The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We are going to continue on the same theme, as this will provide a background for the evaluation of the significant events which now present themselves to the human mind, events in which humanity is now caught up and which are more significant than is often realized today. I have sought to show that momentous occurrences in the spiritual world form the background to these events. I have also spoken of the profoundly significant battle which took place in the spiritual regions of the world between the early 1840s and the autumn of 1879. This was one of the battles which occur repeatedly in world and human evolution and are customarily represented by the image of Michael or St George fighting the dragon. Michael won one such victory over the dragon on behalf of the spiritual worlds in 1879. At that time the spirits of darkness who worked against the Michaelic impulses were cast down from the spiritual realm into the human realms. As I said, from that time onwards they have been active in the feeling, will and mind impulses of human beings. Present-day events can therefore only be understood if one turns the inner eye to the spiritual powers which are now moving among us.

Inevitably the question must arise as to the actual nature of the battle which raged in the spiritual regions between the 1840s and the 1870s, and of the activity of the spirits of darkness since November 1879.

The story of what was behind this significant battle, or we might say behind the scenes of world history, can only unfold slowly and gradually. Today we shall first of all consider some ways in which a reflection of the battle was cast on human regions. I have often drawn attention to the great turning-point in the evolution of modern cultural spheres which came in the early 1840s. This was the turning-point which brought the full impulse for the development of materialism. Materialism could only develop in consequence of major occurrences in the spiritual world which then continued in a downward direction and gradually caused materialistic impulses to be instilled into humanity. If we consider how events in spiritual regions were reflected here on earth, two things are particularly evident.

The first is that the purely physical intellect and a culture based on this showed a tremendous upsurge in the 1840s, 50s, 60s and 70s, much more so than people imagine today—future observers will see this more clearly. It is reasonable to say that anyone who studies the evolution of humanity and has an eye for more subtle elements in human life will note that there has never been such an upsurge in subtlety of conception, acumen and critical faculties for the adherents of materialism as during those decades. All the thinking I have characterized, thinking that leads to technical inventions, to criticism and to brilliant definitions, is physical thinking and is bound to the brain. A materialist who wanted to describe human evolution would have reason to say: ‘Humanity has never been as clever as during those decades.’ It really was clever. If you study the literature—here I mean not only fine literature—you will find that at no other time were ideas so well defined and critical thinking so well developed as in those years, and this was in all kinds of areas. We see a mirror-reflection develop in human souls of the aims certain spirits of darkness were seeking to achieve in the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s of the last century, always hoping for victory.

They sought to get possession of an ancient inheritance of humanity. This was something we referred to yesterday: Through millennia, the progressive spirits of light guided humanity by means of blood bonds. They brought people together in families, tribes, nations and races, uniting those who belonged together on the basis of truly ancient human and world karma. With their feeling for those blood bonds people then also had a feeling for missions which went a very long way back in the world, missions designed to make the blood bonds—which, of course, came from the earth—part of the general human karma. If one turns one's attention to the spiritual world during the 1820s and 1830s, when the souls which were later to enter into human bodies were still in that world, one finds that the souls which were about to descend had certain impulses which, among other things, were due to the fact that for millennia they had been bound to particular families, tribes, nations and races each time they were on earth. From the 1840s onwards these souls were meant to make the decision to enter into particular bodies. For the spirits of light who sent their impulses into human souls were, of course, guiding human evolution according to the old blood bonds. And so the human souls in the spiritual worlds had certain impulses to follow the ancient human karma on entering into bodies which were to be the population in the second half of the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. The spirits of light were using the old measures of controlling and guiding those souls.

The spirits of darkness wanted to gain control over this. They wanted to drive the impulses of the spirits of light from those human souls and bring in their own impulses. If the spirits of darkness had won the battle in 1879, the relationship between human bodies and souls would have been utterly different from what it actually has become in people born after 1879. Different souls would have been in different bodies, and the plan according to which human affairs on earth were ordered would have been according to the ideal of the spirits of darkness. But it is not. Thanks to the victory that Michael won over the dragon in the autumn of 1879, this could not happen.

During the 1840s, 50s, 60s and 70s, the battle was reflected on earth in the particular acumen, critical faculty and so on, which I have described. As I have said before, mere speculation does not get us anywhere; it needs genuine spiritual observation. Speculation could never show that the very qualities of the physical intellect which I have mentioned are a reflection here on earth of the battle over reproduction, over the way in which generation follows generation. These things have to be observed. Anyone who thinks that the right connections between the physical and the spiritual worlds can be found by using the physical intellect is very much in error. This approach will normally give the wrong result, because the rules of logic used are those of the physical sciences. These apply only to the physical world, however; they do not apply to the relationship between the physical and the spiritual worlds. This, then, was one way in which the battle for the blood was reflected.

The other way—this again is something I have mentioned before—was the emergence of spiritualism in the 1840s and later. Certain groups, and they were far from small, sought to explore the connections with the spiritual world by using mediums, that is essentially by physical means. If this had succeeded, if the spirits of darkness had been strong enough to gain the victory over Michael's adherents in 1879, spiritualism would have spread enormously. For spiritualism gets its impulses not only from the earth, but is also governed by influences coming from the other world. It is important to be very clear that this is not a matter of choice; it is not possible to be easygoing and say: ‘Either we accept such things or we refuse to accept them.’ It certainly is not like this. The things that happened in spiritualistic circles partly represented a significant intrusion of the spiritual world; they certainly arose from impulses which came from the spiritual world and were often closely bound up with human destinies. They were nevertheless a mirror-reflection of the battle which had been lost in the spiritual region. This is also why spiritualism lost momentum and became so strangely corrupted after that point in time. It would have been the means by which people's attention would have been drawn to the spiritual world, and it would have been the only means if the spirits of darkness had gained the victory in 1879. If they had won, we would live in a world of indescribable acumen which would apply to all kinds of different spheres in life. Speculations on the Stock Exchange, which are sometimes quite dimwitted nowadays, would have been made with incredible acumen. This is one aspect. On the other hand, people far and wide would have sought to satisfy their spiritual needs by using mediums. So there you have what the spirits of darkness intended: physical acumen on the one hand, and a way of seeking connection with the spiritual world based on reduced consciousness on the other. Above all else, the spirits of darkness wanted to prevent spiritual experiences, living experience of the spirit, from coming down into human souls; this was bound to come about gradually after their fall in 1879.

The kind of spiritual experience which is utilized in the spiritual science of anthroposophy would have been impossible if the spirits of darkness had been victorious, for they would then have kept this life and activity in the spiritual regions. It is only because of their fall that instead of merely critical, physical intelligence and the mediumistic approach, it has been and will increasingly be possible to gain direct experiences in the spiritual world. It is not for nothing that I recently told you how the present age is dependent on spiritual influences to a far greater extent than people believe. Our age may be materialistic and want to become even more materialistic, but the spiritual worlds reveal themselves to human beings in many more places than one would think. Spiritual influences can be felt everywhere, though at the present time they are not always good ones.

People often find it embarrassing to admit to others their knowledge of spiritual influences, but many things they do, or initiate, are done because something appeared to them in a dream which was a genuine spiritual influence. Ask poets why they have become poets. Speaking of the time when they first began to be poets they will tell you that they had spiritual experiences which came as in a dream, and this gave them the impulse to be creative. Ask people who have started journals why they did so—I am giving you facts—and they will speak of what they call dreams, though this was actually the transmission of impulses from the spiritual to the physical world. And there is much more of this, also in other areas, but people will not admit to it, for they think if they tell someone: ‘I've done something or other because some spirit or other appeared to me in a dream,’ the other person will call them idiots. This, of course, is not a nice thing to hear. It is the reason why we know so little about what really goes on among people today. The things which now happen sporadically in one place or another are merely the vanguard of what will happen more and more: spirituality will come to human beings because Michael won his victory in 1879. The fact that we have a science of the spirit is also entirely due to this. Otherwise the truths concerned would have remained in the spiritual worlds; they could not have come to dwell in human brains and would not exist for the physical world.

You have been given images which may serve to demonstrate the intentions of the spirits of darkness in the 1840s, 50s, 60s and 70s when they fought the followers of Michael. These spirits have been down here among human beings from the autumn of 1879. They have failed to achieve their aims: spiritualism will not become the general human persuasion; people will not grow so clever from the materialistic point of view that they fall over themselves with their cleverness. The spiritual truths will take root among human beings.

On the other hand, the spirits of darkness are now among us. We have to be on guard so that we may realize what is happening when we encounter them and gain a real idea of where they are to be found. The most dangerous thing you can do in the immediate future will be to give yourself up unconsciously to the influences which are definitely present. For it makes no difference to their reality whether they are recognized or unrecognized.

It will be the main concern of these spirits of darkness to bring confusion into the rightful elements which are now spreading on earth, and need to spread in such a way that the spirits of light can continue to be active in them. They will seek to push these in the wrong direction. I have already spoken of one such wrong direction, which is about as paradoxical as is possible.¹ I have pointed out that while human bodies will develop in such a way that certain spiritualities can find room in them, the materialistic bent, which will spread more and more under the guidance of the spirits of darkness, will work against this and combat it by physical means. I have told you that the spirits of darkness are going to inspire their human hosts, in whom they will be dwelling, to find a vaccine that will drive all inclination towards spirituality out of people's souls when they are still very young, and this will happen in a roundabout way through the living body. Today, bodies are vaccinated against one thing and another; in future, children will be vaccinated with a substance which it will certainly be possible to produce, and this will make them immune, so that they do not develop foolish inclinations connected with spiritual life—‘foolish’ here, of course, in the eyes of materialists.

A beginning has already been made, though only in the literary field where it is less harmful. As I have mentioned,² learned medical experts have published books on the abnormalities of certain men of genius. As you know, attempts have been made to understand the genius of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer, Viktor Scheffel, Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Goethe, by showing them to suffer from certain abnormalities. And the most astounding thing in this field is that people have also sought to understand Jesus Christ and the Gospels from this point of view. Two publications are now in existence in which the origins of Christianity are said to be due to the fact that at the beginning of our era there lived an individual who was mentally and psychologically abnormal; this individual went about in Palestine as Jesus Christ and infected people with Christianity.

These, as I said, are the beginnings in the field of literature. The whole trend goes in a direction where a way will finally be found to vaccinate bodies so that these bodies will not allow the inclination towards spiritual ideas to develop and all their lives people will believe only in the physical world they perceive with the senses. Out of impulses which the medical profession gained from presumption—oh, I beg your pardon, from the consumption they themselves suffered—people are now vaccinated against consumption, and in the same way they will be vaccinated against any inclination towards spirituality. This is merely to give you a particularly striking example of many things which will come in the near and more distant future in this field—the aim being to bring confusion into the impulses which want to stream down to earth after the victory of the spirits of light.

The first step must be to throw people's views into confusion, turning their concepts and ideas inside out. This is a serious thing and must be watched with care, for it is part of some highly important elements which will be the background to events now in preparation.

I am choosing my words with great care. I am saying ‘in preparation’ because I am fully aware that to say ‘in preparation’, after the events which have taken place in the last three years, is something significant. Anyone who is able to see more deeply into these matters knows them to be preparations. Only superficial people can believe that this war, which is not a war of the old kind, will tomorrow or the day after be followed by a peace of the old kind. You have to be very superficial to believe this. Many will believe it, of course, if outer events appear to be in accord with the notions some people have; they will fail to realize what actually lies dormant beneath the surface.

It is interesting to consider the decades from the 1840s onwards, both in general and in detail. We have had a general characterization of them in these last weeks, and I have to some extent gone over this again today. A study of representative figures—the spiritual impulses which power evolution come to expression in such figures—will show that the general insights gained also prove true in individual instances. Let me give you an example which may seem to be a minor one. It is something I also mentioned last year.³

Numerous commentaries have been written on Goethe's Faust. Oswald Marbach's⁴ commentaries do not lack depth; they are in some respect profound. It is fair to say that the people who have been least profound are the literary historians, for it is their academic duty to understand such matters, which, of course, tends to be an obstacle to real understanding. Oswald Marbach wrote well about Faust because he was not really a literary historian. He lectured on Goethe's Faust, mathematics, mechanics and technology at Leipzig University, and at the present time the mysteries of the cosmos are easier to penetrate by studying Marbach's mechanics and technology than by applying the ‘modern science’ of historians and literary historians. However, we do find something quite peculiar in the case of Oswald Marbach. He spoke on Goethe's Faust during the 1840s but had ceased to do so by the end of the 1840s, nor did he speak about it in the 50s, 60s and 70s. He only started to lecture on Goethe's Faust again in the late 70s. In between he spoke only on mathematics, mechanics and technology, that is he devoted himself to the sciences which offered the best opportunity, especially at the time, to foster one's acumen and critical faculties. It is most interesting to see how he refers to this in his preface: “Thirty or forty years ago, I used to lecture on Goethe's Faust at Leipzig University—the book was published in 1881—but I have only taken the subject up again in recent years (1875). Why such a long interval? Many factors were involved, outer and inner ones, both subjective and objective. I grew older and finally old and so did my students: semester by semester they grew more and more morose. (People were getting more clever, but for anyone who looked more deeply also more morose!) Open interest of the spirit in the spirit was getting less and less and we lived in an age when usefulness counted more than beauty. For thirty years I yielded to necessity rather than to my own inclination and put philosophy and poetry aside, teaching the exact sciences of mathematics, physics and mechanics instead.”

This was the time of materialistic acumen. One sentence in the preface is tremendously interesting, for it points directly to what mattered at this time. Marbach states that in his conscious mind he always thought he was doing exactly what he wanted to do in the past, whether interpreting Faust or lecturing on technology. However, when he took up Faust again to interpret the work, he had to confess he had been under an illusion, for he had merely obeyed the spirit of the time. It would be good if many people could realize the extent to which they are under illusions. For it was the ideal of the spirits of darkness before 1879, and has been even more so since they walk among us in the human realms since 1879, to spin a web of illusion over human beings and into human brains and let illusions stream through human hearts.

Something else is of interest when one considers such an individual who is representative, as it were, of the influences which heaven brought to bear on earth. He says—and this is in accord with history—that in the 1840s he would mostly speak about Faust, Part 1 at the university, for there was no interest in Part 2. When he started to lecture on Faust again—and we can now say this was after Michael's victory over the dragon—his exposition would mostly be on Part 2. The age of acumen and critical faculties was indeed a time when access to Part 2 of Goethe's Faust was difficult. Even today this work, which is one of the greatest affirmations of Goetheanism, is relatively little understood. Efforts at understanding are, of course, liable to make us feel ill at ease, for nowhere else is the atmosphere in which people live today treated with such humour, such irony, as in Part 2 of Goethe's Faust. People live in a social atmosphere today which has been gradually evolving since the sixteenth century. They hail everything which has been achieved from the sixteenth century onwards as great and glorious achievements of our time and positively wallow in those achievements. Goethe was not only a man of his time; he was inwardly able to look ahead to the twentieth century and wrote Part 2 of Faust for the twentieth, twenty-first and later centuries. This will be only understood in the future. Hidden below the surface is a humorous and ironical look at developments since the sixteenth century, written in grand style. Consider the way Goethe lets the much admired advances on which civilizations live today be presented to Faust as a contrivance of Mephistopheles. Thus not only the paper spectre of the golden florin,⁵ but all the glorious developments from the sixteenth century onwards were the creation of Mephistopheles. In time to come, humanity will see the magnificent irony with which the creations of that time are treated in Part 2 of Faust. On the one hand, we have Faust in his quest for the spirit, and on the other, Mephistopheles, representative of the spirits of darkness, who invents everything humanity has come to depend on and will depend on more and more, especially in the twentieth century.

Much which will help us to be on our guard may be found hidden in Part 2 of Faust. It is a profoundly significant symptom that someone who had used physics, mechanics, mathematics and technology to learn the secrets of the age felt drawn to speak about Part 2 exactly when the victory had been won over the dragon. For decades before this he would speak only of Part 1, which alone could be understood at the time.

We have seen, especially also in the course of last year, that anthroposophy is gradually helping us to bring life into things which Goethe was only able to present in images, and to discover their deeper meaning in Part 2 of Faust.⁶ Anthroposophy clearly cannot be derived from a study of Faust, but it is certainly true that anthroposophy throws a new and much clearer light on the impressive images Goethe has given in Part 2, and in his magnificent discourses in Wilhelm Meister's Journeyman Years.

Here we touch on a trend which will have to gain ground under the influence of the progressive spirits of light as time goes on, to counter the efforts of the spirits of darkness; and it will gain ground if human beings are on their guard against the spirits of darkness. These last three years have been a challenge to be watchful and on our guard, though the numbers of souls able to perceive the call are as yet far from adequate. We have been able to see the opposite trend at work here, there and everywhere. It is particularly when spiritual life is beginning to be possible that the spirits of hindrance are very much to the fore. We have seen characteristic things and we shall see more of them. Even just to hint at such things is liable to create continuous misunderstanding. The spiritual atmosphere in which people live today is impregnated with the will to misunderstand to such an extent that one's words are immediately interpreted as something different from what they actually mean to convey. One has to use human words, and these have all kinds of associations.

Today, so many people base their judgement on national passions that if one has in some way to characterize someone who belongs to a particular nation, simply as a human individual who is here on earth, this is taken amiss by people who also belong to that nation, despite the fact that something said about individuals who are involved in current events, for example, has nothing to do with one's views of some nation or other. The belief that the tempest now raging is caused by the things that everybody is talking about today is especially harmful because it is especially senseless. The causes are much more deeply hidden and initially have really nothing to do with national aspirations in some respects—please note I am saying in some respects. National aspirations are merely made use of by certain powers, but the majority of people are so superficial that they do not want to know about this. It will be some time before an objective view is taken in this area.

Large sections of humanity find it easiest to ascribe greatness and far-sightedness to ideas which have arisen in a brain as limited as that of someone just out of teacher training college who is let loose not just on a class of school children, but in this case on the whole of humanity. As I said on a number of occasions, it did not need this terrible time which has come upon us to form an objective opinion on Woodrow Wilson from the point of view of spiritual science. I spoke of this in the lectures I gave in Helsingfors in 1913; you can read it up in The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita.⁷ There I spoke of the world schoolmastery of Woodrow Wilson and the shallow superficiality of the man. In those days, however, you were outside the Spirit of the time when you spoke about Woodrow Wilson like this, for his grammar-schoolboy essays on independence, culture and literature were then still being translated into European languages. It will be a long time yet before people will feel embarrassed at taking seriously the grammar school level policies of Woodrow Wilson.

Spirits of darkness are at work everywhere to befog human minds. One day people will waken from the mists and vapours in which they are now asleep and they will find it hard to understand how people could have allowed themselves to be kept on leading-reins by Woodrow Wilson and his wisdom in the early twentieth century without feeling embarrassed. A moment of waking will only come when people begin to feel embarrassed at policies which are possible today.

It is difficult to say truth-inspired things today because they sound too much in opposition to the ideas which have been inculcated into people's heads. And it is difficult to form an independent judgement in the atmosphere which has been produced not only during the last three years, but also through everything I have called a social carcinoma in the lectures I gave in Vienna.⁸ It is necessary to take these things with profound seriousness and not apply to them the concepts and ideas which people have been in the habit of using as their criteria. It will be necessary to realize that the present time demonstrates the inadequacy and indeed the utter uselessness of the ideas humanity has come to accept, and that in terms of world history it is indecent for people to base their judgement on the very ideas which have led to present events when those events clearly show them to have been wrong. Do people think they can cure the ills of the present time by applying the same principles which have brought them about? If so, they are utterly deceiving themselves.

Humanity has a certain sum total of cultural achievements which come from older times. These are now being used up. Every day brings evidence of their being used up without anything new taking their place. People are so little prepared today to understand and see through such things in their full seriousness. Many are still thinking exactly the as they did in 1913, in the belief that the understanding they had in 1913 will also be adequate for 1917; they do not have enough sense of reality to see that this kind of thinking has a great deal to do with the events of the year 1917, having brought them about, and that it cannot cure the ills we experience now, in 1917.

The need of the present time is that we go deeply into the events which have occurred since the fall of the spirits of darkness; we must gain as much insight as possible into the events of the 1880s, 1890s, and the first two decades of the twentieth century. People are utterly confused in their judgement with regard to them.

Neither do they have a real idea of the radical difference in the way people felt and reacted after 1879 compared to the way they did before 1879. Going into something like Part 2 of Goethe's Faust will also help us to progress; this work could not be understood in Goethe's time because it is a critique of what Goethe perceived to be the content of the twentieth century. Characteristically, someone like Oswald Marbach only found access to Part 2 after the fall of the spirits of darkness.

These are the insights and impulses which will help us to grow inwardly so that we may meet the needs of our time. Many of the needs sown before 1879 have not come to fruition, and in connection with this there is a significant question which should really cast its shadow on every human soul. Today I want to put it merely as a question.

The events in which we are caught up today indicate where humanity stands now. What matters now is not merely to understand them, but to find a way out of them. Yet while there is so little will to penetrate the deeper, real impulses which have led to the present age, practical minds will not be able to understand these matters. It is wrong to think that no one has sufficient insight into the current situation. People simply do not want to listen to them, just as they do not want to know about such a thing as Goetheanism, which is also like the voice of the twentieth century. Yet this voice will only be rightly understood if people seek to understand, seriously and in all dignity, the profound significance of the fall of the spirits of darkness in the autumn of 1879. To understand the present time, it will be necessary to understand the spiritual evolution of humanity. That is why I spoke of Oswald Marbach, whose poem I gave you last year to let you see how he looks at the past and ahead to the future. He wrote the poem to mark the anniversary when Goethe found entry into communities then called Masonic or the like, though in the eighteenth century this meant something different from what it means today. Goethe's viewpoint allowed him insight into many of the mysterious impulses which go through the world, things that people are too superficial to want to see. Oswald Marbach wrote these verses to mark the anniversary of Goethe finding his way to the world of the spirit:

With you, my brother, father, sublime master,
We now join hands across a hundred years
To mark the steadfast love which does unite
And closely bind all independent minds;
Greatest of spirits, mind most independent,
All our endeavour is to reach your heights;
We dedicate ourselves to you! We dedicate our sons,
So that one day achievement be the crown.
You strove as we now strive; yet the soul of your endeavour
To gain self-knowledge that will lead to wisdom
Was always life itself with vigour lived,
Was power creative, actively progressing
To works which rise into the light,
In glorious beauty for eternity:
Like Israel you struggled against God
Until you won the victory o'er yourself!
The mystery which now for ever binds us
Will not be told to unenlightened souls;
Yet make it known to all the world
In deeds of purest love that never tire,
In the clear light which spirit gives to spirit,
In life eternal which shall never fade.
Lead on then, Master! Where you went before
We're drawn to follow in most ardent longing.

Such is the mood that must unlock the ‘gates of fulfilment’.

• 1. See fourth to last paragraph of lecture 5.
• 2. See lecture 5.
• 3. Geisteswissenschaftliche Erlaeuterungen zu Goethes “Faust”. Band I. GA 272. Not available in English.
• 4. Oswald Marbach (1810–1890), Professor of Technology in Leipzig, poet and writer; head of ‘Balduin zur Linde’ Freemasons' Lodge. Goethes Faust, Teil I and II erklaert, 1881.
• 5. Faust 2, Act 1, Scene 2: in the imperial palace, Mephistopheles tells the emperor and his advisers that paper money will solve the financial crisis. Scene 4 describes the rapid spread of paper money.
• 6. During 1916, the work on stage productions with eurythmy of scenes from Part 2 of Goethe's Faust which had started in 1915, culminated in a number of performances. See the lecture of 4 November 1916 (GA 172) in The Karma of Vocation, tr. by 0. D. Wannamaker, rev. by G. Church. Anthroposophic Press, Hudson NY, 1984.
• 7. Steiner, R. The Occult Significance of the Bhagavad Gita. Tr. by G. M. Adams, rev. by D. M. Bugbey. Anthroposophic Press, Hudson NY, 1984.
• 8. See Note 2 of lecture 1.

If in a broad sense, without going into details, you review what I ventured to put before you in the foregoing lectures, you will realise that the path of development which the spiritual-scientific current of thought was bound to take, imposes definite and earnest responsibilities upon those who feel themselves its sponsors. For you will certainly have realised from our recent studies that when man tries to find his bearings along the right path, great difficulties spring up for him, difficulties of a kind different from those otherwise encountered in life.

Now in life on the physical plane we are in many respects protected from aberrations in one direction or another. Many years ago I drew attention to this protection when, in connection with the problem of the Guardian of the Threshold, I gave certain indications which have been added to in the course of time.¹ Even in the early articles now incorporated in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds. How is it achieved? it was shown how man on the physical plane is protected from deviating too readily in one direction or another in intellectual and moral life. We enter into existence in such a way that certain guiding forces for life are with us during our childhood. We know well that only in later years do we reach the stage of being able to exercise our power of free judgment.

If you observe a child and compare his soul-life with that of a grown-up person you will detect a certain difference. For you can justly say: instead of a kind of dreamlike life which he leads in childhood, the human being begins in later years to exercise his own faculty of free judgment. It is very important to be aware of these variations.

If in thinking of the whole course of human life from birth until death we keep childhood too much in mind, we may perhaps pay insufficient attention to this metamorphosis of the inner life of soul. But it is important to understand it because it is during the period when our power of judgment is not yet fully awake that guiding impulses for later life can be received. For the sake of our power of free judgment we must, as it were, be swathed in dream during the early years of our life in order that certain forces of guidance may find their way into our intellect and into our moral impulses, in order that we shall not prematurely crystallise the forces bestowed upon us for the purposes of our life and which are “breathed”—I will not say “incorporated”—into our being. Thereby we have something for the whole of our life; we direct ourselves throughout life in accordance with the intellectual and moral impulses that have been breathed into our soul.

When we approach concepts of the spiritual worlds, we become in a certain sense freer. It has often been said and must again and again be repeated, that the approach to the spiritual worlds is also a kind of awakening from the ordinary conditions and circumstances of life; again, therefore, this is a variation in the metamorphoses of life similar to the metamorphosis leading from childhood to the capacity of free judgment in later life.

But this means that when we adopt the spiritual-scientific view of life it can very easily happen that the steady direction of life we formerly knew, begins to waver. So that when we begin to grasp the reality of the spiritual worlds, it is a matter of mustering the forces of the whole man within us—because we need the “life-capital” breathed into us during childhood in order rightly to approach the things now to be revealed from the world on yonder side of the Threshold. And I showed you how easy it is, under influences which proceed as a matter of course from the different currents of the time, to go astray in one direction or another. An aberration such as occurs in Sinnett's Esoteric Buddhism is due to the fact that the strong impulse of materialism can have an effect upon the souls of men—I say, can have an effect. Just because oriental influences were at work, a deviation was possible in the direction which led to a defamation of the whole nature of the present Moon, and on the other side aberration was possible because it was in the interests of certain persons not to allow the truth of repeated lives on Earth to come into the open. The one who had an interest—in this case it was not Sinnett himself but the one who was behind him—in helping materialism in human life to be, as it were, “ultra-materialised”, introduced into an otherwise true system, teaching such as that concerning the Moon, thereby giving a twist in a particular direction.

Now we know that especially in recent centuries Western civilisation and its American offshoot have been subject to a strongly Christian impulse. I myself have been at pains to show that the significance of Christianity does not depend upon what can actually be understood of it—for a great deal will become intelligible only in the future, and we ourselves are only just beginning to grasp certain facts connected with the Mystery of Golgotha. But the impulses of Christianity are real; they take effect even when men do not yet understand them. In earlier centuries, however, certain cosmic truths were excluded from these impulses. These truths are entirely compatible with Christianity although insight has not succeeded in making this evident. Truths relating to repeated lives on Earth were withdrawn from Christianity, and so a Western culture with an American offshoot arose with a form of Christianity from which the teaching of repeated lives on Earth was excluded.

Now I have shown you how certain occultists made efforts to preserve this view of Christianity—the view which rejected the truth of repeated earthly lives. I spoke of trends in occultism that were connected, for example, with the High Church party. Those concerned were people of knowledge, they were well-informed. It can be said that they knew much more about occultism than did the leading members of the Theosophical Society. But their whole object was to ensure that the teaching of repeated earthly lives should be eliminated even more decisively; hence their denial that man, as I have shown in Occult Science, enters in the course of his earthly evolution into relationship with the other planets of our solar system.

The forces here implanted into the human soul have mainly to do with man's participation in the extra-terrestrial Cosmos; and it was desired from this quarter that men should be left in obscurity about this participation. The object was to divert them from the realisation that the soul is connected, not only with the Earth and its happenings, but also with what is out there in the Cosmos, shining down to us, for example, from the other planets of our solar system.

Now in that they work upon the human being, the impulses proceeding from the other planets of our solar system have the power to wrest the soul, as living soul, away from physical death. That is their essential function, as you can realise from the descriptions of the life between death and a new birth which I have given in various connections and from various points of view.

But if you look back over the evolution of humanity, you will find that precisely in the times when atavistic knowledge, clairvoyant knowledge, was present as an ancient heritage, men directed their gaze to the other celestial bodies of our solar system, and Astrology—which in our day has become such a questionable science—played a part of tremendous importance in those olden times.

Why, we may ask ourselves, has Astrology ceased to play this important part? It is because the gaze of human souls had to be diverted in order that Christianity should have time to take root in earthly existence. Just as the gaze of clairvoyance had to be diverted from the Imaginative world, so too had the gaze to be diverted from the impulses proceeding from the planets of our solar system. All that has remained of Astrology consists of old traditions. I have often spoken of this. In a sense, we may say: the old clairvoyance and also the old vision of the impulses proceeding from the planets of our solar system, were circumscribed. Man was relegated to the physically perceptible world, to the senses by means of which he was to perceive only that which takes place on the Earth. This was in order that the impulses of the Mystery of Golgotha might wax in strength and take root in the souls of men, in the feelings of the believers, so that men might be inwardly deepened.

In ancient times, clairvoyance was, after all, an external faculty. It was not a question of having to acquire it by effort, for it was a heritage. Just as a man today has eyes and ears, so in those times he had the faculty of clairvoyance. But the times are approaching when clairvoyance will increasingly be regained. This made it necessary that in one phase of his existence man should be shut off from the spiritual world and confined to the outer, mineral world, in order that everything may be built up again from within; what was once seen from without must now be built up again from within. I will sketch it for you like this (drawing on the blackboard).

Picture a man with the old clairvoyant vision. (I will take the eye as representing the clairvoyant gaze, although this is not exclusively a function of the eye.) He directed his gaze to the starry heavens and beheld the different spiritual impulses streaming from there.

Then, in the course of the ages this clairvoyance faded away and man's gaze was restricted to the phenomena of earthly existence. Something else had to arise in place of the earlier clairvoyance, something that can be indicated by saying: What formerly came from without must now go out from within. Man had to learn to project outwards what the Heavens had implanted in him in order that he might again find his links with the phenomena of the Heavens.

The direction that had now to be followed was exactly the opposite of that of the earlier path. It is an actual fact that human nature is at this present point of time involved in a process of re-organisation. It has passed through the point of deepest darkness—one expression of which was what I called the full flood of materialism in the middle of the nineteenth century. But humanity is emerging from this condition. Describing this in terms of occultism, we may say: In earlier times men did not perceive, did not think with the physical body only, but they perceived and thought with the etheric body. What was perceived with the etheric body was experienced consciously in the astral body as Astrology. But in modern Astronomy everything is a matter of calculation. The etheric body must be revitalised, and this is connected with the new revelation of Christ. When the etheric body is re-vitalised, man finds Christ. But, as you see, it is essential that this vitalising of the etheric body shall take place.

Noteworthy discoveries can be made if one goes deeply into these matters. The whole feeling that man has an etheric body has disappeared and the feeling that he has only a physical body predominates. But it would be entirely false to believe that this opinion about man having a physical body only, is very old. By no means is it so. If this restriction to the physical body was actually brought about by the full flood of materialism in the nineteenth century, then men must previously have had some inkling of the etheric body which was then suppressed but is now emerging again. I could give you many proofs that previously something was known about the etheric body, the existence of which began gradually to be ignored. I could quote many passages from earlier works, but I will read one from a book published in 1827. On page 208, a remarkable passage occurs. I will read it very slowly so that you may be able to judge how differently these things are written about today under the influence of views that have become wholly materialistic.

“The concept of nourishment is connected erroneously with the mere imbibing of food and drink and their elaboration in the organs of digestion. The organism is nourished, and organic life sustained, not by food and drink, but by the blood (the neutralised earthly and etheric life-principle)”—here the writer shows that he is not speaking of the physical blood but of what underlies the blood as etheric life-principle—“and indeed not until in the plastic membranes the blood has been enhanced and as it were sublimated into the vitalising, formative exhalation (Aura vitalis).”

What does the writer want to express here? He wants to indicate that external nourishment is not the fact of primary importance but that while external nourishment is taking place, extracts stream from the foodstuffs into the blood, so that a process is going on in that which underlies the blood as an etheric life-principle.—This was written in the year 1827. The writer has put brackets round the words “Aura vitalis”. “Plastic” here is a synonym of “imaginative”. I might equally well read the lines thus: “Not until in the imaginative membranes the blood has been enhanced and sublimated as it were into the vitalising, formative exhalation (Aura vitalis)” ... the two last words are in brackets. “Aura vitalis” can only be translated as “etheric body.”

The man who wrote this was Professor of Psychiatric Therapy at the University of Leipzig and Physician at the Hospital of St. George there. He was Johann Christian August Heinroth, of whom I once spoke in connection with Goethe.

Hundreds of such examples could be given and they will indicate to you how utterly different the attitude of mind once was, how the knowledge that was still in evidence by no means such a very long time ago, has degenerated into the materialistic view of the world.

One can say: A stream of knowledge oozes away and the materialistic view of the world rises to the surface, but beneath the stream a sub-stream develops in human nature. The connection with the Cosmos is established again, this time from within. You may still say: Prove to us that there have been people who had an inkling of the fact that whereas, on the one side, knowledge of the activities of the etheric body passed away, on the other, the etheric body was being revitalised again from within.—

Here I will read you a passage from a book published even earlier, from which you can see that there were indeed people who drew attention to a change that would take place in the organisation of humanity in the future. Admittedly, the story is told in a very veiled form, but at all events it is told. The story is about a female character. When I read the passage, most of you will know where it occurs.

We read that there is a soul in the body of a woman who no longer leads the earthly life but the solar life, that in the course of her life she circles around wider and wider spheres—it can therefore be assumed that beings, in so far as they are corporeal, strive towards the centre, and in so far as they are spiritual, towards the periphery. A soul who lives with the Cosmos is here described.²

Makaria is in our solar system in a relation which we may scarcely dare to express. In spirit, soul, imagination, she keeps within herself; she does not only look, but at the same time she makes a part of it; she sees herself carried away in those heavenly circles, but in a quite special manner. From her childhood she wanders around the sun, and indeed, as is now discovered, in a spiral, withdrawing always more from the centre and circling towards the outer regions.

If we may accept that creatures, so far as they are bodily, strive towards the centre, so far as they are spiritual to the periphery, so does our friend belong to the most spiritual. She appears to be born only to free herself from what is earthly, so as to pierce through to the nearest and most remote spaces of existence. This quality, splendid as it is, was, however, lent to her from her earliest years as a difficult task. She remembers from childhood her innermost self as penetrated by illuminating beings, brightened by a light which even the brightest light of the sun could get no hold on.

She therefore bears sources of light within herself and the external light can “get no hold” on her.

Often she saw two suns, one inward, another in the sky; two moons, of which the outer one, in its size, remained the same in all phases; the inner always diminished more and more.

This gift drew her interest away from ordinary things, but her excellent parents directed everything towards her culture. All faculties were alive in her, all activities operative, so that she understood how to satisfy all outward relationships, and while her heart, her spirit, was entirely filled with otherworldly visions, her actions and dealings remained always suited to the noblest decorum. As she grew up, everywhere helpful, incessant in great and small services, she wandered like an angel of God upon the earth, while her entire spiritual being moved indeed around the sun of this world, but in continually increasing circles towards what is beyond this world.

The exuberance of this condition was in some measure modified, that it also seemed to her to dawn and to grow dark, while with quenched inner light she strove most loyally to fulfil external duties; with the fresh shining of the inner light she gave herself up to the most blessed tranquility. Yes, she will have observed that some kind of clouds hovered over her from time to time, and for some time obscured for her the look of the heavenly companions—a period which she understood how to make use of continually for the well-being and delight of her surroundings.

So long as she kept her views secret, it required much to support them. What she revealed of them was not recognised, or misinterpreted; therefore in her long life she let it appear outwardly as an illness, and in the family they still always speak of it so; but at last good fortune introduced to her the man whom you see with us, as doctor, mathematician and astronomer equally valuable; a thoroughly noble man who, however, first actually approached her out of curiosity. But when she gained confidence towards him, described by degrees to him her circumstances, joined the present to the past and had brought a connection into the events, he became so fascinated by the phenomenon that he could no more separate himself from her, but day by day endeavoured continually to penetrate more deeply into the secret.

At first, as lie gave it to be understood not obscurely, he considered it to be deception, for she did not deny that from earliest youth she had diligently busied herself about knowledge of the stars and sky, that she had been well instructed in them, and had missed no opportunity of getting a clear idea for herself of the structure of the world by means of machines and books. He did not, therefore, have his say out; it was learnt by heart, the effect of an imagination regulated in a high degree, the influence of the memory was to be conjectured, a co-operation of the power of judgment, but especially of a hidden calculation.

He is a mathematician and therefore obstinate, a clear mind and therefore unbelieving. For a long time he resisted, observed however what she mentioned, exactly, endeavoured to get near to the sequel of different years, kept himself especially to the newest with the opposite position of the lights of heaven and their tasks in accordance, and at last exclaimed: “Now why should not God and Nature be a living ‘Armillarsphere’, an intellectual clockwork movement, so that just as the clocks perform it for us daily and hourly, it would be in the position of itself in a special way to follow the course of the stars!”

But here we dare not proceed further, for the incredible loses its value when we wish to look at it more nearly in detail. We say so much, however: that which served as the basis of the reckonings to be instituted, was as follows. For her, the seeress, our sun appeared in the vision much smaller than she beheld it as such by day; also an unusual position of this high light of heaven in the zodiac gave rise to inferences.

On the other hand, doubts and errors arose because she who looked indicated one and the other star as appearing alike in the zodiac, but of which in the sky one was not aware. They might be the small planets at that time still undiscovered, for from other accounts it could be concluded that she, long since over the, orbit of Mars, drew near to the orbit of Jupiter. Openly, for a long time, she had considered these planets, at what distance it would be difficult to say, with astonishment in their mighty splendour, and looked at the play of its moons around it, but had seen it in the most marvellous manner as waning moon, and indeed, without being turned round, as the waxing moon appears to us. From this it would be concluded that she saw it from the side, and was really on the point of moving outside its orbit, and in the infinite space coming in opposition to Saturn. Thither no imagination follows her, but we hope that such an entelechy does not withdraw itself entirely from our solar system; but if it has arrived at the border of it, it will yearn to be back again, so as to work again in favour of our great grandchildren for earthly life and beneficence.

Here, in a very significant way, the vista is presented to us of how the soul, how the human being, will from within take the path of return to the world of the stars. I have been reading to you the description of Makaria from Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, and he has expressly added that he has not said everything. He indicates that this was an ethereal poem, in the words: “While we now here close this ethereal poetry, hoping for forgiveness, let us turn again to that terrestrial story, of which we have given above a transient indication.”

Before Goethe describes Makaria he writes:

But arrived at this point, we cannot resist the temptation of communicating from our archives³ a paper which concerns Makaria, and the special quality which was imparted to her mind. Unfortunately, this composition was written from memory not till a long time after the contents were communicated, and cannot be looked upon as altogether authentic, as in so remarkable a case would be desirable. But however this may be, here already is so much communicated as to arouse reflection and recommend attention as to whether already something similar or approximating to it has been remarked and noted down.

I wanted to call your attention to this passage in Wilhelm Meister's Travels because it will show you that with Spiritual Science we are really meeting the demands of our age. Human nature is changing in such a way that it will bring forth from itself that ancient heritage from the pre-earthly world which it has lost. And men must be aware of what is approaching them—otherwise they will fall into utter confusion. Spiritual Science must establish its place in the cultural life of our time.

But the moment men become attentive to what has been indicated here they inevitably come across the teaching of reincarnation, because they say to themselves that an entelechy from the spiritual world, from the spheres of Jupiter, Saturn, and so on, may well have something to do with the Earth and might return among us. Therefore those occultists who wish the teaching of reincarnation to be suppressed, say that barricades must be erected against the advent of this view of life, and these barricades are erected by diverting men's minds as far as possible from the connection with the celestial bodies of the solar system. So we see that in that quarter there is intense interest in not allowing certain things to come to light. I said yesterday that if interest is present for a biased, one-sided cause, it always finds support. But truth is generally contested and everything possible is done to prevent the truth itself from coming to light. And whether we take the right stand in our spiritual Movement depends upon our being fully conscious that the truth for which we seek will be attacked from many, many sides. Nothing is more essential than that in order to be armed, we shall endeavour to develop clarity of thought in every domain. You must bear in mind that the antagonisms that arise, above all the hostile personalities, are really, for the most part, puppets of the opposing Powers. For we are here in the field of activity of super-sensible Powers. These super-sensible Powers, to which Lucifer and Ahriman belong, naturally work in human life through human souls, which are simply their instruments.

Hence it is necessary to know exactly what is at issue in the one case or the other; but what is far and away the most necessary of all is that the acquisition of the faculty of clear, exact thinking shall never be neglected. You know that life itself has its contradictions, and Hegel built up his whole philosophy on this. It is not a question of avoiding the contradictions in life, for they are there. The essential thing is to recognise and be alert to them.

Ahriman and Lucifer can accomplish something only when a contradiction remains unnoticed, when we have neither the strength nor the will to lay it bare. Whenever we get entangled in a contradiction that we do not recognise as such but simply regard it as a natural part of life, this makes it possible for Lucifer and Ahriman to take possession of our soul.

Let us take a strange contradiction with which we have been just recently confronted here. The circumstances have obliged me to read a passage in a letter from a lady who states that what is wanted is “not the teaching and not the teacher, but the man”. The teaching was therefore taken as a kind of adjunct and the chief value attached to the man. Then came another assertion—the very opposite! The man was completely rejected and it was stated that the teaching must be acknowledged as correct. Just think of it: on the one hand it is asserted that the quest should not be for the teaching or the teacher, but for the man; and on the other: “I hate the man and reject him; he makes promises and does not keep them—but the teaching is good, I accept it.”

