The Rudolf Steiner Archive

7. Evil in the Light of Knowledge of the Spirit

[ 1 ] What we are to consider here today is, in essence, an age-old question of humanity: the question of the origin of evil and wickedness in the world. And although many people today may believe that this question can no longer be considered such a question at all, the human soul will nevertheless feel compelled to raise it again and again. For this question is not one that approaches our soul solely from theoretical or scientific perspectives; rather, it is a question that the human soul encounters at every turn in life, because life is immersed not only in the good and the benevolent, but also in evil and wickedness. On the one hand, one might say, trace the entire history of human thought and reflection to become fully convinced that our question has always been a question of the deeper spirits of human development; and on the other hand, one can study even the most significant, outstanding thinkers of the nineteenth century and our own time, and one will find that even with these most outstanding thinkers, all philosophy and all striving for knowledge come to a halt precisely before this question. So let us try today to regard what has emerged from spiritual science in this winter’s lecture series as a foundation from which we might perhaps approach an answer to the mystery of evil and wickedness. I say expressly “may come closer to”; for what I have often emphasized—and this applies all the more to this momentous question—is that spiritual science not only opens our eyes to realms of existence that are inaccessible to external science, but it also, in a certain sense, makes us humble. And it is precisely with such a question that we may be able to sense that it is easy to raise the highest questions—as they are usually raised when one is, so to speak, at the beginning of the quest for knowledge—but that a genuine quest for knowledge often leads only to pointing out the first steps along the paths by which one can gradually approach the solution to life’s great mysteries.

[ 2 ] First, allow me to make a few preliminary remarks intended to clarify just how profoundly this question has preoccupied the hearts and minds of significant thinkers throughout the ages. We could go back a long way in human development; but for now, let us focus only on thinkers from the centuries leading up to the founding of Christianity in Greece: the Stoics, that remarkable group of thinkers who, building on the ideas of Socrates and Plato, sought to answer the question: How should a person conduct themselves if they wish to position themselves in life in a way that corresponds to the innermost essence of their being—in a sense, to the destiny that has been mapped out for them and is recognizable to them? We can describe this as the fundamental question of the Stoics. And as an ideal for the person who strove to position himself within the universe in accordance with his destiny, the ideal of the sage emerged before the inner eyes of the Stoics. — It would take us too far afield to describe in detail the ideal of the Stoic sage and how it relates to the entire Stoic worldview. But let us at least emphasize this one point: Stoicism presents us with an awareness that human development is directed toward bringing out, ever more clearly, the self-aware nature of the human being—the human sense of self. The Stoic sage said to himself: This “I,” through which a person is able to place themselves in the world with complete clarity, can be clouded; it can, as it were, numb itself; and it does so when a person allows their emotional life to intrude too strongly into the ebb and flow of their imagination and feelings. To the Stoic, it appeared as a kind of spiritual impotence when a person allows the clarity of their “I” to be overwhelmed and clouded by their passions and emotions. Therefore: suppressing passions and emotions in the human soul and striving for calm and equanimity—this, in the Stoics’ view, leads to liberation from the spiritual impotence of the soul.

[ 3 ] It is clear that what has had to be emphasized here more often than the first steps on the path to an understanding of the spiritual world—steps that consist, after all, in subduing the wild turmoil of the emotional and passionate nature, which, as it were, creates a spiritual powerlessness, is held in check, and the clarity of spiritual vision is drawn out of the entire experience of the soul—what was presented in this way as the first steps on the path that then leads into spiritual vision—this was what the Stoics had in mind. It is precisely this aspect of the Stoic nature—which has as yet been little explored in the history of philosophy—that I sought to elucidate in the new edition of my Worldviews and Lifestyles in the Nineteenth Century with reference to Stoicism. Thus, the characterization of the conqueror of passion, the conqueror of emotion, as the sage, stands before Stoicism as an ideal. And the one who, as a sage, places himself within the course of world development recognizes, in the spirit of Stoicism, that this course of world development is capable of embracing him, that this course of world development is truly imbued with wisdom as well, so that he must, as it were, immerse his wisdom in the currents of worldly wisdom.

[ 4 ] Whenever, then, the question arises: How does the human self fit into the overall structure of the world order? — another question arises: How can one reconcile, with the wisdom of the world order—which humans must presuppose if they wish to place themselves within it—that which prevails as evil in the vastness of worldly experience, and that which, as evil, can stand in opposition to humanity’s quest for wisdom?

[ 5 ] Now, before the Stoic’s inner eye stood what would later be called divine providence. How, then, does the Stoic come to terms with evil and wickedness in light of these premises?

[ 6 ] Here, already in the Stoic, something emerges that even today—if one does not wish to delve into the humanities themselves but, as it were, only approaches their threshold—can be presented as a kind of justification for evil and wickedness; it was the necessity of human freedom that emerged before the Stoic. And so he reasoned: If a person is to strive for the ideal of the wise out of his own freedom, he must be given the option not to strive for it. Freedom must lie in his striving for the ideal of the wise. But for this to be the case, it must be possible for him to remain within that from which he is to strive; it must be possible for him, as it were, to immerse himself in the realm of emotions and passions. Then he simply submerges, the Stoic reasoned, into a realm that is not initially his own, that is actually a realm beneath his nature. And to reproach the wise order of the universe for allowing man to submerge in this way into a realm that is beneath him would be just as sensible as reproaching the wise order of the universe for the existence of a realm of animals, plants, and minerals beneath man. The Stoics knew that there is a realm into which man can submerge himself, a realm beyond his wisdom; but that he himself can emerge from it must be his own free choice, his own wisdom.

