The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Throughout world history, there are phenomena through which inner forces of development manifest themselves as outwardly visible signs, and such phenomena sometimes seem to be outwardly connected to these inner developments. Yet the connections in the world—in the world of the spirit, the soul, and matter—are of such a profound nature that what appears externally is often, upon closer examination, to be taken as a truly real indication of what lies within. And in this sense, perhaps the pyre on which Giordano Bruno was led to his death in the year 1600 may be cited as an outward sign of a significant inner development. It is precisely the flames of this pyre that, I would say, shine out at the historical observer as something that points, in clear fiery script, to significant transformations taking place throughout the entire history of human development.

[ 2 ] We must not forget that three figures seem particularly characteristic of that period of transition from the 16th to the 17th century: a Dominican, Giordano Bruno; a cobbler, Jakob Böhme; and a Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, Bacon, Baco of Verulam—three figures who seem quite dissimilar to one another, but who, precisely in their dissimilarity, are exceptionally characteristic of what took place in the development of humanity during the emergence of the new worldview and the twilight of the old worldviews.

[ 3 ] Jakob Böhme came from the humblest of peasant backgrounds; even as a boy, with a keen spiritual ear, he listened to various teachings of wisdom that were still alive among the people of Central Europe in his time, wisdom that related just as much to what people felt within themselves as to the mysteries lying behind natural processes and phenomena. All this folk wisdom was, at the time when Jakob Böhme’s keen spiritual ear could attune itself to it, already in a state that made it virtually impossible to put the profound wisdom—the remnants of which Jakob Böhme still heard—into clear words, so that one was already compelled to express profound wisdom in stammering, often inaccurate words. Alongside all that is great, one must indeed observe in Jakob Böhme how he chews over words in order to extract from them whatever he had actually absorbed only intuitively—I would say out of their inherent weight—and what these elements of wisdom meant in folk tradition.

[ 4 ] The second figure we encounter is Giordano Bruno—who was steeped in the teachings prevalent particularly within the Dominican Order, teachings which, though rooted in ancient wisdom, offered insights in finely chiseled terms regarding humanity’s relationship to the world. These insights possessed a certain strength and intensity of understanding in and of themselves, but had been dulled by ecclesiastical tradition. And we see how, in the personality of Giordano Bruno, the entire drive and passion for knowledge of that era—namely, the transition from the 16th to the 17th century— with Faustian force, and how Giordano Bruno is so very much a child of his time—how, alongside the Dominican who lives within him, he is in the most eminent sense a man of the world of that era, yet a man of the world with all the refinement one can possess when bringing sharply defined, vividly formed ideas into the world. Perhaps no figure of that era spoke so directly from the general character of the age as Giordano Bruno did. One need only observe how, because he must speak from the fullness of world consciousness yet has at his disposal only the narrowness of the human soul of his time, he is compelled to clothe the subtle ideas he absorbed during his student years in a poetic garb; how he becomes a poet of insight, a scientist who poetizes, because at the very moment he wishes to say something, such a rich inner content lives within him that this rich inner content transcends all concepts, and he is compelled to surrender to the momentum of the poetic, the artistic, in order to give expression to this abundance of light. |

[ 5 ] And on the other hand, we see in Bacon of Verulam a man who has, in a sense, lost his footing, a man who is completely absorbed by the outward life of his time. He is a statesman, Keeper of the Great Seal; he is a man of great intelligence, yet one whose intellect is not rooted in any tradition; he is the first to bring to the fore on a grand scale in human history that which a man like Fichte would later so deeply despise—and, from his standpoint, rightly despise: the banality of reason, the banality of rationalism.

[ 6 ] Baco of Verulam actually introduced banality into philosophy in a witty way. As mentioned, he had completely lost his footing in the spiritual realm; he had no tradition to draw upon. He accepted as real only what presented itself externally to the senses, yet he was not yet capable of extracting anything spiritual from sensory experience. One might say he was the opposite of Jakob Böhme. While Jakob Böhme, drawing on the old spirituality that was no longer understood, nevertheless sought to extract sparks of the spiritual and also sparks of the material from everywhere—seeking to uncover the mysteries of the spiritual and the mysteries of the material from ancient traditions, which he then stammered forth—Baco of Verulam had nothing of the sort within him. He faced the external, sensory world, so to speak, with his soul as a tabula rasa, an empty slate; he applied the banality of ordinary common sense—not sound common sense, but ordinary common sense—to this external sensory world, and nothing else emerged but the very beginning of sensory knowledge, which is devoid of any spirituality.

