The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] We have often considered, in various contexts, the development of humanity that has taken place during the so-called post-Atlantean era—that is, in our own time—since the Atlantean catastrophe. We have, in fact, identified various epochs and periods within this post-Atlantean development. We have referred to the ancient Indian era, the proto-Persian era, the Egyptian-Chaldean era, the Greek-Latin era, and then to our own era, which is precisely the fifth phase of post-Atlantean development. We then pointed out that two further periods will elapse before the onset of another great catastrophe, so that there will then be seven such periods in the history of humanity on Earth.

[ 2 ] It is understandable that we have described these epochs of human history on Earth from various perspectives. For as people of the present who, in a sense, wish to orient ourselves toward our own tasks, we can only gain a sense of the future that lies ahead if we know how we are situated within these various ages.

[ 3 ] It is repeatedly emphasized in a wide variety of ways that a distinction can be made between the individual human being—as a small world, a microcosm—and the greater world, the macrocosm. And it is rightly emphasized that the small cosmos—the human being—is in every respect a reflection of the greater world, the macrocosm. Although this is a truth, it is, at first glance, a rather abstract one, and as it is usually presented, it is not particularly useful. It only becomes meaningful when we can examine in detail to what extent this or that aspect of the human being that we encounter can truly be understood as a small world and related to another, larger world.

[ 4 ] In essence, modern human beings belong to all seven ages of the post-Atlantean epoch, for they have been and will be incarnated during all these periods. We have lived through past ages in our earlier incarnations, and we will live through the later periods in our future incarnations. In every incarnation, we absorb what the respective period has to offer. And by absorbing this, we carry within ourselves, in a certain sense, the results—the fruits—of previous developments, so that, in essence, the most intimate part of what we carry within us will be what we have acquired through the periods mentioned. For it must be said: What each individual human being has acquired during these periods already enters, to a greater or lesser extent, into present-day human consciousness, whereas, in fact, what we as human beings generally acquired during our incarnations in the Atlantean period was characterized by entirely different states of consciousness, so that it has already been pushed down more or less into the subconscious and no longer stirs as much as what we acquired later, in the post-Atlantean era. In a certain sense, people in the Atlantean era were much better protected from undermining this or that aspect of their own development, because consciousness had not yet awakened to the same degree as in the post-Atlantean era. What we therefore carry within us as the fruits of Atlantean development is much more correct and much more in keeping with the world order than what stems from the times when we ourselves were already capable of throwing things into disorder within ourselves. Certainly, the Ahrimanic and Luciferic beings already exerted influence during the Atlantean era. But even these beings acted upon human beings in a completely different way back then. Human beings at that time were not capable of defending themselves against them.

[ 5 ] The fact that this is entering our consciousness more and more is the essence of post-Atlantean culture. In this regard, the development of humanity from the Atlantean catastrophe to the next great catastrophe is, in a sense, also a macrocosmic process. Like a great individual, the whole of humanity develops through the seven post-Atlantean epochs. And the most important thing that is to arise in human consciousness throughout these seven cultural epochs essentially goes through periods similar to those experienced by the individual human being.

[ 6 ] We have divided the stages of human life—and this is pointed out again in The Secret Science—such that we consider the first seven years of life, from birth until the change of teeth, to be the first period. We have said that during this time the human physical body definitively takes on its forms and that, with the permanent teeth, these forms are essentially established. Although the human being continues to grow within these forms, their basic directions are already set. It is the development of form that takes place during the first seven years. We must understand such rhythms correctly in every respect. We must therefore also make a lawful distinction between the first teeth, which a person receives in the first years of life and which then fall out and are replaced by the second set of teeth. These two types are, in terms of the body’s natural laws, something entirely different: The first teeth are inherited; they stem, so to speak, as fruits from the earlier organisms of the ancestors, and only the second set of teeth arise from the individual’s own physical laws. We must bear this in mind. Only by delving into such details can we clearly recognize that a real difference exists here. We receive our first teeth because our ancestors bequeath them to us along with our organism; we receive our second teeth because our own physical organism is constituted in such a way that we can produce them through it. In the first case, the teeth are directly inherited; in the second, the physical organism is inherited, and it, in turn, produces the second teeth.

