The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] In these winter lectures, we have explored the question of the nature of Christ from many different angles, and we have attempted in a wide variety of ways to elucidate what we call the Christ Impulse in human evolution—the most powerful force within the entire history of our Earth. It may therefore seem understandable that, first of all, this topic cannot be exhausted at all; rather, there would be, so to speak, an infinite amount to do if one were to elucidate the Christ impulse from every angle. On the other hand, however, it can also be clear that, according to all our premises, fundamentally everything that can interest human beings must be linked to the discussion of the Christ event. We have seen, after all, that the Gospels themselves seek to approach the essence of Christ from four different perspectives, and we have touched upon various aspects of the mysteries of the individual Gospels.

[ 2 ] We were able to shed light on the Gospel of Matthew only to a certain extent. It will now have to be left to later lectures to return, in context, to the mysteries of the Gospel of Matthew, in order to then delve into the depths of the Gospel of Mark. If we were to attempt now, at the end of winter in our branch, to allude—even with just a few sketchy hints—to what remains for us to cover, it would disrupt the coherence of the lectures too much for the coming period. Therefore, today and next time I shall address questions that, in a certain respect, approach the Christ problem from a different angle; specifically, today I shall address the question of the connection between the human conscience and the impact of the Christ impulse on human evolution. This will also serve another purpose. Next Thursday we will have the public lecture on the human conscience, and today, too, we will discuss the same topic here in this study group. However, this serves a very specific purpose—a purpose that will come to mind more often in the future. Namely, it is to be shown that the same subject should be discussed in a different way within a working group such as the one in which we find ourselves than in a public lecture intended for those who do not yet belong to the spiritual science movement. Among the various qualities that should take root in the anthroposophist’s mind, one is a sense that the things of the world should be approached from the most diverse viewpoints and perspectives, and that someone who already possesses certain prerequisites can speak about and listen to a subject differently than someone who lacks such prerequisites. When we speak in a working group, we assume that the mind has, to a certain degree, immersed itself in the concepts of a spiritual world, is immersed in the sensations and feelings of the spiritual world, and that from these sensations, feelings, and thoughts—which have been absorbed about the spiritual world—a conception of such a thing as the human conscience can take shape. Thus, the answer to such questions can be drawn from much deeper and more intense depths in a working group than in a public lecture delivered before a non-anthroposophical audience. After all, the purpose of these public lectures is to gradually provide, through the phenomena of soul life—which are initially drawn upon as external experiences—something akin to proof that the truths we know in spiritual science are indeed truths. This is a different task from speaking to the spiritual scientist himself, who already brings with him certain presuppositions, convictions, and perhaps even certain views about the spiritual world. The spiritual scientist should gradually learn to draw upon the concepts and ideas that explain this and that in a wide variety of ways from a wide variety of sources and perspectives, and the spiritual scientist should learn to break the bad habit—which, however, must necessarily exist in external life—of speaking about a subject as if there were only one way to do so.

[ 3 ] The human conscience is something that must touch us in the very depths of our souls. And wherever philosophers and other thinkers have confronted us with questions about the world over the centuries, it is generally the question of what is called the human conscience that has interested them. One could easily succumb to an illusion when confronted with a phenomenon such as the conscience: the illusion that has already been described here on several occasions as an illusion, and which would consist in believing that everything present in the human soul today has always been there. But we have seen that the most diverse soul faculties and soul processes, which have developed in human beings over the course of millennia, were quite different in primeval times than they are today. And indeed, many of the things we now regard as the most precious and significant aspects of our soul life were not present in our souls when they walked the earth in other incarnations many millennia ago. Passing through various incarnations does, after all, have a purpose. We have often emphasized this. Its purpose is that, as the soul develops from one incarnation to the next, it can continually acquire new abilities and powers; that the soul truly undergoes a history; that its earthly existence is a period of learning; that it was something different in the time when our incarnations began, is something different now, and will be something different in the distant future.

