The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Tenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Before we explore what will emerge in connection with the significant image of Götterdämmerung, it would be good to lay a foundation for this. For our task will be to describe more precisely the essence of the Germanic-Nordic folk-souls based on the findings we have obtained. We must see how the entire European spiritual life interacts in Europe, how the activity of the various national spirits brings about the progress of humanity—from time immemorial, through our present, and into the future. Every single people—indeed, even all the individual, smaller fragments of peoples—have their own special task within this great overall picture; and from what has been said, you can see that, in a certain sense, it is precisely the pre- and post-Christian culture of Europe that has been entrusted with the task, the mission, of educating the “I” through the various stages of human existence, of shaping it, and of gradually developing it. In a certain sense, this “I” was, in ancient times, still revealed to human beings clairvoyantly from the spiritual world, as we have shown in the case of the Germanic-Nordic peoples. It was said that this “I” is bestowed upon human beings by one of the angelic beings who stands right in the midst between the individual and the Folk-souls: by Donar or Thor. We have seen that the individual still felt as if he were without an “I,” as if he were impersonal. He regarded the “I” as a gift bestowed upon him from the spiritual world.

[ 2 ] Naturally, in the East, when the “I” first awakened, it was not found in this way. There, human beings were already subjectively so far developed to a high level of human perfection that they perceived the “I” not as something foreign, but as their own. When human beings in the East awakened to the “I,” Eastern culture was already so advanced that it was capable of gradually developing such finely woven speculation, logic, and wisdom as we see before us in Eastern wisdom. Thus, Orientalism did not undergo the entire process of receiving the “I” as if from a higher, spiritual world with the aid of a divine-spiritual individuality such as Thor was. European culture underwent this process, and therefore this European culture also perceives this gradual ascent to the individual “I” as emerging from a kind of group soul. The Germanic-Norse person still felt as if endowed with a group soul, as if belonging to an entire community, as a member of the great unity of the tribe. Only in this way could it have come to pass that, nearly a hundred years after the Christian impulse had been given to the earth, Tacitus was able to describe the Germanic peoples of Central Europe in such a way that they always appeared to belong to individual tribes, that they were like the members of an organism and belonged to the unity of that organism. Thus, in those days, the individual still felt like a member of the tribal self. He sensed the gradual emergence of the individual “I” from the tribal “I,” and he saw in the god Thor the giver, the bestower of the “I”—the god who actually endowed him with the individual “I.” But he still felt this god to be connected to the entire spirit of the tribe, to that which lives in the group soul. The term “Sif” is now used to denote this group soul. This is the name of Thor’s wife. Linguistically, “Sif” must be related to the word “clan,” denoting tribal kinship—and indeed it is, even if this connection is masked and hidden. In occult terms, however, “Sif” signifies the group soul of the individual community from which the individual emerges. Sif is the being who unites with the god of the individual “I,” with the giver of the individual “I,” with Thor. The individual human being perceives Sif and Thor as the beings who gave him the “I.” The Nordic people still perceived them in this way, even as peoples in other regions of Europe had already been assigned different tasks in the education of the human being toward the “I.”

[ 3 ] Every single people has its own special mission. Above all, we find there the people, the sense of national unity, and the shared identity that we know by the name of the Celts. The national spirit of the Celts—which, as we know from the preceding descriptions, was later assigned entirely different tasks—had the mission of nurturing the still-young “I” of the European population. For this, however, there had to be an education and instruction for the Celts themselves that was conveyed directly from the higher worlds. It is therefore entirely correct that the Celts, through their initiates—the Druid priests—received instruction from higher worlds that they could not have received on their own, and which they were then to pass on to the other peoples.

