The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] Recalling what we attempted to consider yesterday, let us reflect on what the so-called Saturn phase of human development must actually entail.

[ 2 ] If we consider what we discussed yesterday, we know that within us—or rather, within our human being—there exists, in a hidden way, that which was first implanted in us during the Saturnic era: the first rudiment of physical corporeality. What the ancient Saturn evolution did to us can no longer be found anywhere within our outer world today. This ancient Saturn evolution arose once in the distant past, has since passed away, and possessed characteristics and forces that we today, when we look around us, initially seek in vain. For even when we look up at the stars out into outer space, we do not initially find today what was dominant within the ancient Saturn evolution.

[ 3 ] It is true that, after this ancient Saturnic phase had come to an end, the Solar phase and then the Lunar phase followed. Today we are living within the Earth phase. Three phases of development have passed. The characteristics of those periods have passed away; they are no longer, I might say, within our field of vision. Only among the hidden, occult forces that permeate the world can we find what was characteristic of the ancient Saturn evolution. We can still, in a sense, discover the forces that once worked upon our physical bodies.

[ 4 ] If you recall what is described in my Outline of Esoteric Science, you will know that at that time there was an interaction between the spirits of the will and the spirits of the personality. This interaction still exists today, but, as I said, we cannot perceive it in the outer realm. We find it when we look into what we call our personal destiny. Our personal destiny is woven in such a way that, in successive incarnations, what befalls us is connected as cause and effect. And what is at work in the current of our personal destiny are not forces that the external natural scientist can investigate. For among the forces he discovers in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, and so on, he will find nothing that brings about that connection of cause and effect which is expressed in our personal karma. The laws that govern this elude physical observation. But they also elude historical observation—the kind of observation practiced today by so-called cultural scientists of a materialistic bent. The way we examine what takes place in historical development, the way history is written today—from Persian, Egyptian, Greek, and Roman times up to the present—contains laws that have nothing to do with the forces at work in our karma. Therefore, the historian—today’s cultural scientist of a materialistic bent—does not arrive at the laws that depend on people’s personal karma.

[ 5 ] History is viewed as a continuous stream, and, for example, it is completely disregarded to what extent historical development depends on the fact that, let us say, human souls who were personalities in ancient Roman times are present again today, that they participate in the events around us, and participate in such a way that the manner of their participation today flows from their personal karma. This is disregarded by the historian of a materialistic bent.

[ 6 ] So when we seek out what remains of the forces that, I would say, were the natural forces of the ancient Saturn evolution, we must turn to the laws of our personal karma. Only when we learn not merely to observe the cosmos within our field of vision, but to read what is within it, do we gain an insight into how the ancient Saturn laws are still active in a certain way in what surrounds us.

[ 7 ] When we consider the arrangement and influence of the twelve signs of the zodiac as a kind of cosmic script, when we consider the forces that flow into the lives of Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and so on, we are thinking in terms of those forces that were once the forces of Saturn. And when we try to relate personal karma to the constellations associated with these zodiac signs, we are operating roughly within the sphere of a worldview that would have to be applied to the laws of the ancient Saturn epoch.

[ 8 ] So, in a sense, nothing remains that can be seen, but rather something invisible that can still be interpreted from the signs of the cosmos. Anyone who believes that Aries, Taurus, or Gemini determine their fate would be living under the same delusion as someone who is convicted under a certain section of the law and then develops a particular hatred for that section, believing it to be the cause of their imprisonment. Just as a single legal provision—what is printed on a white sheet of paper—cannot condemn a person, so too can Aries, Taurus, or Gemini not bring about destiny. But one can read from the star script what is connected to human destiny from the cosmos. We can therefore say: What follows from the star script is a remnant of the ancient Saturn evolution; it is the ancient Saturn evolution, having become purely spiritual, leaving only its signs behind in the star script of the cosmos. .

