The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] You will all likely be familiar with the thought that can be phrased as a question: How did it actually come to pass that, in the wake of the events we have considered, the materialistic way of thinking among people took on precisely the form that we can observe today as permeating all human impulses? One must view impartially the elements that have flowed into the spiritual life of modern times, uninfluenced by what the conventional view of history calls “historical necessity.” One must direct one’s gaze precisely toward those events that shed light on and clarify what is being experienced.

[ 2 ] We can now say that among all the major upheavals that have taken place in recent times, there is one that, in a certain sense, is a sort of latecomer to earlier upheavals: namely, that by the last third of the 18th century, European humanity had, in fact, lost all understanding of the realm of the mysteries. I have already briefly alluded to this in the course of these reflections: Saint-Martin’s mode of thought still extended into the 18th century, and his views had a broader impact through him and through the general spirit of the times in the 18th century; however, Saint-Martin’s views and modes of thought declined entirely in the 19th century. One need only recall one thing regarding Saint-Martin’s mode of thought to immediately notice the radical difference between such a way of thinking and everything that, for example, the present age is capable of thinking and feeling. In his significant work on error and truth, *Des erreurs et de la vérité*, Saint-Martin speaks, among other things, of an event in the Earth’s evolution that took place before humanity had attained physical incarnation. Saint-Martin speaks, in a sense, retrospectively of a significant—one might say cosmic—transition of all humanity that occurred before human beings attained physical incarnation. This is significant because it shows that Saint-Martin’s like-minded companions still possessed the broad perspective to look beyond the physical human world toward the spiritual, thereby opening up the possibility of also speaking about that which has a different connection to the development of humanity than that which is confined solely to the physical realm. Saint-Martin, who in a certain sense was a successor to Jakob Böhme, did indeed have some disciples spread throughout the educated world, even in the 19th century, and continued to have them right up to the present day. But one cannot say that the consciousness of the 19th century was still influenced by impulses such as those found in Saint-Martin, and one can certainly say that such insights into the spiritual world, as they are still evident in Saint-Martin, were lost to the 19th century.

[ 3 ] Now, such things as Saint-Martin taught are the very last remnants of ancient mystical wisdom. If one wishes to understand, from an external historical perspective, what caused such ideas as those found in Saint-Martin to be suppressed, then one must not ask the question: Which figure disseminated teachings that were capable of suppressing Saint-Martin’s modes of thought? — but rather one must ask: In which figure is that sum of impulses most characteristically expressed, through which nineteenth-century humanity became so materialistic? And one then finds a figure at the turn of the eighteenth to the nineteenth century who is particularly characteristic of this last major shift in the external development of the spirit. However, in order to understand what is actually happening here, one must bear in mind that, as a result of this latest upheaval, humanity’s understanding of the mystery traditions has been completely lost, so that in the 19th century, only a few individuals—only a few souls—still possess any knowledge of the profound significance and influence of the mystery traditions. The figure I am referring to—who is, in a sense, the embodiment of the general spirit of the times at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century—is Dupuis, and the important work that, in a sense, dealt the death blow to the understanding of the mystery tradition is the treatise *Origine de tous les cultes* from the year 1794. In the 19th century, when one surveys people’s views, one usually thinks of scientific materialism. Yet I would like to say that this scientific materialism had already taken on the character that the 19th century more or less imposed on all human impulses—a character we found most clearly expressed in the “bon dieu citoyen,” as Heinrich Heine greeted Jesus Christ. The nineteenth century has also plunged materialism into the current of philistinism, and the most essential characteristic of nineteenth-century materialism is that it is philistine.

