The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] Before I take the liberty of offering my farewell remarks in response to the kind words spoken on your behalf by Professor Hauffen, allow me first to share my reflections on this evening.

[ 2 ] It will have become evident from the preceding reflections here at the Prague Anthroposophical Society how a spiritual influence—or perhaps better said, the influence of spiritual beings—prevails over human evolution, and how human souls themselves, imbued with spirit, carry forward from epoch to epoch what they have attained in one epoch, though also that which they have accumulated as guilt upon their souls in a given epoch. But all of this allows us to take a deep look into the life of the physical-soul-spiritual cosmos, and it is only through such a gaze that we come to understand our human nature. For without falling into any kind of arrogance, we must admit to ourselves that we are connected to the spiritual source of the cosmos through our own human nature, and we can only understand our own human nature when we penetrate the cosmos spiritually. Now, since the Christmas Conference, the aim has been not merely to administer anthroposophy within the Anthroposophical Society, but for the administration itself to be anthroposophy. And this must also find expression in the reorganization of anthroposophical work. I have therefore not hesitated, in these lectures, to let my reflections flow from the exoteric toward the esoteric, and I would like to add a few more thoughts to what has been said today. I would like to add something that can illustrate how the human soul is carried over from one epoch to the next. What happens on a large scale also happens to the individual, and when we understand the karma of personalities known to us all, we can also shed light on our own karma. Therefore, let us continue our reflection on karma today in somewhat more concrete terms.

[ 3 ] I have already mentioned, in the course of these reflections, the name of a man who, in a remarkable way, demonstrates how something visionary can come to revelation within a will-driven nature. I have mentioned the name of the Italian hero of freedom, Garibaldi, and have also described some of his characteristic traits. Everything that manifests itself in Garibaldi is an expression of the will. What immense willpower it took for him, as a young man—time and again during a perilous era, in the second and early third decades of the nineteenth century—to sail across the Adriatic on his own initiative, to be captured repeatedly, and yet to free himself time and again through his strength and courage. What an immense display of willpower is evident in the fact that, when he saw there was initially no field of action for him in Europe, he crossed over to South America and became one of the boldest advocates there for the development of a life of freedom. I have also drawn attention to how, with regard to his marriage, he actually lived a life that transcended ordinary earthly circumstances; and when he then returned to Europe, he was, in fact, the man to whom present-day Italy owes everything.

[ 4 ] When the question arose one day: What might the karmic connections of this personality be like?—two questions came to mind. For experiencing karmic connections is not a simple matter, but a complicated one. I have already said that one must sometimes begin with the seemingly trivial matters of life in order to move from these trivialities—which are, however, vividly concrete—to that which carries the facts of one earthly life over into the facts of another earthly life.

[ 5 ] And so, in Garibaldi’s case, it was particularly the fact that, in his convictions, he was a republican—a republican through and through—yet in Italy he brought about the kingdom under Victor Emmanuel with all the strength of his will. And in fact, if one considers only the outward details of Garibaldi’s biography, one sees a fundamental contradiction between his innermost convictions and what he actually did. On the other hand, one sees how closely he felt connected to men like Mazzini and Cavour, with whom he did not agree at all in his thinking, and who held entirely different ideological views. One then notices how remarkable it is that Garibaldi, born in 1807, was actually born at a time and in a place in the immediate vicinity of the birthplaces of these three other figures: the future King Victor Emmanuel, Cavour the statesman, and the philosopher Mazzini. They were, so to speak, born in close proximity to one another. This leads one to explore how the karma of such figures is interconnected.

[ 6 ] The other question that this leads to is this one—truly a profound question! When we engage in spiritual scientific reflections, we must always point out that in ancient times there were initiates—those who possessed and held the worldview in the broadest sense. The question may now arise: Since even these sages of ancient times must reincarnate, where are they in more recent times? And some might ask: Where, then, are the great personalities of ancient times, who worked as initiates, active in later times? You see, they have returned, these great initiates, but you must bear in mind, my dear friends, that when a human being appears in any age, they are dependent on using the body that that particular age provides. The bodies of ancient times were more malleable, more pliable and flexible for the spirit; and within earthly life, one needs the body to truly translate into earthly manifestation and earthly action that which one has taken in before descending into earthly life. And so, precisely when faced with such a puzzling question—and this is by no means meant as a criticism—we must consider how the entire educational system of modern times, for centuries now, has shaped the human organism in such a way that what was lived within the initiate cannot manifest itself in our lives at all. Much must remain entirely in the depths of existence. And that is why some initiates of old appear as personalities whom, judging by the concepts we have today, one would never suspect of having once been initiates, because they must make use of the body of their own age.

