Perception
of the Nature of Thought
— Sun
Activity in Earthly Evolution —
Lecture
given by Rudolf Steiner,
Dornach, 10 January 1915,
GA 161
Translated by M. Cotterell
Bearing
in mind what we sought to study yesterday, let us consider how
matters actually stand in regard to what we call man's Saturn
evolution.
If
we remember the course of yesterday's lecture [],
we know that there is concealed within us, within our human being,
something that was first implanted in us during the Saturn period,
namely, the first rudiments of our physical bodily nature. What we
have acquired from the ancient Saturn evolution can be met with
nowhere today in the external world. In primeval ages the Saturn
evolution arose and again passed away; it possessed characteristics,
forces, which seek in vain if we look around us today. For even if we
look out to the stars in cosmic space we do not at first find what
prevailed within the old Saturn evolution.
After this ancient Saturn
evolution had died away, there came as you know, the Sun evolution
and then the Moon evolution and today we are living in the Earth
evolution. Three evolutionary periods have gone by. And all that
formed their peculiar characteristics has passed away with them and
is no more to be found in our field of vision. We can only find the
characteristics of the Saturn evolution among the hidden occult
activities which pulsate through the world. We can still, as it were,
uncover the forces which at that time worked upon our physical body.
If
you recollect what was shown in my book
Outline of Occult Science
you are aware that there was an active co-operation at that time
between the Spirits of Will and the Spirits of Personality.
This co-operation still exists today though it cannot be discerned
externally. We find it if we look into what we call our personal
karma. Please note, my dear friends, that our personal karma is
woven in such a way that what befalls us in successive earth lives is
connected as cause and effect. The forces active in our personal
stream of destiny cannot be investigated by the official Natural
Scientist. He will find nothing among the forces disclosed in the
field of Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Physiology etc., which calls
forth the connection of cause and effect that comes to expression in
our personal karma. The laws prevailing there are withdrawn from
physical observation as well as from the historical observation
pursued today by the so-called cultural-scientist of a materialistic
colouring. The modern investigation of historical evolution, the
history which is written nowadays of Persia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, up
to our own time, contains laws which have nothing to do with the
forces active in our karma. Thus the historian, the modern
materialistic scientist studying civilization does not discover the
laws dependent on man's personal karma.
History is looked upon as a
continuous stream and no one considers to what extent historical
evolution depends on the fact that human souls, for instance, who
were personalities in ancient Roman times are present again today.
The fact that they participate in current events and that the way in
which they do so flows out of their personal karma finds no place in
modern materialistically coloured history.
If
we seek therefore for forces having something of the nature-forces of
old Saturn we have to go to the law of our personal karma. Only when
we learn to read what is in the surrounding cosmos and not
merely to observe it, do we gain an insight into how the laws of
ancient Saturn are still in a certain way active.
If we turn our attention to the
ordering and outstreaming of the twelve Signs of the Zodiac as a
cosmic script, and consider what radiating forces pour into human
life from Aries, Taurus, Gemini etc., we are then thinking in the
sense of forces which were Saturn forces. And if we try to bring
personal karma into connection with the constellations which relate
to the zodiacal signs, we are then living approximately in the sphere
of that world-conception which must be employed for the laws of the
ancient Saturn epoch.
Thus
nothing visible has remained, nothing that may be perceived, and yet
there is still remaining an invisible element which may be
interpreted out of the signs of the cosmos. Anyone who thought that
Aries, Taurus, Gemini etc., made his destiny would be living under
the same delusion as a man who had been sentenced by a certain legal
passage and then conceived a special hatred of this paragraph in the law
and believed that it had sent him to gaol. Just as little as a legal
paragraph printed on the white page can sentence a man, can Aries,
Taurus, or Gemini, bring about destiny. Yet one can read from the
star-script the connection between the cosmos and human destiny. And
thus we can say that what follows from the star script is a remainder
of the ancient Saturn evolution, is indeed the ancient Saturn
evolution become entirely spiritual, but leaving its signs behind in
the star-script of the cosmos.
