The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] To expand upon the remarks I have made here recently, it will be helpful to first look back at the course of human development to times when what we today call “cognition” had a completely different character. We have, of course, already spoken of this different nature of human knowledge in earlier times. But with what we have now gained here in the last few lectures, we will be able to shed further light on what we already know.

[ 2 ] Human knowledge has actually taken on a completely different character than it had in the past, back when Greek and Roman civilizations entered history. The form of knowledge that preceded Greek and Roman civilization in the East and in Africa was of a completely different nature than what was subsequently inaugurated in such a magnificent way by the Greeks, abstracted by the Romans, and then, in more recent times, increasingly led into materialism. It was around the beginning of the 8th century B.C. that knowledge took on the character that, albeit with significant modifications, still exists today. Until now, we have been able to characterize earlier knowledge mainly by saying: It was a kind of instinctive insight. It was not a life of cognition in concepts; it was a life of cognition in images—images that, while not entirely similar to our dream images because they referred to spiritual realities, nevertheless lived in the soul not with the precision of our present-day conceptual world, but were present in consciousness more in the form of fleeting images.

[ 3 ] This insight, however, did not actually refer to what constitutes the content of our knowledge today, but rather to those worlds from which human beings emerged—the primordial worlds in which they were still so fully integrated that they were scarcely distinct from them. During the Saturn, Sun, and Moon phases of evolution, human beings were still completely one with the rest of the world. But even during the early stages of Earth’s evolution, the individual personality was not yet separated from the general content of the world. Human beings felt, as it were, immersed within the general fabric of the world. As soon as a person departs from their actual intellectual understanding—from intellectual knowledge—and proceeds in a manner similar to certain Eastern schools that seek to attain a kind of knowledge through breathing exercises, this sharp separation from the world immediately ceases to exist. The moment a person today performs the antiquated yoga exercises—which still occur—he immediately feels diminished and subdued in his personality; he feels, I might say, like a breath of the world.

[ 4 ] This was precisely the nature of perception in those earlier times, when human beings were able to interpret—in the sense I explained yesterday—their own physical inner being through this pictorial perception. Yesterday we pointed out how people today perceive their surroundings, how they then retain them as mental images, what their inner world is like, and how, from within this inner world, they can, so to speak, represent an image of their world from birth to the present moment. Thus, what we carry within us as organs—the brain, lungs, and liver—represents the entire content of the world. Just as one can interpret an event one has experienced from a memory image—that is, just as one carries this event within oneself as an image—so too does one carry the entire world within one’s internal organs: the lungs, the heart, and so on. And ancient wisdom consisted in interpreting these individual organs and relating them to the entire content of the world.

[ 5 ] It was essentially the older understanding—one that persisted well into the 9th century B.C.—that interpreted the content of the world based on the inner physical nature of the human being, the physical-etheric nature of the human being—though, of course, the inner world was viewed differently than it is by today’s anatomists or physiologists. Each individual internal organ was related to something in the external world, but this internal organ was experienced from within. Thus, the structure of the brain was experienced in powerful images, and these images were in turn related to the entire celestial sphere, so that through this ancient understanding—based on the structure of the brain as suggested by atavistic imagination—people actually formed a conception of the entire celestial sphere. And what is contained in ancient wisdom regarding the world has essentially arisen from such an interpretation of the inner human being.

[ 6 ] But one cannot really even say that what existed there as knowledge was true human knowledge. True human knowledge—even if it is by no means meant to be the dry, pure intellectualism that it is often regarded as today—is nonetheless inconceivable without intelligence. That ancient wisdom, however, was entirely devoid of any intelligence brought about by human beings, so that one cannot even say that this ancient wisdom was true human knowledge. In a sense, the human being merely participated in a form of knowledge that was actually possessed by other beings within him. And these were beings who belonged to the hierarchy of the Angeloi. Such an Angelos animated the human being, and it was actually the Angelos who possessed this ancient knowledge. The human being merely participated in it. He looked, as it were, into the inner being of this Angelos. Therefore, he shared in what the Angelos perceived. Consequently, even the bearer of that ancient wisdom had a very vague notion of how he arrived at his insights. He simply told himself: “This is inspiration; it is simply there”—because he himself did not bring about this insight, but rather the angelic being within him brought it about.

