The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. The Mission of Wrath

[ 1 ] “Prometheus Bound”

[ 2 ] When one delves into the human soul from the perspective from which the life of the soul is to be considered here, the ancient saying of the Greek sage Heraclitus may come to mind time and again: You can never find the limits of a soul, even if you were to walk every path; so vast is the essence of the soul. — Here, we shall speak of the life of the soul not in the sense in which it is frequently discussed today from the standpoint of conventional psychology, but rather from the perspective of spiritual science. Spiritual science stands firmly on the ground that behind everything given to the external senses—and everything given to the intellect bound to the external senses—there lies, as the source and foundation of this external existence, a true, real spiritual reality; and that human beings are capable of truly exploring this spiritual reality. It has, after all, been mentioned frequently in these lectures here what distinguishes this spiritual science or theosophy from so many contemporary viewpoints, and these differences shall be briefly recalled. In everyday life and in the external sciences, it is commonly said that human knowledge is bound by this or that limit, that one cannot know this or that because certain limits to knowledge have simply been set for human beings. And so one person, for example, if he does not wish to reject a supersensible, spiritual world entirely, might say: Let us leave this spiritual world alone, for human beings, being of the nature they are, can only penetrate the physical world and, at most, form concepts—in accordance with their intellect—about what lies beyond this physical world, based on hypotheses and the like. Another person, perhaps expanding on this view, might say that a supersensible world is of no concern to us at all. Spiritual science does not stand on this ground, but rather asserts that the content of the world is infinite; what falls within human cognition depends on human beings having the appropriate organs for it. Human beings would never be able to conceive that there is a world of color and light if they did not have eyes; they would never be able to conceive that there is a world permeated by sounds if they did not have ears. With every new sense organ, with every possibility of a new perception, a new aspect, a new realm of the world opens up. And so spiritual science is based on the premise that the limits of human knowledge can only ever be provisional; that they can be expanded; that there are hidden abilities within our soul that we can draw out of it; and that just as light and color emerge from the darkness and gloom for the person born blind who undergoes surgery, so too does the one who awakens the hidden spiritual -soul abilities within himself, will bring forth from the world—which previously was only as the external senses conveyed it—that which is always around us as the spiritual, and which we simply cannot perceive without the spiritual organs. Spiritual science, or theosophy, does not say that there are limits to knowledge here or there, but rather: how must we transform ourselves in order to penetrate ever more deeply into this world and to gain more comprehensive experiences from it? And time and again, spiritual science must point to the great event through which a person becomes a spiritual researcher, in order to look into the spiritual worlds, just as the physical researcher looks into the physical worlds with a microscope. With regard to the spiritual world, however, one must say that Goethe’s words apply:

Mysterious in Broad Daylight
Nature cannot be stripped of its veil,
And what it chooses not to reveal to your mind,
You cannot force from it with levers and screws.

[ 3 ] The researcher in the spiritual sciences does not possess an external instrument composed of lenses or other components. He must transform his own soul into an instrument; then, on a higher level, he will experience that momentous moment of spiritual awakening when he can look into a spiritual world, just as a blind person who has undergone surgery can look into a world he had not previously perceived. It has also often been emphasized that not everyone needs to become a spiritual researcher in order to acknowledge today what the awakened one has to communicate to the world; for when the findings of spiritual research are communicated, an unbiased sense of truth and ordinary logic are sufficient for every person to acknowledge what the spiritual researcher has to communicate. Research requires the open eye of the clairvoyant; acknowledging these messages requires a sound sense of truth; a natural, unbiased feeling, unclouded by any prejudice; and natural reason. It is therefore essential that we understand the study of the soul and the observation of the soul in the sense of this spiritual research when, in the following lectures, we first discuss some of the soul’s characteristics that are of interest to human beings. Just as only those who acquire the necessary abilities can conduct research into hydrogen, oxygen, and other chemical elements, so too can only those whose spiritual eye is open look into what constitutes soul life. To explore the soul, one must be able to make observations, so to speak, within the substance of the soul. However, we must not regard the soul as something vague and nebulous in which feelings, thoughts, and impulses of the will flit about; rather, we must once again briefly familiarize ourselves today with what has been said here in earlier lectures on the same subject.

[ 4 ] When we look at human beings, they reveal themselves to be far more complex beings than external science assumes. What external physical observation knows about human beings is, for spiritual science, only a part of the human being: the outer physical body, which human beings share with all the mineral substances in our environment. Within it, the same laws prevail and the same substances are at work as in the external, mineral-physical world. But beyond that, in spiritual science we recognize—not merely through logical deduction, but through observation—a second aspect of the human being: what we call the etheric body or life body. Today we can only sketch out this structure of human nature; for our task today is quite different; it must be built solely upon knowledge of this structure of human nature. The etheric body, or life body, is not something that human beings share with the physical-mineral elements of their surroundings, but rather with everything that lives. I said that anyone who has become a spiritual researcher—who has made the soul an instrument for looking into the spiritual worlds—knows this etheric or life body through direct observation. But even an unbiased sense of truth, if it is not clouded by today’s prejudices, can recognize this etheric or life body. For take the physical body: it contains within itself the same physical and chemical laws as the external physical-mineral world. When do these physical laws reveal themselves to us? They reveal themselves to us when a person comes toward us devoid of life. Where a person has passed through the gate of death, there we see what the laws inherent in the physical body are. These are the laws that dissolve the body, that govern the body in a completely different way than it is governed between birth and death. These same laws are always present in the physical human body as well. The reason the body does not follow them is that within this physical human body, between birth and death, there is a force fighting against the decay of the physical body—namely, the etheric or life body.