When
we proceed from the Old Saturn evolution to the Moon evolution we
must be clear that at first there is nothing so directly (I said; at
first, so directly) in our surrounding field of vision; external
nature contains in the first place in the main no forces which
resemble those of the Old Moon evolution. These forces of the Old
Moon have also drawn back into concealment, but they have not yet
become spiritual to the same degree as the Old Saturn laws. The
Saturn laws have become so spiritual that we can only investigate
them in the laws of our personal destiny, that is to say, quite
outside space and time. When we observe human life as a whole
we still find today these ancient Saturn laws, still find what cannot
be seen when we confront a man in the physical world.
We have said that in meeting man
in the physical world, we have the physical body as coming from the
Old Saturn evolution, the etheric from the Old Sun evolution; the
astral body from the Old Moon, and the Ego. And when we look at man
externally and observe his form it is solely this embodiment of the
ego which is not a relic from other periods of evolution. It is the
laws of Earth which prevail and are active when the ego fashions man
for itself and embodies itself. The laws of the Moon evolution, the
laws of the astral body have already withdrawn and are no longer
outwardly active. Now if we encounter a man we shall say: “You,
O Man, as you confront me as material man are an embodiment of the
Ego. But deep in the background of your being lies your invisible
personal destiny.” How this invisible human destiny is
determined comes under the rule of ancient Saturn laws. There we are
already appealing to something entirely spiritual when, from the
earthly laws of the embodiment of the Ego, we look towards the
ancient Saturn laws. If, however, we look from what stands before us
in the human being towards what still prevails in him from the Old
Moon laws we find something not so spiritual. But this too has
withdrawn from the external activity of the world, this too is not
directly under the active forces of Earth-existence.
Where
then must we seek for what has remained behind from the ancient Moon
activity? We must we seek it protected and embedded, veiled from
Earthly existence. For it is active in the period before man enters
Earth existence through his physical birth, it is active before the
external physical ray of light can penetrate his eye, it is active
before he can first draw breath. It is active from the conception to
birth, active in the embryonic life. I beg you expressly to notice,
however, it is not active in that which develops from the ovum to the
external physical human being; in what grows from the ovum, becoming
greater and greater through continuous division, the forces of the
Earth are working. But it is active in what exists only in the mother
and dies away during the embryonic development, in what is lost with
the birth and perishes. In all that envelops the earthly human being
and cares for its nourishment before it is born, in all that
ensheaths the growing human being and then falls away from it —
in that rule the ancient Moon laws. And with this we have something
that goes beyond the single human life, that forms a connection
between the individual man and his ancestors and is included in the
concept of heredity.
Thus we see something that
existed during the Old Moon evolution still playing an active part,
though not in the external world. In the outer world it acts only, so
to say, as a dying away in human development, as something that is
overcome as soon as the human being draws the first active breath for
earthly life.
If one would study the laws of
the Old Moon existence — or at any rate a part of them —
purely physiologically and not clairvoyantly, the only way to do so
today would be to study the laws at work in the sheaths surrounding
the human embryo before it draws the first breath, enfolding it and
nourishing it. What is there enclosed in the mother's body,
what can only thrive during earthly evolution within the protecting
sheath of the maternal body was the whole nature during the Old Moon
evolution; it filled the whole field of vision.
Thus there die not only beings
in so far as they have a sheath-nature, but whole types of natural
laws, and exist in succeeding ages solely as last remains. Now you
will have to ask the question: How does it stand with what is derived
from the Sun?
Let us look at yesterday's
diagram. We have seen that through all complications that appear
here, we have to do with the complete human being, with his physical
body, etheric body, astral body, Ego, — etheric body, astral body,
ego, — astral body, ego, and with the ego itself.
