The Rudolf Steiner Archive

First Lecture

[ 1 ] This is not the time for festive reflections in the usual sense, and in these difficult times it will be best if we try, within the scope and framework of spiritual science, to search for things that can help us understand, to some extent and in the right way, what the deeper foundations of our time are. And so today I would like to speak to you about a specific research finding that may shed light in this direction; I would like to attempt to view the development of humanity from the post-Atlantean era up to the present day from a particular perspective. However, once these reflections are concluded, I will be compelled by various circumstances to also say a few words this evening about the Society itself.

[ 2 ] We know from various observations made over the years that, in a certain sense, the development of humanity as a whole can be compared to the development of the individual human being, simply because in both cases this development, at least at first glance, is a progression over time. For years now, I have been investigating the inner conditions of development, particularly those of post-Atlantean humanity. And just as many things have become clear to me during my research this winter, so too has something significant emerged regarding the question just raised.

[ 3 ] Viewed from the outside, when observing a phase of human development as it unfolds, it might seem that one would have to conclude that this phase of human development corresponds so closely to the individual development of a single human being that one might perhaps say: Just as the individual human being develops between these and those years of his or her life, so too does humanity develop in a similar way. Now, I have found that this is not the case at all, and that significant mysteries—particularly those of the present human epoch—are connected with this difference. If we go back—and in doing so we may certainly apply ideas that are familiar to us—to the first post-Atlantean cultural period, which we are accustomed to calling the ancient Indian or primordial Indian period, we may ask ourselves: To which specific stage of an individual human life can the collective age of humanity during that primordial Indian cultural period be compared? — Spiritual research reveals something most remarkable here. I have often said: People too easily imagine that in the times when human culture already existed here or there, the inner constitution of the human soul was essentially the same as it is now. But that is by no means the case. This view arises solely because modern humanity, with its tools of materialistic science, is utterly incapable of forming a conception of how souls have actually changed over a relatively short period in the course of human development—and how, in particular, the life of the soul has changed.

[ 4 ] When we look at humanity around us today, we notice that during a certain phase of individual human development, a person first grows physically: their physical organs develop in both their finer and coarser structures; not only does the person grow taller, but the organs also become more perfected internally. And we see that up to a certain age, spiritual and soul development is linked to physical development, proceeding, so to speak, in parallel with it; and no educator can ignore this with impunity. But we also know how, from a certain age onward, this intimate interweaving of spiritual and soul development with physical development ceases. We observe that, from a certain age onward, people consider themselves finished. In our time, indeed, if we look more closely at life around us, we become very aware of how—one might say—people consider themselves finished at the earliest possible stage, regarding themselves as having nothing more to learn. We know, after all, that it is considered unreasonable for many people today to expect them to read, say, Goethe’s *Iphigenia* or Schiller’s *Tell* at a certain age. These were read in school when one was a young girl or a student. They belong to one’s youth. From a certain age onward, one no longer concerns oneself with such things! Admittedly, this is not a universal habit, but it is a very, very widespread one. And we can observe similar phenomena in many areas of life. But there is a truth underlying this. The truth underlying it is that, from a certain point in their individual development, human beings have, so to speak, physically matured; that their spiritual and soul life then ceases to be dependent on the growth and development of the physical organs—which has, after all, come to an end—and that their spiritual and soul life develops freely and independently; this is what we come to realize. When we look at humanity today, we find that this point in time, just described, occurs at a certain age; we will speak about this in more detail later. But one would be very much mistaken to believe that the situation as it is today was even remotely similar to that of the first, the primordial Indian cultural epoch. Even back then, of course, people lived to be 6, 12, 20, 30, 40, 50, and so on years old, but their entire life related to this aging process differently than it does now. In those ancient times, right up to an incredibly advanced age—from the 48th to the 56th year of life—the human soul experienced such a dependence of the soul-spiritual upon the physical-bodily that is felt today only in childhood and adolescence. And consider what that means. It means that in those days, the human being experienced a coexistence of the soul with the physical body during the ascending physical development of the human being up to the age of 35; then, as physical development began to decline, the soul accompanied this process, feeling dependent on this physical development. Whereas at first the physical aspect was a process of growth and unfolding, it then gradually became a process of decline. But with this decline of the physical—which people today do not perceive at all, because their soul-spiritual life proceeds relatively independently of the physical—it was precisely those who reached this age during the first post-Atlantean epoch who experienced an inner liberation into the universal spiritual. As the physical aspect receded, yet they remained dependent on it, the spiritual shone forth within them. And this lasted from immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe until the age of 56. It was then, if we may put it that way, that the human being had truly come of age; that is to say, it was only then that the dependence of the spiritual-soul aspect on the physical aspect ceased. The fact that the human being also participated spiritually and soulfully in the physical aspect during the period of descending development meant that, precisely at that time, echoes of inner spiritual vision were still present. And now the remarkable thing is that this nature of human life naturally radiated out into the entire culture. Those who were young in those ancient times knew, through the general concepts and habits of thought and feeling that one acquired, that when a person grew old, they reached that venerable age in which the divine mysteries unfolded within their soul. Thus, in that first cultural epoch of the post-Atlantean era, there existed a veneration of old age, a cult of old age, of which we can no longer form any conception today unless we perceive it in the echoes that have remained with us spiritually from those ancient times. After all the reflections I have already made, I hardly need to mention that everyone who died earlier, before reaching this patriarchal age, knew that there are worlds other than the material-physical world, and that there the high spiritual-soul beings of the higher worlds had other tasks to perform with those who had died earlier. Thus, it goes without saying that even if someone had to die before reaching this advanced patriarchal age, they could still experience a sense of fulfillment within themselves.

