The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Seventeenth Lecture

[ 1 ] Over the past few days, using the specific example of Johannes Scotus Erigena, we have once again been able to highlight that turning point that occurred in Western civilization around the 4th century A.D. And especially in our present time, when so many things are set to change, it is vitally important to understand what actually happened back then to the entire spiritual disposition of humanity. For it is certainly true that we are once again living in an extraordinarily important moment in human development, and that we need, so to speak, to look to and listen to the signs of the times and the voices of the spiritual world so that we may find a path into the future out of the chaos of the present.

[ 2 ] In this 4th century A.D., changes took place in the human souls belonging to the leading peoples and tribes—changes that have, in part, already begun to unfold again in our own century and, in part, will occur once more. And in Johannes Scotus Erigena, we have encountered a figure who, in a certain sense, was still under the influence of what had existed as human perception even before the 4th century A.D.

[ 3 ] Now let us consider other aspects that also reveal this shift in character. From this perspective—insofar as this, I would say, can be done in a more external way—let us examine the development of the natural sciences, particularly human views on health and illness. Let us first remain within historical times and then, when we ask ourselves how views of nature—namely, the nature of human beings in connection with health and illness—are presented to human beings themselves, go back to ancient Egyptian times. It is actually only in the case of the ancient Egyptians that one can speak of any similarity between their views and our own with regard to the question at hand. But these ancient Egyptians held views on health and illness and their natural foundations that were quite different from those we hold today, because they conceived of the connection with the natural environment in a way entirely different from how we do today. The ancient Egyptian, in essence, was not fully aware that he was gradually becoming separated from the earth. He viewed his own body—and the Egyptian, after all, initially focused on what we call the body in human beings—he viewed the human body as intimately connected with the forces of the earth. We already spoke last Friday about how such a conception arises—that human beings imagine themselves to be, in a sense, intimately connected to the earth on a physical level. I referred you to the ancient forces to illustrate this. But the ancient Egyptians were perfectly clear that they had to regard themselves as having a certain relationship to the earth similar to, let’s say, the relationship plants have to the earth. Just as one can trace, more or less visibly, the sap—or at least the interplay of forces—flowing from the earth into the plant, so too did people in ancient Egypt sense certain forces at work within the human being that were simultaneously at work in the earth. The human body was considered part of the earth.

[ 4 ] This was possible only because people had a completely different view of the Earth than we do today. To imagine the Earth as a mineral body, as we do today, would never have occurred to an ancient Egyptian. In a sense, he imagined the Earth as a great organic being—a being that, while not quite as organized as an animal or a human, is nonetheless an organism in a certain sense—and he imagined something like a skeletal system beneath the Earth’s rock masses. He imagined that processes were taking place within the Earth that simply continued into the human body.

[ 5 ] You see, the ancient Egyptians felt something special when they mummified the human corpse after the soul had departed, when they created mummies, when they sought, so to speak, to preserve the form of the human body. In a sense, they saw in the formative forces that emanate from the earth and sculpt a human body something like the will of the earth, and they wanted this will of the earth to be expressed continuously. These ancient Egyptians had views on the soul that are, in turn, somewhat foreign to people today. We must now characterize them.

[ 6 ] You see, we must emphasize that when we go back to ancient Egyptian times—but especially to the earliest Persian and Indian periods—we find the doctrine of reincarnation, of the return of the true human being in successive earthly lives, to be widely held there, stemming from that instinctive ancient wisdom. But we are mistaken if we believe that these ancient people, for example, held the view that what we today recognize as the soul is the very thing that returns again and again. The Egyptian view, in particular, shows us that this was not the case; rather, we must imagine that the spiritual-soul aspect of the human being lives in spiritual worlds between death and a new birth. When the time approaches for the spiritual-soul aspect to descend to the physical earth, it then works of its own accord to shape what emerges through heredity across generations as the human body. But during the life between birth and death, these ancient people did not imagine that what they carried in their consciousness was actually the spiritual-soul being that lives between death and a new birth and then shapes the human body between birth and death. No, these ancient people imagined things differently. They said to themselves: When I am fully awake from morning until evening, I know absolutely nothing of the spiritual-soul matters that are also my concerns as a human being. I must wait until, in a state of half-sleep or—as was indeed the case in those ancient times—in a sleep filled with images, my own true being appears to me, the being that fashioned me when I entered earthly existence through birth.

