The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fourth Lecture

[ 1 ] The last two lectures were essentially devoted to the various areas of human artistic creation and artistic sensibility. I chose this approach because I wanted to draw attention to how the unique way of viewing the world—which can arise from a deepening of anthroposophical understanding—must in turn lead to an inner, elemental revitalization of the artistic in the civilization of the present and the future. At the end of yesterday’s lecture, I wanted to draw particular attention to how, because the anthroposophical worldview enables human beings to gain a direct relationship with the spiritual, the spiritual forces necessary for true art to emerge can also be regained—forces that have always been present whenever truly artistic works have emerged from the immediate human experience in one era or another. This truly artistic creation can stand, on the one hand, alongside genuine knowledge and, on the other hand, alongside the genuine religious life of humanity. Through knowledge and through religion, human beings approach, in a certain sense, the spiritual realms of thought, feeling, and will—but in such a way that, precisely during the time human beings spend on earth between birth and death, they sense through inwardly experienced knowledge and inwardly experienced religion that what I made, so to speak, the foundation of yesterday’s and the day before yesterday’s reflections is indeed the case. As human beings observe what surrounds them in the external natural world—which is of the same nature as the physical within them—they must tell themselves that this does not exhaust the human essence. In all artistic, truly religious eras, they have told themselves this. “I exist in earthly life,” humanity told itself, “but in such a way that earthly life contradicts the very essence of my humanity; on the other hand, the very essence of my humanity—as humanity had to tell itself—bears within it something that must be the image, the result of another world or other worlds than the one I experience between birth and death.”

[ 2 ] Let us consider this emotional moment, which I have just described, specifically from an anthroposophical perspective with regard to cognition. With regard to cognition, human beings seek to penetrate the mysteries and enigmas of worldly existence. Modern humanity is so proud of its external, naturalistic discoveries. It is fair to say that, with regard to external naturalistic knowledge, modern humanity has truly made extraordinary progress over the past three to four centuries. Marvelous natural interrelationships lie before the observing gaze of human beings. But it is precisely in the face of these natural interrelationships that modern science, when it reflects on its own nature, must tell itself with the utmost intensity: fundamentally, in our view of the world, what we can perceive through the senses—what we can perceive through the earthly body—takes us only as far as the very gateway to the world’s interrelationships that bars us from the world’s true mysteries and enigmas. And we know from anthroposophical insight that, in order to pass through this gateway—to truly enter the realms where one can gain a vision of what lies beyond the outer sensory world—there are, on the paths that lead through this gateway, certain inner dangers lie in wait for the human being; the human being must have attained a certain inner stability in thought, will, and feeling. This is why passing through this gate is also called “passing by the Guardian of the Threshold.” It must therefore be clearly emphasized that if one is to attain true knowledge of the spiritual-divine foundation of the world, certain dangers must be overcome; that is, one cannot immediately pass through this gate, which leads into the spiritual world, in the state one is in as a human being between birth and death under natural conditions.

[ 3 ] This points to the immense gravity of what may truly be called “knowing.” That is one aspect. And it also points to the fact that, in a sense, there is already an abyss between the purely naturalistic world and that which human beings must seek out if they wish to return to their true home, if they wish to know what their innermost being—with which they must inevitably feel alienated in the merely naturalistic world—is connected to. There is, therefore, a gulf between what constitutes the human being’s innermost essence and the knowledge of where it is to be found. For even as we enter physical existence through birth, we naturally carry our eternal-divine essence with us into earthly life. But if it is to be recognized in the world in terms of its source, then there is an abyss between immediate earthly life and the realms of knowledge we must traverse in order to recognize our own being. Thus, on the one hand, the true idea of knowledge clearly draws attention to the seriousness required in relation to the spiritual world and the search for a connection to it. On the other hand, the religious person as such would not exist if earthly existence were immediately satisfying, if the matter were truly as the new naturalism often dreams—that human beings are merely the highest pinnacle of natural phenomena. The religious person would not exist at all if that were the case, for human beings would then have to be content with their earthly existence. But religion aims at something entirely different from contentment with earthly existence. Religion aims either to offer solace beyond this earthly existence or to place before human beings something that serves as a counterbalance to earthly existence. Or religion also aims to awaken people from mere earthly existence so that, in a kind of reawakening, they may feel that they are more than what can be revealed to them solely through earthly existence.

