The Rudolf Steiner Archive

1. European Intellectual Life in the Nineteenth Century, with Reference to Its Origins in the Fourth Century I

[ 1 ] During the most recent lecture series at the Goetheanum, it was repeatedly emphasized that spiritual science, as it is practiced here, should have a stimulating effect on the entire scientific spirit of the present day and on the individual academic disciplines. Perhaps this can be most clearly grasped, to begin with, when spiritual science attempts to solve historical mysteries to the extent that is humanly possible; and insofar as two short lectures permit, an attempt to that end will be made this time with regard to a historical topic.

[ 2 ] Today, one already hears from various quarters that the discipline of history is in a sort of crisis. It was not long ago that certain circles held to something like an ideal of historical scholarship. It was the time, for example, when the historian Ranke was active. The ideal was to make history a kind of exact science—exact in the sense in which this term had gradually come to be used out of the practice of scientific research. Today it is often claimed—since this concept of exact research is based on nothing other than what has been gained from conventional natural science—that history as such an exact science is not possible at all, that everything that appears as history must be colored by the temperament, nationality, and other subjective perspectives of the historians; that it must even be colored by the element of imagination that synthesizes the facts, colored by existing intuitive abilities, and so on. And if one indeed looks at what historiography has accomplished, particularly in recent times, one will observe sufficiently that what is actually required for the presentation of objective historical facts takes on a completely different character depending on whether the historian belongs to one nationality or another, whether he possesses a synthetic imagination to a lesser or greater degree, and what other such subjective factors are inherent in the historian.

[ 3 ] The humanities—as an example within these two lectures may perhaps demonstrate—can, in a certain sense, lead to a kind of objectivity in the study of history. Certainly, one will always have to take into account the degree of ability possessed by the individual historian or the individual student of history. But it is precisely in relation to this historical perspective that one aspect of the humanities—which the humanities must claim for themselves, though it is, of course, denied to the greatest extent by their opponents today—should carry great weight. The humanities must, after all, proceed from the development of the subjective human inner life. Forces that are otherwise only latent in the soul must be awakened; they must be transformed into genuine forces of research. Work must therefore proceed from the subjective. But in doing so, spiritual research comes into play precisely to gradually overcome the subjective entirely and to explore such depths within the human soul where, internally, the subjective no longer expresses itself—even though it appears subjectively—but rather the objective emerges, just as in mathematics the objective emerges, even though the truths and insights of mathematics are discovered in a subjective manner. From this perspective, I would like to examine before you a chapter of historical development that must, of course, be of the utmost interest to us as people of the present. I would like to highlight, from the universal realm of historical facts, the more spiritual experiences of the 19th century and their origins, and to view them historically in the sense that spiritual science makes this possible. I would like to structure this in such a way that—if I may make use of these older terms—today I will, so to speak, present to you the exoteric, the more external aspects of the facts that must be taken into account for our considerations, and that tomorrow I will delve more into the esoteric, that is, I will focus on the inner connections and the deeper causes underlying the facts of spiritual life that are of interest to us here.

[ 4 ] When we look back today on the 19th century, to which we are still closely connected—only two decades have passed since then that bear a strong resemblance to the general character of the 19th century—when we look back on the facts of the 19th century, on its very beginnings, we usually have the feeling that the spiritual life of the nineteenth century unfolded as a kind of steady, continuous progress. But this is by no means the case, as becomes clear to anyone who delves a little deeper into the actual fabric of the facts. One might say: It is precisely the development of intellectual life in the nineteenth century that reveals how a radical turning point in that development occurred roughly in the middle of the century. People’s ways of thinking and their state of mind underwent a metamorphosis in the middle of the nineteenth century. What had previously provided the impetus for human coexistence was called into question in many ways. Different ways of feeling emerged in the second half of the 19th century—different from those that existed in the first half—and different habits of thought also emerged. Today, however, we can only, I would say, point to these things with a few characteristic strokes. But that is what we want to do.

[ 5 ] If we look at the leading intellectual figures of the first half of the 19th century, we see that they all still possessed, in their very nature, a certain trait—one might say, a striving toward the spiritual and the idealistic—even though they were already growing up amidst the scientific ways of thinking characteristic of the modern era. Nevertheless, they still feel, in a sense, dependent on what their souls inspire them to pursue. This changes entirely in the second half of the 19th century. We need only look at specific examples, and this will immediately become clear to us. However, we will not be able to focus on scientists in the narrower sense, or perhaps even artists, when we consider this particular line of development; rather, we will have to focus more on those representative minds of humanity who, grounded in the scientific thinking and artistic sensibility of modern times, set themselves greater global tasks—above all, tasks that are intended to encompass the social realm as well. For the social problem—the social enigmas—are emerging with ever-greater intensity as the 19th century unfolds, and the leading minds are compelled to draw upon what the sciences have produced—what has emerged in the general consciousness of humanity as a kind of spiritual sediment—in order to grasp the great social problems and enigmas.

[ 6 ] When we look back at the first half of the 19th century, we find such a representative figure—first and foremost, I would say, in a son of the French Revolution, in Saint-Simon, a thinker who, while certainly embracing the scientific mindset of his time, still retained in his soul at the beginning of the 19th century, yet at the end of the 18th century still carried within his soul the very state of mind that, as a result of the scientific spirit, could only have emerged at the turn of the 18th to the 19th century. But Saint-Simon was also immersed in the general world consciousness, in the social forms of life, and in the demands of life at that time. He witnessed the effects of the French Revolution—that cry for liberty, equality, and fraternity that sprang from the depths of the human soul. But he also had to endure all the disappointments in European life that followed in the wake of the Revolution. Yet he already saw looming on the horizon what would later become, more and more, the burning social issue. And when one takes in the whole structure of his soul, one realizes: Saint-Simon stands firmly on the standpoint of a person who has the firm belief that, through the human pursuit of knowledge, one can rise to ideas that can then enrich social life. One need only understand, in the right way, what has emerged through the scientific spirit of modern times; one must relate it in the right way to all the demands of the times; then, through reflection, knowledge, insight, and a heart warm with love for social causes, one would be able to find something to share with people—and there will be people who understand what one has to say to them, based on contemporary knowledge and a heart warm with love and social compassion. And through the collaboration of such people—who have an understanding of this and develop a will commensurate with that understanding—an improvement and further development of Europe’s social situation, and all that it entails, will be achieved. In Saint-Simon lives the power of thought, the power of the belief that one can have a persuasive effect on people if one grasps what is right within one’s own soul and presents this truth to them in the proper way—scientifically, literarily, and instructively.

