The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] When I incorporate certain historical perspectives into current debates, my aim is certainly not to criticize this or that, or, so to speak, to single out or call out this or that. Rather, the point is to connect with external phenomena on the physical plane in such a way that one can see how certain major perspectives—which we, after all, consider from the standpoint of spiritual science—are confirmed in this or that individual phenomenon. For my aim is that, precisely through these reflections, we may gain a kind of understanding of what is essential in the transition from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—how the forces that have been at work there over the past few centuries flow into our present, and how they can—and indeed must—be observed by anyone who truly wishes to understand how spiritual science has a specific task for each individual in our present time. These are therefore meant to be merely episodic interludes that I offer to illustrate the broader perspectives when I include such reflections on contemporary history.

[ 2 ] I would also like to point out specifically that those of our contemporaries—or their immediate predecessors—who, in a certain sense, must be portrayed as powerless in the face of the recognition of genuine spiritual impulses—that is, those who thus seem to require criticism— is not done with the intention of offending them personally in any way, but rather to show how, in a sense, such people are ensnared by the offshoots of the materialistic worldview and world order. For indeed, it is not easy for people today to find the path to genuine spiritual-scientific insight. Given the way spiritual culture has developed in our time, it is difficult for many to, so to speak, connect with what spiritual science has to offer in the present and the near future. From a certain point of view, one can indeed understand how people who are now completely ensnared by contemporary thinking cannot find a connection between their own thinking and that which must, after all, underlie our movement—underlie it as a genuine engagement with the spiritual worlds. One sees that even outsiders who are well-disposed toward our movement often say: Well, what these people aim for—the elevation of idealism, the elevation of ethical human culture—is all very well, but in doing so, these anthroposophists—as even well-disposed people say—get carried away with all sorts of fanciful theories about the spiritual worlds. — Even well-meaning people fail to recognize that this engagement with the spiritual worlds must truly be the foundation upon which we must work today, and they cannot see it unless they can free themselves from certain prejudices of our time.

[ 3 ] It is incredibly difficult for a person who is so completely absorbed in the nature of contemporary spiritual life to imagine that human beings themselves serve as a kind of switch for impulses that flow down from spiritual beings into the world of physical life and exert their influence on that physical life. And we can bring this particularly clearly to mind when we point out the difficulties that stand in the way of understanding the spiritual world for people who, with great devotion and also with certain insights drawn from contemporary culture, devote themselves to reformist ideas or similar endeavors relating to life today. Isn’t it true that there are many people today—and there have been for a long time—who know that social conditions in the world have become just as the rest of life has, and that certain measures must be taken to give life—namely, the social structure—a new form? We, as those who recognize the essence of spiritual science, must be clear that the most pressing questions of the present can be grasped by our souls in the true sense only when they are grounded in the foundation of spiritual scientific insight. Yet many who are working energetically in the present cannot attain this insight, this understanding. And so, on the one hand, they find themselves without a firm footing, and on the other hand, they are in a position where they cannot find answers to the most important questions. Let us also consider an example in this regard.

[ 4 ] Here we have a man who, more than anyone else, was genuinely concerned with the major social problems of his time: Jaurès, who met a mysterious death on the eve of this ill-fated war—a death that may never be fully clarified by an external investigation. Jaurès, the socialist who was certainly one of the most sincere among the leading figures of his time, engaged intensively with all the fundamental questions of contemporary social life. And one can certainly say that, in forming his understanding, he brought together everything that a person today can gather from the study of nature, from history, and from a social perspective, in order to arrive at views on what must be done to solve the issues facing human life today in a practical manner. Jaurès was not one of those superficial thinkers who develop a social system based on a few subjective ideas they find appealing, through which they seek to bring happiness to the world—people who do not merely seek to gain social insight but also to understand human life in the present; rather, Jaurès was among those who also examine history—how various social and other problems of life have taken shape among different peoples, leading to crises and developments—so that one can see from such patterns what results from certain conditions. Jaurès conducted careful studies of these matters.

