The Rudolf Steiner Archive

5. The Natural Sciences and the Development of Humanity III

[ 1 ] If one wishes to gain a deep understanding of how the scientific worldview has become embedded in the contemporary mindset, one must draw upon what emerges from the history of human development. But one must then view this history of development in the manner attempted in this lecture. And this is where our consideration should culminate: in penetrating this integration of scientific thinking into the human mindset.

[ 2 ] We have seen that, over successive historical eras, the entire inner state of the human soul has also undergone a metamorphosis, and it now falls to us to examine in somewhat greater detail the state of the soul at that turning point in human civilization marked by the rise of Christianity.

[ 3 ] If one wishes to study, in particular, the state of mind that found expression among the Chaldean and Egyptian peoples, this can currently—as I have already indicated—be done in no other way than by ascending in the soul to imaginative perception, to inspired perception, and so on. Regarding this imaginative perception—which I have, after all, characterized from various angles during these evenings—I need only add the following: When a person quite consciously ascends to the state of imaginative knowledge, that is, lives in a pictorial consciousness that brings images of spiritual realities before the soul, then their entire inner vision is transformed. The entire perception of the self becomes different, and the perception of the external world surrounding the person also becomes, at first, different. Inner vision becomes such that one does not, at first, advance to a more “soulful” content through imaginative visualization—if by “soulful” one means what is known from ordinary life experience. One could say: Under the influence of imaginative visualization, introspection actually transforms what is present in the waking, conscious human being into something more concrete than the spiritual usually is—into, one might even say, something more material. This is, in fact, what is peculiar about it: it does not result in that mystical nebulosity that some people assume when they hear talk of inner contemplation, nor does it result in the fantastical images of, let us say, a divinely illuminated inner human being in the ordinary sense of some mystics. Rather, through true introspection, a person advances toward gaining a direct understanding of their very organism, of its organization, thereby coming to know the profound significance of the individual organs of their body. They learn to recognize the role that the heart, the lungs, and other organs play within the organism; in other words, they learn to recognize precisely what the vague mystic does not seek—what the mystic regards as something base and material. Thus, by advancing toward imaginative knowledge, they attain a true transparency regarding their own organism.

[ 4 ] Whoever then arrives at inspired insight comes to realize that what they have encountered along the path of imagination—something one might even call more material than the abstract concepts one usually has as mental content when speaking of the external, seemingly sensory stream of heredity—which in reality is born from the deeper spiritual realm—will thus come to realize that what organizes the human being in particular is born from the spiritual. This leads us to recognize an extraordinarily significant fact. Fundamentally, one can understand the physical human being as a whole, as we perceive him before us, as a being who must have passed through the ancestors, through the stream of heredity. But if one remains stuck at this external, scientific view, which seeks to trace everything back to heredity, one fails to grasp the details of this organism. This may seem paradoxical to some, but it is true. Our individual organs are shaped by the spirit; only the entire configuration of the human being, as he appears to us in the sensory world, had to pass through physical heredity in order to come into being as a synthesis of the individual organs. Thus, we do indeed arrive at a spiritual-scientific anatomy and physiology, which, at the same time, appears as the result of spiritual insights that lie deeper and are attained through inspiration. So we can say: When we consciously strive today to attain such insights through imagination and inspiration, we come to know the human being in a different way. But we also come to know the external world in a different way.

[ 5 ] For those who strive upward through imagination and inspiration—as I already hinted at in my autumn lectures in Dornach on the “Limits of Knowledge of Nature”—for those who strive in this way toward supersensory knowledge, the assumption that atoms lie behind sensory phenomena ceases to apply. It makes no difference whether one thinks in the older sense—where one assumed more elastic or even rigid atoms—or as we do now, where we speak more of ions or electrons; regardless of the nature of atomism, the assumption of such atoms—which are supposed to constitute matter and represent the very substance of the material world—loses its meaning. It simply appears to be an absurdity. And what remains to us of the sensory world, I once sought to characterize in the third volume of my edition of Goethe’s Scientific Writings, where I said: Everything that one surveys in the external world and with which one must engage in a process of self-recognition consists of the contents of sensory perceptions—the phenomena themselves. For if one goes behind the phenomena with a spiritual-scientific perspective, one does not find atoms in the sense used by physicists or physiologists, but rather one finds essentially spiritual entities. The external world is constituted by the spiritual—and not, mind you, by those forces that we also seek to take as the basis of our calculations. These are not, then, the central forces that mathematical physics usually assumes to account for the constitution of the material world. Instead, through a more spiritual mode of perception, we are driven outward toward the spiritual and inward toward what is initially a material conception. As we rise today to such insights from our present historical standpoint—one achieved by humanity—we do so with full awareness. We survey the step we are taking; we know that as our knowledge undergoes a metamorphosis, the external world becomes spiritualized for us, while the inner world becomes materialized. And we thereby grasp a now-metamorphosed image of the world in which we exist and which we ourselves are. We then relate this image we receive to our ordinary perception, which lives in intellectual concepts; we express it through such intellectual concepts, and this is precisely what enables us to live consciously within both of these perceptions of the world. This consciousness was lacking in human beings until the 8th century B.C., until the end of that period which I have characterized on these evenings as the Egyptian-Chaldean era. But in its place, they had the ability to attain instinctively what we can only work our way toward again consciously through inner methodology—the methodology of spiritual science. They lacked the ability to penetrate what they perceived instinctively with concepts. Intellectualism was still foreign to them, but images stood before their souls without their first having to bring them about in full consciousness, as we must do today; and so the external world was a spiritual reality for them. The further back we go in human development, the clearer this becomes.

