The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Ninth Lecture

[ 1 ] In our discussion today, we want to begin with the facts of human existence and then move on to some guiding principles of world history.

[ 2 ] We have, after all, examined from a wide variety of perspectives that rhythmic alternation in human states that takes place over the course of twenty-four hours—the alternation between sleep and wakefulness. Today I would like to draw attention to the facts underlying this alternation between sleep and wakefulness from a perspective that we have considered even less frequently.

[ 3 ] We know, of course, that the human being is a threefold being. We consider the human head organization to be one part of this threefold being. This human head organization is such that, first of all, the sensory organism faces the external world. Located further inward is the actual brain organism. We know, of course, that any such way of looking at things is only an approximation. For we must not simply divide the human being into spatial sections; we must be clear that while the nervous-sensory organism is concentrated primarily in the head, it extends spatially throughout the entire human being. Everything we have to say in this regard also applies to the whole human being. We characterize it according to the primary part in which these things are concentrated—the head. Thus, outwardly, the sensory organism; inwardly, the brain organism.

[ 4 ] Now the question arises: What actually happens to the sensory organism and the brain organism when a person transitions from the state of wakefulness—which you are familiar with, at least outwardly—to the state of sleep? As you know, the sensory organism ceases its activity. The brain organism can still be observed through what, in a certain sense, shines through to the human being from the state of sleep: through the life of dreams. If you take a look at this dream life, you will be able to say to yourself: At first glance, this dream life presents you with a kind of environment that is, in a certain respect, similar to the external sensory world. It contains images of this external sensory world. A person in waking consciousness knows very well that in the dream life they have images that have a kind of counterpart in the external sensory world. And when a person then looks more closely at their dream world, when they observe it completely impartially, they become aware that the dream images are connected to one another, relate to one another, and stand in a reciprocal relationship that is just as determined as the mutual relationships, the interplay, found in the more image-less thoughts of waking life. However, while a person has full control over the connections between their thoughts in the image-less thinking of waking life—exercising influence through the will on how one thought connects to another—this is not the case in the interplay of dream images. Dream images arrange themselves. The person is at the mercy of this arrangement. But when one then surveys the manner in which these dream images arrange themselves, one finds: It is as if the facts of ordinary thinking were unfolding in a diluted, somewhat involuntary manner. One can still trace quite precisely the remnants of both sensory life and thought life in dream life. One will be able to recognize—which spiritual science can then elevate to full certainty—from all that emerges through this observation of dream life, that the human brain, which is, in a certain sense, the bearer of the life of imagination, must have undergone a change compared to the waking state. For in the waking state, the situation is such that it is precisely through our will that we control the connection between thoughts. In the dream state, we do not. Furthermore, the senses have ceased their activity; only the pictorial echoes of sensory life remain in the dream state. Thus, a diminished sensory life is also present. What changes—we ask today—has the human brain undergone?

[ 5 ] If you consider the matter impartially, you will have to agree with what the science of the spirit must assert: In dreaming, the brain has become similar to a sense organ. A sensory organ perceives images from the external world. It also processes these images, at least to a certain extent. But there is no will in the way the mere sensory organ relates to the external world. If you consider precisely this way in which the sensory organ relates to the external world and then compare it to dreaming, you will find that the brain, as the vehicle of dreaming—let us assume for the sake of argument that the brain is the vehicle of dreaming—has become similar to a sensory organ. It has become more of a sensory organ than it is in the waking state; or rather, in the waking state it is not a sensory organ at all, having completely shed the characteristics of a sensory organ.

[ 6 ] And now you will not be far from understanding what full, dreamless sleep is like. Dreams, after all, lie right in the middle between waking life and sleep. If the brain already approaches the sensory organ during dreaming, this approach will be even greater during sleep. However, in their present condition, human beings are not able to make use of this sensory organ in normal life. But there was a time in human evolution when human beings were, to a high degree, able to use the brain as a sensory organ. Yet every time, between falling asleep and waking up, the brain becomes, in a certain sense, a sensory organ. We know where the true human being—the spiritual-soul being—is from the moment of falling asleep until waking up. He is in the outer world. We will not dwell here on describing what this outer world is like, but we simply want to be clear that, naturally, the human being, as a spiritual-soul being, is in a spiritual-soul outer world. The environment, which from waking until falling asleep we can only regard as a physical world—in which we are not aware of the spiritual-soul elements—becomes, for the state between falling asleep and waking, such that the human being, as a spiritual-soul being, is within this environment as a spiritual-soul environment. Unconsciously, they experience themselves within this spiritual-psychic environment in accordance with their current state of mind.