[ 7 ] So the old man was aware that he could not experience his true soul life in the actual waking state, but that he had to view this true soul life as something external—as an image that came over him when he entered the dreamlike, clairvoyant states I have often described to you. In a certain sense, the ancient person perceived his own being as something that appeared to him like an archangel or an angel. And the idea that, in a certain sense, this human inner life was regarded in the waking state as belonging directly to the soul—this was actually first the case in ancient Egypt. But if we are to characterize how the ancient Egyptians conceived of this, we must say the following.

[ 8 ] He thought to himself: My spiritual-soul aspect appears to me in the image of a dream, just as it is between death and a new birth. It builds its own body. When I look at the body in its form, I see how this spiritual-soul aspect has worked on the body like an artist. In fact, my body is a much truer expression of my spiritual-soul nature than when I look into my inner self. That is why I also want to preserve this body. That is why it should be preserved in its form as a mummy, for what the soul has built up in this body between the last death and this birth is contained within this form. I preserve this when I preserve the body and, as a mummy, capture the image on which the spiritual-soul has worked for centuries. In contrast, regarding what a person experienced in the waking state between birth and death, the Egyptians said to themselves: This is actually something like a flame; it is something that is kindled within me, but it has very little to do with my true self. This self is actually something that remains outside—more or less outside my soul experiences in the waking state between birth and death. These soul experiences in the waking state between birth and death are actually a fleeting flame. They are kindled within my body by my higher soul; but they are extinguished again with death, and only then does my true spiritual-soul nature shine forth. Then I live in my spiritual-soul nature until the next birth.

[ 9 ] It was indeed the case that the ancient Egyptians imagined that, in the life between birth and death, they did not truly experience their spiritual nature. They saw this spiritual aspect, so to speak, as something that stood above them, something that kindled and then extinguished their temporal spiritual life, and something that took the dust of the earth to form the body; they sought to preserve this form in the mummy.

[ 10 ] The ancient Egyptians did not actually attach any particular importance to the soul—which experiences itself in the waking state between birth and death—because they looked beyond this soul to an entirely different spiritual-soul realm that continually rebuilds bodies and then passes through the time between death and a new birth. And so they perceived an interplay of forces between what is the higher human nature and the earth. They actually looked toward the earth; for them, the earth was, after all, the house of Osiris. They looked beyond what constituted inner consciousness.

[ 11 ] And this is precisely what the Greek development—which began in the 8th century B.C.—consists of: that human beings placed ever greater value on this spiritual aspect that comes to life between birth and death, which the ancient Egyptians still viewed as a flame that is kindled and then extinguished. This spiritual aspect became valuable to the Greeks. Yet the Greeks still had a sense that, with this spiritual aspect, something like an extinction truly occurs at death. Hence the famous Greek saying, which I have already characterized from this perspective on several occasions: “Better to be a beggar on earth than a king in the realm of shadows.” — The Greeks made this statement by looking at the soul. The soul became important to them, whereas for the Egyptians it was even less important. And this was connected to the Egyptians’ view of health and illness: they believed that the human body is formed from the elements of the earth—from the water of the earth, the air, the solid matter of the earth, and the warmth of the earth. Since the ancient Egyptians believed that this human body is formed from the earth, they took great care to keep it pure. And during the heyday of Egyptian culture, maintaining the purity of the body was therefore something that was particularly cultivated. The Egyptians attached great importance to this body, and they reasoned: When the body becomes ill, its relationship to the earth is, in a certain sense, disrupted—specifically, it is no longer in the proper relationship to the water of the earth—and this relationship to the water of the earth must be restored. In Egypt, therefore, there were whole groups of physicians who studied the relationship between the earthly element and the human body, and who were engaged in maintaining people’s health and restoring it when it was impaired, specifically through the use of water cures and air cures. Specialist physicians were already practicing during the heyday of Egyptian culture, and their work focused particularly on bringing the human body into the proper relationship with the earthly element.

[ 12 ] Starting in the 8th century B.C., this changed, particularly for Greek civilization. There, the soul—what one consciously experiences—became truly important. But people no longer viewed this soul as being connected to the earth in the same way the ancient Egyptians had. In a sense, even for the ancient Egyptians, the human body was something plant-like that grew out of the earth. For the Greeks, the spiritual-soul aspect was what held the elements together, and they were more concerned with this holding-together of the elements within the body through the human’s spiritual-soul aspect. And from this arose the scientific views of Greek civilization, which we find particularly pronounced in the contemporaries of Phidias, Socrates, and Plato: in Hippocrates, the famous Greek physician. In him, who lived in the 4th century B.C., we already see this emphasis on the human soul—as it becomes self-aware between birth and death—clearly developed.

