The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Thirteenth Lecture

[ 1 ] There is still much to be said to bring the ideas presented here over the past few days to some sort of conclusion. For when one speaks, one must break things down into words and ideas; but what one really means is the unified thread and the unified force that one wishes to let flow through the many words and ideas that have been laid out. However, so that perhaps some of what I could still say in many words—and actually ought to say—might also be expressed in a certain way that summarizes it all, let me present what I still wish to say to you today in a semi-figurative manner. You will process this semi-figurative presentation and then perhaps better understand what I mean.

[ 2 ] I have drawn your attention to this from a wide variety of perspectives: today, every person who lives within civilization lives within intellectualism—within that conceptual life that has developed in the most intense and compelling way precisely in our age. Humanity has managed to work its way up to the most abstract concepts. You need only think of how, in the era immediately preceding our own, Dante received a description of the world from his teacher. Back then, everything was still soulful, everything spiritual, and that still weaves through Dante’s great poetry like a magical breath. Then came the age when humanity sought to cast its inner experiences into abstract concepts. People have always had concepts. But, as I have explained to you, these were revealed concepts. They were not concepts that no longer corresponded to any inner, soul-based revelation. Only when people had forced themselves to adopt concepts that no longer sprang from any soul-based revelation did they come to develop all their concepts through the observation of external nature—indeed, even through external experimentation—and to accept as valid only that which is taken in from the outside through observation.

[ 3 ] Whenever one delves into the thought world of the past—even that of the twelfth, thirteenth, or fourteenth centuries—one always has the feeling that there is something there that connects with one’s inner soul. One has the feeling that one still has an inner life, a life that springs from within, an experience that has arisen because the human being has connected with it.

[ 4 ] Today, the conceptual system of even the most primitive human being is acquired from the outside, from the external natural world as observed through the senses. And even those people who still cling to the older concepts with a certain degree of faith no longer have the intense relationship to that faith that people used to have—not even the farmer. To impart to human beings something from the outside—something that is scientifically established and verified by nature—is today an ideal toward which we strive. But concepts and ideas that arise from within the soul have, as my discussion shows, the peculiar characteristic that, as they struggle to emerge from the inner soul, they then die as concepts. And human beings feel it is right that their concepts, insofar as they are born from within, should die out. But the peculiar thing that has been happening for several centuries—and which reached its culmination in the nineteenth century—was that the concepts dying out within were revived in the external world. We can truly demonstrate this through a historical phenomenon. Just consider how Goethe formed, from within himself, an entire view of evolution that culminates in his concepts of metamorphosis. One has the feeling of working one’s way out of the living into the dead, yet that this must be so because the living is a compulsion. Freedom could only arise after the concepts had reached the dead. But at the same time, these concepts have come to life again in external nature: As something like Darwinism—even in our Central European civilization—takes the place of Goethe’s concept of evolution, we have concepts and ideas that regain life in external nature. But this is a life that devours humanity!

[ 5 ] One must feel this in all its intensity: how we are surrounded today by a way of thinking that is connected to nature, that has drawn its life force from nature, but that devours human beings. How does it devour us? Well, with all the ideas that even the most advanced way of thinking derives from nature, we can never truly understand human beings. What does our magnificent theory of evolution give us? It shows us how animals develop from other animals. Then human beings stand before us, but only as the final link in the animal chain—and not as human beings in their true essence.

[ 6 ] This is what today’s civilization tells us. Earlier civilizations understood the natural realms from the perspective of human beings; our civilization today understands human beings, from the perspective of nature, as the highest of animals. But what it fails to understand is the extent to which animals are imperfect human beings. When we fill our souls with what our thinking about nature has become, then what appears to us in the image of the dragon devouring humanity is precisely what is most intense in our civilization today. As human beings, we feel we are facing a being that devours us.

[ 7 ] Just look at how this devouring process has taken hold. As the natural sciences have developed further and further in a truly triumphant manner since the fifteenth century, the study of humanity has fallen into ever greater decline. People could only with great difficulty hold their ground against the dragon devouring their innermost lives by preserving and passing on the old, though now lifeless, traditions. And in the last third of the nineteenth century, the dragon—which threatened to devour the human soul in the most terrible way—loomed before people with particular intensity. Those who still possessed a full spiritual life within themselves sensed how the dragon, which was destined for death, had gained life through observation and experimentation in the most recent developments—but a life that devours human beings.