[ 7 ] This spiritual and soul environment in which human beings exist was, in fact, the true world of that time, from which humanity’s primordial wisdom originates. When we look back on that time—a time to which we have, after all, looked back many times before, and whose echoes can be found in the Vedas and in Vedanta philosophy, in short, in the wisdom traditions and revelations of the ancient Orient, then we find that what this primordial humanity of the ancient Orient experienced occurred precisely in that state between falling asleep and waking up to the external world. And for this humanity, it was still the case that during sleep, the brain was to a large extent a kind of sense organ. Admittedly, it was a sense organ that did not allow thinking to occur at the same time as perception. The ancient Oriental human being could perceive in the spiritual-soul world what he experienced between falling asleep and waking up. It was reflected, so to speak, in his brain, which had become a sensory organ. But he could not also think about it in that same state. He had to wait, so to speak, until waking to think about what he had perceived there. And there is even an outward sign that these things were as I have now described them. Just try, for a moment, to go back even to the later remnants of ancient Eastern culture. There you will find that this ancient Eastern culture of wisdom is indeed structured in such a way that it represents, so to speak, the sensory world-space—which, however, was viewed from a spiritual perspective. What today exists only as a caricature—astrology—was a living wisdom in those ancient times. What the stars revealed, what the night sky revealed to human beings—that which is veiled from our perception from the moment we wake until we fall asleep—constitutes, to a great extent, the foundation of what this ancient Eastern wisdom unveiled. And that was what human beings experienced from the moment they fell asleep until they woke up. They were in the outer world, and they experienced their connection to the world of the stars in a spiritual-soulful way. And when they awoke, their brain would once again withdraw from the state of the sensory organ into a state that was already somewhat similar to our brain’s state—only this brain was still structured in such a way that, while awake, a person could remember what they had experienced during sleep. And what he remembered there shone forth as an instinctive imagination. As this ancient Eastern person went about his daily life, he could turn his inner attention away from what was in the sensory world around him, and he could focus on what stood before his soul as an inner illumination in powerful images—as a memory of what he had experienced during the night. And these were the primordial Eastern imaginations, which then appear in a diminished form in the still magnificent Vedas and in the wisdom and poetry of Vedanta.

[ 8 ] How did human beings perceive themselves in those days? In those ancient times, there was no question of describing human beings in the way that modern anatomy or physiology does, where the descriptions are based on the outward, sensory aspects of the human being. Amid all that a person experienced in the outer world between falling asleep and waking up, they experienced themselves as a soul-spiritual being. They experienced the cosmos as a soul-spiritual being and themselves as a soul-spiritual being within the soul-spiritual cosmos. And how did they experience themselves there? They experienced themselves as their own model. Please pay close attention to what is contained in these very words. When a person gained insight into what they had experienced in sleep, they experienced themselves as their own model, and they could say to themselves: My model looks like this and that. Within this archetype, in turn, are contained certain specific archetypes for my head, for the interior of my head, for the lungs, the liver, and so on. The human being did not experience himself in the way that modern anatomy and physiology describe, in the external, sensually perceptible organs. Rather, he experienced himself as an archetype—as that which creates these external, sensually perceptible organs. In a sense, the human being experienced himself as a divine-heavenly being, as the divine-heavenly archetype of the earthly human being. The earthly human being therefore did not particularly interest him; rather, he was interested in his heavenly-spiritual archetype. Through this entire complex of experiences, however, he came to realize something else. He came to recognize that this heavenly-spiritual archetype is, at the same time, the very same being that he was before he was conceived or born as a physical human being. And through this particular nature, during the ancient Eastern primordial state, the human being experienced himself as a heavenly-divine being, but at the same time he experienced himself as a human being before his earthly existence. And this is the fundamentally important aspect of the ancient Eastern cultures: that the human being experienced himself as the being he was before his earthly-physical existence. His awareness of all this was, admittedly, instinctive; yet it resulted in a firm recognition of pre-earthly existence—of the descent from a spiritual world into the physical-sensory world. This is the forgotten defining characteristic of the ancient Eastern religions: that these religions indeed spoke of pre-birth existence, and of the fact that life on Earth is a continuation of a heavenly life.

