The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Third Lecture

[ 1 ] The day before yesterday, I spoke here about how we, as members of humanity, live first and foremost in a sphere that we can describe as our fourth sphere of development. We know that Earth’s evolution has proceeded in such a way that what is now Earth’s evolution gradually emerged from the Saturn evolution, which then became the Sun evolution, followed by the Moon evolution, and finally the Earth evolution. When we now consider these four successive phases of the Earth’s evolution—to which, of course, humanity as such belongs—we may regard the human being only insofar as the human being is a head-being. But we must also be clear that, when we speak in this way, everything we designate as the “head” of the human being is, for us, the symbolic expression of that which belongs to human sensory perception, that which belongs to human intelligence, and that which, in turn, flows into social life through human sensory perception and human intelligence. We must also encompass everything that human beings go through in their development by virtue of being beings of sensory perception and by virtue of being intelligent beings. So, in a sense, when I say “human beings as head-beings,” this is, figuratively speaking, a reference to all the other aspects I have just mentioned.

[ 2 ] We speak lightly of the fact that, as physical human beings, we are inside the atmosphere. We must also realize that this atmosphere is part of ourselves. For, isn’t it true that the very air that is within us right now was, just a short time ago, still outside of us? As human beings, we are simply inconceivable outside this atmosphere. But as modern humanity, we have even grown accustomed to believing that this was always the case—which is not at all true—and to speaking of things like air and the like only in the modern way. We already find it strange today when we speak of the fact that, just as we walk in the air, we walk in a sphere that, in a sense, contains the conditions that make us sensory beings, that make us intelligent beings—in short, that we possess all that can be symbolically expressed in the sense just mentioned by the fact that we are head beings. But I have told you that this is just one of the spheres in which we exist. We, however, find ourselves in various spheres, and we now wish to proceed to a sphere that is practical for humanity and to consider everything that constitutes our existence—namely, the fact that our Earth has undergone three stages of development and that we are now in the fourth. Let us characterize all of this by this circular area, within which we live, as it were, in our fourth stage of development (the inner circle is drawn in orange). Furthermore, we live in another stage of development in that this stage belongs to the spiritual beings who are our creators just as this fourth stage belongs to us. Let us now, for the time being, set aside our human perspective and turn our attention to those beings whom we have always referred to, in the order of the hierarchies above us, as the Spirits of Form—the spirits of all creative form— then we must say that, as human beings, we will not reach the sphere we attribute to these creative, divine spirits until the Earth has passed through three further stages of development—which you will find described in my Outline of Esoteric Science as the Jupiter stage, the Venus stage, and the Vulcan stage—and has arrived at the eighth stage. So where we humans will stand after the Vulcan stage of development is where these creative spirits stand. That is their sphere, which belongs to them just as the fourth sphere belongs to us. But we must conceive of these two spheres as interlocked and interpenetrating. (A larger circle is drawn over the first one: yellow.) So when I designate the other sphere I have just mentioned as the eighth, it means that we do not live merely in the fourth sphere, but also in this eighth sphere, because our divine creators live in this sphere together with us.

[ 3 ] If you now consider this eighth sphere, you will see that it is inhabited not only by our divine creative spirits, but also by the Ahrimanic beings. Thus, by living in the vicinity of the eighth sphere, we live not only with the spirits we perceive as our divine powers, but also with the Ahrimanic beings. In the fourth sphere, to be precise, the Luciferic spirits live with us. This, then, is the distribution of these spiritual beings, so to speak. We can now go into these spiritual beings in more detail once we grasp what connects the corresponding environments of these spheres to ourselves.

[ 4 ] The science of initiation first reveals to the observer that, because we live in the fourth sphere of our development, we are—as has been said—perceiving and intelligent beings. But we must never forget that it is precisely into this intelligence—whereby we always wish to refer to sensory perceptions together with intelligence—that the Luciferic power intervenes. This Luciferic power is actually intimately connected with the particular kind of intelligence that human beings still regard today as their true, inherent intelligence—the intelligence with which they most readily work. And yet, this intelligence was bestowed upon human beings only because that higher being—of whom I have spoken as the Michael Being—cast Luciferic spirits down into the sphere of human beings, into the fourth sphere of human beings, and thereby the intelligent impulse actually entered into human beings.

