The Rudolf Steiner Archive

3. The Spiritual Signature of the Present

[ 2 ] Ladies and gentlemen, dear fellow students! Anthroposophy can be a matter that the individual settles with himself in the privacy of his own room—in a sense, something that touches upon the most intimate questions of the heart and soul, something about which one can become convinced that it is connected to what binds the individual, as he experiences himself in his full individuality and personality, to the eternal and the divine. I spoke more from this perspective yesterday. Today I would like to say a few words to you from the other perspective—the perspective from which anthroposophical spiritual science can be a matter of our present age. This age, which has indeed brought to the surface from the depths of human development a vast number of questions that now concern not merely the individual in his quiet little room, but are a common—if one may say so—entirely social matter for all of humanity.

[ 3 ] If one wishes to examine anthroposophical endeavors from this perspective, one must first outline a few points regarding what I would like to call “the signature of our time”—that is, the specific forces, currents, and aspirations that particularly characterize our era. Of course, I will not have the opportunity to describe the details of our age; however, I would like to outline in broad strokes those aspirations and currents—which are, of course, well known in the widest circles, although, unfortunately, their full significance is all too rarely appreciated—in a way that shows how the individual, so to speak, moves within our age without this individual being given special consideration.

[ 4 ] Perhaps it struck some as strange, even paradoxical, when I uttered a sentence yesterday that actually contradicts much of what has recently emerged in the history of humanity, particularly in the realm of shaping worldviews. I said that when a person truly matures in scientific consciousness—which has long since become part of the general consciousness of humanity and has also found its way into certain religious views— —that human beings thereby acquire a concept of being, a sense of existence—including their own—which they can no longer hold onto when, in their self-reflection, they look back on their own thinking. I stated that human beings, based solely on their consciousness of time—and by this I mean the consciousness of the last three to four centuries—can arrive at the statement: “I think, therefore I am not.” — Human beings cannot simultaneously apply the concept of being—which they need to justify their scientific worldview—to what unfolds before them in their thinking, namely in their intellectual life. And perhaps one must see in the quest for a worldview that emerged with Descartes—and which has nonetheless infected almost the entire quest for a worldview in modern times—one must see in the statement “I think, therefore I am” more of a kind of attempt at salvation, a search for some fixed point within oneself. One must, so to speak, understand the emergence of this statement, “I think, therefore I am,” from a psychological perspective. And psychology might tell us: Philosophers and their followers engage with this statement and believe in it because it offers them a certain illusory aid against sinking into nothingness—[which befalls one] when one looks inward and has been brought up to view existence through the lens of the external, scientific worldview. — It might even seem paradoxical to anthroposophists if this statement were uttered by the very person who, with The Philosophy of Freedom in the early 1890s, sought precisely to counter the defining spirit of our age. Since I took pure thinking as my starting point in my Philosophy of Freedom at that time, it might seem as though what was said then about pure thinking—through which one grasps the general forces of the world as if by a single thread—were to be, so to speak, cast aside today. But that is precisely not the case. And precisely because one rediscovers spiritual being by starting from pure thinking—precisely because of this, in the sense of a matter of our time—this is what anthroposophical spiritual science is concerned with. But one will only come to understand what has just been said if, in the sense I have indicated, one familiarizes oneself a little with the character of our time, with the most principal characteristic features of our age.

[ 5 ] And this characteristic—which, one might say, sheds light on all the others—follows directly from the way in which the people of our age approach scientific conviction, to which they have become accustomed over the past few centuries. Ladies and gentlemen, people today are so proud to say that they have cast off the belief in authority of earlier centuries, as prescribed by the denominational institutions. People today are so proud to tell themselves that they believe only in what they can grasp within their own personal being. And yet, to the deeper observer, it seems as though the old belief in authority of the confessional religions has merely shifted to another realm—and this realm is precisely what is abstractly called “science,” with great vagueness but all the more intense conviction. Science. — As soon as people today hear the word “science,” everything within them that once stemmed from the old belief in authority—but had since taken entirely different directions—is stirred once more. What is deemed to have been scientifically established is today—for reasons that people in wider circles do not fully grasp—an authority of far greater power than any authority has ever been. How often does one hear today the answer to something that wells up as a question from within the human soul: “Science says this or that.” — This universal power, science, has today claimed all authority for itself. It has claimed this authority even with regard to questions of worldview among those people who consider themselves to be at the forefront of their time.

