The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The Karma of Materialism VIII

[ 1 ] Following up on last Tuesday’s reflections, I would like to present to you today some perspectives for assessing Luther’s place in history. Let me note from the outset: The reflections we will engage in today are intended to examine Luther from the standpoint of the humanities, not from a religious one.

[ 2 ] Above all, when considering Luther from a humanities perspective, the significance of the era for the nature, appearance, and impact of this figure becomes particularly evident—one might say even more so than with many other historical phenomena. Let us first clarify, according to our perspective, the era in which Luther’s emergence took place: the sixteenth century, viewed from a spiritual-scientific perspective within the context of world history, shortly after the dawn of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. We know that this fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch began around the fifteenth century. Up to that point, we must include what we call the Greco-Latin era, which began around the eighth century before the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus, Luther appeared shortly after that which was, in a certain sense, connected to Greco-Latin thought and feeling—in the sense in which we view it—had begun to fade in the thinking and feeling of civilized humanity. To the impartial observer, his personality initially appears to be a contradictory one, but in such a way that the two aspects of this contradiction ultimately converge in a higher unity, as we shall see. We need only make it quite clear to ourselves that much more took place between the fourteenth and the sixteenth centuries than contemporary historiography is inclined to assume—above all with regard to the transformation of the human soul. This is given far too little consideration in contemporary historiography. People of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries still had, through the very structure and constitution of their souls, a direct relationship with the spiritual world. This has simply been forgotten today, but it cannot be emphasized often enough. People of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—taken, of course, on average—still perceived elemental spirituality when they turned their gaze to the beings of nature, to the movements of the cloudy sky, and so on. Far more than is believed today, people of that era still had the ability to maintain a connection—even while remaining here on the physical plane—with the departed dead to whom they were karmically bound. A direct knowledge that this world, which the senses perceive, is not the only one, was still present at that time as a remnant of an older consciousness. The transition to the later era was far more abrupt than people today believe. The emerging natural science, which is fully justified in its own right, has, so to speak, drawn a veil over the spiritual world that lies behind the sensory one. I can well imagine that today’s historian, who is accustomed to accepting as immediate truth whatever he has been taught, will not believe in the abruptness of this transition at all, because it seems to him ahistorical and unsupported by historical evidence. But spiritual science presents it this way for the age that is now dawning: in this age, the human soul is placed entirely within the sensory world by virtue of the human organization that has emerged in this age.

[ 3 ] Now, we have already seen in the previous section what was woven into Luther’s soul: living within it were the aftereffects—as I described it—of what he had absorbed in the mysteries of the pre-Christian era, in which he was present during his pre-Christian incarnation, but in those mysteries that were working toward Christianity. In this respect, he was in the fullest sense a child of his time—that is, of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch—an epoch in which the sense of the former connection with the spiritual world has faded among human beings, even though this sense was once as vivid as it was among the ancient initiates of the mysteries. But one must not believe that what has faded—that which therefore does not appear within the realm of the soul’s knowledge—does not exist or is not effective. It is effective precisely when the individual, through his inner karma, is simultaneously receptive; when he is open to what is nevertheless surging up from the depths of the soul but cannot enter into consciousness. Luther was such a receptive person.

[ 4 ] One can see for oneself that the effects of what I have just hinted at as the causes were present in him. They were evident in the immense spiritual anguish he had to endure—an anguish that, in a sense, as it took shape as an expression of his own soul, assumed the character of his age in his words and ideas, yet which was essentially the anguish over what human beings are now, in the fifth post-Atlantean age—the materialistic age— deprived of impressions from the spiritual world. All the deprivations that the deeper essences of souls undergo in the materialistic age were deposited in Luther’s soul to a very special degree. Certainly, today we must use different words to make clear what he felt than the ones he himself used. It is not his words that I am using to characterize what he felt: What will become of humanity if it is now cut off from contemplating the spiritual world, if it gradually forgets the impressions it once had of the spiritual world? — Imagine this feeling condensed as much as possible, and you will have the underlying tone of the spiritual anguish that lived within Luther’s soul. Why did it live so particularly strongly within him?

[ 5 ] To answer this question, we must turn to the aforementioned ambivalence of his nature. On the one hand, Luther was, in a sense, a son of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. He empathized with the people of this epoch insofar as he perceived, with infinitely heightened intensity, the deprivations that the people of the fifth cultural epoch were already experiencing, though they were not yet conscious of them. Why did he perceive these deprivations with such intensity?