[ 7 ] And with this mindset, Saint-Simon seeks to draw upon the entire intellectual spirit of the age. From this perspective, he looks back on those times—which, for him, have now fulfilled their purpose—when the dominant forces came from the world of the nobility and the world of the military. Saint-Simon tells himself: In earlier times, the military and the nobility had a purpose. The nobility provided the military forces that carried out the defense—even for those who wished to devote themselves to the so-called arts of peace. But another class, too, had its significance in earlier times: the clergy. For a long time—so Saint-Simon tells himself—the clergy was the true teaching class, the bearer of intellectual life, the bearer of education. It has long since ceased to be so. Just as the nobility and the military no longer hold their former significance in modern times, neither does the priesthood retain its former importance. In contrast, a completely new element has entered the course of development. — Saint-Simon had a keen insight into what the rising industrial sector and the natural sciences associated with it mean for the development of modern humanity. He told himself: When one considers this development of industry, it fosters, on the one hand, an intellectual life that has already taken shape in the natural sciences—one that has planted a certain way of thinking, which is already manifesting itself in physics, chemistry, and even biology—a way of thinking that must take hold of the other, higher branches of science within the entirety of human intellectual life. True, up to now—as Saint-Simon observed of his own time—only astronomy, chemistry, physics, and physiology have taken on the character of the modern era. But we must also establish a human science, a science of the human soul; we must establish a sociology; and we must rise to a kind of political physics; then we can actively engage in social life. We need—as Saint-Simon says—a political physics, and he wanted to build a kind of science of human social action modeled on the scientific approach that had developed in chemistry, physics, and physiology. Saint-Simon deduced that the entire spirit of the age was driven by a mindset striving toward such a goal precisely from the fact that industrial activity had gained such prominence in modern times. In an age so intensely shaped by everything that can be called “industrial” in the broadest sense, the past cannot possibly find its continuation in the old military-priestly way of life.

[ 8 ] At the same time, Saint-Simon pointed out that, over the course of time, all these things could really only be relative. In earlier times, priests and noble military leaders held significance; in the present age—his own time—contemporary scholars and industrialists hold the same significance. And while, as Saint-Simon observes, a certain worldview and a certain mental disposition were appropriate for the priests and the military—the kind of military of ancient times—a different mental disposition is appropriate for the modern era. But something of the older era always remains. Saint-Simon rejected the old, supernatural culture of the priesthood—which, after all, also underlay the aforementioned military institutions—in light of what the industrial spirit of his age had brought about. He called this an insubstantial, impossible metaphysics, whereas the modern era must strive—even in politics—toward a positive philosophy that adheres to facts just as industrial activity adheres to external facts. All that remains, Saint-Simon said, from those old times is what appears to be a traditional metaphysics—one that seems to have lost all real life and merely perpetuates itself. And this metaphysics, Saint-Simon argues, is the one found specifically in modern jurisprudence and in everything that has crept into political life indirectly through jurisprudence. Essentially, for Saint-Simon, jurisprudence and the conceptual framework underlying it are merely a remnant, a shadow left over from those times when the rule of the clergy and the military held sway.

[ 9 ] One can see what is actually at work when a spirit can manifest itself with such a state of mind. On the one hand, there is what has been at work since the 18th century and even earlier: the scientific way of thinking, which seeks to direct all human contemplation of the soul toward outward, sensory reality and has adopted the habits of thought derived from it. Yet there is something else at work in a mind like Saint-Simon’s. It is, at the same time, the demand for the freedom of human individuality rising from the depths of the human being. On the one hand, there is the insistence on finding scientific laws everywhere and accepting as scientific only what can be explained by them; on the other hand, there is the demand: Human beings must be able to become masters of their own individuality; they must be able to seek their human dignity in freedom. — Fundamentally, these two demands are diametrically opposed to one another. And when one delves more deeply into the fabric of nineteenth-century intellectual life, one sees that a thinker such as Saint-Simon was confronted precisely with these great problems of life: How do I reconcile, on the one hand, the general laws of nature—to which human beings are also supposed to belong—and, on the other hand, the demand for the exercise of human individuality and human freedom?

[ 10 ] During the French Revolution, the materialist view of the world as a whole converged with the demands for individual human freedom, and it was the voice of the French Revolution that echoed into the 19th century and confronted people like Saint-Simon with this inner conflict of understanding—with what emerges so tragically, what increasingly appears as a social demand rather than a result of the French Revolution. It further turns out that the laws of natural science apply, that they should therefore be extended to everything—including human beings—but that human beings do not actually want to be included in them, because they cannot find their freedom within these natural scientific laws.

[ 11 ] And so the state of mind of the modern era—the early 19th century—is actually embodied precisely in such representative figures as Saint-Simon; one might say they stand on shaky ground, torn between two demands that are simply irreconcilable in what they assert. And it is with this conflict that one must now embark on a consideration of social life. On the one hand, one must be scientific; on the other, one must find a social structure in which human beings can realize their free human dignity.

