The Rudolf Steiner Archive

8. Human Conscience

[ 1 ] Allow me to begin today’s lecture with a personal recollection. It concerns a small experience I had when I was very young, and it is one of those things that, though seemingly quite small and insignificant, can nevertheless create beautiful memories that last a lifetime.

[ 2 ] When I was very young, I once attended a series of lectures by a professor on literary history. The lecturer in question began his course at that time with a reflection on intellectual life during Lessing’s era and intended to introduce a series of reflections that would guide us through the literary development of the second half of the 18th century and part of the 19th century. And he began with words that made a deep impression. He sought to characterize the main feature that emerged in the literary intellectual life of Lessing’s time by saying: “Artistic consciousness acquired an aesthetic conscience.” — If one then tried to piece together from what he went on to elaborate what he actually meant by this statement—we will not discuss the validity of this assertion here—it was something like the following: A profound seriousness permeated all artistic reflections and the intentions behind artistic achievements that followed in the footsteps of Lessing and his contemporaries; through this seriousness, they did not merely wish to make art something that stands as an appendage to life—something that exists only to add to life’s various other pleasures; but rather, they wanted to make art something that must be integrated into development as a necessary factor of every dignified human existence. To elevate art to a serious and dignified human endeavor, one that has a voice in the chorus discussing the great and fruitful affairs of humanity—that was the goal of the minds who ushered in that era. — That is what that literary historian meant when he emphasized: “Aesthetic conscience entered artistic and poetic life.”

[ 3 ] Why, then, could such a statement hold meaning for a soul that sought to listen to the mysteries of existence, as reflected in this or that human mind? Such an expression could gain significance precisely because the conception of art was to be ennobled by being endowed with an expression whose significance for all human existence, for all human dignity and human destiny, is beyond doubt. The seriousness of artistic endeavor was to be endowed with an expression whose significance, so to speak, precludes any debate. And there is truth to it when we say that, in any given matter, those soul experiences we designate by the term “conscience” hold significance, because through this we seek, as it were, to elevate the matters in question to a sphere in which they are ennobled. In other words: When the term “conscience” is uttered, the human soul senses that something of the most precious in human spiritual life is being touched—something whose absence would constitute a deficiency in that spiritual life. And how often has it been said, to characterize the greatness and significance of what is denoted by the word “conscience”—regardless of whether the other person understands this figuratively or literally: What manifests itself as conscience in the human soul is the voice of God in that soul. And one will hardly find a single person—no matter how little they are willing to reflect on higher spiritual matters—who has not formed some conception of what is commonly called “conscience.” Everyone has, after all, more or less the same feeling: Whatever it may be, it is a voice that, with irrefutable force, makes decisions within the breast of each individual regarding what is good and what is bad or evil; regarding what must be done so that a person can be at peace with themselves, and what must be refrained from so that a person does not reach the point where they must, in a certain sense, treat themselves with contempt. Therefore, we can say: To every individual human soul, conscience appears as something sacred within the human heart, as something about which it is relatively easy to form some kind of opinion.

[ 4 ] The situation is different, however, when we consider human history and the human intellectual life a little more closely. Who, when contemplating such an intellectual matter and striving to see more deeply, would not look to those from whom one can assume prior knowledge on the subject—the philosophers? Admittedly, one’s experience with such a matter would be much the same as with so many other human concerns: the explanations of conscience found among various philosophers differ considerably from one another—at least on the surface—even though they all contain a more or less obscure core that is the same everywhere. But that would not be the worst of it. Anyone who were to go to great lengths to ask the various philosophers of ancient and modern times what they understood by “conscience” would find that they would receive all sorts of quite beautiful statements—as well as all sorts of quite difficult-to-understand statements—but that they would not encounter anything precise of which they could say that it fully and unquestionably expressed what they feel: that is conscience! — It would, of course, take us far too far afield today if I were to present you with an anthology of the various explanations of conscience that have been offered over the centuries, particularly by the philosophical leaders of humanity. One could point out, for example, that from roughly the first third of the Middle Ages onward and throughout the entire history of medieval philosophy, whenever conscience was discussed, it was always said that conscience is a power of the human soul capable of making direct statements about what a person ought to do or refrain from doing. But—as the medieval philosophers say, for example—there is something else underlying this force within the human soul, something even more subtle than conscience itself. A figure whose name has already been mentioned here several times, Meister Eckhart, speaks of a very small spark underlying conscience—a spark that has, as it were, been placed in the human soul as something eternal, and which, when heeded, reveals the laws of good and evil with irresistible force.