[ 6 ] He felt this way because, deep down, he was once again entirely a son of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. That was the conflict within his nature. The impressions from the mysteries I have spoken of had taken such deep root in his soul that he felt, in his innermost being, like a person of the fourth cultural epoch—and yet was once again wholly devoted to his own time, the fifth cultural epoch. Because, in a certain sense, he felt inwardly connected to the fourth cultural epoch like an ancient Roman or an ancient Greek—one might even say, as improbable as that sounds today— he was therefore unable to show any understanding for what now truly sprang from the hearts—as strange as that may sound—of the people of the fifth cultural epoch, namely, an understanding of a worldview such as the Copernican one, of the conception of the world based purely on the calculations of the senses. The fourth cultural epoch would certainly have had no understanding for such a world system. This sounds strange to us today because our age, in many respects, truly believes that the pinnacle of all wisdom has now been reached, and that Copernicanism is the ultimate truth. I have often pointed out that this is a great folly. Just as people today look down upon the Ptolemaic world system from the standpoint of Copernicanism, so too will the Copernican world system one day be replaced by another that relates to it in the same way that the Copernican system relates to the Ptolemaic one. But given the spiritual disposition of the people of the fifth cultural epoch, they are capable of understanding such a purely sensory, calculated system of the movements of the celestial bodies.

[ 7 ] Luther had no sympathy for this. Copernicanism struck him as a kind of folly. Luther had little interest in the ideas that preoccupied the people of the fifth cultural epoch—ideas that were scientific, materialistic, and purely spatial—insofar as these ideas expressed the phenomena of the world. But he was all the more interested in the emotional disposition, in humanity’s place in the world during the fifth cultural epoch. Yet he perceived the relationship to the world that was imposed on people of the fifth cultural epoch with the innermost spiritual impulses of a person from the fourth cultural epoch, the Greco-Latin era.

[ 8 ] Thus, as we consider him, Luther looks back, on the one hand, at the way in which, during the fourth cultural epoch, humanity related to the cosmos and to the spiritual content of the cosmos; on the other hand, he looks forward to all the sensations, feelings, and imaginings that human beings of the fifth cultural epoch will experience because of their special relationship to the cosmos, which, in a sense, separates them from the spiritual content of the cosmos. One might say: with a soul from the fourth cultural epoch, Luther empathizes with the experiences of human beings in the fifth cultural epoch. And these particular experiences of human beings in the fifth cultural epoch were now imprinted upon Luther’s own soul.

[ 9 ] Let us just compare—and to make the comparison more meaningful—an average educated person of today, who thinks and feels in accordance with a scientific worldview, with a person from the fairly ancient times of the fourth epoch, who still felt in harmony with that attitude of humanity toward the world, when human beings were aware of their relationship to the spiritual content of this world. Above all, concepts that we today express through the words “imagination” and “inspiration” were still very much alive among people in those earlier times. The fact that human beings perceive colors not only through their eyes and hear sounds not only through their ears, but also receive revelations of the spiritual world in images—and receive messages from the spiritual world—through a special activation of their soul was something quite commonplace in earlier times. The idea that the divine-spiritual comes to life in the human soul was, in those times, a common notion; human beings felt themselves to be in connection with their God. |

[ 10 ] This was to come to an end in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, so that humanity might undergo a trial. In this fifth epoch, human beings—trained through special methods and a special science—felt the possibility of observing external natural phenomena closely and understanding how these phenomena interact with their own being. Yet the view upward toward the spiritual world remains closed to them; the path from the soul to the spiritual worlds does not exist.