SATURN |
SUN |
MOON |
EARTH |
Physical Body |
Etheric Body |
Astral Body |
|
Etheric Body |
Astral Body |
|
|
Astral Body |
|
|
|
Ego |
Ego |
Ego |
Ego |
All that is above the dividing
line is really the hidden part of human nature. If we wish to study
the laws underlying the foundation of the physical body we must look
to super-sensible laws determining man's destiny. If we look
towards that which rules in the astral body and finds its embodiment
in the physical body, we have something that is not so spiritual, so
super-sensible, but something that melts from the sense-perceptible
into the super-sensible. For the part that falls away from the human
embryo becomes so to say more and more atomistic. The nearer the
human being approaches birth the more it dissolves materially and
becomes increasingly spiritual. For that which is attached to the
human being as astral body and etheric body has originated through
the spiritualising of those parts of the embryonic sheaths which fall
away.
The question could now arise:
how does it stand with regard to the Sun part? Can we find the Sun
portion somewhere in the world? This too withdraws from sense
perception. Whereas what we call karma, personal destiny, or, one
might say, the Saturn part of man, lies in lofty spiritual regions,
we have seen that we need not ascend so high in the case of the Moon
part, for we found it still ensheathed in the sensible. Nor in the
case of the Sun part need we ascend so high as for the Saturn part.
One can still apprehend it but it is not easily recognised.
I
should like to give you an example of something where you can still
recognise the Sun-part that is active, although attention can only be
directed to it in a veiled way. Those of you who have acquainted
yourselves with the new edition of my book,
Riddles of Philosophy in Outline
will have found that four periods in the development
of Philosophy are distinguished. I have called the first period “The
World-conceptions of the Greek Thinkers”. This lasted from 800
B.C. — in round numbers — or 600 B.C. to the birth of
Christ, i.e. into the age of the origin of Christianity. A second
period lasted from the rise of Christianity to about 800 – 900 A.D. up
to the time of John Scotus Erigena. Then came a third period which I
have called “the World-conception of the Middle Ages”,
and which lasted from 800, 900 A.D. to 1600 A.D. And then there is
the forth period up to our own time; we are just in this period.
Eight-hundred year periods have been assigned to the history of
philosophy, presented in such a way as was possible in a book meant
for a public still quite unacquainted with Spiritual Science.
The
intention was to give everything that could stimulate the mind and
let the spiritual structure of these periods work upon one.
The characteristic of the first period consists in the fact that a
transition is found from a very remarkable ancient thinking to what
one can call the life of thought in ancient Greece. Our age has not
made much progress in the understanding of such differences, the
difference, for instance, between the thought life of our own time
and that of ancient Greece. Our clumsy thinking believes that thought
lived in an ancient Greek head just as it lives today in the head of
modern man. Thought lived in Socrates, Plato, even in Aristotle quite
differently from how it lives in present-day mankind; this present
thought-life first awoke in the 7th, 6th century B.C. Before that
there was no actual life of thought. As my book sets out, one can
speak of a beginning, of a birth of thought-life in this age of
ancient Greece.
People have conceived that most
curious ideas about the great philosophical figures of Thales,
Anaxagoras, Anaximenes, etc. It has been pointed out, for instance,
that Thales believed that the world originated out of water,
Anaxagoras out of air, Heraclitus from fire. I have shown how these
ancient philosophers formed their philosophies from the human
temperament. They were not based on speculation, but Thales
established water as the original ground of things because he was of
a watery temperament; Heraclitus founded the fire-philosophy because
he was of a fiery temperament and so on. You find that shown in
detail in my book.
Then
comes the actual thought-life. And in the epoch described here the
thought-life is still essentially different from that of modern
times. The Greek thinker does not draw up thoughts from the depths of
his soul, but thought is revealed to him just as external sound or
colour is revealed to modern man. The Greek perceives the thought; he
perceives it from outside and when we speak of Greek philosophy we
must not speak of such a mode of thinking as is normal today, but of
thought-perception. Thus in the first period we are concerned with
thought-perception. Plato and Aristotle did not think in the
way the modern philosopher thinks, they thought as today we see,
perceive. They looked out into the world, as it were, and perceived
the thoughts which they expound to us in their philosophies just as
much as one perceives a symphony. They are thought-perceivers. The
world reveals to them a thought-work; that is the essential character
of the Greek thinker. And this perception of the thought-work of the
world was brought to the highest pitch of perfection by the Greek
thinker.
