Goethe's Secret Revelation — Exoteric
Berlin, 22nd October, 1908
If
you pursue the history of spiritual development not only
according to the traditions and according to the normally usual
documents, but if you go a little deeper, while you get
involved in something that could seem symptomatic maybe at
first only for the human development that, however, intensely
points to the internal and true developmental forces. Then you
find an unforgettable scene in the newer spiritual history
significant repeatedly, a scene that took place in the nineties
of the eighteenth century in Jena.
In
those days, a talk was given in the society of naturalists in
Jena by a botanist, called Bartsch, who stood absolutely at the
summit of his discipline at that time. Two men, a younger one
and an around ten years older one, listened to this talk, and
it happened that they went out from the talk at the same time
and got into conversation with each other. Besides, the younger
man said to the older one: if I open myself to such a talk, it
appears, nevertheless, over and over again how the scientific
approach picks the things to pieces, putting them side by side,
and regards the uniform spiritual tie so little which lives in
all various details. —
It
went, so to speak, against the younger man's grain that there
the plants were put side by side, without any tip that anything
higher must exist that connects the various plants. The older
man replied that an approach of nature might be found which
does not go about its work in such a way and which, although it
is a knowledge, a consideration, must lead to the knowledge
that aims very well at the uniform, at that which is separated
in the external considerations for the different senses.
— The man took a pencil and a piece of paper from his
pocket and drew a strange thing straight away. It was a thing
that looked similar to a plant, but none of the living plants,
which one can see or perceive with the external physical
senses. It was no individual plant and he said about it that it
lives, indeed, in no single plant, but that it is the
archetypal plant in all plants and constitutes the connecting
tie.
The
younger man had a look at this and said, what you draw there,
however, is no experience, this is no observation, and this is
an idea. He had the opinion that only the human mind could
develop such ideas, and that such an idea had no significance
for the life outdoors in the so-called objective nature. The
older man could not understand this objection at all and he
answered: if this is an idea, I see my ideas with eyes. He
thought that in the exact same sense, as the single plant is
visible to the external sense of the eye, his archetypal plant
is an experience, although it cannot be seen by the external
senses, it is an objective experience existing in the external
world, just that which lives in all single plants. — You
know that the younger one of both men was Schiller, the older
one Goethe.
This conversation is a symptomatic, important manifestation of
the newer spiritual science. What spoke, actually, in Goethe's
answer in those days? In Goethe spoke the consciousness that
one grasps not only something externally true, something
externally objective with each idea that the external sense
perception, the limited intellect gives. The human being rather
sets higher spiritual forces in motion that do not turn to
single sensory observations and he also gets something true,
something real as one gets something true, something real with
the external sense perception.
One
may say that Schiller could not yet see at that moment what was
behind it and believed that that was subjective which Goethe
had drawn for him. However, he delivered the most beautiful
document how to ascend to that summit Goethe had shown. From
that time, we see Schiller understanding the Goethean ideas
more and more. A psychological document first-rate is a letter
of Schiller, who says there, “I have watched the course
of your spirit long-since, although from considerable distance,
and I have observed the way that you have predetermined for
yourself with always renewed admiration. You search the
necessary of nature, but you search it in the hardest way,
which any weaker strength will probably avoid. You take
together the whole nature to get light about the single
phenomenon; you look for the reason of the individual in the
allness of her appearance. From the simple organisation you
ascend, gradually, to more developed ones to build, finally,
the most developed one, the human being, genetically from the
materials of the whole building of nature. Because you recreate
him from nature as it were, you try to penetrate into his
concealed technology. A great and really heroic idea which
shows well enough how much your mind holds together the rich
entirety of its ideas in a beautiful unity!”
Thus, we are allowed to consider as a document of the
objectivity of Goethe's world of ideas what in Goethe's
consciousness led to such answer and what Schiller confirmed
later with this letter.
It
is very strange: a psychologist who lived during the twenties
of the nineteenth century and is forgotten today, Heinroth
(Johann Christian August H., 1773–1843, German physician,
psychiatrist), spoke a very significant word about Goethe in his
Textbook of Anthropology
(1822) which is, actually,
a textbook of psychology. He used the word “concrete
thinking” for Goethe's whole point of view, and he
explained this term, saying: Goethe's thinking is a quite
peculiar thinking which does not really separate from the
objective of the objects which lives quietly in the objects in
which it rises up to the ideas.