[ 4 ] Even the human conscience—that precious treasure of the human soul, which, like the voice of God, calls out to each individual regarding good and evil—even this precious gift of the human inner self has not always existed. This conscience, too, is something that has developed. And in fact, it has not been that long since this human conscience first emerged and has continued to develop ever further since then. And even though it is a precious asset, it is nonetheless not destined to exist in the human soul in exactly the same way through all subsequent incarnations as it does now. It will continue to develop; it will take on other forms; it will prove to be something that human beings must make their own, something that will bear fruit for them, and something that in later times, when they have reaped this fruit, they will look back upon and say: There was a time when, as I passed from one incarnation to the next, I was able to incorporate into my soul’s existence that which is conscience, and now I reap the fruits of what I once incorporated into my soul. — Just as we look back today on a time when our souls were in other incarnations and did not yet possess what we now call conscience, so in later times our souls will one day look back on our present incarnations and say: Hail to that past! Thanks to those gifts that became ours in the past as human conscience! Had we not been able to develop human conscience within our souls back then, we would now lack what we need for our present life!

[ 5 ] From this we can already see that conscience belongs to the spiritual assets of the present, and that understanding the nature and essence of the human conscience is akin to understanding our present, to understanding the spiritual life of our present. The fact that it has come into being has, after all, already been pointed out in various contexts. This will also be alluded to next Thursday: that one can, so to speak, point to the exact moment when conscience was first discovered for the human soul. If we go back a few centuries to ancient Greece, we find the great poet Aeschylus barely half a millennium before the beginning of the Christian era. When we look at him—this mighty genius of early Greek drama—and allow his characters to take effect upon us, we find that in his plays, what we today call “conscience” is not yet designated by a similar term. Half a millennium before the beginning of the Christian era, even the greatest playwright had no term for what we today call the human conscience. When he wishes to express the inner process of the human soul that would correspond to what we today call “conscience,” he must do so in such a way that someone who, for example, has committed the crime of matricide, is compelled by the force of this event to look into the spiritual realm and sees there figures that ancient Greece called the Erinyes and later Rome called the Furies. That is to say, according to Aeschylus, someone who has committed an injustice such as matricide does not hear what we today call the accusing voice of conscience within themselves, but is compelled to gaze spiritually upon the figures that surround them like avengers of their deed.

[ 6 ] This is one of the specific pieces of evidence you can find in the historical development of humanity for what has just been described in broad terms. The human soul was quite different in ancient times. We have always emphasized that the human soul developed only gradually to its present capacity to perceive the physical-sensory world through the senses as it does today, and to use the intellect as it does today. We have emphasized that in ancient times the soul possessed a certain degree of clairvoyance as a normal faculty. By the time of Aeschylus, this clairvoyance occurred only in special cases. The soul becomes clairvoyant, for example, in order to see what it has wrought in the physical world through its wrongdoing. Orestes’ soul becomes clairvoyant after he has committed matricide. There it sees which spirits it has summoned in the spiritual world through its deed. These spirits press upon it. It is not that something like a conscience resides within the soul, but rather a clairvoyant consciousness arises to perceive the disorder that has been summoned by the commission of an injustice in the physical world. We would find this everywhere in ancient times: whoever has committed an injustice does not yet hear the warning voice of conscience, for in ancient times the soul was in a state of clairvoyance and could see what had arisen in the external world as a result of the injustice.