[ 7 ] It is clear that the basis for many of the answers to the question of the meaning of evil—answers that lie at the threshold of spiritual science—is already found in ancient Stoic wisdom; and one cannot say that, with regard to the understanding of evil as such, later centuries showed any real progress. This becomes immediately apparent when we turn to a thinker—who is otherwise an extraordinarily significant figure—who lived in the period following the founding of Christianity and exerted a major influence on the shaping of Western Christianity: Augustine. Augustine, too, had to reflect on and investigate the meaning of evil in the world; and he arrived at a peculiar formulation: that evil, just like “evil” proper, does not actually exist at all, but that it is merely something negative—that it is the negation of the good. Augustine thus reasoned: Good is something positive; but since a finite being, in its weakness, cannot always bring about the good, the good is limited; and this limited good need not be explained as something positive any more than one would explain the shadow cast by light as something positive. So when one hears the Church Father Augustine speak about evil, one might find such an answer naive compared to what one might imagine today, given the progress of thought over the past few centuries. But the true nature of the question regarding the meaning of evil can be seen from the fact that even in our own day a scholar has given exactly the same answer: Campbell, who wrote the so-called “New Theology,” and whose works have caused quite a stir in certain circles. He, too, believes that one cannot ask about evil and wickedness because they represent nothing positive, but are merely negative. We do not wish to engage in hair-splitting, philosophical deductions to refute the Augustinian-Campbellian view. For anyone capable of thinking impartially and without prejudice, this answer—that evil is merely negative—stands on the same ground as the answer someone might give who were to say: “What, then, is cold? Cold is only something negative, namely the absence of warmth. Therefore, one cannot speak of it as something positive.” But if, when it is cold, one does not put on a fur coat or a winter coat, then one will already perceive this negative as something very positive! This image may make it perfectly clear how little one can make do with the truly superficial answer—one that even great philosophers of the nineteenth century gave—namely, that when it comes to evil and wickedness, one has nothing positive to do with them. It may be that one has nothing positive to do with it; but this “non-positive” is just as negative as, say, cold is in relation to warmth.

[ 8 ] One could also cite a whole group of other thinkers who, through the development of their inner lives, have—one might say—already come close to what spiritual science now has to say. Among these one could cite, for example, Plotinus, the Neoplatonist who lived in the post-Christian era and was still grounded in the principles of Plato; and along with him, one might also cite a large number of other thinkers who reflected on evil and suffering in the world. They sought to clarify that human beings are composed of a spiritual aspect and a material-physical aspect. By immersing themselves in the physical, human beings partake in the properties of matter, which from the outset presents obstacles and hindrances to the activity of the spirit. It is precisely in this immersion of the spirit in matter that the origin of evil in human life lies; but it is also the origin of evil in the external world.

[ 9 ] The fact that such a view was not merely felt by individual thinkers as something satisfying in response to the great question of the meaning of evil and wickedness in the world, but is in fact widespread, may be illustrated by a remark that I do not wish to suppress, because it may precisely clarify our situation. I would like to refer to a thinker from a completely different region: the eminent Japanese thinker Nakae Toju, a disciple of the Chinese thinker Wang Yangming. For him, everything that presents itself to us as worldly experience consists of two things—two, one might say, entities. One of these essences is such that he looks up to it as to the spiritual, and he allows the human soul to participate in the spiritual; he calls this essence Ri. Then he turns his gaze to what manifests itself physically in human beings, and allows physicality to participate in everything of which it is composed, emerging from matter; he calls this essence Ki. And from the particular combination of Ri and Ki, all beings arise for him. For this Eastern thinker, who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century, humanity participates in both Ri and Ki. But because the human soul, in its experience, must immerse itself with its Ri into the Ki, the will flows toward it from the Ki—and with the will, desire. Thus, the human soul is entangled in will and desire throughout its life, and thus it faces the possibility of evil. — This Eastern thinker, who lived relatively recently—as mentioned, in the first half of the seventeenth century—is not far removed from what the West, in the era of Neoplatonism—Plotinus, for example—attempted to portray as the origin of evil: humanity’s entanglement in matter. We shall see later that it is important to point out this approach—to answer the question of the origin of evil by referring to humanity’s entanglement with matter. It is precisely this that confronts us in the broadest circles of human thought.

[ 10 ] A nineteenth-century thinker, who truly ranks among the most significant, attempted to grapple with evil and wickedness, and I would like to briefly outline the main ideas of his thought. He saw elements of evil and human wickedness in the world around him, and as a philosopher whose emotional qualities were particularly well-developed, he confronted evil and wickedness: Hermann Lotze, one of the most significant thinkers of the nineteenth century, who wrote, for example, the highly influential Mikrokosmos and other philosophical works of great importance for the nineteenth century. Let us try to bring to mind how Hermann Lotze—one of our most significant contemporaries—confronts the problem of evil.

[ 11 ] He tells himself: Evil cannot be denied. How have people tried to answer the question of evil? It has been said, for example, that evil and misfortune must exist in life; for it is only by the human soul working its way out of evil that it can be educated. Since Lotze does not belong to the atheists but rather posits a God who lives through and permeates the world, he says: How, then, must one approach evil and misfortune in the spirit of the idea of education? One must assume that God needed evil and misfortune in order to refine human beings and elevate them to the free use of their souls. This could only happen by their performing this inner work themselves, by their experiencing for themselves this inner state—which consists in working their way out of evil—and only through this did they learn to recognize their true nature and their true value with self-awareness. — At the same time, Lotze objects: Anyone who gives such an answer fails, above all, to take into account the animal world, in which we truly encounter not only evil but also wickedness in the broadest sense. How often do we encounter cruelty in the animal world, and how often do we encounter everything that, if introduced into human life, could become the most terrible vices—all of it is present everywhere in the animal world! But who could possibly invoke education in the face of the animal world, when education cannot be applied to the animal world at all? Thus, Lotze rejects the idea of education. In particular, he points out that this idea of education would contradict the omnipotence of his God; for, according to Lotze, one would only need to cultivate the good in a being out of the bad if one had first bestowed the bad. But that would contradict the omnipotence of God: first having to bring out the bad, as it were, by way of preparation, in order to then be able to build the good upon it.

