The Rudolf Steiner Archive

26. The Spiritual-Scientific Significance of “Faust”

Ladies and gentlemen!

[ 1 ] It was in the late summer of 1831—that is, [not quite] a year before Goethe’s death—that the great poet sealed a package. The contents of this package were to remain sealed until after his death.

[ 2 ] What Goethe sealed at that time was the conclusion of his great life’s work—the second part of his Faust, as we know it today. And the words Goethe spoke to one of his friends back then, after he had completed this great poem of his, ring with significance. He said: “With this, my life’s work is complete, and it is, in essence, irrelevant what I do now—or whether I do anything at all.”

[ 3 ] It is a peculiar feeling that must creep into our soul when we see such a personality having reached the pinnacle of life and, at the same time, the twilight of life, and when such a sensation passes through the soul of that personality. This statement by Goethe implies that our poet senses something deeply complete within his life’s work: he feels, so to speak, that he has brought to an end and to its goal something on which he had worked for a long, long time—not years, but decades! And when we consider that the work into which he poured his highest ideals and views on life is now complete, we must attach a very special significance to such a work—a life so rich and full of meaning that it can speak for itself, with such inner harmony, with the awareness of having reached a goal, [that he gave the world what he had to give—that is the profound meaning]. To have given humanity the very best one has to say! [With this great poet, one can understand how his work grows with his development, becoming ever richer and richer.]

[ 4 ] We can get a sense of what this means by looking back at the poet’s life, to that time in September 1783 when he carved the following words into a [wooden wall] in Ilmenau:

Above all the peaks
There is stillness,
In all the treetops
You can barely
Feel a breath of wind;
The little birds are silent in the forest.
Just wait, soon
You, too, will rest.

[ 5 ] Even though we must understand such a poem in the context of its situation—and perhaps bear in mind that, in a personality like Goethe’s, it was born of the moment — it was evening —, born of the evening mood, we may still say that these profound words were written from Goethe’s state of mind at that time, from that mood of deep inner turmoil, when heavy enigmas weighed upon his soul.

[ 6 ] It was toward the end of his life that he returned to the place where he had written these words. He read them again in his old age, and with tears of emotion he looked back on that youthful spirit. How much lies in Goethe’s life between two such moments! How much, indeed, lies in Goethe’s life between that time when he began, in his youth, to pour all his thirst for knowledge—as a yearning for the ideals of life—into the [first] parts of Faust, and that moment shortly before his death, when he brought this work to a close! Oh, it is very peculiar that it is precisely in this work of the poet’s that we can trace several stages, where it reveals to us how it grows and grows along with the poet’s personality. Even when he arrived in Weimar [in the mid-]1770s, he brought certain sections of his Faust with him. That was the first form in which he expressed his life’s ideals and mysteries. This version remained unpublished for a long time—[it was] preserved until the nineteenth century, [when it was] discovered in the estate of a Weimar court lady. Rediscovered upon the opening of the archive, “Faust” was printed as a fragment in 1790. [From then on, “Faust” continued to grow.]

[ 7 ] Today, my task is to characterize this monumental work of poetry more from an external perspective and thereby lay the groundwork for tomorrow’s lecture, which is intended to delve deeper into its profound mysteries. Much has been said about the obscurity of the second part. In response, I would simply like to pose the question: Do you believe that a figure such as Goethe is just as easy to understand at the end of his life as he was in his earlier years? Should we not rather strive with all our might to penetrate what he had to say in his twilight years?

[ 8 ] “Faust” exists in three versions: first, the youthful “Faust,” which is called the first part. It is preserved in the manuscript found in Weimar among the papers of that court lady. The second version dates from 1790. And a third, which was published in 1808. This is the version in which “Faust” is currently available to us as the first part. From that time until well into the 1820s [of the nineteenth century], Goethe had no intention of continuing his “Faust.” [We shall see what the actual reasons for this were.] For Goethe, the problem was too great to bring to a conclusion without further thought. It was not until 1820 that the poet, at the height of his maturity, took up the work again and carried it out with energy and vigor right up to the last year of his life. Oh, in Goethe we have a man who, even in his youth, had already come to terms with life’s greatest questions, but at the same time a personality who, decade after decade, could look into his own soul and say: “Now you have moved forward a little more.”

[ 9 ] [And when we see how far above us this ever-striving personality stands], are we not inspired by the urge to trace the steps he took between the first and second parts of his Faust? [Truly, there is a vast difference between the stages of the first part of Faust and between the first and second parts.] If we first consider the version that could have been published in 1775, we would see a deeply personal work into which Goethe’s own longings and aspirations have flowed. Everything Goethe felt in terms of mysteries and profound experiences, he poured into this work.