[ 4 ] Anthroposophical study is capable of awakening a strong feeling, a powerful sensation, on both sides—both on the side of knowledge and on the side of religious experience. On the side of knowledge, it does so by pointing out that one must undergo a process that purifies and refines one before one can pass through the gate into the spiritual world. And reference is also made to religious life by drawing attention to how this religious life must transcend the mere facts that can be grasped by ordinary earthly consciousness; for through anthroposophy, the Mystery of Golgotha—the appearance of Christ Jesus on earth— is understood in such a way that it stands as an event to be grasped supersensually within the other historical events that have occurred in the world, which are to be grasped merely sensually.

[ 5 ] Now, in a sense, human beings live on the brink of this abyss, which opens up before them both intellectually and religiously; this abyss must certainly be bridged, but not—in terms of religious content—during earthly life, nor—in terms of intellectual content—with the consciousness that is given to human beings solely by the earth. This is precisely where art comes in—to provide something within earthly evolution that directly bridges this abyss for earthly existence as well. Therefore, true art cannot help but be conscious that, on the one hand, it must bring the spiritual-divine life down to Earth, and on the other hand, it must elevate earthly-physical life so that the latter may appear, in its forms, colors, words, and sounds, as an earthly revelation of something beyond the Earth. Whether art is more idealistic or more realistic in character is irrelevant. Art requires a connection to the spiritual—to the real spiritual, not merely to the imagined spiritual. The artist could not create from his material at all if the impulse originating from the spiritual world did not live within him. This, however, also points to the seriousness inherent in the artistic, alongside the seriousness of cognition and the seriousness of religious experience. It cannot be denied that, in many respects, our materialistically minded world and humanity have strayed from this seriousness in the artistic. Every glimpse into artistic creation—which truly deserves this name—reveals to us that artistic creation is at the same time a human striving for harmony between the spiritual-divine and the physical-earthly. And where this striving is not evident in the artist, there is no truly artistic impulse present. One might say that this became evident precisely when the great question of art approached humanity—at a certain stage of cultural development—with the utmost seriousness. It was most recently manifested on a grand scale in world history through what was alive during the Goethe-Schiller era. It is precisely this striving for a balance, for a harmonization of the spiritual-divine with the physical-sensual, that characterizes the Goethe-Schiller era. One need only cast a glance at Goethe’s own struggle, at Schiller’s struggle, to find this confirmed. From the wealth of material that could be cited here, we have cited many examples in the course of our years of reflection. Today I wish to point out just a few things in order to set the basic tone.

[ 6 ] During the Goethe-Schiller era, the distinction between Romantic and Classical art emerged as a guiding principle—one that Goethe and Schiller themselves accepted. Goethe, in a sense, saw himself entirely as a devotee of classical art. He wanted to become a true guardian of classical art by immersing himself in that which could still reveal to him the true secrets of great Greek art. Through his journey to Italy, he sought to immerse himself in the mysteries of Greek art. His trip to Italy was, for him, something like the fulfillment of a longing. In his Nordic surroundings, he had, in a sense, felt no possibility of artistically harmonizing the divine-spiritual—which, on the one hand, hovered before his soul—with the physical-sensual—which, on the other hand, stood right before his senses. In contemplating what he believed he could intuit of Greek art—I would say through the lens of Italian artworks—he sought to harmonize that which had not yet been harmonized when he departed from Weimar for Italy. In a deeper sense, there is something—I must coin a paradoxical expression, but I can find no other if I am to describe what Goethe experienced during his Italian journey—that makes a heroic and moving impression.

[ 7 ] Goethe is an advocate of a classical artistic movement. In this sense—to put it in words that quite well reflect his own idea—Goethe is an advocate of a classical artistic movement in that his gaze was directed above all toward the external, the sensory-real. But he was far too profound a spirit not to sense that this sensory-real realm does not correspond to that in which human beings must seek their spiritual home. It must be purified and elevated. — Thus, as an artist, Goethe sought everywhere—in the forms of nature and in human actions—that which he believed, even if it appears imperfectly in the sensory-physical realm, could, through appropriate treatment—without betraying the sensory -physical form, so that the divine-spiritual might shine through the purified sensory form. This was Goethe’s entire, energetic endeavor: not to incorporate the divine-spiritual into his words with a light hand, nor to express the divine-spiritual in lines or the like with a light hand; for he would always have been convinced that when one speaks of the divine-spiritual in this romantic form, it is relatively easy—suggestive, but not exhaustively or comprehensively, to bring the divine-spiritual into earthly life. Goethe did not want to say: “The gods live. I am creating a more or less symbolic representation in the earthly realm as proof of my belief that the gods live.” —That is not what Goethe intended. He did not have such a feeling. Rather, he had the feeling: I look at the stones, I look at the plants, I look at the animals, I observe the actions of human beings. To me, they are like forms that have fallen away from the divine-spiritual, that have perhaps strayed far from the divine-spiritual; but even if I see, in the form that meets me in the earthly realm, even if I see, in the color that meets me in the earthly realm, a departure from the divine-spiritual appearing everywhere, I must still be able to treat this color, this form, in such a way that I elevate it, so that it can represent the divine-spiritual out of its own essence. — I need not, as Goethe felt, be unfaithful to nature; rather, I need only purify fallen nature through artistic creation, and then it will, in its very essence, be an expression of the divine-spiritual. Goethe perceived this as classicism. He believed that this had been the main impulse of Greek art, and that it is, in fact, true art itself.

