The Rudolf Steiner Archive

52. The Mission of Wrath. Prometheus Bound

[ 1 ] Anyone who reflects on such questions of human spiritual life—such as those featured in this year’s winter program—regarding character, conscience, the healthy and unhealthy soul, life and death, mysticism, and so on—whoever reflects on such questions may well be reminded time and again of a saying by an ancient sage from the fifth century B.C., Heraclitus, who is called “the Obscure One” because of the profoundly significant nature of his thought. He, Heraclitus, spoke these words:

You cannot find the boundaries of the soul, even if you were to wander every road. The soul runs so deep.

[ 2 ] We are reminded in various ways of this depth of the soul when it comes to questions of the soul. But only slowly and gradually, over the course of this winter—if we may put it that way—can we engage with the deeper questions of the life of the soul.

[ 3 ] Today and tomorrow we will be examining aspects of human inner life that, perhaps precisely because they are closer to the most mundane aspects of daily life—and therefore less frequently reflected upon—are no less interesting. These are phenomena in which that noblest and highest core of human inner life—which we call self-consciousness—is obscured for certain periods of time in a certain way, obscured by all manner of feelings, but primarily by emotions.

[ 4 ] Today we will focus on one of these emotions, which plays a profoundly significant role in human psychological life. We will focus on the inner force that underlies anger and everything associated with it. When speaking of the qualities of the soul and the manifestations of human inner life, one may ask: How is it that the human soul—which, through its self-awareness, is meant to rise to ever higher intellectual and moral heights—is time and again, so to speak, thrown back by outbursts of this kind, such as anger? Is a quality of the soul such as anger merely an obstacle on the human being’s path upward toward the great ideals of life? — And in practical terms as well, such questions are of the utmost importance in everyday life.

[ 5 ] The educator—and indeed anyone entrusted with the care of another person—will readily admit and recognize how significant it is to understand the role that a particular emotional expression, such as anger, plays in the inner life. Then, once one recognizes such a thing, one can deal with everything related to it in a manner that is both tactful and wise. However, our current examination of the inner life will pose the greatest difficulties when it comes to a question such as the significance of anger. Only a deeper penetration into the depths of existence, into the winding paths of spiritual life, allows us to shed some light on such a question. So today we will first have to bring before our soul something that those among our esteemed audience who have frequently attended these lecture series have heard from a certain source.

[ 6 ] But it will always be necessary to allow the unique nature of human beings to come to the forefront of our consciousness if we are to understand human expressions and the effects of human power. From the standpoint of spiritual science, the mission of anger is to be considered today. In doing so, we must not limit our view of the human being to the extent that he presents himself to us through external sensory perception—that is, to the intellect bound to the instrument of the brain, which is restricted to processing the impressions provided by immediate sensory observation. For such a spiritual-scientific consideration, what the senses perceive—and what the human intellect, conscious in this sense, can grasp—is only a part of the human being. That aspect of the human being which we can perceive with the senses—external science deals only with the physical body insofar as it is natural science, and in a certain respect it is correct in this limitation—is what spiritual science calls the physical human being. Beyond this, however, it distinguishes the higher nature of the human being. What we call the physical body we share, in terms of the composition of substances and forces, with everything we call the mineral kingdom—the seemingly lifeless nature around us. The same world of forces exists within our physical body as it does out there in the world.

[ 7 ] Beyond that, however, there is a question that even ordinary human reason can ask—and, to a certain extent, answer—namely: Do these forces and substances that are at work in the human body—and which are the same as those found outside in the rest of the mineral world—act [in humans] in the same way as they do outside in the rest of the mineral world? — No, they do not. When the human physical body—and indeed the physical body of any living being—is left to its own devices, it follows the laws of the mineral world. We see this when the physical body is left to its own devices in the event of death. There we see the way in which the composition of the physical body acts when left to its own physical and chemical forces. That which, from the beginning of physical life to its end, wages a struggle against the physical and chemical forces so that they cannot follow their own course—a course they follow only in death—we call the first member of the higher human nature—do not take offense at the terms; stick to the concepts—we call this the etheric body or the life body. With this, we [ascend] into the first supersensible element of human nature.

[ 8 ] Even for those who rely solely on the physical instrument and logic, such a life body can be rationally deduced. For those grounded in spiritual science, this life body is a fact of the same reality as the world of sound and color. And the spiritual researcher says to the one who replies: “This etheric or life body does not exist at all”—it does not exist, indeed, for ordinary sensory perception, just as color does not exist for the blind. But it does exist for the person who has developed the corresponding powers within their soul to be able to truly perceive this life body as a fact.

[ 9 ] All these things can be discussed in a different context over the course of the winter. For now, we must leave it at that. — Then we come to the third aspect of the human being, which is called the astral body. This astral body is the vehicle of pleasure and suffering, of joy and pain, of instincts, desires, and passions. This astral body is what human beings share with animals, just as they share the etheric or life body with plants and the physical body with minerals. For reason, if it wishes to make use of logic impartially, this astral body can be something that can be logically deduced. For spiritual research, it is a fact—something that is just as present to the spiritual researcher’s perception as color is to the eye or sound is to the ear. Thus, in the astral body, we have a second member of the supersensible human being.

