The Rudolf Steiner Archive

13. Raphael's Mission in Light of the Science of the Spirit

[ 1 ] Ladies and gentlemen! The subject of today’s reflection will go somewhat beyond the boundaries that have generally been drawn here in such spiritual scientific reflections. Nevertheless, it seems to me that reflecting on the spiritual life of humanity in a broader sense is useful in relation to what the human soul can feel in response to the findings and results of this spiritual science. Furthermore, when we consider current historical events, this evening’s discussion may well present itself as a kind of spiritual-scientific imperative that directly engages with the spiritual life of the present; for the study of Raphael, when viewed in the way it is usually approached, presents people with all manner of puzzles—truly great puzzles in the realm of spiritual and cultural studies.

[ 2 ] And we may well find ourselves faced with the need to extend our humanities-based reflections specifically to such areas, particularly when we allow the fate of a significant contemporary art historian—one who, in my view, is not merely a scholar in the conventional, academic sense, but who is so above all because the heart of the nineteenth century beat within him as directly as it did in few other figures: Herman Grimm. He is one of those art historians who, in approaching his subject, was always engaged not only with reason and intellect, not only with the conventional scientific approach, but with his entire soul. And anyone familiar with Herman Grimm’s reflections on art and culture knows how infinitely much of what spiritually moves the present pulsates within him, how his puzzling questions about various subjects of intellectual life are, in fact, the very puzzling questions of our era. And if the science of the spirit is to prove itself more and more fruitful, then it will have to seek a connection with the way in which the entire spiritual and cultural life seeks to approach such enigmatic questions.

[ 3 ] Herman Grimm—the son of Wilhelm Grimm and the nephew of Jakob Grimm, the great linguist—was truly a spirit of the nineteenth century. At the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century, this eminent expert on Goethe passed away; this remarkable mind, who produced the wonderful book on Michelangelo, passed away. Anyone who delves into Herman Grimm’s work on Michelangelo will sense how, in his analysis, the entire era from which Michelangelo emerged first comes alive; how Michelangelo’s soul comes alive before us; how he stands out from his era; and how that era becomes art—artistic creation—within his soul—a picture of rare completeness! And we can turn to other works by Herman Grimm, for example his significant work on Goethe, and find that he has an immediate, personal relationship to everything concerning Goethe—a relationship that reveals more of Goethe’s character and inner essence than many scholarly analyses can. And so it is with many things.

[ 4 ] In a certain sense, it is indeed characteristic that Herman Grimm also wrote a “Life of Raphael.” However, his approach to this “Life of Raphael” differed from his approach to the life of Michelangelo or even that of Goethe. Herman Grimm himself admitted that he repeatedly made attempts to unravel the mystery of Raphael, and that at certain times he had indeed sought a kind of conclusion to the *Life of Raphael*; but every time he returned to the mystery of Raphael, he realized how incomplete, in his own mind, his work on Raphael had been. Time and again he made a fresh start; and so we have a wonderful essay that he wrote shortly before his death, which serves only as the introduction to a book that was intended to be more extensive, in which, shortly before his death, he once again attempts to place Raphael’s image before his own soul, to solve the enigma of Raphael for himself in a certain way—to the extent that such enigmas can be solved by the human soul at all.

[ 5 ] On the one hand, we see a struggling spirit who, with his entire being, is immersed in artistic life and in the contemplation of artistic life, a spirit who creates a wonderfully well-rounded portrait of Michelangelo; we see how he is conscious of having truly brought this portrait to a kind of conclusion; we see how this struggling soul, at the same time, struggles throughout his entire life to set Raphael’s enigma before him, yet never quite finishes it, so that even immediately before his death he makes one last attempt, which, in turn, remains unfinished. How is this possible? Yes, a mere scholar might have finished it in some sense, but not a mind that immersed itself in its task with its whole soul and sought to resurrect Raphael’s image. The more Herman Grimm drew near to Raphael, the more he sought to resurrect Raphael’s image within his own soul, the more it revealed itself to him as emerging, in some enigmatic way, from the entirety of human development; it presented itself to him in such a way that the more closely one examines it, the more one is compelled to delve into the deepest mysteries of the human soul itself and to gain an understanding of what such a human soul is—one that emerges from the entire picture of human development as a great mystery. And if, on the other hand, one traces the entire body of work of Herman Grimm, one has the feeling: Such a spirit, so intimately intertwined with the spiritual culture of the nineteenth century, makes attempts everywhere to find the path—yes, which path? The path that the spiritual researcher knows as his own. I can only gently allude here to the wonderfully intimate way in which Herman Grimm, at the end of his significant book *Unüberwindliche Mächte* (*Insurmountable Forces*), depicts death and the process of dying—and in this dying, the detachment of that which has often been described here as the detachment of the etheric body from the physical body. Tenderly and intimately, yet no less poignantly, we see Herman Grimm’s soul struggling to find the paths that spiritual science seeks to open up.