[ 10 ] Then we come across that “fragment” that first appeared before us in 1790. There we find a striking difference from the first one: Goethe is already more serene. What first strikes us as a personality with individual character and nuance has been elevated to something more impersonal and serene. [We already sense more strongly that] what is [being discussed here concerns not only the young Goethe, but] more or less all of us as human beings.

[ 11 ] And when we then consider the version from 1808, we find that it [“Faust”] has moved further from the human toward the superhuman, into a sphere where the powers of heaven battle over humanity and humanity is placed in the struggle between good and evil—as expressed in particular in the “Prologue in Heaven.” Whereas in the first part we see the striving of Goethe’s soul as if completely absorbed in participating as a human being, in 1808 we see him placed within the entire human cosmos, his horizon expanded from the human-personal to a grand worldly tableau.

[ 12 ] But in its inner character, we find that the first part contains something that Goethe himself, even in his later years, perceived as personal and obscure—not something universally human. Anyone who immerses themselves in it will find something theoretical there: the way a person speaks when faced with things unknown to him, of which he has only a vague inkling. The second part—as strange as this may sound in light of common preconceptions—is a realistic work, springing from his very own experiences, after he could say of himself that he had arrived at a satisfactory resolution of all life’s questions. [In this respect, the second part rises even higher above the personal]. Therefore, if we understand it correctly, “Faust” fills us with that same satisfaction as all works of literature of which we can say: Here, an artistic individuality has risen to speak to all people, to inner peace, to inner harmony.

[ 13 ] The way Goethe allowed the content of Faust to flow from the depths of his being can help us understand why the first part is more theoretical, while the second part recounts Goethe’s experiences in a more realistic way, as he actually lived through them.

[ 14 ] If we wish to explore Goethe in his Faust, we must recognize that the goal was inherent in his nature from childhood onward. That is why it is so telling that the seven-year-old Goethe, even as a young boy, already felt unsatisfied [with what those around him told him] about the great depths of life. Of course, he cannot put it into words at that point—he can only feel and sense it; but he senses it in the direction that he would later be able to articulate with such sharp clarity. And so we find that one day he sought a way to express his feelings toward the divine: He took a music stand and placed on it whatever natural objects he could find in his father’s collection of natural specimens. He had constructed a sort of altar for himself, and through the products of nature he allowed the Creator—the creative spirit behind them—to speak to him. For the seven-year-old boy intended to offer a sacrifice to the God he was seeking. And on top of it he placed an incense stick, and he took a magnifying glass, focused the rays of the rising sun with it, and lit the little incense stick. He had offered a sacrifice to his God at the very sources of nature itself. [This is the direction of Goethe’s soul, his striving toward the sources of life.] In his memoirs, he himself says that as a boy he wanted to make such an offering to the deity. This urge remained in his soul and shaped all his later endeavors.

[ 15 ] Thus we see him, as a student in Leipzig who is actually supposed to be studying law, occupied mainly with whatever he can absorb from the natural sciences of the time; and he explores all other sciences and areas of knowledge, just as he had explored all areas of knowledge at the end of the 1660s [of the seventeenth century]. He did not [seek isolated pieces of knowledge], as one usually did [as a young student] under the constraints of circumstances. He sought to forge his own path to knowledge of all kinds; he strove [for a general understanding of humanity’s spiritual source], seeking to connect what was then expressed in abstract concepts—through sober, dispassionate observations of external impressions of life—with the innermost longings and needs of his soul: he hoped that these insights would bring him enlightenment regarding the mysteries of life. However, the insights of that era were not suited to this purpose.

[ 16 ] Everything that came his way was, in Goethe’s case, connected to his entirely individual quest, to all the questions he pondered regarding the infinite. And even in his youth, his life was such as to point him toward the spiritual and eternal. But what was so well-suited to deepening his entire life from his youth onward found particular expression in various events of his life.

[ 17 ] Only two of these will be mentioned here: During a serious illness, he felt that death was near. Indeed, death stood at his bedside in his early youth. This life event made him acutely aware of the transience of all external things, and his soul was also directed outwardly toward the pursuit of the immortal.

[ 18 ] Anyone who traces Goethe’s life, particularly during that period, will see how this event enriched his life. He was well-suited to encounter very special [intellectual circles] in Frankfurt. And those individuals who, in the most eminent sense, direct their souls toward exploring [the mysteries of life], the spirit, and the sources of existence—those who have emerged from the traditional moods of religions, who ask: Where are the limits of our knowledge? How much must we leave to mere religious traditions, and how much to our own insight? [Those who do not ask about the limits of knowledge, about the boundaries of science and revelation] were not at home among those who were Goethe’s friends at that time.