If
anybody can look deeper into Goethe's whole spiritual
organisation as we will do it today and the day after tomorrow,
he sees that Goethe keeps in this thinking with the facts in a
certain way without sticking to the surface of the things and
in the sensory experience and that he finds the spiritual, the
world of ideas. We see that Goethe's thinking has become so
significant just in this kind for a big part of our modern
human development. We are allowed to say that it is something
extremely peculiar with this effect of the Goethean spirit on
the most different human beings, on the most different views,
even on the different following epochs.
If
we consider what it concerns here, we see how peculiarly
Goethe's mind worked actually. If we face, for example, three
philosophers of the German spiritual life who are very
different according to their attitudes: Fichte, Hegel,
Schopenhauer, and then something quite peculiar arises about
the world-historical effect of the Goethean attitude from their
mutual relation and their relation to Goethe.
Fichte turns out to be a thinker floating in abstract heights,
in particular when he had finished his
Foundations of Entire Science of Knowledge
in Jena in 1794. It is difficult to
rise to the understanding of Fichte's characteristic; it is
difficult to penetrate him, although anybody who penetrates him
would have to say to himself that he took immense fruits for
his spiritual discipline from him. Nevertheless, it is not
everybody's thing to walk up to such spheres of the purest
concept. He, who walked in such abstracts heights, in
particular in that time, sent his
Science of Knowledge
to Goethe with the following important words: “I regard
you, and I have always regarded you as the representative of
the purest spirituality of feeling on the present level of
humaneness. Philosophy turns to you rightly. Your feeling is
the touchstone of it.”
If
we look now at another philosopher, at Schopenhauer, we see
first how Schopenhauer stood to Fichte. They were hostile
brothers; at least Schopenhauer was a rather hostile brother to
Fichte. Schopenhauer does not tire to speak about Fichte almost
with invectives. He is to him a windbag who has reflected and
written in empty concepts. Over and over again he comes back to
stress the insubstantiality, the insignificance and unreality
of Fichte's philosophy. It is true, there can be no bigger
contrasts than Schopenhauer and Fichte. Schopenhauer really
apprenticed to Goethe. For a while, he experimented together
with Goethe to realise the physical basic concepts, and
something that you read in Schopenhauer's first work and in his
main work arose from the impression that Goethe made on him.
However, who knows Schopenhauer also knows how devotedly he
spoke of Goethe. Schopenhauer and Fichte, two big contrasts,
unite in Goethe and he appears like the unifying force of
both.
Now
we take, finally, Hegel and Schopenhauer. It is hard to
understand Hegel, too. He who tries to get a factual world of
concepts in a comprising, organic system demands that the human
being rises to a level where he grasps the concept as a fact
where he becomes able to experience it. Schopenhauer also finds
something worthless in this conceptual technique; everything is
a play of abstract words.
If
we want to visualise again the relation of Hegel to Goethe, we
need only to call one thing and we see how Hegel relates to
Goethe. Hegel writes in a nice letter, Goethe looks for the
actual, spiritual phenomena that are behind the sensuous ones
which Goethe calls the archetypal phenomena as he calls the
archetypal plant the archetypal phenomenon of the plant world.
— While Hegel speaks as a philosopher from the height of
the mental world and shows us what we can think and understand,
he works the way up to the other side where he gets into
contact with the concepts taken from the spirit. Thus, Goethe's
archetypal phenomenon unites with that which the pure, thinking
philosophy grasps from above. We see a harmony here between
Hegel and Goethe like between Goethe and Schopenhauer. In
Goethe, they meet. If we go up from these older times to our
times, what do we find there?