To what does this really amount? In effect it amounts to this: For a time I had a certain relationship with an individual; he himself interested me, the teaching only very little. Then I turn from the individual and lay stress on what did not really interest me at all. I now lay the stress upon what I formerly put aside; I did not assimilate the teaching and now say: it is good. I stand for something which I refused to accept, something I cannot possibly have acquired because previously I refused to accept it!—There you have a literal example of the kind of contradictions to be found in the world. Can you possibly imagine that where such contradictions prevail there can be any real, inner connection with our spiritual-scientific Movement? There can obviously be none.

It is important to be aware of contradictions such as these, for if we fail to notice such phenomena among us we shall never find the right path to knowledge of the spiritual world. Needless to say, many things may escape us, but we must have the will to take note of such contradictions. On the other side, however, it must be remembered that contradictions of this kind are used with the intent of shaking the truth to its foundations. Suppose, for example, someone were to say: a man is giving teaching but he himself is full of contradictions, even of immoral tendencies, indeed he is dominated by the power of evil; but the teaching itself is good—that is certainly to be admitted. Very well—but if it is part and parcel of the teaching that the one who represents it and the Movement connected with it establishes the relationship between himself and the others precisely through the teaching, wishing to be nothing more than the bearer of the teaching—then such an attitude demands him to be something else! All kinds of demands are made upon the man, and although at bottom the teaching is rejected, it is said: the teaching is good, but for all that the man is evil! In this way, someone who feels utterly incapable of grasping the teaching can work against it through those who believe in it. This is the best way for a person to undermine teaching which he cannot disprove, for as I indicated yesterday, it is then delivered into the hands of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic Powers.

It has been said so often that our teaching must not be mere theory, but actual life. If it is made into mere theory, it is killed, delivered into the hands of Ahriman, the God of Death. That is the best method for ensuring that what is taught is given over to Ahriman and thus exterminated from the world; moreover, it is a method very similar to that employed by certain individualities who were standing behind Mr. Sinnett, for example. They inspired him to take a certain direction in order to steer him into fallacy which culminated in the true facts being violated. The Moon, which as physical Moon is an agent for paralysing the Eighth Sphere, is declared to be the Eighth Sphere itself. The reality concerning the Eighth Sphere is obscured, effaced. And later on H. P. Blavatsky corrects this by alleging that Jahve has created the lower sphere of man's life only, the sphere of his senses—whereas the truth is that Jahve has created a counteracting agent for the Eighth Sphere. This method therefore consists in spreading over some matter a fog whereby it is presented in a false light. If you examine these things carefully, you will see that what has happened among us is essentially of the same pattern, only on a smaller scale. It is an attempt to shed calumny on the truth that would fain come into the world. Someone feels incapable of refuting the teaching and so levels imputations against the one who has to present it. This of course shows that such a person is unable to grasp the essence of the teaching.

This is a problem well worth the notice of people of standing and sincerity among us, for these things must be viewed from a higher vantage-point. I am quoting these examples because they are near at hand and because they show us whither our attention should be directed. In our Movement the strongest possible emphasis must be laid—and this has been done ever since I have been connected with it—upon a right attitude being adopted towards atavistic clairvoyance, so that there may be no delusions about it. An example of what has been invented in order to distort what we do or desire to do, is that it has been said: One can see that this is a Movement which applies itself to the cultivation of clairvoyance—and then efforts have been made to imply that everyone in the Movement is urged to develop clairvoyance. This kind of thing spreads a fog over the Movement. The truth is reversed—although it is a fact that clairvoyance must be developed—but a good means is furnished for provoking hatred against the Movement.

Again, it is said: A Movement that comes into being in the modern age ought not to cultivate the old, atavistic clairvoyance, but that is precisely what this particular Movement is doing.—On the subject of cultivating atavistic clairvoyance the Movement says exactly the same, but here the direction of the arrow is turned round and the Movement is censured. This is happening, for example, in our immediate vicinity, where in sermons and addresses it is alleged that those who have gathered here in Dornach are urged, above all by me, to develop clairvoyance, and it is imputed at the same time that this is pathological, atavistic clairvoyance.

Needless to say, the one who voices these things has no inkling of what he is really saying; he is only a puppet. But we ourselves must look more deeply into the connections, realising that we are living at a time when such impulses will assert themselves strongly against us. And it would be particularly grotesque if our teaching itself were to he used as a weapon for confuting us. Even this has already happened. In one of the antagonistic criticisms published during recent weeks, an attack was formulated by using quotations from the Mystery Plays and from the book Occult Science. So the Powers that do not want the truth to come to light are everywhere at work.

About the truth itself we need have no anxiety. ... Truth makes its way in the world by laying emphasis only on what is positive.

But the moment statements that simply do not remotely come near the truth go out into the world, we must be armed and know how to judge them. We must not adopt the stand merely of studying what is to be found in the literature; we must translate into very life the life-principle contained in our teaching. That is to say, we must judge life according to the principles of our teaching; we must not think about one or another attack from outside as we should be bound to think if we had accepted our teaching merely as a theory. The need for polemics does not begin until we are attacked. But then we must realise that ours is a teaching very easily distorted into its opposite and that we have therefore to watch over and protect it. Especially must we be on guard against all one-sidedness.

For example, undertones could be heard in connection with certain things that have been said here and there—undertones coming from an attitude that very easily runs to opposite extremes. And then it is easy to be refuted. You will remember that it was necessary to say a great deal on the subject of illusions about particular incarnations. If this were carried to the extreme of laughing all such matters to scorn, our opponents might well say: “These people teach something. But let one of them touch the very fringe of it and they at once proceed to ridicule him!”

We have no ground for rejecting clairvoyant experiences—obviously not. Our only duty is to get to the bottom of such experiences when they are being used to bolster up the aims of personal vanity, or certainly when the outer course of events proves these experiences to have been incorrect. We must not, to use a trivial expression, pour away the child with the bath-water. Our Society must certainly not transform itself into a body of scientific theory. There too you can see that this danger may easily arise.

An essay sent to us during the last few days is astutely written, for there is no more plausible way of attacking our Movement than by saying: “Those people behave as if they rejected all connection between the world of the senses and the spiritual world!” This is actually stated in the essay. In an appendix, strangely enough, the question is raised : “Why should not the Mother of God also reincarnate?”—Of course, one can ask, why should she not reincarnate? There is no reason why it cannot be so. But of this you may be sure: the exoteric life of this Mother of God in such a reincarnation would not be in the form in which it is claimed to have taken place!

Truly, in these matters it is a question of something that I have been emphasising for many years and found it necessary to include in my fundamental philosophical work. If you read other philosophies you will find in their theories and forms of expression, also in still earlier writings, much that appears again in my The Philosophy of Freedom. But one thing is contained in it which, at least in the way it is there expressed and interwoven as an ethical principle, a moral impulse, is entirely original.—For the first time, “moral tact” is introduced as something that cannot be grasped through the mere power of judgment, but only through the whole mind and life of feelings, so that when something has to be handled delicately one shall not immediately fall into extremes and try to sweep away one error by means of another. That is “moral tact”. I have tried to define it as clearly as possible in the Philosophy of Freedom. It is truly necessary to emphasise at the present time that—because here we have to do with a very tricky matter—we must avoid the danger of falling into the other extreme.

I indicated various dangers yesterday but have felt it necessary to add something today, in order to emphasise that we must not fall into the other extreme. The whole of our activity, the whole nature of our Movement, must be based upon making the spiritual world a reality, upon feeling and experiencing our own life as connected with the spiritual world.

But if we hold this principle sacred, we must tactfully refuse to allow directly personal affairs, the subjective-personal life, to be drawn in. This again does not imply that we should never try to discover whether we ourselves are the reincarnation of someone. But simply to look from one personality in search of the other is of no account. It is the easy-going way. But the right way is to endeavour to reach the point where we begin to discover certain secrets of our own life. Then we shall certainly make progress. In this connection we are standing at a point of great significance, namely that we must pay heed to the saying: do not pour the child away with the bath water!

At the same time we must work with all intensity to prevent what would be utterly disastrous to an occult Movement, namely, a gradual lapse into haziness and lack of clarity. There are certain things which need to be treated with a certain harshness. That is another matter. But we must always be mindful of the ground on which we stand—the ground of an earnest and worthy spiritual Movement.

These are some of the points of view which can help us to realise the conditions that are essential to the life of our Movement. When it is said that outer reality is maya, then this maya too must be thoroughly studied. Nor must we keep emphasising the theoretical saying, “outer reality is maya”, and then act as if the outer reality itself is of supreme importance when we encounter it concretely in the world.

• 1. See inter alia, Macrocosm and Microcosm, lecture 4. (Rudolf Steiner Press, 1968).
• 2. The translation of the passage is by R. O. Moon, M.A., M.D.(Oxon.), from Vol. II of Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. Published by G. T. Foulis & Co., London.
• 3. (Goethe means “spiritual” archives.)

This address was given at the Second Annual Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society.

It was then edited for printing by St. George Publications in 1982.¹

Anthroposophy will only be able to fulfill its great and universal mission in modern civilization when it is able to grasp the special problems which have arisen in every land by reason of the intellectual possessions of the people. In Germany, these special problems are in part determined by the inheritance bequeathed to her intellectual life by the men of genius living at the close of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. Any one who approaches those great minds, Lessing, Herder, Schiller, Goethe, Novalis, Jean Paul and many others, from the point of view of Anthroposophical thought and its attitude toward life, will have two important experiences. The first being that, as a result of this profoundly spiritual attitude, a new light is thrown upon the working and works of these men of genius; the second, that through them Anthroposophy receives new life-blood, which must, in some way as yet not clear, produce a fructifying and strengthening effect in the future. It may be said without exaggeration that the German will understand Anthroposophy if only he brings his mind to bear upon the highest conceptions for which the leading spirits of his land have striven, and which they have embodied in their works.

It will be the task of future generations to reveal the Anthroposophical and spiritual-scientific basis of the great advancement in the intellectual life of Germany during the period in question. It will then be shown what an intimate knowledge and understanding of the influences at work during this period is obtainable by regarding things from an Anthroposophical point of view. It is only possible on this occasion to make a few references to one man of genius who was the leading light of this age of culture, namely, Goethe. It is possible that new life may be infused into the active principles of Anthroposophy through Goethe's thought and the creations of his mind, with the result that, in Germany, Anthroposophy may appear by degrees to be something akin to the spirit of the people. One thing will be made clear: that the source of the Anthroposophical conception is one and the same as the fount from which Germany's great poet and thinker has derived his creative power.

The most clear-sighted of those among whom Goethe lived acknowledged without any reservation that there was no branch of intellectual life which his attitude toward life and the world could not enrich. But one must not allow oneself to be deceived by the fact that the quintessence of Goethe's mind really lies concealed below the surface of his works. He who wishes to win his way to a perfect understanding of them must become intimate with their innermost spirit. This does not mean that one should become insensitive to the beauties of their style or their artistic form. Nor must one put an abstract interpretation upon his art by means of intellectual symbols and allegories. But, just as a noble countenance excites no less admiration for the beauty of its features because the beholder is able to perceive the greatness of the soul illuminating this beauty, so it is with Goethe's art; not only can it lose nothing, but rather will it gain infinitely, when the outward expression of his creative power is illuminated by that depth of conception of the universe which possesses his soul.

Goethe himself often has shown how justified we are in having such a profound conception of his creative power. On January 29, 1827, he said to his devoted secretary Eckermann concerning his Faust, “It is all scenic and, from the point of view of the theatre, it will please everyone. More than this I did not wish. If only the performance gives pleasure to the majority of the audience, the initiated will not miss the deeper meaning.” It is only necessary to bring an impartial insight to bear upon Goethe's creative power in order to recognize that it is only an esoteric conception which can lead us to a full understanding of his working. He felt within him an ardent desire to discover in all phenomena of the senses the hidden spiritual force. It was one of his principles of search that the inner secrets are expressed in outward facts and objects, and that those only can aspire to understand Nature who look upon the phenomena as mere letters which enable them to decipher the inner meaning of the workings of the spirit. The words: “All we see before us passing, Sign and symbol is alone,” in the Chorus Mysticus, at the end of Faust, are not merely to be regarded as a poetical idea, but as the outcome of his whole attitude toward the world. In Art, too, he saw only a revelation of the innermost secrets of the world; in his opinion, it was through Art that those things are to be made clear which, though having their origin in Nature and being active in her, yet with the means at her disposal, she cannot express. He sought the same spirit in the phenomena of Nature as in the works of a creative artist; only the means of expression were different in the two cases. He was constantly at work on his conception of a gradual process of evolution of all the phenomena and creatures in the world. He regarded man as a compilation of the other kingdoms. The spirit of man was to him the revelation of a universal spirit, and the other realms of Nature, with their manifestations, appeared to him as the path of evolution leading to man. All this was not merely a theory with him, but became a living element in his work, permeating all that he produced. Schiller has given us a fine description of this peculiarity of Goethe's mind, in the letter with which he inaugurates the intimate friendship which united them (August 23, 1794):

For a long time I have watched, although from some distance, the procedure of your mind, and ever with renewed wonder have observed the track that you have marked out for yourself. You seek for the necessary (the absolute) in Nature; but you seek it by the most difficult route, which every weaker spirit will take care to avoid. You grasp in your view entire Nature in order to obtain light on her parts: in the totality of her manifestations, you search for the key to lay open the individual. (Correspondence between Schiller and Goethe, from 1794 to 1805.)

In his book on Winckelmann, Goethe has expressed his opinion as to the position of man in the evolution of the realms of Nature:

When the sound, healthy nature of man works as a whole, when he feels himself at one with the world as a great, beautiful, worthy whole, when this harmonious feeling of well-being gives him a pure free delight, then might the Universe, could it consciously feel, deeming itself at the goal, cry out for very joy, and be lost in admiration of the climax of its own development and organization.

It was Goethe's life-work to strive to obtain an ever clearer insight into the evolution of the living world. When, after moving to Weimar (about 1780), he embodied the result of his investigation in the beautiful prose-hymn, Nature, we find over the whole a certain abstract tinge of pantheism. He must perforce use words to define the hidden forces of being, but before long these cease to satisfy his ever-deepening conception. But it is in these very words that we first meet with the ideas which we find later in such perfect form. He says there, for instance:

Nature! we are surrounded and embraced by her ... Unasked and without warning she draws us into the circle of her dance and carries us along with her until we are weary and slip from her arms. For ever is she creating new forms; what is, never was before; what has been, never will be again; everything is new, and yet ever old ... Each one of her works has its own individuality, each of her phenomena requires individual comprehension, and yet it all makes but one whole ... She has thought, and is for ever meditating; not as man, though, but as Nature. She has her own all-embracing meaning, which no one can learn from her by observation only ... She envelops man in a mist, and is ever spurring him on toward the light ... She creates wants because she loves action ... She has neither speech nor language, but she creates tongues and hearts through which she feels and speaks ... Her crown is love, through which alone she may be approached ... She has isolated everything in order to draw everything together ... Past and future knows she not. The present is her eternity.

When Goethe (1828), having reached the summit of his insight, looked back upon this stage, he expressed himself thus concerning it:

I would call that former stage of insight the Comparative, which is impelled to express its tendency toward an, as yet, unattained Superlative ... But what is wanting for its fulfillment is the conception of the two great driving-wheels of all Nature, the comprehension of polarity and self-perfecting evolution, the former belonging to matter, insofar as we call it material, the latter opposed to it, insofar as we call it spiritual; the former is everlastingly attracting and repelling, the latter is ever striving to ascend. But, as matter cannot exist and operate without spirit, nor spirit without matter, even so matter has the power to raise itself, nor can spirit be prevented from attracting and repelling.

It was with such a conception that Goethe approached the animal, mineral and vegetable kingdoms to grasp the hidden spiritual unity in the manifest multiplicity of sense-perceptible phenomena. It is in this sense that he speaks of primeval plant, primeval animal. And it was for him Intuition which stood behind these conceptions as the active spiritual force. In his contemplation of things, his whole being strove toward what in Anthroposophy is called tolerance. And ever more and more he sought to acquire this quality by means of the strictest inward self-education. To this he frequently refers; it will suffice to quote a very characteristic example from the Campaign in France (1792):

As I was for the most part almost entirely engrossed by the business and occurrences of the moment, with which kind of life I had reason to be satisfied, of late years particularly, I had the peculiarity of never forming conceptions beforehand of persons whom I expected to meet, or places that I intended to visit, but allowed them to produce their effect upon me without being previously prepared for them.

The advantage that arises from this is very great; one does not require to come back from a previously conceived idea, to blot out a picture arbitrarily painted by ourselves, and painfully to adopt the reality in its place.

Thus he endeavored to rise higher and higher and to reach the point which divided the real from the unreal.

Only here and there do we find references to his innermost convictions. One of these occurs, for instance, in the poem The Mysteries, which contains his confession as a Rosicrucian. It was written in the middle of the 80's in the 18th century, and was regarded by those who knew him intimately as revealing his character. In 1816, he was called upon by a “fraternity of students in one of the chief towns of North Germany” to explain the hidden meaning of the poem, and the explanation which he gave might well stand as a paraphrase of the three objectives of the programme of the Anthroposophical Society.

Only when one is capable of appreciating the full significance of such points in Goethe is one in a position to recognize the higher meaning, to use his own expression, which he has introduced into his Faust for the initiated. In the second part of this dramatic poem is in fact to be found what Goethe had to say concerning the relation of man to the three worlds: the physical, the astral and the spiritual. From this point of view, the poem represents his expression of the incarnation of man. A character which, to the mind that refuses a spiritual-scientific basis, presents insuperable difficulties, is that of Homunculus. Every passage, every word, however, becomes clear as soon as one starts from this basis. Homunculus is created by the help of Mephistopheles. The latter represents the repressive and destructive forces of the Universe which manifest in the realms of man as Evil. Goethe wishes to characterize the part which Evil takes in the formation of Homunculus; and yet from such beginnings is to be produced a man. For this reason, he is led through the lower realms of Nature to the scene of the classical Walpurgis Night. Before he sets forth on these wanderings, he possesses only a part of human nature. What he himself says concerning his connection with the earthly part of human nature is striking.

Homunculus:

Hither and thither, up, down, in and out;
From place to place still hovering about,
Impatient the free air of life to breathe.
Longing to break the glass that is my sheath—
My chrysalis; but everywhere I see
Such sights! I could not venture yet to be.
Now for a secret—I am on the track
Of two Philosophers. Their tongues, clack! clack!
Went evermore, and Nature—Nature was
The word. Keep me not from them. Of the laws
Of earthly being they must somewhat know:
Between them I may learn some little; so
Pass into life by their experience wiser.

Part ii, Act ii.

The Nature of Homunculus becomes quite clear in the light of the following lines which refer to him:

Thales:

He wants your counsel—has come a long distance:
His object is to get into existence.
He is, by what he told me of his birth,
Miraculously come but half to earth:
A lively spark—has every mental quality,
But, luckless fellow, ‘twas his strange fatality
An active, naked spirit, all alone—
Without a shred of body, blood, or bone,
Into the world to be at hazard thrown—
His glass is all he has to steady him:
He wants and wishes body, life, and limb.

Part ii, Act ii.

The following words are also added, “He is, methinks, Hermaphrodite.” Goethe here intends to represent the astral body of man before his incarnation in mortal (earthly) matter. This he also makes clear by endowing Homunculus with powers of clairvoyance. He sees, for instance, the dream of Faust in the laboratory where work is going on with the help of Mephistopheles. Then in the course of the classical Walpurgis Night the embodying of Homunculus, that is, the astral man, is described. He is sent through the realms of Nature to Proteus, the spirit of transformations.

Thales:

Away to Proteus! Question the magician
As to the spark's proposed change of condition.
You thus may learn what transformations he
Must pass through to be anything—to BE.

Part ii, Act ii.

Proteus then describes the road which astral man has to take through the realms of Nature in order to arrive at an earthly incarnation and receive a physical body.

Proteus:

... In the broad sea thy being must commence;
On a small scale one there begins,
Well pleased the smallest to devour;
Till, waxing step by step, one wins
A loftier achievement, ampler power.

Part ii, Act ii.

The passage of man through the mineral kingdom is then described. Goethe makes his entrance into the vegetable kingdom particularly contemplative. Homunculus says:

A tender air is wafted here;
Dear is the greenness, and the fragrance dear.

The philosopher Thales, who is present, adds in elucidation of what is taking place:

Thales:

Obey the noble inspiration,
And at its source begin creation.
Make ready for the great emprize!
By laws eternal still ascending,
Through myriad forms of being wending,
To be a man in time thou'll rise.

The moment, too, when the asexual being has implanted within him the double sex, and therewith sexual love, is also represented:

Sirens:

And all things are gleaming by fire girt around,
Prime source of creation, let Eros be crowned.

That the investing of the astral body with the physical body, composed of earthly elements, is really meant here is expressly stated in the closing lines of the second act:

All:

Hail each softly blowing gale!
Caverns rich in marvels, hail!
Highly honored evermore,
Be the elemental four!

Goethe here makes use of the evolution of beings in the course of the fashioning of the earth in connection with the incarnation of man as a special being. The latter repeats as such the transformations which mankind has undergone in reaching its present form. In these conceptions, he was in line with the theory of evolution held by spiritual science. His explanation of the origin of the lower forms of life was that the impulse which was aspiring to a higher grade had been stopped on a certain level. In his diary of the Journey through Switzerland, of 1797, he noted a conversation with the Tübingen professor Kielmeyer, which is interesting in this connection. In it, the following words occur, “Concerning the idea that the higher organic natures in their evolution take several steps which the others behind them are unable to take.” His studies of plants, animals, and of man are entirely pervaded by these ideas, and he seeks to invest them with an artistic form in the transformation of Homunculus into a man. When he becomes acquainted with Howard's theory of the formation of clouds, “he expresses his thoughts concerning the relation of spiritual archetypes to the ever-changing forms in the following words:

When the deity Kama-Rupa, high and sublime, wanders, wavering, on the breeze, light and heavy, gathers together the folds of his veil, shakes them out again, rejoicing at the variety of forms, remains now motionless, and now disappears as a dream, we are amazed and scarce believe our eyes.

In Faust, we also find represented the relation of the imperishable spiritual man to the mortal envelope. Faust has to go to the Mothers to seek for this imperishable essence, and the explanation of this important scene is developed quite naturally in the second part of the play. Goethe conceives the real being of man as a trinity (in accord with the Anthroposophical teaching of Spirit-self, Life-spirit, Spirit-man). And Faust's visit to the Mothers may be termed in Anthroposophical phraseology the forcible entry into Devachan. There he is to find what remains of Helena. She is to be reincarnated; that is, she is to return from the realm of the Mothers to the earth and, in the third act, we really do in fact see her reincarnated. In order to accomplish this it is necessary to reunite the three natures of man: the astral, the physical, and the spiritual. At the end of the second act, the astral (Homunculus) has put on the physical envelope and this combination is now able to receive within it the higher nature. Such a conception introduces an inner dramatic unity into the poem, whereas with a non-occult forcible entry the individual events remain a mere arbitrary collection of poetical incidents. Without taking into account the spiritual-scientific foundation of the poem, Professor Veit Valentin, of Frankfort, has already drawn attention to the inner connection of Homunculus and Helena in an interesting book, Die Einheit des Ganzen Faust, 1896. But the contents of this work can only remain an intelligent hypothesis if one does not penetrate into the spiritual-scientific substratum underlying it all. Goethe has conceived Mephistopheles as a being to whom Devachan is unknown. He is only at home on the astral plane. Hence he can be of service in the creation of Homunculus, but he cannot accompany Faust into the realm of the Mothers. Indeed, that plane is to him Nothingness. He says to Faust, in speaking to him of that world:

Mephistopheles:

Naught, in the everlasting void afar,
Wilt see, nor hear thy footfall's sound,
Nor for thy tread find solid ground!

Part ii, Act i.

But Faust, with his spiritual intuition, at once divines that in that world he will find the real essence of Man.

Faust:

We'll fathom it! Come on, nor look behind!
In this thy Naught, the All I hope to find.

In the description which Mephistopheles gives of the world which he dares not enter, one understands exactly what Goethe means to express.

Mephistopheles:

Sink then! Arise! This also I might say:—
‘Tis all the same. Escaping from the real,
Seek thou the boundless realm of the ideal.
Delight thyself in forms long past away!
The train-like cloud-procession, glides along:
...

A glowing tripod teaches thee thou hast
The deep attained, the lowest deep, at last;
There by its light the Mothers thou wilt see;
Some sit, while others, as the case may be,
Or stand, or walk: formation, transformation
Of mind etern, eternal recreation!
While forms of being around them hover.

Only by means of the archetype which Faust fetches from the devachanic world of the Mothers can Homunculus, the astral being who has assumed physical form, become a spiritually-endowed entity, Helena in fact, who actually appears in the third act. Goethe has taken care that those who seek to penetrate the depths shall be able to grasp his meaning for, in his conversations with Eckermann, he has lifted the veil as far as it seemed to him practical to do so. On December 16, 1829, he said concerning Homunculus:

For such spiritual beings as Homunculus, who have not yet had their powers obscured and confined by becoming completely human, were reckoned as among the demons.

And, on the same day, he points out further how Homunculus is still wanting in Mind: “Reasoning is not his concern, he wants to act.”

The whole of the further development of the dramatic action in Faust, according to this reading, follows easily on the foregoing. Faust has become acquainted with the secrets of the three worlds. Henceforth, he looks at the world from the point of view of the mystic. One could point out scene after scene which bears this out, but it will be sufficient to draw attention here to a few passages. When, towards the end, Care approaches Faust, he becomes outwardly blind but, in the course of his development, he has acquired the faculty of inward sight.

Faust:

Deeper and deeper night is round me sinking;
Only within me shines a radiant light.

Part ii, Act v.

Goethe once, in answer to the question, “What was Faust's end?” replied definitely, “He becomes a mystic in the end,” and the significant words of the Chorus Mysticus, with which the poem closes, can only be interpreted in this sense. In the West-East Divan he also expresses himself very clearly on the subject of the spiritual development of man. It is to him the union of the human soul with the higher self. The illusion that the real man exists in his outward body must die out; then higher man comes into existence. That is why he begins his poem Blessed Longing with the words: “Tell it to none but to the wise, for the multitude hasten to deride. I will praise the living who longs for death by fire.” And, in conclusion, he adds: “And as long as thou hast not mastered this; dying and coming into existence; thou art but a sad and gloomy guest on the dark earth.”

Quite in harmony with this is the Chorus Mysticus, for its inner meaning is but this: The transient forms of the outer world have their foundation in the imperishable spiritual ones to which we attain by regarding the transient only as a symbol of the hidden spiritual:

Chorus Mysticus:

All of mere transient date
As symbol showeth.

That to which reason, appointed as it is to deal with the world of the senses and its forms, cannot attain, is revealed as an actual vision to the spiritual sight; further, that which this reason cannot describe is a fact in the regions of the spiritual.

Chorus Mysticus:

Here the inadequate
To fullness groweth.

In harmony with all mystical symbolism, Goethe represents the higher nature of man as feminine, entering into union with the Divine Spirit. For in the last lines:

The eternal feminine
Draws us upward.

Goethe only means to characterize the union of the purified soul drawing near to the Divine. All interpretations which are not made in a mystic sense fail here.

Goethe considered that the time had not yet come when it was possible to speak of certain secrets of our being in any other manner than he has done in some of his poems. And, above all, he felt it to be his own mission to furnish such a form of expression. At the beginning of his friendship with Schiller, he raised the question, “How are we to represent to ourselves the relationship between the physical and the spiritual natures of man?” Schiller had tried to answer this question in a philosophical style in his letters Concerning the Aesthetic Education of Man. To him, it was a question of the ennobling and purifying of man; to him, a man under the sway of nature's impulses of sensual love and desires appeared impure; but then he considered just as far removed from purity the man who looked upon the sensual impulses and desires as enemies, and was obliged to place himself under the rule of moral or abstract intellectual compulsion. Man only attained inner freedom when he had so absorbed moral law into his inner being that he desired only to obey it. Such a man has so ennobled his lower nature that it becomes by itself an expression of the higher spiritual, and he has so drawn down into the earthly human nature the spiritual that the latter possesses a direct sentient existence. The explanations which Schiller gives in these Letters form excellent rules of education, for their object is to further the evolution of man so that he may, by absorbing the higher ideal man, come to contemplate the world from a free and exalted point of view. In his way Schiller refers to the higher self of man thus:

Every individual man, one may say, harbors within him, according to his character and type, a pure, ideal man, with whose unalterable unity through all changes it is the great task of his life to harmonize himself.

All that Schiller says in this connection is of the most far-reaching significance. For he who really carries out his injunctions accomplishes within himself an education which brings him directly to that inward condition which paves the way for the inner contemplation of the spiritual. Goethe was satisfied, in the deepest sense of the word, with these ideas. He writes to Schiller:

I read the manuscript you sent me at once with the greatest delight; I swallowed it at one gulp. Just as a delicious drink, in sympathy with our nature, slips down willingly and, while still on the tongue, shows its wholesome workings in a pleasant harmony of the nervous system, so were these letters highly pleasing and beneficial to me; and how could it be otherwise, when I found set forth therein so coherently and nobly what I had long recognized as right, what I partly carried out in my life, and partly wished to carry out?

Goethe now endeavored on his part to set forth the same idea from the depths of his conception of the world—but veiled in imagery—in the problem-tale of The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily. It is placed in the editions of Goethe at the end of the Conversations of German Emigrants. The Faust story has often been called Goethe's Gospel; this tale may, however, be called his Apocalypse, for in it he sets forth—as a fairy-tale—the path of man's inner development. Here again, we can only point out a few short passages, it would need a large book to show how Goethe's spiritual insight is concealed in this tale.

The three worlds are here represented as two regions separated from one another by a river. The river itself stands for the astral plane. On this side of it is the physical world, on the other side the spiritual (Devachan), where dwells the beautiful lily, the symbol of man's higher nature. In her kingdom, man must strive if he would unite his lower with his higher nature. In the abyss—that is, in the physical world—dwells the serpent which symbolizes the self of man. Here too is a temple of initiation, where reign four kings, one golden, one silver, one bronze, and a fourth of an irregular mixture of the three metals. Goethe, who was a freemason, has clothed in freemasonic terminology what he had to impart of his mystic experiences. The three kings represent the three higher forces of man: Wisdom (Gold), Beauty (Silver), and Strength (Bronze). As long as man lives in his lower nature, these three forces are in him disordered and chaotic. This period in the evolution of man is represented by the mixed king. But when man has so purified himself that the three forces work together in perfect harmony, and he can freely use them, then the way into the realm of the spiritual lies open before him. The still unpurified man is represented by a youth who, without having attained inner purity, would unite himself with the beautiful lily. Through this union he becomes paralyzed.

Goethe here wished to point out the danger to which a man exposes himself who would force an entrance into the super-sensible region before he has severed himself from his lower self. Only when love has permeated the whole man, only when the lower nature has been sacrificed, can the initiation into the higher truths and powers begin. This sacrifice is expressed by the serpent yielding of its own accord, and forming a bridge of its body across the river—that is to say, the astral plane—between the two kingdoms, of the senses and of the spirit. At first man must accept the higher truths in the form in which they have been given to him in the imagery of the various religions. This form is personified as the man with the lamp. This lamp has the peculiarity of only giving light where there is already light, meaning that the religious truths presuppose a receptive, believing disposition. Their light shines where the light of faith is present. This lamp, however, has yet another quality, “of turning all stones into gold, all wood into silver, dead animals into precious stones, and of destroying all metals,” meaning the power of faith which changes the inner nature of the individual. There are about twenty characters in this allegory, all symbolical of certain forces in man's nature and, during the course of the action, the purifying of man is described, as he rises to the heights where, in his union with his higher self, he can be initiated into the secrets of existence. This state is symbolized by the Temple, formerly hidden in the abyss, being brought to the surface, and rising above the river—the astral plane. Every passage, every sentence in the allegory is significant. The more deeply one studies the tale, the more comprehensible and clear the whole becomes, and he who set forth the esoteric quintessence of this tale at the same time has given us the substance of the Anthroposophical outlook on life.

Goethe has not left the source uncertain from whose depths he has drawn his inspiration. In another tale, The New Paris, he gives in a veiled manner the history of his own inner enlightenment. Many will remain incredulous if we say that, in this dream, Goethe represents himself just at the boundary between the third and fourth sub-race of our fifth root-race. For him, the myth of Paris and Helen is a symbolic representation of this boundary. And as he—in a dream—conjures up before his eyes in a new form the myth of Paris, he feels he is casting a searching glance into the development of humanity. What such an insight into the past means to the inner eye, he tells us in the Prophecies of Bakis, which are also full of occult references:

The past likewise will Bakis reveal to thee; for even the past oft lies, oh blind world, like a riddle before thee. Who knows the past knows also the future: both are joined in To-day in one complete whole.

Much, too, might be quoted to show the underlying elements of spiritual science in the fairy tale, The New Melusine, a Pandora-fragment, and many other writings. In his novel, Wilhelm Meister's Traveling Years, Goethe has given us quite a masterly picture of a Clairvoyante in Makarie. Makarie's power of intuition rises to the level of a complete penetration of the inner mysteries of the planetary system:

She stands with regard to our solar system in a relationship which one hardly dares to express. In the spirit, of the soul, of the imagination, she fosters it, not only gazes at it, but at the same time forms part of it; she sees herself drawn on into those heavenly circles, but in quite a peculiar way; she has wandered since her childhood round the sun, and, in fact, as has now been discovered, in a spiral, circling ever further and further from the center towards the outer regions. If one may assume that beings insofar as they are embodied strive towards the center, but insofar as they are spirits strive towards the periphery, then our friend belongs to the most spiritual; She seems to have been born only to detach herself from the earthly and to force her way into the nearest and furthest realms of existence. This quality, glorious as it is, was laid upon her from her earliest years as a difficult task. She remembers her inner self penetrated, as it were, through and through by shining beings, illuminated by a light which not even the brightest sunlight could rival. She often saw two suns, one, that is, within, and one without in the heavens, two moons, of which the outer retained its size through all its phases; the inner ever more and more decreased.

These words of Goethe's prove clearly how intimate he is with these matters, and whoever reads through the whole passage will recognize that Goethe so expresses himself, albeit with reserve, that he who looks beneath the surface may feel quite certain of the spiritual-scientific foundation in his being.

Goethe always looked upon his mission as a poet in relation to his striving toward the hidden laws of Life. He was often forced to notice how friends failed to understand this side of his nature. He describes thus, in the Campaign in France in 1792, how his contemplation of Nature was always misunderstood:

... the passionate earnestness with which I addicted myself to this (the study of natural philosophy) seemed inconceivable to all, nobody observing how it sprang from my innermost being itself; they considered this laudable pursuit as a whimsical mistake; in their opinion, I could do something better, and leave my abilities to work in their old direction. They felt the more entitled to do this as my way of thinking did not agree with theirs, expressing rather, in most points, exactly the contrary. No more isolated being can be imagined than I was then, and for a long time afterwards. The Hylozoism, or whatever it may be called, to which I was attached, and the deep foundation of which I left untouched in all its sacred dignity, made me unsusceptible, nay, intolerant, toward that way of thinking which set up as an article of belief the existence of matter as a dead thing, in whatever way it may be supposed to be stirred up and put in motion.

Goethe could only understand artistic work when based on a profound penetration of the truth. As an artist, he wished to give utterance to that which in Nature is suggested without being fully expressed. Nature appeared to him as a product of the same essence which also works through human art, only that in the case of Nature the power has remained on a lower level. For Goethe, Art is a continuation of Nature revealing that which in Nature alone is hidden:

For in that man is placed as the peak of Nature, he perceives himself in his turn as a complete nature, which, in its turn, has within himself to produce a peak. With this objective in view, he raises himself, striving to win his way by all perfections and virtues. Selection, order, harmony, and purpose he calls to his aid, until finally he rises to the production of a work of art. (Winckelmann.)

To understand the world is to Goethe to Hue in the spirit of worldly things. For this reason, he speaks of a perceptive power of judgment (intellectus archetypus), through which Man draws ever nearer to the secrets of our being:

If, then, in a moral sense, we are, through faith in God, to attain to youth and immortality in a higher region, and are to draw near to the Most High, it should surely be the same in an intellectual sense, that only by the contemplation of an ever-creating Nature, we shall become worthy of spiritual participation in her productions.

Thus did Goethe represent to himself Man as the organ of the world, through which its occult powers should be revealed. The following was one of his aphorisms:

For this has man been placed so high that what must otherwise have been unmanifest might manifest through him. Truly may we say: What are even the workings of Nature's elements in comparison with man, who, that he may in some degree assimilate, must first control and modify them?

PLEASE NOTE: Although Rudolf Steiner in giving this address, used the words theosophy, Theosophical Society and occult, we have replaced these with the words Anthroposophy, Anthroposophical Society and, except in two or three cases, Spiritual Science, since, when Rudolf Steiner gave this address, he already had written KNOWLEDGE OF THE HIGHER WORLDS and THEOSOPHY and used the words theosophy, etc., in the sense that they are used in these books and in his subsequent writings and lectures. This was done as an attempt at corrective updating and no polemic is intended.

• 1. Original Translator Unknown. In the case of the quotations in this paper, the translations of Goethe's works by Anna Swanwick and John Anster and R. Farrie have been used freely. G. Calvert's translation of Schiller's work has also been quoted.

Continuing our studies on the great works of Art, we will show some further slides today, supplementing those that were shown last week. Today I propose in the main to supplement what I endeavoured to explain last week, of the connections and contrasts between the Mid-European, or Northern, and the Southern Art. I tried to show how the specifically artistic quality is always influenced by the character of the South or of the North, while, on the other hand, there were continual interpenetrations of the Southern and Mid-European impulses, layer upon layer, as it were, so that it is by no means easy now to see how these things really worked together. Spiritual scientific investigations will in course of time have to bring more and more light into these matters.

Today I wish to draw attention to the contrasts from certain other points of view. You will remember what I emphasised last time. From underlying impulses of the Mid-European spiritual life, there arose what we may call the art of expression—expression of Will and Intelligence—the power to express the ever-mobile life of the soul. The soul in movement—that is the goal of the Mid-European impulse; while the Southern (which was, however, influenced at a very early stage by the Mid-European) looks more to all that enters our perceptions from the Divine-spiritual in the Cosmos, which finds expression in the power of composition, and in features which transcend the human.

It is a characteristic abuse of our time to consider Art—even the plastic Arts—far too much from the mere point of view of the narrative and subject matter, while appreciating far too little the specifically artistic qualities. At the same time there is another equally pernicious error. Art is very frequently severed nowadays from the general life of culture and civilisation, and treated as though it were something that lives a life apart. This, too, is wrong. For we need only have a feeling for the specifically artistic qualities, for all that works in form and colouring, in composition and the like—we need only wean ourselves of the tendency to explain everything symbolically, or in other artificial ways; we need but feel—before such pictures as Dürer's ‘St. Jerome,’ or ‘Melancholia,’ for example,—how infinitely deeper is the mysterious ebb and flow of the masses of light themselves, than any artificial symbolism we may choose to read into these pictures. Then we shall recognise that the specifically artistic qualities that come to expression in the great works of Art, are also living in the whole general life of civilisation. Out of the common feeling of his time the artist works into the spheres of form and color and expression. The time itself works through the soul of the artist. The whole culture of the age finds expression in the characteristic works of Art.

We saw last time how the Mid-European, or Northern element, works its way upwards more or less independently, while at the same time it grows together with all that is brought to it through the Church—through Christianity from the side of Rome. Until the 12th and 13th centuries we witness the development of a unique artistic life in Middle Europe, uniting the more Roman or Latin elements with a strongly individual characterisation of all that is life and movement in the human soul. We cannot understand what took place until the 12th and 13th centuries if we merely consider what we know of the spread of Christianity in the succeeding time. For the whole spread of Christianity was a very different thing in those earlier centuries from what it afterwards became. It was only in later times that the rigidly dogmatic qualities which so repel us, came into prominence, though, needless to say, there were all manner of excesses even before the twelfth century. And while in Middle Europe the systemmatising, formal tendency of Rome was always felt like a foreign body, still the Christian impulses found their way most wonderfully into the soul-life of the people—especially into the more subconscious, feeling elements of the soul.

This entry of Christianity into the soul found expression especially in the sphere of Art, where there was a wrestling for plastic power of expression.

Here we may point to a truth which can be characterised in two very simple statements which are, none the less, very far-reaching. We may ask this question: To what does Art appeal among the Southern peoples? To what did it appeal already in antiquity? And elsewhere in the South, in the period of its decline and in its resurrection from the early to the late Renaissance? To what does Art appeal in the more southern regions? It appeals to the fancy and imagination. This statement is of infinite importance. The appeal is to the life of the fancy and the imagination, which is present in the souls of the southern people with a slight, suggestion of a sanguine temperament in these respects. Thus in the southern regions we see the Christian ideas entering, above all, into the imaginative life, and borne by fancy into the realm of Art.

Needless to say, such a statement must not be pressed too far. I would say, the statement itself should be artistically understood.

Only so, my dear friends, could it come about that in the time of the Renaissance artistic fancy rose to such great heights of creation, while the moral life, as we showed in a recent lecture, fell to the state revealed in the attacks of Francis of Assisi, and later of Savonarola. The situation stands before us when we contrast the fiery attacks of Savonarola which were all in vain, with the infinitely rich life of Christian vision and imagination in the plastic works of Donatello, Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo and many others.

Art in the North speaks differently and appeals to a different element of soul, namely, to mind and feeling. Once more, these things must not be pressed; nevertheless, in such a statement guiding lines are given for the understanding of whole epochs of History. However we may believe that Christianity contains a peculiar, morally religious impulse of the soul, this impulse did not find its way into the element of fancy and imagination in the Southern culture which reached such giddy heights in the Renaissance. But in the North, the centuries until the 12th—nay, the beginning of the 13th—reveal in Art the progressive appeal of Christianity, and especially the tragic elements of Christianity, to human heart and feeling. The Art of the Italian Renaissance strives to make the countenance of Christianity itself as fair as possible—that, after all, is the essential element in the Renaissance Art: But the centuries to which I now refer, in Middle Europe, are all devoted to the striving to realise the Story of the Passion—with all its tragedy and drama, until the tragic story becomes their very own in heart and soul.