[ 5 ] Now, for a person who contemplates such matters, the most important thing is to understand what has transpired in the course of human life, particularly over the last three to four centuries. For while, on the one hand, these past three to four centuries have witnessed a transformation of all human endeavor in the realm of knowledge—and the two one-sided impulses toward knowledge, as I have presented them to you in these reflections, have gradually taken shape—it is equally true, on the other hand, that a similar development has taken place in social currents and social longings. Anyone who wishes to understand the situation in which humanity today—indeed, one might say, the entire Earth—finds itself must, in particular, understand how the impulses that now dominate people’s minds—largely unconsciously, for they are unaware of them—have gradually crept into the human soul since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period. But precisely when people like Jaurès—who, after all, had no choice but to base his sincere striving on the materialistic mindset of his time—consider this very period, questions arise everywhere that they do not really know how to address. Thus, I would say, precisely in a sincere endeavor such as Jaurès’s, we can discover two peculiar points of obscurity—among others that we cannot list here—to which one should turn one’s attention, particularly from the perspective of spiritual science.

[ 6 ] As Jaurès surveys the life of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch that has now passed, a question arises in his mind: What, in fact, has led the people of the present to the point where members of a certain caste or class have this or that spiritual disposition, while members of another class or caste have different dispositions? — Such a person looks back at what preceded the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, looks back at the life that was confined within narrow limits at that time. One need only recall how the world of human life has changed since the 14th and 15th centuries; how profoundly it has been transformed by the discovery of America, by the more recent scientific discoveries and institutions, by the art of printing, and so on. Think of all that has come upon humanity! Think back to the times when there was no printing press, when people could not read the Bible but only gathered in their respective churches to hear what had been personally communicated to them by those who wished to convey a specific message to them. Far too little attention is paid to this entirely different way of life that existed before the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. And what lives in people’s souls today—what forms the principles of governments today, what forms the principles of those who lead commercial, industrial, and other enterprises— what forms the principles of those who train people for these enterprises, what forms the principles of those who, as the working population, are involved in these enterprises, what constitutes the principles of those who own the land, and so on—all of this, as it lives in people’s souls today, has only emerged over the course of the last few centuries. The truly radical difference that exists between the current way of thinking and feeling—even among the simplest farmer—and what used to be the case is given far too little consideration. But of course, those who grapple with the great, burning social questions in their hearts do take this into account.

[ 7 ] And so we see that Jaurès is first and foremost faced with a question, namely this: How did the thinking of civilized humanity come to take on such a peculiar character today? What has happened since the relatively small circle of people—who used to have direct access to intellectual life and who guided the others—now only guides the others with regard to external, material life, but in a certain sense no longer guides them with regard to their feelings and emotions? — It is, after all, a great difference—a tremendous difference—when we consider earlier conditions, in which the one who provided people with work also provided them with the chaplain who spoke the necessary words—what had to be said to them according to his understanding—compared to later times, when certain things became accessible to everyone. The question arose in Jaurès’ mind: How, in fact, have the thoughts and feelings of modern humanity changed? — Admittedly, this question first arose in his mind in a form entirely colored by the nuance characteristic of modern socialist thought; but we can separate it from that. Jaurès first asks himself: Why should one accuse the people in the small circle who provide work for others, so that one might say, for example: Well, they have made educational resources—such as schools and reading materials—accessible to the people who are supposed to work for them, precisely in order to increase their own profits. — Certain socialists have repeatedly claimed that it was actually a ruse on the part of employers to make educational resources available to workers, because educated workers work harder and more efficiently than the opposite is true. But Jaurès does not agree with these views held by some socialists. Consequently, in a certain sense, what he must think becomes an insoluble problem for him. And it is very interesting to see how Jaurès comes to terms—or rather, does not come to terms, but cannot come to terms—with the question: What is the nature of the emotional, intellectual, and spiritual impulses that have emerged over the last few centuries?

[ 8 ] In one of Jaurès’s most interesting political writings, we find the following passage on this subject. There he says:

[ 9 ] “The fact that the bourgeoisie, in those early days of its development, believed it was acting justly toward the workers is evidenced by the fact that it provided them with schooling from the very beginning: that is to say, it sought to give them as much education as possible. The Reformation, of which the bourgeoisie was a powerful champion, was enthusiastic about public education. Had the bourgeoisie harbored secret pangs of conscience, it might have doubted the judgment that the workers—whom it had rigorously trained to work through the power of its example as well as through the coercion of the law—would pass on it and its work; thus, it would have kept them in ignorance as much as possible. At the risk of obtaining less productive labor from an uneducated mass, it would not have exposed itself to the terrible judgment of the proletariat it exploited. It would not have opened the eyes of all those thousands—accustomed to long darkness—to its own work of injustice.”

