The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] The abilities a person needs to face the world and work within it during earthly life are connected, as I have just shown here, to the activities a person undergoes in the spiritual world between death and a new birth. This, however, means that human beings here on Earth are, in certain respects, involved in contexts that are not truly real on Earth itself, but which reveal their reality only when one views the whole from the supersensible realm.

[ 2 ] Today, from this perspective, let us turn our attention to the three areas that essentially encompass all human activity on Earth. Let us turn our attention to the thoughts through which human beings seek to acquire truth in the world; let us then turn our attention to the feelings, insofar as human beings seek to acquire beauty in and through their emotional world; and let us turn our attention to the human will, insofar as human beings are to realize the good through their will.

[ 3 ] When we speak of thoughts, we mean the realm through which human beings can come to know the truth. But thoughts themselves cannot be anything real. Precisely when we realize that we are to learn about the truth of reality through our thoughts, we must also admit that thoughts, as such, cannot be anything real. For suppose you were as deeply immersed in your thoughts as you are in your brain or your heart; then these thoughts themselves would be something real. You would not be able to grasp reality through these thoughts. One could not even express through human language what is to be expressed if human language, in the ordinary earthly sense, contained full reality. If every time we spoke a sentence we had to labor to extract something very heavy and real from our mouths, we would not be able to express something, but rather produce something. In this sense, what is spoken is not a reality in itself, but “signifies” a reality, just as thoughts are not realities in themselves, but signify a reality.

[ 4 ] If we look at what is good, we will find that what arises of its own accord through physical reality cannot be described as good. We must first draw the impulse toward the good from the depths of our being—as something entirely unreal—and then bring it to fruition. If the impulse toward the good were to arise like hunger, as an external reality, it could not be the good.

[ 5 ] And when you look at a statue, it does not occur to you that you can have a conversation with it. It is merely an illusion. In appearance, something is expressed that is beauty. So that while in truth we have “the reality,” truth itself moves within an unreal element, just as beauty does, just as goodness does.

[ 6 ] But as necessary as it is for human beings that their thoughts are not themselves real—just imagine if thoughts were to wander around in one’s head like lead figures; then, although you would sense something real, these lead thoughts could mean nothing to you, for they would themselves be something real— just as true as it is that thoughts—and indeed, beauty and goodness—cannot be immediately real, it is nevertheless true that something real is necessary in this physical, earthly world so that we may have thoughts, so that we may realize beauty in the world through art, and so that we may also realize goodness.

[ 7 ] And as I discuss this, I am entering today into a field of spiritual scientific inquiry that can lead us quite deeply into the spiritual beings that surround us here on Earth—beings that are essential to our earthly existence but which are entirely beyond the reach of sensory observation and therefore cannot be conceived by ordinary consciousness, which relies solely on sensory perception. In truth, we are surrounded everywhere by spiritual beings of the most diverse kinds; it is just that ordinary consciousness does not perceive these spiritual beings. But they are necessary so that we, as human beings, can carry out our activities; so that we can have thoughts in their unreal lightness and transience, so that they do not themselves exist in our minds like lead weights, are not things in themselves, but can instead signify something. For this, it is necessary that there be beings in the world who ensure that our thoughts, with their unreality, do not constantly vanish from us just as quickly as they arise. We humans, with our ordinary consciousness, are—I would say—too heavy, too clumsy, to be able to hold onto our thoughts so easily with this ordinary consciousness, and there must be elemental beings who constantly help us to hold onto our thoughts. Such elemental beings do exist, but they are extremely difficult to detect because, I might say, they are constantly hiding.

[ 8 ] If one asks: What is it, actually, that enables one to hold onto a thought even though it is not real at all, and who helps one do so? — then one is very easily misled, especially by the spiritual-scientific perspective. For the very moment one takes it upon oneself to ask, “Who holds thoughts in place for human beings?”—one is already driven into the realm of the Ahrimanic beings by this very tendency to want to know about the spiritual essences that hold thoughts in place. And one plunges into the realm of the Ahrimanic beings and very soon begins to believe—though it is a deceptive belief—that one must be supported by the Ahrimanic spirits in order to hold onto one’s thoughts, so that they do not vanish the moment one grasps them. For this reason, most people are even unconsciously grateful to the Ahrimanic beings for supporting them in their thinking. But this gratitude is actually misplaced, for there is an entire realm of beings who support us precisely in relation to our world of thought and who are by no means of an Ahrimanic nature.