[ 5 ] As we then move into the modern era, we again find a wide variety of explanations regarding conscience; among them are some that cannot help but make a peculiar impression, because they clearly bear the mark that they do not truly convey the full gravity of that inner voice of God which we call conscience. There are philosophers who speak of conscience as something that a person actually attains by absorbing more and more life experiences into his soul, by experiencing more and more of what is—or is not—useful, harmful, perfecting, and so on for him. And from this sum of experiences, so to speak, a judgment is formed that then says: Do this, do not do that! — There are other philosophers who, in turn, have extolled conscience in the highest possible terms. Among the latter is the great German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte, who, when he wished to point to the fundamental principle of all human thought and being, pointed above all to the human “I”—but not to the transitory, personal “I,” rather to the eternal core within the human being. At the same time, he pointed out that the highest thing a person can experience within their self is conscience. And he stated outright that a person cannot experience anything higher than the inner judgment: “You must do this, because it would contradict your conscience not to do it.” As far as the majesty and nobility of this judgment are concerned, one cannot go beyond this at all. And if Fichte is precisely the philosopher who, more than any other, has emphasized the power and significance of the human “I,” it is characteristic that he, in turn, identifies conscience as the most significant impulse within the human “I.”

[ 6 ] However, the further we move into more recent times, and the more thought approaches a fundamentally materialistic character, the more we find that conscience—not for the human breast and not for the human heart, but certainly for the thinking of philosophers with a more or less materialistic bent—is greatly diminished in its majesty. Let me illustrate this with just one example.

[ 7 ] In the second half of the 19th century, there was a philosopher who, in terms of nobility of spirit, harmonious human feeling, and generosity of spirit, certainly ranks among the most beautiful and magnificent personalities. He is scarcely mentioned today: I am referring to Bartholomäus Carneri. If you read through his writings, you will find—despite the nobility of his thinking and the broad-mindedness of his outlook—that, because he was thoroughly imbued with the materialistic mindset of his century, he characterized conscience as follows: What can we understand by the term “conscience”? It is, after all, nothing more than a sum of habits and ingrained judgments that we absorbed in early youth, that have been imprinted on us through upbringing and life, and of which we are no longer fully aware. It speaks to us from within our ingrained habits: “You should do this—you should not do that!”

[ 8 ] Thus, the entire scope of conscience is traced back here to external life experiences and habits—specifically, the most narrowly defined ones. Indeed, other 19th-century philosophers with an even more materialistic bent have gone even further. And in this regard, the work of a philosopher who exerted a great influence on Friedrich Nietzsche during his middle period is of interest: Paul Ree. He wrote a treatise on the origin of conscience. It is interesting, not because one could agree with even a single sentence of it, but as a symptom of the views of our entire era. In it, he argues roughly as follows—let us be aware that when one must state something briefly and outline it with a few sharp strokes, certain details are bound to be somewhat distorted—: Humanity has developed in terms of all its characteristics, including conscience. Originally, people did not possess at all what we call conscience. That is merely a prejudice—and indeed one of the most powerful ones—if one regards conscience as something eternal. Originally, something like a voice telling us, “You should do this—you shouldn’t do that!”—a voice we call conscience, according to Paul Rée—did not exist at all. But what we might call the instinct for revenge did develop. That was the most primordial aspect. When someone was wronged in any way, the instinct for revenge arose—the urge to return what had been done to them. And as living conditions became more complex, it came to pass that, within social groups, revenge was handed over to the authorities, to whom its execution was entrusted. Thus, people became accustomed to believing that every act that harms another must be followed by something that was formerly called “revenge.” This gave rise to the belief that certain acts, which have dire consequences, must be balanced out by other acts. And from the further development of this belief arose a connection between certain feelings that a person may experience when an act has been committed, or even when they are tempted to do something. People have forgotten that the instinct for revenge was originally alive; yet this has become firmly established in the feeling that an action must follow as compensation for a harmful act. Thus, people now believe that an “inner voice” is speaking, whereas in truth it is merely the voice of the instinct for revenge turned inward. — Here we have an extreme case, extreme in that such a conflict presents the conscience as a complete illusion.

[ 9 ] On the other hand, however, we must admit that those who claim the conscience is something that has always existed as a fact—ever since humans first appeared on Earth—and that it is, so to speak, something eternal, are also going much too far. Since errors are made both where people think in more spiritual terms and where they declare conscience to be a pure illusion, reaching an understanding in this area is very difficult, even though it concerns an everyday—yet sacred—aspect of our inner human nature. Even a brief survey of the philosophers would reveal that, even among the finest of our human personalities, people used to think about conscience differently than we must today. It has been rightly pointed out by those who see somewhat more deeply into such matters that, for example, in a figure as noble as Socrates, we do not, in essence, find anything at all like what we today call “conscience.” For when we say: “Conscience is a voice that speaks even within the breast of the most naive person and, as if by a divine and sacred impulse, says, ‘You shall do this! You shall refrain from that!’”—in contrast, the assertion made by Socrates and later adopted by Plato takes on a somewhat different character. Both assert that virtue is something that can be taught, something that can be learned. Socrates thus means to say: If a person forms clear concepts about what he should or should not do, he can, through learning and through knowledge of virtue, come to act virtuously little by little.

