The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventh Lecture

[ 1 ] Today, I would like to return to what I have just discussed—Goethe’s Faust—in order to derive a sense of unity from it, which will then make it possible to arrive at a more comprehensive analysis tomorrow.

[ 2 ] We have, indeed, seen how the transition from the 14th and 15th centuries to the 16th, 17th centuries marks an extraordinarily significant turning point in the entire development of humanity—the transition from the Greco-Roman era to our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the epoch in which we now live, from which our impulses for all knowledge and also for all action flow, the epoch that will last until the 4th millennium. Now, from everything you know about Goethe’s Faust and about the connection between this Goethean Faust and the Faust figure as it originates from the 16th-century legend, you will see that both this 16th-century Faust figure and what Goethe’s worldview has shaped from it are intimately connected with all the transitional impulses that the new age has brought about, both in spiritual terms and, consequently, in external, material terms. Now, in Goethe’s case, the reality is that this very problem—the emergence of the new age and the continuing influence of the impulses of the old age—was so immensely powerful that he was entirely inspired, throughout the sixty years he spent creating his Faust, by the question: What are the most important tasks and the most important attitudes of modern humanity? — And Goethe was truly able to look back on the bygone age, which even science today knows so little about—that bygone age that came to an end with the 14th and 15th centuries. What history tells us—I have said this many times—about the spiritual mood of people, about the human capacities and needs of earlier centuries, is, after all, something that is really just very abstract theory. In the souls of people from earlier centuries—the centuries that preceded the age of Faust—things looked vastly different than in the souls of people today, in the souls of the present epoch of humanity. And Goethe was quite right to embody in his Faust a figure, a personality, who looks back on the state of mind of people in earlier centuries—centuries long past—and who at the same time looks forward to the tasks of the present and the tasks of the future.

[ 3 ] As Faust first looks back on what preceded his own age, he can, in essence, only gaze upon the ruins of a culture that has come to an end—a spiritual culture. He can gaze upon those ruins. We must always first consider the Faust of the 16th century, who is a historical figure, who truly lived, and who then became part of folk legend. This Faust still lived within the ancient sciences he had mastered; he lived within magic, alchemy, and mysticism—which constituted the wisdom of earlier centuries, notably the wisdom of the era preceding Christianity; yet by the time the historical Faust of the 16th century lived, this wisdom was already in a state of profound decline. What was regarded in Faust’s time as alchemy, magic, and mysticism by those among whom Faust lived was, by and large, already a jumble of nonsense; it was a body of knowledge based on traditions and legacies from earlier times, but one that people no longer understood. The wisdom that lived within it was no longer known. People had all sorts of sound formulas from ancient times, all sorts of correct insights from ancient times, but they could hardly understand them anymore.

[ 4 ] Thus, in this respect, the historical Faust was placed in an age of declining spiritual life. And Goethe continually blends what the historical Faust experienced with what he had shaped into the Faust of the 18th century, the Faust of the 19th century, and indeed the Faust of many centuries yet to come. That is why we also see Goethe’s Faust looking back to the old magic, to the old kind of wisdom and mysticism—which was not driven by chemistry in today’s materialistic sense, but which, through its dealings with nature, sought to connect with a spiritual world, yet no longer possessed the knowledge to do so in the proper way, in the manner of earlier times. What was regarded as medicine in centuries long since past is not as foolish as modern science often wishes to portray it; it is simply that the true wisdom inherent in it has been lost, and it was already partly lost in the age of Faust. Goethe knew this well. But he did not know it with the intellect alone; he knew it with his heart; he knew it with all the powers of the soul that are devoted to the welfare and salvation of humanity and that are of particular importance for the salvation of humanity. He wanted to answer the questions—the riddle-like questions—that arose for him from this in such a way that one could recognize how, by proceeding ever further, one might arrive at other forms of wisdom regarding the spiritual world that are just as suitable for the modern age as the wisdom the ancients knew—a wisdom that, in accordance with the course of human development, was bound to fade away. That is why he has his Faust become a magician. Faust has devoted himself to magic, just like the Faust of the 16th century. Yet he remains unsatisfied, for the simple reason that the true wisdom of ancient magic had already faded away. Ancient medicine also stemmed from this wisdom. All the knowledge of prescriptions and all pharmacology was connected to ancient chemistry, alchemy.

[ 5 ] Such a question immediately touches upon the deepest mysteries of humanity: that, in truth, one cannot cure diseases without, at the same time, being able to cause them, for example. The ways to cure diseases are also the ways to cause them. We will hear shortly how the principle was firmly established in ancient wisdom that the one who was a healer could at the same time be a creator of diseases, and how, for this reason, the art of healing in ancient times was conceived in connection with a profoundly moral worldview. But we will also see shortly how little of what is called the newer freedom of human development—which humanity has actually only begun to pursue in this, our fifth epoch, following the Greco-Roman period—could have developed in those ancient times. We will see what this freedom would have had to be like if ancient wisdom had persisted.

[ 6 ] But in all areas, this wisdom had to come to an end so that humanity might, as it were, start over from scratch—but in such a way that it could strive for freedom through both knowledge and action. It could not have done so under the influence of the old wisdom. In times of transition such as the one in which Faust lived, the old is in decline; the new has not yet arrived. This gives rise to the kind of moods that can be observed in Faust in the scene that precedes the one we have performed today. In the scene, we see quite clearly how Faust has emerged from—and feels himself to be outside of—an age in which old wisdom still existed, though it was no longer fully understood. We see how Faust, accompanied by his servant Wagner, steps out of his cell into the countryside; how he first observes the people celebrating Easter outdoors in the countryside; and how he himself becomes filled with the spirit of Easter. But we immediately see how he refuses to accept the tributes offered to him by the people. An old farmer approaches Faust and pays him homage, because the people believe that Faust, the son of an old adept, an old healer, is himself a significant healer who can bring healing and blessings to the people. An old farmer approaches Faust and says:

Truly, it is most welcome,
That you have appeared on this joyful day;
For you were kind to us in the past
During those dark days!
Many stand here alive today,
Whom your father, in the very end,
Saved from the raging fever,
When he put an end to the plague.
Even back then, you, a young man,
went to every hospital,
Many a corpse was carried away,
But you emerged healthy,
Endured many a harsh trial:
The helper was helped by the helper above.

