The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Second Lecture

[ 1 ] The day before yesterday, I attempted to draw attention to the equally significant enigma—the cosmic mystery of necessity and freedom in world events and human action. I began by attempting—and today’s reflection will also have to follow the same line of thought—to draw attention to the full significance and difficulty of this cosmic enigma and the enigma of humanity. I tried, through a hypothetical example, to illustrate how this question can confront us in world events. I said: Let us suppose that a group of people set out to travel through a mountain gorge, along which there is an overhanging rock, and the time was set very precisely. But the coachman, through negligence, departs five minutes late. As a result, the group arrives at the spot in question—which is directly beneath the rock—at the very moment the rock falls. One must say, based on an external assessment—and I emphasize: based on an external assessment—that the entire group of travelers was buried as a result of the coachman’s tardiness, that is, due to an event that occurred as if through human fault.

[ 2 ] Last time, I mainly wanted to point out that we should not approach such a mystery too quickly with our usual way of thinking and believe that we can solve it. I pointed out how this human thinking—which, after all, we initially need only for the physical plane—has also become accustomed to taking into account only the needs of the physical plane, and how this human thinking becomes confused when it is led even slightly beyond the physical plane. Today I would like, above all, to point out the gravity of the entire enigma. For it is only in the next lecture, which is to take place here on Sunday, that we will be able to approach a kind of solution to this whole problem—if we survey it in its full scope and significance, including for human cognition itself; when, for example, we fully grasp how we can fall into speculation—especially when faced with the most difficult problems of life—into a rush and a direction of thoughts that, in a sense, lead us astray, so that we find ourselves as if in a forest where we keep walking and believe we are making progress, while in reality we are simply going in circles. Only when we see that we have returned to the same point do we realize that we have been going in circles. The strange thing is that, in human thinking, we do not notice how we arrive at the same point over and over again. But we will discuss that as well.

[ 3 ] I have suggested that this significant problem is connected with what we call the forces of Ahriman and the forces of Lucifer in the course of world events and in what approaches human beings in their actions, in their entire thinking, feeling, and willing. I have noted that even as late as the 15th century, one can see how people had a sense that, just as positive and negative electricity play a role in natural phenomena—and just as no physicist is shy about speaking of positive and negative electricity— so, too, people knew how to perceive the Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces at work in world events, even if they did not actually use those names. I pointed to what seems to be a very distant example: the clock on Prague’s Old Town Hall, which is so artfully designed that it is not merely a clock but a kind of calendar, so that one can see every event on it, observe the movements of the planets, and read solar and lunar eclipses on the clock as they occur. In short, a man with a great appreciation for art has created a magnificent work of art. I pointed out that it is now possible to document very clearly how a professor at a Prague university brought this work of art into being, but that this is of no further interest to us, for these are events that took place on the physical plane. I have, however, pointed out how a simple folk legend has taken shape, born of the sense that Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces also play a role in such an event—the legend that this clock was artfully installed on the town hall in Prague’s Old Town by a man who was a simple man, who received the entire gift for it through a kind of divine inspiration, and that the legend goes on to say: but the ruler, who wanted this clock all to himself, would not tolerate the construction of such a clock or anything similar in any other city. Therefore, he had the clockmaker blinded. The clockmaker was then forced to stay away. Only when he sensed his death approaching was he permitted to approach the clock once more. And there, through a deft maneuver, he gave the clock a jolt, with the result that it could never really be set right again.

[ 4 ] In this folk tale, one senses how, on the one hand, there was a perception of the Luciferic principle—that Luciferic principle in the ruler who wanted the clock all to himself, a clock that could only have been constructed through a gift of grace, which thus came about through the good, progressive divine powers; and how, as soon as Lucifer appeared, Ahriman entered the picture—for this was an Ahrimanic act—so that the deluded master of this clock then ruined it through his own skill. The moment Lucifer is invoked—and the reverse is also true—Ahriman then strikes back. But the fact that it was not only the people who sensed something of Ahriman and Lucifer in the formation of this legend is evident from something else as well. It is evident from the design of the clock itself. This shows that the master, too, wanted to incorporate Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces by constructing this very clock, for this clock reveals, in addition to the artistic perfection I have already described to you, something entirely different. In addition to everything else that is featured on it—the dial, the planetary disc, and so on—there are also figures on both sides: on one side, Death; and on the other side, two figures—one a man holding a purse in his hand, with money inside that he can jingle. The other figure depicts a man with a mirror held up to him so that he can always see himself. So in these two figures we have an extraordinarily beautiful depiction of the human being who is devoted, in terms of his self-worth, to the external: the rich miser, the Ahrimanic human being, and the Luciferic human being, who constantly wants the forces of his vanity to be called upon—in the figure to whom the mirror is held, who can constantly look at himself. Thus, through the Master himself, we have set the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic against one another, and we have placed death on the other side—that is, the balancing force—which we will also have to speak of later— that is what is meant to stand there as a reminder of how, through the constant alternation of life between death and birth and birth and death, the human being transcends the sphere in which Ahriman and Lucifer reign. We thus see depicted in the clock itself, in a wondrous way, how a sense of the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic still existed in those days.

