Donate books to help fund our work. Learn more→

The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

Search results 2751 through 2760 of 6549

˂ 1 ... 274 275 276 277 278 ... 655 ˃
272. Festivals of the Seasons: Easter and Whitsuntide II 11 Apr 1915, Dornach
Translated by Harry Collison

Who then is this spirit whom Faust cannot understand? What spirit can Faust understand? He, made in the image of the Godhead, who cannot understand the Earth Spirit!
He hesitates, because he does not understand them. To the professors it seemed as if Faust did understand these words; but this is not the case. Faust does not understand them as yet. He can well perceive the ‘Might,’ the ‘Deed;’and he gauges the Gospel from the standpoint of his own rational understanding.
272. Festivals of the Seasons: Easter and Whitsuntide III 22 May 1915, Dornach
Translated by Harry Collison

Perhaps that is the reason why it is now necessary that that revelation should speak to the souls of men under a new form, should speak more clearly, more urgently than it has done as yet, so that for the future its true meaning may be understood aright.
As we showed in the Easter Lectures, the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements are confused and intermingled with one another in Mephistopheles, because at that time true understanding was as yet impossible for Goethe. Goethe had, in fact, during the whole of his life, been aware of the struggle going on within him to arrive at some understanding of the relationship of man to Lucifer and Ahriman.
This cannot happen to the Faust who is under the sway of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic influence. This purgation means, ‘Bring forth the higher self of Faust.
157a. Festivals of the Seasons: The Golden Legend and a German Christmas Play 19 Dec 1915, Berlin
Translated by Harry Collison

We mingle something else with it; something else, concerning which we must form quite definite conceptions if we want to understand it. We must form such ideas as these, if we wish to understand correctly. We must say to ourselves as follows: I am placed in the Earth evolution.
Things had to be made more comprehensible to the laity. And this clearer understanding progressed step by step. At first the people understood absolutely nothing about the child lying in the manger.
For man in the sphere of erudition does not yet understand how to let that power work on him which has so wonderfully conquered the hearts and souls that on beholding the Christmas Mystery, out of a profane comprehension, there has arisen a holy understanding.
165. Festivals of the Seasons: Meditations on the New Year: The Year as a Symbol of the Great Cosmic Year 31 Dec 1915, Dornach
Translated by Harry Collison

The man who is limited in his physical senses, and limited to the understanding that he considers appertains to these physical senses, can at first know nothing of this great Earth-consciousness.
Everything is in great as in small, and in small as in great. The small, the yearly cycle, can only be understood aright when it becomes for us a symbol of the mighty events of the cosmos—of the vast cycle of thousands of years. The year is an image of the aeons, and the aeons are the realities of those images which we encounter in the course of a year. When we understand this yearly course aright we are filled, in this important night in which a New Year begins, with thoughts of the great cosmic mysteries.
165. Festivals of the Seasons: Meditations on the New Year: On the Duty of Clear, Sound Thinking 01 Jan 1916, Dornach
Translated by Harry Collison

This kind of thought is ‘trumps’ and rules life in every department. It is not because man is unable to understand with his thoughts all that Spiritual Science teaches, that it fails to be understood, but because he permits himself to be infected with the slip-shod thinking of the present day.
When, however, we take the trouble really to understand—really to grasp the things, the matter taught—we shall certainly make progress. Even the conceptions of Spiritual Science are affected by the careless thinking of the present day.
It is true that today and to-morrow we cannot perhaps be more than interested in the matter, but we must bear in our souls such interest for the affairs of humanity if we wish to understand in their true meaning the teaching of Spiritual Science. We still often think that we understand the great interests of humanity, because we frequently interpret our personal interests as if they were the greatest interests of mankind.
165. Festivals of the Seasons: Meditations on the New Year: Perceiving and Remembering 02 Jan 1916, Dornach
Translated by Harry Collison

‘ This belonged to the understanding, to the Gnostic understanding that such disciples of Christ could still evoke at that time and which, as I have explained to you, disappeared about the time in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place.
I will extol Thee, O Light, for Thou art my Saviour.” Reading it thus I do not understand it’—but one must have such humility, such modesty, that one will not desire to understand it until one has called forth in one’s self the possibility of understanding it.
This attitude of soul is that which existed in the Mysteries, and it consisted in a man’s developing within him the feeling that it is not possible for a matter to be understood without first preparing the soul for it—without preparing oneself for the understanding of it.
51. Schiller and Our Times: Schiller's Life and Character 21 Jan 1905, Berlin
Translated by Harry Collison

The way in which he took them is important and significant for his life. We cannot understand Schiller wholly if we do not read the two dissertations which he wrote after finishing his studies.
In the second Schiller puts to himself the question how we have to understand the working of the material in the human body. For Schiller, even the material body has something spiritual.
We may say, of course, that it has by no means exhausted the possibilities of this sphere, that it might have left this sphere more perfect; but do we know that this sphere is lost to it? We lay aside many a book which we do not understand, but which we may perhaps understand better some years hence. This is how Schiller tries to make clear to himself the eternal of the spirit in its relation to physical nature—without however under-estimating the physical.
51. Schiller and Our Times: Schiller's Work and its Changing Transformations 28 Jan 1905, Berlin
Translated by Harry Collison

Kantianism was a necessary study for a person like Schiller, and we shall understand his standpoint yet more deeply if we delay a moment over what was then working upon him. At that time, we can see two quite definite currents in German intellectual life.
In Herder we have the passion to put man into relation with the whole of nature and to understand him in that relation. It is this striving for unity which makes Herder appear so modern a man. ...
Through the study of history, through honest inclination and devotion to human life he reached the harmony that had been lost and thus to an understanding of Goethe. Schiller describes in splendid words in the memorable letter of 23rd August 1794, what was Goethe's way: “I have for a long time, even though from a distance, observed the course of your spirit and with ever new wonder noted the path you have traced out for yourself.
51. Schiller and Our Times: Schiller and Goethe 04 Feb 1905, Berlin
Translated by Harry Collison

And thus, at the beginning of their personal meetings these two great geniuses were quite incapable of understanding each other. In fact, when Schiller came to Weimar, he felt himself repelled by what he heard about Goethe, and even a personal meeting could not alter things. In 1788 Schiller could still write an unfavourable criticism of Egmont, that fruit of a mature artistic thought. He could not understand how Goethe could represent Egmont, not as a heroic enthusiast as Schiller himself would have done, but as a weakling who could be guided by given circumstances.
They were pursued with envy and hatred, for the small has never been able to understand the great. It is hardly credible today what attacks were launched by pettiness against them. The Annals of Philosophy, for instance, spoke disparagingly of them, and someone, called Manso, described them as the “sluts of Weimar and Jena.”
51. Schiller and Our Times: Schiller's Worldview and His 'Wallenstein' 11 Feb 1905, Berlin
Translated by Harry Collison

There was something in him which could only come out by reference to Kant. We have to understand this point in Schiller thoroughly if we wish to understand the greatness of his personality aright.
What Hebbel demanded as the necessary pre-supposition of tragedy, “That things had to happen thus,” that nothing can be tragic which might have happened otherwise, was grasped intuitively by Schiller, though he never puts it thus in words. But there is another tragic idea under the influence of which Schiller stands which does not admit of solution and which was expressed particularly in Wallenstein.

Results 2751 through 2760 of 6549

˂ 1 ... 274 275 276 277 278 ... 655 ˃