[ 7 ] This is what the old farmer says, recalling how Faust is connected to the ancient art of healing, which, however, did not refer only to the cure of physical illnesses, but also to the cure of the moral ills of the people. Faust knows that he no longer lived in an age in which the ancient wisdom of humanity was truly helpful, but rather in an age of decline. And in his soul there glimmers a sense of humility, but at the same time despondency over the falsehood he actually faces; and he says:

Just a few more steps up to that rock;
Here we’ll rest from our journey.
Here I often sat alone, lost in thought
And tormented myself with prayer and fasting.
Rich in hope, firm in faith,
With tears, sighs, and wringing hands
I thought to force an end to that plague
From the Lord of Heaven.
The crowd’s applause now sounds like mockery to me
Oh, if only you could read my innermost thoughts,
How little the Father and the Son
Were worthy of such glory!
My father was a mysterious man of honor,
Who, with integrity yet in his own way,
Pondered nature and its sacred circles
With whimsical diligence;
Who, in the company of adepts,
Locked himself away in the black kitchen
And, following endless recipes,
Poured together the adverse elements.
Then a red lion, a bold suitor,
Was wed in the lukewarm bath of the lily,
And both were then tormented by open flames
From one bridal chamber to the next.

[ 8 ] So Goethe did indeed study how things were done back then—how “red lion” (mercury oxide, sulfur-mercury) was handled, how the various chemicals that were mixed together and left to undergo their processes were handled, and how medicines were manufactured from them. But all of this no longer corresponded to the old wisdom. Goethe is also familiar with the style of expression; people certainly depicted what they needed to portray in images. The compounds of substances were depicted as a marriage. That is why he says:

Tormented from one bridal chamber to another.
Then, resplendent in vibrant colors
The young queen appeared in the mirror

[ 9 ] —that was a technical term. Just as certain terms are technical in modern chemistry, back then, when certain substances reached a certain state and color, they were called “the young queen.”

[ 10 ] This is where the medicine was kept; patients died here.

[ 11 ] They were ineffective back then, just as many medicines still are today.

Here was the medicine; the patients died,
And no one asked who recovered.
So we raged with hellish potions
In these valleys, these mountains
Far worse than the plague.
I myself have administered the poison to thousands,
They withered away, and now I must witness,
That these brazen murderers are praised!

[ 12 ] This is Faust’s self-knowledge. Thus Faust now stands before himself—he whom you know to have immersed himself in ancient magical wisdom in order to penetrate the mysteries of nature and the spirit. But through all this, he has become spiritualized. Unlike Wagner, his assistant, who has been content with the newer wisdom found in written works, in letters, Faust cannot remain so. This Wagner, well, he is a person who places far lesser demands on wisdom and on life. And while Faust seeks to immerse himself in nature to find the spirit of nature, Wagner thinks only of the spirit that flows to him from theories, from parchments, from books; what comes over Faust, he calls “whimsical hours”:

I, too, have often had moments that felt like a barbecue,

[ 13 ] — says Wagner —

But I have never felt such a longing.
One can easily grow weary of forests and fields,
I will never envy a bird’s wings.

[ 14 ] He never wants to fly away with the bird to explore the world!

How differently the joys of the mind carry us
From book to book, from page to page!
Then winter nights become lovely and beautiful,
A blissful life warms every limb,
And oh! If you were to unroll a noble parchment,
Then the whole heavens would descend upon you!

[ 15 ] A true bookworm, a true theorist!

[ 16 ] So, now that the crowd has dispersed, they stand there: the one who wants to enter the sources of life, who wants to connect his own being with the mysterious forces of nature in order to experience these mysterious forces of nature—Faust—and the one who sees nothing but external, material life and what is recorded in books through matter. One need not think too deeply about what has been going on within Faust through all that he has experienced up to this moment, as Goethe presents it to us; but one can say this much, based on everything we encounter in Faust: that his inner world, one might say, has been transformed—and turned upside down—that a genuine development of the soul has taken place in Faust, that he has attained a certain inner vision; otherwise he could not have summoned the Earth Spirit, who surges up and down in the storm of action. Faust has acquired a certain ability not only to see the outer world according to its outward appearances, but to see the spirit that weaves and lives in everything. There, a poodle runs toward them—Faust and Wagner—from a distance. The way they both see the poodle—an ordinary poodle—the way Faust sees it and the way Wagner sees it, characterizes the two men completely. After Faust has immersed himself in the living spiritual weaving of nature, he catches sight of the poodle:

Do you see the black dog roaming through the crops and stubble?

Wagner: I’ve seen him for a long time now; he didn’t seem important to me.

Faust: Take a good look at him! What do you think this animal is?

Wagner: A poodle, who in his own way
Is toiling to follow his master’s trail.

The poodle circles around and around.

Faust: Do you notice how, in a wide spiral
it chases around us, drawing ever closer?
And if I’m not mistaken, a whirlwind of fire
follows in its wake.

[ 17 ] Faust does not merely see the poodle; something stirs within him; he sees something that belongs to the poodle, something spiritual. That is what Faust sees. Wagner, of course, does not see it. After all, one cannot see with the physical eyes what Faust sees.