If the philosophers of today
believe that they understand what Plato and Aristotle perceived as a
universal symphony of thoughts, that is only due to a childish stage
of the modern philosopher. The modern philosophers have a long way to
go before they can fully grasp what Aristotle represents as
Entelechy, what he gives as the members of the human soul nature —
Aesthetikon, Orektikon, Kinetikon etc. The inner activity of
thinking, where one draws the thoughts out of oneself, where one must
make subjective efforts in order to think, did not as yet exist in
Greece. It is completely foolish to believe that Plato thought he
perceived thoughts. To believe that Aristotle already thought in the
modern sense, is nonsense ... he perceived thoughts.
Modern man can hardly imagine
what that is, for he makes no concepts of actual evolution. He gets
slight goose-flesh if one tells him that Plato and Aristotle did not
think at all in the modern sense, and yet it is a fact. In order that
thinking in the modern sense might take root in the modern human
soul, an impulse had to come that seized its inmost part, an impulse
that has nothing to do with the thought-symphony in the surrounding
world but which grips man's inmost being. This impulse came
from Christ and hence this period of philosophy lasts up to the time
of Christ.
In the second period we are
concerned with a thinking that is still not man's own
individual thought, but is stimulated by the impulse coming from the
external world. If you go through all the systems of thought of the
philosophers of the second period up to the time of Scotus Erigena
you will find everywhere how the Christ-Impulse rules in them. It is
what has flowed out of Christ himself, one might say, that gives man
the first stimulus to create thoughts from within outwards. This gave
the stamp, the physiognomy of the patristic philosophy of the Church
Fathers, the philosophy of Augustine and others up to Scotus Erigena.
We can therefore say that we no longer have thought-perception, but
thought-inspiration stimulated by the spirit.
It
was different again in the third period when the inner impulse
proceeding from Christianity began to be seized by men themselves. In
this third period man begins to be conscious that it is he who
thinks. Plato and Aristotle did not think, but they could as little
doubt that thought has a fully objective validity as a man seeing
green on a tree can doubt that it has a fully objective validity.
In
the second period it was the intense belief in the Christ Impulse
that gave certainty to the awakening thought. But then began the
period when the human soul began to say: “Yes, it is actually
you yourself who thinks, the thoughts rise up out of you.”
The Christ-Impulse gradually faded and man became aware that the
thoughts arose out of himself. It began to occur to him that perhaps
he framed thoughts that had nothing at all to do with what is
outside. Was it possible that the objective external world had
nothing to do with his thoughts?
Think of the great difference
between this and the thoughts of Plato and Aristotle: Plato and
Aristotle perceived thoughts and therefore they could not doubt that
the thoughts were outside. Now, in the third period men became aware:
‘One creates thoughts oneself ... well, then, what have
thoughts to do with objective existence outside?’ And so the
need arose to give certainty to thinking, — to prove thinking as was
said. Only in this period could it occur to Anselm of Canterbury, for
instance, to create validity for the idea of God; — for one did not
see thoughts as perception. In the former Greek thinking that would
have been a complete nonsense, because at that time thoughts were
perceived. How can one doubt that God exists when thoughts of the
Godhead are as clearly to be seen outside as the greenness of the
tree? Doubt first began in the third period when men became aware
that they themselves produced the thoughts. The need arose to
establish the connection of that which one thinks with that which is
outside. In essentials this is the epoch of scholasticism — the
becoming aware of the subjectivity of thinking.
When
you consider the whole thought-structure of Thomas Aquinas it stands
entirely under the aegis of this epoch. The consciousness is present
throughout; concepts are created within, concepts are linked
together in the same way as the laws of subjectivity. Thus a support
must be found for the idea that what is created inwardly also exists
outside. There is still at first an appeal to traditional dogmatism,
but there is no longer the same attachment to the Christ-Impulse as
in the second period of philosophical development.
Then
comes the fourth evolutionary period; the independent rule of thought
from the external thought-perception, the independent creation of
thought from within: free creation of thought, that free creation
that comes to light so magnificently in the thought-structures of
Giordano Bruno, Spinoza, Decartes, and their successors, Leibniz etc.
