The Rudolf Steiner Archive

2. European Intellectual Life in the Nineteenth Century in Relation to Its Origins in the Fourth Century, Part II

[ 1 ] Yesterday I attempted to illustrate how, roughly in the middle of the past century, a radical shift in intellectual life took place, and I then went on to show how the particular configuration of thought—indeed, of intellectual life as a whole—that can be observed in the 19th century and that experienced this upheaval can be traced back to another radical turning point in Western history, one we must look for in the 4th century A.D. Now, at first glance, it might seem as though two periods that are very far apart in time are being brought into too close a relationship with one another. Yet it is precisely this line of inquiry that will lead us to certain inner connections within human history. Today we will begin where we, in a certain sense, left off yesterday. Yesterday we reached the point of the decline of classical education and the Roman Empire, and we highlighted some features that are particularly characteristic of that time.

[ 2 ] We have placed two representative figures before our souls: one who emerged entirely from the Southwest, Augustine, and we have compared him with another figure and with the spiritual current from which that figure sprang—Wulfila, the Gothic Bible translator.

[ 3 ] When it comes to Augustine, one must above all be clear that he is very much a product of the circumstances that developed in the southwest of the European-African civilization of that time. Those people who, at that time, aspired to a higher education at all could only attain it by being brought into contact with what, by its very nature, had long since taken shape within a certain upper class of the human population as a worldview and, in a certain sense, as literature, art, and science. Even what we know as Greek education is conceivable only because it was the preserve of an upper class that left the more menial labor and tasks to the slaves. And Roman education, in particular, is inconceivable without widespread slavery. This education was vibrant precisely because those who possessed it were, above all, removed from the ways of thinking and feeling that prevailed among the broad masses of the population. But one must not therefore imagine that there was no intellectual life whatsoever among these broad masses of the population. It certainly existed. In fact, there was an extraordinarily strong spiritual life—a spiritual life that, admittedly, resembled more the topsoil of a spiritual life left behind at an earlier stage of development, when compared to the other, upper-class education, but which was nonetheless unquestionably a spiritual life.

[ 4 ] This spiritual life has become little known historically; however, it is very similar to the one now being carried into the southern regions of Europe by the so-called barbarian peoples, who were driven to migrate by the advance of the Asian population. We must try to form as concrete an idea as possible of this spiritual life. Let us try to do so by looking at the peoples who advanced into the territory of the Roman Empire.

[ 5 ] When we consider the peoples who set out on their migrations—the Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Heruls, and so on—we can say of them: In the period before the Migration Period began—that is, in the time preceding the 4th century A.D., which marks such an important turning point for us—these people over in the East had a spiritual life that culminated in certain religious views, which permeated everything and extended, in their ramifications and emotional consequences, even into their everyday activities. In certain religious conceptions, I say. The peoples who had begun to migrate had, after all, already been settled for a long time before the Migration Period began. During this period of settlement—which can be ascertained not only through spiritual science but also through the echoes of the legends and myths that lived on among these peoples—they went through precisely what the Oriental peoples, the South-Eastern peoples, from whom Indian and Persian culture and so on later emerged, had long since gone through in earlier times, indeed, what the peoples of Southern Europe and North Africa had also gone through in much earlier times. These peoples lived within what might be called a religion that was closely intertwined with their entire kinship structure. What they revered were certain family ancestors. But these ancestors were not venerated until many years after they had passed away, after they were dead; and this veneration was by no means based on any abstract ideas, but rather on what was instinctively experienced—if one does not wish to misunderstand the expression—as dreamlike, clairvoyant visions. For these were certain perceptions that arose in a completely different way than our perceptions are formed today. When we hold perceptions today, our spiritual life unfolds independently of our physical constitution. We no longer sense the seething and bubbling of our physical constitution. These peoples had a certain intensely inward-directed sensitivity to what was taking place within their bodies, into which all manner of cosmic mysteries naturally worked their way. For cosmic processes operate according to laws not only in the chemical retort, but also within the human body. And just as today the chemist attempts to discern the laws of the universe through his abstract intellect from the processes in the retort, so these people sought to penetrate the mysteries of the universe through what they experienced inwardly, through their own organism, whose inner processes they sensed. It was indeed an inner experience, but one that was still closely connected to physical perceptions. And from these perceptions—aroused by the organism’s inner stirrings—emerged the visions and images that these people associated with their ancestors. The ancestors were, in a sense, those whose voices continued to be heard through dream-like visions for centuries to come. The ancestors were the rulers of peoples who lived exclusively in small communities, in village communities. These peoples still practiced this form of ancestor worship—a form brought to life through dreamlike imaginings—when they migrated from Eastern Europe to the West. And when we look at the teachers, at the priesthood of these peoples—which reveals yet another distinctive feature of their spiritual life—we find that this priesthood was characterized above all by the advanced spirit possessed by certain individuals who became such priests or teachers, called upon to interpret what appeared to individual people in their dream images—images that, however, thoroughly permeated their waking daytime consciousness. These priests were interpreters of what the individual experienced.