Wagner: I see nothing but a black poodle;
It may well be an optical illusion on your part.

Faust: It seems to me that he is quietly casting magical snares
Around our feet to bind us in the future.

Wagner: I see him circling us, uncertain and fearful,
Because, instead of his master, he sees two strangers.

[ 18 ] Faust thus perceives something spiritual in this simple phenomenon. Let’s keep that in mind. With his inner being moved by a certain spiritual connection—even with this poodle—Faust now goes into his study. Now, of course, Goethe presents this dramatically in such a way that the poodle is simply there as it is; that is fine—the drama must portray it that way. But fundamentally, we are dealing with something that Faust experiences inwardly. And the way this scene unfolds now—the way Faust experiences something inwardly here—is expressed by Goethe with true mastery in every word. Faust and Wagner remained outside until late into the night, when the external light no longer had any effect, when only the twilight remained. In the twilight, Faust sees what he wishes to see spiritually. Now he returns home to his cell. Now he is alone with himself. A man like Faust, having gone through all of this and been left alone with himself, is now in a position to experience self-knowledge—that is, to experience the life of the spirit within his own self. He expresses how, in a sense, his innermost being has been stirred, but stirred in a spiritual way:

I have left the fields and meadows behind,
Which a deep night covers,
With an ominous, sacred dread
That awakens the better soul within us.
Wild impulses have now fallen asleep
Along with every impetuous deed;
Human love stirs,
The love of God now stirs.

[ 19 ] The poodle growls. But let’s be clear: these are inner experiences; even the poodle’s growl is an inner experience, even if it is dramatically portrayed externally. Faust has become entangled with decaying magic, has become entangled with Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles is not a spirit who guides him into the progressive, regular spiritual forces; Mephistopheles is the spirit whom Faust must first overcome, who is assigned to him so that he may overcome him, who is given to him as a test, not as a teacher. That is to say, we now see Faust standing before us, on the one hand striving to enter the divine-spiritual world that propels the development of the world forward, and on the other hand, with the forces in his soul stirring to pull him down into the ordinary life of instincts, which turns people away from spiritual striving. Precisely when the sacred stirs within his soul, it mocks him; the opposing instincts mock him. This is now wonderfully depicted in the form of external events: Faust, striving, as it were, toward the divine-spiritual with all his knowledge, and his own instincts, which growl in opposition, just as the materialistic sense of human beings growls against spiritual striving. And when Faust says, “Be quiet, Pudel, don’t growl”—he is, in essence, calming himself. And now Faust speaks—that is to say, in this instance, Goethe has Faust speak in a marvelous way. Only when one examines the individual words does one discover how wonderfully Goethe understands the inner life of a person undergoing spiritual development:

Ah, when in our cramped cell
The lamp burns warmly once more,
Then our hearts are filled with light,
In the heart that knows itself

[ 20 ] — self-knowledge, that is, seeking the spirit within oneself.

Reason Begins to Speak Again

[ 21 ] — a meaningful sentence! For whoever undergoes spiritual development, who is shaped by life itself, knows that reason is not merely something dead within; such a person knows more than just intellectual reason; they know how alive reason becomes, how inner spiritual weaving becomes reason and truly speaks. This is not merely a poetic image:

Reason begins to speak once more,
And hope begins to blossom once more.

[ 22 ] “Reason begins to speak again”—about the past that has remained alive from the past—“and hope begins to blossom again”; that is to say, we find our will transformed, so that we know: We will pass through the gate of death as a spiritually living being. The future and the past are wonderfully interwoven. Goethe has Faust say that Faust knows how to find the inner life of the spirit in self-knowledge.

One longs for the streams of life,
Ah! for the source of life.

[ 23 ] And now Faust seeks to draw closer to what he yearns for: the sources of life. He first seeks a path: the path of religious elevation; he turns to the New Testament. And the way he now turns to the New Testament is a marvelous illustration of Goethe’s wise dramatics. He turns to the Gospel of John, which contains the deepest words of wisdom of modern times. He wants to translate it into his “beloved German.” It is significant that Goethe chooses the moment of translation. Anyone who is familiar with the workings of the deeper worlds and spiritual beings knows that when wisdom is transferred from one language to another, all the spirits of confusion arise—all the spirits of confusion intervene. In the borderlands of life, the forces opposed to human development and human salvation manifest themselves particularly strongly. Goethe deliberately chooses the act of translation to place the spirit of perversity—indeed, the spirit of falsehood, which still resides in the poodle—side by side with the spirit of truth. If one attunes oneself to the feelings and sensations that can flow from such a scene, the wondrous spiritual depth that lives within these scenes becomes apparent. All the temptations I have just described—those arising from what lies within the poodle, which rear up to distort the truth into falsehood—all of this continues to have an effect and works directly into an act of Faust’s that provides just the right opportunity to distort truth into falsehood. And just how little people actually realize that Goethe intended this is still evident today in the various commentators on Faust, for what do these various commentators say specifically about this scene? Well, you can read it for yourselves; it is said there: Goethe is simply a man of outward life, for whom the “Word” is not enough. He must improve upon the Gospel of John; he must find a more accurate translation—not “In the beginning was the Word,” the Logos, but “In the beginning was the deed!” This is what Faust discovers after much hesitation. This is a profound wisdom of Goethe’s. — This wisdom is not a Faustian wisdom; it is genuine Wagnerian wisdom, true Wagnerian wisdom, just as that wisdom—which is emphasized time and again—where Faust later speaks such beautiful words to Gretchen about religious life: “Who can name him, who can confess him, the All-Encompassing One who holds and sustains all, and so on”—is a Gretchen-like wisdom. What Faust says to Gretchen there has been quoted time and time again, and it is repeatedly presented as profound wisdom by the gentlemen who quote it, the learned scholars:

Who may call upon Him?
And who may confess:
“I believe in Him”?
Who can feel
And bring themselves to say
“I do not believe in Him”?
The All-Encompassing One,
The All-Sustaining One,
Does He not encompass and sustain
You, me, and Himself?
Doesn’t the sky arch above?
Doesn’t the earth lie firm below?
And don’t eternal stars
rise up, gazing kindly?
Don’t I look into your eyes?
And doesn’t everything
draw toward your head and heart

[ 24 ] and so on. What Faust says there is often presented as profound wisdom. Well, if Goethe had intended it to be the very deepest wisdom, he would not have put those words into Faust’s mouth at the very moment when he was trying to instruct the sixteen-year-old Gretchen. It is a “Gretchen-wise saying”! One simply has to take things seriously. The scholars have simply been misled. They have mistaken what is a “Gretchen-style” piece of wisdom for deep philosophy. And so, too, what appears in Faust as a Bible translation is taken for a particularly profound wisdom, whereas Goethe intends to depict nothing other than how truth and error toss a person back and forth when he undertakes such a task. Goethe has portrayed these two souls of Faust with great depth, particularly in this Bible translation.

It is written: “In the beginning was the Word!”

[ 25 ] We know it is the Greek Logos. That is indeed what the Gospel of John says. In contrast, the entity symbolized by the poodle in Faust rebels against this, refusing to let him grasp the deeper meaning of the Gospel of John. Why did the author of the Gospel of John choose precisely the word, the Logos? Because the author of the Gospel of John wants to emphasize that what is most important in human evolution on Earth—what truly makes a human being a human being in the external sense—did not develop gradually, but was present from the very beginning. What distinguishes human beings from all other beings? The fact that they can speak, whereas all other beings—animals, plants, and minerals—cannot. The materialist believes that human beings only arrived at the Word—that is, at language, at the Logos, which is permeated by thought—after having undergone animal evolution. The Gospel of John delves deeper into the matter and says: No, in the very beginning was the Word. This means: Human development is originally predestined; human beings are not merely the pinnacle of the animal kingdom in the materialistic-Darwinian sense, but in the very first intentions of Earth’s development, in the very beginning, in the start, was the Word. And it is only through this—the interweaving of the Word of human development—that human beings on Earth can develop a sense of self, something animals cannot achieve. The Word stands, so to speak, for the human “I.” But the spirit that has been given to Faust—the spirit of untruth—rebels against this truth, and it must descend deeper; it cannot yet comprehend the full, profound wisdom contained in the words of John.

I'm already stuck here!

[ 26 ] But it is actually the poodle—the dog within him—and what lies within the poodle that causes him to falter. He does not rise any higher; on the contrary, he sinks even lower.

I'm already stuck here! Who can help me move on?
I cannot possibly value this word so highly,
I must translate it differently,
if I am truly enlightened by the Spirit.

[ 27 ] As he sees Mephistopheles approaching him, he believes for a moment that he is enlightened by the Spirit; but he is actually darkened by the Spirit of Darkness and falls.

It is written: “In the beginning was meaning.”

[ 28 ] This is no higher than the word. As we can easily demonstrate, meaning is also at work in the lives of animals; yet animals do not attain human speech. Human beings are capable of meaning because they possess an astral body. Faust descends deeper within himself, from the “I” into the astral body.

“In the beginning was meaning.”
Take heed of the first line,
Lest your pen rush ahead!

[ 29 ] He thinks he's rising higher, but he's actually falling lower.

Is it the Spirit that works and creates everything?

[ 30 ] No, he descends even further, from the astral to the denser, material etheric body, and writes:

“In the beginning was the power!”

[ 31 ] Force is that which lives in the etheric body.

But even as I write this down,
Something is already warning me not to stop here.
The Spirit helps me!

[ 32 ] The spirit inside that poodle!

Suddenly I see the way forward
And write with confidence: “In the beginning was the deed!”

[ 33 ] And now he has arrived at complete materialism; now he has arrived at the physical body, through which external action takes place.

Logos, Word: I
Meaning: Astral Body
Power: Etheric Body
Action: Physical Body

[ 34 ] Thus you have Faust, alive and active, in a moment of self-realization. He misinterprets the Bible because the various aspects of the human being—which we have discussed so often: the I, the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body—interact within him in a chaotic manner under the influence of the Mephistophelean spirit. Now it also becomes clear how these impulses operate, for the poodle’s barking from the outside is precisely what rebels against the truth within him. He is not yet able, through his understanding, to recognize the wisdom of Christianity. We see this in the way he connects word, meaning, power, and deed. But the urge, the impulse toward Christianity, already lives within him. By bringing to life and asserting what lives within him as the Christ, he overcomes the opposing spirit. He first attempts this using what he has inherited from ancient magic. But the spirit does not yield; it does not reveal itself in its true form. He summons the four elements and their spirits—the salamander, the sylph, the undine, and the gnome—but none of this misleads the spirit dwelling within the poodle. Yet when he invokes the figure of Christ—the “one who was cruelly pierced, whose blood was poured out through all the heavens”—then the poodle must reveal its true form.

