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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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204. Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy: Lecture I 02 Apr 1921, Dornach
Translated by Maria St. Goar

But in addition to being armed with the necessary conceptions, we find that from the point of view of spiritual science we are required at the same time to do something more, namely, to understand this materialistic world view. First of all, we must understand it in its content; secondly, we must also understand how it came about that such an extreme materialistic world view was ever able to enter human evolution.
For those who write these commentaries and believe that they understand Goethe, Schiller, and Herder simply do not understand them; they do not see what is most important in these men.
I do not favor the immediate abolition of stenography. This is never the tendency underlying such characterizations. We must clearly understand that just because one understands something, this does not imply that one wishes to abolish it right away!
204. Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy: Lecture II 03 Apr 1921, Dornach
Translated by Maria St. Goar

We cannot simply speak of rejecting it and say that it is an aberration; materialism needs to be understood. For the one does not exclude the other. Particularly in these reflections it is important to extend the sphere of thoughts relating to truth and error further than is ordinarily the case. It is generally said that in the logical life of thoughts it is possible either to err or to find the truth. What is not mentioned is that under certain circumstances the glance we cast upon the external world may discover errors in outer reality.
We can understand that the human being distanced himself, as it were, from the power enabling him to comprehend himself inwardly by developing in the strongest measure the forces that, as conceptual forces, are most akin to death, the forces of abstraction.
204. Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy: Lecture III 09 Apr 1921, Dornach
Translated by Maria St. Goar

Thus, when we look back to former epochs of human evolution without the prejudices of modern anthropology, we find a mode of perception that, albeit instinctively, penetrated into things. Inasmuch as human beings still understood the processes of acquiring speech, they also grasped something of the soul activity within outer nature; and inasmuch as they understood the incorporation of the soul-spiritual into the physical corporeal element, they understood something of the spirit vibrating and weaving through the world.
For this is related to the vanishing of any understanding for the process of learning to speak. The other matter, the comprehension of preexistence, was preserved in traditions until the time of Origen;4 yet it was lost to inward understanding much earlier than the comprehension of the process of speech, of the resounding of the word in man's inner being.
The former Logos concept is utterly filtered into an abstract thought concept. The world-creative principle is now understood not by means of the ancient Logos concept, but only through the sublimated or filtered thought concept.
204. Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy: Lecture IV 15 Apr 1921, Dornach
Translated by Maria St. Goar

In our time, however, we have to understand clearly that the historic documents call forth almost completely false ideas of what existed prior to the fourth century A.D.
Certain individuals who at the same time were ahead of their age in their own spiritual evolution then went through remarkable developments, such as the personality we know under the name Basilius Valentinus.9 What kind of personality was he? He was somebody who had taken up the tradition of the old medicine of fluids from the people with whom he had spent his youth, at times without understanding it from this or that indication.
Mithras: Persian-Indian cult of Mithras, the god of light and sun, spread through Europe in first century B.C. by Roman troops. Celebrations in underground caves, knew baptism, communion, celebration of birthday of the god on December 25.4 .
204. Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy: Lecture V 16 Apr 1921, Dornach
Translated by Maria St. Goar

This tragedy was experienced by modern humanity; human beings had to and still have to undergo this tragedy in order to comprehend themselves inwardly and to turn properly into people asking questions.
Such, then, was the situation in Europe, and our age today is still a part of it. For if we understand the true, inner call resounding in human hearts, we still are and should be seekers for the Holy Grail.
Both philosophical systems are mainly directed towards practical life, seeking “happiness” in it. The latter is understood to be a rational, moderate striving for self-control and spiritualization without negating nature.
204. Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy: Lecture VI 17 Apr 1921, Dornach
Translated by Maria St. Goar

What has been striven for in regard to the external world since the first third of the fifteenth century must be striven for in reference to the totality of the human being; the whole human being has to be understood based on the knowledge of the world. The comprehension of the world must be viewed in harmony with the understanding of humanity.
We must recognize the human being in the world, and out of this knowledge of man in the world an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha can well up once again. Human beings must learn to understand why an impassable region surrounds the Castle of the Grail, why the path between birth and death is difficult terrain.
It is also necessary that among ourselves we do not give ourselves up to the popular illusions concerning the various oppositions. Their aim is to undermine the ground we stand on. It is up to us to work as much as is humanly possible, and then, if the ground under us should become undermined and we do slide down into the chasm, our efforts will nevertheless have been such that they will find their spiritual path through the world.
204. Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy: Lecture VII 22 Apr 1921, Dornach
Translated by Maria St. Goar

He is the one who sensed the forces of decline inherent in these trends in the most terrifying manner and who, in the end, broke down under this tragedy, under these horrors. Naturally, one can approach the picture we have in mind from any number of directions.
It held that nowadays one would really have to empty out the human being and then, like a sack, stuff him full with what can still be gained from history so that modern man, aside from his skin—and at most a little of what lies under the skin—would, underneath this tiny area, be stuffed full with what former ages have produced, and would in turn be able to utter ancient Greek insights, old Germanic knowledge, and so on.
He endeavored to experience this intoxicated plunge into nature in his life by traveling south repeatedly during his vacations in order to forget, in the warm sun and under the blue sky, what men have produced in the modern age. This drunken plunge into nature underlies his Morgenroete and the Froehliche Wissenschaft as the basic feeling.
204. Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy: Lecture VIII 23 Apr 1921, Dornach
Translated by Maria St. Goar

In short, they spoke about numbers in a certain qualitative sense, not merely in a quantitative one. When the underlying reason for this is considered from the standpoint of spiritual science, we arrive at the realization that the Pythagorean School, which as yet was still a kind of esoteric school, represented basically only the last vestige of a much more ancient wisdom of numbers, going back to primordial times of which only the traditions have been preserved.
Otherwise, the brain would crush the blood vessels lying underneath. The brain floats in the cerebral fluid, but people in their abstract awareness no longer notice this today; neither are they aware of any other relationships within themselves.
204. Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy: Lecture IX 24 Apr 1921, Dornach
Translated by Maria St. Goar

If one is unaware of these things, one does not understand what finally came down to us from the Oriental scriptures that have survived. This living cosmic perception gradually became extinguished.
It does become comprehensible, however, when the intellect on its own makes the effort to understand it, initially neither agreeing nor disagreeing but only comprehending. After all, the emphasis is on understanding these things. Initially, you need simply understand them. If you do, then you create something with the insight the ego has gained that extends into the night.
204. Materialism and the Task of Anthroposophy: Lecture X 29 Apr 1921, Dornach
Translated by Maria St. Goar

In this, it is always our intention to bring about an understanding of what plays into human life in the present age from the most diverse directions and leads to comprehension of the tasks posed by our time.
Earlier, when the cultural development ran its course under the influence of the sentient soul, people did not refer to a uniform principle encompassing the whole world.
Then reality will no longer be brutal. This has to be understood. What is not yet understood in many different respects is that a thinking in which universal being dwells cannot but pour its force over everything.

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