Dornach, July 1, 1924
For those of you who are able to be here today I wish to give
a kind of interlude in the studies we have been pursuing for some time.
What I shall say today will serve to illustrate and explain many
questions that may emerge out of the subjects we have treated until now.
At the same time it will help to throw light on the mood of soul of the
civilisation of the present time.
For years past, we have had to draw
attention to a certain point of time in that evolution of civilisation
which is concentrated mainly in Europe. The time I mean lies in the 14th
or 15th century or around the middle of the Middle Ages. It is the moment
in the evolution of humanity when intellectualism began � when people
began mainly to pay attention to the intellect, the life of thought,
making the intellect the judge of what shall be thought and done among
them.
Since the age of the intellect is
with us today, we can certainly gain a good idea of what intellectualism
is. We need but experience the present time to gain a notion of what came
to the surface of civilisation in the 14th and 15th centuries. But as to
the mood of soul which preceded this, we are no longer able to feel it in
a living way. People who study history nowadays generally project what
they are accustomed to see in the present time back into the historic
past, and they have little idea how altogether different people were in
mind and spirit before the present epoch. Even when they let the old
documents speak for themselves, they largely read into them the way of
thought and outlook of the present.
To spiritual-scientific study many
things will appear differently. Let us turn our gaze for
example to those historic personalities who were influenced on the one
hand by Arabism, the civilisation of Asia � influenced by what lived and
found expression in the Mohammedan religion, while on the other hand they
were influenced by Aristotelianism. Let us consider these personalities,
who found their way in the course of time through Africa to Spain, and
deeply influenced the thinkers of Europe down to Spinoza and even beyond
him. We gain no real conception of them if we imagine their mood of soul
as though they had been like people of the present time with the only
difference that they were ignorant of so and so many things subsequently
discovered. (Roughly speaking, this is how they are generally thought of
today). The whole way of thought and outlook, even of the people who
lived in the above described stream of civilisation as late as the 12th
century A.D., was altogether different from that of today.
Today, when man reflects upon
himself, he feels himself as the possessor of thoughts, feelings, and
impulses of will which lead to action. Above all, man ascribes to himself
the �I think,� the �I feel� and the �I will.�
But in the personalities of whom I
am now speaking, the �I think� was by no means yet accompanied by the
same feeling with which we today would say �I think.� This could only be
said of the �I feel� and the �I will.� In effect, those human beings
ascribed to their own person only their feeling and their willing. Out of
an ancient background of culture they rather lived in the sensation �It
thinks in me� than that they thought �I think.� Doubtless they thought �I
feel,� �I will,� but they did not think �I think� in the same measure. On
the other hand they said to themselves � and what I shall now describe
was an absolutely real conception to them: The thoughts live in the
Sublunary Sphere. The thoughts are everywhere within this sphere, which
is determined when we imagine the earth at a certain point, and the moon
at another, followed by Mercury, Venus, etc. They not only conceived the
Earth as a dense and rigid cosmic mass, but as a second thing belonging
to it they conceived the Lunar Sphere, reaching up to the moon. And as we
say, �In the air in which we breathe is oxygen,� so did these people say
(it is only forgotten now that it ever was so): � �In the ether which
reaches up to the Moon, there are the thoughts.� And as we say �We breathe
in the oxygen of the air,� so did these people say � not �We breathe in
the thoughts� � but �We perceive the thoughts, receive them into
ourselves.� They were conscious of the fact that they received the
thoughts.
Today, no doubt, a person can also
familiarise himself with such an idea as a theoretical concept. He may
even understand it with the help of Anthroposophy, but as soon as it
becomes a question of practical life he forgets it. For then at once he
has the rather strange idea that the thoughts spring forth within himself
� which is just as though he were to think that the oxygen he receives in
breathing were not received by him but sprang forth from within him.
For the personalities of whom I am
now speaking, it was a profound feeling and an immediate experience: �I
have not my own thoughts as my own possession. I cannot really say, I
think. Thoughts exist, and I receive them unto myself.�
We know that the oxygen of the air
circulates through our organism in a comparatively short time. We count
these cycles by the pulse-beat. This happens quickly. The people of whom
I am now speaking did indeed imagine the receiving of thoughts as a kind
of breathing, but it was a very slow breathing. It consisted in this: At
the beginning of his earthly life, man becomes capable of receiving the
thoughts. As we hold the breath within us for a certain time � between
our in-breathing and out-breathing � so did those people conceive a
certain fact, as follows: They imagined that they held the thoughts
within them, yet only in the sense in which we hold the oxygen which
belongs to the outer air. They imagined that they held the thoughts
during the time of their earthly life, and breathed them out again � out
into the cosmic spaces � when they passed through the gate of death.