[ 12 ] Saint-Simon searched for every possible concept in order to be able to outline institutions and structures of industrial life—and of human life in general—that might have satisfied him. But as we can see, he fails everywhere due to the incompatibility of these two demands of modern history. Yet these two demands of modern intellectual life are not confined to the human heart alone. It is not only when a person, as it were, looks inward as an individual observer that he becomes aware of a conflict arising within himself; rather, the entire intellectual life—and, as a consequence, political and economic life—at the beginning of the 19th century was, in essence, marked by this conflict. In the unfolding of historical events, the longing for fixed laws—even in social life—coexists with the call for individual freedom. One must find a social structure—a social organism, so to speak—that is, first of all, governed by laws, just as nature is governed by laws, but which, on the other hand, offers people the possibility of a free life. This conflict arises in particular because the greatest minds—and Saint-Simon undoubtedly belongs among them—can find nothing in intellectual life that might provide them with positive ideas for a social order in human coexistence. Thus, Saint-Simon outlines a social system based on the modes of thought characteristic of the natural sciences; but the other demand—the attainment of free human dignity—cannot be fulfilled. And this becomes the cardinal demand that arises in modern life and is reflected in all the ambivalence of intellectual life. It arises because people no longer know how to help themselves; because, in a sense, those minds in modern life who, like Goethe once did, strive for a reconciliation of these opposites, find themselves, in their old age, once again condemned to a solitary, purely inner life.

[ 13 ] At the beginning of the 19th century, something emerged in the realm of social life that could be called a kind of act of desperation in the face of the fact that, no matter how hard human thought may strive, no matter how it may seek to bring together everything that can be drawn from the human inner life in terms of inventiveness of thought, one still cannot, in this way, arrive at a vision of a possible social organism. Consequently, it happens that these thinkers make a profound impression—not, however, on those whose thinking stems from the natural sciences, nor on those who assert the abstract demands of the French Revolution, but rather on people who, in a Europe shaken by the Revolution and by Napoleon, wish to create a social order, something enduring. Among these people, a spirit finds resonance that, like de Maistre, points back to the earliest ages of humanity, to the first centuries of Europe’s Christian development.

[ 14 ] De Maistre, who hailed from the southern Romance-speaking regions, who had already issued his “Appeal to the French Nation” in the 1790s, who then wrote his significant work on the popes, and who subsequently penned the impressive *Evening Hours in St. Petersburg*—he is, I would say, the most universal mind of the European reaction in the first half of the 19th century. He is a sharp thinker, a brilliant mind, this de Maistre. He points out to those who are willing to listen the chaos that must gradually arise if one is unable to conceive of the structure of a social organism. From this perspective, he sharply scrutinizes those minds which, in his view, have precisely plunged the modern era into chaos—the minds that have brought about social chaos and thus ushered in the modern era. For example, he sharply criticizes the philosopher Locke, and he presents it as an irrefutable truth that a social order cannot come into being unless, in the old Christian-Catholic sense—that is, by once again infusing European civilization with the religious spirit of the first Christian centuries in Europe—one does so.

[ 15 ] If one wishes to do justice to such phenomena, one must cultivate a measure of objectivity; one must be able to put oneself in the shoes of a figure such as de Maistre, and of those who professed—and still profess today—this same spirit. One must be able to put oneself in the shoes of a mind that sees how no sociology can emerge from all this modern scientific thinking, how chaos must grow ever greater unless a spiritual impulse enters the social order. Of course, de Maistre did not see such a new spiritual impulse, nor did all those who accepted what he wrote in such forceful terms. But he pointed back to ancient times when people actually had the ability and power to form a social fabric. Today, for those who are usually engaged in science, de Maistre’s voice has almost faded away. But it has faded only on the surface. Anyone who sees today what is actually happening beneath the surface of our civilized life—how traditional religious communities are once again extending their tentacles, how they are striving to modernize—knows how much of Joseph de Maistre’s spirit lives on, particularly in circles that are now, admittedly, gaining ever wider traction as reactionary circles, and which, unless a counterbalance is created, will inevitably come to set the tone more and more in our declining modern civilization. If one is able to look at de Maistre objectively, one says to oneself: Not a spark of a new spirit, but a brilliant interpreter of the old Roman Catholic ideas, a brilliant interpreter of a social organism that, by imprinting ecclesiastical-Christian impulses on people’s minds, can bring forth from chaos a social order—one that is certainly not desirable for the present age, but is possible in and of itself. And with that, a curious fact in recent intellectual life now stands before us.

[ 16 ] In a certain sense, a man who is, in turn, representative of more recent intellectual life has become a disciple of de Maistre, though he has developed de Maistre’s ideas in an entirely different way. But the content of the thought is one thing, and the entire manner of thinking is another, and one might say: De Maistre’s reactionary mindset, his reactionary state of mind, lives on in a realm where one would not expect to find it, like an illegitimate child of modern civilization. For it is not in content, but in terms of the configuration of thought, that a true disciple of de Maistre is one who also revered him intellectually—the sociologist Auguste Comte; Auguste Comte, who is virtually regarded as the father of modern sociology. On the one hand, he is a disciple of Saint-Simon; on the other, he is certainly also a disciple of de Maistre. This will not be easily understood by those who, in intellectual life, focus solely on content—not on the entire style, not on the entire trajectory of thought, nor on the entire course of the inner life. In Comte’s work, one sees how he refers to three stages of human development. He points to the ancient era of myth-making, the era of priestly rule. He regards this as a bygone era, and in his view it was superseded by the metaphysical era—the era in which systems of thought about the supernatural were developed. That, too, is over. In the spirit of Saint-Simon, we must transition to a kind of political physics. Only what constitutes the science of positive facts may be accepted. Thus, one must ascend from the realms of physics, chemistry, and physiology to a sociological perspective in order to arrive, using the same methods, at a kind of political physics.