[ 6 ] These peoples then set out on their migrations. During their wanderings, their great spiritual blessing was that they possessed an inner, clairvoyant spiritual life, which was interpreted for them by their priests. This life has been preserved in legends that still exist, particularly in the Slavic world; they have, so to speak, been handed down in the Slavic world, and one can still see that they contain what I have now briefly—albeit in outline form—described.

[ 7 ] However, shortly after the 4th century, these peoples once again settled down. Some of them disappeared into the population—which had long been settled down in the south, on the southern peninsulas—as part of the groups that made up the lower classes. For the upper class had, so to speak, been swept away during the Augustinian era. But they disappeared there. The Goths, among others, disappeared there. However, those who populated the Central European countries—namely the West—and those who then settled in the northern part of Southern Europe remained and once again established permanent settlements.

[ 8 ] And so we see that, after the 4th century, the establishment of permanent settlements became a defining characteristic of this immigrant population. And now the entire spiritual life of this population changed as a result of the fact that permanent settlements had been established. It is very remarkable how radically this changes their spiritual life—though this is also due to the special disposition these people possessed. These people, after all, possessed a special racial and national disposition; they still retained, with far greater vitality, that sensibility which sought to live in dreams and experience spiritual reality within them—something that in the southern regions had long since transformed into other forms of spiritual life. But they settled down, and—partly due to their special predisposition—a different kind of spiritual life now took shape within them. What had previously found expression in looking up to the ancestors—what had conjured images of revered forebears before their souls—now became attached to the places themselves.

[ 9 ] Wherever there was a particularly dense forest thicket, wherever there were mountains that, in their view, contained special metal treasures, wherever there were places from which one could particularly observe storms and the like, these people felt and sensed—with that deep feeling and sensibility that had remained to them from the reveries of their ancient ancestral beliefs—that certain places were sacred. And what had been ancestral gods became local gods, place gods. These local gods became bound up with the feelings, with the entire inner state of mind, that they had brought with them from the veneration of their ancestors. I would say that religious concepts lost their temporal character and took on a spatial character. Those who had formerly been interpreters of dreams—interpreters of the inner experiences of the soul—now became the custodians of what one might call the signs. The particular way the sun was reflected in this or that waterfall, in other natural phenomena, in the patterns of cloud movement in certain valley regions, and so on—I need only hint at these things—these now became the subject of interpretation, something that was then directly translated into the world of the runes. For this purpose, sticks were taken from the wood of certain trees at specific locations, and by throwing them so that particular patterns emerged, the custodians were able to interpret the signs that had been created. The entire religion of time was transformed into a religion of space. The entire spiritual life became a local spiritual life. As a result, however, these peoples became increasingly capable of being treated in the same way that the Roman Catholic Church—since it had become the state church in the 4th century—had grown accustomed to treating the lower strata of the southern peoples who remained after the upper strata had been swept away.

[ 10 ] And what did the Church do? In these southern regions, the period that the peoples migrating from the north had gone through was long past. There, the transition from the temporal worldview to the spatial worldview had already been completed in ancient times. And one thing always happens when the temporal worldview transforms into the spatial worldview. Something of extraordinary significance occurs. In the process, a certain kind of living experience gives way to a symbolic-ritual experience. This had long since taken place among the lower strata of the population in southern regions compared to those in northern regions. As long as people live according to their conceptions of time, the priests—those whom one might call scholars in the old sense—are interpreters of the corresponding inner life. The priests are concerned with explaining to people what those people are experiencing. They were able to do this because people essentially lived only in small village communities, and the one who, in a certain sense, was the interpreter—the leader of the entire spiritual life—could address individuals or small groups directly. But at the point when this temporal worldview transitions into a spatial worldview, this living element is increasingly pushed into the background. The priest can no longer point to what the individual has experienced, to what the individual tells him, and interpret it for him. What is alive in this way is transformed into that which can be connected to the place and the locality. And through this, the symbolic formation gradually arises—the pictorial elaboration of what had previously been vividly experienced from the supersensible worlds. This, then, is transformed into something that is now to be carried out in ritual acts, in symbolic acts.

[ 11 ] And then, once again, the development begins from the other side. Now the human being perceives the symbolism and, in turn, interprets it. What the Roman Catholic Church has developed as a form of worship has been shaped by a precise understanding of this world-historical course of human development. The transition from the ancient feasts of the Last Supper to the Mass arose because what had been the living Last Supper was transformed into the symbolic act, the Mass. Although ancient, sacred mystery rites—which had been passed down and were now permeating even the lower classes of society—had been incorporated into this Mass, However, they were interwoven with the new ideas that Christianity had introduced. They were, so to speak, “Christianized.” The lower classes of the Roman population provided fertile ground for the development of these ritual acts, which were now intended to symbolically represent the supersensible world. And once the northern peoples had adapted to the local spiritual life, these ritual practices could also be transplanted among them, and they began to show an understanding of them. This is the basis for the first of the movements that emerged from this 4th century A.D.

