The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Sixth Lecture

[ 1 ] What I wanted to point out yesterday is that, viewed from one perspective, the actual content—the deeper content—of the Christ impulse, which came into the world through the Mystery of Golgotha, has not been fully revealed to humanity all at once, nor even over the relatively long period of time that Christianity has now existed, has been fully communicated to humanity; but that, far into the future, more and more of the content of the Christ impulse will seek to be communicated to humanity; that, in other words, the words of Christ Jesus are profoundly true: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” And Christ did not mean to be idle among human beings, but to reveal Himself actively, entering into their souls, encouraging their souls, strengthening their souls; so that when these souls know what is taking place within them, they may find the way, may find connection with Christ, and may feel strong within their earthly struggles.

[ 2 ] In addition to all this, however, it is necessary—especially in our present Age of Consciousness, to the extent that this is already the case today—and as I have said, the content will flow ever more clearly and richly to humanity—to realize even now what actually belongs to the revelation of the Christ impulse. To understand this point correctly, one must first be imbued with the realization that the human race has truly developed and changed over the course of Earth’s history. This change can best be characterized by saying: If one looks back to very, very ancient earthly times, long before the Mystery of Golgotha, one finds—upon closer inspection—that the physical nature of human beings was even more spiritual than it is today. And it was this physical nature of human beings that gave rise to those visions which, through atavistic clairvoyance, revealed the supersensible world in a certain way. But this ability, this power to become acquainted with the spiritual world through atavistic clairvoyance was gradually lost to humanity. And precisely at the time when the Mystery of Golgotha dawned, a crisis had arisen. A crisis had broken out that revealed that the physical nature of human beings had most significantly diminished in its power with regard to the revelation of the spiritual.

[ 3 ] From that point on, from that crisis onward, there had to be a strengthening of the soul-spiritual, of the soul-spiritual power, corresponding to the weakening of physical strength. But here in the earthly body, we must rely on the instruments of our body. Human beings simply would not have been capable of attaining the strengthening of their soul-spiritual nature—which became necessary as physical strength began to wane—had they not received help from a region that is not the earthly region but is extraterrestrial; had something not come to Earth from outside the Earth: namely, the Christ impulse. Humanity would have been too weak to advance on its own.

[ 4 ] But this becomes particularly evident when one considers the ancient mystery traditions. What, then, was the purpose of this mystery tradition? On the whole, one can say: The vast majority of our ancestors—that is, ourselves, for in our previous lives we were precisely the people we call our ancestors—were, in very, very ancient times, endowed with a much more dulled consciousness than we have today. They were more instinctive beings. And those people, in their instinctive nature, would not have been able to find their way to a knowledge that is, after all, necessary for the salvation of humanity, for its preservation, and for the development of its consciousness of power. Thus, certain individuals—called to this task by their karma and initiated into the Mysteries—were able to proclaim to the others, who led a more instinctive life, the truths that can be called the truths of salvation. But in ancient times, this proclamation was possible only through a certain constitution of the human organism, of the human being, which no longer exists today. The mystery ceremonies—the rites performed through the various degrees—consisted in the fact that the human being truly became a different person within the mysteries. It is difficult to imagine this today, because such external rites—which I recently described in connection with the Egyptian mysteries—are no longer possible to that extent. Human nature was truly transformed through the evocation of certain emotions and certain inner soul experiences, so that the spiritual realm was released in full consciousness. But first, the initiate was prepared in such a way that this spiritual realm was not released in a chaotic state, as it is today during sleep, but rather so that the person could truly perceive the spiritual realm. This was the great experience that the Mystery students underwent: that after their initiation, they knew the spiritual world just as a person knows the physical-sensory world through their eyes and ears. Then they were able to proclaim what they knew of this spiritual world.

[ 5 ] But the time was drawing near when human nature could no longer be transformed so readily in this way through the rites that had been part of the ancient mysteries. Human beings simply changed in the course of history. Something else had to come, and what did come was precisely that what human beings had experienced in the mystery at a certain stage—the inner resurrection—actually took place as a historical fact on Golgotha. So this had now become a historical event. A human being, Jesus—for as a human being walking among people, he was simply the human being Jesus—had passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. Those who were his intimate disciples, however, knew that after a certain time he had appeared alive among them—we will not examine the manner of this today—and thus that the Resurrection is a truth.