[ 10 ] Anyone who adheres to the modern concept of conscience might object: It would actually be quite bad if one had to wait until one had learned what is good or bad in order to act virtuously. Conscience is something that speaks to the human soul with a much more fundamental force—and speaks audibly in each individual case: “You should do this and refrain from that!”—long before we have formed higher ideas about what is good and evil, that is, long before we have internalized a moral doctrine. And conscience is something that brings a certain peace to the human soul when a person can say to themselves: You have done something with which you can be at peace. It would be terrible—as some might say—if we first had to learn a great deal about the nature and character of virtue in order to be able to approve of our own actions. — That is why we can say: That philosopher whom we look up to as a martyr of philosophy—who, through his death, ennobled and crowned his philosophical work—Socrates—presents us with a concept of virtue that is difficult to reconcile with today’s concept of conscience. And even among the later Greek thinkers, it is still said that one can perfect oneself in virtue through learning; which would, in essence, contradict the original, elementary power of conscience.

[ 11 ] How is it possible, then, that a figure as noble and imposing as Socrates was not yet familiar with the concept of conscience as we understand it today, even though we sense—when we encounter Socrates as Plato portrays him in conversation—that his words express the purest moral sense and the highest virtue? This stems from nothing other than the fact that even those concepts, ideas, and inner spiritual experiences that people today feel as if they were, so to speak, innate, were in fact only acquired by the human soul over the course of time. Anyone who looks back into the spiritual life of humanity will indeed find that the concept of conscience and the feeling of conscience in ancient times—even among the Greek people—did not exist in the same way as they are conceived and felt today. The concept of conscience has emerged. But human beings cannot learn about the origin of conscience in such a simple way through external experience and external science, as has been attempted, for example, by Paul R&e; rather, one must look much more deeply into the human soul.

[ 12 ] This winter, we have made it the task of these lectures to shed deeper light on the structure of the human soul—specifically, with the light drawn from the human soul’s development toward higher capacities of cognition. The entire life of the soul has been presented as it appears to the open eye of the seer—that eye which not only perceives the outer sensory world and acquires knowledge of it, but also looks beyond the veil of the sensory world into the realm where the true origins of the sensory world lie: into the spiritual foundations of this sensory world. And on the other hand, it has been repeatedly pointed out—for example, in the lecture “What Is Mysticism?”—how, beyond what appears to us in everyday life as our soul life, the seer’s consciousness leads us into deeper regions of the soul. In the ordinary life of the soul, we believe we already perceive deeper foundations when we look within ourselves and find the experiences of thought, feeling, and will. However, it has been pointed out that what reveals itself to our soul in the waking state is, in essence, merely the outer aspect of what is truly spiritual. Just as we must look beyond the veil of existence if we wish to find its depths—beyond what our eyes show us, what our ears allow us to hear, and what our intellect enables us to perceive through the brain—so too must we look beyond our thinking, feeling, and willing, and also beyond the reasons behind what we experience within ourselves as our ordinary soul life, if we wish to come to know the true causes—the spiritual foundations—of our own lives.

[ 13 ] We have taken these perspectives as our starting point to shed light on the human soul life in its various ramifications. It has become clear to us that this human soul life must be considered in three distinct areas—mind you, I do not say “separate areas”! The feeling soul has presented itself to us as the lowest level of the soul’s life. In a person who is still entirely at the mercy of their drives, desires, and passions—who has not yet managed to refine and purify their emotions and passions and to gain mastery over them from within their own “I”—we say that the feeling soul predominates. As the human being then increasingly gains mastery over drives, desires, and passions, a higher level of the soul reveals itself to us: the intellectual or emotional soul. Here, what lives within the human being as a sense of truth, as compassion for others, and the like, comes to the fore. The intellectual soul develops out of the sensory soul. And the highest level of the soul to which a human being can initially ascend—though they will develop even higher levels in the future—we have called the conscious soul. While in the sensory soul a person responds to external impressions with their drives and passions, they ascend into their emotional soul in order to respond to the impressions of the world without merely listening to their drives and passions. When a person purifies their instincts, desires, and passions, the intellectual soul develops. When they then approach the external world again with what they have conquered within themselves—when they have acquired inner concepts to understand the world and say to themselves: “My ideas and concepts are there to make the world understandable to me”—when he, as it were, steps out of himself again to gain an awareness of what exists out there in the world, then he ascends to the soul of consciousness.

[ 14 ] What is it that works its way upward in the human soul through these three soul elements? — It is the human “I,” that point of unity within the human inner being through which everything is held together—everything that plays, as it were, on the three strings of the soul’s life, causing them to resonate together in the most varied ways, whether in harmony or dissonance. We call this inner force—which asserts itself by reconnecting concepts with the things of the world—the human “I,” which is present in all three members of the soul like an inner artist playing upon the human soul as upon three strings. But what we perceive as a kind of inner play of the “I” within our soul members has, after all, developed only gradually. Indeed, the entire nature of our present consciousness has developed only gradually. And we can best understand how this human consciousness and today’s human soul life have evolved from primeval times if we point out a little of what the human being can become in the future, and what he can already become today, when he develops his soul from the consciousness soul into precisely what we might call a higher, clairvoyant consciousness.