[ 4 ] If one wishes to understand the true driving force of the 19th century, one must seek out the impulse of philistinism everywhere. Dupuis’s materialism was, in a certain sense, not yet philistine; it still possessed something grand and free, something that extended far beyond philistinism. Dupuis’s materialism was, in a certain sense, a heavenly materialism. Dupuis still had the courage to embrace a more radical materialist philosophy than the learned and brilliant philistines of the 19th century. Dupuis arrived at certain insights—or at least he believed he had arrived at them. And the way in which he arrived at them is extraordinarily interesting. When looking back on this man, one must not overlook the fact that he was a brilliant individual. For example, as early as the 1780s, he had set up a kind of private telegraph system through which he sent telegrams from his home to his friend Fortine, who lived quite far away. When the Revolution broke out, he feared that his telegraph connection might be viewed as somehow disreputable. So he destroyed the relevant machines, and as a result, the whole matter was forgotten. Of course, I’m not saying that he had an electric telegraph, but the principle of the telegraph was fully realized there.

[ 5 ] Dupuis also served as Commissioner of Public Education in France in the late 1780s. When the Revolution broke out, he left Paris, but was elected to the National Assembly very soon afterward; he returned to Paris and actually played a fairly significant role both in the Convention and later in the Council of Five Hundred, generally aligning himself with the moderate parties. One must realize that what lived within him was, in fact, an impulse that spread from him to many souls. But even more important is that this very impulse, which had taken hold of the era, found its most characteristic expression precisely in him.

[ 6 ] Dupuis, in fact, came to the following conclusion. He studied ancient legends and myths—for example, the legend of Hercules, or the legend of Isis and Osiris, or the legend of Dionysus; in other words, he studied the ancient myths, which, as we know, are exoteric disguises for the truths of the mysteries. Let’s take the myth of Hercules as an example. He noted that Hercules performed twelve labors, and as he followed the account of each of Hercules’ labors, he came to the conclusion that certain elements appearing in the narratives of these labors justify establishing a connection between Hercules’ passage through his twelve labors and the sun’s passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac. This man studied these elements very conscientiously and carefully, and from this study he formed the following view. He said: In ancient times, there were certain people—mystical priests. These people aimed to keep the vast masses of the people as calm as possible, so that they could be easily guided. That is why they told certain segments of these masses myths about a Hercules who once lived—a figure to be emulated, to whose persona such labors were linked. They told other myths, about Isis and Osiris and the like. Among themselves, within the mysteries, however, the mystery priests knew that all of this was nonsense, that no such personality as Hercules, Osiris, or Isis had ever existed externally, but that everything that happens on Earth is caused by the material celestial bodies and their constellations. The myths are merely symbolic representations of the processes taking place in the celestial sphere. What happens here on Earth, according to the ancient mystery priests, said Dupuis, depends on the Sun’s passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac and the Moon’s passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac. And the priests knew what this brought about on Earth; they knew that the material events expressed in the constellations—these material events taking place in the cosmos—are the cause of plant growth, as well as the cause of human progress, human procreation, and so on. The priests knew this. It never occurred to them to believe that other spiritual forces were somehow at play; rather, they were enlightened enough to believe solely in the interplay of material forces in the material expanse of the heavens. But for the people, astronomy was cloaked in myths, because it was believed that this was necessary to deceive the people—that this was the only way to guide them.

[ 7 ] For Dupuis, the mysteries were thus great factories of lies, organized for the purpose of presenting what the priests knew—that the material processes of the heavens bring about other material processes here on earth—in a manner suitable for the “stupid people,” who are gullible. In the work *Origine de tous les cultes*, for example, the following sentence appears: “Truth knows no mysteries; they all belong to error and deceit.” — Or: “One must seek their origin—namely, the origin of the mysteries—beyond the bounds of reason and truth; as children of the night, they shun the light.”

[ 8 ] Of course, only a small minority of people have actually read such things. But that is not the only thing that matters; what matters is that such ideas have an impact, that they exist. When a person like Dupuis articulates them, it simply means that he has a special ability to formulate these ideas. These ideas began to have an impact from the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century.