[ 17 ] Comte now depicts a kind of human community, a kind of society, in which only the positive mode of thought—based on external sensory facts—prevails, and which brings about in reality only what can result from such a mode of thought. Naturally, there is not a trace of Catholic faith to be found in this society, in this social organism. But the way Comte constructs his vision—the way he replaces the supernatural church with what one might call a “church of the senses,” the way he, for example, substitutes all of humanity for God, the way he coins the phrase: “Man acts, but humanity guides him, leads him”—this is, after all, merely a rephrasing of the saying: “Man thinks, and God guides.” — All of this shows that de Maistre’s spirit—the ultra-reactionary, Catholic spirit of de Maistre—lives on in the positivist spirit of Auguste Comte, which is directed solely toward the sensory. And one might say: Catholicism thus lived on in everything that has been incorporated into this sociology. Nevertheless, when we look at Auguste Comte, we must say: an idealistic trait still lives within him, in the sense that he, too, believes he can fathom—if only he thinks in the right spirit of the times—what must be for the good of humanity within the social fabric, and that this can then be communicated to people, who can be convinced, and through this communication and this process of being convinced, a desirable coexistence can emerge. And, fundamentally, throughout the entire configuration of thought in the first half of the 19th century, there is still a certain confidence in the human ideal—the belief that one can convince one’s fellow human beings, and that from this, human deeds and human institutions can emerge through the intellect-guided will of those who have been convinced. This then manifests itself in a wide variety of ways. From this perspective, essentially all thinkers in the first half of the 19th century viewed the world. The way they viewed it depended in part on their national positions and on other circumstances, but they viewed the world from this perspective.

[ 18 ] Let us see how the social order is viewed by Saint-Simon, by Auguste Comte, or by Quételet—how the systematizing mind, the pure intellect that adheres to calculation and mathematics, operates: a mind that always seeks to act statistically, that wants everything to be ordered, and that seeks to construct systems with a certain elegance. Let us see how a preeminent thinker of the first half of the 19th century—such as, say, Herbert Spencer in England—operates. He embodies the English spirit to the full. He does not operate in the same systematizing sense as Saint-Simon or Auguste Comte, nor does he rely on statistics; rather, one sees that what he has learned from economic thought—specifically, how individual economic problems are interconnected—he applies to sociology. Herbert Spencer conceives of a kind of “superorganism” based on scientific and economic thought. Not he himself, but others have used this term. After all, it became customary in the 19th century to prefix the word “Über” to anything that could not be concretely grasped. But you see, as long as it remains lyrical—as it later did with Nietzsche’s “Übermenschen”—it may well be valid; but if it is meant to do away with the concrete by simply seeking to negate a concrete reality that lies before one—by prefixing it with the word “super,” as has often been done, for example, by inventing the term “superorganism”—then one is merely babbling and muddling one’s way through confused concepts, nothing more. But as I said, these leading minds of the first half of the 19th century lived in a kind of idealism, in a kind of confidence that the spirit would enable them to find the right direction.

[ 19 ] This changed in the second half of the 19th century. In many respects, Karl Marx, for example, can be regarded as a leading intellectual figure of the second half of the 19th century. He, too, in his own way, synthesizes the scientific spirit of the modern era and seeks to derive a social direction from it. But how different Karl Marx stands from Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, or Herbert Spencer! Karl Marx stands in such a way that one can say: He essentially no longer believes that anything can be known, that one can instill conviction in another person, and that, if this is true, then what happens in this modern world will also be brought about by the determined will of human beings. No, Saint-Simon, Auguste Comte, Herbert Spencer, Buckle—all those one might name here, and we could list a very long series of figures—all these thinkers of the first half of the century still possessed this inner conviction. The thinkers of the second half of the century, on the other hand, no longer have it and can no longer have it. Marx is merely the most radical in one respect; it is the same with all the others: none of them have that trust in the spirit anymore.

[ 20 ] What does Karl Marx do? Karl Marx does not act with the awareness that he can teach something or inspire conviction. No, he says: There is the great mass of the proletariat; they possess these instincts, which manifest themselves as class instincts. If I rally those who already possess these class instincts, if I organize them and tell them what is expressed in these class instincts, then I can accomplish something with them; then I can lead them in such a way that a new era dawns. One might say that Saint-Simon and Comte come across as priests translated into the modern era, who at least believe they can instill conviction in human hearts; they were able to do so in the first half of the 19th century. Karl Marx comes across as a strategist, as a military commander, who does not reflect on conviction at all, but rather organizes the masses. It makes no difference whether one first drills soldiers and then uses that discipline to organize the masses in order to march into battle with them, or whether one relies on already existing instincts—class instincts—and leads what already exists into battle. One might say: The priestly style lives on in people like Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte, as well as in Herbert Spencer and similar minds; the military spirit prevails in minds like Karl Marx—the spirit of strategic exercises, the spirit that no longer believes one can discover anything and express it in such a way that it convinces others, and that what then emerges from that conviction will have the desired effect—but rather the spirit that says: I take those whom I can organize; I take them as they are, for I cannot convince people anyway. I organize the class instincts, and then what is to be will come to pass. — One need only sense how radical this shift is. And anyone who looks closely at the transformation among the leading thinkers throughout the 19th century will sense everywhere that this radical transformation is, in fact, taking place relatively quickly. And it is taking place in yet another sphere.

[ 21 ] The scientific way of thinking emerged in modern times, during the first half of the 19th century. One should look in particular to Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. At that time, people still had faith in the spirit; they believed that, through the spirit, they could discern something about nature that would also determine nature itself. Just as trust in the creative spirit has ceased in the realm of social thought in modern life, so too has it ceased with regard to external cognition. People now rely solely on observation and experiment. The creative spirit no longer believes in its own abilities; what is accepted as valid is observation and experiment. The creative spirit is attributed only with the ability to register what observation and experiment reveal. And when one seeks to understand social life from precisely this perspective, one applies scientific observation—such as that of Darwinism—to human development. Benjamin Kidd, Huxley, Russell, Wallace, and others in the second half of the 19th century were influential in this school of thought. Everywhere here we find the “physicalization” of the spirit, the alignment of the spirit with something external, both in practical social life and in the life of knowledge.