[ 8 ] A figure like Schiller could not go along with this focus on ideas, for his gaze was directed idealistically upward toward the divine-spiritual world. He treated whatever existed in the sensory-physical world merely as an opportunity to allude to and express the divine-spiritual. Thus, Schiller was the catalyst for Romantic poetry, which then followed in Goethe’s footsteps. It is extraordinarily interesting how the opposing approach—the one I might say despaired of the possibility of elevating the earthly-sensual to the divine, and which is content merely to use the earthly-physical-sensual to express the divine-spiritual more or less allusively—how precisely this Romantic poetry in Central Europe followed in the footsteps of Goethe’s aspired classicism.

[ 9 ] But let's take a look at Goethe's classicism itself. Goethe, who coined the beautiful phrase:

“Whoever possesses science and art,
also possesses religion;
Whoever does not possess those two,
let him have religion.”,

[ 10 ] was so deeply imbued with it that there can be no artist who does not possess a religious impulse within himself; Goethe, who was so strongly repelled by trivial religiosity precisely because such a deep religious impulse existed within him, made—if I may use this almost pedantic expression—the most sincere effort to artistically purify the sensual, physical, earthly form so that it appears as a reflection of the divine and spiritual. Let us consider how he made this sincere effort. He takes up precisely that which is so thoroughly coarse and earthly, and feels compelled not to alter it all that much in order to shape it artistically. In this context, take a look at Goethe’s work on Götz von Berlichingen. He takes the biography of Götz von Berlichingen—which is a purely external biographical account—and treats it with the utmost reverence, dramatizing it; he even expresses this in the title, for the title of his first adaptation is The Story of Gottfried von Berlichingen with the Iron Hand, Dramatized. So he takes something entirely earthly and physical, treats it with such reverence that he alters it only slightly in order to transform it into drama. As an artist, he thus wishes to depart from the earthly realm as little as possible, while at the same time seeking to portray it as an expression of the spiritual-divine world order. And take another example. Consider how Goethe approaches his Iphigenia and his Tasso. He conceives these dramas, shaping the material poetically. But what does he do then? One might say he doesn’t dare at all—as he is, this Goethe, born in Frankfurt, who studied in Leipzig and Strasbourg and came to Weimar—to complete this Iphigenia drama, this Tasso drama, as that Goethe, as the Weimar-Frankfurt Goethe. He must go to Italy, must walk in the light of Greek art, in order to elevate the sensual, physical, earthly form to such a degree that he can assume it reflects the spiritual. Just think of the struggle, the inner conflict within this Goethe, to bridge the chasm between the sensual, physical, earthly and the divine, spiritual. This was a kind of affliction within Goethe when he left Weimar, so to speak, under cover of night, without telling anyone, simply to flee to an environment where he might succeed in making the forms—which he, as the Nordic Goethe, could not at all master—appear spiritual, in order to further elevate them into the spiritual realm. This psychology of Goethe is something profoundly moving. There is something—I would say—heroically moving about it when one considers Goethe in this context.