[ 5 ] The strange thing is that, when one investigates these matters, one cannot say that humanity is growing older; rather, curiously enough, one must say that humanity is growing younger, regressing. Immediately after the Atlantean catastrophe, development—as I have described it—took place up to the age of 56; then came a time when it took place up to the age of 55, then up to the age of 54, and so on. And when the first post-Atlantean cultural epoch had come to an end, this development lasted only until the age of 48. Then, in a sense, the human being found himself in a situation where he had to say to himself: “Now I am left to my own devices; now the physical body no longer contributes anything of its own accord to my spiritual and soul development!” — which, as we shall see, occurs much earlier today.

[ 6 ] Now we come to the second, the primordial Persian cultural epoch. It corresponds to the individual human life span from age 48 to 42. This means that during this epoch, people feel dependent in their soul-spiritual development on the physical body well into their forties, and that it is only when they pass the age of forty that they begin to experience the independence that today tends to set in earlier. Consequently, however, the soul did not participate for so long or to such a high degree in, so to speak, the decline and sclerosis of the organism; it did not participate for so long in this surrender of the organism’s forces that could guide the human being into the spiritual world and provide him with insights into that world.

[ 7 ] Then, following the second, the Proto-Persian cultural epoch, came the one we have called the Egyptian-Chaldean epoch. During this time, the age of humanity as a whole declined to an individual lifespan of between 42 and 35 years. This means that the fruits of development up to this age came to the individual of their own accord. Then, successively through the various sub-epochs of this Egyptian-Chaldean period, the individual had to undergo free, independent, purely inner development at the ages of 42, 40, 38, and so on.