Down to the Carolingian period in Middle Europe, Mid-European paganism continually breaks through into the life of feeling. But in the centuries from that time onward until the 12th and 13th there arises out of the very soul of Middle Europe an inherently Christian Feeling for all human life. And the strange thing is that from the 13th century onward a certain decline can be observed. Yet, as I explained last time, even now when another element once more overwhelms it, there is still the constant striving for the Mid-European soul to assimilate into its deepest inner life all things that come to it, so that, after all, there is a continuity of work and progress in the best souls, from the 11th century on into the 15th and 16th.

The gradual entry of Christianity into the life of the people is also recognisable, or, rather, would be recognisable, if the dramatic representations which did, indeed, grow more and more significant toward the 13th century, had been preserved. All that we now bring to light again—the Christmas and Easter Plays, and Plays of the Three Wise Men—are of a later date, and are but a faint reflection of those earlier ones which tended to a more universal presentation of the Christian world-conception. The Play concerning Anti-Christ, of the 12th century, which has been found at Tegernsee in Bavaria, and a later Play on the Ten Virgins, these, too, are but echoes of Plays that were presented everywhere, dramatising the Biblical stories and the sacred legends. Out of this life with the Christian world-conception as a whole, there arose the works of Art which we shall see again today and which we say last time. There followed what I might call a slow and silent working towards the deepening of the soul's life and its artistic power of expression. It finds expression wonderfully in Dürer's representations of the Passion, and notably in the head of Christ Himself as conceived by Dürer and others. It will be a satisfaction to me if we can show these pictures, too, on some future occasion; we do not possess them at present.

If we study the progress of artistic penetration in pictures of the countenance of Christ till Dürer's time, and in other things as well, we find there was really attained in Mid-Europe at that time an astonishing degree of maturity. It lies inherent in the subtle difference between the Mid-European and Northern, and the Southern life, which developed, as it were, the last phases of the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch—(albeit the Fifth epoch already shone into the Renaissance);—the South in its deepest tendencies of feeling was still expressing the last phases of the Fourth; while in Mid-Europe and the North the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch was preparing. What afterwards became the expression of the individual, and of all that is mobile in the human soul—the soul in movement and emotion—all this was working its way up from unconscious depths.

Here we see the whole life of the two regions in their essential difference. We need only bear in mind how much in the Southern Art is due to the fact that there still existed a living atavistic perception of what plays from spiritual regions into the realms of sense. For this was, indeed, preserved in what are known to us of the Byzantine forms of Art—in all the suggestive forms and figures that have come down to us. Take, for instance, what works upon us with such suggestive power in the Art of the Mosaics, and in all that is connected with the name of Cimabue. Here it is more the Christ Figure that works upon us. In Middle Europe it is, rather, the life of Jesus that is presented to us, for the artistic forms are created directly out of the inner life of the soul.

Superhuman as is the Byzantine type of Christ, inwardly human is the Christ type which was afterwards worked out by Dürer.

The Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, including the latest flower (in the Italian Renaissance) has essentially the quality of looking upward to the superhuman and typical; the superhuman and generic nature of the soul, setting aside the individually human. The Southern peoples brought to their Art, in a far higher degree, the ancient, the generic nature of the soul in its superhuman and divine quality.

In the Northern Art, on the other hand, we see the strong decided striving of the individual, as it works its way upwards out of every single human soul. The more these things are understood, the more this will be confirmed.

The southern life still contains mankind as a whole. Think how intensely an Athenian was an Athenian, or a Spartan a Spartan, so that Aristotle rightly called man a “Zoon politicos”—a political animal. The “political animal” was developed to its greatest height in Rome, where, we might say, man lived more in the streets than in his own house; and with his soul-life, also, he lived more in the life that surrounded him than in the house of his own soul. Such, truly, was the Southern imagination as it worked in the world of space. From the very outset men live together, live together as a whole, and the life of Art itself arises out of this principle. This is a feature common to all the Southern Art. They decorate the churches and the public squares; everywhere we see how they reckon with the fact that the people run gladly together, crowd gladly into the churches, or in the public squares, drawn thither by their very temperament and expecting what will there be set before them. To possess themselves fully, they need this life in the outer world, this living with the group-soul nature—with all that is most eminently political—in the right sense of the word.

All this is different in Middle Europe. In Middle Europe man lives within himself; seeks his experiences in his own house and home, even the house of his soul. And if he is to dedicate himself to the group-nature, his heart must first be conquered for it, he must in some way be summoned to it. Many of the underlying impulses of Gothic architecture will be found to lie in this direction. The buildings erected by Gothic architecture stand there not because the people are already running together of their own accord, but, on the contrary, because they must first call the people, bring them together, as it were, through mysterious and suggestive influences. This is expressed in the very forms of the Gothic. The individuals must first be called to the group-life. And the same thing lies inherent in the whole treatment of light and darkness which I described to you the other day. In the elemental surging and interweaving of the light into the darkness, man finds an element into which he can enter to free himself from his own separate existence; albeit he can carry his individual existence, his individuality with him into this very element, because it is so akin to the nature of the soul.

In all these things we find the distinguishing feature of the Northern as against the Southern Art. Hence the striving—the successful striving—of the Northern Art to express inwardness of life and soul. We need only call to mind the portraits, the Madonnas, for instance, of Van Eyck. These Madonnas—their facial expression altogether determined by a turning inward of the life of the human soul—this speaking from an inwardness of soul in the countenance and gesture—all this, Raphael would never have painted. Raphael raises what he paints beyond the human; Van Eyck lifts it into the still more deeply human, so as to seize the human emotions with his paintings, the human hearts of those who see them. Once more it is a question of grasping the human soul.

The priesthood until the 12th and 13th centuries were well aware of these possibilities of the human soul in Europe. They reckoned with these things. They worked with the heart and mind of the people. And without a doubt, much that arose out of this wrestling for artistic powers of expression, came about through the co-operation of the religious orders with that inner life and character of the people which we have here described. We must by all means understand how these more Northerly qualities of artistic creation are connected with the protesting folk-soul of the North, rising up in opposition against the Roman element.

Luther went to Rome. But he saw nothing of the sublime heights of artistic creation; he saw only the moral degradation there. And this implies very much. No doubt he met one or another of the great painters of Rome on the Square of St. Peter's, but what concern had they for him, these men who created out of al altogether different mood of soul, something to which he had no inner relationship. And yet, Luther's very radical one-sidedness was in another way the product of the same Mid-European characteristics which, if I may say so, wrestled most sublimely in the realm of plastic, pictorial expression, and attained an artistic height that stands, in a certain way, so magnificently and independently side by side with the Art of the Italian Renaissance. (We need make no comparisons, for they are always trivial.)

We will therefore now show a few more pictures, supplementing those we showed last week. First we will show some wood-sculptures from the very beginning of the 13th century. They are at Halberstadt.

Look at this Crucifixion Group. I will only say one thing to characterise what is most important. In this group you can see how deeply the story of the Passion had found its way into their lives by that time. There is Mary, there is St. John, and in the center the Christ, looking down towards her. If you could see the face you would see an infinite deepening of soul in the expression, an overwhelming depth. In Mary, if you have a feeling for these things, you will recognise at once the flowing together of the more Roman, priestly conception with the Mid-European depth and tenderness of feeling. Here it is recognisable in a most wonderful way. We shall presently show the face of Mary in detail.

This group reveals how they contrived, out of the specifically Mid-European creative impulse of the soul, to mould the Christianity which had conquered the Mid-European country. We will now show the detail.

Wonderfully characteristic is the expression of the face. The expression in the Southern Art is such that the eyes look far out into the world; in the Northern Art the soul, as it were, presses forward into the look of the eyes from within. Here the two are altogether interwoven—united with one another. A tenderness of soul in the expressions hovers gently, wonderfully, over a more Latin, Roman rounding and perfection of the features.

These things must not be pressed. But I beg of you to observe in all the following pictures how very differently the clothing and drapery is treated in the Mid-European Art and in the Southern. Undoubtedly, such things must not be pressed too far; yet it is true to say that in all the Southern Art the drapery rather surrounds and veils the human form, follows the lines of the form closely, continuing, as it were, the bodily forms. In the Mid-European Art the treatment of the drapery is different. It proceeds from the emotion and movement of the soul. According to the gesture of the hand and the whole attitude of the figure, the quick, mobile life of soul is continued into the raiment. The latter adheres less closely to the body. It does not seek, as in the Southern Art, to veil or to express the forms of the body. It is, rather, like a continuation of the living experience of the soul. You will see this more and more distinctly as we go on into the following centuries.

We have now come to the famous:

This, too, is in the wood, and dates from the first third of the 13th century. None the less, you will see in it a wonderful progression from the former group whose subject is so similar. Observe the communion of soul between the Mary and the Christ-Figure. See how the faith in the Christian world-conception, deeply united with the human soul, appears in the St. John and in the Mary-Figure, as the power that overcomes all things. The Christian world-conception had entered into the souls of these people so as to become an universal historic conception of all earthly evolution. See how Adam, down here, receives the Blood of the Redeemer dropping downward from the Cross. Study the face of Adam, how he is touched by the influence of Grace which he can now receive inasmuch as he may catch the Blood of the Redeemer flowing from the Cross. You will realise with what infinite depths Christianity had found its may into the lives of these people. It had risen to a universal and truly Cosmic conception.

Angels carry the Cross. God the Father descends with the Dove, setting His seal upon the fact that what He had given to the Earth in His Son gives, at this moment, the whole Earth its meaning. In this group with all its artistic perfection we see how deeply Christianity had found its way into Middle Europe,because they tried again and again to permeate it with the human heart and feeling,—to permeate it from within the human soul.

On the other hand, in the South, it was permeated by fancy and imagination, thus producing that peculiar permeation, so free from the moral element—(or shall we say, in order not to give offence, so free from moral cant)—which comes to expression in the Renaissance in the South.

If you were to make a study of the progress in the representation of the Christ-Figure, this Head of Christ would be an important station. Also the Head of Christ in the Cathedral of Amiens, and afterwards, the Head of Christ by Albrecht Dürer.

We now pass to some sculptures which are found at Freiburg in Saxony, also dating from the first third of the 13th century. They show an altogether different aspect, though here, too, it is the sacred history, and a deep striving for inwardness. It is not too much to say that one loves to dwell on every single face. The next picture:

shows us two figures. The one, the figure of a woman, is hard to interpret. Perhaps she is an “Ecclesia.” The other is said to be Aaron. These things are not essential. The figures are undoubtedly connected, allegorically or in some other way, with the Christian world-conception. Once more, observe the deepening of the soul's life. The contrast of expression between the face on the left, and that on the right is particularly fascinating from this point of view.

Supplementing what we showed last time of the Cathedrals at Naumburg and Strasburg, we will now show some sculptures from the Cathedral at Bamberg. Here, to begin with, we have two.

See how directly the dramatic element, the living movement of soul, is expressed in the attitudes, representing the interchange between one soul and another. C. single moment is presented to us, while at the same time the two contrasting characters are well expressed.

The composition is by no means great, but the expressiveness of soul is marvellous. He must remember that this dates from about 1240. Spiritual scientific research will in course of time be confirmed, in that it does not suggest—as many people still do today—that the Mid-European element, in its presentation of the Christian world-conception, was in any high degree influenced by the Southern. That, indeed, is not the case. On the contrary, the very opposite is true.

The different streams are not as yet clearly seen by external history. It is not seen, for instance, what I pointed out the other day—how the Northern impulses worked down even into the creations of Raphael and Michelangelo. Artistically, this conception is altogether a product of the Northern spirit.

This example shows how the worldly and the religious elements played into one another. This was, indeed, the case, especially at the time with which we are now dealing. The worldly and the religious were brought together in the effort which I characterised just now. The souls of men had to be won over; the individual souls must first be called—must by some means be gathered together, if they are to look up in community, in congregation, to the spiritual world. Likewise, they must first be called if they are to express reverence in one way or another, for something in the outer worldly sphere.

Hence the worldly is brought together with the ecclesiastical element. Here, then, we see the Emperor Heinrich, the Empress Kunigunde, and, on the left, St. Stephen.

Needless to say, these things presuppose, as a rule, the naivete of the common people, their blind devotion and dependence. Today, in the fond belief of our contemporaries, these things are overcome. Inwardly, they are present all the more. On the part of the great lords themselves there is very frequently the underlying idea (not unconnected with very human qualities, which shall be nameless), that they themselves stand just a little nearer to the various Saints and supersensible powers than ordinary mortals do.
We will now show a detail, the middle figure of this picture.

The Old and the New Testament were always conceived in unison, as the promise and the fulfilment. Follow the detail of these figures.

And now another figure from the same Cathedral.

A figure of Mary, showing—from whatever point of view you may consider it—how richly the qualities which I described before, come to expression in this stream of Art. You must remember that this was done about the year 1245. What would you look for in the South at that time? The next Picture, from the Cathedral at Bamberg again, represents the figure of:

A favorite representation at that time. Last time we saw the corresponding figure from the Cathedral at Strasburg. The figure of the Church is conceived with a certain inner freedom. Her soul is free, she gazes freely far into the world, with wisdom.

This figure is in contrast, as we saw last time, with the Synagogue, who is represented once more with bound and downcast eyes. The whole posture is intended to represent this contrast in every detail, even to the sweep of the drapery.

Look at the lower portion of the dress, how well it is adapted to the movement of the soul. We will insert the 'Church' once more, in order that you may compare the draperies:

And now a worldly, or secular figure from the same Cathedral.

Study the expression well. The head, which we will now show in detail, is most wonderful:

We now pass on to the 14th century, and see what had occurred by that time. We have a few figures from the Cathedral at Cologne, first half of the 14th century.

It is easy to see that a certain decline had taken place. The next picture is also from Cologne:

Going further in the 14th century we now come to a figure of St. Paul by a master known as the “Master of the Clay Figures.” These figures were executed in burnt earthenware.

Having now shown the rise, and to some extent the decline of a stream of evolution complete in itself, we will give a series of pictures from the Chartreuse de Champmol at Dijon, which are really great of their kind. Most, if not all of them are the independent work of the Dutch sculptor, Sluter, or else done under his direction. He brought to the Chartreuse at Dijon, from the Netherlands, an almost unique power of individual characterisation. From many points of view we see this individualising tendency in his work.

Here especially you see the Art of individual characterisation. Compare this Madonna and Child of Sluter's with the next picture (Moses) and realise the power of one and the same man to characterise these two.

Remember that this Chartreuse at Dijon was built in 1306 to 1334; it was therefore the beginning of the 14th century. Compare this with Michelangelo's Moses—for why should these things not be placed together—they are, indeed, comparable.

And now by the same artist as before—Sluter.

To live with the prophetic figures so as to achieve this degree of individualisation, was, indeed, most wonderful. We will now show one of the figures in detail:

These are by the same artist. The age was especially great in the creation of tomb monuments. We will show the detail of the upper part:

The figures round the base of the tomb which were formerly so small, are wonderfully executed when you come to see them in detail.

Such is the individual characterisation of all the single figures round the base of the tomb. Here is another group.

We now go on to an artist of the 15th century. (We must go according to the pictures we possess at the moment.) The last pictures, you remember, were by an artist of the early 14th century. With the Cologne Master, and the Master of the Clay Figures who made the group we saw before, we came to the 14th century. We now pass on into the 15th. Here, then, we have two figures by Hans Multscher:

This is about the middle of the 15th century. The next is a Madonna, by the same artist (Multscher).

And now we go further and further in what I described just now as the elaboration of the Christian subjects with deep inwardness of soul. The following are figures carved in wood, at Blutenburg (end of the 15th century). The art of characterisation has, indeed, attained its ideal to a marvellous extent.

The figure of Mary, carved in wood—end of the 13th century:

This, then, is the time when Michelangelo and Raphael were born. The next picture, too, is from Blutenburg.

The time when these highly individual figures were created was also especially great in wood-carving, with which they decorated the Choristers' seats in their churches. We will give two examples from the Frauenkirche in Munich, end of the 15th century.

We now come to the sculptor who worked at the end of the 15th century.

And this was the time when the High Renaissance in Italy had not as yet begun. These works were created about 1490–1495.

This St. Elizabeth—created in the early 16th century—is now in the (Germanisches Museum, at Nuremberg.)

This, too, dates from the beginning of the 16th century.

There are wonderful types among these twelve Apostles; one would like to study every single head alone:

Finally, we give two examples of the sculptor—Veit Stoss—early 16th century, who worked in Cracow and also in Southern Germany, creating his plastic works in many different materials.

The next picture is in Nuremberg,. “The Angel's Greeting,” it is called.

I will also show three paintings by Hans Baldung, also known as Hans Grun, who worked in Dürer's workshop at the beginning of the 16th century—about 1507–1509.

His pictures reveal once more, in the sphere of painting, how everything is turned towards the life of the soul.

Hans Baldung was also a portrait painter of no mean order. Here you have an example.

Here you see how the same master cultivated the art of portraiture. He was a pupil of Dürer's, who subsequently lived at Strasburg, and at Freiburg in Breisgau. He did some wonderful paintings of the Life of Christ, and of the Mother of Christ. You will find a picture by him at Basel—“Christ on the Cross.”

This picture, then, is of the early 16th century—the time of Raphael and Michelangelo in Rome.

My dear Friends, the more we multiply these pictures, the more should we see, from this juxtaposition of the Northern and Southern Art, what an immense revolution took place at the turn of the fourth and fifth Post-Atlantean Epochs. And the more should we realise how infinitely rich in content is the simple statement that at that historic moment Civilisation passed from the development of the Intellectual, or Feeling Soul into that of the Spiritual Soul. Infinitely much is contained in such a simple statement. But we only learn to understand these things of Spiritual Science rightly when we follow them into the several and detailed domains of human life.

In conclusion, my dear Friends, I still wish to speak a word of solemn remembrance to you on this day. The day after tomorrow is the anniversary of the death of our dear friend, Fraulein Stinde, and in our hearts we will not forget to think on that day of all that came into our Movement through the work of this dear and valued member.

And we will also turn our thoughts to her soul as she works on in the Spiritual Worlds—deeply and lovingly connected as she is with our Movement. On this day especially we will deepen the thoughts and feelings of our hearts which are directed to her.

I only wished to add this word of remembrance to remind you of the day after tomorrow.

In memory of all that unites us with our dear friend—with the soul of our dear Sophie Stinde—let us now rise from our seats.

Translated by Dorothy S. Osmond and Owen Barfield

Many years ago, when I was working in Berlin, the news filtered into a theatre during the performance that the Empress of Austria had been assassinated at Geneva by one of the “Propagandists by Action”—so they were being called at that time. [1] During one of the intervals I happened to be standing near a man who was then a literary critic in Berlin and has since written philosophical books which have gained a certain reputation. This man voiced his astonishment at the news in a way that still lingers in my memory. He said: “One can understand many things that happen in the world without in the least justifying or approving of them ... one can understand many things that happen ... but that a revolutionary movement should instigate the murder of a sick woman whose continued existence could have made no real difference, whose death anyhow can have no clear connection with any political idea, this”—said the man—“is incomprehensible; it just doesn't make sense.”

I am sure this man was expressing what must be the opinion of every right-minded, educated person in the modern world. We are reminded that in the life of men and the course of history, things do happen which seem senseless and purposeless not only when judged by the normal standards but even when they are attributed to some form of aberration.

But events of this very nature—and many, many others might be cited—show that what appears outwardly incomprehensible must inevitably do so because behind the scenes of world affairs—if I may use this expression—spiritual forces and spiritual deeds are playing to and fro [a phrase meaning back and forth – e.Ed], both in the good and in the bad sense. These spiritual deeds and happenings are only to be understood when the light of Spiritual Science can be shed into those regions that lie behind the scenes of life in the ordinary world of the senses. Things happen which become intelligible only when they can be illumined by ideas derived from the spiritual world and which, if viewed merely in their connection with the world of the senses, inevitably seem devoid of meaning and purpose—either good or bad. And if by what may be called chance but may also possibly have been a matter of karma in symbolic garb, one has an experience of this kind in a theatre, then it prompts the reaction that what is going on “behind the scenes” looks very different from what is happening on the stage.

I have made these preliminary remarks because I propose today to speak about matters which will be further elaborated when we are next together—matters which it is important for men at the present time to know about and which are connected with events behind the scenes of the physical plane. These things cannot be understood if we give way to the easy-going modern habit of merely generalising about the facts of the spiritual world and their connection with human affairs on the Earth; they become intelligible only when we penetrate as deeply as possible into the concrete realities of the spiritual world.

You know from many passages in the Lecture-Courses that the evolution of mankind is to be divided into certain periods: the vast periods of the Saturn-, Sun-, Moon-evolutions; the shorter periods of the Lemurian, Atlantean and our own Post-Atlantean epochs; and again within these shorter periods which, however, extend over long stretches of time, we speak of certain epochs of culture within the Post-Atlantean period: the ancient Indian, the ancient Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean, the Greco-Latin and our own Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch.

The reason for speaking of these periods is that the faculties of humanity as a whole—in this case more particularly the faculties of soul—change fundamentally from one period to another; they change because a very real evolution takes place in every such period—I am speaking now of the shortest. Every such period contains something which mankind is obliged to undergo, something which may cause either happiness or unhappiness, which has to be realised and understood, which is the source of impulses of will leading to deeds, and so forth. The tasks devolving upon the Egypto-Chaldean epoch of civilisation differed from those of the Greco-Latin epoch—and our own age, too, faces its own specific tasks.

A really true idea of the distinct tasks of the several epochs in regard to the development of certain qualities—especially those of which we shall speak today—cannot be formed without taking into account the experiences contributed by human life as a whole to the external development of which history speaks and to which the materialistic thought of today prefers to confine itself. No really adequate characterisation of the successive epochs can, however, be drawn from these experiences on the physical plane, for they, after all, constitute only one part of that cycle of human life which stretches from birth to death and from death onwards to a new birth. For in what actually happens, there is a constant interplay and interaction between the forces that come down from the world in which man lives between death and a new birth and those which are unfolded in his life here, on the physical plane. There is an unceasing interplay between the forces unfolded by human beings after death and those operating on the physical plane.

Conditions throughout the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch were such that certain things might safely be withheld from the consciousness of man. Many things in respect of which men of the Greco-Latin epoch might without harm be kept unconscious must, however, enter more and more into the consciousness of those living in the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. During this Fifth epoch, human beings must become conscious of much that in earlier times could remain in the unconscious.

These things unfold according to certain spiritual laws, under a kind of spiritual necessity. It is part of the destiny of the human race that certain faculties of comprehension and also certain forces of will, shall unfold in a particular epoch. In this Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch humanity becomes ripe for the knowledge of certain things, just as in earlier epochs men became ripe in other respects. One thing in respect of which humanity has become sufficiently mature in the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch seems highly paradoxical to the modern mind, because public opinion moves for the most part in exactly the opposite direction, would prefer, as it were, to lead men in the opposite direction. But this will be of no avail. The spiritual forces with which men are, if I may put it so, inoculated, in the course of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, will be stronger than the wishes of certain people, stronger than the dictates of public opinion.

One of these things—and it will assert itself most powerfully—is the guiding or directing of men more deeply in line with occult principles than has ever before been possible. It lies in the general character of evolution that during this Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, certain conditions connected with the exercise of power, of influence, must pass into the hands of small groups who will wield great power over other, large masses of people.

A certain section of public opinion vehemently resists this trend; nevertheless it will assert itself and for the following reason. During the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, simply because of inner maturity and evolutionary necessity, a large portion of humanity will unfold certain spiritual faculties, a certain natural capacity to see into the spiritual world. This portion of humanity, which will indeed provide the best foundation for the future Sixth Post-Atlantean epoch—this portion of humanity, while in process of preparation during the Fifth epoch, will show little inclination to be actively concerned with the affairs of the physical plane. Such men will have little interest in physical affairs and will be engrossed in ennobling the life of soul, in regulating certain matters connected with the spiritual life. And because of this, others less spiritually inclined will be able to seize for themselves certain factors connected with the exercise of power—to get them into their own hands.

This is something that arises with a kind of necessity. Among men who were cognisant of these things it was the subject of much discussion throughout the last third of the nineteenth century, and they always stressed the vital necessity that this potential should be directed - not into evil but into good channels. During the last third of the nineteenth century, especially just before its turn, one could hear occultists on every hand insisting that precautions must be taken to ensure that such means of power come into the hands of worthy men. Naturally, with the exception of a very few groups, opinions differed as to who were really worthy; each group championed the claims of those with whom the world had brought it into contact. But the whole matter was the subject of almost day-to-day conversation among occultists and, in a certain sense, has remained so to this day.

Simply because man attains the requisite degree of maturity, other things, too, will emerge in the course of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, will become known to men and also pass into the sphere of the will. These are things which lead still further, so far indeed that they cannot but cause grave anxiety to everybody who is cognisant of them.

This Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch confronts the fact that the physical apparatus of human thinking becomes capable of understanding certain factors relating to illness and processes of healing, connections of Nature-processes with illnesses. This causes anxiety to those possessing real knowledge of these matters because their aim now must be to ensure that those who will be chosen to bring the relevant teachings and impulses to men will do so in the right and worthy way. For two possibilities exist: information about these things will either be conveyed to men in a form which does harm, or it may be imparted in a way which is for the good of the world. These things are connected with the most intimate depths of certain conditions relating to human propagation, with circumstances connected with illnesses and with the onset of death, and when knowledge concerning them spreads among mankind they give rise to thoughts and impulses of deep import and significance. And the purpose of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch is that men shall become free enough to be enlightened about certain truths hitherto kept in the more unconscious region of the human soul, and to master them.

Those who knew, concerned themselves deeply with all the implications of these things and with the steps that could be taken in one direction or the other. For everything that can arise in this way bestows a certain power, enables a hand to be taken to a very far-reaching extent in the shaping of human affairs. All these considerations, as I said, occupied an important place in spiritual-scientific movements during the nineteenth century, and still do so, to this day, in connection with the evolution of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch.

Another fact must here be considered, a fact that to anyone cognisant of it, is very significant, and must therefore be brought into relation with many others. I have mentioned it here and there in the Lecture-Courses. When, having crossed the threshold of the spiritual world, a man begins to make observations there, peculiar facts, essentially individual facts come before his soul's eye. And then a deeper scrutiny of things which at first sight seem to have nothing to do with each other, reveals that they are indeed connected, that they mutually illumine and explain each other and in doing so greatly facilitate penetration into the nature of the spiritual world.

The other fact, of which I am now going to speak, will, at first, certainly not give you the impression of being connected with what I have just said, yet the very contrary proves to be the case. This other fact is the following: When one turns to the souls of human beings who have died in our present age and learns the circumstances of their existence, one perceives souls among them who feel grave apprehension at the prospect of coming into contact with those human souls who, here on Earth, met their death as did the Empress of Austria at that time in Geneva. One discovers that human beings sent through the Gate of Death by, let us say, the “Propagandists by Action,” are a cause of grave anxiety to certain human beings who passed through death in a normal way and then have further experiences in the spiritual world. One notices, as it were, that those who died in the normal way and who may have occasion to contact these other souls, are fearful of such contact after death, and shrink from it.

I beg you, in such a case, to ignore the emotional paradox. Such innumerable possibilities of association and contact are open to souls that it would be out of place to allow oneself here to be swayed by feelings of compassion, however natural and justifiable they may be. A case like this must be viewed quite objectively. It is a fact that souls who have passed through the Gate of Death normally, feel a certain dread of those whose death was brought about by violent means resembling those adopted by anarchist propaganda.

Now there is a certain very strange connection between this last fact and the other of which I spoke previously. Closer scrutiny reveals that these souls who met their death by violent means come into possession of certain knowledge in the spiritual world after death, which the other souls do not wish to receive from them prematurely, before it is right and healthy to do so. For the very reason that here, on the physical plane, they were deprived of life in this way and sent with such violence through the Gate of Death, these souls retain a certain possibility of turning to account the powers and forces they possessed on Earth, for example, the power of intellect. From the other side, from the spiritual world, such souls can make use of the powers which were bound up with the physical body here on Earth and achieve with them something quite other than it is possible to achieve during life in the physical body. Thereby these souls are able to acquire knowledge of certain things earlier than is really conducive to the progress of human evolution.

It is very remarkable that both meaning and purpose are revealed in this way in a number of deeds hitherto seeming to lack all rhyme or reason. These deeds assume a strange aspect to one who sees things as they really are. In the physical world, all kinds of nonsense is talked; it may sound plausible but is, well just nonsense to closer observation. Here, in the physical world, it is said: people like these “Propagandists by Action” who murder others, are simply out to draw attention to misery in the world; it is a means of active agitation, etc., etc.. But one who analyses the matter and tries to bring it into line with the laws of social life will realise at once that, although such deeds appear to be senseless, their meaning suddenly becomes clear in the light of the knowledge that souls sent into the spiritual world in this violent way, acquire knowledge which they really ought not yet to possess and of which souls who died a normal death have a positive dread.

To investigate the causes underlying assassinations committed at various times, like that of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, to discover the position of these souls who come into the spiritual world with certain secrets in their keeping—with consequences of which we shall speak—to investigate these things occultly was of course the important thing. A merely external view of the series of such assassinations may ascribe them all to chance; but if one analyses the matter, if one considers who the individuals thus sent to their death really are, it becomes clear that they have been selected, as it were—not, of course from the standpoint of the physical world but from that of the spiritual world. Investigation of this aspect of many of the well-known assassinations reveals something very remarkable. In the cases of Carnot, [2] the Empress Elizabeth of Austria and certain others, the remarkable fact is revealed that although the possibility of achieving something by their assassinations certainly existed, it was, as a matter of fact, not achieved at all. It would have been achieved if souls had been found to be their “customers,” if I may put it so. If that had happened, both sides would have incurred transcendental, super-sensible guilt: those who had passed through death in the normal way would have had experiences which would have driven them into blameworthy paths, and those whose deaths had been caused by violence, by assassination, would have been guilty of divulging knowledge before the proper time.

Higher Spiritual Beings, Higher Hierarchies, prevented this from happening because of certain consequences which would have ensued and which it was necessary to frustrate for the sake of the well-being of a certain part of mankind. By the intervention of higher Spiritual Beings, the harm that might have resulted was prevented. And so there was evidence here of an attempt made with ineffective means, or rather, with means that had been deprived of their effectiveness. It was an attempt made in the spiritual world, behind the scenes of the physical world.

Probing into the deeper foundations of such matters, we discover the source of the impulses underlying them. And in the case of many of the assassinations which were news in Europe and will be known to you, the impulses—they were spiritual impulses, remember—were not really primary and original but were derivatives; they were “defence measures,” if this rather trivial expression is permissible. The purpose of these deeds was to put a stop to something else, to frustrate other deeds, or, better said, to prevent the consequences of other deeds tending in the same direction.

This is a very mysterious matter and can only be understood by scrutinising what, exactly, it was proposed to prevent, against what, exactly, these defence measures were taken. Spiritual Science penetrates here into things deeply connected with the impulses of human life in the present and in the future and of which it is extremely difficult to speak because they everywhere run counter to certain naive and even justifiable interests of men. The matter becomes comprehensible only when we take into consideration the fact that all these attempts by means of assassinations of which I have spoken up to now, were amateurishly directed, were not under “expert” guidance. They were attempts made without thorough knowledge of the occult connections; they were defence measures born of fear, and they were not under united leadership. They become intelligible only when we study the plan which they were actually intended to avert, and which was itself being pursued and staged with much greater insight. In the nineteenth century, a remarkable Order was still in existence over in the East: the Order of the “Thugs.” This Order, which flourished in a certain region of Asia, did not arise out of mere desire—the desire, I mean, of its members—to gain their ends. The members of this Order were charged with the task of murdering certain persons named by very secret and unknown superiors. It was an Order of murderers, so to speak, with the task of putting certain individuals to death. Evidence of its activity filtered through from time to time in news announcing the murder of such and such a person. The murder was committed on the orders of unknown superiors who had charged some member of this Order of the Thugs to carry it out.

In the places where this was undertaken, the aim was well understood. By arranging circumstances of the physical plane in such a way that the establishment of this Order of the Thugs was possible, and then by directing its activities as required, the plan was to bring about the violent death of such persons as would be equipped after their death with the faculty for learning certain secrets. The individuals who managed all this also organised corresponding conditions here, on the physical plane, to act as “mirrors”—“mirror events” as they are called in occultism. Such was the intention: to organise the appropriate “mirror events.” Certain events of this kind—if only a few—have actually been organised on the physical plane. It is done in this way: certain suitable personalities are trained to be mediums, put into a mediumistic condition and by certain machinations the currents from the spiritual world are directed to the medium. The medium then divulges certain secrets which can only be disclosed by this means, namely, that in yonder world a person killed by a deed of violence, turns to account here, on the Earth, those forces which owing to his violent death can still be made use of; as souls, they fathom certain secrets and then instill them into the medium. And it is possible for those interested in such research here, on the Earth, to investigate what these souls are instilling by such means.

What is investigated in this way is a sort of “premature spiritual birth”—if I may use this expression. The souls who passed through the Gate of Death in the normal way and are concerned with such things, know that they must be preparing themselves now—and they make it plain that they are engaged in this preparation—in order, later on, when humanity has sufficiently matured, to bring down many things to the Earth and inject them into the Earth by rightful means. This, indeed, is an important task devolving upon a number of human beings now passing through the Gate of Death. Having attained the requisite maturity for certain secrets at the right time—not prematurely, as is the case when forces generated by violent deaths are put into operation—the task of these souls is to use and apply the normal forces. It is actually the task of these human beings to acquire control of these forces and then to inspire them into men living on the Earth who are not mediums at all but who should experience them in the normal, legitimate way—through genuine Inspiration.

In normal life this would be a matter of waiting. But because, as the result of occult crime, these things which ought to come much later are sent as premature spiritual births along the path indicated—because of this, individuals intending evil to humanity and who in this sense are “black” or “grey” magicians, capture such secrets for their own ends.

Behind the scenes of outer happenings, such things have been proceeding during our own decades. The intention was this: to place in the hands of a certain group of men, firstly, the secret of the control of masses—I spoke of this to begin with. It is the secret of how to gain extensive control over those masses who concern themselves little with external affairs, yet possess spiritual capacities and are especially qualified to assist in the preparation of the Sixth Post-Atlantean epoch—it is the secret, too, of how the art of controlling these masses can be placed in the hands of a few individuals.

That was the one aim. The other is something that will play an important role in the future: it is a matter of acquiring the secret means whereby factors connected with processes of disease, with the process of propagation, may be given a particular turn.

Among a few friends, I have already spoken of these things. The age of materialism is striving, through the work of certain circles, to paralyse, to eliminate all spiritual development in mankind, to bring human beings to a point where simply by temperament and character they reject everything that is spiritual and regard it as folly.

This trend—and it is already perceptible in some individuals today—will intensify. People will actually long for the time when the Spiritual is universally deemed to be insanity, craziness! Attempts will be made to achieve this end by inoculations; just as viruses ¹ have been discovered as means of protection against illnesses, so certain inoculations will be used to influence the human body in such a way that it provides no place for the spiritual proclivities of the soul. Human beings will be immunised against any predisposition for spiritual ideas ... such, at least, will be the endeavour. They will try by inoculation to bring it about that even in childhood, human beings lose the urge towards the spiritual life. This is only one of the aspects of that more intimate knowledge, relating to the connection of Nature-processes and Nature-specifics with the human organism, which must arise during the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. These things will certainly find their way into the life of mankind when the time comes. The only question is whether success will have attended those previous attempts—by means of such premature spiritual births as I have mentioned—to put knowledge into the hands of individuals who will use it for their own ends ... or whether the knowledge of these things will come in the right way, at the right time, and thus promote the well-being of humanity.

There was nothing amateurish about the methods of the organisation designed for promoting these premature spiritual births; with the help of the Order of murderers known as the Thugs, it worked very systematically, albeit in a way which horrifies anyone who has the good of humanity at heart. It worked systematically, not amateurishly, with full knowledge of the means required.

Because the effort was being made through instruments acquired prematurely from the spiritual world to place part of mankind in the egotistical possession of knowledge which, as humanity matures will be acquired in any case during the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch ... because this was being striven for, there arose in other groups of men the uneasiness and anxiety which staged this “Propaganda by Action” as a counter-blast, so to speak; it was intended to be a help but, being the child of fear, it was an amateurish attempt, a provisional attempt made with ineffective means.

These things that proceed behind the scenes of external happenings, are of deep import. Nor would they be mentioned here if it were not a necessity and a duty to bring them to the attention of people trained to some extent in Spiritual Science. It is a necessity for such things to pass into the consciousness of humanity in the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. Only so can the goal of earthly evolution be attained.

Human beings must embark upon the unpleasant task of abandoning the mode of thinking which the universities produce in the so-called educated classes today; a time must come when a number of human beings declare themselves ready to accept this uncomfortable world-conception which takes its direction, its concepts, its ideas, from the spiritual world. For men must not, dare not, linger in the condition of sleep that is so congenial to those abstract concepts for which the age of materialism strives and then calls “noble.”

Thinking over what I have thus indicated, you will realise that a whole number of possibilities exist for making use of currents emanating from the spiritual world in order to bring evil things to pass on the Earth during this Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch. There are many, many such possibilities—today I have told you of one. And the obligation to stress the necessity that such knowledge should reach the consciousness of a certain number of souls—this is bound up with the fundamental character of our age. The second half of the nineteenth century was an extremely important period. I have often indicated to circles of friends here and there that the year 1841 was a critical time, a year of decision and crisis. This, of course, is not discovered by looking merely at the events that happened in the physical world, but only by studying these events in connection with what was going on in the spiritual world. The year 1841 was, in truth, the critical year in respect of the onset of the age of materialism, for at that time a very definite battle began in the spiritual worlds—a battle waged by certain Spirits, Spirits of Darkness as we may call them, belonging to the hierarchical rank of the Angeloi. In the spiritual worlds they fought out this battle until the autumn of 1879. They were striving for many and definite aims, only one of which shall be mentioned today. Between the years 1841 and 1879, decision was to be taken as to whether a certain store of spiritual wisdom could be made sufficiently mature to trickle gradually down to the Earth from the last third of the nineteenth century onwards, that is to say, to enter into the souls of men as a stimulus to spiritual knowledge, to the knowledge described today as that of Spiritual Science, which has only been possible since that time.

The aim of these Angeloi-Spirits between the years 1841 and 1879 was to prevent what was thus to flow down to the Earth, from coming to maturity in the spiritual world. But these Spirits of Darkness were defeated in the war they waged against the Spirits of Light during this period. In the year 1879, on a smaller scale, an event came to pass of the kind that has several times come to pass in the course of evolution, and has always been pictured symbolically as the victory of Michael, or St. George, over the Dragon. In the year 1879, too, the Dragon was overcome in a certain realm. This time the “Dragon” was the Angeloi-Spirits who were striving for but could not achieve the aim I have indicated. In 1879, therefore, they were cast out of the spiritual world into the world of men—and here, in this world, they wander among humanity. They are present here, sending their forces into men's thoughts, feelings and impulses of will, egging them on to this undertaking or another. They have not been able to prevent the onset of the age when the spiritual knowledge flows down—their defeat in the battle lies precisely in this—for the spiritual knowledge is here and will unfold increasingly; human beings will be able to acquire the faculty of seeing into the spiritual world.

But having been cast down to the Earth, these Angeloi-Spirits are intent upon doing harm with the down-flowing knowledge; they want to guide it into wrongful channels, to rob it of its power for good and lead it into paths of evil. In short, having been cast down since the year 1879, their aim is to achieve here, with the help of men, what they were unable to achieve with the help of the Spirits in yonder world. Their aim is to bring ruin to that part of the good plan for world-evolution which consists in causing the knowledge of the control of masses, the knowledge concerning birth, illness and death, among other things, to spread among men when the time is ripe. These Spirits of Darkness want to spread such knowledge too soon, by means of the premature spiritual births. Among their other objects and activities, these Spirits operate in the manner I have just indicated.

The only way to combat the influence of these Ahrimanic Beings is to realise that against certain aims of Ahriman nothing avails except to see through him, to know that he is there. I have indicated this repeatedly in the Mystery Plays; think only of the end of the last Play. The Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch must evolve to the stage where many human beings address the Ahrimanic Powers and Beings as Faust addresses Mephistopheles: “In thy Nothingness I hope to find the All.” Men must be resolved to look into that realm where materialism sees the “Nothingness” and there see ... the spiritual world! Ahriman-Mephistopheles is then obliged to speak to such men as he speaks to Faust when sending him to the “Mothers”:

“I will not grudge my praise before thou goest, For well I see that thou the Devil knowest.”

The other day, I said, jokingly, in Dornach: “Mephistopheles would not have made such a remark to Woodrow Wilson! To Woodrow Wilson he would have said: ‘The little fellows never notice the Devil, even when he has them by the collar!’” Truly, it is of the greatest importance that men shall learn to see into the realities of the spiritual world. And, believe me, it is simply the fact, that when, on the one side, there is some special necessity, the opposing forces are also especially strong—and so, today, men put up strong resistance to these things, struggle against them.

I beg you here in Zurich, in your laudable and welcome efforts to bring Spiritual Science to certain still very hostile circles, to be under no illusions! Many disappointments—and at first, nothing but disappointments—await all efforts to direct things that must come to pass, into the right paths. This, of course, should never deter us. We must be so imbued with the impulse needed for the present age, that we do what has to be done without regard to results—whether they fall out one way or the other.

This attitude alone makes achievement possible—and then it is often reached by an entirely unexpected route. I beg you to remember, too, that a great deal must often be done that yields no gratifying results. For the propaganda of Spiritual Science is a different matter from other current forms of propaganda. In these other domains, people are for the most part told things with which they are as familiar as devout ladies sitting in church are familiar with what the clergyman says from the pulpit. The programmes of most leagues and societies contain subject matter that can be imbibed very light-heartedly and superficially—it usually is, and remains, pure abstraction. Fine programmes are made—but these programmes are unrelated to and incapable of penetrating into reality. If it is our desire to cultivate spiritual strivings in this Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch, we must regard them as we regard the Living. What is the nature of the Living? The Living, the Life, in the realm of Spirit has its image in the realm of the Living in Nature. I ask you: is a fish in the sea afraid of laying a number of eggs that come to nothing? Ask yourselves how many of the eggs that are actually laid, turn into fish? How many come to nothing? As it is in life, so, too, it is in the spiritual life. You may speak for long years, on countless occasions, to vast numbers of people ... and you must be satisfied if interest, at most, is awakened in a few among them—for that inheres in the nature of the Living. Achievement in any degree is only possible when one proceeds as Nature proceeds—Nature being the image of the Spirit. What would happen if Nature hesitated to allow living beings to lay the eggs that come to nothing, because a number obviously perish in the course of a year? The Nature-process continues and, moreover, achieves evolution. Considerations as to whether any particular thing can be achieved, whether it is in line with this or with that—are of no moment. What is of moment is that in the thing itself we see the impulse and that we simply cannot do otherwise than carry this impulse into the world.