[ 6 ] So when one looks into the eyes of this remarkable art historian, one can truly get the sense that something lives within him that is a question specific to our own age. And because the pulse of our time lived within him, this question lived with particular vitality in his soul—the question of the humanities that we have sought to approach in all the reflections presented here. But it is precisely in a struggle such as Herman Grimm’s struggle with Raphael’s painting that one sees that, if one remains stuck in the spiritual mode of contemplation of the nineteenth century, one cannot come to terms with the greatest mysteries—especially when one sincerely and without hypocrisy attempts to solve such mysteries with the awareness that one must plunge into ever-greater depths. From the perspective of spiritual science—which I can only hint at—the answer will increasingly become clear as to why Herman Grimm could not come to terms with his interpretation of Raphael. As grotesque as it may sound to some, this is why he came as close as the very threshold of spiritual science everywhere, yet could not open that door anywhere in accordance with the spirit of his century, in accordance with the conditions of the entire development of the nineteenth century. Let us therefore attempt to approach Raphael, not on the basis of any spiritual scientific dogmas or laws, but with whatever is capable of penetrating our minds as the entire mood of the soul in response to Raphael’s painting. In spiritual scientific research, it is far more important—and this is ultimately what imprints itself on our souls—that we view the things of the world in a certain frame of mind than to apply, in a stereotypical and abstract manner, all manner of laws that may arise from spiritual research. This is certainly not what the human soul should make of spiritual science.

[ 7 ] How did Raphael appear to Herman Grimm, that spirit of the nineteenth century? This man speaks strange words. I will quote them verbatim so that we may, so to speak, fully immerse ourselves in the way this man seeks to establish a personal relationship with his subject through his research. Thus, Raphael appears to him as a spirit whom he must understand by drawing upon the most intimate depths of human development. Not on the basis of a single era, but as if born out of the entire development of humanity—great and mighty against the backdrop of human development—this is how Raphael appears to him; and for those who are capable of feeling, words such as those found in the final fragmentary pages of Herman Grimm’s work on Raphael—words he produced, so to speak, from a final attempt to contemplate Raphael—have a profound effect. There, Herman Grimm says:

Raphael is a figure in world history. He is like one of the four rivers that, according to the beliefs of the ancient world, flowed from Paradise.

[ 8 ] Scholars may think what they will about this, but for the person who can open his soul, something very special blossoms within him, [when he looks at a person like Herman Grimm, who has immersed himself in a single subject throughout his entire life and in whose heart lives something that compels him to speak of Raphael in such a way that he elevates him to a citizen of world history, to a being who stands apart from the entire course of human development]. And however different Herman Grimm may seem from others, if one seeks to do him justice—viewed from a certain spiritual perspective—one must acknowledge this. Herman Grimm said:

If Michelangelo were miraculously raised from the dead to live among us again, and I were to encounter him, I would step aside reverently to let him pass; but if Raphael were to cross my path, I would follow behind him, hoping to catch a few words from his lips. With Leonardo and Michelangelo, one can limit oneself to recounting what they once were in their own time; with Raphael, one must start from what he is to us today. A faint veil has settled over those others, but not over Raphael. He belongs to those whose growth is far from over. It is always conceivable that future generations will emerge for whom Raphael will pose new enigmas [...].

[ 9 ] And so let us raise the question: What mysteries can Raphael’s work present to those whose inner state has been permeated by the spiritual-scientific view of the world? Well, spiritual science speaks of development over time in a twofold sense; this dual sense has been touched upon here on several occasions. First, spiritual science speaks of how humanity, in its earthly evolution, moves from epoch to epoch, so that one recognizes that spirit and mind are present in this development—that is, that spiritual laws can be discovered. In light of these spiritual laws, we can see how humanity in prehistoric times was guided in its development across the Earth in a different way than in later periods; we can see how other, [new] impulses and influences have continued to work into our own time in accordance with these spiritual laws. In the spiritual-scientific sense, we make a precise distinction between the individual epochs, and therefore one cannot be satisfied with that trivial statement that natural development never takes a leap. This statement can certainly be quite correct if interpreted in a certain way; but let one try to observe nature: one will see how precisely such a saying, so easily uttered in a trivial manner, has only a very limited meaning. For nature continually makes leaps: the plant makes a tremendous leap in its development between the root and the green leaf, another tremendous leap between the green leaf and the flower, and yet another between the flower and the fruit. Nature makes leaps everywhere, and this is no less true in the history of humanity. The individual epochs do not, as a convenient worldview would have it, simply merge into one another in a straightforward, successive manner, but are sharply distinguished from one another in character. And anyone who examines these human epochs closely will find that the human soul is capable of perceiving something unique within itself in each epoch—something unique to experience. Even if one might find the phrase used by Lessing—that world history is an education of the entire human race—somewhat pedantic, in a certain sense this statement is justified. Just as the individual human being, starting from a primitive stage of his spiritual life, rises to ever-new impulses, which he then experiences both in the outer world and within himself, so it is also for all of humanity across the earth. This is one way in which spiritual science views the development of humanity across the earth.

[ 10 ] The other perspective concerns the human soul’s participation in this ongoing process of education. And here, spiritual science—as has been explained so often, and again the day before yesterday—concludes that: Through repeated earthly lives, the human being undergoes this earthly evolution, so that the human soul participates in the successive epochs in such a way that—looking back—we can ask ourselves how our own souls, in earlier epochs of earthly evolution, in earlier earthly lives, participated in what the earthly evolution of the human soul was able to offer each time. Time and again, our souls were incarnated on Earth in physical bodies in order to absorb within themselves that which then became impulses for later epochs. Thus, in its successive lives, the human soul participates in all that can flow into it from the impulses of the entire human evolution on Earth.

