The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Essential Aspects of Consciousness for the Present and the Future VI

[ 1 ] Today I will outline a few more points within the context that we have already been trying to understand in the course of our recent reflections. Understanding the present, with its diverse currents—both spiritual and material—is, of course, extraordinarily difficult, and one should not even imagine that one could understand this bewildering present without the will to recognize what has, in essence, been preparing for this present for a long, long time in the bosom of history. Today, in the way that we can attempt to do so from the perspective of our spiritual science, we want to look back at the so-called fourth post-Atlantean epoch.

[ 2 ] As you know, we must let this period begin around the year 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha, and for us it ends with the beginning of the 15th century, around the year 1413. So we are looking at this period—the dates, of course, are to be taken as they are, as is always the case with such matters—because in this period we see certain related, interconnected forces that differ quite significantly from all the forces prevailing in the preceding and subsequent periods. This period, which we call the development of the intellectual or emotional soul in human nature, can in turn be divided into three smaller epochs: a period that we can roughly delimit as beginning around 747 B.C.—which is, after all, the true founding date of Rome—and ending around the year 27 B.C., prior to the Mystery of Golgotha. The second smaller period would then extend from the year 27 to approximately the end of the 7th century, up to the year 693 after the founding of Christianity; and the last, the third smaller period within this larger one, encompasses the time from 693 to approximately 1413. Since that point in time, since about 1413, we have been living in the era that endows our soul development with those soul forces that, in their distinctive nature, are already familiar to us to a certain degree. Just as one can clearly distinguish the fourth post-Atlantean epoch—in terms of humanity’s soul development—from the three preceding ones—the Proto-Indian, the Proto-Persian, and the Egyptian-Chaldean—and just as one can again clearly distinguish it from what has already followed it and what is yet to come, so, too, can one highlight characteristic moments within this period for the development of civilized humanity, insofar as they come into play in the process of humanity’s further development within these smaller, specified periods.

[ 3 ] For the period from 747 to 27 before the Mystery of Golgotha, it goes without saying that the peoples living around the Mediterranean are the ones primarily under consideration. Among these peoples, we see a very specific state of soul developing. History says little about this state of mind, because in this case history does not seek to develop the ideas and concepts necessary to address what is truly characteristic of this period. If one wishes to characterize this period, which I have just defined, one can say: During this time, human souls develop—for inner reasons related to human evolution—in such a way that, in a sense, they detach themselves as souls from their connection to the all-spiritual world. If we go back to Egyptian and Chaldean times—which is, after all, the period of the feeling soul—we find there, in human consciousness, a pronounced sense of the human soul’s oneness with the cosmos. The feeling soul within human nature sensed at that time that the human being is a part of the entire cosmos. One cannot properly understand the nature of what is known as Egyptian, Chaldean, or Babylonian development unless one takes into account that, at that time, human beings, through their sensory perception of the world, took in something that expressed within them this sense of belonging to the spiritual cosmos. Just as the fingers on our hand feel, as it were, as one with ourselves, so too did the Egyptian and Chaldean people still feel themselves to be a part of the spiritual cosmos. With regard to this cosmic feeling, a crisis—a veritable catastrophe—had befallen humanity in the 8th century B.C. Human souls had, after all, owed their former sense of belonging to the cosmos to their ancient, atavistic, more dreamlike clairvoyance. In those ancient times, people did not perceive the world as we do today. They perceived—what secular science, which knows nothing in this regard, calls “animism”—the spiritual and the divine at the same time as they perceived with their senses. Through this, they felt connected to the spirit of the cosmos.

[ 4 ] This connection faded. On the one hand, this fading gave rise to many manifestations of decadence; on the other hand, however, it also gave rise to the entire marvelous Greek culture. For this Greek culture, which was based primarily on what human beings experience as human beings—as individuals standing alone in the universe—owes its existence to the fact that human beings no longer felt themselves to be a part of the cosmos, but rather as a human totality, as something self-contained in their humanity. In a sense, he had emerged from the cosmos; he had “begun a total life within himself.” If the same state of mind that had lingered from ancient times—for example, in Indian culture—and which still maintained a certain sense of belonging to the cosmic had permeated Greek intellectual life, you could not imagine that the beautiful Greek culture could have arisen out of this sense of belonging to the cosmos. Everything that emerged in Greek culture as splendor and glory—and which took shape in other areas in a less edifying manner—all of this developed during the period from the 8th to the 1st century B.C. Humanity had withdrawn into the spiritual realm, into what is purely human. It was during this era that humanity’s movement toward the Mystery of Golgotha began. Let us not forget that the Mystery of Golgotha must always contain something that, in a sense, cannot be fully comprehended by human understanding—nor even by human supersensible understanding. There will always remain an unresolved remnant. What took place with the entry of the Christ into the development of the Earth—as I have explained in various earlier reflections—cannot be fully dissolved into human concepts, nor even into human feelings and sensations. This, however, is connected to the fact that the Mystery of Golgotha had to unfold in such a way that, during this event, civilized humanity was prepared not to experience this Mystery of Golgotha in its fullness, but rather to let it pass by alongside their own human experience. Just consider how this letting it pass by alongside one’s own human experience emerges quite clearly in history. How much, after all, did civilized humanity around the Mediterranean actually take to heart what had taken place in the distant Jewish province of Palestine with the Christ Jesus? How little of this has actually found its way into the consciousness of civilized humanity—even for Tacitus, who wrote a century after the Mystery of Golgotha!