[ 22 ] There is something remarkable about this 19th century: the way the human spirit gradually constructs for itself a kind of inner agnosticism, the way it loses its inner confidence in itself. And in this regard, a radical turning point also occurred in the middle of the 19th century. Anyone who wishes to observe how these moods I have described developed—and these moods are far more important than the content of intellectual life for those who wish to view the connections historically—will in fact find a kind of direct emergence of what later shaped the 19th century from what was already present in the 18th century. One can also go back even further into the 17th century; one can go back further into the 16th and the 15th centuries. Although one will not yet encounter there what would later, in the nineteenth century, strive toward the establishment of a new social order, one will become aware of how a social order cannot be established—to the point that this endeavor is entirely abandoned in the second half of the nineteenth century. But one will find that what happens in the mid-19th century—that this turning point in the mid-19th century—has been developing slowly since as early as the 15th century. If one traces intellectual life back to the 15th century, one can at least sense this in those concepts that one can understand and engage with as a person of the 19th or 20th century.

[ 23 ] This possibility ceases as soon as one goes back beyond the 15th century to the even more distant Middle Ages. And there I could cite numerous individual terms and concepts that would prove to you how different the entire human state of mind was in those times. I will single out just one. Anyone today who sincerely wishes to understand what, say, a text devoted to the description of nature contains from before the 15th century must put their soul into a completely different state than when reading anything from a later period, namely from the 18th or 19th century. When we read about nature, we find in these writings—including those written later but in the same spirit, with the same attitude toward knowledge as existed before the 15th century—we find everywhere that there is still something alive even in the observations of nature that tells us: If you conduct this or that experiment, if you devote yourself to this or that aspect of working with nature, then you must at the same time cultivate a certain inner disposition within yourself. For example, you must not perform certain procedures with minerals intended to lead to this or that result unless you put yourself in a state of mind that is pleasing to certain divine spirits. You must carry out certain natural procedures in a certain moral state of mind.

[ 24 ] One can hardly imagine, in this day and age, that anyone tasked with conducting a chemical reaction in a laboratory would be required to first cultivate some kind of religious or moral state of mind! Of course, anyone would laugh at such a demand. Yet it was entirely natural that back then, before the 15th century, such demands were placed on anyone who dealt with the processes of nature—and this became increasingly common the further back in time one goes. It was precisely a thinker like de Maistre who sought to revive something that had actually ceased to be alive in more recent times. Specifically, he wanted to establish a clear distinction, for the living human understanding, between the concepts of sin and crime. De Maistre said that the people of his time—he is referring to the early 19th century—no longer had any concept of the difference between sin and crime. Essentially, the two had gradually become one and the same to them. In particular, people no longer had a proper understanding of original sin.

[ 25 ] Now I would like to present to you a concept such as that which people before the 15th century held regarding original sin. You see, in our present-day worldview, there are simply no precedents for developing such concepts with full vitality. But for a historical examination of spiritual life, one must develop them. If such a concept is to be developed, one must, of course, base it today on the original concepts of spiritual research. By “original,” I mean in the sense that today’s spiritual research can bring such older concepts to light. For it is only by arriving at these things entirely independently once again that one can comprehend the older way of thinking. If one reads them without this, one is merely reading words; and only if one is dishonest with regard to the words does one believe one can associate a meaning with them. What theology today defines as original sin, according to various dogmatists, was not believed in enlightened circles at that time—before the 15th century. As I said, it is only today, through the humanities, that it is possible to rediscover with complete clarity what people actually believed back then. They believed, for example, the following: From the moment of birth—that is, from the moment a person takes their first breath—until death, human beings undergo certain organic inner processes through their inner life. These organic inner processes are distinct from those that take place in the natural world outside of humanity. It is merely a modern scientific superstition to believe that everything active within a human being can also be demonstrated in animals. It is a superstition because, fundamentally, the laws governing the animal organism are different from those governing human beings. Human beings can thus observe how their organism is permeated by the inner soul forces in accordance with certain laws from birth to death. And fundamentally, if they truly recognize what is at work within them in accordance with these laws, they will find nothing in external nature that corresponds to their own laws. But in external nature, they do find something that, in a certain sense, corresponds to the laws at work in human beings between conception and birth—that is, during embryonic development. One cannot understand human beings in the processes between birth and death solely through what can be learned from external nature. But with what can be learned from external nature—if it is used correctly—one can, in a certain sense, understand what takes place during the human embryonic period. — There is not much receptivity today for such an idea, but I must at least suggest how, through modern spiritual science, we can return to concepts from earlier epochs. A person today does not think this way, but the natural scientist before the 15th century did—not as a person perceiving the external world through the senses and not with clear consciousness, but out of a dark intuition: When I survey external nature, I, as a human being, may attribute the laws of external nature to myself only if I look to what happened to my physical body before my birth. What lies openly in external nature is concealed within the inner being of the human being in the course of his or her development. Human beings must not simply develop naturally in broad daylight. They would become evil beings if they were to develop in the same way that a plant develops outwardly in space, as revealed in its blossoms.

[ 26 ] This was the prevailing view in earlier times. And a person becomes sinful when he surrenders himself to those forces that promoted his development within his mother’s womb, for they act in the same way that extra-human nature acts. This extra-human nature has its full legitimacy as nature. But if a person continues to surrender to these forces after birth—if they are not raised to integrate themselves into a supersensible order—then they become sinful. This leads to the concept of original sin; it leads to the need to integrate even the natural into a moral world order. In a sense, what still unfolds naturally becomes interwoven into the moral order, and this leads to a concept such as original sin, which was still very much a scientific concept before the 15th century. De Maistre seeks to reintroduce this concept of original sin. He seeks once again to unite natural science with morality. This concept of original sin—how, then, could it have been preserved in the 19th century? Only by religion separating itself from scientific knowledge in an even stricter sense than had previously been the case. The emphasis on a separation between faith and knowledge is becoming increasingly prominent. If we look back to earlier times, this separation of faith and knowledge made no sense at all. It only began to emerge more and more in more recent times—though already several centuries before the 15th century. And what emerges in the 19th century with regard to these particular realms of thought? We see how religion is asserting more and more decisively: Let science focus on the exact sciences; let it proceed as it sees fit according to its own methods, but we, who represent the religious realm, make no claim to this method. We reserve for ourselves a secure domain in which we want not scientific knowledge, but only faith, only subjective conviction. In a sense, one cedes scientific knowledge to science and secures the realm of faith for oneself, because one has become too weak to combine the two. And so concepts that merge morality and natural law into one—such as the concept of original sin—gradually lose their meaning. Thus, according to de Maistre, for modern man, only the concept of “crime” actually retains any meaning, not the concept of “sin,” for the concept of sin has meaning only when an interplay between natural law and morality can be envisaged. Indeed, we arrive at entirely different concepts when we go back beyond the 15th century.