[ 7 ] Next, we must distinguish a second stage of life, which extends from the change of teeth to sexual maturity—that is, up to the age of fourteen or fifteen. This stage involves the development of the etheric body. The third period, which extends to the age of twenty-one or twenty-two, represents the formation of the astral body. This is followed by the formation of the “I,” progressing from the development of the feeling soul to that of the intellectual soul and the conscious soul. This is how we distinguish the stages of human life. Within these stages of life, as you are well aware, only what pertains to the early stages of life is actually systematic. This must be so and is also correct for human beings today.

[ 8 ] Such a regular pattern in the distinction as seen in the first three stages of life does not hold true for the subsequent stages; their duration, too, cannot be specified with nearly the same precision. And when we ask ourselves why this is so, we must realize that, in the development of the world, there is always, so to speak, a midpoint following the first three of seven stages. We are now in the post-Atlantean epoch; we already carry within us the fruits of the first four epochs—that is, in a sense, the fruits of the first three epochs and the fourth—and we are currently living in the fifth and moving toward the sixth.

[ 9 ] Now, we can quite justifiably find a certain similarity between the development of the post-Atlantean epochs and the development of the individual human being, so that here, too, we can quite clearly distinguish the macrocosmic from the microcosmic. Let us consider what characterizes the first post-Atlantean epoch in particular, which we refer to as the ancient Indian epoch, because the character of post-Atlantean development was particularly pronounced among the Indian people. In this first epoch—as you will find confirmed by various things I have already said—there existed, above all, a lofty, comprehensive, and far-reaching ancient body of knowledge, an ancient wisdom. What the seven holy Rishis taught in India was, in principle, what the natural seers and also a large part of the people actually saw in the spiritual world at that time. This ancient knowledge existed in the Indian era as a legacy from earlier times. During the Atlantean era, it had been experienced through clairvoyance. By then, it had become more of an ancient, inherited wisdom that had been preserved and proclaimed by the Rishis—those who, through initiation, had once again ascended to the spiritual worlds. Essentially, what entered human consciousness was entirely an inherited legacy. Therefore, it did not in any way resemble the nature of our knowledge today. One forms a completely false mental image when attempting to express the most important teachings proclaimed by the holy Rishis during the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch in the same forms we use to express our knowledge in modern science. This is hardly possible. For the scientific forms we have today arose only within the post-Atlantean culture itself. The knowledge of the ancient Rishis was of an entirely different nature. It was such that the one who imparted it continually felt how it was working within him, fermenting within him, how it arose in the very moment. And there is one characteristic we must note above all else if we are to understand what knowledge was like back then. This knowledge, in fact, was not based on memory at all. Memory played no role whatsoever in it. I ask you to bear this in mind very particularly. Today, memory plays the greatest role in the communication of knowledge. When a university professor steps up to the lectern or a public speaker takes the podium, he must have ensured beforehand that he knew what he wanted to say and then repeats it from memory. There are, of course, people today who say they do not do this—that they followed their genius—but there is not much truth to that. Today, the communication of knowledge is, in fact, based almost entirely on memory.