[ 9 ] As we move from the ancient Saturn evolution to the lunar evolution, we must realize that, at first, we do not have anything from the lunar evolution—I say: at first, nothing so immediate—within our field of vision that surrounds us. The forces of external nature, for the time being, contain no forces that are comparable to the forces of the ancient lunar evolution. The forces of the ancient lunar evolution have, so to speak, withdrawn into the hidden realm, but they have not yet become spiritual to the same degree as the ancient laws of Saturn. The ancient Saturn laws have become so spiritual that we can only explore them in the laws of our personal destiny—that is to say, entirely outside of space and time. When we consider human life as a whole, we still find these ancient Saturn laws today; we still find what we cannot see when we encounter human beings in the physical world.

[ 10 ] We have said: When we encounter a human being in the physical world, we find the physical body as a remnant of the old Saturn evolution, the etheric body as a remnant of the old Sun evolution, the astral body as a remnant of the old Moon evolution, and the I. And in fact, it is only the embodiment of this ego that we do not see as a remnant when we look at a human being externally, when we observe their form. Thus, the laws that are active and effective as the ego takes shape in the human being, as it incarnates, are the laws of the Earth. And even the laws of the astral body, the laws of the lunar evolution, have withdrawn; they are no longer outwardly effective. But they are such that when we stand before a human being, we will say: You, human being, are—as you stand before me as a material human being—an embodiment of the I. But deep in the background of your being lies your invisible, personal destiny. Just as this invisible, personal destiny is determined, so do the ancient Saturn laws reign within it. Here we are already appealing to something entirely spiritual when we look from the embodiment of the I—that is, from the laws of the Earth—toward the ancient Saturn laws. It is not something so spiritual when we look from what stands before us in the human being to what still reigns within him from the old lunar laws. But that, too, has withdrawn from outer world activity; that, too, is not so immediately, so to speak, under the active forces of earthly existence.

[ 11 ] Where must we look for what remains of the old lunar influence? We must seek it protected and embedded, veiled by earthly existence. For it is active in the time before the human being enters earthly existence through physical birth; it is active before the outer, physical ray of light can penetrate the eye; it is active before the first breath has been taken. It is active from conception to birth, active in embryonic life, but not active—and I ask you to note this explicitly—in what develops into the outer physical human being from the egg cell, that is, in what grows from the egg cell, becoming larger and larger through continuous cell division—the laws of the Earth are at work there—but effective in what exists only within the mother and dies off during embryonic development, to be lost at birth and pass into death. In that which envelops the mother and provides nourishment for the earthly human being as long as he has not yet been born, that which envelops the developing human being and then falls away from him: in that, the ancient laws of the Moon prevail. And connected to this is that which transcends the individual human life, that which creates a connection between the individual human being and his ancestors, that which is encompassed by the concept of heredity.

[ 12 ] In this way, however, we can still perceive what was present during the ancient lunar evolution, though not in the outer world. In the outer world, it acts only, as it were, as something that is dying out in the process of human becoming. It is overcome as soon as the human being takes their first, active breath of life on Earth.

[ 13 ] If one wishes to study the laws of the old lunar existence—purely physiologically, not clairvoyantly—there would be no other way today—at least for a part of these laws of the old lunar activity—than to study the laws that are active in the membranes surrounding the human embryo before it takes its first breath, which envelop and nourish it. What is enclosed within the mother’s body, what can thrive during Earth’s development only under the protective covering of the womb—that was the very essence of nature during the old lunar development; it filled the entire field of vision during the old lunar development.

[ 14 ] Thus, not only do beings perish insofar as they have a physical form, but entire types of natural laws also perish, surviving only in their remnants in subsequent eras.