[ 12 ] The second movement, which ran parallel to the first for a long time, must be characterized in a different way. In what I have described to you—namely, what swept in from the East toward the declining Roman Empire—we can still clearly see how this ancient ancestor cult lived on. This is evident in the Lord’s Prayer, as I explained to you yesterday. Among these migrating peoples, Christianity was indeed still incorporated into the cult of the ancestors and into local religions. And that is precisely the essence of Arian Christianity. The doctrinal dispute behind it is of lesser importance. What is important for this Arian Christianity, which moved from east to west with the Goths and the other Germanic peoples, is that? since Christianity, via a path that did not yet pass through Rome, became immersed in such a living existence—one that had not yet developed into a formal cult—in a living spiritual life that, as I said, drew upon dream experiences and clairvoyant experiences, if the term is not misunderstood.

[ 13 ] In contrast, the Christianity that Augustine experienced had permeated the educated upper class of the southern population. And this Christianity was contrasted by all manner of Eastern cults and religious conceptions, which converged in the great city of Rome. Augustine had grown up as a pagan within these religious conceptions, and from them he had turned to Christianity in the manner I described yesterday. He is part of a spiritual current that was experienced by individual personalities in a manner quite different from the one I have just characterized as, in a sense, folk-based—one that arose from the most elemental forces of the people’s spiritual life. The spiritual current that Augustine experienced had been filtered many times over and, as such, had risen into the upper classes. It was then adopted and preserved by the Roman Catholic priesthood. Once again, its content is far less important for the course of world history than the configuration of this entire spiritual constitution, which was first the Roman-Greek education and then, through the adoption of Christianity, became the education of the Christian-Catholic clergy, the Christian-Catholic priesthood. One must examine this education—how it was and how it has lived on through the centuries. When we look at our educational system today, it is merely a remnant of what education actually was back then. After completing the most basic instruction—what we today call elementary school—one moved on to the so-called grammar classes. These grammar classes first taught the structure of language. In them, one learned to use language correctly, just as the poets and writers had used it. One then acquired all other knowledge that was not kept secret, for in those times much scientific knowledge was still kept secret by certain secret schools. What was not kept secret was taught in the grammar classes, but through the medium of language. And when someone advanced to a higher level of education—such as Augustine, for example—they moved from the study of grammar to the study of rhetoric. What mattered most was developing a pleasing, symbolic style of expression; learning to construct sentences correctly; and, in particular, learning to direct sentences toward a specific purpose. This was the skill that anyone striving for an education at that time had to acquire.

[ 14 ] One must have a sense of what exactly such an education cultivates in a person. Through mere grammatical and rhetorical education, a person is, in a certain sense, brought to the surface of their being; rather than engaging in thought, they immerse themselves in what comes out of their mouth. They focus their attention far more on the structure of language than on the structure of thoughts. And that was indeed the defining characteristic of this ancient education: the emphasis was not on the inner experience of the soul as such, but on the structure of language, on the form of language, on the pleasing quality that finds expression in language. In short, people externalized themselves through this education. And in the 4th century, while Augustine was—as we would say today—studying, one can certainly perceive this externalization, this life in the word, in the turn of phrase, in the form of expression. Grammar and rhetoric were what one had to learn. And there was a good reason for that. For, you see, what we today understand as intelligent thinking did not exist back then. It is a superstition that has taken root in the history of humanity—the belief that people have always thought the way they do today. No, that is not the case. Thinking, even as late as the 4th century—indeed, the entire mode of thinking in the Greek era—was of a different nature. I have described certain intimate aspects of this in my book *The Riddles of Philosophy*. Thought was not concocted through active inner mental activity, as is the case with us today, but rather thought came to people of its own accord, like a dream. This was particularly the case in the East, and what, as part of Eastern spiritual life, also inspired Greece and even Rome was not conquered through thinking; it had come about—even if it was thought—in the same way that dream images arise. And in fact, the learned people of the Eastern and Southern European regions differed from the Northern people I described to you earlier only in that the Northern people received the images I have characterized—images that first evoked ancestral conceptions, then became associated with certain locations, and more or less took on a ritualistic, pictorial form. The concepts that took shape in Asia and Southern Europe were already conceptual in nature, but they were not thoughts attained through inner spiritual work or inner intelligence; rather, they were thoughts revealed from within. People experienced what they called “knowledge” and merely developed the word, the sentence, and speech. People did not work with logic. Logic first emerged through Aristotle, when Greek civilization was already in decline. And what found expression there in the beauty of language and in rhetoric was essentially Roman culture, and this had also become the culture of Catholic Christianity.