[ 6 ] If we go back to the times for which historical documents still exist, we do indeed find a kind of decline in what once lived within these peoples. We find that the spiritual aspect of the external world had been degraded to the point of the demonic, and we therefore find demonic forces everywhere behind sensory phenomena. But this was merely the echo of an ancient spiritual worldview that was still very much present in the ages I have called the Proto-Persian and Proto-Indian periods. Furthermore, these people instinctively held the view that the organs themselves lived within them as part of the soul, so that—especially when they were educated individuals among these ancient peoples—they spoke of the soul as if it were their internal organs and conceived of the soul as a composite arising from the interaction of these internal organs. When we read the sayings of the ancients about the heart, liver, kidneys, and the like, we must not imagine them in the fantastical sense found, for example, in Wundt’s philosophy, but rather we must understand them in light of the spiritual state of mind that we can attain through imaginative and inspired insight. Only then do we understand what is meant by such remarkable sayings about the heart, liver, and the like, which have come down to us from ancient times.

[ 7 ] But we must also be clear about the spiritual constitution of these ancient peoples. This mental state was such that people saw the spiritual in the outer world, but in their inner being they actually perceived the material; yet, in order to perceive their inner being, they had to remain awake while observing the outer world, and had to dream while asleep. I have already alluded to this in connection with the Egyptians, hence the introduction of temple sleep. The sick person was brought to the temple and put to sleep; he then had to recount his dreams. The priests, who were trained in these matters, knew that what mattered most was the dramatic progression of the dream rather than its content. Interpreting its content would have been superstition. But what mattered was whether something dark in the dream followed something light—or vice versa—and whether the dream had to relate to states of fear or joy and the like. It was this dramatic aspect of the dream that mattered, and from this dramatic aspect it then became clear how one organ or another might be diseased; indeed, as I hinted, it even revealed the remedy. This is the reality of what later came to be known as the Egyptian temple sleep.

[ 8 ] These things then fell into decadence, and when one studies them in their decadent state, they no longer appear as they did in the heyday of ancient civilization; this should certainly be understood. One can therefore say: In their waking state, these ancient peoples possessed a kind of pictorial consciousness—not yet the intellectual consciousness that lives in abstract mental concepts. Through this pictorial consciousness, they perceived a spiritual outer world that lay at the foundation of the sensory world for them, just as causality and effect were later regarded as lying at the foundation of the sensory world. While these ancient peoples, in their instinctive experience at that time, were in a subdued state of consciousness, their dreaming was all the more vivid; and in the images of their dreams they perceived their inner world. And the scholars of that time were able to interpret these dream images as relating to the inner world—but actually to its material aspect.

[ 9 ] The great turning point that occurred around the middle of the 8th century B.C.E. consisted in the fact that human beings increasingly developed the ability to cultivate intellectuality. At first, this intellectual capacity was not yet as it is today, when we can, so to speak, detach ourselves from the external world, close our eyes, render all our senses inactive, and then set the mind itself in motion. This inwardly active work of the mind did not yet exist. But as the external world was perceived through images, a kind of intellect revealed itself along with the images; and as the world of images and dreams was penetrated, it was then also permeated by this intellect in memory. One can say that the intellect first emerged as a capacity in human development around the middle of the 8th century B.C.

[ 10 ] If one studies the ancient documents from this perspective, one will certainly be able to make sense of them. The fact that people like Jeremias or others who seek to describe ancient Chaldean culture encounter contradictions at every turn stems from their belief that what these Chaldeans had achieved arose solely through active intellectual thought rather than through the world of images perceived directly. If one assumes that the entire Chaldean culture arose through the perception of images—if one assumes that the distinctive inner life developed by the Egyptians, which then found expression in their mythology, but also found expression in works such as the Book of the Dead—if one takes all of this together and realizes that the inner world was once revealed through dreamlike inner perception, only then does one truly understand what this is actually about.