[ 11 ] There are, so to speak, compassionate souls who forgive Lessing for having spoken of repeated earthly lives from such a perspective at the height of his life in his significant work *The Education of the Human Race*, for it was only through this—[through this idea of repeated earthly lives] —did it become clear to him by what forces the entire evolution of humanity is actually carried through history: solely through the fact that human souls themselves carry over into other epochs what they have absorbed in one epoch, and that the human soul does not belong in isolation to a single epoch, but rather, recurring time and again, to successive epochs, so that it is a citizen of all of history. If we can proceed from this point of view—that what a human soul has absorbed as impulses in earlier epochs shines forth in a very peculiar way within every human soul—then it becomes clear to us how, in particular, an outstanding spirit [such as Raphael] can step into the world bearing the fruit of everything his soul has experienced in earlier earthly lives in whatever epoch.

[ 12 ] We will not search abstractly for cause and effect in a pedantic manner, but rather cultivate a sense of how a soul immerses itself in an epoch; and in this soul we essentially feel, in a very special way, the entire past earthly life that such a soul—and every human soul—has lived through in its own unique way. If we now consider a period that is, admittedly, relatively short in terms of Earth’s development but initially the most obvious one for the present-day human perspective—namely, the historical millennia—and [compare it with the period] of the millennia that preceded the historical ones, then something emerges for spiritual scientific research that has already been mentioned here on several occasions: The human soul itself has undergone states of transformation, so that in ancient times it was of a completely different nature than in later times or than in the present. It must be pointed out that our ordinary, present-day intellectual thinking—which has achieved its triumph in science—is a product of evolution that has emerged only gradually. It is precisely with the word “development” that spiritual science must take a serious approach, viewing this development not only in the succession of external forms but, above all, in the workings of the human soul. However, in spiritual science, this evolution of the human soul presents itself differently than it does in the external sciences.

[ 13 ] Spiritual science turns its gaze back to ancient times, even before the historical era, and finds there the human soul endowed with a kind of primitive clairvoyance. I can only hint at these things today; they are discussed in greater detail in other lectures. What today constitutes our intellectual thinking—through which we truly attain self-awareness and recognize ourselves inwardly as human beings—had to develop over time. In ancient times, the entire imaginative life of human beings was such that they experienced certain intermediate states between waking and sleeping, akin to dream images. These were not mere dream images, but symbolic expressions of the reality that surrounded them. People perceived through a kind of ancient clairvoyance. Then humanity developed further, and as part of a new impulse, our present-day understanding, our imagination, and other faculties—as they are characteristic of present-day humanity—were incorporated.

[ 14 ] We now find a significant turning point in the great period of human development that preceded us, a period that presents itself to us as a truly marvelous epoch in the history of humanity. This is the era of Greek civilization. To those who view human development with the trained eye of a spiritual researcher, Greek civilization appears as a kind of midpoint between two distinct lines of development within human history. When we consider Greek civilization, what is closest to us—since our present examination is intended to culminate in the perspective of an artist—is the artistic aspect. This artistic aspect, however, was in complete harmony with the entire Greek spirit, and this Greek spirit appears—only to those who view human development with a narrow perspective—as the modern spirit does—as though human souls were actually roughly the same as they are today. For those who closely examine the distinctive characteristics of human development, the picture appears quite different.

[ 15 ] I’d like to start with a specific point: When an artist today approaches his art—let’s say sculpture—it is entirely natural and self-evident in our present age, because it is inherent in the character of our time—well, to put it bluntly—that he works from a model, that he has nature as his example before him, that he imitates nature. This corresponds to our contemporary worldview, to our present-day environment, which artistically suggests to us that form of soul-contemplation that confronts nature and seeks truth by conjuring up images of things within the soul. This is how modern science operates, and in a certain sense, this is also how modern art operates. [But this is only right and proper for our time, for this is what the rational contemplation of the world demands; it demands that human beings gain a true or false image of nature through observation and that they create images of nature in their imagination, thereby confronting nature as self-conscious human beings.] This was not yet the case in Greek times, and those are mistaken who believe that the Greek artist worked in the same way as the artist of today. The artist of today must work this way because the human soul has become increasingly internalized; because, in our era, the human soul is no longer able to form that intimate bond with nature by immersing itself in the objects themselves. It positions itself as separate from things; it imitates them. Through this, modern man attains his power of judgment; through this, however, he also attains his full self-awareness in the world.

[ 16 ] The situation was different in ancient Greece. In Greek culture, the soul was, above all else, still intimately connected with everything physical and corporeal; and because it was more intimately connected with all of that, it was also intimately united with that with which the physical and corporeal are connected—namely, the surrounding nature. Whatever lives and unfolds in nature truly lived and unfolded in the human soul as it does in nature, just as it is. The human soul did not stand opposed to nature; it was within nature, living in harmony with the depths of nature. If, then, a Greek artist wished to create a statue in sculpture, it would have been entirely unnatural for him—as spiritual research shows us—to imitate anything outwardly. If he wanted to depict a statue—say, of Mars or Zeus—figures whom he humanized—his primary concern was to empathize with what the soul of Mars or the soul of Zeus experienced. And because the soul’s impulses, the soul’s feelings, poured objectively into the soul, the artist felt in every gesture, every movement, every posture, and every glance what the soul was experiencing. He was, in fact, Mars or Zeus within himself, and therefore knew what a hand or a muscle looked like. He created his own immediate inner experience. He did not create by imitating nature, because the soul did not merely experience what was spiritual, but also shared in the physical reality of the surroundings. This separation [of spiritual participation from nature]—that is a later development.