[ 10 ] So Jaurès says to himself: No, the bourgeoisie—we know how the bourgeoisie is rooted in a one-sided current, as we have seen in these reflections—cannot be accused of merely wanting to, so to speak, dup the workers in order to turn them into useful tools; on the contrary, it wanted everyone to be able to read. — And now comes the significant part, the part that, so to speak, opens the eyes of a modern, educated person—who is fully immersed in knowledge—to this insight, only to close them again immediately because he has not yet arrived at the science of the spirit. He says:

[ 11 ] “But quite the contrary—she wanted everyone to be able to read. And what a book! The very one from which she herself drew life. By reading the Bible, which had been translated into the vernacular languages everywhere, the peoples were to learn to think: From that Bible full of struggle and harshness, which is filled with the grumbling, the cries, and the indignation of a disobedient people whose pride—even when it chastises and breaks them—seems to love God; from that Bible in which even the chosen leaders must ceaselessly persuade the people and earn the right to command through service; from that strangely revolutionary book in which the dialogue between Job and God unfolds in such a way that God appears as the accused, able to defend himself against the righteous man’s cry of indignation only with the crude roar of his thunder; from that Bible in which the prophets have bequeathed their call to the future and their curses against the unjust rich, their messianic dream of universal brotherhood, the full fervor of their wrath and their hope, the fire of all the glowing coals that burned on their lips. The industrial bourgeoisie has placed this terrible book into the hands of the people, into the hands of poor workers in the cities and villages—the very ones who were their workers or were about to become so—and has said to them: See for yourselves, hear for yourselves! Do not rely on intermediaries; the connection between God and you must be direct. Your eyes must behold His light, your ears must hear His word! I repeat: How could a class that doubted itself, the word, and the legitimacy of its work, have freed the consciences of the people it was preparing to guide for its own benefit from all belief in authority? If it had had a “guilty conscience,” if it had come into the world like a thief, it would have come at night, fur in nocte. But on the contrary, its primary concern was to increase the light. It was therefore evidently convinced that the order of work, activity, and strict moral discipline—which it brought to a world full of laziness, superstition, disorder, and barrenness—was precisely what was needed by those who occupy the lowest rank within that order.”

[ 12 ] Here we see a question raised by a contemporary reformist thinker who asks: How did all the ideas that dominate the masses today come into being? — They arose—and we can set aside political nuances for now—from the fact that people got their hands on the Bible, the most revolutionary book the world has ever known; for it is so revolutionary precisely because it is so effective. So Jaurès finds in people’s minds the consequences of reading the Bible, which only came about because Bibles began to be printed; for in earlier centuries, the people did not have the Bible, and the Church even took great care to ensure that the people did not get their hands on it. People still give far too little thought to the fact that all recent issues are connected to the fact that it is only since the times of the fifth post-Atlantean period that the people have known the Bible—and know it in such a way that the impulses of the Bible now also become impulses in the souls of human beings. In the past, Christianity was passed down to the people in a completely different way than through the Bible. Thus, a thinker who is fully immersed in the present looks at the development of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and asks: “Yes, what has actually happened here?” What are the connections between the fact that the Bible has been made accessible to people and the other facts we now see around us? — He finds no real connection. He expresses this very precisely, by the way. He says:

[ 13 ] “It would be a fascinating problem—far more complex and far more human than the one Marx dealt with—to examine how this kind of moral certainty, this peace of conscience, could reconcile itself to all the violent and deceptive practices, to the cruelties in the colonies, to the swindles in trade, to the whole variety of forms of exploitation that characterized the early period of capitalism—its emergence and its growth. This problem is beyond my capabilities; one would have to extract the countless elements of a moral-philosophical investigation into it from the documents of all kinds that the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries have left us. And only a strongly intuitive and divinatory gift could penetrate to the very heart of the problem.”

[ 14 ] He does not take credit for this. So even in the case of one of the most earnest seekers, you can see—as he himself admits—the inability to answer the question: How did the souls of the present come to be?