[ 7 ] Thus, these three figures stand out as contemporaries. Jakob Böhme was born in 1575, Giordano Bruno—who was older—in 1548, and Lord Bacon in 1561. They represent modern civilization in its early stages, each in his own unique way.

[ 8 ] Today, when the descending forces are at their strongest, it is extraordinarily difficult to shed light on the inner workings and life of souls such as these three. For much of what these souls experienced as spiritual insights that were still very much real has now faded away. At some point in the future, a retrospective view of history will certainly characterize how our age—precisely because it is situated at the culmination of materialism—also bears within itself the moral counterimage of this materialism. And this moral counterimage is certainly, on the one hand, rampant immorality, but on the other hand, above all, indifference toward everything spiritual. I draw particular attention to this indifference because I intend to have these three lectures, which I am now about to deliver, culminate on Sunday in one that will deal with the specific nature of the opposition to the anthroposophical worldview, and because I would like to lay the groundwork for this today and tomorrow through a kind of historical perspective.

[ 9 ] This indifference toward all things spiritual actually makes one wonder at times: Why do people of our age still see anything special, say, in Goethe’s Faust? It would actually be easier to understand if the people of our time, in keeping with their mindset, would simply say: This Goethean “Faust” belongs to a bygone era. After all, this Goethean “Faust” contains a revelation of old superstitions on almost every page. There is a great deal of magic in it, and of a pact with the devil.

[ 10 ] Now, of course, our age has the excuse of saying: All of this is poetic disguise. But on the other hand, our age does admit that Goethe, in his Faust, intended to portray something like a representative of humanity. One has to say, then, that this helps us better understand the great scholar Du Bois-Reymond, who actually considered the entire Faust to be a kind of humbug and said: Faust should have become a decent person, married Gretchen honestly, and invented the electrostatic machine and the air pump. — That is actually a more honest statement, coming from the mindset of our age, than what is very often said about Faust by people who share precisely the mindset of our age. For they do so only because the prevailing opinion is that Goethe’s Faust is a great work that must not be cast aside. As I said, it is indifference that is sometimes merely too embarrassed to actually reject things it ought to reject.

[ 11 ] One need only consider for a moment how our age would treat such matters if they were not burdened by traditional judgment! If Shakespeare hadn’t written Hamlet and the Hamlet play were to appear today from some unknown depths, written by an obscure poet, then we would see what people would say about such a Hamlet play.

[ 12 ] Sometimes one really must think seriously about such things in order to understand the times properly. Precisely because it is reluctant to do anything else, this indifference rises to a contemplation of Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust—or even occasionally indulges in making all sorts of inaccurate statements about the magic in Faust. But to gain insight into what actually existed as a spiritual and psychological atmosphere during a time when events so decisive for the intellectual life of modern civilization took place—such as the era in which Giordano Bruno, Jakob Böhme, and Bacon of Verulam lived—is, in truth, impossible for the present day.

[ 13 ] Now, above all else, if we want to look at something like this with a completely open mind, we must first bring to mind the truly gigantic ideas—in comparison to those of our own time—that earlier ages soared toward! Ideas that, precisely because of their sheer scale, are today not even worth our attention—except, at most, from a literary-historical perspective.

[ 14 ] Look back to the Middle Ages and consider a figure like Merlin! Immermann did indeed attempt to breathe new life into this figure in his own time, but what was once gigantic comes across in Immermann’s work as if it were all written in a nightgown, with a nightcap on his head.

