The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. Goethe's Secret Revelation: Exoteric

[ 1 ] Anyone who traces the history of humanity’s spiritual development not only through the usual documents and traditions, but goes a little deeper, by engaging with certain aspects that might at first seem merely symptomatic of human development, but which nevertheless point deeply into the inner—and therefore true—forces of development, will find a memorable scene in recent intellectual history to be significant time and time again—a scene that took place in Jena in the 1790s.

[ 2 ] At that time, a lecture was given at the Natural History Society in Jena by a botanist named Batsch, who was highly regarded at the time, and the lecture was certainly in line with the scientific standards of the day. Two men—one younger and the other ten years older—listened to this lecture, and it so happened that they left the lecture at the same time and struck up a conversation. The younger of the two men said to the older one: “When one allows such a lecture to sink in, it becomes clear time and again how the scientific approach dissects things, how it sets one thing next to another, and how little it takes into account the unified spiritual bond that lives within all these various details.” — The younger man, so to speak, was put off by the fact that one plant was set next to another without any reference to what, as something higher that unites the various plants, must surely also exist in the world. The older of the two men replied that perhaps there might be a way of viewing nature that does not proceed in this manner—and that, even though it is a form of knowledge, a form of observation that must lead to knowledge, it very well focuses on the unified whole, on that which is separated in the external observations made by the various senses. — The man took a pencil and a piece of paper from his pocket and immediately drew a strange figure, a figure that resembled a plant, but none of the living plants that can be seen or perceived with the external physical senses—a form that, so to speak, is not realized individually anywhere, and of which he said that, although it does not live in any single plant, it is the plant-ness, the primordial plant in all plants, and constitutes the unifying element. — The younger man looked at it and then said: “Yes, but what you’re describing there is not an experience; it’s not an observation; it’s an idea”—and by this he meant that such ideas could only be formed by the human mind, and that such an idea had no significance for what lives out there in so-called objective nature. The older of the two men could not quite understand this objection, for he replied: “If that’s an idea, then I see my ideas with my eyes!” He meant that just as the individual plant, visible to the external sense of sight, is an experience, so too was his “primordial plant”—even though it cannot be seen by an external sense—an objective entity, something existing in the external world, precisely that which lives in all plants: the primordial plant within all individual plants. — You know that the younger of the two men was Schiller, and the older was Goethe.

[ 3 ] This conversation is a symptomatic, significant expression of modern spiritual science. What was it, actually, that spoke through Goethe at that time in his reply to Schiller? What spoke through Goethe was the awareness that one does not merely perceive, through the ideas provided by the external senses, and which the limited intellect perceives from external sensory perceptions, one grasps an external objectivity, an external truth, but that when a person sets higher spiritual powers in motion—powers that do not rely on individual sensory observations—one arrives at a truth and a reality just as one arrives at a truth and a reality through external sensory perception.

[ 4 ] It is fair to say that Schiller—who at that moment could not yet grasp what lay behind it all, and who believed these to be mere subjective notions that Goethe had laid out for him—provided the most beautiful testament to how a person can rise to the heights that Goethe had shown him. From that point on, we see Schiller showing an ever-increasing understanding of Goethe’s ideas. A psychological document of the very highest order is a letter from Schiller in which he writes: “For a long time now, though from a considerable distance, I have been observing the course of your mind and noting the path you have charted for yourself with ever-renewed admiration. You seek the essence of nature, but you seek it by the most arduous path, one that any weaker force would surely avoid. You take all of nature as a whole in order to gain insight into the individual; in the totality of its manifestations, you seek the basis for explaining the individual. From simple organisms, you ascend, step by step, to the more complex ones, in order to finally construct the most complex of all—human beings—genetically from the building blocks of the entire natural world. By recreating them, as it were, in the image of nature, you seek to penetrate their hidden mechanisms. A grand and truly heroic idea, which amply demonstrates how deeply your mind holds the rich whole of its concepts together in a beautiful unity!”

[ 5 ] Thus, we may regard as evidence of the objectivity of Goethe’s world of ideas what led Goethe to give such a response, and what Schiller later confirmed in this letter.

[ 6 ] Very curious: A psychologist who lived in the 1820s and is now forgotten, Heinroth, wrote in his *Anthropology*—which is actually a work of psychology—a very significant remark about Goethe, a remark that belongs to those that are methodologically significant precisely because of their phrasing and shed deep light on what they are meant to illuminate. He used the term “concrete thinking” to describe Goethe’s entire way of thinking, and he explained this term by saying: Goethe’s thinking is a very peculiar kind of thinking that does not actually separate itself from the objectivity of things, but lives quietly within the things themselves, from which it rises up to the level of ideas.