[ 9 ] Now, one must set against this some of the true historical reality that Dupuis so brilliantly arrived at by establishing this—as one may rightly say—celestial materialism. Is it not true that the philistine science of the 19th century seeks material processes within atoms? It remains confined to the earthly. Dupuis was bold enough to establish a “celestial materialism,” to conceive of everything that exerts an influence from the cosmos as a materialistic effect of the celestial bodies, and to regard everything that is supposed to be spiritual as mere nonsense—an echo of priestly deception dating back to the age of the Mysteries. Above all, in his famous and significant book, Dupuis drew the conclusion that all these great figures are, in reality, nothing more than astronomical phenomena, welded together and disguised for the people. Hercules is the sun; his twelve labors represent the sun’s passage through the twelve constellations of the zodiac; Isis is the moon, and the stories told about her describe the moon’s passage through the zodiac; Dionysus is portrayed in Nonnus’s great epic—comprising forty-eight cantos—as the sun, passing through the signs of the zodiac, and so on. The Christians then simply substituted Christ for Hercules, Dionysus, and Osiris, and Christ is nothing other than the Sun in a different guise. The priests knew full well that the Sun is the real entity in question. But for the people, they needed the story of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the sun of the New Testament, as opposed to Hercules, Dionysus, and Osiris, the suns of the Old Testament. — Dupuis’s book *Origine de tous les cultes ou religion universelle* contains a radical dismantling of every religious idea.

[ 10 ] Public consciousness generally lags behind; it does not keep pace with radical upheavals. That is why, in the 19th century, few people noticed that these ideas—if I may use the trite expression—were in the air. But they were left to hang in the air. Naturally, few rose to the level of Dupuis’s clear conclusion, even though these ideas were present in the intellectual consciousness of all educated people. But the entire theological chaos of the 19th century operated under the pressure of these ideas. For there is nothing else underlying this than the fact that Dupuis pointed out to those who shared his views: Just as there never was a Hercules or an Osiris as human physical personalities—just as these are suns—so Christ was never a physical personality either, but a sun. — Under the pressure of this thought, the Christ figure gradually crumbled away for the theologians of the nineteenth century. They then went to great lengths to embellish the “bon dieu citoyen” of Nazareth. The liberal philistines turned him into a humane moral preacher; the Social Democrats turned him into a Social Democrat; the psychiatrists turned him into a madman, an epileptic; and so, under the pressure of such ideas, everyone shaped him in their own image.

[ 11 ] If you combine what I am about to say with the other great truth—that historical development is, in fact, dreamed—you will be able to grasp the idea that such thoughts, even if not expressed in radical terms, already play a role in people’s dreams.

[ 12 ] Now one must keep the true historical reality in mind in relation to the whole. If one looks back at the ancient mysteries—those mysteries that still had their origins in the third post-Atlantean period—one sees throughout these mysteries that there were both esoteric and exoteric elements represented. What was—this is the question one must raise precisely in connection with these mysteries, which trace their origins back to the third post-Atlantean epoch—what was esoteric and what was exoteric in them? In the ancient mysteries to which I am now referring, everything related to physical science, everything pertaining to the practices of science, was esoteric. Religious studies were never esoteric in those ancient times. One is laboring under a completely false belief if one thinks that the conceptions of God and the gods were esoteric in the ancient mysteries. The ancient mysteries regarded as esoteric what was known at that time about things that are now being researched in chemical laboratories and clinics. What pertained to external, physical science was essentially kept esoteric, and that was what the esotericists considered dangerous. In those times, no religious truth was ever considered dangerous in any way within the mysteries. Whatever people held to be true in a religious sense, they also proclaimed openly. What we today call chemistry, physics, and mathematics was treated in those times in such a way that it was, so to speak, kept under wraps and was to be cultivated only among those who had committed themselves—and even sworn under strict oaths—to keeping the matter within the Mysteries.

