The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. Homunculus

[ 1 ] How spiritual science, in the sense intended here, seeks to engage with contemporary intellectual and cultural life as a whole has been alluded to here on several occasions. What it can be for people and what it can offer them has also been discussed frequently, and this will be presented in detail in the final lecture. Throughout these winter lectures, it has also been pointed out time and again how understandable it is that, on the one hand, numerous souls of our time—perhaps more than they themselves realize—strive toward this spiritual science almost instinctively, out of their deepest feelings, one might say, out of their subconscious soul forces; and on the other hand, it is equally understandable that, arising from the general intellectual climate of our time, opposition upon opposition arises against spiritual science. To the spiritual researcher, even the objections raised against it—although they are based on prejudices—are understandable, indeed even self-evident. This, too, has been emphasized frequently. But the entire attitude of our contemporary culture toward a possible spiritual science depends, not in the least, on a refusal to recognize how this spiritual science—at least as it is intended in these lectures—can, in essence, understand and grasp all other worldviews and fully appreciate, in terms of their content and significance, the arguments put forward against it from one side or the other. Attention has been drawn to how spiritual science aims to be the great circle that expands human knowledge across all the realms that illuminate our lives, and how all other worldviews are small circles within this great circle, which therefore naturally believe themselves to be in the right from their own perspectives. Spiritual science is usually in a position to say “yes” to the positive aspects put forward by these worldviews. However, the same cannot be said—in the same sense—of other worldviews that are currently being advocated. For one will not adopt the standpoint that this or that—whether put forward in the name of materialism, spiritualism, or realism—should be regarded as one-sided in a certain respect, and that only by transcending this one-sidedness does the possibility arise to gain knowledge that satisfies human beings. In its own field, the worldview that must appear one-sided is often fully justified—so justified, in fact, that it is capable of bringing forth, uncovering, and discovering truths within its proper sphere. Spiritual science, however, cannot stop at recognizing these truths as something all-encompassing; rather, it must proceed to place them in their proper context. Thus, in the field of spiritual science in particular, we are confronted with opposition from that worldview which, in its own estimation, believes itself to be firmly grounded in modern science, and which, from its own perspective, often cannot help but see—and I say this explicitly: cannot help but see—spiritual science as nothing more than fantasies and daydreams. Leaving other matters aside, let us single out a form of worldview that believes itself to be secure by claiming—and, understandably, from its own perspective, it must do so—that it stands on the firm ground of rigorous scientific methodology. I would like to characterize this worldview—I might say, for our time—in somewhat radical terms: the worldview that asserts: If we wish to consider human beings, we must—if we are to remain on the ground of science—reflect on the physical, chemical, and mineral forces and substances of which they are composed; and we must be clear that, just as any other being is composed according to the laws of nature, so too is the human being, as the crown of creation, constructed.

[ 2 ] And so this worldview holds that once it has succeeded in understanding all the natural laws and substances at work in the human nervous system, right down to the finest processes of the brain, then it will also become clear—as far as is scientifically possible—how human thought, human feeling, and human will arise from the processes governed by natural laws. To understand human beings purely from a scientific perspective is an ideal—if one wishes to define it in one-sided terms—a legitimate ideal of this worldview.

[ 3 ] I know that, having just described this ideal in rather radical terms, I am bound to provoke opposition from some researchers who take a more serious approach and proceed with greater scientific dignity than was evident even a short time ago—researchers who are certainly already saying today: We have moved away from that more materialistic worldview, which holds that if human beings are understood purely in terms of external natural processes, then they are understood in their entirety. However, what matters is not that it is already acknowledged here and there that one has not understood human beings merely by knowing the purely natural processes that take place in their nervous system, extending all the way up to the brain; rather, what matters is that, despite this awareness, even in the scientific methods of philosophically minded contemporaries, nothing else prevails but the view that is based on these natural processes. For even today, in the widest circles that believe they are building on a scientific foundation, a view such as that intended here as spiritual science will be rejected.

[ 4 ] Based on its research findings, spiritual science will have to strictly admit that, despite all thinking and all research—which, by its very nature, is suited to surveying the processes of the sensory world and describing them down to the processes of the nervous system, and to surveying these as well—nothing other than the purely natural human being can be found; but that within this purely natural human being, as in a shell, there reigns that which we have come to know as passing from one earthly life to the next—that which, after each earthly life, undergoes an existence in a purely spiritual world between death and a new birth, as I dared to describe here last time. Spiritual science, I said, must be clear that this which reigns so eternally in human nature must remain hidden from all philosophy that seeks to rely solely on the faculties suited to natural perception; that this eternal aspect of human nature can be explored only through the powers of which I have spoken here on several occasions—the powers attained through inner development, as described in greater detail in my Outline of Esoteric Science and in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?. But even philosophers who today emphasize the necessity of spiritual life—indeed, even the philosopher who has become famous in such a peculiar way, Rudolf Eucken, who in a philosophy written in the style of a newspaper column speaks again and again of the “spirit”—will, when he speaks of the spirit, limit himself solely to what the natural human being is; and nowhere does he reveal that he has any sense that the spirit and the spiritual world can be explored only with the spiritual powers that must first be drawn forth from the soul through specific methods of spiritual science.

[ 5 ] Now, spiritual science is not opposed to such scientific views, nor is it opposed to such philosophical worldviews; rather, it must simply point out their limitations and show what they are capable of and what they can represent. With regard to this relationship between spiritual science and other worldviews, it has been emphasized time and again that spiritual science feels in harmony with those spirits of human development who, although they did not yet have spiritual science, for spiritual science can only be a product of our time, but who nevertheless—because they had a profound intuition of the truth arising from their deepest spiritual sensibilities and feelings—spoke in a clear, comprehensible manner when expressing this intuition, so that spiritual science can feel in harmony with them.