[ 6 ] But what, then, is the relationship of humanity today to scientific authority? Circumstances have brought it about that, scientifically speaking, what is recognized is that which every person—having developed to a certain level through ordinary human education, the customary human education—is believed to understand. Science is, in essence, meant to establish nothing other than what every person, provided they have the necessary prerequisites, can say “yes” to. Science is meant to be something entirely universal. Science is meant to exist in every person in exactly the same way. For we know how those who cling above all to the authority of science react when a single individual somewhere rebels against this universal validity of scientific judgment. So one could say: The ideal of a scientific worldview is that it provides a set of judgments about matters concerning the world and humanity that apply in exactly the same way to every person, with complete uniformity. A uniformity of gigantic proportions, one might say, is the ideal of this scientific conviction.

[ 7 ] When one says something like this, it might at first even seem like a triviality. In life, however, this triviality means an extraordinary amount. For given the great influence that science—particularly insofar as it is based on the natural sciences—has gained in our time—and, as I explained yesterday, rightly so in certain fields—one must assume that, as scientific thinking increasingly standardizes people, it is becoming more and more the case that one person becomes merely a carbon copy of another. And indeed, if one considers science not in terms of its content but in terms of what it has accomplished in recent times with regard to the development of the human race, one sees how this standardization, driven by scientific persuasiveness, seeks to become a matter of universal human concern. One need only look at the terrible, destructive forces raging today in Eastern Europe—forces whose significance, unfortunately, is still not sufficiently appreciated here in terms of their destructive power— and one sees how, indeed, the people who today devote themselves to such forces of destruction with a certain fanaticism have actually set out to make certain doctrines—arising from scientific foundations—or perhaps, better said, a certain state of mind arising from these scientific foundations, the basis of social thought as well. And what is sought through this transposition of the scientific state of mind into social thought—that great prison of humanity where one person is supposed to be merely a carbon copy of another, even in social relations, as in Leninism or Trotskyism—is driven to the point of paradox, but indeed to a most tragic paradox. One can already see everywhere—I have, after all, merely pointed to an extreme, a radical case—one can already see everywhere, one might say as if flowing naturally from the developmental trends of our time, how the scientific mindset seeks to bring about this leveling of humanity. This is essentially one of the main forces found in the signature of humanity’s current development: this leveling driven by theory, thought, and research. This in no way calls into question the legitimacy of such research, as was evident from my remarks yesterday. For in the realm of the natural sciences, this research is indeed fully justified, and it has led science and technology to the great, fully justified triumphs that I need not describe here.

[ 8 ] This one pole of modern human development, however, is counterbalanced by another that is no less characteristic of humanity’s current spiritual condition. To the same extent that this leveling of humanity is sought through the intellect and intellectualistic observation of nature, to that same extent the individual and the personal assert themselves in human nature; polarities arise everywhere in the world, and here, too, is one such polarity—an inner one. And we see how, in contrast to the leveling just described, the instinctive forces of human nature come to the fore on the other side. One might say that the impulses of the will burst forth with instinctive force from the individuality of the human being, reaching down to the animal level. While people strive with their minds toward a certain leveling, the most deeply personal aspects assert themselves everywhere from the depths of the human being—that which distinguishes the individual from every fellow human being to the greatest degree. Thus, the moment we turn away from the ideas people wish to form about the world in the scientific sense indicated, and turn instead to what people feel—what they recognize as the foundation, as the impulse of their will—we can see how people completely pass each other by, how the individual no longer has any kind of understanding of the other. An understanding of one person by another—often artificially cultivated—is now limited to only the narrowest circles. People do not understand one another today. We talk so much about social ideals, about artificial institutions intended to bring about social life, and we do this mainly to delude ourselves about the fundamental fact that, in our instincts and in the development of our will and feelings, we have actually become terribly antisocial. An antisocial element pervades humanity as soon as one looks beyond intellectual life and examines what actually lives in the depths of emotional life, in the depths of the impulses of the will. This is the great conflict of our time, in which humanity is entangled: that on the one hand it seeks intellectual uniformity, and on the other hand develops, from the depths of human organization, a differentiation that actually has an incredibly antisocial effect.

[ 9 ] This is essentially the situation in which humanity finds itself. And from this question—which is one of the most important elements defining the character of contemporary spiritual life—all other questions essentially arise; it was essentially from this that what developed into such a terrible catastrophe in the second decade of the 20th century emerged.