[ 5 ] You can sense what this intelligent impulse means for humanity when you consider the impersonal element of human intelligence that is still present. After all, we humans have many personal interests. We interact with one another through our personal interests, and it is precisely in relation to our personal interests that we are individualized. But this individualization stops short of intelligence. When it comes to intelligence, when it comes to logic, all of us humans share the same qualities and rely on them. We would not have these shared qualities if the Luciferic influence, mediated by Michael, had not been exerted upon humanity.

[ 6 ] We understand one another in this simple way only because we share a common intelligence, and only because that common intelligence stems precisely from the Luciferic spirit. Now, this Luciferic spirit arose because Michael, so to speak, permeated and influenced human beings with the Luciferic being. These Luciferic influences have continued to take shape throughout the course of human history. Alongside them, many other aspects have developed within human beings. But even today, this Luciferic spirituality—which we call our intelligence—is still perceived by the broadest circles as what truly distinguishes human beings.

[ 7 ] To perhaps make this even clearer to yourselves, you must turn your spiritual gaze toward something else that can bring us humans together across the entire Earth, once it spreads throughout the world. That is the Christ Impulse. But the Christ Impulse is something different from the Intelligence Impulse. The impulse of intelligence has a compelling quality. You cannot make the intelligence of humanity your personal concern. You cannot suddenly decide to personally decide anything that must be decided through intelligence without being cast out of the social life of humanity as insane. But on the other hand, you cannot establish any relationship to the Christ impulse other than a personal one. Fundamentally, no one can dictate to another the relationship that the other wishes to establish with Christ. Ultimately, this is a personal matter. But because Christ passed through the Mystery of Golgotha and became connected with the development of the Earth, it is the case that, even if countless people—completely independently of one another—make the Christ Impulse their own, it will of its own accord become the same for all. This means: people are brought together by something that each does for themselves—not by compulsion, as with intelligence, but because the Christ impulse itself shapes the relationship within each person to Christ in such a way that, as it develops in the right manner, it is the same for everyone. That is the difference between the impulse of intelligence and the Christ impulse. The Christ impulse can be the same across all of humanity and yet remains a personal matter for each individual. Intelligence is not a personal matter.

[ 8 ] So where, then, has the Christ impulse fallen? We can answer this question based on the hints I have already given. We know that the development of the head is already a regressive, a backward-moving process. With regard to the head, the human being is, in a sense, in a state of constant dying. Thus, we can point to the cosmic fact that Michael cast the Luciferic hosts down into the realm of humanity. The Luciferic hosts have thus made the human head their dwelling place—but the human head in its dying state.

[ 9 ] Here, these Luciferic hosts began to wage a ceaseless battle against the withering away of the human head. And here we touch upon a mystery of human nature that, though well known and manifest in the most diverse forms, has been almost entirely veiled from modern humanity. When one considers human divine evolution, the human being carries within his head a process of decay, a continuous dying away. But this continuous dying away is accompanied by a kindling of life on the part of Lucifer. Lucifer constantly seeks to make our head as alive as the rest of our organism is. Thus, from an organic perspective, Lucifer would cause humanity’s development to stray from its divine direction if he were to succeed in actually animating the human head to the same degree that the rest of the human organism is animated.

[ 10 ] But the divine direction of human evolution must turn against this. For human beings must remain connected to the Earth’s evolution so that they can continue with the subsequent stages of Earth’s evolution through the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan phases. If Lucifer were to achieve his goal, humanity would not follow the path that has been laid out for it, but would instead be incorporated into a cosmos that would be thoroughly intelligent.

