The Rudolf Steiner Archive

10. Wisdom - Beauty - Goodness Michael — Gabriel - Raphael

following eurythmic-dramatic performances of the “Dedication” and the “Prologue in Heaven”

[ 1 ] In recent weeks, we have spoken of the three great, highest ideals of humanity and have referred to these three ideals—as they have always been referred to throughout history—as the ideals of wisdom, beauty, and goodness.

[ 2 ] In more recent times, these three highest ideals of humanity have consistently been associated with the three human soul powers known to us and considered in a wide variety of contexts. The ideal of wisdom has been associated with thinking or a mental image; the ideal of beauty with feeling; and the ideal of goodness with volition.

[ 3 ] Wisdom can only come to a person through clear mental images and clear thinking. The object of art—beauty—cannot be grasped in this way. Feeling is the power of the soul that is primarily concerned with beauty, as the psychologists—the researchers of the soul—have long maintained. And what manifests itself as the good in the world is connected to the will. It seems quite plausible what the psychologists—the experts on the soul—have said about the relationships between the three great human ideals and the various powers of the soul. By way of a sort of supplement, we might add that Kant wrote three Critiques, one of which—the *Critique of Pure Reason*—is intended to serve wisdom, because it seeks to critique the faculty of representation. Kant called another Critique the “Critique of Judgment,” and he divides it into two parts: the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” and the “Critique of Teleological Judgment.” Essentially, when Kant speaks here of the faculty of judgment, he means that which is determined in sensuous cognition, through which one affirms that something is beautiful or ugly, useful or harmful. Thus, we could—as a subdivision specifically in this Kantian sense, and others have indeed retained this terminology—speak of the faculty of judgment—whereby we do not merely think of the judgment of a mental image, but rather of the fact that the judgment comes from the heart—as relating to the apprehension of the beautiful. And a third of Kant’s Critiques is the “Critique of Practical Reason,” which relates to the will, to the pursuit of the good.

[ 4 ] Now we can find what I have just said in the work of all psychologists, with the exception of one who emerged in the second half of the 19th century and who concluded that this entire classification of human mental faculties does not hold up; it does not accord with an unbiased examination of the human soul. Nor does the attribution of humanity’s great ideals to the various mental faculties—mental images, emotion, and volition—hold true, such that wisdom is assigned to mental images as the highest ideal, beauty to emotion, and goodness to volition. The psychologist to whom I am referring, Franz Brentano, believed he had to overturn the entire doctrine I have just outlined and, one might say, fundamentally restructure the organization of human mental life. He assigns beauty—let us assume—to the mental image. You see, while everyone else assigns feeling—or rather, the faculty of judgment, the aesthetic faculty of judgment, indeed the faculty of judgment in general—to beauty, Brentano assigns the mental image to beauty. To wisdom, insofar as it is something that human beings acquire, Brentano assigns the faculty of judgment; he does not say feeling specifically, but rather the faculty of judgment. And as for volition—curiously enough, he even downplays it by focusing not at all on the unfolding of the will or the volitional impulse, but rather on what underlies the volitional impulse: sympathy and antipathy. — There is much to be said for viewing things this way. Language itself, for example, sometimes leads us to associate the impulse of the will with sympathy and antipathy. When we say, for instance, “to feel aversion toward something”—in that case, we do not will anything at all, but we feel antipathy toward something. And so Brentano, in a sense, reduces volition to sympathy and antipathy and attributes to volition this sympathy and antipathy—saying yes or no to something. He does not go as far as the volitional impulse, but only to what underlies the will: saying yes or no to something, affirming or denying a thing.

[ 5 ] Through a mental image, Brentano argues, one never arrives at a true—that is, a wise—insight, but only at an insight in general. He suggests, for example, that one imagine a winged horse. There is nothing wrong with creating a mental image of a winged horse. But—and we must bear in mind that Brentano lives in the age of materialism—it is not wise to create a mental image of a winged horse, because a winged horse has no reality. Something else must be added when one forms a mental image. But that something is the recognition or non-recognition of the mental image by the faculty of judgment; only then does wisdom emerge.