[ 10 ] If one observes the judgments that float on the surface—how peoples and individuals judge one another, how they assign guilt and innocence to one another, how they speak of what they wish to recognize as right or wrong—then, fundamentally, everything that is said on the surface is merely a superficial view. Beneath the surface, that very contradiction rages—those very polarities of which I have just spoken.

[ 11 ] In contrast to this, in a certain sense, there is that anthroposophically oriented spiritual science which seeks to become a matter for the whole, the complete human being, and which seeks to engage the human being’s feelings and will. On the one hand, as I explained yesterday, it draws upon sources of knowledge that learn to look into the human inner being. It draws upon certain abilities that go beyond the everyday and can be developed through the method I hinted at yesterday. From these latent powers of knowledge—which lie dormant in ordinary life and in ordinary science—it draws forth something that looks down into human nature, into those regions that are veiled in ordinary life by the all-so-necessary power of recollection, by memory, just as the space behind a mirror is veiled by the mirror. If we break through, via the path I indicated yesterday, what stands in the way of the power of our memory, and develop powers of supersensible perception, then we will indeed, as I indicated yesterday, first arrive at the point of seeing through the human organs themselves in their liveliness. We enter the realm into which a living medicine must delve, into which a living anthropology must delve. But we then go beyond what we find in the present human being as the spiritual-material to the pre-birth human being—or rather, to the human being as he was in the spiritual world before he began this earthly life through conception. We arrive at a true expansion of those forces of human soul life which otherwise—filling the span of time from a few years after our birth up to the present moment—extend only over this life within earthly existence. By breaking through memory, we arrive at a higher soul force, at a higher power of knowledge; through this we attain a vision of the human being’s spiritual-soul essence as it was before the human being was conceived here for this earthly life. And from there flows the current that is so difficult for people today to conceive of: the current that moves from self-knowledge toward knowledge of the world.

[ 12 ] I am well aware, my esteemed audience, of how paradoxical people find what I have described regarding knowledge of the world in my Occult Science. But anyone who immerses themselves in this development of a supersensible power of knowledge—in this—I would rather not use the term at all, because it is so widely misused today—in this true, genuine clairvoyance—will discover how what is otherwise limited to a brief span of time in the capacity for memory expands into a power of world-knowledge.

[ 13 ] What we have here—certainly, people always say one should prove it. But those who constantly speak of proof at every opportunity have never familiarized themselves with the nature of proof itself. Only what is at least initially presumed to be a fact can be proven. All other so-called “proofs” are merely a dialectical play with concepts, an accumulation of concept upon concept. And when it comes to this “proof” that is so often demanded, humanity merely indulges in grand illusions; of course, this is not meant as an objection to legitimate proof. The anthroposophical researcher need only point out what becomes apparent to him when the faculty of cognition is expanded in the manner indicated. And I would like to outline what happens there in the following way.

[ 14 ] When we consider our ordinary, earthly memory, we will say: This memory binds us together with all the experiences we have gone through from a certain point in time in this earthly existence onward. At present, most of these experiences lie in the subconscious of the human organism. We either bring them up voluntarily, or they rise into consciousness through their own power. Memories emerge from the stream of experiences we have undergone. And the capacity for memory must be continuous so that our inner life, our state of mind, remains healthy. As human beings, because we possess this capacity for memory, we exist not only within ourselves but are also deeply connected to everything with which we have a connection through our experiences in external life. Through our healthy discernment, we are already able to distinguish between the image that emerges today as a retrospective experience in memory and that intense, saturated experience that once was, that lives on in our memory, the memory of which has remained with us from what had connected us to the world. When we had an experience, we were involved in it as human beings; we were connected to the objects; the objects poured their essence into our personality. Everything that flowed from us in liveliness, everything that was intensely experienced, everything we went through with the outside world, with nature, or with other people—it was transformed into images, and from these images we conjure up the experience once again. — Why can we conjure up what we have experienced in the present? Because we were once connected to it as human beings, because we were one with the outside world in that experience.