[ 4 ] The entire European culture is a gift from the European mysteries. The evolving Folk-souls are always the guiding forces behind the progress of humanity’s overall culture. But in the era when these national spirits of Europe were meant to guide people to work from within themselves and to be effective from within themselves, it was necessary for the mysteries to withdraw to a greater extent. Thus, with the withdrawal of the Celtic element, there also occurred a kind of retreat of the mysteries into much more secret depths. A much more direct, immediate interaction between the spiritual beings and the people through the mysteries existed in the time of the ancient Celts, because the “I” was still bound to group consciousness; yet the Celtic element was to be the bestower of the “I” upon the rest of the population. We can therefore say: In the period preceding the actual Germanic-Nordic development, the education in the mysteries could be provided to European culture only through the ancient Celtic mysteries. This education in the mysteries brought to the surface just as much as was necessary to lay a foundation for the entire culture of Europe. From this ancient culture, through intermingling with the most diverse racial fragments, ethnic groups, and racial communities, the most varied Folk-souls and national spirits were able to be enriched; and they have continually placed the “I” in different situations in order to educate it—the “I” that clawed its way out from the depths of what lies beneath the human “I.” One can say that, after ancient Greek culture had reached its zenith to a certain degree in the development of what was precisely its special mission, a completely different aspect of this same mission came to light in ancient Rome and its various cultural periods. We have already mentioned how the individual post-Atlantean cultures follow one another in a strict sequence of stages. If we wish to gain an overview of this sequence of post-Atlantean cultures, we can say: Ancient Indian culture worked on the human etheric body. Hence the clairvoyant, wonderfully wise character of ancient Indian culture, because—after the development of the specific human faculties—it is a culture reflected in the human etheric body, so that we can understand ancient Indian culture roughly in the following way.

[ 5 ] From the Atlantean period through the later post-Atlantean era, the Indian national spirit underwent the entire development of the inner soul forces without its “I” having awakened. It then retraced its path back to its work in the human etheric body. This is the essence of ancient Indian culture: that with fully developed soul forces—soul forces that were refined to the highest degree—the Indian re-enters the etheric body, returns to the etheric body, and within it develops those wonderfully subtle forces, the later reflection of which we see in the Vedas and, in an even more refined state, in Vedanta philosophy. All this was possible only because the Indian folk-soul had developed to a high degree before the “I” had been beheld or perceived—and at a time when human beings could still see for themselves with the powers of the etheric body. The Persian folk-soul had not progressed that far. It had only progressed to the point of perceiving through the sensory body or astral body. The situation was different still in the Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian culture. There, the part we call the feeling soul was capable of perception. We must therefore describe this Egyptian-Chaldean culture as one that operates through the feeling soul. In the case of the Greek-Latin national spirit, it was guided as far as the intellectual or emotional soul; it worked within this intellectual or emotional soul. It could work within the intellectual or emotional soul only because this soul, in turn, had a kind of expression of its essence within the etheric body. But this is, as it were, a less real, less vivid, and less firmly rooted in reality form of the worldview than the one that emerged in Greek culture. Whereas in ancient Indian culture there was direct work within the etheric body, what now exists is a blurred, shadowed, and more subdued image of reality—as I characterized it by saying: It is like a memory of what these peoples had once experienced, like a memory that radiates back onto their etheric body (cf. the schematic illustration).

[ 6 ] Among the other peoples who followed the Greek people, we see the predominant use of the physical body for the gradual development of the consciousness soul. Therefore, Greek culture was one that we can only understand if we are able to grasp it from within; if we realize that, in this culture, what is important as an external experience is what wells up from within the Greek. In contrast, the peoples situated further to the west and north have the task, under the guidance of their Folk-souls, of directing their gaze out into the world and seeing what is to be seen on the physical plane—that is, of developing what is meant to play a role on the physical plane. The Germanic-Nordic peoples had the additional special task of developing all of this to the best of their ability, since they still enjoyed the grace—the grace of world history—of looking into the spiritual world through ancient clairvoyance and of carrying the ancient experiences, which they perceived as living realities, into what was to be established on the physical plane.