[ 5 ] Then we distinguish a third aspect of the human being: the bearer of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain, of drives, desires, and passions—of everything that we essentially already refer to as the soul; but precisely the bearer, not the soul itself. Human beings share this with all beings around them that possess a certain form of consciousness—including animals. We call this third aspect of the human being the astral body, or body of consciousness. And with this, we have exhausted what we call the physicality of the human being. This physical nature of the human being has three components: the physical body, the etheric or life body, and the astral or consciousness body. Within these three components, we recognize in the human being that which makes the human being the crown of earthly creation—something that the human being does not share with anything else. It has often been pointed out that our language contains, in a single little word, something that leads us precisely to this innermost essence of the human being, through which the human being is the crown of earthly creation. Anyone can call this bouquet of flowers “a bouquet of flowers,” this clock “a clock,” this desk “a desk,” this chair “a chair,” and this flame “a flame.” But there is one thing that can never sound like a name to our ears when it refers to ourselves—something that must spring forth as a name from within us if it is to signify ourselves. This is what is expressed by the little word “I.” Just consider for a moment whether the little word “I” can sound to your ears from the outside when it refers to you yourself. If you wish to designate yourself as “I,” then this “I” must resound from within you and be the designation for your innermost being. That is why the great religions and worldviews have always seen in this name the “inexpressible name” of that which cannot be designated from the outside; and with this designation “I,” we stand before that innermost essence of the human being, which can be called the divine element within man. In doing so, we do not make human beings into gods. Just as we do not turn the drop we take from the sea into the sea itself when we say it is of the same substance as the entire sea; just as we do not make the “I” into a god when we say it is of the same substance and essence as the Divine that pulses through and weaves throughout the world.

[ 6 ] Through this very inner essence of his being, the human being is subject to that aspect of the world which spiritual science takes seriously and regards as real in the fullest sense; that aspect whose very name has a fascinating effect on people today, but which, in relation to the human being, is taken seriously and honestly only by spiritual science. It is the fact of life that we describe with the word “development.” How fascinating this word seems to people today when it refers to lower living beings that have gradually evolved to higher levels; how fascinating it seems when it can be said that human beings themselves have evolved from lower forms of existence to their present height! Spiritual science takes the word “evolution” seriously, above all in relation to human beings. It points out that, as a self-conscious being—a being with an inner activity welling up from its center—humanity must embrace “development” not merely by looking out into the world and saying, “Here, the imperfect is developing into the more perfect,” but rather because, as an active being placed within the world, humanity must itself undergo development. We cannot stop at the concept of development as it applies to what has already come into being; rather, we must be clear that human beings must bring about development themselves; that they must transcend the stage of development they have reached; that they must continually develop new powers, so that they become ever more perfect.

[ 7 ] Spiritual science is now arriving at a corresponding concept of evolution with regard to the human being by seeking to advocate a principle today that has already been advocated for another field not so long ago, and which spiritual science now seeks to advocate for a higher field in the same manner. People usually do not realize that even at the beginning of the 17th century, not only laypeople but also scholars believed that lower animals simply developed from river mud. This belief was based on inaccurate observation; and it was the great naturalist Francesco Redi who, in the 17th century, was the first to advocate the principle: Life can only come from life. — Mind you, this principle is cited here with all the qualifications that apply to its meaning today. Of course, no one today would believe that any lowly animal—such as an earthworm—could grow out of river mud; rather, that is the result of inaccurate observation. For an earthworm to come into being, an earthworm germ must be present. Nevertheless, in the 17th century, Francesco Redi narrowly escaped the fate of Giordano Bruno. For this statement had made him a formidable heretic. Well, today it is not customary to treat heretics as they were back then—at least not in all parts of the world—but something else has become the norm in its place. Those who today propose something that directly contradicts the beliefs of those who, in their arrogance, imagine they have reached the pinnacle of all worldviews, are regarded as fantasists, as dreamers, if not as something even worse. That is the modern form of the Inquisition in our parts of the world. So be it. Yet what spiritual science asserts regarding phenomena in higher realms—much like what Francesco Redi asserted in the lower realm—will meet the same fate as Redi’s assertion. Just as he upheld the principle: “Life can only come from life!”—so spiritual science has upheld the principle: “Spiritual-soul aspects can only arise from spiritual-soul aspects!” And nothing other than a consequence of this principle is what is often ridiculed today as the product of a wild imagination: the law of reincarnation. Even today, many people still believe—when they see what develops from the physical as a spiritual-soul aspect from the very first day of birth; when they see how increasingly distinct facial features emerge from the initial blurred physiognomy; how movements become more and more individual; how abilities well up more and more—they believe this is a consequence of what is physically given as father, mother, grandparents—in short, the physical line of ancestors.