[ 5 ] We must, in a certain sense, awaken this sense of the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic within ourselves if we are to arrive at a solution to the difficult question hinted at here. After all, the world truly always presents itself to us as a duality. Let us look at nature. What is purely nature truly presents itself to us—we might say—in its signature, in its expression, through the revelation of a rigid necessity. We know, indeed, that it is even the natural scientist’s ideal to be able to calculate future events mathematically from preceding events. It is an ideal to be able to approach all natural phenomena in the same way as one approaches future solar and lunar eclipses, which can be predicted based on the constellations of the celestial bodies. This is what human beings feel: insofar as they are confronted with natural phenomena, they are faced with a rigid necessity, an absolute necessity. Especially since the 15th century, people have become accustomed to taking this rigid necessity as the very model for their view of the world. As a result, it has gradually come to be the case that historical events, too, are now imbued with such rigid necessity.

[ 6 ] But when it comes to historical events, on the other hand, we must also take the following into account. Let’s take, for example, an event that is independent of whatever life situation we happen to be in. So let’s take, for example, the historical figure of Goethe. In a certain sense, there is a tendency to view a phenomenon such as Goethe’s emergence and all that he created as rooted in a kind of rigid necessity. But then someone might come along and say: Yes, but just look—Goethe was born on August 28, 1749. If this boy had not been born into this family, what would have become of him? Would we then have Goethe’s works as well? — One could then point out that Goethe himself noted how he was raised by his father and mother in a unique way, how each contributed to the person he later became. If he had been raised differently, would these works have come into being? And we look to the meeting between Duke Karl August of Weimar and Goethe. Had the duke not summoned him, had he not given him what we know as the course of his life from the 1870s onward, might not entirely different works have come into being? Or might it not even have been the case that Goethe would have become a perfectly ordinary minister if he had been raised differently in his father’s house, had the poetic impulse not already been so vividly at work within him back then? What would the content of German literature and art—as it has been since Goethe—look like if all of that had turned out differently?

[ 7 ] These are all questions that can be raised and that can bring home to us the full depth of this mystery. But what stands in the way of a superficial solution is not yet entirely clear to us. We can go even deeper and ask other questions. Let’s look, for example, once again at the artist who created that clock on Prague’s Old Town Hall. He placed these figures up there: the rich miser with his moneybag—that is, the vain man—and set Death opposite him. Now one might say: This man did something—he put those figures up there. But in saying this, we are stating a cause for an infinite number of possible effects. For imagine vividly how many people have stood before them—before this rich miser, before this vain man to whom his own image is shown, and before Death. And how many people also saw what was an even greater feat of artistry by this clockmaker: namely, every time the hour was to strike, Death would move first, accompanying the chime with a bell mechanism, and the other figure would move as well, and Death would wave across to the rich miser, and he would wave back in turn. All of this could be seen. All of these were important symbols of life. All of this could make an impression on anyone standing before it. It did, in fact, make a deep impression. This is evident from the fact that the folk legend has developed further, telling us something even more special: Death, this skeleton, would, strangely enough, open its mouth wide every time the hour was about to strike, and the folk legend said: Every time you look there, you see a sparrow flying out of its mouth, and this sparrow has but one longing—to get back out into the open air. But whenever it tries to escape, the mouth snaps shut, and it is trapped once more for another hour. The people have even woven a very witty legend around this opening and closing of the mouth, through which they sought to show just how significant that which we so abstractly call “time”—and “the passage of time”—actually is. The people wanted to hint that profound mysteries lie within.