[ 15 ] The other point we must consider is that, of course, a person striving in this way cannot possess the intuitive and divinatory gifts that would be necessary for this problem, because he is completely removed from the fundamental problem of spiritual science. To perceive how the spiritual flows down from the spiritual worlds—as it were, through the switch, through the human soul—and flows into the physical world—this actual flowing down of spiritual impulses from the forces and workings of the beings of the higher hierarchies—is, after all, quite foreign to such a mind. Therefore, such a mind observes: This and that has been taking place since the beginning of modern times, since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period. But it does not see what is weaving and living within it; nor does it see, in a concrete case, the conscious influx of spiritual impulses, so to speak, arising from the activities of the beings of the higher hierarchies. This can only be traced through spiritual science. But everything is preparing itself. The world was, of course, never without spirit, even if this spirit has been at work unconsciously in one way or another. I have often drawn your attention to how everything that has swept over a certain region of modern Europe has in fact been deeply influenced by spiritual powers. Even from external history, one can demonstrate that at a certain time, at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean period, something truly wondrous actually happened—something that the materialistically minded person is compelled to regard as a figment of the imagination if the matter is taken seriously. But then again, if he does not take it seriously, he cannot explain the entire course of recent history.

[ 16 ] This event, to which I have often referred, is the appearance of the simple peasant girl with a great historical mission: Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orléans. The map of Europe would be quite different today—as historians know very well—if Joan of Arc, the Maid of Orléans, had not appeared. Why are people today—one need only recall Anatole France—so astonished that, at a time when this could not yet happen consciously, an impulse—even a system of impulses—was sent from the spiritual worlds through a kind of half-atavistic, half-clairvoyant mediumship? But they don’t know what to make of it! Someone like Anatole France, of course, comes to terms with this by saying: Well, it does happen from time to time that people, under the influence of suggestion or fantastical forces emanating from individuals such as the Maid of Orleans, do all sorts of things. — Such a view is reminiscent of that of modern theologians, who, in a strange way, come to terms with the origins of Christianity through Paul’s vision near Damascus; they declare this Pauline suggestion near Damascus to be a proven fact and, in essence, would have to trace the whole of Christianity back to it, yet they are careful to avoid doing so, for otherwise they would have to admit that Christianity stems from a suggestive experience of Paul’s. And they will be careful not to say that. This half-heartedness is immensely harmful to the entire spiritual life; this half-heartedness is an expression of one’s powerlessness in the face of such questions. It is therefore good to examine this very point in the work of such an honest man as Jaur&s.

[ 17 ] He seeks to clarify the significance of the impulses that emanated from the landowners during the fifth post-Atlantic period, and those that emanated from the urban population. We need not address this socialist nuance here; I merely wish to point out that Jaurès is of the opinion that, during this period, it mattered less whether the social question was addressed by the landowners or by the industrial working class—a matter that is beside the point here. Peasant uprisings were movements dependent on land ownership; these are not the most important to him. And this is precisely what he wants to see in Joan of Arc: that, although she is a peasant girl, she does not act on behalf of the landowning population—that is, the peasantry—but rather on behalf of the broader circle of the urban population. Jaurès says:

[ 18 ] “Joan of Arc fulfills her mission and sacrifices herself for the salvation of her homeland in a France where the land is no longer the sole source of vitality; the communes are already playing a major role; Louis the Saint had sanctioned the craft charters and guild laws and had them solemnly proclaimed, the Parisian revolutions under the reigns of Charles V and Charles VI had seen the merchant bourgeoisie and the artisan class emerge as new powers; the most far-sighted among those who wished to reform the kingdom dreamed of an alliance between the bourgeoisie and the peasantry against lawlessness and arbitrariness; in this modern France, which the “Citizen King” — the son of the ruler whom Joan of Arc was about to save — would soon rule; in this diverse, cultured, and refined country, which was touched by the delicate, literary sorrows of that Charles d’Orléans, whose captivity moved the heart of the good Lorraine; in this society, which was anything but rural, Joan of Arc appeared.”