[ 13 ] Then came the time when the Mysteries, in a certain sense, changed their approach—but only in a certain sense. This is true of all those Mysteries that trace their origins primarily back to the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. This extends, then, into the 15th century. During this period, it was customary in the Mysteries not to keep physical science secret, but rather to keep secret, in a symbolic sense, a certain aspect of the mathematical and, more generally, the intellectual sciences: everything related to certain things such as the circle, the triangle, the level—in short, everything that is mechanical, mathematical, and intellectual. They attempted to preserve this by keeping it within certain brotherhoods and obliging the members not to reveal the things they learned there about circles, triangles, spirit levels, plumb lines, and so on. In other areas, however, things were handled in such a way that people gradually became less strict about keeping the physical truths esoteric. These truths gradually emerged from the mysteries into the public consciousness.

[ 14 ] You might say: Yes, but what, after all, did the ancient mysteries of the third post-Atlantean epoch have to keep secret? Science was still in its infancy back then; there was no chemistry yet, and people knew nothing of the whole world that has been so gloriously conquered in more recent times. — If you judge it that way, you’re just parroting what people generally say today. But even ordinary external history should give you pause before forming such judgments. After the Europeans invented gunpowder as a result of external scientific progress, they were naturally proud of it. Why shouldn’t they be proud of it! But it very soon turned out that the Chinese had already had gunpowder in ancient times, had already mastered the art of printing in ancient times, and so on. One could cite many such examples where a particular thing has become widely known. The truth, however, is simply this: in ancient times, certain things were also known—let us say, for example, the principle of the airship, the principle of the submarine, and so on, to mention something radical right away—but these things were strictly kept secret as part of physical science. They were withheld from the general population; they were not allowed to leave the realm of the mysteries, which was tantamount to the same thing. What could be achieved through this science was not applied to the general social order of humanity. It is a completely amateurish notion to apply the terms “esoteric” and “exoteric” to the Mysteries of the third post-Atlantean epoch without referring to these things, but rather to believe that there were still particularly mysterious matters concerning purely spiritual affairs within the Mysteries of precisely this epoch.

[ 15 ] In the Middle Ages, on the other hand, the situation was such that people tried to keep certain aspects of mathematics and mechanics to themselves, preventing them from reaching the general population. These things had their importance in ancient times; they had their true value. They gradually lost their value as modern times approached. I have often stated that, in this same sense, the mystery traditions cannot be continued in the way they were practiced in the past. In the present fifth post-Atlantean epoch, it is in many respects no longer permissible—I mean, no longer permissible in the eyes of the higher spiritual powers—to keep certain things entirely esoteric. Now, certain spiritual truths would be considered esoteric. In very ancient times, these were physical truths; then they became intellectual truths; now they would be spiritual truths. Today, such soul truths are kept under lock and key only by brotherhoods such as those I have spoken to you about, when I characterized the general state of the world today as stemming from certain dark brotherhoods, whose origins I described last year.

[ 16 ] This raises the question: Why did the ancient mystery priests withhold what might be called physical knowledge? This is truly connected to the evolution of humanity. As I have often pointed out: humanity has indeed undergone a process of development; it has moved from one form to another, from one form to yet another. And the period in which the Mystery of Golgotha took place is the greatest transitional period in Earth’s development—a fact of which, of course, external history is completely unaware. Nor does it know all the things connected with this turning point. In ancient times—essentially in the periods preceding the Mystery of Golgotha—when a person reached the age of about fourteen or fifteen, they acquired very special powers in addition to the powers they had possessed since childhood up to that age. In those ancient times, when a person reached the age of fourteen or fifteen, they acquired powers that have been lost since the Mystery of Golgotha—powers that have not existed since the Mystery of Golgotha, but remain only in an atavistic, lingering form, no longer constituting normal powers of general human nature. The powers that a person acquired when he was around fourteen or fifteen years old—powers that were simply present in his environment by virtue of his very existence—were powers capable of connecting with the processes of physical manipulation. When one combines oxygen and hydrogen today, one simply combines oxygen and hydrogen to form water; nothing that emanates from the human being connects with this process. In those ancient times, something emanating from the human being did combine with it; the human being participated in the process. Thus, the activities of the laboratory became magic through these forces that developed in the human being at the age of fourteen or fifteen.