[ 8 ] This is an inaccurate observation, just as it was an inaccurate observation when people believed that earthworms and other lower organisms arose from mud. Simply because we are unable to go back, with our present sensory perception, to the spiritual-soul realm from which what we now have before us as the spiritual-soul realm developed—simply for that reason—we regard what we attribute to the laws of physical heredity as something that emerges from the dark depths of the physical realm. In spiritual science, we look back to earlier earthly lives in which the human being laid the foundations for the abilities that are now emerging in this incarnation. And we regard the present life between birth and death as a new cause of future earthly lives. The spiritual-soul aspect arises only from the spiritual-soul aspect. The time is not far off when this statement will be as self-evident a truth as Francesco Redi’s statement: “Life can only come from life”—which has been accepted since the 17th century. However, Francesco Redi’s statement is of limited interest; whereas the statement that spiritual science must uphold today—that spiritual-soul elements develop from spiritual-soul elements—that human beings do not live just once, but through repeated earthly lives, and that each earthly life is the effect of previous earthly lives and the starting point for numerous subsequent lives—this statement is of interest to every human being. All confidence in life, all certainty in our work, and the solution to everything that presents itself to us as a mystery depend on this insight. Human beings will draw more and more strength from this insight for their entire existence, as well as confidence and hope for what is to take effect in the future. That is why these propositions are of interest to every human being.

[ 9 ] What, then, is it that works from one existence to the next, that began in earlier earthly lives, and that winds its way through all those earthly lives? It is the human “I,” which in our language is designated by that name that is inexpressible to external beings. The human “I” passes from life to life, and thus, as it passes from life to life, it undergoes its development.

[ 10 ] How does this development take place? It takes place through the “I” working on the three lower members of the human being. There we have the astral body, the vehicle of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain, of instinct, desire, and passion. Let us consider a person at a lower level whose “I” has done little work to purify the astral body: with his “I,” he follows his instincts, desires, and passions like a slave. If we compare such a person with another, of a higher standing, whose “I” has worked on the astral body to the extent that it has transformed the lower instincts, desires, and passions into moral ideals and ethical judgments, then we have, for the time being, an initial picture of the work of the “I” on the human astral body.

[ 11 ] Thus we see the “I” working from within on the human sheaths, first on the astral sheath, the sheath of consciousness. We can therefore say: In every human being standing before us today, we can distinguish between that which, so to speak, has been given to them in existence without their own effort—that part of the astral body on which the “I” has not yet worked—and that part which the “I” has already consciously transformed. We refer to that part of the astral body that the “I” has already transformed as the “spirit-self” or “Manas.” Then the “I” can grow stronger and stronger, and it then also transforms the etheric or life body. What the “I” has transformed in the etheric or life body, we refer to as the “life spirit.” And when the “I” becomes stronger and stronger, so that it gains the power to work transformatively even into the physical body, we refer to the part of the physical body that has then been transformed—but which cannot be seen with the ordinary eyes because it is supersensible—as the “spiritual human being.”

[ 12 ] This is how we see the process of development unfold. The outer members of the human being—which he has received without any effort on his part—are reshaped by the “I.”

[ 13 ] So far, we have spoken of the conscious transformation of the astral body. But before the “I” became capable of working so consciously, it had already been working—since time immemorial—unconsciously, or rather, subconsciously, on its three outer members; and first and foremost on the astral body, the vehicle of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain, of drives, desires, and passions. And the part of the astral body that the “I” has unconsciously transformed—which we therefore already carry within us today as a transformed astral body—we designate as the first soul member of the human being, the feeling soul. Thus the “I” lives within the human being, and before the human being had reached a level of consciousness that allowed them to consciously transform their instincts, desires, and so on, the “I” had created the feeling soul within the astral body. In the etheric or life body, the “I” created—without being able to work consciously, in a preconscious state—what we call the intellectual or emotional soul. In turn, within the physical body, the “I” has created for itself the organ of an inner soul component that we call the consciousness soul. Thus, we must distinguish three soul components within which the “I” acts in the human being: we have the feeling soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul. For spiritual science, this human soul is not some vague, nebulous entity, but rather an inner constituent of the human being, consisting of the soul of sensation, the soul of understanding or feeling, and the soul of consciousness.