[ 13 ] But we would be completely mistaken if we were to believe that this spiritual-soul aspect existed in Greek consciousness in the same way that it exists in our consciousness today. Just consider how impoverished—how abstractly impoverished—what modern people call their “soul” actually is for them. Thinking, feeling, willing—these are quite nebulous constructs that people imagine when they speak of thinking, feeling, and willing. It is something that no longer has any meaningful impact on people. For the Greeks, it had a meaningful impact because they were aware that this spiritual-soul aspect actually holds the elements of the body together and causes them to bubble and churn. They did not have in mind such an abstract “soul” as people do today, but rather a system of forces rich in content that specifically shapes the liquid element, giving the liquid element its human form. The Egyptians said to themselves: It is the spiritual-soul aspect, which lives its way from death to a new birth, that gives form to this liquid element. — The Greeks said to themselves: That which I consciously experience—this soul—gives form to the water; it is that which has a need for air and which then shapes the circulatory organs, which determines the body’s temperature, and which also deposits salt and other earthly substances in the body. — Thus, the Greeks did not actually conceive of the soul as separate from the body, but rather imagined it as forming the watery body, as causing the air within the body, causes inhalation and exhalation, how it brings about the body’s thermal conditions—this warming and cooling of the body, this breathing, this general movement of the humors, this intermingling of the humors with the solid constituents, which, after all, make up only about eight percent of the human body—the Greeks imagined all this with full vitality. And they attached great importance, in particular, to this shaping of the humors. They imagined that even within these humors themselves, through everything that acts within the four elements—water, earth, air, and heat—a fourfold process is at work. This is what the ancient Greeks initially envisioned. In winter, a person must, in a sense, shut themselves off from the outside world; they cannot live in intimate contact with it; they are left to their own devices. During winter, the head in particular asserts itself through its fluids. It is the aspect of the fluids that is most like water that acts within the human being. In other words, for the Greeks, this is what acts as phlegm. He saw this phlegmatic quality in the human organism, permeated by the soul, as being particularly active in winter. Then spring arrived, and the Greeks observed that the blood becomes more active; it enters a state of greater agitation than during winter; this is primarily a sanguine season for human beings; it is the element that centralizes in the veins toward the heart, which is particularly active in the human body as a movement of humors. In winter, the phlegmatic movement of the head, which is why people are prone to all sorts of diseases involving the phlegmatic humors; in spring, the blood movement in a state of particular agitation.

[ 14 ] The Greeks conceived of all this in such a way that, for them, the physical elements were not separate from the spiritual. In a sense, the blood and phlegm were half-spiritual, while the soul itself—in its powers as it set the humors in motion—was half-physical.

[ 15 ] When summer approached, the Greek imagined that the activity of the bile—in particular what he called “yellow bile,” which has its center in the liver—became especially active. The Greek also had a particular view of how this manifests in human beings themselves. People have, for the most part, already lost this view. They no longer see how the skin changes color in the spring due to this stimulation of the blood; they no longer see the actual yellow glow that comes from the liver, where yellow bile has its center. The Greeks saw in what turned rosy in spring and yellowish in summer an activity of the soul.

[ 16 ] And when autumn came, he said: “It is especially those humors that have their center in the spleen—the humors of black bile—that are active at this time.” And so the Greeks saw in the human being a movement of humors, an effect of the humors directly influenced by the soul. In a sense, unlike the Egyptians, they viewed the human body as separate from the whole of the earth. They considered it in and of itself. Through this, they came to understand more of the inner soul of the human being, as it manifests itself between birth and death.

[ 17 ] But as this civilization continued to advance—and as the Western element, the Latin and Roman elements, in particular, became more prominent—this view, which we find especially in Hippocrates, who based his medicine on it, was lost to a certain extent. He reasoned that the human spirit and soul, as they manifest between birth and death, bring about these mixtures and separations within the humoral system; if this process does not proceed as the spirit and soul intend, then illness arises. But the spirit and soul actually always strive to shape this process in a normal way. Therefore, the physician has the special task of studying this spiritual-psychic aspect in terms of its influence on the actions of the humors and of observing the disease. If there is any tendency within the human body to cause an abnormal mixture of humors, then the psychic aspect intervenes—intervening until the crisis, when it hangs in the balance whether the physical or the spiritual-psychic aspect will prevail. The physician must steer the situation in such a way that this crisis occurs. Then it becomes apparent at some point that the abnormal mixture of humors is trying to break through. Then, during the crisis that has been induced, one must intervene in the proper manner—either by removing the humors that have coagulated in this way and do not tolerate the influence of the spiritual-psychic realm through purgation, or by drawing blood at the right moment.