[ 15 ] The ordinary conscious soul allows us to comprehend only that external world which lies opposite to sensory life. If a person wishes to penetrate beyond the veil of the sensory world, they must develop their soul life to a higher level; they must continue this development within themselves. Then they have the profound experience that there is such a thing as an awakening of the soul—something that, in the lower life of the soul, can be compared to the experience of a person born blind who previously knew nothing of light and colors and who then suddenly sees the luminous, colorful world burst forth. So it is with the person who, through the appropriate methods, brings his soul to a higher level of development and who then experiences the moment when that which is otherwise not named in our surroundings—but which always hovers around us—enters our soul life as a wealth of beings and realities, because we have acquired a new organ.

[ 16 ] When a person consciously develops such clairvoyance through training, he brings his full “I” along into this clairvoyance; that is to say, he moves among the spiritual beings and realities that underlie our sensory world just as he moves among tables and chairs in the sensory world. Whatever guided them as their former “I” through the soul of feeling, the soul of understanding, and the soul of consciousness, they take with them into a higher region of human soul life.

[ 17 ] Let us now turn our gaze back from the clairvoyant consciousness—which is illuminated and infused by the human ego—to ordinary soul life. In a wide variety of ways, the human ego lives within three members of the soul. If we have a person who lives entirely within the drives, desires, and passions that arise in his sensory soul—without, in essence, doing anything about it—we say: he is surrendered to his sensory soul, and the ego is still very weakly active within him. Here the “I” has no particular power; it follows, so to speak, the drives, desires, and passions of the feeling soul. We can say: Within those forces that surge up from the feeling soul like the waves of the sea, the “I” stands there as a faint light and is still powerless against the surging of the drives and impulses of the will. — The “I” already works more freely and independently in the intellectual soul or the emotional soul. There, the human being comes more fully into their own, because the intellectual soul can develop only by the human being processing, within a calm, inner soul life, what they experience inwardly in their sensory soul. In the intellectual soul, the human being comes to their “I”—that is, to themselves. The “I” becomes ever brighter and brighter and then attains complete clarity, so that a person can say to themselves: I have grasped myself! I have attained true self-consciousness! The “I” can attain this clarity only in the conscious soul. This is where the penetrating power of the “I” reveals itself as we ascend from the feeling soul through the intellectual soul to the conscious soul.

[ 18 ] But if human beings can develop their “I” beyond the conscious soul to clairvoyant consciousness—to, as it were, higher members of the soul—then we will also find it understandable when the seer, looking back on human evolution, tells us: Just as the “I” ascends to higher soul members, so too did it enter the feeling soul from a subordinate member of human nature. — We have already pointed out how the totality of the human inner being—the feeling soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul—develops within the totality of the human sheaths, which we designate as the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body or feeling body. Does it not seem understandable, then, when spiritual science shows us that the “I,” before it had developed upward through the soul of sensation to the soul of consciousness, was actually active in subordinate, still largely non-soul-like aspects of the human being—in the outer human sheaths? Before the “I” was in the sensory soul, it was active in the sensory body; even earlier, in the etheric body and the physical body. At that time, it was still more of an “I” that guided and directed the human being from the outside. If we want to form a conception of this activity, we might say something like this: When we have the human being before us in his three sheaths, we see the “I” at work, guiding and directing the human being. But at that stage, the human being is not yet capable of saying “I” to himself, nor is he yet capable of finding the center of his being within himself. Here we encounter an “I” that still reigns in the darkness of physical life. But let us now ask ourselves: Is this “I,” which reigned within the human being in that distant past and built up the outer physicality, actually more imperfect than the “I” that we ourselves carry in our souls today?

[ 19 ] Today we regard our “I” as the true inner focal point of our being, which gives us, as human beings, our inner life, and which can be perfected in infinite ways in the future through training. We see in it the very essence of our human being and, at the same time, that which guarantees our human dignity. When we were not yet aware of this “I,” when it was still working within us from the dark spiritual forces of the world, was it more imperfect then than it is now within us? — Only someone who wished to think purely abstractly could say that.

