The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] Yesterday I drew your attention to how the most diverse historical forces intervene in the course of human development. As a result of this, and also because one powerful current intersects with another, certain periods of rise occur in specific cultural movements, as well as periods of decline, and this unfolds in such a way that, while old cultures are still ebbing away—while, so to speak, old cultures are passing into the external world—that which is to inaugurate the later cultures, that which is actually to enliven and give birth to the later cultures, is slowly and gradually being prepared. So that, as a rule, we could schematically represent the course of human cultural life as follows: We find human culture rising from indeterminate depths to certain high points, and then we see how this cultural life ebbs away, and indeed more slowly than it rose. That which a particular cultural epoch has brought forth lives on for a long time, finding its way into the most diverse subsequent currents and folk cultures, and fades away, just as a stream would fade away that does not pour into the sea but trickles out across the plain. But while this is still trickling away, new cultures are preparing themselves—cultures that were, so to speak, not yet noticeable during the decline of the old ones—to then begin their own development and ascent and to contribute to the progress of humanity in the same or a similar way. If we wish to conceive of cultural progress that is characteristic in the most eminent sense, we can indeed surmise that it must be one in which the universal human, the weaving of the I within the I, has emerged most strikingly. This was the case with ancient Greece, as we have shown. Now, when we consider this, it is precisely here that we can truly see how a culture unfolds in a characteristic sense; for what took place in the three preceding cultures, and what follows, is modified in a wholly different way by that which lies outside the human being. Therefore, what lies within the human being itself—through which, so to speak, the human being acts in the world—is given to us in the middle, the fourth cultural epoch, in all that can express itself most humanly within the human being through supersensible powers.

[ 2 ] Now, however, we must also say the following regarding Greek civilization. It was preceded by the third period; that period was ebbing away, and as it ebbed, Greek civilization was taking shape. Thus, during the ebb of Babylonian culture—which had poured from the East to the West—the seed of what was to sink into humanity as the stream of a new life was, so to speak, already present on this small southern European peninsula that we call Greece. Now, we must certainly say that this Greek life expressed pure humanity—that which the human being can find entirely within himself—in the most eminent sense; but one must not believe that such things do not need to be prepared. Even what we call pure humanity—even that, so to speak, had first to be taught to human beings by supersensible powers through the mysteries, just as now that even higher freedom, which must be prepared for the sixth cultural epoch, is carried and taught in the supersensible worlds by the corresponding guides of human development.

[ 3 ] We must therefore say: Where Greek civilization, viewed from the outside, appears as though everything in it springs solely from the purely human, Greek civilization has already gone through a period in which it was, so to speak, under the influence of the teachings of higher spiritual beings. It was these higher spiritual beings who first made it possible for Greek civilization to rise to its purely human heights. And that is why what we today call Greek culture, when we trace it back, loses itself in the abyss of prehistoric times, in which, as the foundation of Greek culture, what was practiced in the temple sites of the Mysteries was then brought into poetic form in a magnificent way, like a legacy of ancient temple wisdom, by Homer and Aeschylus. And so we must regard that which confronts us so magnificently in these unsurpassed figures in such a way that, while these people did indeed process something in their souls—something that was entirely the content of their souls, entirely the weaving of the I within the I—this had first been carried into their souls by higher beings in the sacred temple sites. That is why what lives in the works of Homer and in the works of Aeschylus appears so unfathomably deep, so unfathomably great. One must not, however, take these works of Aeschylus merely from Wilamowitz’s translation, but must be clear that the full grandeur of what lived in Aeschylus has not yet been exhausted in a modern language, and that the path to understanding Aeschylus taken by one of these most recent translators is the worst possible one.