[ 18 ] Hippocrates’ approach to healing was quite unique, closely tied to this view of the human being, and it is interesting to note how it reflected an intimate integration of the spiritual-soul aspects—as they manifest between birth and death—with the humoral system. But this changed when the Latin-Roman element continued this development.

[ 19 ] This Roman element was less suited to the sculptural representation of form, to the sculptural representation of the mixture of humors. With a physician like Galen, who lived in the 2nd century CE, you can see it quite clearly: for him, this humoral system—which Hippocrates had just observed—is no longer so transparent. You see, one must imagine it this way: If you see a retort in a chemistry laboratory today, with the flame beneath it, and you see the product of the substances inside—so transparent in the effect of the spiritual-soul aspects on the body’s humors—just as transparent, in a sensory-supersensory way, was what was taking place within the human being for Hippocrates. But the Romans no longer had any sense for this vivid, concrete imagery. They no longer related what lived as the spiritual-psychic in the human being to the body, but rather to the abstract, to the spiritual. Yet it was only in this way that they grasped how the spiritual-psychic can experience this spiritual aspect within itself between birth and death. Just as the Greek looked at the body, just as he perceived the spiritual-soul aspect in the mixing and separating of the humors, and just as sensory perception in its plasticity was the essential for him, so for the Roman, that which a human being feels as itself became the essential: the soul’s sense of self. For the Greeks, it was the observation of how phlegm, blood, black bile, and yellow bile intermingle—how these are, in a sense, the expression in human beings of the earthly elements—air, fire, water, and earth—that which one beholds in human beings as a work of art. While the Egyptians gazed upon the mummy, the Greeks gazed upon the living work of art. The Romans had no interest in that, but rather in standing on one’s own two feet, developing inner consciousness, letting the spirit speak—not gazing at the body, but letting the spirit speak from the soul between birth and death.

[ 20 ] This, however, is connected to the fact that among the Egyptians, during the heyday of their culture, four branches of knowledge in particular flourished in their ancient forms: geometry, astrology, arithmetic, and music. As the Egyptians looked upon that which, in a sense, formed the body from the earth as something supernatural, they imagined: This body is formed in its spatial forms according to the laws of geometry; it is subject to the influence of the stars according to the laws of astrology; it functions from within according to the laws of arithmetic; and it is internally harmoniously structured according to the laws of music, whereby the musical aspect is not merely that which pertains to sound, but rather everything that expresses itself in harmonies. In the human being himself—who was an effect of the Earth—in this mummified human, the Egyptians saw the result of geometry, astrology, arithmetic, and music. This receded into the background for the Greeks. The Greeks replaced what I might call the lifeless, mummy-like aspect—which can be understood through geometry, astrology, arithmetic, and music—with the living, the soulfully alive, the inner, plastic self-shaping, and the artistic self-forming of the human body.

[ 21 ] Thus, in a certain sense, we see geometry—as it existed among the Egyptians—disappearing from Greek culture. It becomes a mere science; it is no longer revelation. The same is true of astrology, and likewise of arithmetic. At most, the inner harmony that underlies all living things still remains in the Greek conception of music.

[ 22 ] And when Latin then took its place—as I said, the Romans conceived of their spiritual-soul life, as it is between birth and death, with the inner spiritual, but in a way that is now expressed not as something visible inwardly, but as something experienced inwardly, establishing itself on earth through grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric. Thus, during the period when Greek gave way to Latin, the following disciplines flourished: grammar—the self-expression of the human being as spirit through the word; rhetoric—the self-expression of the human being through the beauty of the word and the shaping of the word; and dialectic—the self-expression of the soul through the shaping of thought. And only as an ancient legacy had arithmetic, geometry, astrology, and music become sciences. These disciplines, which were very much alive in ancient Egypt, became abstract sciences. In contrast, what is inherent to the human being—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic—came to life. There is a great difference between how a triangle was perceived in ancient Egypt during the pre-Euclidean era and how it was perceived later, after Euclid. They did not perceive the abstract triangle in the same way it was perceived afterward. Euclid signifies the decline of Egyptian arithmetic and geometry. Back then, when one imagined a triangle, one sensed the forces of the universe. Back then, the triangle was a living entity. Now all of that has become science. And dialectic, grammar, and rhetoric have come to life.