[ 9 ] I have already pointed out from another perspective how much the awareness that had developed there has been lost in our time: although we have a word that negates the idea that life ends with death—“immortality”—we have no word that negates the idea that the beginning is the very start of human life. We have no word similar to “immortality” for the prenatal realm. We would also need the word “unbornness.” If we had the word “unbornness” and if this word were as vivid within us as the word “immortality,” then we would be able to put ourselves in the spiritual state of mind of the ancient Eastern people.

[ 10 ] If you try to imagine this entire state of mind of the ancient Oriental, you will be able to say to yourself: In a certain sense, earthly life unfolded for him in such a way that he paid little attention to it, because he saw in it only the reflection of heavenly-spiritual life. Nor did the ancient Oriental attach particular importance to himself as a physical human being, for this human being walking here on Earth was, after all, merely a reflection of the heavenly human being who stood foremost before his soul. The eternal aspect of the human being was, for this Oriental person, a matter of course based on direct perception, because, as mentioned, it dawned on him as an enlightenment; in daily life, in the waking state, was the memory of the life of the night. To picture such a state of soul before one’s spiritual eye, one must therefore go back to the ancient Orient. That which existed there as a great spiritual culture in the ancient Orient belongs to very, very ancient times. For what the books contain—even the magnificent Vedas and Vedanta philosophy—is merely an echo. If one were to contemplate, in its pure, original form, the content of ancient Eastern primordial wisdom, one would have to go far beyond the age of the Vedas and Vedanta philosophy. Only spiritual science can do this. This ancient Eastern culture, which in a sense illuminated all earthly life with an insight into the spiritual world—an insight that, though perhaps only instinctive, was nonetheless profound—this ancient Eastern spiritual culture subsequently fell into decadence. Anyone who studies the contemporary Eastern spirit—which is already highly decadent—will still find, as its fundamental impulse, this orientation toward the heavenly human being. Even in the coquettishness of Rabindranath Tagore, we still find echoes of this Eastern style. Rabindranath Tagore is, of course, thoroughly imbued with what is, naturally, a later, decadent culture; but, as I said, the fundamental trait can still be found even in his—at times extraordinarily interesting and significant, yet in their basic character entirely coquettish—discussions, for example in the essays compiled in his work on nationalism. So that when one looks toward the East, one looks into an ancient time, into a lofty, instinctive spiritual culture with a strong emphasis on pre-earthly existence. And one then witnesses a gradual decline of this originally lofty spiritual culture. In this decline, what becomes apparent is simply the inability to engage with what is now the task of modern humanity: the physical-sensual existence that human beings experience between birth and death. The ancient Oriental human of prehistoric times had the archetype of the human being; and in physical-sensual life, he could see the reflection of this archetype. The vitality and radiance of the heavenly-divine archetype gradually dimmed and darkened, leaving the Easterners with nothing more than a shadow image. Today it has already faded completely. What remains is a shadow image of that which once stood before his soul in living brightness as the spiritual-soul archetype of himself within the entire cosmic spiritual-soul world. But a certain powerlessness also remained within the Eastern being. And this is something that people today, who wish to live in step with their times, must take to heart in a very special way. What remained was the inability to contemplate the human being who is but a reflection, to contemplate the human being in the time between birth and death. The Eastern person had no sense of this in the past, not even when he had before him not a substitute but something entirely different: the heavenly-physical human being. But even today, he still has no sense of truly engaging with the human being as he is between birth and death. It was reserved for another cultural sphere to contemplate the human being in his essence here in physical-sensory existence between birth and death. This was reserved for the culture I would like to call the culture of the middle. This culture of the middle first finds its historically visible expression in later ancient Greek civilization. Early ancient Greek culture was, after all, still under the influence of Oriental wisdom. Later Greek culture already embraced what I now wish to characterize as the culture of the middle.