[ 6 ] We might ask ourselves: What, so to speak, underlies such a complete reversal of the powers of the soul? What led Brentano to distribute the powers of the soul—beauty, goodness, and wisdom—in a manner entirely different from that of other psychologists? If one investigates why Brentano arrived at this distinct structure of human psychological life, one can find no answer other than by taking into account Brentano’s own personal developmental path. The other psychologists of modern times are people who have, for the most part, emerged from the recent development of worldviews. It is a characteristic of modern philosophers—of all philosophers—that they are relatively well-versed in Greek philosophy—in their own way, of course—and then, in essence, philosophy begins anew with Kant. And modern philosophers know very little about what lies between Greek philosophy and Kant. Kant himself knew little more about everything that lay between Greek philosophy and his own work than what he had read in Descartes and Berkeley; he knew nothing of the entire development of medieval philosophy. Kant was completely ignorant of what is called medieval scholasticism. And those who, in their own way, are quick to exaggerate, find in this very reason—precisely because Kant knew nothing of scholasticism—to regard scholasticism in general as a bundle of pedantic follies and to refrain from studying it further. The fact that Kant knew nothing about Scholasticism does not mean that he also knew nothing about Greek philosophy. Others simply knew more than he did in this field. — Brentano, however, was a thorough expert on Scholasticism, a thorough expert on medieval philosophy, and, moreover, a thorough expert on Aristotle. As for those who view the world of philosophy through Kant’s lens, they are not connoisseurs—not true connoisseurs—of Aristotle, for Aristotle, the great Greek, was, in fact, the one most maltreated in the history of the development of modern intellectual life. Brentano, then, was a thorough expert on Aristotle and Scholasticism, but not merely what one might call a “historical expert”—that is, someone who simply knew what Aristotle wrote and what the Scholastics wrote—for as far as such knowledge is concerned, one can form one’s own opinions by reviewing the history of philosophy! Brentano was, from the very core, a person who had immersed himself in both the philosophy of Aristotle and that of Scholasticism—in this solitary thinking that had been carried out in monastic cells over the centuries, in this thinking that operated with a thorough technique of conceptual thought, with that very technique of conceptual thought that has been entirely lost to modern thought. Those who therefore took psychology courses with Brentano in the 1870s and 1880s essentially heard a completely different tone of human thought than what could be heard—and still is heard—in other philosophers of more recent times. There truly lived within Brentano something like an undertone of that which spoke from the soul of the Scholastics. And this is significant because he derived this distinct classification from this different mode of thinking. So that we can say: There is the peculiar fact that all the modern thinkers, for whom Scholasticism was and remains merely a web of concepts, portray the human soul and its relationships to wisdom, beauty, and goodness as follows:

Wisdom: Mental image
Beauty: Feeling
Goodness: Will.

[ 7 ] Brentano embodied all the feelings and inner impulses that resided in the heart of a scholastic, to the extent that such a thing is possible in the present day. He had to think this way; he had to organize the human soul differently in terms of its faculties and relate it to the great ideals of humanity. Where does this come from?

[ 8 ] If you had been able to decide today to ask the angels up on stage—and especially the three archangels—how they classify souls and how they relate them to the great ideals, then they would have answered you—albeit in a much more perfect way than Brentano could—with an answer similar to the one Brentano gave. Raphael, Gabriel, and Michael would not understand that classification on their own, but they would easily find their way into it—only they would reshape it more perfectly into the classification that Brentano provided. Here we touch upon a significant fact concerning the spiritual development of humanity. No matter how far removed we may be today from the mode of thinking of the scholastic Middle Ages, there was something underlying this mode of thinking that can be described roughly as follows. When speaking of the highest things, the scholastic did not attempt to remain confined to what takes place directly on the physical plane; rather, the scholastic first sought to prepare his soul so that the spiritual beings of the higher world might speak through him. In many respects, this will be a stammering of the human soul, because, of course, the human soul will always be able to represent only imperfectly that which is the language of the higher spirits, superior to human beings. But this is how the scholastics wished, to a certain extent, to speak of the spiritual affairs of human beings—as a soul must speak when it surrenders itself to what supersensible spirits have to say.

[ 9 ] Here on the physical plane, we have become accustomed to forming our opinions—whether in agreement or disagreement with what makes a mental image valid or wise—based on the external physical world, ever since the age of materialism became the true age of humanity. We say that a winged horse is not a valid mental image because we have never seen a winged horse. Materialism regards a mental image as a wise one if it corresponds to what the external world dictates.