[ 7 ] But this angelic being was not like the normal angelic beings we have come to regard in recent days as accompanying human beings through their various earthly lives; rather, this angelic being had a Luciferic character. In a sense, its entire being and its entire disposition had remained at an earlier stage of development—the stage of lunar evolution. So one can say: Beings who, during the Lunar Evolution, should actually have passed through their normal human stage—Luciferic beings—animated or permeated human beings for the sake of the ancient wisdom, and human beings participated in what this angelic being experienced within them. This was what humanity received as such wisdom—an extraordinarily high level of knowledge. It was the very knowledge that had been bestowed upon the angelic being as a highly perfected form during the Lunar Evolution, but it was not a form of knowledge that was actually suited to humanity in such a way that they knew what to do with it on Earth. On Earth, human beings behaved more or less instinctively; I would say they behaved like higher animals. And then, however, this high wisdom shone into this, as it were, even higher animal being—this high wisdom that began to fade as the 8th century B.C. dawned.

[ 8 ] This wisdom, which in the sense implied certainly had a Luciferic character, actually extended only to everything that allowed human beings to recognize themselves as members of extraterrestrial worlds. With his knowledge, so to speak, the human being had not yet truly set foot on Earth. He still felt himself to be within higher spheres with his wisdom, and on Earth he acted instinctively.

[ 9 ] Then, more and more, what could arise from the intellectual or emotional soul began to take hold. Human beings began to awaken their intellect within themselves. Human beings began to develop concepts. Greek culture was characterized by the fact that, even from ancient times, it still possessed—I would say—that angelic wisdom, but it worked it out using human concepts. And wisdom such as that of Plato makes such a profound impression on us precisely because, in Plato, the subjective elaboration of the world of concepts and ideas was already present, while at the same time the ancient instinctive wisdom shone into this process. This is why the Platonic writings combine, in such a wondrous way, the highest wisdom with what already lives within the human-personal element. And when one considers the whole disposition of Plato’s soul, one cannot imagine that he could have composed his books of wisdom in any form other than the dialogue, for the simple reason that he clearly sensed what the older human being felt only vaguely. The ancient person said to himself: Wisdom is simply there; it takes hold of me; it shines into me. Plato found himself in a kind of dialogue with the being that brought wisdom into him. Just as in a dialogue, he himself experienced wisdom; that is why he preferred to express it in the form of a dialogue.

[ 10 ] But then it quickly came to pass that this conceptual activity intensified. And in Aristotle, we already see knowledge presenting itself to us in the form of a theoretical fabric.

[ 1 ] Then, during the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, a certain cultural element began to gain ever greater influence—one we might describe as follows: People felt that an ancient wisdom had once permeated the soul. They felt that superhuman beings had descended to them and brought this wisdom. But they also felt how this wisdom was becoming increasingly abstract. They could no longer grasp it; what had once flowed down from spiritual worlds was now slipping away from them.

[ 12 ] This activity of the human intellect, which then shaped everything into the abstract, is something we find particularly in Roman culture. Roman culture, after all, developed a dry, abstract nature—a nature alien to imagery, a nature that sought to exist within the forms of the intellect. Whereas with the Greeks we still have the sense that the divine figures—that is, what lay at the foundation of the world and nature as elemental forces—possess an inner life, the Roman gods are abstractions, possessing a rigid, inflexible conceptual character. The logical nature gains the upper hand over the earlier imaginative nature, which was still so widespread in Greece. After all, whatever imagination the Romans still possessed originated in Greece. The Romans introduced the element of prose, the element of logic, and then developed it further into Romanism in later times; this is why the Latin language took on that logical character through which it shaped culture for so long.

[ 13 ] But one thing has endured—kept alive by Greek civilization, somewhat stifled by Roman civilization—yet it has continued to be passed down through the post-Christian centuries into the Middle Ages, and even into the dawn of the modern era: the tradition of ancient wisdom has endured. And more than people today realize, the tradition of this ancient wisdom has endured.

[ 14 ] It was not possible to grasp immediately with the intellect what unfolded all around us through the senses. People sought to grasp the traditional with the intellect. As a result, however, what had previously been an inwardly enlivening Luciferic element took on an even outward Ahrimanic character. But that is merely the mask. In truth, it is a Luciferic element that perpetuates itself through tradition. And what we see perpetuating itself from the time of the Roman Empire through the following centuries as Romanism—which is then very strongly imbued with the Germanic element, yet which nevertheless preserves itself in tradition—is essentially a Luciferic element. The Luciferic element continues to work. Naturally, as it flows down into the realm of thought, it is stripped of its original character. It dissolves into thought form. In the Latin language, I would say, a Luciferic element lives on in an Ahrimanic way.