[ 11 ] This culture of the center emerged more from the south, taking hold in later Greece and, in particular, in the Roman world. While everything I have described so far as characteristic of the East was a culture of observation, what comes from the south—seizing upon later Greek civilization and finding its particular form of development in the Roman world—becomes the culture of the center—as we have often considered from other perspectives— a legal, dialectical, intellectual, and rational culture—not a culture of contemplation, but a culture of thought. This culture of thought is particularly suited to contemplating human beings in their lives between birth and death. After it had gone through its preliminary stages in later Greek civilization, after it had manifested itself in a very crude, brutal manner in Roman civilization, and then persisted through the language of Roman civilization—Latin, which remained the language of scholarship throughout the Middle Ages—this dialectical, this intellectual culture reached its zenith in the great Central European cultural achievements witnessed at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century in Schiller, Goethe, Herder, and indeed also in the philosophers Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. You need only look at what is truly characteristic of these minds, and you will immediately realize that what I am saying is true. Take Fichte, Schelling, and even Goethe himself. In what, then, are these minds great; in what are they significant?

[ 12 ] These spirits play a major and significant role in a person’s understanding of life between birth and death. For this person, they demand a comprehensive understanding. Take, to highlight just one example, Hegel’s philosophy. In Hegel’s philosophy, you will find a strong emphasis on the fact that human beings are spiritual beings. But the spirit is considered only insofar as human beings live between birth and death. You will find nothing in Hegel about a pre-birth, heavenly-divine human being. Nor will you find anything in Hegel about a human being after death. In Hegel, you will find a historical examination of everything that has transpired among human beings here on Earth, insofar as they are human beings living between birth and death. But you will find no mention of any forces from those worlds that the human being experiences between death and a new birth. All of this has been completely erased from this great culture, whose mission, whose calling, was precisely to emphasize sharply that human beings here in their lives between birth and death are spiritual-soul beings alongside physical-bodily beings. But at the same time, the limitation of this culture lay in the fact that one could not look up into that life which is spiritual. And the soul, which extends beyond birth and death—the eternal, insofar as it reveals itself between birth and death—was powerfully emphasized, particularly by Hegel and also by all the others, especially the German thinkers; but there was no possibility of looking out into the life of the eternal, as it reveals itself before birth and as it reveals itself after death. What was said at that time about the human being as a bodiless being was, after all, an ancient legacy of the Orient; it did not spring from our own insight. It was tradition. In this European understanding, the power of cognition was stretched to its utmost; it was directed toward the spiritual-soul aspect within the human being, but at the same time toward the physical-bodily aspect. Yet this tension did not extend beyond the life that unfolds between birth and death.

[ 13 ] In the West, preparations were being made in a wide variety of ways for a different kind of life—a life that, if it were to develop further in the future, would introduce the spiritual, which is free from the physical body, in a different way. How did the ancient Oriental—let us make this clear to ourselves once more—bring the spiritual into physical life? He brought it in by recalling during the day what he experienced outside his body at night, between falling asleep and waking up. Later this will be different; today only the harbingers are present, the preliminary stage. For between waking and falling asleep, a person does not merely experience within themselves what is conscious to them; very little of what a person experiences actually rises into today’s normal consciousness. Deep within human nature, far more is actually experienced than a person can be conscious of. This is already sensed, especially in the West. That is why people like William James speak of the “subconscious” or “unconscious”—because they sense it; they simply have not yet been able to elevate it to the level of knowledge. Everything said about these things is mere babbling, but the things themselves are sensed. And just as what was experienced in the ancient Orient—in a state free from the body—as the spiritual-soul aspect of the cosmos began to emerge, so too will what is currently being experienced unconsciously in the depths of the West one day rise up from those depths. Imagination will also emerge there. Anyone who studies Western psychology can already see in association psychology—which, as it appears today, is nonsense—a preparation for this.