[ 12 ] Lotze then goes on to say: Perhaps one should give greater consideration to those who say: That which is evil, that which is bad, that which is a misfortune—this is not due to the omnipotence of God, nor to the will of any conscious being; rather, evil is so intrinsically linked to what exists in the world as, for example, the fact that the three angles of a triangle add up to 180° is intrinsically linked to a triangle. So if God wanted to create a world at all, he had to conform to what is true independent of him—namely, that evil and misfortune are inherent in any world he might create. Therefore, if he wanted to create a world at all, he had to create evil and misfortune along with it. — Lotze objects to this: But then we would be limiting even further what one could assume to be the workings and weaving of a divine being through the world. For when one considers the world, one must say: According to the most general laws, according to how one can think through the phenomena of the world, a world without evil and wickedness would very well be conceivable. When one considers the world, one must say precisely that evil violates true freedom; it must therefore be brought about precisely by the arbitrariness, by the freedom, of the divine being.

[ 13 ] We could cite other things that Lotze and other thinkers—Lotze is mentioned here merely as a representative example—have said regarding the problem and the mystery of evil. I simply want to draw attention to the conclusion Lotze ultimately reaches, because that will be important for us later on. Thus, Lotze turns against the German philosopher Leibniz, who, after all, wrote a “theodicy”—that is, a justification of God in the face of evil—and held the view that this world, even though it contains much evil, is nevertheless the best of all possible worlds. For if it were not the best of all possible worlds, Leibniz argues, then either God must not have known the best of all possible worlds—which contradicts his omniscience; or he must not have wanted to create it, which contradicts his omnibenevolence; or he must not have been able to create it—which contradicts his omnipotence. Now Leibniz says that since one cannot, in thought, violate these three principles of God, one must assume that the world is the best of all possible worlds. — Lotze, however, objects: in any case, one cannot speak of God’s omnipotence if, in a world where evil exists and reigns, one regards it as an emanation of God. Therefore, Lotze argues, one must say that Leibniz limited God’s omnipotence and thereby secured the doctrine of the best of all possible worlds.

[ 14 ] Now Lotze believes there is still a way out. One must say: On the whole, when one considers the cosmos, order and harmony are evident everywhere; it is only in the particular that one sees evil and wickedness. To this, Lotze asks: But what value can be placed on a perception that actually depends solely on human perception? For in a world where, on the whole, order and harmony prevail—which one can admire—and where, in the particular, evil and wickedness appear like black spots, one could use the expression: What does it mean if, on the whole, order and harmony prevail in a world, and in the particular, evil and wickedness are found everywhere? Here, Lotze argues—and this is the crux of his argument, to which we wish to return—that one should rather say this: Evil and wickedness do indeed exist in the world; it must be wise that evil, like excellence, and wickedness, like goodness, should be present; we simply cannot comprehend this wisdom. Thus, we are compelled to acknowledge a limit to our understanding when it comes to evil and wickedness. There must be a wisdom that is not human wisdom, Lotze argues—a wisdom we simply cannot attain, and which justifies these evils. Thus, Lotze places the wise understanding of evil and wickedness within an unknown world of wisdom.

[ 15 ] I have specifically addressed at least these debates—which many might consider more or less pedantic—because they show us the tools that have been used to attempt to understand evil and wickedness in the philosophical thought of humanity, and how, time and again, this has led to the admission that: these tools prove to be quite blunt—indeed, as Lotze says, completely unsuitable—when faced with a mystery that confronts us at every turn in life.

[ 16 ] There are, of course, other thinkers who sought to delve even deeper than Plotinus, for example, into what lies at the very foundations of existence—foundations that can only be reached through a certain development of the soul toward a higher capacity for knowledge. One such thinker is Jakob Böhme. And when one approaches Jakob Böhme, one is indeed approaching a spirit of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—a world into which few in our time are willing to venture, even though he is regarded today as a sort of curiosity. Jakob Böhme sought to penetrate the depths of the world and its phenomena to the point where he felt something welling up within himself—a kind of theosophy, a vision of God within his own inner being; and now he sought to clarify for himself how evil and wickedness must be traced back to the deepest foundations of the world, how evil and wickedness are not merely something negative, but are, in a sense, rooted in the foundations of the existence of the world and of humanity. Jakob Böhme views the divine being in such a way that, as he says—one must first get used to his way of expressing himself—a “balance” must arise within it. A being that, as it were, merely allows its activity to flow out into the world could never come to grasp itself. This activity would have to “bump up against” something, so to speak. On a small scale, we essentially perceive every morning upon waking what Jakob Böhme includes in this conception of his. When we wake up, we are, so to speak, in a position to unfold our spiritual-soul activity from within our spiritual-soul being out into boundless expanses. There, our spiritual-psychic activity comes into contact with our surroundings. It is through this contact with our surroundings that we become aware of ourselves. Human beings, in fact, become aware of themselves in the physical world only by coming into contact with things, so to speak. A divine being cannot be one that comes into contact with others. It must set its opposite—or, as Jakob Böhme expresses it in many ways, its “No” in opposition to its “Yes”—against itself. It must limit within itself the activity that flows out into infinity. It must be “separated” within itself—that is, distinguished—and must, as it were, create its own opposite at a specific point within the circumference of its activity; so that, for Jakob Böhme, the divine being necessarily creates its own opposite in order to become aware of itself. Through the participation of a created being, Jakob Böhme maintains, not only in what flows forth from the divine being but also in what the divine being must necessarily create as its opposite, evil arises—indeed, all evils in the world arise. The divine being posits its own opposite in order to “become aware” of itself. At this stage, one cannot yet speak of evil or wickedness, but only of the necessary conditions for the divine to become aware of itself. But as the created comes into being, and as this created realm not only immerses itself in the outflowing life but also participates in the opposite, evil and wickedness arise.

