The Rudolf Steiner Archive

11. The Perception of Reality in Greek Myths

based on a depiction of the “Classical Walpurgis Night”

[ 2 ] Yesterday I tried to speak to you about the scene from the second part of Faust that had just been performed. I would like to briefly recap the main ideas that were highlighted here yesterday, for this scene is indeed one of Goethe’s most significant creations—a scene that Goethe inserted into his Faust after wrestling with the Faust problem for some sixty years. Moreover, we are dealing with a scene through which one can truly gain the most intense insight into Goethe’s soul, insofar as this soul is governed by a thirst for knowledge—and above all, by the seriousness and grandeur of that thirst. However, if one regards Faust as, so to speak, a work of poetry dedicated to knowledge, one must never lose sight of the fact that everything revealed in Faust through the highest wisdom in no way impairs the artistic creative power—the purely artistic—as is so often the case with lesser poets who attempt such things. I have pointed out that Goethe himself emphasized to Eckermann that he had encoded much within his Faust, and that the initiated reader would find many human enigmas therein; yet he had endeavored to shape everything in such a way that, viewed purely from the stage as a visual image, it could make an impression even on the naive mind.

[ 3 ] Now let us once again bring to mind the main ideas from yesterday’s discussion regarding the mystery within, so that we may then move on to what could not yet be addressed yesterday: the conclusion of this scene. I said yesterday that this scene truly demonstrates how Goethe explored the problem of human self-knowledge and human self-understanding. For Goethe, knowledge—the grasping of truth, which for him was a scientific impulse—was never merely something abstract or theoretical, but was always, as it must increasingly become for the fully developed human being in the future evolution of humanity, for Goethe, that which he sought as knowledge in his soul was something that had to become an impulse toward fully immersing oneself in life, toward feeling everything that life can bring to human beings—happiness and misfortune, joys and sorrows, blows of fate and opportunities for development. But the thirst for knowledge must also relate to all that life demands of human beings with regard to their behavior toward the social whole, and with regard to their actions and creative work. Faust is not to be portrayed merely as one who strives for the highest knowledge, but as a human being who is intimately connected to everything that life demands of and brings to human beings. To this end, Goethe seeks for his Faust self-knowledge—that is, knowledge of humanity and self-understanding—an understanding of the forces that lie dormant within the human being, ready for action. But Goethe is equally clear that ordinary knowledge, bound to the senses and conditioned by the intellect, cannot lead to such self-knowledge. That is why Goethe introduces the homunculus in the “Classical Walpurgis Night”—that product which, to the medieval researcher, was supposed to be a replica of the human being, derived from the forces of nature and the laws of nature that the physical intellect can grasp within the external world. Let us now take all of this into account in the idea of the homunculus—I spoke in more detail yesterday about what Goethe meant by his homunculus, setting aside all the superstition associated with it—and let us consider what Goethe meant by it. In his idea of the homunculus, Goethe wanted to depict that aspect of the human being which a person here in the physical world can perceive about themselves. According to Goethe’s view, anyone who relies solely on the insights that physical science or knowledge of physical life can provide will never attain an understanding of humanity or a grasp of what it means to be human. Such a person will never recognize the Homo, the human being; they will only be able to place before their soul a homunculus, an elemental spirit that has remained stuck on the path to becoming human.

[ 4 ] Goethe was now grappling with a problem of knowledge. How can the idea of the homunculus give rise to the idea of Homo? Goethe was clear on this—as evidenced by the entire attitude, the entire mood, and the artistic conception of the “Classical Walpurgis Night”—that the question of human nature can only be answered through a form of knowledge derived from research into the spiritual and soul aspects of the human being that operate outside the physical human body. Goethe certainly wanted to let this shine through as his conviction in Faust: that only someone who accepts insights gained outside the physical instruments of the body can provide information about the human being. Thus, only true Spiritual Science—or, as we understand it, anthroposophy—can lead to knowledge of the human being, the Homo, whereas all other forms of knowledge active in the physical world can lead only to the concept of the homunculus. Throughout his entire life, Goethe also strove unceasingly, as far as he was able, to ascend to such supersensible knowledge. He sought it through various paths. He attempted to artistically shape the paths that presented themselves to him in his Faust. Faust was to be, for him, the representative of a human being who now attains true knowledge and understanding of humanity.