[ 20 ] For example, we regard our physical body as something that was formed from the spiritual world in the distant past, but which nevertheless had to exist so that the soul could dwell within it. Only a materialistic mind could believe that this physical body does not originate from the spirit. But at the same time, we are looking at something that, as a spiritual creation, had to precede what we now call our inner life. For our inner life must dwell within a body during our earthly existence, and that body had to be prepared beforehand. Even if we consider the body only from an external perspective, we must say to ourselves: What a marvel of perfection this human body truly is! Anyone—even an anatomist or physiologist—who examines, for example, the human heart in its marvelous structure will say: What is all human intellect, what is all technical skill, compared to what presents itself to us as wisdom in the structure of the human heart! What is all our engineering—which builds bridge frameworks and the like—compared to the framework of the human femur, which appears to us as a marvelous structure of crisscrossing beams when we view it through a microscope! It is sheer, immeasurable arrogance for a human being to believe that they have attained, even in the slightest degree, what is embodied as wisdom in the structure of the outer physical body. And when we consider our inner life—let us look no further than our instincts, desires, and passions—and ask: How do these work? What do we not do to undermine, from within, the wisely organized structure of our body?—then anyone who impartially contemplates the work of wisdom in the construction of the human physical form will have to say: The structure of our body is infinitely wiser than what we carry within us—that which we hope will become ever more perfect, but which today is, in essence, still quite imperfect. — Yet we can never believe otherwise, even if we lack clairvoyant powers, as long as we simply observe impartially what presents itself to the outer eye.

[ 21 ] Must not that wise activity which constructed the physical body of a human being—so that it might be inhabited by a self—possess, in its nature and essence, something of what the self itself is by its nature and essence? Must we not conceive of that which has worked upon our physical forms as possessing a “self”-like character—albeit an infinitely more perfect one? We must say: Something akin to our “self” has, throughout time immemorial, built a physical form capable of being inhabited by a “self.” — Whoever does not wish to believe this may imagine something else; but he may also imagine that a human house, built so that a human being may dwell within it, was not constructed by a human spirit, but came into being through the forces of nature alone. One is just as true as the other, if one considers it impartially. Therefore, we look back to a time long, long ago, when a spiritual force, possessing an infinitely perfect “I”-nature, worked upon our physical forms, and from there the “I” gradually developed into the consciousness we have today. Just as in the subconscious, it was hidden within this vessel in primeval times.

[ 22 ] If we consider this development from that distant past, when the “I” was enclosed within the outer shells as if in a dark womb, we find that, while it knew nothing of itself, it was nevertheless closer to those spiritual beings who fashioned our shells—beings related to the “I,” yet infinitely more perfect than the “I” itself. It will therefore seem understandable that clairvoyant consciousness points back to a time when human beings, while not yet possessing “I-consciousness,” were nonetheless in the very bosom of spiritual life itself, and when the life of the soul as we know it today was quite different—even closer to the soul forces from which the “I” emerged. If we look back into the past of human evolution, we find at the very foundation of all human development a primordial clairvoyant consciousness that was not yet illuminated by an “I,” but rather appeared dim and dreamlike; and it is from this consciousness that the human “I” first springs forth. What humanity will only regain with its “I” in the future, we find in that distant past without the “I.” — Clairvoyant consciousness, however, is connected to the fact that human beings perceive spiritual realities and spiritual beings in their surroundings. This is what spiritual science reveals to us: that before human beings reached their present state of consciousness, they existed in a dreamlike state of clairvoyance, in which they were closer to the spiritual world and perceived it—albeit only in a manner similar to that of a dream. This is the primordial state of humanity. At that time, because human beings were not yet permeated by an “I,” they were not yet compelled to remain within themselves if they wished to perceive something spiritual; rather, they perceived the spiritual all around them and saw themselves as part of the spiritual world; and whatever they did still had a spiritual character in their perception. When he thought something, it was not like today, when a person says, “Now I am thinking!”—but rather, he had the thought before him through clairvoyance. When he had to develop a feeling, he did not have to look only within himself; rather, the feeling was something that radiated from him, through which he integrated himself into his entire spiritual environment.

[ 23 ] This is how the people of ancient times lived in relation to their souls. And from this dreamlike, clairvoyant consciousness, human beings had to evolve in order to find themselves, to discover that center which is still imperfect today but which will become ever more perfect in the future, when human beings will ascend into the spiritual world with their “I.”

[ 24 ] If we now look back to those primeval times of humanity using the methods we have described here—and which are available to clairvoyant consciousness—what does the seer tell us about original human consciousness, for example, when a person had committed a terrible deed? In such cases, the evil deed did not present itself as something the person could assess from within, but rather the person saw it standing before their soul like a specter, in all its harmfulness and shamefulness. And when the feeling for the evil deed arose in the soul, the result was that the deed in question approached the person as a spiritual reality in all its shamefulness. The person was, as it were, surrounded by the vision of the evil of his or her deed.

[ 25 ] Then humanity entered more and more into an era in which the old, dreamlike clairvoyance faded and the “I” asserted itself more and more. As human beings found their center within themselves, the old clairvoyant consciousness faded away, but self-consciousness emerged ever more clearly in its place. What he had previously perceived as a vision of his evil deeds—and also of his good deeds—was now transferred to his inner being. What he had once seen clairvoyantly was, as it were, reflected within him.