[ 17 ] Such an answer will certainly not be satisfactory to anyone who seeks to penetrate the mysteries of existence through the humanities. It is cited here only to show the depths to which a thoughtful thinker will go when investigating the origin of evil in the world. And so I could cite many examples that would better illustrate how one might attempt to approach the mysteries inherent in evil and wickedness, rather than assuming that one has found an answer shining forth from the world itself.

[ 18 ] If we now take up what has come before us, as it were, as a confession by an outstanding thinker of the nineteenth century—Lotze’s confession—we might say something like the following: Lotze is of the opinion that there must be some wisdom somewhere that justifies evil and wickedness. But human beings are limited in their cognitive capacity; they cannot penetrate this wisdom. — Are we not faced here with what we have often had to mention: that it is, so to speak, a common prejudice in our time to accept human cognitive capacity as it is, and not to reflect at all on the fact that it might, as it were, emerge from the state in which it finds itself in everyday life, that it might rise above itself, that it might develop in order to look into worlds other than the world of the merely sensory and of the intellect bound to the senses? Perhaps it is precisely becoming clear to us that such significant questions as those concerning the origin of evil have been unable to find their answers because people have resisted, in the face of the knowledge that turns to the senses and to the intellect bound to the sensory world, the idea of going beyond this knowledge to another kind of knowledge—one that must be found along the paths that have been spoken of here more often, the paths through which the human soul transcends what is, so to speak, its everyday and ordinary scientific outlook. We have often spoken of the possibility that the human soul might free itself from its physicality, that it might truly carry out that spiritual alchemy which detaches the spiritual-soul aspect in the human being from the physical, just as external alchemy extracts hydrogen from water. We have spoken of this: When a human being detaches his spiritual-soul aspect from the physical-bodily, so that he rises into the spiritual and stands opposite his physicality with his spiritual-soul aspect—that is, when he is outside the body with his spiritual-soul aspect and is able to perceive within a spiritual world—then indeed he can, through direct experience, not from within— but outside of their body—into the depths of the world, to the extent that they are accessible to them in light of this insight. We might perhaps ask ourselves: What do we encounter when we truly attempt to walk this path of spiritual research—the path that has often been described here, and which you will find described in detail in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?? What experiences does one arrive at when one truly walks this path in order to become a participant in the supersensible worlds?

[ 19 ] Now we will be particularly interested in how what is commonly called “evil” in everyday life relates to this path. We need only take a closer look at ordinary evil—what is commonly referred to as “evil” in everyday life. It turns out that when the spiritual researcher sets out on his path to ascend into higher worlds—to truly emerge from the physical realm with his spiritual and soul aspects and perceive without the body—then everything he must look back upon as evil, or rather, merely as imperfect in life, presents him with the most serious obstacles on his path. The greatest obstacles come from what one must look back upon as something imperfect. By this I do not mean to say that the arrogant conclusion follows that anyone who succeeds in looking into the spiritual world as a spiritual researcher may call himself a perfect human being. That is not what is meant. But it should be reiterated what has already been emphasized very strongly: that the path to spiritual research is, in a certain sense, a martyrdom—and this precisely because, at the very moment one emerges from the physical body with one’s spiritual-soul aspect and becomes a participant in the spiritual world, one looks back on one’s life with its imperfections and now knows: You carry these imperfections with you just as a comet carries its tail; you carry them within you into other lives and must seek to compensate for them in later lives. What you have walked through until now without being aware of it, you now see. You know what lies ahead. — This tragic examination of what one is in ordinary life weighs heavily on one when seeking the path upward into the spiritual world. If it does not weigh heavily on one, then it is not the true path into the spiritual world. Indeed, one must say: a certain seriousness of life begins when one enters the spiritual world. And even if one gains nothing else, one gains this: that one beholds one’s own evil and one’s own imperfections with infinite clarity. One might say, then, that one gains an experiential understanding of imperfection and evil already with the very first steps one takes upward into the spiritual world.

[ 20 ] Where does this come from? If one looks more closely at its origin, one finds there, so to speak, the fundamental trait of all human evil. In my latest book, The Threshold of the Spiritual World, I attempted to point precisely to this fundamental trait of evil, insofar as it arises from within human beings. The common root of all evil is, after all, nothing other than selfishness. — If I were to demonstrate this in detail—which is what I intend to do now—I would certainly have to speak for many hours; but I will merely present it here, and everyone may follow the lines of thought I have outlined on their own. They will, in fact, be explored further in the next lecture, which will address “The Moral Foundation of Human Life.” Fundamentally, all human evil stems from what we call selfishness. Whether we examine the slightest trifles—which we regard as human lapses—or the most heinous crimes, and trace everything that constitutes human imperfection and human evil—whether it appears to stem more from the soul or more from the physical nature—the common underlying trait, stemming from egoism, is present everywhere. We find the true meaning of evil when we consider it in connection with human selfishness; and we find every striving to transcend imperfections and evil when we see this striving in the struggle against what we call selfishness. Much has been reflected upon regarding this or that ethical principle, regarding this or that moral foundation; yet the deeper one delves into ethical principles and moral foundations, the more evident it becomes that egoism is the common foundation of all human evil. And so one may say: the more a person overcomes egoism, the more they free themselves from evil here in the physical world.

[ 21 ] This result now stands alongside another; and it appears, one might say, in spiritual research as truly oppressive—truly oppressive. What, then, must one cultivate if one wishes to find the path upward into the spiritual worlds—those worlds that one must behold with the spiritual-soul aspect outside the body?