And looking at the reasons—a few of which have been indicated today—why this impulse must be carried out into the world during the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch ... truly they are serious enough! Where necessity is greatest, remember, there the opposition is strongest. Men will have to learn to view all these things that come to pass here, on the physical plane, and in our time present a truly terrible aspect, in their connection with happenings behind the scenes. Only then do they become intelligible. But the historians, the sociologists, the economists, the politicians of today, who derive their rules and laws exclusively from the physical plane well, as far as the actual necessities are concerned, they act like persons who begin some important task by stretching themselves on a chaise lounge and going to sleep, believing they can achieve it in the world of dream. The majority of those who belong to the world of culture, to the several branches of science today, really do set to work like this; in their state of dream they let reality pass them by. How do men write treatises on history, on sociology? They write without a single inkling of the real forces at play behind the subject of their dreamings. The realities underlying such deeply decisive events as we are witnessing nowadays, lie around modern men of science like the walls of a room into which they have been carried during sleep, have never seen and in which they go on sleeping. This is how materialistic science acquaints itself with the world.

In my book Vom Menschenratsel (The Riddle of Man) I have described a mode of consciousness that is at the same time a “seeing” (Schauendes Bewusstsein). This must, to a certain degree, become a faculty in humanity of the Fifth Post-Atlantean epoch for the following reason. Certain secrets must come into the open because otherwise they would be spread among humanity by unlawful means such as those of which I have told you today. As I said, it is not easy to speak of these things, but in duty bound it is necessary to do so. Men must acquire for many things a gift of observation very different from the clumsy faculty of observation in vogue today.

In connection with what has been said, I want to add the following. Firstly, men can acquire something, even today, by trying to take things normally ascribed to chance seriously and regard them as hints for deepening the life of soul. Suppose you read that at one place or another, on this or that date, a certain man died. A great deal may light up if one asks oneself: “How would it have been if that man had died three months earlier or three months later?” reckoning, of course, merely with possibilities. But you may be sure that if such a question is put, forces are released whereby you will discern other things. Or again, while traveling in a train you may have a conversation that means a great deal to you. A materialist, naturally, would regard such a thing as a lucky stroke of chance. But those who are trying to penetrate behind the scenes of outer existence will be alert to such incidents; without forcing ideas too far but feeling that there is something in these “accidents”, they pay attention, because these things point to forces playing into and between the events—forces whose origin is neither mechanical nor mathematical. That is one of the things I wanted to say.

The other is this, and I want to reiterate it with emphasis. In spite of the materialism of our time, much that is spiritual is revealing itself to men. But it goes against the grain to speak about these spiritual experiences. When someone becomes communicative, because he trusts you, he will often speak of what he, or some other person, has done ... If he tells you honestly and genuinely why, for example, he founded some newspaper, why he did this or that, he relates a dream, or what seemed to be a dream; he tells you of an impulse from the spiritual world. Such things happen at every turn nowadays—far more often than people think. Far more deeds are prompted by spiritual impulses than is usually imagined. But people hesitate to admit such things because they are as a rule not taken seriously.

It is well to deepen contemplation in both these directions, to be alert, in these days, to any sign or experience which strikes one's attention; and also to observe—for the opportunities are there—how in the good and in the bad sense, things are revealed from the spiritual world, which impel men to act. Nowadays, above all, this is more often the case than people think.

That is what I wanted to put before you today. Next Tuesday we will continue the subject.

[1] Note by Translator: The date of the assassination was 10^th September, 1898. “Propagandisten der Tat” seems to have been a phrase in current use at that time. In modern books of reference, this assassination and that of Carnot, of which mention is made later, are attributed to revolutionary anarchists.

[2] Carnot was the fourth President of the Third French Republic. He was assassinated at Lyons on 24^th June, 1894.

• 1. This word translated as ‘viruses’ is Impfmittel, the same word which was translated in the previous and following sentences as 'innoculations'. —rsarchive.org

Raphael belongs to those figures in mankind's spiritual history that appear all at once, like a star, who are simply there, so that one has the feeling, they arise quite suddenly from indeterminate substrata of humanity's spiritual development—disappearing again after deeply impressing their being upon this spiritual history. Closer observation reveals that such individualities, of whom one had at first assumed, they light up like a star and disappear again, actually incorporate themselves into cultural life as a whole, as into a great organism. One has this feeling quite especially with Raphael.

Herman Grimm¹, the eminent art historian, of whom I was able to speak here last time, attempted to trace Raphael's influence, his renown, through the times that follow Raphael's own age, up to our own day. He was able to show that Raphael's creations worked on after his death like a living, unified stream of spiritual development that continues beyond his death, reaching to the present. If Herman Grimm was able to show this, one would like to say on the other hand: The preceding age leaves us with the impression that it already points in a certain respect to Raphael's later entry into world evolution, just as a limb is an integral part of an organism.

In calling to mind a saying of Goethe's, one would like to transpose it, as it were, from the realm of space to the realm of time. Goethe once made the following significant utterance: “How can the human being relate himself to the infinite, other than by gathering together all his spiritual forces, drawn from many directions, asking himself: Is it permissible to think of yourself as the centre of this eternally existing universal order, when it leads at the same time to a persistent circling around an absolute mid-point?”²

In applying this saying to temporal evolution, one would like to add: in a certain respect the gods of Homer, described by him in such a grandiose manner almost a thousand years before the founding of Christianity, would lose something for us, in looking back into pre-historic times, if we were not able to see them as they re-emerged in the soul of Raphael. Only there do they attain a certain completion in the powerful visual expression of Raphael's creations. Thus, what Homer brought forth long before the advent of Christianity joins itself for us to an organic whole through what arose from Raphael's soul in the sixteenth century.

And, by the same token, if we direct our gaze to the biblical figures of which the New Testament tells us and then contemplate the works of Raphael, we have the sense that something would at once be lacking for us if the creative power in Raphael's Madonnas and similar pictures, arising from biblical tradition and legends, had not been added to the descriptions of the Bible. One would like to say, Raphael not only lives on in the centuries that follow him; what preceded him joins with his own creative activity to form an organic whole—even if this becomes evident only from a later historical viewpoint.

Thus, an expression that Lessing³ made use of in an important connection, in referring to “the education of the human race,” appears in a special light. We see how a uniform spiritual element flows through humanity's development and how this shines forth quite especially in such outstanding figures as Raphael. What we have often been able to emphasize from a spiritual scientific standpoint in regard to the development of humanity—concerning the repeated earth-lives of the human being—takes on further significance in contemplating what has been said. We become aware of the significance of the fact that the human spirit appears again and again in repeated earth-lives throughout the various epochs of humanity, bearing from one age to another what is to be implanted in mankind's spiritual development. Spiritual science seeks meaning and significance in human evolution. It does not want merely to present what happens sequentially in an ongoing straight line of development, but rather to assign an overall meaning to single periods. In appearing again and again in earth-lives that follow each other, the human soul comes onto this earth so as to be able to experience something new each time. Thus, we can really speak of an education the human soul undergoes in passing through various earth-lives; an education by means of all that is cultivated and achieved by the common spirit of humanity.

What is put forward here from a spiritual scientific standpoint concerning Raphael's relation to the general development of humanity over the last centuries is not meant as a philosophical, historical construct. It arises rather as a natural outcome of considering Raphael's creative activity from all manner of viewpoints. These reflections are not the result of an urge to elaborate on humanity's spiritual life philosophically. What is said has arisen for me after contemplating Raphael's creations from many points of view—crystallizing quite naturally into what I wish to present. However, it will not be possible to enter into particular works of Raphael as such, since this would require showing such works at the same time. But the total works of Raphael also coalesce in feeling to an overall impression. Having studied Raphael, one bears something of a total impression in one's soul. And then one may ask: How does it stand with this overall impression as regards the development of humanity?

Our attention is necessarily drawn to an important age with which Raphael is intimately connected, the age that coincides with the development of the ancient Greek culture. What the Greeks attained and what they experienced out of their inherent nature presents itself as a kind of middle epoch in the development of humanity. What precedes Greek culture, which is concurrent in a certain respect with the founding of Christianity, presents a quite different aspect from what follows it. If we consider the human being in the time prior to Greek culture, we find that the soul and spirit were much more intimately connected with the external bodily nature than was the case in subsequent periods. What we may call the “internalizing” of the human soul, the withdrawal of the human soul in turning to the spirit, in wanting to contemplate what underlies the spiritual in the world—this did not exist in the same measure as it does today for the times preceding the Greek period. For human beings of that earlier time it was rather that in making use of their bodily organs, the spiritual secrets of existence illuminated their souls simultaneously. A detached view of the sense world, such as we find in today's conventional science, did not exist in those older times. The human being beheld objects with his senses, sensing at the same time, in having the impression before him, what lives and weaves in things of a soul-spiritual nature. The spiritual resulted for human beings from the things themselves, from making use of their sense organs. A withdrawal from sense impressions, in giving oneself over to inner experience, so as to arrive at the spiritual in the world, was not necessary in older times.

If we go very far back in the development of humanity, we find that what may be called, in the best sense of the word, “clairvoyant contemplation of things,” was a general property of the humanity of primeval times. This clairvoyant contemplation was not attained in separate states but was simply there and as natural as sense perception. Then came Greek civilization with its own characteristic world of which it can be said that, though the internalizing of spiritual life begins here, what the spirit experiences inwardly is still seen in connection with what goes on externally in the sense world. In Greece the sensory and the psycho-spiritual hold each other in balance. The spiritual was no longer given in such an immediate fashion together with sense perception as in the time preceding Greece. The spiritual welled up as it were in the Greek soul as something inwardly separate, but as something felt in directing the senses out into the world. The human being became aware of the spiritual, not in the things of the external world, but in connection with them. In the time preceding Greece, the human soul was poured, as it were, into the bodily nature. It had freed itself from the bodily nature to some extent in Greece, but the soul-spiritual held the bodily nature in balance throughout the time of ancient Greece. For that reason, the creations of the Greeks appear as fully permeated with spirituality as what presented itself to their senses.—Then came the times that followed Greece, times in which the human spirit internalizes—in which it was no longer granted it to receive the spiritual element that lives and weaves in things along with sense impressions. These are times in which the human soul had to withdraw into itself and experience its own forces through conscious effort, in advancing to the spiritual. The human soul had to experience spiritual contemplation of things and sensory observation as, so to speak, two worlds.

What has just been said becomes fully evident in considering a spirit such as St. Augustine,⁴ who is barely separated farther in time from the advent of Christianity than we are from the Reformation. Humanity's progress becomes apparent in comparing what St. Augustine experienced and set forth in his writings, with what has come down to us from the Greek world. What St. Augustine expounds in his Confessions, what he shows us of the soul battles in turning inward, what he reveals of an inner being altogether withdrawn from the external world—how impossible does this seem with regard to the spirits of ancient Greece! There we see everywhere how what lives in the soul unites with what happens in the external world.

The historical development of humanity shows itself divided as though by a mighty incision. On the one hand we have the culture of ancient Greece in which humanity holds the balance with respect to the soul-spiritual and the external physical. On the other hand, we have the founding of Christianity, that proceeds from everything the human being experiences inwardly, by means of inner battles and conscious effort—turning not to the outer world in sensing the riddles of existence, but to what the spirit can ascertain when giving itself over to purely soul-spiritual forces. Altogether different are those beautiful, those majestic and so perfect Greek gods, Zeus and Apollo, as though separated by a deep chasm from the Crucified One, from inner depth and power, undistinguished by external beauty. This is already the outer symbol for the profound turning point represented by Christianity and the culture of ancient Greece in the development of humanity. We see this turning point in the spirits that follow the Greek period, taking effect as an ever greater internalizing of the soul.

The inner deepening that took place in this way is characteristic of the further development of humanity.—If one would comprehend the development of humanity, one has to become clear in one's mind that we are living in an age which implies a progressive internalization in the sense of what has been said—whether we view it in terms of the immediate past, or in looking to the future. Thus, we can foresee a time in which a still greater chasm will loom between everything that goes on in the external world, what happens in the more or less mechanical life of the outer world, and what the human soul aspires to in wanting to ascend to an understanding of spiritual heights—in attempting to take the inner steps that lead to the spiritual. We are advancing more and more toward an age of further internalization. A significant turning point in regard to this progress of humanity toward inwardness since ancient Greek times is what has come down to us in Raphael's creations.

As a quite unusual spirit, Raphael places himself as though at a watershed of mankind's development. What precedes him is in a quite special sense the beginning of the turn toward inwardness. And what follows him presents a new chapter in this internalization of the human soul. Some of what I have to say in today's presentation may sound like a kind of symbolic reflection. But it should not be taken as a mere symbolic mode of expression. On account of Raphael's towering greatness, the attempt here is to grasp what can otherwise only be clothed in trivial concepts, as far as possible in broader concepts and ideas.

Attempting a glance into Raphael's inner being, it strikes us above all how, in the year 1483, this soul appears as a veritable “spring-time birth,” undergoing an inner development and evolving brilliant creations. And when Raphael subsequently dies at thirty-seven, he is still young. So as to immerse ourselves in Raphael, in following the various stages of his development, let us turn our attention for the moment from historical events to Raphael's inner nature.

Herman Grimm has pointed out certain regular intervals in Raphael's development. Indeed, spiritual science has no need to be ashamed, in the face of disbelieving humanity, in pointing to certain cyclical laws, laws of a regular spiritual path, also of individuals, since a thinker of the calibre of Herman Grimm—without spiritual science—was led to recognize a regular cyclical development in Raphael. Herman Grimm refers to a work of Raphael that especially delights us in Milan, the Marriage of the Virgin, as a completely new phenomenon in the whole of art history, that cannot be set alongside any previous work. Thus, out of indeterminate depths, Raphael brought forth something that distinguishes itself as being entirely new in spiritual evolution.

Noting in this way what, from birth on, was a predisposition in Raphael, taking account of his progression, we can sense with Herman Grimm how he enters upon certain four-year periods. It is remarkable how Raphael advances in cycles of four years. And if we contemplate such a four-year period, we see Raphael at a higher level each time. About four years after the Marriage of the Virgin he painted The Entombment four years later the frescoes of the Camera della Segnatura and so on, in stages of four years, until the work that stood unfinished next to his deathbed, the Transfiguration of Christ.

Since everything in regard to Raphael's nature proceeds so harmoniously, we feel the need to consider it purely for itself. One then gains the impression that in the age of Raphael a quality of inwardness had to arise, quite especially in regard to the art of painting—an inwardness that had to realize itself in figures such as Raphael alone was able to bring about, born of profound soul experiences, though manifesting in sensory images. And does this not then in fact become part of history itself?

Having thus considered Raphael's inner nature, let us turn to the times and the surroundings into which he was placed. There we find that, while still a child growing up in Urbino, Raphael found himself in an environment that could have a stimulating and awakening effect on his decisive talents. A palace building had arisen in Urbino that aroused excitement throughout Italy. It could be said to have contributed to Raphael's initial harmonious disposition. However, we then see him transplanted to Perugia, to Florence and then to Rome. Basically, Raphael's life unfolded within a narrow circle. In viewing his life, how close in proximity do these places lie for us today. Raphael's entire world was circumscribed within a relatively narrow region, so far as the sense world was concerned. Only in spirit did he raise himself to other spheres.

In Perugia, where Raphael underwent his youthful development, bloody battles were the order of the day. The city was populated by a passionately aroused citizenry; noble families that lived in strife and discord, waged war on each other. One faction drove the other from the city. After a brief expulsion, the others attempted to seize the city again. And not a few times, the streets of Perugia were covered in blood and strewn with corpses. A history writer⁵ describes a peculiar scene, as do other reports of that time that are indeed quite odd. In lively fashion, we see a member of the city's nobility emerge, who, to avenge his relatives, storms into the city as a warrior. The writer describes how he rides on horseback through the streets, the embodiment of the spirit of war, massacring all in his way. But the description is such that the writer clearly had the impression: it is a matter of a justified vengeance being taken by the nobleman. The image in the historian's mind is of a warrior subjugating the enemy beneath his feet. In one of Raphael's pictures, the St. George, we can sense this image the chronicler indicates. We have the immediate impression, it could not be otherwise than that Raphael let this scene work on him. What must appear outwardly so frightful for us, resurrects inwardly in Raphael's soul and becomes the starting point for one of the greatest and most significant pictures in the development of humanity.

Thus, Raphael witnessed a quarrelling, battling population around him. Confusion and chaos, war and strife reigned all around him in the city in which he pursued his apprenticeship with his first teacher, Pietro Perugino. We have the impression that two distinct worlds coexisted in the city: The one in which cruel and horrible things occurred, and another that lived inwardly in Raphael, having little to do with what went on around him.

Then in the year 1504 we again see Raphael transplanted, now to Florence. How did matters stand with Florence when Raphael entered the city? First of all, by their conduct the inhabitants made the impression of being tired people, having undergone inner and outer states of agitation, of satiation and fatigue.—What all had not befallen Florence! Internal battles as in Perugia, bloody vendettas among patrician families, as well as battles with outside forces. But, roiling every soul in the city, there had also been the incisive experience of Savonarola⁶ who had died a martyr's death not long before Raphael arrived in the city. We have the strange figure of Savonarola of the fiery tongue, lashing out against the deplorable state of affairs, the acts of cruelty on the part of the Church, against secularization, against the paganism of the Church. The stormy words of Savonarola reverberate in us if we give ourselves over to them; words with which he captivated all of Florence, so that people not only hung on every word, but worshipped him as though a higher spirit stood before them in that ascetic body.

As a kind of religious reformer Savonarola had transformed the city of Florence. His preachings pervaded not only religious ideas, but the entire city-state. Florence stood wholly under the influence of Savonarola, as though a divine republic of some sort were to be founded. And we then see Savonarola fall prey to the powers he had spoken out against, morally and religiously. The moving scene arises of Savonarola being led with his companions to the martyr's pyre. From the gallows he turned to look down upon the people gathered there, who had for so long been enthralled by him, having once hung on his every word. This was in May of the year 1498. Having now forsaken him, they viewed him as a heretic. However, in a few among them, including artists, the words of Savonarola still echoed on. After Savonarola had suffered a martyr's death, a painter of that time assumed the monk's habit, so as to continue working in his spirit, in his order.⁷

It is not difficult to imagine the tired atmosphere that lay over Florence. We see Raphael transposed into this atmosphere in the year 1504—bringing, with his creative activity, the spirit's “breath of spring” that introduced into the city a spiritual fire, so to speak, though of a quite different kind from what Savonarola had been capable of. Taking account of the contrast between the mood of this city and Raphael's soul in its isolation (joining other artists and painters working in solitary workshops or elsewhere in Florence) a picture emerges that once again shows how Raphael stood inwardly apart from the external circumstances in which he found himself. We see the Roman popes, Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X and the whole papal system that Savonarola had railed against and the reformers had opposed. But it transpires that in this papal system we have at the same time Raphael's patrons. We see Raphael in the service of this papacy. Inwardly, his soul has in truth little in common with what meets us, for example, in his patron Julius II. The latter admitted to appearing to people as someone who “had the devil within him,” and generally had the impulse to bare his teeth in confronting his enemies.

Nominally great figures, these popes were certainly not what Savonarola or his like-minded comrades would have called Christians. The papacy had passed over into heathenism, not in the old, but in a new sense. There was not much trace of Christian piety in these circles, though certainly of the desire for splendour and lust for power. Raphael becomes the servant of this heathenized Christendom. But such that something is created out of his soul by which the Christian ideas appear in many respects in a new form. We see the most heartfelt, the most delightful content of the world of Christian legends arise in the Madonna pictures and other works of Raphael. What a stark contrast there is between the inwardness of soul in Raphael's works and all that went on around him in Rome, when he became the outer servant of the popes. How was all this possible? Already, with his apprenticeship in Perugia, and then his time in Florence, we see how disparate were the actual circumstances and Raphael's inner nature. This was quite especially the case in Rome, where he created pictures of worldwide renown. Yet Raphael and his surroundings have to be taken into account if we are to acquire a proper idea of what lived within him.

Let us allow the pictures of Raphael to work upon us. For the moment, this cannot be done with individual pictures, though one of his best-known paintings may be singled out, so as to come to an understanding of the characteristic soul quality in Raphael. It is the Sistine Madonna in nearby Dresden, which almost everyone knows from the numerous reproductions found throughout the world. This shows itself to be one of the noblest, most magnificent works of art in the history of mankind. We see the Mother and Child float toward us over the clouds that cover the globe—out of an indeterminate realm of the spiritual-supersensible—enveloped and surrounded by clouds that seem naturally to take on human form. One of them as though condenses to become the Child of the Madonna. She calls forth a quite particular feeling in us. In permeating us inwardly, this enables us to forget all legendary ideas from which the image of the Madonna derives, as well as all Christian traditions that tell of the Madonna.

I should like to characterize, not in a dull manner, but as large-heartedly as possible what we are able to feel in regard to the Madonna. In considering human evolution in the sense of spiritual science we transcend the materialistic view. According to the natural scientific view, the lower creatures evolved first, ascending as far as the human being. However, from the standpoint of spiritual science we have to see the human being as having an existence over and above the lower kingdoms of nature. With the human being we have, in spiritual scientific terms, what is much older than all the creatures that stand in relative proximity to him in the kingdoms of nature.

For spiritual science the human being existed before the animal, the plant or even the mineral kingdom came into being. We look back into far distant perspectives of time in which what is now our innermost nature was already there, only later to unite itself with the kingdoms that stand below the human being. Thus, we see the essential being of Man descend, that in truth can only be comprehended in raising ourselves to the supersensible, to what is pre-earthly. By means of spiritual science we come to recognize that no adequate conception of the human being is to be gained from forces connected only with the earth. We must raise ourselves to super-terrestrial regions to see the approach of the human being. To speak metaphorically, we must feel how something floats toward the earthly—in turning our gaze, for instance, to the sunrise in a region such as that in which Raphael lived, to the gold-gleaming sunrise. There, even in natural existence, we can come to feel how something must be added to what is earthly, of forces that we can connect with the sun. Then there arises for us, out of the golden lustre, the symbol of what floats down in order to take on the vesture of the earthly.

In Perugia quite especially, one can have the sense that the eye beholds the same sunrise seen by Raphael and that the natural phenomenon of the rising sun grants us a feeling of what is celestial in the human being. Out of the clouds shone through by the sun-gold there can arise for us—or it can at least appear so—the image of the Madonna and Child as a symbol of the eternally celestial in the human being, that wafts down to the earth out of the extraterrestrial. And below, separated by clouds, we have everything that only proceeds from the earthly. Our feeling-perception can rise to the most exalted spiritual heights, if—not theoretically and not abstractly but with our whole soul—we abandon ourselves to what affects us in Raphael's Madonna. It is a quite natural feeling one can have in regard to the world-famous picture in Dresden. And I should like to provide an example showing how it has had such an effect on some people, in quoting words written by Goethe's friend, Karl August, Duke of Weimar, concerning the ,i>Sistine Madonna, following a visit to Dresden:

With the Raphael adorning the collection there, it was for me as when, having climbed the heights of the Gotthard all day and traversed the Urseler Loch, one all of a sudden looks down on the blossoming, green valley below. As often as I saw it and looked away again, it always appeared only like an apparition. To me, even the most beautiful Corregios were only human pictures; in memory, their beautiful forms palpable to the senses.—Raphael, however, remained always like a mere breath, like one of those appearances the gods send us in female form, in our happiness or sorrow; like pictures that present themselves to us again in sleep, upon awakening or in dreaming, and having once seen, appear to us day and night ever afterwards, moving us in our inmost soul.⁸

And it is remarkable, what is to be found in following up the literature of those able to express something of a profound nature in viewing the Sistine Madonna, as also other Raphael pictures. Again and again we find comparisons with light, with the sun, with what is luminous and what is spring-like in nature.

This affords us a glimpse into Raphael's soul. We see how, despite the conditions that prevailed around him, he holds converse with the eternal secrets of human development. We sense that, in his uniqueness, Raphael does not grow out of his surroundings, but points to a tremendous past. One does not then need to speculate. Such a soul looks out into the world's circumference and does not express the secrets of existence in ideas, but forms them into a picture. By virtue of its inner completeness such a soul is self-evidently mature in the highest degree and truly bears special forces of humanity in its whole disposition,—one that must have gone through epochs that poured tremendous things into the soul, so as to reappear in what we call the life of Raphael. How, we may ask, does this re-emerge?

We see the living content of Christian legends, of Christian traditions, arise in Raphael's pictures at a time in which Christianity had become pagan and given over to external pomp and outer splendour. Greek paganism was represented in its gods and venerated by the Greeks in their intoxication with beauty. We see Raphael giving form to the figures of Christian tradition in an age in which Greek treasures that had been buried for centuries under rubble and debris on Roman soil were being dug up again. We see Raphael among those excavating. Indeed, this Rome into which Raphael was transposed makes a remarkable impression.

What precedes this time? We see, first of all, the centuries in which Rome emerges, built on the egoism of individuals whose aim is to found a community in the external world based on what the human being signifies as the citizen of a state. When Rome had attained a certain height with the time of the Caesars, we see it absorb the Greek element into its spiritual life. We see Rome, though it had overwhelmed Greece politically, now overcome by Greece spirituality. Thus, the Greek element lived on in Rome. Greek art, to the extent it was absorbed by Rome lives on in what is Roman. Rome becomes permeated through and through by the Greek element.

But why does this Greek element not remain a characteristic feature of Italy's development over the following centuries? Why did something altogether different in fact make its appearance? Because, not long after this Greek element had poured itself into the Roman world, something else came, impressing its signature more strongly on what had developed on the soil of Italy: Christianity, the internalizing of Christianity. Something was now to speak to humanity, not as had the external sensory element of Greek cities, of Greek works of art, or Greek philosophy, but by addressing itself to the inner human being, taking hold of this human soul in inner battles. Hence, we see such figures arise as St. Augustine, personalities of a quite inward disposition.

But then, since all development runs its course cyclically, we again see a yearning for beauty arise, after human beings had undergone this internalizing and had lived for a long time without the same connection to external beauty. In the “outer” we once again see what is inward. In this regard, it is of significance when in Assisi the inwardly deepened life of Francis of Assisi. Francis of Assisi appears in the works of Giotto, in which Christianity is able to speak directly to the human soul.—Even if we sense at the same time—the expression is permissible—something awkward and imperfect in Giotto's pictures, in bringing the inner nature of the human being to expression. We nonetheless have a direct line of ascent to the point where the most inward, the most impressive and noblest becomes manifest in outer form in Raphael and his contemporaries.

Entering in feeling into the way in which Raphael himself must have felt, we have to say to ourselves: In looking at a picture such as the Madonna della Sedia it strikes us, in contemplating the Madonna with the Child, along with the Child John, that we forget the rest of the world—forget above all that this Child held by the Madonna could be linked with what we know as the Golgotha experience. With Raphael's picture we forget everything that followed as the life of Christ-Jesus. We give ourselves over entirely to the moment seen here. We have simply a Mother and Child, of which Herman Grimm said, it is the most exalted mystery to be met with in the outer world. We view the moment in serenity, as though nothing could connect onto it, either before or after. We are wholly taken up by the relationship of the Madonna and Child, separated from everything else. Thus, in always showing us the eternal in a given moment, Raphael's creations appear fundamentally complete in themselves.

What must a soul feel in creating in this manner? It cannot be seized inwardly by the burning fervour of Savonarola that feels the whole Christ tragedy within itself, in speaking its words of fury, or in addressing its hearers in uplifting, pious words. We cannot imagine that Raphael could have anything to do with Savonarola's spiritual orientation; or that so-called Christian fire could have held sway in Raphael. Nevertheless, we should not think that the Christian ideas could appear to us so vividly through Raphael—a human soul of such inwardness and completeness—if Christian fire had been altogether foreign to it.

One cannot create figures in an objective and well-rounded fashion if one is imbued with Savonarola's fire, borne along by the whole tragic mood of Christ, feeling oneself spurred on by this. A certain tranquillity and quite different Christian feelings must first have arisen in the soul. Even so, what has come to expression in Raphael's pictures could not have arisen if the very “nerve” of Christian inwardness had not lived in him. Is it not then reasonable to suppose: In the painter Raphael we have a soul that must already have brought that fire with it into physical existence that we perceive at work in Savonarola. If we see Raphael as bringing this fire along with him from earlier earth-lives, then we comprehend how he could be so inwardly serene, so inwardly complete, that this fire does not meet us as a consuming fire, destructive of enthusiasm, but as the tranquil element of creative activity. At his point I should like to say, one senses something in Raphael's natural abilities by means of which, in an earlier life, he could have spoken with the same fire as Savonarola. And it need not astonish us if Raphael's soul were to have re-arisen from a time in which Christianity was not yet present in the form of art, but received that mighty impulse at its immediate inception by which it became effective in the course of the centuries that followed.

Perhaps it is not too audacious, in attempting to understand Raphael, to put forward something like what has been said. For, whoever has learned, in immersing himself again and again in Raphael's works, to revere this individual in all its depths, to view it in its unfathomableness, is only able by means of such extended feelings to comprehend what speaks to us out of the miraculous works into which Raphael poured his soul.

Raphael's mission only appears to us in the right light when we seek, in the sense of Goethe's expression, “in a completed life” [in einem abgelebten Leben], the Christian fire that later manifests as serenity in Raphael. Then we come to understand why he had to place himself into the world in such an isolated manner. And we comprehend how the Raphael we have attempted to characterize—having experienced something “Savonarola-like” in an earlier life (only in an enhanced measure)—now became the Raphael we know from Renaissance Italy.

As already mentioned, in the time in which the Roman Empire drew near, in the Roman period of Greece, an internalizing of the soul had taken place. In the Renaissance, in Raphael's time, we see the ancient Greek culture, buried under rubble, reappearing. Rome was gradually filled with relics of Greece, with what had once beautified the city. The Roman population directed its attention once again to the forms the Greek spirit had created. In this period, we also see how the spirit of Plato, the spirit of Aristotle, the spirit of the Greek tragedians infuses Roman life. We see the Roman world conquered once again by Greek culture. For a spirit that had previously given itself over to the moral-religious view of Christianity, devoting itself in a prior life completely to such moral-religious impressions, Greek culture may be said to have had a renewing, fructifying effect, in appearing out of the rubble and ruins on the Italian peninsula.

Thus, if we see the moral-religious impulse of Christianity as integral to Raphael's innate faculties, what was not there in his disposition appeared in the Greek artefacts then being excavated before his eyes. The statues reappearing out of the rubble, products of the Greek spirit, the manuscripts that were recovered, had their effect on Raphael's soul as on no other. What united itself in this way as a result of his inner disposition—Christian feeling, combined with an especially spiritual devotion to what is cosmic—all this worked together with what was then re-emerging of the Greek spirit. These two things united in Raphael's soul, bringing it about that in his works we have what the time following Greece had generated—the inwardness with which Christianity had imbued the development of humanity—now finally brought to full expression in a world of forms, of pictures in which the purest Greek spirit speaks to us.

We see the remarkable phenomenon, that through Raphael the Greek element arises again within Christendom. In Raphael we see a Christianity appear in an age that, all around him, presents what is actually anti-Christian. In Raphael there lives a Christianity that goes far beyond the narrowness of the Christianity that had gone before, raising itself to a far-reaching conception of the world. However, this is a Christianity that does not merely point vaguely to infinite realms of the spiritual, but assumes artistic form—much as the ancient Greeks had united their idea of the gods with what lives and weaves formlessly in the universe, pressing this into figures that delight our senses.

In letting one or another of Raphael's creations work on us, in attempting to form an overall picture of his works in their exalted, perfect forms, they appear to us as possessing a wonderful excess of youth, for Raphael died at 37 years of age. Not for the sake of a grey theory, nor as a philosophical-historical “construct,” but out of immediate feeling deriving from Raphael's works, it may be said: The lawful continuum of mankind's spiritual life presents itself to us most clearly with such a towering figure as Raphael.

Imagining the progress of spiritual life as a straight line in which cause and effect follow upon each other is truly not in accord with the facts. There is a saying that seems obvious, belonging to the “golden” pronouncements of humanity, namely, that life and nature make no leaps. However, in many respects life and nature make leaps all the time. We see this in the development of the plant, from the green leaf to the blossom, from the blossom to the fruit. There we see everything develop, yet we see that leaps are inevitable.

It is no different with the spiritual life of humanity, and this is connected with various evolutionary secrets. One of these is that a later epoch always has to reach back to an earlier one. Hence, just as the masculine and the feminine have to work together, so must the various Time Spirits work together, mutually fertilizing each other, so that further development can take place. Thus, the Roman period around the time of the Caesars had to be fertilized by the Greek element, for a new age to arise. And in the same way, the Time Spirit that then arose had to be fertilized by the Christian impulse, in order to make the internalizing possible that we see in St. Augustine and others. Similarly, more recently, such an inwardly advanced soul as Raphael had to be fertilized, made productive by the Greek element. Doubly buried though Greek culture then was, it yet reappeared, being doubly “extracted:” for the eyes in that the sculptures had been covered over by the soil of Italy; and for the souls, in the buried works of literature that revealed the Greek spirit. The centuries of the first Christian millennium, on the other hand, had been extraordinarily little touched by what lived in Greek philosophy, in Greek poetry.

Having been doubly buried, Greek culture waited, as it were, in a “beyond” for a later point in time when it could fertilize the human soul that had meanwhile been imbued with a new religion. Buried, withdrawn for outer eyes and buried likewise for souls that had no notion that it would develop further, it actually flowed on like a river that sometimes continues underground, out of sight, far below a mountain, returning afterwards to the surface. This Greek culture was buried outwardly for the senses, inwardly for the substrata of the soul. Now it reappeared. For spiritual sight it was excavated not only in that it was fetched from old manuscripts, but also in that people began to experience the world in the Greek manner once again, sensing how the spirit lives in everything material, how everything that is material is the revelation of the spiritual. People began to connect once more with what Plato and Aristotle had thought.

But Raphael was the individual on whom this could take effect most of all, since in his whole disposition he had fully assimilated the Christian impulses. With him this twice buried and twice resurrected Greek culture now brought it about that he was in a position to recreate the evolution of humanity in figures. How marvellously was he able to accomplish this in the pictures of the Camera della Segnatura. There we see the old spiritual contests arise again in pictures—the struggle of those spirits that had developed in the time of internalizing, that had not been there in the Greek period. That they could be viewed in this way in Raphael's time—for that, the whole period of internalizing was needed. We now see this internalizing painted on the walls of the papal rooms.

What the Greeks had conceived and formed into figures we now see internalized. The inner strivings and inner battles humanity had undergone we see infused with the Greek creative spirit, with the Greek artistic mood and sense for beauty, conjured onto the walls of the papal palace. The Greeks poured into their statues their conception of the way in which the gods worked upon the world. How human beings felt in approaching the secrets of existence presents itself to us in the picture often referred to as the School of Athens How the human soul had learned to view the Greek gods meets us in the remarkable recreation of the gods of Homer in the Parnassus. These are not the gods of the Iliad and the Odyssey but the gods as seen by a soul that had already gone through the epoch of internalization.

On the other wall we see the picture that must remain unforgettable to everyone, of whatever religious confession—as little as one can still gain an idea of it—the Disputa in which something most inward is depicted. The other picture presents what is attained by means of a certain philosophical striving, but in Greek beauty of form. In the picture opposite, the “Disputa,” we encounter the most profound content the human being can experience. And the fact that we do not need to think in terms of a narrow Christian consciousness becomes evident here in that we find the Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva motifs expressed in a quite different way. We have before us what the human soul can experience inwardly of the Trinity—every soul, no matter what confession it belongs to. This appears to us not merely symbolically, in the symbolism of the Trinity in the upper part of the picture. It appears to us further in each countenance of the Church fathers and philosophers, in every motion of the hands, in the whole distribution of the figures, in the wonderful colour composition. It appears to us in the picture's totality. In the beautiful forms permeated with the Greek spirit we are presented with the human soul in its entire inwardness. The inwardness experienced in the course of one-and-a-half millennia arises once again, as outer revelation. In Raphael's pictures we see Christianity, not in the form of the paganism of the Roman popes and cardinals, but as the ancient Greek paganism, capable of creating beautiful, splendid figures.

Thus, Raphael stands at a turning point, at a watershed, pointing both to an earlier age that had preceded Christianity in the beauty of outer revelation, and to what may be seen as inherent in the “education of the human race,” the internalizing of the human soul. Hence, in standing in front of these pictures of Raphael, these miraculous, unique works of art, they appear to us as the confluence of two ages clearly separate and distinct from each other: an age of outer experience and one of inner experience.

Yet, at the same time, in standing before these pictures, they open up a perspective into the future. For, with a feeling for what has been said, who does not sense that—in spite of all the externality that has still to evolve further in humanity's future—this internalizing must necessarily also progress further in the course of evolution? Indeed, the human soul will need to find periods of ever greater inwardness in subsequent lives.

If we turn to literature and study, not as an art scholar or mere reader, the works of a spirit such as Herman Grimm, who spared no effort in portraying the workings of human phantasy, we can understand the profound empathy with which he contemplated Raphael's creations. It becomes comprehensible, when, at a certain point in his work on Raphael we find words that take on special meaning. We see how he stood before Raphael's creations with heartfelt interest. One has to take account of what passed through Herman Grimm's soul at a certain point in his work on Raphael, in the first few pages where, in casting a glance at Raphael's emergence from ancient times, he only modestly touches on something. It is not evident, really, from where this thought comes.—In the middle of wider historical considerations into which Raphael is placed, a thought occurs to Herman Grimm and is written down: “I see before me developments of humanity, participation in which will be denied me, but that appear to me so radiantly beautiful that, on their account, it would be worth the trouble of beginning human life all over again.”⁹

This yearning of Herman Grimm for “reincarnation” in the introduction to his Raphael book is remarkable and profoundly indicative of a particular feeling living in a human being who attempted to come to terms with Raphael and his connection to other epochs. Does one not sense what can be expressed more or less in saying: Works such as those of Raphael are not only an end-result. They lead us to acknowledge not only how grateful we have to be in regard to what past ages have given us. Such works call forth feelings in us such as the feeling of hope, since they strengthen us in our belief in the progress of humanity. We can say to ourselves, these works would not be as they are if humanity were not a unified being whose nature it is to advance. Thus, certainty and hope arise for us if we allow Raphael to work on us in the right way. And we can then say: Through what he created artistically, Raphael has spoken to humanity!

In contemplating the frescoes in the Camera della Segnatura>, we do of course sense the transience of the external work. From these works, frequently painted over, we can gain little idea of what Raphael once conjured onto the wall. We sense that at some point in the future human beings will no longer be able to experience the original works. But we know, humanity will progress ever further.

Fundamentally, the works of Raphael first embarked on their triumphal march when, with love and devotion, innumerable engravings, photographs and reproductions of his works were made. Their effect continues right into the reproductions. One can understand Herman Grimm when he relates that he once hung a large collotype¹⁰ of the Sistine Madonna in his room and on entering, it was always as though he were not fully permitted to enter—as though the room now belonged to the picture as a sanctuary of the Madonna. Some will already have experienced how the soul actually becomes a different being than it otherwise is in ordinary life, when truly able to give itself over to a picture by Raphael—even a mere reproduction. Certainly, the originals will some day no longer exist. But, do the originals not still exist in other realms?

Herman Grimm frankly states in his book on Homer:¹¹ edition, Stuttgart and Berlin 1907, p. 473. We can also no longer fully enjoy the original works of Homer, since in ordinary life, without higher spiritual forces, we are no longer in a position to enter into all the nuances and expressions of the Greek language in their full beauty and power, in taking in Homer's “Iliad” and “Odyssey”. There too we no longer have the originals. Even so, Homer's poetic works speak to us. But, what Raphael gave to humanity will live on as evidence of the fact that there was once a time in the development of humanity when, in the widest circles people were unable to immerse themselves in thoughts and written works, since that was far from being the norm at that time. However, in Raphael's creations the secrets of existence spoke to the eyes of human beings. The age of Raphael was one that read less, but that looked more. This makes it clear that that age was differently constituted. But what Raphael created will continue to have an effect in all future times. Confirmation of this will be what Raphael will continue to say to humanity. Thus, Raphael's creations will live on in the further course of human evolution, live on inwardly in lives that follow upon each other. In undergoing future lives, Raphael's spirit will have ever greater things, of an ever more inward nature, to impart to humanity.

Thus, spiritual science points to a further life in a two-fold sense; a living-on of a kind described in lectures that have been given and that will be spoken of further, becoming our guide in going through earthly existence in ever new epochs. It can be said to be entirely true, what Herman Grimm states in words summarizing what resulted for him from his overall study of Raphael: Even if Raphael's works will eventually have faded or been destroyed, Raphael will still live on. For, with him something has been implanted in the spirit of humanity that will forever germinate and bear fruit.

Every human soul sufficiently able to deepen itself in Raphael will come to feel this. Only in entering into a sense with which Herman Grimm was imbued—heightening and deepening this by means of spiritual science—do we come to understand Raphael fully. We indicated recently how close he stood, in contemplating Raphael ever and again, to spiritual science.—We can understand our relation to Raphael and such thoughts as have been ventured today can grow in us, if we conclude by summarizing what has been said in words of Herman Grimm:

Human beings will always want to know about Raphael; about the beautiful young painter who surpassed all others; who was fated to die early. Whose death all Rome mourned. When the works of Raphael are finally lost, his name will remain engraved in human memory.¹²

Thus, did Herman Grimm express himself in beginning his discourse on Raphael. We understand these words; and we understand him again in concluding, at the end of his work on Raphael:

All the world will want to know about the life-work of such a human being, for Raphael has become one of the pillars upon which the higher culture of the human spirit is founded. We would fain draw nearer to him, since we have need of him for our well-being.¹³

• 1. 1828–1901
• 2. From: Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, Vol. 1, Chapter 10.
• 3. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, 1729-1781
• 4. 354–430
• 5. Astorre Baglione. See: Francesco Matarazzo: Cronache della Città di Perugia.
• 6. Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498), prior of the Monastery of San Marco, burned at the stake at the instigation of Pope Alexander VI.
• 7. Fra Bartolomeo, who became a Dominican in 1500.
• 8. Karl August to his friend Knebel, 14th October, 1783.
• 9. In Herman Grimm: Das Leben Raphaels, (The Life of Raphael), p. 4.
• 10. Phototypie
• 11. See Herman Grimm: Homer's Iliad; 2^nd 11
• 12. From Herman Grimm: Das Leben Raphaels, p. 1.
• 13. Ibid., p. 334.