[ 10 ] And as we ascend further in the composition of human nature, we arrive at that which it no longer shares with the other kingdoms of nature around it—what we call human self-consciousness, or its expression, the “I.” This “I” is that which, so to speak, takes every sensible human being by surprise when they first perceive it. Time and again I would like to quote the beautiful saying of Jean Paul, when he was still a boy and stood in the courtyard of his parents’ house and felt the “I” for the first time—[gap]. From that moment on, the question of God and immortality became understandable to him. It would be so easy to arrive at the human “I,” at a conception of it, if one were to say to oneself: In the “I,” something is expressed that, by the very act of speaking, already distinguishes itself from all other concepts or names. Anyone can call a table a “table” and a chair a “chair.” But when you utter the word “I,” it denotes something that refers only to itself, yet has no meaning and finds no application in your higher self-awareness when spoken by another. Your “I” can never sound to your ear unless it is meant to signify your own soul. This is truly the expression of the “veiled sanctuary” of the human soul. It is the expression that, like a brief monologue, describes the essence of the human being within, or what may also be called the divine in human nature.

[ 11 ] We have thus presented to your soul the four aspects of the human being: the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. When we look at the human being standing before us, these four aspects are what constitute their interplay and mutual interpenetration. What is significant is that the human being is not a self-contained being, that he is not a being who is complete at any given moment, but rather a being in the midst of living development, a being who progresses from one stage of advancement to another.

[ 12 ] What, then, is the nature of this human development? What does it consist of—[what does it consist of]—this interplay of the various aspects of the human being, in what we might call the wonder of human development? They interact in the way that presents itself to our soul when we consider, for example, what an astral body looks like in a person who is at a low level of cultural development, and in a human being who stands at a higher cultural level because they do not live according to their wild drives and instincts, because they do not covet and demand everything that presents itself to their senses, but rather because they have purified their drives and desires through the ideals of the moral life. You can place two people side by side: one whose senses are [still] covetous, who still craves whatever his senses present to him; the other, with refined tact and a sense of duty, demonstrating that he has undergone a refinement of his soul, having purified and cleansed it.

[ 13 ] What, then, is the basis of this purification? It lies in the fact that human beings work on the other aspects of their being from the perspective of their “I.” It is the “I” that has transformed what were once drives, desires, and passions. The “I” has purified the astral body, transformed instincts, desires, and passions, and turned them into something other than what they were before. In spiritual science, the [part of the astral body] that the “I” has already transformed—insofar as the “I” has worked with full consciousness on the transformation of drives and passions, on its moral perfection, and on the restructuring of the astral body—is referred to as the “spiritual self,” or, using a term from Eastern philosophy, as the “Manas” of the human being.

[ 14 ] In general, we can say that the human “I,” in the current stage of human development, has only reached the point where it can work on the Manas, or the spiritual self—and do so consciously. In the future, humanity will be faced with a lofty spiritual-scientific ideal: not only conscious work on the astral body and the purification of passions, drives, and desires, but also the ideal of transforming the etheric or life body. Today, human beings can work on this etheric body only unconsciously. What they once transformed in their life body is referred to in spiritual science as the life spirit or buddhi.

[ 15 ] And now an even higher ideal, in the sense of spiritual science, arises before the human soul; it is an ideal that, when the human soul senses it today, can fill it with a sense of vertigo at the height, magnitude, and sublimity of the future of human development. When human beings are able to work consciously on the physical body, they will also be able to transform the physical body from the perspective of their “I” or self-consciousness.

[ 16 ] Today, people can only do this unconsciously. But you can see in everyday life that it does happen. You just need to observe life with an open mind. Take a person, for example: He feels a sense of shame—that is, he feels something in his soul as if he wanted to hide something about himself; a blush of shame rises to his face. What does this mean? Through a purely inner experience, a physical process—a redistribution of blood—has taken place. The same is true when a person turns pale. The blood then flows from the surface into the inner parts of the body. This is a process in the physical body that takes place unconsciously. What a person consciously develops in their physical body is referred to in spiritual science as the Atma or spiritual human being.

[ 17 ] If we view the course of human evolution in this light, we can say: The human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body, and the ego. When the activity of the ego transforms part of the astral body, the mental self, or Manas, arises. If part of the etheric body is transformed, the life spirit, or budhi, arises. And if the physical body is transformed, the spiritual human, or atma, arises.

[ 18 ] But that is not the only possibility. Even if a person can look toward his ideal only after he has completed the transformation of his astral body, he has already been working on this astral body unconsciously from the perspective of his “I.” They already possess something within themselves that can be described by saying: “The ego lives in the astral body.” This part of the astral body, which is not consciously transformed by the ego but which—as we shall see, this is indeed correct—is already today an instrument of the ego, is called the “feeling soul” in spiritual science.