[ 11 ] Let’s really compare these two types of people side by side. We saw this last time as well: for Luther, the spiritual world was open. He did not merely possess abstract knowledge; he did not merely have an abstract religious sense of the spiritual world; rather, he had—as is characteristic—a living interaction, above all, with the evil spirits of the world’s spiritual realm—which is not, however, necessarily an evil trait. So he knew from direct experience of the existence of the spiritual world; but he knew that these experiences would fade away for people of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, that they would no longer be there. And these people of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—how did they feel, how did their souls lack spiritual perception? That became the great mystery for him. But he also looked upon these people from a heart that was imbued with the forces of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. These forces of the fourth epoch reached out once more with all their vitality toward the spiritual world. It is there! That is how it appeared to Luther on the one hand. It is there; one must not fail to awaken in people the awareness that this spiritual world exists. But on the other hand, one must not succumb to any delusion about this: in the humanity that will now fill the coming age, a direct awareness of the spiritual world cannot exist; this humanity will be able to make use only of its senses. While the insights of earlier times had provided knowledge of the divine-spiritual through a direct gaze—a gaze toward the spiritual world gained through experience—Luther could say nothing else to the humanity now to come than: “If, then, you wish to look up toward the spiritual world, you will find nothing, for this ability has vanished; however, if you wish to be firm in your awareness of the spiritual world, then you must above all take the most reliable testimony, which still contains the direct knowledge of the spiritual world that can no longer be given in this age. — An earlier age could still say: here is the Gospel—but here is also the possibility of looking directly into the spiritual worlds. The latter possibility ceased to exist in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Thus, only the Gospel remained.

[ 12 ] As you can see, Luther spoke from the spirit of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, but he spoke from the spirit of this epoch in a way that was true to the heart of a man who was at the same time a son of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch—a man who, through the means that had remained from the fourth epoch, wanted to point people toward what they could no longer attain in their development within the fifth epoch. This is something that must be understood in the context of the times: that Luther presented the Gospel as the sole testimony to the spiritual world at the very beginning of an age to which direct insight into the spiritual world was closed. Therefore—even if all of this was not present in his consciousness exactly as I am now describing it, though that is not the point—he wanted to emphasize the Gospel in particular to strengthen the humanity that was now to come.

[ 13 ] Now let us look back at another field in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. I am currently engaged once again—and this is why these things have come particularly to mind for me these past few days—in a study of Christian Rosenkreutz and Johann Valentin Andreae’s *The Alchemical Wedding*. When, prompted by this literary work, one turns one’s gaze to the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries, one sees—when looking at the people of that era who were engaged in science—that the science of nature was, in the best sense of the word, alchemy. What a natural scientist is today was an alchemist back then. One need only strip away all superstition and deception—especially from the word “alchemy”—to arrive at the inner, purely spiritual meaning of the essence of alchemy. What did these researchers seek? They sought nothing other than the conviction that behind the forces of nature lie not only those forces discovered through external observation and experimentation, but that supersensible forces are at work in nature—that nature is indeed “natural,” yet supersensible forces are nonetheless active within it. These people were clear about what a later age would come to realize again—though today these things remain deeply hidden—namely, that the external form of, for example, a metal is not so rigidly fixed that it cannot be transformed into another. They viewed this transformation, however, as spirit-driven, as the effect of the spirit acting within nature. They were capable of bringing about those alchemical processes that would astonish a modern natural scientist if they could be demonstrated to him again. But these processes were brought about through the application of spiritual forces. The fact that spiritual forces truly govern material existence was also something connected with the knowledge of that earlier time.

[ 14 ] This, too, was destined to be lost to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—and indeed, it was lost to it. But this is reflected in the religious worldview. Because this is the case, the thirteenth century and earlier centuries—including the fourteenth—were able to have a different doctrine of the sacraments than the centuries that followed. For the later centuries, the belief that spiritual forces are directly at work in matter when it is treated sacramentally lost all meaning. This stood quite vividly—though not in full consciousness—before Luther’s soul. As a result, the doctrine of the sacraments became something entirely different. The Catholic doctrine of the sacraments is, after all, still something different today, as in the case of the sacrament of the Altar, for example, where bread and wine are truly transformed into flesh and blood through a mysterious process. Anyone who has ever discussed such a question with Catholic theologians has often heard them respond to modern objections with this: “If you do not understand this, then you understand nothing at all of Aristotle’s doctrine of substances.” — Nevertheless, it must be said: for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, no real meaning can any longer be attached to a true transubstantiation, to a true alchemy. Therefore, this process is set apart from material existence. Today one receives bread and wine, but they are not transformed; in receiving them, the divine-spiritual essence of the Christ Being passes into one. This metamorphosis of the concept of the sacrament is again connected with the further development of humanity from the fourth into the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. And Luther must speak from both perspectives. He wishes to give the human soul the same strength it received under the influence of the former spiritual teaching, but he can only do so by preserving this spiritual teaching from modern science—by, so to speak, not allowing modern science to come into contact with this spiritual teaching at all. For modern science would never, ever recognize the spiritual in the material. Therefore, Luther from the outset separates the spiritual from material processes, allowing the material process—even if not yet a symbol—to remain merely a material process. These things are scarcely understood correctly today; yet it is precisely through spiritual science that they must once again be discussed.