[ 19 ] A different mood prevailed, however, among those in whose midst stood the sincere Miss von Klettenberg, whom Goethe later immortalized in his Confessions of a Beautiful Soul. In this circle, people said to one another: There is something in the human soul that can be developed, something that can mature to ever greater heights. A person is not always ready to recognize the highest, but within their soul lie dormant powers that they can develop [that can be brought forth through striving and working on oneself. One then attains inner spiritual powers that are not otherwise present in the soul]. And what a person cannot achieve, no matter how humanly they strive, they can achieve by developing powers that are unattainable in ordinary life. The development of the soul—that was the focus of this circle of friends; for it was their conviction that there is something in the soul that remains unconscious—or, shall we say, subconscious—to ordinary life. [In ordinary life, people are unconcerned with the mysterious forces that exist there.] When a person lives in such a way that they merely surrender to sensory perception and process this perception solely with the intellect, they do not draw near to the sources of life; they pass by the hidden powers of the soul that they can cultivate and work upon. And when a person has raised themselves to a higher stage of development, they penetrate more deeply into what lies hidden behind objects. Then the spiritual, the eternal, and the imperishable come to meet them. Such was the mood among these friends.

[ 20 ] So you see that when it came to the very question of the immortality of the human soul, these people took a different stance than is often taken in life, where people frequently refrain from seeking to understand what the eternal is out there in nature or in art, or leave it to traditional teachings. It was not so with these friends. They said to themselves: Out there in nature there is something imperishable, and there are forces within the human organism just as there are out in nature. What is transitory out there and appears to be transitory is also transitory within the human being. And if we perceive our powers solely through this transitory aspect, then the immortal will never reveal itself. Yet hidden within the soul lie deeper human powers—powers that are veiled, as it were, by the fact that human beings rely solely on external sensory perceptions and the intellect that synthesizes them. Through such purified powers—which provide [just as] objective insights [into the eternal] [as the intellect does for the sensory world]—we must purify the senses and seek to divert them from the transitory. This is what they told themselves: If I unite with the Eternal within my own soul, then I stand spiritually eye to eye with the Imperishable; then I have drawn it forth from within myself; then nothing can take away my certainty of immortality; then I am united with the Spirit within my own breast, which originates from the Spirit of God just as sensory things originate from external interconnectedness and harmony.

[ 21 ] Goethe felt a deep kinship with these souls. But there was much that was unclear about them. What I have now described in specific terms was expressed in them more in the form of premonitions, of unspoken feelings of the soul; it was expressed more in certain gestures of the soul than in sharply defined insights.

[ 22 ] It was into this circle that the young Goethe entered. And this circle had a certain fondness for a particular kind of writing that stemmed from a medieval understanding that had already passed into history—writings that expressed the way in which people sought to approach the great mysteries of human nature. Goethe, too, came into contact with these writings, and we can discern the fundamental disposition of his heart when we see him delving into these medieval texts with an unceasing thirst for knowledge, seeking to discover means of developing the hidden powers of his soul that would ultimately lead to the knowledge of the immortal. One such text was that of Valentinus Basilius and Theophrastus Paracelsus [Welling’s Opus macrocabalisticum et theosophicum, but above all Kirchweger’s Aurea catena Homeri], which he himself describes as Kabbalistic-theosophical.

[ 23 ] What do these writings contain that would cause a person of that time, who held modern views, to immerse himself in such texts, just as a modern Haeckelian or any other modern, educated person might engage with the strange writings of Eliphas Levy? [If an ordinary person had immersed themselves in them back then, they would have considered these writings pure nonsense, mere fantasy.] It was exactly the same back then: a modern person would have felt that this was pure nonsense, that only a fanciful person could devote themselves to such things. One can understand this sentiment, both then and now. One can recognize it as a sentiment that is, from certain points of view, entirely justified. It is by no means surprising that someone who has not progressed further [in the development of their soul] can see only pure nonsense in them. Goethe did not find only pure nonsense in them. Yet in part they were sheer nonsense. In part, they still belonged to an era when there was no printing press and everything was still written by hand; from a time when science had not yet been enriched by what Galileo and Kepler had taught. In those days, people sought to understand nature in a completely different way. If we wish to characterize, in that era before the great achievements of the natural sciences, the way in which people sought to approach the source, we must say: Before that time, human beings sought to enter into nature and the world with everything that was in their soul, not merely with the intellect; rather, [they sought] to purify their will and feeling so that they might also perceive objectively through feeling, just as mathematical knowledge investigates. [Something of which people today can scarcely form a conception. Likewise, desire can become a power of knowledge. To achieve this, however, a person must transform it; they must work on it; they must purify and refine it of all selfish feelings.] Likewise, the will can be elevated to a power of knowledge. To do so, however, a person must not leave feeling, sensation, and desire as they are—they must work on them!