[ 35 ] All of this is, at its core, self-knowledge—a self-knowledge that Goethe makes quite clear. What emerges? A wandering scholar! Faust is truly engaging in self-knowledge; he is, in essence, confronting himself. At first, the wild impulses that had rebelled against the truth were at work in the form of the poodle, and now, in a sense, he becomes clear to himself—clear yet unclear: the wandering scholar stands before him; but it is only Faust’s other self. He himself has become little more than a wandering scholar, with all the errors inherent in the wandering scholar. Only now, as he comes to know his instincts more precisely through his union with the spiritual world, does the wandering scholastic—that is, his own self, as he has appropriated it thus far—confront him in a cruder and more thorough manner. Faust has learned like a scholastic; only he then surrendered himself to magic, and through magic, scholastic wisdom has been demonized. What the good old Faust has become—as he was when he was still a wandering scholar—he has become only by relying on the old magic. The wandering scholar still lies within him; he confronts him in a transformed form. It is merely his own self. This wandering scholar, too, is his own self. The struggle to rid oneself of everything that rides toward one as one’s own self—that is now contained in the following scene.

[ 36 ] Goethe has always sought, through the various characters with whom Faust appears, to reveal only Faust’s other self, so that Faust may come to know himself more and more. Perhaps some of you in the audience recall that in earlier lectures I discussed how Wagner himself is also present within Faust, and how Wagner, too, is merely another aspect of Faust’s self. Mephistopheles, too, is merely another aspect of the self. It is all self-knowledge! Self-knowledge is cultivated through knowledge of the world. But none of this is present in Faust as clear spiritual insight at this point; all of it is contained within Faust in an unclear, dull spiritual vision—one might say still influenced by the old, atavistic art of clairvoyance. It is not yet clarified. It is not clear insight; it is dreamlike insight. This is presented to us through the dream spirits—which are actually group souls of all those beings accompanying Mephistopheles—as they beguile Faust, and through his eventual awakening. And there Goethe has Faust say quite clearly and distinctly: “/p”

Have I been deceived yet again?
Does this mean the whimsical urge has vanished,
That a dream made the devil appear to me,
And that a poodle sprang from me?

[ 37 ] Goethe already employs the method of pointing again and again toward the truth. That he actually means this as an inner experience of Faust is made clear enough in these four lines. This scene, too, shows us how Goethe struggled to understand the transition from the old era to the new one in which he himself lived—from the fourth post-Atlantean epoch to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The boundary lies in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. As I said earlier, anyone living in today’s way of thinking cannot, unless they have undertaken special studies, form a clear picture of the spiritual development of past centuries. And in Faust’s time, only the ruins remained.

[ 38 ] You see, we often find that people today do not want to engage with the newer spiritual research that we are striving for, but instead want to rehash the old wisdom. Many believe that by reviving within themselves what the ancients possessed, they can attain a deeper, magical-mystical wisdom about nature. Two fallacies, I would say, lie very close to all human spiritual striving. The first is that people buy old, ancient books, study them, and value them more highly than modern science. They usually value them more highly simply because they do not understand them—because the language is truly no longer comprehensible. That is one form of folly: that people keep returning, time and again, to the gibberish-like content of these old books whenever they wish to speak of spiritual research. The other is that people want to give old names to newer endeavors as much as possible, thereby sanctifying them. Look at some societies that call themselves occult, secret, or something similar: their entire endeavor is aimed at dating themselves back as far as possible, explaining as much as possible about a legendary past, and taking pleasure in ancient names. That is the second piece of nonsense. There is no need to go along with any of this if one truly understands the needs and impulses of our time and the future that lies ahead. One can open any book from the time when traditions still existed, so to speak. One can pick up any book from a time when traditions still existed: there, one can see from the manner of presentation that legacies and traditions did indeed exist—remnants of an ancient, primordial wisdom that humanity once possessed—but that this wisdom had fallen into decay. The style of expression—it’s all still there, even quite late on.

[ 39 ] I happen to have a book right here that was printed in 1740—that is, as recently as the 18th century. I would like to read a short passage from it—a passage about which one can be certain that many who seek spiritual knowledge today, when confronted with such a passage, will say: “Abysmal, profound wisdom! Oh, what is contained within it all!”—There are even some who believe they understand such a passage. Well, I will first read to you the passage I am referring to:

[ 40 ] “The king’s crown shall be of pure gold, and a chaste bride shall be given to him in marriage. Therefore, if you wish to work through our bodies, take the greedy gray wolf—who, because of his name, is subject to the warlike Mars, but by birth is a child of the ancient Saturn, found in the valleys and mountains of the world and possessed by great hunger—and cast him upon the King’s body, that he may find his sustenance therein.”

[ 41 ] This is how these chemical processes—which people had devised—were named in ancient times; this is how people spoke of certain chemical processes, which Faust also alludes to when he speaks of how a red lion is wed to the lily in the glass, and so on. It is not proper to mock these things, for the simple reason that the way chemistry speaks today will sound just as strange to future generations as it does to us. But we must be clear that this, too, arose even during a very late period of decline. Reference is made to a “gray wolf”; this “gray wolf” refers to a certain ore found everywhere in the mountains and subjected to a specific procedure. A “king” was the term used for a certain state of substances; and what is described here is meant to allude to a specific method of handling. They took the gray ore and treated it in a certain way; this gray ore was called the “miserly gray wolf,” while the other was called the “golden king,” where the gold, after being treated in a certain way, was the “golden king.” And thus a compound was formed. He describes this compound as follows:

[ 42 ] And when he devoured the king—that is, the “gray, greedy wolf,” meaning the gray ore found in the mountains, fused with the golden king—which is a certain state of gold after it has been chemically treated—the gold disappeared into the gray ore. He depicts it as follows:

[ 43 ] “And when he has devoured the king, build a big fire and throw the wolf into it.”

[ 44 ] — so the wolf who ate the gold, the golden king, is thrown into the fire —

[ 45 ] “If he is completely and utterly burned, the king will be redeemed once more.”

[ 46 ] The gold is back in the spotlight!