[ 15 ] Take, for example, the simple, straightforward narrative of the Merlin legend. What is Merlin meant to become? Merlin is meant to become the antithesis of Christ. That is what he is meant to become, according to medieval legend: the polar opposite of Christ. Christ, then, entered the world without physical conception, in accordance with the Testament. Merlin is to do the same. But Christ entered the world through the overshadowing of Mary by the Holy Spirit; Merlin is to enter the world through the overshadowing of a pious nun in her sleep by the Devil. The Devil wants to create an antipode to Christ on earth in the form of Merlin; that is why he attacks a devout nun in her sleep. And Merlin does not become the Antichrist only because the nun is too devout. And it is precisely through her genuine, true morality that the Devil’s plan regarding Merlin is thwarted.

[ 16 ] One need only try to grasp what such passages mean within medieval legend. They signify an inner boldness of worldview, an inner energy of thought formation. Compare all that is said in our time—except in circles such as those of anthroposophy—about the origin of evil in the world and the origin of corruption in humanity, and one must admit: Nothing is more justified than to say that recent developments reflect a petty-bourgeois mentality. For ultimately, setting aside all the philosophical rigor with which the origin of evil is sometimes discussed today, these views are still petty-bourgeois when compared to an idea of the evil that is colossally developed—such as that of the creation of a Merlin, who is, in a sense, merely a wayward son of the devil and therefore does not become evil enough.

[ 17 ] Consider this: Merlin is one of the leaders of the circle of Arthur’s knights. The legend draws upon him to shed light on the character of an era. But the legend finds no way on earth to characterize this era accurately. Therefore, it transcends the earthly realm, delves into the supernatural and evil, and requires a wayward son of the devil to explain the earthly world.

[ 18 ] I am not saying that we do not need similar elements of legend for our own age. I am not saying that, in order to accurately characterize certain things, it is not necessary to speak of similar creations as well. Even the Philistine mentality of modern times, in terms of its origins and sources, certainly does not need to be explained solely in earthly terms. For what is peculiar about the Philistine mentality is that, in terms of its harmful effects, it is just as little understood in and of itself as it is in terms of its benefits.

[ 19 ] In the Middle Ages, the controversy over the Lord’s Supper was widespread. I have already addressed this before: People actually only began to discuss the Eucharist once they no longer knew what it entailed. How does one even begin to discuss something when one knows nothing about it? As long as one knows something about a matter, one does not, in fact, discuss it. For those who have even a glimpse into the mysteries of the world, discussions are always a sign of ignorance. Therefore, when groups of people gather somewhere and discuss things among themselves, this is a sign to those with insight that none of them know anything. For as long as reality is present—and it is only about realities that one can know anything—one does not discuss the matter. At least, I have never heard of anyone, when the rabbit is on the table, discussing whether it is a real rabbit or a not-real rabbit, or where the rabbit comes from, or whether the rabbit is eternal, or came into being in time, or the like; rather, one eats it; at most, people quarrel over ownership, but not over any truths of knowledge. But behind this dispute over the Last Supper lies something entirely different, and this entirely different thing makes the ideas one once had for human interaction seem, once again, gigantic compared to today’s philistine ideas, which are sometimes no less diabolical, but are precisely philistine ideas.

[ 20 ] People such as Trithem of Sponheim, Agrippa of Nettesheim, Georgius Sabellicus, and Paracelsus were not merely slandered in the usual philistine manner; rather, they were at least accused of being in league with the devil and, as a result, of being able to practice the magical arts that people feared. And so we see, behind the controversy over the Lord’s Supper, a fear of magic. This fear of magic, in turn, is linked to the dawn of a new era, whose hallmark lies precisely in figures such as Baco of Verulam, Giordano Bruno, and Jakob Böhme.

[ 21 ] What, then, was meant by a magician? A magician was understood to be a person who drew knowledge from within himself, through which he could control nature and, possibly, human beings as well. But the spirit of modern civilization sought to let these inner insights—which had indeed once existed and which, at that time, still appeared as remnants of ancient, instinctive clairvoyant insights—fade away, and to bring to the fore that which can be gained only from external nature, not from within the human being. People had an immense fear of a person whom they could not observe as he tinkered with all sorts of things, assembling machines and the like. For where one was able to oversee everything, one could also, in a sense, observe how these insights entered his mind. Today, of course, this is commonplace, for—isn’t that so?—today people no longer fear magic, because it is essentially no longer present, since the inner sources of knowledge have already completely dried up. Today we realize that it makes no difference at all whether one listens to a person who shares insights—that is, listens to their human side—or whether one watches them tinker with machines in the laboratory, for there one can actually see how the insights first enter their mind; and people won’t accept that there might be other things inside their head besides what one sees entering it. One must always be able to see exactly what a person has inside their head. Today, this is taken for granted.