[ 22 ] If you take everything I have mentioned in the course of these lectures as spiritual exercises that must be practiced in order to enter the spiritual world, you will find that they boil down to strengthening certain qualities of the soul that it possesses in the sensory world—to making the soul stronger and more vigorous, and to enabling it to rely more and more on itself. What manifests as selfishness in the physical-sensory world must be strengthened and intensified as a person ascends into the spiritual world. For only the soul that has strengthened itself from within—that has strengthened the powers that are its own, which are rooted in its ego, in its “I”—only such a soul ascends into the spiritual worlds. Precisely what must be strengthened on the path to the spiritual worlds is that which a person must cast off in order to adopt moral principles for the physical world. A prominent mystic once said:

When the rose adorns itself,
it also adorns the garden.

[ 23 ] This is certainly true within certain limits. But in human life, selfishness would still come to the fore if the human soul regarded itself merely as a “rose” that adorns itself. In the spiritual world, however, this applies perfectly. In the spiritual world, what is expressed in the saying, “When the rose adorns itself, it also adorns the garden,” is present to a greater degree. When the soul ascends into the spiritual world, it becomes a serving member there all the more so the more it has strengthened itself and brought forth what lies in its inner abundance. Just as one cannot use an instrument that is not perfect, so too the soul cannot make use of itself unless it has driven out of its “I,” out of its ego, everything that lies within it.

[ 24 ] From this comparison, which leads us away from all rhetoric and into the facts that must not be concealed, we see first of all that the spiritual world stands in such a relationship to the physical-sensory world that the latter must fulfill its full role in relation to the former. If human beings could live only in the spiritual world, they would—because the law “When the rose adorns itself, it also adorns the garden” must apply—be able to develop only their inner capacities; they could not develop those capacities that bring them together with other people and with the wider world as altruists. It is precisely in the physical world that we must find the place that enables us to overcome egoism. We are not obligated to altruism in this world for no reason, but rather so that we may thoroughly wean ourselves from selfishness, if I may use this trivial word.

[ 25 ] The very thing that the spiritual researcher finds to be decisive—namely, the strengthening of his soul to ascend into the spiritual world—is also what is decisive when a person enters, in a natural way through the gate of death, into the world that lies between death and a new birth. There we enter that world which the spiritual researcher has just attained through the development of his soul. We must therefore bring into that world those qualities that make the soul appear inwardly strong, qualities that embody within the soul the truth of the saying: “When the rose adorns itself, it also adorns the garden.” At the moment we pass through the gate of death, we enter a world in which the highest elevation and strengthening of our “I” is of the utmost importance. We will hear what we have to do in this world in the lecture “Between Death and Rebirth of the Human Being.” For now, let us merely point out that in this spiritual world, what essentially matters is that the soul prepares itself to shape its future lives in accordance with what it has experienced in previous earthly lives. In accordance with its destiny, it must, above all, be engaged with itself in the spiritual world between death and the new birth. When we view the human soul in this way, it appears to us as follows from these two perspectives. In terms of its significance for the physical-sensory world, it appears to us as the great school where the soul must step outside of itself, where selfishness can be transformed into selflessness, so that it becomes something for the wider sphere of existence. And the world between death and the next birth appears to us as the one in which the soul must live, drawing strength from within itself, and for which the soul would be utterly worthless if it were to enter this world weak and without having drawn strength.

[ 26 ] What follows from the fact that the soul has these two characteristics?

[ 27 ] It follows from this that human beings must indeed be careful not to apply that which is excellent in one realm, in one world—namely, the elevation of the inner soul—in the other world to anything other than, at most, the attainment of the spiritual world; but that it must be evil and turn into something worse if a person allows what must be lived out here in the physical-sensory world as their very being to be permeated by that which serves as a worthy preparation for them precisely in the realm of the spirit. Precisely for this reason, we must be strong in the spiritual realm between death and new birth, in the strengthening and fortification of our “I,” so that we may prepare ourselves for a physical-sensory existence that is as unselfish as possible in our outward life, in the deeds and thoughts of the physical world. We must use our egoism in the spiritual world before our birth to work on ourselves in this way; we must look within ourselves so that we may become selfless—that is, moral—in the physical world.

[ 28 ] Herein lies everything that can be called the most valuable thing for those who wish to enter the spiritual world. Indeed, one must be aware that it is not for nothing that one sees one’s own evil and imperfection as a shadow image when one is in the spiritual world. This is what shows us how we must remain connected to the sensory world, how our karma, our destiny, must bind us to the sensory world until we have progressed so far in the spiritual world that we can live not only with ourselves but with the whole world. It becomes clear how wrong it is to apply that which is essential to spiritual progress—namely, self-perfection—directly to the affairs of external life. Seeking spiritual progress is not something from which we can allow ourselves to be deterred. Rather, it is our duty. And for human beings, duty is the development that is the law for all other living beings. But it is wrong to apply what is appropriate for spiritual development directly to external life. These two—external physical life with its morality—must necessarily stand as a second world alongside what the soul strives for internally when it wishes to draw closer to the spiritual world.

[ 29 ] Now, however, there is something that might again appear to be a contradiction. But one might say: the world thrives on such living contradictions. It had to be emphasized: one must gather strength within the soul; the ego, the “I,” must become stronger in order to penetrate the spiritual world. But if, in one’s spiritual ascent, one were to seek only to develop egoism, one would not get very far. But what does that mean? It means: one must already enter the spiritual world without egoism; or rather, one cannot enter without egoism—a fact that everyone who enters the spiritual world must wistfully acknowledge—so one must view everything egoistic so objectively that one sees it as one’s own egoism, to which one is connected in the outer world. One must therefore strive to become a selfless person through the means of physical life, because in the spiritual world one no longer has the opportunity to become selfless, since what matters there is the strengthening of the soul life. This is only an apparent contradiction. In the spiritual world—even when we pass through the gate of death into it—we must live there with whatever strength is present within us. But we cannot attain this strength unless we acquire it through an altruistic life in the physical world. Altruism in the physical world is reflected in the spiritual world as the true, value-enhancing egoism.