[ 15 ] This way of living, so to speak, not within oneself but in an external element, was already expressed in the education one acquired. And one can see quite clearly how Augustine, in particular, became a representative figure in this regard as well. Characteristic in this regard are the letters that Jerome and Augustine wrote to one another, from which one can see how these people in the 4th century A.D. or at the beginning of the 5th actually discussed matters with one another differently than we do today. When we discuss matters today, we have the feeling that we are working from a certain activity of thought. When people of the 4th and 5th centuries discussed matters with one another, one of them would feel: Yes, I have formed an opinion on a certain point, but perhaps my own inner being is not yielding the right answer. I want to hear the other person; perhaps something different might arise from their inner being. There is a much more real element of inner experience in which these people are immersed. But what results from this on the one hand is evident, in turn, in Augustine’s behavior when he condemned heretics of all kinds. There we see how, arising from the old, still-living elements—namely, from the living folk culture—people develop such as the Donatist priests, the Pelagians, and some others as well. We see how these people, even though they believe themselves to be Christians in every sense, assert that a person’s relationship to righteousness, sin, and so on must come from within. And so we see a whole host of people who, for example, cannot believe that there is any point in baptizing children to secure for them the forgiveness of original sin. We see how this is raised as an objection against the Christianity emanating from Rome; we see how Pelagianism is gaining ground, but how Augustine, as a true representative of the Christian-Catholic element, turns against such views. He opposes a conception of original sin that has anything to do with human subjectivity. He opposes the idea that belonging to the spiritual world or to Christ could arise at all from individual human impulses. He works toward the Church gradually being absorbed into the external institution. What matters is not what lies within the child, but that the Church exists as an external institution. What matters is not that baptism means something for the soul, for the soul’s experience, but that an external ecclesiastical institution exists through which baptism is performed. The spiritual worth of the human being inside the body matters less than the spread of the universal spirit that lives in the sacrament, which, in a sense, pours out over humanity as an abstract sacrament. The individual human being plays no role; rather, what matters is that which extends as a sum, a system, a fabric of abstract dogmas and ideas about humanity. Augustine also considers it extremely dangerous to believe that a person must first be prepared—that his soul must be made ready—and only then should he receive baptism. For the issue is not what a person desires inwardly, but rather that the person be incorporated into the Kingdom of God, which exists objectively, independent of the person. And this is essentially the milieu in which Athanasian Christianity thrives, in contrast to the other form that comes from the northeast and thrives on certain folk elements. But the Church has understood how to clothe that which was an abstract element in the forms of worship that, in turn, arose from below. In this way, the Church has created the possibility for itself to gain a foothold in this European element, from which classical education had initially been swept away. And in particular, it was able to achieve this expansion by essentially excluding the broad masses of the people from the very substance of religion and from the substance of education. It is also of immense significance that the substance of Christianity was perpetuated throughout the following centuries through the medium of the Latin language, beginning precisely in the 4th century A.D. We see, as it were, a current flowing over people’s heads, essentially right up into the 15th century. For what history usually recounts are merely the outward manifestations of what took place within people’s souls. One could say: In a much higher sense than any secret teachings were ever kept hidden in the ancient mystery schools, Christianity was kept hidden—particularly through the 11th and 12th centuries—by those who spread it. For only the outward symbols of worship penetrated down to the people. And that which perpetuated itself—yet at the same time appropriated all the scholarship that had emerged from antiquity and clothed it in the garb of the Latin language—was the Church, the Church as something that hovered above the actual development of humanity. And all the centuries, from the 4th to the 14th, are in fact marked by these two parallel currents. External history, as well as intellectual history, traditionally records, in essence, only what—I would say—seeps out more into the public sphere from the Latin-ecclesiastical current. Consequently, people today gain hardly any sense from current historiography of what actually took place among the broad masses.

[ 16 ] What took place among these vast masses can be imagined something like this: At first, only village communities had actually formed, and all of Central Europe, Western Europe, and even Southern Europe were populated in such a way that cities initially played only a minor role. Life unfolded primarily in small communities, in village communities. And while this life was taking shape in village communities—for what existed as cities at that time were, in essence, merely larger village communities—the Christian Catholic Church spread, as I have described, over the heads of the people in the larger village communities, exerting a suggestive influence on them through religious practice; yet the people who saw only the symbolic acts—those who participated in the religious rituals, who were able to look up to what they did not understand—nevertheless developed a spiritual life of their own. A rich spiritual life developed throughout Europe at that time—a spiritual life that was, above all, shaped by the very nature of human beings themselves. The participation of these villagers in the spread of the Christian-Catholic doctrine was, in essence, something entirely different. All these matters have been portrayed in a false light, such as when they are linked to the person of Boniface or the like. But what unfolded in these village communities was an inner life of the soul, thoroughly permeated by the echoes of interpretations of the local divine or the local spiritual. Everywhere one could see hints of this or that. A magical life developed within the people. Everywhere, people lived with a sense of foreboding and told their fellow human beings about their premonitions. These premonitions found expression in legends or in mysterious allusions to what one person or another had spiritually experienced here and there during their work and the like.