[ 15 ] Now let us imagine that Luther directed his gaze—albeit not with full awareness—toward this entire period spanning more than two millennia, which would have passed in the normal course of human life, even though people living an abnormal existence were able to gain some insight into the spiritual world again through special practices. He had to speak to this age. A historical figure must never be taken in an absolute sense, but must be understood in his sayings and teachings as an expression of his age. He had to speak to the people of his age. But these people have truly lost something. What have they lost?

[ 16 ] They have lost the ability to draw upon the power of human knowledge—as it is expressed most distinctly in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch—to strengthen the soul so that it can look out into the spiritual world and gain its own spiritual insights. Insight arising from direct initiative is not a normal experience for people of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Freedom, free will, direct action arising from the deepest power of the soul—from that place within the soul where it is directly connected to the Divine—people of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch cannot become aware of this freedom in their immediate, everyday life, that is, in the life of the ordinary external world. Freedom is theory; knowledge is theory. Furthermore, this fifth post-Atlantean epoch has, in numerous cases, established the doctrine of the limits of knowledge. But to speak of the limits of knowledge in the sense of Kant or Da Bois-Reymond would have been nonsense even to the skeptics of old. As I have already said, one should not attribute absolute, eternal significance to the sayings of such a historical figure. But these sayings are an expression of the times. In the Christian sense, Luther grasps what he perceived in this man as the preeminent characteristic of humanity in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It was understood, in the Christian—or rather, biblical—sense, as the immediate effect of original sin. This immediate effect of original sin consists in the fact—and this is its defining characteristic—that the people of this epoch, by their very nature, cannot rise either to the knowledge of the divine or to freedom. Thus, when Luther said that human beings were so corrupted by original sin that they could not, by their own nature, rise above sin, he was expressing a truth for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. And no human power is so closely connected to the immediate human essence as the power that manifests itself in the human will—in what the human being does. What a person does springs entirely from the center of his being. What he knows and what he believes has much more in common with his surroundings, his age, and the like. In the fifth post-Atlantean, materialistic, scientific age, it is not possible for a person to perform actions imbued with the spiritual out of his own being. This is precisely the essence of this age—in the sixth post-Atlantean epoch it will be different again—that human beings, in their entire being, are cut off from connection with the spiritual. Luther, too, was deeply aware of this. But human beings were not meant to be torn away in their very essence. With what he now is in himself—what he does and wills as a human being situated in the sensory world—he cannot be connected to the Divine. He can be connected to the Divine only if he conceives of this connection with the Divine as having absolutely no connection whatsoever to his outer sensory existence. This is the origin of the doctrine of sanctification through faith alone. For a genuine human being of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, this sanctification through faith alone would have made no sense at all. One would have had to bring in an ancient Greek or an ancient Roman to say that he acquires his worth before the highest powers of existence not through what he does, not through what he brings about in the world, but solely through the way in which his soul professes its allegiance to the spiritual world; he would have considered it utter nonsense. For a person of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, it is not such nonsense, for if he relies on what he is through the world, he must, in fact, be nothing more than a worldly human being. He must increasingly come to realize that he stands only at the very pinnacle of the animal kingdom. Therefore, he must make something with which he has no connection whatsoever—given his position in the world—into a bond with the spiritual world: namely, mere faith. It is not possible that what Luther imprinted on his own time and the era that followed him remained the sole spiritual current.

[ 17 ] For example, one might ask: Who is a Lutheran today? Actually, all people are Lutherans! All people, insofar as they are imbued with the essence of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Anyone who truly has a sense of the distinction that may underlie certain more subtle concepts in the understanding of the world will notice what an enormous difference there is between a Catholic theologian today and one from the thirteenth or fourteenth century. Why is that? Because today’s Catholic theologian is, in truth, also a Lutheran. He carries the same impulse within him. It is just that today people often have little sense of the inner truth of a matter; they have a much greater sense of the superficial label they attach to a person. The fact that someone is registered in the church records as a Catholic or a Protestant due to family or other connections is, after all, merely an external characteristic; what characterizes a person inwardly is something entirely different. In a certain sense, people today who go with the flow of their age—who allow themselves to be inspired by the spirit of their time—are, in their innermost being, thoroughly Lutherans, because Luther articulated the life of his age—from the perspective I have touched upon. He was able to articulate it so particularly well because the conflict I described lived within him; because, on the one hand, he had the impression: What is this humanity that is coming? — And because, on the other hand, he felt the impulse to speak to the people of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch with all the forces living within him, with all the forces he wished to preserve in the spirit of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch.