[ 14 ] Now that all these considerations relate to these three members of the soul and the work of the “I” within them, let us consider how we can form a concept of what these three members of the soul are and how they present themselves to us. The spiritual researcher knows them through direct observation; but we can also form a concept of them through reason. For example, we need only imagine that a rose is before us. We perceive it. As long as we perceive it, we receive an impression from the outside. We call this the perception of the rose. Now, at the very moment we turn our gaze away from the rose, we retain an inner image of it. Something remains that we can now carry with us—an image of the rose. We must distinguish between these two moments: the moment when we are facing the rose, and the moment through which we can carry the image of the rose with us—in our imagination, as an inner possession of the soul—even when it is not standing before us. It is necessary to emphasize precisely this point, because nineteenth-century philosophy has given rise to the most incredible notions in this very area. We need only think of Schopenhauer’s philosophy, whose first proposition is: “The world is my idea.” One need only form a clear concept of what perception is and what an idea is. An idea differs from perception. The thinking person recognizes this if he merely holds in his mind the idea of a very hot, a terribly hot piece of steel—a piece of steel, for my sake, at a certain number of degrees Celsius. If we allow ourselves to simply hold this image in our minds, it differs from the steel of perception. The steel of perception, in our case, burns; the imagined steel does not burn, no matter how hot we imagine it to be. For perception, we must enter into correspondence with the external world; imagination is the property of the soul. We can draw a clear line between what we experience internally and the external world. The moment we begin to experience something internally, that is when what we call the soul of sensation begins, as opposed to what is the body of sensation—which, for example, mediates perception for us and makes it possible for us to perceive the color of a rose. Thus, the sensory soul contains not only ideas but also everything we might call our sympathies and antipathies, our feelings, and our sensations toward things. When we call the rose beautiful, this inner experience is a quality of the sensory soul. Anyone who does not wish to distinguish between perception and imagination—the inner possession of imagination rooted in the sensory soul—should realize that a glowing, real piece of steel burns, whereas an imagined one does not. Once, when I had said this, someone replied to me: Yes, a person could induce a kind of suggestion in themselves so vividly that, for example, if they merely thought of lemonade, they would already have the taste of lemonade, so that we cannot entirely distinguish between inner experience and the external world. I replied: “It is certainly possible for someone to go so far as to conjure up the taste of lemonade without any actual lemonade present; but whether this imagined lemonade actually quenches their thirst is another matter.” It is certainly possible to draw a line between what actually exists externally and what is experienced internally. Precisely where inner experience begins, there the soul of sensation begins in relation to the body of sensation.

[ 15 ] A higher member, now formed through the work of the “I” on the etheric body, is what we call the intellectual or emotional soul. In the lecture on the “Mission of Truth,” we will have to speak of this intellectual or emotional soul, just as today we must speak in particular of the sensory soul. Through the intellectual or emotional soul, the human being experiences not merely something that is stimulated by the external world and carried on within them; rather, through it, the human being experiences within themselves that which they may experience on the basis of the external world—but only if they, so to speak, continue the external stimulus within themselves. When we do not merely make external perceptions and allow them to come alive again in our sensory soul, but when we reflect on them, when we immerse ourselves in them, when we experience more, then they build themselves up; then they take shape within us as thoughts, as judgments, as the entire content of our mind. What we experience inwardly simply because our soul continues to live out the stimuli of the external world—that is what we call the intellectual or emotional soul.

[ 16 ] Then we have a third aspect in that the “I” within the physical body has created organs for itself in order to step outside of itself once more and to reunite what it has experienced—in the form of judgments, concepts, and ideas in the mind—with the external world. When the “I” in the soul develops this third element, we call it the “consciousness soul,” because the soul does not merely have experiences based on stimuli coming from the outside; rather, it transforms what it experiences internally into knowledge about the external world. When we shape the feelings we experience within ourselves in such a way that they enlighten us about the content of the world, then the content of our thinking, judgment, and feelings becomes knowledge of the external world. We speak of a soul of consciousness through which we fathom the mysteries of the external world; we speak of a soul of consciousness through which we are knowing, discerning human beings.

[ 17 ] It is, however, the “I” that works ceaselessly within these three aspects of the human soul—the three soul aspects of the human being: the feeling soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul. And the more it works, releasing inner forces that are bound, the more capable it makes these three soul components, the further the human being advances in their development. The “I” is the agent, the active being through which a human being can not only recognize development but also bring it about; through which he progresses, farther and farther, so that his earlier incarnations revealed these three soul components as internally imperfect, and with each new life the content—the life of the sensory soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul—becomes ever richer and richer, ever more comprehensive and all-encompassing. This is human development from life to life—the work of the “I” first and foremost on the three soul elements: the feeling soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul. As this “I” works in this way, we must be clear that this “I” itself represents, so to speak, a kind of “double-edged sword.” Oh, this “I” of the human being—on the one hand, it is that aspect of the human being through which alone he can be human in the true sense of the word. We would be a being that was, so to speak, passively merged with the external world if we did not have this center. Our concepts and ideas must be grasped within this center; more and more concepts and ideas must be experienced within this “I”; we must receive ever richer emotional content and ever richer stimuli from the external world. The fuller, richer, and more comprehensive this “I” of ours becomes, the more fully human we are. Therefore, throughout our various lifetimes, this “I” must enrich itself more and more, becoming a center through which a person not only integrates into the external world but also serves as a source of inspiration. The more we sense that a rich sum of impulses lies at the core of our “I,” the more fully human we are. The more we radiate our individuality, the more we have absorbed, the more fully human we are. The richer the “I,” the more perfect the human being is as a human being.