[ 17 ] But a curious element pervades these remnants of the ancient ancestral and clairvoyant dream life, which certainly persisted in the village communities while Catholic doctrine swept over their heads; something peculiar unfolded there, from which one can discern how human society across Europe was actually involved in this peculiar spiritual life. Something unfolded there that reveals the inner state of the soul in a very special way in two respects. First, when people expressed their most important premonitions—their most important dreams, which were always tied to specific locations—and described what they had experienced in a half-awake or sleeping state, this was always connected to experiences with questions posed to them from the spiritual world, or with tasks assigned to them, or with situations in which their wisdom played a role. One can see from the very nature of the narratives—which could still be uncovered among the common people as late as the 19th century—how, when people fell into reverie and dreaming and formed their legendary tales and mythical stories, the nervous-sensory system of the threefold human constitution did not yet play such a strong role, which is more oriented toward the external world—but rather the rhythmic system was at work. And because the rhythmic system was particularly stimulated by the people’s constitution, these clairvoyant dreams—which were passed from person to person in the village—gave rise to the means by which people shared with one another thrills, as well as joy, pleasure, and beauty. In all of this, there was always something of the more subtle nature of the questions that came from the spiritual world. People had to solve riddles in a half-dream state, carry out clever actions, overcome obstacles, and so on. There is always something mysterious in this dream life that developed there.

[ 18 ] This is the physiological basis for the ever-expanding spiritual experience of these people, who were still living in village communities—though their experience also encompassed the deeds recounted to them by history, such as those of Charlemagne and others. But these are things that take place only on the surface of their experience—things that, while deeply affecting individual destinies, are not the main point. The main point unfolds within village communities, where, alongside economic life, a spiritual life developed among the people, as I hinted at today. And this spiritual life essentially continued into the 9th, 10th, 11th centuries. However, some of what developed in the minds of the upper classes gradually trickled down into the lower classes, as what emerged from people’s narratives in a ghostly, magical-seeming way coalesced and merged with Christ and the deeds of Christ, and at times what comes from the people themselves—from the Bible and the Gospels—is drowned out. But then we see how the Christian element is first incorporated into social thought. We see this in the *Heliand* and in other works of literature that arose from Christianity, but which are always, in fact, carried into the people by the clergy, while the people, in turn, convey to the clergy their own spiritual life, of which I have spoken.

[ 19 ] Now, when we move on to the 10th and 11th centuries, however, we see that outward life has changed. We see—as we did earlier, but particularly strongly during this period—that life is concentrated in the cities. The way of life I have described—this vivid, waking dream—is something that is thoroughly tied to the countryside. As the larger cities gradually spread across the entire region I have characterized in this way during the 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th centuries, a different way of thinking also became concentrated in the cities. People in the cities thought differently. They were far removed from the places where local religions had developed. In turn, they were more reliant on what is human. However, this human element that developed in the cities was, in a certain sense, still under the influence of what I have just described, for certain people from the earlier village communities settled in the cities, and those with special intellectual dispositions still brought certain things with them. And what they brought with them was an inner life of the personality that echoed what had been experienced in the countryside, but which now manifested itself in a more abstract form. People who were cut off from life in nature and therefore no longer actively participated in it in a living way still retained the thought forms derived from that natural existence, but they were already developing more of that kind of thinking that gradually leads to intelligence. In the cities—initially in the 11th, 12th, 13th centuries, the first traces of that intelligence began to emerge which we would later see come to the fore among the leading European population in the 15th century. But in the cities, because life had become more abstract, what grew out of the folk culture mingled intimately with the abstract elements of the Church, clothed in the Latin language.

[ 20 ] And so we see how this Latin character took shape in the cities in an ever stronger and ever more abstract form. We then see how the great—I would say—explosions of folk culture surge up from below in the most diverse regions. A great and mighty storm is Dante’s entry—from folk culture, via a detour through his teacher—into the world of education. But even this, when you get right down to it, is something that arises from folk culture alongside many other phenomena, and it took the form it did only because of the particular way in which Latin-Romance education in the cities came together with folk culture.

[ 21 ] We must not forget, however, that other currents also influenced what was taking place at that time. It is true, of course, that the principal current of intellectual life—which, so to speak, sustained the rest of intellectual life—was a continuation of the intellectual tradition in which Augustine taught. This ultimately dominated everything in the cities—not only the bishops, who in turn dominated intellectual life, albeit in an abstract form and above the common people—but this intellectual tradition, which in its course also incorporated everything derived from the constitution of the Roman Empire, ultimately came to dominate the administration as well. Consequently, an alliance emerged between administrative officials and the clergy, which was particularly powerful in the 11th and 12th centuries. We see how other events emerge from this current, such as the Crusades, which I need not describe to you, since I wish to focus primarily on what is distorted in external history. But other currents that also existed are far too little appreciated.

