The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. Goethe and the Worldview of German Idealism

[ 1 ] I have always tried to begin the lectures on the subject of spiritual science—which I have been privileged to deliver from this venue during the winter months for many years now—with a reflection on the connection between that particular view of the spiritual world, as represented within this spiritual science as understood here, and general spiritual life. And already last winter I attempted—which must be particularly relevant in our present fateful times—to draw attention, based on the sentiments currently alive within the German people, to that period of German spiritual development in which, from the very core of the German being, a connection—a coexistence—with the spiritual world was sought in the most truly idealistic sense. In our time, when the German people must defend their very existence and their hopes for the future against a world of adversaries, it must be particularly natural to look back to that era of which one of the most popular historians of the German people says: it was the era in which the idealistic spirits of this German people demonstrated that the German spirit, even in times of extreme adversity and the most intense hostility, is capable of preserving that greatness which can be preserved through the cultivation of spiritual life—a life that seems to be inherent precisely in the deepest characteristics of this people. In doing so, we need not fall into the error of our opponents, who today, in such a strange and peculiar way, believe they must characterize the significance of their own people by belittling the nature of their adversaries. There is no need to fall into the error, for example, of those from whom we now hear that the German worldview itself must lead the German people into the most savage warmongering. Rather, without falling into the error of belittling our opponents, we can turn our gaze to what the German people believe—and must believe, in accordance with their very nature—namely, that their mission in world history is rooted in the deepest innermost core of their nature. Nor is it necessary—as so many of Germany’s opponents do today—to form one’s view of what is “folk-like,” whether of one’s own people or of another, out of the immediate hatred and antipathy of the present moment.

[ 2 ] And so let us take as the starting point for today’s reflection a perspective, an idea that, in a time far removed from our own—a time of such fateful significance—an outstanding mind, acting with relative serenity, was able to formulate regarding what constitutes the essence of the German people within the national communities of more recent times, Schiller’s great friend Wilhelm von Humboldt, who was able to delve so wonderfully into the essence of human development, who knew how to portray human needs within the course of world history in such a subtle manner, In 1830, when Wilhelm von Humboldt looked back on what Schiller’s friendship had meant to him, as well as Schiller’s significance for the development of the German people and the entirety of Schiller’s intellectual development, he spoke of the German essence in the following manner:

[ 3 ] “No modern nation has succeeded to the same degree as the German in viewing art and all aesthetic endeavor from their true perspective—not even those nations that the poet boasts will always be recognized as great and outstanding. The deeper and truer orientation of the German lies in his greater inwardness, which brings him closer to the truth of nature, in his inclination toward engagement with ideas and the feelings related to them, and in everything connected with this. In this way, he differs from most modern nations and, in a more precise definition of the concept of inwardness, also from the Greeks. It seeks poetry and philosophy; it does not wish to separate them, but strives to unite them; and as long as this pursuit of philosophy—even of the purest, most abstract philosophy, whose indispensable role is often misunderstood and misinterpreted even among us—lives on within the nation, the impulse that powerful minds unmistakably imparted in the latter half of the previous century will also endure and gain new strength.”

[ 4 ] Thus, someone who has given much thought to the feelings involved in understanding this points to what he had to believe lay in the very mission and immediate destiny of the German people themselves.

[ 5 ] And when we look at what shaped the German spirit from an intellectual perspective during that great era in which German idealism elevated German culture to the stage of thought; and when we point to the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, with all that has developed right up to the immediate phase of development in our own time, then we see something that cannot be encompassed by the concept—certainly significant, but not particularly lofty—of, let us say, the international character of science and the like, which, insofar as it concerns science, goes without saying. But what emerged so powerfully during Germany’s greatest periods in terms of intellectual development was that, at that time, through those thinkers who felt so deeply connected to the German spirit—such as Fichte—the question arose regarding the full significance of knowledge, of what human beings can achieve through the knowledge they develop as science; the relationship of this knowledge to the mystery of the world, to the eternally active, eternally spiritual in the world itself. That knowledge has been called into question, that knowledge itself has become an enigma, and that it was precisely through this inclination toward the enigmatic nature of knowledge that humanity had to make the matter of this knowledge a personal, yet objective and factual, human concern, that is what is immensely significant: to feel deeply connected, in every fiber of one’s being, to what a human being can attain through an ideal in his striving, through the pursuit of knowledge; to strive brightly toward science and yet still be able to raise the question: Can one go beyond this knowledge—or rather, must one even go beyond it—if one wishes to reach the deepest level that connects human beings to the eternal sources of existence? And the reason why this enigma was able to present itself in a particularly intense way to the German soul in its finest minds lies in the fact that, during the era of German idealism, the aspiration arose to possess knowledge not merely as something that instructs one about the world through concepts—as something one approaches dispassionately by seeking to dissect the phenomena of the world—but to possess knowledge as something that lives within the whole soul, that sustains the human being. It was precisely out of this longing for the vitality of knowledge, out of this deep sense of connection with knowledge, that the great enigmatic questions of knowledge arose. It seems as though one would only want to possess knowledge, or cultivate a science, if that science could truly live in such a way that, through the experience of knowledge, one could also find the path to the sources of existence.

[ 6 ] It is fascinating to see how German minds, in their knowledge and in their science, seek to live in a much higher sense than is usually implied when one speaks of the connection between life and science. Last winter, in a similar context, I attempted to characterize Fichte’s distinctive nature—this noble German spirit who, during one of the most difficult periods in the development of the German people, placed his intellectual endeavors entirely in the service of his people, and who, through the depth of his spirit, found the most wonderful words of inspiration to stir German enthusiasm. Part of what Fichte was able to offer his people was the way he felt connected to the pursuit of knowledge and how he strove to rise to the level of German idealism. A portrait that has been preserved for us can illustrate this beautifully. Forberg, who heard Fichte speak as he sought, from the depths of his quest for wisdom, to bring to life what he regarded as his connection with the weaving, reigning world spirit, said the following beautiful words about Fichte’s manner of speaking on spiritual matters:

[ 7 ] “Fichte’s public lecture... roars like a thunderstorm that discharges its fire in individual flashes. It does not move... , but it uplifts the soul... ; it seeks to create great people. Fichte’s gaze is stern, and his gait is defiant. Through his philosophy, Fichte seeks to guide the spirit of the age... ... His imagination is not florid, but energetic and powerful. His images are not charming, but bold and grand. He penetrates to the innermost depths of his subject and moves about in the realm of concepts with a self-assurance that reveals he not only dwells in this invisible realm, but reigns over it.”