[ 6 ] Today I would like to speak to you about how this applies to two spirits of the nineteenth century; by incorporating this lecture, as it were, into this year’s series of lectures, I would like to illustrate this point using the examples of Goethe and Robert Hamerling—Goethe, who is universally known, and Hamerling, who, despite his widespread influence, was until recently still little known. Specifically, I would like to discuss a problem that both poets confronted—a problem that arose, as it were, from a deep spiritual-scientific sensibility, yet was at the same time genuinely poetic—and I would like to begin by emphasizing the spiritual-scientific dimension of this problem.

[ 7 ] I would like to say: Couldn’t the thought even occur to someone: What actually happens when one conceives of a form, a figure of the human being, that is held entirely in the spirit of a purely natural way of thinking—when one conceives of the human being as a being in such a way that one draws on nothing that can be perceived to support this thought, but instead reflects on the forces lying deeper within the human soul, on the eternal forces within the human soul? What image emerges when one, as it were, simply conceives: We have the forces and substances we know—we may not yet know them all, but the ideal of natural science is to come to know them all and to observe how they work—we have the laws of nature, and we try to conceive of the human being as he might emerge in this picture if we drew on nothing but the natural forces and substances and the laws of nature?

[ 8 ] The scholar of the humanities can assess such a picture only from the perspective that has often been emphasized here. When one develops the powers slumbering in the soul into spiritual vision, one comes to experience oneself within the soul, so that, in a sense, one experiences oneself and recognizes how these abilities of the soul—which are to be developed—are not bound to the senses nor to the powers of the brain. In this way, one experiences that one is truly with the soul outside one’s sensory organs, outside the brain, outside the body—indeed, that one has before oneself, like an external object, everything that is bound to the body. That in which one otherwise always dwells, what one otherwise regards as belonging to one’s self—one’s body—is present before one in spiritual research just as the table is now before me. But one also has one’s own destiny before one, insofar as it unfolds in the external world. One has become a new human being, in relation to whom what one was before has become objective and lies outside oneself. — When one now observes the human being while standing outside one’s own human body, one gains the ability to judge: to what extent does the image of humanity that one can conceive—based solely on natural substances, natural laws, and natural abilities—hold true? And one comes to the realization: Oh, this image is by no means unreal, but rather represents something very real; yet for human beings, it is not even truly present in the sensory world—rather, it is a limb, a part of the human being; it permeates and animates the human being.

[ 9 ] Those among the esteemed audience who recall the daring experiment of eight days ago will have heard how the human soul, after having undergone the purely spiritual life between death and a new birth, re-enters earthly life with the powers developed in that life, how it is drawn to a pair of parents, and how it integrates itself into what may be called the inherited powers—those from the father and mother, in short, the powers arising from the stream of heredity. But the spiritual researcher observes that what descends, as it were, as the human soul into a new earthly incarnation must, during its entry into the physical body, envelop itself and clothe itself in forces that are, as it were, an extract of the entire physical nature. Before the human being—the eternal human being—hastes toward its incarnation, it must, as it were, draw upon forces from the spiritual substance—spiritual substances—through which it solidifies the image that it has formed purely spiritually as an archetype for the next incarnation, and which then seeks to incarnate physically within the hereditary line. We can say: In human reincarnation, an intermediate link is inserted between the purely spiritual realm—which reigns between death and a new birth—and that which then stands before us in the physical world as a human being. In this being that stands before us in the physical world as a human being, we find precisely what is inherited from the father and mother, and that which comes from earlier earthly incarnations—the spiritual-soul aspect. But in between there is, one might say, a purely etheric human being, still a spiritual human being, who is supersensible and invisible, but who contains within himself the forces that are like an extract of the entire physical world’s events. It is remarkable: when a person believes himself to be standing on the firm ground of natural science and forms a picture of the human being based on natural substances, natural forces, and laws, then they arrive at an image that is not at all real within this physical human being—who, after all, also contains the eternal soul—an abstraction, a mere abstraction; yet it reigns and weaves within this physical human being, and it is also that into which the

[ 10 ] clothes the human being before it descends into physical embodiment. What the human being snatches from eternal spiritual life and forces into the earthly life that unfolds between birth and death—that which compels us, little by little, to speak of the death of our earthly life; that which reigns within us between birth and death, torn from the spiritual worlds; that which is itself spiritual, yet lifts us out of the physical and surrenders us to the spirit: that is a real being for the spiritual researcher; only it is not visible—it can be fathomed only through higher vision.

[ 11 ] This gives rise to the curious fact that those who believe they are thinking correctly from a materialistic or monistic perspective are not entirely wrong when they form, based purely on natural laws, a fantastical image of the human being—one constructed purely from natural forces, which has significance for the human being between birth and death, and which, during earthly life, causes the soul to forget, as it were, its entire spiritual life. Conceived, however, as consisting solely of natural substances and governed solely by natural laws, it does not exist as a natural entity, but rather permeates human nature; it is an intermediate link between the outer and the eternal human being who passes through the physical world. And as such—one might say, as “super-sensible-sensible”—Goethe regarded this entity, and he characterized it as such in the second part of his life’s work, in his Faust, as the homunculus. And precisely what Goethe meant by his homunculus is fantastically based on the materialistic—or, as it is called today, the monistic—worldview as the image of humanity. But this image of humanity does not truly exist. It permeates the human being; it is that which strips the human being of its eternal significance between birth and death and forces its way into the physical-sensual nature. The latter is a third element that is added to the other two. In believing that his image of the human being presents the most real thing before us, the materialist thinker presents an abstraction; he presents a supersensual entity. This ideal of modern monism, this homunculus—that which modern monism seeks to portray as “man”—Goethe employs in the second part of his Faust for a very special mission. — To keep this lecture from becoming too lengthy, I can only briefly touch upon these matters.