[ 22 ] You see, first there is a current that is actually driven by trade, which has, after all, always been vibrant in Europe—at times even extending along the Danube toward the Orient. As a result, people were constantly traveling back and forth for trade, particularly in the Middle Ages. Oriental ideas—albeit in a highly decadent form—were thus brought over to Europe. And those who perhaps had never even been to the Orient themselves, but had merely traded with people from the Orient, brought not only spices and seasonings into people’s homes, but also intellectual life. As a rule, however, this was something that was nuanced by Oriental influences. This trend swept through all of Europe. Its influence extended less to those who disseminated education through the Latin language and far more to all those who understood nothing of Latin—those among the broad masses of the people. Among the townspeople and the villagers who remained in the countryside, what took root was a living spiritual exchange with the East. And these were not merely adventurous tales that took root there; rather, it was a spiritual life that deeply moved people. And if you wish to understand figures such as Jakob Böhme, Paracelsus, and numerous others who came later, then you must take into account that they emerged from those very masses of people who had developed without an understanding of the Latin education that went over their heads, but who were, in a certain way, permeated by Eastern thought. Everything that had developed there as folk alchemy, astrology, and an interpretation of life in general had coalesced from what I described earlier as people’s inner experiences—the riddles they recounted in waking dreams—and from what had been carried over from a decadent Eastern spiritual life.

[ 23 ] Within the Latin world, nothing that sought to think had been able to gain a foothold either. One might say that Aristotle’s logic appeared like a meteor. We see that even Augustine was scarcely influenced by this logic. People turned away from Greek thought altogether in the 4th century; and later, Emperor Justinian had the school of philosophy in Athens closed, contributing to the fact that Origen—who had brought much into Christianity that was part of Eastern learning and the intellectual life of the past—was branded a heretic. And the Greek philosophers were driven out. What they had learned from Aristotle was carried over to Asia. The Greek philosophers found a home in Persia and there, in Asia, led the Academy of Gondishapur, which was primarily concerned with infusing the ancient Eastern intellectual culture—which had already fallen into decline—with Aristotelianism, reshaping it into an entirely new form. What was in turn saved by this Academy of Gondishapur—which developed with tremendous speed into a logical form of thought—was Aristotelianism; it was there that it was reborn in its own true form. The Christians, after all, had not carried it forward. In its own true form, it entered Latin ecclesiastical life via a detour through Africa, Spain, and Western Europe. And so we see in the West—particularly through this Gondishapur current, this Arabism in a thoroughly philosophical form, a form that embodies a living worldview, albeit a wholly abstract one—that it influences what, as I said, flows above our heads.

[ 24 ] I have now described the two currents: one that played out in the minds, the other that played out in the hearts and souls. These worked together, and it is remarkably characteristic that a language in the process of dying out continues to pass on the cultural heritage of antiquity. Of course, elements that emerged during the Renaissance then flow into it. But I cannot cover everything today. Essentially, I would like to stick to some of the main lines that are of particular interest to us. These coexisted well into the 15th century.

[ 25 ] Then something happens that is extraordinarily significant. One might say that what was once ancient thought—a thought still inspired from within, a thought that was half vision—was gradually clothed in abstract linguistic forms in what then emerged as Christian philosophy, as Christian spiritual life, as a worldview, carried forward by the schools from which the university system itself later developed. In this element, Romanism—antiquity—certainly lived on in a grammatical-rhetorical manner. It was not an element of thought that lived on, but the form in which that element of thought was clothed.

[ 26 ] It was within what constituted the folk movement, however, that the idea—forged through subjective activity—was born for the very first time in the entire history of human development. From this ghostly, magical, intuitive essence—intermingled with Orientalism—from this essence, which expressed itself particularly in the interpretation of natural phenomena, thought was born: active thought. And this birth of thought—I would say, from a dreamlike, mystical essence—took place around the 15th century. But by then, something else had already gained strength—something that had now, alongside the Roman priesthood, clothed itself in Latin learning, namely the Roman-juridical essence.

[ 27 ] Through a particularly well-developed method, what had swept over people’s minds as a movement was able to spread everywhere—first in the village communities, then in the cities—and now, in the new era that dawned after the 15th century, it joined forces with a completely different movement that was just emerging. Cities had already emerged. In the cities, people took pride in individuality and freedom. This is evident in the portraits that have survived from this period, as well as in many other things. But the village communities remained on the outside. The territorial principalities asserted their authority. Those in the villages on the outskirts who gradually came into opposition to the cities found their leaders in the people who sought to take their side against the cities—or who pretended to do so. And from the countryside, from the villages, the cities were incorporated into larger structures, into larger administrative frameworks, into which the Roman legal system then found its way. The modern state emerged—this modern state, which was formed from within the rural communities—as that which, originating in the countryside, in turn conquered the cities, was permeated by what was now emerging on the basis of Latin as the Roman-legal essence. By then, this element was already so strong that nothing that still sought to rise to the surface from the folk current could gain any traction—nothing that emerged during the “turbulent times,” as they were called, among the rural populations of, for example, England and Bohemia; nothing that appeared in Hussitism, Wycliffism, or the Bohemian Brotherhood. None of that could take hold. The only essence that could emerge was the one that converged with the Roman essence, with the Roman administrative essence.