[ 5 ] In Goethe’s time, however, an anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science did not yet exist—nor could it have existed. Goethe therefore sought to draw upon those cultures of his era in which echoes of an atavistic view of the spirit were still present. And it was natural for him—after he had demonstrated all that was inadequate for human understanding in the “Romantic Walpurgis Night” of the first part of Faust (we have spoken often about Goethe and can therefore appreciate the underlying reasons why this seemed natural to him)—to take refuge in the imaginings of Greek mythology. Goethe sensed and felt that an understanding of humanity cannot be attained through the concepts of the physical intellect. He was not yet ready to turn to his own imaginings. He therefore attempted once more to give form to Greek imaginings. So that, to speak more precisely, we can describe the very scene that has just unfolded before our eyes as follows: Goethe wanted to depict how a person—Faust—has been approached—it has come to him from outside, but that is irrelevant—by the idea of the homunculus, which can be grasped solely within the physical world; how such a person, through a change in his state of consciousness, that he steps out of his body, now behaves differently—that the person behaves as if, at night, while sleeping, he were placed outside his body and enabled to perceive what is then spiritually and psychologically around him. And then, when he, so to speak, falls asleep consciously and continues to act consciously in sleep—such a person, when he carries the idea of the homunculus, gained in physical life, into the sleep of knowledge, can transform it in such a way that it takes hold of human reality. This is what Goethe sought to portray, and to that end he drew upon the imagery of Greek mythology. In his perception, he was at least far beyond that scholarly superstition—he hinted at this repeatedly in this very scene—that myths such as the Greek myths contain nothing but fiction and figments of the imagination. As you know—I have discussed this many times—scholarly superstition has even gone so far as to claim that the legends, sagas, and myths that live among the common people are views of nature transformed by the imagination. Such scholarly superstition, in fact, has no idea how little the imagination in the naive mind contributes to what is created, and how much, instead, a certain atavistic perception of reality—which takes place in dreams—contributes. Now, in the myths that the Greek spirit has developed, there is not merely fiction; there is a perception of reality.

[ 6 ] First, Goethe demonstrated the very element in which all ancient peoples saw the impulse that acts upon the soul in such a way that it separates from the body. For the people of ancient times, the connection to the world was far more intense than it is for today’s abstract, rationalistic human beings. When people of ancient times climbed a mountain, it was not merely a physical, barely perceptible change in the density of the air they breathed or a shift in perspective that the eye overlooks; rather, for them, it was a transition from one state of soul to another.

[ 7 ] The older people experienced a climb up the mountain much more vividly than the modern, abstracted person. And in particular, these people intensely experienced what some sailors still experience today—albeit in a crude and barbaric form—namely, that a certain detachment of the spiritual-soul aspect from the physical body truly takes place. Sailors with a deeper-rooted seafaring nature are still familiar with this phenomenon. But for the people of old, it was something entirely natural: they sensed that when I set sail out onto the vast sea and no longer have my connection to the solid earth—which gives everything fixed contours—then the soul detaches itself from the body, and one perceives more of the supersensible than one can even intuit of this supersensible realm while firmly bound to the fixed contours of the earthly world. That is why Goethe has a joyful sea festival take place at the very moment when the homunculus is to be transformed into the homo. Thales, the natural philosopher, introduces the homunculus to this joyful sea festival.