[ 14 ] That which, for the person of the Middle Way, appeared only as a revelation of what is experienced between birth and death will reveal itself in its eternal aspect through the special abilities of the West.

[ 15 ] In particular, what lies deep within us is what will live on in the spiritual world after death. Remember what I have often told you about these matters from various perspectives. I have said: The human head is the result of a previous earthly life. That which constitutes the rest of the human being will become the head in the next earthly life. This is how the metamorphosis will take place. So what lies within the part of the human being outside the head—which, from the present perspective, is merely flesh and blood, muscles, skin, and bones—contains within it, in a spiritual seed, that which will be the head of the next incarnation; this points beyond death. And this aspect that points beyond death will one day reveal itself in the consciousness of the humanity of the future—a humanity that today exists in its primitive beginnings in the West. The inner spiritual-soul aspect will thus be perceived imaginatively in the future, just as the outer spiritual-soul aspect was perceived imaginatively and instinctively in ancient times. However, what will reveal itself from within will reveal itself to full consciousness, whereas what revealed itself to the ancient Easterners revealed itself only in a dull, instinctive consciousness.

[ 16 ] And how is this manifesting itself today? What are the warning signs? The warning signs are, first of all, that there is a strong tendency toward materialism in these Western regions. Since the spiritual is to reveal itself from human-physical matter, this world today leans heavily toward materialism. People do not yet see the spiritual, but they do see that from which the spiritual will emerge. Hence materialism, which is primarily a Western product but has spread from the West to the center and is now spreading toward the East.

[ 17 ] The culture of the Middle is, after all, not a materialistic one; one could call it a material-spiritual culture, because in the contemplation of human beings between birth and death, a balance is always maintained between the focus on the material and the focus on the spiritual. It is certainly true of German philosophers—Goethe and Schiller, for example—that they, so to speak, accord equal rights to the body and the spirit. In the West, the spirit is a matter for the future; the present gaze is directed first and foremost toward the body. But in the development of humanity, everything is in flux: this understanding of the body—this materialism—will one day give rise to a spiritualism that comes from an entirely different perspective and that, above all, will be consciously distinct from the spiritualism of the ancient Orient.

[ 18 ] From this you can see the peculiar distribution—I have already spoken of this from other perspectives—of this threefold configuration of humanity throughout the world: The people of the East once regarded themselves as their heavenly-spiritual model. People of the Middle view themselves as earthly human beings, who, however, possess spirit and soul alongside body and flesh. People of the West still view themselves today as merely physical human beings; but in what they are called to develop, there are already signs of what will emerge from this human physicality and what will constitute the spiritual content of consciousness in the future.

[ 19 ] The person of the Middle is, in fact, caught between East and West. The East, which once possessed a high spiritual culture, is in a state of decadence. The West, where a future high spiritual culture is beginning to emerge, is still entirely entangled in materialism today. A culture in which, I would say, these two elements balance each other out has emerged in the middle: on the one hand, a dialectically sharp mode of thinking, as exemplified in Schiller’s letters “On the Aesthetic Education of Man,” which goes just far enough to avoid falling into the mere triviality of modern science, yet remains grounded in the human and personal; on the other hand, a pictorial conception of human social life, as in Goethe’s “fairy tale” of the green snake and the beautiful lily, which already gives rise to images but does not push these images to the point of intellectual insights.

[ 20 ] This person of the middle path is therefore also entrusted with the mission of expanding—through direct insight—what he has initially attained through his special abilities for human beings between birth and death, for human beings as spiritual-soul beings alongside their physical-bodily beings; but to expand this by ascending directly from this to mystery wisdom once again. Then, by cultivating the very same abilities through which he has preserved the spiritual-soul aspect for physical-bodily existence—through clear thinking that develops into imagination, inspiration, and intuition—the human being ascends once more into the spiritual world, which is experienced between death and a new birth. Here, within this physical world, one experiences a complete illumination of those faculties that can be developed only by considering the problem of freedom. I have therefore limited myself in my Philosophy of Freedom to considering this problem of freedom. There one had to apply—albeit now to purely earthly problems—the very same capacity which, when further developed, raises one’s gaze beyond what lies beyond birth and death. .