[ 5 ] On the one hand, we have the current of cultural humanity, and on the other, the current within which the Mystery of Golgotha unfolds. Both unfold, so to speak, side by side. This could only happen because, while the divine event was taking place, human beings—civilized human beings—had cut themselves off from the divine and were living a life that had no direct connection to the spiritual. Thus, a spiritual event took place on Earth itself that actually runs parallel to human civilization. Such a coexistence of external culture and a mystery event is entirely unthinkable in all earlier cultural periods of humanity. Nothing of the sort ever took place before, because human culture used to be aware of its connection to what was happening in the divine-spiritual realm. It is very characteristic and very significant that secular culture, which unfolded in parallel with the Mystery of Golgotha, was actually distant from this event—that humanity had cut itself off.

[ 6 ] And in the second period—which thus begins approximately 27 years before the Mystery of Golgotha and ends 693 years after it—the entire Central European culture is, in fact, structured in such a way as to prevent secular culture from truly coming to terms with the Mystery of Golgotha. What I am saying might seem very strange, considering that Christianity has become established within this European secular culture and has spread throughout Central European culture. But this spread has taken place in the sense that I described recently. The Mystery of Golgotha stood alone. Certainly, in an outwardly dogmatic way, all sorts of things were incorporated into secular culture, expressed as follows: Christ was there, had apostles, accomplished this or that for humanity, and said this or that about the relationship between human beings and the divine. These ideas were indeed incorporated quite extensively into secular culture in the form of external statements, but alongside this external incorporation, the opposite was certainly true: that in fact, the whole of humanity—which embraced Christianity precisely during these centuries—kept itself deliberately distant from an inner understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. With the help of Gnosis, and through certain preparations drawn from the treasures of wisdom handed down from ancient paganism, one could have approached the very question: What actually happened with the Mystery of Golgotha? This was not done. In fact, anything that might have led to an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha was declared heresy, and people attempted, to a greater or lesser extent, to cast into trivial formulas that which can never be cast into trivial formulas—that which, with regard to the Mystery of Golgotha, can be grasped only through the highest contents of the quest for wisdom.

[ 7 ] Thus, the practices that were observed during the first centuries of Christian development were not actually intended to connect with the Mystery of Golgotha, but rather to foster within the human soul something that remained quite distant from a genuine, inner, and understanding sense of belonging to the Mystery of Golgotha. The Church was more of an institution designed to prevent understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha than to foster it. Anyone who traces what the various councils—and indeed the ecclesiastical machinations of those times—sought to achieve will find that all their efforts were directed toward incorporating certain dogmatic concepts into human life, while regarding the matters connected with the Mystery of Golgotha as taking place independently of the life of the human soul. Everything tends toward a certain point—that point which, if one were to characterize it rather radically, could be described as follows. One might say: People sought to come to terms with life here on earth by means of certain ideas about the Mystery of Golgotha and its effects. But what mattered most to them was not what they could know or what they took into their souls; rather, what mattered most to them was that they could have the assurance: Whatever we humans may comprehend, the Mystery of Golgotha has unfolded in and of itself, and Christ will see to it that we attain salvation! — And the tendency was to push the reality of spiritual events further and further into a realm beyond the soul, not to think of the actual—if I may use the expression—spiritual-sacred events in connection with what takes place within the human heart, but to separate the two as much as possible. This tendency contained a goal that was, of course, not explicitly stated but operated unconsciously—a goal that then came to the fore all the more clearly at the Eighth Council of Constantinople in the year 869. The goal was to prevent the human spirit from engaging individually and personally with the spiritual—which one now wished to limit to the Mystery of Golgotha—that is, from the inclination, the individual and emotionally driven inclination, toward an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. It was to remain misunderstood. In this way, the Church was able to gradually develop a congregation consisting of people who possessed only a profane understanding, people who increasingly came to believe: One cannot think about the supersensible at all, for the supersensible eludes the powers of the human soul itself. Human thought should be limited only to what lives here in the physical world. — No powers should develop within human souls that might be capable of seeking an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha on their own. Certain decrees of the Eighth Council of Constantinople explicitly state that the people of Europe should not reflect—because the powers of the human soul do not extend to that realm—on the realm in which the life to which the Mystery of Golgotha belongs has passed.