[ 17 ] For this reason, the priests of the mysteries had to keep the external rituals secret, because these rituals would simply have been transformed into magical practices due to the general human nature of that time; magic would have spread everywhere and would, of course, easily have turned into so-called black magic. At that time, therefore, it was necessary to shroud certain aspects of physical science in the deepest secrecy, due to general human nature. These powers, which human beings acquired around the ages of fourteen or fifteen, were gradually lost and had almost completely disappeared by the 15th century. And this is also why things written before the 15th century can no longer be understood today unless one approaches them through spiritual science. For at the very moment, in those ancient times, when human beings set out to perform physical experiments—such as those we routinely conduct in laboratories today—at that very moment, human beings gave rise to certain Luciferic elemental beings, or at least had the potential to do so. And these Luciferic elemental beings were active—that is, they would have played a role in human social life—if these matters had not been kept hidden.

[ 18 ] A period such as the late 18th and early 19th centuries had the very faintest inkling of the realities of human development. Consequently, everything that stemmed from this ignorance coalesced into assertions such as this: “Truth knows no mysteries; they all belong to error and deception.” — In a sense, people had to be protected from the direct knowledge of physical mysteries. Just as they had to be protected from the physical experiments that are commonly conducted in laboratories today, so too, for example, they had to be protected from the purely physical knowledge of astronomy. Therefore, the spiritual counterpart was provided in the form of myth and legend. This was a necessary requirement.

[ 19 ] But times have changed quite drastically. Humanity today is not, after all, exposed to the Luciferic elemental beings one might speak of in such a context. Instead, it is very strongly exposed to certain Ahrimanic elemental beings. These Ahrimanic elemental beings arise today with a necessity similar to that with which the Luciferic elemental beings described arose in antiquity. Only they arise in a different way. They arise from entirely different forces and impulses within human nature. Today there are—and I am not referring merely to human science, but to social life, which concerns all people, not just those who belong to the so-called educated class— today there are a great many things actively at work in social life that exist precisely because people have certain purely technical-mechanical, physical, chemical, and similar ideas, because they possess a certain level of knowledge of the physical sciences. People today know about and use machines; they also employ a certain mechanical approach in the world’s financial management. People think mechanically about the entire world. I am not referring merely to a mechanical worldview, but to what concerns every human being—even the simplest farmer in the remotest alpine hut—for he, of course, knows nothing of mechanical science. Yet the world in which he lives is permeated by these ideas. That is what really matters.

[ 20 ] Just as in ancient times these mechanical, chemical, and physical processes became intertwined with Luciferic forces, so today—now that they can no longer be held back—they become intertwined with Ahrimanic forces, and this occurs through a very specific circumstance. It is a law that everything arising from a mechanical, chemical, or physical way of thinking can be influenced in a peculiar way by that which stems from partial human nature, in the following manner: These trains of thought—which relate to the chemical, physical, mechanical, technical, and financial realms—are today conceived by people who, for example—though other factors also come into play—are still steeped in a national way of thinking; yet they are incompatible with it. If one thinks about what is physical, mechanical, and chemical today in such a way that, at the same time, the very same brain that thinks these things is imbued with a national mindset, then this national mindset acts upon the things one thinks about in relation to the physical, chemical, mechanical, and technical realms; then Ahriman exerts a fertilizing influence, and through the connections between national sentiment and international physical science, Ahrimanic elemental beings are arising in our environment today. For thoughts and actions such as those found in today’s chemistry, physics, mechanics, technology, financial conduct, and commercial conduct are compatible—they are compatible only with a non-national way of thinking.