[ 27 ] But then there is a long period—a period usually regarded as the dark, gloomy Middle Ages—during which no real intellectual progress of the kind that began in the 15th century takes place. What has developed since the time of Galileo, since the time of Copernicus—what has been happening for humanity ever since and continues to have an effect right up to the great achievements of the 19th century—is viewed in such a way that one infers a progressive development, saying: People are advancing further and further. — But if one goes back beyond the 15th century, this concept of progress simply no longer applies. One can go back from century to century; and while one does not find the same spirit everywhere over the course of time—one does find that it changes, as we will characterize more precisely tomorrow—as one goes through the various historical epochs of the 12th, 11th, 10th, 9th, 8th, 7th, and 6th centuries. One sees how Christian doctrine gradually spreads; but one does not find progress in the same sense as that which began in the mid-15th century and led, as we have seen, to the radical upheaval and turning point of the 19th century. And as one, I would say, contemplates that more static state, one is led back to a pivotal moment in European development. One is led back to the 4th century A.D. And in doing so, one gradually gets the feeling: Through continuous observation, one can trace what began in the mid-15th century—roughly with Nicholas of Cusa—which then found expression in the Galilean-Copernican way of thinking, and which advanced step by step until the radical turning point in the 19th century; but one cannot view earlier centuries in the same way, as they reveal a static course of development. We will examine this in more detail tomorrow when, as I said, we delve deeper into esoteric matters.

[ 28 ] But when we return to the 4th century A.D., things suddenly take a very different turn. There we find yet another immensely significant turning point in European history. And we will appreciate the significance of this turning point all the more when we see that what we encounter after the turning point in the 15th century—the Renaissance, the Reformation—is, in a sense, a return to the times to which we are led as we pass through the stationary stages of development and are driven back to the 4th century A.D. With regard to this 4th century A.D., too, let us today look only at the outward facts, in a sense, from an exoteric perspective. We see how it is the decisive century for the gradual decline of the ancient Roman Empire. We see how, in this 4th century A.D., Christianity has reached a point where Constantine must now proclaim religious freedom for Christians, so that Christianity is placed on an equal footing with the ancient pagan religions. But we also see how a final attempt is made, through Julian the Apostate, to once again instill in European and civilized humanity as a whole that which had emerged from ancient paganism as a worldview and philosophy of life. With his death in 363, the figure who had sought once more to inject with all his might into European civilizational life that which had prevailed for centuries—that which Christianity had subsequently absorbed, but which was heading toward its downfall in the 4th century A.D.—passed away. And we see the forces coming into play that would then take the place of the Roman Empire. We see how Europe begins to stir, and how the Goths, the Vandals, and the Lombards begin to stir. We see how, in the 4th century, the decisive Battle of Adrianople takes place, through which the Goths invade, initially the Eastern Roman Empire, how they then advance further, how that which lives in the blood of the so-called barbarians pushes forward against what remains of the dying old culture in southern Europe. We see what is remarkable about that period we are discussing here, in the fourth century A.D., how that which existed as the upper stratum of culture—for example, the upper stratum in Greece that believed in the Greek gods and subsequently developed the Greek worldview—how this upper stratum is gradually uprooted, how it gradually disappears of its own accord as a decisive factor. And we see how what remains of its thought patterns is transferred to the Roman Catholic Church, which also incorporates the constitution of the Roman Empire into its external institutions. We see how the entire spiritual leadership passes to the Roman priestly hierarchy, how, in a sense, everything that was secular spirituality comes to an end. It is only brought back to the fore again through the Renaissance. Its influence is still felt even in later times, so that Goethe, after completing his youthful education and creating his first works, yearns—as is well known—with such intensity for what ancient European and Asian civilization had once been.

[ 29 ] And what, in fact, actually remained of all that? The monetary economy had also declined—and by the 4th century A.D. it had already declined to such an extent that the development of urbanization had essentially come to a halt. What remained, essentially, was the peasant element, which, together with the large landowners, populated the vast regions, and this remaining peasant element of the Southern European inhabitants merged with the northern peoples who were pouring in from the north.

[ 30 ] Thus we see how that spiritual life—which came over from the ancient East and then, in a certain sense, was transformed and metamorphosed into Greek and Roman culture—is gradually fading away, so that, in essence, it is disappearing. And only that segment of the population remains which did not participate in this culture—the peasantry and the landowning class, along with those from the population that is now merging with them as they migrate into the Roman-Greek territories through what is known as the Migration Period. We see how, within this peasantry—which, to put it somewhat radically, was the sole population of the European world—the Roman priesthood spread Christianity in the familiar manner over the following centuries. We see there how, at first, this priesthood has nothing to do with the resistant Greek element. That element is fading away; it holds no further possibilities for the future. Those who were educated are dying out. The bourgeois population is receding. A subsistence economy is taking the place of the old communities and merging with the subsistence economy of the barbarian-Germanic peoples swarming in. And we see emerging from this situation in the 4th century A.D. a gradual spread of the Christian element; however, it is not the actual spiritual life itself that advances, but rather that which was adopted in the 4th century from the old spiritual life—transformed by the priesthood— is essentially implanted by the clergy into the uneducated, peasant European population. Only then, after it has been implanted, does the blood that has developed over the centuries within the European peoples begin to work, awakening the spirit that then emerges in the 15th century.

[ 31 ] And so, if we are to consider that great and significant moment, we must go back to this 4th century. For in this 4th century A.D., too, we find such representative figures who, in their own state of mind, express precisely what is actually at work and alive there. If you put together the key dates involved, you will see just how immensely significant this period of the 4th century A.D. is: in 313, Emperor Constantine proclaimed religious freedom; in 363, Julian the Apostate was killed, thereby extinguishing the last hope of the old worldview. In the year 378, Adrianople fell under the onslaught of the Goths. In 400, Augustine wrote his *Confessions*. Thus, by the end of the 4th century, Augustine had brought to a close the inner spiritual struggles that Western European civilization had to fight through.

