Three Streams of Human Evolution
GA 184
5 October 1918, Dornach
Lecture Two
From the manifold indications and details I have given concerning the Christ Mystery, you will be aware that we must differentiate between what had come to be present in the general course of human evolution at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and what came in through the Mystery of Golgotha. You know that in human evolution we have to do with a continuous stream of forces proceeding from the Beings of the higher Hierarchies who belong to man's original nature, and also with two side-streams, the Luciferic stream and the Ahrimanic stream.
Now the point is that the Luciferic and Ahrimanic streams reached a certain climax, the climax of the usefulness of their working within human evolution, just at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and—if one may put it like this—mankind was threatened by the danger of this climax being overstepped, so that the necessary equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic forces in the whole evolution of mankind might have been lost. If we look at mankind's evolution as progressing in a straight line (see diagram), we can say: To the course of this evolution belong the Lemurian age (we will start there), the Atlantean age, and our own age, the fifth, which we always refer to as the post-Atlantean age. If I draw in the strength of the Luciferic influence as a red line, we can say: In the Lemurian age a certain strength is there which first grows, then decreases, becomes very slight, and disappears entirely in the Atlantean age—to arise again in the post-Atlantean age. So that, strictly speaking, in the Atlantean epoch (I am talking not of the evolution of individuals but of mankind as a whole) very little of the direct influence of the Luciferic is there (see red line in diagram).
But in this Atlantean age the Ahrimanic development was there instead, where I have put in a yellow line. I have to show it as particularly strong in the Atlantean age, and later, in the post-Atlantean times, becoming weaker. I am referring now to historical evolution, and when we characterise anything in this way, we must always pay heed to what I said recently: when Lucifer is working particularly strongly, he calls up Ahriman in the subconscious. Thus, if in our fifth age the Luciferic curve is specially noticeable, this does not mean that because Lucifer is active, Ahriman is somewhat outside our sphere. On the contrary, it means that, because Lucifer is working strongly among the forces of history, Ahriman sets to work particularly in the subconscious regions of man.
You see, therefore, that in man's earthly evolution a kind of waving line is there in the case of Ahriman's activity, just as in that of Lucifer. These degrees of strength of the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic both have to be balanced. But in the course of history this state of equilibrium has never come to perfection. There have been times when the Luciferic was working with great strength, and times when the Ahrimanic was doing so.
If we look at the period of human evolution when mankind was approaching the Mystery of Golgotha, we find that the state of equilibrium between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic forces was extraordinarily fluctuating, vacillating—no real balance was there. We have on one hand the stream of mankind which is moving towards the Mystery of Golgotha and manifests historically in the evolution of the Semitic peoples. This stream is particularly susceptible to the Luciferic influence, whereby a strong Ahrimanic activity is brought about in the subconscious.
On the other hand, the Greek nature is highly susceptible to the forces of Ahriman, and this brings about great Luciferic activity in the subconscious. We can fully understand the Semitic and Greek cultures—polaric opposites of one another—only by keeping in mind this vacillation in human evolution between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. At the time when the Mystery of Golgotha entered Earth evolution from without, the influence of Greece was of enormous importance for the people of the West. This influence, however, was already beginning to wane, or, more exactly, it had passed its peak. Greek culture was threatened with a decline which can be characterised in the following way. Precisely through the Ahrimanic intervention experienced by the Greeks, and manifest as a Luciferic element of their art, they had developed a lofty wisdom. And—as we have often said—this wisdom took on a very individual, humanly individual, character. But fundamentally it was at its greatest where there still shone into it out of primeval times the teachings received from actual spiritual Beings.
We know that in those times the Teachers of mankind were those who were inspired, initiated, directly from the spiritual world. But through them spiritual Beings spoke; and, if we look back into those remote ages of mankind's evolution at the beginning of the fifth epoch, we can see into a wonderful primeval wisdom. Among the Greeks it was so highly clarified in its concepts and ideas that in this way it had adapted itself to the nature of man. Whereas in earlier times it was given out through the great Initiates in a more pictorial, imaginative way, with the Greeks it was grasped in ideas, in concepts, and thereby was adapted to the human nature of that time. What is so admirable among the Greeks, however, is that resounding through the philosophy of Plato is an echo of that primeval wisdom which mankind may be said to have received from the very lips of the Gods. But men were threatened with the loss of this wisdom.
When we look back to the period of Greek spiritual development that Nietzsche has called the “tragic age,” we are looking back at the great figures of Greek philosophy, at Anaxagoras, at Heraclitus, and in them we can see the final bearers of a divine wisdom which, however, is already converted into ideas and concepts. Thales is to a certain extent the first to take his stand solely upon natural concepts; he is already at some distance from the directly living impression of the primeval wisdom of mankind which we can still discern in Anaxagoras. Mankind was threatened with the gradual loss of this wisdom. But out of this primeval wisdom there had flowed something which in ancient days gave men the capacity to gain some knowledge about man. Knowledge of man was indeed something in which the Greek and all primeval wisdom were destined to be steeped. The Mysteries were meant to give knowledge of man; from them came the aphorism, “Know thyself!” This ancient knowledge of man, however, was mediated by way of Lucifer, and men worked upon it with the aid of Ahrimanic forces. It was bound up with a state of equilibrium between the Ahrimanic and Luciferic powers.
Now at the time when the ancient world was passing away and from the other side came the Mystery of Golgotha, the Ahrimanic forces began to gain a slight ascendancy; they were then particularly strong. And since the sixteenth century something similar is happening again—a kind of renaissance of the Ahrimanic forces. But at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the Ahrimanic forces were specially strong. And through them man's life of soul was driven in the direction of the abstract—towards that abstraction which meets us in the thoroughly abstract nature of the Romans. We have now to ask: What would have happened to mankind if the course of evolution had continued on these lines and there had been no Mystery of Golgotha? The result would have been that men would have no longer been able to have any concept, any idea, any perception, of the human personality itself.
This is a fact of extraordinary significance. Because it would no longer have been possible for anything to be said to man by way of the Gods, because even the tradition of this divine source of wisdom concerning human personality was being lost, man was threatened with finding himself ever more and more of a riddle. We must feel the full implications of this truth—without the Mystery of Golgotha, man would have been faced by the threat of becoming an ever-increasing riddle to himself. He would indeed have been able to wring forth wisdom, but only about nature, not about himself. And he would gradually have forgotten his divine origin; he would have had to lose all knowledge of it.
Then came the Mystery of Golgotha. And among all the diverse points of view from which the Mystery of Golgotha can be characterised, this one must be specially considered—that through the incursion of the Mystery of Golgotha men were given from spiritual heights, which were no longer within their reach on earth, a renewed capacity for grasping themselves as persons. The Christ Impulse brought men the possibility of once more grasping their personalities, but now of doing so through inner forces.
To-day it is extraordinarily difficult for human beings to conceive how men of old arrived at their consciousness of personality, because one thing people refuse to believe is how entirely different for men of old was their conception of the external world. It is impossible to understand such a figure as Julian the deserter, the apostate, in all his world-historic significance. if it is not known that he was one of the last who still saw the sun differently from the way in which it is seen to-day.1See Planetary Spheres and Their Influence on Mans Life on Earth and in Spiritual Worlds, Lecture I, “The Threefold Sun and the Risen Christ.” This lecture was given in London, April 24th, 1922. See also Karmic Relationships: Esoteric Studies - Volume IV, Lecture VI, given in Dornach, September 16th, 1924. The man of to-day sees the sun as a physical body. The influence of the moon through its natural effects has stayed with him longer. In the moonlight lovers still stroll and sentimentally dream; in the moonlight imagination grows and flourishes; moonlight is like twilight—and poetry written in that key, both true and false, is still widespread. The same feelings that people still have in moonlight, the men of old had, but much more intensely, when on waking they first caught sight of the sun. They did not talk merely of the sunlight; they said something like this: “Out of this heavenly being there streams into us a radiance which permeates us with warmth and light, making of each one of us a personality.”
This was still felt by Julian the Apostate, and he believed it could be preserved. That was his mistake, and also his great tragedy, for man no longer experienced his personality through the physical rays of the sun. This knowledge of the personality was brought to man by a spiritual path. That which the sun out there in space could no longer give him, the experience that could no longer come to him from outside, now had to rise up from his own inner depths. Christ Himself had to unite His cosmic destiny with mankind, so that in the continual fluctuation of the balance between Ahriman and Lucifer men should not fall away from their onward path.