[ 19 ] So, in a sense, for Jaurès, it did not represent the peasant population, nor the segment of the population tied to land ownership, but rather that which was connected to modern life—to urban life. Jaurès says:

[ 20 ] “She was a simple country girl who had witnessed the pain and hardships of the farmers around her, but to whom all these tribulations were merely a close-up example of the sublime and greater suffering endured by the plundered monarchy and the ravaged nation. In her soul and in her thoughts, no place, no estate plays a role; she looks out beyond the fields of Lorraine. Her peasant heart is greater than all peasantry. It beats for the distant, good cities that the foreigner has besieged. Living in the fields does not necessarily mean being absorbed in matters of the soil. Amid the noise and bustle of the cities, Jeanne’s dream would certainly have been less free, less bold, and less far-reaching. Solitude protected the boldness of her thinking, and she experienced the great patriotic community much more intensely, since her imagination could, without confusion, fill the silent horizon with a pain and a hope that transcended it. It was not the spirit of peasant rebellion that filled her; she wanted to liberate all of France in order to later consecrate it to the worship of God, to Christianity, and to justice. Her goal seemed so lofty and pleasing to God that, in order to achieve it, she later found the courage to even oppose the Church and to invoke a revelation that stood far above any other revelation.”

[ 21 ] Thus, the other—I would say—becomes immediately vivid before Jaur&s. He lets his gaze wander over what has happened and finds that what took place there occurred under the influence of a spiritual impulse—as it were, channeled through the soul of Joan of Arc and penetrated into the physical world. But it goes without saying that a person who thinks this way cannot fully acknowledge that spiritual impulses and spiritual forces are the most important things. Thus, he again does not know what to make of what is even vividly revealed to him. You see, in this failure to acknowledge what is actually there—even on the part of the finest minds of our time—in the failure to acknowledge the spiritual impulses that they can nevertheless grasp with their own hands, that is, in the failure to acknowledge what is historically tangible, lies the great lie of modern life, by which even the finest, most aspiring people are infected. They want to comprehend what is there; but they cannot comprehend it because they cannot perceive the spirit at work within it. Those who think like Jaurès are unable to do so. Nor, however, could the others do so, even in the time of Joan of Arc, who, drawing on ancient traditional wisdom, stood before the immediate manifestation of a spiritual fact in the Maid of Orleans; for, as paradoxical as it may sound, the fact that one is a theologian does not make one a spiritualist, and the fact that one defends theological dogmas does not make one a recognizer of the spiritual world.

[ 22 ] The theologian, of whom I gave you a few examples yesterday, is of course not someone who acknowledges the spiritual world; rather, he is just as much a materialist as Büchner or Moleschott—except that Büchner and Moleschott were more genuine than such a theologian with his materialism. What one says is not what matters; what matters is what one takes in through living experience: whether one truly recognizes the spiritual when it confronts one. But even the theologians were unable to do this when Joan of Arc stood before them, and this fact is something that Jaur&s, in turn, points out quite well when he says:

[ 23 ] “Their goal seems so lofty and pleasing to God that, in order to achieve it, they later find the courage to even oppose the Church and invoke a revelation that stands far above any other revelation. To the theologians who urge her to justify her miracles and her mission from the sacred books, she replies—”

[ 24 ] So the theologians—these representatives of spiritual life who once had a revelation of spiritual life before them—did not set themselves above this revelation of spiritual life; rather, they came with the parchment, which is the source from which divine revelation springs, and said: “Prove to us from Holy Scripture that what you are telling us can be true.” — The Maid of Orleans was not to be allowed to prove that she had any mission based on the living reality of a connection with the spiritual world, but rather she was to prove it from the ancient books. And she replied:

[ 25 ] “There is more written in the Book of God than in all your books.” Jaurès comments: “A wonderful saying that, in a certain sense, stands in contrast to the peasant soul, whose faith is rooted above all in tradition. How far removed all this is from the dull, narrow-minded, and limited patriotism of the landowning class! Jeanne, however, hears the divine voices of her heart as she looks up toward the radiant and gentle heights of heaven.”

[ 26 ] Imagine, on the one hand, honesty, and on the other, profound untruth; for, of course, a person of the present day regards what is in The Maid of Orleans as nothing more than self-suggestion, a work of fiction, and sees only figurative, poetic expressions in what she says:

[ 27 ] “How far removed all this is from the dull, narrow-minded, and limited patriotism of the landed gentry! But Jeanne hears the divine voices of her heart as she looks up toward the radiant and gentle heights of heaven.”