[ 7 ] What happens, then, when an injustice has been committed? We ourselves create something in the spiritual world. It is merely a materialistic prejudice to believe that an injustice can pass without something being created in the spiritual world. The wrongdoing gives rise to very specific processes in the spiritual world—effects that radiate from us, invisible to external sensory observation but perceptible to spiritual vision. And such spiritual processes, radiating from someone who has committed a wrongdoing, serve as nourishment for certain beings that actually exist in the spiritual world. Such beings cannot always approach human beings. If a person does not emit the kind of radiation that results from wrongdoing, then these beings cannot approach him. It is just like a room: if the room is completely clean, no flies can be inside. There aren’t any inside, either. But if the room contains all sorts of filth—food scraps and so on—the flies are there immediately. The moment a person radiates certain spiritual vibrations through his or her evil deeds, there are entities around him or her that feed on them. The great Greek tragedian Aeschylus has these entities surrounding Orestes. What we perceive today as an inner voice was still so conscious to the Greek tragedian Aeschylus that he had it appear in external forms, because he knew that in certain cases what had once been common to all souls in earlier times still occurred: a certain clairvoyant consciousness. Something of everything that came before remains for later times and then manifests as atavism, but only in abnormal cases. Therefore, it is not something to be criticized if, in Shakespeare for example, something similar still appears—as it were, an objectified conscience.

[ 8 ] But then we need only move a short distance further along the timeline of Greek art, from Aeschylus to Euripides, and Euripides, the later tragedian, shows us that he already possesses the concept of conscience. Thus, in ancient Greece, we see how, in the half-millennium before the Christian era, the concept of conscience gradually began to emerge. Look in the Old Testament for a word for what we today call conscience: you will not find it. Conscience is something that has only recently entered the human soul as a capacity. And if we look not at short periods of time but at long spans, then we can see that conscience is something that took root in the human soul at roughly the same time that the Christ impulse took hold in the soul. One might say that the conscience follows the Christ impulse almost like a shadow as it enters the course of world history. To understand this, we must now bring to life within ourselves many things that we have acquired over the years and that we must make fruitful in order to grasp what the human conscience actually is.

[ 9 ] If we wish to understand, on a deeper level, what conscience is, we must focus precisely on that moment when human evolution approached the Christ impulse, absorbed it, and then continued onward into our own time. We know that we are dealing here with three cultural epochs in the development of humanity, which we designate as the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, the Greco-Latin culture, and our present-day culture. We can now set aside the two preceding cultures—the ancient Indian and the ancient Persian—because at that time our souls were still far from even sensing what we today refer to as the concept of conscience. In the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, we gradually see how everything was prepared that later rose to the highest peak it could reach, in order to attain, within the Greek-Latin culture, the significant impulse that was received as the Christ impulse. And we then see, in our own time, the epoch in which this impulse is being assimilated. And this assimilation will become ever greater and more significant in the coming age.

[ 10 ] If we now recall in a little more detail this development, which unfolds from the Egyptian-Chaldean period through the Greek-Latin era right up to our own time, it becomes clear to us that in each of these eras a particular aspect of the human soul is developed. Of the three members of the human soul, the one we call the feeling soul was developed during the Egyptian-Chaldean period; that is to say, we once had to be incarnated in Egyptian-Chaldean bodies so that we could properly assimilate within ourselves those faculties suited to the specific development of the feeling soul. Then, as souls, we carried this quality with us into our next incarnations during the Greco-Latin epoch in order to develop the intellectual or emotional soul. And with the fruits we have gained from the Greco-Latin epoch, we live in our present incarnations in order to gradually bring to ever higher development what we call the powers of the conscious soul. Thus, our soul as a human being is formed precisely during these three epochs. And when our time is over, our soul will ascend to the development of the capacity of the spiritual self. This will take place in the sixth cultural epoch. Here we see the profound significance of undergoing successive incarnations. The purpose is that through this process we gradually acquire those faculties we recognize as belonging to the human soul, and, to a greater extent, those that then go beyond mere soul life.

[ 11 ] Thus, during the Egyptian-Chaldean cultural period, our souls assimilated the powers of the sensory soul and developed these powers; during the Greco-Latin period, they assimilated the powers of the intellectual soul or emotional soul. A person normally had to ascend to the level of the intellectual soul before the Christ impulse could be exerted upon him.