We must take fully and deeply in earnest that Christ had descended from spiritual heights and has united His destiny with that of men. What does this mean? When before the Mystery of Golgotha men looked into the world of the senses, they saw at the same time a spiritual element there; this I made clear when speaking to you about the perception of the sun. All this was lost to men. They had to receive something in place of it; they had to receive something of a spiritual nature, and at the same time gain from this spirituality an impression of reality in the sense-perceptible world. That is a salient point in the Mystery of Golgotha and its relation to human knowledge.
And this Mystery of Golgotha, which gave lo earth-evolution its real meaning, actually took place in a little corner of the earth, unnoticed by the Romans; and even Tacitus knew practically nothing of the Mystery of Golgotha, although he wrote his excellent work on Roman history a hundred years later. History says really nothing about the Mystery of Golgotha, for the Gospels are not to be reckoned as history. They were written in the way I have shown in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact; they are really Mystery-books applied to life. However much trouble the theologians may give themselves, the Mystery of Golgotha will never be part of the history that applies to other events. For this is exactly what is meant to be characteristic of the Mystery of Golgotha: that historically, by way of history founded on external facts, nothing about it is to be known. Those who wish to know anything about the Mystery of Golgotha must have faith in the supersensible. The Mystery of Golgotha does not admit of historical proof by the senses.
In the same way that men of old looked into the world of the senses and apprehended at the same time the supersensible, so must modern man, if he does not wish to lose his knowledge of the personality, look upon the Mystery of Golgotha as upon the supersensible; that is how he must come to the conviction that this historical event, for which there is no historical evidence, did indeed take place. Whoever does not keep in mind that there is no history concerning the most important historical event in the course of man's evolution, that no external account of this event can be called historical—whoever does not grasp this has no understanding of the whole relation to modern man of the Mystery of Golgotha. For concerning the Mystery of Golgotha modern man is meant to turn to an actuality of which history can tell him nothing. And this actuality is to have an operative effect. For what did we speak of yesterday as coming from Ahriman and Lucifer? We said that Lucifer turns men's hearts from interest in other men. Were only the Luciferic to work in mankind, we should increasingly lose interest in our fellow men. What one or other person was thinking would concern us very little. We can very well take the measure of the Luciferic in a man by asking: Is he interested objectively, tolerantly, in others, or is he interested only in himself? Luciferic natures take very little interest in their fellows; they grow stiff and hard, considering as right only what they themselves think and feel, and they are not accessible to the opinions of others. Had the Luciferic gone on working in human evolution in the same way that it worked up to the Mystery of Golgotha, mankind would have gradually entered on a way that we might characterise as follows: People would have become hard and detached in their souls, each thinking only of his own affairs, each holding his own ideas as conclusive, and having no inclination to look into the hearts of his fellows.
This, however, is merely the reverse side of the loss of personality. For by losing the possibility of recognising man as a personality, we lose also our understanding of the personality of those around us. Just at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha was approaching, there were very many people—more than is generally thought—in the Greek and Roman worlds, in Africa, in the West of Asia, who were in a certain sense spiritually proud, people who went through the world as—one cannot say peculiar people—but as proud, lonely men who hugged their loneliness. There were many such, and also those who made it a philosophy not to trouble about other people, but merely to follow the way of their own choice. This was brought about by the Luciferic falling out of balance.
And indeed the Ahrimanic was present in excess. This is best shown in the outlook of the first Roman Emperors, the Julians, of whom the very first, Augustus, was the only one to be initiated, though in a rather questionable way. Among the other Emperors there were some who at best obtained initiation by force, but they all regarded themselves as sons of God; that is, they considered themselves initiates by claiming divine descent.2See the lecture cycle: Building Stones for an Understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha (notably lectures 5–8) given in Berlin, March 27th to April 24th, 1917. For the Ahrimanic is particularly revealed by a man not being willing to live among other men as a personality among other personalities, but wanting to develop power in the way I referred to yesterday—wanting to rule by exploiting the weaknesses of others. The two great dangers threatening the world at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, dangers to which men would have succumbed if the Mystery of Golgotha had not come, were lack of interest in other men, and the lust for domination in every individual. The Christ, by uniting His destiny with that of mankind, implanted into humanity something of extraordinary depth. You may perhaps understand me best if I give you an outline of what this really was. As I have shown you, we men possess forces that we develop through our original being. You know that in a certain sense we become clever, through our original being, only in the second half of our life. I have spoken of this fully and repeatedly. But that is not quite all; what I was then referring to as the growth of cleverness in man between birth and death is, strictly speaking, valid only for earthly evolution; we are intended to become still cleverer during the evolutionary stages of Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan. And the forces we are to develop in the course of the Jupiter and Venus stages are already latent in us.
Now the following has come about. You know that during the first half of life a man is unable to acquire self-knowledge through his original being; he has to acquire it through Lucifer, while his original being goes on developing further. The Luciferic infuses him with self-knowledge during the first half of life; in the second half of life this brilliant self-knowledge is clouded over by Ahriman. With the Christ Impulse, another stream enters man's evolution; it speaks to the very depths of the human being. And if man had to rely on his original forces for developing the faculty that would of itself lead him to those cosmic insights which come into Earth-evolution through Christ, then he would not acquire this faculty until the Venus stage of evolution. Thus, however clever a man might become during his life on earth, up to the time of his death he would never be able to reach the point that can be reached through the Christ Impulse having united its destiny with Earth-evolution.
We live through our earthly life, therefore, without being able to understand the Christ Impulse with the help of our original evolution. From this you can gather the following. There were contemporaries of Christ, His disciples; they went about with Him; through the traditional primeval wisdom they could acquire so much wisdom about Him that later they were able to produce the Gospels—but they could not really understand Him. Right up to their deaths they certainly never reached an understanding of the Christ Impulse. When was it, then, that they could achieve this? After their death, in the time after death. Given that Peter or James, let us say, were contemporaries of Christ, when were they ready to understand Christ? Only in the third century after the Mystery of Golgotha—for up to their deaths they were not sufficiently mature; they became mature only in the third century.
We are touching here on a very important secret which we must bring with all exactitude before our souls. The contemporaries of Christ had first to go through death, had to live in the spiritual world until the second or third century; and then, in the life after death, knowledge of Christ could dawn upon them, and they could inspire those who, towards the end of the second century, or from the third century on, wrote about the Christ Impulse. Hence the writings about the Christ Impulse from the third century onwards take on a special character, for through the Church Fathers they received inspiration, more or less clear or more or less clouded. Thus Augustine, whose authority prevailed throughout the Middle Ages, falls into this period. Hence we can see how the only way in which people could be given an understanding of the Christ Impulse was to be inspired on earth by the Venus wisdom, if I may so call it, which at present man can experience only after death and in subsequent centuries. And it was a piece of good fortune—a foolish expression but there is no better one—that in the second and third centuries this inspiration could begin. For had men been obliged to wait longer, beyond the year 333, they would have become increasingly hardened towards the spiritual world and would have been incapable of receiving any kind of inspiration.
You see, the working of the Christ Impulse into mankind during the centuries of Christian development was bound up with numerous mysteries. And anyone wishing to seek for it again to-day finds the most important elements in knowledge about the Christ Impulse only by achieving supersensible cognition. For the first actual teachers of mankind concerning the Christ Impulse were really the dead, as you have been able to see from what I have now been saying—persons who were contemporaries of Christ, and only in the third century became mature enough to gain a full understanding. This understanding was able to grow during the fourth century, but at the same time the difficulty of inspiring men increased. In the sixth century this difficulty went on increasing, until finally the time came when the inspiring of men through spiritual mysteries concerning the Christ Mystery, and the opposition to it caused by the hardening of mankind, were brought under regulation by Rome. This was done by Rome in the ninth century, in 869, at the Council of Constantinople, where the spirit was finally done away with. This whole matter of inspiration became too far-fetched for Rome, and the dogma was laid down that man possesses in his soul something of the nature of spirit, but that to believe in the spirit is heresy. Men had to be enticed away from the spirit. This in essentials is what is connected with the Eighth (Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople in 869, to which I have often referred. It is merely a consequence of this abolition of the spirit when Jesuits to-day—I have mentioned this recently—say: “In earlier times there was indeed such a thing as inspiration, but to-day inspiration is devilish; we may not venture to strive for supersensible knowledge, for then the devil comes in.”