[ 15 ] If you take a broad view of what anthroposophical spiritual science has accomplished in the most diverse fields of knowledge, you will realize how, in ordinary life, a person is always aware of only a part of what they are. We must, after all, expand our power of cognition if we wish to look down into our own inner being. Just consider what I have already said: that when we break through our ordinary memory, we first look down into the living interconnection of our physical organization, and then, through that organization, we look beyond to those forces within which we lived in a purely spiritual and soul-based existence prior to our earthly existence. Human beings are connected in their entire being with the whole of world existence. And just as the human being—enclosed between birth and death—is connected only to what he has shared or experienced with the world in the manner described, so too is he connected—through what is then discovered within oneself through further exploration—to the entire development of humanity on Earth and also to the development of the Earth itself. It is nothing other than, at the same time, an overcoming, a breaking through of memory, and a reemergence of the power of memory on a higher level. By overcoming, on a small scale, the power of memory that preserves our earthly experiences, we attain, on a higher level, a new power of memory through which we can develop images of the destinies that the Earth itself has undergone in other planetary forms, as I have described in my Occult Science. And just as we use our everyday memory to conjure up in vivid images what we have experienced since our birth, so too—when we come to know the whole human being—can we, through spiritual science, conjure up from the organization of humanity what this entire human organization has gone through, what it has been connected to: the entire development of the worlds. For the human being is a microcosm. We are dealing with no other world than the one to which we ourselves have been linked. I have demonstrated this in my Occult Science.

[ 16 ] Thus, my esteemed audience, we see how anthroposophical spiritual science becomes an expansion of human consciousness. We see how, by descending into the greater depths of the human being, one simultaneously enters into the objective unfolding of the world. To the same extent that one, so to speak, temporarily sets aside one’s ordinary inner life, that which has otherwise remained an objective outer life enters into this inner life. At the very moment one dives into the regions that are otherwise hidden from consciousness, one plunges into those regions that have shaped us as objective beings—as human beings—out of the entire universe. This is the very way in which anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to provide an understanding of the world.

[ 17 ] From the perspective of the present, as I have characterized it, people today object to such a view of the world: “Yes, but that leads one into a realm where subjectivity can assert itself in any way it pleases.” — And it is always pointed out—with a certain sense of satisfaction, one might say—by certain people that the most diverse spiritual researchers who have come before have, in the most varied ways, reported on what they have beheld in the universe. Admittedly, this diversity is emphasized mainly by those who have not engaged more intimately, not truly and thoroughly, with what the various spiritual researchers have said. For just as it seems understandable that a tree looks different when photographed from different angles—and that an overall picture of the tree is actually only obtained in an external sense when the tree is photographed from four or six angles, and these photographs are then viewed together— so it should also seem quite understandable that a person who applies the spiritual scientific method to his or her own inner life naturally begins from a subjective standpoint, but that, as he or she progresses in this research, the perspective from which he or she operates will certainly always be evident. And just as photographing a tree from a particular angle is objectively [correct], so too can a spiritual researcher’s description be objectively [correct]—even if it differs from that of another researcher who has simply started from a different point of view. One will notice, however, that the anthroposophical spiritual science, which I represent, strives to characterize the subject in question from the most diverse angles, and that this is intended, in a certain way, to balance out what might become one-sided when described from only one perspective—this description from a single perspective, which can occur, in particular, when someone takes my books, compares them in an abstract way, and then says to themselves: “Yes, here it says this about a certain thing, and here it says that.” — This can very easily be misinterpreted as if there were contradictions. But this stems from nothing other than the effort to describe things from the most diverse angles, so that precisely through these particular approaches in anthroposophical spiritual science, a kind of comprehensiveness might be achieved.

[ 18 ] Whoever comes to fully understand what is sought and found on the inner path will be able to realize more and more clearly how an inner faculty, an inner ability, develops there—one that is actually similar to what a person possesses in the mathematical state of mind. [It is] like in mathematics, where we have something that gives us a certain mental content derived entirely from within. For mathematics is derived entirely from within; we know that a mathematical truth is true once we have grasped it inwardly, even if millions of people say otherwise. What takes place in the soul when we are able to grasp a mathematical truth—which is at once inner and outer—takes place in a similar way [in the soul] when we arrive—albeit through the subjective—at the inner objectivity that can truly be present to us in anthroposophical spiritual science. Only the beginning of the path of research is subjective, but the true anthroposophist remains silent about that. What then emerges after the researcher has overcome his or her subjective peculiarities is thoroughly objective; one can speak of it just as one might of an external observation made through the senses or even with a scale or a measuring stick; just as one can speak of mathematical findings, except that these are formal, whereas the findings made through spiritual science are, in fact, rich in content.