[ 15 ] In Greek art, this element is still very much alive. Then it becomes more or less rigid, and it is interesting to trace how it continues into theology, which is a doctrine of supersensory worlds, yet does not actually possess these supersensory worlds itself—it has them only according to tradition. And thus arises the intellectual current that is essentially a kind of Luciferic one and that carries the ancient conception of the supersensible over into theology.

[ 16 ] Christianity itself is drawn into the web of this theology. Christianity becomes theologized. Just as “logization” occurs in the Roman language, so “theologization” occurs with Christianity. But the true, life-giving element of Christianity is submerged there in a Luciferic element wearing an Ahrimanic mask. Living Christianity becomes a theologizing cultural current. The true personal element is always at work beneath it, but still in an instinctive way. It cannot yet fully unite with what comes from above. And it is particularly interesting to observe this in its most striking phase, the Renaissance. There we see a form of high theology that certainly possesses the concepts and ideas of the supersensible, but no longer possesses the intuitive insight. Traditionally, everything is essentially present at the time of the Renaissance. What is preserved in Roman Catholicism in theological form is ancient wisdom, but brought down into the realm of the imagination. It lives on in the imagination in a Luciferic way.

[ 17 ] It is wonderful to see what remains of such theological elements even today when one views Raphael’s frescoes in Rome—what actually lives on in that painting, known as *The Disputa*, in terms of theological elements. Profound wisdom that lives on, more or less, in words—words that no longer contain visual images in themselves, but which, for those who can connect them with those images, are indeed the deepest wisdom.

[ 18 ] We also admire the theology embodied in Dante’s *Divine Comedy*, but at the same time we know that while certain views in Dante’s work were indeed derived from his teacher Brunetto Latini—I have discussed this before—the vast majority of it is actually a traditional, theological element that has a strong Luciferic influence. And on the other hand, we see how those beings who bring such ancient wisdom into into the theological element—how these beings are the very ones who, having previously animated Greek art, now carry it—albeit in a more rigid form—into Renaissance art through tradition, so that Goethe sees Greek art resurrected in his spirit by recognizing it anew in Renaissance art.

[ 19 ] It must be said: There is indeed a strong Luciferic element present in theology and in art as it has been handed down to us from ancient times—that art which, in order to be artistic, must primarily seek the supernatural, which cannot fully descend to the human level. Where it does descend, it appears to us as if it had been thrust down into the instinctive realm in a single leap. For we see Renaissance life itself in such a way that it possesses, as it were, heaven within itself—of which it has ideas, no longer visions, but ideas that it can even bring to life in a wonderfully artistic way; yet we see an instinctive degeneration of Renaissance life developing beneath it. It is, after all, a magnificent—though at times actually terrifying—spectacle of world history to see how a pope such as Alexander VI or Leo X, on the one hand are learned—thoroughly learned—men, carrying within their imaginations the highest aspects of supersensible worlds, yet as Renaissance men, they are unable to elevate what constitutes human personality to these spiritual heights, and thus what lies below instinctively degenerates. And so we see these terrifying figures, these Renaissance men, unfolding on the one hand something like a higher form of animal life, and above that we see spreading out—bearing the Luciferic character—the heaven that has been brought to humanity in a theology that is, on the one hand, wondrous, and on the other, thoroughly Luciferic.

[ 20 ] But this brings us to the time when other powers took charge of human evolution, rather than those older, angelic beings.

[ 21 ] Human beings, after all, stand at the center between the realm of the angels and the realm of the animals. In ancient times, their outward physical form was very animal-like, but it was nevertheless animated by what I have just described to you. Without the slightest inkling of what is true in this regard, geologists and paleontologists today unearth human remains from ancient times—with receding foreheads, animal-like human forms—and believe that this brings humans closer to animals. Judging by outward physical appearance, this is entirely justified; but the more animal-like the forms we encounter as we go back in time, the more these animal forms are imbued with ancient wisdom. And when these animal-like forms were excavated a few years ago in certain regions of Europe, and today’s geology and paleontology can only say: “These are humans with low skulls, receding foreheads, protruding eyebrows, and eye sockets”—one must say, if one knows the truth in this field: This human being, who today may look so animal-like, who appears to the superficial paleontologist as a more highly developed ape, was in fact fully imbued with ancient wisdom, which had a different nature within him. He merely participated in it.