[ 7 ] Anyone who is now able to look more deeply into Goethe’s entire spiritual constitution—as we will do today and the day after tomorrow, when we will attempt to delve even deeper into this topic and contemplate more inwardly what is to be presented to us externally today—will see that in this way of thinking, without remaining stuck on the surface of things or in sensory experience, yet remains grounded in the facts, and within them finds the spiritual, the world of ideas. We see that Goethe’s thinking, precisely in this way, has become so significant for a large part of our modern human development. We may say that there is something highly distinctive about this effect of Goethe’s spirit on the most diverse people, on the most diverse views, indeed, on the various successive epochs.

[ 8 ] Let us consider what this is actually about, and we will see just how unique Goethe’s mindset truly was. If, for example, we bring to mind the three philosophers of German intellectual life—Fichte, Hegel, and Schopenhauer—who are, in essence and in their entire worldview, very different from one another, then a very peculiar insight into the world-historical impact of Goethe’s mindset emerges from an examination of their mutual relationships and of the connections between their relationships to Goethe.

[ 9 ] Fichte proves to be a thinker soaring in lofty realms, and he was soaring in these lofty realms all the more so when he completed his *Grundzüge der Wissenschaftslehre* in Jena in 1794. It is difficult to rise to the level required to understand Fichte’s unique character; it is difficult to penetrate his thought, although no one who delves into it can help but acknowledge that they have drawn immense benefits for their intellectual discipline from him. But it is not for everyone to ascend to such spheres of the purest concept. This Fichte, who walked in such abstract heights—especially at that time—sent his *Science of Knowledge* to Goethe with the following significant words: “I regard you, and have always regarded you, as the representative of the purest spirituality of feeling at the stage of humanity currently attained. Philosophy rightly turns to you. Your feeling is its touchstone.” Thus spoke Fichte to Goethe.

[ 10 ] Let us now turn to another philosopher, Schopenhauer, and first examine Schopenhauer’s stance toward Fichte. They were truly hostile brothers; at the very least, Schopenhauer was a quite hostile brother to Fichte. Schopenhauer never tires of lashing out at Fichte with what amount to outright insults. To him, Fichte is a windbag who thought and wrote in empty concepts. Time and again, he returns to emphasizing the insubstantiality, meaninglessness, and unreality of Fichte’s philosophy. Truly, there can be no greater opposites than Schopenhauer and Fichte. And Schopenhauer did indeed study under Goethe. For a time, he experimented alongside Goethe to clarify the basic concepts of physics for himself, and much of what appears in Schopenhauer’s first work and also in his magnum opus stemmed from the impression Goethe made on him. But anyone familiar with Schopenhauer also knows how devotedly he spoke of Goethe. Schopenhauer and Fichte, two great opposites—in Goethe they are united, and he appears as the unifying force between the two.

[ 11 ] Let us finally turn to Hegel and Schopenhauer! Hegel, too, is difficult to grasp. He, who attempts to create a factual world of concepts within a comprehensive, systematic framework, demands that human beings rise to a level where they grasp the concept as a fact, where they become capable of experiencing it. Schopenhauer, too, finds this technique of conceptualization to be utterly worthless; everything, he argues, is merely a play on abstract words. And if we now wish to recall the relationship between Hegel and Goethe, we need only mention one thing, and we will see where Hegel stands in relation to Goethe. There is a beautiful letter in which Hegel writes: Goethe seeks the actual, spiritual phenomena that lie behind the sensory ones—what Goethe calls the “primordial phenomena,” just as he calls the “primordial plant” the primordial phenomenon of the plant world. — While Hegel, as a philosopher, speaks from the heights of the spiritual world and shows us what we can think and comprehend, he simultaneously works his way upward to the point where he comes into contact with the concepts drawn from the spirit. Thus, Goethe’s “primordial phenomenon” unites with what pure, thinking philosophy grasps from above. Here, too, we see a harmony between Hegel and Goethe, just as between Goethe and Schopenhauer. They come together in Goethe. And when we ascend from these earlier times to our own, what do we find there?

[ 12 ] In the era in which Goethe himself lived, scientific research, so to speak, still had a very different character. Even more so than was the case in Goethe’s time, research based on external sensory observation—and the meticulous elaboration of what the intellect, limited to observation, can derive from the results thus obtained—is regarded today as the only correct method of rigorous science. But even Haeckel, as he emphasizes again and again in every book, wants to stand on the firm ground of Goethe’s worldview, and so we see a more materialistically tinged worldview placing great value on drawing on Goethe. Yet even today you can still find writings grounded in a perspective for which the spirit is an absolute reality in the most eminent sense of the word, and in these as well you can observe references to Goethe. Spiritualist and materialist researchers may stand in opposition to one another, but both believe they can look up to Goethe in the same way. Thus, even here, he offers something that bridges opposites.