[ 8 ] Thus, precisely during this middle period of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch—from about 27 years before the Mystery of Golgotha to 693 years after it—the following took place for humanity, so that one can say: Humanity was to be led to believe that all human knowledge and all human perception were intended solely for the sensory world of this life; that which is not sensory—the supersensible, or, as one might call it, the otherworldly—was to be withdrawn from human perception and knowledge, from immediate cognitive experience. One can truly understand the entire history of these centuries only by taking this very characteristic into account. All the measures taken by the Catholic Church during those centuries were designed to lead people to believe: Your spiritual cognition is intended solely for this world; as for the supersensible, you must allow it to approach you in a way that has nothing to do with your understanding or your own cognition. — This led to a kind of spiritual eclipse among the European people after the end of this period—that is, in the 8th and 9th centuries—regarding the connection between the human soul and the supersensible. And phenomena such as those I have described—of which figures like Bernard of Clairvaux, who came later, are typical—can be explained precisely by the fact that they remain, so to speak, beyond all that is physical and sensory, and devote the soul entirely to that which lies beyond the reach of natural human understanding. This enthusiasm for that which lies beyond all human understanding must be taken into account when considering the entire spiritual disposition of Bernard of Clairvaux, as it is understood. One can find in this very personality certain traits that appear grand and powerful, because everything that may have a more or less distorted aspect can also possess a beautiful, grand, and glorious aspect. But in Bernard, one will find traits that quite clearly indicate in the character of his soul that he was born out of that spiritual disposition which developed in the manner described, during the specified centuries, within Western culture. One could name many other figures besides Bernard of Clairvaux; he is merely a typical example—for instance, when he speaks to his followers—whose circle was a large one—about all that his intended crusade was to bestow upon humanity. Then came the failure of the whole endeavor. And how does he, this God-fearing man, speak specifically about this failure? Something like this: If everything—everything—turns out badly, then let the judgment for the bad outcome fall upon me, but not upon the Divine, for the Divine must always be right. — Even where a person could know themselves to be connected to what they conceive as a divine-spiritual force behind appearances—setting that apart from the rest—even there they say: Let sin befall me; what is right is something that proceeds of its own accord, something that, so to speak, flows beyond the stream in which the human soul is bound.

[ 9 ] Thus, with the beginning of this third phase of the fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, something like an eclipse had come over humanity. This is best expressed by observing how humanity, in its concepts, was no longer able to recognize any connection with the real spiritual currents and impulses. One need only study the philosophy of the centuries between the 8th and 15th centuries to see how it aims everywhere to demonstrate that one should under no circumstances attempt to grasp, through human ideas and concepts, what is taking place in spiritual reality—as this, as was aptly put into a formula — must be left to revelation, and to the magisterium of the Church.

[ 10 ] This is how the power of the Church had developed. This power of the Church did not arise merely from theological impulses; rather, it had developed because people had been directed to apply their own powers of cognition, their own spiritual faculties, solely to physical, sensory life and not to consider any knowledge of the supersensible. From this developed the later concept of faith—one that certainly did not exist in the first centuries, though it is often retroactively attributed to that time. This concept of faith holds that one can have only faith—not knowledge—regarding the spiritual-divine. This separation between the truth of faith and the truth of knowledge did indeed arise from certain historical contexts that are significant and that must be sought in matters such as those we have cited.

[ 11 ] Since the 15th century—approximately since the year 1413—we have been living in an era—as the third millennium will reveal—in which we are dealing, in part, with the legacy of everything that has taken place under the influences I have described here. On the one hand, we are dealing with legacies from that time, and on the other hand, we are also dealing with something that is taking shape as something entirely new in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. If we look back at that fourth epoch, we see a kind of severing of the human soul from the spiritual-divine, a confinement to merely external, physical-sensory processes. That, too, was new for that fourth epoch. As I indicated earlier, this was not present in the Egyptian-Chaldean era. We are also dealing with a similar new development in our own era, and the task of humanity—for humanity has gradually entered an era in which consciousness must play an ever-greater role— the task of humanity would be to recognize all of this—to recognize what, on the one hand, is a legacy from the past era just described, and what, on the other hand, is emerging anew in our own era. Let us first turn our attention to this legacy.