[ 15 ] Now you will have to ask the question: What about that which originates from the sun? — Let us consider yesterday’s diagram. We have seen that, due to all the complications that arise here, we are dealing with the complete human being and his physical body, etheric body, astral body, and I; etheric body, astral body, and I; astral body and I; and with the I itself. Basically, everything that is up here (above the boundary) is the hidden part of human nature. If we want to study the laws at work in the physical body, we must look at what in the human being are the laws that determine destiny—super-sensory, destiny-determining laws. When we look at what reigns in the astral body and finds its embodiment in the physical body, then we do not have something so spiritual, not something so supersensible, but we have something dissolving from the sensible into the supersensible. For what falls away from the human embryo becomes, I might say, more and more atomistic the more the human being matures toward birth; it is moving toward its dissolution in a material sense. And to the same extent that it moves toward its dissolution in a material sense, it becomes more and more spiritual, for what attaches itself to the human being as the astral body and the etheric body arises through the spiritualization of these shedding parts of the sheaths, the embryonic sheaths.

[ 16 ] Now the question might arise: But what about the solar aspect? Can we find the solar aspect anywhere in the world? This solar aspect, too, eludes sensory observation. While what we call karma—personal destiny, I might say, the Saturn part of the human being—lies in highly spiritual regions, as we have seen, we do not need to ascend so high to reach the Moon part, for we still find it veiled in the sensory realm. With the solar aspect, we also do not need to ascend as high as with the Saturn aspect. This solar aspect of the human being is, as it were, still graspable, but it is not easily recognized. It is graspable, but it is not easily recognized.

[ 17 ] I would like to give an example of something where you can still recognize the active part of the Sun, even if attention can only be drawn to it in a veiled way. Those of my dear friends who have familiarized themselves with my book in its new edition, The Riddles of Philosophy, Presented in Outline, will have found that four epochs of philosophical development have been distinguished. A first epoch, which lasts roughly—I have titled it “The Worldviews of the Greek Thinkers”—from the year 800, that is, roughly speaking, or 600 B.C. until the birth of Christ, that is, until the time of the emergence of Christianity; a second epoch, which lasts from the emergence of Christianity until about 800 to 900 years after Christ, that is, up to the time of John Scotus Eriugena; then a period which I have called “Worldviews in the Middle Ages”; a third epoch, which lasts roughly from the year 800 or 900 to the 16th century AD; and a fourth epoch from the 16th century to the present. We are currently in the midst of this epoch. Epochs spanning seven to eight hundred years in the history of philosophy have been outlined, as I have been able to present them in this book for a world still entirely untouched by Spiritual Science.

[ 18 ] There should be something that can inspire us to let the spiritual structure of these epochs sink in, at least once. The distinctive feature of the first epoch is that it marks the transition from a very peculiar ancient way of thinking to what might be called the life of thought in ancient Greece. Our time has not yet come very far in understanding such differences as that between the intellectual life of our time and the intellectual life of ancient Greece. Our crude way of thinking assumes that thought lived in an ancient Greek mind just as thought lives in a modern mind. In Socrates, in Plato, and also in Aristotle, thought lived in a completely different way than in a modern person, and this life of thought essentially first awakened in the 7th or 6th century B.C. Before that, there was not really an intellectual life to speak of. As it is presented in my book, one can speak of a beginning, of a birth of intellectual life in this era of ancient Greece.

[ 19 ] The most curious mental images have been formed about the early Greek philosophers—those great figures such as Thales, Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, and so on—by pointing out, for example, that Thales believed the world arose from water, Anaximenes from air, and Heraclitus from fire. I have pointed out that these ancient philosophers derived their philosophies from human temperaments, that these teachings were not based on speculation, but that Thales posited water as the primordial source of all things because he had a watery temperament, that Heraclitus developed the philosophy of fire because he had a fiery temperament, and so on. You will find this demonstrated in detail in my book.