[ 7 ] There was a people who, in their later days, no longer possessed this grace—a people had not initially undergone such a preliminary development, which was therefore, as it were, placed on the physical plane before the birth of the human “I” in a single leap, and which could therefore, only under the guidance of its Folk-souls—its archangel—provide for everything that fostered this human “I” on the physical plane and was necessary for the well-being of this human “I” on the physical plane. This was the Roman people. Everything the Roman people were to accomplish under the guidance of their national spirit for the entire mission of Europe was destined to establish the human “I” as such. Therefore, the Roman people were able to develop that which the “I” places between the other “I’s.” It was able to establish the entire body of private rights. Thus it became the creator of jurisprudence built purely upon the “I.” How the “I” relates to the “I”—that was the great question in the mission of the Roman people. The other peoples who emerged from the culture of the Roman people already possessed more of what, so to speak, springs from the feeling soul, the intellectual or emotional soul, and the conscious soul itself—that which in some way nourishes this “I” and propels it out into the world. This required all the racial mixtures documented by external history—those that took place on the Italian and Iberian peninsulas, in present-day France, and in present-day Great Britain—in order to develop the “I” on the physical plane according to its various nuances: through the soul of feeling, the soul of understanding or emotion, and the soul of consciousness. This was the great mission of the peoples who gradually developed in the West of Europe in a wide variety of ways.

[ 8 ] All the individual cultural nuances and missions in Western Europe can ultimately be explained by the fact that, as one moves toward the Italian and Pyrenean peninsulas, what could be developed within the “I” through the impulses of the feeling soul had to take shape there. Study the individual national characters in terms of their light and shadow sides, and you will find that among the peoples of the Italian and Pyrenean peninsulas there is a distinctive blending of the “I” with the feeling soul. Among the peoples, however, who have lived on French soil up until the most recent times, you will find their distinctive character understandable if you consider the development and intermingling of the intellectual or emotional soul with the “I.” The great achievements in world history, however—of which we can regard Great Britain as the representative—are attributable to the fact that the impulse of the consciousness soul has been driven into the human “I.” What emerged from the British Isles as a world-historical mission is also connected to what arose from the establishment of the external, constitutional form of government. The connection between the soul of consciousness and the “I” was not yet present inwardly. But if you examine how this connection between the soul of consciousness and the “I” driven outward came about, you will find that the great world-historical conquests of the people of that island stem from this impulse. You will also find, however, that what is happening there in terms of the establishment of parliamentary forms of government becomes immediately understandable once one realizes that the aim was to bring an impulse of the conscious soul onto the stage of world history.

[ 9 ] Many nuances were therefore necessary, for the individual peoples had to be guided through many stages of the “I.” If we had enough time to explore these matters further, we would discover true historical pictures that show us how the fundamental forces branch out and exert their influence in the most diverse ways. This is how the soul constitution worked among the Western peoples, who did not possess for themselves the immediate, elemental memory of the clairvoyantly experienced phenomena of the spiritual world of earlier times. In later times, in the Germanic-Nordic region, what emerged directly from a gradual development of the original clairvoyance—which had already been infused into the feeling soul—had to take shape in a completely different way. Hence that trait of inwardness, which is, after all, merely the aftereffect of inner clairvoyant experiences that took place in ancient times. The South Germanic peoples initially had their task in the realm of the conscious soul. The Greco-Latin era was to develop the intellectual or emotional soul. But it was not merely to provide the impulse through the intellectual or emotional soul; it was to work within it through a wondrous, prehistoric development endowed with clairvoyant experience. All of this poured into the consciousness souls of the Central European-Nordic-Germanic peoples. This continued to influence them as a soul disposition, and the more southern parts of the Germanic peoples first had to develop what was necessary to inwardly prepare the consciousness soul and to inwardly fill it with the content of consciousness—translated onto the physical plane—from the ancient clairvoyance.