[ 17 ] In ancient Greece, the soul was still infused into natural existence. But if we go back even further than ancient Greece, we find ourselves approaching—and drawing ever closer to—the times when a kind of clairvoyance still existed, when human beings transcended the physical and perceived the spiritual realm lying beyond it—there they were connected to the spirit that hovers behind the sensory world. [There the soul created, from the innermost depths of the world—from laws that do not resemble those of the outer world—those forms that now, however, correspond all the more to the laws of the outer world.] Even among philosophers such as Plato, Pythagoras, and Socrates, we find human souls that still reach somewhat beneath the surface. In Greek culture, the soul is not yet internalized within the human personality; it still remains within the sensory world. Modern man has detached himself; he can only confront the natural world and imitate it. Through this, however, the consolidated soul attains inner stability, a firm standing within itself. Thus, the human soul of primeval times was unfree and dependent on the all-pervading Spirit; thus, the Greek soul was directly immersed within, not yet separating nature and Spirit from one another; thus, the modern soul is set apart from its surroundings, comprehending itself in its inner life.

[ 18 ] Now, there is no period in the history of art that shows us as clearly as in a single leap—in the sense described—how this art, on the one hand, still demands the grandeur and significance of experiencing nature firsthand, and on the other hand, must reckon with the deepened inner life of the human soul—[it is the period in which great artists such as Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael created their works] . It is characteristic that the Greek era witnessed the event that, above all else, instilled inner reflection in the human soul and which, through its impulses, contributes to the education of the human soul: the emergence and establishment of Christianity. And it strikes us as immense and remarkable when, viewing the development of humanity from the most comprehensive, non-denominational standpoint—independent of any narrow denominational perspective—we see how, from the very moment of Christianity’s emergence, what we might call the “internalization of the human soul”—and which I am now attempting to characterize—began to emerge as a natural process.

[ 19 ] One can especially keep this in mind when trying to contemplate a figure from the early Christian centuries, a figure like Augustine. Let us immerse ourselves in something like Augustine’s *Confessions*—a work well worth reading for anyone who wishes to delve into the spirit of the times, in the best sense of the word. And in doing so, we gain a sense of that infinite inwardness of human soul experience that bursts into the development of humanity and manifests itself in a soul such as Augustine’s. And compare the whole life, the entire inner nature of Augustine’s soul life, with what [all of] Greek art—even the harrowing tragedies of Aeschylus and Sophocles—has been able to offer. In the great Aeschylus, in the great Sophocles, we find everywhere the interconnectedness of human beings with their surroundings. However brilliantly great the characterizations presented to us may seem—the characters do not stand out to such an extent that we can speak of an internalization of the inner life to the same degree as this self-contained nature of the human spirit confronts us so powerfully and mightily in Augustine.

[ 20 ] It will only be possible to grasp the entire spiritual course of human development once this impulse toward internalization is recognized as a historical law—even if one does not wish to connect it in any conventional way to the Christ impulse. For these things exist, just as truly as the sun exists in space. From a spiritual-scientific perspective, they can be understood in the same way as the effects of the sun on the planets in space. [This development led, particularly during that flowering of human-spiritual evolution known as the Renaissance, initially to the adoption of a certain unartistic way of viewing things.] But art will never be able to disappear from human development; it will simply seek out, for each different epoch, precisely what is possible for it within the lawful, general character of that age. And so, in the era at the turn of the fifteenth to the sixteenth century—an era that also encompassed Raphael’s lifetime—we see how people struggled, first, to make art possible and, second, to take into account in art what had naturally arisen in the development of art as a result of the inner transformation of the human soul.

[ 21 ] Raphael’s spirit came of age during this momentous period of transition. And how does he appear to us then? He appears to us in a wondrous way! Raphael was born in Urbino in 1483, the son of a goldsmith who was also a painter and from whom he received his first painting lessons. Orphaned at an early age, Raphael was sent to apprentice with Pietro Perugino in Perugia, who was the most important painter in Italy at the time. We see Raphael receiving from Perugino, so to speak, the initial inspiration for what would later rise to such tremendous greatness. But when one considers Raphael’s surroundings—first in Urbino, then in Perugia—and then Raphael’s own soul, this observation becomes a mystery no matter where one looks; for this soul of Raphael stands within his surroundings like something that does not grow out of those surroundings themselves, but rather places itself within them as if coming from entirely different homelands. And only those who are short-sighted with regard to these matters can still strive to explain Raphael based on what surrounded him.

[ 22 ] Raphael grew up in Perugia, where he studied under the most important painter in Italy at the time. When we first consider the master himself, we see a thoroughly Christian man, one who took into account the Christian element of the soul’s inner life. When we allow the overall impression of his paintings to take effect on us, we find this to be justified throughout. Yes, drawing from the traditions of his time, this master of Raphael’s painted the Christian figures—the inner life of the human soul that seeks the ways of the Eternal. He painted the figures of sacred legend in such a way that the struggling, searching human soul, in need of eternity, finds satisfaction in these figures. But in every stroke of these paintings by Perugino, we also see that he was not fully present with the innermost fibers of his soul in what he painted, even though it was rooted in tradition. One can clearly discern this when looking at the surviving paintings, at Perugino’s gentle countenance—one that can nevertheless be fully explained in terms of his time: This soul, which lives in these features, sought—drawn from tradition—to internalize the art that it had conjured onto the canvas; but the soul was not fully present. This tradition, not fully internalized—that was the essential quality that Raphael valued in his master.