[ 6 ] So one might say: Once, in the course of human evolution, there was an event that took place in one place on Earth—namely, that through the power of an extraterrestrial being, the Christ impulse, a human being had overcome death, so that the overcoming of death could become part of the experiences and events of earthly existence itself. But with this, something had happened in the historical development of humanity that is incomprehensible precisely to the intellect—the very intellect that was now to develop further, which lay at the heart of human progress. For the human intellect cannot comprehend that a human being dies, is buried, and rises again. For the sake of Earth’s evolution, therefore, something was necessary; something had to happen in the physical course of this earthly evolution that is incomprehensible to the intellect—which is particularly well-suited to understanding natural existence. And in fact, it is honest to admit that the further human beings advance in the development of this intellect—and development in the Age of Consciousness is, after all, primarily the development of the intellectual—the more incomprehensible the event of Golgotha must become to the intellect, which is initially directed toward external nature. So that} one can say: Anyone who is aware only of the use of ordinary reason, as it is directed toward the natural world, must honestly admit to himself, little by little, that he does not comprehend the mystery of Golgotha. But they must make an effort, because they must understand it nonetheless. That is the essential point: being able to make an effort to think beyond common sense. That is the essential point; it is something that must necessarily occur—making this effort to learn to understand something that seems incomprehensible even to the highest human power.

[ 7 ] The more intellectual development progresses—on which the flourishing of science depends—the more the understanding of the mystery of Golgotha had to give way to this intellectual development. For this reason, it was not the educated Hebrews, nor the educated Greeks, nor the educated Romans who were, so to speak, historically chosen to understand the Mystery of Golgotha in the way I have explained it to you; they translated it into other concepts, as I explained yesterday; rather, it was the primitively educated barbarians of the North who took into their primitively educated souls the Christ who came to them, just as he came to Jesus of Nazareth. One can indeed say, in the sense I explained yesterday: Christ first came to the human being Jesus of Nazareth in the event of Golgotha. There, humanity—the Hebrews, the Greeks, the Romans—was first made aware of the most important thing that happened in earthly existence. But then Christ came again, uniting Himself with the people who inhabited the north and east of Europe, who did not have the same level of civilization as the Hebrews, the Greeks, or the Romans. There He did not unite with an individual human being; there He united with the national souls of these tribes. But we also had to emphasize yesterday: These tribes developed gradually. In a sense, they had to make up for on a fifth stage what the Hebrew-Greek-Latin peoples had gone through on a fourth stage. And as we emphasized yesterday, it was not until the age of Goethe that the age of Plato had been reached in relation to a later stage. With Goetheanism itself, the Platonism of Greek culture—which had been present during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch—had returned for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Yet Goetheanism had not yet progressed to the point where it was already confronting the entire new formulation of the understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha; rather, as I said yesterday, it was still in anticipation of it.

[ 8 ] This attitude of modern humanity toward the Mystery of Golgotha can be properly studied, in particular, when one truly understands Goethe’s personality—specifically, his spirit-soul personality. The question is one that is thoroughly spiritual-scientific: Where do Goethe and those associated with him—the various spirits who were connected to him—stand? Where does Goetheanism stand at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century in relation to human development and in relation to the understanding of the Christ impulse? — One might first consider: How does this Goetheanism actually fit, outwardly, into European development?