[ 20 ] Then comes the actual life of thought. And even in the epoch described here, this life of thought is different from today’s life of thought—fundamentally different from today’s life of thought. The Greek thinker does not draw the thought up from the depths of his soul, but rather the thought reveals itself to him just as external sound or color reveals itself to people today. The Greek perceives the thought; he perceives it from the outside, and when we speak of Greek philosophy, we must not speak of thinking as it is practiced today, but rather of the perception of thought. So in the first epoch we are dealing with the perception of thought. Plato and Aristotle do not think as a modern philosopher thinks, but they think as one observes today, as one perceives today. They look, as it were, into the world and perceive the thoughts they convey to us in their philosophies just as one perceives a symphony. They are perceivers of thought. The world reveals to them a work of thought: that is the essence of the Greek thinkers. And with regard to this perception of the world’s work of thought, the Greek thinkers bring it to a high, indeed the highest, perfection.

[ 21 ] If philosophers today believe they have already understood what Plato and Aristotle perceived as a grand symphony of thought, this stems solely from a childish attitude on the part of contemporary philosophers. To fully comprehend what Aristotle describes as entelechy—what he presents as the soul’s faculties of human nature—the aesthetic, the appetitive, the kinetic, and so on—modern philosophers still have a long way to go. That kind of inner mental work, where one draws thoughts from within oneself, where one must make subjective efforts to think—that did not yet exist in Greece. It is completely nonsensical to believe that Plato thought; he perceived thoughts. To say that Aristotle already thought in the modern sense is nonsense; he perceived thoughts.

[ 22 ] Modern people can hardly imagine how this actually is, because they have no mental image of the true course of development. They get a slight chill when told that Plato and Aristotle did not think in the modern sense; and yet it is so. For thinking in the modern sense to take root at all in the modern human soul, an impulse had to arise that grasped the innermost core of that human soul—an impulse that has nothing to do with the symphony of thoughts in the human environment, but rather reaches into the innermost being of the human being. This impulse came from the Mystery of Golgotha. That is why this philosophical epoch extends all the way back to Christ.

[ 23 ] In the second epoch, we are indeed already dealing with a form of thinking, but one that is not yet truly human thinking in its own right; rather, it is stimulated by an impulse that comes from the spiritual world. If you examine the systems of thought of all the philosophers of this second epoch, you will find everywhere how the Christian impulse prevails within them, right up to Scotus Eriugena. It is, one might say, something that has flowed forth from Christ himself, which brings about in human beings the first impulse to generate thoughts from within. This gives patristic philosophy—the philosophy of the Church Fathers, the philosophy of Augustine, and the philosophy up to Scotus Eriugena—its character, its physiognomy. So that we can say: Now we are no longer dealing with the perception of thoughts, but with thought inspiration stimulated by the spirit.

[ 24 ] Things take a different turn in the third epoch, when this inner impulse, which emanates from Christianity, begins to be grasped by human beings themselves. Now, in this third epoch, human beings become aware that it is indeed they who think. Plato and Aristotle did not yet think. They could therefore have no more doubt that thought possesses full, objective validity than a person can doubt that, when they see green on a tree, that green truly possesses full, objective validity.

[ 25 ] In the second epoch, it was the intense faith in the Christ impulse that gave the awakening mind a sense of security. But now began the epoch in which the human soul started to say: Yes, it is actually you yourself who thinks; thoughts arise from within you. — The Christ impulse gradually faded; the human being became aware that thoughts arise from within him, and he came to ask: Are you perhaps forming thoughts that have nothing at all to do with what is out there? Could it not be that the objective external world has nothing to do with your thoughts?

[ 26 ] Just imagine the huge difference compared to the thinking of Plato and Aristotle! Plato and Aristotle perceived thoughts; they could not doubt that thoughts existed outside themselves. Now, in the third epoch, people became aware: We generate thoughts ourselves, and they began to ask: Well, what do thoughts have to do with objective existence out there? — And now the need arose to give certainty to thinking, as they said, to prove thinking. It was only in this epoch, for example, that Anselm of Canterbury could conceive of creating a proof for the validity of the idea of God. That would have been utter nonsense in earlier Greek thought, for the simple reason that there one saw the thoughts. How could one doubt that God exists when one sees, out there, the thoughts of the deity, just as one sees the greenness of the tree out there? Doubt began only in the third epoch, when it became clear that it is oneself who thinks. The need arose to prove, to reflect on the connection between what one thinks and what is out there. And that is essentially the era of Scholasticism: the realization of the subjectivity of thought.