Thus it was a question of
in-breathing � the beginning of life; holding the breath � the duration
of earthly life; out-breathing � the sending forth of the thoughts into
the universe.
People who had this kind of inner
experience felt themselves in a common atmosphere of thought with all
others who had the same experience. It was a common atmosphere of thought
reaching beyond the earth, not only a few miles, but as I said, up to the
orbit of the moon.
This idea was wrestling for the
civilisation of Europe at that time. It was trying to spread itself ever
more and more, impelled especially by those Aristotelians who came from
Asia into Europe along the path I have just indicated. Let us suppose for
a moment that it had really succeeded. What would then have come about?
In that case, my dear friends, that
which was destined after all to find expression in the course of earthly
evolution could never have come to expression in the fullest sense: I
mean the Consciousness Soul. The human beings of whom I am now speaking
stood in the last stage of evolution of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. In
the 14th and 15th century, the Consciousness Soul was to arise, which, if
it found extreme expression, would lead all civilisation into
intellectualism.
The population of Europe in its
totality, in the 10th, 11th and 12th centuries, was by no means in a
position merely to submit to the outpouring of a conception such as was
held by the people whom I have now described. For if they had done so,
the evolution of the Consciousness Soul would not have come about. Though
it was determined in the councils of the Gods that the Consciousness Soul
should evolve, nevertheless it could not evolve out of the mere
independent activity of all European humanity. A special
impulse had to be given towards the development of the Conscousnes Soul
itself.
And so, beginning in the time which
I have now described, we witness the rise of two spiritual streams. One
was represented by the quasi-Arabian philosophers who, working from Western
Europe, influenced European civilisation very strongly � far more so than
is commonly supposed. The other was the stream which fought against the
former one with the utmost intensity and severity, representing it to
Europe as the most heretical of all.
For a long time after, this conflict
was felt with great intensity. You may still feel this if you consider
the pictures in which Dominican Monks, or St. Thomas Aquinas alone, are
represented in triumph � that is to say, in the triumph of an altogether
different conception which emphasised above all things the individual and
personal being of man, and worked to the end that man might acquire his
thoughts as his own property. In these pictures we see the Dominicans
portrayed, treading the representatives of Arabism under foot. The
Arabians are there under their feet � they are being trodden underfoot.
The two streams were felt in this
keen contrast for a long time after. An energy of feeling such as is
contained in these pictures no longer exists in the humanity of today,
which is rather apathetic. We need such energy of feeling very badly, not
only for the things for which they battled, but for other things as
well.
Let us consider for a moment what
they imagined. The in-breathing of thoughts as the cosmic ether from the
Sublunary Sphere � that is the beginning of life. The holding of the
breath � that is the earthly life itself. The out-breathing � that is the
going forth of the thoughts once more, but with an individually human
colouring, into the cosmic ether, into the impulses of the sphere beneath
the Moon, of the Sublunary Sphere.
What then is this out-breathing? It
is the very same, my dear friends, of which we speak when we say: In the
three days after death the etheric body of man expands. Man looks back
upon his etheric body slowly increasing in magnitude. He sees how his
thoughts spread out into the cosmos. It is the very same, only it was
then conceived, if I may say so, from a more subjective standpoint. It
was indeed quite true, how these people felt and experienced it. They
felt the cycle of life more deeply than it is felt today.
Nevertheless, if their idea had
become dominant in Europe, only a feeble feeling of the I would have
evolved in the people of European civilisation. The� Conscience Soul
would not have been able to emerge; the I would not have grasped itself
in the �I think.� The idea of immortality would have become vaguer and
vaguer. People would increasingly have fixed their attention on that
which lives and weaves in the far reaches of the Sublunary Sphere as a
remnant of the human being who has lived here on this earth.
They would have felt the
spirituality of the earth as its extended atmosphere. They would have
felt themselves belonging to the earth, but not as individuals distinct
from the earth. Through their feeling of �It thinks in me,� the people
whom I described above felt themselves intimately connected with the
earth. They did not feel themselves as individualities in the same degree
as the people of the rest of Europe were beginning to feel themselves,
however indistinctly.