Hermann Grimm, the eminent thinker on Art, has tried to follow Raphael's influence and fame through the ages down to the present day. Grimm has been able to show that Raphael's creations went on working after the painter's death as a living element, and that a uniform stream of spiritual development has flowed onwards from the life of Raphael to our own time. Grimm has shown how the evolution of humanity has proceeded since the creations of Raphael, and on the other side of the spiritual conception of history it may be said that preceding ages too give the impression as if they were themselves pointing to the Raphael who was later to appear in world evolution like a limb inset in a whole organism. We may here recall an utterance once made by Goethe and from the world of Space apply it to the world of Time. Goethe once wrote these significant words: “What would all the starry world and all that is spread out in Space amount to if it were not at some time reflected in a human soul, celebrating its own higher existence for the first time in the experiences of this human soul?” Applying these words to the evolution of the ages, we may say that in a certain sense, when we cast our eyes back into antiquity, the Homeric gods who were described so gloriously by Homer nearly 1000 years before the founding of Christianity, would seem less to us if they had not risen again in the soul of Raphael, finding their consummation in the sublime figures of his pictures. What Homer created long ages before the appearance of Christianity unites in this sense into an organic whole with what was born from the soul of Raphael in the 16th century. Again, we turn our gaze to the figures of the New Testament, and in the face of Raphael's pictures we feel that something would be lacking if the creative, formative power in the Madonnas and other pictures which have sprung from Biblical tradition and legend, had not been added to the Biblical description. Therefore we may say: not only does Raphael live on through the following centuries but his creations form one organic whole with all preceding ages. Most ages indeed already pointed to one in whom they should find their consummation, although this, it is true, could only be discovered in later history.

The words of Lessing when he speaks of “the Education of the Human Race” assume great significance when we thus see how a uniform spiritual essence flows through the evolution of humanity, flashing up in figures like Raphael. The truth of repeated earthly lives that has so often been emphasized from the spiritual-scientific standpoint in connection with the spiritual evolution of humanity is perceived with special vividness when we bear in mind what has just been said. We realize then for the first time what it means that the being of man should appear again and again in repeated earthly lives through the epochs, bearing from one life to the other what is destined to be implanted in the spiritual evolution of humanity. Spiritual Science is seeking the meaning and purpose in the evolution of mankind. It does not merely seek to portray the consecutive events of human evolution in one straight, continuous line, but to interpret the various epochs in such a way that the human soul, appearing again and again over the course of the ages, must have ever new experiences. Then we can truly speak of an “Education” which the human soul undergoes as the result of its different earthly lives,—an education proceeding from all that is created and born from out of the common spirit of humanity.

What will here be said from the standpoint of Spiritual Science in regard to Raphael's relationship to human evolution as a whole during the last few centuries, is not intended to be a philosophical or historical study, but the result of many-sided study of Raphael's creative activity. There is no question of giving a philosophical survey of the spiritual life of humanity for the sake of bringing Raphael into it. Everything that I myself have experienced after study and contemplation of his different works has crystallized quite naturally into what I propose to say tonight.

It will be impossible, of course, to enter in details into single creations of Raphael. That could only be if one were able by some means to place his pictures before the audience. A general impression of the creative power of Raphael arises in the soul and then the question arises: what place has this in the evolution of humanity? The gaze falls upon a significant epoch,—an epoch to which Raphael stands in inner relationship when we allow him to work upon us—I refer to the Greek epoch and its development. All that the Greeks not only created but experienced as the outcome of their whole nature and constitution appears as a kind of middle epoch when we study human evolution during the last few thousand years. Greek culture coincides in a certain sense with the founding of Christianity and all that preceded it seems to bear a different character from following ages. Studying humanity in the Pre-Grecian age of civilization we find that the soul and spirit of man are much more intimately bound up with the corporeal, with the outer corporeality than is the case in later times. What we speak of today as the “inwardness” of the human soul,—the inward withdrawal of the soul when applying itself to the spiritual or the spiritual becoming conscious of the Spiritual underlying the universe,—this inwardness did not exist to the same degree in Grecian times. When man made use of his bodily organs in those days, the spiritual mysteries of existence simultaneously lit up in his soul. Observation of the sense-world was not so detached and aloof as is ordinary Science to-day. Man beheld the objects with his senses, and with his sense impressions he simultaneously perceived the spirit and soul-elements weaving and living within the objects. The Spiritual was there with the objects as they were perceived. To press forward to the Spirituality of the universe in ancient times it was not necessary for man to withdraw from sense impressions or to give himself up wholly to the inner being of the soul. Indeed in very ancient times of evolution “clairvoyant perception of things”—in the very best sense of the word—was a common possession of man. This clairvoyant perception was not attained as the result of certain given conditions, but was as natural as sense perception.

Then came Greek culture with the world peculiar to it,—a world where we may place the beginning of the inward deepening of spiritual life, but where the inner experiences of the spirit are still connected with the outer, with processes in the world of sense. In Greek culture the balance is between the Sensible and the Psychic-Spiritual. The Spiritual was not so immediately present in sense perception as was the case in Pre-Grecian times. It lit up in the soul of the Greek as something inwardly apart, but that it was perceived when the senses were directed to the outer world. The Greek beheld the Spirit not in the objects, but with the objects. In Pre-Grecian times the soul of man was poured out, as it were, into corporeality. In Greek culture the soul had freed itself to some extent from the corporeality, but the balance between the Psychic-Spiritual and the bodily element was still held. This is why the creations of the Greeks seem to be as fully permeated with the spirituality as that which their senses perceived.

In Post-Grecian ages the human spirit undergoes an inward deepening and is no longer able to receive, simultaneously with the sense impression the, Spiritual living and weaving in all things. These are the ages when the human soul was destined to withdraw into itself and experience its struggles and conquests in an inner life before pressing forward to the Spiritual. Spiritual contemplation and the sense perception of things became two worlds which the human soul must experience. How clearly evident this is in a spirit like Augustine, for instance, who in the Post-Christian epoch is really not so far removed from the founding of Christianity as we are from the Reformation. The experiences and writings of Augustine as compared with the traditions of Greek culture are highly characteristic of the progress of humanity. The struggles of the inward turned soul, the scene of action existing in the inner being of the soul apart from the external world that we see in Augustine,—how impossible all this appears in the Greek spirits who everywhere reveal how deeply their soul-content is united with the processes of the external world.

The evolutionary history of humanity shows evidence of a division, a mighty incision. Into this evolutionary picture there enters on the one side Greek culture, where man holds the balance between the Psychic-Spiritual and outer corporeality; on the other side there is the founding of Christianity. All the experiences of the human soul were thereafter to become inward, to take their course in inner struggles and conquests. The mission of the founding of Christianity was not to direct man's gaze to the world of sense in order that he might become conscious of the riddles of existence, but to all that the spirit might intuitively behold when giving itself up wholly to the powers of the spirit and soul. How utterly different,—divided by a deep, deep cleft, are those beautiful, majestic Gods of Greece, Zeus or Apollo, from the figure dying on the Cross,—a figure, it is true, full of inner profundity and power, but not beautiful in the external sense. Already here we find the outer symbol of the deep incision made by Christianity and Greek culture in the evolution of humanity. And in the spirits of the Post-Grecian ages we see the effects of this incision as an ever more intense inward deepening of the soul.

Thence forward this inner deepening has been characteristic of the onward progress of evolution. And if we would understand human evolution in the sense of Spiritual Science we must realize that we are living in an age which represents a still greater inward deepening, the more we observe it in relation to the immediate past and the prospect of the future in which a cleft, still deeper than that which the contemplation of the past reveals, will appear between all that is proceeding in the world in a more or less mechanical, technical life of the outer world, and the goal ahead of the human soul as it endeavors to scale the heights of spiritual being,—heights which open up only in our inner being as we attempt to ascend to the Spiritual. More and more we are advancing into an age of inner deepening.

A mighty incision in the progress of humanity in Post-Grecian times toward an energy being is what has remained to us in the creations of Raphael. Raphael stands there as a mighty spirit at a parting of the ways in human evolution. All that preceded him marks the beginning of the process of this inner deepening; what follows him represents a new chapter. Although much that I have to say in this lecture may have the appearance of symbology, it should not be taken merely as a symbolical mode of expression, but as an attempt to create as broad a conception and idea as possible, that which can be clothed only in the “trivial concepts of man” on account of Raphael's towering greatness.

When we try to penetrate into the soul of Raphael we are struck, above all, by the way in which the soul appears in the year 1483 in a “spring-like” birth, as it were, passing through an inner development radiating forth its glory from the most marvellous creations. Raphael dies at an early age, at 37. In order so to deepen ourselves in this soul so that we can follow all its stages, let us turn our attention for the moment away from all that was going on in world history and concentrate wholly on the inner nature of this soul.

Hermann Grimm has pointed out certain regular cycles in the inner development of Raphael's soul. And indeed it may be said that Spiritual Science today has no need to be ashamed of directing the attention of modern skeptical mankind to the existence of cyclic laws holding sway along the path to the spirit, in all evolution andalso in that of individual human beings, if so eminent a mind as Hermann Grimm was led, without Spiritual Science, to the perception of this regular inner cyclic development in the soul of Raphael. Grimm speaks of the picture called “The Marriage of the Virgin” as being a new phenomena in the whole evolution of Art, saying that it cannot be compared with anything that had gone before. From infinite depths of the human soul, Raphael created something entirely new in the whole of spiritual evolution. If we thus gain a conception of the gifts lying in Raphael's soul from birth onwards, we can readily agree with the following passage of Hermann Grimm: “We now see Raphael's soul developing onwards in regular cycles of four years duration. It is wonderful to observe how this soul advances onwards thus, and studying one such period we find that at the end of it, Raphael stands at a higher stage of his soul's development. Four years after the picture The Marriage of the Virgin comes The Entombment; four years later again the frescoes in the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican,—and so on, by four year stages up to The Transfiguration which stood unfinished by his death bed.”

We feel the desire to study this soul for its own sake because its development is so harmonious. Then however we get the impression that in the Art of Painting itself an inwardness had to develop,—an inwardness such as that expressed in figures which only Raphael could create. It is an inwardness borne out of the depths of the soul experience although it appears in pictures of the world of sense, and it then becomes part of history itself.

Having thus contemplated the inner nature of the soul of Raphael, let us allow the age in which he lived and all that was around him, to work upon us. While Raphael was growing up more or less as a child in Urbino, his environment was of a kind that could stimulate and awaken any decisive talents. The whole of Italy was excited at that time about a certain palace that had been built in Urbino. This was something that imbued the early talents of Raphael with an element of harmony with their nature. After that, however,we find him transplanted to Perugia, thence to Florence, thence to Rome. Fundamentally speaking, his life ran its course within narrow circles. These towns seem so near when we study his life. His world was enclosed within these circles so far as the world of sense was concerned. It was only in the spirit that he rose to “other spheres.” In Perugia, however, which was the scene of his youthful soul development, fierce quarrels were the order of the day. The town is populated by a passionate, tumultuous people. Noble families whose lives were spent in wrangling and quarreling fought bitterly against each other. The one drove the other out-of-town, then after a short banishment the other family would try again to take possession of it. More than once the streets of Perugia flowed with blood and were strewn with corpses. One historian describes a remarkable scene, and indeed all the descriptions of that epoch are typical. A nobleman of the town enters it as a warrior in order to avenge his relatives. He is described to us as he rides through the streets on horseback like the spirit of War incarnate, beating down everything that crosses his path. The historian evidently has the impression that the revenge was justifiable and there arises before his soul the picture of St. George bringing the enemy to his feet. Later on, in a work by Raphael, we feel the scene as described by the historian rise up before us in picture form and our immediate impression is that Raphael must surely have allowed this to affect him; and then what seemed so terrible in the outward sense is deepened and rises again from out of his soul in the subject of one of the most wonderful pictures.

Thus Raphael saw around him a quarreling humanity; disorder upon disorder, battle upon battle, surrounded him in the town where he was studying under his master Pietro Perugino. One gets the impression of two worlds in the town,—one, the scene of cruelty and terror, and another, living inwardly in Raphael's soul, which had really little to do with what was going on around him in the physical world.

Then, later again we find Raphael transplanted to Florence in the year 1504. What was the state of Florence then? In the first place the inhabitants give the impression of being a wearied people who had passed through inner and outer tumults and were living in a certain ennui and fatigue. What had been the fate of Florence? Struggles, just as in the case of the other town, bitter persecutions among different patrician families, and of course, quarrels with the outer world. And on the other hand the stirring event that had thrown every soul in the town into a state of upheaval when Savonarola, a short time previoulsy, had been martyred. This extraordinary figure of Savanarola appears before us uttering words of fire against the current misdeeds, the cruelty, materiality and heathendom of the Church. The words of Savonarola seem to resound again in our ears, words by which he dominated the whole of Florence and to such an extent that the people not only hung upon his lips but revered him as deeply as if a spirit from a higher world were standing before them in that ascetic body. The words of Savonarola transformed Florence as if the direct radiations of the Reformer of Religions Himself had permeated not only the religious conceptions, but the very social life of the town. It was as though a citadel of the Gods had been founded. Such was Florence under the influence of Savonarola. He fell a victim to those Powers whom he had opposed, morally and religiously. There rises before our soul the moving picture of Savonarola as he was led to the fire of martyrdom with his companions, and how from the gallows whence he was to fall onto the burning pyre, he turned his eyes—it was in May 1498—down to the people who had once hung upon his words, but who had now deserted him and were looking with apparent disloyalty at the figure who had for so long inspired them. Only in a very few,—and they were artists,—did the words of Savonarola still resound. There were painters at that time who themselves donned the monk's robe after Savonarola's martyrdom in order to work on in his Order under the influence of his spirit.

One can visualize the weary atmosphere lying over Florence, Raphael was transplanted into this atmosphere in the year 1504. And he brought with him in his creations the very Spirit's breath of Spring, although in a different way from Savonarola. When they contemplate the soul of Raphael in all its isolation,—a soul so different from the mood surrounding it in this town, visualizing him in the company of artists and painters working at his creations in lonely workshops in Florence or elsewhere, another picture rises up, showing us visibly in history how Raphael's soul stands out inwardly aloof from the outer life around it. And there arises before us the figures of the Roman Popes, Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X, in fact the whole Papal system against which Savonarola directed his words of scorn, the Reformers their attacks. Yet this Papacy was the Patron of Raphael who entered its service, although inwardly his soul had little in common with what we find in his Patron Pope Julius II for instance. It was said of Julius II that he gave the impression of a man with a devil in his body, who always likes to show his teeth to his enemies.

How was this possible? We see the contrast between outer life and Raphael's inner being in the early student days in Perugia, but we see it's still more intensely in Rome where his all-conquering works were created in the midst of an officialdom of Cardinals and Priests which had been intolerable to Savonarola. True, the two men were different, but we must nevertheless contrast Raphael with his environment in this way if we are to obtain a true picture of what was living in his soul.

Let us allow the picture of Raphael to work upon us. This cannot be done in detail in a lecture, but we can at least call up before the mind's eye one of the more widely known works for the purpose of contemplating the peculiar qualities living in Raphael's soul,—I mean the Sistine Madonna which is familiar to everybody in the innumerable copies existing all over the world. The Sistine Madonna is one of the greatest and noblest works of Art in human evolution. The “Mother with the Child” hover towards us on clouds which cover the Earth globe,—hover from the shadowy world of spirit and soul, surrounded in clouds which seem naturally to form themselves into human figures, one being the Child Himself. Feelings arise which, when we permeate them with soul, seem to make us forget all those legendary conceptions which culminate in the picture of the Madonna. We forget all that Christian traditions has to tell of her. I say this not for the sake of giving any dry description, but in order to characterize as fully as may be the feelings that arise within us at the site of the Madonna.

Spiritual Science raises us above all materialistic conception of human evolution. Although it is difficult to understand in the sense of Natural Science according to which the development of lower organisms proceeded until finally it reached the stage of the human being,—nevertheless it is the fact that man is a being whose life transcends everything below him in the kingdom of Nature. Spiritual Science knows that man contains a something within him much more ancient than all the beings who stand in greater or lesser proximity to him in the kingdom of Nature.

Man existed before the beings of the animal, plant and even of the mineral kingdom. In a wider perspective we look back to ages when that which now constitutes our inner being was already in existence andwhich only later was incorporated into the kingdoms which now stand below man. We see the being of man proceeding from a super-earthly world and realize that we can only truly understand it when we rise above all that the Earth can produce out of herself to something super-terrestrial and pre-terrestrial. Spiritual Science teaches that even if we allow all the forces, all the living substances connected with the Earth herself to work upon us, none of this can give a true picture of the whole essence and being of man. The gaze must rise beyond the Earthly to the Supersensible whence the being of man proceeds. Speaking figuratively we cannot but feel how something wafts towards the Earthly when, for instance, we gaze at the golden gleaming morning sunrise,—and especially is this the case in a region like that in which Raphael lived. Forces which work down into the Earth seem here to flow into the Earthly elements,—forces which inhere in the being of the Sun. And then out of the golden radiance there rises before our soul the sense image of what it is that is wafting hither in order to unite itself with the Earthly.

Above all in Perugia we may feel that the eye is beholding the very same sunrise once seen by Raphael, who in these phenomena was able to sense the nature of the Super-Earthly element in man. And gazing at the Sun-illuminated clouds there may dawn on us a realization that the picture of the Madonna and Child is a sense picture of the eternal Super-Earthly element in man that is wafted to Earth from super-earthly realms themselves and meets, in the clouds, those elements that can only proceed from the Earthly. Our perception may feel itself raised to the loftiest spiritual heights if we can give ourselves up—not theoretically, or in an abstract sense, but with the whole soul—to what works upon us in Raphael's Madonnas. This perfectly natural feeling may arise before the world-famous picture in Dresden. And to prove to you that it has indeed had this effect upon many people I should like to quote words written about the Sistine Madonna by Karl August, Duke of Weimar, the friend of Goethe, after a visit to Dresden: He says:

“In regard to the Raphael picture that adorns the collection, I felt as if the whole day long I had roamed over the heights of the Gotthard, through the Urner cleft and looked down from thence to the green, blossoming valley. As I looked at the picture and again away from it, it always seemed to me a revelation of the soul. Even the most beautiful Correggios were pictures only of the human; the memory of them tangible like beautiful forms. Raphael, however, remained with me as a breath, as one of those revelations sent to one in women's form by the Gods to bring us happiness or sorrow, like a figure that arises before one again and again in waking or dream life, whose gaze, once experienced, is with one forever, day and night, moving the innermost being.” (Karl August to his friend Knebel, 14th October, 1763)

Another remarkable thing is that if we study the literature of those who speak of the experiences of deep emotion at the site of this Sistine Madonna and also of other pictures of Raphael, we shall always find that they use the analogy of the Sun, all that is radiant and spring-like.

This gives us a glimpse into Raphael's soul and we realize how from amid the environment already described, it held converse with the eternal mysteries of the genesis of man. And then we feel the uniqueness of this soul of Raphael, realizing that it is not a “product” of its environment, but points to a hoary antiquity. There is no longer any need for speculation. A soul like this, looking out into the wide universe,—a soul which does not express the mystery of existence in ideas, but senses and gives it form in a picture like the Sistine Madonna, stands there in its inner perfection quite naturally as mature in the highest degree. Truly, the gifts inherent in this soul represents something that must have passed through other epochs of human evolution, not many such epochs which poured into it a power able to reemerge in what we call the “life of Raphael”. But from what it re-merges?

We see the living content of Christian legends and traditions appearing again in Raphael's pictures in the midst of an age when Christendom had, as it were, become heathenised and was given up to outer pomp and show, just as Greek paganism was represented in the figures of its gods and honoured above all else by the Greeks in their intoxication with beauty. We see Raphael giving form to the figures of Christian tradition in an age when treasures of Greek culture which had for long centuries been buried under ruins and debris on Roman soil were unearthed, Raphael himself assisting. It is a remarkable spectacle, the Rome where Raphael found himself at this time. Let us consider what had gone before.

First there are the centuriesof the Rise of Rome,—a Rome built upon the Egoism of individual men whose aim it was above all to establish a human society in the external physical world on the foundation of what man, as the citizen of a State, was meant to signify. Then during the age of the Emperors, when Rome had reached a certain eminence, it absorbs the Greek culture which streams into Roman spiritual life. Rome subdues Greece in the political sense, but in the spiritual sense Greece conquers Rome. Greek culture lives on within Roman culture; Greek art, to the extent to which it has been imbibed by Rome, lives on there; Rome is permeated through and through by the essence of Greek culture.

But why is it that this does not remain through the following centuries as a characteristic quality of the development of Italy? Why was it that something entirely different made its appearance? It was because soon after Greek culture had streamed into the life of Rome there came the influx of that other element which impressed its signature strongly into the spiritual life that was developing on the soil of Italy, I mean, Christendom. The mission of this inward deepening of Christendom was not that of the external sense element in the Greek State, Greek sculpture, or Greek philosophy. A formless element was now to draw into the souls of men and to be laid hold of by dint of inner effort and struggle. Figures like Augustine appear,—men whose whole being is inward turned. But then,—since everything in evolution proceeds in cycles, we see arising in men who have passed through this inward deepening and whose souls have long lived apart from the beauties of external life, a yearning for beauty. Once again they behold the inner in the outer. It is significant to see the inwardly deepened life of Francis of Assisi in Giotto's pictures for those pictures express the inner experiences called forth in the soul by Christianity. And even if the inner being of the human soul speaks somewhat haltingly and imperfectly from Giotto's pictures, we do nevertheless see a direct ascent to the point where the most inward elements, the very loftiest and noblest in external form confronts us in Raphael and his contemporaries. Here we are directed once again to a characteristic quality of this soul of Raphael.

If we try to penetrate into the kind of feelings and perceptions which Raphael himself must have had, we cannot help saying to ourselves: “Yes, indeed, in the contemplation of pictures like the Madonna della Sedia, for instance, the whole way in which the Madonna with the Child, and the Child John in the foreground are here represented, makes us forget the rest of the world, forget above all that this Child in the arms of the Madonna is connected with the experiences of Golgotha. Gazing at Raphael's pictures we forget everything that afterwards proceeds as the “life of Jesus”; we live entirely in the moment here portrayed. We are gazing simply at a Mother with a Child, which in the words of Hermann Grimm, is the great Mystery to be met with in the outer world. Peace surrounds this moment; it seems as though nothing could connect with it, before or afterwards; we live wholly in the relationship of the Madonna to her Child and separate it off from everything else. Thus do the creations of Raphael appear to us,—perfect and complete in themselves, revealing the Eternal in one moment of Time.

How shall we describe the feelings of a soul able to create like this? We cannot compare them to the feelings of a Savonarola, who when he uttered his words of scorn or was speaking those uplifting, godly words to Christian devotees, was seized with inner fire and passed through the whole tragedy of the Christ. We cannot conceive that Raphael's soul burst forth suddenly like the genius of a Savonarola, or others like him; nor can we conceive that it was swayed by the so-called “fire of Christendom.” Raphael could not however have portrayed the Christian conceptions in such inner perfection if his soul had been as foreign to this “Christian fire” as may appear to have been the case.

On the other hand, the forms in all their objectivity and roundness could not have been created by a soul permeated with Savonarola's fire and winged by the experience of the whole tragedy of the Christ. Quite a different peace, quite a different Christian feeling must have flowed into the soul. And yet no soul could have created these pictures if the very essence of Christian inwardness were not living within it. Surely it is almost natural to say: here indeed is a soul which brought with it into the physical existence of the artist Raphael, the fire that pours forth from Savonarola. When we realize how Raphael brings this fire with him through birth from earlier experiences, we understand why it is so illuminating and inwardly perfect; it does not come forth as a consuming and shattering element but as the reliance of plastic creation. In Raphael's innate gifts one already feels the existence of something that in an earlier life might have been able to speak with the same fire that is later found in Savonarola. It need not astonish us to find in Raphael a soul reincarnated from an age when Christianity was not yet expressed in picture form or in Art, but from the age of its founding, the starting point of the whole mighty impulse which then worked on through the centuries.

In the attempt to understand the soul like Raphael's, it is perhaps not too bold to say something of this kind, for those who have steeped themselves again and again in the works of Raphael and have thus learnt to reverence this soul in all its depth, cannot but realize what it is that speaks from those wonder-works into which the artist poured his soul. Thus the mission of Raphael only appears in the right light when,—to use an expression of Goethe,—we seek in a life already past for the Christian fire that is revealed in the radiance of the Raphael life. Then we understand why his soul was necessarily so isolated in the world and why it was that having possessed to an intense degree in an earlier existence something of the nature of a Savonarola. It was able to refresh and renew all that had arisen in the spiritual evolution of Italy in the 16th century.

I have already described how in the age of the Rise of the Empire, the influence of Greek culture has entered into Roman development and how an inward deepening of the soul had set in. Later on, in the age of Raphael,—the Renaissance,—we see on the one side the reappearance of this old Greek culture that had long been buried under ruins and debris. We see in Rome with the remnants of this Greek culture, the reappearance of the Greek spirit that had once adorned and beautified the city; the eyes of the Roman people turn once again to the forms that had been created by this Greek spirit. On the other side, however, we see how the spirit of Plato, of Aristotle, of the Greek Tragedians, penetrates Roman life in the epoch. Once again the victory of Greek culture over the Roman world! The Greek culture which was emerging from ruins and debris and spreading over the Italian peninsula could not help having a refreshing and renewing effect on a spirit like Raphael's, who in an earlier existence was imbued, to the exclusion of everything else, with the moral-religious conception of Christendom.

If we see the moral-religious impulse of Christendom born in the gifts of Raphael, we also see that element which these gifts did not at first contain rising before his eyes in the resurrected culture of Greece. And just as the city, rising out of ruins and debris, influenced this soul more deeply than all others, so also did the spiritual yields of Greek culture that were unearthed in the hidden manuscripts. Raphael's inborn gifts, united with his “super-spiritual” devotion to everything of a cosmic nature, worked hand-in-hand with the Greek spirit that was emerging again in his age. These were the two elements that united in Raphael's soul; this is why his works express the inwardness proceeding from the post-Grecian age,—the inwardness poured by Christianity into the evolution of humanity which was expressed in outward manifestation in a world of artistic forms permeated with the purest Greek spirit.

We are faced, then, with the remarkable phenomenon of the resurrection of Greek culture within Christendom through Raphael. In him we see the resurrection of a Christendom in an age which in a certain respect represents the “Anti-Christian” element around him. In Raphael there lives a Christianity far transcending what had gone before him and rose to a much loftier conception of the world as it was at that time. Yet it was a Christianity that did not dimly and vaguely direct the attention to the infinite spheres of the Spiritual, but was concentrated into forms that delight the senses too, just as in earlier times the Greeks expressed in artistic forms their ideas of the gods united with the formless element living and weaving in the universe.

This is what we find when we try to form a general picture of Raphael, allowing one or another of his creations in all their sublime perfection yet marvellous superfluity of youth,—for Raphael died at the age of 37,—to work upon us. Not for the sake of any colorless theory, or for the purpose of building any kind of philosophical history, but as the result of a conception born out of Raphael's works themselves, it must be said that the law holding sway in the course of human spiritual life finds its true revelation in a mighty spirit such as his.

It is not correct to think of this course of spiritual life as a straight line where effect follows cause as a natural matter of fact. It is only too easy in this connection to quote one of the so-called “golden sayings” of humanity to the effect that the life and nature does not advance by leaps and bounds. Well and good, but the fact is that in a certain respect both life and nature do continually do so, as can be seen in the development of the plant from the green leaf to the blossom, from the blossom to the fruit. Here everything does indeed “develop” but sudden leaps are quite obvious.

So too is it in the spiritual life of humanity, and this, moreover, is bound up with many mysteries, one of them being that a later epoch must always have its support in an earlier. Just as the male and female must work in conjunction, so may it be said that the different “Spirits of the Age” must mutually fertilize and work together in order that evolution may proceed. Roman culture, already at the time of the empire, had to be fertilized by Greek culture in order that a new “Spirit of the Age” might arise. This new Spirit of the Age had in its turn to be fertilized by the Christ Impulse before the inwardness which we then find in Augustine and others was possible. This human soul that had been so inwardly deepened, had once again to be fertilized by the spirit of the Greek culture which, although it was doubly buried, doubly hidden, was made visible again to the eyes of man in the works of Art resting beneath the soil of Italy, and to their souls in the rediscovered literary manuscripts.

The first Christian centuries in Italy were extraordinarily uninfluenced by what lived in Greek Philosophy and Poetry. Greek culture was buried in a double grave and waited in a realm beyond as it were, for an epoch when it could once again fertilized human soul that had meantime passed through a new phase. It was buried, this Greek culture, hidden from the eyes of men and from souls who did not know that it would live and flow onwards like a river that sometimes takes a track under a mountain and is not seen until it once again comes to the surface. Hidden, outwardly from the senses, inwardly from the depths of the soul was this Greek culture and now it appeared once again. For sense perception it was brought to the light of day from out of the soil of Italy and flowed into the works of art; for spiritual perception it was not only unearthed from the ancient manuscripts; men began once again to feel in the Greek sense how the material is the manifestation of the Spiritual. They began to feel all that Plato and Aristotle had once thought.

It was Raphael in whom this Greek culture could bring forth its fairest flower because the Christ Impulse had reached a greater ripeness in his soul than in any other. This twice buried and twice resurrected Greek culture worked in him in such a way that he was able to impress into forms the whole evolution of humanity. How marvellously was he able to accomplish this in the pictures in the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican! The ancient spiritual contests rise again before our eyes,—the struggles and activities of those Spirits who developed onwards during the epoch of inward deepening, who were not there in the Greek culture as it reappeared in the time of Raphael. The whole period of inward deepening was necessary before Greek culture could become visible in this particular form, and then it is painted on the walls of the Papal Chambers.

What the Greeks had conceived of in forms only, has now become inward; we see the inner struggles and conflicts of humanity itself charmed onto the walls of the Vatican in the spirit of Greece, of Greek Art and beauty. The Greeks poured into their statues their conception of the way in which the Gods worked upon the world. How this working of the Gods is experienced by man, so that he presses onwards to the foundations and causes of things,—this is what is expressed in the picture so often called “The School of Athens”. The conceptions which the human soul had learned to form of the Greek Gods is expressed in the Parnassus, with its new and significant interpretation of the Homeric gods. These are not the gods of the Iliad and Odyssey; they are the gods as perceived by a soul that had passed through the period of inward deepening.

On the other wall there is a picture that must remain indelibly in the memory of everyone, whatever their religious creed,—I refer to the fresco of the “Dispute about the Mass” which portrays the deepest inner truths. Whereas the other pictures,—in a Greek beauty of form it is true,—express the goal to be attained as the result of a certain philosophical striving, we have in the “Dispute about the Mass”, the fairest thing that the soul of man may experience. Here we find “Brahma”, “Vishnu”, “Shiva” portrayed in quite a different sense,—a proof to us that there is no need to adhere rigidly to a narrow Christian dogmatism. What can be inwardly experienced by every human soul, irrespective of creed or confession, as the “Trinity”, faces us in the symbolism,—though the portrayal is not merely “symbolical”, in the upper part of the picture. We see it again in the countenances of the Church Fathers, in their every gesture, in the whole grouping of the figures, in the wonderful coloring, indeed in the picture as a whole which portrays the inwardness of the human soul in a beauty of form permeated by the spirit of Greece.

And so the inward deepening experienced by the soul man in the course of 1500 years rises again in outer revelation. Christianity, not as the heathendom of the Roman popes and cardinals, but as the wonderful paganism of Greece with its mighty Gods, is resurrected in the works of Raphael.

Thus the soul of Raphael stands at the turning point of ages, pointing back to days of yore, containing within itself all that had developed up to the time of Christendom in the beauty of external revelation, and yet at the same time permeated by what had been brought about by the so-called “education of the human race”, namely an inward deepeningin the reincarnated soul. These wonderworks of so rare and art stand before us like a fusion of two ages, each clearly different from the other,—the pre-Grecian and the post-Grecian epochs, the one of external, the other of inner life. But the pictures also open up a glimpse into the future. Those who realize what the fusion of external beauty and the inner wisdom-filled urge of the human soul may signify, cannot but feel security and hope that this inward deepening—despite all the materiality that must develop more and more as humanity progresses,—must increase in the course of evolution and that the soul of man through successive lives will enter into greater and greater depths of inwardness.

If we now turn to literature and study not as “Art critics” or mere readers, the works of a spirit like Hermann Grimm, who tried with his whole soul to portray the workings of human fantasy, we can understand the depths of inner sympathy with which he contemplated the creations of Raphael. If we ourselves study a spirit like Hermann Grimm with this same inner sympathy, we can understand the significance of certain words of his which express what was passing through his soul when he makes a somewhat tentative utterance at the beginning of his books, in a passage dealing with the way in which Raphael is a product of all the ages. Grimm's formal descriptions of the various works of Raphael do not show us whence this particular thought has sprung. In the middle of other wider historical considerations into which Raphael is introduced, Hermann Grimm is struck by a thought which he records somewhat tentatively in these words: “When we contemplate the spiritual creations of humanity and see how they have passed over from days of yore into our own time, we may well be aware of a longing to tread this Earth once more in order to see what has been their fate as they have lived on.”

This desire for “reincarnation” expressed by Hermann Grimm in the introduction to his book on Raphael is remarkable, and moreover, deeply characteristic of the feeling living in the soul of a man of our own time,—I mean of course one who tried to penetrate into the very soul of Raphael and his connection with other epochs. Surely this makes us feel that works like those of Raphael are not merely a “natural product”; they do not only induce a sense of gratitude for all that the past has hitherto bestowed. They rather give birth to a feeling of hope, because they strengthen our belief in an advancing humanity. We feel that these works could not be what they are if progress were not the very essence of humanity. A feeling of security and hope arises when we allow Raphael to work upon us in the true sense and we are able to say: Raphael has spoken to humanity itself in his artistic creations.

In front of the Stanzas in the Camera della Segnatura we do indeed feel the transitoriness of the outer work and that those ofttimes repaired frescoes can no longer give any conception of what Raphael's magic once charmed on those walls. We realize that at some future time men will no longer be able to gaze at the original works, but we know too that humanity will never cease progressing. Raphael's works began their march of triumph when out of sheer love of them the innumerable reproductions now in existence were made. The influence of the originals live on, even in the reproductions. We can so well understand Hermann Grimm when he says that he once hung a photograph of the Sistine Madonna in his room but always felt that he had no right to go into that room; it seemed to him to be a sanctuary of the Madonna in the picture. Many will have realized that the soul is changed after they have entered livingly into some picture of Raphael, even though it is only a reproduction. True one day the originals will disappear, but may it not be said that they exist nonetheless in other worlds?

The words of Hermann Grimm in his book on Homer are quite true: “Neither can the original works of Homer truly delight us in these days for when we read the Iliad and Odyssey in ordinary life without higher spiritual faculties, we are no longer able to enter fully into all the subtleties, beauty and power of the Greek language. The originals exist no longer; yet in spite of this Homer speaks to us through his poems.” What Raphael has given to the outer world however will always remain as a living witness of the fact that there was once an age in the evolution of humanity when the mysteries of existence were indeed revealed through mighty creations, although at that time men could not penetrate into these mysteries through printed writing. In the age of Raphael men read less, but they beheld a great deal more.

Raphael's eternal message to humanity will bear witness to this epoch,—an epoch differently constituted but that will nevertheless work on through all the ages to come, because humanity is one complete organism. Thus Raphael's creations will live on in the outer course of human evolution and inwardly in the successive lives of the spirit of man, bestowing ever mightier and more deeply inward treasures.

Spiritual Science points to a twofold continuation of life, one aspect of which has been described in previous lectures here, and will be still further described, and to another spiritual life towards which we are ever striving. This spiritual life becomes our guide as we pass through the epochs of earthly existence. Hermann Grimm spoke words of truth when he expressed what his study of Raphael imparted to his feeling and perception. He says: “A time must come when Raphael's work will have long since faded and passed away. Nonetheless he will still be living in mankind, for in him humanity blossomed forth into something that has its very roots in man and will forever germinate and bear fruit.” Every human soul who can penetrate deeply enough into Raphael's soul will realize this. Indeed we can only truly understand Raphael when we can sublimate and deepen in the sense of Spiritual Science a feeling which permeated Hermann Grimm when he turned again and again to the contemplation of the painter. (In the last lecture we saw how near Hermann Grimm stood to Spiritual Science.) It will help us to understand our own relation to Raphael and the sense in which thoughts such as have been given today may grow into seeds. If we conclude with a passage from Grimm which expresses what I have really wished to say: “Men will always long to understand Raphael, the fair young painter who surpassed all others, who was fated to die early and whose death was mourned by all Rome. When Raphael's works are lost his name will nevertheless remain engraven in the memory of man.”

Thus wrote Hermann Grimm went in his own particular way he began to describe Raphael. We can understand these words and also those with which he concludes his book: “All the world will long to know of the life work of such a man for Raphael has become one of the basic elements in the higher development of the human spirit. We would fain draw nearer to him nay, we need him for our healing.”

Dear attendees! The subject of today's reflection will somewhat cross the boundaries that have usually been drawn here in such spiritual scientific reflections. Nevertheless, it seems useful to me to consider human spiritual life in a broader sense in relation to what the human soul can feel about the results of this spiritual science. Moreover, if we consider contemporary history, this evening's reflection, perhaps, as a kind of spiritual-scientific challenge, places itself directly into this spiritual life of the present, for the consideration of Raphael, if we consider it in the way it is usually done, presents people with many puzzles, really great spiritual-cultural-scientific puzzles.

And perhaps we may be confronted with the necessity of extending our spiritual-scientific considerations to such areas in particular, especially if we allow the fate of a significant contemporary art researcher in relation to Raphael to have some effect on our souls – an art historian who, I believe, is so not only in the scholarly, in the usual scientific sense, but who is so above all because the nineteenth century beat in his heart as directly as in few personalities: Herman Grimm. He is one of those art historians who were always not only with reason and intellect, not only with the usual scientific sense, but with the whole soul in their subject. And anyone who is familiar with Herman Grimm's art and cultural writings knows how much of what is directly moving the present intellectually pulsates within him, how his riddles about many subjects of intellectual life are the riddles of our era. And if spiritual science is to prove more and more fruitful, then it will have to seek contact with the way in which the entire spiritual cultural life seeks to approach such riddle-questions.

Herman Grimm – he was the son of Wilhelm Grimm and the nephew of Jakob Grimm, the great linguist – was truly a nineteenth-century spirit. This great expert on Goethe and this significant spirit, who wrote the wonderful book about Michelangelo, died at the turn of the twentieth century.

Now it is, in a sense, characteristic that Herman Grimm also wrote a “Life of Raphael”. However, he felt differently about this “Life of Raphael” than he did about the Life of Michelangelo or even the Life of Goethe. Herman Grimm himself confessed that he had repeatedly tried to solve the riddle of Raphael and that at certain times he had indeed sought a kind of conclusion with his Life of Raphael; but every time he approached the riddle of Raphael again, he knew how imperfectly he had dealt with Raphael in his own soul. Again and again he made a new approach; and so we have a wonderful essay that he wrote shortly before his death, which is only the introduction to a book that should have been more extensive, in which he once again attempts, shortly before his death, to place the image of Raphael before his own soul, to solve the riddle of Raphael for himself in a certain way, insofar as such riddles can be solved by human souls at all.

Thus we see on the one hand a struggling spirit who, in accordance with his entire disposition, is immersed in artistic life and in the contemplation of artistic life, who creates a wonderfully rounded image of Michelangelo, we see how he is aware that he has really to have brought this image to a kind of conclusion; we see how this struggling soul fights throughout his entire life to present the enigma of Raphael, and does not finish it, so that he makes a new attempt immediately before his death, which again is not finished. Why is that? Yes, a mere scholar would have been finished in some sense, but not a mind like that, which immersed itself in its task with all its soul and wanted to resurrect the image of Raphael. The closer Herman Grimm approached Raphael, the more he wanted to resurrect the image of Raphael in his soul, the more it revealed itself to him as emerging in an enigmatic way from the entire human development; it presented itself to him in such a way that, the more closely one looks at it, one is led to delve into the deepest mysteries of the human soul itself and to gain an understanding of what such a human soul is, which grows out of the entire picture of human development as a great mystery. And when one follows the other side of Herman Grimm's work, one has the feeling that a mind such as his, which has grown so intimately together with the spiritual culture of the nineteenth century, is making attempts everywhere to find the way – yes, which way? The path that the spiritual researcher knows as his own. I can only gently hint here at the wonderfully intimate way in which Herman Grimm presents a death, a dying, at the end of his significant book 'Unüberwindliche Mächte' (Insurmountable Powers), and in this dying the detachment of what has been presented here more often than the detachment of the etheric body from the physical body. We see Herman Grimm's soul wrestling tenderly and intimately, but no less urgently, to find the paths that spiritual science in particular wants to unlock.

Thus, when one contemplates this remarkable art historian, one can really get the idea: something lives in him that is a question of our age in particular. And because the pulse of our time lived in him, this question lived with particular vibrancy in his soul - the spiritual-scientific question that we wanted to approach in all the considerations that have been employed here. But it is precisely in such a struggle as Herman Grimm's with Raphael's image that one sees that if one gets stuck in the nineteenth-century way of looking at things, one will not be able to cope with the greatest riddles, if one sincerely and without hypocrisy tries to solve such riddles with the awareness of having to delve into ever deeper depths. From the contemplation of spiritual science, the answer will emerge more and more, which I can only hint at, why Herman Grimm could not finish his contemplation of Raphael. However grotesque it may sound to some, the reason for this is that he was able to approach the gate of spiritual science everywhere, but could not unlock this gate anywhere according to the spirit of his century, according to the conditions of the whole becoming of the nineteenth century. So let the attempt be made to approach Raphael, not from some spiritual-scientific dogma or law, but with that which, as the whole mood of the soul, is able to penetrate into our minds when we face Raphael's painting. In spiritual scientific research it is much more important – and this is ultimately what impresses itself on our souls – that we look at the things of the world in a certain mood, than to apply all possible laws that may arise from spiritual research in a stereotypically abstract way. That is certainly not what the human soul should do in spiritual science.