[ 10 ] The philosophies of Central Europe—those espoused by Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel as late as the nineteenth century—seem to lie far removed from the realm of mythology. Nevertheless, they are nothing other than the result of the most sublimated ancient clairvoyance—the collaboration with divine-spiritual powers achieved within the human being. Otherwise, it would have been impossible for a Hegel to see realities in his ideas; it would have been impossible for a Hegel to make the peculiar statement that so characterizes him, when, in response to the question, “What is the abstract?” he answers: “The abstract is, for example, a single human being going about his daily tasks—let us say, a carpenter.” Thus, what is concrete for the “abstract-minded” person was, for Hegel, something abstract. What for the “abstract-minded” person are merely thoughts were, for him, great, mighty architects of the world. Hegel’s world of ideas is the ultimate, most sublimated expression of the conscious soul and contains, in pure concepts, what the Nordic people still perceived as sensuous-supersensuous, divine-spiritual powers in connection with the “I.” And when the “I” found expression in Fichte, it was nothing other than the manifestation of what the god Thor had given to the human soul—viewed by Fichte solely from the perspective of the conscious soul—in what appears to be the simplest thought, the thought “I am,” from which Fichte’s philosophy proceeds. A straight line of development extends from the gift of the “I” bestowed upon the ancient Norse people—radiating through the god Thor or Donar from the spiritual world—all the way to this philosophy. This god had to prepare all of this for the soul of consciousness so that it might have content appropriate to itself, for it is dependent on looking into the outer world and acting within that world. But this philosophy does not merely encounter the external, gross-sensory, materialistic experience; rather, it finds the very content of the consciousness soul itself in the external world and regards nature solely as the idea in its otherness. Take this enduring impulse, and you have therein the mission of the Germanic-Nordic peoples in Central Europe.

[ 11 ] Now, since all development must proceed, we must ask ourselves: How does this evolution move forward? We can observe some remarkable phenomena when we look back to earlier times. We have said: In ancient India, the first culture took place in the etheric body after the corresponding development of the spiritual powers had occurred. But there are also cultures that have preserved the ancient Atlantean culture and carried it over into the people of the post-Atlantean era. While the Indian approaches his etheric body from this side and, from within it and using its forces, creates his immensely great culture and magnificent spiritual life, we have, on the other hand, a culture rooted in the Atlantean era that works its way into the post-Atlantean period—a culture that, as it were, draws upon the other aspect of etheric-body consciousness for its foundation and development. This is Chinese culture. You will understand the details of Chinese culture if you consider this connection and recall that Atlantean culture had a direct relationship to what we called the “Great Spirit” in our earlier descriptions—meaning that this culture had a direct relationship to the highest stages of world development. But this culture still exerts an influence on modern human beings, albeit from an entirely different angle. It will therefore seem understandable that it is precisely within these two cultures that the two great opposites of the post-Atlantean era will one day clash: the Indian culture, which is capable of development within certain limits, and the Chinese culture, which closes itself off and remains rigid, repeating what existed in the ancient Atlantean era. One literally gets the impression of something occult, scientific, and poetic when observing the development of the Chinese Empire, when thinking of the Great Wall of China, which was intended to enclose on all sides that which originated in ancient times and had developed in the post-Atlantean era. I would say that a kind of poetic-occult sensation creeps up on one when one compares the Great Wall of China with what once existed in earlier times. I can only hint at these things. If you compare this with the scientific findings already available today, you will find how extraordinarily revealing these things are. Let us take a clairvoyant look at the ancient continent of the Atlantean world, which we must seek where the Atlantic Ocean now lies, between Africa and Europe on one side and America on the other. This continent was surrounded by a kind of warm current—a current which, as clairvoyant perception reveals, flowed—strange as it may sound—up from the south, passing through Baffin Bay toward northern Greenland and encircling it, then flowing eastward, gradually cooling, then, at a time when Siberia and Russia were still far from having risen to the Earth’s surface, flowed down into the Ural region, turned back, touched the eastern Carpathians, flowed into the region where the Sahara lies today, and finally entered the Atlantic Ocean at the Bay of Biscay, thus forming a completely enclosed current system. You will understand that this current can now exist only in its very last remnants. This current is the Gulf Stream, which once flowed around the Atlantic continent. — And now you will also understand that, for the Greeks, the life of the soul is memory. The image of Okeanos arose within them—he is a memory of that Atlantic era. Their worldview is not entirely incorrect, because it is drawn from the ancient Atlantean era. — The current that flowed down as a warm current past Spitsbergen and gradually cooled, etc.—the Chinese have literally recreated this enclosed current system in their culture, which is enclosed by the Great Wall and preserved from the Atlantean era. The historical dimension did not yet exist in Atlantean culture. That is why Chinese culture has also retained something ahistorical. That is why we find there something pre-Indian, something originating from Atlantis.