[ 12 ] We have seen that this legacy consists in the fact that human beings feel, as it were, compelled to develop their inner life apart from the supersensible. And this legacy is something else entirely, which you will come to understand more and more clearly as you examine the historical events with ever greater precision. It is precisely through this careful examination that the matter is not in any way subjected to doubt, but rather firmly established as truth. For you will see how what emerged at that time—the desire to preserve the human soul’s power within the sensory realm and to separate it from the supersensible—then developed, in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch beginning in the 15th century, into a rejection of the supersensible altogether. At that time, people wanted, so to speak, to keep the supersensible away from human beings, and this is precisely what characterizes the Eighth Council of Constantinople in the year 869. Now, this very act of keeping the supersensible at a distance—which the Church in particular made its task—gave rise to the rejection of the supersensible. The belief developed that the supersensible was merely a figment of human imagination, that it had no reality whatsoever. If one truly wishes to understand the origin of modern materialism from a historical-psychological perspective, one must look to the Church. Of course, the Church is merely the outward expression of deeper forces at work in human evolution, but one gains insight into this human evolution by observing more closely how one thing truly arises from another. The orthodox believer in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch said: The human faculty of cognition is intended only to understand sensory relationships; the supersensible must be left to revelation; one must not interfere with it; for everything that is imposed upon it is heresy and can only lead to delusion. — The modern Marxist, the modern social democrat—who is the true heir to this view, which is nothing other than the logical consequence of Catholicism from earlier centuries—says: “All science worthy of the name can deal only with sensory-physical phenomena; there is no such thing as the science of the spirit, because there is no spirit; the science of the spirit is, at most, the social science—the science of human coexistence. — Of course, this tendency just described has played out in the most diverse fields of civilized nations, but that is merely a nuance.

[ 13 ] Thus, from the 9th century onward, it became necessary in the central and western countries of Europe to take into account that the human soul does, in a certain way, play an active role by believing in the supernatural—knowing nothing of it except through revelation, yet believing in it nonetheless. The racial and national characteristics of Central Europe were such that they had to be taken into account; they could not simply be ignored. To tell people: “Your human powers must be limited to eating and drinking, and whatever else happens in the world—the rest exists beyond you”—one could not do that quite so in Western Europe; but that is what was done in Eastern Europe, and that is the meaning of the schism between the Eastern and Western European churches. In Eastern Europe, human beings were truly confined to the sensory world; that is where their powers were to develop. And within the heights of the mysteries, completely untouched by the sensory realm, that which later led to the Orthodox religion was to develop. There, a strict separation was made between what human beings brought forth through their humanity and what constituted the true spiritual world, which existed solely and exclusively in the cult that hovered above humanity.

[ 14 ] What had to develop there? What had to develop—again, in various nuances—was the perception, the feeling that only the sensory-physical actually has meaning and reality. One could say: Powers that are not exercised, but rather treated in such a way that people behave toward them by shutting them out within themselves—such powers do not develop either; they atrophy. Thus, if people had been prevented over the centuries from grasping the supersensible in their minds, their powers to grasp this supersensible would have become increasingly untrained, and it would have vanished from them completely. And we find this complete disappearance in modern socialist worldviews, whose misfortune lies not in their socialism, but in the fact that they completely reject the spiritual and supersensible and must therefore limit themselves to the mere social structure of the animal nature within human beings. This mere social structure of the animal nature within human beings has been brought about by the crippling of human beings’ supersensible powers. It has arisen because people are forced to say to themselves: We do not want to connect our soul—through recognition and experience—with that which lives the stream of its life for itself, so that our bliss is brought about through it and in which the Mystery of Golgotha is embodied.

[ 15 ] What is the connection here? It is connected to the fact that, particularly during this fourth post-Atlantean epoch, the Luciferic forces were at work with exceptional intensity. They severed humanity’s connection to the cosmos; for these forces are always intent on isolating human beings in selfishness, on severing them from the entire spiritual cosmos—including their knowledge of their connection to the physical cosmos. That is why there were no natural sciences when this detachment was at its peak. That is the Luciferic principle. Therefore, one must say: What was at work back then in the separation of sensory knowledge and supersensory dogmatism is of the Luciferic kind. Opposed to the Luciferic is the Ahrimanic. These are the two adversaries of the human soul. This atrophy of the human’s supersensible powers—which then led to the purely animalistic form of socialism that must now descend upon humanity in a devastating and destructive manner—can be traced back to Luciferic forces. The new development emerging in our age is of a different nature; it is more of an Ahrimanic nature. The Luciferic force seeks to isolate human beings, to cut them off from the spiritual and supersensible, and to make them experience within themselves the illusion of totality. The Ahrimanic force, on the other hand, instills fear of the spiritual in human beings, prevents them from approaching the spiritual, and gives them the illusion that the spiritual cannot, after all, be attained by human beings. While the Luciferic alienation of human beings from the supersensible is of a more educational, cultural-educational nature, the Ahrimanic alienation from the supersensible—which is based on fear of the spiritual—is more of a natural phenomenon that has particularly come to the fore in the era since the 15th century. And just as the Luciferic estrangement from the spiritual found particular expression in life under the guise of Eastern Orthodox Christianity, so too has the Ahrimanic fear and reluctance toward the spiritual found particular expression in the realm of Western culture and especially in the realm of American culture.