[ 10 ] To truly form a mental image of how knowledge was imparted in ancient India, one must realize that knowledge first arose in the mind of the one who imparted it, at the very moment he was imparting it. In the past, knowledge was not prepared in the same way it is today. The ancient rishi did not prepare by committing what he had to say to memory. He prepared himself by putting himself into a sacred state of mind—a devout state of mind, so to speak—and by approaching what he was about to convey with the understanding: “I must first make my soul devout, imbued with sacred sentiments!” He prepared the mood, the feelings, but not what he had to say. And then, at the moment of speaking, it was as if he were reading from something invisible. Listeners who might have taken notes would have been unthinkable in those days. That was something absolutely out of the question, for it would have been interpreted to mean that what one brought along in this way had not the slightest value. The only thing that had value in the sense of that time was what one carried within one’s soul, and what inspired one to subsequently reproduce the matter in a similar way to how the one who had presented it had himself reproduced it. It would have been a desecration of what was shared if one had written anything down. Why? Because, in the spirit of the times, people quite rightly held the view that what is written on paper is not the same as what was shared—it simply cannot be!

[ 11 ] This tradition has endured for a long time, for such things remain in people’s feelings much longer than in their understanding. And when, in the Middle Ages, the art of printing was added to the art of writing, the people initially perceived it as black magic, because old sentiments still lingered in the popular imagination; because people felt that what is meant to live from soul to soul should not be preserved in such a grotesquely profane manner as occurs when it is printed with printer’s ink on white sheets of paper—thus, in a sense, first transforming it into something lifeless, only to then revive it, perhaps in a rather unedifying way. So we must regard this direct flow from soul to soul as a defining characteristic of that era. This was entirely a tendency of the early post-Atlantean period, and it must be understood correctly if one wishes, for example, to comprehend how the ancient rhapsodes roamed in Greek and even in Old Germanic times, reciting their long, long poems. If they had relied on their memory for this, they would not have been able to recite it over and over again in that way. For it was the quality of the soul, the soul’s power, that underlay them—a much more vibrant one. When someone recites a poem today, they have learned it beforehand. These people, however, experienced what they were reciting, and there was truly a kind of re-creation taking place in that moment. This was also supported by the fact that, to a far greater extent than is the case today, the more spiritual elements still came to the fore. Today—with a certain justification for our times—everything spiritual is suppressed. When something is recited today, the focus is on the meaning; the literal meaning of the words is brought out. It was not even like that when the medieval singer recited the Nibelungenlied. He still had a certain feeling for the inner rhythm; he even stamped his foot, marking the beat of the rises and falls, moving up and down.

[ 12 ] But these are merely echoes of what existed in ancient times. Nevertheless, you would form a false mental image of the ancient Indian rishis and their disciples if you were to believe that they did not faithfully transmit the ancient Atlantean knowledge. The students in our universities, even if they have filled an entire notebook with notes, do not reproduce what was said as faithfully as the ancient knowledge was once conveyed by the Indian rishis.

[ 13 ] The subsequent periods are characterized by the fact that, for the most part, the ancient Atlantean knowledge ceased to have an effect. Until the decline of the ancient Indian cultural period, it was indeed the case that the knowledge humanity had received as an inheritance continued to grow further and further. There was still a growth of knowledge taking place. However, this essentially came to an end with the first post-Atlantean epoch, and after the Indian period, it was hardly possible to bring forth anything new from human nature that had not already existed. Thus, an increase in knowledge was possible only during the first period; then it ceased. And in the ancient Persian period, among those influenced by Zoroastrianism, a phase began with regard to external science that can now be compared to the second stage of human life—and which is best understood in this way. For the ancient Indian cultural period can truly be compared to the first stage of human life—the time from birth to the age of seven—when all forms take shape, whereas everything that follows is merely growth within those established forms. So it was with the spiritual realm during the first post-Atlantean epoch. And what followed in the Proto-Persian epoch can now be compared to a kind of learning. Just as a person pursues formal schooling in the second stage of life, so too can the Proto-Persian period be compared to a kind of learning. We must only clarify who the students were and who the teachers were. I would like to say one thing here.

