The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. Faust and the Problem of Evil

[ 1 ] If we begin by characterizing the successive epochs of human development on Earth solely in terms of the post-Atlantean period, we can cite various characteristics from spiritual research for each individual epoch; in this way, we gradually gain concrete mental images of these individual epochs. Today we want to add some specific details to what we already know about the fourth epoch—the Greco-Latin period—and the fifth, our own epoch, which began around the year 1413. One might say: Each such epoch has a specific task—though I ask you not to think of a mere theoretical, scientific task, or anything that has to do only with knowledge, but rather that each epoch has a task in the sense that this task must be solved in a living way; that impulses must arise in life itself with which the individual human beings living in these epochs must come to terms, with which they must struggle, from which not only their mental images arise, from which their emotional stirrings arise—that which they love and hate—but also that which they take up within themselves as an impulse of the will. So, in the broadest sense, we can say that every such epoch has a task to solve.

[ 2 ] If we look at the Greco-Latin epoch, we find that it has the task of resolving an issue that relates primarily to what can be summarized by the words “birth” and “death” in the universe. These matters have already become somewhat blurred today, because the great problems of birth and death confront the human being of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch not in the deepest sense of life, but only in a more theoretical sense. This human being of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch no longer has a precise sense of how deeply the phenomena of birth and death penetrated the soul of the human being of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. We, the people of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—and we are, in essence, still quite at the beginning: this fifth post-Atlantean epoch began in 1413, and such an epoch lasts 2,160 years—must vitally resolve, to the fullest extent, the realm that can be called the problem of evil. I urge you to take this to heart. Evil, which will approach the people of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch in all manner of different forms, will do so in such a way that humanity will have to scientifically unravel the nature and essence of evil; that in their loving and hating, they will have to come to terms with everything that stems from evil; and that they will have to fight and struggle against the resistance of evil to the impulses of the will—all of this is part of the tasks of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.

[ 3 ] Indeed, just as birth and death were central to life in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, so too is the problem of evil central to this fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Why? You see, just as the problem of evil will have to be resolved with such intensity in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, so too did the question of birth and death have to be resolved with such intensity in the Atlantean epoch. In the Atlantean era itself, the phenomena of birth and death presented themselves to people in a much more vivid, much more immediate, and much more elemental way than they do now, when what lies behind birth and death is also more hidden from human perception and feeling. And the Greco-Latin era was, in essence, merely a muted repetition of what the Atlanteans had to experience with regard to birth and death. Therefore, what was experienced during this Greco-Latin era was not as intense as the struggle of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—which began in 1413—will be, against all the forces of evil, against everything that springs from evil, and from which humanity must actually free itself through the opposing forces, upon whose development this fifth post-Atlantean epoch is therefore particularly dependent. One need only contemplate what I have just said with sufficient intensity, and then much of what we have characterized in recent weeks will become even more clearly illustrated. Many things will appear as a consequence of this overarching statement: that this fifth post-Atlantean epoch must grapple with the existential problem of evil.

[ 4 ] And now let us ask ourselves: How did Goethe come to realize that this is so, when he characterized Faust—the representative of humanity—in such a dramatic way that he pitted him against the representative of evil, Mephistopheles? — From this you can see that this Faust drama truly springs from the deepest concerns of the present age.

[ 5 ] It is a distinctive feature of human beings that they can only cope with the things they struggle with if—as we have often emphasized in these reflections—they bring them into their consciousness, so that they do not remain unconscious. That is one distinctive feature. Whatever potential for evil impulses may rise from the depths of the world order—it must reveal itself to consciousness.

[ 6 ] But there is yet another necessity. As a rule, it is not enough merely to know what belongs to a particular epoch. One can really only judge things correctly through comparison. So it is not really enough to know that now, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, humanity must struggle with evil in the historical development of earthly existence; rather, it is necessary to add a certain awareness of the preceding epoch—in this case, the Greco-Latin epoch—so that, in a sense, the impulses that were active in the Greco- -Latin epoch are now also becoming human impulses in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Consider how wonderfully Goethe’s feelings correspond to this perspective, which is drawn from the nature of human development—the historical development of humanity. Goethe longed to get to know antiquity through direct observation—as well as it could be known in his time—to, so to speak, intuit it in Italy from what had revealed itself to him there. That is why the longing for Italy lived within Goethe like an illness. But this was connected to the fact that Goethe felt himself, in the most eminent sense, to be a son of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Goethe did not strive for Italy with the same impulse as some university professor of art history who already believes he is knowledgeable in every field and merely wants to expand his knowledge. That was not what Goethe sought. Goethe sought, in fact, a transformation of his state of consciousness, a different way of perceiving. And much could be cited to illustrate this point. Goethe told himself: If I remain only in the North, then my soul will have a form of perception that is not comprehensive enough. I must live in the atmosphere of the South in order to acquire other forms of perception, forms of concept, forms of thought, and forms of feeling. - Even that which, in the most eminent sense, has a northern character—for example, the “Witches’ Kitchen”—Goethe wrote this scene in Rome because he believed he could only fully immerse himself in the nature of spiritual perception if his state of consciousness were transformed by the atmosphere there. One must strive to find one’s way into Goethe in a subtle, intimate way.