These things, however, are connected with the deepest matters which must interest us if we wish truly to enter into Spiritual Science. They are connected particularly with a certain recognition of the character of wisdom which many so-called spiritual scientists, especially those who foregather in so-called secret societies, do not recognise. A certain deception, one might say, is constantly spread abroad among men—spread abroad by those who know spiritual secrets. This deception is veiled by a false contrast, a false polarity. Have you not heard people saying: “There is Lucifer and his opponent is Christ?” and setting up Christ-Lucifer as polaric opposites? I have shown you that even Goethe's Faust-concept suffers from a confusion between Ahriman and Lucifer; from Goethe's inability to distinguish between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. The second part of my little book, Goethes Geistesart, treats of this.
But behind this there is something extraordinarily significant. The real contrast, imparted by those who wish to speak the truth out of the spiritual world, is between Ahriman and Lucifer, and the Christ Impulse brings in something different. It has nothing to do with the Ahriman-Lucifer polarity, for it works in equilibrium. Something of tremendous importance rests on a recognition of this fact; we will speak of it further tomorrow.
Elfter Vortrag
Aus den mannigfaltigsten Andeutungen und Ausführungen, die ich über das Christus-Mysterium gemacht habe, werden Sie haben entnehmen können, daß man zu unterscheiden hat zwischen demjenigen, was im allgemeinen Entwickelungsgang der Menschheit gelegen hatte zur Zeit dieses Mysteriums von Golgatha, und dem, was durch das Mysterium von Golgatha in diese Menschheitsentwickelung hineingekommen war. Nach der Art, wie wir jetzt die Menschheitsentwickelung kennengelernt haben, wissen Sie, daß wir es zu tun haben mit einer fortlaufenden Strömung von Kräften, die von den Wesenheiten der höheren Hierarchien herrühren und die zur ureigenen Natur des Menschen gehören, und mit zwei seitlichen Strömungen, mit der luziferischen und der ahrimanischen Strömung.
Nun handelt es sich darum, daß die luziferische und die ahrimanische Strömung gewissermaßen ihren Höhepunkt, den Höhepunkt ihres nützlichen Wirkens innerhalb der Menschheitsentwickelung gerade zur Zeit des Mysteriums von Golgatha erreicht haben, und in gewissem Sinne, wenn man den Ausdruck gebrauchen darf, der Menschheit Gefahr drohte, daß dieser Höhepunkt überschritten werde und dadurch das notwendige Gleichgewicht zwischen dem ahrimanischen Wirken und dem luziferischen Wirken für die ganze Menschheitsentwickelung verlorengehen könnte. Im Laufe dieser Menschheitsentwickelung trat ja folgendes zutage. Betrachten wir die fortschreitende Menschheitsentwickelung als eine gerade Linie (siehe Zeichnung $.220), so können wir sagen, dieser fortschreitenden Menschheitsentwickelung gehören an - wir wollen beginnen mit der lemurischen Zeit - das lemurische Zeitalter, das atlantische Zeitalter und unser Zeitalter, das fünfte, wie immer wir das bezeichnen, das nachatlantische Zeitalter. Wenn ich als rote Linie einzeichne die Stärke der luziferischen Wirkung, so kann man diese etwa so einzeichnen. Man kann sagen, im lemurischen Zeitalter ist eine gewisse Stärke da, die wächst, nimmt dann wiederum ab, und diese luziferische Stärke wird sehr gering und geht dann ganz unter im atlantischen Zeitalter, um im nachatlantischen Zeitalter sich wiederum zu erheben. So daß im atlantischen Zeitalter im Grunde genommen - also ich rede jetzt nicht vom einzelnen Menschen, sondern ich rede von der Menschheitsentwickelung - in der geschichtlichen Entwickelung der Menschheit wenig vom unmittelbaren Einflusse des Luziferischen da ist (siehe Zeichnung, rot).
Dafür aber war in diesem Zeitalter die ahrimanische Entwickelung, was ich einzeichne mit einer gelben Linie, und ich müßte diese so zeichnen, daß sie besonders im atlantischen Zeitalter stark ist und hier, nachatlantische Zeit, wiederum schwächer wird - ich rede jetzt von der geschichtlichen Entwickelung - und wir müssen uns klar sein, daß wir, wenn wir so etwas charakterisieren, immer das berücksichtigen müssen, was ich neulich einmal gesagt habe: Wenn Luzifer besonders stark wirkt, so ruft er im Unterbewußtsein Ahriman hervor. Also wenn in unserem fünften Zeitalter die luziferische Kurve besonders da ist, so bedeutet das nicht, daß, weil Luzifer besonders wirkt, etwa Ahriman außerhalb unseres Kreises liege; im Gegenteil, es gilt gerade, daß, weil Luzifer unter den historischen Kräften stark wirkt, Ahriman in den unterbewußten Regionen des Menschen besonders sein Wesen treibt.
Sie sehen also, es ist eine Art Wellenlinie sowohl für ahrimanisches Wirken wie für luziferisches Wirken im Verlauf der menschlichen Erdenentwickelung da. Aus den beiden Stärken des Ahrimanischen und Luziferischen muß ein Gleichgewichtszustand hergestellt werden. Dieser Gleichgewichtszustand ist nun in der geschichtlichen Entwickelung niemals ein vollkommener gewesen. Es gab Zeiten, in denen die luziferischen Wirkungen sehr stark waren, Zeiten, in denen die ahrimanischen Wirkungen sehr stark waren.
Wenn wir das Zeitalter der menschlichen Entwickelung ins Auge fassen, in dem sich die Menschheit dem Mysterium von Golgatha näherte, da finden wir, daß der Gleichgewichtszustand zwischen dem luziferischen und ahrimanischen Kräftewesen ein außerordentlich labiler ist, ein schwankender ist, kein rechtes Gleichgewicht eigentlich da ist. Wir haben auf der einen Seite jene Menschheitsströmung, die sich dem Mysterium von Golgatha zu bewegt, und die uns historisch erscheint in der Entwickelung der semitischen Völker. Diese Menschheitsströmung ist insbesondere zugänglich für das luziferische Wesen, wodurch ahrimanische Wirkungen stark im Unterbewußten erzeugt werden.
Dagegen das griechische Wesen ist stark zugänglich für die historischen ahrimanischen Kräfte, wodurch starke luziferische Wirkungen im Unterbewußten erzeugt werden. Man versteht die semitische und die griechische Kultur, die ja polarische Gegensätze sind, nur dann vollständig, wenn man dies Schwanken in der Weltentwickelung des Menschen zwischen Ahrimanischem und Luziferischem gehörig ins Auge faßt. Aber für die abendländische Bevölkerung war in der Zeit, in der also von auswärts das Mysterium in die Erdenentwickelung hereinfiel, der Einfluß des Griechentums ein ganz ungeheuer bedeutsamer. Dieser Einfluß des Griechentums, er war aber schon im Abnehmen, besser gesagt, er hatte seinen Höhepunkt überschritten. Dem Griechentum drohte eine absteigende Entwickelung. Und diese absteigende Entwickelung, die dem Griechentum drohte, die kann man so ausdrücken, daß man sagt: Die Griechen haben gerade durch den ahrimanischen Einschlag, den sie gehabt haben, der sich in ihrer Kunst als luziferisches Element kundgab, eine hohe Weisheit entwickelt. Und diese Weisheit, sie hat, wie wir öfter charakterisiert haben, einen sehr individuellen, menschlich individuellen Charakter angenommen. Aber sie war im Grunde genommen am größten da, wo noch hereinleuchtet in die griechische Weisheit aus uralten Zeiten dasjenige, was geistige Wesen selber die Menschen gelehrt hatten.