[ 21 ] You see, in a certain sense, the world is also divided into three parts in terms of its development: in the ancient Orient, instinctive wisdom; in the middle, a certain dialectical-intellectual life; and in the West today, materialism, which carries within its bosom a future spiritualism. Everything in the ancient Orient depended on instinctive wisdom. There was no political life there in our sense of the term. Those who presided over the mysteries also set the course for political and economic life. For the ancient Orientals placed great value on the spiritual life that developed instinctively within them. Political and economic life depended on this spiritual life. Then came the culture of the European heartland, originating in the south, of course; it had already taken its first steps in Egypt. There a way of life developed that eventually led to a dialectical conception of the state and political elements. It was precisely within this culture of the center that state and political life took shape. Intellectual life was regarded there merely as a legacy. And especially in the West—for example, in Puritanism—the spiritual was viewed as something entirely abstract, something that could be pursued in a sectarian manner, something allowed to shine into the ordinary, physical life of everyday existence.

[ 22 ] Here, in the heart of Europe, was the soil in which ideas of the state took particular shape, as seen, for example, in Wilhelm von Humboldt, and where they even took on such marvelous forms as social solidarity, as in Schiller’s “Aesthetic Letters,” where they present themselves to people in such magnificent imagery as in Goethe’s works; for, fundamentally, it is the idea of the state that is portrayed in Goethe’s “fairy tale” of the green snake and the beautiful lily.

[ 23 ] Today, in the West, we have only just begun to develop what must inevitably lead to the threefold social order; we have only just begun to develop it in the material-economic sphere. The concept of the state in the West is merely a legacy of the culture of the Middle. There is a thick book by the once-famous Woodrow Wilson about the state. There is nothing Western in it at all; rather, it is entirely just a pale imitation of the theories of the state—right down to the specific ideas—that were developed in the Middle. It has also been translated into German, for there was a time in Germany when Woodrow Wilson was regarded as a great man.

[ 24 ] Thus, one can say that what we today envision as the threefold social order has historically developed through the evolution of humanity in three stages: Exemplary and instinctive as spiritual life in the ancient Orient; in a certain sense semi-instinctive—for just as the idea of the state emerged in Humboldt, Schiller, Herder, and later thinkers, it is half instinctive and half intellectual—the idea of the state, political life, and legal life developed in the culture of the Middle; economic life is actually, first and foremost, a matter for the West—so very much a matter for the West that even the philosophers of the West are, in fact, economists out of place. Spencer would have done much better had he founded factories instead of philosophies. For the particular configuration of the West actually fits into the structure of the factory. Everything to which Spencer’s thinking extends is found there.

[ 25 ] One can also put it this way: The ancient Oriental man had ascended to the divine aspect of humanity. To him, man was, in a certain sense, the son of God, the emanation of the divine. For the people of the ancient Orient, the divine, as it were, reached down and had a downward extension that was merely imitated: the earthly human being was a continuation of the divine model. For the ancient Orient, this meant: above, the divine-spiritual human being; below, the physical human being as its sensory-earthly image—merely something that, so to speak, still hangs down and extends into the earthly world from the heavenly human being. And when the heavenly human was later forgotten, or only a faint inkling remained in the decadent culture, people had no sense of that which extended down from the divine human into the earthly human.

[ 26 ] The human being of the middle is organized in such a way that what descended as the heavenly human being from spiritual heights has condensed into a sort of closed semicircle, and that the earthly human then attaches itself below it, resulting in a comprehensible divine-spiritual and sensory-physical being, as so beautifully depicted in Hegel’s philosophy and as Goethe so beautifully envisioned.