[ 8 ] Now let’s imagine that a person might have been standing there, right? By touching on this folk tale as well, I wanted to suggest all the things that could be thought—not just thought, but seen in the imagination; for one does not simply invent a sparrow like that. Naturally, there were people who stood there and saw the sparrow as a figment of their imagination. I just wanted to hint at that. But let’s take this, shall we say, from a rationalist perspective. A person might be standing there who is perhaps at a moment when he could be morally led astray, and he stands before the clock and sees: Death beckons every hour to the rich man who makes himself dependent on his wealth, and to the vain man. Through this impression he has received, he might be diverted from a certain possibility of moral deviation to which he had already been exposed.

[ 9 ] But one can also create mental images of other possibilities. If one considers this, one might say: This man, who created this work of art through divine-spiritual inspiration, has actually done a great deal of good. For many such people might have stood before this work of art and, in a certain sense, been morally uplifted. One might say: What favorable karma this person has, that he was able to trigger such positive effects on the souls of so many people! — And one might now begin to think: How many positive effects on the soul has this person triggered by creating this image! One might now begin to consider this artist’s karma. One might say: What is this—that he created this clock and placed Death, Ahriman, and Lucifer upon it? What an infinitely favorable starting point for karma this all is! In such a line of thought, one might indulge in saying: Indeed, there are people who, through a single act, set in motion a whole stream of good deeds. This stream of good deeds must therefore be credited entirely to their karma. — One might now begin to reflect: Yes, how should I actually structure every action so that such a stream of good deeds arises from it?

[ 10 ] Here you see the beginning of a line of thought that can go astray. An attempt to think: How must I organize my actions so that such a stream of good deeds flows from them? — An impossibility, isn’t it, if one were to make this a principle of life. Someone might take pleasure in saying: Such a stream of good deeds flows from what this man has done. And then another might come along and say: No, I’ve actually seen it for myself; I’ve looked into this matter a bit, just as with the clock. I haven’t really heard much about such effects. He might be a pessimist and say: The times are far too bad for that. People can’t convince themselves of such things when you try to make them believe them. In several cases, I’ve seen something quite different: how people have come along who are filled with a certain democratic sentiment—hatred of all that is rich—which has not yet erupted. And there stood such a person, watching as the rich miser was merely beckoned by Death, and how he beckoned back. “I want to carry that out,” he said, and sought out the nearest rich miser he could find and murdered him. Similar acts of hatred have emerged from individual people. The man has brought all of this about with his work of art. That is what must now be attributed to his karma.

[ 11 ] Again, without considering everything, one might say: “Yes, so could it be that… one is not allowed to bring into the world anything that is artistically perfect in itself, anything that has great intrinsic value, because it could have the worst effects, because it could have countless negative effects, which in turn would fall back on one’s karma.”

[ 12 ] This draws our attention, I would say, to something infinitely tempting for the entire capacity of human cognition and the soul. For one need only engage in a little self-reflection—there is nothing humans are more inclined to do than ask themselves, in this or that situation: “What came of it?”—and then to judge the value of what they have done based on the outcome. But just as one falls into a certain kind of speculation when trying to determine, as in the example I gave you last time, whether the number of even numbers on the right is exactly the same as the number on the left, or whether they are only half as many—just as one gets caught up in a confusion of thought there, so one must inevitably get caught up in a confusion of thought when, in considering what one has done in any such way, one tries to apply the standard: What effects does this have? What result will this have, for example, for my karma?

[ 13 ] Here, once again, the folk tale is wiser and—one might even say—more scientific in the Spiritual Science sense. For it is, of course, terribly trivial when I say this, but the folk tale said: It was a simple man who built the clock. He had nothing else in mind but the idea that had been inspired in him, and he built the clock accordingly, without speculating on what consequences his action might have in one direction or another.

[ 14 ] Now, it cannot be denied—and this is precisely what makes it so alluring and tempting—that one really does uncover something when one digs in the way I have suggested; when, in the case of any action, one first asks: What consequences will this have? — It is tempting precisely because there are certainly actions in the world where one must ask about the consequences. And it would, of course, be one-sided to draw the conclusion from what I have said that one should always act like that master and not ask about the consequences. For one must ask about the consequences when, for example, one spanks a young boy who has been lazy. So there are, of course, things in the world where one absolutely must ask about the consequences. But here lies precisely what we must now take very seriously to heart, to our very soul: that within the context of the world we truly receive impressions from two sides—that on the one hand we receive impressions from the physical plane, and on the other hand—as folk wisdom hinted at when it said: “he was a simple man,” an inspiration from the divine-spiritual powers, graciously bestowed from above—on the other hand, impressions from the spiritual world. When these impressions from the spiritual world are given to us, when something from the spiritual world reaches our soul and stirs it to to carry out this or that, then these are the moments in life when there is a second kind of certainty, a second kind of truth—not in the objective sense, but in the subjective sense, in that we allow ourselves to be guided by the truth—a second kind of certainty that is immediate, and with which we must remain as it is. That is what this is all about.