Wir wissen ja, daß in Urzeiten die Lehrer der Menschheit unmittelbar aus der geistigen Welt heraus Inspirierte, Initiierte waren. Durch solche aber haben die geistigen Wesenheiten der Welt selber gesprochen, und wir können, wenn wir in uralte Zeiten der Menschheitsentwickelung noch in dem Beginne des fünften Zeitalters zurückblicken, auf eine wunderbare Urweisheit blicken. Die war gewissermaßen in Begriffen und Ideen so geläutert, daß sie sich in diesen Begriffen und Ideen dem Menschenwesen angepaßt hatte. Während sie in früheren Zeiten durch die großen Eingeweihten in mehr bildlicher, imaginativer Form verkündet worden war, war sie durch die Griechen in Ideen, in Begriffe gefaßt worden, hatte sich dadurch den Menschen angepaßt. Aber dasjenige, was eigentlich bewundernswürdig an den Griechen ist, dasjenige, was selbst noch die Philosophie des Plato durchtönt, das ist noch ein Nachklang jener Urweisheit, welche die Menschheit, ich möchte sagen, aus dem Munde der Götter selber empfangen hat. Aber diese Weisheit drohte den Menschen verlorenzugehen.
Wenn man zurückblickt auf dasjenige Zeitalter der griechischen Geistesentwickelung, das Nierzsche das tragische Zeitalter genannt hat, dann blickt man zurück auf die großen griechischen Philosophengestalten, auf Anaxagoras, auf Heraklit, und man erblickt in ihnen, ich möchte sagen, letzte Träger der Götterweisheit, die aber schon umgesetzt ist in Ideen und Begriffe. Thales ist gewissermaßen der erste, der rein auf natürlichen Begriffen fußt; er ist schon getrennt von dem unmittelbar lebendigen Eindruck der Urweisheit der Menschheit, der noch bei Anaxagoras wahrzunehmen ist. Der Menschheit drohte nach und nach diese Urweisheit verlorenzugehen. Nun war aber aus dieser Urweisheit geflossen dasjenige, was in alten Zeiten den Menschen befähigt hat, überhaupt über den Menschen etwas zu wissen. Menschenerkenntnis, es war ja auch etwas, was die griechische und was alle Urweisheit durchtränken sollte. Die Mysterien sollten Menschenerkenntnis geben. «Erkenne dich selbst» war einer der Weisheitssprüche. Aber diese alte Menschenerkenntnis, sie war auf dem Umwege durch Luzifer vermittelt, und der Mensch erarbeitete sie durch ahrimanische Kräfte. Sie war ganz und gar gebunden an den Gleichgewichtszustand zwischen ahrimanischen und luziferischen Kräften.
Nun stellte sich zur Zeit, als die alte Welt zu Ende ging, als von der andern Seite her das Mysterium von Golgatha kam, für die Menschheit ein leichter Überschuß ein an ahrimanischen Kräften. Die ahrimanischen Kräfte waren damals besonders stark. Jetzt, seit dem 16. Jahrhundert, ist wiederum etwas Ähnliches der Fall, eine Art Renaissance der ahrimanischen Kräfte. Aber in jener Zeit waren die ahrimanischen Kräfte eben besonders stark, in welcher das Mysterium von Golgatha hereinkam. Und durch die Stärke dieser ahrimanischen Kräfte wurde namentlich das bewirkt, daß das menschliche Seelenleben nach der Abstraktheit hingetrieben wurde, bis zu jener Abstraktheit, die uns dann im römischen Wesen entgegentritt, welches durch und durch abstrakt ist. Man muß sich fragen: Was wäre mit der Menschheit geschehen, wenn nur in dieser hier eben charakterisierten Entwickelungsströmung der Entwickelungsgang fortgegangen wäre, wenn nicht das Mysterium von Golgatha gekommen wäre? Das wäre eingetreten, daß der Mensch nicht mehr hätte einen Begriff, eine Vorstellung, eine Empfindung fassen können von der menschlichen Persönlichkeit selbst.
Damit ist außerordentlich Bedeutsames gesagt. Das drohte den Menschen, weil ihnen nichts mehr auf dem Wege von den Göttern her gesagt werden konnte, weil selbst die Traditionen verlorengegangen waren von diesem Götterwege der Weisheit über die Persönlichkeit, daß sie sich selber immer mehr und mehr ein Rätsel werden sollten. Man muß diese Wahrheit in ihrer ganzen Stärke fühlen: Ohne das Mysterium von Golgatha hätte den Menschen gedroht, daß sie sich immer mehr und mehr ein Rätsel geworden wären. Die Menschen hätten Weisheit erringen können, aber nur über die Natur, nicht über sich. Und sie hätten allmählich vergessen müssen, daß sie aus dem Geiste geboren sind. Sie hätten das vollständig verlernen müssen.
Da kam das Mysterium von Golgatha. Und von den verschiedensten Gesichtspunkten, von denen aus man das Mysterium von Golgatha charakterisieren kann, ist auch der eine Gesichtspunkt zu beachten, daß durch den Einschlag des Mysteriums von Golgatha den Menschen die Fähigkeit wiederum gebracht worden ist, aus geistigen Höhen, die ihnen vom irdischen Felde aus verlorengegangen waren, sich als Persönlichkeit zu fassen. Der Christus-Impuls brachte den Menschen die Möglichkeit, sich wiederum als Persönlichkeit zu fassen, aber jetzt als Persönlichkeit sich zu fassen durch innere Kräfte.
Es ist heute für den Menschen außerordentlich schwierig, sich vorzustellen, wie der alte Mensch zu seinem Persönlichkeitsbewußtsein gekommen ist, weil die Leute einem heute nicht glauben wollen, wie ganz anders die äußere Weltanschauung für den alten Menschen war. Man kann eine solche Gestalt wie Julian den Abtrünnigen, den Apostaten, nicht verstehen in seiner ganzen welthistorischen Bedeutung, wenn man nicht weiß, daß er einer der letzten von denjenigen war, welche die Sonne noch anders gesehen haben, als der heutige Mensch sie sieht. Der heutige Mensch sieht die Sonne wie einen physikalischen Körper. Die Mondenwirkung ist ihm noch länger geblieben als Naturwirkung. Im Monde gehen heute noch die Liebenden spazieren und schwärmen und träumen, im Monde wächst und blüht die Phantasie, im Monde, da dämmert es und die Mondscheinpoesie, die wahre und die falsche, sie ist heute noch immer unter den Menschen verbreitet. So, aber viel intensiver, wie heute noch manche im Monde fühlen, so fühlten die alten Menschen, wenn sie aufwachend der Sonne ansichtig wurden. Wenn die alten Menschen aufwachend der Sonne ansichtig wurden, dann redeten sie nicht nur von dem Sonnenlicht, dann empfanden sie: Aus diesem Himmelswesen strömt mit dem Strahl in uns ein dasjenige, was uns wärmend und uns durchleuchtend durchdringt, was uns zur Persönlichkeit macht.
Das fühlte noch Julian der Apostat, und er glaubte, daß das den Menschen erhalten werden könne. Und das war sein Irrtum; das war auch seine große Tragik. Aus dem physischen Sonnenstrahl trat der sich entwickelnden Menschheit die Persönlichkeit nicht mehr entgegen. Auf einem geistigen Wege wurde den Menschen diese Erkenntnis der Persönlichkeit gebracht. Was die Sonne draußen im Raume nicht mehr geben konnte, was nicht mehr auf dem Wege von außen an den Menschen herankommen konnte, es mußte aus dem tiefsten Inneren des Menschen aufsteigen. Der Christus mußte selber sein Weltengeschick mit den Menschen verbinden, damit im fortwährenden Schwanken der Waagschale zwischen Ahriman und Luzifer die Menschen nicht aus ihrer fortschreitenden Bahn fielen. Und man muß in vollem und tiefem Ernste nehmen, daß der Christus aus geistigen Höhen zu den Menschen heruntergestiegen ist und sein Geschick mit dem Geschick der Menschen verbunden hat. Wie ist das? Das ist das Eigentümliche: Wenn die Menschen vor dem Mysterium von Golgatha in die Sinneswelt hineingeschaut haben, dann sahen sie zugleich ein Geistiges. Das habe ich Ihnen ja an der Sonnenanschauung eben klargestellt. Das ging den Menschen verloren. Die Menschen mußten dafür ein anderes bekommen, sie mußten ein Geistiges empfangen, aus dessen Geistigkeit sie zu gleicher Zeit den Eindruck der sinnenfälligen Wirklichkeit hatten. Das ist das Merkwürdige beim Mysterium von Golgatha und seinem Verhältnis zu der menschlichen Erkenntnis.