[ 14 ] Hasn’t it struck you as curious how very different Zarathustra—the true leader of the second post-Atlantean cultural epoch—appears to us compared to the Indian rishis? While the rishis appear to us as figures consecrated by ancient, sacred antiquity, into whom the old Atlantean knowledge flows, Zarathustra appears as the first figure to be initiated into post-Atlantean knowledge. Thus, something new is emerging. Zoroaster is in fact the first post-Atlantean historical figure—who was initiated into that form of mystery knowledge which is truly post-Atlantean, in which the knowledge is prepared in such a way that it essentially becomes comprehensible only to the reason and intellect of post-Atlantean humanity. It was true, however, that in the Zoroastrian schools of the first epoch, one attained eminently supersensory knowledge. But in these Zoroastrian schools, for the first time, this knowledge began to take shape in human concepts. While the ancient Rishi knowledge cannot be rendered in the forms of our modern science, this is already more possible with Zoroastrian knowledge. Although this is indeed a wholly supersensible knowledge—and deals with knowledge of the supersensible world—it is clothed in concepts that are similar to the concepts and ideas of the post-Atlantean era in general. And among his followers, what is now primarily emerging is what might be called the systematic development of humanity’s conceptual system. That is to say, they are drawing upon the ancient, sacred treasure of wisdom that developed up to the end of the Indian epoch and has been passed down from generation to generation. Nothing new is being added, but now the old is being elaborated upon. And we can form a mental image of the task of the mysteries of the second post-Atlantean cultural epoch by drawing a comparison—for example, as if some occult book were to appear today. Of course, any occult book that is truly based on research into the higher worlds could be clothed entirely in logical arguments; it could be brought down to the physical plane entirely within the framework of logical arguments. That could happen. But then, for example, my Secret Science would have had to become a work of fifty volumes, and each volume as large as that single volume itself. In this way, one could distinguish each area very precisely and clothe it in logical forms. All of that is there and can be done. But one can also think in another way: namely, that one leaves something, as it were, for the reader to ponder. For this must already be attempted today; otherwise, one would make no progress at all in the practice of occultism. Today, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, human beings already have the ability to approach such occult knowledge using the rational concepts that humanity has developed and to process it. But during the Zarathustra epoch, one first had to find the concepts for these facts. They were gradually worked out. Sciences such as those that exist today did not exist back then. There was something like a remnant from the time of the ancient Rishi knowledge, and something emerged that could be clothed in human concepts. But the human concepts themselves first had to be found; it was into these that the supersensible was first poured. This nuance—of casting the supersensible into human concepts—only then arose. Therefore, one can say: The Rishis still spoke entirely in the manner in which supersensible knowledge can be expressed at all. They spoke in a variable language of images, in an imaginative language. They poured their knowledge, as it were, from soul to soul by speaking rich, vivid images that arose again and again wherever they communicated their knowledge. There was no mention at all of cause and effect, of other concepts as we have them today, or of any kind of logic. All of that emerged only later. And with regard to supersensible knowledge, this began in the second post-Atlantean cultural epoch. It was then, so to speak, that people first felt the resistance of material existence; it was then that they felt the necessity to express the supersensible in such a way that it takes on forms that human beings conceive on the physical plane. This was also, in essence, the task of the proto-Persian cultural epoch.

[ 15 ] Then came the third post-Atlantean epoch, the Egyptian-Chaldean culture. By this time, people had developed concepts of the supersensible. This is once again difficult for people today to grasp. Imagine: there was still no physical science, but rather concepts of the supersensible that had been gained through supersensible means. People knew what was happening in the supersensible worlds, and they could express it in the thought forms of the physical plane. Now, in the third cultural epoch, people began to apply what they had gained from the supersensible world to the physical plane itself. This can again be compared to the third phase of human life. While in the second stage of life a person learns to apply what they have learned without actually putting it into practice, in the third stage of life most people must once again apply it to the physical plane. The disciples of Zarathustra in the second cultural epoch were disciples of heavenly knowledge. Now people began to apply what they had gained to the physical plane. Let us say, to bring this into focus: People had now learned from visions of the supersensible how to grasp everything supersensible by expressing it in a triangle—the triangle as an image for the supersensible—and how to conceive of the supersensible human nature, which is poured into the physical body, as a trinity. And so they had learned other concepts as well, enabling them to apply physical things to the supersensible. Geometry, for example, was first learned in such a way that it was understood as symbolic concepts. Now that these concepts existed, they were applied: by the Egyptians in land surveying for their agricultural practices, and by the Chaldeans to the movements of the stars, as they established astrology and astronomy. What had previously applied only to the supersensible was now applied to what one perceived through the physical senses. People began to work out on the physical plane what they had drawn forth from supersensible knowledge, so that in the third cultural epoch, if we may put it that way, the application of knowledge gained from the supersensible to the sensory world began. This was only the case in the third epoch.