[ 16 ] Such truths may be uncomfortable today, but they are, after all, truths, and we will not make progress today by generally talking in vague terms—no matter how mystical or theosophical—about humanity’s connection to the divine, or whatever else the question may be called. Rather, we can only move forward by recognizing reality as it is. We can only restore order to our chaos by recognizing the distinct characteristics of the various currents coexisting side by side. For these various currents, in turn, develop from their own local premises and then spread, and in the modern jumble that is called “culture,” everything ends up in a state of confusion. — What I would now like to call “Americanism,” “Americanism” as a collective concept—not referring to individual Americans—is the fear of the spiritual; it is the longing to live solely on the physical-sensual plane, or at most with what rises from below into this physical-sensual plane in the form of crude spiritualism, spiritism, and the like—things that are not truly spiritual. Fear of the spiritual is what characterizes Americanism. But Americanism does not merely exist in America—there it exists entirely in the social sphere, driven by will rather than humanity—it exists above all in all of science. For in the period since the fifteenth century, this science has increasingly developed what one might call “fear of the spiritual.” After all, only that which, as far as possible, does not deal with living concepts generated within the soul is designated as objective science. Anything that is in any way an idea or a concept generated within the soul must not interfere with the observation of nature. Only the lifeless aspect of nature observation, not the spiritualized living aspect, may enter into science. If one introduces the concept into the observation of nature—say, in the Hegelian manner, which is a truly Central European approach, but also in the Schellingian or Goethean manner—one immediately believes that this leads one into uncertainty; for one does not trust oneself to experience anything objectively real through spiritual comprehension or spiritual experience. One believes that only arbitrariness can thrive there, that one immediately enters the non-objective realm if one introduces anything subjective into one’s experiences. That is Ahrimanic. Science is universalistic-American insofar as it adheres to the principle of expelling everything subjective from the observation of nature. This is what has emerged as a fundamental consequence of that earlier constriction of the spiritual in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch.

[ 17 ] Thus we have added something new to that legacy—something new that, alongside what must develop as fruitful but must do so consciously, is asserting itself more and more as a destructive force in the future. This new element is essentially of an Ahrimanic nature; it is a fear of the spiritual and has a destructive, dissolving effect on all human culture, which must, after all, be rooted in the spiritual.

[ 18 ] At the turn of the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantic epoch, especially in the fifth, it was precisely these impulses that I have just described that came to the fore more and more. With the discovery of America and the transplantation of the European spirit to America, a fear of spiritual life developed there. But on the other hand, I would say, a tension arose in people’s souls; for the collective forces of Europe were not such that they could not, from within themselves, have sensed at least something of the connection with the spiritual realm of the cosmos. A tension arose, so to speak, at the turning point between the fourth and fifth post-Atlantean cultural epochs, during the centuries in which what is called modern history took shape. That is when this tension of the suppressed spiritual arose within the human breast. A barrier had to be erected against this, partly by gaining a clear understanding of what existed as an ancient heritage, and partly by viewing the newly emerging Ahrimanic forces in a very appropriate light. This gave rise to that spiritual current which, after all, has a much greater influence than most people realize—I already pointed this out last time from a different perspective—that spiritual current which strives to perpetuate and continue this holding back of the human soul from the supersensible. In other words, Jesuitism arose. Its inner principle consists in doing everything in the course of human development that can keep people away from a connection with the supersensible—from a genuine connection with the supersensible. Of course, this separation is achieved all the more by the Jesuit side presenting the supersensible in a strictly dogmatic manner as something beyond the reach of human cognition. But the Jesuit approach, on the other hand, counts on this very well, and it seeks no inner kinship other than that between modern science and Americanism, between modern science and Jesuitism. This is indeed where Jesuitism excels: in advancing physical science with profound significance. The Jesuits are great minds in the field of physical-sensory science, for Jesuitism counts on this fundamental tendency of human nature—which must be overcome by directing human nature toward the spiritual world—namely, a fear of the spiritual. And it counts on the fact that this fear can be socialized by, as it were, telling people: You cannot and must not approach the spiritual; we administer the spiritual for you, we bring it to you in the proper way.