[ 8 ] This truth seems to us to be most significant for the fourth, the Greco-Latin era, for in this Greco-Latin era, all of humanity developed in such a way that its age corresponded to the individual human age between 35 and 28 years. This, however, places us precisely in the years of middle age. So consider what actually took place during this Greco-Latin period. Those who developed as individual human beings within this Greco-Latin cultural period experienced—purely through the laws of human development itself—the dependence of the soul-spiritual upon progressive growth. And during the time when humanity began to decline, when it became sclerotic—if I may put it that way; this is, of course, a radical expression—the soul became free from the physical. A member of the Greco-Latin culture lived through the first half of life in accordance with the general development of humanity. Individual development coincided so wonderfully with the general development of humanity in this age that, from the moment when human beings began to experience a downward trajectory in their physical development, nothing more was revealed to the Greeks through the physical body. That is why Greek culture was so full of everything that grows, flourishes, and ascends in its development. But they also missed what can reveal itself only through the development of the physical in the descending course of human evolution. That is to say: unless they had received spiritual instruction through the Mysteries, the Greeks lost—through their own human nature—the ability to glimpse into the spiritual world.

[ 9 ] During the third period, it was possible—simply by virtue of human nature—to gain insight into the spiritual worlds; it was possible for human beings to know something about the immortality of the soul directly through intuition. During the Greco-Latin period, it was still possible for human beings to know that everything that grows, rises, and comes into being is permeated by the soul. But the independent life of the soul—whether after a person had passed through the gate of death or before entering physical life through birth—was no longer accessible to the Greeks through the natural course of human development. Hence the view—as I have often mentioned here and as is well known—expressed in the famous saying of the Greek hero: “Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of shadows.” — The Greeks knew through direct perception how the upper world, with whatever the human being is within it, is permeated by the soul. Through this perception, the supersensible world eluded them. And it is remarkable how the great Greek sage Aristotle developed his ideas—which we have already discussed in the reflections held here recently—precisely from this fundamental perspective. Franz Brentano, the great Aristotelian scholar who recently passed away, interpreted this correctly when he said: Aristotle’s idea of immortality is that the human being who has passed through the gate of death is no longer a complete human being. — For as a Greek, Aristotle—based on the premises I have outlined above—had counted the union of the physical with the spiritual as part of what constituted a complete human being. Only if he had been a mystery sage—which Aristotle was not—would he, as a Greek, have known of the true immortality of the soul. If he was not a sage of the mysteries, as Aristotle was not, then he had to say—which is certainly false in light of the highest truths, but which sprang from Greek thought, even though this thought reached its highest flowering in Aristotle—“he had to tell himself: If I cut off a person’s arm, he is no longer a complete human being; if I cut off both his arms, even less so; but if I take his entire body, as death does, then he is certainly no longer a complete human being. Hence, for Aristotle, the soul, having passed through the gate of death, is an incomplete human being—a human being lacking the organs necessary to interact with any environment. This is the Aristotelian idea of immortality, which Brentano correctly interprets.

[ 10 ] Now consider this: during this period, people generally went through the stage of life that corresponds to the individual life stage from age 35 to age 28. Let’s take the first third, that is, around the age of 33. The fourth post-Atlantean epoch begins in the year 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha; it ends in the year 1413 after the Mystery of Golgotha. It is the period during which—if humanity had continued to develop in the same way as it had up to that point—people in general would have become younger and younger, and would have ceased to be dependent on the physical body in terms of their spiritual and soul life much earlier than when a person reaches middle age in their growth and development. Not only would a kind of shadowy immortality, such as that of the Greeks, have had to result, but human beings would gradually—as humanity would have yielded a lifespan extending only up to the ages of 34, 33, 32, and so on, have reached a point where the physical-bodily aspect would, so to speak, have overwhelmed him, so that through his own development within humanity he would no longer have been able to look up to any supersensible world. It is therefore of immense significance that at the end of the first third of this period, which begins in 747 B.C., the Mystery of Golgotha takes place—precisely during this period—and that it is during this period that Christ Jesus develops exactly up to that individual age, 33 years, which was the average age of humanity at that time. Then death occurs on Golgotha. Christ Jesus grows toward the age of humanity, and through the Mystery of Golgotha he brings about the possibility of attaining knowledge of immortality in a way that is not derived from the earthly realm—a way that could only come to Earth through that fertilization which occurred when the Christ Spirit united with the personality of Jesus, and this personality reached the age of 33, the same age as humanity was when it was in danger of losing all connection with the supersensible world.