[ 16 ] In the fourth epoch, the Greco-Latin one, it is now particularly important that human beings come to realize that things are this way. They did so before, but they had not at all realized that things are this way. The ancient Rishis did not need to come to this realization, for they received knowledge directly from the spiritual world. During the Zoroastrian period, people worked solely with spiritual knowledge and knew exactly how supersensory knowledge takes shape on its own. During the Egyptian-Chaldean period, concepts from the supersensible realm were clothed in what had been derived from the physical world. And in the fourth cultural epoch, people asked: Do we have the right to apply what has been formed in the spiritual world to the physical world? Does what has been gained in the spiritual realm truly apply to physical things? — Humanity was only able to pose this question to itself in the fourth cultural epoch, after it had for some time innocently applied supersensible knowledge to physical experiences and physical observations. Then, for once, it was conscientious toward itself and asked: What right do we have to apply supersensible concepts to physical events, to physical facts?

[ 17 ] In fact, there is always, in any given period, a figure who carries out some important task of that period in a particularly distinctive way and who is especially struck by the existence of such a thing. In such a figure—who is struck by this—do we have the right to apply supersensible concepts to physical facts? — one can then truly see how what I have just hinted at develops. For example, you can see how Plato still maintains a very vivid connection to the ancient world and still applies concepts to the physical world in the old way. His student Aristotle is then the one who asks: Is that even allowed? — That is why he is the founder of logic.

[ 18 ] Those who are not at all involved in Spiritual Science should ask themselves this question: Why did logic not emerge until the fourth epoch? If humanity has been evolving since time immemorial, did it really have no reason to ask itself the question of logic at a specific point in time? If one looks at things realistically, one can identify important turning points in development that occur precisely at specific moments. For example, an important turning point in development lies between Plato and Aristotle. One might therefore say: Indeed, in the period described, we are dealing with something that is still, in a certain way, connected to the ancient relationship with the spiritual world as it existed in the Atlantean epoch. True, living knowledge died out with the Indian epoch. But with it, something new had been brought down. Now, however, people had become critical in a certain sense: How can the supersensible be applied to physical, sensory things? That is to say, it was only now that human beings had become aware that they themselves accomplish something when they observe the world externally; that they bring something down into the world in this way. That was an important period.

[ 19 ] One can still sense that concepts and ideas are of a supersensory nature if one begins to see in the very character of concepts and ideas a guarantee of the supersensory world. But very few people sense this. For most people, what lies in concepts and ideas is quite tenuous and flimsy. And although there is something alive within them that could provide full proof of human immortality, people could not be convinced by it, because concepts and ideas are truly a rather thin spider’s web compared to the coarse reality that people demand. It is the thinnest thread that human beings have gradually spun from the spiritual world after descending into the physical world. The thinnest, the very last thread from the supersensible world, are still concepts and ideas. And in this era, when humanity has descended to the very last web—one that is no longer credible to them at all—where they have completely spun themselves out of the spiritual world, we now witness the most powerful impact from the supersensible world: the Christ impulse. Thus, the strongest spiritual reality enters our post-Atlantean era and appears at a time when human beings themselves possess the least spiritual aptitude within themselves, for they now have only a spiritual aptitude for concepts and ideas.