[ 9 ] These beings are difficult to detect even for those who have already advanced in their ability to perceive the spiritual world. One sometimes encounters them, for example, when observing a very intelligent person in their daily activities. For when one observes a very intelligent person in their daily activities, that person actually has a fleeting retinue. In fact, they never go anywhere alone, but are accompanied by a fleeting retinue of spiritual beings who do not belong to the Ahrimanic realm, yet possess a most remarkable quality—one that one truly comes to know only when observing those beings who belong to the elemental realms, that is, those who are invisible to the physical eyes and who are active in the formation of shapes in nature, crystal forms, for example, and the like, come into being. Everything that takes on form is, after all, subject to the activity of these beings, whom you will also find depicted in my Mystery Plays as beings who shape and hammer solid forms. If you follow the gnome-like beings in one of the Mystery Plays, you will see these beings who bring forth forms. Now—as you can already see from the way I have portrayed this in my Mystery Dramas—these beings are cunning, and out of their cunning they mock the limited intellect that human beings possess. Recall this scene if you are familiar with it from my Mystery Play.

[ 10 ] If one were to observe a truly intelligent person—who, as I mentioned earlier, may have an entire army of such beings in his retinue—one would find that these beings are held in extremely low esteem by the gnome spirits of the elemental world, because they are clumsy, and above all, because they are terribly foolish. Foolishness is their most prominent characteristic. And so one can say: Even the wisest people in the world, if one can observe them in this regard, are followed by whole groups of fools from the spiritual world. — It is as if these fools wanted to belong to them. And these fools, as I said, are held in extremely low esteem by the beings who fashion forms in nature in the manner described in the Mystetia. So one can say: Among the worlds that are initially unknown to ordinary consciousness, there is one populated by a people—a spirit people—of fools, fools who press their way in particularly toward human wisdom and cleverness.

[ 11 ] These beings do not actually have a life of their own in the present age. They come to life by drawing upon the life of those who are dying—those who die from illness but still possess vital forces within them. They can draw only upon past life. They are, therefore, spirit-goblins who make use of the life left behind by humans; they, so to speak, soak up what remains of that life as it rises from cemeteries and similar places.

[ 12 ] It is precisely when one enters such worlds that one begins to grasp how infinitely densely populated the world beyond the human sensory realm is, how diverse the classes of such spiritual beings are, and how these spiritual beings are thoroughly connected to our own abilities. For the intelligent person whose activities we are observing there—if he is not clairvoyant but merely intelligent—can hold onto his intelligent thoughts particularly firmly precisely because he is pursued by this throng of spiritual fools. They cling to his thoughts, tug at them, and give them weight, so that they remain with him, whereas otherwise his thoughts would have vanished quickly.

[ 13 ] These beings are therefore subjected to extreme ridicule by the gnome-like beings. The gnome-like beings do not wish to tolerate them in their realm, yet they belong to that very same realm. They constantly drive them away, and there is a fierce struggle between the gnome people and this people of spiritual fools, who are in fact the very ones who make wisdom possible for human beings; for otherwise, wisdom would be fleeting, would vanish the very moment it arises, and could not endure. As I said, these beings are hard to detect, because one very easily tumbles straight into the Ahrimanic realm the moment one poses the relevant question. But one can find them on occasions such as those I have indicated, by observing particularly intelligent people who have a whole retinue of such beings following them. Furthermore, however, if there are not enough intelligent thoughts clinging to a person, one finds these entities on all manner of monuments to wisdom. They dwell, for example—though they are hard to find there as well—in libraries, when there is something intelligent written in the books within. If the books contain nonsense, then these entities cannot be found; they can only be found where there is wisdom; that is what they cling to.

[ 14 ] In a sense, we gain insight into a realm that certainly surrounds us, that exists just like the natural realms, and that has something to do with our own abilities—but which is also difficult for us to assess. Therefore, if one wishes to assess it, one must rely on these gnome-like beings and give some credence to their statements—and they find them extraordinarily stupid and insolent. But these beings have yet another characteristic. When they are pursued too relentlessly by nature spirits of the gnome-like kind, they take refuge in human minds; and while they are practically giants out in nature—for they are extraordinarily large—they become very small when they are inside human minds. One could say that they are a kind of abnormal nature spirits, but ones that are intimately connected with the entire course of human development on Earth.