[ 15 ] On the one hand, we are immersed in the physical world. In the physical world, everything appears as if the next event were a natural consequence of the previous one. But we are also immersed in the spiritual world. Last time, I tried to make it clear that just as the etheric body is present within our physical body, so too does a supersensible process reign within the entire flow of events in the physical world. We are also immersed in this supersensible process. From this supersensible process come the impulses that are primordial and which we must follow, regardless of how the effects—particularly in the physical world—will ultimately manifest. For when a human being is placed in the world, they possess a kind of certainty that must come to them as they survey external things. This is how the observer of nature proceeds. They cannot arrive at any certainty regarding cause and effect in any other way than by surveying natural phenomena. On the other hand, however, we have the possibility of attaining immediate certainty whenever we wish—provided we truly open our souls to the influences of this immediate certainty. Then it is a matter of pausing to consider an event and learning to judge it according to its intrinsic value and its unique nature.

[ 16 ] The latter is, of course, difficult. But events—particularly those of world history—constantly provide us with the decisive impetus to judge things and events according to their intrinsic value, those things and events that unfold in history outside of ourselves. This is a constant necessity. But here the confusion among people really stands out so strikingly when one examines things more closely—which will take us very far if we understand it correctly. Fundamentally, it is not always immediately apparent to every individual. Let us take the example of Goethe’s Faust. It is a work of art that has come into being, is it not? There are perhaps very few people in this hall who—especially in light of the various reflections we have already made on Faust—do not hold the view that, with Goethe’s Faust, humanity has been gifted a great work of art, a work of art that truly corresponds to a grace-filled inspiration.

[ 17 ] In a sense, German intellectual life has conquered other intellectual spheres through Goethe’s Faust. Even during Goethe’s lifetime, Faust exerted a powerful influence on many people. These people regarded Goethe’s Faust as a great, unique work of art. One man in Germany was particularly annoyed that Madame de Staël had passed an exceptionally favorable judgment on Goethe’s Faust. I would like to read aloud the judgment this man passed on Goethe’s Faust, so that you can see how, when it comes to assessing something as an individual work, opinions can arise that differ from those you might currently consider the only possible ones regarding Goethe’s Faust. The man begins right at the prologue in heaven.

[ 18 ] This was written in 1822 by a certain Mr. von Spaun. At that time, he offered the following assessment of Goethe’s Faust:

[ 19 ] Even the prologue shows “that Mr. von Goethe is a very poor versifier, and the prologue is a true example of how one should not write in verse.”

[ 20 ] “Past ages have nothing to show that, in terms of presumptuous wretchedness, could be compared to this prologue... But I must be brief, for I have taken on a long and, alas, tedious task. I am to prove to the reader that the notorious “Faust” enjoys a usurped and undeserved fame, owing it solely to the pernicious collective spirit of an “Associatio obscurorum virorum”... It is not a rivalry for fame that prompts me to pour the lye of strict criticism over Mr. von Goethe’s Faust. I do not walk in his footsteps toward Parnassus, and I would be delighted if he had enriched our German language with a masterpiece... My voice may well be drowned out among the crowd of “Bravo!”-shouters, but it is enough for me to have done my utmost; and if I succeed in converting even a single reader and bringing him back from the worship of this monstrosity, then I shall not regret my thankless effort. .. Poor Faust speaks in a completely incomprehensible gibberish in the worst rhyming nonsense ever put into verse by any student in Quinta. My tutor would have given me a good spanking if I had written verses as bad as the following:

Oh, you, bathed in moonlight,Events For the last time, to my sorrow,Events For I have spent many a midnight,Events Awake at this desk.

[ 21 ] I will say no more here about the coarseness of the diction or the wretchedness of the versification; what the reader has seen provides ample evidence that, when it comes to versification, the author cannot even measure up to the mediocre poets of the old school...

[ 22 ] Mephistopheles himself recognizes that Faust was already possessed by a devil even before the contract. We, however, believe that he belongs not in hell but in the madhouse, along with everything that is his—namely, his hands and feet, his head and his behind. Many poets have provided us with examples of sublime gibberish—nonsense expressed in high-sounding words—but I would like to call Goethe’s gibberish a “genre nouveau,” or popular gibberish, because it is delivered in the crudest and most vulgar language ...