[ 12 ] However, this development had taken place in very different ways at various points on Earth. For if, out of a certain complacency of the soul, we were to believe that everything in human evolution proceeds as simply as possible, we would never be able to comprehend human evolution. There is much one must learn in order to be able to reflect to any degree on the great thoughts of the guiding world spirits! And it is the height of arrogance when a person declares that the truth is simple; for in doing so, they seek to mold the truth to suit their own convenience. To say that the truth must be simple is merely a product of complacency. But the truth is complex, because the spirit of the guiding world beings can only be understood by us if we make the greatest efforts to immerse ourselves in the thoughts of the guiding world spirits—even down to the most subtle thoughts. Thus, we must not believe that we have already exhausted everything when we say: Our souls have evolved upward through the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, through the Greco-Latin culture, and through our present cultural epoch. Let us transport ourselves for a moment to the time when there was still no Greco-Latin civilization, but only the Egyptian-Chaldean culture.

[ 13 ] During this period, people also lived in the regions of Greece and in the lands of the Roman Empire; they lived, so to speak, before the Greco-Latin era in the lands that would later become part of Greco-Latin culture. And in our own regions as well—on the very ground we tread today—people lived during the time when the Egyptian-Chaldean culture was unfolding in Asia and Africa. While in Asia and Africa during the time of the Egyptian-Chaldean culture certain souls were undergoing, in the most eminent sense, what was to prepare them to receive the Christ impulse, other souls lived in the regions of the later Greco-Latin culture who were preparing to contribute something entirely different to the overall development of humanity. Likewise, people lived in our regions who were preparing for something else. Not only do our souls acquire different abilities in successive eras, but souls also live side by side within the same era. This affects the souls in a wide variety of ways, thereby introducing a further complication into the course of development. This contributes more to human development than if everything were to proceed in a straight line. In fact, preparations had to be made both in the Greco-Latin world and in our regions so that the right elements could be incorporated into cultural development from a wide variety of perspectives. The Asian and African peoples had an entirely different task; the peoples of Southern Europe had a completely different one; and the peoples of Central and Northern Europe, in turn, had yet another distinct task. They all had very different contributions to make to the overall development of humanity, and they were able to make these contributions because their dispositions and their entire upbringing were fundamentally different from those of the others.

[ 14 ] For when we turn our gaze to the Egyptian-Chaldean peoples—to the souls that reached their zenith precisely within Egyptian-Chaldean culture—we must say: these peoples developed at that time certain faculties of the feeling soul, which can be developed particularly well by absorbing those wonderful teachings that flowed from the Egyptian sanctuaries at that time, or the wonderful astrology that came from the Chaldean sanctuaries. What flows from the various centers of culture is meant to advance the souls. For fundamentally, the true significance of what flows from the various centers of culture is not the content of these cultural currents, but rather what they contribute to the development of the human soul. Content fades away! And only those who, in a deeper sense, are not in their right minds can believe that in a few centuries our present-day science will not have sunk just as deeply into the bosom of oblivion as certain aspects of Egyptian-Chaldean culture have sunk into oblivion. Anyone who believes that the Copernican worldview contains eternal achievements is gravely mistaken; it will later be just as much a thing of the past as the achievements of Egyptian culture are today. In terms of their content, these things pass away, just as many other things do in human development. Let us, for example, step forward to that marvelous painting, which you will all be familiar with at least from reproductions: Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. If we wish to see it today in Milan, we can only make out its very faint outlines, and we know it won’t be long before there will be nothing left to see of what Leonardo da Vinci poured his greatest energy into. Nor will there be anything left to see in the future of Raphael’s magnificent works, which today touch the soul so deeply when you allow them to take effect upon you. All these works will crumble to dust, and no memory of them will remain on the physical plane. The content of these works, like the content of cultures, passes into death. But when we stand before these paintings, for example, we should remember that they flowed from Raphael’s soul, and that Raphael’s soul became something different after it had conjured these images from within itself than it was before. And the millions and millions of people who are uplifted by them take the content of the paintings into their souls and thereby become something different. And when the whole earth has one day been reduced to dust—which it most certainly will be—then nothing of the external structures of cultures will remain, but what the souls have absorbed will pass into eternity. For human souls, what cultures offer is the noble wisdom that flowed from the sanctuaries of Egypt and Chaldea—wisdom that was sublime for its time. Human souls were meant to advance by a corresponding degree. And to the extent that they advanced, they became more mature, ready to receive new gifts; those gifts that then, in Greco-Roman culture, brought the souls forward once more. Had our souls not absorbed what they were able to absorb during the Greco-Roman period, they would not now be able to live their way into the conscious soul. That is progress through time.