[ 7 ] We are faced with just such a case in Garibaldi. If we look far back into European history, we find mysteries and initiates of the deepest kind in ancient Ireland. But the Irish mysteries have truly survived into the Christian era. Even today, there is much spiritual life in Ireland—not abstract or conceptual, but real—that is spiritually active. As chaotic as Ireland may appear on the surface today, there is much real spiritual life in Ireland; but this is, after all, only the last remnant of what once was. In Hybernia, in Ireland, there were profound mysteries that continued to exert their influence into Europe even during the first centuries following the adoption of Christianity. And there we find an initiate who traveled from Ireland roughly to the region of present-day Alsace in the eighth to ninth centuries after the establishment of Christianity. This initiate did much at that time to work for true Christianity amid great turmoil—for which Boniface, in reality, did very little. And three disciples came to this initiate from three different parts of the world—three disciples who entrusted themselves to him. These three disciples—one more so than the others—went far. But it was precisely in the Irish mysteries that the strict rule was that disciples who had entrusted themselves to an initiate would not be abandoned by him in their future earthly lives, but rather that he would accomplish something in his earthly life that would bind these disciples to him, establishing a bond between them and him. The initiate I am referring to reappeared in the nineteenth century as Giuseppe Garibaldi; with this visionary will—which in earlier times had come to manifestation in a completely different way—he was able to live it out in a nineteenth-century body that had undergone an education quite different from that of the nineteenth century, indeed, a very limited education. And the three others I mentioned were the disciples who came as disciples from three different regions of the earth. But that which acted as a force from one incarnation to the next had a deeper effect than external principles. Compared to what binds one human being to another across incarnations, it is a trifle to say: “I am a Republican; you are a monarchist.” — In these matters, one must be clear about just how far removed earthly Maya—the great illusion, the appearance of existence—is from the spiritual reality that acts as a spiritual impulse behind the phenomena of existence. And so, for example, Garibaldi could not abandon Victor Emmanuel, even though his convictions were entirely different from Victor Emmanuel’s. When they relate to external matters rather than to people, such convictions belong to the age, not to the individuality that passes from one earthly life to the next.

[ 8 ] I’d like to choose another example that, in a strange way, has touched me deeply. I had a geometry teacher who was extraordinarily valuable to me. Perhaps you’ll know from my biography that geometry, in fact, is one of the subjects to which I owe the most inspiration in my life. That is why this geometry teacher became particularly valuable to me. The fact that he was an excellent draftsman naturally meant that I loved him very much, because I loved drafting, and because he presented his ideas with true independence—and also with all the one-sidedness of geometric thinking. He was so one-sidedly trained in geometry that, for example, he was not a mathematician, but only a geometer. In that respect he was a genius, but he had no knowledge—no real knowledge—of mathematics. And he lived precisely at a time when all of descriptive geometry, which was his specialty, was being transformed. He stuck to the old ways. That was a characteristic trait of his. But another trait was even more characteristic of the occult researcher. He had what is called a clubfoot. Now the peculiar thing is that—not, of course, the physical substance, but the force that a human being carries in his feet during an incarnation—the way he carries himself, the way he positions himself toward sin or toward goodness through the movement of his feet—undergoes a metamorphosis. Everything connected with the feet can play out in the organization of the head in a subsequent earthly life, while what we now have in the head can play out precisely in the organization of the legs in the next earthly life. These things undergo a peculiar kind of metamorphosis. Those who are well-versed in these matters can discern, from the way a person carries themselves—how they place their toes and heels—what their thinking was like in a previous incarnation. And anyone who observes the peculiarities of a person’s thoughts—whether they think quickly and fleetingly or measuredly and deliberately—is often led to truly see how that person walked in a previous incarnation.

