must be felt through to the point of radiating outwards. The slate, or the material used to cover it, must shine in a certain way in the sunlight. It seemed to happen by chance here – but of course there is always an inner necessity underlying it. When I saw the Nordic slate in Norway from the train, I knew that it was the right thing to cover the building with. We were then able to have the slate shipped from Norway in the pre-war period. You will feel the effect when you look at the building from a distance in good sunshine. My main concern during the construction was the acoustics. The building was of course also provided with scaffolding on the inside during construction so that work could be carried out above. This did not produce any acoustics, the acoustics were quite different, that is, it was a caricature of acoustics. Now it so happens that the acoustics of the building were also conceived from the same building idea. My idea was that I had to expect that the acoustic question for the lecturer could be solved from occult research. You know how difficult it is; you cannot calculate the acoustics. You will see how it has been done, but to a certain degree of perfection in the acoustics. You may now ask how these seven pillars, which contain the secret of the construction, are related to the acoustics. The two domes within our building are so lightly connected that they form a kind of soundboard, just as the soundboard of a violin plays a role in the richness of the sound. Of course, since the whole, both the columns and the dome, are made of wood, the acoustics will only reach perfection over the years, just as the acoustics of a violin only develop over the years. We must first find a way to have a profound effect on the material in order to be able to feel through the building idea what is now sensed as the acoustics of this building. You will understand that the acoustics must be sensed best from the organ podium. You will also see that when two people talk to each other here in the middle, an echo can be heard coming down from the ceiling. This seems to be an indication from the world essence that one should only speak from the stage or the lectern within the building and that the building itself does not actually tolerate useless chatter from any point. Now, dear attendees, I have tried to tell you what can be said in this regard while looking at the building. I will have to supplement what I have spoken today in my presentation of the building idea, which I will give at the final event next Saturday. Then I will say what can still be said. Now we have to clear the hall for the next lecture. |