[ 8 ] We see the Sirens. I do not wish to repeat today—I did so yesterday—how all of this is presented in an outward, theatrical, and pictorial manner. But I want to draw attention to the deeper mystery that Goethe himself claims to have seen within it—the deeper mystery of the song of the sirens, these demonic beings who, on the one hand, are sea demons, but who come to life as sea demons only when the moon shines on the sea. The moonlit sea lures the Sirens forth, and the Sirens, in turn, lure the human soul out of its innermost being. Thus, the Sirens bring about this state of consciousness in which the supersensible world can be perceived through imagination and images. First, the Nereids and Tritons are lured forth. They are on their way to Samothrace for the sacred mysteries of the Cabiri.

[ 9 ] Why does Goethe have the Cabiri appear? Because his homunculus is to become Homo, to become human, and because in the sacred mysteries of the Cabiri on Samothrace, those to be initiated into these mysteries were, above all, to be made acquainted with the mystery of becoming human. What was revealed in the Cabiri was the mystery of becoming human. Here in the physical world, the physical process of becoming human takes place, but this physical process has a spiritual-soul counterpart, and this spiritual-soul counterpart can only be perceived outside the body through imaginations. Unless the abstract idea of the homunculus is brought into connection with what can be perceived there, the homunculus cannot become a human being. Thus Goethe believed that in all that the Greeks felt when they thought of their Cabiri on Samothrace, he could find something that might be added to the abstract idea of the homunculus, so that this idea of the homunculus might become the idea of the homo. Let us speak openly about what this is actually all about.

[ 10 ] Goethe viewed what a human being can experience through ordinary self-knowledge—that is, what is merely a homunculus—as something comparable, in terms of knowledge, to an unfertilized human embryo. If one thinks only of the unfertilized human embryo within a woman, it can never become a physical human being. The embryo must be fertilized. Only then does a physical human being come into being. If a person thinks solely with the physical intellect, the inner essence of the human being can never be revealed in their thoughts, but only that which can be brought forth one-sidedly and can be compared, for example, to what a woman can bring forth one-sidedly. That which the physical intellect can grasp of the human being must be fertilized through knowledge beyond the physical body. Half of the mystery of the human being remains hidden from mere physical perception. The ancient atavistic clairvoyance, in a manner appropriate to those times, sought precisely through the Kabir mystery to point to that aspect within the spiritual context of nature which constitutes the other half of human becoming—the aspect that points to the immortal nature of the human being. That is why Goethe said: “Perhaps the process of becoming Homo can be depicted from the homunculus with the help of the Kabir impulse.”

[ 11 ] But Goethe, as a seeker of knowledge, was not only someone who struggled with the utmost intensity; he was also—at the same time—something that is far, far rarer in the realm of knowledge than one might actually believe: an intensely honest soul. He wanted, so to speak, to test how far he could go by bringing such mysteries to life—such as the mystery of the Kabirs. Less honest seekers engage in a few antiquarian studies, perhaps even conjure up some fantasies based on those studies, and then believe they understand what is expressed, for example, by the Kabirs. The sincere seeker of truth always knows less than those who are not sincere seekers. The sincere seeker actually always considers himself far more ignorant than those who, with a light heart, cobble together from this or that a so-called “as complete as possible” understanding within human reach. Goethe was not one of those who took the pursuit of knowledge so lightly. Goethe knew that even if, as a seeker of knowledge, one has striven from 1749 to 1829—the year in which he likely wrote the scene that has now unfolded before our eyes—this scene was written, at the very latest, about two years before his death— he knew that even if one has grown old in the pursuit of knowledge and never slacked off, there always remains a nagging doubt for the honest seeker of knowledge: Perhaps you must go even further here or there! — That is precisely what shines so intensely from Goethe’s nature: this absolute honesty. This honesty is evident, for example, even regarding the riddle of the Cabiri: Yes, but as a modern person who no longer possesses the old atavistic clairvoyance, I cannot know what the Greeks meant by the Kabirs; I cannot know it fully! But perhaps that is not even the most important thing; rather, Goethe had the feeling that a kind of knowledge of the Kabir mystery lived within him, yet he himself could not grasp what lived within him. It is like a dream that not only fades away immediately, but like a dream in which one knows that something is flitting by that contains something most profound—yet it flits by so faintly that the mind, the intellect, is not sufficient, and the powers of the soul are not sufficient to bring it into clarity, into distinct contours. It is precisely in this intimate inner unfolding that the significance of this scene lies. One cannot understand this scene if one seeks to explain everything down to the very last detail. For Goethe has, in fact, evoked images precisely to demonstrate through them: “Here I am very close to the place I want to reach, but it is still not possible.”