At
that time in which Goethe himself lived, the scientific
research had, so to speak, another physiognomy. Even more than
it was the case at Goethe's times, one considers as the only
right method of the strict science that research which rests on
the external sensory observation, and one relies on that which
the intellect, limiting itself to observation, can obtain from
those results. However, Haeckel wants also to stand on firm
ground of the Goethean worldview, as he stresses in every book
again. Thus, we see a more materialistically coloured worldview
placing value on following Goethe. However, you can also find
writings, even today, for which the spirit is absolute reality
in the most eminent sense of the word, and with them, you can
note the citation of Goethe. Spiritualistic and materialistic
researchers can oppose each other inimically, both believe,
however, to be able to look up at Goethe in the same way. Thus,
he also offers something that bridges contrasts. These facts
witness the strength of the Goethean worldview, the strength
that works on the others so that they find something own in
Goethe although they do not understand each other. Maybe some
of you know how antithetic Virchow (Rudolf V., 1821–1902,
German pathologist, biologist) and Haeckel (Ernst H.,
1834–1919, German biologist, philosopher) were. However,
Virchow who complies in so few matters with Haeckel followed
Goethe in an important lecture about Goethe. We have in Goethe
a force that is able to harmonise the contrasts, the struggle
of the worldviews and shows that it is not with the worldviews
in such a way as the representatives of science assert so
tenaciously.
Just if one considers the relation of these significant persons
to Goethe, one realises that knowledge is something like
paintings of the same mountain painted by painters from
different points of view. Of course, the pictures which you get
there must be very different and, nevertheless, it was the same
mountain which they painted. You can get a comprising idea of
the mountain only if you compare the different pictures with
each other and join them to a whole. If you position yourselves
to knowledge in such a way, you see that Goethe chooses no
single point of view, but climbs up the mountain and shows that
you can take the point of view at the summit and can find a
comprising panorama where all views show their deeper
compatibility.
However, this makes Goethe such an eminently modern spirit. If
we receive the feeling — responding wholeheartedly to
Goethe — that he appears to us as a modern spirit, then
it is already justified to consider our talks and
considerations about spiritual science as a kind of instruction
to go deeper into his nature. He is a stimulating spirit in so
many relations. Why should he not be a stimulating spirit of
that spiritual current that has the tolerant penetration in the
different points of view as one of its highest aims and that
has the principle not to stop at a once fixed point of view? In
order to find truth, to rise higher and higher one has to apply
the methods of developing inner organs of perception.
We
still want to consider to what extent Goethe addresses the
deepest feelings of the modern human being in a narrow field.
As an example, a feeling is chosen which many of you know, a
feeling that one could characterise with the words that there
are in our time persons who strive to abandon some old
traditions and to create feelings, thoughts and ideas which
lead into the immediate present. You will see immediately what
I mean if I remind you of a picture, which many people
appreciated in our time. One may adhere to the picture
howsoever, but it is an expression of the modern time. I mean
the picture Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest (by the
painter Fritz von Uhde, 1848–1911). The picture lives not only
with that who created it, but also in those who want to enjoy
it; the longing lives in them to see the figure of Jesus in the
immediate present as He positions Himself at the table. One
could say that the picture has not only value for this time,
but for all times, that it has an everlasting, imperishable
existence, and that any time has the right to put this figure
in its own epoch. Only with these few words, the feeling that
many have at the sight of this picture may be suggested.
Now
could believe that Goethe belongs in this respect still to the
old people. One deduces that from his preference of the old art
which wanted to stick to the old, good, artistic traditions,
from his preference of the Greeks. One could believe that he
would maybe have no deeper understanding for a feeling as it is
characterised in the picture Come, Lord Jesus, be our
guest.
To
do a look at Goethe's soul once, we want to follow a book,
Bossi's book Del Cenacolo di Leonardo da Vinci (On
Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, 1810, Giuseppe B.,
1777–1815, Italian painter and writer on art). Goethe wrote a
review of this book. You can read important words in it. This
picture is located in the refectory of the cloister Maria delle
Grazie in Milan and makes the impression — in spite of
the lately carried out restoration — as if it goes to
rack and ruin. Goethe tells about the picture how he himself
faced it once at a time when it was still preserved in a
certain freshness. He describes the impression that he got from
this picture in his youth, “Opposite the entrance on the
narrow side was the dining table of the prior, at both sides
were the tables of the monks, all were a step raised from the
ground. If one turned round, one saw the fourth table painted
on the wall above the not too high doors. At the table, Christ
and his disciples were sitting, just as if they belonged to the
community.” He was called by the Dominicans in their
sense, in their position with the feeling: “Come, Lord
Jesus, be our guest.” The whole unites, Goethe says, to a
uniform picture. In addition, in order to give no rise to
doubts about what he meant, actually, he said, “A
significant sight must have been at mealtime when the tables of
the prior and Christ, as two counter-images, looked at each
other and the monks found themselves enclosed in between at
their tables. That is why the wisdom of the painter had to take
the available tables of the monks as a model. The tablecloth
with its squeezed folds, patterned stripes, and untied corners
was also taken from the washing chamber of the cloister, bowls,
plates, mugs and other devices are imitated to those, which the
monks themselves used. Here could be no talk of approaching an
uncertain, outdated costume. It would have been extremely
clumsy to let the holy community stretch out on cushions at
this place. No, it should be approximated to the present;
Christ should take his supper with the Dominicans in
Milan.”