[ 9 ] A person who thinks hastily had, in a previous incarnation, a gait characterized by quick, small steps that practically scurried across the ground. A person who thinks thoughtfully had a steady demeanor. And it is precisely such seemingly minor details of life that lead one deeper into the matter when one seeks the deeper spiritual—rather than the external, abstract—connections. And so, as I repeatedly brought the image of my beloved teacher before my soul, I was led to his previous incarnation. And then another image joined his—that of another man with a clubfoot: Lord Byron’s. Now these two men stood before me. And my teacher’s karma had led me—as had the peculiarity I have described to you—to realize how, in the tenth or eleventh century, these two souls had lived in a previous incarnation far in the east of Europe, where one day they were influenced by a significant saga, a legend, a prophecy—that legend which states that the Palladium, which through a certain magic had actually sustained Roman power, had been brought from ancient Troy to Rome and hidden there. And when Emperor Constantine wanted to transplant the Roman Empire to Constantinople, he had the Palladium brought from Rome to Constantinople with extraordinary pomp and had it hidden beneath a column—a column which he, however, designed in such a way that it expressed his immense, colossal arrogance. He had an ancient statue of Apollo placed atop the column, but had it altered so that it depicted him. He had pieces of wood brought from the cross on which Christ was crucified and wove a sort of wreath from these pieces to encircle the statue’s head. He practically celebrated orgies of arrogance in the process!

[ 10 ] But then a prophetic legend arose, stating that one day the Palladium would be carried from Constantinople further north, and that the power associated with the Palladium would one day be embodied in a Slavic kingdom. These two men I spoke of had heard this prophecy, and they set themselves the goal of journeying to Constantinople and bringing the Palladium to Russia. They did not succeed. But the urge remained, particularly in one of them—Byron. This transformed into the impulse to champion the freedom of Greece, which then, in the nineteenth century, led Byron almost to the very same place where he had sought the physical Palladium in a previous earthly life.

[ 11 ] You see, it is necessary to find the threads that lead back to earlier times. On another occasion, I was led to a figure who lived in northeastern France—present-day France—around the ninth century. This person, in the early part of their life, owned extensive estates; they were a wealthy figure by the standards of the time, as well as a warrior, and had undergone many small-scale, adventurous military campaigns—nothing particularly grand. When this individual reached a certain age, he gathered a group of people to embark on an adventurous expedition with him, which ended unhappily, bringing him a great, immense disappointment; and having achieved nothing, he was forced to return home. But as was the case in some regions at that time: while the individual was away from home, farm, land, and people, another had taken possession of his home, farm, land, and people. The individual simply could no longer find his property—it is strange, but it happened, and in the future he had to serve as a kind of helot, as a serf, on his own manor. At night, gatherings with neighbors were commonly held, and in a rather wild manner, ideas of power were developed, which could lead to nothing more than their mere articulation. One might say that a real-dialectical game was played with these ideas of power in rebellion against the lords—almost as in ancient Rome. This figure can indeed be of interest: one who was driven out by possessions, property, and the habit of giving orders, yet who, unbowed in spirit, became a stirrer of the masses throughout the entire region—particularly against the one who had seized possession of the property. And once again, in the nineteenth century, this personality appeared and became, inwardly, intellectually, and spiritually, what could emerge from that earlier incarnation: he became Karl Marx, the leader of the socialists. And now, my dear friends, consider how world history is illuminated when one can view it in this way, when one can actually trace the souls from one epoch to the next; how what lies upon the souls is carried over from one epoch into the next. This gives concrete connections to the historical life, development, and essence of humanity.

[ 12 ] And just recently, in Dornach, I was able to draw attention to another connection—one that led me, on several occasions during the war, particularly toward the end of the war, to point out that people should not allow themselves to be overly dazzled by a certain figure of modern times. I had already pointed out in my 1913 course in Helsingfors the rather limited capacity at stake here. All of this happened because the connection was clear to me between a successor of Muhammad, Muawiya, from the seventh century, and Woodrow Wilson. Everything that was fatalistic in Muawiya at that time came to light in the otherwise quite inexplicable fatalism—which sought to be nothing more than a fatalism of the will—in the fatalism of Woodrow Wilson. And one might say that anyone seeking confirmation or the origin of the well-known Fourteen Points will surely find it in the Qur’an. Such are the connections, my dear friends! In these matters, not the slightest trace of sympathy or antipathy must prevail; in these matters, no criticism must prevail—there must be the purest objectivity. But this objectivity leads us from one point in history, where a soul appears, to another. And one can certainly say that once humanity has moved a little beyond what still remains today from the materialistic era, people will begin to listen to and look at such things. And then they will feel quite differently within modern civilization, because they will see it in its broader context—not merely in terms of things that are dead, but in terms of things that are alive. That is what matters. The entire course of history will come alive. And if humanity wishes to move beyond the dead end of development at which it now stands in its civilization, it needs the living spirit—not the abstract, dead spirit of mere ideas.