[ 28 ] These divine voices of her heart are something entirely abstract to a man like that. What flows down from above is not something truly real: the forces of life flowing in through a source like the Maid of Orleans, so that one absorbs them in order to use this spiritual impulse to pursue reform-oriented social science! No, Joan of Arc speaks of this; but when he wants to do anything, he does not look up to what flows down from the radiant heights of heaven, but rather he adds, divides, raises to powers, and applies logic to abstract concepts—purely materialistic thoughts. This is the profound untruth that people are not even aware of—one that the very best among them fail to recognize.

[ 29 ] Examples like these really drive home how people who are immersed in contemporary intellectual life are simply unable to recognize what is most important: the spiritual realities themselves, which, from their perspective of contemporary life, they are bound to regard as mere fantasy. I have said: In the 19th century, what is indicated here—the prevalence of the materialistic mindset—experienced a crisis. It reached a certain climax. And it is good to see how things are unfolding; for you will have seen, precisely from yesterday’s example of a theologian, how what flows most strongly in “theology”—one might even say—is that which has originated from the materialistic mindset of the natural sciences. That is why it flows most disastrously there, because it leads most strongly to untruthfulness—to unconscious untruthfulness. That is the crucial point one must grasp. And a theologian such as the one who represented Reformed Christianity in Aarau this past May—who spoke of how we all want to wean ourselves off thinking and how we all want to become Christs—is merely a figure standing on the same ideological ground. For in his pamphlet, for example, one finds the view: These people want to explore the mysterious; but that is precisely what we do not want, this man argues from his standpoint—the mysterious is valuable precisely because it remains mysterious. We want to leave the mysterious as it is; we certainly do not want to unveil it. For once the mysterious is unveiled to us, it is no longer mysterious, and to unveil the mysterious is irreligious; it is unchristian. — This is the man’s standpoint.

[ 30 ] And yet, in a sense, this man is typical—even for our time, which has taken intellectual defects to the point of moral defects; for what he says about our understanding of the Christ principle—and much of what he says in general—borders not merely on misunderstanding, but on deliberate falsification, since he could know otherwise and does not feel sufficiently conscientious to examine this other perspective, to get to know it, but instead readily states what is incorrect: This is where intellectual misunderstanding begins to turn into a moral defect, which then creeps into people’s souls in a particularly disastrous way. What he said there is truly a product of our time, and yet it is interesting to realize that this was not always the case. If one examines the matters closely, one can already see that this was not always the case. This brochure reproduces a lecture that was given on “Modern Mysticism and Free Christianity” in Aarau at the Swiss Reformation Day on May 22, 1916. In Aarau! So this, so to speak, is the spirit that permeated the atmosphere of Aarau in May 1916.

[ 31 ] Well, in such a case, it is good to really study the matter and examine, within the same context, how things developed: In Aarau, in 1828, published by Heinrich Remigius Sauerländer, Dr. Troxier’s Naturlehre des menschlichen Erkennens appeared! So we see that this Naturlehre des menschlichen Erkennens found a place within that same aura back then, in 1828. You are already familiar with Troxler—at least most of you are—from my last book, Vom Menschenrätsel. Troxler was born in Switzerland; he was first a professor in Lucerne, then in Basel and Bern, and he died in 1868. He has not yet reached the standpoint of contemporary spiritual science; that is to say, he lacks the ability to present the worlds concretely before people, as spiritual science is able to do. But he is, I would say, on the path. And it is interesting to see how, on the same terrain, things were once discussed differently. To illustrate this, I will present just a few passages by Troxler today, so that you may see how differently people once spoke in this same field. I would like to note first that, while Troxler certainly did not yet have spiritual science, he does put forward concepts—initially as hypotheses—which, though perhaps not precise, can nevertheless be recognized in essence when viewed from the standpoint of spiritual science. We are speaking here of the physical body, the etheric body, the astral body, and the I. These four concepts roughly correspond—even though Troxler lacks a clear conception of them—to what he calls the body in the human being, the physical body, the soul, and the spirit. He divides the human being into four parts: body, physical body, soul, and spirit, and he sharply criticizes the philosophers who came before him for failing to realize that it is nonsense to say that the human being consists of spirit and body, but rather that one can only understand the human being by viewing it as this four-part system: the body and soul as the inner aspects, the physical body as the outer, lower aspect, and the spirit as the higher aspect. And as I said, even if Troxler did not advance as far as spiritual science, he nevertheless managed—through an insight into the soul—to attain a high degree of understanding of the human being. And from this perspective, the man says the following, for example. Referring to earlier philosophers who simply confused everything within the human being, he says:

[ 32 ] “In general, our only criticism of this philosopher, as well as of all the philosophers and theologians mentioned above, is that they have derived their anthroposophy more from reflection and speculation, or from authority and dogmatism, than from their primal consciousness or their own spirit perfected in religion. Only the original and direct knowledge of the Divine in its nature leads human beings to self-knowledge of their essential personality and living spontaneity, for which, until now, only individual, derived, and indirect works and forms of subordinate and one-sided kinds and degrees of consciousness have been regarded.”

[ 33 ] He goes on to say:

[ 34 ] “The Theosophists are, admittedly, no more united among themselves than the philosophers. For example, in the following remark—which seems to me to be quite accurate and close to our own view—Daumer opposes Böhme, Schelling, and Baader alike. On page 39, he says: ‘It should be noted that in Böhme, as in Schelling, there prevails that confusion of the self-transcended God (the Ungrounded) with the Unconditional in God, and the error that God has found and explored Himself through the Ground itself.’

[ 35 ] So, once again, the confusion regarding these very issues that are at stake here.

[ 36 ] “Here, too, it is worth mentioning the way in which mysticism, for the most part, loses sight of the human being in God—just as philosophy loses sight of God in the human being—and has transferred this primordial relationship of human nature, which, according to anthroposophy, the human being should be content to explore within himself, from himself to God Himself in theosophical speculations,” and so on.

[ 37 ] This was Troxler’s most intense endeavor, particularly in the area I have just referred to: working toward the development of anthroposophy. One might say that Troxler appears as a kind of harbinger precisely in this field. Now just consider for a moment how things would have been different if Troxler, who was active in Lucerne, Bern, and Basel, had been heeded back then when he sought to introduce anthroposophy—albeit in his own way. If that had gained a foothold, how different things would be now that a structure is being erected here for anthroposophy, which has just advanced to the point of concrete spiritual knowledge. If you reflect on such matters, studying them specifically in this concrete case—this remarkable instance in which direct anthroposophy, taught by name in the 1930s, seeks to reemerge—and consider how, right now in the very same Aarau where this book was published—a book containing statements about anthroposophy as it might have been back then— a lecture is being given on “Modern Mysticism and Free Christianity,” in which it is said: These anthroposophists want to make it a principle to wean themselves off thinking and to become all the Christs—if you reflect on this, then you will already begin to grasp the materialistic crisis that arose in the course of the 19th century. And it is good to form an idea of such things, to know that one has no justification today, when standing on the ground of external spiritual life, to speak in any other way than by being conscious of expressing a Wagnerian attitude and not a Faustian one, when one says:

It is a great delight,
To put oneself in the spirit of the times,
To see how a wise man thought before us,
And how we have ultimately come so far.

[ 38 ] Just imagine, if the man who spoke in Aarau—looking at Troxler, who had his book published in Aarau—were to say now—he would certainly say it from his own perspective, as today’s speaker on modern mysticism and liberal Christianity:

It is a great delight,
To put oneself in the spirit of the times,
To see how a wise man thought before us,
And how we have ultimately come so far!

[ 39 ] Troxler has not yet come to realize that these anthroposophists are trying to wean themselves off thinking and want to become Christs themselves, that they want to unveil the mystery rather than leave it a mystery, and in doing so are rebelling against all honest, human endeavor. Troxler would not say: “I have finally realized that these anthroposophists are to be condemned, for they all want to become Christs, want to renounce thinking and reflection, and want to unveil the mysteries; but man is not here to investigate anything—rather, as the theologian believes, he is here to think, which is precisely what the anthroposophists want to give up!”

[ 40 ] As you can see, mutual understanding will certainly not be possible; but it does serve as an example of whether or not a crisis—a materialist crisis—exists in the 19th century, and to what extent it is true that we have come “so wonderfully far”! I believe we’ve come a wonderfully long way—from Troxler to Joß—in the realm of the Aarau aura! But not forward—backward! More on that tomorrow.