[ 23 ] The more I think about this long litany of nonsense, the more it seems likely to me I’d be willing to bet that if a famous man were to come up with the most shallow, boring nonsense, there would still be a legion of silly writers and gullible readers who would know how to find and extract profound wisdom and great beauty from this trite nonsense. These famous men have this in common with Prince Piribinker and the immortal Dalai Lama: their excrement is served up as confectionery and venerated as relics. If this was Mr. von Goethe’s intention, then he has won the bet ...

[ 24 ] There may well be some ideas in Faust; but a good poet need not simply cobble them together; he must understand the art of rendering them correctly and bringing them to life. It is not easy to find richer material for poetry, and one resents the poet for having botched it so miserably...

[ 25 ] This diarrhea of undigested ideas does not stem from an excessive influx of healthy fluids, but rather from a relaxation of the sphincter of the mind, and is evidence of a weak constitution. There are people from whom bad verses flow like water, but this “incontinentia urinae poeticae”, this “diabetes mellitus” of insipid rhyming, never afflicts a good poet... Once Goethe’s genius has freed itself from all shackles, the flood of his ideas cannot break through the dams of art; they have already been breached. Yet even if we do not disapprove of an author transcending conventional rules of composition, the laws of common sense, grammar, and rhythm must still be sacred to him; even in dramas, where the magic wand comes into play, he is permitted only one hypothesis as a plot device, and to this he must remain faithful. A “dignus vindice nodus” must be tied up; the sorcery must lead to significant results. In Faust, the result is to tempt the patient into committing utterly base crimes, and his seducer has no need for his magical arts; everything he does could just as easily have been accomplished by some pimp-like scoundrel without any sorcery. He is as shifty as a usurer, even though buried treasures are at his disposal...

[ 26 ] In short, a wretched devil who could take a lesson from Lessing’s Marinell. Following this, in the name of common sense, I overturn Madame de Staël’s verdict in favor of the aforementioned Faust and do not condemn him to hell—which could not even cool this icy creation, since even the devil feels a winter chill there—but rather to be precipitated into the Cloacam parnassi. By right of law.”

[ 27 ] You see, this judgment, too, was once passed, and the context in which it was passed does not portray the man as entirely dishonest, but rather as someone who truly believed what he wrote. Now imagine, however, that this man—who speaks as if his tutor in the fifth grade had already prevented him from writing something like Faust—had himself become a tutor, teaching many boys and instilling this very view in them. These boys might in turn have become teachers themselves and retained something of this judgment regarding Faust. Now consider what further speculation is possible here—what this person has brought upon himself karmically through his judgment. I would like to focus less on that, however; rather, what I wish to draw attention to primarily is that it is difficult to form a genuine, correct judgment regarding events that stand on their own merit—a judgment that can, so to speak, stand the test of time. In some lectures, I have pointed out precisely this: how certain great figures of the 19th century will no longer be regarded as great in the centuries to come, and how people who have been completely forgotten will be regarded as great and significant figures in the centuries to come. Certainly, such things sort themselves out over time. I simply wanted to point out how infinitely difficult it is to arrive at a judgment when it comes to forming such a judgment regarding an event that is supposed to have its own intrinsic value. And why, exactly, is it so difficult?

[ 28 ] We must now ask ourselves: What is it that makes this difficult for us? And here we will begin by considering the matter in such a way that we view the person making the judgment as distinct from the person being judged, for example. Isn’t it true that today we would say: Those who, back then, already regarded Goethe’s Faust as a great, significant work of art—those who, in a certain sense, judged objectively—removed themselves from the equation. The man who wrote what we were just discussing did not remove himself from the equation. But how does one even come to judge non-objectively? People so often fail to judge objectively that they don’t even raise the question: How does one come to judge non-objectively in the first place? One comes to judge non-objectively, well, through sympathy and antipathy. If there were no sympathy and antipathy, one would not arrive at a non-objective judgment at all.