[ 13 ] Historical analysis may be very reluctant to approach the spiritual in the way I discussed here in my public lecture a few days ago, but it must do so nonetheless. For external historical analysis, which can rely only on documents, is actually full of things that are difficult to understand. Something arises that one simply cannot fathom where it comes from. Why? Because one does not know its origins. The origins have been lost. It is precisely when one investigates such matters that many aspects of historical development come to life. But this also reveals many things that people have done in order to distort history—particularly regarding important matters—into something incorrect, something untrue.

[ 14 ] My dear friends, it will surely seem paradoxical to you, indeed strange, when a spiritual researcher, looking back on a relatively recent past, must conclude that a marvelous work of poetic art has been lost—utterly lost—due to the hostility of a certain spiritual movement. In the early centuries of Christian development, there existed a work of art in the southern regions of European civilization that depicted the innermost essence of the evolving civilization, immediately after Christianity had intervened in the development of the European people. This work of art, an epic drama or dramatic epic in its own right, depicted how, after Christianity had taken effect as a new phenomenon, human beings could not yet approach the real, true essence of Christ, but had to undergo a very specific preparation through the mysteries in order to approach the true essence of Christ.

[ 15 ] To understand what this is all about, one must realize the following: Christ made it very clear to his closest disciples how, in the thirtieth year, Christ—as a solar being, as a cosmic being—came to fill the being who was Jesus, who had been born over in the East. Jesus of Nazareth was born into a lunar religion; for what was the Yahweh, the Jehovah religion? What was Yahweh himself? When one looked up to Yahweh, one looked up to the human “I,” which is directly dependent on the physical human form—the very form with which we are born. But that which is born with us, that which is formed within us, that which is developed within us as we are shaped into an “I” in the mother’s womb, is dependent on the lunar forces. And Yahweh is, in fact, a lunar deity. And as people looked up to Yahweh, they said to themselves: Yahweh is the leader of the lunar beings, from whom come the forces that bring human beings into physical earthly existence. But if only lunar forces were at work in human beings, they would never be able to transcend what is predisposed within them in earthly life. Yet human beings cannot do this now; they were able to do so in earlier times. If we go back to prehistoric earthly times, we find something very remarkable that seems strange to people today. There we find how human beings—the majority of a certain class of people—experienced a complete transformation of the human soul in the thirtieth year of life. As strange and paradoxical as this may seem to people today, it was nevertheless the case in an era of which the Vedas offer only echoes. There were people in ancient India at that time: if they encountered someone they had seen three years earlier, they might, under certain circumstances, learn from that person that they had seen him; but they did not recognize him. They had forgotten everything that had happened up to the age of thirty; they had forgotten everything, even the identity of their own person. And so there was even an institution—we would call it an office today, since we call everything an office or an authority—there was an institution where such a person had to go to the office and be told where they had been born and who they were. These individuals were then given, within the Mysteries, the means to gradually recall their lives up to the age of thirty. They were the ones who were later called the “twice-born,” who owed their first existence to the forces of the Moon and their second earthly existence to the forces of the Sun.