[ 11 ] As I have always suggested, one must turn to an examination of the state of mind in those times. The intellect does not become active until much later; in fact—and this is particularly evident in the development of early Greek philosophy—it begins initially as a kind of perception that also perceives the concepts of the intellect, the ideas, within sensory objects. One cannot understand Thales, Heraclitus, Anaximenes, and so on—especially not Anaxagoras with his νοῦς (Nus); one cannot understand the philosophy that Nietzsche called “Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks” unless one realizes that they had not yet ascribed to human beings the idea that “the intellect resides within you, and you are active in your intellect”—rather, they depicted the world; just as they perceived colors, so too did they perceive intellectual concepts in things. And in a certain sense, even Plato’s theory of ideas can only be understood without contradiction from this perspective, and all the more so the specific details, such as Hippocrates’ medicine. This can only be understood if one realizes that there was no abstracted intellect, but rather that just as things outside revealed themselves through colors, so too did they reveal themselves in their conceptual context. Just as we today, in a sense, view the sensory world as a tapestry of colors, so too did people in those times perceive it as a web of thought. Consequently, the relationship between the inner and the outer worlds was, of course, quite different for the Egyptians than it later became.

[ 12 ] Among the Chaldeans, it was still the case that human beings, in a certain sense, considered themselves to be an integral part of the external world. For when they were awake and attributed spiritual causality to the sensory world, they actually saw their own likeness in all things in nature. They sensed the soul within themselves, just as they sensed the spiritual reality behind sensory phenomena. And when they were asleep and dreaming, they saw their own inner world in images—one might say, as if in an external world. This entire state of being gave them the feeling that they were, in the most profound sense, a part of the world. Consequently, however, the way they thought about their connection to the world was different from how it is today.

[ 13 ] We are now immersed in a worldview that must, in fact, be overcome. We are immersed in a worldview that actually creates a deep chasm between natural events and the order in which we find ourselves through our human morality, our ethical views, and our religious convictions.

[ 14 ] When people today look out at nature, they understand the interrelationships within nature through what are called the laws of nature. These laws of nature are not in the least—and this is precisely what one seeks in them—tinged with anything moral. It seems to people today to be a paradoxical superstition—and, when it comes to a view of nature, quite rightly so—to assume, for example, that lightning shoots from the clouds in a way that must be explained in moral terms, and the like. Conversely, however, people feel as if they were torn away from the entire world order when they are expected to apply the moral standard to their own actions. And a more recent worldview has increasingly come to see only natural necessity out in the world, and in human beings, entirely and solely a kind of moral necessity. But today’s view of life cannot find a connection between this inner moral-religious order and the outer natural order. It was quite different in those times when people viewed the world around them and themselves as I have just described. Back then, there was no such contrast between morality and natural necessity. If we survey most of the ancient peoples, we find everywhere that these ancient peoples positioned themselves in the world in such a way that they conceived their own spiritual destinies as subject to a certain natural order; that, in a sense, from the very same force out of which they conceived thunder and lightning to have arisen, they also conceived as having arisen that which springs from their own souls.

[ 15 ] Only one people constituted a remarkable exception—if we may call it that—in that it experienced the inner world in a different way, and that is the Hebrew, the Jewish people. Anyone who takes the time to appreciate this will find a striking difference between the Jewish creation story in the Bible—the Old Testament—and all other creation stories. The other creation stories must be viewed entirely from the perspective of an inseparable order of nature and morality. The Jewish-Hebrew creation story, however, is characterized precisely by the fact that it is, at its core, devoid of any worldview rooted in nature. This is what distinguished the Jewish people from the surrounding peoples of antiquity. The Jewish people related everything to the one God. But the forces that acted in the world through this God—they regarded them, albeit in a different way than later conceptions, yet fundamentally as moral, that is, arising from the will of Yahweh. And fundamentally, whenever anything happened—whether in the natural world or through human action—a member of the ancient Hebrew people could only respond: It happens because Yahweh wills it. — One might say that the spiritual disposition of this Jewish people is such that the external world exists merely as a realm spread out before the senses, as if nothing spiritual or soulful were revealed from this external world, as it was for the other, pagan peoples. In contrast, there was a particularly keen perception of the human inner life, and through this perception of the human inner life, the Jewish people arrived at their monotheistic religion, their religion of Yahweh. And everything in antiquity that led and tended toward a certain insensitivity to the outside world, and conversely toward an emphasis on what is perceived from within—all of that is, in essence, attributable to the influence of the Hebrew people.