[ 12 ] Under the guidance—or through the seduction—of Mephistopheles, Faust has gone through what is known from the first part of the poem. He has gone through all the phases of the drive for knowledge, has experienced all the torments of the quest for knowledge, has passed through grave human guilt, and in the second part of the poem, Goethe now portrays Faust as he is torn away from ordinary perception. Faust is not to gain the ability to penetrate further into the world by using his ordinary consciousness and the everyday powers of his soul to struggle his way back up from all that his soul has endured; rather, we are presented with a night— that is, a state of rapture of Faust’s consciousness at the beginning of the second part of the poem, and from the spiritual worlds, forces are poured into him through his sleeping consciousness—forces that do not immediately become clear to his awareness, but which Goethe suggests will be at work in Faust’s soul, where the eternal forces reign, so that Faust may progress. That is why spirits—Ariel and others—speak to him in his sleep. That is why he feels the “pulse of life” beating “fresh and alive” once more; he is restored to life and can begin the struggle of life anew. — I will set aside everything else and merely point out that he is required to conjure up the image of Paris and Helen, the image of Helen, the most beautiful woman. Faust himself feels the urge to behold Helen; and one understands from Goethe’s description that he himself feels this urge.

[ 13 ] Mephistopheles—what kind of figure is he? He stands beside Faust as the spiritual being who seeks to keep humans bound to the purely external, sensory world—to natural existence. Mephistopheles is certainly a spiritual being, but he is the very being who denies the spiritual world to humanity and in the face of humanity. Faust must demand of Mephistopheles that he enable him to penetrate into those realms of existence where the eternal soul of Helena reigns. Mephistopheles can only give Faust the key to this world; for it is the world of mothers, of the primeval forces of spiritual existence—that world in which the eternal soul-spiritual powers reign. And now, in the second part of Faust, a dialogue unfolds in which Faust’s genuinely spiritual-scientific outlook is pitted against Mephistopheles’ rejection of that outlook; Mephistopheles dismisses the world into which Faust seeks to enter as nothingness. — But Faust retorts: “In your nothingness I hope to find the universe!” For Mephistopheles, too, the world into which Faust seeks to penetrate is nothingness. — In the realm of the Mothers, Faust encounters the primordial archetype—that is, the eternal essence of Helena. He brings it forth. He is not yet mature enough to confront it. I do not wish to touch on everything that still unfolds, but only this one point: Faust is not as purified as one’s powers must be in such a quest for someone who truly wishes to confront the spiritual. He approaches Helena as one would a sensual apparition, and the result is that he is paralyzed by her. His consciousness is snatched from him by his overflowing passion. Out of this paralysis springs his dream, which leads him into the realm where Helena lived.

[ 14 ] Now the big question arose for Goethe: How can Faust’s life be continued poetically? Goethe was not a symbolic poet; rather, he was a realistic poet, albeit a spiritual realist. And the question arose within him: Faust must be able to face Helena as a human being—that is, just as she lived as a human being; she must therefore descend into the realm of humans, she must take on a physical form, and Faust must be able to face Helena as a human being: how can this be done in a spiritual-realistic sense?

[ 15 ] He recalled the studies he had pursued earlier; for he wrote this scene in the 1820s. But what he had studied in the field of the humanities during his youth had an ever-increasing influence on him. Consequently, the second part of this poem is all the more mature—which, admittedly, has led some critics to dismiss this second part as a pitiful product of an aging Goethe, simply because they could not make sense of it. The question for Goethe, then, was: How can I apply my studies in spiritual science to lead Faust to the place where Helena’s spiritual essence is to be found? Then he recalled what he had read in Paracelsus’s work De generatione rerum: the “homunculus.” In it, Paracelsus describes how an image of a purely natural human being in the state described above can be created so that a human being can actually see it. — It would take us too far afield to go into detail about what Paracelsus describes, if only because his explanations are entirely insufficient for us today. I therefore wish to approach the matter more in the style of modern spiritual science, rather than relying on what Paracelsus described. — He speaks of mixing various substances together and treating them according to the methods of that time. If we consider how people in Paracelsus’s time thought about this, what mattered was not so much how the substances mixed, how they decomposed, and formed new compounds, but rather that the person stood before them and allowed the process to affect their soul. And the effect of these processes evoked something in the human soul; this in turn brought about a form of clairvoyance that today is achieved through other means. Then that figure described by Paracelsus was beheld—a figure that is truly a paradigm of the human being, a tiny human figure, but only luminous, without a body, not incarnated. The essential point, in the sense of today’s spiritual science, is that through those mixtures and fumigations, a state of consciousness was brought about in which the homunculus became visible, a figure that held the significance of which I have spoken.

[ 16 ] Goethe said to himself, building on what he had read in Paracelsus: This homunculus is, after all, a being that stands between the supersensible and the sensible, in such a way that it can carry human beings down from the primordial eternal into the physical-sensible world—that which acts within human beings as a force but is not itself embodied. And Goethe shaped the homunculus into a poetic figure. Specifically, he first depicted a spirit of the kind about which, in the spirit of Faust, one might say: they greedily seek treasures and are happy when they find earthworms. Goethe portrays such a spirit in the character of Wagner—a figure who truly embodies an ideal of today’s ideologues, who seek treasures and are happy when they discover the laws of earthworms.