[ 11 ] Yes, if one considers the development of humanity from this perspective, starting from entirely different premises, and if—simply as a result of spiritual scientific research—this profound connection between the life and death of Christ Jesus and the entire earthly development of humanity then becomes apparent, then this is indeed a realization that penetrates deeply, deeply into the soul. And I can think of very little that must strike the soul as profoundly as the realization that the Mystery of Golgotha is embedded within a significant law of human and humankind’s development. We see how, in this way, spiritual science gradually casts its explanatory and illuminating rays upon the Mystery of Golgotha. And we may perhaps sense that, as spiritual science continues to develop further and further through careful research, many other lights will be shed on this Mystery of Golgotha—which we certainly understand today, even with the most intensive spiritual science, only to a very small extent on an earthly level—and which will be understood ever more deeply the further humanity advances in this development. I may say that I myself have had few moments of such deep emotion during my research in spiritual science as this one, when—let me use the word—from the gray depths of the spirit, this connection between the 33rd year of humanity in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch and the 33rd year of the life of Christ Jesus, in which death occurred on Golgotha, emerged as a result.

[ 12 ] And as we proceed, we enter our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, and we must note that in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the general age of humanity corresponds to the individual age between 28 and 21 years. This means that when the fifth epoch began in 1413, the general state of human development was such that people could consider themselves dependent in their spiritual and soul development until the age of 28. Then the soul had to become independent. So you see that it is necessary for this age to strive with full consciousness—inwardly, through spiritual development—to give the soul what can no longer be provided by dependence on the physical body. In this age, a person must take into the soul things that can only reach him or her individually—things that directly grasp the soul in its independence and freedom and lead it, as a soul, beyond the ages of 28, 27, 26, and so on. However, for the time being, general education—no matter how much is talked about it, or one might even say “fabricated” about it—still aims to provide people with no more than what corresponds precisely to what humanity offers of its own accord. Now, in our age, humanity as a whole is in its 27th year of life. It will reach the ages of 26, 25, and so on. And by the time the fifth period has run its course, it will have regressed to the age of 21. From this you can see the necessity for the emergence of spiritual science, which seeks to impart to the soul that which cannot result from physical development, and which seeks to support the soul in its development as a free entity. Otherwise, we would have the situation where people whose development remains dependent solely on what comes externally from the sensory world and the ordinary historical world would, in our age, never be older than 27 years—even if they were actually to live to be a hundred years old. That is to say, whatever they might express in their inner state—in terms of ideas, feelings, and ideals—would always bear the character of what corresponds to the human life span up to the age of 27.

[ 13 ] I have studied the most diverse personalities of our age—those who have made their mark on the various branches of contemporary culture and on public life. I certainly did not take this part of my studies lightly. I have tried to determine what exactly constitutes one phenomenon or another that we encounter today in life as so questionable. And it has become clear that much of what we now face stems from the fact that people are active in the public sphere—acting in the way I have described to you in previous reflections—whose fundamental mindset, in their ideas and in what they are capable of expressing, extends only up to the age of 27, no matter how old they may be. Truly, what I am about to say, I do not say out of any passing mood, nor out of any animosity, for the studies on which this is based go far back into the time before this war, as I can even demonstrate from the cycles. It has become clear to me that a characteristic personality—of whom it must be said that, in terms of the configuration of his soul, in terms of what he is in his innermost being, he has not grown older than 27 years— but who has, of course, aged physically and now acts in public life as a quintessential representative figure—there are also many others we shall not discuss; let us take a more distant example—a distinctive figure who has had a significant influence in our time: Woodrow Wilson, President of the North American Union. I have taken great pains to study this man’s soul constitution. He is representative of those who have gained nothing through the development of the freely self-reliant, independent soul; representative of those people who, in our age, do not grow older than the age of humanity as a whole: 27 years. It is, in essence, untrue when they count 30, 40, 50 years, and so on, for in reality, in terms of the progress of their soul, they are no older than 27 years. And I believe it is true what a friend of our movement told me after he had just listened to this very lecture I am now giving here in Munich: that for him, who has thought and suffered deeply about many aspects of the present, this explanation of the peculiarity of the present was truly a ray of light that helped him understand many phenomena. The abstract nature of ideals—a youthful trait of ideals—the abstract rambling about ideas of freedom, in which one indulges one’s own intellectual lust and believes one has a world mission—so characteristic of Woodrow Wilson! This fact explains the impracticality of the ideas—that is, the impossibility of having ideas that are creative enough to take root in reality as constructive and creative—but rather the only possibility of conceiving ideas that appeal to people, that make sense to humanity at large, which simply wants ideas suitable for those under 27. This, in turn, is a hallmark of what Woodrow Wilson brought into the world; for his ideas were so impractical that, for example, he spread the idea of peace throughout the world, and from this idea of peace sprang—war for his own country; things that are deeply interconnected but have their basis in facts such as those I have just indicated to you.