[ 28 ] And so we see how, at first, what constituted the folk element—what actually established itself in thought as reality, what asserted itself as if in resistance against the Roman-Latin essence—continued to smolder beneath the surface. One sees how intellectual life there bursts forth from two sides. From the Roman-Latin essence, nominalism developed—a view in which general concepts are merely names, as one was compelled to conclude from grammar and rhetoric. Just as one could not help but arrive at nominalism in this context, so too did a form of realism develop among those who nevertheless possessed a spark of folk spirit within them—such as Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas—a realism that perceived the intellectual element as something distinctly real. But at first, nominalism prevailed in a certain sense. In the historical development of humanity, everything is, in a certain sense, also necessary, and we see that the abstract element became all the more abstract as it was carried forward by the dead element of Latin into the 15th, 16th centuries—that it can indeed be enriched by what was born as thought, since it takes into account the birth of thought, but that it clothes thought in abstract formulas, in abstractions. And the following centuries—the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th centuries—namely, under the influence of thought born of the ancient, Gothic-Germanic essence, which was, however, clothed in Roman logical formulas—actually grammatical-rhetorical formulas—which, now that they had been fertilized by thought, could call themselves logical formulas. This became inner human thinking. People initially thought with this kind of thinking, but it had no content of its own. All ancient worldviews brought with them, along with what was experienced inwardly, the mysteries of the world as part of their content. Even the thoughts themselves were still rich in content up until the 4th century A.D.

[ 29 ] Then came the era that, in a sense, carried the future within it—an era in which, within a dead language, what had already been present at the very beginning—in rhetoric and grammar, and at most in dialectics—developed more and more. This developed, and it was then fertilized by the power of thought that arose from below; and this is what humanity first took hold of, though it had no content in and of itself. One passed down, so to speak, realism, but meant nominalism and believed in nominalism, and with this nominalism one first conquered nature.

[ 30 ] Through what “true Europe” was able to bring forth in the manner described, the idea as such—as an inner spiritual life, as a power of thought—was born; yet it, in turn, brought no content of its own. This content must be sought externally. With this content-empty thinking, people began to master nature—the external laws of nature—from the 15th century onward. But in the middle of the 19th century, people began to realize: Yes, with your thinking you master what the laws of nature are, that which is outside of you, but thinking itself cannot arise from within itself. — And so people gradually immersed themselves in a mindset that excluded from thought everything that was not absorbed from the outside. On the other hand, they immersed themselves in religious faith, which was supposed to have nothing to do with scientific knowledge, because thought—having become empty—was allowed to be filled only with external natural facts and entities. Faith had to be protected in its content, because it was meant to relate to the supersensible. This empty thinking, however, could relate to the sensible precisely because it produced no content of its own. Faith, in turn, could only be filled with the old traditions, with the content of past Eastern culture, which continued to be transmitted.

[ 31 ] The same was true of art. In earlier times, art was closely intertwined with religion; religious ideas found expression in works of art. Consider how the ideas about the Greek gods found expression in the works of Greek playwrights and sculptors. Art is something that lies at the very heart of the entire structure of worldview and spiritual life. The Renaissance, however, already conceives of art as something external.

[ 32 ] In the 19th century, we see more and more how happy people are when art occasionally offers them something that is pure fantasy—something they do not have to cling to as they would to reality, something that does not refer to any reality. Like individual modern hermits, I might say, there stand people such as Goethe, who says: “To whom nature begins to reveal her manifest secret, there arises an irresistible longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” “Beauty,” says Goethe, “is a manifestation of secret laws of nature that would have remained eternally hidden from us were it not for its appearance.” And it is remarkable how Goethe, in a different way than the others, seeks to return to the past in order to find substance in an age of the empty mind, which fills itself only with the external sensory world. He longs to return to Greece, to the Greek world. And when, in Rome, he sensed an echo of what Greek art had achieved from the very depths of its worldview, he wrote down the words: “There is necessity; there is God.” — Through art, what he sought to perceive as the spirituality of the world was revealed to him.

