The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Today I will once again discuss the law of human development in the post-Atlantean era, because I will need to build upon various explanations of this law in the coming days. After all, the understanding of the significant demands of the present and the near future—which is so necessary in our time—cannot take root in people’s consciousness unless there is a profound understanding of how humanity has arrived at the current stage of civilizational development. Humanity has undergone a development of the soul—one that can be grasped only from the perspective of spiritual science—since the time we refer to as the era of the great Atlantean catastrophe. When we consider this era of the great Atlantean catastrophe, not as far back as the current scientific interpretation of human development would often have us go, but rather to the times geologically designated as the Ice Age—a period in which even conventional science assumes major upheavals occurred in the regions we now call civilized Europe. We go back roughly to the 8th or 9th millennium before the Mystery of Golgotha, and we have always referred to the first great cultural age that arose in post-Atlantean civilization following this Atlantean catastrophe as the Proto-Indian cultural age. We need to focus our attention specifically on the fact that the nature of the human soul in those ancient times was fundamentally different from what it was later, particularly in our own time. From the perspective of spiritual science, it is significant to look specifically at the development of the human soul. After all, external physical development—as well as the development of material cultural contexts—can only be understood once one has truly penetrated the development of the soul.

[ 2 ] If we now consider the two millennia—beginning in the 8th and 9th millennia and continuing to constitute the primordial Indian era—we encounter a humanity that developed under conditions that were very, very different from anything known today as human development. In particular, as I have often said, we must bear in mind that modern human beings undergo a development in which their physical development proceeds in parallel with their soul-spiritual development; yet today, human beings actually undergo this development only during the first decades of life. The first decade of life is marked by that important physical transition we refer to as the change of teeth around the age of seven, which we can draw parallels to with significant spiritual and psychological processes. Then, for modern humans, there is another profoundly significant event in their physical development—one that in turn affects their spiritual and psychological development—namely, sexual maturity around the ages of fourteen or fifteen. Then, as is still clearly evident for people today, there is a certain connection between mental-emotional development and physical development that extends well into one’s twenties. It is less abrupt and less distinct than during the periods around the ages of seven and fourteen, but it is still clearly perceptible to a careful observer.

[ 3 ] Humanity in the primordial Indian era experienced this parallelism between physical and spiritual development all the way up to the “fifties” of human life, extending into the sixth decade of life. People were thus spiritually and emotionally dependent on what was happening in their bodies in this way. People experienced these changes right up to a very advanced age, just as we experience them today during tooth replacement, puberty, and so on. Thus, human beings lived out their physical lives right up to the time when they reached their sixth decade—their fifties. And I have drawn attention to what this actually means for human life. One became an adult, let’s say, at the age of thirty; as a thirty-year-old, one would say to oneself: “I, too, will one day be forty or fifty years old; then, purely through my physical development, I will be mature in a completely different way before the world than I am now.” — One lived in this way, looking forward to growing older, even into the later decades of life, just as today one actually only looks forward to growing older as a child does. One continued to grow and mature right up into the highest decades of life. And one was aware that the older one became, the more things in the world became clear to one; the more entered into one’s inner life—one might say—from the unknown depths of worldly existence. One still experienced such stages of development even in old age, just as one now experiences the change of teeth and sexual maturity.

[ 4 ] This changed insofar as this parallelism between physical and spiritual development receded more and more. In the next cultural epoch—the Proto-Persian one, as I have called it in my *Outline of Esoteric Science*—this was only the case until the beginning of the 1950s, or even until the end of the 1940s. And in the Egyptian-Chaldean period, this was only the case until the beginning of one’s forties; and during the time when the Greco-Latin culture—which is still significant for us today—was spreading, people were capable of further development well into their early thirties. In Greece, people felt young well into their early thirties. And they told themselves that something would mature within them once they reached their thirties. Today, by the time we reach our early thirties, we are already withered mummies—if we look solely at our physical development. Today, we cease to have a connection with physical development at a much earlier stage.