Und dieses Mysterium von Golgatha, das der Erdenentwickelung den eigentlichen Sinn gegeben hat, es ging eigentlich, unbemerkt für die Römer, in einem kleinen Winkel der Welt vor sich, und Tacitus weiß eigentlich noch nichts Rechtes von dem Mysterium von Golgatha, obwohl er hundert Jahre nach dem Mysterium von Golgatha seine ausgezeichnete römische Geschichtsbetrachtung aufgestellt hat. Die Geschichte sagt eigentlich nichts über das Mysterium von Golgatha, denn die Evangelien sind keine Geschichte; sie sind geschrieben so, wie ich es darstelle in meinem Buch «Das Christentum als mystische Tatsache»: sie sind eigentlich aufs Leben angewendete Mysterienbücher. Und wenn sich die Theologen noch so viel Mühe geben werden: Geschichte, so wie Geschichte über andere Ereignisse existiert, wird nie da sein über das Mysterium von Golgatha. Denn das soll gerade das Charakteristische sein des Mysteriums von Golgatha, daß man geschichtlich, auf dem Wege der äußeren tatsächlichen Geschichte, nichts darüber wissen soll. Wer über das Mysterium von Golgatha etwas wissen will, muß ans Übersinnliche glauben. Historisch-sinnlich läßt sich das Mysterium von Golgatha nicht beweisen.
So wie der alte Mensch ins Sinnliche geschaut hat und Übersinnliches mitbekommen hat, so soll der moderne Mensch, wenn er nicht die Erkenntnis der Persönlichkeit verlieren will, auf das Mysterium von Golgatha als auf ein Übersinnliches hinschauen und aus dem Hinschauen auf das Übersinnliche die Überzeugung erhalten: Auch dies ist historisch geschehen, worüber keine Geschichte berichtet. — Wer das nicht ins Auge faßt, daß es im Laufe der geschichtlichen Entwickelung der Menschheit über das wichtigste geschichtliche Ereignis keine Geschichte gibt, daß darüber äußerlich nichts verzeichnet ist, was man Geschichte nennt, wer das nicht faßt, faßt das ganze Verhältnis des Mysteriums von Golgatha zum modernen Menschen nicht. Denn der moderne Mensch soll an dem Mysterium von Golgatha lernen, an die Tatsächlichkeit von etwas sich zu wenden, von dem er keine historische Urkunde hat. Und wirksam soll dieses Tatsächliche sein. Denn was haben wir denn gestern eigentlich erwähnt als von Ahriman und Luzifer kommend? Wir haben erwähnt, daß Luzifer die Menschengemüter abzieht von dem Interesse am Nebenmenschen. Würde nur Luziferisches in der Menschheit wirken, wir würden immer mehr und mehr verlieren das Interesse an unseren Mitmenschen. Es würde uns wenig berühren, wie der eine oder der andere Mensch denkt. Man bekommt sogar einen recht guten Maßstab, wieviel Luziferisches in einem Menschen ist, wenn man frägt: Interessiert der Mensch sich für andere Menschen objektiv, tolerant, oder interessiert er sich doch eigentlich nur für sich selbst? — Luziferische Naturen haben wenig Interesse für ihre Mitmenschen, sind in sich versteift, verstockt, halten nur dasjenige für richtig, was sie selber ausdenken, was sie selber empfinden, sind nicht zugänglich für die Urteile von andern. Würde das Luziferische in derselben Weise weiter gewirkt haben in der Menschenentwickelung, wie es bis zum Mysterium von Golgatha hin gewirkt hat, dann würde die Menschheit eben allmählich in die Bahn hineingekommen sein, die damit zu charakterisieren wäre, daß die Menschen in sich verstockte und verschlossene Seelen würden, jeder sich nur um sein Eigenes kümmerte, jeder nur sein eigenes Ausgedachtes für wahr hielte und keinen Sinn hätte, in die Herzen der andern hineinzuschauen. Das aber ist nichts anderes als die Kehrseite des Verlustes der Persönlichkeit. Denn indem wir eben die Möglichkeit, den Menschen als Persönlichkeit zu erkennen, verlieren, verlieren wir auch das Verständnis für die Persönlichkeit des Mitmenschen. Es gab sehr viele Leute — viel mehr als man denkt, gerade im Zeitalter, in dem das Mysterium von Golgatha herannahte — in der griechischen, in der römischen Welt, in Afrika, im Westen von Asien, viele Menschen, welche in gewissem Sinne Hochmütige des Geistes waren, Leute, welche durch die Welt gingen, wie, man kann nicht sagen Sonderlinge, aber wie hochmütige, einsame Menschen, die einsam sein wollten. Es gab viele solche, es gab auch solche, die eine Philosophie daraus machten, sich nicht um die andern Menschen zu kümmern, sondern nur dem zu folgen, was man selbst in sich trug. Das war durch das Herausfallen des Luziferischen aus der Gleichgewichtslage bewirkt.
Und gar das Ahrimanische, das war sogar in einer Überkraft vorhanden. Es zeigt sich ja am allerbesten in der Anschauung der ersten römischen Kaiser, der Julier, von denen nur in einer etwas fragwürdigen Weise der allererste, Augustus, initiiert war, während unter den andern es höchstens solche gab, die sich die Initiation erzwangen, die sich aber alle für Göttersöhne, das heißt, für Initiierte hielten, dafür hielten, daß sie von den Göttern abstammten. Denn das Ahrimanische offenbart sich insbesondere dadurch, daß der Mensch nicht unter Menschen leben will wie Persönlichkeit unter Persönlichkeiten, sondern daß er Macht entwickeln will, wie ich gestern ausgeführt habe, daß er herrschen will, herrschen will durch Benützung der Schwächen anderer. Das waren die zwei großen drohenden Gefahren zur Zeit des Mysteriums von Golgatha, denen die Menschheit verfallen wäre, wenn das Mysterium von Golgatha nicht gekommen wäre: Interesselosigkeit für die Mitmenschen, Herrschaftsgelüste jedes einzelnen. Indem der Christus sein Geschick mit dem Menschheitsgeschick verbunden hat, hat er etwas außerordentlich Tiefes in die Menschheit hineinverpflanzt. Vielleicht verstehen Sie mich am besten, wenn ich Ihnen schematisch davon spreche, was eigentlich der Christus in die Menschheit hineinverpflanzt hat. Wir Menschen, wir haben, wie ich Ihnen gezeigt habe, Kräfte, die wir durch unser ureigenes Wesen entwickeln. Sie wissen ja, in einer gewissen Beziehung werden wir erst in der zweiten Lebenshälfte gescheit durch unser ureigenes Wesen. Das habe ich Ihnen des langen und breiten und wiederholt ausgeführt. Aber damit noch nicht genug. Das, was ich Ihnen da ausgeführt habe für das Gescheiterwerden des Menschen zwischen Geburt und Tod, gilt ja im Grunde genommen nur für die Erdenentwickelung, und wir sollen ja weiter gescheit werden durch die Jupiter- und Venusentwickelung und Vulkanentwickelung. Diese Kräfte, die wir entwickeln sollen im Lauf der Jupiter- und Venusentwickelung, liegen jetzt auch schon in uns.
Nun ist folgendes geschehen: Sie wissen, was der Mensch an Selbsterkenntnis erwerben kann in der ersten Lebenshälfte, kann er nicht durch seine ureigene Menschenwesenheit erwerben. Er muß es durch Luzifer erwerben. Seine ureigene Menschenwesenheit geht weiter. Luziferisches gibt ihm, indem es ihm in der ersten Lebenshälfte einen Einschlag gibt, die Selbsterkenntnis; diese glanzvolle Selbsterkenntnis wird in der zweiten Lebenshälfte durch Ahriman abgedämpft. Mit dem Christus-Impuls tritt eine andere Strömung in die Menschheitsentwickelung ein: zum tiefsten Inneren des Menschen spricht der Impuls, der mit dem Mysterium von Golgatha eintritt. Und wenn der Mensch durch seine ureigenen Kräfte das entwickeln sollte, was ihn von sich aus zu denjenigen kosmischen Einsichten führen würde, die durch den Christus in die Erdenentwickelung hereingekommen sind, dann würde der Mensch erst während der Venusentwickelung die Fähigkeit dazu erlangen. Also wenn der Mensch noch so gescheit wird bis zu seinem Tode, er würde bis zu seinem Tode auf der Erde von sich selbst aus nicht das erreichen können, was er dadurch erreicht, daß der Christus-Impuls sein Schicksal mit der Erdenentwickelung verbunden hat.