[ 33 ] But more and more, one began to have this vague, indefinable feeling: this way of thinking that we have is suited to the external world, but it is not suited to arriving at an inner spiritual content on its own. And so we see the second half of the 19th century come to a close. I would like to say, as we hinted at yesterday: The thinkers of the first half of the 19th century—one need only look to Flegel, Saint-Simon, or even Spencer—still believed they could draw something from what they could experience psychologically, whether as a worldview or as a social philosophy of life. People in the second half of the 19th century no longer believed this. But there was a lingering effect of what had given birth to thought from the unconscious. Why did something—a sense of inner puzzle-solving, of inner wisdom applied to experiences involving all manner of mischievous riddles—resonate in the intuitive dreams of villagers across all of Europe all the way back to the 12th century? Because it was during this time that thought, reflection, and intellectual work were born. That was the beginning of it all. And now we see how, in the second half of the 19th century, people ultimately despaired of thinking. Everywhere we see declarations emerging about the limits of scientific knowledge. And with the same rigidity and dogmatism with which the Scholastics once argued that reason could not penetrate the supersensible, Da Bois-Reymond, for example, asserted that scientific research could not penetrate to the essence of matter and consciousness. I would say that in the past, the way limits were set referred to the supernatural; now it refers to what is supposed to lie beyond the sensible. But in all sorts of other fields, we see the same phenomenon occurring.

[ 34 ] Ranke, the historian of the second half of the 19th century, is particularly representative of this approach. He once put it this way: History must investigate external events, even during the period when Christianity began to spread. One must look at what is taking place outwardly in terms of political and social events and events of external cultural life. But what took place prior to that in the course of human development through Christ, Ranke attributes to the primordial world—not in a temporal sense, but to the world that lies beyond what can be investigated. We see that the natural scientist Du Bois-Reymond declares “Ignorabimus” in regard to matter and consciousness. Natural science can reach far and wide; but where matter haunts, where consciousness arises—there Du Bois-Reymond places his seven world mysteries; there he utters his “Ignorabimus.” And the one who, in the same spirit, works as a historian—Leopold von Ranke—says: Historical research can shed light on everything that exists in documents and is accessible, but behind what appears as external historical fact lie events that seem like the primordial world. — What lies at the very foundation of history—just as, for Du Bois-Reymond, it is that which lies beyond the limits of scientific knowledge—Ranke calls the primordial world. Therein lie the mysteries of Christ; therein lie the religious mysteries of all peoples. There the historian says, “Ignorabimus.” “Ignorabimus” of the natural scientist, “Ignorabimus” of the historian—that is the mood of the entire intellectual life of the second half of the 19th century.

[ 35 ] Look wherever you perceive this spiritual life—even in Wagner’s music, even in Nietzsche’s concept of the priesthood—this mood appears everywhere. One person feels compelled to take refuge in certain musical dreams, while another suffers from what is unfolding in the “Ignorabimus” world. Agnosticism sets the tone; agnosticism becomes politics, shapes the state. And if someone wants to do something positive there, they do not rely on any form of gnosticism, but on agnosticism. Marxism, as I said yesterday, relies—like a strategist—on whatever instincts it finds, not on whatever supernatural elements it seeks to introduce. We see how spirituality is being pushed back everywhere, how agnosticism is shaping reality.

[ 36 ] This is how one must understand modern intellectual life. One can interpret it correctly only if one traces it back to its origins in the 4th century A.D., if one knows that this is where the form emerges—what later came to be known as nominalism, which arose as a mere legal and logical system of forms—and the idea is born in the manner I have demonstrated. But this idea is, in essence, still only as fully developed as formalism—as empty thinking—can utilize it. It slumbers in the depths of civilized humanity. It must rise to the surface.

[ 37 ] This is what a true historical perspective teaches us when we shed light, through spiritual research, on what has been floating before humanity’s eyes from the 4th century to the present day. Then we can know what lies at the top. Admittedly, this idea has borne fruit in the natural sciences because it has been fertilized as the idea born of the power of thought inherent in human nature in the manner described. But now, in this time of misery, in this time of need, humanity must remember that the idea—which at first was allowed only to fertilize formalism, which was allowed only to act as a force for empty thinking that passively absorbs knowledge of nature from the outside—this idea, which has culminated in scientific and historical agnosticism, must draw strength from within itself, must once again become vision, must rise into supersensible worlds. That this idea exists, that this idea has already contributed to scientific knowledge, but that its true power still lies deep within the consciousness of human evolution—this must be recognized as a historical fact; then one will gain confidence in the inner power of spirituality, then one will turn toward spirituality; then one will establish a spiritual science not out of nebulous mysticism but out of the clarity of thought—a science that can also be active in thought and that can influence social and other human institutions. People are always saying that history should be our teacher. It cannot become our teacher by simply presenting the past to us, but rather by enabling us to discover something new from the depths of existence. That which seeks to emerge from this place is searching for such newness, for such insight. And this can be justified not only by proclaiming the spiritual scientific method, but also by a proper historical perspective.

[ 38 ] I wanted to touch on this briefly at first. I hope that these points can be elaborated on in more detail later. The natural sciences and the development of human history since antiquity