[ 15 ] If we recall some of what has also been said in the public lectures, we know that what we call the “I” is at work within the three soul members. Out of the chaos of psychological experiences that confront us in the feeling soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul, the “I” gradually develops and crystallizes from all of this—though not in the same way at different points on Earth. While, for example, in Asia and Africa—during the time of the Egyptian-Chaldean culture—people developed in such a way that they continued for a long time to allow the revelations of the Chaldean and Egyptian sanctuaries to influence their souls, the peoples of Europe, who were distant from these regions, had developed in such a way that they had, so to speak, already anticipated certain things. In the European regions, people had already developed the “I” to a certain extent in their feeling soul—a strong sense, a strong feeling for the “I.”

[ 16 ] Here we have reached a point of infinite importance. People migrated to Asia and Africa, carrying within them their sense of self, at a time when the sentient soul had already developed what could later be further developed through the Egyptian and Chaldean sanctuaries. In the region of Egyptian-Chaldean culture, souls were incarnated who, more or less without a clear sense of the “I,” absorbed high teachings and a high culture. In ancient Chaldea, the high culture that existed at that time was imbued into a sentient soul not yet conscious of its “I.” Here in the north, such a high culture is not imbued into the soul. There, the soul remains more or less uncultivated; but in return, within this lack of culture—within this sentient soul not infused by any revelations from the sanctuaries—it develops a sense of self. We can say: Among the Egyptian-Chaldean peoples, ego-consciousness is delayed; it first allows the soul of feeling to absorb a certain culture until the later soul members are developed. In Europe, the ego does not wait, but develops already within the soul of feeling. Instead, it waits to absorb certain cultural assets until the later soul elements have developed. Thus, in Asia and Africa, we have embodied souls that are still almost entirely unaware of their “I,” yet possess something like inspirations from higher revelations within the feeling soul. In Europe, we have souls that do not possess a particularly high level of culture, but who emphasize their individual “I,” who look within themselves as human beings and feel themselves to be human. Between these two extremes lie the Greco-Latin peoples, whose particular task was to develop the faculties of the intellectual soul. In their case, they developed the “I” within the intellectual soul and were also able to assimilate certain cultural elements into the intellectual soul at the same time. Thus, while Egyptian-Chaldean culture waited until a later period to develop the “I,” European culture developed this “I” at an early stage. In Greco-Latin culture, this was, in a certain sense, in balance, as a certain culture was developed simultaneously with the “I.”

[ 17 ] In this way, we point to a great mystery of our human evolution; without an understanding of this mystery, we will never comprehend why the Christ impulse, in particular, found such unhindered influence and acceptance in Europe.