[ 29 ] Sympathy and antipathy are necessary to cloud the objectivity of a judgment. But are sympathy and antipathy bad for that reason? Are they something we should simply eliminate from human life? We need only think about it a little to realize that this is not the case. For precisely when we immerse ourselves in Goethe’s Faust, Faust becomes likable to us, and we find ourselves increasingly drawn into that sympathy. We must have the opportunity to develop sympathy. And after all, if we were unable to feel antipathy at all, we would not form a very favorable judgment of the man whose judgment we have just heard. For I imagine that a feeling of antipathy toward this man might have arisen within you, and this feeling of antipathy might perhaps be justified. But here again we see how important it is not to take these things as absolute as they are, but rather to consider them within their entire context. A person is not merely guided by things toward sympathy and antipathy; rather, he goes through life with sympathy and antipathy. One already harbors sympathy and antipathy toward things themselves, so that things do not affect him directly, but rather affect his sympathy and antipathy. But what does that mean? Well, I approach a thing or an event. I bring my sympathy and antipathy with me. Of course, the man in question, whom I have been discussing, did not exactly bring his antipathy toward Faust with him, but he did bring with him feelings that caused what he encountered in Faust to appear antipathetic to him. How he judges depends entirely on the direction of his drives.

[ 30 ] What is actually at stake here? What is at stake is that sympathy and antipathy are, at first, merely words for real spiritual realities. And these real spiritual realities are the deeds of Ahriman and Lucifer. In every sympathy there is, in a certain sense, something Luciferic, and in every antipathy there is, in a certain sense, something Ahrimanic. By allowing ourselves to be carried through the world by sympathy and antipathy, we allow ourselves to be carried through the world by Ahriman and Lucifer. We must simply not fall back into the mistake that I have often characterized here as a mistake—namely, saying: “Lucifer, Ahriman—we’ll flee from them! We want to become good people. So nothing to do with Lucifer and Ahriman—yes, nothing at all to do with Lucifer and Ahriman!” They must be gone from us, completely gone! — But then we must also be gone from the world! For just as there can be positive and negative electricity—not merely a balance between the two—so too, wherever we go, there are Lucifer and Ahriman. It is simply a matter of how we relate to them. Both forces must be present. It is simply a matter of always bringing them into balance in our lives. If, for example, there were no Lucifer, there would be no art. It is simply a matter of ensuring that we do not shape art in such a way that something purely Luciferic might speak through it.

[ 31 ] The point, then, is that we must become aware: as we move through the world with antipathy and sympathy, Lucifer and Ahriman are at work within us; that is to say, we must gain the ability to truly allow Lucifer and Ahriman to work within us. But by being aware that they are at work within us, we must acquire the ability to nevertheless approach things objectively. We can do this only by not merely focusing on how we judge others in the world—how we judge what happens in the world outside of us—but also by looking at how we judge ourselves in the world. And this “judging ourselves in the world” in turn leads us a step deeper into the whole question and the entire complex of issues. We can judge ourselves in the world if we apply a consistent approach to our self-assessment. We must now raise this question.

[ 32 ] We look out into nature. On the one hand, we see a rigid necessity; one thing flows from another. We look at our own actions and believe that they are subject only to freedom and are connected only to guilt and atonement and the like. Both of these are one-sided views. That both are one-sided—in that we do not correctly assess the positions of Lucifer and Ahriman—will become clear to us from what follows. We cannot look into our own souls in such a way—when we view ourselves as human beings standing here on the physical plane—that we see only what is happening within us at this very moment. When each of us now asks ourselves what is happening within us at this very moment, that is certainly a step toward self-knowledge. But this self-knowledge is far from giving us everything we could even demand for a superficial self-knowledge. For—without, of course, offending anyone—let us consider ourselves as we are here: I, who am speaking to you, and you, who are listening. I would not be able to speak the way I am speaking now if all that has preceded—both in my present life and in other incarnations—had not come before. So focusing solely on what I am saying to you right now would be a very one-sided view of my self-knowledge. But, without offending anyone, it is clear that each of you listens differently, and that each of you perceives and interprets what I am saying to you with a slightly different nuance. That goes without saying. And indeed, you all interpret this in turn according to your past lives and your past incarnations. It would, in fact, be necessary that there really were no human beings sitting here if not everyone were to perceive what is said here in a different way. But this leads much further. It leads to recognizing a duality within oneself in the first place. Just think for a moment about the fact that when you pass judgment, you do so in a certain way. Let’s take a random example! When you see this or that—for instance, a performance at Reinhardt’s—you say, “I am delighted.” The other person says, “That is the ruin of all art!” Certainly, neither of these should be criticized here. One view may be valid for one person, the other for another. What determines that one person judges one way and another person another? Again, it depends on what is already within them—on the presuppositions with which they approach things.