[ 19 ] This shows, however, that this anthroposophical spiritual science strives above all to speak directly to the human being. That is also its task. While contemporary scientific thinking strives for a leveling—in a sense, striving to make one person a carbon copy of another—anthroposophical spiritual science cannot help but speak to each person as an individual, This, I would say, is the direct social trust one gains through working for this anthroposophical spiritual science: that one does not seek to present something which, simply because it has been researched, is now supposed to apply to all people, but rather seeks only to appeal to people by saying: one has researched the content of anthroposophical spiritual science oneself. But this content is the true content of human nature. When I speak to individual people, I speak in such a way that I do not view them as part of a homogenized mass, but address each one as an individual. I count on the fact that, because human beings are human, because they share the same soul-spirit-body origin, a chord will resonate within them; that from the innermost depths, in an individual way, the same thing will emerge that has been struck by one human being. Anthroposophy does not speak to people in the way science usually does—as if seeking followers for something that has already been established—but rather, through Anthroposophy, one appeals to the innermost being of each individual and says: If you look into your own inner being, then in this way you will discover within your own being what I wish to communicate to you, because I have researched it. — The way of speaking from person to person about spiritual science, and every form of teaching, takes on a different tone, a different attitude, when the messages are clothed in the formulas of anthroposophical spiritual science. This is what is effective in anthroposophical spiritual science against the defining characteristic of our time, as I have described it: that which appeals—arising from thinking, but from thinking rooted in the fully developed human being—appeals simultaneously to every single person. The opposite of this is what is sought in the process of leveling. The aim is the individualization of the human being through what is knowledge, through the development of a worldview. This content of anthroposophical spiritual science is intended to be the most subjective and at the same time the most objective, the most personal and at the same time the most universally valid content of human scholarship. Contemporary humanity needs this contrast to leveling. Leveling has given rise to what I have described to you—which is, in essence, an antisocial element because it asserts itself as an antithesis: the lack of understanding of one human being toward another. From anthroposophical spiritual science should arise the loving understanding of one human being toward another; and above all, not only will a general knowledge of human nature and a general anthroposophy emerge, but through what this general anthroposophy and world-knowledge will be, a state of mind will be inspired that in turn encompasses loving understanding for every individual characteristic of our fellow human beings.

[ 20 ] What social life is cannot be grounded unless it is grounded in the deepest, most sacred roots of human existence itself; yet, as I hinted at yesterday, for the current phase of human development, these are the individual roots. Therefore, spiritual science will essentially impart this different character to the spiritual signature of the present, which we so desperately need.

[ 21 ] This already implies, however, that the other pole—which had to be characterized in relation to the signature of the present—will also take on a different character. In practical life, what will emerge is not an antisocial element, but rather a social element. Where, then, does this antisocial element actually come from? It arises from the fact that, precisely because intellectual culture has reached a peak, the instincts inherent in human nature take hold and seize the realm of feeling and willing. Anthroposophical knowledge shines into feeling and into willing; it does not dull the elemental force of feeling and willing, as people so easily believe; it does not rob human beings of their original naivety. No, when something beautiful is illuminated, it does not lose its distinctive character; rather, it stands out all the more. What lies in the depths of human nature does not become dulled when illuminated by anthroposophy; rather, it is unfolded in just the right way, without the individual having to succumb to the modern-day ailment of nervousness as a result. Thought, in turn, shines into feeling; feeling seizes hold of it; and as we shine thought into feeling, the “I think, therefore I am not,” the “I am only in the image when I think”—thinking is transformed into being. And only when we immerse ourselves in the will—which is otherwise experienced only in sleep—for what does a person know, in ordinary cognition, of the relationship that exists between a thought intended to lead to the will and the raising of the hand? — by immersing this thinking, through spiritual science, into this willing, what develops is what one might say leads from one human being to another in the bright light of spiritual knowledge. Humanity can become a social whole only by having its feelings and impulses of will illuminated—not by abstract, intellectualistic knowledge, but by higher insight. And through their being permeated by this higher insight, a true social science, a social ethics, will arise. It is precisely such a social ethics that I sought to present in my book The Philosophy of Freedom. There I showed that, fundamentally, a human being can only feel free by developing an impulse for action and volition out of the purest thinking. A human being could never feel free if he had to draw impulses of will from any other sources. When we stand before a mirror and have merely an image before us—the comparison is more than just a comparison—this image cannot compel us. If something pushes me, I am compelled by causality. When I look at the image, I cannot be compelled; the image has no power in itself to compel me. When I grasp my volitional impulses in the pure image-thought, these image-thoughts have no causal power, no momentum. By recognizing the imagery of thought, one recognizes how free will truly unfolds in pure thinking, so that the impulses for free action can be found only in the most individual aspects of the human being. But precisely because the will enters into this pure thinking—which is initially an image to us—precisely because the will enters, as is the case with loving social action or with higher supersensible knowledge, as you can see in the explanations in my book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?—precisely through this, the otherwise pure thinking is filled with what is the human being’s very own, eternal essence. And the first glimpse of clairvoyance, my esteemed audience, is already present when a free act of will flashes into thought. And, in essence, everything I then describe as a method for ascending into the highest spiritual worlds is nothing other than a transformed elaboration of what I have described in my Philosophy of Freedom as the foundation of free will. If one recognizes how, in this pure thinking permeated by the will, there lies that through which human beings can initially grasp world events as if by a single thread, then one also gradually learns to see how this state of the soul—which otherwise exists only in human free action—can be expanded in the manner described yesterday, and how one can thereby attain supersensible knowledge. If a human being wishes to recognize himself as a free being, he must begin with this true supersensible perception; otherwise, freedom will always remain something impossible for him. Freedom is also incompatible with natural causality—not even for the Kantian or for those who at least claim to be one. And there is no other way to harmonize natural causality and human freedom than by understanding the matter as I have just described it.