[ 8 ] And if one wishes to characterize Fichte’s German style, one must point out how, in seeking to reign in the realm of concepts, he sought within that realm something that was more than what is often called concepts and ideas—namely, a reawakening of those forces of the human soul that are one with the creative forces of all existence, those creative forces that live out there in nature, that have placed human beings themselves within nature, that guide and direct historical life, that interweave and surge through all existence. But in order to gain such a view in its full vitality, Fichte could not remain confined to the abstractness of concepts—to concepts that are merely intellectual constructs. To do so, he needed concepts that were directly lived through and animated by an element of activity that not only illuminates the human soul but also strengthens it, so that this human soul, by first withdrawing from the external world, feels connected precisely to the innermost core of reality. And so Johann Gottlieb Fichte directed his contemplation toward a living force within the human soul that strengthens itself through the will. And what he sensed there as flowing into his will, he experienced as if the divine-spiritual forces that surge and weave through the world were entering the soul, and the soul itself felt at rest within the divine experience. If one wishes to call this aspect of Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s thought “mystical,” one must strip this term of everything that introduces any vagueness into the worldview; one must then associate this concept with all that constitutes the highest energy of knowledge in Fichte’s entire endeavor. Then German idealism appears to one as if condensed into a single focal point—not only when Fichte speaks of German national character, but most of all when he speaks of the highest matters to which his thinking and, one might say, his inner experience are directed. As he attempts to bring the ruling Will to life within his own soul—seeking to make it come alive before those to whom he speaks—he speaks of this Will as if he were conscious that within it lives that which is the innermost essence of the entire world. Thus he speaks as if he himself felt the sublime world-will pulsating within the very will of the human soul, when this human soul, through its quest for knowledge, traces back to the innermost flow and activity of the will itself. Fichte speaks these wondrous words:

[ 9 ] “That sublime Will does not follow its own path, separate from the rest of the rational world. There is a spiritual bond between it and all finite rational beings, and it is this spiritual bond itself within the rational world.... I veil my face from you and place my hand over my mouth; how you are in yourself and how you appear to yourself, I can never comprehend, just as surely as I can never become you yourself. Even after a thousand times a thousand spiritual experiences, I will still understand no more than I do now, in this hut of earth. - “What I comprehend becomes finite through my very act of comprehension; and even through infinite growth and elevation, this can never be transformed into the infinite. You differ from the finite not in degree, but in kind. Through that growth, they make you only a greater human being—and ever a greater one—but never God, the Infinite, who is beyond all measure.”

[ 10 ] Thus Fichte addresses that which he perceives as the Will of the World by deepening his quest for knowledge, so that it may discover what, in the innermost depths of the soul, binds that soul to the sources of existence; that from which the soul must create if it is to feel that, through its creation, it is in harmony with the historical and eternal powers that guide all existence itself, That science, through an idealistic contemplation of life, must lead to such an understanding of human inner life that this inner life simultaneously encompasses the innermost essence of worldly existence within human striving—this is the fundamental tenet of German idealism. And, in essence, Fichte’s philosophical colleagues also confront the great enigmatic questions of existence with such idealism. |

[ 11 ] From a certain perspective, last winter I attempted to portray precisely this realm of thought within German idealism and the worldview of that German idealism. At that time, I set out to show how Fichte attempted to grasp the existence of the world through the experience of the innermost nature of the human will itself, by seeking to grasp the human soul at the point where the will can delve into it. I wanted to show how Fichte, in attempting to penetrate to the very essence of the human “I,” could not be satisfied with grasping this “I” in its being or in mere thought—for example, in the sense of Descartes with his “I think, therefore I am,” but rather how Fichte sought to grasp the “I”—the innermost essence of the human soul—in such a way that there lies within it something that can never fundamentally lose its existence, because it can recreate this existence anew at every moment. Fichte sought to demonstrate the living, ever-creative will as the original source of the human “I”; not through a judgment such as: “I think this is something, therefore I am”—Fichte did not seek to discover the essence of the “I” in this way, but rather by demonstrating: Now, even if this “I” were not to exist at any given moment, or if one were compelled to conclude from certain signs that it did not exist, such a judgment would be invalid for the very reason that this “I” is a creative one—because it can recreate its existence at every moment from the depths of this “I.” In this continual re-creation, in this persistence of the creative, in this connection with the creative nature of the world, Fichte sought to recognize the essence of the “I” in the will, to preserve it in the will, and to give vivid form to the quest for knowledge.

[ 12 ] And Schelling, Fichte’s philosophical comrade—who in many respects went so far beyond him—approached nature in such a way that, for him, nature was not what it otherwise is in many respects to the external sciences: a sum of phenomena to be dissected; but for Schelling, nature was that which is similar in its essence to the human spirit, except that the human spirit stands in the present, experiencing itself, whereas nature has lived through this spirit, so that it now rests, enchanted, within her, hiding behind her veil and revealing itself through her external phenomena. Just as one considers a human being in terms of his physiognomy—not merely describing this physiognomy in terms of form, like a statue, but looking through the physiognomy to what is living, spiritual life, which shines through the physiognomic features, which animates and warms the outer form — in the same way, Schelling sought to trace back, through the outward appearances of nature, through its external manifestations—as through the physiognomy of nature—to that which is spiritual in nature, to unite the spirit in the soul with the spirit in nature. And from this arose his one-sided yet bold approach to the pursuit of knowledge, expressed in Schelling’s words: “To comprehend nature is to create nature!” That there might be something in the human soul that need only rouse itself to a creatively living existence, and in so doing—though it does not create the external phenomena of nature—creates images that are akin to that which creates behind nature; this lives in the words: “To understand nature is to create nature!” Today, one truly need not take this philosophy of German idealism dogmatically; one need not be its follower—that is not the point. Rather, what matters is coming to know the inner nature of the soul from which such a direction of spiritual life springs. And so one could, in the fullest sense of the word, be an opponent of the dogmas of German idealism, yet find something indestructibly alive, something that holds the promise of the future, in the way the human soul of that time sought to penetrate the deepest mysteries of existence.