[ 23 ] And so it came to pass that schools were organized in such a way that it was said: Anyone who wishes to become a cultured person must develop the spiritual aspect within the preceding spiritual-soul aspect of their own being. First, as the initial stage of a well-rounded education, one must complete grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic; then what exists only as a legacy—what constituted the subject matter of higher education but which nevertheless remains precisely that: a legacy, a tradition—namely, geometry, astrology, arithmetic, and music. And these were also, later on and throughout the entire Middle Ages, the seven liberal arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, geometry, astrology, arithmetic, and music. What came more to the fore was: grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic; what remained more in the background—what the ancient Egyptians still grasped vividly when they were connected to the earth—that was, at that time, higher education, the subject of higher instruction, and that was the essential element that developed between the 8th century B.C. and the 4th century A.D. Look again at Greece in the 4th century CE, or even further back to the 3rd and 5th centuries; look over to what is now Italy. Everywhere you will find that this knowledge of the human being as a sculptural, external work of art—a product of the spiritual-soul life, a life of the spiritual expressed through dialectic, rhetoric, and grammar—is in full bloom. This is roughly how Julian the Apostate was educated at the Athenian school of philosophy. This is how he viewed the human being.

[ 24 ] The dawn of Christianity coincided with this period. But it emerged at a time when, in a certain sense, everything was already on the wane. It had, after all, reached its peak in the 4th century, and we have seen how, even with John Scotus Erigena, only a legacy of it remained. It is, after all, that which lived, for example, in the Greeks out of such a worldview as I have described to you; it is that which was then passed on to Plato and Aristotle, who articulated it philosophically. But as the 4th century A.D. approached, people understood Plato and Aristotle less and less. At most, they could adopt the logical and the abstract. People lived within the realms of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic. Arithmetic, geometry, astrology, and music had become sciences. People were immersing themselves more and more into a kind of abstract realm; they were already entering a realm where what had once been alive was meant to remain only as a legacy. And as the centuries went on, it became more and more of a legacy. Those who then educated themselves within the Latin language retained—I would say, more or less ossified—grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics, whereas before, a person would have laughed at the question of whether what he thought pointed to anything real; he would have laughed, for he would have said: I am practicing dialectic, after all; I am not practicing the art of concepts in order to pursue something unreal. Spiritual reality lives within me. As I practice grammar, the Logos speaks within me. As I practice rhetoric, it is the sun of the world that works within me. — That sense of being connected to the world was lost more and more. Things became abstract experiences of the soul, as they already are entirely so in John Scotus Erigena. And what had been preserved from the earlier times of Plato and Aristotle—these were now understood only more or less logically. One could not find the living essence within them.

[ 25 ] And when Emperor Constantine made Romanism the dominant religion under the pretext that he wanted to make Christianity the dominant religion, everything became completely abstract, it became so abstract that people fell silent, like Julian the Apostate, educated in the Athenian schools of philosophy, who looked on with a bleeding heart at what Constantine had wrought—the ossification of concepts, the ossification of the old, living world; and he, Julian the Apostate, set out to preserve this life, which still appeared to him in the Athenian schools of philosophy.

[ 26 ] But from that Byzantium and that Constantinople, founded by Constantine, Justinian later ruled; he abolished the last remnants of those Athenian schools of philosophy, where an echo of living human knowledge still lingered, so that the seven wise men of Athens—they were not actually Athenians; they were, in fact, quite international, Damascenes, Syrians, and others—they had gathered here from all over the world—the seven wise men were forced to flee at Justinian’s command. They fled across to Asia to the King of the Persians, where philosophers had already been forced to take refuge when Zeno the Isaurian had dissolved a similar academy. And we see how, over in Asia, that which could no longer be understood in Europe—namely, in its very essence—seeks refuge: the living experience as it existed in Greek culture.

[ 27 ] What was later passed down in Europe as “Greek culture” is, after all, merely a shadow of Greek culture. Goethe allowed it to take hold of him, and as a man full of life, he developed such a longing that he wanted to break free from what had been presented to him as the shadow of Hellenism. He traveled down to the south so that he might at least experience its lingering echoes.

[ 28 ] And over in Asia, those who were capable of doing so received what had been brought to them from Plato and Aristotle. And so it came to pass that, as the 6th century approached, Aristotle’s works were translated in the spirit of Asian-Arabic thought. By then, Aristotle had taken on a different form.