We must, however, also bear in mind
the following. Only the spiritual stream of which I have just spoken was
aware of the fact that when a person dies the thoughts he received during
his earthly life are living and weaving in the cosmic ether that
surrounds the earth. This idea was violently attacked by those other
personalities who arose chiefly within the Dominican Order. They declared
that man is an individuality, and that we must concentrate above all on
his individuality which passes through the gate of death, not on what is
dissolved in the universal cosmic ether. This was emphasised, albeit not
exclusively, � emphasised representatively, I would say, � by the
Dominicans. They stood up vigorously for the idea of the individuality of
man, as against the other stream which I characterised before. But
precisely as a result of this a certain condition came about. For let us
now consider these representatives of individualism.
After all, it was the individually
coloured thoughts which passed into the universal ether. And those who
fought against the former stream � just because they were still vividly
aware that this was being said, that this idea existed, � were troubled
and disquieted by what was really there.
This anxiety, notably among the
greatest thinkers, � this anxiety as a result of the forces expanding and
dissolving and passing on the human thoughts to the cosmic ether, � did
not really come to an end until the 16th or 17th century.
We must somehow be able to
transplant ourselves into the inner life of soul of these people,
especially those who belonged to the Dominican Order. Only then do we
gain an idea of how much they were disquieted by what was really left as
an heritage from the dead, � which they, with their conception, no longer
could nor dared believe in.
We must transplant ourselves into
the hearts and minds of these people. No great man of the 13th or 14th
century could have thought so dryly, so abstractly or in such cold and
icy concepts as the people of today. When the people of today are
defending ideas or theories, it seems as though it were a recognised
condition for so doing that one's heart should first be torn out of one's
body. At that time it was not so. At that time there was deep feeling,
there was heart in all that men upheld as their ideas. But in a
case such as I am now citing, this heart also involved an intense
inner conflict.
That philosophy, which
proceeded from the Dominican Order, evolved under the most appalling
inner conflicts. I mean that philosophy which afterwards had such a
strong influence on life � for life at that time was still far more
dependent on the authority of individual men. There was no such popular
education at that time. All culture and education � all that the people
knew � eventually merged into the possession of a few. And as a
consequence, these few reached up far more to a real philosophic life and
striving. And in all that then flowed out into civilisation, these inner
conflicts which they lived through were contained.
Today one reads the works of the
Scholastics and is conscious only of the driest thoughts. But it is the
readers of today who are dry. Those who wrote these works were by no
means dry in heart or mind. They were filled with inner fire in relation
to their thoughts. Moreover, this inner fire was due to the striving to
hold at bay the objective influence of thoughts.
When a person of today thinks on
philosophic questions or questions of worldview, nothing is there, so to
speak, to worry him. A man of today can think the greatest nonsense � he
thinks it in perfect calm and peace of mind. Humanity has already evolved
for so long within the Consciousness Soul that no such disquieting
occurs, as would occur, for instance, if individuals among us felt how
the thoughts of men appear when they flow out after death into the
ethereal environment of the earth. Today such things as could still be
experienced in the 13th or 14th century are quite unknown. Then it would
happen that a younger priest would come to an older priest, telling of
the inner tortures which he was undergoing in remaining true to his
religious faith, and expressing it in this wise: �I am pursued by the
ghosts of the dead.�
Speaking of the ghosts of the dead, they
meant precisely what I have just described. That was a time when people
could still grow deeply into what they learned. In such a community � a
Dominican community for instance, � they learned that man is individual
and has his own individual immortality. They learned that it is a false
and heretical idea to conceive, with respect to thought, a kind of
universal soul comprising all the earth. They learned to attack this
heresy with all their might. And yet, in certain moments when they took
deep counsel with themselves, they would feel the objective and
influential presence of the thoughts which were left behind as relics by
the dead. Then they would say to themselves, �Is it quite right for me to
be doing what I am doing? Here is something intangible working into my
soul. I cannot rise against it � I am held fast by it.�
The intellects of that time, many
of them at any rate, were still so constituted that they were
generally aware of the speaking of the dead, at least for some days after
death. And when one had ceased to speak another would begin. With
respect to such things too, they felt themselves immersed in the
all-pervading spiritual � or at the very least, ethereal � essence of the
universe.
Coming into our own time, this
living feeling with the Universal All has ceased. In return for it we
have achieved conscious life in the Consciousness Soul, while all the
spiritual reality that surrounds us (surrounds us as a reality, no less
so than tables or chairs, trees or rivers) works only upon the depths of
our subconscious. The inwardness of life, the spiritual inwardness, has
passed away. It must first be acquired again by spiritual-scientific
knowledge livingly received.