[ 13 ] And in this context, we may refer to Hegel, the third in this series, who did not shy away from ascending to the coldest realms of pure thought. For Hegel believed that when the soul withdraws from all the warmth of external perception, from all immediate repose in natural existence—when it is entirely alone with the concepts that live within the soul in such a way that this soul is no longer present with its own volition in the thinking of the concepts, but rather surrenders itself to the process of how one concept emerges from another, how concepts reign within it, without the soul turning in any way to anything other than these reigning pure, crystal-clear, and transparent concepts, which it allows to reign and weave within it as they themselves will, not as the soul will—then, so Hegel believed, in this unfolding, in this flowing in of the concepts, a union of the soul with the ruling World Spirit itself, which expresses itself through concepts, which, through millions of years, by sending its concepts imperiously through infinity, brought the external world into being from the condensation of these concepts, and then placed humanity within it so that humanity can awaken in its soul these concepts from which the world itself emerged. It is certainly one-sided, then, the way Hegel delves into the world of existence by attempting to penetrate to the sources of existence through the pure world of concepts, while squeezing out all other reality; is it one-sided in that the world spirit, which surges and weaves through the world, is thereby reduced to a mere logician who conjures up the world out of pure logic, yet this striving, which springs directly from the German essence and German character, also shows how the German spirit, out of its quest for knowledge, seeks in its own way to connect that which lives in the soul—that which can be directly perceived in the soul’s innermost being—and that which, by being perceived in this way, simultaneously seizes the spirit surging through the world. The grasping of the world spirit by the spirit that is developed within the soul—that is the fundamental trait of this striving. And while the proper way to approach worldly life and its understanding only be resolved in a reasonably satisfactory manner by the human soul in the very, very distant future, the manner in which it was attempted within German idealism—this way of seeking the world spirit—is so intimately connected with the German essence and is, at the same time, the way in which, in our time, the eternal must be sought within the temporal human soul.

[ 14 ] One can see just how intimately this particular mode of cognition is interwoven with German intellectual endeavors when, looking at the dawn of modern intellectual striving, one observes how two phenomena stand in contrast to one another at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries; for this is precisely the period in which the forces first emerged that provided the impetus for the modern worldview and European development. One sees in an interesting way how the German soul relates to this dawn of spiritual life when, for example, one contrasts side by side—precisely at the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth centuries—on the one hand—one may otherwise regard this remarkable spirit as one pleases, we shall consider him today solely in the context of the development of modern spiritual striving—if one places Jakob Böhme side by side and compares him with a thinker active at roughly the same time in Western Europe, with a mind that is as characteristic of his people as Jakob Böhme is of his, namely Montaigne.

[ 15 ] Montaigne, too, stands out as a towering, significant figure, embodying one of the elements emerging in the dawn of modern intellectual life. He is the great skeptic. He is the one who, drawing from French culture, receives an impulse something like this: Here we are, looking at the world. It reveals its secrets to us through our senses. We try, through our thinking, to unravel these secrets. Yet who can say with any certainty, Montaigne asks, that the senses do not deceive us; that what is revealed to the senses from the depths of the world could in any way have a connection—one that we can grasp—with the sources of existence. And who can fail to recognize, this great skeptic argues, that even if one does not rely on the senses but on judgment and reason—if one seeks proofs and each proof in turn demands another proof, and the new proof in turn demands yet another proof—that one can then continue along this chain of proofs and indeed must continue, because everything one believes one has proven appears fleeting once again upon closer examination. Neither thought nor sensory perception can provide any certainty. Therefore, according to Montaigne, a wise person is one who does not seek such certainty at all; one who regards the phenomena of the world and the insights into the sources of existence with an inner irony; who knows that, although one can reflect on and observe all things, one thereby gains only a knowledge that one might just as well accept as reject, without having any hope of attaining, through intellectual endeavor, anything other than precisely that kind of knowledge toward which one can only adopt a doubtful and ironic attitude.

[ 16 ] At the same time, within the German spirit stands Jakob Böhme, who embarks on a journey into the depths of the human soul through the mere inner development of the soul’s powers, through the mere immersion into what the soul can draw up from its depths. And because he finds these depths of the human soul exactly as he believes he can find them, he was clear about this, he was convinced that, as he descends into the depths of the human soul, he simultaneously hears the sources of all existence—the natural and the spiritual, the entire vast expanse of existence—pouring in from these depths. For Jakob Böhme, descending into the depths of the soul also meant stepping out into the reigning divine spiritual life of the world. And so Jakob Böhme sought this path; on this path, there can be no question whatsoever of doubt or of an ironic mood in the Montaignean sense, because Jakob Böhme, in his own way, is clear that he lives in the Spirit—for one cannot doubt that in which one lives, that in which one co-creates by immersing oneself in it. And one might say: Only a revival of this aspiration of Jakob Böhme in a higher form lies in what lives on the stage of German idealism through the spirits just mentioned. And these very same thinkers are, in essence, all turning their gaze once again toward a figure who—however much this may at times have been doubted from a narrow-minded standpoint—has emerged in his entire being, in his entire nature, from the deepest folk spirit of German culture: Goethe. And Fichte, the philosopher who strove only for clarity, who was never satisfied unless he could express what he had to say in sharply defined concepts, Fichte, who could be regarded as a dry, sober man of reason—though that was not his nature, it is what characterizes his striving—and who, in the peculiarity of his being, might be thought to be far, far removed from Goethe, — Fichte addressed those beautiful words to Goethe, in which he sought to express how he tried to harmonize the highest ideal he strove to bring forth from within himself with what Goethe was by nature. When Fichte had published the first, most abstract—one might say the coldest, most historical—part of his *Science of Knowledge*, he presented the book to Goethe and wrote to him:

[ 17 ] “I regard you—and have always regarded you—as the representative (of the purest spirituality of feeling) at the stage of humanity we have now reached. Philosophy rightly turns to you. Your feeling is its touchstone!”

[ 18 ] Words that any of the others mentioned could have addressed to Goethe in the same way—indeed, words that each of them, as historical records show, did address to Goethe in one way or another.

[ 19 ] And when Schiller had attempted, in his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man”—which, as I took the liberty of characterizing here last winter, has been far too little appreciated—to answer the question from the depths of Kantian philosophy: How must the human soul strive so that, through the harmonious interplay of all its powers, it may truly attain a free coexistence with the World Spirit?—and when Schiller turned his gaze to Goethe, he saw in Goethe something like the German spirit at one of its focal points, seeking to present to the world, from the deepest innermost core of his being, the highest goal to which he wished to ascend. Schiller admired in the striving of the ancient Greeks the pure, free humanity—that pure, free humanity which, on the one hand, is free to turn toward external nature, yet does not allow this nature to exert such an external necessity upon itself as is the case with more recent intellectual striving, in which human beings become unfree in their striving in the face of the interconnection of nature. This Greek nature, which, on the other hand, became so aware of itself in the deepest recesses of the soul that it felt itself to be nature itself, even in its innermost being—this Greek spirit, which stood before Schiller’s soul as a model of all human striving and self-expression—Schiller saw it recently illuminated in Goethe’s manner and life before the spirit of the modern age. And Schiller characterized this in a letter to Goethe—written around the same time that Fichte wrote the aforementioned words to Goethe—with the following words:

