The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. The Struggle Between Goethe and Schiller in an Era When Intellectualism Triumphed Over the Old Spirituality

[ 1 ] I wanted to speak to you about the tasks that were set for the leaders of spiritual life as a result of the transition that took place from the fourth to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. And I tried to illustrate the forces that emanated from this and manifested themselves in the figures of Faust and Hamlet. If one turns one’s gaze to the essential, one sees that spiritual leaders such as the poets who created these figures were faced with the task of answering poetically the question: What becomes of a human being when he must seek inner spiritual fulfillment solely from an intellectualistic life, from a life of abstract thoughts? — For, of course, the entire state of the soul arises precisely from this particular impression—the one evoked in the soul by being compelled to look, with the aid of abstract thoughts, at what is most precious and significant to it, at what reveals the meaning and purpose of its own existence—from such an attitude toward intellectual life. It was, after all, out of all those moments of development that we sketched out for ourselves yesterday that Goethe and Schiller were compelled to create.

[ 2 ] And we have already seen how Goethe and Schiller found themselves entangled in the developmental phases we were able to point out there. We have seen how both of them clearly express what they actually feel: In great, true poetry, one cannot do without a certain inclination toward the spiritual world itself. But that old inclination toward the spiritual world—which was still characteristic of Western intellectual development in the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries—was, in essence, no longer possible for people of the subsequent era. It withdrew, one might say, from mere intellectualistic contemplation. On the other hand, however, this intellectualistic contemplation—this life in thought—had not yet advanced to the point where the real, the truly spiritual, could have been attained within the life of thought itself.

[ 3 ] What is actually characteristic of Schiller’s and Goethe’s position in the spiritual development of humanity is that their emergence and their most significant influence occurred at a time when the old spirituality had faded away and living spirituality had not yet been able to spring forth from the new intellectualism. We saw here some time ago how what fills the soul as intellectualism is actually the corpse of that spiritual life which the soul experiences in the spiritual-soul world before its birth, or rather before conception. This corpse must, of course, be brought back to life. It must be reintegrated into the whole life of the cosmos. But people had not yet reached that point at that time, and the struggle of Goethe and Schiller, particularly during their most significant era, consisted in finally achieving, in this age of transition, a somewhat satisfying state of mind that could also be poetically productive.

[ 4 ] This is most clearly and most intensely evident in the collaboration between Goethe and Schiller. By the time the two became well-known, Goethe had completed a large portion of his “Faust” poem—which had been published in 1790 as a fragment of “Faust”—as well as several other works. If one examines this fragment, which was published in 1790, as well as what Goethe withheld at the time for whatever reasons—for example, the dungeon scene was withheld even though it was already finished back then—and the fragment begins immediately, without any “Prologue in Heaven,” with the scene: “I have now, alas, studied philosophy, jurisprudence… thoroughly”—if one examines this, one must say that in this fragment Faust stands alone, wrestling from within for a satisfying state of mind. He finds himself unsatisfied by mere intellectualism and strives for a union with the spiritual world. The Earth Spirit appears in the familiar version as we have it today. We certainly already see Goethe’s striving toward the spiritual-soul world, but what is completely missing here—and what was, in essence, far removed from Goethe’s mind at the time—was the placement of Faust within the entire cosmic context. The “Prologue in Heaven” was not there. In other words, Faust had not yet been placed within that struggle between God and Satan. That was added only when Goethe received Schiller’s encouragement to continue his “Faust.”

[ 5 ] Inspired by this, he no longer sought to leave Faust on his own, but rather to place him within the broader cosmic context. And so he shaped his Faust, more or less inspired by Schiller, in such a way that we can say: When Faust steps before the world for the second time in 1808, we see a cosmic drama emerge from the personal drama that Faust of 1790 still was. In the prologue scene—“The sun resounds in its ancient way with a song of competition in the spheres of brotherhood”—in the appearance of the angels, in the appearance of the entire spiritual world, and in the contrast with Satan—we see a struggle unfolding in that world over the figure of Faust. Before that, in 1790, Faust was preoccupied with himself. We focus on his person. He is the sole and absolute center. Later, an entire cosmic tableau unfolds before us, into which Faust is placed. Good and evil forces battle over him. Goethe wrote this scene in 1797, in which Faust is placed within a cosmic tableau, after Schiller had virtually demanded that he continue Faust.