[ 26 ] What, then, were these figures that the person beheld in dreamlike clairvoyance as spiritual counterimages of his evil deed? They were what the spiritual powers surrounding him showed him as the very thing through which he had disturbed and disrupted the world order. This was, in essence, not a harmful effect in the true sense of the word; it was a healing effect. It was, as it were, the counteraction of the gods, who sought to lift the human being up by showing him the effect of his deed, so as to enable him to eliminate the harmful consequence of his deed. Thus, although it was indeed a terrible thing when the effect of the evil deed stood before the human being, it was, in essence, a healing effect of the foundation of the world from which the human being himself had emerged. When the time came for human beings to find their “I” as their center within themselves, this perception was transferred inward and appeared as the reflection of their actions within. When our “I” first emerges, it is initially present only weakly within the feeling soul, and human beings must first work their way up slowly to gradually bring the “I” to perfection. Let us ask ourselves: What would have happened at that moment in human development when the clairvoyant perception of human actions from the outside disappeared, if something had not arisen inwardly within the still-weak “I”—something that appeared at the same time as a counter-image to that beneficial effect which had previously been visible to the human being when he clairvoyantly beheld the effect of his actions?

[ 27 ] Human beings would have had their weak ego; but they would have been tossed back and forth in their sensory soul by their own passions, as if in a boundless, churning sea. What entered the human being from the outside into the inner self at this great moment in world history? If it was the great World Spirit that, as a salutary counteraction, presented the harmful effect of an act before the clairvoyant consciousness—showing human beings what they had to rectify—then it was also this World Spirit that subsequently manifested itself as a powerful force within human beings, even while the “I” itself was still weak. Thus the World Spirit, who had previously spoken through clairvoyant vision, withdrew into the human inner being with regard to what it had to say for the correction of the disrupted world order. The “I” is still weak. But the World Spirit watches over this “I”; and it makes itself heard as something that stands watch over the “I” at all times and judges matters that the “I” is not yet capable of judging. Behind this weak “I” stands something like a reflection of the mighty World Spirit, which had previously shown human beings the effects of their actions through clairvoyant consciousness.

[ 28 ] Thus, as the ancient clairvoyance faded away, human beings perceived within themselves only a reflection of what the World Spirit itself was bringing about. This reflection of the corrective World Spirit, which stands watch beside the “I,” appeared to human beings as the conscience that oversees them! Thus we see that it is true when a naive consciousness speaks of conscience as the voice of God within the human being. But we also see that spiritual science, in tracing human evolution, shows us the moment when the external entered the internal, and when conscience arose.

[ 29 ] What I have just said can be derived entirely from insights into the spiritual world. No external historical account is needed for this; it must be perceived entirely from within. Those who can perceive it experience it as a truth of irrefutable certainty. But let us now ask, out of a practical need: Could an external historical account perhaps also show us something that serves as a confirmation of what has now been drawn from the facts of inner perception?

[ 30 ] What stems from clairvoyant awareness can always be verified against external facts. Anyone who makes such a claim need not worry that it contradicts external facts. Only an imprecise examination might lead to such a conclusion. But one point should be emphasized, which can demonstrate how external facts indeed confirm what has now been derived as a fact from clairvoyant consciousness.

[ 31 ] It was not so long ago that we can perceive the moment when conscience first emerged. If we go back to the 5th and 6th centuries B.C., we encounter in Greece a towering figure of Greek drama: Aeschylus. He presents us with something very peculiar—peculiar because the same event was later portrayed differently by another Greek poet. Aeschylus depicts Agamemnon returning home from Troy, only to be murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, upon his arrival. Agamemnon is avenged by his son Orestes, who, after receiving counsel from the gods, kills the mother who murdered his father. What, then, is the consequence of this act for Orestes? Through the impact of matricide, something is forced forth from within him—as Aeschylus depicts—that enables him to perceive what, over the course of these centuries, could normally no longer be perceived; abnormally, the violence of such an act, like an ancient heirloom, allows the old clairvoyance to arise once more. Orestes could say: It is Apollo, the god himself, who vindicates me for avenging my father on my mother. Everything I have done speaks in my favor. But my mother’s blood continues to have an effect! And in the second part of the *Oresteia*, we are powerfully shown how the legacy of ancient clairvoyance awakens, how they approach—the goddesses of vengeance, the Erinyes, later known to the Romans as the Furies. Orestes sees the outward manifestation of the consequences of his mother’s murder before him in a dreamlike vision. Apollo himself agrees with him; but there is something even higher. That is to say: Aeschylus wanted to point out that there is an even higher world order, and he could only show this by making Orestes clairvoyant at that very moment. Aeschylus has not yet reached the point of depicting what we today call an inner voice. But, especially when studying *Agamemnon*, one might say: Aeschylus has reached the point where something like a conscience ought to well up from the entire life of the human soul; he has simply not quite reached that far yet. He places before Orestes what has not yet become conscience: the images of dreamlike clairvoyance. But we can already sense how close he is to penetrating to the realm of conscience. From every word he puts into Clytemnestra’s mouth, for example, one can literally sense: Now the concept we call conscience should be brought to light! But it does not come to that. In this century, the great poet can only show how, in the past, evil deeds have stood before the human soul.

