The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. The Faust Problem

after a performance of the study-room scene from Faust I

[ 1 ] Today, I would like to build on what I have just presented in order to arrive at a coherent whole, which will then make it possible to take a more comprehensive look at the subject tomorrow.

[ 2 ] We have seen how the transition from the 14th and 15th centuries to the 16th, 17th centuries marks an extraordinarily significant turning point in the entire development of humanity—the transition from the Greco-Latin era to our fifth post-Atlantean epoch, the epoch in which we now live, from which our impulses for all knowledge and also for all action flow, the epoch that will last until the fourth millennium. Now, from everything you know about Goethe’s Faust and about the connection between this Goethean Faust with the Faust figure as it originates from the 16th-century legend, you will realize that both this 16th-century Faust figure and what Goethe’s vision shaped from it are intimately connected with all the transitional impulses that the new age has brought forth, both in a spiritual sense and thus also in an outwardly material sense. Now, in Goethe’s case, the reality is that this very problem—the emergence of the new age and the continuing influence of its impulses—was so immensely powerful that he was entirely inspired, throughout the sixty years he spent creating his Faust, by the question: What are the most important tasks and the most significant attitudes of modern humanity? And Goethe was truly able to look back on the bygone age—an age of which even modern scholarship knows so little today—that bygone age which came to an end with the 14th and 15th centuries. What history tells us—as I have often said—about the spiritual disposition of people, about the human capacities and needs of earlier centuries, is, after all, something that is really quite “dry theory.” The inner lives of people in earlier centuries—the centuries that preceded the age of Faust—looked vastly different from those of people today, from the inner lives of the present epoch of humanity. And Goethe was so right to embody in his Faust a figure, a personality, who looks back on the state of mind of people in earlier centuries—centuries long past—and who at the same time looks forward to the tasks of the present and the tasks of the future.

[ 3 ] As Faust first looks back on what preceded his own age, he can essentially see only the ruins of a culture that has come to an end. We must always first consider the Faust of the 16th century, who is a historical figure who actually lived and who then became part of folk legend. This Faust still lived immersed in the ancient sciences he had mastered; he lived immersed in magic, alchemy, and mysticism—which constituted the wisdom of earlier centuries, notably the wisdom of the era preceding Christianity—but which, by the time the historical Faust of the 16th century lived, was already in a state of profound decline. What was regarded in Faust’s time as alchemy, magic, and mysticism by those among whom Faust lived was by then nothing but a jumble of nonsense—a jumble based on traditions and legacies from earlier times, but one that people no longer understood. The wisdom that lived within it was no longer known. People had all sorts of sound formulas from ancient times, all sorts of correct insights from ancient times, but they understood them only poorly. Thus, in this respect, the historical Faust was placed in an age of a decaying spiritual life. And Goethe continually blends what the historical Faust experienced with what he shaped into the Faust of the 18th century, the Faust of the 19th century, and indeed the Faust of many centuries yet to come. That is why we also see Goethe’s Faust looking back to the old magic, to the old kind of wisdom and mysticism—which did not practice alchemy in today’s materialistic sense, but sought, through its dealings with nature, to connect with a spiritual world, yet no longer possessed the knowledge to connect with that spiritual world in the proper manner of earlier times. What was regarded as medicine in centuries now long past is not as foolish as modern science often would have us believe; it is simply that the true wisdom inherent in it has been lost, and it was already partly lost in the age of Faust. Goethe knew this well. But he did not know it with the intellect alone; he knew it with his heart; he knew it with all the powers of the soul that are devoted to the welfare and salvation of humanity and that are of particular importance for the salvation of humanity. Goethe sought to answer the enigmatic questions that arose for him from this, so that one might recognize how, by proceeding ever further, one could arrive at other forms of wisdom regarding the spiritual world—just as suitable for modern times as those of the ancients, whose wisdom, in the course of human history, was bound to fade away. That is why he has his Faust become a magician. Faust has devoted himself to magic, just like the Faust of the 16th century. Yet he remains unsatisfied for the simple reason that the true wisdom of ancient magic had already faded away. Ancient medicine also stemmed from this wisdom. All the knowledge of prescriptions and all pharmacology were connected to ancient chemistry and alchemy.

[ 4 ] Now, when one addresses such a question, one immediately touches upon the deepest mysteries of humanity, insofar as these mysteries imply that, in truth, one cannot cure diseases without also being able to cause them. The paths to curing diseases are at the same time the paths to causing them. We will hear shortly how, in ancient wisdom, the principle was firmly established that whoever was a healer could at the same time be a creator of diseases, and how, for this reason, the art of healing in ancient times was conceived in connection with a profoundly moral worldview. But we will also see shortly how little what is called the newer freedom of human development—which was actually only undertaken by humanity in our fifth epoch, the one following the Greco-Roman period—could have developed in those ancient times. We will see what this freedom would have had to be like if ancient wisdom had persisted. In every sphere, however, this wisdom had to perish so that humanity might, as it were, start anew—but in such a way that it could strive toward freedom through both knowledge and action. It could not have done so under the influence of the ancient wisdom. In times of transition such as that in which Faust lived, the decay of the old is present; the new has not yet arrived. This gives rise to the kind of moods that can be observed in Faust in the scene that precedes the one we have performed today. In this scene, we see quite clearly how Faust has emerged from—and feels himself to be outside of—an age in which the old wisdom still existed, though it was no longer fully understood. We see how Faust, accompanied by his servant Wagner, steps out of his cell into the countryside; how he first observes the people celebrating Easter outdoors in the countryside; and how he himself becomes filled with the spirit of Easter. But we immediately see how he refuses to accept the tributes offered to him by the people. An old farmer steps forward, approaches Faust, and pays him homage, because the people believe that Faust—the son of an old adept, an old healer—is himself a significant healer who can bring healing and blessings to the people. An old farmer approaches Faust and says:

Truly, it is most welcome,
That you have come on this joyful day;
For you were kind to us in the past
During those dark days!
Many stand here alive today,
Whom your father, even at the very end,
Saved from the raging fever,
When he put an end to the plague.
Back then, too, you—a young man—
You went to every hospital,
Many a corpse was carried away,
But you emerged healthy;
You endured many a harsh trial;
The helper was helped by the helper above.