[ 27 ] If you take the entire intellectual framework of Thomas Aquinas, it is situated within this epoch and is entirely dominated by it. This awareness is present everywhere: concepts are generated internally, and concepts are assembled in accordance with the laws of subjectivity. So one must find a basis for the fact that what is generated internally is also present externally. At first, one still appeals to traditional dogmatics, but one is no longer connected to the Christ impulse in the same way as was the case in the second epoch of the development of philosophy.

[ 28 ] Then comes the fourth period of development: the free play of thought within, a further emancipation of thought from external perception of thought—that free creation of thought within which emerges so magnificently in the thought structures of Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Descartes, and their successors, Leibniz, and so on. When we follow these intellectual edifices, we notice that they are created entirely from within. And everywhere we find these thinkers’ intense need to provide reasons why what they create internally also has real external validity. Spinoza creates a marvelous edifice of ideas. But the question arises: Is all of this merely created within the human mind, or does it have meaning out there in the world? Giordano Bruno and Leibniz create the monad. The monad is supposed to be something real. How does what people conceive of as a monad come to be something real out there in the world? All the questions that have arisen since the 16th and 17th centuries are still shaped by this quest to reconcile free thought with the existence of the world out there. Human beings feel isolated, abandoned by the world in their free thinking. We are still right in the midst of this today.

[ 29 ] But what exactly is this all about? (See diagram.) If we go back to the perception of thought as it was among the ancient Greek philosophers, then we must say: Philosophical thinking in ancient Greece works in such a way that—even though ancient Greece was generally the era of the intellectual or emotional soul—this ancient thinking is still a form of perceptual thinking, still deeply influenced by the feeling soul, and even by the feeling body, the astral body. It still clings to the external world.

[ 30 ] The thinking of Thales, the first philosopher, was still influenced by the etheric body. Temperament resides in the etheric body, and it is from this temperament that they create their philosophies of water, air, and fire; so that one can say: the philosophy of the sensory body is preceded by a philosophy of the etheric body. — Then we enter the Christian era. The Christian impulse penetrates the soul of feeling. Philosophy is experienced inwardly, felt inwardly, but in connection with what one can believe and feel; the influences of the soul of feeling are present there.

[ 31 ] In the third epoch, the epoch of Scholasticism, the essential element of philosophical development is the intellectual or emotional soul. As you can see, philosophical development follows a different course than the general development of humanity. And only now, since the 16th century, has philosophy indeed come to coincide with what is otherwise the general development of humanity: here we have free thought reigning in the conscious soul. The most magnificent example of how free thought reigns from the abstraction of being up to the highest spirituality, how a thought-organism, proceeding entirely from the world, reigns only within itself—that is Hegel’s philosophy: thought living only in consciousness.

[ 32 ] If you follow this, however, this is the part that I was unable to present in my book to the outside world; but it is contained within it. And if you read the descriptions given of the individual epochs, then, if you are proper anthroposophists, you will be very clearly pointed to what I have written here on the left (see diagram). Everything develops in much the same way as the human being develops: from the etheric body to the sensory body, to the sensory soul, to the intellectual soul, to the conscious soul. We follow a path similar to the path of human evolution, but arranged differently. It is not the path of human evolution; it is something else. Beings develop, and they utilize the human faculties in the soul of feeling, in the soul of understanding, and so on. Through the human being and their work, other beings pass through, governed by laws different from those of human becoming.

[ 33 ] You see, these are the effects of the solar laws. We do not need to ascend into such supernatural realms as when we examine personal destiny. We see an example of what remains of the solar laws here in the philosophical development of humanity.