[ 9 ] It would be good to recall something I have often said to you throughout these years of our catastrophic times; it would be good to recall the answer to the question: Where, in fact, do these European peripheral cultures—with their American offshoots—come from? — We must not forget: Anyone who takes an unbiased look at these European peripheral cultures knows that the cultures of England, France, Italy, and the Balkans—as far as they have advanced—and even, behind them, the culture of Eastern Europe, radiate from the center of Europe; they all radiate from there. It would, of course, be a terrible prejudice to believe that what is today Italian culture is anything other than what has radiated from the center of Europe to Italy, merely overlaid with the Latin essence that has remained in the language and in outward form. It would be a terrible prejudice to believe that English culture is anything other than what has radiated from the center of Europe and has actually only been framed—again through language and the like—into a different essence, one even much less pronounced than the Italian or French essence. But everything that constitutes France, England, Italy—and indeed, in many respects, Eastern Europe—has radiated from the center of Europe. And in this center has remained that which has now come into being, after the cultures have radiated outward—that which has remained as the womb from which Goetheanism has developed. We are faced today with the fact—which must be accepted without emotion—that what has radiated out to the periphery is working with all its might to destroy, even spiritually and psychologically, that from which it itself radiated out while situated at the heart of Europe. One day, the world will view this most monstrous phenomenon in human history in a completely different light than it does in our present time, when the world is preparing to worship fourteen intellectual corpses of the West as idols. Humanity will one day understand that what took place was what might be called the absolute will to destroy that which has radiated out in all directions. The tragedy of this fact will, of course, come to pass.

[ 10 ] For it is in the light of this fact that, in a further stage of Europe’s development, what is emerging—with the exception of the last few decades, when one can say that other forces have been at work—is something that has been taking shape and developing over the centuries through the fact that, from the heart of Europe, the personal traits of those who shaped cultures in the most diverse ways also radiated out in all directions. Oh, how little inclined humanity is today to form an unbiased judgment on this point! I may say, I myself was closely involved in the work of my old friend Karl Julius Schröer when he was studying the last remaining traces—which could be found to provide a fully established scientific basis for the matter—of the various dialects, the various languages, and the distinct characteristics of the ethnic groups that are to be regarded as the German-speaking communities of Northern Hungary, Transylvania, and other regions of Austria. Anyone who considers all that relates to the unpretentious dictionaries and grammars of the Spiš Germans, and the Transylvanian Saxons—which built upon Schröer’s studies, which I had the privilege of discussing with him personally, as he was then a researcher into the spread of Central European culture—may say that Schröer is still connected to a body of knowledge that, unfortunately, is no longer taken into account today amid the turmoil and storm of events. But let us look at this Hungary, where a purely Magyar culture was to be established over the course of the last few decades, since the year 1867; let us look at it—not through the lens of political falsehood, political delusion, or political hatred—but in accordance with the truth: Then one will discover that the regions which were later to be Magyarized as the lands of Magyar culture were settled by people from the Rhine region—such as the Transylvanian Saxons—people from further west—such as the Spiš Germans—and people from what is now Swabia—such as the Banat Germans. All of this is the ferment that forms the foundation of Magyar culture; over this was merely poured that which, in essence, only very late in the process came to be known as Magyar culture. But at the very foundation of this Magyar culture—even if not in what can be expressed through language, but in the feelings, the sensibilities, and the entire national character—there has always been an infusion of what has flowed there from the heart of Europe over the centuries.

[ 11 ] As astonishing as this is: you could study the same phenomenon for all of Europe’s peripheral regions if you simply considered the overall history of Europe. In the East, the Slavic wave—contrary to what radiated from the center—swept over what had radiated from the center, covering it with the Slavic wave; from the West came the Romance wave. And through a tragic chain of events—which, however, has an inner historical necessity—the periphery then turned against that which remained in the bosom of the center; it turned in such a way that one fact emerges quite clearly from this turning—whether one believes it or not, whether one is quick to mock or scoff at it or not: That which has remained in the heart of Europe—that which has grown out of Goetheanism, understood in its reality and truth in a spiritual and soulful sense—still finds no understanding whatsoever today, even in the most average understanding of the periphery. And one could say of this: Everywhere, even as far as the American regions, people speak of the very substance of the Central European essence as if they had no idea what it is. One cannot have any idea of it. But world history will bring this to light. This is what, in a certain sense, can give one the strength to hold fast to it.