[ 20 ] “For a long time now, though from a considerable distance, I have observed the course of your mind and noted the path you have charted for yourself with ever-renewed admiration. You seek the essence of nature, but you seek it by the most arduous path, one that any weaker mind would surely avoid. You take all of nature as a whole to gain insight into the particular; in the totality of its manifestations, you seek the basis for explaining the individual. From simple organisms, you ascend, step by step, to the more complex ones, in order to finally construct the most complex of all—human beings—genetically from the materials of the entire edifice of nature. By, as it were, recreating them within nature, you seek to penetrate their hidden mechanisms. A grand and truly heroic idea, which amply demonstrates how firmly your mind holds the rich whole of its conceptions together in a beautiful unity. You could never have hoped that your life would suffice for such a goal, but merely setting out on such a path is worth more than completing any other—and you have chosen, like Achilles in the Iliad, between Phthia and immortality. Had you been born a Greek—or even just an Italian—and had an exquisite nature and an idealizing art surrounded you from the cradle onward, your path would have been infinitely shortened, perhaps rendered entirely superfluous. Even in your very first perception of things, you would then have absorbed the form of the necessary, and with your earliest experiences, the grand style would have developed within you. Now, since you were born a German, since your Greek spirit was cast into this Nordic creation, you had no choice but either to become a Nordic artist yourself, or to replace in your imagination what reality withheld from it through the guidance of the power of thought, and thus, as it were, to give birth to a Greece from within and by rational means.” Creativity springing from the deepest inner self, which not only creates the present but even gives birth anew to the past from one’s own being: the spirit of Goethe. Schiller characterizes it wonderfully and selflessly in this letter, in which he so aptly laid the foundation for the friendship between these two spirits, Goethe and Schiller; Schiller characterizes this inner nature of the creative process of the Goethean spirit wonderfully. And truly, this is how Goethe, with all his aspirations, appears in the image of German idealism.

[ 21 ] That is why, out of the striving of Goethe’s personality, a poetic figure could emerge—and I do not believe one needs to be prejudiced to say this—that places itself, in a wholly unique way, within world literature and, indeed, within the entire creative fabric of the world: the figure, the persona of Faust. How does he stand there, this Faust? As the highest representative of human striving, yet—since he is, after all, a university professor—he stands there as a representative of the pursuit of knowledge and understanding! And right at the beginning of *Faust*, what becomes the enigma, what becomes the great question? Knowledge itself, the pursuit of understanding, becomes the question! Two elements play out to the full in this Faust epic. And one must point to this full expression of the two elements if one wishes, on the one hand, to understand the fundamental character of Goethe’s Faust epic and, on the other hand, its connection to the innermost nature of German intellectual striving.

[ 22 ] Admittedly, the term “magic” and everything associated with it are not exactly popular today. But Goethe found it necessary to place his Faust in the realm of magic, after knowledge and insight had become a question, a riddle, for this Faust. And the fact that we are able today to separate everything that is commonly associated with the concept of magic from a deeper spiritual striving—that will be my task in particular to demonstrate tomorrow in my lecture, where I intend to speak about the eternal forces of the human soul. Yet one can perhaps conceive of the way in which Goethe has his Faust turn to magic as entirely separate from all the wild superstition and nebulous striving associated with the word “magic” and with magical striving in general. One can certainly look past the trivialities and focus instead on the main point—namely, the fundamental trait of human striving as expressed in *Faust* itself. Why must Faust—who has truly engaged with all the human sciences and sought clarity in them regarding the source that underlies existence—why must Faust turn to magic, to a completely different way of connecting with nature than that of the ordinary pursuit of knowledge? Why? For the reason that Faust has experienced everything that can be experienced in the pursuit of knowledge; because he has experienced what a person can feel who has a longing for the depths of the world’s essence; what a person can feel when they sense within themselves, in a living way, what external science can encompass. This science brings the laws of nature to mind in concepts, in ideas. But am I truly immersed in existence through these concepts, or do I have in these concepts only something that weaves itself like a phantom within my own soul—and which, perhaps, in relation to this image is clear, though not in relation to its living reality, and has a direct connection to the sources of existence? What intrudes into the soul in this way as a question can be experienced in various ways. One can experience it weakly, but one can also experience it strongly, so that the enigma that takes root in the soul through these sensations becomes like a nightmare from which this human soul seeks to free itself. For the soul can say to itself: All this knowledge is, after all, merely something one constructs on the basis of existence. All this knowledge is, after all, something derived from existence. But I must descend into existence with what I experience within myself.

[ 23 ] What, one might say, Schelling believed in his presumption, Faust simply cannot believe: that by living in concepts, one creates within nature. Rather, he wants to descend into nature. He wants to seek out nature where it lives in the creative process. He wants to unfold an activity that is such that the human soul accomplishes it, but which, because this activity is within the soul, is both the creation of nature and the creation of the soul. Because Faust cannot achieve this in any other way, he attempts it by seeking to enliven within himself the path that ancient magicians have tried. Faust seeks to possess something within his soul that does not merely reflect nature in concepts, but that reveals to him what lives behind phenomena and creates behind them. He seeks not merely to incorporate into his knowledge the spiritual element in nature’s creative work—which floods and weaves through the world, surging up and down in torrents of life and storms of action—but to connect himself to it in a living way. He seeks the path to it in such a way that nature’s spiritual creativity stands beside him, just as one human soul stands beside another, embodied here in physical existence, so that one experiences existence, rather than merely knowing about it.

[ 24 ] And thus Faust does indeed stand before nature just as—one need only point to a thinker like Jakob Böhme, in his own way; one need only look at what underlies the German philosophical striving of the idealist era— there stands Faust, eagerly awaiting insights from certain endeavors to which he seeks to rise—facing nature, yet standing alongside nature, in a manner befitting the innermost life and workings of the German spirit: creating nature within the soul and allowing it to become living science, living knowledge. That is why Goethe must bring his Faust into contact with magic.

[ 25 ] Goethe brings his Faust together with something else—something that perhaps, even more than the magical element that confronts us in the first scenes and then continues in a, I would say, immediately dramatic manner—while the magical element itself fades into the background—there is something that appears even more wondrous than this magical element in Goethe’s *Faust*—something that is now intimately interwoven precisely with the spiritual aspirations of the German people.