[ 17 ] From two different perspectives, the image of Wagner emerged for Goethe. For one thing, in addition to a “Faust” book, there is also a “Wagner” book; and second, there really was a remarkable man living during Goethe’s time: his name was Johann Jakob Wagner. He claimed that if one mixed certain substances and so on in a retort according to specific methods, one would indeed produce a tiny human being. From these two Wagner figures—the one from the Wagner book and Johann Jakob Wagner—Goethe forged a single character: the Wagner of fiction. And so the figure of that Wagner came into being—the one who stands before his retort, mixes the substances together, and now waits for the “little human-like creature,” the homunculus, to emerge. It would not emerge just like that. Neither in Johann Jakob Wagner’s retort nor in that of Goethe’s Wagner would what constitutes a human being—or what some scientists who consider themselves modern conceive of as a human being—come into being if Mephistopheles did not sneak into the process, if the spiritual power of Mephistopheles were not at work in the background. And so, in Wagner’s retort, a purely spiritual being emerges—radiant—but one that now desires to take on a physical form; a being that lacks nothing in spiritual qualities, but certainly lacks tangible competence—a being that the materialistic worldview regards as a human being:

He lacks nothing in intellectual qualities,
But all too much in tangible competence.
So far, only the glass gives him weight,
But he would like to be embodied first.

[ 18 ] Homunkulus would also like to take on a physical form, but he is a being that lives solely in the spiritual realm. For those who seek the “real” present a terrible abstraction. But Wagner can believe nothing else than that he has brought about conviction in the real world. And so he stands before the retort and believes:

[ 19 ] It’s happening! The masses are stirring more clearly!
The conviction grows truer, truer!

[ 20 ] However, this passage is still so poorly understood in Faust scholarship today that people believe it refers to a “conviction,” as if it were a creed. Goethe, however, means it in the sense of Nietzsche’s “Superman”—as a conviction.

[ 21 ] This homunculus now truly proves himself to be a being that belongs to the spiritual world. For he immediately sets about Faust himself in a strange way. Faust lives in dreams of ancient Greece. The homunculus is a clairvoyant; he sees everything Faust dreams. Why? Because, as Goethe portrays him, he exists in the spiritual world, not born out of the physical world. Human beings possess him as forces within themselves. Thus the homunculus loses his abstract nature. One would even concede to the monists that this abstract concept, if they were to truly see it in the spiritual world where it has reality, would in fact be clairvoyant there. For the homunculus—the human being, as conceived, for example, by Ludwig Büchner and others—exists as a spiritual being and is a clairvoyant being in the spiritual world. A person like Ludwig Büchner, however, would certainly not suspect this. Therefore, the homunculus can indeed become the guide into the realms where Helena is to reincarnate in a new earthly realm, where she is to appear before Faust. But to do so, the homunculus must first acquire the powers that lie within physical nature, apart from everything else.

[ 22 ] Homunculus, as a clairvoyant being, serves as Faust’s guide during the “classic Walpurgis Night.” And there he seeks advice from the ancient philosophers—Thales and Anaxagoras, and also Proteus—on how he, who so dearly wishes to take on a physical form and who lacks “nothing in terms of intellectual qualities” but all the more in “tangible competence,” might attain a natural existence. If only the materialists or monists would ever ask themselves: How can what we imagine come into natural existence?! Proteus advises the Homunculus to develop through all the realms of nature. Goethe’s reference to this is marvelous, particularly where the passage through the plant kingdom is concerned; there the Homunculus says:

[ 23 ] It murmurs, and I delight in the scent! “Murmur,” derived from “green,” is used to depict the vibrant, fresh life of the plant world as perceived in its active state. But one thing is told to the homunculus: that on this path he can only proceed as far as the point where becoming human begins. He is the mediator between the physical and the eternal. Where birth is concerned, he must plunge into the natural forces; he must be absorbed into the purely cosmic elements. Therefore, the homunculus is told: Go through all of this, and “you have time until you become human.” And then it is signaled to him:

Just don't strive for higher places:
For once you've become human,
Then it's completely over for you.

[ 24 ] How wonderfully this aligns with the mission the homunculus has in becoming human; for once he has become human, he is completely absorbed into human nature. That is why he is told: “Stay here; do not strive for higher places.” — It must read “places” here. The copyist made a mistake there. This part of “Faust” appears only in the manuscript, and since Goethe spoke with a Frankfurt accent, the scribe understood “Orten” as “Orden,” and modern Faust commentators have believed that even the old Proteus spoke of “Orden”—one of the most unfortunate ideas to have crept into Faust scholarship.

[ 25 ] The scene where the homunculus merges with the elements is described magnificently—the moment when Helena is to come into being, when she is to appear before Faust as her eternal essence unites with the forces emanating from the elements, enabling her to enter earthly existence. The sirens say:

[ 26 ] What fiery wonder do the waves reveal to us,
That crash against one another, sparkling?
Thus it glows and sways and rises brighter:
The bodies glow on their nocturnal path,
And all around, everything is encircled by fire;
So let Eros reign, he who began it all!