[ 47 ] “When this happens three times, the lion has overcome the wolf and will find nothing left to devour in him; then our body will be complete at the beginning of our work.”

[ 48 ] So he does something in this way. If one wanted to know what he does, one would have to describe these procedures in great detail—namely, how the golden king is made—but that cannot be described here. These procedures are no longer carried out even today. But what does the man hope to gain from this? He hopes for something that is by no means entirely far-fetched, for he has now created something. Why did he actually do that? That is to say, the person who had this printed probably didn’t actually do it himself, but rather copied it from old books. But why was this done back in the days when people still understood these things? You can see that from the following:

[ 49 ] “And know that this alone is the true way to effectively purify our bodies, for the lion purifies itself through the blood of the wolf, and the tincture of the wolf’s blood blends wonderfully with the tincture of the lion’s blood, for the bloods of both are closely related.”

[ 50 ] So now he's praising what he himself has created. He's been given a kind of medicine.

[ 51 ] “And when the lion has had its fill, its spirit has become stronger than before, and its eyes give off a proud gleam like the bright sun.”

[ 52 ] That's all down to what he has in there in the retort!

[ 53 ] “His inner being is capable of great things and is useful for all that is required of him; and when he is brought into a state of readiness, the children of men—burdened with severe, debilitating illnesses and various plagues—thank him; the ten lepers run after him and beg to drink of the blood of his soul, and all who have infirmities, rejoice greatly in his spirit; for whoever drinks from this golden fountain experiences a complete renewal of nature, the removal of evil, strength of the blood, vigor of the heart, and perfect health of all the limbs.”

[ 54 ] You see, there are indications that this is a medicinal substance; but there are also sufficient indications here that it has something to do with what appears as a moral quality of human beings. For, of course, if a healthy person takes it in the appropriate amount, then what he describes there occurs. That is what he means, and that is how it was with the ancients, who still understood something about these things.

[ 55 ] “For whoever drinks from this golden fountain will experience a complete renewal of nature”

[ 56 ] — so, through this art that he has described here, he sought a tincture through which true life force could enter into human beings:

[ 57 ] “The power of the heart, the strength of the blood, and perfect health of all the limbs, whether they are internal or external to the body: for it opens all the nerves and pores, so that evil may be driven out and good may dwell peacefully in their place.”

[ 58 ] I read this aloud first to show how, even in these ruins of ancient wisdom, one can still discern traces of what people strove for in times past. People sought to stimulate the body through external means derived from nature—that is, to attain certain abilities not merely through inner, moral striving, but through the very means of nature itself that they had created. Keep that in mind for a moment, for it leads us to something important that distinguishes our era from earlier ones. After all, it is perfectly acceptable today to mock the old superstitions, for in doing so one earns the reputation of being a wise person in the eyes of the whole world; whereas one is not otherwise regarded as a wise person if one sees something reasonable in ancient knowledge. Something that has even been lost to humanity—and had to be lost for certain reasons—because in that pursuit of ancient times, people could never have attained freedom. But look, in old books—which date back to times even earlier than this tome, which belongs to a very late period of decline—you’ll find, as you well know, the sun and gold represented by a common symbol, this symbol: ©; you’ll find the moon and silver represented by this symbol: €. For people today, this symbol—applied to gold and the sun—and this symbol—applied to the moon and silver—are, of course, utter nonsense when it comes to the spiritual faculties that modern people necessarily possess; and it is utter nonsense the way these things are discussed in literature—which often calls itself “esoteric”—because people usually lack the means to understand why, in ancient times, the sun and gold, and the moon and silver, were designated by the same symbol.

[ 59 ] Let’s start with the moon and silver, represented by this symbol: €. You see, if we go back in time—say, a few millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha, before the Christian era—people not only possessed the abilities that were already in ruins by the time such things came into being, but they also possessed even higher abilities. When a person from the Egyptian-Chaldean culture said “silver,” they did not initially mean what we mean when we say “silver.” When that person used the word in their language of that time—the word that meant “silver” to them—they applied it in a completely different way. Such a person possessed inner abilities, and by “silver” they did not mean merely a small piece of silver, but rather a certain kind of force that essentially spreads across the entire Earth. They meant: We live in gold, we live in copper, we live in silver. — He meant certain kinds of forces that are alive there, and that flowed toward him particularly strongly from the Moon, and he sensed this—in the grossest material sense, but also subtly within that little piece of silver. He truly found the same forces streaming out from the Moon, but also present throughout the entire Earth, and particularly embodied in the material form of that little piece of silver. Well, today’s enlightened person says: Yes, the moon, which shines so silvery-white; people simply believed that it was made of silver. — That was not the case; rather, people had an inner, spiritual experience of the Moon—an experience that has been lost today—but it was connected to a force that lived throughout the entire earthly sphere and, translated into the material realm, was present in that small piece of silver. So the force contained in the silver must, so to speak, have been spread across the entire Earth.

[ 60 ] Of course, when you tell people this today, they consider it complete nonsense; and yet, from the perspective of modern science, it is not complete nonsense. It is not nonsense at all—absolutely not—because let me tell you something that science knows today, even if it doesn’t always say so. Modern science knows that a little over four pounds of silver, finely dispersed, is contained in a cube—imagined as a cube cut from the world’s oceans—that is one English nautical mile long; so that the entire world’s oceans surrounding the Earth contain two million metric tons of silver, finely dispersed. This is simply a scientific truth that can be verified even today. The world’s oceans contain two million metric tons of silver, finely dispersed—in an extremely homeopathic concentration, one might say. It is truly silver spread out across the Earth. Today, if one were to establish this using conventional knowledge, one would have to draw seawater and methodically examine it through all manner of meticulous analyses; but then, using the methods of modern science, one finds that two million metric tons of silver are contained in the World Ocean. These two million metric tons of silver are not contained within it in the sense that they have somehow dissolved or anything of the sort, but rather they belong to the World Ocean; they are part of its nature and essence. And ancient wisdom knew this; it knew it through the subtle, sensitive powers that still existed, which stemmed from the clairvoyance of old. And it knew that when one conceives of the Earth, one must not merely conceive of it as modern geology does, but that silver is dissolved within this Earth in the most subtle way.