[ 4 ] If we therefore view this Greek culture against the backdrop of the deep mysteries of the sanctuaries, we can gain a sense of the essence of this Greek culture. And because the mysteries of life in the supersensible world were conveyed to the Greek artists in a certain human way, Greek sculpture was also able to cast in marble or bronze what was originally a temple mystery. Indeed, even what we encounter in Greek philosophy shows us quite clearly that the best this Greek philosophy had to offer was, in fact, nothing more than ancient mystery teachings translated into intelligence and intellectual comprehension. Symbolically, this is expressed to us by the statement: The great Heraclitus presented his work on nature in the temple of Diana at Ephesus. This means nothing other than: He presented what he could say from the inner weaving of the “I within the I” in such a way that he had to offer it as a sacrifice to the spiritual powers of the preceding age, with which he knew himself to be connected. And from such a perspective we also understand the profound statement of Plato, who was able to give the Greeks such a deep philosophy and yet felt compelled to say that all the philosophy of his time was nothing compared to the ancient wisdom that had been received by the forefathers from the realms of the spiritual worlds themselves. And with Aristotle, everything already appears to us as if cast into logical forms; in this case, one can only speak of abstracted ancient wisdom, living worlds rendered into concepts. Nevertheless, because Aristotle stands, so to speak, at the very gateway of the old current, there still breathes in Aristotle something of what was ancient wisdom. In his concepts, in his ideas, although they are abstract, one can still hear an echo of the perfect tones that resounded from the temples and that were the true source of inspiration not only for Greek wisdom but also for Greek art and the entire character of the Greek people. For it is the distinctive feature of every such culture at its dawn that it seizes not only knowledge, not only art, but the whole human being; so that the whole human being is an imprint of what lives within him as wisdom, as the spiritual. And when we imagine that, from unknown depths, even as Babylonian culture was ebbing away, Greek culture was rising up, then we can recognize the full effect of all that the ancient temples brought to the Greek character in the age of the Persian Wars. For in these Persian Wars we see how the heroes of Hellenism, in fiery enthusiasm for what they had received from their forefathers, throw themselves against the current that, so to speak, rolls toward them as the decaying current of the Orient. And what that resistance of that time signifies—where the wisdom of the Greek temples, where the teachers of the ancient Greek mysteries fought in the souls of the heroes of the Persian Wars against the ebbing culture of the East, against the Babylonian culture as the later Persians had adopted it—what that signifies, the human soul can grasp once the question is raised by that human soul: What would have become of southern Europe, and thus of all of later Europe, if the onslaught of the great physical masses from the Orient had not been repelled by the small Greek people at that time? With what the Greeks did back then, the seed was sown for everything that later developed within European cultures right up to our own times.

[ 5 ] And even what emerged for the East from what Alexander subsequently brought back—albeit in a manner that, in a certain respect, cannot be justified—from the West to the East, even that could only have come into being after that which was doomed to decay had first been repelled, even in terms of its physical power, by what lived in the souls of the Greeks as a blazing enthusiasm for the temple treasures. When we grasp this, we will see not only the aftereffects of Heraclitus’s wisdom of fire, the great ideas of Anaxagoras, we will see not only the aftereffects of Thales’s comprehensive ideas, but also the real teachings of the guardians of ‘temple wisdom’ in prehistoric Greece. We will perceive this as the result of spiritual forces that brought to Greek civilization what had to be brought to it. We will feel all of this in the souls of the Greek heroes who stood against the Persians in the various battles. This is how one must learn to feel history, my dear friends, for what is otherwise presented to us as history is, after all, merely an empty abstraction of ideas—at best. What from the earlier period continues to influence the later can only be observed by going back to what has perhaps been given to human souls over millennia, and what then takes on real forms at a certain time. Why was it that, during this ascent, the ancient temple treasures could give the Greeks something so great? It lay in the universal, all-encompassing, and in the character of these temple treasures, which was unconcerned with anything else. It was something that existed as a primal force, capable of filling the whole human being, possessing, so to speak, an immediate, guiding power.