[ 27 ] This means: when a human being enters earthly existence from the eternal spiritual realm through what is called love, or Eros, on Earth, this descent appears to the clairvoyant eye as waves and surges. “Surges” are meant in a spiritual sense. Therefore, it is said:

Hail to the sea! Hail to the waves!
Surrounded by the sacred fire;
Hail to the water! Hail to the fire!
Hail to the rare adventure!
Hail to the gently billowing winds!
Hail to the mysterious tombs!
Here you are all celebrated
All four of you, elements!

[ 28 ] This means that the homunculus truly dissolves into the elements, and Helena now appears in the third act. The reincarnated Helena, whom Faust will not be able to destroy, makes her entrance.

[ 29 ] Goethe thus knew how to employ the figure of the homunculus in a truly poetic way. In Goethe’s view, too, the homunculus is that part of the human being which leads a purely mechanical existence, in which purely mechanical forces prevail. But what makes human beings the highest link in earthly creation is that these forces dissolve the moment they enter them. Yet what a human being is not in reality, he can be in his imagination. This, after all, is human freedom: that a person can form an image of his or her ideal, and that—even though he or she possesses within themselves an eternal spiritual-soul element that passes from life to life and traverses a spiritual world between death and rebirth—he or she can deny this eternal spiritual-soul element, need not take it into account, and can imagine: “I am merely a being consisting of purely natural substances and forces.” Then he can also live accordingly.

[ 30 ] In an age that theoretically gives rise to materialism, that theoretically thinks in the manner described, it is not without consequence that its entire way of life, its entire attitude toward life, contains something that denies the eternal-spiritual and turns precisely that which we have now come to know as the homunculus into a natural human being. There must be a certain urge, a drive, to develop the homunculus forces in particular; then one will take a liking to a worldview that presents the homunculus as the human being.

[ 31 ] It was in the early 1860s; a strange cry swept through the field of psychology. It had always been believed in psychology that, when it came to the soul, people would not go so far as to embrace “homunculus theory”—that is, to want to know nothing about the soul and to acknowledge only the purely physical. But then the slogan “psychology without a soul” emerged—all the way up to Wundt. This means, in other words, that one wishes to study the mere phenomena of mental life—goodwill, joy, sorrow, and so on—down to the finest details. These are simply “occurrences,” one tells oneself; but one does not turn to the soul itself. — It is, of course, in the very nature of homunculism to deny the soul; for if one sees the true human being in the homunculus, one must deny the soul, since homunculism is incompatible with the soul. An era in which the slogan “psychology without a soul” could emerge for psychology must, of course, represent homunculism as a secret impulse of human life. An era in which it is said that human beings are only what can be perceived through the ordinary faculties bound to the nervous system—such an era will, for the majority of its people, also exhibit homunculine traits.

[ 32 ] This can then give rise to the following thought in a poet: What if I were to hold up a mirror to time and show it: Imagine what would come out of you if you believed you were truly the product of purely natural forces and laws. Let’s take, for example, a poet who takes the slogan “psychology without a soul” seriously and says to himself: Not only have people said this, but they also live by it. I want to present a person who is truly conceived in the image of how they imagine him to be. They just don’t know that he is exactly as he appears. But I want to think through, to the logical conclusion, what would become of the image of the modern materialist or monist.

[ 33 ] Such thoughts took root in Robert Hamerling, and from his sickbed he elaborated on them and sent the image of the “Homunculus” out into the world. It seems to me that this work of poetry is little known today, even though five thousand copies were sold in the first five months after its publication. But this, too, is something that is in keeping with homunculism—that is to say, with the spirit of our times. —Hamerling created the “Homunculus” in the way I will now attempt to describe it in just a few words. I may describe it this way. Just as I have come to regard what I say about Goethe as correct after more than thirty years of studying him, so too may I do the same with regard to Hamerling. For shortly after Hamerling’s Homunkulus was published, I wrote a treatise on the Homunkulus, and Hamerling even wrote to me that I had fully captured his idea.

[ 34 ] Robert Hamerling had conceived the idea of presenting to modern people what lies in the concept of a human being when that being is thought of as composed solely of purely natural forces and substances and in accordance with natural laws. For this reason, he has the modern professor Ernst construct a human being in accordance with natural forces and laws. Certainly, the natural scientist who believes he can construct a worldview from the laws of nature will say: it is not yet possible today to construct a human being in this way. The poet, however, may say: Let us assume that this point in time has already arrived—which, according to the theory of those who believe they stand on the firm ground of modern science, may well be justified. And so we see the learned monist in Robert Hamerling standing before the retort, treating the substances accordingly—and there appears the little homunculus:

“Bravo, little doctor!” he exclaimed
A second time, as he
Slipped shivering into a doublet,
Which was already laid out for him;
And with a gracious expression, he patted
His father on the shoulder.

“So, on the whole and from a purely
chemical-physiological standpoint
viewed, my dear friend,
what you have created is a respectable,
commendable piece of work.
In detail, however, there would certainly be
much to say about it.”
So the homunculus continued,
Then offered a few scholarly,
Valuable hints,
Spoke at great length about albumin,
About fibrin, and globulin as well,
Keratin, mucin, and other things,
And about proper mixtures,
And thoroughly instructed his creator
And maker on how he
Could have done it better.

[ 35 ] So there he is in reality—that is, in the reality of the poet, as he is conceived in the minds of many a materialistically minded person who, according to Hamerling’s view, thinks from the perspective of the present age. And from this materialistic mindset, which is bestowed upon the “little man,” arises what this little man displays as his first inclination. If one looks at the world today through the lens of the “youngest” people’s inclinations, one can already understand how the homunculus might come to such conclusions:

Gradually, the homunculus began to grumble
And to grumble about the book,
which he held in his hands,
The homunculus. This was
interesting to the doctor; he jotted down
the remark in his notebook:
“First literary impulse
of a little man—reviewing.”