[ 22 ] Thus one can say: In ancient times, human beings were filled with something superhuman. They grew toward this more and more as they evolved from animal-like forms until they became a kind of super-animal that synthesized the various animal forms. Within this super-animal, a being of a completely different nature than the ordinary angelic beings—an Ahrimanic being—can now take root. And precisely at the same time that the essence of ancient wisdom is fading into tradition, this human being—who is now drawing the intellectual being toward his animal organization—becomes more and more powerful. And so we see how, beginning in the 8th century B.C., human beings develop upward—at first slowly, then further and further—as a kind of super-animal being of an Ahrimanic nature springs forth from within them and now also permeates them from the other side.

[ 23 ] This being, which, in a sense, encounters the Luciferic being within the human being—this being is, I would say, the other that seeks to lead the human being astray from his pure path. One could say that the Luciferic beings are beings of wrath who inspire human beings, but not in order to actually allow them to find joy on Earth, and who constantly draw them away from the Earth in order to, so to speak, continually lift them up into the superhuman realm. They would much rather have them as angels who do not succumb to the lower functions of the physical organism. The Luciferic beings harbor a fierce anger toward the human being who walks on two legs upon the earth and is bound to the earth through his lower functions; these beings wish to strip humanity of everything animal, and they do not wish, for example, to allow him—now, in this epoch of his existence—to descend once more into physical embodiment; they wish to keep him above in the life that flows between death and new birth. In contrast, one might call the other, Ahrimanic beings “beings of suffering.” For in truth they strive toward the human form, yet cannot attain it for themselves. It is a terrible suffering that these Ahrimanic beings essentially endure. It is as if the animal were to feel deep within itself: “You should rise up, you should be a human being”—as if it wanted to tear everything within itself apart. It is this terrible pain that the Ahrimanic beings actually feel. And it can only be alleviated for them when they approach human beings and grasp the human intellect. There, the intellect cools this pain. That is why they sink their teeth into the human intellect, clawing into it, so to speak, with their entire being, digging themselves in. The Ahrimanic being experiences something like a painful interpenetration with the human intellect. The Ahrimanic being wishes to unite with the human being in order to come to its senses.

[ 24 ] Human beings, then, are the battleground between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. One can say that the Luciferic is at work in everything artistic and in everything abstractly theological. The Ahrimanic is something that arises from the material world, has passed through the animal kingdom, strives painfully toward the human being, and seeks to seize the intellect—but is repelled within the human being by the superhuman being, which always bounces back yet still seeks to carry the intellect along with it. It is something that seeks to enter the human being again and again and wishes to keep the human being confined to mere intellect, not allowing him to rise to the levels of imagination and inspiration, because it wishes to keep the human being close to itself to alleviate its own torment.

[ 25 ] Everything that has taken shape within humanity since the recent Ahrimanic era—primarily as materialistic science, as a science that arises from this cooling pain within the human being caused by material existence—is of an Ahrimanic nature. And we see materialistic science emerging. Human beings develop it. As human beings nurture it within themselves, Ahriman unites with their science. And just as Lucifer, in particular, has a hand in the arts, so does Ahriman have a hand in the development of the mechanical and the technical—that which seeks to draw the intellect away from the human being, to draw it into the machine, be it a mechanical tool or the machinery of the state. It is only through this that what lives in modern humanity—what has emerged especially since the Renaissance—has essentially become possible. One might say: During the Renaissance, the Luciferic activity reached a kind of dead end; the Ahrimanic activity then took hold on the other side of the wall of this dead end. And we see the entire trend that has been present since the Renaissance—the drive toward mechanism and spiritless science—unfolding with an Ahrimanic character.

[ 26 ] The only thing that can now be introduced into what has developed since the Renaissance is the concept of Christ. What has emerged in modern times as materialistic science and industrial technology is thoroughly Ahrimanic in nature; if it were allowed to spread without the concept of Christ, it would bind human beings to the earth. Human beings would not be able to ascend to a Jupiter-like existence. But if we introduce the Christ-concept, if we bring a new spiritual life, if we once again introduce imagination, inspiration, and intuition into what is merely knowledge of the outer world, then we redeem the Ahrimanic nature. I have depicted how this redemption can be visualized from the most varied perspectives in my Mystery Dramas. But it would be a conquest of humanity by Ahriman if the Christ concept could not continue to develop as a truly spiritualized concept, stripped of theology. Materialistic science and the external industrial mechanism would condemn humanity to earthly death—that is, they would construct an entirely different world in which humanity would continue to exist more or less as a petrified entity for the edification of the Ahrimanic beings—if the Christ concept did not, in turn, permeate the modern materialistic and mechanical nature in a spiritual way.