[ 12 ] Certainly, on New Year’s Eve I presented you here with a picture—calculated by someone skilled in mathematics—of the future conditions in Central Europe. That is exactly how things will be if all of that comes to pass, or even if only part of what the peripheral countries want comes to pass. But this Central Europe, whose destruction has been decreed in terms of its external existence—a destruction that will likely come to pass in the coming years and decades, for so it has been decided by the council of the peripheral powers—held within its bosom the final manifestation of what we characterized yesterday; it held within its bosom the final manifestation of that which is nonetheless important as a catalyst for human development. It must flow in; this development—which I have described to you in relation to the Magyar people—must simply continue. This radiating influence will certainly continue.

[ 13 ] However, it will be necessary—especially in Central Europe—to understand something that has, admittedly, been little understood there in recent decades: it will be necessary to grasp something of the nature of the intentions underlying the threefold social order, as I have outlined it to you. Central Europe, in particular, will be called upon to understand this threefold structure. And perhaps, if this Central Europe has no external state, if this Central Europe is tragically compelled to live in chaos, only then will people begin to realize that old views—for which the periphery of Europe is now fighting—must be overcome, because even the periphery of Europe will not be able to sustain these old views. The old concept of the state will fade away; it will give way to the threefold social order. And what Goetheanism represents will also have to find its way into this external life. Whether one calls it that or not is entirely irrelevant. What matters is that Goethe’s worldview offers a glimpse into what must simply become clear, even with regard to the external social organization of humanity. But one can only grasp all this if one makes an effort to understand this representative—this most complete representative of the German essence—Goethe, who is such a complete representative of the German essence precisely because he is entirely free of national chauvinism or anything that merely recalls national chauvinism or nationalism, as it is understood today. One must try to grasp this representative of the modern era, this most modern of men, who is at the same time the person most fruitful in his essence for spiritual culture. When it comes to understanding Goethe, one cannot say that humanity has actually made much progress. Goethe himself felt like a loner within his own circle. And even though Goethe was one of those personalities capable of developing such social skills—including, if I may say so, social skill and grace—that a possible relationship with his surroundings might develop: the true Goethe, the inner being living within this man in Weimar—who later appeared outwardly as a stout Privy Councilor with a double chin—the inner person who lived within that stout Privy Councilor with the double chin—he felt lonely. And in a certain sense, he is still lonely today. He is lonely for a very specific reason, and he had to feel lonely. Such a feeling of cultural isolation, of not being understood, may have been at the root of it when, in his later years, he uttered those remarkable words: “The Germans may be different in a century than they are now; they may then have become a people of scholars.”

[ 14 ] This saying must truly touch one’s very soul. For, you see, when the Goethe and Schiller Archive and the Goethe Society were founded in Weimar following the death of Goethe’s last grandson, they were established by a gathering of people—truly, I mean this in the best sense of the word—by a gathering of scholars. The Goethe Society was established at that time by people, by individuals who, in truth, had not yet become mere scholars. Yes, one can go even further. You know how much I admire Herman Grimm, the art historian and the refined essayist, and I have never made a secret of this admiration; I have spoken to you in various ways about the admiration I have for Herman Grimm. I have also frankly admitted to you that I consider the book on Goethe written by Herman Grimm to be the finest work ever written about Goethe in a biographical or monographic sense. But now take this book by Herman Grimm: It is written out of a certain human affection and from a particular worldview; but try to form a picture of the figure of Goethe that stands before you once you have allowed this book to take effect upon you! What is this figure of Goethe like? It is, after all, a specter—a specter, not the living Goethe! One cannot shake this feeling if one takes these things seriously and with due respect. Herman Grimm—if he were to meet Goethe today, or had he met Goethe during his lifetime—would, because he had absorbed the deepest reverence for Goethe within the tradition built upon him, have been ready at any time to say: Goethe is predestined to become the spiritual king not only of Central Europe but of all humanity. — Yes, Herman Grimm would also, had it been up to him, have done everything to serve as a herald if the aim had been to make Goethe the king of earthly culture. But one cannot shake off the other feeling: If Herman Grimm had now begun to want to speak with Goethe, or Goethe with Herman Grimm, Herman Grimm would hardly have found understanding for the innermost essence of Goethe’s being. For what he describes in his book is certainly the best he knew of Goethe, but nothing more than the shadow Goethe cast upon his entire surroundings, the impression he made on his time. There is nothing—not even the slightest trace—of what lived in Goethe’s soul; a specter from the 18th and 19th centuries, not that which lived in the depths of Goethe’s being.