[ 5 ] This is what the old farmer says, recalling how Faust is connected to the ancient art of healing, which, however, did not refer only to the cure of physical illnesses, but also to the cure of the moral ills of the people. Faust knows that he no longer lived in an age when ancient wisdom was truly helpful to humanity, but rather in a time of decline. And in his soul there stirs a sense of humility, but at the same time despondency over the falsehood he is actually confronted with, and he says:

Just a few more steps up to that rock,
Here we’ll rest from our journey.
Here I often sat alone, lost in thought,
And tormented myself with prayer and fasting.
Rich in hope, firm in faith,
With tears, sighs, and wringing hands
I thought to force an end to that plague
From the Lord of Heaven.
The crowd’s applause now sounds like mockery to me.
Oh, if only you could read my innermost thoughts,
How little the Father and the Son
Were worthy of such glory!
My father was a mysterious man of honor,
Who, regarding nature and its sacred circles,
In integrity, yet in his own way,
Pondered with whimsical diligence.
He who, in the company of adepts,
Locked himself away in the black kitchen
And, following endless recipes,
Poured together the adverse elements.
Then a red lion, a bold suitor,
Was wed in the lukewarm bath of the lily,
And both were then, with open flames,
Tormented from one bridal chamber to the next.

[ 6 ] So Goethe did indeed study how things were done back then—how the “red lion” (mercury oxide, mercuric sulfide) was treated, how the various chemicals were mixed together and left to undergo their processes, and how medicines were manufactured from them. But all of this no longer corresponded to the old wisdom. Goethe is also familiar with the style of expression. People certainly depicted what they needed to portray in images. The compounds of substances were depicted as a marriage. That is why he says:

Tormented from one bridal chamber to another.
Then appeared, resplendent in vibrant colors
The young queen in the glass —

[ 7 ] That was a figure of speech. Just as there are figures of speech in modern chemistry, people back then referred to certain substances that had reached a certain state and color as “the young queen.”

This is where the medicine was; patients died,

[ 8 ] They were phased out back then, just as many pharmacies are still phasing them out today.

Here was the medicine; the patients died,
And no one asked: Who was healed?
So we raged with hellish plagues
In these valleys, these mountains
Far worse than the plague.
I myself have administered the poison to thousands,
They withered away, and I must witness
How those brazen murderers are praised.

[ 9 ] This is Faust’s self-knowledge. Thus Faust now stands before himself—he whom you know to have immersed himself in ancient magical wisdom in order to penetrate the mysteries of nature and the spirit. But through all of this, he has become spiritualized. Unlike Wagner, his servant, who has been content with the newer wisdom found in written works—that which rests in letters—Faust cannot remain so. Wagner, after all, is a figure who places far lesser demands on wisdom and on life. And while Faust seeks to immerse himself in nature to find the spirit of nature, Wagner thinks only of the spirit that flows to him from theories, from parchments, from books. What comes over Faust, he calls “whimsical hours”:

I, too, have often had moments that felt like a barbecue,

[ 10 ] — says Wagner —

But I have never felt such an urge.
One can easily grow tired of forests and fields,
I will never envy a bird’s wings.

[ 11 ] He never wants to fly away with the bird to explore the world!

How differently the joys of the mind carry us
From book to book, from page to page!
Then winter nights become lovely and beautiful,
A blissful life warms every limb,
And oh! If you were to unroll a worthy parchment,
Then the whole heaven would descend upon you.

[ 12 ] A true bookworm, a true theorist!

[ 13 ] So, now that the crowd has dispersed, here they stand: the one who wants to enter the sources of life, who wants to connect his own being with the mysterious forces of nature in order to experience these mysterious forces of nature: Faust—and the one who sees nothing but external, material life and what is recorded in books through matter: Wagner. One need not think too hard about what, through all that he has experienced up to this moment—as Goethe portrays it to us—has been going on within Faust; but one can say this much, based on everything we encounter in Faust: that his inner world, one might say, has been transformed—and turned upside down—that a genuine development of the soul has taken place in Faust, that he has attained a certain inner vision; otherwise he could not have summoned the Earth Spirit, who surges up and down in the Storm of Deeds. Faust has acquired a certain ability not only to see the outer world according to its outward appearances, but to see the spirit that weaves and lives in all things. Then a poodle comes running toward them—Faust and Wagner—from a distance. The way they both see the poodle—an ordinary poodle, as Faust sees it and as Wagner sees it—characterizes the two men completely. After Faust has immersed himself in the living spiritual weaving of nature, he catches sight of the poodle:

Do you see the black dog roaming through the crops and stubble?

[ 14 ] Wagner: I had seen him for quite some time, but he didn't seem important to me.

[ 15 ] Faust: Look at him closely! What do you take this beast to be?

[ 16 ] Wagner: For a poodle who, in his own way, struggles to follow his master's trail.

[ 17 ] The poodle walks around in circles.

[ 18 ] Faust: Do you notice how, in a wide spiral
It races around us, drawing ever closer?
And if I am not mistaken, a whirlwind of fire
Follows in its wake.