[ 6 ] Goethe felt, in a certain sense—as the “Dedication” shows—already estranged from the way he had approached his Faust in his younger years. We can see what actually took place in the souls of the most outstanding individuals, for example, in Schiller. Schiller actually began as a realist. I told you yesterday how the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic elements stand in opposition to one another in Franz Moor and Karl Moor. But this is not at all a matter of the spiritual worlds intervening in any form of their own; rather, we can only trace the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic in the character traits of Franz Moor and Karl Moor. It is quite characteristic of Schiller that he starts from a certain realistic element. But once he had completed his early dramas in this style, and once he became acquainted with Goethe, we see how, when he returned to poetry in the 1890s, he found himself compelled to allow the spiritual world to play a role in his poetic creation. And it is, in turn, one of the most interesting facts that Schiller now feels compelled to let the spiritual world play a role in his poetic characters.

[ 7 ] Consider Wallenstein. Wallenstein bases his decisions on his belief in the stars. He undertakes his actions and forms his intentions in accordance with this belief. Thus, the cosmos certainly plays a role in Schiller’s epic poetry. The entire Wallenstein drama can really only be understood if one takes into account how Wallenstein feels imbued with the forces emanating from the constellations. One might even say: At the end of the 18th century, Schiller felt compelled to return to that view of the stars which, in the 16th and 17th centuries, was the norm for people who gave any thought to such matters at all. Thus, Schiller believed he could not portray human life in its most outstanding manifestations without situating that human life within the cosmos.

[ 8 ] . And furthermore, take a play such as The Bride of Messina. Schiller is conducting an experiment. He attempts to weave the old concept of fate, in conjunction with astrological wisdom, into the dramatic plot. And here, in The Bride of Messina, it is particularly striking that Schiller feels compelled to do this, because with The Bride of Messina you can, in fact, conduct a certain experiment. Try setting aside all belief in the stars and all notions of fate, and take what remains—you will still, in fact, have a magnificent drama, precisely in The Bride of Messina. So Schiller could have crafted a drama in The Bride of Messina without belief in the stars and without the idea of fate—and yet he did include both. This means that, in his inner state of mind, he felt the need to place human beings within the cosmos. There is certainly an absolute parallel here to what led Goethe, in the sequel to his Faust, to place Faust within the entire tableau of the world.

[ 9 ] Goethe does this figuratively; in his work, the angels appear as star-guides. We see the cosmos vividly before us in the grand tableau “Prologue in Heaven.” Schiller, who was more inclined toward abstraction and less figurative, felt compelled, during the same period, to veile the human condition’s place within the cosmos in his Wallenstein and The Bride of Messina—to such an extent that even the concept of fate from ancient Greek tragedy reemerged. But consider something else as well. It was precisely during the time he became acquainted with Goethe that Schiller, in his own way, embraced the ideas of freedom from the French Revolution. We already noted yesterday that the Revolution in France unfolded as a political revolution, whereas within Central Europe it took the form of a spiritual revolution. And one might say: This spiritual revolution took on its most intimate character in a work by Schiller that I have already mentioned here on various occasions: the letters On the Aesthetic Education of Man.

[ 10 ] Here we see Schiller asking: How does a person achieve a truly dignified existence? — Something that could be called a philosophy of freedom was not yet possible at that time. Schiller answers the question in his own way. He told himself: If a person follows only his logical thoughts, then he is not free. Of course he is not free, for one cannot shape what logic dictates according to any kind of freedom; there, the person is subject to the necessity of reason. So precisely where he first becomes most spiritual in his earthly life, he is not free; there he is subject to the necessity of reason. He is not free to say: Two times two is six or five. In contrast, a person is subject to the necessity of nature when his entire organism is devoted to that necessity.