[ 15 ] This is a curious phenomenon; one must simply hold it before one’s soul with all seriousness and dignity. And if one now looks back from this—not Goetheanism, but from this Goethean following, which, even a hundred years after Goethe, is truly far more scholarly than human—if one looks back from this to Goethe himself, then among the many great things, among the many magnificent things that one encounters in Goethe, one sees one thing above all else. Take The Mysteries, which were recently recited here by Dr. Steiner; take the Pandora and Prometheus fragments; take other works; take the fact that “The Natural Daughter” contains only the first part of a trilogy that was never completed, take the fact that in this fragment something of the greatest magnitude that lived within Goethe found expression: and you have the remarkable, the truly remarkable fact that whenever Goethe set out to express something of the greatest magnitude, he did not finish, because he was honest enough not to round off or complete the work outwardly—as poets and artists so often do—but to stop when the inner wellspring of creative power ran dry. Hence so much that remains unfinished. But the matter goes even further. It goes so far that one can say: “Faust” is indeed complete in an external sense, but how much of “Faust” is internally rotten, how much of “Faust” is just like the figure of Mephistopheles himself! — Read what I have written about Faust, about the figure of Mephistopheles, in the little book on Goethe that was recently published, where I discuss how Goethe created in Mephistopheles a figure that does not actually exist, in that the two figures, Lucifer and Ahriman, have merged and are chaotically swirling together. And over the course of this week, you will find presented here the final scenes before Helena’s entrance, before the beginning of the third act in the second part of Faust: something that Goethe completed in his later years, something that is, on the one hand, grandiose, profound, and mighty, but on the other hand—despite being outwardly finished—is entirely unfinished internally, containing everywhere hints of what lay in Goethe’s longings but refused to enter his soul. If one considers Faust in terms of its human scale, one has a gigantic work before one; if one considers it in terms of the greatness that would live within it had Goethe been able, in his time, to bring forth all that lay within his own soul, one has a rotten, brittle work before one, one that is incomplete in every respect.

[ 16 ] This is perhaps the most powerful testament Goethe left to his descendants: that they should not merely profess their allegiance to him as a scholar does today, or even as a person who is educated in a certain way. That is easy, but Goethe did not make our relationship to him that simple. Goethe must live among us as a living presence and continue to be felt and thought of. The most important aspect of Goetheanism does not lie with Goethe himself, because Goethe was not able, within his own time, to bring it from the spiritual realm into his soul—for only the beginnings of it are present everywhere. Goethe demands of us that we work with him, think with him, feel with him—that we carry on his task as if he were standing behind us everywhere, patting us on the shoulder and offering advice. In this sense, the entire 19th century—and right up to our own time—has, one might say, strayed from Goethe. And the task of our time is to find our way back to Goethe. Fundamentally, nothing is more alien to true Goetheanism than the entire external earthly culture of the late 19th century—or even of the 20th century—with the exception of certain spiritual endeavors that have been undertaken. The path back to Goethe must be found through anthroposophically oriented spiritual science.

[ 17 ] Only those who are truly capable of addressing the question can understand this: Where did Goethe actually stand in reality? — You have the most honest confession of humanity from Goethe—I characterized it yesterday—that he actually drew from paganism, as was also in keeping with the Platonism of his era. As a boy, he erected a pagan altar to nature. As an adult, Goethe was then most strongly influenced not by the traditional Christian church, which had essentially always remained alien to him, for his worldview was one of anticipation in the face of the new conception of the Mystery of Golgotha. Those who, in the old traditional sense, comfortably professed the Christian church faith, or who even within this Christian church faith sought to carry out all manner of merely superficial reforms, were truly not kindred to him in spirit and soul. He actually always felt the way he did back then, when he put it into words during a journey with two seemingly good Christians, Zavaier and Basedow—two people who adhered to a form of Christianity that was advanced, yet still rooted in the old church tradition: “Prophet on the right, prophet on the left, the child of the world in the middle.” That was actually how he felt whenever he found himself between two people of his own generation. For he had indeed stated it: he was always the staunch non-Christian in the eyes of the Christians around him, precisely because he was meant to prepare humanity for the expectant Christ-spirit.