If we follow up these edifices of thought we observe that they are
produced entirely out of the inner being. And everywhere we find that
these thinkers had an intense desire to prove that what they created
in themselves had also real validity externally. Spinoza creates a
wonderful ideal-edifice. But the question arises: Now is that all
merely created within, in the human spirit, or has it a significance
in the world outside? Giordano Bruno, and Leibniz create the monad
which is supposed to be a reality. How does something thought out by
man as monad exist at the same time as a reality in the outer world?
All the questions which have arisen since the 16th, 17th century are
concerned with the endeavour to bring free thought-creation into
harmony with external world existence. Man feels isolated, abandoned
by the world in his free thought creation. We are still standing in
the midst of this.
But now what is this whole
diagram?
Saturn
|
Sun
|
Moon
|
Earth
|
Physical body
|
Etheric body
|
Astral body
|
Ego
|
Etheric body
|
Astral body
|
Ego
|
|
Astral body
|
Ego
|
|
|
Ego
|
|
|
|
|
I
|
800/600 ... Birth of Christ
|
II
|
Birth of Christ ... 800 (900)
|
III
|
800 (900) ... 1600
|
IV
|
1600 ...
|
|
Sun Laws
|
|
|
Etheric body
|
|
|
Sentient body
|
I
|
Thought Perception
|
Sentient soul
|
II
|
Thought inspired from the spirit
|
Intellectual or Mind soul
|
III
|
Awareness of the subjectivity
of thought
|
Consciousness soul
|
IV
|
Free creation of thought
|
If
we go back to the perception of thoughts which prevailed in the time
of the old Greek philosophers then we must say: Philosophic thought
in ancient Greece — in spite of the fact that it was the age of
the intellectual or mind-soul in ancient Greece — was still a
perceptive thinking, was still deeply influenced by the sentient
soul, in fact by the sentient, the astral, body. It still clung to
the external. The thinking of Thales, of the first philosopher was
still influenced by the etheric body. They created their Water —
Air — Fire — Philosophies out of their temperament, and
the temperament lives in the etheric body. One can therefore say that
the philosophy of the sentient body goes into the philosophy of the
etheric body. Then we come into the Christian period. The Christ-
Impulse penetrates into the sentient soul. Philosophy is experienced
inwardly but in connection with what one can feel and believe; the
influences of the sentient soul are present. In the third period,
that of scholasticism, the intellectual or mind-soul is the essential
element of philosophical development. Now the development of
philosophy follows a different course from that of human evolution in
general. And for the first time since the 16th century we
now have philosophy coinciding with the general evolution of mankind,
for we have the free thoughts ruling in the consciousness soul.
—Consciousness soul! The magnificent example of how free
thought prevails from the abstraction of existence up to the highest
spirituality, how a thought-organism, leaving aside the world
entirely, rules purely in itself, that is the philosophy of Hegel —
the thought that lives solely in the consciousness.
If
you follow this scheme it is actually the part that I could not show
in my book for the public, though it lies in it. And if you read the
descriptions given of the separate epochs you will, if you are proper
Anthroposophists, very clearly connect them with what I have written
here (see diagram). There is thus a development corresponding to that
of man himself: from the etheric body to the sentient body, to the
sentient soul, to the intellectual soul, to the consciousness soul.
We follow a path like the path of man's evolution, but
differently regulated. It is not the path of human evolution, it is
different. Beings are evolving and they make use of human
forces in the sentient soul, in the intellectual soul etc. Through
man and his works pass other beings with other laws than those of
human development.
You see — these are
activities of the Sun-laws!
Here we need not ascend to such
super-sensible regions as when we investigate human destiny. It is in
the philosophical development of mankind that we have an example of
what remains from the Sun-laws.