[ 13 ] These facts attest to the power of Goethe’s worldview—a power that affects others in such a way that even those who do not understand one another find in Goethe something they themselves possess. Perhaps some of you are aware of the contrast between Virchow and Haeckel. But even Virchow, who agrees with Haeckel on so few things, likewise drew upon Goethe in a significant lecture on Goethe. In Goethe, then, we find a power that, in the face of contradictions and the clash of worldviews, is capable of bringing out what they have in common—a power that is able to show that, at the core, worldviews are not as these representatives of science claim and so persistently defend.

[ 14 ] Precisely when one considers the relationship of these significant figures to Goethe, one comes to realize that what people call “knowledge” is like the various painters who sit around a mountain, gaze at it, and paint it from a wide variety of vantage points. The images they produce must, of course, be very different, and yet it was the same mountain they were painting. One can only gain a comprehensive understanding of the mountain by comparing the various depictions and piecing them together into a whole. If one approaches knowledge in this way, one will see that Goethe does not choose a single vantage point, but rather climbs the mountain and shows that it is possible to take up a vantage point at the mountain’s summit and find there a comprehensive panorama where all perspectives reveal their deeper compatibility.

[ 15 ] But that is precisely what makes Goethe such an eminent “modern spirit,” and if, in engaging unreservedly with Goethe, we get the feeling that he appears to us as a modern spirit, then that in itself will serve as justification for us to regard what he did and intended—in the reflections on spiritual science and “a worldview rooted in the spiritual” that are often presented here—as a kind of guide for delving deeper into his essence. If he is a stimulating spirit in so many respects, why should he not also be a stimulating spirit for that intellectual movement which has as one of its highest and most beautiful goals the tolerant engagement with the various viewpoints of worldviews, and which makes it a principle not to remain fixed on a single standpoint, but—in order to find truth—to ascend ever higher and higher through methods that must be applied to one’s inner development and to the cultivation of inner organs of perception, because it is only by cultivating these inner organs that one is able to perceive the deeper spiritual foundations.

[ 16 ] Let us now consider to what extent Goethe, within a narrowly defined sphere, touches upon the deepest feelings of humanity even today. Let us take, for example, a feeling that many of you are familiar with—a feeling that could be described as follows: in our time, there are people who strive to cast aside certain old traditions and to create feelings, thoughts, and ideas that lead directly into the present. You will immediately see what I mean when I remind you of an image that has become dear to many in our time. Whatever one’s opinion of the image may be, it is an expression of the modern age. I am referring to the image: “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest.” The image lives not only in the mind of its creator but also in those who wish to appreciate it; within them lives the longing to see the figure of Jesus in the immediate present, as he takes his place at the table. One could say that the painting is valuable not only for our time but for all times, that it has an eternal, imperishable existence, and that every era has the right to place this figure within its own historical context. Let these few words suffice to convey the sentiment that many feel toward this painting.

[ 17 ] One might think, then, that Goethe still belongs to the “old school” in this regard. This conclusion is drawn from his fondness for ancient art—which sought to preserve the good, time-honored artistic traditions—and from his admiration for the Greeks. One might think that Goethe perhaps lacked a deeper understanding of a sentiment such as that characterized in the painting: “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest.” To gain a glimpse into Goethe’s soul, let us turn to a book—Bossi’s book on Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper. Goethe wrote a review of this book. It contains some significant words. Goethe speaks of this painting—which is located in the refectory of the monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan and which, despite the recent restoration, gives the impression of being in a state of decay—recalling how he himself once stood before it at a time when it was still preserved with a certain freshness. And he describes the impression this painting once made on him in his youth: “Opposite the entrance on the narrow side, at the far end of the hall, stood the prior’s table, with the monks’ tables on either side, all raised one step above the floor; and now, when the person entering turned around, he saw painted on the fourth wall above the not-too-high doors the fourth table, at which Christ and his disciples were depicted, just as if they were part of the company”—He who had been summoned by the Dominicans in their spirit and from their position with the sentiment: “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest.” The whole, says Goethe, comes together to form a unified image. And to leave no doubt whatsoever as to what he actually meant, he added: “It must have been a remarkable sight at mealtime when the tables of the prior and of Christ, as two contrasting images, faced one another, and the monks found themselves enclosed between them at their own tables. And that is precisely why the painter’s wisdom had to take the existing monks’ tables as a model. Likewise, the tablecloth—with its crushed folds, patterned stripes, and untied corners—was certainly taken from the monastery’s laundry room, and the bowls, plates, cups, and other utensils were likewise modeled after those used by the monks. There was therefore no question here of an approximation to an uncertain, outdated costume. It would have been highly clumsy to have the holy company reclining on cushions in this setting. No, they were to be brought closer to the present; Christ was to take his Last Supper among the Dominicans in Milan.”