[ 10 ] But put yourself in the realm of the angels. They do not have this physical external world, for this physical external world is essentially conditioned by dwelling in a physical body and by possessing physical sense organs, which the angels do not have. How do angels come to regard their mental images as valid, as true mental images? By entering into relationships with other spiritual beings. For as soon as one crosses the threshold into the spiritual world, this world of the senses ceases to extend itself as it does before the senses. I have often described how, as soon as one crosses the threshold into the spiritual world, one enters a world consisting entirely of spiritual beings. And whether a mental image one forms is valid or invalid depends on the way in which these beings present themselves to one. Thus, when Brentano speaks merely of the power of judgment, he is not speaking quite correctly. He ought to speak of the revelation of being. Then one would attain wisdom. Once one has crossed the threshold into the spiritual world, one cannot attain wisdom except by entering into a proper relationship with the spiritual beings that lie beyond that threshold. Anyone who cannot develop a proper relationship with the elemental beings, with the beings of the various hierarchies, can only develop confused mental images—not correct mental images, not mental images imbued with wisdom. Viewing the beings beyond the threshold to the spiritual world correctly—this is what determines a correct mental image of what lies beyond the threshold; this is what determines wisdom regarding the spiritual worlds to which the human soul also belongs. Because—as you will find described in the concluding chapter of my *Theosophy*—human beings have no point of reference in an external physical reality, they must, in matters of wisdom, rely on the communications of the elemental beings, the beings of the higher hierarchies, and so on. We enter a world that is full of life, not a world in which we merely become photographers of reality.

[ 11 ] Brentano, in a sense, provided the final abstract imitation of the language of the angels. Angels would say: Wisdom is that which corresponds to the context of the messages from beings who are beyond the threshold of the spiritual worlds. —It is not enough merely to form a mental image; rather, this mental image must be in harmony with what the spiritual beings beyond the threshold reveal. Mere conceptualization, therefore, must not serve wisdom beyond the threshold. To what, then, may it serve? To the appearance in which beauty lives. If one applies a mental image to reality beyond the threshold without further thought, one will not arrive at a correct mental image. But one may apply it to the appearance in which beauty acts and lives. Here Brentano was entirely correct in relating imagination to beauty. For when the angels wish to imagine, they will always ask themselves: What kinds of mental images may we form? Never ugly ones, but always beautiful ones. — But these mental images that they form—and which they form in accordance with the ideal of beauty—will not correspond to reality unless they correspond to the revelations of other beings they encounter in the spiritual world. There, mental images are truly to be assigned only to beauty. Angels have the ideal of representing things in such a way that their entire world of mental images is permeated and illuminated by the ideal of beauty. And you need only read the chapter of my *Theosophy* that deals with the world of the soul, and study there the two forces as they are found beyond the threshold to the spiritual world—the two forces of sympathy and antipathy—and you will see how the relationship between sympathy and antipathy underlies the impulses of the will there. So this, too, corresponds in a certain respect. One must, however, relate this to the life of the soul—how this life, emerging from the subconscious, still arises from the soul world in the soul of modern humanity. There you see how a modern philosopher, precisely because he has, in a sense, atavistically preserved the scholasticism of the Middle Ages in his heart, attempts—albeit in the imperfect language of modern materialism—to speak in the terminology of angels. It is an extraordinarily interesting fact. Otherwise, one cannot understand at all how Brentano opposed the whole of modern psychology to such an extent that he distinguished the powers of the soul quite differently from other psychologists and assigned them to the highest ideals of humanity in a different way.

[ 12 ] But consider what is said here in all its implications. Consider all the consequences. When we cross the threshold into the spiritual world, we live in a world of beings, as I said, insofar as we speak of reality. There, then, we cannot form such abstract concepts in the same sense as we do here in the physical world when we speak of reality. We must have beings. So, when we speak of the Real, we must say: It cannot be that wisdom, beauty, and goodness have the same meaning in the spiritual world over there as they do here in the physical world. Otherwise, they would again be abstract concepts, such as we can use here in the physical world. Over there, there must be beings. — So, as soon as we speak in the sense of wisdom itself—that is, when seeking something real—there must be beings over there, not merely what is designated in the abstract as wisdom, beauty, or goodness. When one speaks of beauty in the spiritual world, one cannot say: Beauty exists there as maya, as an illusion in the spiritual world. — Just as beauty and wisdom are imprinted on the physical world—for example, when we portray wise beauty in drama or other works of art, or when we portray goodness in beauty in drama or other works of art, and see how all this interconnects—so too do wisdom, beauty, and goodness operate in the realm of beauty beyond the threshold. But we must not then speak of them as mental images; we must not apply them over there in the same way we apply them here. So let us suppose that someone wanted to speak from over there, and wanted to speak from over there with the power of the soul that corresponds to our power of imagination; then he could not say: wisdom, beauty, strength—for these are abstract ideas—but would have to refer to entities. Wisdom would have to appear as an entity over there.