We
had yesterday to write here Angeloi as corresponding to the etheric
body (see diagram) [].
|
Saturn |
Sun |
Moon |
Earth |
Manifestation Outwards |
(Saturn) |
Physical body |
Etheric body |
Astral body |
1) Ego |
Jupiter Existence |
(Sun) |
Etheric body |
Astral body |
2) Ego |
Angeloi (Jupiter) |
Venus Existence |
(Moon) |
Astral body |
3) Ego |
Angeloi (Jupiter) |
Archangel (Venus) |
Vulcan Existence |
(Earth) |
4) Ego |
Angeloi Thinking (Jupiter) |
Archangel Feeling (Venus) |
Archai Willing (Vulcan) |
|
Manifestation Inwardly |
(Jupiter) |
(Venus) |
(Vulcan) |
|
|
Such
Angeloi evolve. And while men believe that they themselves
philosophise, Sun-laws work in them — inasmuch as men bear
within them what the Sun-evolution laid down in their physical and
etheric bodies. And the laws of the Sun-existence, working from epoch
to epoch, cause philosophy to become precisely what it is. Because
they are Sun-laws, the Christ, the Being of the Sun, could also enter
them during the second period. Preparation is made in the first
period and then the Christ, the Sun-Being, becomes active in the
second period.
You see how everything is linked
together. But inasmuch as the Christ, the Sun-Being, enters in, he
comes into connection with an evolution which is not the human
evolution, not man's earthly evolution, but actually
Sun-evolution within Earth existence.
Sun-evolution
within Earth existence! Just think what we have actually reached in
these reflections. We are considering the course of philosophical
development, philosophical thought since the time of ancient Greece,
and when we consider how this has evolved from philosopher to
philosopher we say to ourselves: there are active within not earthly
laws, but Sun laws! The laws which at that time held sway between the
Spirits of Wisdom and the Archangels come to light again on earth in
the philosophical search for wisdom. Read in the book
Occult Science
how the Spirits of Wisdom enter during the Sun-evolution.
Now during earthly evolution they enter again not into what is new
but into what has remained from the Sun-evolution. And man develops
his philosophy not knowing that in this development the Spirits of
Wisdom are pulsing through his soul. The Old Sun existence lives in
the evolution of philosophy; it really and truly lives within
something that has stayed behind, something that is connected with
the Old Sun-evolution.
Human beings, passing from
generation to generation, evolve as external personalities in earthly
evolution. But an evolution of philosophy goes through it from Thales
up to our present time; the Sun-evolution lies within it. This gives
opportunity for beings who have stayed behind to make use of the
forces of philosophical evolution in order to carry on their ancient
Sun existence; beings who remained behind during
the Sun-evolution, who neglected at that time to go through the
development that one can pass through in one's etheric body,
sentient body, and sentient soul — in cooperation with Spirits
of Wisdom and Archangeloi. These Spirits that missed their evolution
during the Sun time can use man's philosophical evolution in
order to be parasites within human evolution. They are Ahrimanic
spirits!
Ahrimanic spirits yield to the
enticement of creeping parasitically into what men strive for in
philosophy and so of furthering their own existence. Men can thus
evolve philosophically but at the same time they are exposed to
Ahrimanic, Mephistophelean spirits.
You know that Ahriman and
Lucifer are harmful spirits as long as one is not aware of them, as
long as they work in secret. As long as they do not emerge and let
men face them eye to eye spiritually Ahriman and Lucifer are harmful
in one or another way. Let us suppose that a philosopher appears who
develops thought of such a nature that one can grasp it in merely
earth existence. He develops thoughts that can live through the
instrument of earthly reasoning. That is Hegelian thought! It is pure
thought, but only such as can be grasped with the instrument of the
physical body and this as we know ends at death.
Hegel has achieved thought that
is the deepest which can be thought in earthly life — but which
must lose its configuration with death. Hegel's tragedy lies in
the fact that he did not realise he grasped the spirit in logic, in
nature, in soul-life, but only the spirit that exists in the form of
thought and does not accompany us when we go through death. To have
put this clearly before his mind he would have had to say: If I could
believe that what goes through thought, that is to say what I think
about abstract being by means of logic, thoughts of nature, thoughts
of the soul and up to philosophy — if I could believe that this
leads me behind the scenes of existence than I should be deceived by
Mephistopheles!