[ 18 ] And now we ask: Did Goethe possess precisely this understanding, which we must call a modern understanding? He possessed it in that all-encompassing style of his, which can once again serve as proof of how universal his power is in contrast to the sometimes one-sided forces that exclude and combat one another. Thus, we must put ourselves in Goethe’s place, and we will then understand why Goethe can be so close to us, and why we may look up to him when it comes to gaining a preliminary orientation regarding deeper spiritual questions. This was Goethe’s deep conviction: that it is possible for human beings to awaken spiritual faculties within themselves in order to ascend to higher perspectives and thereby gain something that lives not merely in the human spirit, but at the same time lies deeper within.

[ 19 ] If we had the opportunity here to discuss Goethe’s studies in the natural sciences—as you will find them discussed in detail in my book *Goethe’s Worldview*—we could show how this entire Goethean method works. But today we want to approach Goethe from a different angle. Goethe expressed many things that can point us to the deep foundations of his worldview. We will discuss this in the two lectures of this winter series on Goethe’s *Faust*. Goethe once said to Eckermann that he had conceived *Faust* in such a way that the reader, if he wishes to rely solely on external teachings, can already find something in the vivid imagery; but that he can also discover, behind the words, the mysteries contained within. In the second part, Goethe points out that a distinction must be made between what is external and what is internal—the essence, that which he has imbued with mystery. In the traditional sense, the external is referred to as the exoteric, and the internal as the esoteric.

[ 20 ] Let us now approach Goethe by examining the work in which he expressed his entire methodological thinking and intent—today in an external, exoteric manner, and the day after tomorrow in an internal, esoteric manner. It is a relatively little-known work by Goethe that one must turn to if one wishes to fathom Goethe’s deepest secrets of knowledge—for that is surely what we are dealing with here. It is the short work that appears at the end of *Conversations of German Emigrants* under the heading: “Fairy Tale,” and upon reading which, anyone striving to penetrate more deeply into Goethe’s worldview will have the sense from the very beginning that Goethe intends to say more than what the images initially present. Riddle upon riddle will present itself to the contemplative reader of this “Fairy Tale” of the green serpent and the beautiful lily.

[ 21 ] And now, please allow me to first outline the main features of this fairy tale here, for it is not possible to discuss the fairy tale without at least bringing to mind those features that are important if we wish to take a deeper look into Goethe’s worldview. It will therefore be necessary for us to devote some time to the content of this little work; but in return, we will understand one another all the better with regard to what we have to say. It has happened to me time and again, whenever I have given a lecture on this fairy tale, that people have said to me: “I didn’t know there was a fairy tale in Goethe’s works.” I therefore repeat: it is included in every edition of Goethe’s works and forms the conclusion of *Conversations of German Emigrants*. Now to the imagery! A ferryman lives by a river. Strange figures—will-o’-the-wisps—come to this ferryman. They want the ferryman to take them across the river in his boat to the other bank. The ferryman agrees and takes them across the river. They behave strangely, are restless and fidgety, so that he becomes afraid they might capsize his boat. But he manages to take them across safely, and when they arrive, they want to pay him in a peculiar way. They shake themselves, and gold pieces fall from them; this is to be the reward for the trouble of ferrying them across. The ferryman is not particularly impressed by the gold pieces and says, “It’s a good thing nothing fell into the river, because it would have churned wildly.” “But I cannot accept this payment; I can only be paid with the fruits of nature.” — And he asks for three onions, three artichokes, and three heads of cabbage. So they were to pay with produce. We will soon see what profound meaning every gesture and every single detail holds.

[ 22 ] Now the ferryman continues: “So you’re giving me the trouble of having to carry down the river and bury what you’ve been throwing around as gold pieces.” — Then he actually carries the gold pieces a short distance down the river and buries them in the crevices of the earth. Once they have been buried there, a strange other creature approaches these gold pieces: the green snake, which crawls around in and on the earth and through the crevices of the earth. Suddenly, it sees the gold pieces falling through the cracks in the earth. At first, it believes they are falling from the sky. But then it devours them and, by taking these gold pieces into its own body, becomes ever more luminous. When it emerges to the surface, however, it notices that it radiates a wondrous, peculiar light, shining like an emerald and a gemstone.