[ 24 ] The circle of friends surrounding Goethe knew how he had to work on this. While the intellect, so to speak, can be left as it is—because today it is already, from the outset, such that it can be left as is—[one must transform sensation, feeling, will, and desires so that they become powers of cognition]. [Only through that work] does one bring forth the hidden capacities of the soul that give human beings an understanding of the eternal. [The intellect, when left to its own devices, can provide insight only into the transitory.] This kind of knowledge gained through will and feeling had [at that time] taken a back seat [compared to intellectual knowledge], even in Goethe’s youth. In contrast, what prevailed was what is gained through external sensory perception and the intellect—as is still the case today. Goethe, however, knew the limits of sensory and intellectual knowledge. [Thus, he could not quite find his way in these writings, which—since they were composed by latecomers who no longer possessed their own insight—contained a great deal of nonsense.] Yet his soul—even though he could not make sense of them—found nourishment in these books, which indeed contained much that was pure nonsense; but whoever could see through to what lay deeper within these writings could sense—and Goethe could do so at that time, albeit imperfectly—could sense that a deeper insight lay dormant within them. And that is what Goethe sensed: the insight that does not aim to simply accept the world as it is, but rather to develop and shape the soul, to bring forth the powers slumbering within it. [He now wishes to develop within himself the ability to grasp these.]

[ 25 ] In these writings, Goethe found strange figures that only a fool could find appealing today. But there is something else behind these things; I will mention just one example. In that text, Aurea catena Homeri, which made a particular impression on him, you will find a curious figure: two dragons. One at the top, formed into a semicircle. It brims with life and gives the impression of a benevolent being. Entwined with it at the bottom is a shriveled, withered dragon that appears as a symbol of evil. The two are intertwined within a circle. Inside the circle are two [intertwined] triangles: one pointing upward, and at the corners the symbols commonly used to represent individual planets in our solar system.

[ 26 ] How fascinated Goethe’s soul must have been by such a symbol, for what the soul experiences in response to this symbol does not leave it unmoved. As he contemplated this symbol, inner spiritual forces stirred within him: what otherwise served only human needs—will and desire—stirred like the urge for knowledge. He sensed something that is necessary for understanding such writings.

[ 27 ] If someone were to say: “Certainly, if you even want to talk about that insipid stuff, you’re showing that you have absolutely no knowledge of science, such as philosophy and other sciences.” This objection is understandable, even if one says: “In our understanding, we should look to what truly exists.” What this fantastical stuff depicts does not depict the truth. Anyone who speaks this way is absolutely right. But he does not know what really matters! What matters is the impression these images make on the soul; that they are precisely the ones that bring forth what otherwise lies deep within the soul, that they possess creative power for the soul. And Goethe felt how this symbol affected him: “This affects your will,” he felt. “It draws forces from your soul that connect with the universe.” He felt that. But he felt something else as well, something that was terrifying to him at the time. He stood before all these things, felt that they could trigger something in the soul, felt that they could have an effect—but he did not feel the strength within himself to allow this “something” to take effect. He only felt that they concealed something

and I can't understand what I might be sensing there.

[ 28 ] [He sensed in them something like the spirit of the world, but he could not understand it because of his upbringing and the life he had led thus far.] It was terribly shattering for Goethe’s soul when he sensed a connection to higher spiritual forces, felt what could flow forth from this “Aurea catena Homeri,” and yet had to tell himself: You are not yet ready; you cannot penetrate the mysteries of the world; your powers of insight have not yet matured. But he sought unspeakably to walk such a path of insight. And so he came to other signs, to a symbol that represented not only the great world but also the workings [of the Spirit] on Earth. He already sensed this more closely, yet he was still unable to draw the forces out of the Earth. Now we sense how what he experienced flowed into Faust. There his gaze is fixed on the title page of the Aurea catena Homeri. It shows him how the forces move from planet to planet, how their inner kinship is hinted at through human desires—[it draws them upward toward the good, downward toward the evil]—in the forms of wooden dragons, with the triangles, one point of which is directed upward. — A few pages further on, he sees the illustration showing how “celestial forces ascend and descend.” There he must turn away, for he felt his powers were not yet mature enough to understand it.

[ 29 ] Now read the passage in Goethe’s Faust that shows that one cannot grasp anything—nothing that is experienced in the depths of the soul—from ordinary knowledge or scientific knowledge:

Here I stand, poor fool that I am, And I’m just as wise as I was before!