[ 16 ] One might say that the pagan peoples of antiquity were such that they held a spiritual view of nature and extended this spiritual view to human beings as such. They observed the phenomena of nature and attributed them to spiritual causes. They perceived the world through wisdom—understanding wisdom as that which brings the spiritual into the life of the human soul. The Jews had no organ for this wisdom in the world; instead, for specific reasons—which there is not enough time to explain here—they had something else. I once described this in a series of internal lectures in Kristiania that I gave on the souls of nations. In contrast to other peoples—particularly in contrast to the Egyptians, who instinctively perceived the inner life of the human being through dream images and dream imaginings—the Jews had, long before the dawn of intellectuality in the middle of the 8th century B.C., developed a kind of intellectuality from within, albeit one-sidedly and also prematurely. In the case of the earlier Greek thinkers, we can clearly see how they came to embrace intellectuality through their observation of nature. A living worldview, such as that developed by Heraclitus—for whom, in essence, the entire world is a process of becoming, yet in which this becoming is, in turn, symbolized more than just by fire—such a living worldview can only come about when a person fully immerses themselves in the fire, experiences the inner nature of the fire, so to speak, and simultaneously experiences the conceptual and the imaginative. Through the external, sensory glow of the fire, the imaginative and the intellectual are perceived in the external world.

[ 17 ] For the civilization represented in particular by the Greeks, the intellectual element was indeed born for humankind in the middle of the 8th century B.C. For the Hebrew people, it had already emerged earlier. For the Hebrew people, the intellectual element was not perceived in the external world, but rather within themselves—not through dream images as with the Egyptians—and already with a certain degree of abstraction, they perceived what is spiritual and intellectual. And this led them to their monotheism. This led them, one might say, to moralize the entire world, to trace everything back to the will of Yahweh, to attribute it to the fact that Yahweh wills it. And it might even be called a polar opposite when we take any Greek sage, such as Anaxagoras, and see that he speaks of the world-mind as the *nus*, perceiving the mind, as it were, objectively out in the world, and when we speak of an ancient Jewish scholar who feels this intellect rising from within him and thereby experiences the revelation of Yahweh. Even if you take something like the revelation of the burning bush to Moses, you will have to think about it differently, in the same way that you must think about a philosophical problem posed by Anaxagoras. What Moses perceives externally is merely a stimulus. What he actually perceives rises from within him. Hence the peculiar abstractness with which everything appears that constitutes the actual content of this Hebrew antiquity. But this gave human development a tendency that leads further away from nature. In Greek culture, we see humanity living within nature in such a way that it gives birth to reason out of nature. In Hebrew culture, we see an early experience of the human inner life, and from this tendency it followed that late Greek culture—Greek culture that had already fallen into decline—replaced, for example, Platonism with Neoplatonism, which represents an abstract mysticism, an immersion into an intangible, abstract spiritual world. We are already in the centuries of the Greek people’s decline. The outward gaze has already turned inward. One might say that the intellect, which the Greeks first discovered in the external world, has overwhelmed their inner being. And Plotinus, Iamblichus, Ammonius Saccas—these are people who are entirely devoted to the non-sensory, spiritual realm, who live entirely within this non-sensory, spiritual realm, and who, in fact, consider a person to be a true human being only if he or she can experience this non-sensory, spiritual realm.

[ 18 ] In certain regions of the Orient, however, something has still been preserved of what the inner, does not conceive of the soul in such abstract terms as the later Greeks did—for example, in Neoplatonism—but which still echoes inner sensory perception and which also does not represent the external world in the way that the Greek Democritus began to conceive of it, through material atoms, but which conceived of the foundation of the external, the sensory world, as a spiritual world. And time and again, tendencies arose from the East to counter what had come in through Hebrew influence. One need only study Philo, who lived at the beginning of the first century CE, to see this Hebrew influence. More and more, a reaction is emerging from certain regions of Asia against this internalization, against this complete absorption in the abstract inner world.

[ 19 ] In recent times, the most unfortunate idea has been to interpret the biblical account of creation simply as a symbolic representation of external geological time periods. It is certainly not that; rather, it is a depiction of what one perceives regarding the entire course of the world’s development, provided one allows the inner life of the human being to take effect. However, the Hebrew sages were such that they still saw what arose within them in concrete terms; they saw in it a diversity, a variety of elements. What they perceived there as inner reality had already degenerated into a symbol in Philo, and had then become entirely abstract in Neoplatonism. And while there is certainly something sublime, something magnificent, about immersing oneself in the otherworldliness of Plotinus and Iamblichus, this also means, on the other hand, that in this rapture, in this ecstasy, in the purely abstract supersensible realm, the order of nature—the entire view of nature—is lost. As I said, reactions had always come from various parts of Asia against this complete inward turning of the human being, through which he lost all inner imagery, through which images lost their contours, imaginations became blurred, and the human being ultimately dissolved into the abstract, the primal, the supernatural, the world-being that cannot be characterized by anything.