[ 8 ] In earlier times, human beings were still involved in the creation of the dragon, but they had been endowed with the necessary measure of the power of death, so that they could still subdue it. Back then, human beings imbued their experiences with just enough intellectuality that they could still overcome them through the powers of the heart. Now the dragon has become strictly objective; now it exists in such a way that it confronts us from the outside and devours us as spiritual beings.

[ 9 ] This was essentially the hallmark of civilization from the fifteenth century well into the nineteenth: We can only truly understand it by looking at the image of the dragon, which in ancient times was meant prophetically and pointed to what was yet to come in the future. But those ancient times were aware that, in giving birth to the dragon from within themselves, they were also giving birth to Michael or St. George—namely, that which can overcome the dragon.

[ 10 ] From the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, humanity was powerless in the face of the dragon. It was an age that gradually succumbed entirely to belief in the material world. As a result, this era was so spiritually deadened at its very core that, with regard to the innermost treasures of the soul, there was no longer any truth. An era that conceives of the world emerging from the Kant-Laplacean primordial nebula—which condenses and, in its condensation, brings forth living beings and, finally, human beings—must acknowledge: Such a process can ultimately only vanish into heat death. But then what human beings have morally achieved will also be dead! If one has repeatedly attempted to prove that the moral world order can have a place in a world whose beginning is the so-called Kant-Laplace primordial nebula and whose end is heat death, that is not sincere. And it is certainly not sincere—and certainly not honest—to conceive of moral development in such a way that it rises with the infusoria and disappears when heat death brings about the end of the universe.

[ 11 ] And how did people come to hold such a worldview? Why does it essentially live on in every soul today? Because even in the most remote country cottage—though people may not be aware of it—the dragon penetrates and slays the heart. And why is that so? Because human beings can no longer comprehend one another. What, then, happens within a human being? At every moment, something happens within a human being that occurs nowhere else in the earthly environment: A human being takes in food from the external environment; he takes it from the realm of the living and only a little from the realm of the dead; but as the food passes through the digestive system, even the most living of foods is killed. Human beings completely destroy what they take in while it is still alive in order to infuse their own life into what has been killed, and only when the food passes into the lymphatic vessels is what was dead brought back to life within the human being.

[ 12 ] Throughout the entire organic process, which is permeated by soul and spirit—as becomes clear when one fully recognizes and comprehends human existence—matter is completely destroyed in order to be recreated. Within the human organism, there is always a process of destruction of matter so that this matter can be recreated. Within us, matter is continually transformed into nothingness and then recreated anew.

[ 13 ] The door to this insight was firmly locked in the nineteenth century, when the law of conservation of energy was established and it was believed that matter was conserved even through the human organism. The formulation of the law of conservation of matter is clear proof that people do not understand the inner nature of human beings.

[ 14 ] But just imagine how incredibly difficult it is today not to be considered a fool when one fights against what is regarded as the most certain truth in modern physics! The laws of conservation of matter and conservation of energy mean nothing other than that natural science has tightly locked the path to humanity. There, the dragon has completely devoured human nature. But the dragon must be vanquished, and therefore the realization must take hold that the image of Michael vanquishing the dragon is not merely an ancient image, but one that has reached the highest degree of reality in our time. Earlier times gave rise to this image because people still felt Michael within themselves as something that unconsciously permeated them and unconsciously overcame what arises from mere intellectuality. Now the dragon has become entirely external. Now the dragon confronts us from the outside and constantly threatens to kill us. But the dragon must be defeated, and it can only be defeated by becoming aware that Michael—or St. George—also comes from the outside. And this Michael, this St. George, who comes from the outside—who is capable of defeating the dragon—is nothing other than a true spiritual insight that also overcomes this center of life, which is, however, a center of death for the inner being of the human being—the so-called law of conservation of energy—so that human beings can once again be human beings right down into the very realm of insight. Today they are not allowed to do so; for if there is a law of the conservation of matter and the conservation of force, then the moral law dissolves into heat death, and the Kant-Laplace theory is no mere phrase.