[ 32 ] If one was immersed in the declining ancient culture, one witnessed the slow fading of the Eastern worldview. Augustine experienced this in the worldview that he himself had embraced with faith and devotion in his youth: Manichaeism. He experienced it in Neoplatonic philosophy. And only after he had gone through unspeakably intense inner struggles—through Manichaeism, through the teachings of Mani, through Neoplatonism, and even through Greek skepticism—did he struggle his way to the Roman Catholic form of the Christian worldview. We see this expressed in such a monumental way in his *Confessions*, written around the year 400. And let us look at him, this Augustine, truly a representative figure of the 4th century A.D., raised in Manichaean ideas, but already in an age that had so thoroughly Romanized and dogmatized the ancient Eastern wisdom that Manichaeism could no longer be properly understood.

[ 33 ] What, then, is the essence of Manichaeism? One cannot, however, understand Manichaeism from what remains of the teachings that have been handed down. One must understand Manichaeism by examining its unique inner essence through the lens of spiritual science. The Eastern worldview was already in a state of decline, but through Mani’s teachings something was added that should certainly strike us as familiar and significant. It is evident that Manichaeism still strove toward an experience of the living interplay between the spiritual and the sensory worlds. Those who adhered to Mani’s teachings still wished to view the sensory world in such a way that in every sensory fact, in every sensory thing, something spiritual could also be seen; that is, in the light of this, they sought to find both wisdom and goodness, because they did not wish to separate nature from mere spirituality. Spirit and nature were to be regarded as one. This came to be called dualism—dualism because the two—spirit and nature—which had been separated, could not be reunited, whereas they had formerly been regarded as a living unity. This view still made a great impression on the young Augustine, but he could no longer bring himself to embrace it; the times were no longer capable of rising to the ideas that had been attained through an older, instinctive insight—insights derived from cognitive processes that humanity had already outgrown. And so we see an inner, tragic struggle within Augustine. He wishes to find the truth; he wishes to find the divine forces of the world in what lives in the clouds, in the mountains, in the plants, in the animals, in all of existence. But in the end, he nevertheless takes refuge in Neoplatonic philosophy, which already shows that it no longer has any understanding of this interweaving of spirit and matter, seeking instead to ascend mystically and hazily into an abstract, pure, and purely spiritual realm—even though it is still magnificent, powerful, and brilliant. And as he gradually detaches himself from the possibility of understanding nature imbued with spirit—the external world imbued with spirit—and as he forces his way toward a contempt for nature and the worship of pure spirituality in Neoplatonism, Augustine then arrives, through an event of profound symbolic significance, at his own Catholic-Christian view of life. One must sense what is happening there in the context of world history in the right way. Where does Augustine stand? He stands in a world in which the entire old civilization still lives, but which is already decayed and decadent, so that he can no longer break through to it, even though he tragically struggles with its last remnant—Manichaeism—and with its very last remnant—Neoplatonism. He cannot break through. Yet, because he is imbued with what still shines toward him from such wisdom—albeit in a state of decadence—he cannot yet embrace Christianity. There he is, caught up in his deep doubts; there he is, already a famous rhetorician and Neoplatonist, caught up in his deep, deep doubts. And what is unfolding? Just at the moment when he is on the verge of despairing of the truth, when he can no longer find his way through the manifold, tangled paths that had emerged in the 4th century within the decaying old culture—when questions and doubts are shaking his soul—he believes he hears something from the neighboring garden, like the voice of a child: “Take and read!” Take and read! — and he reaches for the New Testament, for the Epistles of Paul, and is guided by the child’s voice into Roman Catholicism.

[ 34 ] As we can see, burdened as he is with all that has drifted over from the East—Eastern culture in its decadence—this is the world in which Augustine lives. There he stands as the representative spirit. And he now sets the tone. That which the voice of the child calls him to do guides him, and thus he sets the tone for the coming centuries. It is not until the 15th century that this tradition is broken, and it is only the final result of this break, in a certain sense, that emerges as a turning point in the mid-19th century.

[ 35 ] Thus, in this fourth century A.D., our gaze turns to the one Spirit who is immersed in all the complexities and all the decadence of Western civilization. But it is also immersed in that which is now becoming a starting point—a starting point, however, for something that is blending with something else. And it is blending with something strange. It blends with that which comes from the East, with the outwardly barbaric peoples who, in a sense, trample Roman civilization underfoot, who take the place of Roman civilization, and who, after mingling with the peasantry and the landowning class, are instructed by the Roman priesthood. But something else still lives in the depths. From the rough soul of these peoples, something emerges that nevertheless contains a strange spiritual element within itself, like an early spiritual element. And we sense and feel this early spiritual element most intensely when we pick up the book that has remained to us as an ancient Gothic monument: Wulfila’s translation of the Bible. And when we are open to allowing the spirit of this Bible translation to work upon our souls, it seems remarkable how the Lord’s Prayer, for example, is structured out of the remnants of all the turmoil for which Augustine is a defining figure. And the Lord’s Prayer resounds to us from Wulfila’s translation of the Bible, which, in its style, is now entirely rooted in a primal social life—in Arian Christianity, in contrast to the Athanasian Christianity of Augustine.

[ 36 ] Yes, perhaps more than in anything else, we can sense in the style of Wulfila’s Bible translation what spirit—I would say, what pagan spirit—lives there, a spirit that is, however, deeply permeated by Christianity, albeit by Arian Christianity. If one takes all the details into account, one comes to realize what spirit lives within this simple Goth, Wulfila, who translated the Bible. One need only look at these things with feeling. To these barbarian masses sweeping in from the East—replacing ancient Roman culture in its decline—something resonates that lives wonderfully, truly lives inwardly as a spiritual life, as a Gothic spiritual life, which lived in the great teacher of the Goths, in Wulfila, for example, in his own way of praying the Lord’s Prayer:

Your kingdom come,
hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our sins, as we also forgive
those who sin against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but forgive us
our trespasses;
For yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory
forever and ever. Amen.