[ 12 ] And so he introduces the Kabirs to show that, while perhaps not he himself, someone who fully grasps the mystery of the Kabirs will fathom the homunculus’s transition to Homo through that mystery. For him, this is not yet possible. That is why other paths are chosen in the world of the imagination; that is why he has the natural philosopher Thales—whom Goethe held in high esteem, but whom he did not expect to be able to provide insight into how the homunculus becomes Homo—step forward as the homunculus’s guide before Nereus. Nereus possesses such a keen, indeed exceptionally keen, human faculty for transforming the divine into the demonic—and thus for prophetically foreseeing the future—that one might perhaps expect him to know something about how the homunculus becomes Homo. But here Goethe wishes to demonstrate once again: No, this path does not work either. — For if one attempts this path, one arrives at a one-sided development—a development of the critical human intellect elevated into the demonic—which not only degenerates into blunt criticism but even into prophetic criticism, thus focusing on the positive aspect of human criticism. But Nereus, who is, so to speak, among the demons of the priests, is also incapable of approaching the homunculus problem in any way. Nor does he even want to. Goethe feels that if one develops what is merely human reason all the way into the demonic—if it even, I might say, demonizes what the human being already possesses in terms of critical, inquiring intellect—then one loses interest in this deepest human problem of the homunculus’s development into a homo. And so nothing is gained from Nereus. But Nereus at least points out that, at this very moment, he is awaiting the arrival of his daughters, the Dorides—who are the sisters of the Nereids—and the most distinguished among them, Galatea. I already attempted yesterday to allude to what this Galatea represents.

[ 13 ] Today, the researcher sees everything as compartmentalized into individual moments of life. In the Greek worldview—which is by no means limited to what is typically taught in classical philology—what lived within human beings was still thoroughly connected to what lives in the entire natural world outside. That which makes a human being exist exists in a different form, permeating and interweaving all natural processes. But one must be able to discover it. Humanity’s present capacity for knowledge is too coarse to penetrate those realms through which, out in nature, one experiences in the wider world the very same processes that are also hidden within the human being as he develops from the human embryo—from conception, through fertilization, to birth—and then emerges as a human being. The very same processes that take place within the human being itself, veiled from view, are constantly unfolding all around us. This was precisely what was revealed to the initiates in the Kabir mystery: how conception and birth are lived out in nature. Human beings see the moon rise and set, see the sun rise and set, feel the warmth the sun radiates, perceive the light the sun radiates; they see the clouds drift by, hear the roar of the ocean waves, and watch them take shape. In all of this lies the impulse of becoming that surges and undulates through the world. But modern human beings no longer perceive it. They will perceive it as they develop further in the Spiritual Sciences, and it was perceived by the atavistic sense of knowledge, the atavistic sense of perception and intuition of ancient times.

[ 14 ] One must really open oneself up to that more subtle faculty of perception that still existed in ancient times. Today, one might say, it is at most only vaguely dreamed of, intuitively sensed in a dream, but not raised to full consciousness—what happens when, instead of the active sunlight, the moonlight shines upon the sea, and the moonlight is reflected in the waves. People today look at this—how the moonlight is reflected in the waves. At most, the physicist says: “Moonlight is polarized light.”—That is an abstraction; it does not say much. He does not experience what is actually happening there. We experience it today when we are burned with red-hot tongs. The subtlety of our sensory perception is sufficient for this. But the Greek worldview knew that something lives in the sun’s rays—something spiritual and soulful—that something similar, yet different, lives in the moon’s rays, and that something happens when the moonlight—this borrowed sunlight—unites with the sea, with the surging waves. It knew what surges forth when the moonlight, uniting with the ocean’s waves, surges forth alongside them. When it came this way, uniting with the waves, the Greeks perceived in this wave, enchanted by light, the impulse surging and undulating out there in the world—the same impulse that surges and undulates within the human being from conception to birth. Out there in nature, in a different form, is the same thing that exists within the human being when the mystery of becoming human in the physical sense takes place.