[ 15 ] The fact that people have always shied away from this consequence is the untruth that has penetrated deep into the human heart, deep into the human soul, taking hold of everything in a person and turning him into a false human being on this earth. We must lift our gaze to Michael, who shows us that what exists materially on Earth does not merely undergo heat death, but will one day truly disintegrate, and that we are capable of planting life through our connection with the spiritual world and our moral impulses. And there begins the transformation of what is within the Earth into new life, into the moral realm. For the reality of the moral world order is precisely what Michael, as he approaches us, can give us. The old religions cannot do this, for they have allowed themselves to be defeated by the dragon. They simply accept the dragon that slays human beings and establish, alongside the dragon, some kind of special, abstractly moral, divine order. But the dragon does not tolerate such a thing; the dragon must be defeated. He does not tolerate the establishment of anything merely alongside him. For what humanity needs is the strength it can gain from defeating the dragon.

[ 16 ] You can see how deeply the problem must be understood. But what has modern civilization given us? It has given us this: that every science has been a metamorphosis of the dragon, that all external culture has also been a product of the dragon. Certainly, the external mechanism of the world—which lives not only in machines but also in our entire social organism—is rightly a dragon. But the dragon also confronts us everywhere else where modern science speaks to us of the origin of life, of the transformation of living beings, and of the human soul. Even when history is discussed, the conclusion is such that it actually stems from the dragon. And this had become so severe in the last third of the nineteenth century, at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and well into the twentieth century, that the young person growing up—who yearned to learn something of what older people knew—saw the dragon confronting them everywhere: in botany, zoology, history, and so on—in all the sciences—saw the dragon coming toward them, saw the one who actually seeks to devour the innermost essence of their soul.

[ 17 ] Michael’s battle with the dragon has only become truly real—in the most intense sense—in our own age. And when one penetrates the spiritual fabric of the world, one finds that, simultaneously with the culmination of the dragon’s power, Michael’s intervention—with whom we can connect—began at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Human beings can, if they wish, have spiritual science; that is to say, Michael truly penetrates from the spiritual realms into our earthly realm, yet he does not impose himself upon us, for today everything must spring from human freedom. The dragon, however, pushes itself forward; it demands the highest authority. Never in the world has there been an authority that appears as powerful as that exercised by science today. Compare it to papal authority; it is almost as great. One can be the most foolish person imaginable, yet one can still say: “Science has established this.” — Just think how people are silenced by science, even when they speak the truth. There is no more oppressive authority in the entire history of human development than that of modern science. The dragon leaps out at you from every direction.

[ 18 ] There is no other remedy for this than to connect with Michael—that is, to become truly imbued with the spiritual weaving and essence of the world through genuine insight. Only now does this image of Michael truly stand before us, and only now has it become our very own human concern. In ancient times, this image was still perceived through the imaginative. Today, this is not possible for the outer consciousness. Therefore, any fool can say that it is untrue to describe outer science as the dragon. But it is the dragon.

[ 19 ] Those who grew up with science and were not so captivated by the dragon that they calmly allowed themselves to be devoured, those who could not go so far as to let the soul be probed by all manner of devices in order to test memory and recall, those who grew up with it as human beings, but who were no longer told what a human being is—because it was no longer known, because the dragon had devoured humanity—they initially found themselves face to face with the dragon and did not yet see Michael. This is what lived in the hearts of many people, especially at the beginning of the twentieth century: they intuitively and instinctively saw the dragon before them, but could not see Michael. Therefore, they moved as far away from the dragon as possible. They wanted to find a land where the dragon could not reach them; they wanted nothing more to do with the dragon. And so we see how the youth flee from the older generation, because they want to escape the dragon’s domain. This is also one aspect of the youth movement. The youth wanted to flee from the dragon because they saw no way to defeat it. They wanted to go somewhere where the dragon was not.

[ 20 ] But there is a secret here, and it is that the dragon can exercise its power everywhere, even where it is not physically present. And if he does not succeed in killing people directly through ideas, through intellectualism, then he succeeds by having made the air so thin all over the world that one can no longer breathe in it. And that is probably the crux of the matter: those young people who had fled from the dragon to avoid harm from him, and who—having entered an atmosphere where the air of life had become too thin—could no longer breathe a future, felt at most the oppressive weight of the past, because the air had become unhealthy even in those regions where one could escape the dragon’s direct influence. But the oppressive pressure that comes from within is, in terms of human experience, not much different from the pressure that comes from without, from the dragon.