[ 18 ] Why is that? Could the Christ have appeared in Europe, could he have incarnated in the flesh in Europe? No, he could not have done so. He appeared during the Greco-Latin era, when the intellectual soul had been developed. That soul was suited to receiving the Christ, so to speak. But Christ should never have appeared in Europe, because a strong sense of the “I” still prevailed there. This strong individual sense of the “I” was not suited to producing a single human being who, above all others, possessed the distinction of being the only one capable of receiving the Highest. A premature sense of the “I,” an excessive sense of human equality, had developed in the European countries. There, it would have been impossible for a personality to rise so far above the others as that personality did above his contemporaries—the one who was to form the vessel for the Christ in Palestine. The sense of self was not allowed to emerge as intensely as it did in Europe at an early stage if the Christ was to find a body in which to incarnate. He therefore had to appear precisely where, at the boundary between Egyptian-Chaldean and Greek-Latin culture, it was possible to form such a body—one that did not yet carry within itself the premature sense of self, but which nevertheless possessed the deepest understanding of the spiritual world as embodied in Egyptian and Chaldean culture. But even if Europe lacked the capacity to provide a body for the Christ, it nevertheless possessed—precisely because it had developed the “I” too early in the dawn of modern existence—a full understanding, above all other achievements, of once the Christ had come to bring full consciousness of the “I” to humanity, to grasp this “I”-consciousness—for the reason that the European peoples had embraced the sense of “I” too early and had, as it were, grown together with it.

[ 19 ] We must take this into account if we are to understand the entire rise of modern culture. In Asia and Africa, we find people who know a great deal about the mysteries of the world and who are highly skilled in the creation of certain symbols. In short, they have cultivated their feeling soul to such an extent that they possess a rich inner life, but their sense of self is weak. In Europe, we find people who are less cultured in terms of what can be acquired through external revelations; however, we find there the type of person who seeks within themselves, who finds a firm foundation within themselves. Thus, in Asia, the ground was prepared for the appearance of the Christ; there could be a body into which the Christ could enter; and in Europe, we find people best prepared to understand the Bringer of self-consciousness. He brought to the European peoples what they had been longing for. That is why that wonderful mysticism developed precisely in Europe—a mysticism that sought to receive the Christ into one’s own soul, into the “I”: Christian mysticism.

[ 20 ] Thus, at various points on Earth, humanity is being prepared—through the wise guidance of the world—so that every stage of development comes into its own. This is one of the great achievements of the spiritual-scientific worldview: that one increasingly gains a sense of just how wisely everything has actually unfolded in human development and throughout the world—how, over millennia on European soil, souls have been prepared to have a firm foundation within themselves as early as possible, and that, in order to develop this firm point, they were even held back in the forces that were so highly developed in Asia. Hence, the cultural current flows over from Asia, and the strong sense of the “I” personality blossoms in Europe. Indeed, we can quite literally point out how the Adriatic Sea forms an almost fixed boundary between, on the one hand, an even somewhat weaker sense of self in Greece—where people did not yet feel themselves to be individual personalities, but rather as Athenians, Spartans, Theban, a member of their polis—and the Roman cultural regions on the other, where the strong sense of self is fundamentally developed in the consciousness of the Roman citizen, who stands firmly rooted in his own land as a personality. In Greece, we still see in people what one might describe as follows: the “I” is still somewhat in the background; more is still absorbed from the outside world, in a way where the “I” does not need to be present.

[ 21 ] And when we cross the Adriatic Sea, we arrive in Rome and see the Roman citizen standing firmly on his own two feet, with the sense of self we have already sensed. All of this is connected to deeper, significant underlying forces. These things do not take place in the world without corresponding events unfolding in the spiritual world for the things that occur on the physical plane. We see that in Greek culture there is still a strong influence of a restrained sense of self. Much is still perceived impersonally there. The Greek does not feel himself to be an individual citizen, but rather a member of the Athenian, Spartan, or Theban organism. This must be shed. The human being’s longing to receive from the outside must disappear, and the human being must take up residence within the soul if he is to become more and more a Western human being.