[ 26 ] Let us try—as I said, without passing judgment on its value in a dogmatic or any other way—to approach Jakob Böhme; let us try, in particular, to bring one aspect of Jakob Böhme’s striving to life in our souls. A great question stands before Jakob Böhme regarding the mysteries of existence—the question that arises from contemplating the world when one says: The world is governed by the World Spirit in its goodness, in its wisdom. Those who are able to immerse themselves in the World Spirit perceive the flow of the world’s wisdom, as well as the flow of the world’s goodness. But then evil intrudes—evil in the form of suffering, evil in the form of human deeds. Now, if one does not focus on the abstraction of thought, but rather on a sensorial and emotional quest for knowledge—a quest that engages the whole human being—one stands in awe of the way Jakob Böhme poses the question of the origin of evil. He simply cannot help but say to himself: The world spirit, the divine world spirit—one must conceive of it as connected to the sources of life; but one does not find the origin of evil by delving into the world spirit. And yet evil is there. — With tremendous intensity, the question of the origin of evil arises before Jakob Böhme’s quest for knowledge. He seeks to answer it by asking about evil in the same way one might ask about the origin of the deeds of light. What Jakob Böhme developed so profoundly can, for the sake of brevity, only be illustrated here through this comparison. For just as one can never derive from the light itself that which manifests as the works of light, but always requires darkness for this; and just as one can never derive the darkness with which the light must appear from the light itself, but must rather go to the very source of the light if one wishes to examine the works of light in external nature, so Jakob Böhme, too, does not seek in the Divine, but in that which stands alongside the Divine—like a shadow, like darkness beside light, which one does not seek in the light, but for which one also does not need reasons in the same way as for the light itself—so Jakob Böhme seeks to find the essential nature, not merely the principle, of evil. He seeks to find it by undertaking precisely the journey into the depths of the soul described above, and by attempting at the same time to grasp the existence of the world at its very sources within the soul. Thus, he confronts evil not as something recognized in the abstract, but as something he attempts to grasp in its reality, in its actuality. In his approach to evil—as something one seeks to grasp not through concepts but through reality—Schelling, in turn, follows him in his highly significant treatise *Philosophical Investigations into the Essence of Human Freedom and Related Subjects* (1809). Thus, Schelling consciously follows Jakob Böhme in his exploration of evil.

[ 27 ] Goethe, drawing from the depths of the German spirit, perceived this enigmatic question of evil in an entirely different way. Just consider what a perilous undertaking it actually was to create a work of poetry in the manner that Goethe did in his *Faust*. On the one hand, Goethe had to portray a purely inner striving—one that, as one might believe, could essentially be expressed only by presenting a human being who relates to the world in a lyrical way. Goethe seeks to bring to life, in a dramatic way, how Faust stands before the world. He does so, however, by allowing what lives in the soul to shine forth in such a way that, while remaining alive within the soul, it also becomes something external. Drama places the human being in the world not merely as he stands in it lyrically, but as he stands in it actively. In this way, Goethe is able—as a dramatist must—to lead the human being out of subjectivity, out of the mere inwardness of being, into the external world. But try to imagine what a pitfall lay in what can be characterized as follows. Now Faust is to strive—just as a human being, when he allows the mysteries of existence to take hold of him, moves forward in the world and becomes a fighter in the world. And yet, such struggles, which arise from the enigmatic questions of knowledge, are inner struggles. As a rule, a person stands alone in this; as a rule, there is nothing dramatic about it. Dramas unfold differently than simply letting the inner life of the human soul play out. How, then, was Goethe actually able to transform what is essentially only an inner matter of the human soul into a vivid, dramatic image? Simply by the fact that, just as he uses magic to bring the inner life of the human being out into nature on the one hand, on the other hand he brings this inner life out into the wider world by attempting to show that, if one seeks out evil and wishes to experience it in its reality, one cannot merely conceive of it as an inner principle and seek an inner explanation for it, but must step right out into life, just as it confronts one in all its vitality. Therefore, Goethe cannot direct his gaze toward evil in such a way that he finds in it something that is mere philosophy; rather, he must direct his gaze toward the essential—toward one who fights Faust, toward one who is the embodiment of evil, who is as alive as a principle of evil as a human being is alive here in his physical body. And he must be able to feel, must be able to show, that the struggle with evil is not merely an abstract, inner struggle, but that it is a struggle waged hour by hour, moment by moment, in which the human being lives. In everything he does, he encounters evil in its essential form. Thus was this obstacle surmounted. Thus, what is otherwise an abstract philosophical principle was truly brought forth into immediate existence, into essential existence. What is otherwise merely spoken of was brought to walking, to moving, to acting, to fighting. For these reasons, on the one hand, the magical element had to come to life in Faust, as Faust attempts to penetrate the veil of nature. On the other hand, evil had to be set against Faust as an essential force—as something that is far more than what is usually called an idea or concept; what is usually conceived as existing only within the soul had to be embodied and brought out into the world. And to achieve this, the poem had to draw upon precisely that depth of understanding of evil that we find to be such a marvelous fundamental trait of German intellectual endeavor—from Jakob Böhme onward through all the deeper German minds who cannot be satisfied by seeking evil merely in philosophical concepts, but who yearn to go out into the world. And as they go out into the world, they encounter evil just as one encounters another human being or the physical world in the flesh. In order to spiritually uncover the inner realm, this striving had to be combined with such a conception of evil. That is to say: just as, on the one hand, nature is to be sensed through magic all the way back to its sources, so too is spiritual life to be placed within human life by revealing evil itself as a spiritually active being. Thus, as a poet, Goethe elevates humanity to the stage of the ideal—but of the living ideal.

[ 28 ] And he was confronted with a precipice in yet another way—he, the great artist of whom Schiller said that he could give birth to a Greece from within himself. He was confronted with a precipice in yet another way—a precipice whose full significance we may only come to see gradually. There, in *Faust*, stands before us the striving human being. Many interpreters of *Faust* have emphasized that Goethe accomplished something great by allowing Faust to be redeemed—that Faust does not, as was the case in earlier portrayals of *Faust*, perish, but that Goethe allows him to be redeemed, because, in accordance with the modern worldview, one must assume that the forces capable of triumphing over evil lie within the human soul. Indeed, one usually does not consider what this actually implies for our understanding of the entire Faust epic. People say to themselves: Goethe’s Faust could only have become what he did if Goethe had, from the very beginning, intended to take human nature into account in such a way that Faust could be redeemed. One imagines a drama—or indeed any work of art—that unfolds over time and is meant to be great, such that one knows from the outset what the outcome must be. And that is actually what it ought to be. For, as is commonly believed, a person must bring their own convictions regarding the highest mysteries of life. In reality, this says nothing more and nothing less than that “Faust,” by its very nature, ought to be the most tedious work of poetry in the world. After all, every pedant today knows—or at least believes he knows—that man, if he strives correctly, is ultimately destined to be redeemed. And now one of the greatest poets is supposed to present a grandiose epic of the world in order to illustrate this self-evident truth through every possible form! And yet, Goethe succeeded—not in embodying the thought just expressed in some abstract way, but in presenting living life before us through a long, long series of images. Why? Simply because he showed how that which, when grasped internally as an abstract thought, would be nothing but a triviality, a matter of course, presents itself in life in an entirely different way; because he attempts to expand life, on the one hand toward the magical, and on the other hand toward the spiritual, the intellectual; because for him the striving toward nature is not a quest for knowledge but a magical striving; because the striving toward evil or the recognition of evil is not merely a philosophical matter but a matter of life. How does that which is otherwise merely an inner, abstract striving of the soul become a matter of life? It becomes a matter of life when a person, facing nature in the sense that Faust faces nature in the sense of his own striving, seeks to go beyond abstract knowledge. Faust wishes to go beyond that which can exist only within concepts, that which continues to unfold as ideas and concepts. He wants to enter the sphere of nature, where creative life exists, with which the soul’s own creative life unites, in order to transcend the merely abstract life of concepts through nature’s creative process.