[ 23 ] Now the snake and the will-o'-the-wisps meet, the will-o'-the-wisps still shaking and casting off whatever they contain. The snake, which has now acquired a taste for the gold, takes into its own body and processes what the will-o’-the-wisps are throwing around. The snake and the will-o’-the-wisps exchange meaningful remarks about their mutual relationship. The snake calls itself a relative of the will-o’-the-wisps from the horizontal line, and the will-o’-the-wisps call themselves relatives of the snake from the vertical line. The will-o’-the-wisps ask the snake if it might be able to tell them how to reach the beautiful lily. Then the snake says: “The beautiful lily is on the other side of the river.” “Well, then we’ve really gotten ourselves into a fine mess!” reply the will-o’-the-wisps. “We had ourselves ferried across because we wanted to reach the beautiful lily. If only we could find a ferryman to take us back!” And now come the fateful words: “You will not find the ferryman again, and even if you did, be aware that he may well take you across, but he is not allowed to take you back.” If you want to return to the other side of the river, there are only two ways to do so. Either you try at noon, when the sun is at its highest, to find a bridge across my own body to get across.—The will-o’-the-wisps say: “Noon is a time when we do not like to travel.”—Or you can take the second route. For there is, in fact, another possibility. At twilight, you will find the great giant at a certain spot. He has no strength at all, but when he stretches out his hand and the shadow of that hand falls across the river, you can cross the river by stepping over the shadow. The shadow is strong enough to support you as you cross. So if you do not wish to walk across me at noon, seek out the giant. — The will-o’-the-wisps take this advice to heart. The snake, however, has returned to the crevices of the earth and rejoices in the inner radiance it has gained by absorbing the gold.

[ 24 ] Now the snake notices something most peculiar. As she searches the crevices again, she realizes that where she had previously found irregular natural formations, she now sees strange structures in one spot. Previously, it had perceived them only through touch; now that it is glowing, it realizes that it can also see these things. It had been able to feel columns and even human-like figures, but until then it had never fully understood what actually lay within the underground crevices. Now she moves back inside, and the light she radiates serves to illuminate the objects.

[ 25 ] As she enters this vast underground cave, she immediately notices four royal figures standing in the four corners: a golden king, a silver king, a bronze king, and in the fourth corner, a mixed king—a figure composed of the other metals in the most colorful manner, so that all possible metals are chaotically intertwined within him.

[ 26 ] The moment the snake enters the cave and manages to illuminate the figures, the Golden King asks the very significant question:

[ 27 ] “Where are you from?”

[ 28 ] “From the crevices,” replied the snake, “where the gold dwells.” “What is more magnificent than gold?” asked the king.

[ 29 ] The snake replies, “The light!”

[ 30 ] And the king continues to ask: “What is more refreshing than light?”

[ 31 ] “The Conversation.”

[ 32 ] No one will doubt that these words are not merely meant to convey imagery, but that they also have meaningful content.

[ 33 ] When the snake enters the cave, a crack opens in the temple where the four kings dwell. The old man enters the room with the lamp, and he is asked why he has come at this very moment. Then he utters these strange words: “Do you not know that my light may only illuminate what is already illuminated? That I may not illuminate the darkness?” — After the snake has illuminated the objects in the room, he, too, is now permitted to enter with his miracle-working lamp.

[ 34 ] Now a conversation begins anew between the kings and the old man with the lamp. The old man is asked:

[ 35 ] “How many secrets do you know?”

[ 36 ] “Three,” he replies.

[ 37 ] “Which is the most important?” asks the Silver King.

[ 38 ] “The obvious,” the old man interjects.

[ 39 ] “Will you reveal it to us as well?” asks the bronze king.

[ 40 ] “As soon as I know the fourth.”

[ 41 ] And now come the most significant words of the fairy tale: “I know the fourth,” says the snake, and hisses something into his ear, whereupon the old man cries out in a mighty voice, “The time has come!”

[ 42 ] There have been numerous attempts to solve the riddles of this fairy tale. Many have also tried to interpret, in one way or another, what was already perceived as a riddle in Schiller’s and Goethe’s time. It is curious that Goethe and Schiller agreed on this and explicitly stated it in these words: “The key to the fairy tale lies within the fairy tale itself.” Thus, one must seek the solution to the fairy tale only within the fairy tale itself, and as the lecture progresses, it will become clear that the key to the riddle—albeit in a peculiar way—is indeed contained within the fairy tale. The serpent hisses something into the old man’s ear, and what it hisses into his ear—though it is not spoken aloud—is the solution to the riddle. Then the old man says, “The time has come!” What must therefore be fathomed is what the serpent whispered into the old man’s ear in the underground temple.