[ 23 ] When we look at the countryside around Perugia, we see a marvelous natural landscape that awakens in every sensitive human soul a sense of the mysteries of natural existence and of the eternal values inherent in earthly life. But what was taking place in this setting? One struggle after another within a passionate people. And it must be assumed that the place where Raphael grew up and was educated was marked by struggles—terrible struggles—that individual families and lineages waged against one another in the struggle for supremacy over the city. Entire families would leave the city and then lay siege to those who remained behind. All of this surrounded Raphael. Try to imagine any person who grew up in Perugia and compare him to Raphael; you would see how the former would have lived through it all and become absorbed in the life of his surroundings—you can almost touch it with your hands, so to speak.

[ 24 ] There is a compelling account by a chronicler, a historian, who was just such a person—one who was there; he recounts how, on one occasion amid these warring factions, one of the heroes of such a faction rode into the city like a kind of St. George or Mars, high on his horse, fighting valiantly for his followers, and how he trampled everything that stood in his way with his horse—a scene from Perugia at that time! We see this scene, described by the chronicler, depicted in a painting by Raphael—elevated to the spiritual and soulful realm, in that everything that has an immediate effect on the viewer facing this scene has been swept away. We see how a life is revealed to us here that only a soul can experience—a soul that hovers above the whole and captures only what is presented inwardly and spiritually in such a scene, and which it then later conjures onto the canvas. This is how Raphael appears to us: at home in worlds that do not belong to the sensory realm, at home in spiritual realms with which his soul is wholly interwoven in its innermost being. And the immediate surroundings into which he is placed offered him nothing other than the opportunity to observe them as a spirit from entirely different realms—a spirit who, for the sake of clear thinking and clear observation, can never be reduced to his surroundings, who brings something with him, who adds something that is not present in those surroundings.

[ 25 ] And what else did Raphael learn from his master? Precisely what makes Raphael that marvelous embodiment of artistic and human development—that is what he did not learn from his master. For we sense in Raphael that the defining trait of the modern era—the internalization of the human soul—that natural internalization which is intertwined with everything he creates—is precisely what Perugino lacks, whereas it is present in every fiber of Raphael’s being and pours directly into what he expresses through his forms and his art. We sense how a piece of Raphael’s deepest inner life lives on the canvas everywhere when we immerse ourselves in his paintings. This was something Raphael drew from the heights of heaven and not from Perugino; he brought it here like a messenger from entirely different worlds. Anyone who attempts to grasp this internalization not merely through dogmas and doctrines, through external laws that can be captured in concepts, but with their whole soul, will feel it streaming forth from every one of Raphael’s creations, so that in Raphael’s greatest works we have precisely what we can say: It is now something entirely different from what lies in Greek art. There, what the human being directly experienced in soul and body—and at the same time shaped into forms—was brought to life. In Raphael, we see the innermost essence of the human soul as if poured out and confronting us in forms; the soul, having separated itself from natural existence, flows forth and stands before us as a new world, as a creation of the most deeply internalized human soul—not in a certain sense standing within nature, but like a new creation —the inner life of the human soul striving outward once more and embodying itself artistically there.

[ 26 ] Let us, for the purposes of today’s reflection, leave aside those who call only those people Christians who believe in Christian dogmas. Whoever recognizes the Christian trait in the inner life of the human soul, whoever sees this Christian impulse at work, whoever observes how the human soul detaches itself from the outer world and turns inward, how it seeks the Christ impulse within—because the human being, having separated from nature, needs such a point of support— will understand why this impulse was given precisely at that time. Whoever is able to recognize and feel this Christianity—which is more than [merely] free of dogma, a Christianity that some no longer even regard as Christian—will understand when the spiritual scientist senses how the fundamental trait of Christianity already lived in Raphael’s soul even before his birth, how, with Raphael, a Christianized soul was born in all his feeling and self-expression, a soul that, as a soul imbued with Christianity, places itself within its entire environment; a soul with which the Christian way of life was born at the same time; a soul that was Christian through everything that lived within it. And this Christian essence in Raphael’s soul cannot be explained by anything in his environment. When put this way, it sounds like an assertion, and it cannot be substantiated with mathematical proofs; such things arise through intimate immersion in the essence of such a soul. One can see this precisely in Raphael, when one lets his soul pass before one’s eyes in contemplation, how it stands out and differs from another soul that only came to live within the internalization of Christianity during the course of its life. Indeed, it is precisely in Raphael—when one contrasts him with another figure—that one can see the difference between a soul born as a Christianized soul, so that it imbues every stroke of its creations with Christian mystery, and a soul that only gradually immerses itself in Christian impulses.

[ 27 ] Let us continue to examine Raphael in relation to his immediate surroundings. When he was transferred to Florence in 1504, he entered an environment where Savonarola’s influence was still keenly felt and where the atmosphere was still strongly shaped by what Savonarola had instilled in Florence. The spirit of Savonarola himself was still palpable in what lived on in Florence among both his followers and opponents—for example, in Fra Bartolommeo, who belonged to Raphael’s circle of friends. If one places a soul like Savonarola’s—a contemporary soul, so to speak—side by side with that of Raphael, one notices a difference. How naturally the Christianized aspect—the very nature of Raphael’s entire Christianized spiritual life—presents itself to us; Raphael’s soul does not first need to become Christian; it does not need to fanatically advocate for Christianity; it never does so. Nor does Raphael’s soul need to indulge in Christian dogmas in any way; this soul draws lines and applies colors in a way that corresponds to the Christian inner life—it lives as a Christian from birth. How different is Savonarola’s soul! It immerses itself in Christianity in such a way that, bit by bit, it fights its way toward the heroic, the grand, the meaningful, and the moral aspects of Christianity. As it develops, it is gradually inspired by what one can perceive as the essence of Christianity. It is a soul that first acclimates itself to Christianity, that becomes fanatical about it—a soul in which we can see how it is drawn to Christianity bit by bit and lives so closely with it that the internalized Christian soul must pour itself out again—powerfully, and therefore one-sidedly and fanatically. That is a tremendous difference.