[ 29 ] But when one grasps the matter in the fullness of life, one enters into that aspect of the human being from which the human being, in turn, emerges precisely by acquiring consciousness through one’s concepts. One need only go back to what, for example, the Greek Stoics sought out of a serious pursuit of knowledge. They sought a wisdom that would smooth over the world and encompass it, a wisdom that had nothing whatsoever to do with human passion. Human beings were to become dispassionate, to be dispassionate, so that in the calm conceptual grasp of the wisdom that surges through the world, they might feel their own souls blossom. Why did the Stoics want this? Because they felt that one emerges from a certain intoxication of life—from a semi-unconscious immersion in life—by arriving at the dispassionate concept. Stoicism consists precisely in the search for a life free of intoxication.

[ 30 ] Now, as a result of the course of human development, the personality that is to be represented in *Faust* stands before nature in such a way that knowledge becomes a question for her—that very thing through which human beings attempt to save themselves from the intoxication of life. He can enter into the intoxication of life; by immersing himself in the creative forces of the soul, he does not absorb the very forces with which he has just elevated himself, but rather he plunges downward, seeking to connect the depths of the soul with the depths of nature. From this, however, arises what constitutes Faust’s error in the first part of the poem: the immersion into sensuality, into sensual life, even into the outward, trivial life that he must undergo within his own personality, because he is to connect what lives within his own personality—what lives in the depths of the soul—with what lives in the depths of worldly existence. To vividly portray the error through which a human being can be tested in his or her soul—that is the task of the first part of *Faust* and also of a large section in the second part of *Faust*.

[ 31 ] “Faust” depicts how, in seeking to grasp the world personally—to seize it in all its power through knowledge—human beings expose themselves to the danger of being submerged in the personal realm and swept into the maelstrom of life. And this does not depend on some abstract doctrine, but on the nature of Faust’s will and character. It is this that truly makes the work poetry. And on the other hand: by striving for a true understanding of evil and not being satisfied with a theoretical, conceptual understanding of evil, human beings must break through what constitutes ordinary soul life; for there they find only concepts, ideas, and feelings. He must pass through this life of the soul; he must go where a person, without seeing the essential and real through the senses, perceives the essential and real through pure soul experiences—perceives the essential and real from within the spirit. This becomes the task of the one who wishes to recognize evil by experiencing it in its reality. This will be Faust’s task in relation to Mephistopheles. But human beings, as they are at first, cannot approach this evil at all. It is virtually impossible to approach evil as human beings are at first; for one must know the world, and one can know it only by knowing it in the soul. One must form concepts. One must possess within the soul that which can be experienced there. After all, as more recent philosophers have asserted—both rightly and wrongly at the same time—one cannot transcend one’s consciousness. But if one remains within consciousness, evil remains merely an abstract concept and does not manifest itself in its essential form.

[ 32 ] Faust faces a great, so to speak, impossible task. Yet, as *Faust* itself states, “he who desires the impossible” is great. Faust faces the downright impossible task of transcending that which alone is the source of his consciousness—of stepping out of consciousness. This will be his path forward: the path out of the ordinary consciousness of the soul. Tomorrow we will speak of the path of knowledge leading from ordinary consciousness to those realms where the spirit is grasped directly as spirit. This stands before Faust as a task. He cannot find evil in its essential nature in the realm toward which consciousness is initially directed. Therefore, he must once again—and now not in a general, trivial, abstract way—come to find the reconciliation of the human being with existence, but in the way that he, as an individual human being, is capable of doing. It must be shown how he finds his way out of ordinary consciousness to an understanding of life that now springs from deeper forces of the soul.

[ 33 ] Thus we see Faust moving forward, as it were, attacking and probing—I would say, probing inwardly—the existence of the world everywhere, to see where he might find the gateway through which to pass from the outer shell into the inner core. Thus we see him soaring so far that, having transformed his soul and transformed it ever more, he truly descends in his experience into those depths toward which Jakob Böhme strove—depths that are then hinted at to us in the second part of *Faust* through the fact that Faust finds the broadest, the greatest, the Highest, and at the same time the Deepest—which he had already sought in his journey to the Mothers—as his senses fade, as he goes blind, and as a bright inner light now dawns within him. Out of ordinary consciousness into another consciousness, into a consciousness that slumbers in the depths of the soul, just as the depths of nature’s springs slumber beneath the veil of nature that is perceived by the external senses—to a deeper consciousness that accompanies human beings constantly between birth and death, but which is not present in the realm of ordinary consciousness; to this, Faust must be led. Faust must be guided in two ways—through the strengthening of the ideal life—to the gates that lead from the abstractness of the idea into the living reality of spiritual existence itself: As a magician, Faust knocks on the gate to existence, which leads from the mere contemplation of nature to co-creation with nature; in his interactions—in his vivid, dramatic dealings with Mephistopheles and all that is connected to them—Faust knocks on the other gate, that other gate which leads out of the ordinary consciousness of the soul to a superconsciousness, to a supersensible consciousness that reveals a spiritual world—from which evil itself truly originates—beyond ordinary soul existence, just as external natural revelation is merely the expression of that which lives and weaves entirely within nature.

[ 34 ] By connecting with what one might call the essence of the German national spirit, Goethe created a work of poetry that, in the most difficult sense of the word, could only become poetry. For the most non-sensual—that which is entirely removed from the sensual, the purely inner—was to be given dramatic form. But this inner life becomes dramatic only when it is expanded toward two limits. And Goethe sensed the necessity of this expansion toward two limits. In doing so, he created the possibility of placing this unique body of poetry—which, in a sense, no one within another nation has ever achieved in the same way—within the context of world history.