[ 6 ] And this brings us to the defining characteristic of those cultures that are initially on the rise until they reach their zenith. In these cultures, everything that is alive and active within the human being—beauty, virtue, the useful, the purposeful, everything that a person wishes to do and realize in life—all of this is seen as arising directly from wisdom, from the spiritual. And wisdom is that which contains virtue, beauty, and everything else. When a person is permeated and inspired by the wisdom of the temples, then everything else follows naturally; such is the feeling for such times of ascent. But the moment when questions and feelings fall apart, when, for example, the question of the good or the beautiful becomes independent of the question of the divine source, that is when the times of decline begin. Therefore, we can be certain that we are always living in a time of decline when it is emphasized that, alongside the originally spiritual, this or that should be particularly cultivated, that this or that should be the main thing. If one does not have confidence in the spiritual that it can bring forth from within itself everything necessary for human life, then the unified cultural currents, which form a unity as they rise, disintegrate into individual currents. And we see this where interests lying outside of wisdom, outside of the spiritual impulse, interfere with Greek life; we see this in political life, and we also see it in that part of Greek life that particularly interests us, in the spiritual realm immediately following Aristotle. There, alongside the question: “What is the true?”—which contains the question: “What is the good and the expedient?”— — there the latter question begins to take on a life of its own. One asks: What must our knowledge be like so that one can become a person who achieves a practical goal in life? And so we see a current blossoming in the age of decline that we call Stoicism. In Plato and Aristotle, the Good was contained within the Wise; all momentum for the Good could only come from the Wise. The Stoics ask: What must a person do to become wiser for life, for the practice of living, to become a person living a purposeful and good life? Practical life goals intermingle with what was once the universal impulse of truth.

[ 7 ] In Epicureanism, something comes into play that we might describe as follows: People ask, “How must I organize my intellect so that this life may be as blissful and as internally harmonious as possible?” To this question, Thales, Plato, and even Aristotle would have answered: Seek the truth, and it will give you what is the greatest bliss, what is the seed of love. But now this question is separated from the question of truth, and a current of decline arises. Thus, what is called Stoicism and Epicureanism is a current of decline. Such a thing always has the consequence that truth becomes questionable for people, that it loses all its power. Therefore, alongside Stoicism and Epicureanism in this age of decline, skepticism—a craving for doubt regarding truth—arises. And when skepticism, the addiction to doubt, when Stoicism, when Epicureanism have run their course for a time, then the human being who nevertheless strives for the true feels, so to speak, as if cast out of the world soul and rejected back upon his own soul. Then he looks around and says to himself: There is no world epoch now in which the impulses flow into humanity through the continuing stream of the spiritual powers themselves. Then the human being is turned back upon his own inner life, upon his own subject. This confronts us in the further course of Greek life in Neoplatonism, in that philosophy which no longer has any connection with external life, which looks inward and seeks to strive upward toward the True in the mystical ascent of the individual. Thus we have an ascending culture, and thus we have one that descends step by step. And what has developed in the ascent then slowly and gradually trickles away, until, as the year 1250 approaches, an inspiration for humanity begins—one that is certainly not easily noticeable, but no less great for that—which I characterized in a certain way yesterday and whose trickling away we have been experiencing again since the 16th century. For since that time, essentially all the special questions have once again arisen alongside the questions of truth; once again, a standpoint is taken that seeks to separate the question of the good, the question of what is outwardly expedient, from the one great question of truth. And while those spiritual leaders who were under the impulses of the year 1250 viewed all human currents within the context of ‘truth,’ we now see the principled separation of the practical questions of life from the actual questions of truth emerging in a most eminent sense. And at the gateway to the new age of decline, that time which so truly signifies a downward plunge for spiritual life—at the gateway stands Kant. In his preface to the second edition of the *Critique of Pure Reason*, he states explicitly: I had to push the pursuit of truth back to its limits so that I might clear the field for what practical religion demands. And hence that strict separation of practical reason from theoretical reason. In practical reason, the postulates of God, freedom, and immortality, purely ordered toward the good; in theoretical reason, the shattering of every possibility of knowledge in order to enter into some spiritual world. Thus do things stand in world history. And certainly, the quest for wisdom in our time will long follow in Kant’s footsteps. And when our truly spiritual movement points to that expansion of the faculty of knowledge, to that elevation of the faculty of knowledge beyond itself, through which it can penetrate into supersensible worlds, then for a long, long time we will still hear it resound from all sides: “Yes, but Kant says...!” It is indeed in such antitheses that the historical development of humanity unfolds. And in what instinctively emerges as a premonition, it then becomes evident that beneath what is mere Maya and what is accepted as truth, that beneath the current of Maya, the true essence flows to a great extent for human instincts. For it is extraordinarily interesting that we see the downward course of human development up to the Greco-Roman era and the ascent demanded of us in certain intuitions that have been given for practical life out of the instincts of the people.