[ 28 ] If one does not adopt a dogmatic stance but instead considers how, at the very moment one ascends to a spiritual-scientific perspective, everything becomes infinitely multifaceted—where proofs do not present themselves as they do in the realm of mathematics, where everything has sharp contours—then it becomes infinitely clear to those who are not merely familiar with scientific dogmas and laws, but who have imbued themselves with the impulses of spiritual science, that this concept of the two souls, which we have just attempted to develop, is illuminated with infinite clarity. When spiritual science shows us how Raphael’s soul—I wish only to hint at these things gently, not crudely, as must be done in spiritual science when approaching individual concrete details—when spiritual science illuminates for us how a soul such as Raphael’s was already intimately connected with the spirit of Christianity in a previous life, how it absorbed the power of Christianity and passed through life—between death and a new birth—with this power of Christianity, then one can also understand the transformation through which he can now live out in a serene form, as soul-spiritual powers, what he once experienced with intensity. This is how one comes to terms with the mystery when one says to oneself: “Yes, that which possesses an immediate Christian impetus—even to the point of becoming dogmatic—was not previously lived through by a soul such as Savonarola’s; rather, it was only in that life during Raphael’s time that it was able, step by step and emerging from other forms of life, to settle into Christianity—into a stage that the soul of Raphael had already passed through in an earlier life.”

[ 29 ] Certainly, I, too, find it only natural that a large portion of humanity today still finds what has just been said absurd and ridiculous. I will never be surprised—along with all those who are familiar with the foundations of spiritual science—if people find such things absurd and ridiculous. But the time will come when people will realize how deeply grounded is what can be said about human souls from the spiritual perspective—the very perspective just used to illustrate the fundamental difference between the soul of Savonarola and that of Raphael. The doctrine of repeated earthly lives will prove fruitful in this regard.

[ 30 ] And yet another aspect of Raphael comes to light when we bring this remarkable spirit to mind. If one examines his soul in this way, one finds that it is so naturally Christian that Raphael was not at all led astray by the unchristian environment of the popes when he came to Rome. Truly, a soul in which Christianity lived so naturally could more easily cope with its surroundings and not take offense at that Julius II, the pope of whom Machiavelli—who was certainly not of a particularly moral nature himself—said was a diabolical soul, a man who would have liked to bare his teeth at anyone who opposed him or did not suit him. And there is not exactly much to say about the Christian character of the subsequent popes with whom Raphael lived. A soul like Savonarola’s thus clashes with such popes. He confronts them just as John the Baptist once confronted people with his apt words—but not the Raphael soul, which has already been through this before, in some previous life, which we shall not discuss further here. Raphael’s soul remains untouched by this, in its Christian self-evidence.

[ 31 ] But artistically, his soul must be active. Artistry must be a continuation of what emerged as art in ancient Greece. He must seek what he does not possess within himself, and he must seek it precisely in his surroundings. We see him, for example, walking among the excavated ruins and ancient tombs in Rome, surveying everything, truly taking in from the outside what is distinctive about Greek art—which he must marry with what comes naturally to him: Christian inwardness. It is as if Raphael’s soul, in a previous life, had had the opportunity to be so close to Christianity that Christianity was born into Raphael’s existence as a matter of course; yet in that previous life, the soul had stood at a distance from Greek culture and must now take in this Greek culture from the outside in order to unite it with the Christianity that he brings with him as a matter of course from a previous life. It is like the fusion of that which appears from the spiritual realm as a necessary result of earlier earthly existence with that which this soul must now take in from the outside—in contrast to the soul of Savonarola. Thus the two kinds of forces that confront us in this soul of Raphael grow together. And one day it will no longer seem absurd or ridiculous to seek Raphael in a previous life somewhere in a Christian environment that stood apart from Greek culture, an environment that at that time poured powerful impulses into this soul, impulses that lay dormant there until this soul life had been transformed—until the next birth, now, of course, without any fanaticism and without many other things that only remotely resemble fanaticism. When this soul was reborn, it sought—because it had still been distant from Greek culture at that time—Greek culture wherever it could find it, so that it might now absorb this Greek culture into itself.

[ 32 ] If, through the study of the spiritual sciences, we can recognize the spiritual currents that converged within Raphael—if we can grasp them—then we will come to understand how both of these elements exerted such a significant influence on his soul: [on the one hand] the natural Christian innerization inherent in him through his individuality, and [on the other hand] Hellenism, through the environment into which the soul was drawn precisely because it lacked that which was a significant, major turning point throughout all epochs of human development. We see how Raphael—through the fusion of these two elements, one individual and one inherent in the general development of humanity but not received by Raphael in his earlier incarnation—rises on the grand canvas of humanity’s general development as if to a [special] summit. Then we realize that what now confronts us in his creations could arise from within his soul, so infinitely internalized there. If Raphael is a typically Christian soul, and if the Christian principle and the universal humanity of Greek culture come together within him in accordance with the laws of nature; if Raphael thus absorbs the magnificent currents of humanity’s present cycle of development, then we may assume that something lives within his own soul that is like a reflection of the laws governing human progress.