[ 30 ] That was the mood when Goethe left Leipzig.

[ 31 ] So he sought another path in Frankfurt, as he so beautifully expresses in Faust. He opened the book of Nostradamus and beheld the sign of the macrocosm. [There he sees nature at work before his soul; he sees]:

How everything weaves itself into a whole,
How one thing works within another and lives!
How the forces of heaven rise and fall
And pass the golden buckets to one another!
With wings scented with blessing
Penetrating from heaven through the earth,
Resounding harmoniously throughout the universe!

[ 32 ] This is a beautiful, wonderful description of what Goethe saw with such fascination. This is how he expresses what he feels when he beholds the sign of the first spirit. Then he turns his attention to the sign that pertains only to the processes taking place on Earth. He beholds the sign of the Earth Spirit. Once again, it fascinates him. [Before this, he senses that the forces are stirring which otherwise express themselves as interest and feeling toward objects. The sign of the Earth Spirit was now to develop these forces in such a way that they would become powers of cognition.] Try to place before your soul the forces that come into consideration as powers of cognition; first, the objective powers of the intellect, the powers of thought. They are easily accessible. But then there are the powers of feeling and sensation, which can only be purified in the manner described and can be awakened by the signs that evoke the spiritual world. Now Goethe had unlocked such a sign, and now he felt that he was not yet ready for it. Nor did he feel ready to understand the powers of cognition that are connected solely with the earth—not ready!

[ 33 ] Now something stirs within his soul. But at first, it is only terror and fear, which are reflected back to us at the moment when “Faust” turns away from the Earth Spirit—whom he calls a “terrible face”—and upon which the Earth Spirit then says to him:

You are like the spirit you understand, not me!

[ 34 ] Goethe’s insights are thus reflected in the first part of Faust. But Goethe was not a person who could simply remain a “timid, cowering worm”; he was a person who had the strength to strive onward. What did this person tell himself? He did not speak like other people who believe they are seekers of knowledge and say: There are limits to knowledge. It is easy and convenient to dismiss all these things as nonsense. No! Goethe said to himself: I am not yet ready for this! This is something we can learn from Goethe—that he told himself: You are not ready now; you must first begin to work on yourself to allow what is possible for the soul to mature. [So he worked on himself to move forward.] To achieve this, he now immerses himself in life to get to know life, people, and science from every angle. And we see this when, after his time in Frankfurt, he comes to Strasbourg, looks around in nature to grasp the things he had placed on his father’s music stand as a seven-year-old boy, in order to come to know, through understanding them, the divine-spiritual essential forces. But these divine-spiritual forces of being—not only those manifested outwardly in nature, but also those of human life and its manifold forms. And even now we see how he has the favorable opportunity to come to know all the heights and depths of the human soul—the human soul in its infinite goodness and love, but also in all its spiteful, hateful, and harmful qualities, with all its longings, torments, and sacrifices. [He came to know both the highest satisfaction and agonizing doubts through the souls of human beings.] There, in Strasbourg, he encountered the great figure of Herder—a figure who, throughout his entire life, had strived to draw near to the sources of life, yet who also sensed that the powers of his soul were not yet mature. A mood of a terrible kind prevailed in Herder’s soul at that very moment; despite his titanic thirst for knowledge, he lost courage and said to himself: [You cannot strive any higher]. One’s own inability is a universally human inability. Herder was close to such moods; such moods had gained the upper hand within him and given rise to a way of life that was harsh and dismissive—bearable only to a soul like Goethe’s, which was benevolent. Goethe had recognized Herder’s great soul. And no matter how much Herder might have tried to belittle him, Goethe knew that such a great soul stood before him. And he himself possessed a great soul—great enough to disregard the insignificant in the face of the significant. As he climbed the stairs at the Gasthof zum Heiligen Geist and unexpectedly saw this figure, whom Herder introduced in a somewhat brusque manner—with his coat fluttering, the tails tucked crosswise into his pockets—Goethe sensed at first glance that this figure was Herder, and he said, “You are Herder.” From that moment on, his respect for him grew.