Now
we ask, did Goethe just have this understanding that one must
call a modern understanding? He had it in that comprising way
which can be again an argument how universal his strength is,
compared with the sometimes one-sided forces that exclude and
combat each other. Thus, we have to project our thoughts in
Goethe's soul and then we understand why Goethe is so close to
us and why we are allowed to look up at him if it concerns the
preliminary orientation about deeper spiritual issues. This was
Goethe's deep consciousness that it is possible for the human
being to wake spiritual organs in himself to ascend to higher
views and to gain thereby something that does not live only in
the mind of the human being, but that is deeper at the same
time.
If
I had the possibility to go into Goethe's scientific studies as
you find them discussed in detail in my book
Goethe's World View
(GA 6), we could show how this Goethean method
works. However, today we want to approach Goethe from another
direction. Goethe expressed various things that can point us to
the deep basis of his worldview. We have to speak about that in
two talks of this winter cycle on his Faust. He said
about it once to Eckermann (Johann Peter E., 1792–1854, author,
Conversations with Goethe)
that he formed it so that the
reader if he wants to keep only to external instructions
already has something in the coloured pictures; however, that
he can find also the secrets behind the words, which are in it.
Goethe points there in the second part to the fact that one has
to differentiate what is external and what is internal, the
being, that which he has hidden. In old way one calls the
outside the exoteric, the inside the esoteric.
We
want to approach Goethe now considering the work in which he
expressed his whole methodical thinking and willing, in an
exterior, exoteric way today, and then in an internal, esoteric
way the day after tomorrow. It is a relatively unknown little
work to which one must keep if one wants to figure out Goethe's
deepest secrets of knowledge — one is allowed to call it
that way. It is the little work at the end of the
Conversations of German Emigrants
with the heading:
Fairy Tale
(1795). Somebody who strives to penetrate
Goethe's worldview deeper has the feeling from the start that
Goethe wants to say more with it than the pictures present at
first. This
Fairy Tale of the Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily
presents riddle by riddle to the meditative contemplator.
Allow me now to explain the principal features of this fairy
tale at first, because it is not possible to speak about it
without imagining those features that are of importance if we
want to have a deeper look at Goethe's worldview. It is
necessary that we dedicate ourselves some time to the contents
of this little work; but in return, we understand ourselves so
much the better. It has happened to me repeatedly if I held a
talk on this fairy tale that one said to me: “I do not
know that in Goethe's works is a fairy tale.” Therefore,
I repeat: it is included in every issue of Goethe's works and
concludes the Conversations of German Emigrants.
Now
to the pictures! A ferryman lives by a river. Some strange
figures come to this ferryman: will-o'-the-wisps. They want to
be ferried over by him in a small boat to the other riverbank.
The ferryman agrees and ferries them over. Besides, they behave
oddly, are restless and fidgety, so that he gets fear they may
capsize. However, he succeeds in ferrying them over, and when
they have arrived, they want to pay him in a peculiar way. They
shake and gold pieces drop from them; this should be the
payment for the trouble of the passage. The ferryman takes a
dim view of the gold pieces and says, it is good that nothing
has fallen in the river, because it would wildly well up.
However, I cannot accept this payment; I can be paid only with
fruits of nature. — He demands three onions, three
artichokes, three cabbages. They should pay with fruits. We see
soon which deep meaning any feature and any single fact has.
The ferryman keeps on saying: you are still a trouble to me
because I have to drive the gold pieces down the river and bury
them. —
Afterwards he really drives the gold pieces a certain distance
down the river and buries them in the abysses of the earth.
When they have been buried there, another strange being
approaches these gold pieces: the green snake, creeping in the
earth, on the earth, and through the abysses of the earth.
Suddenly it sees the gold pieces falling through the crevices.