[ 33 ] And so that my remarks do not seem too “mystical” to you, and so that the “imagination” does not become too grotesque after all, I would now like—as I set out to show how a soul absorbs something like a reflection of the great currents of world history, how it, as it were, represents small epochs as images of great epochs of human history — for it is in such epochs that human development unfolds — I do not wish to speak with my own words, but rather to present once again the struggling Herman Grimm, who says something very remarkable. In his last work, Herman Grimm seeks to portray the most significant pinnacles of Raphael’s creative output, but how strangely he speaks of this creative, productive soul of Raphael—how curious. For Herman Grimm, the development of Raphael’s creations—his creative work—becomes a universal law of the world itself; he regards seven works as the greatest in Raphael’s development. And of these seven works, he says:

At the age of twenty-one, he painted *The Marriage of Mary*; four years later, *The Entombment*; another four years after that, *The Camera della Segnatura* was completed; four years after that came the cartoons for the tapestries, and soon afterward the two Madonnas. *The Transfiguration of Christ* stood at the foot of the deathbed.

[ 34 ] A mind that, when viewed without prejudice, appears as if it were to encompass within itself the epochs of human development—such a mind appears to the art viewer, who looks for the characteristic features, to be developing in such a way that, quarter by quarter, it ascends to higher and ever higher peaks; and because the last four years are not yet complete, the final work is not yet finished either.

[ 35 ] It is often said that the human being is a microcosm in relation to the macrocosm; an epoch-making spirit like Raphael appears to us here as a microcosm of human-spiritual development itself. And how does he carry this within himself? We need only turn our gaze to the two large and magnificent—though, one might say, now poorly overpainted and poorly preserved—frescoes in the Vatican’s Camera della Segnatura, one of which—whether rightly or wrongly, let that remain open to debate—is called “The School of Athens,” and the other “The Disputa.” The entire course of human development is captured in these two opposing images, which touch the human soul so deeply. In one painting, Greek civilization is represented by the ennobled figures on the left and right, expressing, as it were, the question: [How far has humanity come? To what point has it advanced throughout the entire age of Greek civilization,] when human beings still lived in direct communion with the external world? Everything in this single painting—down to the architecture—reflects the spirit of this development.

[ 36 ] It is wrong to attempt to comment on or interpret it in a pedantic, philistine manner; one is right to try to summarize in a single feeling what humanity has preserved on its path up to the Greek era, where life in the external world was replaced by the internalization of the human soul; to summarize the entire life of humanity in a bygone era—with everything the human soul has longed for, strived for, and worked toward—in a single feeling: It flows toward us; what fills this feeling with meaning lives within this image. There is no need to imagine the individual figures. I already consider it a shame when travelers stand before the painting with the “Baedeker” in hand and read: “That is so-and-so—that is Aristotle, that is Plato, that is Ptolemy, that is Pythagoras.” What do all these names matter to us? What do all the commentaries and explanations give us? The artistic breath that emanates from this painting is also what flows toward us from the Greek work of art—the breath that arises precisely from the development of humanity itself, when we view it with a sensitive, artistic heart. Then the epoch of internalization on the opposite wall: above, the symbols of the supernatural; below, human beings depicting how the supersensible flows into their souls so that they may internalize it. The entire powerful contrast between an ancient era and the era of internalization, and once again the breath of this new internalization itself—all of this flows toward us from what is called—again, rightly or wrongly—“Disputa.”

[ 37 ] Raphael infused these scenes with the very essence of his soul. And one truly feels this when one can perceive as true what lies in the souls within these two distinct cycles of human development: the pre-Christian and the post-Christian eras. If one refrains from all intellectual judgment, from all unartistic commentary—that nonsense of subjective interpretation that has become so widespread, especially in theosophical circles—and surrenders to immediate feeling, if one immerses oneself artistically in these works, then one feels drawn to Raphael, to a human soul that has united innerization in artistic creation with a kinship to all that is spiritual in nature, as it existed in earlier epochs.

[ 38 ] Again—when one travels from Florence to Bologna and sees the painting there: in the center, the female figure, gazing upward as if in a vision—I need not mention the name, you may assume, for my sake, that this is “Saint Cecilia”—depicted in such a way that in every gesture, every line, every color, the soul’s detachment from the physical is revealed. She directs her gaze upward, so that both from the central figure and from the four surrounding ones it becomes clear: The falling to the ground of the earthly instruments arises directly from the feeling; but the soul, which is directed upward—we sense that its tones have fallen silent—listens to what is born as if from the supersensible, what resounds as celestial music, permeating and warming the world, in the face of which earthly music seems to fade away. Only a soul that feels as deeply as Raphael’s soul could conjure this onto the canvas, onto the wall. And only a soul like Raphael’s could create, precisely from the depths of the human soul, the highest thing the human soul can feel. If spiritual science, in its comprehensiveness, seeks to elevate the human soul to the origin of human existence, then it arrives at what has already been expounded here on several occasions: that while many things may surround us on Earth, and while we may look upon many things, it is precisely that which, in a strictly spiritual-scientific view, presents itself to us as the innermost core of our nature—that which sustains and guides us— to seek this innerization—that which is of extraterrestrial origin—lives, as I said the day before yesterday, in the spiritual-soul realm that surrounds us, just as the Earth’s atmosphere physically surrounds us; and born out of the spirit, we feel this, which is the most human of all that is human.