[ 11 ] Schiller thus sees human beings situated between the necessity of reason and the necessity of nature, and he sees a balance between these two states in what he calls the aesthetic state. There, man, so to speak, subordinates the necessity of reason to what pleases and displeases him—in which he is, in a certain sense, free. And when he shapes his drives, his instincts—that is, the necessities of nature—to such an extent that he can surrender to them without being reduced to the level of an animal, having thereby elevated them once more, then they meet precisely in the middle. The necessity of reason descends one step, the necessity of nature ascends one step; they meet in the middle. And man, by acting in accordance with what pleases and displeases him, is in a state where he is subject to neither one necessity nor the other, where he is free to do what pleases him, precisely because the good pleases him, because at the same time he desires the good with his senses.

[ 12 ] This, of course, is a highly philosophical and abstract account that Schiller provided. Goethe was extremely taken with the idea, but he, in turn, realized that this, of course, does not get to the heart of the mystery of human nature. Goethe must certainly have deeply appreciated the extraordinary intellectual depth of Schiller’s work, for what Schiller accomplished in these letters, On Aesthetic Education, ranks among the finest treatises of modern times. Goethe sensed the grandeur and power of this thought. But at the same time, he realized that such thoughts cannot be used to create anything that truly resonates with the human being. Human nature is too rich to be grasped by such thoughts.

[ 13 ] Schiller, if I may put it this way, sensed: I am living in an age of intellectualism. It is precisely through intellectualism that human beings become unfree, for this is a necessity of reason. — So he actually seeks a way out in aesthetic creation, in aesthetic enjoyment. Goethe had a sense of the infinite richness and depth of human nature. He could not be satisfied with Schiller’s conception, however spirited and profound it was. Therefore, he felt compelled to express, in his own way, the forces that actually interact within human beings. Not only by his very nature, but also in accordance with his entire worldview, Goethe was unable to convey this in the form of abstract concepts; instead, under the influence of Schiller’s ideas of this kind, he wrote his “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,” in which we see a whole host—about twenty figures—appear, all of whom have something to do with the powers of the soul and who now interact, not merely as a necessity of reason or nature, but as twenty different impulses working together to ultimately shape, in the most manifold ways, what constitutes the rich nature of the human being.

[ 14 ] Above all, one must also consider the fact that Goethe had simply given up speaking in abstract terms about human existence. Goethe felt compelled to move away from such concepts. If one wishes to characterize Schiller’s relationship to Goethe with reference to the Aesthetic Letters and the fairy tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily, one must actually say the following: Goethe wrote this fairy tale directly under the influence of Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters. In other words, he wanted to answer the same questions from his own perspective, based on his own feelings. This can be proven. I have long since demonstrated this historically, and it also makes perfect sense. And if one now wishes to fully describe what took place between these two personalities, one would have to say: In ancient times, when people, in their quest for knowledge, still allowed themselves to be visited by beings from the spiritual world—when they were still working in their “workshops of knowledge”—forgive me for using this bourgeois expression—to uncover the mysteries of the world, things were different than they are today; back then, a person could feel a kinship with these spiritual beings who visited them. The spiritual beings that Faust seeks once again entered these “workshops of knowledge.” The Earth Spirit and all manner of other spiritual beings do, after all, come to Faust. Then he knew: I do indeed live on Earth now and must make use of the instrument of a physical body, but before birth and after death I am a being just like those who visit me here. — So he knew that, although he had sought a place of residence for his earthly life—which separates him from the spiritual world—this spiritual world visits him. He nevertheless felt a kinship with this spiritual world. This gave the human being an awareness of his own being.