[ 20 ] Now, during this period—a time when such struggles were taking place, when old worldviews still persisted, as I have described today and yesterday, but when intellectual development was also progressing more and more—it was during this period, as you know, that Christianity came into being. This emergence of Christianity certainly had profound significance for the later rise of the natural sciences. But one can only understand this significance if one first says to oneself: Whatever it may be that came into the world through Christianity, the world of that time could understand this Christianity only in terms of its own conceptions. Whatever may have happened in Palestine, the people of that time had to understand it, at first, according to their own conceptions.

[ 21 ] So let us say that somewhere over in Asia there was a person who still retained a vestige of the more material inner vision and of the spiritualized outer world; then he had to see in the event of Golgotha something that corresponded to his worldview. He had to explain it from the perspective of his own worldview. If someone lived within Neoplatonism, within Plotinism—that is, within a worldview that already perceived all images as having blurred contours and ultimately allowed everything to merge into the One—then he would interpret everything he experienced regarding the Mystery of Golgotha through such an internalized perception of the world. He would say to himself, for example: “The highest I can attain—even if I withdraw from all these sensory perceptions, if I let my inner self alone take the lead and unite myself with the All-One—then Christ dawns within me as this highest reality. In this detachment from the world, I experience the Christ impulse.” — This is roughly what a Neoplatonist might have said. Someone who still retained something of the old worldview, as I have described it today, would say to himself: In Christ, a spiritual element from the cosmos was united with a human element. — And since he saw, in a certain sense, what lived in the human organs as more material than soul, this particular union of the spiritual Christ with the human Jesus became a problem for him. That is why the problem of the union of Christ with Jesus arises so frequently over in the East. In that stage of intellectual development in which people found themselves at the time—after all, only seven and a half centuries had passed since the dawn of intellectuality in humanity— the Mystery of Golgotha was understood exactly as it could be understood at the time; and one must distinguish between what individual people said and what had actually happened—what had burst upon the course of human development as an objective event: the event of Golgotha.

[ 22 ] But first—and we will return to this later—let us see how these various views manifested themselves: some of which had come down from ancient, non-intellectualistic times, and others that had developed under the influence of the Hebrew element; let us see how these manifested themselves in the centuries that followed. One might say—and this seems quite tangible, if I may use the term symbolically—what had taken place in human development becomes evident when one looks at the 4th century A.D. and considers, for example, an event such as the founding of Constantinople by Emperor Constantine, who, after all, was the one who first elevated Christianity to the status of the full-fledged state religion of the Roman Empire. Constantine founded Constantinople. This brings us to the 4th century A.D. And one can say that the way Constantine behaved in founding Constantinople is a way in which no figure in earlier times could ever have behaved in founding any city. In those earlier times, everything had arisen from a more instinctive impulse. Constantine—as everything that has been handed down to us undoubtedly shows—believed that the ancient prophecies foretelling the fall of Rome were true. He therefore did not wish to retain Rome as the capital. It must be particularly emphasized that, naturally, when people spoke of the fall of Rome, they were thinking primarily of the fall of the Roman Empire. The idea that Rome could not remain the center of the world in the same way it had been in the past was, after all, a belief that was deeply held at that time. But Constantine did not want to let the empire perish along with it. Now, there was an ancient belief that human development proceeds in a kind of cyclical pattern. Therefore, even in earlier times—as far back as the era of pagan Rome—the idea had arisen to rebuild the city of Troy, from which, as the legend attests, the founding of Rome is said to have originated. People wanted to return to the very beginning. Constantine did not go as far as Asia Minor, but he moved eastward; he founded Constantinople, as we know from tradition, entirely out of the conviction that world development must once again move back toward its origin. And he was, in a sense, intent on bringing into this Constantinople as much as possible of what he believed was still viable at that time. In the 4th century A.D., Christianity was more viable than is often assumed today. One need only think of accounts such as those given by Tertullian, for example, who—one might say—addresses the Roman emperor in a sort of petition, asking that Christians be tolerated, for what good would it do not to tolerate them; half the inhabitants of all cities are Christians anyway, and they are therefore not tolerated. We also know quite well from pagan Roman writers that Christianity spread at a breakneck pace back then. We know that, deep down, many people felt that Christianity simply could not be stopped. During the time of Diocletian, the Romans lamented that one could kill a few hundred people, a few thousand people, but one could not kill half the population of the empire. That may be somewhat of an exaggeration, but nevertheless, it is based on the fact that Christianity spread relatively extraordinarily quickly in the first centuries. Constantine saw through the driving force of Christianity, and that is why he wanted to combine what had come down from ancient times with what was now new. One might say: Nothing in world history has ever been as symbolically significant as that foundation-laying ceremony that Constantine celebrated upon the founding of Constantinople, where he had the porphyry column—to which the fortune of Rome seemed bound—transported to Constantinople amid the greatest difficulties. When they sought to bring the porphyry column into the new city, they had to transport it across a marshy area and first lay iron rails to do so; this is the origin of the expression “The Iron Gate,” which has been preserved to this day in the name “The Gate.” He had this porphyry column erected, but placed a statue of Apollo from Ilion on top of it. He had pieces of wood from the Cross of Christ—which his mother Helena had brought him from Jerusalem—hidden inside this statue of Apollo, and he surrounded the statue with a design resembling sunbeams; embedded in it were thorns from the Crown of Thorns, which he had also obtained from Palestine.