[ 35 ] Herder was filled with profound ideas, such as those we find, for example, in his treatise “Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind.” But all of that was not enough for him. It was then that Goethe came to know a tremendous striving that was on the verge of collapsing in despair and was thus held back. But Goethe had already come to recognize the inadequacy of ordinary intellect through another person: his friend Merck. Even the most benevolent woman, Goethe’s mother, Frau Rat, said of him: “He can never leave Mephisto at home; he finds fault with everything.” Goethe observed these personalities, and he saw in them something that now, in turn, had a profound effect on his soul: that they had particularly pronounced qualities of which he himself carried a large part within his own soul. As if in a mirror, he saw his soul, he saw himself! He saw the intellect into which error and superstition from the outer world were creeping. [He sought to grasp the spirit of the earth, which he has the “Faust” express as follows]:

Amid the tides of life, in the storm of deeds
I surge back and forth,
Weaving to and fro!
Birth and grave,
An eternal sea,
A shifting weave,
A glowing life,
Thus I work at the whirring loom of time,
And weave a living garment for the Deity.

[ 36 ] Driven by an inner urge, he had tried to comprehend the spirit and the soul that spoke to him through the forces of life and the images of Homer’s “Aurea catena.” But he had also sensed that he was not yet ready to soar to those spiritual heights. He now realized why: because there was still too much of the interests of the senses within him. Now he knew that the spirit to which he still bore too much resemblance was the most evil of all—the spirit of Mephisto.

You are like the spirit you comprehend,

[ 37 ] said the Earth Spirit, who saw the Mephistophelean side of Goethe's soul.

[ 38 ] Now a significant part of the “Faust” idea dawned on Goethe: Why does a person, in his ordinary feelings and sensations, not arrive at clear insight as he does in thinking? Why are desire and feeling not forces like the powers of thought? Because within us there are soul forces that are not ourselves, yet which act within us. Those forces that we encompass with our actions and desires—according to an ancient view, but also according to a new spiritual-scientific view—are the forces of Lucifer, and they bring these desires down to such a level that they cannot become an objective power of knowledge in this life. This is how Lucifer works.

[ 39 ] But there is also another kind of force that drives us to act and enables our intellect to attain true knowledge, provided only that our perception is directed toward this world. At work here are those forces that were first described by Zarathustra as Ahrimanic. Thus the Ahrimanic forces, which are permeated by desire and which would penetrate even into the macrocosm, are at work within us—[they prevent feeling from becoming a power of knowledge regarding the Earth, just as the Luciferic spirits prevent desire from rising to cosmic knowledge]—and the Luciferic beings are at work there.

[ 40 ] Goethe sensed what clouds human vision and leads it into error—that which is called the Ahrimanic forces. For Ahriman is the very same being we are accustomed to calling Mephistopheles—the one who characterizes human behavior as a lie: in Hebrew, “Mephis” means “liar” and “tofel” means “ruin.” It signifies the very same thing that Zarathustra calls Ahriman. [However, Mephisto does not mean Lucifer. He is the power that leads human beings to lies, to seeing external life in a deceptive form rather than in truth.] All these forces are at work wherever human beings go through life and, driven by their interests, are led to see life in its deceptive form.

[ 41 ] Despite his most sincere efforts at the time, Goethe could not penetrate to the sources of truth because he still had too much of Mephistopheles within him—you resemble Mephistopheles, not me! And that is why [in Urfaust, immediately after the Earth Spirit, out of the blue] Mephisto appears as if shot from a pistol. [Out of the blue, because Goethe only sensed the connection, not clearly recognized it.] Yet another deeply moving mystery of the soul.

[ 42 ] Thus we see how Goethe, as it were, pours into Faust what he has experienced, how he attempts to portray it, and how Mephisto leads him to take pleasure in such insipid things as those found in Auerbach’s Cellar, in various superficial aspects of life that, from a higher vantage point, he must describe as banal. But this Mephisto leads him to something else as well. If we follow Goethe from Strasbourg at the time when he had passed the bar exam, and a little later, we find two characteristics that were bound to plunge a deep and searching soul into strange conflicts. One of these becomes apparent when we consider him as a legal scholar. His knowledge of the law was rather limited, [he knew only a few legal provisions]. But when it came to grasping any case quickly and promptly, to penetrate it in a flash, there he was among the very best—still admired today by experts who study his trials. [He was a practical man who, with his intellect, quickly found his way in practical life.] He, in particular, is proof against the outrageous claim that those who seek access to the spiritual life must be impractical people in everyday life. Goethe sought access to the spiritual worlds to the highest degree and was at the same time an eminently practical person compared to all those who are impractical because they lack talent. Many a young poet believes that to be fully absorbed in spiritual life, one must be an impractical person. Such people are gifted only to a dubious degree. No one will ever deny Goethe the special talent he demonstrated [while writing] his Iphigenia. On his desk lay the lists for the conscription of recruits. While the recruits were being conscripted, he wrote the verses for his “Iphigenia” in between. That was a man of substance! Delving into the intellectual world never prevents one from finding one’s way into the practical world. That is how Goethe saw himself—as a practical man.