How did Raphael appear to Herman Grimm, this nineteenth-century spirit? This man speaks strange words. I will quote them to you verbatim so that we can, so to speak, fully immerse ourselves in the way this man seeks to gain a personal relationship to his subject through his research. Thus Raphael appears to him as a spirit, to understand which he needs to draw on the most intimate depths of human development. Not on the basis of an epoch, but as if born out of the whole development of humanity – great and powerful on the background of human development, that is how he appears to him; and for those who can feel, words such as those written by Herman Grimm in the last fragmentary pages about Raphael, which he wrote as if born out of a final attempt to understand Raphael, have a profound effect. There Herman Grimm says:

Raphael is a citizen of world history. He is like one of the four rivers that, according to the beliefs of the ancient world, came from paradise.

No matter what scholars may think about it, someone who can open his soul to something very special will experience something special in his soul when he looks at a person like Herman Grimm, who has immersed himself in an object throughout his life and in whose feeling something lives that makes him speak about Raphael in such a way that he elevates him to a citizen of world history, to a being that stands out from the entire development of humanity. And Herman Grimm, too, may appear differently to others, if one wishes to do him justice from a certain emotional point of view. Herman Grimm said:

If Michelangelo were called away from the dead by a miracle to live among us again, and if I met him, I would respectfully step aside so that he could pass by; but if Raphael came my way, I would walk behind him to see if I could catch a few words on his lips. With Leonardo and Michelangelo, one can limit oneself to recounting what they once were in their day. With Raphael, one must start from what he is today. A soft haze has settled over the others, but not over Raphael. He is one of those whose growth is far from over. Generations of people living in the future can always conceive of new enigmas that Raphael will pose for them [...].

And so the question is raised: What riddles can Raphael's appearance pose to someone who has penetrated his soul through what comes from the spiritual-scientific contemplation of the world? Well, spiritual science speaks of development in time in a dual sense; this dual sense has been touched on here several times. First of all, spiritual science speaks of how humanity progresses from epoch to epoch in its earthly development, so that one recognizes that spirit and meaning are in this development, that spiritual laws can therefore be found. In terms of these spiritual laws, we can see how humanity in prehistoric times was led in a different way in its development across the earth than it was later; we can see how other, [new] impulses and impacts worked in accordance with these spiritual laws into our time. In the spiritual-scientific sense we distinguish precisely between the individual epochs, and therefore one cannot be satisfied with the trivial statement that natural development never makes a leap. This statement can certainly be quite correct if it is interpreted in a certain way; but just try to observe nature: you will see how such a saying, which is so easily spoken in a trivial way, has only a very limited meaning. Nature makes leaps: plants make a giant leap in their development between the root and the green leaf, then another giant leap between the green leaf and the blossom, and yet another between the blossom and the fruit. Nature leaps everywhere, and it is no different in the history of mankind. The individual epochs do not, as a comfortable worldview would have it, simply and successively merge into one another, but rather they are sharply distinguished from one another in character. And anyone who takes a close look at these human epochs will find that the human soul is capable of recognizing something special in each epoch, of experiencing something special. Even if one finds the word pedantic that Lessing used: that world history is an education of the entire human race - in a certain sense this word is justified. Just as the individual, starting from a primitive stage of his spiritual life, rises to ever new impulses, which he then experiences in the outer world and in his own inner being, so it is also the case for all of humanity throughout the earth. This is one way in which spiritual science views the development of humanity across the earth.

The other way of looking at it relates to the human soul's participation in this ongoing education. And here spiritual science - as has been explained so often and also the day before yesterday here - states as a result: the human being goes through this earth development in repeated earth lives, so that the human soul participates in the successive epochs that we, looking back, can ask ourselves how our own souls in earlier epochs of the development of the earth, in earlier lives on earth, participated in what the development of the earth could give the human soul each time. Again and again our souls were embodied on earth in bodies to absorb that which then became impulses for later epochs. Thus, in its successive lives, the human soul participates in everything that can flow into it from the impulses of the entire human development on earth.

There are, let us say, compassionate minds who forgive Lessing for speaking from such a point of view at the height of his life in his significant work “The Education of the Human Race” about repeated lives on earth, because only through this - [through this idea of repeated lives on earth] - did it become clear to him which forces actually carry the whole evolution of humanity through history: only through the fact that the human souls themselves carry over what they absorb in one epoch into other epochs, and the human soul does not belong to only one epoch in isolation, but recurring again and again to the successive epochs, so that it is a citizen of all of history. If we can start from this point of view, that in a very peculiar way, what each human soul has absorbed as impulses in earlier epochs, then it comes to us before the soul, as in particular an outstanding mind [like Raphael] can be found in the outcome of all that his soul has gone through in earlier lives on earth in any epoch.

We will not search pedantically and abstractly for cause and effect, but we will acquire a feeling for how a soul can become immersed in an epoch, and we feel in this soul, basically, in a very special way, the entire previous life on earth that such a soul - and every human soul - has lived through in its own unique way. If we now look at a relatively short period of time in terms of the development of the earth, but one that is close at hand for the present study of humanity, namely the historical millennia, and compare it with the millennia that preceded the historical ones , then something arises for spiritual scientific research that has been mentioned here often: the human soul itself has undergone transformations so that it was very different in ancient times than in later times or than in the present. It must be pointed out that our ordinary present intellectual thinking, which has achieved its triumph in science, is a product of development that has only gradually emerged. Spiritual science must take the word 'development' very seriously and see this development not only in the succession of external forms, but above all in the work of the human soul. Only in spiritual science does this development of the human soul present itself differently than in external science.

Spiritual science turns its gaze back to ancient times, to times even earlier than the historical ones, and finds that the human soul was endowed with a kind of primitive clairvoyance. Today I can only hint at these things; they are explained in more detail in other lectures. What our intellectual thinking is today, through which we come to self-awareness and recognize ourselves inwardly as human beings, had to develop first. In ancient times, the whole imaginative life of man was such that he had certain intermediate states between waking and sleeping, like dream images. These were not mere dream images, but they were symbolic expressions of the reality that surrounded him. He perceived in a kind of ancient clairvoyance. Then humanity developed further, and our present understanding, our imagination and other things, as they are peculiar to present humanity, were incorporated as an element of a new impulse.

Now we find a significant break in the great period of human development that precedes us, which presents itself to us through a very wonderful epoch of this human development. That is the time of Greek culture. For those who look at human development with the trained eye of a spiritual researcher, Greek culture appears as a kind of middle ground between two separate lines of development in human history. If we look at Greek culture, then, because our present consideration is to culminate in the view of an artist, the artistic aspect is the most important for us. This artistic aspect was, however, in full harmony with the whole Greek spirit, and this Greek spirit only appears to him who, shortsightedly, regards the development of humanity — as today's spirit does — in such a way that human souls were actually about the same as they are today. For those who look closely at the characteristic features of human development, the picture is quite different.

I would like to start with a specific example: when an artist approaches his art today, let us say sculpture, it is quite natural and self-evident for our present time, because it lies in the character of our time, now, let us say it dryly, that he works from a model, that he has the model of nature before him, that he imitates nature. This corresponds to our current view, our current environment, which artistically suggests the soul's contemplation that confronts nature and seeks the truth by conjuring up images of things in the soul. This is what modern science does, and in a certain way this is also what modern art does. [But this is only right and proper for our time, for this is what the intellectual contemplation of the world wants; it wants man to gain the true or the false image of nature through contemplation and to create images of nature in his imagination, which he then confronts as a self-aware human being. This was not yet the case in Greek times, and those who believe that the Greek artist did it the same way as the modern artist are wrong. The modern artist has to do it this way because the human soul has become more and more internalized; because in our time the human soul is no longer able to form that intimate bond with nature by immersing itself in the objects themselves. It presents itself as distinct from the things, it imitates them. This is how today's man acquires his power of judgment, but it is also how he acquires his full self-confidence in the world.

It was different in the Greek world. In the Greek world, the soul was still intimately connected with all that is physical, corporeal; and because it was more intimately connected with all this, it was also intimately connected with what the physical, corporeal is connected with, with the surrounding nature. What lives and moves in nature, experienced this in the human soul as it really is in nature. The human soul did not stand opposed to nature, it was in nature, living with the foundations of nature. If a Greek artist wanted to create any old statue in sculpture, spiritual research shows us that it would have been quite unnatural for him to imitate something externally. If he wanted to depict a statue, say of Mars or Zeus — figures that he all humanized —, it was his primary concern to feel what the soul of Mars or Zeus experienced. And because the soul impulses and feelings poured directly and objectively into the soul, the artist felt in every gesture, in every movement, in every posture, in every look, what the soul experienced. He was actually inwardly Mars, Zeus, and therefore knew what a hand, what a muscle looked like. He created his immediate inner experience. He did not create according to nature because the soul did not merely experience the soul, but also experienced what was bodily in the environment. This separation [of the soul's co-experience from nature] – that has only come about.

In ancient Greece, the soul was still part of natural existence. But if we go back even further than ancient Greece, we come closer and closer to the times when there was still a kind of clairvoyance, when man went beyond the physical and felt the spiritual that lay behind it – and was connected to the spirit that hovers behind the sensual world. From the innermost depths of the world, from the laws that do not resemble the external, the soul created those forms that now correspond all the more to the laws of the external world. Even in philosophers such as Plato, Pythagoras and Socrates, we find human souls that still reach down below the surface. In Greek thought, the soul is not yet internalized in the human personality; it is still rooted in the world of the senses. Modern man has freed himself; he can only confront nature and imitate it. But in this way the soul, having become stronger, attains inner stability and a firm footing within itself. Thus the human soul of primeval times was unfree and dependent on the all-pervading spirit; thus the Greek soul was directly within nature, not yet separating spirit and nature; and thus the modern soul is set apart from its surroundings, grasping itself in its inwardness.

Now there is no period of time for art that shows us as clearly as in a leap in the characterized sense how this art, on the one hand, still demands the greatness and significance of experiencing nature and, on the other hand, has to reckon with the deepened inwardness of the human soul - [it is the time in which great artists like Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael created their works]. It is characteristic that the event falls into the time of Greek culture, which gave the human soul internalization above all else and which, through its impulses, contributes to the education of the human soul: the emergence and establishment of Christianity. And it seems mighty and wondrous to us when we look at the development of humanity from the most comprehensive interdenominational point of view, regardless of any narrow-denominational point of view, and see how, from the time of the emergence of Christianity, what we can call the internalization of the human soul arises in a lawful manner, and which I am now trying to characterize.

You can particularly see this when you try to look at a mind from the first Christian centuries, a mind like Augustine's. Just delve into something like the “Confessions” of Augustine – worth reading for anyone who wants to delve into the spirit of the times, in the best sense of the word. And one thus gains a sense of the infinite inwardness of human soul experience, which breaks into human development and shows itself in a soul like that of Augustine. And compare the whole life, the whole inward nature of Augustine's soul life with what [all of] Greek art, even the harrowing tragedies of an Aeschylus, of a Sophocles, could give. In the great Aeschylus and the great Sophocles we find the connection between man and his environment everywhere. However ingenious the characterizations may appear to us, the people everywhere do not stand out in such a way that we can speak of an internalization of the soul life to the same degree as in the powerful and forceful way in which this inwardness of the human spirit appears to us in Augustine.

We will only be able to see the whole spiritual course of human development when we recognize this impulse of internalization as an historical law, even if we do not want to tie in with the Christ impulse in any conventional way. For these things are present, as surely as the sun is present in space. They can be grasped spiritually as the effects of the sun on the planets in space. [This development has particularly led to a certain inartistic way of looking at things in the so-called Renaissance, the golden age of human-spiritual development.] But art will never be able to disappear from human development; it will only seek for itself that which is possible for it in the lawful general character of an age. And so we see in the epoch at the turn of the fifteenth to the sixteenth century, in which Raphael's life also falls, how there is a struggle, firstly, to make art possible and, secondly, to take into account in art what has also occurred in the development of art in a lawful manner with the internalization of the human soul.

In this mighty transitional epoch, Raphael's spirit matured. And how does he appear to us? In a wonderful way he appears to us! Raphael was born in Urbino in 1483, the son of a goldsmith who was also a painter and from whom he received his first painting lessons. Orphaned at an early age, Raphael was apprenticed to the most important painter in Italy at the time, Pietro Perugino in Perugia. From Perugino, we see Raphael receiving, so to speak, the first stimulus for what would then rise to such tremendous greatness. But when you consider Raphael's environment, first in Urbino, then in Perugia, and then again Raphael's soul itself, this consideration becomes a mystery wherever you look; for this Raphael soul stands within its environment like something that does not grow out of this environment itself, but that places itself within this environment as if coming from completely different home climes. And only those who are short-sighted with regard to these things can still strive to explain Raphael in terms of what surrounded him.

Raphael grew up in Perugia, where he learned from the most important painter in Italy at the time. If we first look at the master himself, we see a thoroughly Christian man, counting on the Christian moment of the soul's interiorization. If we let the overall impression of his pictures sink in, we find this justified everywhere. Yes, out of the traditions of his time, this master of Raphael painted the Christian figures, the inner soul of man seeking the paths of eternity. He painted the figures of the holy legend in such a way that the struggling, searching human soul, in need of eternity, finds satisfaction in these figures. But in every stroke of these paintings by Perugino, we also see that he was not present with the innermost fibers of his soul in what he painted from tradition. You can see this clearly when you look at the still existing pictures, at the mild, but still quite understandable face of Perugino from his time: This soul, living in these features, has sought to internalize the art from what he has conjured up on the canvas, from tradition; but the soul was not completely there. This not fully internalized tradition, that was the essential thing that Raphael had of his master.

If we consider the surroundings of Perugia, we see wonderful nature that awakens in every sentient human soul a feeling for the riddles of natural existence, for the eternal values that lie in earthly existence. But what took place in this environment? Struggle after struggle within a passionate people. And it must be assumed that the place where Raphael grew up learning was characterized by struggles, by terrible struggles, which the individual families and clans fought among themselves in the struggle for supremacy in the city. Entire families moved out and then besieged those left behind in the city. Raphael was surrounded by all this. Try to imagine someone who grew up in Perugia and compare him to Raphael. You would see how the former would have lived with all of this and absorbed the life around him – you can almost touch it.

There is a promising tale told by a chronicler, a historian who was just such a person, who was there; he tells how, among these warring factions, one of the heroes of such a faction rode into the city like a sort of St. George or Mars, riding into the city on horseback, powerfully fighting for his followers, and how he rode down everything that opposed him with his horse - a picture from Perugia at that time! We see this scene, as described by the chronicler, depicted in a painting by Raphael - elevated to the spiritual and soul realm, in which everything that has a direct effect on the observer of this scene is swept away. We see how a life confronts us here that only a soul can experience, which hovers above the whole and only captures what is inwardly, spiritually presented in such a scene, and then later conjures it onto the canvas. This is how Raphael appears to us: at home in worlds that do not belong to this sensual world, at home in spiritual realms with which his soul is completely interwoven in its inwardness. And the immediate environment in which he is placed gave him nothing else than that he was allowed to look at it. A spirit, as if from completely different homelands, who can never be explained by his environment for clear thinking and clear observation, who brings something with him, adds something that is not in the environment.

And what did Raphael learn from his master? It is precisely that which makes Raphael the wonderful phenomenon of artistic and human development that he did not learn from his master. For we feel with Raphael that the main feature of the newer period, the internalization of the human soul - the self-evident internalization that is connected with everything he creates - is precisely what is missing in Perugino, but that it is present in every fiber of Raphael and pours directly into what he lives out in his forms, in his art. We feel how a piece of Raphael's deepest inwardness lives on the canvas everywhere when we immerse ourselves in his paintings. This was something that Raphael took from the heights of heaven and not from Perugino, something that he brought in like a messenger from completely different worlds. Whoever tries to grasp this internalization not only in dogmas and doctrines, in external laws that can be grasped in concepts, but with the whole soul, will feel it flowing out of every creation of Raphael, so that in Raphael's greatest creations we have precisely that which we can say: It is now something quite different from what lies in Greek art. There lived that which man has directly experienced in soul and body and at the same time shaped in forms. In Raphael, we see the inner soul of man as poured out and confronting us in forms, the soul that has separated itself from natural existence, pouring out and confronting us as a new world, as a creation of the most inwardly human soul - not in a certain way in nature, but like a new creation - the interior of the human soul striving outwards again and artistically embodying itself there.

Those who call only those a Christian who believe in Christian dogmas, we want to leave to themselves for today's reflection. Those who recognize the Christian trait in the inwardness of the human soul, who see this Christian impulse at work, who see how the human soul breaks away from the outer world and turns inwards to reflect, how it seeks the Christ impulse within - because the human being, having separated from nature, needs such a point of support - will understand why this impulse was given precisely at this time. Those who are able to recognize and feel this more than dogma-less Christianity, this Christianity that is no longer regarded as Christian by some, will understand when the spiritual scientist researcher feels how in Raphael's soul, even before his birth, the basic trait of Christianity was alive, how in all that Raphael felt and experienced, a Christian soul was born, a soul that entered the whole environment as a Christianized soul, a soul with which the Christian way of life was born at the same time, a soul that was Christian through everything that lived in it. And this Christianity in Raphael's soul cannot be explained by anything in the environment. When it is put this way, it looks like an assertion, and it cannot be proven with mathematical certainty; such things arise through intimate immersion in the essence of such a soul. You can see in Raphael, when you let his soul pass before you, how it stands out and differs from another soul that only during its life entered into the internalization of Christianity. By contrasting Raphael with another figure, we can see the difference between a soul that is born a Christian and therefore incorporates the Christian message into every line of its creations, and a soul that only gradually embraces Christian impulses.

Let us continue to observe Raphael in relation to his immediate surroundings. When he was transferred to Florence in 1504, he came into an environment where the after-effects of Savonarola were still vividly felt and where the atmosphere was still strongly influenced by what Savonarola had brought to Florence. The spirit of Savonarola himself was still perceptible in the followers and opponents of Savonarola in Florence, for example in Fra Bartolommeo, who was one of Raphael's friends. When you place a soul like Savonarola's side by side with Raphael's, so to speak, as a contemporary soul, you notice a difference. How naturally the Christianized, the way of the whole Christianized soul, comes to us in Raphael; this soul of Raphael does not first have to become Christian, it does not fanatically represent Christianity; it never does that. Raphael's soul does not need to indulge in Christian dogmas either; this soul draws such lines, applies such colors, as correspond to Christian interiorization; it lives Christian from birth. How different is the soul of Savonarola! He assimilates Christianity in such a way that he fights for the heroic, the great, the significant, and the moral of Christianity bit by bit. He is kindled bit by bit during his development by what one can feel as an impression of Christianity. She is a soul who is only becoming familiar with Christianity, who is fanatical about Christianity, and we can see how she is gradually drawn to Christianity and lives so close to Christianity that the internalized Christian soul must pour out again - powerfully, and therefore one-sidedly and fanatically. There is an enormous difference.

If you do not dogmatize, but consider how, in the moment when one ascends to spiritual-scientific contemplation, everything becomes infinitely versatile, where the evidence does not arise as in the field of mathematics, where everything has sharp contours, then it becomes clear to him who is not merely acquainted with scientific dogmas and laws but has imbued himself with the impulses of spiritual science that this, which has just been attempted to be developed, is illuminated with infinite clarity by the two souls. When spiritual science shows us how Raphael's soul - I only want to hint at these things gently, not roughly, as it must be done in spiritual science when one comes across individual concrete facts - when spiritual science illuminates for us how a soul like Raphael's was already in an earlier life , how it absorbed the power of Christianity and passed through life between death and a new birth with this power of Christianity, then one can also understand the transformation by which he can now live out in a serene form in soul-spiritual powers that which he once experienced with strength. The only way to make sense of the riddle is to say to oneself: Yes, that which has direct Christian impact, right down to the dogmatic, has not been experienced by a soul like Savonarola in the past, but was only in that life at the time of Raphael that it was able to gradually live its way into Christianity from other forms of life, into a stage that the Raphael soul had already passed through in an earlier life.

Of course, I too find it natural that a large part of humanity today still finds what has just been said absurd and ridiculous. I will never be surprised - together with all those who know the fundamentals of spiritual science - when something like this is found to be absurd and ridiculous. But the time will come when people will realize how deeply rooted is what can be said about human souls through the spirit, which has just been used to explain the very different nature of the soul of Savonarola compared to that of Raphael. The doctrine of repeated earthly lives will prove fruitful.

And yet another trait comes to light when we study Raphael's soul. If we probe his soul in this way, we find that it is so thoroughly Christian that Raphael was not at all disturbed by the unchristian environment of the popes when he came to Rome. Indeed, a soul in which Christianity lived so naturally could more easily cope with the environment, not taking offense at Julius II, the pope of whom Machiavelli, who was certainly not particularly moral himself, said that he was a devilish soul, a man who would have liked to bare his teeth at anyone who crossed him. And of the following popes, with whom Raphael lived, there is not much of a Christian tale to tell either. A soul like Savonarola's clashes with such popes. He confronts them as the Baptist once confronted people in his apt words, but not the soul of Raphael, who has already gone through this in some previous life, which we will not talk about here. Raphael's soul remains untouched in its Christian self-evidence.

But artistically, his soul must be active. Artistry must be a continuation of what appeared as art in the Greek world. He must seek what he does not have within himself, and he must seek it in his surroundings. We see him, for example, walking around among the excavated ruins and ancient tombs in Rome, taking in everything, really absorbing from the outside that which is peculiar to Greek art, which he must marry with that which is self-evident to him, with Christian inwardness. It is as if Raphael's soul in a previous life had had the opportunity to be so close to Christianity that Christianity was born as a matter of course with this soul in the existence of Raphael, but that in a previous life it had been far removed from Greek culture and now had to absorb this Greek culture from the outside in order to marry it with the Christianity that he brings with him as a matter of course from a previous life. It is as if what appears out of the spiritual as a necessary result of a previous existence on earth grows together with what this soul must now take in from the outside - in contrast to the Savonarola soul. Thus the two kinds of forces that confront us in this Raphael soul grow together. And it will no longer be absurd and ridiculous to look for Raphael in an earlier life somewhere in a Christian environment that was far removed from Greek culture, which at that time poured powerful impulses into this soul, which remained dormant until this soul life had been transformed - until the next birth, of course, now without any fanaticism and without many other things that are only remotely similar to fanaticism. When this soul was reborn, it sought, because it had been far removed from Greek culture, to find it where it could, in order to absorb this Greek culture into itself.

If we can recognize the spiritual currents that came together in Raphael from a spiritual scientific perspective, can we grasp them, then we learn to understand how both had such a significant effect on this soul: [on the one hand] the natural Christian internalization through his individuality and [on the other hand] the Greek element, through the environment into which the soul was drawn because it lacked that which was an important, a great point of passage through all epochs of human development. We see how Raphael, through the merging of these two things, one individual and one rooted in the general development of humanity and not received from Raphael's earlier incarnation, rises on the great tableau of general human development as if to a [special] summit. Then we understand that what arises in his soul, so infinitely internalized, is what now confronts us from his creations. If Raphael is a typically Christian soul and in it the Christian principle and the general human element of Greek culture are combined in a lawful manner, if Raphael thus absorbs the great currents of the present cycle of human development, then we may assume that something lives in his soul itself that is like an image of the lawfulness of human progress.

And so that my explanations do not seem too “mystical” to you and the “fantasy” does not seem too grotesque to you, I would now like to show you how a soul takes in something like an image of the great currents of world development , how it presents, as it were, small epochs within itself like images of great human epochs – for it is in such epochs that the development of humanity takes place – I would like to show, not with my words, but again with the struggling Herman Grimm, who says something very remarkable. In his last work, Herman Grimm wants to depict the most important highlights of Raphael's work, but how strangely he speaks of this creative, creating soul of Raphael, how curiously. For Herman Grimm, the development of Raphael's creations becomes a law of the whole world – he regards seven works as the greatest in Raphael's development. And of these seven works he says:

At twenty-one years of age he painted the Marriage of the Virgin, four years later the Entombment; four years after that the Camera della Segnatura was completed, four years after that the cartoons for the tapestries were painted and soon after that the two Madonnas. The “Transfiguration” stood at the foot of the deathbed.

A spirit that appears to the unprejudiced observer as if it were to incorporate the epochs of human development, such a spirit appears to the art observer, who looks for the characteristic, in his development in such a way that he ascends from year to year to higher and ever higher peaks; and because the last four years are not complete, the last work is also not finished.

It is often said that man is a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm; an epochal spirit like Raphael appears to us here as a microcosm of human and spiritual development itself. And how does he embody this? We need only turn our gaze to the two large and powerful, if now, one might say, poorly overpainted and poorly preserved, two rooms in the Vatican in the Camera della Segnatura, one of which - whether rightly or wrongly, it remains to be seen - is called “The School of Athens” and the other “The Disputa”. The whole of human development is depicted in these two pictures, which are placed opposite each other and touch the human soul so deeply. In one of the pictures, Greek culture is represented by the ennobled figures on the left and right, as it were expressing itself in the question: [Where has humanity come to, to what point has it progressed in the entire age of Greek culture,] where man still lived with the immediate surroundings of the outside world? Everything, down to the architecture, reflects the spirit of this development in this single image.

It is wrong to comment on it or interpret it in a pedantic, philistine way; it is right to try to summarize in a feeling what humanity has received on its way to Greek culture, where life in the external world has been replaced by the internalization of the human soul of the human soul, if one summarizes the entire life of humanity in an elapsed time with everything for which the human soul has longed, what it has striven for, has achieved, in one feeling: It flows towards us, it lives in this image that which this feeling fulfills with content. It is not necessary to paint the individual figures. I consider it a bad thing when travelers stand in front of a painting with a “Baedeker” in their hands and read: This is such and such - Aristotle, Plato, Ptolemy, Pythagoras. What do we care about all the names, what do all the comments and explanations give us? The artistic breath that comes down from this picture is also what streams out of the Greek work of art – the breath that is there from the development of humanity itself, when we look at it with a sensitive, artistic heart. Then the epoch of interiorization on the opposite wall: above, the symbols of the supernatural; below, representing people, how the supersensible flows into their souls in order to interiorize them. The whole mighty contrast of an ancient time and the time of internalization, and again the breath of the new internalization itself, they flow towards us from what is called - again rightly or wrongly - “Disputa”.

From what Raphael's soul had grown, he conjured it into these scenes. And one feels it so clearly, if one can feel truthfully what lies in the souls in these two different cycles of human development, the pre-Christian and the post-Christian times. If one abstains from all intellectual judgment, all inartistic commenting – that nonsense of subjective interpretation that has become so widespread, especially in theosophical circles – and abandons oneself to direct sensation, if one artistically immerses oneself in the things one feels drawn to Raphael, to a human soul that has married interiorization in artistic creation with kinship with all spiritual things in nature, as it was present in earlier epochs.

Again – when you cross over from Florence to Bologna and have the picture in front of you: in the middle the female figure, looking upwards in a visionary manner – I don't need to mention the name, you may assume, for my sake, that this is the “Saint Cecilia” - so expressed that in every gesture, in every line, in every color scheme, the soul's detachment from the physical is shown. She looks up, so that both from the central figure, as from the four surrounding ones, it is clear: The earthly instruments fall to the ground directly from the feeling; but the soul, which is directed upwards – we feel that its tones have fallen silent – listens to what is born as if from the supersensible, what sounds through the world, warming it like the music of the spheres, in the presence of which earthly music fades away. Only a soul that feels so inwardly as the Raphael soul could conjure this on the canvas, on the wall. And only a soul that was like the Raphael soul could create the highest that the human soul can feel, straight from the depths of the human soul. If spiritual science in its universality wants to elevate the human soul to the origin of human existence, then it comes to what has been explained here many times: that we may be surrounded by many things on earth, that we may look at many things, but that precisely that which presents itself to us in strict spiritual scientific contemplation as the innermost part of our nature, that is of extra-terrestrial origin – it lives, as I said the day before yesterday, in the spiritual and soul that surrounds us, just as the Earth's atmosphere physically surrounds us; and we feel that this, which is the most human of all, is born out of the spirit.

If we want to have a representation of that, of the most human of the human, if we want to feel and experience in our soul what spiritual science is able to stimulate in the soul, then we feel the earth with everything that belongs to the earth, we disappear and the most human of the human floats by, our soul is absorbed in the extra-terrestrial worlds. It turns its gaze outwards to seek in these extra-terrestrial worlds that which is the origin of man; and it transports itself outwards, seeking to sensualize the supersensible in the cloud-forming regions. From the cloud-forming regions, we find the image of the most human of humanity pressing towards the earth, as Raphael lets this mysterious union of mother and son float in, born out of the stylized clouds. Our soul rises from the feeling that flashes in us in the figure of the so-called “Saint Cecilia” to the delicately tangible supersensible feeling of the mystery of man originating from extraterrestrial worlds.

And when we allow this feeling, which awakens an infinite warmth in our soul, to be just feeling – it is the one feeling into which the currents of spiritual scientific contemplation ultimately converge – when we allow this feeling to prevail within us and seek a satisfactory representation – seek something that meets the feeling from the outside – then we imagine the “Sistine Madonna” from Dresden. The spiritual feeling grows together with what Raphael has depicted in this picture. Line and color, hand movement and gesture present to us what is meant: the encounter of spiritual ideals with the highest artistic ideals, with the religious feelings in us, the encounter of that feeling which, in all that is pictorial, is able to flame, the encounter of this feeling with what flows towards us from Raphael's creation, the encounter of the feeling with the creature of the imagination, which itself has grown out of such a feeling.

One may gladly fall silent when one has reached the description of the feelings that ultimately lead to the grasp of the supersensible. Raphael, however, appears to us as a riddle that is the task of spiritual science. And deep down we can understand why someone like Herman Grimm, who everywhere penetrates to spiritual science and longs to find in Raphael's figures something that corresponds to spiritual science, but because he cannot find it, leaves his observation unfinished. Such an example shows quite clearly what has had to be said so often: the legacy of the nineteenth century consists in the fact that the external science of that century, the external observation and the external recreation of nature, was destined to reach a peak that cannot be admired enough. But it has left behind riddles, so that in our age this external science must lead to spiritual science.

One is enriched and stimulated to occupy oneself with Raphael spiritually when one considers the peculiar struggle of Herman Grimm. And then one can feel how peculiar it must have been in the soul of Herman Grimm, and one comes to say the same thing that has been attempted here with all too inadequate means. It is strange that in the introduction to his consideration of Raphael we find a peculiar thought sprouting up in Herman Grimm's soul – just as thoughts sometimes arise from the deep, subconscious regions of the soul – a peculiar thought that makes one wonder: why precisely this thought when considering Raphael's soul?

I see developments of humanity that I will be denied the opportunity to participate in...

- he doubts that the soul will truly live again in later incarnations.

... but which seem to me so gloriously beautiful that for their sake it would be well worth while to begin human existence all over again.

It is strange, one might say, grotesquely dryly: precisely where Herman Grimm cannot approach Raphael's life because he cannot view it from the point of view of repeated earthly lives, the idea of repeated earthly lives occurs to him. When one looks at Raphael, he says, one is drawn to the thought of starting life all over again.

We need not comment further on such a thought, but merely let it hint, as it does from the subconscious in Herman Grimm, who will one day be the solution to the Raphael riddle. And if we must see the solution to many of the riddles that live in every human soul - the smallest as well as the greatest - in the fact of repeated lives on earth, then the great riddles of human development will also become particularly understandable to us at their peak if we are able to draw on the doctrine of repeated lives on earth. Then an infinitely deep meaning flows into the developmental history of humanity.

And when we are imbued with the feeling that souls like Raphael's themselves put the forces of humanity into them, in order to apply them in a new life in new forms, then we feel vividly towards Raphael what Herman Grimm once concluded and at the same time began his reflection on Raphael with, and with what we also want to conclude what should be explained by today's reflections on Raphael. Particularly when one sees, in the sense of spiritual-scientific observation, how deeply Raphael's soul is rooted in the whole sense of human development, then one really feels what Herman Grimm suggests at the beginning of his consideration of Raphael. And here too spiritual science shows us, not in abstract forms, what the inner life of the soul is, but it kindles devotion to everything that is full of spirit, full of strength and fruitful in human development. What Herman Grimm was able to say from the depths of his soul can only emerge from such a contemplation as we have given today. Yes, with such a feeling we may look up to Raphael, and so we can say:

Everyone wants to know about the life's work of such a person. Raphael has become one of the elements on which the higher education of the human spirit is based. We want to approach him because we need him for our well-being.

Yes, and the development of humanity is intertwined with such a power, which flows into its sphere because it will, must live in ever new aspects in this soul, and this power will in turn flow out into other souls. So spiritual research can also express the same words that Herman Grimm said:

People will always want to know about Raphael. About the young, beautiful painter who surpassed all the others. Who had to die young. Whose death was mourned by all of Rome. Even if Raphael's works are lost, his name will remain ingrained in people's minds.

And spiritual science can add: The power that was in his soul will live on and on, in ever new and new forms, in ever more creative development of humanity!

In our last lecture we showed the period of Art which finally merged into that of the great masters of the Renaissance. We ended by revealing the connecting threads in the artistic world of feeling, which finally led up to what was so wondrously united in Leonardo, in Michangelo and in Raphael. Yet at the same time, in these three masters we must also see the starting point of the new age, in an artistic sense. It is the dawn of the 5th post-Atlantean age, which is heralded in the realm of Art. All three were living, at the beginning of the 5th post-Atlantean age. Leonardo was born in 1452, Michelangelo in 1475 and Raphael in 1483; Leonardo dies in 1519, Raphael in 1520, and Michelangelo in 1564. Here we find ourselves at the starting point of the new age. At the same time, something is contained in these artists which we must undoubtedly regard as a culmination of the spiritual stream of preceding ages, inasmuch as they poured their impulses into the realm of Art. It is true, my dear friends, that in our time people have little understanding for what is important in this respect, for in our time—I do not say this as mere criticism—art has been far too much expelled from the spiritual life as a whole. It is even considered a failing of the historian or critic, if he seeks once more to give Art its place in the spiritual life as a whole. People say that our attention is thus diverted unduly from the artistic or aesthetic impulses as such, attaching an excessive value to the content, to the subject-matter, and yet, this need not be the case at all. Indeed, it is only in our own time that this distinction has acquired so much importance. It had no such direct significance in former epochs—epochs when the artistic understanding was more developed in the ordinary common sense of the people. We must not forget how much has been done to extirpate a true artistic understanding by all the atrocities which have been placed before the human mind of men in recent times, by way of pictorial representation and the like. True understanding for the manner of representation has been lost. European humanity, in a certain sense, no longer cares how a given subject-matter is presented to it. In wide circles, artistic understanding has to a large extent been lost.

Speaking of former epochs, and especially of the epoch to which we are now referring, we may truly say artists such as Raphael, Michelango and Leonardo were by no means one-sidedly artistic, but carried in their souls the whole of the spiritual life of their time and created out of this. In saying this, I do not mean that they borrowed their subject-matter from the spiritual life of their time. I mean far more than this. Into the specifically artistic quality of their creation, in form and colouring, there flowed the specific quality of the world-conception of that time. In our time, a world-conception is a collection of ideas which can, of course, be represented in sculpture or in painting and it is frequently embodied, needless to say, in forms and colours and the like which to the true artistic sense will nevertheless be an atrocity. In this respect, unfortunately, we must repeatedly utter warnings, even within our anthroposophical stream of evolution. The feeling for what is truly artistic is not always prevalent among us. I still remember with a shudder how at the beginning of the theosophical movement in Germany a man once came to me in Berlin, bringing with him reproductions of a picture he had painted. The subject was: Buddha under the Bodhi Tree. It is true there sat a huddled figure under a tree, but the man—if you will pardon me the apt expression—understood as little of Art as an ox, having eaten grass throughout the week, understands of Sunday. He simply thought, here is the subject; let us paint it, and it will represent a work of Art. Of course, it represented something. Namely, he who imagined the scene to himself—“Buddha under the Bodhi Tree”—could see it so, no doubt. But there was absolutely no reason why such a thing should ever have been painted.

It is a very different thing when we say of Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael, that they bore within them the whole way of feeling which permeated the Italian civilisation of their time. For this civilisation entered livingly into the artistic quality of their work, into their whole manner of presentation; nor can we fully understand these artists if we have no feeling for the civilisation in the midst of which they lived. Today, indeed, people believe the most extraordinary things. They will believe, for instance, that a man can build a Gothic church even if he has not the remotest notion of High Mass. Of course, he cannot do so in reality. Or they believe that one can paint the Trinity even if one has no feeling for what is intended to be living in it. In this way, Art is expelled from its living connection with the spiritual life as a whole. At the same time, on the other hand, people fail to understand the artistic element as such, imagining that with aesthetic views and feelings which happen to be prevalent today they can set to work and ciriticise Raphael or Michelangelo or Leonardo, whose whole way of feeling was quite different. It was only natural (though I should need many hours to say in full what should be said on this point), it was only natural for them to be living in the whole way of feeling of their time. We cannot understand their creative work unless we understand the character which Christianity had assumed at the time when these artists blossomed forth. You need only remember that at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century Italian Christianity witnessed the rise even among the Popes, of men who truly cannot be said to have satisfied even the most rudimentary demands of morality, nor need one be in any way a pietist to say so. And, of course, the whole army of priests were of like character. The idea that a specific moral impulse must be living in what goes by the name of “Christian” had been lost sight of, comparatively speaking. And when in later times it emerged again—in pietist and moralising forms, by no means identical with what I described the other day when speaking of St. Francis,—it was imbued with quite a different feeling of Christianity than inspired those who lived, for instance, under an Alexander VI, a Julius II or a Leo X. If, on the other hand, we consider the Christian traditions, the concepts and ideas (and when I say ideas I include “Imaginations”) connected with the Mystery of Golgotha, we find them still living in the souls with an intensity of which the man of today has little notion. Human souls lived in the ideas connected with the Mystery of Golgotha, as in a world that was their very own, and they saw Nature herself in the midst of this same world. We need but call to mind: In that time, even for the most educated, this Earth, of which the Western half was still unknown (or was only just begining to be known and was not fully really reckoned with),—this Earth was the centre of the whole Universe. Going down beneath the surface of the Earth, one found a subterranean kingdom; going but a little way above, a super-earthly. We might almost say, it was as though a man only need lift his arm, to grasp with his hand the feet of the heavenly beings. Heaven still penetrated down into the earthly element. Such was the conception—a harmony, an interplay of the spiritual above and the Earth beneath it, with the world of the senses which contained mankind. Even their view of Nature was in this spirit.

Those, however, among whom we find the three great masters of the Renaissance were striving forth from yonder age. And the one who harbours within him, as in a seed, all that came forth since then—nay, much that is still destined to come forth,—that one is Leonardo. The soul of Leonardo was equally inclined to the feelings of the former time and of the latter. His soul had most decidedly a Janus head. By his education, by the habits of his life, by all that he had seen, he lived with his feelings still in the olden time. Yet he had a mighty impulse to that conception of the world which only came forth in the succeeding centuries. He had an impulse, not so much towards its width as to its depth. From various indications in my other lectures, you know that the Greeks—and even the men of later times during the 4th Post-Atlantean age—knew life quite differently than we do,—that is to say, out of a different source of knowledge. The sculptor, for example, knew the human figure from within—from a perception of the forces that were at work within himself, the forces which we today describe in Anthroposophy as the etheric. Out of this inner feeling of the human figure the Greek artist created. In course of time this faculty was lost. Another faculty now had to appear: the power to take hold of things with outward vision. Man felt impelled to feel and understand external Nature. I showed you last time, how Francis of Assisi was among the first who sought to perceive Nature through a deep life of feeling. Now Leonardo was the first who endeavoured in a wider sense to add to this feeling of Nature, a conscious understanding of Nature. Because it was no longer given to him, as to the men of former ages, to trace from within outward the forces that are at work in man, he tried to know these things by contemplation from without. He tried to know by outward vision what could no longer be made known by inward feeling. An understanding of Nature as against a feeling for Nature: this is what distinguishes Leonardo da Vinci from Francis of Assisi, and this determines the whole constitution of his spirit. He was all out to understand. And though we need not take it word for word—for the sources, as a rule, relate only the current legends—nevertheless, the legends themselves were founded upon fact, and there is truth in it when we are told how Leonardo took especial pains to study characteristic faces, so that by dint of outward contemplation the working of the formative forces of the human organism might become his own inner experience. Often he would follow a character about for days and days, so that the human being might become as if transparent to him, revealing how the inner being works into the outer form. Yes, there is truth in this,—and that he invited peasants to his house and set before them tasty dishes or told them stories, so that their faces assumed every possible expression of laughter and contortion and he could study them. All this is founded upon fact. And when he had to paint a Medusa he brought all manner of toads and reptiles into his studio, to study the characteristic animal faces. These are legendary anecdotes; and yet they truly indicate how Leonardo had to seek, to discover the mysterious creation of Nature's forces. For Leonardo was truly a man who sought to understand Nature. He tried in an even wider sense to understand the forces of Nature as they play their part in human life. He was no mere artist in the narrower sense of the word; the artist in him grew out of the whole man, standing in the very midst of the turning-point of time. The church of San Giovanni in Florence had sunk a little, owing to a subsidence of the soil. He wished to raise it again—a task that could easily be carried out today; but in that time such a thing was considered absolutely hopeless. He wanted to have it raised bodily, as it stood. Nowadays, as has justly been observed, it would only be a question of the cost; in his time it was an idea of genius, for no one beside Leonardo thought such a thing was possible. He also thought of constructing machines whereby men would be able to fly through the air; and of irrigating great areas of swamp. He was an engineer, a mechanic, a musician, a cultured man in social intercourse, a scientist according to his time. He constructed apparatus so unheard-of in that age that no one else could make anything of them. What poured into his artist's hand was working, therefore, from a many-sided understanding of the world. Of Leonardo we can truly say, he bore his whole Age within him, even as it came to expression in the profound external changes which were then enacted in Italy. Leonardo's whole life—his artistic life included—bears the stamp of this his fundamental character. In spite of the fact that he grew out of the Italian environment, he was not altogether at home there. True, he was a Florentine, but he spent only his youth in Florence, and then went on to Milan, having been summoned thither by the Duke Ludovico Sforza—sommoned by no means (as we might naively imagine) as the great artist whom we recognise in him today, but as a kind of court entertainer. From the skull of a horse, Leonardo constructed an instrument of music, from which he enticed various notes, and was thus able with great humour to entertain the ducal house. We need not say that he was intended as a kind of “fool,” but as an entertainer to amuse the Court, most certainly. The works of Art which he produced in Milan, to which we shall presently refer, were certainly created out of the very deepest impulse of his own being. But he had not been summoned to the Court of the Sforza's for this purpose; and though he entered well into all the life at Milan, we find him afterwards, on his return to Florence, working at a battle-picture, intended to glorify a victory over Milan. Then we see him end his life at the French Court.