[ 13 ] In the language of the ancient mysteries, people were well aware of what I am now explaining, and they therefore introduced terms that could express this—terms that do not refer to mere abstract ideas, but to something essential. There must be a being on the other side of the threshold that corresponds to what wisdom is here—a being. If you reflect on it, you will easily see that a being we might call the “God-beholder,” the one who beholds God, could be such a being that corresponds to wisdom on the other side: the God-beholder.

[ 14 ] A being that corresponds to beauty—our abstract idea of beauty on the physical plane—would have to reveal itself. Beauty reveals itself; it is the radiance, the shining, that which shines. The moment one crosses the threshold, that which is far more alive than here on the physical plane appears. When we speak of beauty—the essential beauty—we are not speaking of something so silent or existing merely in human, physical abstractions of hearing or language, as is the case here on the physical plane. It is all revelation, living revelation. And if you take what I am saying now together with what has been said earlier, you will understand that the ancient mysteries coined a term for what corresponds to beauty on the other side of the threshold—something that can be described as the proclamation of God. The Word of God, or perhaps “God-proclaimer,” “God-announcer.” One could also say “Word of God.”

[ 15 ] Likewise, there must be a being for the will: the God-willing one. Not the abstract concept, as we have it in our soul as “will,” but a being must exist beyond the threshold for the will. “God-willer”—if we may coin the term. Why, after all, should we limit ourselves to forming only those words that are already in common use, since we are entering realms for which no words have even been coined! “God-willer,” so to speak. God has within Himself—if we take “God” as a collective term for the spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies—not merely a will, as we have in our souls, but a willer: this is essential to His nature. What for us are merely the three soul forces—mental images, feeling, and will—are beings in God: the God-beholder, the God-proclaimer, and the God-willer. And if one—as you know, I have often mentioned on other occasions what has happened to translations over the course of time—takes the ancient Hebrew expressions, they correspond completely to the words I have attempted to coin here. Certainly, you will not find the translation of these words in any Hebrew dictionary, but if one immerses oneself in what was intended, one would actually have to translate the ancient Hebrew words with these words today—and in such a way that “Beholder of God” means exactly the same thing in our language as Michael; “Proclaimer of God” means exactly the same as Gabriel; and “Willer of God” means exactly the same as Raphael. While we act in the physical world through our three soul forces, the beings of the higher hierarchies act through beings themselves. Just as we act through mental images, feeling, and willing, so does a God act through Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael. And for a God, this means the same thing: “I act through Michael, Gabriel, Raphael”—which for our soul means: “I act through thinking, feeling, and willing.” This translation—“I act through thinking, feeling, and willing”—into “I act through Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael” is simply the translation from the language of human beings into the language that should be spoken—if one speaks the true language that prevails there—beyond the threshold to the spiritual world. Incidentally, if you open yourself to certain descriptions in the Bible—provided you feel with reasonable objectivity and do not feel in a way that corresponds to today’s interpretation of the Bible, which is a misinterpretation in many respects—you will be able to sense how this must truly be understood in relation to Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael.

Wisdom: Discernment - Gottschauer; Michael
Revelation of Essence

Beauty: Mental Image — Messenger of God: Gabriel
Discernment

Quality: Sympathy, Affirmation / Antipathy, Negation —
Gottwoller: Raphael

[ 16 ] With this in mind, think back to the way Gabriel, Michael, and Raphael speak in Goethe’s “Prologue in Heaven.” One can only say that one is deeply moved by the instinctive certainty with which this “Prologue in Heaven” suggests how the willful essence of the Deity manifests itself through Raphael, the contemplative essence of the Deity through Michael, and the essence of the Deity that reveals itself in beauty—the self-revealing, self-proclaiming essence of the Deity—through Gabriel. The will of the Deity lies in the harmony of the spheres, lies in what is expressed in the great movements of the celestial bodies and in what takes place there as the celestial bodies move:

The sun resounds in the ancient way
A contest of song in the spheres of the brothers,
And its prescribed journey
It completes with a thunderous roar.
The sight of it gives strength to the angels,

[ 17 ] — one could also say: goodness, the strength of the supermoral life beyond the threshold. That is why some also refer to the three powers of the soul—wisdom, beauty, and goodness—as wisdom, beauty, and strength.