[ 19 ] Faust does not merely see the poodle; something stirs within Faust—he sees something that belongs to the poodle, something spiritual. That is what Faust sees. Wagner, of course, does not see it. After all, one cannot see with the physical eyes what Faust sees.

[ 20 ] Wagner: I see nothing but a black poodle;
It may well be an optical illusion on your part.

[ 21 ] Faust: It seems to me that he is magically and silently drawing snares
Around our feet to bind us in the future.

[ 22 ] Wagner: I see him darting about, uncertain and fearful,
Because, instead of his master, he sees two strangers.

[ 23 ] Faust thus perceives something spiritual in this simple phenomenon. Let’s keep that in mind. With his inner being moved by a certain spiritual connection—even with this poodle—Faust now goes into his study. Now, of course, Goethe presents this dramatically in such a way that the poodle is simply there as it is; that is fine—the drama must portray it that way. But fundamentally, we are dealing with something that Faust experiences inwardly. And the way this scene unfolds now—the way Faust experiences something inwardly here—is expressed by Goethe with true mastery in every word. Faust and Wagner remained outside until late into the night, when the external light no longer had any effect, when only the twilight remained. In the twilight, Faust sees what he wishes to see spiritually. Now he returns home to his cell. Now he is alone with himself. A person like Faust, after having gone through all of this, left alone with himself, is in a position to experience self-knowledge—that is, to experience the life of the spirit within his own self. He expresses how, in a sense, his innermost being has been stirred, but stirred in a spiritual way:

I have left the fields and meadows behind,
Which a deep night covers,
With an ominous, sacred dread
That awakens the better soul within us.
Wild impulses have now fallen asleep
Along with every impetuous deed;
Human love stirs,
The love of God now stirs.

[ 24 ] The poodle growls. But let’s be clear: these are inner experiences; even the poodle’s growl is an inner experience, even if it is dramatically portrayed externally. Faust has become entangled with decaying magic, has become entangled with Mephistopheles. Mephistopheles is not a spirit who leads him into the advancing, regular spiritual forces; Mephistopheles is the spirit whom Faust must first overcome, who is assigned to him so that he may overcome him, who is given to him as a test, not as a teacher. That is to say: we now see Faust standing before us, on the one hand striving to enter the divine-spiritual world that propels the development of the world forward, and on the other hand, the forces within his soul are active, pulling him down into the ordinary life of instincts that leads people away from spiritual striving. Precisely when the sacred stirs within his soul, it mocks him; the opposing instincts mock him. This is now wonderfully portrayed in the form of external events: Faust, striving, as it were, toward the divine-spiritual with all his knowledge, and his own instincts, which growl in opposition, just as the materialistic sense of human beings growls against spiritual striving. And when Faust says, “Be quiet, Pudel! Don’t growl”—he is, in essence, calming himself. And now Faust speaks—that is, in this instance, Goethe has Faust speak in a marvelous way. Only when one examines the individual words does one discover how wonderfully Goethe understands the inner life of a person undergoing spiritual development:

Ah, when in our cramped cell
The lamp burns warmly once more,
Then our hearts are filled with light,
In the heart that knows itself—

[ 25 ] in the heart, which seeks self-knowledge—that is, the spirit within one's own self.

Reason Begins to Speak Again -.

[ 26 ] A meaningful sentence! The one who undergoes spiritual development—who is shaped by his life—knows that reason is not merely something lifeless within; he knows more than just intellectual reason; he knows how alive reason becomes, how inner spiritual weaving becomes reason and truly speaks. This is not merely a poetic image:

Reason begins to speak once more,
And hope begins to blossom once more.

[ 27 ] Reason speaks, begins once more to speak of the past—that which has remained alive from the past—and hope begins to blossom anew; that is to say, we find our will transformed, so that we know we will pass through the gate of death as a spiritually living being. The future and the past are wonderfully interwoven. Goethe has Faust say that Faust knows how to find the inner life of the spirit in self-knowledge.

One longs for the streams of life,
Ah! for the source of life.

[ 28 ] And now Faust seeks to draw closer to what he yearns for—the sources of life. He first seeks a path: the path of religious elevation. He turns to the New Testament. And the way he now turns to the New Testament is a marvelous illustration of Goethe’s wise dramatic art. He turns to the Gospel of John, which contains the deepest words of wisdom of modern times. He wants to translate it into his beloved German. It is significant that Goethe chooses the moment of translation. Anyone familiar with the workings of deeper world and spiritual beings knows that when wisdom is conveyed from one language to another, all the spirits of confusion arise; all the spirits of confusion intervene. In the borderlands of life, forces opposed to human development and human salvation manifest themselves in particular. Goethe deliberately chooses the act of translation to place the spirit of inversion—indeed, the spirit of falsehood, which still resides in the poodle—side by side with the spirit of truth. If one attunes oneself to the feelings and sensations that can flow from such a scene, the wondrous spiritual depth that lives within these scenes becomes apparent. All the temptations I have just described—those arising from what lies within the poodle, which rise up to distort the truth into falsehood—all of this continues to have an effect and works directly into an act of Faust’s that provides just the right opportunity to distort truth into falsehood. And just how little people actually realize that Goethe intended this is still evident today in the various commentators on Faust, for what do these commentators say specifically about this scene? Well, you can read it for yourselves. It is said: Goethe is simply a man of outward life; the Word is not enough for him; he must improve upon the Gospel of John; he must find a more accurate translation—not “In the beginning was the Word, the Logos,” but “In the beginning was the deed.” Faust discovers this after much hesitation. This is a profound wisdom of Goethe.