[ 35 ] If one has these thoughts, one might still ask: Yes, but hasn’t Goethe actually created a work of literature that requires a great deal of preparation to understand? It almost seems that way. For the commentaries that scholars—both German and non-German—have written on Goethe’s *Faust* fill several libraries, not just one. But even if one were to conclude from this that a great deal of preparation is required to understand the *Faust* epic, the thought must nevertheless occur to one: What, then, did Goethe actually base this *Faust* epic on? On some abstract philosophical pursuit? On speculation about the magical foundations of nature? Or on speculation about the sources, the origins of evil? No, certainly not! He had seen the puppet show—a purely folk performance, the folk play of Faust that was presented to the simplest of minds—and he had seen it; and what lives and weaves within it, he reworked in his own way. The Faust epic, therefore, presents us—in the best sense—with a work of art and a work of the spirit which, if one looks only at the most general aspects of its origin, shows how this pinnacle of German intellectual life sprang from the most immediate folk tradition—that is, from the most elemental aspects of the national spirit—and how German idealistic intellectual striving is connected to the essence of the German national spirit. Historically, too, this is evident in the emergence of humanity’s highest poetry from the simplest folk drama. This is a significant event in world history: that a mind capable of immersing itself so deeply in folk culture through its inner workings—such as Goethe’s—and capable of creating the very highest from the most primitive folk culture, a supreme work that, as we have been able to show, is also connected to the most significant philosophical endeavor—the idealistic philosophical endeavor—of Germany’s great age of the spirit. One sees in *Faust*—as I said, these things must not be taken dogmatically—the striving Fichte. In what sense? Fichte does not, like Descartes, seek to grasp Being—the “I”—by bringing thought to consciousness, but rather Fichte seeks to grasp Being—the “I”—by aligning himself with the world-creating forces that play their part within the soul, so that the “I” creates itself in every moment. We see this, translated into dramatic will and immediate vitality, shine forth once again in *Faust*. Faust is not satisfied with the self that the human quest for knowledge could hand down to him; rather, he wants to experience his own self directly in the spiritual world. The entire progression of the dramatic plot in *Faust* consists precisely in the fact that the “I,” in its engagement with the world, recreates itself and continually elevates itself. Fichte lives on in Goethe’s *Faust*; Schelling, too, lives on in Goethe’s *Faust*, in that Faust, on the one hand, attempts to unite the truth of magic with his soul, but also seeks the true striving in the depths of the soul; by seeking, in his encounter with the representative of evil—as a direct spirit—that which cannot be found in ordinary soul life, in thinking, feeling, and willing. Faust truly seeks out nature where it lives in creation. Schelling had, I might say, explained it in a presumptuous way when he said: “To understand nature is to create nature!”—Fichte stands on sounder ground when he says: “To understand nature is to live oneself into the creation of nature through one’s own creation.” — But one can see how the drive toward a deeper quest for knowledge, toward the sources of existence, is alive in Fichte as well. Hegel strove for sober thought, and one cannot be more sober than Hegel. The World Spirit, with which the soul attempts to unite in Hegelian philosophy, becomes a mere logician. To conceive of the divine World Spirit as a logical soul that constructs the world solely through logic! One must not take this dogmatically, but one must regard it as an expression of the striving that remains mystical even within the most extreme logic—a striving that seeks a union of the soul’s deepest essence with the pinnacle of the entire existence of the world, both in nature and in history. Hegel, too, must be understood in this way: that one cannot find one’s own self in what the senses provide us, but only in what the human soul can attain within itself when it emerges from the sensory world. This is also the goal of Hegel’s philosophy. And Faust, after his eyesight has faded, is illuminated by a brighter light within. What Hegel seeks on the right path—though he cannot perceive it as the true goal—is what Faust seeks: to allow one’s own self to merge peacefully into the World-Self, to unite with it, and thus to experience the World-Self within one’s own self.

[ 36 ] Can we not say, as Wilhelm von Humboldt did, that this German striving has not only sought, in a beautiful way, to establish harmony between philosophy—if one wishes to call the pursuit of a worldview that—and poetry, and art in general, but that the German spirit has also given this striving external form and expression in *Faust* in a wholly unique way? Is not the very essence of Germanness characterized precisely by this harmonious resonance between what the imagination creates and what the sense of truth seeks? Is it not the case that, for the most part, the prevailing view in the rest of the world is that the imagination creates in freedom, but in unreality? The sense of truth does indeed create in accordance with the necessities of existence, but in doing so it does not attain a real life—only an objectification, a representation of experience. To bring the imagination out of its unreality and to enliven what it is capable of creating in such a way that the created coexists with the living spirit—so that harmony, a harmonious unity between poetry and philosophy, may one day be realized in a work of art—this is what Goethe attempts, drawing upon the complete originality and the truly unphilosophical nature of his being. And having achieved this harmonization between poetry and philosophy, between imagination and worldview, by connecting himself to the sources of the most deeply folk-rooted aspects of the German spirit, one may say: Just as Goethe’s creative work—one could demonstrate this with other works of his as well, but it is most clearly and explicitly evident in his *Faust*—manifests itself in connection with what the idealistic German worldview, in turn, sought; there it is, as it now stands before us, seemingly the intellectual heritage of a few who have specially prepared themselves for it. One can also consider that, fundamentally, supporters and opponents in the broader course of German intellectual life—right up to our own time—have sought to grapple with the paths taken back then in the era of Goethe, Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel. Infinite effort has been expended to truly understand the paths taken back then, along which one can find the sources of existence. However, anyone who delves more deeply into what was lived out on the stage of German idealism may come to the conclusion that what was developed there need not remain the preserve of only a few, of only individuals. Certainly, if one wishes to delve today into the worldview as Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel themselves presented it—if one engages with their books—one will, understandably, soon close the books again unless one intends to make a special study of them. For, understandably, one might say: All of this is, after all, completely incomprehensible. Nor should any further criticism be leveled at those who claim that it is incomprehensible and indigestible. But there is a possibility—and this possibility is actually dictated by human development—that what is seemingly an indigestible asset for the few can become quite popular and truly find its way into the entire intellectual and cultural life of humanity. In order to grasp humanity’s striving for the world in the way that it was grasped in German idealism, it was necessary for some to devote themselves entirely to the specific elaboration of concepts and ideas, and to attempt this in a solitude of intellectual life that stands alone as such.