[ 19 ] But that which is the etheric or life body has already, in a certain sense, been transformed by the “I” and already serves the “I” as an instrument in a certain sense. The “I” has already sent its power into the etheric or life body. Insofar as this body is merely an etheric body, it is connected with the forces of reproduction and growth. But insofar as the etheric body has been transformed by the “I,” we call it the intellectual soul or emotional soul of the human being.

[ 20 ] But the human physical body, too, has been transformed and is an instrument of the “I.” This human physical body, insofar as it is an instrument of the “I,” serves specifically as a sensory instrument; through the marvelous apparatus of the sensory organs, it serves the consciousness of the “I.” That is why we call that aspect of the physical body which is immediately capable of being an instrument of the “I” the “consciousness soul,” which thus dwells within the physical body.

[ 21 ] Thus, according to spiritual science, we first have three physical members: the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body; then three soul members in which the “I” lives, in a certain sense: the feeling soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul; and as the “I” ultimately makes use of these three members, it consciously transforms them into the spiritual self, the life spirit, and the spiritual human being.

[ 22 ] This is a schema that speaks volumes. But it is not merely a schema; it is a force at work. Only those in whom it comes to life to such an extent that they see the forces of the individual human members interacting with one another can truly understand human development. Yes, human nature is deep, deep, as Heraclitus rightly said. Thus we see the human “I” at work, and within human bodies we see the transformation of the inner soul elements of the human being. If we wish to understand this “I,” we must first and foremost ask ourselves: What exactly is the current, present stage of the human “I”? What has it achieved and conquered by working—in part unconsciously—on its astral body? What it has attained lies in what we can describe with the following words: The “I” makes the human being a judgmental being, a being that judges from within, whether these are judgments of the intellect, the feelings, or the will; this is what makes the human being a judgmental being.

[ 23 ] This says a great deal: it makes a person a being capable of judgment, a being who can think, feel, and will based on rational judgments. It has been said that one truly learns to distinguish between what is the sensation of a physical being and what is the impulse of a human being. When we observe animals, we can find all the characteristics of human spiritual life in animals in a certain sense. We find sympathies and antipathies in animals, even what is analogous to one of the highest feelings of the human soul—an analogy to love. We find analogies to what we call human intellectual activity. It is easy to observe in the animal kingdom how everything there functions similarly to how it does in humans; but who would fail to recognize the difference that exists between what is present in humans and what is present as a characteristic in animals? In animals, we can say with certainty—based on their organization and form—what drives them in this or that instance. This certainty is quite different from that of a human being who asks himself the question: Should you do this, or should you not do it? He weighs the pros and cons before making a decision. Only those who do not look closely at this matter can overlook the enormous difference. In the course of evolution, human beings have acquired the capacity for judgment through the very interplay of their development that has just been characterized.

[ 24 ] If we wish to hold before our minds the highest ideal of this rational human being—in relation to a particular sphere, in relation to human coexistence, in relation to the way two people relate to one another—two things come to meet us. When we look at the judgment that confronts human beings, we see the concept of justice and the concept of love. When a person places the concept of justice before them, they will be able to say to themselves: Justice is something that can be regarded as a higher ideal. It signifies harmony and balance in the circumstances of life. One need only think of good and evil, right and wrong. But what is it that affects the human soul when it utters the word “justice,” when it surrenders to the concept of justice? — It is a chill that the human soul experiences in its feelings when it surrenders to this concept. It perceives justice as a necessity, as something that must be, as something to which a person must submit based on sound judgment.

[ 25 ] The soul feels differently when it, so to speak, sets before itself the concept related to justice—the concept of love. There the soul feels not coldness, but inner warmth—something that elevates human nature—because it must say to itself: This is a truly human ideal only when justice is no longer practiced because one perceives it as a necessity, but because one loves what is right, because one loves to do what ought to be done.

[ 26 ] Thus, justice and love stand side by side—one as a frosty ideal, yet recognized as necessary, and the other as a warm ideal that fills our soul with an inner fire. And within them lies the resolution of what the human soul regards as the two ideals when it asks itself: In which direction must it first develop its capacity for judgment? Toward experiencing human coexistence—through its judgment, its deliberations, and what lives within it—in a way that is in keeping with justice and love. —In this sense, human beings look up to justice and love as two lofty ideals of development, and they see, within the interplay of their own forces, that which leads to justice and love in human coexistence.

[ 27 ] Indeed, that is true. But one cannot understand human development—or development in general—without drawing on another insight that sheds light on the true nature of development. Development is something that—if it is to flourish—must encompass something else within itself. And this other aspect can perhaps best be described by the word: maturing. Maturing within time is something that cannot be separated from the concept of development. And we understand ourselves best when we apply the concept of maturing directly to the concept of the human “I” itself.