[ 43 ] The old man now goes with his lamp to where his wife lives. By the power of the lamp’s light, all manner of materials are transformed: stones into gold, wood into silver, dead animals into gemstones—but metals are destroyed. He finds his wife in a state of utter bewilderment. When he asks what happened, she says: “There were some very strange figures here. One might have taken them for will-o’-the-wisps.” “They didn’t exactly stay within the bounds of propriety.”—“Well,” says the old man, “at your age, they probably stuck to general politeness.”—And now she tells how the will-o’-the-wisps went after the gold and licked it so they could shake it off again. “If only that were all, but just look at the pug.” He ate some of the gold pieces, was turned into a gemstone, and died. Now he’s dead.” — And the old woman continues: “If I’d known that beforehand, I wouldn’t have promised them that I’d pay off their debt to the ferryman. That is: three cabbages, three onions, and three artichokes.”

[ 44 ] “Well,” said the old man, “take the pug with you and carry it over to the beautiful lily; it has the power to transform any gemstone into a living thing simply by touching it.” — So she takes the three-by-three fruits to pay off the debt she inherited from the ferryman, and places the pug alongside them.

[ 45 ] Now comes a very significant moment in the fairy tale: As she carries the basket, it seems extraordinarily heavy to her, even though the dead have no weight for her at all; the basket containing only the dead pug would be as light as if it were empty. It is only the living things—the cabbages, onions, and artichokes—that make the basket heavy. On her way to the ferryman, however, something peculiar happens to her. The giant positions his arm so that his shadow falls across the river, reaches into her basket, and takes a head of cabbage, an artichoke, and an onion, eating them so that she now has only two of each. She therefore wants to pay the ferryman only part of the fare, but he says that it is absolutely necessary to bring the whole load right away.

[ 46 ] After much back-and-forth, the ferryman said there was one more way out: she would have to pledge to bring the three missing fruits. She must therefore put her hand into the river as a guarantee that she would keep her promise. She did so, but then noticed that, as far as her hand was submerged in the river, it had turned black and shrunk. “It only seems that way now,” said the old man. “But if you don’t keep your word, it may come true. “Your hand will gradually wither away and eventually disappear completely, without you losing the use of it. You’ll be able to do everything with it, except that no one will be able to see it.” But she would rather be seen, even if she couldn’t do anything with her hand. If she brings the tribute at the appointed time, the ferryman says, everything will be all right again.

[ 47 ] On her way to the beautiful lily, she now encounters a strikingly handsome young man who, however, says that all his former strength and vigor have faded; and from the conversation they have, we learn how this came to be. The young man had been seized by a fervent desire to reach the beautiful lily. She had become his ideal. But her beautiful eyes seemed so forlorn that they had robbed him of all his strength, and yet he is drawn to her again and again.

[ 48 ] Finally, the two of them come to the beautiful lily. Although everything surrounding the beautiful lily is highly symbolic, we can only highlight a few characteristics here. The beautiful lily is the image of perfect beauty; yet it has the property of initially killing all living things upon contact, and of bringing back to life everything that has passed through life and succumbed to death.

[ 49 ] The old woman now presents her case. The young man has come to satisfy his longing for the beautiful lily; but we also see that the beautiful lily feels a longing of her own. She feels distant from all that is fertile and alive; plants thrive in her garden, but only until they bloom, not until they bear fruit; she is beautiful, but distant from all that is alive. The old woman then utters a meaningful word. She repeats what the man in the underground temple had said, and this gives the lily new hope. But that was also the last moment in which she could cling to hope; for the last living thing that had formed a kind of connecting bond between her and the living world had also been lost to her. She had a canary in her vicinity and had been very careful not to touch it, because that would have killed it. But now a hawk had come near; the canary fled from it, flew toward the lily, and was killed. And with that, the beautiful lily was now in complete spiritual solitude and isolation from what humans possess.

[ 50 ] Now the old woman gives the pug to the lily. The lily touches him, thereby bringing him back to life. The young man seeks to satisfy his longing by embracing the lily. This kills him completely. The life within him is utterly destroyed.

[ 51 ] The snake now forms a magic circle. The young man and the canary are placed inside this circle. This is meant to bring about—and the snake points to this meaningfully—a change in what is bleak, very soon. And indeed, it does change. We learn that the old man is now approaching with his lamp, and that through him a solution to the entire situation can indeed be set in motion. For it is precisely the right moment when the old man arrives: the bodies of the canary and the young man have not yet begun to decompose.