[ 18 ] But this, in turn, was the higher unity, the synthesis: that he spoke to people who were subject to the conditions of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch in such a way that he spoke, as it were, from within their very souls. He shaped the words; he captured the ideas arising from the souls of the people of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, but he spoke in such a way that everything was at the same time imbued with the intention of preserving what had existed in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. That is the higher unity. However, this could not remain the sole spiritual current for this fifth epoch; otherwise, the sixth epoch would not be prepared within this fifth one.

[ 19 ] Thus, while Lutheranism is particularly influenced by the impulses of this fifth period in the manner described, we see that, on the other hand, other currents are making their presence felt. For us, the most important of these is the one that emerged in German Classicism: from Lessing to Herder—who can also be included among them—Schiller, Goethe, and others. Here we encounter the remarkable phenomenon that in Kant we have a thoroughly Lutheran philosopher; for Kant is Lutheran right down to the very core of his concepts. Schiller would like to be a Kantian, but cannot be; for there is nothing in philosophy that springs so directly from Lutheranism itself as, for example, Schiller’s “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.” These letters—which are far too little appreciated today—constitute, in a sense, a high point of the other current, just as Goethe’s *Faust* is a high point of the other current, expressing a protest that calls for taking not merely the Bible but nature as well, and thus allowing the human soul to find its way into the spiritual world through its own efforts. The final scenes of *Faust* therefore stand in stark contrast to Lutheranism. Only an artificial construction would place Schiller’s aesthetic letters, Goethe’s “Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,” or the final scenes of *Faust* in a relationship of kinship with Lutheranism. This, in turn, seeks—through inner opposition to the natural sciences—to empower the human soul so that it may, through its own powers, find a connection with the spiritual world. Thus, the sixteenth century sets against the powerful ideas associated with Luther those other ideas that could not yet emerge at that time—ideas that, in a sense, still stand as the antithesis of the good—and presents the ideas of *Faust*. Luther had the people of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch in mind: this humanity that refuses to acknowledge the devil, whom Luther knew so well, but which is entirely possessed by Ahrimanic demonism—that is, by what Luther calls the devil. Luther has this humanity before him, and it is actually not surprising that someone who has once again studied Luther more closely today attaches such great importance precisely to the fact that Luther knew the spiritual world with its diabolical content in such a direct way.

[ 20 ] It is interesting, however, that the person who now, I would say, is practically yearning for people to get to know the Devil again—who, after all, is always breathing down their necks, especially when they view the world solely in naturalistic terms, but whom they do not know—it is interesting that, in the manner of the Paradise incident, this figure, who harbors this new longing for the Devil, is a woman: Ricarda Huch. Her book on Luther practically expresses this longing: if only people could have an experience of the devil again, for through that they would return to an awareness of God. And in this state that so deeply permeates her, she even feels this longing for the devil. At one point, she expresses this longing for the devil quite vividly in her book *Luther’s Faith* (Insel-Verlag, 1916, p. 44):

[ 21 ] “A work like Burckhardt’s *The Culture of the Renaissance* and a figure like Nietzsche are humanity’s cry for the devil, which is just as justified as the cry for a child. But neither a child nor the devil can be brought forth at will, and when I think of how many young people light themselves up with Bengal fire to create the appearance of hell, I am overcome with horror at the thought of possible misunderstandings. After all, in Nietzsche’s time, many behaved like blond beasts who lacked even enough animality to be a simple guinea pig. But you, my beloved”—the entire book is written in the form of letters to a friend—“will not found a society for sinners, nor will you breed model sins in a greenhouse for yourself alone; in that respect, I can rely on you. Lucifer, after all, despises the stupid and the evil devil, his precursors; I am all the more angry with him as he now rises in the sky, bringing unwelcome light, and brings the night—in which you listen to me—to an end.”