[ 28 ] Consider the life of a single human being—consider it in the way that a serious observer of existence should. Is it possible to expect the same from a person in their third year of life as from a person in their twelfth or sixteenth year? That is impossible. For a being that is in the process of development—and is developing in such a way that a interplay of forces is taking place—it is impossible to expect the same of them. Every stage of development has its time, and it is detrimental to the being’s entire development when this law of maturation is violated. Thus, it is detrimental to an individual’s human development between birth and death when, at a certain stage of life, the “I” is expected to do something that should only be expected at a later stage, according to the degree of maturity. But it is also unhealthy when a person at a lower stage of development—who has not yet sufficiently purified their passions and instincts—is expected to handle things that can only be truly fruitfully handled by an “I” that has passed through the various stages of purification. This is the case when the human “I” sees such significant ideas as justice and love as ideals before it and says to itself: “You must ascend”—so that they act as two great guiding stars in human life. But the path must be taken in the right way. If we now consider not the individual life, but the whole of human life over the course of centuries and millennia—how the human “I” returns and works upon the human being—then we will be faced with a complex reality that strongly compels us to direct our attention to the process of maturation. If—which can only be mentioned here today, but which will be touched upon from various perspectives in the course of the Winter Lectures—if a human being does not live just once between birth and death, but returns again and again, then it is [conceivable], as spiritual science recognizes as a necessary consequence of evolution—that the “I” does not live just once between birth and death but returns again and again—then it is [conceivable], as spiritual science recognizes as a necessary consequence of evolution, that the “I” does not live just once in this life between birth and death but undergoes successive incarnations.

[ 29 ] Throughout all these incarnations, the “I” works in the same way that it worked in the distant past on the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body, so that the sensory soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul have already come into being for modern human beings; if we continue working in this way, the spiritual self, the life spirit, and the spiritual human being will emerge. The forces of this development interpenetrate one another in a reciprocal interplay and unite in the ideals of justice and love. This work is accomplished by the “I.” However, if we take the word “experience” in the proper sense, we must understand that at every stage of life—when we speak of different incarnations, in each individual incarnation—the soul acts in the proper way upon the other parts of the body, that the “I” works on every single aspect of development, and that it does not do too much with regard to the acquisition of justice and love; for the “I” must never go beyond what is capable of judgment within it, nor can it progress beyond what its degree of maturity allows.

[ 30 ] But what, in this context, is the regulator? What prevents the “I” from going beyond its level of maturity at certain stages? Do we understand what the regulator is—what enables the “I” to at least do the right thing at every stage? One can understand what is being said here only by turning one’s attention to something that is becoming ever clearer to people through spiritual science: If one turns one’s attention to what provides human beings with their knowledge and insight in terms of content—their ideas and concepts, to name, in short, that through which we perceive the world—one sees that this is not present solely within the human being, but is poured out over the entire world.

[ 31 ] Human beings seek to understand the world by forming concepts and ideas about it. Just as you cannot draw water from a glass that contains no water, so too can you not draw wisdom from a world in which there is no wisdom. Human beings draw wisdom from the world through their judgment and their capacity for understanding. They comprehend the plant because it is constructed with wisdom. They form concepts. It is nonsense and folly to believe that a person could form a concept of a plant if the plant itself were not structured according to that very concept. What a person draws out of the world is what has been poured out into the world and underlies all things. What has been poured out into the rest of the world or into nature outside appears in the human soul in a different form as wisdom.

[ 32 ] If you want to visualize this, you need only consider the following. It took a long time in the course of human development for humankind to reach a certain stage of historical evolution—let’s say, the point at which paper was invented. Try to conjure up in your mind the sum of thought and labor required to produce paper so that it could become part of human development. One could say—to put it grotesquely—that within the world of wasps, this paper was invented not millennia ago, but much earlier, for the wasp nest is built from the same material we call paper. We have real paper there. Whatever humans produce from their materials is woven into the fabric of the external natural world.

[ 33 ] By considering these stages, you can understand how what humans develop as wisdom is manifested out in the world. The world is permeated by wisdom and structured by judgments. Wisdom is a rediscovery of judgments that are spread out like a net over all existence in nature. A wise order is not found only in what human consciousness works out, in what human beings shape within their souls; a wise order is to be found everywhere. It was therefore already there when the human ego was not yet able to work consciously. And it was this work of wisdom that made it possible for the human “I” to work on the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body even before it was capable of conscious activity. But this wisdom must also be present in life today. The human “I” today is not yet at the stage where it could find what is right entirely on its own, that which would correspond to a much higher power of judgment.

[ 34 ] You’ll understand what I mean if you consider the following. Imagine a person standing before a child whom they want to raise. The child does something they shouldn’t do. It becomes necessary to take action; this could be punishment or something else. Such a scenario is possible. One possibility is that the educator says, “This pupil is doing something wrong.” The educator disapproves of this, and it is possible that he may become angry and that this anger may develop to a certain degree, becoming an impulse toward a specific action. That is one possibility. The other possibility, however, is that the educator—even though he has seen the wrongdoing and felt displeasure—remains in a state of what is called “composure”; that he feels composure and, based on mere judgment and a certain maturity of the soul, does whatever is necessary—whether as punishment or otherwise—in the case at hand. Outwardly, the same thing may happen. The difference lies in the fact that in one instance the soul is filled with anger, and in the other with composure.