[ 15 ] Goethe clearly expresses how he empathizes with and artistically reimagines this subtle, intimate sensation that the Greek might have experienced. Goethe expresses this by having Thales point to the lunar halo, to the little clouds drawing near, and to Galatea’s conch-shaped chariot. Galatea’s conch shell chariot represents the creative power of external nature surging through the sea, which Goethe associates with Luna, with the power of the moon, and with the lunar impulse. Thus, Goethe once again evokes a meaningful imagination of the Greek worldview in order to approach that process through which the abstract idea of the homunculus can become the idea of the homo in human perception. Only when one intuitively senses the intimate nuances of what surges and swells in Goethe’s wonderful images of this scene can one truly connect with what was truly alive in Goethe’s soul during this scene. As soon as one attempts to grasp this scene in our crude, abstract concepts—so that one does not attune oneself to an intimate experience of what Goethe may have felt—one remains far from truly penetrating this scene.

[ 16 ] Thus, the problem of the homunculus and the homo can, in a sense—if I may put it in dry, theoretical terms—be brought closer to a solution by immersing this idea, which has been carried out into bodyless contemplation, into the generative impulse that surges and weaves through nature. Even before he brought the homunculus together with this generative impulse, Goethe had already invoked Proteus, Proteus, the demon whose inner soul structure Goethe believed he had come closest to understanding in his theory of metamorphosis, in which he attempted to trace the transformation of living form from the lower beings all the way up to the human being, in order thereby to draw closer to the mystery of becoming human, the mystery of the homunculus-homo. We know that Goethe was only able to resolve this through a long and circuitous path. He believed he recognized how the leaf transforms into the petal, and the petal in turn into the stamen and pistil of the plant; he also believed he recognized how the bones of the spinal skeleton transform into the bones of the skull. He stopped there, for he could not penetrate to the culmination of this idea of metamorphosis, which exists because we know that a metamorphosis also takes place for the forces that permeate the human body from one incarnation—from one earthly life—to the next. What is my head today is the metamorphosed remainder of the body from the previous incarnation, and what is my body today—excluding the head—will transform itself by the next incarnation into the form of my head in that next incarnation. That is the culmination of metamorphosis. But Goethe was able to present only the elementary stage of this idea of metamorphosis, which flows into anthroposophically oriented Spiritual Science. It came to him as he sought to grasp the problem of the homunculus-homo and strove to give it poetic form.

[ 17 ] Here, too, he presents—I would say with honest skepticism—everything that Proteus, who embodies the idea of metamorphosis, is capable of. Proteus appears in his various forms. Yet they stand side by side. Goethe draws upon everything, I would say, that can truly lead to the birth—the supersensory birth—of the idea of the homunculus. But then Goethe loses heart again. At that moment, I would say, another ray of light flashes in. Opposite all the demons, the spiritual beings of an elemental nature—the Nereids, Tritons, and Dorids, and Nereus— Proteus, and so on—opposed to all of them, the Telchines appear. These, in a sense the oldest artists of the fourth post-Atlantean Earth world, remind us that Goethe sought to approach the mystery of the human being not only through sensory science, but also through another sensory path: the path of art. Goethe was, in fact, neither a one-sided thinker nor a one-sided artist; rather, the artist and the thinker were consciously united within him. That is why, when he stood before the works of art in Italy, he said that he perceived something in them as if he were recognizing that the Greeks, in creating their works of art, had followed the same laws by which nature itself operates—laws he was seeking to uncover. And if one allows Goethe’s book on “Winckelmann” to sink in, one will see how Goethe, through the path of art, sought, so to speak, to bring the mystery of human cognition closer to himself, to trace the transformation of natural phenomena all the way up to the point where nature becomes conscious of itself in human beings—as he so beautifully expresses it in the book on “Winckelmann.” What the artistic view of nature is capable of—viewed from the other side, from the perspective of supersensible knowledge—is brought home to us through the appearance of the Telchines, who are ancient artists who first gave the gods human form.