[ 29 ] This wisdom is not Faustian wisdom; it is genuine Wagnerian wisdom, true Wagnerian wisdom! Just like that wisdom that is emphasized time and again—that Faust later speaks such beautiful words to Gretchen about religious life: “Who can name Him, who can confess Him, the All-Encompassing One who holds and sustains all,” and so on—that is Gretchen’s wisdom! What Faust says to Gretchen there has been quoted time and time again, and it is repeatedly presented as profound wisdom by the gentlemen who quote it, the learned scholars:

Who is allowed to call upon Him?
And who can confess:
“I believe in Him”?
Who can feel
And bring themselves
To say: “I do not believe in Him”?
The All-Encompassing One,
The All-Sustaining One,
Does He not encompass and sustain
You, me, and Himself?
Doesn’t the sky arch above?
Doesn’t the earth lie firmly below?
And do not eternal stars rise, casting friendly glances?
Do I not look you in the eye?
And does not everything
draw toward your head and heart...
and so on.

[ 30 ] What Faust says there is often portrayed as profound wisdom! Well, if Goethe had intended it to be the deepest wisdom of all, he would not have put those words into Faust’s mouth at the very moment when he was trying to instruct the sixteen-year-old Gretchen. It is a piece of “Gretchen wisdom”! One just has to take things seriously. The scholars have simply been misled. They have taken what is essentially “Gretchen-style wisdom” for deep philosophy. And so, too, what appears in Faust as a Bible translation is taken for a particularly profound wisdom, whereas Goethe intends to show nothing other than how truth and error toss a person back and forth when he undertakes such a task. Goethe has portrayed these two souls of Faust with great depth, particularly in this Bible translation.

It is written: “In the beginning was the Word!”

[ 31 ] We know it is the Greek Logos. That is indeed what the Gospel of John says. In contrast, the entity symbolized by the poodle in Faust rebels against this, refusing to let him grasp the deeper meaning of the Gospel of John. Why did the author of the Gospel of John choose precisely the Word, the Logos? Because the author of the Gospel of John wants to emphasize that what is most important in human evolution on Earth—what truly makes a human being a human being in the external sense—did not develop gradually, but was present from the very beginning. What distinguishes human beings from all other beings? The fact that they can speak, whereas all other beings—animals, plants, minerals—cannot. The materialist believes that human beings only arrived at the Word—that is, at language, at the Logos, which is permeated by thought—after having undergone animal evolution. The Gospel of John delves deeper into the matter and says: No, in the very beginning was the Word. This means: Human development is originally predestined; human beings are not merely the pinnacle of the animal kingdom in the materialistic-Darwinian sense, but in the very first intentions of Earth’s development, in the primordial beginnings, in the beginning was the Word. And it is only through this—the interweaving of the Word of human evolution—that human beings on Earth can develop a “self,” something animals cannot achieve. The Word stands, in fact, for the human “I.” But the spirit assigned to Faust—the spirit of untruth—rebels against this truth, and it must descend deeper; it cannot yet comprehend the full, profound wisdom contained in the words of John.

I'm already stuck here!

[ 32 ] But it is actually the poodle—the dog within him—and what lies within the poodle that causes him to falter. He does not rise any higher; on the contrary, he sinks even lower.

I'm already stuck here! Who can help me move on?
I cannot possibly value this word so highly,
I must translate it differently,
if I am truly enlightened by the Spirit.

[ 33 ] As he sees Mephistopheles approaching him, he believes for a moment that he is enlightened by the Spirit; but he is actually darkened by the Spirit of Darkness and falls.

It is written: “In the beginning was meaning!”

[ 34 ] This is no higher than the word. As we can easily demonstrate, meaning also prevails in the lives of animals, yet animals do not attain human speech. Human beings are capable of meaning because they possess an astral body. Faust descends deeper within himself, from the “I” into the astral body.

...“In the beginning was meaning.”
Take heed of the first line,
Lest your pen rush ahead!

[ 35 ] He thinks he's rising higher, but he's actually falling lower.

Is it meaning that brings everything into being and creates everything?

[ 36 ] No, he descends even further, from the astral to the denser, more material etheric body, and writes:

“In the beginning was the power!”

[ 37 ] Force is that which lives in the etheric body.

But even as I write this down,

something is already warning me not to stop here.

May the Spirit help me!

[ 38 ] The spirit inside that poodle!

Suddenly I see the way forward
And write with confidence: “In the beginning was the deed!”

[ 39 ] And now he has arrived at complete materialism; now he has arrived at the physical body, through which external action takes place.

Word (Logos) — I
Meaning — Astral Body
Power — Etheric Body
Action — Physical Body

[ 40 ] Thus you have Faust alive and active in a work of self-knowledge. He misinterprets the Bible because the various aspects of the human being—the I, the astral body, the etheric body, and the physical body—which we have discussed so often, interact within him in a chaotic manner under the influence of the Mephistophelean spirit. Now it also becomes clear how these impulses operate, for the poodle’s barking is what rebels against the truth within him. He is not yet able, in his understanding, to grasp the wisdom of Christianity. We see this in the way he connects word, meaning, power, and deed. But the urge, the impulse toward Christianity, already lives within him. By bringing to life what lives within him as Christ, he overcomes the opposing spirit. He first tries to do so with what he has inherited from ancient magic. But the spirit does not yield; it does not reveal itself in its true form. He summons the four elements and their spirits: the salamander, the sylph, the undine, and the gnome; none of this misleads the spirit dwelling within the poodle. But when he invokes the figure of Christ—the one wickedly pierced, whose blood was poured out through all the heavens—then the poodle must reveal its true form.