[ 61 ] I could go on now; I could show how gold, too, is dissolved, how all these metals—in a fine, dissolved state—are truly contained within the Earth, apart from the fact that they are physically deposited here and there. Ancient wisdom was not wrong, then, when it spoke of silver. It is contained within the Earth’s sphere. But it was known as a force—as certain kinds of force. The silver sphere contains other forces, the gold sphere other forces, and so on. Much more was known about what is spread out there as silver in the Earth’s sphere; it was known that within this silver lies the force that causes the tides, because a certain life-giving force of the entire Earth’s body resides in this silver—or rather, is identical with this silver. Otherwise, the tides would not occur at all; this peculiar movement of the sea is originally set in motion by the silver content. This has nothing to do with the Moon, but the Moon is connected to the same force. Therefore, the tides occur in a certain relationship to the Moon’s movements, because both—the Moon’s movements and the tides—depend on the same system of forces. And these forces lie in the silver content of the universe.

[ 62 ] Even without clairvoyant insights, one can simply examine such matters and, with a certainty of proof unmatched in any other field of science—except, at most, in mathematics—demonstrate that there once existed an ancient science that knew such things, that was well versed in them. And linked to such knowledge and mastery was what ancient wisdom was—that wisdom which truly mastered nature and which must be regained through spiritual research, from the present into the future. We are living precisely in the age in which an ancient form of wisdom has been lost, and a new form of wisdom is just emerging. What did this ancient wisdom entail? It entailed what I have already hinted at. One could truly, if one knew the mysteries of the universe, make one’s own being more capable. Just think—it was possible to make a person more capable through external means! In other words, the possibility existed that a person, simply by producing certain substances and ingesting them in the appropriate quantities, could acquire abilities that we today rightly assume can only be innate—such as genius, talent, and so on. It is not what Darwinism fantastically dreams of that existed at the beginning of Earth’s development, but rather the possibility of mastering nature and endowing human beings themselves with moral and spiritual abilities through the manipulation of nature. You will now understand that this manipulation of nature therefore had to be kept within very specific limits; hence the secrets of the most ancient mysteries. Anyone who was to attain such knowledge—knowledge that truly had something to do with these secrets of nature, that was not merely concepts, ideas, and sensations, nor merely matters of faith—had to first prove himself perfectly suited to the task: not but absolutely nothing for himself through this knowledge, but rather to apply these insights—and the abilities he acquired through them—solely in the service of the social order. That is why this knowledge was kept so secret, let us say, in the Egyptian mysteries. The preparation consisted in the person to whom such knowledge was imparted giving a guarantee that he would continue the life he had previously led in exactly the same way, that he would not gain the slightest advantage for himself, but would apply the skills he would henceforth acquire through his engagement with nature solely in the service of social order. Under this condition, certain individuals were allowed to become initiates, who then guided that ancient culture whose marvels can be seen but are not understood, because people do not know from what they sprang.

[ 63 ] But humanity could never have become free that way. One would, so to speak, have had to turn human beings into automatons through the influence of nature. An age had to dawn in which human beings acted through mere inner moral forces. Thus, nature is, so to speak, veiled from them, because they would have desecrated it by giving free rein to their instincts in the new era. And his instincts have been unleashed most of all since the 14th and 15th centuries. That is why the old wisdom is fading away; all that remains is bookish wisdom that is not understood. For no one today would allow himself to be deterred—if he truly understood such things as even just the sentence I read to you—no one today would allow himself to be deterred from using these things to his own advantage. But that would bring forth the worst impulses in human society—worse impulses than those produced by that tentative progress we now call scientific endeavor, where, in the laboratory, without being able to look into the very nature of things, we discover: “This substance interacts with that one in this way”—where, without looking into the nature of things, one arrives at conclusions, just as is the case with the current state of chemistry. We carry on in this way; and spiritual science will first have to find its way back into the mysteries of nature. But at the same time, it will have to establish a social order that is entirely different from today’s social order, so that human beings can recognize what holds nature together at its very core, without thereby being led into a struggle of the wildest instincts.

[ 64 ] There is meaning and wisdom in human development, and that is precisely what I have been trying to prove to you through a whole series of lectures. What happens in history—even if often through forces as destructive as possible—happens in such a way that a meaning runs through the course of historical development, even if it is often not the meaning that human beings dream of, and even if human beings must suffer greatly because of the paths that the meaning of history often takes. Everything that happens over the course of time certainly does so in such a way that the pendulum swings sometimes toward evil, sometimes toward the lesser evil; but through this swinging, certain states of equilibrium are nevertheless achieved. And so, at least until the 14th and 15th centuries, a certain body of knowledge regarding natural forces was known to some, though this knowledge has been lost because people of more recent times lack the proper mindset for it.