[ 11 ] Please continue reading. The most characteristic thing about Goethe is—as strange as it may seem to you when I utter this paradoxical phrase—that he never finished anything. He began Faust with a grand vision. Only the philistine Eckermann was able to persuade him in his later years to complete this Faust in a way that was still possible for Goethe. It took an immense struggle—one in which even another person had to assist—for Goethe to bring this Faust to artistic completion at all. Take Wilhelm Meister. As he had conceived it in his initial burst of inspiration, he had no intention of finishing it on his own. Schiller persuaded him to do so. And when we look at the story in the light of today, we might say, “If only Schiller hadn’t done that.” For what Goethe produced back then does not at all measure up to what would have remained a fragment in the draft stage. And take the second part: episodes were initially cobbled together. It is not a unified work of art. Consider how Goethe sought to ascend to the highest heights of poetic creation by drawing his characters—such as “Pandora”—precisely from a realm so dear to him: the Greek world. It remained a fragment; he could not bring it to completion. His draft was so immensely vast that he failed to give it a rounded form. We see this in this draft, but we also see how the weight and gravity of the artist’s task weigh heavily on his soul. And look how Goethe sought to idealize human life in order to present it—I would say—in the radiance of the divine-spiritual; yet he managed to complete only the first part of the trilogy, the first drama, Die natürliche Tochter (

).

[ 12 ] One might say that Goethe demonstrated his commitment to classicism everywhere; he displays such a strong striving to create, out of the earthly and physical, something that is purified to such a degree that it reveals the splendor of the divine and spiritual. Goethe shows how he strives and struggles everywhere, yet how this is a task that can transcend even human powers—including Goethe’s own—when taken deeply enough. That is why one must say that the artistic, in its serious mission in the world, appears so magnificent and powerful precisely in a figure such as Goethe. - What ultimately emerged, particularly within Romanticism, appears all the more characteristic when viewed in connection with Goethe.

[ 13 ] Last Thursday marked the 150th anniversary of Ludwig Tieck’s birth. He was born on May 31, 1773. He died on April 28, 1853. Ludwig Tieck, who is unfortunately little known today, was in a certain sense a faithful disciple of Goethe. He emerged from Romanticism, from what I would call the “Goethe problem” of the late 18th century, as it was felt at the university in Jena. As a young man, Ludwig Tieck witnessed the publication of Werther and the first Faust. In Jena, Ludwig Tieck sought answers to the mysteries of the world alongside Novalis, Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Ludwig Tieck felt the breath of the entire Goethean-classical striving from the closest possible proximity. I would like to say that it is precisely in Ludwig Tieck that one can perceive how intellectual life was still thriving at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, and in the first half of the 19th century, for Ludwig Tieck is not only the one who, alongside Schlegel, actually introduced Shakespeare to Germany, but Ludwig Tieck is a figure through whom one can see how Goethe’s immense struggle and striving are reflected in a significant contemporary who perceives precisely the serious, the sublime, and the dignified in art as a mighty, human-cultural ideal. And Ludwig Tieck looked around the world; he did not limit his life experiences to a small corner of the globe; after first sitting at the feet of Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel in Jena, he traveled through Italy and France. Ludwig Tieck knew the world. But after becoming acquainted with philosophy and the world, Ludwig Tieck sought to bridge the chasm between earthly existence and heavenly-divine existence artistically, in the manner of Goethe.

[ 14 ] Of course, he was no match for the true power, the driving force of Goethe’s essence. But consider, for example, one of Ludwig Tieck’s relatively early works: Franz Sternbald’s Wanderings, which is modeled in form after Wilhelm Meister. Indeed, what are these Sternbald wanderings? They are wanderings of the human soul toward the realm of art. The question weighs immensely heavily on Sternbald: How can I, from within this sensory, physical, earthly reality, find a way to elevate this physical, earthly, sensory reality into the splendor of the spiritual in an artistic manner? In this regard, if I may say so, Ludwig Tieck—whose 150th birthday we would actually be obliged to celebrate these days—also felt that gravity which shines down upon art from the realm of knowledge and from the realm of religious life. The highlights that fall upon Ludwig Tieck’s artistic creations from the realms of knowledge and religion are magnificent. One of Ludwig Tieck’s novels, William Lovell, was also written relatively early in his youth. This character is entirely shaped by the impression Tieck gained from the seriousness of the quest for knowledge, which he experienced while sitting at the feet of Schelling and Fichte in Jena. Just consider what effect this had on a mind as highly receptive as Ludwig Tieck’s. It had a different—though no less magnificent—effect on Novalis, but for Ludwig Tieck, who in his earlier years had still undergone the so-called rationalist, intellectualist, and free-thinking training of the Berlin “Oberpedant,” the Secret Oberpedant Nicolai, what he had to experience there was something else entirely when he saw how, in Fichte and Schelling, the human soul essentially abandoned all connection with external physical reality and sought, from within itself alone, the path through the gate into the spiritual world. In William Lovell, Ludwig Tieck portrays such a person who, entirely from within his own soul, seeks the path to the spiritual—in a wholly subjectivist manner—and who, because he cannot find what Goethe always sought through his classical art, because he could not find the divine in the physical and sensual realm but only sought it—I would say, placed at the very pinnacle of his own personality— therefore becomes deluded not only about the world but also about his own personality. And so William Lovell loses all foothold in life through the greatest of all—through the philosophy of Fichte and Schelling. In its own way, this play alludes to the danger of knowledge—a danger that human beings must necessarily undergo—precisely in this William Lovell, so that one can already say: In Ludwig Tieck, one sees how the seriousness of knowledge shines into the seriousness of art.