[ 37 ] “Atta unsar thu in himinam, weihnai namo thein. Qimai thiudinassus theins. Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Now, when we examine this prayer—so wonderful in Wulfila’s language—and try to translate it into our modern language, we must not translate it literally, but rather say something like:

We perceive You up above in spiritual heights, All-Father
of mankind.
Hallowed be Your name.
Your kingdom come.
Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

[ 38 ] And we must truly grasp what is expressed therein. The person who translated the Lord’s Prayer in this way sensed something primordial, and he felt, deep down, just as all those pagans had felt: in spiritual heights, the all-sustaining Father of Humanity, whom one imagined as ancient clairvoyance had portrayed him—whom one essentially imagined as the King, the invisible, supersensible King who reigns as no earthly king does. He was addressed as King among the free Goths, and this was expressed by saying: “Atta unsar thu in himinam.” ” And now they addressed his threefold nature: “Hallowed be Your Name.” By the name itself—compare this with the ancient Sanskrit meanings—they meant the essence as it expresses itself, as it reveals itself outwardly, just as a human being reveals himself through his body. By “dominion” they meant that which was within the power—in a sense, under the control—of the one who could command over its territory: “Weihnai namo thein. Qimai thiudinassus theins. Wairthai wilja theins, swe in himina jah ana airthai.”

[ 39 ] For by “Will” one understood that which, as Spirit, shone through power and name. And so one looked up and saw, in the Spirit of the supersensible worlds, the threefold spiritual power. One ascended to it, and then one said: “Jah ana airthai. Hlaif unsarana thana sinteinan gif uns himma daga.” May it be on earth just as it is in heaven—that is to say: How should it be on earth? Just as Your Name—that through which You wish to reveal Yourself outwardly—is to be consecrated, so may that which reveals itself outwardly within us, that which must be renewed daily, be illuminated in the same way. — One need only understand what lies in the old Gothic word “Hlaif.” From this came “Laib,” “Laib,” “Brotlaib.” We no longer have any sense of what this meant when we say today, “Give us this day our daily bread,” whereas here “Hlaif” means: Just as we regard Your name as the Body, let our body become such that it can be so every day through its nourishment, through what it takes in through metabolism.

[ 40 ] And just as we then move on to the realm of authority that is to prevail in the supersensible worlds, so we move on to that which prevails among human beings in the social order. There, people stand in such a relationship to one another that no one is indebted to the other. Among the Goths, the word “debt” is understood to mean the actual incurring of a debt—both moral and physical—in social life toward another person, which implies being indebted to that person.

[ 41 ] Thus, just as one had passed from the name into the realm of dominion—that is, from the physical to the spiritual (in the supersensible realm, the name roughly signifies the physical)—and just as one had passed from the soul to the realm of dominion, so one passed from the outer, physical realm to that which is soul-related in social life, and then to what is truly spiritual: “Lead us not into temptation”—“Jah aflet uns thatei skulans sijaima, swaswe jah weis afletam thaim skulam unsaraim.” This means: “Lead us not into that which, arising from our body, plunges our spirit into darkness, but deliver us from the evils that plunge our spirit into darkness”: “Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil”—“Deliver us from evil”—which arises when one becomes too deeply entangled in the physical realm with the spirit.

[ 42 ] So, the second part essentially expresses this: there should be such order in social life on earth as there is above in heaven in the spiritual realm. And then it is reaffirmed: We want to acknowledge such a spiritual order here on earth: “Unte theina ist thiudangardi jah mahts jah wulthus in aiwins. Amen.”

[ 43 ] Almighty Father, whose name embodies the outward physicality of the Spirit, whose dominion we wish to acknowledge, whose will shall prevail—You, You shall also permeate the earthly realm, so that we may see our bodies being renewed daily, being reborn, as it were, through earthly nourishment. That in social life we may not become debtors to one another, that we may stand before one another as equals. That we may not decay along with the spiritual-physical, that we may link the trinity of earthly social life to the super-earthly; for the supersensible shall reign, shall be Emperor and King. Not the sensual, not the personal on earth—the supersensible shall reign.

[ 44 ] “Yours is the reign, the power, and the glory forever. Amen.” For not a single thing, not a single being here on earth—but Yours is the claim to sovereignty, Yours is the right to rule, Yours is the revelation as light, as radiance, as all-pervading social love.

[ 45 ] This trinity in the supersensible realm is expressed in threefold terms, as it is to permeate the sensory social order. And once again, in conclusion, this is affirmed by the declaration: Yes, we want social life to be such that the threefold order there be as it is above with You: for Yours is the claim to sovereignty, Yours is the right to power, Yours is the revelation: “Theina ist thiudangardi jah mahts jah wulthus in aiwins. Amen.”

[ 46 ] That is what resonated with these Goths; that is what reigned in the background, what now emerged as something natural after the old culture had come to an end. And from what emerged there as something natural—which then permeated and blended with peasant life, about whose ideas history has recorded virtually nothing—what took shape there, after the old classical culture had faded in the 4th century A.D.—in what historically eluded observation until the beginning of the 15th century—it was this that then sparked a development that began slowly at first but then, in the 19th century, accelerated so rapidly that it led to the great intellectual upheaval we have characterized today.

[ 47 ] This is how things fit together. It was meant to be just one example of how, by viewing the facts in the right way—without distorting them in any way—one can introduce into the historical analysis a regularity that, however, cannot be merely a natural law. As I said, I wanted to present the facts to you today from an exoteric perspective; tomorrow we will then examine the inner connections from an esoteric perspective to see how this entire period of European development—from the 4th century A.D. to the present day—actually takes shape, how it lives within us, and we will then see how, through such understanding, we can finally gain a truly secure foundation for judgment regarding our knowledge and actions in the present.