[ 35 ] When we consider this difference, we might ask ourselves: Why is there anger in one case and composure in the other? Would the person who looks on in a rage at what the child is doing be capable, through the maturity of his ego, of doing the right thing in that particular situation? If you look at life, you will say to yourself that, as a rule, they would not be capable of doing so. It requires a certain degree of maturity of the “I” for the “I”—even though it feels no emotion and remains cool and composed—to nevertheless do what is right out of love for the matter at hand, out of love for what ought to be. It requires a certain degree of maturity. And every person stands at a certain point in relation to this maturity. The human “I” cannot always possess that degree of composure which enables it—even when it feels no emotion—to do what is right. For this, the human “I” must develop to a certain level. What would the educator do if he were calm and felt no anger? Then the educator, with his composure, would stand by, do nothing, and let the matter be.

[ 36 ] The wise order of the world ensures that the self is guided toward what is right—at least in part—by forces other than those for which it has not yet matured. Before the “I” is mature enough to act out of serenity, it acts out of emotion, out of anger. Here we see this human “I,” in the course of development, working on the human astral body, so that over time the astral body evolves in such a way that serenity blossoms; but as long as the “I” is not yet capable of attaining this maturity, it does not wish to work toward this serenity—instead, the human being must be driven by something within them to do something. Anger is such a mechanism—and indeed a very essential one—that allows the ego to mature within the astral body while still driving it to establish a certain relationship with its fellow human beings before it is mature; anger is such a mechanism within the astral body. Just as, for example, the external natural world is wisely organized in its plant and animal kingdoms, so too is everything we might call the astral nature of human beings wisely organized. It is organized in such a way that human beings enter into relationships with one another before they can, through their power of judgment and guided by their ideals of justice and love, establish a completely proper relationship among themselves. The precursor to serenity is anger.

[ 37 ] In the process of development, it must be the case that what leads upward to higher stages of development can also lead into error. If a person did not fall into error, he would not be able to work his way toward the truth. So even if anger gets out of hand—if we consider it in its full significance, we can see how it works. Take a young person in their teens who is not yet capable of forming certain ideals; yet they see this or that injustice in their surroundings; they experience what might be called noble anger. And what one might call noble anger—toward what he cannot condone—works within him so that the soul may mature and develop within itself what can become the great ideals of life. Just as from a mother substance, the ego, left to its own devices, is brought to maturity through qualities such as anger. You can also infer from other facts that the ego is being brought to maturity. Because the young person never sees his ideals realized in his surroundings—things of which he can still have no concept—he repeatedly feels the same noble indignation toward what displeases him. When people look into the fabric of life, they can perceive that all those noble outbursts of anger in youth later emerge as love and gentleness. Those who view life in its entirety see the transformation of youthful anger into the love and gentleness of old age.

[ 38 ] Thus we see how love and justice—which stand before the human soul as lofty ideals, but which the ego must allow to mature—for it takes an immense effort to develop, in its entirety, from genuine inner, concrete ideas and concepts, the system of human justice and the true, authentic nature of love—unburdened by clouded emotions—to develop in its full scope from genuine, inner, concrete ideas and concepts—we see how justice and love, these lofty ideals, have placed anger before them as a forerunner in the human social order. It is the [mission] of anger to prepare the way for love.

[ 39 ] This becomes understandable when we consider that what is actually meant to become the power of judgment threatens to degenerate into an extreme. If we take the various incarnations into account, we can say: What human beings bring with them as a sense of justice and as the capacity for love dates back to a time when they were not yet able to recognize what the proper balance should be, when they had no idea of the true feeling of love needed to fulfill this or that, but when what is anger arises. Like the dawn of the sun, anger—noble anger—shines ahead of love. In their wisdom, the powers that guide the world have placed anger within the astral body before a full consciousness of love can develop, before love can become fully established in the soul in all righteousness.

[ 40 ] In times when people examined things more closely than they do today, they could already determine what was contained within the soul by looking at the names of its parts. If we go back to the great Greek philosopher Plato, we will find that Plato calls what we call the “conscious soul” the “rational soul.” But what we call the intellectual or emotional soul—into which the ideals of justice and love must be instilled—Plato calls the spirited soul. What we call the sensory soul, Plato calls the appetitive soul.

[ 41 ] If we were to turn to Aristotle, we would find that these terms are used in a similar way by him as well; we can also see that they correspond exactly to the terms used in spiritual science. — Why does Plato call the soul that precedes the soul of consciousness the “irascible soul”? He calls it that because not only anger but also all the faculties of wisdom are inscribed within this soul; for he found the wisdom that has been poured out into the world also poured out into the human astral body, precisely as the irascible soul.