At first, it believes that they fall from heaven. Then it
consumes them, however, and its body becomes more and more
luminous by the intake of these gold pieces. When it goes to
the surface, it notices that it emits a peculiar light, radiant
like emerald and precious stones in a miraculous way.
Then the snake and the will-o'-the-wisps meet, the
will-o'-the-wisps are still shaking and throwing away what they
have in themselves. The snake, which has acquired a taste for
the gold takes them up in its body and processes what the
will-o'-the-wisps throw around themselves. The snake and the
will-o'-the-wisps say something significant about their mutual
relation.
The
snake is called a relative of the will-o'-the-wisps from the
horizontal line and the will-o'-the-wisps call themselves
relatives of the snake from the vertical line. The
will-o'-the-wisps still ask the snake whether it cannot give
information how to come to the beautiful lily. The snake says,
the beautiful lily is beyond the river. — Now, then we
have get into some trouble, the will-o'-the-wisps replied. We
were ferried over because we wanted to come to the beautiful
lily. If we only could reach a ferryman who leads us back
again! Now there important words follow: you will not find the
ferryman again, and if you find him, be clear in your mind that
he is allowed to ferry you over but he is not allowed to lead
you back. If you want to go back again to the other side of the
river, you can do it only in two ways. Either you attempt at
noon when the sun is highest to find a bridge over my own body
to come over. — The will-o'-the-wisps say, noon is a time
in which we do not like to travel.
Alternatively, you use the second way. There is still another
possibility. In the twilight hour, you find a huge giant at a
certain place. He has no strength in himself, but if he
stretches his hand and the shadow of this hand falls over the
river, one can cross the river about the shadow. The shadow has
the weight-bearing capacity that one can walk across it. If you
do not want to go over me at noon, visit the giant. — The
will-o'-the-wisps accept this advice. Then the snake goes back
again into the abysses of the earth and enjoys the inner light
due to the uptake of the gold.
The
snake then notices something extremely strange. When it
searches the abysses again, it perceives that it sees strange
things now where it had once found irregular products of
nature. Once it perceived them only by the sense of touch, now
after it has become luminous, it notices that it can also see
the things. It could feel columns and manlike things, but it
had never become clear to it until then what there is really in
the subterranean abysses. Now it moves again into them and uses
its emitting light for the illumination of the things. When it
penetrates into this big cave underground, it can immediately
perceive four royal figures standing in the four corners: a
golden king, a silver king, a bronze king and a mixed king in
the fourth corner. This figure is joined from the other metals
in the most various way, so that all possible metals are
chaotically mingled in him.
When the snake comes to the cave and is able to illuminate the
figures, the golden king puts the very important question:
“Where from do you come?”
“From the abysses,” the snake replied, “where
the gold lives.”
“What is more marvellous than gold?” the king
asked.
The
snake answers: “The light!”
The
king continues asking: “What is more refreshing than
light?”
“The conversation.”
Nobody doubts that in these words not only pictures should be
given, but that they also have important contents.
When the snake comes in the cave, a gap opens in the temple in
which the four kings live. The old man with the lamp comes into
the room, and he is asked why he comes just now. There he says
the strange word: “Do you not know that my light is
allowed only to illuminate what is already illuminated? That I
am not allowed to illuminate the dark?” — After the
snake has illuminated the things in the room, he is also
allowed to come with his miraculous lamp.
Now
a conversation develops between the kings and the old man with
the lamp. The old man is asked:
“How many secrets do you know?”
“Three,” he answers.
“Which is the most important one?” the silver king
asks.
“The obvious one,” the old man replies.
“Would you reveal it to us?” the bronze king
asks.
“As soon as I know the fourth.”
Then come the most important words of the fairy tale: “I
know the fourth,” the snake says and whispers something
in his ear, whereupon the old man shouts in a loud voice:
“The time has come!”
There is a big number of attempts to solve the riddles of this
fairy tale. Many people have also tried to interpret this or
that way, what one felt as a riddle already at Schiller's and
Goethe's time. It is peculiar that Goethe and Schiller agreed
about it and expressly pronounced it with the words: the word
of the solution of the fairy tale is contained in the fairy
tale itself. So one is allowed to search for the solution of
the fairy tale only in the fairy tale itself, and it will be
found in the course of the talk that the word of the riddle is
contained in the fairy tale, even if in a peculiar way. The
snake whispers something in the ear of the old man, and that is
the solution of the riddle but it is not said. Then the old man
says, “The time has come!” One has to fathom what
the snake has whispered to the old man.