[ 12 ] Let us now turn to the description of the next stage in the development of the Germanic-Norse national spirit—to what follows it. What will be next when a national spirit guides its people in such a way that the Spirit-Self can develop in a distinctive manner? Let us recall that the etheric body develops in Indian culture, the feeling body in Persian culture, the feeling soul in Egyptian-Chaldean culture, the intellectual or emotional soul in Greek-Latin culture, and the consciousness soul in our own, as yet unfinished, culture. But now comes the grasping of the Spirit-Self by the soul of consciousness, so that the Spirit-Self shines into the soul of consciousness—a process that must be gradually prepared as the task of the sixth cultural stage. This culture, which must be a receptive culture in the most eminent sense—for it must devotedly await the entry of the Spirit-Self into the soul of consciousness—is being prepared by the peoples of Western Asia and the advanced Slavic peoples of Eastern Europe. The latter have been advanced with their Folk-souls for good reason—namely, because everything that is to come in the future must, in a certain sense, undergo its preparation beforehand; it must already begin to take shape in order to provide the elements for what is to come later. It is of the utmost interest to study these advanced outposts of a Folk-soul preparing itself for later epochs. Hence the peculiar nature of the Slavic peoples who, for us, live to the east. Their entire culture suggests to Western Europeans that it is in a preparatory stage, and in a strange way they advance, through the medium of their outposts, something that, in spirit, is entirely different from any mythology. It would be a mistake to regard what is being advanced from the East as the culture to be expected; it would be a mistake to misjudge this culture if one were to compare it with what the Western European peoples possess within themselves—a straight-line, continuous impulse that still has its root and source in ancient clairvoyance. The distinctive quality through which the soul of these Eastern European peoples expresses itself is reflected in the entire attitude these peoples have always revealed whenever their relationship to the higher worlds came into consideration. This relationship—when compared to what is evident in our mythologies in Western Europe, with their peculiar divine figures elaborated down to the individual level—is something entirely different. It presents itself to us in such a way that we can compare what it offers us—as a direct outflow of the national character—to our various planes or worlds through which we prepare ourselves to comprehend a spiritual, higher culture. For example, in the East we find the following mental image: the West has received successive, parallel worlds. Here we first have a clear awareness of a world of the cosmic Father. Everything that is creatively active in air and fire—indeed, in all the elements found in and above the earth—presents itself to us, as if in a great, all-encompassing concept that is at the same time an overall sensation, as the concept of the Heavenly Father. Just as we conceive of the world of Devachan as fertilizing our Earth, so this heavenly world, this fatherly world, approaches us from the East and fertilizes that which is perceived as motherly—the spirit of the Earth. We have no other expression and no other means than to conceive of the entire spirit of the Earth through the image of the motherly Earth being fertilized. Thus, two worlds stand opposite one another, not individual, distinct divine figures. And as a third world, standing opposite these two worlds, is that which is perceived as the blessed child of the two. This is not an individual being, not a feeling of the soul, but something that is the offspring of the Heavenly Father and the Earth Mother. Thus, from within the spiritual world, the relationship between Devachan and the Earth is perceived. What arises there as the Bestower of Blessings, as spring, and as that which sprouts and grows in the physical body is perceived entirely as spiritual; and what sprouts and grows in the soul is perceived as the world, which is at the same time perceived as the blessed child of the Heavenly Father and the Earthly Mother. As universal as these mental images may be, we find them among the Slavic peoples who advanced westward. We do not find such a universal perception in any Western European mythology. There we find clearly defined divine figures, but not what we depict in our spiritual visions; these we find more in the Heavenly Father, the Earthly Mother, and the Child of Blessing of the East. Within the Child of Blessing lies yet another world that permeates another. This is the world that is, admittedly, already conceived of individually, because it is linked to the physical sun with its light. This being, which we have encountered many times in Persian mythology, also possesses—albeit in a differently developed form of feeling and mental image—the Slavic element; it possesses the solar being that pours its blessings into the other three worlds, so that human destiny is woven into creation, into the given earth, through the fertilization of the Earth Mother by the Heavenly Father and through what the Sun Spirit weaves into these two worlds. A fifth world is that which encompasses all that is spiritual. The Eastern European element perceives the underlying spiritual world in all natural forces and creatures. But we must conceive of these in a completely different emotional nuance, perhaps more closely linked to natural beings, natural facts, and natural creations.