[ 15 ] Another type is that which lives primarily in the aqueous and airy elements, such as those beings that you will find described by me in the Mystery Dramas I have mentioned as sylph-like beings and so on. These beings I am referring to are primarily concerned with the world of appearance, of beautiful appearance; they are drawn less to intelligent people than to artistic natures. But they, too, are very difficult to detect, because they can easily hide themselves. They are to be found where true works of art exist—that is, where the human form, natural forms, or the like are present in appearance. That is where they are to be found. As I said, these beings are, once again, very difficult for us to detect. For when we ask ourselves: How is it that beautiful appearances interest us, that under certain circumstances we derive greater pleasure from a beautiful statue than from a living human being—admittedly a pleasure of a different kind, but nevertheless greater pleasure—or that we are uplifted and delighted by the melodic or harmonic arrangement of sounds? — then we very easily tumble once more into another realm, the realm of the Luciferic beings. But it is not only the Luciferic beings that sustain the artistic, but also a realm of elemental beings that keep alive this interest in human beings—who would otherwise always be inclined to have no interest in artistic beauty because it is unreal—and who, in fact, stimulate artistic interest in the first place.

[ 16 ] The reason it is so difficult to discover these beings is that they can hide in the spirit world even more easily than fools, for they are actually found only where beauty asserts itself. And when one is absorbed in beauty, when one is enjoying beauty, then one certainly does not see these beings. Why?

[ 17 ] In order to perceive these beings in a normal way, one must—if one is at all receptive to artistic impressions—try to direct one’s clairvoyant gaze toward those entities that are depicted in the same scene as nymph- or sylph-like beings, which also exist in the elemental realms of nature, and one must put oneself in their place. In a sense, one must, together with these beings of air and water, observe the others who are present there, revelling in beauty. And since that is difficult, one must resort to another method. Well, fortunately, I would say, one can easily discover these beings when listening to someone who speaks quite beautifully and whose language one does not fully understand—where one hears only the sounds without grasping their meaning. If one immerses oneself in this beautiful speech—but it must be spoken beautifully, it must be spoken oratorially, and yet one must not understand it properly—then one can acquire the ability, an intimate, delicate ability, to see these beings. So one must, so to speak, try to acquire the talent of the sylphs and strengthen it through that talent which develops when one listens to speeches that are beautifully delivered and that one does not understand, paying no attention to what they are meant to signify, but only to the beauty of the speech itself. Then one discovers these beings, who are present wherever beauty is found and who offer their support, so that human beings can develop a genuine interest in beauty.

[ 18 ] And then comes the great disappointment, followed by the great, terrible astonishment. For these beings are utterly hideous—the ugliest things one can imagine—horrifying creatures, the archetypes of ugliness. And once one has acquired the spiritual vision to perceive these beings and then visits, with this spiritual vision, any studio where art is created, one finds that it is these entities—which, like spiders, actually dwell at the very foundation of earthly existence—that ensure that human beings take an interest in beauty. It is these horrifying spider-like beings of an elemental nature that actually awaken an interest in beauty. Human beings could not possibly have a genuine interest in beauty if their souls were not entangled in a world of primal, hideous spider-like beings.

[ 19 ] When you walk through a gallery like this—for what I have described is merely a means of discovering the forms of these entities, which are always present whenever a person enjoys beauty—you have no idea how your interest in the most beautiful paintings is heightened by the fact that these ugliest of spiders are crawling in and out of every ear and every nostril. Human enthusiasm for beauty rises from the depths of ugliness. That is a mystery of the world. One needs, I would say, the provocation of the ugly so that beauty itself may come to light. And the great artistic minds were those who, through their strong physicality, were able to endure being permeated by these spiders in order to produce a Sistine Madonna or the like. Whatever beauty is produced in the world is produced precisely in such a way that it rises out of a sea of ugliness through the enthusiasm of the human soul.

[ 20 ] One must not believe that, once one passes beyond the veil of the physical world, once one enters the realm beyond the threshold, one will find nothing but beauty there. Do not think that anyone who knows these things is speaking recklessly when they say: People must be held back at the threshold of the spiritual world if they are not properly prepared. — For first one must come to know the by no means uplifting undercurrents that lie beneath everything that appears, so to speak, as uplifting and edifying before the curtain. And so, when you wander through the elemental world—which belongs to the elements of air and water—you will see, once again, the great struggle between the fleeting worlds of the sylphs and the undines and these archetypes of ugliness. I call them “spider-like creatures”; they are not made of spiderwebs, but are composed of the element of water and the element of water vapor. They are ephemeral air-forms whose ugliness is further heightened by the fact that they take on a different form of ugliness every second, giving one the constant sensation that each successive form of ugliness, superimposed upon the previous one, is even greater than the one before. This is the world that exists in the air and water just as much as that which is delightful in the air and water.