[ 5 ] All of this, however, is connected to other aspects of human development. The first period following the great Atlantean catastrophe—the primordial Indian period—included people who participated to a high degree in the entire life of the universe, who experienced the life of the universe particularly through their mental, or head-level, experiences. After all, we know of the universe only what is observed in observatories through telescopes and what is calculated by astronomers. The human being of the primordial Indian age felt the movement of the stars in his mind. He experienced not only earthly nature in spring, summer, fall, and winter, but he also experienced cosmic events; he experienced, so to speak, the era of a particular Sirius constellation, and so on. What was later artfully calculated through astrology was experienced directly by people, just as today we experience the feeling of fullness after a meal or hunger in anticipation of a meal. The movement of the sun and the stars was thus experienced within their own minds.

[ 6 ] As a result, people at that time did not really feel themselves to be merely citizens of the Earth, but rather members of a supernatural world who had merely been transferred to Earth. They felt like travelers on a brief pilgrimage across the Earth. They felt a certain kinship with that which is extraterrestrial.

[ 7 ] This changed as early as the second post-Atlantean epoch. By then, people were less attuned to the life of the universe and more attuned to everything that relates, I would say, to the luminous nature, to the light-being of the universe. People in the Proto-Persian period experienced the day differently than they did the night. They truly still felt present in the universe during the time between falling asleep and waking up. This time had real substance for them, whereas today it amounts to little more than a void in conscious human life. A kind of shared experience of the universe was, after all, still present. So that we can say: To the same extent that human beings’ capacity for physical and bodily development shifts from the higher decades of life to the lower ones, to that same extent does humanity’s coexistence with the universe come to an end.

[ 8 ] We can therefore say (see the overview): In the first post-Atlantean, proto-Indian period, we experience a connection with the physical-bodily realm from the age of forty-eight or forty-nine up to fifty-six, and even beyond. In the second, the primordial Persian period, we then have, from the age of forty-two to forty-nine, further stages of physical development in human beings that can be compared to our teething or to sexual maturity and the like. In the third period, which we are accustomed to calling the Egyptian-Chaldean period, we have such stages of physical development from the age of thirty-five to forty-two. And in what we are accustomed to regard as the Greek period—the fourth post-Atlantean, Greek-Latin period—this development extends from the age of twenty-eight to thirty-five.

I.	Proto-Indian	49 to 56	from 8167 to 5567 BC
II.	Proto-Persian	42 to 49	from 5567 to 2907 BC
III.	Egyptian-Chaldean	35 to 42	from 2907 to 747 BC
IV.	Greek-Latin	28 to 35	from 747 BC to 1413 AD
V.	Present	21 to 28	from 1413 to ...

[ 9 ] If you consider this, you will say to yourself: Humanity’s capacity for development is declining further and further. And as this capacity for development declines, the gates to participating in universal events are, in a sense, closing to humanity. — If you want to remember this—not write it down, but remember it—we can say: The first period extends from 8167 to 5567 B.C.; the second from 5567 to 2907, roughly; the third from 2907 to 747 B.C.; the fourth, the Greek period, from 747 before the Mystery of Golgotha to 1413 after the Mystery of Golgotha; and then our fifth period begins—that is, the time during which we remain capable of development only from the twenty-first to the twenty-eighth year of life. This begins in 1413, and we are living within it. And if we want to be precise, we must say: The modern human being remains capable of development well into the twenty-seventh year. He then begins, so to speak, to emancipate himself completely in his soul-spiritual life from the physical-bodily. Emancipation from the physical-bodily realm is thus something that is increasingly coming to the fore. You can see from this that a time will come when people will only be capable of development up to the age of fourteen, when the age of sexual maturity will cease to have any significance in human development.