[ 13 ] We must create a mental image of this Eastern soul being capable of perceiving, within a natural process, not merely the outer physical-sensory aspect, but also the astral-spiritual aspect. Hence the mental image of an immense number of beings in this unique spiritual world, which can at best be compared to the world of the light elves. The spiritual world, which is regarded by Spiritual Science as the fifth world, is roughly the world that is dawning in the collective consciousness of the East. Whether you call it by this or that name is not important; what matters is that the perceptions are nuanced and nuanced, and that the mental images through which this fifth plane or this fifth spiritual world has been characterized are found in the world of the East. With this feeling, this Eastern world prepared the way for the Spirit who is to bring the Spirit-Self into human beings, for that epoch in which the consciousness soul is to rise to the Spirit-Self in the sixth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, which will succeed our fifth. This confronts us in a most peculiar way, not only in the creations of the Folk-souls—which are as I have just characterized them—but also, in a wonderfully preparatory manner, in the various other expressions of Eastern Europe and its culture.

[ 14 ] It is very curious and extremely interesting how this Eastern European expresses his predisposition toward receptivity to the pure spirit by embracing Western European culture with great devotion, thereby prophetically suggesting that he will be able to unite his being with something even greater. Hence, too, his limited interest in the details of this Western European culture. He takes in what is presented to him more in broad strokes and less in the details, because he is preparing himself to assimilate that which will enter into humanity as the Spirit-Self. It is particularly interesting to see how, under this influence, a much more advanced concept of Christ has emerged in the East than in Western Europe—insofar as it has not arisen there through Spiritual Science. Of all those who stand apart from Spiritual Science, the Russian philosopher Soloviev holds the most advanced concept of Christ. His conception of Christ is such that it can be understood only by students of spiritual knowledge, because he develops it ever further and presents it in an infinite perspective, thereby showing that what people recognize of it today is only the beginning, since the Christ impulse has so far been able to reveal to humanity only a small portion of what it contains within itself. But if we look at the concept of Christ as it is conceived, for example, by Hegel, we will find that one can say: Hegel conceives it in the way that the finest, the most sublimated soul of consciousness can conceive it. The concept of Christ, however, presents itself quite differently to us in Soloviev. There, the twofold nature of the concept of Christ becomes clear, and everything that has found expression in the most diverse theological disputes—and which, fundamentally, is based on deep misunderstandings—is rejected, because ordinary concepts are insufficient to make the concept of Christ comprehensible in its dual nature; they are insufficient to understand that the human and the spiritual must be precisely distinguished within it. The concept of Christ rests precisely on a precise understanding of what happened when the Christ entered into the human being Jesus of Nazareth, who had developed all the necessary qualities. There, then, are two natures within him that must first be grasped, even though they merge once again into a unity on a higher level. One has not grasped Christ in his full form until one has grasped this twofold nature. However, this can only be achieved through a philosophical understanding that foresees that human beings themselves will enter a culture in which their conscious soul will be in a state where the Spirit-Self can come to them, so that in this sixth cultural period, human beings will feel themselves as a duality in which the higher nature will keep the lower nature in check. Soloviev incorporates this duality into his concept of Christ and explicitly asserts that the concept of Christ can only make sense if one posits a divine and a human nature, which can only be understood through their real interaction—that is, as an organic unity rather than an abstract one. Soloviev already recognizes that two centers of will must be presented as mental images within this being. If you take Soloviev’s theories on the true meaning of the Christ-being—as they arose through the presence of an Indian influence that is not merely conceptual but spiritually real—then you have Christ in such a way that within him, in the three bodies, the aspect of feeling, the aspect of thinking, and the aspect of willing are developed. There you have human feeling, thinking, and willing, into which the divine feeling, thinking, and willing sink. European humanity will not fully assimilate this until it has ascended to the sixth cultural stage. This has been expressed in a wondrous, prophetic way in what shines forth in Soloviev’s concept of Christ as the dawn of a future culture. That is why this philosophy of Eastern Europe takes such giant strides beyond Hegelianism and Kantianism, and when one enters the atmosphere of this philosophy, one suddenly senses something like the seed of a future unfolding. This goes so far because this concept of Christ is perceived as a prophetic foreshadowing, as the dawn of the sixth post-Atlantean culture. As a result, the entire essence of Christ and the full significance of the Christ-essence for philosophy are brought into focus, and it thereby becomes something entirely different from what Western European concepts of it are capable of conveying. The concept of Christ, insofar as it is developed outside the realm of Spiritual Science and understood as a living substance intended to work its way—like a spiritual personality—into all aspects of state and social life, — who is perceived as a personality in whose service humanity finds itself as “human beings with a Spirit-Self”—this Christ-personality is elaborated in a wonderfully vivid manner in the various discussions Soloviev offers on the Gospel of John and its opening words. Once again, it is only within the field of Spiritual Science that one can find an understanding of how deeply Soloviev grasps the statement, “In the beginning was the Word, or the Logos,” and how differently the Gospel of John is understood through a philosophy in which one can sense that it is a philosophy in its infancy, that it points toward the future in a remarkable way.