[ 30 ] We see how complex these concepts become as we approach the spiritual world. But at the same time, we can see what human life is really about. For let us suppose that a human being enters physical existence through birth. In this case—that is, when the being that he was in the spiritual world before birth or conception, between his last death and his present birth, is clothed in the physical body—there is a possibility that he may, as it were, unjustifiably permeate his physical body with what must be the life force of the spiritual world; that the spirit becomes lost in the physical, by carrying down into the physical world that which is good in the spiritual world. Then what is good in the spiritual world becomes evil in the physical world! This is a significant mystery of existence: that human beings can bring down into the physical world what they necessarily need to be spiritual beings—what, in a sense, represents the highest aspect of their spiritual nature—and that their highest, their best spiritual qualities can even become the deepest aberration in the physical-sensory realm.

[ 31 ] How does evil enter our lives? What causes so-called crime in the world?

[ 32 ] This occurs because human beings allow their better nature—not their worse nature—to become submerged in the physical-bodily realm, which cannot be evil in and of itself, and there develop those qualities that do not belong in the physical-bodily realm but rather belong specifically to the spiritual realm. Why can we humans be evil? Because we are allowed to be spiritual beings! Because, as soon as we begin to live in the spiritual world, we must be in a position to develop those qualities that turn to evil when we apply them in physical-sensory life. Let those qualities—which manifest in cruelty, malice, and other such forms in the physical world—be removed from the physical-sensory world; let the soul be permeated by them and live them out in the spiritual world instead of in the physical-sensory world—then there they are the qualities that advance us and perfect us. The fact that human beings apply the spiritual in a perverted way within the physical realm leads to their evil. And if they could not become evil, they could not be spiritual beings. For they must possess the qualities that can make them evil; otherwise, they could never ascend into the spiritual world.

[ 33 ] Perfection consists in a person learning to internalize the following insight: You must not apply the qualities that make you an evil person in physical life during this physical life; for to the extent that you apply them there, you deprive yourself of the soul’s qualities that give you strength for the spiritual realm, and to that extent you weaken yourself for the spiritual world. There, these qualities are in their rightful place.

[ 34 ] Thus we see how spiritual science demonstrates that evil and wickedness, by their very nature, point to the fact that we must acknowledge the existence of a spiritual-soul world alongside the physical world. For why does the human capacity for knowledge—as exemplified by Lotze or other thinkers—come to a standstill when they contemplate the sensory world and say: one cannot penetrate to the origin of evil and wickedness? It is because—since the faculty of cognition refuses to penetrate into the spiritual world—it cannot elucidate evil from within the physical world alone, for it is a misuse of forces that belong to the spiritual world! Is it any wonder, then, that no philosopher who disregards the spiritual world can ever find the essence of evil in the physical-sensory world! And if one is averse from the outset to venturing into another world to find the origin of evil there, then one will also fail to gain insight into external evil—that which we encounter as the bad and the imperfect in the external world, for example, in the animal world. We must simply be clear that evil in human action arises because human beings, as it were, transfer what is great and perfect in one world into another world, where it is transformed into its opposite. But when one considers the evil in the world that is independent of human beings—the evil that, for example, pervades the animal world—then one must say: Yes, we must be clear that there are not only beings like human beings who, through their lives, carry what belongs to the spiritual world and is great there into another world where it is out of place; but there must also be other beings—and a look at the animal kingdom shows us precisely that, apart from human beings, there must be spiritual beings who carry their own evil into the realm where human beings cannot carry their evil, and thus generate evil there. This means that as we come to understand where the origin of evil lies, we are simultaneously led to recognize that it is not only human beings who can introduce imperfection into the world, but that there are also other beings capable of bringing imperfections into the world. And so we tell ourselves that it is no longer incomprehensible when the spiritual researcher says: The animal world is, in essence, a manifestation of an invisible spiritual world; but in this spiritual world there were beings who, before human beings, did the very same thing that human beings are now doing—namely, unjustifiably drawing the spiritual into the physical world. This is how all evil in the animal world came into being.

[ 35 ] It should be made clear today that those are mistaken who believe that, because the soul is entangled in material existence, one can—as it were—attribute the impulse of evil to matter itself simply because of this entanglement. No, evil arises precisely through human beings’ spiritual qualities and their capacity for spiritual activity. And we had to ask ourselves: Where would the wisdom lie in the order of the worlds that would restrict human beings to unfolding only the good in the sensory world—and not the evil—if, as we have seen, this would necessarily deprive them of the power to make progress in the spiritual world? Because we are beings who belong to both the physical world and the spiritual world, and because within us it is not imperfection but perfection that is the spiritual law, we are enabled, like a pendulum, to swing to one side; and we are enabled to swing to the other side because we are spiritual beings who can carry spiritual elements into the physical world to manifest them there as evil, just as other beings—perhaps higher than human beings—were able to manifest evil by bringing into the sensory world that which belongs solely to the spiritual world.

[ 36 ] I am well aware that such a description of the origin of evil and wickedness conveys a message today that may be comprehensible to only a small number of people, but one that will become increasingly ingrained in the life of the human soul. For people will come to realize that coming to terms with the problems of the world is only possible at all if one conceives of a spiritual world as the foundation of our own. Human beings may still be able to cope with the perfections of the sensory world—though in doing so they are, of course, succumbing to an illusion—but they will not be able to cope with the imperfections, with evil and wickedness, unless they are able to explore the extent to which this evil and wickedness must exist in the world. And he realizes that they must exist in the world when he tells himself: evil in the physical world is merely out of place. If the qualities that human beings unjustifiably employ in the physical world—and which cause evil there—were applied in the spiritual world, they would make progress there.