[ 39 ] If we wish to have a representation of what is most human in humanity, if we wish to feel and experience in our souls what spiritual science is able to stir within them, then we feel the Earth, with all that belongs to it, slipping away from us and what is most human in humanity floating toward us; then our soul delves into the worlds that lie beyond the Earth, it turns its gaze outward to seek in these extra-earthly worlds that which is the origin of the human being; and it transports itself outward by seeking to make the supersensible tangible in the regions where clouds form. From the regions where clouds form, we find the image of the most human of all that is human breaking through to Earth, as Raphael allows this mysterious connection between mother and son to float toward us, to be born from the highly stylized clouds. Our soul rises from the feeling that shines within us in the [figure of] the so-called “Saint Cecilia” to the delicately perceptible, transcendental sense of the mystery of humanity [originating] from otherworldly realms.

[ 40 ] And when one allows this feeling—which stirs an infinite warmth in our soul—to be nothing but feeling —for it is the feeling into which the currents of spiritual scientific contemplation ultimately converge—if one allows this feeling to take hold within oneself and seeks a satisfying representation—something that meets the feeling from the outside—then one should imagine the “Sistine Madonna” from Dresden. The spiritual scientific feeling grows in harmony with what Raphael has depicted in this painting. Through line and color, through the movement of the hand and gesture, what is meant is revealed to us: the encounter of spiritual-scientific ideals with the highest artistic ideals, with the religious feelings within us; the encounter of that sensation which, from all that is pictorial, is capable of kindling a flame within us; the encounter of this sensation with what flows toward us from Raphael’s creation, the encounter of this feeling with the creation of the imagination, which itself has grown out of such a feeling.

[ 41 ] One is tempted to fall silent when one has reached the point of describing the feelings that ultimately lead to an understanding of the supersensible. Raphael, however, appears to us as a riddle that spiritual science must solve. And deep down, it is understandable when someone like Herman Grimm approaches spiritual science from every angle and longs to find in Raphael’s figure something that corresponds to spiritual science, but—because he cannot find it—leaves his reflection unfinished. Such an example clearly illustrates what has so often had to be said: The legacy of the nineteenth century consists in the fact that the external science of that century—the external observation and external recreation of nature—was destined to reach a pinnacle that cannot be admired enough. Yet it has left behind mysteries, so that in our age this external science must flow into spiritual science.

[ 42 ] One is enriched and inspired to engage with Raphael from a humanities perspective when one considers the unique intellectual struggle of Herman Grimm in particular. And then one can sense how peculiar the inner workings of Herman Grimm’s soul must have been, and one is led to say the same thing that has been attempted here with all too inadequate means. It is curious that right in the introduction to his reflection on Raphael, we find a peculiar thought sprouting from Herman Grimm’s soul—just as thoughts sometimes emerge from the deep, subconscious regions of the soul’s life—a peculiar thought that makes one ask: Why this thought in particular when contemplating Raphael’s soul?

I can see developments in human history unfolding before my eyes that I will be unable to be a part of, ...

[ 43 ] – he doubts that the soul will truly live again in future incarnations —

... but which seem to me so dazzlingly beautiful that, for their sake, it would surely be worth the effort to begin human existence all over again.

[ 44 ] Strange, one might say with grotesque dryness: precisely where Herman Grimm cannot go, because he cannot view Raphael’s life from the perspective of repeated earthly lives, that is where the idea of repeated earthly lives occurs to him. When one looks at Raphael, he says, one is drawn to the idea of beginning existence all over again.

[ 45 ] One should not comment further on such a thought, but merely let it be hinted at, just as the thought that will one day provide the solution to the mystery of Raphael surfaces from Herman Grimm’s subconscious. And if we are to find the solution to the many mysteries that dwell in every human soul—from the humblest to the greatest—in the fact of repeated earthly lives, then the great mysteries of human evolution, especially at their pinnacles, become particularly clear to us when we are able to draw upon the teaching of repeated earthly lives. Then an infinitely deeper meaning flows into the history of human development.

[ 46 ] And when we are filled with the sense that souls like Raphael’s imbue humanity with forces so that they may be applied in a new life and in new forms, then we vividly feel toward Raphael what Herman Grimm once used to conclude his reflection on Raphael—and at the same time to begin it—and with which we, too, wish to conclude what was to be expounded through today’s reflections on Raphael. It is precisely when one sees, from the perspective of spiritual science, how deeply Raphael’s soul is rooted in the entire course of human development that one truly senses what Herman Grimm alludes to at the beginning of his reflection on Raphael. And here, too, spiritual science shows us—not in abstract forms—what inner soul life is, but rather it kindles a devotion to all that is spirited, powerful, and fruitful in human development. What Herman Grimm was able to express from the depths of his soul only becomes clearly evident through a reflection such as the one we have presented today. Yes, with such a sense of appreciation, we may look up to Raphael, and thus we can say:

Everyone will want to know about the life’s work of such a person. Raphael has become one of the foundations upon which the higher education of the human spirit is based. We would like to get to know him better because we need him for our well-being.

[ 47 ] Yes, and human evolution is intertwined with such a force that flows into its sphere, because it will—and must—live in ever-new perspectives within this soul, and this soul, in turn, will radiate its power into other souls. Thus, spiritual research, too, can echo the very words spoken by Herman Grimm:

People will always want to know about Raphael—the young, handsome painter who surpassed all others, who died too young, and whose death was mourned by all of Rome. Even if Raphael’s works were ever lost, his name would remain etched in people’s memories.

[ 48 ] And spiritual science can add: The power that was in his soul will live on forever, in ever-new forms, in the ever-more-creative development of humanity!