[ 7 ] So we can see that Goethe does not contrast his Faust with Mephistopheles out of some insubstantial abstraction, but because he wanted to present him as the representative of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch within the development of humanity. But out of another aspiration—to make a living comparison, as it were, between two states of consciousness—he felt the need not only to have Faust experience the conditions and events of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, but also to lead him back and immerse his soul in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, so that this, too, might shape his state of consciousness. This occurs when Faust meets Helena.

[ 8 ] There are many interesting aspects to explore in individual scenes throughout the comprehensive “Faust.” For example, it would be interesting to present one after another the “Witches’ Kitchen,” the conjuring scene at the “Imperial Court,” and then the scene in which Helena herself appears; for these three scenes depict three successive encounters between Faust and Helena. In the “Witches’ Kitchen,” while Mephistopheles converses with the monkeys and the witch, Faust sees an image in the magic mirror, to which he speaks only of the woman’s beauty. But Mephistopheles’ words already foreshadow the appearance of Helena’s image:

With this potion in your veins,
you will soon see Helen in every woman.

[ 9 ] Here, the element that later takes on further form in the “Kaiserhof” scene first appears, and which finally emerges in its third form in the “Classical-Romantic Phantasmagoria” in the third act of the second part. It would be interesting to see these three elements presented one after the other, because then people might realize that this “Faust” is, in fact, a very organic, internally coherent, and living entity.

[ 10 ] It is no coincidence that here at the “Kaiserhof” we hear once again from Faust’s own lips:

It smells like a witch's kitchen here.

[ 11 ] Whenever the conversation turns to Helena, there’s a whiff of the “witch’s kitchen.” So Helena is brought to mind. The sentences are all carefully crafted. Goethe is not a poet like others, but a poet who truly wrote out of great, far-reaching necessities.

[ 12 ] But let us ask ourselves more precisely: Why does Faust have these three encounters with Helena? Why is this so? — After all, these three encounters are quite different from one another. In the first encounter, in the “witches’ kitchen,” in the magic mirror, Faust is initially transported in a lighthearted manner. He sees an image. Anyone familiar with the finer distinctions of occult science knows how to properly assess this image that Faust sees in the magic mirror. I have often spoken to you about how our thoughts and our mental images in ordinary life are actually the corpses of what we experience. Behind all thoughts lie imaginations, but we kill off the imaginative. You will be able to see this a bit more clearly from a philosophical perspective once my book is published—a small

[ 13 ] The chapter on this subject contains: “On the Mysteries of the Soul.” What Faust sees in the “witches’ kitchen” in the magic mirror is something that lives within him, elevated to the realm of the imagination. Otherwise, he has only an abstract mental image; here, however, he experiences the mental image of Helena—which Goethe elevates from the entire realm of conceptual life and transforms into imagination. So we have—and I ask you to note this—first: a mental image that has become imaginative—“Witches’ Kitchen.”

[ 14 ] The story continues in the conjuration scene at the “Kaiserhof.” Here, more is captured than merely Faust’s imagination. If Faust had merely absorbed the image he sees in the magic mirror, he would not be able to reproduce it outwardly, whether through smoke or some other means. For him to be able to reproduce it outwardly, it is necessary that it be connected to his emotional life. One can truly only say that Goethe hints at what he intends to convey here as intensely as possible. That Faust no longer merely admires beauty in the realm of the imagination—as in the “Witches’ Kitchen” in the image of the magic mirror—is evident to you from the fact that Goethe wonderfully presents the entire range of emotions, feelings, and stirrings of the soul through which Faust feels connected to Helena in this conjuration scene. It is truly a marvelous crescendo—in which not a single word could be placed elsewhere—when Faust bursts out with the words that characterize his emotional relationship to Helena: affection, love, adoration, madness. One could not describe it in a more soulful way. Imagine this crescendo, and you will see how Goethe portrays the intertwining of what Faust experiences in his inner life. What occurs in the invocation scene, then, is no longer merely a mental image that has become imaginative; it is feeling that has become imaginative. And here is the second point: feeling that has become imaginative—the conjuration scene at the “Kaiserhof.”