[ 22 ] What the great masses are to become must be exemplified by the great leaders, the great individuals of humanity. Here we see—if we allow ourselves to contemplate what we have repeatedly pointed out—that the Greeks still possessed a strong awareness that what is given to them from the outside, without the inner development of their personality, is something of particular value. Once again, I recall the saying of a highly educated Greek who gives us a deep insight into the longings of the Greek people: “Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows!”—The great value of the invisible, of the supersensible life, has not yet been grasped. Whatever can be drawn from the environment without the involvement of the “I” is drawn from it. And it is deeply moving, precisely at this point, to see how, at the turning point of the ages, a great leading figure stands like a milestone to cast off the attitudes of the past and embrace those of the new, to proclaim, as it were, resoundingly to the spiritual world: “Now a time is to come when we shall no longer merely receive what flows into the human personality without the ‘I,’ but when we shall receive what comes into the human personality through the ‘I’!”

[ 23 ] This event took place in the life of one of the great sages of that Greek antiquity, which unfolded in part on the island of Sicily—in Empedocles. In many a legend, which today is merely retold, there lies something extraordinarily profound. Of Empedocles, the great sage—who was not only a great philosopher but also an initiate into the deep mysteries of time, who was one of the greatest statesmen of all time and at the same time a sacrificial priest in Agrigento—the legend tells of him, but it also reveals the occult truth that, after fulfilling his mission in Sicily, cast his body into Mount Etna to unite his outer forms with the soil of Sicily, thereby documenting, as it were: Now shall come the firm belief in the Self, even as the outer form fades away! — The sacrifice of Empedocles’ outer form was accomplished at that time, when he surrendered his forms to Mount Etna. Behind this lies a profound occult truth. For those who come to Sicily today, this remains one of the spiritual experiences: that in the air of Sicily, when breathed in spiritually, one still finds the aftereffects of Empedocles’ deed. Empedocles’ soul has continued to incarnate; his body has acquired special significance through the fact that it was consciously surrendered to the elements, so that today it is found in the spiritual atmosphere of Sicily. Empedocles’ body forms a component of the spiritual atmosphere of Sicily.

[ 24 ] It was a significant moment for me—and after all, in our field we are free to discuss such matters with one another—when, a few weeks ago, I was able to say to our friends in Palermo about their Empedocles, in the immediate vicinity of that event, the very same thing I have just said to you: Whoever consciously enters your site here in Sicily in spirit still breathes, even today, that which entered the air of Sicily through the sacrificial death of Empedocles!

[ 25 ] Thus we see how what we could outwardly, spatially, suggest with the Adriatic Sea —the boundary between East and West—is symbolized by a great leader of humanity who, in order to continue his work in the West, consciously sheds that which enabled growth over in the East, and seeks to preserve for further development the existence of that which is exalted above all elements of the outer physical plane.

[ 26 ] It is a profound experience to examine these differences, for they reveal how, in separate realms, separate elements were prepared so that the greatest possible achievement could be attained within this diversity. Through the interplay of the greatest diversity, the goal of humanity’s overall development must be attained. From this we can see that Christ, after appearing in the East, moved on to the West and was received there by those who were prepared with a strong sense of self, so that they might understand the Bringer of the strong sense of self. That was the secret of Christ’s entry into the West: that he found prepared souls, and that these souls received him. Thus, in the East, we see humanity “preparing everything necessary for the emergence of a body or physical form—consisting of the physical body, the etheric body, and the astral body—into which the Christ can enter, bringing the impulse of love to Earth through and with the sense of self.” Love is what is brought to Earth in its most soulful, most spiritual form through the Christ. We first consider love as if it were arising, so to speak, in its soul-spiritual form in the East; and as if it were spreading westward and being understood there, we then consider its further development.

[ 27 ] How was it that, particularly in the West, the sense of the “I” came to have such an effect that it felt a kinship with Christ? What had happened to the souls who had embraced the sense of the “I” at an early stage?