[ 15 ] Let’s suppose that Schiller had come to Goethe around 1794 or 1795 and said: “Look, I have now written the letters ‘On the Aesthetic Education of Man’; I have tried, moving beyond modern intellectualism, to give people the opportunity once again to feel like human beings. I have sought out the ideas one must have in order to speak of true human nature. These ideas are contained in the letters on aesthetic education. — Goethe would have read this, and the next time he met Schiller, he might have said: “Yes, dear friend, what you have done there is very beautiful. You have once again held before people’s eyes a concept of their dignity; but that is not the way to go about it. Human beings are, after all, spiritual beings, and spirits withdraw—just as they do from light—from concepts, which are, after all, nothing other than another form of ordinary daylight. So a different approach is needed here. One must move away from concepts and toward something else.”

[ 16 ] What I am translating into concrete language here, you can trace in Goethe’s and Schiller’s correspondence. It’s all there, even if only in isolated hints. And Goethe wrote his “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily” about this, which was intended to illustrate precisely how the soul forces work within human beings. With this, Goethe made a declaration: if one wishes to speak about human beings and their essence, one must rise to the level of images. — And that is the path to imagination. Goethe thus simply pointed the way to the imaginative world. And that is why this “Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily” is so extraordinarily important, because it shows that, out of his inner struggle—as he also expressed in his “Faust”—Goethe felt compelled, at a crucial moment, to set out on the path toward the realm of imagination.

[ 17 ] Goethe would have found it philosophical if someone had said: “Thinking, feeling, and willing work together in human beings.” — He did not put it that way, but rather described how, in a certain place, the three kings are present: the golden king, the silver king, and the bronze king. For him, these images contain something that cannot be expressed in concepts. We thus see Goethe on the path toward an imaginative life. And here we touch upon one of the very, very deepest questions that actually preoccupied Goethe. With Goethe, it is the case that he was generally reluctant to speak to anyone at all about the true depth of the question. But one can see how this question preoccupied him. In the most varied passages, it becomes clear how the question preoccupied him: What does a human being actually gain when he seeks, through his thinking, to go beyond his own being—through that very thinking to which intellectualism has arrived? What does a human being gain from this? Sometimes the full weight of this earthly enigma—which is, of course, an enigma of an entire epoch, for this enigma could only emerge in such a powerful form during this particular epoch—is expressed in paradoxical terms. For example, in Faust you read:

The great power
Hidden from science
And from the whole world!
And to those who do not think,
It is given as a gift,
They have it without a care.

[ 18 ] It is an extraordinarily profound statement, even if it is the witch who says it: The great power of science—hidden from the whole world! To those who do not think—that is, to those who do not think—it is given as a gift! So no matter how much one thinks, the great power of science remains hidden from them. If one manages to stop thinking, then it is bestowed upon one: one possesses it without worry. One would therefore actually have to develop the ability not to think—to refrain from thinking in some artful way—not in order to arrive at science (for one cannot, of course, arrive at science without thinking), but in order to arrive at the power of science.

[ 19 ] Goethe knows that this power of science is at work within human beings. He knows it is already at work in the small child who does not yet think. People have taken particular offense at the fact that, in my book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity I pointed out right on the first few pages that if a person were to consciously carry out, through his thoughts, all the spiritual elements in the formation of the human body—using the power that also governs science—he could grow quite old and still not attain those subtle, sculptural-artistic powers of formation! Indeed, the power of science is already necessary to transform this brain, in the early years of childhood, from a rather formless mass into that magnificent form into which it must be shaped.