[ 19 ] These two currents—Americanism and Jesuitism—interact, so to speak; but you must not take this lightly; rather, you must seek the deeper, more influential forces at work in human development. Anyone who seeks the forces that have brought about the current catastrophe will find a remarkable interplay between Americanism—in the sense intended here—and Jesuitism. When one surveys all of this, one sees how, on the one hand, the legacy of earlier times continues to influence our cultural life, and how, on the other hand, new elements are added. By designating this as the Luciferic on the one hand and the Ahrimanic on the other, one is precisely identifying the opposing forces to what must be infused into the development of humanity as true spiritual life for the salvation of humanity. Anyone who now approaches a figure such as Bernard of Clairvaux with deep devotion—a figure who, in a sense, leans toward one side—expects the following: Since human cognition is directed solely toward the physical-sensory realm, we must turn the soul toward the spiritual-divine with fervor, through elemental experience. This brings an element of enthusiasm into this nature. — One could say: What lives on one side—the spiritual side—in human souls also lives on the other side in our time, but on the dark, the sinister side. The 12th century had its Bernard of Clairvaux, and our century has figures such as Lenin and Trotsky. Just as the inclination toward the supersensible was at work back then, so too does hatred of the supersensible live on in these figures, even if it is expressed in different words and with different content. This is the dark flip side of those times: back then, the infusion of the human soul into the divine; here, the infusion of the human being into the animalistic, which alone is meant to sustain a social structure.

[ 20 ] However, one can only understand these things if one is absolutely clear about one thing—which, however, is quite far removed from our current understanding. Our present age is devoted to theories, for it believes in the content of what ideas and programs are. I have discussed this on numerous occasions. But it is never the content of theories and programs that matters; what matters is their effectiveness. A modern Marxist, on the eve of this world war, at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century, would naturally have said: This is what Marx teaches, this is what Engels teaches, this is what Lassalle teaches; that is still all one must strive for. For he knows that one must strive for this for the good of humanity and so on. People simply focused on the content of programs and ideas. But in reality, that is never what matters, for ideas are never realized in life according to their content, but through forces that exist within them, independent of their content. And only those who know that ideas often have so little to do with reality—that they arise alongside what the ideas contain—truly understand reality. One can draft a very beautiful program, can ground it very well scientifically, and then one can be passionate about one’s program, just as the Marxists were about theirs. But that is not what matters; for a time as unspiritual as ours, that is playing with fire. People then believe they are working for the content of the ideas. But anyone who knows how life really works also knows that the actual effects are quite different. Ideas even become monstrosities in cultural life if they are not taken up by spiritual understanding. But the ideas of Marxism cannot be taken up by spiritual understanding, since they seek to drive out the spirit. No matter how beautiful they may be, they are bound to become monstrosities. Only if one looks beyond the idea—and in the morning does not ask, “Why has it become light because of what has happened on Earth?”—but instead says to oneself, “It has become light because the sun is shining”—that is, if one steps outside the realm of the Earth—can one explain to oneself why it has become light. Thus, one must move from what is happening in the immediate present to what took place in the distant past in order to explain what is happening today. You do not understand Bolshevism unless you know how it arose as an aftereffect of the Eighth Ecumenical Council of 869. You will not understand it unless you see it as a product of the atrophy of the spiritual powers related to the supersensible world. This is the inner context one must possess if one truly wishes to understand what is happening in the outer world in such a way as to be able to confront it. For those who see through the interconnections in history, the most terrifying thing is to witness movements that presume to want to reform the world, yet rely solely on the content of ideas without taking into account the effectiveness of those ideas—quite apart from whether the content of the ideas is beautiful or ugly. — A child is born. It is a beautiful child. The mother may be delighted by it. Mothers are sometimes even delighted when their children are not beautiful. The child becomes a good-for-nothing, a ne’er-do-well, perhaps even a criminal. Does that mean it is not true, after all, that the child was beautiful? Do we not have the right to call it beautiful? Does this beauty perhaps conflict with the fact that things happen in life that one did not imagine? Thus, in certain circles of people, the content of ideas they admired—through which they wanted to reform the world—takes root. These ideas became monstrosities! For ideas are, in themselves, something dead; they must first be brought to life by flowing into the living spiritual life.

[ 21 ] Anyone who reads modern socialist writings will, if they set aside certain differences, find a great similarity between them and—even if expressed differently and focusing on other areas—the writings of those who draw on the ecclesiastical principles of Catholicism. For example, I recently read to you from a pamphlet. Take the patterns of thought in that pamphlet, the way of thinking; compare what is expressed there with the frenzied cultural—or rather, anti-cultural—tendencies that are gradually moving toward Bolshevism; compare it with what is at the beginning of, say, a Kautsky or a Lenin text: you will find the same ideas. One is a product of the other’s development. Nowhere does one feel more “Catholic” than when reading certain dogmatic socialist writings. Only, what is forbidden in Catholicism—philosophizing about certain things—has become a passion, a principle: the principle of explaining all science solely in terms of the bourgeoisie and all intellectual development solely in terms of class struggle. This principle is an effect of the Catholic principle. Bolshevism, in the form in which it has appeared, may have only a short existence; but with what lies behind it, all of humanity will have to contend for a very long time, and for those who understand the connections, it is no wonder that Bolshevism first dawned in the very place where this human thought, in its animalistic form, lived under the umbrella of the Minister of Cults of the Orthodox religion, so that one current was completely isolated from the other.