[ 41 ] All of this is, at its core, self-knowledge—a self-knowledge that Goethe makes perfectly clear. What appears? A wandering scholar! Faust is truly engaging in self-knowledge; he is, in essence, confronting himself. At first, in the form of the poodle, the wild instincts that had rebelled against the truth were at work, and now, in a sense, he is becoming clear—clear yet unclear! The wandering scholar stands before him. But it is only Faust’s other self. He himself has become little more than a wandering scholar with all the errors inherent in a wandering scholar; only now, as he comes to know his instincts more precisely through his union with the spiritual world, does the wandering scholar—that is, his own self, as he has hitherto conceived it—confront him in a cruder and more thorough manner. Faust has learned like a scholastic, only he then surrendered himself to magic, and through magic, scholastic wisdom has been demonized. What the good old Faust became—when he was still a wandering scholastic—he became only by adding the old magic to it. The wandering scholastic still lies within him: he confronts him in a transformed form. It is merely one’s own self. Even this wandering scholar is one’s own self. The struggle to rid oneself of everything that confronts one as one’s own self is now contained in the following scene.

[ 42 ] Goethe always sought, through the various characters with whom Faust appears, to reveal only Faust’s other self, so that Faust might come to know himself more and more. Perhaps some of you in the audience recall that in earlier lectures I discussed how Wagner himself is also present within Faust, and how Wagner, too, is merely another aspect of Faust’s self. Mephistopheles, too, is merely another aspect of the self. It is all self-knowledge! Self-knowledge is cultivated through knowledge of the world. But none of this is present in Faust as clear spiritual insight; all of it is contained in Faust as an unclear, dull spiritual vision—one might say, a vision still influenced by the old, atavistic art of clairvoyance. It is not clarified. It is not clear insight; it is dreamlike insight. This is presented to us through the dream spirits—who are actually group souls of all those beings accompanying Mephistopheles—as they beguile Faust, and through his eventual awakening. And there Goethe has Faust say quite clearly and distinctly:

Have I been deceived yet again?
Does the whimsical urge vanish like this,
That a dream made the devil out of a lie,
And that a poodle sprang from me?

[ 43 ] Goethe already employs the method of pointing again and again toward the truth. That he actually means this as an inner experience of Faust is made clear enough in these four lines. This scene, too, shows us how Goethe struggled to understand the transition from the old era to the new one in which he himself lived—from the fourth post-Atlantean epoch to the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The boundary lies in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries. As I said earlier, anyone living in today’s way of thinking cannot, unless they undertake special studies, form a clear mental image of the development of the soul in past centuries. And in Faust’s time, only the ruins remained. We often observe that people today do not wish to engage with the newer spiritual research to which we aspire, but instead want to rehash the old wisdom. How many believe that by reviving within themselves what the ancients possessed, they will thereby attain a deeper, magical-mystical wisdom about nature! Two forms of folly, I would say, lie very close to all human spiritual striving. The first is that people buy and study old, ancient books and now value them more highly than modern science. They usually value them more highly simply because they do not understand them—because the language truly can no longer be understood. That is one form of folly: that people keep returning, time and again, to the content of old books—which has become gibberish—whenever they wish to speak of spiritual research. The other is that people want to give old names to newer endeavors as much as possible, thereby sanctifying them. Take a look at some of those who call themselves occult, secret, or other such societies. Their entire endeavor is directed toward dating themselves back as far as possible, explaining as much as possible about a legendary past, and taking pleasure in ancient names. That is the second piece of nonsense. There is no need to go along with any of this if one truly understands the needs and impulses of our time and the necessary future. One can open any book from the time when traditions still existed, so to speak. From the way things are presented, one can see that legacies and traditions of an ancient, primordial wisdom—which humanity once possessed—still existed, but that this wisdom had fallen into decay. The way it is expressed suggests that everything is still there, even quite late on.

[ 44 ] I happen to have a book at hand that was printed in 1740—that is, as recently as the 18th century. I would like to read a short passage from it—a passage about which one can be certain that many who seek spiritual knowledge today, when confronted with such a passage, will say: “Abysmal, profound wisdom! Oh, what is all contained within it!”—There are even some who believe they understand such a passage. Well, I will first read to you the passage I am referring to:

[ 45 ] “The king’s crown shall be of pure gold, and a chaste bride shall be given to him in marriage. Therefore, if you wish to work through our bodies, take the greedy gray wolf—who, because of his name, is subject to the warlike Mars, but by birth is a child of the ancient Saturn, found in the valleys and mountains of the world and possessed by great hunger—and cast him upon the King’s body, that he may find his sustenance therein.”

[ 46 ] This is how, in ancient times, people referred to these chemical processes they had devised; they spoke of certain chemical processes to which Faust also alludes when he describes how a red lion is wed to the lily in a glass, and so on. It is not proper to mock these things for the simple reason that the way chemistry is discussed today will sound just as strange to future generations as it does to us. But we must be clear that this also arose even during a very late period of decline. Reference is made to a “gray wolf.” This “gray wolf” refers to a certain ore found everywhere in the mountains and subjected to a specific procedure. A “king” was the term used for a certain state of substances. And what is described here is meant to allude to a specific method of handling. They took the gray ore and treated it in a certain way. This gray ore was called the “miserly gray wolf,” while the other was called the “golden king,” where the gold, after being treated in a certain way, was the “golden king.” And a connection arose. The author describes this connection as follows: “And when he devoured the king …”

[ 47 ] So what happens is that the “gray, greedy wolf”—that is, the gray ore found in the mountains—has fused with the golden king—which is a certain state of gold after it has been chemically treated. The gold has disappeared into the gray ore. He describes it as follows: “And when he has devoured the king, light a great fire and throw the wolf into it... .” So the wolf, which has devoured the gold—the golden king—is thrown into the fire. “So that he may be completely burned up, the king will be redeemed once more.” The gold reappears!