[ 36 ] But now it just isn’t working at all. For, of course, the homunculus grows out of the thoughts of its creator—let’s say, its “convincer”—and brings with it many things that lived in the creator’s thoughts, stemming from the entire state of our times. It is nervous; it brings that nervousness with it. His learned creator can do nothing about this, and so he throws him back into the retort, turns him once more into a human embryo, and ensures that he is at least properly conceived and carried to term on the mother’s side; so that we do not, after all, have a completely proper homunculus before us, but one who is merely without a natural father.

[ 37 ] Then he goes through his formative years. Naturally, he also becomes a poet. He experiences what many a poet experiences in our time: he seeks out publishers. A pleasant relationship develops not only with his publisher but also with the publisher’s daughter, who is promised to him if his poems gain the necessary circulation. “Connections,” of course, are a given in the age of homunculism. The book receives glowing praise; how could Homunkulus believe otherwise! But lo and behold: by the end of the year, the publisher has sold only thirteen copies. He therefore withdraws his daughter from Homunkulus, and Homunkulus must continue to seek his path in life. — He tries every possible path. This is how he ends up at a spa town, where he becomes acquainted with the customs and traditions of Homunkulism—that is to say, the customs and traditions of modern spa life. Afterward, he hatches a plan to found a newspaper, a “paper for everything and for everyone.” And because it costs little and is not affiliated with any political party, “court and state councilors and other advisors, or even the leaders of powerful, financially solvent parties,” as well as the heads of major banking and trading firms, flock to it and write their editorials and reports. — But please bear in mind: since Robert Hamerling’s Homunkulus was published in 1887, it cannot be intended as a satire on anything that would have arisen only in the present day—that is, on things that appeared much later. — But of course, Homunkulus is not satisfied with that; he aspires to something even higher. He sells his newspaper to a joint-stock company—which, again, is not satire!—and then devotes himself to his further ventures. There he becomes a “billionaire” and, as such, lives in a very peculiar way. I would like to emphasize one thing: that he truly immerses himself in the era of Homunkulism. What non-Homunkulism achieves through lifeless forces—for example, when something needs to be supported, when columns are erected to bear a load—all of that belongs to bygone times. Large snakes, which have been tamed, stand in Homunculus’s garden pavilion and support its domed roof. In the past, squirrels were trained and locked up in cages. Homunculus did not do that; he has them function as automatons. That is true homunculism. Something like this would emerge if certain ideas that already exist today were further developed.

[ 38 ] But even if you’re a billionaire, you still can’t achieve a truly fulfilling life. Homunkulus didn’t know what an “inner life” was, after all—he didn’t have a soul. So he is extremely dissatisfied with his existence, and that is why he throws himself into the Rhine. There, he is saved by a creature who also has no soul: the mermaid Lurley. And Homunkulus and Lurley now become a couple. And because all the old worlds are not enough for them, they set out for an entirely new realm. — One could also describe the interesting “literary Walpurgis Night” celebrated at the wedding feast of the two, the homunculus and Lurley. Many aspects of our own time are reflected there. One would only have to go back to Hamerling’s time, but even here one would have to say the same thing—that it is not meant to be a satire on contemporary conditions:

Completely consumed by bitter world-weariness,
Bitter weariness of life,
Gloomy melancholy,
Promethean and vulture-like
Liver-wasting pessimism,
Such was the crowd of the “water poets”;
They found everything miserable,
Except for their own verses.
Much more at ease in their own skin
Were the wine and beer poets.
To them, the world was just
Right, and they suffered from only one ailment
: a fear of water.

Finally, the absinthe poets,
Along with the wine and beer poets
Shared their aversion to water,
And the vulture-like bite of the dark,
Melancholic, weary,
Liver-sick pessimism
With the swarm of water poets:
And they were doubly wretched.

[ 39 ] This provides a rather interesting analysis of what is commonly referred to as “art and literature.”

[ 40 ] So they set out for a region that has not yet been tainted by the belief in the soul. The soulless man and the soulless mermaid set out for an Eldorado. It is also an Eldorado of a certain kind of party politics; and much of what prevails in party politics today is depicted in a magnificent way. I merely wish to suggest that even here, Homunkulus cannot quite succeed in establishing his model state, the Eldorado; even his Lurley is taken from him by a party man who goes about with the motto: “We won’t let ourselves be outvoted!” But: “He’s quite a character,” Lurley tells himself, and Homunkulus must move on. Yet he is an inventive mind and now truly wants to think things through to their ultimate consequences. He tells himself: There’s no use trying to work with humans if one wants to turn Homunkulism into reality; they simply aren’t up for it. But why not draw the ultimate conclusions? Couldn’t one use the monkeys

[ 41 ] to turn them into humans? After all, modern science already teaches us that humans evolved from apes. So let’s gather the best specimens of them and turn them into humans—and quickly! — So this is how he formulates his plan: he founds a company in which he intends to turn apes into humans—an entirely new realm. And now we are told about the ape school:

The headmaster of the monkey school
Only complained of “restlessness,”
For these noble
Offspring found it difficult
To break away from the established
Habits of their species
—such as, for example,
Climbing up everywhere.
They also sometimes forgot
To the point that, during long hours
Of serious instruction, they would
Catch vermin off one another,
And would even, in a wild
Swarm, rush upon the teacher
To pick lice from his head. —