[ 22 ] One must see through all these things in order to become aware of the necessity of approaching spiritual life in the right way. All this mystical talk has no place today. What is appropriate today is to use spiritual insight to look into reality and discover the connections that exist there; for only from an understanding of these connections can a proper intervention in world events arise—not from inherited traditions, nor from that fear, nor from the elemental novelty I have described, which can only lead far into chaos. In animalistic socialism, one must see one manifestation of what has taken shape in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. There is something Luciferic contained within it: the Luciferic original sin is present there. But what is now developing is already like a punishment for this original sin; it is already a punishment in the sense that those faculties, which were commanded not to be applied to the supersensible, have truly become incapable of being applied to the supersensible and harbor a hatred and loathing of the supersensible. This is no longer merely hatred and original sin; it is already punishment for turning away from the supersensible. This applies to much of what is happening now.

[ 23 ] “In various nuances,” I said, “what runs through human development as impulses finds its expression. Only by understanding these nuances can we understand what is happening today.”

[ 24 ] The peoples of the Italian and Spanish peninsulas were swept up by the spread of Christianity, as were the peoples of what is now France and the peoples of what are now the British Isles. We already know quite a bit about what spread there. We know that on the Iberian and Italian peninsulas, the feeling soul has been preserved above all; in French regions, the intellectual or emotional soul; in British regions, the conscious soul; here in Central Europe the “I,” and in Eastern Europe, similarly, a culture of the spiritual self comes into consideration, though this can only become effective in the future and currently has only entirely hidden seeds. If only one would look at this Western Europe in order to understand it, just as spiritual science can unravel it! The national character of the Italian region, for example—not as the character of the individual human being, who naturally transcends national traits everywhere—develops differently from that of the French or British peoples. The British people are such that their national character is connected to the consciousness soul. I have long characterized this from certain points of view. But through life in the consciousness soul, the human being is driven out onto the physical plane—not as strongly in the British Isles as in America, but driven out onto the physical plane nonetheless. The result is that the human being, whom ecclesiastical development had previously cut off from the supersensible, is now reunited with the cosmic. But when it comes to the soul of consciousness, he is reunited only with the outwardly cosmic. The consequence of this is that, in fact, the British person, as a Briton, grows together with the cosmos solely through economic principles. British thinking is essentially economic thinking—thinking in economic categories. Anyone who recognizes the inner connection between the consciousness soul and the physical world understands this as a necessity; they also understand as a necessity that the French national character—not that of the individual Frenchman—which corresponds to the intellectual or emotional soul, develops primarily political thought and political sentiment, while Italians and Spaniards similarly develop the animistic aspect, because there the feeling soul is directly influenced by the national character. I can only sketch this out, but it expresses what lives within the national characters themselves.

[ 25 ] When we look at the German spirit—this German essence caught up in such a tragic development—we see that the national character takes hold of the “I.” The whole of German history becomes clear when one considers this fact, which reveals itself from the supersensible world. This human “I” is, after all, what is least developed outwardly today, what has remained most spiritual. Therefore, because the German is connected to the spiritual world through the “I,” he is most intimately connected to it. He cannot be connected to the cosmos economically, politically, or in an animalistic sense through his very being. He can only be connected to the cosmic in the way it reveals itself in spiritual life, in the soul life of individual personalities—for the “I” always lives within these individualities—and then pours forth through the people. German development is most characteristically expressed in what manifests as substantiality in Goetheanism, Herderianism, and Lessingianism—something that is regarded as a level higher than the physical-sensual. Hence, too, a certain estrangement from the physical-sensory realm, a feeling that this substantial element does not quite belong when it comes solely to the physical-sensory, and hence the fact that in recent decades so much “Americanism” and, on the other hand, so much of what I do not wish to specify in detail have poured over Germany and alienated it from its original, folk-based activity.

[ 26 ] In an even higher sense, Eastern Europe will be connected to the spiritual realm through its folk culture and will develop an even higher culture in a spiritual sense—a counterforce to what is currently taking shape for the reasons stated. But that is a matter for the future; it does not yet exist today, but is still contained within the animalic realm, from which it must first develop.

[ 27 ] Just as they have inherited from the past, the Western countries of Europe are connected to the fourth post-Atlantic epoch. Something that is newer, yet opposed to Americanism, is already inherent in the German character: a certain relationship to the spiritual world that is sought within the spiritual realm itself. When the German person follows his or her very own nature, he or she does not fear the spiritual, but rather possesses that inclination toward the spiritual which we find, for example, typically expressed—albeit at a higher level—in Goetheanism.