Wir durchleben also unser Erdenleben, ohne daß wir in der Lage sind, vermöge unserer ureigenen Entwickelung bis zu unserem Tode dahin zu kommen, den Christus-Impuls zu begreifen. Daraus geht Ihnen doch folgendes hervor: Es gab Zeitgenossen des Christus, seine Schüler; sie verkehrten mit ihm, sie konnten auch durch die Tradition der Urweisheit so viel Weisheit über ihn gewinnen, daß sie die Evangelien später schreiben konnten; aber verstehen konnten sie ihn eigentlich nicht. Denn sie konnten ja bis zu ihrem Tode damals ganz gewiß nicht zu dem Verständnis des Christus-Impulses kommen. Wann konnten sie denn erst dazu kommen? Nach ihrem Tode, in der Zeit nach dem Tode. Wenn wir annehmen, daß, sagen wir, Petrus oder Jakobus Zeitgenossen Christi waren, wann waren denn Petrus oder Jakobus reif, den Christus zu verstehen? Erst im 3. Jahrhundert nach dem Mysterium von Golgatha. Im 3. Jahrhundert nach dem Mysterium von Golgatha, denn bis zu ihrem Tode wurden sie nicht reif, sondern erst im 3. Jahrhundert wurden sie reif.
Wir berühren damit ein sehr bedeutsames Geheimnis; wir wollen es uns ganz genau vor die Seele führen. Die Zeitgenossen Christi mußten erst durch ihren Tod gehen, mußten in der geistigen Welt bis ins 2., 3. Jahrhundert leben, dann konnte ihnen in dem Leben nach dem Tode die Erkenntnis Christi aufgehen, und dann konnten sie inspirieren diejenigen, die gegen Ende des 2. Jahrhunderts oder vom 3. Jahrhundert an über den Christus-Impuls schrieben. Dadurch gewinnt auch das Schreiben über den Christus-Impuls, weil es durch eine mehr oder weniger deutliche, oder auch mehr oder weniger getrübte Inspiration der Kirchenväter ging, ein ganz besonderes Gesicht, aber erst vom 3. Jahrhundert an. Darum ist es, daß im Grunde genommen der für das Mittelalter dann maßgebende Augustinus in dieses Zeitalter fällt. Und daraus ersehen Sie, worauf man angewiesen war beim Verständnis des Christus-Impulses: die Venusweisheit, wenn ich so sagen darf, die der Mensch jetzt noch nicht erleben kann bis zu seinem Tode, sondern erst nach seinem Tode - in folgenden Jahrhunderten sogar erst -, diese Venusweisheit hereininspiriert zu bekommen auf die Erde. Und es war, man möchte sagen, wenn der Ausdruck nicht gar so töricht wäre, aber es gibt keinen rechten anderen, noch ein Glück, daß im 2.und 3. Jahrhundert inspiriert werden konnte, die Inspiration anfangen konnte; denn hätte man länger gewartet, über das Jahr 333 hinaus, dann hätte die Menschheit immer mehr und mehr sich verstockt gegen die geistige Welt und keinerlei Inspiration angenommen.
Sie sehen, die Wirksamkeit des Christus-Impulses in die Menschheit herein ist im Laufe der Jahrhunderte der christlichen Entwickelung an mancherlei Geheimnisse gebunden. Und derjenige, der sie heute wieder aufsuchen will, der findet die wichtigsten Bestandteile der Erkenntnis des Christus-Impulses nur, indem er das übersinnliche Erkennen ergreift. Denn die ersten wirklichen Lehrer der Menschheit über den Christus-Impuls waren im Grunde genommen Tote, wie Sie aus meinen eben getanen Ausführungen haben ersehen können, Leute, die Zeitgenossen Christi waren, und die erst im 3. Jahrhundert reif waren, ein vollständiges Verständnis zu erhalten. Im 4. Jahrhundert konnte dann dieses Verständnis wachsen; aber es wuchs auch die Schwierigkeit, Menschen zu inspirieren. Und im 6. Jahrhundert wuchs die Schwierigkeit noch mehr, bis endlich jene Zeit eintrat, wo Ordnung geschaffen wurde von Rom aus in diesem Hereininspirieren von geistigen Geheimnissen über das Christus-Mysterium in die Menschheit und dem Dawider-sich-Sträuben der verstockten Menschheit. Da hat Rom endlich Ordnung geschaffen im 9. Jahrhundert, 869, auf dem Konzil von Konstantinopel, wo man nun endlich den Geist abgeschafft hat. Es wurde Rom endlich zu bunt, diese Inspiriererei, und man stellte das Dogma auf, daß der Mensch in seiner Seele etwas Geistartiges hat, aber daß es ketzerisch ist, an den Geist zu glauben. Die Menschen sollten von dem Geiste abgezogen werden. Das ist ja im wesentlichen das, was mit dem achten ökumenischen Konzil in Konstantinopel 869, das ich öfter erwähnt habe, zusammenhängt. Es ist nur eine Folge dieser Abschaffung des Geistes, wenn Jesuiten heute — wie ich Ihnen neulich angeführt habe — einem sagen: Na ja, früher, da gab es Inspirationen, aber heute ist die Inspiration teuflisch, man darf nicht übersinnliche Erkenntnisse anstreben, denn da, da kommt der Teufel.
Doch diese Dinge hängen mit dem Tiefsten zusammen, das einen interessieren muß, wenn man wahrhaft in die Geisteswissenschaft eindringen will. Sie hängen nämlich zusammen mit einem gewissen Anerkennen eines Weisheitscharakters, den viele sogenannte Geisteswissenschafter, namentlich solche, die oftmals in sogenannten Geheimgesellschaften zusammengeschlossen sind, nicht anerkennen. Es gibt, ich möchte sagen, einen gewissen Betrug, der immer wieder und wiederum in die Menschheit hineingetragen wird, hineingetragen wird von denjenigen, die geistige Geheimnisse kennen. Und dieser Betrug hüllt sich in einen falschen Gegensatz, in eine falsche Polarität. Haben Sie nicht gehört, daß die Leute sagen, es gibt Luzifer, und sein Gegner ist Christus -, daß die Leute die Polarität aufstellen: Christus-Luzifer, als Gegner? Ich habe Ihnen ausgeführt, daß selbst noch die Goethesche Faust-Idee unter der Konfundierung von Ahriman und Luzifer leidet, daß Goethe nicht genau auseinanderhalten konnte das Ahrimanische und das Luziferische. Der zweite Aufsatz in meinem Büchelchen über «Goethes Geistesart» handelt auch davon.
Damit aber ist etwas außerordentlich Bedeutsames gemeint. Der wahre Gegensatz, den diejenigen, die wahr reden wollen aus der geistigen Welt, den Menschen mitgeteilt haben, der wahre Gegensatz ist der zwischen Ahriman und Luzifer, und der Christus-Impuls bringt etwas anderes, und hat nichts zu tun mit der Polarität Ahriman-Luzifer, sondern er bewegt sich in der Gleichgewichtslinie. Und auf der Anerkennung dieser Tatsache beruht etwas ungeheuer Bedeutsames. Davon wollen wir dann morgen weitersprechen.
Eleventh Lecture
From the many hints and explanations I have given about the Christ Mystery, you will have gathered that a distinction must be made between what was part of the general course of human development at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and what entered into human development through the Mystery of Golgotha. From what we have learned about human evolution, you know that we are dealing with a continuous stream of forces originating from the beings of the higher hierarchies and belonging to the very nature of the human being, and with two lateral currents, the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic currents.
Now the point is that the Luciferic and Ahrimanic currents have, in a sense, reached their climax, the climax of their useful activity within human evolution, precisely at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, and in a certain sense, if one may use the expression, humanity was in danger of passing this peak and thereby losing the necessary balance between the Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces for the whole of human evolution. In the course of human evolution, the following became apparent. If we consider the progressive development of humanity as a straight line (see drawing $.220), we can say that this progressive development of humanity includes—beginning with the Lemurian epoch—the Lemurian epoch, the Atlantean epoch, and our epoch, the fifth, whatever we may call it, the post-Atlantean epoch. If I draw a red line to indicate the strength of the Luciferic influence, it would look something like this. We can say that in the Lemurian epoch there is a certain strength that grows, then decreases again, and this Luciferic strength becomes very weak and then disappears completely in the Atlantean epoch, only to rise again in the post-Atlantean epoch. So that in the Atlantean epoch, basically—I am not talking about individual human beings, but about the development of humanity—there is little of the direct influence of Lucifer in the historical development of humanity (see drawing, red).