[ 42 ] In the case of those who have looked more deeply into the nature of the soul, we find that the very names hint at what that nature is. Anyone who, from the standpoint of spiritual science, considers what has been passed down through the ages as the legends and myths of the peoples—as the traditions of the peoples—makes a remarkable discovery within their soul. What one might call “armchair scholarship” can answer you if you ask where this or that myth comes from: “It is folk poetry.” — Only someone who is unfamiliar with folk poetry can speak of it in this way. But whoever delves deeper, whoever shines a light into this or that legend, this or that myth, makes the remarkable discovery that great wisdom is contained within them. Before humanity was shaped by logical judgment, by deliberation and calculation—as is proper today, as it is today—before this capacity for judgment led to the perception of truth, another kind of clairvoyant insight—more in the realm of imagery—led it to perceive the truth. Thus, myths and legends become something quite different from what they initially appear to be. They become expressions of profound truths.

[ 43 ] The Greek tragedian Aeschylus explored a mythological theme that leads us into the depths of the truths that interest us today in his *Prometheus Bound*. When we look back at the life of this poet, who lived two millennia before our own, we are moved by the worldview that surges through his poetry, by the worldview poured out in the Greek myths, by the worldview of the Greek people.

[ 44 ] I could fill the entire winter with lectures if I were to tell you everything there is to say about *Prometheus*. This poem builds upon the myth embodied in the name Prometheus. You are all surely familiar with what the Prometheus myth encompasses. Let us briefly call it to mind. When the Greeks cast their spiritual gaze back into past times, they saw ancient generations of gods at work within the essence of our Earth, within the becoming of our Earth and the universe. Today, we need not determine exactly what this means. Imagine them as personifications of natural forces, or whatever else you may think of them; that is not what matters today. The Greeks saw two ancient lineages of gods: Uranus and Gaia; these ancient lineages of celestial gods, who brought about the first events on our Earth, were succeeded by the lineage of the Titans—the very lineage to which Cronus and Saturn belonged. Cronus was the son of Uranus. We are told that the Titans, led by Cronus, seized power and overthrew the ancient Uranus. We can assume from the outset—it is pointed out, and indeed this is the case—that, according to the Greek view, certain forms of life existed in ancient times that were subject to different dominions then than in later epochs of development. Anyone who understands that the nature of events changes over time will admire the brilliant insight of Greek mythology, which expresses the beginning of Earth’s development—that interplay of the world’s simple primal forces—through the marriage of Uranus and Gaia, and then depicts a later epoch by stating that the Titans emerge. The entire face of the Earth changes, so that other forms of life, of events, and of becoming come into being. Thus, in the Titans we have a second generation of gods—forces that work within the Earth’s evolution. Why is the race of the Titans supplanted by the race led by Zeus? He is, so to speak, a member of the youngest of the divine lineages. He therefore cast Cronus and his followers into an unknown world, a hidden world to which the Titans belong, and in which Zeus is the one who exercises dominion over the world.

[ 45 ] During Zeus’s battle against the Titans, Prometheus—a descendant of the Titans—sided with Zeus. It was he who helped Zeus achieve his goal. However, Prometheus experienced, so to speak, a bitter disappointment. He had helped Zeus attain world domination. Within what the Greeks envisioned as a succession of these three groups of gods—Uranus, the Titans, and the Zeus lineage—humans developed various abilities and progressed to certain stages. By the time Zeus had assumed rulership, humans had reached a stage where they could take in impressions of their surroundings into their consciousness.

[ 46 ] If we understand this Greek myth correctly, if we truly engage with it from a spiritual-scientific perspective, then we find that the Greek genius, in its mythical expression, takes the concept of evolution into account in a marvelous way. People who can see only what is a few steps in front of their noses believe that human beings and their consciousness—ever since they evolved from animal to human form, as understood by modern natural science—have always been as they are today. Human consciousness, too, is part of an evolutionary process. It has only [gradually] taken on the forms it possesses today.

[ 47 ] If we were to go back, based on research that is no longer accessible to the external natural sciences but [indeed] is accessible to the humanities, we would arrive at early stages of human consciousness where judgment and deliberation did not yet exist. Instead, there was an image-based consciousness—a consciousness that functions differently, such that when a person encountered an impression, an image arose within them. They knew immediately through the images, through the impressions the image made on their feelings; they knew in an ancient, twilight-like consciousness, preserved like an ancient remnant, like a heirloom passed down in a dream. An ancient, twilight-like, clairvoyant consciousness existed in those times. It was into this consciousness that human beings first acquired the capacity for conceptual thought. Everything was in a state of development; above all, human consciousness.

[ 48 ] This is expressed in the fact that Zeus has assumed power. Consciousness is making more and more room for what is to develop into judgment and deliberation. The confident insight conveyed through images was lost. Human beings began only with the first facts of calculation, counting, and deliberation. People were at a loss. They became dulled in relation to their old consciousness. They could no longer comprehend their environment. They went about their lives in an almost inhuman way. But out of this dullness, that which—as we have indicated—was present in the very earliest beginnings developed more and more, and which worked within human beings in such a way that it gradually led them to judge, led them to project something from their “I” into the world that had not been there before. Call it power; call it essence. The Greek genius expresses this by saying: Prometheus instills in human nature that sense which enables human nature to transform the individual things of life into works of art through the use of tools. Prometheus is the great benefactor of humankind, who, out of love for humanity, gave it what it will continue to develop further and further. Zeus, as Prometheus realized to his disappointment, would have developed in humans only that which is independent of judgment, independent of calculation and deliberation—which would not have led to the arts. Zeus would have left humankind without fire.