[ 18 ] And so we see that three people have had the greatest influence on his intellectual development in a remarkable way. These three people are, in fact, individuals who, in a certain sense, are children of the world. Ordinary Christian preachers would not have been a good fit for Goethe. The three figures who exerted the greatest influence on him are, after all: First, Shakespeare; why did Shakespeare have such a decisive influence on Goethe? Simply because Goethe sought to build a bridge from the human to the superhuman—not from abstract regularity, not from a detached intellectualism, but from the human itself. Goethe needed to hold fast to the human in order to find, within the human, the transition from the human to the superhuman. Thus we see Goethe struggling to develop and shape the human—as Shakespeare had done to a certain extent—to work it out from within the human itself. Just observe how Goethe takes up The Story of Gottfried von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand, his autobiography; how, altering it as little as possible, he dramatizes this story, forming the first version of his Götz von Berlichingen; how he then creates a second version from it, already more transformed, already more shaped, and then a third version. Goethe seeks his own honest paths in a way that builds upon Shakespeare’s humanity, yet aims to shape superhuman qualities out of that humanity.

[ 19 ] He was only able to do this when, during his trip to Italy—as can be seen in his letters—he believed he could discern, from the Greek works of art that were familiar to him, how the Greeks acted according to the same intentions—divine intentions—that govern nature itself. He needed his own true path, his individual, personally experienced true path. He could not believe what those around him told him; he had to find his own way.

[ 20 ] The second thinker who exerted an immense influence on him was undoubtedly a staunch non-Christian, namely Spinoza. In Spinoza, he found the possibility of discovering the divine in the same way that a human being discovers it when seeking to forge a path from the human to the superhuman. Spinoza’s ideas are, in essence, the ultimate expression—for the age of intellectualism—of the ancient Hebrew approach to God. As such, Spinoza’s ideas stand quite far removed from the Christ impulse. But Spinoza’s ideas are such that the human soul finds in them, as it were, the threads to hold onto as it seeks that path: There, deep within the human interior, lies my essence; from this human essence, I seek to penetrate further toward the superhuman. — This path, which he was able to pursue—which he did not merely have to have preached to him, but which he was able to pursue by following Spinoza—Goethe regarded, in a certain sense and at a certain stage of his life, as his own.

[ 21 ] And the third figure who had the greatest influence on him was Linnaeus, the botanist. Why Linnaeus? Linnaeus, for the simple reason that Goethe did not want any other kind of botanical science—any other science of living beings—than one that simply arranges living beings side by side in a series, just as Linnaeus did. All abstract thinking that devises all sorts of ideas about plant classes, plant genera, and so on—that was not Goethe’s way. His concern was to allow Linnaeus—a man who arranged things side by side—to influence him. For Goethe wanted, from a higher vantage point than those who view plants in an abstract manner, to trace in his own way what Linnaeus had conscientiously arranged side by side as plant forms, just as the spirit reigns through this juxtaposition.

[ 22 ] It was precisely these three spirits—who, in essence, were able to give Goethe that which was not at the very core of his being but which he had to receive from outside—that had the strongest influence on him. Goethe himself had nothing Shakespearean about him, for when he reached the height of his art, he created his Natural Daughter, which truly has nothing of Shakespeare’s art but strives toward an entirely different direction; yet he could develop this innermost essence of his only by modeling himself on Shakespeare. Goethe’s worldview has nothing of abstract Spinozism, but what Goethe held in his innermost being as his path to God, he could only gain from Spinoza. Goethe’s morphology has nothing of the juxtaposition of organic beings as found in Linnaeus, but Goethe needed to be able to take from Linnaeus what he himself lacked. And what he had to contribute to it was new.