[ 10 ] This is a period that will most certainly come to pass. No matter how long a period geologists may calculate for the evolution of humanity on Earth, for the evolution of physical humanity on Earth; this physical humanity on Earth will not continue to develop beyond the moment when this upper age limit has been lowered to the thirteenth or fourteenth year of life. For from that point on, physical humanity on Earth will no longer be able to develop. Women will no longer give birth to children. Then physical humanity on Earth will have come to an end. I once said: The calculations made by conventional geologists are all based on a certain error. — Today, one can calculate geological time periods based on the way river silt is deposited or how much silt the Niagara River deposits and the like, and then “determine” what kind of fauna and flora prevailed on Earth so many years ago. These calculations are all conducted in much the same way as if one were to calculate today what changes, let’s say, have taken place in the stomach over the past ten years, and then deduce what the stomach looked like one hundred and fifty years ago. Yes, one can even—just as geologists do today—calculate what the Earth will look like in millions of years, and deduce what the stomach looked like three hundred years ago. But the Earth will no longer be here in millions of years, any more than the physical human being was here three hundred years ago, when his stomach is said to have looked a certain way. According to these physical laws, which form the basis of these scientific works, one can of course calculate quite correctly; but what one calculates is just as little “correct” as one can calculate what a human stomach looked like three hundred years ago. These things I am mentioning here are rejected today by exact science. But what really is, what is factual, cannot be discovered at all by this exact science. For you can spend a long time calculating what the Earth will look like in a hundred thousand years, what people will be like then, and the like: People will no longer exist on Earth!

[ 11 ] These are things that should already be compelling us today to build a bridge toward spiritual scientific perspectives. For only through this can insights arise into the true development of humankind and into certain necessities that must be incorporated into human consciousness. Now, it may not be difficult for you to see that in earlier times, human beings—simply by virtue of being physical beings—experienced certain revelations, revelations that can only be experienced if one remains physically capable of development beyond a certain age. Among the ancient Persians, and even more so among the ancient Indians, the brain remained soft, supple, and malleable well into one’s fifties—as malleable as it is today only in early youth. Simply through this malleable brain, people received revelations that cannot be received while still a child, but only when the body remains malleable well into old age. Our mummified brain, which has already completely withered by the age of thirty, cannot attain these revelations through that ancient, natural path. This is precisely what gives rise to the necessity of finding content for the emancipated spiritual-soul aspect through another, purely spiritual path.

[ 12 ] This presents you with the urgent necessity, in our age, to turn toward spiritual life. For at the age of thirty-five, one has reached the halfway point—the ascending half—of life; from there on, the path leads downward. Everything that can only be attained in the descending half of life is something that people today cannot achieve on their own. If they do nothing to attain it in any way other than through their physical development, it will not come to them at all. Based on such insights, one should understand how necessary it is for people today to turn to spiritual science.

[ 13 ] Whatever external social structures human beings have produced up to now have arisen entirely under the influence of the old, plastic physicality. But now the age has dawned in which these old structures are decaying and in which the new can only be created if it is created out of the spirit. This is already plain to see today, even if one merely follows external events. But one can only understand external events if one traces them in connection with the spirit. I would like to draw your attention to a field that seems quite distant from the topic we have just discussed. As I have often mentioned, retired generals and statesmen are now writing their memoirs. Among those who have written their memoirs, one of the best and most interesting—a frivolous and cynical figure who guided Austrian affairs for a certain period—is Czernin. He, too, has written his memoirs. I am not overestimating him when I say that he is one of the best to have written memoirs; for I must at the same time call him a frivolous and cynical man, a superficial person. Yet his memoirs still rank among the most interesting.

[ 14 ] There is an interesting passage in it where Czernin examines what could have prevented—or what brought about—this catastrophe of the World War. He addresses the issue as an Austrian and says: “This Austria—it was ruined by the World War.” But it would have collapsed even without the World War, for it was ripe for collapse. It could no longer survive. It was rotten to the core. — He even expresses himself somewhat dramatically, saying: “We were bound to collapse anyway; we could only choose the manner of our death. We could choose nothing else but the manner of our death. We chose the worst one.” Well, a better option wasn’t considered. Perhaps another one would have been slower, less painful. — That’s how he puts it.

[ 15 ] This is, in essence, a very accurate insight, for this Austria was a state structure cobbled together according to ideas that still stemmed from an older era. Even if they no longer, I might say, took root in people’s minds, they were still present there in a Luciferic sense. Today, people see how these old structures are beginning to rot and die off. People would only truly see if they could perceive the inner reasons—the reasons of the times—behind the demise of these structures. But of course, no one really sees anything until the structure in question has catastrophically collapsed. For a person today who is truly in step with the times, the task would not be merely to come up with all sorts of social ideas and take the old state structures as if one could actually take these old state structures, these old state frameworks, at all. That is not possible. One must come to terms with the fact that the old concept of the state has ceased to make sense, that something else must take its place: the threefold social organism. This threefold social organism will create its own state boundaries; the old ones have lost their internal coherence.