[ 15 ] And when we then find the transition to the “Classical-Romantic phantasmagoria,” where Helena appears not merely as a ghost but as a reality that exists for Faust himself—he has Euphorion as his son—we find that Goethe clearly suggests: this “Classical-Romantic phantasmagoria” arises from Faust’s will, no longer merely from his feelings and mental images. This “Classical-Romantic Phantasmagoria” is will transformed into imagination. Third: Will transformed into imagination—Act III of Part Two.

[ 16 ] Mental image, feeling, and will—transformed into the imaginative realm—are all present in the three stages of Helena’s apparition. All of this is artfully rendered. Even those who do not analyze Faust as thoroughly as we are doing now, but simply enjoy it, will find these elements within it.

[ 17 ] The fact that Goethe chose Helena specifically as a manifestation for Faust is indeed connected to the nature of the life tasks of the fourth and fifth post-Atlantean epochs. However, this touches on a problem that even the Bible only touches upon delicately, while Ricarda Huch addresses it somewhat less delicately in her new book on “Luther’s Faith”: the connection between the problem of understanding women and the understanding of evil. There is a mysterious connection in the Bible, hinted at by the fact that the Luciferic temptation in Paradise took place via the woman. The longing for the devil is—in such a beautiful way—now described in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch in Ricarda Huch’s book on “Luther’s Faith.” This is very characteristic. But one cannot go into these matters further, for even hinting at them today would be like treading on very thin ice, let alone discussing them in greater detail.

[ 18 ] But Greek culture—and Goethe in conjunction with Greek culture—gave rise, out of this impulse, to the figure of the Helena apparition. We need only consider that the Helena apparition, the Helena problem, truly formed part of the content of the Greek mysteries. And recognizing the essence of Helen was part of a certain initiation process. Through this essence of Helen, one learned something in the Greek mysteries about the task of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch in relation to the spiritual world. Therefore, there was an exoteric Helen legend and an esoteric Helen legend in Greece. The exoteric Helen legend is the well-known one. The other has also become known, for everything esoteric gradually becomes exoteric. The exoteric version is that, through that event involving the three goddesses, Paris was incited to steal Helen from Menelaus; that he appeared in Greece, abducted Helen with her consent, took her to Troy; that the Trojan War broke out as a result; and that, after the Greeks had besieged and conquered Troy, Menelaus brought his Helen back. This is the exoteric legend of Helen.

[ 19 ] As you know, Homer actually only alludes to this exoteric legend of Helen because, although he was initiated into the esoteric legend of Helen, he did not want to reveal anything about it. It was not until later in Greek history that the playwrights Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides deigned to reveal something of the esoteric Helen legend—namely, that Helen had not consented to her abduction, that Paris had not abducted her but had carried her off against her will; he sailed across the sea with her. Hera caused the ships to be driven off course, so that Paris had to land with Helen in Egypt, where King Proteus ruled at the time. Proteus was informed of the entire affair by slaves who had deserted Paris’s ships, so that he captured Paris, his retinue, and Helen. And Paris was released by Proteus, but Helen was taken from him. According to this legend, she never became Paris’s wife; his treasures were taken from him, and he was sent back to Troy without Helen. But on this journey to Troy, instead of the real Helen—who had remained in Egypt with Proteus—he was able to take with him the idol of Helen, so that Paris appeared in Troy only with the idol of Helen. And the Greeks fought over the idol because they did not believe the Trojans when they said that the real Helen was not in Troy at all. Then, after the Trojan War had ended, Menelaus himself made the journey to Egypt and brought his wife, who had remained chaste, home from there.