[ 52 ] The Old Man leads them to the underground temple, which the snake had already scouted out. He says to the will-o'-the-wisps: “You, too, are suited to serve us. When we reach the temple gate, it will be up to you to unlock it for us.” — Now the serpent forms a bridge across the river. The entire procession crosses the serpent’s bridge. There, once they have reached the other side, we see that through contact with the serpent—which has now resolved to sacrifice itself—the young man, though not yet spiritualized, nevertheless comes to life. Because the serpent is willing to sacrifice itself, he enters a strange state. He can see, but cannot yet comprehend what he sees.

[ 53 ] The serpent splits into a multitude of marvelous gemstones, which the old man drops into the river, thereby creating a bridge across it. Led by the old man, the procession moves into the underground temple. As they enter, we see that meaningful questions are being asked between the new arrivals and the kings, suggesting that a great mystery is hidden there. For example: “Where do you come from?” “From the world.” “Where are you going?” “To the world.” “What do you want from us?” “To accompany you!”—namely, the kings.

[ 54 ] Now the group moves along with the temple. They go beneath the river and then rise again along with the entire temple. Once they have risen above the river, something resembling wooden planks falls from above into the temple: it is the ferryman’s hut. It transforms and becomes a small shrine within the great temple. And now a scene unfolds that is of great importance to the young man, who, though alive until now, had not yet been spiritualized.

[ 55 ] We have seen that the first, the golden king, represents wisdom; the second, the silver king, represents splendor or beauty; and the third, the bronze king, represents strength or will. We now witness a symbolic act taking place. The young man is bestowed with three different gifts by the three kings. The bronze king gives him the sword, and as the sword is presented to him, the meaningful words are spoken: “The sword in the left hand, the right hand free.” — The power of the will. — From the silver king, he receives the scepter with the words: “Tend the sheep.” We shall see that the young man is filled with the emotional power of the soul, which expresses itself in beauty. The golden king places the crown upon his head, saying: “Know the Highest.” And the power of imagination takes hold of the young man. At that moment, he is spiritualized and is allowed to unite with the beautiful lily. We are then made aware that everything is rejuvenated.

[ 56 ] Of particular significance is the peculiar role played by the giant, who has no strength of his own but does possess power in his shadow. He stumbles very clumsily across the bridge, and the king is annoyed by this. It turns out, however, that the giant’s arrival serves a good purpose. Just as the hand of a large sundial stands still, so he is held fast in the center of the temple courtyard. We see the power we find in the sundial—in the giant who marks time and brings harmony—and we see how the bridge leading across the river to the temple is formed from the body of the serpent. We then see that it is no longer just pedestrians, but now also carts, horsemen, and herds that can cross back and forth. We are shown how, through his union with the beautiful lily, the young man regains the strength he had lost through contact with her, how he is now allowed to approach the lily and embrace her, and how both are filled with joy and bliss.

[ 57 ] Who, when letting the images of the fairy tale sink in, would not want to say: They are mysteries! At first, we can sense very little of what lives within this fairy tale. But if we take a historical approach—if we consider how it came into being in mid-1795, at the beginning of his friendship with Schiller, and in light of what transpired between Goethe and Schiller—then we will understand what task Goethe set for himself in this fairy tale. It was during this period that a work was written—a fruit of the study of Goethe’s worldview—that became profoundly significant for the education and cultivation of German intellectual life: Schiller’s Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man. We can only sketch out what Schiller intended with these letters.

[ 58 ] He wonders how human beings can come to develop their powers ever higher and higher, so that they may penetrate the mysteries of the world in a free and fully human way. This work is written in the form of a letter to the Duke of Augustenburg, and in it Schiller wrote the significant sentence: “Every individual human being, one might say, bears within himself—by nature and destiny—a pure, ideal human being, and the great task of his existence is to harmonize with the unchanging unity of that being amid all his vicissitudes.” And now Schiller seeks to explain how human beings must develop themselves upward toward the higher stages of human existence.

[ 59 ] There are two things that render human beings unfree, preventing them from gaining a clear insight into the mysteries of existence. On the one hand, it is being dominated by sensuality; on the other, the insufficient development of reason. And now Schiller distinguishes between these things as follows: Let us take a person who does not feel within himself the compelling, logical nature of concepts, nor the concept of duty, but instead follows his inclinations and instincts—he cannot freely develop the powers of his nature; he is enslaved by his drives, desires, and instincts; he is unfree. But neither is free the person who initially fights against his desires, drives, and instincts and follows solely a purely conceptual and logical necessity of reason. Such a person becomes either a slave to natural necessity or a slave to rational necessity.