[ 20 ] It is a problem that deeply preoccupies Goethe. Of course, he does not mean mere, mindless non-thinking, but he is clear on this: If one does not allow intellectualistic thinking to disrupt one’s connection with the power of science, then one must turn to it. — In fact, this is why he has Mephisto lead Faust into the witches’ kitchen. These matters are always discussed only in passing, in a roundabout and contorted way. One knows Goethe poorly if one refuses to understand what he himself intends in a scene such as the witches’ kitchen with a certain sense of Goethe’s essence. Faust is handed the elixir of youth. Certainly, the fact that he receives such an elixir is to be understood in a thoroughly realistic sense, but if one imagines Goethe standing nearby and the witch says:

You have to understand!
Turn one into ten,
Let two go,
And make three the same,
Then you'll be rich.
Lose the four!
From five and six
So says the witch
Make seven and eight,
Then it’s done:
And nine is one.
And ten is none.

[ 21 ] And if one can understand Goethe as he was, then one simply has to say: Someone could have come along and asked, “Why do you let them recite the witch’s multiplication table there?” — Then Goethe might have said—if he’d been in the mood, for he didn’t like to talk about such things—“Yes, the lofty power of science, hidden from the whole world! And to those who do not think, it is given.” Well, one’s ability to think will vanish when one is told: “Make ten out of one, let two go, and make three equal—then you’ll be rich”—and so on. That’s where thinking stops! That’s when you enter a state in which you can be granted the sublime power of science without having to think. — These themes, of course, always play a role in Goethe’s Faust and in Goethe’s poetry.

[ 22 ] So Goethe was faced with this problem, which was something extraordinarily profound for him. For what does Faust actually lack, and what does he gain from the witches’ cauldron? What does he lack beforehand? If you picture this Faust—as he might have been, for example, Hamlet’s teacher, who feels repulsed by philosophy, law, medicine, and theology, and who turns to magic—if you imagine him as he then stands before us in the Easter scene, then you must say to yourself: One thing is certainly missing from this Faust, one thing that Goethe had. Goethe never quite came to terms with it; he felt like Faust, but he had to admit to himself: Yes, everything I’ve put into this Faust is within me, but I have something else inside me as well. Am I allowed to have that?—For Faust, you see, has no imagination, whereas Goethe did. Faust only acquires imagination through the witches’ kitchen, through the elixir of youth. Goethe, in a sense, answered the question for himself: What is it like to penetrate the mysteries of the world with imagination? — For that was the most outstanding power that Goethe himself possessed.

[ 23 ] In his youth, however, he was by no means certain whether one might not be groping in the dark when attempting to use the imagination to penetrate the mysteries of the world. That is, after all, the question posed by Faust. For purely dry intellectualism exists only in reflections. As soon as one turns to the imagination, one is already one step closer to the forces of human growth—the forces that permeate one’s being. There, one enters—albeit only from a distance—into the formative forces that, for example, also make the brain malleable in childhood. There is, after all, only one step from the imagination to the creative imagination! But that was precisely the central question for Goethe.

[ 24 ] Now he has Faust enter the witches’ kitchen so that he may cast off that accursed way of thinking—which leads to science, but not to the power of science—so that he may, as it were, live in the realm of the imagination. And from that point on, Faust develops the power of imagination as well. Goethe, in a sense, secures for Faust the right to imagination through his “stay” in the witches’ kitchen. And this rejuvenation consists of nothing other than the fact that Faust does not remain stuck in the arid faculties he possessed as, say, a thirty-five-year-old professor, but rather returns to his youth and draws the youthful creative forces—the forces of growth—up into his soul. For where imagination exists, the youthful creative forces live on in the soul.

[ 25 ] All of this was already present within Goethe, for he had written The Witches’ Kitchen as early as about 1788. So it was inherent in him; it was bubbling within him, demanding a resolution. But through Schiller, he received a new impulse. He was impelled onto the path toward the Imagination. At first, Schiller himself was still far from turning toward the realm of the imagination. But Schiller then sought the cosmic in Wallenstein and The Bride of Messina. He attempted to delve into the subconscious forces of the human being in The Maid of Orleans.