[ 28 ] The Egyptian-Chaldean peoples waited with the development of the “I” until the level of the conscious soul; the Greek-Latin peoples developed the “I” as early as the level of the intellectual or emotional soul; the culture of northern Europe developed the sense of the “I” prematurely in the sensory soul. There it was present early on within the human soul. Thus, the soul of feeling and the sense of the “I” had interacted here in a completely different way than anywhere else in the world. In Northern Europe, the soul of feeling and the “I”-consciousness first became intertwined in the course of human development. What was the significance of the fact that the “I”-consciousness had already taken root in the soul of feeling among the European peoples before Christ entered the course of human development, and before they had assimilated what had developed in Asia?

[ 29 ] As a result, the sentient soul—a power of the human soul—had developed; this could only have come about because the sentient soul, which was still entirely unspoiled and unaffected by other cultures, had become imbued with the sense of the “I.” And this soul force has become the conscience: the interpenetration of the sense of self with the soul of feeling. Hence the strangely innocent nature of the conscience! How does the conscience speak? It speaks in the simplest, most naive person just as it does in the most complex soul. It says directly: This is right! This is wrong! — Without a theory, without any doctrine. With the force of a drive, of an instinct, that which tells us, “That is right!” “That is wrong!” takes effect. — Nowhere else will you find what developed in this way in the West, in the manner we have just discussed. That is why it casts its first rays ahead of it like a dawn toward Greece and from there to Rome, and there it already confronts us with great force. It is among the Roman writers that we first encounter the word “conscience”: conscientia. While we find it only sporadically among the Greeks—in the earliest hints in Euripides—we find it already strongly emphasized among the Romans, already as a commonly used word. This is the influence of that cultural current that arose because the sensory soul and the sense of self have become intertwined—because the sense of self, which carries the human being upward from the lower to the higher, already speaks within the sensory soul like the voice of God, as otherwise only drives, desires, and passions—and there it speaks with the urge to do what is right in order to ascend to the higher “I.”

[ 30 ] Thus, in the course of human development, we see conscience emerge first among the European peoples. From there, it radiates outward and is then shared with the rest of humanity. Thus, through wise cosmic guidance, humanity was prepared to such an extent at a certain point that conscience could be brought forth as a contribution to the overall development of humanity. With this, we have essentially already given everything that conscience itself explains to us. We have given that indefinable aspect of conscience—the emergence of conscience from the depths of the soul. Conscience speaks as an instinct speaks, and yet it is not an instinct. Those philosophers who describe it as an instinct are way off the mark. It speaks with the same grandeur with which the conscious soul itself speaks when it comes to the fore; but at the same time, it speaks through the elemental, the more primordial forces.

[ 31 ] Thus we see how love emerges over there in the East, and conscience here in the West. These are two things that belong together: just as Christ appears in the East, so conscience awakens in the West to receive Christ as conscience. In this simultaneous emergence of the reality of the Christ event and the understanding of the Christ event, and in the preparation of these two things at different points on the earth, we see at work an infinite wisdom that is present in evolution. With this, we have pointed to the past of conscience.

[ 32 ] If we now recall what we have often emphasized—that now, after the Kali Yuga has come to an end, we are in a transitional phase in which new forces are to develop—then we will find it understandable that today we are also facing important questions regarding the development of our conscience. Last time we emphasized—strongly and emphatically—that we are moving toward a new Christ experience, in which the soul will become capable of perceiving the Christ through a certain kind of etheric clairvoyance and of reliving the Damascus experience within itself. Therefore, we may raise the question: What will the parallel development—the development of consciousness—be like in the periods of time into which we are now entering? — We will address this question next Sunday, May 8, and in doing so best commemorate our anniversary by pointing to the vitality of the spiritual scientific movement and illustrating how the human soul forces are in a state of transition. We will see that conscience can be illuminated from a wide variety of perspectives. This will be done in a completely exoteric manner in the public lecture next Thursday, but even there, certain things can already be taken for granted, since these public lectures have been taking place for a number of years now. One can speak as deeply about conscience as we have today; one can speak as exoterically as we will next Thursday; and one can speak even more deeply about conscience. It will take some time yet before we are in a position to do so.