[ 21 ] And so that human beings can develop enthusiasm for what is good, something else takes place as well. Of other beings, one can say that they are more or less simply there, but of the entities I am about to discuss, one must actually say that they are constantly developing—and indeed, they develop precisely when a person possesses a certain inner warmth for the good. It is within this warmth that those entities develop which are of a fiery, warm nature—entities that live in the present but which actually possess a nature such as I described in my Outline of Esoteric Science for the human being’s Saturn phase.

[ 22 ] Just as human beings were in the ancient Saturn existence, so are these beings today. They are not shaped like human beings, but they possess such a nature. One cannot say that they are beautiful or ugly or the like; one must judge them from the perspective provided by the ordinary elemental beings of warmth, which also exist. The entire spiritual investigation is extraordinarily difficult, for one encounters these beings, who live solely in heat—that is, in the “fire” of the ancient sense—and it is extremely difficult for a human being to approach them; and when one does approach them, it is not a pleasant experience. One encounters them, for example, when one is suffering from a high fever. But in such a state, one is generally not a very objective observer. Otherwise, it is a matter of developing an insight into such heat beings through further training using the methods described in my books. But these heat beings do have a certain relationship to those entities that appear especially when a person develops a warm enthusiasm for the good. Yet this relationship is of a very peculiar nature.

[ 23 ] Let me make a hypothetical assumption—for this is the only way I can actually describe the matter—that there are such heat-beings of a normal kind that originate entirely from human physical heat, which is, after all, greater than the heat of the surroundings. Human beings possess their own body heat. This is why these beings are present in their vicinity. And now, within a person who is enthusiastic about goodness, these other beings—which are also heat beings but of a different kind—are brought forth. But when they are near the normal fire beings, they immediately withdraw from them and slip into the innermost part of the human being. For if one makes a great effort to discover the characteristics of these beings from the perspective of the normal heat beings, one finds that these beings possess an intimate yet terribly strong sense of shame. They absolutely do not want to be observed by other beings of the spiritual world and flee from them because they are ashamed of being seen; above all, they flee into the innermost depths of human beings, making them difficult to detect. They can actually only be detected if, let’s say, one observes oneself at certain moments that cannot easily be brought about at will. Suppose you are reading something and, simply by reading a scene that deeply moves you—even if you are not a sentimental person—you are moved to tears. Some great, noble deed—in a novel, for example—is described, and you are moved to tears. If you are then engaged in self-observation, you may discover how whole hosts of such beings—who possess such a finely and intimately developed sense of modesty that they do not wish to be seen by any other beings of the spiritual world—take refuge in your heart, indeed in your entire inner being; how they come to you, how they seek protection from the other beings of the elemental-spiritual worlds, and especially from the other beings of warmth.

[ 24 ] There is a significant force of repulsion between normal thermal beings and those thermal beings endowed with such an extraordinarily strong sense of shame, who live only in the moral sphere of human beings and shy away from contact with other spiritual beings. These beings exist in far greater numbers than is commonly believed, and it is they who instill in human beings a passion for moral goodness. Human beings would not easily develop this enthusiasm for moral goodness if these beings did not come to their aid. And when human beings love what is moral, they are actually in alliance—in an unconscious alliance—with these beings.

[ 25 ] Certain characteristics of these beings are such that it is easy to misunderstand this entire realm. For indeed, why do these beings feel ashamed? They are truly ashamed because the rest of the spiritual world of the elemental realm, in which these beings dwell, actually despises them and wants nothing to do with them. And these beings sense this, and precisely because they are so despised, they inspire enthusiasm for goodness.

[ 26 ] There are certain other characteristics of these beings that I would really rather not discuss, because one can already see how deeply the human soul is affected when one speaks of those hideously ugly spider-like beings. For this reason, I would like to leave certain characteristics of these beings unmentioned. But we have seen how that which develops here in the realm of the sensory being—as the True, the Beautiful, and the Good—arises entirely from foundations that these three spiritual realms, which I have described, require, just as we as human beings on Earth need the ground upon which we walk. Not that these beings produce the True, the Beautiful, and the Good—they do not. But the thoughts that express the True, that signify the True, need the spiritual fools so that they can move upon their shoulders. And the Beautiful that human beings bring forth needs the ugly water and air spiders so that it can rise out of this sea of ugliness. And the Good needs a realm of beings that cannot even show itself among the other decent warmth-beings, that must always remain hidden, and that precisely through this evokes enthusiasm for the impulses of Good.