[ 34 ] Yesterday, in accordance with the etheric body, we had to write to Angelo here.

[ 35 ] Such angels evolve. And while human beings believe they are philosophizing on their own, the laws of solar existence are at work within them because they carry the solar evolution within themselves—that is, what was predisposed as solar evolution in their physical body and also acts in their etheric body. And the laws of solar existence, working from epoch to epoch, operate in such a way that philosophy becomes exactly what it is. Because they are solar laws, Christ, the solar being, can also intervene within them in the second epoch. This is prepared by the first epoch, and then Christ, the solar being, intervenes in the second epoch.

[ 36 ] You can see how everything comes together. But when Christ, the solar being, intervenes, he becomes connected with a process of development that is not human development, not human development on Earth, but rather solar development within Earthly existence.

[ 37 ] The development of the Sun within the Earth’s existence! Just imagine what we are actually getting at in this discussion. We are examining the course of philosophical development, observing the progression of philosophical thought since ancient Greek times, and we tell ourselves, when we lay all this out before us and see how philosophical thought has developed from philosopher to philosopher: it is not earthly laws that are at work here, but solar laws. The laws that once played out between the spirits of wisdom and the archangels come to light again in the philosophical quest for wisdom on Earth. Read in Esoteric Science how the spirits of wisdom intervene during the solar evolution. Now they repeat this intervention during Earth’s evolution, not in the new, but in the remnants of the old solar evolution. And because human beings do not realize that the spirits of wisdom pulse through their minds in philosophical development, they develop their philosophy. The old solar existence lives on in philosophical development. It truly and genuinely lives within it. But because this is the old solar development, something backward also lives within it—something connected to the old solar development.

[ 38 ] Human beings, passing from generation to generation, develop as external human personalities within the course of Earth’s evolution. But now a philosophical development runs through this, from Thales to the present day: the solar evolution is woven into it. This gives rise to the possibility that beings who have remained behind can use the forces of philosophical development to continue their former solar existence—beings who remained behind during the old solar era, who at that time failed to undergo the development that can be experienced in one’s etheric body, sensory body, and in the sensory soul, through the cooperation of spirits of wisdom and archangels. These spirits, who failed to undergo their development during the Sun era, can use human philosophical development to exist within it as parasites. These are Ahrimanic spirits!

[ 39 ] Ahrimanic spirits are tempted to parasitically insinuate themselves into what people strive for philosophically, thereby sustaining their own existence. Thus, while people can develop philosophically, they are simultaneously exposed to Ahrimanic spirits—Mephistophelean spirits—through this philosophical development.

[ 40 ] You know that Ahriman and Lucifer are harmful spirits as long as one is not aware of them, as long as they are, so to speak, working in secret. As long as they do not step forward in such a way that people confront them face to face in spirit, Ahriman and Lucifer are harmful spirits, harmful in one way or another. Let us suppose a philosopher appears and develops the idea—namely, the idea insofar as it can be grasped in mere earthly existence. Then he develops the idea in a way that it can live through the instrument of earthly reason. That is the Hegelian idea! It is pure thought, but only a thought as it can be grasped with the instrument of the physical body, which, however, dies with death.

[ 41 ] Hegel conceived the deepest thoughts conceivable in earthly life, but these die with death in their very configuration. And Hegel’s tragedy lies in this: he did not realize that he grasps the spirit in logic, in nature, in the life of the soul, but only that spirit which exists in the form of thought, which, however, does not accompany us when we pass through death. To bring this clearly before the soul, he would have had to say to himself: If I could believe that what passes through thought—that is, what I think of abstract being through logic, through thoughts of nature, through thoughts of the soul, and up to philosophy—if I could believe that this leads me behind the scenes of existence, then I would be tempted by Mephistopheles!