[ 32 ] And now let us move forward a generation; we proceed from Aeschylus through Sophocles to Euripides, who addresses the same set of events only a short time later. Scholars have rightly pointed out—though only the humanities can shed the proper light on this—that he presents the situation in such a way that, from Orestes’s perspective, when dream images are mentioned, they are—much like in Shakespeare—merely something like shadows of the inner conscience.

[ 33 ] Here we can, as it were, see with our own eyes how conscience is brought into the realm of poetry. We see how Aeschylus, the great poet, does not yet speak of conscience, whereas Euripides, his successor, already does. With this in mind, we can understand why human thought and human earthly knowledge could only very slowly work their way up to a concept of conscience. The force at work in conscience was also at work in ancient times, when the images depicting the effects of human actions revealed themselves to clairvoyant vision. The force has merely been drawn from the outside to the inside. But what was required to perceive it? One could also have conceived of morality, as it were, as a reflection of what human consciousness had already possessed earlier. But in order to perceive this force as an inner one, one had to go through the entire course of human development, which only gradually came to grasp the concept of conscience. In this era, for example, we see the great and noble thinker Socrates standing before us. Why should Socrates not have been able, above all, to speak about how human beings can acquire virtues? Why should his speeches not be able to make the deepest impression with regard to what they can bring to our attention as morality? And why should the concept of conscience not yet have been established in the philosophy of his time, since we see how, during this period, the human soul was just beginning to strive to discover the concept of conscience as the God who speaks within? We will find it quite understandable that Socrates does not yet speak of conscience, because this power of the human soul had only just been drawn from the outside into the inner self at that time.

[ 34 ] In the conscience, we see something that develops alongside the human being, something that the human being attains. But how must this conscience manifest itself? Where must it manifest itself most intensely as what it truly is? Precisely where the human being has only just begun the development of the “I,” and the “I” is still weak! This is something we can demonstrate in human evolution. In Greece itself, people were already somewhat further along, so that the development of the “I” had already reached the level of the intellectual soul. But if we go back from the Greek period—of which external history knows nothing, though Plato and Aristotle knew it through clairvoyant insight—if we go back to Egyptian and Chaldean times, we find that even the highest culture is something that is not attained through an innerly independent “I.” What we see emerging from the sanctuaries of Egypt and Chaldea differs from modern science precisely in that today we grasp science within the conscious soul; in pre-Greek times, however, everything was attributed to the inspirations of the sensory soul. In Greece itself, progress is made—and this is the basis of that progress—as the “I” develops upward from the soul of sensation to the soul of understanding or the soul of feeling. We are living today in the epoch of the development of the soul of consciousness. It is within this development, then, that true “I”-consciousness truly emerges. Anyone who truly observes human development can clearly see, when moving from Eastern to Western culture, that humanity’s progress is such that an ever-greater sense of freedom and an ever-greater independence emerge. Whereas in the past human beings felt entirely dependent on what the gods inspired in them, in the West the first step is the internalization of culture.

[ 35 ] This is evident, for example, in the way Aeschylus strives to bring consciousness of the self into the human soul. We see Aeschylus standing at the boundary between the East and the West, one eye turned toward the East, the other toward the West, drawing out of the human soul what would later be summarized, in particular, in the concept of conscience. We see how Aeschylus strives for this, but is not yet able to embody the new form of conscience dramatically. If one is always intent on comparing, one easily confuses everything. One must not only compare; one must also distinguish. This is the essential point: in the West, everything was geared toward bringing the “I” up from the soul of feeling into the soul of consciousness. In the East, the “I” remains dull and suppressed, as something unfree. In the West, by contrast, people are growing up in whom the “I” is increasingly striving upward into the soul of consciousness. Even if development initially proceeds in such a way that the old, dreamlike clairvoyant consciousness is silenced, everything is nevertheless geared toward awakening the “I” and, as the guardian of the “I”—as the inner voice of God—allowing conscience to emerge. And Aeschylus is the cornerstone between the Eastern and Western worlds; he looks with one eye toward the East and with the other toward the West. Hence, the course of human development unfolded in the manner we have just seen.

[ 36 ] In the Eastern world, people had preserved a living awareness of their origin in the divine world spirit. From this awareness, an understanding could be gained of what happened several centuries later, after humanity—in many cases, as with Aeschylus—had struggled to find something that speaks within as the voice of God. For it was then that the impulse entered humanity which, in any spiritual contemplation of the development of the Earth and humanity, we must regard as the greatest that has ever come, and which we call the Christ impulse.