[ 27 ] If all these beings did not exist, then instead of our thoughts in our heads, we would have—if not exactly lead soldiers—at least heavy fumes. The things that would come out of that would not be very intelligent. And in order to bring forth beauty, we would have to possess the gift of bringing that beauty to life, at least to some extent, so that people would take an interest in it, and so on. For that which we need here in the realm of the sensory world—for our intellectual activity, for our emotional response to beauty, and for our volitional activity in goodness—to be present, three such elemental realms are necessary.

[ 28 ] When we consider the ordinary elemental realms—that is, to use the popular expression—the realms of the gnomes, sylphs, undines, and salamanders, we actually find realms that are still striving to take shape in the world. They are moving toward forms similar to those we have in our sensory world; they will simply be different, but they will one day become perceptible to senses such as those humans possess today, whereas today, in their elemental existence, they are not perceptible to the ordinary senses.

[ 29 ] But the beings I have just described to you have already moved beyond the stage that humans, animals, and plants occupy today; they have progressed further than these and have already moved beyond it. So that if, for example, we could go back to the old lunar being that preceded earthly existence, we would find there these beings whom we find here on Earth today as those modest, morally inspiring beings. We would see them on the ancient Moon as a veritable ‘animal world’—visible even to earthly eyes—spinning about, say, from tree to tree. But you must recall the lunar existence as I have described it in my Occult Science. This lunar existence is, of course, a soft and fleeting one, and things undergo metamorphosis, transforming themselves. And among these beings, those ugly creatures I have described—these primeval spiders—weave their way about; the ancient Moon was completely permeated by them, and they were visible there. And then there were also those beings who today accompany the wise as fools. They were present there, and they brought about the disintegration of the old Moon, so that the Earth could emerge from it. Even here, during Earthly existence, these beings take no joy in the formation of crystals, but rather in the fragmentation of the mineral realm.

[ 30 ] So while we can say of the other, normal elemental beings that they will one day become visible and perceptible to the senses, we must say of these entities that they were once perceptible to the senses but have now, in fact, been snatched into the spiritual realm by Ahrimanic and Luciferic spiritual forces. Thus we have two kinds of elemental beings: an ascending kind and a descending kind. And I would like to say: Our world of beauty arises from the decay of the old Moon’s ugliness—for that was abundant during the old Moon existence.

[ 31 ] You have an analogy in nature when you spread manure—fertilizer—on the fields, and then the most beautiful plants bloom from it. There you have nature’s analogy, except that in that case the fertilizer, the manure, also confronts you in a sensory way. So it is when one contemplates spiritually that which is only half-real as the world of beauty. Let this—which is only half-real as the world of beauty—stand before you, without regard for what else teems with life in the three kingdoms of nature on Earth; for my sake, let all the beautiful effects that spring forth from the Earth arise before your spirit. In any case, just as the most beautiful flowers spring up in a meadow, so must you mentally imagine beneath them that mold, that fertilizer—the lunar fertilizer—which contains those ugly spiders I have described. Just as your cabbage will not grow without manure, so too can beauty not blossom on Earth without the gods fertilizing the Earth with ugliness. This is the inner necessity of life, and one must understand this inner necessity of life, for it alone gives us the ability to face with awareness what actually surrounds us in nature.

[ 32 ] Anyone who believes that beauty in art can be produced on earth without the foundation of this ugliness is like a person who says: “But it’s actually appalling that people use manure; they should instead let beautiful things grow without manure.” — It is simply not possible for beauty to be produced without the foundation of ugliness. And if one does not want to succumb to illusions about the world—that is, if one truly wants to recognize what is real and not what is illusory—then one must recognize these things. That is absolutely necessary. Anyone who believes that art exists in the world without ugliness does not understand art either. Why not? Well, simply because only those who have some inkling of what I have described to you today will be able to truly appreciate works of art, for they know the price at which they are earned in the existence of the world. And anyone who wishes to appreciate works of art without this awareness is actually like a person who wants to do away with fertilizing the fields. They would then not know what grows in nature, but would in reality be faced only with an illusion—plants made of papier-mâché, so to speak. Even if they have real plants, they have only plants made of papier-mâché! Those who do not sense the ugliness in their foundations cannot truly delight in beauty.

[ 33 ] That is how the world is arranged. And that is what humanity must learn if it does not want to continue wandering through the world—as I have said before—just like earthworms, which also cling to their own element and do not look up to what truly is. But people can only develop the potential that lies within them if they confront reality. Reality, however, is not achieved simply by talking about spirit, spirit, spirit, but by truly getting to know the spiritual world. But then one must also be prepared for the possibility that, under certain circumstances in certain realms of the spiritual world, something like what I have described to you today may come to light.