[ 48 ] “When this happens three times, the lion will have overcome the wolf and will find nothing left of him to devour; then our body will be perfect at the beginning of our work.”

[ 49 ] So he’s doing something in this way. If one wanted to know what he’s doing, one would have to describe these procedures in great detail—specifically, how the golden king is made—but that cannot be described here. These procedures are no longer carried out today, either. But what does the man hope to gain? He expects something that is by no means entirely out of thin air, for he has now created something. Why did he actually do that? That is to say, the person who had this printed probably didn’t actually make it himself, but rather copied it from old books. But why was this done back in the days when people still understood these things? You can see that from the following:

[ 50 ] “And know that this alone is the true way to effectively purify our bodies, for the lion purifies itself through the ‘blood’ of the wolf, and the tincture of the wolf’s blood blends wonderfully with the tincture of the lion’s blood, for the blood of both is closely related by kinship.”

[ 51 ] So now he's praising what he himself has created. He's been given a kind of medicine.

[ 52 ] “And when the lion has had its fill, its spirit has become stronger than before, and its eyes give off a proud gleam like the bright sun.”

[ 53 ] That's all due to the properties of what he has in that retort!

[ 54 ] “His inner being is capable of great things and is useful for all that is required of him; and once he is brought to a state of readiness, the children of men—burdened with severe, debilitating illnesses and various plagues—thank him; the ten lepers run after him and beg to drink of the blood of his soul, and all who have infirmities, take great delight in his spirit; for whoever drinks from this golden fountain experiences a complete renewal of nature, the removal of evil, strength of the blood, vigor of the heart, and perfect health of all the limbs.”

[ 55 ] You see, there are indications that this is a medicinal substance, but there are also sufficient indications here that it has something to do with what appears as a moral quality of human beings. For, of course, if a healthy person takes it in the appropriate amount, then what he describes there occurs. That is what he means, and that is how it was with the ancients, who still understood something about these things.

[ 56 ] “For whoever drinks from this golden fountain feels a complete renewal of nature.”

[ 57 ] So, through this art that he has described here, he sought to create a tincture through which true life force could enter into human beings:

[ 58 ] “The power of the heart, the strength of the blood, and perfect health of all the limbs—whether they are internal or external to the body—for it opens all the nerves and pores so that evil may be driven out and good may dwell there peacefully.”

[ 59 ] I read this aloud first to show how, even in these remnants of ancient wisdom, one can still discern traces of what people strove for in times past. People sought to stimulate the body through external means derived from nature—that is, to attain certain abilities not merely through inner, moral striving, but through the very means of nature itself that they had created. Keep that in mind for a moment, for it leads us to something important that distinguishes our era from earlier ones. It is perfectly acceptable today to mock the old superstitions, for in doing so one earns the reputation of being a wise person in the eyes of the whole world, whereas one would not be considered wise if one saw something reasonable in ancient knowledge. Something that has even been lost to humanity—and had to be lost for certain reasons—because in the striving of those ancient times, people could never have attained freedom. But look, you’ll find in old books—which date back to times even earlier than this tome, which belongs to a very late period of decline—you’ll find in old books what you know well: the sun and gold with a common symbol, this symbol: O; you’ll find the moon and silver with this symbol: (. For people today, this symbol is applied to gold and the sun, and this . symbol applied to the moon and silver—to represent spiritual faculties that modern people necessarily possess—is, of course, utter nonsense. It is utter nonsense the way these things are discussed in literature—which often calls itself “esoteric”—because people usually lack the means to understand why, in ancient times, the sun and gold, and the moon and silver, were designated by the same symbol.

[ 60 ] Let’s start with the moon and silver, represented by this symbol: C. If we go back in time—say, a few millennia before the Mystery of Golgotha, before the Christian era—then people not only possessed the abilities that were already in ruins by the time such things came into being, but they also possessed even higher abilities. When a person of the Egyptian-Chaldean culture said “silver,” they did not initially mean what we mean when we say “silver.” When a person used the word in their language of that time that meant “silver” to them, they applied it in a completely different way. Such a person possessed inner abilities and was referring to a certain kind of force that is not found merely in a small piece of silver, but which essentially spreads across the entire Earth. They meant to say, “We live in gold, we live in copper, we live in silver.” He was referring to certain kinds of forces that are alive there and that flowed toward him particularly strongly from the Moon. And he sensed this—in the coarsest material sense, yet also subtly—in that little piece of silver. He truly found the same forces streaming out from the Moon, but also present throughout the entire Earth, and particularly embodied in the material form of that little piece of silver. Well, today’s enlightened person says: “Yes, the Moon—it shines so silvery-white, so people simply believed it was made of silver.”—That was not the case; rather, people had an inner spiritual experience of the Moon—an experience that has been lost today—which lived as a force throughout the entire Earth’s sphere and—translated into the material realm—in that small piece of silver. So the force contained in the silver must, so to speak, have been spread across the entire Earth. Today, of course, people regard this as complete nonsense when you tell them this, and yet it is not complete nonsense in the sense of modern science. It is not nonsense at all, absolutely not nonsense, for I will tell you one thing that science knows today, even if it does not always say so. Modern science knows that a little over four pounds of silver, finely dispersed, is contained in a cube—imagined as a cube cut from the world’s oceans—that is one English nautical mile long, so that the entire world’s oceans surrounding the Earth contain two million metric tons of silver, finely dispersed. This is simply a scientific truth that can still be verified today. The world’s oceans contain two million metric tons of silver, finely dispersed—in the most extreme form of homeopathy, one might say. It is truly silver spread out across the Earth. Today, if one were to establish this using conventional knowledge, one would have to draw seawater and methodically test it with all manner of meticulous analyses; but then, using the methods of modern science, one finds that two million metric tons of silver are contained in the world’s oceans. These two million metric tons of silver are not contained therein in the sense that they have somehow dissolved or anything of the sort, but rather they belong to the world’s oceans; they are part of its nature and essence. And ancient wisdom knew this; it knew it through the subtle, sensitive powers that still exist today, which stem from ancient clairvoyance. And it knew that when one conceives of the Earth, one must not merely conceive of it as modern geology does, but that silver is indeed dissolved within this Earth in the most subtle way.