[ 18 ] This is one aspect of the self that imposes upon us the obligation to do everything we can to make it as rich and multifaceted as possible. But there is also a flip side to this progress of the self toward ever richer and fuller content. This is what we refer to as selfishness or egoism. If people were to treat the words “selfishness” or “egoism” merely as buzzwords and say that one must become selfless, that would of course be bad, just as any use of a buzzword as a mere buzzword is bad. It is, in fact, a person’s task to make themselves richer and richer; this is not the same as becoming selfish, provided that this enrichment of the self is not accompanied by the self becoming hardened within itself, by the self closing itself off through its enrichment. In that case, a person does indeed become richer and richer, but at the same time loses their connection to the world, and their enrichment would mean that they can no longer give anything to the world—nor can the world give anything to them—and that they would eventually fade away because, in striving to enrich their self, they keep everything within the self and thereby lose their connection to the world. Through this caricature of their ego development, human beings would simultaneously become impoverished. Selfishness impoverishes and desolates human beings. Thus, the ego is a double-edged sword in that it works upon the three members of the soul. On the one hand, it must work in such a way that it becomes ever richer and richer, ever fuller and fuller in its formation, so that it becomes a powerful center from which much can radiate; but it must, in turn, bring everything it takes in into harmony with what lives in its surroundings. It must, in the very same measure that it develops inwardly, at the same time reach outward from itself and merge with all of existence. It must simultaneously become a being in its own right and, on the other hand, become selfless. Only when the “I” works toward these two seemingly contradictory aspects—by enriching itself more and more while at the same time becoming selfless—can human development proceed in such a way that the individual develops for their own fulfillment and for the well-being and progress of all existence. However, the “I” must work on each of the three soul elements in such a way that these two aspects of human development are taken into account.

[ 19 ] Now, however, when the human “I” works on the three parts of the soul, it gradually awakens itself. After all, development is inherent in all life; and we see that the various parts of the human soul are developed to varying degrees in modern human beings. The feeling soul is the most highly developed. And within this feeling soul lies everything that is experienced inwardly: pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, drives, desires, and passions, all moods and emotions, and whatever awakens in the soul through direct stimulation from the world of perception. At certain lower stages of development, a person experiences these things in their feeling soul in a sort of dulled way, so to speak. The “I” has not yet awakened to full existence. Only when the life of the soul continues within itself, when the human being works within themselves, does the “I” become clearer and clearer; only then does it become more and more conscious of itself. In fact, as long as the soul of sensation is awakening, the “I” is something that smolders dimly. The “I” becomes clearer and clearer only as the human being develops upward toward a richer life in the intellectual soul; and the “I” appears most clearly when, in the conscious soul, it distinguishes itself from the external world, as the human being becomes a knowing being and distinguishes itself as an “I” from the external world. This is possible only in the conscious soul.

[ 20 ] Thus we have the “I” lying dormant within the sensory soul. There, within it, are the waves of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain; there, the “I” can scarcely be perceived; there, it is swept away in this surge of emotions and passions, and so on. Only when the “I” begins to further develop the intellectual soul into clearly defined concepts and ideas—when it arrives at clear judgments—only then does it become ever fuller and clearer within itself, and it becomes clearest of all in the conscious soul. Thus we must say: Human beings should educate themselves through their “I”; human beings should have the opportunity, through their “I,” to develop further; but this “I” awakens in a state where it is still entirely at the mercy of the waves that exist within the feeling soul as pleasure and suffering, joy and pain, as drives, desires, and passions. Is there anything in this feeling soul that can, in a certain sense, serve as a teacher for the human being, since the “I” itself is still unskilled?

[ 21 ] We will see how something takes hold in the intellectual soul that enables the “I” to take charge of its own education. This is not yet present in the feeling soul. There, the “I” must be guided by that which takes hold in the feeling soul without its own intervention. Today we shall single out one force, one element of the feeling soul, and examine its significance and its role in the education of the “I” from two perspectives; and this is what may perhaps cause the greatest stir in this context: that which we call anger. Anger belongs to that which stirs within the feeling soul, in which the “I” is still brooding dully. Or are we in a self-aware relationship with some being in the external world, toward whom we burn with anger because of its conduct? Let us consider the difference between two people who are, say, educators. One is already so serene that he has arrived at enlightened inner judgments. He observes with complete composure the wrong actions his pupil commits, because his emotional soul has matured. And his conscious soul, too, views the child’s mistakes with complete composure, and he can, when necessary, devise an appropriate punishment. Without being overcome by any passion, he proceeds to impose the appropriate punishment, which is determined according to the principles of ethical and pedagogical judgment and is commensurate with the child’s offense. The situation is different for the educator who has not yet developed his ego to the point where he can remain calm, who has not yet attained inner clarity, and who cannot work out within himself what should happen when the child has done this or that; instead, he may flare up in anger at the child’s wrongdoing. Is this anger always disproportionate to the events of the external world? No, it is not always so. And that is what we must bear in mind. In a sense, the wisdom of our development has ensured that, before we are able to use our judgment—arising from the intellectual and conscious soul—to determine what is appropriate in response to an event in the external world, our feelings and emotions overwhelm us. Something in our feeling soul arises as a consequence of the event in the external world. We are not yet mature enough to determine through judgment what is appropriate for the external world; however, we are capable of reacting in our feeling soul—drawing upon the sum of our feelings—to whatever confronts us from the environment.