[ 22 ] But there is something else that needs to be clarified. What I described in my Philosophy of Freedom as the foundation of social will has been greatly, greatly misunderstood. People have objected: How are people supposed to cooperate within the social organism if everyone simply follows the inner impulses of their individual nature? — But that is not the point at all. The point is that through a genuine, authentic, true spiritual development of the human being, what I would like to call “true social trust” can be cultivated. After all, a dignified existence in social life is only possible if we are not compelled to act from the outside by commandments or other means, but if we can act freely out of the innermost impulse of our being. But then we must be able to develop this great trust in others—the trust that they, too, will gradually come to act out of the innermost impulse of their human nature. And as human beings advance toward the innermost core of their being and gradually develop such an understanding of one another, a social ethic—a social organism—will be able to emerge from the individual shaping of each person’s will, through full mutual trust. — Thus, what constitutes conscious trust is connected to what, in the sense of human nature’s present-day aspirations, can indeed be regarded as nothing other than social will.

[ 23 ] The best way to see how anthroposophical spiritual science relates to the current character of spiritual life is to look at what—arising from the underlying currents I have just described—has gradually become of humanity’s religious outlook. Spiritual science is repeatedly attacked from this very angle, with the claim that it seeks to enter the supersensory worlds through knowledge; yet, it is said, this is precisely the essence of religious life—that one does not know that which one trusts as the divine world order, and thus one has merely a subjective trust. According to this view, the essence of religion would consist precisely in developing a mere certainty of faith within it, while excluding certainty based on knowledge. But, my dear friends here present, this certainty of faith—which is, after all, identical to what one might call trust—cannot, in essence, be established within religious life for anyone who thinks honestly about these matters in any other way than through what follows from truly supersensory knowledge. Even a historical perspective could teach humanity this. Where, after all, do people today—who rebel against anthroposophy in the manner described—derive their religious trust? Is it something truly fundamental? That is a mere illusion. They are the remnants of the historical religions. They are the remnants of what has developed throughout history as the historical religions. In the sense of anthroposophical spiritual science, these religions have their full justification, and they have attained their ultimate height—through which earthly evolution has received its true meaning—precisely in Christianity. Christianity contains what must be regarded as the primordial religion—the ultimate form of religion to which humanity has been able to ascend, and which must remain valid for the rest of human history. Anthroposophical spiritual science not only does not undermine Christianity, but rather establishes its foundation in a deeper sense. But on the other hand, one must ask: Where did the religions derive their content? They derived it—as can be historically proven—from spiritual visions, albeit from ancient, instinctive spiritual visions. It was through no other means than the one that spiritual science, in its anthroposophical orientation, now seeks to demonstrate scientifically that the religions derived their supersensible content from ancient, instinctive visions. This content has been passed down; it is preserved in scripture and tradition. And the religions would have no content at all if there had not even been instinctive, supersensible visions among human beings. From this alone—and from much else besides—it is clear how wrong it is to say that anthroposophy should not point a path into the supersensible worlds; for the religions, the supersensible worlds must be preserved precisely as the distant unknown, which cannot be reached through knowledge but only through naive trust and faith. The value of religions will be revealed when the light of knowledge shines into them. Those who believe that any discovery in the field of spiritual science could diminish the greatness and significance of Christianity are, in essence, weak Christians. In my view, those who believe that one must not approach Christianity with any kind of science because it might suffer as a result are, in fact, weak Christians. Just as the Gospels contain no mention of America, yet America must be accepted as a reality, so too must repeated earthly lives be accepted, even though the Gospels say nothing about them.