[ 20 ] You may know that Goethe does indeed allude to this esoteric aspect of the Helena legend in the “Classical-Romantic Phantasmagoria” in the third act of the second part. Mephistopheles-Phorkyas himself continues the speech of Helena, who is already at a loss. In the third act of the second part, Goethe portrays Helena with all the doubts that assail her. She has, after all, been abducted. Now she hears everything that is being said about her. Everything is becoming jumbled. Things that relate to the idol—not to reality—resound in her ears. Ultimately, she herself no longer knows who she is. Amid all these doubts, we hear her say:

Do not dwell on the joys! All too bitter sorrow
poured endlessly over my chest and head.

[ 21 ] Mephistopheles-Phorkyas replies:

Yet they say you appeared as a dual figure,
Seen in Ilios and in Egypt as well.

[ 22 ] Goethe certainly alludes to this complexity of Helena’s character and incorporates it into his Faust. The Helena problem, in fact, speaks volumes, and it is by no means insignificant that in the second part of the drama, Mephistopheles acts as a mediator, using the key to guide Faust to places that mean nothing to him—places where Faust hopes to find the universe. Every word there, in turn, carries a certain significance. Faust possesses within himself the capacity to transform his state of consciousness, to carry it over into what was experienced by consciousness in the Greco-Latin antiquity, in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. The universe should not be taken merely in the abstract, but concretely, in spiritual form. Mephistopheles cannot enter into this spiritual form. He belongs to another realm. He is actually there to act, as a spirit, in the spiritless world of material events, which is primarily intended to convey its impulses to the people of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. In this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, certain people have the task of looking from the perspective that lies in the spiritual world, so that it may become clear what is to be achieved through the impulse of evil.

[ 23 ] Just as the eye cannot see itself but only other things, so Mephistopheles—he who is the impulse of evil—cannot see evil itself. It is part of what Faust must see, what Faust must come to know. Mephistopheles cannot actually see Helena, at least not with his full attention. And yet he is not entirely without connection to Helena. The shift toward Mephistopheles was only possible through the impulses that Christianity provided for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. Not without a certain shift toward Helena being present there, but what Greek culture—especially for its initiates—sought to express in the Helena problem remains foreign. The Christians of past centuries are also familiar with Helena, but in the form of hell. The word “hell” is not entirely without etymological connection to Helena—the two are related—even if it is a distant connection. The Helena problem is complicated, as is already suggested to you in the esoteric form of the Greek legend.

[ 24 ] What is clearly expressed in various places in my Mystery Dramas is that Ahriman-Mephistopheles must be recognized and seen through; this is what the Faust drama conveys in a certain sense. And Goethe, in turn, coined a phrase for Ahriman-Mephistopheles that is very important for the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. The human being of this epoch must bring about a situation in which, so to speak, Ahriman-Mephistopheles feels recognized by him. Recall the conclusion of my last Mystery Drama; that is a crucial moment—when Ahriman-Mephistopheles feels recognized, when the impulse of evil knows that those who must experience evil find a perspective that allows them to stand not within the evil, but outside of it. This is very important. It is deeply significant that Mephistopheles calls out these words to Faust: “/p”

I praise you before you part from me,
And I can see that you know the devil.

[ 25 ] That is very important. Mephistopheles would never say that to Woodrow Wilson! There would be no reason to.

[ 26 ] This relationship between Faust and Mephistopheles encapsulates much of the entire problem of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. This epoch, I said, has, in a sense, the task of moving toward the struggle that is necessary against the most diverse forms of evil. Yes, the impulses of human development must become sharp again. Such impulses—which arose in the struggle against evil—must emerge, and, as I said, this experience is much more intense than that of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, because the latter is, in a certain sense, a repetition of the Atlantean epoch.

[ 27 ] What does a first experience consist of in the course of humanity’s earthly evolution? For we have such a first experience here. Is it not true that the fourth post-Atlantean epoch had to work through the problem of birth and death, but as a repetition of the Atlantean epoch? A first experience has now occurred again in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It consists in drawing anew from maya, from illusion. Human beings must become acquainted with illusion, with maya, with the great deception.

[ 28 ] I have repeatedly addressed this issue from entirely different perspectives: once in my book The Enigma of Man, where I linked the problem of freedom to the fact that what first appears in consciousness are mirror images, maya; then in the forthcoming essay on Christiani Rosencreutz’s Chymische Hochzeit (1459), where I emphasized the role of illusion in consciousness. These things can really only be stated in their immediate form for the first time now. But these things do not belong to an abstract theory, nor to some abstract fantasy, but to immediate reality. And it is truly wonderful how Goethe was initiated into these things. This fifth post-Atlantean epoch must bring much out of illusion. Goethe portrays the human being of this epoch in Faust. When Faust enters the wider world, he creates paper money—which is characteristic of the Ahrimanic nature of economic life in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—this paper money, which is merely the real economic proof that the imaginary, the unreal, and the illusory reign within economic life and play their role.