This
was realised by another: Goethe realised it and represented it in his
Faust as the conflict of the thinker with Mephistopheles, with
Ahriman. And in this fourth period of the evolution of philosophy we
see how Ahriman presses into the Sun-evolution and how one has to
face him consciously, really recognising and comprehending his
nature.
Hence today we are also standing
at a turning point of the philosophical thought of the outer world.
In order to avoid falling prey to the allurements of Ahriman and
becoming mephistophelean wisdom, philosophy must get behind this
wisdom, must understand what it is, must flow into the stream of
Spiritual Science.
Read
the two chapters preceding the last one in the second volume of my
Riddles of Philosophy.
You will see that I tried to present
the world concepts prevailing in the world, the philosophical
concepts of the world, in order then in a concluding chapter to add
A brief view of an Anthroposophy. There you will see how philosophy
today in the free emancipated life of thought represents something
which, to be sure, rises into the consciousness soul, but how this
life, through the consciousness soul, must lay hold of what
comes from Spirit itself, philosophically at first, otherwise
philosophy must fall into decadence and die.
Thus you see at least one
example of the working of the Sun-evolution in human earthly life. I
said that one could encounter these sun-laws if one studied the
course of philosophical evolution, though one does not always
recognise that it is sun-law which is active in it. This must be
recognised by Spiritual Science. Just reflect that in reality a Being
is evolving which little by little acquires the same members as man
himself.
If
one were to go still farther back into ancient times one would find
that not alone the etheric, but the physical body too gave rise to
the forming of world concepts. It is difficult to give clear
characteristics of the age that goes back beyond the 12th – 14th
centuries B.C.; it lies before Homer, before historical times. But
then something was evolving which is not man as man lives upon the
earth.
Something lives in history which
passes through the etheric body, the sentient body etc., a real,
actual Being. I said in my book that in the Grecian era thought was
born. But in modern times it comes to actual self-consciousness in
the consciousness soul: thought is an independent active Being. This
could not of course be said in an exoteric book intended for the
public. The anthroposophist will find it however if he reads the book
and notes what was the prevailing trend of its presentation. It is
not brought into it, but results of itself out of the very subject
matter.
You
see from this that very many impulses of transformation as regards
the spiritual life are coming forward in our time. For here we see
something evolving that is like a human being except that it has a
longer duration of life than an individual man. The individual man
lives on the physical plane: for seven years he develops the physical
body, for seven years the etheric body, for seven years the sentient
body etc. The Being which evolves as philosophy (we call it by the
abstract name ‘philosophy’) lives for 700 years in the
etheric body, 700 – 800 years in the sentient body (the time is only
approximate), 700 – 800 years in the sentient soul, 700 – 800
years in the intellectual or mind-soul and again 700 – 800 years in
the consciousness soul. A Being evolves upwards of whom we can say: if we
look at the very first beginnings of Grecian philosophy this Being
has then just reached the stage of development which corresponds in
mankind to puberty; as Being it is like man when he has reached the
14th – 16th year. Then it lives upwards to the
time when a human being experiences the events between the 14th
and 21st year; that is the age of Greek philosophy, Greek
thought. Then comes the next 7 years, what man experiences from the
age of 21 to 28; the Christ Impulse enters the development of
philosophy. Then comes the period from Scotus Erigena up to the new
age. This Being develops in the following 700 – 800 years what man
develops between the ages of 28 and 35 years. And now we are living
in the development of what man experiences in his consciousness soul:
we are experiencing the consciousness soul of philosophy, of
philosophical thought.
Philosophy has actually come to
the forties, only it is a Being that has much longer duration of
life. One year in a man's life corresponds to a hundred years
in the life of the Being of philosophy. So we see a Being passing
through history for whom a century is a year; evolving in accordance
with Sun-laws though one is not aware of it.
And then only there lies further
back another Being still more super-sensible than the Being that
evolves as humanity except that a year is as long as a century. This
Being that stands behind evolves in such a way that its external
expression is our personal destiny, how we bear this through still
longer periods, from incarnation to incarnation. Here stand the
Spirits regulating our outer destiny and their life is of still
longer duration than the life of those for whom we must say that a
century corresponds to a year.