[ 20 ] For anyone observing the development of humanity on a grand scale, there is a quite interesting compilation which—aside from the fact that it can, I would say, have a storm-like effect on the soul—can also be extraordinarily interesting from a scientific perspective: namely, when you contrast the infinite spirituality of that Being who descends into humanity with the Christ Principle with the fact that, shortly before this, humanity had been asking itself how its final spiritual web of concepts relates to spirituality—that is, when you set Aristotelian logic alongside it, this web of the most abstract concepts and ideas to which humanity had ultimately descended. One cannot imagine a greater gulf than that between the spirituality that descended to the physical plane in the essence of Christ and the spirituality that humanity has preserved for itself. You will therefore find it understandable that, at first, during the early centuries of Christianity, it was simply not possible to grasp the spirituality of Christ using this web of concepts as it existed in Aristotelianism. And little by little, an effort arose to understand the facts of world and human history in such a way that Aristotelian logic could be applied to world events. That was the task of medieval philosophy.

[ 21 ] What is important, however, is that the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch can be compared, in terms of the stages of human life, to the development of the human “I”; that the “I” of all humanity itself enters into the development of humanity; and that human beings, as such, have actually moved the farthest away from the spiritual world. This is also the reason why human beings were initially incapable of receiving Christ in any other way than through faith. Therefore, Christianity had to be a matter of faith at first and is only gradually beginning to become a matter of knowledge. It will become a matter of knowledge. But we have only just begun to penetrate the Gospels with knowledge. Christianity was a matter of faith for centuries and millennia; it had to be, because human beings had fallen the farthest from the spiritual worlds.

[ 22 ] Even if this was also the case during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, it is nevertheless necessary that, after this greatest descent, humankind now begin to ascend once more. The fourth period brought humanity down the farthest in a certain sense, but in return gave it the greatest spiritual impact—which, of course, it could not understand, but which will only be understood in subsequent periods. But we now recognize our task in this: to once again imbue our concepts with spirituality from within.

[ 23 ] The development of the world is not entirely simple. For once a sphere has begun to roll in a certain direction, it has the inertia to continue rolling. And if it is to continue rolling in another direction, another impulse must come along to push it in that other direction. Thus, pre-Christian culture had a tendency to maintain this downward rush into the physical world and to carry it over into our time. And the upward-striving tendency is still only in its infancy; moreover, it requires constant impetus to move upward. In human thought, for example, we can see particularly clearly how the inertia of this downward rush persists. And a large part of what is called philosophy today is nothing more than the ball continuing to roll downward. Aristotle still had a sense that a spiritual reality is indeed grasped through the spider’s web of human concepts. A few centuries after him, however, people were no longer able to know at all how what is observed in the human mind is connected to reality. And the very driest, most arid aspect of the development of the old is Kantianism and everything connected with it. For Kantianism frames the central question in such a way that it completely severs any connection between what human beings develop as concepts—between the mental image as inner life—and what the real concepts actually are. All of this is dying, outdated, and is therefore not at all suited to providing the life-giving force for the future. Now you will no longer be surprised that the conclusion of my psychosophical lectures had a theosophical background. I have pointed out to you that in everything we do—especially in regard to soul knowledge—we have the task of offering back, before the altars of the gods, the knowledge that was once bestowed upon humanity by the gods and passed down to us in such a way that we were inspired by it. We must, however, reappropriate those concepts that arise from spirituality.

[ 24 ] It is not out of immodesty, but rather in accordance with the laws of our time, that I say: It is necessary to pursue the study of the soul—including as a science—in such a way that it emerges from the state of deathly rigidity into which it has fallen. Certainly, there have been many psychologists, and there still are today, but they all work with concepts that are not animated by spirituality. It is therefore a telling sign that a man like Franz Brentano published only the first volume of his Psychology in 1874, the content of which—even if some aspects of it are flawed—is generally well-conceived. He had already announced the second volume, which was to be published that same year; but he did not finish it—he got stuck. He was still able to schematize. But if one wants to make further progress, one needs the spiritual impulse.