Once the monkeys were educated,
They rivaled humans
In every field.
In the fine arts,
They were exceptionally gifted
Thanks to an innate
Talent for imitation.
Unparalleled—naturally
They were stage performers,
Undertook touring performances
With the most brilliant success.
Farce, comedy, operetta,
Parody—that was their domain.
Cabinet pieces and masterpieces
Of the most dramatic and finest comedy,
The likes of which had never been seen
Were the faces they pulled.
They had widely famous song recitals
— the soloists were howler monkeys
and they beat
human choirs here and there
in singing contests.
Baboons, grinning like fauns,
trained themselves to be stutterers,
elegant street strollers,
and at balls they also proved to be
sprightly dancers; and the gallant
demeanor they boldly displayed
toward the women was, in part,
very much to the latter’s taste.
As for the female monkeys,
they rivaled human women
Sometimes matching them and sometimes even surpassing them
In the art of coquetry.
Always dressing fashionably,
Who would understand this better
Than a monkey? They knew how
To adorn themselves with ornaments
And with tassels, ribbons, bows...

[ 42 ] and so on. But even though things went that far, Hamerling argues that “ape-like nature plus education” was not enough to create a human being. Although the monkeys invoked many a “monkey ancestor,” they managed to achieve a resemblance to humans in only one human “virtue”: the virtue of conviction. They soon declared that it was actually very inferior to be human; for these humans had not even become “monkeys.” This soon led to the monkey “Doctor Krallfratz”—who, as they say, had been elected monkey rector—taking Homunkulus’s place. Thus, Homunkulus was displaced by Doctor Krallfratz. But this did little to improve the monkeys’ fortunes. Although humans were unable to deal with these apes that had become human, in wild regions the humans still living in a primitive state were able to deal with them: there, the apes that had become human were simply killed.

[ 43 ] Now comes a chapter for which Hamerling was severely criticized—Hamerling did not want to be counted among the anti-Semites; he strongly objected to this when, in the eighth canto of Homunkulus, he made the protagonist the leader of the Jews emigrating to Palestine, who could no longer bear to live here under current circumstances. One might think that, in an era familiar with the aspirations of Zionism, this should not be considered particularly striking. What is important, however, is what this means for Homunkulus: he is crucified by the Jews because they cannot bear to be with him. And when he hangs there alone, bound to the cross, his only visitor is Ahasver, the eternal Jew. Through him, he is then freed from his bonds, and so they must now continue their journey together, Homunkulus and Ahasver.

[ 44 ] Homunkulus has, admittedly, taken what he believes he has gleaned from modern science and thought it through to its ultimate consequences. But—and this, too, is to be expected of people who concern themselves with questions of worldview—he has not really engaged with true science. Now he begins to grapple with scientific problems. In doing so, he actually succeeds in making an attempt: to win over a large portion of humanity to an idea that first emerged from the philosopher of the unconscious out of pessimism—which, in a certain sense, is also a form of homunculism—namely, from Eduard von Hartmann’s pessimistic philosophy. Not many people today know what pessimism has to say to humanity: Oh, the world is bad, as bad as it can be, and the best thing is to escape from this bad world. To do this, one must be clear about the following: the world came into being through the will, and if all people resolve to abolish existence, then through the unity of all these resolutions, the world and life will once again be abolished. Eduard von Hartmann describes in detail how it would be possible to eliminate humanity from the world through a single will. — From this perspective, Homunkulus founds a society, not only of humans but also of animals. Congresses are held, speeches are given, and so on. In the end, it actually comes to the point where a specific moment is set at which all people are to make the decision simultaneously: “Now you no longer wish to exist!” And even the Earth is to perish in the process. Everyone is in agreement; the day, the hour draws near, but the sun alone holds it back. What had happened? Homunkulus and Lurley had wished for a child but were unable to have one in Eldorado. Therefore, they adopted two children from the primitive people living there: they were named Eldo and Dora. But these two could not adapt to the way of the homunculi. And now, as all of humanity gathers on the appointed day to carry out the resolution, and Eldo and Dora see each other again after a long separation, they fall in love—but because of this, they arrive too late. They were absent from the collective will of all humanity, and all efforts were in vain. And Homunkulus himself has drawn near those who will thwart his plan! Oh, Homunkulism will, of its own accord and in the most manifold ways, produce its own “Eldo and Dora,” who will arrive too late when Homunkulism seeks to draw its final conclusions! Then the sun of spiritual life, of spiritual science, will rise!

[ 45 ] But in the end, the homunculus must achieve something through his science. After having explored all the forces of nature, he builds a giant telescope through which he can see into the farthest reaches of the world—a telescope that magnifies everything to gigantic proportions, thereby giving rise to the modern worldview. And alongside this giant telescope, he constructs a giant ear trumpet and a giant nose trumpet; and he also builds—indeed, everything else that can be derived from mechanical forces! He sets out to build something from these mechanical forces in the most modern style: he builds a giant airship. I’ll note once more: in 1887, the story of the steerable airship was written by Robert Hamerling in his Homunkulus! And aboard this steerable airship, Homunkulus sets out beyond the Earth’s sphere. And he can zoom along in his airship faster than the speed of light. But he is not satisfied with all that he can do: he can travel through outer space in his airship, peer out into the world of the stars with his giant telescope, listen in on Earth with his giant listening tube, and speak down to the people through a giant megaphone, whizzing about like this. Then, during his journey, he flies into a thundercloud; lightning strikes his airship. He cannot destroy the rudders or the engines, but he does destroy the steering mechanism! And so Homunkulus is now at the mercy of the elemental forces in his airship. There is only one thing he can still take with him: When he approaches Earth one last time, he discovers Lurley’s corpse and takes her along on his steerable giant airship. — Thus, Hamerling can conclude his epic with the words:

To whom Nature, the sacred one,
The mysterious Mother,
Did not give life through love,
Did not give life in love,
To him she also denies death,
And above all, the most beautiful death,
To die in love
And no grave of blissful rest,
No place of eternal peace
Does the vast universe hold for him.