[ 37 ] I hardly need to say that it would be utter nonsense for anyone to conclude from what has just been said: “So you’re claiming that only the villain makes progress in the spiritual world.” That would be a complete misinterpretation of what was said. For qualities are evil only insofar as they are applied in the physical world, whereas they immediately undergo a metamorphosis when applied in the spiritual world. Anyone who were to raise such an objection would be like someone who said: “So you’re claiming that it’s perfectly fine for a person to have the power to smash a watch?” Certainly it is good for a person to have this power; but he does not need to use it to smash the watch. If he uses it for the benefit of humanity, then it is a good power. And in this sense, one must say: The powers that a person allows to flow into evil are evil only in that context; when used correctly in the right context, they are good powers. |

[ 38 ] One must delve deeply into the mysteries of human existence to be able to say: What causes a person to become evil? It is because they apply the powers bestowed upon them for their perfection in the wrong place! What is the source of evil in the world? It is because human beings do not apply the powers bestowed upon them in a world suited to those powers.

[ 39 ] In our present day, one might even say: The tendency, the inclination toward the spiritual worlds, is already palpable in the depths of the soul. A closer, more intimate look at the nineteenth century—and the period leading up to the present—could teach us this. In the nineteenth century, among the philosophers, one also encounters representatives of what has been called pessimism—that worldview which focuses directly on the evils and the wickedness present in the world, and which draws the conclusion—as some indeed have—that this world cannot be regarded at all as one that demands anything of humanity other than to be led to its end. I need only point to Schopenhauer or Eduard von Hartmann, who, as it were, saw salvation for humanity in the idea that the individual can find salvation only by merging into the world process, and not in a goal that grants personal satisfaction. But I would like to point out something else: that in the age of matter, the soul is captive to materialism, and that in this age the deepest desolation must set in in the face of the world’s evils and the presence of evil; for materialism rejects a spiritual world from which shines the light that gives meaning to evil and the presence of evil. If this world is rejected, it is entirely inevitable that this world of evil and wickedness will stare back at us desolately in its purposelessness. — Today I do not wish to refer to Nietzsche, but to another thinker of the nineteenth century. From a certain point of view, I would like to point to a tragic thinker of the nineteenth century: from the point of view that human beings, being placed within their time, must necessarily live with their time. This is the distinctive feature of our nature: that our nature converges with the nature of time. So it was only natural in recent times that deeply sensitive minds—indeed, precisely those who had an open heart for what was unfolding around them—were deeply moved by that interpretation of the world which sees the very essence of human existence solely in external appearances. But such minds could often not succumb to the illusion that one can then go through the world without consolation if one must look at this earthly existence, must contemplate the evils—and cannot look up to a spiritual world in which the evils are justified, as we have seen.

[ 40 ] Philipp Mainländer, born in 1841, was a thinker who, I might say, fully experienced the tragedy of materialism, even though he himself did not become a materialist. If one looks at things superficially, one might call him a successor to Schopenhauer. Mainländer arrived at a peculiar worldview. He was, in a certain sense, a profound thinker, but a child of his time, and thus could only look at what the world offers in material terms. Now, let us not be under any illusion: this materialism had an immensely captivating effect, especially on the finest souls. Indeed, those who pay no heed to what the times and their spirit have to offer—who live selfishly within a religious creed they once came to cherish—the “most religious” people are sometimes the most selfish of all in this regard; they reject any transcendence beyond the things they have grown accustomed to and care for nothing other than what is familiar to them. Time and again, when one points out the tragedy of countless people, one receives the reply: “Yes, but can’t old-fashioned Christianity satisfy souls much better than your spiritual science?” Such questions are asked by minds that do not keep pace with the times and who react with intolerance against everything that is meant to enter cultural development for the salvation of humanity.

[ 41 ] Philipp Mainländer looked at what external science—what our age, from its materialistic standpoint, had to say to him—and there he could find only a world full of evil and human beings predisposed to evil. He could not deny that the pressure of this modern worldview is so strong that it prevents the soul from looking up toward a spiritual world. For let us not hide this fact from ourselves: why do so few people turn to spiritual science today? It is because the pressure of the prejudices of materialism—or, as it is more elegantly called today, monism—is so strong that it darkens the souls, preventing them from penetrating into the spiritual worlds. If souls were left to themselves and not numbed by materialistic prejudices, they would surely turn to spiritual science. But the pressure is great, and it is only from our time onward that one can say: The era has arrived in which spiritual science can be presented to people with some prospect of success, because the longing of souls has become so strong that spiritual science is bound to find an echo within them. In the second and third thirds of the nineteenth century, this resonance could not have existed. At that time, the pressure of materialism was so strong that even a soul as deeply spiritual as Philipp Mainländer’s was held back. And so he arrived at a peculiar view—the view that nothing spiritual could be found in the present world. In Mainländer, we have before us a spirit of the nineteenth century who made no great impression on his contemporaries simply because the spirit of the nineteenth century—despite great progress in the material realm—was a superficial spirit. But what the soul had to feel in the nineteenth century, Mainländer felt—even if he stood alone—because he was, in a sense, the sage in contrast to those who, as if in a state of spiritual helplessness, ignored what must leave souls unsatisfied in a materialistic or monistic worldview. One need not tackle the somewhat thick volumes of Mainländer’s Philosophy of Redemption, but only the relatively good little book by Max Seiling to learn what I am now saying.