[ 29 ] In those periods of human development when money was not the primary concern—but rather the exchange of goods, or barter even when money was available—and the economy was not based on money—one could not say that external economic life was permeated by a web of illusions, as is the case in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. But Goethe himself connects Faust with this economic illusion. What does he actually mean by setting Helena’s second appearance immediately after the “Imperial Court”? What are we actually dealing with here? With the astrologer’s suggestions, with what is suggestive. I already mentioned this yesterday: deception, illusion. It lives—that is what Goethe wanted to say—in external historical reality; it lives there spiritually. The concepts, the mental images—how often have we spoken of them in these reflections—that so often lead to errors. The errors I have cited for you all sprang from illusion. Do you remember that I cited as a characteristic error—though one could cite hundreds of this kind—the fact that certain economists, who considered themselves particularly clever, said in 1914, based on their economic laws: “This war cannot last longer than four to six months at most; it simply cannot be any other way.” — But it has now lasted nearly as many years! Why is that? Why do people live with such mental images, which are reduced to absurdity by reality? Because that phantom-like web—which Goethe has his Faust intervene with at the “Imperial Court”—interferes with this imaginative life, and because people fail to see through what lives in their mental images as a phantom-like web. As soon as the fifth post-Atlantean epoch dawned, the imagination of those capable of perceiving such things was directed toward grasping reality in the face of such phantom-like fabrications. For it was precisely for this scene at the “Imperial Court” that Goethe found a model in Sachs’s beautiful depiction of how a necromancer at the court of Emperor Maximilian causes Helena to appear. There it is not Faust, but the Emperor himself who seeks to grasp the apparition—and who succumbs to it, becoming paralyzed. This weaving of phantom-like fantasies into the reality of historical becoming—I would ask: Where else is it depicted so magnificently and so appropriately, so deeply rooted in the fullness of spiritual reality, as in this Faust? And, as I said, the consciousness of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and that of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch must intertwine. Faust outgrows Mephistopheles. For Mephistopheles, the only conclusion is:

To be burdened with fools,
That ultimately harms the devil himself.

[ 30 ] Faust has suffered a stroke and is paralyzed. His soul has become separated from his body. But what follows is the scene we depicted here last year: Faust’s dream, which the homunculus sees through.

[ 31 ] If she is merely a ghost, where does the Helena of this second apparition come from? This is hinted at very clearly. It is the astrologer who brings her about, even if only through suggestion, through the rhythm of the stars. Connect what emerges for us from the rhythm of the stars with what I said about the macrocosmic forces at work within a woman before conception. This Helena comes from the stars, but she directs the impulses in Faust’s soul toward another Helena. Homunculus sees how the birth of Helena appears in Faust’s vision: Zeus, Leda with the swan, the entire scene. There Faust is led across; there you have the transition to the problem of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch—the problem of birth to be solved. This emerges at the moment when Faust truly outgrows Mephistopheles, when Mephistopheles has nothing of Faust left but the outer physical body. Then the impulse to pass into the fourth post-Atlantean epoch arises in Faust’s soul.

[ 32 ] The motifs are wonderfully interwoven here. One sees the interplay of what lives within us from the fourth and fifth post-Atlantean epochs, as used by Goethe in the most eminent sense. But Goethe knew even more, for he points to the esoteric legend of Helen—how in Troy she was merely the idol, the very same thing rooted in the stars, that which is of cosmic origin. The other aspect—the individual essence of Helen—has shifted across to Egypt, to Proteus. For in the falling city of Troy, what remained of Helen belonged to the third post-Atlantean epoch—that which this third epoch had cast out, that which Egypt had dismissed. But what Egypt preserved for the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, Menelaus in turn retrieved from Egypt and brought back to Greece.

[ 33 ] Thus, in the esoteric legend of Helen—which Goethe evidently drew upon—the third and fourth post-Atlantean epochs also merge into the fifth. Goethe has thus made marvelous use of this “Helen problem.”

[ 34 ] Well, let’s talk more about this tomorrow—not only addressing the Helena problem in relation to Faust, but also discussing some aspects of the Helena problem that can truly shed light on many things within us, things that may arise as questions from the reflections that must pass through our souls at this time.