We must think livingly upon the
knowledge of spiritual science, and we shall do so if we dwell upon such
facts of life as lie by no means very far behind us. Imagine a Scholastic
thinker or writer of the 13th century. He writes down his thoughts.
Nowadays it is easy work to think, for people have grown accustomed to
think intellectually. At that time it was only at the beginning, and was
still difficult. Man was still conscious of a tremendous inner effort. He
was conscious of fatigue in thinking even as in hewing wood, if I may use
the trivial comparison. Today the thinking of many people has become
quite automatic. Today we are scarcely overcome by the longing to follow
up every one of our thoughts with our own human personality! We hear a
person of today letting one thought arise out of another like an
automaton. We cannot follow, we do not know why, for there is no inner
necessity in it. And yet so long as a man is living in the body he should
follow up his thoughts with his own personality. Afterwards they will
soon take a different course; they will spread out and expand when he is
dead.
So a person could be sitting there
at that time, defending with every weapon of sharp incisive thought the
doctrine of individual man in order to save the doctrine of individual
immortality. He could be arguing with polemics against Averroes, or others of
that stream of thought which I described at the beginning of this
lecture. But there was another possibility. For especially in the case of
an outstanding person like Averroes, that which proceeded from him,
dissolving after his death like a kind of ghost in the Sublunary Sphere,
might well be gathered up again by the Moon itself at the end of that
Sphere, and remain behind. Having enlarged and expanded, it might even be
reduced again, shape and form be given to it, till it was
consolidated once again into an essence built, if I may say so, in the
ether. That could well happen. Then the man would be sitting there, trying
to lay the foundations of individualism, carrying on his polemic against
Averroes; and Averroes would appear before him as a threatening figure,
disturbing his mind.
The most important of the Scholastic
writings which arose in the 13th century were directed against Averroes,
who was long dead. They made polemics against the man long dead, against
the doctrine which he had left behind. Then he arose to prove to them
that his thoughts had become condensed, consolidated once again and thus
were living on.
There were indeed these inner
conflicts before the beginning of the new age of consciousness. And they
were such that we today should see once more their full intensity and
depth and inwardness. Words after all are words. The people of later
times can but receive what lies behind the words with such ideas as they
possess. But within the words there were often rich contents of inner
life. They pointed to a life of soul such as I have now described.
These, then, are the two streams,
and they have remained active, basically speaking, to this day. The
one � albeit now only working from the spiritual world, yet all the
stronger there, � would like to convince man that a universal life of
thoughts surrounds the earth, and that in thoughts man breathes in soul
and spirit. The other stream desires above all to point out that man
should make himself independent of such universality. The former stream
is more like a vague intangible presence in the spiritual environment of
the earth, perceptible today to many people (for there are still such
people) when in certain nights they lie on their beds and listen to the
void, and out of the void all manner of doubts are born in them as to
what they are asserting today so definitely and so surely in their own
individuality.
Meanwhile in others, who always
sleep soundly because they are so well satisfied with themselves, we have
the unswerving emphasis on the individual principle.
This battle is
smouldering still at the very foundations of European culture. It is
here to this day; and in the things that are taking place outwardly on
the surface of our life, we have scarcely anything other than
the beating of the surface-waves from what is still present in the depths
of souls � a relic of the deeper and intenser inner life of earlier
times.
Many souls of that time are here
again in present earthly life. In a certain way they have conquered what
then disquieted them so much in their surface consciousness � disquieted
them at least in certain moments of their surface consciousness.
But in the depths it smoulders all
the more in many minds and hearts today. Spiritual science, once again, is
here to draw attention also to such historic facts as these.
But we must not forget the
following. In the same measure in which people become unconscious during
earthly life of what is there none the less, namely the thoughts in the
ether in the immediate environment of the earth � in the same measure,
therefore, in which they acquire the �I think� as their own possession �
their human soul is narrowed down. Man passes through the gate of death
with a contracted soul.
The narrowed soul has carried untrue,
imperfect, inconsistent earthly thoughts into the cosmic ether, and these
work back again upon the minds of men. Thence there arise such social
movements as we see today. We must understand these too as to their inner
origin. Then we shall recognise that there is no other cure, no other
healing for these social ideas, destructive as they often are, than the
spreading of the truth about the spiritual life and being.
Call to mind the lectures we have
given here, especially the historic ones taking into account the concept
of reincarnation and leading to so many definite examples. These lectures
will have shown you how things work beneath the surface of external
history. You will have seen how what lived in one historic age is
carried over into a later one by people returning into earthly life. But
everything spiritual plays its part between death and a new birth in
moulding what is carried by man from one earth-life into another.