[ 15 ] If, on the one hand, one must say that Hegel represents the ripest fruit in the realm of philosophy—something born from the soul of consciousness as the ripest philosophical fruit—then, on the other hand, Solovyov’s philosophy is the seed within the soul of consciousness for the philosophy of the Spirit-Self, which will be integrated into the sixth cultural period. There is perhaps no greater contrast than that between the concept of the Christian state—in the most eminent sense—which, as a lofty ideal, hovers before Solovyov like a dream of the future, and this Christian concept of state and people, which takes everything that exists in order to offer it to the descending Spirit-Self, to hold it forth toward the future, and to allow it to be permeated by the powers of the future —there is, therefore, no greater contrast than that between this concept of the Christian community as understood by Soloviev—in which the concept of Christ is entirely future-oriented—and the concept of the City of God by St. Augustine, who, while incorporating the concept of Christ, but constructs the state in such a way that it is the Roman state, which incorporates Christ into the mental image of the state that the Roman state has given it. What matters is what knowledge contributes to a Christianity that is growing into the future. In Soloviev’s state, Christ is the blood that flows through all social life. And the essential point is that the state is conceived with all the concreteness of the personality, so that while it acts as a spiritual being, it will also fulfill its mission with all the characteristic traits of the personality. No other philosophy has been so deeply imbued with the concept of Christ—which shines before us in Spiritual Science at higher levels—and yet has remained so much in its infancy. Everything we find in the East—from the national character on up to philosophy—appears to us as something that bears within itself only the seed of future development, and which therefore had to undergo the special shaping of that spirit of the age we already know, since we have said that the spirit of the age of the ancient Greek people, having given impetus to Christianity, was entrusted with the mission of becoming the active spirit of the age for later Europe. For that national character that is to develop the seeds for the sixth cultural epoch, this spirit of the age has had to be not only an educator but also a nurturer from the very first stage of existence. Thus we can literally say—whereby the concepts of “father” and “mother” lose their separate meanings—that what constitutes the Russian national character, and is to gradually develop into the national soul, has not only been educated but also nourished and nurtured by that which, as we have seen, was formed out of the ancient Greek spirit of the age and then assumed a different outward form.

[ 16 ] This is how the missions are distributed among Western, Central, and Northern Europe and Eastern Europe. I wanted to give you a glimpse of these matters. Based on these insights, we will make a few further observations and show what the future of Europe will look like—a future that will require us to shape our ideals based on such insights; we will show how the Germanic-Nordic national spirit is gradually transforming into a zeitgeist through this influence.