[ 28 ] When one says such things, one must, of course, express them in no uncertain terms. But you know that these matters are raised here not out of chauvinism, but out of a deeper understanding. It is truly not said to please anyone today. You saw last time that I, too, understand how to speak without seeking to please. But one thing must be said: Within what is often forgotten in Central Europe—yet is, after all, the German essence—lies an innate relationship between the human spirit and the supersensible world that must be cultivated, a relationship that is the exact opposite of everything else manifesting on Earth today. Oh, if only we would acknowledge this—if only the last few decades had not, unfortunately, tended to promote Americanism and Russianism in this realm—then the practice of science in Central Europe would have developed in a different way. You know from my other remarks what a spiritual science could have emerged from Goetheanism. But Goetheanism also remained a transcendent current. Has it actually been grasped? Not yet. But it embodies the true German essence in everything that underlies it. This essence, as you can see from today’s characterization, is foreign to the others. The others are very, very intertwined with the legacy and with the new. Only in this Central Europe has something developed that has more or less emerged from the legacy and from the new.

[ 29 ] The fact that Goetheanism remains untouched by materialistic science—Goethe is, of course, praised, but, as I have said, the former Minister of Finance, Kreuzwendedich, is addressed by his first name and made president of the Goethe Society—can be seen in various ways. One will inevitably perceive precisely what is present in this very inner element of Germanness as a constant reproach in other areas; for the best way to protect oneself against that which one cannot acknowledge by one’s very nature is to denigrate it. One must look this squarely in the face without reservation. When something exists as a living reproach, the best course of action is to portray it as criminality. In this way, one subjectively defends oneself against the fact that it exists as a reproach. This touches upon an important psychological reality. The vilification will go on and on, but it will stem from the fact that it is uncomfortable to acknowledge this peculiar stance of the “I” toward the spiritual. Yet there is a necessity to see clearly in these areas, not to flee from clear seeing, as is commonly done. If we ourselves did not harbor so much philistinism, so much Americanism within us, we would realize that these are two opposites: German Goetheanism and Americanism; and we would then know that we can only relate to the currents of the present in the right way if we look into these currents entirely without prejudice. We should actually rid ourselves of all chauvinism; we should focus entirely on what is objective.

[ 30 ] But it is precisely then that we would turn away from any idealization of Americanism—to which we have, after all, devoted ourselves sufficiently—and would realize, precisely because the fear of the spiritual is the defining element of Americanism, that in the current catastrophic events, the American element will increasingly come to be seen as the truly radical evil. It is the short-sighted who say otherwise, because they do not judge matters within their proper context. Everything that stems from the political situation of the French, everything that stems from the purely economic rigidity inherent in the British, and everything that flows from the animalistic fury—this “sacred egoism”—of the Italian people is, in light of the great events unfolding, a trifle compared to the truly evil element that arises from Americanism. For there are three currents which, by virtue of their inner kinship, possess a destructive force for human development. Because they have, in various ways, absorbed the legacies of the past and the new—as I have attempted to sketch out today—they are, in this respect, destructive. This destructive force is found primarily in three currents: first, in everything that is called Americanism, for it tends more and more to foster a fear of the spirit, to reduce the world to nothing more than an opportunity to live in it physically. It is quite something else, however, when British culture seeks to turn the world into a kind of trading post. Americanism actually seeks to turn it into a physical dwelling equipped with as much comfort as possible, in which one can live comfortably and in wealth. And being able to live comfortably and in wealth in the world—that is the political element of Americanism. Anyone who fails to see through this does not see things as they are, but seeks to delude themselves. Under the influence of this current, however, humanity’s connection to the spiritual world must wither away. In these American forces lies what must essentially lead the earth to its end; there lies the destructive force that must ultimately bring the earth to its death, because the spirit is to be kept at bay. The second destructive force is not merely Catholic Jesuitism, but all forms of Jesuitism, for it is essentially related to Americanism. If Americanism is the cultivation of the American current that seeks to instill fear of the spirit, then Jesuitism seeks to awaken faith: do not meddle with the spirit, which we cannot approach, and let the spiritual goods be administered by those who are called to do so through the magisterium of the Catholic Church. And this current seeks to stunt the forces within human nature that strive toward the supernatural. And the third is what is now rising so terribly in individual manifestations in the East, but which nevertheless has its root in socialism, which socializes the purely animal nature; it is—and the term is not meant to be dogmatized in any way—what is called Bolshevism, which humanity will not easily overcome.

[ 31 ] These are the three destructive elements of modern human development. To counter them with insight, so that we may face the events of the present in the right way—this is possible only on the foundation of spiritual science. I would like to speak about this over the next eight days.