[ 16 ] But people today are simply asleep. They go along with what is unfolding in a catastrophic way. Yet they are unwilling to turn their attention to the inner driving forces of existence. They will only do so when they learn to truly understand these things through spiritual scientific insights. Then, through a truly spiritual grasp of existence, a bridge will also be built between an understanding of the purely natural and the social. For ultimately, both realms have laws that are interconnected. Only by viewing the times from this perspective will one arrive at the necessary insight into what is truly happening today. One will have to resolve to say: Today, if a person wants to do something for the upward development of humanity, they must not be content with what comes to them from the outside, for such things only come to them until the age of twenty-seven. After that, they become mummified; after that, the spiritual-soul aspect must draw its strength from the spiritual world.

[ 17 ] A person who today develops solely on the basis of what the outside world offers him is capable of development only up to the age of twenty-seven. You can regard the following thought as eminently true: If most people today who rise to so-called higher positions still undergo all sorts of high school or similar education, then this twenty-seven-year limit is shifted somewhat, because something from ancient traditions enters into people, which they absorb from it. But if someone grows out of our present-day life—truly as a self-made man—and then reaches the age of twenty-seven without having imbued this self-made nature with a high school education in the usual sense or the like, then by the age of twenty-seven he may be at a point where he is completely immersed in everything that applies only to the Earth’s present moment—things that offer no possibility of development toward the future and must find their conclusion in the present. For if someone is to have something in his soul that provides a force for development toward the future, then he must draw it from the spirit. So if someone today reaches the age of twenty-seven, having been educated, so to speak, solely by humanity—through what naturally comes to one through physical development—then at the age of twenty-seven he can be elected to parliament. He will understand the present, and the present will understand him; but as for what he understands, and what is understood of him, development could actually unfold in such a way that it is destroyed tomorrow by a massive global catastrophe; for he will contain no further catalysts for further development within his soul. Precisely such a man—a self-made man who has had everything handed to him from the outside as is customary today, who would then have reached completion by the age of twenty-seven and, for all I care, become a member of Parliament, then soon a minister, and so on—would be the most characteristic expression of the present.

[ 18 ] The quintessential example of this is Lloyd George. He is, in fact, the most absolute expression of the present. If you take a look at his biography, you will find that he is the kind of person who embodies everything a human being can achieve today through his physical and spiritual development up to the age of twenty-seven. But since he rejects everything that does not come to him of its own accord—that is, everything gained from the spiritual world—he can never grow older than twenty-seven. He is, of course, much older today in terms of chronological age, but in reality he is twenty-seven years old. And so there are many among us today who remain stuck at twenty-seven years of age because they do not absorb anything from the spiritual world. The fact that one gets gray hair or shows other signs of aging makes no difference in this regard. One can be twenty-seven years old today, even if one is a seventy-year-old man by chronological age, and can be the French Prime Minister named Clemenceau. This is the secret of human development: that growing old is not connected to the passage of years, but that today, whoever truly wishes to grow old must do so by incorporating the spiritual into their soul’s development. It is therefore no coincidence that, precisely during these decisive events, Lloyd George set the tone for the world. For the tone of today’s age—which is entirely primal-maternalistic—had to be set by a person who, in the most characteristic and typical way, had become twenty-seven years old and had not progressed beyond those twenty-seven years. After all, it was precisely at this age that he became a member of Parliament and developed all these ideas with great genius. One does not come to know the world today by merely viewing it as reflected in the ideas that float on the surface of so-called civilization. One comes to know the world only by truly looking at it from within, in the manner just described.