[ 49 ] Travelers will tell you that higher animals, such as monkeys, were spectators and watched as travelers warmed themselves by the fire. When the travelers leave the fire while it is still burning, they, too, warm themselves; but what they do not do is gather wood themselves and build a fire. This is intimately connected with the act of making a fire—with the foresighted intellect that brings about something intended to serve one later on. This foresight is symbolized by Prometheus, who is the visionary. The process of becoming is symbolized by the Greek genius in the form of Prometheus. In Zeus, one sees that which does not act within the human “I”—that which does not endow the human being with the capacity for judgment, but rather acts solely within the human astral body. The Greeks turned their gaze to human nature and said to themselves: The three constituent elements of the human being—whether they expressed it in this form or not is irrelevant—are driven by impulses, desires, and instincts. These must play off one another. — What wisely permeates astral nature, the Greeks saw in Zeus. What penetrates the human “I,” what leads the “I” to a higher level, they saw in Prometheus.

[ 50 ] Thus Zeus and Prometheus stood opposed to one another, just as the “I” that reflects judgment and reason stands opposed to the astral body. Thus they struggle against one another within the “I,” which purifies the astral body. When the Greek directs his gaze to the whole of astral nature, he says to himself: When we look at the human being with his astral body and his “I”—there he stands in the world, experiencing pain and joy, doing good and evil; pain and joy, good and evil, require balance. It causes displeasure in the human soul when good goes unrewarded and without success, while evil goes unpunished or is met with undeserved success. That which brings about balance in suffering and joy, in good and evil, is justice.

[ 51 ] But when we survey the world—so says the Greek genius—we find that justice exists in the world, within human nature and the human astral body, only to a very limited extent at first. Human beings are powerless; this is how the Greek genius perceived justice. Now he looks out into nature, sees, and says: Development is what appears before our soul in the sunrise and sunset, in the growth and decay of the plant world; what appears before us in this way is everything that does not rise up to the level of the human astral body; that something is at work within it that is connected to human nature, that is linked to the whole world as something that is a far deeper justice than human beings, in their powerlessness, can bring about. — He then looked up and said to himself: There must surely be hidden forces and powers behind what we can see, forces that work to restore balance.

[ 52 ] These powers are those that are mighty in the face of human powerlessness; they are the powers of justice, so that they may prevail everywhere, relying on these forces that act as a balancing influence with might and power and are not subject to human powerlessness. They are hidden, and there they must be. The Greek genius looked upon them and called them the Titans, precisely because they are free from human powerlessness; and Themis, the goddess of justice, belongs to the special female Titans.

[ 53 ] Thus, in the realm of the Titans, an all-powerful justice stands before the gaze of the Greek genius. But then it must transform itself into love. It must absorb the warm feeling of love within itself. Therefore, it is not Themis who is revered as the figure who also penetrates into human beings, who leads them to the ideal of justice and to love, but rather the son of Themis, Prometheus. He is the one who grasps human beings in their very essence. While Zeus belongs to the realm that infuses human cognition on Earth with wisdom and balance—insofar as the astral realm is concerned—Prometheus pours into the human “I” that which is meant to propel this “I” ever forward.

[ 54 ] However, in the individual human being, if the “I” were to go too far in its development, we can perceive a force that restrains this “I,” that stands in its way. Just as anger precedes the still-immature serenity, so the Greek genius saw, within the great context of the world, the interplay between the deed of Prometheus and the wrath of Zeus. Zeus is the one who must ensure that the human development of the “I” does not proceed too rapidly. Therefore, he must create a balance. Prometheus provides humanity with what, in the ordinary person, is the intellect—reason, the mind—that is, what arises of its own accord as the capacity for judgment.

[ 55 ] However, this has given rise to something else in human development. In the human being who has progressed from the earlier stage to this one, consciousness has narrowed. When human beings still possessed their old, clairvoyant consciousness, they were able to look into their spiritual realm—or at least into their soul world—through their imaginal consciousness. This is connected with the conscious emergence of imaginal forms, enabling human beings to glimpse a soul world that remains hidden from intellectual and sensory consciousness. Thus, a world withdrew from human consciousness. Human vision became bound to the earth even as it simultaneously ascended to a higher level. What humanity has instilled as its ideals of justice and love had to pay the price of being confined to the outer sensory world, to the earth.

[ 56 ] This was the counteraction of the astral realm. As human beings continued to develop their “I,” the astral realm acted as a counterforce. Whereas human beings could once look into the world of the soul, this counterforce clouded their vision of that world, and their gaze remained limited to the outer physical world. They were bound to the earthly world. That which was within Prometheus bound him to the earthly world. And so, in human nature, Prometheus was bound to the earth—forged to the earth—by the wrath of Zeus, which acts as a counterbalance in the astral realm within the realm of Zeus. He had developed a higher faculty. But it was obscured by the wrath of Zeus.