[ 22 ] It is Ricarda Huch’s cry for the devil that can be heard in the collective unconscious of humanity, and she wants this cry to have an effect. Anyone who knows that the real devil is hidden and at work at every laboratory bench, in every machine—in short, in the most important cultural milieus of modern times—I say this plainly—can already understand Ricarda Huch; for it would be far better for people if they knew that the devil is there, even though he already has them by the throat, and the little folk just don’t realize it.

[ 23 ] In Luther’s consciousness, the devil still lived, and he lived precisely because Luther, as a person of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, could still perceive the spiritual world. And he still lived in his words because Luther wanted to present him to the people of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, who are indeed possessed by him but know nothing of him. Luther had to evoke a different feeling toward the Devil in people than Faust had—for Faust, after all, had devoted himself to the Devil, seeking precisely to gain his insights and power through the Devil. The sixteenth century initially rejected this; Faust had to fall prey to the negative forces of the world. Goethe, and indeed Lessing as well, protested vehemently against this. Why? Certainly, neither Lessing nor Goethe articulated the true essence of their relationship to Faust. It is indeed possible to speak more openly about this today than it was in Lessing’s and Goethe’s time, even though the initiate, in particular, wanted to share other things with his fellow human beings; yet they would have torn him to pieces had he revealed them.

[ 24 ] Let us take a look into Goethe’s soul and see how he viewed Faust. Goethe, after all, also had his own perception of the people of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch. He knew of the intimate connections between the people of this epoch and the Devil; for the Devil—the Ahrimanic forces—is always present whenever consciousness is limited to matter. For them, this is the gateway through which they gain entry. If consciousness is limited to matter, it is pushed down entirely into the subnormal realm; an organic, twilight-like consciousness is produced, or an agitated one in which the human being is wholly devoted to matter, or a foolish consciousness—and then Ahriman has all the more access to him. Goethe, however, knows that the Ahrimanic forces are generally present. Yet, by his very nature, he cannot portray the Ahrimanic forces as something to be feared or rejected. He cannot limit his approach to them to the faith rooted in external, material existence. No, he must draw what he seeks to achieve for his Faust from a living engagement with the devil; that is to say, the devil must yield his power; he must be vanquished. This lies at the heart of Faust’s struggle with the devil, with the evil Ahrimanic spirits, and with Mephistopheles.

[ 25 ] Then we have Schiller, who would like to be a Kantian but cannot, and who, in his “Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man,” distinguishes within human beings between mere instinct—which, in the Lutheran sense, arises from sensual nature—and the spirit that reveals itself through sensuality. If one were to be an honest Lutheran, one would say: Man is enslaved to this instinct; he cannot rise above it by his own power. He can rise above this instinct only through faith, and then, through Christ who is outside of him, he can consider himself purified and redeemed. — Schiller says: No, the other is still within man—the impulse toward freedom, the power of spirituality—which are capable of ennobling within man the mere impulse of physical need, the impulse of sensuality. — And Schiller therefore distinguishes between sensuality ennobled by the spirit and the spirit revealed through sensuality, by presenting the human being who, though separated from spiritual existence by matter, nevertheless strives toward the spirit through transformation, through the inner alchemy of matter—that is, of sensory existence.

[ 26 ] Goethe depicts, in an outwardly dramatic form, this overcoming of the Ahrimanic forces at work in external sensory existence. Oh, it pains one’s soul to see the greatness that has emerged in Western culture from Schiller’s Letters on Aesthetic Education—and what could have emerged—even if it has not yet emerged as it could have—from the great impulses contained in Goethe’s *Faust*. When one considers the impulses toward spirituality contained therein—when one fully understands them—and then has to witness how our contemporaries have sought, time and time again, to cultivate their spirituality through the most insipid American harmonies with the universe and similar nonsense! It really makes one feel such world-weariness! I must tell this true story again and again: a Viennese man—his name was Deinhardt—wrote a wonderful little book about Schiller’s aesthetic letters, in which he laid out the infinitely beautiful perspectives that could have been drawn from them. I don’t think anyone knows him today. For he once had the misfortune of falling down on the street and breaking a leg, and when the doctor came and examined him, he said that he would never recover because he was too malnourished. And so he died. But in this little book by Deinhardt, the Viennese, we have one of the deepest impulses to have emerged from Western culture. One need only look at what has flourished in Western culture, and one would not dismiss the phrase “the right man for the right place” as a silly cliché—provided one is able, by virtue of one’s own education, to arrive at the conclusion that the nephew or cousin is the right man for the right place. Time and again today one hears the phrase: “People are not here to fill this or that position.”—No, there are no people who know how to seek! But seeking is only possible when the soul strengthens itself and imbibes what flows from the greatness of our spiritual life. And this greatness does not merely provide abstract concepts; it provides the impulses to spiritualize the soul and guide it in its development to where Goethe rushes—albeit in a pictorial and dramatic manner—in the final scenes of his *Faust*. It is not the spirit of our time to preserve old things, but to seek the synthesis that is most beautifully revealed in the classical tradition of Goethe, Schiller, and Lessing.