[ 25 ] Psychologies such as those that exist today—for example, those of Wundt and Lipps—are not really psychologies at all, because they operate solely on the basis of preconceived concepts; from the very beginning, they were not designed to amount to anything. Franz Brentano’s psychology, on the other hand, was designed in such a way that it could have amounted to something, but it was bound to get stuck. And that is the fate of every dying science. In the natural sciences, this will not happen so quickly. There, one can work with flimsy concepts because one collects the facts and lets them speak for themselves. In the science of the soul, however, this is much less achievable. One immediately loses the entire substrate if one attempts to work with the usual straw-like concepts. One does not immediately lose the heart muscle, even if one analyzes it like a mineral product without knowing its true nature. In the same way, however, one cannot analyze the soul.

[ 26 ] Thus, the sciences will, as it were, die out from the top down. And little by little, people will come to realize that, while they are indeed capable of applying the laws of nature, this is entirely independent of science. Designing machines and tools, telephones, and so on—that is something entirely different from truly understanding the sciences, let alone advancing them. One does not need to have any insight into electricity to design electrical devices. True science, however, is dying off more and more. And so we have now reached the point where external science must indeed be enlivened by Spiritual Science. Our fifth cultural epoch, in particular, is characterized on the one hand by science rolling sluggishly downward. When the sphere can go no further, it simply gets stuck—as with Brentano. Alongside this, however, humanity’s ascent must be invigorated more and more. And it will be. This can only happen by continuing those efforts that consist of enriching even externally acquired knowledge with what spiritual, occult research has to offer.

[ 27 ] Our era—as the fifth post-Atlantean era—will increasingly take on such a character that, as I have already emphasized, the ancient Egyptian-Chaldean era will appear as a kind of repetition within our own era. I would like to draw your attention to one thing here. We have not yet progressed very far in this repetition; rather, we are still very much in the early stages. Just how little progress we have made in this regard may have become apparent to you if you have reflected on what has, after all, taken place in various areas during our General Assembly. For example, you heard Mr. Seiler’s lecture on astrology and were able to form the impression that, as scholars of the Spiritual Sciences, you are in a position to associate certain mental images with astrological terms, whereas this is impossible with the concepts of modern physical astronomy without everything astrology says having to be regarded as nonsense. This is not a consequence of the science of astronomy as such. Astronomy is, after all, the field that has the greatest potential to be led back to spirituality. This is most readily possible within it. But people’s attitudes are very far removed from a return to the spiritual. Of course, there would easily be a method to return, from what astronomy offers today, to the fundamental truths of astrology—which is so disregarded today. But it will still take some time before a bridge can be built between the two. In the meantime, all sorts of theories will be devised that seek, for example, to explain planetary movements and so on in purely materialistic terms. Things are already more difficult in the field of chemistry and in matters relating to life. There, it will be even harder to build that bridge.

[ 28 ] It will likely be easiest in the field of the science of the soul. All that will be necessary is to recognize what formed the conclusion of my Psychosophy: that the stream of soul life flows not only from the past into the future, but also from the future into the past; that we have two streams of time: the etheric, which flows into the future, while that which we call the astral, on the other hand, flows back from the future into the past. On Earth today, there is perhaps no one who will come to such a realization unless they have a spiritual impulse. Only when one comes to understand that something is constantly coming toward us from the future will one rise to a true understanding of the life of the soul. There is no other way. This one concept will be essential. To achieve this, however, we will have to break away from the way of thinking that relies solely on the past whenever it speaks of cause and effect. We must not limit ourselves to the past alone; rather, we must speak of the future as something real that comes toward us just as realistically as the past we carry with us.