[ 8 ] What must people who had a sense for such things have thought? When they looked back on the great leading figures of human history in pre-Christian times, or, let us say, in pre-Greek times, how must they have looked back on all those whom we could characterize as the instruments of the beings of higher hierarchies? They must have said to themselves—even the Greeks: This has come to us through people into whom superhuman divine powers have flowed. - And we see this living in the consciousness of all ancient times: the leading figures, down to the heroic figures, indeed down to Plato, were regarded as sons of the gods; that is to say, behind these figures who appear in history, when people looked back to antiquity, when they raised their gaze farther and farther, they saw the divine; and what appeared there as Plato and in the heroic figures, they regarded as having descended, indeed as having been born of divine beings. That was truly the view that the sons of the gods unite with the daughters of men to bring the spiritual down onto the physical plane. Sons of the gods, god-men—that is, those who had a connection of their being with the divine—were seen in those ancient times. In contrast, at the moment when the Greeks felt: “Now we can speak of the weaving of the ‘I within the I,’ of that which lies within the human personality”—at that point they spoke of their highest leaders as the Seven Sages, thereby designating that which, so to speak, had become purely human out of the Sons of the Gods.

[ 9 ] How, then, did things proceed in the instincts of peoples in the post-Greek era? Here we must describe what human beings develop on the physical plane, and how they carry this, in its full fruition, up into the spiritual world. If, in the very early days, it was felt that one must see the spiritual before the physical human being—and view the physical human being as a shadow image—and if, during the Greek era, sages were seen who lived, so to speak, as the “I within the I,” then in the post-Greek era one had to see personalities who live on the physical plane and then ascend into the spiritual through what lives in the physical. This concept has been formed out of the instinct of knowledge. Just as the pre-Greek era had sons of the gods and the Greeks had sages, so the post-Greek peoples have saints who live their way up into spiritual life through what they achieve on the physical plane. There is something alive in the folk instinct, and there we can see how, behind the Maya, there is something that historically propels humanity forward.

[ 10 ] And when we recognize this, then what is alive in these times shines into the individual human soul, and we understand how group karma must be modified by the fact that human beings are at the same time instruments of the historical process. And we can thus grasp what the Akashic Records reveal: how, in Novalis for example, we see something that goes back to the ancient Elijah. It is an extraordinarily interesting sequence of incarnations. There we see how the prophetic element emerges in Elijah, for the Hebrews had the mission to prepare for what was to come later. And they prepared it in the transition from their patriarchs to the prophets, passing through the figure of Moses. While in Abraham we still see how the Hebrew feels the after-effect of God within himself, in his blood, in Elijah we see the transition to the rapture into the spiritual worlds. Everything is gradually preparing itself. In Elijah lives an individuality that, even in ancient times, is already filled with what is to come in the future. And then we see how this individuality is to serve as an instrument to prepare the understanding for the Christ impulse. We see how the individuality of Elijah is reborn in John the Baptist; he is the instrument for a Higher purpose. An individuality lives within him that makes John the Baptist an instrument; but the high individuality of Elijah was necessary in order to then serve as such an instrument.