[ 22 ] In Bacon of Verulam’s time, there were still people who possessed a certain inner richness. That is why it was still worthwhile for Bacon of Verulam to launch a major campaign against such inner spiritual richness and to point out what can enter people from the outside. One might say that this takes us back to an earlier time, when human minds were still regarded as full, and when people wanted to know what was inside them, because they were convinced that what was inside could not be found outside in nature. And then Bacon came along and declared: “That is nonsense; the human mind is entirely empty; everything that enters it must come from the outside, from nature.”

[ 23 ] Well, that was just theory. In the early Middle Ages, however, there was a tremendous fear that some form of knowledge might grow independently within a person, that the spirit might develop within a person. No wonder that understanding of the mystery of the Lord’s Supper was completely lost, for something had to be accomplished by human beings themselves if a transformation of matter into something entirely different was to take place.

[ 24 ] And so we see how, above all in the controversy over the Lord’s Supper, something quite remarkable begins to emerge. In earlier times of Christianity, the transformation of the bread and wine was accepted as something possible, as something real, by virtue of certain ideas that existed at the time. Those ideas were no longer present. That is why people began to ask: What could this be? And from then on, it was to take place purely in an outward manner. The outward form now became the essential element, which was already evident in the fact that the Reformers even quarreled among themselves over the form in which the Lord’s Supper should be taken. The spirit was driven out of the ceremonies.

[ 25 ] That was the very first phase of materialism. What first emerged as a materialistic concept in modern civilization was sacramentalism. That was where materialism actually first took root. And while this era—in which Bruno, Böhme, and Bacon lived—was meant only to sow the seed for a new spirituality, as an era at the very beginning of which we still stand today, one that tends to present human beings with spiritless matter in the form of natural laws, so that he must seek the spirit through his own efforts, the first phase was one in which the spirit was, as it were, eradicated in all areas of life—eradicated above all in religious practice. And then this eradication extended to the secular spheres of life.

[ 26 ] But Goethe still felt all of this and, in his Faust, created an echo of what, born of powerful ideas, was alive precisely in that era of transition from the 16th to the 17th century. What, then, did Goethe intend to present in his Faust? The form is poetic, but what he sought is more universal and human than merely poetic, and it is not difficult, with an open mind, to say what Goethe intended in his Faust: he wanted to present the whole, complete human being before humanity itself. And he drew upon this 16th-century figure—the figure of Faust—whom, when the impulse to write Faust first arose within him, he actually knew only sparsely, based on insufficient historical accounts. He drew upon this Faust figure from the 16th century because, on an emotional level, he grasped the tremendous struggle that existed in the 16th century—a struggle to somehow rediscover, in some way, what had been lost: namely, humanity.

[ 27 ] And that was, in fact, what each of these three was seeking. The Dominican, who had outgrown scholasticism—in which concepts had flourished to the point of extreme abstraction—sought—by poeticizing them, elevating them to art, and imbuing them with feeling, yet also with profound insight—to bring these concepts to life, striving, in essence, to answer: What is the world within the human being? What is the nature of the human being in the world? — Such was the case with Giordano Bruno.

[ 28 ] And that was essentially the case with the shoemaker Jakob Böhme. He, too, sought the human being—but given the way he grew up, in those simple circumstances that were far more human than the circumstances of the “upper crust.” Yet he did not find this human being. And so he immersed himself and delved deeply into folk wisdom, and what he sought was, in essence, nothing other than the world within the human being, and the human being within the world.