[ 60 ] How can a person develop their inner powers? Schiller answers: They must develop their inner divine states, strive to have them purified and refined, and bring them into harmony with what we call logic. When their drives and instincts are purified to the point that they willingly do what they perceive as their duty—even when the necessity of reason is not felt as coercive—then people will willingly do what is reasonable simply out of their ordinary drives; then reason has led people down into sensuality, and sensuality leads them back up to reason.

[ 61 ] Let us consider a person standing before a work of art. He is looking at something sensory. But through every aspect of the sensory, something spiritual is revealed to him, for the sensory expresses what the artist has imbued the work of art with as spiritual. Spirit and sensibility in the contemplation of beauty—this becomes a mediating state. Thus, art—life in beauty—becomes for Schiller a great educational tool, a means of aesthetic education, a liberation of nature so that it can unfold its own powers. How, then, does the human being develop in Schiller’s view? He must bring his nature down so that it proves itself in the sensory realm, and develop his senses upward so that they prove themselves in the realm of reason.

[ 62 ] Goethe has a wonderfully beautiful thing to say about these letters: “They have such an effect on me that they depict to me what I have lived or have always wished to live.” — It can be shown that Goethe was inspired to write his fairy tale by what Schiller had expressed in his letters on the aesthetic education of man. In his work, Goethe expresses the same idea in his own way. Goethe did not wish to articulate the mysteries of the soul in abstract terms. For Goethe, the individual mysteries of the soul were too rich and too immense for him to have been able to capture them in natural necessity and logic. Thus, Goethe felt the need to personify the individual powers of the human soul in the characters of his fairy tale. Goethe answered Schiller’s question in his fairy tale, and we shall see how Goethe’s psychology is wonderfully characterized in the story. We see how the soul is constantly receiving and giving in the depiction of the will-o’-the-wisps, how certain powers are personified in the snake, which works only on the earth—like human research, human reason, and experience—all of which remain on the horizontal plane, while the idealist ascends to the heights. The power of the religious spirit is embodied in the old man with the lamp, and we finally see how, through the events recounted to us, Goethe illustrates the manner in which every power of the soul must act.

[ 63 ] The day after tomorrow we will see how Goethe demonstrates in his account that each soul force must act in moderation together with the other soul forces in order to shape the soul into a unified whole, so that it may develop upward toward human perfection, toward a comprehensive understanding of things. If a person attempts to grasp these insights before they are ready, they will be killed, just like the young man. There is a maturing process of knowledge. In this fairy tale, Goethe presents the evolution of the soul in a precise and vivid manner, creating a parallel work to Schiller’s *Letters on Aesthetic Education*. Goethe knew that there is a goal of human soul development that in ancient times was called initiation into higher mysteries. He knew that such a possibility exists, and he also knew that there are societies that develop the powers of the soul in hidden places, in the temples of initiation. He also shows how modern times must increasingly lead to a situation in which it becomes possible for humanity to attain this initiation on a larger scale and to develop the soul. Through the processes that take place between individual human beings, he illustrates the process of initiation up to the highest levels—to the point where the soul becomes capable of grasping the highest mysteries. This is viewed exoterically, from a purely historical perspective.

[ 64 ] Through his close association with Goethe, Schiller experienced what Goethe himself had experienced during one of the most important periods of his life. And even if Schiller found it difficult to understand Goethe, we must still say: What Schiller expresses in an abstract way in his Aesthetic Letters, and what Goethe had to say in a much more comprehensive way—in a manner that can only be achieved by expressing oneself through images and characters—is one and the same. The fairy tale is Goethean psychology in the deepest sense. We see that Goethe, through the nature of his striving, became so fruitful that we still gladly take our cue from him today. Goethe still appears to us today as a contemporary. We read him as if he were a writer of our own time. He is so fruitful because there is so much of the eternal in his work and in his entire way of being. Thus he works in the spirit of that truth which he himself regarded as the true one, and he once spoke a meaningful word: “What is fruitful alone is true.”

[ 65 ] This means that a person must take possession of truths that, when he enters life, are confirmed by proving themselves fruitful. For him, this was the criterion of truth: Only what is fruitful is true!

[ 66 ] It is precisely these lectures, which aim to illustrate Goethe to you, that are meant to show us that Goethe himself put this saying into practice. All those who delve deeper into his work will sense this. They will sense that something of genuine truth lives within Goethe, for Goethe is fruitful, and what is fruitful is true.