[ 27 ] In Western culture, the focus is on the animal world, on the animal nature. Darwin views this in a magnificent light in his theory of evolution. And at the top of this, there is a sort of pinnacle that one cannot quite reach, which is regarded only as the highest product of evolution: human beings. In fact, in the West one considers only the animal nature, just as in the East one has considered only the heavenly, only God, who continues in human beings. In the West, one considers only the animal, which has a pinnacle at the top—a being that is still a continuation of the animal kingdom, something like a “super-animal” that transcends the animal realm. That, however, is still the state of the West today. It is also the state that finds expression in Western philosophy and that will continue to develop in such a way that, just as the Easterners received the spiritual from above, the Westerners will one day shape the spiritual from below—and do so with full consciousness. The middle forms the transition.

[ 28 ] Anyone who observes reality does not like to speak of a transitional age. For every age is, of course, a transitional age, because something always follows and something has always preceded it. But just as there is a point on a plant where, for example, the calyx is at the bottom, the flowers at the top, and the leaves at the bottom—just as there are distinct sections there—so, too, are there such distinct sections in the development of humanity. And we can already speak of the period in which the great slaughter took place—beginning in 1914—as a transitional period, a time that is particularly distinctive in the historical development of humanity, a time in which, in a certain inner and tragic way, the fate of the average human being has unfolded, a fate confronted by the great question: How does one find one’s way out of the physical-earthly life—that which lies between birth and death—into the life between death and a new birth? Hegel’s philosophy soon turned into materialism. And the first half of the 19th century was powerless in the face of the question: How can what has been discovered in the earthly-spiritual realm be extended to the non-earthly? But this is the great question that lies before us, especially for the culture of the Middle. Goetheanism must find its further development. It must develop toward the spiritual-soul realm. It must transcend the merely physical-human and become cosmic. This endeavor is being undertaken precisely by the anthroposophically oriented spiritual science, which is a continuation of Goetheanism into the spiritual realm. Goetheanism must extend all the way into the wisdom of the mysteries. It must be developed into the wisdom of the mysteries.

[ 29 ] This is the significant aspect that confronts us in the character of the present—the aspect one must understand if one wishes to consciously engage with contemporary life and the challenges of our time. Despite its severe trials, Central Europe—if it does not fail—must accomplish the deepening of that which confronts it regarding the physical-sensory existence of the human being, which has preserved the spirit within that physical-sensory existence. This must form the foundation for the development of a wisdom of the mysteries that is as intellectually acute as was the intellectual work that was accomplished for the physical-sensory realm. Therefore, a thorough understanding of the balance between the three spheres—the spiritual, the political, and the economic—must, or ought to, take hold precisely in this European center. The others will follow. Here, however, it would be the greatest possible negligence if people were to pass by, oblivious, what stands before them as a great necessity: to grasp and bring to fruition the impulse toward the threefold social order.

[ 30 ] This European center is caught between the East and the West. Today, it lies in ruins. It must find a path to the light, emerging from darkness and gloom.

[ 31 ] We will discuss what is to happen there before the middle of the century next time, when I will explain to you the reappearance of the Christ before the middle of the 20th century. I will speak to you about what I hinted at in my first Mystery Drama: the reappearance of the Christ. Today I simply want to draw your attention to the fact that this reappearance of the Christ—which is, however, intimately connected with an understanding of the threefold structure of the entire world order—unfolds as the center must look, on the one hand, to the now-aged, instinctive-spiritual culture of the East, and, with a thorough understanding of what is being prepared there, must look, on the other hand, to Western culture, which is still materialistic today, but which, within its materialism, carries within itself the seed of a future spirituality. The culture of the Middle must position itself within this context; it must find the strength and power to do so and to become a guiding force.

[ 32 ] That is precisely what hurts so deeply, what causes such great heartache, that today the words pointing to the necessities discussed here are scarcely heard by the soul; that people would simply like to sleep, to let themselves drift, shying away from the great tasks of the present. But we must look closely and understand what is at work in the East and what is at work in the West.

[ 33 ] We must be clear about how a nascent culture exists in the West. We see how, in the West, this culture of beginnings manifests itself most strongly precisely where, I would say, the economic springs forth from the technical. Nothing is more characteristic in this regard than that ideal which once stood before an American and which will most certainly be realized in the West one day—a purely Ahrimanic ideal, but an ideal of high idealism, which consists in utilizing the human organism’s own vibrations by studying them closely and transferring them to the machine, so that the human being stands at the machine and his slightest vibrations are amplified within it, so that the nervous vibrations the human being generates are transferred into the machine. Think of the Keely motor, which, at first glance, has not yet succeeded to the point of actually running, because it is still too heavily based on mere instinct; but it is something that is definitely moving toward realization. In a sense, it is what, even within the very crude mechanistic material, points to what must come into being: the union of the mechanical-material with the spiritual.