[ 23 ] It is clear that what had come down from ancient times and what was present as a new, fruitful element were meant to converge. But Constantine evidently did not believe that what was to be continued could be continued in Rome. The Palladium, which was said to have once been brought from Troy to Rome, was likewise transferred to Constantinople and hidden there in a location unknown to the outside world. Yet the legend remained: this Palladium had been transferred twice—once from Asia to Rome, and the second time from Rome to Constantinople. A third time, it would be transferred from Constantinople to the Slavic capital, and when this happened, a new era in world history would begin. This belief inspired many people in Eastern Europe. It also lived on in those who were complicit in instigating the outbreak of the last war in 1914. This legend of the threefold relocation of the Palladium is a symptomatic one. Yet within this legend lies an awareness of the progress of human development.

[ 24 ] When we look at all of this, doesn’t it give the impression of a consciousness, of a rationality, that must seem profoundly significant when one considers: Constantine combines ancient mythological motifs and visual motifs in a purely rational manner—one might say with tremendous logic—and is this logic meant to become the logic that dominates the world? One can see precisely this point, when one looks at the particular state of mind of this Constantine, how rationality is already at a high level during this period, but at the same time is still such that it is thoroughly interwoven with the objective external world. There is, I would say, still much that is Greek in this way of making use of the intellect. The Greeks had perceived the intellect, the nus, together with the external world, just as one perceives colors. They had also effectively conceived of the nus, the intellect, in history. Constantine believes that he can bring his subjective intellect to bear only if he thoroughly weaves it into objective events: the transfer of the Porphyry Column, the bringing over of the wood of the Cross and the crown of thorns. Constantine weaves historical elements into his images through the intellect. The intellect still lives in the external world; it perceives itself as reality only by living in the external world. A legend such as that of the Palladium, we see—I would say—transformed into the utmost sobriety.

[ 25 ] This 4th century A.D. is indeed a remarkable time, and one realizes what is significant and essential about this era when one considers what continued into the rest of the Middle Ages. Take just one example: the later scholars’ struggle between nominalism and realism. For the scholastics, even in the 13th century, realism was, for example, the view that ideas about external nature possess an intrinsic reality. The nominalists rebelled against this, seeing in concepts only abstract names, not something real like colors or sounds, and thus the great controversy arose between realism and nominalism. In realism, something of the view that was taken for granted in Greek thought lived on. A Greek thinker could not help but be a realist, because he perceived his intellectual concepts just as he perceived colors. But what we still find in Constantine linked to the objective external world—one might say, the “realizing mind”—was increasingly absorbed into the human being, increasingly interwoven with inner activity. Human beings became increasingly obsessed with the intellect. As a result, they withdrew this intellect from the external world for the sake of their perception. The emergence of realism in the Middle Ages had a specific reason, which we will learn about tomorrow; it was not merely an echo of ancient Greek culture, but stemmed from the particular relationship that the invading Germanic peoples had to the traditions inherited from antiquity.

[ 26 ] However, what nominalism was continued in such a way that what had previously been experienced as the intellect in conjunction with the external sensory world was now experienced in an abstract, detached manner. I would say that people were brought up in this nominalism because, as the Middle Ages progressed, Latin persisted as an ancient, dead language that no longer existed where one was in contact with the external world, but lived on only for that spiritual world which Plotinus had led up into the abstract, into the One, into the non-sensible and supersensible. One might say that this non-sensible, supersensible realm was meant to take hold of people more and more, and for those with a higher education, the Latin language—which had become a dead, abstract language—was to be the means of education leading toward this abstractness, toward this detachment from external nature. When one considers this in the context of later times, one can gauge what was actually alive in the 4th century A.D.