The one dominating impulse in Leonardo is to see and feel what interests the human being of his time; the political events, complicated as they were, more or less swept past him. He only skimmed off them, as it were, the uppermost and human layer. Indeed, in many respects he rather gives us the impression of an adventurer, albeit one endowed with colossal genius. He bears his whole Age within him; and out of this feeling of his Age as a whole, his creations arise. We shall present them not in chronological but in a freely chosen order, for in Leonardo the main point is to see how he creates out of a single impulse, and for this reason the chronological sequence is less important.

An altogether different nature, though possessing the characteristics of the Renaissance in common with him, was Michelangelo. If we can say of Leonardo that he bore the whole forces of his time within him (and for this very reason often came into disharmony with it and remained misunderstood, just because he understood it in its depths, in the forces that only found their way to the surface during later centuries), of Michelangelo, on the other hand, we may say: he bore within him, above all, the Florence of his time. What was the Florence of his time? It was, in a sense, a true concentration of the existing order of the world. This Florence he bore within him. Unlike Leonardo, he did not stand remote from political affairs. The complicated political events around him—and the whole world-order of that time played into these politics—entered again and again into the soul of Michelangelo. And when again and again he went to Rome, he bore his Florence with him, and painting and sculpting a Florentine element into the Roman setting. Leonardo bore a universal feeling into the works he created; Michelangelo carried a Florentine feeling into Rome. As an artist he achieved a kind of spiritual conquest over Rome, making Florence arise again in Rome.

Thus Michelangelo entered intensely into all that was taking place through the political conditions in Florence during his long life. We see this in the succession of his life-periods. As a young man, when his career was only just beginning, he witnessed the reign of the great Medici, whose favourite he was, and by whose favour he was enabled to partake in all that the Florence of that time could offer to a man's spiritual life. Whatever of ancient Art and artistry was then available, Michelangelo studied it under the protectorate of the Medici; and it was here that he produced his earliest work. Indeed, he loved his protector, and grew together in his own soul with the soul-nature of the Medici. But presently he had to realise that the sons of his patron were of quite a different kind. He who had done so much for Florence—out of an ambitious disposition, it is true, yet cultivating largesse and freedom—died in 1492; and his sons proved themselves more or less common tyrants. Michelangelo had to experience this change in comparatively early youth. Whereas at the beginning of his career the mercantile spirit of the Medici had allowed free play to Art, he must now witness this mercantile spirit itself masquerading as a political spirit, and striving towards tyranny. Yes, he witnessed on a small scale the rise in Florence of what was afterwards to take hold of all the world. It was a terrible experience for him, and yet not unconnected with the whole surrounding world of the new Age. It was now that he first went to Rome, and we may say: In Rome he mourns the loss of what he has experienced as the true greatness of Florence. We can even recognise how the plastic quality of his work is connected with this great change in his feelings: Into the very line we notice what the political changes in Florence had brought about in his soul. Any one who has a deeper feeling for such things will see in the Pieta in the Vatican a work which in the last resort is born out of the mourning soul of Michelangelo—Michelangelo mourning for the city of his fathers.

Then, when better times returned and he went back to Florence, he stood once more under a new impression. He felt uplifted in his soul,—Freedom had entered into Florence once again. He poured out this new feeling into the indescribably great figure of his David. It is not the traditional David of the Bible. It is the protest of free Florence against the encroaching principle of “great powers,” of mighty States. Its colossal character is connected with this very feeling.

Again, when he was summoned by Pope Julius to decorate the Sistine Chapel, now in a far fuller sense than before, he bore his Florence with him into Rome. What was it that he bore with him? It was a whole world-conception, of which we can say that it shows the rise of the new age, just as truly as we can say, on the other hand, that in the works of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel, representing the creation of the World and the great process of Biblical history, we have the twilight of an ancient world-conception. Thus Michelangelo carries with him a whole world to Rome,—carries with him something that could never have arisen at that time in Rome itself, but that could only arise in Florence: the idea of one mighty cosmic process with all the Prophetic gifts and Sibylline faculties of man. You will find further explanations on these things in earlier lectures. These inner connections could only be felt and realised in Florence. What Michelangelo experienced through all the spiritual life that had reached its height in the Florence of that time, cannot, in truth, be felt today, unless we transplant ourselves through Spiritual Science into former epochs. Hence the usual histories of Art contain so many absurdities at this point. A man can only create as Michelangelo created if he believes in these things and lives in their midst. It is easy for a man to say that he will paint the world's creation. Many a modern artist would credit himself, no doubt, with this ability,—but one who has true feeling will not be able to assent. No one can paint the evolution of the world who does not live in it, like Michelangelo, with all his being.

But when he returned once more to Florence, he was already driven, after all, by the new stream, which—to put it bluntly—replaces the sacramental by the commercial character. True, he was destined still to create the most wonderful works, in the Medici Chapel. But in the background of this undertaking was an element which could not but inspire him with melancholy feelings. The purpose was the glorification of the Medici. It was they who mattered,—who in the meantime had become powerful, albeit less in Florence than in the rest of Italy. Then once more the political changes drove him back. The betrayal of the Malatestas, their penetration into Florence, drove him back again to Rome. And now he painted, as it were, into the Last Judgment, the protest of a Florentine, the great protest of humanity, of the human individual against all that would oppose it. Hence the real human greatness of his Last Judgment, the greatness which it undoubtedly breathed forth, as it proceeded from his hand. For now, also, parts of it have been completely spoiled.

But he still had to undergo experiences which entered very, very deep into all the impulses of feeling in his soul. How many events had he not experienced, how much did they not signify for the development of his picture of the world: For the things I have indicated were of great importance to him. They may be taken abstractly today, but in the soul of Michelangelo they worked without a doubt as very deep soul-impulses. But we must add that I have mentioned the fact that he witnessed, too, the great change which came over Florence through the appearance of Savonarola. This was a protest within the life of the Church against what was characteristic of that time in Christianity. So free an Art as was developed in Leonardo and in many others like him could only unfold in this way inasmuch as the ideas of Christianity were lifted out of their context and taken by themselves. I mean the ideas connected with the Mystery of Golgotha—the conception of the Trinity, of the Last Supper, of the connection between the earthly and the spiritual realms, and so forth. All these conceptions, lifted right out of the moral element, assumed a free imaginative character which the artist dealt with at his pleasure, treating it like any worldly subject, with the only difference that it contained, of course, the sacred figures. These things had been objectified, loosed from the moral element; and thus the Christian thought, loosed from the moral element, slid over by and by into a purely artistic sphere. All this took place quite as a matter of course, and the gradual elimination of the moral element was a natural concomitant of the whole process. Savonarola represents the great protest against this elimination of the moral element. Savonarola appears; it is the protest of the moral life against an Art that was free of morals,—I do not say, void of morals, but free. Indeed, we must study Savonarola's will if we would understand in Michelangelo himself what was due to Savonarola's influence.

But this was not all. You must imagine Michelangelo as a man who in his inmost heart and mind could never think in any other than a Christian way. He not only felt as a Christian; he conceived the order of the World in mighty pictures, in the Christian sense. Imagine him placed in the midst of that time, when the Christian conceptions had, as it were, become objectified and could thus slide so easily into the realms of Art. Such was the world in which he lived. But he experienced withal the Northern protest of the Reformation, which spread with comparative speed, even to Italy; and he also witnessed the great and revolutionary change which was accomplished from the Catholic side as a counter-Reformation, against the Reformation. He experienced the Rome of his time,—a time whose moral level may not have been high, but in which there were free and independent spirits, none the less, who were decidedly agreed to give a new form to Catholicism. They did not want to go so far as Savonarola, nor did they want it to assume the form which afterwards came forth in the Reformation. They wanted to change and recreate Catholicism by continuous progress and development. Then the Reformation burst in like another edition, so to speak, of the Savonarola protest. Rome was seized with anxiety and fear, and they parted from what had pulsated through their former life. Michelangelo among others had built his hopes on such ideas as were concentrated, for example, in Vittoria Colonna, hoping to permeate with high ethical principles what had reached so great a height in Art. With a Catholicism morally recreated and renewed, they hoped to permeate the world once more. Now, however, there arose the great Roman powers, the strong Catholic ideas, the Jesuitical principle, and Paul IV became the Pope. What Michelangelo was now to witness must have been terrible for him, for he saw the seeds of an absolute break with what had still been known to him as Christianity. It was the beginning of Jesuitical Christianity. And so he entered on the twilight of his life.

Michelangelo, as I said, had carried Florence into Rome. With Raphael once again it was different. Of Raphael we may say, he carried Urbino—East-Central Italy to Rome. Here we come to that strange magic atmosphere whose presence we feel when we contemplate the minor artists of that region whence Raphael grew forth. Consider the creations of these artists—the sweet and tender faces, the characteristic postures of the feet, the attitude of the figures. We might describe it thus: Here there arose artistically somewhat later what had arisen earlier in a moralising and ascetic sphere in Francis of Assisi. It enters here into artistic feeling and creation, and leaves a strangely magic atmosphere—this tenderness in contemplating man and Nature. In Raphael it is a native quality, and he continues to express it through his life. This is the feeling which he carries into Rome; it flows from his creations into our hearts and minds if we transplant ourselves into the character they once possessed, for as pictures they have to a great extent been spoilt.

What Raphael thus bears within his soul, having evolved in the lonely country of Urbino, stnads, as it were, alone within the time; and yet taking its start from Raphael, it spread far and wide into the civilisation of mankind. It is as though Raphael with this element were carried everywhere upon the waves of time, and wheresoever he goes he makes it felt—this truly artistic expression of the Christian feeling. This element is everywhere poured out over the influence of Raphael.

Summing up, therefore, we may say: Leonardo lives in the midst of a large and universal understanding. He strikes us, stings us, as it were, into awakeness with his keen World-understanding. Michelangelo lives in the policical understanding of his time; this becomes the dominant impulse of his feeling. Raphael, on the other hand, remaining more or less untouched by all these things, is borne, as it were, upon the waves of time, and bears into the evolution of the ages a well-nigh inexpressible quality of Christian Art. This, then, distinguishes and at once unites the three great masters of the Renaissance; they represent three elements of the Renaissance feeling, as it appears to us historically.

Let us now give ourselves up to the impressions of Leonardo's works. We will first show some of his drawings, which reveal how he creates his forms out of that keen understanding of Nature which I sought to characterise just now. Thereafter, not quite in the historic order, we shall show those of his pictures which have the character of portraits. Only then will we go on to his chief creation, the “Last Supper,” Finally, we shall return and show him once more at his real starting-point. The first picture is a well-known Self-portrait.

This, then, is one of Leonardo's portraits. There follows the other one, still better known.

Here we have a picture from an early period of his development, showing how Leonardo grew out of the School of Verrocchio. Tradition has it that the finely elaborated landscape round this figure here was painted by Leonardo in the School of Verrocchio, and that Verrocchio, seeing what Leonardo could achieve, laid down his brush and would paint no more.

Here, again, you see how Leonardo drew—how he tried, even to the point of caricature, to extract the characteristic features by dint of studious contemplation, as I described just now.

We need not imagine that he stood alone in things like this; they had, indeed, been done by others in his time. Leonardo only stands out through his extraordinary genius, but it was altogether a quest of the time—this search for the strong characteristic features, as against what had come forth in earlier times from higher vision and had grown a mere tradition. It was characteristic of that time to seek for what appears directly to external vision, and thus bring out with emphasis whatever in the outward features of a being is most significant of individual character.

Far more important than the subject-matter, the point was to study and portray with precision the positions of the bones and so forth.

This is the portrayal of a thunderstorm.

The two pictures we now show are not attributed to him with certainty, nor are some others which we shall see presently, but they bear the character of Leonardo and are therefore not without connection.

In this famous picture we see the other aspect of Leonardo, where we might say he seeks to attain the very opposite pole from what was illustrated in the former sketches. There he tried to discover and bring out with emphasis the individual and characteristic in all details. People will often not believe that an artist who can create such a work as the Mona Lisa has any need of going in the other direction to the point of caricature. I have, however, often drawn attention to this fact. Think of the inherently natural impulse whereby our friend the Poet, Christian Morgenstern, went from his sublime, serene creations to the humorous poems with which we are familiar, where he seeks the very extremes of caricature. There is this inner connection in the artist's soul. If he desires to create a work so inwardly complete, harmonious, serene as this, he often has to seek the faculties he needs for such creation by emphasising characteristic individual features even to the point of caricature.

These pictures, which, as I said, are not in historic order, represent Leonardo in the quality of an artist seeking for inner clarity, completeness and perfection.

Here is the Dionysos figure, the God Dionysos. You will find indications on these matters in various other lectures. The painting is based on proven designs and sketches of Leonardo da Vinci. However, it is believed that it was carried out by an unknown student from the workshop of Leonardo and between 1683 and 1693 it was modified and painted to represent Bacchus.

We now come to the Last Supper—which he created, it is true, at an earlier time, and worked upon during a long period. We have often spoken of it. We know what an essential progress in the artistic power of expression is visible in this picture as against the earlier pictures of the Last Supper by Ghirlandajo and others. Observe the life in this picture; see how strongly the individual characters come out in spite of the powerful unity of composition. This is the new thing in Leonardo. The adaptation of the strong individual characters to the composition as a whole is truly wonderful. At the same time each of the four groups of disciples becomes a triad complete and self-contained; and, again, each of these triads is marvellously placed into the whole. The colour and lighting are inexpressibly beautiful. I spoke once before of the part of the colouring in this composition. Here we look deep into the mysterious creative powers of Leonardo. If we try to feel the colours of the picture as a whole, we feel they are distributed in such a way as to supplement one another,—not actually as complementary colours, but in a similar way,—so much so that when we look at the whole picture at once, we have pure light—the colours together are pure light. Such is the colouring in this picture.

We now come to the details of the picture. This is generally considered to be an earlier attempt at the Head of Christ. These reproductions are familiar.

This is Morghan's engraving, from which we gain a more accurate conception of the composition than from the present picture at Milan, which is so largely ruined. You are, of course, familiar with the fate of this picture, of which we have so often spoken.

This is a very recent engraving,—a reproduction which reveals the most minute study. It is frequently admired and yet, perhaps, for one who loves the original as a work of art, it leads too far afield into a sphere of minute and detailed drawing. Still we may recognise in this an independent artistic achievement of considerable beauty.

Here we have a fragment of the battle picture projected by Leonardo, which I mentioned a short while ago.

We will now go on to Michelangelo. Considering Leonardo once again, you will see there is something in him which comes out especially when, instead of taking the chronological order, which is in any case a little uncertain, we take his work in groups, as we have done just now. Then we see clearly what different streams are living in him. The one, which comes out especially in his Last Supper, aims at a peculiar quality of composition combined with an intense delineation of character. It stands apart and alongside of that other tendency in which he does not seek this kind of composition. This other _stream we find expressed in the pictures in the Louvre, and at St, Petersburg and London, which we showed before the Last Supper. It might have come forth at any time; one feels it is almost by chance that the pictures of this kind do not exist from every period in his life. That which comes to expression in these pictures is in no way reminiscent of the peculiar composition in the Last Supper, but aims at a serene composition while seeking to express individual character to a moderate extent.

We now come to Michelangelo. To begin with, his portrait of himself.

Here we have Michelangelo before he reached his independence, working in Florence, perhaps under the influence of Signorelli and others, still, in fact, a pupil.

And now we think of Michelangelo moving to Rome for the first time, under all the influences which I described just now.

Look at this picture and then at the following one; compare the feeling in the two.

Look at this work. Undoubtedly it is created under the feeling of his coming to Rome. A more or less tragic element, a certain sublime pessimism pervades it. Let us return once more to the former one, and you will see the two creations are very similar in their artistic character. They express the same shade of feeling in Michelangelo. We now return once more to the Pieta.

People who feel the story more than the artistic quality as such have often said that the Madonna, for the situation in which she is here portrayed, is far too young. This arose out of a belief which was still absolutely natural in that time and lived in the soul of Michelangelo himself:—the belief that owing to her virgin nature the Madonna never assumed the features of old age.

Here you have the work of which we spoke before. The figure strikes us most of all by its colossal quality, not in the external sense, but a quality mysteriously hidden in its whole artistic treatment.

We now come to the Sistine Chapel. To begin with, we have the Creation of the World,—the first stage, which we might describe as the creation of Light out of the darkness of night.

This picture bears witness to a tradition still living at that time as regards the creation of the World. It was that Jehovah created, in a sense, as the successor of an earlier Creator, whom He overcame, or transcended, and who now departed. The harmony of the net World-creation with the old which it transcended is clearly shown in this picture. Truly, we may say, such ideas as are expressed in this picture have vanished absolutely; they are no longer present.

This, then, is the creation of that which went before mankind.

Here we find the creation of man. There follows the creation of Eve.

We now move more and more away from the theme of World-creation into the theme of History—the further evolution of the human race. This is the fall into sin.

We come to the Sibyls, of whom I have spoken in a former lecture. They represent the one supersensible element in the evolution of man, which is contrasted with the other, the prophetic quality. We shall see the latter presently in the series of the Prophets. Here we have the Sibylline element. In my cycle of lectures given at Leipzig, on “Christ and the Spiritual World,” you will find the fuller description of its relation to the prophetic. That Michelangelo included these things at all, in his series of pictures, proves how closely he connected the earthly life with the supersensible—the spiritual. See now the succession of the Sibyls; observe how a real individual life is poured out into each one: in every detail, each one brings to expression a quite specific visionary character of her own.

Observe the position of the hand. It is no mere chance. Observe the look in her eyes, coming forth out of an elemental life; you will divine many things which we cannot express in words, for that would make the thing too abstract,—but they lie hidden in the artistic treatment.

And now we come to the Prophets.

These are examples of his scenes from the Old Testament.

Here we come to his later period in Florence: to the Medicis and the Chapel at which he had to work for the Medicis under conditions that I described before. I have spoken of these tombs of Juliano and Lorenzo in a lecture which I believe has also been printed.

This is the second tomb, with the figures of Morning and Evening.

Once again we accompany Michelangelo to Rome, where he creates, once more by comman of the Pope, the Last Judgment—the altar-piece for the Sistine Chapel. The greatness of this piece lies in the characterisation, the universal significance of the characters. Consider in this picture all that is destined, as it were, for Heaven, all that is destined for Hell, and Christ in the centre, as the cosmic Judge. You will see how Michelangelo sought to harmonise this cosmic scene. Majestically as it was conceived, with an individual and human feeling. Hermann Grimm drew the head of Christ from the immediate vicinity, and it proved to be very similar to the head of the Apollo of Belvedere. We will now show some of the details.

and another detail, the group above the boat:

And now, though in time it belongs to a somewhat earlier period, we give what Michelangelo created for the monument of Pope Julius; for, in fact, this was never finished, and Michelangelo was working at it in the very latest period of his life and finished portions of it.

It is significant that Pope Julius II, whose character undoubtedly contained a certain greatness, called for this monument to be erected to his efforts. It was to have included a whole series of figures, perhaps thirty in number. It was never completed, but there remained this, the greatest figure in connection with it—Michelangelo's famous figure of Moses, of which we have often spoken,—and the two figures now following:

This was completed in the very latest period of his life. It is hard to say exhaustively how it arose. One thing is certain: the group expresses an idea which Michelangelo carried with him throughout his life. Whether there was another group which has somehow been lost, in which he treated this scene at a very early stage in his career, or whether it was the same block at which he worked again, remodelling it at the end of his life, it is hard to say. But we see it here as his last work. Not only is it the one which he completed when he was a very old man; it corresponds to an artistic idea which he carried throughout his long life, and is connected far more deeply than one imagines with the fundamental feeling of his soul. True, he could not have created it thus at every phase of his life. It would always have turned out a little differently; it would always have reproduced the basic mood of his soul in a somewhat different way. But the deep and pure Christian feeling that lives in Michelangelo comes to expression especially in this particular relationship of Christ to the Mother, in this scene of the entombment. Again and again the idea of the Mystery of Golgotha arises in the soul of Michelangelo in this way:—He feels that with the Mystery of Golgotha a deed of Heavenly Love took place, of an intensity that will hover for ever before the eyes of man as a sublime ideal, but that can never be attained by man even in the remotest degree, and must therefore inspire with a tragic mood him who beholds these World-events.

And now imagine, with this idea living in his soul, Michelangelo saw Rome becoming Jesuitical. With this idea in his soul, he underwent all the feelings of which I spoke; and whatever he saw in the world, he measured in relation to this standard. Truly, he underwent much in his long life. While he was creating his earliest artistic works in Florence, the Pope in Rome was Alexander VI, the Borgia. Then he was summoned to Rome, and painted the Creation of the World for Pope Julius. We see the dominion of the Gorgias in Rome replaced by Pope Julius, and then by the Medici, Leo X. In this connection we must realise that Pope Julius II, although he worked with poison, murder, slander, etc., was none the less in earnest about Christian Art. Pope Julius, who replaced the political Borgia princes, strove for the Papal See in order to make it great through spiritual life. Although he was a man of war, nevertheless, in his inmost soul, even as a fighter, he only thought of himself as in the service of spiritual Rome. Of Julius II we must not fail to realise that he was a man of spiritual aims, thoroughly in earnest with all that lay in his impulse to re-erect the Church of St. Peter, and, indeed, with all that he achieved for Art. He was selflessly in earnest about these things. It may sot strange to say this of a man who in carrying out his plans made use of poison, murder and the like. Yet such was the custom of the time in the circles with whose help he realised his plans. His highest ideal, none the less, was that which he desired to bring into the world through the great artists. For a spirit like Michelangelo it is, indeed, profoundly tragical to feel how a perfect good can never find its realisation in the world, but must always be realised one-sidedly. Yet, this was not all, for he lived to witness the transition to the commercial Popes, if we may call them so—those of the house of Medici, who were, in truth, far more concerned with their own ambitions, and were fundamentally different in spirit from Julius II and even from the Borgias. Certainly, these were no better men. We must, however, judge all these things in relation to the time itself. It is easy nowadays to feel Pope Alexander VI, or his son Caesar Borgia, or Julius II, as human atrocities; for today it is permitted to write of them quite independently and freely, whereas many a later phenomenon cannot yet be characterised with equal freedom: But we must also realise:—The sublime works achieved at that time are not without causal relationship with the characters of all these Popes,—indeed, many things would certainly not have come to pass if Savonarola or Luther had occupied the Papal See. And now we come to Raphael.

Here is the picture of which I spoke last time. We will bring it before our souls once more. On the left we have the same subject treated by Perugino, and on the right by Raphael. It is the Sposalizio or Marriage of the Virgin. Here you can see how Raphael grew out of the School of his teacher, Perugino, and you can recognise the great advance. At the same time, we see in the picture on the left all that is characteristic of this School on the level from which Raphael began. See the characteristic faces, their healthily—as we today call it—sentimental expression. See the peculiar postures of the feet. A certain characterisation is attempted; yet it is all enclosed in a certain aura of which I spoke before,—which appears again in Raphael, transfigured, as it were, raised into a new form and power of composition. You recognise here the growth of this power of composition, too. But if you compare the details, you will find that in Raphael it is grasped more clearly and yet at the same time it is more gentle, it is not so hard.

This whole picture is to be conceived of as a world of dream. It is generally known as the “Dream of a Knight.”

We will now let work upon us a number of Raphael's pictures of the Madonna and of the sacred legend. These—especially the Madonnas—are the works of Raphael which first carried him out into the world.

In all these pictures you still have the old, characteristic postures and attitudes which Raphael took with him from his home country.

These are the Madonnas which bear witness to the further development of Raphael. Ile follow him now into the time when he went to Rome. It is not known historically exactly when that was. Probability is that he did not simply go there in a given year,—1500 is generally assumed—but that he had been to Rome more than once and gone back again to Florence, and that from 1500 onward he worked in Rome continuously. Now, therefore, we follow him to Rome and come to those pictures which he painted there for Pope Julius.

This picture is well-known to you all, and we, too, have spoken of it in former lectures. Many preparatory sketches of it exist. In the form in which you see it here, it was done to the order of the Pope,—the Pope who craved, as I said just now, to make Rome spiritually great.

We must, however, hold fast to one point, which is revealed by the fact that some elements of the motif of this picture appear at a very early stage, even in Perugia, representing this idea, this scene, or, rather, the motif of it.

Thus the idea was already living at that early stage, and was able to take shape in this remarkable corner of East-Central Italy.

We must conceive the motif of the picture as living in the very time itself. Below are the human beings—theologians, for the most part. These theologians are well aware that everything which human reason can discover is related to what St. Thomas Aquinas called the “Praeambula Fidei,” and must be permeated by what comes down from Spiritual Worlds as real inspiration, wherein are mingled the attainments of the great Christian and pre-Christian figures of history, and by means of which alone the secret of the Trinity is to be understood. This mystery, we must conceive, bursts down into the midst of the disputations of the theologians below. We may conceive that this picture is painted out of the will to unite the Christian life quite fundamentally with Rome—to make Rome once more the center of Christianity by rebuilding the derelict Church of St. Peter, according to the desires of Pope Julius. Under the influence of the Pope, wishing to achieve a new greatness of Christianity centered in Rome, such ideas are brought together with the fundamental concept; the secret of the Trinity. This fact explains what I may call, perhaps, the outer trimmings of the picture. (Even in the architectural elements which it contains, we see designs which re-occur in St. Peter's.) It is as though this picture were to proclaim: Now once again the secret of the Trinity shall be taught to the whole world by Rome. There are many preliminary sketches showing not only that Raphael only by and by achieved the final composition, but that this whole way of thinking about the inspiration, the Idea of the Trinity had been living in him for a long time. It was certainly not the case that the Pope said: “Paint me such and such a picture.” He rather said, “Tell me of the idea that has been living in you for so long,” and thus together, so to speak, they arrived at the conception which we now see on the wall of the Segnatura.

Now we come to the picture which, as you know, is commonly named the School of Athens, chiefly because the two central figures are supposed to be Plato and Aristotle. The one thing certain is that they are not. I will not dwell on other views that have been put forward. I have spoken of this picture, too, on previous occasions. But they are certainly not Plato and Aristotle. True, we may recognise in these figures many an ancient philosopher, but that is not the point of the picture. The real point is, that in contrast to what is called “Inspiration” Raphael also wished to portray what man receives through his intelligence when he directs it to the supersensible and applies it to investigate the causes of things. The various attitudes which man can then assume are expressed in the several figures. No doubt Raphael introduced the traditional figures of ancient philosophers, as, indeed, he always tried to make use of this or that tradition. But that is not his real point; the point was to contrast the supersensible Inspiration, the descent of the super-sensible as an inspiration to man, on the one hand; and on the other hand the attainment of a knowledge of the world of causes through the intelligence of man directed to the Supersensible. In this sense, the two central figures are to be understood as follows: On the one hand we have a man still in the younger years of life, a man with less experience of life, who speaks more as a man who looks around him on the Earth, there to perceive the causes of things. Beside him is the old, old. man who has assimilated very much in life, and knows how to apply what he has seen on Earth to heavenly things. And then there are the other figures who, partly by meditation, partly by arithmetical, geometrical or other exercises, or by the study and interpretation of the Gospels and the sacred writings, seek to discover the causes of things by applying their human intellect. I have already spoken of these things and I believe that Lecture, too, has been made accessible. I think if we take the contrast of the two pictures in this way, we shall not be misled into nonsensical speculations as to whether this one is Pythagoras or the other Plato or Aristotle—which speculations are at all events beside the mark and inartistic. Much ingenuity has been applied in deciphering the several figures: Nothing could be more superfluous in relation to these pictures. Rather should we study to observe the wonderful varieties expressed in the search for all that is attainable by the intelligence of man.

You may also compare the two pictures. In this present picture the whole thing is placed in an architectural setting, whereas in the other, the “Disputa,” the wide World is the setting. It is the difference between Inspiration whose house is the great universal edifice and the quest of the human intelligence which, as you see it here, goes on in an enclosed and human space.

We come to what is attainable in the human sphere, without the latter being influenced out of the supersensible.

This is like a commentary to the Disputa—the knowledge of the Divine Mysteries represented in a more allegorical figure, and leading on to the Disputa.

Here we have a picture taken from the whole complex which Raphael did for Pope Julius II in order to inspire the idea that Christianity must gain the victory and all that resists it must be overcome.

This is only another aspect of the same idea.

Also belonging to the same group.

Raphael's Sibyls. If you remember those of Michelangelo, you will observe the immense difference. In the Sibyls of Raphael—I beg you to see it for yourselves—human figures are portrayed, to represent beings standing within the cosmos,—Beings into whom the whole cosmos is working. They themselves are dreaming, as it were, within the cosmos as a very part of it and have not fully come to consciousness. The various supersensible Beings, angelic figures between them, bring them the secrets of the worlds. Thus they are dreamy Beings, living within the universal nexus. Michelangelo, on the other hand, portrays the human and individual in all that his Sibyls are dreaming, or evolving out of their dream-consciousness. Michelangelo has to create out of the individual, nay, we may even say, the personal character of each one. These Sibyls of Raphael, on the other hand, live and move and have their being over and above the individual. Even inasmuch as they are individual, they live and move in a cosmic life.

In this room we have the picture of the Transfiguration. (No picture of room available)

Here is the picture itself. It is even possible that Raphael himself did not complete it, but left it unfinished at his death. Christ is soaring heavenward.

To those who say that Raphael in his latest period painted visionary pictures, we need only reply by pointing to this figure (the figure of the boy). It is portrayed in a perfectly real, Occultly realistic sense, how the figure makes it possible for the scene to become visible to the others. Through what I would call the mediumistic nature of the unconsciousness of madness, this figure influences the others, enabling them to behold such a thing as this.

Here we have the figure of the Christ.

And now, my dear friends, think of all that Raphael had painted. All that has passed before you was contained between his twenty-first and his thirty-seventh year, in which he died. In his twenty-first year he painted the first picture which we showed—the Marriage of the Virgin—contrasting it with Perugino's painting. Hermann Grimm worked out in a beautiful way something that bears eloquent witness to Raphael's free and independent evolution, proving even outwardly to some extent what I just said before. Raphael, although he was carried on the waves of time, and learnt, of course, very much from the world, nevertheless took with him into Rome the peculiar nature of that Middle-Eastern part of Italy. In spite of his youth, he created out of his own inmost nature and progressed undisturbed, with perfect regularity in his evolution. Hermann Grimm pointed out that we come to the chief culminating points in Raphael's creative work if, starting from his twenty-first year, we go forward in successive periods of four years. From his twenty-first year we have his Sposalizio; four years later the Entombment, which we have not shown today—an exceedingly characteristic picture, which, especially when we take into account the related sketches and everything connected with it, expresses a certain climax in the work of Raphael. And then, once more, four years later, we have a climax of creative work in the Camera della Segnatura in the Vatican. Progressing thus by stages of four years, we see how Raphael undergoes his evolution. He stands there in the world with absolute individuality, obeying an impulse connected only with his incarnation, which impulse he steadily unfolds and places into the world something that takes its course with perfect regularity, like the evolution of mankind.

And now consider these three figures all together,—standing out as a summit in the life of Art, in the evolution of mankind. It lies in the deep tragedy of human evolution that this supreme attainment is connected with a succession of Popes—Alexander VI, Borgia, Julius II, Leo X,—men who occupy the first position as regards their artistic aims and who were called upon to play their part in human evolution as rulers in high places. And yet they were of such a character as to take with them into these high places the worst extremes which even that age could nroduce by way of murder, misrepresentation, cruelty and poison. And yet, undoubtedly—down to the Medici, who always retained their mercantile spirit,—they were sincere and in earnest where Art was concerned. Julius II was an extraordinary man, inclined to every kind of cruelty, never scrupling to use misrepresentation and even poison as though it were, in a world-historic sense, the best of homely remedies. Yet it was rightly said of this man that he never made a promise that he did not keep. And to the artists, above all, he kept his promise to a high degree; nor did he ever bind or fetter them, so long as they were able to render him the services which he desired, in the work which he intended.

Consider, alongside of this succession of Popes, the great men who created these works—the three great characters who have passed before our souls today. Think how in the one, in Leonardo, there lived much that has not yet been developed further, even today. Think how there lived in Michelangelo the whole great tragedy of his own time, and of his fatherland, both in the narrower and in the wider sense. Think how there lived in Raphael the power to transcend his Age. For while he was most intensely receptive to all the world around that carried him as on the waves of time, nevertheless, he was a self-contained nature. Consider, moreover, how neither Leonardo nor Michelangelo could carry into their time that which could work upon it fully. Michelangelo wrestled to bring forth, to express out of the human individuality itself all that was contained in his time; and yet, after all, he never created anything which the age was fully able to receive. Still less could Leonardo do so, for Leonardo bore within his soul far greater things than his Age could realise. And as to Raphael—he unfolded a human nature which remained for ever young. He was predestined, as it were, by providential guidance to evolve such youthfulness with an intensity which could never grow old. For, in effect, the time itself, into which all that came forth from his inner impulses was born, first had to grow young. Only now there comes the time when men will begin to understand less and less of Raphael. For the time has grown older than that which Raphael could give to it.

In conclusion, we will show a few of Raphael's portraits.

These, then, are the two Popes who were his patrons.

We have come to the end of our pictures.

In the near future, following on the tree great masters of the Renaissance, we shall speak of Holbein, Durer, and the other masters—the parallel phenomena of these developments in Southern Europe.

Today I wanted especially to bring before our souls these three masters of the Renaissance. I have tried to describe a little of what was living in them, and of their stimulus if, starting from any point of their work, you dwell on the historic factors which influenced and entered into them. You will perceive the necessary tragedy of human history, which has to live itself out in one-sidedness. We can learn much for our judgment of all historic things, if we study how the world-historic process played into that Florentine Age whose greatness is identified with Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo. Today especially I fancy no one will regret the time he spends in dwelling on a historic moment like the year 1505, when Michelangelo, Leonardo and Raphael were at the same time in Florence—Raphael still as a younger man, learning from the others; and the other two vying with one another, painting battle-pieces, glorifying the deeds that belonged to political history. Especially at the present moment, anyone who has vision for the facts of history in all its domains, and sees the significance of outward political events for the spiritual life, will profit greatly by the study of that time. Consider what was working then:—how the artistic life sought and found its place in the midst of the outer events, and how through these artistic and external events of the time, the greatest impulses of human evolution found their way. See how intimately there were interwoven human brutality and high-mindedness, human tyranny and striving towards freedom. If you let these things work upon you from whatever aspect, you will not regret the loss of time, for you will learn a great deal even for your judgment of this present moment. Above all, you will have cause to rid yourself of the belief that the greatest words necessarily signify that the greatest ideas are behind them, or that those who in our days are speaking most of freedom have any understanding at all of what freedom is. In other directions, too, much can be gained for the sharpening of our judgment in this present time, by studying the events which took place in Florence at the beginning of the 16th century, while under the immediate impression of Savonarola who had just been put to death. We see that Florence in the midst of Italy, at a time when Christianity had assumed a form whereby it slid over on the one hand into the realm of Art, while on the other hand the moral feelings of mankind made vigorous protest against it, was a form fundamentally different from that of Jesuitism which found its way into the political and religious stream immediately afterwards, and played so great a part in the politics of the succeeding centuries down to our day.

Of course, it is not proper at this moment to say any more about these things. Perhaps, however, some of you will guess for yourselves, if you dwell upon the chapter of human evolution whose artistic expression we have today let work upon our

Uhland and Goethe

[ 1 ] On September 3, 1786, Goethe set off on his Italian journey from Karlsbad. It brought him a rebirth of his intellectual life. Italy satisfied his thirst for knowledge and his artistic needs. He stood in awe before the works of art that gave him a deep insight into the imaginative life of the Greeks. He describes the feeling that these works of art awakened in his soul in his "Italian Journey". "At every moment" he felt called upon to contemplate them in order to "develop from the human form the circle of divine formation, which is perfectly complete, and in which no main character is missing as little as the transitions and mediations." He has "a conjecture that the Greeks proceeded according to the very laws by which nature proceeds, and which he is on the track of". He expresses how he perceives this realization as a spiritual rebirth with the words: "I have seen much and thought even more: the world opens up more and more; even everything that I have known for a long time only becomes my own. What an early knowing and late practicing creature is man!" - His feelings towards the creations of ancient art rise to the level of religious fervor: "These high works of art, as the highest works of nature, were produced by human beings according to true and natural laws. Everything arbitrary and imaginary collapses: there is necessity, there is God."

[ 2 ] Since Goethe had immersed himself in such an ideal of art, he saw everything in a new light. For him, this ideal becomes the yardstick for judging every phenomenon. One can observe this even in small things. When he was in Girgenti on April 26, 1787, he described his impressions with the words: "In the wide space between the walls and the sea, there are still the remains of a small temple, preserved as a Christian chapel. Here, too, half-columns are beautifully connected to the ashlar pieces of the wall, and both are worked into each other, most pleasing to the eye. You can feel exactly where the Doric order has reached its perfect measure."

[ 3 ] As chance would have it, on the same day that Goethe expressed his conviction of the high significance of ancient art by linking such words to a subordinate phenomenon, a man was born who summarized his almost opposite creed in the sentence:

Not in cold marble stones,
Not in temples, dull and dead,
In the fresh oak groves,
Weaves and rustles the German God.

Uhland's boyhood

[ 4 ] This man is Ludwig Uhland, who was born in Tübingen on April 26, 1787. When he concluded his poem "Freie Kunst" on May 24, 1812 with the above words, he was certainly not thinking of saying anything against Goethe's view of the world. Nor should they be cited in the sense of presenting a contrast between Goethe and Uhland. But they are indicative of Uhland's whole character. His path in life had to be different from Goethe's. Just as Goethe's whole inner being came to life before the "high works of art" of the ancients, so did Uhland's when he immersed himself in the depths of the German folk soul. Faced with this popular soul, he could have exclaimed: "There is necessity, there is God." He has this feeling when, wandering through the forest, he admires the native nature:

No better pleasure at this time,
Than to penetrate the forest,
Where thrush sings and hawk cries,
o deer and roe deer leap.

[ 5 ] He has the same feeling when he writes about Walther von der Vogelweide, reflecting on the art of German antiquity: "Among the old German singers, he deserves the name of the patriotic one. No one has, like him, recognized and felt the peculiarity of his people, how bitterly we hear him complain and reproach, with proud enthusiasm he sings elsewhere the praise of the German land, above all others, many of which he has wandered through: You shall speak: willekommen!"

[ 6 ] Uhland's ancestry and youthful development were highly conducive to the development of his folkloristic tendencies. His father's family was an old Württemberg family, rooted with all its attitudes and customs in the part of the country to which it belonged. His grandfather was an ornament to the University of Tübingen as a professor of theology, and his father worked as a secretary at this university. Her gentle, imaginative mother came from Eßlingen. These were favorable circumstances in which the quiet, introverted, outwardly awkward, even clumsy, but inwardly cheerful and enthusiastic for everything great and beautiful boy grew up. He was able to spend a lot of time in his grandfather's library and satisfy his thirst for knowledge in various fields. He enjoyed immersing himself in descriptions of important personalities and stories of great world-historical events as much as in descriptions of nature. Serious poems in which the life of the soul of deep people was expressed, such as those of Ossian and Hölty, made a great impression on him early on. This early Ernst Ludwig Uhland was far removed from all cowardice. If his high forehead indicated his sensible disposition, his beautiful blue eyes and cheerful disposition betrayed the deepest joy of life and the interest he could take in the smallest pleasures of existence. He was always there for all the fun games, jumping, climbing and skating. Not only could he spend hours sitting in a corner, engrossed in a book, but he could also wander through the woods and fields and devote himself entirely to the beauties of natural life. All learning was easy for him with such a disposition. Uhland's ability to master the external means of poetry became apparent early on. The occasional poems that he addressed to parents or relatives at parties show how easy verse and stanza form became for him.

Study and inclination. Uhland and Romanticism

[ 7 ] The outward course of study was forced upon Uhland by circumstances. He was only fourteen years old when his father was promised a family scholarship for his son if he studied law. Without having any inclination for this course of study, he took it up. The way he spent his apprenticeship is characteristic of his entire character. He literally split into two personalities. One personality was devoted to his poetic inclinations, his imaginative, cozy world view, his immersion in the history, legends and poetry of the Middle Ages; the other to the conscientious study of law. On the one hand, the Tübingen student lives in a stimulating devotion to everything that his "heart's desire" draws him towards, on the other hand, he appropriates the subjects of his professional studies so perfectly that he can conclude them with a doctoral thesis that has met with the approval of the most competent scholars. -

[ 8 ] The first poems that Uhland incorporated into his works date from 1804. The two ballads "The Dying Heroes" and "The Blind King" reveal a basic trait of his personality. Here he already lives in an imaginary world taken from Germanic prehistory. His love for this world has borne the most beautiful fruit for him. The sources of genuine folklore, the essence of the folk soul, were opened up to him through this love. As a poet and as a scholar, he drew the best strength from this love. And it was almost innate in him. He could say of himself that it was not only through study that German prehistory opened up to him, but that he sensed it when he gazed at the high cathedrals of the old cities. Scholarship only gave him clear, distinct ideas about what he had felt from his youth. - His immersion in the German Middle Ages was one of the characteristics of the literary movement known as Romanticism at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Ludwig Tieck, de la Motte Fouqúe, Clemens Brentano, Achim von Arnim and others were all promoters of this movement. They sought in piety and depth of mind a cure for the damage that the dry and often shallow "Enlightenment" of the eighteenth century had done to the spirit. As certain as it is that the pursuit of enlightenment, the recourse to one's own understanding and reason in matters of religion and outlook on life had a beneficial effect on the one hand, it is also certain that the critical stance towards all religious tradition and all old traditions brought about a certain sobriety on the other. The Romantics felt this. That is why they wanted to help the extreme, overly one-sided and understanding spirit of the times by delving into the prehistoric life of the soul. The view of art, which saw its ideal in the ancient Greek world and which had reached its zenith in Goethe and Schiller, also appeared to them to be a danger if it forgot its own people above the foreign antiquity. They therefore endeavored to revive interest in genuine German folklore.