[ 21 ] Thus, it was the immediate sense of being at the mercy of the dragon that an older generation felt in the last third of the nineteenth century, and it was the oppressive weight of the air, tainted by the dragon and unfit for breathing, that the younger generation then experienced. The only solution here is to find Michael, who will defeat the dragon. For we need the strength of the dragon-slayer, because the dragon draws its life from a world entirely different from the one in which the human soul can live. The human soul cannot live in the world from which the dragon draws its lifeblood; but in overcoming the dragon, the human being must gain the strength to live. That is why we are right to say today: That era, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century, which developed humanity in such a way that everything flowed out from within it, must be overcome. The age of Michael, who defeats the dragon, must begin. For the dragon’s power has grown great!

[ 22 ] But this is precisely what we must accomplish if we are to become true guides for young people. For Michael, in a sense, needs a chariot through which he can enter our civilization. And this vehicle is what reveals itself to the true educator when it emerges from the young, developing human being—indeed, even from the child. There, the forces of pre-earthly life are still at work. It is already truly present there—and if we nurture it, it will become the chariot for Michael with which he will enter our civilization. If we educate in the right way, we prepare the vehicle for Michael so that he can enter our civilization.

[ 23 ] We must not continue to feed the dragon by developing a science based on thought-forms without even considering that these forms seek to penetrate the human soul, the human body, and the human being itself—and to shape the human being. We must build Michael’s chariot, his vehicle. To do this, we need living humanity—the kind that flows from the supersensible worlds into earthly human life and manifests itself there, especially in the earliest stages of human life. But we must have a heart for such an education. We must, so to speak—if we may use a metaphor—learn to make ourselves allies of Michael as he enters the world, if we are to become true educators. More is accomplished for the art of education than by all theoretical principles combined when what we take in within ourselves has such an effect that we feel ourselves to be allies of Michael, the spiritual being descending to Earth, for whom we prepare the vehicle through a living, artistically guided education of youth. What can come of this impulse is far better than all theoretical principles of education. We must come to the point where we look up to Michael, who, in the last third of the nineteenth century, is striving to enter our aging dragon culture.

[ 24 ] This is the true driving force behind all educational theory. We must not approach this art of education as a “theory,” nor as something we can simply learn. We must embrace it as something with which we form an alliance, whose arrival we welcome—something that comes to us not as dead concepts but as a living spiritual being, to whom we offer our services because we must offer them if humanity is to continue its development. This means: to bring knowledge back to life, to bring back into full consciousness what once existed in the unconscious of humanity.

[ 25 ] My dear friends! In ancient times, when atavistic clairvoyance was still common among people, there were mystery sites. In these mystery centers—which served simultaneously as churches, schools, and centers of the arts—those who underwent their human development there also sought to gain access to the powers of knowledge, but in a more spiritual way. Many different things could be found in these mystery centers at that time, but there was no library in the sense we understand it today. Do not misunderstand me: there was no library in the sense we understand it today. There was certainly something resembling a library—that is, things that had been written down—but everything that was written down was there to be read, to have an effect on souls. Today, a large part of library material is there merely to be stored, not to be read. People only turn to it when they have to write a dissertation, because they have to take it into account. But they would prefer to eliminate all vitality entirely. Dissertations are supposed to consist entirely of mechanical elements. They want human involvement to be as minimal as possible. All human participation in the spiritual realm has been torn out of the human being.

[ 26 ] This must return, and now with full awareness: that spirituality becomes a living reality, that we do not merely experience what can be seen externally with the senses, but that we once again experience what can be perceived in the spirit. The Age of Michael must dawn. Essentially, everything that has come to humanity since the fifteenth century has flowed in from the outside. In the Age of Michael, human beings will have to find their own relationship to the spiritual world. And knowledge and insight will become valuable in a completely different way.

[ 27 ] You see, what remained of the ancient mysteries in the libraries were more like monuments in which was recorded what was to be passed down into everyone’s memory. Our books cannot be compared at all to those libraries. For all the guides to the mysteries instructed their disciples to read something else. They said: There is a library—and this library consists of the people walking around outside. Learn to read from them! Learn to read the mysteries inscribed within every human being! —We must return to this. We must approach it, so to speak, from a different angle—in such a way that, as educators, we know: All insight, all knowledge, when merely piled up, has no value. There it is dead and derives its life only from the dragon. But we, in our very desire to “know,” must have the sense that this knowledge is something that cannot be piled up here and there, because it would immediately flow apart. We must learn that in literature, that which is spirit can actually only be hinted at.