[ 19 ] We humans are given two things for our development: I would say, the physical form and the content. The people of the first, second, and third periods were given not only their physical forms—their physical development—but also the spiritual aspect. Members of the higher hierarchies still lived within these physical forms. We develop our bodies in such a way that we possess: in our human forms, the powers of the spirits of form; in our etheric body, the spirit of the age; in our astral body, archangelic beings; and in our “I,” angelic beings. But it does not go any further than that, for we must deliberately and consciously ascend to what simply came to the people of ancient times as a natural consequence of their physical development. And one cannot understand the moral development of humanity without truly taking such things into account. People today write history in exactly the same way that blind people would write about color. They write only superficial phrases that have no substance. From these superficial phrases, which have no substance, party platforms and social programs then arise, as do those so-called ideals according to which one seeks to bring about this or that social change. Today, one cannot bring about any social change without drawing upon the driving forces of human development. An understanding of the times is necessary today. But it can only be drawn from spiritual foundations.

[ 20 ] Just how strange this understanding of time is often perceived can be seen from external signs. When people want to transcend everyday life today, they often do all sorts of things. For example, one heard some time ago—when, even before the catastrophe of war, people no longer knew what little trinkets of civilization they were supposed to engage in—that all sorts of “Olympic Games” were to be staged. Yes, the Olympic Games were for the Greeks. Our age has moved on by so many centuries beyond the Greeks. We no longer have the same spiritual and physical constitution that the Greeks had. We must find what is appropriate to our state of mind and body. We merely reveal the impotence of our spirit, the utter emptiness of our inner life, when we insist on endlessly rehashing the past. The Olympic Games were possible for people who retained their capacity for development well into their thirty-third year. To simply revive things that once existed for humanity is no different from someone who has reached the age of thirty-five suddenly deciding to behave like a fifteen-year-old boy. That is roughly how it was when the ideal of the Olympic Games emerged.

[ 21 ] This inner search for understanding, rooted in the spiritual foundations of development—that is what we must absolutely strive for from this moment onward. For the very old frameworks within which people have operated until now have become rotten and brittle. After all, a snail shell can still hold together for a while even after the snail is dead. In the same way, the old states—which emerged from entirely different “snails,” from entirely different ideas—have persisted. But it is essential that new social structures truly develop today out of people’s renewed imaginative life. The great demise of the old social structures—which began in the East and has swept through Central Europe—will certainly continue! But it would be good if people understood this and focused less on restoring the old empires, and instead focused on facing the real conditions of the present and shaping new social structures appropriate to these real conditions.

[ 22 ] All in all, one must say: Spiritual science requires people to develop a little less complacency regarding their spiritual nature than people today tend to have. People today are already in such a state that they are completely unaware of the driving forces of evolution in which they are immersed. I found it interesting to see how a member of our Society wrote in the latest issue of the *Dreigliederungszeitung* about the style of *The Core Points of the Social Question*. Many people have, of course, chattered on about all sorts of things regarding the style of *The Core Points of the Social Question*: hard to understand, convoluted sentences—and the like. It’s quite good that someone has finally pointed out that, after all, this book is meant to be a call for the renewal of humanity; it is not meant to be a sleeping pill for those who want a pleasant read.

[ 23 ] Today, in their desire to be consistent, people bring together the most disparate elements. If they go out among the so-called “people” today, they will be expected to adopt a popular style. Perhaps those who feel the most free-spirited will demand the most “popular” presentation. These people will find a restrained style boring. Where does this pursuit of so-called “popular” presentation come from?—If people would just stop and think about it for a moment, they would more easily reconsider such judgments as are often heard. For what even many people hostile to the church demand today as “popularity” in style is nothing other than the result of the very style of presentation that certain representatives of the denominations sought in order to keep the people as ignorant as possible. In their Sunday afternoon sermons, they gave them, as much as possible, what was “crystal clear”—something that was crystal clear even to those who wanted to doze off during the sermons. The ultimate example of listening to a sermon is, after all, the old lady who always slept through the sermon and was called to account. She said: “Well, what does a person have in this world if they no longer have that little bit of church sleep!”—The difference in level between this state of drowsiness and popular presentation is not very great. It arose essentially because people were not allowed to develop their thinking in a certain free and lively way. What people have grown accustomed to while listening to sermons is what the anti-church Social Democrats now demand as a “popular presentation.” That is how the connections work. People today find the style of the “key points”—which would strongly reject the idea of being confessional believers—difficult; but the reason they find the style difficult is that these people have been raised on the “crystal-clear” Sunday afternoon sermons. This is also something people must learn through spiritual science: to look at events with an open mind. After all, people would prefer to delude themselves about the laws of development.