[ 15 ] Ludwig Tieck, already a relatively elderly man at the time, wrote a poetic work such as The Uprising in the Cévennes. Yes, what does this The Uprising in the Cévennes depict? Demonic Powers that approach human beings, spirits of nature that seize people, make them possessed, drive them into religious fanaticism, and take such a hold on them that they can no longer find their own way through the world. Oh, this Ludwig Tieck, on the one hand, had already sensed what it means to be placed at the very pinnacle of one’s own personality, and on the other hand, to be at the mercy of the spiritual beings that live throughout nature as elemental spirits, as elemental gods. That is why there are tones of such poignant power in Ludwig Tieck’s works, such as in Dichterleben (The Life of a Poet), where he depicts how Shakespeare, as a wholly poetic, artistic nature, entered the world; how the world places obstacles in the path of a truly poetic nature everywhere; and how a truly poetic nature becomes entangled everywhere in the clutches of life. Ludwig Tieck depicted the artist’s entry into life—into earthly life, as granted by purely natural existence—by portraying Shakespeare’s youth in his work The Poet’s Life. He depicted the departure from earthly life—indeed, the path toward the gates of death for the artist, for the poet—by portraying Camões, the Portuguese poet, as he departs from life in his work The Death of the Poet. These are truly moving depictions: how Ludwig Tieck, drawing from the solemnity of the Goethean era, portrayed the artist’s entry into life by drawing on Shakespeare, and the poet’s departure from life by drawing on Camões, the Portuguese poet. Yet, since Ludwig Tieck was not himself such a great personality—but rather, his greatest quality was a reflection of the Goethean spirit—it was extraordinarily characteristic how Tieck positioned himself in relation to all those who sought only to stand on earth as, I might say, “truly practical people” without any intellectual influence whenever art was involved. Oh, in a certain sense, there is no more apt satire than that which Ludwig Tieck delivered in his Bluebeard against all the novels of knights and robbers. And in a certain sense, there is, in turn, no more apt satire on all that is maudlin and sentimental—which aspires to be artistic but becomes merely lamentable and constantly whispers indistinctly toward the divine and spiritual—than what Ludwig Tieck, who was also an outstanding declaimer, felt toward such maudlin types as Iffland or such chatterboxes as Kotzebue; there is nothing more excellent than Ludwig Tieck’s Puss in Boots, with which he shows this whole rabble the way.

[ 16 ] You see, precisely in this figure—who often strikes one as embodying what Goetheanism reflected in a receptive personality during the first half of the nineteenth century—precisely in this figure of Ludwig Tieck, whose 150th birthday, as mentioned, we would now be obliged to commemorate, one sees how something like the memory of the great old times found its way into the modern era—times in which humanity looked up to the divine-spiritual and sought to create monuments to the divine-spiritual everywhere in earthly art. One can see in such a figure what the actual transition was like from a time that still lived on in the spirit—at least in memory—to the time that was then completely blinded by the impression of a scientific worldview that was indeed brilliant in itself, and by a less brilliant way of life, what the transition into this era was like—an era that will never find the spiritual within itself unless it receives the spiritual impulse of direct spiritual perception of the world, that is, of imagination, inspiration, and intuition, as sought after by anthroposophy.

[ 17 ] Let us just once consider, from this perspective as well, the immense seriousness that animated these people. Goethe and many others despaired of finding the path into the realm of the spirit in what modern intellectual thought could offer them. And Goethe did not rest until he had gained an inkling in Italy of the way in which the Greeks, through their works of art, wove themselves into the mysteries of existence. I have often quoted Goethe’s statement: “I have a hunch,” says Goethe, “that they (the Greeks) proceeded—in the creation of their works of art—according to the very same laws by which nature proceeds, and which I am on the trail of.” Goethe thus believes that, in creating their works of art, the Greeks received something from the gods, enabling them to create in these works something like higher works of nature and thus images of divine-spiritual existence. The Goetheans, who were still directly influenced by Goethe’s spirit itself, received from Goethe a sense of that inspiration, that feeling that one must actually go back to the ancient times of humanity—at least to Greek civilization—in order to return to the spirit.