[ 23 ] And so Goethe grew up, entering his forties, shaped by Shakespeare, Linnaeus, and Spinoza, and imbued with the artistic perspectives that presented themselves to him in Italy, where, looking at the works of art, he said: “There is necessity; there is God.” And as was typical of his time, what might be called his passage past the Guardian of the Threshold took place within him in a largely unconscious manner, yet also, to a certain extent, in a conscious one. And now, when you consider his passage past the Guardian at the beginning of the 1790s, compare words that sound like the words of worship to Isis in ancient Egypt, in that prose hymn “Nature” just recited to you by Dr. Steiner—where Goethe still feels entirely pagan—with what confronts you in a powerful imagination in the “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”: then you have Goethe’s path out of paganism and into Christianity. But there, expressed in images, is what Goethe became after his passage through the threshold place, after his passing by the guardian of the threshold; it is expressed in images that he himself could not intellectually dissect for people, yet which are powerful images nonetheless. What must one do if one wishes to understand Goethe, who wrote the “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”? Compare what is written in the aforementioned little book by Goethe about the “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily”: One is confronted with this very fact when one considers that Goethe created this “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily” as a powerful work of the imagination after his passage past the Guardian of the Threshold.

[ 24 ] This “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily” sprang from the transformed soul, after that soul had overcome the pagan sensibility, as it is still expressed in the prose hymn: Nature—we are surrounded and embraced by her. Uninvited and without warning, she draws us into the circle of her dance and carries us along until we are weary and slip from her embrace... Even the unnatural is nature... Everything is her life, and death is merely her stratagem for having abundant life—and so on; this pagan Isis-like mood transforms into the profound, truths that cannot yet be grasped by the intellect, which lie in the mighty imaginings of the “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,” where Goethe makes it abundantly clear how everything that man can discover through external empirical science can lead only to the will-o’-the-wisp-like flickering of will-o’-the-wisps; but how that which man must develop in his innermost being leads him to develop his soul forces in such a way that the self-sacrificing serpent—which sacrifices its own being to the course of human development so that a bridge may be built between the two realms of the sensible and the supersensible, between which rises the temple, the new temple, through which one can gain a sense of the supersensible realm—can serve as his model.

[ 25 ] Certainly, this “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily” does not speak of Christ. But just as Christ did not demand that a good follower simply say, “Lord, Lord!” all the time, — nor is someone who constantly says, “Christ, Christ!” merely a good Christian. — The way the images are conceived, the way the human soul is conceived in its transformation in the “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,” the sequence of thoughts, the power of the thoughts—that is Christian; that is the new path to Christ. Why is that? There were already many interpretations of this fairy tale in Goethe’s time; since then, many more have been added. We had attempted to shed light on this fairy tale from the standpoint of spiritual science. I may speak here—in this circle, it may indeed be said—about this fairy tale. It was at the end of the 1880s, when—if I may put it in simple terms—the meaning of this fairy tale first dawned on me. I have never since strayed from the path that is meant to lead ever further and further toward an understanding of Goethe through these powerful images set forth in “The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.” One might say: The intellect that guides us quite well in discovering scientific truths, the intellect that guides us quite well in gaining an outward view of nature—especially in its full bloom—in harmony with the present age and its circumstances—this very intellect fails completely when one seeks to comprehend this fairy tale. It is therefore necessary to allow one’s intellect to be enriched by the concepts of spiritual science. Here you have translated into our time and its circumstances the very thing that is necessary for all of humanity to understand the Mystery of Golgotha.

[ 26 ] To understand the mystery of Golgotha, the mind must first be trained. It must give itself a jolt. It does not need this jolt to understand the external world. It has become increasingly impossible for both Latin and Germanic cultures—the Latin culture because it is too deeply entrenched in decadence, and the Germanic culture because it has not yet risen to this level of development—to train the soul through mere intellectuality to the point where it can find the new path to understanding the mystery of Golgotha. But if you develop within yourselves the ability to transform your soul forces in such a way that you begin to find, as a natural inner language, the transition to the imagery that Goethe strove for, then you are training your soul forces to find the path to a new grasp of the Mystery of Golgotha. That is what matters most.