[ 33 ] But when you reflect on these prerequisites, you will be able to say to yourself: Yes, these prerequisites are things that were not always taken for granted. For example, the judgment you make now will be influenced by, let’s say, what you saw when you were eighteen or what you learned when you were thirteen. That flows into it; it has merged with your entire body of thought, now resides within you, and contributes to your judgment. Of course, anyone can perceive this within themselves if they are willing to do so. It contributes to your judgment. Ask yourself whether you can change what is already within you, whether you can tear it out of yourself. Just ask yourself! And if you could tear it out of yourself, you would be tearing out your entire past existence in this incarnation—you would have to erase yourself. You can no more remove from yourself the thoughts and feelings you have experienced than you can, when you look in the mirror and say: “I don’t like my nose; I want a different one”—just as you cannot give yourself a different nose right now. That is quite clear. You cannot erase your past. Nevertheless, if you want to get up early in the morning, you will notice that this always requires a decision. But this decision really does depend on your circumstances in this present incarnation. It also depends on many other factors. Isn’t it true that if you now tell yourself that this depends on this or that, does that not affect the fact that I still have to resolve to get up at some point? Perhaps this resolution to get up can happen so quietly that you don’t even notice it, but there must be at least a faint resolution to get up—that is, getting up must be a free act.

[ 34 ] I knew a man who was part of our circle for a while, who illustrated the point very well in that he actually never wanted to get out of bed. He suffered terribly from this, and he complained about it again and again. He said: “Yes, I can’t get out of bed!” Unless something happens that creates an external necessity for me to get out of bed, I would just stay in bed forever.” — He confessed this quite openly. He confessed it because he felt it was a terribly tempting force at work within his life: he simply didn’t want to get up! From this you can already see that it is, after all, a free act. This does not prevent certain preconditions from being established within us that suggest this or that cause to us; nevertheless, in individual cases, we can still carry out a free act. In a certain sense, then, the situation is quite simply this: There are people who drag themselves slowly out of bed—they need a stronger resolve—while for others, getting up is a joy. One might even say: From this we can see that these preconditions—the fact that one person is well-mannered and another is ill-mannered—are significant. We can see a certain necessity in this, but it is always a free decision. Thus, in one and the same fact—the fact of our getting out of bed—we see freedom and necessity interwoven. They are thoroughly interwoven. One and the same thing contains both freedom and necessity. And I ask you to take this to heart: that, when viewed correctly, one cannot argue that a person is free or unfree in this regard, but one can only say: In every human action, freedom and necessity are initially intermingled.

[ 35 ] How does this come about? We will not make any progress in our Spiritual Science unless we consider what we view from a human perspective within the context of the entire world at the same time. Where does this come from? It comes from the fact that what acts as a necessity within us—I will now say something relatively simple, but which has immense implications—what we regard as a necessity is the past within us. What acts as a necessity within us must always have been in the past. We must have gone through something, and this experience must have become imprinted on our soul. It is then within our soul and continues to act within our soul as a necessity.

[ 36 ] Now you can say to yourself: Every person carries their past within them; every person thus carries a necessity within them. What is present does not yet appear as necessary; otherwise, free action in the present would not be possible. But the past influences the present and is linked to freedom. Because the past continues to have an effect, necessity and freedom are intimately linked within one and the same act.

[ 37 ] So if we look within ourselves—if we truly engage in this self-examination—we will say: Necessity exists not only in nature out there, but also within ourselves. But as we look at this necessity, we must turn our gaze to our past. This provides the person studying Spiritual Science with an infinitely important perspective. He comes to understand the connection between the past and necessity. And now he begins to examine nature, finds necessities within it, and learns to recognize—by examining natural phenomena—that everything the natural scientist finds as necessities in nature is also part of the past. What is all of nature, all of nature with its necessity?

[ 38 ] One cannot answer this question unless one seeks the answer on the basis of Spiritual Science. We are now living in the Earth existence. The Earth existence was preceded by the Lunar, Solar, and Saturnian existences. During the Saturnian existence—you can read about this in Occult Science—the planet did not yet look the way the Earth looks today; it was something entirely different. If you examine Saturn, you will see that everything there is still like thoughts within it. Stones do not yet fall to the Earth there. There is no dense physical matter there yet. Everything there consists of thermal effects. Everything there is just as it unfolds within the human being itself. These are soul effects, thoughts that the divine spirits have left behind. And they have remained. All of present-day nature, which you perceive as a necessity, was once free; it was a free act of the gods. And only because it has passed, because what developed on Saturn, the Sun, and the Moon has come over to us—just as the thoughts we had when we were children continue to work within us—so do the thoughts of the gods from the Saturn, Sun, and Moon eras continue to work in earthly existence; and because they are past thoughts, they appear to us as a necessity.