The
old man with his lamp goes to his wife. The force of the light
of the lamp transforms the most various matters: stones into
gold, wood into silver, dead animals into precious stones,
however, metals are destroyed. He meets his wife in downright
stunned condition. When he asks what has happened, she says,
there were quite strange personalities here. One could regard
them as will-o'-the-wisps. They have remained very little in
the borders of decency. — Now, the old man says, in view
of your age one has probably kept to the general politeness.
— She tells how the will-o'-the-wisps have approached the
gold and have licked off it, so that they could shake off it
again. If it were only this, but have a look at the pug. It has
eaten from the gold pieces and was transformed into a precious
stone and died. Now he is dead. — The old man replies: if
I had known this before, I would not have promised to pay their
debt with the ferryman: three cabbages, three onions and three
artichokes.
The
old man said, take the pug; carry it to the beautiful lily. She
has the capacity to transform any precious stone into something
living by her touch. — She takes three times three fruits
to clear away the accepted debt with the ferryman, and lays the
pug to them. Then a very important feature of the fairy tale
comes: when she carries the basket, it seems to her
exceptionally heavy, although the dead has no weight to her,
the basket with the dead pug would only be as light, as if it
were empty; only by the living, due to the cabbages, onions and
artichokes the basket becomes heavy. However, on the road to
the ferryman she still experiences something peculiar. The
giant lays his arm just in such a way that the shadow falls
about the river, picks a cabbage, an artichoke and an onion out
of her basket, and consumes them, so that she has two of any
kind only. Hence, she wants to clear away a part of the debt.
However, he says that it is necessary to bring the whole
payment immediately.
After some discussions, the ferryman said, there would be still
another resort if she stood security for the supplying of the
three lacking fruits. Hence, she has to put the hand in the
river, as a security for her promise. She does it; however, she
notices that, as far as the hand was put into the river, it has
become black and smaller. “It only seems so now,”
the old man said. “However, if you do not keep your word,
it may become true. The hand will dwindle bit by bit and
disappear completely, finally, without you being devoid of its
use. You can do everything with it, only that nobody sees
it.” However, she prefers that everybody sees it, even if
she can do nothing with the hand. If she brings the tribute to
the agreed time, the ferryman says, everything becomes good
again.
Now
on the road to the beautiful lily, she meets a handsome young
man to whom, however, as he says, all his former power and
strength have dwindled; and from the conversation, we find out
how this has happened. The young man had got the lively desire
to reach to the beautiful lily. She had become his ideal.
However, her beautiful eyes looked so unfortunate that they had
taken all his strength from him and, nevertheless, he feels
attracted to her over and over again.
Finally, both arrive at the beautiful lily. Indeed, everything
that surrounds the beautiful lily is extremely typical; but we
can only take out single features. The beautiful lily is the
picture of the perfect beauty; but she has the property that
she kills all living by her touch at first, and brings
everything back to life that has gone through life and is
doomed.
The
old woman brings her concern forward. The young man has come to
satisfy his longing for the beautiful lily; however, we also
see that the beautiful lily also feels a longing. She feels far
from all fertile living; in her garden plants thrive, but come
only into bloom and do not fructify; she is beautiful but far
from all living. Then the old woman says an important word. She
repeats what her husband said in the subterranean temple, and
this gives the lily new hope. However, this was also the last
moment when she could hope; for she had lost the last living
creature that established a kind of connecting tie between her
and the living. She had a canary in her surroundings, and was
on her guard to touch it because this would have killed it.
However, a hawk had come near; the canary fled from it, flew to
the lily but was killed. Thus, the beautiful lily was in
complete mental loneliness and isolation of that which the
human beings have.
Then the old woman gives the lily the pug. The lily touches it
and brings it back to life again. The young man tries to
satisfy his longing embracing the lily. Thereby he is killed.
His life is destroyed.
Now
the snake forms a magic circle. The young man and the canary
are put into this circle. Thereby that shall be changed in the
near future — and the snake points knowingly to it
— which is hopeless. Indeed, it changes. We hear that now
also the old man with his lamp approaches, and that really he
can tackle a solution of the whole situation. Because the old
man approaches at that time, the bodies of the canary and the
young man have not yet passed over into decay.