If no one cares to fathom them;

[ 18 ] — it’s a real struggle to get the Faust commentators to stick to this line: “If no one can fathom her.” Most people say: Oh yes, Goethe simply meant “even if,” or “although,” or “despite the fact that” no one wishes to fathom her. But that is not how a truly great poet speaks—I have mentioned this many times before, specifically in reference to Goethe—that is not how a great poet speaks. Fathoming belongs to wisdom, as it exists within the human physical world. Beyond the threshold, everything is a becoming acquainted with spiritual beings whom one encounters just as one encounters people here who must also retain an inner life, whom one cannot fully fathom. This fathoming, in the sense that it occurs here on earth, does not exist at all for the angels. They have spiritual reality before them; they do not fathom it; they behold, because each is also endowed with something of Michael’s power of vision. Each possesses something of the other’s power, just as every soul force possesses something of the other—for example, the power of mental image possesses something of the power of will, for if we could not will when forming a mental image, we would only ever dream, and so on. Thus, Raphael, too, naturally possesses something of Michael and Gabriel within himself.

The incomprehensibly lofty works

[ 19 ] Are as magnificent as on the first day.

[ 20 ] Try to experience these two lines with all the feelings that Spiritual Science can evoke in you!

The Incomprehensibly Lofty Works

[ 21 ] — the ones described there

They're just as wonderful as they were on the first day.

[ 22 ] What does that mean? They are not glorious as they were on that day, glorious as on the first day. Just as they were glorious back then—that is, manifesting themselves, revealing themselves to the angels—they are still Luciferic. For what has remained behind is, after all, Luciferic. One must truly apply the insights gained through Spiritual Science. The stars shine in a Luciferic way, just as they did on the first day. They have not progressed; they retain their original character—yet another reason why the angels do not fathom them, but simply behold them. For angels, the Luciferic is visible. It does not make the angels evil. I have often described the Luciferic as a necessity in the development of the worlds. Here it is presented to you as something that stands before the angels: Lucifer—not as he reigns over human beings—but as he magnificently sustains the indescribably lofty works as they were on the first day. And in sublime language, we are led to see how the Luciferic manifests itself throughout the cosmos, and how the angels are permitted to behold it just as they did on the first day. There, it is justified. Yet it must not descend into the physical world to humanity in the ordinary way in which it lives above, in the world beyond the threshold. And the world, which is swept through and thundered through by the World Will, is first proclaimed on Earth. Up there it is to remain unfathomable; there it is not to be fathomed. Here on Earth, with the powers allotted to human beings, it exists so that what is unfathomable to angels

[ 23 ] be fathomed by human wisdom. But Gabriel, the herald of God, the Word of God, can only hint at it as he beholds it from outside the earth. Recall the profound biblical passage: “Before the mystery of the Incarnation, they veiled their faces.” In this profound biblical passage lies the entirety of what is unfathomable to the angels—the worlds that are accessible to human beings through the wisdom developed on Earth. And here, the language of angels is spoken in the “Prologue in Heaven”; therefore, Gabriel, the herald of God, describes from the outside that which reveals itself on Earth as wisdom.

And swiftly, with incomprehensible speed
The Earth’s splendor whirls around;
The brightness of paradise alternates
With a deep, eerie night;

[ 24 ] This is how it looks from the outside: the world in which we live here, which we are trying to unravel, and which affects us through our senses. Out there, it is the wonderful alternation of day and night.

The sea foams in wide streams

[ 25 ] Human well-being and misfortune depend on this; out there, it reveals itself only as that which, in its foaming, forms the spherical Earth.

At the very bottom of the cliffs,
And rock and sea are swept away
In the eternally swift course of the spheres.

[ 26 ] Our entire earthly destiny, bound to our sensory life, is tied to this. The herald of God depicts it from outside the Earth.