[ 37 ] It was only through the Christ impulse that humanity was enabled to comprehend that God—who is the Creator of all things, and who is also the Creator of humanity’s outer forms—can be understood and grasped within us. Only by comprehending the divine-human nature of Christ Jesus was humanity able to grasp that God can be something that speaks to us from within ourselves. In order for human beings to be able to find the divine nature within themselves, it was necessary for Christ to enter into the course of human development as an external historical event. Had the God, Christ, had not been present in the human body of Jesus of Nazareth; had he not shown once and for all that God can be grasped within the human being because he was once present in humanity; had he not been regarded as the victor over death in the Mystery of Golgotha—then human beings would never have been able to comprehend the indwelling of the Godhead within themselves. Anyone who would claim that human beings could comprehend the inner deification without an external, historical Christ Jesus might as well claim that we would have eyes if there were no sun in the world. It will remain eternally true that it is one-sided when philosophers say: Without eyes, we could not see light; therefore, we must derive light from the eyes. Such a notion must always be countered with Goethe’s statement: “The eye was formed by the light for the light!” — If no sun illuminated space, eyes would not have developed within the human organism. The eyes are creatures of light, and without the sun, no eye could ever perceive the sun. No eye is capable of perceiving the sun without first having received the power to perceive from the sun itself. Nor is there any inner understanding or recognition of the Christ-nature without an external, historical Christ impulse. What the sun is to sight in the universe, that is what the historical Christ Jesus is to what we call the permeation with the divine nature within ourselves.

[ 38 ] The elements necessary to grasp and understand this were already present in everything that came from the East; they simply had to be raised to a higher level. The elements for comprehending the God who unites with human nature were able to develop gradually out of the Eastern tradition. The souls in the West were ripe to grasp and receive what this impulse brought—in that West where what ascended from the outer world into the inner human world developed most intensely, and where, as conscience, it watches over an ordinary, weak ego. Thus the soul’s power prepared itself in such a way that conscience arose, which now says: Within us lives the God who appeared to those in the East who were able to see through the world clairvoyantly; within us lives the Divine!

[ 39 ] But what was taking shape in this way could not have come into consciousness unless, in this very emergence of conscience itself, the inner God had already made Himself known, as in the dawn. Thus we see how the external understanding of the idea of God in Christ Jesus was born in the East, but how it was met in the West by what human consciousness had developed as the conscience. We see, for example, how in Roman culture—precisely at the time when the Christian era began—there was increasing talk of conscience, and the further west we go, the more clearly it is present in its embryonic form within consciousness.

[ 40 ] Thus, the East and the West work in harmony with one another. We see the sun of the Christ-nature rising in the East; and we see how the Christ-Eye is preparing itself in the human conscience in the West to understand the Christ. Therefore, we see the triumphal advance of Christianity unfolding not toward the East, but toward the West. In the East, on the other hand, a religious creed is spreading that represents the ultimate consequence—albeit a supreme one—of the East: Buddhism is taking hold of the Eastern world. Christianity is taking hold of the Western world because Christianity first established its institution in the West. There we see Christianity linked to what has become the West’s most profound cultural factor: the concept of conscience structured within Christianity.

[ 41 ] It is not through an external view of history, but by contemplating the facts from within, that we alone can come to an understanding of development. What is stated here today will still encounter many skeptical minds. But the times are urging us to recognize the Spirit in outward appearances. Yet this is possible only for those who are first able to perceive this Spirit at least where it announces itself through a messenger who speaks clearly. Popular consciousness says: When conscience speaks, God speaks within the soul. The highest spiritual consciousness shows us: When conscience speaks, it is truly the World Spirit that speaks. And spiritual science reveals the connection between conscience and the greatest event in human development—the Christ event. It is therefore no wonder that, for modern consciousness, that which is designated by the name “conscience” is thereby ennobled and elevated to a higher sphere. When it is said that something is done out of “conscience,” one senses that this is regarded as belonging to the very essence of humanity.

[ 42 ] Thus it becomes clear to us in a natural way that the human mind is correct when it speaks of conscience as the “God within man.” And when Goethe says that the highest good for human beings is for “God-Nature to reveal itself to them,” we must be clear that God can reveal himself to human beings only in the spirit when nature appears to us on its spiritual foundation. That it can appear to us in this way is ensured in the course of human development, on the one hand, by the light of Christ—the light from without—and, on the other hand, by the divine light within ourselves—through conscience. Therefore, a philosopher of character such as Fichte may truly say of conscience that it is the highest voice within us. This is also why we are aware that our individual dignity depends on this conscience. We are human beings because we possess a sense of self; and whatever stands by our side in our conscience stands by the side of our self. Conscience is therefore also something we regard as a most sacred, individual asset, into which no external world has a right to interfere, and through which we can set our own direction and goals. Consequently, for human beings, conscience is something they must regard as the most sacred of all—something they know points not only to the Supreme but also to something inviolable within the human soul. No one should intrude upon them where their conscience speaks to them!

[ 43 ] Thus, on the one hand, conscience is a guarantee of our connection to the divine primal forces of the world, and on the other hand, it is a guarantee that we possess within our very most individual selves something that flows forth like a drop from the Divine. And man can know this: When conscience speaks within him, a god speaks!