So
you see, it is as if we look there into differing ranges of Beings,
and how, if we wished, we might even write the biography of a Being
who stands spiritually as much higher than man as a 100 years is
longer than a year.
An
attempt has been made to write the biography of a such a Being as had
its puberty at the time of Thales and Anaxagoras, and has now reached
the stage of its self-consciousness and since the 16th
century has entered, so to say, into its ‘forties’. The
biography of this Being has furnished a ‘History of
Philosophy’ [].
From this you see, however, how
Spiritual Science gives vitality to what is otherwise abstract, and
really animates it. What dry wood for instance, is the usual
‘History of Philosophy’! And what it can become when one knows
that it is the biography of a Being which is interwoven in our
existence, but evolves by Sun-laws instead of Earth-laws!
It
was my wish to add these thoughts to what we have been considering
lately about the life-forces which arise in us when we look at
Spiritual Science not as a theory but seek it in the guidance to
living. And it is just through Spiritual Science that we find
the living. What is so unalive, so dry, and withered as the history
of philosophy comes to meet us out of the mist as though we looked up
to it as a Goddess who descends from divine cloud-heights, whom we
see young in ancient times, whom we see grow even if with the
slowness where a century corresponds to a year of human life. Yet all
this becomes living — the sun rises for us like the Sun within
Earth existence itself. For just as the sun rises on the physical
plane, so do we see the ancient Sun still radiate into the earthly
world in a Being that has a longer lifetime than man. As we follow
man's development on the physical plane from birth to death so
we follow the development of philosophy by seeing a Being within it.
When in this way we look at what Anthroposophy can be to us we reach
the point of seeing in it not only a guide to knowledge but a guide
to living Beings who surround us even though we are unaware of them.
Yes,
my dear friends, something of this was only felt by Christian
Morgenstern. And by feeling this, feeling it in the deepest part of
his soul, our friend Christian Morgenstern could put into writing a
beautiful sentiment, a true anthroposophical sentiment which shows
how a soul can express itself which in its inmost being knows itself
to be one with our Anthroposophy — not merely as with something
giving us various facts of knowledge — but as something that
gives us life. In the wonderful poem Lucifer by Christian
Morgenstern we have a wonderful example of this. The feeling of this
poem lives entirely in the inspiration of which ones feels a breath
when, as we have tried to show today, one finds the transition from
the presentation of the idea in Anthroposophy to the grasping of
living beings.
LUCIFER
“I'll keep my light from light of your excluded,
I want you not, your light shall be precluded,
Until my light's my own and separated.
So do I bring the Evil to expression
As Spirit of negation, self-possession,
Yet is new world by ranks of mine created.
By off'ing to un-erring Beings resistance,
A race of err-ant gods has found existence
Who act on their — and not your — discretion.
Who have not walked in Truth from the beginning
Who only reach the Truth through suffering, sinning,
Who only read the truth through sin's transgression.”
LUZIFER
“Ich will mein Licht vor eurem Licht verschliessen,
ich will euch nicht, ihr sollt mich nicht geniessen,
bevor ich nicht ein Eigenlicht geworden.
So bring ich wohl das Bose zur Erscheinung
Als Geist der Sonderheit und der Verneinung,
Doch neue Welt erschafft mein Geisterorden.
Aus Widerspruch zum unbeirrten Wesen,
Aus Irr-tum soll ein Gotterstamm genesen,
Der sich aus sich — und nicht aus euch — entscheidet
Der nicht vom Anbeginn in Warheit wandelt,
Der sich die Wahrheit leidend erst erhandelt,
Der sich dies Wahrheit handelnd erst erleidet.”
Christian Morgenstern
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If
the feeling in this poem leads you to reflect how alive something can
becomes that is understood theoretically in Anthroposophy, so that,
as it were, one can grasp the Beings who approach us out of the dark
abyss of existence, if you take this poem, stimulated by feelings I
wished to arouse through today's lecture, then you will see
that this figure of Lucifer is really perceived, fashioned in a
wonderful way. It is a model example of how what is brought to us by
Anthroposophy can become alive and grip our whole soul.
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