[ 16 ] What in ancient times occurred so radically in the course of earthly life as such a metamorphosis—what was called “being born twice”—was attributed to the sun; and rightly so, for the forces of the sun are connected with everything that a human being can freely make of himself. But gradually, in the course of human evolution, it had come to pass that this no longer belonged to human development; that human beings no longer brought the awareness of it into the physical realm by looking up into the vastness of the cosmos. Julian the Apostate wanted to draw attention to the fact that this still existed, but he had to pay for it with his life. Christ, however, by imbuing his words with power, sought to bring to humanity—through morality and through religious-moral deepening—that which nature did not provide. It was Christ who taught people: If you feel as I feel, if, instead of looking toward the sun, you look toward what has been awakened within me—I who, as the last one, received the Word of the Sun at the age of thirty—then you will find the path back to the solar realm. — And the Mystery teachers of early Christianity knew very well: The mind will now develop—intellectuality—which, while bringing freedom to humankind, will also take away the old light that leads them into the spirituality of the cosmos.

[ 17 ] That is why these sages of the ancient Christian mysteries established a kind of teaching that was now presented in that epic drama, that dramatic epic, of which I spoke. It depicted a disciple of the Christian mysteries who, through the sacrifice of the intellect that he had to make at a certain age in his youth, was to be initiated into true Christianity, so that he might come to realize: Christ is a solar being who lived within Jesus of Nazareth from the thirtieth year of his life onward. And that drama movingly depicted how one who strives for the true essence of Christianity makes the sacrifice of the intellect in his young years, that is, makes a vow to the higher world powers not to cling to intellectuality, but to delve into his own inner being, so as to come to know Christianity not merely as something historical and traditional, but as something cosmic—to look upon the Christ as the one who bears the solar being within himself as spirituality. It was a dramatic scene of magnificent scope and profound content, depicting this transformation of a human being through the sacrifice of the intellect. And a person who had merely accepted Christianity according to the literal text of the Gospels—as it came to be later—became one who learned to look toward the cosmic, who beheld the living connection between Christ and the cosmos. For this hero of his, the development of clairvoyance into the cosmic dimension of Christianity represented that ancient epic drama. The Catholic Church ensured that every trace of this drama was eradicated. Nothing remains; the Catholic Church had sufficient power to do so. It is, for example, only by chance that a copy has survived of the works of a figure at the court of Charles the Bald, about whom we would otherwise know nothing: Scotus Erigena.

[ 18 ] Anyone who sees such things will not find it so paradoxical when, through spiritual research, one is compelled to point to this epic drama—this dramatic epic—which depicts, in a very real sense, the transformation of a human being through the vow of intellectual sacrifice, by which the heavens have been opened to him. But in tradition, many fragments of that ancient dramatic epic have been preserved, often altered, no longer understood within their broader context, and above all no longer understood in their original pictorial form; for what the content of this work of art represented has in many cases become the subject of painting. These paintings, too, have been lost; only traditions have survived. And something of these traditions was still passed down within a circle to which Dante’s teacher, Brunetto Latini, belonged. Dante learned something from this teacher—admittedly no longer in precise detail, but something traditional—and in Dante’s Divine Comedy something of that dramatic epic still lives on. But the work did indeed once exist, just as the Divine Comedy itself exists.

[ 19 ] As you can see, history does not correspond to reality, and much will have to be recovered through purely spiritual research from all that has been eradicated by the enemy. For a certain party has every interest in eradicating, root and branch, anything that draws attention to the fact that Christ originated in the cosmos. They have shifted the birth of the Christ to the thirtieth year, aligning it with the physical birth. None of what has since become Christian doctrine could have been achieved had they not eradicated that drama of which I have spoken today. Spiritual research will inevitably have to play a role if humanity is to continue to live on in its civilization. You are already familiar with the terrible harm caused by those illnesses that manifest as they did in someone I knew quite well—a man who held a highly respected position, who one day left his home and family, boarded a train, bought a ticket to a distant station, and suddenly forgot everything he had experienced in his life up to that point. His intellect was intact, but his memory was completely clouded, and when he arrived at that station, he bought another ticket, traveled in this way through Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Galicia, and finally, when his memory returned, found himself in a homeless shelter in Berlin.

[ 20 ] It is truly the ruin of the entire self to forget what one has gone through. Likewise, it would mean the ruin of the civilizational self—the self of European humanity—if it were to completely forget what it has historically endured and what has been eradicated from it. Only spiritual science can bring it back to that point.