[ 34 ] In contrast, we see how, in the East, the ancient spiritual realm is sinking deeper and deeper into decadence, decay, and a state of rot. We are certainly witnessing something in the East that leads one to say: The once heavenly-spiritual human being has become senile in terms of perception; he has become senile, like an old man. He does not yet understand what is on Earth, which, after all, also envelops human beings. While in the West one understands only this earthly realm, in the East one understands nothing of it. Therefore, the heavenly has already become quite senile, quite decrepit. It is therefore always a great mistake, on the one hand, not to be mindful of how the spiritual must first be extracted from the mechanism—the mechanistic materialism of the West—and how the spirit must be intuitively grasped from natural science, which is also still entirely materialistic and Western. And it is an equally great mistake to look toward the East and, as the Theosophical Adyar Society does today—just as it did in the past—with its antiquated ideas, attempt to carry spiritual matters from the East to the West. When one looks toward the East, everything one finds there has nothing to do with anything living in the present, but rather with something that has grown old—something that must be studied as a historical relic that no longer holds any significance for the present.

[ 35 ] Just as we have Keely—with his engine—as, I would say, a still very crude, brutal, mechanistic precursor to a future culture in the West, so we have Tolstoy as the extreme outgrowth of the East’s intellectual senility. In Tolstoy, we see, as it were, a concentrated manifestation of that which was once great and is now in a state of complete decadence—an interesting phenomenon, but one that holds not the slightest significance for us today. Just as so much has been wiped out by the events since 1914, so too has that which was a final flicker of Eastern senility in Tolstoy been wiped out. Before the war, one could still speak of Tolstoy as something relevant to the present. With the war, that is over. It has no contemporary significance. It is thoroughly antiquated today to speak of Tolstoy as something that has any contemporary significance. And one must guard against any kind of looking toward the East—toward the old East—and also toward what, in a certain kind of senility, was concentrated one last time in a person like Tolstoy. We must stand firmly on the ground of the mission that is the mission of the present. And we can do so only if, from our own foundations, we grasp the impulse of the threefold social order. In a sense, as a symbol of world history—or perhaps as a symptom—the decaying East has, in a way one might describe as inwardly striving yet ultimately powerless, presented Tolstoy as its final offshoot, just as the West presented Keely with his engine as an early precursor. While Tolstoy embodies the complete Luciferic transformation of the ancient Eastern culture, Western culture still stands entirely under the sign of the Ahrimanic.

[ 36 ] This is what must be grasped in the present. And unless we grasp, on the one hand, that we must guard against what still looms from the past in the East—which looms as the past even within a living human being—and, on the other hand, that we must guard against what is only just emerging in the West, without seeing through it, we are not people of the present. Of course, a person of the present can be English, French, American, or Russian, for humanity today must transcend geographical boundaries. But we must take these old boundaries into account, because they are significant for the historical development of humanity. Behind us lies that in which human history is divided into three parts: the East, the Middle, and the West. Ahead of us lies—and anthroposophically oriented spiritual science should emphasize this as clearly as possible—pure humanity, carrying within us at the same time the East, the Middle, and the West. The person who is born today as a living human being—even as an Asian—can carry all three within themselves. The person of the Middle need not limit themselves to carrying only the Middle within themselves, but must experience within themselves the historical East as something in decline and the historical West as something on the rise. Likewise, the American can—if, through contemplation of the wisdom of the Mysteries—and he is most in need of this—he wishes to elevate his purely economic thinking to a thinking that is political and spiritual—carry within himself the East, the Middle, and the West.

[ 37 ] This is what one must say today if one wishes to describe the tasks that human beings should recognize as their innermost spiritual tasks, arising from the great necessities of the times.