[ 22 ] Of all that the sentient soul experiences, let us single out anger. It is a harbinger of what will one day come to be. First, we judge an event in the external world based on our anger; then, as we learn—initially unconsciously—not to agree with that which ought not to be—learning unconsciously through anger—we become, precisely through this judging, ever more mature and ready for the light-filled judgment of the higher soul. Thus, in a certain sense, anger serves as a teacher for human beings. It exists as an inner experience before we are mature enough to pass a light-filled judgment on that which ought not to be. Thus we must consider the anger that overtakes the young person with his or her judgment that has not yet matured—one who cannot yet form a calm judgment, but who can blaze with anger when he or she sees injustice or folly in his or her surroundings that does not correspond to his or her ideals. And we are then right to speak of a noble anger. This anger is a dim judgment passed in the feeling soul before we are mature enough to make that judgment with clear insight. Yes, anger is the guide to this luminous clarity. For no one is better led to a judgment that is secure within themselves than the person who, drawing from an ancient, noble disposition of the soul, has developed to the point where they can blaze with noble anger at what is base, immoral, or foolish. And anger has the mission of lifting the human “I” up into the higher realms. That is its mission. It is a teacher within us. Before we can guide ourselves, before we can judge with luminous clarity, it guides us in what we are already capable of. Of course, everything in a human being must be capable of degenerating, since he is meant to become a free being. Therefore, that which can serve as a guide toward freedom and independence of judgment can degenerate. Anger can degenerate into rage, so that the worst kind of selfishness is satisfied. But this is how it must be if human beings are to develop toward freedom. In this context, it must not be overlooked that what can become evil, when it occurs in its proper context, may in fact have the very mission of advancing human beings. Because human beings can turn good into evil, that which develops as a quality in the positive sense can precisely be the property of the human “I.” Thus, anger is to be understood as the dawn of that which can elevate human beings to serenity.

[ 23 ] But this anger, while on the one hand serving as the educator of the self, is, on the other hand, also what—strangely enough—shows us that it shapes the other characteristic of the self: the selflessness of the self. What, then, emerges from this “I” when anger overwhelms us in response to an unjust or foolish act in our surroundings? Let us confront this fact: anger overwhelms us. There is something within us that speaks differently from what stands before us. The fact of anger expresses itself in such a way that there is something within us that opposes the outside world; that is, anger makes itself known; the “I” wants to assert itself against what lies out there. The full substance of the “I” is drawn upon here. If we were to witness folly or injustice and yet be unable to burn with noble anger, then the outside world would pass us by indifferently with these realities; that is, we would merge with the outside world, we would not feel the sting of our own “I”; we would not feel the “I” in its unfolding. Anger, however, awakens it, calls it forth, so that it can confront the outside world. But on the other hand, anger also cultivates the other aspect of the “I”—selflessness. If this anger is what we might call noble anger, then it works in such a way that, wherever a person experiences this anger, they simultaneously experience a tempering of their sense of the “I.” It is something like a spiritual powerlessness that is awakened within us by anger when we do not surrender to it in rage. When we feel this anger throughout our soul, something like a spiritual powerlessness arises; the ego becomes duller and duller. As it asserts itself in opposition to the outside world, it dissolves itself on the other hand. Through the intensity of the anger that a person holds back within themselves, they simultaneously develop selflessness. Both sides of the “I” are brought to development through anger. Anger has the mission of giving rise to self-centeredness within us, and at the same time, this self-centeredness is transformed into selflessness. Those who experience anger within themselves experience something that the popular imagination captures wonderfully. You may all be familiar with the colloquial expression “to poison oneself.” Being angry is called “poisoning oneself,” for our popular imagination wonderfully captures in such teachings precisely what scholarship sometimes fails to perceive. Anger that gnaws its way into the soul is a poison—that is, something that suppresses the self-assertiveness of the “I.” By saying, “He is poisoning himself,” one points to this other educational aspect of anger: the cultivation of selflessness. Thus, anger is indeed something that has a mission in relation to these two aspects of human education, and we see how it becomes the harbinger of our independence and selflessness as long as the “I” cannot yet intervene in its own education. We would dissolve if everything around us remained indifferent to us, if we were not yet able to make a calm judgment. We would not become selfless, but rather, in the negative sense, dependent and devoid of individuality, if—before we have developed our “I” to the point of clear, luminous judgment—we cannot assert our independence through anger in those instances where the external world does not correspond to our own inner being. And for the student of spiritual science, this anger is truly the dawn of something entirely different yet.