Who can say where
And for how long, with the homunculus
And the mermaid who keeps him company,
The charred giant airship
Within the iron laws,
In the whirlwind of matter and forces
On boundless paths
Does the reigning fate chase?
Even children of Sunday
Sometimes on starry nights
Behold that wreck as a dark wandering star
High in immeasurable distance,
And, shuddering, they sense the fate
Of the eternally restless one.

[ 46 ] Thus Hamerling has shown, in his own way, that what homunculism conceives cannot belong to the world in which the human soul—which reigns from life to life—lives, but only to purely mechanical forces. And Hamerling’s homunculus is swept away by these mechanical forces of nature. For the poet, this idea could indeed take shape—the idea that modern man, who forms his purely natural ideal of humanity, is in fact only looking within himself at what is in reality an abstraction, something unreal, and belongs to the purely natural elements. This is also what Hamerling means, as Goethe put it, when the homunculus dissolves into the elements:

Hail to the gentle breezes!
Hail to the mysterious tombs!
Here you are all celebrated,
all four elements!

[ 47 ] But while Goethe’s homunculus contributes his powers to Helena’s transformation into a human being, Hamerling’s homunculus—as a soulless being, as the representative of that ideal of humanity that denies the soul—must dissolve into the elements of the cosmos.

[ 48 ] It is fair to say that Hamerling intended—whether he succeeded or not, I leave to others to judge—to hold up a mirror to that modern mindset that wants nothing to do with the spirit and conjures up an ideal of humanity stripped of the spirit. Whether this mirror image is actually recognized is another question. But it is, after all, something that does not truly exist in the physical world—and which, therefore, those who are currently constructing it can rightly deny. What a strange twist of fate! Goethe goes some way toward solving the riddle. He recalls the other saying: “The little people never sense the devil, even if he had them by the collar.” Wagner, who creates the homunculus in his retort, also fails to notice the one who actually creates him: the devil. For it is Mephistopheles who infuses the spiritual forces into him. It is the “Father of All Obstacles” who inspires what is a product of modern science—what materialism seeks to present as modern man.

[ 49 ] I have read about the homunculus a third time. I say this with bashful hesitation, but I do not wish to shy away from a remark that has already occurred to me once before. I read a book by the learned economist Werner Sombart that describes the modern economic man. Read the final chapter on the bourgeois; it is written in a very interesting way; and in the end, the modern economic man emerges—one who is gripped by the forces that govern modern economic life, who is seized by them as if by tentacles, who is driven from one enterprise to the next. The last thing, says Sombart, that he has lost is religion. “Religion has become a business.” There lies modern man—you can literally sense him—within Sombart’s conception of humanity. Anyone familiar with the subject will have to admit: Isn’t he there, after all? Don’t the economists describe him?

[ 50 ] Thus, it becomes clear from all this how homunculism is to be overcome through a living grasp of spiritual life. Just as homunculism is blind to many things, so too is it blind to where its own powers are leading it. Poets have attempted to depict this, and spiritual science feels entirely in harmony with those poets who, out of their intuition, sensed what spiritual science must now reestablish. What spiritual science can offer humanity as a source of life, how it can move people, how it can touch their souls, and how it is the only true, the only genuine conqueror of all homunculism—these are the topics to be addressed in the next lecture. Today I simply wanted to illustrate how what prevails in the circumstances of the present as “homunculism” in various currents of our time has certainly also been recognized by spirits who have observed with open eyes and open senses.

[ 51 ] I believe that Hamerling can be understood from the perspective of the science of the spirit; in particular, one will understand the very last words that I have already taken the liberty of quoting:

Who can say where
And for how long, with the homunculus
And Nize, who keeps him company,
The charred giant airship
Amid the iron laws,
Amid the whirlwind of matter and forces
On boundless paths
Does the reigning fate chase?
Children of Sunday still catch a glimpse
Sometimes on starry nights
Of that wreck as a dark, wandering star
High in immeasurable distance,
And, shuddering, they sense the fate
Of the eternally restless one.

[ 52 ] But perhaps one might also apply a rather well-known saying to this statement: Why gaze into the vastness of the universe with the eyes of a Sunday child in search of the wreckage of the giant airship? The “Munkel” is so close at hand that Sombart can even describe it! It lies very close to modern humanity, and one can only hope that quite a few intuitive and perceptive souls will, in this regard, become a little like “Sunday children” through spiritual science—that they will see the homunculism that is so close at hand, one might say embedded in our contemporary worldview—the wreckage of a worldview nourished solely by natural forces. And there will be more and more of such “Sunday children”—people who have become “Sunday children” through spiritual science. And no matter what—forgive me for the expression—homunculism may bring up against spiritual science, spiritual science will give humanity what it, as it learns to understand itself better and better, simply cannot do without, what it yearns for and must hope for: the soul, and with the soul, spiritual life, which many are already longing for today. Therefore, there is no need to worry about the future of the science of the spirit.

[ 53 ] This final lecture in the winter lecture series will address this sense of confidence and the hope that the humanities hold for the future.