[ 21 ] This is a significant secret that one must know if one wishes to understand the structure of life in the present. There is no way, given the constraints of time, to ward off these things other than through knowledge. The ancient masters of the mysteries sought to ward off these things by keeping their knowledge secret. Today, the opposite must occur: the evil must be banished by disseminating the spiritual insights that counteract it as widely as possible. In this regard, humanity has undergone a complete reversal. Back then, it was necessary to withhold certain knowledge from the physical sciences behind the barriers of the mysteries; today, spiritual science must be disseminated as widely as possible, because only in this way can that which acts in the direction just described be gradually driven out. Indeed, humanity today often has no idea what it means to be nationally minded on the one hand and to pursue international physics on the other. Yet these forces meet within human nature and interact within it, leading—as they did in antiquity to Luciferic formations—and in the present to Ahrimanic formations. Humanity has no alternative but either to abandon everything related to physics, chemistry, and the like, or to adopt an international way of thinking.

[ 22 ] People today have not yet even begun to suspect that such laws exist, laws that are intimately connected with life in general. And yet it is a truth that is knocking directly at the door of our present-day development and must be admitted for the sake of that development. The forces most hostile to human progress resist such things precisely and are today tempting people to express the idea of nationality in a particularly radical way. Such matters must be pointed out today, for they contain what is true, and they may be the only ones capable—precisely because they contain the pure and genuine truth—of healing people from the kind of nonsense that currently occupies their minds. As unbelievable as it may seem, there are still many people today who, both in theory and in practice, are incapable of realizing that the opposing forces of the present have employed a ruse—for example, to incarnate nonsense and call it *Woodrow Wilson*. Not only what I have said, but also many other things are very closely connected to this person I have named and characterized.

[ 23 ] Anyone who considers all the religious systems that are justified in the light of the Mystery of Golgotha, and truly comprehends them in their depths, knows that these religious systems all share a specific impulse: to protect people from coming into contact with those forces that act in the way I have described, if they are not countered. This was essentially one of the impulses of the ancient religious systems: to protect people from the harmful effects of the forces that arise around the ages of fourteen and fifteen in connection with external physical activities. The ancient mystery priests could deduce that they were justified in doing this from a very specific fact. When these ancient mystery priests were initiated into the sacred ancient mysteries and thereby became able to commune with the dead, they were able to perceive the gratitude that human beings feel after death for such a measure: Above all, the dead showed gratitude for having been spared contact with these forces before they passed through the gate of death.

[ 24 ] The analogy still holds true today. Anyone who becomes acquainted with the life of the human soul between death and a new birth knows how grateful the deceased is when they can be protected in life from humanity’s most extreme excesses—such as separatism into groups, the confinement of people to national groups, or the like. All the ancient religions were concerned with holding back, regulating, and organizing according to law certain forces that emerged around the fourteenth or fifteenth year. With the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ-force enters the development of humanity. “In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.” This refers to the Word, to the incarnated Logos, who, among other impulses, also has the impulse to overcome every particular logos—everything that rises from human nature in the human larynx, in the speech-generator, and through the speech-generator divides humanity across the earth. Just as the ancient gods had to overcome other forces, so the power of the Logos must overcome the particular forces associated with the development of the word—that is, of language. For those people who were far more advanced in their understanding at that time than those who later characterized the Christ impulse, a single word was of no consequence; and when they used a word, they did so with a very specific purpose. The fact that the writer of the Gospel of John used precisely the word “Word” was done with the purpose I have just described.

[ 25 ] All these things are intimately connected with the evolution of humanity, for the evolution of humanity must be understood precisely from the perspective of its deeper forces. That, in itself, is the task of the present. That is why we wish to consider now, in particular, those things that are so significantly connected with that great turning point inaugurated for humanity at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha—a turning point that has subsequently led to many later, smaller turning points.