[ 21 ] Even people who are relatively well-disposed—even to them, my dear friends—what spiritual science has to say still seems quite strange today. One cannot help but read with a certain irony what an otherwise such promising mind as Maurice Maeterlinck says about me—the founder of anthroposophy—in his essay titled “The Great Mystery.” Maurice Maeterlinck seems unable to deny that there is always something quite reasonable in the introductory chapters of my books. That strikes him. But then—then he enters into something that confuses him immensely, something he cannot get through. Well, one could paraphrase a saying by Lichtenberg: When books and a person collide, and it sounds hollow, that need not necessarily depend on the book. But that’s just how it is—Maurice Maeterlinck is certainly a high point of our contemporary culture—just think, one finds in his writings almost verbatim the following sentence: “In the introductions to his books, in the first chapters, Steiner always displays a thoughtful, logical, broad-minded spirit; then, in the subsequent chapters, it is as if he were going mad.” — Well, my dear friends, what does that actually mean? That would mean: First chapter: a thoughtful, logical, broad-minded spirit. Last chapter: madness. Now the book is finished, and a new one comes along. Again, at the beginning: a thoughtful, logical, broad-minded spirit; at the end: madness. I have written quite a number of books, so I would go through this process with a certain virtuosity: First chapter: a thoughtful, logical, broad-minded mind; then: confused, obstinate. And so, according to Maurice Maeterlinck, my books juggle these elements. But this kind of arbitrary approach to the subject has not yet been discovered in mental institutions.

[ 22 ] Now you see, one gets into even greater confusion when one approaches the books of those people who consider one to be narrow-minded. And so, from the irony with which one must accept some of these things, one can see how difficult it still is for people today to find their way into genuine spiritual research. But it must come. And so that it may not be said of us, my dear friends, that we failed to apply the necessary effort to bring about this spiritual deepening, the Christmas Conference was held—a conference intended to serve as a milestone for the further development of the Anthroposophical Society in the manner I have already outlined; which, above all, is intended to usher in a new era for the anthroposophical movement, in which we shall speak without hesitation about the concrete realities of spiritual life, as we have done again today and in the preceding lectures. A stronger impetus is needed than has been applied in the past if the spirit that humanity needs is to take hold.

[ 23 ] That is why, my dear friends, it has truly been a source of the deepest satisfaction for me to have been able, in these eleven lectures—which I was privileged to deliver either publicly or to more or less intimate audiences—to guide you a little into the depths of spiritual life. And out of this heartfelt satisfaction, let me express my most sincere thanks for the warm, heartfelt words that Professor Hauffen spoke here today at the beginning of this session. I thank you sincerely for your welcome, and I thank you sincerely for everything your souls have bestowed upon me during my time here. And you can be assured that I will carry the beautiful words spoken by Professor Hauffen in my soul, that from them will spring the thoughts I will always send to you, and that, when they reach their destination, they will dwell among you as you work here. After all, as anthroposophists, even when we are physically apart, we are united in spirit, and we should bear this in mind and know that we are together. For many years I was granted the opportunity to speak here in Prague on the most diverse aspects of spiritual life, and this has been a source of deep satisfaction to me. And this time especially so, because demands have been placed on your hearts and souls that are relatively new, since you had to approach what I had to say to you this time—I would say on a spiritual mission—with even greater open-mindedness. When I say “on a spiritual mission,” we interpret the phrase to mean that we say to one another: “In spirit, we remain together.” The executive committee that has been formed in Dornach is small; it consists only of those people who can be intimately connected with me in order to bring about, through this initiative, what is to be accomplished. Yet what is to be accomplished will be accomplished only if all dear friends work together wholeheartedly, above all in spiritual, anthroposophical unity of thought, feeling, and will.

[ 24 ] Please accept this, along with my thanks, as a heartfelt farewell—one that is meant to be something different, not a parting, but the beginning of a spiritual union. This union should, at its core, remain what emerges from each of our words. All the words spoken among us are meant to serve the purpose of bringing us ever closer and closer together. In this spirit, let me, my dear friends, with a heart full of emotion, promise you that I will be with you, that my thoughts will dwell among you, and that they will seek among you one of the places where anthroposophical will and anthroposophical spiritual currents may take effect in the proper way. Let us part physically in this spirit, but let us remain deeply united in spirit! Anthroposophy as the foundation of knowledge regarding the spiritual in the world and in human beings, and as a soul impulse for moral and religious life.