[ 11 ] I would like to say that, physiologically speaking, it is precisely the case that Lucifer is constantly at work within us in such a way that he sends up to the head of the human being—from the rest of our organism—the life forces that seek to permeate it. Psychically speaking, Lucifer constantly seeks to give our intellectual content—which, after all, encompasses only thoughts and images—a substantial content. Lucifer constantly has the tendency—I am saying the same thing I said earlier in physical terms, but now in psychological terms— Lucifer constantly tends, when we form an image in the mind—anything that, for my part, constitutes artistic creation—to endow it with real, substantial content, that is, to permeate the contents of our thoughts and our imaginations with ordinary earthly reality. In this way, he would achieve the goal of causing us, as human beings, to leave the other reality behind and fly into a reality of thought, which would then be a reality in itself, not merely thoughts. This tendency is constantly linked to our human nature—that our fantasies should become realities—and the greatest conceivable efforts are made so that human fantasies can become realities.

[ 12 ] Now, everything that exists in humanity in terms of inner causes of illness is connected to this Luciferic tendency. Gaining insight into Lucifer’s work in this regard—the forcing of vital forces into the dying forces of the human head—ultimately means, in truth, the diagnosis of all internal diseases. And scientific and medical development must ultimately aim to build its understanding upon this Luciferic element. Giving such direction is one of the tendencies of the Michael influence that is breaking into our human development.

[ 13 ] Conversely, the Ahrimanic influence is present. It first makes itself felt from the eighth sphere, from which the rest of our organism—except for the head—is created; this organism is full of vitality and is, by its very organization, designed for vitality. The Ahrimanic forces now act upon this. They, in turn, strive to send into the vital forces of the rest of the organism the forces of death that, according to divine development, actually belong in the head. Thus, from the eighth sphere, we receive the forces of death in this way, mediated through the detour of Ahriman. This, again, is speaking in physical terms.

[ 14 ] From a spiritual perspective, I would have to put it this way: Everything that acts from this eighth sphere influences the human will, not the intellect. But the human will is based on desire; there is always an element of desire within the will. That which lies at the foundation of the will as a nature of desire is precisely what Ahriman continually attempts to introduce into the personal element of the human being. And because the personal element of the human being lies hidden within this nature of desire, our human soul-will activity is precisely an imprint of our resistance to death. Instead of allowing ourselves to be permeated by divine ideals—allowing them to penetrate our desires and thereby our will—something personal is introduced into our desires and into our will.

[ 15 ] Thus we are truly in a state of balance between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic elements. The Luciferic-Ahrimanic element brings us illness and death in the physical realm; in the soul, it gives rise to all that appears as illusion because we regard one thing or another—which belongs only to the world of thought, the world of imagination, or the world of fantasy—as reality. Furthermore, with regard to the spiritual element, it is precisely the desire for selfishness that penetrates our human being in this way. Now, we see this Lucifer-Ahriman duality as inherent in human nature. And I have explained to you, using Milton’s Paradise Lost, Klopstock’s Messiah, and Goethe’s Faust, how modern civilized humanity is deceived by—and can be deceived by—this duality. The point is that we, as humanity, have reached a stage in Earth’s evolution that can be characterized by the fact that we have, so to speak, already passed the midpoint of Earth’s evolution. Isn’t that so? The situation is as follows (a diagram is drawn): Earth’s evolution was initially ascending, reached a peak, and has been descending ever since. For certain reasons, which we need not discuss today, there was a kind of steady level up through the Greco-Roman period and into the 15th century. Since that time, however, the development of humanity on Earth has been truly on a downward trajectory.

[ 16 ] The physical evolution of the Earth has been on a downward trajectory for much longer. As early as the period preceding our last Ice Age—that is, before the Atlantean catastrophe—the Earth’s physical evolution began its downward course. This is something that, as an anthroposophist, one does not need to tell people today; it is something that geology already knows, as I have often mentioned: that as we walk across the Earth’s crust today, in numerous places we are already walking over the descending Earth’s crust. You need only read the descriptions of Earth’s evolution in reputable geology texts, and you will be able to confirm even today—as a finding of physical science—that the Earth is on the descending stage of its evolution. But that which dwells within us as human beings is also in a state of descending evolution. As human beings, we can no longer count on any further upward momentum arising from our physical development. We must seize this upward momentum by learning to look at the human being in the way that leads him out of Earth’s development and toward the subsequent stages of Earth’s evolution. We must learn to look toward the human beings of the future. This is what it means to think in the Michaelic way. I would like to describe to you in more detail what thinking in the Michaelic way means.