[ 61 ] I could go on from here; I could show how gold, too, is dissolved, how all these metals—apart from being physically deposited here or there—are actually contained in a fine, dissolved state. So the ancient wisdom was not wrong when it spoke of silver. It is contained within the Earth sphere. But it was known as a force—as certain kinds of force. The silver sphere contains other forces, the gold sphere contains other forces, and so on. People knew much more still about what is spread out there as silver in the Earth’s sphere; and they knew that within this silver lies the force that causes the tides, because a certain life-giving force of the entire Earth’s body resides in this silver—or, rather, is identical with this silver. The tides would not occur at all; this peculiar movement of the Earth is originally set in motion by the silver content. This has nothing to do with the Moon; but the Moon is related to the same force. Therefore, the tides occur in a certain relationship to the Moon’s movements, because both—the Moon’s movements and the tides—depend on the same system of forces. And these lie in the silver content of the universe.

[ 62 ] Even without clairvoyant insights, one can simply examine such matters and, with a certainty of proof unmatched in any other field of science—except, at most, in mathematics—demonstrate that there once existed an ancient science that knew such things, that was well versed in them. And linked to such knowledge and mastery was what ancient wisdom was—that wisdom which truly mastered nature, and which must be regained through spiritual research from the present into the future. We are living precisely in the age in which an ancient form of wisdom has been lost, and a new form of wisdom is just emerging. What did this ancient wisdom entail? It entailed what I have already hinted at. One could truly, by knowing the mysteries of the universe, make one’s own being more capable. Just think—it was possible to make a person more capable through external means! In other words, the possibility existed that a person, simply by producing certain substances and ingesting them in the appropriate quantities, could acquire abilities that we today rightly assume can only be innate—such as genius, talent, and so on. It is not what Darwinism fantastically dreams of that existed at the beginning of Earth’s development, but rather this very possibility of mastering nature and endowing human beings themselves with moral and spiritual abilities through the manipulation of nature. You will now understand why the manipulation of nature had to be kept within very specific limits: hence the secrets of the most ancient mysteries. Whoever was to attain such insights—which truly had something to do with these secrets of nature, which were not merely concepts, ideas, and sensations, nor merely beliefs—whoever was to attain such insights had first to prove himself perfectly suited to the task: not only but also absolutely nothing for himself with this knowledge, but rather to apply these insights—and the abilities he acquired through them—solely in the service of the social order. That is why this knowledge was kept so secret, let us say, in the Egyptian mysteries. The preparation consisted in the person to whom such knowledge was imparted giving a guarantee that he would continue the life he had previously led in exactly the same way, that he would not gain the slightest advantage for himself, but would apply the skills he would henceforth acquire through his work with nature solely in the service of the social order. Under this condition, individuals were allowed to become initiates, who then guided that ancient culture whose marvels can be seen but are not understood, because people do not know from what they sprang.

[ 63 ] But humanity could never have become free in this way. One would, so to speak, have had to turn human beings into automatons through the influence of nature. An age had to dawn in which human beings acted through inner moral forces alone. Thus, nature is, so to speak, veiled from him, because he would have desecrated it by giving free rein to his instincts in the new era. And his instincts have been given the most free rein since the 14th and 15th centuries. That is why the old wisdom is fading away; all that remains is bookish wisdom that is not understood. For no one today would allow himself to be deterred—if he truly understood such things, such as the very sentence I have read to you—from using these things to his own advantage. But that would bring forth the worst instincts in human society—worse instincts than those produced by that tentative progress which is today called scientific endeavor, where, in the laboratory, without being able to look into the very nature of things, one discovers: “this substance interacts with that one in this way”—where, without looking into the nature of things, one arrives at conclusions—well, just as the content of chemistry is today. One carries on in this way. And Spiritual Science will first have to find its way back into the mysteries of nature. But at the same time, it will have to establish a social order that is entirely different from today’s social order, so that human beings can recognize what holds nature together at its very core, without thereby being led into a struggle of the wildest instincts.

[ 64 ] There is meaning and wisdom in human evolution, and I have already sought to prove this to you through a whole series of lectures. What happens in history—even if often through forces as destructive as possible—happens in such a way that a meaning runs through the course of historical development, even if it is often not the meaning that human beings dream of, and even if human beings must suffer greatly along the paths that the meaning of history often takes. Through everything that happens over the course of time—and it certainly happens that the pendulum swings sometimes toward evil, sometimes toward the lesser evil—certain states of equilibrium are nevertheless achieved through this swinging. And so, up until the 14th and 15th centuries—at least to some—a certain body of knowledge regarding natural forces was known, but this knowledge has been lost because people of more recent times lack the proper mindset for it.