[ 29 ] Only Bacon was not actually aware of this search for humanity, but he too sought it in a certain way. He even sought it in the same way that leading natural philosophers still seek it today. Bacon sought humanity by attempting to construct it as a kind of mechanism. Condillac, de Lamettrie, the natural philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries—they construct human beings atomistically from individual natural processes, just like a mechanism. According to the beliefs of these natural philosophers, this results in something that, to the discerning mind, is nothing more than a kind of specter in the worst sense—something that cannot live, something that is essentially a bag of concepts stuffed with abstractions.

[ 30 ] Truly, when one hears Bacon speak about human beings, it is as if he were carrying a sack of concepts stuffed with abstractions. But that is something, at least. It is also a search for humanity, albeit a completely unconscious one. Even in Bacon, one finds that, since he has relegated everything with which people previously attempted to understand humanity to the realm of idols, he, too, is searching for humanity. He is not fully aware of it, but deep down, he, too, is searching for the world within humanity, and for humanity within the world.

[ 31 ] And how is it, really, that each person, in his own way, seeks the human being in the world and the world in the human being? How is that? — When we try to gain insight through Jakob Böhme, this search for the human being appears to us in the following way. There we see how Jakob Böhme arrives at a human being who is actually nowhere to be found. Through his stammering concepts, we arrive at a vision of a human being who is nowhere to be found. And yet, this nonexistent, seemingly nonexistent human being possesses an inner power of existence—a genuine inner power of existence. We believe in Jakob Böhme’s human being, even though we tell ourselves: Just as Jakob Böhme speaks—for example, of the three elements of life, of salt, sulfur, and mercury in the human being—the human being is not like that in modern times. But it is a being that Jakob Böhme elaborates—one cannot say “composes,” but rather “elaborates”—it is a being. And precisely from the perspective of spiritual science, one is led to ask: What is the nature of this being of whom Jakob Böhme speaks in a stammering manner? — And then one comes to the realization: This is the human being of pre-earthly existence. For when, from the perspective of spiritual science, one returns to the nature of the human being in pre-earthly existence, remarkable correspondences emerge with what Jakob Böhme describes, in a stammering manner, as the human being. This human being described by Jakob Böhme cannot walk about here on Earth. But in pre-earthly existence, he does in fact have a possible existence. It is just that, so to speak, not everything that constitutes this pre-earthly human being is actually present in Jakob Böhme’s description.

[ 32 ] And so one might say: If one delves deeply into Jakob Böhme’s description of human beings—how this human being appears in pre-earthly existence—then one gets the impression, precisely through genuine spiritual-scientific and anthroposophical insight, that Jakob Böhme is describing the pre-earthly human being. That is certainly true, but he describes him in such a way that it remains a theory—not an extensive theory, but an inner theory. It is the pre-earthly human being who cannot become an earthly human being, who actually dies spiritually before he can be born on Earth. He cannot make the transition to Earth.

[ 33 ] So one could also put it this way: What Jakob Böhme describes about pre-earthly human beings is like wanting to recall a memory of something one has experienced, but being unable to do so, no matter how hard one tries to bring that memory back. Thus, for Jakob Böhme, the power to conjure up the pre-earthly human being again has been lost. In earlier world ages, people were able to do this. Jakob Böhme had absorbed the folk tradition of such wisdom. But he could produce nothing more than a pre-earthly human being who was spiritually stillborn. Human capacity was no longer sufficient to depict this human being as truly alive in his pre-earthly existence.

[ 34 ] And Giordano Bruno—well, Giordano Bruno is not merely a child of his time, but a person in whom everything is entirely the present. With Giordano Bruno, one has the feeling that everything within him is the present—a magnificent present, a present that encompasses the entire universe in space—but nothing is the past, nothing is the future. He experiences the world entirely in the present. He portrays the universe as something present and actually seeks, through his stammering, poetic words of insight, to describe the human being of the present. He is just as unable to come to terms with this as Jakob Böhme is with the pre-earthly human being. But the seeds are there in Giordano Bruno for correctly situating the human being of the present—namely, the earthly human being between birth and death—within the universe in such a way that he can be understood.

[ 35 ] But even here, we see the inability of human faculties to comprehend the whole human being, whom we strive to understand. Yet he had to be understood, for from the understanding of the earthly human being must in turn spring forth the pre-existent human being and the post-existent human being. Very little was known about the post-existent human being. This realm, in fact, remained closed to Bacon, the Baco of Verulam.