[ 42 ] Someone else perceived this; Goethe perceived it, and he depicted it in his Faust: the struggle of the thinking human being with Mephistopheles, with Ahriman. And in this fourth epoch of philosophical development, we see how Ahriman extends into the solar evolution and how one must clearly confront this Ahriman by truly grasping his essence.

[ 43 ] That is why we are today at a turning point in external philosophical thought as well; that is why this philosophical thought, in order not to succumb to the temptations of Ahriman, in order not to be Mephistophelean wisdom, must go beyond this entity, must grasp it, must lead into Spiritual Science.

[ 44 ] Read the two chapters that precede the concluding chapter of the second volume of my Rätsel der Philosophie (The Riddles of Philosophy), in which I attempted to describe the worldviews that exist in the wider world as philosophical worldviews, and then add the concluding chapter, “A Sketch of a Prospect for Anthroposophy.” There you will see how philosophy today, in a free, emancipated life of thought, does indeed represent something that rises up into the conscious soul, but how, within this life in the conscious soul, it must grasp that which comes from the Spirit-Self—initially philosophically—since otherwise philosophy would fall into decadence and be forced to dissolve.

[ 45 ] Here, at least, is one example of how the evolution of the Sun influences human life on Earth. I said that one can catch a glimpse of these solar laws by studying the history of philosophy, but one does not always recognize that the solar laws are at work within it. Spiritual Science must recognize this. Just consider for a moment that, in truth, a being is developing that is gradually acquiring the same limbs as human beings themselves.

[ 46 ] If one were to go back even further into ancient times, one would find that not only the etheric body but also the physical body was the source of impulses shaping worldviews. It is difficult to elucidate the peculiarities of that time, which lies beyond the 12th to 14th centuries B.C., that is, before Homer, for it lies beyond all history. But there something develops that is not human in the sense that human beings live on Earth.

[ 47 ] There is something alive in history that passes through the etheric body, the sensory body, and so on: a true, real entity. I have said in my book: Thought is born in the Greek era. But in more recent times, thought truly comes to self-consciousness in the soul of consciousness. Thought is a self-active being. This last point, of course, could not be stated in an exoteric book intended for the entire outer world. The anthroposophist, however, will discover it if he reads the book thoughtfully and perceives what has actually been the dominant theme of the exposition—something that has not been explicitly stated, but rather emerges from the subject matter itself.

[ 48 ] You can see from this that many, many transformative forces are at work in our time with regard to spiritual life. For we have seen something here that continues to develop, something that is like a human being, except that it has a longer lifespan than the individual human being. The individual human being lives on the physical plane: for seven years they develop the physical body, for seven years the etheric body, for seven years the sensory body, and so on. And the being that develops as philosophy—we call it by the abstract name “philosophy”—lives in the etheric body for 700 years, in the feeling body for 700 to 800 years—the time is, of course, only approximate—in the feeling soul for 700 to 800 years, in the emotional or intellectual soul for 700 to 800 years, and again in the conscious soul for 700 to 800 years. A being evolves upward, of which we can say: If we look at the very earliest beginnings of Greek philosophy, then this being has just reached the stage of development that corresponds to sexual maturity in humans: it is just like a human being when they have reached the age of 14 to 16. Then it lives through the period when a human being experiences what they experience from the ages of 14 to 21: this is the time of Greek philosophy, of Greek thought. Then comes the period of the next seven years, what a human being experiences from the ages of 21 to 28: the Christ impulse enters into philosophical development. Then comes the period from Scotus Eriugena up to modern times: over the next 700 to 800 years, this being develops what a human being develops between the ages of 28 and 35. And now we are living in the development of what the human being experiences in their consciousness soul: we are experiencing the consciousness soul of philosophy, of philosophical thought. Philosophy has indeed entered its forties, only that it is a being with a much longer lifespan. What is a year for a human being is a century for this philosophical being. There we see a being ruling through history for whom a century is a year. One simply does not perceive it; this being develops precisely according to solar laws.