[ 65 ] See, this is so beautifully described in the symbol that expresses the force of nature in the Egyptian legend of Isis. This image of Isis—what a moving impression it makes on us when we create a mental image of it standing there in stone, yet—at the same time—with a veil covering it from top to bottom: the veiled image at Sais. And the inscription reads: “I am the past, the present, and the future; no mortal has yet lifted my veil.” - This, in turn, has led to an exceedingly clever—though very clever people have accepted this clever explanation, it must still be said—to a very clever explanation. It is said: Isis thus embodies the symbol of wisdom that can never be attained by human beings. Behind this veil is a being that must remain eternally hidden, for the veil cannot be lifted. And yet the inscription reads: “I am the past, the present, and the future; no mortal has yet lifted my veil.” — All those clever people who say that one cannot fathom the essence are, logically speaking, saying roughly the same thing as if someone were to say: “My name is Müller; you will never know my name.” — It is exactly the same thing you always hear people say about this image as if someone were to say: “My name is Müller; you will never know my name.” - If one interprets the statement “I am the past, the present, and the future; no mortal has yet lifted my veil” in this way, then of course this interpretation is utter nonsense. For it is written there what Isis is: the past, the present, and the future—time flowing by! We will speak more precisely about these things tomorrow. It is time flowing by. But something entirely different from what this so-called witty explanation intends is expressed in the words: “No mortal has yet lifted my veil.”—What is expressed is that one must approach this wisdom as one would those women who had taken the veil, whose virginity had to be preserved: with reverence, with a mindset that excludes all selfish impulses. That is what is meant. This wisdom of earlier times is like a veiled nun. The language of this veil alludes to that state of mind.

[ 66 ] And so the point was that, in the times when ancient wisdom was alive, people approached this wisdom in the appropriate manner—or, conversely, were not even permitted to approach it if they did not do so in the appropriate manner. But in more recent times, human beings had to be left to their own devices. They could not possess this wisdom of ancient times, these forms of wisdom from the past. Knowledge of certain natural forces was lost—those natural forces that cannot be recognized without experiencing them inwardly, without simultaneously living them within oneself. And in the era in which, as I explained to you eight days ago, materialism reached a certain peak—in the nineteenth century—a natural force emerged that is characterized by its unique nature in such a way that everyone today says: We have this natural force, but it cannot be understood; it remains hidden from science. — You know how the natural force of electricity, in particular, came to be used by humans; and the electrical force is such that human beings cannot experience it inwardly through their normal faculties—it remains external. Moreover, more than one might think, what grew to prominence in the 19th century did so through electricity. It would be easy to show just how much—indeed, an infinite amount—of our present-day culture depends on electrical power, and how much more will depend on it in the future, when electrical power is used in the modern way, without penetrating into the inner realm. Much more than that! But it is precisely electrical power that has taken the place of the old, familiar forces in the development of human culture—and through which humanity is meant to mature morally. Today, when using it, people do not give any thought to morality. Wisdom lies in the ongoing historical development of humanity. Humanity will mature by being able, for a time yet, to unleash even deeper forms of harm—and as our times show, there is certainly no shortage of harm—by unleashing even deeper forms of harm within its lower “I-bearer,” that is, its savage egoism. If humanity still possessed the old forces, this would be entirely impossible. It is precisely electrical power, as a cultural force, that makes this possible; steam power does so to a certain extent as well, but to an even lesser degree.

[ 67 ] The fact is that, as I explained to you some time ago, the first seventh of our cultural era—which will last into the fourth millennium—is now over. Materialism has reached a certain peak; the social structures in which we live—which have, after all, led to such tragic events in our time—are such that they will not sustain humanity for another fifty years without a profound transformation of the human soul. For those who spiritually comprehend the development of the world, the electrical age is at the same time a call to seek spiritual deepening—true spiritual deepening. For that force, which remains unknown to sensory observation on the outside, must be joined by spiritual power within the souls—a power that lies hidden in the deepest innermost recesses, just like the electrical forces, which, too, must first be awakened. Consider how mysterious electrical power is; it was only brought out of its secret recesses by Galvani and Volta. Just as secretly hidden lies that which resides in human souls and which Spiritual Science investigates. The two must come together like the North and South Poles. And just as surely as the electrical force was brought to light as the force hidden in nature, so surely will the force sought in Spiritual Science be brought to light as the force hidden in the soul that belongs to it; even though today, in many cases, people still stand before what Spiritual Science seeks—well, much as someone might have stood in the time when Galvani and Volta were dissecting frogs and observed from the twitching of the leg that a force was at work in that twitching frog’s leg. Did science know back then that this frog’s leg contained the very essence of static electricity—everything we know about electricity today? Imagine yourself back in the time when Galvani was in his simple laboratory, hanging his frog’s leg out of the window, and it began to twitch—and he observed this for the very first time! This isn’t a matter of electricity that’s been generated, is it, but rather static electricity. When Galvani observed this for the first time, could he have imagined that the force with which the frog’s leg is drawn toward the hook would one day be used to propel trains across the earth, or to send thoughts circling around the globe? It was not so very long ago that Galvani observed this force in his frog legs. Anyone who, back then, had already predicted all that would flow from this discovery would certainly have been regarded as a fool. And so it has come to pass that today, anyone who seeks to describe the very beginnings of a spiritual science is regarded as a fool. A time will come when what emanates from Spiritual Science will be just as significant for the world—specifically, the moral, spiritual, and psychological world—as what emanated from Galvani’s frog’s leg was for the material world and material culture. This is how progress unfolds in human development. Only by paying attention to such things can one develop the will to go along with what may still be in its infancy. While the other force—the electrical force, which has been drawn from its hidden state—has merely an external, material significance for culture and only an indirect significance for the moral world, what comes from Spiritual Science will have the greatest social significance. For the social orders of the future will be governed by what Spiritual Science can give to humanity. And everything that will constitute external material culture will also be indirectly inspired by Spiritual Science. I can only point this out today as I conclude.

[ 68 ] Tomorrow, we will expand on the image of Faust that we saw today—who, as I told you today, is still half in the old era but already half in the new—to develop it into a kind of worldview.