[ 18 ] Goethe shows us that, while he otherwise always, so to speak, guides human consciousness from the sensible to the supersensible, here he once again allows us to look back from the supersensible to the sensible. The Telchines are in the supersensible realm, but their meaning, so to speak, extends back into the sensible realm; they are depicted in contrast to all the other figures who are purely dedicated to the moon, the Luna; they are the ones addressed by the Sirens:

To you, who are consecrated to Helios,
Blessed with sunny days,
Greetings at this hour that stirs
Our deep reverence for Luna!

[ 19 ] So they actually belong to the sun. On Rhodes, they erected statue after statue to the god Apollo. In a sense, they are trying to approach the Homo-Homunculus problem by looking into the supernatural world. But that doesn’t work either. And Proteus himself emphatically denies that anything has been achieved regarding the homunkulus’s transition to Homo through the Telchines. What happens? Well, the Psylles and Marses—a kind of serpent demon—approach, and they bring the shell chariot with Galatea, whom we described earlier. The Psylles and Marses are serpent demons—demons who, in a sense, lead the soul out of the human being and into the spiritual realm, and who at the same time serve in the world that the human being enters when he leaves his physical body. There is no separation there between the purely animal and the purely human; there, the animal form merges into the human form.

[ 20 ] Now, after it has been shown how difficult it is to illustrate to humans the relationship between the spiritual world and the sensory world—using the Dorids and the boatboys who bring them—the scene depicts the homunculus shattering against Galatea’s shell-shaped chariot. There is also an intimacy in this scene in that the Dorians bring the shipboys forward. The Doriids are demons, sea creatures; the shipboys are human beings. Goethe wishes to show that human beings can draw near to the spiritual beings from the other side of existence, that fate—as we are clearly shown: the shipboys have been saved by the Doriids—that fate brings human beings together with the gods. Yet here in physical life, this relationship dissolves again almost immediately; it cannot be sustained when the supersensible seeks to unite with the sensible:

The gods do not approve.

[ 21 ] And then, at the end of this scene, we are confronted in a truly wondrous way with how—after all that has been attempted in grandiose imaginings of what can turn the homunculus into a homo—what emerges, so to speak, as the highest, most significant, and most intense approach to solving this human enigma is that the homunculus truly submerges himself in the generative power of nature, insofar as it reveals itself through the moonlit and moon-enchanted ocean wave. There the homunculus plunges in. What do we see at the end of the scene? A flash, a blaze. All the elements assert themselves: earth, water, fire, air—all the elements—and what is happening there is, in a sense, overwhelming. And it stands before us much as if we ourselves had now sunk into the sleep of knowledge, had become acquainted with the imaginations that alone can shed light on the mystery of humanity on the other side of existence, and were then called back by the rolling on of the generative force into the life we carry out within the body. I already told you yesterday: The force underlying conception, pregnancy, the embryonic stage, and birth is merely a more expansive, more intense force, but it is of the same nature—it is, in fact, quite the same force as the one that conjures us back from nocturnal sleep or even from the sleep of knowledge into physical wakefulness. Every morning, when we wake up, we are awakened by the same force—which is present only with a different intensity—through which a human being is conceived, carried, and born. Only the former is observed here on Earth—but only in its outward aspect, not in its deeply mysterious inner aspect—while the latter passes by completely unnoticed. This sacred mystery of waking up passes by unnoticed. — We are immersed in a spiritual world; we are submerged in a spiritual world; we wake up, take possession of our body, and find ourselves in the physical-sensory world.