[ 24 ] This is what, stemming from a particular state of mind, makes anthroposophy a matter of its time. I have described this in my Riddles of Philosophy, where I have shown how the various philosophical views up to the present tend to converge with the anthroposophical view. Thus, the character of the present spiritual age indeed reveals how one can ascend to an anthroposophical worldview.

[ 25 ] To conclude, I would now like to sketch this hallmark of spiritual presence for you with just a few strokes, drawing directly from anthroposophy itself, so that you may see that anyone who stands on the foundation of anthroposophy does not shy away from sharing the results of their research—research they have conducted along the path that has been described to you— and which are just as certain to him as the findings of astronomy, physiology, biology, and botany.

[ 26 ] When we look back at a relatively short period in human development with an anthroposophically sharpened perspective, we find that we cannot even understand, for example, Greek civilization. In his previous lecture, Dr. Heyer pointed out how human consciousness has changed in the course of historical development. To corroborate this purely empirically, we need only look at the distinctive nature of Greek consciousness. Herman Grimm, who—despite being contested in many respects—had retained the keen insight of a historical observer for such matters, pointed out our relationship of understanding toward the Greeks with the following incisive words. He said: “What the Romans lived out—how a Caesar or a Brutus lived—that we can understand. The elements of our consciousness have not changed so much since then that we cannot understand this. What is told to us about Alcibiades, Pericles, Plato, and Sophocles—people only imagine they understand it when they remain at the level of today’s understanding of humanity. Like fairy-tale heroes, the figures of Pericles and Alcibiades actually rise only as shadowy forms against the backdrop of ordinary human concepts. — Herman Grimm sees fairy-tale figures throughout Greek history. Spiritual science is called upon to bring about what can expand consciousness, so that one can truly transform one’s inner state of mind in such a way as to once again stand within this particular inner experience of the Greeks. And here one must say: This experience of the Greeks was based on a historical law that is only now recognized in its full scope by anthroposophical spiritual science. It is the law that I now wish to characterize for you in the following way.

[ 27 ] The further back we go in the development of humanity—into Greek, Egyptian, Persian, and Indian civilizations, and into prehistoric times—the more we find that the entire human constitution is, in fact, a different one. Today we see life developing in the child in such a way that the life of the soul is closely bound to the physical organization. Take my little book The Education of the Child from the Perspective of Spiritual Science or other writings I have produced in connection with pedagogy, and you will see how, with the change of teeth in the seventh or eighth year, the child’s entire mental constitution changes. And from everyday life, we know how a person’s entire mental constitution changes when they reach sexual maturity. What is less noticeable, however, is that similar changes take place again at the beginning and end of one’s twenties; these occur more internally, but they are still quite clearly present even for people today. When, on the other hand, we reach our later years—our thirties—the human soul-spiritual life becomes highly independent of the physical. We then enter that stage of our development in which we transform our soul through external experience and through our interaction with the world. We no longer transform our soul through processes such as the loss of baby teeth, sexual maturation, or the changes that occur after the age of twenty. — But what in our time extends primarily from the teenage years through the late twenties used to extend, in ancient times, all the way into old age. This is a historical law. One can observe this once one has acquired the capacity to observe inner soul life, which shows us—in the remnants still evident today in elderly people—that such a development once existed. Once one knows this, one can look back, for example, to the ancient Indian era—to times leading back into prehistory—when human beings, well into their fifties, were still dependent on physical development in their soul-spiritual life. In those days, one became a patriarch simultaneously through physical development and through psychological development, just as a sexually mature person today becomes so both physically and psychologically. This harmony between the physical and the psychological-spiritual extended well into old age in ancient times. In those ancient times, people also experienced that downward trajectory of physical development that begins around the age of 35. Until then, our organism grows and flourishes; from that point on, it declines—a downward trajectory sets in. We do not undergo this downward trajectory in the same way today; we are certainly weighed down by old age, but that is something different from what it was in ancient times. In ancient times, as the outer physical body became stiffer and more withered, there was simultaneously a bright radiance of spirituality, so that as one grew into old age, one naturally developed a certain spirituality. What in earlier times was still present in advanced age was still present for the Greeks well into their mid-thirties. What the Greeks still experienced up to about the age of 35 is something we, as human beings in our thirties, simply no longer experience and therefore no longer radiate in social life. This imbued the entire social life of the Greeks with what, for example, Goethe felt when, driven by longing in Italy, he sought to relive the Greek spirit within himself, and where he said: But when I look at these Greek works of art, and see how the Greeks, in creating their works of art, followed the same laws by which nature itself proceeds in creating its natural works, then I feel a sense of necessity; then I feel God. — The Greeks were able to re-create the laws of nature in their works of art only by experiencing, in their finest examples {[?], the harmonization of the spiritual-soul and the physical-bodily, which occurs when a human being reaches the very midpoint of life in full, including physical, development. From this physical-psychic constitution arose the Greek style of artistic creation, the Greek style of religious feeling, and also Greek medical thought. This was the hallmark of spirituality in humanity, which simply stemmed from the fact that in one’s thirties, what I have described was experienced. One could say: Just as the balance of a scale is experienced at its midpoint, so the Greeks experienced the balance of human life by still being able to grasp the interplay of the soul-spiritual realm right up to the mid-thirties. We no longer grasp it. To continue in the same vein, in our present age we reach a stage of physical development—which still exerts an influence on the soul—only up to the end of our twenties. Consequently, in the later years of our lives, that which rises from the depths of human nature and permeates our worldview ceases. Consequently, however, the necessity has also arisen that what no longer develops naturally in humanity after the age of 28 must be consciously attained through anthroposophical-spiritual-scientific education—that what formerly arose from human nature itself must now be truly attained within the soul. This has become the hallmark of our time: that we now live within physicality only during our young years. This is what has now also—and, I may say this without being misunderstood, quite justifiably—led us into materialism. For the child, in observing itself, must be materialistic, because spirituality is only just beginning to detach itself from matter. As humanity, we have become increasingly materialistic in recent centuries to the extent that we are bound to the era characterized by ascending material and organic development, and to the extent that we receive less and less from nature as we enter the downward phase of development after the age of 35.