But in this age, the Ahrimanic development, which I have marked with a yellow line, and I would have to draw it so that it is particularly strong in the Atlantean epoch and becomes weaker again here, in the post-Atlantean epoch — I am now talking about historical development — and we must be clear that when we characterize something like this, we must always take into account what I said recently: when Lucifer is particularly strong, he evokes Ahriman in the subconscious. So when the Luciferic curve is particularly present in our fifth age, this does not mean that because Lucifer is particularly active, Ahriman lies outside our circle; on the contrary, it is precisely because Lucifer is strongly active among the historical forces that Ahriman is particularly active in the subconscious regions of the human being.
You see, then, that there is a kind of wave line for both Ahrimanic and Luciferic activity in the course of human evolution on earth. A state of equilibrium must be established between the two forces of Ahriman and Lucifer. This state of equilibrium has never been perfect in the course of historical development. There have been times when the Luciferic influences were very strong, and times when the Ahrimanic influences were very strong.
If we consider the age of human development in which humanity approached the mystery of Golgotha, we find that the state of equilibrium between the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces is extremely unstable, fluctuating, and that there is no real equilibrium. On the one hand, we have the human stream that moves toward the mystery of Golgotha, which appears to us historically in the development of the Semitic peoples. This human stream is particularly susceptible to the Luciferic being, which strongly generates Ahrimanic influences in the subconscious.
In contrast, the Greek nature is highly susceptible to the historical Ahrimanic forces, which generate strong Luciferic effects in the subconscious. The Semitic and Greek cultures, which are polar opposites, can only be fully understood if one takes proper account of this fluctuation in the world evolution of the human being between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. But for the Western population, at the time when the mystery fell into earthly evolution from outside, the influence of Greek culture was enormously significant. However, this influence was already waning; or rather, it had passed its peak. Greek culture was threatened with a downward development. And this downward development that threatened Greek culture can be expressed as follows: it was precisely through the Ahrimanic influence they had received, which manifested itself in their art as a Luciferic element, that the Greeks developed a high level of wisdom. And this wisdom, as we have often characterized, took on a very individual, humanly individual character. But it was greatest where the Greek wisdom of ancient times was still illuminated by what spiritual beings themselves had taught human beings.
We know that in ancient times, the teachers of humanity were inspired, initiated beings who came directly from the spiritual world. Through them, the spiritual beings of the world spoke themselves, and when we look back to the ancient times of human development, at the beginning of the fifth age, we can see a wonderful primordial wisdom. This wisdom was purified in concepts and ideas to such an extent that it was adapted to human beings in these concepts and ideas. While in earlier times it had been proclaimed by the great initiates in a more pictorial, imaginative form, the Greeks had captured it in ideas and concepts, thereby adapting it to human beings. But what is truly admirable about the Greeks, what still resonates even in Plato's philosophy, is an echo of that primordial wisdom which humanity received, I would say, from the mouths of the gods themselves. But this wisdom was in danger of being lost to humanity.
When we look back on that age of Greek intellectual development which Nietzsche called the tragic age, we look back on the great Greek philosophers, on Anaxagoras, on Heraclitus, and we see in them, I would say, the last bearers of the wisdom of the gods, which has already been transformed into ideas and concepts. Thales is, in a sense, the first to base his thinking purely on natural concepts; he is already separated from the immediate living impression of the primordial wisdom of humanity, which can still be perceived in Anaxagoras. Gradually, humanity was in danger of losing this primordial wisdom. But it was from this primordial wisdom that flowed what enabled people in ancient times to know anything about human beings at all. Knowledge of human beings was also something that was to permeate Greek and all primordial wisdom. The mysteries were intended to give knowledge of humanity. “Know thyself” was one of the sayings of wisdom. But this ancient knowledge of humanity was conveyed indirectly through Lucifer, and human beings worked it out through Ahrimanic forces. It was completely bound to the state of equilibrium between Ahrimanic and Luciferic forces.
Now, at the time when the old world was coming to an end, when the mystery of Golgotha came from the other side, there was a slight excess of Ahrimanic forces for humanity. The Ahrimanic forces were particularly strong at that time. Now, since the 16th century, something similar has been happening again, a kind of renaissance of the Ahrimanic forces. But at that time, when the mystery of Golgotha came in, the Ahrimanic forces were particularly strong. And the strength of these Ahrimanic forces caused the human soul life to be driven toward abstraction, to the point of the abstraction that we then encounter in the Roman nature, which is abstract through and through. We must ask ourselves: What would have happened to humanity if the course of development had continued in the stream of development just characterized here, if the mystery of Golgotha had not come? What would have happened is that human beings would no longer have been able to grasp a concept, an idea, a feeling of the human personality itself.
This is an extraordinarily significant statement. This was the threat facing human beings because nothing more could be told to them from the gods, because even the traditions had been lost from this divine path of wisdom through the personality, so that they were becoming more and more a mystery to themselves. One must feel this truth in all its power: without the Mystery of Golgotha, human beings would have been threatened with becoming more and more of a mystery to themselves. Human beings could have attained wisdom, but only about nature, not about themselves. And they would have gradually forgotten that they were born of the spirit. They would have had to unlearn this completely.
Then came the mystery of Golgotha. And from the various points of view from which the mystery of Golgotha can be characterized, one point of view must also be considered, namely that through the impact of the mystery of Golgotha, human beings were given back the ability to grasp themselves as personalities from spiritual heights that had been lost to them from the earthly realm. The Christ impulse gave human beings the opportunity to grasp themselves again as personalities, but now as personalities through inner forces.
It is extremely difficult for people today to imagine how the ancient human being came to have a sense of personality, because people today do not want to believe how different the external worldview was for the ancient human being. One cannot understand a figure such as Julian the Apostate in his entire world-historical significance unless one knows that he was one of the last of those who still saw the sun differently from the way people see it today. People today see the sun as a physical body. The influence of the moon remained with them even longer than the influence of nature. Today, lovers still go for walks and dream in the moonlight; the moon is where imagination grows and blossoms; in the moon, twilight dawns and moonlight poetry, both true and false, is still widespread among people today. The way some people still feel in the moonlight today, but much more intensely, is how ancient people felt when they awoke and saw the sun. When the ancient people woke up and saw the sun, they did not just talk about the sunlight, they felt that from this heavenly being, rays streamed into them, warming and illuminating them, permeating them, making them who they were.
Julian the Apostate still felt this, and he believed that it could be preserved for human beings. And that was his mistake; that was also his great tragedy. The developing human race no longer encountered personality in the physical rays of the sun. This knowledge of personality was brought to human beings through a spiritual path. What the sun outside in space could no longer give, what could no longer reach human beings from outside, had to rise up from the deepest inner being of human beings. Christ himself had to connect his world destiny with that of human beings so that, in the constant swaying of the scales between Ahriman and Lucifer, human beings would not fall out of their progressive course. And we must take it in full and deep earnestness that Christ descended from spiritual heights to human beings and connected his destiny with the destiny of human beings. How is that? This is what is peculiar: when human beings looked into the sensory world before the mystery of Golgotha, they saw something spiritual at the same time. I have just made this clear to you in my description of the view of the sun. This was lost to people. They had to receive something else in its place; they had to receive something spiritual, from whose spirituality they could at the same time gain an impression of sensory reality. This is what is remarkable about the mystery of Golgotha and its relationship to human knowledge.
And this mystery of Golgotha, which gave the actual meaning to the development of the earth, actually took place, unnoticed by the Romans, in a small corner of the world, and Tacitus actually knows nothing definite about the mystery of Golgotha, even though he wrote his excellent Roman history a hundred years after the mystery of Golgotha. History actually says nothing about the mystery of Golgotha, for the Gospels are not history; they are written as I describe in my book Christianity as Mystical Fact: they are actually mystery books applied to life. And no matter how much effort theologians may make, history as it exists about other events will never exist about the mystery of Golgotha. For this is precisely what is characteristic of the mystery of Golgotha, that one should know nothing about it historically, through the means of external, actual history. Anyone who wants to know something about the mystery of Golgotha must believe in the supersensible. The mystery of Golgotha cannot be proven historically or sensually.