[ 27 ] And how does the meaning of the Earth reveal itself? By looking not only at what is valid within the sphere of human perception, but also at what sends its effect out into the universe. Gabriel describes the Earth as it appears from the outside, but he describes what has significance for human beings within the sphere of perception. Michael, the seer of God, describes what radiates out into the universe and also has significance for the Earth’s surroundings, for the entire celestial sphere. Therefore, he begins with the outer sphere, not below, where the sea flows and the rivers flow, but with the

[ 28 ] Circles. He looks at the circle.

And storms rage in competition with one another,

[ 29 ] What a profound statement!

From the sea to the land, from the land to the sea,
And furiously form a chain
Of the deepest impact all around.

[ 30 ] Just create a mental image, as seen from the outside, let’s say, of the trade winds that blow in regular streams out there. Our limited natural science describes everything that goes on in these atmospheric phenomena, but this natural science is, after all, limited. When one examines the regularities in atmospheric phenomena, one discovers a deep connection between these regular atmospheric phenomena and the phases of the moon, the lunar phenomena, but not because the Moon causes what takes place in the atmosphere, but because, to the same extent and in parallel, the ancient laws of the Moon still govern the Moon today, and atmospheric phenomena, too, are still a legacy of those ancient laws of the Moon. It is not that the Moon governs atmospheric phenomena and the tides, but rather that both are governed in the same way—in parallel—by causes that extend far back in time. What takes place in the atmosphere in this way is therefore significant not only for what affects human beings within the sphere of the senses, but also for what happens out there in the universe. We look up at the lightning; we hear the thunder. But the gods, too, watch the lightning and hear the thunder from the other side. And for them, it signifies something entirely different—which can be discussed another time—than it does for us humans here, who do not understand lightning and thunder at all. But Michael, the God-seer, understands from the Earth precisely that which plays out on the other side as lightning and thunder, which I have described here —remember the first lecture I gave here again this summer—as the subterranean realm of the human soul, as the thunderstorms of the human soul, which I explained to you using the character of Weininger, who died young. Whatever corresponds to these thunderstorms in the human soul, in the atmosphere, radiates outward. And just as the storms of the soul within us are harmonized and tempered when we shower them with our higher soul forces, so too does that which rages and thunders here in our atmosphere—and is irregular in meteorological terms—become regular and harmonious as it radiates out into the universe. Just as we, when we develop, do not remain stuck in the storms but progress toward the harmony of the soul’s life. Down below, lightning and thunder reign

But your messengers,

[ 31 ] - the angels —

Lord, I revere
The gentle passing of your day.

[ 32 ] From the sphere of the angels, as seen from the outside, everything comes together in gentleness and harmony.

The sight gives strength to the angels,

[ 33 ] —that is, he encourages her will

Since no one wants to fathom you,

[ 34 ] — it is not a matter of fathom[ing], but of beholding!

And all your mighty works
Are as glorious as on the first day.

[ 35 ] In other words: they are Luciferic; they exist for the angels, but they are not meant to influence human beings in the same way. Lucifer is the unauthorized presence in the human world, insofar as he transfers his rightful domain—which belongs to the spiritual world—into the human world and applies there the very same laws that he should apply only outside, in the spiritual world.

[ 36 ] And do you recall how, in other lectures, drawing on Goethe’s *Faust*, I analyzed the ambiguity that still lingered within Goethe when he was writing *Faust*? I told you at the time that Goethe had not yet properly distinguished between Lucifer and Ahriman. Mephistopheles is actually Ahriman, who has simply remained behind in a different way than Lucifer. But this distinction has only been established by modern Spiritual Science. Goethe constantly confuses Lucifer and Ahriman, mixing them up, so that his Mephistopheles is truly a confused figure in this regard, possessing both Luciferic and Ahrimanic traits. Had Goethe already had access to Spiritual Science, this hopeless confusion regarding the character of Mephistopheles would certainly not have arisen. I said this even back then: I ask that you not accuse me of not revering Goethe enough, or of offering petty, philistine criticism, because I say this. — By speaking the truth, one is truly no less worthy of reverence for any genius than if one were merely to heap praise upon him. I believe that no one can accuse me of having little reverence for Goethe based on what I have written and said about him. But I must always emphasize—when speaking from the impulse of Spiritual Science—that his Mephistopheles is a confused spiritual character. Had Goethe known the whole truth, then, according to the verse:

And all your mighty works
Are as glorious as on the first day

[ 37 ] First appeared Lucifer, the one who acts through the radiance of the spherical world, through the beauty of the spherical world. Lucifer would stand there. And because Lucifer has Ahriman as his companion—Mephistopheles, who is one and the same as Ahriman—Mephistopheles would then step forward, or Lucifer would step aside, and Mephistopheles would appear. That is what Goethe would have done if he had already possessed Spiritual Science in its present form. Today we would first have seen a red Lucifer and only then the gray-black Ahriman, the gray-black Mephistopheles. But Goethe did not get that far. Therefore, he merely has Mephistopheles appear, who in his own way also unites within himself the residual qualities that are meant to work up above in the spiritual world and not to work their way into human life in a human manner. Goethe sensed this—he sensed it correctly. That is why not everything about this Mephistopheles quite adds up, and yet it does. The intuition at work here feels much more certain than Goethe’s original conception ever did. Much of what approaches Faust as temptation truly comes from Mephistopheles, but other elements cannot really be attributed to Mephistopheles. The fact that Faust is to find temptation in base passions cannot really come from Ahriman; it can only come from Lucifer. And when Ahriman-Mephistopheles says this, Goethe subconsciously recalls that this doesn’t quite work. In reality, Mephistopheles would have to have Lucifer at his side. That is why Mephistopheles also says: “Let him eat dust”—that is, let him live in base passions—“like my aunt, the famous serpent.” That is Lucifer. “There he recalls his aunt, good Aunt Lucifer!” There you have the allusion to Lucifer, who is actually supposed to be there.

[ 38 ] As you can see, this “Prologue in Heaven” contains immensely profound mysteries of the world; by this I do not mean to say that Goethe intended to portray them as we perceive them today in Spiritual Science. But instinctive wisdom is often much deeper than what is apparent. And in ancient times, there was only instinctive wisdom, and that was truly a higher wisdom than the one produced today by limited natural science.

[ 39 ] Thus Mephistopheles-Ahriman has entered the physical world, where he ought not to be. What he has to say is also at odds with the physical world and with the intentions that the Deity holds for the physical world. He wants to rule the world, but he finds everything “utterly wretched.” He must be different from the others—from the true sons of God—because he is meant to be here in the physical world, where deeds are to be fathomed. Since Mephistopheles has entered the physical world at all, the saying that he should not fathom the world does not apply to him; he must fathom it. Yet on Earth he is a half-being; as a spiritual being, he does not truly belong here. He ought to fathom—and yet cannot fathom. That is why he finds everything “utterly wretched.” To what extent he is here to create—we will speak of that tomorrow in connection with other teachings of Spiritual Science. Today we will say only this much.

[ 40 ] So this Ahriman-Mephistopheles is different here in the physical world from the true Sons of the Gods. He must truly be employed here for a different purpose. He must act upon what is real in the physical world, unlike the true Sons of the Gods. They do not need to include the earthly-real in their mental images. They take delight in the “vibrant, rich beauty”—the beauty within their mental images. There is a discrepancy between the angels—the true sons of the gods—and Ahriman, Mephistopheles. For them, the following applies: the angels cannot act as Mephistopheles does; they take delight in the vibrant, rich beauty.

That which is coming to be, which eternally acts and lives,
Encircle yourselves with the gentle bounds of love.

[ 41 ] This is pretty much the deepest part of the prologue. Remember what we said about the cosmos of wisdom and the cosmos of love. And recall once more these words: “They veiled their faces from the mystery of the Incarnation.” — Love does not function in the same way for the Sons of God of Wisdom as it does for human beings: they are beings within Wisdom; there are barriers for the true Sons of God. And as they live in the great maya, in the glory of the Luciferic world, they weave in the “enduring thoughts,” which in turn are beings, not abstract ideas; they are forces, not mere thoughts.