[ 9 ] Such a current of the times must have found an echo in Uhland's heart. He must have felt happy during his university years to live in a circle of friends who shared his inclinations in this direction. Those who live in a pronounced world view easily see only the dark side of an opposing one. And so it was that Uhland and his childhood friends in Tübingen fought in their own way against the excesses of the Enlightenment and old-fashioned views that seemed to them to contradict German folklore. They expressed their resentment against this in a "Sonntagsblatt", which they could only publish by hand. Everything they had to say against the art movement, which was represented in the Stuttgart "Morgenblatt für gebildete Stände", they put down on paper. An essay in the Sonntagsblatt "Über das Romantische" (On Romanticism) provides clarity about Uhland's attitude. Certain traits of his soul, which can already be found here, remained with him throughout his life. "The infinite surrounds man, the mystery of the Godhead and the world. What he himself was, is and will be is veiled from him. These mysteries are sweet and terrible." He did not want to speak about the mysteries of existence with sober reason; he wanted to leave the primal reasons for existence as mysteries to which feeling can indulge in vague intuition, of which only the sensing imagination should form an idea in free images, not sharply outlined ideas through reason. He preferred to seek poetry in the unfathomable depths of the popular soul rather than in the high artistic laws of the Greeks. "Romanticism is not merely a fantastic delusion of the Middle Ages; it is high, eternal poetry that depicts in images what words can scarcely or never express, it is a book full of strange magical images that keep us in contact with the dark world of spirits." To express the secrets of the world through anything other than images of the imagination seemed to him like profaning these secrets. This is the attitude of the twenty-year-old Uhland. He retained it throughout his life. It is also clearly contained in the letter he sent to Justinus Kerner on June 29, 1829. June 1829, when the latter had presented him with his book on the "Seerin von Prevorst": "If you will allow me to express the impression that our last conversations left on me, it is this: what is yours in these works, what emerges pure and unclouded from your observation and view of nature, I am assured of the most beautiful benefit for all those who are aware that one will never penetrate the wonderful depths of human nature and worldly life without the living imagination..."

Circle of Friends

[ 10 ] The times that Uhland spent with his university friends were times that he himself described as "beautiful, joyful". Justinus Kerner, the rapturous Swabian poet, Karl Mayer, Heinrich Köstlin, a physician, Georg Jäger, a naturalist, and Karl Roser, Uhland's later brother-in-law, were all part of the circle. In 1808, Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, who was personally close to a number of Romantics and lived entirely according to their views, joined the circle. Uhland's poetry during this period bears the hallmark of the Romantic spirit in many respects. He sings of figures and circumstances from the world of medieval legends and history; he immerses himself in the emotional worlds of these prehistoric times and reproduces them characteristically. Even in the poems that do not refer to the Middle Ages, a romantic tone prevails as the basic mood. This tone sometimes takes on a rapturous, sentimental character. It is expressed, for example, in the song "Des Dichters Abendgang". The poet indulges in the delights of the sunset on a walk and then carries the impression of it home with him:

But when around the sanctuary,
The dark clouds roll down,
Then it is done, you turn back,
blessed by the miraculous.
In silent emotion you will go,
You carry the blessing of the song within you;
The light that you saw there,
Shines mildly around you on dark paths.

[ 11 ] Moods of a similarly romantic spirit are expressed in the songs: "An den Tod", "Der König auf dem Turme", "Maiklage", "Lied eines Armen", "Wunder", "Mein Gesang", "Lauf der Welt", "Hohe Liebe", and others from Uhland's student days. And the same romantic imagination prevails in the romances and ballads that Uhland wrote at the time: "Der Sänger", "Das Schloß am Meere", "Vom treuen Walter", "Der Pilger", "Die Lieder der Vorzeit" and others.

[ 12 ] And yet: for all the romantic mood in Uhland's character and for all the sympathy he had for the Romantic movement, there is a contrast between him and Romanticism proper. This grew out of a kind of contradictory spirit. Its main proponents wanted to oppose artistic poetry, as represented by Schiller, and the Enlightenment with something that was deeply rooted in popular life and the mind. Through study and scholarship, they came to the times in which, in their opinion, the spirit of the people and natural piety of the heart prevailed. In Uhland's case, the folkloristic and depth of feeling was present from the outset as a fundamental trait of his nature. If one therefore finds in many Romantics, for example in de la Motte Fouque and Clemens Brentano, that their striving for the Middle Ages, for the original folklore, has something sought after about it, that it often even appears only like an outer mask of their nature, then these traits are something quite natural in Uhland. He had never distanced himself in his thinking and feeling from the simplicity of the folk spirit; therefore he never needed to seek it. He felt comfortable and at home in the Middle Ages because the best aspects of it coincided with his inclinations and feelings. With such inclinations, it must have been quite an experience for him when Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano published "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" (1805) in Heidelberg, in which they collected the most beautiful flowers of folk poetry.

Journey to Paris. Diary

[ 13 ] In 1810, the poet had completed his studies, his state and doctoral examinations were behind him. He could think about looking around the world and searching for the nourishment for his spirit that he craved. Paris had to attract him. There were the manuscript treasures of old folk and heroic poetry, which could give him the deepest insight into the connections between the life and work of the past. The journey to the French capital and his stay there had a lasting effect on his entire life. He left Tübingen on May 6, i8io and arrived back home on February 14 of the following year. From i810 to 1820, Uhland kept a detailed diary, which was published by J. Hartmann. These notes are invaluable for understanding his personality, especially those relating to the Paris trip. Silent as Uhland generally is, he also proves to be in this diary. Feelings and thoughts are only sparsely interspersed between the purely factual details that are recorded. These are all the more significant. They give us a deep insight into his soul. He traveled via Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Mainz, Koblenz, Trier, Luxembourg, Metz, Verdun and Chalons. He writes: "My stay in Karlsruhe, which lasted from Monday to Sunday (May 7 to 3), will always be a precious memory for me." There he met the poet of the "Alemannic poems", Johann Peter Hebel. This genuinely folksy personality attracted Uhland immensely. He later wrote about his stay in Karlsruhe when he was in Koblenz: "Evening memories of Karlsruhe with tears." A diary entry that refers to the Rhine trip shows how Uhland liked to pursue mysterious connections in life and build his contemplative imagination on them: "Old view of Bacharach. The jolly, unknown journeyman with the post horn, which he blew badly, but whose notes were transfigured in the echo. The traveler from Breslau who suddenly emerged with his flute. Singing and music on the ship. Strange coincidence with my song: the little ship." Three months earlier, he had written the poem "Das Schifflein" ("The Little Ship"), in which he had described the experience, which now really came before his eyes, from his imagination. The diary shows us in many places that Uhland also pursued such things in later life, which cast a mysterious spell on the imagination, although they seem to defy rational contemplation. On April 3, 1813, for example, he wrote down a dream he had had. A girl was tempted by a reckless lover to enter the attic of a house and have herself played on a piano which, according to an old legend, must never be played because the player and the person who hears the notes will immediately age and die. Uhland sees himself in the company of his beloved. He feels the age within him; and the scene ends terribly. Uhland writes: "One could explain this dream as follows: the piano is the sin that lurks hidden somewhere in even the most pious home, waiting to be appealed to. The girl's lover is the devil, he knows how to handle the sin so that at first it sounds quite innocuous, ordinary. The sound becomes sweeter and sweeter, more and more enticing, holds fast with magical power, then it becomes terrible, and in wild storms the once pious and peaceful house perishes." Particularly characteristic in this respect, however, is a note from March i, 1810. "Night's idea for a ballad: the legend that those close to death believe they hear music could be used in such a way that a sick girl thought she heard a spiritual, supernatural serenade outside her window, as it were." This idea stuck so firmly in his mind that he expressed it on October 4 in Paris in a poem entitled "Serenade". This poem describes a dying girl who does not hear "earthly music", but who believes that "angels are calling me with music". Compare this with what Uhland wrote down on 8 June 1828 with reference to a dream, and you will recognize how such traits reveal something lasting in his character: "Among the surprising phenomena of a future world will also be that, just as we will have heavenly thoughts and feelings, so also for the expression of these a new organ will open up to us, a heavenly language will break out of the earthly one. The splendor and pomp of the present language cannot give us an idea of this, nor can the calm and (animated) silence of the language of the older German poets, just as in my song heaven wants to open up in the silence of Sunday morning, just as only when it is completely silent can the sounds of the aeolian harp or the harmonica be heard." At the same time, this shows how Uhland's whole way of imagining things had to lead him to the "silence and language of the older German poets", with whom he felt so closely related.

[ 14 ] In Paris, Uhland found what he was looking for. He immersed himself in old French and Spanish literature. The substantial essay "Das altfranzösische Epos", which appeared in the journal "Die Musen" in 1812, was the first result of these studies. He conceived the idea of a poem: "The King of France's Book of Fairy Tales", which, however, was never realized. He meets the poet Chamisso and spends pleasant days with him. He also meets Varnhagen again. A note dated November 17, 1981 shows what Uhland was pursuing with his studies in Paris: "Certain conception of the tendency of my collection of old French poetry: mainly saga, heroic saga, national saga, living voice, with the artistic, the bourgeois, etc." He is persistent in copying manuscripts. It is hard to say what fruit Uhland would have gained from his stay in Paris if it had not been curtailed from the outside. He needed the permission of the King of Württemberg to stay abroad. Unfortunately, his father had to inform him in December that royal permission for a further stay would not be granted. However, the poet not only became acquainted with the treasures of the Paris library, but also with the other treasures and beauties of the great cosmopolitan city. From his notes and letters we can see how he made it a point to study life and art, and how his view broadened. - What Paris meant to him is clear from the gloomy mood that initially afflicted him after his return. The prospect that he would now have to take up some kind of legal position added to this mood. One bright spot, however, was his acquaintance with Gustav Schwab, the poet of popular romances and songs and splendid writings on virtue, who was studying in Tübingen at the time. He became a loyal, devoted friend to Uhland. The level to which Uhland had worked his way up to in his poetic work is shown by his creations: "Roland's Shield Bearer", "St. George's Knight" and the magnificent "The White Stag", along with many others from this period. However, he had already achieved the high perfection of form that we encounter here earlier, as can be seen from one of his most popular ballads: "Es zogen drei Bursche wohl über den Rhein", which was written in 1809. On the other hand, the poems written after the Paris period clearly show how his imagination had been enriched by his immersion in the past. He is now not only capable of vividly depicting foreign material, but also of creating a complete harmony of content and manner of presentation in all external aspects of verse and rhythm.

Uhland as a civil servant

[ 15 ] After his return from Paris, Uhland had to look for a job. He had the opportunity to familiarize himself a little with the practical side of the profession by being entrusted with a number of defence cases in criminal matters and also the conduct of civil proceedings in the years i8i1 and 1812. The experience he gained from this did not exactly make the profession of a lawyer seem desirable to him. He was therefore satisfied when he was offered the opportunity to join the Ministry of Justice as an unsalaried secretary, but with the certain assurance that he would receive a salary before the end of the year. He took up his post in Stuttgart on December 22. - The life he now entered had many downsides for him. His official duties brought with them many difficulties. He had the task of dealing with the lectures that the minister gave to the king about the courts. The independent and straightforward manner in which Uhland drafted these lectures caused the minister some concern. After all, he was primarily concerned with creating as favorable an impression as possible with his reports. In addition, Uhland found it very difficult to connect with other people. It so happened that he was not accepted as a member of a circle of friends that met every Monday and Friday evening in a pub under the name "Schatten-Gesellschaft" until September 1813, although he had already attended one of the evenings on December 18, a few days after his arrival. Köstlin, Roser and others belonged to this circle. The strenuous work in the office and the unattractive life meant that Uhland did not feel very encouraged to be creative at the beginning of his stay in Stuttgart. How he nevertheless found his way inwardly and how his personality developed can be seen from statements such as the one in a letter to Mayer dated January 20, 1813: "Of course, I have not yet written any poetry, but in this outward isolation from it, poetry is becoming clearer and more alive to me inwardly, as is often the case with more distant friends."

[ 16 ] External events could only excite Uhland's poetic power to a limited extent. He was able to devote himself completely to them as a character, as a man of action. This is shown by his later self-sacrificing activity as a politician. Poetry was awakened in him, where it bore the most beautiful fruit, by an inner spiritual impulse. That is why the great struggle for freedom, in which his heart was fully involved, inspired him to write only a few songs. However, they show how his personality was interwoven with his people's striving for freedom. The "Lied eines deutschen Sängers", "Vorwärts", "Die Siegesbotschaft" and "An mein Vaterland" are songs with which he joined the chorus of freedom singers. - The salary that Uhland had been promised was not forthcoming for a long time. He grew tired of waiting and was otherwise not very satisfied with his position. For these reasons, he left the service of the state in May 1814. He now set up as a lawyer in Stuttgart. Although this profession also gave him little satisfaction, he felt happier with the external independence he now enjoyed. The source of his poetry also flowed more abundantly again. In 1814, he wrote the "Metzelsuppenlied" and the ballads "Graf Eberstein", "Schwäbische Kunde" and "Des Sängers Fluch".

Edition of the "Gedichtes" and the "Vaterländische Gedichte"

[ 17 ] In the fall of 1815, Uhland was able to publish the collection of his poems. Cotta, who had turned down an initial offer from the publisher in 1809 due to the "circumstances of the time", now agreed to take over the work. If this publication enabled the poet Uhland to become known in wider circles, it would soon provide an opportunity to do so with regard to his personal strength of character and soul. From now on, he actively intervened in the political affairs of his homeland. - In 1805, significant constitutional changes had been introduced in Württemberg. In the course of the turmoil caused by Napoleon in Germany, Duke Friedrich II had succeeded in making Württemberg an independent state and in 1806 he was granted the title of king. During this time, the state had also achieved significant territorial expansion. At the same time, however, the regent deprived the state of its old constitution, which was based on medieval institutions. Even though much of this constitution no longer corresponded to the new times, the Swabian people clung tenaciously to their inherited rights; at least they did not want to have new laws unilaterally imposed on them by the government. An antagonism developed between the king and the people, which lasted through the years of turmoil until the Congress of Vienna in 1815. After the negotiations of this congress, the people hoped for a reorganization of their political conditions in a liberal sense. As early as 1815, the king presented a draft constitution to a convened assembly. However, it met with the approval of neither the nobility nor the people. The latter demanded that completely new conditions should not be created arbitrarily, but that the old conditions should be transformed into new ones by negotiation, with full recognition of the rights of the estates that had been abolished in 1805. A second draft constitution presented by the king in 1816 also failed due to popular resistance. In that year the king died; his efforts to create new conditions in the country, disregarding the old rights, were initially continued by his successor, Wilhelm II. - Uhland's political convictions coincided with those of the people. Just as he clung with reverence to the products of the Middle Ages in intellectual life, so in public life the traditional institutions had something so deeply justified for him that his innermost feelings were outraged when they were arbitrarily and unilaterally shaken. He took the view that no one was authorized to give the people a new right, but that the owners of the "old, good law" must retain it until they themselves create innovations on the basis of it. It was in this sense that he expressed himself in 1816 in the poem: "The old, good right"; he wanted this "right", the "well-deserved fame of centuries proven, which everyone loves and honors from the heart like his Christianity". As in this poem, he expressed his conviction in a number of other poems. They were published from i815 to 1817 in small brochures as "Vaterländische Gedichte". They had a strong effect on his fellow countrymen. People appreciated this man, who was free-minded and democratic at heart, and increasingly revered him as one of the best guardians of Württemberg's national rights. As a result, people longed for the time when he would have reached the necessary age to become a member of the state parliament. Until then, namely until his thirtieth year, he could only work as a writer for the rights and freedom of his country.

"Duke Ernst". Dramatic attempts
"Ludwig the Bavarian". Dramatic plans

[ 18 ] Even before this time, the world also got to know Uhland as a playwright. In 1817, he completed his tragedy "Herzog Ernst", which he had begun in September of the previous year. It deals with the fate of the Swabian Duke Ernst, who repeatedly took up arms against his stepfather, Emperor Conrad II of Franconia (1024-1039), and who met his death in 1030 with his friend Werner of Kyburg while defending his supposed rights against the emperor. Uhland poured all his enthusiasm for the German Middle Ages and his Swabian homeland into this drama. Even if the dramatic liveliness of the work is rightly missed, the warmth of the portrayal and its lyrical power have always been admired. It was performed for the first time in May 1819 at the Stuttgart Court Theater and was a great success. - Uhland developed the greatest dramatic power in the first act, which presents a picture of harrowing entanglements. Gisela, the Emperor's wife, who has given him her sons Ernst and Hermann from her first marriage, asks her husband to release her son Ernst, who has been imprisoned on Gibichenstein for two years, on the day of his coronation as Roman king, where everyone is allowed to beg for favors. Her son had rebelled through youthful exuberance and because he believed he had a right to the Burgundian kingship, because the emperor had claimed this land for the empire. Gisela pleads for a pardon for the sorely tried man, who had a "semblance of right" for himself and whose young heart could easily be outraged. The Emperor is willing to grant the request if Ernst submits and relinquishes Burgundy. The scene in which Ernest appears, gaunt, pale and aged, is poignant. He is to be enfeoffed with Swabia if he renounces Burgundy and hands over his loyal friend Werner, who has always stood by him. He agrees to the first condition; he does not want to become a traitor to Werner under any circumstances. Like Ernst, the Emperor does not abandon the position he has once taken. Ernst and Werner remain loyal to each other. The imperial ban and the church ban hit them both. They are once again at the mercy of misfortune. Everything else now develops with iron consistency until Ernst and Werner's downfall, even if the dramatic life no longer rises to the heights reached in the first act.

[ 19 ] "Herzog Ernst" was not Uhland's first dramatic work, although it was the first that he completed. If you follow his dramatic drafts, you can see how persistently he worked on his perfection in this field of poetry and how he always made new approaches in this direction. One can therefore describe "Herzog Ernst" as the rich fruit of years of striving. At the time of his university studies, he tried his hand at a free adaptation of Seneca's play "Thyestes", which has been preserved. (Cf. Adalbert von Keller, Uhland als Dramatiker, p. r5 ff.) - The plan for an Achilles tragedy dates from the year i805. What Uhland wrote about it to Leo Freiherr von Seckendorf on March 6, 1807, shows how deeply he wanted to delve into the mysteries of life and fate with this drama: "About two years ago I began to draft a tragedy, Achilleus Tod. It was intended to portray the idea that even if fate prevents us from carrying out our decisions, if we have only fully and firmly grasped them within ourselves, they are nevertheless complete. What remains a fragment in reality can be a great whole in the idea. The idea remains untouched by fate. Various reasons, but especially my preference for the romantic, which the Greek ground was not up to, kept me from realizing it." It is a pity that nothing of the draft has survived, for one could gain insight from it into the way in which Uhland's Romantic spirit felt alien to the Greek cultural element. - After less significant dramatic attempts, Uhland became interested in the story of Francesca of Rimini in 1807. He was reading Dante's "Divine Comedy" at the time and thus became familiar with the material. The tragedy he wanted to work out from it occupied him for several years. He abandoned the plan in 1810 for a reason that we learn more about in a letter to Karl Mayer dated February 6, 18io: "I lack the leisure, inner peace and vitality to do anything bigger, for example Franceska; I can only do everything in fragments." The plan and individual scenes have survived (see Keller, Uhland als Dramatiker, p. 91 fl.) - Uhland received the inspiration for a drama "König Eginhard" from an old folk book. As an excerpt book shows, he made excerpts from this folk book in 1809. Justinus Kerner was also attracted to the Eginhard saga. He adapted it into a Chinese shadow play, which was published in Karlsruhe in 1811. The book from which Uhland took the legend is called: "Riesengeschichte oder kurzweilige und nützliche Historie von König Eginhard aus Böhmen, wie er des Kaisers Otto Tochter aus dem Kloster bringen lassen, usw. Item, how the great giants attacked the same kingdom etc. All described in a very useful and instructive way by Leopold Richtern, a native of Lambach in Upper Austria." Part of the Eginhard drama is the dramatic fairy tale "Schildeis", which Uhland published in 1812. - Uhland also attempted to write jocular plays during his student days. "The Uninhabited Island" and "The Bear" are two such plays. The latter is a farce set in Spain, which Uhland wrote together with Justinus Kerner in 1809. The year 1809 also saw the composition of a short comedy, "Die Serenade", which is also set in Spain. On ar. January i810, Uhland informs Kerner in a letter that he is working on a drama entitled "Tamlan and Jannet". It was to be a fairy tale dramatized from a Scottish ballad. A hint in the letter also reveals why this plan did not come to fruition. Uhland writes: "I have worked out the first act and another scene for Tamlan. It is to be three acts. You will receive a few scenes from it. Junker David is a changeling abandoned by the elves instead of the stolen Tamlan. As soon as Tamlan returns, he disappears. The discords dissolve into harmony, Absalon finds the desired music." Uhland drew inspiration for the two poems "Harald" and "Die Elfen" from this material. -

[ 20 ] It is understandable that Uhland had doubts about his dramatic talent after the failure of so many dramatic attempts. We learn of such doubts from a letter to J. Kerner dated 2i. January 1810: "With my inner restlessness, with my other, so varied occupations, nothing greater, more elaborate has been possible for me so far. And my talent for drama?" These words come after the mention of a tragedy sketch, "Benno", which Uhland wrote down in two days at the end of December 1809 (see Keller, Uhland als Dramatiker, p. 289 ff.) - Uhland wanted to deliver a truly romantic drama with his "Eifersüchtiger König" (Jealous King), the idea for which he communicated to his friend Kerner on 2i. January i810: "At last I have sketched a Scottish ballad (in Herder's folk songs) "The Jealous King" into a drama, albeit a slight one at first. The idea is to dissolve the hero and his story into poetry, into legend, precisely into the underlying ballad. Squire Waters leaves his father's house and goes to court; a minstrel joins him as the song that echoes the knightly life of action. Waters pleases the queen. The jealous king throws him into prison and has him executed; the flourishing life has come to an end. The minstrel leaves the court, the song goes out into the country. Water's parents and siblings sit at home by the fireside at night. They have a craving for scary fairy tales. The lost Minstrel enters and sings the ballad of Waters' death. The Queen's love for Waters is to be treated in such a way that she favors her dearest lady-in-waiting's inclination towards Waters, as it were in order to love him directly." Unfortunately, nothing has survived of the execution of this plan, which is rooted entirely in Uhland's romantic sensibility. - In 1814 and 1815, Uhland completed the short drama "Normännischer Brauch". He received the inspiration for it from old French poetry. The basic idea is given by the "Normännischer Brauch", that hospitality is rewarded. - A fragment: "Charlemagne in Jerusalem" was probably written in 1814. A letter from Uhland to J. Kerner dated March 28 reveals that the poet was working on a dramatic adaptation of the Hohenstaufen prince Konradin at the time. The diary shows that in July 1818 he read "Hahn's Reichsgeschichte über Otto von Wittelsbach und Konradin" in order to gain material for his drama. On July 14, he even wrote: "More vivid conception of Konradin". Nevertheless, only one scene was realized. He must have finally convinced himself that the material was not suitable for dramatic adaptation. This can be seen from a letter written on September 30, 1854 to Chief Justice Hein in Ulm, in which he states: "Because I myself, like many others, have once tried my hand at a Konradin, I know from experience that this historical subject seems to be more suitable for drama than it really is." - After so many futile attempts in the field of dramatic art, it must have filled Uhland with deep satisfaction when he wrote the last scene of his "Herzog Ernst" on July 14, 1817. On November 7, 1816, he had complained in a letter to Varnhagen von Ense: "Two poems occupy me, a narrative in stanzas, Fortunat und seine Söhne, on which, however, I have not completed more than two songs in two years, and a 'Trauerspiel', Herzog Ernst von Schwaben, which I cannot begin to complete unless I can hope to work it off in one piece. But my situation still won't allow me to do that." - The legend of the "Weiber von Weinsberg" preoccupied Uhland in 1816 and he wanted to work it into a dramatic farce, but this also remained a fragment. His planned Nibe-Jungen drama, the draft of which dates back to 1817, was also never realized. On the other hand, he was able to send the completed manuscript of the historical play "Ludwig der Bayer" to Munich on May 24, 1818. King Max Joseph had offered a prize for a drama based on Bavarian history, and Uhland had entered his work in the competition. The poet spoke about this drama in a letter to his parents on May 25th: "I have faithfully adhered to history in this and have faithfully used the documents still available. Also, since a play from Bavarian history was expressly requested, there are undoubtedly historians on the commission who are well qualified to judge it." Uhland wanted to express a "symbol of German tribal unity" in the play. It depicts the battle between Duke Ludwig of Bavaria and Frederick the Fair of Austria in 1322. The poet has portrayed a magnificent picture of German loyalty and strength of character in the personality of Frederick, who is captured and released by Louis for the purpose of working for peace in his homeland and who, true to his promise, voluntarily returns to captivity when he fails to mediate. The drama did not receive the prize. But that Uhland himself was satisfied by it is clear from the fact that he devoted himself to new dramatic plans after its completion. One of these is a short play: "Welf", of which only the beginning was written down in 1818, another: "Der arme Heinrich", of which only a small part was also written down in 1818. In 1819, the poet was occupied with "Otto von Wittelsbach" and "Bernardo del Carpio", for which he took the material from Spanish history. He wanted to deal with the heroic deeds of one of the most popular personalities in Spain. He only produced a prose sketch of "Otto von Wittelsbach", a draft of "Bernardo" and two fragments in verse. The last dramatic plan that occupied Uhland was in 1820, when he wanted to deal with the story of Johannes Parricida. From a suggestion he made to Gustav Schwab, we learn that Uhland wanted to put much of his own fate into this play. He said: "It was with him as it was with me. He was unlucky in everything." Nothing is known of an execution of this idea. It was the last to inspire Uhland to create in the dramatic field. The muse of this art never visited the poet again.

Marriage
Uhland as a representative of the people
Walther von der Vogelweide

[ 21 ] The above words about the plan for "Johannes Parricida" show how deeply upset Uhland's soul was at the failure of many a life plan. But just at the time when this disgruntlement seems to have taken hold of the poet's soul most strongly, a happy turnaround occurs in his life. On January 16, 1820, he became engaged to Emilie Vischer, the sister-in-law of his friend Karl Roser. The marriage took place on May 29 of the same year. This marked the beginning of a forty-two-year marriage that made Uhland happy in every respect. One need only read the magnificent work: "Ludwig Uhland's Leben. Compiled from his estate and from his own memory by his widow" to get an idea of the rarest union of souls based on intimate mutual understanding.

[ 22 ] If you want to judge Uhland's character, you need only familiarize yourself with his behaviour on the wedding day. The wedding ceremony was at three o'clock. The bridegroom spent the morning in the Ständehaus, where he also returned after the ceremony. The dutiful man did not want to allow himself a day off, which he would have had to take away from his work as a member of parliament. By this time, the poet was already fully involved in political life. In 1819, he was elected as a deputy from Eßlingen to the Assembly of the Estates, which had been convened to discuss the creation of a constitution. He was also appointed to the commission that had to work on the address of thanks to the king. This address is in fact essentially a work by Uhland. It bears the stamp of his character. It was written in a masculine manner, emphasizing freedom and justice, but sparing all prejudices of those in power. Uhland was a member of the deputation that had to present it. To celebrate the signing of the constitution on September 24, the "Herzog Ernst" was performed in Stuttgart on October 29. Uhland wrote a prologue to it, in which he characterized his relationship to political affairs in a striking and lively manner. In the performance, he brought the events of the present into a meaningful relationship with the facts of his drama. He characterized the time in which his hero lived: "This is the curse of the unhappy land, where freedom and law lie prostrate, that the best and the noblest must consume themselves in fruitless harm ..." "How different, if law and order, freedom and justice had risen up from stormy times and planted themselves firmly!" ... Uhland was also elected to the first state parliament, which convened in January 1820, as a representative of his home town of Tübingen. He held this office for six years with the conscientiousness that characterizes the course of his wedding day.

[ 23 ] In addition to his political work, Uhland devoted himself to the study of German prehistory. During these years, his interest was focused on the great medieval poet Walther von der Vogelweide. He felt a deep affinity with Walther's nature. Like Uhland himself, Walther was also a poetic and political personality. From the German conditions of his time, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, he characterized the great singer. But Uhland himself was too pithy a character not to know and to see through everywhere how only a personality of a decidedly individual nature could be affected by the circumstances of the time in the way that Walther was. He knew what belonged to the times and also what belonged to man's own soul. And he took a deep look into the soul of his hero. He portrayed his character with a vividness that is difficult to achieve, how he suffered and what he wanted. How Walther cries out in poetry the cries of pain caused by his time, how he finds solace and healing in his art: Uhland has drawn this with delicate but decisive lines. These are soft outlines through which the image of the personality in Uhland's work presents itself to our souls, but they are outlines that reveal in every point the master of biographical art, who knows exactly how to find the boundary where overly sharp lines distort the character sketch into an arbitrary, if not caricature. And the figure of Walther in Uhland's drawing also becomes a symbol of the German nation. As peculiar as the soul of the individual personality is painted, everywhere we see the threads through which it is connected to the essence of the German national soul. - Uhland was only able to portray Walther von der Vogelweide because his studies were not limited to his narrow circle. He showed the same interest in the whole of German prehistory. During this time, he also worked on a "Representation of the Poetry of the Middle Ages". However, only the section on "Minnegesang" was completed, which was added to his collection "Schriften zur Geschichte und Dichtung" after Uhland's death. The work on "Walther von der Vogelweide" appeared in 1822. How little Uhland pursued these studies as a mere scholar is shown by his behavior on his travels, especially his honeymoon, which he was able to embark on after completing his work for the state parliament on July 8, 1820. The couple traveled throughout Switzerland. Everywhere we find Uhland eagerly endeavoring to get to know the customs, ideas and views of the people, everywhere he pursued the imagination of the country folk in their poetry and legends. What he hears from the mouths of the people themselves enlivens his eager studies, which he undertakes wherever he finds suitable material for his purpose in libraries. - Uhland's research was held in the highest esteem by his learned contemporaries. The explorer of German folklore, Joseph von Laßberg, visited him in 1820 and became his ardent admirer. This was important for Uhland, as Laßberg was in contact with the most important German classical scholars of the time and was also able to arrange written or personal contact with them for Uhland.

Politics and research. University professor

[ 24 ] In addition to the strictest understanding of his duties, Uhland was also characterized by wise moderation in all his actions. This makes his personality appear harmonious in the best sense of the word. Once he had taken on something, he gave himself to it with his whole soul. He put all his energy into it. But he never wanted one side of his profession to be compromised by the other. He lived in his research and at the same time achieved the most extraordinary things as a politician from 1819 to the end of 1826. In the latter year, however, he felt that the politician in him should not be allowed to push back the researcher any further. For this reason, he did not want to be re-elected to parliament in the following years. He wrote to his father in 1825: "It is my considered decision not to accept election this time. By enduring the seven troubled years, I believe I have fulfilled my civic duty in this respect.

[ 25 ] I cannot be expected to exclude myself from any other profession and purpose for another six years, apart from the fact that I would otherwise lack the desire and love that is required above all for such a sphere of activity." He did not allow himself to be re-elected for the time being. All the more reason for his desire to teach to grow ever greater and greater as a result of his research. For a long time, all his hopes in this direction remained unfulfilled. In 1829, the Württemberg government finally decided to appoint Uhland as an extraordinary professor of German language and literature in his home town at the suggestion of the academic senate of Tübingen University. He was now able to move to the latter. His lectures were among the most stimulating imaginable. All who heard them were full of praise and enthusiasm. Uhland was not a brilliant orator; he read his well-thought-out explanations, which were based on the most thorough research, from the manuscripts. Despite this unpretentious manner, he had the most profound effect. He presented his audience with the history of German poetry in the Middle Ages, in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as well as the history of legend and myth among the Germanic and Romance peoples. Particularly useful for his students were the "exercises in oral and written presentation" that he set up. Each participant in these could practise reciting speeches he had written himself or declaiming poems under Uhland's careful guidance, or could submit essays which were subjected to detailed criticism by the teacher. - Uhland's lectures were published after his death in his collected

[ 26 ] writings. They offer a complete picture of his academic work. Strangely enough, he did not deliver his inaugural lecture until the third year of his teaching career, on November 22, 1832. It can also be found in his writings. It deals with the saga of Duke Ernst, whom he was able to depict as clearly and vividly as a scholar at the time as he had previously portrayed him dramatically as a poet.

Death of the parents

[ 27 ] The joy that Uhland's parents felt when their son returned to them was great. But this joy was short-lived. In the spring of 1831, the mother fell ill and died on June 1 of the same year. Shortly afterwards, on August 29, the father followed. The warm relationship between the son and his parents is expressed in the poem "Nachruf" (Obituary), which he sent to their graves. It contained the simple but deeply painful lines: "They let the pious funeral song fade away, fade away; in my breast a gentle sound from you never dies away." And rarely has anyone expressed their grief in such haunting words as those in the obituary: "The death knell sounded so sad to me otherwise, so anxious; since you were rung by it, it has been the sound of home to me."

New political activity. Dismissal from the teaching profession.
"On the myth"

[ 28 ] It was not granted to Uhland for long to remain in a profession that would have met his innermost needs like no other. The people, whose advocate he had been in such a devoted manner for years, demanded his strength anew when the election for the Assembly of Estates to be convened the following year took place in 1832. He was elected deputy for the provincial capital and could not reconcile it with his conscience to deny himself the demands of his country. The French July Revolution had also deeply stirred emotions in Germany. For a man who, like Uhland, was prepared to give his life for justice and freedom at any time, important political tasks were once again at hand. He was one of the personalities in the Chamber who resolutely opposed the dangerous measure by which the government was to be granted special powers to maintain order. Since, in the opinion of Uhland and his friends, the way in which these powers were to be granted infringed on the rights of the people, they voted against them. The result was a dissolution of the chamber and new elections. Uhland was once again appointed to represent the people. The government soon found his work uncomfortable. They wanted to get rid of the deputy by saying that he was indispensable at the university and therefore could not be given leave to fulfill his duties as a deputy. Although he was truly devoted to his teaching position, there was no doubt in his mind that in such a case he would have to let his inclination take a back seat to his duties to the country and therefore take his leave as a professor. He was "very gladly" granted his resignation in May. He now devoted himself with all his strength to the office of representative of the people. A number of important bills were introduced at his suggestion. He only retired from this office again in 1838.

[ 29 ] His dismissal from his teaching post did not interrupt the pursuit of his research work. He was able to present his studies on the "Myth of Thor" to the world as early as 1836. In the following years he wanted to treat the "Myth of Odin" in the same way, but he left the manuscript lying around. It was only published after his death. Both works are as perceptive as they are soulful. Uhland pointed to the peculiarities of the creative popular imagination, which expresses a meaningful view of nature and a religiously deepened spiritual life in the form of myth. These works were complemented by the collection of German folk songs, which occupied him well into his forties. In 1844 and 1845 he was able to publish a large number of collected folk songs. He wrote a treatise explaining the essence of the folk song, which was only published from his estate.

The magic of Uhland's poetry

[ 30 ] In the period from 1816 to 1834, Uhland wrote very few poems. Unless there was a strong inner compulsion, he renounced all poetic activity. He is one of those personalities who are true to themselves in the strictest sense of the word. He probably never forced himself to write a poem. And since the muse only spoke to him at certain times, there are large gaps between the epochs of his poetic production. The year 1834 was another fruitful period. Magnificent ballads and romances belong to this period. "Die Geisterkelter", "Das Glück von Edenhall", "Das Singental", "Die versunkene Krone", "Die Glockenhöhle", "Das versunkene Kloster" were written at this time. He also wrote the songs: "Abendwolken", "Die Lerchen", "Dichtersegen", "Maientau", "Wein und Brot", "Sonnenwende", "Die Malve", "Reisen".

[ 31 ] The unique character of Uhland's poetry appears in these poems in a serene manner. The cozy tone of the songs, the meaningful vividness, the expression of a pure, loving feeling for nature appear in an outer form that has increased to the highest artistry. The ballads are imbued with the high ethical core of the poet's personality. It is part of the essence of Uhland's ballad and romance poetry that one always feels his heart beating, his soul rejoicing and suffering, when he tells facts in his simple, true way. Therein lies the magic of Uhland's poetry. He also puts his innermost feelings into his narrative poems; he always says what he feels about things and people. But by expressing his innermost feelings, he also knows how to let his personality recede behind the depiction. His creations reveal the complete unpretentiousness of a highly sensible man who is allowed to live his life to the full because his manner always appears modest and natural to the highest degree. When he talks about things, it seems as if the things alone speak. He feels so much with the nature and the heart of his fellow man that one always follows his sentiments, even when he speaks entirely from his personal point of view. It cannot be denied that the expression of the poet's feelings impairs the dramatic vividness of the narrative; but Uhland expresses himself in such a simple, truthful, thoroughly natural way that one does not feel the expression of his personality to be lacking in his ballads and romances. - And his feeling for nature is just as simple and great as his feeling for human destinies and actions. His eye looks at the creations of the world with serious joie de vivre. Only rarely does he strike a note of exuberance or exuberant cheerfulness. His outlook on life is always directed towards seeing the majesty and harmony in things. The moods of the times of day and seasons, the graceful and terrifying aspects of natural works and processes elicit the same vivid images and sounds that penetrate the soul. There is rarely anything sentimental in his feelings, although they are always characterized by softness and gentleness. Even in the poems in which he expresses his feeling for nature, the visual and emotional content flow into one another in an unforced manner.

Elected to the National Assembly. The year of the revolution.
The last years of his life. Letter to Alexander von Humboldt

[ 32 ] The satisfaction that the poet derived from his political activities diminished. And he may well have felt a sense of redemption when he made the firm decision not to accept another election as a deputy in 1838. He now lived a quiet, secluded life in his home town, completely devoted to his research. In 1836 he had bought his own house with a garden, from which he was granted a charming view of the wonderful Neckar valley. A number of trips to Austria, southern and northern Germany brought variety to his undemanding scholarly life. In 1846, he met Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, the great German linguists and legend researchers, in person in Frankfurt am Main. -- Then came the turmoil of the revolutionary year 1848, and Uhland was one of the first to tremble with hope for a new era of freedom and national happiness. His fatherland was also gripped by the desire for freedom. Uhland's friend and fellow politician, Paul Pfitzer, with whom he had fought through many a storm in the Diet, was a member of the liberal ministry that was appointed. As a result, Uhland was asked to join the committee that was to prepare a new federal constitution in Frankfurt. Soon afterwards, he was elected to the German National Assembly from the districts of Tübingen and Rottenburg. Because he did not want to be both a representative of the people and a representative of the government, he resigned from the committee and devoted himself entirely to the negotiations of the People's Assembly. He belonged to the liberal center party. For a man like Uhland, who was able to see the situation more clearly than others, cherished expectations soon gave way to bitter disappointment. It did not take him long to realize that the various proposals made for the unification of Germany on a liberal basis had little chance of being realized. These proposals were a mixed bag: Prussian hereditary emperor, directorate, elective emperor, republican constitution. Uhland could draw little courage to intervene in the negotiations from all that was being said at the time. He was not a personality who indulged in hopeless radicalism. In addition to a resolute sense of independence and a noble enthusiasm for freedom, he also had the determined will to strive only for what was possible in the circumstances. Within the realm of the possible, however, he always advocated what was most in keeping with his sense of freedom. Thus, on June 29, 1848, he did not vote for Archduke Johann, but for Baron von Gagern for the office of Reichsverweser. Only rarely did he feel compelled to appear as an orator. When he did, he spoke weighty words. His entire feeling and thinking is expressed in the words he uttered on January 22, 1849 in the course of a speech against a hereditary emperor: "No head will shine over Germany that is not anointed with a drop of democratic ole." Following the King of Prussia's rejection of the German imperial dignity, those members of the parliament who were attached to this idea resigned. The rest of the representatives moved to Stuttgart. Uhland persevered in the rump parliament, despite his opposition to its relocation to Stuttgart. He felt it was his duty to remain among the men who wanted to continue fighting for their ideals. The situation in Stuttgart was the most difficult imaginable right from the start. The majority of the rump parliament was in favor of electing a regency of five people to lead the empire. Uhland was the leader of the opponents of this decision. He had only five like-minded people. He expected nothing from such a form of government. In the following days, the Württemberg government tried to prevent the meetings of the people's representatives by military force because they had decided to raise five million as a levy for the formation of a people's army. Uhland and his friends nevertheless wanted to go to the meeting on June 18. The military prevented them from doing so. They had to give way. So Uhland was one of those who fought the parliamentary battle to the last in those memorable days, and who could say to themselves that they had only given way to violence. - Only once more was Uhland called to the political scene, for a very short time. In 1850, he had to take part in the State Court, which had to pass judgment on the government's actions during the revolutionary period. Here, too, he once again stood up for the rights of the people in vain by advocating the condemnation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Baron von Wächter, who had not submitted important political decisions to the Estates in accordance with the constitution.

[ 33 ] From then on, Uhland lived only for his scientific and literary work. He devoted himself to his research into the history of legends and began collecting folk songs. He also entered a new field. He wanted to work through the legends of his own homeland. He only managed to carry out a small part of this plan.

[ 34 ] Until the last days of his life, Uhland retained the full vigor that was always characteristic of him. His domestic happiness was always unclouded; he took great pleasure in bringing up two foster sons. One was Wilhelm Steudel, whom he took into his home as a fifteen-year-old boy. The father of the prematurely orphaned child was Uhland's friend, Dean Steudel in Tübingen. In 1848, the son of Uhland's sister, who had already died in 1836, lost his father. Uhland also devoted himself to the upbringing of this boy. - The poet was deeply saddened by the death of his old faithful friend Justinus Kerner in February 1862. It is not unlikely that a cold at the funeral was the cause of his fatal illness. He was unable to recover and died on November 13, 1862. The funeral services held in many places proved that Uhland's work had gradually come to be fully appreciated. The poet was loved in the widest circles of the people, the scholar of legends and myths was held in high esteem by his peers, the politician with his genuinely masculine sense of independence was revered as a role model. In the last period of his life, he proved this sense in a rare way. In December 1853, he was made a Knight of the Order pour le m£rite. He rejected the dignity with the significant words: "I would be in irreconcilable contradiction with literary and political principles, which I do not flaunt but have never denied, if I were to accept the honorary position that has been conferred on me and which is also associated with an elevation in rank. This contradiction would be all the more cutting as, after the shipwreck of national hopes, on whose planks I have floated, it would not suit me well to be adorned with decorations, while those with whom I have gone together in many and important things, because they went on in the last disruption, are doomed to the loss of homeland, freedom and civil honor, even to the death sentence." He addressed these proud words to Alexander von Humboldt, who informed him of the award. Humboldt did everything in his power to persuade the poet to accept. He remained unbending. He also rejected the order for science and art intended for him by the Bavarian king.