[ 28 ] This is the hallmark of our time. It has led us into materialism because, as humanity, we have surrendered ourselves to unconscious forces over the past few centuries.

[ 29 ] What anthroposophical spiritual science seeks is that we receive from the spirit—with the same naivety with which we once received it from nature—that which nature no longer gives us; that we develop the courage and the strength to receive from the realm of the spirit what we can no longer receive from the realm of nature. The spiritual signature of our time points us toward developing our full humanity—which we can no longer attain from nature—through spiritual activity and the exercise of free will. This does not give rise to decadence. No, decadence arises precisely because, in a time that demands the spirit, people wish to leave themselves solely to nature. Materialism has emerged as a necessary phenomenon. The overcoming of materialism must likewise occur as a necessary phenomenon. Anthroposophical spiritual science believes it can discern this from the signs of the times, from the signature of the times. It seeks to work from this consciousness of the world and of humanity.

[ 30 ] People who have delved somewhat more deeply into this defining characteristic of our time and who have spoken here and there recently have, in essence, always pointed out—in a negative sense—the forces of decline present in our time and what must fundamentally be the case when we consider the development of the human race just described. There is no need to refer to Spengler, who is, of course, frequently cited today; rather, one can point to one of our finest philosophers, Gideon Spicker, who wrote his work out of a broad-minded awareness and who repeatedly pointed out how people in our time can no longer build the bridge to what actually gives them full consciousness as human beings—that which in turn connects them to the Eternal, allowing them to be permeated by the Divine-Eternal. And it was Gideon Spicker, in particular, who spoke words worth heeding in 1909, describing in his own way the hallmark of our time. He said: We have managed to end up with a metaphysics without supernatural conviction; an epistemology without objective meaning; a logic without content; a psychology without a soul; an ethics without obligation; and a religion without rational grounds. —

[ 31 ] Well, ladies and gentlemen, dear fellow students. Anthroposophy seeks to provide humanity once again with a theory of knowledge that leads into reality, because reality is both material and spiritual. Anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to give human beings a genuine conviction regarding the supersensible world—by pointing out the path to perceiving this world. Anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to establish a logic that, in turn, delves into the reality of things. Anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to speak of a life of the soul as a reality, not merely of the life of the soul that we interpret figuratively from the scientific findings of anthropology. Anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to create a binding social ethic drawn from the depths of humanity. And anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to provide a religious conviction grounded in insights—in the perception of that which must exist as the divine presence in religious life.

[ 32 ] Thus, anthroposophical spiritual science seeks to influence the character of our time, not because this arises from some utopian ideal or an arbitrary decision of will, but because it appears, in the most essential sense, to be necessary for our age to those who are now able to observe the greatest need and the deepest longing of our time.