[ 65 ] See, this is so beautifully described in the symbol that expresses the force of nature in the Egyptian legend of Isis. This image of Isis—what a profound impression it makes on us when we imagine it standing there in stone, yet with a veil covering the stone from top to bottom: the veiled image at Sais. And the inscription reads: “I am the past, the present, and the future; no mortal has yet lifted my veil.” - This, in turn, has led to an exceedingly clever—though very clever people have accepted this clever explanation, it must still be said—to a very clever explanation. It is said: Isis thus embodies the symbol of wisdom that can never be attained by humans. Behind this veil is a being that must remain eternally hidden, for the veil cannot be lifted. — And yet the inscription reads: I am the past, the present, and the future; no mortal has yet lifted my veil. — All those clever people who say, “One cannot fathom the essence”—they are logically saying roughly the same thing as if someone were to say, “My name is Müller; you will never know my name.” — It is exactly the same as what you always hear people say about this image, as if someone were to say, “My name is Müller; you will never know my name.” - If one interprets the statement, “I am the past, the present, and the future; no mortal has yet lifted my veil,” in this way, then of course this interpretation is utter nonsense. For it is written there what Isis is: the past, the present, and the future—time flowing by! We will speak more precisely about these things tomorrow. It is time flowing by. But something entirely different from what this so-called witty explanation intends is expressed in the words: “No mortal has yet lifted my veil.” - What is expressed is that one must approach this wisdom as one would those women who had taken the veil, whose virginity had to be preserved: with reverence, with a mindset that excludes all selfish impulses. That is what is meant. This wisdom of earlier times is like a veiled nun. The proper attitude is implied by the mention of this veil.

[ 66 ] And so the point was that, in the times when ancient wisdom was alive, people approached this wisdom in the appropriate manner—or, conversely, were not even permitted to approach it if they did not do so in the appropriate manner. But in more recent times, human beings had to be left to their own devices. They could not possess this wisdom of ancient times, the forms of wisdom from those days. Knowledge of certain natural forces was lost—those natural forces that cannot be recognized without simultaneously experiencing them inwardly, without simultaneously living them through inwardly. And in the era in which, as I explained to you eight days ago, materialism reached a certain peak—in the 19th century, at the beginning of the 19th century—a natural force emerged that is characterized, in its particular nature, by the fact that everyone today says: We have this natural force, but we cannot understand it; it remains hidden from science. — You know how the natural force of electricity, in particular, came into human use; and electrical force is such a force that human beings cannot experience it through their normal inner faculties—it remains external to them. And more than one might think, what came to prominence in the 19th century did so through electricity. It would be easy to show how much—indeed, an infinite amount—of our present-day culture depends on electrical power, and how much more will depend on it in the future, when electrical power is used in the modern way, without penetrating into the inner realm. Much more than that! But it is precisely electrical power that has taken the place of the old, familiar forces in the development of human culture—and through which humanity is meant to mature morally. Today, when using it, people do not think of any moral implications. Wisdom lies in the ongoing historical development of humanity. Humanity will mature by being able, for a time yet, to unleash even deeper forms of harm—and as our times show, there is certainly no shortage of harm—within its lower “I-bearer,” that is, its unbridled egoism; if humanity still possessed the old forces, this would be entirely impossible. It is precisely electrical power, as a cultural force, that makes this possible; steam power does so to a certain extent as well, but to an even lesser degree.

[ 67 ] The fact is that, as I explained to you some time ago, the first fifth of our cultural era—which will last into the 4th millennium—is now over. Materialism has reached a certain peak. The social structures in which we live—which have, after all, led to such tragic events in recent years—are such that they will not sustain humanity for another fifty years without a profound transformation of the human soul. For those who spiritually comprehend the development of the world, the electrical age is at the same time a call to seek spiritual deepening—true spiritual deepening. For alongside that force, which remains unknown to the senses on the outside, spiritual power must be added within the souls—a power that lies hidden in the deepest innermost being, just as the electrical forces do, which, after all, must first be awakened. Just imagine how mysterious electrical force is; after all, it was only brought out of its secret hiding places by Galvani and Volta. Just as secretly hidden is that which lies within human souls and which spiritual science explores. The two must come together like the North and South Poles. And just as surely as electrical force has been brought to light as the force hidden in nature, so surely will the force sought in spiritual science be brought to light as the force hidden in the soul—a force that is part of it—even if today many people still stand before what spiritual science seeks just as, well, someone might have stood in the days when Galvani was dissecting frogs and noticed from the twitching of the leg that a force was at work in that twitching frog’s leg. Did science know back then that everything about static electricity—everything we know about electricity today—lay within that frog’s leg? Imagine yourself back in the time when Galvani was in his simple laboratory, hanging his frog’s leg out the window, and it began to twitch—and he observed this for the very first time! After all, this isn’t about electricity that’s been generated, is it, but rather about static electricity. When Galvani observed this for the first time, could he have imagined that the force drawing the frog’s leg toward the hook would one day be used to propel trains across the earth, or to send thoughts circling around the globe? — It was not so very long ago that Galvani observed this force in his frog legs. Anyone who, back then, had already articulated all that would flow from this discovery would certainly have been regarded as a fool. And so it has come to pass that today, anyone who sets out to describe the very beginnings of a spiritual science is regarded as a fool. A time will come when what emanates from spiritual science will be just as significant for the world—specifically, the moral, spiritual, and psychological world—as what emanated from Galvani’s frog legs was for the material world and material culture. This is how progress unfolds in human development. Only by paying attention to such things can one develop the will to go along with what may still be in its infancy. While the other force—the electrical force, which has been drawn from its hidden state—has significance only for external material culture and only indirectly for the moral world, what comes from spiritual science will have the greatest social significance. For the social orders of the future will be governed by what spiritual science can give to humanity, and everything that will constitute external material culture will likewise be inspired, albeit indirectly, by this spiritual science. I can only point this out today as I conclude.

[ 68 ] Tomorrow, we will expand on the image of Faust that we saw today—who, as I told you today, is still half in the old era but already half in the new—to develop it into a kind of worldview.