[ 26 ] One can fully appreciate the depth of the struggle that raged there when one considers the “Demetrius” fragment, which Schiller took with him to the grave. This “Demetrius” fragment surpasses everything else Schiller ever wrote in terms of dramatic power. Schiller still had the draft for The Maltese in his desk. This Maltese drama, had Schiller been able to complete it, would likely have become something truly magnificent as well. The struggle of the Knights of Malta—this spiritual order of knights, similar to the Knights Templar—against Sultan Suleiman—this is where the entire principle of the Order of Malta unfolds. There is no doubt that, had Schiller ever carried this out, he would have been forced to confront the question: How, in turn, can one succeed in bringing the perspective of the spiritual world into human creative work? For the question was already standing before him, very much alive.

[ 27 ] And Schiller passes away. Goethe no longer has that inspiration. Later, inspired by Eckermann—who, to put it this way, was less witty than Schiller—he completed his Faust; the second part, beginning around 1824, until his death. Shortly before his death, he put the finishing touches on it. It is a posthumous work. We have examined this second part of Faust in a wide variety of ways. Profoundly significant, magnificent insights into the manifold mysteries of the spiritual world—that is one aspect. Of course, one cannot do enough in this regard; one must try to understand it from the highest perspectives. But there is something else to consider as well. Goethe felt compelled to bring this Faust epic to a conclusion. Let us consider the development of the Faust character. We could go back one more phase. I have already presented such a phase to you in the figure of Cyprian, and in the 9th century the adaptation of the Theophilus legend emerged. Theophilus is certainly a kind of Faust of the 8th and 9th centuries. He enters into a pact, a contract, with Satan, and his fate is very similar to that of Faust.

[ 28 ] Let us take this “Theophilus,” this Faust of the 9th century, and let us take the legendary Faust of the 16th century, to whom Goethe did, after all, draw inspiration. The 9th century condemns the pact with the devil in the strongest terms. Theophilus ultimately turns to the Virgin Mary and is redeemed from everything he would have fallen prey to had the contract with Satan been fulfilled. The 16th century makes the Faust legend “Protestant”—that is, it is not portrayed in a positive light as in the Theophilus legend, where the predisposition toward damnation is present but redemption through the Virgin Mary is added—instead, it is rejected. The Faust legend is portrayed in a manner consistent with Protestantism. Faust makes his pact with the devil and falls prey to him as well.

[ 29 ] Lessing, however, and Goethe, in turn, protest against this. It cannot be that a person who, in conjunction with worldly powers and within the sphere of their influence, places himself in the hands of the figure of Satan and enters into a pact with him—that such a person, simply because he acts out of a thirst for knowledge, must inevitably perish. Goethe protests against this view, against this Protestant interpretation of the Faust legend. He wants to save Faust. While in the first part he still presented the matter in such a way that he had, in effect, conceded to Faust’s downfall—for in the first part, Faust does indeed perish—Goethe cannot leave it at that: Faust must be saved. Now Goethe leads us in a magnificent way through the experiences described in the second part of Faust. We see the inner, powerful essence of the human being asserting itself: “In your nothingness I hope to find the whole!” One need only recall such words, which set a healthy, powerful human nature in opposition to the corrupter.

[ 30 ] We see how Faust works his way through the entire history, all the way back to Greek antiquity. Faust must not perish. And Goethe makes every effort to arrive at images—images that, while shaped in a different form, are nonetheless drawn from Catholic worship and Catholic symbolism. And if you take away what is specifically Goethean in its imagination—what he worked his way up to through an entire, rich human life, such as Goethe’s was—if you take that away, then you are back at the Theophilus legend; then you have returned to the 9th century. For in the end, it is the “Queen of Shimmer who approaches in splendor.” And if one removes what is specifically Goethean, one is once again faced with the Theophilus of the blessed nun Hrosvitha—not exactly the same, of course, but something that has not yet attained an independent treatment of the poetic problem, but must still borrow from what came before.