[ 37 ] But it does not have to stop there. It is possible to present what lives in Fichte—in thoughts that are so abstract, so abstruse, and, as many might rightly say from their point of view, so convoluted—in such a popular way—I know that to many this may sound somewhat paradoxical, but time will show that it is correct—if one immerses oneself in the spirit and the essence of his thought, so as to present it in such a way that it can be immediately imparted to boys and girls in their earliest youth; that it can be understood in the same way one understands something that lies entirely within the nature of human life, if one wishes to grasp this human life. And so it is with all the other heroes of the mind! One can do this just as one can with the Grimm fairy tales. It requires no more spiritual alertness of the soul to recognize, feel, and sense Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel in the deepest recesses of their creations than it does to grasp a fairy tale in the proper imaginative way, as it appears in the Grimm fairy tales. But the path will first have to lead people to live in harmony with something that belongs to the very highest that humanity has experienced in the realms of knowledge and poetry. And that is the significance of this idealistic striving of the German spirit. Once it is demonstrated how one can grasp the essence of the soul in a simple way—by appealing to the creative powers that will dawn on everyone if one merely points them in the right direction—then one will be able to present to people, in a simple, elemental, and immediate way, that which Fichte, in order to discover it for the first time, certainly required a particular height of the spirit to achieve. The same applies to the other point. But is what I am saying really so outrageous? I do not believe that anyone who remembers how they learned to understand the Pythagorean theorem in school will find it so outrageous. But that does not mean they are inclined to consider themselves a Pythagoras, even though Pythagoras’s intellectual level and mental power were necessary to discover the Pythagorean theorem in the first place. An intense stream of spiritual experience of the world will flow from what the greatest German minds have sought—albeit in solitary, abstruse thoughts within German idealism—down into the most ordinary human endeavors and lives.

[ 38 ] And this ordinary human striving will possess much—infinitely much—if it is able to position itself correctly in relation to the ever-creative nature and to the human “I”’s sense of self-creation, extending all the way to its conscious standing within the infinite. It is only in this merging with creative nature that the human soul will be able to experience and feel the great beauties of nature as it reveals itself. And the same applies, in a similar way, to the other elements of this German spiritual life.

[ 39 ] One must feel this; only then does one truly grasp the connection between German aspirations and the aspirations of the entire world. And to revive this sense in our own day seems certainly fitting in light of the fateful times we face. And it is indeed part of what gives the German soul its strength. To conclude, here is an example.

[ 40 ] Even before the German people’s unified identity and the new German state had emerged from the context of the world and from history, an author who remains unknown wrote some beautiful words in his reflection on Goethe’s *Faust*. It was 1865. I cite these words from an otherwise completely unknown commentator on *Faust* only because they express what countless others have felt in exactly the same way. Since the rise of German idealism—which we have spoken of again today—countless of the finest German minds have sensed the connection between the paths that idealism takes into the spirit of nature and into the deeper foundations of the soul and spirit themselves. They have sensed that there is a connection between what the German spirit, at its zenith, has created for thought—what it has bequeathed to humanity as the sum of thoughts and artistic creations—and what forces can also live on in German action, in what the German people must now do, when it must wage its struggles in the world on a stage other than that of thought. It is precisely those who knew how to hold German thought and German idealistic creativity in the highest regard in their own way who have felt this connection between German spiritual life and German action most deeply. And from contemplating the history of German idealism—with its ascent to the heights where thought leads into the life of the spirit—from contemplating this sphere of German idealism, there has always emerged the most beautiful hope that the German people will find the impulse for action from this very same source when they need it.

[ 41 ] To conclude, let us cite an example that could be applied to many, but here we will focus—and quite deliberately so—on one who has become very little known: Kreyssig, an interpreter of *Faust*. Kreyssig, having written a treatise on Goethe’s *Faust* in 1865—in which he attempted to clarify for himself what Goethe actually intended with his *Faust*—concludes with the words:

[ 42 ] “And so we would also know the overall impression left by the contemplation of this colossal monument to our great era of enlightenment—which, after all, remains unfinished and fragmentary— we could not better summarize it here than by simply recalling a passage from the famous testament of the then 75-year-old poet to the younger generation, which was preparing to embark on new paths.”

[ 43 ] Kreyssig cites Goethe’s own thoughts when he focuses on the way Goethe sought a path into the spiritual world well into his old age. Kreyssig explains how the power that leads into this spiritual world seems to him to be connected to the power that is to bring about German achievement in distant, distant times—times that Goethe, as an old man, could only intuit:

The solemn style, the high art of the ancients,
The primeval mystery of eternal forms,
It is familiar to both humans and gods,
It will turn the pages of rocks as it does of books.
For what Homer and the Scipios created,
Will never dwell in the scholarly greenhouse!
They wanted to transplant us into the greenhouse;
But the German oak grew into its full form!
A storm of growth has swept over it,
It has shattered the glass of the greenhouse.
Now grow, O oak, grow to the world’s delight.
Already I see new rays of sunlight flying.
And when my gray eyelashes close,
A gentle light will still pour forth,
From whose reflection, from those stars,
The late grandchildren will learn to see,
And in prophetically higher visions
To accomplish greater things for the world and humanity.

[ 44 ] And the commentator on *Faust* adds—in 1865—:

[ 45 ] “Let us add the wish that the words of the Master—who looks down upon us with gentle light from better stars—may come true for his people, who, though shrouded in darkness, confusion, and distress, yet, God willing, with indomitable strength, seeks its path to clarity, and that “in those higher accounts of God and humanity, which the poet of *Faust* expects from the centuries to come, German deeds, too, may no longer be merely symbolic shadows, but may one day find their place and their glorification in beautiful, life-affirming reality alongside German thought and German feeling!”

[ 46 ] This is how a German figure in 1865 conceived of the German ideal in connection with the hoped-for German deed. How must the disembodied souls of such figures look upon the field where the German deed is now called upon to be realized!

[ 47 ] But this must be said, especially in connection with the faith, love, and hope of such figures—and above all of those who, whether as creators or as thinkers, were rooted in the worldview of German idealism: If the German wishes to recognize the impulses that are meant to inspire him, he need not belittle any opponent. He need only reflect on what he must believe to be his mission in the world, according to the innermost essence of his being. He need only reflect on the fact that he looks up to the way in which his forefathers and ancestors have passed this down to his own time; how it has become a source of strength for the present, and how, from this strength that stands before his eyes and lives within his soul, hope for the future may spring forth from the present.

[ 48 ] Truly, in the context of the present and German idealism, one can say from the depths of one’s heart: As the German looks back to the past of thought—or to what he has striven for beyond thought—he senses his mission in the world; he may feel it in this fateful time; he may feel it out of his love for his past, and out of faith in the power of the present, which comes to him when he has the right love for what the past has brought him. And from this love and this faith—from this dual relationship between the past and the present—will spring forth, in the proper way, that which, despite blood and pain, allows us to perceive a blissful present: the German hope for the future. Thus, through a deepening of the idealistic nature of the German spirit, a triad can emerge: love for the German past, faith in the German present, and hope for the German future.