[ 14 ] Yes, the profound truths of human development are not pleasant to hear. This is probably why these profound truths, drawn from the sources of spiritual research, are so unpopular today. Although not in their conscious mind, people sense in their subconscious that these ideas are sometimes unpleasant. They are afraid of them. It is an unconscious fear, a subconscious fear, but one that acts so reliably that it prevents the idea itself from rising into the conscious mind, allowing instead hatred and antipathy toward these things to assert themselves. What breeds antipathy toward spiritual science today is this subconscious hatred, but above all this subconscious fear of ideas that, admittedly, cannot be so easily “digested” in life—so to speak—as the so-called “great idea” that people love today: “the right man in the right place,” and so on. — Life moving into the future needs concrete ideas, concrete ideals; it needs ideas and ideals that can form an alliance with reality—I have mentioned this from a wide variety of perspectives—but they must be drawn from a genuine understanding of the conditions of humanity’s development and existence. No salvation can come to this development of humanity as long as people are unwilling to ground what is called idealism in such concrete spiritual research. Today, no ideals that are in harmony with reality—that fit into reality—can be established out of mere caprice.

[ 15 ] Just imagine for a moment what it will be like in the sixth epoch—the one that will succeed our own—and what it would be like if what can be drawn from the sources of the spiritual world did not connect with the independent human soul, which stands freely on its own. Then human development will have entered a stage of life corresponding to the individual life stage from age 21 down to age 14. Then one could be 30, 40, or 50 years old—if individual development has not been stimulated—and yet possess the maturity of a 17-, 16-, or 15-year-old. It is also, once again, the greatness of human development that, the further the Earth advances, the more humanity’s progress is placed into the hands of the individual. But if we fail to take into account that human progress is placed in humanity’s own hands, what follows? Epidemic dementia praecox! From this, however, you can see that it is necessary to look into the depths of earthly existence and become aware of what threatens humanity. Today, we witness a great deal of courage—which cannot be overestimated—in outward actions; but what humanity will need as development continues is courage of the soul—that courage which is capable of facing truths that at first do not seem pleasant or comfortable, especially when one loves only the comfort and pleasantness of life, and when one strives to hear from knowledge only that which, as they say, “uplifts” one. For then one demands pleasant truths. And that is, perhaps, even something that is very, very widespread today. As soon as someone speaks of truths that are unpleasant, though necessary, one does not like him, for one feels he is mistreating one, that he does not uplift one. But the truth of knowledge stands higher than those words that flow from the mouth like butter and can therefore be taken home like a refreshing drink. Higher still is the satisfaction we draw from knowledge that seeks to be grounded in a life of truth and necessity, rather than in a life of easy comfort.

[ 16 ] These are the things I wanted to say today to help us understand the times we live in.