[ 29 ] What exactly had been attempted there? An attempt had been made to elevate what the Greeks had experienced—the connection between the spiritual-soul aspect and the body’s humoral system, in all its spiritual-soul-physical plasticity and formative power—to a level where the “I” could be fully grasped. And this gave rise to that Arabized science, which was particularly cultivated at the Academy of Gondishapur and throughout the declining period of the 4th post-Atlantean epoch, and which was also brought over by Avicenna and Averroës in later centuries via Spain to Europe, and which then exerted a great influence on people such as Roger Bacon and others. But it was a completely new element that the Academy of Gondishapur sought to give to humanity—in a way that could not endure—by the roundabout route of Aristotelian translations and certain mystical teachings, which, however, then took paths we shall discuss another time. And what was then brought over by Avicenna and Averroës was the struggle for that which was to enter human civilization from the beginning of the 15th century onward; it was the struggle for the conscious soul, for the Greeks had only reached as far as the rational or emotional soul. And what Avicenna and Averroës then brought over—what, in a sense, Aristotle had become in Asia—is in conflict with the understanding of the human “I,” which, in a completely different way—as I have described in the public lectures here during the course—had to fight its way through from the bottom up among the Germanic peoples. Over in Asia, it was received as a mystery wisdom, like a revelation from above, and this gave rise to the view that has provoked such serious disputes in Europe for so long: that the human “I” is not actually an independent entity, but is, in essence, united with the divine All-Being. People sought to grasp the “I.” The “I” was supposed to be found in what the Greeks regarded as a physical-soul-spiritual entity.

[ 30 ] But it was impossible to reconcile this with the concept of the self. Hence Avicenna’s view: that which constitutes the individual soul comes into being at birth and ceases to exist at death. As we have seen, the Greeks had struggled with this very issue. The Egyptians, for their part, imagined it as something that flares up at birth and goes out at death. People were still grappling with this idea when they considered the true nature of the soul between birth and death—the true soul itself. But the “I” could not be transitory in this way. Therefore, Avicenna concluded: the “I” is, in fact, one and the same in all human beings; it is, at its core, a single ray of the Divine, and it returns to the Divine when a person dies. It is real, but it is not individually real. A pneumatic pantheism arose, as if the “I” had no independence, but rather as if the “I” were, so to speak, merely a ray of the Divine that shines into what the Greeks regarded as the spiritual-soul between birth and death. In a sense, the transitory soul of the human being is permeated by the ray of the Divine and thus connected to the Eternal between birth and death. That is how people conceived of it.

[ 31 ] This is part of what shows you how things were at that time with the emergence of the “I,” the awareness of the “I,” and the conscious soul. You see, this is what took place during the period between the 8th century B.C. and the 15th century A.D., with the 4th century A.D. marking the midpoint. People were caught up in the process of moving away from the concrete—which was still fully alive in the mixing and separating of bodily fluids, which perceived the soul within the physical being—and toward the replacement of this plastic element with something purely abstract, something more inwardly directed. One might even say: up until the 4th century A.D., Hellenism still reigned in Roman culture. In fact, Roman culture only became dominant after it had already declined. In a certain sense, it was predestined to work only through its own legacy—through its dead Latin language—in which it had prepared the way for what was to enter human development in the fifteenth century. One must view the course of civilization in this way. For now we are once again faced with the task of seeking the path to knowledge of the coming of spiritual revelations from higher worlds. We must learn to struggle once more, just as the struggle was waged in those days.

[ 32 ] Now we must be clear about this: what we have in the natural sciences, we have received indirectly through the Arabs, and we must elevate what we have gained through the natural sciences to the level of imagination, inspiration, and intuition. But we must also, so to speak, strengthen our power through the observation of what has passed, so that we may use it to attain what we need for the future. That is the task of anthroposophical spiritual science. We must always remind ourselves of this anew, my dear friends, and we should gain very vivid impressions of how a Greek thought quite differently about the soul and the body. It would have seemed ridiculous to him if someone had listed seventy-two or seventy-six chemical elements for him. He saw the living activity of the elements on the outside and of the vital fluids on the inside.

[ 33 ] Human beings live within the elements. Human beings already live, through their bodies—insofar as the body is permeated by the soul—in the four elements of which the Greeks spoke; and we have come to lose sight of the human being because we can no longer view him in this way, because we focus instead on what chemistry today provides in the form of abstract elements.