[ 29 ] It will, of course, be a long time before we have these concepts. But until then, there will be no psychology either. The 19th century came up with a rather nice concept: psychology without a soul. People are quite proud of this term and mean something like this by it: Let’s simply study the manifestations of the human psyche, but let’s not talk about any soul that underlies it—the study of the soul without a soul! Methodologically, that might still work. But what has come of it—to use a crude comparison—is nothing other than a meal without food; that is psychology. Now, people are certainly not very satisfied when they are served a meal with empty plates, but nineteenth-century science is wonderfully satisfied when it is served a psychology that operates without a soul. This began relatively early on. And it is only then that spiritual life will have to find its way into everything.

[ 30 ] Thus, we are witnessing the beginnings of a completely new life here. The old has, as it were, dried up, and new life must develop. We must feel this. We must feel that an ancient wisdom was given to us from the old Atlantean era, that this wisdom has gradually dried up, and that we are faced with the task, in our present incarnations, of beginning to gather, more and more, a new wisdom that will be available to humanity in later times. The Christ impulse exists to make this possible. It will continually develop a living efficacy. And perhaps the Christ impulse will be most fully realized when all tradition and everything historically associated with it on the outer level has died away, when we have arrived at the real, authentic, historical Christ himself.

[ 31 ] Thus we can see that the post-Atlantean course of history can indeed be compared to a single human life; that it, too, is a kind of macrocosm that stands in contrast to the microcosm of the human being. But the individual human being is in a very unique situation. What, after all, remains for him in the second half of life to process other than what he has acquired for himself in the first half? And when that is exhausted, death follows. Only the spirit can triumph over death—the spirit that, in a new incarnation, continues to develop what gradually begins to wither away once we have passed the midpoint of our lives. We experience an upward development until the age of thirty-five; then a downward development begins. The spirit, however, ascends all the more. And what it can no longer develop within the physical body during the second half of life, it can bring to full bloom in a subsequent incarnation. Thus, we see the body gradually wither away and the spirit gradually come into full bloom.

[ 32 ] The macrocosm of humanity presents us with a very similar picture. Up to the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, we see a youthful, upward-striving cultural development; from that point on, a veritable decline. Death is evident everywhere in terms of the development of human consciousness, yet at the same time, a new spiritual life begins to take shape. This will reincarnate as the spiritual life of humanity in the period following the current cultural epoch. There, human beings must work quite consciously on what is to be reincarnated. The other aspect must die away—truly die away. And we look prophetically into the future: Many sciences have arisen and continue to arise—a blessing, of course, for the post-Atlantean cultural epoch—but they belong to what is dying out. That immediate life which is poured into human life under the direct influence of the Christ impulse will revive in the future just as Atlantean knowledge was revived in the holy Rishis.

[ 33 ] Today, in mainstream scholarship, only the part of Copernicanism that is on the verge of dying out is known. The part that is to live on—that which is to bear fruit from Copernicanism, not only what has already been effective over the past four centuries but also what is to live on—must first be won by humanity. For Copernicus’s teaching is not as true as it is presented today. Only spiritual research will reveal this. This is already the case in astronomy with what humanity today considers to be the truest. And so it will be with everything else that is regarded as knowledge among people today. And what you find as science today is true; it can be useful—therein lies its usefulness. To the extent that today’s science becomes technology, it is justified. To the extent that it seeks to contribute to human knowledge, it is a dead product. It is useful for humanity’s immediate crafts. It is good for that, and for that it needs no spiritual content. To the extent that it seeks to make sense of the mysteries of the universe, it belongs to a dying culture. And in order to enrich our understanding of the mysteries of the universe, it would have to enliven everything that is offered today as external science with what comes from spiritual science.

[ 34 ] This was intended as a prelude to the reflections on the Gospel of Mark that we are now about to begin. But first, I needed to point out the necessity of the greatest spiritual influence at a time when humanity had, in fact, only the last, the thinnest thread of spirituality left.