The
old man leads them to the subterranean temple that the snake
had already explored. He says to the will-o'-the-wisps, you are
also appropriate to serve us. When we reach the gate of the
temple, you have to unlock the gate for us. — Now, the
snake forms a bridge over the river. They all go over the snake
bridge. There we see when they have come over that by the touch
with the snake which decides to sacrifice herself the young man
comes to life again, even if not yet mentally. He experiences a
strange condition because the snake is ready to sacrifice
herself. He can see but cannot grasp the seen.
The
snake divides in nothing but precious stones that the old man
casts into the river and from them a bridge originates over the
river. The old man leads them to the subterranean temple. When
they arrive there, we see that between the arrivals and the
kings important questions are put which point to the fact that
a big riddle is hidden there. For example, “Where from do
you come?” “From the world.” “Where to
you go?” “To the world.” “What do you
want from us?” “We want to accompany you!,”
namely the kings. Now the group moves with the temple. They go
under the river and rise again with the whole temple. When they
have risen about the river, from above something like planks
falls in the temple: it is the hut of the ferryman. It changes
and becomes a small temple within the big temple. Now a scene
takes place that is of importance to the young man who is
revived by now, but not yet spirit-endowed.
We
have seen: the first golden king represents wisdom; the second,
the silver one the light or beauty; the third, the bronze king
the strength or the will. Now we see a symbolic act taking
place. The young man receives three gifts from the kings. While
he gets a sword from the bronze king, the important words are
spoken: “The sword on the left, the right free.”
— Strength of the will. — From the silver king, he
gets the sceptre with the words: “Pasture the
sheep.” We shall see that the young man is fulfilled by
the emotional strength of the soul that expresses itself in
beauty. The golden king places the crown on his head with the
words: “Recognise the highest.” The strength of the
image grasps the young man. At this moment, he is
spirit-endowed and is able to unite with the beautiful lily.
Thereafter, our attention is still called to the fact that
everything becomes rejuvenated.
Especially significant is still the peculiar role that the
giant plays who has no strength in himself, however, in his
shadow. He stumbles extremely clumsily over the bridge, and the
king is annoyed about that. However, it turns out that the
arrival of the giant has its good sense. As the hand of a big
sundial he stands there, he is held in the middle of the temple
court. We see which strength is there in the sundial, in the
time registering and harmonising giant, we see the bridge
originating from the body of the snake that leads to the
temple. Then we see not only pedestrians, but also carriages,
riders, herds passing back and forth over the bridge. It is
shown to us how the young man regains his former strength due
to the union with the beautiful lily, how he is now allowed to
approach the lily, to embrace her and how happy they are.
Who
would not like to say when he opens himself to the pictures of
the fairy tale: they are riddles! At first we can only feel a
little of that which lives in this fairy tale. However, if we
proceed historically if we consider how it originates in the
middle of 1795, in the beginning of the friendship with
Schiller, from that which took place between Goethe and
Schiller, then we understand what a task Goethe set himself in
the fairy tale.
In
this time, a work was written, a fruit of the study of the
Goethean worldview, which became deeply significant for the
education and cultivation of the German cultural life:
On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters
by Schiller (1794). I can only outline what Schiller intended with
these letters.
He
asks himself, how the human being gets the possibility to
develop his forces higher and higher, so that he can penetrate
in a free and perfect human way into the secrets of the world.
This work is written in letter form to the Duke of
Augustenburg, and Schiller wrote the important sentence in it:
“Every individual human being, one can say, bears a pure
ideal human being in himself as a natural disposition and
destiny. And it is the great task of his existence to agree
with this unchangeable unity in its transformations.”
Now, Schiller tries to explain how the human being has to
develop to the higher stages of human existence.
There are two ways to make the human being unfree, to give him
no free look at the secrets of existence. On one side, he is
controlled by sensuousness, on the other side, his reason is
insufficiently developed. Schiller explains these things in
such a way: we take a human being who does not feel the
compelling, logical of the concepts, also not the concept of
duty in himself, but follows his inclinations and instincts. He
cannot develop the forces of his nature freely, he is the slave
of impulses, desires and instincts, and he is not free. But
also that is not free who fights against his desires, against
his impulses and instincts first of all and follows a purely
conceptual and logical necessity of reason. Such a human being
becomes either a slave of physical necessity or a slave of the
necessity of reason.