[ 17 ] When you encounter your fellow human being today, you actually approach them with a thoroughly materialistic consciousness. You tell yourself—even if you don’t say it aloud, or even in your thoughts—but you actually tell yourself this in the innermost recesses of your consciousness: This is a human being of flesh and blood; this is a human being made of earthly substances. You tell yourself the same thing about animals; you tell yourself the same thing about plants. But what you tell yourself about humans, animals, and plants, you rightly tell yourself only about minerals, only about mineral entities. Let us immediately consider the most extreme case: the human being. Let us first consider the human being—as shaped by its outward appearance—in terms of its external form. (A drawing is made): What appears to be its external form, you do not actually see at all; you do not encounter it at all with your physical powers of perception. Rather, it is filled—in fact, more than ninety percent—with liquid, with water. And what fills the form as a mineral substance—that is what you see with your physical eyes. What the human being unites with himself from the external mineral world—that is what you see.

[ 18 ] You cannot see the person who unites these things. You are only speaking correctly when you tell yourself: What stands before me are the particles of matter that the human spiritual form stores within itself; that is what makes the invisible—what stands before me—visible to me. — The human being is invisible, truly invisible. All of you are here, sitting as you are, invisible to the physical senses. There are simply so many figures sitting there who, through a certain inner force of attraction, have gathered material particles in this way (it is drawn): You can see these material particles. One sees only the mineral. The real human beings sitting here are invisible; they are supersensible. To tell oneself this with full consciousness at every moment of one’s waking life—that is what constitutes the Michaelic way of thinking: to cease viewing the human being as this conglomerate of mineral particles that he merely arranges in a certain way. Animals do it too, plants do it too; only minerals do not. Becoming aware of this—that we walk among invisible human beings—is what it means to think in the Michaelic way.

[ 19 ] We speak of Ahrimanic beings and Luciferic beings; we speak of the beings of the hierarchy of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, and so on. These are invisible beings. We learn to recognize them by their effects. We have discussed many of these effects, including again in recent days. We learn to recognize these beings through what they do. Indeed, is it any different with human beings? We come to know the human being—who is invisible—here in the physical world through the way he arranges and layers mineral particles into a human-like form. But that is only one activity, one effect of the human being. The fact that we must understand the effects of Ahriman and Lucifer, the effects of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai, and so on, in a different way simply means getting to know these beings in a different manner. But insofar as these beings are supersensible, they do not differ from us at all, provided we approach the human being with reason.

[ 20 ] You see, this is Michaelic thinking: realizing that, in essence, we are no different at all from the supersensible beings. Humanity could manage without this awareness when the minerals still provided it with sustenance. But since the mineral world has been in a state of declining development, human beings are compelled to grow into a spiritual understanding of themselves and the world. That we can find the inner strength to realize that we truly do not need to go through the world with the consciousness that this regular accumulation of material particles is the human being, but rather that the human being is a supersensible being—these material particles merely pointed this out to us with a gesture from the outer mineral world: there is a human being—the power to develop such consciousness has been available to human beings since the 1870s, and they can possess it to a greater degree. And it is only because of the Ahrimanic influences, as I characterized them here eight days ago, that human beings reject this inner consciousness and refuse to approach it. One thing is connected to another in human life. And just as we go about under the delusion that human beings are sensory beings rather than supersensory beings, so do we go about under other delusions. We speak of development and always think, well, it proceeds in sequence, further and further on. You know, it was not possible to artistically shape such a development in our building. When I designed the capitals, I had to show the first, second, and third capitals in ascending development; the fourth stands in the middle; the fifth follows a descending development; the sixth is simpler again; and the seventh is the simplest of all. So I had to add the descending development to the ascending development.