[ 27 ] I would also like to point out how Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller, viewed from this perspective, are part of more recent cultural developments; and it is precisely through this that one can better understand what Luther represented for them as their predecessor. One comes to truly recognize a figure such as Luther only when one realizes from what depths he spoke and what lived in the depths of his soul. That is precisely what I wanted to emphasize at this time. I do believe that if you take these thoughts and approach what can confront you so powerfully from Luther, especially in our own time, you will find much in Luther—and discover it for yourselves—which I naturally cannot elaborate on in detail here, but which everyone must find in Luther for themselves. Then, I believe, especially for our difficult times, immersing ourselves in Luther can once again become the starting point for a deeper engagement with him. For perhaps no force is as well-suited to pointing out the powerful character of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch as Luther, because he spoke entirely from the spirit of this fifth epoch, yet found his words within the spirit of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch.

[ 28 ] In the face of all the events and occurrences that we encounter in history, we should feel the need to, so to speak, rethink history. We should recognize how our present difficult times, which have brought such misery upon humanity, are already karmically linked to distorted, superficial thinking, and how what we are experiencing so horrifically today is in many ways the karma of materialism. We should develop within ourselves the will to rethink history. I have often emphasized that what is presented to us today as history—in elementary schools, middle schools, and universities—perhaps most of all in the latter—is a legend that is so pernicious precisely because it does not intend to be one, because it purports to offer external, sensory truth. If only the true nature of the events of the nineteenth century—just the nineteenth!—were to be substituted for the legendary stories, something immensely beneficial would be bestowed upon humanity. Speaking specifically about the conception of history, Herman Grimm once said that he foresaw a time in which all those regarded as the great figures of the nineteenth century would no longer be regarded as such, but rather entirely different figures would emerge from the twilight of time. — History, in particular, has been shaped in such a way that, given how it has developed over time, its proper assessment today requires a transformation of the human soul—a transformation reaching down to the deepest roots of its being. From this perspective, I have emphasized this time and again, but it cannot be said often enough, for all the ideas people hold today arise from such a superficial view that these ideas lack the very power that must be unleashed if human beings are to move beyond their mere imaginings and engage with what occurs in human social life. People’s short-sighted, dull, and dim-witted concepts are waging war today. And the people who fight against one another are often merely puppets of these dim-witted, short-sighted, and dull concepts. But one must develop the ability to perceive what is short-sighted. That is necessary. And if spiritual science were able—and one would certainly wish for this—to rouse people to look into the deep impulses that lie beneath the surface of ordinary life, but which people today refuse to see, then what is achieved would be what today swarms in numerous declamations about the freedoms of nations and international courts of arbitration—and remains mere words—because it makes no difference what one argues, as long as things are understood exactly as they are understood in the present age. It makes no difference whatsoever what one argues for—whether in favor of war, peace, or anything else. What is necessary is that our ideas be led out of the superficiality of contemporary daily life and into the depths of things. One would like to hear how, in this era of Luther’s epistles, people are shown that it was not only the man Luther who spoke, but also the character of the era that began in the eighth century B.C. and ended in the fifteenth century, and how this resonated within him with the character of the other era, which begins in the fourteenth century and lasts for about 2,100 years from that point on.

[ 29 ] A personality is historical insofar as that which we call the Archai—the spirits of the age—from within the hierarchy of spiritual beings speaks through this personality, so that this personality leads us to the language of the spirit of the age. It is truly necessary to understand this in a presentation that seeks to approach Luther’s perspective.