[ 42 ] Philipp Mainländer thus looked out at the world, and under the pressure of materialism, he could only see it as it presents itself to the senses and the intellect. But he had to assume the existence of a spiritual world. “Yet it is not there,” he told himself; “the sensory world must be explained from within itself.” And now he comes to the view that the spiritual world preceded our own, that there was once a spiritual-divine existence, that our soul was part of a spiritual-divine existence, that the divine existence has passed into us from an earlier state of being, and that our world can only exist because God died before this spiritual world perished before us. This is how Mainländer conceives of a spiritual world—but not within our world; rather, within our world he sees only the corpse burdened with evil and wickedness, which can exist only so that it may be consigned to destruction, so that what led to the demise of God and his spiritual world may ultimately also pass into nothingness through the corpse’s own ruin. — Monists or other thinkers may smile at this to a greater or lesser extent; but whoever has a better understanding of the human soul and knows how a worldview can become the soul’s inner destiny, how the entire soul can take on the nuance of that worldview, knows what a person must have experienced who, like Mainländer, had to relegate the spiritual world to a bygone era and could see in the present world only its materially backward-remaining corpse. To cope with the evils of this world, Mainländer turned to such a worldview. That he was more deeply immersed in this worldview of his than Schopenhauer or Nietzsche, than Bahnsen or Eduard von Hartmann, is evident from the fact that at the age of thirty-five, when he had finished his Philosophy of Redemption, the thought occurred to him: Your strength is now needed in a disembodied form so that you may advance what appears to you to be the salvation of humanity more quickly than if you were still using your body after reaching middle age. The fact that Mainländer took his worldview with the utmost seriousness is evident from the fact that, when he arrived at this thought—that he would be of greater use by pouring his energy into the world rather than concentrating it on his body—he actually drew the conclusion that Schopenhauer and the others had not drawn, and died by suicide—specifically, suicide out of conviction.

[ 43 ] Philosophers and others may choose to overlook such a human fate; yet for our time, such a fate is infinitely significant, because it shows us how the soul must live—a soul that can truly penetrate to its depths, to that which can be reborn in our time as longing —how the soul can live when confronted with the problem of evil and wickedness in the world, and has no glimpse of a world where spiritual light spreads and illuminates the meaning of evil and wickedness. It was necessary for the human soul to develop its materialistic capacities for a time. In the future, spiritual life will also be viewed—I would say—from “psycho-biological perspectives,” perspectives of soul life, and it will become clear that, when raised to the spiritual level, what applies to the human being is what appears, as in a physical reflection below, in animal beings, for example. Certain animals can go without food for a long time and do so for a long time. Tadpoles, for example, can be induced by prolonged starvation to rapidly transform into frogs. Similar conditions are observed in certain fish when they fast for a long time, because degenerative processes then set in that enable them to carry out what they must do; they fast because they withdraw the forces they would otherwise devote to taking in food in order to develop other forms. This is an image that can be applied to the human soul: For centuries, it has lived through a time when people always spoke of the “limits of human knowledge”; and even many who today believe they think spiritually are still entirely devoted to materialistic ideas—which, simply because one is ashamed of them, are now often called monistic—and even philosophers are devoted to the principle: Human knowledge cannot help but come to a halt precisely where it faces the greatest mysteries. The faculties that led to all this had to be developed over a period of time; that is to say, humanity had to undergo a period of spiritual starvation. This was the era of the rise of materialism. But the forces that were thereby held back in the souls will now, according to a psycho-biological law, lead the human soul to seek the path into the spiritual worlds. Indeed, we will find that human brooding had to take the form we encounter in Mainländer, who could no longer find the spiritual world within the physical world because materialism had taken it away from him, and who therefore had to stop short of the physical world, making the mistake of overlooking that what lies before our world does, after all, give us the opportunity to discover within our soul something that points just as much toward the future as the outer world points toward the past. For it cannot be denied that Mainländer was right in a certain sense: that what our world presents all around us are the remnants of an original development. Even today’s geologists must already admit that, as we walk across the Earth, we are stepping over a corpse. But what Mainländer was not yet able to show is that, as we step over a corpse, we are at the same time developing something within ourselves that is just as much a seed for the future as what surrounds us is a legacy of the past. And as we look at what spiritual science is for the individual soul, what Mainländer was not yet able to see—and which is why he had to despair—can be revived within us.

[ 44 ] Thus we stand at the crossroads of two eras: the age of materialism and that of spiritual science. And perhaps nothing can demonstrate to us more clearly, in a way accessible to the general public, how—if we truly understand our souls—we must live in anticipation of the spiritual age of the future, than the contemplation of evil and wickedness when we are able to turn our gaze upward toward the luminous heights of the spiritual world. I have often said that such reflections bring one into harmony with the greatest minds of all time, who have longed to see how humanity must live toward the future in an ever-clearer way. Now, when such a spirit—with whom one feels in complete harmony—has made a statement regarding the external sensory world that is like an appeal to spiritual insight, we may also use it to summarize what has been able to speak to our soul today, and cite this as a kind of transformation of such a statement.

[ 45 ] In his Faust, Goethe had a character say something that shows how human beings can stray from the spirit. Summarized in a beautiful, paradigmatic saying, this estrangement of human beings from the spiritual world is expressed in the words:

Whoever wishes to recognize and describe something living,
Must first seek to drive out the spirit,
Then he has the parts in his hand,
But, alas! the spiritual bond is missing.

[ 46 ] This is, in a sense, the case with all knowledge of the world. It was humanity’s destiny to devote itself to the parts for several centuries. Yet more and more, people will perceive the absence of the spiritual bond not merely as a theoretical deficiency, but as a tragedy of the soul. That is why the spiritual researcher must perceive in souls everywhere today what most souls do not yet know for themselves: the longing for the spiritual world. And when one considers a subject such as the nature of evil and wickedness, one might perhaps expand upon Goethe’s statement by taking the following as a summary of what has been said.

[ 47 ] Goethe believed that anyone who seeks a worldview must not limit themselves to the individual parts, but must above all look to the spiritual connection. However, anyone who approaches such significant questions of life as the mysteries of evil and wickedness may, drawing on the foundations of spiritual science, summarize his conviction in accordance with his inner experience:

He who does not unravel the soul’s mysteries,
He who remains in the light of the senses alone;
Whoever wishes to understand life,
Must strive for the heights of the spirit!