[ 43 ] But he also felt this: One day, as he was reflecting on his situation, he had to admit something to himself that made a deep impression on his soul. There are many, many things in which you have not lived up to your own potential in your life—and above all: you have become guilty! The self-realization: You have become guilty—in situations such as those experienced by the Frankfurt poet in Sesenheim, the struggle of the most intense passions against those that confronted him there in Friederike. He also knew that they were not suited to one another, that he would have been paralyzed in all his endeavors had he sought a relationship with her. But he knew that, through the way he behaved, he had become guilty; he knew that Mephisto had led him astray—just as we, when led into error and deception instead of clear circumstances, are led by Mephisto.

[ 44 ] Goethe felt completely and in the depths of his being—because he grasped all these questions at their core—that this force within the human soul, which guides everything in the human soul, that [this Mephistophelean force] can lead it far, to confessions of the self entirely different from what he had to put into words: “You have become guilty.” He knew that when these Mephistophelean forces influence the pursuit of knowledge, they can turn a person into a charlatan in the face of the higher pursuit of knowledge! There he stood with his soul before something monstrous; there he stood [before a monstrous abyss], so that he said to himself: You must go beyond what only the intellect can experience; you must call upon the powers of feeling and emotion for knowledge—[those that Mephistopheles drags down]—but something of Mephisto still lives within you. Another self lives within you alongside it. Only now did a figure from the sixteenth century become clear to him—one that [has interested and terrified so many people], one that has instilled fear and horror in people. Now the “Faust” of the sixteenth century dawned on him. How did it dawn on him? Here we gain a deep insight into Goethe’s psychological self-knowledge as we explore this. Goethe told himself—as many people might still tell themselves today—that human beings cannot really help but seek access to the forces that transcend the sensory realm. That is why, even in our present age, which does so little to address the deepest needs of the soul, we have so many movements that spring from people seeking access to spiritual currents, to the spiritual depths of the soul.

[ 45 ] The first thing [that is necessary] for a person to find entry [into the spiritual world] without harm, so that he may purify and cleanse his soul, is that he free himself from everything that is now called, in Goethe’s sense, Mephistophelean forces—from the merely negating, critical impulses [that are directed solely toward the things of the outer world]. This is not easy; Goethe himself demonstrates just how difficult it is by finding himself bound to Mephisto as to a spirit that constitutes a part of his soul.

[ 46 ] [If a person listens to this Mephisto within, then he does not tell his fellow human beings the truth, but rather what the Mephistophelean element—reinforced by the Luciferic element—goads him to say, which leads to arrogance, ambition, pride, and charlatanism.

[ 47 ] Truly, a very fine web separates the charlatan from the true spiritual seeker. This can be seen even today. Theosophical and other spiritual movements emerge because they respond to the longings of our world. But it is not easy to become such a herald of the spirit.]

[ 48 ] If the researcher is not free from these Mephistophelean forces, then he is not a true researcher, but a charlatan who stirs up feelings that lead to vanity in the realm of knowledge. — Here, a truly refined sensibility is necessary to distinguish between a noble striving for higher knowledge and charlatanism. And it is difficult to distinguish the charlatan from the spiritual researcher for those who do not penetrate deeply into spiritual life. This danger also exists in theosophy. It is not easy to satisfy these longings. Anyone who wishes to penetrate the spiritual world faces the danger of charlatanism. It is therefore only natural that charlatans and spiritual researchers are confused with one another. [The outside world’s accusation is only too justified: “One cannot, after all, distinguish the charlatan from the true spiritual researcher.”] This, which can confront us so vividly in life, confronted Goethe in his soul. The Mephistophelean brings you so close to a being such as Faust, whom people fear—of whom one can say he has made a pact with the devil and has succumbed to the forces that lead to lies and deceit. And now the question stood before Goethe’s soul: How can a person save himself from the danger of charlatanism, so that Mephisto does not lead him down into the abyss? Thus, for Goethe, the Faust question had become a matter of the heart.