[ 24 ] Above all, energy in the life of the soul—that is what is needed in the most profound sense for the future of human development. And it is precisely in this regard that we are living in extraordinarily difficult times today. Last Sunday, while “Egyptian darkness” reigned in this hall, I pointed out various efforts that are currently directed against our spiritual science. But it is not at all uncommon for decisive, uncompromising thinking on this very subject to be resented, so to speak, even within our own ranks. This must be stated clearly because the kind of smear campaigns directed against anthroposophically oriented spiritual science—and the social consequences it entails—are only just beginning. Time and again, one encounters within our own ranks the pernicious notion that, when someone slanders—be it an elderly gentleman, or whoever it may be, sometimes a young man, an elderly woman, or even a young one—one should treat them as gently as possible. It is said: “Whoever slanders should, above all, be treated as gently as possible within our ranks; one should first make friends with people who spread slander!” — That is not what matters today! Anyone who understands the times should realize this. What matters today is not that we engage with the people who spread slander throughout the world; what matters is that we describe these people to others, that we have nothing to do with them, that we treat them as individuals we do not want to let get close to us, and that we inform others accordingly about what kind of people they are out there in the world. That is what matters today! — For today we face serious turning points in our development, and today turning a blind eye is the very worst thing that can happen, especially in the service of humanity. It is easier to turn a blind eye than to grasp clearly what is at stake here.

[ 25 ] Above all, we must be clear that a true understanding of the social task of our time is possible only from the spiritual perspective. But to achieve this, of course, many other things must first be brought about, I would say. On the one hand, there is our science, which is in need of a complete renewal. We can no longer make sense of things with the old science. We must have the opportunity to truly penetrate the spirit of nature. We must have the opportunity to truly grasp natural science, medicine, and biology in general from a spiritual perspective; only then can we, through the education we undergo in this way, truly develop fruitful ideas for social thought. Otherwise, we will continue to try to create something new using the old catchphrases. But that is precisely what is leading us so rapidly into the abyss. Humanity must rise; but it must do so through spiritual renewal. And anyone who is not willing to view the old in such a way that they truly regard it as old will simply not be able to contribute to the progress of humanity.

[ 26 ] I have, after all, explored this topic with you in a wide variety of ways. Today I wanted to point out how humanity—as I have discussed on numerous occasions—is actually becoming younger and younger in terms of life expectancy. The ancient Indian people lived to be over fifty; the Persian people, into their forties; the Egyptian-Chaldean people, into their late thirties; and the Greek people, into their thirties. We do not grow old in this way. We simply plod along if we do not revitalize ourselves spiritually from within, but we do not actually grow old. For in ancient times, growing old meant simultaneously becoming wiser through the physical development that a person underwent. Today’s people, as they grow old, merely grow old; they do not become wiser—they become mummies. They become wiser only when they fill those mummies with something from within. The Egyptians mummified their dead. People today do not even need to become mummies first, for they are already walking around as mummies and are only not mummies when the spiritual is grasped in living, immediate presence; then the mummy is brought to life. But it is necessary for humanity today that the mummies be brought to life. Otherwise, we continue to have those world-unions in which all manner of sounds emanate from mummified human beings. These unions are called “parties.” But what came from the mummified human beings gradually became purely Ahrimanic voices, and these have brought about the catastrophe of recent years. That is the flip side of the matter; that is the very gravity of the situation. If, from now on, human beings do not begin to fill their mummies with spiritual content, they will be filled by the whisperings of Ahriman. Then the human mummies will walk about, but it will be the Ahrimanic demons speaking through them. They can only be prevented from populating the Earth if human beings resolve to seek their living connection with the spiritual world. Yes, there is a very, very serious side to this matter. Practicing spiritual science today is at the same time a process of driving the Ahrimanic spirit out of humanity; it is a means of preventing humanity from becoming possessed by the Ahrimanic spirit.