[ 27 ] We can therefore say: Lucifer has a hand in everything traditionally theological, in everything artistic that degenerates into mannerism and rigidity, and in everything Renaissance-like; whereas Ahriman has a hand in everything that is merely external, spiritless natural science—which cannot discover the spirit in nature—and in everything that is external mechanism in human activity. The Luciferic angelic beings, who have managed to preserve themselves from traditional life right up to the present day, have every interest in actually preventing human beings from acting. They would like to preserve human beings at least in their inner soul life. Human beings have become personalities. But these angelic beings do not want to let human beings flow out into their actions, into experience, into the manifestation of their impulses of will. They want to keep them in inner contemplation. They tempt them toward mysticism; they tempt them toward false theosophy. They tempt them to lead a purely inner, contemplative life—to observe rather than to act. They turn him into a daydreamer who would prefer to sit all day and ponder all manner of world-puzzling questions, but who does not wish to translate what lives in his spirit into external reality. They wish to bring about, through purely external observation, what constitutes external science. They readily give rise to a science such as that of Father Secch, who was an excellent astrophysicist precisely because he could observe with a microscope and telescope, because he could record his findings—and alongside this had something that was entirely unrelated to it: that which had been instilled in him by Luciferic beings as a lofty, superhuman, otherworldly wisdom. By cultivating this superhuman, super-earthly wisdom, the Luciferic beings tear the soul-spiritual aspect of the human being away from earthly existence. Then even what is still such a lofty external materialistic science simply decays; it decays because it has no inner substance. After all, it is not permeated by real spirituality. That does not interest them any further.

[ 28 ] Likewise, these Luciferic entities want art to be as lifeless and spiritless as possible, in the sense that no spirit enters into the form. They want nothing but the Renaissance—that which was alive in ancient times. They instill in people a hatred of any new stylistic form that can truly emerge from modern humanity. They want to perpetuate the old stylistic forms because these old stylistic forms are still borrowed from the unearthly, the supernatural.

[ 29 ] The Ahrimanic being, on the other hand, does not want to allow for spiritualization or style at all; it would prefer to erect only entirely prosaic buildings—utility buildings, for example—and wants to mechanize everything, place everything solely at the service of industry, and instill in people the idea that they should not value any kind of handiwork as a craft—but rather, it seeks only to provide models that are then reproduced mechanically in infinite numbers, just as Ahriman himself can reveal himself in an immeasurably large number of instances through the mystery of numbers in many people.

[ 30 ] In the present day, human beings are actually fully immersed in this struggle. Only when they truly reflect on what the genuine gift of Christ can be for them—an anthroposophical spiritual insight and worldview appropriate to the present age—and when they reflect on this, will they find the path by maintaining a balance between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic. They must, so to speak, struggle against the Ahrimanic, for otherwise they would inevitably succumb to the Luciferic. But they must not, without remaining vigilant, surrender to the currents of Ahriman, for thereby they would fall into a completely mechanical world order. The Luciferic beings would like to deter human beings from all action, turning them into contemplatives, into mystics, who gradually have no further interest in earthly existence and can therefore be withdrawn from it. The Ahrimanic beings would like to keep human beings entirely within earthly existence. Therefore, they would like to mechanize everything—that is, to push it down into the mineral kingdom. In this way, they would reshape the Earth according to their own conception, preventing it from transitioning to the Jupiter stage of existence. They do, however, strive not to rob human beings of their activity, but rather to let them act, work, and do as much as humanly possible—yet everything is to proceed by the book, everything is to proceed according to a program. Ahriman is the great enthusiast for all that is programmatic. He is the inspiration behind the endless drafting of bylaws. When Ahriman sees a committee somewhere drafting bylaws, he is in his element: First, second, third—first this is to be done, second that is to be done, third this member has these rights, fourth that member should do this or that. Of course, it then doesn’t occur to the member to respect these rights or to do what is written there in any way. But that isn’t what matters at first. Once the bylaws are drafted, what matters is cultivating the Ahrimanic spirit. One can then point to paragraph such-and-such.

[ 31 ] But Ahriman still wants to inspire people to act; it’s just that everything is supposed to proceed in a formulaic, programmatic manner. Everything is to be crammed into paragraphs. Every morning, so to speak, a person is to find on their bedspread a list of what they have to do throughout the day, and they are to carry this out mechanically, thinking, so to speak, only with their legs, not with their head. While Lucifer strives to make people think with their heads and to pour the heart into the head, Ahriman strives to make people think only with their legs, pouring everything into the legs.