[ 28 ] How could you possibly have fully captured what the spirit is in a single book? After all, the spiritual is a living thing! The spiritual is not like bone; it is like blood. And blood needs vessels through which to flow. What we recognize as spiritual needs vessels. These vessels are the growing human beings. We must pour it into them so that it holds together at all. Otherwise, we would have to regard the spirit as something so alive that it would immediately dissolve. We must preserve all our insights in such a way that they can flow into the developing human being. Then we will build Michael’s vehicle and will be able to become Michael’s companions. And what you desire, my dear friends, you will best achieve by becoming aware that you want to become Michael’s companions.

[ 29 ] You must once again reach the point where you are able to follow a purely spiritual being who is not incarnated on Earth, and you will have to learn to believe in a human being because he shows you the way to Michael. Humanity must understand the words of Christ in a new, living way: “My kingdom is not of this world.” For it is precisely because of this that it is all the more of this world! For the purpose of human beings is to make the Spirit—which is not without them in this world—the very substance of this world. Christ Himself came into the world. He did not take human beings up to heaven to live an earthly life; rather, human beings must imbue their earthly lives with a spirituality that can be communicated—and that, in turn, gives them the ability to defeat the dragon.

[ 30 ] One must understand this so thoroughly that one can answer for oneself the question of why people tore each other apart in the second decade of the twentieth century. They tore each other apart because they carried the struggle into a realm where it did not belong, because they failed to see the true enemy, the dragon. Defeating the dragon requires forces that, only when developed in the right way, will bring peace to the Earth.

[ 31 ] In short, we must take the dawn of the Age of Michael seriously. Only when, through the means of the present, we succeed in bringing back to people’s minds the image of the mighty Michael, bathed in radiant light, who is able to defeat the dragon that is draining humanity through the power of human beings developing into a living soul life — only when we can once again take this image into our souls, much more vividly than we once held it before our eyes, will the strength come to us to develop inner vitality, because we know we are in fellowship with Michael. Only then will one participate in everything that can bring progress and peace between the generations—that which leads young people to listen to the elderly, and which ensures that the elderly have something to say that young people want to know and take to heart.

[ 32 ] Because youth has held the dragon at bay, it has fled to places devoid of air. Only when the dragon is no longer held at bay, but rather—through the power of Michael—that which can vanquish it is found, will a genuine youth movement achieve its true goal. This will be revealed in the fact that the generations have something to say to one another, that the generations can learn from one another. For in truth, if the educator is a whole human being, he receives just as much from the child as he gives to the child. Anyone who cannot learn from the child what it brings down to them as a message from the spiritual world cannot teach the child anything about the mysteries of earthly existence either. Only when the child becomes our educator by bringing down messages from the spiritual world will it be willing to receive the messages we offer it from earthly life.

[ 33 ] Goethe did not search everywhere for things that are like breathing—exhaling, inhaling, exhaling, inhaling—merely for the sake of a symbol; rather, Goethe saw the whole of human life reflected in the image of giving and taking. Everyone gives, and everyone takes. Everyone who gives becomes a taker. But for giving and taking to fall into the right rhythm, it is necessary that we enter the Michaelic Age.

[ 34 ] So I would like to conclude with this image, so that you can see what I actually meant by the preceding reflections. They were meant not for you to take what I have said here away in your minds and ponder it, but rather—what I hope is that you hold something in your hearts, and that you put into practice what you carry in your hearts. What a person carries in their mind, they lose along the way. But what a person takes into their heart, the heart preserves it into all spheres of activity into which the person will be placed. If it is possible that what I have been allowed to say to you is not merely carried away by your minds—for then it would surely be lost very soon—but if it is carried away by your hearts, by your whole being, then, my dear friends, we have spoken to one another here in the right way.

[ 35 ] And from this perspective, from this feeling, from this sense, I would like to bid farewell to your hearts today by calling out to you: Accept what I have tried to express in words as if, above all, I had wanted to let something into your hearts that cannot be put into words. If your hearts have connected even a little with what is meant here as a living spirit, then what we sought to achieve when we gathered here has been fulfilled, at least in part. Let us part with this feeling, and let us also come together again with this feeling. In this way, we will find our connection in spirit, even as we work individually in the most diverse areas of life. The main thing will be that we have found one another in our hearts. Then the spiritual, the Michaelic, will also flow into our hearts.