[ 57 ] There are all kinds of degrees between the clarity of consciousness that a person experiences during the day and the darkness of sleep. What occurs in the emotional state is, to a certain degree, a darkening of consciousness. And the cosmic degree of this darkening was that human consciousness was bound to the physical world. How paralyzed was the consciousness that was meant to gaze into the spiritual world. This paralysis was Prometheus’s being chained to the rock.

[ 58 ] The foresight inherent in Greek human nature is precisely what the myth portrays in the myth of Prometheus. And this is what the Greek tragedian presents in such a powerful form in *Prometheus Bound*. If you allow the essence of this marvelous drama to sink in, you will see what confronts you there; what confronts you is that which one might describe as standing in the world like an ancient heirloom from bygone times. Certainly, humanity has evolved in a certain way, but not all evolution proceeds in a straight line. There are always heirlooms from past developments; these do not fit into later times; they seem out of place. Imagine a being with the old pictorial consciousness in our time—it is an impossible being; it cannot possibly find its way in the present age. It is not for nothing that the powers of the human soul change. They change so that they may be adapted to human conditions on Earth.

[ 59 ] Visual consciousness is adapted to the conditions of the ancient Earth. Intellectual consciousness corresponds to the present day. The artist depicts this to us in the form of Io. She represents a being that has taken shape from the level of consciousness of the ancients. What becomes of this [visual consciousness when it appears in our time]? Madness! What is the image of the past meant to convey? It may be that one has the ability to express it, but such abilities are of no use. They give rise to error and delusion that ensnare the soul.

[ 60 ] The Greek genius depicts this kind of consciousness—which has remained like an ancient heirloom, giving rise to error, delusion, and deception—by having [Io] see the hundred-eyed Argus. Images appear before her. But these are deceptions, delusions—they are illusions. Even if this consciousness, once it has taken hold of the human faculties of the soul, were to succumb to madness, one must not believe that it has no meaning. The consciousness possessed by the developed individual has taken hold of only one part of the human being—the brain—and has made it its organ.

[ 61 ] But Io continues to influence humanity even today. This is part of humanity’s future development: that all the forces that may exist will, in later times, manifest in new forms, just as Io did with her consciousness in ancient times. Thus, she is a madwoman. But when that aspect of human nature—[which] is shaped by the subconscious—unites with what constitutes higher human nature, then human judgment will become conscious; the Prometheus within human nature will be redeemed. The Greek places this entire story in the past, and in a certain sense it also relates to past events. Just as he was able to draw out the significance of this scene—the chained Prometheus with Io—he could also draw out the significance of every single scene in the drama.

[ 62 ] I could only hint at where the heart of the drama lies. I was able to show how the playwright’s mind was filled with what exists in human nature and how these forces interact. That is why Aeschylus was able to depict how wrath emerges from the astral body—wrath that has bound the “I” within the cosmos so that it may mature and first bring forth the capacities for development that are appropriate to it, as it were projected out of the cosmos into inner human nature. Through this powerful drama, we will see how anger has the mission of being a harbinger of love. In a certain sense, this is also what connects us to the noble word “truth,” which relates to human nature in a different way than anger does.

[ 63 ] We shall see how Goethe incorporated into his “Pandora” what he himself felt in the depths of his soul about these mysteries of life. But precisely because humanity today is so far removed from spiritual science—from what lives in such a poet’s soul—poems like “Pandora” were so poorly understood. This was already the case in Goethe’s time. That is why Goethe also felt lonely at the height of his life. In this loneliness, he also sensed many dangers—as people still say today: In his youth, Goethe still wrote in a way that could be understood, but in his old age he has gone to the dogs and writes [nonsense]. — In contrast, Goethe once burst out with words that you’ll find expressed in his works: “They praise my *Faust* and whatever else is in my works … and yet that old rabble believes I’m no longer myself.” This is how he viewed the incomprehensible aspects of the spiritual world. Precisely when one observes the human soul and seeks to understand it in a practical way, one must start from spiritual science. One must be able to observe the interplay of forces and the meaning of the individual forces, as spiritual science presents them to us. Then we can peer into the deep abysses of the soul in such a way that we can apply this understanding practically. Only then do we understand, as further insights, what speaks to us spiritually from this perspective [through] Aeschylus in his drama [of] Zeus versus Prometheus—which we will only understand once we grasp what mission anger serves in the astral body for the development of the “I” toward the capacity for [love]. Then the veil is lifted—the veil we must have lifted if we wish to penetrate to our satisfaction and toward a truly practical life—so that we can say: Certainly, when we view the soul through the lens of spiritual science, we feel how deep the fundamental tone is, and we also feel that we are on the path to penetrating this very depth. Spiritual science will first guide us to strive, step by step, toward what is right, in order to penetrate the ideals and insights of soul life that are to be attained; it will show us how, starting from these ideals, to make the words of the ancient sage from the fifth and sixth centuries understandable in a new way—a sage we can recall as we explore the depths of the soul to discover its boundaries. It will be difficult, even if we were to journey a certain distance, for the soul’s depths are infinite.