[ 18 ] Herman Grimm, who—in this and in many other respects, as I described in my latest essay in Goetheanum—still sensed something of this living Goethean spirit, said repeatedly that when one looks at the Romans, they are already akin to modern people. They already walk the way modern people walk, even though they still wear togas. But when one looks at the Greeks, it seems as if the great Greeks all still had the blood of the gods flowing through their veins. What a beautiful statement! Above all, there is an artistic sensibility in this statement. Yes, ever since the 15th century—I have often mentioned this beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch—there has been a shift among people toward materialism and naturalism. It was necessary. There is no need here to criticize what the modern era has brought. Humanity would have had to remain deterministically dependent on the divine-spiritual world if it had stayed as it was in the past. Humanity needed this step out into the purely material world in order to become free. Now, I have described in my Philosophy of Freedom what modern human beings feel in this regard. But one might say that something like the lingering twilight of this spiritual life was still present right up to Goethe’s time, indeed well into the mid-19th century—the twilight of an old era. Hence Goethe’s deep longing for Italy, to sense—in the echoes of the ancient Greek spirit—the spirit he could not find within his own civilization. Goethe could not live at all without having seen Rome, that Rome in which he believed he could feel a culture—albeit antiquated—that was still so very much alive and that still contained the spiritual within the sensory-physical.

[ 19 ] The one who truly stands as the personification of the twilight of the old intellectual life—Johann Joachim Winckelmann—had preceded him in this spirit. The immense, dazzlingly beautiful book that Goethe has just written about Winckelmann and his century demonstrates how well Goethe understood Winckelmann’s spirit. What Goethe has produced in his book on Winckelmann is a magnificent portrayal of the aspirations of a man as deeply yearning for spirituality as Winckelmann. One senses in this book how vividly Goethe perceived how Winckelmann first journeyed down to southern Rome to find the spirit he could no longer find in the present, to carry spirituality from the past into the present. Winckelmann was utterly intoxicated by such a search for spirituality. Goethe could empathize with that. That is why his book on Winckelmann is so magnificent—because he was imbued with the same longing. And both of them ultimately sensed, while they were in Rome, something of the breath of that ancient spirituality. Winckelmann did so by drawing out, as it were, the mysteries of art from what he had absorbed in Rome—not physically, but soulfully and spiritually—of the remnants of Greek artistic intent. Goethe did the same. Goethe was able to rewrite his “Iphigenia” in Rome. He fled to Rome with the Nordic “Iphigenia” in order to rewrite it, to give it the form that he alone could regard as classical. There he succeeded; in his later works, after he had returned, he no longer did.

[ 20 ] In this, however, Goethe reveals the profound seriousness of an artist’s struggle for spirituality. Essentially, he could not find satisfaction in his artistic quest until he believed he had discerned in Raphael’s use of color and Michelangelo’s sculptural form what is possible in terms of color and form when derived from genuine artistic experience. And so he grew into this spirituality and depicted the evening glow that was still there, still evoking a spirituality that had been exhausted, one that no longer held meaning for modern humanity.

[ 21 ] If I may touch on something personal here, please allow me to say the following. It was at a certain moment when I could truly feel what Winckelmann once said as he traveled south to discover the mysteries of art, when I could also truly sense how Goethe then followed in Winckelmann’s footsteps, but when I also had to sense and feel had to feel with all my might that the time is past when we can indulge in the twilight, that the time has come when we must seek with all our might a new exploration of spiritual life, when we can no longer merely revel in the search for the old. I could feel this so deeply at the very moment when fate brought me to the rooms where Winckelmann once lived during his stay in Rome—where he honed his thoughts on Italian and Greek art, where he articulated those far-reaching ideas that so inspired Goethe— years ago I had to give anthroposophical lectures on the evolution of humanity and the evolution of the worlds. It was a truly profound experience for me to feel there that something new must be said on the path toward spiritual life. I had to say this in the very same places where Winckelmann formulated his ideas during his stay in Rome—ideas about which Goethe later wrote in his book on Winckelmann. It is a remarkable twist of fate that I had to give these lectures in the very same palazzo where Winckelmann lived during his stay in Rome. With this personal remark, I would like to conclude these reflections today.