[ 32 ] Humanity is already embroiled in this struggle; and what I may express in a more figurative way is, at its core, the very essence of our culture. On the one hand, we see those people who regard it as their ideal to be able to rise, with legs crossed like a Buddha statue, to contemplate the Supreme, in a state of complete leglessness, their heads rising as they immerse themselves in the mystical abysses. On the other hand, we see Western people who, essentially—because they have no idea how quickly they must shuttle back and forth on their feet from one office to another, from one store to another—give us the impression that they are actually carrying a head on their shoulders quite unnecessarily, a head that, in essence, isn’t even present in what they’re doing. And these are already the two extremes of humanity in the present age: the lonely musers with their eyes closed, so that they cannot even see what they themselves are doing, and those who actually have no need for eyes, because they always have something attached to their legs—like ropes, pull ropes—and at the end of the pull ropes is “Paragraph So-and-so,” and so they are dragged through the world like a cog in a machine.

[ 33 ] We do see, however, how modern people sometimes rebel against Ahrimanism, how they rail against bureaucracy—which is, after all, pure Ahrimanism—and how they rebel against the standardization of education and so on—but as a rule, only to fall even deeper into the very thing from which they wish to escape.

[ 34 ] The only way out of all this is to direct the entire mindset, the entire state of the human soul, toward spiritual knowledge—toward that which, in turn, permeates the realm of imagination with true spirituality, so that the true spirit takes hold of the whole human being, not merely the head. And by taking hold of the whole human being, it can also overcome the Ahrimanic being, and by overcoming it, it redeems it. Nothing at all should be said against the Ahrimanic being. There is no reason to reproach that which rightfully expresses itself in record-keeping, in drafting statutes, and in formulating paragraphs. But all of this must be imbued with spirit.

[ 35 ] In modern times, we can hardly do anything other than engage in Ahrimanic arts—such as taking shorthand or typing on a typewriter. All of these are, after all, manifestations of Ahriman’s influence on our culture to the highest degree. But by bringing spirituality into our culture, we can elevate even those practices that are so clearly under Ahrimanic influence—such as shorthand or typing—into the sphere of spirituality, thereby redeeming Ahriman. This is possible only through full mindfulness of the spiritual life. Anyone who lives today with a materialistic mindset and uses shorthand or even types on a typewriter becomes deeply entangled in the Ahrimanic element. You see, we are not advocating a reaction; we are not condemning the demonology that has arisen here; but the demons themselves are to be redeemed.

[ 36 ] This can certainly be seen in specific instances. Essentially, one can say: The Ahrimanic elements that have taken root in modern civilization actually drive the Ahrimanic arts only out of a certain preference. For whatever is transcribed by shorthand or typed by this Ahrimanic culture could just as well remain unwritten. As a rule, one already knows what it contains anyway. There is really no need to record it at all. The content is irrelevant. It is only the Ahrimanic art that comes into consideration here that is of any significance. But for what emerges in the field of spiritual science, precise recording will be necessary, because it is essential to express oneself in an exact and precise manner. And then it is precisely the Ahrimanic that will be able to render essential services to the spiritual. This is how one will come to see it in detail.

[ 37 ] Of particular importance, however, will be that modern spiritual science permeates the individual human sciences, that it moves from the spiritless natural sciences toward a truly unified spiritual science, and that the individual natural sciences are, I might say, chapters of a unified spiritual science. In this way, they will be de-Ahrimanized, and through the proper handling of the details, one will gradually enter into that current which I had to unfold for you today out of the Luciferic-Ahrimanic opposition.

[ 38 ] Do not think that it is unimportant to point out such details as I have done today. It is certainly helpful to become somewhat acquainted, through images such as those I have used, with the Luciferic people living today—those with their legs crossed in the Buddha posture—and the Ahrimanic people who, like “jack-of-all-trades,” bustle busily from office to office, and who, in truth, do not even need their heads for this busyness.

[ 39 ] It may sometimes be more pleasant to hear about these things in abstract terms rather than through concrete images, but modern spiritual science—anthroposophical spiritual science—has the task of pointing the way to immediate life and of calling immediate life by its proper name in every context. Only in this way can a completely healthy, concretely accurate perspective and state of mind truly emerge.

[ 40 ] That is what I wanted to add today to the reflections of the past few weeks. Next time, we will once again try to approach the study of human beings from a different angle.