[ 21 ] We actually have these in our head. While the rest of our organism is still in a state of ascending development, our head is already in a state of descending development. If one believes that development consists solely of ascent, then one is straying from true reality; one is speaking as Haeckel did under the influence of a certain delusion: first simple beings, then further development, then more complex beings, and so on ad infinitum—always more complex, always more perfect. That is nonsense. Every form of development that moves forward also eventually begins its return journey. Every ascent is followed by a descent, and every ascent already carries within it the potential for descent. One of the most insidious deceptions of modern humanity is that it has lost sight of the connection between evolution and devolution, between development and, in turn, regression. For where there is ascending development, the potential for regressive development must arise. Then, at the very moment when an ascending development begins to become regressive, the physical enters into spiritual development. For as soon as the physical begins to become regressive, there is room for spiritual development. In our minds there is room for spiritual development because physical regression is taking place. But we will not be able to truly understand the human being—and thus the rest of the world—until we are able to see things in their proper light, that is, until we truly bring our intelligence into connection with Luciferic development, just as I have described it. For then we will assess these things correctly and will know that our intelligence needs a certain direction if it is to truly lead humanity to its goal. Lucifer must be prevented—through the Christ principle—from turning humanity away from its predestined divine path.

[ 22 ] As I have already said, one thing is connected to the other. You see, under the influence of the same delusion that has attributed certain Luciferic characteristics to the divine powers, people today are inclined to view, for example, the representation of beauty one-sidedly as an ideal. Certainly, one can portray beauty as such. But one must be aware: If, as a human being, one were to devote oneself solely to beauty, one would cultivate within oneself those forces that lead into the Luciferic current. For in the real world, just as one-sided development—which includes regression, and in the case of evolution, devolution—does not exist in isolation, neither does mere beauty. Mere beauty, used by Lucifer to ensnare and dazzle people, would actually free humanity from earthly evolution rather than bind it to it. In reality, just as with the interplay of evolution and devolution, we are dealing with an interplay—namely, a fierce struggle between beauty and ugliness. And if we truly wish to grasp art, we must never forget that the ultimate artistic expression in the world must be this interplay, this manifestation of beauty and ugliness in conflict. For it is only by looking toward the state of equilibrium between the beautiful and the ugly that we truly stand within reality—not one-sidedly in a reality that does not belong to us, but which is striven for alongside us in the Luciferic and Ahrimanic realities. It is very necessary that ideas such as those I have just expressed find their way into the development of human culture. In Greece—you know with what enthusiasm I have often spoken from this podium about Greek culture—it was possible to devote oneself entirely to beauty, for humanity had not yet been overtaken by the downward course of earthly evolution, at least not among the Greek people. Since that time, however, human beings can no longer afford the luxury of cultivating merely the beautiful. That would be an escape from reality. He must boldly and courageously face the real struggle between the beautiful and the ugly. He must be able to perceive the dissonances in the struggle alongside the consonances in the world—to feel them, to experience them firsthand.

[ 23 ] This brings strength into human development, and from this strength comes the possibility of attaining that inner state of consciousness which truly lifts us above the illusion that human beings, in their true essence, consist of the piled-up substances—the mineral particles—that they have merely drawn into themselves. Today one could actually say, even in physical terms, that human beings, in their very essence, do not at all bear the characteristics of the mineral nature—that is, the external physical nature. The external mineral is heavy. But that which enables us, for example, to develop the soul—I am not referring here to the intellectual—is not bound to heaviness, but to the opposite of heaviness, to what is called the buoyancy of a liquid. I have described to you on other occasions how our brain floats in cerebrospinal fluid. If it did not float there, the tiny blood vessels within it would be crushed. When Archimedes was once in the bath, he discovered that he was becoming lighter, and was so delighted that he cried out “Eureka!” at that moment. You have, of course, learned all this in physics. So we do not live by being pulled down spiritually, but rather by being lifted up. It is not because our brain is heavy, but because our brain is lighter as it floats in the cerebrospinal fluid—that is how we actually live spiritually. We live through that which pulls us away from the earth. Today, we can even say this in physical terms.