[ 22 ] After all, even among those who are not clairvoyant, there are some who know quite well what is actually alive when they are in a state of sleep and, through sleep, perceive spiritual reality—more than just a dream, but a dreamlike, undulating reality—and then awaken, awakened by the very same force that lives in Galatea’s shell chariot: the creative power of nature, with which the Homo-Homunculus unites to become human. Some people know this, even if they are not clairvoyants. But the science of clairvoyance becomes completely clear in this awakening: it is a descent from the spiritual world—which can be grasped only through the imagination—into the physical-sensory world, which lives in the elements: fire, water, earth, and air. There, once again, that which we believe we have already won for the homunculus’s becoming human over in the other world shatters; there it shatters when he returns once more to reality. Faust is to immerse himself in the reality of ancient Greece; Faust is to bring Helen herself into his presence. If you just turn the page from that powerful conclusion to this scene, where it says:

Hail to the sea! Hail to the waves!
Surrounded by the sacred fire;
Hail to the water! Hail to the fire!
Hail to the rare adventure!

[ 23 ] Hail to the gentle breezes!
Hail to the mysterious tombs!
Here you are all celebrated,
“Elements!” all four of you!

[ 24 ] — if you just turn the page, you'll find the third act:

Much admired and much reviled, Helena,
I come from the shore where we first landed,
Still intoxicated by the lively
rocking of the waves that carried us here from the Phrygian fields of metal...
and so on.

[ 25 ] Faust is to exist within Greek reality; Faust is to awaken from the perception of the highest spirituality to the mystery of the homunculus-homo in the Greek world. There he is to awaken consciously, just as Goethe intended. The moment of awakening had to unfold in such a way that it shows, as it were, how what is perceived in the spiritual-supernatural realm regarding the mystery of humanity shatters as one plunges back into external physical reality—into one’s own body. This is a process that takes place out in nature when the moon fades and dawn breaks. But today, people perceive this connection at most allegorically, symbolically, or poetically. The reality underlying it is little known. Here it appears in something that is at once the embodiment of the enigma of knowledge and true poetry. Goethe truly succeeded, in a magnificent way, in introducing Faust to the supersensible world and awakening him to coexistence with Greek reality.

[ 26 ] One might say to oneself: It was in the 1780s; Goethe set out on his flight to Italy—for a flight it was. Having immersed himself in Nordic nature, he wanted to discover what he believed he could gain—the insight into the world’s mysteries—only through the contemplation of Southern art. — He had gained much, for we know what became of Goethe in the 1790s. Then he had grown older again—that is to say, younger in spirit. While a person grows old outwardly, they grow young in spirit; when they die, they are at their very youngest in spirit. Spiritual life moves in reverse. Now something like the year 1829 had drawn near. One senses, one feels, just as Goethe must have felt within himself at that time: How I would have loved, back when I had the opportunity to immerse myself in the world of southern art, to awaken the spirit of ancient Greece within my soul—how I could have experienced all of that far more richly, far more intensely than I did, had I been able back then to immerse myself in the spiritual world as I now intuitively experience it. - This is what defines the unique atmosphere in this second part of Goethe’s Faust: one sees the soul—which has become young again but has been enriched by this rejuvenation—once more, to a heightened degree, artistically reenacting what has been experienced throughout life. Philistines will therefore never be able to relate to the second part of Goethe’s Faust in any way. And I can fully understand why Vischer—the Swabian who is so witty in many respects, the so-called “V-Vischer,” who has said many good things about Goethe’s Faust—has found that such a work is, after all, a cobbled-together, glued-together piece of drivel from old age. But philistinism, no matter how learned, how clever, or how intelligent it may be, will never be able to penetrate the poetic—especially the highly poetic nature of the second part of Goethe’s Faust. One can only penetrate it by allowing one’s poetic sensibility to be ignited and set ablaze by that which provides spiritual insight.:

[ 27 ] Tomorrow, after presenting this scene as a mental image, we will say a few words about the Goethean inspiration behind this portrayal.