[ 31 ] So you see how, in the case of such a great figure as Goethe, all his efforts are directed toward regaining access to the spiritual world. In “The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily,” he seeks the imagination that is meant to make things comprehensible to human beings. In his Faust, he also seeks to arrive at imagination, but he cannot attain independent imagination; he must still rely on Catholic symbolism. Thus, even his final scene still bears a resemblance to Hrosvitha’s clumsy 9th-century depiction—albeit executed with natural grace by one of the greatest poets.

[ 32 ] One must point out these winding paths that the spiritual history of humanity has taken in order to gain some understanding of all that is at work in this spiritual history. For only then does it become clear how—I would say—karma works throughout human history. One need only hypothetically imagine that the things that did not happen had happened—not to correct history retroactively, but to make sense of what is actually here. Imagine, for example, that Schiller, who was still a young man at the time of his death, had lived on. He had The Maltese on his desk; he was just working on Demetrius. In his relationship with Goethe, the highest spirituality was developing within him—a spirituality that lives only when the two are together. The thread was severed. What Goethe strove for—and what he was unable to achieve—becomes clear when one considers the second part of Wilhelm Meister or Elective Affinities. Goethe strove throughout his work to integrate human beings into a grand spiritual context. Yet he could no longer do so alone. Schiller had been taken from him.

[ 33 ] This whole picture illustrates precisely how humanity’s recent spiritual development is moving toward a certain goal—the goal of seeking humanity’s connection to the spiritual world—yet how obstacles are present everywhere. And so perhaps something like Goethe’s Faust in all its grandeur only becomes truly vivid to you when you see what it lacks—when you see the path along which the entire spiritual development of humanity has traveled. Yes, of course, one does not arrive at an understanding of the spiritual grandeur present in human development simply by saying, “An incomparably great work!” — or by offering all sorts of explanations; rather, one arrives at this understanding only by being able to grasp precisely this struggle of the entire human spirit toward a certain goal of development. This can strike one particularly strongly when considering such matters. And then, in the 19th century, the thread breaks off completely! The nineteenth century—so magnificent in the realm of the natural sciences—is, after all, asleep in the spiritual realm. At most, it happens that something is drawn from the highest wisdom of the natural sciences and applied to a work of art such as Faust.

[ 34 ] Goethe needs Schiller to place Faust—whom he initially conceived as a character—within a grand, all-encompassing tableau of the world. One can sense what Goethe might still have made of this Faust character had he not lost Schiller so early. Then there are those who reflect on these matters and say: “Faust” is a problematic work; Goethe actually got the whole thing wrong. Had he done it right, Faust would have married Gretchen, set her on the path to virtue, and invented the electrostatic machine and the air pump; then the true Faust would have been presented to humanity!

[ 35 ] A great aesthetician, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, said: “This second part of Faust—it’s nothing.” He sketches out a plan for how it should have been: what emerged was a sort of improved 19th-century Eugen Richter—a party man, only somewhat more imposing than the party men of the 19th century appeared to be. It is not from an insignificant person, but from a very significant one—for such a man was Friedrich Theodor Vischer—that the following words originate: “The second part of Faust is a cobbled-together, glued-together piece of drivel from old age!”

[ 36 ] The connection with the pursuit of spirituality had been lost entirely. People were asleep when it came to spirituality. But it is precisely out of all these circumstances that people today must find the tasks involved in charting a new path to the spiritual world. Of course, we cannot simply claim:

The great power
Of science,
Hidden from the whole world!
And to those who do not think,
It is given as a gift.
They have it without a care.

[ 37 ] We cannot decide to stop thinking, for thinking is, after all, a force that emerged with the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, and this force must be cultivated. But it must be developed in the direction that, in essence, Goethe had already begun with “The Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.” It must be cultivated toward imagination. One must be clear about this: the power of the intellect drives the spirit away; but if one develops the intellect itself toward imagination, one approaches the spirit once again. This is what can be recognized from a living contemplation of what has just taken place in the realm we have touched upon here.

[ 38 ] We'll continue our discussion tomorrow.