Today it would be good if many souls
would attain for themselves that objectivity to which we can address
ourselves, awakening an inner understanding, when we describe the people
who lived in the twilight of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul age.
Some of the people who lived at that
time are here again today. Deep in their souls they underwent the evening
twilight of an age, and through the constant attacks they suffered from
the ghosts of which I have now spoken, they have absorbed
deep doubts about the validity of intellectualism.
This doubt can well be understood.
For around the 13th century there were many people � men of knowledge who
stood in the midst of learning, almost entirely theological as it then
was � people for whom it was a deep question of conscience: What will
happen now ?
Such souls had often carried with
them into that time mighty contents from their former incarnations. They
gave it an intellectual colouring; but they felt this all as a declining
stream. While at the rising stream � pressing forward as it was to
individuality � they felt the pangs of conscience. Until at length those
philosophers arose who stood under an influence which has really killed
all meaning. To speak radically: those who stood under the influence of
Descartes! For many, even among those who had their place in the
Scholasticism of an earlier time, had already fallen into the Cartesian
way of thought. I do not say that they became philosophers. These things
underwent many changes. When people begin to think along these lines the
strangest nonsense becomes self-evident. To Descartes, as you know, is
due the saying �I think, therefore I am.�
Countless clever thinkers have
accepted this as true: �I think, therefore I am.� Yet the result is this:
From morning until evening I think, therefore I am. Then I fall asleep. I
do not think, therefore I am not. I wake up again, I think, therefore I
am. I fall asleep, and as I now do not think, I am not. This then is the
consequence: A person not only falls asleep, but ceases to be when he
falls asleep. There is no less fitting proof of the existence of the
spirit of man than the theorem: �I think.� Yet this began to be the most
widely accepted statement in the age of evolution of consciousness (the
age of the Consciousness Soul). When we point to such things today it is
like a sacrilege, but we cannot help ourselves!
But over against all this I will
now tell you of a kind of conversation. Though it is not historically
recorded, by spiritual research it can be discovered among the real
things that happened. It was a conversation that took place between an
older and a younger Dominican, somewhat as follows:
The younger man said, �Thinking
takes hold of men. Thought, the shadow of reality, takes hold of them. In
ancient times thought was always the last revelation of the living Spirit
from above. But now thought is the very thing that has forgotten that
living Spirit. Now it is experienced as a mere shadow. Verily, when a man
sees a shadow, he knows the shadow points to some reality. The realities
are there indeed. Thinking itself is not to be attacked, but only the
fact that we have lost the living Spirit from our thinking.�
The older man replied, �In thinking,
through the very fact that man is turning his attention with loving
interest to outer Nature, (while he accepts Revelation as Revelation and
does not seek to approach it with his thinking), � in thinking, to
compensate for the former heavenly reality, an earthly reality must be
found once more.�
�What will happen?� said the younger
man. �Will European humanity be strong enough to find this earthly
reality of thought, or will it only be weak enough to lose the heavenly
reality?�
This dialogue truly contains all that still holds good with
regard to European civilisation. For after the intermediate time, with
the darkening of the living quality of thought, humanity must now attain
to living thinking once more. Otherwise humanity will remain weak and the
reality of thought will lose its own reality. Therefore it is most
necessary, since the our Christmas Conference impulse, that we in the
Anthroposophical Movement speak without reserve in forms of living
thought. For otherwise it will come about more and more that even the
things we know from this source or from that � for instance that man
has a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body � will only be
grasped with the forms of dead thinking.
These things must not be grasped with the forms of dead
thinking. For then they become distorted, misrepresented truth, and not
the truth itself.
That is what I wanted to say today. We must attain a living,
sympathetic interest, a longing to go beyond ordinary history and to
attain that history which must and can be read in the living Spirit, the
history which shall more and more be cultivated in the Anthroposophical
Movement. Today, my dear friends, I wished to place before your souls the concrete outline of our programme in this direction.
Much has been said today in aphorism. The inner connection
will dawn upon you if you attempt not so much to follow up with the
intellect, but to feel with your whole being what has been said
today. You must attempt to feel it knowingly, to know it feelingly, in
order that not only what is said but what is heard within our circles may
be sustained more and more by real spirituality.
We need education to spiritual hearing, spiritual listening.
Only then shall we develop true spirituality among us. I wanted to awaken
this feeling in you today; not so much to give a systematic lecture, but
to speak to your hearts, albeit calling to witness, as I did, many a
concrete spiritual fact.
Thanks to the Rudolf Steiner Archive
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