[ 24 ] Anyone who observes life will see that those who cannot burn with noble anger at an injustice or folly can never attain true compassion and love. If you observe life, you will see that as long as a person needs to train themselves to be able to burn with noble anger in the face of injustice or folly, they are also, in the most beautiful sense, cultivating that heart ablaze with love, which does good out of love. Love and compassion are the other side of noble anger. Anger that has been overcome, anger that has been purified, transforms into love and gentleness. A loving hand will rarely be found in the world unless it was also capable, at certain times, of clenching into a fist in response to what can be felt in noble anger at an injustice or folly. These are things that belong together.

[ 25 ] In a clichéd form of theosophy, one might say: Yes, human beings must overcome their passions. They must purify and refine them. “Overcoming” does not mean tiptoeing around something or neatly sidestepping it. That is a strange kind of sacrifice that some people want to make by trying to shed their passionate nature through tiptoeing around it and avoiding it. One can only sacrifice what one already possesses; and what one does not possess, one cannot sacrifice. Only the one who was first able to burn with anger can overcome it; for one must first possess what one is to overcome. One must not sneak past it, but rather transform such qualities within oneself. To do so, however, they must first be present.

[ 26 ] When we transform anger—when we rise from that which glows within the sensory soul as noble anger up into the intellectual and conscious souls—then love, gentleness, and a blessing hand will develop out of that anger.

[ 27 ] Transformed anger is love in life. That is what reality tells us. Therefore, anger—when it manifests itself in a measured way in life—has the mission of leading people to love; we can describe it as the teacher of love. And it is not for nothing that what manifests in the world as an indeterminate force—flowing from the wisdom of the world and balancing what ought not to be—is called “divine wrath” in contrast to “divine love.” But we also know that these two things belong together, that one cannot exist without the other. In life, these things are interdependent and mutually determinative.

[ 28 ] Now we see how art and poetry, precisely where they reach their greatest heights, reveal to us what primordial wisdom is. And just as we can show—when speaking of the mission of truth—how Goethe, in one of his greatest poetic works—even though it may appear small to us on the surface— in his “Pandora,” clearly expresses to us what he thought about the mission of truth; so, too, can we—albeit not as clearly as there—see how, in a monumental work of world literature, Aeschylus’s “Prometheus Bound,” the world-historical phenomenon of wrath confronts us, so to speak.

[ 29 ] You are probably familiar with the plot of the myth on which Aeschylus’s drama is based. Prometheus is a descendant of the ancient race of Titans, which succeeded the first generation of gods that Greek mythology places at the beginning of the evolution of the Earth and humanity. Uranus and Gaia belong to the first generation of gods. Uranus is overthrown by Cronus, or Saturn. The Titans, in turn, are overthrown by the third generation of gods, led by Zeus. Prometheus was a descendant of the Titans; yet he fought alongside Zeus against the Titans, so that in a certain sense he can be called a friend of Zeus; yet he is only a half-friend to Zeus. As the legend continues, when Zeus assumed rule on Earth, the human race had reached a point where it was entering a new phase, and the ancient abilities that prehistoric humans possessed were growing increasingly dull. Zeus wanted to exterminate humanity and bring another race to Earth. Prometheus, however, resolved to enable humanity to continue evolving. Prometheus gave humans the ability to speak, to understand the external world, to write, and finally, to use fire, so that the human race could rise again from its decline through the use of writing and language, and through the use of fire.

[ 30 ] Now, if we look at the matter more deeply, the human “I” is connected to everything that is presented as a gift to humanity from Prometheus. And if we understand the Greek myth correctly, we must say: Zeus is presented to us there as a divine force that animates and spiritualizes those human beings in whom the “I” has not yet come to expression. If we look back at the evolution of our Earth, we find a humanity in which the “I” is still smoldering dully. This “I” had to be given special abilities in order to educate itself. The gifts that Zeus was initially able to bestow were not sufficient to advance humanity further. With regard to the astral body—that which exists within the human being apart from the “I”—Zeus is the bestower, the giver. He resolved to exterminate the human race because he was unable to bring the “I” to maturity. Prometheus, through all the gifts he bestows, brings the ability to develop the “I.”

[ 31 ] That is the deeper meaning of this myth. Prometheus, then, is the one who enables human beings to focus on the self, to make it ever richer and fuller. This, precisely, is what was understood in Greece as the gift of Prometheus: the ability of the self to make itself ever richer and richer, ever fuller and fuller.