In
what way can the human being develop his inner forces? Schiller
answers: he has to develop his inner divine conditions and
endeavour that they are purified and coincide with logic. If
then his desires and instincts are purified, so that he does
with pleasure what he feels as duty, if the necessity of reason
is not felt as compelling, the human being will act with
pleasure already from the usual desire what is reasonable. Then
reason has led the human being down to sensuousness, and
sensuousness leads him again up to reason.
Let
us look at a human being facing a piece of art. He looks at
something sensuous. However, any part of the sensuous manifests
something spiritual to him. For in the sensuous that is
expressed which the artist has put as something spiritual into
the piece of art. Spirit and sensuousness in the view of
beauty, this becomes the condition of the mediator. Thus, art,
the life with beauty, becomes for Schiller a big means of
education, a means of aesthetic education, a freeing of nature,
so that it can unfold its own forces. How does the human being
develop according to Schiller? He has to lead down his nature,
so that it proves itself in the sensuous nature, and develop
the senses, so that they prove themselves in the reasonable
nature.
Goethe pronounces wonderful words about these letters: they
work on me in such a way that they explain to me what I lived
or forever wanted to live. — One can prove that Goethe
was inspired to write his fairy tale by that which Schiller
pronounced in his letters on the aesthetic education of the
human being. Goethe pronounces the same in the fairy tale in
his way. Goethe did not want to pronounce the riddles of the
soul in abstractions. He regarded the single soul riddles as
too rich and too immense to be able to grasp them in physical
necessity and logic. Thus, he felt the necessity to personify
the single soul forces in the figures of his fairy tale. Goethe
answered to Schiller's question in his fairy tale, and we see
how the Goethean psychology is characterised wonderfully in the
fairy tale. We see how the soul continually absorbs and
releases from itself in the representation of the
will-o'-the-wisps, how certain forces are personified in the
snake, which works only on earth like the human research, the
human mind and experience which remain in the horizontal line,
whereas the idealist rises upwards. The force of the religious
attitude is characterised in the old man with the lamp, and we
see, finally, how with the help of the processes that are told
to us Goethe explains in which way any soul force has to
work.
We
shall see the day after tomorrow Goethe showing in the
representation how any soul force must work moderately together
with the other soul forces to develop the soul to a general
view, so that it is able to develop to human perfection,
encompassing the things. If the human being wants to grasp
knowledge immaturely, he is killed like the young man.
Knowledge has to mature. In the fairy tale, Goethe shows to us
the development of the soul correctly and pictorially creating
a parallel work of Schiller's
Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man.
Goethe knew that there is an aim of the development of the
human soul that one called initiation in the higher mysteries
in ancient times. He knew that there is such a possibility, and
he knew that there are communities that foster the soul forces
at concealed places, in the temples of initiation. He also
shows how the newer time has to reach the aim to enable
humankind to attain this initiation largely, to develop the
soul. He shows the process of initiation up to the highest
levels in the processes that happen between the single persons.
Up to that level where the soul becomes able to grasp the
highest secrets. This is exoteric, from a purely historical
viewpoint.
By
the living together with Goethe, Schiller experienced what
Goethe had experienced in one of the most important periods of
his life. Even if it was hard to Schiller, nevertheless, we
must say: what Schiller says in the abstract in the aesthetic
letters and what Goethe had to say in much more comprising
manner, in a manner which is only attained if one expresses
himself in pictures and personalities, this is one and the
same. The fairy tale is Goethean psychology in the deepest
sense. We realise that Goethe became so fertile by the way of
his striving that even today we orientate ourselves with
pleasure to him. Still today, Goethe appears as somebody
present to us. We read him like an author of our time. He is so
fertile because he has so much of eternal substance in his
creating and his whole way. Thus, he works in the sense of that
truth which he himself regarded as the right one, and once he
said something significant: “What is fertile is true
only.” That means that the human being has to acquire
truth that works in such a way, that if he enters life it is
confirmed because it proves to be fertile. This was the
criterion of truth to him: what is fertile is true only!
Just these talks, which are intended to illustrate Goethe to
you, should show that Goethe has proved this saying. Everybody
feels it who settles in him. He feels that in Goethe something
true lives, because Goethe is fertile, and what is fertile is
true.
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