[ 39 ] If you now place your hand on a solid object, what does that actually mean? Nothing other than this: what is inside that solid object was once thought in the distant past, and that thought has remained there, just as the thoughts you had in your youth have remained within you. When you look at your past and view the past as something alive, you see the process of becoming nature within yourself. Just as what you think and say now is not a necessity but a freedom, so too was what is now earthly existence a freedom in earlier stages of existence. Freedom continues to develop, and as it persists, it becomes a necessity. If we were to see what is now happening in nature, it would not even occur to us to find necessity within it. We see only what nature has left behind. What is now happening as nature is spiritual. We do not see that.

[ 40 ] As a result, human self-knowledge takes on a very peculiar cosmic significance. We now think a thought. Now it is within us. We certainly could not think it otherwise. But because we have thought it, it remains in our soul. Now it has passed. Now it is present as a necessity at work, as a still subtle necessity; it is not yet as dense a matter as that found out in nature, because we are human beings and not gods. We can only go so far as to perceive that inner nature within us, which remains within us as our memory, as our recollections, and is active in our necessities. But what are now thoughts within us will become external nature in the next Jupiter-Venus existence. There it will act as the external environment. And what we now see as external nature was once the thought of the gods.

[ 41 ] Today we speak of the Archai; we speak of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, and so on. In the past, they thought just as we think now. And what they thought has remained as their memory, and it is this memory of theirs that we contemplate. We can only contemplate inwardly within ourselves what we remember from our earthly existence. But inwardly, it has become nature. What the gods thought during earlier planetary states has become external, and we now perceive it as something external.

[ 42 ] It is true, deeply true: as long as we are earthly human beings, we think. We sink our thoughts, as it were, down into our inner life. There they become the beginning of a natural existence. But they remain within us. But when the Jupiter stage of existence arrives, they will flow out of us. And what we think today—what we experience within ourselves today—will then become the external world. We will then look down from a higher level upon what is today our inner world, as if it were an external world. What is once experienced in freedom is transformed into a necessity.

[ 43 ] These are very, very important considerations, and only by taking these important considerations into account can one gain an understanding of the peculiar course of historical events—of what the current events are, of what is currently unfolding. For these points lead directly to the realization that we are, in fact, constantly embarking on the path from the subjective into the objective. Subjectively, we can, in essence, only exist in the present. As soon as we move beyond the present and have pushed the subjective down into the life of the soul, it takes on an independent existence. Admittedly, at first only within us, but it does take on an independent existence. And while we continue living with other thoughts, the earlier thoughts we had do, at first, live only within us. We still provide them with a temporary shell. But this shell will eventually fall away. In the spiritual realm, the situation is already different. That is why you must also view an event such as the one I have described to you hypothetically from this perspective as well. Viewed from the outside, a boulder has fallen and buried a group of people. But this is only the outward expression of something that is taking place spiritually, and what takes place spiritually is the other part of the event, which is just as objectively present as the first event.

[ 44 ] That is what I wanted to explain today—to show how freedom and necessity interact in the becoming of the world and in the process of becoming in which we ourselves are immersed as living human beings; how we are interwoven with the world; and how we ourselves, day by day and hour by hour, become what nature reveals to us externally. Our past is already a part of nature within us. We move beyond this part of nature as we continue to develop, just as the gods have moved beyond their own development—beyond their natural evolution—by becoming higher hierarchies.

[ 45 ] This, in turn, was just one of the many paths to be taken, paths that are meant to show us time and again how everything that takes place in the physical realm must not be judged one-sidedly based solely on physical appearances, but must be judged in light of the fact that, alongside physical appearances, it also contains a hidden spiritual element. Just as our physical body still contains our etheric body, so too does everything sensory have a supersensory foundation. From this we must conclude that we actually view the world quite incompletely if we regard it only in terms of what it presents to our eyes—what happens outwardly—and that, while something entirely different is happening outwardly, something spiritual may be happening inwardly, simultaneously and in connection with it, which has a much greater, an infinitely greater significance than what presents itself to our physical perception. What the souls who were buried there experienced in the spiritual realm may be infinitely more significant than what took place externally. But what happened there has something to do with the entire future of these souls, as we shall see.

[ 46 ] But let us leave these thoughts aside for now and continue them next Sunday. My sole aim today was simply to steer your thoughts and ideas in a direction that would show you how we can only arrive at correct concepts of freedom and necessity, guilt and atonement, and so on, if we supplement the physical with the spiritual as well.