[ 27 ] Now we see yet another profoundly significant turning point in human development at the beginning of the 15th century. One need only delve into ancient writings on nature dating back to the 10th and 11th centuries to discover that it is indeed the case that people, while living in their intellect, perceive this intellect as something abstract, yet experience it as if it were possessing them, as if it were a real element within them. Even the nominalists do not see the intellect as existing outside in things; they do see mere names in ideas—particularly in generalizing ideas—but in the experience of these ideas they perceive a real power. This ceases in the consciousness of the early 15th century. Then, more and more, the era in which we still live fully developed—an era we recognize when we ask ourselves: What, then, has reason become for us? In this era, which so greatly loves exclusivity and takes such pride in its own absoluteness, people look down very haughtily upon earlier periods. Anyone who reads today what was written in the 10th and 11th centuries regards it as childish. But anyone who delves into these works from a spiritual-scientific perspective will, while not wishing to return to that way of thinking, nevertheless not regard it as childish, but rather as a different perspective. They notice how, although human beings are active with their intellect, they still conceive of the intellect—at least in the process of cognition—as united with things. From the 15th century onward, this changes. There, when a person thinks, he is no longer aware that forces are at work within him; he no longer feels possessed by the intellect, but feels himself to be the very being that brings forth the intellectual itself. We no longer regard the intellect as a real power, but only as that which provides us with images of the external world—images that are shadows of what the intellect once was. What has emerged here is the defining characteristic of the new era. Internalization has progressed to such an extent that human beings no longer feel as if they were being driven by something when logic is at work within them; rather, they feel that the concept of the intellect has, I might say, become entirely shadowy. They no longer feel that there is something within, internally impelling and driving them. People of the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries still felt this. It ceased in the 15th century. With this, the age of the development of true human consciousness begins. It was only through this that human beings could become fully conscious of their own nature: no longer did they feel the intellect as something that possessed them from within—to which they had to say, as was said much more often in ancient times than one might think, “It thinks within me”—but rather they became the ones who say, “I think.” They rise to their fully conscious self-awareness. The soul of consciousness develops, whereas the soul of intellect had developed during the period from the middle of the 8th century B.C. to the beginning of the 15th century. Consider this: all the concepts we have today—including the concepts of evolution, heredity, and so on—all the concepts and ideas we hold— date from the time before the 15th century. We have not acquired any new concepts. Today, especially as a scholar of the spiritual sciences, one feels how difficult it is to form words—even in an elementary sense—when one can no longer make do with what the words actually express according to the concepts that had been developed up to the 15th century. We are living off the shadows of the old concepts, and yet, in the age of natural science, we have been able to penetrate external nature in a marvelous way precisely by clinging to the shadows of those earlier concepts.

[ 28 ] It is curious to consider certain individuals from this particular perspective. For example, a thinker emerged during the 19th century who has not been sufficiently recognized. I have attempted to portray his character in the third chapter of my book *On the Riddles of the Soul*: Franz Brentano. He is, I would say, merely the most characteristic of a whole series. One can study many such figures. Franz Brentano became acquainted with modern natural science. Along with the scientific facts, he naturally also absorbed the concepts. But at the same time, he came from a devout family, was raised in a devout manner, and wanted to come to terms with the concepts of natural science. He could not help but ask himself: What is the nature of these concepts that live within me when I grasp the facts of natural science? I’m talking about heredity, development, metamorphosis—what is the nature of these concepts? —And this leads him to his extraordinarily insightful treatise on Aristotle, in which he takes Aristotle as his guide and must therefore return to the period that began in the 8th century B.C. and ended in the first third of the 15th century. And if one wishes to gain insight into the distinctive concepts that prevail in our own era, then one must, time and again, return to these earlier periods.

[ 29 ] Franz Brentano once gave a lecture on jurisprudence. In this lecture, he sought to clarify how human beings, as psychological and spiritual beings, relate to the external world. He wanted a concept to describe this relationship between human beings and the external world; in other words, he wanted to be able to ask: How does a representation relate to the external world? — He drew upon the concept of “intentional,” which he found already developed among the medieval Scholastics as a concept from a period preceding our own. And so one must always go back to the concepts. It is a delusion to believe that concepts arose after the 15th century. We live in a shadow world of concepts, not in a world of conceptual reality. The period before 1400 is the era in which conceptual reality took shape—the concept, the intellectual as a real factor within. We have already moved beyond that since the 15th century. We have replaced it with ego-consciousness. Ego-consciousness was still in the background among the Greeks; for them, it had something shadowy about it. Among them, the intellectual aspect prevailed, but it existed as a reality, as I have described.