[ 42 ] It is actually quite remarkable how this “Prologue in Heaven” was composed in 1797—one might say not in the language of humans, but in the language of the gods—and how long it will take humanity to fathom all the depths of this prologue. I believe it is possible to empathize a little with the feelings that stirred within Goethe when, spurred on by Schiller, he set out again in 1797 to continue *Faust*, which he had begun years earlier. It began there: “I have now, alas, studied philosophy, law,” and so on. Then the three sections are missing: “Dedication,” “Prelude in the Theater,” “Prologue in Heaven.” Then the entire Easter Walk was missing. Some scenes were then written during the Italian journey of 1787, and, spurred on by Schiller, Goethe set to work on it again. At that time, he probably thought back to the days when he had not yet taken *Faust* so deeply to heart, when he had regarded it—albeit already quite deeply—as the story of one who strives to step beyond the threshold of the world of physical reality and into the spiritual world, toward the Earth Spirit, and so on. But at that time, he—the twenty-year-old Goethe—could not approach it the way he did now, at the end of the century, in 1797, when he himself felt that he truly did not understand much of what he had to express in the “Prologue in Heaven” in an abstract sense. For there the language of the angels reigns. Those who heard the first cantos of *Faust* would have had to develop alongside Goethe in the same way that Goethe himself developed, if they had wanted to understand what had become of the entire rich world of *Faust* in Goethe’s soul by the year 1797. It had become something else. What he had created as a young man now appeared to him in a higher sphere. He must have sensed, at least in part, that gaze down from the spirit realm—from beyond the threshold—into the earthly world where Faust himself walked, the one who says: “I have now, alas, studied philosophy, law...” and so on, “...thoroughly, with fervent effort.” Goethe could already say at that time that he and his comrades had enjoyed something different back then than what had now become of him. And he may have sensed how little he would be understood. For Goethe had already sensed, from the late 1790s onward, that something like a spiritual science would have to emerge if what he had instinctively perceived and felt as worldly wisdom, worldly beauty, and worldly strength were to be fully understood.

They do not hear the following songs,
The souls to whom I first sang them;
The friendly throng has scattered,
Alas! the first echo has faded away.

[ 43 ] An echo from the souls to whom he read the first scenes of *Faust*, which he had written when he was twenty: the first echo. Understanding, however, back then—for even that time has now passed in this age of materialism—understanding, that is, for a character like Faust crossing the threshold, understanding for the appeal to the Earth Spirit, who “weaves and lives in the floods of life, in the storm of deeds.” But to remain stuck at this level of understanding, to be unable to rise to what Goethe had to bring himself to do. Hence—now that an angelic language prevails and the whole is viewed from a different perspective—the old resonance is no more. Gone, alas!—that old resonance! Scattered are the souls for whom he sang his first songs. That suffering which everyone who truly wishes to behold the spiritual world must endure—Goethe knew it and knew that, in his time, he stood alone with this suffering.

My sorrow resounds among the unknown crowd.

[ 44 ] The situation today is not much different, so much so that the applause people give to *Faust* might give one cause for concern. For what do people today still hear of the profound wisdom that prevails in *Faust*, other than mere superficialities!?

[ 45 ] But Goethe might have said, when he now felt that he had to raise his song—the song of his suffering—into the sphere of the spirit realm: What was once reality to me now drifts far away into the vastness, and what once vanished becomes reality—the silent, solemn realm of the spirits, toward which one approaches with that shudder one feels when one senses something of the entirely different form that the world takes beyond the threshold and on this side of the threshold. Thus, this “Dedication” also sprang from a deep sense of future possibilities within Goethe. If Spiritual Science could, in such cases, deepen human hearts so that they are able to truly take to heart what must be taken deeply, then Spiritual Science would fulfill one of its tasks. For true, deeply true is the saying I quoted here only recently: “The world is deep, and deeper than the day is thought,” that is, than that day which shows us only the physical, sensory environment. The world is deep, as it is revealed to us by that night which, though it is night and darkness in contrast to the physical day, is into which we carry that light which we kindle in our own soul as a lamp, and which we must then illuminate ourselves. The world is deep, and it must be fathomed by a light that we first kindle through our spiritual striving, so that it may shine in the spiritual world. Then it will shine like the light in the eternally becoming, which acts and lives and in which the beings of the higher world must dwell, so that what they need may be revealed to them—namely, to consolidate with enduring thoughts that which hovers in a fluctuating appearance.

[ 46 ] We will then continue our discussion from this point tomorrow.

[ 47 ] I’d just like to ask our friends from Basel not to bring any children tomorrow. Since this scene—due to the presence of the figure from hell introduced to you today—is truly not suitable for children’s imaginations and dreams, we must, as an exception this time, make this request: please do not bring anyone under the age of fifteen or sixteen tomorrow.