[ 11 ] We shall see later how this individuality is capable of giving form to that which is to have an impact on the future, in ways that were only possible under the influence of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. Thus, as strange as it may seem to us, this individuality reappears in Raphael and unites what is to act as a Christian impulse for all time with the wondrous forms of Greek culture in painting. And there we can see how the individual karma of this entelechy relates to the outer incarnation. For the outer incarnation, it is required that a power of the times be able to express itself in Raphael; for this power of the times, the Elijah-John individuality is the appropriate one. But the times can provide only a physical body that must be fragile under such a power; hence he dies so young.

[ 12 ] The other side of her being must shape this individuality at a time when the various currents are already beginning to drift apart again; it is then that she reappears as Novalis. There we see how, in this Novalis, everything that is now given to us through spiritual science truly already lives in a unique form. For no one outside of spiritual science has ever made such apt statements about the relationship between the astral, etheric, and physical bodies, or between waking and sleeping, as Novalis, the resurrected Raphael. These are the things that show us how individualities are the instruments of the flowing stream of human development. And when we observe human development, when we look at this enigmatic interplay in historical events, then we can sense what lives within it through profound spiritual forces. In a remarkable way, the earlier passes into the later.

[ 13 ] As I have already mentioned to some of you, one can observe a remarkable historical perspective in the transition from Michelangelo to Galileo. And a man who is otherwise very intelligent—mind you, I am not saying that this is a case of reincarnation, but rather a historical progression—a very intelligent person drew attention to how strange it is when, upon seeing the marvelous architecture of St. Peter’s Basilica, we observe how the human spirit has woven into it what it calls mechanical science. Oh, in these magnificent forms of St. Peter’s Basilica we see embodied the mechanical ideas that the human intellect could grasp, and moreover transformed into beauty, into grandeur: Michelangelo’s idea! The effect that the sight of St. Peter’s Basilica can have, my dear friends, manifests itself in the most diverse ways, and perhaps each of you has experienced a little of what the Viennese sculptor Natter experienced—or what was experienced with him. He was driving toward St. Peter’s Basilica with a friend; they had not yet caught sight of it, when suddenly the other heard Natter leap from his seat, completely beside himself, exclaiming: “I am afraid!” For at that very moment he had caught sight of St. Peter’s Basilica—he later claimed not to remember it at all. After all, anyone can experience something similar when they see something so magnificent. And now a very clever man, Professor Müällner, pointed out in a rectorial address that the great thinker of mechanical ideas, Galileo, intellectually taught humanity what Michelangelo built into the spatial forms of St. Peter’s Basilica. So that in Galileo’s thoughts we encounter intellectually what stands there, crystallized as mechanics, as human mechanics, in St. Peter’s Basilica. But what is strange is that the same man had to point out in this lecture that the anniversary of Michelangelo’s death is the anniversary of Galileo’s birth. This means that the intellectual, the thoughts that were mechanically imprinted as intellectuality by Galileo, emerged in a personality born on the anniversary of the death of the one who had placed them in space. And so one should ask: Who, through Michelangelo, built into St. Peter’s Basilica the mechanics that humanity only later received through Galileo?

[ 14 ] If, through the quite aphoristic and scattered thoughts that have been presented here in reference to the historical development of humanity, if from these thoughts, taken together, a feeling arises in your hearts of how the true, the real spiritual powers work through their instruments in history, then you will have received these remarks in the right way. And then one could describe this feeling as that which, from the occult-historical perspective, can enter our hearts as a true sense of becoming in time, of progress in time. And today, at a small turning point in time, it may be fitting to direct our meditation toward such a sense of human progress and divine progress in time. And if every heart among you, my dear friends, wishes to take this in—this feeling for the realization of the science of occult progress in time—as a sense of the weaving and creating in becoming, in human progress, into which we are placed; if every soul among you wishes to take this in as a living feeling, then perhaps a New Year’s wish might also live in the soul of each of you within this feeling. And at the conclusion of this cycle, I would like to let this New Year’s wish sink into your souls from this place: Consider what has been spoken as something that is to form the starting point for a sense of time. And in a certain sense, it may be symbolic that we were able to use a small transition from one period of time to another to allow such ideas, which span these transitions of time, to take effect in our souls for a moment.