[ 32 ] But we have seen today that if the ego were to develop only this one characteristic, it would eventually become impoverished; for it would cut itself off from the outside world. That is only one side of the ego—to make itself richer and richer. The ego must carry this content out into the world again; it must bring itself into harmony with its entire environment if it does not want to become impoverished. Prometheus could bring humanity only that one gift which made the ego ever fuller and fuller, ever richer and richer in content. In doing so, Prometheus had to challenge precisely those forces which, out of the whole of worldly existence, properly temper the ego so that it can become selfless, so that it can also develop the other side. What anger actually brings about in the individual, on the one hand, is that he centers the ego on himself, that he allows the thorn to spring from it, which sets it against the whole world, and what anger brings about on the other hand—by simultaneously dampening the ego, so that the human being, through this emotion, devours the anger within himself, so to speak, and the ego becomes dulled—is depicted in world history through the struggle between Prometheus and Zeus. Prometheus bestows upon the “I” the abilities through which it becomes ever richer and richer. What Zeus must now do is to act in the same way that anger acts within the individual human being. Therefore, the wrath of Zeus descends upon what Prometheus has wrought and extinguishes the power of the “I” in Prometheus. The legend goes on to tell that Prometheus is punished by Zeus for his deed, because he advanced humanity prematurely in the development of the “I.” He is chained to a rock. What this human “I” endures there, chained to the rock—the inner turmoil it experiences—is expressed so magnificently in the poetry of Aeschylus.

[ 33 ] Thus we see the representative of the human ego subdued by Zeus’s wrath. Just as the individual human ego is subdued and brought back into itself when it conceals this wrath within itself—and is thereby brought down to the proper measure—so too is Prometheus chained by Zeus’s wrath, that is, brought back to the proper measure in his activity. Just as wrath floods through the individual soul, the “I” is chained when it seeks to live out its “I-ness” to the full. Just as it is bound by the wrath that forces the “I”-consciousness down, so is the “I” of Prometheus bound to the rock. This is the distinctive feature of the comprehensive myth: that it presents such all-encompassing truths—which apply to the individual as well as to all of humanity—in powerful images. This is the distinctive feature of the myth: that it allows people to see, through images, that which is to be experienced within their own souls. And so we gaze upon Prometheus, chained to the Caucasus rock, and see in him a representative of the human “I” that strives to move forward even as it still broods dimly within the soul of feeling—an “I” that is chained so that it cannot run wild into excess.

[ 34 ] And then we hear further how Prometheus knows that Zeus will have to silence his wrath when he is overthrown by the son of a mortal. That which is born of a mortal will succeed Zeus in his reign. From the mortal human being will be born—just as the “I” is unleashed through the mission of wrath on a lower level—the “I” on a higher level, the immortal “I.” On a higher level, the immortal soul is born from the mortal human being. And just as Prometheus looks upon one who will succeed the rule of Zeus—the rule of that god who can pour out his wrath upon Prometheus, that is, upon the human “I,” so that this “I” does not overstep its bounds, just as Zeus is superseded by Christ Jesus—so the individual “I,” which is bound by wrath, is transformed, through the transformed wrath, into the loving “I,” into the love that is the transformed, noble wrath. We see that ego, which intervenes in the outer world with blessing, gentleness, and love, developing out of the ego bound by wrath, just as we see a God of love developing forth—a God who nurtures and cares for the ego that, in an earlier age, had to be bound by the wrath of the god Zeus so that it would not overstep its bounds.

[ 35 ] Thus, we also see in the continuation of this legend an external tableau of human development. We must grasp this external tableau of the myth in such a way that it brings to life for the entire earthly being what the individual human being experiences within themselves—the transformation from the “I” shaped by the mission of wrath to the liberated “I” that unfolds love.

[ 36 ] If we take it this way, then we understand what was at work there, what shaped this legend, and what Aeschylus made of this material. We truly feel spiritual blood pulsing within us; we feel it as the Prometheus legend unfolds; we sense it in Aeschylus’s dramatic treatment of this material.

[ 37 ] Thus, we find in this Greek drama something akin to a practical application of what we can experience in the soul. This is true of all great works of literature, and indeed of all great works of art: they arise from the great, archetypal experiences of the human soul.

[ 38 ] Today we have seen how the ego is educated through the purification of an emotion. In the next lecture, we will see how the ego matures to the point of educating itself within the intellectual or emotional soul by taking on the mission of truth at a higher level.

[ 39 ] Thus, our reflection has shown us how—even from what we have regarded as practical application—the words of the great Greek sage Heraclitus are proven true: “You can never fathom the limits of the soul, even if you were to walk every path; so vast is the essence of the soul.”

[ 40 ] Yes, it is true that the soul is such a comprehensive entity that we cannot fathom it directly. Spiritual science, however, with the open eye of the seer, does lead us into the substance of the soul, and we advance further and further in fathoming that mysterious being that is our soul when we view it through the eyes of the spiritual scientist. Truly, on the one hand we can say: the soul is unfathomable; but we must ask ourselves, if we take this statement seriously: if the soul’s boundaries are so vast that we must traverse all paths, then we can also have hope if we expand these boundaries of the soul ourselves, if we make use of the fact that the soul’s boundaries are vast, so that we can go farther and farther with the soul.

[ 41 ] This ray of hope shines upon our quest for knowledge when we accept Heraclitus’s true saying not merely with resignation, but with confidence: “The soul’s boundaries are so vast that even if you were to travel every path, you would still not fathom it; so all-encompassing is its essence.”

[ 42 ] Let us embrace this all-encompassing essence; it will lead us ever deeper into the solution of the mysteries of existence.