[ 24 ] But what I wanted to point out during these three days was—and still is—that, in the face of modern life, we need a state of mind that is truly conscious, in every moment of our waking lives, of the supersensible in our immediate surroundings; a state of mind that does not succumb to the illusion of regarding human beings as real simply because we see them, and spirits as unreal simply because we do not see them. In truth, we do not see human beings either. That is precisely the illusion—believing that we see them. We are no different at all from the beings of the higher hierarchies. To learn to perceive the kinship between the beings of the higher hierarchies and ourselves—even the animals and the plants—that is the task set before modern humanity.

[ 25 ] We are speaking of how, through the Mystery of Golgotha, the Christ impulse has entered into the development of the Earth—and initially into the development of humanity—and is now connected with it. People say they do not see it. Yes, they cannot see it as long as they are deluded about human beings themselves, as long as they perceive something entirely different from what a human being truly is. The moment this is no longer a theory but a vividly felt reality of the soul—one that enables us to see the supersensible in the human being—at that moment we cultivate within ourselves the ability to perceive the Christ impulse everywhere in our midst, and to be able to say everywhere, out of our conviction: Do not seek him through outward gestures; he is everywhere among you. — But humanity would also have to develop the modesty and humility to believe that cultivating such a consciousness—one that sees a supernatural being in every human being from the very beginning—truly requires something. Merely stating it theoretically accomplishes nothing. Only when one truly does not believe—when one intuitively regards it as an absurdity—that what one encounters there is the real human being, only then is one in the state of mind that I actually mean.

[ 26 ] If you were able to go out to the construction site and gather up enough of all sorts of things lying there so that, through skillful handling, you could hold them in front of you in such a way that anyone who encountered you would see nothing of you, but only brick rubble, wood debris, and so on: you would not say that these fragments of brick and wood, arranged in a certain way, are the human being. But you do not do anything different with the mineral substances that you present to your fellow human beings in a certain arrangement. You do say, after all, that these mineral substances—because your physical eyes see them—are the human being. In truth, this is merely the gesture that points to the true human being.

[ 27 ] If we look back to pre-Christian times, we will find that, visibly—I would say—God’s messengers came down to Earth and revealed themselves to humankind, making themselves understood to humankind. The greatest of God’s messengers to descend to Earth—Christ—was also, at the same time, the one who, without human intervention, was able to reveal himself most fully in the greatest event on Earth. Now we are living in the time of Michael’s revelation. It is just as present as the other revelations. But it no longer imposes itself on humanity, because humanity has entered into the development of its freedom. We must reach out to the Revelation of Michael; we must prepare ourselves so that he may send the strongest forces into us, enabling us to become aware of the supersensible in our immediate earthly surroundings. Do not fail to recognize what this Revelation of Michael would offer to people of the present and the near future if they were to approach it through their own freedom. Do not fail to recognize that today people are striving to resolve the social question out of the remnants of old states of consciousness. Everything that could be resolved from humanity’s old states of consciousness has been resolved. The Earth is in the descending phase of its development. The demands that are emerging today cannot be resolved with the kind of thinking that has come down from the past. They can be resolved only by a humanity with a new spiritual disposition. The task before us is this: to work toward bringing this new spiritual disposition among humanity. We see it today—I would say—as something that weighs on our souls like a terrible nightmare: that people cannot break free from the ideas that have been cultivated for millennia. We see today how the consequences of these millennia-old ideas unfold almost automatically—ideas that have already been stripped of all substance and, in essence, contain nothing but empty phrases. People everywhere among us speak of human ideals. What truly lies within these ideals is nothing—they are merely the sound of words—for humanity needs a new state of mind. A call once resounded among humanity, which we translate into our language as: “Change your mindset, for the time has drawn near!” — But back then, people were still able to change their mindset from within the old states of mind. Now that possibility has passed; now, if what was demanded back then is to be fulfilled, it must be fulfilled from within a new state of mind. Michael has conveyed the Yahweh tradition, the influence of Yahweh, to humanity. Since the end of the 1870s, he has been working—if only we will meet him halfway—to impart an understanding of the Christ impulse in the true sense of the word. But we must meet him halfway. And we meet him halfway when we fulfill two things.