[ 36 ] Just as a sleeping person—when, apart from the physical and etheric bodies, he is in his “I” and in his astral body—initially lives in the same world that we perceive sensually with our eyes and our entire sensory apparatus, so too does this sleeping person, that is, their spiritual-soul aspect, takes in, while asleep, the seeds of the life they will unfold once they have passed through the gate of death—but just as what is actually taken in from the immediate present for the future remains hidden from human beings in ordinary consciousness, so too, for the earliest beginnings of modern scientific thought, as it appears in Bacon of Verulam, all that which is the future—which nevertheless lives unconsciously, even if denied, within sensory perception—remains hidden. And it is from sensory perception that the knowledge of postexistence, of existence after death, must be drawn. Bacon is not yet capable of this; he lacks the spiritual power for it entirely. Therefore, as I said, his conception of the human being actually becomes a sack of concepts, stuffed with abstractions. It is the most imperfect of what must ultimately be achieved at the end of this age—an age that must strive toward spirituality, but now from the perspective of knowledge of nature—namely, that which emerges in Bacon of Verulam.

[ 37 ] Thus we see how, in the case of Jakob Böhme, the pre-earthly human being is conceived in an imperfect way; in Giordano Bruno, the present earthly human being—the human being between birth and death, understood from the perspective of the universe—is sought out in a grandiose but still imperfect manner; and how, in the case of Bacon, what is to live one day is still unconscious, yet appears in him as a completely dead product. For you see, what Bacon describes as a human being does not live on earth; on earth, it is a specter. But when it is one day described in its perfection, then it will be the human being in post-earthly existence.

[ 38 ] If we take these three figures, who truly represent a marvelous trifolium at the turn of the 16th to the 17th century—and especially if we consider their origins—namely, the common man Jakob Böhme, the Dominican friar Giordano Bruno, who emerged from the intellectual training of his time, and Baco of Verulam, who stood at the pinnacle of outward social life but who had lost his footing—Bacon of Verulam—and if we also understand, from these social circumstances, how they might have arrived at their views in various ways, then we find a remarkable destiny fulfilled in them.

[ 39 ] We see Jakob Böhme, a man of the people, struggling throughout his entire life for what still lives within the people—though it lives only in a stammering form and is met with hostility. Yet the struggle continues latently: Jakob Böhme, in essence, never steps outside the circles of folk culture.

[ 40 ] Baco of Verulam, a man of great intellectual prowess and a representative of the modern worldview, loses his moral compass, strays from the moral path, and is, in this respect, an honest portrayal of humanity, in that this kind of scientific approach was bound to lead to moral deviation in the first place. However, the others are not as honest as the demon within him; for I do not wish to claim that he was honest.

[ 41 ] And among them was Giordano Bruno, who did not point to anything in the past or to anything in the future, but who sought to grasp, in the immediate present, the seed from which the future spiritual worldview was bound to develop. In his work, it still appears in a completely embryonic form. But that which clings to the old had to crush this seed as it was emerging. And so we see how the flames in Rome are a magnificent historical monument, just as the burning Giordano Bruno himself indicates: something must come to be. And that which was to come to be—that which compelled him to say, “You can kill me, but my ideas cannot be killed for centuries”—that, too, must live on. And in this way, external phenomena that appear to be merely superficial aspects of historical development are, in a profound inner sense, rooted in the evolution of humanity. It is precisely expressed in these flames of Giordano Bruno how a new impulse must be absorbed from the old when one truly understands the entire configuration of the old.

[ 42 ] I wanted to describe to you what was actually going on inwardly, what it was that they actually wanted to burn. Well, our present age has indeed erected an outward monument to Giordano Bruno at the site of the flames that once consumed him. But the point is that what was killed back then—yet was meant to live and must live—should now truly be understood—though it must live in a form of further development, not in the same form in which it existed back then.

[ 43 ] The Handing Over of the Serpent: The Second Initiation.

[ 44 ] The Journey into the Labyrinth: 3. Initiation.