[ 27 ] Goethe is important not only because of what he produced; above all, Goethe is important because of what he does to our soul when we immerse ourselves wholeheartedly in his innermost being. Then humanity can gradually and consciously find that path past the Guardian of the Threshold—a path that Goethe, fortunately, walked unconsciously, which is why he was unable to complete precisely those works in which he most deeply wished to express himself. A flickering and shimmering interplay of the conscious and the unconscious, of the attainable and the unattainable, lived within Goethe’s soul. When we allow something like the “Secrets” to take effect upon us, when we allow something like “Pandora” to take effect upon us—all those things that Goethe did not complete—then we have the feeling: In this incompleteness lies something that must be released in the souls of Goethe’s descendants, and that must be completed as a great spiritual creation.

[ 28 ] Goethe was lonely. In terms of who Goethe truly was, he was lonely—lonely in his development. Goetheanism has much that is hidden. But even if the 19th century has not yet achieved the transformation of scholars into human beings—whereas Goethe struggled his way from scholarship to a human view of the world—it is precisely this development that must move forward with the help of the Goethean impulse. I said yesterday and have repeated today: The power connected with the Mystery of Golgotha once united itself with the one human being, Jesus of Nazareth, in a little-known province of the Roman Empire, and then with the national souls of Central Europe. But it then turned inward. And from what was weaving within Central Europe emerged such achievements as those of Goethe and the entire Goethean movement. But the nineteenth century, in particular, did much to consign the Goethean movement to the grave. In every field, the nineteenth century did everything it could to consign the Goethean movement to the grave.

[ 29 ] The scholars who founded the Goethe Society in Weimar at the end of the 1880s were far more suited to being the gravediggers of Goetheanism than to reviving anything of it. The time has certainly not yet come for Goetheanism to take root in outward life. This is connected to what we have discussed at length: the renewal of human souls through the spiritual sciences. Whatever may come to pass in this Europe, which now, in a certain sense, seeks to commit suicide: the grave that is being dug—above all and first and foremost by the thoughtlessness of modern culture—will nevertheless also be a grave from which something will rise again. I have already alluded to this: the Christ Spirit has united itself with the souls of the Central European peoples; Goetheanism arose in the bosom of these national souls. A resurrection will come—a resurrection that should not be conceived of in political terms, a resurrection that will look entirely different, but it will be a resurrection nonetheless. Goetheanism is not alive; Goetheanism still lies in the grave of external culture. But Goetheanism must rise again.

[ 30 ] Let the building we have attempted to erect here on this hill also serve as a sign that we are sincerely resolved—as courageously as the present moment requires—to bring Goetheanism back to life. To do this, however, we must have the courage to understand and see through that Goetheanism—which has hitherto called itself by that name—in its un-Goethian manner, and to approach Goethe’s very essence. We must also learn to affirm Goethe’s spirit, just as the late 19th and early 20th centuries denied it—denied it in every possible sphere. Then the path of spiritual-scientific knowledge—which must be attained in the absolute sense—will be connected not only with the historical path of the revival of Goetheanism, but also with the impulse that can arise from this revival of Goetheanism, leading to a new understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha and to the correct understanding of Christ as is necessary for our time. Our age may find the guidepost to the Christianity of the future—which humanity needs—precisely in Goethe, the decidedly non-Christian, who, just as Christ himself demanded, insisted that one should not always say, “Lord, Lord”—but rather carry his spirit in one’s heart and in one’s mind; who, as Goetheanism, does not constantly speak of “Christian” or “Christ,” but who all the more preserves in his heart that which has flowed into humanity as reality from the Mystery of Golgotha, in his heart, so that this heart may gradually transform the abstract and intellectual knowledge—the natural science of the present—into that through which one looks into the supersensible worlds, in order to give human beings the strength for a deeper understanding of the world and for a socially just structure. We will speak further about this next time.