Just as the ancient human being looked into the sensory world and perceived the supersensible, so must the modern human being, if he does not want to lose his knowledge of the personality, look at the mystery of Golgotha as something supersensible and, from looking at the supersensible, gain the conviction: This too has happened historically, even though history does not record it. Anyone who fails to grasp that, in the course of human history, there is no history of the most important historical event, that nothing has been recorded about it in the external sense that we call history, anyone who fails to grasp this, fails to grasp the whole relationship between the mystery of Golgotha and modern man. For modern human beings are to learn from the mystery of Golgotha to turn to the reality of something about which they have no historical record. And this reality is to be effective. For what did we actually mention yesterday as coming from Ahriman and Lucifer? We mentioned that Lucifer draws human minds away from interest in their fellow human beings. If only Luciferic forces were at work in humanity, we would lose more and more interest in our fellow human beings. We would be little affected by how one person or another thinks. One can even get a pretty good measure of how much Luciferic there is in a person by asking: Is this person interested in other people objectively, tolerantly, or is he really only interested in himself? Luciferic natures have little interest in their fellow human beings, are rigid and stubborn, consider only what they themselves think and feel to be right, and are not open to the judgments of others. If the Luciferic had continued to work in human evolution in the same way as it did up to the Mystery of Golgotha, then humanity would gradually have entered a path that could be characterized by people becoming stubborn and closed souls, everyone concerned only with their own affairs, everyone considering only their own ideas to be true and having no interest in looking into the hearts of others. But this is nothing other than the flip side of the loss of personality. For in losing the ability to recognize human beings as personalities, we also lose the ability to understand the personalities of our fellow human beings. There were very many people—far more than one might think— especially in the age when the mystery of Golgotha was approaching — in the Greek and Roman worlds, in Africa, in western Asia, many people who were, in a certain sense, arrogant in spirit, people who went through the world not as eccentrics, but as arrogant, lonely people who wanted to be lonely. There were many such people, and there were also those who made a philosophy out of not caring about other people, but only following what they carried within themselves. This was caused by the fall of the Luciferic out of balance.
And the Ahrimanic was even present in a superpower. This is best seen in the view of the first Roman emperors, the Julii, of whom only the very first, Augustus, was initiated in a somewhat questionable manner, while among the others there were at most those who forced initiation upon themselves, but who all considered themselves sons of gods, that is, initiates, believing that they were descended from the gods. For the Ahrimanic reveals itself especially in the fact that human beings do not want to live among other human beings as personalities among personalities, but want to develop power, as I explained yesterday, they want to rule, to rule by exploiting the weaknesses of others. These were the two great dangers threatening humanity at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, dangers to which humanity would have fallen prey if the Mystery of Golgotha had not come: indifference to fellow human beings and the desire for power on the part of each individual. By linking his destiny with that of humanity, Christ implanted something extraordinarily profound into humanity. Perhaps you will understand me best if I speak schematically about what Christ actually implanted into humanity. As I have shown you, we human beings have forces that we develop through our very nature. You know that, in a certain sense, we only become wise through our own nature in the second half of our lives. I have explained this to you at length and repeatedly. But that is not all. What I have explained to you about the development of human intelligence between birth and death applies, in essence, only to the evolution of the earth, and we are to become even more intelligent through the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions. These powers, which we are to develop in the course of the Jupiter and Venus evolutions, are already within us.
Now the following has happened: You know that what human beings can acquire in self-knowledge in the first half of life cannot be acquired through their own human nature. They must acquire it through Lucifer. Their own human nature continues. Lucifer gives him self-knowledge by striking him in the first half of life; this brilliant self-knowledge is dampened by Ahriman in the second half of life. With the Christ impulse, another current enters human evolution: the impulse that enters with the Mystery of Golgotha speaks to the deepest inner being of the human being. And if human beings were to develop through their own innate powers what would lead them of their own accord to the cosmic insights that have entered into earthly evolution through Christ, then human beings would only attain this ability during the Venus evolution. So even if human beings become as intelligent as possible before they die, they would not be able to achieve on their own what they achieve through the Christ impulse connecting their destiny with the evolution of the earth.
We therefore live through our earthly life without being able, by virtue of our own development, to come to understand the Christ impulse before we die. The following conclusion is clear: there were contemporaries of Christ, his disciples; they associated with him, and through the tradition of ancient wisdom they were able to gain so much knowledge about him that they were later able to write the Gospels; but they did not really understand him. For they certainly could not have come to an understanding of the Christ impulse before their death. When could they have come to this understanding? After their death, in the time after death. If we assume that, say, Peter or James were contemporaries of Christ, when were Peter or James ready to understand Christ? Only in the third century after the Mystery of Golgotha. In the third century after the Mystery of Golgotha, because they did not become mature until then, but only in the third century did they become mature.
We are touching on a very significant mystery here; let us bring it very clearly before our souls. Christ's contemporaries first had to go through death, had to live in the spiritual world until the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and then, in the life after death, the knowledge of Christ could dawn on them, and then they could inspire those who wrote about the Christ impulse toward the end of the 2nd century or from the 3rd century onward. This also gives the writings about the Christ impulse a very special character, because they passed through the more or less clear, or also more or less clouded, inspiration of the Church Fathers, but only from the third century onwards. That is why Augustine, who was decisive for the Middle Ages, basically belongs to this age. And from this you can see what was necessary for understanding the Christ impulse: the wisdom of Venus, if I may say so, which human beings cannot yet experience until their death, but only after their death—in fact, only in the centuries that follow—to have this wisdom of Venus inspired into the earth. And it was, one might say, if the expression were not so foolish, but there is no other right one, a stroke of luck that in the 2nd and 3rd centuries inspiration could be given, that inspiration could begin; for if one had waited longer, beyond the year 333, then humanity would have become more and more hardened against the spiritual world and would not have accepted any inspiration at all.
You see, the effectiveness of the Christ impulse in humanity is bound up with many mysteries throughout the centuries of Christian development. And those who want to seek it again today will find the most important elements of the knowledge of the Christ impulse only by grasping supersensible knowledge. For the first real teachers of the Christ impulse to humanity were, in essence, dead people, as you can see from what I have just said, people who were contemporaries of Christ and who were not ready to gain a complete understanding until the third century. In the fourth century, this understanding was able to grow, but so did the difficulty of inspiring people. And in the sixth century, the difficulty grew even more, until finally the time came when order was established from Rome in this inspiring of spiritual secrets about the Christ mystery into humanity and the resistance of stubborn humanity. Rome finally established order in the 9th century, in 869, at the Council of Constantinople, where the spirit was finally abolished. Rome finally found this inspiration too colorful, and the dogma was established that man has something spiritual in his soul, but that it is heretical to believe in the spirit. People were to be drawn away from the spirit. This is essentially what is connected with the Eighth Ecumenical Council in Constantinople in 869, which I have mentioned several times. It is only a consequence of this abolition of the spirit that Jesuits today — as I mentioned to you recently — say: Well, in the past there was inspiration, but today inspiration is devilish, one must not strive for supersensible knowledge, because that is where the devil comes in.
But these things are connected with the deepest things that must interest us if we truly want to penetrate spiritual science. They are connected with a certain recognition of a wisdom character that many so-called spiritual scientists, especially those who are often united in so-called secret societies, do not recognize. There is, I would say, a certain deception that is repeatedly brought into humanity, brought in by those who know spiritual secrets. And this deception cloaks itself in a false opposition, in a false polarity. Have you not heard people say that there is Lucifer, and his opponent is Christ — that people set up the polarity: Christ-Lucifer, as opponents? I have explained to you that even Goethe's Faust idea suffers from the confusion of Ahriman and Lucifer, that Goethe could not distinguish precisely between the Ahrimanic and the Luciferic. The second essay in my little book on “Goethe's Spirit” also deals with this.
But this means something extremely significant. The true opposition that those who want to speak truthfully from the spiritual world have communicated to human beings, the true opposition is that between Ahriman and Lucifer, and the Christ impulse brings something else and has nothing to do with the polarity of Ahriman and Lucifer, but moves along the line of equilibrium. And something tremendously significant is based on the recognition of this fact. We will continue talking about this tomorrow.