[ 30 ] Humanity is educated—I would say—as if through an inner influence of spiritual forces upon these intellectual faculties. And this education lasted precisely from the 8th century B.C. to the 15th century. And if you ask about the midpoint of this period, you will find it: the 4th century A.D.—that is the midpoint. That is where the turning point lies. Up to that point, the process ascends; up to that point, the force that, so to speak, drives the intellect into the soul impels human beings. Then this force ebbs away, and the intellect gradually begins to take on a shadow-like quality. And with the founding of Constantinople, one sees this turning point take place: from an inner life still lived in full reality through the intellect—just as one lived with the ancient imagery in full reality, so that one was indistinguishable from the outer world— But even then, the tendency to withdraw from the world is already alive within human beings, as ancient mythic images are interwoven with sober reason in the founding of Constantinople. Such turning points reveal what is alive in the development of humanity.

[ 31 ] And now one might ask: Was that which manifested itself as reason—which then flourished within Roman pragmatism, which essentially reduced all gods to mere external symbols for state concepts and the like, or for natural phenomena—did it live on in what emerged from that, in what developed there, not something like a tendency toward the influence of the Hebrew element—which was entirely detached from external nature and brought forth the inner from earlier times? I would say that this striving found its expression in southern Europe, northern Africa, and the Near East, by straining the ancient imagery—the Chaldean-Egyptian imagery—upward toward the non-figurative nature of the mystical contemplation of the All-One. One had to enter this region, not to force it into existence, but to be able to fully experience the intellect within it. It was the preparation for reason, and one cannot understand this era unless one grasps the intertwining of this mysticism at the end of antiquity—this mysticism that accompanied the fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of reason.

[ 32 ] But just take a look at this entire development. In the South, the most educated segment of the population has been desperately turning toward the non-sensual and supernatural, toward the formless, toward merging with the soul in the One and All, in order to attain understanding. The further development of reason—even in language—was fueled there by the dead language of Latin. But the whole process had arisen one-sidedly. It had arisen because, in a sense, the people of this South had elevated themselves above nature, and this elevation above nature had already been prepared by a social phenomenon. You can trace this entire process all the way into the 4th post-Christian century other than as follows: on the broad foundation of a slave population, a population of the upper classes rises to prominence, for only these upper classes can develop such a social milieu that this Plotinism becomes possible—that this non-sensual, supersensual aspect, this exclusion of the natural, becomes a fundamental constitution of the soul. But the intellect, too, can then only absorb this—one might say—with this spiritual quality of the soul distilled from the fullness of humanity. This developed in southern Europe; it was not imbued with a sufficiently intense force to sustain the robust Roman Empire; it was imbued with the force that Egyptian hermits could generate, but which could not sustain the robust Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was barely able to draw inspiration for the intellect from this seclusion from the world and was able to cultivate the intellect, but it could be sustained only by the socially privileged upper class. The people could not grasp it—nor could all of humanity. Thus, the return to nature had to be made once again. Constantine wanted to embark on a return journey. He set out on the return journey to Constantinople. But that was done solely through the intellect. Another return journey was undertaken. This return journey consisted of the path that the Romans had to take—even if I am now describing it somewhat from the other side—toward the peoples who brought them fresh blood and nature, toward the Germanic peoples coming down from the north. There was the necessary robustness there; there, reason could be assimilated with the blood, with the natural. Even Caesar fought against Pompey with hordes of Germanic peoples. All the victories of the Roman Empire were won with legions of Germanic mercenaries. And alongside the—I would say—abstract act of founding Constantinople stands the other, concrete act of Constantine, in which he defeated Maxentius with Germanic-British, Germanic-Gallic, and purely Germanic people.

[ 33 ] The abstract realm toward which people had turned could give rise to the spiritual disposition of the Egyptian hermits, the spiritual disposition of those who withdrew to Monte Cassino, but that was not enough to sustain the robust course of world history. What had been left behind at an earlier stage had to intervene. The peoples who descended there had been left behind by roughly an entire historical epoch. They still brought with them the freshness that had once flourished in an earlier, higher age, but which had at least still been vibrantly alive in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries B.C. in Greece and the Near East. The inner spiritual strength, the willpower, and the emotional vitality that existed there were brought into the Roman world through the Germanic element. And now a people, with all its humanity, took in what had been developed in the south at an abstract level. And in this act of taking in lies the possibility of reintroducing realism, of bringing reality back into that which had become uninstinctive and unreal—and could therefore only lead to the downfall of the Roman Empire. Thus, intense power and reality were introduced into the course of human development. This paved the way for what would lead the human being—who had attained the intellect, that is, his inner life, and then the conscious soul, but in whom only the shadow of the intellect remained—back to what he had lost sight of: nature. The emergence of the soul of consciousness is linked to the dawning of a view of nature. We will speak tomorrow about how to envision this in more detail.