[ 28 ] With regard to our own state of mind, we can say to ourselves: We must turn away from a certain error. I do not wish to burden you too much with narrow abstractions or philosophical worldviews, but I must draw your attention to this, because it is a symptom of humanity’s recent development that, at the dawn of the modern era, for example, a philosopher such as Descartes lived. He still knew something of the spiritual realm that, for example, operates through the dying human nervous system. But at the same time, he uttered the phrase: “I think, therefore I am.” — That is the opposite of the truth. By thinking, we do not exist, for in thinking we have only the image of reality. We would gain nothing from thinking if, through thinking, we were actually immersed in reality—if thinking were not merely a reflection. We must become aware of the mirror-like nature of our world of imagination, of the mirror-like nature of our world of thought. The moment we become aware of this mirror-like nature, we will turn to another source of reality within us. This is what Michael wants to speak to us about. That is to say, we must try to recognize our world of thought in its mirror-like nature; then we will counteract the Luciferic development. For this development has every interest in infusing substance into our thinking and in creating the deceptive illusion that there is substance in our thinking. It is not substance; it is merely an image within. We will draw substance from something else, from deeper layers of our consciousness. That is one thing. We need only the awareness that our thoughts make us weak; then we will appeal to the strength of Michael, for he is said to be the spirit who points us to that within us which is stronger than thought, whereas through modern civilization we have learned to focus primarily on thought and have thereby become weak human beings, because we have regarded thought itself as something real. No matter how much we turn away from mere abstract intelligence, we do so only for appearances’ sake; as modern human beings, we remain under the terrible yoke of intelligence and do not send from the deeper layers of our being into the thoughts themselves that which ought to be there.

[ 29 ] The second point is that we incorporate into our desires—and thus into our will—that which arises solely from a reality we must recognize as supersensible. I have mentioned here on several occasions that failing to take the supersensible character of the Mystery of Golgotha completely seriously has had bitter consequences. I have drawn your attention to such a view as, for example, that of the liberal theologian Adolf Harnack. There are many such liberal theologians who calmly admit: No proof of the reality of the Mystery of Golgotha can be found in historical documents. Indeed, the existence of Jesus Christ cannot be historically proven in the same way that the existence of Caesar or Napoleon can be proven. Why? Because the Mystery of Golgotha was intended to present humanity with an event to which it is to have only a supersensible access. It was not meant to have any sensory access at all. So that humanity might learn, precisely through the Mystery of Golgotha, to rise to the supersensible—that is why there was to be no sensory, no outwardly sensory-historical proof.

[ 30 ] This, however, points us toward two things we must address. First, to recognize the supersensible in the immediate sensory world—that is, in the world of humans, animals, and plants—this is the Michael Path. And its continuation: to find the Christ impulse within this world, which we ourselves thus recognize as supersensible.

[ 31 ] In describing this to you, I am at the same time describing the deepest driving forces behind the social question. For the abstract League of Nations will not solve the international problem. Such abstractions cannot bring people together across the globe. But the spirits that lead people into the supersensible realm—the ones we have been speaking of these past few days—they will bring people together.

[ 32 ] Outwardly, humanity is facing severe struggles today. And in the face of these severe struggles—which are only just beginning, as I have often mentioned here, and which reduce the old impulses of Earth’s development to absurdity—there will be no political, economic, or spiritual remedies to be found in the pharmacy of old historical development. From what comes from ancient times stem the forces that have first placed Europe on the brink of its abyss, that will pit Asia and America against one another, and that will pave the way for a struggle across the entire Earth. The only thing that can counteract this reduction of human development to absurdity is that which leads people on the path to the spiritual: the Michael Path, which finds its continuation in the Christ Path.