[ 49 ] The first thing a person must tell themselves when this question arises in their soul is: [You must become simple and humble]. You must go through a process in which you seek the particular within yourself—from the smallest experience, from the smallest observation—in order to find the divine in every single experience. Goethe set out on this path. On this path, we see him wandering through Italy, modestly and humbly gathering all the details. In the unassuming coltsfoot, he seeks to gain clarity about the different effects of plant forms, [observing the difference in its appearance here and elsewhere]. In an intimate, selfless manner, from picture to picture, from work of art to work of art, we see him hurrying along. Although he read Spinoza at home to elevate himself, he does not dwell on it, for he is humble. [He goes to the works of art and says to himself]: When I look at them, I know that the ancients created as nature does, by raising the forces to a higher level. In this there is necessity; there is God. He does not seek to construct a worldview on the fly, moving from thing to thing; humbly, he seeks out the smallest details in order to modestly seek the divine-spiritual within the smallest. [You may even find it uncomfortable at times when someone who speaks of spiritual science discusses details.] The human quest for knowledge is not humble enough; it does not want to proceed from detail to detail, but seeks to rise higher at once; one would like to encompass the entire world in a single word. When, for example, the Theosophical Movement emphasizes proceeding step by step through the details, people sometimes say: “I want to ascend immediately to the highest levels of the Logos,” even though the person in question understands no more about the Logos than that the word “Logos” is composed of five letters. [Modesty is essential here above all else; Goethe attained this necessary modesty.]

[ 50 ] Goethe learns from one detail to the next. That was what Goethe did. Through this, he attained that refinement, that purity, in which he found himself after having followed this path for a while—so that he can now speak in a different way about [his encounter with those spiritual forces, such as the Earth Spirit, from which he had previously turned away, shunning them like “a timid, cowering worm”], of his encounter with the Earth Spirit, who lives through the events of the Earth. Back then, he had to be told:

You are like the spirit you understand—not like me!

[ 51 ] The spirit had appeared to him from the fire. Now, having thus proceeded from one aspect of nature to another through modesty and careful inquiry—so that he could incorporate into Faust the section he had written in Italy—he now addressed this spirit of the earth differently, as characterized in that beautiful monologue in “Forest and Cave”:

Sublime Spirit, you gave me, gave me everything,
That I asked for. You did not in vain
Turn your face toward me in the fire.
You gave me magnificent nature as my kingdom,
The power to feel it, to enjoy it. You do not
do you merely allow me to be a cold, marveling visitor,
but grant me to gaze into its deep bosom
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the procession of the living
past me, and teach me to know my brothers
in the quiet thicket, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce crashes down, sweeping neighboring branches
And crushing neighboring trunks as it falls,
And the hill thunders with a dull, hollow roar at their fall,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Me to myself, and within my own breast
Secret, profound wonders unfold.

[ 52 ] This was the progress Goethe had made through his efforts. Now, having modestly followed in nature’s footsteps step by step, he no longer felt like a slacker in the pursuit of knowledge, and he felt closer to the spirit that had once repelled him. Now he was able to look into his soul with a different kind of satisfaction and bliss. [What he had once sought to attain in a flash, he had now come to understand through the most diligent, painstaking work; he had ascended in humility. Now he stood face to face with the Spirit, which lives not only as the Earth Spirit in the outer world but also within the human soul itself. It led him into the safe cave, into his own inner self, toward self-knowledge!] He had gained a view of nature that now truly allows one to recognize the Spirit in nature:

You lead the procession of the living
Past me, and teach me to know my brothers
In the quiet bush, in the air and water.

[ 53 ] Now he had risen—albeit still drawing on the forces that had once sparked his aspirations in Frankfurt—but he had risen in humility. And now he became aware of what lived within his own soul as the eternal, the immortal. Through what he was able to connect with—after he had recognized this “Spirit of the Earth” in the outer world—the Spirit led him to self-knowledge. Now he felt ready to find within himself the forces he had once sought in the storm. And so we learn from the great Goethe how, as we mature alongside him from within, we should be cautious and humble and say: This cannot yet affect our soul, but it is willing to wait patiently and allow it to mature. Whoever acts in this way will say: It is good that you acted this way and opened yourself up to many things, for these had to mature within you first and then blossom. Faith in the development of the human soul, faith in the necessity of maturing so that we may believe in the immortality of the eternal, [so that we may gradually grow into the spiritual world]; this is what we can learn from Goethe.

[ 54 ] Back then, when he found a cave within his inner soul where the secrets of his own heart were revealed, he did not believe he had reached the end, but strove ever higher. And we shall see how “Faust,” which appeared as a fragment in 1790, climbs ever higher.

[ 55 ] At that time, much of what he experienced was merely external. But he became increasingly connected to the experiences of his inner soul: he delved into the mystical. [After Goethe had beheld the living spirit of the earth in the outer world, he also discovered his inner powers: “And the deep wells of my own spirit open up”—the Goethe of 1790 strives ever deeper and deeper. He looks up with humility and modesty.] This led him to feel deeply in the depths of his soul: There is something imperishable, and the human soul can recognize it because it can recognize the imperishable within itself. This was the legacy he left behind upon completing his Faust, which he sealed; it found expression in the closing words:

[ 56 ] Everything that is transitory is merely a parable.