[ 49 ] And behind this lies that which is even more supersensible than this being, which develops like a human being—only like a human being for whom a year is as long as a century: behind this stands a being that develops in such a way that its outer expression is our personal destiny, as we carry it through even longer periods of time, from incarnation to incarnation. In this, the spirits who govern our outer destiny find their fulfillment; for them, a still longer lifespan exists than for those of whom we must say that for them a century is like a year.

[ 50 ] So you see how we look into it, as it were, through layers of beings, and how, if we only wanted to, we could even—I would say—write the biography of a being that stands so much higher than humanity in terms of spirituality as a century is longer than a year.

[ 51 ] An attempt was once made to write the biography of such a being, who reached sexual maturity in the time of Thales, in the time of Anaxagoras, and has now come to the use of his self-consciousness, which has, as it were, entered its forties since the 16th century: the biography of this being resulted in a history of philosophy.

[ 52 ] From this, however, you can also see how truly the Spiritual Science brings to life—truly animates—what is otherwise abstract. What dry undergrowth is sometimes what is otherwise called the “history of philosophy”! And what becomes of this history of philosophy when one knows that it is the biography of a being that is woven into our existence, only that it develops according to the laws of the sun rather than the laws of the earth!

[ 53 ] I wanted to add this to everything I have told you in recent times about the life forces that arise within us when we do not regard Spiritual Science as a theory, but rather seek in it guidance toward the living. And it is precisely through Spiritual Science that we find the living. That which is so lifeless, so straw-like as the history of philosophy often is, becomes—when we entrust ourselves to the guidance of Spiritual Science—such that a being emerges from the fog of the history of philosophy, to whom we look up as to a goddess descending from divine cloud heights, whom we see as young in ancient times, whom we see growing up, albeit with the slowness such that a century corresponds to a single year of human life. But all of this comes alive. The sun rises for us, just as the sun rises within earthly existence itself. For just as the sun rises on the physical plane, so do we see the ancient sun still shining into the earthly world in a being that has a longer lifespan than a human. Just as we follow the development of a human being on the physical plane from birth to death, so do we follow the philosophical development by beholding a being within it.

[ 54 ] When we consider what anthroposophy can be for us, we come to see in it a true guide—not only to knowledge, but also to the living beings that surround us, even though we know nothing about them.

[ 55 ] Yes, my dear friends, Christian Morgenstern felt something like this as well. And because he felt this—deep within the very core of his soul—he was able to record it—our friend Christian Morgenstern — a beautiful feeling that is truly an anthroposophical feeling, one that shows how a soul can express itself, a soul that knows itself to be one with our anthroposophy in its deepest core, not merely as something that gives us knowledge about this or that, but as something that enlivens us. A wonderful example of such an enlivening by anthroposophy is what we find in the beautiful poem “Lucifer” by our Christian Morgenstern, in that poem which, I would say, in terms of feeling, lives so completely in that breath of which one senses something when, as has been attempted to suggest today, one finds the transition from the presentation of the idea in anthroposophy to the grasping of living beings.

I will hide my light from your light,
I do not want you; you shall not enjoy me,
until I have become a light of my own.

Thus I bring evil to light,
as the spirit of separateness and negation,
yet my order of spirits creates a new world.

From contradiction to the unwavering essence,
from error a race of gods shall arise,
which decides from within itself—and not from you.

He who does not walk in truth from the beginning,
who first bargains for the truth through suffering,
who first endures the truth through action.

[ 56 ] If you approach this poem in such a way that you reflect on how vividly what is understood theoretically in anthroposophy can come to life, so that, as it were, through our Spiritual Science we can grasp the beings who approach us from the dark abyss of being—if you take this poem in such a way that you are inspired by the feelings I sought to evoke through today’s lecture, then you will see that this figure of Lucifer is truly perceived and shaped in a wondrous way. This provides a prime example of how what anthroposophy brings to us can come alive within us and take hold of our entire soul.